Copyright © Peter Cawdron 2012
All rights reserved.
The right of Peter Cawdron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published as an eBook by Peter Cawdron using Smashwords
ISBN: 9781466160637
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental
2:01 Chained
Trixie lay in a fetal position, hugging her legs against her chest as she curled up on the ground, trying to stay warm. Her eyes flickered in the dark, taking in the soft glow around her. The ground was dirty, almost oily. Plant roots ran beneath her, crisscrossing the floor. A little warmth radiated through the leathery surface, coming up from the engines deep below, but it wasn't enough to stave off the chill hanging in the air.
Trixie’s first thought on waking was that she was naked. Goosebumps prickled her skin. Her covering was gone, and that surprised her more than the alien environment in which she found herself. She felt vulnerable, alone and somewhat scared. Sitting up, Trixie struggled to clear her thinking as she looked around, trying to make out where she was.
A soft hum rang in her ears. Things moved about her, scurrying around her, ignoring her. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. She wasn't sure if they were tiny machines or something that was alive. Either way, she didn't want to know. They were leaving her alone in the darkness, and that was fine with her. She had no desire to change the arrangement.
Trixie blinked, her eyes taking in the soft light. The cavern was large, at least a hundred feet high, with irregular, curved walls spiraling inward toward each other, joining at a point high above. The walls around her looked like the inside of a hollow tree. The trunk was gnarled, the tree rotten. Faint specks of light ran up the twisted knots. Tiny pinpricks of red, yellow and green pierced the darkness, spreading throughout the cavern like ants climbing an ivy vine.
Trixie could see Berry.
Berry hung in mid-air. He was suspended without any means of visible support, his feet just inches from the ground, his head drooping to one side. The soft, orange glow of a force field surrounded him. Like her, he was naked.
His body puzzled her, she'd only ever seen him dressed, at least that was all she could recall in her hazy memory. The contours of his muscles, the hair on his chest, the stubble on his face, they aroused something primal within her. This was a feeling she didn't understand. Her thoughts were confused, muddled.
Something ran across Trixie’s hand. Prickly feet danced briefly across her fingers. She wanted to scream, but she resisted, pursing her lips so as to avoid making a sound. Slowly, she withdrew her hand from where she had been leaning, not wanting to arouse any inadvertent attention.
As Trixie got up, she felt clumsy. Her legs felt too long, her arms too lanky. She crept forward with her fingers and arms splayed wide to keep her balance. Stiff and sore, she pushed through the ache in her muscles. Trixie stepped over a thick root and tripped, falling forward, landing on all fours, but her fall was slow, her landing soft. Gravity was reduced.
“Trix,” Berry called out, seeing her in the shadows. “You've got to get me out of here, babe.”
Trixie shook her head slowly, watching her dark hair dangle in front of her face. She got back to her feet, trying to shake the drugged lethargy of the moment, not sure what had happened to her. Was this a dream? A nightmare? Was any of this real? She was disoriented, detached.
“Trix, Honey,” called Berry. “Come on, baby. You can do this.”
Trixie heard Berry, but she wasn't interested. There were too many other strange and unusual things competing for her attention, too much she was curious about, things she wanted to understand.
Something caught her eye, a colorful bracelet lying on the ground nearby. She picked it up, examining it closely. Trixie wasn't sure why, but she sniffed the material. She wasn't sure what she expected it to smell like, but the bracelet smelt musty, almost familiar. Holding the band, she looked at the petite woven threads. The rainbow strands of colors were dull within the dark chamber. It must have been pretty to look at in the light, she thought. A small bell hung from a silver name tag looped over the bracelet. In the dim light, the polished silver reflected muted colors like a mirror. The flicker of light was beautiful, she decided, even if she couldn't see it properly.
Trixie slipped the bracelet over her wrist. The bell tinkled softly as she moved. Trixie liked the sound. Her mind was struggling to comprehend what was going on, where she was, what had happened to her, what had happened to Berry. Deep inside, she wanted to block everything out, to ignore the bizarre sensations and focus on the simple things, like the bracelet and the bell. Trixie felt confused, afraid, but the soft ring of the bell was strangely comforting, and that made her feel better.
“We don't have time for this, Trix.”
Trixie walked slowly toward Berry, tiptoeing as she picked her way over the forest-like floor of the cavern. Roots and vines twisted along the ground. They climbed over each other, diving beneath the surface and reappearing again.
Stepping on the balls of her feet, Trixie moved gracefully, carefully, her arms stretched out on either side of her naked body. Like a gymnast on a beam, she adjusted her arms to keep her balance in the confusing gravitational field.
“That's it,” Berry said. “I know this is hard for you. I know. You're doing great. Get me out of here, and we'll get back to the Swift and get the hell out of this mess, but you've got to be quick, Trix. They'll be back soon. Do you understand?”
Trixie stepped up onto the ledge beside Berry. She'd heard his words, but she didn't understand them. Berry’s words seemed disjointed, like words spoken at random. She knew her name. She liked hearing her name, but the other words were a jumble of noise. Swift, mess, hell, quick – somehow she knew the terms, but their meaning was lost. They made no sense in a sentence.
Trixie stared at Berry with a mixture of bewilderment and curiosity. She turned her head sideways as she watched him slowly rotating within the force-field.
“You've got to figure out how to disable this thing,” he said.
Trixie reached out, her hand passing harmlessly through the glowing field, and ran her fingers through his hair, stroking his head gently. She ran her nails over his scalp. It felt nice to touch Berry.
“Not now, Trix. Look, you're beautiful, you're pretty, but I need you to focus. I need you to get me out of here. Do you understand?”
Trixie ran her fingers over Berry's muscular shoulders and through the hair on his chest, clawing at him, feeling the muscles beneath his skin. She was fascinated by Berry. She couldn't explain what was going through her mind, but to touch him felt good. Her fingers played with the hair on his forearm, fascinated by the sense of touch, the warmth, the soft textures.
Berry sighed, exasperated. “Trix. You can't do this! Trixie, please, listen to me! Bellatrix, please listen!”
Something resonated within her. She knew those names, all three. They were her names, she remembered that. Although she couldn't explain why, Trixie felt compelled to obey Berry. She pulled her hand away from the shimmering field surrounding him and stood back, looking at him coldly. Words, concepts, hormones and emotions, they bounced around in her head, conflicting with each other.
“The controls are over there,” Berry said, unable to move his arms but nodding with his head.
Trixie looked around the dark cavern, hearing his voice echoing in the void.
Black shapes swarmed over the walls. Soft lights glowed from beneath the hard outer shells of the tiny insect-like aliens crawling over the mat of tree roots and branches. Trixie felt drawn to the strange cre
atures. Her fear faded the more she moved around. She was feeling bold, empowered. As her thinking cleared, she found herself growing more curious.
She crouched and reached out to touch one of the small creatures scuttling past on the ground. She wanted to learn about it, to toy with it, to play with it as a child would with a pet. She picked up one of the insect-like animals by its shell. The creature’s legs continued pumping as though they were still touching the ground. She turned the critter around, putting it down so it faced the way it came, and it scurried off, fighting against the current of other creatures swarming around it. The tiny alien was mindless, which surprised her.
Another creature caught her eye. This one was segmented, with hundreds of spiky legs protruding from its segmented body sections snaking some six feet behind it. The creature was thin, barely an inch wide, and looked like a centipede, but without a visible head. Trixie put her foot down in front of it, blocking its path. The creature reversed its motion without turning around, moving backwards smoothly and climbing on top of an adjacent root that weaved along the floor at a slightly different angle. From there, the long, flexible creature straightened up and proceeded forward again, without turning and changing the direction it was facing.
Trixie was fascinated.
“Trix, we don't have time for this.”
Berry sounded exhausted, frustrated.
Berry was no fun.
As Trixie moved over by the twisted wall, a holographic projection rose up in front of her. She'd stepped up on a slightly raised platform, activating the image.
“Don't touch that, Trix.”
Trixie was intrigued.
The holograph sprawled out, a three-dimensional image of a dense tree branching into millions of fine filaments, or perhaps it was a giant brain attached to a spinal cord, or the growth of a coral head or some bizarre alien cauliflower, whatever it was, it stretched some fifteen feet across through the air in front of her. The image was semi-transparent, allowing her to see through to the different end points on the far side. As she waved her hand over the image it turned, rotating around her in response to the motion of her arms.
Trixie laughed.
She liked the pretty lights.
“Leave that alone, Trix.”
Naked, she lifted both hands above her head and the entire image turned upside down, turning over on the x-axis, exposing the single root from which the tree branched out in all of its complexity. The trunk was stubby, dividing in two, before those limbs split again and then further, diverging into hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of branches, each one blossoming and spreading out further again into thin veins covering millions of end points at varying depths. The tips looked like a sea of stars. Trixie felt giddy looking at the immense structure, all linked back to that single point at the base. She lowered her arms and the coral tree rotated down, showing the plethora of possible end points as a field of fine white dots floating in the air. One of them glowed red.
“Don't touch that, Trixie.”
Trixie couldn't help herself. Her curiosity was overwhelming.
She wanted to play, not to run and hide. She had to touch the miniature star. There was nothing else she could do when faced with such a wonderful, beautiful sight. Her hand reached through the air, skimming over the sea of jewels as her finger touched the small, red terminal point.
The image changed.
The branching structure beneath the glowing red star lit up in a brilliant variety of complementary colors. The trail winding through the tree toward its base showed multiple alternate end points all branching off in different, lesser shades of red, slowly fading to orange and yellow on the fringes.
“Don't touch anything, Trix. Just step away. I need you to figure out how to turn that damn thing off.”
Trixie heard him. She understood “don't,” but she decided, no. Looking at the fine filaments, she touched a point near the base of the upper junction leading to the tiny, pretty red star. She wondered what this marvelous machine would do, if it was a machine. It seemed organic, more alive than any computer was. Trixie was curious.
As she pulled her hand back, another image appeared above the glowing branch, a set of human chromosomes. Twenty three pairs of chromatids floated in the air, each one looking like an earthworm, or a fuzzy caterpillar all scrunched up. Some of them were pinched in the middle, others were pinched together. Sections of the DNA coiled within these chromosomes glowed, highlighting the genetic changes that had occurred since this last juncture in the evolutionary tree of life.
Berry screamed, crying out in agony. The muscles in his arm flexed as his head swung back in pain. Although his upper torso and legs were held fast by the force field, Trixie could see his muscles clenching as though seized with a cramp.
Trixie was startled by his cry.
She panicked.
Instinctively, she leaped, with her only thought being to flee. In the low gravity, her muscles propelled her ten feet in the air, and she grabbed hold of one of the mighty branches twisting upward toward the specks of light above. Instantly, her body was pulled sideways against the wall, held there by the gravitational realignment within the alien vessel that made every wall a floor.
Trixie's change in orientation was confusing, disorienting. She looked back at Berry and the holographic image, they seemed to be stuck to the wall beside her, instead of below her. Berry's cries and the bewildering nature of her sense of down scared her even more. Trixie felt she had to hide from the raw power being unleashed around her.
The force field around Berry glowed, throbbing and pulsating with light.
Trixie watched Berry’s form change over the course of several minutes. Berry squirmed, trying to free himself from the invisible chains that bound him, but it was useless. His skin darkened as his head distorted, his cheekbones widened, his jaw grew larger, and the brow above his eyes thickened and extended slightly outward. Hair bloomed, covering most of his body. His back seemed to arch into a hunch, no longer straight. Berry struggled in vain as his muscles gained bulk. His forearms and hands looked coarse and thick. He looked over at her, his eyes pleading. He grunted, unable to speak. The force field surged in its intensity and Berry howled in agony.
Trixie had been bad. She should have listened to Berry. This was wrong. Even for her, this was too much. She shouldn't have played with the hologram, but she didn't know what would happen. She wanted to know what would happen, she was curious, not malicious.
Trixie wanted Berry back, her Berry.
With unusual grace, she sprang off the wall as though she were jumping from the ground. She twisted through the air. In the light gravity, Trixie drifted before landing silently in a crouched position. Her sense of up never changed, but the vast chamber seemed to twist and distort and swing around her as she landed on the floor that, seconds before, had seemed like a wall.
Her hands were shaking. Trixie hadn't meant to hurt Berry. She loved Berry. Her fingers trembled as she reached into the holographic image, carefully moving the glowing red star back to the outer filaments of the tree, hoping that would be enough to reverse the process.
Berry screamed again, but this time his cry was deep and chesty. His body shook in a continuous spasm as genetic changes were applied to the cellular structure of his entire body. Trixie watched in anguish as the minutes slowly passed. She was torturing him, but she didn't mean to cause him such pain. Trixie felt awful. At those points where she could no longer watch him writhing in agony, she hung her head in shame.
The contorted, twisted look on his face slowly returned to normal. His skin lightened, his back straightened, the excess hair fell away, drifting lazily out of the force field and to the floor, his claw-like nails retreated. Insects swarmed over the ground and converged on the hair, whisking it away into the shadows.
As the pulsating field died down, Berry was left panting, gasping for breath. Tears ran down his cheeks. Blood dripped from his nose.
“Trixie,” he whispered. “Ple
ase.”
Trixie didn't know what to do. She tried to speak. She tried to say sorry, but nothing came out, just a hoarse croak. The cold around her seemed to add to her confusion. What could she do? She didn't understand, she couldn't understand.
The holographic image rested in front of her. She noticed it emanated from a smooth silver disc set into the center of the platform. Trixie decided she hated the pretty lights. She hated what they had done to Berry. She wanted to be rid of the image, to destroy it. Trixie reached through the glowing filaments with her foot, hoping she was doing the right thing, and stamped on the source of the image, kicking at it and covering it. The cavern darkened immediately. Berry dropped to the ground.
“Oh,” she cried, bounding over toward him in the light gravity and grabbing him. She helped him sit up as she struggled with her words. “I—I'm...”
“I know,” he said, catching his breath. “I know you didn't mean to hurt me. It's OK, babe. I know you're sorry.”
“Hurt. Sorry,” she said, repeating his words, grasping at their meaning.
Trixie pulled Berry’s head to her soft naked breast, wrapping her arms around him and holding his head close as she kissed his forehead and his hair. She didn't think anything of what she was doing. She relished the warmth of touch, the feel of life, the freedom and relief.
Berry got to his feet. Trixie grabbed at him, her hands running up and down his chest, fawning over him.
“Trix, don't.”
Berry’s clothes lay to one side. He tossed her a singlet, adding, “Put this on.”
Berry slipped on his trousers as Trixie stood there holding the cotton singlet, wondering what to do with it.
“Raise your hands,” he said. “Go on, it's okay.”
Trixie complied meekly and Berry slipped his singlet over her arms and head, pulling it down over her breasts and covering her waist and the upper half of her thighs.
“Clothes,” he said. “They keep us warm.”
Trixie & Me Page 1
