HUMANS MUST KNEEL: A POSSESSIVE ALIENS ROMANCE

by Renard, Loki

  “I know,” I growl, interrupting him before he can continue to remind me of my hypocrisy. “But that human was disruptive.”

  “That’s what the mind wiper is for. And the soul whip. There are ways to keep people in line without fucking them. Did you like her or something?”

  “I did,” I say. “She was brave and smart.”

  “Not quite brave enough,” he says. “She was terrified of you after seeing what you did to Tyank.”

  I can still see the expression on her face in my mind’s eye. She looked at me as if I was the devil incarnate. She didn’t understand that I did it to protect her, that Tyank’s reckless table throwing could have hurt her and I refused to allow harm to come to her. And she can’t understand that scythkin are different from humans.

  “Evening, boys,” Tyank says, strolling in, both arms attached as if they had never been torn from his body. “Boss,” he adds, nodding at me.

  He does not hold any ill-will against me. We are rough on one another, and what we do in the heat of battle is rarely personal.

  “How’s the arms?” Vulcan asks.

  “Better than before, I think,” Tyank grins, windmilling them around, knocking a small model of the original Earth off a shelf. It bounces and then shatters on the next landing, cracking into dozens of pieces.

  “Idiot,” Vulcan snorts.

  “You’re the idiot,” Tyank says. “And your jacket is ripped.”

  “It isnt…” Vulcan looks down and then swears. “Great. Do you know how many of these were in existence? This is one of the very last designs by the great seamstress Serphone. She made it for me in a custom order. And now you two have…”

  “ENOUGH.” I snarl the world with enough ferocity to make them both fall silent. The battle never really stops with scythkin. We are constantly at war, with the universe, with each other, some might say, even with ourselves. The only peace we get is in the lull after the battle, where our war hormones have been consumed in the act of violence. It has been too long since any of the three of us had a proper foe to fight, and so we are turning on one another.

  “So what are you going to do with Seven?” Tyank asks.

  “I’m returning her to the simulation,” I say. “After what she’s seen, she’s never going to be able to trust me.”

  “Does it matter if she trusts you?”

  Vulcan’s question seems callous on the surface, and on a deeper level too, for that matter. He doesn’t see humans as being in any way equal to us. I suspect if it were up to him, he’d reclassify them as food class. If it’s not capable of defending itself against him, he doesn’t value it. Weakness is, well, weakness where Vulcan is concerned. What he doesn’t see is how strong humans can be. How incredibly brave Seven was.

  “Yes. It matters. She’s too smart to be down here if she doesn’t feel safe.”

  “You ripped Tyank’s arms off to protect her. She’s the safest human in this entire place.”

  “She doesn’t see it that way. She saw me do something monstrous, and she will never see me any other way.”

  Vulcan makes a grunting sound, as if he’s disgusted I care what she thinks or how she sees things. I know his attitude comes from a lifetime of raw domination of other species. We are not made to empathize with others. We are made to wipe them from existence.

  He would understand if he had bonded with a human like I have. I mated with Seven and I created a connection. That connection has consequences, like fearing the judgement of a soft little meat woman.

  “I don’t understand,” he says plainly. “You are Krave. First hatched of a hundred. You have conquered worlds, slaughtered millions. And yet now you worry because one human with a dry erase board for a mind saw you rip Tyank’s arms off a little?”

  When he says it like that, it doesn't make sense. I am not acknowledging who I truly am to Seven. From the moment we met, I played a role. I tried to pretend that even though I was dangerous, I was civilised.

  “She resisted the programming.”

  “So she’s a glitch. You can’t fall in love with every human who bucks the program,” he says, his eyes searching my face. I know what he’s doing. It’s what every dominant scythkin lower in the hatching order does - he’s looking for a weakness. I have always had to be careful around Vulcan. Now I’ll have to be more careful than ever.

  “She’s more than a glitch. You wouldn’t understand. You’re a grunt.”

  His dorsal ridge rises at the jibe. He doesn’t like to be reminded of his place, but he has to be. I will have order, both in the colony, and outside it. I take a swig of the synth, but it doesn’t do anything for me. I’m not suffering from an overdose of natural rage. I’m mourning the fact that I’m about to turn the most singular female I’ve ever met back into a state where she will no longer know me. The intimacy we shared will be erased entirely from her mind. Any memory of me and my kind, let alone fond feeling, will be long gone. She is going to find herself

  “I wouldn’t put her back,” he says. “What I take, I keep.”

  “And what have you taken, or kept?” I curl my upper lip, baring derisive fangs. “What have you ever claimed, Vulcan?”

  His dorsal ridge rises and I see fire flash in his eyes. He takes a long swig of his synth to calm down before he begins another battle with me. I would fight him again just to put off what must inevitably come next.

  I could wipe her again, go back a few hours so she forgets what she saw, but I know that would be futile. I am scythkin. I do things like rip the arms off my broodkin when they enrage me. I am a monster. She is a human. And we can never be together, even if letting her go feels like my heart is being ripped from my chest.

  REDUX

  Seven

  THIS ISN’T REAL

  I turn the note over and over in my fingers. These three words are ruining my life.

  My stomach growls. I’m hungry. Hungry like I’ve been undergoing something really intense and stressful. I’m also wet, like I just got out of the shower, except I don’t remember having had a shower. But it wouldn’t be the first time I spaced out when doing something menial, especially if I’ve been doing some recreational substances. Whatever I took this time has really knocked me around.

  I drop the note and stumble over to the kitchen to get some water and some food. Man, what did I take?! The come down on this trip is brutal. My head is starting to pound and my legs feel like jelly, and I feel like I’ve lost something very important. Except I can’t remember what it is. It’s like I left an organ somewhere outside my body, and the rest of me is aching for it.

  I manage to gulp a little water down and look around myself. It’s probably just the drug dissociation talking, but has my apartment always been this dingy? Has there always been speckled black dust building up on the insides of the window frames? All I can see right now are the problems. Little pieces of anarchy, peeling paint and loose hinges, and a blaring sound outside demanding that I do something. I’m rubbing my hands over my head and ears, so I miss the first part of it, but the last two words drift through the wall and into my bones.

  … MUST KNEEL

  Oh right.

  The kneeling thing.

  I swig down the rest of the glass of water which feels like a million razorblades cascading down the inside of my throat, then follow everybody else out to the street for the ritual, dropping to my knees with the rest of my fellow humans. This has never been comfortable, but right now it feels like hell on my tender body. The light from the sun is making me want to curl up on myself and roll away into a dark corner, but I have to wait. The kneeling isn’t done until the bell releases us.

  DING!

  There it is.

  Almost immediately, the world resumes its usual hum. The streets come alive with traffic, horns beeping, tires squealing, people shouting.

  I go back upstairs. I’m between jobs. I got laid off from the last one because I went in and insisted that I was a mushroom. That did not go down well because I was actuall
y a bank teller. It’s frowned upon to have a drug problem, though I insist that I don’t have a problem with any of the drugs I like to use.

  Wuff!

  I look down to see a fluffy white dog sitting at my door. It’s cute. But I’m pretty sure it’s not mine.

  “Hello,” I say. “Where did you come from? This is a no pets apartment. Plus, the concept of a dog seems strange and unnatural to me for some reason.”

  Wuff! It insists, scratching at my door. The dog doesn’t care about the apartment policies on pets, and neither, now I think about it, do I.

  “I mean, sure, okay, whatever,” I say, opening the door and letting the little animal in. It dashes through the door and leaps up on the couch where it starts sniffing all around as if it is hunting something.

  “Guess I’ve got a dog now,” I say, sitting down on the couch. There’s a half-eaten bag of chips on the coffee table, which I grab and start stuffing my face. Daytime television is starting, and so is my schedule. Two hours of talk shows followed by two hours of soaps, followed by an hour long presentation on a knife you can cut your shoes in half with. I’m set for the next five hours.

  The dog and I lie together on the couch, amid crumbs and bits of chips, and other stuff that I don’t know what it is, but the dog likes it. His snuffling is near constant as he works around me, cleaning up the mess I’ve been making for I don’t know how long.

  “I should have gotten one of you ages ago,” I say. “The rules say I can’t have one of you, but you're here and it’s awesome. I should break more rules. I should break… all the rules.”

  The dog agrees. He sits down, puts a paw on my shoulder, and wuffs at me in a way which says the rules aren’t rules, they’re just guidelines, and they’re imposed on you by a society that doesn't even know you as an individual, just as a number, a productive unit. Throw off the shackles of your oppression and do only as you wish to do.

  “Wow, little doggie, you sure are eloquent with your paw tappy taps.”

  I’m aware the dog isn’t really psychically talking to me. I’m projecting my own thoughts onto this little white puppy, but it feels as though we are communicating somehow, because I can tell this little dog is totally down for, like, whatever.

  “What should we do, doggie? Should we tune in, drop out? Should we, tune out and drop in? Or was it drop out, turn over… no, that’s not it.”

  I’m sure I have some drugs in this place somewhere.

  I start looking, opening doors.

  One leads to a chaotic mess of a room which is not mine. This is my roomie’s room. I haven’t seen her in what feels like a VERY long time. She’s probably off riding some dude. I have a faint memory of her telling me something, but it’s fuzzy and faded and once I find my stuff again it will probably be completely obliterated.

  Closing that door, I return to my room and look underneath the lava lamp which glubs away happily day and night. I think it’s technically illegal to get high without a lava lamp and at least one wall hanging of a tiger drinking at a lake. Glancing at the wall over my bed, I see my tiger drinking and know that what I am doing is correct. Yes.

  “Herrreee druggie druggie druggies…” I croon to the room. There’s nothing under the lava lamp besides a sticker which says it was made in China. I’ve never been to China.

  Moving on, I check my underwear drawer, which contains a white lace thong I bought, wore once, and then realized it spent the entire time sawing away at my butt crack like it was trying to make a new canyon between my cheeks. There’s nothing there. Nothing in my sock drawer either.

  “Do I… not have drugs?” I say the words to myself with all the disappointment I can muster. What was past me thinking? It must have known that future me would want drugs.

  “We are going out, doggie. Do you need a leash?”

  We step out of the apartment together, no leash. I don’t want to tie this cool dog down, plus, I get the feeling he’s not going to leave my side. He likes me. It’s an interesting feeling, being liked this way, by a creature that clearly thinks I am awesome as hell. It’s not like people who always have something better to do. Except my roomie. She was interesting, when she wasn’t collecting dick. I wonder if she’ll ever come back. I wonder if I will remember her name if she does. Forgetting people’s names is…

  “Is that a DOG!?

  I swing around to see Kar3n. She put a 3 instead of an e in her name because she wanted to spell it uniquely. Nobody likes her. But she doesn’t care. Which kind of makes me like her. But not right now.

  She’s dressed for work. I don’t know where she works. Somewhere they make you wear black and white uncomfortable looking clothing with even less comfortable looking shoes. I am wearing a tight red tank top and wide legged jeans with skate shoes. The two of us do not look like we belong in the same space, yet here we are.

  “Hi, Kar3n.”

  “Is that a dog?” She is pointing at the dog with a red coated fingernail.

  “Nice shoulder pads, Kar3n.”

  She looks at me through narrow eyes coated with blue eyeshadow and repeats the question slowly and aggressively.

  “Is. That. A. Dog?”

  “Okay, bye Kar3n, nice talking to you.” I walk into the elevator. Kar3n follows. Goddammit. Should have taken the stairs, but old habits die hard. Now I’m trapped in an enclosed space with a woman wearing way too much Red Door.

  “You're not allowed dogs in this building. Some people are allergic.”

  “They're not in my apartment.”

  “I’m reporting you.”

  “Go ahead. See what happens.”

  I’m being menacing. It is fun. I get to make my face go mean, my eyes narrowed, my jaw clenched, just like my fists, and my butthole, to be honest, because if this goes wrong I could face eviction. I don’t want to be homeless.

  “It’s not about you,” Kar3n says.

  “Well if it’s not about me, then why do I only have the experience of me? Why am I stuck inside the head of myself? Why aren’t I in the head of the person it IS about!?”

  She pulls her head back and looks at me askance.

  “It’s about all of us,” she says. “You can’t be in everyone’s head. That doesn’t mean you can’t act as if everybody matters.”

  “Good advice, Kar3n. I’ll spend my life worrying about how what I do affects everyone else. Like this dog. Who has nowhere else to go.”

  The door dings and opens, allowing us to escape our mutual prison.

  The dog and I go one way. Kar3n goes the other. We are all temporarily happy. Yay for us.

  “What’s your name, dog?”

  The dog doesn’t answer. It just pants at me happily.

  “Pants,” I say. “Your name can be pants.”

  Pants seems happy about that.

  So we go, Pants and I, looking for our next fix.

  Krave

  “What is she doing?”

  I returned Seven to the simulation, having wiped her memory of everything that had happened to her. I expected for her to immediately rebel again, but that’s not what’s happening.

  She is making different choices this time around. She is being compliant. She is kneeling when told. This should be a triumphant moment, but it doesn’t feel like one.

  All is not well in the simulation, or outside it. Tyank’s arms have been reattached, for the moment at least, but that is only one problem solved. The Galactor fleet is on the move, according to our intel, but they are not en route to this location. Their movements are erratic and difficult to monitor. My mind should be on them. Instead, I can think of nothing but this human.

  I watch her from a distance, flipping between hardwired camera feeds and flying drones to track her progress. I am confused. I was certain she would repeat her earlier behavior by refusing to kneel, but she went ahead and did it as if she had never had any objection to it at all. I wonder if I erased too much, some specific and important thought or piece of information which might now change the course of
her life. I also sent the puppy up after she obeyed, thinking that it might jog vestigial memory when she saw it after kneeling, but there is no evidence that has happened either.

  Humans are complicated and unpredictable, and if I know one thing about them it is that they can be relied upon to do precisely the thing I want them very much not to do.

  I have an ache inside me, which is ridiculous. Scythkin do not feel pain. But I am feeling loss in my gut, a horrible empty feeling which torments me by being so very pathetic.

  “Are you still watching that human?”

  Tyank has learned absolutely nothing from our fight. I knew he wouldn’t. It was foolish of me to engage with him. I should have let him be, returned Seven to the bedroom and made love to her. I should have controlled myself. I already regret sending her back. I can be better. I don’t have to be a reckless, ruthless monster who acts out in violence whenever he is challenged. I can be better, for her.

  At least, I think I can.

  But it doesn’t matter. I may never touch her again. If she keeps behaving herself, I will never have cause to remove her from the simulation. She may live in this simulated period as a perfect citizen. She might meet a man, fall in love, argue with him about what they should have for dinner. Do human things. That would probably be the best outcome for her.

  “Go do something else, Tyank,” I say, my voice rough with warning.

  He doesn’t get the hint.

  “What’s she up to?”

  “I don’t know. She’s not employed. Maybe she’s walking the dog.”

  “Looks like she’s buying drugs.”

  “She wouldn’t…”

  “That’s one of the dealers, isn’t it? That guy she’s talking to? The one she’s smiling at? She’s pushing her hair back behind her ears and laughing a lot.”

  “I don’t need a narration, Tyank.”

  “That’s true. We have microphones.” He reaches over, hits a button, and Seven’s voice fills the room, the sound of the city behind her.