My proctor is stern but I am the best servant she has ever had in the three hundred years she has lived. All the others proved not up to passing the test she gives in the first week of her employ. She is a scientist and works for years at a time. Nonstop. Day and night. It is my job to see her needs are met and I have been augmented to see that always takes place. I am protected from the wave as is the meat stored in cold storage and brought up after the culling. But she will kill me as fast as she made me. Faster. I know my place in the universe. Let me tell you the beginning of beauty and her beast....
I should have died on this day. Servants of proctors must be clothed at all times. This law is the oldest. There is no explanation given. It is just enforced. This, the ancient one enforces in person. The abduction is always swift. The rush of the wind, the person is gone and then from a distance the screaming begins. One is careful not to break this law.
In the early hours of the morning, an attendant had made an attempt on the life a proctor. This doesn’t happen often but when it does retribution is unusually swift. Most proctors simply kill their servants first then find out who was responsible and did the person act alone.
The time of cleansing is something holy to me. It is the only time I am without clothing. It is a time where I wash clean the stench of the collaborator( for that is surely what I am) and I can close my eyes and pretend that my actions are the result of a forced hand.
I finished and toweled off. As I exited the shower stall my proctor stood in the doorway with a pruning rod in her hand. I immediately went to my knees. Not all of me stayed down. My proctor stopped in mid-stride. Time stretched for me. All that broke the silence was the pitter patter of water droplets from my body to the tile floor. “Dress and prepare for the probe” she said huskily and was gone from the room as silently as she came.
As we waited for the mind-probe to warm up, the change in her behaviour was unmistakable. For the first time, in the years I had known her, she fumbled, dropped things, hesitated in selecting instruments. These creatures are not clumsy I assure you. Something major had happened and then something major did. As she paused over me to position the probe her tunic fell open. There was a moment when her face changed to something unreadable then a blur of motion. You get used to the speed of these creatures after a while but I froze. I knew that if I looked up I would see embarrassment on her face. Then her eyes would find my eyes and her hands would find my throat and another servant would take my place by the end of the day.
My proctor is my world. I live for her. Would die for her. Whatever was going on outside our world paled in comparison with what was going on inside ours. I stayed still, breathing as shallowly as possible and I felt her eyes slowly crawl across my face. I closed my eyes and waited for the blow that would end my life. But the moment passed and I felt the triodes and minutes later the probe was finished. “In the morning” she said icily. I came off the table bowed to my missus, went to my quarters and barely made it to the bowl in time.
My proctor was very busy for the next month. Very busy. I was summoned only when absolutely necessary and when she did there was no eye contact. I assumed crisis was past so like a fool who goes swimming in waters where the big lizards live... I threw myself back into my job hoping to incur the favour of my beloved mistress.
Proctors do not usually visit one another. There seems to be a silent line of communication that they tap into. I have seen them move to destroy nests of resistance, human and alien(the greys refuse to give up their experimentation on human subjects and pay for their stubbornness with their lives) and their immortal nemesis’ the vampire. Icarus and Donnabella are legends from the vampire world well known to us and they do not play when it comes to corrupting the Attendants to bring them valuable information. Death is quick when they find covens of the leeches but all proctors that have caught wind of Donnabella and her immortal child and search to destroy them are never seen again.
On the hunt the proctors put the lionesses to shame. There are no visible signals but they move as one. Of course. So imagine my surprise when I opened the front door to check the spoor finder and found five proctors waiting.
There was a moment where my surprise got the better of me and I did not move, then as I was about to drop to my knees they all smiled. The same way. At the same time. If you have never seen this, having it described to you will bring you nowhere near the horror it evokes in the viewer. I dropped to my knees and lowered my head in supplication and they passed me and through the front door. I felt their eyes pass over me and knew they were here about me.
The evening chores brought me to the “pit”.
