The Taste of Chicken by @f3nix
"What do you feel now?" The scalpel of a monotonous voice, cold as the halogen light blinding him.
"Let me go".
A sudden electric shock followed and almost broke the arched vertebrae of the specimen n. 19-B, while penetrating his limbs.
"What do you feel?"
"The ... the taste of a chicken".
Dense whispering, silent annotations, white everywhere.
He was floating in that white, for hours, perhaps days. Subtle lines, at the corners of his eyes. The last bulwark of Euclidean geometries. Over him, the ceiling was like an enormous virus. Not alive, not dead. Up there, all the gluttony of a pulsating white blasphemy was unfolding over his impotent being. A dodecaphony, ever hungry of new semitones in the musical scale of his moribund ego.
He felt his soul's entrails slowly peeled like an onion. That non-color was slipping inside him, like a sickly glucose sludge, inside every cavity, along every neuron, hair, capillary. It was a profound evil, different from pain. Pain is a vowel. If you're good enough, you can observe it from the outside of yourself till you inevitably lose consciousness.
That, instead. That was nothing less than a grinding profanation of his soul.
"Now. Some feelings?"
"Feeeeeeelings ..." was the mumbled answer, the sound resembling the broken lung of a deflating accordion.
Silent annotations following.
The synaptic stimulation was proceeding well, soon they could present the product to Mother Unit. It was said that, in prehistoric times, the human being populated the nano-swarm, when it was still called Earth. According to certain niche schools of thought, this.. thing.. could have been at the top of the food-chain. Go figure.
A new product, very efficient in its own way and not missing that pleasant touch of chaoticness, this human. No doubt that the Mother Unit would have liked it and find it entertaining, if not even useful.
The chief demiurge gently closed the skullcap of the specimen n. 19-B and left the room with its cohort of servile apprentices in tow. Enough for today.
Winner winner tschikn dinner - by @erh.germany
While the group of giants left, others came in to bring 19-B back into the alcoves. And although the pain was great, a frenzy started.
"Let me go! You pigs, you dreadful creatures, you mangy murderers and torturers! To hell! To hell, to hell with you! Untie me, now! Now! Now! Have you no mercy?" 19-B cried in despair.
But no one related to him. They understood nothing of what he was saying. This ghastly huge figure, which the other whites always followed and which cut at him and gave him energy shocks, then stood bent over him. Maybe asked questions. And he, 19-B answered, but they spoke a different tongue and he answered in his. He had no other! If he could at least speak to them! But all he heard with his ears was a kind of faint squeaking and scratching. There was hardly any difference in the tones, but what did he know anyway? Lastly he just gave silly statements like the chicken thing.
19-B didn't have the slightest chance of escaping his fate. For the Demiurgs, the human race was like for them to examine their rodents. They were put in solitary confinement, burned, mutilated, opened and closed, moved to other environments, observed, grouped, touched, turned and flipped; like objects of investigation. Which they were.
The Demiurgs themselves were an intelligent race who, from a great distance, had finally reached the Milky Way and discovered the blue planet. It looked beautiful as soon as one came to it within a reasonable range of vision. One did not know what humans were.
In principle the Demiurgs were sensible and empathetic beings and therefore there were no intentional cruelties, only necessities. Well, not all the scientists were without arrogance and pride. They had come at a time when the planet was almost devastated. The scars and injuries on the Earth's surface had been clearly visible from orbit and yet the inhabitants had apparently taken no notice. Obviously they did not understand anything of demiurgation. They had been classified at a lower intelligence level. But what did one already know?
The chief demiurge, however, did intend to make the Mother Unit "tschikn" available. After all, the specimen seemed suitable for it. On top, there were so many fascinating creatures in the seas as well. The chief got excited.
An assistant asked him while they were strolling into the big hall for lunch: "Who do you think built the local orbital station?
"I don't know," the chief shook his whiteness with a thought, "There's evidence of intelligent design to some degree. If only we knew more ... ."
"But should we perhaps rethink our approach because we know so little? Do we actually have the right to investigate this nano swarm and its inhabitants with our methods?"
Shoulder-shrugging, the superior replied: "Let's eat first, shall we?"
From the outside you could see strange creatures merely snaring and screeching.
It was an extremely frightening sight.
End
Photo by Mitch Lensink on Unsplash
And again a gloomy and agonizing beginning story. Maybe it would be advisable to take a holiday on a mountain pasture, rather @f3nix? Where the meadows are green and lush and there is a sparkling lake in the valley. Or a long refreshing walk in the woods with your dog in winter temperatures. Anyway, I didn't follow my own advice and finished this depressing episode for humanity. I don't know what to think of it myself yet.
Here, dear readers, we go to the contest of @bananafish and the conditions of participation. Have fun with the other versions of finishthestory contest!
;-)