Alien Pets, Trisha McNary [free novel 24 .txt] 📗

That evening, Antaska and M. Hoyvil, with Potat in his pocket, passed through the wide, high entrance to the game room. They walked part of the way across the curved foyer that led to the various parts of the big room. Dim lighting made it impossible for Antaska to see its far walls. Round tables, each softly lit by a blue light focused down from a point on the ceiling, were scattered about one section of the room.

Verdantes of various sizes and Earth humans sat at the tables sipping from drink tubes of many colors. Some played card or board games. Behind the small round tables, more humanoids stood at larger rectangular tables playing games Antaska didn’t recognize. Turning to face the center of the room, she saw an empty dance floor with a spot-lit bar counter and bar stools placed far behind it.

Antaska turned again and looked to her other side. She peered into a much more dimly lit area and froze in shock.

“What is that?” she gasped.

It was a vision that could have been right out of one of the Earth-made horror movies about aliens. These movies were still popular after many thousands of years, although the Verdantes had attempted to persuade the humans not to watch them.

Earth humans were eager to adopt most of the helpful information and technological advances that the Verdantes provided, but in the case of movie viewing, the warning message had the opposite of the desired effect. The forbidden nature of the movies only increased their popularity. Curiosity kicked in, and almost everyone, including Antaska, wanted to know what they were being warned about.

In one common movie theme, a more powerful alien race captured humans and stored them in some vast facility. The stored humans believed they were still living their lives, but they were actually in a dream state enclosed in eggs or other containers. Often, tubes were attached to them to suck out their mental or physical energy.

Now, Antaska was horrified to be faced with a similar scene directly in front of her. Hanging from the ceiling from harnesses were more than a dozen humanoids covered from head to toe in a tight casing. Its shiny black material glowed out eerily from dark shadows that enveloped the area. There were no eye openings in the black encasements. Sensors stuck out all over the heads and other parts of the bodies, attached to wires that led to the ceiling high above the floaters.

Most disturbingly of all, the humanoids weren’t making full movements, but the muscles of their arms, legs and bodies were twitching. They twitched like Potat did when she was dreaming and thought she was running or jumping. Mixed in between the occupied suits were many empty ones that seemed to be waiting hungrily to encase and feed on their next victims. Antaska didn’t know the real purpose of these suits. But she thought these humanoids must be in a dream state, experiencing some kind of illusory reality.

Antaska instinctively backed away from M. Hoyvil. Reflexively, he lifted and waved the six fingers of his hands in a gesture protesting his innocence. But she didn’t understand Verdante sign language, and she backed away even more.

Could the energy taken from these humans be what they use to power the ship? Antaska wondered creatively.

When M. Hoyvil saw Antaska’s reaction, he felt as if he had suddenly developed the supposed mind-reading powers of Master Mytaar. Hoping to reassure her, he spoke out loud.

“It’s not what you think! These are virtual reality suits, and these people are playing games in them. They aren’t trapped in there. There’s a virtual control function that lets them get out of the suits whenever they want to. If you look closer, you’ll see that it’s not just Earthlings in the suits. There are just as many Verdante adolescents, if not more. If these suits were for capturing humans, why would we put our own people in them? Not that we would ever do that, of course.”

M. Hoyvil kept his eyes on Antaska while he was speaking. He was relieved to see that she looked calmer. But with his sharper-than-human eyesight, even in the dark room, he also noticed a red color changing her tan skin to a deep copper shade.

She must be embarrassed, M. Hoyvil thought.

“I should have warned you about this, but I didn’t know you’d watched those Earth alien movies. Actually, the truth is that I was preoccupied with thinking about a lot of other things,” M. Hoyvil admitted. “I should have remembered Potat’s extreme reaction when I brought her in here last night. I felt something poking into my shoulder, and when I looked over, she had grown to twice her size. Her fur was sticking straight up, and her back was curled up too. But once she realized it was harmless, she got interested. She tried to slap and claw at the players. I had to take her away before she messed up someone’s game.”

Antaska looked up at Potat. She sat on M. Hoyvil’s shoulder calmly washing her white paws, clearly taking no interest in the discussion. Then, something new happened among the silent and barely moving hanging black figures. Two of them lowered to the ground. Their black casings opened. One released a male Verdante of about M. Hoyvil’s size. The other released an Earth human male who Antaska recognized from her gym class. They walked over to M. Hoyvil and Antaska.

The two Verdantes stood staring silently at each other, and Antaska heard whispering, but she ignored it. The male human spoke to Antaska. He was about her height with brown curly hair and large dark-brown eyes.

“Hi, I’m Pablo. I’ve seen you in gym class,” he said.

A reddish flush appeared on his face, and he looked down at the floor. Antaska felt a sudden stab of embarrassment.

Is he thinking about what’s going on in gym class with me and Eegor and Tilde? Antaska wondered. But it’s not that different than how people acted on Earth. We were taught not to get into exclusive relationships. So no one would have cared who I flirted with.

“But this isn’t Earth,” the tiny voice in her head said again.

This time it seemed to come from close by. From up on M. Hoyvil’s shoulder. Antaska looked up to see Potat staring down at her.

Antaska shook her head.

No. I’m not