You would think that living out in space might teach a bit of patience, and you would be right.  I possess a modicum of patience that has been honed over long years of tedious tasks.  Checking and double-checking all the hull seals that one year, for instance, was a great teacher in boredom.  Usually, I had fun things to think about while I was doing those mindless tasks.  Things like where in the virtual world I would explore next or how to escape from my last guild’s dungeon and repatriate myself.  Usually, my thoughts were not centered on if the faint itching that I think I’m feeling is or isn’t the first sign of space-monster digestive juices.

Lets face it, there really isn’t much that you can focus on besides your situation when in possible mortal peril, and all that thinking ends up recursive after the first hour or two.  I don’t even have captain McGreggor to mime at since my pod is in the way.  Nothing is going on, and even with the threat of death, it still makes me. . .just a bit. . .sleepy.

~

I’m laying on an operating table, tied down with clamps.  Two doctors lean over me muttering just outside of my range of hearing.  THey gesture back and forth with scalples and needles.  Every so often they glance at my face and make what might be a smile that’s hidden behind their surgical masks.

I attempt to sit up, straining against my bonds.  Instead of pulling myself up, the room tilts down and gravity goes with it.  The doctors ignore me, one poking animatedly at a patient chart on his clipboard.  Leeroy Jackson typed in at the top.  My name.  Not important, but my gaze lingers.

The sound of pencil on paper draws my eyes away and forward.  Standing on the wall, maybe suction cupped to it with the tilt, is a man with a squid for a head writing furiously in a small notebook.  He fills a page, then brings the pencil back up to the top and keeps writing.  He ignores me just like the doctors do.

Like the doctors did.  One finally looks over at me and presses my body backwards flat on the table.  The room rights itself, perhaps leaning a slight bit the other direction.  A stray scalple on a rolling table slides an inch or two towards my head before stopping from friction.  The doctors do not seem to notice the gravity anomaly.

I decide that I should really inform them that there is a squid-headed man in the room without a mask on which is certainly not proper sanitary procedures.  As I begin to speak, I realize that my mouth is numb.  Maybe its missing, even.  My tongue feels fine, but my lips are heavy and can not open.  I attempt to point, but the two doctors are still debating, though one seems to have the upper hand.

I have given up, and the squid-headed man checks his watch.  It is attached to one of his face-tentacles instead of his wrist.  That seems convenient, though I don’t know many people who still have wristwatches.  THe notebooks goes in his coat pocket, and the man turns and jumps down through the window sideways, defying gravity.

The doctors are quiet now and look down at me.  They have lost their masks at some point when I was distracted, and instead of normal human mouths they have long black beaks that open and close with their minty breathing.

Something is beeping in the background, behind the doctors.  Beeping slowly, incessantly.  More beeps join it, desynched and harmonious until everything is filled with beeping and the room fades from white to whiteout.

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~

I open my eyes and see the lights on the pods around me are blinking furiously.  I can even hear them beeping and way in the background an older man cursing in what might be Irish.  Below it all, the beeping and the cursing, a low rumble sounds.  A momentous rumble.

My stomach is grumpy.  I still haven’t eaten lunch.  I’m still stuck floating in not-space.

Just within reach of my hands is floating a tube of nutrition paste.  From the color, I can see that its banana flavor.  My least favorite, but it’s a start.  Unscrew the cap, then suck the paste out of the plastic.  Boring, unsatisfying, and bad tasting, but now my stomach can shut up for a few hours.

Will another tube show up before then, or will whatever this is be over by then?  Maybe if I hope hard enough there will be something better than this paste.  Maybe if I hope hard enough, this will all be a dream.  I doubt it.  I pinched myself a few times and I even had a dream, so I’m awake.  If I’m a full loony, there might not be a way back to reality anyway.  If this is all real, who knows when and where I’ll end up.

The eyeballs that are popping out into mid-air certainly aren’t saying anything.  Kind of unnerving how they flicker my way every few seconds.  Mostly they seem to be watching the area the captain is in.  His antics are more interesting to them, maybe.

The pods aren’t getting much attention.  The blinking is still going on, as well as the beeping.  Every once in a while, I hear the hiss of a lid popping open.  No human sound is coming out of them.  Are people taking a while to wake up?  Are the pods shutting down improperly and malfunctioning?  No, when one opens that I can actually see, it looks empty.  Not mine, one that should have had someone inside it.  Still, instead of the cushioned bed that I’m used to seeing, the inside ends in a black film of something.

Less of the same something that I’m floating in and something different.  When a tentacle pops out of the blackness to snag a pod and drag it farther off, I see a shimmer around its base that looks similar.

Everything is being spread out.  Moved from a loose clump into a scattered field.  I catch sight of a beak somehow blowing a bubble of. . .something. . . around one of the pods being dragged away.  Why bring everything together if it was just going to isolate us all again?  Another question I don’t get an answer to.  Some of the research types might have a three page dissertation by now, but I’m a bit lost.

All I know is that the captain hasn’t stopped cursing.  Now that things are drifting apart, I can see three of the black tentacles attempting to shove him into what I assume is his pod.  Has this been going on for long?  Maybe.  I haven’t been paying too much attention to the actual content of his diatribe.  His limbs are braced against the edges.  Pushing isn’t going to work, but. . .

. . .yep, they tried pulling him off.  Worked like a charm.  The outside is pretty slick, no purchase to hold onto.  Got him tied up with two of the tentacles and the third pushed him head-first into the pod.  Relative silence, now.  The beeping from pods is faint, the cursing is gone, and my stomach is settled.

The click and hiss of my own pod opening up has free reign over my hearing.  Inside is that black, greasy membrane.  One of the tentacles pushes the pod just close enough for me to grab, finally.  Two more appear to my left and right out of nowhere.  Before they can molest me, I’ll try the membrane.  Dignity before disgust, right?

The membrane is cool.  To the touch that is.  Not that interesting otherwise.  For what seems to be the gateway to somewhere else, it seems rather lame.  Something like this should have a runic border or cool lighting effects.  Maybe something different than slightly greasy looking black if it was going for a deep and dark effect.

Still, it isn’t too bad.  It could be a puddle of blood which would have been super disgusting.  I can get my hand through without stopping to reconsider, and once that’s through the rest of me is sucked forward into it.