I didn’t expect the prehistoric space robot to gasp in surprise or stumble at me having known who he was, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed when he just continued staring at me with those lifeless green eyes of his.
“Curious,” he murmured, speaking in low gothic. He tapped a floating screen in front of him. Annoying tin bucket, you kidnap me then act like I’m just a fancy piece of furniture.
I decided to see how strong his fancy containment field was, so I pulled on some soul energy and pushed. The green energy wobbled, forced back away from my skin before snapping back as I let up.
Humm, hum, that was just a gentle push. I might be able to force my way out of this, making a tiny hole and teleporting through should be more than doable. Though it might just result in me getting thrown back into his pokeball before I could do so.
At least it got his attention. I grinned as he dropped the floating window which turned out to be some glass tablet; he near frantically fiddled with some switches and then I felt the green coiling energy constrict around me and gain in power.
“What is it?” Selene asked my other avatar, which was still happily bouncing around. “What happened?”
“I regained connection to my kidnapped avatar,” I said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t put it back into the box. I shouldn’t scare him too much.”
“What did he do?” she asked. “He isn’t dissecting you or something, is he?”
“Nope,” I said. “… he just has me tied up in a spread eagle like some wall decoration.”
Selene just stared at me, frowning. Then a flush ran up her cheeks.
“Naughty,” I rolled my eyes. “Ah … I might be a bit distracted for a bit. Feel free to jolt me awake if there is something!”
“Sleep well … I guess?”
With that said, I flopped over the bed and returned my focus to the avatar in Trazyn’s BDSM dungeon.
“I would appreciate it if you refrained from repeating that,” he said stoically. “I would hate to be forced to return you into the Tesseract Labyrinth after just a few minutes.”
“That would be regrettable indeed,” I nodded, doing away with the empowered voice thing. “You could certainly work on your hospitality though.”
“It is an unfortunate consequence of our circumstances,” he said.
“Hmmm,” I squinted at him. Stupid evasive rust bucket. “Why did you kidnap me?”
“… I have never seen anything quite like you,” he said after a moment of consideration. “It would be a shame if a unique being like yourself was lost to time. Here, you will exist in perpetuity as a part of my … museum.”
“I know of your Infinite Galleries, Overlord Trazyn,” I said. “No need to dance around the subject.”
“A welcome surprise.” The 60 million-year-old alien murder robot preened like a cat. “I would offer to give you a tour … alas I have learned not to let dangerous people near my prized exhibits.”
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to reconsider?” I asked. “Believe it or not, I am quite interested in your museum.”
“I’m afraid it would be too much of a risk,” he said, tapping a metal finger on his chin. “I can hardly even figure out what manner of a creature you are. Though if you could enlighten me … I might be able to craft a containment with which I would be comfortable letting you take a stroll through the less important exhibits?”
“That’s a tough question,” I hummed. “You see, I’m not quite sure myself. Nor am I willing to disclose all of my weaknesses to you. What I will tell you, is what you have here tied up is what I call an ‘avatar’ and I have more than one of them running around.”
“That would complicate things,” he said with a nod. “I suppose, seeing as how agreeable you’ve been so far, you are not hellbent on delivering some misguided revenge on me for having misappropriated your ‘avatar’. Or are you?”
“I do have some simmering resentment, I admit,” I said with a grin. “Which wasn’t helped by waking up naked and tied up in a basement.”
I waited a moment before continuing. “That said, it is as you say. I’m sure we could come to an agreement. I wouldn’t even be opposed to you keeping this avatar around for an exhibit if you compensated me for the loss. Avatars are energy intensive and taxing to create.”
“Or so you say,” he hummed. “Alas, I have indeed treated you like one of the narrow-minded humans. You have my apologies for that, whoever you may be.”
Stolen story; please report.
He actually apologised and even sounded sincere from what I could tell. Those stuck-up mops in the imperium could learn a thing or two from this old Necron. What a weird galaxy, the crazy space skeleton is more respectful than the humans.
“Echidna,” I said. “I might not know what I am, but I do have a name.”
“Well met,” he said in that creepy buzzing voice of his. “Echidna.”
Before anything else, I shifted my body around a bit. I wasn’t too embarrassed being naked in front of a Necron, but it wasn’t a good look. I covered my skin in nice white scales I took from some lizard and removed the erotic bits from my body.
Trazyn stared at me in fascination, which was making me feel kinda weirded out. I gave a mental sigh. Another damned negotiation.
In the end, it took almost an hour and some testing from the old collectors part until I was semi-freed from my bondage. I might have zoned out midway through and just went to autopilot.
Whatevs! I stretched my newly made very fragile human drone which was controlled by the still tightly tied-up avatar floating up above.
Trazyn was still running some scans over the drone, to make sure I hadn’t snuck a nuclear bomb into it or something — I hadn’t — and then I would get a tour of the place with the possibility of further trade down the line.
I could tell the archivist was interested in my ability to perfectly replicate biological organisms just from a sample, but he made no offers for doing some reconstructions on his somewhat crashed exhibitions. Likewise, I didn’t bring up taking a bit out of some of his prized exhibits, yet.
“It does seem to be an entirely normal human female,” he said thoughtfully. “The signs of brain activity seem strange, but I suppose that is understandable. As discussed, the moment I sense any foul movements from you, your avatar is getting locked in a Tesseract Labyrinth.”
“Yes, yes,” I shrugged. I had a pretty good idea where exactly Solemnace was in the galaxy by now. If Trazyn locked me away or was an asshole, I was going to pay him an explosive visit in a few weeks.
Plus, I was about 60% sure I could force my way out of the containment before he could react. Though he might just throw one of his pet ancient horrors at me if I did so. The ensuing battle would surely ruin quite a few of his exhibits and sour our following relationship, which I didn’t want at the moment.
“Let us begin then,” he said, striding forward and motioning for me to follow, which I did. “It has been a while since I had a receptive audience.”
I hummed noncommittally. Truth be told, I was getting excited. I did enjoy museum visits even back on Earth and I was just about to see the greatest museum of this galaxy with stuff older than any civilization I knew back then.
Plus, Trazyn was going to guide me through it. I never got into the painting miniatures part of the hobby, but my shelf did sport a tiny replica of the old archivist in his full glory.
Even if it was pre-painted — don’t blame me, I had the artistic skill of a drunk monkey, and I probably still do.
He led me through winding tunnels and up a few elevators. With a masterful application of willpower and a show of unparalleled self-control, I didn’t start humming some elevator tune as we stood in silence.
Just how damned deep was that basement dungeon he keeps me locked up in? I wondered.
After a few eternal minutes spent in silence, the door opened up in front of us and I saw a well-decorated hallway expand before me. If I didn’t know I was in space, I could have mistaken the place for the insides of the Louvre or the British Museum.
Paintings, statues, and smaller art pieces stood by the walls, placed at equal distances from each other and as if to stand guard at the sides of the occasional large archways opening up to other rooms.
Trazyn had items out here that would have been worth building museums of their own around. I would have thought he was disrespecting the ancient art pieces, but I knew the main attractions were his prized Prismatic Galleries. Holographic displays recapturing events from history deemed worthy of preservation. These galleries were not populated by mere sculptures but by conscious living beings transmuted into the holograph themselves.
I supposed my fate would have been something similar, or more along the lines of placed into simple time-stasis and put out on a pedestal like a living statue.
“How nostalgic,” I said. “It reminds me of ancient museums on Ear- *cough* I mean holy Terra.”
“Is that so?” he sounded pleased. “This section is dedicated to early human relics I’ve managed to rescue. Since I myself haven’t been able to see early human architecture, I could only work off of hearsay and ruins to design the decor.”
“I believe you did quite well at it,” I said, only to stop and gape at a particular painting. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified.
Trazyn noticed me stopping and turned to stare at me curiously as I stepped up to the tiny frame and the painting inside. I ignored him in favour of inspecting the painting.
It was frozen in time, I could feel the spatial disturbance of the stasis-field even in this basic human body.
Following a few seconds of stupefaction, I let out a snort. Back when I was a teenager on Earth, I somehow got into a tour that took me on a month-long journey around western Europe with other kids.
Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, and Vienna were the main stops and despite only having spent a few days in each capital, I remembered staring at this exact same painting in the Louvre.
This crazy fucker had the Mona Lisa out in the hallway like it was some kid’s scribbles. The hallway expanded into the distance, splitting just a few hundred metres away and I could see at least another fifty paintings and dozens of statues placed with about the same care as the most famous painting on Earth — in my time that is.
Then I remembered a little tidbit from the lore and broke out in cackles.
“How did you get this?” I asked him. “Ah, sorry for being so forward. But I was under the impression that this … “I pointed at the painting. “Was one of the most prized possessions of Malcador the Sigillite.”
“Ah, I see,” he nodded. “I wasn’t aware of its origins unfortunately, it was part of some imperial governor’s collection along with most of the other paintings you see in this hallway.”
I shook my head ruefully. “I’m not sure if you can check for the authenticity of a painting, or for its age. But if this is the original, then it is more than 40 thousand years old.”
That seemed to stump the old Necron. “Truly?”
He walked up to it, gently motioning for me to move aside, which I did. He then took out a slew of scanners from god knows where and waved them around for a minute. “The stasis field messes with temporal signatures, so I cannot be sure until I run some detailed scans, but it does indeed seem to be around thirty-five to forty millennium old.”
“Do you perhaps have a painting depicting sunflowers that came from the same governor’s museum?”
“Sunflowers?” He asked back distractedly. “I’m afraid I am unaware of that particular species of flora.”
“Well,” I said. “They are large flower-like plants with yellow leaves.” I stopped, realizing how little that narrowed down the options. “The painting I’m curious about supposedly depicted a handful of the flowers in a vase with a somewhat … eccentric style.”
I could have thrown up an illusory replica of the painting quite easily, but locked in this flimsy body as I was and without drawing on any soul energy, all I could do was use words to describe it and consequently make a fool of myself.
I wasn’t an art girl, alright? Nor did I know how to describe damned plants accurately. You didn’t need to be either to just enjoy art and nature though.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I just might. But if I may, why do you ask?”
“It was the only other piece of art the Sigillite managed to protect from the ravages of time … aside from this one.” I nodded toward the damned Mona Lisa. “Both of them should be a relic from the second millennium of Holy Terra.”
“I see,” he nodded. “Well, I suppose I will just plan our tour so we walk by all the possible candidates for that painting.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Would you care to share what you know of these two paintings?” he asked after a moment. “I would be loath to not have the original artist’s name under them at the very least.”
“Sure,” I smiled and started to enlighten Trazyn about the Renaissance and the lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh.