Chapter 6: What's Up Doc

Paulie was having the strangest dream. He had been abducted by short green lizard people and then shipped across the galaxy to become an alien punching bag in a retrotech looking city all while being pursued by angry aliens of every conceivable shape and proportion. As he ran he stumbled over a small clam no larger than his boot that tipped a top hat to him and told him to have a great day before seeming to scream in agony and boil alive inside their own blackening shell.

Paulie turned in fear, all around him were corpses now. There was the man from the bar when he was only sixteen, there was Krissh and the unknown viltessian officer. There was the horrible bultesian cultists and his Aunt Magret. A tear rolled from his eyes as he turned again and froze.

‘No..’ he cried out in the depths of his nightmare. On the ground lay two more figures, their forms at once alien and familiar. It was Jakiikii and Mack, no.. they couldn't be dead. He had gotten them both killed simply by existing, why did Ooounoo want him dead so badly?!

As he wondered it, the sound of hungry laughter sounded from behind him and he turned to see a titanic alien behind him. They had six tentacle-like legs with two more boneless arms sprouting from wide shoulders under a horned head with too many eyes. The thing seemed to laugh at him again and he yelled as he tried to run. But the air seemed to turn to molasses around him as he ran in place. Meanwhile the massive tentacled hand of the thing seemed to wrap around him tightly.

Paulie thrashed, fighting for his very life against the thing that had him bound. But it was no use, his arms were pinned to his sides and a weight was settled on his chest making it hard to breathe.

Suddenly his eyes flew open and he found himself staring into six bright orange orbs only a few centimeters from his own. It took his panicked mind a few additional seconds to recognise them.

He croaked, “Jakiikii?”

She seemed to sigh and nodded, her head close to his as she held his upper body in place. “Yes. Are you alright? You started thrashing and I thought you were having a seizure, I called for the doctor.” She spoke quickly, the hint of panic in her voice.

He shook his head. “No. No.. I’m fine. Really.” He spoke a little awkwardly, suddenly aware of just how close the termaxxi woman was to him. She was pinning his arms and upper body, her uppermost four arms holding his shoulders and biceps while her third and smallest pair pressed down on his chest. She was breathing heavily, likely from the exertion of keeping him contained. He was far stronger than most aliens he had met, though Jakiikii was also an apocalypser like him and his closest match. Or so he had thought till meeting the bultesians in the market.

As his eyes locked with hers he thought he heard her breath catch slightly, once more he felt a subtle pressure in his mind. Like somebody brushing fingers through his hair gently, the sensation was not at all unpleasant. But it was no longer unknown. He had figured out that it was something she was doing, some manner of psychic power maybe? He had no idea what alien capabilities she had, she could literally turn invisible after all. What else could she do?

He cleared his throat and pushed back against the pressure with his own mind. For a tiny moment he thought he could hear her voice though she was not speaking. The words ‘very compatible’ seemed to echo in the corner of his mind as he recoiled from the sensation, “You can let me go now. I assure you that I am no longer trying to escape.” He blinked, what had just happened?

She seemed to realise herself that she was still holding onto him tightly and she blinked several eyes all at once. “Oh! Oh, yes.. sorry.” She released him and stood, taking a step away from the bed and shifting from foot to foot in that amusing manner she did while excited or nervous. She brushed herself off, as if trying to untangle herself from spiderwebs or something.

He looked at her, she seemed none the worse for wear, not for the first time he noted her skin-tight attire. The stealth-suit outlined her toned features and left little to the imagination. The sixpack of pectorals that supported her six arms, her flat belly and her attractively flared hips. He jerked as he realised he was staring and turned to look at the bedside table.

Upon it sat some of his personal effects, the wallet that he had still not managed to lose after everything chief amongst them. He also saw a large bottle of water with a straw and reached out for it before wincing as his bandaged hand made itself known to him. He looked down at it and saw it was in some manner of hard cast. He supposed that made a certain amount of sense, given that he had broken it on a criminal’s chest.

He tried to sit up but Jakiikii hopped to his side and placed a hand on his chest again. “No, you cannot. Not again.” She worried aloud, referring to the first time he had skipped his rest after being injured.

He grunted and allowed her to force him back down despite the fact he could likely have lifted her up and tossed her across the room had he wanted to. Instead he settled back into the bedding, it was rather comfortable anyways and he smiled as she reached for the cup and held it to his lips gently.

“Here, drink.” She said, her mouth cracking slightly into a smile as her eyes all focused on him. He shivered under her gaze slightly, this time it felt a little more predatory. A little more piercing.

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He obliged though as he was thirsty, the lukewarm water soothing his parched throat like nothing else could as he heard a loud clattering coming from outside of the room. He felt a bolt of adrenaline shoot through him, Jakiikii herself whirled and raised the cup in what could have been either an aggressive or defensive posture. It was hard to say with her profusion of arms. But he didn’t have to worry as through the door emerged a trio of figures. The first two were tall and slim, their long shaggy white fur looking like it would have been more at home on the end of a mop handle. The third figure was much more interesting, they plodded into the room much more slowly with heavy thudding steps. They gave off the impression of being very heavy, much heavier than even he himself.

At first he thought they were wearing some manner of strange environmental or protective suit. But as they got closer he started to realise that the suit itself seemed to be moving in a manner that didn’t make sense. The body plan was strange, four jointless legs and four equally jointless arms that ended in complex looking mechanical instruments. There was no head, instead the suit's chest had a large open porthole-like window. As he looked at it he was at first confused, the window looked to be full of something almost like dark television static. No, not static exactly, but something else. Something that seethed and roiled like it was alive but didn’t look like any substance he could put his finger on.

Jakiikii had stepped out of the way as the two shaggy furred aliens reached his side. He had seen them before, these two were the equivalent of nurses or maybe doctor’s aides. They or others like them had taken care of him before after physical exams for his adjudicators training. The nearest one reached over to him with what passed for an arm that emerged from under their obscuring white fur, the long fingers clutching a small humming device that it moved over his lower torso and thigh. The same ones that had been injured the night before, the day before?

He found that the harder he tried to remember details of the event the more they seemed to slip away into the farthest recesses of his mind. He cursed under his breath and the nearer nurse spoke up, “I am sorry, what was that?”

She asked it so sweetly that he didn’t have the heart to tell her what he had actually said. And so instead he just gave her a winning smile and said, “Thanks. I was thinking you were doing a great job.” The furry hobulite was tall, nearly as tall as he was, and they ducked their long furred head and stepped aside to let the strange suited thing closer.

Paulie tensed as the tentacled monster reached him, but before he could even speak the suit’s strange window lit up and alien text scrolled in a falling motion across the screen. A small pink crystal embedded in the side of the small computer screen next to it lit up and a synthetic monotone voice spoke up. “Please, do not be alarmed. I do not wish to be scattered throughout this place. My name is Doctor Ssillssskks, but you may call me Doctor S if it suits you.”

Paulie was a little more taken aback now, not by their tone or strange alien name. But by the fact that he had finally gotten a closer look through the large glass porthole that covered their chest. Inside the walking talking suit was a boiling mass of what he could only describe as sharp black sand, it pulsed and swirled like cold mist on an early winter morning. But somehow more intelligent, more alive. He could hear it shifting around inside the suit, grinding against itself with a strange low nearly infrasonic moaning sound like the wind over sand dunes or shifting scree on a mountainside.

Likely taking his silence for the curiosity it was, Doctor S tapped on the porthole and asked Paulie in a calm yet somewhat jovial feeling monotone. “What is the matter urrenian?

Have you never seen a cryssid before? I must admit, you are the first talking apocalypser I have ever seen, so I can understand what you must be feeling.” There was a sharper grinding sound, maybe its version of a chuckle?

Paulie shook his head slowly. “N-no.. never seen anything like you before? What is that?” He asked, maybe a bit too abruptly as he pointed at the porthole on its chest area.

The doctor just tapped its chest window with one of the four tentacle-like suit arms. “Me.. I am a cryssid. You must have taken a pretty hard knock to the head, you seem a little dazed. I am prescribing you some anti-inflammatories and another bout of quickheal. I gave your hand a *crackle-moan* injection to help your bones heal back together faster.” There was a moment where the translation stopped, the doctor clearly using a word that had no equivalent in his vernacular. “You should be back up to one-hundred percent in a day or two with how fast your body heals.”

Paulie nodded slowly. “I thank you, I do seem to have a habit of getting myself into dangerous scenarios.”

Jakiikii snorted from his other side and he shot her a smile.

One of the nurses tottered over to the doctor and handed them a large datapad. “His biosigns indicate a tremendous amount of internal microbiota. They seem to be symbiotic in nature however so we left them.”

Doctor S made no physical indications, but they did utter aloud. “Curious. How curious.” Turning to gesture to the other nurse, “See to it that he is taken care of and discharged when he feels able to move freely.” The storm in a suit turned to face him again and spoke quickly, “I must apologise for leaving you so soon..” They paused and checked the data pad, “Paulie. But I have others that require my more immediate attention. Please don’t hesitate to ask for anything you think you might need. And thank you for the lives you saved, I heard what you did. Quite brave of you.” And with that, the good doctor and one of the hobulite nurses left the room in as much of a rush as the bulky containment suit allowed. Its slow thudding footsteps making the floor shudder ever so slightly.

The other nurse seemed to smile, but not with her mouth. Instead her beady black eyes somehow gave off the impression of mirth. It must be his parasite helping to translate their body language into a form he could recognise. He felt a squirming in his mind as if thinking about it had summoned the stupid worm. But no, it simply stirred fitfully and then retreated of its own accord, the encounter with the two bultesian cultists had seemed to have a stark effect on the jargon worm. And he was growing curious as to why, he remembered the dark hollow feeling he had felt around them. Maybe they had some sort of correlation?

The nurse was still standing by his side patiently and so he waved for her to come closer. She did so, “Um, I am curious.. do you have any jello?”

She twitched, the long shaggy fur that covered the majority of her body nearly completely obscuring her body language. But he got the indistinct impression she was confused again.

He reiterated. “Jello. It's a sort of gelatin-like sugary snack that is easy for the body to digest and served in hospitals back on earth. It's kinda clear and you eat it with a spoon?” He shook his head slightly. What the hell was he even saying?

Jakiikii on the other hand seemed to perk up a little. “Oh, I know. Nurse, could you get us a couple containers of kluggsgoft? Fruit flavours would be preferable, frubble or sniap if you have them?”

The long haired woman seemed to deflate a little in relief. “Y-yes. I will, right away.” She rushed out of the room as if her hair must have caught fire, clearly in some manner of rush. What had that been all about?

He asked the only remaining person in the room. “What is kluggsgoft?”

Jakiikii smiled at him as she leaned on the side of his bed near his legs. “It’s good is what it is. Trust me, you will like it. And if you don't, I will have yours.” She chuckled huskily as she said it, her voice reverberating deep in her chest as she said it.

He had no choice but to sit there and take her at her word. Though from the way her two lowest hands seemed to rub together unconsciously and the tip of her bubblegum pink proboscis protruded from her mouth like a dog's tongue, he was sure that she was telling him the truth.