There's no dreams.

One moment I'm sitting in that little alcove, and the next...

I'm in another room completely. This one is smaller than the last, but far less over-full. I don't recognize the faces milling about, but at least it doesn't smell like a stable or feel like a sauna in this room.

Not that it is by any means cool and temperate here. It's not. But it's a little easier to breathe without feeling like I'll bake my lungs in the process.

When I stand up, I spot another of those alien figures at the door. This one is taller and slimmer than the other lumpy orange men. It's hard to say, but maybe this is a female? It's less stocky and lumpy than the others I've seen is the thing. There's really nothing else distinct about it, including the clothes it's wearing.

It, or perhaps she, settles those odd fish-like eyes directly at me and speaks. Her - I guess that's what I'm using now - voice is gravely like the others. "If you cannot speak, cannot hear, and cannot see, you are useless."

...Wait.

I understand that.

What she's saying, I can understand her?

It sound a little weird, like...she's speaking in a heavy accent I can't pinpoint, but I can definitely understand words, unlike what I heard earlier over the loud speakers.

She doesn't deign to react to my surprised expression. Maybe she's not actually looking at me. Those huge pupils make it hard to say.

"You will be taught Constant. You will have one unit of time in which to learn this and other essential skills. Failure will be punished. There is no end until you are taught and find use. There is no home. There are no names. There is only purpose. You will learn."

It's...

I'm never going home.

Strange.

Maybe I should have realized this a while ago - when I landed on this planet, when things happened that weren't in any abduction story, when I was 'processed' or whatever...

But I think...

That might be the first time that thought has occurred to me.

This isn't some simple abduction story, is it? No one's ever given a story like this, because anyone who's come here has never made it back.

...So I.

I'm never going home.

Around me in the room there's others shouting, protesting and pushing, but it's...

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I don't really hear what they're saying. It's just distant noise.

My legs give out with surprising abruptness and I find myself simply. Sitting there. Like a puppet whose lost its strings but has no life to stand on its own.

It's hard to tell how long I sit there. It doesn't feel like long....but...at the same time it almost seems like the others getting herded out of the room are moving in slow motion.

I can't really...describe it properly.

Eventually that tall yellow-orange figure grabs my shoulder and hauls me to my feet. My arm wrenches in such a way that I should be in pain, but...I guess I'm still in enough of a daze that I don't really feel it.

I just know that at some point, I'm...walking.

Yes.

Beneath my feet is some kind of cracked clay, packed from frequent traffic. Nondescript buildings stand around me as I walk. That tall figure still holds my arm, and...yeah.

Ow.

My shoulder hurts.

How long have I been walking with this person? I have a dim awareness of it, but it's hard to pinpoint. And...

I'm...

Does it matter?

How far I walk? How long it's been?

If I'm never going home, if I'm never seeing Earth again...

It's sort of like I'm already dead.

The figure opens a door at some arbitrary building and shoves me into another room, because...apparently this is my life. Or. My afterlife?

I don't know.

The shove sends me off balance and my knees hit a smooth metal floor, and a metallic clang signals the door closing behind me.

This room...it's not like the space ship, but it does feel more high tech than the rest of the places I've been on this planet so far. Everything is metal. Not as shiny and smooth as that other place, but still metal.

The walls. The floor. The ceiling.

The singular chair sitting in the middle of the room, which looks to be created specifically to be as uncomfortable and painful to sit in as possible.

The only thing that isn't completely metal is the wall-screen. Like a television built into the wall the chair is facing, but with no frame at all or any apparent way to control it.

It looks like one of those subliminal messaging brainwash rooms from a spy movie.

I laugh.

The sound startles me, despite being my own, and for a moment I'm not even sure why I'm laughing.

But.

Isn't it hilarious...?

I'm on a completely alien planet, no one has ever seen this and come back to tell about it...

But somehow some 50s spy thriller got it right on accident??

It's so absurd that my vision blurs from the tears falling down my cheeks.

Maybe the absurd one is me, because I don't know why I'm crying or laughing anymore.

My personal crisis is interrupted by the television - or whatever kind of screen it is - flashing to life.

The face on the screen is human. She's older than me, but I can't tell what her age actually is. Fair skinned, blue eyed, brown hair.

She smiles just long enough to begin to feel creepy, before she blinks and looks at something I can't see.

Then her vision focuses on me.

Which is...

Terrifying. Because I'm not sitting in the seat I'm surely supposed to be sitting in.

"I am Jeive." She speaks in a firm, feminine voice that sounds...sort of like a customer service line. "I will teach you how to speak. You will repeat the words I say. Now, repeat this."

What she says next, I can't....

It's just noise.

I don't even know how a human can make that noise.

She says it again.

After a pause, she says it once more, slower, and now I'm sure that's sounds no human throat can make.

Jeive smiles and shakes her head. "You must repeat what I say."

I can't help but glance around the room for...

A camera?

A microphone?

This seems like it's a broadcast of some kind, but apparently she can tell if I don't say anything?

She says the word again.

Well. If she can hear me, maybe she can explain how to make those sounds. And if she can't, maybe there's just some kind of...decibel checker?

"...I don't know how to say that."

I barely finish speaking before the entire room electrifies.