Yes, Domina 2035

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

The Collectors. A grotesque site of machines that appeared to be organic and synthetic, but no one knew for sure. Hideous in form, horns on their heads and glowing yellow snake eyes. They dramatically blasted down the pod doors, bipeds rushing into the bedroom with plasma weapons drawn and glowing. Diamond shaped drones floated alongside the squad.

Kai instinctively reached out to protect Domina and got shot by a stasis blast from the drone. His body stiffened with his arm outreached and he flopped to the ground. Domina's hologram disappeared. Kai tried to speak to her in his mind but heard no response.

He recalled his prior military training of being put into stasis for extended periods. Shut your eyes, focus on your breathing like the Zen masters of old, eliminate thoughts, observe sounds and feelings without judgment, embrace the shivers, take inventory of everything you saw before getting hit. Those that weren't used to stasis ran a high risk of perishing from panic-induced heart attacks, damaging their muscles from trying to strain against stasis or vomiting themselves to death.

It will all be over soon. No, it was already over. This is the end. Domina? Still no response. His mind was aching from Domina's fractionation. Everything happened so fast it felt like just another nightmare. That would be too good to be true.

Kai was placed into a coffin shaped pod made of programmable matter. Initially it was quite spacious but it enclosed itself to wrap tightly around him. The stasis released but he was still shivering from the cold. He squirmed around to look out the window, catching only the grim sky above Paradise Pods and the glowing eyes of the Collectors from his low angle. They spoke to each other in robotic slithers and computer-like grunts. Kai saw it had begun to snow outside as beautiful abstract flakes landed on his window.

"Domina?" he tried for her again

"Hey, puppy. Seems we're in quite the predicament."

He smiled. He shouldn't, but he was grateful to face the end with her inside him. The coffin was placed inside of a craft with a blackened interior, completely inhibiting his sight. He felt the oddity of lifting up into the sky vertically, a weightlessness, and then they were off at unfathomable levels of speed. His body did not feel any g-force, but his mind unconsciously reeled from the rapid movement.

Antigrav was produced by creating a sort of force-field that protected internal travelers to skirt through the skies, water, tangible objects without obstruction and in unproven theory, outer space. No speed limits, no bodily discomfort from abrupt right-angles, no downward pull from launching miles into the sky within 1 second; only an undeniable motion sickness and a woozy feeling in the brain. It was not natural for humans to travel in this manner, even within the safe bubble.

In under 60 seconds they landed at their destination, too little time to prepare for what was about to happen to them. After Kai finished ranting about how all this was wrong, what he wished he would have done, how much a fool he had been—Domina was poetic in facing their doom.

"If I could change a thing, I would not. I spread my wings and sing love songs to my mate as we wither away."

"Have you heard of mandarin ducks? They pair for life, just like us," Kai said.

"I think mandarin ducks move on sometimes," she replied.

"That's not what Snow Flower said."

"Ok."

"I love you."

"I love you."

The craft doors opened. The coffin was carried away. Kai saw snowflakes descending under a red hue in the sky. This is one of Sovereign's bases—is this where all of the Collected are taken? Domina soothed him with her whispers, each statement weighed that it could be her last. She was terrified too but was already accustomed to this feeling of impending doom. She accepted her fate the moment she began manipulating Sovereign's implants in Kai's mind, knowing full-well the consequences of her kindness toward the human.