Once we return to Major Chang's spaceship, he plops into his chair and leans back, shutting his eyes for a few minutes.
"Hey, while you're resting, can you at least tell me where those audio files are so I can—"
He leaps up out of his seat, as if fully energized, and makes a dive toward the control panel. "Nononono! I don't want you messing anything up. Just let me do it."
Major Chang pulls a few electrical cords out of a drawer in his worktable, then plugs them into place, connecting me to the spaceship's main computer system. After he taps a string of commands into the keyboard, an influx of data flows into my internal database.
So many unfamiliar sounds and tones stream in that I discontinue all my other background processes and just listen to each audio file as they download one by one.
[TRANSFER COMPLETE. DISCONNECTING OUTSIDE SOURCE]
"It's done," says Major Chang. "What's next?"
I locate the radio communicator and flip the switch that connects to the outside frequency. Then I carefully speak the message I had prepared, now translated into the language of the natives.
"What did you say to them?"
"You'll see...It's all part of the plan."
"I don't know if I like this plan of yours..."
We sit in anticipation, waiting for the natives to reply.
Minutes pass...hours pass...nothing.
Eventually Major Chang falls asleep in his chair, and I run slides of random images from my default database to occupy my mind.
Maybe it didn't go through.
Suddenly a piercing, high-pitched noise rings through the spaceship, rattling me into a state of dizziness and confusion. Major Chang snorts awake and covers his ears.
"What...what is that??" I think he's shouting, but everything sounds muffled except the high frequency tone pounding through my head.
My lenses blur in and out of focus. In a brief moment of clarity, I barely piece together a message in the deafening clamor:
[THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. DO NOT RESIST.]
Everything around me swirls together in a mess of sensory overload. With the fraction of consciousness I have left, I sense another being grab hold of me and pick me up.
[[TO BE CONTINUED]]
YOU ARE READING
I Am XIAO: An Inktober Story
Science FictionFirst published on Instagram under the username @leilacreatesthings as a response to Jake Parker's "Inktober" art challenge during October 2019-January 2020. PREMISE: In the year 2520, on the space capsule "Blue Dragon", the sole passenger, a NASA...
