The next two days passed in an all too familiar haze. During that time, I kept the fire burning, got much better at making flint blades, and tried to prove I was sentient. I wrote numbers in binary in water on the ground from 0 through to 63, hoping someone would be watching before the last of the numbers dried. When that garnered no response, I started writing the Fibonacci sequence in binary too, this time wetting the paperbark stuff and using it as a sort of paper-mache on the wall. I didn’t get very far, and gave up on that eventually too. I could only hope that they tried to test me on their own, perhaps with their own version of the mirror test.
I still hadn’t figured out how the food reward system worked, and was quite hungry because of it. I had earned one grey loaf with an achievement sound when I attached a missing button to my shirt with a bit of MacGyvering. I was quite proud of how I had managed to make one of the needle-teeth into an actual needle, but I still wasn’t sure the reward was anything other than a coincidence. I was reminded of a pigeon experiment on superstition I had read about. But I wouldn’t fall for it, I was much too intelligent and wasn’t superstitious at all, bad harvest, bad harvest.
My hair continued to be unmanageable, though I did get it into another braid of sorts. I became less sore over the two days as well, and began a bit of an exercise routine. Whenever I could muster the energy, I would perform a series of simple bodyweight exercises then jog around the enclosure. I also practiced throwing the stone I that I used for flintknapping, as it seemed to be the most durable of the lot. I wasn’t very good at it, and missed my chosen target a lot. Sometimes I wished I had taken an interest in a sport during high school. Perhaps then I would have been better able to get some force behind my throwing arm. The leaf-leech didn’t like it when I did this throwing practice. With every thump he would visibly cringe, and stop his waddling investigation of the enclosure.
Said leaf creature, which I had taken to calling Critter for obvious reasons, had tripled in size. Since he was only getting nibbles of my food and whatever he could sneak from my clothing, I was at a loss to explain how he was almost as long as my hand with fingers outstretched. I could pick him up now without worrying about being bitten, because he seemed to have grown used to me. For lack of any way to pen him in, I let him run free in the enclosure. He thankfully hadn’t found a way to get into the latrine yet, but he had shown an interest.
On the third morning after I had killed the needle-toothed creature, I was jolted awake by the “get ready” chime. I hastily chucked some fuel on the fire so it wouldn’t go out, put my trusty hand-axe in a pocket, and gathered up my other things in a pile near the opening wall. So long as the ground was not a teeming swarm of alien insects, I planned to take care of whatever was waiting for me out there, grab my stuff, and stay in the arena. Critter would have to fend for himself.
The sea of deep red bamboo reached my shoulders. Each stick ranged from as thick as my thumb to the width of my forearm, but all of them stood at precisely the same height. Red feather like leaves sprouted from their upper ten centimetres. The ground was pale and stony beneath my feet.
As I walked around the outside of the arena to a small rise in the landscape that would be the highest ground, I noticed something interesting was happening. I had to use less energy to push off the ground, and occasionally found myself overbalancing because I put too much force behind my strides. Gravity manipulation would certainly fit with my alien abduction theory. However, while I felt lighter, I found myself taking deep breaths, as if I couldn’t get enough oxygen. I half dismissed it as the heat and humidity. I slowed down my pace, regularly scanning over the red landscape for any visible motion.
When I reached the crest of the hill, I bent over with my hands on my knees, ridiculously puffed for walking such a short distance. I was glad that the red bamboo bent easily where it touched the ground, so I didn’t have the added struggle of trying to hack away at it. Which wasn’t a bad idea, now I thought of it. I took another glance at my surroundings before squatting down. If there was anything out there, it was both shorter than the bamboo and staying still.
I used the hand-axe for its intended purpose for the first time, hacking at the base of a particularly sturdy stick. I quickly found that the red bamboo was too pliable at the base to be chipped away at, and instead struck a rigid bit 10cm up. Success. I now had a sturdy stick thing. It looked pretty cool anyway, and would do as the length of a spear. I straightened momentarily because constant vigilance and all that, and found my eyes drawn to a waving patch of bamboo fifteen meters to my left. As I froze, something decidedly not head shaped peeked out above the canopy and turned around as if searching for something. I didn’t move, movement would only make it easier to see me.
Although, while that was true for humans, this creature could have any number of different mechanisms for sight. And as if to prove my point, it didn’t seem like it saw me at all. It ducked its head down and I saw the patch of bamboo begin to sway again, moving at an angle that wouldn’t intercept with me, but would bring it quite close. That would be an excellent way to keep your prey calm as you got closer, I considered, and so I crept slowly further away from where it would end up.
I could hear its footsteps on the hard ground. It wasn’t trying to hide them at all. I risked a peek above the canopy and found it had moved much closer, and was now heading in the right direction. I slipped my axe into a pocket and ran. It was becoming too much of a pattern, but I wasn’t letting this one get close enough to pounce.
I could hear it gaining ground behind me. By the sounds that continued to get louder, I knew that I probably wouldn’t be able to outrun the thing. I was having trouble compensating for the change in gravity, and was soon also gasping for breath. I hoped I wouldn’t fall or pass out.
My hopes of tiring the creature out were shattered when I misjudged and put my ankle down wrong. I stumbled and kept running, but it was enough for the thing to be able to reach me. I felt a powerful pressure on the small of my back before everything got upended. Suddenly I was landing in a painful flurry of limbs and redness, and had no other choice than to test my earlier hypothesis. When I came to a rest, I stopped all movement and went limp. Holding my breath was out of the question, so I focused on breathing without moving my chest much.
The way I had fallen, I could just see the creature, or alien, out of the corner of my eye. It blended surprisingly well against the bamboo for something about the size and shape of a naked bear. Not that I had seen a bear without it’s fur, but I did have a pretty good imagination, and this thing was it. The skin looked very tough, with thick wrinkles down its sides, and four solid limbs ending in stumpy paws with bony hard plates protecting them instead of claws. When it sat on its hind legs, its angular head peeked well above the red canopy, showing off a thick bony plate that gleamed in the artificial light. Two unblinking eyes stared out from either side of the well protected head. I searched for a mouth, and could see none. No jaw, just a small opening that periodically let out a snakelike tongue.
I supposed It had used the armour on its head to throw me into this bit of a clearing, and I could see it cautiously sniffing around. It was slowly moving in my direction, as if it knew where I ought to be, but wasn’t sure. It seemed like I was being proven right about the thing’s vision being based on movement. If it’s red play dead, my mind supplied with a burst of incongruous creativity.
I had to applaud my grip strength. I was still holding the stick, although it had been crushed a bit at one end. My other hand was out of the alien’s line of sight, so I slipped it into my pocket and grabbed hold of my hand-axe.
I felt like I was suffocating, controlling my breathing so carefully in the harsh atmosphere. It was coming closer. I could end it. I had my axe and I could bring it down on the thing’s neck, which looked like its least protected area. I could finish it quickly. But the alien hadn’t done anything other than give me what would turn into a very colourful bruise. And part of me, a really reckless part of me wanted to know what came after the warning sound that had made the needle-toothed creature so afraid.
I let my axe slip back into my pocket and rolled to my feet. Taking large bouncing strides this time to work with the gravity, I took advantage of the element of surprise, judged there was enough space between us, and I leapt to the side and came to a stop. I crouched and took deep breaths as quietly as possible. If I didn’t move, it wouldn’t find me for a while.
I heard the alien’s lumbering footsteps slow down and then take a different pattern. I imagined the tongue flitting out as it tried to sense where I was. Poised uncomfortably as I was in the bamboo, I couldn’t help but shake my head internally at my preparations of the previous two days. I had put some effort towards trying to remember the strengths of a human when compared with other animals, and had come up with quite a substantial list. Aside from tool use, there was endurance (especially in running), cooperation, visual acuity, and throwing things. I had no-one to cooperate with at the moment, but the rest should have been fairly useful abilities to have when pitted up against other creatures, in theory at least. Because while I was sure they would be very useful if I was the one doing the hunting, they were no use at all when I insisted on acting the part of prey. As it was, I felt more kinship with a little mouse hiding in the reeds than my own species.
It was just a waiting game. It had taken a while of inactivity for the warning sound to chime last time, and I was already getting a bit of a cramp in my leg. But with how fast the alien moved, I wasn’t far enough away that I could relax into a sitting position. I let my heels touch the ground and waited with ears peeled. I wasn’t sure if ears could be peeled or if it was just eyes that had that ability, but if they could be, then my ears were it.
The alien hadn’t come any closer when the warning sound rang out, and it didn’t seem to change its behaviour with the noise like the other one had. What did change, was that a Will O’ the Wisp appeared over my head and began wiggling wildly. I cursed inwardly and tried to shoo it away without giving away my position. It didn’t work, and I heard the creature begin to move closer at an alarming pace.
I steeled myself and got ready. I gripped the hand-axe with my right hand, and with my left I moved the stick into a semi defensive position just as the alien burst through the vegetation on a collision course. It hit the stick first which scraped along its skin doing a surprising amount of damage, but did nothing to stop the creature’s momentum. And so I felt the full force of a desperate and naturally armoured alien for the second time that day.
It pummelled into me noiselessly then continued to attack with gusto. I blocked a powerful swipe of a paw with my face, then rolled before it could come crashing down on me with its armoured forehead.
That was quite enough of that. I swung with my hand-axe towards its unprotected neck, but it blocked quickly with a paw. There was a sickening crunch, and the creature reared up fully, stretching its neck as if to howl soundlessly. When it came back down, it had the injured paw tucked up underneath its body. But still the creature attacked. I swung again, and hit soft flesh at the level where a collar bone should be. I backed up as the alien lowered its head and charged, spilling maroon blood onto the ground and flattened bamboo. As it reached me, I stepped to the side, grabbed a hold of its neck, and jumped up onto its lowered shoulders. The creature was suddenly upright, and yanking at my leg with its uninjured limb. I brought my axe down on the bony plate repeatedly, hoping to stun it, or discourage it from fighting. Naturally it wasn’t discouraged. The alien made as if to fall backwards, which would bring me crashing down on sharp looking bamboo. I changed tactics and hit the neck with my axe over and over. We fell down together, and I kept striking the animal well after it had stopped moving. I was so engrossed in my purpose that I couldn’t even pinpoint when it was that the victory gong rang out, only that it did, and that I passed out before I could make the decision to stop my onslaught.
I came to gasping for breath, and with the damned Wisp floating over my head. I pushed the creature’s head off my legs and got to my feet unsteadily. There was nothing I could do for the gore that once again splattered my entire body, so I simply picked up my hand-axe and trudged after the Wisp. I eyed the ground suspiciously as I walked. I was satisfied to see it was behaving itself this time.
We got to my enclosure in no time. I could see my stuff just inside the huge entrance, but I made no move to grab it. The air was too thin here to stay long term. I was sure I would end up panicking without a naked bear alien to distract me. I thought about my options, and as I did, I made a show of cutting some red bamboo off at the base and throwing it into my enclosure. The Wisp seemed content to let me do that at least.
I wondered how long they would let me stay here. They were fine to let me keep stuff from my adventures, Critter had proved that. I wondered if they would try to drag me back in or simply let me stay until I tired myself out and went back in with my tail between my legs.
I decided to test it. Hopefully they would show themselves. I sat down where I was and stared at the Wisp in my doorway. I kept one of the red sticks in hand in what I hoped looked like a serene but commanding gesture. The deep, urgent gasps probably ruined the effect. “I’m. Staying. Here.” I rasped out defiantly between breaths. The Wisp had other ideas.
ToWitToWhom 