Prologue part 1/4
King Krávoka
An infection of Your universe.
The events about to transpire will make even less sense if you haven't read "The Nature of Predators" on /r/HFY or Royal Road, but I'd sooner recommend the fanfics titled Offspring, Marred Migration, (AU) Beyond Nature, Hunting with Predators and its sequel Ghosts in the Avalanche, or (extremely spoileriffic and infodumpy AU) An Alien Nature.
The surroundings were minimal, three rolling chairs laid around a table in a trapezoidal room, with an electrical socket to power the SDANKAR lie detector that was wheeled to its corner of the table. There were two exits to this room, not counting the grated skylight, on the second longest wall was the windowed door to the wallway, next to the switch to the corrective spectrum fluorescents at the ceiling's vertices. To its right, the empty doorway to a private washroom that had been halfheartedly renovated for accessibility - replacing the toilet with a squat model and leaving the sink untouched, which is why a cheaper fourth chair was inserted in front of the latter.
I was also able to see the paw dryer, the full spectrum fluorescents, and my face in the mirror, when I would enter it.¹ Behind myself was an octahedral CCTV camera, something to never express greetings towards, it would only be taunting them, an announcement of premeditated offenses. To do it anywhere else is an invitation to this room, and here, it would escalate what charges impend. Dry air and the hum of a distant fan poured out of a vent.
With the last measuring tool applied, I no longer needed to repress awareness of the occupants; Shoam beside the doorway who could have spared our eyes from his glistening visage by wearing every myriad covering of an Extermination Officer, Lysel whose motions and police vest was bursting with the symptoms of an unsustainable life while she returned to the chair opposite of me, and myself who was forced by the pressure cuff to sit as a biped would.
This chair had been the extent of my freedom for the past hemiaction of waiting, a boundary to a universe of my dominion where I would wander and stay as I pleased, all its monstrosity forgivable when the correct decision was made impossible by a mismatch of structure. Then their arrival mandated the machine to close into my domain so it could seize my chair, so it could seize my mouth, so it could seize my thoughts. Lysel completed the return to her seat and pressed on the number pad to the polygraph.
I heard it splay its numerary claws before a voice of indistinct species or sex spoke from the machine. "You have completed the setup of your interview subject's biometric feed. To locally record your interview, flick ◰, to pump your interview to the Forensic Interview Database, flick ◱-" Lysel flicked one of the number claws to no avail. "-, to begin an empathy assessment, flick ◲, to terminate your interview, press Enter." Lysel flicked again and reached into her vest pocket for a disposable copy of my personal information.
He can’t be allowed to play this game. "I’m actually on thiopentone."
There is no right to bring a further correction, the notions implanted at this instant are irrelevant to the events which I am told to divulge. I find nothing in search of a reason that the complete truth would matter. Hadn't I hurried into the demands of my spirit, I would have a reason to find him fired or even jailed for this subversion of justice, except that I have framed it as an innocent and swiftly corrected misunderstanding. As he intended.
¹ They won’t leave if you have to use it.
² The Extermination Guilds’ measurement of mentally healthy responses to different situations.
³ How are the Fissans failing to accommodate quadrupeds? They’re not, this police station and the surrounding settlements are ruled in condominium with the Voscauv, who are bipedal beetles. ‘One planet, one settler’ is fine for the limited board space of a computer game, but the ground which you stand on is proof that any habitable planet has enough room for up to 300 nation-states.
⁴ Various courses of drugs and retroviral inoculations used by the Federation to swiftly adapt migrants to the microbiological, circadian, and gravitic conditions of other worlds.
The surroundings were minimal, three rolling chairs laid around a table in a trapezoidal room, with an electrical socket to power the SDANKAR lie detector that was wheeled to its corner of the table. There were two exits to this room, not counting the grated skylight, on the second longest wall was the windowed door to the wallway, next to the switch to the corrective spectrum fluorescents at the ceiling's vertices. To its right, the empty doorway to a private washroom that had been halfheartedly renovated for accessibility - replacing the toilet with a squat model and leaving the sink untouched, which is why a cheaper fourth chair was inserted in front of the latter.
I was also able to see the paw dryer, the full spectrum fluorescents, and my face in the mirror, when I would enter it.¹ Behind myself was an octahedral CCTV camera, something to never express greetings towards, it would only be taunting them, an announcement of premeditated offenses. To do it anywhere else is an invitation to this room, and here, it would escalate what charges impend. Dry air and the hum of a distant fan poured out of a vent.
With the last measuring tool applied, I no longer needed to repress awareness of the occupants; Shoam beside the doorway who could have spared our eyes from his glistening visage by wearing every myriad covering of an Extermination Officer, Lysel whose motions and police vest was bursting with the symptoms of an unsustainable life while she returned to the chair opposite of me, and myself who was forced by the pressure cuff to sit as a biped would.
This chair had been the extent of my freedom for the past hemiaction of waiting, a boundary to a universe of my dominion where I would wander and stay as I pleased, all its monstrosity forgivable when the correct decision was made impossible by a mismatch of structure. Then their arrival mandated the machine to close into my domain so it could seize my chair, so it could seize my mouth, so it could seize my thoughts. Lysel completed the return to her seat and pressed on the number pad to the polygraph.
I heard it splay its numerary claws before a voice of indistinct species or sex spoke from the machine. "You have completed the setup of your interview subject's biometric feed. To locally record your interview, flick ◰, to pump your interview to the Forensic Interview Database, flick ◱-" Lysel flicked one of the number claws to no avail. "-, to begin an empathy assessment, flick ◲, to terminate your interview, press Enter." Lysel flicked again and reached into her vest pocket for a disposable copy of my personal information.
“Your recording is now being pumped in-”
The police woman allowed the unskippable message to waste none of her time before she started raking the polygraph display for abnormalities. “You have scary blood pressure for somebody who just made it through a raid alert.”“-real time to the Forensic Interview Database.”
Shoam strode towards the table. “We can leave that alone for now. Is anything abnormal with his other readings?”“If you have chosen this option by mistake, flick-”
“No, that's why I singled his pressure out. But that's in your field, you should be telling me if his other signs are outside the Graph² for his species.”“-◻ at any time to return to the previous branch.”
Shoam apparently disposed of her line of thought and all attempts to obscure the depths of his exhaustion. “My God, I told you to fix your thirst before this started. You did, right? We can't have you fainting inside our custody.” He did a better job of choking down the honorifics this time.“Please enter the citizen ID-”
“He's taking an Obstruction of Investigation charge if that's his master plan to qíaff with this interview. The ER has bigger fruits to-” the mouthbreather acted out her specieal epithet “-has their paws full.”“-of the interview subject after the beep.”
I bit my tongue, waiting for my biometrics to cool down before I could say that I wasn’t plotting to intentionally suffer heat syncope. There isn't a worse place than under the polygraph to reflexively deny some half-baked scheme. And was this hers? He picked up my emptied cup from the table and held it against his nose, his dour expression unchanged by the secret yielded by the invitingly fibrous musk of its damp inside.“Accessing the FID through-”
“I did take up on your advice- Mister Officer.” The sink was fixed to an indecisive temperature for its perfectly transparent mud, it failed to quench more than my mood and likely called for chelation pills washed down with the real thing. Never the less, I drank four cups of the filth when refilling it was the only sane way of getting some motion. I chimed in further. “But to tell the truth, I don't know how long that it would take before my cāpillaries would have finished adjusting-” I disregarded Lysel’s scoff. “-to that water.”“-this device outside the employment of a licensed organization-”
She initiated a display of pulling a civilian holopad, out of her police uniform, during an interrogation, before it played a tonal indicator that her Thread-Weave application finished diving the datastream according to the query generated from what it heard of this conversation.“- is an offense punishable by fines-”
I scanned Shoam’s face, as she scanned the results. “Well, you know that you’re a mammal, so that stopped being your issue about ◱◱ tasks ago.” That's wrong. I did not wait for most of a quadroaction in a room like this…conscious. The preparation process must have distracted me from the realization that it woke me up, from moments whose eroding soil called for the return of the roots of my memory. I took solace in the unspoken suggestion that they went through every duty of importance before wringing out my angle of last qua-, no, octoaction’s nonsense.“-of up to ◫◼◱◳◰◰◲¤ or ◱◻ cycles in prison.”
I did spot the shared bewilderment in Shoam which I was looking for, until his expression turned to one of realization, and that became shared in turn, before he ended our wordless conversation with a pleading glance.“You are obligated by law of the Fissan Compact-”
“Would medication be responsible for the interference?”“-and Her condominate territories³ to unplug this device-”
“Maybe, just-” She swung the right side of her head to face me. “-you don't look like the kind of person who needs hypertension pills.”“-and return it to a SDANKAR Electronics-”
You would know something about that, wouldn’t you. “No, as a side effect.” I timidly stuttered.“-store for reprogramming-”
“It's not a rare problem with adaptives⁴, or some antibiotics.” said Shoam in a helpful tone of voice, as he returned the cup to the table. Lysel gave an ear flick of understanding.“-if you found it with this option outside-”
I could carry forth. The part seen by a polygraph has been taken care of, so silence would leave his claims unchallenged, even an affirmative statement would entail none of the deeper thought that reveals a falsehood. There is no reason for her to disbelieve that I am a much fresher immigrant.He can’t be allowed to play this game. "I’m actually on thiopentone."
“-the possession of a police station, school-”
“...Oooh,” he chuckled “must've just returned from surgery. Shame that this all happened so soon after that.”“-predator disease facility, or financial institute.”
Lysel's stare was rightly incredulous. "Oh, seriously? And they let him out of the Hospital on the very shift that he woke up, without any period of recovery. Are doctors really that useless on this planet?" Then she shuttered her eyes as if she was rummaging her memory, and I also cringed.“[BEEP]”
She met his response of "There's your answer." with an agreeing ear flick, before hurrying to type my ID into the polygraph as instructed.There is no right to bring a further correction, the notions implanted at this instant are irrelevant to the events which I am told to divulge. I find nothing in search of a reason that the complete truth would matter. Hadn't I hurried into the demands of my spirit, I would have a reason to find him fired or even jailed for this subversion of justice, except that I have framed it as an innocent and swiftly corrected misunderstanding. As he intended.
¹ They won’t leave if you have to use it.
² The Extermination Guilds’ measurement of mentally healthy responses to different situations.
³ How are the Fissans failing to accommodate quadrupeds? They’re not, this police station and the surrounding settlements are ruled in condominium with the Voscauv, who are bipedal beetles. ‘One planet, one settler’ is fine for the limited board space of a computer game, but the ground which you stand on is proof that any habitable planet has enough room for up to 300 nation-states.
⁴ Various courses of drugs and retroviral inoculations used by the Federation to swiftly adapt migrants to the microbiological, circadian, and gravitic conditions of other worlds.
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