“I’m very sorry,” I apologize. “Truly. Please. If you'd like to direct me to your accounts department, or provide me with your records, I will get started right away.”
“You will get started right away — after you have been punished.”
“Uhm…”
I’m not sure what he is referring to, but I know that I’m not going to like it. When I fuck up at Rogers Accounting, I get a verbal, or at worst, written warning. I have one written warning for the whole cough medicine incident. But I don’t get the impression that King Tyrant gives warnings.
Terrible is giving me a look I don’t particularly enjoy. He looks smug, and happy, for the first time since I met him.
I watch as Tyrant performs whatever technological magic is involved with making matter move, and creates what I can only describe as a sort of bench with a human shaped indentation in it out of the essence of the room.
“Lie down.”
“On that?”
“Lie. Down.” He repeats the words in a throaty growl, and I am compelled to obey, lest he become even more annoyed than he currently is. “Face down.”
I lie down and find that the surface beneath me is soft and molds to my body, somewhat like that soft foam you stick flowers into when you arrange them. Except this surface moves at the whim of the king, and slips over my lower back, holding me firmly in place.
I’m trapped.
“Please… sir. Mister. King. Royal. Please…” I start to babble as panic rises in my stomach. I’ve never been good at small spaces. My apartment started to feel like a prison during quarantine and this, this gives me no room to move whatsoever. I am held as securely as I would be if I were wrapped in the arms of a lover, except there’s no being to the grip which keeps me pinned. There’s just King Tyrant’s will.
“Okay, I don’t want this job anymore. Send me back to Mr. Rogers. Fuck this. Fuck that guy over there, specifically. Let me up!”
I’m panicking, and when I panic, I curse. It’s a failing I’ve never managed to overcome. I’m not good at high stress situations. I’m good at contained ones with documentation and forms and guidelines. I’m a worker bee, and I like being a worker bee. But what is happening to me now is way outside the hive.
Tyrant places his massive hand on the back of my neck and emits a low purring sound which throbs through me, calming me in a mysterious alien way. I breathe. Maybe this is going to be okay. This is an advanced species, after all. Hopefully, they will be kind. Is kindness not the most advanced trait of all? This is probably just some kind of holding thing to ensure I don’t hurt myself for a little bit.
“I have no place for disobedience on my ship.”
I can’t see him, but I can hear him. The sound of his voice makes me think what is about to happen won’t fall under the umbrella of kindness after all. He’s keeping me calm so that I don’t make it harder for him to hurt me. This is a perversion of my nervous system, an alien overload.
This isn’t fair. This isn’t remotely fair. I wasn’t disobedient. I just made a mistake. It could have happened to anybody. I don’t think that matters though, not to this king who is determined to punish somebody for the damage to his ship. I’m the scapegoat. The whipping girl.
“This is my ship,” he intones. “You will respect it, and you will refrain from damaging it. Do you understand?”
“I’m so sorry. It was a mistake! I never meant to cause any damage to your ship, I swear. I’m very careful with property.”
“I saw your apartment, human. There is no evidence to support your statement. Many of your common items were in a state of advanced disrepair. You may put holes in your walls, human, but you will not put holes in my ship.”
I can’t believe he noticed the state of my apartment. He was only at my front door for a matter of seconds. Goddamn it.
“That’s because we’ve all been locked away inside to avoid the plague. There was no way to get them fixed.”
“There shouldn’t have been holes at all. Humans don’t use materials capable of withstanding physical blows.”
I’d point out that neither does his species, but I don’t feel like pushing my luck right now. Instead, I try to explain what happened.
“Okay. I was playing a game, you know, in VR, and you wear these goggles over your head, and then you really can’t see anything, so sometimes you hit a wall.”
“Then you haven’t calibrated your room size properly.”
“How the fuck do you know how a VR toy works?”
King Tyrant lets out a laugh. “You are surprised we understand your world, human? We made your world.”