“Loneliness is not common to our kind. We usually travel in the same groups we were hatched in. I am part of a clutch of many dozens of my kind. But ruling over the simulation changes that. I am here alone.”
“I ruled over my simulation alone,” I say. “It was an apartment, but… I was alone most of the time. People don’t like me very much.”
The last thing I expected to do today was relate to a massive alien stranded running a simulation of humans, but I suspect I am going to have to revise my expectations for the contents of any given day going forward.
We gaze at one another, the way people do in movies. Time stretches out into a small eternity as we simultaneously wonder if we might have finally met what some people would call “the one”. I feel magic in the air which intangibly crackles with tension and possibility.
“I still need to punish you,” he intones. “You broke the rules.”
“If I broke the rules, then I suppose you’ll have to…”
“Punish you. That's what I've been saying.”
“Yes,” I smile. “Punish me."
I no longer fear this alien, or his punishment. If he was going to hurt me, he wouldn't need to talk to me. He would just do it. I can see that nature made him to be violent, but he is making the choice not to be with me. I don’t think he's going to hurt me. I think he’s bored. I think he's lonely. I think he's been waiting for a woman just like me.
“Krave put his human in a cell,” Tyank says, as if I’m supposed to know who Krave is. “But it didn’t work, and I don’t think it will work with you either. You, Karen, need a more personal touch.”
Oh yes. I want to be touched personally. I want to be touched all over, long and hard. I want to be taught the lessons this alien has in store for me. I want him to make me sorry, and I want him to make me his. These are intense feelings for a non-human creature I only just met, but instinct is telling me that this is the reason I always found human males wanting. They were put off by my abrasive behavior. They feared a strong, independent woman who did not need them. They didn’t like it when I’d harangue service staff over cold soup. But this alien will not care about any of those things, I’m willing to bet.
“So, how will you teach me a lesson?”
"What would you do, in my position?”
“What would I do if I were an alien with horns who runs the entire world in the form of a simulation, controlling the lives of the inhabitants at his whim? Hm. I’d be very happy.”
Tyank smirks at me. “So that is what you are hungry for, Karen. Power?”
“Maybe.”
"I don’t think so,” he growls softly. "I think what you really want more than anything is to have power taken from you. To be at the lustful mercy of a male who can handle you, who isn’t afraid of you. I've seen your file, Karen. You’ve terrified every man you've ever met. Including the one who called himself your husband."
He knows too much about me. I hate the reference to Keith. We were married for three months a lifetime ago. He left me for another woman, one he’d been cheating on me with the entire time we’d been engaged.
“If you want me to be lustful, mentioning my ex is a bad move,” I scowl.
“You still care about him? Keith?”
I cringe at hearing his name. I have done my best to forget Keith and yet here we are, discussing him.
“I don't care about him. I hate him.”
“Would it please you to know he remains captive inside a simulation while you alone know the truth?”
“I don’t alone know the truth, your friend told everybody the truth. They didn't want to hear it. They asked to be made to forget.”
“True,” Tyank says. “Humans like to avoid discomfort where possible. But not you, Karen. You move toward it. You court it. You choose it again, and again, and that makes you different.”
Is that admiration in his voice? He is supposed to be punishing me, and I am supposed to be complaining to him, but neither one of us seem to be doing what we are supposed to be. This is all very irregular. I rather like it.
“You don’t know me,” I say, more or less just for something to say.
“I reviewed your records, Karen. I told you that. I know you as much as anybody can.”
I have to say I am impressed with his general efficiency. The brutality of his appearance belies a creature who does his homework. I am intrigued. I am also very much behind the curve. I don’t know anything about Tyank, besides he is the alien in charge of the lie which I have inhabited for a very long time. Curiosity and desire war within me. I can't stop looking at him. He’s so powerful, and the way the sharp ridged blades rise and fall over his body is mesmerizing as he flexes with what appear to be subconscious movements. I reach out to touch one on his arm. He flinches away, but it is too late. There is blood on my finger where the blade sliced me, so sharp I didn’t even feel it.
I look at the beading red fluid. So I am still human. Still real. Even if nothing else is.
“Why did you do that?!" He growls, his brows drawing down over his eyes, his entire demeanor becoming immediately stern.
I have no answer for him.
Taking my wrist in his hand, he marches me from the laundry basket room through a series of halls. “That was very foolish," he lectures. "I am dangerous. Can you not see that? We are designed to kill. You should not touch me without warning, little human.”
I note that he has retracted all the sharp surfaces across his body. He looks strange without them, like a bearded man does when he shaves.
“Would somebody bring me human bandages!” He shouts the order and the little round headed big mouthed creatures spring into action like sprites, appearing seemingly out of nowhere to do his bidding.
He is a creature of great authority, but instead of letting the lesser aliens mend me, he tends to me himself in a room which looks like a transit lounge. There is little in the way of decorations, just smooth metal brushed walls and a hard plate floor. It is furnished sparsely, and with no regard for aesthetics.
“Be careful, Karen,” he says, my name warm on his lips. “Reality is so much more dangerous than the simulation you have been inhabiting. You can be seriously injured here and find yourself very much not yourself.”
He relinquishes my now bandaged finger and looks at me, his horns pricked forward with what I think must be interest. We are sitting on a couch, though it is a very large one clearly not made for a person of my proportions. I feel as though I am Gulliver, having voyaged to a world very similar to my own and yet very different.
“What am I going to do with you?” He murmurs the question more to himself than me, though I have some ideas. He can take his alien pants off and show me what alien thickness lies beneath them. He is shirtless, but he evidently felt the need for some modesty on the lower half of his body. I wonder what rough ridges might be hiding beneath the leather-like pants stretched tight over his powerful thighs.
I am not commonly what some people would call thirsty, but I am aroused. I might even be about to make the first move, something I haven’t had the courage to do in decades. My ex made me feel ugly, and I have carried that with me through every male interaction I’ve had since. But Tyank changes the entire paradigm of attraction. If the world I have always lived in is a lie, then maybe the rules that say respectable women don’t sleep with rakish males upon first meeting them is a lie too.