Serial Fiction with Friends
In the last installment, we left Ainan sprinting away from an unknown creature -- far, far into the future.
This month we will be jumping into the fray with Tucker and the Capastraunian. I actually have no apologies for those of you who voted to follow Ainan again. Too bad! I've been itching to give you this next segment! 😉 (FINALLY!)
Last time we saw Tucker, he'd been captured by Tjalians and trapped inside a stasis pod on their ship, trying unsuccessfully to remember what a banana split was like, as well as how to escape the pod.
Vote for the next segment by clicking your choice at the end of this one!
Read up on previous segments (in past issues) here.
Shoulda Stayed in the Pod...
The thermostat wire.
It had only taken him an eternity to remember it. When pulled out, it would cause the pod to pop open as a precaution.
On the bright side, during all this think time, his body finished morphing to that of a young adult, and the drug that immobilized him helped to dull the pain for a while. Until he outgrew the dosage. The tradeoff was that he could now feel and control his appendages better.
The downside was that he was now much too tall for this pod, which immobilized his body in a new way: crunching it into configurations it was not meant to make.
He managed to get what he hoped was the thermostat wire hooked between the very end of his big toe and its buddy at an amazing rate of only one curse word per second (for God-only-knows how long). Then it slipped away. Working his toes and the top of his foot farther into that tight cutout, he tried again.
Several frustrating and excruciating minutes after that, he managed to partially dislodge the wire. The pod popped open.
His foot was bleeding, bruised, and stung like heck, but he was free of the control pod. He tried to take a breath, but gagged and coughed up some of the gel they had packed his body in. Then he managed to turn his head and lift one shoulder just enough to throw up to his side, in the gel.
Problem one: he knew he did not have the couple of minutes he needed to cough up the rest of this stuff and breathe uncontaminated air to finish clearing his system of the drug, so he could be coordinated and get the heck out of this place.
Problem two: completely naked, he would leave a trail of gel wherever he went until he dripped dry.
He flopped his body over the no-throw-up side of the pod, and onto the floor closest to the door. His feet hit first. Barely. Ow!
I can’t believe they haven’t redesigned these control pods yet!
A Tjalian guard showed up at the door and pressed a button with his top right hand. He shot a significant look at Tucker through the small window in the door.
Silent alarm, now, apparently.
The guard glowered at Tucker and indicated the wall with the boomstick he held in his top left hand.
Tucker sighed, crawled ahead, then finally stood up using the wall for support. He 'assumed the position' in momentary resignation.
The guard came in, gave the control pod a disgusted glance, then placed magnetic cuff shackles on Tucker’s ankles, neck, and wrists. He lifted Tucker by his shackles, as if Tucker’s six-foot-four 200-pound body weighed almost nothing, and carried him from the control pod bay to a prison bay.
At the first cell to their left, the guard paused and unlocked the feeding port.
Bad, bad sign.
He lifted Tucker's body and pushed him down the slippery, smelly chute.
Tucker slid helter-skelter down the chute, popped out the end on his side, and flopped over on his face. As the chute retracted, the guard disengaged the cuff shackles’ magnetic attraction, leaving him still shackled, but able to move.
“He likes his food to put up a fight,” the guard’s robotic translator device laughed through the intercom.
Tucker lifted his head. Oh crap!
He rolled and dodged the giant Capastraunian’s first venomous tentacle swipe just in time. He kept rolling and got his legs and elbows under him, scrambling out of the way of another strike.
He scanned the cell, looking for the most defensible position, and in the same moment, ducked another swipe, tucked, and rolled. Hopping up immediately, he ducked the other tentacle, and ran behind the Capastraunian. He dropped to the floor as the Capastraunian turned. In the moment he had before the single bulging eye was able to track him again, he squeezed his (thankfully still slimy) body under the solid, giant quarter-round of cement-like material attached to the wall as a bed in the cell’s corner.
The rough material tore at his naked skin as he frantically pushed with his toes and pulled with his forearms, squeezing himself closer to the vertex. He shifted his body as far away from the opening as he could. The smell of rotten fish intensified the farther he squeezed into the enclosed space. He gagged.
They have to keep my mind occupied with survival. Which means they know I can get out of here.
The large, bulging appendage flattened itself and pressed against the opening under the cot. A long stinger sprung from the end of the tentacle. The Capastraunian swiped back and forth with the stinger, only inches from Tucker’s outer leg, as it continued to further flatten and extend its tentacle.
He had nothing with which to defend himself, except his cuffs. Could he re-activate them? Could he somehow activate or repel the cuff on the Capastraunian's tentacle?
