The robot paused. “Very well,” she said.
“And then Mongo,” Donut said. “He smells really bad.”
“Your pet will be required to be stored during the interview.”
“Excuse me?” Donut said. I stepped into the machine to avoid listening to the ensuing argument. Donna continued talking to me while the treadmill resized itself, instructing me to lift my arms and turn around, but I could see through the plexiglass-like material that Donut was also arguing with the robot. I couldn’t hear what was happening, but I could tell Donut was pissed.
Like with Odette’s trailer, this facility also had a porthole window. I stared out at the wide expanse of open sea. Unlike the last two times, it was now light outside, and I could finally see the real world. A pair of silver, trailer-like objects floated in the ocean a couple hundred meters away. They looked like shipping containers, though they bobbed up and down like any regular ship. In the blue sky, a trio of shapes zipped through the air, astonishingly fast.
I wondered how the other humans were doing, the ones who’d been smart enough not to go into the dungeon. The system had said they’d be left alone if they decided not to participate, but even through this little porthole looking through to some random place in the ocean, I could see that wasn’t true. How many spaceships and other vessels had descended on the planet? Were they really leaving the other humans alone? Or were they being exploited, hunted, or enslaved?
“We came to a compromise,” Donut announced once I stepped out. “Mongo is to be cleaned, but then he’s going into the carrier.”
I spent the next five minutes watching Donut attempt to talk the dinosaur into walking onto the treadmill. I’d just watched the pet plunge headfirst into a 13-foot-tall undead zombie frittata, but the idea of getting clean appeared to terrify him. Donut finally succeeded by capturing him with the pet carrier and then zapping him back out directly onto the contraption. The cleaner turned on, and the giant chicken started shrieking like a piglet being fed into a meat grinder. We could hear him even through the soundproofing of the device.
“Don’t be a baby,” Donut called. “Mommy is right here!”
He came out a moment later poofed up and smelling of lavender. He started running in circles around the trailer while Donna clucked after him nervously.
Finally, Donut zapped him away, and the door at the end of the room opened. We walked into an empty studio with a large, round table. There was a section for a studio audience, but it was currently empty. Spotlights blazed over us. There was no desk like with Odette’s show, and there was no extra-ornate chair like with the Maestro’s stupid program. There was a simple, glowing sign against the back wall that read Danger Zone with Ripper Wonton.
One of the chairs had Carl glowing over it, and the one next to it read Princess Donut. We both sat down. Like usual, Donut’s chair ascended into the air, allowing her to look over the table.
“This is so exciting,” Donut said. “I always love going on new shows.”
“Yeah, the last new one really worked out great,” I said.
A strange creature appeared, entering the room from a door across the studio. I guessed the creature was a he, but I wasn’t certain. He was humanoid in shape, but absurdly thin. He stood about my height and was entirely white and hairless. He had oversized, black eyes, like pools of oil. A ridge grew from between his eyes and up, over his head, like a bony mohawk. He wore simple, white clothes. His entire body glowed. When he walked, he drifted as if his feet didn’t touch the ground.
Since we were outside the game, he had no name floating over him. He came to hover beside the table.
“Princess Donut and Carl, welcome to Danger Zone,” he said. His voice sounded like I would expect. Airey and halting, alien-like. He waved at us in greeting, moving languidly. He only had three fingers on each hand.
“Hello. We are delighted to meet you,” Donut said. “Are you Ripper Wonton?”
He chuckled softly. “No, Princess. My name is Evo. I am the program’s director. I wanted to greet you two personally before we bring everyone else online. We will be live, not pre-recorded. We have one other crawler with us tonight, and she has already been briefed.” He indicated an empty chair. “She is sitting there at the moment and can’t see you.”
“What’s the name of your race?” I asked.
“Ahh, I am of a people called the Forsoothed. People generally call us Soothers,” Evo said.
“We had a lot of fiction and movies about aliens, and a lot of them looked similar to you,” I said.
“Yes, it is interesting,” Evo said. “Your culture showed the Null more than us, but we have seen examples of our people in your historical records and media. I do not know how you latched onto our likeness. It is most likely one of my brethren visited your world in the past. Some of my people are oddsmakers, and they likely visited this planet to get a sample of the human stock in order to make predictions for the crawl. Visiting the planet except for official Syndicate business was illegal, of course, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“So alien abductions were really a thing?” I said. “Imagine that.”
“What about the probes?” Donut asked. “I remember them talking about the probes on television.”
“I assume you’re talking about anal probes?” Evo asked. “Yes, we’ve heard about this, as well. If that really happened, it was likely done by the Null. You called them the Grays. They are a nasty, unpleasant race. Perverts, all of them.”
Evo pointed at the chair immediately to my left. A static holographic image appeared. It was of a tentacle-faced woman wearing a crown. “We must move on. Sitting in this chair will be Princess D’nadia of the Prism. She is a race called the Saccathians. People call them Sacs. They are a common race, but D’nadia’s Prism kingdom is rather small. Still, she is a powerful force in certain trade circles and is quite outspoken. She is a regular on this program. She is a fan of you two and specifically asked to sit here.”
I examined the squid woman. This was just a holographic representation, not the real deal. Her skin appeared gray and covered in bumps. A tangle of squid-like tentacles hung from her cephalopod face, like she was a human-sized Cthulhu. She wore a long, flowing dress, and there was no way to tell what was under it. The whole look kind of freaked me out.
The next chair contained a pudgy, fuzzy brown creature that looked like the result of a wombat/Ewok union. The thing only stood about four feet high, and didn’t wear any clothes except a fucking orange scarf around his neck, like Fred from Scooby Doo. He had two huge cheeks and giant eyes. He was disgustingly cute. I vaguely remembered that Miss Quill had a beanbag version of this race sitting on her shelf.
“Oh my,” Donut said. “That is positively adorable.”
“This is your host, Ripper Wonton,” Evo said. “He is of a race called a Setonix. People mostly call them Quokkas, though. He will lead the conversation. He is a good-hearted gentleman, despite his strong opinions. He will treat you fairly, but if he disagrees with your positions on anything, he will take you to task.”
In the next chair was another female. She was a silver and black Cobra-headed creature. The holograph towered over the table. Her hooded head had to be a meter wide.
“This is Manasa. She is a famed singer. She’s a Naga, but do not worry,” Evo said. He looked at Donut. “She’s not of the Blood Sultanate, so you won’t have to kill her when you hit the ninth floor. She’s not really a Naga, either. The real Manasa perished long ago, but she contracted with the Valtay Corporation to keep her career going once she died.”
I remembered what Odette had told me about the Valtay system. Their people were little parasites that took over bodies. “So, she has a worm in her brain, driving her body?”