The Soldier grunted. «Get back in your cell.»
As if electrocuted by an Electric Current Projector, Lennon’s hand twitched in annoyance. He would very much like to. The nurses were stationed there, silent and prepared to stitch him up from yet another critical injury before sending him off to be tortured again. But the knife was still lodged deep in his flesh. The walls of his stomach could feel its edge; cold as ice, sharp and lethal to touch.
Lennon opened his mouth. Lennon closed his mouth. Lennon was a mute and fish out of water for the moment it took him to overcome the immense pain, and stab an irritant finger towards the knife. He gestured for the soldier to remove the weapon, in a perverse game of charades.
The prize of victory was his continued survival. The price of loss was his life. Thus it was fortunate that the brutish Soldier had sufficient intelligence to decipher his meaning. The metal slid out, coated in bile. Lennon observed it in pain–shadowed boredom. The blade was smooth, and shone. Uniform and uninteresting, like every other corporate knife of Gorgon Inc.
‘The control freaks.’ He thought with utmost derision.
The hilt was wrapped by a pale and unmarred hand. Any callouses were absent. ‘Another untrained, and lazy idiot then,’ Lennon decided. The soldier was a complete oaf, his sole capability being to swing his knife around, in a pathetic attempt to appear intimidating. If the knife was out of the question, Lennon knew he could take him. His odd feminine neck was brittle, long and slim, like a dainty swan. He would be easy to strangle. Or break. Whichever worked fine, he didn’t mind the particulars. But the knife was in the savage soldier’s grip, eager to spill blood and slice flesh. And his hands were handcuffed in an uncomfortable position behind his grucking back. Escape was impossible.
Lennon missed Lalilah and her Ormons - her hybrid of oranges and lemons. Ah! He wanted to eat her delicious Ormon pies, piping hot and crunchy; Ormon cookies that smelled heavenly like citrus; healthy Ormon soups – that on second thought, he’d prefer to not come in contact with his sensitive palate.
The Soldier prodded him in the shoulder with his knife. Lennon winced, as the tip dug in like a hungry viper’s fang and pierced his skin. A drop of blood formed and winded down his body in a red rivulet. «Oh. Sorry,” The Soldier said in an apologetic tone. For a knife created from micro particles in the air that had been crammed into the contours and rammed into shape of a knife, it could cause a fascinating amount of damage.
Lennon sighed, stood, and allowed The Soldier to herd him back into the cage. Lennon and The Soldier passed a familiar corridor of familiar prisoners, sleeping and drugged out of their minds after lunch.
Then they took a right. And Lennon’s heartbeat sped up. Right was never, ever, good. Right meant that you were travelling in the direction to the Gorgon III spaceship’s back exit. Where death–row convicts were executed, via an impactful kick off board the ship and into space. To drift in dizzying disorientation, until you starved or were shrivelled to a mass of wrinkled skin and dehydrated to death.
Gruck. A silver Coppinium (IIII) door rapidly came into view. It slid open with a ‘whoosh.’ Darkness seemed to stretch even past the horizon. The gravity projector that attracted his feet to the sweet, sweet, ground deactivated, and he was lifted aloft. Lennon had no time to marvel the miracle of flight, before being flung out the spaceship. The Soldier stepped off after him, and his features morphed into a feminine face.
«Hey.» Lalilah grinned, green eyes sparkling with mischief as she held up a Projector Key Hacker – PKing Hacker, in short. «Sorry bout' the knife.» The strange solid key rippled and jangled between the apexes of her fingers. Lennon squinted and stared at her for a long, hard minute. He beamed, once convinced of the absence of any deceit. She whipped out a Projector Signal Player and adjusted the coordinates. Her fingers were nimble, as they skipped across each control. A moment later, they were spirited away in a flash of dim orange light.
In the supervillains’ headquarters deep beneath earth’s curmudgeon of a crust, Lennon and Lalilah were having tea after bandaging Lennon's wounds. «Have I told you look beautiful today?» Lennon casually asked. He licked his lips of any Ormon pie crumbs.
Lalilah choked on air, her cheeks tinged red.
«No?» Lennon raised an eyebrow, leaned across the table and kissed her.
A short story by SecondGuess- , originally written for Challenge 1 of the Contests here on the science fiction profile on the theme of escape.
Simplat Cubicle Gray
Bob first suspected he was in a time loop on a Tuesday which was just like any other.
At first he thought it was his company's interior design choice of gray cubicle walls over gray carpeting with slightly less gray (one might even call it beige) tables which was playing tricks with his mind, but after giving it some more thought he came to conclusion that this is most definitely not the first time he had lived through this day.
He decided to talk it over with Ralph over lunch.
But before lunch he had to survive a conference call about the marketing plan. He tried to focus on the conversation. Had he heard this all before? It was a weekly meeting, so of course it all sounded familiar, from the meandering questions, to the vacant answers. But once more he had a feeling that this didn’t sound like a meeting he had previously attended, it was the same meeting he had previously attended. When it was his turn to speak he panicked slightly hoping not to break the space time continuum with his new found insight. He must try to give that same answers he would have given without his understanding that he was caught in a loop. He breathed in slowly and in his most steady voice said
«Sounds good»
Bob met Ralph at the entrance to the Cafeteria. Bob was short and stocky while Ralph was tall and rangy and seemed constantly distracted by the smallest things such as the fact that the queue to the Indian food booth snaked a slightly different route than yesterday. Walking side by side they looked to be a corporate parody of Laurel and Hardy, the portrait of stagnated careers.
«A time loop you say» Ralph said as he was separating the tomatoes from his salad.
«yes» Bob responded chewing his Indian daal and rice.
«This would actually explain quite a bit» Ralph summarized.
«Exactly!» Bob concurred
«So you think you've lived through this day not only once but many times.»
«Many many times» Bob agreed.
«And you think this isn't the mindless monotony of the job speaking» Ralph wondered.
«no, no, the mindless monotony had stopped talking to me years ago» Bob said.
«Well this is exciting» Ralph said, his slightly raised voice turning a few heads from the nearby tables.
They chuckled as Bob wondered if the conversation had anywhere left to go.
«So how does this work? — at some point – do you have to reset and start the loop from scratch?» Ralph asked.
«I would imagine» Bob said.
«And you think that happens at the end of the day?»
«I guess so.»
«And then how far back would you go, is the loop only a single day, or do you think you are repeating the same week? The same month? Your whole life?»
«Not sure - wow, you’ve really thought this through» Bob said
«How about this one – do you think we've had this conversation before»?
Bob put down his fork and looked around
«Yes» he said in a surprisingly serious tone.
Bob thought about it some more and then said