There was a long, tired history of hatred between the Arata races. The Treysyl were my kind, marked by the distinct white stripes on our ginger fur and a slightly taller height. Meanwhile, the Pelsyl were stout with pudgy chests and plain coats that reflected their utter inability to invent anything interesting for themselves. Continental drift had separated us from one another geographically, though not far enough that we couldn’t jockey for territory and be subjected to their conniving greed.
My mother always taught me that the Pelsyl weren’t like us; they could be trusted as far as you could throw them, and even that might be giving them too much credit. They threatened our very way of life, as they had for all of the conflict throughout Arata history. When the annual peace conference broke down in a shooting match, the war declarations were a formality. We would only be safe when they were destroyed once and for all! The Pelsyl hated us and everything we stood for.
The Pelsyl aren’t even civilized enough to be considered people. Uncouth, ill-mannered, dirty slugs that march through like a blight, killing children without restraint. They want our total annihilation, and that’s why we must end them first. The globe isn’t big enough for both of us.
When I enlisted, it had been with pride in my frills. The Treysyl needed my service, and I’d hated the Pelsyl ever since they took my father from me; I’d been a youngster when their cowardly attack on a cruise liner in international waters had ended his life, and left my middle school self to become the man of the house. Of course, the strike on civilians “wasn’t sanctioned.” It never was; it was “racketeers.” The military had beaten discipline into me, though I still had a twitchy finger when Pelsyl crossed my sights.
The battlefield was absolute hell; ripe with unimaginable suffering, lousy conditions, pure exhaustion, and the sights and sounds of mutilated Arata breathing their last. It was the times when the dying stretched on and on that burned into my mind. Fuck, I hated the Pelsyl, but it’d hurt to stare at the trenches and see a young bastard, about my age, with both legs lopped off from a landmine…crying for his mother. He’d been a few hundred feet from us, and he just lived forever.
It was mercy when I’d put one through his skull, unable to take the cries. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same for Keensty; the medics were trying to end his suffering, but the blood kept coming. The Pelsyl had flanked us and gotten several of our front line troops, breaking the months-long stalemate that kept us in this dingy forest for months. What I wouldn’t have given for modern comforts like electricity and running water. I rubbed my gritty fur and tried to steady myself, as we had to defend our wounded here.
“Lucren!” my best mate cried out my name, as medics tried to stem the bleeding from his stomach.
I shushed Keensty, pity swirling in my gut. “I’m right here. We’re going to push those fuckers back, alright? I’m going out there to hold the line.”
“You…can’t let us be captured,” he coughed. “Shoot me.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re going to get better and make a full recovery. We can keep ‘em off our tails.”
“I’m dying either way. They’ll just make my…last hours miserable. I’m asking for mercy.”
My grime-smeared fingers curled with anger and anguish, witnessing him in such a state. Furthermore, I was afraid of it being me languishing next, unable to end my own misery. I cursed and ran out to the barricade, unable to make that choice regardless of Keensty’s will. A glance upward latched onto our ragged air support zipping toward the incoming Pelsyl infantry. Explosions rocked our front lines and rattled my eardrums, something that I’d become numb to more than it’d become normal.
Death before capture. I’m going to take as many of those bastards down with me as possible. Maybe we can still fend that off, without our position collapsing.
I followed the shouting sergeant and packed behind a barricade, panting. “This one’s for Keensty.”
I fired several rounds at the moving shapes in the treeline, while a few of my own comrades caught bullets heading in the opposite direction. It was chaos and carnage mixed in one package—a cacophony of noise and fury. I remembered Keensty and I walking down to the recruitment office together, as we both boasted about our collections of toy soldiers and laughed with sweet naivety. There was a girl I’d left at home too, who’d broken off our engagement when I went overseas.
I still thought about life back home: the life I was trying to protect. The Pelsyl winning and domineering Arata society…it’d mean the Treysyl were wiped from existence. It’d be like me and everyone I loved, everything they ever knew or built, would be scrubbed away like insect guts on a windshield. This was going to be where I died; that was beyond frightful. A defiant howl rumbled in my throat as more enemies kept coming, ensnaring us.
Weapons erupted all around us, eviscerating what was left of our defenses. The Pelsyl were advancing and throwing explosives around in excess; our dwindling supplies couldn’t match that, but I tried to find heart in the weapon that rested against my chest. I stared down my sights at one’s ugly head, before I heard a click and saw a flash that burned my retinae. Sensation and thought were ripped away—a sudden, liberating nothingness, aside from a distant freeze frame of the battle.
I gasped and jerked awake, as the consciousness that had come to an abrupt halt coalesced back in a moment later. “What the fuck?!”
The words hitched in my throat, a new kind of terror biting me in the ass once I glimpsed my surroundings. The battlefield was nowhere to be found, like I’d been transported in an instant…I was just getting shot at, with an imminent death staring me in the face. What the fuck was this? The walls were a strange kind of shimmering metal, with otherworldly glyphs hidden in the machinery. Plus, my body was fucking levitating. My uniform was gone, replaced by plain streetwear.
I sat up and crawled backward, but found an aching weakness throughout my entire body. What had been done to me? This…wasn’t a Pelsyl capture. Even the dirt on my fingernails was gone. There was a strange syringe and nourishment on a nearby table, which made little sense. It wouldn’t have been an instant transfer from the battlefield. I wasn’t injured at all, and there was no sign of medical equipment. The shock and bewilderment I felt was indescribable.
Snap out of it. You need to figure out what’s going on, and think of an escape plan. Who the hell would even be able to…or want to take me hostage? Things don’t work like this. What the actual fuck?!
I managed to coax myself over to the window blinds to lift them; it’d make sense to get a view of wherever the hell I was now, and work from there. My jaw almost hit the floor when the scenery that looked back at me was nothing but stars. The little I could see of…the structure I was in…a space station, where the indigo orb of our planet, Teska, was not even in sight. Whoever—whatever had teleported me, in the blink of an eye, wasn’t Arata.
I had been abducted from the middle of an active battlefield by aliens.
I screamed in pure, absolute terror. I have to get back to Teska! What kind of experiments…what have they already done? We’re insects to them. Whatever technology this is, it’s crazy fucking advanced. Why? Why me? Why are they…?
“Your distress has been logged. Please remain calm, your safety is our top concern!” A singsong, artificial voice proclaimed from thin air. “We are currently experiencing staffing issues, with an estimated wait time of [108 days] to speak to a sapient Watcher. Would you like us to play a prerecorded explanation by our founders?”
I gawked in the direction of the voice, dumbfounded. “Staffing issues?!”
“I’m sorry, that was not a yes or no response. Would you like to hear the message?”
I sat back down in a stupor, blinking several times. Why the everloving fuck was I getting a…computer program with a customer service voice? I had no idea what a Watcher was, beyond sounding ominous. Were Arata being watched under a microscope at all times? These hyperadvanced aliens were understaffed; abducting us was some job that they couldn’t hire for?! It didn’t make sense what they wanted with us, or why my “safety” would be important at all.
I opened and closed my mouth several times, before deciding some kind of explanation was warranted. “Yes.”
A holographic image appeared in front of me, shimmering lights that revealed a bonechilling creature. The being had tousled brown hair solely on its scalp, gray skin that looked like pebble colors exposed in every other place, and inky black eyes that lacked any indication of where it was looking. It waved spindly digits and flashed flat, pearly white teeth; I couldn’t tell what it was trying to convey, but it was unlike any lifeform I’d ever seen. These Watchers looked like this?! I didn’t want to interact with…literal, creepy aliens.
“Hi there! Preston-svran here; to make a long story short, I’m the first interdimensional explorer of the human race, and I’m also immortal. Just getting that out of the way,” the alien said casually, in our language. “So if you’re hearing this message, you’re advanced enough to have computers, eGirls, and spaceships. Congrats. We’ve had super hokey versions of all of that for millions of years, and that’s all you’ve got to understand! We bend spacetime and spread through every single universe. That’s us—but enough about us. Let’s talk about you!”
I blinked several times. “What the actual fuck?! I…not enough about you. Who the hell are you?”
Preston continued to flash his teeth. “Sooo we’re random aliens who found you. I know this all is scary and sudden, but as you might’ve already guessed, you died. We stepped in so that wouldn’t be forever dead. We gave you eternal life and put some limited access on those nanobots over yonder, if you haven’t taken them already. Now if the video doesn’t cut here, uh-oh: your planet is brand spanking new to us! Still getting situated, but we didn’t want to wait. Because, y’know: forever dead.”
“What? I’m not dead?” A dull ache had intensified in my head, as I struggled to grapple with the nonsensical words he was saying. “How would that even…I’m obviously alive! This is beyond stupid. I was there one moment, here the next.”
“We teleported you and gave you a new body. Different folks have different near-death experiences and memories, but hopefully yours aren’t too bad. Right, good news: some people you thought were dead are totally fine, and you can find them out there on this station. I know, I know, we’re super cool. You’re welcome.”
“If you’re not kidnapping me, let me go back to Teska! Now!”
“Final thing: you’re probably wondering what to do now or how to reckon with an eternal life you never knew about for reasons you don’t understand.”
“No shit, alien!” I shouted.
The human’s lips remained upcurved. “We believe nobody deserves to miss out on forever, but we didn’t contact you and swoop down with our epic tech. Why? We didn’t want to trample on your culture, so we don’t interfere in developing worlds. You can go anywhere in the multiverse, except your homeworld—at least, until they reach a certain tech level. Don’t worry, you can watch over them! We also left lots of reading on the Alliance and some fun places to start your space journey. Enjoy!”
The holographic feed blinked out as I reached out to claw it with a hand, desperate for more answers; it’d created so many questions, but I was beyond skeptical of their self-proclaimed motivations and their insistence that I’d died. I would remember getting killed, not just getting transferred to some entirely alien place. My terror had grown once I heard Preston say I could never go home. They wanted me to be stuck here, in an alien environment?! Absolutely not! There was a war going on that I was supposed to be a part of, not some alien game!
Why would “random aliens” give us all of this in earnest? That Preston entity had been so nonchalant and offhand about insane bullshit. Reversing death was magic, anyway; maybe they stepped in right before they presumed casualties were imminent? If there was any truth to all of that, of course. Perhaps they were ideologues who disapproved of the fighting and imposed their will to stop it, which would mean there were revolting Pelsyl in this station too. I really had to find my allies and get apprised of the situation, before they came for me.
It was overwhelming to be thrust into such a foreign setting without warning, when I’d barely given a second thought to extraterrestrial life. My wits had to remain sharp. The sole thing I was certain about was that I had to find a way out of here, and that meant connecting with the other Treysyl Aratas in the station. Their perspectives might shed some light on how these extraterrestrials operated and what their blind spots were. There was no way I’d accept being trapped here with our mortal enemies, left to be the playthings of immortal Preston and his Watchers.
A/N - 1! The Watchers have discovered a pre-uplift race called the Aratas, and jump right into a violent race war to try to stop permanent deaths from occurring. Lucren teleports from a hectic battlefield with his best friend, Keensty, who begged him to be put out of his misery. Amid insane technology in what he sees as an alien abduction, since he can’t return home and doesn’t find noninterference to be a valid policy, Lucren is determined to find a way out.
What do you expect the Arata station to be like, and what do you think of the Treysyl/Pelsyl feud and how it might affect their afterlife outlook? Will Lucren calm down after being ripped from the battlefield?
As always, thank you for reading and supporting!