The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [2]
“Remain calm. Step over to the opening on the left wall and keep inside the gray area.”
The programmer must have felt verbose.
At the base of the niche were two trays with slimy green things inside. She leaned forward a fraction. Not trays, but slight hollows. Laurel knew what came next, and the thought filled her with dread.
“To your right are earplugs. Hold one by the larger spherical end and insert the pointed end into your left ear.”
The plug felt like a blob of jelly, like the candy her mother used to make. Laurel tried to push her auburn mane out of the way and froze when her hand encountered air. There was not a hair left on her body. The blob fell to the floor and jiggled a little before coming to rest. The training had been one thing, but the reality was far more horrifying.
“Remain calm.” A click, then a different voice, this time female and with a warm Hispanic lilt. “Pick it up and try again, five-one-five-eight-five-three-one-six. No punishment for the accident. The floor is sterile.”
Laurel recovered the plug. The programmer hadn’t recorded instructions for this eventuality. It could be her imagination, but the new voice had a whiff of humanity, assuming the fallibility of fumbling fingers. After pushing both plugs into her ears, she waited until the voice sounded inside her head. It had switched to the implant in her neck.
“Continue with the nose plugs. Hold the spherical end and insert the pointed end into your left nostril. Breathe deeply.”
She held the nose plug, also green but much softer than the earpieces and long, at least three inches. It looked like a fat worm with a bloated ass. When Laurel pushed the tip into her nose, the slimy object slipped from her fingers and rammed deep into her, almost of its own accord. Then it fizzed and expanded, leaving a ball-shaped blob resting on her upper lip. She jerked her head back, panic gripping her muscles in an age-old terror. I won’t be able to breathe!
“Remain calm. Repeat with your right nostril.”
Calm. Calm. Calm! Her legs trembled, but she contracted her calves and bunched her toes. Almost over. Almost. With ears and nose plugged, the cold jelly feeling predictably alien, she stood motionless before the empty niche and tried to control her shortening gasps. Her tongue dried to a barky texture, like a piece of beached driftwood.
“Step into the next room.”
Laurel did a quick double take. The wall to her right had vanished and now opened into another room, its center occupied by a sinuous form.
“Lie down on the bed.”
Bed? Like an abstract white sculpture, the form grew seamlessly from the floor—a shape that reminded her of a sofa dreamed by a stoned avant-garde designer: a formless shiny mass dipping in its center. Laurel sat down and swung her legs over. She adjusted her anatomy to the shape, her shaking legs hampering her movements.
“Remain calm.”
For once, the voice made sense.
Gradually, the bed softened. Like an enormous amoeba, the shape absorbed her body. Laurel felt a powerful suction under her buttocks as the sculpture molded to her back and limbs.
She scrunched her eyes, terrified of what she knew would follow. The bed continued to move, adjusting, rearranging, softening and hardening in places, molding to her anatomy, and robbing it of any capacity to move. Her legs flexed at her knees and rose, her body adjusting to a child-delivery position. Then her head started to sink. She opened her eyes and tried to straighten out, but her head seemed caught in a vise.
Her head continued to fall. Now her toes must be pointing to the ceiling, and her head arched back almost to her spine, her throat stretched.
“Remain calm.”
Laurel rotated her eyes frantically. They were the only things she could move besides her gaping mouth, which drew in short gasps. The tips of her nose plugs tickled the back of her throat. Most would scream at this point, definitely, or at least whimper, or empty their bowels.
She detected movement on the fringe of her vision. A thick phallus-shaped green mass neared her face. She