Erik felt no relief from seeing that his core had been successfully ‘stabilized’. He had no idea what it meant and couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment. The pain was still present, but he felt numb to it.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye, and he found that the timer had expired. It was blinking 00:00:00 now, though he was still moving.
With no further warning, he found himself standing inside a small office room. He stood directly in front of a desk that was crowded with neatly arranged papers and books. He could see several people in the room, though none of them had looked up at his sudden arrival. The walls were lined with posters and bookshelves.
His observations were interrupted by the sudden return of breath and motion to his body. He instantly bent over, coughing and dry-heaving. Erik’s heart pounded furiously in his chest and his hands were shaking. He struggled to maintain his balance, as he felt something pulling him down.
It’s gravity. I’ve been without it for so long that it feels foreign.
The sound of someone clearing their throat drew his attention, and he looked up to see a man sitting behind the desk. He was wearing what appeared to be a tweed jacket over a white button up shirt. A red bowtie stood proudly at his neckline. His small, circular spectacles completed the look, giving the man a bookish air.
Also, he had blue skin and small, curved horns sticking out of his forehead. His black hair was slicked back and gleamed faintly in the light.
Erik stared, mouth agape, at the alien.
The man stared back for a moment before sighing. “It’s rude to stare. If you’re finished, we have a lot of paperwork to do.”
With an audible click, Erik’s jaw snapped shut and he straightened slowly from his half bent over position. It was a struggle not to continue examining the man so blatantly, but Erik schooled his expression as best he could.
It’s like looking at a weird looking kid. Gotta hide the fact that you notice.
That thought helped guide him and he quickly nodded to the man and apologized.
“Sorry, I’ve just… had a shock. If you don’t mind, where am I? What’s going on? Who are you? What the hell just happened?”
As he continued speaking his voice rose and began to quaver, until he was almost shouting the last words.
The blue man looked disapprovingly at Erik over his glasses before simply saying “Robert. My name is Robert. Sit down. Have a glass of water.”
Erik stared at the man, panting from the exertion of his sudden rant. No one else in the office said anything, though he could see a few dirty looks shot his way by busy workers. Some were blue, just like this man, but he saw a variety of colors and body types. Erik immediately blocked all of that out and focused only on the important issues.
…water? The oddity of the suggestion threw Erik, but there was indeed a glass of water sitting on the desk in front of him. He reached out and chugged the water, as if it would somehow make things normal again.
Forcibly, Erik drew his attention back to Robert. For the first time, he noticed there was a chair next to him.
Without further considering it, Erik plopped down into the chair and slumped over, putting his head in his hands and trying to calm himself before speaking. He noticed then that all of the pain in his body had disappeared, as if the hours of long torture he had just endured had never happened.
“My name is Erik. Can you explain any of this to me?”
“I could, but that’s not really my job. I can tell you that you are the winner of a Species Protection Lottery, and that your planet…”
At this, he paused and flipped through a couple papers on his desk as Erik mutely watched through splayed fingers.
“...what was the name of your planet? I can’t seem to find it listed. Ah, nevermind actually, it doesn’t matter so much right now. You’re here because your planet was in a zone designated by the System as…” Robert’s voice broke off as he read something, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Erik before continuing.
“... as having been located in a Residual Allocation Zone and designated for removal. So it was removed, and you were brought here in accordance with the Species Protection Act—the lottery law, as it is commonly referred to. Essentially, you’re being integrated by the System and adopted into the multiverse in an effort to allow something of your people to live on. Welcome.”
“Do you mean my home was… destroyed?” Erik asked, in a quiet tone.
With a half-pitying glance the man nodded and replied, “We prefer ‘removed’, but yes that is largely correct.”
An awkward silence descended as each waited a moment for the other to say something, but Erik was too stunned to ask more questions.
“Well, now that we’ve gone over that, I need to get some information from you. Well, more precisely said, the System needs some information from you. So go ahead and take this paperwork over to the waiting room and fill it out. Make sure you take a number.”
Having said his piece and gestured towards something behind Erik, he thrust a clipboard with multiple sheets of paper on it towards Erik. The little pencil that came with it reminded Erik of the ones at an IKEA.
The blue man—Robert—had apparently dismissed Erik now, and had turned back to doing some paperwork of his own.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Paperwork… waiting area… did he say ‘take a number’? This is sounding a lot like going to the DMV…
A cold dread began rising in Erik’s chest as he considered the possibility.
Seeing no other choice, Erik slowly stood and turned to where Robert had gestured. He could see other officials quietly working or reading at their desks. It felt like a study hall.
He made his way to the door, noticing for the first time the cheap looking gray carpet on the floors and the almost flimsy look of the furniture. Light was provided by floating spheres of pure white, which gave the room an almost sterile feel, illuminating everything harshly.
The door looked perfectly normal, other than being a bit larger than Erik might have expected. The handle was just like the ones Erik had at his house. Used to have.
Walking through the door, he found himself in what was clearly a waiting room.
Oh my god, it really is some sort of space DMV.
The room was massive. The same harsh lighting provided all the details to Erik as he stood in the doorway, taking it all in.
It was filled with rows of uncomfortable looking chairs that seemed to be upholstered in a plasticy looking teal-colored leather type of material. There had to be easily a thousand seats, and most of them were occupied.
Erik’s eyes briefly darted to the numbered service windows that lined most of the walls and the floating blue screens that told people where to go. His attention was quickly drawn back to the wild looking occupants of the seats. They came in all shapes, sizes, and colors. There were creatures that Erik recognized from fantasy novels and movies, and humans that looked completely normal. All sitting in the uncomfortable looking chairs or standing at the too small service windows, fiddling with papers, talking in low tones, or—at least in the case of one ancient woman—napping.
The room he had entered from was located between two service windows. To his right floated what appeared to be a fairy. She was arguing fiercely with the employee.
To his left was a bored looking humanoid man who was waiting as the employee consulted a book.
Neither glanced in his direction.
Walking further into the room, Erik saw a small sign that said: “Present completed paperwork here for scan and ticket assignment”.
The arrow on the first sign pointed to an unmanned booth with a sign that said “Lunchbreak. Use the automated terminal”. This second sign then pointed to a machine that looked vaguely like an ATM. It was labeled “Intake Processor”.
Sighing, Erik made his way to the nearest chair and began filling out the paperwork. He sat between the napping old woman and what looked to be a perfectly normal toad. It glanced at him, then went back to staring at the seat in front of it.
The paperwork was extensive. The pages started out by requesting basic demographic information, though Erik was unsure how to fill out some of the boxes, such as the ones that asked for his sector and plane.
From there, it moved on to increasingly random information, such as what his favorite foods were and what type of music had been popular on his planet.
Most of the questions did not have a space to write anything in, and instead provided many boxes you could check. Unfortunately, most of the options didn’t mean anything to Erik. He found boxes for Jazz and Heavy Metal, but there was no box for Rock’n’Roll or Country music.
The questions that did have space for Erik to write were often very difficult, asking things Erik did not know or was unsure he knew the details of. For instance, one asked what the ‘great works’ of his people were, requesting that he also include drawings of them.
He’d begun a crude sketch of the Pyramids of Giza when he came to a sudden stop. He’d never been much of an artist, and the diagrams he’d drawn for his students had always been rough and largely useless. He stared at the unfinished lines for a moment, then set down the little pencil.
Before long, he decided to skip many of the questions. He felt a bit bad about shortchanging his home like this, but his mind was simply too disjointed to focus and write an essay on the world's wonders. Even as he was trying not to think about what had happened to his home, the paperwork was forcing him to dwell on it.
It took a long time, even after he began skipping questions and providing half answers, to complete the paperwork. When he had it all together, he headed over to the ATM that was not an ATM.
It stood in one corner, towards the back of the room. Now that he was closer, Erik could see it was not quite like an ATM. Rather, it consisted of another one of the blue screens inside a large metal box. There was a slot that looked to be the right size for a piece of A4 paper. Erik slid his paperwork in, and the machine quietly hummed.
Processing
The word appeared on the blue screen in front of him, and it felt just like when the System had made announcements earlier. This appeared to simply be an externalized manifestation of the System.
Note:
27% of questions not answered
43% of open response questions answered insufficiently
Are you sure you want to submit?
Blinking, Erik thought for a moment. He hadn’t expected it to give feedback on the quality of his answers, but at the same time, he didn’t really care what it thought. He just wanted to get out of here and have a moment to himself to figure everything out.
“Yes, I’m sure”, he muttered aloud, unsure of how he was supposed to answer. Could it read his thoughts?
Paperwork accepted
Initiating intake scan…
At that message Erik tensed once more.
Here we go again. What horrible thing is it going—
The thought was cut off as the horrible thing in question began. It felt like Erik was pried open and someone was examining every inch of his innards. The sensation was not painful, but it was starkly, horrifyingly, invasive. He had never felt so exposed.
The feeling did not last long, and it ended abruptly, leaving Erik feeling violated but physically unharmed.
Scan complete
User assigned identification Erik Carlson
Legacy role markers detected
Cross-referencing restricted registries...
Match confirmed
Role state: Dormant
Reinstatement criteria satisfied
Assigning legacy custodial designation
— SYSTEM INTAKE SUMMARY —
User: Erik Carlson
Void-Origin Sapient: Human
Cultivation Status:
Core State: Inactive
Stability: Unknown*
Intake Regulation: Not detected
Administrative Designations:
Custodian [Legacy]
Visibility: Restricted
Advisories:
*Core stability cannot be verified
Standard safety caps suspended
Extended inactivity discouraged
Next Assignment:
Location: Planet 303*
[Restricted metadata detected]
[Custodian clearance verified]
[Administrative Notes – Custodian Clearance]
*Historical Registry: Kharos-3
*Status: Repurposed (Induction Facility)
Custodian clearance? Since when did I have clearance for anything?
The wall of text threatened to overwhelm Erik, but his eyes caught on two things in particular.
Void-Origin? Safety caps suspended? What does that mean, it doesn’t sound…
Routing…
