Everything he did not see was a waking nightmare to him.
The nonsensical paradox was quite literal. The sophisticated mechanism at the core of his body that measured the parameters of his phantasmagorical skin in order to provide him with sensation had a fully spherical field of view and never turned off. Before, when he had still been alive, he could simply constrain his field of view to something Human-adjacent for a more
digestible experience.
Now though, dead and buried, if he closed his one third eye even slightly, in the writhing darkness beneath its synthetic eyelids he could instead - see the festering, putrescent, monstrous beings pupating inside what remained of his entombed corpse. He swore they moved. Every time he dared to try and examine them he swore their everting maws and pulsating, grime-lathered ventricular pores had pulsated in some edacious fashion that he could not quite commit to memory.
The alternative of a full field of view without end, warped and blown out of proportion by his limited Human experience, reigned as a seductive siren's call promising an end to the fitful night terrors. He knew, however, that is was but one of the many self-imposed facets and aspects of his new form that if he embraced too fully, all pretense of Humanity would abandon him. He would lose sight of what-was and drown in the metamorphic numen, reverse transubstantiation of the mind and soul to mirror the state of the body - the placid, inert fluid being reshaped and molding to the form of its new container. While that might not have necessarily been a bad thing, per se, there was always then the forlorn, insidious notion: If he adapted too well to his new form, he would never be able to return to what remained of his corpse.
Make a heaven of hell to find damnation in paradise, or endure an unending continuation of freakish misery for the distant promise of far-flung catharsis and absolution? The classic dilemma in a new, modernized experience embodied in an exploration of phantom sensation. In their magnanimity, his current hosts had even arranged his living conditions to neatly mirror his sleepless, daylight horror. The Tarrhaidim and Vrexul dominated aesthetics of the vessel he had been reassigned to charming him with its rancid, fungal aesthetic at every turn, as if the whole ship was a corpse with industrial-sleek and glittering mold covering every relevant surface. He was not certain whether the convergent aesthetics on display between the two alien species and his own personal torment were incidental or deliberate - all he knew for certain was that they almost certainly saw him in just a distasteful light as he saw them. The so-called bunking arrangements at general quarters aboard the ship, in particular, were insufferably claustrophobic and altogether too similar to the writhing torment that occupied his blind spot.
It was thus no surprise that he instead spent the majority of his time 'patrolling' his new host vessel for the purposes of finding the single
least visually offensive vista where he could ineffectually bang his head against the metallic hydrogen facade of contemplative normalcy he tried to maintain if only for the sake of his own withering sanity. There was no salvation to be found - practically every squirming centimeter of the alien vessel churned and seethed with the rush of biomechanical life. The company he had to keep, of course, was even worse. It was as if every single asshole inside of twelve AU wanted to put their own mutagenic excess on display - that most of them were bent and twisted into rough approximations of Humanoid form almost seemed condescending.
Needless to say, after having run what passed for his mouth a few times, the majority of the crew and passengers had come to view him with precisely the same disgust he held for most of them. He had already been disciplined
(Ha! HA! AHAHAHA!!!) multiple times for 'speciest proclivities and discriminatory sentiment.' He could clearly see how indulging in such base and distasteful behavior was hindering his ongoing efforts, but what else could he do? He did not even have the relative oasis of his own body to find respite in - or to find the rudiments of civility in. He needed
something to ground his Humanity in, and if it won him no favors from his erstwhile 'allies,' they could go find a large mass of anti-neutronium to kick.
“King.”Yes. That was him. The not-name for his body anyway. He shook off the passing, questionable entertainment of his reverie to continue arguing with the bay quartermaster. He glanced off to the side, behind where the Quartermaster stood, to look at the security-feed displaying the counter-side view of the desk and whoever happened to be on the receiving end of it. It was still him he saw. Approximately 1.78 meters in height and still looking a little too thin, even with the bulked-up ballistics suit he had projected over the display for his skin. His auburn-colored hair was presently being worn in a loose ponytail until he could be assed to devise something really eccentric. The expression on the angular features of his face was still one of vague disinterest however - only the deep-green coloration of his eyes really stood out at the moment. Conjuring up a bid of concentration, he managed to twist the external photon-curtain for his face to resemble an approximation of scornful expression.
"That's my name, don't chew on it too much before spitting it out." He retorted.
He was King.
"Your requisition request has - once more - been denied." The Quartermaster wheezed through the biomechanical equivalent of a respirator. Like everything else on the ship, they were a little too tall, spindly, and corpse-like for King's taste.
"What, all six thousand of them?" King asked plaintively as he leaned elbow-first on the commissary counter.
"It was impressive that you had the patience and commitment to press the 'Confirm and Send' button six thousand times. I can only imagine how much time that took you. However, all the duplicates were filtered and omitted by the governing system.""So why was the one application that got through rejected?"The Quartermaster leaned down from across the commissary window, practically butting head to head with King in the process before answering.
"I took such apoplectic offense to your attitude from before that I, in my rage, lost your form. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you personally.""Nothing to it, scatterbrains, pretty sure they make a pill for that." King made a show of gritting the teeth he did not have while locking what currently passed for his eyes with the quartermaster's own beady, optical lens.
"Look, I ask for so very, very little. I do not even eat. Is it so much to ask that you actually do your job and requisition the one, singular item that might make abiding your creepy, insufferable countenance otherwise tolerable, which I have been asking you to get for the last fourteen billion cycles?"The quartermaster leaned back from across the counter again.
"Without even having looked into it, you are asking for a form of physical media that could be perfectly viewed digitally. You could even look at it right now, if what I know about your apparatus is right. Obtaining a physical copy is redundant, risky, expensive - and unnecessary. Do not file a similar request again.""So on top of being lazy, ugly, and dim-witted, we can now add 'inept' to the lengthy list of your many physical failings." King made a concerted effort to twist the photon-curtain of his face to approximate a contemptuous sneer.
"I, for one, cannot wait to get to know you better so I can figure out what is also wrong with your personality. I'll resubmit the form another six-thousand times with unique modifications each time if that's what it takes. Just get it for me you complete waste of my time..." He banged on the commissary counter with the project for his right fist before turning around with a somewhat over-embellished sweeping gesture. Then he made to strut away, taking care to make sure his feet were actually touching the floor and to throw in some exaggerated nigh-drunken sway to really sell the picture of barely-contained indignant rage. He had no idea if the alien quartermaster could even read Human body-language, but it was not for his benefit regardless.
The quartermaster threw something wet and viscous at the back of King's head. It struck and splattered itself against the contours of the photon-curtain for King's hair, neck, and shoulders.
'Get mad. Get really mad. Hormonal, impulsive, completely reckless rage. You are incandescent with hate. Let's go. Get mad. Just imagine it as if it had happened to you for real. Get mad. Get mad. Get mad.'King's form stood still and rigid for several moments, but he failed to properly approximately the still-but-livid shock that he remembered as coming with being struck by something filthy from an unseen angle. He couldn't quite bend the eyes projected by the photon-curtain to swell with visible hate. He couldn't quite get the photo-curtain's skin to ripple with reflexive shock. He couldn't quite get the set of his jaw to broaden and lower in animal ferocity.
Most damningly, though: He also couldn't quite bring himself to care.
King shrugged faintly, and the surface of his entire body shimmered with iridescent waves of scintillating light as his photon-curtain remodulated itself. He applied a faint burst of ablative-kinetic shock to the residue of whatever the Quartermaster had thrown at him and sent it scattering across the walls and floor. Utterly defeated, he then drifted off - literally. His feet did not even touch the ground as he pulled his host mechanism across the bay and to the nearest juncture, ignoring the alien curses the Quartermaster was flinging at his back.
Before he could ruminate for too long on his failings and contemplate jettisoning himself out the nearest airlock to scream in space for the rest of forever, he received a communique from the Invictoid Authority. The strike team was back. Time for mission debrief and introductions. Time to pretend to care about another mishmash of random assholes out here in the back end of nowhere, space, running aggrandized wetwork for the interstellar political equivalent of a howling infant. There was always the possibility some of them might be Human of course. Or at least look passably Human. He could have reviewed the strike team's profiles in advance but had elected to savor the disappointment in person.
As he made to enter the briefing room, resplendent with its insultingly mundane table and chairs, he was genuinely shocked for the first time in months when he heard a Human voice stained with the very indignant rage he had just attempted and failed to conjure up - and then he beheld the frazzled countenance of one Kleo Alves, attempting to chew out the Invictoid Authority as though she did not know it had been dealing with
him for long enough that she would be unable to faze it even if she had spat in its face.
He frowned when she visibly coughed blood on the ground. Did she have internal bleeding? Had the medics not tended to her yet? Typical. Still, she was healthy enough to scream at an authority figure, that meant she was healthy enough to humor a little hazing.
"𝙱𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚍, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚕 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚍. 𝚆𝚊𝚒𝚝 '𝚗 𝚜𝚎𝚎, 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚙𝚊𝚠𝚗 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎? 𝚂𝚑𝚎'𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚜. 𝙸'𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚞𝚝 𝚑𝚒𝚖.. 𝙲𝚑𝚎𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚎."
"That..." He said, putting a bit of a spinning, exaggerated drawl in the intonation of his voice as he strutted into the room,
"Would be me!"He made directly for the seat nearest to where Kleo was standing, spun it around, and made a show of heaping himself in it before propping his boots up on the table directly in front of her.
"The name is King, don't forget it." He drew up a hand right beside the temple of his brow and snapped his fingers while twisting the photo-curtain of his face into a familiar, savage smirk. He could not quite manage to perfectly mimic the friction of flesh on flesh to approximate a snapping sound, so he instead emitted the faintest of laser-pulses to generate a plasma-mediated vacuum around the tips of his fingers that would
simulate a snapping sound.
"And you can checkmate me any day of the terrestrial week you like, Queen, but kindly refrain from coughing blood all over my boots."Externally, everything about King would have screamed 'civie' to the others looking at him. He was wearing a flagrantly ineffective and eye-catching overcoat over a very light ballistic suit that would not have saved him from a single shot in an actual fight, and he had close to no muscle mass or definition to speak of. He seemed like some 20-somethings spoiled Human brat, for the most part - except...
There was something
off about his appearance. An eerie stillness to him - as though he was not breathing. As if no part of him moved unless he wanted it to. More than that, he was a sensory dead patch in the room. Beyond infrared and thermal picking him up as a colder than cold Humanoid-shaped patch, everything else would return a scan of being either completely overloaded just from looking at him, or else make him out to simply not be there at all. To the Etheric sense particularly, it was as though he did not exist.
"Task failed successfully, team?" He laughed.
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