Navigational Numbness: A Sci Fi Short

There was no telling how long he'd been here like this. The hours had stretched into days, had stretched into months and, later, years. Never-ending.

"Forever only lasts as long as it's convenient," his girlfriend used to joke. She'd always been skeptical about relationships...People... Particularly those who said they'd love her forever.

Like him.

Ironic, how he'd never said the words aloud but, rather, had thought them at her over and over again. She wouldn't have believed him anyhow. In the end, though, it was her that left first. So far, he'd managed to love her forever - and she'd been the one to fall short of the mark.

Had she loved him? He liked to think so, but she'd never bothered to let down the walls far enough that she could. Not her. She was never one to leave herself that vulnerable. He couldn't hold it against her though. Death tends to cut one's plans short. Perhaps that was what kept him going, now, in the darkness of space. Faith. Belief. The thought that, maybe - just maybe - she really had loved him.

Around him, the machines pulsed and buzzed in a strange language all their own. He'd tried to understand, tried to break the code, but to no avail. He wasn't a scientist. He wasn't a brilliant man. He'd always prided himself on being a stable, reliable, average Joe.

In the end, he simply let the sounds fade into the background - that monotonous playlist they piped into the restaurant or store where you worked, designed to either make the customer's visit more enjoyable or the employee's life a living hell. At first, you heard it and it amused you. After 3 months of it, you had to learn to drown it out or you'd be chewing off your own fingers. He'd adapted and overcome. In the end, he'd simply forgot it was playing at all.

The different colors had been vaguely amusing. These were visual. Here, he could make out patterns, though he still couldn't decipher them. Somewhere, deep inside, he'd come to the conclusion that they were there to placate him. Reprogram him, perhaps. Make him submit.

He turned his head away as often as he could.

With a sigh of resignation, he slumped slightly in the strange harness that kept him suspended in the middle of the room, his massive form seemingly weightless as he hovered and swayed there. His legs never would have been able to support him with the weight he'd packed on since they'd started feeding him. He wasn't even sure what it was - some gray mucous-like substance that was continually pushed through a tube that went down his nose and into his stomach. He never felt hungry anymore. He never got thirsty. Even his bladder and bowels were relieved through some manner of machine.

He simply... was.

How he had come to be in this state of existence was a nightmare of brief flashes and unanswered questions. A harvesting, as far as he could tell. For a few brief hours, he had known a couple of other trembling, frightened and confused souls - all thrown together into the hull of the ship until the alien creatures had come and sorted them out. Then, much like in the way he'd once seen hogs handled, metal partitions had slid between them and shifted across the floor. One by one, separating them until only he remained.

It was then that all sound stopped and he felt utterly alone. But that had happened so long ago that he'd all but forgotten it. 'Time heals all wounds,' they used to say. He had come to the conclusion that that wasn't it at all... Time just made you forget.

Now, he just hovered in his own weightless quarter of space, drifting at the mercy of creatures he'd never even seen. He didn't understand and he'd given up trying. He was simply waiting for Time to come along and suck away the terrible reality of it all.

A faint buzz off to his left alerted him to the presence of his tormenter and he turned frightened eyes in that direction. A needle, long and ominous, sparked evil and hissed with painful intent. Though he started and squealed in fright, still the needle advanced... the sparks arcing out to send painful pricks across his skin, drawing closer and closer to his eye.

At one time, he'd tried to resist. He'd attempted to balk but the jab at his eye and the consciousless intent in the needle had warned him of how expendable he was. Failure to do his job would result in termination. And termination, he did not want to encounter.

Pathetic as his existence now was, the life-force within...that desire to survive... was stronger than his urge to give it up and cease being. Damn it all to Hell.

The needle jabbed again and this time he floundered to the side helplessly, attempting to avoid the instinctive pain. Heaving his ponderous form to the right, the ship groaned and rolled with him, turning and shifting in the direction he'd moved. This continued until they were on the course they wanted, at which point the needle slid away, back into the inky darkness, and he was once more left to hover...and stare... and remember... until they needed to alter course again.