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[germhating_hypochondriac]

[Eddie paces as he talks. There's a cast on his arm with the word loser written in black, with a red V written over the s to spell lover.]

Hello? Can you hear me? We're all kidnapping victims here; you guys know that right?

This nanite stuff sucks. There are tiny germ sized robots crawling around inside us! Something's gotta be powering them. They could be hanging out in our stomachs eating our food. Or they could be eating us and making tiny little holes inside our bodies. They could all build up in one place and block off the blood flowing through our arteries and our veins. Or build up in our organs, our lungs and our brains! And, our bodies are mostly water. They could be rusting inside us.

[He stops pacing and starts scratching his face with his cast-free hand]

I think I'm allergic to them! Everything's itchy. I'm gonna break out into hives!

[He starts wheezing and rubs his chest.]

I could be allergic to the tattoo too. I'm just a kid. I shouldn't have one. I think it's starting to swell up. I could have an infection. Or a blood disease. I don't trust these government people to be clean.

[The wheezing continues and his voice becomes strained with each word. He takes his inhaler out of a fanny pack and uses it, only speaking again when he's breathing is back to normal.]

How are we supposed to deal with this shit?

Comments

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[drivesadesk]

Relax. Humans get abducted for alien experiments all the time. Just pretend it's like that.

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

What the fuck?!

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[drivesadesk]

Look, calm down, calm down, it's like...back in my world, alien abductions just happen. Only most people don't know it, because your mind gets wiped after. But then, most of the time when you get abducted, the aliens really just want to see how you interact with some random Earth object, then they put you back without any memory that anything happened. This is like that. It's scary and invasive, but no one's going to hurt you, and when it's all over they just put you back and you don't even remember it.

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

Mind wipes?  Your world sounds scary as fuck.  Most of the time?   What the fuck happens the rest of the time?   What the hell do I tell my mom if I do get put back?   If I'm gone for a long time and I can't remember where I've been, she'll, she'll...I don't know what the fuck she'll do.  Make me get a ton of x-rays and needles and spend the rest of my life in a damn hospital.  I'll never get to go outside again when I get back.  My face is probably on every single milk carton on my world by now too. Every single one!  I'll never live it down.

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[drivesadesk]

It doesn't matter, because this time isn't going to be like those 'rest of the times'.

And I've actually got some great news for you. When we get put back, we're put back the same moment we left, so no one ever knows we were gone.

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

Are you sure?

Wait, what?  I heard people can be here for years. If I go back and I'm taller and older, how's anyone gonna know it's me?  It'll be like I grew up in a second. 

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[drivesadesk]

I'm sure. We've all been here this long and we're okay, aren't we?

And you'll go back to the age you were. It's like all of this is just erased.

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

Yeah, but people thought cigarettes were good for them once and then years later, they all started getting cancer.  Who knows what's gonna happen?

So I might have to be a fragile kid twice?

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[drivesadesk]

You don't know what's going to happen, but I know most of the people here aren't going to let something happen to a kid.

But yeah, you might have to be a kid twice. Hopefully you won't be stuck here long enough to grow up here, though.

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

Really?   Back home, most of the adults didn't give a shit when something happened.  Kids went missing or got hurt and the adults would just forget'em.  Even most of my friends' parents didn't care.

Yeah.

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[drivesadesk]

Really? Where I'm from adults really freak out when kids disappear. Even when they find the kid, there's a lot of fighting and drama over whose fault it was and who was supposed to be watching the kid.

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

Yeah, there'd be so many missing kid posters, they'd be hung up on top of each other.  Betty Ripsom's mother looked for her and my friend looked for his brother, but his parents would tell him to give up. No one else looked for any of the other kids.

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[drivesadesk]

That's...incredibly disturbing and your world sounds terrible. And you're upset about being pulled out of that world?

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[germhating_hypochondriac]

I'm upset about tiny robots in my body and a tattoo and being away from most of my friends and my mom, and all the other weird shit.

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[drivesadesk]

Oh, right. Yeah. I forgot about that part.

[measuringdicks]

Oh my god. Do you stick probes up their asses?

[drivesadesk]

That is not the proper way to do a probe, no.

[measuringdicks]

Oh, sorry. [Using the British Guy’s Voice:] So what’s the proper way to do a probe, then, guv’nor?

[drivesadesk]

I mean, if you're doing a brain probe you really are just attaching receptors to either side of the subject's head, and it will print out all of their thoughts typewritten on paper so you can keep the information for your records.

tw ableism

[measuringdicks]

That’s just boring. People do that to whackjobs on TV all the time to record their brainwaves or some shit.

[drivesadesk]

A lot of things are just not as exciting as in the movies. Alien abductions included.

[measuringdicks]

Alien abductions should be more exciting, what the dick is this scientific bullshit?

[An indignant huff.]

Hey, if you're an alien, [and he must be since he knows so much about alien abductions,] why do you look human?

[drivesadesk]

The scientific bullshit is what we abduct humans for. Why did you think we did that kind of thing?

And this? This is just a suit. [He lifts a bit of the skin around the neck, showing dark green scales underneath.] See?

[measuringdicks]

Human zoos. Alien invasions. Freaky sex stuff.

[Richie whistles, lowly, leaning forward with fascination in his eyes. This is way better than a movie.] Really fucking good suit, then. How'd you make it? Did you have to sit through hours and hours of make-up and shit? What do you do if it gets all fucked up?

[drivesadesk]

You are way too young to know what the words 'freaky sex stuff' means.

[He thinks. He really doesn't know the age humans learn about that kind of thing.]

And the 'science stuff' is so we can better mimic humans for our invasion. I had to sit through hours and hours when it was first made, but now that it's made and fitted to me, I can put it on and take it off pretty quickly. In this place I was given a power that lets me regenerate it. Back home I'd have to repair it by melting it and pressing it back together.