From the far reaches of an extended universe came a light. Dim at first, it quickly got brighter as it travelled at blinding speed across the never ending mess of dust and particles scattered on millions on miles, shattering rocks and planets and entire galaxies standing in its way.
Arrived at the center of this huge contraption, the light stopped abruptly, as if suddenly anchored in place. There, it shimmered as the clouds surrounding it cleared away, letting it shine across everything that existed, things that... Weren't rocks, actually. Nor planets, nor galaxies. They're only a visual representation of... uh... who... uhmm... Is that the light talking? It pulses along with the words, like a string that vibrates every time it is struck by... By a musician? A person? Let's pause for a bit. It pauses as well, but bounces yet again immediately as I think about..
I!! I said I!! I is... I am the light! Yes!! Am I thinking or talking out loud? I wouldn't know, but every time I do I shimmer. God this feels so good! I seem to be really good at it. I... This isn't the first time I've... existed... I remember... things. Colors, shapes, things. The smell of flowers, but do I even have a nose? Speaking of nose, am I even breathing? Can I look down? ... Did it work? I have no way of telling if it did. Oh, the light is expanding now, which means that I am expanding. What seemed like an infinite space around me a moment ago now seems much smaller. I can see walls racing towards me from all directions and just when I think they'll squish me into nothingness, a warm feeling envelops me, envelops my... my body. This is refreshing. Is this new? No it isn't. I've felt this before. One hundred, one thousand, one million years ago, I have no notion of time.
I activate a few muscles, those that open my eyes. Everything I see is the same dark shade of blue. Suspended in liquid, I can still breathe but no air escapes my lungs. I can faintly discern cables connecting to my stomach and feel the one in the back of my neck before my memories rush back in. The heist, the mole, the tribunal, and most importantly, the sentence. Stored inside a microchip for an eternity or until they find a more cruel method of shelving criminals. But now I was given this new body... Why was I being resleeved?
Three taps on the glass of the resleeving tank jolt me out of my thoughts. I look up and see the face of a man dressed entirely in white clothes. Looking professional, he seems to be taking notes directly on the skin of his arm.
"Chrissie Clarke?" He asks without taking a look at me.
"Who's asking?" My words come out muffled by the water running through my wind pipe, but he seems to have heard me because he nods.
"My employee number is 437. Everything looks under control here, I'm just making sure the finer adjustments are in order before we can drain you out of this."
I try to look beyond him through the glass of the tank to no avail. Except for his silhouette, the rest of my vision around him is blurred.
"What year are we?"
"Do you want that in Earth years or in Galactic ones?" I'm not sure but there seems to be the faintest touch of arrogance in his voice.
"What. Year." I repeat, both annoyed and nervous.
"Let me calculate that for you." He raises his hand to his face for a moment. "Earth year is forteen thousand and three."
I bite all the way through my lower lip, sending a puff of blood drifting away in the liquid I'm floating in. With a disapproving look, he materialises a dial out of thin air before him and turns it progressively, causing the flesh of my lip to reform almost instantly. As it happens, I noticed that my entire body is slowly bobbing up and down inside the tank.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." He says, going back to his arm. Our client would be very disappointed if you weren't delivered in perfect condition."
"What is this all about? I thought I had been sentenced for eternity. Although I gotta say it's pretty nice to be able to shake my brains a little bit..."
"We received a very generous offer we simply could not refuse. The economy isn't going so well these days, so we had no choice but to resleeve you. Plus, a ten thousand three hundred and fifty seven years sentence isn't so bad."
TEN THOUSAND YEARS! Are you kidding me?! It all went so... fast. Yet, I can still remember when they first shelved me. Alone inside the simulation, in the empty void... The silence was deafening. I must've gone completely mad after the first hundred years or so. Time flows differently when nothing ever changes : Boredom slows it down but repetition blurs it out completely. I turn my attention to 437 again.
"The moment I'm getting out of this tank my only goal is going to be to snap your neck in half, you know that?" I grin.
He smiles back. "I would love to see you try. While we're at it, I have to ask you to move your arms and legs to assure the neural connections between your chip and your new body is complete."
"I'll move 'em for you, alright. Get ready to get some of thi...."
I clench my fists and raise them towards him when I notice a few problems.
Problem number one : My fists don't exist. My arms end before my elbows in two perfectly round genetically-engineered stumps. I flutter my arms roughly around me as they barely create any drag against the liquid. My legs present problem number two because they're the same as my arms. I'm surprised such short appendages can actualy move. The sensation in my limbs barely reaches down through my thighs before coming to a complete stop. Then : nothingness. This new body is devoid of feet, toes or any articulations. The idea of moving anything below that point has become illogical in my mind.
"....ffffffffuucck thaaaaat." I gasp, looking down at myself.
"Good, they seem to be working. Let's proceed with emptying the tank, then."
The sound of rushing water fills my ears and I feel myself floating down rapidly. Instinctively, I try to swim upwards by this body is no good. My arms and legs flap about uselessly, offering me no hold on my surroundings. Soon enough, I can feel the metallic grid against the stumps of my legs as I sink and sit down, leaning against the glass panels of the tank.
When I feel the air against my face, I start coughing until all the water has left my lungs. As I pant, naked and wet at the bottom of this cylindrical prison, an unexpected weight on my chest causes me to lower my gaze yet again. Breasts. I sigh. I guess I'm back at being a women after all. Ten thousand years ago, masculine bodies were so much stronger than woman's and thus much more useful when brutal force was needed, which is what I specialised in. This is basically why I had started using them instead of women bodies. Although it does feel good to be back into the kind of body I grew up in. I'm sure going to miss the biceps I once had on one specific sleeve. I wonder if they managed to modulate these kind of things after ten millennia of science advancements. I guess they wouldn't have been much useful in my current condition, anyway... Which is... what exactly? 437 interrupts my thoughts.
"Step out of the tank please."
"Yes, about that.. I would like to order a foot or two? To go, thank you." I look up at him arrogantly, tapping my infinitesimal legs on the ground before me.
"Your sleeve is as is, and is not to be modified in this station. Step out please."
I lift my arms towards him. "And how the fuck am I doing that?"
"Not my problem." He stares away from his arm to look down at me. "I thought you were going to try to kill me?"
"Fucker." I whisper. "How about a friendly nudge in the back to get me started?"
"Walking out of the tank unassisted is part of the procedure. Now I'll say it for the last time. Step. Out."
Asshat. Well, where do I even begin? I look at the spot where my arms end and shake my head at their insufficiency. Since my legs lay wide open, I join them together and decidedly push downwards. My pelvis rises as my body forms an angle against the wet surface of the glass and I slide down on my back, hitting my head against the metal gridle. Extending two limbs on the side while contorting my torso, I manage to flip over on my stomach. The rough texture of the gridle is harsh against my skin and stomach, but most hardly on my breasts. Arching my back, I slide my arms under me and push myself up on my four limbs. I feel like I'm standing on four wooden pegs attached to my shoulders and hips, not quite in control while still being in relative balance for the moment. Now, how to proceed next... let's extend an arm forward first...
"I gotta say, our client has very good taste."
Why is his voice is muffled? Oh, I see. He has walked all the way around the tank and is staring at me from behind. If he thinks that'll embarass me, he's barking up the wrong tree. After my first two or three sleeve changes, embarrassment regarding my own body is one of the things I lost first. I think nothing of my naked ass or breasts, he can stare all he wants. These stubby arms and legs aren't who I am, although they have already revealed themselves as being extremely limiting. Slowly, one limb at a time, I walk forward. First I move an arm, then the opposite stupidly short leg, and I repeat on the other side. After only a few steps, my shoulders burn from the effort of simply holding myself up. I stare at my limbs as I make my way out of the tank, still unsure about how they feel. I have vague memories of having complete arms, but they are getting blurrier with every passing second. The feeling of holding something in my hands gradually fades away. My movements are imprecise. I try to clench my missing fists but seem to have forgotten how... yet the cold floor against my stumps feels eery, new, out of place, while being impossibly real. Their novelty and realism leave me completely dumbfounded. The adaptation period of a new sleeve isn't usually this intense. What have they done to me?
When my head sticks out of the tank, I can see the rest of the room. Glossy white surfaces all around without any doors or controls of any sort, really. I keep moving forward and 437 loops back around the tank, his black shoes filling most of my field of view. My face is so close to the ground I could kiss his feet. Behind me, the resleeving tank disappears into the floor, leaving behind no indication it had been there. Well, that is if you forget the wet smudges I have drawn across the floor. I spread my ridiculously short legs and let my ass drop on the floor with an audible plop. I try to control my breathing to hide the fact that this sleeve is out of shape.
"Well that was fun." I stretch my back and raise my arms before letting them fall limp to my sides. "How about some hands now? Or a pair of knees?"
"Negative. This sleeve was designed this way and you are meant to stay like so." He's still tapping away on his fucking arm. "You will be shipped immediately."
I shake my head and extend a leg behind me as I try to get up, causing my head to bolt towards the ground at an astounding speed. I stop myself just in time using what I can barely call my arms.
"Wait wait wait," I say, collecting myself again. "What is this all about? I demand explanations!"
"You are in no position to demand anything." He replies. "Now stand still would you."
He taps an umpteenth time on his interface and lasers shoot off from every corner of the room to quickly dry off my skin. Then, strands are quickly weaved around my breasts and pelvis to form clothes that perfectly fit the shape of my new body. They are smooth to the touch.
"Am I your toy or something? How dare you put someone like me in this sleeve. Do you have any idea who I am?"
"Oh, I do. And so do our clients."
A light flashes and I feel a sudden pain on the right side of my neck. I try to reach it to rub it away but my arms don't let me. Before I can say anything, a tingling sensation overcomes my body, weakens the truncated muscles in my thighs and I topple over. A robotic arm saves my face from certain impact and lifts me up, promptly setting me in a cushionned case before closing the lid on top of me. Did I just get boxed in? I can't see a thing. I feel so weak. I can't seem to move my limbs, even with their ridiculous length, and can barely squirm around in my coffin. I doze off in no time, rocked by the rhythmic thumps I can feel against my back.
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Suddenly, I am bathed in light. I blink a few more times than I would be proud to admit before I can make out what is happening. The box I was in has been opened and now the effect of the tranquilliser has faded away. I try to stand up but... Oh.. That had slipped out of my mind. My limbs flap like the fins of a fish out of the water and I let them rest at my side again. Raising my head, I am startled by the face of the person who freed me in full close-up. It belongs to a young woman in her early twenties, or so it seems, and is overly excited as she scans me up and down, a gigantic grin plastered on her face.
She turns away from me to speak to someone I can't see : "Is this real?! Is this really for me?!"
"Happy birthday, my little honey bunny." A masculine voice answers. Her father's perhaps?
Her long hair are an impeccable bright shade of blue. As they flow around her face and down her back, they seem to shimmer as if they were animated. She mutters thanks at the owner of the voice and a new colour gradually spreads down her hair from her scalp. In a matter of seconds, they have turned pink. She bites her lower lip and secures a lock of hair behind her ear before turning back to me. Again, but a lot slower now, the blue starts gaining ground on her hair as she inspects me. I'm so utterly confused that I can't seem to find something to say.
"Is it..." She begins.
"She," the other voice interrupts, "is a class 2 prisonner from the 37th century and was sentenced for eternity. And now she's yours."
Excuse me?! EXCUSE ME?! Her eyes grow wider than the bullet holes I would leave in her head if I still had my two hands. I breathe in deeply.
"She doesn't seem too responsive, is she active?"
"What the fuck is this?!" I shake myself alive and I shout in her face. "What do you think I'm all dried up like an old fruit?"
The excitment triples in her eyes. "Oh my god! She's real! And exactly how I imagined her!"
"I'll make you pay for your imagination when... Hey!!"
Holding me at arm's length by the stumps, I end up hanging four feet above the ground while my stubby legs dangle below me. Behind her, I can see other people, now. An older man, probably the voice I heard earlier, but mainly people in their 20s, all wearing specially modified sleeves like I have never seen before. This guy has a pair of antlers on his head; a girl, barely a human beneath the beak in the middle of her face, her feathered body, and the pair of bird legs that stick out of her dress; another girl, looking relatively normal, but whose hair, eyes and nails constantly change colours; another guy way at the back, who I assume is a security guard, has three pairs of arms, all more muscular than the others. I wriggle in her grasp and grab everyone's attention in the process.
"Let me down for fuck's sake." My legs trace puny arcs through the air as I try to kick her in the stomach. She starts giggling before setting me down on a cushioned chair. "Do you have any idea who I am? Give me my limbs back or else..." I point my arm at her, trying to sound menacing.
"Or what?" She scoffs, both hands on her hips. "You're going to ask me to stay still until you manage to headbutt me in the shins?"
Everyone starts laughing. Ha ha ha, yeah, yeah. Very funny. When I waddle closer to her and the edge of the seat, she effortlessly pushes me back. I try to grab her hand but my stumps offer me no grip and she simply pulls it away from me.
"Alright put it with the other one, I'll be with them in a minute."
"What? Put me down!"
Someone I can't see lifts me by the waist and carries me over to a nearby room furnished with nothing but a gigantic bed. Now set on the floor, my carrier quickly leaves me behind and the entrance to the room seals itself shut. When I turn back around, I notice that I'm not alone in here. Another girl, wearing about the same clothes as me, is sitting cross legged on the bed. She walks up to me only to sit again, this time in front of me.
"Welcome to the club." She says.
"Who the fuck are you?!"
"That's not important. You should forget who you were because it is of no importance here." She stares me up and down. "She got you the special treatment I see." She grasps the rounded end of my left arm with both hands to inspect it. "Unfortunate."
"Get your hands off me!" I free my arm and stare back at her.
"Hey, I'm just like you. No need to be bitch eachothers now."
I frown and grimace at her. "You're telling me you got a fucked up sleeve too? Doesn't seem too special to me."
She rolls her eyes as she speaks. "It has 20 different programmed methods of deconstruction that can tear me apart while still keeping me alive."
"Meaning?" I sigh out of boredom.
She crosses her legs. "Right now I'm in soft clay mode. That's her favorite to have on me. This way she can toss me around however she likes. She usually leaves it on even if she's not around. Here, look."
Grasping her right forearm with her other hand, she squeezes it until her fingers become clearly embedded in her skin. When she loosens her grasp, her fingers leave behind dents in her flesh, as if she was indeed made of modelling clay. She shafes her flesh until it's back to it's original form. I shiver. It reall does seems I'm not the only that has been turned into a toy.
"20 different ways?" I burrow my frown lower. "How does that even add up?"
She rummages softly through her hair as she speaks. "Well, there's the one where my limbs shrink gradually up to my torso, the ones where she can either cut through them or pluck them out, one where my flesh erodes into dust as I move, another one where I melt like ice cream in the midday sun, one that shortens my limbs every time I do a specific action, then this other..."
"Okay, okay, I got it." I say, bringing my arms to my temples as if to fake a headache. I waddle up to her, swinging my arms to the sides as I walk. "So if I were to..."
I thrust my shoulder forward and jab her in the chest where I make an average sized dent. She sighs.
"Yes, but can we please not do this?" She grabs my arm and pushes it aside but I immediately retaliate with another hit in her right elbow where I punch a hole through her arm. "Please?! Stop this!"
"Gimme that! I need it more than you!"
When I flick my arm away, the structural integrity of her limb quickly falls apart. As she raises her arm, her forearm tips over and falls to the side. It bends at an unnatural angle as she clenches her fist and her forearm plummets towards the ground. I grab the arm with both stumps and tear it off just as she grabs my hair and yanks my head back. I raise my arms in vain to try and reach her hand, then quickly swing my head from side to side until I feel her grasp weaken, which is soon followed by the thumping sound of flesh falling to the ground. I turn around to admire exactly what I had expected. My hair cut her fingers like a hot knives through butter in an astounding amount of slices of different sizes and her palm, now fingerless, fumbles around incomprehensively for a between me and her spare parts. I dive towards her arm and fit one of my own in the elbow socket and....
"Why isn't it working?!"
From my point of view, the illusion is almost perfect. My arm extends from my shoulder and buries itself in her torn arm to form a makeshift elbow.... But I can't feel any of it. The hand remains motionless as I probe the back of my mind for clues to how limbs used to work. Come on!! I waggle my arm in the soft flesh but it starts crumbling around my own skin, worthless. I lay on the ground panting.
"You're dumber than I thought you were." She says as she stands. "Sleeve parts aren't transferable, at least not if they're not programmed to do so. Now get the fuck away from my arm."
As she extends her leg to push me away, I curl myself around it the best I can and bite halfway through her heel. Instead of tasting like sand like I expected, it tastes like sweaty skin all the way through. The even texture of her body mixes in my mouth and I spit it right out before it makes me vomit. Just like with her arm, the last bit of flesh remaining on her heel fails her and her foot snaps off her body. The rest of her leg collapses in chunks of various sizes under the impact and the pressure of her own weight before coming to a stop near her pelvis, halfway through her thigh. When left untouched, her discarded parts quickly become unrecognisable, unusable, and crumble where they lay. They lose their shape and transform this section of the room into a fleshy sandbox, her arm, fingers and leg nothing more than irregular patches of dust.
She slaps me with what little remains of her hand and I stumble backwards, hitting my head hard on the tiled floor. She shambles across the floor, her uneven stump swiping the tiles as she pushes her ass towards me with her surviving foot. Now at my level, she shoves the shortest of her arms in my mouth, her face directly above mine.
"You like the taste of this?!" She grins as she easily keeps my own arms out of the way with her whittled hand. A grumble barely escapes my throat as I try to speak. "You're gonna get your money's worth."
She jabs her arm deeper and deeper into my mouth and it gives way under her weight, slowly sinking deeper in my throat. Her sandy flesh gradually fills every inch of my mouth and prevents me from breathing. Her face is much closer to mine now, her shoulder almost touching my lips. As my brain and body ache for air that never comes, I feel my eyes water and my vision blurs, both from the lack of oxygen and the seemingly imminent death of this sleeve... I think I hear a door open.....
"What the fuck?!"
A loud feminine voice manages to reach my ears. Suddenly, the weight is removed from my throat and I flip on my side to vomit the flesh out, allowing me to breathe again. As much as killing this sleeve could've been a good start for my situation, I've always found asphyxiation to be one of the worst deaths to experience. It scared me more than the idea of living in this body.
The voice rises again. "I can't leave you for five fucking minutes before you start fucking each other up?"
I lift my head to see my new owner, her hair now flamboyantly red, stomping through the room. She snaps her fingers twice before kicking the other girl in the ribs, where her foot doesn't leave any holes. I'm guessing she just deactivated her sleeve's special mode.
"Ask her, she's the one who started trading blows." She manages to say between two kicks. She swings her empty shoulder back and forth, as if expecting more arm to be left. She points to me with her palm instead. "She tore my fucking arm off, then bit my heel from under me."
"And you let yourself be beat by that? She doesn't have any fucking legs! You could've walked away from her!"
"Well I uhh, she.." She stutters.
"You know what, forget it. Enjoy your new body, you're gonna be living in it until I decide otherwise..
The girl seems on the defensive, now. "Yes, Felicia."
"Unless you want us to use your new brainless feature again?" She smiles wickedly.
I can see her eyes widen. In fear? She pauses before answering. "I'd rather not, thank you."
She then scuttles further down the room and leave me behind with Felicia. I'm still spitting grains of sand when her face fills my field of view.
"And what about the newest addition to my collection?"
Her breath reeks of alcohol. What a pity. After thousands of years of science and research, booze is still what people use to fuck up their mind.
"How do you like your body?" She pinches my left thigh, or at least what little leg I have that feels like a thigh, and places her other hand delicately on my neck. "I designed it myself."
"I gotta say I'm a little cramped up in here." I push my legs down and arch my back. "Getting used to it. Still shitty, though."
"I see." She bites her lower lip, her hair rapidly turning purple. She runs her fingers softly across my skin, a sensual gleam in her eye. "I'll teach you to appreciate what little life gives you."
She lifts me by the arms and throws me onto the bed where I tumble like a ragdoll. I try to collect myself and face her, but who am I kidding. My stumps slide against the silky fabric of the sheets and I stay immobile regardless of the effort I put into it. Furious, my owner stomps her way to me and punches all the air out of my lungs through my gut. I had forgotten how it felt to get my ass handed to me. Before I have time to recover, she slaps me across the face, then again, and again, and again, and again. With every futile attempts I make to protect my face, she pushes away the laughable arms she ordered be grown on this sleeve.
Between two hits, I brace myself and headbutt her strait in the nose. She stumbles back and reaches for her nose where blood is now trickling, wiping it off on her white clothes. She rushes to me again and pins me down on the mattress, her knees sharply jabbing my thighs and both of her hands bolting my arms down above my head. My face is nothing but pain. I've endured a lot worse on many occasions, but I could usually retaliate. Right now, I'm entirely at her mercy and she knows it. I squirm and struggle under her weight but I can barely move. The meager strength of my amputated limbs offers me no way out of this deadlock.
I know I shouldn't care. This doesn't even compare to what I once felt during torture simulations. She's nothing. A nobody, a girl rich enough to purchase anything she wants. And what am I? How can I ever forget. She'll never be as powerful and cunning as I once was. She'll never know what it's like to be the most respected and feared outlaw on the surface of the planet, to build an empire from the ground up and rule it for almost a century. But right now, she doesn't need to. Because being trapped in this body terrifies me. In this situation, the horrors of reality can never compare even to what the simulation allowed. This is all of me. Defenseless, reduced to being the toy of a neverending teenager. I got arrested, shelved, and now I'm here. She looks me dead in the eyes while licking her lips. I would dig my nails deep into her flesh until I could grab her bones but I can't. I would kick her groin so hard it ends up in her throat but I can't. I.. I...
"Command."
She articulates clearly and loudly. At the back of my neck, a shiver comes to life and travels along my entire body, down my stumps, defining their exact shapes and sizes.
"What are you doing?" My voice trembles a lot more than I would like it to.
"Reduce." She articulates this single word as a command.
"What is that?! Tell me what you're doing!!"
She doesn't move yet I can feel the pain in my thighs lessen until it vanishes completely. Still struggling under her weight, I can feel her hands gradually slip off of my stumps. I finally free myself of her grasp, fighting and wheezing, only to notice that she didn't let go of my arms; they have begun to shrink even more than they were before. My stumps vanish before my eyes along with any sensations I had in them, their round ends coming closer and closer to my torso. I start to panic and swing them around hoping to stop the process but it doesn't. It progresses ever still, cruelly slowly, as their length first prevents me from reaching her face, then my own, or even if I arch my back. As they draw closer from my shoulders, a scream fills my ears. My own. I am screaming. I push down with my legs but realise they've also been vaporised. My pelvis twitches weakly as my arms merge into my shoulders and get lost into oblivion. My mind works at a million miles a second trying to move this piece of shit body around. It's like I'm paralysed, my limbs have gone numb, nothing works. I jerk my shoulders a few centimetres towards her but she laughs. Searching for a useful muscle in my body, I wiggle on the sheets like a larvae. She sits on my chest to bolt me down again and stares me down while warm tears start running down my eyes. From a corner of the room, I can hear the other girl. I'm not sure if she's laughing or crying.