Chapter 3
It was unusually quiet on the train that morning. A storm front had materialized during the night and smashed through the city with wet fury all night long, and it raged too hard to let the sun have its turn in the heavens. The noise of bloated raindrops rattled against the train’s exterior in thousands of incessant thunks that overpowered the drone of the mag-lev systems. I stretched my legs across an empty row of seats and relaxed to the serenade. The damp and cold day had restrained many would-be workers to their homes by creating all manner of imagined illnesses.
The rain’s insistent throbbing on the roof had awakened from bed. It worked as well as any regular alarm. Better even, since it energized me. Mother Nature and I were on good terms as it so happened. Rain, no matter how soggy, cold, or inconvenient, never gave me any discomfort. Not aching joints, or sore colds, or pneumonia, or whatever else people like to pretend they have when foul weather comes. Rain is a beautiful thing; the glum and darkened clouds were a source of wonder and content.
Of course, it’s no coincidence that rain also makes people scarce. You traded in the hustle and bustle of the populace for a few hours of wetness. In effect, the heavy sound and force of a good storm tranquilizes things. I cherished that ironic tradeoff. Spring downpours are good omen.
I loved the rain.
North Station’s glass overhead sheltered the exiting passengers from the shower but kept the thick, fragrant air. Delicate swirls of warm breaths danced through the atmosphere before melting into the cold. The Spire itself was a faint outline in the haze—its man-made presence no contest to nature. Most made used the tunneled walkways to make their way to their destinations, but I chose to cut directly into the courtyard. Rain had enough trouble biting through the urban sprawl, so I wanted to experience it as much as I could. Massive puddles had formed in the aged depressions of the concrete, just waiting for a child to splash into it. I might have let myself go a couple times. I couldn’t help it. I would certainly regret the heavy and soggy clothes when I got to work, but screw it.
The temperature shock when I came inside instantly fogged up my glasses. I shook the water off of my coat as I walked, begetting annoyed stares from people when they had to move to avoid splashes on the floor. I made a point to get as close as I could to them when I shook. They were too dry, and those who couldn’t enjoy the rain should be pitied.
As always, Aimee was at her desk. She was organizing some documents. I leaned against the desk and waited for her to acknowledge me.
“Hello there, Mr. Ivano,” she said with a nod and a smile.
I spread my hands on her desk, leaned in a bit, and said, “Well, have you considered my offer yet? I really need to know before the end of the day.”
“I am afraid I do not recall your proposal.”
“A yes or a no, sweetie. Don’t play games.”
“No, I really do not recall,” she said, her voice tuning down to match the confusion program running on her face. “I am sorry. Perhaps you could remind me?”
“Of course you remember! You can’t do this to a man. He can only take so much teasing.” I leaned in closer until I was next to her head. “I promised you dinner. So, yes or no?”
She terminated the confusion and smirked. “Oh Mr. Ivano! That is an inappropriate proposition, and you know it.”
“I can’t help it, Aimee! Just every part of you drives me nuts! Your sleek body, your soft metal hands, your lovely and expensive face, your cute little plastic butt. I’m not even going to talk about your new memory upgrades. Oh baby, you know it makes me hot.”
I had to keep myself from giggling to death saying that bullshit. Aimee, to her credit, played along and cooed as best as a robot could.
“Oh, it will never work out between us, Mr. Ivano. I am a high-end piece of technology, while you are just a simple organic creature.”
“Hey now, that’s not fair.”
“And besides, could you ever be able to support me? I require at least two maintenance trips per week, and this face of mine certainly does not take care of itself. Let us be realistic,” she said as her face twisted with haughtiness, “I am just simply too expensive for you.”
“But…”
She used a finger to silence my lips. “No more words. It is over between us. Now get to work before I report you late again.”
Aimee beamed with her hands on her hips. Oh well. One of these days, I’ll finally defeat her mechanical logic. But I didn’t want to leave without a parting shot.
“All right, all right, Aimee. You win for now. I’ll leave you be, but in the meantime, wear some clothes would you?” I took off my coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. “You look like a tramp going without clothes all the time.”
Before she could say anything, I scrammed for the labs. When I took a look back at the checkpoint, she shook her head at me, hung my drenched coat on the corner of the desk, and began wiping rainwater off her silver body. I waved her goodbye, and she shook her head again, but then smiled.
The usual group of engineers loitered around in the engineering hall, obviously still paid too much to do any real work. I expected at least a few of them to harass me about Secondary’s low output, which yesterday’s shutdown only exacerbated. It’s the standard inter-department rivalry: Primary bitches at Secondary for being slackers and holding up their work, Secondary bitches at Primary for being unreasonable, overpaid assholes, and I just trudge along thankful that a robot hadn’t stolen my job yet. I tucked to the walls and tried to avoid them, but one of them recognized me. He blocked my path with an arm.
“Hey, aren’t you the guy that got clobbered a couple nights ago?” he asked.
“I think you might have the wrong guy,” I replied.
“Nah, nah, I don’t think so.” He waved near my forehead. “It’s definitely you. Oh shit, I knew it! Hey guys, come look at this!”
As soon as he called out for them, the scattered groups suddenly began clustering around me. Apparently, the way to impress your co-workers was to suffer a head injury, because they started pointing and gaping at me. Had I known, I would have gotten concussions more often.
“Wait, you were the guy that got decked?” someone said.
“Probably,” I said.
“On the head, right?” another asked.
“Yeah.”
“In SE?”
“I guess so.”
Incredulity groaned through the hall. The wide hall began to feel packed as the crowd gawked at me as if I was some fantastic oddity. Like, if Tutankhamen’s tomb itself was opened for the world to see, and I was the mummified corpse. I stood in self-conscious confusion and couldn’t think of anything to do but listen to the crowd’s huddled whispers.
“No, it can’t be.”
“Yes it is! I saw it.”
“Damn, there’s the man, right there.”
“Oh shit. Oh shit.”
“Doesn’t it hurt at all?”
“Jesus Christ. How could he still be standing?”
Before long, a stark yell broke through the air. “You maggots, get the hell back to work. Get off of my boy, there.” An excited Mark pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed my arm. “Clear out, all of you, before I send Lyle here to smash the lot of ya.”
The crowd dispersed, but not without stares and incredulous murmurs lingering. I was still standing dumbfounded when Mark shook me back to reality.
“What the hell just happened?” I said.
“Pay no attention to those fools. They’ve just never seen a real man before.”
“What the hell are you talking about? The hell is anyone talking about?”
“They’re just surprised to see you alive, that’s all.”
With that, all he gave was a grin before he escorted me to SE-2.
Okay, so let’s get some things straight. I could handle bodily injuries. Sure, I was a fucking stick, and that shit hurts like hell, but they were a natural part of life. When I was a kid, I broke my arm when I tried to ride a sled down a hill—in the summer. That incident taught me life lessons that changed my life. Here I was now, a proud and respected entry-level engineer seven years strong, charged with doing important work. In contrast, the rest of my childhood friends, who had not broken their arms, went on to such menial professions as doctors, screenwriters, war heroes, and state governors. I pitied them and their intact arms. No, broken bones and head injuries built life-long character.
I could handle unwanted attention from complete strangers. This is coming from someone that once, for Halloween, dressed as a gigantic earthworm. It would have been fine had people not mistaken it for a phallus. And of course, had I not mistaken November 1st as Halloween. But damn it, I paid good money for that costume, and I sure as hell wore the goddamned thing, one day late or not.
I could even handle corporate suits harassing me and threatening my job and my freedom. Because, hey, that’s just how you do business.
I could honestly tolerate many things. Life is too short and unusual to sulk over inconsequential bullshit. But one thing I cannot absolutely, positively handle was the surprise that I was still somehow fucking alive. There I was, being led back to the place where I almost fucking died by my goofy-grinning boss, and no one bothered to tell me this before. Sure, why the fuck not? It’s okay, Lyle really doesn’t mind cheating death to continue making this place its money. Honest. God, I love this company!
It not was until I got into the lab when everything became frighteningly clear.
It seemed normal enough at first glance, but something immediately felt amiss. Everything was far too quiet. I could sense a certain tenseness clouding over the room, that unease that you could feel chewing at your gut but you haven’t the foggiest clue why. Away from the normal grind of their work, everyone wore a distracted nervousness that gave me the chills.
“Everyone thought you died,” Mark said as he brought me to my station and sat me down. “’Cept me, of course. I knew my man here is a goddamn son of a bitch, and he wasn’t taking shit from nothing, no sir.”
“Dammit, Mark!” I nearly yelled. No one bothered to make inconsiderate glances.
“What’s with you?”
“What’s with me? You tell me! I stay up late to work on some fucking bullshit this company shoves down my throat, wake up in a fucking hospital, and now everything’s surprised I’m still fucking alive? Goddammit, what the hell is going on here?”
“Shhh! Quiet down. You don’t want to wake up those bastards, do ya?” He chuckled. “That is, ’less you wanna go to round two.”
The hell is he talking about?
He understood my confusion and waved to the arena. I didn’t see anything and asked what the hell he was trying to show me. He pointed more insistently down, so I took deeper look. I panned from the stairs down, to the winding paths built from piles of cabling, to the mainframe, and then to the holographic platform. Suddenly, something snapped in the recesses of my mind, and my eyes glued themselves to the platform as if they saw a ghost. Camouflaged against the white surface, some things lay in wait. My mind couldn’t wrap around what they were, but my instinct knew exactly. I stared at them, and I might have forgotten to breathe if Mark hadn’t grabbed my shoulders.
“So, gonna go for it?” he said. “I’ll put down a hundred bucks if you do. That’ll get me a hot date and everything.”
I didn’t speak. I just stared at the pair of white reptilian-like beasts deep in cold slumber on the platform. Those were it. Them! These fucking things almost killed me!
“Eh?” Mark said after prolonged silence.
“What… what the hell is this?” I sputtered.
He chortled. “Son of a bitch! How long are you going to play that stupid ‘I-don’t-know-nothing’ bullshit? Ah, fuck it. You remember two nights ago, right?”
I nodded in a way that didn’t cause my gaze to wander away from the platform. I didn’t dare to look away from the creatures for a second.
He pointed to the creatures. “Well, those bastards right there? They busted into the lab that night and started making wrecking shit in the lab. Fucking horrible situation. They even had to call in security. Those fuckers were so insane, even the sec guys didn’t want to touch them. But not you, Mr.-Fucking-Universe here.” He slapped my back and almost knocked me off my chair. “From what I heard, you just fucking stormed into this goddamn room and a fucking wailed on them. I would’ve loved to see that.”
I stared.
“Well,” he said, “one of those things finally took you down. Knocked you straight in the head, but you already know that. By then, they got too tired to fight back and security finally took ’em away. Still, you’re a fucking hero, Lyle. Lotsa dipshits here would have probably got hurt if it weren’t for you. I’m proud of you, you brave and stupid motherfucker.”
I continued to stare.
Mark was a boisterous, embellishing, and rather crude man, but he wasn’t particularly prone to lying. If anything, his willingness to praise someone other than himself spoke of his sincerity.
Oh, what the fucking hell have I gotten myself into now? Fuck my life.
I gawked at the creatures lying on the platform with their jaws slacked and exposing pernicious rows of teeth in awful candor. The maws looked like they could swallow a human head. Those terrible things birthed those hounding sounds that night. I didn’t want to see them anymore than I had to, but I couldn’t help but stare.
These were the creatures that nearly sent me to my grave.
I stood up and grabbed Mark’s hand. “These things… these things almost killed me. These damned things almost killed me!”
“Ah calm down, you dumbass. You ain’t dead now.”
“Why are they here, Mark? Why?”
“Jesus Christ, I don’t know.” He shook off my grip. “Sit the hell down, you idiot. You’re making a damned scene.”
He roughly took my arm and pushed me back onto the chair. He then sat on the edge of my desk and blocked my view.
“Look, it’s Tetra, okay?” he explained. “Remember those suits from yesterday? Yeah well, this was why they were here. Company’s got an interest in these things, for whatever goddamn reason, and they told me to keep them here, all right? Hell, they even got a chaperone.”
He pointed to the far end of the arena, off the side, where a woman sat. I hadn’t noticed her before. She sat still, observing the creatures in their sleep, and was apparently undeterred by their close presence.
“Chick’s been here all day,” said Mark. “Supposed to be looking after these things or something. Has a nice ass.”
I shook in my chair. Mark stood back up and allowed me stare at the creatures again. This was madness. These were the things that caused havoc in the labs and nearly crushed my skull in… and Tetra was letting them reign free, right here. Fucking here! I was nearly as angry as I was afraid. Mark must have seen my exasperation.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t like this shit any as much as you do, right? But if Tetra says I gotta do something, I gotta do it. I’ll try to take care of this later, but right now, we have to get some work done. They ain’t payin’ us to sit pretty.”
I heard the words but I couldn’t register them. My hands tapped on the keyboard and typed random gibberish on the pad. For a while, I didn’t even notice the terminal was still off. All I could concentrate on was the holographic platform. Images from that night, which I thought I had forgotten, flooded back. Those screams.
Two of them, side-by-side. I couldn’t exactly place what disturbed me so. Maybe it was their cruel, primitive white forms that intruded so arrogantly in our own lab. Nearly killing a man wasn’t enough for these things. No, they had to show themselves off the world like the pompous fuckers they were. Pompous and dangerous.
Mark left me to my job, but I don’t remember what I work I accomplished that day.
Everyone evacuated the lab awfully quick come break time. I couldn’t really blame them. I would have readily joined in the exodus. How I would have loved to. But I really couldn’t. Of course, I was alarmed. With the safety of numbers gone, I was the only lone and utterly defenseless target in a room full of chairs and uneaten donuts. But in a way that words could not express, I felt compelled to stay.
I’m sure it was because I wasn’t actually alone in the lab.
Too distracted from the creatures, I hadn’t paid attention to the woman that took residence in the arena. While the rest of the lab staff had filtered out, she remained in the same spot with her attention on tablet that rested on her folded legs. We were the only two humans left in the room, and the vacancy of the crowd allowed me to notice her.
Mark wasn’t totally wrong. She was pretty cute, wearing an ensemble consisting of a pinkish blouse, dark knee-length skirt, and short-heeled pumps. She wore her black hair in terse, curled bobs that framed around a thin face where a pair designer glasses balanced on. A fine blemish marred the bony cheek of her right side, but it was fine enough for 87% of the male population to ignore. Especially fine enough since the only woman that I regularly saw in Summit was Aimee (who, being a robot, didn’t really count). I didn’t know about her ass.
I ended up lingering on her for a bit, not because she was a pretty woman trapped in a horndog hellhole (though you couldn’t blame me if I did leer a little), but because she hovered no more than two meters away from those fucking animals on the platform. And she looked like she couldn’t be any more mundane. This woman had a secret, and I balanced my thoughts away from the beasts just long enough to become intrigued.
More than anything, though, I hoped she could finally shed some light to this madness.
Mustering up what little manly courage I possessed, I made my way down and teetered on the last step to the arena. My right foot hovered in mid-air in preparation for the final step down, but I thought about it and pulled it back. I loudly cleared my throat to catch the woman’s attention, but she didn’t respond, so I forced it even louder and strained my vocal cords in the process. She finally glanced up from her tablet.
“Hello there. What are you doing?” I said. Damn, I’m smooth.
She stood up and straightened her skirt. “Oh, just passing through,” she replied.
I offered my hand out for a handshake across the arena from her. Decidedly un-slick, but I didn’t want to get any closer to the creatures than I had to. The woman stared at me blankly—looking at me as if I was an idiot—and walked over to take my hand.
“Lyle Ivano,” I said as we shook.
“Arlene Neuman. Pleasure to meet you.”
I remained on the first step of the stairs, which caused me to peer uneasily down to face her. In my effort to think of something to say, I must have inadvertently gaped at her too long.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Never seen a girl before?”
I felt my cheeks burn a few degrees higher. “Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Girls are sort of endangered around here.” I managed a bogus chuckle.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m just here on a short visit. I’ll be out of here before long, and you boys can do whatever it is boys do.”
She smirked and turned back to the creatures on the platform. I stuttered over her shoulder.
“I’m… I’m assuming you’re from Tetra HQ?”
She pulled up her tablet. “No, I’m from the I.C. Wyvern Institute.”
“Wyvern? You’re some sort of researcher?”
“Yep. I’m a biologist. At least that’s what they hired me as, anyway.” She waved at the platform. “It seems I’ve been doing everything but biology work these days.”
I glanced at the creatures. They were still in oblivious slumber. I gasped out a sigh and tested a foot down to the arena, but ended up reeling it back. “So, you’re in charge of these… creatures?”
“Well, yes and no. I’m their official caretaker, but they mostly take care of themselves.” She shook her head. “Whether I like it or not.”
“What exactly are they doing here, anyway? An engineering lab is no place of these… things.”
The glare she gave when she faced me again almost made me stumble off the steps. She frowned and clasped a hand to her hip.
“And where do you think these things belong?” she asked.
“Well… I don’t know. In a zoo? In a cage? Just anywhere else but here.”
“Really? In a cage?”
“Yeah, locked up and away from people. I don’t know why these animals are here and what this whole business is.”
“Maybe you should ask your company.” She turned her back to me and waved a hand over her shoulder. “Tetra brokered a deal for these animals, as you say, and like it or not, a cage is the last thing they’re going into.”
“Tetra made a deal for these things? I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe whatever you want. But I assure you it’s all very legal.”
Arlene pulled a chair closer to the platform and sat with her body leaned forward, using her right forearm to prop her chin over her leg. “Look, I’m not exactly thrilled about the whole thing either,” she said. “God knows I’ve fought against it tooth and nail. But my superiors figured it’d be a good idea to expose them to more humans. Everything went too fast. They weren’t even supposed to be even around Summit’s people yet.”
Of course not, because they’re prone to chewing people’s faces off.
“I bet,” I said.
“Something went wrong two nights ago, have you heard?”
“Yeah. I was here.”
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. Horrible, wasn’t it? The one day I’m not here to look after them and something like that happens. I should have never left them alone their first night here.”
It hit me. That’s what she was, damage control! These creatures almost maimed and killed a bunch of people because of Tetra’s dumbshittery, and now she had to take the fall. I gazed at her as she stared at the creatures. It was the look of frustration—frustration of having her warnings continually ignored. I knew that look very well.
“That’s too bad,” I said. I teased my foot down the last step. “But it’s not your fault. Really, I know. It’s the goddamned bureaucracy. They just don’t listen or understand the peons like you and me.”
She sighed and smiled at me. It was wonderful seeing a female smile that wasn’t programmed by a dozen men in a robotics lab. It convinced me to take the final step down.
“I’m glad someone here understands the truth,” she said. “Everyone else here thinks the lizards are stark raving savages.”
Yes, fuck everyone else who thinks the lizards are… what?
She straightened up and singed her voice with resentment “Can you believe it? Some lunatic tried to attack them that night. They were here, minding their own way, and some idiot attacked them. And the incompetent guards did nothing to stop it. I feel sorry that the lizards had to go through that mess.”
What? What? What the hell?
“Are you… are you mental?” I said. She took offense with a sharp look, but I couldn’t think of anything other way to put it. “They’re the ones that attacked us. You should feel sorry for us.”
Arlene was silent for a moment, just staring at me, and then laughed. And laughed. She laughed as if it was about to become extinct. I wound back up the steps. Lord Almighty. This woman’s a loon.
She finally slapped her thighs, calmed herself, and turned body around to face me. She leaned forward and pointed to me with her elbow anchored on her knee.
“You actually believe that nonsense? Really now? And here I thought that you actually seemed intelligent. Shame on me for assuming.” Another laugh.
“How would you know?” I snapped. “You weren’t there. I was. I believe my own eyes more than the words of some stranger I just met.”
“And I believe the security cameras more than your eyes.”
She took her tablet and, after placing some taps, lifted it up for me to see. And sure enough, there it was: the security feed for SE-2, split across multiple sections of the tablet for each camera. A visualization of the wide-space sensor occupied the center, backing the feeds with a three-dimensional overview of the entire lab and adjoining hallway. Everything was present and accounted for, from the employees, to the security guards, to the creatures, and to me.
It wasn’t a pleasant image. Unpleasant for my ego. Each new scene from the feeds whittled down my self-esteem in sized chunks. Chunk 1: watching myself bumbling down the hallway like a psychopathic lab rat on heroin. Chunk 2: the image of me entering the lab and nearly bowling over a security guard standing at the ready. Chunks 3 through 43: each step I stumbled down toward the arena.
Then creatures came into view, and I finally what kind of beasts they truly were: the kind that enjoyed licking themselves on the floor. I thought I was hallucinating. But no, that was it. The truth. They were grooming themselves on the floor of the arena while the rest of the sensible and sane stayed clear.
“Oh, such horrible beasts,” Arlene said.
And then I saw myself trip into the arena. And I wanted to cry.
I knew the outcome of the video. I didn’t need reminding. But that was a small worry since it was all over in a couple of frames. Before I could blink or look away, I witnessed myself crumpling like a wet rag on the floor, and the creatures backed up against a table and hissed furiously at my body. The feed then went black.
Arlene dropped the tablet when it was over, and the floor punted it a few times until the poor device finally settled between some data lines. She brushed her skirt and folded her hands on her lap. Her lips held a crinkled, nascent scowl.
“Some hero, eh?”
I sputtered, but I couldn’t form words.
“You know, I knew something looked familiar about you. But I couldn’t place it until just a few moments ago. You sure didn’t look like a psychopath at first glance. My fault for judging a book by its cover.”
“I’m not… I’m not like that!”
“Could’ve fooled me, psychopath. You’re lucky that gash on your head was all you got. You could’ve easily gotten worse.”
“Dammit, would you just listen to me?”
She crossed her arms waited.
I stroked my forehead, perhaps thinking I could massage out a coherent explanation, but all I got was a familiar throbbing. “Well, you see, that wasn’t me there. I mean, it was me, but not really me, you get it? Sometimes it happens, but it doesn’t happen a lot, in fact very rarely, but it sometimes happens. Sometimes I… well… I panic.”
“So now you’re telling me you just had a panic attack, is that it?”
“Kinda. Sorta. Something like that. I don’t know, okay? It just happened. Maybe it was the stress from the long workday, maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe my mind just got stupid for a day. All I know is that I was in the lobby trying to take a rest, and then I heard some horrific screeching and screaming from those… things.” I pointed to the platform, but I didn’t dare look at it. “Shit just happened after that, okay? Call me a wuss, call me an asshole, call me a freak, whatever. I probably deserve it. But dammit, I don’t deserve to almost die!”
Who could look at someone else in the face after that sort of admission? I sure as hell couldn’t. My spine, tired of trying to holding my useless body up, withered and gave up, and I found myself drooped and staring at my feet with my hands in my pockets. Too ashamed to look her in the eye, yet too weak to walk out.
A soft, feminine hand pulled my head back up. A mellower, more caring woman’s face looked back.
“I didn’t say that you deserved to be hurt,” she said. She smiled and then shook her head. “But it’s not fair to label them as vicious unthinking animals, either. Look, I think we’ll just got off on the wrong foot. You weren’t seriously hurt and neither were the lizards, and that’s good enough. We can put all this behind us, all right?”
Put it behind us, she says. I didn’t know about that. I didn’t have a desire to make peace with dangerous animals, but neither did I like head injuries. It was a wash.
Arlene rocked shoulders when I didn’t respond. “Hey, you okay?”
“Oh, ah.” I snapped out it. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around these… whatever these things are.”
“Isian lizards.”
I thought I might have misheard her, at first. Then, incredulity came. I expected her to holler an “April Fools!” or something. Surely, this woman was taking me for some sort of gullible fool. But it was February and she was serious.
“Isian lizards?” I said. “You mean the Isian lizard?”
“Yep,” she said with a nod. “Exactly those.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. You just have to believe your eyes.”
I was still expecting a “February Fools.” Instead, with her hand still on my shoulder, she coaxed me down from the steps and started moving me closer to the platform.
I was a kid when the tabloids started running pieces on the great Isian beasts about two decades ago. A bunch of hicks (alien menaces seemed to target only hillbillies) first spotted them in the wild in some bummy wilderness. You know how it goes: some redneck saw a deer or something out in the woods, tried to shoot it, and then wrote a manifesto on how the government had a hidden mutant laboratory buried in some extinct volcano in the forest. The usual conspiracy stuff, and it wasn’t even that original. Normally, people would nod in polite understanding, give the hick a warm glass of milk, and let him go back to his room and go to sleep with his shotgun.
The media moguls, apparently starved for viewership, played the goddamned thing for all it was worth. “MYSTERIOUS ISIAN LIZARDS: EXTRATERRESTRIALS OR GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY?” the headlines would say. The answer, of course, was “both.” The embellishments got pretty wild, where the government supposedly had a top-secret scheme involving E.T.s, genetic engineering black projects, and a plot to create a one-world government using an army of mutated lizard creatures. At the peak, the story of the Isian lizard rivaled the extra-normal traditions of Bigfoot, Roswell, and Bob Dole, except without the staying power. In a couple months, the tabloids readily forgot them in lieu of the latest celebrity divorce. And thus, the Isians were doomed to be no more than a paranormal fad destined for obscurity underneath the Loch.
I was about six or seven at the time though, so I didn’t care. They published some blurry, obviously doctored pictures and videos of dinosaur-looking creatures though, and I thought they looked pretty cool. I fucking loved dinosaurs.
Don’t get me wrong, cryptozoology and conspiracies are all fine and good. They keep the simple-minded and intellectually lazy occupied with a purpose. Had the Isians stayed as fiction, then I could’ve spared my intelligence. Yet here they were, Arlene’s so-called “Isian lizards!” She wanted me to believe this? Was I supposed to nod my head and accept this? Fuck me, I wasn’t ready to live in a world where the tabloids were credible.
Under the circumstances, my engineer-trained logic begged me to keep skeptical and restrain myself for the sake of rationality. My eyes, however, told me to look at the goddamn platform where gigantic white lizards were sleeping on.
The two creatures, identical in size, shape, and appearance, were slightly smaller than a man. Surprisingly sinewy limbs supported their slender bodies, but they were taut like a marathon runner’s legs. The webbed feet of the hind limbs had three toes, each ending in curved talons that I could imagine would be ideal for slicing through flesh. But not more ideal than those jagged, but well ordered, rows of teeth they bared from their open mouths.
A frill decorated around their tapered heads with lengths of spines supporting an opaque membrane between them. Pointed ears stood alert on the sides of their heads, and they seemed to flicker about their senses despite being asleep. On the opposite end, a long tail attached at their rumps and coiled around their bodies a couple times before ending in a narrow flare. Each tail was easily twice as long as their actual bodies.
Very fine, white scales coated their bodies and produced a hazy shimmer from the light. They would have remained invisible had I not specifically sought to discover them; from a distance, the scales seemed to form a single skin that bound their hides. The strangest decoration, though, were the blue markings on their skin. The azure lined parts of their throat, the back of the calves of their hind legs, across the torso and sides, and along their tails in a thin line. Not exactly effective predatory camouflage, I could imagine.
Arlene continued to guide my closer to them. I hesitated and tried to dig my feet in. But at the same time, I was curious. The curiosity only grew the longer I observed them. We finally stopped just a meter away from the creatures.
“Isians,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”
“Then maybe you should try reevaluating your beliefs,” said Arlene.
“But they’re lizards. Isian-goddamned-lizards.”
“If it makes it easier for you to swallow, then maybe you’d like to know that they’re not actually lizards.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a misnomer, really. They look like lizards, but they’re not reptiles at all.”
“I a tale, a snout, and scales. Sure looks like a reptile to me.”
“It’s all superficial. From what we’ve gathered, they’re not related to reptiles in any evolutionary sense. What you’re seeing here is likely a product of convergent evolution.”
“Okay… so what are they, then?”
She shrugged. “We’re not exactly sure, really. That’s one of the many things we’re trying to discover.”
These revelations got more bizarre the more I received them. First, I find strange creatures in the lab with no explanation as to how or why. Then, I discover that these were the mythical Isians of conspiracy lore. Now, a freaking biologist tells me she has no idea what they actually were. Perhaps those hicks were onto something all along.
I didn’t try to pry any more details from Arlene. As it always seemed to be, I served myself better by being ignorant. At least I could imagine the answers myself. However dishonest self-delusions may be, it was at least comforting.
One of the creatures made a noise and startled me backwards. I bumped into Arlene, who then clasped her hands on my shoulders and steadied me. The creature, eyes still closed, stretched, adjusted itself, and yawned. It then curled back up on its side and went back to sleep.
Arlene rocked my shoulders a bit and said, “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
“A couple of bloodthirsty beasts. Yes, very beautiful.” My forehead began to throb again.
“Don’t tell me you’re still sore over that.”
“Oh no, not at all. Because I really do hate my life and wished something would just end it all by cracking open my skull.”
Suddenly, she gripped me and moved me even closer to the platform, and then shoved me down until I was eye level with the Isians. “Look at the tail, near the end,” she said, pointing. “See that?”
Confused over her intentions, I obeyed, but I couldn’t find whatever it was she wanted me to discover. Her pointing became more insistent as did her grip on my shoulder. Eventually, I found it: a sort of spike that extended a few centimeters out near the end of an Isian’s tail.
“That pointed thing?” I said. “What about it?”
“That ‘thing’ is the Jacobs stub. It’s a defensive mechanism made from tissue that’s far stronger than bone. You were hit by that. I’ve seen them dent sheet metal with their tails. Steel. Your skull is nothing to it.”
She then grabbed my cheeks and pointed my head to one of their slacked jaws, and said, “And see in there? Those are venomous fangs on the top of their mouths. One bite delivers enough neurotoxin to kill a human more than a hundred times over. And they can bite many times.”
Finally, she pulled me back up, turned me around to face her, and jabbed a finger onto my chest.
“So Lyle, if they really, really, wanted to kill, do you think that you’d still be alive right now?”
I looked at the Isians again. One of them began yawning, revealing its numerous, razor-sharp teeth that didn’t inspire comfort. “No, I guess not.”
“That’s right.” She pointed at my forehead, made a whipping motion, and slapped her hands together near my eyes. “Because, if they wanted to really hurt you, your head would be in a hundred bloody pulps right now.” She clasped her hand into a ball in front of my face and then popped it open to mimic an explosion. “Boom.”
“I…”
“But your skull is still holding that useless brain of yours, isn’t it? That’s because they attacked with just enough force to incapacitate you. Knock you down, stop you. But not kill.”
Arlene’s voice had become loud and breathless. I thought it best to say nothing.
“And furthermore, if the situations were reversed, would you have shown the same restraint? I don’t think so! You would have probably killed them without any hesitation. You, your friends, everyone. All of them!” She pointed around the room at imaginary defendants. “So who’s the ‘bloodthirsty beasts’ now, Lyle? If you really want to hunt down the dangerous predators of the while, you should look at your own mangy human colleagues!”
We stood watching each other in silence. I didn’t want to move until I was sure she was calm. The Isians had remained asleep for the entire time.
“Well, I should take my lunch now,” I finally said. Lunch was almost over.
Now it was her turn to remain silent.
“Could I get you anything? Some water or coffee? Maybe you should get something to eat too.”
She turned away and pulled back her chair so she could sit. “No, I’m fine, thank you. I have to make sure these guys are okay.” Her voice was plain and even.
I nodded and started up the stairs as Arlene continued her observation of the creatures. When I came back, they were all gone.