Chapter 4
There are some things in life that you simply take as it is. These are the inarguable, the universal, and the eternal truths that you must accept as part of the greater human experience. Ben Franklin once wrote, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Old Ben had those two right, of course. But even his timeless wisdom didn’t prevent him from missing one: the complete idiocy of your bosses.
I worked for Tetra proper for over seven years. And before, I was an intern while I was a young college kid. Over those years, my relationship with the company had run through the mountains, the valleys, the plateaus, the mesas, the hills, and all other sort of bullshit topography. I’ve had disagreements with the company and my managers, yes. Friction between bosses and the workforce just happen in our business—in any business. Even God himself couldn’t keep some of his employees up in Heaven Incorporated completely happy, and they eventually left to form a rival company. It was the natural order of the universe.
Like any relationship, these spats were fairly harmless, even perhaps beneficial. It kept people honest with one another. So long as our bosses remained rational, we could forgive their occasional executive gaffes. I’d fume at an insult some manager inflicted upon me, brood in angst for a day or two, perhaps call upon some dark and ancient voodoo curse if the case was particularly serious, and then forget it ever happened. For what it’s worth, Tetra never gave me any evidence to completely doubt its competency.
That was, until now.
Bringing in uncultured animals was one thing, and I would have not taken an issue with that. After all, the company hired Mark Ellis. However, bringing in uncultured and dangerous animals was something else completely. I take exception when, not one, but two highly vicious beasts are paraded around like pets in my workplace. These weren’t Grandma’s sweet little predators, either—the kind that preferred Kitty Chow to human flesh. No, they already proved they would hurt people I care about. And also me.
I honestly didn’t appreciate being an audience volunteer in a cage with Tetra’s pet lions. In the circus, at least, you had popcorn and coke, which are generally delicious.
Imagine how I felt when I learned that these savage beasts were some sort of honored guests courtesy of our Tetran overlords.
I wasn’t the only one sharing those sentiments. My fellow colleagues all had similar reactions. Being the boss of the labs where the creatures had holed in, Mark had the most to say.
“You know Lyle,” he said to me while I was settling into my station the following day, “if they told me we were gonna get a bunch of fucking animals in the lab, I would’ve brought a gun. I’m serious, I would have brought it. If I’d known, I would’ve gotten your back that night. Boom! Things would’ve been different. You wouldn’t have got knocked around, there would be no goddamned animals in my lab, and we wouldn’t have this problem right now. Right in their heads. Defense of my people, company wouldn’t be able to do shit about it. I used to go hunting all the time with my dad. Bullet never misses.”
I huddled inside my station and tried to bootstrap my terminal into the Alie. I didn’t care to remind him that, by his own admission, he hadn’t gone hunting since he discovered masturbation. It was the start of a new day, and I didn’t care for any more drama from anyone or anything else. I couldn’t be bothered to worry about it because, frankly, Tetra didn’t pay me enough to. I was already behind in my workload, especially since I didn’t accomplish anything worth a damn yesterday due to preoccupation with those lizards.
Small comfort, then, of having a lizard-free lab that morning. We came in and found it empty, and I couldn’t be happier.
Tap, tap, tap. That’s all I wanted to hear. I wanted the keyboards to fill the room with that incessant droning until it clogged my head as white noise. It numbs the senses into complacency, as empty as a corporate drone should be. Tap, tap, tap.
It was maybe three hours and change before I took a breather. I stretched on my seat and took my eyes off the screen just enough to glance at the arena. Still empty as I cared it to be. If fate would be kind for once, it would stay that way until I could get home and refresh my resume.
And then fate answered with an inhuman shriek echoing from beyond the doors.
The distant echoes drafted through the room and froze everyone still, and it left in its wake a chilled silence. The stillness only attenuated the rapid claps that ran through hall beyond the lab doors. Everyone looked to the doors as claps became louder and clearer. Then, it stopped. Those next few minutes stretched into a proverbial eternity.
There wasn’t a question to what it was, but no one dared say anything. Mark finally slapped his desk and stormed up the steps.
“Fucking beasts,” he muttered. He nearly reached the doors when another cry froze him in his steps.
Before anyone could pray for him, the door burst open and a white flurry devoured the foreman.
Mark was a very large man. A very large and a very strong man. He had a successful run in his college football team as a linebacker, steamrolling lesser opponents to the state championship. His old nickname “The Dumpmaster” was apparently well deserved (in more than one way, I suppose). He even did some amateur weightlifting back in his younger days. Point is, it took a lot to knock over Mark Ellis, some massive quantity that defied conventional mathematical notation.
Imagine how stunned I was to see his body crumpled on the floor after something bowled him over that could have not been more than half his weight.
With his back planted firmly to the floor, Mark wore a look that seemed astonished at his own incapacitation. Everyone stood for a better look at the scene, but no one attempted to help. The ones closest actually moved away, and for good reason. The perpetrator was sitting on his stomach.
Atop Mark’s abdomen, the Isian sat with its hind legs folded to its sides and its forelimbs pressed against his chest, a perfect position to stop him from getting back up. Its sinuous tail swished side-to-side and slapped against his legs and feet. It parted its jaws just enough to allow its tongue to make a series of piercing clicks that echoed through the lab like gunshots.
Another other lizard came into the lab, positioned next to them, and watched with its legs spread apart and its tail undulating in the air. It was an unnerving and predatory stance, one that you expect a killer to use on a cornered victim.
Mark finally rolled his eyes back to sense, only to find a reptilian face staring back. He didn’t move as the creature came in close to his neck and took a deep sniff, maybe to inspect the quality of its prey. His scent apparently offended it, and it started making even louder clicks, followed by a trill from its throat. The other creature mimicked it with similar sounds. The clicks and shrieks mixed together into a racket. The creatures bobbed their heads together as they cried out.
The clamor stopped at a peak, and the lizards stared at Mark. His eyes opened wide when they produced a low rumble with their mouths open and teeth exposed. The lizard on Mark’s chest placed its muzzle close to his face and opened its mouth wide, exposing an array of vicious teeth. This was it, the beginning of the end. I wanted to turn away black it out. I knew there was nothing we could do to save him, and my stomach churned at the thought of it. But I continued watching, because at least I’d know when the Isians starting sinking their teeth into him. Hopefully, we could run out and save ourselves while they were busy tearing him apart.
Mark squirmed beneath the creature, but it was too strong for him to overcome. Its fanged muzzle was millimeters away from face. I could hear my own breath lapse in my lungs. And then in a snap, the unthinkable happened.
It licked him.
The lizard on his chest eagerly lapped at his face, all traces of the menacing growls and posturing gone, and the other joined in. I watched, shocked in disbelief. This was the most unbelievable sight I’ve seen yet. Had the creature bit into his throat and tore out his trachea, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Nauseous, sick, and traumatized, but not shocked. But this show of… affection? I couldn’t believe it. My sensibilities refused to believe it.
The sane, if not altruistic, part of my mind hoped they were merely tasting him before the kill.
Eventually, the creatures had enough of Mark’s manly taste, and the Isian on his chest got off and allowed the bewildered foreman to stand. He stood in place for a moment. He looked at the lizards sitting next to him, their tails swishing around, and then at us. A scowl crawled on his face. “What are you guys looking at? Get back to work, all of you!” he yelled.
We quickly went back to our business and the creatures continued theirs. No sooner had Mark gotten up and stumbled down the steps, the Isians went hog-wild in the lab. Like little children or, more appropriately, a pack of wolves, they ran around the room, chased each other, knocked over equipment, and generally made a nuisance. Repeatedly, one would chase the other around the lab a few times and then to a corner, shriek, knock down a piece of equipment, and then continue the chase in reverse. It went on for what seemed like hours. More than once, they scaled the lab walls to bat at the lighting, their sharp claws digging pockmarks onto the panels.
All the while, Mark sat at his desk, visibly fuming at the show. For all his previous bravado, he did nothing to stop it. Whether it because he had an executive order not to or because he was too frightened, I wasn’t sure.
The Isians continued their animalistic parade. Biting, growling, yelping, groping… it was all a display of simple minds. I still couldn’t believe that Tetra had a vested interest in them. At least, I was grateful they didn’t have any bloodlust that day.
Eventually, monotony allowed me to tune out the ruckus and concentrate on my work. Lunch came and rows of engineers streamed out from the lab faster than usual. I decided to stay in to work since I had too much work to afford any more interruptions. The lizards helped by falling asleep on the projector after a morning of killing energy. I figured I wouldn’t have too much a problem them.
Mark stopped by my station before he left.
“Hey, you taking out for lunch or what?”
“No, I got too much work to do,” I said without looking off the screen.
“That’s good. We’ve been behind quite a bit.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
He grumbled. “Look, I’ll be square with you,” he said in a low voice that gave me pause. “I just got word from higher up saying that we have too much people in Secondary. Too much employees and not enough in the department budget or whatever. Point is, I have to fire some people in a few days.”
I stopped my work and turned to him. He stared at me. It was obvious what he meant.
“Look, you know I like you, Lyle. You’re a good worker and a good man. I wouldn’t even think of letting you if I had the choice. But that shit doesn’t matter to my bosses, you know? I can keep you on, sure, but when my performance review comes in next week, all they’re gonna see is that I kept someone on that’s dead last in his work queue. That ain’t gonna look good for me, either.”
“Christ Mark, of course I’m behind. Look at this thing.” I pointed to my battered forehead. “If Tetra’s so concerned with work output, maybe they should rethink their goddamned pets. It’s insane up here.”
He looked at the Isians. “You don’t have to fucking tell me, buddy. Those fucking animals are ruining shit for everyone else too. But I still gotta let some go, and right now you’re on top of the list. You know damned well as I do that management won’t care why.”
I folded my hands over my face. This couldn’t be happening! Over seven years at the company, and now I’m going to get the axe for one bad week while a pair of stupid fucking animals run loose over my lab. I sighed and stared at my hands.
“What could I do, Mark? What could I do to make this work?”
“You’re behind twenty-four units.”
“Jesus Christ. What, you expect me to do all that in one fucking day?”
“Just do what you can. Working hard will still get you points. I’ll try to talk to my bosses and see if I can get some goddamn sense into them. Don’t let these animals wreck your shit. You’re worth way more than them.” He patted my shoulder. “All right, buddy?”
He left me to stare at an empty screen.
Mark’s reassurance was too little and too late. Those animals had already wrecked my shit. The attack that knocked me out, the engineering shutdown… these were all because of them. Everything. And I was going to pay for it with my job.
I wasn’t going to lose my job, goddammit! I’ve worked too long and too hard at this damn place to go out like that, especially not by a bunch of stupid fucking animals. At this point, I didn’t care if they brought in a hundred more of those things. Tetra can do whatever it goddamn wanted with its ludicrous piles of money, and if that meant wasting it away on some barely intelligent life forms, then so be it. That was their problem, not mine. But I will not lose my well-being, not from these creatures, not from Tetra, and not from anything else. With a reawakened determination, I started tearing through the work queue like a rusty hacksaw. Tap, tap, tap!
Hey, you know, I actually believed my own hype for a minute. But that burst of emotional determination couldn’t drag along that left-brained logic engineering school pounded into me, and I quickly realized I was kidding myself. On a very good day, I would be lucky if I finished eleven units with overtime. Twenty-four units? Fuck. Me. My days were numbered. Well at this point, more like hours.
Despite the grim realization, I continued to work like a madman. I still didn’t want to give those Isians the satisfaction of beating me. If I was to go down, I’m going down in a blaze of engineering glory.
Tap, fucking tap.
In trying my damndest to burn myself out, I didn’t notice the hot breath that breathed down my neck. I paused for a moment, enough for the heat to chill my spine. And when I felt the presence of a body lurking behind me, the hairs of neck left bulges as they tried to squirm away from my skin.
Don’t.
My eyes strained in their sockets trying to fish an image from the corners. The chill froze my neck in place.
Don’t turn around.
I caught blurred glimpses of slitted pupils, flaring nostrils, and sharp teeth looking up at me.
Don’t fucking move.
My head and torso got the message, but my stupid legs twitched up off the floor, causing the chair to rotate and take my hapless body along with it. To my chagrin, I began rotating toward a slack-jawed reptilian face that stared with unblinking scrutiny.
Dear God, don’t fucking move!
I tucked my legs in and gripped the seat until my hands pained. The Isian continued to examine me with its unblinking eyes. The slit pupils seemed as if they were sizing me up, to determine what resistance I would offer once the creature decided to hunt me down to satiate its hunger. They stalked atop a head that made only the slightest movement to keep me within sight. A side curiosity discovered that the creature had blue eyes. Strange, but I didn’t care to appreciate it.
Am I supposed to stay still? Should I stare back or look away? Or wait, perhaps I should play dead instead? Predators won’t eat dead things, right? I could try playing dead. I was close enough to it, anyway.
While I argued with myself, something caught the creature’s eyes, and it cocked its head and turned it slightly past my side. It tuned its gaze away from me and toward my terminal. I had been working on a frequency distribution chart for some bullshit statistic that now escaped me. I had tabulated the data with bright colors so they would stand out, and the hues must have caught its attention.
In one quick, startling move, it hoisted its forelimbs off the floor so it could steady itself on its hind legs with its foreclaws on the table. In reflex, I coiled into myself and caused the chair to roll backwards. The Isian, now paying its attention exclusively to my terminal, gave the keyboard a cursory sniff before it smashed its claws into the keys. The terminal whined with error beeps, and the lizard pressed its nose onto the screen and clicked its tongue in response.
While it occupied itself with the bright lights and loud sounds of the terminal, I shuffled my chair backwards and away. The Isian was completely oblivious in its quest to bash the keyboard.
I hadn’t moved far when I crashed into something, which nearly bounced me off the seat. I planted my feet onto the floor and steadied myself. My nails dug deeper into the cushions when I made a white-knuckled realization. There’s two of them, you idiot! I closed my eyes and prayed that I hadn’t run over its feet or tail or some other soft body part. But I didn’t. Or maybe if I did, the creature didn’t care. I felt the light swish of its tail against my calf, then gone. I pried an eyelid open and saw it join its partner at the terminal. In no time, it too was leaping in joy when it took a turn at pounding the keyboard.
I hopped off the chair and ran up the stairs, out the door, and through the halls. I didn’t bother wait for my breath to follow me. The lizards left me the opportunity to escape, and I took it. Thank God for colored tables and harsh error sounds! I made it panting to the security checkpoint where a security guard dutifully ignored me.
I rested and, after a moment or two, came to my senses. Those damned things were ruining my work queue! It was bad enough I was about to get fired for being behind, but now those stupid animals were sabotaging the rest of the engineering data. This would totally look great on my work references, just the thing I needed to find another job!
I lingered at the station and darted my eyes between the lobby and the engineering labs. Hesitantly, I waddled back. This was going to be painful.
I thought of ways to distract the animals. I could yell at them, but that would probably just annoy them. I could borrow a broom or some implement from the janitorial closet, but Summit replaced the bulk of the sanitation staff with robots last year, and fat chance of anyone remembering where the keys to those closets were. Besides, shooing them with a broom would just likely promote biting. Maybe the chemicals guys would have, I don’t know, fucking nerve gas or something. When I peeked into SE-2, I had a hundred ideas but not a lick of sense or courage for any of them.
I sat at someone’s station on the outermost ring. There wasn’t really anything I could do. Besides the possibility of bodily harm, these things were Tetra’s personal pets. Antagonizing the lizards would cost me more than just my job. Broken bodies could be mended, being blackballed less so, especially since I needed a job to pay the medical bills. I crumpled into the seat, and my face sought solace in my hands.
Fuck Isian lizards. Fuck Tetra. Fuck Summit. Fuck me.
I don’t know why I bothered looking back to my station, seeing as how I was doomed regardless. Morbid curiosity, I guess. Watching an unfurling trainwreck is a human diversion cherished since the dawn of civilization, even if said wreck was your own. Especially if it was your own. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to hang yourself. Cathartic stuff.
So I watched my station. And what I saw shocked me.
One of them lay on the desk while the other tapped on the keyboard. It wasn’t the brainless mashing from earlier. It was ordered, deliberate, and… intelligent, somehow. And on the screen, rather than the hundreds of red error tapes I expected, I saw a clean and ordered stream of data.
I lost to disbelieving curiosity and crept back to the terminal with my gaze locked to terminal screen. I was hovering just a meter away from the lizards, but my incredulity bullied the terror away.
They were doing the work. My work!
Page after page after page of data screamed through the screen under the Isian’s orchestration, its claws now a virtual blur. Every so often, the one on the table would make a clicking sound, and the other would bob its head in response. The data kept on flowing and the lizard kept on tapping. It didn’t stop to rest or to think. It just tore through them one-by-one like Jack the Engineering Ripper.
Fifty minutes later, at the tail of the lunch hour, the Isians finally became bored with the terminal and went back to the arena to sleep.
I sat down. Absentmindedly, I tapped on the keys to bring up the engorged work review list. I paged through each item trying to find errors. Hoping to find errors. None. Pristine. Perfection, just perfect. It was incredible, but that’s not what stunned me into catatonia.
They had finished fifteen units in less than an hour.
The sun’s setting rays painted the sky through the remnants of yesterday’s storm. The dense air squeezed the light until it glowed, neon streaking through the orange sky. The storm left behind clumps of wandering clouds and small refuges of puddles collected in the boughs of the courtyard, too stubborn to evaporate. Most of the fresh water and its natural, nasal-tickling scents had washed away into the sewers.
I sat on a bench in the courtyard and watched the bloated clouds swim. They all looked like whales. That’s the only thing clouds could be, really. Just lumbering marine mammals trying to swallow the sun. I didn’t usually have the opportunity to wave the sun goodbye when it left the earth.
I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the absurd irony. Those things that nearly killed my career today where the ones that rescued it. In any other case, I’d mark it up as an even trade and go home. But they were animals. Those slobbering, naked, growling beasts that had knocked me out and trashed the lab.
But the system didn’t lie. Fifteen units, gobbled up like candy. It wasn’t humanly possible. But apparently, it was cakewalk for giant lizards.
It was a hard swallow.
Everything started making sense. Of course the company had calculated their interest with these Isians—they didn’t become the multi-billion-dollar behemoth by being mostly stupid. Why do you think the top brass would bother making a visit in less than a day’s notice? Why would they shut down operations for an entire day? Why allow these creatures to run free through the labs? These creatures hid something incredible, something I had never seen before.
“Never judge a person by his appearance,” they repeatedly drilled into you stupid childhood brain. No one ever said to apply that dictum to lizards, as well. Was I supposed to? Mom never told me to.
God, maybe those conspiracy nuts were right after all. Secret government alien genetic engineering mutant project? I could begin to see it.
I got up and stretched. This was too much. Whatever these Isians were, I knew I wanted to meet them. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I did, or even if they would let me, but I guessed I could try. I had a feeling we’d be seeing each other an awful lot from now on, and God knows I should try to start the relationship anew. If not now then eventually, so I mind as well get it over with. Something tugging at me head told me I owed them that. I blame my mother and her insistence on good manners and that other sort of nonsense.
I went to the maple tree at the center of the courtyard. Earlier, I had seen the Isians horsing around it. The tree had an odd history about it. It grew proudly on the grounds before Summit was even an embryo in Tetra’s womb, rooted among its neighbors on undeveloped land. The company came in, bought the parcel, and started razing everything, as you do, to seed the foundation of their glorious next-generation research campus. The earthmovers felled all the arboreal inhabitants (because there wasn’t anything “next-generation” about trees) but inexplicably left the single maple intact. Urban legend says the tree destroyed the treads of three dozers, and the construction crew got tired and just went around it. And it just stood there ever since, defiant like a woody William Wallace, as Summit’s single bastion of nature growing through the concrete, steel, and glass. They say you could still see the battle scars on its trunk where the machines failed to knock it down.
Keeping the maple company was a large boulder unearthed during Summit’s construction. Or it might have been a giant dollop of concrete, no one’s really sure.
There, one of the lizards sprawled on the sunny side of the boulder with its eyes closed, like a pet reptile warming itself on a hot rock. The sunset lit its scales in orange flames that shimmered like a gossamer sheen. Its limbs stretched across the rocky surface, and its tail trailed down and curled next to the rock’s base. The lizard’s nostrils closed and flared gently as it snored. If it had some fur covering those ghastly-looking scaled, it would almost seem cute.
I moved under the tree and brought out my sack lunch, still uneaten. I rummaged through it and took out an apple. If the lizard woke up, I needed a peace offering. I didn’t know how much a single apple was worth to an Isian, but it was still edible. I couldn’t understand the lizard and it probably couldn’t understand me, but we both the universal language of food.
No sooner had I taken the apple out, the Isian stirred, groaned, and opened its blue eyes. It blinked a few times and moved its head, the chin still planted on the rock, to me. It blinked again, gathered its limbs together, and raised its head up. Not wishing to startle it, I inched toward the rock in deliberate steps. Unblinking Isian eyes tracked me along the way.
I reached the foot of the rock and held up the apple for the lizard to see. Its eyes immediately snapped to the fruit. I waved the apple around, and the Isian bobbed its head to follow it like a magnet. Satisfied I got its attention to the right thing, I placed the apple to the ground next to the rock. The lizard crawled around the rock to peer down to it.
I slowly backed away and said, “Here, for you.”
The Isian didn’t waver from the apple. It brought its body off the rock and stood on all fours. It arched its back and stretched, and then it hopped off the rock with a swish of its tail. On the ground, it quickly found the apple. Tentatively, as if unsure of the offering, it nosed into the apple and sniffed. It dug in closer and pivoted around it to smell from other directions, stopping after a cursory lick from its thin, pink tongue. Apparently satisfied, it nuzzled the apple, brought its jaws around it, and devoured the fruit in one gulp. It didn’t even bite—it took the entire apple into its maw and crushed the thing with its powerful jaws. Rivulets of juice trickled down its blue chin, which the lizard licked away along with the white apple bits that clung on its lips.
Finished with the apple, the Isian turned around and brought its attention back to me. It made a high-pitched chirping sound. It sounded like a bird’s, which confused me because it was a far cry from what you’d expect from a reptile’s vocabulary. Perhaps it was a sparrow in its stomach screaming for freedom.
The lizard cocked its head slightly and chirped again, as if expecting me to understand. Since I didn’t speak “Giant Lizard,” I had no idea of its intentions, so I backed away some more. Maybe it was thank-you chirp. Perhaps it was a territorial call warning me to leave. Or hell, a mating call for all I knew.
The Isian chirped once more, and then came closer.
It crawled on all four of its legs, and although it barely stood higher than my thighs, it still intimidated me. I continued shuffling back. It chirped and took another step. This repeated a couple more times until I bumped into the tree and found myself without anywhere else to back up to. The Isian came until it almost nosed at my leg. I huddled and squirmed against the tree, preparing to run if I needed to, but the lizard then moved its snout to the lunch bag I held in my right hand.
I finally understood, so I reached in and pulled out another apple, a green Granny Smith. Again, I held the apple, on uneven hands, for the Isian to see. I waved it for attention as I did before, and I planned to set it the ground, but then Isian did something that startled me. I fell and my ass kissed the floor when it got up on its fucking hind legs and snatched the apple away with its foreclaws. Jesus Christ! The lizard showed no trouble balancing itself on two legs as it fondled the apple in its claws. I sat on the ground in disbelief at the towering creature.
This time, the lizard dispensed with formalities and stuffed the apple straight into its jaws. It polished off the second apple and landed back on all fours to crawl over to my lunch bag, which I still gripped in my hand. It nosed at it again, so I dumped the rest of its contents to the ground. I shuffled away across the grass, leaving the hungry lizard to rummage through the pile. It ignored the can of soda and quickly found the ham sandwich. It sniffed at it eagerly, shrieked at what it found, and hammered a series of sharp clicks.
It seemed placated now, but I didn’t want to wait around when it realized I had run out of food. I was about to get up and leave when a branch struck me on the head. The tree rustled above, and a brown maple leaf fell on my eyes when I looked up to investigate. I shook it away and, when I looked back up, met with a pair of slitted blue eyes.
Goddammit, Lyle! There’s two of them! Fucking two, you dumb motherfucker!
The second creature, probably roused by the calls from the first, climbed down the tree with the grace of a squirrel, and I found myself trapped between two reptiles. Fat chance of escaping now if shit goes wrong.
Fortunately, the new Isian ignored me and went over to the other lizard, who was busy breathing in the sandwich with its nostrils plastered into the plastic wrapping. The second lizard saw the sandwich, bobbed its head and chirped, and then snatched the sandwich away while the other was still in mid-sniff. This didn’t sit well with the sniffer, and its happy-looking face quickly dissolved into a teeth-bared scowl. It spread its hind legs and elevated its rump in an aggressive posture. The thief ignored it and started pressing the sandwich into its own nose.
One lizard was clearly ready for blood, yet the other sat like a fool with its eyes closed in bliss and a sandwich pressed into its face. Oh God, there was going to be blood. Thankfully, not mine, but that was only slightly worse.
“Hey… hey guy,” I called out. “I think you better give that sandwich back to him.” Lord knows what the hell I thought that was supposed to accomplish, but it was the only thing I could think of. To my utter amazement and confusion, the growling stopped. And now I had a pair of reptilians eyes trained to me.
I cursed myself. I had the perfect opportunity to leave and go home, only to squander it on some meaningless gesture. It was like calling out to pack of wolves. They’re not going to understand you, you idiot, why did you try to reason with them? Now they’re surely going to expect more food, and if they found out I didn’t have any, they might decide I would be a good, meaty replacement. Something that can’t keep its mouth shut is something that deserves to get eaten.
I called my bet and went for broke, even though I didn’t know how to gamble worth a damn. I turned away and paced away from them. They won’t follow, I hoped. They won’t follow. They won’t follow. They won’t follow…
“I’m a she, not he!”
I froze. I looked around, trying to find whoever called out. No one else lingered in the courtyard with us. No one could have possibly said anything. But there was definitely a voice—I heard it! I looked back at the area of the tree. The Isians were still staring at me.
They couldn’t. Could they? No, it couldn’t have been. I thought for a moment. It was too bizarre to consider. It must have been my imagination. But… I definitely heard something!
Once again, I ignored my sensibilities and went cautiously back to the lizards.
“Ex-excuse me?” I stammered, not knowing what I wanted to expect but hoping for nothing.
“She! I’m a girl, not a boy!”
Why was I surprised? How dumb did I have to be? Observation: watch these things barrel through, in one hour, work that I struggled to finish in a day, as if the terminal was but a plaything. All right, noted. Now, I also heard their chirps and calls, which mean they have vocal cords or some other noise-making apparatus, yes? So what’s a reasonable hypothesis to make?
Definitely wasn’t Isian speech, I’ll tell you that.
I just stood as a gaping, stupefied imbecile that hesitated to accept what he saw and heard. I guess, in my mind, I wanted to cling to the thing that still gave me superiority: the spoken word. It’s the thing that separates us from the beasts. Our past, our present, our future, our rich stable of cabbie swear words, it’s all here. Human civilization was founded on the word, and I guess I needed to latch onto it. I’d believed the Isians’ aptitude didn’t extend beyond the confines of the sciences, just uncivilized animals that just so happened to be familiar with Bernoulli’s principle. That postulate collapsed into a fiery wreck, and my last shred of dominance fell with it. Predisposed bias—I’d make a horrible fucking scientist
On the other side, the lizards continued staring at me. The second one, the tree dweller, leaned near its partner and seemed to whisper to it, and the other returned with a bob of its head. The first lizard then came closer to me, a few foot lengths away, and sat on the grass.
“Did you understand me?” it drawled in a low voice.
The words choked in the back of my throat and couldn’t come out. An uncanny role-reversal. Now I was the stupid, incomprehensible animal.
It spoke again even more slowly, and enunciated every syllable as if speaking to a child. “Do… you… un-der-stand… me?”
After getting no response, it leapt beside me and gave a loud roar that knocked me off my feet. Panicked and on the ground, I blurted out the words the Isian wanted to hear.
“Yes, yes, I understand!”
The Isian scrunched its face together in what I could only describe as a patronizing look. Its eye ridges narrowed, and it bowed its head down to me like a lecturing parent.
“Say it again, but right this time,” it said.
“What?”
It snorted and rolled its eyes back. “Say like you did to him.” It pointed to the other Isian. “Except call me a girl this time.”
It took me a second to understand. The Isian continued to drilling its eyes into me. I turned and waved to the other.
“Ah… right. Uh, you there? I think you should give the sandwich back to… her.” I pointed to the subject. “She looks pissed.”
The rock-warmer began clacking at the sandwich thief, who then snorted and nosed away the sandwich. The first lizard curled the ends of its mouth up in… a smile? That was the only thing it could have been.
“Thank you!” it said in tone unlike the one it gave earlier, loud and perky. It tilted its head at me. “You’re such a silly man!”
Another shocking revelation. What would you expect a lizard’s voice to be? Low, raspy, and hissy? Against stereotype, the Isian’s words precise and articulate, spoken with a deep and full, yet distinctly feminine, pitch. It was a handsome voice that I could not have expected to come from such a source. Drop a foreign accent atop and it could narrate a nature documentary.
The Isian went to claim its… her prize. She snatched up the sandwich and tore away the wrapping with her teeth. The other lizard looked longingly as the female buried her nose into the bread.
“You always get all the food!” it complained. Again, a rich voice came clear, this one toned deeper. I didn’t have to guess at this lizard’s sex.
The female ignored him and wolfed the sandwich down to crumbs on the grass and on her lips. She licked them clean and chirped.
I continued to sit on the grass like a beaten combatant. The Isians had triumphed over me once again. They were stronger, smarter, and even spoke better than I did. In the grand pyramid of life, they stood atop of me at a level I couldn’t even fathom to scale. Nothing I could do, really, but stay down and prop up my reptilian overlords.
After the female finished the sandwich, she sat on her haunches and waggled her tail like a dog. “Your food was delicious!” she said to me, and then asked the other lizard, “Wasn’t it delicious?”
“I wouldn’t know because you ate it all.”
“Oh, it was so good. You would have loved it.”
“You could have let me have that apple.”
“The green apple wasn’t too good. Not as good as the red one.”
“Green ones are good enough.”
“But red is better.”
“Green, red, yellow, purple. I like apples. You ate all the apples.”
“Apples aren’t as good as sandwiches. You should have sandwiches.”
“I like sandwiches! You ate it!”
“Oh yes. It was so good!”
I could barely catch the dialogue as it ping-ponged back and forth. It went on for a couple minutes as if they had forgotten my presence.
“He should bring more,” I heard the female say before she turned back to me. “You should bring food again for tomorrow. And this time, enough for both of us.”
“That was my lunch, actually,” I said. “I just didn’t eat it today.”
She squinted her eyes and scratched her blue chin, perhaps deep in thought. She said, “Then you should bring three lunches then!”
“Yes, three!” said the other Isian.
“I’m sure you don’t need my food,” I said. “Don’t they feed you here?”
The female winced and stuck out her tongue in disgust. “Their food is terrible. Smells bad and tastes worse.”
“And they have no apples,” said the other.
With her eyes closed, the female began swaying her head from side-to-side and waved around her arms and tail. “Sand-wich-es! Sand-wich-es!” she repeated in a singsong voice. The male clicked his tongue and bobbed his head to the words.
“Well…” I started. The Isians stopped and stared at me. “I guess I could bring some food tomorrow. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
The female jumped and clapped her foreclaws together and cried out, “Yay!” The male chirped in joy.
They grouped around me, and I tensed up in reflex, but they just chirped and clicked their tongues. One of them came close and purred. That’s what it was, a throaty, reverberating, purr that outperformed a feline’s. Surely, these guys could send any number of animals to the unemployment line—me included. I shuddered at the thought of being obsolete.
And certainly, the Isians didn’t seem to mind. After expending their excitement over the future sandwiches, they stretched on the grass alongside me with their bodies twisted to match the remaining slivers of sunlight casted through the horizon’s shadows. I remained sitting, just observing them as they lounged like lazy lizards. I tried to come to terms with them all. God, Isians. Urban legend? Engineering savants? Crude animals easily amused with cheap ham sandwiches? All of it? I had to observe and study them to try to make sense of what they were. I stared until the earth blanked out the sun.
They stirred up when the shadow overwhelmed their spots.
“Hey,” I said when they started getting up. “I want to thank you guys for doing my work today.”
One of the Isians peered with a lazy eye at me, unaware of my words. The other gave a yawn that gaped its mouth open enough to swallow a football.
“In the lab this afternoon,” I said, “you guys finished my work for me. I really appreciate it.”
The female came to her feet and stretched her legs with an arched back. She sauntered over on all fours and laid herself down in front of me. “What are you talking about, you silly human?”
“You guys of you worked on my terminal during lunch,” I said. She was still confused, so I mimicked them pounding on the keyboard. “You know? In SE-2? Where you guys slept all day? Where you tackled and licked Mark?”
Her eyes opened wide and whistled. “Oh, that lab! I remember you, now!”
Remember me now? She didn’t realize who I was all this time?
The female Isian waved her head at me. “Your terminal was so fun!” She patted her companion’s side. “Wasn’t it fun?”
“Very fun,” he replied.
“Well, thank you for choosing mine,” I said.
“We got bored,” the male said. “There wasn’t anything else to do.”
“And yours was the only one unlocked,” said the female. “And it was colorful!”
“Very colorful!”
I shook my head in amazement. They really were amused with bright lights and loud sounds. My mind boggled trying to reconcile the observations.
The female smiled at me. “You’re so nice letting us play with your toy. I wish we met you earlier. Unlike that horrible man that tried to hurt me that night.”
The other Isian snorted. “Oh, I remember him. What a horrible person.”
“So bad.”
“So mean.”
The female came next to me and placed a claw on my shoulder. “He just ran up to me! I had to hit him on the head for him to stop. Then they had to drag him away.”
Oh… oh God! They were talking about me! That night when I stayed late for work. I was that “horrible human!”
The lizards were now clicking in a commotion. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, I thought. They barely remembered me from just this afternoon, so what are the chances they would remember several nights back? Not likely, so I continued to sit and hoped to weather it out.
“It’s a fact that you can tell who the bad ones are by their smell,” the male said.
“No you can’t, don’t be silly,” said the other.
“It’s true, though. You can smell it. It’s called… what did Arlene call it? Character? Yeah, you can smell character.”
The female patted my leg and said, “Tell him it’s not true. You can’t smell badness. That’s stupid.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think you can.”
“Ha! See?” She pointed and stuck her tongue at the other. “Told you.”
The male shook his head, clicked his tongue, and pointed at me.
“Look, see him? Just smell that one. He’s a good one. If he smells better than that one from the other night, then you’ll know I’m right!”
The female narrowed her eyes and frowned at him. “Fine,” she said.
She moved around and sat down in front of me. I wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, so I remained still. She looked at me for a moment, closed her eyes, and then brought her nose near my chest. She inhaled, her narrow chest contracting to take in a lungful of air. After taking in the breath, she remained motionless in that position with only her nostrils flaring in and out. I quavered a bit trying to remain steady. A smile started forming on her lips, and she released the breath against my chest.
“He smells pretty good, I think.” She poked her muzzle onto my chest again. “Very nice smell.”
The other Isian chirped. “I was right!”
Still with her eyes clothes, the female lizard took small whiffs of my shirt. “He smells a bit familiar though,” she mused in airy voice. “Like something I smelled before.”
She continued rubbing her nose on my chest and sniffing in my scent. I didn’t have the nerve to try to stop her.
My body was shivering.
Suddenly, she exploded with a shriek and flew backwards with wide eyes.
“You!” she cried. The male looked at me.
“You? Him? What?”
“It’s him! Him!”
“Who’s him?”
The female made a series of clicks—deep, angry ones like her tongue was taking a jackhammer to her palate. They came in an incomprehensible volley, which the male listened to with perked ears. When it stopped, his eyes opened into blue orbs. He screeched.
“Him!”
They positioned themselves at right angles from me, their hindquarters raised in the air and their heads low to the ground. It was either a defensive or attack position, I didn’t know which. Bared teeth and rumbling growls had swallowed their smiles and chirps. The frills around their necks puffed in an angry spread that throbbed like a pounding heartbeat.
I tried to get up, but an ear-splitting shriek planted my ass right back into the dirt. Without the nerve to fend for myself on my feet, I had only hands motioning to try to calm them.
“No guys, wait,” I said. “Please, you have it wrong. I’m not horrible.”
“So you’re not that horrible man?” one of them asked.
“Well, yes that was me, but—”
The rendering growls cut me off. I tried to form the rest of the words, but my mouth dried and my throat knotted into air-choking noose. I dug my heels into the ground and pushed myself back while I kept my hands up in defense. The growling became louder, and a hissing sound began worming through my eardrums. The Isians came closer. And closer.
I tried pushing myself away, but their feet were more nimble than my ass. They came near me. Their open jaws looked ready for the kill.
I pressed my feet down as hard as I could and thrust myself along the ground. Something, probably the tree’s root, cracked into my tailbone, and my back collapsed to the grass from the pain. I writhed on the ground in agony. Hot, moist breaths began to chill my ears. I felt them. They were here. This was it. I was going to die now. My body quaked in pain and terror. What I cried out weren’t so much words than uncontrolled fear diced up and vomited into the air.
“No! Stop! Please! I don’t want to die!”
I felt wetness on my ears. Blood. I was bleeding my life away.
But…
Something compelled me to open my eyes and look up. The Isians stared down, but their menacing faces had disappeared. I felt my ears and rubbed at the wetness. It clung to my fingers, and I brought it on a shaking hand to view. It wasn’t blood. It was clear and sticky like… saliva.
I found a single thread of nerve to prop my torso up on my elbows. My voice came up in spastic gasps.
“L-look guys. I’m s-sorry, I’m really sorry. Whatever I did that night, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to attack anyone. P-please… believe me.”
One of the Isians twisted its head to its partner, and then to me, and let out a grunt. The other repeated the same.
“Besides,” I said, “I was the one that got pegged in the head. See? It still hurts.” I pointed to the bruise.
The female slapped her tail to the ground and cried, “Because you scared me!”
“You’re the horrible man that scared us!” said the male.
I stretched myself up by the arms to take pressure off the sore tailbone and said, “I’m sorry, I really am. I won’t be like that anymore.” An idea came to me. “Listen, I’ll make it up to you guys, all right? I’ll pack in extra sandwiches for you both tomorrow. Sound good?”
The moment I mentioned “sandwiches,” the Isians’ faces melted, and they bobbed their heads up and down and chirped an earful.
“That sounds good, Mr. Horrible Man!” the male said.
“Please don’t call me that,” I said.
“Then what do we call you?” the female asked.
“My name is Lyle.”
“Lyle?” the male repeated. He flinched his head back and frowned at the disclosure. “That’s not a good name.”
“No, not good at all,” the female said.
I shrugged. “What’s a good name, then?”
The lizards looked at each other and exchanged clicks.
“I know!” the female said. “We’ll call you Ly-lee!”
“Ly… Lee?” I had to roll the word off my tongue a few times to grasp it. It defied even childhood imagination.
“Yes, Ly-lee. That’s a good name, I think.”
The male Isian repeated the name like a child discovering a new swear word. They seemed so genuinely proud of the new name that I couldn’t refuse.
“Okay, fine. Ly-lee. Call me that, just not Mr. Horrible Man.”
“All righty!” they said together.
The night had completely overtaken the sky. The last N-Freight would be leaving soon.
“It’s pretty late, guys,” I said. “We should probably go home.”
“Is it really late?” the male asked the other.
“Seems like it. Maybe we should go back. They’ll be worried.”
He sighed. “Yeah. It’s so boring though. I hate going back there.”
“But Secondary is pretty fun.”
“Yeah, it is!”
“It’s much better than Primary Sigma. Better people too!”
“Why do we have to work there, anyway?”
“Don’t know. Oh well. Let’s go!”
They duo raced away and disappeared into the evening, leaving me in a pocket of dust and debris. I just sat there, more bewildered than I had ever been since this whole mess started.