Entry 16

If you’ve ever had to escape from someone in an area you’re unfamiliar with, then you will be able to know exactly how I was feeling. At first I was exhilarated to escape Ven, and my only goal was to put as much space between him and me as I could. I scuttled through the ductwork as fast as I could, not paying attention to the twists and turns I took. Then I slowed down, realizing I had no idea where I was. I had been so busy trying to get away from Ven that I had not considered where I was going. I was completely lost within the ductwork. I had run away from the man who wanted to help me and into the heart of the enemy.

And I had no idea where John was.

I stopped in the ductwork, figuring that unless Ven had some sort of psychic connection to me or some alien device I could not fathom he had no way to find me. I could not recall the twists and turns I had taken to get to this point and therefore had no idea at all where I was.

Hopelessness began to set in on me. I had bitten my one ally. Surely I could have done something more to convince him to help me look for John. Then he could have used his technology to help me find John. However, I was on my own, because I had made him an enemy by taking a chunk out of his arm.

John was stuck somewhere in this hive of alien anthropologists, and I was completely at a loss to help him. My big brother was in the hands of the enemy, with only his useless little sister to find him.

If the scenario was reversed, John would tear this place apart to find me. He would fight every anthropologist until they revealed where they would keeping me. He would then free me and take me to safety with little harm to myself. He would do everything he could, and here I was doing nothing.

John needed me, and I was doing nothing. It was simply not acceptable. If John would do anything for me, then I would have to do anything for him. In this scenario, I would have to be the protector of my brother who needed me.

I made my mind up to do whatever it took to find John, just as he would do for me. However, it was much easier said than done. I stared at the gray ductwork, wondering which direction I should go. Where would a group of anthropologists hide my brother? Where would they hide an android?

I had no idea how these alien anthropologists’ minds would work or where they might store my brother as they picked his brain for information. So I decided it would be best just to pick a direction and try to find an exit from the ductwork. It might be easy to hide in ductwork, but it was impossible to know where I was going.

Going right was my first inclination, so I decided to go left. My gut instinct and John’s were never the same. If I wanted to go right, he would want to go left. So I did what I thought he would do. I crawled through the ductwork in the general direction of what had been my left.

If you have ever crawled through ductwork or perhaps seen it, you can imagine it’s quite monotonous. It almost felt like I was going nowhere, since the duct walls offered no relief from the gray color.

Suddenly ahead I saw a light. The light came from the floor of the ductwork ahead. I could also hear strange sounds. ‘Strange sounds’ is perhaps a much too light description. What I heard was an awful din.

I crept forward carefully, remembering all the times in movies people fell through ducts onto the heads of people they were hiding from. I would do John no good if I got myself captured.

After a bit of time, I reached the duct and was able to look down. It looked like a lecture hall. Rows upon rows of aliens in all shapes, colors, and sizes that I could not begin to describe all watched as one alien stood at the front. The alien at the front was speaking in a language I could not possibly begin to understand while the onlookers all chatted endlessly. Any of my teachers on Earth would have had a cow if their studies behaved in such away, but clearly things were different among the Society of Anthropologists.

Though the onlookers talked, they all watched avidly as the alien demonstrated something on a table at the front of the room. The alien held some sort of device in one of hands. If I had to guess what he was doing with a strange alien technology I did not recognize while using a language I could not understand, I would say he was scanning what looked like another alien on the table.

It did not surprise me that a group of anthropologists would be studying an alien. Doctors practice on cadavers. Why wouldn’t alien anthropologists study what looked like a dead alien? Surely it gave them important information about anatomy that they could use to understand the culture. I totally understood that. If they had been grave robbing human graves to study us, I was cool with that. It wasn’t like the dead people were using their bodies. Was it a little disrespectful? Sure, but it was the lesser of evils. Rather they kidnap unneeded bodies than kidnap innocent people, like say me.

Suddenly the room actually got sort of quiet, and not the ridiculous ruckus that would have horrified any Earth teacher. All eyes, and other visual orifices, turned to the body at the front of the room.

The lecturer fiddled with something on the device as everyone watched breathlessly. He finally did something that emitted a strange pulse. Immediately the eyes of the alien on the table opened and looked about. It was alive.