"Do you have any idea how slow you talk?"
"I think you mean slowly."
"What?"
"I think you mean to say, 'Do you have any idea how slowly you talk'. It's an adverb, not a Kccckkqgurlk!"
"Do you have any idea how much of my fucking time you wasted telling me that? I knew what you meant, I just couldn't believe it. It's a good thing you pissed me off enough to beat you, because otherwise this session would have been a complete loss. Hey, Big Red, it's your turn!"
*click...creak*
"What, did he give up? Why'd you get out early...Oh. What'd you do to his throat?"
"I don't remember. That was almost twenty seconds ago. I've already written two new Haikus since then. Want to hear one?"
Judging by the timbre of his mind, Ray was experiencing a heart rate increase of almost 1%. For a lifeform as mentally advanced and pure as the sectoid, this was a sign of nervousness which was, frankly, embarrassing to the rest of the group.
[So, what did you do next?]
[Well, after I checked their transportation device for radiation as well...]
[It was a car.]
[What?]
[The term "transportation device" properly refers to a unit of teleportation power equal to technical level 7. Earth is only a technical level 5. The proper earth term for the device is "automobile" or "car".]
[Well then, their "CAR"...]
Ray used the telepathic equivalent of increased volume, including a physical gesture performed with the fingers which was strikingly similar to the human habit of forming quotation marks, but in fact meant irritation or displeasure.
[...showed no unsafe signs of radiation, so...]
[Of course not. It was a car. They are rarely radioactive, Initiate.]
[...anyway, so I opened the entrance cover and continued checking for radiation inside the "car", starting with the strange ring projection from the main instrument panel...]
[They are correctly and aptly called "steering wheels", Initiate Ray.]
[...and continuing on to the music box, the Ray-Dee-Uh...]
Ray was obviously proud to know at least one Earth term, although we suspected it was only easy for him to remember due to the cooincidental use of his name in the first earth syllable.
[...and finally to the only portable artifact, a black plastic box with a cylinder attatched to the face.]
Some mental equivalent of frowns ensued.
[Did the artifact have any earth writing, Ray?]
[Yes...]
Ray stepped to the projection board and proceeded to outine a series of clumsy characters in the common alphabet of the "western hemisphere" of earth.
V...C...P
[Yes, I think that was it.]
The mental frowns became much more pronounced.
[That last character, Ray...Do you think it was this?]
...R
[Yes! Yes, that was it. An "Arrr", is that right?]
[Yes, Ray...that is an "Arrr"...]
It couldn't be. Could it? Was he really this bad?
[Tell me, Ray...was there a little red light on?]
[There could have been...]
Ray's mind was becoming somewhat defensive, as he picked up stray thoughts from around the room.
My head fell forward into my hands. And to think that I had gone before the committee and sponsored Ray. My career was about to go "down the toilet". I could feel my own heartbeat reaching an unacceptable level.
[Ray...]
[You don't mean they got the whole thing on tape? And you left it there? They have it now?]
[Well...the artifact showed minimal signs of radiation, so...]
[This is unacceptable, Ray. What is it with you and that obsolete geiger counter, anyway?]
[We're going to have to do something about this. Get a hold of some black suits. And Ray...you're assigned to refuse clean up.]
[Oh, no! You can't! Please, it was a mistake! I don't even know what I did wrong! Not garbage duty, please!]
[Please calm down, Ray. You're embarassing us. You're almost as emotional as the earth humans.]
To be continued...
I guess if I was Aranae or Renee I'd probably have done some nifty somersault over the desk and roll into a defensive position behind it, but I was always kind of a klutz and that's one thing my cybernetics hadn't improved.
So instead, I just dove to the ground and tried to crawl under the desk as quickly as possible. I could feel my exposed ass wrigling in what seemed like slow motion as I squirmed under the frame in front of the desk, my back scraping loudly on the underside. I expected to feel those bullets tearing apart my lower body any second...surely he had time to get me in sight by now? The anticipation was worse than the pain in my chest. That's what I thought, until my anticipation was fulfilled.
Just when I actually began to believe I was going to make it, my right calf felt the fire and tearing pain of another round, and my ears were suddenly ringing from the sound of the huge gun firing in such a small office. A few scattered screams broke out again from the secretaries still remaining hidden under their office equipment, but they were getting weaker and less meaningful after so many. They covered up my strangled grunt, though.
I pulled the rest of the way into my new shelter, crouched under the desk in the area where knees and chairs belong. This desk wasn't going to do much to protect me from that gun, but at least he couldn't see me. I just needed to buy some time. I needed to figure out what was going to keep this guy from planting enough of those bullets in my head to permanently put me down.
I heard the loud thump of his heavy boots hitting the top of a desk a few rows back. This guy wasn't lacking in any agility, that was for sure. He reminded me of Aranae. A viscious version of Aranae, with a hand gun pissed enough to go through my skin, and a seriously twisted sadistic attitude.
"Come out, come out, little boy...Daddy wants to play some more..."
What the hell was I going to do?
"Well, if you won't play, maybe this one will. Julie Cox, that's what the name plate says...name plate says! Name plate says! Ha ha hah! That's good! It can't talk, see? But that's what it says! Get it?"
His efforts at intelligible communication had all been failures so far. Damn it! How did I fight somebody that fast? I needed to act immediately, or this Julie chick was gonna eat it...
"Do you get it, you fuckin' bitch? You get it?"
I could hear Julie whimpering. The random, frantic thought which had been filling my mind evaporated like so much fog. I stood up where I was, holding the heavy steel desk over my head with one hand.
I was too late to save Julie though, whoever she was. Some corporate secretary or something.
"You fucking skank! Die! Yeah! Bleed!"
As Julie's back arched violently, as her blouse exploded in red chunks, I launched the desk as hard as I could. I was too slow, too stupid, too late. Too late for salvation, but not for revenge. One-hundred fifty pounds of angry steel parts and office supplies plowed into soldier boy with the kind of force only a piston can produce. He was flung backwards into the desk's cousin, metal drawers and papers furious with territorial rage, biting his back. He never made a sound, but the noise was terrific.
I looked at Julie's face, big deer eyes asking me why she was dead when a superhero was here to protect her. When you see eyes like that, there's never any excuse good enough, no matter what troubles you had today or last week or whenever. You can't think of anything to make it feel better.
All I felt was angry. Angry at myself for being too slow and weak, too stupid, yeah. But mostly I was angry at these assholes who thought blowing away innocent people was a good time. Coherent thought was a thing of the past.
I launched myself across the room, striding from desk to desk effortlessly, hurdling cubicle walls and other office obstacles with a complete disregard for my earlier clumsy troubles. Desks flew back from the reactionary forces my feet produced. My head scraped the flimsy ceiling panels as my vertical clearance surpassed anything Glitterboy or Aranae had managed to work into me in our training sessions. I was largely unimpressed, however. A brief memory in the back of my head of sprinting through deep powder forests, with one misstep meaning a broken limb...
A steel shoulder block took out the flimsy door more quickly than I could have opened it. He was close, I could smell it...I could almost hear his heartbeat...no, his footsteps. Keep running. He can't get away now, I thought. More of a mental snarl than my usual voice.
I entered the stairway with a tearing shriek of another door, this one metal. He's down below, he must be just outside...I can hear him leaving the stairwell...but I don't have time to run down all those stairs. My thought train at this point was completely without hesitation. No conclusion was reached with deliberation, everything was obvious.
I lept from the platform at the doorway to the metal railing without slowing down from my reckless pace, speeding up if anything. Something like a cartwheel or handspring - I don't really understand gymnastics - took me down to the first turn, with the glass window offering a view of the sidewalk outside. As I landed in a crouch, muscles compressing from the force of my fall, I gave no thought to either the fall below me or the impossibility of landing on a two inch round railing like that. When I looked back at it later, I remember an image in my mind that I never really noticed...a tall woman for whom I felt nothing but hatred...cold, cold wind on my skin...countless attempts at bizzare contortions and excercises my body just wasn't designed for...and a voice, contemptuous, repeating over and over again: "Wrong! Again! Do it again! You are such a waste of my time! Wrong! Again..."
I thrust forward and upward from my crouch an instant later, breaking the window with my forearm just in front of my face, twisting and flipping in mid-air to be in position...and suddenly my rage left me there, in free-fall. What the hell was I doing?
My conjecture cut short with my forty-foot descent as I drove my boots into the surprised look on his face. He's almost impossible to hurt, like me, but five hundred pounds of steel falling nearly three stories was something he was not prepared for. Our combined impact left a sizable crater in the cement, centered around his head.
I rolled over and threw up. I had just broken every bone in my feet, which was a lot better than I deserved, trying shit like that. What the hell had come over me?