Plocamiophobia

Standing alone on the elevator, Jonah waited for it to start moving. He expected that, since the room had technology advanced enough to recognize when he woke up and to try capturing him, at least the elevator should be automatic too. Staring blankly into the red-tinged distance, his eyes were drawn to the dome which remained stuck halfway between ceiling and floor.

'Maybe the elevator is stuck too. I should probably give it some… motivation.'

He raised his foot and slammed it back down on the platform with some effort, getting no reaction from the inanimate slab.

'C'mon, get moving. I'm in a very vulnerable situation here!'

Stomping over and over, the amphitheater became filled with noise. As his forcefulness increased with each attempt, so did Jonah's frustration.

'Why can't anything go the way I want it to? Just do something, you damned machine!'

With a grunt of exertion, Jonah jumped up, tucking his knees into his chest before slamming them back into the platform with all the power he could muster. With the hit, the platform flexed up at the edges and buckled under Jonah's weight, while a sound more akin to a firecracker than a stomp echoed through the room. As soon as the platform reached the peak of its deformation, it snapped back, launching Jonah four meters up where he slammed into the ceiling. Just as Jonah had been launched up, the platform shot down into the ground. It had fallen into a strange looking shaft filled with a yellow glow, grinding against the walls violently and leaving behind a trail of white-hot sparks. Jonah soon joined it in falling and was at the hole's edge before he could recover from his shock.

With the amount of unexpected predicaments he had run into recently, it took no time at all for his desperation-autopilot to kick in. He shot his hand out towards the ledge, barely managing to grab it as the rest of his body fell into the glowing shaft. He set his jaw and tensed up right before slamming into the side of the shaft, bracing himself against the pain of getting pancaked once again. The jolt hit him all at once, loosening his grip momentarily before he grabbed the ledge with his other hand out of panic.

Coming to a balanced position, Jonah's heavy breathing started to slow down, and the thrill of surviving set in.

'Holy shit,' he thought, 'finally it feels good making it out of a disaster alive. I feel like a fucking pro rock climber!'

The grinding sound of the platform slowly faded into the distance. Moments later it was replaced by a bang which echoed through the corridor until it sounded more like the distant rumble of thunder. Something out of sight on the floor above blinked purple, turning into a brief yellow flash and disappearing before Jonah had gathered himself enough to climb up to meet it.

Exactly at the point where he had slammed into the ceiling earlier, a hole appeared and spread, coming to a stop when it matched the size of the shaft below. A high-pitched whirring could be heard from above, sounding like a cheap scooter speeding down a highway.

'Nope, you're not gonna get me this time.' Jonah thought after hearing the distant buzz.

With all the grace of an Olympic gymnast, he pulled against the ledge and launched him up and over it, executing a 9/10 landing back on the safe ground of the amphitheater. Briefly pausing in amazement at his own abilities, Jonah then took a few steps to reach a safe distance from the upper portion of the shaft. After a few seconds of anticipation, a long grey streak flew down the center of the shaft and passed him with a roar. It hit the platform below in an instant and bounced back up briefly before settling into place. After some inspection, Jonah figured out the streak's purpose.

'Long pole, same boring grey as everything else in this forsaken building, weird hooks sticking out from the sides every couple of centimeters. If it isn't the next torture device sent after me, it's probably a service ladder.

'So then, I was right in thinking that this thing was an elevator. Lucky—nothing else looks remotely like an exit in here and I don't know how long I have before I start getting hungry and thirsty. I should try to make it down to the ground floor and get out of here as quickly as I can. After recovering my decency, of course.'

Without further hesitation, he awkwardly climbed onto the ladder, finding the alternating rungs much too close together for a comfortable descent. With no sign of the grace he had just exhibited, he started his climb down.

The first section of the shaft kept the same grey quality as the amphitheater, only dimly lit by the yellow glow which got stronger the further down he went. Jonah took a brief glimpse down, noticing that the next part of the shaft seemed to be either unwalled or surrounded by windows.

'Well, only one way to find out what's going on down there.'

Soon enough, he reached the end of the grey walls and saw that they were replaced by a window that would have been invisible were it not for the light scratches left by the platform on its way down. Before he could notice the scratches, though, Jonah got distracted by the awe-inspiring vista spreading out before him.

On first sight, it looked as though a field of stars had been folded and twisted until it resembled a broken mirror more than a collection of constellations. The dark blue background, bordering on black, was speckled with golden orbs of varying sizes emitting a warm glow. Lines crisscrossed the panorama like cracks, cutting through some orbs and their haloes in some places while converging on others. The dim grey of the amphitheater's exterior could be seen extending out for hundreds of meters to one side, suspended in the air with no visible support other than the hand of God. It seemed to be the only solid thing amidst all the shattered lights.

As his eyes adjusted to the new view, however, Jonah started to figure out that what he thought were cracks in the background were actually dark and glassy crystal-shaped formations which wouldn't have been visible without the stars' auras bending around them in a peculiar manner. Each star seemed to be at the tip of one of these massive prisms, with the larger stars only being larger by merit of the nearness of their crystal supports. Aided by this recognition, a realization dawned on Jonah:

'This has got to be the most space-like cave I've ever seen. It's looks so magical.'

Taking a minute to bask in the beautiful view, the resentment Jonah held towards being transported here against his will faded a sliver.

'Well, if I'm in a cave, I probably ought to go up instead of down. This ladder sucks, though. I wish that elevator still worked.'

After a last look-see at the kilometers-wide cave, Jonah resumed his climb in the reverse direction. On the way back up, he felt as though he was starting to grasp his situation better and better.

'Putting all the amnesia stuff aside, whatever that behemoth did to me back over the ocean seemed to teleport me here, and even with just a few minutes of memories from there I can tell this has got to be a new body. Stronger, taller, balder, and seemingly with the muscle-memory of a lifelong gymnast, it's way too good to be the same. Unless I was out for way longer than I thought and someone regrew my body in that tank. If that were the case, then someone must have put me in there, leaving the problem of where they are now.

'The tank, the chair, the floating dome and cordless elevator all show that wherever and whenever I am right now, the technology is far beyond anything I know of. Maybe if I had my memories from before the plane crash, I'd remember some sort of alien invasion or something. But since I was probably teleported, my money is on this being an alien planet or asteroid or something. Agh, this is all so confusing though! I can't tell whether this place is old and abandoned or if all the important stuff is broken and no one has bothered to fix it yet.

'If I find anyone things should be made clear, and if I don't, that works too. So, mental note: priority number one, look for people. Number two, find clothes. Number three, find food and water before I start dying the slow death. I can do this.'

Jonah reached the level of the amphitheater again but kept on climbing without looking back. The golden glow from below quickly faded out of sight and was replaced by the same distant red he had woken up to. Climbing up for another minute, he eventually reached a jittery hole which seemed to be trying to open further but kept catching something and seizing up, leaving it back where it started. He managed to fit through without getting guillotined by the sketchy hole, quickly hopping off the ladder and onto the new floor.

'Alright, I need to be careful when looking around. If this place really is alien like I suspect, even if I do meet someone they'd probably prefer dissection over having a nice conversation over coffee and snacks.'

To Jonah's chagrin but not his surprise, the floor was the same boring grey as before. The ceiling was slightly lower than the spacious amphitheater, but still felt roomy to him as it could almost fit two of him stacked on top of each other. The room formed a concentric circle just about quadrupling the diameter of the shaft, and four identical corridors expanded out from the center, making two perpendicular lines if seen from above. Peeking down one, Jonah noticed that a row of alcoves ran down each side. As he walked past them, he noticed that each alcove seemed to be furnished slightly differently, with some approximating jail cells while others were closer to operating rooms. Seeing how strange some of the items inside were, Jonah became increasingly confident of his alien-planet hypothesis. Jonah tried to walk into one to check out the goods but was blocked by what had to be an invisible barrier. Cursing himself for his blunder after realizing how noisy it had been, he tensed up in case something with an appetite happened to be hiding in one of the cells. After a moment of silence, he heard a distant banging and started sprinting back towards the elevator shaft in fear of what might come next.

Realizing the sound was getting louder instead of softer as he ran, he froze in place and tried to calm down enough to figure out the predator's position.

'Fuck, I'm dead. I'm dead. The sounds bounce off the walls so much I can't figure out where it is!'

After a moment, Jonah realized how idiotic he was acting.

'If I can't tell where it is, there's no way it can tell where I am, but the sound of me running couldn't have hurt its search. I've got to get out of here quietly.'

Jonah started back towards the elevator shaft, this time making his footfalls soft enough to eliminate the pitter-patter of each step. Getting closer and closer to his escape, he realized the noise was rhythmic and constant, only becoming more audible as he approached the central room. Once again, Jonah reflected on his actions and cursed his own ignorance.

'No predator would be dumb enough to keep making noise like that. If anything, that sounds more like a signal for help. As long as I'm ready to make a break for it, it shouldn't hurt to find the source of the noise.'

Jonah walked back to the shaft and listened closely. He tested each corridor, and found that the sound kept getting louder when he went down the passage opposite the one he had just come from. Passing by the alcoves with little interest, he eventually reached the dead end of the hall, with the noise seeming to come from right behind the otherwise nondescript wall blocking his path.

He walked up slowly to the wall, and gently touched it with his finger, hoping for a reaction. Suddenly, the noise stopped abruptly, and a small circular hole opened at knee-level, barely big enough to fit an arm through. He crouched down, bringing his head near to the hole but not too close for comfort, noticing a grey room on the other side but nothing much more. Jonah and the hole stayed perfectly still for an awkward moment, with Jonah being strongly distrustful and the hole being… a hole. After accepting that he had to make the first move, Jonah did as such.

"Uh… hello? Anyone there?"

His voice had almost completely recovered from the stuffy, gurgling quality it took on because of the silver goo, and he was finally able to appreciate the deep and sonorous timbre it took on. The baritone of a well-trained opera singer he heard now contrasted greatly with the nasally screams from his memories of falling from the sky, gleaning another point in favor of the new-body hypothesis. Unless his body had been regrown vocal cords and all, there was no other explanation.

After a brief pause, a strange, soft noise came from the other side of the hole. It was brief and abrupt, only lasting a second at most. It was halfway between a blender full of nails and a broken diesel tractor. Jonah winced slightly upon hearing the noise but was more frightened at the white tendrils which stretched out from the hole.

'Aaaaaand that's my cue to run away. No more tentacles, thank you very much!'

Jonah started booking it back towards the elevator, not even bothering to look at what else came out of the hole. Whatever it was, if it had tentacles, it was on his blacklist. In a bolt that would have put a professional sprinter to shame, he made it back to the elevator shaft. He was about to latch back onto the ladder when he realized that it was screaming down the shaft at a speed which blurred out its features. Turning around and seeing something tentacled crawling towards him, he threw caution to the wind and reached out to grab the ladder underhand, only succeeding in getting his hand bent back nearly all the way. Jonah screamed in pain and pulled his arm back as his hand hung limply down from his arm.

Without thinking, Jonah ran down the corridor to his right, banging on the transparent barriers hoping to find an open room with something that could help him escape or incapacitate his foe. Finding every alcove sealed, he reached a dead end just like that of the other corridor, and tried to open it the same way, failing once more. Frantically searching for an answer and failing each time, he cursed loudly and started slamming his head against the wall.

"WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE MAKE THIS SQUID HELL STOP!" he bellowed in exasperation.

He then felt a tingle on his right ankle, which slowly worked its way up his calf, then his thigh. Too afraid to look down, he clenched his buttocks and whimpered out pleas for mercy. The tingle kept climbing, now passing his waist, then hopping onto his right elbow and curling up around his bicep, where it came to a stop. Still staring straight ahead into the wall, Jonah heard another short series of harsh clicks and growls. He slowly looked over at his arm, seeing a glossy white hexagon the size of his open palm with white corrugated legs sticking out from each one of its vertices now forming six spirals around his arm, locking the hexagon in place. Two of the tendrils reached down to his limp hand, seeming to stretch out as they wove between his fingers and tightened. Before he could react, the tendrils snapped the hand into a more natural position, locking it in place like a wrist splint. After that, the thing moved no more, and Jonah took a second to breathe before angrily trying to pull the hexagon off, to no avail.

Jonah gave up, smoldering at his inability to avoid even a single tentacle no matter how desperately he resisted. He turned to face the rows of cells, slumping down with his back to the wall until he reached a cross-legged sitting position. He kept picking at the tendrils with suspicion, only managing to move them side to side a centimeter or so. It seemed that they would roll around on his arm to accommodate any motions he made but would do nothing to break the contact they made with his skin. He noticed that the pain in his wrist was already fading away, with a warm taking its place.

'What? It's been like, a couple of minutes at most. Is it healing already, or did squid number two slip me some painkillers without me noticing?' he thought.

As Jonah gazed at his wrist in confusion, he heard a screech from down the hall and looked up abruptly. Despite the distance and the red glow, he was able to make out the ladder slowly coming to a halt, and mumbled grumpily about how thoughtful it was for the ladder to wait until after he got caught to slow down.

'Since it seems like I'm not dying, I'll just work with my horrifyingly hexagonal hitchhiker for now. I'd better bump my "find people" priority below my "find clothes" one, though, since now they'll probably think I'm stealing their robots. Only stealth from now on.'

Jonah stood up cautiously, imagining that another unwelcome surprise could pop up at any time. He walked back to the elevator shaft and tugged on the service ladder a couple of times to make sure it wasn't going anywhere soon. Sighing, he got back on and resumed his climb up, hindered slightly by his bad hand which had only just regained the ability to move its fingers.

Over the next fifteen minutes, he climbed with increasing frustration. The floors he passed all looked the same as the one he just left; sometimes there were six corridors, sometimes just two, but each one was the same as the last in structure. Occasionally he would come across a broken door blocking the shaft and was forced to stretch and bend to fit through, but nothing fully impeded his path up.

'At this point, I don't care what's on each floor. There's just too much risk to be taken by snooping around, when all that I'll find is going to be more sealed empty cells and tentacle robots. It seems like I'm in the bowels of either a low security prison or a strange alien zoo. My money's on the prison, but I'm hoping it's the zoo since it'll probably be way harder for me to find my way out of the former. At least in that case I'll win my bet against myself… damn it, I'm getting lonesome already.'

During the climb, his hand had kept losing its rigidity and pain until the tendrils interlaced with his fingers and wrapped around his wrist retracted, leaving a little bit of soreness but otherwise nothing else. In his head, Jonah wished for that movement to be the last one the thing ever made, but still felt a tinge of gratitude for whatever it was that it did. Jonah also came to notice that no matter how long he climbed the ladder, he wouldn't get tired, and hunger and thirst still felt like distant concerns. Feeling his mind drift off with the monotony, he started to speculate on what kind of clothes he might find.

'With all this hi-tech stuff, I could really go for an all-purpose mech suit. That would hit the spot. Or, maybe, something with wings. Would be nice to fly up this shaft instead of climbing. Hmm… wings might not fit though, so let's say rocket boots instead. There should be a bunch of stuff around once I get out of this prison, but I'll take a guard's uniform if it's the first thing I find. I'd even take a prisoner's suit. I wonder if orange jumpsuits are the universal indicator of criminality…'

After what felt like hours but in reality was only a few more minutes, Jonah could make out a distant green light which raised his spirits.

'Finally! The top of the shaft!'

He picked up the pace of his climb, too excited to find something other than grey walls and red fog to concern himself with the stealth he had fixated on at the start of the climb. By the time he reached the top of the shaft, he was practically jumping from one rung to the next. Launching himself into the newfound room with unrestrained, Jonah found himself amid a control center of some kind. He failed to notice how the ladder vanished into thin air a few meters further up.

The room was colored dark green with highlights of white, reminding him of a holly tree after a night of snow. The room had six even walls, forming a regular hexagon in outline. From wall to wall, there was about the length of two soccer fields, and the height of the walls would not have been out of place in an industrial warehouse. The ceiling, however, arched upward, with creases tracing out six panels which met at the apex above. Beautiful patterns which reminded Jonah of fractals like snowflakes and ferns spread from the ceiling's center outwards, mimicking the six-way symmetry of the room, and despite the distance separating him from them, not even a touch of red could be seen in the air.

Starting a few meters back from the elevator shaft, there were rings of simple workstations sharing the dominant green color. Each one arched slightly around a white cylindrical protrusion from the ground, which had to be a seat for the desk's user despite its unassuming form. The desks themselves were perfectly flat, and had no other feature save for a curved, transparent cover which made the whole desk look like a jet fighter cockpit cut in half. Each desk was in perfect condition, spotless and with a sheen that could only be seen on the best-kept of all things.

Curiosity got the better of him, and Jonah walked over to take a seat at one of the desks. When he sat down, the stool started warping to conform with the contours of his glutes and thighs, spreading out and up his lower back while distributing the pressure evenly. It glided smoothly towards the desk, raising him up until he reached an ideal position for working. When he placed his hand on the surface of the desk, the entire surface rippled, while the canopy lit up with the same circle-and-chevron logo from the amphitheater's chairs. The logo transformed into a loading icon once again, and portions of the desk started rising, forming an assortment of alien objects.

To his right and his left, two flattened domes appeared, growing lighter and lighter until they turned pure white. Some of the green remained, though, forming arcane rings of script which intersected and rotated in a mesmerizing manner. In front of him, a small green globe rose out of the surface until it separated and floated to the level of his eyes. A copy of the simple loading icon appeared in white on the globe's surface, spinning for a moment before the entire globe turned purple with a buzzing sound. The loading icon was replaced with an alien word which blinked on and off, looking like an error message of some kind. Meanwhile, an array of delicate tools had appeared on the desk, resting between Jonah and the floating sphere. Some seemed familiar, with the form of tweezers, small hammers, chisels, syringes, probes, and various others, but many were oddly shaped and often were decorated with glowing patterns, crystalline gems, or both.

As he sat, taking in all the new stimuli, Jonah felt a strong jerk which lifted his arm towards a dome. The hexa-squid had taken control, having stealthily wrapped its arms around Jonah's hand and fingers while he was distracted, and completely against his will, he manipulated the symbols on the dome with inhuman dexterity. In an instant, the seat extended and wrapped all the way around his body until nothing was left exposed save his head. The squid seemed to merge with the seat, leaving a hexagonal protrusion like a badge on Jonah's arm.

Breathing heavily now and with pupils fully dilated, he tried to figure out what exactly it was that he was doing. With full control over his body now, the entire seat moved him, manipulating both domes simultaneously until the levitating globe switched back to green and became clothed in complex patterns barely resembling the common script of the devices. Lines of text started flashing across the canopy with incredible speed, with some blocks appearing containing graphs of some kind. With another whirring sound, the service ladder above the elevator shaft started rising, with distortions spreading through the air where it vanished.

'Wow! Huge surprise! I can't parse a single crumb of this!' thought Jonah. 'I can stand hitchhikers, but body-snatchers? Hell no.'

Considering his options, Jonah decided it couldn't hurt to ask for his freedom.

"…hey. Mr. Robot guy. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but can I please have my body back? I don't consent to this."

Surprisingly, this time the hexagon gave a simple answer back in garbled, static-ridden English.

"No."

Jonah's fury flared like it never had before.

"OH SO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH AND NOT WEEDWACKER NOW. GREAT. GIVE ME MY FUCKING BODY BACK! IF I DON'T GET SOME EXPLANATIONS PRONTO I SW…" Jonah yelled.

Interrupting his rant, the seat-suit spread upwards, covering Jonah's mouth and reducing his vocalizations to angry puffs at the nose. Jonah's right hand now moved from the dome to the tools, picking up a small metallic rod tipped with a translucent pearly ball and holding it near the globe. In reaction to the globe's presence, the ball took on a mix of pastel colors, some clear and some almost opaque. His arm moved until the ball turned murky red, leading to him dropping the tool. He then picked up a thick needle with prongs at one end, which he connected to a wire that had sprung from the desk's surface. Inserting the needle at the globe's point caused the wire to pulse with orange energy, forming blobs which flowed back into the desk. A touchpad popped up at the point of the wire's emergence, and Jonah rapidly tapped through a series of geometric glyphs before halting completely and snapping back to rest on his legs.

The distortions in the air which seemed to be sucking up the ladder like a vacuum intensified, as did the speed of the ladder's rise, until a quick succession of slams ended with the ladder fully vanishing and the elevator shaft closing. The distortions, however, only continued to grow, and started spreading up towards the ceiling fluidly. They seemed to trace out a circle, and once the circle was completed, the bottom began to crystallize and crack repeatedly, changing faster and faster as the cracks spread. It looked like dozens of prisms forming and reforming constantly, bending and distorting the light from all around and spitting it back out randomly. Within seconds, the cracks converged, and the circle was replaced by a giant hovering sphere, covered with patterns identical to those on the globe at Jonah's desk.

Those patterns started shimmering, and a domino effect starting from the poles cascaded outwards until two pure white shockwaves formed from the merging symbols and met with an explosion of light at the sphere's equator, brightening the room drastically. The light then condensed, forming a solid white ring which then took off, expanding explosively in all directions. It quickly phased through the walls of the room, leaving the sphere looking drained and grey. Jonah was completely overwhelmed, sitting quietly until the next round of noise filled the room.

This time, it was the sound of the arched roof spreading open, with each of the six panels folding up and out like the petals of a blooming flower. They revealed a huge channel which went upwards as far as the eye could see, reaching into darkness. 'If there is a surface up there,' Jonah thought with despair, 'It's way too far to even see. I'd never make it out of here on my own. What am I going to do?'

Suddenly, the darkness of the channel was lit up by a tower of rings descending from a distant height. Each one locked in place, then projected a twelve-sided star, constructing it from four overlapping triangles. Looking closely at the nearest star, Jonah saw that each triangle was formed from text so densely packed that the characters were inseparable. The stars began to spin in alternating directions, rotating faster and faster until they became white blurs as the air began to vibrate with energy. With a bang a bright beam of light, so thin that it looked like a slice through the fabric of reality, coursed up from below and passed through the sphere's poles and into the channel above.

The sphere lit up with symbols again, this time with arcane hexagrams which formed quickly and spat out a ball of light towards a desk before disappearing. The balls of light flew straight to the seats, merging with them and forming glowing alien torsos which reached out and activated their desks, beginning to operate them like madmen. The entire room at this point was pulsing with the energy of the beam, which kept getting brighter and brighter, making it painful to look at. To Jonah's surprise, a bland voice, devoid of accent, inflection, and emotion, filled the room. At times, it paused, as if searching for the right word to use, and taken just as sound the voice was much in need of refinement, but it cut through the clutter surrounding it with a violent punch.

"Salutations… Jonah. Thank you for your invaluable assistance in reforming the bridge between our systems here and at… Zenith Station. To avoid any… unwanted attention, we will need to take some drastic measures, as only a fraction of Nadir's power has been reactivated. I am afraid this means the answers you currently seek must be postponed to a much later date. Please take this kindly, as even if you had the answers now, only your body is willing, and your… spirit is much too crippled to receive them.

"There is no need to worry, thankfully. Nadir's exemplary database has revealed to me a simple solution to each one of your present spiritual difficulties, and I am sure you will find it quite enjoyable compared to your journey to date. Even in its dilapidated state, Nadir can provide for you a… tailor-made spiritual rehabilitation which will outshine all the pleasures you have experienced so far."

The energy filling the room seemed to peak, and the suit restraining Jonah's movements released him completely, sinking into the ground and leaving him dumbstruck and sprawled out on the ground. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to flee, to do something, anything to escape, but the power in the room was so oppressive, it felt as though his strength had been snuffed out on a cellular level.

In a single instant, the entire room froze. All the aliens at their desks were halted midway through a movement, each shred of light emanating from the beam stopped and hovered where it was. Nothing moved or made a sound, and all Jonah could hear was the violent beating of his heart. Silently, the beam tore apart, ripping the sphere in two as if it were a drawing on paper, forming a tear in the cloth of existence which pushed all other things out of the way. Out from that hole came an enormous skeletal hand, which seized Jonah and ripped him out of his physical form. Now falling towards the seam, he heard a voice pass through his head—it was the same voice that had filled the room moments before, but now with the cheerful tone of a corporate phone-jockey trying to gut you of all your wealth. It was the last thing he heard before the world slipped into darkness.

"Please, enjoy your reincarnation."