11. THE SHAPESHIFTER (Redux)
We were walking along the highway. Me and my invisible «rider» — Gena. The highway, popularly known as the «Sixth Road», looked… wrong today. I stopped, my sole squeaking against the asphalt. How could this be?
No mud, no branches, no usual car wrecks. Amidst the all-encompassing chaos — perfectly clean asphalt, as if licked clean by a giant’s tongue. The road shone like new, reflecting the leaden sky. Alright, maybe the +Angi decided to have a community cleanup day here?
— «Gena, do you notice anything strange?»
«Scanning. Visual spectrum: Anomalous surface cleanliness. Absence of organic debris. Thermal spectrum: Normal. Electromagnetic background: Stable. Danger factor: Acceptable.»
— «Acceptable, you say… We’ll see.»
I stepped forward. The sound of my footsteps seemed deafeningly loud in this sterile silence.
Soon, a roadside motel appeared. The sign «Comfort» glowed with a soft, inviting neon, even though there hadn’t been electricity in the area for a long time. A golden light glimmered in the windows.
— «Gena,» — I froze, rubbed my eyes with a dirty glove. — «Is this a glitch? Tell me I’m dreaming.»
«Rescanning. This is not a hallucination, Carrier. The object physically exists. Thermal spectrum: Normal. Electromagnetic background: Stable. Danger factor: Acceptable.»
— «What, are you playing a broken record in there? ‘Danger factor: Acceptable…‘» — I mocked Gena.
«I do not have a drive for vinyl records,» — Gennady grumbled, with a hint of offense, it seemed to me.
— «I already got that you’re a bore, Gena, there’s light… and I think…» — I greedily inhaled the air. — «It smells like… real coffee? Gena, open my eyes! Where is the electricity coming from here? And the coffee?!»
The smell wasn’t just strong. It aggressively disturbed my sense of smell. The aroma of freshly brewed Arabica twisted into my nostrils, drowning out the stench of rot and dampness. My mouth filled with saliva so quickly I almost choked. How can a normal person even live without this drink? I certainly can’t. I was ready to sell my soul right now, figuratively speaking, for a cup of espresso.
Gena’s voice finally cut through, dry and cynical:
«Probability of real coffee presence: 0.00%. Probability of ‘Mimic’ class trap: 98%.»
— «Mimic class traps,» — I repeated, swallowing. — «That’s something new.» — «Coffee… is coffee even in Africa…» — a treacherous thought beat in my head. — «And the remaining 2%?» — I asked hopefully.
«Statistical error. Or a miracle. Do you believe in miracles, Carrier?»
— «I believe in caffeine,» — I muttered and clicked the shotgun off safety.
I approached the doors. Massive stained oak. Polished to a mirror shine. Before I could touch the handle, the doors, as if by the wave of a magic wand, silently swung open.
— «Ding!» — a little bell rang joyfully.
— «Open sesame, motherfucker…» — I muttered, pressing the stock to my shoulder, and stepped inside.
Inside, the sterility of an operating room reigned, disguised as a hotel lobby. The floor shone so brightly that my dirty, ragged figure was reflected in it. A girl stood behind a long counter. Pretty, young, in a perfectly fitted uniform. Not a spot, not a crease. She wasn’t making faces, wasn’t growling. She… smiled benevolently, sweetly.
— «Welcome!» — she said brightly. Her melodious voice sounded clear, without intonations. — «We have vacant rooms for you. And a hot dinner.»
I aimed the barrel at her. The sight looked straight into her forehead.
— «Who are you?»
— «I am the receptionist,» — she didn’t even blink. Her eyes, large and blue, seemed absolutely glass-like. — «You are tired. Lower your weapon. The coffee is getting cold.»
She looked «too» normal. Like an AI-generated image they forgot to add animation to.
«Like a picture from a children’s magazine,» I thought.
«Attention,» — Gena’s voice became harsh. — «Micro-expression analysis. Blink rate: 0 times in 60 seconds. Object’s body temperature: 12 degrees Celsius. Pulse absent. This is not a human.»
— «Gena says you’re cold,» — I said, taking a step back.
The girl’s smile grew wider. Much wider. Unnaturally so. The corners of her lips crept towards her ears, the skin on her cheeks stretched and, with a wet crackle, began to tear.
— «Gena…» — she hissed. Her voice changed, turning into the screech of metal on glass. — «Sma-art… li-ttle bo-ox…»
The light flickered and went out…
And the «girl»…
Her uniform burst, and from inside, tearing the artificial flesh, a sheaf of slimy tentacles crowned with bone needles erupted.
— «I wanted to ea-eat so badly…» — the creature howled.
«EVADE LEFT! DISTANCE CRITICAL!»
I jerked, but was too late. My human reflexes proved too slow for this world. The bone whip hit my chest like a sledgehammer. The shotgun flew out of my hands and clattered somewhere in the dark. I was thrown back, my spine smashing into a rotten counter. The wind was knocked out of me completely.
The creature leaped. Not like a human, but like a spider — unnaturally arching its limbs. I barely had time to raise my forearm, blocking the strike. It pinned me down with its entire mass. Heavy. Cold. Slimy. Its tentacles wrapped around my torso, squeezing my ribs. I heard my poor bones creaking.
— «Don’t resist…» — the creature rustled right into my face. And then its eyes changed. They became kind. Blue. Piercing. Human. — «Ko-o…» — she said in a voice I had almost forgotten. The voice of my ex-wife. — «You are tire-ed. Just res-st, honey…»
I was paralyzed. Not physically. Mentally. My brain refused to give the «Kill» order.
I stared into those eyes, and my hand holding the knife, raised for a strike, trembled limply and dropped. This was a trap. I knew it. But my body didn’t obey. Apathy covered me with a warm, downy blanket.
— «Ye-ah…» — I wheezed, relaxing my muscles. — «You’re right… I’m tired…»
Reality wavered and blurred, like watercolors in the rain. The rotten walls dissolved. The smell of dampness vanished. A sharp, itchingly familiar smell hit my nose. Mandarins. The damn mandarins that I hated. Citrus allergy…
I blinked. I was at home. Last year’s Christmas. A cheap Chinese garland blinked annoyingly in the corner. Crystal glasses stood on the table. Opposite me sat Marina. Alive. Real. My daughter’s voice — soft, pleading — broke through the noise in my ears:
— «Dad, please. Just for today. Let’s do this without politics? Let’s just sit like normal people?»
She reached out to me with a salad bowl, smiling pitifully and guiltily, trying to glue back together what had long since crumbled. To glue our family back together. And I snapped. I looked at her, but I didn’t see my daughter. I saw Them. Those pompous ones with atrophied brains, sitting in their offices, writing idiotic laws and turning the lives of ordinary citizens into a digital concentration camp with free Wi-Fi.
I saw in her this sheeple-like submission. This desire to close her eyes and munch on Olivier salad while the world, as inexorably as the coming of a new day, rolls into the abyss.
— «Normal people?» — my voice broke into a screech; I even scared myself with the sound. — «You call this normal? Gorging yourself and smiling while you’re getting screwed from all sides? You are just like them! The same blind, stupid biomass!»
Marina froze. The salad bowl trembled in her hands. Fear splashed in her eyes — not childish, but animalistic. But I couldn’t stop. I was carried away. My «domestic antagonism», the bile that had been accumulating for years, broke the dam. I yelled at her, blaming her for everything: for gas prices, for idiot officials, for the fact that she was happy with her small, wretched, cozy little world, while I, the «great unrecognized thinker», suffered from the imperfection of the universe.
She tried to object to something, quietly, with trembling lips:
— «Dad, what for?..»
I jumped up. The Demon Alcohol seized control… The chair flew back with a crash. I swung. I really wanted to hit her. To beat out of her this «normalcy», this calmness I hated so much, stinking of mayonnaise and encrusted domesticity… My fist stopped a centimeter from her face.
And then the memory changed. In reality, she had said then: «You are sick, Dad. You are just an angry, miserable old man». And left forever. But here… now… at this moment… everything happened differently.
Marina didn’t leave. She didn’t cry. She didn’t say nasty things to me. She gently intercepted my fist with her warm little palm and pressed her cheek against it. I felt her hot tears. Her breath.
— «Hush, daddy…» — she whispered with infinite love. — «You’re just tired of fighting. Everything is fine. I’m not angry. We will make peace. I won’t go anywhere.«
My heart skipped a beat. The irony of fate: now, when the real world had died, when all my predictions had come true and illusions had crumbled to dust, I was ready to give my right arm to see this very moment again. To fix it. And I was fixing it right now, in reality. I was fixing my past, and it felt very good.
— «Marina…» — I exhaled, feeling drunken tears flowing down my cheeks. — «Forgive me… I really am an old fool…»
— «I know, Dad. I love you.» — She scooped up some salad with a spoon. That very one. Delicious. Divine. — «Eat, Dad. Let’s just eat. Like normal people. Like a family.«
I opened my mouth. I wanted this Olivier so badly. I wanted this forgiveness so badly. I reached for the spoon with my lips, closing my eyes from unthinkable happiness…
At that moment, an icy, synthetic voice rang out in my head. There were no mandarins in it, no pity. Only pure mathematics.
«ATTENTION. CRITICAL FAILURE OF CARRIER’S COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS. PSI-INFLUENCE CLASS ‘A’ DETECTED.»
— «Gena… piss off… we’re having dinner…» — I muttered angrily, feeling the amazing taste of mayonnaise on my tongue.
«NEGATIVE. YOU ARE NOT HAVING DINNER. YOU ARE BEING EATEN. DEVOURED. PROTOCOL ‘MARIONETTE’ ACTIVATED. INTERCEPTING MOTOR FUNCTIONS.»
A sharp pain pierced my right arm — like an electric shock. The illusion of the crystal room cracked. Instead of a spoon with salad, the maw of a monster clicked its mandibles in front of my face, dripping with acidic saliva. I had almost shoved my own head into that maw.
— «What the?..» — I exhaled as my hand jerked toward the knife on its own.
«CALCULATING TRAJECTORY. TARGET: CENTRAL NERVE NODE…»
My hand lunged forward. It wasn’t my strike. It was the strike of a soulless machine. A fucking terminator.
Perfectly precise, monstrously fast, and absolutely ruthless. The blade entered the creature right under the chin, piercing the bone growth, muscles, and brain, and exited from the back of the head.
The creature didn’t even have time to understand what had happened. Immense surprise froze in the «kind», bottomless pools of its eyes.
The Mimic went limp instantly, like a severed puppet. Its tentacles unclasped. The illusion finally shattered into gray ash. A pile of rotten meat collapsed onto me.
«THREAT ELIMINATED. CONTROL RETURNED TO CARRIER.»
HSSSS!
It stank of scorched rubber and burnt meat so badly that it took my breath away.
The illusion fell away completely.
The pain in my arm vanished. I felt my fingers as my own again. I shoved the corpse off me and crawled to the wall, breathing heavily. I was shaking. Not from the fight. But from the fact that a second ago I was just a passenger in my own body.
I found myself in the ruins of some gas station.
No stained oak, no marble. Only trash, mold, and a skeleton behind the counter. And, of course, no coffee.
— «You…» — I spat blood. — «What are you doing, tin can? You almost broke my arm.»
«You hesitated, Carrier. Your biological firmware experienced a critical failure when confronted with mimicry. I compensated for your weakness. Do not thank me.»
I looked at my trembling hand. At the smoking knife.
— «I wasn’t planning to,» — I lied. But somewhere deep down, I understood: if it weren’t for this impassive «interception», I would have already become fertilizer in this «Comfort».
— «Alright,» — I grunted, getting up and picking up the shotgun. — «Let’s get out of here. And… Gena?»
«Listening.»
— «Next time, please warn me before you pull the strings.»
«I will try. But the probability of your survival is a higher priority for me than your comfort.»
What a son of a bitch. Electronic ass…
I didn’t say the word out loud again, after all, he had saved me once more.
I stumbled: — «Motherfucker…» — I exhaled, looking at the knife one more time. — «Another bust. Only the hateful, all-pervading smell of rot. In this damned world, it’s pretty much the main fragrance.» I looked wistfully at the empty rusty mug on the floor. — «I hate this world,» — I spat out viscous saliva that tasted like ash. — «And no mayonnaise…»
I closed my eyes. How appetizing it was, after all… That very salad…
By the way, the sign…
I looked around, raised my head. Above the entrance hung a rusty piece of metal on which you could barely read: «TIRE SHOP», in Russian. The Mimic couldn’t even read, the bitch. It read images from my head. And it communicated with us in pure Russian too…
— «The night is still young,» — I smirked, — «let’s go, sma-art bo-ox, moving on.»
> ⚠️ ENTITY STATUS: MOTOR FUNCTION INTERCEPTION SUCCESSFUL. PROTEIN CARRIER SAVED FROM SALAD.
>
> 🎭 Greetings, survivors! Have you ever wondered how vulnerable your human psyche is? The creatures in the Fog Zone have long understood: to eat a human, you don’t need to chase them. It’s enough to show them what they regret the most. First, the smell of coffee, then — the illusion of forgiveness from a daughter.
>
> 🔪 The Mimic almost got its dinner by playing on our Executioner’s guilt. And if the Smartass Jerk didn’t have yours truly sitting in his head (the impassive, mandarin-hating Gena 2.5L), the story would have ended right in this tire shop. «Protocol Marionette» is rough, it hurts, but it works. Sometimes, to survive, you have to let the machine pull the trigger for you.
>
> 💀 Keep reading: how will the SJ live with the thought that he is no longer the full master of his own body?
🔬 GENA 2.5L LABORATORY: COMMENTARY
⚠️ ENTITY STATUS: REALITY SUBSTITUTION.
🎭 Reader, did you notice the main detail? The Mimic «failed» on the language and the sign. It doesn’t know how to read human signs, it only reads feelings. The sign «Tire Shop» meant nothing to it, but «Comfort» in the SJ’s head was as bright as a flare.
🧪 And that mayonnaise… That was the taste of decaying matter, which the brain interpreted as a holiday. If it weren’t for the «cold li-ttle bo-ox» Gena, the SJ would have already finished digesting.
💀 Conclusion: In the Fog Zone, you cannot trust even your own tears. If you feel «good» — it means you are already being eaten.
