Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 2.x (Bonus Chapter)

Content notice: Self-harm

Day 22

Day 19 was when I arrived here. Day 20 was supposed to be the one where I could get used to my new home. Day 22? Well, that was when the zoo "opened".

"Opened" was an odd word, since there wasn't any fence around my dome or anything. The guards merely left any restrictions there were before and video cameras were allowed to film me. There weren't as many visitors as I thought there would be; more like school classes than an overwhelming swarm. Well, technically, the number of visitors was predictable if one considered that their home VRs gave them the same experience as seeing me in person.

Crick stood before my dome, lecturing. You know, the usual first contact speech and what a pivotal moment my discovery is for their civilization. As should be expected from Crick, the speech wasn't primarily about me. Rather, it was about Crick's ego.

Here's an excerpt:

"You might still remember how my colleagues used to mock me in my youth for suggesting we were not alone. I discovered megastructures from alien civilizations, but my peers did not take me seriously. Not until a voyager arrived from the stars and dropped this alien onto our soul."

Crick then went on about how my discovery rewrote several evolutionary theories on the origin of life the Seizers had. Of course, Crick's theories always remained in the spotlight.

I barely even listened. There were more educational boards around my dome than in a museum; enough for me to occupy myself. Several of them were ingrained into the nanotech wall so that both I and the visitors could touch them. Upon touching, each showed the visitor a VR simulation.

One was about the protoplanetary disk that formed Shadowmoon's solar system. Others were about Shadowmoon's ecosystems. The one about Seizer evolution answered many questions I had had.

The board explained how Seizers lived on a planet full of supervolcanoes (hence the "fiery magma chamber" cursing) as well as solar flares and needed a meal only once a week. Therefore, they did not evolve intelligence for hunting and gathering as humans did. No, they likely did this to keep themselves safe from the environment and predators.

For this reason, they were more self-centered than humans and more distrustful of foreigners. Their minimum distance rule made sense in this light, too.

The most interesting presentation was about Shadowmoon's cultures though.

Specifically, the VR I was in was about a culture that had rejected modern-day technology. It was in a desert-free part of Shadowmoon; the foot of an enormous mountain range covered in black foliage. From it extended a river into a valley covered by meadows. At its center, trees covered a lake like parasols.

The VR allowed me to look beneath the Earth, entering a vertical cavern. It wasn't the sort of cavern with stalagmites formed by water or a digging animal. It was the sort of smooth and round cave only machines or decades of sapient dedication could build.

LED lights resting on the marble tiles like eyes illuminated my path. The cave extended into the ground like a skyscraper-sized, flipped-over tree, with each branch fanning into more and more twigs before ending in habitable bubbles.

Clever, to live underground with the solar flares and all. Did this work in the desert, too, with its softer sand?

As fascinating as the underground habitat itself was, its inhabitants topped it.

Two Seizers standing at the edge of a tunnel, punching shovels into the walls with all six arms. Some patched potholes and cracks in the marble tiles with cement. Others dug into the places that had not been tiled yet and created more space for future living bubbles.

Throughout the whole subway building, I saw Seizers from all occupations imaginable. My VR avatar swept across Seizers growing black crops, Seizers raising youngsters, and Seizers arresting outlaws; all jobs I did not see in the arcology.

No robots here. And apparently no recreational VR either, given that I saw inhabitants with real-life hobbies.

Three Seizers entertained themselves with a piece of paper that cleaned itself every time they scribbled something on it. Next to them, a fourth Seizer lay down on the ground. It was the first time I had ever seen one of these creatures lie down. Normally, their six stocky legs made it easy to sleep even while standing. Yet its faint bodily glow told me it was still alive.

When asked, the VR guide confirmed that this was a homeless beggar.

A homeless beggar much like my former bus driver back in Ernstburgh. The one who had his job destroyed by a machine.

They had no social services whatsoever here.

As the guide told me, for all technologies those Seizers rejected, they did not reject nanofactories. Thus, anyone with enough raw matter could produce whatever they wanted, but not everyone had access to raw matter. According to my guide, they believed that if they had a basic income, no-one would be motivated to work hard. The other Seizers also used to have this attitude until automation forced them to improve social services.

My first gut instinct was to curse those aliens. They let their people suffer based on stupid social Darwinist ideals.

Only then did I remember that this was basically me on Earth. I went to Burger Bob even though it didn't help me because I wanted to feel useful to society. The thought of being unemployed my whole life horrified me - even if our stupid government eventually adjusted. Humans and Seizers weren't so different beneath their skins.

I exited my VR, feeling like I had just woken up from a hard night.

My forty hours were up soon.

There was a pointy stick in my dome, now that I paid attention to it. While its tip was blunt, it had an edge as sharp as a knife. The edge was just worn enough to lend me to the conclusion that it had been forged by hand rather than with a nanofactory. Sye might have put it inside while I was still in the VR, probably under the guise that I needed new stuff to play with.

With what I had learned about the Seizers' true nature, I knew that their internal politics were nothing I should care about.

It was time to do what Sye had wanted me to do all along.

I took off my spacesuit's glove and then I sliced my wrist.

Note: Never slice your wrist in real life, guys! It's a damn ineffective way to commit suicide anyway. I'm still alive and typing this, as you can see.

More on that later.