Chapter ERROR (Inprocessing)

Do'ormo'ot trotted partway across the courtyard, the sound of his shod hooves on the stone muted, like he was trotting across packed dirt rather than black stone. He stopped in roughly the middle of the courtyard, looking around.

The fortress was tall. At least a hundred feet, maybe more, with a single tower raising up into the sky almost as tall as the main fortress. It was all black stone that felt dry and dusty even though it was solid. The black color hurt the eyes to stare at, as if it was sucking the light from a person just to stare at it. There were windows and gaps in the stonework, but no sign of light or movement. The citadel was ugly, almost unfinished looking, with the sold entrance being nothing but a black metal double door in a peaked arch.

The courtyard itself was empty, featureless. The wall around it was made of closely interlocked stone blocks with no sign of mortar, just as if they had adhered to one another. The sky was purple with hints of deep indigo and streaks of lavender.

After a while Do'ormo'ot began to get annoyed. He was supposed to be a prisoner but all he was doing was standing in the courtyard by himself. Snorting with irritation he trotted toward the walls.

Within a half dozen steps it felt like he was trying to push through a sandstorm, his hooves became heavy, he almost had to lean forward as if there was a pressure on him, and he began trembling with weakness.

By a dozen steps he gave up, turning around and heading back for the middle of the courtyard.

His steps were easier.

He tried several different directions, getting the same results each time with the two notable exceptions of walking toward the citadel and trotting toward the gate.

When he reached the gate the five nodes, arranged in a rough pentagon, rotated and opened to reveal the eyes. A line extended beneath the nodes and split apart to become a fang filled maw.

"Prisoner 4582143," the voice said. It was strange to Do'ormo'ot's ears. Like it was different words and syllables and sounds jammed together to make the sounds. He identified three different female voices on the numbers even as the voice continued. "You are being inprocessed. Do you have an inprocessing request?" the strange aggregated voice asked.

"I wish to speak to whomever is in charge," Do'ormo'ot demanded.

"Prisoner 4582143 request," the voice paused. "Denied."

Do'ormo'ot just stared. "What do you mean 'denied', I demand to speak to someone!"

"Prisoner 4582143 request," the voice paused. "Denied. Insufficient privileges."

Do'ormo'ot began shaking in rage. Didn't these jumped up lemurs understand who he was? He was a Most High Direct Action Agent of the Unified Executor Council! A simple memo from him could get an entire world scorched! A word from him could get their families imprisoned in a hard labor mine for the rest of their lives in Lanaktallan Space.

"Prisoner 4582143 is not in Lanaktallan Space. Examples are irrelevant," the voice said.

Do'ormo'ot opened his mouth to argue and stopped.

He hadn't vocalized those thoughts, had he?

Whinnying in anxiety Do'ormo'ot trotted backwards far enough the eyes closed and the nodes rotated, the mouth thinned and melted into the supporting bars. Do'ormo'ot turned and trotted toward the citadel.

He stopped a few dozen feet from it.

I will go no further until someone forces me to. Now is the time for passive resistance, Do'ormo'ot thought to himself.

Do'ormo'ot folded his legs and sat down on the stone, waiting.

Time crawled by. Do'ormo'ot got slightly thirsty. Just enough that he was aware he was thirsty, but not the maddening urgent thirst. It was easy to ignore but kept popping back to remind him he was starting to get thirsty.

The citadel ignored him as he ignored it.

Do'ormo'ot looked up at the sky, squinting, and found nothing but vivid purple streaked with lavender with hints of indigo deeper in. No patterning, just random streaks and swirls that slowly came apart or shifted as he watched. There was no source of the steady illumination, but it was all around him as if he was surrounded by light emitting nanites like he had seen in a few high tech labs he had been sent to destroy. There was no sun, no stars, no moon. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't see a single star in the sky.

Just purple on and on and on seemingly forever.

As he watched a chunk of debris the size of a small ground vehicle struck nothing and broke apart. Do'ormo'ot realized that several of the pieces that had broken off of the piece of debris were larger than the piece of debris had been to begin with. Every so often something small enough to be unseen at that distance cracked against nothing with a flash that was muted within a few feet of the impact.

Soon the sky seemed to press in. There was no reason for it, it just began to feel to Do'ormo'ot that the sky was slowly pressing down on him. That the invisible field that small pieces of debris exploded against had failed and now the purple was pressing on him.

His stomachs were signalling that he would be hungry soon as he huddled down and covered his eyes with his hands. He was going to be hungry soon and was starting to get thirsty.

After a bit the fear lifted and he opened his eyes.

He realized with a shock that he had straight purplish black streaks extending from him, like some kind of fringe made of thin fibers. With a panic he brushed at them but they only stuck his his fingers. Whinnying in fear he managed to get the fibers off by brushing them with his hands and then rubbing his hands together.

It wasn't until he looked at the palms of his hands that he realized that the black stuff hadn't vanished, but now his palms were covered with a layer of hard looking glossy black material.

He worked a fingernail under the edge of the material and tried to pry it up and then jerked his hand away at the sudden spark of pain. Steeling himself he tried again, only to get the feeling of peeling away a scab that was still thickly attached to the skin. He managed to pull the edge up, moaning in pain, and his eyes all opened when thick red blood started to flow.

It turned black a fingerwidth from the edge of the coating on his palms, then suddenly hardened, turning a glossy black.

Do'ormo'ot looked over his body to see spots of thinly layered black on his flanks, on his upper torso, on his legs and arms. He felt his neck and head and found spots the size of his palm here and there. He tried to peel one plate on his chest off and stopped when the pain from trying to tear it off got too much.

It felt like he was trying to rip away a thick scab.

Do'ormo'ot got up, slowly, his legs shaking, and looked down. The outsides of his legs that were unprotected by his sitting stance had spots of thin black material over the flesh and hair of his hide.

I can't stay out here, he realized. Taking a few deep breaths to steel himself, he trotted to the double doors. As he climbed the steps the opened silently although Do'ormo'ot could swear he heard a creaking sound far away, almost muffled.

The being that appeared made Do'ormo'ot skitter back slightly, his hooves thumping on the stone.

It was a biped, taller then Do'ormo'ot, wider than him. Completely covered in a heavy black robe, a hood covering its head, and a black mask covering its features that was shaped like a human skull. It stepped to the side and made a grandious motion for Do'ormo'ot to enter.

Shaking his head, Do'ormo'ot shuffled back down off the steps that led up to the door.

The door swung silently shut, leaving Do'ormo'ot alone in the black stone courtyard under a luminous purple sky that pressed in at him.

A mangled hydrogen, disfigured and scarred, hit something that didn't exist a few hundred yards from the courtyard and deflected off of it with a bright flash a sharp crack that made Do'ormo'ot's ears hurt. The sky began to press down on him and he swallowed thickly. He was starting to get thirsty and hungry.

Do'ormo'ot covered his face in his hands and cried. The tears were hot feeling and when he pulled his hands back he realized, with horror, that his hands, covered in a thin layer of the black substance, were now smeared with blood. As he stared the blood shivered, turned to dust, and fell from his hands, wafting away and dissolving.

His skin felt like it was going numb and he opened his eyes and looked down, startled to find the black patches had thickened and begun to spread, the leading edges thinner than the thick centers. In some places the patches had developed eye-watering spiral patterns or strange, almost organic looking, curved sections.

Shuddering, Do'ormo'ot struggled to his feet, able to feel where the edges of where the black chunks and his skin met by the way it pulled uncomfortably, swallowed thickly to banish his lingering thirst, and trotted up the stairs.

Again, the door swung open and that robed human, his body hidden by his mask, gloves, and hooded robe, stood in the middle of the entryway. The human turned, moving to the side, and motioned for Do'ormo'ot to enter.

Looking behind him with his rear eyes, feeling dread fill him, he entered the hallway. The doorway slowly shut.

The interior of the citadel felt dim, even though Do'ormo'ot could see clearly. Just smoothed black stone cubes piled on one another so they fit perfectly. The hallway had no decoration, no ornamentation, just featureless black stone.

Do'ormo'ot blinked his side eyes and the robed figure had vanished as if he never existed.

From the perfectly clear dimness a figure slowly approached. Do'ormo'ot backed up until his rear hit the door as a black splotch appeared, then slowly grew larger as if it was moving toward him without moving at all. From within the black splotch a figure emerged. Black robed, white mask, white gloves, no trace of their flesh at all.

The black mist around it convulsed, rippled, and sucked into a point behind the figure.

"You are Prisoner 4582143. Respond," the figure intoned, the voice coming from far away.

Do'ormo'ot just stared.

What kind of interrogation facility is this? he wondered, moving his dry tongue around in his mouth, trying to moisten it.

Do'ormo'ot just stood there, refusing to answer, as the figure intoned the shame phrase twice more.

"Prisoner 4582143 has displayed non-compliance passive resistance. Level One Negative Stimulation for five seconds will commence," the figure intoned. Again the sentence was made of up of words and sounds taken from different sources to create an atonal ear jarring speech that made Do'ormo'ot feel uneasy. The 'eight' in his number was screamed by a female in pain.

Before Do'ormo'ot could answer or even really parse what was happening it felt like strong hands grabbed the top of his skull and began pressing fingers into his eyes. He could see clearly, his vision was unblurred, but it felt like it regardless. The pain was intense and Do'ormo'ot tried to scream but instead gagged and choked as it felt like his airway suddenly had a thick band pressing against it.

The pressure suddenly released.

"You are Prisoner 4582143. Respond," the figure ordered.

"Yes," Do'ormo'ot said, licking his lips. His tendrils hung limply, several of them now nothing but unmoving black material.

"Prisoner 4582143, you will follow me. Comply," the figure intoned, turning around by simply, suddenly, seeming to just melt into itself them back out. The figure began moving down the hallway.

Do'ormo'ot could still remember the feeling of having his eyes pressed in and the band around his throat. He knickered in fear and followed, his hooves making a dull thumping sound on the stone. It? he? she? both? neither? led him up straight flights of stairs, down claustrophobia inducing tight circular staircases, down hallways, all of which were unmarked, unrecognizable from one another.

Finally the hallway ended in a doorway made of black metal that looked slick and oily to the touch that swung open. Beyond was a seating couch made for a Lanaktallan, but the flat of the couch was hard with fist sized convex areas, like balls that had risen only an inch above the surface of some strange liquid. Beyond that was desk, made up of twisted and strange shapes locked together to form the semblance of a desk. It looked like nude female and male Lanaktallans contorted and stretched, compressed and twisted, to create the shape. Behind the desk was a chair, the sitting surfaces covered in wide square spikes that were only an inch or so high.

The figure stepped to the side and motioned for Do'ormo'ot to enter.

Trembling with fear he did so. When the door slammed shut Do'ormo'ot opened his rear facing eyes, only to see a blank stone wall. When he looked forward a figure was sitting in the chair, robed, gloved, the mask subtly different than the other bipeds that Do'ormo'ot had seen.

"Prisoner 4582143, sit. Comply," the figure behind the desk ordered.

Do'ormo'ot moved forward, looking around the room. The black stone walls seemed to lean in slightly, the corners felt off, as if they weren't ninety degree angles yet had a perfect sharpness at the same time that told him his senses were lying, the corners could be laser measured as perfect right angles.

He settled onto the couch, the bumps just smooth protrusions that didn't bother him. He licked his jowls, swallowing thickly. He was starting to get thirsty and his stomachs were warning him he was going to be hungry soon.

"Prisoner 4582143, known as Do'ormo'ot. Executor Corps Direct Covert Action Directorate," the figure intoned. The mask didn't move, the words came to Do'ormo'ot's ears from different locations in the room. Sometimes a whisper, other times a scream, different voices for different words, sometimes even different syllables.

The effect made Do'ormo'ot shudder even as the figure kept speaking.

"Captured in the Oort Cloud of Red Cloud Nebula stellar system LNX-3842," the figure continued. "Determined to be in possession of proscribed warfare materials, to include, but not limited to: attack nanites, biological weaponry, chemical weaponry, thorium anti-matter weapons in near-planet cracker range. Determined to be in possession of operational plans to deploy such weaponry against Terran Confederacy Member Worlds and Terran Descent Human worlds. Determined to have been behind no less than three attacks up Member Worlds resulting in loss of life in excess to thirteen billion."

The figure stopped speaking and time crawled by. Do'ormo'ot kept swallowing, the slight thirst making his mouth thick with gummy saliva.

"Field trial and summary judgement determined that Subject Do'ormo'ot and fellow Direct Covert Action Warfare Specialist were agents engaged in wide scale sabotage during a time of war. Judgement resulted in transfer to The Black Citadel as Prisoner 4582143," the figured intoned. "End of Line."

Again the silence stretched out. After a bit Do'ormo'ot glared at the figure behind the desk.

"I demand water and food," he started.

"Prisoner 4582143 possesses insufficient privileges for water or food. End of Line," the figure intoned. The last part was said in a dead, emotionless, mechanical voice that the timbre suggested was male.

"I want water," Do'ormo'ot said. "I'm thirsty."

The figure just repeated itself.

Do'ormo'ot shifted on the couch. The upraised sections, just gentle curves extending up an inch, were starting to get uncomfortable. Some of them were pressing muscle against ribs. The couch was slightly too wide for comfort, making it so his legs were separated just a bit too far that was slowly becoming uncomfortable.

"Prisoner 4582143, state your name for the record. Comply," the figure said.

"I will do no such thing," Do'ormo'ot snapped, shifting on the couch.

"Prisoner 4582143 has displayed defiance and refusal to follow orders. Level One Negative Stimulation will be applied for five seconds," the figure stated. "End of Line."

Before Do'ormo'ot could answer it felt as if someone with strong, hard fingers was pulling his jaw down, squeezing the bottom of his jaw, their fingers finding nerve clusters and crushing them against his jawbone. Do'ormo'ot moaned in pain, all six of his eyes crossing.

When the fingers released Do'ormo'ot slumped on the couch.

"Prisoner 4582143, state your name for the record. Comply," the figure said.

"Do'ormo'ot 62471," Do'ormo'ot said.

"State your nation of origin. Comply," the voice was still jarring.

"Unified Species Council," Do'ormo'ot answered, slumping slightly.

"Escort the prisoner to his cell. End of Line," the figure said.

As Do'ormo'ot watched black mist rose up from the floor, surrounding the figure on the other side of the desk. The door behind him, that was not there a moment ago, opened to reveal another hooded robed figure, their features concealed by a black mask. The mist vanished as Do'ormo'ot started to stand and almost collapsed as his muscles cramped.

"You will follow me. Comply," the figure at the door stated.

Do'ormo'ot nodded, swallowing, the slight feeling of thirst becoming more nagging.

He stumbled after the figure, the cramps in his muscles painful as they eased up. Again, up stairs, down stairs, around corners, down long narrow passages. Finally the figure stopped at a door that had a handle-pull cover over a narrow slot at eye level.

As Do'ormo'ot approached, the door slowly swung open to reveal a square cell with a window. Beyond the window was the endless purple sky.

Shaking, Do'ormo'ot stood at the doorway, unwilling to enter the cell. It had no place to lay down, no place to eliminate waste, no features at all except black stone.

"Prisoner 4582143, enter your cell. Comply. This is a Level Two Negative Stimulus Warning," the figure intoned.

Trembling, Do'ormo'ot entered the cell, turning around to face the door.

There was no sign of the figure as the door slowly shut with a bang. For a moment there was silence, then sounds started to come to Do'ormo'ot. Crying, weeping, screaming, prayers in strange languages, insane howling, all coming from far away.

Do'ormo'ot closed his rear eyes so he didn't have to look at the purple sky beyond.

All I must do is hold on. Sooner or later an opportunity to escape will present itself, he thought to himself.

Gibbering laughter from just outside his door was his only answer.