And we’re back to Doc’s perspective. This was a fun chapter to write, and I got to write some very strange dialog. There will not be an overabundance of non-human speech going forward, but I felt it was necessary for this portion.

Stick around, and find out why the caged Doc sings in the next exciting installment of Rosetta Stone: Genetic Abomination-ese.

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Chapter 9: Jailhouse Education

Day 42 (Doc)

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I woke to a slicing pain in my head. The berry bushes really did a number on me. Before my vision had even cleared, I was aware that I was no longer in the clearing at the base of the waterfall. My hands and legs weren’t bound. That was the first good news in a while. I was outside, and all around me I saw the trunks of trees in a perfect circle… No, not trees, they were too close. Bars? Yes. I was in a wooden cage of some sort. I could feel a swaying movement under me. Was I being transported? But the distant forest didn’t seem to shift as I moved. My view was mostly clear now, so I approached the edge of my cage. Not movement. I’m being suspended. What I felt was the swaying of the cage.

I was something like fifty feet above the floor of the forest. I sighed. I had a feeling I was being captured, but I had hoped they’d put me in a traditional cell. I had experience with those. This was much harder to deal with. Looking above, I saw that the cage was hung by a rope rather than a chain. Even the bars were wood. I suppose when escaping means falling to one’s death there isn’t a need for strong bars. What surprised me more is that they hadn’t just killed me. They didn’t seem evil, and I had been eating from their field. It’s just that in a world where every inmate can slowly adapt their body for escape, what is the purpose of cells? Given enough time I’d be able to grow wings or a spinneret. Maybe this society wasn’t familiar with the powers of dust? But then how were they all hybrids? I looked down once more to see if I could make out any of my captors.

Staring down at the forest floor, I didn’t see anything move. No, Looking closer, I thought I saw a shadow shift; but when I looked at the area above it there was nothing there. Had I been abandoned here? That would be crueler than simply killing me! But no, I can’t imagine the owners of those big, round eyes would be so cruel. Maybe I was going about this wrong. What did I know about the beings that had captured me? Round eyes, long arms. Long thick fingernails. And short hair all over the body. They were all heavily modified in a uniform manner to resemble animals… Monkeys? But no, the fingernails were wrong, and they didn’t have tails, as far as I could see. A combination of animals? Either way, from their bodies I could learn a lot about the way they lived. The long arms suggested climbing, so they probably lived in caves or trees. Of course!

I turned my eyes back towards the canopies and once again checked for movement among the leaves. I was confident of my guess, but it was still a good ten minutes before I caught any movement. One of them was hanging upside down on a branch maybe fifty feet out, watching me and clutching a rope. After meeting his eyes, I followed the course of the rope up above my cage. Was he holding the cage up? That shouldn’t be possible. Then I saw a glint of obsidian above me, and a stick and rope contraption rigged next to my hanging cage. So that was their game. If he released the rope, an obsidian shard would swing down and sever my rope, ending any thoughts of escape. No matter what change I made, the rope would be cut well before I regained consciousness. This was a fairly sophisticated trap, perfectly suited for prisoners with command of dust. I could now confirm that these people weren’t savages. I would need to convince them I wasn’t a threat, or I might die up here.

“Hey! Hey you!” I shouted at my guard, but he only blinked slowly and continued to watch me. After a few repetitions of my call the most I was able to produce was a yawn. I sat down in the middle of the cage and decided to meditate. In my mind, I visualized my dust, and saw that I hadn’t recovered too much. In a day or two I might be able to effect a change, so long as I got regular food. Still, without a change in scenery I’d never get the opportunity.

It was several hours before anything changed. The guard was where he had always been, hanging from the tree and watching me like a somnolent statue. Suddenly another rope dropped a few feet from the edge of the cave. I crawled over to the closest wall and looked up. Ever so slowly another of the creatures was making it’s way down towards me, head first. This one was more lithe than the bulky guard, more curvy. A woman. I think she may have been in the group that captured me, but I couldn’t be sure. Her short trip down the rope took an agonizingly long time, but after maybe five minutes she reached the point closest to the bars, and we looked at each other for a good long beat.

She, like the others, had a wide face and black button nose. Thin hair covered her face and body, with an almost red head of more human-like hair on her scalp. A wide dark mouth and thick lips. What really stood out was her eyes. The pupils were almost invisible, and the rich red-brown color seemed to almost glow. I couldn’t tell if it was a tapetum lucidum like I had given Harper or something else, but they seemed brighter than the others of her species I had seen so far. She wore the hide of some sort of beast over her lower body like a pair of rough shorts, and a wrap for her upper body. Despite her alien appearance she maintained a very human charm. In a different situation I might have been entranced. She was, after all, the first member of the opposite sex I had encountered. At the moment however all I could feel was intrigue and relief. Her eyes looked curious and intelligent, and this cage and her clothes were proof that her people maintained human intelligence. If we could communicate I might be able to explain my situation.

“Waaah wah waaaaaaah” She points one clawed finger at me and makes it immediately clear that there is a language barrier. This will be difficult. It seems that these people have changed their vocal chords as well. There is a lot of meaning in the sounds, clearly a full language, but I’m unsure if my own voice box will be able to reproduce them.

I point to my self. “I am Doc.” I realize she likely won’t understand, but at the very least I have to establish that I am intelligent and rational.

Pointing at herself, she lets out a short, higher pitched “Waah nii” I tried to repeat it back, pointing at her. The result was a quizzically turned head and a slight grin. From her shorts she produced a branch of the bush I had been dosed with the previous day, and slowly pointed at me. I was concerned she would dose me again, and it must have shown on my face, because she slowly shook her head in the negative. Great! At least some of our nonverbal communication was global then. She pointed at the branch again and back to me. This time I had the good sense to look sheepish and bowed my head, doing my best apologetic face.

With that, she nodded and reached back into her shorts. She produced some small fruits and leaves and set them at the edge of the gave, gave me a final “Waaah” and started her way back up the rope, moving even slower this time. When she was a ways up, I moved to the food she had left and took a good long look at it. It seemed unlikely they would try and drug me again now that I was in their power, but given the physiology they all had it was possible food they deemed safe might be poisonous to me. Still, I was trapped, and unlikely to receive anything else, so I picked up a fruit and took a bite.

Delicious! Not as good as the berries, but then it didn’t seem to come with a hangover either. I had wondered at the lack of water provided, but these fruits were so water rich there would be no problem there. I wolfed down the fruit, and tried the leaves as well. Not as good as the fruit, but they didn’t taste medicinal, so I ate them as well. Then I returned to the middle of the cage and decided to think more on how I could better communicate with my new acquaintance when and if she returned. I started on a mental list of gestures and facial expressions that I thought of as fairly universal in humans. Smile, frown, head tilting, pointing. I knew these seemed to be constant based on our earlier exchange. What about open palms, shrugs, crying, laughing? I thought it best to stay non-verbal for now, or to try and ape their language if possible. Laughing could sound aggressive if you didn’t understand the meaning, and anyways I didn’t have a reason to laugh at the moment.

Next I thought back to her appearance. I thought I had discovered the source of their genetics finally. They had all changed themselves to more closely resemble sloths. It matched with the claws and long limbs, and the slow movements I had seen from them so far. Of course they weren’t really sloths, they had just appropriated some features, so I couldn’t be sure of their capabilities from what I knew. It was good to feel a little more sure of my situation, but I was becoming more and more sure I was safe here. They had acted to terminate a threat to their land, but since I’d been captured I’d been treated fairly civilly. My primary fear at the moment was for my brothers. Had they been captured as well? What if it had been a predator that had pushed me into the river? I had no way of knowing whether I’d ever see them again. I hoped they were safe.

I once again began my exercise regimen, working each muscle group. After all the sleep I’d gotten recently I was feeling restless, and although the cage had enough room to move about I was nervous to stand in the seemingly fragile construction lest it start to swing. Looking over to my guard I realized he had closed his eyes, still holding the rope. That was terrifying. What if in his sleep it slipped from his hands? “Hey! Hey, wake up you!” Slowly he opened one eye and then shut it again. Well, It was nerve-wracking, but there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. If he really was asleep, at least I might have opportunities to make changes if I had to in the coming days. I once more started on my exercises and spent the remainder of the day thinking on my brothers and the mysterious sloth girl I had met. I was committed to better expressing myself when next we met.

When night fell, with nothing better to do, I went to sleep.

Day 43

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When I woke in the pre-dawn light My mysterious visitor was already hanging next to the cage watching me. I jumped back a bit when I saw the big round eyes watching my sleeping form. “Waaah haw Waaah Ni!” she tilted her head again and looked down, where she had already placed another bundle of food, the same as yesterday. I nodded my head and brought my hands together in a gesture of thanks. I tried my hand at her name again with a “Waah” But I’m sure I was nearly unintelligible. I approached the edge of the cage slowly and reached for the bundle. As I did this, she reached forward and touched my short hair with one clawed finger, then pulled away. Her eyes were wide, like a child touching an animal for the first time. Then she began her ascent back up to the canopy. She returned in the evening with dinner, and again I tried to get her to speak as much as possible. I noticed the first vocalization “Waaah haw” was always the same, and I took it to be a greeting. I continued my exercises and watched my guards as they switched out twice, trying with each new arrival to initiate communication to no avail. When night fell I once again curled up in the center of the cage and fell into an uneasy sleep, thinking of my brothers and their ultimate fate. If they had been captured they would have been placed nearby, right?

Day 44

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When I woke up Waah was once again looking at me, although she looked up as soon as she noticed my eyes were open. “Waaah haw, Waah” I parroted, combining the greeting with her name a I understood it. She blinked and looked a little startled, then strung together a long string of sounds I couldn’t catch. Again the food, and again she reached to touch my head, but pulled back before she reached the bars. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the guard was attentively watching our exchange. She followed my gaze, then let out a string of language in the direction of the guard, who looked away. She started back up the tree, but I was puzzled at what had happened. It looked like she had a lot of authority for a young woman. I would have to make sure to stay on her good side. The rest of the day proceeded as the previous, and once more I drifted off hoping for the safety of my strange little family.

Day 45

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Today I woke up with some more memories. Most of them as usual were of genetics and various animals and mutations, but I also got a healthy dose of language this time. I now knew that in time I would understand snippets of several human languages, although whether they were even still spoken was an open exception. The Latin I had taken in made sense of many previous memories on evolution and species names. More importantly, the fundamentals of language I had gathered showed the similarities between all languages, and might be of use in communicating with the sloths. I stared at the ceiling for a while as I took everything in, and when I turned my head Waah was watching as always. Her eyes looked inquisitive and I could tell she knew something was different today. I greeted her, and tried to absorb every bit of language I could as we had our usual short conversation. I thought I’d try a bit more today, so I pointed at the food and tried a lower sound I’d heard used several times while she was placing my meals. She seemed to grasp the idea and shook her head before issuing a shorter “Ni” sound and pointing at the bundle. I continued this for a few minutes, pointing at objects in our field of view and trying to repeat after her as she named them. After a while, I pointed back to myself and repeated my name a few times. With sparkling eyes she tried her hand. It was a challenge, but eventually we got to something like “Naw”.

Day 46

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I continued my vocabulary game with Waah today, and worked on picking up linking words and sentence structure from any complete sentences that passed between us. When she had left after our morning routine, I turned inward and took a look at my dust. It had brightened a fair amount over the last few days. The fruit I was eating didn’t seem to contain much, so the overall reserves weren’t noticeably larger, but much of my depleted portion was once again shining brightly. After a few minutes of watching it, I noticed it seemed to pulse faintly in an ever-changing pattern of slow and quick bursts. I spent most of the day just watching it, trying little experiments with breathing, heart rate and state of mind to see if I could find a pattern to the pulses, but my physical state seemed not to effect it in any meaningful way.

In the evening Waah returned and we continued my language education.

Day 50

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I’ve continued my education over the last few days, and diligently researched the pulses in my dust. I’ve noticed similarities to language theory in the pulses, something like a code. I can’t begin to make sense of it, and I can only assume I’m over-thinking things. How could the dust communicate? Likely I was seeing patterns where there weren’t any because I’ve been spending all day on language training lately.

Last night I had a dream where my brothers were stolen from me by a giant bird with razor teeth and a giant mouth. I watched as it pushed me from the bridge before slowly devouring them one at a time. I awoke screaming and Waah almost let go of her rope in surprise. I apologized and she looked questioningly at me. I did my best to explain the situation to her, but the concept was difficult to get across. I hadn’t yet found a way to communicate the concept of my brothers to her without one present to point at. I finally managed to get across that I was worried for others that looked like me, and that there were very few of us, using my fingers to count us out. She looked thoughtful, and then gripped my hand through the cage. She had a resolute look in her eyes. And with that she turned and climbed back into the tree.

I can’t pretend to know what decision had been reached, but she seemed sympathetic. It was a one in a million shot that Harper and the others would ever come across this tribe in the expansive forest, but with any luck I now had an ally in seeking them out. I fervently hoped it wouldn’t be too late when they were found.

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And Waah joins the cast properly. It will be nice to have someone to write that doesn’t have a tortured past. She’s a smart little sloth person, and you can expect a lot more of her tribe before Doc and co part ways with the forest. What’s going on with Dust? Why does it pulse, why does it hum? Why sloth people? Lots of mysteries, few answers, but we’ll get there.

As always, comments and ratings are welcome, and criticism encouraged. See you next time!