Where the F**k Am I?

The first thing I see when I come to is a closeup of an old wrinkled face.

The creature is leaning in close, blocking out warming rays of sun, flooding my smell receptors with their repulsive odor. I’m still not sure how I got here, or even where “here” is, or, admittedly, who I am, and this is what I have to wake up to. That’s my luck right there.

“Are… are you alive?” Asks the old-timer, seemingly as equally confused as I am.

Am I? I grumble an incomprehensible sound in response, which he accepts as an acknowledgment.

“Are you hungry, maybe?” Gramps inquires. Now that he mentions food, it occurs to me how famished I am.

“Pffft, what kind of question is this? Bring what you have!” I mouth with seemingly zero effect on the geezer—he does not move. Are we speaking different languages, or perhaps his mental screws need a bit of tightening?

“What should I call you?” Another dumb question. How the fuck should I know—you tell me!

Come to think of it, the whole concept of identifying individuals by sets of letters somehow seems foreign to me. That exceptional stench, though, I could probably recognize from a block away. Ewww.

Ignoring the question, I raise my head and take in the surroundings. I’m in what can only be described as a cliché living room of an elderly person: the space is cluttered with excessive furniture with two worn out armchairs pointing at an old TV set covered with a knitted sheet. Endless shelves and cupboards are stuffed with books, picture frames, statuettes, glass dishes, and other useless crap, all blanketed with a thick layer of dust. A sun-bleached carpet on the floor contrasts with the color of heavy drapes on the sole window, while a faux-gold-plated ceiling lamp imitating a candelabra completes the decor.

I still don’t remember anything from my life before I woke up here, but it’s safe to assume that this is the lamest interior I’ve ever graced with my presence.

Shaking off the last dregs of grogginess, I tentatively move my limbs, one by one. Satisfied that everything seems to be in working order, I get up. The grandpa backs off a bit, but keeps his inquisitive glance glued to me.

Moving slowly, I circle the room, until I find a door to what seems to be the kitchen. Success! I cast a peek back at the coot, and having received no prohibitive visual clues, I step through the threshold.

The smell here is orders of magnitude better. Perhaps because there’s no one to stink it up, or maybe due to a bowl of lukewarm pasta on the table. Not my favorite cuisine, I realize, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I make a beeline towards the dish, and poke my nose in for a probing sniff—I might be ravenous, but my instincts prevent me from digging in without at least a baseline due diligence.

“What the hell!!!” A shrill yell shocks me like a bucketload of ice-cold water. Admittedly, having been focused on food, I failed to notice the fogey slinking into the kitchen. Startled, I accidentally knock the bowl off the table, shattering it into an exquisite collage of clay shards and tomato sauce.

“Idiot! Bastard! What have you done?!?” Shouts the fossil, brandishing a rusty golf club that somehow magically materialized in his hand. “C’mere, I’ll knock you out!”

In an instance, that irrational feeling of safety, steaming from the fact that I regained consciousness—vulnerable and confused—in that man’s apartment and thus logically attributed my rescue from whatever cataclysm I endured earlier to him, is gone, replaced with an overwhelming sense of threat and an instinct to defend myself.

“Get the fuck away from me, relic!” I hiss.

That stops him right in his tracks, the rage lines in his face instantly replaced by dread.

“You… you… you can talk?” He mutters. No shit, shrivelly carrot!

Like a piranha drawn to blood, my instinct kicks in, sensing confusion and fear in an adversary, making me step threateningly towards him, shrieking a terrifying war cry.

“I… I… just wanted company…” The creature is still stuttering, backing away. “So expensive… They didn’t tell me that…”

He does not finish the sentence. The old grump’s slipper skids on the bolognese-adorned tiles, throwing him off balance. Poor fella flails his arms in a futile attempt to grab onto something before hopelessly toppling backwards. The metal club clanks on the floor roughly at the same time as I hear a sickening crack of the skull bone kissing a corner of the kitchen counter.

My new friend hits the floor with a thud, taking whatever information he knew about me with him. There goes my chance of finding out what they didn’t tell.

Past the immediate danger, as adrenaline dissipates, I’m swamped with fatigue. Almost involuntarily, I slum right there on the floor, and doze off.

***

A piercing beeping noise plucks me awake. The annoying sound seems to be coming from… inside me?

I can clearly smell a sharp, coppery scent, originating just inches away. Blood?

In the pitch-black of my closed eyes, there’s a blinking message:

Autonomous unit CAT-1 (AI model v. 0.9.1-BETA)
Battery remaining: 5%
Proceed to a charge pod or switch to hibernate mode

The first thing I see when I groggily blink the text away is a closeup of an old wrinkled face.

This story has originally appeared on majeris.substack.com