Discomfiture soon set in. I was, in fact, not human anymore.
That fact didn't strike me as significant at first. Most of my attention drew toward and was subsequently overwhelmed by the numerously faceted yet not so numerous stimuli around me. Leaving me with little time to ponder over my sense of self. But as that initial bewilderment faded, I began to fret over the implications of what I'd become. I was in thrall to identity crisis: was I still the same person I thought I was? Will I turn into some sort of monster, or was that already a foregone conclusion?
That insecurity grated on whatever constituted my nerves. Even as I whiled away the time messing around a bit, which consisted of flattening and flipping myself like a fritter, my mind drifted back to those questions. Only to pile on more layers of uncertainty and yet more gears to grind.
Distractions from it all were few and far between. I already made several dozen circuits around the circumference of my abode, and that quickly dulled. On the bright side, I ironed out a relatively smooth cadence to my ungainly strides. I couldn't test how fast I could go. The fluid put up far too much resistance against my efforts to determine a true top speed. My little pink bastille was an impregnable thing and possibly necessary for survival, effectively barring any hopes of testing myself on the outside.
"Not that there was much for me to do anyway." Is what I came to accept, albeit with a touch of disappointment. As long as I remained this helpless, sitting here was about all I could do.
At least, that was my belief until my entire world began to flush down the drain. Quite literally.
To the naked eye, the drain plateaued at a lethargic pace. But for someone who had no eyes or a tangible sense of touch, I could feel the minuscule changes to the fluid's flow. Perhaps sensitivity to changes in my environment trailed as an addendum of my senses, or simply a result of texture. Couldn't say.
It became readily apparent that my little world was a cylindrical vessel or storage tank as the fluid level dropped far enough to expose my upper body to open air. Since I lived in it, it had to be some sort of exhibit tank or specimen container. Which of these were true wasn't of any consequence, nor did I know which to accept. I was on display either way. The thought made me a little self-conscious, as frivolous as that sounded. The idea of people looking at me when I couldn't see them was a bit disturbing, and a shameless invasion of privacy!
"Although that probably isn't that important..."
Up until now, I wasn't able to sense what was above, or really much of anything save simple textures or presence. It was just a hypothesis, but whatever the pink substance was may have blocked what I could only refer to as my sense of sight. I could clearly discern the top and bottom now, and found they were plated with a silvery metal I assumed to be stainless steel or some similar alloy. At the center of the bottom surface, which oddly enough I hadn't noticed before with my sense of texture, a circular drain with a coarsely-stippled grating sunk into the steel.
Sure enough, I was right in guessing the walls were glass, transparent, though I still couldn't see through it. The surface was blurred, in the same way the fluid blocked my perception of the floor and ceiling.
I assumed the sensory interference was by consequence rather than design. The way I saw it, no one would suspect something like me to possess sapience, let alone sight. Assuming there were people around to suspect, which there likely were. My abode was unequivocally artificial. Nature certainly had no hand in it save for maybe the materials it was made from.
I hoped nobody saw me. It would be no small surprise for someone if they noticed a mass of whatever I was flopping around in a tank, vigor and intelligence apparent.
In any case, boggled by the sudden change in environment, I was left to helplessly watch the last of my fluid wash down the grating. In a desperate but farsighted attempt, I wriggled over to catch the last drippings inside the folds of my body, just in case it truly kept me alive. Not that I had any assurance that it did, or if the measly bead of the stuff was enough as insurance against starvation, but if I was going to survive what came next anything would be enough.
An so I braced myself for whatever fate had in store for me.
Fate didn't keep me waiting. Almost immediately, the top of the tank lifted open, revealing the ceiling of my domicile to be a hinged cap to the tank. A large presence loomed so close it gave me a start. It hovered momentarily above me, pivoting this way and that as though unsure from which angle to attack. When it finally settled on a strategy, it scooped me from underneath, only to slosh me into yet another, albeit confined, container. Even with the lid firmly sealed, this time, it didn't inhibit my senses.
My senses flared, nearly blinding me as I took in my new surroundings.
The tank sat against a gray-stone wall. From my new perspective in the hands of my captor, it wasn't as big as I thought. A meter or so tall by my best estimate, and about half that in radius. Bundles of tubing and copious amounts of cabling snaked their way upward to the open, slotted alloy cap, obfuscating the myriad connections from view. I suppose the lines constituted the control and refill system once the pink stuff in the tank was emptied. As for the rhyme or reason of it was, needless to say, lost on me.
Everything that wasn't the tank was nothing short of technical. Ethereal, three-dimensional holograms, consoles, and paraphernalia I couldn't even identify cluttered the room, the room itself being very cramped and stiflingly uncomfortable to look at. A lot of it had that steampunk vibe of valves and mysterious looking gems, which was an interesting contrast against the high-tech incongruities jumbled in the mix.
Fascinated as I was by my not-so-humble beginnings, I was far more curious about the identity of my porter. To my surprise, he had more human-like qualities than I imagined, unlike my own not-so-recognizable self. Sallow, thin-faced, and remarkably wide-eyed. The man fit so well with the mad-scientist archetype, that with the long, unkempt shock of graying hair, I could've easily mistaken him for an emaciated and austere clone of the titan of physics himself. Only one piece was missing though, which was the trademark lab coat. In its place, he wore a set of white robes with a curious four-pointed star emblem to the left of his chest, close to where his heart would be.
Upon taking me into custody, his destination wound around numerous gray-brick corridors and stairs that all led upward. All the while, he walked with a lop-sided gait, every so slightly meandering to the right. It took conscious effort on his part to keep to a straight path, as though fighting an unruly limp.
"It reminds me of a certain whaling captain from long ago. Of course, without a peg of wood to stand on."
I was beginning to wonder how many more stairs he'd climb. More than half-a-dozen lingered behind, and we were poised on our ninth set when we arrived at an ominous-looking set of dark metal double-doors off to the side. Another one of those colored gems protruded from a control panel on the right-hand side. He placed a corresponding hand over top of it.
For a moment, nothing happened. His hand hovered over it, foot tapping impatiently against the stone floor. Then, a fine, green-colored laser line began a scan of his outstretched hand, moving from the tips of his fingers down to the bottom of his palm.
"This place really loves to build up this whole sci-fi motif to the limit." I half expected to see cocktail-serving androids somewhere. But some of the background feels different from what I'd expect of the genre. Who uses crystals instead of electronics?
The double doors swung open to announce the completion of the security check, to which he promptly shambled through.
It was back. That strange interference that blocked my sight before. I couldn't tell if the walls were metal or stone, obscured behind a blurry warping of the space in front of them. The same went for the floor and ceiling. They yawned open, bending the spaces to look like a bottomless void above and below. Clearly, that wasn't the case, as the eccentric man unhesitatingly walked right above and below them, either unaware or entirely unconcerned by the non-Euclidean departures from reality, and deposited my container onto an altar-like table positioned on a wide metal dais. Which, naturally, floated above the void, making a mockery the very laws of physics.
Beckoned by his entrance, he was soon joined by other robed persons who only just arrived through the double-doors. They gathered around me and the dais, deathly serious. It was difficult not to feel uneasy. They were, after all, staring at me.
Without warning, the lid on my container opened, and I was unceremoniously dumped onto the altar. Not that I felt any pain. It did, however, wound my pride a little. The man from earlier did so looking down with his eyes narrowed.
"What are you looking at?" That was, of course, a rhetorical question. I couldn't help but fume indignantly at how uncaring his eyes looked on me. As though merely an item to behold, rather than a living thing to respect.
The others pressed in closer. One of them handed the wild-eyed one what appeared to be some sort of instrument. It had the same kind of blurring affect on it, which piqued my interest. Up until now, it only applied to my surroundings, but to see the same behavior in something so small one could hold it was interesting from what I knew so far.
I watched as he lowered it into me. If I had to guess, a scalpel? It would be roughly the right size. A pocket knife wouldn't be much bigger than it though.
Before I knew it, a dense fugue took hold as my entire being tore in two.