The Pod

Cool air, salt, and burned steel all wafted about. Now, there was only gray, and a light rocking that had seemingly always been present.

(Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!)

For some time, the presence wasn’t truly aware of itself. It was only aware of the smell and sounds that permeated their way in. The stench of cool, acrid air, the sound of

(Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!)

something wallowing to and fro, and the slight sting of salt.

It wasn’t until it had something substantial to focus on, that the presence truly became aware of its presence, of its consciousness. That incessant voice that droned on some unintelligible drivel

(Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!)

is what pulled it forth from the deepest gray depths of its own mind.

He, it thought, not it. It was his first true coherent thought since his consciousness had awoken again. He knew very little, unsure even of what he was, aside from the fact that it was a he.

The more his thoughts overtook the darkness that ruled over his mind, the more he became aware of himself. After a while, he realized that the rocking from side to side must mean that he was more than a disembodied consciousness, he must have a body. This thought overjoyed him, for the first time, he thought that he was real, and not just a lunatic mind in the aether.

(Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!)

He then realized the incessant voice spoke his language, which led him to remember that he was hungry. At this thought, everything clicked. He was a man.

A man with his eyes closed and mind shut off from the world.

He struggled for some time to feel his own body, but soon he’d felt his head, then his hands. Finally, his stomach growled loud enough to awaken the rest of his body.

When he was finally able to peel open his eyes, they were dry and stung, like they’d been filled with salt. He was greeted with something he didn’t expect, though he wasn’t sure what to expect at all. He was laid flat on a cushioned table or seat, surrounded by a steel case. A few straps around his torso held him to the table, likely to keep him from rolling off as the steel case bobbed about.

It rocked from side to side almost rhythmically, and a small porthole on either side showed that it was caused by waves. The portholes seemed to both be placed intentionally at the waterline of whatever kind of vessel he was in, and with every undulation the waters seemed to push their way up the thick glass on one side while receding on the other.

“Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!” A happy-go-lucky mechanical voice chirped from a small speaker above his head.

“Food,” he mumbled quietly, as he did he realized just how weak he felt. It was as if whatever fog his mind was in still enveloped his muscles.

“Feeding time confirmed!” The happy-go-lucky voice chimed. As it did, the metal above his face seemed to come forward and split, dropping a metallic tube onto his chest.

Suddenly, his arms no longer felt weak, and they jolted forward to grab whatever spoil the voice had bestowed to him. The tube felt familiar in his hands, and a word flashed in his mind that he didn’t fully recognize: toothpaste.

It took him a few seconds to understand the markings scrolled across the semi-metallic white tube. But after some strain he recognized the letters that spelt out in official-looking block text, “Standard Ration Type III, Serving Size: 1 collapsible tube.”

He scrambled to peel off the small tab of tape that held the threaded cap in place, then turned that off as well. Before even thinking about what this mysterious food was or where it may have come from, he squeezed it directly into his mouth.

He was not disgusted or elated, he was simply perplexed. The paste was gritty and thick, but seemed to lack any flavor. Even with his dulled memory and sense, he knew food was supposed to have a taste, but this paste just seemed to float in his mouth like a neutral medium. When he swallowed it however, he realized it did satiate his hunger, which made him smile lightly.

Before delving in for another squeeze, he held out a finger and squeezed some onto the tip. The paste was grey and homogeneously chunky. Another word he didn’t fully recognize flashed before his mind’s eye: anti-seize.

He grunted and decided he had little choice. And greedily squeezed the rest of the tube into his mouth, swallowing it with one thick, laborious gulp.

“Feeding time complete!” The voice chirped from some unknown area as a small arm with a bucket on the end seemed to push itself from the side of the steel encasement, “Please deposit all waste into the receptacle to commence free time!”

He held the tube for a moment more, hesitant to give up his only source of food to the unknown beast that spoke from steel.

“Please deposit all waste into the receptacle to commence free time! Compliance is compulsory!” The voice said, with its happy-go-lucky tone not faltering, even as its words grew threatening.

He squeezed the tube one last time, and sighed when nothing came forth. Resigned, he dropped the empty Ration Type III into the bucket, and it quickly retracted into the wall.

“Free time commencing, you have one hour for leisure!” As it made its declaration, the straps around his torso loosened, and retracted, reminding him of seatbelts.

What is a seatbelt? He questioned to himself as he threw his legs off the table. The vessel he was in was very small, barely tall enough for him stand up straight, and only large enough for the table he laid upon and a small receptacle labeled “WASTE” in all capital letters at the foot of the table. The only source of light in the pod was from the two portholes, and as the water bobbed up and down across the glass, the light seemed to dip and dive inside the pod as well.

For what seemed like hours, he simply stood and stared at his surroundings, before muttering to himself, “how did I get here?” As he said this, he realized something even more troubling, there was no door. The pod that bobbed up and down around had no entry or exit, almost as if it had grown around him as he was encapsulated in the fog.

After relieving himself using the WASTE receptacle, the voices chimed back to him, “Free time is over. Please return to the table!”

For a moment, he thought of defying the voice, but as it repeated itself with the suffix “Compliance is compulsory!” He decided that he’d better return to the table, for he had no idea what power the voice may have.

**

For many days, weeks perhaps, he followed the routine. He’d awake, eat his tasteless Ration Type III, peer out of the portholes for a while, and lay back down in his table of bondage, wondering. It seemed that all he had time for was to think, but his mind was still mostly broken.

He knew his mind was missing a key component, and for a long time he hadn’t been able to place what it was. It was only when remembering back to his first day awake aboard the pod, he realized he had no memories before that. No complete ones at least, the most he’d get is a word here or there, or an image that flashed away like a lit match.

He didn’t even know his own name, or if he even had one. He wanted one, and he seemed to like the one Dan. It felt familiar, as if it really was once his name. Dan, or maybe Stan. For the time being, he became Dan. Oh how far he had come, from a disembodied consciousness, to Dan, consumer of Ration Type III’s.

He’d tried to count the days, but every time he woke up, it was as though the fine details of his limited memory had been pulled away. Eventually, he’d stolen a cap from one of his rations, and tried to scribe marks on the walls, one per day. But, as he rose the next day, he’d always find the scribe marks gone.

**

Dan knew that it had to have been months by now, and his diminished mind seemed to falter more and more every day. He was a being with no purpose, a prisoner locked inside a cell as empty as his own mind. His only companion, the Voice of the Pod as he’d come to recognize it, seemed only to prod away at his mind further.

It’s pre-scripted, overly happy demands echoed through Dan’s head seemingly non-stop every day.

“Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!”

“Free time is commencing!”

“Compliance is compulsory!”

Dan had decided that now was the time, today was the day. During his free time, he’d find some way to break the pod, some way to free himself, whether compliance was compulsory or not.

He spent his hour searching for seams or weak points, failing that, he’d tried to find a way to smash the glass, but it was too thick. He’d finally resorted to clawing away where the porthole had met the wall. He spent the remainder of his hour trying to pry away at the steel rim of the window, desperately trying to hook a fingernail under the seam, but his only success was in wearing down his fingertips until they were bloody and his fingernails were mostly gone.

He slumped down the wall, holding his bloodied fingers like one would hold an injured bird.

“Free time is over, please return to the table!” The voice chimed in its incessantly overjoyed tone.

“Fuck you.” Dan whispered quietly to himself.

After a few seconds, the voice responded with its standard reply, “Compliance is compulsory!”

Suddenly, Dan felt an emotion he’d not felt since his awakening: pure, hot rage. “Fuck you!” He screamed as loudly as he could, and he began kicking the legs of the table with all of his power. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck!” He yelled as the table absorbed all of his kicks effortlessly.

As soon as he stopped, the pod did something new. The porthole windows slammed as a metallic grates emerged from the walls and closed them with some force. Now, the inside of the pod was pitch black, and Dan’s rage quieted into a fearful anxiety.

After a few moments, the Voice of the Pod boomed much louder than normal, “Compliance is compulsory!” Though the voice seemed to yell now, it had never lost its upbeat tone.

“No!” Dan screamed defiantly.

Suddenly, the inside of the pod had lit up a bright red from some fixture in the ceiling Dan had never seen before. As the red light replaced the abyss of blackness, a small arm much like the one he’d drop his ration tube into every day hovered an inch or so from his face. This arm, unlike the trash arm, had no bucket on the end, but a hypodermic needle instead.

Before Dan had the chance to move, the needle maneuvered skillfully around his face and plunged itself into his neck, breaking through his skin and locating a blood vessel effortlessly. Soon after, the fog began enveloping his mind once more.

“Compliance is compulsory!” The Voice of the Pod boomed once again.

**

Since the day of the needle, Dan had been truly broken. His body had grown worn and dirty, his own stench disgusted him, but not as much as the Voice had. He’d do anything in his power to hear it no longer. Not only did he comply with all of its demands, he’d even tried stuffing what meager scraps of clothing he could tear from himself into his ears, but the voice only grew louder when he did.

After many months aboard the vessel, Dan simply wished for death, but he had no means to get it. He tried to starve himself, but the voice would never stop chiming “Rise and shine, it’s feeding time!” Until he ate. He figured he’d rather live a bit longer than be driven even madder by the Voice.

Finally, after what seemed like a million days aboard the pod, he noticed something change when he woke on the table. The rocking had stopped. The stillness of the pod was almost disorienting at first, it made his head swoon and his stomach sink.

When he peered out the portholes, he noticed that there was longer any water to be seen, just bright rays of pale yellow light.

“Rise and shine, you’ve concluded your journey!” The Voice of the Pod chimed in as something wonderful happened. All around him, the walls of the pod seemed to split, tearing at invisible seams until it eventually lay flat on the ground around him.

Dan smiled, but only for a moment, while he hated the monotony of the pod, he had grown somewhat comfortable with its safety. The word Stockholm flashed in his mind but he ignored it.

He found himself on a beach, with white sand outstretching to his left and right, and a dense forest before him. As he walked forward onto the sand, he felt it sear his feet, but he almost welcomed the pain.

As he continued forward, however, he noticed something unsettling. More pods, all unfolded like his, were scattered up and down the beach. There had to be hundreds of them, if not more.

The Voice from the Pod addressed him one last time as he walked down the beach, it’s happy-go-lucky voice rang out across the mostly silent beach, “Thank you for your donation!”

Dan paused at that, confused. He then noticed he felt something beneath his feet, a light vibration that seemed to increase in intensity with every second, to the point that the fine beach sand began to swallow his feet. Suddenly, almost as if to mock him, a voice identical to that of the Voice of the Pod, bellowed out from the forest with an unrelenting force, “RISE AND SHINE, IT’S FEEDING TIME!”

The vibrations grew more and more intense, eventually they began to sync up with crashes that came from the forest before him.

Not long after, Dan heard the roar. It sounded unnatural, and louder than anything he could have imagined, even louder than the Voice prodding it to feed.

For just a moment, Dan saw the beast emerge from the tree line and scoop him up.

“RISE AND SHINE, IT’S FEEDING TIME!” The Voice continued to bellow.