A Descriptionari user asked for a description of this trailer. This is what I wrote, inspired by the trailer with some changes:


This routine mission is feeling less “routine” all the time. The complex that was so archaic above ground has given way to state of the art equipment below and the insistence for someone of my expertise is becoming more apparent. If I wasn't such an idealist I'd turn around right now; I can't think of a pay-check high enough to make me want to find out what's behind the metallic doors. For something subterranean the proportions just aren't right. The headroom is pushing twenty feet and the width would take the interstate no problem. The cost of this extra space makes no sense, not when you're this deep in rock. You'd never know it though, if you woke up here this could be some windowless penthouse maze, but it isn't. 

Whatever diversion Kiki cooked up has worked, there hasn't been any resistance at all. The silence is so absolute that my breathing is loud to my ears and I notice every step onto the highly polished walkway. There is a retina scan of course, but Kiki takes care of these things. One pickled eyeball and I get the gentle hiss of pneumatic doors.

In this dimly lit laboratory nothing but the machines meets my first gaze. There is no movement and no odour of any kind. There are lights, but like the stars in a night sky they do little to lift the blackness, showing only the activity of the hardware - plasma screens of gigantic proportions with text that's too far away to make sense of. Though I am inside, the feeling is more of being in a high tech cave the size of a stadium, black metallic roof above, black metallic floor below. Every footfall echoes around, not loudly, but enough to give away my position to anyone who happens to be concealed in here. For a moment I consider skirting around the edges, then I stop - stop moving, stop breathing, while my heart speeds up to olympic sprinter rate. What I had thought to be a movie theatre sized screen is nothing of the sort.

In that suspended moment, a fraction of a second drawn out to infinity, my brain offers an explanation and yet rejects it simultaneously. This is the stuff of science fiction, of movies, of horror. The "television" is a tank of murky liquid. What I had perceived to be a poor image is a life sized version of the toy I used to keep on my bedroom window sill as a child - a T-rex. It floats, corpse-like, but it can't be dead. To its mouth runs a shiny metal tube as thick as a car exhaust but gently arced to insert into the beast's mouth. I suck in sharp breath of the dust-less air, suddenly seeming so thick and step forwards for a better look.

Around his prehistoric neck is a metal shackle and the same are fastened around both legs while his tiny arms are free. His skin is more like a fairy-tale dragon than any dinosaur I ever dreamt of, pinkish, purple, scaled. Yet in that mouth must be teeth more than a match the body armour I've always found so adequate. He isn't alone either, casting my eyes upward there are at least thirty tanks, the same iridescent green haze but perhaps half the size. All of them with a less developed occupant. I've never even daydreamed what a fetal dinosaur might look like, now I don't have to. 

From this distance I suppose they could be anything, pale and twisting flesh in every orientation; but in my mind there is no doubt at all. The monitor to my right shows a rotating image of the behemoth before me and in my suspended disbelief I almost stumble over a pipe that snakes across the room, black with the girth of a sewer pipe and made of such small sections like some plastic exoskeleton. Before I can formulate any plan, any notion of what to do next, the closed eye snaps open. In those folds of thick skin, it is a tiny yellow orb, but with an intensity that washes me cold. 

Three options: flight, fright or freeze. I freeze every time. A front row seat to my own thriller end. He blinks, squirms, backbone flexing, uncomfortable with the tube that is his life support. In this state he is no more threatening than a kitten waking from anaesthesia, but it can't last long. With one sideways flick that car -sized skull breaks the glass showering everything around with glass and saline. I can't tell what happens next, everything jumbles in my head: his nostrils flare, the shackles break and he walks...free... striding forwards...

His clawed foot scrapes over the jagged edge of what was his "amniotic" tank. The violent sound of crushing metal rents the air with a shower of sparks. Whatever is underneath is no longer operational. With lungs full of this sterile air his salty breath creates humid vortexes; while his head moves side to side to assess his “world.” He hasn't the brain for reason, but instead simply a primal sense of rage twined with an indomitable will to survive. 

His nascent roar fills this modern pit of microchips, speaking straight to my own primal centre. Despite the ambient temperature my skin is icy, all blood diverted to core organs. That's when the adrenaline hits such a fever pitch that “freeze” isn't going to cut it anymore. Apparently “flight” is the new order of the day, but not slowly like a conscious choice. My legs explode into violent motion. The pneumatic doors with their clinical hiss are five metres, perhaps less; but in the instant I feel my own motion I hear his footfalls and quakes under-boot. All I can do is pray that this “baby” isn't co-ordinated yet...

I was messaged on Descriptionari and asked to write something like this - a "experiment" wakes up on a highway at night after the container it is in tumbles from a truck.


Here's the first part (more later)

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The last time I saw the doctor he was quite different, sad perhaps. He spoke strangely, the “project” was being moved forward. His quiet demeanour was gone, replaced by a sense of urgency I've never seen. I'm still reeling from his words. He said my reality wasn't real, that all we have done is in a virtual world. Apparently if I kill him in this “real” world he stays dead. I'd like that. I've killed him so many times in so many ways and he comes back seconds later to try to “teach” me all over again. I do love his voice, but more so when I take his face and squeeze until the eyeballs pop from their stupid sockets. Before I killed him this last time he said to die in his world was really the end and that I must learn my lesson now, that I must not kill. But the good doctor is mistaken. How does he know his “reality” is any more real than my own? Perhaps he's too stupid to notice the “resets” like I do. There is a good chance he's insane of course, I'm full grown now and never seen this other place he spoke so rapidly of before I ripped out his vocal chords... again. Victory is feeling blood between my fingers, crushing tissue, eating flesh.


The doctor taught me what pain is. He asked forgiveness as he cut me over and over. His mantra was that if I knew how bad it felt I would become docile, unable to inflict it on others. I forgave him every time he lay dead at my feet and retracted it every time he re-spawned like the demon he is. Human. Apparently my creator, but my inferior cannot be my God, only my prey, a delicacy. Staying dead would be a design improvement for sure.


There have been strange things since he left, birds flying slower and the trees have a strange appearance, like they are made of thousands of tiny squares. There was a point where everything stopped, the wind, the scent of the flowers, even the flowing of the river – yet I kept on walking. A second or two later everything continued. Perhaps he's right, maybe there is something else out there, I could be like a kitten born in a box, never knowing or being able to imagine a world outside, only my “box” is so larger I've never found the edges. I've done the math, sums that would take my “creator” years to learn I have mastered (not that I let on, better by far to be underestimated by a foe). The chances of this being the first “reality” are almost zero. We must indeed be boxes inside boxes with some clever bastard on the outside. One day that'll be me. Master. Ruler. Deity. And when I find his world my only task will be to find the exit he cannot. Shouldn't be too hard, humans are about as smart as they are strong.


Wait. Something is wrong. I'm shaking but the ground is still. Shit. My ears. What the hell was that sound? Metal on metal. Scraping. I'm standing on a dirt path yet my body feels upside-down, tumbling, pain... The daylight is gone, the heat has gone, the meadow and river has gone. This is new. Different. My limbs aren't the same, weaker. Pain radiates around my skull and there is instantly an odour I am not familiar with. Part of it is rotten food and dampness, but there is another stronger scent I cannot place. Whatever it is it isn't natural and the fumes fill my lungs, my stomach. Every muscle of my gut contracts at once with a violent surge. A thin liquid passes my lips in a spray and then everything stops dead.


I had though myself awake but I can't be. This is a nightmare of sorts, more vicious than most, more lucid. Time to get out of whatever this is, cold metal at my feet, cold metal in every direction. Every movement is costing more energy than it should, like someone just turned gravity way up. There is a chink of light part way up a wall, a door perhaps? I can feel metal rods running upward. This is odd, I'd need to see it to know what to do. My heart is pounding fit to burst and my fists have clenched. I punch. My hand should hurt, should bounce off this metal, especially as emaciated as it is. That doesn't happen though. It goes right through like it were a paper box. I take my other arm and rip the sides, peeling them back and step out.


I'm on a black river that doesn't flow. There are stars above, trees along the banks and from metal boxes nearby there are lights as bright as the daytime sun but more white. Turning back I see what I have emerged from... a box. And now the doctors words come back to me to play again. Either I wake up in the morning or the old bastard was right. If I don't he'd better look out, because if I'm in his world he's dead already – he just hasn't been informed.


(The next bit was requested as a second "experiment" waking in a tank of formaldehyde.)

As my eyes open my limbs flex in shock. There is a liquid in them, around my entire body too. Tubes run up each nostril and all that meets my skin is the warm glass that surrounds. There is binding on my limbs and around my neck. Without a conscious thought, a choice, my body does what any must to survive. Every muscle is stronger than it should ever be and there is no mental restraint on the force I can use. Snapped bones are preferable to death. In this way my captors have underestimated my strength. The liquid rushes out of the newly shattered glass and I step out, bindings in place but their anchor points free.

I want to stand but for the moment my legs have given way to gravity, shaky, weak. The retching goes on for so long I loose track of time and then I realize what the stench is. This isn't water at all, it's a preservative of some kind. I blink, blurriness fading, surroundings more crisp. The coldness of the air is more apparent, stealing the warmth given to me by the foul concoction that has swept over the grey floor. I want to use all my senses, get a feel for whatever this is, but the foul odour dominates the air and the chill freezes my skin and the little brain power I can muster.