Chapter 1 - The Deadly Digits Strike!
In the dark, he regained his liquid-consciousness. How long had he been out this time? He wasn’t sure. Still too weak to congeal, let alone break free, his essence remained encased within a blot of gelatinous fluid sealed-in a non-self-propelling spheroid, itself trapped within a square prison.
Suddenly, he was aware: a gap in his field of perception. Vague and indistinct in the best of times, his senses in the dark told him almost nothing. Had another spheroid been taken while his mind shut down? If so, that made four - or was it five? - since he had first awakened here. How many were left? The consuming dark made it impossible to be certain.
None of the others were like him. Cacao-based forms with similar core and spheroid compositions, he alone had thoughts, the others: only instincts. Unaccountably, he could feel what they felt, even though they lacked any means to express it themselves. Beyond that, he’d been able to perceive parts of the zone outside the prison, though only during the brief periods when the dark lifted and the attacks came. In the last such period, he had made out variously-sized, stationary solids in the proximity, distances between them, temperatures...and movement: the hideous Giants who held him captive!
Under ideal conditions – unified essence, the right timing and opportunity - he thought he could take one down, maybe even two...but in his present state, he was helpless and knew it. Alongside maybe-five thoughtless captives, there was only the dark to keep him company until the next attack.
A sense of belonging came over him, but it wasn’t to this place. In his liquid-thoughts, he saw a hot and humid forested landscape and sought refuge there; a cultivated field dominated by trees with cocoon-shaped leaves and unevenly-bloated fruit-pods. He watched as one such pod fell, cracked open on a sloping mound of soil and ejected bean-shaped seeds. Through unfathomable means, he intuited that many pods had fallen and cracked open on that spot through uncounted millennia, but that no seed had ever implanted in the mound; wind, birds and the unforgiving slope thwarting all efforts.
On this occasion, however, he saw the mound undulate almost imperceptibly, acting to aid one seed’s stability at a critical moment of landing. Like a coveted pearl, the seed was embraced, then enveloped under strangely-loosened topsoil. As he looked on, time accelerated, rain appeared: the seed took root. At that moment, he knew: it was his seed. It had been chosen.
In due course, a sprout appeared, growing more slowly than sprouts of other seeds, as if bearing some extra burden. No fruit was ever borne of it until near the end of its life, when the Giants started using chemicals to get what they wanted out of the soil. The sprout, now a mature tree, gave up a single pod; his pod. Hacked off by the Giants, it was taken away, leaving the tree to wilt and die soon after...its life-task completed.
As though guided by a latent primordial presence exerting its will through his mind’s-eye, he saw the same land tens of thousands of years before he was born, before his kind was ever cultivated. A wild and overgrown jungle then, tiny flowers and towering trees everywhere basked in a glorious sun. Suddenly, it all started to pass quickly, as though he was running through it. He felt exhaustion, pain from a gaping wound. He heard footsteps and labored breathing around him: beast-like pursuers closing in! He saw the mound ahead of him.
He knew: something died there. What it was, where it came from, he would never know, but he understood one thing: it left something - part of its essence - in the mound of his birth. Flashes of flesh being stripped off a carcass too mangled to be identifiable seared his psyche; the charred bones were fought over by the killers. Shorter, but heavier-set than the Giants, they had bigger heads and teeth, making them even more hideous.
Literally shaken out of his horrific reveries, he awoke to a far more dangerous reality. It was here: the next attack was now! As the dark started to lift, he knew he would only have seconds to take advantage. First came the blindingly bright flash, then clarity: he made out four spheroids with him in the prison, two Giants outside it, the same array of stationary solids around them and – sensing it for the first time - ground covering that was soft and plush.
AND THEN--right when he expected it: the Deadly Digits appeared! Two of them hovered menacingly over the prison walls, their intent unmistakable: to carry off a victim to certain death! Diving in, they veered away from him; he felt the fright of other spheroids filling his senses. As he wondered how – or whether - the Digits choose their victims, they abruptly reversed course, his spheroid directly in their path! Slammed, it went hard into a prison wall. The jolt roiled his liquid-self, but left the spheroid undamaged. He began to worry what might happen if it did break, but a belated grim realization interrupted: the Digits had him!
Groped, his spheroid was slowly elevated. Despite (or perhaps, because of) his mortal terror, his mind intensely focused. He got an impression of a third Digit - stumpier and opposed to the others - in contact with the underside of his spheroid. An opposed Digit held possibilities, he thought.
Looming over the prison, a Giant appeared eager for delivery, but as it turned its head to communicate with the other Giant for a brief moment, the Digits carelessly brushed against a side wall. Jarred loose, the spheroid fell back into the prison. The Giant let out a sharp cry of woe.
Enduring multiple bounces, the spheroid was unbroken even as his liquid-self got battered senseless. Consciousness fleeting, he couldn’t piece together how he had just cheated the Digits. It seemed impossible; could Forces Beyond Him have acted on his behalf? Alarmingly, he was only dimly aware of the Digits re-entering the prison. Flailing out of control, they knocked spheroids to all sides. His spheroid took a shot that actually seemed to rouse him. With the Digits in a mad fury, he guessed his escape must have rattled them...but his spirits quickly sank as he watched five of them gang up on one of the others.
As the defenseless spheroid was lifted away, he could feel Fear of Death emanating from it. Having seen this horror show before, he wanted to turn away, but felt he owed the victim; it had taken his place. He watched as the Giant widened its horizontal aperture; the Digits inserted the spheroid whole. Once the aperture closed, he no longer sensed anything from it.
And then the dark returned, shaking him up before closing off the light. He welcomed it this time; it meant the attack was over. He had survived...at the cost of another. It was a set of circumstances that couldn’t last.
