The Autistic Experience! (In Hell)
Chapter 1: Swimming With Sharks
It takes a while to find the address listed by your new employer, embarrassingly. It's Vee Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the city, and you hadn't even realized it. Your nerves nearly get the better of you as you approach.
Fuck, you realize, this guy is someone important…!
Taking a deep breath, you steel yourself before walking up the path to the large front doors.
You can do this, you tell yourself, you're just going to be taking care of this guy's sharks for a few days, then you'll probably never see him again.
You open the doors to find a bustling lobby. Demons rush about every which way, several carrying piles of documents. You thank the powers that be that isn't you. You'd never survive an office job with papers and deadlines.
You approach the front desk, and the receptionist–a fish demon of some sort–sends you a look you can't quite decipher, but are pretty sure is judgmental or negative in some capacity.
“Hi!” you greet them, mustering what you hope is a friendly smile, “I'm here to see… Vox? I'm here to pet-sit for… him?”
The receptionist shoots you another indecipherable look, before adjusting their glasses. “Yes… let me call him down for you…” they reply with a tone that you don't really like. They push a button on their headset, “Vox, your pet-sitter is here.”
You watch with a now strained smile as they nod their head to a response they receive. They turn to fully face you before speaking again.
“Vox will be down in a moment, please take a seat over there and wait for him.” They point to a row of seats along the wall.
It takes a moment to process what they said, but you nod anyway, standing a little too long at the desk before you turn and hesitantly take a seat. Damn! I look like an idiot!
The wait is excruciating, taking only a few minutes, but feeling like hours. You fidget in your seat, feeling for all the world like everyone is watching you, judging you.
Finally, you hear the ding! of an elevator chime, and look up to see a tall TV-headed demon stepping through the doors of the nearest elevator. He's dressed smartly, adjusting the lapels of his pinstriped tuxedo jacket before moving on to his bow tie. He takes a glance in your direction, before striding over, a wide showman's smile taking over his face.
“Ah, yes!” he greets, an air of what you can only describe as smugness in his voice, “__Y/N__, right? It's so good to see you've made it! Welcome to Voxtek headquarters! I'm Vox, of course, I'm sure I need no introduction…!” He leans down and offers you a handshake.
It takes a moment for you to recognize the gesture, but as soon as you do, you take his hand in yours and give it an awkward shake. You have no idea who he is, but you nod along anyway. “Ah, yeah…! It's nice to meet you, Vox!” you say, before brightening and standing from your seat, “So, who are the babies I'll be taking care of?”
Vox's smug smile morphs into a more genuine one. “Of course! I'm so glad you asked!” He places a hand on your back and leads you towards the elevator, not seeming to notice your flinch at his touch.
He takes you to the floor above his studio, where access to the first tank is. Inside the tank are several cybernetically enhanced sharks of varying sizes and species. He points out each individual shark and tells you their names, and you make a mental note of each one.
Once you've seen the first tank, he takes you to the kitchen where the sharks’ food is stored and prepared. The kitchen is pristine, completely spotless, and has three fridges and two freezers filled with raw meat. Vox walks you through the feeding schedules before leading you up a few floors to his office.
“... and this here is my pride and joy!” Vox tells you, gesturing to the tank behind his desk with a flourish, “Shock.wav!”
Inside is the single largest living shark you have ever seen. She—you can tell she's female by the lack of claspers coming off her anal fins—is somewhere between a great white and a megalodon in size. She's a biomechanical hybrid of some sort, with pulsating electronic lights accenting her body.
You stare at Shock.wav for a moment in awe.
“... she's beautiful…!” you breathe. If a little bit overweight.
Vox chuckles at your reaction. “She is gorgeous, isn't she?” He puts a hand on your shoulder, “So… you think you can handle all of them for a few days?”
“Great! Great!” he approves, “Well, in that case, let me show you to your room!”
He leads you back to the elevator, and takes you up two more floors, to the floor just below the penthouse. There, he leads you down a hall to a one-bedroom condo, complete with a full bathroom and a fully-stocked kitchen.
Once the tour is finished, you and Vox take the elevator back to the ground floor.
“Thank you so much for agreeing to do this, you have no idea how hard it is to get someone competent to care for these sharks!” Vox tells you, a note of what you think might be condescension in his voice. He pats your back. “Well, I have places to be! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask any of my employees!”
You nod. “Of course. Have a good trip!” you wave after him as he makes his way to the front door. “And don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your babies for you!”
Vox turns to face you as the doors open for him, his showman’s smile turning sinister.
And with that, the doors close behind him.
As soon as he’s gone, you’re in animal care mode. You take the elevator back up to the first tank to check the water’s pH and saline levels. You make some minor adjustments before heading up to do the same for Shock.wav’s tank. Once you’re satisfied with the homeostatic balance of both tanks, you take it upon yourself to put together a feeding chart for each of the sharks; noting the precise time you feed each one, as well as the weight of the meat you give them.
Before you go to bed, you eat some dinner of your own while putting together a plan to get Shock.wav down to a healthier weight involving exercise and a controlled diet.
You spend the next three days following your animal care plan, feeding the sharks and working on target-training Shock.wav. She is wonderfully intelligent, just as you suspect, and you make a note to suggest to Vox that he provide her with extra enrichment when he returns.
It’s on the third day that you come across a problem; the tanks need cleaning, and Vox neglected to tell you where the diving gear is.
It’s not a big problem, you can just ask one of his employees. So you think.
You’re able to stop one Voxtek employee in his rush from one office to another, an eel demon with mismatched eyes.
“Excuse me,” you tell him, “I have a question.”
The eel demon stops, sending you a hesitant glance. “Ah… yes…?”
“Yeah! Hi! I’m the petsitter Vox hired a few days ago,” you introduce yourself, “and I was wondering if you might know where the diving gear is?”
“Diving gear?” he repeats, incredulous.
“Yeah!” you push, “There’s some algae build-up in the shark tanks, and I need diving gear in order to clean that up.”
“You want to swim in the shark tanks?”
You frown, brows pinched in concern, “Uh, yeah? I need to in order to clean the tanks…!”
The eel demon shakes his head, looking at you like you’d just sprouted an extra head. “Are you crazy?”
“That’s up to debate,” you admit truthfully, “but not because of this. So is there any diving equipment…?”
“No,” the demon tells you, a little too strongly, “because no one is crazy enough to try to swim with Mr. Vox’s sharks!” With that, he turns and continues on his way, leaving you with a dilemma.
You return to the floor with the first tank, and pace in front of it, thinking.
“There’s no way I’d be able to hold my breath long enough to even get to some of the algae spots, let alone clean them…” you muse, “Damn… If only I was a fish demon, like that eel guy…!”
The thought of the way he spoke to you irks you a bit.
“Crazy! He called me crazy!” You frown as you continue to pace, before stopping to stare at your reflection in the glass, “Wanting to do my job doesn’t make me crazy! Right?”
You scowl, before mimicking what the eel demon had told you, even trying to remember and mimic his mannerisms.
“‘No one is crazy enough to try to swim with Mr. Vox’s sharks!’” you mock, changing your posture to match the employee’s.
And suddenly, your reflection changes to that of an eel demon.
“Huh?” You squint, blink, and take a closer look at your reflection. It’s not your imagination, your reflection has changed. You look down at yourself and find that yes, your reflection matches your actual current appearance.
You drop the act, slowly turning around while looking at yourself, and your body shifts back into your own demonic form, right before your eyes.
“Huh,” you say to yourself, “that’s… interesting.”
You begin, again, to mimic the mannerisms of the eel demon, and your body shifts once again to match. You reach to feel the gills at the side of your neck, and find that they are indeed there.
Problem unexpectedly solved.
With your newfound ability, cleaning the sharks’ tanks is easy. Sure, a couple of the sharks, including Shock.wav, charge you, but you know just what to do about that.
“Get rotated, idiot,” you joke underwater as you take one charging shark by the nose and gently flip it upside-down, putting it into tonic immobility.
And so it happens that the tanks are pristine when Vox returns from his business trip.
