#lowarden

[thequantumlyunstableman]

Drawing Their Attention 12-18 Feb

Four squidpeople with guns were swimming right at me. What could I do to stop them? I had no weapons. I had no abilities. I was alone with no one to help. I'm not complaining. I made this bed and I'm going to lie in it whether it gets me killed or not.

I swam right back at them, that seemed to surprise them enough to stop swimming. But as I got close, I began to dive as quickly as I could. I dove as hard as I could. When I started to tire, I glanced back and saw they were all hot on my heels. Any advantage I'd had was disappearing. My goal was to distract, to draw their attention, to keep them away from Tam, and it looked like I was doing. Now, I just had to keep doing that. So I did the only thing I could to keep them focused squarely on me. I spun around and I surrendered.

The quartet of guards jumped back, in the way that you can 'jump' in the middle of ocean. They stopped and pushed away from me as if I was going to do them great harm. But when I just stayed there unmoving, more or less, they began to move closer towards me. They pulled out their weapons and they pointed them at me. "Try anything and we'll blast you!" one of them yelled.

"I'm not doing anything," I said. "I'm unarmed. I surrender. All I want to do is talk."

"You'll talk to this!" One of them smacked me across the face with their gun. I went tumbling through the water from the impact until the squidman grabbed me with his tentacles. "Try something again..."

"I'm cooperating," I yelled at him. "I surrendered already."

"Yes, after you and your Merapolian friends have already destroyed our homes."

"I don't want to get into a blame game, worrying about who id what to who, or who was responsible for what. I'm surrendering. I'm ready to help you deal with what happened. Let's just work together and fix everything. All right?"

to be continued next week

or everyday on @QuantumUnstable

[thequantumlyunstableman]

Arguing to the Rescue! 8-14 Jan

I looked at the unconscious squid people and I looked down through the transparent floor at the destroyed city below. There hadn't been any new explosions in a while. That was good, but I knew it was also bad. That meant they'd be coming for us now. No more explosions meant no more people getting hurt. Or at least, less people getting hurt. But less explosions also meant less distractions, which meant we were now the only thing this entire ciry of squid people had to worry about. "Maybe we should get going," I said.

"Finally," Tam said before quickly swimming away. I did my best to keep up.

After a few minutes, they took us through a hole in the transparent tube hallway and out into open water. I was surprised to feel little difference. Was that the rebreather protecting me the presumably very cold deep waters, I wondered. I didn't have to worry about that because not too long we were breaking our way back into another tube on our way to a part of the city that wasn't see through.

"What's this?" I asked, as we came up to the door.

"How am I supposed to know?" Tam replied.

"You led us here."

"Because this is where my sensors led me."

"Like they led to me," I said.

"Exactly," Tam replied, looking at their arm display.

"So that means one of us is in there."

"If there were an 'us', whatever's inside wouldn't be one of it."

"Stop being difficult. You know what I mean."

"There's a non-native in that room," Tam said. "I can tell you that. Whoever or whatever it is, it is emitting exotic material that is similar to the material that is emitted from your other 'friends'. Is that clear enough for you? Because that's all I can tell you with certainty."

"Just open it," I said.

The door puckered open revealing the unmistakable giant gerbil known as Gnomenasher. But before I could move water began streaming into the room and I belatedly discovered that he had been kept in there with no rebreather. Meaning I just killed Gnomenasher!

to be continued next week

or everyday on @QuantumUnstable

[thequantumlyunstableman]

Fire and Ice, Underwater 25-31 Dec

And Tam started to swim off. I did my best to keep up, but neither of us got very far before we were joined once again by the quintet of squid people looking slightly worse for ware. "I knew this was all your fault," the lead squid said. "You tried to trick us, pretend that you and the Merapolian weren't trying to spring a trap, but here it is, the trap. Now, we know. You were the distraction. And that," he pointed at Tam, "was the trap. Or...are both of you the trap?"

"There was no trap!" I said, but Tam shut down the explanation that was going to follow.

"We've come for our people," they said. "If you want the destruction to end, you'll return them."

"The only..." the squid person began to say, but once again Tam interrupted.

"I don't care. You give them to us or we take them. Those are your only choices."

"We can't kill them," I said.

"I can," Tam replied, putting heavy emphasis the singular pronoun.

"No."

"He's right," the squidperson said. "You will not. It will be us who ends you."

"Ok," Tam agreed. Maybe I won't kill you. But I will do this." They raised their hand and ice began to shoot out. Within seconds, the squidpeople were imprisoned in ice formations. "See? Still alive. How about that?"

"You can shoot ice out of your hands!" I exclaimed.

"No. Don't be ridiculous," Tam told me. "I can modify the energy output of the molecules around me. The fact that water this far below the surface is already pretty cold only makes it all easier."

The water didn't feel very cold to me, but I just chalked that up to the rebreather working its magic. "And they'll be fine like that?"

"They will...as long as they tell me where the others are."

to be continued next week

or everyday on @QuantumUnstable

[thequantumlyunstableman]

Series of Tubes 4-10 Dec

I tried to struggle against my bindings but there was no give, no room to slip out, no way I could break free. The squidpeople grew tired with my attempts to escape and began to pull me toward the door. It puckered open and they pulled me out through it.

At first I thought they had brought me out into the big open ocean as I could see all around us, underwater life swimming in every direction, but I soon realized that we were actually in some kind of tubular structure and it was just that the walls were transparent. I could see various modules floating in the water of varying size, presumably, though it was quite hard to tell with all the multicolored fish swimming about, the modules were all room connected to the transparent tubular structure. Which one of those held Gnomenasher?

And then suddenly the tranquil vista was thrown into chaos. Explosions at the base of the complex sent the sealife swimming for safety. The tube rattled and the squid people looked upset. They glanced at each other before finally turning their gazes on me. "What did you do!?"

"Wha..? Me?" I asked, befuddled. "How could I have done anything? I've been here the whole time?"

"What did you do!?" they demanded again as the structure began to quake.

"Nothing, I swear."

"This was a trick. A Merapolian trick! And you were the distraction!"

"What? No. I swear we..." And then stopped myself. Could they have done that? Could the Merapolians, knowing that we were coming out here, decided to use as a distraction to launch some kind of attack? It seemed strange, but just how well did I know them.

"Lock him in!" the squid man said and one of the grey squids hit a controller. I went flying into the wall. I tried to struggle but I was trapped, stuck there. The squid people then turned and swam away. They left me here, unable to move, with the whole city blowing up around me.

to be continued next week

or everyday on @QuantumUnstable

[thequantumlyunstableman]

Ensnared by the Squidpeople 20-26 Nov

"No, I'm not lying," I pleaded. "I'm not a spy!"

"You came from Merapolis!" the squid man ylled. "We saw you! We saw you with those fishtail fiends and their mutated monsters! You invaded our homes in their transport!"

"We didn't..." I tried to start.

"Liar!"

"I'm not..."

"Do you think we are blind! We can see! We can see you and your Merapolian creations swimming here on your transport, destroying our defenses! We can see!"

"I'm not..." I tried yet again.

"You are!"

"If you'd just let me finish, I'd..."

"You will nothing!"

"I just want to tell you what's going on!" I screamed at them, bubbles rising from my rebreather.

"I know what's 'going on'," he repeated. "You are being interrogated and you will tell us everything you know about your Merapolian masters and their evil plans to destroy our city."

"There are no evil plans. I don't want to destroy your city! No one does! We're here to save our friend. I just want to save my friends. All of them. And you took them. All of them. I just want them back."

"Your friends are dead," the squid man replied. "All of them."

"I don't believe you," I said.

"And you will be dead soon, as well, if you don't tell us what we want to know," the squid man continued. "Tell us what the Merapolians have planned. Tell us what this attack was about. Tell us what that strange creature we found out in the waves was."

"Strange creature?" I said. "What strange creature? Maybe you should show me the strange creature and I can tell you what it is."

The squidpeople took a second to talk amongst themselves. I thought maybe I had gotten them, maybe they'd show me where Gnomenasher was. "Then it's decided," the Squidman said, turning back toward me. This was it. They were going to take me to go see... "We'll kill him."

to be continued next week

or everyday on @QuantumUnstable

[thequantumlyunstableman]

Regurgitated by A Giant Robotic Eel 13-19 Nov

The cell was filled with water, so I still had to suffer that. There was a door on the far side. I started to move toward it when I noticed movement behind me. I turned and almost screamed when I saw the giant robot eel again. It was pretty freaky looking.

To my relief the eel was slowing receding from the room. There was a port on the wall that it was sliding out through. When the eel was gone, the port sealed behind it. I tried to reopen it, but it was no good.

It's fine, I told myself, there was still the door I had yet to try. As I started to swim toward it, the door slid open. For a brief second, I had the misguided thought that I was going to be let go, that I was going to be free. But before I could really get my hopes up, my captors swam into the room. Five of them.

There was no question they were squid people. I could see their tentacles. Three of the people were red. The other two appeared to be a dark gray. They had large black eyes and heads that raised to a point. Four of them were holding guns.

Or at least I think they were guns. They looked quite gun-like, but then they were squid-people, we were underwater, and I was breathing through a collar that was pumping blood directly into my bloodstream so, who really knew what was what. Still, they looked pretty threatening.

"Hi," I said, trying to make nice. I wasn't here to hurt them. They weren't my enemies. I didn't see any reason why this couldn't end beneficial to both of us. They, however, did not see things the same way.

"Who are you!?" the lead squidman shouted. "What are you doing here!?"

"My name is Frank and I'm..."

"What are you!?" the squidman interrupted. "What kind of strange creature have the merapolians concocted now?"

"Um...well, I wasn't concocted by anyone. I'm..."

"You are a spy for the Merapolians!"

"I'm not a..."

"Liar! You will die for your lies!"

to be continued next week

or everyday on @QuantumUnstable