Page 3 of Volunteer 4711

I hear other alien voices now, and it occurs to me that I can’t be sure those silvery aliens are the only ones on the planet. It’d be very stupid of me to assume the planet’s population was homogenous. This silver male might be delivering me to an insect alien or something equally terrifying, which is why he wants me to wear the veil.

He touches my wrist to indicate I should stay and says something in the alien language. I stop walking, although I can hear him walking away and more alien voices in the distance, his voice joining theirs.

I see no reason to run. I’m on an alien planet, and I’ve no idea where I am or how to speak to anyone.

About five minutes pass, and then I hear the sound of females talking. They come closer to me. I can almost feel them around me. Then my veil comes off, and I’m surprised to see silver females with elvish ears and long white hair, and I can see by their faces; they’re also surprised to see me. I want to say, ‘Ha, you didn’t expect a human under here, did you?’ But I say nothing because, at that moment, I assume that they can’t understand me.

These females look like the male who brought me here, so I’ll refer to them now as Silvers. The females take my hand and guide me into a building that looks like a massive modern farmhouse. I can’t help but be overwhelmed with the modernness of it compared to any human house or technology I’ve ever seen before.

The females lead me into what I assume is a bathroom. It’s a large room that smells of a kind of soap. They strip off my purple tunic and trousers that are still damp with my urine and urge me into a corner. Suddenly a sort of white foam begins falling from the ceiling. I realize when it touches my skin, it’s a mixture of steam and soap. Curiously, the females watch me as I rub my hair and underarms trying to clean myself. I can tell by their expressions that this pleases them. I want to say to them, ‘I’m not an animal. I know how to keep clean.’ But again, I say nothing.

The warm steam feels so good I don’t mind standing in it as I survey the Silver females. Their eyes are big and blue but not unkind. Their ears are pointed and thick, but otherwise, these aliens look very humanoid, allowing me to relax a little. I also cannot deny that I’m relieved I’m with females. This isn’t to say that rape by an alien male isn’t in my future, but at least I know it’s not happening right now. Nor do these females look particularly unhappy.

After a while, one of the females turns off the shower, and I frown.

She pats me on the head as if I am a child or pet and then escorts me into a drying area of the bathroom. The whole wall I’m standing next to now heats up to dry me instantly. It is insanely nice and superior to drying with any cotton towel. I put my whole body against the heat, and again, I want to stay here forever. I close my eyes and pray silently to a god I might’ve left behind on Earth, ‘Please don’t let this be a bad place.’

CHAPTER2

VOLUNTEER 4711

I’ve beenin this place I call ‘the farm,’ for a few months, I don’t know how long exactly because I’ve lost track of time. Although it didn’t take me long to figure out, I’m in a brothel slash farm slash mad scientist’s home. Most of my days are exactly the same. I’m required to do farm work, clean, and sometimes help the mad scientist, who I call ‘the doctor’ with his sadistic work. I’ve no idea what we are farming, I assume, food, but as I don’t recognize the shoots coming up and I still don’t have a translator, I can’t be sure. It could be drugs which would go along better with the prostitution and all the strange technology the doctor has in his large house behind the living quarters. But I’ve not received any drugs myself, and this isn’t from a lack of asking.

My days are long in the fields. In the morning, the skies are purple, then they fade to pink at midday, and then back to purple in the evening. About every other day, alien males, not just silvery ones, come to the farm to have sex for money. There are a variety of aliens here on the farm, all the aliens here are volunteers too, but none of us have translators, not even the Silver farmers or the doctor. So it’s obvious that I’ll never get a translator. I suppose it makes me a better worker not to have one. All the other aliens have the same tattoo I have on their faces. It looks like an upside-down arrow with a semi-circle around it with some dots. I’ve tried to ask what it means, but it’s a ridiculous question as without a translator, I can’t understand the answer, even though I know enough of the alien language to ask the question.

Every day I try to learn some new words in the Silver’s language, but it’s daunting, and I have a nagging suspicion, by the way the other people treat me, that they don’t believe that I’m not worth the effort to teach me how to speak Silver. I assume they assume, I won’t be here long, which isn’t a comforting thought.

The farm is a strange place. The farming part is straightforward. I haven’t seen a full season yet, but so far, I’ve been involved with the harvesting. I imagine there’ll be seeding in a few months. I don’t know why they don’t use technology for this, which makes me think what we’re doing is illegal, and any technology would draw attention to it with tracking devices. Someday, I’ll get up the courage to eat what I’ve picked just to see what happens.

As for the brothel, the aliens that come looking for sex don’t look particularly threatening, nor do they seem to be violent. The other alien volunteers who accommodate these sexual transactions don’t seem to have suffered physically. But I feel lucky every time I stand in line, and I’m not chosen for sex.

Mind you, many of the aliens look at me and talk about me, but none choose me. I assume this is because they’ve never seen a human before. I hope that I’ll die knowing the last person I had sex with was a human man. I don’t care if this makes me a racist in the galaxy. I don’t want alien hands on me in such an intimate way.

In the back, beyond the main building, is another large building where the doctor works. I’ve no idea what he’s doing. All I know is that he has other aliens and Silvers in his home a lot and does things to their bodies. I feel lucky that I don’t have to assist him every day, only for a few minutes sometimes, when his usual assistant volunteer cannot. On the rare occasions he leaves his house, he terrorizes all of us. Everyone fears him, including the other Silvers who run the farm. I suspect he might own this whole place, but again, I don’t have the language skills to understand yet.

I’m the only human here, and I wonder if the group of human women I was brought over with were the first humans to come to this alien planet. I also wonder what these Silvers threatened Earth with to take us. As far as I can see, these aliens are farmers, low-level brothel owners, and a mad scientist, but I cannot be certain if that’s all they are because I was brought over on a spaceship piloted by advanced AI, and there’s advanced technology on the farm. So I may be just in one of the poorer regions of the planet. While I’m working, I wonder sometimes if there’s a big capital somewhere with really important Silvers that do more in the galaxy than just farm in this dry earth. I wonder what the human women who were sent to the big cities are doing. I also wonder if I’ll spend the rest of my days on this strange alien farm. I tell myself it could have been much worse.

* * *

A year or more has probably passed, and I now know enough words to make myself understood to the Silvers running the farm. ‘Make myself understood’ means that after I’ve said something about a hundred times, theymightunderstand what I’m trying to say. I’ve figured out their language is tonal, making it difficult for me to say the right words all the time, especially if I’m upset. Because in those instances, I let my emotions guide me, changing the word’s meaning. This also has the opposite effect on my listeners, as they cannot help but laugh at my mistakes. They shake their heads and say, ‘Water woman.’

I’ve asked why they call me this, and the only reply is, ‘That’s what you are. Water woman.’ I can only assume humans are referred to as ‘water people’ because there’s so much water on Earth compared to what I’ve seen on this planet as we’re farming in desert-like conditions and rarely drink plain water; it’s always mixed with vegetable juice.

On the farm, all ten volunteers and the five Silvers eat breakfast and dinner together. There is no lunch. Today I’ve gotten up the courage and practiced what I think is the correct vocabulary to ask one of the Silvers about my tattoo. I point to it. “What does this mean?”

“Volunteer 4711,” one of the males replies gruffly.

“I don’t understand the word ‘volunteer.’ Please use simple words.”

The male farmer grunts and then says, spitting some food out while he talks, “A person who tries and your number.”

I understand the word ‘number,’ and I know I have a number instead of a name. I tried to get people to say my name when I first arrived, but no one would, but I still don’t understand the other word, but I don’t ask again. So I just remember the first word he said, and I repeat it under my breath, “Voleen-teeur.”

The alien volunteer next to me repeats the word loudly, “Volunteer 4711.”

“Then another alien volunteer points to her identical tattoo, and then to me, and then to her chest. “Volunteer. You are 4711. I am 872. We are the same. Our people here.” Then she makes a movement with her hands like dusting off dirt and nods at me. I still don’t really understand what the word means or her hand gesture. I’ve learned there are many galactically understood hand gestures aliens use to be better understood, and everyone seems to know them but me.

I point to my chest and repeat, “voleen-teeur” and everyone at the table nods as if I’ve said the sky is purple and go back to eating. Now I know what I am called but not the meaning.

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