A Place Not of This World

A look at a day in the life of a worker alien. Written 2004.

In a far away land, there lived a little creature called Ingmay. Ingmay worked in a potions factory, manufacturing magical concoctions galore. With vivid green eyes and a very intelligent mind, Ingmay was a slate grey creature about the size of an average chimp.

            One day Ingmay was mixing a potion, when two men came to the factory looking for a love potion. One of the men clapped his hands together and a bell rang. The bell sounded like a distant church bell, but it started to get louder, until there was a peal so loud and sharp that the whole factory trembled. The bottles of potion that Ingmay had been using trembled and then fell in to the mixture, along with Ingmay. Ingmay tried to breathe, but only choked on the potion, slipping into darkness.

            Ingmay woke to the sound of drums beating, and sat up, only to flop right back down again at the throbbing pain in the back of its head. It seemed that the potion had transported it to another world. There was a noise and Ingmay tried to crawl away, but ran headfirst into a cold, damp, hard, and slimy surface. It turned out to be a pretty young girl, who gently scooped Ingmay up, and dribbled some liquid into its mouth. Ingmay was then gently cradled to a soft, warm surface and rocked slowly. Ingmay woke to soft music and realised three things, the first of which being that it was in a lot of pain. It also realised that it was thirsty, and that it must have dropped off on the walk to where it was now. A cup was thrust into its hand, and it drank gratefully. Abruptly there was no pain, and Ingmay was not hungry or thirsty, only sleepy.

            After many days, Ingmay woke up feeling much better ready to work, and healthy enough to explore this new world. When it told the girl who had come to take care of it, she said that she would speak to her boss, who would go through the chain of command to find it a job. She asked Ingmay if it was male or female, and Ingmay answered truthfully that it didn’t know, because its species did not have outward ways of telling their gender. Ingmay then told her that it was an orphan that had been abandoned on the steps of the potion factory. Noone had cared enough about it to do the necessary test to find its gender. The girl told it that her name was Cellie, and she was a 15^th rank girl. Cellie told it about the ranking system, and taught it proper worker etiquette for both males and females. Cellie and Ingmay then made an agreement, that they would be friends and share everything with each other. Cellie advised Ingmay that it would have to be a male to get anywhere in this world. She informed her boss that Ingmay was a male, had been held in quite high regard in its own world, & as it was not from this world; maybe it could have a little higher rank.

            Ingmay got a job watching the livestock on the hills, and was given an 8^th rank as a male. The highest rank generally given to a newcomer was generally 18^th rank, so Ingmay was especially lucky that ‘he’ had Cellie as a friend. His livestock watching gave him lots of time to sit around and do nothing, so he asked Cellie to teach him to play one of the games that were played around the tables after dinner, called gambel. He practised while he watched the livestock, and soon got very good at them. After dinner every night he played games with the other men. He was a fair player, and won some, but not all of his games, gradually getting better.

            One day when he took the livestock out, he realised that they were restless. He wondered at this, but when he reached the hills, they settled down. He had one eye and half his brain on them, when they started running in all directions, obviously scared by something.  There came a snarl, and a brown blur flew by. The livestock, which was comprised of many species of animals, protected themselves in their individual ways, some freezing, some playing dead, and others unsheathing long razors from their tails, mouths or feet. Ingmay realised that there were two creatures stalking the livestock, and sounded the alarm. He had been given a stick to protect himself, and using this, he tried to get the blurs to go away. He heard someone yell at him to duck, so he did, and the blur about to attack him suddenly dropped with a dart in its throat. The other blur was leaping at one of the livestock, and Ingmay was suddenly filled with a rage that one of these creatures would dare attack one of his charges. He gave a full throated war cry, and leapt at the creature, a grey blur himself. Claws suddenly came out of his nails, and he ripped the creature’s throat out with one swipe and leapt back to where he had been standing. His claws disappeared and it seemed as if he had never moved. Noone knew what had happened except Ingmay, and he had just realised something about himself.

Afterwards, Ingmay got promoted to 3^rd rank male!!! He was allowed to ask for one person to be promoted to a higher rank, and he chose Cellie. She was promoted to 5^th rank female, and she was allowed to help watch the livestock with Ingmay.  They practised the gambel so much together that they both became expert. Ingmay was challenged to a 2-on-2 gambel match, and he accepted. He chose Cellie as his 2^nd player.        It was a close game, but Ingmay and Cellie won. Ingmay was catapulted to 2^nd rank, while Cellie was catapulted to 3^rd.

Cellie had the ability to transmit anything onto a wall, so that everyone could see. One night, Cellie put on a show of what had happened when the blurs attacked the livestock. Everyone saw it as it appeared on the day, followed by a view of it very slowly, showing exactly what had happened. Ingmay got up and gave a speech, explaining about his home, ending with a statement that left everyone reeling. “Only the females fight in my world. That means…

I AM A FEMALE!”

Author's Note

Unedited. Reading these reminds me of just how young I was. It's great to see how much I've changed. I'm not quite so feminist now...