#dogwatch05

“No, I figured I’d feed him a young Komdo.” Montressa glanced behind her and saw a horrified look on his face. “I’m joking you moron. First order of business is getting a collar on him. Once that’s done we’ll have more control over him. Today I want to see how he deals with having people around him, in a controlled environment of course. I’ll select a few calm and controlled crew from some of the species we’ve got on board and take them to the rec room. That’s where I’ll introduce Frantal to them.”

F’rangel turned back to his desk. “I knew you were joking…obviously. I expect you to have some armed crew in there. I know he’s been calm so far, but he’s a wild animal and you never know what he’ll do.”

“There will be. I may have high hopes for Frantal but I’m not going to throw safety out the window. Come on, let’s go eat.” Montressa led the way out of their room and met Torell in the corridor. F’rangel ruffled his head feathers and Montressa draped her arm over his shoulder as he followed them into the mess hall.

While they were eating, Montressa scanned the room for candidates for her experiment. She wanted crew members that were calm and confident in their abilities and who wouldn’t spook Frantal. Her first choice was the Horntals, a small reptilian race that was from a dry rocky homeworld with many deserts. They were a naturally relaxed species who were very hard to provoke and so would be perfect for this project. Next on her list would have to be her assistant Jalor, a Polton. Polton’s were a curious race but could be quite skittish at times. The most unsettling thing they could do was walk up walls and hang from ceilings, but she’d just tell Jalor not to do that. Montressa had been working with Jalor for over five years now and knew she could count on her not to do anything that would spook Frantal.

Figuring that four species was enough to start with, Montressa gathered a few Horntals, Jalor, some Komdos, and Torell to take to the rec room after breakfast. Now that she’d figured out who to use, they just had to do the hard part: getting a collar on Frantal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Diary,

I swear these people are trying to kill me.

I mean seriously trying to give me a heart attack.

This morning I woke up to the lights coming on and a buzzer alarm as normal. My food was brought in by the two Naga caretakers and placed in my bowl before they backed out of the room. Today’s breakfast was actually pretty decent with some lettuce and meat. After that not much happened for a time. I stretched, ran around the room, climbed my tree, and exercised a bit before draping myself over a tree branch and dangling my arms and legs freely over the edge, the simulated wood digging into my ribs no longer padded with fat. I must have laid there for at least two hours before my door opened again and Momma and Sounder entered.

I’ll admit, I was curious about what they had in store for today. Usually them coming to visit me meant we were going somewhere so I dropped down from my branch to approach them. I landed with a thud as my leg slipped from under me and I had to roll so as to not land on my hip. “You didn’t see that,” I growled as I sat up. 

Sounder looked like he was holding back a laugh and Momma swatted him following it up with a chirp. It was a cute interaction and it reminded me of my family back home. I had done my best to avoid doing this because I knew it would make me sad. My kids would probably have already had their birthday and Dad wasn’t there to celebrate it with them. How was I going to explain why I wasn’t there for them? That Dad was taken by aliens and couldn’t figure out how to get home? The hardest part of all this was knowing I’d likely never get back home and if I did, they’d never believe me…they’d think I had abandoned them. 

A tear rolled down my face before I could stop it, I was never one to cry in front of others. I tried to pull myself together, but out of nowhere Sounder appeared before me and clipped something around my neck. Smart boy I’ll give him that. Taking advantage of my absent mindedness to get that collar on. “At least you learned from last time,” I chuckled before running my fingers under the collar, testing for a latch I could use to disengage it. I couldn’t find one, I have no clue how he got it on without a latch, so I tried to slip it over my head. The collar flexed and moved without chafing, but wouldn’t go over my jaw or ears. As far as I could tell, there was no way to get this thing off unless Sounder or Momma wanted it off.

Speaking of Sounder and Momma, both of them looked startled at how easy it was to get the collar on and watched patiently as I fiddled with it. Momma approached with a lead in her hand, but there was no way I was allowing that to happen. She tried to attach it to the collar and I jumped to the left, just out of reach. She said something to Sounder and he moved behind me to block my path, or at least that’s what I think he was doing. If it was, he wasn’t doing a very good job because when Momma tried again, I leapt to the right and dashed up my tree as fast as I could climb. It was harder than it had been, and I panted as I reached the top. I stared at them from the top branch platform and didn’t move even when they tried to coax me down with food that Sounder ran off to get when Momma realized I wasn’t coming down. Eventually, she sighed and shook her head before walking over to the wall screen. She pressed a few buttons and spoke to it, what she said repeated over the intercoms outside of my room.

When she was done, she walked back over to Sounder and I and raised the lead to me. Then, she tossed it to the far corner of the room. I observed them for a moment before starting to climb down the tree, constantly watching for one of them to retrieve the lead. Once I was satisfied that they weren’t going to try and leash me, I dropped fully from the tree and approached them. Momma glanced at Sounder, then moved to the door, opening it for Sounder and I to exit.

As usual, Momma walked in front of me while Sounder brought up the rear, but this time we didn’t go to the small testing room. We followed the teal wall line to a room that was a full 10 minute walk from my room to the end. As we passed one room, I could smell bread baking and my mouth watered. I made note of what line to follow to get there as we continued to our destination.

Momma stopped in front of a large glass door. Inside I could see a group of creatures and seating areas with tables. She opened the door and stepped aside so I could enter. I cautiously stepped over the threshold and glanced around, looking for anyone I hadn’t seen yet, before walking all the way into the room. The people inside were a mix of familiar species and those I hadn’t seen yet. One was another reptilian species, but this was more lizard-like than snake-like. It looked a lot like a leopard gecko, pattern wise, and walked on all fours instead of being bipedal. I couldn’t think of a name for them so I looked around and saw something thin and black behind the group.

I strained my neck and stood as tall as I could to see around the group. They separated a little bit seeing my attempt to look behind them, but it was just enough for me to see the creature. It moved forward a bit and the motion confirmed what I feared. The eight giant, human sized legs bent and extended as it moved toward the center of the group, and what was worse, towards me. I watched in horror, frozen in place as it walked. Finally, something in my brain clicked and I spun and ran right into the glass door. Dazed, I got up off the floor and put my back to the door. That thing was a creature from my nightmares and I was not about to let it get to me without a fight.

The aliens looked at me with a mix of concern and confusion before connecting the dots, and the spider backed up behind the group. I relaxed a small amount and leaned off the door. Looking at Momma, she was studying me, watching my every move. She made an obvious note on her tablet before calling out to the group in a low whistle. They slowly dispersed to tables around the room and the spider exited out a back door. While this did put me slightly more at ease, I was still weary of all the new people around me.

Momma made an encouraging sound next to me, so after shooting a glare at her, I pushed off the door and took a few hesitant steps forward. When no one moved, I walked further into the room and started to cautiously explore. The aliens seemed to naturally sit according to their species, or maybe they had been told to do this, and each group was occupied with different activities. The leopard geckos, who I will now be calling Gepards, were relaxing under a hot light on cushions surrounded by bowls of small insects covered in a white powder. In much smaller bowls at the center of the table was a small pile of thinly cut yellowish discs. To my left were the Naga. They were crowded tightly around a circular table, their focus solely on a tablet in the middle of the group. I doubted I could get their attention even if I tried. In the far right corner of the room, the Fosh were sitting at a square table watching two of them play a game.

They seemed like the friendliest option so I slowly wandered up to them to see what they were doing. The two in the middle were highly focused on the game in front of them, but the rest of the group noticed me and made a space for me to see. The game looked like a multi-layered game board that had five levels. After watching them play, I could tell that pieces could move between levels at the edges of each board, but they had to cross to the otherside of the level before they could move up or down again and to take a piece, it had to be surrounded on the four tiles directly next to it. I wasn’t quite sure what the goal of the game was, but they seemed to be focused on moving down the tiers. If I could just move the pieces, I might be able to show that I understood part of the game. And maybe I could show them that I wasn’t just a dumb beast. I walked closer to the board as one of the Fosh leaned back with his head in his hands and the other grinned at me while resetting the game. I reached for a piece still on the second tier from the top and…lost my balance as my hand slipped through the item. I caught myself on the board and the Fosh around me began to laugh. I don’t know why I couldn’t interact with the pieces, but my failure seemed highly entertaining to the Fosh around me and also caught the attention of the nearby Gepards.

“I’m glad my struggles are so very entertaining for you,” I grumbled as I pushed myself off the table to a more upright position. Head held high, I stalked over to the Gepards who were smiling sympathetically at me, or at least I think they were, reptilian facial expressions were never my strong suit. I’d never be able to demonstrate I was intelligent with that game now. All they’d see was an animal playing with something it didn’t understand. The Gepards shuffled their cushions to make a space for me so I could sit down with them, and I have to say, the warm lights felt amazing compared to my room. The lamp heated the cushions like a blanket fresh out of the dryer and I burrowed as deep into the fabric as I could. My body relaxed into the warmth and familiar comfort and I drifted off to sleep without realizing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Montressa had to admit, it was quite cute watching Frantal burrow into the seat cushions and today had revealed more about him and his personality just like she had hoped it would. He was curious and willing to explore. This she already knew from his adventures into hydroponics, but he was not only willing to explore, he was also willing to investigate other creatures. With one notable exception… She hadn’t expected him to react so violently to Jalor. The poor thing had nearly left his skin behind trying to escape, but on the bright side, she now knew that Frantal was from a social species or at least one that craves interactions. She would just have to make sure he never saw Jalor again. She guessed that on his home planet there must be some terrifying creature that resembled her assistant and that’s why Frantal reacted the way he did. She would also have to check him for injuries. The crack of his head hitting the glass was honestly quite impressive.

The rest of the experiment was both telling and not at the same time. His first instinct was, understandably, to interact with the species most familiar to him, but even then he spent most of his time simply watching them and what they were doing. He got curious about them playing a game of Crusade and tried to mess with the pieces but was he just curious and wanting to feel them or did he actually have purpose in trying to grab one? How could he have known that the pieces could only be moved via a ring worn on the player’s finger to avoid the pieces getting thrown around in unstable flight. When he failed to move a piece and was laughed at, poor Frantal simply raised his head and stalked off toward the Horntals like a prideful pet who didn’t want to admit they were embarrassed or had made a mistake. Interestingly though he avoided a species he knew in favor of one he didn’t. Montressa knew that Frantal had had bad experiences in the past with Komdos, but she didn’t think that he would completely ignore them other than a calculating gaze before selecting the new species. Without knowing what his homeworld was like, she couldn’t know if there was a similar species like the Horntals he was familiar with, but he really seemed to like the heating lamps they had. She made a note to include one in his room along with some other things she thought might give him some more enrichment. 

Montressa left Torell in charge of the sleeping Frantal and made her way back to her office to log all of her observations. She was only 5 paragraphs in when she got a notification on her tablet. An incoming call from D’ral. “Strange,” she thought to herself. Pressing the answer button, she smiled, “D’ral, how are you?”