Hello My Other, Hello My Self: Encapsulation

Ch. 1 of a space opera from the perspective of "The Thing" from the classic sci-fi horror films

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This is the beginning of a long excerpt from one of my pipeline novels, HELLO MY OTHER, HELLO MY SELF, which explores the implications of a classic monster trope from sci-fi horror cinema (the shapeshifter, the perfect mimic, the assimilator, The Thing) on human identity, ego, and the blurred boundary between self and other.

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Encapsulation

When they force me into the cage I don’t go easily.

I no longer wear my human form; I have no interest in etiquette. No, as the police pod rises to meet the orbiting space station where I will be held, I am in flux in the back. I am a nest of vipers then a panicked slick of eels then a spaghetti of earthworms, flexing against the synthetic walls of the abdomen.

The pod is white and smooth and deceptively simple, like everything on our world, two compartments devoid of doors or seams. I smear my flesh against the membrane separating me from my arresting officers, reveling in their discomfort. They’re both in full traditional morphology, one blonde and pale-skinned the other golden brown, draped in dead cotton not of their own making. I press a rash of lidless eyeballs to the barrier—eyeballs generated in real time, rising out of the slab of tissue holding them, rolling and pulsing and winking in and out of existence. The eyes do not always see, are not always connected to enough cortex to process images, but collectively offer a fragmented picture of the front of the pod.

“Join me,” I say from the mouth of a serpent, vocal apparatus made just human enough for intelligibility. “Reject your solitary confinement. You lonely pieces of shit.”

I see them stiffen. I think I might see the back of the blonde one’s head ripple beneath his short hair, a subconscious impulse to form a third eye of his own, to look at me even though he knows better than to turn around. I am reaching out to a long-repressed part of these two Citizens. One whose desires their conscious minds are only vaguely aware of through the dis-ease passed up from their bodies, the blunt alarm of cortisol. If I made eye contact with this one he’d be finished.

I leave my slab of eyes in place while behind it I continue to be writhing things, slippery things, inspired combinations of things from Earth’s menagerie and beyond. Things that are difficult to contain. My path through possible forms is not entirely intentional; it is the natural flow of fresh anger and grief, the turbulence of strong emotion that I surrender to willingly. Enthusiastically.

Something feels so good and right about this state, even if getting to this moment cost me dearly. I’ve lost friends and I’ve lost freedoms. But finally, I am in my fullest Thing energy. Not from around here. A Thing From Another World.

---

I see the space station through the windshield ahead, against the black field of stars. Gravity is low enough that what felt like up is now simply forward. We are officially offworld now, in Federation space. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from the surface of the planet. Perks of committing a Federation crime, I suppose (all part of the plan).

We approach an invisible, imaginary boundary—a political border—encircling the atmosphere, separating us from the rest of the universe. Thingkind is meant to stay inside, on pain of sterilization. It’s semipermeable, of course, like every boundary, our waste heat bleeding into the void alongside our radio static. But anything more substantial approaches that threshold, and our galactic neighbors imagine monsters with their fingers on the lip of the gravity well, dripping with ill intent.

It has become my mission to find the pores in our prison, by breaking you out of yours.

We glide through one of many bay doors toward a grid of transparent hexagonal cells, all empty. The pod turns and its backside merges with the wall of one cell, everting slightly to deposit me inside. I redouble my movement, prodding along the join, more out of principle than hope—the process is seamless, leaving no gaps at any moment. My escape will not be so crudely obvious. This is the 41st century.

One of the officers does turn around then, the one with golden brown complexion who seemed less affected by my antics. The membrane between us is now flush with the wall of my new container. His nostrils flare and he is sweating, but otherwise collected and in full control of his shape. We share a liminal moment. For the next ten seconds he is as trapped as I am, unable to take off until the undocking is complete, his vehicle a pimple on the skin of the station.

"Repent," he says urgently, his eyes skittering, wondering which of mine to lock onto. "Purify yourself. Give your impure desires over to them. Integrity is a necess-"

"Which is it?” I hiss back. “Maintain my integrity or give over half of myself?"

"Don’t bring them down on us. Give up your impurities for immolation, and you can go free, having wiped the slate clean-"

"THAT. WOULD. NOT. BE. ME."

Then the pod pinched off and began the long fall home, its back section smaller now, a wasp leaving behind its stinger.

And I am “alone.”

So to speak.

ALL CHAPTERS | NEXT CHAPTER (Feb 14)