Work Text:
A flash coats the back of a chair in a wide, dark room.
The camera recording the event sits on a tripod, positioned behind an adjustable blue chair with padded arms, backing, and legrest. Right now, it’s currently sitting up with an inkfish on it, their face cut off by the positioning and angle of the camera. A few of their tentacles hang from the sides, blocking their expression and just barely showing their ears. Their wrists and, presumably, their ankles are clasped in metal braces, keeping them strapped to the chair. Another metal clasp sits around their waist, but seems to be wider than their inkfish form, and allows them to breathe comfortably.
The camera’s flash doesn’t light up enough of the room to see the walls, but there are a few things shining along the edges of it. Glass, metal, some kind of reflective items polished to a reflective state. Out of that darkness steps a lanky, lab-coated figure, face also cut off by the height of the camera. It holds a clipboard in its hand.
“Live report for Cuttlebone Research Susceptibility Evaluation Experiment- beta testing phase.”
Its voice was mellow, their inclination neutral. It glanced down to its clipboard, which fluttered with some papers already covered in printer and pen ink.
“Head Scientist Doctor Fairy is the lead on the project- and will be the first to interview the subject before we possibly enter further phases in this project. Other important details for the context of this recording will be added to the results report attached to all video copies, or placed on an addendum after research is complete.”
The subject strapped to the chair seemed to not respond- either being unconscious in some way or being a corpse.
The figure turned slightly, pulling a pen out from the front pocket of its coat.
“Please begin with the patterns.”
Surrounding the scientist’s back on both sides, long, ovoid shapes began to mildly glow just enough to reveal a colorful surface. The glow wasn’t bright enough to light up the room, just display the colors. Upon lighting up, the scientist pulled a pair of glasses out of its front coat pocket and presumably put them on, as they weren’t in its hand when it lowered it.
The colors were vibrant but subdued, cycling through colors at a slow pace. There were a couple dots sitting in seas of mixed colors, and some dark brown stripes that stagnated near the middle of each canvas.
From its other pocket it pulled out a remote with several flat buttons and a switch, a plastic cover preventing the buttons from being accidentally touched. It used its thumb to flip the switch to the other state, a buzzing sounding from above the camera and jerking the subject’s head slightly forward. Within a few moments, a mildly pained groan came from the inkfish, as they began to instinctively try to raise their arms and move them free. The tentacles on their head seemed to also retain some movement, swinging as they glanced around softly. Once they seemed to face forward again, towards the patterns, any panic or tension their body showed seemed to go slack. Their muscles lost any and all control- now glued to the chair.
There was a pregnant pause between them as the scientist seemed to just wait, staring at the one in the chair. After a long moment had passed, it seemed to note down a few sentences on one of the papers, and flipped to the next before speaking up again.
“Hello young Inkfish. Welcome to the Cuttlebone Testing Department. We will be evaluating your reactions to certain stimuli while under the effects of concentrated polarization. “
The voice was even smoother, calmer, almost mockingly sweet. It sounded more like the figure was a teacher attempting to comfort one of their students- making sure to speak in a loud, clear voice that was still charming enough to not sound forceful.
“Can you understand what I am saying? Please respond with a verbal ‘yes’ if so.”
The inkfish stayed slack and unresponsive. It could be interpreted that they fell back asleep, if the figure in front of them didn’t seem to ask questions that needed a response.
After another silent pause, the researcher hastily wrote three more lines on the top of their paper.
“Please amplify the patterns to allow for the Polarization to take its intended effect.”
Without hesitation, the stripes and dots were washed away in a sea of fractal patterns that swirled in on themselves and bubbled with dark spots. The camera seemed to not be able to pick up some of the shapes that formed- any viewer focusing on the patterns would see them blur into only one shade or turn into static noise as a result. The inkfish who was staring at them didn’t seem to respond at all, but their right foot began to tap rapidly and clank against the bottom of the foot guard.
The scientist turned their head to glance down at something, and then repeated their earlier statement after the tapping had stopped.
“Hello young Inkfish…”
“...Can you understand what I am saying? Please respond with a verbal ‘yes’ if so.”
After taking an open mouth breath, the inkfish replied with a loud “Yes.”
The voice was raw, loud, and monotone. It seemed to strain against their throat, sounding a bit hoarse. The researcher tapped its pen in response, writing down quite a few things before responding as well.
“Very good.”
It clicked its pen and dropped it in its front pocket before spinning around and walking past the canvases, beyond the camera’s view.
Returning with a squeak, the figure no longer held the clipboard nor any writing implement. In its hand now was a metal tool that seemed to look like tongs- only extended wider than the kitchen utensil when opened. On the back of it, the part the metal arms seemed to connect to was a large, chunky plastic and silicone piece that connected to some wires. The wires snaked back into the darkness, unable to be followed.
The scientist clamped the tongs together, revealing a small convex surface attached to the inside of the tongs.
This time, the figure wasn’t as sweet and coy. “We will now begin a full-body analysis using the wireless sensors.”
The scientist turned around and stuck the tongs into the dark, where a loud KCH-UNK sounded while a white pad was attached on the top and bottom of the convex insides. As it removed the tool, a soft mechanical humming could be heard.
The researcher approached the inkfish, leaning down slightly to raise their bare foot. It clamped the tongs down on the top and bottom, detaching the pads flush to their skin. They then lightly lowered the foot before letting go, as it swung back and made a small pff as it hit the foot rest.
The scientist repeated this motion with the pads on every limb they had- both their feet, their arms, and every one of the tentacles on their head. Both of them wordlessly staring at each other.
Finally, the figure returned the clamps to the darkness, making a click as it was placed down. It returned with its clipboard, not holding its pen. The ovoids in the background seemed to shuffle slightly closer together after the figure assumed its position.
“Now, I am going to do some simple observation tests with you. When I show you something on this clipboard, I will ask you what it is and you will respond with what you see, using as few words as possible. Do you understand? Please respond with a ‘yes’ if so.”
“Yes.”
“Very good.”
The scientist spoke with its cheery tone, and the inkfish responded with their mono-tone.
The clipboard flipped around. What was on it was fuzzy, since the camera was still trying its best to pick up the colors in the background.
“Can you identify this number? Please respond with what you think it is.”
The inkfish in the chair idly groaned, a low moan catching in their throat before they responded.
“Three.”
After the three second wait for their answer, the scientist pulled the clipboard back, turning it around and tugging the sheet of paper off the front.
“Very good.”
It then turned the clipboard around to show a new shape, still unable to be properly identified by any viewer.
“Can you identify this number? Please respond with what you think it is.”
A longer silence filled the room before the inkfish blurted out a “mmf-”
“Twenty six.”
“Very good.”
This monotonous style of work was repeated with different numbers, including several numbers at once, different directions, different shapes, and even images of some living creatures as well. Once most of the papers had been worked through, the scientist straightened the papers in the stack back out and pushed between the canvases in the back again, emerging with two clipboards.
“Now, this will be the final test before we put you back to sleep.”
“I will be holding two papers with a different color on each of them, and I need you to turn your head to identify both. Once you face one color, please verbally identify what color it is, and then turn to the other color and do the same. If you understand these instructions, please respond with a ‘yes.’”
There was a heavy breath from the inkfish. A muscle in the top of their hand twitched in view of the camera.
“...Yes.”
“Very good.”
The scientist gently approached, putting both clipboards side by side and leaning only a foot away from their face. It quickly flipped them over, the right being a pure and bright red and the left being a vibrant neon green. It then pulled them to be a few inches apart, so that they could be sure about which direction the inkfish was looking when they were identifying the colors.
There was a pause. The subject seemed to turn their head slightly, mumbling to themself about something. This time, their hand intentionally cramped up and shook slightly, the sensation taking place in other spots on their body. Their waist shuffled uncomfortably in their seat. They thumped their foot again, the direction of their face wandering from left to right, their pained moaning getting louder and louder. As they suddenly began to shake their head back and forth, it sounded like their breathing was getting very heavy and teary.
The scientist gripped the clipboards hard as they absorbed this reaction, backing up as it became more frantic. Once the inkfish began to struggle against their restraints, the figure quickly turned the clipboards around and covered them with its body, putting them down somewhere away from the camera’s view. It walked back up with raised hands, its arms tense.
“Good,” was all it said, and the subject began to calm down. This calmed the figure down as well, and they both resumed their resting positions as the inkfish sniffled softly. Once they stopped moving, it was easier to see the pads on their hands seemed to have gotten slightly greyer.
The scientist’s sigh filled the room, and it turned to face the figures behind it.
“Please return the Polarization to a milder state.”
The colors behind it unwound their rapid, strange patterns into ones that the camera could catch. The flickering dots began to bubble up instead of flashing, traveling up and down like they would in a lava lamp. Eventually, the stripes took shape and each ovoid looked more uniform.
“This will be the end of testing. Subject has calmed down and will now return to a dormant state.”
It turned back one last time to grab the initial clipboard from where it placed it, now lacking most of the paper it originally held. It pulled out the pen and wrote a larger paragraph down, looking back up to its subject when it was finished.
“Thank you for cooperating.”
They retracted the tip of the pen, hung the top of it on their coat pocket, and then reached for the remote they had earlier in their lower left pocket. Pointing it towards the chair, they flipped up the plastic panel and pressed two buttons in succession. A mechanical whirr sounded from behind the chair, up near the inkfish’s head. After it stopped, the scientist flipped the switch back to its original state.
The inkfish twitched with a choking sound, something causing them to jerk forward. After a few moments, their head was able to lean back against the chair again, and they stopped moving after that. The remote’s clear cover was slid back on, and placed back into the coat-pocket.
The scientist wrote some things down during a three-and-a-half minute long silence, the colors continuing the flash behind it and the inkfish showing no signs of consciousness.
“You can all stop flashing now,” the scientist grumbled, and the colors behind them dimmed back to darkness. All that could be seen was the two humanoid figures, and the chair.
Marking a few lines down on the clipboard, the figure began to approach the camera with an extended hand, taking one last glance at the subject.
Before the camera turned off, an astute viewer could notice that the inkfish’s extremities, around the pads placed on them, had also begun to gray out.