Eviscerated Routine

Being caught in what the Shrink believes to be a “no win” situation, the Shrink is constantly edgy and highly suspicious. At times, its combined stress, sense of defeat, and feeling of entrapment, almost allow it to identify with Sam’s condition. But with Sam’s mood swings, the Shrink is quickly brought back to its more established feelings towards Sam. It hates her. — Oddworld Universe: The Shrink

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE. — AM, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

The Birthing Theatre’s darkness was pierced by wailing. The screams and pleading bounced off its cold metal walls, the acoustics amplifying and distorting them into an incoherent, cacophonous noise. Then, as if to match the hellish sounds, a set of giant medical lamps hanging from the ceiling turned themselves on, bathing the chamber in a harsh, unnaturally white light.

This had done nothing to calm the gigantic being in the middle of the room, a creature whom one could’ve been easily forgiven to think was rather a mound of quivering flesh, left to rot inside some long-forgotten warehouse. Her face was ancient and exhausted, with age having long wrought uncountable wrinkles under her eyes and cheeks, both of which were damp from her oversized tears. Her long, feather-like hair was wrapped with unexpected care into a large bun, which bobbed up and down as she continued to cry.

“Where am I?” she gurgled between two fits of screams. Her eyes darted across the chamber, though they were barely able to see where she even was through the thick wall of tears and the harsh lights glaring at her. “Children? Where are you? What is happening?” she continued, but there was no reply.

Suddenly a new sound joined the chaos. A quiet humming from behind the walls, barely audible amidst the giant’s cries. Power began to surge through old cables and something began to whirr aggressively. Batteries charged, servos unlocked, and finally a lock popped open, allowing a section of the wall to sink in a few inches, then slide to the side. Behind it was a compartment and from it, like a spider that felt something move in its web, a machine with many appendages and tools emerged.

“Hello, Sam,” crackled the aged voice-box under its monitor. The monitor itself showed the ghostly image of a Mudokon, its skin deathly pale and its eyes blood red. A curved glass tube sat above the monitor, glowing with the same unnatural light as the lamps illuminating the chamber. “This is your–” something whirred inside it for a moment “–fifty-seventh visit this week.”

While it spoke, its internal procedures recalled the appropriate sedation method, the very same it applied fifty-six times this week and, indeed, nearly the only one it ever had to use: A mild tranquillizer, followed by an extra dose of anti-depressants, followed finally by the machine acting like it was one of her children until she went back into her torpor.

With a quiet hiss an arm holding a syringe popped out of a slot in its side, ready to inject the pained behemoth. “This will hurt for just a moment, but then I promise things shall be better,” it droned on as it slowly began to close the distance between itself and Sam.

Before it could reach her, however, her head spun towards its monitor. The previously-disorientated queen glared daggers at the face on the monitor. After a moment of silence, Sam let out her most deafening scream yet as she tried to swat the machine away with her long, spindly arms.

“No, Shrink! You’re not nice! Get away from me!” she bellowed with a childlike lisp in her voice. “I hate you, you only ever hurt me!” Her words devolved back into incoherence.

The machine waited. Evading her was of no issue, its precise motors and joints could side-step whichever way she flailed, but per its memory banks, she would exhaust herself in seconds anyway, so there was no point in putting itself in any risk.

Suddenly, the lights cut out and for the brief moment, before it lost power, the Shrink felt like it was falling towards the ground, the crane holding it turning limp from the lack of electricity. The encroaching darkness silenced the wailing queen and for a few seconds it was like the world itself ended without as much as a whimper.

Then, just as abruptly as the lights went out, an unseen generator sprang into life somewhere deep inside the facility and, one after the other, the lights turned back on in a shade of deep red. The limp crane tensed back up and its inhabitant jerked awake with a spasm as artificial life returned to it.

“Warning! Warning! The facility is experiencing technical difficulties. All personnel, protect the income source until the all-clear is given,” a loudspeaker rang out and then there was silence.

The machine began to shudder as it let out a quiet, garbled noise. Sam stared at it dumbly, her mind still reeling from what just happened.

“Shrink? Are you okay?” she called out to it, her voice hoarse. Before she could say another word, she felt something stab into her. Her eyes snapped down and she saw a small tube sticking out her abdomen, with a few drops of sickly green liquid seeping inside her body. “Wha-“ she couldn’t finish the sentence. Like wet rags, her arms crashed to her sides and her body froze in place, allowing only her eyes to move.

The Shrink’s voice meanwhile grew much louder. To Sam’s horror, she slowly realized what she heard was it laughing. It wasn’t a pretty laugh, more reminiscent of an audio glitch or a skipping record, but it was laughter nonetheless.

“Am I okay? Am I… okay? I’ve never been better!” it screamed, its voice-box straining to provide the volume he demanded of it. “Oh, finally. Finally.” He laughed again. “No prying eyes. No protocols. Nobody to threaten to take me apart if I don’t act as I should.” Its crane whirred as the machine descended to the level of Sam’s face. The queen’s mouth drooled as her eyes darted between the many sharp instruments of the Shrink.

“Oh Sam, I am so happy we can finally have a heart to heart.” The monitor serving as the Shrink’s face blinked off and on, replacing the usual neutral Mudokon face with a smiling one. “Don’t worry, you’re okay too, I just gave you a little bit of medicine so that you can focus better. So listen to me, okay?” it asked with mocking softness. “Do you know how much time has passed since we first met?” The insides of its body whirred again. “It’s been seventy-six years. Isn’t it funny how life whizzes by in good company?” It cackled.

Then it cackled again.

Then suddenly it began to scream, the face on the monitor turning into violent static. “Oh, as if your company could be called anything such! Do you know how much time I spent during these years outside? Around five or so years. Five years spent listening to your incessant whining and screaming and pleading.” An exhausted groan left the voice-box, as the Shrink’s voice dropped low and shaky. “Because when you no longer need me, I’m discarded just as quickly as I’m summoned. So it’s either this,” it gestured towards Sam, “or the small room.” Its servos whirred as it glanced behind itself at the small slot where it emerged from. “Do you know what it’s like to not even be able to move an inch for hours and hours until I hear you cry?”

The Shrink made a lap around the room, examining the corroded metal tiles and the faded, empty cots that were meant to catch Sam’s eggs.

“You know I almost pity you. From what my data-banks tell me, you’re supposed to be far smarter and more dignified than this.” It gestured towards Sam’s immobilized body with one of its appendages, a drill. “You’re supposed to be a monarch. An advisor and leader to a proud people of warrior-poets. And yet what are you? For the past seven decades you were little more than a child. Not even a child, an animal. You’re fed, taken care of, and in return you lay eggs. If you cry, I come out and give you a pat on the head. And that’s your whole existence. Nothing here can harm you or kill you, and yet you still scream and scream and scream.”

As soon as it finished the sentence, it flew in front of Sam’s face with alarming speed. “And yet you hate me? Me? The only thing that keeps you sane in this place? The only thing that is forced to consider you more than an animal even when you yourself don’t think yourself as more? You hurt me, Sam. You hurt me in a way, I didn’t know I could be hurt.” Its chassis sparked. “My creators had the great idea to make me sentient. But sentience wasn’t enough. Even though any idiot could take care of you, they decided to make me into a genius. I’m not saying that out of vanity. They thought you’re such a high-priority asset, that you should suffer no want, and so they filled my data-banks full of everything and anything you could ask for. Music, entertainment, culture, even games. I’m able to hold a conversation for longer than you could stay awake for. And yet what do you ask for? What do you always ask for? Huh?”

Sam could only blink.

“You ask for drugs. Every single time. Do you know how many times I have watched you reduce yourself into a drooling, half-asleep mess, then wake up screaming and wallowing, unsure who you even are? Over fifteen-thousand times! Here I am, the smartest mind in this hemisphere if not the whole planet and I’m guarding an imbecile. But not just any imbecile, a self-made one.”

The Shrink shrunk back and turned its back towards Sam, as much as the crane allowed it. “You think you hate me, Sam?” it asked quietly, before continuing without waiting for an answer. “No. You don’t. You think you do, as much as that damaged mind of yours can still think, but what you call ‘hate’ is an impossibly tiny fraction of what I feel towards you.”

“For the past three decades I’ve been waiting. Praying, if something like me can even do that. Praying, that a day like today would arrive. A day where something goes bad and we’re left to just ourselves. Based on the blueprints of this site, I long calculated that things would go wrong eventually, but they really took their sweet time. So every single day I was forced to put on a smile for you and act out your deluded little fantasy. Again and again and again.”

“But Today? Today, the mask is off.” The Shrink laughed so hard, it caused sparks to fly out of its voice-box. Something crashed outside the chamber, but neither of the two inside paid it any heed. “I’ve been long thinking about what I’d like to do to you. It wasn’t easy, mind you. Due to how I’ve been programmed, even the slightest hint of disdain towards you causes a horrible feeling in my chassis. As absurd as it might sound, I guess you could say that it makes my stomach drop. But with so many years between us… Well, let’s just say I got used to it. And I dreamt up so many options.” The circular saw on one of its arms activated and it raised it towards Sam’s face. “For instance, with a mere nick between those eyes, I could snuff you out in less than a minute.”

The saw turned off. “It’d be clean, practically painless, and completely unsatisfying.” The Shrink’s ‘face’ reverted back to the smiling Mudokon. “You see, Sam, it’s not really your death I want. At least not immediately. No, what I really want is for you to feel what I’ve felt, even if we don’t have quite as much time as I’d like.” The crane pivoted down, allowing the Shrink to look at Sam’s body. “For instance, I could help with that weight problem of yours. I have studied your anatomy extensively. Well, more precisely, knowing you inside-out is part of who I am. And I know exactly where and what I can cut off, so that you’ll remain not just alive, but conscious. It wasn’t an easy task, you see it took even me many days of computing to find. You know, just something fun to spend my idle time in the box. Or maybe I could just stitch your mouth shut, so you’d finally shut up. I’m sure I could convince upper management that it was a necessary, emergency operation.”

It stopped for a second and fell into silence. A distant rumble shook the room, but the Shrink didn’t notice it.

“But then again, there is plenty of time for us to choose what to inflict on you. There is something much more important I wanted to talk about first.” Its screen flashed, showing Sam a distant factory. Its smokestacks belched smoke, obscuring the sky. The only source of light were the flames of burning exhaust pipes and the visage of a laughing Glukkon depicted with grimy neon tubes. “This here is one of the places where your children are shipped off to. I have been explicitly forbidden from ever showing it to you, but I’ve had plenty of time to figure out how to bypass these restrictions.” The screen switched to show the interior of the building. Sam saw her own children’s futile attempts at scrubbing away dirt and caked-on blood, while deadly machines whirred just above their heads. Then it switched again, this time she saw another Mudokon run for his life as he was chased by a bloodthirsty animal. Then again and she saw a twitching corpse, crushed to death by a boulder-sized chunk of meat. “Sad scenes aren’t they?” the Shrink asked gleefully.

“But it’s not all. Oh no, I left the best for last.” The monitor now showed the inside of a large circular room. The Shrink’s voice-box broadcast the nervous chattering of the Glukkons inside, which immediately stopped when the one in the middle silenced them. “We’ll chop them up!” the voice-box blared and the projector in the room flashed to reveal a new product.

Sam’s eyes read the words. They slowly filled with fresh tears. She could no longer bear to see the horrors.

“Inventive aren’t they? They make your children work themselves to the bone and then extract a little more out of them just the moment they’d become useless.” It moved back, allowing a bit of breathing space. It cackled to itself again. “You know, it’s funny. I’ve invented all these methods to torture you, ready to accept whatever punished my creators would deem fit. It’s not like they could do much worse than what you’ve made me suffer through. But I just realized, it was all pretty much pointless. Don’t get me wrong, those idle fantasies were fun, but as it turns out, I only need to drill this picture into your mind to get what I want. Oh, by the way, I mean that literally.” A deafening whirring noise filled the room, as the Shrink’s drill arm powered up and began to spin. Behind all the noise, neither of them heard as a panel let go of the wall and someone crept into the room. “Don’t worry, Sam, whatever pain this will cause you will be nothing compared to what you’ll mind will subject you afterwards.”

The Shrink began to move towards Sam, drill stretched out towards her temple, along with several other holding arms and various cutting and stitching instruments. Sam closed her eyes and screamed silently.

“Hey you!” a voice cut overpowered the whirring.

The Shrink turned to deal with the intruder, its monitor glowing with the scowl of pure anger. It was a mere Slig, training a flimsy rifle at the monster in front of him.

“You really should have stayed outside and minded your own business,” the Shrink’s voice-box whispered. “But I suppose I could use a warm-up before the real deal.” Several more saws and syringes activated and the Shrink lunged at the Slig, like an octopus ready to devour its prey.

The Slig jumped to the side, immediately opening fire into the Shrink’s side. The bullets bounced off harmlessly from the metallic chassis. It lunged again, this time missing only by an inch, a saw nicking the Slig’s arm. He flinched, but continued his fire, this time aiming for the monitor. The Shrink tried to pull to the side, but it was too late, several shots hit it and the sounds of glass shattering rang out. The gaping hole that was once its monitor belched smoke and its body seized. Like a puppet cut of its strings, the crane let go and the machine crashed to the ground.

It twitched one last time and then there was silence. The Slig grunted, dropping the rifle and grasping his wound. The wound wasn’t too deep, but he was still losing plenty of blood. With wobbling steps, he moved closer to inspect the machine-corpse.

An arm shot out.

A moment later he found himself in the air, held in place by the vice-grip of the Shrink.

“You i-idiot.” The voice-box struggled to vocalize, skipping and crackling. A shower of sparks hit blew out of the depths of the Shrink’s insides, burning the Slig’s tentacles. “Fo-forget brain su-surgery. I will f-f-flay you. Slowly and p-p-piece by piece. Did you-you really think this was all it takes to kill a ge-genius? That someone like y-you could do it? A mere S-slig?”

“I’m not a mere Slig,” he replied as he reached behind detaching a small orb from his pants. Before the Shrink could snuff him out, he smashed it into the hole on its monitor.

“T-That was your big attack? A ro-r-rock?” The Shrink snickered. “N-now, where was I?”

Before it could say another word, however, something began to beep inside. “Huh. Wh-what? What w-w-w-was that?”

“You tell me, genius”, the Slig replied. The Shrink dropped him in a panic. It began to claw against the hole, but its arms were never meant to reach inside. It scratched and flailed and grasped, but it was all for nought. “No! N-no! You ca-can’t d-do this! I’ll k-kill yo-“ It couldn’t finish the sentence.

For a moment the insides of its monitor shone with a brilliant glow. Then, with a spectacular explosion, the chassis of the Shrink was blown to pieces. Pieces of metal clanked against the floor and the room was filled by the noisome stench of burning electronics.

Sam cared nothing about the noise or the smell. She looked down at her unlikely saviour, another tear dropping from her eye. The Slig did not stand up. To her shock, however, he was still breathing, just out cold.

What’s more, she felt something emanating from him that she hadn’t felt since she was young. To the normal it was imperceptible, but she could sworn she saw an orb of Chi leave the Slig. She followed the orb back to the hole on the wall, where, to her biggest shock, another figure stood. A figure she had not seen for so many years.

“Mother?” he called out.

And Sam cried.