Chapter 14: 2100 October 17th, Sunday

I should probably write more about Veldel.

Mentioned earlier she was really fond of just constantly color-shifting. I guess that’s a gift of hers, maintaining creative patterns over her body and hair.

She’s also pretty good at telekinesis. Her psionic index is nothing to sneeze at, but not even close to Nyrle’s. I wonder if sometimes she gets jealous about that.

She’s great at hair-plugs too, even if Soaph is better at the speed and precision. Veldel has a certain creativity with that stuff that can be hard to beat.

I’m sure her skill with her pheromones is good too. She’s also beautiful like the rest of us, though in her own subtle and unique way. In particular I think her nose is pretty cute.

But none of those are Veldel’s real gift. No, Veldel is smart. Like, really smart. Nyrle is smart too of course, as is Maggie. I’m probably not the brightest, but I think me and everyone else the gang are intelligent enough for college at least, to put it modestly.

Veldel, though, is on a whole other level than smart. She’s an actual genius. Despite being the same age as the rest of us pretty much, she’s in a graduate school program at the university, not a sophomore student.

I think she’s working on a masters in biology or something. She already did a quintuple bachelors in biology, bio-engineering, chemistry, physics and mathematics. Oh, and apparently she plays the piano too.

So yeah, super smart. Zenith on average are probably technically smarter than humans, but it’s not that big a difference. Sometimes I wonder if its Veldel alone pulling our average up haha.

Anyways, she’s also pretty weird. Not in a bad way, at least most of the time. But, she’s definitely interesting.

Like, she was the last person to join our friend group. She just randomly sat with us one day for lunch, after we already met Maggie, and started chatting us up.

She can be very nice in conversation though. If she overheard one of us talking about any sort of homework problem or some concept we didn’t understand, like in our freshman math or science classes, she’d quickly chime in give us the answer or otherwise explain things.

But like I wrote earlier, it’s usually kind of odd to see her around outside of meal times. She just kind of shows up when she wants, but otherwise is busy doing schoolwork or who knows what.

So naturally I find it peculiar and neat that, due to odd circumstances, we ended up spending a chunk of the day together.

My morning started off with my noticing another 10 texts or so on my smartphone. Nyrle was yet again thanking for saving Maggie’s sorry butt. One text from Maggie too. It matched the general sentiment I gleaned from Nyrle’s spam, that the two of them were both cool about what happened and everything.

With no work to do, I had a lazy morning and just engulfed the leftover containers of gams for breakfast. Lunch in the cafeteria was just Wojis and I, as the others were either busy or off-campus.

After lunch I decided to go for a job around the university, just to enjoy the fresh air. There was a walk path on the outskirts which connected via crosswalks to the areas off-campus. I wasn’t really dressed for a jog, wearing some sandals and everything, but I managed it ok.

Zooming past the far slower humans out and about, I eventually reached one of the crosswalks leading to a side ride off campus. That’s when I saw Veldel. She saw me first actually, or around the same time, as she gave me a curt wave once she came into sight.

At that time, she was once again wearing her usual style of attire with strapped sandals, a black skirt, and a white top. She had a black purse today though, which I hadn’t seen her with before. Her skin and hair were shifting in a pattern of white and red stripes. Didn’t look too far off from one of those ornaments barbers have outside their shops. The spinny peppermint kind of thing.

I slowed down as I approached her, expecting just to say hi, but she shouted out as I got near.

“Zlee, good timing. Want to help me out with something?”

I stopped in front of her.

“Sure, I’m not doing anything too special anyways.”

“Well, let’s see if we can change that.”, she said, laughing softly.

We jogged together along the crosswalk and deeper out of campus. The back road was somewhat popular for people who wanted a scenic route to whatever off-campus destination they had, as it cut through some of the shrubbery and stuff. Most people take the more main road out to the business districts or town via leaving by the university’s main entrance still, but given how many students went here that meant this still had a bit of action everyday.

“So, what are we doing by the way?”, I asked along the way.

“Gathering some test subjects.”, said Veldel.

I tilted my head.

“Huh, seems interesting I guess. You mean for your lab-work.”

“Exactly.”

She was in a graduate program for biology I believe. Maybe one or two other subjects for all I knew. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary she’d be gathering specimens. I just didn’t quite guess the type of specimen at first...

So we make it to a tree at the side of the road, and there she stops. Then, she leans against the tree and shifts her color pattern to a brownish shade with darker lines on it. If not for her clothes, she would have blended right into the tree. I realized what she was doing.

“Camouflage?”, I said.

“Yes, but don’t worry you don’t have to follow suit. It probably won’t matter if any of us are spotted in advance. Their reaction times just aren’t up to snuff.”

I shrugged and stood some distance away, near a bush, just keeping my usual skin and hair tones of light-brown and red, respectively. Together we were watching the road.

A convertible came down the road, driven by a lone student letting her raven hair flow in the wind. Veldel leaned in a moment, then back upon seeing it.

“No, just the one. Not worth the trouble.”

I tilted my head again, then I realized what type of test subjects she was trying to get. Immediately I felt a sense of intrigue.

Another car was coming down the road shortly after. A sedan. She squinted at it.

“Ah, four is fine.”

The car kept moving along at a rather fast pace. Probably 40 MPH at least. Veldel moved from the tree a bit closer to the pavement. Then, right when it passed by us, Veldel bolted out onto the road.

She didn’t move in front of the car though. Rather, she reached out and dug her fingers into the left side of the car’s exterior as was zooming by. I heard the metal tear. Once she had a good grip on it, she lifted the car up, its wheels still spinning, and she just slammed it right into the tree behind her.

The car flipped over, wheels petering out as the people inside screamed and yelped. One guy was yelling about his leg. He had been sitting on the left side of the backseat and so his left leg was cracked and torn from the impact, but all the other humans inside seemed to fair well from what I could see.

As I watched, curious, Veldel walked up to the overturned car and ripped the right side of its exterior off. The doors and other crumbled bits of metal were tossed over her shoulder to the other side of the road.

I saw her smile as she lashed her hair at everyone inside. Their screams intensified as they started to shrink. I moved over to watch.

“Oh wow. That was... something.”, I said.

“I suppose.”, said Veldel.

After taking her hair-plugs out of them, she stepped into the wreckage, carefully, and moved their clothes aside with their mind. Once she spotted them, she went.

“Aha!”, and levitated them up to her face as well. She walked back over hovering there, each one about 2 inches in height. She spun them around with her mind, peering at them with her red-irised eyes like she scrutinizing nail-polish bottles at the store.

While doing that, she shifted her color-patterns again. Her skin took on a very light pink. She also made white star patterns over her form which moved around her body, occasionally exploding out in white little shard-like patterns before disappearing so another new star would form somewhere else on her body. I think she was going for a sunset-night sky sort of vibe... only with the stars the more cartoony 5-point style and exploding, dissipating, then coming back.

She tapped each of the terrified, shrunken humans and stopped on the guy with the wounded leg.

“No, this one won’t do.”

She plucked it out of her telekinetic lineup and brought it to her lips. But, she paused, and quickly turned to me.

“Actually here, you can have this one.”

She guided the man to her other hand with her mind, then chucked him my way. I caught him, eyeing him.

“Wait, why’s he not good? Is it the leg?”

“No.”, said Veldel. “Check out his jaw. Under-bite.”

I squinted at the terrified guy.

“Huh I guess you are right.”

I didn’t ask her why that mattered for her research or whatever. Instead I just shrugged and popped him in my mouth. His leg was a bit bloody, so I didn’t savor him much and just swallowed him down quick.

“The rest are fine though.”, said Veldel, eyeing her terrified catches. She snatched them up and put them into the purse she had over her shoulder.

“Alright, that’s all I technically need for now, but we can keep an eye out. Want to head back to campus with me?”

“Sure.”, I said, shrugging again.

As we walked back, I asked her what she planned to do with the humans.

She smiled, though stayed looking at the path ahead.

“You know, how about I just show you my lab once we get back. No harm in that and I think you might get a kick out of it.”, she said.

“Oh, neat! Yeah I’d like to see it.”

No one else in our friend group had been there before at the time, far as I knew.

Anyways, as we were heading back, another vehicle was coming down the road. Veldel’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Zlee, do you see that.”

“Yeah, it’s a bus.”

“Jackpot.”, she laughed. “They don’t usually take this road. It must be a weekend trip for a class or something. Come with me.”

She gently grabbed my hand and tugged me to the side of the road: the side closer the bus as it sped along. No trees nearby so Veldel didn’t bother with camouflaging. Oddly enough, she quickly unstrapped her sandals, and stepped out barefoot onto the grass near the road.

“What are you doing that for?”

“Better sense of texture and control. Now, mind helping me out here. Once it passes up, just ram into it with me.”

“The whole bus? If we get caught that’s quite the fine.”

“We won’t get caught.”, said Veldel.

I chuckled. “The only ones getting caught are the humans I take it.”

That got a laugh out of her.

The bus drove by, fast, but not fast enough. As per her request I charged the vehicle, hitting it with my shoulder. Veldel did the same by my side. With our combined strength the force was very easily enough to knock it on its left side and send it skidding over to the other lane.

Since we both hit it at about the same time--her towards the back of it and me to the front--it didn’t angle itself too awkwardly or anything.

Screams erupted from inside of course, a mixture of male and female, with one voice of each gender being rather older: the driver and professor I guessed.

Before I could ask if Veldel wanted any more help or anything, she just pounced atop the overturned bus. It was like she was an animal or gremlin or something--albeit a sophisticated one. She just bent over and started tearing into the thing, peeling off the layers of metal, stomping through the glass to get at the people inside.

With her bare feet and hands she ripped open a large gash into the right side of the bus which, being overturned, was effectively its roof. Her fingers and toes could tear the metal as though a human’s could butter.

Cackling, her hair spread up and out and wiggled like many tiny snakes, then she started lashing it at everyone inside. I heard the screams intensify, then get quieter. Not because the humans were in any less pain but, as they shrunk, their voices shrunk a bit with them.

With her hair-plugs still extended, she kept tearing at the bus to make the hole bigger to work with. Eventually she retracted her hair back to its usual medium length, and levitated all the bus-goers up and out.

She lept off the mangled bus and landed right in front of me, her feet leaving some cracked marks in the road from the force.

The humans all rotated around her body via her telekinesis, it was like she was being orbited by them. As they spun, she plucked three of them out into her right hand.

“These ones won’t do. One for me and two for you.”

She held out her palm before me, and I saw three students there, shrunken to 2 inches.

I smiled.

“I mean, I’m not like a pet you have to reward treats to or something for helping you.”

She laughed.

“Nonsense. Besides, I’m eating one of these ‘treats’ myself. I’m just giving you extra for helping out. As a friend, not a pet. You can pick which two you want.”

I ended up taking a guy and a gal out of her hand, leaving the other shrunken male student for her to devour. Which she did, slurping him in legs first and seeming to savor his fear as much as his flavor.

I popped my two in my mouth, and suckled them both, one against each of my cheeks. I imagined I might’ve looked a little like a chipmunk.

Veldel unzipped her purse and guided the rest of the shrunken humans inside. She then resealed it. Thankfully it was one of those purses with the tiny metal-ringed holes in them towards the top but below the zipper, so they had air and all that.

I swallowed the gal in my mouth, so I could talk easier without spitting saliva or anything.

“Alright, that’s it for now I take it.”, I said.

“Yes this is plenty, let’s head back.”, she replied.

As she spoke, she was already back on the side of the road with her sandals. But, she paused before finishing slipping on the first one.

“Actually.”, she said. “I think I’ll walk back barefoot. Enjoy the feeling of the ground under my steps. You ever done that before Zlee?”

“Walk around outside barefoot? Maybe once or twice somewhat recently.”

“Oh, even better.”, Veldel said, taking her sandals up in her hand.

“Why don’t we have a friendly race back?”, she continued. “Wind rushing through our hair as our bodies tear through it. Let’s say a race back to the crosswalk.”, she continued.

“Are you sure the humans in your purse will be fine?”

“Yes.”, she said. “It’s padded.”

I shrugged. “Sure then!”

“Alright.”, said Veldel. “On three. 1, 2, 3.”

We both bolted off along the side of the road. As we did, we sped by a few more cars on the road. The speed limit was a little lower closer to campus, so aside from the first one, we were clearly going faster.

She didn’t bother any of them though, nor did I. In fact she didn’t even really look at me much in the race. She seemed more to be just enjoying the feel of the air against her body like she was talking about earlier. Some gams outside and in our path were crushed without a moment’s look though. I saw her fast moving feet tear through a small squad or two. They must've popped out of the dirt to forage or something.

I hate to admit it, but Veldel got an early lead and kept it. I think it’s cause she ditched her sandals. Easier to run unshod than with those usually. She arrived a little before me at the crosswalk back to campus, but was nice enough to wait for me.

“Nice job.”, I said.

“Thanks.”, she replied. “Now then, I bet you still want to see a little of my lab huh.”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”, I said.

“Let’s get going.”

With her sandals still in hand, she crossed the crosswalk. At the same time a car was coming speeding along the road. The driver must’ve just left the nearby lot and didn’t have the sense to look. Rather than dodge, Veldel just smiled, not casting it a glance, and kept walking.

The student driving it tried to stop in time, but failed. He did stop though. When his car ran into Veldel, she tensed her legs and pushed with her feet to hold herself steady.

It was like the car was made out of clay with how the front of it just sort of caved in, making space for Veldel’s unyielding body during the collision.. The car started to smoke a bit as the front of it was smashed in.

I guess comparing it to clay again, it was like someone took their finger and just dug it down the car’s middle, only the finger was Veldel’s body and so it wasn’t, like, a perfectly semi-circle-topped cylinder kind of shape with the dent.

The guy driving rolled down the window and coughed before calling out.

“Oh my gosh, lady I’m so sorry I-”

He paused as Veldel turned to face him, smiling. She said nothing, but pushed herself up atop the car’s damaged hood. As she walked, her feet were digging into the metal from the force she was using.

“Uh, lady. W-what are you doing?!?”

She kept walking and smiling. Her left foot broke the glass of his windshield. The man’s right hand was resting there at the time though, so that meant her naked heel slammed down on it, crunching it to a pulp. He let out an agonized shriek.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”, he said.

Veldel just kept moving. She stepped on the hood next and the metal came down from above onto the guy, crushing him beneath. Veldel just kept walking down the car, crushing it beneath her feet till it was much flatter--though not near ‘pancake’ level or anything. She hopped off the trunk, back onto the road, and sighed.

“Humans are such terrible drivers.”, she said.

“Yeah, sometimes.”

We went to the other side of the road, and kept walking along. Her lab was a bit deeper into campus. Despite all the messes we had made, neither of us had any blood on us or anything. Well, Veldel had some on her feet but she wiped that off soon as she could. The only reason anyone on campus gave us more than a glance was cause of her lack of shoes.

It wasn’t until we reached the door of a medium building, where her lab was I guessed at the time, did she think to put them back on. First, she took a wipe out of her purse and wiped her feet fully clean though. Screams from within briefly echoed louder before she put the now dirty wipe inside and zipped it back up.

She opened the lab with a pair of keys from her pocket and stepped inside, beckoning me in with her.

As soon as I entered, I was immediately both impressed and surprised and, I guess, a little confused too.

The lab had a clean tile floor of white. In the center of the area, there were a bunch of surfaces were around like counter-tops in a grid, each with some drawers and cupboards at the bottom. There was plenty of space to walk between them though. Although the general furniture type was something like a school lab, they weren’t nearly as densely packed. Each such bit of lab furniture had a white sterile top, with the drawer and cupboard parts of it styled brown like wood.

The surfaces were all pretty neat. Some had tidy papers on them. Others had beakers. Others had jugs of various chemicals or other curious devices. There were microscopes.

Towards the back of the big room were two double doors leading deeper into the building. I didn’t think to ask about those then, because my gaze quickly found and fixated on the various more interesting pieces of the room.

There were clear-walled enclosures everywhere, but mostly towards the wall of the lab. There large ones filled with gams, kind of like Soaph’s gam tank in her house, but way more of them, with some bigger and others smaller. Almost every one was filled with gams.

However, there were some enclosures, slightly smaller, filled with humans! Their sizes varied from a bit over an inch to as big as 6 inches, but most were around 2 inches. Some humans were grouped with others, and some other enclosures just had a pair or even one human in them, and were sized accordingly. Some enclosures were also basically just metal cages with one human in each. They seemed cheaper to make.

I idly wondered if the girlfriend of that human student from Thursday was in one of the enclosures somewhere.

Veldel walked over to one of the medium-sized enclosures with clear walls. She unzipped her purse and dumped the humans she had collected in with the others. Once that was done, she took a nearby scoop and scooped up what must have been food pellets from a nearby little bin. She sprinkled them over the naked people inside. Aside from the ones she took today, I could see that the others were students for the most part, but one or two were old enough to be campus staff.

After she finished, she started walking back to me.

“Well, what do you think? Do you like it?”, she said.

“It’s definitely very interesting. I mean, wow. Lots of gams and humans to toy with I guess.”

“Not toy, not usually. This is science after all. But...”

She smiled.

“I make exceptions now and then. Failed experiments have to be disposed of after all. Speaking of which, come with me as I check on one.”

She walked by my side, a bit ahead, and guided me to the far back of the lab.

“So, do you share this lab with anyone or...”

“No.”, she said.

“Think about it.”, she continued. “You know I’m pretty smart right? Not to brag, but this lab is the reason why’d I choose this university over far more prestigious ones. Our school was the best university to give into my request for a private lab and a generous research budget each and every semester.”

“Huh.”, I said.

We reached one of the cheaper metal cages with thin holes between the bars. A shrunken student was inside, 2 inches tall, wearing only tears of a paper towel around her waist as rags of a sort.

Veldel put her face up against the front of the cage. The woman inside cowered. Veldel squinted, looking like she was focusing. She muttered.

“Hmmmmmm.”

Another second or so passed before she continued.

“Yes, this one is a failure.”, Veldel truespoke to me. That is, she was using telepathy to communicate. She must’ve not wanted the woman to hear.

The woman started to fidget nervously as Veldel reached inside. She didn’t seem to know what was going on at first, but her fear quickly flared up as she was brought up past Veldel's face, and above her open maw.

“No!”, the human shouted. “No no no no.”

No use of course. Veldel plopped the woman inside and started slurping on her.

As she did so, I truespoke to her, knowing she could only talk aloud somewhat awkwardly with her mouth full like that.

“So, what are you trying to test exactly, or experiment, or whatever, with all these humans and gams.”

“Many things.”, she truespoke in reply. I could her the muffled screams of the woman as she was slurped.

Frankly watching it made me a bit peckish again, but I was feeling more curious than hungry.

“Anything neat in particular?.”, I truespoke.

Veldel paused, then swallowed. She kept truespeaking.

“Keep to truespeak for now, subjects shouldn’t know the nature of any experiments after all, right?”

“Sure.”, I truespoke in reply.

“Humans are much more flawed than us Zenith on average right? Delicious as they are, they’re fragile. Weak. However, they do have one advantage over us Zenith. They can be cellularly modified. Of course, we love to shrink them down and toy with them. Others like to cure certain easy flaws, like fixing vision problems or the like. However, I think there’s some real potential for overall improvements, not just repair-ative ones.”

“Really? Such as?”

Veldel smirked aloud but replied telepathically still as I just did.

“How do you think the world would be if all humans could use truespeak? People would be able to communicate with Zenith. Much as we love to talk aloud ourselves, there’s a certain intimacy and complexity to telepathic communication they lose out on. Well, most of them do. There are natural exceptions.”

“That is interesting to think about I suppose.”, I truesaid.

I thought for a few moments, tapping my foot.

“Wouldn’t that make it even easier to control pheromoned humans too?”, I truesaid.

Veldel smiled wide at that.

“Yes. Great minds think alike.”, she truesaid in reply.

I looked towards the doors deeper into the lab. Still sticking to truespeak, I remember truesaying:

“This is all very impressive, but what’s in there?”

“This is just the first room of the lab. I do more advanced research deeper in. Very neat stuff, maybe one day you’ll get to see the fruits of some of it soon. For now though, it’s top secret.”, she replied in truespeak.

The two of us laughed. She then spoke aloud.

“To be true though, I do have some work I want to do, and I’d like some privacy for it. That said, thank you so much for your help Zlee.”

“No problem Veldel. Will I see you at the cafeteria for dinner today?”

“Maybe.”, she said. “But if not, enjoy your meal.”

“Thanks, will do and take care.”

“Goodbye for now.”

We waved goodbye once more as I walked to the exit of the lab.

I went back to my dorm for a bit. Later, I ended up eating at the cafeteria with just Wojis and Kuola and, after vibing to some music for a bit at my desk, I am writing this entry.

Looking back on what I wrote, so far I’d say October has been a pretty interesting month so far. Who knows how the rest of the month, and semester, can turn out?

No matter what, I hope it will be quite the ride.

Anyways, I think I’ll end today’s entry right here.

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Fin