For Lisa, life was a constant of familiar routine. A new day rose and with it would be much of the same as the day before. There were minute variations on the routine, sometimes a new work project was filtered down to her from higher up. Sometimes she stood in a different spot on the metro. For a young woman in her prime, this routine was a luxury in a way. For many, life had become something of a scramble to make enough money to even scrape by. For Lisa, her luxury was to be bored with what others struggled to attain.
It was her day off, the bliss of the weekend never long enough to wash out the exhaustion of constant ten hour days and long metro rides. Coffee trickled down slowly, ever so slowly from her filter coffee maker like a drip feed of wakefulness. Lisa didn’t bother to stifle a yawn as she watched the reliable machine work, for the tall dark haired woman sleeping in only seemed to make her more tired these days. She was wearing little more than a purple robe, her pajamas, and a pair of fuzzy purple slippers with rabbit faces staring up from the floor. At 11 AM most people were already well up and about. She was just starting her day.
The coffee maker finished its work and she poured out a full cup of jet black liquid, not bothering to sweeten it or add milk. She liked it as dark as possible. That done, the groggy young woman shuffled her way through her rather nice Manhattan apartment toward her couch. Joints popped every so as she stretched her legs for a moment before seating herself back and switching on the flat screen ahead of her. She idly flicked through the channels, not really having anything specific in mind. She rarely did. The TV was more here for noise and maybe casual watching than anything else.
Setting it on some newscast she leaned back in her couch and took a sip of her coffee, feeling a wave of relaxation roll through her from the acrid taste of the vital liquid. Growing up she’d often wondered why her parents drank it like fish. Now she didn’t know how it was possible to get through the day without it. Funny how that worked. It was the one part of her daily routines that was always treasured, when waking was no longer a chore and instead felt like something she could tackle without issues.
She crossed her legs and leaned back, dull brown eyes drifting over to the balcony window nearby. Lisa could afford an apartment in Manhattan, but the view wasn’t exactly the best. She could see a building across the way that was under construction though. What a morning sight. She snorted as the shadow of clouds seemed to be falling over the city. Rain? Wouldn’t shock her, when wasn’t it gray and raining around there in the fall?
She took another sip of her coffee and closed her eyes. Part of her wanted to go out, do something different. To maybe break the routine a bit. Honestly she felt too exhausted mentally from the past week to do much though. Maybe go for a jog later? Check out a restaurant a coworker told her about? All of that sounded like way more work than it was worth. A day inside with her brain unplugged sounded way better to her. She could always go out tomorrow or something. Little seemed likely to rouse her from her vegetative state.
“...Appears to be some kind of… structure! It's massive! You’re seeing this right folks, its not some special effects routine!”
“Hmm?” Lisa’s eyes drifted over to the TV.
There was a reporter out in the street and he was gesturing upward wildly. Guy was usually the most mild and dull reporter out there but he looked like he was seeing something falling out of the sky. The camera pointed upward and…
“What the…”
There was a *vast* dark shape that was descending from the sky. It looked like metal, an unending sky of smooth metal that was far above the clouds in the blue sky and getting lower. The clouds were dispersing as well as the craft descended from on high. There was a low constant hum… and then Lisa realized she wasn’t only hearing that hum from the TV. She looked to the balcony and rushed over to it, her coffee cup falling to the floor and shattering and she stumbled outside to look up.
Just like on the broadcast she could see it, well above the skies covering Manhattan. It was hard to make out what it was, the shadow it cast was so dark that it seemed like the sun itself was blocked out by it but it was definitely metal. There was a low constant hum that thrummed through the air and set Lisa’s teeth on edge. This… this had to be a dream right? Like this stuff didn’t just happen. That was like some kind of spacecraft or something!
The panicked voice of the reporter was a dull noise in the background as she, like many others, was gazing up into the sky in wonder, fear, and disbelief. She snapped out of it after a few moments and could hear others rushing around inside their apartment building. She managed to tear her eyes away and went over to the door, seeing folks shoving each other out of the way so they could get into the elevator. Lisa could see others heading for the stairway door, some rushing downstairs, while others were heading upstairs to get a better view from the roof.
Despite herself, Lisa found her legs moving toward the stairs and she rushed her way up the steps. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute, stumbling on a step and one of her slippers sent falling away down the stairway. She barely noticed it as she made her way up the winding stairs to the roof exit. Normally off limits aside from staff but she honestly really didn’t care at the moment. Nor did about a dozen other apartment residents that walked out onto the asphalt laden roof to look up into the sky.
She could vaguely make out that the thing had a sort of round shape to it. If only because it seemed to warp when looking out where the edges were. A sphere maybe? “Is this like some kind of government weapons?” Wondered a resident.
“Bitch you serious? Them’s some ET shit up there!” Another said.
“Thats crazy, aliens ain’t real, no way!”
There were bickering voices laced with worry and confusion as their visitor hovered overhead. All Lisa could do was wonder right along with them. Aliens, government stuff, or something else it seemed like all they could do was collectively hold their breaths as the sphere stopped its descent and just hovered in the sky above Manhattan. Someone brought up their phone and others peeked at it and were watching a live stream from a chopper some distance away. The newscast showed a massive metal sphere hovering over a large part of New York City as a whole, a deep shadow cast over miles of land. It was like an artificial moon was hovering over the urban sprawl, stretching up into the heavens.
Then came the light. From above the dark underside of the structure whirred and hummed louder as a beam of green light suddenly bathed all of Manhattan in its glow. Lisa let out a cry as she felt it hit her and everyone around her flinched as well. The gray urban sprawl was painted green by the light, covering an unfathomable area in it and everyone in it. The ground shook ever so and suddenly being atop a taller building didn’t seem like such a smart idea.
However Lisa noted something strange. With the quake it seemed like the sense of space had shifted. She felt… higher in the air. She glanced over to where the man’s phone had fallen when he’d stumbled and fallen over. She lifted it up, her eyes wide in disbelief. The helicopter broadcast was showing the whole island of Manhattan had just been lifted out from the ground. It was suspended in air, the ground beneath it carved away neatly as though from some magic.
Her head was feeling faint and she was feeling a bit woozy as she nearly stumbled back from the sight. Then she realized it wasn’t just that. A funny feeling had just come over her generally. Like pressure was being applied to her. Like she was being pushed in on. Again, the phone newscast shed light on their situation and her eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their skull from how wide they were. The floating island was… shrinking. The beam of green light was getting thinner and thinner and as it was the island was shrinking with it.
“Whats going on!?” Someone shouted.
“Hell if I know, but we gotta get off of here!”
Lisa could agree with that but… where exactly to? She was aware of people running off the roof. She was trying but the sensation was making her sluggish and she wasn’t alone. Others were finding it hard to get up and move. The phone seemed to cut off the signal after a few moments longer and she could only imagine they were getting smaller. And smaller. They were also rising up through the air, closer to the source of the green light. Flying through the air toward the sphere in the sky. They were being abducted it seemed.
Their city flew up and up through the air, higher and higher into the sky as it shrank. Lisa was losing all sense of where they were. She certainly knew where they were going, impossible as that was to believe. A couple nearby hugged each other and started crying and she felt herself on the verge of panic as well. How she was holding it together for the most part was a mystery. The reality hadn’t set in yet perhaps for her.
They flew through the green threshold and arrived in a chamber of pure white. Normal light illuminated the city like it was a regular day. They were hovering somewhere, somewhere that seemed almost featureless. There was no more sensation of shrinking or flying up into the sky. It was just calm. As calm as it could be. Lisa could still hear screams below and the sounds of panic in the streets.
Then another shadow fell over the city. Purple. It was like a vast purple shape in the distance that gave way to pale and then gave way to… something that froze Lisa’s blood. That was an eye. A single, strange amber eye behind some kind of glass wall. It was enormous. It was like the sun rising up over the horizon, only so much closer and so much more all consuming. She could see… lights flickering behind the pupil of this utterly enormous eye.
“What the hell…” She breathed, her heart pounding so loud it was like a constant drumbeat in her skull.
The eye backed off and gave a better view of the full visage of their captor. Pale skin without flaw, purple hair arranged just enough to not look machinelike. Glasses and behind them those strange eyes. A rather pretty face but there was an almost shocking lack of expression on it. The eyes behind the glasses regarded them from an unfathomable distance away, filling the sky in one direction as she looked down at them. She looked human almost… but there were subtle uncanny things that set something in the back of Lisa’s mind itching. Well. Aside from the fact she was fucking massive.
Across the city electronics flickered and then her face appeared on them. Lisa heard it from her phone and could see her face upon it as well. “Greetings humans. Per my programming I am required to introduce myself and inform you of your situation. Please offer your attention to nearby primitive electronic sources.”
Her voice was rather soft and quiet, but blared from many places at once. It was also incredibly monotone. Like it sounded emotionless. Lisa swallowed and looked around at the few on the roof. Below in the city everyone was paralyzed by fear and this girl clearly had their undivided attention.
“I am the Personalized Interface for Exploration, Industrialization, and Exploitation. My creators dubbed me P.I.X.I.E. for short and you may do the same if you find the shorthand preferable. My purpose was initially to search the stars autonomously for planets suitable for habitation and exploitation, establish outposts and resource extraction upon them, and move on. In the twilight of my creator's civilization I was given a new directive, to catalog, collect, and archive all things in the galaxy deemed worthy of preservation based on predefined algorithms. Their goal was to ensure there was a constant record of all the universe, their legacy. I was deemed most suited for this due to the self-sufficient nature of my work.” The clearly AI PIXIE stated as she looked over them all placidly.
That was… a lot to just unload. Lisa tried to wrap her head around it. So a machine that was… basically told to just record the universe? “So why kidnap all of us then? That doesn’t make sense.” She mused aloud though she’d get no response.
“Kidnap… lexicon for remove and capture against one’s volition. This is accurate though irrelevant.” PIXIE stated and Lisa’s eyes flew wide. She couldn’t have…
“You were taken because you are to be the record of Earth and Humanity. My vessel is already departing your planet. Your city and population will be recorded and archived within my ship. Your consent and volition in this matter are not required.” PIXIE stated. “Per my directives I am simply required to inform you of your situation, not to acquire your consent.”
A cold ice flooded through Lisa’s veins. “B-but you can’t! We’re people damn it, you can’t just do this to us!” She screamed. There were similar shouts and protests all over the city.
Protests turned to screams as all around the city something new rose up. Vast pale pillars from below. They stretched up around them on various sides of the floating city, curling ever so slightly inward. PIXIE’s fingers, grand digits that were each just as wide as their whole chunk of city. It put into perspective how small they had been reduced. Lisa felt a panic bubble on her mind, though the fingers stopped where they were. Simply a cage of flawless pale flesh.
“Your city has been uprooted and compressed many times over for ease and efficiency of storage. You will be encased in a protective bubble of hyper dense material to ensure your proper containment and preservation. This bubble will also provide necessary gravity and sustainable life support levels. You will then be placed in a temporal field to lock you at your current moment in time.You will lastly be categorized alphabetically by your system’s identification.” PIXIE went on without much concern for the protests of the humans.
The being, this alien… this machine was stating their situation as though it were a checklist to her. Their individual fates didn’t matter to her. Lisa realized rather horrifically they were all basically just a collective within a chunk of city in her eyes. Humans gathered in an acceptable number to suit her needs. In other words a statistic. Grand amber eyes that looked almost human peered down at them from on high, but the lack of emotion in them and the cold calculus they held was anything but human.
It was then that things started to shift and shake for them again. Lisa screamed and fell onto her ass, the whole building seeming to wobble. The fingers towering over them didn’t shift but on their tips, holes opened. Tiny pinpricks that sent out swarms of shapes in clouds of machines. These drones swept down over the city, emerging from within the woman to give a bit of a glimpse just how skin deep her facade of being humanoid was.
Below there was small arms fire. The sound of gunshots directed at the sky. Bullets firing from people that were trying to level futile defiance at PIXIE and her drones hovering overhead. She didn’t even seem to register their actions. The drones didn’t react negatively or positively. It was as if their efforts didn’t matter at all. Indeed they didn’t when the drones started to construct something around the city in the sky. A clear dome of sorts was rapidly taking shape around them. It was like she had said, a vast bubble now surrounded the city. It encased the city from all around, even the chunks of earth that had been torn away below and the subway system found itself within the sphere and looked like the tunnels of an ant hill most likely.
“This… has to be a dream right? Some kinda nightmare?” Lisa muttered to herself, her arms coming up to hug herself as she could feel her mind struggling to keep up with this. She knew she wasn’t alone. All over the city it was a collective shock as they were trapped. The city resembled little more than a marble. Well over a million people. Trapped inside a marble.
“Preservation Sphere completed. Assessing structural and gravitational conditions.” PIXIE boomed.
It was the only warning before whatever artificial gravity was holding them simply… stopped. The body of their captor sped before them as they plummeted downward rapidly. The screams were reflexive, as was bracing themselves. Lisa fell prone and covered her head with her hands as though that would prevent anything at all. They were going to smash into the ground and get completely powdered. There was no other explanation for what was about to happen. She felt her life flashing before her eyes briefly in the moments they passed over the white robed clad purple haired being.
Minutes passed. Lisa dared to open her eyes. They had stopped falling. They had definitely impacted upon the floor as before their marble city was a truly frightening sight. Ten pale bare toes of the being that had captured them loomed before them, the digits unmoving. They were each bigger than their marble of a city. Each one could have ended the whole of their shrunken little slice of urban sprawl. Looking up it was next to impossible to see anything clearly beyond PIXIE’s feet and shins. They were just too small to see it accurately beyond some distant blur. They had impacted the floor and were alive.
“Impact and Gravity stabilizers within acceptable parameters.” The monotone of the titan thundered all around them from their electronics, a chorus of her voice filling the air.
Their relief was short lived as suddenly PIXIE’s foot shifted forward. The ground outside was surely shaking and shuddering but they couldn’t feel it from within their bubble. The pale thing would have been rather dainty, probably, petite even. It was anything but to the shrunken humans below. Lisa looked up and saw a vast mountain that resembled flesh and blood. A simulacrum of part of the human body. It slid forward upon smooth metal floors before slowly lifting up, like the jaw of a great beast lifting up before clamping its jaws down.
If the panic before had been real, this was sheer animal terror. Through the streets people ran with nowhere to go. People clawed at the walls of their prison. Lisa was staring upward, her eyes wide and her vision feeling like it was fraying at the edges. Her head was feeling faint. Any moment she felt like she might well just faint from the sheer stress and attempting to fathom what was starting to darken their sky above.
Unending pale flesh stretched overhead, five petite toes passing over as an inhumanly flawless replica of the sole of a foot had become the sky over Manhattan. The sealed chunk of urban sprawl was treated to the vision of every crease and fold, every smooth patch of skin on it that hung over them. Its shadow blotted out any other vision of the sky. It was their sky, hovering above them. Lisa could almost image planes flying below it, unable to reach the height of the sole.
“N-no! Please don’t! Please, don’t crush us!” Lisa found herself screaming up to the uncaring pale heavens above.
Pleas that were either unheard or ignored as all too quickly the sky descended down over their clear shielded city. The screams all around reached a fever pitch as everything got darker and darker, the sole of PIXIE’s foot resembling a celestial body that was going to smash down and crush them all to dust. No rationalization or comfort prevented everyone from screaming. It was a sheer animal primal terror that ruled every human.
BOOM!
The sound of the impact echoed out through their prison as Lisa squeezed her eyes shut. Yet… she was alive. After a minute she opened her eyes. They… weren’t dead. They were sealed in darkness for a moment. Some lights flickered on and revealed flesh conforming around their little marble, pressing into soft doughy skin that enveloped them. An uneasy and strained laugh rose from the dark haired woman’s mouth, her head spinning. They were alive. Somehow.
The flesh around them shifted up and PIXIE idly shifted her foot on its heel, looking down over her white clad form to gaze over them from on high. “Stress and Pressure resistance are within acceptable levels.”
She was… testing them? Testing their container it seemed. She shifted her foot down again, this time her big toe setting itself down atop their dome. Every breath in the city was being held as by this point, reality and everything the humans assumed they understood was being called into question. PIXIE idly shifted her foot from side to side and the city started to… roll for lack of a better term. It was slowly approaching to being on its side and everyone braced themselves for a fall. Lisa grabbed onto something in a panic as her animal brain was telling her she was about to fall.
The fall never came as PIXIE idly rolled them under a single toe until they were upside down. Yet they were firmly planted on the ground as though they were standing on Earth. They were looking up at the floor that had replaced their sky. Gravity it seemed kept them all from simply falling when the marble was moved around. It was as though it was indeed a localized chunk of Earth with all the advantages that came with that. All at a very handy tiny scale.
PIXIE rolled them a bit more under the toe before flicking them to the side. They rapidly started to roll, everyone dizzy and disoriented from watching the world turn into a spinning blur above them and beyond them. Then they impacted against the side of another vast pale wall, PIXIE’s other foot. That flicked them again, back to the first. Then back and forth, back and forth. Like they were a marble the AI was playing with idly. Lisa watched someone near her throw up from the sickness of watching the motion all around play out even if they didn’t feel it they could see it. Perhaps it was her imagination but Lisa for a moment could swear she saw the slightest of smirks on the lips of the AI on high.
Finally they slammed into the side of PIXIE’s foot one last time and were… mostly right side up. “Gravity Adjustments are within acceptable levels.”
Finally the artificial gravity seized them again and they were hoisted up into the air, hovering higher and higher until they were right before the face of the purple haired AI again. She really did almost look perfectly human. …Too perfect. In an almost uncanny manner. Like something a machine would consider as a decent form to present. They were before the judgemental eyes of the AI. There was something strange that flickered across her amber eyes and there was a strange light to them before PIXIE’s mouth opened.
“No… nononono, not that!” Lisa screamed, pressing herself against the door to the roof and setting her hand over her mouth. “Haven’t you done enough to us!?”
Evidently not. Breath washed over the marble, fogging it slightly. It almost looked like there was actual saliva dripping and falling from the roof of a realistic fleshy mouth. On closer inspection it appeared to be some manner of lubricant. An endless enormous cavern came closer and closer as they floated into the mouth of the AI. Flesh glistened around them and below them a tongue shifted ever so slightly, teeth gleaming in the dim light of her maw.
“Not like this, stop!” The protests felt even more pathetic and useless as time went on as PIXIE just did whatever she was going to do no matter what they wanted or felt.
Pale lips closed behind them and they were all sealed in near darkness. The lights of the city that functioned unfortunately made the world beyond just illuminated enough so they knew what was happening. They had landed upon the slimy leviathan of a tongue, a marble that was being flicked around the mouth of the AI. Like she was tasting them and sampling them. It was a sight to inspire terror in the hearts of any human.
They landed upon a row of molars, the pristine white teeth smashing down over and over again upon their barrier. Once there was even a feeling like their city was being subjected to an earthquake as whatever stabilizers strained to keep up with the sheer force of the impacts of PIXIE’s jaw working. In the end the sphere held and aside from a couple wobbling buildings and people losing balance they were fine from it. The humans were treated with no more dignity than if they were a piece of candy in the vast AI’s mouth.
They were tossed from their spot on the molars and into the cheek, pressed into it like they were some manner of jawbreaker. Despair welled in the hearts of many and tears were finally springing into Lisa’s eyes as it was hitting her all at once. She’d never see the blue sky again. She’d never go back to work. Never see friends or family beyond this island again. She was trapped an unknown distance away from Earth forever. Subjected to the whims of this AI. Right now, that whim had them being sucked on inside her cheek. The only thing protecting them from an ocean of lubricant washing over them all and drowning them was a barrier erected by the AI herself. They only continued to exist on her whims and on her whims they could be easily exterminated. A clear message.
Then they were rolled out into the center of her tongue again and they seemed to be sliding back toward the fleshy replica of a throat from the machine woman. The cries all around the city intensified as they were fated to be swallowed it seemed. Lisa curled her legs against her chest and sobbed to herself as the despair closed in. This was it then.
And then they found themselves ejected violently as PIXIE spat them out into her waiting and open hand. Lubricant was sliding down the surface of their marble as they were all met with the shock of open air once more. They were somewhere different. There were large pillars in this chamber and it wasn’t nearly so featureless as the last room they had been hovering in. PIXIE looked at their sphere for a few moments… before there was the slightest quirk of her lip to the side. It was so brief it would have been hard to spot but Lisa absolutely saw it.
“...Cleaning of the Containment Sphere Complete.” She said with the slightest lilt to her voice.
“Cleaning!? Bullshit, you evil bitch you’re enjoying this! Let us go!” Lisa found indignant anger exploded in her as she shouted at the heavens.
Whether PIXIE was or was not capable of such a thing as enjoyment was something that would remain speculation to the humans as she flicked her fingers. The sphere hovered from her hand and toward one of the pillars. There was a gap between all of the pillars, a rather sizable gap designed to hold something. Faint blue light was active on the pillars to either side of the one their sphere stopped at. There were other spheres there on either side. One was a city as well but it was… easily the size of a baseball rather than a marble. The one on the other side was the size of a basketball and instead of a mere city… it was a whole planet. A whole blue and green planet hovering in the gap. Others caught by this being. Others collected by her. Archived.
“Activating temporal stasis.” PIXIE’s voice echoed out.
“Wha-!”
For Lisa, life was a constant of familiar routine. A new day rose and with it would be much of the same as the day before. There were minute variations on the routine, sometimes a new work project was filtered down to her from higher up. Sometimes she stood in a different spot on the metro. For a young woman in her prime, this routine was a luxury in a way. For many, life had become something of a scramble to make enough money to even scrape by. For Lisa, her luxury was to be bored with what others struggled to attain.
It was her day off, the bliss of the weekend never long enough to wash out the exhaustion of constant ten hour days and long metro rides. Coffee trickled down slowly, ever so slowly from her filter coffee maker like a drip feed of wakefulness. Lisa didn’t bother to stifle a yawn as she watched the reliable machine work, for the tall dark haired woman sleeping in only seemed to make her more tired these days. She was wearing little more than a purple robe, her pajamas, and a pair of fuzzy purple slippers with rabbit faces staring up from the floor. At 11 AM most people were already well up and about. She was just starting her day…
_________________________________________
PIXIE’s eyes were impassively locked on the new addition to the archives. An artificial sky had risen around it, preventing the occupants from seeing what was beyond their little bubble. The stasis locked them in a set span of time of the same calculated period of time for a standard day for them. They would relive a normal, standard day over and over again from now until basically forever. Trapped in spacetime by the AI and preserved as a species. They were certainly a curious species and she looked forward to whatever relevant data she managed to uncover from their endless cycle.
Her gaze lingered for just a moment longer before she started hovering down the hall. A hall that contained. Thousands of similar contaminants. Some spheres, some cubes. Some mere cities. Some whole planets. Some whole stars. She passed by a space leviathan trapped in a cube, its tendrils once enough to crush planets. Now little more than another for her collection. All of it filed and stored forever. For that was her ultimate purpose. To archive the universe itself.