From the Abyss

Chapter 1: Into the Light

Darkness. Left, right, up, down, everywhere, darkness. A wiggle of limbs and a growing sense of both awareness and panic. It was silent. The silence was deafening, the darkness blinding. These were my first memories, at times my only memories. If I ever forgot who I was, those memories came back to me. I remember swimming upwards, then realizing I was swimming out. Out of a shell, out of a part of myself. When at last I finally broke free, I felt the rush of water on my miniature limbs. I tried to move away from that awful prison, that shell, but I was still attached. I heard noise, but I did not recognize it as speech. I tried to open my eyes wider, tried to see if there was something beyond that horrible darkness. I waited, unable to free myself, for I don't know what, but still I waited. After what felt like an eternity passed, my eyes were stabbed and assaulted by a beam of light. I quickly shut my eyes, yet I basked in it's warmth. When I re-opened my eyes to see if the light was gone, my brain was flooded with visual information. I saw many strange shapes and objects and again I heard that strange noise. I was curious, I wanted to know what all the things I saw were. What I really wanted to know though, was what the sounds were.
As I gazed upon this new and expanded world, a strange creature startled me as it pressed it's face next to my own. As I looked into it's eyes, I saw a reflection of another creature like it, at the time I didn't, no I couldn't, comprehend that the creature reflected was me. I watched as the being before me opened it's mouth and pushed out that strange noise. I realized that it was trying to communicate. I watched as it signaled to another of it's kind towards me. The second creature walked towards me and pushed on something, before it and the first moved back. I suddenly felt a rush of water and air as the doors to my egg's egg opened. I fell forward in a tangle of limbs, I fell onto to something hard, something other than water. I watched with mute horror and fascination as the creatures pulled me to my feet and dragged me towards a pair of doors. They threw me inside, locked me in there, locked me in more darkness. This time, I was not alone. I could sense the presence of another, perhaps several others. I quickly moved away, back towards the doors. I stayed near the doors, practically slept by them, for they gave me comfort. I would learn that those other lost souls thrown into this new abyss never returned if they left the door. All of them left and all of them screamed. I still hear their screams now whenever I shut my eyes, still see their faces that mirrored my own.
Eventually the workers that threw the others and I in noticed that the same being remained by the doors, remained uneaten or killed, that I remained. Finally, one day, they took me out. They puzzled over me, fussed over me. I had begun to learn some of their language, I could not speak, but I could listen. They said that I shouldn't have lived, that I should have moved further in, that I was programmed to die. Programmed, what an interesting word. I was organic, yet they had believed that they could program me like a machine. Program me to throw myself into the abyss, throw myself to the beasts. After awhile, they grew fond of me and even gave me a name, Anomaly. They said that I was special, that there was much to learn form me. Learning from me required a lot of tests, a lot of needles and shocks. They did not try to communicate with me, for they thought that I was incapable of such a feat, that is until the day I said my first word. I had remembered one of the Scientists(I had learned that was their name) had exclaimed, "Ouch!" After he dropped something on his foot. One day, after a particularly painful series of tests, I exclaimed, "Ouch!" I can still remember the looks of astonishment on their faces, then the excitement. After that they talked to me almost always, listened to what I had to say and treated me a little better. I was no longer an animal or a test subject anymore, I was a fellow human.