Chapter 3
47 squirmed down the palace corridor. The aluminum floor billowed with each thrust. It was time for a feeding after yesterday’s depleting event with the belligerent boy. The blob passed portrait after portrait of queen after queen, each posing within the most elegant of frames, each with a face that presented its deep misery as high minded elegance. With a keen eye, one could see cosmetically surgical scars cracking their cakes of foundation and allowing wrinkles to peak through. Their garments had masculine construction, but were made of the finest, rarest fabrics of their era. Their haircuts were all short, though they grew shorter with their modernity.
But the nuance of these portraits was lost to blob number 47. It was nearly blind and could make out only blurred figures where people stood. It was enough vision to get its job done, nothing more.
47 was to report to the queen that the boy’s hugging had taken place and that the normal schedule would resume. The queen would be in her strongest state, having just finished her daily feeding. 47 would take whatever punishment came. The schedule must be kept.
When 47 reached the inner foyer, it recognized the queen’s form perched on a huge, palladium-trimmed chair. Her legs were splayed out as she sat with rigid, upright posture. The shapes of her arms were thick and spread wide, their color pitch black, and they resembled those of a giant raven. Her form had swelled open by her feeding. It would be rough message delivery for 47.
47 squirmed and then lurched forward and backward. Then it released a sound more similar to a belch than to articulate speech. It was loud, stern, robotic, and discordant.
To this the queen convulsed briefly and started turning toward 47. As she turned, her bones creaked and squealed as if she were some ancient machine. And when her turning was finally complete, and 47 witnessed her dark form staring forward, a malaise filled the room like some vaporous opioid. 47 felt its autonomy dissipate. There was no thought of action or choice as the pitch black of the queen grew larger and larger with the malaise until 47’s entire being was consumed.