THE INSIDER

     Zarion swam through red tubes, feeling the vibration of a heart, then traveled downward. Nutrients in a pile of pink sausages tamed Zarion’s appetite until the mission could be completed. Outside, a plump tower of protoplasm rubbed the spot on his stomach where a fire seemed to brew.
     Inside this stomach, Zarion built a nest and laid egg sacs. An electric sensation crossed its blue, slimy, wormlike body in a chemical reaction to eureka. Zarion had no partner. The reproduction had been asexual. Everything had been accomplished alone—except for the unwitting help of the body, which was tottering to the grease-stained rectangular box of cool air to fetch precooked turkey slices. Zarion wrapped itself around the nest to keep the sacs from rolling. Once the giant sat on the recliner, feeding his face and rubbing his stomach, the universe within restabilized.
     After consuming more nutrients, Zarion expelled a gooey substance which self-assembled into a protective wall around the nest. The heat was ambient. Below, acid boiled like lava. But certain critters hatched here.
     Zarion swam upward. It passed a yellowed filtration system, charred sponges, and heard once more the beating of four chambers. The views dwarfed the most vivid science illustrations. Professors of Biology, from a research perspective, would have envied this meticulous journey through the body, unless they knew the purpose.
     The insider was not on a journey; the insider was on a quest.
     Zarion climbed a tendon. The man’s neck became a stump of sore stiffness. He winced and rubbed the nape. This passage of the body was dark and hollow, a place where silence somehow shouted about loneliness. Zarion felt sad. There had been no friend, no companion, since the start of the mission, and the Insider had been living here for a year. Sadness swelled the creature’s microbody because it was unable to flush tears.
     Noises began entering the hollow. Apes spoke through an electronic box outside. To Zarion, their voices sounded as if they were sliding down steel tubes. Feeling pressure from acoustic waves, the creature climbed faster, causing the host to itch. The man put the TV remote on his lap and scratched. The scratching sounded like freight trains scooted over a surface. But a second later his nails dug into a cushion, while apes babbled louder.
     Annoyed, Zarion jumped onto a neuron, riding it to the cranium. Then it disembarked the vehicle for the control panels. Both left and right hemispheres were being rewired, bending to Zarion’s will.
     The host’s head throbbed. He closed his eyes, ground his teeth. As he stuttered toward a mirror, heavy footfalls shook the internal surroundings. But Zarion and the egg sacs remained undisturbed. The insider became electric at the thought of its children, how they would make an impact on the world, how they would continue the purpose.
     The man examined all sides of his neck. Nothing unusual appeared in the mirror. He tilted his head forward and parted pieces of hair. The movement swung Zarion but hooks on its feet dug into the mussiness. The man frowned, longing to know the cause of his discomfort. His head felt overextended, ready to burst.
     A rumbling echoed below. Zarion listened. The pink sausages were complaining.
     The insider shuffled neurons until the man exited his front door and entered his four-wheeled machine. Zarion heard a symphony of pistons. He was on the road—they were on the road. Splinters seemed to poke his brain. Still, he drove. He knew not why. Taking to pavement had not been a conscious decision.
     Free will was dead.
     Horns honked. Four-wheeled machines buzzed. Zarion sensed a concrete jungle unfurling outside. The man’s machine turned left, shot straight, and then curved around a ramp that spilled onto a scenic highway. Zarion felt the acceleration. Neurons danced in a light show, making the creature lightheaded. But the mission wouldn’t take much longer.
     The destination waited a mile ahead.
     The machine was making the final turn when sirens screamed. Zarion directed the host to pull to the shoulder of the road. The screaming lights raced closer.  
     A thud. A jingle of a belt. Footfalls crunching gravel. Then hands knocking on glass.
     “Roll down your window,” a uniformed protoplasm with a silver badge instructed. To Zarion, the officer’s words were the equivalency of coins rattling in a can: meaningless, incomprehensible, earsplitting nothingness.
     “Roll down your window,” he repeated with irritation.  
     The man behind the wheel sat frozen, eyes staring ahead. The officer tapped the window. “Open up, buddy. I’m not going to tell you again.”
     Zarion knew no ape language. It did, however, understand emotions. Emotions had no boundaries. They existed beyond culture and place. They were the most ancient forms of communication. The obnoxious utterances, Zarion concluded, vibrated with anger. Anger on the outside posed a direct threat to the purpose on the inside.
     Zarion played the right neurons. The host—red threads lapping his eyes, pallor masking his tan—sprang at the uniformed protoplasm. For a moment, the officer fancied him as a psychopath on a rampage.
     The insider made the man’s body kick the door while simultaneously pulling the handle. The impact sent the officer to the ground. Before the suspect could overcome him, he pulled out a black explosion maker. But the device was disarmed by the host. Zarion felt the fear in the officer’s voice. Anger and fear threatened the mission. The explosion maker was pointed at the officer’s face. The host squeezed the trigger.
     Lead penetrated his temple. Hot blood painted pavement.
     Zarion directed him back into the machine. His foot pressed the pedal. Buzzing around a curve, they passed under a bridge. The next quarter-mile was a narrowing straight stretch.
     Twenty seconds later, the roar of water forced the host’s foot to stomp the brake. They had reached the destination.
     The “ventriloquist doll” exited, then leaned over, almost stumbling. He limped forward. Commanding the body became harder. Cells were accelerating, some becoming cantankerous.
     A sickness brewed.
     Outside, the sound of flowing water loudened. But all Zarion heard was the crackle-pop starting below. Rumbling lava inside the body thinned, thickened, thinned, thickened. The babies were hatching. Zarion became sad, swollen. The creature wanted to see its children before the end. Although seeing them would mean aborting the control panels, which in turn meant not fulfilling the purpose. And if the purpose never reached fulfillment. they all died.
     A blue flash lit the nest. The egg sacs cracked open. Baby insiders climbed over the gooey wall and then ate into a sausage, where they were to remain in a hollow until launch time. The fire-fluid below grew higher, spitting acid. 
     The host held a hand over half of his stomach. Acid-growls rattled Zarion’s ears. The man’s knees started buckling.
     Time was thinning. Zarion reconfigured the controls. The man somewhat straightened and continued walking. Outside, the running water grew louder and louder. Inside, fire-fluid elevated, sickened.
     The water was within touching distance. Zarion punched a handful of neuro-keys, causing the host to drop to his knees. It cupped its ears. An eruption roared. An ocean in the stomach churned, ascended. His pallor reflected in moonlit water. He leaned close enough to touch the surface. The little insiders got into position. Zarion closed its eyes. The final countdown had arrived.
     One, two, three.
     Vomit rushed out of the man’s mouth and spilled into the Harmonic River, a central water supply. Zarion’s children swam the river toward the second phase of their mission.
     Zarion steered the man into his machine and back onto the road. They were approaching the scene of the dead officer when Zarion sensed the pain of someone—or something—familiar. Droplets, splashes, and explosions sounded in Zarion’s head. Its body read a stinging, glassy sensation from something hot, something halved. Coldness crept into the control room.
     It was time to exit the man. Zarion had to leave anyway. But eagerness to know what the familiar thing was accelerated the departure.
     Quickly, Zarion rode a vehicle out of the control panels and down the dark tunnel where the voice maker dangled. The next place Zarion arrived at was a bed of jelly. The insider had never been here. Most places remained unexplored. The body was a universe. But Zarion knew how to break free. There had been lessons, instructions, practice sessions.
     It was weak. Working at the control panels had drained the creature’s energy. Zarion needed more nutrients. This time it had a feast. The man felt the insider moving inside him, the sensation of a wire forcing itself through blood vessels. He glanced at his chest, where the agony was migrating. He ripped open his shirt. A scream rose, charring the dark tunnel. His nails sawed, cutting skin and scooping up blood. He hissed and shuddered. Zarion munched toward the beating of four chambers. The nutrients increased its size by half an inch.
    The man stared at his throbbing breast. A knife seemed to be stabbing him when the insider reached the chambers.
     Zarion pushed up, up, and out. The man sprawled on the pavement. Blood painted new parts of the inside and outside worlds. Zarion swung a collapsing vessel like a rope, ate through jelly, then reached what appeared to be a rock formation.
     Now it burrowed through bone, eating some of the crunchy nutrition that caused a skeleton to form inside Zarion. Its worm-like body enlarged, transformed, hardened. Finally, the surface was breached.
     Outside, Zarion—now four inches long—noticed a blue shine on the bloodied face of the officer. The insider slithered closer. The smell of pain irritated its breathing apparatus.  
     The blue speck was a friend from their faraway home. They had grown together, had hatched in neighboring nests. The waiting, the eating, the working…all for what? A dead friend?
     Zarion swelled. Its friend Yarion (who had been in the officer’s control panels when the lead struck) was dying. The explosion maker had halved its body, which was sinking into the officer’s caterpillar eyebrow. Blue goo was oozing out of the insider and running into the corpse’s eyeball. Zarion felt stings and slices. It heard explosions and the sawing of wormlike critters.
     Zarion climbed the face and cradled the dying insider. Tiny hands absorbed Yarion’s thoughts. Zarion’s children will be enough. Our mission is accomplished. Earth is saved.
     Distraught but strong, Zarion carried the comrade between green shards leading into a land of bark cylinders capped with leafy crowns, where feathery aviators rested. Waiting behind one of Nature’s cylinders was a nine-by-nine molten rock with a carved entry. Zarion carried Yarion inside. The body was cold. A moment later, its blue pebble eyes shut forever.
     The fallen insider would receive a hero’s funeral. Nobody but Zarion and Yarion had been sent to fulfill the purpose.
     Suddenly, the rock lifted in midair. Smoke gushed out of the underside. The craft went up, up, left, right, up again. The black sky gave way to black seas of outer space. Zarion was returning to its home planet among the stars.
     Decades would pass before the creature saw its children, and Yarion’s body was beginning to molder.
     But comfort was found in knowing the offspring would not endure the same loneliness Zarion had endured on Earth. They were swimming to a land of steel towers touching charcoal clouds. A land where millions of hustle-and-bustle apes padded concrete, where God meant a green paper with a presidential face. Water lines would provide cozy homes for its children until they were poured into drinking glasses. That was when the real fun would begin. Yes, Zarion longed to see its hatchlings, but understood they were the seeds of the apocalypse. And they were safe. Nobody would unveil the purpose. Apes were too busy chasing green paper, never realizing bigger forces existed, including ones inside themselves. Once the purpose came full circle, the children could return home, where Zarion could hold and love them. Sensing these truths, its melancholic swelling subsided.
     The rock transporting Zarion through the universe accelerated, piercing space and time.
     Apes gulping water stared out their windows at what appeared to be a shooting star.

***

Writing speculative fiction has been Paul Lee's passion for more than a decade. His short story publications include "Something's Out There," "Prisoners," "When They Bled," and "The Insider." When not writing, he enjoys reading books, watching horror flicks, and spending time with his cat.

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