“No idea. Okay,” I said, addressing the monster, “I want to save you. How do I do that?” The creature stood motionless. I scrambled to come up with something that might invite some information in return. “If you could–”

It turned away.

“I’ll help you!” I broke into a fit of coughing. I turned to Patton. “I don’t know what’s going on. They want me to save them and I don’t have any clue how I’m supposed to do that.”

He grimaced and shook his head. “They’re gonna probe it out of you, man.”

“I hope not.” It went without saying that in an alien situation we’d always naturally assumed it would be him getting probed.

Our enclosure was a monolith in the center of the giant rotunda. Light came from above somewhere, illuminating the area that immediately surrounded it, but not all the way to the perimeter of the colossal space. The farthest walls were the color of twilight, against which the ever-present mist was tucked. I pressed my face to the membrane again.

Tiny vortices spun out from the churning fog. Occasionally the veil broke and a cycle of creation and dissolution presented itself between burps of dense vapor. Tumbling boids assumed form and shape, with some appearing in random configurations and others as fully assembled biped individuals. Then, as if linked by some internal sense of timing, the behemoth congealed from the masses, plowing through cloud like a rolling black wave. At one moment powerful and coursing, the next spilling apart and submerging.

I palmed my way around our enclosure, watching this process repeat itself again and again. The creature boiled through the dusky light while cycling through other-worldly color schemes, trying on new forms and discarding them just as quickly. Then it stopped, and the thick vapor rotated away its inertia.

I’d lost track of how long I’d been watching. The muscles in my legs burnt. I needed to eat. I needed to go number two.

A new figure approached from the mist. This one was smaller than the earlier individual, but still considerably taller than me. It might have been the same one for all I knew, just reconfigured, though that wasn’t the vibe I was getting. It even walked differently from the first. The way the boids fit together gave it unique contours and features, which seemed to confer a sense of individuality. It also had the metal prong thing embedded in its thorax region, but the shape was different. A horizontal gap opened along the bottom of its head and it spoke, my voice, again, carried on the wind.

Save us, it said.

I shrugged. “Look–”