It’s not long before I hear footsteps and the Silver’s language. They’re calling for me. I hear them say my volunteer number repeatedly. I close my eyes tighter and hope they’ll decide they don’t want me. I already know the evils on this rural farm, and I can handle them. I’ve no idea what bad things will happen to me if I leave with these males, and what more sophisticated torture will await me at a wealthier place.

I keep my hands over my mouth and will myself to be calm, so they won’t be able to hear me. Not much time passes before I feel the sheets being pulled from my head, and one of the military males grabs me. He easily throws me over his shoulder as if I weigh nothing. I kick and scream like my life depends on it because it most likely does, but my efforts don’t even slow him down.

He walks up to my patient, who grabs my chin and says directly in my face, “You now belong to me, Volunteer 4711. You will be punished later for running, but now be calm. I am taking you to a better place.” Then to the male holding me, my patient issues his commands. I don’t understand his words, but it’s clear when it happens to me. I’m put in a chair for prisoners or slaves on the new transport that’s appeared while I was gathering everyone. I’m completely strapped in so that I can’t move. As we take to the air, I cry at another life that has been lost to me. Goodbye, farm slash brothel, I think. I don’t know yet if you were the worst or the best of my alien life.

* * *

We are only in the transport for about half an hour before we dock with a starship. I’m escorted off by the same male who found me in the laundry room. I’ve no idea what’s happening to me now.

“Take me back. Who knows what space travel will do to me,” I say, but all my pleas fall on deaf ears.

“Walk, or I will drag you,” the Silver male says sternly, and I walk the best I can with my flimsy farming shoes on the slick floor of the starship. It’s like walking on ice. As I slowly walk, annoying my companion, I notice the starship corridors are brightly lit, and I see many males wearing the same uniforms as the males that were in the farmhouse. The males we pass only give me a fleeting look. The male behind me directs me down numerous corridors until finally arriving at what appears to be a clinic.

I walk in, and a few Silver military doctors approach me. They begin to speak to me quickly, and I hold up my hand to my ear. “Slowly.”

The male who escorted me here speaks to the doctor quickly, and I only catch my name, ‘Volunteer 4711.’

When he finishes, the same male doctor looks at me and says slowly, “Calm, Water woman. I am going to look at you and make sure you are in good health.” He runs his hands up and down his own body to let me know what he means.