Majgen Ch. 016

"It just does. If you don't get out soon I'm going to pee on your sheet."

"What a great idea." Aejoa was serious. "I got plenty others. We can just throw that one to cleaning."

"I didn't mean it," explained Majgen.

"I know, but it was still a great idea. You won't hurt yourself while excreting waste on a sheet."

"Get OUT!"

"But..."

"OUT," she repeated not waiting for him and the translator to finish his objection.

"NO!" Aejoa yelled back, being a yijejo he could yell louder than her.

Majgen took a step back, staring at the giant in front of her. For the first time a little intimidated by his size. He was more than twice as tall as her, and several times wider.

"Don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt you. You know that," pleaded Aejoa.

Majgen nodded the human way. She clearly sensed he spoke full truth, but somehow she didn't feel confident it would always be true.

'Don't be silly, it's Aejoa,' she chided herself, but wasn't able to fully convince herself.

"Little human, listen to me. We didn't survive the interrogation rooms just for you to get killed by a lavatory device."

"That would be a rather silly thing to happen," admitted Majgen.

"I promise as soon as we get home, I will have a human toilet installed. Until then you need to co-operate more."

'Need to? Did the translator change something? Did he mean something different?' Majgen didn't feel confident. His emotions when saying that had been somewhat dual.

Aejoa went quiet, trying to figure out another solution. Majgen tried too, but her bladder was complaining severely now, making it hard to think straight.

'If we don't come to an agreement soon I am going to wet his sheet after all.'

"You can excrete waste in the bath!" exclaimed Aejoa. "There it will be easy to wash the waste away, and you can clean up there too."

"Ok," said Majgen.

"Let me lift you into the bath." Aejoa picked her up without waiting for a reply, and deposited her in a yijejo sized tub.

"The drain is there," he said and pointed. "If you do it close to that it will be easy to wash it off."

"Ok, now will you please get out."

"Yes, but I will leave the door open so you can call when done." He turned to leave the room.

"Aejoa?" she called after him.

"Yes?"

"How do I turn the water on for washing afterwards?"

He came back to her and pointed to the tub controls.

"That is temperature setting, and those are the..." he halted, looking from Majgen to the controls.

"You aren't tall enough to reach the controls, I will help you wash when you are done excreting."

"I can wash myself, just turn the water on before you go."

"You didn't survive this long just to drown in a tub," said Aejoa, then turned and left the room with yijejoan swiftness.

'He is treating me like a small child.' The notion made her uncomfortable, but her bladder brought her mind off the topic.

She unwrapped herself from the yijejo-sized sheet and draped it over the side of the yijejo sized tub. While she relieved herself the sheet slid off the side onto the floor next to the tub.

'Grief,' she thought, when she was done and saw the sheet gone.

The sides of the tub where vertical and reached as high as her shoulders. She went to the side of the tub and looked down at the sheet. Not wanting to leave the tub before cleaning, she didn't try to climb out to fetch it.

"Aejoa," she called. He re-entered and was at the tub almost instantly moving at the eerie speed yijejos were capable of.

"Are you done excreting?" he asked.

"Yes. Will you hand me the sheet, please?"

"As soon as we have washed you, I will," he said and reached for the tub controls.

'Treating me like a child,' noticed Majgen, again.

"Come feel if this water is the right temperature." Aejoa started a flow of water in one end of the tub. Majgen did as asked, very aware of her nudity.

"You will be able to adjust to me seeing your body, won't you?" asked Aejoa.

'If he is aware that I am uncomfortable, why doesn't he just hand me the sheet?' thought Majgen, not sure what to say. She put her hand in the water-beam. "This is a good temperature."

"That is well," Aejoa's words translated, as he turned a showering cascade on in the other end of the tub. "I will acquire soap, which is good for human skin later. For now we will use pure water. Come, Little Human."

'That was translated correctly. He said it as an order.' Majgen was sure of it.'Should I let him order me around?' She raised her mind shield.

"What is wrong?" asked Aejoa.

"I don't like to be naked," said Majgen, withholding the other things that bothered her.

"Mind guard removal," the translator maltranslated an order to lower her mind shield, but she understood from his emanations.

"Give me the sheet, Aejoa," she counter-ordered, and strengthened her mind shield.

Aejoa picked up the sheet and gave it to her. While Majgen draped herself with an end of the sheet the rest of it got drenched in the water at the bottom of the tub. It was far too large for her. She huddled in a corner of the tub, perceiving the speech Aejoa was about to tell her even sooner than he began. When he began he paused every sentence, for the translation.

"Your protective feelings towards me do not extend to every member of my species, Little Human. I want to protect you, but I have a duty to protect others from you. If you ever refuse to give me access to your mind, I will force my way in. I don't want to hurt you, so please never do that.

"I want to give you as good a life as possible, Little Human, but I cannot give you freedom. Even though I can keep you with me, you are still a prisoner. A prisoner in alien surroundings. You have to let me help you till we get settled in my home. When we are home and settled, I probably won't need to give you orders, certainly not frequently, but until then I need you to obey my every command.

"Do you understand?" Aejoa asked, his speech completed.

"Yes," Majgen replied, not sure why tears were pouring out of her eyes yet again. She lowered her mind shield, and Aejoa entered her mind again.

He helped her wash, and dry, and fetched her a dry sheet. By the time she was in Aejoa's reaching limbs again, and he called for a servant to arrange pure water for her to drink, she had forgiven him for treating her like a child, and a prisoner. The feeling of safety and comfort in his hold was seducing.

'If I have no choice, why object?' thought Majgen.'Being treated as a small child is better than being dead, and it does have its advantages,' she comforted herself. She snuggled against Aejoa's chest, partially because she enjoyed doing that and partially to convince herself she would be able to tolerate living like that.

'I guess it can't be worse than being a mentarion student,' was the best argument she could think up to make herself appreciate the current situation.

----=(o)=----

Majgen pressed her back against the bars of her cage. She needed to feel something solid. Metal was perfect for that. She felt cold, but she was sweating too.

'In a moment I will feel too hot again, and then I will wish I felt cold,' she thought,'but right now I'd wish I felt hot.'

She tried to pay attention to the yijejo dancers in front of her cage.

'Three-dimensional view. Every program I've seen so far has been in life size three-dimensional. Do yijejos never use two dimensional presentation?' she tried to focus her mind on unimportant details.

Her yijejo guard was watching the viewer.

Aejoa was sleeping. It was his first sleeping period since he had carried her from the yijejoan interrogation room. Four human days he had guarded her himself, both when she slept and when she was awake. After being rescued and before Majgen was woken from sedation, he had slept for six human days.

'How long has it been since Aejoa went to bed?' wondered Majgen.'I can't stand this cage.'

Majgen knew her problem wasn't the cage. It was eight metres to each side and five metres tall. No, the problem wasn't the cage, she could pace back and forth on eight metres. Only walk, not run. But if there had been space to run, she still couldn't outrun what was wrong with her.

'They were right after all then. You must feel pretty stupid now,' a voice spoke inside her head, her own voice.

"Shut up," she whispered to herself, and pressed her back harder against the bars. She sat on the floor of her cage in a mesh of blankets and sheets.

'Ever since you found out they thought you had it, you believed them to be wrong. You kept telling yourself 'They may be therapeutic experts, but you know you best,' ' her voice persisted in her head.

"I do know best, so shut up," whispered Majgen, and started sobbing yet again. "I do know best," she tried to convince herself.

'Well you do now, don't you?'

Majgen laid down and buried herself under blankets and sheets. Her stomach hurt.

'Baglian and Weissme knew. They both knew. Yet, you thought you knew better. What were you thinking?'

"They were wrong," whispered Majgen. "This is something else."

'No, it's not. It's exactly what they predicted would happen if you were deprived of pleasure chambers for this long.' The voice sounded like it was laughing.'Isn't this beautiful. Just a few more hours and the prude will be begging for a pleasure chamber,' the voice mocked her.

'Never.'

'Yes you will.'

'I'd rather die than have to use a pleasure chamber every four days for the rest of my life.'

'Rest in peace then.'

"Shut up," Majgen whispered into the blankets.

'You know that you are emanating don't you?'

'Yijejos are stronger empaths than humans, they can resist it. Otherwise that guard would have killed me long ago, wouldn't he?'

'Maybe he would have done something else to you.'

'That's disgusting.'

'You want him to do something else to you, with those reaching limbs. You stare at them every time you glance his way.'

Majgen pressed her hands against her ears, as if she could shut the voice out.

'You've noticed what the tip of the middle limb looks like. You've imagined what it would feel like if he...'

Majgen curled into a ball while her other voice mercilessly continued its narrative.

'I don't have Brakwan syndrome,' she tried to convince herself.'It's something else. A post-traumatic disorder. It could be so many things. When Aejoa wakes up, he can scan my mind and fix it empathically.'

'Why don't you just tell the guard to wake Aejoa then? The revered Winin told you to do that if you should need him; the guard has orders to wake him at your request.'

'Aejoa deserves a good nights rest, so shut up.'

'Excuses, excuses, you don't want to wake him because you know what will happen. Think about it the other way, you do want it to happen. Why postpone it? You will enjoy it.'

'No I won't, but it won't happen!'

'Do you remember what the doc said to Aejoa? Humans are always in heat, it is natural for them, hormonal control is not needed.'

'Aejoa will be shocked to see what you are like when you are truly in heat,' a third voice mingled in, inside her head.

Majgen started shaking, even though she was now feeling too hot again. The voices kept harassing her for hours on end. Majgen knew it wasn't really voices, just herself thinking. She knew what hearing voices was like, from the minds of people who had such specific illnesses, and this was different. Yet she couldn't stop it. Or rather, the voices were easier to handle than the emotions themselves.

"Please don't let it be Brakwan," she whispered to herself shortly before sleep finally came to her, giving her some hours rest. She knew it was Brakwan though. She had grasped the full symptomology of Brakwan's syndrome from both Baglian and Weissme. What was happening to her fit perfectly.

----=(o)=----

Aejoa had slept well through most of the night, but his last dream before he woke was a nightmare. In that one he dreamt of humans who prepared to torture him. Suddenly he was a human himself - a torturer - and the victim he was about to cut up was the little human that had saved him.

"Everything is well," the little thing said to him. "You don't have to believe." He raised a knife with his human hand and prepared to cut the little human's mouth to shreds.

"But I do believe," he stated, pushing the knife into her mouth.

Aejoa forced his eyes open.

'It's not real, just a nightmare.'

He sat up, and turned up the light.

"Just a nightmare," he said, and shook the dream off.

He looked at a clock and was relieved to find he had slept long enough. He put a morning robe on and went to check on his human.'I hope she didn't get too bored without me,' he thought. The doctor had mentioned Majgen's gender, and since then he had thought of his human as a her, not an it.

The soldier at guard knelt to him, as he entered the leisure room his human's cage was in. The commanding officer on the ship had insisted that, apart from lavatory needs, the human was to be kept in a cage while Aejoa slept.

"I will take over now. You may leave," said Aejoa, dismissing the soldier.

With the soldier gone, Aejoa opened the cage and entered to kneel next to his human's sleeping form.'I'll just ask if she want's to have breakfast with me,' he thought, giving himself an excuse to wake her. He felt a need to hear her voice, to convince himself she was still well.

"Little Human," he said, nudging her awake.

He felt how warm emotions rose in the human as she slowly woke.

"Aejoa," mumbled Majgen, waking with a happy feeling.'I saved him,' was her first thought.'Aejoa is well.'

She opened her eyes and saw the yijejo she had rescued towering over her like a giant.

'Aejoa is awake!' she thought and felt herself starting to freeze.

'Something is wrong,' realised Aejoa, as his human's emotions changed from happiness, to something he didn't recognise, to fear, to anger.

"Get away from me!" yelled Majgen, and pushed herself away from him, crawling while still on her back. She rolled over on her stomach and scurried to the corner of the cage, furthest from Aejoa. There she wrapped herself with a sheet and huddled against the bars of the cage.

With growing concern Aejoa studied her emotions as they changed yet again - to fear.

"Little Human, what is wrong?" he asked, and entered the top of her mind.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD," screamed Majgen, and attempted to raise a mind shield.

'She feels angry and violated now,' noticed Aejoa.'What is wrong with her? What has happened?'

Majgen Rahan was extremely powerful for a human empath, but by yijejo standards she was weak, and by yijejo standards Aejoa was exceedingly strong. It cost him no effort to prevent her from raising a mind shield.

The human screamed with frustration, as she failed to keep him out of her mind.

"What is wrong?" Aejoa asked again.

"I don't want you in my head, please get out of my head," pleaded Majgen, suddenly feeling terrified and vulnerable instead of angry and violated.

"Did someone hurt you?" he asked, fearing she had been harmed while he slept.

"You are going to hurt me in a moment." Majgen's breathing became heavy.'It is too hot in here. Why is it so hot in here?'

"What happened while I was sleeping?" asked Aejoa, searching her mind for answers to her strange behaviour.

Majgen didn't try to reply, instead she gripped the bars tight and started sobbing.

'Please just leave me alone,' she thought.'Tell him what his middle reaching limbs looks like,' another part of her thought.

"No, I won't," she told herself.

'Strong emotional conflict,' thought Aejoa.'Imprisonment trauma effect?' He had checked her for claustrophobic tendencies before leaving her in the cage, and had found no signs of such risks.

"I don't want to live like this, I don't want this to be my life," wailed Majgen, against the bars.

'Despair,' noted Aejoa.'Transitionary trauma effect? She has been ripped from her old life and thrown into completely alien surroundings.'

He continued scanning her, his technical skills higher than those of any human empath. Discarding hypotheses as fast as he could think up new ones.

'Maybe she is physically ill?' thought Aejoa, but decided to learn more about her condition before calling the doctor. The physician who looked after Aejoa's physical health on this ship was also experienced in human physiology.

Half an hour later, Majgen calmed. Aejoa was still trying to find the cause of her misery.

"You are trying to find out what is wrong with me, aren't you?" she asked. Emotionally exhausted, she leaned her head against the bars.

"Yes."

"Think you can fix me?" she asked, not sure if she felt a tiny hope or not.

"Should be able to," stated Aejoa. "You were well before I went to sleep. Chronic diseases don't tend to develop over night."

'Should I tell him?' Majgen asked herself.

'She knows what is wrong with her,' realised Aejoa, following her thoughts.

"Tell me what is wrong with you, Little Human."

"I have a fourth degree Brakwan syndrome, Aejoa. I have had it for years," replied Majgen, after the translator had repeated his question in humana.

Admitting it to Aejoa felt bad, admitting it to herself felt worse. Although Aejoa could feel her shame at the admission, he had no clue what a Brakwan syndrome was. It was a human diagnosis.

"What is a Vjaaaawan syndrome?" said Aejoa, physically unable to pronounce Brakwan.

Majgen understood, though. She didn't want to explain, and for now she didn't have to. Aejoa followed the associations his questions had highlighted and gained a preliminary understanding.

'It has something to do with human sexuality,' realised Aejoa, and looked deeper into Majgen's understanding of the syndrome.

'Of course!' thought Aejoa.'What she is experiencing right now is a psychological withdrawal effect. She has a psychological addiction, and has been deprived of the dependency relieving ingredient while being here.'

"I wish you had told me sooner, Little human. So you wouldn't have had to suffer like you did this night. Don't worry. I will call the doctor, and he will help us find a way to relieve the dependency for now," said Aejoa.

"Please don't," Majgen pleaded despondently, before her mood changed again and she started yelling with fury. "DON'T YOU DARE! I'll..." Majgen went limp as Aejoa mentally pushed her into unconsciousness.

'I'll protect you, Little Human,' he thought, and picked her limp body up, wrapping her sheet around her. Carrying Majgen, Aejoa walked out of the cage. He pressed a servant button, and in moments one of his assigned servants arrived.

Aejoa told him to fetch the doctor.

----=(o)=----

"How can I be of assistance, Winin?" asked the doctor, kneeling to the revered Winin.

"My human is sick," explained Aejoa, not paying heed to the doctor's disappointment at having been called regarding the human yet again.

The doctor did his best to not feel annoyed. The previous day the Winin had called him multiple times, and had interrogated him thoroughly on the physical needs of humans. Eating, sleeping, washing, exercise, preferred lighting, gravitational needs, hormonal treatments, microbiological additive needs, no topic seemed too small for a thorough questioning. The Doctor was starting to feel like a veterinarian.

'How long will the Winin keep convincing himself, that keeping a human as a pet is a viable solution?' the Doctor had wondered.