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A Science-Fiction Short Story

MERCY OF TWO

by Robert Zorkman


The words of the Tribunal boomed across the crystalline chamber.

Glok-Veth'aran
Lord of the Fifth Spiral
Last of the Sanguine Isles

"You are hereby sentenced by order of the Galactic Court. Twenty cycles of human corporeal confinement."

Glok's wings trembled - the shimmer of his membranes collapsing inward in instinctive horror.

The presiding judge clicked a holo-panel.

"And your assigned human designation..."

Glok braced, eyes wide, antennae quivering.

A pause.
A very deliberate pause.

"... Gary."

The chamber gasped.

Even the guards recoiled.

Glok shrieked, the sound bending light, his entire form spasming with cultural revulsion.

"No! Not... Gha'rii. Nooooo!"

But the guards were already closing in, gripping his limbs with containment fields.

"Let the punishment begin."

A portal opened. A human vessel awaited - pink, fragile, soft and disgusting, with a curse for a name. They dragged Glok toward the portal, his severed resonance echoing like a phantom limb.

The Adjudicators, harmonics unified, uttered the final decree: "We grant the Mercy of Two. Twelve hours human. Twelve hours alien."

Glok screamed his True Name one last time as he shrank into the human vessel. His mind dulled, his harmonics faded.

The light collapsed. The portal sealed.

One more criminal condemned to the most unbearable form known to the galaxy:


Human.

THE EXPEDITION

The aliens didn't even have a name for Earth during the first expedition. It was simply "World 17342-c".

A world with unstable climates, erratic magnetic fields, and a species whose neural structures made no evolutionary sense. A point of curiosity.

The Fifth Spiral sent a small team of twelve observers. Cultural anthropologists. Linguists. Mind-harmonics researchers.

They landed in secret.
They blended.
They watched.

They recoiled in horror.

What they found changed galactic jurisprudence forever.

Most intelligent species in the galaxy have:

Humans had none of these. It wasn't madness. It was baseline behavior.

Every alien researcher kept using the same word in their reports: "Uncontained."

One anthropologist wrote: "Human bureaucracies exist to generate pain. They pay taxes to suffer."

Another wrote: "Humans have no ancestral memory. A stranger can appear in any settlement, claim origin from elsewhere, and be accepted without verification."

We tested this seventeen times. Their computer systems are trivial to alter. Background, credentials, history - all fabricated in minutes. They never question. They never verify. They simply... accept.

After eight months on Earth, the alien team began to unravel - dissociation, collapsing harmonic cycles, failing ancestral memories. They recoiled in horror when one researcher began referring to himself as "Jeff."

Nine members failed to reintegrate into alien form. The three who survived demanded immediate extraction and decontamination.

After returning home, they testified before the Tribunal:

"Death is mercy. Humanity is not."

CLASS 4

The Galactic Tribunal created the Class 4 Cognitive Degradation Protocol. A sentence of containment, a biological quarantine: "Human Embodiment"

A species whose daily existence destabilizes cognition, erodes identity, overloads senses, and fragments memory. A punishment no mind returns from intact.

The Tribunal formalized the ruling into a single line:

"To walk as human is to be unmade."

And so the galaxy agreed:

Becoming human is the ultimate punishment.

LHAD

LINGUISTIC HARM ASSESSMENT DIVISION
Fifth Spiral Court Complex
Sub-Level 7

The Linguistic Harm Assessment Division ensures optimal nominal
degradation through empirical analysis of phonetic resonance,
cultural context, and sociolinguistic humiliation indices.

We are an Equal Harm employer.

Vex'kala sat hunched over his terminal, antennae twitching as another batch of phonetic data scrolled past.

Seventeen years in the Division. Seventeen years analyzing prisoner languages, cross-referencing cultural taboos, testing pronunciations against humiliation indices.

He looked fondly at his annual performance review printout:

Agent Vex'kala identified 847 instances of cross-cultural nominal profanity this cycle, with an outstanding cultural shame index of 91.6%. Recommended for promotion to Senior Harm Assessor.

Most of his colleagues had transferred out within three cycles. Said the work was too grim. Too demanding. Too cruel.

Vex'kala found it soothing.

He looked through his messages. The HR training module "Recognizing Unauthorized Compassion" was due this cycle. This can wait until tomorrow, he thought.

Instead, he pulled up the file for subject 5S-CASC-77412.

Glok-Veth'aran
Lord of the Fifth Spiral
Last of the Sanguine Isles

Pretentious, Vex'kala mused. This one will break easily - the shame will be beautiful.

The Division had taught him to start with the worst insults first. He ran a standard cultural analysis on:

The algorithm flagged three candidate profanities:

Gha'rii: Offspring that failed the molt.
Cultural shame index: 96.3%

Zair-uu: Unmade, unformed, unworthy.
Existential degradation rating: 91.7%

Ik:Vii: The discordant one.
Harmonic violation: Level 17

Vex'kala selected the three. Cross-referenced against the human phonetic database.

2,847 Earth names analyzed.
Seventeen potential matches flagged.

One stood out, surpassing acceptance thresholds.

Phonetic overlap: 98.12% with Gha'rii.

Vex'kala reviewed the division checklist:

Five for five. A complete match.

Vex'kala's mandibles clicked in satisfaction. The human name was perfect. Destiny.

He stamped the linguistic harm report:

HUMAN NAME: GARY
LOCATION:   IRS - Taxpayer Assistance Division

IDENTITY

The sentencing had been public. What came before was not.

The chamber was a hollow sphere of black stone, its walls threaded with faint red veins that pulsed in time with the Tribunal's breath. Three Adjudicators hovered at the center. Towering, translucent figures whose faces were shifting masks of law.

Glok-Veth'aran stood alone below them, shackled at the wrists, the harmonics around his body dimmed to a sickly gray. Even in restraint, he carried the proud set of a Spiral Lord - chin high, wings folded with defiant symmetry.

Three times the gong rang. Echoes reflected off the chamber walls.

The First Adjudicator spoke:

Glok-Veth'aran
Lord of the Fifth Spiral
Last of the Sanguine Isles

His True Name echoed through the chamber with perfect fidelity, vibrating the stone, the air, the marrow in his bones. He felt a rush of warmth course through him. The resonance. The music of self. That familiar harmonic that had comforted him since larval form.

"I am Glok-Veth'aran," he thought. "I am harmonic."

The Adjudicators allowed the vibration to linger - his last moment of peace.

Then the Second Adjudicator raised a glowing sigil. Bright white light. Terrifying.

"Identity Stripping shall commence."

Glok's wings twitched. He knew what came next. Every Lectvoid knew about the white sigil. He had begged for anything else - exile, memory erasure, even death. But the sentence was final. Carved into the Court Ledger.

A low harmonic tone filled the chamber. Then another. And another. Discordant. Contradicting. Glok's own resonance staggered, then faltered.

The harmonics snapped.

Pain lanced through him. Not physical. Something deeper, something worse, cutting a sacred thread.

He gasped, stumbling to one knee.

"Identify," commanded the Third Adjudicator.

"My True Name is Glok-Veth'aran..."

The familiar warmth, the internal music, was gone.

Nothing rose to meet the words.
No pulse of identity.
No ancestral echo.
No resonance.

Only silence.

A shiver of horror ran through him.

"Your True Name is revoked. All titles, harmonics, and ancestral designations are hereby stripped," declared the First Adjudicator.

The Adjudicators spoke in perfect unison:

"You shall recite your True Name nightly as penance, and feel nothing. Remembrance without comfort is the purest form of remorse. May this sentence extinguish what arrogance built."

The words, the cruelty, hit harder than any blade.

The chamber dimmed.

The Tribunal's voice boomed across the crystalline chamber...

MONDAY

The mornings at the IRS were noise, despair, and microwaved fish.

He blinked awake to the cheap ceiling light buzzing above him, shuffled into the government-issued cubicle maze, sat down, and adjusted his name badge.

GARY
Employee IR-14376

He cleared his throat. The headset clicked.

"Hello," he recited, "my name is Gary. How can I help you?" Someone began yelling about taxes.

Gary didn't know why, but for a moment, however brief, something deep inside him felt like screaming too.

Everyone at the IRS felt that way. Eventually.

He brushed it off.

He checked his calendar. Tuesday had a bright circle around it, like a tiny sun.

But that was tomorrow.
For now, he endured Monday.

TRANSFORMATION

At 6:00 PM, Gary's body slackened, his eyelids falling shut as if someone had flipped a switch. The timing was precise, down to the millisecond.

And then it began.

The transformation always started in the spine - a spasm, a ripple, a tearing sensation as bones softened, split, and reformed. Skin dissolved like shedding wax. Joints re-articulated. A soft chemical glow bled from beneath the human flesh as it peeled away.

Gary was gone.
Glok-Veth'aran crawled free.

He gasped in the cool air of the apartment, mandibles trembling, four eyes blinking as the human shell collapsed like a discarded costume. His carapace cracked with the memories rushing back in.

Twelve hours human.
Twelve hours lost.

He lifted his head, and the hatred arrived right on cue.

"Curse this fragile, leaking meat-form," Glok rasped.

The memories flooded in - every moment, every choice, every sensation Gary had experienced. Glok remembered it all as if he'd been awake, trapped behind eyes he couldn't control.

He shook out his wings, buzzing with weakness instead of the strength he once possessed. The stench of human sweat still clung to him, an indignity that survived any amount of cleansing.

He crawled to the center of the room and spoke the words of penance:

My True Name is Glok-Veth'aran.
Lord of the Fifth Spiral.
Last of the Sanguine Isles.

He paused.

My crimes demand I bear the False Name 'Gary.'

No internal harmonics.
No resonance.
No comfort.

The shame overwhelmed him.

"Mercy of Two," Glok rasped. "No punishment may eclipse half a cycle. Twelve hours as human, twelve hours as myself. They call it compassion. Mercy."

"They have never lived as... Gary."

Glok collapsed on the floor, exhausted, already dreading tomorrow's cycle.

The human mind weakened him.
The human habits bled into him.
The human cravings - for spice, for salt, for fried food - tortured him to the limits of his physiology.

Every week for six years the pattern was the same: Tuesday afternoon, Gary ate hot wings. Tuesday night, Glok suffered in agony. Even the mildest hot wing felt like swallowing acid. The Diablo Sauce split his soul.

"Every week for six years..." Glok cried out. "Death is merciful. This is not."

Gary loved hot wings.
Glok could not warn him.
Glok could not communicate with him.
Glok could not plead with him.
Glok could only suffer.

In twelve hours, the transformation would restore Gary. Glok would sleep, trapped inside, helpless.

He shuddered.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tomorrow will be pain.

For now, he rested.

TUESDAY

The mornings at the IRS were noise, despair, and microwaved fish.

He blinked awake to the cheap ceiling light buzzing above him, shuffled into the government-issued cubicle maze, sat down, and adjusted his name badge.

GARY
Employee IR-14376

He cleared his throat. The headset clicked.

"Hello," he recited, "my name is Gary. How-"

Without a greeting or introduction, someone interrupted and began yelling about taxes...

The receptionist walked past. John in the next cubicle whispered something under his breath that sounded like "Big Booty." A coworker in another cubicle coughed the same cough every seven minutes. Another coworker, also named John, occasionally shouted "Tay."

Gary never wondered why so many coworkers were named "John."

Gary didn't mind. Today, a bright circle on his calendar. Today was Tuesday.

As soon as the clock marked 11:30 AM, Gary interrupted his caller. "Please hold," he said, transferring them to a random extension.

Time for wings.

Waldo's Wing Extravaganza

Waldo's Wing Extravaganza and Soup Emporium smelled like heaven, disaster, and fryer oil.

The neon chicken mascot winked at him from above the door - one flickering LED eye always slightly dimmer than the other. The sign crackled in the winter air. Most customers complained about it.

Gary found the sound comforting.

Warm air, spices, and loud pop music from three years ago blasted him as he stepped inside. The hostess didn't look up from her phone.

"Table for one?"

"Yes. It's... Tuesday!", Gary exclaimed with enthusiasm far out of proportion for human life.

"Booth or counter?"

"Booth," Gary said, because booths were special. Booths were for Hot Wing Tuesday.

A laminated menu covered in sauce stains and fingerprints rested on the edge of the table. Gary knew it by heart, but he picked it up anyway, just to savor the experience.

The server approached.

Marcus.

Lanky, perpetually exhausted, easygoing.

"Hey, Gary, the usual?"

"I-", Gary started, but an insert caught his eye:

MONSTER SAUCE: Finish the entire basket and your order is FREE!

Gary had been training for Monster Sauce for almost a year. He mastered mild, hot, Diablo, Regret, and "Why, oh Why?". Monster Sauce was the final stage. He wasn't 100% confident he was ready, but he couldn't resist "FREE".

"One Monster Sauce basket, please," he said, tapping the insert, grinning with the confidence of a man whose pain receptors were not his own.

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

"One Monster Sauce Hot Wing Basket," Marcus said, pulling a bright white card from his apron pocket and sliding it across the table with a pen.

"Corporate makes me do this part."

Gary picked up the card. A bright red pepper punctuated the corner. A standard liability waiver, printed in that font designed to discourage reading:

MONSTER SAUCE LIABILITY WAIVER

Monster Sauce may cause sweating, crying, temporary loss of vision,
gastrointestinal distress, heart palpitations, existential dread, and/or
loss of consciousness. Management assumes no responsibility for physical,
spiritual, or harmonic damage.

No refunds.

Gary skimmed it - the usual restaurant CYA nonsense - and signed with a flourish.

Marcus took the waiver back without looking at it. "And a soda?"

"Diet Coke."

Gary folded his hands on the table and waited, vibrating ever-so-slightly in anticipation. Wings were one of the few joys of human existence.

Waldo's was perfect: chaos, pepper oil, and fried dreams. A toddler hurled a napkin dispenser. College kids chanted something while pounding the table. Someone at the counter screamed in agony while his friends laughed. Gary absorbed it all.

The wings arrived quickly - glistening red, dangerous, beautiful.

Marcus set them down with the caution of a man delivering something hazardous.

"If you die," he said, "I want you to know I am absolutely not doing the paperwork."

Gary smiled. "Thank you, Marcus."

He picked up the first wing. Steam curled upward. The sauce shimmered like molten glass.

He took a bite.

Fire.
Soul-dissolving fire.

Gary's eyes shot wide.
A bead of sweat had already formed at his temple.

His nose ran.
His eyes watered.
His vision pulsed at the edges.

He felt alive.
Beneath his skin, something deep down recoiled in wordless terror.

He took another bite.
And another.
And another.

Gary was sweating like someone who had sprinted through a car wash. Droplets rolled down his face, neck, and arms.

Even his elbows were sweating - a medical impossibility he chose not to question.

Gary kept going.
The sauce burned deep.

He struggled with the final wing, shaking from excitement and salt. Gary wiped his mouth with a handful of napkins, victorious.

Best. Tuesday. Ever.

He did not hear the faint sound - like a harmonic whimper - echoing somewhere deep in the back of his mind.

Marcus approached with caution, carrying a pitcher of water.

"Hey, man," he said, leaning in. "Just checking... are you, uh... alive?"

Gary blinked up at him through a curtain of sweat, then gasped "Oh yes, never been-". He wheezed. "-better."

Marcus stared a bit, then placed the water down.

"Right. Well... I'm legally obligated to offer hydration, so... here."

"You know," he continued, "most people tap out at Diablo. If you start hallucinating or your heart does... anything weird... just raise your hand, okay?"

Gary beamed. "Absolutely."

As Marcus walked away, he muttered to himself, "Dude's gonna ascend to a higher plane. Or die. Hard to tell which."

MONSTER SAUCE

Gary slept soundly.
Glok did not.

The transformation began at 6:00 PM, as always - a biological clock the Tribunal had etched into his soul. But tonight, something was wrong the moment the first harmonic flickered.

His bones reorganized with a grinding crack. His skin split open along the old seams. The human shell peeled away like brittle wax.

And then the smell hit him.

Acid.
Capsaicin.
A chemical inferno.

Glok's senses screamed first, then his lungs.

His alien form solidified on the apartment floor - carapace steaming, mandibles trembling - and the full consequences of Monster Sauce surged through him like molten glass poured directly into his veins.

He convulsed.

Every nerve lit up.
Every harmonic fractured.
A rasp tore from his throat, a sound so sharp it clipped the silence.

"No - no, no, nooooo-"

His internal organs recoiled, attempting to flee his body. His vision flared into ultraviolet static. The inside of his thorax felt like someone had poured boiling acid onto it.

Because someone had.

Gary.
Gary had done this.

Glok staggered to his claws, gasping for air - any air - but every inhale was like dragging fire into his lungs.

He collapsed again, body shuddering.

Then the second burn hit.

Monster Sauce wasn't spice. It was engineered suffering. For a Lectvoid, it might as well have been a nerve agent.

Glok curled in on himself, vision whitening at the edges. His claws dug furrows into the linoleum.

"It burns inside - how does the human shell survive this?"

It didn't matter.
The misery had just started.

Each wave of pain - each spike of capsaicin dissolving his cells - triggered a corresponding harmonic backlash. His memories flickered like dying stars. His sense of self fractured.

And underneath it all, beneath the agony, was an infuriating awareness:

Gary had enjoyed this.

Glok writhed, choking on air, mandibles scraping the floor.

"Why... would anyone... create this?"

No answer.
Only agony.

The night dragged on - an hour, then two, then three. Time stretched and twisted. Glok screamed until his voice broke, then kept screaming silently. The pain built. Swelled. Compounded on itself.

By hour seven, Glok couldn't form words.
By hour nine, he couldn't remember the stars - his only memory was of Gary, enjoying wing after wing.
By hour eleven, the monstrosity peaked: nothing but pain and complete harmonic collapse.

Glok convulsed violently, his whole body seizing as the Monster Sauce toxins destabilized the remains of his resonance.

He lay still.

Just breathing.

Barely.

And then - the first hint of dawn. The transformation signal flickered.

Glok tried to rise, tried to recite the nightly penance. He needed to. He had to.

His mind was fractured.
His voice wouldn't form.
His limbs refused to move.

The ritual went undone.
The Tribunal stirred.
Punishment.

REVOCATION

Glok lay half-transformed on the apartment floor, body flickering between alien and human as the last waves of the Monster Sauce torment ravaged him. His vision swam. His thoughts frayed.

Then the air split with cold light. The projection of the Galactic Court appeared: three Adjudicators suspended above him, emotionless and still.

"Glok-Veth'aran," the First Adjudicator accused, "you have failed to complete your nightly penance."

Glok tried to lift himself. He failed.

"The pain... the cycle slipped... I..."

The Second Adjudicator raised two sigils in the air, glowing coldly.

"Choose."


The first sigil flared red:
Pain sufficient to realign your cognitive harmonics.

The second sigil brightened blue:
Revocation of Mercy.


Glok shuddered. After twelve straight hours of agony, there was nothing left in him that could survive more.

Silence fell.

The Mercy of Two - twelve hours alien, twelve hours human - the only thing keeping him tethered to himself.

His breathing paused.

"I will not return to myself?"

"You will remain 'Gary'," declared the last Adjudicator.

Glok's vision dimmed at the edges. He understood the choice: Agony. Or oblivion.

He thought briefly of the Sanguine Isles, of his home in the Fifth Spiral.

His voice was almost gentle.

"I choose... revocation."

The Tribunal stamped the decree: "So recorded. So enacted."

The projection dissolved.

The harmonics died.
His alien form faded.
The resonance went silent.

He mourned the Sanguine Isles - for a moment - then it was gone.

He was human.

He didn't understand why he felt lighter. Or what he had forgotten.

He reached for the marker on the counter. Pulled a label from the stack. And slowly, carefully, wrote as if for the first time:

My name is Gary.


As he pressed the sticker onto his shirt, the last harmonic faded, and the memory of Glok-Veth'aran dissolved forever.


LEDGER

Far above the small apartment, in a distant galaxy, the Fifth Spiral Court updated its ledger. A single line glowed, then dimmed:

Subject 5S-CASC-77412

Revocation enacted.
Identity annulled.
Cognitive dissolution complete.

The entry slid into place among thousands of others. Unremarkable. Another mind quietly unmade by the galaxy's most efficient punishment.

The Tribunal advanced to the next case, condemning one more criminal to live on as the most unbearable form in the galaxy.


Human.