Raiyev Part 24
#24 of Raiyev
"Tell me what this is about?" Raiyev asked incredulously. "What, you mean you knew all this time?" he asked firmly.
"No, no, no!" Harper said quickly. "I was able to find out what the humans were doing here, like you had sent me to do, remember?"
"Oh," Raiyev said, remembering his last meeting with Harper. "Yeah...I'm sorry..."
"It's okay," Harper said consolingly. "You've been through a hell of a lot. More than anyone should be put through, honestly."
"You're telling me," Raiyev huffed. "Anyways...I feel bad about sending you in. Thomas told me after I saw you last that it was about some political war with another planet, and that I was their weapon."
"Yes, Thomas would say that. That's what he had come to understand, at least. I was able to find some sort of archives--their technology is way ahead of ours, of course, so the way they store data is really different. Anyways, from what I could see, they were using you as a war machine...which is very sick and twisted and wrong..." she added in an undertone. "But while the war was real, it was only part of the equation. Almost like a red herring, but it did have its own innate purposes."
"What do you mean?" Raiyev asked.
"Well, that camera you're holding in your paw...it's...it...oh, Raiyev! It's for a television show!"
Raiyev sat, staring at Harper in total disbelief. "You're joking," he said accusingly.
"I wish I was," she pleaded. "You know how we have reality shows here, right?"
Raiyev nodded, frowning at Harper.
"Well, the humans do, too, only for them, it's gotten so bad in their society that they turn the news and politics into sick entertainment. They use reality shows to choose presidents and CEOs and other leaders. War to them is just like some fictional movie, even if they're the ones waging it! And your life as you've been seeing it since this whole mess began has been documented and aired as pure entertainment for the humans back on their home planet."
Raiyev sat still and silent, the shock of all this hitting him like a freight train. "I'm a fucking show..." he sighed after a moment.
"It's horrible, I know..." Harper started, patting his arm.
"How?" he demanded, glowering at Harper, as if it was still somehow her fault.
"It's a bit complicated," she began, looking up at Raiyev with pleading eyes, but his stare penetrated her, and she continued, "but a lot of our people were involved. First there was Toni Hawthorne."
"Toni?" Raiyev asked incredulously. "But she seemed so nice...but then...she did try to warn me of something..." It felt like ages ago that he had that brief and interrupted meeting with Toni after work.
"I know," Harper said, "but the humans have plenty of ways to make people do what they want, as I'm sure you've learned by now. Remember bumping into her that day, making her papers fall?"
Raiyev strained a moment to recall fuzzy memories. "Yeah..." he said slowly. "Yeah, I think I do. I helped her pick them all up."
"Exactly. Those papers were coated with a certain solution that worked its way into your body. When that solution was mixed with the Gigantism extract, it caused you to stay the same size as the rest of us and this planet shrunk. Bilicek, the security guard, was paid off well to simply radio to Toni when you had arrived to work that day, so Toni could make sure to run into you and spill the papers.
"Dr. Paxton was a key link between the humans and earth. She worked for--"
"For a secret government organization," Raiyev interrupted. "Yeah, Thomas laid me privy to that one. She sold information to the humans for access to their technology. Christ, it's a fucking conspiracy! And Thomas was in on it, too!"
"Yes, Thomas was supposed to make sure that our lab got the ball rolling with the Gigantism idea."
"Lovely," Raiyev spat sarcastically. "Anyone else?"
Harper cast a nervous look at the ground. "Well, they had to get that camera into your head that day the planet started to shrink..." she said, her voice trembling a bit. "But it's not clear...it's hard to say for sure, because so many of the rest of us were just pawns, Raiyev, pawns that fell right into place as our profiles showed the humans we would!"
"Who?" Raiyev demanded.
"I'm saying, it's not clear--I could have misread--"
"Who?" Raiyev repeated louder, though he already could tell who.
"Please, Raiyev," Harper said, looking up into his eyes with fear. "I can't--"
"SAY THE NAME!" he roared, grabbing her, his fist encompassing her tiny body.
"BRAD!" she cried out, sobbing. "Brad might have...been..."
"No," Raiyev muttered firmly, releasing his grip on her. "I won't believe it. I refuse to. He wouldn't. Not ever, you hear me? Not EVER!"
"Oh, Raiyev...I don't want it to be true...I don't want any of this to be true...and it's hard to tell anymore what is and what isn't..." Harper leaned over the raccoon's large leg and cried. Raiyev, too, had tears carefully caressing his cheeks. He didn't care what Harper ever said--he would never believe that Brad had betrayed him.
"Why me?" he croaked after a minute.
"It was nothing personal," Harper explained. "They just went through our profiles, looking for the best candidate--the one who would do the best job as both their war machine and their drama queen for their show. But it's over now, Raiyev, and they've gone."
"It's over?" he asked, not knowing whether or not he could believe it.
"They've left. The war is over. And you're shrinking."
"What?!" Raiyev said, looking suddenly at Harper with sharp eyes. But as he looked around, he could see everything getting slowly bigger around him.
"They're done with us, Raiyev. They're returning Earth back to its normal size. They only started shrinking it to serve as a warning to us not to mess with them, just as they were shrinking that other planet they made you attack."
Raiyev looked down at the small camera still in his paw, surveying it as he took in everything that had just happened to him. He gave an odd sort of laugh; it almost felt forced, but not really. He felt broken and betrayed. But there was something more... He couldn't exactly put his finger on it--it felt surreal, like something out of a dream, but at the same time it felt so real...so real... Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say that it was otherworldly.
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