Rustling. A number of loud beats. Boom. Boom. Boom.

The unpleasant sense of an internal explosion inflated me. I was expanding, growing. As if particles of my soul were scattered in a million directions. They stretched and tortured me. Then they flew back and made my soul whole again.

“Who am I? Where is this? What the hell happened?”

Complete darkness around me. No sounds.

I felt unbodied like after a slick. It was the same weird feeling; like being an indistinguishable unconscious mess drifting somewhere in outer space. Although I was not drifting. I was rooted and immovable like a planetary appendix. I tried to grasp my physical senses. I saw nothing. I felt nothing. I heard only my thoughts.

I got it. I was not exactly alive.

“Instructor, and what happens when my body gets destroyed?”

It was one of the first Slicktrace lessons at Damp Valley. Instructor Aptoop peered over from the top of a vtonch while we were gamboling around.

“Wantoop? Is that your name, young chap? How old are you? Speak up.”

He scowled at me stretching out his arm and poked his finger into my eye. I floundered and landed on the dank valley soil with a loud squelch. My companions giggled and honked their proboscises.

“I’m already nine and I’ve seen a lot, sir! Even on Kintoop terrible stuff can happen to our nation, and even more so on a bladdy hostile planet!”

“Is this what you’ve learned from the basic soul training, old chap? The most important thing is your soul! Your body isn’t anything more than a bladdy inert framework. Don’t you care about losing it?”

“But instructor, It’s not that I… “

“Yeah, I know. But as I’ve already told you, the soul is important. To survive on an alien planet, of course, you have to protect the body of your host! There’s no denying the truth. In outer space you will meet many bladdy dangers, dangers that you can’t even imagine. Don’t let them scare the shit out of you, alright chaps? Cherish your host like it’s the apple of your eye, but stay enthusiastic, inquisitive and, above all, stay happy!”

“But what if I fail to preserve the host, sir…” I mumbled, not really convinced. “What if it’s flattened by a wild jibajib or is sucked down by a stinking ravine? What if its arm or leg is torn off by an alien monster? Will I be transferred to another body?”

Some agents stopped jumping and dangled off the edges of the vtonch’s hairy cup. There was a strange mixture of curiosity and anxiety in their eyes.

“Pull yourself together, chaps! There are no engineers and Soul-Spitters to shake your soul out on the alien planets. When your host is dead you are trapped. You are the prisoner of its corpse, until it decomposes. It can take about fifty seven to sixty four years…” said Aptoop.

Then he stretched out his telescopic arm to a happiness spray. He drenched us with the magic liquid from above. We found inner peace wrapped up with overwhelming joy and stopped asking questions.

I was trembling. Or rather my soul was trembling, since I had no physical senses anymore. Then I remembered. I had slicked, I had flown, I had landed. “Where am I?” I tried to move around inside of my prison. Again and again. I thought I swayed. In vain.

“Get me out of here!!” I would have cried if I could have.

There was no proboscis, no eye, no telescopic arms, no hump pouch anymore. Nothing.

I was not even a coral. I was not an appendix like an articulate jibajib or multifunctional vtonch…

I was an immovable, insensible, dead creature in the back of beyond. This was the sum of my achievements. My training, my experience in Akvaionix, my space travel to the Third planet… Everything was in vain.

All I could do was to wait until some new host showed up.

…
…
…

Ahem! So how many years did Aptoop say I’d have to wait before my body decomposed?

Info iconDid you know?..
        
— It is quite absurd, but instead of recycling bodies for new reproduction, earthlings usually hide their dead companions in boxes (like gifts!) and… dig them deep into the vulnerable ground.

— It takes about one Earth year or two Kintoopian years to decompose a body trapped in the bloody box until only the framework with traces of tissue is left.

— Decomposition above ground is twice as fast as when the body is under water and four times as fast as underground.