My Brains!!! ep 10

"You're invaders. You wanna drive us around like cars and crash into each other to settle some dispute? And worse, you don't even bother to show up in person—you make some kind of brain machine to do your dirty work for you?"

"Calm down."

"No! I won't accept this. I'll go to the authorities. They already want to cut this thing out of my head. I might just let them!" I was bluffing. I hoped. Anything to make her say this was all some kind of cosmic-misunderstanding; that they had gotten lost and come here. Had meant to come to some adjacent planet where giant lizards were the predominant species or something. I wished this was a hidden camera show, but I had the sinking sensation it wasn't.

"You said this war was three-sided," I said. "Who's the other guy?"

She shook her head. "We don't know. He's part of the collective, but… somehow he's able to keep himself secret from us."

"How do you know it's not the one I have in my head?"

"Because I… I don't know. Nobody knows what he wants. The disagreement is a simple one. Why would he even bother?"

Then the wall exploded. The man in the hat floated with three others behind him.

"There you are," he said, but I wasn't sure which one of us he was talking to. She made an unearthly screeching sound and leapt at him. Two of the other gripped their hatted heads, but he stood—floated—his ground, grabbing her by the wrist and holding her up like a dog by the scruff.

"I don't think he's one of us," she said. She looked in pain from how he was squeezing her wrist.

"You just will say anything to not admit you're wrong." He held up his hand like he was making the O.K. sign with his thumb and middle finger and plinked the hat off her head.

It was disgusting.

Her brain… the other one was large and sticking out of the top of her head. I saw her pretty blonde hair wreathed around the perimeter of pink and white skull surrounding it, a dark green octopus-looking thing tentacles stuffed inside at the edges.

"No matter what, don't let him take you," she said, not looking at me. "We're not all what you think. We only want to finish the argument. They want to stay. They want to—"

Splat

He'd brought his fist down on top of the octopus thing.

She went limp and slid out of his hand onto the ground. He held his hand out to me. I looked at him—all of them—and realized they all were wearing hats.

Did they all have the octopus-brain thing?

"Yes," he said as he floated to the ground. "You let her touch you?"

"No," I lied.

"Yes you did. I wasn't really asking-asking you." He tapped his temple. "I already knew. No telling the damage she did in there."

"Look, guys, I don't want to join. I'm not really interested in… this."

He made face.

"I just really want to go home."

"What a coincidence." They kept coming closer. "So do we."

I turned to run and a jolt of electricity from my brain shot my legs out from under me. I hit the ground face-first, expecting unconsciousness to envelop me any moment. But I just lay there, numb and twitching until the man in the hat and the others (also in hats) picked me up and took me away.