It began.

A dull whirring. A faint noise. A slow thud. Fading away to a distance. Everything was dark. Darker than the deepest sleep. A void, except a noise that kept on thudding slightly louder with each beat and stomp. It throbbed persuasively.

There is a curious thing about noises that beat on like a metronome. You might be able to make it feel like a rhythm. Imagine the dull thuds as beats of a drum, and their echoes as voices singing some unknown melody. If you let the chaos of the noise wash over you, you would appreciate its uncertainty. You would flow along without resistance. You can make music out of chaos if you can imagine.

But this was not the noise of the metal tracks that blare on the psychispeakers of the Immemorial Pub. These beats carried a sense of physical pain; dull shocks that joined the throbbing sound in the void; the pain multiplying with each beat. It was like putting your head on an anvil and asking the ironsmith to pound it with two hammers like a slow progressive drum roll.

As the pain grew, shocks swept through the rest of the body. All was still black. The nerves carried bursts of sharp pain from every corner. Each beat a pain. Each gap a slight relief.

Gradually sensation dawned. Fingertips tickled; mouth parched; eyes opened up in a slit; toes cramped; tummy hurt. Face was buried in something grainy; probably sand. The right hand awkwardly stuck under the chest. The left hand was spread out ahead. Shoulders ached like they bore the weight of a thousand rocks.

The dull sound was now growing steadily louder. It’s speed increasing with each beat. There was a faint rustle of wind.

Both his legs were folded awkwardly. They were almost numb. As consciousness flooded, he realized that he was glad to be alive. One.. Two.. Three.. Four.. Good!, he counted slowly. All four limbs were attached to the body.

He tried to focus his eyes on the world outside. There were greyish patches now in the darkness. Some of these patches fleeted across his field of vision. He could not focus on any of them. Those moving images hurt his eyes. He shut them again.

There was a rush of noises. Weird noises. As if some people were gurgling violently and spitting out the water as far as they could. Each gurgle ended with a spit. Gurgle. Spit. Gurgle, gurgle. Spit. It carried on. Weird, he thought.

The pain in his head was now reaching its peak. He tried to open his mouth, but decided against it. Something was tugging at his feet. He tried to open his eyes again. Slightly wider this time.

There were shapes alright, but they seemed to be hovering. Not good, not good! If there is one thing they say about waking up and seeing gurgling beings hovering around you, it is that you have been abducted. That too by the worst possible folks in the known universe. The Katoon fleets. They abduct you for fun. Only to sell you to the highest bidder in their all-year-round clearance sales.

“Not the Katoons! Not them,” he thought.

But there was no mistaking those hovering swooshes. The round blob-like figures, a smaller blob on top of a larger blob, hovering a feet above ground - it had to be the Katoons.

There was a sharp beep. The throbbing stopped. All pain washed away. He wondered aloud, “Did I just die?”

“No-hh”, a dry voice retorted, still gurgly.

“Goo-rrhhd”, remarked another dry voice. It had an annoyingly high pitch.

“Restoration complete. All units have resumed normal activities”, the first voice spoke again, this time sounding perfectly clear. No traces of that weird gurgling in its voice.

“Welcome to Katoon HQ Forty-two slash Two”, said the second voice in a clear, flat tone. “You have been injected with the pain remover serum and the translator serum. It should remove all your physical pains and you should be able to understand us and speak with us during your brief stay here. If you understood what I just said, say ‘Yes’. Else you are of no use, so you may as well stay shut.”

He said “Yes”. Surprisingly, it took no effort at all.

“That’s very good news! Up you get, Orator Blink! Entertain us! For therein lies your salvation”, remarked the second voice.

Thus, it began.