Nari’s Log was a ambitious unfinished sci-fi novella created by Natalie Neumann. Natalie does not recommend that you try to read the original work due to its low quality, structural issues, and grammatical errors. Instead, she encourages you to read the summary included in Volume 06: Nari’s Logof The Saga of Vincent Dawn and Volume 02: Nari’s Log of Natalie Rambles About The Saga of Vincent Dawn to better understand the content of this novella.
I shouldn’t be surprised about anything in this Omni place, should I? I mean, some animal people in a rave seems pretty normal when you consider every factor. However, that was only the tip of this iceberg, and I couldn’t avoid it, no matter how much I turned my ship away. But let’s just talk about my first Shift.
The first thing that I recall happening was hearing someone say, “Hey, Octave, you alright? Don’t try playing sick, girl. I won the bet fair and square. So now you need to do my thing, and you’re going to at least try it. Worst case scenario, you just get hammered and get a slightly worse hangover than most Fridays. Best case scenario, you learn to love something so radical its unreal!” It was a woman’s voice, but sounded relatively deep and attention grabbing. Kinda reminded me of a few female radio personalities who ran classic rock stations. Well, if they were twenty four, instead of being in their fifties.
My vision focused during her spiel, but I couldn’t make anything out until near the end. I was in some sort of overpriced looking leather coated two person car with blue lights emitting from nearly every surface. While the individual I was talking to was a skinny young woman wearing a white tank-top with that double music note symbol, and some jean shorts cut so low her pockets were hanging out a bit. Along with some tall brown cowgirl boots, which managed to look fairly stylish. She also had messy looking shoulder length hair that was two shades of blue, sky blue and cobalt. finished with some purple sunglasses, which looked off. Since outside of the car, I could see that it was nighttime.
I tried to respond, starting with, “Ugh, sorry, I just-” before stopping after I realized that my voice sounded off, very off. If the fact that the voice was obviously feminine was not enough to act as a dead giveaway, the fact it was also British sounding certainly did the trick. This acted as a prompt to look down at myself. I glanced down to catch a glimpse of a greyish brown sleeveless overcoat with a dull light purple vest beneath. Some flowing chestnut brown hair that was apparently long enough to enter my vision. And a sensibly lengthed skirt that matched my upper attire. Along with a handbag across her, or rather my, shoulder that kept the same dull purple tones, talk about a theme.
But after about four seconds, I heard the woman once more, now outside of the car with the door open. “C’mon Octavia, you coming or do I have to leave you in the car all night, like a baby?” Thus far, I deduced that my Host body and this woman were not the best of friends, and maybe Nari was not such an odd name, when compared to Octavia.
I murmured a response of compliance, and exited the vehicle. Doing so granted me a better view of my surroundings, namely how I was in some sort of city. I have memories of cities made of concrete coated buildings that were really just rectangles with holes for windows. But here everything seemed to be far more circular, and colorful while I’m at it. I only glanced over for a few seconds, but it was a nearly nauseating blend of every color of the rainbow emitting form giant cylinders with hemispheres on their tops. It looked very off, but the blue haired woman apparently did not think so, as she resumed telling me to hurry up.
Having no direction, I figured this was the best bet, and began to walk with her to a nearby building. One that was more dome shaped than the others, but was still radiating a bright shade of magenta, along with some yellow characters that read, “Eternity”. Which meant next to nothing to me. But what I did know was that whoever I Shifted into liked wearing high heels, which I could manage, somehow, but walking was still kinda tough. I’m pretty sure that it might’ve been the muscle memory that The Doctor told me about. We went to the only visible entrance of this windowless building, where a being that looked to be a bulk man’s body, but with a Rhino’s head and skin. He was not wearing anything special, just a black tee and some jeans. As we approached, he looked over and grinned, which was more than a bit unsettling.
He spoke in a voice that sandpaper would have if it could talk. “Yo, Vinyl! Wassup Grrl? You doin’ Fridays too?” The blue haired woman, who was apparently named Vinyl, no clue why. Straightly responded, showing that Rhino-men are normal wherever here is. “Hey Tuff. I’m just a replacement, their normal rotation has been kinda wack for a while, so we’re all sorta spread out. Surprised no one told ya.” The Rhino-man, Tuff, chuckled at the answer, not that anything funny was uttered. “Heh, fuckin’ figures they don’t tell me this shit. But hey, I’d let you in anytime.” He looked over at me, as if I just appeared from the ether. “Ey, who’s the leather binder? Not the kinda gal I’d ‘spect you to hang with.” I was not sure if that was suppose to be an insult or not.
Keeping the conversation going, Vinyl answered for me. “Oh, Octave? Yeah, she’s my Roomie. We were randomly put together in U of C. We got so comfy as music loving Bros that she let me move in with her when she got a flat.” Tuff meekly nodded in response, remembering his job. “Ah, shit- Er, y’all probably wanna get in, okay, you know what to do. Peace out Pwn The Third.” The last bit caused Vinyl to groan. “Guh, again with that stupid name. Fuckin’ Flank Friends and their leet speak. So what if I like some goddamn neon horses?”
The conversation ended there, and we entered the building. Inside it was basically just one huge room. And the room was some sort of nightclub. I recalled the general idea, but I’m pretty sure that where I came from, nightclubs didn’t have most surfaces emit some kind of light. I’ll be the first to admit that it looked pretty, but the constant rotation between black, white, magenta, cyan, and yellow just made my head rush as I looked at it. And to make it worse, the entire place was filled with people. All of which were humanoid, but following the Rhino-man, there were more variations of animals merged with people than I’d find at a pet shop. Turtle-men, dog-men, cat-men, fox-men, mice-men, fish-men, badger-men, a walrus-man, everything! And obviously women versions of all of those, bringing in many odd images of beastiality that I never fathomed.
But before I could ask anything about this, or maybe tell her my situation, I heard Vinyl start freaking out about something. “Oh hell to the yes! They got a ZE9-VLR mark 2! Let’s get some freakin’ tits up in this bitch!” She was gesturing around the room, and I think she was pointing to some speakers the size of two coffins that were on metal stilts in the corner. I wouldn’t mind, except she immediately forgot about me, and she ran into a crowd, so finding her would be a pain, because there were at least 1,500 people in this one building.
As I meekly began to scooch on into this area, I noticed something out of the corner of my eyes. It was a pure white door that read, “Uni-Species Restroom” in bold black letters. I decided that I might as well investigate my appearance, and maybe find a private place to try and check whatever was in my handbag The restroom was notably empty considering how many people were in the club. With one of its two occupants bumping into me as I entered.
It was an ordinary black human female, if you counted wearing a kilogram of make-up, and having an afro to be normal. In addition to having the only thing covering your chest being electrical tape, and having your legs covered by sweat pants with a leopard or cheetah print on them. With socks that looked like tongues, if she lacked some of that weird charm. Upon clashing with me, I murmured something about how I was sorry about this, but this woman was not having any of that. If there was a default voice for a ghetto black girl, it was certainly her’s.
It would’ve been bad enough listening to her, except she was screeching at me. “Da fuck you’s doin’? Getcho ass outta here, ain’t like yo cooze getting no dick tonite. Now, I’ve gotta be wit dem dahahs uv diskord.” She then tilted up her chin and walked away, briefly showing her ass in a disgusting walk that would’ve brought enough attention, except the word, “KASS” was on the back in pink letters. I wasn’t annoyed with her actions as much as the fact that she existed.
A second after she left, I heard a voice come from the other side of the room. It was a pretty mellow sounding male voice that was on the edge of being dopey. “Bah, don’t listen to her. She just thinks she’s prime stuff ever since she got accepted as a drummer. News flash lady, you are in the back, and your face is covered. You could be replaced by a stereo.” I was about to retort something back at the speaker, but as I turned around, I discovered that the speaker was some sort of mantis-man.
It was more like a praying mantis’ head, lower body, and arms coming out of a male torso with a varsity sports jacket on. And to top it off, he had on a baseball cap, and was growing a pornstache, not sure how. One part of me was freaked out, the other was just confused. I stumbled around for the right words, only for the mantis-man to take the next line. “What, are you just not used to seeing us ’ethnic types’? Trust me, our appearance is just different. Kinda surprised the Rhino Sapien let you in if you were acting like this.”
I saw this as an opportunity to keep conversation flow, and maybe get some answers. “Oh, well, I am not from around here, or anywhere close to here. I just was brought here with a friend.” This apparently interested mister Mantis. “Oh, really, where are you from?” Crap, I’d already dug myself a hole, but I thankfully had enough BS to keep it going for a while. “Um, I just got out of U of C.” This was apparently a proper answer to the bug person. “Oh yeah, they already have enough problems getting the, ‘Crackers’ into there. A ‘Wetback’ like me would never have a chance of even getting on the campus.”
I had no clue what he said, so I nodded politely, before taking my leave. “Um, I kinda came into here for a reason.” I said, pointing at a bathroom stall in this shockingly clean washroom. This was also a right choice, as the Mantis closed his eyes, held his limbs up and skittered off outside of the door.
Now having a private bathroom, I decided to take a look at my face. My Host was actually pretty darn cute. Nice dimples, smooth skin, and chestnut hair that bobbed after what I presumed to be years of care. Paired up with some cyan eyes, which looked to be contacts more than anything. And much to my surprise, she was actually Indian-British if that was the only explanation for the skin tone and accent. But then there was the handbag.
I stumbled through it, looking for some sort of information gathering tool, and eventually found a phone. I searched through a familiar enough user interface, and found something declaring a new text message. It was from someone known as “The Doctor”, and read, “Hiya Nari, first time off in a Shifted body, I guess. Just try not to wreck this world by bringing up your whole Shifting business. Try for some fun! – The Doctor”
Great, no hints, no clue, no idea what I was going to do. Well, I was in a nightclub, the least I could’ve done was try and have some fun like he said. Coming out empty handed from the restroom, I was greeted by the technicolor rainbow once more, holding my hand over my eyes. Well, dancing was out of the question, due to not only how awkward it would be, but how I was not necessarily comfortable being the opposite gender. I eventually laid my eyes past a set of curtains, and onto a series of tables and stools, with some sort of circular bar in the center. That also kept the color of the light at a pretty dim white. My course was certainly set.
I cautiously moved past several dozen scantily clad animal people and equally as naked normal people. I eventually planted my rump down on a seat, right in front of the bar, kinda hoping that the tenders would be normal enough for me to talk to. And I was in luck. The one I planted in front of looked to be a fifty year old white male who still regularly exercised. His hair was certainly grey, and he had a thin beard that matched the color. While his wardrobe was minimalistic as far as I could tell, with just a dark blue shirt on with the word, “Eternity”. He instantly looked at me as I sat down, and gave me his full attention. Speaking in a very commanding, but not unsympathetic voice.
“Howdy, name’s Lou. Now, Miss, I don’t mean to sound rude, but you are not the type I’m used to seeing around here.” “Oh, well. I’m here with a friend, her name’s Vinyl, and I think she’s DJing, or something.” I sputtered out. “Ah, so I take it you’re that Octavia she told me about a few weeks ago. Never forget a name like that. Or the description.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of this guy. He certainly seemed nice, but also like he never met any other kids until he was eight. I started to regret talking to him mostly because I don’t think that he’d buy the whole, “I Shifted into another body” excuse. Hell, I wouldn’t! I stumbled out to a topic where he could talk, rather than ask me questions I couldn’t answer. “So, um, could you tell me a bit about this place?”
Lou responded with a smile, as he leaned in a bit closer. “Well, I’ve been working here since the place started up, but I’m guessing that you don’t care about the owner’s land issues, and the construction accidents.” I merely raised an eyebrow. “Well, Eternity is the most popular nightclub in all of the Big Avocado. Pretty much exclusively due to how anyone who enters here is temporarily immortal.” I tilted my head back. “You know how you can pretty much buy immortality supplements, I’m sure you’re Momma made you watch some blood-ball before it got censored. But Eternity is actually just a building where anyone who breathes its air becomes immortal for a night. So they can drink, smoke, smack, fizzle, jizzle, and murder their friends while having a gay old time.”
I nodded my head, not knowing what to think of that. The hell was a jizzle? I decided that it would be best to just end it there, and ask for a drink. Lou smiled. Well, he always looked to be smiling a bit, but this was more of a grin than normally. “Are you sure you want one?” He sounded like I had just chosen an “evil” option. I meekly replied a confirmation, not knowing what exactly was happening. Lou’s smile disappeared, as he placed a glass with a white liquid right in front of me. being a bit discomforted by the atmosphere, I went to one of the many empty tables with my beverage. Upon closer examination, it just looked like milk. But it tasted like liquidized salt. I was originally going to gag, except I didn’t have any negative physical effect. If anything, I actually found the drink pretty appealing.
I quickly gulped it down, and began to look around at the nearby company. There were figures of all shapes and sizes in every direction, but there was some kind of hubbub going on with a table right next to me. There was a man with spiky black hair in a red trench coat pounding a table. A sitting pale woman wearing nothing but electrical tape with purple hair in a ponytail, who was boredly tapping her stark white face. And another standing man with a black mohawk, flannel jacket, bandaged knuckles, and torn jeans. After looking over for a few seconds and seeing some vibrant hand gestures, the man in a trench coat and purple haired woman both left. Seeing nothing else to do, I went over to see if I could talk to mister flannel.
“Hey, so what was that all about?” I questioned, barely speaking loud enough to be heard over several other conversations. The man glared back at me, with a face like I just farted into it. He spoke in a higher pitch than I expected, but he placed anger in every syllable. “The fuck you think happened? ‘Cos it ain’t none of your fucking business!” I tried to play the higher person. “Gee, temper, temper. I was just asking.” He spat at the ground before responding. “Well don’t! Jesus Christ, you must be new here. Rule fucking one for Eternity, don’t fuck with people who don’t want to be fucked with!”
I decided that I wanted this little snot to be taken down a peg, so I continued. “Well, where are these rules listed?” “What are you, some kinda smartass? Look, just leave specifically me alone. ‘Cos Dave’s not in the fucking mood for some cooze to go belching over him. So get the fuck lost.” I was tempted to start a physical fight, but I chose to believe that he was not worth my time.
Needing a new destination, I conveniently heard the sound of a speaker or mike having audio problems. It was followed by Vinyl’s voice, jam packed with child-like excitement. “Hell-o C-L-U-B E-TER-NI-TY! This is Vinyl Scratch rockin’ this bitch till dawn. Let’ bring in the weekend with our third appearance of the top stars of the E-Q-U The Daughters of Discord!” Which made everyone screech, indicating the event’s importance. I saw about a thousand people immediately rush to the curtains, along with myself, because any direction was good direction to me at this point.
After squeezing my way to the middle of the crowd, the curtain everyone surrounded around began to raise. Revealing a blank white backdrop, and four silhouettes of women. They stayed motionless, as the crowd went silent. That is, until a flash involved the entire stage, and the silhouettes began to gain color as music began to play. The leftmost one was a blonde with a long hair that centered together in the front to make something that looked like bananas. She was wearing a plain strapless red dress, with matching heels, and had a very “Come and try to stop me, ya jackass” kind of face. Along with a simple red guitar along her chest, which she began to strum with her fingers with large red nails.
The rightmost one was a Gothic Lolita donned woman with hair that looked to be made from cotton candy and chocolate. Her skin was dead looking, as was her expression, when she began to press notes on a keytar she had strapped to her. On an elevated platform in the back, there was a woman who looked remarkably like that one I met in the restroom. The afro, make-up, and complexion were all the same. Except she was now in a Nun’s outfit minus the hat, and beating on a drum kit with sticks that looked like bones. While the front held a silhouette who merely altered her color while being very sparkly. She seemed to reflect that colors as the rest of the club began to change. She did not play any instrument, she just moved around like she was made of goo, and sung.
I could hardly hear the music due to how loud the crowd was, but it sounded like some sort of electronica dance beat, something I was okay with, but don’t recall being a fan of. I stayed for a bit, because I was all but packed in, but after their first song, which took three minutes, I had a light shine down on me from the ceiling. I covered my eyes, and looked around, only to hear a woman speak, it was the Blonde on stage. She sounded very, how do I put this? Sultry, but not stupid.
“Guards, if you’d be so kind as to bring this woman into my dressing room. And have Quinlan come in, so he can try and squeeze some juices out first. Kay, darlings?” Before I could respond, I felt something grip both of my arms. They were two animal people, a hippo-man and an elephant-man, whom were wearing the same thing as that Rhino bouncer. I tried to speak up, but the women on stage began to play once more, making it hard to even hear myself think, let alone talk.
I was dragged around through a few doors, and eventually thrown into a concrete hole in the wall, with only some wooden chairs to keep me company. I was alone for a good minute, trapped behind a metal door. Only to have it open with a large man with dirty blonde hair, a giant red jacket, and a face like old meat, burst in. He had a voice that was fairly calming, but sounded like he was reading a script all the time. While his movements seemed to have been made from a preset force as well..
“If I am to understand the situation, you are someone who was called in here by my client, correct?” I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I just shrugged. “Okay. First of all, I’m Quinlan. My client, Uni took an interest in you. And I want to know why.” I tried to talk, but lacked any confidence as I did so. “Hello, Quinlan. My name’s Octavia, but it’s really Nari, and I’m not from around… here.”
Quinlan’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. “Not from around here? Whaddya mean?” I was intimidated by the size, so I spilled all the info without much care. “Well, I’m not actually from this world, in fact, mine was destroyed, and then I was in this purpley goo, then I got stuck in a train car with a Red Panda-” Quinlan leaped right at me, pinned me against a wall, and looked me dead in the eye, and spoke. “You a Shifter?” To which I nodded. He smiled a grin that would’ve looked marvelous on some cheesy villain. “And that’s not your body… I’ll be back in a minute. Wait here!”
I did just that, not that I had a choice. It was just two minute of me thinking that I should’ve kept quiet, I was technically immortal after all, but I guess old habits might die harder than I thought. But after two minute, the door slammed open, with the Blonde from the stage bursting in, with a grin that matched Quintin’s in looking mellifluously evil. I decided to try and not be so timid, and asked the first question, although not very smoothly. “So, um, who are you? What do you want from me?” She side stepped the door and snapped her fingers, sending in the two guards from before. The instantly pinned me down to a chair, and began to tie me up. Not sure how, since they had sausage link fingers. But they did so remarkably fast before they exited the room.
In an extravagant twirl and several alterations of her facial expression, the Blonde placed her hand on my cheek, and whispered in my left ear. “Oh my, a toy has finally come into place. Now, how exactly does The Doctor play with you?” I was massively uncomfortable, and began to squirm as the guards pulled away, and left the room. I tried to respond. “Wh-Who are you? Why am I here? W-What do you want?” Her face turned sour, like I just formed a brilliant insult. “What kind of shit are you feeding me? You admit to being a Shifter and you are playing innocent? Give me at least some fucking credit! Now tell me everything you know about The Doctor’s plans for Omni!”
“Plans?” I responded. “He just told me that he wanted to chart all of the Omni, by using Shifters to explore planets.” It was the truth, but the Blonde didn’t believe me. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t ask for lies with that! I want to know what he wants to do with M-E. Little old Uni.” She then reached up from her dress’s bottom rim and pulled out some sort of nightstick, giving me all sorts of imagery that I would have prefered to not think about. She began to slap me with it, but the pain was actually a lot more dull that expected. It still pain, but it was just not as much pain.
“Don’t act like an insufferable imbecile, you retarded rascal! Tell me what you know, you I’ll need to break you into pieces!” I decided that I would keep up the honest act, because I really had no idea what was going on. “Look, I was just introduced to this whole Omni thing. I was just given a rundown by The Doctor. I literally know nothing about you, ‘Uni’. I barely even know who I am. This is my first Shift!” She literally spat into my face. “Uh-huh. FIgures you’d throw that shit around, but I know that there are more than just you, so where is tweedle dee to your tweedle dumb?” I kept being straight by clarifying that I came here alone, but that just made her angry.
She knocked thrice on the wall, prompting the two guards to enter once more, now with syringes in a box, along with several cutting tools. Uni picked up a kitchen knife, and instantly crammed one into my left leg. I winced in pain. “Look, I don’t know what is going on here, I was just trying to get some sleep and then-” Uni pulled the first knife out, and shoved a syringe into my arm. “Tell the goddamn truth, or this Shift will be a very painful one. Just a squirt of this is considered the cruelest form of punishment on this planet. And this club will only elongate that punishment!”
I said nothing for a few seconds out of fear, but that just made her scowl. She then finalized the injection, as I felt my arm burn with pain. All there was in my mind was agony. It was like being on fire, but never burning up. I was not sure if ten minutes or ten seconds had passed before I seemed to lose control of everything. Followed by… it was like having an epiphany, more than anything. All I really remember is saying, “All that is yours… is rightfully mine. And mine… it shall be…”
With that, my Host’s body, leaped out of the chair it was tied to, grabbed the discarded knife that was used to wound it, and then swiftly sliced Uni’s throat in two. It was very impressive, but also uncomfortable. I could still feel the pain, but I lost all control. So I had no clue as to why the knife was then used to slice my own throat. Before fading out, I saw the two guards rush over to Uni, not giving a damn about Octavia’s body. Funny, I thought this was a place where people were immortal, yet they care about her wounds?
Either way, I somehow managed to black out. Unsure of what I had just seen. Who was this Uni person? Why was I even there? What the hell did I end up saying near the end? Yet, I know, or at least hope, that I will have the answers when I wake up. Which should be right, about, now!
End of Cycle