Tales from the Grey Skies: The Uncanny Valley

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. We will be arriving at our destination in approximately ten minutes. Please gather all your personal belongings and prepare to exit the vessel.”

And not a moment too soon, thought Harry as he picked up the luggage already stacked on the floor of his cabin in preparation. He was not keen to spend a single minute on this flying heap than he had too. Looking around the room, he was outraged that airlines had the nerve to even allow such an accommodation (one that, in his opinion, wouldn’t seem out of place in a submarine) to even exist on a flight of any sort. Just the cherry on top of the sundae that was the worst vacation ever, he grumbled inwardly.

Lugging his bags out into the austere grey corridor, he could see that quite a few passengers had had the same idea. Numerous men, women and children filled the space in front of him as they shuffled forward awkwardly towards the exit, ready to disembark. Along the side of the corridor spanned a large series of windows, allowing an honestly spectacular view of the city as they passed over it on their way to the airfield that most of said passengers amused themselves with as they waited for the landing. Even Harry himself allowed him to take in a little of the grandeur of the cityscape, despite the cloudy skies both literal and figurative.

Then he felt a bump in his back, and a hurried apology. Turning, he found himself facing a teenager with a backpack, with baggy clothes and even baggier eyes. Must have been one of the ones sleeping near the engines in the back, he thought. At least now he felt he had a little less to complain about in comparison.

“Sorry, man, didn’t see you there. My bad.”

Harry didn’t reply, instead turning away, walking up to the window and looking down. He could see the tourist district coming up underneath, the families in their tacky shirts milling around like ants. Bright green taxis lined the streets, ferrying foreigners to all the famous sites all around the city they had no doubt heard so much about back home. Harry so wanted to go down there and experience the kind of vacation that they were having.

He heard the same youth from before come up behind him and sighed inwardly. “Look, it doesn’t matter about the bump, just forget it,” he snapped.

“No, man, I just wanted to see the view.”

Cooling down, Harry thought better of his attitude. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a bit of a rough time lately.”

“Yeah, same here,” said the teenager, a weary smile on his face. He looked over and took in Harry’s attire, that being somewhat expensive but not overly striking casual clothes. “Those are some nice threads, man. What did you do to end up here?”

Aware of how odd it was to be striking up a conversation with someone like this, Harry responded, “Well, I was on holiday across the Atlantic in the Isles when all of a sudden, I have to move to a different, more expensive hotel that sucks up all the money I had planned for other stuff, and instead of those things I sit around in a hotel I can’t afford for a couple of weeks before going back home on a piece-of-scat flight like this, all because not only is the government on a big cutback spree which means I get less pay for my vacation, but also because those bloody Brits felt the need to riot over something or other.” He took a deep breath, feeling a bit better about the whole ideal. At least I got it off my chest, he thought. Looking back at the youth, he noticed that he had only seemed to pick up on one aspect of his rant.

“You’re with the government?”

Straightening himself up, Harry answered, “Yep. Harry Costra, low-ranking official in the Department of Agriculture. Nothing fancy.”

“Right. Sure.” The teenager turned away, revealing, amongst others, a patch on his backpack that betrayed him as a member of the group known as the Nomads. Supposedly formed to “renounce the repression of modern society” and “live off the grid as cheaply as possible while experiencing all that life has to offer around the world”, they mainly clogged up homeless shelters and profited off of people who actually contributed to society at large; well, at least, that’s how Harry saw them. Bunch of layabouts, he thought as he too turned away to face the door again. They’re worse then Mu-fetishists.

Fortunately, Harry’s grumbling was interrupted by the tinny rendition of the pilot’s voice over the loudspeaker. “Hello again, passengers; this airship will be docking at Terminal 7 at the New Lancaster Airport in approximately five minutes. Please ensure you have all your personal belongings with you, and thank you for flying Bishop Airlines. Also, may I just say-”

But what the pilot had to say just then Harry never found out, because at that moment a deafening explosion rang through the entire aircraft, coupled with a massive lurch that sent multiple passengers tumbling to the ground. Momentarily disorientated and his ears ringing, he struggled to get back on his feet, as panic began to swirl around him. The bottom began to fall out of his stomach as helium gas began venting out of the airship’s envelope, sending it slowly careening to the streets below. Only one thought managed to assemble itself within his head in the heat of the moment: What the hell is going on?!

Then just as he managed to get his footing back on the now-sloping floor, a massive jolt along with a massive banging noise sent everyone careening away from the windows and back onto the floor. Must have hit a building on the way down, his scrambled thoughts managed to puzzle out, reasoning that the banging had come from the rigid structure of the airship colliding with a high-rise. He was right, but that didn’t really help much.

Looking around, he saw children being hugged by their desperate parents, sobbing in fear. People with fractured limbs, damaged from the multiple falls, cradling them uselessly, and others frantically calling their loved ones to let them know and say goodbye. His heart began to race as it hit him. We’re going to die. Oh, god, I’m going to die.

He contemplated lying down and simply waiting for the inevitable, when all of a sudden the airship’s descent shunted to a halt, though, miraculously, no one took a third topple. An extraordinary lightness passed though Harry’s body; indeed, through the entirety of the airship as an unseen figure began to carry them near-effortlessly to their former destination, that being the airship docking terminal. And yet, all throughout, no one had any doubt as to the identity of their saviour. They had all seen him on the news multiple times, and had heard many stories about him second-hand. They wondered if it would be different seeing him “in person”.

About half a minute later, the airship was placed in the massive field beneath the docking port where the airship was meant to be tethered under normal circumstances. Obviously, with the massive hole in the side and the severely warped framework of the envelope, these were far from normal circumstances, and upon touchdown the airship keeled over, not meant to be resting on the ground without adequate ground support. However, despite the awkward angle, most were still able to get back to their feet again as their weight returned to their bodies, just in time to see a hand rip through the exit door and hurriedly tear it away in order to allow the beaten passengers to leave. There in the open space of the doorway was their rescuer, and they stared in awe at him.

Yet at the same time, within themselves, at a deep and primal level, they couldn’t help it. They looked at the figure in the doorway, and they recoiled.

The stories were true.

Floating in defiance with all known laws of physics was a humanoid, but calling him “human” pushed one’s suspension of disbelief to its limits. Sure, he had the basic proportions of a human male: arms, legs, head and such, but even a casual observer was able to pick up on little details that rang as slightly, well, off, like his unnaturally broad shoulders, the fact that his eyes were just a little too far apart, and his bald head that looked as though it had never seen a single hair to begin with. He looked mostly human, but not quite to the point where one could definitively call him as such, and it was in this grey area that unsettled something deep down within the crowd, because, whether they were aware of it or not, they knew what a human looked like, and this was not it.

Said figure was clad in an unnaturally skin-tight outfit that seemed like it was trying to be blue, but was so washed out that it appeared almost black, and, instead of fabric, seemed to be made of tiny, weird scales just big enough to be noticeable from a distance. On his chest was a glyph that vaguely resembled a human symbol, but only if one squinted real hard, and what made it worse was that said glyph seemed to change and warp depending on the angle it was viewed at. From his shoulders and down his back to his knees flowed a cape, that seemed to flutter slightly on its own even in the absence of a breeze. Everything about this being lay nestled in the same grey area as his status as human, which only made things worse.

The being cleared his throat and spoke to the thankful yet slightly repulsed crowd.

“I am Pseudoman, and I’m here to help.”

Even his voice is wrong. The intonations are all off and the tone is just weird. He wants to sound reassuring, but it comes off more like a threat.

Nonetheless, the crowd was able to overcome their reluctance in order to make their way down the quickly-assembled emergency slide to the awaiting ambulances and fire engines assembled down below while Pseudoman flew around to the front of the cockpit to check for any survivors there. Harry was one of the last, seeing as he was near the back, but as he was about to leave he noticed someone else. He looked back and saw the body of the teenager he had been speaking with before lying motionless on the floor. Despite his feelings for the youth and his politics, he rushed back to assist, noticing a pool of blood that had formed around the crown of his head. Must’ve taken a pretty bad knock to the head during one of the jolts. He knelt down to try and check for his heartbeat and breath.

“He’s alright.”

Looking back up, he saw Pseudoman hovering over both of them, having made his way into the corridor with nary a sound, giving Harry quite a start. Instinctively, he gave Pseudoman a closer look, having never been this nearby to him before, each second noticing a new feature that just made him seem even more unsettling.

His face is too symmetrical. It looks like it was formed by mirroring one half of a normal face.

His chin is as completely devoid of hair as the rest of his body, like there was never any to begin with.

His pupils look like they’ve been slightly squashed horizontally. They look like ovals within circles.

His movements are simultaneously too smooth and too jerky, almost reptilian in a sense.

His face doesn’t seem to be registering the same emotion as he wants to project. It’s really awkward.

Momentarily recovering, he began to stammer. “We have to help him! Give me a hand, please!”

“Don’t worry. He’s only unconscious. It’s okay. I can take care of all of this.” Pseudoman reached out both of his hands as if to pick them both up. Harry naturally cringed slightly, but Psuedoman effortlessly managed to grab Harry around the torso and picked up the teenager, cradling him in his other arm, making sure not to let his head fall limp. The strange sensation of weightlessness returned as Harry and the teen were carried out to the tarmac just as easily as Pseudoman had handled the airship. Lowering Harry to the ground, Pseudoman then went over to one of the many ambulances and laid the teen down on a waiting stretcher. Harry stood looking around at the scene that lay before him: a severely damaged airship near a cavalcade of emergency vehicles and multiple injured individuals being attended to by a somewhat human being hovering slightly off the ground the entire time. How had his vacation come to this?

Pseudoman drifted back over to Harry, and offered his hand, apparently as a handshake. Reluctantly, Harry took it.

“What’s your name?”

“H-Harry. Harry Costra.”

“Thank you, Harry, for your help today.” Pseudoman’s mouth assumed a rough approximation of a smile, and flew to another family of victims, apparently to meet and greet them as well. Their flinch was far more pronounced than Harry’s.

Standing there wondering how exactly he had “helped” and how long it would take to get his luggage back, he caught sight of the ambulance hauling the unconscious teenager away in a loop of strobing red and blue. Suddenly, in the midst of everything he’d just been through, a single thought occurred to him, and he slumped, the impact of everything that’d just happened in the last few minutes having just caught up with him.

I didn’t even get the kid’s name.


“Hello, and welcome to The Happenings. I’m your host, Allison DuBois.”

“Over New Lancaster today, an airship carrying several dozen people suffered a catastrophic explosion that killed both the pilot and the co-pilot, but thankfully there were no other casualties, with most of the other passengers only suffering minor injuries. Several people suffered head trauma and have been transferred to intensive care, but all are thankfully stable.”

“The cause of the explosion has been determined to be a remotely-detonated bomb stowed away on board by a terrorist organisation. The notorious anti-MUE group ‘Sovereign Borders’ have already claimed responsibility, citing an upswing in government funding towards the Multinationalist Union of Earth’s various initiatives. The leader of Sovereign Borders, Anthony Pryor, has released a video today detailing his group’s manifesto and demands for intercontinental co-operation to cease, which we will not be showing owing to broadcast legal standards regarding aiding and abetting terrorism.”

“The owner of Bishop Airlines, when pressed on the security of his various enterprises in the wake of the attack, declined to comment, with the company releasing a statement announcing that ‘their security practises are currently under review, and that there is no need for alarm from the public, given that Bishop still retains an impeccable record of safety and public trust’. Shares in Bishop have fallen sharply in the wake of this attack, falling 5.3% over the course of today alone.”

“Of note is the participation of Pseudoman in the rescue of the attacked ship, with his quick response being credited with saving numerous lives, including those the airship would have landed on. However, some, including the notorious yet reclusive on-lace conspiracy theorist, Cassidé Clark, have insisted in the wake of the disaster that Pseudoman was, in fact, responsible for the very disaster he helped avert and that the whole affair was actually a publicity exercise on his part, apparently based solely on his unusually fast response time to the tragedy. Cassidé himself is well-known for his anti-Pseudoman position, and made headlines last year after posting a supposed exposé about how Pseudoman was engaged in a homosexual relationship with Gatorman, the mythical vigilante of Vandal City. This station would like to remind its viewers that it can neither confirm nor deny these accusations.”

“Next, how do you tell if your son or daughter is becoming a Mu-fetishist? Learn the signs right after these messages.”