The Spartacus Brigade
an excerpt

As the senior engineer for a major electronic company Aaron Johnson was responsible for the design of the machine that produced a new microprocessor. The problem had come late Sunday evening when the only machine they had online had decided to go on the fritz. It had taken until the early hours of the morning to find the faulty component that kept sorting out the circuit board that controlled the robot arm. The result was several thousand dollars in components fried and one long night for the technicians and engineers responsible for the machine. As the senior engineer Aaron had been called in to diagnose the problem after fifth board had gone up in a puff of smoke. As the technician who started working on the board had quipped “Once you release the magic blue smoke the board doesn’t work anymore.” Once the problem was finally discovered in a servo motor that moved the arm it didn’t take long to get the machine back up and running. However, by then everyone was exhausted and Aaron especially was in a bad mood. Once Aaron had arrived home, at 4 in the morning no less, he had had problems getting to sleep. After he finally managed to doze off there were the strange dreams of light and someone poking him in place that probably shouldn’t ever be poked by anything. Aaron came slowly and begrudgingly back to consciousness. It took several minutes to gather his wits and look around at the surroundings. “Something definitely isn’t right here” Aaron thought. It took a moment to realize that this wasn’t his bedroom. For one the walls were all white and smooth and he was lying on some sort of inclined bed. “What the hell?” Aaron muttered. A high pitched squeaking sound came from behind him and he tried to turn to see what it was. Something was preventing him from moving on his side. Lifting his head as far as it would go, something seemed to be limiting its movement as well, and Aaron started. Some sort bright bands were across his arms and body. They almost seemed to glow as he strained against them. “How wonderful! You are awake!” said a high pitched voice. As he struggled to turn to see who was speaking a short creature with a squashed face came into view. Aaron stared at the creature that was standing there staring at him with what looked like a big smile on its face. “I hate Mondays.”