For as long as he could remember, Kepler had been convinced that aliens were real, lingering just outside the notice of the general populous. When his friend fails to show up for their movie night, and he starts receiving strange texts instructing him to head to a spot he alone knew of to stargaze in, he was convinced that this was finally it. And he was right! Turns out, though, that extraterrestrials have unique methods of scientific cataloging species.

For those that want to get right to the fun stuff, skip down to the end of page 11(trust me, I know I went overboard. DW, most of it is what you came for)
Sorry for any formatting errors in the description version! This is roughly 10k words, so settle in.

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Somewhere, out in the deep void of space, amongst trillions of stars unsuited for planets that would potentially bear life, there was intelligence. Unproven, sure, but logically sound: if the conditions that had made Earth suitable for life to flourish were possible, then the likelihood that the blue marble alone bore sentience was next to none. Even if they might never have had extraterrestrial visitors, that didn’t mean it would never happen. But what if it had?

What if?

Such possibilities had kept Kepler up at night for as long as he could remember much of anything, introduced by his parents to the unrivaled glory of the cosmos by his parents at a young age with an old telescope from their garage. Seeing his fascination, they’d hoped that it might spark an interest in pursuit of the sciences, and it had!...somewhat. It wasn’t like the goat was dumb or anything, he did well enough in school, and had strongly considered higher education so he could advance into the field of astrophysics, but it’d been the mathy part that turned him away, just not quite where his interests in the grander universe lay. Observing in dumbstruck awe of the beauty of the stars no matter how many times he hiked through national parks, chatting with others online about their favorite nebulae, dreaming about what it’d be like to be up there, lost amongst the stars…oh yeah, and alien conspiracies, a lot of those.

What had begun as a harmless, passing interest in entertaining the possibility that extraterrestrial life had visited Earth before had spiraled into a still-mostly-harmless obsession with hunting down any potential extraterrestrials that thought they could observe undetected. He knew well enough how to tell who believed from those who didn’t, tactfully avoiding bringing up beliefs that would label him as a nutcase in the eyes of the greater public. He even kept his mouth shut at the job he’d scored as a tour guide for a swanky space museum, playing the part of a semi-normal space nerd well enough, since he was one. Only in private gatherings and on hidden messageboards did he reveal his true self, chatting endlessly with his fellow believers about potential sightings and historic coverups.

A lot of the people he talked to were hard set on theorizing about the government's involvement in the control of information, stealing technology from captured crafts to ‘control the masses’, but Kepler had never been of the opinion that it was that serious; he just liked the idea that they weren’t alone in the universe. The thought that they were being watched by some greater species was exciting, and the reason that he wanted to find them wasn’t to expose some massive conspiracy. He just wanted to talk to them, hear their experiences exploring the cosmos in a way Earthlings couldn’t do yet, and if he was lucky, convince them to take him out to see the grander universe for himself. Maybe there was more going on than simple curiosity from their planet’s visitors, maybe not, but that wasn't important to him. At least it hadn’t been until very recently.

“C’mon Vic…” Drumming his hands on his knees, Kepler stared forlornly at his front door from his position on the couch, trying to will his friend to come knocking. He’d been waiting since 5 PM for the ram to show for their weekly movie-and-whatever-happens-happens night, and it was…geez, nearly 8 already? This was so unlike Victor! The two of them had first been introduced at a local group shortly after he’d moved to town, and they’d hit it off fast! Even outside of the obvious commonality, they liked a lot of the same movies, had similar tastes in games, so it hadn’t taken them long to hang out outside of alien junk.

And yet, here he was, alone and worried sick for the guy. It wasn’t just this that Vic had been strangely absent from: the ram hadn’t been online all week. At first, Kepler had just assumed he’d gotten busy with work, perfectly normal, but him being this late without any notice was unquestionably out of character. The goat's paranoia had spiked, and when he was anxious, he ate, which had led to him becoming fairly chubby in his adult life, though not unhealthily so; he exercised plenty with all the hikes he liked to take. Since he’d already eaten through the entire bowl of kettle corn he’d set out for them, he’d resorted to chewing on the collar of his t-shirt, a bad habit developed in his adolescence he never quite kicked.

Deciding the 9 minutes since his last call were cause for another, Kepler jabbed his finger back onto Victor's contact, setting it to speaker and holding out hope that this time would be the one. When, for the 2 dozenth time that night, he was greeted with Heyyyyyy dude, you’ve reached Victor Malik’s voicemail, leave a message and I’ll get back as soon as I can, he flung his phone onto the cushion beside him, tipping his head back in exasperation, one hand yanking on one of his flat, curled-back horns, while the other ran down the length of his black-furred muzzle toward his nose. “Fucking hell…” He groans, spitting the stretched fabric of his shirt out. “Where’dya go Vic…you’re freaking me out.”

Several things could have happened: for one, the ram might just have been too busy, and didn’t have his phone on him. By far the most comforting option, and the one that Kepler wanted to believe, but dozens of other horrifying scenarios took precedent. Some kind of injury that had left him hospitalized, kidnapping, disease, potentially even DEATH…unattractive possibilities that just as likely could have been the case. Still, despite the more extreme circumstances, all relatively mundane on a grander scale.

And yet…what if?

Conspiracy theories were not rational or helpful at the present moment, he knew that, but try telling that to the brain of an overimaginative space nut! No matter how many times he talked himself out of the possibility, Kepler’s mind kept wandering back to the sliver of a chance that Vic had gotten too close to something he wasn’t supposed to, caught and abducted not by criminals, but extraterrestrial criminals. Did that even matter? Probably not, kidnapping was kidnapping no matter what planet the captors were from, and being perfectly honest, he doubted that it'd be incredibly pleasant (though certainly more exciting). Still, in the infinitesimally small chance that Vic had been taken away by a craft, he'd be jealous for the rest of his life.

A sharp ping from his phone cracked the silence, forcing him back to the present. Only a moment passed before Kepler lunged across the couch, kicking off the ground with a hoof to reach his phone a fraction of a second quicker. This was it, Victor was back to put assuage his nerves and he could laugh about how silly he'd been acting-

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
HELLO KEPLER

“Goddammit!”

Planting his face against the couch cushion, Kepler let out a long sigh that may or may not have turned into a scream, gripping his phone in an attempt to strangle the thing. Stupid goddamn scam texts! This was the absolute worst time to get his hopes up, and now he just felt crushed…and bitter. Enough to lift back up with a huff and reply:

Kepler:
The fuck do you want‽

Very nearly tossing the phone away again, Kepler was mentally preparing to get changed to go pounding on Vic's door to make sure he hadn't died in his sleep, but the reply came quick enough to pique his curiosity:

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
YOU LONG FOR THE UNKNOWN
WE CAN SHOW IT TO YOU

Oh great, his number had gotten out again. Kepler was a lot of things, but stupid enough to fall for someone fucking with him over his life's passion was not one of them.

Kepler:
Haha, hilarious
Look i know you think its so funny to make fun of me, but i'm really not in the mood for this shit rn

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
YOU SEEK YOUR SHEEP

Already having stood up to go and shove on a hoodie, the text made him stop dead in his tracks, staring blankly at his phone screen. How could they possibly know that…? Well, okay, there were several ways that a normal person might have been able to figure that out, yes, but to what end? Either someone was really committed to fucking with him and was willing to land in potential legal trouble, or…

Kepler sat back down.

Kepler:
Fine
What do you know about Victor?

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHERE TO FIND HIM

Kepler:
[Obviously yes
Is this some weird roundabout ransom thing? I don’t have a lot of money

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
33.122988 -107.796385

Oh cute, coordinates, probably at his house or something like that. If for no other reason than morbid curiosity, he held his thumb down to copy them, swapping over to the maps app to plug them in. Surprisingly, he wasn’t taken to his neighborhood or an abandoned warehouse somewhere in the city where no one’d think to look for him, rather somewhere in the wilderness, a hiking trail not far away. But something about the spot seemed familiar, so he investigated, zooming out far enough until he discovered it was in a national forest. The one that the town was near. The one that he took hikes in every weekend.

And the coordinates were his favorite spot to stargaze.

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THIS LOCATION

Kepler:
So what?
What does this have to do with him?

UNKNOWN NUMBER:
COME AND FIND US
ALONE

Kepler:
How do I know you haven’t just been getting all this from his phone?

Even typing it, Kepler’s heart was beating faster, right back to nervously chewing on the collar of his shirt, ripping little bits of fabric off. It was a good thing this one was already too small for him anyway, constantly forcing him to tug it down over the tan fur of his gut. Yes, he had told Vic about the spot before, even offered to bring him out there one evening (doubtful it’d ever happen considering the ram never got any exercise), but he sure as hell hadn’t ever shared the exact coordinates. He didn’t even know them until just now, so unless whoever this was was just that committed to stalking him–

Their message back was a photo of the spot from above.

~~~~~

Somewhere in the back of Kepler’s mind, he knew that he’d been acting incredibly stupid for the past few hours, but that small rational part was completely drowned out by how excited he was! Yes, his friend was still missing, and he was incredibly worried about what might have happened to him, but this had to be it. The amount of effort it would take to fake this whole thing just to fuck with him went beyond what was reasonable, nor did he have any enemies that might want to lure him to a remote location to take him out. Plus, though he lived comfortably enough, the goat really didn’t have that much to give for ransom of any kind, and were this a plot to kidnap him, there had to be a less remote location than a 1 hour drive and 2 hour hike from town.

Fortunately, he already had his gear ready for the hike that he’d been planning on taking tomorrow, including a flashlight AND headlamp with plenty of spare batteries since he always had to trek back in the dark once he had his fill of stargazing. The only thing he didn’t bring was his telescope, loved the thing to death but it was bulkier, and he didn’t have the luxury of taking it slow this time, damnit! Not only for Vic’s sake, but he was too anxious to meet the mysterious number not to break out into a light jog whenever he felt he had the energy. He knew enough not to push himself too hard, considering it was getting close to midnight (a 6 hour energy was doing a lot of work here), but how could he not be at least a little giddy?

So, there he was, picking across the trail in the dead of night all by his lonesome, headlamp strapped on, backpack secured over his shoulders, half-running to his destination. Seeing as he’d been nervous enough to ruin a shirt already that evening, Kepler had brought essentially an entire pack of granola bars to keep his mouth busy, more than once forgetting to unwrap them and biting down into the plastic, whoops. He was too preoccupied with going over everything he wanted to ask. What was their home planet like? Why did they come to Earth? What was it like in space? Have they ever met any other space-faring species? Oh right, where was Vic? Did they take him too? Would they at least show him what it was like outside of the atmosphere for a few seconds-

Violently shaking his head to bring himself back down to Earth, Kepler stared down at his empty hands, the bar he’d brought with him gone. Considering the distinct aftertaste of plastic in his mouth (something he unfortunately was familiar with, amongst many other things that should not be eaten), he could make an educated guess as to what had become of it. Perhaps concerning for his digestive health, but the goat had bigger fish to fry: he was just about there! Stopping at the trail sight he normalled turned off from, he reached back to the side of his pack, retrieving his water bottle and taking a long swig to wash away the bitter taste (and hydrate, very important). It was a good thing he hiked the trail so often, otherwise he might not have had the stamina to rush all the way out here so late in the evening. Sure, he was a little groggy, despite the caffeine, but that was easy enough to push through when everything he’d been looking for was just within reach.

Off the trail, the densely wooded forest gave way to a rocky clearing, too unsightly for most others who hiked to bother to stop in with the complete lack of any kind of alive flora, but perfect for someone like Kepler who was far more focused on the sky. It was just big enough that the treeline didn't obscure his view, but not so large as to be particularly noteworthy. Hundreds of nights he’d come out here, setting up a blanket and his telescope, far enough away from the light pollution of the city that he could truly bask under the stars. In his closet, he had an entire box stuffed full of notebooks he’d brought with him, sketching constellations and star charts like he imagined they would have back before everything revolutionary had been discovered. Meteor showers, eclipses, he’d seen it all out here. Everything but what he’d come for that night.

Now, making for the middle of the clearing, Kepler turned his attention outward, straining to make out any out-of-place noises, his ears flicking at every crickets chirp. The night was clear, only cool enough to necessitate a light sweater, perfect conditions for his typical trips. But, insofar as he could tell, no one else was here.

“I’m here! Alone like you asked!” After a minute, the goat called out into the yawning void surrounding him, even doing away with his headlamp in case the light was spooking them off, having to fully unbuckle it since he didn’t want to bother to struggle with slipping the straps over his horns. Just another annoyance of them curving outward. Still getting no response, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “IT’S KEPLER! I SAID I’M HERE!”

The resounding silence grew more oppressive by the second, complimenting the rising humiliation when it dawned on him how unbelievably stupid he was for falling for this shit. No one was coming, of COURSE no one was coming. This was all just some elaborate trick so that the members of another messageboard could laugh about how that’d wasted his time on another hoax. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes as he took out his frustration on a nearby rock, slamming his hoof against it so hard that it came loose and turned over, no doubt leaving a poor family of grubs homeless. Everything he believed in was just a stupid joke to the greater public, and it was moments like these where he hated that he was so hung up on aliens, that it would drive him out to the middle of nowhere just because of a damn text exchange he’d taken to heart. Vic was still missing, and he was standing around by himself like a complete idiot.

And then, as if he were standing in the middle of a stadium as the power was turned on, the brightest floodlight he’d ever seen banished the darkness of the clearing, so harsh that Kepler was forced to shut his eyes, the tears that had welled up in them spilling down his cheeks. Choking back a sob, he waited a few seconds until he felt brave enough to take a peek, shielding his eyes from as much of the light as he could with his hands. Fluorescent lighting beamed from above, so concentrated on the clearing that the leaves of the trees on its border did not so much as touch it, shrouded still by the dark. As for what said light was coming from?

Ho. Lee. Shit.

20 feet or so above the treeline, a giant, grey, metal craft floated, stopped still in place as if gravity completely overlooked it. Not overly humongous, but at least a few times larger than his whole damn house, enveloping the entire clearing underneath it and blotting out the night sky. It wasn’t perfectly saucer shaped like a lot of older photos depicted them, this one had a large, flexible protrusion that reminded him of something like a scorpion's tail, complete with the distinctive segments like pods. The light itself beamed out from the bottom of the main part, smaller lights like lasers lining the edge, all pointed at and darting rapidly over his body.

It was, undeniably, a UFO. He was right, holy fucking shit he’d been right all along.

After standing there gaping up at the ship like an idiot for a good half minute, Kepler reacted on pure instinct, slinging off and tossing his pack away so his arms were more free to be waved frantically over his head, as if they might have missed him. “HEY! DOWN HERE!” Despite the ship itself making no noise at all, he felt the need to shout at the top of his lungs, smiling like a maniac. “I KNEW IT, GOD I KNEW IT!”

In response, the tail-like part swung around to the bottom side of the craft, the end of it swivelling until the flat, disk-like tip was aimed directly at him. Some kind of tractor beam, then? Usually they were on the bottom, but that was all speculation and sci-fi, while this was real. Honestly, Kepler didn’t much care how they got him up there, he was far too stoked to be concerned about the bright flashing that ran down the tail, and the hum that quickly built with it. At least until, accompanied by a sound like a railgun being fired, the massive, metal disk shot toward him, so fast that he was only able to let out a final, panicked bleat before

WHAM

Followed by silence.

He was dead, right? He had to be from the force of that, there was no surviving it. Everything was dark, quiet, and he couldn’t move an inch, so… purgatory? Somewhere he’d just be alone with his thoughts forever? Sounds about accurate…but it couldn’t have been right. Kepler could still feel the rough ground beneath him, with considerably more of his body than just his hooves, and the smooth, cold embrace of metal pressed flush against his entire face, torso, arms and legs…wait, flush? That wasn’t possible; he had dimension, so unless…unless…

The goat didn’t have to speculate for long, as after a few seconds of pressing him down against the rocks, the disk lifted, the cool night air hitting him like the bitter wind in winter with how sensitive his body felt now. Underneath where it had been resting was Kepler, or what had become of him, his entire body having been smushed flat, like a piece of dough spread under a rolling pin. Still keeping his proportions relatively intact (maybe a little wider than normal, not that he had a way of confirming that), he looked like a wall hieroglyph of himself, pressed horizontally thanks to the angle of the disk. His arms were still over his head, one crossed over the other, fingers spread out in an attempt to get the attention that he sorely wished he’d dodged. In the split second he’d had to react, he had managed to begin turning, leaving his head tilted to the side, left eye hidden away, squished into the single, thick layer of his head. His right, meanwhile, was open wide in terror, letting him see perfectly the ship and that horrible disk hovering above, a continuous bolt of electricity magnetizing it to the tail. Saying he felt like a bug wasn’t quite accurate; he envied bugs right now, because unlike him, they could get around just fine, meanwhile he couldn’t manage more than a weak squirm that failed to separate his wrists from one another. Being so low to the ground was disorienting, to say the least, the rock that he’d kicked over towering over him like one of the trees…but he wasn’t completely flat, not yet. That one slam had done a damn good job at reducing his width and his body to a single layer, but he still had somewhere over an inch of thickness, not that it really mattered given he couldn’t so much as wiggle anyway.

Well, it didn’t to HIM, but clearly it made enough of a difference to whoever was piloting the ship that it necessitated correction. The disk, hovering dutifully a few feet away while he’d gotten his bearings on suffering a fate far more humiliating than the alternative, moved quietly back overhead, blocking out his view of the ship. Try as he might, Kepler failed to do more than twitch one of his legs, settling on letting out a pitiful, choked bleat that he hoped might sway them into leaving him alone.

It didn’t.

Wham! With considerably less force, the disk came down again, simply letting gravity do the work unaided in removing that much more of his 3rd dimension. This time, he could really feel the weight behind the impact, the smooth, unmarred metal pressing him down again, a mix between being hit by a sledgehammer and the world's most intense massage. The feeling wasn’t…awful, or really even that bad at all, but the sheer intensity combined with the dull splat that could only have come from him sure had him weakly groaning through his flattened muzzle, feeling his edges smush out a little further. A few seconds later, it lifted back up, moved out of the way so the observers above could judge whether or not he was flat enough for their tastes, having lost another good half inch of thickness.

Alas, the extraterrestrials Kepler had sought his whole life after weren’t yet satisfied, perhaps deciding then that it would be easier to bring it down on him repeatedly until desired results. Every subsequent slam of the disk broke the goat a little more, his sensitivity shooting through the roof as his nerves were bundled and pinched together, completely overwhelming his head to the point where all he could think about was how unbelievably intense the stimulation was. Not how he was still alive, how he could even breath, or what had become of Vic; every press down shattered his mind, the pieces unable to collect back before the next sent them even further away. Wider, thinner, less crisp in detail, the rough treatment was thoroughly destroying him.

After the dozenth time it came down, the accompanying splats had grown quieter, his body reaching its limit on how much damage this barbaric method could do. Still, it kept coming another dozen times before it stilled, keeping him sandwiched between it and the ground, before it lifted for the final time, revealing what had become of him. Kepler was…well, recognizable as himself still, yes, but it’d gone a long way in beginning to make that not the case. A decent amount of detail had been preserved, but the formerly sharp borders where his black fur met the lightly-toasted white had blurred together, eroding into greyish stripes that ran down his muzzle and up his sides. As far as width went, he was considerably more spread out, still keeping the general shape intact, albeit less so around his midsection and thighs, the latter of which had melded together thanks to being squished out against one another.

Thickness, however, that was a different story entirely. On par with a sheet of paper, or perhaps even lesser, Kepler felt like a wafer, too thin to fight off being blown away by a light breeze. That rock near his head that had seemed the height of the trees now was more like a mountain against him, a fact he might have been humiliated about if all the intelligence hadn’t been crushed out of him somewhere around the 8th slam. He’d come back to his senses eventually, but for the time being, the goat was far too dizzy to be perceiving much of anything, his visible eye a cartoony swirl. A faint red tinge dusted his cheek, perhaps just an instinctual reaction to having one’s nerves squashed together so thoroughly, or maybe there was some part of him that enjoyed what had happened; any thoughts of why he was flustered couldn’t get within a country mile of his head at the moment.

Deeming him sufficiently pulverized, the disk whizzed back up to its spot, electromagnetically anchored in place, letting the appendage swing back up to its neutral position, silence again reigning in the clearing. From some unseen port on the rounded underside of the main part of the craft, a length of prehensile tubing snaked out, lurching toward Kepler, until it pressed into his chest, the goat far too flattened for it to leave any kind of mark. With a quiet click, air began to get sucked up into it, the suction increasing in strength so as to remove him from where he was mashed out over the rocks. A paint scraper might have done the job faster, but it only took a few seconds until his chest peeeeeeeled up, meeting the opening and blocking it, indenting in as the rest of him slowly followed. At the same time, the length raised up, coaxing him along with it. Stubbornly, one of his hooves refused, holding onto the ground for a moment longer, and the instant that it let go, Kepler’s body crumpled like a tissue, SCHLORPED up into the tubing that was meant for the collection of liquids, disappearing into the depths of the ship in the blink of an eye. With its pickup safely inside, the hose retreated, vanishing behind a panel that closed after it. One by one, the lights turned off, and the craft silently lifted into the sky, witnessed only by the light of the stars, and a very, very flat goat in its possession. The only evidence he’d been there at all lay abandoned next to a vaguely humanoid-shaped imprint on the ground, too far off the beaten path for the oddity to be noticed before it was eroded away.

~~~~~

By the time that sense began to worm its way back into Kepler’s 2 dimensional mind, he was elsewhere entirely, the expansive night sky traded out for a colder, sterile white ceiling, something that might have been written language flashing above intermittently in red. The first thing that struck him was how gigantic everything was, the walls stretching so far above him that the ceiling might as well have been in space, it was a wonder he could even see up so far! Off to his right sat a glass vial that looked similarly insurmountable, even the metal frame it rested in dizzyingly larger than he was…just how big were these guys?

Or…no, he wasn’t thinking about it right, how thin was he?!

All at once, it came back to him, hitting the paper-thin goat hard enough to almost make him twitch! His 3rd dimension had been absolutely pulversized away, leaving him with a body he couldn’t so much as move a muscle in. While there was no longer any pressure holding him down, the increased sensitivity remained, a gentle airflow hitting his midsection amplified some thousands of times, enough that, were his lungs and diaphragm not melded into a single layer along with skin and bones, he doubtless would be letting out all manner of pitiful little whimpers. Perhaps it was fortunate they’d done such a thorough job…

Speaking of them, while he couldn’t speak himself, he could hear just fine, tuning into a conversation he hadn’t realized was happening: “...And your technique with the anchor was sloppy; had you allowed the charge to build for five hundred and seventeen nanoseconds longer, you would not have needed to pound it on him repeatedly like a simpleton.”

“Look, I got the subject in the ship without being seen by any locals, Erro, it’s fine.” Both voices sounded masculine, though the former–Erro–had a deepness to it that the other lacked, speaking far more flatly than his compatriot. More importantly, though, Kepler could understand them! Either they had the decency to speak in english (unlikely), or there was some kind of automatic translation going on, but either way, it was a relief; they could communicate! Whenever they undid this, that is…which they’d surely do soon! Also alarming, though he could hear them clearly, and they sounded fairly close, the glorified sheet-of-paper couldn’t see them anywhere, his eye being the one and only thing he could move, slit pupil darting around rapidly. Though, it didn’t take long before he had to stop, making himself dizzy with the shifted perspective. Where were they?

“You did, correct, but this is about the principle, Aevelar,” Erro chides, off somewhere to Kepler's left, presumably in front of the table he was laid on. “Continue to screw up now, and you’ll have us caught when we visit a planet that has a more observant populace.”

“Alright I get it, I’m sorry,” Aevelar groans, exasperated with his lab partner. “I will do better next time, can we please get on to the examination?”

“Hhmph, we may.” There was a pause, broken by the dull clacking of footsteps and subsequent bleeping from some machine just out of Kepler’s wonky field of view. “Proceed with preliminary, mundane observation of subject E A R 57”

And then, like a sticker being peeled off of a sheet, the side of the goat's head was pinched by unseen fingers that felt unnaturally hard, like armor…or perhaps chitin? The dizzying feeling of being lifted what felt like hundreds of feet in the air to the living pancake almost distracted from his abductors being invisible, or at least imperceptible to him…most of the time. Briefly, as he was lifted higher, the light from the glowing ceiling panels seemed to catch on Aevelar, like the iridescence of a beetle's wing. He seemed generally humanoid, though the flash wasn’t enough to make out any details. Staying focused on what he might look like was tricky, given how the sensation of his fingers running over the goat were amplified to a nigh-unbearable degree, coaxing the red tinge on his cheek a little darker. Shit, god damn it, it felt good…something about the way his thinned body ran through the alien fingers, dimpling and folding over like a loose piece of cloth, woof…

“The subject appears to be of the local, dominant class Mammalia, its fur, body heat, and breast tissue being strong indicators.” Aevelar spoke in a far more detached tone as he turned Kepler this way and that, his voice accompanied by the gentle, distant bleeps from Erro presumably making note of the observations. And hey, rude! He was not an it! “Given the relative lack of tissue and presence of external genitalia, it is also safe to conclude that it is of the male sex.”

Okay, as if Kepler needed another reason to be flustered…wait, had his clothing been flattened along with him, or were they gone somehow? When next his head was folded forward, he did his best to focus on the sight of his paper-thin body, getting a good view of both his nakedness and the damage that had been done to him, his eye widening when he noticed how his patterns had begun melding together, that could not have been healthy!

“As far as noteworthy features go, hmmm…” Aevelar shifted him to be supported by the back of his head, the rest of his body bunching and folding up on the examination table below. “Would you run a scan of the fur sample extracted from it? I would like to confirm a growing suspicion.”

“We do the scan after observation by eye, not during it,” Erro grunts.

“I am aware of the procedure, however I believe that this instance necessitates deviation; take a look at my findings.” And then, so quickly that Kepler again grew dizzy, he was fully lifted up and off the table, the rest of his body flopping downward, hooves dangling 2 feet above the ground. Were it not for the fingers pinching and crumpling the sides of his head, it might have felt somewhat normal. Briefly again, the light glinted off of Erro, standing just in front of some kind of holographic display…seemed a decent bit shorter than Aevelar, though the goat’s perspective when laying on the table was very off. Speaking of, his vision was suddenly elongated sideways when his captor YANKED his arms apart, somehow with the strength to tug his flattened head out like rubber, stretching his features hilariously so that they might be more visible. There wasn’t a mirror, and Kepler was too overwhelmed to imagine what he might look like, but silly would be an apt word.

“Note the horns, horizontal pupil, and lower hooves; does this subject not call to mind the previously captured Ovis aries? I would like to confirm if it’s similarities are coincidental, or if it is a related species.”

Though it was hard to think of much of anything while listening to his own head creak from the strain of being tugged, something about that classification seemed familiar to Kepler, though a lot of that notation sounded samey to him nowadays. Evidently, though, Aevelar’s case was strong enough to convince Erro, who typed away at his computer-thing. “By local binomial notation, the subject is listed as Capra hircus, ‘goat’, not of the same species. However, both it and the Ovis aries are of the subfamily Caprinae, so your hunch is thereby validated. Good catch.”

Pleased with himself, Aevelar relaxed his arms, letting Kepler's head slink back together, though concerningly not all the way, some permanent damage from the half-minute of yanking lingering. His head was about the width of his shoulders now, leaving his vision still disconcertingly stretched, as if the whole ship had been what was tugged out rather than him, bleh…

After that, the rest of the preliminary examination went by in a blur for poor Kepler, thoroughly wearing him out more than he already had been, were such a thing even possible. Their observations about his bodily features (shorter fur vs. the dense wool of the acclaimed Ovis aries, etc) went right over his head, seeing as he was considerably more concerned with how much Aevelar was tugging on him, wearing out his ability to snap back every time he held a piece for too long, which only made him look and feel even more ridiculous! Not to mention, every time he caught a glance of himself, the parts that had been stretched out further were less distinct, his fur patterns blending and fading, crisp details eroding…if they didn’t stop soon, he’d end up a featureless, grey rug! Speaking out wasn’t an option either, that ability had long since been crushed away, though even if he could, the two of them didn’t seem particularly interested in respecting his autonomy, given how they continually referred to him as an object, both frustrating and something that contributed to how flustered he was…which was also frustrating.

By the time they finished, Kepler was hilariously stretched, random bits of him pulled out past the formerly clear edges. His midsection resembled an uneven wad of dough more than anything else, chest and stomach blurring together, though that didn’t hold a candle to his limbs, like overly stretched sleeves of uneven lengths, flopping over the sides of the examination table. A lot of detail had been lost, even his face was getting fairly smudged, mouth blurred away into his snout, the yellow of his eye running into the black fur surrounding it…squinting hard, one might still be able to tell that it was him, though he was just as likely to be overlooked as a strange wall decoration, which would be a better fate than what lay in store.

“This concludes preliminary observation of subject E A R 57. All findings are in line with those of the general populace,” Erro surmises, tapping a few more times on the holographic display before it shuts off. “You did well.”

“Phew…” With a sigh of relief, Aevelar lets go of the horn he’d stretched out twice its normal length, Kepler's head crumpling back to the table in a heap. “Should I perform the nanobot injection so we may proceed with testing?”

Hearing was fairly difficult when one's ear was half-mushed into their head, but the goat was able to follow along enough for his visible eye to widen. This couldn’t actually be happening, there was no telling whatever weird alien tech they had would do to him if they’d been able to so flagrantly ignore the rules of his anatomy already! What he wanted didn’t matter to them, though, as Erro quickly voiced his assent. “You may. I trust you do not need my assistance.”

A drawer somewhere below the table was opened, and out of it lifted a nasty-looking syringe filled with some silvery liquid like mercury. Now that he was holding something Kepler had (relatively) clear sight on, he could see more consistently the extraterrestrial hand, as if it were made of glass. Despite his best efforts to give the most pathetic, pleading look imaginable, Aevelar wasn’t deterred, gently piercing his chest with the needle and pushing down on the stopper, somehow enough depth left in him for it to not push all the way through to the table. For a moment, the nanobots coursing through his bloodstream (did he even have blood anymore?) brought with them an uncomfortable chill, his cells weakly attempting to fight them off, but the feeling passed just as quickly as it came on.

A smaller screen popped up by Erro. “I can confirm that the bots have integrated into it’s body and are all online. The subject is prepared for testing.” Shoving the holographic over to his partner, his footsteps continued toward the door. “I must attend to communications and begin searching for the next subject. Just transfer it to the chamber, start each scenario, and monitor results until the bots go offline. If I’m not back by the time that happens, label and transfer it to storage.”

“Uh-huh, will do.” Once the footsteps retreated and the door shut, Aevelar turned back to regard his subject, pinching Kepler’s back to lift him up, body drooping like a towel, dangling from the alien’s fingertips. With his head facing in, he couldn’t see much of anything aside from his own flattened and crumpled hide, swinging as he was taken to the side of the room he hadn’t been able to get a very good look at, though from what he had gathered, this lab space was far bigger than the outside of the ship should have allowed. A technological wonder he might better have been able to appreciate were it not for being treated like Silly Putty.

The movement stopped briefly, before Kepler was tossed through a chute like dirty laundry into a hamper, landing crumpled and face-down on the smooth, tiled floor, unable to so much as twitch, let alone lift his head. For a minute, he sat in silence, struggling to get his mind to fully catch up after the thorough examination; he was still feeling woozy from the initial flattening earlier. Aevelar soon spoke again, though his voice was distant, as if from another room. “Subject E A R 57 is contained in the testing chamber. Restructuring in preparation of test 001.”

Inside of him, the nanobots began to buzz, making his whole body feel like pins and needles as they got to work, on what exactly he wasn’t sure. And then, in a terrifyingly quick few seconds, everything reset: his limbs returned to their regular proportions, the stretched and faded bits snapped back into place, regaining detail, and like a balloon on a pump, Kepler was filled out back to his regular thickness, normal again for the first time in hours, still face down. It took a few seconds for him to realize that he could move, the muted soreness lingering after how roughly he’d been treated earlier, and even then he spent nearly an entire minute taking deep breaths, slowly testing his arms and legs.

“Damn…” Hissing, he shoved himself over onto his back, blinking repeatedly just to confirm that, yes, he had both eyes still, and no his vision was no longer distorted. The chamber he’d been unceremoniously dropped in was gigantic, larger than his damn house, all manner of nasty, painful-looking machinery tucked up against the ceiling, connected to arms poised to swing down. In all honesty, after that, he really didn’t care what they did so long as he was allowed to keep his 3rd dimension. But…SHIT, right, they were about to do more testing! What else could they possibly need to know after such a thorough investigation?

In a panic, Kepler shot up, fighting through the ache in his legs to get his hooves under him. Separating him from the main lab was a large, glass observation window, and while he couldn’t see Aevelar out there, he could hear the gentle bleeping as he typed away at the holographic computer. “HEY! Th-there’s uh, no need for more of this, you guys can just get all this junk from Wikipedia!”

To the shock of no one, his protest was not only ignored outright, but capitalized on. From the edges where walls met floor and ceiling, 4 mechanical arms fired out, their lengths flexible like hoses, the ‘hands’ at the end clamping around his wrists and ankles, provoking a startled yelp as he was lifted up, arms yanked straight over his head. Struggling against them quickly proved fruitless, their grip far too tight to allow him to wiggle out, so he was left nervously glancing up and down, struggling a little with moving his head as it was squeezed tightly between his arms. From what he could tell, the upper and lower sets of arms each melded with their pair into one, a larger claw each pinching his wrists and ankles. Okay…okay, intimidating setup, but this could just as easily be for the purposes of simply immobilizing him, right…?

The two hands began to twist in opposite directions, again overpowering his biology and pulling his arms and legs along with them.

Kepler didn’t even think to cry out for mercy, the instinct was sufficiently buried under a breathy gasp as his arms began to twist up unnaturally on themselves, bones forgotten, like two strands of spaghetti. It began at his wrists and ankles, coiling tightly together, and traveled up and down his limbs, more and more of them joining in. Like being crushed, the feeling wasn’t painful, but God was it intense, a demanding, itchy tightness that travelled closer to his body and…SHIT, his head was caught between his arms! The goat struggled to save it from its fate for a few seconds longer, failing to move his neck more than a few centimeters with how tightly his skull was pinched. Arms twisted up to his elbows, he found his voice, panicked and shaky. “P-PLEASE! I’M A PER–MMMMMRPH!”

The rest of the plea was cut off as the ruthless machinery did its job, his vision comically elongated for a few moments as his head, too, twisted up with his arms, though soon it was cut off entirety, replaced with his own taut, folded hide, muzzle following in short order. For a few seconds, Kepler’s mind went completely blank. What remained of his body shuddering from the intense shock of being pulled into a thick rope about the width of one of his legs. Again, his senses compounded on themselves, everything bundled up far tighter than it was ever meant to, though this time it was even more confusing. At least being flat, he had a fairly good idea where every part of him was, this was so overwhelming that he quickly lost mental track of what was meant to be where, it was all just tight.

When the two sides met, one might have figured that’d be the end of the test, but no, they kept going, the arms themselves moving away so that he might be stretched further at the same time as he was coiled up tighter. As a result, Kepler was hilariously elongated, the twists pulling thinner, tighter, a constant stretching across his entire body. The high pitched CRRRREAAAAKS like rubber on rubber were all he could hear, raising in volume with each passing moment. Without being able to see or hear, all that he had to go by was the increasing pressure radiating from somewhere close to his center. If they didn’t stop soon…

Fortunately, the extraterrestrial research didn’t include what might happen were he to snap in 2, and as the bases of the arms again touched the corners, they stopped, cuffs stilling as well. From the outside, he resembled the world’s longest Twizzler, black and tan fur tightly woven together, somewhere in the 50 foot range of total length. He was featureless…aside from the red, flustered blush that stubbornly bled through, stretched itself across a good few feet of length where his cheeks were woven in. For Kepler, it was an indescribable level of tightness, the elongation barely even registering. Small shudders ran up and down the length of his body, dangerously thin, a light tap enough to do him in.

Hearing was difficult, both as a result of his ears being twisted up and his mind completely overloaded, but he faintly heard his tormenter murmuring something about the nanobots looking healthy before, mercifully, the clamps let go. He fell to the ground with a quiet thump, the buzzing from the nanobots coming back, overpowering the ache of being stretched so far, and then, in a dizzying few moments, he rapidly untwisted, compressing back to his normal proportions like letting go of a tape measure, complete with a violent jerk as everything came together. Unfurling so quickly left him too dizzy to move, weakly groaning on the floor as his eyes swirled comically, jaw slackened.

“Preparing chamber for test 002.” Aevelar sounded bored, just going through the motions of a process repeated hundreds of times. Kepler was anything but, completely overstimulated, something he’d just have to get used to. The floor around him morphed into a deep dip that he slid into, glowing panels traded out for glass, the demi-sphere raising up into the air. Just beginning to get his bearings, the goat took deep breaths, struggling to catch a train of thought…how did he even get here, again? Was he just taken from his house…?

A matching upper half dropped from the ceiling, the edges perfectly lining up, sealing together instantly, leaving him trapped inside a smooth, glass sphere. Weakly, he prodded at one of the walls with a hoof, too exhausted to kick with any real force, producing a gentle clink…it was far too thick for him to break. Reminding him of an electric stove being turned on, the glowing white panels transitioned to a light red, which grew darker over time. Also reminding him of said appliance was the room quickly heating up, unbearably warm after only a minute. With his brain still adjusting to his body no longer being twisted up on itself like a rope, he didn’t process what was going on until he shifted his arm back to his side in an effort to sit up, landing in something wet with an audible splash. Wearily, he lifted his head from the glass, finding that he was laying in a puddle of goop that was concerningly him colored, black and tan swirling together. More awake now, he pulled his arm back out, finding that his fingers had all but melted away, large drips running down his arms, mass very quickly being lost. “Uh oh.”

As the temperature rose, Kepler sank, large droplets like melting candlewax joining in the puddle. He didn’t struggle, because what was one supposed to go about being liquified? He was still too worn down from that last test to lash out, what little good it would have done him anyway. Instead, he let it happen, head slowly approaching the swirly, bubbling liquid, from a mixture of him losing mass that was keeping him upright as well as it rising up. When his half-melted muzzle dipped under the bubbling goop, he let out a gurgly little whine, eyes and horns following soon after, lasting only moments under before they too fully liquified.

Becoming a bowlful of thick, roiling goo was probably the least unpleasant situation he’d been put through that day, the lack of muscles to ache, all the pain dissolving away, might have even been relaxing if it weren’t so foreign. Even being twisted up, his body parts had been somewhere, separate from one another even while bundled tightly, but right now? Gone. Everything was exactly the same as everything else, mixed and melded into a swirly, greyish puddle, the continued heat not allowing his face to settle anywhere, so, yet again, the only stimuli he had was touch. The bubbling felt somewhat ticklish, noisy pops contained within the smooth glass.

At once, the walls turned back to the neutral white, and the heat disappeared, glass cooling quick. Before the bubbling even stopped to let him settle, though, a hole opened at the bottom where the glass met the metal that lifted it, doubling as a pipe that Kepler drained into, travelling through an unnecessary amount of turns that served only to disorient the liquidated goat. All of him made it into a small, spherical, metal mold, no larger than a basketball. The hole he’d come through sealed behind him, and the metal began to rapidly cool, an unpleasant, bitter sting that broke him out of the stupor he’d been lost in. Shuddering wasn’t an option with the lack of room, nor could he complain; he thought instead of trying to recall what he’d done for the past week. For some reason, he felt like there was something that’d been bothering him, but whatever it was had slipped through his metaphorical fingers…

With a hiss, the two halves of the mold cracked apart with a vertical split, letting a rubbery-grey ball fall out and onto the ground, cooled and set into shape. The only thing that indicated it to potentially be living at all was the cartoony face that had settled, wrapped around one side, eyes half-lidded, a faint blush running under them. If Kepler could see himself, he’d have been upset, but he was preoccupied with how he bounced upon impact with the ground, dribbling forward and hitting the glass observation window, coming to a stop soon after…what the fuck were they even testing for at this point? Could they make this any more humiliating?

Obviously yes. Aevelar’s voice drifted in from outside, still just as uninterested: “Restructuring and prepping chamber for test 003.” As the buzzing returned, the squishy sphere bulged out painfully, before with a POP morphing back into Kepler, colors returning to their proper places and shades as his limbs flopped down to the ground, laying spread eagle while the terrain shifted behind him. Not being dizzy wasn’t much help when he felt so heavy, like waking up during the night after taking melatonin, no soreness but even the mere thought of trying to move, to get away from the metal wringer big enough to flatten his entire car, was too much for him to bear.

Instead, the helpful arms came back down from above, roughly gripping his shoulders before dragging him over like a lamb to slaughter…lamb, lamb…did…he know a sheep? Something prickled at the back of his mind, buried under the evening's events, but it felt important…frowning, Kepler tried his hardest to chase the train of thought, searching his hazy mind for any memories of someone like that, though he was stopped in his tracks long before he found any answers; the arms had wedged his horns between the smooth, metallic pins, already spinning before he’d even gotten there, and the rest of him was dragged in after. The instant his head was caught between them, everything in his mind came to a screeching halt, arms spasming for a moment before his shoulders, too, slipped through the narrow gap, and he stilled.

What came out the other side was twice as wide and less than an inch thick, muzzle pressed back into his face, which was still stuck in a grimace from his contemplation, though he wasn’t thinking of much of anything at the moment. Something about this particular method pulverized the part of his brain that nagged about the kidnapping and how unnatural this was, quieting it and leaving behind pure, unbridled pleasure, the weight and pressure as the rollers pinched the parts of him going through them so incredibly blissful. His doughy middle had begun bunching up on the other side, like a wad of dough refusing to bend to the authority of a rolling pin, though all it accomplished in the long run was stretching him longer as well, midsection running into his legs. On the side facing away from the glass, he’d been folding over himself like a particularly fluffy towel, face pressed against his chest, and biceps, the backside of which pressed against his lower back, and so on until his hooves pushed through, caught by the arms before they could join the rest of him on the ground. That should have been it, end of test, turn him back and proceed to another…

But the rollers moved twice as close together, rolling in reverse, his hooves fed right back through.

Going through it once was overwhelming to his shattered mind, twice was an unbearingly stimulating amount of pressure, and the test didn’t end there either! He was put through it another half dozen times or so, not a chance he could keep track himself. Each successive trip smeared away a few more details of his life, like where he lived, what he did for work, and whether or not he was even supposed to be there. Were he given the time to sit and settle down, things might have come back, but the extraterrestrials weren’t particularly interested in his cognitive function.

Physically, though, he was considerably worse off. When he came through for the final time, all that was left was a massive rectangular sheet that had once been a goat, everything smearing and blurring together until they were completely unrecognizable, just the faintest hint of the frames of his glasses (somehow those had survived all of this) and a smudged blush. Somehow, he was even thinner than he had been after the anchor had finished crushing him, the lights from the panels shining through.

“Huh…nanobots are still one-hundred percent operational…” Outside the chamber, Aevelar seemed perturbed, the light catching on his head as he looked between his screen and the tissue-thin sheet being held up to the glass like a poster, though it couldn’t very well focus, vision hazy at best. At least he sounded mildly more interested now, if confused. “Well…good. Restructure the subject and prepare for test 004.”

Some tens of tests later, between being compressed down to the size of a penny and thrown into something that reminded it of a taffy puller (though it couldn’t recall what taffy was or how it knew what the machine looked like), Erro had evidently finished with his work, as the sounds of conversation drifted into the testing chamber, rousing it from the stupor of overwhelming stimulation it’d been completely lost in. The interruption gave it a break, allowing it to attempt to follow a conversation meant for more sentient beings.

“...and this is unprecedented for the Earthling subjects we’ve taken in so far,” Erro chitters, tapping his fingers against the glass of the observation window. “Subject 29 previously held the planet’s record of nine completed tests before the nanobots ceased responding. You’re certain that 57 has not even come close to getting stuck after thirty-two?”

“They are reporting zero loss of efficiency. Even the S I L subjects we tested toward the beginning of our voyage showed signs of permanent wear by this point. This one has not.” For as bored as he’d sounded earlier, Aevelar had perked right up, excitedly shoving the mini display into his lab partner's face. “I know that it makes no sense, but the logs support it. What do we do from here?”

“You know the answer. We keep testing it until we either run out, or it breaks.”

It frowned from it’s spot laying on the ground, feeling a surge of autonomy it had long since forgotten…no, no not it, him. He was not a thing. He was a person with thoughts and feelings, with a life…wasn’t he? Try as he might, he couldn’t put together anything outside of vague impressions, feelings attached to memories that were buried too deep to resurface in the brief reprieve he had from the intensity of being smushed. At least the way the two of them talked about him made him feel like he’d been taken from somewhere else, but he couldn’t even remember what he was supposed to look like anymore, let alone where he was from. In the first independent movement he’d made in God-knows how long, he lifted up his arm, blankly staring at the tan fur that ran down its length…what was it they had been calling him? Capra hircus? There was a common name for that, wasn’t there…?

Wait…name…he had a name, too. Not of his species or whatever, a personal name, how long ago had he forgotten? And what was it, exactly?

“Resuming test 033.”

~~~~~

While the prospect of getting stuck forever in a completely inanimate form was unpalatable, it was desperately wishing that that were the case, preferring greatly the idea of being reduced like that to the THOUSANDS of tests that consistently pulverized it’s ability to do anything aside from be wracked with pleasure, then being left alone juuuuust long enough to get some sense back and remember something was wrong, before being stuck right back in. But what it wanted, in the brief moments where it could want, was overruled in the name of scientific discovery at the hands of two beings it was incapable of perceiving.

Smushed down by lines of rollers, stretched like rubber and wrapped around dozens of metal bars at once, compressed into all manner of simplistic, mundane shapes, folded and creased like origami, absolutely nothing was off the table. Long ago they abandoned the pretense that they were actually collecting any real data from the humiliating experiments, tossing increasingly insane ideas out when they ran out of preprogrammed tests to see if it was possible to come up with anything that might crack it’s stubborn perseverance. But nothing did! No matter how extreme the temperatures got, how transparent it became from the widths they stretched it to, or how small they compressed it, it always was able to be turned back. A miracle, an anomaly, the next stage of evolution in the universe, whatever the case, they couldn’t ignore it.

Some weeks or months or years later (for it had no way of knowing how much time had passed), it’d been removed from the testing chamber in the form of a small, hand-size glob of grey putty, broken only by the faint red tinge that grew whenever Aevelar allowed it to settle and spread over his palm, he and Erro walking down one of the labyrinthine halls as they chatted about their discovery. Part of it wanted to be left alone to get a grip on itself, and the other desperately wished that the hand would close around it again, reveling in the sensation of being squeezed through the gaps between his fingers.

“I can’t believe what we’ve found,” Aevelar muses, barely holding back his giddiness as he squelched the putty again, briefly molding it into a more cylindrical shape before it was allowed to spread back out. “It’s unreal…we need to take this to the emperor.”

“Ah-ah, not so fast.” No less mirthful, but certainly less fun, Erro stops walking, bidding his partner to turn and face him. The spot was in front of a door labeled STORAGE in a language the living putty couldn’t read. In front of it, spread out in the hall, a fluffy, woolen rug was spread, bearing curly horns that might have called to mind a name it had long forgotten. “We will, but we haven’t completed testing yet. Tell me, what do you suppose our next phase is?”

“Hmmm…” While he thought, Aevelar stilled his hand, allowing the grey blob to spread out over and between his fingers, gravity threatening to tug bits of it to the rug below. The break brought a resurgence of thought, something nagging at it that seemed important. Really important…a name other than those of the scientists. What was it? “Oh! We need to capture several more Capra hircus so we may test whether or not this resilience is a commonality in the species, or an isolated case.”

“Correct! We’ll make a scientist out of you yet.”

Chitin met chitin as Erro clapped Aevelar on the shoulder, and it was that moment where the putty remember: Kepler. That was the name…his name, not E A R 57, or ‘the anomaly’, or Capra hircus, he was KEPLER, he was a person-

Sqquirchhhhh!

…

It wanted Aevelar to squeeze harder next time.

---

So, I haven't written anything flattening/inanimate related in awhile. This is my apology for that.

In all seriousness, I first had the idea for this story about a year ago, but something about it didn't entirely strike me, so I put it off. Fast forward to 3 days ago, and I thought of the name Kepler for the main character whilst digging through my old ideas, and it spiraled from there.

The first chunk is probably too long, I have a bad habit of writing a lot before actually getting into the damn reason I started, but I can't help myself when I make a new character. I ended up really liking Kepler, as much as the torment I put him through might suggest otherwise. Poor guy really went through the wringer (haha).

I don't expect this to be of a lot of peoples tastes, rare interest in general (though, those of you who do, I see you (and appreciate you immensely)). For any biologists or others who have an interest stronger than mine in science: I apologize for any mistakes I may have made. I will excuse myself by saying they're aliens that don't fully understand Earthen classifications.

As always, criticism is appreciated! I don't know why I used italics as much as I did.