Chapter 2

For three days and three nights, while Zal perfected him, Karl slept. He rose from his bed only to give Topper the minimum care necessary, eat, and use the toilet. But it wasn't Karl who performed these acts, it was Zal controlling his sleeping host's body. And eat he did, the immense quantities of food the alien prepared. Luckily, the house was well stocked with food.

It was late Friday morning when Karl woke up. He opened his eyes to the bright summer sunlight warming his face. As he sat up and put his feet on the floor, Topper came over to lick his hand.

"How you doin, boy?" he asked stroking the dog's blond head. "You miss me?" The dog's only answer was to look up and again lick his master's hand.

Karl looked at the clock, seeing it was a little past ten. "How long was I out?" he asked Zal.

"Three days, as I estimated you would be," Zal answered. "How do you feel?"

Stretching, extending his arms, arching his back, "Ah ... good, really good," Karl answered. "How am I supposed to feel?"

"That is how you should feel."

"But I need a shower, and a shave, and breakfast, I'm hungry, very hungry," heading for the bathroom.

Before he turned on the shower, Karl glanced at himself in the mirror. "I'm a lot bigger," flexing in front of the mirror. "My chest and arms are really muscular, and they're hard as steel." Peering into the mirror, "And my face, my skin, it's flawless."

"Yes, all scars and imperfections have been removed. Your body and mind should now be as close to perfect as possible."

"Here's another change," Karl said after turning on the shower and dropping his boxers. His dick, long and thick, swung between his legs as he turned to close the bathroom door so he could look at his reflection in the full length mirror mounted on the inside of the door.

Standing straight in front of the mirror, "It looks like I'm about two inches taller." Taking his penis in his hand, "My cock is bigger, a lot bigger, and I've got a foreskin now."

"Yes, you are whole now," Zal said. "Also, your wisdom teeth have been restored. They will give you no problems, and the foreign materials added to your teeth by dentists have been removed. Your teeth will never decay, and if lost or broken, will grow back."

Karl grinned into the mirror, examining his perfect white teeth. He rubbed his now wider, stronger jaw feeling the new wisdom teeth. "That's good, I never liked going to the dentist."

Before he entered the shower, Karl weighed himself, finding he had gained more than forty pounds, and it looked like it was all muscle. In the shower, turning under the spray of warm water flowing over his naked body, raising his face to the showerhead, "This feels really great after three days without bathing," he thought to Zal.

"Your nerve endings are more sensitive now, making it more pleasurable," Zal responded. "All your senses are improved: sight, hearing, feeling, taste, smell. Your life will be more enjoyable."

"Yeah, but won't I feel more pain too?"

"I will minimize any pain you may experience," Zal replied.

After his shower, Karl shaved, then dug through his clothes until he found some jeans that fit, barely. They were a little short but would do. The same for the shirt he put on. It was tight across the shoulders and he had to keep the top buttons open, but he could wear it until he got new clothes.

He had a big breakfast - eggs on fried potatoes, with bacon, ham, toast, and then a big bowl of ice-cream. While he ate, he had the TV tuned to one of the financial news channels. "We need to build up our assets," Zal said. "We will need many resources to defeat the enemy, if he survived."

"What's the enemy's name?"

"Zital."

"Zital. Is he a male, like you?"

"He is not male, and neither am I. Our kind is sexless, though we can appreciate it when our hosts experience sexual pleasure, and other pleasures. I thought it would be easier for you to refer to us as he rather than it, but if you prefer we can use genderless pronouns."

"That's not necessary," Karl told him. "I'd feel funny calling you it."

Zal wanted Karl go online to his trading account. In fact, Karl had done very little trading, leaving most of the decisions to his consultants, using the account primarily to monitor how his investments were doing. He was reluctant to take any real risk, but at Zal's insistence he began making speculative trades, something he never thought he would do.

Karl was surprised when with his sharper brain and Zal's help he was able to make over five thousand dollars in about two hours. "At this rate, it won't be long before we've got a million," he told Zal.

"We will need more than that," the alien replied. "We will need a great deal of wealth and power to defeat the enemy. I know he will be extremely wealthy and powerful, and we will need to be his equal."

"Maybe he didn't survive," Karl said.

"Perhaps, but we must be prepared, and we must be discrete. We cannot draw the enemy's attention, in case he did survive."

Karl stood up from the desk. "Let's get the tractor. After we take care of your ship and bury your host, uh ... former host, we better go grocery shopping. The cupboard's almost bare, and with my appetite like it is..."

"Once your physical changes have stabilized, you will find your appetite moderating."

"Come on, Topper," Karl called as he walked out the back door and headed toward the tractor. Then to Zal, "How long before I'm stabilized?"

"Not long, I estimate you will be stabilized tomorrow. Though as you now have a larger body and increased brain capacity, you will need to eat more than formerly."

Because he hadn't used it for over a month, it took Karl some time to get the old tractor started. Once he had it running, he got the chain from the barn, then drove across the field and as far into the wood as he could, stopping about twenty yards from Zal's craft.

When Karl saw the ship again, he realized how small it was, only a little larger that the fuselage of a small private airplane. It hardly seemed big enough to travel between stars. "Your ship seems pretty small, are you sure you use it interstellar travel?"

"Yes, I place my host into stasis, you would call it a kind of suspended animation, during the longer portions of the journey. I can awaken him if he needs to act."

"That makes sense. Okay, let's see what we need to do to get this thing into the barn."

There were no projections from the ship to hook the chain on. Karl decided to just wrap it around the hull and try winching the half-buried craft out of the hole. Running the winch as slowly as possible, stopping and checking often, he was able pull the surprisingly light craft from where it was buried. Next, driving the tractor, he carefully dragged it through the woods, across the field and into the nearly empty barn.

The sleek hull was flat black, featureless except for a gaping crack at what Zal told him was the front. Without Zal telling him, it would have been impossible for Karl to tell the difference between the bow and stern as both ends tapered to identical bullet points.

Topper was sniffing and scratching at the rent, trying to poke his nose in trying to reach the dead creature inside. "Hey, get back!" Karl ordered the dog. Then to Zal, "Wasn't that crack bigger yesterday?"

"It was, the ship is repairing itself, regrowing its skin."

Karl stared at the ship. "Amazing, is it a machine or a living thing?"

"It is a machine that in some ways can act similarly to a living being. Unfortunately, the main drive engines are damaged too severely for the ship to repair itself."

"Using me, could you repair them if you could get the right materials?"

"It is theoretically possible, but this world does not yet have the technology or materials needed. Perhaps some day it may be possible, but not for hundreds, or thousands, of years."