Chapter 11

The morning after the aliens put flowerpots of dirt in the pool area and asked us to pick which type was excellent, I woke up in Pedro’s bed with him snuggled up to my back. We got each other off in the shower the night before, but were too surprised and confused to do any more. His big hand felt nice on my belly, but my bladder was about to burst. He kept snoring quietly while I lifted his arm off me and got up. I dressed and went down to the lobby after a quick trip to the bathroom.

I saw the food from last night was still there, no breakfast. I thought it might have gone bad, but when I touched the edge of the big salad bowl it was cold. The half-full tray of fried chicken was still hot. I shrugged and thought aloud, “I guess it’s better than the time my squad got stuck in the mountains and ate nothing but granola bars for three days. Fried chicken for breakfast it is.”

As they got out of the elevator, I asked everyone, “One of us must have been down here. The food didn’t change from last night.” They all shook their heads, none of them had.

After we ate Anna and Robin returned to their usual spot, watching Grand Central Station in the elevator. Sam went back to working on the computer. Pedro led me to the pool and handed me a swimsuit. I smiled and asked, “Ever tried skinny dipping? The others will be busy for hours.” We kissed and undressed, then enjoyed a relaxing nude swim and a long make-out session naked in the pool.

Pedro sat on the bottom at the shallow end and asked, “Want to sit in my lap?”

That sounded wonderful! I was beginning to sit as Sam rushed in and covered his eyes. “Sorry! Last night I made a mistake translating. They didn’t ask us to pick EXCELLENT soil, they wanted us to pick SEXY soil. They seem to think we reproduce by putting seeds or spores in the ground! I only know a few hundred of their words. How can I ever explain how human reproduction really works?”

Pedro blushed furiously and stumbled over his words as he asked, “Um, Keisha ... ah ... do you ... could we show ... would ... want to have a baby with me? So we can just show the aliens? And get married when we get home?”

I kissed Pedro and looked deep into his dark eyes. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

I turned and said, “Sam, tell the aliens to watch us in the barracks in a little while. I’m gonna teach Pedro to SEXercise.” My new fiancé turned half a dozen shades of red, despite his caramel-colored skin, and I felt something round and firm pressing into my thigh.

As Pedro stood I kissed him and held his sexily masculine body tight to mine. Sam may have been watching, but I was so focused on sucking Pedro’s tongue that I didn’t notice or care.

Eleven months later

I was glad Robin and Anna enjoyed helping Pedro and I take care of our new baby girl Astra. We thought the name fit, since she was born in space.

After nearly a year stuck at the ‘Jupiter Hilton’, the six of us woke up on the floor of Grand Central Terminal!

We wondered if we had been drugged, or if it was all a dream. Sam clarified things when he translated a pair of short messages on Robin’s tablet:

Senior Administrator 0541 notes: Species WDT reproduces in a disgusting and totally unbecoming manner. Instead of immobile baby mycelia dropping spores which are collected and gathered by mobile juveniles, they do not reproduce until startlingly late ages. Their juveniles do not collect spores or coat them with their fertilizing waste, either. They don’t even HAVE ancient seed-mother trees, to combine the spore packets with their own genes and return the progenation packets to the mobile juveniles for planting! They only have TWO sets of chromosomes instead of six! Only two parents instead of three!

They must deeply miss having our progenation packets, which juveniles plant in the sexiest soils they can find. They’ll never know the glory of contributing to a progenation blast as a packet explodes and scatters thousands of fertilized spores, or see the spores grow into our cute and wonderful baby mycelia!

They have no adults, only juveniles which reproduce among themselves! They cannot even plant their progenation material, it gets stuck inside them! Their progeny burst out of their bodies!

Suggest we dispose of them. They’re repulsive!

Seed-mother 0014 notes:

This grove of species WDT exhibits many positive traits but still seem quite distasteful and strange.

The other grove of WDT were violent to their own kind, let alone outsiders.

We cannot give WDT dimensional rift technology to save themselves. They cannot be trusted with it.

Return subjects and move their galaxy far enough to avoid the imminent collision with incoming antimatter galaxy.

Continue search and return when better test subjects are found.