Chapter 4

The large eyes and the general triangular shape of the head reminded me of the so called grays supposedly studied in Roswell, except for him being more beige colored or a sallow yellow, what might be described as sickly. I thought about mutation, the Darwin type, and the large cranium and even the larger eyes, along with more holes than nose and similar with the lack of flesh at the ears, no protective flesh needed, and the skinny, almost anorexic looking body with a strappy muscle tone made obvious with every movement and maybe his height even, looking to be nearing mine, and if he was average, a species taller in general, all came from a sedentary hundreds of years in space where brain power and observation were the important things.

“klattu barada nikto,” said Emily.

A sort of choking sound I realized was laughing came through our coms. “You must be Emily,” the alien said.

“Guilty,” she replied.

“Then you must come first.”

“My husband?” she gestured to me. “And there’s just one other.”

He blinked. “Three in the chamber should be fine. Follow me.”

“The others in the other ship?” I asked.

“They will have to remain there for now. We must be careful with pathogens.”

“Of course.”

Once on the elevated surface, it lowered until it created a small step onto the platform. We followed the alien, his long limber strides kind of beautiful, his skinny musculature, especially at his tiny ass, obvious in its flexing. He pointed a long slim finger at a wall and watched us walk into it, it allowing us to pass through like some kind of gel that gave little resistance, and we entered a chamber, its ceiling giving a glow for us to see.

“You must strip completely naked,” we heard. “Place your things in the large box. We have the information about your breathable air and it mostly matches ours with some differences in percentages and some lack of some of the lesser gasses we hope will not affect you. We can accommodate you from your own source of air if it becomes a problem. Please be patient.”

We used the benches that lined two sides of the chamber, a gray space not unlike the color of the ship’s outside we’d seen. It looked to be a perfect cube maybe three yards a side, not spacious but adequate.

“These are the aliens you found the most information from,” I asked Emily while we stripped.

“We call them the Ags, the closest thing to their fairly difficult pronunciation,” Emily nodded. “They must have received our data much quicker than we thought possible to create their translation program.”

“Perhaps closer proximity helped,” I said.

“Must be.”

Once naked, we got probed, which ended up being a surge of yellow light in the space and a tingling sensation everywhere, almost ticklish, which lasted a long minute. It also contained a tone which went from deep to high pitched, approaching uncomfortable before ending. Our eyes felt uncomfortable as well, both in a drying sensation and as if gazing at a light too long. We were thankful that it ended.

“Please be patient,” we heard. “We must analyze the data.”

“Where do you think we’re headed?” Angela asked.

“Probably not back to Home,” Emily decided.

“Makes sense with all this,” Angela agreed.

“I’d say we’re headed to battle.”

“What about Andromeda?”

“It would make most sense if after some sort of probe like we got they let them head back.”

“You think they were hoping you’d be on our ship?” I asked.

“I actually told them I would be. You’d think with these advancements they’d have far more advanced tacticians.”

“But maybe not as creative,” I offered.

“That makes sense.”

A tray pushed through the wall opposite from the one we entered, stuck in it. “Please take the tray and sample the cubes, each gets one,” we heard.

I grabbed it and each of us took a cube, like a sugar cube but smaller, while I set aside the tray. Three colors, red, yellow and blue, must have coded them. Mine, the yellow one, proved way too salty, while the red one taken by Emily looked to be just as distasteful. “Like edamame,” said Angela approvingly.

“Which one?” the voice asked.

“The blue one,” I said.

“Thank you.”

Another tray pushed through with a rack of stoppered test tubes. “Please smell these.”

Of the seven scents, one had an acrid rotted flesh smell, another a chemical smell, and a third of sweaty underarms. Of the four remaining, two had the odor of ingestables, coffee and the butter smell one might find in movie theaters to tempt customers to buy popcorn. One reminded me of gardenias while the other had a musky odor with a touch of sweetness close to that I would taste from a delicious vagina. It actually got me a little hard as if it had pheromones.

“Pink, orange and green definitely not,” I reported. “If this is for food, then not gray or violet either. These would be better as perfume. The other two, definitely for food.”

“Thank you. Now please lie down.”

I think all of us wanted to ask why but none of us did. We lay on the benches. I heard a hissing sound and soon passed out.

There could be no way to know how long we were out, but when we awoke we knew something transgressive had happened to us. It seemed too clichéd and I could have found it funny knowing I had been anally probed by an alien, except it felt more like defilement. And both Emily and Angela felt the defilement in their pussies too.

“Motherfucker,” I growled, but then realized nothing could be done about it.

“What is this?” we heard.

“This is anger,” Emily explained angrily. “You raped us.”

“We needed data,” the voice replied matter-of-factly. “The data required you to be unconscious.”

“What sort of data?” Emily asked.

“The sort which required you to be unconscious,” the voice repeated, making us even angrier. It clarified, “That you consider it rape underscores the necessity.”

“You tested our responsiveness?” Angela asked.

“Amongst other things, yes.”

“From the information we sent you,” Emily said after a deep breath to calm herself, “you must have discovered how sexually preoccupied our species can be. Perhaps you might have asked first? Maybe let us enjoy it consciously?”

“We ... did not consider that possibility.”

“Why not?”

“We ... considered the complexity of attractiveness and could not imagine how we could fit such complexity.”

“Raping us doesn’t help you fitting into it,” Emily muttered. “I don’t think any of us find you repellent.”

“We didn’t,” Angela agreed.

“I have only seen the male of your species,” I said. “But I believe I would feel the same about your females. How important is this data?”

“We ... apologize,” the voice said. “It is essential,” it added.

“Essential?” Angela asked.

“Sexual pleasure is essential,” the voice said.

“For procreation,” I said. “You must have advanced enough to not require it.”

“Yes, and what you call virtual reality has become more advanced as well, to the point of being tactile. Yet we have found the need to touch, to make full contact with each other including sexual intercourse to be essential to our wellbeing. In fact we have evolved not only in more capacious intelligence, a larger, more efficient brain, but in the sensitivity of our senses, especially that of touch, a sort of balance of the physical and the mental. Like sleep is required for our well-being, so is pleasure, and the pleasure we require can only be sated by being with others, in the giving of pleasure as well as the receiving.”

“I agree,” I said.

“My only real pleasure, with men especially,” Emily explained, “requires a cognizant element, a social intercourse preceding the sexual one, what one might call love.”

“Yes, this is a part of your complexity, what you call romance. We enjoy that too, but it is not required. It does cause preferences though, to whom we prefer to fuck most times.”

“Humans can be like that too,” Emily said. “We enjoy being sexual without the romance, especially men, but women too. We tend not to be monogamous, at least fully. Sometimes, though not as often as our religions might demand of us, especially the patriarchal ones where historically a man might have more than one wife while a woman is not given that choice, the partners in a marriage do not cheat, at least physically, but they inevitably do lust for and fantasize about others. And when affairs happen, they can be purely physical, and men especially can be more prolific cheaters. Prostitution is supposedly the oldest profession after all.”

“I apologize for our egregious mistake,” the voice said. “Confusion in the data, seeing the prodigious sexual content and then the texts which made us assume a need for this romance. You are saying there is not that need, and our data, taken unfortunately without your consent, has borne that out.”

“You made us cum when we slept?” Angela asked.

“Yes.”

“Making it worse because we couldn’t even enjoy it.”

For some weird reason that made us laugh, lightening things somewhat.

“You will find your outfits in the box,” the voice said. “The masks aren’t required, though you may find yourself lightheaded without them since our oxygen levels are higher than yours. Its micro filter material will lessen the oxygen, although we believe you may become used to it over time.”

“How much time?” I asked.

“Until at least we defeat the armada.”

“No!” Emily shouted. “I am needed with my people.”

“Your services are required here.”

“No!”

After a long pause, the voice said, “Understood. We can accommodate. Please insert the earphone into your ear. It will be required for translation.”

“I imagine you could have embedded it,” I said.

“Yes, but after debate we decided not to without permission.”

“Thanks for that.”

“You are welcome.”

“What would it require?” Emily asked.

“Emily?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“A simple injection below your ear,” said the voice. “We believe there would be discomfort with the injection but none after.”

“Then do it, just for me,” Emily insisted.

“We will need time to finish it since the idea was scrapped.”

“Whenever it’s ready. And since it’s not done, perhaps add other alien languages to the software.”

“Yes Emily.”

“I’ll do it too,” I volunteered.

“You don’t have to,” Emily objected.

“Yes I do,” I simply stated.

She smiled and nodded.

As tight as the outfit, I wondered why we bothered dressing at all. It was like wearing a full body speedo, a tight albeit comfortable material covering everything except our hands and head which conformed to our body, the color not quite flesh colored, a bit redder and darker, but fairly close. We put on the small earphone when the door slid open, Angela also putting on the mask, which neither Emily nor I did.