by Marc Landau
My old yoga instructor would’ve been proud. She always corrected my breathing.
“In through the nose, out through the mouth. Deep into your belly. Deep cleansing breaths.”
“How do I breathe into my belly? And what are deep cleansing breaths? Is there soot in my lungs? Will it come out if I breathe hard enough?”
Look at me now, yoga militant. I’m breathing through every pore and atom of my being. Top that, sucker.
I was feeling everything now. Not just the sounds. My thoughts slowed down (or maybe sped up?) so much that I couldn’t sense them anymore. Everything that was a swirling blur had turned into a slow-motion dance. My mind was clear. Empty, as the ancient religion called Buddhism used to call it.
Empty mind. A state of being monks spent decades practicing, for hours and hours a day, with nothing around to distract them. I’d accomplished it on a spaceship with the aid of an alien vessel. Had these aliens come to Earth millennia ago and done this to the monks? Is that why people meditate to this day?
My instinct was to fight it. Question the feeling. Question the sense of joy and peace it was bringing.
Enlightenment.
Another old-school word that popped into my mind. Okay, now I was sure this thing had visited the Earth and made the Buddha. There was no way a normal human could calm their crazy thoughts enough to achieve this exalted state without the aid of a giant alien sphere.
Fight it, Wil, I heard my tiny voice say inside my head. There was still a tiny piece of myself running around inside my brain, trying to form a resistance. I tried to tell it to run and hide but couldn’t.
If the sphere got a hold of that little guy hiding in some tucked-away place in my brain, like the hippocampus, it would be over for me. I’d forget who I was. What I was. I’d just be. I was being sucked into the universe, becoming part of it all. Part of everything. There was an overwhelming urge to just let go. Let go of the stress and pain, the anguish and struggle of being human. The orb was telling me to let myself be washed over by the joy and peace and oneness it was giving to me. It was a gift. It was…
Heaven.
This was where the concept must have come from. If the aliens had visited Earth, it made sense. Was God an alien?. Maybe this thing was sent out to spread the word.
This definitely felt like what I imagined heaven would be.
Was I having a near-death experience? And if it kept up, would it slip from near-death into actual, permanent death? I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not ever, really. As pessimistic and lazy as I could be, I still loved being alive. Sure I got bored, lonely, angry and suffered all the experiences of life, but I still wanted it to last as long as possible. At least until I was sure there was good coffee in heaven.
If this was the Angel of Death coming to take me, I wasn’t ready. It’s not my time. Also, wasn’t I supposed to be greeted by all my departed loved ones and pets? Even my old hamster Rocky. Aw I missed that li’l guy. I didn’t see anything except for the bot.
Hey! I heard the tiny voice hiding inside me say.
“What?”
It's not your time. That thing isn't an angel, the voice answered.
“Are you sure?”
Yes!
“But it feels so warm and comforting and I want to let myself go.”
Don’t!
“Why not?”
It’s fake! Don’t let it trick you.
“You’re a hundred percent sure?”
Like the bot would say, ninety-nine point nine four seven percent.
I felt my face grin. I guess I wasn’t completely immobilized after all.
The moment I sensed a part of myself returning to me, the sphere countered with even stronger effects. It sensed me fighting and went on the offensive. Would an all-loving God do that? I doubted it.
The raw bliss overwhelmed every sense and fiber of my being. It was like overdosing on the happy drug that ravaged the planet a few decades ago. The drug was so strong, people knew they would die if they took it, but they didn’t even care. The high was so profound it was worth literally dying over.
I knew this was more a drug or a demon than an angel, but I wasn’t strong enough to fight it. The effects were too powerful. What chance did mu puny human flesh have against an advanced alien that now looked more like a pill than an orb. An alien drug invading my system. Overdosing me. Taking me to the other side.
I was able to shift my eyes a little, and when I caught a glimpse of the bot, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Its appendages were disappearing. Turning into a fine particle mist. It was slowly becoming dust.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“Stop thinking like that!” The tiny voice screamed.
But I barely heard it at all. I was being engulfed. Digested by the sphere. Turned back into my original components. Back into particles of the universe. Back into space dust.
My eyes shifted toward my hand and I watched as my fingers started to break apart into tiny bubbles. So tiny. Like the very atoms of my body were separating and floating back into the infinite universe.
My eyes moved back to the ship, and I saw the same thing happening to it. Metal and plastic. All of it was being turned into tiny spheres. The ship was dissolving into droplets.
I tried contemplating how long it would be before we all disappeared, but it was too difficult to think. I was absorbed by the light. The colors. The orbgasm.
I needed the feeling to continue. I ached to be absorbed into the universe.
Give me more. Please, universe, don’t stop. Don't stop!
I cared more about the joy than about myself, or my mother, or Kat. Or even Poka. All I wanted was more.
The sphere was either malevolent or uncaring. Most likely a defense system, protecting whatever was down on the planet.
I’m dying. Help me, the tiny voice hiding deep inside my hippocampus said. If I didn’t break free soon it was going to be the last thing it ever said.
A thousand drops of liquid rolled out of my eyes and floated off as I waited for the end to come.
Chapter Nine
SNORE. GURGLE. POP. SNORE!
What the hellvian is that?
GURGLE. POP. POP!
Poka?
I felt my eyes tremble, then blink. I moved my eyes!
POP. POP. POP!
I blinked again and my lips curled into a small smile.
SNORE. POP!
“Poka,” I muttered. I could move my mouth.
SNORE.
“Poka!”I yelled. My mouth was back in my own control. I focused hard on my fingers and told my brain to wiggle them. A moment passed, and my index finger started to bend. A wave of relief washed over me. I was getting unstuck. But I still felt the overwhelming bliss of the sphere. It was fighting for control, but it was weakening.
“Poka!” I screamed, my mouth opening wide. The word echoing through the corridors of the ship.
I stared at my hands, watching as the bubbles moved back toward my fingers. I was not dissolving! I’d never been so grateful to be a solid before. Who knew being solid matter was something to be grateful for? You never walk around thinking, gosh, I’m glad I’m not a liquid or a gas. I would’ve breathed a sigh of relief, if I could've exhaled properly.
I tried to turn my neck to get a better view of the bot, but only managed to move an inch or so. I could see that the walrus was still disappearing. Poka’s snoring hadn’t shaken it out of its trance. The same was true for the ship. It was still slowly turning into mist. As relieved as I was to feel some freedom, it wasn’t going to do me much good if the ship melted.
“Poka!” I screamed again and was greeted with the familiar response of her claw-hooves echoing in the distance.
“Hurry!”
Her galloping grew louder. A few seconds more and she should…
SLAM.
My legs buckled as the full weight of her dense, wet-sack-of-cement body hit my legs.
“Good girl! Up. Up!” I told her.
&n
bsp; She gave me a weird, semi-confused look, like, “Are you sure? You never let me jump up on you.”
“It’s okay. UP. UP.”
Her face beamed with glee as if she was saying, “Okay, you asked for it!”
She lunged. Her paws slamming into my chest. Her tongue darting out, trying to give me unauthorized doggie kisses. Thankfully, she was too short to reach my face. If she did I’d be slathered with warm saliva and possibly get a few teeth knocked loose.
Like Kat always said, “When Poka goes crazy, Poka goes crazy!”
My body swayed as she leapt and pawed at me. I was still stiff as a board, like my feet had been nailed into the floor and my butt had a pole stuck up it. I was swaying back and forth like a tree in a hurricane. At least I was moving, but I still wasn’t free.
The sphere’s colors shifted, and I felt a surge through my body like electricity. I winced and tried to scream in pain, but no words came out. It must have decided that if it couldn’t kill me with pleasure, it would do it with pain.
Another bolt of electricity flashed and I almost vomited from the shock. It was like a kid had just stuck a fork into an electric socket, and I was the fork. I couldn’t handle many more shocks like that. My vision blurred and it started to go dark. I wasn’t sure I could handle even one more.
I felt another jolt of pain. Only this time it was different. It wasn’t my entire body that hurt and the pain was different. What the hellvian was this fraking sphere doing? It had literally just kicked me in the privates. I struggled to move my eyeballs down to get a look at my junk. It wasn’t the sphere that had kicked me, it was Poka. And she was about to do it again.
I braced for it, watching in slow motion as the weight of her dense, tank-like body and the force of her lunge combined to give a championship-winning knockout blow to my testicles.
I still had the presence of mind to think, Why do dogs always know exactly how to step on your junk?
That was when my body crumpled into a ball on the floor. This time I did vomit but I didn't care. I was free from the alien shackles.
“Good girl,” I said, then watched as she stepped off my groin and sniffed the vomit.
“Bad girl! Leave it!”
Luckily she listened. “Thanks, Poka,” I said, patting her back. Then I grabbed her snout and gave her a grateful smooch. Her fur felt soft and smooth, and her nose especially wet. It was like my body was still super-charged from the sphere. I could feel sensations at levels I never noticed before. Maybe contact with the orb had turned me into a superhero! That would be awesome. I always wanted superpowers.
Speaking of heroes, that was twice in two days that crazy dog had saved my life. Good doggie. I had to remember to give her tons of extra treats.
I stretched my limbs and got my body back under the control of my mind. I was getting really sick and tired of unknown aliens controlling my body. That had better be the last time. Realistically though, aliens had taken over my body twice, so odds were high it was going to happen again.
I wiggled my fingers and toes. They were back in my control. So I gave the sphere an enthusiastic middle finger.
The orbgasmic joy of the sphere dissipated like a bad energy exiting my body. Like I’d excised a demon and the black sludge was being sent back to the depths from whence it came.
Did I just say whence?
The good news? I was back! The bad news, the ship and the bot weren’t. They were still dissolving. There was nothing I could do except wait for the end to come. Only this time it wouldn’t be in a wave of bliss—it would be having my lungs sucked inside out and turning into a popsicle in the vacuum of space.
There was only one way to stop the sphere, and before I could even say it, I saw her gorgeous body standing over me. Why was I suddenly noticing how gorgeous she is? How her golden hair caught the light, her breasts pressing against her shirt as she breathed. Her lean, muscular legs perfectly curved. My heart picked up steam and my mind flashed with images of our past encounters.
Those fraking legs! Those perfect breasts!
“You perv,” Kat said with a smirk.
“What?”
“Don’t what me. I know that look.”
“I didn’t give you any look.”
“Wil. Please. I remember that look. And now’s not the time.”
Not the time? It was never going to be the time. No way I’d ever have sex with an alien.
You totally would, I heard my inner voice say.
The damn residue from the sphere must have turned all my senses up to a billion. Thank the universe she didn’t touch me, or I probably would’ve had a full-body orgasm right on the floor. Even with the ship dissolving and me about to get sucked out into space, I was thinking about sex.
A few moments passed, and the super-sensitivity subsided enough that I could stand up without any concerns of embarrassment in the groin region. I stood up and awkwardly adjusted my pants. Now that the super sensations had worn off, I was starting to crash hard. This was getting to be too much like sex. All I wanted was to pass out.
Sex and death.
This was no time for a post-coital nap. I needed to stop everything from turning to dust. Everything except for Kat and Poka, who were fine. Alien Kat wasn’t affected, of course, and I assumed Poka hadn’t been hypnotized by the sphere because she was near Kat. That or because she was too dumb. Either way it was a relief.
“That thing didn’t affect you or Poka.”
“Nope. I didn’t even know what was going on. I waited for a crash after you said ‘Brace yourself,’ but nothing ever happened. I thought everything was fine until Poka suddenly woke up and raced up here.”
“Her snoring snapped me out it.” I wondered how I even heard it from the garden. No way she was that loud. Kat must have had something to do with it. Maybe the alien amplified Poka’s snores?
“Snapped you out of what?”
I pointed furiously at the bot. “Look at him. He’s dissolving. And look at this place—it’s turning to mist.” I showed her the sphere on the big monitor. Not that I needed to. It was impossible to miss. “That fraking thing is doing it. Unless it’s you. Is it you?”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Are you sure?”
She paused. There was no answer. She couldn’t know. Neither of us could. It could’ve been alien-Kat dissolving us all, but that didn’t sit right. So far she’d only saved us. Even when the she’d absorbed stuff, she didn’t do it this way. It was much more instantaneous and dramatic. This was like slow motion, being digested inside the stomach of a snake or something. Kat-alien was like WHAM, BAM, POOF, you’re gone!
“It doesn’t matter if it’s you or them. Either way you’ve gotta stop it.”
“Me? What can I do?”
“I don’t know, but you’re the only one who can.”
“Don’t put that on me, Wil.”
“Who else am I going to put it on? That thing came out of nowhere in front of the planet you teleported us to, after a bunch of aliens started a war with the Earth fleet. For all I know, Earth is gone. This whole thing is on you.”
I almost said I wished I’d never dragged that damn cocoon onboard, but cut myself short. I didn’t want to have her get pissed or start crying (or blow up the ship), because of some frustrated idiotic comment I made. I was trying not to say stupid shat like that anymore. Also, it wasn’t true. In my heart, I was glad I’d brought her onboard. But that didn’t mean I wanted to die.
“Kat, please you gotta do something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Teleport us again, maybe.”
“I didn’t do that. Or at least I didn’t know I did it.”
“Fine, then don’t know you’re doing it. Just fraking do it before we dissolve!”
“I can’t!”
“FRAKING DO IT!”
“FRAK YOU!” she replied, then she went beet red. Not her face. Her everything. Even her eyeballs. I thought she was going to burst into
a ball of plasma. My instinct was to curl up in a ball behind a metal wall.
I’d pissed off Kat plenty of times while we were together, but I’d never seen her turn the color of a nuclear plasma bomb. My universe, she looked angry. Angrier than the time I ate all the Brovain chocolates. Angrier than the time I forgot her birthday. Note to self: Let’s not make alien-Kat angry again.
She was the color of the cocoon again. A rich, glowing red. Was she about to revert back into her nascent form? Was she going let the ship dissolve, leaving me, Poka and the bot to die in space? Was the sphere a transport vessel coming to pick her up and return her to the planet?
It could also be another alien race trying to capture her, but since the orb had no effect on her I doubted it. The alien's power was similar to the Kat cocoon. An energy vampire of some sort. It was sucking us up a lot slower than the cocoon had, so maybe this thing was a less powerful version of Kat.
It might be sucking the energy from us more slowly than the Kat cocoon, but in the end, the effect would be the same, we’re all goners.
Kat’s eyes were now a dark, angry crimson. Small flaming orbs in her beautiful face.
Now at least I knew that hardcore emotions were triggering the alien part of Kat. She might not consciously know what she was doing or how to communicate with the alien, but whenever she got overcome with emotions, something major happened.
Another note to self: Don’t piss off alien-Kat. Or let her-it get too sad, angry, cranky, depressed, or anything. For all I knew, if she got super-stressed she might create a black hole large enough to suck up the universe. Also please universe, for the love of everything, don’t let her have her period. She’d destroy the universe for sure.
Apologies to anyone in the past who might find this when it was bad form and politically incorrect to say that. Occasionally people find artifacts from the future due to rogue time travel dealers.
In the future, people stopped taking everything so personally after the Kulvian War Party invasions.
After the invasions many terms that had previously been thought of as offensive were henceforth considered compliments.