by Jamie Petit
“Thank you.” I finger the badge hanging off my hip. I’ve never used a Wynmerian computer. Never read up on it either. I make a mental note to check sources on Wynmerian computer interface and to write my own piece on it if nothing existed.
“We’ll be taking off very shortly,” Andax explains. “That’s why you’re seeing so much activity around us. We’ll have about ten days of intra-system travel before we reach the jump point. Give or take a few days, depending on conditions.”
Once we jumped it would be just a few hours until we reached their home system, then roughly two or three days until we reached their planet. “What’s your mission once you arrive?”
“Nothing terribly interesting. Resupply. Let some troops off for shore leave, take on new recruits for training. Ah, here we are!” He stops in front of a door that I notice has what might be my name next to it. “Press your card to that smooth spot there.”
I do so and the door slides open. He gestures for me to enter ahead of him. “Thank you.”
“You’ll have plenty of time for your research,” he says, leaning in the doorframe. “We’re all here to help you. If anyone gives you a hard time, you make sure to tell me.”
I laugh slightly. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Some of the men are a bit shy around humans still,” he elaborates. “It’s a second generation of Wynmere-Earth relations, but it still feels a little strange for some.”
“Not a problem,” I reassure him. “I’m looking forward to working with you and your crew.”
His eyes narrow on mine. “I’m looking forward to my time with you as well. You’re not like most Earthmen. And certainly not like any we’ve had on this ship.”
“Oh? Uh, I… You’re my first, uh… sorry, was that speciest?”
Andax roars a laugh. “Don’t worry.” He steps into the room, looming powerfully above me. He rests a hand on my shoulder. Again, I feel that electricity, that strength. “If you need me for anything at all, I’m in the first room on the opposite side of the hall,” he says, pointing out the door.
“Ah, yes, well thank you.” It’s all I can do not to choke on the words.
“Do not hesitate.” His eyes are locked with mine and I feel something new, something warming me from within, down in my belly, or perhaps even below. “Good night, Tanner.”
Andax is out of my room before I can react.
I fall back onto the bed, sinking into the mattress in a sort of defeat. “Computer?” My voice empties into the room. I have no idea if they work the same here.
“Yes,” the computer voice replies from somewhere in the room.
“Make a call to Earth. Janie Neuser. Panama Block, nine oh nine, signal five-eight-seven-two.”
The walls hum and then click. “Hello?”
“Hey babe.”
“Oh, hey. How’s space?”
“It’s pretty amazing. The ride up the elevator alone was practically unbelievable. They had this amazing bridge that connected the ships. You could look right down and see all of Earth. I’m hoping I can get permission from the Admiral to bring you up here when I get ba—”
“Hey, can we talk later?”
“Uh…sure?”
“The girls and I are going out. I’m getting ready now.”
“Oh.”
Her voice perks a little. “They knew how sad I’d be about you leaving, so they wanted to cheer me up.”
After our conversation earlier, I have a hard time accepting her sincerity. “Right, yeah. Have fun babe. We’ll talk—”
“Luv ya!” Click.
“Later.”
“Call ended.”
“Computer… play some music.”
A cacophony of Wynmerian intertonal tunes comes pulsing out of the wall. I’m not in the mindset for it and I cringe.
“Computer, turn it off. I’m going to bed.”
THREE
Vertigo hit me with a slow, damp, chill down the back of my neck. The next day I was on the bridge with Andax. I looked down at the speedometer. Making the conversions to metric from the Wynmerian units was difficult, but I knew enough at a glance to tell we were going blazingly fast. Yet, when I looked up out the front window it seemed like we weren’t moving at all—the stars on the celestial backdrop didn’t change a bit.
Andax’s hands slide onto my shoulders and I all but jump out of my skin.
“First day tension,” he chuckles, and kneads my muscles. God, his hands feel good. There isn’t a single woman I’ve ever been with whose hands felt this good.
“Just a little. My first time for all of this.” I turn around so I can look at Andax, though it’s a little uncomfortable having to crane my neck. “My body is still adjusting. My mind too.”
Andax gestures towards a pair of nearby chairs. “Why don’t we have a seat?”
“It’s all quite a bit to absorb.” I rest back into the seat. The foot rests automatically adjust to my length and our respective seats adjust their height so that our eyes are level. “That’s a neat trick.”
Andax nods. “Invented quite a while ago. With so many necessary inequities in our society we needed as many ways to even things out.”
I pull out my notebook and pen. “Do you mind if I interview you a bit right now?”
“Not at all.” His deeply bronze flesh shimmers. “There won’t be much for me to do until we reach Wynmere.” He leaned in, pressing his gaze—if it’s possible—even more firmly upon me. “Consider me at your complete service.”
I swallow. Hard. “Excellent.” My skin tingles. His eyes are gorgeous. Not just for a Wynmerian, but for any being I’ve ever seen. They’re large, translucent, and crystalline—a three dimensional, high-refraction iris unique to their species.
“So, what were you thinking of discussing?”
“Well, you mention the inequities. I was just wondering a bit about how Wynmere ended up with such a monoculture? Or if you have at all. Is that an exaggeration of the Earth media?”
“All little of this, a little of that. We certainly appear to be monocultural looking from an Earthman’s perspective. You have as much or more cultural difference in a single city than we do on our entire planet.”
I nod, jotting furiously. “It wasn’t always that way, though, was it.”
“No, but the hard choices we had to make to ensure the survival of our species led to some unfortunate outcomes. At the time it was reform or die. We chose reform.”
“Who could blame you?”
“Many people, it turns out.”
“Was there an alternative?”
“If there was, no one knew what it was. We still don’t. We know that even this solution, this arrangement with humans won’t last forever. It’s not in our genes. The amount of genetic variation we need in order to reproduce is unsustainable.”
“Have you found any other alien races besides humans?”
“Not any that we’re compatible with. We’re trying, though. It took us ages to find you. Maybe we were lucky.”
“Tell me about the reforms.”
“What can I tell you that you haven’t read? Once we realized we wouldn’t be able to perform Omega transformations on our own population with any regularity we knew we had to get off world. We consolidated our populations into cities and orchestrated the most intense industrial effort the galaxy has ever seen. Every Wynmerian had a job. We mined the whole planet and built the sort of ships that you’re on right now, setting out for the stars and hope.”
“How did you get everyone to agree with such an immense undertaking? That sort of cooperation suggests something unusual.”
“Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me. There were fringe groups. They remain today. But they live in the wilds beyond the city.”
“Even today?”
“They certainly don’t need to. We ended our draconian policies almost a century ago. It’s a nice place to live, Wynmere. We do all our mining off-world, and it’s all voluntary. But some people see what we do—m
ating with humans—as a sort of sin against the species, I suppose.”
“How do they justify it? How do they not just die off?”
“Well, there’s always genetic anomaly. Every once in a while they’ll manage an intraspecies procreation. Along with a few radicalized city-dwellers running off to join them, it’s sufficient to maintain their numbers, but it would be impossible at the level of sustaining the entire race, though.”
“Will it be possible to speak with any of these radicals?”
“Impossible. The wilds are too dangerous and the inhabitants to violent. You can’t reason with a Wildmere.”
The first mate approaches Andax, handing him a tablet. “Sir, we’ve got a course correction along Alpha-five-niner. How would you like to handle that?”
Andax hands the tablet back. “Thank you Freav, I’ll be over to the navigation deck in just a moment.”
“Yes, sir.” Freav cuts back across the bridge to the navigation charts.
“Tanner, I hope you’ll excuse me. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Of course not.”
“Why don’t you take some time to familiarize yourself with the ship? Interview anyone you wish—if anyone gives you a hard time, write their number down and give it to me.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“We’ll reconvene over dinner.”
“I look forward to it,” I say, standing and heading for the door.
“And Tanner…”
I stop and turn. “Yes?”
“This is going to be a long journey,” he says, closing the distance between us in three smooth steps. “I can tell you’re tense.”
“No, I’m just—”
He cups my chin in his hand, turning my eyes towards his. “You’re tense. I want you to relax. Any time you want to join me for a workout or the sauna, let me know.”
“Yes… sir… Andax.”
“I want you to feel at home.”
My voice is completely gone. I smile and nod and walk out the door. As soon as the door to the bridge closes behind me I gasp for breath.
FOUR
The days after were a furious mix of interesting and frustrating. Interesting as I dug deeper into the Wynmerian culture, a researcher on the forefront of a burgeoning subject; frustrating because with every further minute I spent beside Andax, the stronger an attachment I began to feel to him.
At some point I started to wonder if there was trickery involved. Perhaps a bit of Wynmerian physiology that our scientists hadn't yet found? A pheromone crafted just for the human male to turn them into virtual broodmares?
Could it be?
It was hard to explain how so many humans could be drawn to these aliens so easily. Hundreds of human males, many of whom had never shown a tendency to homosexual urges were falling for these aliens. Weren't we a race with politics largely predicated on some form of xenophobia or another, when we weren't fighting over resources?
Yet, time and time again, human males would take on a lover and have their bodies molded to the needs of the Wynmerian brood-state. They'd give up Earth even and travel across the stars and start new lives on impossibly foreign soils. Sure, it sounds romantic, but a little insane too.
At least that's what I was trying to tell myself as I felt myself drawn more and more to Andax. I'd just finished a tour of one of the social facilities on board the ship. Andax had shown me around, his arm cast comfortably over my shoulder as he introduced me to different crewmates and the activities available.
I'd done all I could to simply focus on taking notes, but with every peripheral glimpse of his taut flesh, his crenellated muscles, the musk of power washing over me, I became distracted and found myself moving ever so slightly closer to him with each passing minute until, by the time we were finished, I was all but pressed tightly against his side.
I immediately excused myself, feigning some reason though I forget what. I close the door to my room behind me and latched it shut, sure to keep out prying eyes and ears.
"Computer. Earth call. Janie Neuser. Pana-" The phone began ringing before I could finish giving it instructions.
The line clicked on and the computer spoke. "Time delay is twenty one point oh eight seconds."
"Hello?" Janie's voice sounded like crystal and gold all in one.
"Hey darlin'. I missed ya."
There’s an agonizing delay as I waited for the signal to reach her and return. "Hey babe,” she said, eyes cast down at her nails as she filed them. “Missed you too. They working you hard up there?"
"You know it. Maybe a little too hard," I said with a teasing lilt to my voice. "I was thinking maybe we could enjoy a little stress relief together." I wiggled my eyebrows into the camera and grinned.
It's another twenty-odd seconds as my cock gets harder. At first I try to think about Janie, about fucking her brains out, but the second I thought about the dim lights of a room ready for sex, the sound of a bed creaking under repeated thrusts, I couldn’t help but have Andax explode like a firework in my mind's eye.
“Oh, babe, yeah I guess we could.” She was silent a moment, then sort of haltingly drew a hand up to her collarbone, dragging her slender fingers along the flesh above her breasts. “Um, what would you like me to do? We’ve never done this before.”
“It’ll be fun. There’s no one here.” I leaned back against my pillow and reached a hand down to grasp my cock through my pants. “Play with yourself for me. Tell me what you’d do to me if I was there.” I slowly started to unzip, fishing myself out.
For twenty seconds I sat there, stroking my sensitive cock, trying to hold onto the singular thought of Janie.
“I guess, um, take out… well, you’ve already got it out. Uh. I’d… um, put my mouth on… you? I don’t know.” She sort of huffed. “I don’t know, Tanner. This was your idea. You say the… things.”
“Yeah, sure. I’d kiss your neck while I massaged your breasts. I’d work my way down, sucking and licking and nibbling your little nipples. My cock would slide over your clit while I played with…” She hadn’t gotten my message yet, but I saw her attention get pulled away. She muted her mike and spoke to someone off screen. “Uh, darling? You, there? Should I… should I keep going?”
She kept talking another moment then unmuted. “Oh, hey, babe, this is fun and all,” she said in a totally unconvincing tone, “But I’ve got to run. Plans, you know?”
“Well, wait, with who? What are you doing? Are you…” But the line went dead. Blank screen. Silent. “Fuck!”
Left with a raging boner and too angry to jerk off.
I just had that feeling in my gut that Janie was screwing… what’s his name. Boat guy.
I’d kind of expected that things might not last. Even before I told her. She’d always seemed a little less invested, as if she could stay or go with little concern for which was which. I’d always had to keep up with little things to keep her happy. But now that I was so far away I felt utterly helpless.
She was a challenge to love, but I loved the girl and all the challenges that came with loving her. Still, I couldn’t help being furious with her for so easily brushing me off.
I couldn’t let this all get in the way of my doing my job. I had to stay focused. I decided to go get my mind off of things, and give my boner a chance to die down. I stripped off the rest of my work clothes and slipped into gym shorts and a tee.
I made my way down to the workout room and found Andax there, practicing Wynmerian martial arts. “I thought I could do a little hands-on research and get in a little exercise.”
Andax dropped the man he had slung over his shoulder and strode over to me. “Excellent. I’m glad you decided to join.”
I looked down over his exposed body. This was more of Andax than I’d ever seen. Heck, this was more of any Wynmerian I’d ever seen outside an anatomy diagram in a textbook. He had on just a pair of tight briefs. “I am too.”
“Have you ever practiced Bchakdu?”
“R
ead about it. Messed around a bit with friends, but nothing really.”
“I’m honored to be the first to teach you then.”
“So, what’s step one?”
“Well, step one is to realize that much of what I’m going to teach you is only applicable to Wynmerians. Try some of these pressure moves on another human and they’ll shrug.”