The Sea Beast Takes a Lover

by Michael Andreasen

  He will tell her again today, while they sit in the lab’s waiting room, that her need for attention is hurting both of them. He doubts she will be very receptive.

  Reel with surprise when you learn that the Man of the Future and the Woman of the Future are not from the future. They are very much from the present, or possibly even the past, if one is to believe what science says about the time-bending physics of interstellar travel. But “The Man of the Past” does not sell tabloids, and no one will click on “The Woman of the Present.” The temporal inaccuracy of their names isn’t even what bothers the Man of the Future most. What bothers the Man of the Future most is the way these monikers imply a deep personal connection between the two moniker holders, which could not be further from the truth. Understand that aside from a few regrettable windshield-fogging minutes in the backseat of a snow-buried Volvo, a subsequent unmeasured but seemingly brief period of intergalactic travel at speeds nearing that of light, and their weekly visits to the lab, where their bodies, now new scientific frontiers, are examined and explored by stymied but determined lab techs, the Man of the Future and the Woman of the Future have no real relationship to speak of. He wishes this fact could have been reflected in the news-channel chyrons during their joint interviews following the incident. Something like: “Man and Woman of the Future (not a couple).” This, at least, would have been more accurate, and a good first step toward convincing his wife to come home.

  * * *

  —

  Since the abduction, Colette, the Woman of the Future, has been cashing in on their low-level celebrity. Look: They are sitting together in the lab’s waiting room, the red diodes on their foreheads keeping time together, blinking with the same brightness and interval, maintaining a perfectly synchronized pulse. Listen: She is telling him about how she’s cleaning up.

  “The fanboys at these conventions,” she says while typing on her laptop, “you wouldn’t believe what they’ll pay just to touch it. One offered me five grand to lay alien eggs inside him, which, you know, I wish.”

  The Man of the Future doesn’t respond. Hear the lab-issue sea-foam-green gown crinkle with his awkward shifting.

  Know that Colette is more than just the Woman of the Future. She’s incorporated. She’s the Woman of the Future, LLC, and TheWomanoftheFuture.com. She’s a blog, an e-mail newsletter, a Twitter feed. Recall her from Reddit. Recall Redditing her. Reread transcripts of her otherworldly communiqués, or her reports on alien estimations of humanity, its place in the universe, its progress and trajectory as a species. Pay the $14.99 monthly membership fee and log on to learn the ways in which her senses have been fundamentally enhanced. Listen as her weekly podcast describes how she can feel satellites as they pass overhead, how she can hear the sizzle of sunspots. Believe her when she says that her thoughts are more focused, that her food tastes better, that her sex is more profound.

  Or don’t. The Man of the Future doesn’t. He finds it convenient that none of these new abilities and sensations are easily verifiable, but since the lab has refused to release their medical records even to them, no one is in a position to refute Colette’s claims or prove that she isn’t still in contact with her extraterrestrial betters, leaving her free to post about their alleged private exchanges, cultural misunderstandings, and little alien inside jokes without fear of reproof. Her subscribers pelt her with questions of cosmic importance, and some less-inspired earthly concerns, to be taken directly to the alien intelligences for answering. She draws hundreds to the conference hall of the now infamous Radisson for live-streaming press conferences in which she recounts their abduction in all its steamy detail.

  “These people have a kindergarten attention span,” she explains to him. “You should get yours while you can. Also, it’d look better for both of us if you’d step up and corroborate me once in a while. I know I’m not the only one hearing voices.”

  “I don’t hear voices,” the Man of the Future says.

  “The hell you don’t,” says Colette.

  “I don’t,” he insists.

  “Whatever,” she says. “You were there.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk so much about that night,” he says. “Or my part in it, at least.”

  “Truth’s the truth, kiddo.” She clucks. The waiting room door opens and a tech waves her in.

  “I have a wife,” he says.

  “Uh-huh,” she says. “And when was the last time you saw her?”

  The Man of the Future doesn’t answer. For a while, all he does is blink.

  “Look, you need to get your head straight about this. I’m not ashamed of my actions,” Colette says. “If you think I’m giving you the shaft, come out and say so.”

  Look how easily she rises. How little she appears to care. Amazing.

  “Nothing worse than a man who won’t take responsibility for his affairs.”

  “How are we today?” the tech asks as the door eases shut behind her.

  “Dandy,” she says.

  * * *

  —

  Is affair the right word?

  There was flirtation, certainly, and desire aplenty in the itchy exchanges that passed through the glass wall between their offices, their little hesitant waves and smiles in between clients that could’ve easily been dismissed as the usual office niceties, the How goes its, the Hang in theres, the Someday, huhs. But there were also the smaller, less obvious performances: her lips grinning around a pen cap when she knew he was watching, his pine-needle hair purposefully combed to appear less thin on the side facing her office, his eye helplessly drawn during a conference call to the bob of her shin on a coppery knee.

  Then, the upped ante. Winks and coy smirks advancing to buttons left strategically unbuttoned and legs left tantalizingly uncrossed. And who could forget when, on her way to the copier, she offered to freshen up his coffee, returning with his St. Louis souvenir mug filled to the brim, and when her unsteady grip made it spill slightly over the edges, she lifted the smooth ceramic to her lips and licked the side of the cup, washing over the hyperbolic curve of the city’s famous arch with a full, flat tongue right in front of him.

  Come on.

  So: flirtation. And, admittedly, some deception. There had been a work conference. That much was true. A rental car company showcase in February at an out-of-town Radisson. His mandatory attendance had not technically been a lie, but what about his plans for dinner afterward, which he described in passing to his wife as “a bite with some coworkers”? Merely a slip of the tongue? A harmless plural, which, strictly speaking, should have been singular?

  Fat chance. The look on his face when he walked into the restaurant with her on his arm, the gormless grin of a carnival winner, had said it all.

  But then, on the drive back to the Radisson, the blizzard. An entire February sky overturned and shaken out over the highway, bringing traffic to a standstill. How determined the Man of the Future had been in the face of it. He would get them there. Too much had been risked to turn back, he thought, until a shriek from Colette stopped him just short of sending the Volvo under the taillights of a barely visible lumber rig, making it clear that there was always more to risk. In the end, he surrendered to the storm, pulled the car to the shoulder, flipped on the hazards. They would wait it out.

  Minutes later, in the snow-hushed Volvo, their necking fever-pitched, the Man of the Future’s hands reached out for that coveted second base. Colette’s breasts had admittedly been one of the driving forces behind the tryst. Held tight by her tailored suits and whatever elaborate carriage systems lay underneath, they had always appeared firm and youthful, the thick, creamy filling beneath the rich devil’s food of her professionalism. But oh, how that promise of firmness melted away with the unlocking of her bra, from which a waterfall of boob spilled down into the shallow pool of her navel, breaking flat and lifeless against her chest.

  The Man of the Future
did his best to manage this minor disappointment. As Colette arched her back and overmoaned, he caressed what he could, grazing her wide nipples with his fingertips, fighting the image of raw eggs in his palms, yolks runny, whites slipping between his fingers. He turned his attention instead to the soft curve of her shoulders, the shifting alignment of her hips, the persistent pressure of her thighs as they bridged his lap. This was fine, the Man of the Future thought as Colette groped at the pleats of his khakis. This was good. This was still worth it.

  Meanwhile, under cover of snow and wind and moonless night, a huge, handsome alien spacecraft, broad and sleek and lit up like a supermarket, drifted through a warm bath of ozone and began its delicate negotiations with the earth.

  Whoa there, said the planet.

  Relax, said the craft.

  Relax nothing. You’re not of this earth, said the earth.

  We’ll only be a minute, the craft promised from its oh-so-patient hover. Superquick. In and out. Just need to pick up a few things.

  Mine is the sky, the earth said. The waters, the mountains, the trees. Mine are the little ants in their anthills, the little birds in their nests, the little people in their homes. There is nothing you could possibly take that isn’t mine.

  Come on, said the craft.

  Get lost, said the earth.

  Hey, the craft said sweetly, casually easing closer. You’ve got all kinds of people! We’re after one, maybe two at the most. You can spare two. How many billions will that leave you?

  Somewhere overhead, shadowed and nervous, the new moon slid by.

  Imagine the feeling of an orbit. It’s no carnival ride, no waltz around the maypole. It’s more like falling, in a circle, all the time. Not to mention the fact that even the smallest gravity well can invite all kinds of unwanted attention from weapons-grade debris, constantly exposing whole global ecosystems to the threat of total annihilation with one meteoric smack.

  This can make a planetary body anxious. Even a little paranoid.

  Seriously, said the earth. Take a hike.

  All right, the craft said. We were hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it’s worth mentioning: We’re engineered to navigate black holes and white dwarfs, quasars and pulsars and gas giants and nebulae. Your little tug is child’s play to us. We’re trying to be polite, but the bottom line is: You haven’t got the mass to stop us.

  The planet furrowed its tectonic plates, sloshed its oceans, hunched in its spin. The craft sat frozen in its landing sequence, waiting for the inevitable to sink in.

  Don’t get too comfortable, the earth said, and rolled over, and over, and kept rolling.

  For real, five minutes, said the craft, which was more than it took to collect the Volvo and its two passengers, now naked as day and moments from consummation, from the snowy shoulder of the road before jetting effortlessly up, beyond the influence of bodies in space, until the craft’s vulgar brightness was just another grain of white sand stuck in the asphalt parking lot of night.

  * * *

  —

  The Man of the Future thinks about his wife often. Often at night. Often with his penis in his hand.

  Masturbating. To the idea of his own wife. Imagine!

  Tonight he is masturbating to the memory of their second date. By the end they had made a run for it, his shirt already fully unbuttoned before they reached the hallway of his apartment. Then, in the bedroom, her skirt tugged hard enough to tear, followed by the startled yelp of mattress springs, the knock of teeth accidentally meeting, the sublimation of underwear, until, with her head and arms trapped in a half-hearted attempt to remove her still-buttoned sweater, he was inside her, pushing her blindly into the headboard, where her palms were luckily already poised to push back. At the time he’d found it a potent anomaly, the sweater covering her face, the woman writhing beneath him represented in body only. He assumed that his charge into her had caught her so pleasantly off guard that it had stripped her, as it had him, of the will even to complete the minor task of removing the sweater, not realizing that the tight grip of the mother-of-pearl buttons at its collar, which he’d admired earlier that evening but had since forgotten, might instead be what was preventing her from surfacing. But she hadn’t complained. She had given herself over to the moment as completely as he had, and when he heard her wool-muffled whimper after he came, he took it as his cue to lower his wet brow to her shoulders and finally dig her mouth out to kiss her.

  It does not now seem strange to him, staring at his enfisted, metronomically red-lit penis in the dark of the bedroom, that one of his most potent memories of his wife should include almost no record of her face. Instead, what he wonders is: How often do you do this thing where your penis is in your hand?

  But understand: He is not thinking this via his own thoughts. This thought seems to sneak in from outside his normal thinking.

  Not terribly often, he thinks. Though admittedly more, recently.

  How many times a week? the thoughts that are not his thoughts wonder.

  Hey, thinks the Man of the Future.

  Hey what?

  You’re not my thoughts, the Man of the Future thinks.

  We’re not? the thoughts respond. How can you be sure?

  The Man of the Future cannot be sure, but he feels fairly certain that something is up. He tucks his penis back into his boxers.

  Never mind that, say the thoughts. What’s your average life span?

  What?

  How long, would you say, does your species live? On average, the thoughts want to know. In years is fine.

  The Man of the Future thinks about it. Eighty maybe? More or less? Why?

  Great, say the thoughts. Good good. Also, in a few words, what would you say is the best thing about living in your current biome?

  The Man of the Future suddenly realizes how little he has thought about his current biome. Those tiny songbirds he doesn’t know the name of come to mind, and rain-wet sidewalks, and the pear tree in his neighbor’s backyard. In the spring there are rabbits, which is nice.

  And the people of your biome? the thoughts ask. Also nice?

  The people, he thinks, yeah, maybe. Some more than others. He imagines he could probably do without a few of them. Colette, for instance.

  Yeah, sorry, the thoughts say. We thought you were a set.

  We are not a set, thinks the Man of the Future.

  But you do come in sets, correct? the thoughts want to know. We’ve got that part right at least?

  The Man of the Future doesn’t know what to think, so he thinks, What difference does it make? Seriously, what’s this all about?

  Nothing, say the thoughts. That’s all super. Really, good to know. No need to worry about it anymore. You did great.

  The Man of the Future feels the thoughts drop away like sand in water and falls asleep. He wakes the next morning with a plump headache and a strange dryness in his mouth, as if he’s spent the whole night with a dentist’s suction nozzle tucked into his cheek. The dream he had been dreaming, in which a many-armed machete-wielding Colette chased him through a restaurant crowded with every woman he’d ever slept with or ever thought about sleeping with, evaporates in the daylight, but every word of the previous night’s conversation remains.

  * * *

  —

  Observe: The Man of the Future is waiting in the lab while a tech goes over his most recent scans. He has received little by way of explanation regarding the nature of the blinking device in his head. The techs are always grumbling about their inability to use the MRI machine. Apparently there is a risk that its magnet would rip the diode from his skull, along with any other alien metal that might be floating around in his body. Though no one has told him yet if more is actually present. And really, who can say?

  The techs can say, he thinks, but they don’t. They’ve made it clear that, at this stage in their anal
ysis, there are few answers to be had, which makes the Man of the Future eager to know when they will be entering the next stage, the one in which there will be answers to be had. This, to him, seems like a crucial stage, and one they should probably have reached by now.

  Watch how lazily the tech rolls over to the Man of the Future on his wheeled stool, placing a digital photograph showing a cross-section of the Man of the Future’s head up alongside his actual head. The head in the photograph is colored in patches of red and orange and yellow, like a map of inclement weather patterns. The tech traces a few of the patches on the photograph with the butt of his pen, then traces the same lines against the skin of his patient’s face. He squints at the photo, then squints at the Man of the Future’s blinking diode. His pen butt gives the diode a few exploratory taps. The Man of the Future goes cross-eyed watching. The light keeps blinking.

  “Has it been bothering you at all?” the tech asks. “Hurting you or anything?”

  The diode has never bothered him. It has never caused him any measure of physical pain or discomfort. If he wasn’t able to see it breathing red into every remotely reflective surface all day long, the Man of the Future might forget about it entirely.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” he says.

  The tech says nothing. He taps the light some more. It goes on blinking.

  “Do you know what it is?” the Man of the Future asks. “Do you think you can remove it?”

  The tech cinches his mouth, tilts his head, swivels his seat. He is waiting for a pitch he likes.

  “Or do we just have to wait it out a little more?” the Man of the Future asks.

  “We may just have to wait it out a little more,” the tech says.

  * * *

  —

  Colette’s breasts had been even more disappointing in space. Gravity had at least given them form. Without it, they were left to wander like amoebas, floating lazily with her hair in the mock atmosphere of the spacecraft. Adrift in the backseat of the Volvo, in the low light and particulate-heavy air, her sleeping body had looked like deep-sea vegetation, the kind whose calm, hypnotic swaying helps it attract and ensnare prey.