7.

The Colloquial Human

The few people aware of the anti-Humanist development were on-edge, Simon among them. Something about knowing utter chaos is poised to break out makes one absolutely paranoid. This is yet another example of universal phenomena. Every sound was an attack. Every light-flicker an assault. Every shadow an assailant.

Were it not for occasional trips to the break-room, and seeing Lina there, Simon might’ve lost his mind. She fared more or less normally. He grew worse over time, internally and otherwise. His feelings became mirrored, first by rumpled clothing and dishelved hair. Then, in a grease-slick face and wide, red-veined eyes.

Ultimately, Niala had been right; hours could pass as quietly as needed, but even five minutes before contact was enough it to a mockery. Simon still remembered confronting Josie– or whom he assumed to be her– and having his throat cut. Things had gone from zero-to-bloody carnage in a blink.

Lina didn’t quite understand that. She was an innocent, in her way. While he wouldn’t recommend near-death experiences– or rather, near-murdered ones– blissful ignorance made it impossible to relate. Then again, she wasn’t entirely ignorant, just in disbelief of her own vulnerability. At least, she treated it as such.

Despite his gratitude for her reassurances, she simply couldn’t make things better. Danger turned him to rubber. Until forced to become stone or become dead, he was useless. He’d done well with the stone part in the past, but his wasn’t an on-off switch engaged at will like Niala’s.

He was tense. So were many others. Like Lina with him, the whole ship felt it even if most didn’t know why. Sleep was restless, difficult. Lina felt it too–

And materialized unexpectedly at Simon’s apartment.

He’d zoned out on his couch, staring at a Vidscreen. Nowadays most people had dual, inbuilt Vidscreen/holoprojectors, but given the cabin’s circumstances, vidscreens alone would do. As spacious as the state-rooms were, space was at a premium. Yet another con to add to the ever-spooling list. Simon didn’t care. In fact, the movie he was currently watching was older than anyone or anything ship-board.

On-screen, the 1000ft tall lizard, played by Haruo Nakajima in a heavy rubber-suit, stomped out and belched atomic breath across Japan. The metaphorical atom bomb Godzilla represented seemed the perfect fit to Simon’s circumstances. Much like the atom bomb, no-one really knew what to do in the event of this new species being met. Everyone had their theories, their protocols to be adhered to, (or discarded) but no-one really knew how to act.

Nor could they. Not until the moment had passed and they could benefit from hindsight.

Much like them, Simon was indecisive, uncertain. He’d inherit enough of the chaos sure to overwhelm Homer’s crew when, if ever, it descended. He currently preparing for that possibility by imbibing as much down-time as manageable. Though something was bound to come and ruin it eventually, he felt the knock on the door premature.

Then the door opened, and there was Lina.

The first thing Simon thought was to check his watch: Despite being more light years from home than most of his species could manage, everyone aboard Homer still went by Zulu Standard time. That is to say, Earth-standard 24 hour day whose zero-hour aligned with the zero hour of an arbitrary line drawn upon a map of “Earth, Sol system” somewhere far far away.

Consequently, the debate of time’s existence and effects is a long, heated one which most often descends into fecal flinging no matter one’s location in the universe.

His first thought was answered by his digital Casio, which gave the time as 02:30.

His second thought was spoken aloud, went, “Lina? What’re you doing here?”

Her eyes fluttered, brighter than she’d have liked. The air around her said she was wired. Simon sympathized, but for once it wasn’t his reason for remaining awake. He’d simply become used to sleeping a certain way aboard Homer. Given the last week was their first aboard, he saw no reason to break the habit yet.

Lina replied to his question with an involuntary sigh. “Can I come in?”

He thought of what happened the last time she’d entered his stately hell-hole and realized he was once again in his underwear. She pushed past for the couch and vid-screen, took in the screaming, atomized breath of Godzilla.

“Old monster flicks? I had no idea.”

He eyed his exposed lower-half, its tightie-whities persisting despite their generations of unflattering fashion, and shrugged. He shut the door and sat beside her on the couch, only then noticing she was clad in a robe, with little more than boy-short panties, slippers, and a dark, see-through tank-top on beneath.

“Y-yeah,” he stammered. “So… is everything alright?”

She nodded, eyes glued to the screen. “Just can’t sleep. Too much work. S’like running on I-V adrenaline.”

He did his best to be at ease with things that otherwise made him feel nervous. Perhaps that was Lina’s plan; arrive as relaxed as possible and catch him in a similar state.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and his eyes fell to her, then beyond to spy the hint of pink peering from beneath her bra-less, tank-top. Panic shifted his attention to his tightie-whities that tented swiftly despite his will.

He squirmed in terror. The heart attack sure to come was fed by the path he found himself on and a dark primal desire. The path was one of real, deep love for Lina. The desire was a hot, slobbering, myopic beast that sought nothing but another of its kind.

The cause, unfortunately for Earth descendants like Simon, Lina, and every other creature hailing from Sol, was the very thing they owed their existence to. An act of bonding between two halves of genetic data in formation of one, new one. This act, known as conception, was an incident (or more oft-times, accident) stemming from succumbing to one or another’s love, lust, or simple boredom driven by that primal, beastly desire.

Early in Solsian history, the goal of this desire was building a genomic legacy that, in the grander scheme of things, was as self-serving and pointless as all other activities life engaged in. Despite never receiving an answer as to its purpose, life was not dissuaded in its attempts to carry on. In parlance, this process was done through “having sex,” “doing it,” “fucking.”

In reality, there was no purpose to life. As evidenced across Sol, the Milky Way, or indeed the known universe. For, in order for it to bear purpose it required one assigning said purpose, a reality with even less evidence than a “life’s-purpose” itself. Like everything, life merely existed. Reasoning was an abstract side-effect of intellect and sentience, just as it seemed, was making an ass of oneself. Believing otherwise was the result of imagination, ego, and the need to belong, to understand.

If one required a meaning for life, in an effort to fulfill some facetious need, they must first recognize that need was no more necessary than life’s existence itself. One would then need recognize “purpose” was merely their own desire to have purpose. Only then could any purpose be ascribed. Thus one must recognize all of the preceding as moot; as unnecessary as anything could be.

If one managed thus, and was not turned away from pursuing the result entirely due to existential dread or elsewise, the following could then and only then, be regarded as life’s purpose– as evidenced by its own commitment to one, inherently adhered to principal; to persist.

The only purpose life, known and unknown, might be said to have was that which coincided with empirical evidence. From the vacuum of space, to the molten core of Earth, and beyond it entirely to the volcanic world of G876-d, and beyond it still, life had done nothing but attempt to, and ultimately succeed in, persisting. In doing so, it had made possible adaptation through the process of evolution.

And thus, it reinforced the idea of persistence as a means of course. That purpose, in its way, was so grand yet simple it seems the greatest rationale as any might find, especially where science is concerned. Grand as it was in its attempt to persist, Nature; the conglomerate of living things and forces acting upon them, had thus imbued the varying species and races with implements to continue persisting.

For Sol, these methods of persistence, fucking, were carried out via the concept of attraction. The bridging force of spaces between two beings capable of mating, attraction, led colloquially, to fucking. As all things regarding evolution, fucking required primers be engaged before the act could be carried out– no matted how satisfied or not the effected parties found themselves after.

For most, Solsian males (and Human males in particular) one of these priming events was the inward flowing of blood to the male sex organ, officially known as the penis, colloquially known as The Rod, Dick, Cock, etc. The blood, then kept from flowing out again and forced to pool, filled The Rod’s spongy, internal tissues. The experienced erection, or “hardening” of The Rod, continued until it more or less stood freely of its own accord. (Other Solsian males, most often politicians, merely found themselves a few inches taller.)

Life’s intent and success at persistence had imbued itself, and Simon specifically, with this tightie-whitie tenting capacity. Blood cells had arrived, and as a family at picnic on a breezy summer’s day, had pitched a tent as large and wide as they could muster. Some were shamelessly proud of it.

Contrary to logical deductions and life’s own “purpose,” this was absolutely the last thing in all the universe Simon wanted to happen.

Or so he thought. For the actual last thing was what came next.

Lina giggled. “Happy to see me?”

He tried to hide it by crossing his legs with an obviously desperate chuckle. Instead, he thrust it forward and grunted. (Recall the male propensity for grunting.) Lina snickered. Before he realized it, she was atop him, straddling The Rod in all its hard glory.

“Lina, I–”

She shut him up with a kiss. Then another.

And a third.

Like their male counterparts, Human females too, had ways of preparing for the act of mating– fucking. It involved a series of secretions released within the reproductive organ, (officially termed Vagina, but also known as pussy, snatch, satin pouch, etc) that lubricated it for The Rod’s reception whilst signaling arousal. (Personally, Lina preferred “pussy,” but like The Rod, there were equally as infinite an amount of names.)

Lina’s body had been worked to a near frenzy before ever arriving at Simon’s door. Admittedly, her intentions had never been to straddle him, but as they were both rather enjoying it now, she saw no harm in it. Rather, it was a reaction to seeing that, like her, he found himself involuntarily aroused by their combined presence.

The near-frenzy she’d achieved before her arrival was the result of her inability to sleep. Temporary insomnia had been a problem of Lina’s since she was a young girl living outside Sussex and dreaming of bigger, more amazing things than England’s southern grasses.

It had taken quite a few years to master her bouts of temporary insomnia, but most of the time, could be done with a single act. If however, that act failed, as it could from time to time, she would be forced to toss and turn restlessly until sleep came far too late and far too short– unlike her.

Incidentally, that act of stress relief was meant to also temper the lust of Solsian creatures. An act that, as a result of Solsian life’s evolved methods for persisting, required essentially fucking oneself somehow. Literally.

Lina had used masturbation as much as a tool for relaxation as for relieving pent-up sexual tension. Since her early youth, when insomnia attempted to rear its ugly head, she skirted and explored her own southern, English grasses until climax left her writhing like a drooling, drugged psych-patient.

From a youth experiencing it for the first time, through restless post-adolescence and adulthood’s nights of grad school, and now to her place on the first expedition outside Sol, Lina’s use of the act had varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, as then with now, failure meant not only failing to achieve sleep but also the intended climax– cumming, and largely the only conscious reason for any creature to attempt fucking, alone or with others.

Lina had failed to sleep, failed to cum, and failed to relieve herself of the growing tension within. Instead of wallowing, she felt it best to visit Simon, hoping to spend her restless night in the company of a warm and familiar embrace, if nothing else. What she did not realize, nor could Simon have anticipated in a million years, was the sudden, unconscious drive that would seize Lina at seeing The Rod so proudly supporting the raised tent.

She wanted to fuck.

Simon.

And Bad.

Thus, the pair found themselves half-clothed, fully aroused, and headed for “the next level.”

The painful confinement of Simon’s tighty-whities suddenly gave way to sexually-heated air between his and Lina’s groins. In a breath, that too gave way to a welcome, constricting wetness. After minutes of astoundingly extreme physicality, the pair collapsed on the floor beside the couch, pleasure trickling through them.

Neither could help wanting more, nor receiving.

Events repeated in prolonged fashion until they once more found themselves on the floor, propped on pillows, with Lina’s robe across them for warmth. Simon was still a ways from it himself, but Lina quickly fell into sleep, her head on his chest and her body against his.

There was no doubt this would prove only the first of many such encounters. They’d already established that desire and more in one another’s minds. Thus, such fucking undoubtedly led to that most highly-regarded of delusions, love. And though Simon could only vouch for himself thus far, he was perfectly fine with it. As other, omnipotent forces could relay however, Lina felt exactly the same.

Unfortunately, things can get much more complicated before settling for any protracted period. For Simon, Lina, and others prepared to board the temporary outpost over G876-d, that time was roughly… now.