Spots: Alien Porn, Alien Humor

A Web Serial by M.C.A. Hogarth

60. Getting To Know You.	62. New Digs.

61. Alien Porn, Alien Humor

Claws stops a few steps away in the hall... then mutters ****! under his breath and heads straight back into the Fiddler's Room. As Samuel-Colt looks up, surprised:

Claws. "What the **** do you know about sex?"

Samuel-Colt. "I presume you mean the human kind?"

Claws. "**** yes, the human kind!" He points. "I think you've creeped me the hell out with that comment about casual sex."

Samuel-Colt's vestigial limbs tremble, but he suppresses their bowing. "It is hard not to be exposed to human sex, Mother's-Escort. It permeates every part of your society. Even your invective."

Claws pauses. Then bulls ahead. "Yeah, but seeing it don't necessarily mean gettin' it. You're an alien. Hell, do you even have sex?"

Samuel-Colt. "You do observe that there are more Violinists from generation to generation?"

Claws pauses again, eyes the shaking vestigial limbs. Then exclaims, "****! You're laughin' at me."

Samuel-Colt. "Now, now. You were not supposed to notice, since I was trying to be polite about not doing it out loud."

Claws smirks. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Sorry. But still. Do you even know what casual sex is?"

Samuel-Colt rises and goes to a small refrigerator next to a desk. He returns and hands Claws a bottle. "We have some understanding of the notion. Intellectual, admittedly."

Claws. "Is this booze?"

Samuel-Colt. "You seem to need it."

Claws. "Hell, I don't want to drink alone. Do you drink?"

Samuel-Colt. "I can, but my blood volume is much lower for my size than it would be in a human. Drinking is more toxic than pleasurable. We can however have a blackvein incense? That would be the Violinist equivalent of... ah... getting buzzed."

Claws, eyeing him. "You know a lot of slang."

Samuel-Colt. "We have been living among and designing weapons for human soldiers for generations."

"How come you don't use it around anyone else?"

Samuel-Colt. "We do. But not the Mother, nor Lieutenant-Savannah-Bonnet. Females, yes? It's uncomfortable for us to be informal around females."

Claws. "****. We're more alike than I thought. Yeah, light your incense."

Samuel-Colt brings out a small cone and sets it on a clean burner. The resulting smoke is thin and clear and smells piquant; he waves it toward his face with one upper hand, then sits back down across from Claws. "The comment was literal. If I am lucky, I won't have sex at all before I die."

Claws stares at him. "You'll forgive me if I say that sounds bass-ackwards. Never? Have sex?"

Samuel-Colt. "No. Reproduction is... complicated."

Claws. "Tell me about it."

Samuel-Colt. "Do you have a woman of your own?"

Claws. "Uh... no. Not right now." He pauses to drink. "Didn't seem like a good idea, what with me deployin' out to the middle of ****in' nowhere for five years. You? Do you get married? Find some Mother or somethin' to settle down with? And then... I guess, never have sex with? ****, that's messed up."

Samuel-Colt. "It doesn't work that way, no. Fertilization of a Mother's eggs requires the death of the male in question."

Claws. "****! So you only get to have sex once?"

Samuel-Colt. "If we do, yes. And then the Mother eats your body."

Claws. "****, there's a lot of eatin' each other's brains and guts and bodies goin' on in your society, Sam."

Samuel-Colt, with a somewhat grimly-amused minor arpeggio: "Am I creeping you out properly now?"

Claws. "Keep goin'."

Samuel-Colt. "The problem being, when a Mother consumes a male, she gives his personality and memories to the eggs. Which would raise up a generation of clones. It stifles evolution, both individually and as a species. So we have developed a special set of males—blanks—without personalities or higher-functioning minds. They fertilize the eggs, the Mothers consume them and the babies are therefore born with unprinted minds."

Claws, staring. "That is... spectacularly messed up. Wow." Then, shaking himself. "But wait, didn't you say at some point... you're going to get eaten by someone? To pass on your memories?"

Samuel-Colt. "That is correct. When I am old, I will return to the homeworld where I will retire to a maturation chamber with an egg. In the two weeks it takes for it to grow to its adult form, it will consume my body and finally my brain, completing its adolescence."

Claws. "..."

Claws. "So for two weeks you lie there while a ravenous mindless kid eats your body from the limbs in?"

Samuel-Colt. "And then I will die, and become a father thereby. And be reborn, of sorts."

Claws, drawing the word out: "**********." Gathering himself. "****, that's hardcore. ****! I don't think I could sit still for that."

Samuel-Colt. "I don't know if I will be able to either. My memories indicate that some of us have taken it better than others." Another of those minor arpeggios, falling. "They keep the doors locked, just in case."

Claws, over his bottle. "So lemme get this straight. If you have sex, even once, you'll die when your sex partner eats you. And if you don't have sex, eventually you'll get eaten by someone else's kid."

Samuel-Colt. "If I am deemed worthy of being preserved."

Claws. "****! Do you people ever have sex for fun? There's got to be some insect version of non-procreative sex. Or hell, alien condoms!"

Samuel-Colt. "We admit, Claws, it is not something that would occur to us to do for fun. The adrenaline rush one feels when narrowly avoiding death is very very nice, but one would hardly build a culture around throwing oneself off buildings or into weapons' fire just to reproduce the feeling."

Claws. "So what do you do for fun? Besides go to concerts."

Samuel-Colt's laugh is a ripple of music. "That topic we could fill a year with. But at least one thing we have in common..."

Claws. "Oh?"

Samuel-Colt. "I will send you a few pictures to your terminal. You can tell your friends you are looking at alien porn."

Claws. "This outta be good." He gets up. "Thanks for the bottle."

Samuel-Colt. "Keep it."

Claws caps it and tosses it back to him. "Naw. Scythe catches me with this stuff he'll tan my hide. You keep it. I'll be back for it. We'll discuss what I think of your email."

Samuel-Colt. "It's a deal." As Claws turns away: "Mother's-Escort?"

"Yeah?"

"Just to make clear: We make our reports on our weapons research to the Mother."

Claws looks over his shoulder and frowns. "Eh?"

Samuel-Colt, fiddling silent. "To the Mother. What she chooses to do with those reports is her business."

Claws. "That's awful exactin' of you, Sam. Somethin' goin' on I should know about?"

Samuel-Colt. "Just making the chain of command clear. Lest we inadverdantly give offense to someone."

Claws, eyes narrowing. "This 'bout the new LT?" When the alien doesn't respond. "What's wrong with him?"

Samuel-Colt. "He won't meet my eyes."

Claws. "Well, you've got damn-strange ones, Sam, what with the color-changin' and the size and the facets and whatnot."

Samuel-Colt. "Yet you look at them. Even on the first day in the Armory, you looked at them."

Claws. "Well, yeah... where else am I gonna look?"

Samuel-Colt, spreading his hands. "Exactly."

Claws. "All right, all right. I can't say I don't understand. But you are an alien, you know? It's kinda natural for humans not to be comfortable around aliens."

Samuel-Colt. "Maybe so. But that's a long discussion, perhaps for another day." At Claws's look: "You humans and the Other."

Claws. "****. Yes, that's definitely for another day. But... yeah. Your reports go to Spots. And Spots's opinions go through me to officer country. 'Cause I love Spots but hell if she's not a little too by-the-book sometimes. She'd tell them everythin', and then how would they get anythin' done?"

Samuel-Colt's bounced note sounds like a snort. "Truly some things are the same."

"Just enough to make the things that ain't feel like they come outta left field. Anyway. Night, Sam. We'll be back to use your test facility tomorrow."

"Good night, Claws."

Back at the Barracks, Claws finds Spots napping. He glances at her, then sits at his terminal. Hesitates... then checks it for mail and opens the files he finds from the Violinist. And then he starts laughing.

"Well, I'll be damned. The ****in' bugs surf...!"

60. Getting To Know You.	62. New Digs.