The Loneliest Man in the Universe

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THE LONELIEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE

A SHORT STORY BY: FAUSTIAN FABLES

My species advanced technologically far beyond your own, only to be beset by specific biological and social-political realities. Underneath the oceans of Rasvolus, we farmed kelp and fished seastock. Agriculture begot towns, cities, technology, the internet, and interstellar travel. It happened quickly, but couldn't be sustained. For my species was one in which males perish during intercourse. With great progress came discussions of equity, rights, and responsibility. What resulted was terrorism, population collapse, and civilizational demise.

NASA astronaut Jennifer Penkin flashes her eyes open. Her head aches, and she sees an empty bottle of tequila floating beside her. She alone operates this space vessel in abundant solitude. It's not surprising she'd have strange dreams.

She floats to the glass starboard window. Her vessel approaches its destination. The International Space Station, whose faint lights flicker, is paneled with solar arrays torn in half, like feathered wings ripped off an angel. Between them, thick cables coil, resembling the splayed arteries or intestines of some gutted mammal.

Her hair is straight and blonde, pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes are green, her face freckled, and she wears makeup. She's been without companionship for several months.

It hovers near the smooth yet rusted surface of a torus alien spaceship. Her CIA handler on Earth informed her she'd be the third human being to have the privilege of investigating the most significant discovery of all time--the abandoned spaceship of a technologically advanced alien race.

She takes the reins of the ship's controls and guides her vessel gently to the beleaguered space station's docking bay in the starlit blackness of space.

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Beep! Beep! Beep!

Through artificial gravity, the astronaut stands once again, the first time in months, on a steel catwalk leading into the ISS.

Lights blink, flicker on and off, and steam puffs out ribbed vents.

A woman wearing yellow and black eyeglasses, a green jumpsuit, and a pin featuring the Soviet Union's flag grins as she greets the astronaut. "Welcome!" she says in a thick Russian accent. Her hair is scarlet and flowing.

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The two sit across a small table in a cramped room full of blinking electrical panels, humming electronics, and a painting of Joseph Stalin.

They eat savory meat dumplings that smell and taste of spiced pork and cabbage.

Her mission is to investigate the alien ship, rescue the cosmonauts, and return to Earth.

There is a burnt electrical smell.

"Where is your companion?" Jennifer asks.

The cosmonaut gestures with her head toward a glass window overlooking the torus alien spaceship.

"I will need to inspect your ship to determine what supplies are compatible," Natasha explains. "Then we can join him."

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The women, dressed in green Soviet cosmonaut suits, clink their boots against the gnarled black coils that form the interior of the alien spacecraft. It too has artificial gravity.

They do not make it far until they reach what resembles a plunging abyss of blood. It's not blood, however, as the air smells sterile and not of iron. It's cool on the alien deck.

Natasha removes her helmet, leaving only a coiled, ribbed breathing apparatus.

Jennifer follows suit. The cosmonauts were here for weeks and presumably discerned the safety of things.

Natasha dives into the abyssal blood water.

Jennifer shivers and feels her hair bristle on the back of her neck. Whatever species constructed this ship must be aquatic. She dives into the cold, rippling depths.

The women swim through bubbling corridors filled with blood colored water, breathing through tanks mounted on the backs of their Soviet spacesuits. They reach a large room with looming screens displaying text written in alien script. The related control paneling is operated not through buttons but a series of large levers and switches.

Jennifer studies the screen.

Something bubbles.

The corpse of a male cosmonaut floats out a vent, collides with Jennifer, breathing apparatus detached, rotting flesh, eyes shrunken, rotten teeth gleaming, skin yellow and bruised, and rectal tears in his suit consistent with anal rape.

Jennifer grows pale, widens her eyes, shivers, and feels thick in her throat.

Something wraps around her ankle and pulls her up and through bubbling, coiled, obsidian corridors.

Jennifer's wet body splashes as she is lifted up and above the surface of blood-colored liquid into a large room with vats of different colored paints. A large window looks upon her spaceship and the ISS. The ceiling depicts, in vivid color, detailed paintings of Natasha mating with the tentacles of a giant octopus-like creature, laying eggs out of her asshole, warming them with her buttocks like a nesting bird, and hatching octopus-human hybrids. She peers down and sees a large, powerful tentacle, rainbow-colored from the application of paints, coiled around her body and holding her in place above the rippling blood surface.

A splash sounds, and Natasha emerges wrapped in a thick, painted tentacle. "My lord, I brought her to you, just as you asked!" she says in the voice of a craven zealot. "She is younger than I. Perhaps she can do what I have failed to do, and lay your eggs!" Her eyes appear crazed, and she starts to laugh hysterically.

Several phallic tentacles the width of a girthy penis burst from the red surface of the water, wrap around Natasha's legs, invade her spacesuit, and rip it off her body, rendering her naked, tits bouncing with unusually wide areolae, penetrate inside of her glistening slit, invade her asshole, and hover over her face. She grabs one from which she sucks enthusiastically.

The cosmonaut shivers, moans, and shakes.

The phallic tentacles inseminate her ass and vagina, leave the Russian woman dripping with wet cum, and ejaculate into her mouth and on her face. The spent tentacles withdraw under the rippling red surface only to be replaced with new ones.

The water below Jennifer bubbles before exploding in a flurry of additional phallic tentacles.

The astronaut's neck hair bristles as she feels the fleshy tentacles wrap around her legs, slide against her bumpy skin, disrobe her of her suit, and cut her off from her breathing supply. She struggles for breath in the unoxygenated room.

The head of a phallic tentacle rubs at her painted lips before worming its way inside the astronaut's mouth. Oxygen flows from its salty tip.

Jennifer has no choice but to suck on it eagerly.

The creature penetrates the astronaut, hovering above the blood-colored surface. At least three phallic tentacles snake inside her dripping wet vagina, and a second inside her asshole. The one she sucks feeds her more than oxygen.

The astronaut coughs, drizzles white alien seed onto her jiggling, freckled tits, swallows his jizz, and takes a new tentacle in her mouth from which she sucks out salty oxygen.

Natasha strokes the heads of two phallic tentacles with the soft palms of her hands before they ejaculate on her face and large nipples, and the one in her mouth explodes.

Jennifer feels his warm seed inside her loins and asshole.

Musk and the scent of seafood wafts. The surface of the water ripples.

He surfaces as a giant octopus-like creature with a brain so massive its folds are visible through the thin membrane that makes up the beast's fragile, white skin, lacking an exoskeleton.

I was genetically engineered in a last-ditch effort to save my dying race. They made me an immortal genius. I've scoured the universe for centuries looking for something I could breed with. Madness overcame my brilliance, beset by the loneliness of empty space. Take my seed and lay eggs for me and mother offspring of the most technologically advanced race to have ever lived.

Jennifer moans and shivers, watching the damaged ISS through the large window.

The astronaut's spaceship explodes in what was undoubtedly a controlled demolition. It makes no sound in the vastness of space. Natasha must not want to return home.

It would be months before NASA could send another shuttle so far out into space. In the meantime, she would be stuck here with the cosmonaut and the loneliest man in the universe.

The astronaut closes her eyes, parts her lips, gasps, jiggles her freckled breasts, and sucks oxygen and white seed from tentacle. A relaxed smile crosses her cum-stained face as she fantasizes about laying his fertilized eggs.