Reflection

MPAD-24 led you to your quarters. Once there, you made the open gesture and entered. Although the room was small and barely furnished, you didn't care. Right now you just wanted to be alone to have some time to collect your thoughts. You moved to the small mat near the wall that was intended for sleeping and sat on it. It wasn't long before you pulled yourself into a fetal position with your knees drawn up to your bosom and your head tilted down. Tears followed soon after.

Your mind was flooded with the memories and emotions from recent events, and you tried to sort through their implications and assess your true feelings about each of them. You were still coming to terms with the fact the Odyssey was gone along with all your ship mates. Until now, you hadn't had time to deal with the grief of their loss, but here in your quarters your sorrow was finally pouring out. So many wonderful friends and colleagues were simply gone, never to be seen again. Their promising futures had been snuffed out so unfairly by a collision with an artifact of alien technology, a massive device you could see but barely comprehend. You were the one awake at the controls of the Odyssey, so in a way were responsible for the loss of the ship and the crew. Was there something you'd missed? Could it have been avoided? Or was sub-space technology so mystifying that there was no possible way the ship's sensors could have detected it? Those were questions that might haunt you for the rest of your life.

You'd nearly died, twice, and now your life's course had been irreversibly altered. A few days ago, you didn't even know aliens existed, but now they and their machines represented your only contacts for the foreseeable future. You admired the intelligence of the Greys, but you felt little connection to them. Interacting with them was almost like talking to their emotionless robots. Your brief encounter with the Arthro was intriguing, but any relationship you formed with Klix would probably be short-lived. Once he found a new homeworld for the Arthro, he would likely leave, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, you'd seen the Gargo from a distance and his physical appearance had turned you on, but based on the odor from his quarters you might not be to able withstand being in his presence. That left the two species you'd had the closest contact with: the Feelers and Cunis. You'd experienced pleasurable orgasms with each, but you were still trying to sort out your feelings over both of them.

Regarding those orgasms, you'd lost count how many you'd experienced today. In addition to those you'd enjoyed with Mari and the Feeler, there were also the ones from the probes. Before this, you'd dabbled a bit with vibrators, but your most memorable climaxes had come during encounters with male partners. However, the intensity of the ones today ranked far above those. Considering that there were no humans on the Starpoint and apparently no males besides the Gargo, your choice of physical companionship for the rest of your time here might be limited to bunny girls, plant tentacles or mechanical probes. This wasn't the future you envisioned when you enrolled at the ASE, not by a long shot.

Not only were you the only human here, but you weren't even completely human any longer. Key parts of your body had been replaced, and you were now some kind of hybrid between human, Cuni and machine. With the organs from the Cuni having an insatiable urge for sex, and the power converter that replaced your stomach needing to constantly be fed semen, the result made part of you feel dirty, as if you'd been turned into some kind of alien whore. Yet there was another part of you that was eager for the next sexual encounter with alien or machine, and another that craved your next meal. Even now you could feel hunger pangs, but they didn't seem to originate from your machine-like stomach, and instead the sensation came from somewhere lower in your reconstructed anatomy. Perhaps the Doctor or one of the Cunis could explain that.