The Sex Move

The first brain slug host in Tokyo wandered the streets for three days before being taken in by a big-hearted street vendor. Let them sleep in his shop and taught them how to cook ramen. That shop became the core of the Tokyo Hive. This is their basic recipe.
—1,001 Ways to Cook Ramen

A bluebird was making a nest in the O of the Cosmic Fill-Up sign above the door. Mel stared at it for a long moment, watching the bird perched on the lip, sorting twigs, coffee stirrer sticks, bits of paper. Ha-Yoon finally came out and looked up at what he was looking at. She immediately pulled out her phone and took a picture.

"Corporate will love this," she said.

Mel frowned. "Do you have to tell them? They might—interfere."

"Are you kidding? They love any opportunity to show us as part of the community, part of the ecosystem," his manager said. She looked at him. "You okay?"

He shook his head. Not sure how to put what he was feeling into words. Maybe it was just the cumulative weight of everything that had happened, and was going to happen. Dinner with Amelia. Dinner with Molly and her mother. Rache sleepwalking. New roommate. Spy agency bullshit.

"Weird night," he said. "Maybe work will take my mind off it."

"That's the spirit!" Ha-Yoon clapped him on the shoulder. "I need to walk you through the Etherling station."

Mel had always wondered about the food kiosk with the alien language at the end of the row. It looked a lot like a soft serve ice cream machine, but with a digital menu and a scanner attached to it. There was also a separate waste disposal below, part of the machine. Ha-Yoon made Mel wear the augmented reality goggles and gloves, even the rebreather.

"This is a training program. It'll run you through everything. There are some quizzes, games, and stuff they make you play. Pay attention, do a good job. This one is actually important," she said. Then smiled. "Once you master this, I can put you for promotion to blue shirt."

Mel stood up a little straighter at that. He smiled.

"Sure, boss," he said.

Glowing instructions outlined Mel's vision. A woman's soft, cultured voice explained things.

Some molecules, like carbohydrates and most amino acids, were chiral—able to exist in two different configurations. Most life on Earth had evolved for a particular chirality. Some of the species in the Exodus evolved on worlds that had the other one. So eating Earth food could be toxic, and vice versa, although the voice explained the real situation was more complicated, and it was closer to not being able to process the food correctly. The Etherlings were the most numerous of these non-terrestrial-chirality species, and their food station was basically set up to serve necessary nutrients to them and species with compatible anatomy, while making sure as little of the good got into the ecosystem as possible.

As Mel unlocked portions of the machine, he saw the scanner where an extraterrestrial would scan their embedded ID chip to make sure humans didn't get a bowlful of protein porridge that they didn't have the enzymes to process, or a flavorless sugary drink with the wrong kinds of sugars. He saw the warning signs labeled on some of the micronutrient containers, which included stuff that could give humans heavy metal poisoning. Walked him through the way containers were tracked by RFID chips and how the trash was bagged and compacted separately to avoid animals or homeless people going through it . . .

Mel became aware of the red-head by the magazine rack as he finished the third quiz. A thin, triangular face framed by jaw-length red hair. Yellow jacket over what looked kind of like a blue tennis dress, which left pale, freckled legs bare. It was the eyes that were most noticeable to him, though. They were clearly artificial, each one a trio of small rotating lenses set in the sockets, the eyelids peeled up and tucked away.

She didn't buy anything. Kept her distance. Patient. Yet she always kept Mel in her field of vision, and when Mel locked the Etherling station and went to return his AR goggles and glasses, she followed at a discreet distance. He was not surprised to find her standing at the entrance of the hallway which contained the supply closet and restrooms, effectively blocking his escape. In her hand was a smartphone.

It was playing Mel's video. The one shot in the K'lur'k restroom. Mel's eyes inadvertently darted to the doorway.

"Hi. Kayce O'Bannon, Slug Fucker Illustrated. Is this your dick?" she was grinning, showing very white teeth. "Because if so, I'd like to interview you."

"Now really isn't a good time," Mel said. "I'm working."

"By law, you're authorized a 10-minute personal break for every four hours of your shift," O'Bannon said. "That's all I'm asking for. Ten minutes."

Mel frowned. He wasn't sure what she had just said was true; at least, he had never heard that law before. Also, he didn't like her eyes. The way the tiny cameras were fixed on him with unnerving, unblinking intensity. Like she couldn't look away.

"Why?" he asked. "Why do you want to talk to me?"

"SFI is thinking of expanding, covering other aspects of the human-extraterrestrial sexual relations scene," the redhead said.

Mel's frown deepened. "Rishathrans?"

"So you know about them!" the reporter said, smiling wider. "How did you hear about them?"

He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he looked toward Ha-Yoon's office, and where Jordan would be manning the register behind the counter.

"It hasn't been four hours into my shift yet," he said, taking the swifter out of the supply closet. "Let me think about it, and I'll let you know in . . . about an hour. Okay?"

"Deal," she said, and stepped back and out of the way. Mel could almost feel the eyes on him as he tried to decide what to do. It was unnerving how this journalist had managed to track that video back here, and then immediately asked Mel if it was his cock on display. A part of him really wanted to know how she did that; if only because if O'Bannon could do it, so could other people. However, he had to balance his own curiosity with the privacy concerns of his girlfriends. If O'Bannon didn't already know about them, he didn't necessarily want her to find out. Then there was the question of what the reporter would do with whatever information Mel gave her. Mel was pretty sure he didn't actually want anything he said to be published.

He ran the swifter all the way to Ha-Yoon's office.

"Hey, boss?" he asked. "Is it true that, legally, I'm allowed a ten-minute break for every four hours of shift?"

"Yes," the gold-shirted woman said, fidgeting with her sobriety chip. "Why do you ask?"

Mel told her about O'Bannon. One eyebrow raised.

"Officially, having sex on company property, especially during work hours, is not allowed and is grounds for immediate dismissal. So whatever else you say, it definitely wasn't done here, just in a K'lur'k biowaste disposal kiosk that looks remarkably similar, and it definitely wasn't done during work hours. Understood?"

"Yes, boss," Mel nodded. Then added: "Any advice?"

Ha-Yoon gave this question all due consideration.

"Do not give this reporter any personal identifying information," his manager said at last. "Including your full name, date of birth, tax ID number, or home address. I wouldn't normally feel the need to specify that, but you are inexperienced about life, frighteningly honest, and have a tendency to just roll with the punches when you should tell people to go fuck themselves."

Mel considered this and nodded.

"Thanks, boss," he said.

Ha-Yoon chuckled and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Ha! He thinks I helped."

Kayce was getting a coffee as Mel swiftered over to the counter. Jordan turned to look at him as he slipped behind the coutner and hopefully out of hearing. He grabbed a pen and pad of paper and handed them to Jordan as he quietly explained.

". . . so what do I do? What do I say? Or not say?" he said. "I want to know how she found out, but . . ."

Jordan scribbled on the pad and handed it to him.

Do not show her your dick. Sex is not allowed. Do not mention hive business. Do not say anything legally incriminating on the record. We trust you. We love you.

"I love you too," Mel said.

He caught Kayce's eye as she checked out, and carefully replaced the swifter. She waited for him near the exit doors.

"Okay," Mel said. "Ten minutes. Outside."

Kayce smiled and followed him out. She waited until the door had closed before she asked:

"Can I see your penis?" she asked. "For journalistic purposes."

"I was specifically instructed not to show you my junk," Mel said. "How did you find me? Also, I'm going to get fired if anybody knows its me having sex at work."

"If you dig into the metadata of the original upload, it includes a cell tower address; this is the only Cosmic Fill-Up within range of the tower, and you're the only male employee," she said. "Who instructed you not to show me your penis?"

"One of my girlfriends," Mel said.

"Any other instructions?" she asked.

Mel took the note out of his pocket and showed it to her. It seemed faster than trying to dissemble. Kayce carefully scanned the note.

"Your girlfriend is a brain slug host?" she asked.

"Two of them are," Mel said.

The journalist digested that.

"How many girlfriends do you have?" she asked.

"Three," he said. "We're exclusive."

"I have video of you getting sucked off by a K'lur'k," the journalist said. "Two hundred million people have seen it."

"My girlfriend gave me permission," Mel said. "Two hundred? Really? Wow."

"She gave you . . . permission," Kayce said. "You're in a polycule, with two brain slug hosts and a human . . . she is human?"

"Rachel, yeah," Mel said.

"And you're exclusive, but your girlfriends can give you permission to have sex with other people. Including extraterrestrials," Kayce said. Her voice was somewhere between shock and morbid curiosity.

"That's pretty much the size of it," Mel said. "Sounds a bit weird just saying it out loud."

"How many species have you had sex with?" she asked.

Mel had to think about that for a moment. It was not something he imagined other people would need to rack their memories about.

"It kind of depends on what you call sex," he said, and started counting on his left hand. "Um. Oral and vaginal sex with brain slugs with human hosts. Oral and vaginal sex with a human, no brain slugs. Oral sex with a K'lur'k. Um. Felt up a Greyan's boobs. That was a little weird. I got tasped by an Electrovore. That wasn't really consensual, but I think it counts."

He stared at his open hand.

"So, five. I've been with five species," Mel said. He wiggled his fingers. It felt so weird saying that out loud.

"You know ninety percent of our readership would kill their own mothers to live your life?" Kayce said. Her eyes couldn't widen in wonder, but her artificial eyes were focused on him with unnerving intensity.

"My mother's dead," Mel admitted. "I'm an orphan."

"Harsh," Kayce said. "How long have you been a slug fucker?"

Mel winced. "I don't really like to use that phrase. But, um, it started not long after I left the orphanage. I got a rent-controlled apartment, but there was a brain slug host as a roommate . . . and it kind of snowballed from there."

"Like, literally a snowball? Like the sex move?" the journalist said.

Mel frowned. "Describe?"

"It's when you cum in someone's mouth and then they swap cum into someone else's mouth with a kiss," she said.

A memory flooded back. That time outside of the apartment, when Jordan and Jenny had kissed, and then swallowed.

"Technically," he said. "Yes. The sex move."

"Awesome," she said. "I'm legally required to inform you that I'm recording all of this."

Mel sighed. "Just don't put it up on the web? Please?"

"Background material for the article. This is platinum," Kayce said.

They had, at this point, circled the Cosmic Fill-Up twice, and were coming back to the main doors, where Ha-Yoon stood, arms crossed over her gold shirt. She smiled at Kayce and tapped her watch.

"Ten minutes are up. Back to work," Ha-Yoon said.

Mel gave Kayce a smile, and the reporter nodded.

"Thank you. I might contact you later for further details," the reporter said. "Also, on a personal note, you have an amazing life."

"Yeah," Mel agreed, and smiled to himself. He looked up at the bluebird poking its head out of the nest. He'd never tried to look at his life as someone else would see it before. "I really think I do."