Educational experience

The first Human-Extraterrestrial hybrid was created by accident in the bed of a Ford pickup truck in Florida in 2049, the result of a very novel and completely unexpected transmission of genetic material via a biological mechanism previously unknown to Earth scientists. The resulting mass of hybrid cells was closer to a tumor than an embryo and nearly resulted in a fatality, but many xenobiologists considered it a promising start.
—Anaïs Nineveh, The Exodus: A History, Chapter 7

"Psssst..."

The bathroom seemed to be sweating.

Every sink dripped. The floors were wet beneath Mel's bare feet. His shirt and underwear stuck to his skin, cold drops rolling down his body, but each lungful of air was frosty. Step by step he was drawn toward the last stall. White phantoms visible in the reflections, just out of the corner of his eye. He saw his hand rise, pull open the door, but it was like watching a movie. The hands were his, but he wasn't doing it.

The hole in the wall was bigger now. Big enough to crawl through. The edges looked melted. The tug of the escaping air pulled at him, and Mel had to brace himself against the door with hands and feet. Beyond, the stars whirled in constellations he couldn't name. Drops of sweat were pulled off of him and froze into tiny crystals of ice as they passed the threshold into the great beyond.

He shivered, not just at the cold, but at that hole, and what it represented. Mel stared into the void and heard the rattle of the toilet as the screws that secured the seat, always loose, came away, and it fell sideways outside the walls of the orphanage.

A pair of hands touched his shoulder. A soft, feminine voice in his ear.

"You can't say you haven't thought about it," she whispered. "You can fight it all you want, but you can't run away from it. You always knew no one was going to adopt you. They never wanted you. There are only two ways out of this place, and you can't stay."

It wasn't a push, exactly. Just a pressure on the backs of his knees. The legs buckled. Mel's grip on the sides of the stall tightened as his feet left the floor. Slowly, the underwear was pulled off his legs and flew off toward the stars.

Mel had slipped out of bed in a cold sweat and was in the bathroom, fundoshi unwound and trying to figure out how he was going to pee through his morning wood when the cans rattled. Rachel stepped forward, a darker shape in the living room, already naked. Instinctively, his hand went to the bathroom's light switch.

The small scream of alarm brought the entire apartment out into the main room, to see Mel naked with his erection, Rache naked and covering her eyes, Jordan and Jenny nude, and Béibhinn—

The short ghola with the androgynous face had off-grey skin, mottled in places with darker splotches. There were scars down the back of her arms and legs in thin surgical lines, and the pale white body of the actual ghola worm was visible as a strip that ran from the crack of her ass up her spine to the neck, then crooked back down, disappearing beneath her left shoulder bone like an elongated question mark. Béibhinn's skin seemed drawn too tight in places; the right arm showed more muscular development, so the left was skinny by comparison, and her thighs and buttocks thicker than Mel expected, the breasts too round for the thin torso, the vulva oddly protuberant, lips nearly black.

A dark wooden baton with a handle set perpendicular was in her right hand, the length of it extended along her forearm.

Mel tore his gaze away and stepped toward Rachel, moving blonde hair out of her face.

"Mornin'," he said. "You okay?"

"My abs hurt," she said, wiping sleep from her eyes. "I think my eyes were bigger than my vaj. Next time, I don't care what I say, please don't poke your dick in my cervi—who the fuck is that, and why is she naked!?"

The ghola took her cue. She smiled brightly and stepped forward, left hand extended, weapon-bearing arm down by her side.

"I'm Béibhinn. New roommate. You must be Rachel."

"Vivian?" Rache asked, her Ottawa Valley accent showing.

"Béibhinn," the ghola corrected. Rachel repeated the name, and this time she got it right.

"Charmed," Rache said as she shook the ghola's hand, then blinked and furrowed her brow. "New roommate? And why are you naked!?"

Béibhinn shrugged. "Everybody's naked. Is that not normal?"

Rache looked down at herself, and swiftly covered her nipples and crotch with her hands and arms. Her head scanned the darkened room. In the light spilling out of the bathroom, there was no sign of what she was looking for.

"Where are my clothes?" Rache asked.

"I don't think you came in with any," Mel said, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her. "You were naked when I tucked you in last night. Sleepwalking again."

"Shit," Rache said. Then her cheeks flamed crimson. "Oh fuck, what if someone saw me in the hallway?"

Mel glanced at the kitchen clock.

"It's 4 AM, and your apartment is right across from ours," Mel assured her. "Probably nobody saw you. We can find you something to wear to cross back over when you're ready."

Rachel glanced at his erection, and then back to the ghola, who was still standing outside of what was now her room, hands on her hips, utterly unconcerned about her lack of clothing.

"Clothes," Rachel said. "Then explain to me the new roommate thing."

So they did.

Jordan and Rachel were close enough in size that the sisters could shop in each other's closets, so Rache was soon in borrowed panties, socks, sneakers, wifebeater, and exercise pants. After Mel finished his business in the bathroom and rewound his fundoshi, he stepped out to find Jenny had laid out his jeans, socks, shirt, and hoodie. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and signed a thank you. Béibhinn put on a t-shirt that said SLUGUSSY in yellow and blue swirly letters and her white gi pants.

The weapon was nowhere to be seen.

"So Cara is okay?" Rache said, more comfortable now that 3/5ths of them were clothed.

"She seemed to be," Mel said. "Although we can go check, see how she's doing."

"And you're . . . security?" Rachel asked, turning to the ghola.

"Counterintelligence," Béibhinn said with a smile. "But if need be, I've some training."

"And your relationship with Mel is . . .?" Rachel asked.

"He's tasty," the ghola said with a wink. "But we haven't made any formal arrangements yet. Considering he's claimed by the Seacouver Hive and all, if I want a piece of that action I'll have to negotiate. So stop worrying about me stealing your boyfriend. Besides, I find sex with women more . . . interesting."

The ghola's rotted-jade eyes flicked over to where Jordan and Jenny stood, unashamed in their nudity. It was a leering gaze, and made Mel's skin crawl in an entirely different way than he expected. A part of him wondered if it was true. Béibhinn had been quite adamant she liked the taste of his ejaculate—but then, dietary necessities and sexual preference could well be different when it came to brain slugs and their kin.

Rache laid a hand on Mel's forearm.

"Mel and I often take walks in the morning. We'll, uh, see you later." Rache smiled automatically, but it didn't reach her blue eyes. The ghola waved goodbye as the pair went out the door. Mel held the door open for Rache as they stepped onto the street, and then the tall blonde grabbed his arm like she was never going to let him go.

"I really didn't have a chance to tell you earlier," Mel said, his voice apologetic. "You were asleep."

"It's not that. I mean, I'm weirdly getting used to how many people have seen me naked at this point," Rache said. "But what really has me upset is that we made love last night so hard that it feels like my gyno got too enthusiastic with the Pap smear, and I still crawled out of bed after more of your dick. I really hoped sex would take care of the whole sleepwalking thing, but apparently a part of me is still . . . thirsty."

She chewed her lip. Mel, not sure what to say to that, said nothing.

Seacouver was still asleep. Yet Mel could see crocus pushing up between the cracks in the sidewalk and in empty lots, hear the skitter of squirrels. Spring was inevitable, and the city remembered it, the sounds and smells. There were streets, Mel knew, somewhere in the city lined with cherry trees brought over from Japan after WWII, the little pink blossoms falling all over. He had been there to see it once, on a school field trip.

It seemed far away from the dark little wooded path of Freeman's Park. The trees there were evergreens.

"What do you want to try next?" he asked, feeling like he had to say something.

"I was thinking you could disable my keycard," she said. "That way I can't just barge in."

"That might work," Mel acknowledged. "But if you are sleepwalking and you hit a locked door, what happens? Would you turn around or wander down the hall? It's safer if you come to our place than just wandering around."

"Point." Rache agreed with a sigh. "Honestly, I'm not sure what would have happened if sex did work. Would I get dicked to sleep every night like some nymphomaniac?"

Mel felt a creeping heat over his face and down his neck, glad that they hit the darkest part of the woods so she couldn't see what the thought of that did to him.

"Do you think people do that?" Mel asked suddenly. "Like, people in a committed relationship, or get married. Do they have sex every day?"

Rache paused, and Mel stopped with her. They were all in shadow, just a little light at either end of the tunnel of trees.

"Maybe at first," she said, her voice odd. "The honeymoon period. When Mom had a new boyfriend, they tended to have a lot of sex. She wouldn't say that's what she was doing, but she'd send us out of the house, or just lock her door. I used to listen, sometimes, and look through the keyhole. Then it would grow less and less, and then they weren't together anymore. Why did you ask that?"

Mel let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"Because . . . maybe it's because I've never been in a relationship before. I don't know what to expect. What the expectations are. I want to be a good boyfriend. Having sex with you is so good, and if you wanted to have sex every day, I'd do my best to make you happy. I just don't know where the line is between real relationships and fantasy. The older teens at the orphanage, they would talk after lights out about getting girlfriends or being married, and how it meant sex every day, and I didn't know if that was normal and expected or just one of those things like—like when you're hungry at night and you build these feasts of all these exotic foods in your head, but in the morning it's breakfast and you have the same bowl of cereal and that's fine."

Mel rarely put so much of himself into a single burst, and he felt oddly empty in the chest after saying that.

"I've got three girlfriends and get to perform or receive oral sex nearly every single day, and sometimes we have sex and that—it feels like a fantasy, sometimes," Mel said. "Like something the older kids would make up. I don't want to take that for granted. Or push you into anything you aren't comfortable with. So when you say having sex every night until you fall asleep makes you feel like something's wrong with you, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel, because the image of that scenario is so good it doesn't feel like it could ever be real. Like real life doesn't let that happen. So maybe there's something wrong with me. Because I wish I could help you fall to sleep that way."

There was more that Mel could have said. How he wanted to hear her make those sounds again, how he wanted to see that smile of satisfaction and exhaustion, that sleepy kiss as she slid, sated, into some deeper level of unconsciousness than just crawling beneath the covers could do.

Rachel's cheek pressed against his in the dark. It was startlingly hot.

"Love," she said. "Isn't measured by how many times a week you have sex. Maybe that's where my mother went so wrong with all of her boyfriends. Mistaking the two. I don't think there's anything wrong with you. Maybe there isn't anything wrong with me, either. For thinking about it. Sometimes, we can have a little fantasy if we make it work."

She seemed like she wanted to say more. Her hand suddenly went to his crotch, and his erection was almost painful in its shocking suddenness. Rachel felt it, too, rubbing gently through his jeans. Mel could feel her smile on his cheek. Then she stopped and tugged him along to resume walking.

"Do you think the result would be different if I invited Jordie and Jenny over?" she asked.

"I don't know, but I definitely want to see that," Mel said, grinning back at her. That earned a laugh.

"I'm going to tie my foot to the bed," Rache said as they exited the path. "We did that before, when I was younger. I don't like it, the same way I don't like my toes tucked under the covers, but at least if I do sleepwalk I won't go far."

Mel gave her arm a squeeze. He wasn't sure what else he could do. Sex, it turned out, was not an all-healing superpower that could solve all of his problems. Yet he wished it had helped Rachel, at least this one time.

Béibhinn was moving through some kind of exercise in the main room as Mel returned. She had the wooden baton in her hand, and swung it through several slow, carefully controlled exercises. Jordan and Jenny were watching, and Mel watched too.

"Martial arts?" he said.

"Yes. Good for grounding biomechanics. It doesn't help to know how to fight if your body doesn't have the right muscle memory, range of motion, or pure physical strength," the ghola said, the baton hitting the air in a thrusting strike. "Theory versus practice."

"We normally do some stretches first thing in the morning," Mel said. "But we don't want to get in your way."

"Not at all," Béibhinn said, straightening up. "I'll join you."

So they did. Basic toe-touches, warm-up stretches, crunches, push-ups, and what Mel's PE teacher had called "Hello Dollies," on their back, raising their legs and opening and closing them. Which was a good exercise, but unexpectedly lewd when half the participants were naked.

"I can see why you like these," the ghola said with a grin. "Now let me show you something."

She stood straight, heels together, hands at her side. Then she moved. Slowly, purposefully. Moving from one distinct stance to the next.

"Tai chi," Béibhinn said. "Is a martial art. It can be a practical form of combat, although its main popularity now is exercise, and its interest for me is to raise bodily awareness. If you wish, I can teach you."

Mel glanced at Jordan and Jenny, who neither moved nor signed.

"Sure," he said.

No time that morning to do more than show them a couple stances. Then there was the general rotation of the shower. While waiting their turn, Mel walked Béibhinn through the household chores, showed her the fridge and dishes. The ghola scratched her chin, noticed she was doing that, and stopped. Mel noticed.

"Gholas are evolutionarily hardwired toward short-term survival. We tend to minimize a lot of pain reception. Long-term, that means we tend to accumulate a lot of little injuries because we can't feel them. So I have to pay attention to scratches, minor infections, bruising, that kind of thing to avoid cumulative injuries rendering a host uninhabitable," she said.

Mel blinked. "You sound like you have a different kind of relationship with your body than brain slugs do."

Béibhinn gave a tight smile. "Yes. Some of your more heavily augmented humans, the transhumanists, have a similar understanding. This body is mine, but it is not me; my consciousness exists within it, but it is not my essential self, but a vehicle for my interaction with the world."

He nodded, not sure what he could say to that.

"Seems practical," he said at last.

Her smile turned up at the corners. "It can be. If we don't like something about our bodies, we change them. Not strong enough? Exercise. Want bigger breasts? Get implants. Ghola tend to be more open to things like body modification in the same way certain car enthusiasts are keen to modify their own vehicles. For brain slugs, who only ever have the single host, the experience is more . . . holistic. They focus on maintenance, not shaping their bodies."

Mel remembered how Jordan had looked when he had first met her. Thought about how she looked now. Was her skin a little brighter? Her movements a little quicker, less lethargic? Was that because of the changes in exercise and diet since he had moved in? He chewed on that thought. While Mel had known he had been changing since he came here, he hadn't considered how he might be changing her or Jenny or Rachel.

The brain slugs emerged, and Mel took his turn in the shower. When he came back, he found Rache had been and gone, dropping off the borrowed clothes. Béibhinn was standing in the kitchen, her palms raised toward the ceiling, arms extended.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," the ghola said. "But it's faster. You know that."

Jordan and Jenny didn't frown. They held each other's hands, and then extended their other hands out, palms down, to place them lightly on Béibhinn's. Mel got dressed again and had finished tying his shoes by the time the little triangle broke apart.

Béibhinn glanced at him.

"Just getting to the quick of things," she told him. "Your work schedule, rules of the house, security signals if needed. A little negotiation."

Mel tried to keep his expression blank. "Negotiating what?"

"I want to take you with me the next time I go to the gloryhole," the ghola said with a smile. "I think you'll find it an educational experience."