Think like a mammal.

Earth's unrestricted media broadcasts provided considerable cultural enrichment to the children of the stars before the ships even approached Earth orbit. The hastiness of their flight from the collapsing intergalactic node meant their own store of cultural works was relatively limited. Earth provided an instant source of alien entertainment and education. It is no surprise that many extraterrestrials born on Earth have taken to heart the credo "Think like a mammal." This was easier for some species than others.
—Anaïs Nineveh, The Exodus: A History, Chapter 1

Mel was in the library again. The librarian had been doing genealogical research, but she took a smoke break and had stayed logged in to the website. His hands were clammy as he slid into the still-warm chair, shoulders tense and heart hammering as he typed in his own name. Arkwright, Melville. Born 8 February 2037. Parents . . . his mother's name, Sinead. Born 2019. Died 2040. A hyperlink. He held his breath as he clicked it.

Oral Sex for Beginners began to play. The woman on the screen was achingly familiar. Not like Mel at all. Like an older, curvier, more mature version of Jordan and Rachel. The hips were wider, breasts a bit heavier, nipples darker. Her smile was warm and generous as she stared out at the screen.

"Now, I'm going to show you how to pleasure a pussy. For this demonstration, I'll be joined by my niece . . ."

A familiar thin, blonde, female figure stepped onto the screen, face placid, blue eyes unworried as she took up her position in the chair, thighs spread, heels in the stirrups, her shaved slit bare.

"Hmm, she's a little dry. Let's start by getting her a little wet . . ."

Mel stared at the woman he didn't know, he never knew, as she bent over to kiss Jordan's cunny.

---

Jordan elbowed Mel in the ribs as she slid off the bed. He blinked into the darkness, breathing hard, the cage too tight around him as his morning wood failed to achieve full erection in the tight confines. Jenny was already at the doorway to his room, her eyes glowing slightly. Mel took a deep breath and tried to shake off the last vestige of the dream as he realized they were waiting for him.

Slow exercises. It was the first time Jordan had joined them. Stretches. Mel touched his toes and saw Jordan struggle with her balance for a moment.

"Easy. Go slow. Don't strain anything. This is just to limber up. If you haven't done this in a while, it'll take time and practice. No rush. That's how you hurt yourself," he said, echoing his P.E. teacher's words.

Exercise. Shower. Less of a mess with the toilet this morning. Mel was beginning to think he was getting the hang of the cage, which involved, among other things, meticulous cleanliness to avoid being insufferably grody. He had never paid so much attention to keeping his junk clean as he had the past few days, and in hindsight, that felt weird and gross. Something to do better about in the future.

Anastasia was leaving for work as Mel and Jordan left, but headed in the opposite direction; greeting and parting with the same wave of the hand, 'stasia's hands in gloves from which the fingertips had been carefully removed and the edges of the holes turned over and hemmed. Mel laced his fingers with Jordan's as they hit the street. A cold front had moved in overnight, and the streets were wet, the air frosty.

March in Seacouver. Spring didn't even feel like a possibility.

Jordan shivered; she hadn't dressed for this weather. Instead of heading back for a long-sleeved shirt to go under her blue work shirt, Mel shrugged out of his hoodie.

"Here," he said. "Don't want you catching a cold."

By the time they had gotten to the Cosmic Fill-Up, Mel felt like he might be the one in danger of catching a cold. His cheeks were wet and numb, and he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. In the relative warmth and light of the workplace, however, he soon fell at ease.

Nor was Jordan in any hurry to give him the hoodie back.

Ha-Yoon glanced at him and said good morning, but seemed in better spirits today. Or at least didn't delve immediately into talk of incest, felching, and assorted topics. No, she was taking inventory, and Mel was her muscle, lifting crates and boxes in the back room, running scanners over barcodes. Not everything was RFID tracked, which meant a certain amount of manual labor was involved.

"They could track it all," Ha-Yoon said. "Automation is amazing these days. Up in space, my sister tells me there are entire habitats being built with almost no direct human labor at all. Jobs like hers, they require hands and hands-on knowledge and experience. But the government wants to keep unemployment low on Earth, so they mandate certain design features to make sure folks like you and me still have jobs."

"That's nice," Mel said.

Ha-Yoon snorted. "It's so you can pay taxes. Nobody wants to pay unemployment on an unemployable 18-year-old. Part of the reason you're house and on basic income, too. They figure if you have enough to eat, a place to live, and a television, you won't go around robbing people."

Mel thought about what Detective MacElroy said about the program. Ha-Yoon didn't know about that. Nor, he decided, did she need to. While he didn't like the whole conspiratorial way of thinking, he had to admit that it felt like a lot of things happened in the world that affected him in ways he didn't know about or have any say over. One piece on a planet-sized chessboard, with an unknown number of players and everybody playing for their own goals.

Sometimes he wondered what his goals were. He had Jordan, Jenny, and Rachel as his girlfriends. Anastasia and Ha-Yoon were friends, and Blair, Tomie, Bobbie, and Maxine were at least coworkers. Detective MacElroy was, if not a friend exactly, then kindly disposed. Same with Two-Clicks and Béibhinn. Mel was pleasantly surprised to think of how many people he knew now that were either having sex with him or actively non-hostile and accepting. He had more friends now than he had in high school, or at the orphanage.

Money, of course, he didn't have a lot of. Groceries ate up most of what was left of his paycheck and basic income, but there was a bit left for necessities like new socks or little luxuries like the books for the ASL class. That was, as far as he was concerned, more than enough for right now.

Mel wondered what he would do with more money. He didn't know how to drive, so a car wasn't really anything he wanted or needed. Bigger and nicer apartment? Only if Jordan, Jenny, and Rachel came with. A smartphone, maybe, or one of those phone implants would be useful, if only so he could keep in touch. More books? He was doing okay with finding things to read, thanks to the library.

As he carefully scanned bottles of some low-alcoholic koumiss drink called BluMalk, Mel thought about it. He thought about the documentaries he watched with the girlfriends.

Travel, Mel decided. He'd like to go and actually see those places with his own eyes, not just see them on television. Stand beneath gigantic trees in the Pacific Northwest. Walk barefoot on a sandy beach and see the crabs crawl around the tide pools. Raise his face to the sun in a desert, close his eyes, and hear the wind play through the vast emptiness.

The Greyan came in just as lunch finished up. Some sort of vegan burrito today, baked soy chunks, multicolored rice, black beans, and spinach. Mel appreciated any bit of variety away from ramen, and was wiping his face carefully when a great grey set of tits wobbled towards him in what looked like a shiny chrome tracksuit.

The emoji for "extraterrestrial" was still, by some universal and unspoken default, a bulbous green or grey alien head with pure black eyes. His history teacher in senior year, Mrs. O'Keefe, had tried to explain it: the mid-20th-century flying saucer craze, ancient aliens pseudoscience, the way pop culture had categorized hypothetical extraterrestrials in various ways before the real thing had shown up, and all of the old ideas had turned out to be wrong. Mel remembered enjoying that class because the readings had coincided with the H. P. Lovecraft stories he was reading in 20th-Century American Literature, his one and only elective senior year.

Standing in front of him was as close as the Exodus had given Earth to what the 1950s thought an alien should look like.

About a meter and a half long, from the stubby tail to the rounded cranial crest. The head was nearly twice the diameter of the human cranium, grey and hairless, on a thick neck. The dark, slightly slanted eyes were relatively large but set far apart. Like most Earth-life, they were bilaterally symmetrical, and despite six limbs, were almost gorilla-like in shape, sometimes walking on the two hindlimbs and sometimes knuckle-walking on the middle limbs as well. About four feet high, with a broad mouth, with long, prehensile lips. Something about the Greyan reminded Mel of a manatee; the mostly hairless body, the flipper-like hands with short, pudgy fingers, all seemed designed to move through the water to him.

Of course, Mel had never seen a manatee with breasts like something on a pornstar.

"Hello," the Greyan said. Their voice had a sort of gulping quality that tried to swallow and roll consonants, but Mel could understand it. "Are you Mel?"

"I am," he said. "Mel Arkwright. What do I call you?"

"Human friends call me Ganymede," the Greyan said. "Do you mind if I sit?"

The brain slug hosts had already stood up and moved away from the table. Jordan had picked up Mel's trash without asking. He indicated a seat.

"Be my guest," he said.

The great head nodded, and the tracksuit swished and crinkled a bit as the Greyan sat down. They turned their head to the side so that one great black eye could look at Mel. It blinked. That surprised him. The lid was circular, coming in from all sides at once, closing up like a pinprick over the iris, then opening back up again.

"Sorry for staring," Mel said. "It's the first time I've seen one of your people before, except on television. You're a Greyan, aren't you?"

"That is what most Earth-people call us," Ganymede nodded. "Our own language is mostly too high for human ears, but we can manage most human languages. We evolved moving back and forth between water and land to project sound in air and water."

Mel nodded. "I was going to say, you sort of remind me of an Earth manatee. I was amazed to see an extraterrestrial so . . . mammal-like. Parallel evolution, I guess?"

Ganymede nodded again. They were, Mel realized, wearing a bra. He could see the straps peeking out from beneath the tracksuit because the zipper was drawn down to expose an amazing amount of slate grey cleavage. The Greyan had the biggest breasts of any being that Mel had ever seen, easily. He doubted he could hold one in his hand.

"Yes. We, too, produce milk to feed our young and for purposes of sexual attraction. Our evolutionary biologists are quite excited about the similarities and differences. They point to similar environmental pressures on our homeworlds. Conditions here are not exactly the same, but better than the void. Our children do not develop well in microgravity," Ganymede said. "Brittle endoskeleton. Balance crystals in the inner ear do not grow properly. We can adapt with technology, but . . . our elders are mostly confined to ships. I was one of the first born planetside."

"Oh, cool," Mel asked. "Where are you from?"

"Our pod established itself in Florida. There was much negotiation about the location; fear of environmental impact, interactions with native flora and fauna. Our reservation was established around Crystal Springs. That is where I was whelped, eighteen years ago," Ganymede said.

"We're about the same age, then," Mel said. "I was born eighteen years ago, here in Seacouver."

Ganymede nodded. Mel's eyes didn't know where to look. He didn't want to spend the entire interview staring at the Greyan's breasts. Almost as if the extraterrestrial understood what was going on, one flipper-like upper hand went to the zipper.

With a rush, the jacket opened. A smell hit Mel then. It reminded him of a field trip to a petting zoo. Warm. Wet. Animal. The skin beneath the suit was slightly sticky with moisture, and Mel saw that there were additional pairs of breasts, six in total. The bras were made of some black fabric, with front catches.

"You are embarrassed. There is no need. Our breasts are for display. In our native environment, they can be cumbersome, but you Earth-people have advanced garments for support and display," Ganyemede said.

Their uppermost limbs struggled to reach the front-latch of their top-most breasts. The alien looked at Mel.

"Would you mind, unlatching me?" it asked.

Mel glanced over the Greyan's shoulder. Ganymede caught the motion and turned their head to stare at Jordan, who was at the counter. She gave him a thumb's up.

He reached forward, timid at first, fingers trying not to graze the breasts as he grabbed either side of it and tugged slightly, just enough to create some slack. His thumb depressed the tongue, and the latch opened.

Ganymede gave a gurgling sigh as the great grey sacks slumped forward, no longer supported. The nipples, Mel saw, were about as long as human nipples, but much thicker, like bottle caps.

"Please, touch them if you wish. Do not worry. There is no social stigma or obligation involved."

Mel had to admit he was curious. He glanced at Jordan. She was obviously listening in, and gave him another thumb's up.

"Okay," Mel said as he reached forward. "Just, uh, let me know if I'm doing anything wrong. I don't want to hurt you."

His hands slid under the great grey teats and lifted. They were warm—far warmer than he thought—and the underside was soaked with sweat, or what he thought might be sweat. They were far more formless than any of the human breasts he had ever touched, and the skin was wrinkled thick, but soft as old leather. Mel found himself impressed by the mass of them, the strain in his outstretched forearms. His fingers clutched, gently, and felt structures inside. Ligaments, tendons, milk glands, maybe.

Ganymede said nothing, just let Mel explore. The human drew back his hands to let his thumbs brush over the thick nipples. They didn't stiffen, like human nipples did, but began to soften and gently swell, growing warm. Mel was shocked to see little clear drops form."

"Your mate is one of the skin-wearers?" Ganymede said. "MacElroy mentioned this."

"Yeah. One of them, anyway. It's a—I want to say it's complicated, but it really isn't, I suppose. I'm in a relationship with Jordan, her fellow brain-slug host Jenny, and Jordan's human host's sister. They're my girlfriends," Mel said.

"I understand," the Greyan said. "Among our people, the most ideal family social unit is the pod—a group of males that serve a dominant female cow, and their progeny—but it is rarely so simple in practice. Pods break up, rejoin; solitary swimmers prefer brief, serial monogamous relationships; our elder governments decry the breakdown of the family structure, but the Exodus left many pods broken, and since coming to Earth we have found greater support for alternative social units. I myself prefer the company of fellow males, at least until I am ready to carry my weight and support young. One day, perhaps, these breasts will fill with milk. Until then, they are effective only at being sexy."

Mel blinked as he digested that. Fellow male. He was caressing an alien dude's boobs. "I know human terms might not apply, but that kind of sounds like you're gay? Or at least, for a while."

Ganymede nodded. "It is better this way. We pleasure each other, but no one reproduces. Your government has tight restrictions on our reproduction, and our Elders are wary of expanding too far, too fast. It is a common concern with all the peoples of the Exodus. We are all, technically, critically endangered. Yet at the same time, a population boom would be seen as a threat to the Earth-peoples. It is all politics and economics. I do not understand half of it."

Mel smiled. "Same. My parents died when I was young, and I was raised in an orphanage. That's a kind of government-run communal care center for children whose parents are dead, or have abandoned them, or can't take care of them. Except when we hit adulthood, they sort of kick us out to fend for ourselves. I've been very careful about the whole mating thing with my girlfriends because I don't think any of us are ready for kids yet. I don't know when or if I ever will be."

The Greyan nodded.

"Among my people, when the cow is ready to conceive, she makes it known. We males traditionally do not always have a choice in the matter. But domineering cows have broken many pods. I think things are better today. They must consult with the males before mating for reproduction. And your human condoms—magnificent. We would have been spared much overpopulation had we thought of so simple a remedy, as opposed to surgical options," Ganymede said. "I hope, when the time comes, your mates consult you instead of simply harvesting your seed."

"Me too," Mel said earnestly.

Ganymede squished their breasts together so that Mel could fasten the clasp. He saw now how the bra helped shape and support the Greyan's breasts, giving an appearance of fullness. Mel wondered if that was to mimic those of a male whose breasts were full of milk? A sign of virility? He wasn't sure. It seemed to work for him.

Hands were washed. Bathrooms were cleaned. Jordan did not give Mel back his hoodie on the way home, but when they entered the apartment, she handed it to him, and as Mel folded it and set it atop the dresser, he gave it a sniff. It smelled like her.

Rachel came in at the end of dinner with a chicken salad and a sandwich. She ate, and Mel told her about the day.

"If I had been there with my phone, a picture of you holding those big grey boobs would be amazing," Rache said, between bites.

She had homework. They kissed goodnight. Before she left, Rachel lingered, then pulled up her shirt to show off her own modest bust, her small pink nipples.

"Touch me?" she asked.

Mel smiled and leaned forward. His hands circled her breasts. He squeezed gently, then bent down to wrap his lips around his teeth and slowly pull on her right nipple, his tongue teasing the little pink tip until it was hard and swollen. Then he did the same to her left. By the time he looked up, her face was flushed, and when Rachel spoke, her brogue was thick.

"When you get that cage off. I think . . . I want to try sex. You and me, and . . Okay?"

"Okay," Mel said, unable to keep the smile off his face.

Jordan and Jenny watched and held hands. They said nothing. They smiled at nothing. Yet when Mel went to get a drink of water from the kitchen tap before bed, he saw that on the fridge, held in place by two magnetic letter X's, was a single condom in its wrapper.