Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Interlude: Somewhere in Fucking Space

   Well, for a long time, everything sucked.

   I didn't remember a lot of it later.  It was like the worst fever dream
I'd ever had.  Sometimes I seemed to be awake and sometimes I seemed to be
dreaming and most of the time I couldn't tell which.  Sometimes time seemed
to be going backwards or, I don't know, sideways.  Sometimes I was talking
to myself - not in a nutball way, but in a two or three of me in the room
at the same time kind of way.  Well, I talked to myself in the nutball way
too.  I was pretty nuts.

   A lot of what they did to me was basically torture.  Not the cool James
Bond kind of torture where they're asking you where the missile plans are
and you're trying to hold out and act tough.  Just senseless torture for no
reason.  I think maybe they were trying to map out my nervous system and
understand the relationship between the cells in my brain and the mind that
was attached to them.  They did every fucked up thing they could think of
to cause me pain - hot, cold, electric shocks, loud sounds, bright lights,
weird radiation, mutilating my body.  They did stuff that seemed to do
nothing at all, and some stuff that felt good or just weird.  They poked
stuff around inside my brain and sometimes my body would jerk around or I'd
shit myself and I didn't know why.

   A lot of stuff seemed to be sexual.  They clamped some kind of device
around my junk, and (after an agonizing eternity while they adjusted the
pressure until it was pleasurable) it more or less masturbated me for
hours. They put stuff up my butt - yeah, I know, the classic alien anal
probe.  At one point I'm pretty sure I was somehow fucking myself in the
ass - I don't want to know how that happened.  Time and space were
playdough to these guys.

   Sometimes I would be dreaming about being tortured and then wake up in a
metal cage, so small that I was bent over double, rusty wire mesh digging
squares into my skin, shaking with cold and hunger and dehydration, and
then I'd wake up again and realize I was just dreaming about being back in
my cage and I had really just passed out while they were torturing me, and
then I'd wake up in my cage and they'd pull me out and start the torture
I'd just been dreaming about.

   Other times I woke up and immediately started drowning.  They kept
dunking me into this funky tube full of green slimy crap.  It smelled like
rotten fish and tasted like fermented coffee with just a dash of sewage.  I
thrashed around, sucking that shit into my lungs, stinging my eyes, pushing
my fingers around on the inside walls of the tube, trying to get out or
find an air bubble.  I never did.  In the distance, distorted by the slime
and the plexiglass or transparent aluminum or whatever the fuck it was, I'd
see lights blinking and silhouettes moving around, sometimes faces pressed
up against the glass.  Once or twice I thought I saw Alex's face.  Usually
the "faces" were awful abominations, like Cthulu got stuck halfway trying
to shapeshift into a giant fetus.  Then I'd black out from lack of air and
dream about being tortured for a while.

   Eventually - if that word has any meaning after my timeline got tied in
a seven-dimensional knot - I was mostly awake, totally naked, sitting on
the floor in an empty white room that was too bright.  I blinked a lot and
tried to look around, but my body didn't seem to work very well.  Alex
somehow appeared in the room and knelt behind me, wrapping a silvery cloth
thing around me like a blanket.  She handed me a cup of something and I
drank it without being told what it was - I was starving and thirsty beyond
understanding.  It tasted like hot chicken soup.  It was probably the very
best thing I ever had in my life.

   Alexis wrapped herself around me and rubbed me through the cloth thing.
I started to get some feeling back in my arms.  Most of the feeling was
bad, but I was less cold.  My stomach hurt.  It occurred to me that I
should drink the next cup more slowly, if there was a next cup.  It then
occurred to me that there might not be a next cup, and that I would
probably be willing to murder more or less anyone, sell my soul, or tell
Dr. No the location of the missile plans in exchange for another cup.

   "I'm sorry," Alex whispered in my ear.  "They won't let you go.  My
voice is too small and I can't convince them of anything." She was kind of
rocking me back and forth.  It felt good.  She sounded sad.  I felt bad
about that.

   I tried to say something and made a sound like a crow with a hangover.
I'd been screaming and coughing and drowning a lot lately.  My throat felt
bad.  My stomach spasmed and tried to empty itself, and I forced it down
with whatever will I had left.  No way was I losing my soup.

   After a while Alex said, "They want us to have sex now.  They want to
watch."

   I just looked at her.  Aside from objecting on various moral principles,
I couldn't even sit up on my own.  They might as well ask me to fly.

   "It is not a request.  We must do it now.  Don't worry.  You don't have
to do anything.  I'll take care of you." A tear rolled down out of her eye.

   She laid me on my back, on the cloth, and started caressing me and
kissing my face.  I mostly just lay there.  I appreciated her getting me
out of my cage - hell, she was like an angel right now, I was ready to
propose - but sex?  I tried to move my mouth and hands a little, act like I
was into it, but it was the furthest thing from my mind.  I think there was
some alien viagra in the soup, though, because when she put me in her mouth
I got a hard-on after all.  "Huh," I said in amazement.  Alex looked up
from where she was softly sucking me off and winked.  When did Alex learn
how to wink?

   She draped herself over me, slid herself onto my dick, and kept kissing
my face and sliding her hands over my arms and chest.  It kind of hurt in a
lot of places, but it was still pretty nice.  She was very slow and gentle.
It took her a while to get anywhere.

   I managed to play with her tits a little before I ran out of energy.

   She started going faster, cupped her hands around my face, looked into
my eyes, got that familiar desperate look on her face.  I knew she was
ready.  I smiled at her.  I wasn't going anywhere, but I was glad she was
happy.

   She panted, arched her back up, ground her hips onto mine a few times,
closed her eyes, and said "Ah!" as she came.

   The lights went out.

   The universe exploded in a cascade of stars and fireworks and
kaleidoscope swirlies.

   I drifted weightlessly in a warm, safe place for a while.

   ***

   When I woke up this time, I was feeling better.  I could move.  Most of
my joints no longer ached.  I was wearing one of Alex's silver smock things
and sitting up on some kind of alien sofa.  I knew it was alien because it
was silvery, but mostly it seemed to be a regular sofa.  The room had kind
of a 70s vibe going on.

   "Space is totally gay," I said out loud.  Don't judge me, it made sense
at the time.

   Alex appeared in the room again.  I bet it only looked like a room
because my dumb monkey eyes only see space in three dimensions.  It was
probably more like a set on an alien movie stage with two of the walls
missing, if you had 5D eyeballs.

   "Hi," Alex said.  "Are you feeling better?"

   "Yeah, actually," I replied.  It didn't hurt to talk now.  That was nice
too.

   "That's good.  Would you like some chocolate?" She offered me a tray of
little round brown things.

   "I...yes?" I was not expecting chocolate.  It tasted okay.

   She sat down on the sofa next to me.  "I think they will let you leave
soon."

   "Wow," I said, after a bit.  "That's good news.  Why'd they change their
minds?"

   "It was my orgasm," Alex said, as if that made any sense.  "Champagne?"

   I took a flute of bubbly and threw its contents down the hatch.  Why the
fuck not?  "They really liked watching us that much?"

   "It is difficult to explain.  Our method of reproduction
is...complicated.  And your reproduction is not like anything we have seen
anywhere in the universe.  The combination of our minds and your bodies has
produced some unexpected effects.  The energy patterns are..." She looked
at me and twisted her mouth.  "You would not understand, of course.  It's
revolutionary.  It's going to change intergalactic civilization as we know
it."

   "Geez.  That's...weird.  Is that good?  I guess that sounds good."

   "It is very good.  They are creating a whole new branch of science to
study the effects.  The implications are still not understood very well. 
My voice is going to be much bigger now."

   "Alexology, huh?  Congratulations on your discovery." I decided the
chocolate was more than okay, and tossed some more in my mouth.  "So what
happens next?"

   "They are going to have sex with us."

   "They...?" I said with raised eyebrows, and then, "Oh."

   Eight women had stepped out of nowhere and into the comfy room.  They
were all tall, leggy, and naked, but otherwise quite different from each
other.  Red hair, brunette, blonde, dark skin, pale skin, big boobs, small
boobs...some of them seemed familiar from somewhere.

   "Do you find them attractive?  Their forms are based on something called
the 'Miss Universe' show on your world.  They found the name to be
amusing."

   "I'm...going to need more champagne," I said faintly.  One of the girls
smiled widely and produced a bottle from somewhere.  Alex started kissing
my ear.