Abduction of a Fool

He gulped; it was up to him to make a good first impression. "W-why did you abduct me?... I would have talked anywhere."

"It will become clear-" The voice stopped as an opening dilated in the wall and one of them stepped inside. "-in a few minutes," she said.

She was... gorgeous... Humanoid down to the number of digits, with pale grey skin and big, black eyes under a fringe of short, white hair. She wore only a skin-tight suit only long enough in the limbs to cover her thighs and upper arms, came inside past the doorway as it disappeared behind her like a droplet of water returning to the ocean and stepped barefoot across to the bench, sat herself pert on its squishy surface and stared at Will with clerical professionalism. "If you would, take a seat." She patted the one beside her.

"I was right..." he said, sat a little more than an arm's length away since he knew that otherwise he would have tried to touch her and confirm the reality of his situation. "You are about as big as we are... I was right."

She put a hand to her chest, incidentally brushing along the subtle curve of her breast. "My generation is, yes. You would not so easily recognize my predecessors by their shapes. This form, like many things, is a precaution made in preparation for visiting a new world." She smiled with pale lips and Will thought despite her pitch-black eyes that he could see a look of quiet consideration and humor. "Tell me, why do you think you are here?"

"That depends..."

She tilted her head, such a human expression of confusion.

"Where am I?"

"Ah, yes."

She came up onto her feet and beckoned for him to join her in the middle of the room, took his hand in hers, so warm and soft... Then she gestured toward the floor and it disappeared.

Not really, Will could still feel it beneath his feet, but below him lay everything he had ever seen before, the world and the stars behind it hanging in infinite space. Panic came and went in moments as the alien girl squeezed his hand, then after some time the floor regained its opacity but there was some tension in knowing that the abyss lay so close beneath him.

"The mother-ship..." He gulped again, feeling his tongue dry up. "You're going to... experiment on me?" He felt stupid even as the words passed his lips, though everything they'd already shown of their ability showed that they could easily restrain him to a laboratory table whether or not that was where he'd woken up.

"No," the alien said. "The time for such action has passed, and you see the fruits before you." She let go of his hand and gave him a quick spin in the center of the room to display her wonderfully-proportioned frame before coming back to his side. "Liaisons, such as myself, to spare your kind unnecessary psychic shock. Is it effective?"

He tried to feel out whether he could be said to be in shock. It felt as though his emotions were on hold until the point where his mind could correlate its contents and gain a foothold in reality like the one that he had lost in the last few minutes. He freshly realized his nudity and dressed as the alien woman watched dispassionately. "I don't know," he eventually said, dumbly.

She gently guided him back to the bench and sat with him, with his arm in hers and incidentally brushing up against her willowy body, the softness of her small breasts resting against his upper arm. "You don't feel faint, do you? The evocative projection used to incapacitate you has been known to have mild after-effects." She touched his cheek, brought him down so that she could press her forehead to his. He didn't know what smell he had expected, but lavender wasn't it. Her small breaths soothed him in the intimate, quiet place as she closed her big, black eyes and focused on reading his temperature. Her lips were so close, pursed slightly in concentration... "It does not seem that you are unhealthy," she said as she drew herself away.

"I'm just overwhelmed, I think..." He wished he could think properly, but the words caught themselves up in his throat, realizing anything would sound stupid in front of the object of his obsession. "Why me?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's just... we've all been looking for proof that you exist for so long. It feels like I'll wake up any moment now, like it's all too convenient that you're here, that you speak my language, that you look so human... If anything, I guess I was expecting Greys."

She laughed, and he would swear later that he could feel her gaiety. "I am not speaking English, watch my lips more closely." She put her spread hand on his chest and kept him at arm's length as she said, "You were expecting me to look like my forebears, then? I would call one for you to witness, but that too is a form taken on as it is well-suited for travel, since it requires so few nutrients. If you would like, there are files of our progenitors onboard." Like she'd implied, the motions of her lips weren't synchronized to the voice Will heard in his head, and the longer he watched, the more he could actually hear the trilling and warbling of the actual language.

"You're telepathic."

She nodded. "Your people are as well; we believe that all thinking creatures are. It is simply that your form of it is so primitive, undeveloped, I apologize but that is the proper term, that you are incapable of projecting your thoughts without heavy strain. I have observed social acclimations based on differential aura, but even those of you who learn the talent are like infants who have never had a use for their muscles and so cannot put them to use."

"So if I can't use it, how are we speaking?"

She took his hand in hers, ran her fingertips up his forearm. "Another person's touch is exciting, isn't it? I can feel your heart race; please, there is no rush, you can be calm."

Easy for her to say!

"With enough power, even insulators will transfer a signal. And, you asked why you alone were chosen to speak with us like this, but you were not. It is not yet the proper time for our presence to be made known, but your earnest intent to establish contact reached me." She smiled, and despite everything else, he could feel the sincere warmth behind it.

"So, um, what now?" he asked. "This isn't, like, a probing situation, is it?"

Her black eyes were unamused, but she could only hold the facade physically; humor glowed within. "You do not truly believe that we kidnap random drunkards, shove things into their digestive tracts, and leave them dazed on the sides of roads, do you?"

"I... suppose not." Will uncomfortably squirmed in his seat. "I always thought it had to be some kind of medical thing, like scientific exploration."

"There were some retrievals of domestic animals for such testing, which unfortunately could not be returned intact." She actually blushed darker grey, just a touch. "The probing was only done on informed and consenting parties, who had the experience wiped from their memory before being returned. It is unfortunate that intoxication sometimes allows the human telepathic instinct to go wild and pull repressed memories from the dreams of other people at vast distances."

"Huh... We thought your people might have some wildly different moral sensibilities, so that sort of thing could be explainable."

"We do," she said with a touch more blush added to the last. "Those of us who made contact several millennia ago were not so careful as to avoid damaging the social sphere in their haste to build psychic magnifiers and transmission devices. Such things are to be regretted: that we were not allowed to see the trajectory of humanity without our own influence and that the effects were not foreseen when our previous ships left and our current project began."

Will searched his mind for the corresponding events in history, snapped to a theory which many allies even found absurd. "The pyramids?"

She tapped her nose and smiled. "Did I do that right? That is the gesture that means you guessed correctly, is it not?"

"Yes. But you're saying the pyramids are actually something your people created?"

"Something we delegated to your peoples' artisans, yes. Because of those structures, and various others which were better hidden, the thoughts of humanity burn bright in the night sky for all to see." She took his hand in hers and brought it up to her soft lips to kiss it, said wistfully, "How I wish that some day you are able to see it as well, the aurora which envelops all of humanity, its beautiful shimmer. Only near the poles is the sky clear enough that your primitive brain can make out the wonderful glow of living minds, the collective aura of the Tellurian macro-organism."

He felt numb, like he could see the floor beneath him falling away to the infinite abyss of space although it was again opaque. "The aurora borealis. We thought that was because of the way electromagnetic waves from the sun interact with the earth's magnetosphere..."

"That is what I said, yes. I am sorry that I cannot elaborate further on the true nature of that metaphysical phenomenon. Know that psychic force affects many things which your kind believe are strict laws of nature. But then, would you like to see it, just for a moment?"

He gulped nervously and nodded.

"Close your eyes, human, and attempt to think of nothing." She took his cheeks in her palms and before his eyes were fully closed he saw that she was leaning forward, coming closer to him.

Think of nothing indeed! How could anyone blame him for a male reaction when the alien's soft lips met his, when her slow breath mingled with his? She held him, rocking into the kiss, moaning very slightly but unavoidably heard in the otherwise silent space. She began stroking his hair, trailed her fingertips along the side of his neck and splayed her fingers across his collarbone as she gently applied pressure. He was on his back before he knew it, with her in his lap, focused on the slow, purposeful motion of her lips against his.

It was too much for him to take, his eyes burst open and he put his hand up to push her off, accidentally cupping a tender breast and witnessing her black eyes widen in shock for an instant before she regained her composure and silently removed herself from atop him, retiring on her knees to the other end of the bench to wait for his response.

"W-w-what was that!?" he gibbered, closing the provided robe tightly across his chest, crossing his legs to hide his throbbing erection in its folds.

"I was merely about to share my senses with you, to show you the aura I had told you about. Human psychic reception is affected by many things, and copulation creates a sense of closeness which would have facilitated telepathy. You are already quite receptive; that is one reason I collected you tonight."

He was burning with embarrassment, kicking himself for not letting her get on with it. But damn it all, there was an order to these things! "I don't even know your name..."

She touched her hand to her chest. "I was designated 'Aleph' as I am the first of my series. I assure you, the orifices may be approximately the same size, but you would be utterly incapable of impregnating me and neither would either of us be capable of infecting the other with any illness."

"Not what I was worried about, though now I am... I'm, um, William, but people call me Will."

"I know." Aleph put some space between them to give him room to breathe. "Perhaps you would like to see more of the ship?"

"You'll let me out?"

She covered a laugh with her hand. "This is not a prison cell, merely a transitory space such that you were not overstimulated upon waking. I would relish the opportunity to sample your aura as you witness new things for the first time, and so," she stood and held out her hand, "for now, shall we go for a walk?"

--

The halls of the mother-ship were not nearly so liminally ascetic as the room he had woken up in, Will could actually recognize some structures and architectural features as he and Aleph passed them. Here there was a wire passing along the wall with a raised access panel, there was the perforated pad of a speaking device with a monitor set into the same wall. Doors, rather than the one in that room, looked quite like real doors, or more like hatches which locked in place when not in use and otherwise slid seamlessly into the wall such that it did not eat into limited space.

Aleph watched him intently, her lithe fingers intertwined with his, but the touch of another person was not enough to distract him from trying to memorize the aesthetic marvel of an alien designer's work. Not at all like the disquieting visual gibberish of Geiger, even those features which Will could not see the purpose for fit in with his surroundings so naturally that it seemed there was no other way for nature to have produced this craft. A few times, Aleph stood silent as Will approached something or another and enjoyed waiting for him to try and figure it out before quietly whispering whichever thing's purpose.

"And what's this?" he asked, reaching for a sort of grooved knob jutting perpendicularly from the low ceiling.

Aleph gently took his hand away from it. "It is a manual handle for a sensor found on the exterior of the ship, used in the case of malfunction on the bridge."

"Oh, sorry."

She laughed sweetly. "Not at all, we are well aware that primates are sensory creatures and you try to get a physical feel for things. The others sometimes mock me, in their genial way, for attempting to emulate this tendency." She reassuringly squeezed his hand and stepped closer, hugged his arm to her body. It was... distracting, and she seemed to know it with the way she rocked back and forth against him, rubbed her chest against his upper arm. "Pink~ Lovely, but you say you still won't mate with me?"

He was preeminently embarrassed, something she again surely knew with a small chuckle, but he did not pull himself away. "I'm a man, and you're... soft... That's just how we're programmed to feel. I'm not the kind of guy who would sleep with someone he doesn't love, even if I am horny..."

"Ah." Aleph released his arm but kept holding his hand within hers; he thought he could feel her pulse rise to the occasion. "I am sure you believe that, at least. You have that kind of firm glow about you, purple: justice."

He looked away. "Is it really purple? I know those, like, mood rings say the emotions are different colors, but is it really like that?"

"No." She shrugged and began slowly walking with him in tow. "Perhaps you know of something called 'synaesthesia? A physical brain may be paired with a psychic monad, but they are yet dissociated materially, and so the sensations of the psyche must be translated to sensations of the body. Sight, sound, touch, smell, heat, balance and so on. Auras are merely the visualized manifestation of the psyche's understanding of its surroundings. But they are thankfully consistent, so I see your aura, pink and purple and red, but ultimately blue, and I understand you to some degree."

"Blue?"

Aleph pulled him along. "Come, I imagine you would like to see some of the crew now that you have calmed down."

"Are they all like you?"

She laughed. "None but those Liaisons who have not been sent to their assignments on the planet. Several dozen cosmomorphs, a herpetomorph, a few Liaisons from other planets, previous projects. You will likely understand as we round this next corner."

They did so, and standing against one wall, drinking from an astronaut's juice box was a Grey.

Between three and four feet tall, with a full third of its mass within its massive head as if the spindly body below was hanging and vestigial, clothed in much the same short-sleeved skintight suit as Aleph. He (Will assumed 'he') regarded Aleph and the human with her using a three-fingered salute of some kind. Immense, implacable black eyes stared up with the wisdom of the cosmos behind them, and yet he returned to his drink, saying without moving his lips, "Liaison, this one is satisfied with his tour? It is a male, is it not?"

Aleph raised her hand to her lips and ineffectively hid laughter behind a cough. "As of yet, he has not seen much." She squeezed one small breast with her free hand. "Again, sir, you may recognize that Tellurian primogene males do not have these milk-production glands."

"What of that one who visited some tens of cycles before?"

"It is merely a statistically-relevant observation, sir. You might also see that he has a penis."

She reached to pull back the fold of Will's borrowed robe and he caught it before she could. His expectation that she didn't realize what she'd nearly done was shattered with her smug smile. "Umm..." he said, hoping he would be understood by the Grey, "just take her word for it, sir."

The Grey emanated mild confusion without the smallest physical motion as if there were no ancestral animal reaction to cause body language or he was so distant from that ancestor that the instinct was forever lost to the abyss of time. "Yes, there would be no point to a lie. You must forgive my ignorance, but your people only have the two sexes, so you can understand how it would be strange."

Will turned to Aleph for an explanation.

She 'whispered', "The norm is three to seven."

The Grey came closer, his immense eyes taking in Will's body from many angles. "Human, you don't seem afraid of me. That is a great step toward induction. Some decades ago, I met one of your kind and he sadly expired of shock." He closed his eyes and shook his head in a purposeful affectation of human sentiment. "It makes an old man hopeful for the future, thank you for your time."

With that, the Grey went his own way and Aleph continued tugging Will along the other way.

"What is 'induction' in this context?" he asked.

"Before that," Aleph said, "I will show you one more thing."

--

It was a large room, stacked with glass chambers on rows of racks. Inside, floating within a solution of reddish fluid, each chamber held one individual.

Aleph squeezed Will's hand as they passed the window separating them from the workspace where several Greys were pulling one chamber at a time from the racks with a large metal claw to inspect the creature growing within. Strangely, it felt more than anything like standing on the other side of a hospital nursery as the babies were carried in for the first time, not that Will had ever done so.

On each row, engraved into the chambers themselves, were the words Aleph, Beth, Gemel, and on and on.

"This is where I was born," Aleph said, her fingers trembling expectantly, anxiously.

"These are all... Liaisons?"

"They are. For each planet we visit, these phytomorphs must be created such that we may visit the people of the surface while being able to breathe the atmosphere present, to eat the foods offered to us, to..."

"Fuck?" Will said it a little more harshly than he meant to.

"If that is necessary, yes." Her cheeks darkened.

Will opened his hand and let hers fall out, and she did not rebuke him.

"You're going to wipe my memory at the end of all this anyway, aren't you? so why are you showing all of it to me?"

"Purple... green..." Aleph went into the hall and did not look back to will when she said, "Come."

He did, following her as she quickly navigated the halls all the way back to what will now could only call a cell.

But now, rather than just the soft bench, there was a squishy rectangle filling most of the center of the room.

Aleph grabbed Will's hand and pulled him past the entryway, snapping it closed behind them so that it became just another part of the wall again. She said nothing as she stepped onto the bed and ran her fingertips along the seams of her skintight suit, removing some kind of unseen connection and threw the wadded thing aside.