Alien Teamwork Makes The Dream Work

Walking out of the deep forest monorail station, Maya looked up at the deep canopy above. It had been a week since the last Apocriax job had finished for the season and it felt strange to be back in the woods again with her memory intact this time.

"Watch out, human," a voice in her ear said quietly and she startled. Turning her head, she found herself face to face with Sperholt, her companion today. They had met months earlier at the Clinic and while they'd taken to spending a little more and more time together, it was usually in the form of lunch of drinks at one of the many cross-species restaurants that filled the trade district in the spaceport city of Breidak.

But today, the two had planned a forest hike together and Maya wondered what this meant for their friendship. Or was it more? The monkey-like native to the planet she'd moved to had taken to sitting closely and was definitely more touchy-feely and hands-on than she was accustomed to, but the Earth expat wasn't sure whether or not it was a cultural difference or... something else.

"What am I watching out for?" she replied, fake archly, and the pseudo simian native backed away with a laugh and walked alongside her as they cleared the station.

"Well, last time I saw you here, you seemed to have a little bit of an insect issue. Does that count?" The fertility technician flicked her tail in amusement and while Maya smiled, a tiny bit of uncertainty or discomfort made itself known.

The job had been profitable, immensely so, but even though the clinic had taken pains to make sure she was giving informed consent on the process (which included temporary memory redaction so her fear response to being hunted by giant sex-crazed arthropods would be genuine), she still felt something strange sometimes when she saw one of the big flying space wasps overhead back in the district where she worked and lived. She knew it was silly, but...

Something in her expression must have caught Sperholt's attention because she stopped and touched Maya's arm so she stopped as well.

"Is everything ok?" she asked through the ubiquitous translator buds.

"Oh, of course," Maya lied, forcing herself to smile bigger. "On my planet, we have small creatures that look the same and sometimes I just have to, uh," she temporized, "to remind myself not to judge a book by it's cover."

Sperholt cocked her head slightly, then nodded slowly. Maya assumed the buds would somehow translate folksy sayings into something equivalent, but she'd never asked.

"Well, let's get going!" she finally said, apparently accepting Maya's words. The two continued out of the small station and onto one of the networks of paths winding through the ancient forest. Unlike the one where she'd been 'hunted' recently as part of a contract to the Apocriax hive that maintained a community in a forest similar to the ones on their home world, this was a big piece of Feiden old growth that had survived centuries of civilization. The planet had become a vibrant hub of interstellar commerce before humans had mastered steam engines but Maya couldn't imagine humanity having the kind of restraint needed to have unspoiled land like this so close to 'civilization'. The Hazen approached things like this differently and she wondered how else they differed. Sometimes, when Sperholt snuggled up closely to speak, her curiosity was certainly sparked.

After almost a half hour of companionable walking, the two decided to take a smaller off-shoot trail without talk, it just seemed natural. The tree trunks were much closer together and reminded Maya of a visit to the Redwoods in Northern California back on Earth. The sounds of nature and birds and the occasional aircar or taxipod faded as the greenery enveloping them grew more dense and their conversation slowed.

The human woman marveled at the peaceful nature of the place. It was hard for her to truly believe the big city and spaceport where she spent so much time was so close, relatively speaking.

The two came to a small clearing covered with a floor of spongy, moss-like plants. Maya looked to her Hazen companion and raised an eyebrow. The gesture was apparently recognizable because Sperholt gestured assent with her tail and the two began to unpack. Spreading out a blanket and opening some containers, soon the two were sitting across from each other and were nibbling at some foods they'd each brought.

The two fed each other samples, laughing at the others' reaction which ranged from approval to disgust. The variety of food on Feiden needed to serve the demand of so many sentient residents and travelers was enough that one might eat something new every meal without repeating for... years, certainly. Like most residents, Maya had identified the things she liked through trial and error and would plan her shopping or restaurant visits around known good options, but seeing as how there was no structure for everyone to have the same lists, eating with friends could be an adventure and turn into taste parties quickly.

Maya had just spit out a bite of some kind of blue gelatin and Sperholt was hooting with laughter when suddenly, a buzzing sound grew then faded over the period of a few seconds as something big and alive flew overhead. She blanched and stabilized herself with both hands and closed her eyes. Her companion immediately stopped laughing and with a twist and a flip was sitting next to her with an arm wrapped around her shoulder.

"Human, Maya... what's wrong?" When Maya shuddered and looked up into the canopy above with fear, the technician followed her direction of sight and suddenly seemed to understand what was happening. "Did you just have a stress reaction to the sound of the being that overflew?" The human sat quietly, shivering a little. She continued. "Was it an association to the Apocriax contract?"

Maya opened her eyes and looked into the face of her friend and nodded but didn't speak. The Hazen technician looked mortified and concerned in equal measure somehow.

"Oh Maya, I am so sorry. Our treatments were supposed to help you process that trauma quickly into the correct context, I-"

Maya interrupted her. "No, no... it's ok, it's not like I have nightmares or anything and I know what happened and everything, I just..." She shuddered slightly. "I just get this reaction when I see one of them right now. I know I need to get over it, I'm cool, I just..." she stopped talking, trying to figure out what was upsetting her. She'd enthusiastically hired into this job. The fear had been real at the time because she'd agreed to have her short term memory redacted so her fear response would be convincing because the client had offered to pay her more for that, but the swarm had thoroughly used her body and the technicians from the fertility clinic had restored her memory, she'd felt fine about it. Why couldn't she-

The pseudosimian held her more tightly, squeezing her and wrapping its tail tightly, squeezing them together. Maya felt like she was in the universe's best possible hug and she could feel the tension slipping away. She took a deep breath, let it out, and turned to find the monkey-like girl's face inches from hers, looking into her eyes with concern. She glanced down at her mouth and back and was about to go for it when suddenly both of their tabs beeped and buzzed at the same time.

"Oh god damnit..." Maya muttered as the two released each other and reached for their tablets to check what was important enough to break their privacy blocks.

The Hazen technician finished reading the message she'd received first and looked up sharply.

"Maya, you don't need to-" she began, but the human waved her quiet, still reading. She went back up a paragraph and read it again, then gave the message a once-over.

"No, this is fine. Like I said, I know the reaction I'm having isn't reasonable and I'll just deal with it." She held up her tablet. "This, this is paying work, and it looks interesting."

The Hazen technician squinted at her, then nodded reluctant assent with her tail. "Very well, but at least let me fix the underlying issue. It's a basic fix, we just didn't realize we'd missed something when we did your post-job care."

Maya frowned. "Will it take long?"

Sperholt laughed. "No, silly, that's part of why I wish you'd told us, told me something was wrong. This is fixable."

Maya shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed. The two began picking up the picnic site and in a few minutes were on the trail heading back to the nearby tram station in the woods. As they hiked out of the woods and onto the main trail, Maya's thoughts drifted back to that moment in their shady grove where it had seemed almost as if something was about to happen.

Less than an hour later, the two were back at the Lower Feiden Extraplanetary Fertility Clinic deep within the Hazen city of Breidak. A new face was at the front desk and as they arrived, Sperholt peeled off and headed back into the office. Maya blinked a little at that, then filed it away with the rest of the mystery. Maybe it was just her imagination after all.

As she was ushered into one of the clinic rooms, she looked around and noted that some different furniture had been moved in. A second omnitable had been set up, that was interesting. She'd spent plenty of time on these almost infinitely configurable machines being twisted into different shapes and positions while variously being cleaned out or reamed by alien customers of the clinic who paid handsomely to use bodies like hers to incubate their young or assist with fertilization. If someone could sell tapes of what happened in this room back on Earth, she thought, they'd be a science-fiction fetishist millionaire overnight.

Today, it looked like the two tables had been configured in a familiar shape she recognized from experience, one where she'd sit on her knees with her legs spread and her upper half held in place by the clamps and pressor fields the table/chair used when she was being mated from behind. She'd skimmed the technical pages on the ride back into the city but it was pretty high level. She thought she knew what the tables would be used for today, but if she was mistaken she'd learn quickly.

"Human Kurt Sanderson is being prepped next door," the technician she knew as Rhoden told her as he got her settled on a small couch in the corner to wait. "Because of his role in this, he required internal cleansing." Maya nodded, she was very, very familiar with that part of the job. Human bodies might have that unique set of properties that made them safe, almost ideal hosts for the widest variety of sentients imaginable (which was the source of their sought-after Indigo 5 classification) but that didn't mean their customers would settle for anything but the best, most sanitary experience. Maya didn't blame them, and glancing at the door she knew went to the room next door, she could imagine her colleague being flushed repeatedly by the ministrations of the robotic omnitable that was no doubt a foot up his ass at the moment, simultaneously cleaning and stretching him.

"The client will arrive shortly, she was receiving a special package related to today's contract work and it required special handling." The technician paused. "Because it is alive," he added, then looked up at her in case she had any questions, but she just nodded.

Not her first space alien fuck rodeo, she thought to herself, then wondered if that was a new sentence. Hmm.

"No worries, I'll be fine." She waved him away and sat back to think again about her picnic. Almost as if by magic, the subject of these thoughts walked into the room, passing the other technician on his way out. He looked at her curiously, but continued out. The door slid shut behind him and the two were alone.

"Sperholt, I-" she began, then paused, trying to figure out how to broach the subject. Before she could start speaking again, the Hazen technician held an injector up to her throat and it hissed. Maya felt a slight pressure at the injection site, but as usual, there was no pain. Reaching up to her neck to touch the spot, she cocked her head at at her friend who was putting the injector away.

"What was that?" she asked, curiously.

"That," Sperholt replied, "was the treatment you should have received more than a week ago had you mentioned this problem you were experiencing." She reached over to a nearby panel and touched a control. Without warning, a full size holo of what looked like a giant wasp flashed into existence in the center of the room. Maya startled, but only because of the sudden appearance.

"Why... why bring up an image of an Apocriax? I told you I was fine."

The pseudosimian woman looked back at her patiently, then touched another control. The frozen image began moving in place, the giant wings flashing as they fluttered in that special pattern that kept these giant creatures flying. A deep buzzing drone filled the room. Maya watched with interest for a moment before realizing what had changed.

"Wait, I feel fine. What did you do?" She did a quick internal audit and realized that she didn't feel a special concern at the sight of the Apocriaxian worker drone, even if it looked identical to the one that had hunted her and carried her into their local hive on a contract to be used for breeding. At the time, she'd felt helpless and anguished as a few of the huge insectoid aliens had forcefully raped eggs into her and fertilized them, but when her memories of accepting the contract had been restored afterwards, it had all become just an interesting memory of another day on the job. Until those terrors had snuck up on her out in crowds when she'd seen or heard members of her clients' species flying overhead.

"I did, as I said, what I would have weeks ago if you'd told us about the day terrors you were experiencing. We have a treatment for what we call post traumatic stress disorder that was incomplete for you and that was our mistake. I just fixed it, and I extend both my apologies to you for the omission on our part and..." she paused. While she did, Maya realized the buds in her ear must have translated the PTSD name from whatever the Hazen called it to what she knew it as, but it was interesting to learn that different species had their own versions of this. "I also," the alien woman continued after a moment, a look of frustration on her face, "am upset that you didn't tell us. Didn't tell me. Maya, please do not keep these things to yourself. You have a support structure at the clinic for a reason." She bit her lip, very much like a human, then continued. "You have people who care about you. I care about you." She reached out and lay a hand on Maya's.

Looking at the image of the giant hovering alien in front of her, she didn't respond, but after a moment she nodded her head. It was true, she realized, she'd had it in her head that it was her responsibility to deal with what something in her brain had held onto even after regaining her memories of going into it willingly. Maybe she'd had bad luck at her previous jobs back on Earth, or maybe the work culture at the Clinic was just that different, she couldn't tell. Turning to the technician, she bowed her head briefly.

"Thanks, I'll try and do a better job of remembering next time."

The Hazen tech arched an eyebrow. "NEXT time?" Maya smiled.

"Well, it was good money..." The two laughed together and once again, the alien tech hugged her, but this time with a smile. Turning off the holo display, she got up and headed out the door. "I'll leave you to this, then, friend. See you in a little bit."

Maya chewed on that. More to think about. Before she could analyze the visit too much more, the door opened again and this time Rhoden entered with someone else. Maya got up and went to meet who she expected had to be the client. The alien woman following the Hazen technician in was almost a half meter taller than Maya and dwarfed the tech. If anything, she thought to herself, the new alien resembled a giant newt. Bright orange skin, a reptilian head, a long tail that waved back and forth fluidly as she walked, definitely a bipedal newt of sorts. If it worked in insurance, the human thought to herself glibly, it could cameo in a commercial as a cousin to-

"Human Maya Whittaker, this is Lyra of the Zarastra clan, a Velnari. Lyra of Zarastra, this is the host with whom you will be interacting directly." Rhoden gestured back and forth as necessary in case either parties of the conversation had forgotten which one they were. It was also, Maya thought, more words than she'd ever heard from the usually quiet technician.

"Human Maya Whittaker, I thank you for your availability and willingness to help. This situation has been... regrettable." The tall creature gestured Maya back to the couch and perched herself onto a small nearby raised platform that Maya belatedly recognized as something that would be more comfortable for a being with a tail to sit on.

"It's what we do," Maya replied. "The clinic provides a valuable service and we're happy to assist-"

"No," the newt-like creature interrupted, "I really mean to thank you. I hadn't planned on using a clinic at all, but circumstances have forced my hand." She paused, obviously remembering, then gave herself a little shake and looked back up at the human. "I had arranged for an implantovore and broodcarrier to come here when my cycle was expected, but they were detained at the spaceport back home." She paused again staring downwards, and Maya received the impression she was troubled. "The pretext was not... it was not reasonable." She looked back up at the human and continued more forcefully. "I believe my business rivals did so deliberately, to place me at a disadvantage in an upcoming meeting. It is outrageous, but almost impossible to prove. Instead, two that I hired are turned back from any terminal due to an," she carefully enunciated, "'anomalous data entry in their exit visas' that must be resolved". She shook her body with frustration, then turned back to Maya again. "I have no doubt the so-called 'anomaly' will resolve itself as my cycle completes. This would, of course, place my company's expansion plans in jeopardy."

"Of course," Maya answered, hoping there would be no request for her to expand on that. The humans that spent time in Society following Earth's sudden introduction to a thriving galactic culture quickly developed an agreeable, easy-going approach to conversations on the expectation that enough context would eventually follow. The phrase 'fake it til you make it' came up often. The unsuccessful humans in Society tended to wonder why opportunities became less frequent for them, not making the connection between their own behaviors. Somehow, members of Society knew who was easy to work with and who wasn't, Maya figured, but she hadn't quite nailed the exact nature of this down yet. She did, however, have a sudden thought.

"If your other partners aren't here, how..." she paused, considering her words, "how will we be able to help? Is this purely an egg, ah, acquisition?" She felt a little shiver of memory. Some of the contracts were as complicated as incubating an alien for weeks or longer and some were as simple as being used as reproductive receptacles. The popularity of the clinic among species with societal blocks against artificial wombs or in-vitro fertilization meant a steady income for those who had the physiology to support it and humans had somehow lucked out with a safe, almost universally compatible internal body chemistry that was the most sought after by such.

"No, of course not!" exclaimed the rubbery-skinned creature. "Using machinery for the egg deposition, fertilization, or implantation would sever the legal chain of inheritance." The tall being paused, extended a hand. "I apologize, I realize the laws of my planet are not, ah, the laws of everywhere. Sufficed to say, no, reproduction among my species must be biological." Her wide mouth curled upwards slightly. Maya knew not to anthropomorphize, but it looked almost as if the creature was smiling. Her next words seemed to support this. "The law is quite explicit about that, it must be purely biological, but it seems the code does not say anything requiring that the species involved be Velnari." She chirped laughter and Maya chuckled as well. "My lawyers earned their retainer with this plan, if it works out then they'll be well rewarded."