Genesis

The overall weather seemed completely unchanging. No excessive heat or cold, or humidity or lack of moisture. The same. Unchanging. Weather. I was pretty grateful for that. The last thing I would want, rain or snow, or, heaven forbid, hale. With this gravity, we were dead.

The real interesting part was me telling her my theory of what happened. I told her the part that I was to take part in a new physics experiment at the new accelerator in the University. My PhD advisor (yes, I am too fucking young for a PhD. Live with it.) wanted to run an experiment, creating a miniature black hole. It was not to last more than a few super-small fractions of a second before blowing up again. I, for my part, had reservations. Any number of cosmic phenomena could happen around our neighbourhood and feed the little hole, making it something bigger and so much more dangerous. A black hole is the one thing in nature than cannot be stopped by anything. At all.

He obviously went through with the experiment. I know that eight minutes prior to its supposing time, a huge solar flare was detected - I got an SMS from the local relay station. But that alone could not have done all this. Something much, much bigger, of cosmic proportions, was needed. What? I had no idea.

Did we miss our folks back home? Yes, I suppose so. For me, between all the people I knew and Vanessa, it was a very easy bet. I preferred it here hands down. For her? Not so. She missed her friends. I know she missed her army of suitors. Her supposing boyfriend - actually they weren't a couple, but they "surely are going to be, once we're back". This actually hurt. But I didn't show. I think.

The great breakthrough came when I was able to actually tilt a rather heavy object in the middle of the wreckage, a part of a wall, and roll it over. She jumped her two-inch jump of joy with me when this happened. We would have hugged if we didn't smell like hell, both of us.

We were ready to move on.

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I searched high and low in the ring for any types of usable material. I managed to create a small toolbox.

I also found a piece of magnet from one of the maimed lockers in the ring, and tied it with one piece of string found in the wreckage, making a small compass. It showed one particular direction as the magnetic north. I checked on it for some time to make sure it didn't change over time, and it didn't. It seemed that the planet had a steady magnetic field. Which meant that we could find directions with some small degree of certainty, thanks to the compass.

Vanessa thought that we should take either the way North or the way South, as these were the only directions that were for sure. I truly though that it weren't relevant, since all we were after for now was just a place to stay and all, but she wanted to be sure that we could always come back. Well, I didn't really mind. So, North it was.

We walked. Man, did we walk. All the while strengthening. Sweating. Smelling. But talking too. Learning about each other. Our hopes. Our worries. Our dreams. Stuff we knew. We talked about anything and everything, to our mutual delight. Both of us learning from the other. It never got boring, which was even worse for me. Goddess, very smart, and so impossibly interesting. Captivating. Enchanting. Damn.

She never revealed her inner feelings to me, and talking about her 'potential boyfriend' got sparser and sparser. She seemed to be more introspective as far as her emotions went, at least the part of them that were linked to romance. But I didn't care. Even her farts smelled like roses to me. Infatuation makes shit out of a man's brain. But happy shit, to be sure.

It took so much more time than what is usual on Earth for our previous place to vanish behind us. It sure was a vast sonofabitch of a planet. After a while, after walking on barren soil, we started seeing something that looked like a forest. The more we approached, the clearer it got.

It truly was a forest, of sorts.

The leaves were all black. Designed to absorb light from any wavelength and any direction it hit. Clever. Nature is always the cleverest when it comes to finding solutions to problems. We humans are infants compared to her. Although, we didn't have the billions of years it had to find those out. Still though, ingenious.

The trees seemed normal, Earth like, although impressively huge. Very thick and tall, considerably more than the hundred-meter Eucalyptus trees that I had seen in Australia as a kid, on a trip with my family. A rather strange phenomenon, given the gravity. So the 'plant' design is pretty successful all over the Universe. If we are in the same Universe, that is.

Some plants had seeds, others had fruit. The over-looming trees had nuts of various types.

I grabbed a delicious-looking magenta-reddish fruit from a plant nearby, ready to eat it.

-"Don't eat that, Josh!"

-"Why?"

-"You are kidding me? You don't know anything about it! It might be poisonous!"

-"It might not even be compatible with our biology, Vanessa. For all I know, it may be made of silicon compounds. In which case I will suffer a horrible death in front of you. If we don't eat, we will both suffer a slow death. And I won't see you die. So there goes."

And before her very surprised eyes, before she could utter another warning, I sank my teeth into it. And this was my second taste of heaven.

I cannot even describe how incredible it was. I got an instant jolt of happiness. My organism loved it so much, it was painful. I couldn't wait to finish it and then eat another, and yet another. It was an addiction. The happiest of them.

Vanessa was very worried at first. But she saw that I was ok, and then she probably thought that if I was going to die, she would probably follow, so what the hell. And she ate too. She started groaning in pleasure as soon as she tasted her first fruit, and like me, she couldn't stop.

It was a very first for both of us on that planet to feel totally full. Happy full. And we didn't die. We just shat our asses off later. This time, we accompanied each other to our respective loo's. We would soon feel relaxed enough to hold conversations around each other during even that - looking the other way, of course. We used leaves to clean our butts. The whole thing felt natural. Maybe this is what Eden was supposed to be like? Me, Adam, and Vanessa, my very own Eve? Sans the fucking and all. And the forest, our own trees?

Well, we ate from all trees of the forest, and we didn't gain any new knowledge. There was no snake around us, and nobody scared us out. The only one to see us was our new 'Saturn', and I don't think he cared.

The forest was not overly big. We didn't see any animals of any kind, which is probably good, since, due to the gravity, they would be extra strong, and most likely, a huge threat to our survival. So for the moment, no fauna, no problems. Flora was very enough, thank you.

The great thing about the little forest was a small lake in its middle, and a small river of drinkable water leading to it. It couldn't get any better! We could actually drink water and wash ourselves and our clothes and all. Not that we had an alternative change of clothes, but at least the change that we did have, we could clean.

It was a moot point to decide that the forest would be our new home, at least for now. We used the small toolkit we salvaged from the wreckage, and cut some branches to create a dome of-sorts, a make-shift, sorry-ass roof over our heads. Well, at least we had a house, our own forest, and our very own private pond!

Ours, I keep saying. Was there an "us" to begin with?

I never allowed myself the privilege of assuming that Vanessa and I were an actual couple. A normal, romantically involved couple - we didn't have any interaction of the sort anyway. No, what we were was a pair created by circumstances, and forged by need. Need for another human, and need for survival. These are so much more basic instincts that romance. And yet, they don't supplant it. How ironic.

I won't lie. I so much wished there was romance between us. I was infatuated with her, but only in my own mind. I wouldn't ever allow myself to fall for the only female on the planet. If she wasn't feeling the same for me, I had no alternative in case of a fallout, and it would simply be catastrophic for our survival. So my soul remained empty, and wanting.

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In time, we had established a 'normal' routine for our reality. We did a lot on our own, and some things together. We swam in the pond, usually not together, obviously naked. Swimming came easy, as the water had the same density as us, so it didn't feel that different from Earth. Getting out of the water was a torment, though. Anyway, at first she wanted us separate and I agreed right away. Then she proposed for us to swim together, but I refused. I didn't need the extra complication of having to see her naked, moving around me like the mermaid she was and increase the torment. She seemed a bit off but accepted it. At first.

Then came the day that changed it all.

I was in the dome.

-"Josh! Help!"

Shit!

I got our of the dome as fast as I could. I walked fast towards the pond - running was still not an option for us - and found her inside the water, with her face contorted in obvious pain. Without thinking, I rushed into the water towards her, fully clothed. As I approached her, she seemed to walk backwards.

-"Stay still!"

-"I can't! It has captured my leg!"

What?!

-"Hold on!!"

I reached her in no time, and grabbed her hands. I pulled her towards me. She jumped up all around me, throwing us both in the water. She started laughing, hugging me as in for dear life.

-"Gotcha, my genius!"

-"You lousy little shit, you scarred me to death and back! 'It has captured my leg', my ass!"

-"Would that be a bad idea?"

-"what do you mean?"

-"If it grabbed my ass?"

-"...depends on the 'it'..."

-"if IT", grabbed my hand, "grabbed", moved it, "my ass?", and put it squarely there.

She looked me defiantly in the eye. The most terrifying moment. Sweet terror.

I couldn't utter a word. I was at a loss.

Her face started darkening. She started having second thoughts? She seemed in doubt. Shit. I couldn't let that happen.

I started bringing my face towards hers.

She smiled triumphantly and lit up the sky. She grabbed my face and took my breath away.

After the most heavenly time of my life up to that point, she let my face go. Always smiling, with a beautiful, shining face, full of... dare I say it? No.

-"Vanessa, I..."

-"Shudup and kiss me."

-"oh...uhm...", and she pulled me towards her.

Closing in for the kill, she whispered: "What part of", smooch, "shudup", smooch, "did you not understand?", smooch, "For a genius", smooch, "you are such a moron..."

If relativity is right, I fell into a black hole. All time stopped.

I cannot relay the feelings I felt. Again. Our tongues wrestling. A whole dimension of feelings having opened up from nowhere. From ever.

After the small eternity of bliss and heaven, she took me to the dome.

She undressed me, kissing me in between.

-"Vanessa, I need to... tell you something."

-"What?"

-"I... have never..."

-"You are a virgin?"

-"...well... yes."

-"Then you are lucky, Josh".

-"Why?"

-"Because it is a great luck to lose your virginity to the one person you love."

Shit. She knew it all along.

-"You love me, don't you, Josh?". Shit. She definitely knew.

I blushed.

-"Yes. From the first time I saw you. I couldn't help it. And this, now, all of it..."

-"Shhhh. No talking now. Let me make this good for you."

That marked the true beginning of my real life.

Our lovemaking was... slow and sensual. Probably by necessity rather than by design. I didn't have any experience on Earth to know the difference. Also, my dick felt superheavy, and she on top of me felt like she weighed a ton, but that was only the gravity talking. Still, when she grabbed my cock and put it at her entrance, and started lowering herself on it, taking me inside my own velvety, hot, smooth, molten piece of true heaven, it was the most intense experience I had ever felt in my life. Incomparable to any other. I knew I was in love, head over heels, with her. It still didn't make it any easier for me; it didn't quench my need for true romance, in other words for her to be in love with me too, but still, it was so much better than nothing. I am pretty sure that the entire planet Earth would be willing to kill me in numerous gruesome ways to be in my shoes.

My pace quickened, and so did hers. She started trembling, and uttering the name of the Lord again and again, and writhed, moaned, screamed, and almost chopped off my dick. It was a losing battle for me. With a huge roar, as much as I could under the circumstances, I came. As deep inside her as I could. She came big time with me. And then collapsed on top of me, with a force of two women. Fucking gravity.

This was something from another world. No comparison.

-"Josh..."

-"Yes?..."

-"It was amazing. You are amazing"

-"Vanessa, I love you. You are amazing. I don't know how you feel about me, but I know how I feel about you. And I am happy with it."

She didn't answer. She just stayed there, on top of me, savouring the moment.

She never once told me how she felt about me.

I never understood how the fuck we ended up with her being the 'guy' in this relationship and me being the 'girl'.

Shit.

If she was going to be the 'guy' with me, it means that the part of her that wants to be the girl, as she should, would not ever be satisfied, as long as I was the 'girl'. Which meant that she would never, ever love me the way I loved her, at least as long as I was still delivering her role. At least as far as feelings were concerned.

Shit. I wanted to cry. Heartbreak. But with tons of lust to boot. Go figure.

From then end on, our days were filled with sex. We christened pretty much the whole forest, and the pond. The river we left out, because it was for drinking.

The upside of good nutrition and lots of good sex was the fact that I was getting stronger by the day. And so was she. We soon could run and jump small heights. And no matter how much we ate, we never gained any weight. Living in high gravity with an oxygen-rich, super thick atmosphere could do that to one.

With the amount of fucking going on, I couldn't believe that she wasn't getting pregnant. But she seemed not to care about that, which was, at a level of comfort, just fine by me. I asked her about it, and she said that she seemed not to have any period in that world. She didn't know why, but that suited her just fine anyway. It probably had to do with the gravity and the difference with the moons and all. Or something else I didn't know about.

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CHAPTER 3

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I started noticing the difference in light intensity one day as we had outdoor sex. She was on top. I saw stars. They remained there after I came.

That is a problem.

I understood that whatever considered as 'night' in this world was probably going to happen soon. We had to prepare.

I took Vanessa and explained this to her. She looked up in the sky, and concurred. It seemed to her that the ambient light was decreasing and the starlight increasing. And the temperature seemed to start dropping.

We didn't have any time to waste.

We took our tools and went to the forest. We chopped as much wood as we could. We fortified our dome with a better roof, and strengthened the walls. We also made a sorry excuse for a door, but it would keep our whatever had to be kept out. Like the cold, or snow, hale and whatnot. Some of the wood we took inside the dome for firewood.

We just made it in time. When we fitted our door, there was only starlight and the three moons. 'Saturn' was covering more than half of the night sky. A truly beautiful sight.

It didn't last long.

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-"What was that?"

-"What?"

-"Shhhhh... That! Didn't you hear it, Josh?"

A thud was more felt than heard in the depths of the horizon.

-"Yes. It seems like thunder. But the sky is clear..."

-"For now! Did you take supplies?"

-"Yes, we have fruits and water, and leaves for the toilet."

I had actually installed a makeshift, turkish-type toilet in a small, covered expansion of the dome. I had even created a small water canal from the pond to flush water in the hole whenever we used it. It was only for emergency situations anyway, up till now at least.

-"Do you think we are safe?"

-"I hope so. The forest will protect us from the weather, I think."

-"Josh, I am scared!"

-"Hey, babe, we made it fine so far, didn't we?"

-"Yes, I suppose we did."

-"It will be ok."

-"Promise?"

Shit. This was my first 'man' moment in our relationship. I had to be able to say yes.

I didn't feel sure at all. But the love of my life wanted to feel sure. So what did I do? I took it like a man. I lied through my teeth.

-"Yes, babe. I promise. We will be fine. I will make a fire now. Care to join me?"

-"Yes!"

She changed. I could see it. She felt like a woman. I took the lead for once. I was what she needed me to be. And she loved it.

I took some wood and a few stones and put it in the centre of the dome. Using the time-honoured practice of our prehistoric ancestors, I lit a fire, after quite some struggle.

Vanessa was elated. I actually could make a fire without a lighter. Me and the whole species of Neanderthal man, probably before that too. What a genius. Yet, she loved it more than the countless talks we had about physics and cosmology and the sciences, or politics, ethics, religion, or whatever. Even gossip, or the part of her circle that she was willing to discuss. Which grew with time, a rather good sign. Yes, she loved my fire-starting even more than that.

And then I got it.

Talk is cheap. Vanessa was a woman's woman. She needed to feel safe. She may wonder at my knowledge, but her base instincts make her need to feel protected, safe. Cosmology cannot make her feel safe. The fire I built with my own hands could. The dome I made and fortified, and she helped along the way, could. Her, helping me make her feel safe, made her feel like a woman. A true, visible change.

I started understanding that when I looked into her eyes, after I fortified the dome and lit the fire. She looked at me differently. With, I don't know, respect? Admiration? Even, God forbid, love? I truly couldn't say. But I felt something. Even if it was all me.

She attacked me with a passion I had never seen in her eyes before. We had the most passionate sex ever, right there by the fire. It was so intense. I had never felt her so alive, so... womanly.

Yes, I seemed to have awoken the woman in her. I was in love with her too.

Now, on keeping her awake, that is another matter altogether.

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The sounds of thunder seemed to grow ever louder, and come closer and closer. The sky outside was pretty dark, with 'Saturn' covering a good proportion of the sky, ever-increasing. Clouds started looming at the edge of the horizon, coming from the North. So, the gas giant was the bearer of the winter-night. It wouldn't last long, but it would probably come with bad storms and all that comes with an eclipse of the suns. 'Saturn' was no Earth moon. If nothing else, it was as big as any other gas giant. The night was probably going to last quite some time. Which probably meant that the storms themselves could very well last at least as long. Since there existed parts of the planet which actually saw at least one of the suns, antipodally located to us, this meant great differences in atmospheric temperature; this alone can very well start huge movements of air masses of different temperatures, which, under the right circumstances, could very well create storms. And by the sounds of it, big bad muthas of storms.