Hardship Troopers

In a way, she was a passive, social anarchist; a person who, by way of passive aggression, made people question their own identities and, therefore, society and its pre-conceived hangups. Max looked across the cafeteria at her defeated co-worker and didn't bat an eye.

After ten minutes or so, Cam heard a tray clatter into the wash slot, then the unmistakable sound of Max's boot-clad feet clomping towards him from behind. He glanced ahead, his eyes sneakily rolling over towards her as she walked out of the cafeteria. She didn't look back once, but could feel Cam's eyes on her. He could tell she was playing with him. It was hard for him not to give the obligatory stare as she walked away, her well-endowed ass just taunting him with each step. He imagined a couple of puppies could've been wrestling under those criminally form-fitting dungarees of hers. He felt like biting a knuckle in sexually-repressed agony but knew he couldn't show that kind of weakness, not in public anyway.

That was the struggle for him. Max was so untouchable, so inaccessible that it was almost difficult to just fantasize about her or objectify her, not that objectification is a good thing. For Cam, though, it was both easy and difficult. From a purely superficial, external standpoint, it was easy because she fit the profile of a young woman just ripe for objectification from the fertile mind of a hormone-driven young man. On the other hand, he knew that he had almost no chance with her and that extended into his fantasies.

The second she walked out of the room, Cam tried to mentally envision the moment after Max walked past him, but in his fantasy she'd suddenly stop, spin around and beg him to use her ass as his playground. All that would happen, though, is that she'd spin around, eye him up and down in that critically evaluative way and wag her finger at him. Even in his dreams he couldn't get her to be submissive. Total psychological domination.

The end of the day came mercifully. Cam punched out, grabbed his jacket and headed out. Thankfully, he didn't see Max after the altercation in the cafeteria and escaped the confines of the office free and clear. It was a long work day so Cam decided to treat himself to a few drinks at Anchorpoint.

Anchorpoint was a little hole-in-the-wall watering hole in the dense marketplace section of Samaran 17. It was an outdoor bar that was basically a long countertop with a bunch of stool built into the floor. There was only room for about fifteen people and that's with zero elbow room. If you spoke, practically everyone at the bar could hear you it was so compact and cramped.

The bartender, Mahklo, was an old, grizzled kylathian who'd made dealing spirits his living since he got out of the army on the kylathian homeworld. He got the license to sell liquor on Samaran 17 and was assured a built-in client base. Only a fraction of the organics living on the station patronized Anchorpoint but that was more than enough to keep the booze flowing. Cam liked the place because he enjoyed the cameraderie of rubbing elbows with fellow firewater afficienados, alien or human. Not to mention that Mahklo was always chatty and in good spirits. It was like a dysfunctional second family for him.

He could always count on Anchorpoint to take the edge off of an otherwise lousy day. As Cam rode the mag-tram, he tried to put the events of the day behind him and look forward to his restful off-work hours. Even though there weren't technically "days" on Samaran 17, the day/night cycles were identical to Arceus. Sammy orbited Arceus at the same speed that Arceus rotated, hence, day on Arceus equaled day on Sammy.

The cargo freighters arrived and departed, regardless of if the organic crew was there or not. When the organics were off-shift, the synthetics took over, managing the incoming cargo shipments automatically. After the organics' off-shift ended and they came back into the office, it was up to them to correct any errors made by the synthetics, which were usually few. Cam would usually have a few dozen documents waiting for him on his terminal when he'd come back to work, the natural result of the office going automated for the off-shift.

The automation and reasonable volume of freighters that came in and out of the office during the off-shift afforded Cam the time to enjoy at places like Anchorpoint. It was a fairly stress-free routine that made for a predictable existence. As the tram neared the marketplace sector, he tapped the button to slow down and hopped off onto the walkway as it did.

The marketplace was unusually packed. Probably tourists from Arceus. It was nearing Tarsian Liberation Day, an Arcean holiday that people from the nation of Mancia, where Cam happened to be from, celebrated. Mancians typically traveled around this time, celebrating the liberties won for them by their ancestors in the War of 12 Colonies. This meant that, every Arcean year, Mancians would flood Samaran 17 looking for interesting off-world novelties that they could get for far cheaper than they could on Arceus, once they hit the markets there.

The cargo freighters came from other worlds to Sammy, bringing with them the types of wares; tech, flora and fauna, fine art and other assorted collectibles, that Arceans had a high demand for. Unluckily for Cam, it made life for him around that time of the solar cycle a tad more inconvenient. He traversed the sidewalk, avoiding the dense walkway traffic which consisted of those obvious Arcean tourists, and neared Anchorpoint.

As he rounded the corner and saw that oasis that was Anchorpoint, his smiled was swept clean off his face. All the seats were taken except for one. Next to that seat he saw a familiar shaved head: Max. She was sitting at the farthest edge of the counter, facing his way but she hadn't noticed him yet. The vacant stool was next to her, facing the bar, back to the mag-track. Max looked up from her drink and finally noticed him. He put his head down, his hands in his pockets and strolled up to the vacant stool, plopping himself down.

Mahklo coggled over to Cam, an unapologetically enthusiastic smile on his face. "Cam, it's been a few days. You okay?"

"Hey, Mack. Nah, things are great. Work's been work. How you been?" Cam asked.

"Holding up. My daughter's coming up in a few weeks, bringing up the granddaughter for the first time." Mahklo guffawed, his yellowed chompers peeking out from behind his lips.

"Hey, that's great, man. Congratulations. Really." he complimented, trying not to glance over at Max.

She was loosely hanging onto her glass, eyes scanning the countertop lazily.

"I got family coming up, too." he said.

"Really? Where'd you say you were from again?" Mahklo asked, ignoring the slurred plea of a patron at the end of the bar.

"Uh, Roseville Landing." Cam responded.

"Oh, that's right! I've read great things about Roseville Landing. How was it growing up there?" Mahklo asked, genuinely curious.

"It was good. Comfortable, low crime, lots of trees." Cam chuckled.

"Sounds better than my old stomping grounds. Can I get ya anything?" Mahklo asked.

"Umm, gimme a Triple Shot. For starters," Cam grinned.

Mahklo shuffled off to get his drink. Then, an awkward silence bridged Max and Cam. He knew she wasn't impressed with him in the slightest and he desperately didn't want to accidentally glance up and get caught in those dark, unforgiving eyes again.

"Roseville, huh?" Max said unexpectedly.

Cam hesitated, the words coming out of nowhere. He didn't want to answer, knowing that he'd just be feeding the beast.

"Yeah," he said as Mahklo slid the drink in front of him.

"Not surprising at all," she retorted flippantly.

He knew she'd throw some snide, insulting remark but he was still miffed at hearing it come out of her mouth.

"What's that mean?" he asked, now simmering with ire.

"No, you just seem like a really swell fella," she said in a not-so subtle manner.

He was almost at wit's end, on the brink. Cam was usually the fair-tempered guy but Max had been pushing and pushing and it showed on his face. He clearly had enough.

He leaned toward her and spoke firmly but softly, with stern control. "Look, I don't know why you seem to have it in for me. I don't what I must've done to you in a past life for you to carry such a huge chip on your shoulder for me, but I don't have any beefs with you. I come here twice a week, it's my favorite place here to get a drink and I'm just minding my business. We work with each other and you have this seething resentment towards me and that's fine. I really just want to go to work, keep to myself and then come here and enjoy a few drinks. I would really appreciate it if you just allow me that. I won't bother you. I won't talk to you. I won't even look in your general direction if it makes you happy. I'll even make the effort to not sit too close to you if we happen to be here at the same time again. How's that sound?"

She took a sip of her drink and set down the glass gently, not even having the courtesy to look him in the eyes as she gave her glib, disinterested answer. "Whatever."

Cam had never been so close to wanting to punch someone in his life, much less a girl. He took a deep breath to calm his pounding heartbeat and turned forward and back to his drink.

A few minutes later, Max paid her tab, got up and left without so much as a sound or a glance in his direction.

For Cam, it was a devastating failure of an interaction. After he got home, he splayed himself out onto his bed and took the last few weeks into consideration. He was thinking about Max, this puzzle of a girl. He didn't know what to make of her. If he wanted to make end roads with her, he certainly wasn't going to gain any traction in any discernible mutual civility by snapping and basically barking at her in public. He knew he had to mend fences, regardless of the consequences.

Minutes stretched into hours until he dozed off into unconsciousness. He "awoke" in a hazy dream state. It was strange. His vision was impaired, his perspective skewed. All he could see was darkness interspersed with bobbing, smooth light shapes. The shapes came somewhat into focus and he realized what it was: a chin, bobbing down into his field of vision before rising out of view. This bobbing and rising continued until he saw more. Above the chin were lips containing rows of teeth clenched together in a passionate exercise.

Still, the imagery was cryptic. Then, blunt, muffled sounds were introduced into the bleary vision. Vague and monstrous at first, the deep dissonance revealed itself as moans. The first set of moans were alien to him, but overtly sexual in expression. He heard another set of moans and recognized them as his own. The moans grinded against each other, synchronized and in concert.

In the dream, his eyes lazily drug upward and hovering just inches over his face he saw Max. She was completely enraptured, trapped in miserable, involuntary bliss, rising and falling onto his prone form. With an achingly slow reaction, he guided his dream form to tilt his head down. Now, he could see that Max's completely naked body was straddled atop him, her hips planting hard into his.

Everything was happening in a stultified, compressed state of time. Every millisecond was extended, every sound reverberated deep, unnaturally bellowing. In the dream, he realized what was happening; the magical pressure in his loins, the lecherous exhaustion on her face, the tactile sensation of wet, engorged flesh grinding against his own equally wet, engorged flesh. Something primal began to well up in him and he felt a surge, as if springing towards the surface of an surging ocean.

Suddenly, he heard himself emit a loud gasp and the dream went dark. He opened his eyes, now awake and could feel his nether region contracting and spasming against his command. He pulled the sheets away and looked down at his boxers, the front of which had mysteriously darkened, and which were now straining to conceal the massive, rigid, thumping piece of flesh contained within.

He peeked into his boxers and realized he'd involuntarily unleashed a gooey mess. A smattering of hot goo had plastered the insides of his boxers, the tip of his penis dribbling out the pearl-white ooze.

"Gahh..." he uttered, disgusted. He couldn't believe it. He'd had a wet dream, and the source of it was his dream of Max. Not quite a dream but the most vivid unreal sensory event he'd ever experienced. It was so real his brain told his penis to do what it would've done for real.

Cam hopped into the shower, his mind reeling in total disbelief. How could he look at her now if he saw her at work? If he needed her help, if his terminal went down, how could he approach her?

*****

With everything that had been going on at work and the stress that had been building, Cam decided to go see one of the on-site physicians to see if he could get something to calm his nerves and help him concentrate on something other than Max.

The infirmary wasn't a top-notch, state-of-the-art facility, but it sufficed. Thankfully, the physicians were well-educated and had great bedside manner which offset the fact that some of the medical equipment they had could easily be considered outdated.

As Cam sat in an evaluation room, a nurse walked in to take his vitals and ask some basic health history questions. With his recent sexual frustration connected to Max, it didn't help that the nurse was a large breasted kylaxian. Young kylaxian females were prized by human men because their natural physiology happened to fit all of the attributes that were considered attractive by humans: big lips and eyes, smooth skin, slim legs and curvy figures. Sure, they had greenish skin and their swollen onyx-ian eyes and puckered lips resembled dried out trout, but they were still strangely sexy. Kylaxian women had massive udders on their chests that looked like enormous tits, but they were actually external lungs that would inflate and deflate as they breathed. Odd to see a pair of breasts act like living balloons. Ironic.

As the kylaxian nurse leaned in to check Cam's blood pressure, he looked down her blouse, getting a partial from the sight of those massive chest bladders. The nurse must've known what human men liked because when she noticed where Cam's eyes were she gave him an approving grin. At that point he just wanted to spray her in the face with a load of jizz. He knew it wasn't a genuine emotion, though, he was just so pent up with sexual aggression for Max that he was prepared to unleash the beast on any fertile female within squirting distance.

The nurse finally left giving him a clear view of her scrumptious derriere which again reminded him why he was there in the first place. When the doc came in, Cam was about ready to bust. The doc was a human and, for some reason, this made having to disclose all of the embarrassing stuff he was planning to disclose that much easier. Cam figured that, as a man, the doc probably could empathize with his situation.

"Hey there, how are you? I'm Dr. Joyan. What can I do for you today?" the doc asked.

Cam inhaled, prepping to vent his problems. "Hi, doctor. Well, I've got a few issues. Having a lot of stress that's work-related."

"Work-related. Is it just the volume of work? Pressure from management?" he asked.

"Not exactly. I'm sort of the manager in my department. No, it's more about a new employee."

"So, this new employee, are they giving you trouble?" he asked.

"I'm really just more confused than anything. It's more psychological." Cam admitted.

"Psychological? Elaborate on that if you could."

"The new terminal repair tech, her name is Max and she's the most confusing and socially backwards person I've ever met. She's kind of a real living-on-a-knife's-edge type person. I don't know, she must've had a crazy upbringing back on Arceus or something, but she's just really hard to socialize with. It's tough because she's great at her job in the department and she's really sharp and intelligent, so it's not that. It's almost like she tactically just screws with me. My stress levels are at an all-time high."

"How does this Max person "screw with you" as it were?"

"Trying to be civil with her, for one, is nearly impossible. She's not even aggressive, really. She's well-spoken, calm and, like I said, extremely intelligent. She just seems like she's got this serious chip on her shoulder for me. It's like this seething contempt."

"Have you ever insulted or offended her?"

"No, never. I'm a friendly guy and I'm always personable with people. Her first day, the day we met, she didn't seem thrilled to meet me but it's just been ramping up since then. Whenever I let her know that one of my terminals is down and if she can take a look at it she does but she's visibly unhappy. I caught her at the Anchorpoint, this bar, and it wasn't intentional, I wasn't following her or anything, but I got this passive aggressive earful from her there. It's just, everywhere I go, she's there. The stress is inescapable--" Cam said before the doc interrupted him.

"Do you find her physically attractive?", Dr. Joyan asked bluntly.

Without a moment's hesitation, Cam nodded. "Yeah. Absolutely. I mean,--she's--she's probably the most incredibly, perplexingly attractive woman I've ever met. And that's part of the problem. She's so--wow, but she's also so emotionally unattainable, like she's on another planet or something. It's driving me crazy. It's to the point where...", Cam shook his head, wondering whether he should continue the confession. "...where I'm having dreams of her that are so vivid and intense that I'm having... nocturnal... emissions." he finally said, trying to sound as clinical and impersonal as possible.

To Cam's relief, the doc didn't even crack a smirk. He was just typing into his tablet console. "Nocturnal emissions. I'm assuming that's not natural for you to be having those at your age. You don't regularly have them, do you?"

"Oh, no. I hadn't had one in probably ten years."

"I'm not a psychologist, but from what I'm hearing about all of this passive aggressive behavior on Max's part, I think it may be possible that she finds you physically attractive. To her, because of that, she may see you as some sort of a threat."

Cam couldn't believe what he was hearing. Max interested in him? Him being a threat? "I'm sorry, doctor. I'm not following you."

The doc persisted, "Well, it's possible that Max may have experienced some sort of sexual abuse or dysfunction when she was younger. That abuse could be manifesting in an extreme form of emotional withdrawal and contempt in those she could feels she would otherwise pursue sexually, thereby exposing herself emotionally and making it possible for her to be abused again. I've got friends who are psychologists and they see that sort of thing all the time."

Cam couldn't believe it. He exhaled in disbelief, as if the puzzle was coming into view. "I guess if that's true there's nothing I can do about it. Is there anything you can give me to at least calm my nerves a little? Something not too heavy."

Dr. Joyan chuckled. "Yeah, I can prescribe you something. And as for your Max problem. I've got four words for you: Kill her with kindness."

Back at home later that night, Cam laid in bed ruminating on what Dr. Joyan had said. Max interested in him? That was the worst joke he'd ever heard. But was it possible? No, couldn't be. But what if it was?

On cue, when Cam woke up from a heavy sleep, his boxers contained the slimy evidence that his dreams of Max were persisting. What a life.

****

CHAPTER THREE

Regretful Apologies

Coming into work that day, Cam decided he'd confront Max and give her a genuine, honest apology about the altercation at Anchorpoint. He couldn't have them fighting a cold war within the confines of the office. Work was always a peaceful temple; a cold, sterile environment free of emotional and physical stresses. The entire debacle with Max was throwing a wrench into it all. Cam was starting to actually dislike the prospect of coming to work after waking up. This had to change and soon.