Liquid Diplomacy

"Fine," I said. "I'm ready. Let's do this."

The alien and I both knew there was one more memory to revisit. It put me under and took me there.

After I got selected for the first contact mission, and Jenna promptly dumped me when she found out I was leaving for good, I found myself alone on my last few days on Earth.

I was back home saying goodbye to my parents, and Kelly was in town too, helping deal with her dad's things after he passed away. I was surprised to run into her at the grocery store. She looked like she was doing great, other than the grief. Given the circumstances, I didn't want to tell her why I was there, but I did want to spend more time with her while I had the chance.

We got pizza, and I helped her go through her dad's DVD collection, deciding what to keep, donate, sell, or trash. It felt like old times, and the years had been kind to her. Kinder than they'd been to me, I thought. I was in astronaut shape at least, but it was like she had only aged ten years in the last twenty.

We put on a DVDR of her dad's old handi-cam footage from a Christmas long ago. It wasn't surprising when Kelly's tears came. At first she tried to hide it, but I put my arms around her, and she leaned into me, sobbing softly into my shoulder. I petted her hair until she caught her breath.

"Sorry," she sniffled.

"Don't be," I said. "You have every right to cry."

I was thinking about how I'd be shot into space soon, and she'd be losing a friend. Maybe it was a mistake to get close to her again, but I almost couldn't help it.

"Do you ever think about what could have been?" she asked.

I laughed a little. "What do you mean?"

"Like for instance, that first time back in high school. I missed my period after that, and it freaked me out a lot. Turned out to be a false alarm. I guess I've never told you about it, but at the time I was irrationally angry that you weren't there for me when it happened."

I remembered when she'd told me this. She'd always been pretty open about this stuff, but I'd never known before that we'd had a pregnancy scare as teenagers. I never knew I put her through that. Hearing about it now freaked me out a little, and I wasn't sure why she was bringing it up after all this time. I knew I didn't want her getting too attached, when I was about to leave the planet. So I had brushed her off and made my exit for the night, thinking it was the kind thing to do for her.

This time I let her continue. "Sometimes I've wondered if there's an alternate universe out there where I really did get pregnant, and I think about how different my life would be. I always wondered what you would have done then. Maybe we would've raised that baby together. Maybe that baby would be headed off to college by now. Maybe you and I would've stuck together this whole time. Having you here with me like this now, I can almost imagine we're in that universe."

She started turning away. "That probably sounds really weird."

I put a hand on her shoulder, catching her eye with mine. "No, it doesn't. I understand what you mean," I said. "Kelly, I'd hope that in every universe out there, I'd be here with you right now."

She laughed a little. And then, consciously, deliberately, knowing I was betraying my species by doing so, I kissed her. Her lips were warm and plump against mine. If she was surprised at all, it quickly ebbed.

We didn't rush this time. Yes, for me the build-up to this had taken days already, but I wasn't holding back, and felt no need to surge forward either. At first, we were content just to kiss, just to embrace. I noticed every time my fingers found somewhere sensitive on her skin. Along her sides, the small of her back, the nape of her neck. I pressed my fingers harder, deeper into the muscles of her buttocks, and she moaned into my mouth, pushing her breasts against me.

Article by article, we exposed a little more skin at a time. Questions hung in the air unspoken: Was I still attractive to her? Was she still attractive to me? With every cautious step forward, we answered.

Her naked form was beautiful to look at, and even more beautiful to feel, her flesh warm and soft against mine. Her firm nipple pressed into the palm of my hand, as I cupped one of her breasts, kissing the valley between them. Her chest heaved with heavy breaths. Her hand found my stomach and slid down from there, to where I already stood erect. She gave me only the tantalizingly barest of touches, as if she knew not to stroke me too hard.

I laid her down on the sofa, kissing her thighs. I found her soaking wet for me, her flower open to be pollenated. But first I lapped at her nectar until she shivered. My finger inside her felt her spasm and contract.

She took my hand and drew it up, kissing my fingers. I followed her lead, looming over her.

Even knowing this wasn't real, I couldn't not warn her that I was leaving. Because I could never do that to the real Kelly. And if this wasn't Kelly, then I didn't want it.

"Kelly, I'm the one they picked for the first contact mission," I said, looking down into her eyes. Giving her a chance to say no.

If she said no, then maybe this wouldn't be the memory that the alien and I would use to cement our pact. Surely we could revisit one of the others.

Kelly took in my words and thought for a little while. And then her expression was unreadable as she said, "Then maybe you could leave a piece of yourself behind, for me to keep."

"What piece do you want?" I asked with a bittersweet smile.

She reached down to where my erection hung between us, and pulled it towards her, lining me up with her.

"I want you inside me," she said.

Her intent was only just starting to dawn on me. "And leave you to be a single mother?"

"What you're doing is important," she said. "And as for me, well, I'm thirty-eight. It's kinda now or never."

I realized that the question of contraception hadn't even come up in the first place. There was only one way she expected this to play out. I was nervous about it, conflicted, but as I pressed into her, it felt so right that I couldn't form an argument against it. It felt like we were meant to be, like we were destined to fit together this way. I had been with her before, but it was different now. We were both older and more mature. We were both more in control of our bodies. And having more experience, I was able to savor her now. I noticed all the ways she shifted inside herself, as I joined with her. I was able to appreciate all the muscles inside of her, and the skillful control she had over them. I came to rest deep inside her, and she let go of all her breath, as I touched something sensitive and reserved.

We moved slowly at first, in small movements of her pelvis against mine. I drew back, making a new memory of way her flesh pulled on mine, and the way she took me deep again when I slid back into her.

I could feel my climax building, but I didn't want this to culminate so soon. I wasn't ready to betray humanity just yet. I got up off Kelly, and she mounted me, lowering herself onto my cock. In this position, my hands were free to rub her back, making her moan for more than one reason. I felt her pleasure resonate down to her core, where she gripped me with every movement of her hips. Her intensity grew, until she was desperately pressing her clit against my crotch, my erection nestled deep in her. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders, and I held her tight.

When she came, she leaned on me, shuddering, just as she had earlier in the night. Inside her, everything was in motion. I just barely held out until her urgency slowed again, but just the feeling of her flesh around me was nearly enough to push me over the edge. I could feel the enormity of my climax looming.

"It's not too late to change your mind." I warned her. "But...soon.

"I'm ready," she said, and it was all I needed to hear.

I felt full to the point of bursting, my cock rigid and swollen inside her, pressing outward against the her soft flesh squeezing in. It was still hard to believe that we might be intentionally doing the very thing we'd been so scared of when we were younger. The very thing I'd managed to avoid, across years and relationships and close calls.

Then I erupted inside her. I felt it shoot out of me. It felt like a weight off, like a pressure released. The warmth of it spread out, filling her, blooming inside her.

It surprised me, how quickly and intensely she climaxed again, so soon after the last time. Her limbs went taut, gripping me almost to the point of pain, while her vaginal muscles contracted hard, drawing another jet up and out of me, almost despite myself. On one level, I had been building up to this for days. On another level, this was the climax of my life. I had one chance to reproduce, and my instincts were not going to leave the job undone. Again and again, I released more of myself into her. Each time triggered a fresh wave of pleasure in her, making her hips threaten to buck as her vagina reciprocated my offering and begged for more. With each feedback cycle, it took more out of me, while taking me to new heights, until I saw stars.

I came out of the psychic trance gently this time. The alien proboscis was still encasing my cock; I was somehow still hard after all that, and it squeezed me gently, keeping me there. If I wasn't mistaken, part of the fleshy tube looked engorged where perhaps I had filled it up. Awash in the afterglow, it didn't disturb me anymore. This was what companionship was going to look like for me, for the next decade or so at least, so long as this alien--or one like it--consented to the act.

"That will be plenty," it said.

"Put me back in," I said. "I want to see what I could've had with her, if I'd stayed."

"That would not be realistic," it warned me.

"Please." I'd given up my bargaining power. Now I was just asking for a favor. A consolation prize. "I'll produce more."

It dropped me back in, right where I left off. Still inside of Kelly, still somehow erect. We made love again that night and again in the morning. And then I got an email saying that they'd cancelled the mission. So a day turned into a weekend turned into a week. Something clicked in my head, after that first night, knowing we were making a baby together. It wasn't just that I was unafraid of pregnancy and parenting with her. I was driven by it. Like I'd had this repressed desire my entire life, and now I had an outlet for it. Now that I was with the right person at the right time.

My stupid youthful hang-ups about being seen in a relationship with her were long gone. I was all in, and I didn't care who knew. Things moved fast after that, like we were on borrowed time. A rushed wedding, after her pregnancy test came back positive. We welcomed our baby boy into the world, and I was in awe of how Kelly handled it. It wasn't long before we had a second, and then a third.

The alien was jumping me ahead in time, like these were memories to revisit, but I still had night after night with her, sometimes even a surreptitious quickie in the laundry room while the kids napped. I must have given the alien so much DNA to work with.

Day 744

Suddenly I was back in the real world, on the deck of the alien's ship. At first I couldn't be sure how long I'd been under. Turns out it had been nearly ten hours this time. A long time, but not compared to the years it felt like I'd lived.

Its proboscis was nowhere in sight, but my crotch was drenched in semen. I had been ejaculating all over myself while I was imagining myself with Kelly. It didn't want to keep collecting my copious offerings of DNA. For me, it validated that what it felt like when Kelly and I were together. It meant that what brought me to climax was her, not the stimulation of some alien DNA collection organ.

"What? What happened?" I asked, confused and disappointed to be brought out of the fantasy.

"That is where the simulation ends," the alien said.

"Why? I don't understand."

"We have been analyzing the DNA you gave us. Modeling all possible variations. In your memories of Kelly, her appearance correlates with the expression of a gene that causes death by age 43."

My heart sank. There was the loss of the Kelly I had just had a fleeting glimpse of--the one I married, the one who carried my children and fed them from her breasts. And then there was also the loss of the real Kelly, the one I left behind on Earth. I knew that more time must have passed there than for me. If the alien was right, then it was already too late, even if I had a way back home.

"If your goal was to impregnate her as many times as possible," it began. I chafed at the suggestion, but it hit home because there was some truth there. "...then you could have started earlier."

I took a deep breath. I was just coming to grips with knowing I would have lost her no matter what, whether I'd stayed or not. And I knew that what the alien was suggesting would mean overwriting the real memories I had of her. But I wanted it anyway. I wanted more time with her, and to my own surprise, I wanted what it thought I did. After all, it could read my mind.

"Show me," I said.

It took me back to that first time, when the two of us were awkward, inexperienced teenagers. There we were on the floor of the den, my cock making first contact with her folds.

"I hope this doesn't weird you out," I told her. "But I love you, Kelly. I always have."

"Yeah," she said, as if she knew all along, but I saw the surprise in her eye. And then, in a cautious whisper, "I love you too."

I leaned down and kissed her, and shifted my hips forward, pushing past the threshold of her depths. The question of a condom didn't come up, as I pressed all the way into her.

"I'm always going to be with you," I told her, knowing exactly how long always would be. Twenty-five years, as it turned out.

I held myself there, inside her, my blood pulsing. It would be one thing to just get carried away and cum inside her, and deal with the consequence when it came into the world. It would be another thing to confess my desire to impregnate her only at the last second, when she'd feel compelled to go along with it for the moment. I didn't want either of those things. I wanted to know that it was what she truly wanted, and to be making the decision with a relatively clear head. We had already gone far enough for it to count as intercourse, after all. If she was only looking to lose her virginity, we had already accomplished that.

"Kelly, I have another confession to make," I said. "I want to have a baby with you. But if you don't want it yet, I can wait."

I knew it was a crazy thing for a teenager to be saying. But the idea would be there. Maybe not today, but sooner or later...

"Oh, silly," she said affectionately. "And here I was thinking I was going to have to trick you into it."

And with her words, she squeezed her vaginal muscles down on me. Making my cock jump inside her. We both giggled nervously.

"Careful, or you just might," I warned her, as I drew back and thrust into her again, resuming a patient rhythm. She started to shudder beneath me, quick to climax.

I pushed into her again and again, relentlessly. We tried every position we'd heard rumors about. I particularly enjoyed thrusting into her from behind. But as the verge of my climax approached, I wanted to be face to face, for the moment that might change the rest of our lives.

We were already exhausted and tender, lying side by side and gently moving together and apart, like the breath of something greater. She had one leg up over my hip, and I was nestled deep inside her. When we came together, I could feel the tip of my cock nudging her cervix, and it was driving her wild.

"I'm about to cum inside you," I warned her, giving her a chance to back out.

"Do it. Cum inside me," she moaned, surprisingly ready to talk dirty on her first time.

"It might knock you up, you know."

"I'm ready. Make me a teen mommy." Her words were driving me wild too.

I was enjoying drawing it out, and wanted to be clear what she was in for. "Soon you're going to be pregnant with our child. Is that what you want?"

"Yes. I want it," she said. "I want to have your baby."

She kissed me hard, thinking this was the moment, but not just yet. "And I'm going to keep getting you pregnant as often as I can."

"Oh fuck," she said, succumbing to her own climax as my cock nudged her cervix again. We were lined up perfectly for me to reach her egg.

"Oh fuck is right," I moaned, feeling her squeeze down on me. I couldn't hold out any longer, nor did I want to.

I clutched her tight, to keep my erection deep within her, lined up just right, as I swelled up inside her. She gripped me right back, inside and out, gasping in my ear when she felt it. Then my seed shot into her, and the way she reacted, I could tell I hit a bullseye. Everything inside her undulated around me. My whole world was shifting in real time, my life passing before my eyes as I changed it forever. I swelled up and poured myself into her again and again, and she clung to me, tightly conjoined as she rode out the shakes of a rolling series of peaks.

Being teenagers, we didn't stop there that night. We went again and again. When she missed her period, it was a surprise to neither of us. I broke the news to my parents right away. They were befuddled at first. Their teenage son was having a baby? With Kelly? They blamed themselves for not having kept us apart before, but now there was no point trying to. And when the baby came, our daughter reawakened their parenting instincts.

Kelly and I took the slow route through college and career, with a lot of young kids on our hands, and often another on the way. Sure enough, our youngest was graduating high school and headed off to college by the time Kelly's dad died. We went through his DVD collection, and I held her when it made her cry. I cried too then, knowing we only had a few more years left.

Day 746

I opened my eyes again, back on the alien ship. I'd been under for even longer that time, experiencing all the years Kelly and I ever could've had. The alien had its proboscis on me again, and it felt like a tender gesture now. It didn't have to.

"Thank you for that," I saw, running a hand up the side of that fleshy stalk. It contracted under my touch, giving my cock a squeeze.

"My pleasure," the alien replied telepathically.

Even though I knew it wouldn't be the same, I wondered how the simulation could've played out with Jenna, or even Lila, if I'd been unafraid to cross the line with either of them. Maybe space wasn't going to be so empty after all.