Orgy of the Shoggoth

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

-- H.P. Lovecraft

1

The turgid, spongey tentacle invaded Amanda's mouth. She tried to push against it with her tongue, but it was too slick with slime and ooze to be held back. She tried to suck in one last gulp of precious air, before it pressed itself into the confines of her throat, pressing her windpipe closed. How? How had this situation gotten so out of hand? She'd had her whole life figured out. She had graduated with honors a year early from high school. She had rode scholarships and bursaries through an illustrious university life, and walked away with a doctoral thesis that was on track to become required reading for future scientists in her field. She was a botanist, for Christ's sake, not some primitive beast's brood sow.

The twitching thing in her mouth flexed, and she could feel it blossoming in her throat. Thick, viscous slime invaded her, its heat making her head spin. This feeling, this inexorably alien feeling of her body being invaded by another organism, it could never feel normal. It felt sick, and wrong, and filthy, and Amanda loved it.

Amanda slapped Burt's thigh, and pulled her mouth off of his penis. She gulped down the load of cum in her throat, and looked up through her smeared mascara at him. Burt looked like he belonged in a place like Deep Station Four. He was just shy of six feet tall, and his torso was shaped like a kidney bean, with fat pooling around his hips, belly, and behind his arms. What he lacked in appearance, he more than made up for with enthusiasm and endowment. He had cum three times today, and even running on fumes, his cock had nearly nine inches of length with over two and a half inches of girth. It had actually scared Amanda when she had first seen it, but watching him use it on Ruth and Carolyn had convinced her that she needed to experience it for herself. He had been in great shape, once, maybe, but a career spent in laboratories had taken that athletic edge away from the fifty-four year old. Amanda wondered if his age was something that she found attractive, or if she had sex with Burt in spite of the age gap. He was, as it stands, just a year younger than her own father. Maybe it didn't matter. She climbed up onto the couch, and nestled into Burt's side. He wrapped one of his thick, powerful arms around her, giving a brief squeeze to one of her small, firm breasts, before sliding down her flank and resting on the swell of her hip. Amanda wrapped a hand around the now half-chub of her lover's deflating member, and massaged it casually.

Burt may have been an ugly man with a rod of gold, but Amanda could have had her pick of men. At thirty one years old, she stayed trim and toned by working out on an elliptical trainer instead of simply sitting when she watched TV. It was strenuous, but it kept her fit, and a vitamin-conscious diet kept her caramel skin free of blemishes. If she was self-conscious of anything, it was her bust. Like a horrible latina stereotype, she had a tremendous ass, perfectly round, and pitiable little cones for tits. She brushed a lock of hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear, and surveyed the rest of the rumpus room.

Ruth was a thick-bodied redhead with enormous Double-D breasts and emerald-green eyes. She looked like she was still in her twenties, despite approaching forty. She straddled Warren, who lay on his back on a futon that otherwise served as a couch. Warren was a wiry, elderly black man with silver hair and a thick moustache. His physique made Amanda think of an ostrich. Behind Ruth, slowly spearing her anus with his long, broomhandle prick, was Kevin. Kevin was middle-aged, but wore it well, and had a firm barrel-chested physique that was only beginning to soften. Carolyn had her back pressed up against a wall, held aloft by Martin. Carolyn was all skin and bones, her ribs visible on her sides, her elbows slightly wider than her upper arms. Her body (and the deep purple bags under her eyes) told of a lifetime spent working late hours and living on a diet of coffee and not much else. Martin paid his way through university with a football scholarship, and it showed. He was a veritable wall of muscle, with hands the size of catcher's mitts, and the cardio needed to hump for hours. Andrew, five foot four and one hundred pounds of tiny blonde twink, perched on the kitchenette counter and rubbed at his implausibly long cock with both hands. His member might have been over a foot long if fully erect, but in a cruel jest, his tiny frame couldn't supply enough blood to inflate it that far, and so it was never more than half-mast. A pool of lubricant and oozing jizz had accumulated on the floor between his feet.

Ruth, Carolyn, Amanda, Warren, Kevin, Martin, Andrew, and Burt. Amanda mused over it in her head. They were scientists, academics, each of them at the forefront of their respective disciplines. Put them all together under one roof, and watch the sparks fly.

"How did it end up like this?" asked Amanda, turning to Burt.

"Well, ah damn, that's good. Well, I think it's sort of like the Olympic Village Problem."

"Mm?" hummed Amanda. "How so?"

"Well, this is a recurring problem with the athlete villages at the Olympic Games. Every minute the athletes aren't on the field competing, they're dashing from room to room, fucking every other athlete they can find. Basically, there's a non-stop orgy going on just off-camera, and the custodians have to clean up thousands of condoms when the event is through."

Amanda squeezed Burt's cock, pulling thin rivulets of semen out of his head and watching them roll down over her fingers. "Do you mean to tell me any time you put a bunch of people together, they turn into us?"

"Well, imagine you're an athlete," said Burt. "You've dedicated your whole life to pursuing perfection in your event, and you're suddenly dropped into a massive complex filled with hundreds of people who've done the same. You're all the best of the best at whatever your chosen sport is, and you suddenly find yourself surrounded with others like yourself. So there's a sort of kinship as soon as you meet, and it just clicks."

"Burt, we're not athletes. You and Ruth jiggle like jello, Carolyn looks like she'll blow away in a strong gust of wind, and the most exercise I get is watching schmaltzy sitcoms for an hour a day."

"It's not the athleticism, it's the common ground and the isolation. We're all working in different fields, but we've all worked our asses off to get as far as we have, and the same general academic path led us all here. You're the botanical equivalent of a gold-medal winner. You've got how many papers published?"

"I've lost count."

"We all have."

Amanda gave a dismissive "mhm," and stood up. She leaned over Burt, and licked the last drooling threads of seed from his manhood, then walked toward the kitchenette. She looked at Andrew, whose face was flushed red with arousal, and answered his pleading stare by saying "sorry, I'm tapping out for today." Amanda poured herself a cup of coffee, grabbed a terry-cloth robe from the floor, and walked out of the rumpus room.

2

Katie turned against the howling wind, trying to put the hood of her yellow raincoat between her face and the harshest of the torrential shower. It was no use. The sea may have been relatively calm, but the sky was angry. She looked at the skipper, who stood behind a tiny windscreen at the rear of the skiff, and shouted a question at him. "How much longer until we get there?"

Her voice was, even at full volume, too weak to be heard over the roaring of the squall. The skipper shouted back "what?"

Katie took a deep breath, and yelled with all her might. "WHEN ARE WE GOING TO LAND?!"

The skipper just stared at her, and fidgeted with some controls. Just as Katie was sucking in the air she would need to yell again, she got her answer. The boat bumped, gently, on its port side. The skipper bounced out from behind the wheel, and threw a length of rope around a post on the small pier.

Katie tried to give directions about what boxes should be moved first, and how carefully to set things down. Her squeaking voice couldn't rise over the sound of the wind, the rain, and the waves on the shore. The skipper grabbed the young woman, his arms lifting her up from beneath her armpits like he was hefting a small child, and swung her over the side of the boat, planting her rubber boots on the wooden planks of the pier. Before she could thank him, he was already unmooring the boat, and reversing it away. Katie picked up the first of her boxes, and looked up in time to see the skiff disappear into the dark murk of the storm. She turned away from the sea, to find her new workplace.

Deep Station Four was built on a narrow, rocky island, about sixty five miles East of Cape Cod. A lighthouse stood in the center of the island; Its operation was now automated and powered by solar panels, so its interior was mostly co-opted for storage. The rest of the station was a new steel building, slapped together from prefabricated panels. It looked like an outbuilding on a ranch, or a heavy industry machine shop, rather than some sort of cutting edge laboratory. The building butted up against a cliff, and Katie could see a steel catwalk extending from its rear, reaching out over the ocean, and connecting to a platform that made her think of an oil rig in miniature. She marched up the asphalt path to the steel building, leaning forward into the wind.

Katie pushed the front door open, balancing her box on one knee so she could turn the handle. Inside, the coat room was dark, with the various gear all seeming to be bone dry. Only an idiot would go out in weather like this, she thought to herself, and smiled. There were doors on the walls to either side, just past the boot and coat racks, but the door at the end of the hall had a thin line of warm yellow light peeking out from under it. Knowing she would need help to get her equipment inside in a reasonable time, Katie set her box down. She marched to the door, and threw it open.

Seated at one of the plush executive office chairs surrounding a great round conference table, was a naked woman with straight black hair that flowed around her shoulders. Her skin was a creamy hazelnut colour, and her eyes were a shimmering amber. In front of her sat a large coffee mug, and a small bottle of deep brown liquor. Katie briefly thought the woman might be a stripper, before remembering where she was.

"Oh, fuck!" said the naked woman, as she quickly clutched at the edges of her open robe to cover herself. "We didn't think you were getting in until Thursday."

Katie looked away, scanning the room to avoid staring at Amanda. "It, um, it is Thursday."

"Damn," said Amanda. "Goddamn Kevin and his goddamn Tequila, we're all a day behind."

Katie tried to say "it's fine, really," but never got past "it's..." The enormous display screen to her right, taking up nearly the entire wall, must have been ten feet high and almost twenty feet wide. A video sharing site was open in its browser, and playing a compilation of dogs falling into swimming pools. The video shocked Katie, because she expected it to be pornography. If the moaning and swearing weren't coming from the TV, then where was it coming from?

Amanda pointed a thumb over one of her shoulders at a door in the far corner. "We, uh, we were having a bit of a party. You need help getting your stuff inside?"

"Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble," said Katie.

Amanda groaned as she hefted herself onto her feet, and took a deep pull from the brown bottle in front of her. She walked to the door where those wet slapping sounds were coming from, and kicked it open. "Drop your cocks and grab your socks! We have company!"

3

Katie was thankful that the other researchers had at least put some amount of clothing on before marching into the storm to collect her equipment from the dock. One of them, a slight blonde man who looked like he still belonged in high school, walked into the coatroom wearing nothing but a pleated red miniskirt. Most of them only had some pants or underwear on under their rain ponchos, and they conveyed the boxes inside as quickly as they could to escape the cold.

Now Katie was seated in one of the luxurious executive chairs by the conference room table, with a mug of coffee in her hands. She held it to each of her cheeks for a moment to warm them. The other eight researchers had made themselves decent, and wrapped up in warm layers of wool and fleece. They all had hot drinks of their own.

"We're glad you've finally arrived," said a tall, square-jawed man with a golden tan. His hair was jet black, with a peppering of grey around his temples, and his stubble gave him the rugged air of an aging movie star. "We told the trustees we needed a geneticist just over a week ago. I'm impressed at how quickly they came through."

Katie flushed, and said "well, they offered me enough money that I couldn't turn it down."

"That makes sense," said the square-jawed man. "Things have gotten heated here, so there's a lot of urgency mounting. I've read your file myself, but I feel some proper introductions are in order. My name is Kevin Grafton. I'm a geologist and paleoanthropologist. I've been selected to head operations here at Deep Station Four, as it was my survey that discovered the cave system."

"It's nice to meet you," replied Katie. The other researchers looked her over as she spoke. Katie had freckled white skin, dirty blonde hair, and hazel eyes that graduated from green rings near her iris to brown at her sclera. Her heavy, frumpy sweater did nothing to hide the swell of her firm breasts or the steep pinch of her narrow waist. "I'm Katarina Waldorff. You can call me Katie. I'm a geneticist. I focus on micro-organisms and pathogens."

After a brief pause, Kevin shook his head. "You received your PhD when you were just twenty two, and you've given guest lectures at Oxford and MIT. Don't sell yourself short, little lady."

"I, well, I don't like to brag."

"Go ahead and brag. Anyway, I know you met Amanda already..."

"Amanda?" asked Katie.

The woman who first greeted Katie lifted her hand. "That's me. Amanda Romero, Botany and Mycology. I'm here to catalogue floral and fungal samples, and to provide insight on the

nutrient sources within the cave system."

Continuing in a clockwise fashion, the next person to speak was a short, fat, balding man in a brown suit. His pink round cheeks framed soft, kind-looking eyes. "I'm Herbert Feinberg. Everyone calls me Burt. My field is chemistry."

Next, a brick wall of a man with a face that was just too narrow for his frame. Loose, curly blonde hair hung around his ears in a sort of bell shape. "Martin Block, and it doesn't matter. We're all just here to gawk at the Shoggoth, now.."

The table went silent. After a moment, Katie asked "Shoggoth? Is that what you're calling Specimen X?"

"Well," said Kevin, stopping to clear his throat. "We, uh, we haven't named it properly. We don't need to settle on a name until we go to publish our findings, but Martin is adamant that the name 'Shoggoth' is apt."

"It's a fucking shoggoth," said Martin. "The Shoggoth is a shoggoth, and no other name is ever going to fit. I'm an ichthyologist, by the way. I'm supposed to be studying fish, and, yeah, there's some weird fish down there. But the Shoggoth is all anyone is going to talk about."

"Like, the thing from 'At the Mountains of Madness?'" asked Katie.

Nobody answered. The next person raised her hand. "Oh, my turn! My turn! Hi, I'm Ruth Flannery." Ruth was a voluptuous woman with a round face and elegantly small nose. Her skin was ivory white, almost like porcelain. She hopped in her chair as she shouted 'my turn' and her breasts nearly leapt out of the generously low cut of her dress. "I specialize in crustaceans and invertebrates. If it scuttles or squirms, I'm your gal."

A grey-haired black man cleared his throat with a loud phlegmy 'haroomph.' "Warren Henry. I engineered the submersibles we deploy from the moonpool to explore the cave and collect samples. I also perform diagnostics and maintenance with my business partner, Andrew."

Katie asked "The moonpool, is that where the catwalk on the back of the building leads?"

"Yes," answered Warren. "The catwalk leads to an elevator platform. The elevator connects to the pressurized underwater complex. That's the real Deep Station, the rest of this warehouse is only here to support it."

The tiny blonde man next to Warren waved, fanning his fingers out and enthusiastically shaking his whole arm. When Katie turned to him, he said "I'm Andrew. Andrew Jacoby. I'm a software engineer, and I developed the interface that controls the submersibles. Me and Warren do most of the piloting, but we can train you on them if you want."

Katie looked at the last person at the table. She was rail-thin, with a tightly cropped bob of straight black hair, framing a gaunt face. Her almond eyes squinted briefly as she stared at her coffee. Katie thought her skin had the tell-tale warmth of a Pacific Island heritage. As the last researcher looked up, and noticed the entire table glaring at her, she spoke. "Carolyn Reese. Zoology. Mammals. I handle the lab animals, as well as any marine mammals that might turn up around the island. Mostly I just breed rats."

4

"This is it?" asked Katie, looking at the slide on the screen.

"This is it," said Amanda.

Most of the researchers had wandered away from the conference room. Kevin, Martin and Amanda had stayed, to cover the particulars of Specimen X.

Martin leaned over the table, resting his cheek on one hand. "Andrew saw it first, slurped it up with the Avatar's vacuum trap."

"Avatar is the name of one of our unmanned submersibles," said Kevin. "We have three subs. Avatar, Titanic, and Terminator. Andrew pilots Avatar, Warren pilots Titanic, and Terminator is kept on hand as a spare."

"I wasn't given any documentation to read before I arrived," said Katie, wanting an excuse for being so out of the loop.

Kevin scratched at his beard and said "no, you wouldn't have. All of the Deep Station research programs are funded by government spooks, and they pulled the curtain down from day one. Everything regarding Specimen X is strictly eyes-only. Nobody outside the nine of us at the station really knows anything about it. One contact on the mainland knows a little, just enough that we could squeeze him for more time and funding."

"So it's some kind of protozoa?" asked Katie.

Amanda answered. "No, or, at least, we don't think so. I've been examining samples of it under a microscope, and the organelles are too simple to be a protozoa. It's essentially just a nucleus and some fluid inside a cell wall. It manifests organelles as needed, and then digests them to repurpose them later. If it were inert, it would resemble a fungus, so that's what we're expecting from your sequencing."

Martin grumbled "Amanda thinks it's a fungus, because she specializes in fungus. She wants it to be a fungus, because then it's her discovery and her glory and the rest of us are just et al."

"Cut that shit out," said Kevin. "The survey is a group project, nobody is getting cut out, and all of our names will be on the published paper."

Katie raised her hand like a flustered schoolgirl.