Red Daddy: Ceres Station Pandemic

Anyusolfani was dead.

His eyes were fully open, his mouth had some vomit around it, and his skin was pasty white. There was no doubting this, I thought, but Cora went over quickly and took his pulse, or, the lack of it.

As she moved, I took more notice of what Cora looked like. I'd seen most of her already, during the exams, but watching her move, I could see she was all-business when it came to handling emergencies.

She had medium-length dark hair, pretty eyes and a pretty but very girl-next-door face. She stood about the same height as Evaline, maybe half a face shorter than me. Both were athletically-built, not over-thin or over-thick, somewhere in the 19-year-old beauty realm of just right, as far as my tastes were concerned.

I wondered what really being overweight was like, on a practical basis... I'd seen pictures from the late 1900's and early 2000's when being very large was still a public health crisis, before endocrine-modulation fixed all that.

I looked at Evaline and asked, "Evaline?"

"Please call me Ev?!? You've called me by my full name since we met, and I've told you before to call me Ev."

"Uh... when? I don't remember that part."

"I'm sure I did."

"Oh. I could have missed it... but I don't think so. Okay, Ev, I'll ... try. Uh, I had a question."

She was moving me over to my pod, but I stopped her.

"I can't go in yet, I really need a shower, I want to do that first." I was holding on to her shoulder, but it wasn't that bad to walk on my own. "I can get this. I need to... use the loo, also."

"Ha!" she laughed, "The 'loo'? "

I grinned, kind of grimly, as I pulled off clothing heading for the shower room. "...Just being funny. If you want one, there's two in there, or you can wait."

"I'm going to help Cora with the body."

"His name is... was, Anyusolfani. Last name is... I don't remember, sorry. Something long and Pakistani."

My shower was unremarkable. I did notice my testicles were much larger than normal, maybe having doubled in size. That's still reasonable, I guessed, not like I'm carting around bowling balls. Still, different can feel bad. I wondered if they'd ever go back down to normal. Plus, they felt a little achy so I knew I'd have to empty them again soon.

That brought my mind to making things simpler for my female ... 'compatriots'?

I didn't know what I should call them, but that wasn't critical.

My focus, instead, was part of the 'make things simpler' and I figured giving myself a bush-cut might help keep me clean or something. I kept my head hair pretty short using a clipper by the sink, so I neaten up on top, then did my down-below to not be too Sasquatch for them.

Unfortunately, this left me covered in hair clippings, so I jumped into the shower again a second time. This time, I made the water significantly cooler (if not actually cold), but my boner was still jutting out, unremittingly out there and pointed mostly skyward. Mine curved a little upwards near the end. It wasn't profound, just a little off-straight, but I was self-conscious about it.

I stood looking carefully at myself in profile for a moment and wondered if anyone in the classroom noticed... Probably so. They had long enough to look at it, certainly.

I ran the shower dryer a second time, and Cora poked her head in to see what was up, briefly, made eye contact and smiled, then went away again.

The dryer was pretty quiet, like most everything around this place, but in all other respects was a minimal unit that was only knees-to-shoulders and ours blew really-cold air and not the higher-volume lower-heat ones.

Towels were unnecessary if you had a dryer. The one I'd had growing up was better - bigger, quieter, certainly warmer, but you take what you can get. It got me thinking... I owned a towel, somewhere in my clothes locker. I might want to get it out to sit on it, since I'd probably be sitting around naked a lot.

Evaline -- or Ev, really now -- stepped in the bathroom just as I was finished, and started stripping. She walked towards the toilets purposefully, so I headed out to the main room. There were some things I didn't need to see.

There were two couches. My dead roommate was on one, so I went to the other, but it was facing Anyu and that made it a little awkward. I was naked and sporting a huge boner, as I had been for a while. The surreal oddball situations I got in now were probably going to continue, I thought, but that didn't make them less oddball when they happened.

Cora finished up typing on her pad and put it away. She walked up to near me and leaned on a wall. "I sent in a casualty report for him. The auto-response said that if we have a deceased person, we should cover them with a sheet if we want, or we can go to an Q7-level aid station for a body bag."

Just then, my two other roommates, Tipu and Peter, walked in! I was naked, and more people made me panic a minute. Behind them there were two women I'd seen vaguely before but not frequently.

Tipu said, "Oh! Hey!" His eyes went to the other couch and he realized what had happened. "Oohhhh!!!! Omygod! Anyu!!!!" He went over and knelt in front of Anyu. I remembered then they had been friends. He started crying, "No! No....No!"

One of the girls (Pam, she told me later), went over and knelt next to him, consoling him.

Peter and Pauline, somber, both of them, talked with Cora a minute and then decided to go get a body bag. That only took a minute -- someone had a stack of them outside, the halls were furiously busy -- and they set to work putting Anyu in it. It didn't take long, they just opened the bag and laid him on it, then zipped it up. Peter, Pam, and Pauline each took a handle and they waddled out carrying the heavy weight of the body bag between them.

The narrow corridor was full of people, and we saw other people carrying body bags, too.

Cora was left with me and Tipu.

He went to his locker and started stripping. He told Cora and I, "I need a shower. Sorry about getting naked in front of you, I... guess things are different now. Who's in there?"

The water had just turned off, so before I could answer, Evaline called out, "Just me. I'm Evaline, people call me Ev."

Tipu hesitated, getting closer to the door, naked, of course.

Ev said, "I see you, it's okay. I'm with Red. Come on in, no modesty left in this place."

Tipu walked in, modest and kind of embarrassed, and I heard the shower start, and the blower start about the same time.

Ev said, "OW! Yuck! Your blower is Just All Wrong! Who set this thing up?!??!"

I said, "What do you mean?"

"Nevermind...." She came out, holding her clothes in front of her and rhetorically asked, "What do I dress in?". Setting down her clothes right by the bathroom on the floor, and sauntered over with a wiggle. She was deliciously naked, and now lacked any sign of pubic hair. I could see Cora noticing, too, but she was busy typing on her tablet.

She came get to me and bent over from the waist, giving me a kiss. Her breasts dangled wonderfully. If I hadn't been hard already, that would have done it. She said, almost sultry, "Mmmm. I don't think I'll be getting dressed. You need service."

"That's one way to put it."

She knelt between my feet, running her hands up my thighs, and then got a really distracted and irritated look on her face. She turned around to Cora and said, "Hey, Cora?"

"Yeah?"

"Uh, this is kind of awkward. I need to use the toilet, still? And, I want to help out Red here, but... "

"Oh, no problem. I got this. You okay with ...?"

"Absolutely! My jaw isn't going to feel good tomorrow anyway, better to spread the 'load' around a little." The wink was implied.

Cora stepped over (nothing in the room was far from anything else), and they traded places. Evaline headed for the bathroom again, and Cora looked up at me, then took my cock in one hand. Very matter-of-factly, looking me in the eye and smiling slightly, she asked, "Anything I should know about?"

I laughed, "I've been coming with a lot more volume... lots of semen. And I really like it when she swallowed..."

"Oh, of course. It's in my mouth anyway, I might as well."

Cora bent down and started bobbing her head on my cock, slow and steady, and jacking at the same time. It was really nice. I leaned my head back on the back of the couch and just felt the sensations. Her hand stroking felt good not as an exciting thing,, but it gave satisfaction and a 'base' to the feelings that the swishing her tongue and mouth were doing just added to.

The head bobbing continued, and I got a little lost in the goodness. Cora's technique was more refined than Evaline's, almost certainly from having done it more. Cora acted more like she knew what she was doing.

Building up, she got faster and I got closer. I barely noticed Evaline come back (dressed) and kneel next to Cora. She was observing more than anything. I really needed to spurt... And I DID -- SPURT! And I came, Spurt! Groaning loudly, I clutched at anything, and got a hold of the couch seats with both hands. Cora kept her mouth over the head of my cock, sucking steadily on my engorged head and just trying to keep herself positioned there, I could tell. I tried to be easy on her that way, but it was hard to stop the involuntary jerks that my body just created. Up from my balls and out my dick, I could feel the cum spurting out. I compared mentally how much was coming out, and it was definitely more than normal. There were sizeable spurts amounts even on what may have been the 8th or more spurt. Cora calmly continued to jack me, and it worked, ensuring I just kept spurting as long as possible.

I looked down and she was looking at my eyes, too, affirming, caring that I was doing better. Her affirmative uh-huh/yes moans had really helped me along, so I said so, and she just smiled since her mouth was still full of me.

Eventually, she let go and sat back, releasing my cock and letting it kind of bounce down onto my stomach, and then, flopping, down farther so it hung down between my legs. She told Evaline that she had to unclamp her mouth, because one time she hadn't with her old boyfriend and he just stayed hard and wanted to do 'something else'. She said that phrase oddly, and I could see there was unspoken communication between them.

They laughed, but I realized it was a laugh of tension acknowledgement, not a humor-laugh. Women and men were different about laughing, I knew that from psych class, but it was another thing to see it so obviously.

I pulled Cora's hand up and looked her in the eyes and said 'Thank You!' and meant it far more than the words. There was joy in the release, of course, but mostly it was relief from the pressure in my abdomen and balls, the nearly-emotional deep ache of needing to cum, it wasn't easy to describe. I knew that if I didn't do this, I'd be in huge trouble.

Ev and Cora sat and talked about technique for a while. I just leaned back and relaxed; I almost could have slept. Tipu was still in the shower, a long time for anyone. I think I heard crying over the water, but I wouldn't have said anything even if I could have. Mourning someone's death? As a culture, we Cereans didn't show emotion very quickly or extensively. I've seen old Japanese videos, both animated and live-action, and despite not many Cereans being Japanese looking, we certainly did hold back on the emotional content of things in the same way that the Japanese anime and movies reflected them doing.

For instance, if someone expressed a really strong emotion, they might be frowned at, teased, or even taken aside to complain about putting everyone in an awkward situation. The proper way of responding to emotion, even small ones, was to be very polite and give acknowledgement of both the thing driving that emotion as well as forgiveness (or not) of having expressed it visibly.

With Tipu returning soon, I didn't know how (sitting there, naked) I would respond to him emoting about his lost friend, if it was in front of me. I guessed I would cry with him, maybe. I was a little sad about Anyu, too. I didn't know him that well, but we'd lived together for a year despite almost never talking.

Not too many minutes later, the outer door opened and the group came back. They'd taken Anyu's body to where the colony med personnel wanted it, they said. We wanted all the details.

The fact that I was naked on a couch with 4 women there seemed irrelevant. I wasn't sporting a boner anymore, so that was good at least.

They had gone north on the lenvator (a tramcar that stays at the same g-level). North meant that they went towards the surface. Once there, they'd toted the bag axward (upwards, towards the axis and lighter grav) on the wide ramps to the crossing bay, an open area with spiral ramps where you could jump from the spinning section to some moving walkways that shifted your speed without killing you. You ended up, of course, in the microgravity of Ceres proper, not spingrav.

They said the whole journey was crowded with people getting to and from places. While common areas all over were populous and dense, that was usually limited by having areas of the hab running on 1st, 2nd, or 3rd shift. So little space meant everyone needed to use the space they had all the time, so we all had the negotiation process of making different sets of friends, then not seeing some people for extended periods because their family was on a different shift from you so you'd never be awake at the same time.

Shift changes were sometimes crowded, but flex hours meant people naturally did things when the stuff around them was least crowded.

In terms of taking the body bag up, the group had seen tons of other body bags, it seemed like there were thousands, they said. There were large containers of them after they got topside (zog, out of the hab's spingrav and into the more factory-oriented spaces).

There was an operation there, they said, where uniformed military personnel were accepting the body bags but writing whatever name or address was known on the bag first with paint pens. Sadly, no one in the group knew Anyu's full name, so they just wrote the address for our living quarters and that had to be enough.

NOTE: Apologies if my explanations here aren't helping your understanding of Ceres topography, which takes even new residents at least a month to use well. Making fun of newbs was fun in middle school, but it's not fair to you, the reader, since you can't see what I'm describing. For more detail on the layout, find a library reference source.

Long and short of this was, the pandemic was getting worse.

After eating some dinner (we always kept frozen burritos in the freezer even though we ate most of our meals in a cafeteria), we chatted and wondered about what was going to come next. Both of the guys took some minutes on the couch and got blowjobs, Tipu from Pam and Peter from Pauline.

It had been about an hour since I'd come, but then my boner had returned after dinner and certainly after hearing the moaning from Peter and Tipu.

About 20 minutes after the BJ's were done, there was a knock on the door, and then in walked Davida.

We stood, and said hello excitedly, of course. This was despite me only wearing a t-shirt and underwear for warmth. She came in and hugged everyone in the room. This was unusual, too, for us, we weren't normally so touchy-feely, but something about all this situation made us more closely bonded, perhaps.

She asked what was up with us, so Cora summarized.

Davida said calmly, "I'm here as a colony official. My medic status has turned into being certified as a Deputy Coroner, now. I can attest to people actually being dead, I have admitting privileges to clinics, and I can even enforce compliance with Provost orders. Basically, if you don't do what I say, I can vac you." Vac was shorthand for throwing someone out an airlock into the vacuum without a suit. This was a lot of power. She could have any of us killed.

She cleared her throat to explain. "The reason for this is, simply... Some Epic Shit is going down. I'm telling you this because I like you, and I know you. But, seriously, there's some Epically Bad Shit Happening. We're just letting things happen, mostly, because there's not much we can do. We can calm things down where we see panic, but ..." She sighed, and her eyes got big, honesty was coming out. "The morbidity rate is way too high."

We were all paying attention.

"So, I'm gonna tell you, this is life and death stuff, your eyes-up me right now, got it? And..." She winked slowly and meaningfully, "to make sure I don't say the wrong thing, you should pay attention to my body language, okay?"

We nodded.

She read her tablet screen rapidly. "Current research, very hasty but with control groups, indicates all males should ejaculate every 1.5 to 4 hours." She held up two fingers and nodded with emphatic eyes. "Any means necessary should be employed to ensure this happens. As you know, everyone on this base has a monthly autodoc physical, sometimes more frequently for risky professions. The autodocs just detected this virus 3 days ago after a central-core update. We had no warning it would be so contagious, and it's too new to have any antigens or antivirals that work. We've tried all of them." She nodded and swept her hand over her brow like that was work but a failure.

"Now, understand this part: Every single person on this station is utterly free of all known pathogens, including STD's and probably even toenail fungus. Unlike a lot of larger colonies or Earth populations where ingress/egress is not controlled, we can do this, and we do. With a steady and predicable flow of immigrants and established processes, we keep up." She was nodding her head yes to all of this part, which was a great relief.

"Age restrictions are a complicated thing and this is being left up to parents." She shook her head 'no' to this, but then added, "Though, some encouragement is being given to older teenagers to pursue whatever opportunities they have." She was strongly nodding yes to this part. I thought about my one-year-younger sister all of a sudden, and then thought about my dad. I hoped he was okay; my mom would take care of him, I hoped.

She continued, "The mortality rate is still unknown..." She shook her head no to this and held up her hands wider and wider apart, "but is much higher among men than women." She nodded to this part, telling us something we knew already.

"If you are male and need assistance ejaculating, text 'help' to medCentral and someone will be dispatched. It may be someone not attractive to you. This is not relevant. Close your eyes if you need to... Listen CAREFULLY: It is unwise to refuse lifesaving treatment. If you do, then call again, you may not have help be dispatched the second time." She nodded yes to this. "It's your life at stake. Males delaying ejaculation more than a certain number of hours [she held up 5 fingers] have much higher rate of complications." As she said the word complications, she motioned like a knife across the throat. We got that message loud and clear.

"Women wishing to not participate in lifesaving activities for moral, ethical, historical, or any other reason are to report topside immediately..." She again made the cut-throat motion. "...so they can be informed of their options." She held up her hand with a rounded zero.

Straightening up, she said, "That's about it. I have to go, and fast, and now. There's a bunch more people I have to tell this to. If you get action-notice info from your screens contradicting what I've said, feel free to call me." She shook her head no with a grimace to say please don't. "Okay. I've told you everything I know, so, gotta go, folks."

We wished her well, and she left to go somewhere else, quickly.

Evaline said, "How long for everyone?"