Space Cherry Pt. 01

Earth had changed much since the turn of the previous millennium.

The great cities had merged over the centuries to create giant, almost unending metropolises where anonymity was easy, whether it was sought or not. In these places, the horizon was blocked in all directions by enormous constructions of glass and steel and concrete and space was at a premium as the population exploded.

Many decided to leave.

The advent of interstellar travel had re-opened the prospect for frontierism for humankind. For those who wished to leave the urban, same and sterile Earth, options for pastures new were potentially limitless.

She was such a one. Cherry.

She longed to see the stars, to feel the freedom of the wide open galaxy and embrace, most importantly, opportunities to meet new and interesting people. People of all races.

Living in what might once have been somewhere between New York and Washington, DC -- later the middle of a vast conurbation that covered most of the eastern half of the North American continent, from Quebec City in the north to Miami in the south and as far west as Minneapolis, Kansas City and even Dallas -- Cherry felt encumbered, hemmed in somehow, by the sameness of it all. She had come to understand that the scope of experiences available to her in a world of such ubiquity were limited at best.

Thus, at a very young age, she had committed herself to striking out, on her own if necessary, in the spirit of exploration and adventure.

With the whole globe essentially a monoglot, 'western' society and with so little open, green or natural space remaining, travelling the world offered little prospect for excitement or experience and most 'outdoor' entertainment or activity was virtual -- conducted from the comfort of a chair in a VR studio, or for the very wealthy, their own homes.

The falseness and unreality of this had little appeal for Cherry. Without having to be told or taught, Cherry instinctively reacted negatively towards the unrelenting, almost overwhelming onslaught of marketing and hype that told her she should be happy with her lot, that to engage in the artificial and tame existence her Earth offered was the pinnacle of existence. Much to her loving parents' constant concern, since the time she had been a small child she had tried to recreate the experiences others lived virtually in the real world and found time and again it was either impossible or unacceptably dangerous.

Cherry did not come from a wealthy or affluent background, far from it, and she knew that it could take years for her to save and scrounge enough to make her galactic ambitions a reality. Thus, she had concluded shortly after her eighteenth birthday, and her first experience in that realm that, while she waited for the opportunity to escape to the stars, sex would have to be her chief outlet for self-expression.

She'd always been popular with the boys. Girls too. She was instantly beautiful to anyone who saw her. Some said it was her face, her full lips turned up in an apparently perpetual smile, her striking green eyes or her fiery red hair with its bouncing curl that struck them. For others it was her ample, firm breasts or her long and supple legs or her toned physique that caught the eye. Still, she was not vain or conceited and really had little concern for her appearance most of the time.

To put it succinctly, she was effortlessly gorgeous.

Attitudes to sex had continued to liberalize from the late twentieth century forward. Thus, Cherry was fairly unusual in abstaining until she was 18. She'd had many boyfriends, was never without a date when needed but, encouraged by her mother especially, she had resolved as a young teenager to 'save herself' for 'the one'.

Many of her friends derided this choice as hopelessly old-fashioned. If not for her powerful will and self-confidence, also probably largely thanks to her mother, she might well have succumbed to this pressure much sooner. A lesser person almost certainly would have. But not Cherry.

As time went on however, the practical realities of the challenge of 'saving herself' grew. Hearing the lurid tales of her friends fumbling encounters, Cherry became more and more accustomed to masturbation of various types to express her sexual desire, and she did have sexual desires. There were many times when her commitment to wait was challenged in her own mind with one boyfriend or another and as time passed she found herself curling up in her bed and using her fingers or the various implements she'd obtained for the purpose to get herself off more and more often. She came to think of it as 'relieving the tension'. Often, these would be marathon sessions, playing with herself until she'd cum two or three or more times.

When the topic was discussed with her friends, she was a little confounded by their comparative experiences, surprised to learn that the ease with which she could bring herself to completion, and several times at that, was not shared by any of them. Indeed, this knowledge only challenged her commitment to wait even further. If she could bring herself so much pleasure, surely bringing a partner into the mix could only make her feel even better?

As it happened, 'the one' turned out to be more accurately described as 'the first'. He came along shortly after her nineteenth birthday. Her ability to douse her desire with masturbation had finally reached its limit and when one more opportunity to go the whole way, as it were, presented itself, her resistance finally came to an end.

His name was Phil. Not uncommonly, they'd met online and after lengthy text, audio and video exchanges over a period had agreed to meet for a 'real' date.

She liked him. They shared some interests and habits -- at least it appeared to her that they did. Later, she would come to realize that Phil was mostly just interested in Phil. Still, at that initial stage and perhaps as a result of her inexperience, it felt good.

He was a little older than she but this only added to the mystique he offered in Cherry's mind. When they did meet in person, she found the 'real' conversation was as lively and exciting and stimulating as the online one had been. So when, at the end of that first date, he'd invited her to his apartment for a drink she didn't hesitate to join him.

She later thought that, as they sat on his couch and started to kiss and touch each other, Phil probably assumed she was more sexually experienced than she actually was.

She could never remember a single moment when she decided he was going to be 'the one', there mightn't have been one. Indeed, it wasn't that she just didn't stop him you see, she was the one taking the lead, whipping his cock out and devouring it with abandon only moments after they'd sat down. Phil complimented her technique. She laughed internally at this, considering this was the first real cock she'd ever taken in her mouth. Evidently, Cherry was very astute when it came to following instructional videos.

She was so good that Phil had to ask her to stop lest he cum too soon. She felt a real disappointment -- it was her first experience of sucking a real cock and she'd been excited by everything about the experience -- the taste, the texture, the heat, the hardness of it.

The disappointment didn't last long. When Phil gently led her back to a lying position and hiked the bottom of the plunging, short, red dress that hugged her hard body and dove his mouth into her pussy she was almost overwhelmed with pleasure and the excitement of yet another new experience.

So overwhelmed in fact that she came almost immediately. Phil groaned as he felt her legs tighten around his head, her body spasm involuntarily, heard her cry out in wordless ecstasy. Cherry wasn't exactly able to use words to describe the sensations at the time, but her gasps and moans, her formless shouts, let anyone who could hear know she was feeling just fine.

Phil kept going mind you and soon it was her turn to ask him to stop and insist that he put his cock in her. "Please Phil, just put it in me right now," was actually how she put it. She said it earnestly, said it with the desperate excitement of someone anxious to end a long wait.

She was expecting some kind of pain or discomfort when he entered her but there was none, none at all as he slowly bottomed out. The slow pace didn't last long. She spread her legs wide for him and soon Phil was hammering away and she was cumming again, and again. As she settled in to the experience, she was able finally to vocalize a little more clearly.

"It's so fucking good Phil!"

And it was. Even as she revelled in the incredible pleasure her body was experiencing, she chided herself for waiting this long to experience it.

Every time she felt him flagging she grabbed, pulled and squeezed him into her, her arms and legs gripping him tightly as she thrust her hips up to meet his and demanded of him: "Don't stop Phil, please!"

But there was only so much Phil was capable of and, at nonetheless impressive length, he drove his final few strokes into her and with a sound that was a mixture of a guttural groan and a shout of intense pain he came in her. It was another first experience she decided she enjoyed very much.

Over the course of the next several hours, and with the aid of various over the counter drugs, her pussy and mouth managed to coax three more ever diminishing loads from his cock. They experimented with different positions and locations. She found she enjoyed the control of being on top, while also loving the feeling of connectedness she got when he held her down with all his weight and ploughed her for all he was worth. Dawn was breaking as he came for the last time. They fell asleep in his bed shortly after. It was drenched in their sweat and mingled juices, but Cherry didn't feel in the least uncomfortable.

That night had been like a door opening out of a darkened room for Cherry and her life quickly came to revolve around Phil. Or more accurately, it revolved around fucking Phil.

Later, she'd come to realist that Phil wasn't 'the one', that there was no such thing and that she'd just been too inexperienced to notice that it was she, herself, who was the arbiter of her own pleasure. Phil was nothing special at all. In her naïveté, she'd come to see the exploration of her own sexuality with Phil over the 12 months that followed their initial encounter as, well, love.

The realization that it wasn't was a painful one.

As we've discussed, Cherry's thoughts were on the possibilities of space to broaden her horizons and that had led her to enroll in various classes she'd need for space flight -- navigation, ship operation, engineering, even courses in the climate patterns and geography of alien worlds.

After moving in with Phil a few months into their relationship, she began earnestly encouraging him to join her in these classes so that they might explore the cosmos together. Although he never quite shut her down, he always managed to shrug the idea off, pushing it further into the future.

It is probably a mark of Cherry's innate optimism that she continued to feel sure she'd win him over eventually. After all, he loved her.

So coming home from one of her classes to the apartment they shared earlier than expected one night she was, to say the least, surprised to come upon Phil fucking a petite blonde called Cindy who she vaguely recognized. They were going at it so hard and loud that neither of them had even noticed her come into the apartment, then the bedroom, and then leave again, without saying anything.

It was the last time she ever saw Phil or set foot in that apartment.

She wandered aimlessly for a while, crying a little but mostly mad as hell. Her mind was turning in a million directions but the one she kept coming back to was a feeling of having been used -- of advantage having been taken of her.

Eventually she found her way back to her parents' apartment. They'd approved of Phil -- he was affluent and charming and provided well for her, even if he was a little older than their only daughter. Her mother was as mad as Cherry had been when she told her what he'd done.

Her father, a large but gentle and tremendously protective man, announced, quite matter-of-factly, his intention to relieve Phil of his balls at the earliest opportunity. This, despite her anger and hurt, made Cherry smile.

Back in her old room, Cherry had two realizations that night that set her on the path where we will soon join her.

The first was that, actually, she had been using him and not the other way around. With a strange suddenness she concluded that she'd been an idiot to stick with one man so long. When she tried, she struggled to think of any personal or emotional quality Phil had that was particularly special or interesting or unique. The only thing she could think of that she really, really liked about him was sex and she could do that with anyone. There were literally billions and billions of potential partners -- and that was only counting humans.

The second was that she and Phil shared a joint bank account.

In fact, it was each their only bank account at that time. While Cherry was focused on her studies, Phil was fairly well off from some shrewd investing in VR technology and his day job as a VR designer.

First with that middle distance look of wonderment people sometimes get when an unlikely yet attractive possibility announces itself and ultimately with a broad smile across her face, Cherry's imagination started to run wild with the possibilities that kind of money could create. In her mind, she pictured herself on the bridge of a starship, the galaxy opening up before her, and on a myriad of alien worlds she'd only read about or seen in videos or VR.

Quickly, without pause to consider consequences or ramifications, Cherry got ready.

Like almost everyone she knew, Cherry had an implant called a Biohud. It was a small chip in her head that interacted directly with her brain and her optic nerve to allow her to view and manipulate information without needing a hand-held device.

Using it now, she opened a new personal account and transferred the entire contents of the joint account into it. She figured Phil would get some kind of notification of this, so time was of the essence now. She packed a small travel bag with some necessities, a handful of her favorite toys and a couple of changes of clothes -- there wasn't much she owned still in her parents' small apartment.

She recorded a short message for her sleeping parents and set it to play when they woke up.

"I have to go away for a while. That bastard had me tied down too long. Don't worry, I have plenty of money. I'll call when I can. I love you both very much."

At the door, she paused briefly to look back at the apartment where she'd grown up, but only briefly.

Within an hour she was at the nearby spaceport and had bought a one way ticket for Apollo Station -- the huge orbital hub of space travel -- and was lining up to board the shuttle that would take her on the first leg of an incredible journey.

*

From her classes she knew that, with thanks to various science-based devices, there would be no terrible, crushing g-forces when the shuttle took off. Still, given her new-found relative wealth Cherry had still preferred to purchase a first class seat. After all, it wasn't everyday you decided to completely upend your life on a couple of hours notice and so she felt justified in thinking a little extra comfort was called for.

Most of the hundreds of passengers on the enormous shuttle filled a single, enormously large room, about the size of a football field. There was some clustered seating here and there, but generally this was standing room only and people tended to gather around the various kiosks and news screens.

By contrast, the opulent first class accommodations that the newly wealthy Cherry was able to plum for were reminiscent of the Orient Express of old. Rows of compartments lined the bulkheads of the forward section of the roughly cylindrical craft. It was Cherry's first experience of space flight or shuttle travel that wasn't simulated and she thought it odd that the wide, comfortable seats in the compartments faced each other.

A part of her mind, perhaps - she feared - the rational part, was trying to warn her that her focus on such inconsequential details as the layout of the compartments was an obvious attempt to distract herself from the more pressing questions facing her. In particular, what was she going to do when she arrived on Apollo Station? What was her plan?

As she entered her compartment, her sole compartment-mate was already seated and in getting a good look at him for the first time, she found a fresh distraction from these more pressing questions.

He looked nervous. She noticed a bead or two of perspiration on his forehead, despite the air conditioning.

Maybe it was that her mind was on the reasons she was there -- branching out from that prick Phil so to speak -- but she was more stuck by his appearance. Despite his clear anxiety, he was still hot. Cherry put him somewhere in his early 30s and he wore an obviously high quality slim fit shirt and slacks with smart, black leather shoes. His hair was neat and contemporary without being overly trendy and his face had a chiselled and rugged quality. His fashionable and business-like appearance clearly hid a strong, powerful physique and Cherry found herself briefly tracing the lines of the muscles of his chest and arms with her eyes.

Having noticed all this, her alluring greeting was automatic. He scarcely acknowledged her. As the shuttle's pilot announced their imminent departure, she was conscious that the sexy stranger was gripping the arms of his seat tightly.

"Nervous flier?" He glanced in her direction, but didn't respond audibly.

"Don't worry, really -- they say it's the safest way to travel. You're more likely to have a heart attack in a VR machine than die in a shuttle accident!" she continued reassuringly, settling into her seat so that they were now facing each other across the compartment.

"P-p-please don't mention that again," he managed.

"What? Having a heart attack in a VR machine or dying in a shuttle accident?"

"Th-th-the second one. Actually, neither one. Please, can we just... not talk?" He was looking at her pleadingly now. She noted this with appreciation -- he didn't have his eyes screwed shut or wasn't staring at the ceiling, he locked his gaze on her and kept it there. She smiled generously at him.

Before she could respond, the pilot announced that they had departed and were en route to Apollo with a travel time a little over 30 minutes.

"See -- you didn't even notice we'd taken off," she continued again, "everything will be fine."

"I-I-I appreciate you're... trying to be nice. I'm...I'm just... really not a good flier." Finally, he returned her smile, even tried a little sheepish chuckle, and she noted his eyes flickering briefly as he took her in properly for the first time.

Her fiery red hair was tied back in a simple ponytail that kinked at the end, framing clearly her broad beautiful face, dominated by her striking green eyes. The tight fitting white PVC-like bodysuit she wore, very much in vogue for travel wear at the time, clung to her skin absolutely everywhere and accentuated her full breasts with a well-placed v-shaped gap revealing just the slightest hint of cleavage. She was sure she noticed a glint in his eye as she leaned forward slightly in her chair.

This apparent slight mellowing in his attitude might have been responsible for the thought that entered Cherry's head at that instant.

She liked helping people, genuinely. The fact that this one was attractive and had sexy eyes only sweetened the deal. She always felt good after helping someone when she didn't necessarily have to. Simple things, like picking up something someone had dropped by accident for example. So this part of her personality combined with another and led to: