Xenoconception Pt. 01

On a day like this, when she didn't have to go to work, Tiara loved to go hiking through the forest and up the small mountain near her hometown.

That was, of course, a lie. If she were wandering around the scenery close to Wormborg at all, it wouldn't have mattered if she'd had to go to work that day or not; she only went wandering, "hiking", if she had problems to deal with that she'd rather not. The forest and the mountain were her hiding places, and she'd been itching to run and hide for a few days now.

So there Tiara was, halfway up the modest mountain of Joggberg in boots she'd started to realise weren't actually very suited to long, hard walks at all about an hour ago. She dropped her backpack on the ground and sat next to it. She took one of the two bottles of water she'd brought with her out of the pack and drank. She thought she promised herself that she'd try to be a little smarter about water this time, but this little break she was taking used up the last of her first bottle. She sighed after emptying it, then shoved the litter back into her backpack and checked her phone. Tiara's lock screen told her that it was 11:02. No wonder I'm starting to feel a bit hungry, she thought to herself as she put her phone back in the bag pocket she'd taken it from. She'd brought sandwiches with her for lunch, but she didn't want to dig into those until it was at least noon. Another sigh.

It didn't take Tiara much longer to decide she wanted to spend the rest of this break with her boots off. After she'd stripped them off, her socks were next. She tucked the socks into her boots, next to her pack. Getting air to her feet was a relief after the torture walking in her boots had turned out to be. They were bright red in a few places, and large blisters had already formed on her heels. Other than that, she was just sore. That was a relief to her at least. She tried rubbing and massaging parts of her sole to ease the pain, but she wasn't sure if the effect would matter once she put the boots back on. She stroked the grass next to her, then wiggled all her toes against it too. Soft enough, she thought, and decided that, if only for a bit, she'd rather try going some of the way barefoot from here on. She tied the laces of her boots together and hung them through on one of the straps of her backpack, then set off on up the mountain again.

Not 10 minutes later and Tiara was beginning to feel nature's call. The nice thing about being out in nature so far from other people was that you pee just about anywhere. Still, she liked to pick a place with a little privacy anyway, just in case. There was an erratic boulder that would be easy to crouch behind, so she made her way over to it. Once there though, as she hooked her thumbs under the waistbands of both her leggings and her panties, she began to get a strange feeling in her head. It was almost as if someone were calling out to her, only stranger, more intrusive.

"Is someone there?" She shouted nervously, moving her hands away from her bottom layers.

"You are suitable. Come down to me," the voice echoed in Tiara's mind, reverberating silently, somehow, inside her head.

"Wha?" Tiara said aloud to no one at all before catching herself. I've gone crazy. I've come up to this stupid mountain with a little stress and ended up cracking. She turned around to walk away, walk all the way back to her shitty apartment in the centre of town, to forget this happened and hopefully not be crazy anymore after a nap. But as she took a step away from the boulder, the ground gave way beneath her feet, and she tumbled down into a cavern within the mountainside. She let out a short, sharp scream as she fell, then hit something of a slope. Although her feet touched the slope first, she crumpled onto her back straightaway, and made several grunts of pain as she rolled sideways down a stony, dirty ramp and into a corridor of rock.

After a minute or so of laying where she'd come to a rest just to try and get over the pain her fall had caused, Tiara heaved herself back up onto her feet. Her boots had unhooked themselves from her backpack strap somehow and now laid about two thirds of the way back up the slope she'd rolled down, made visible only by the small amount of sunlight coming through the same hole she had.

Her clothes were a mess. Her leggings had ripped in several places, and she was covered in dirt from head to toe. At least her top seemed to at least survive, unlike her leggings. She put down her backpack to investigate any damage there; both the pack and its contents were fine, even if the pack had become as dirty as her clothes.

A sudden pain made Tiara realise she'd grazed both of her elbows fairly badly in the fall. They were bloody and covered in gravel-sized stones and dirt. She cleaned them as best as she could with just her spit and her hands, but that would have to do. After all, the closest thing to first aid she'd brought with her was a pack of adhesive bandages, and those weren't exactly ideal for the situation.

Her feet were almost as bad as her elbows. Less bloodied by far, but just as dirty, and covered in those small, gritty pebbles. She dusted them off, then looked down into the cave she'd found herself in. Despite the expected darkness down the corridor under the mountainside, there was a faint, pale yellowish light deeper in that caught her attention.

"Yes. You are almost here. Walk." That voice again. Voice? Feeling? Tiara couldn't decide, but this time, instead of fearing for her sanity, she found herself willing to obey. After all, that light was right there; she was clearly close to something. If she was going to fall into a cave, she might as well investigate it too, otherwise it just wouldn't be worth the pain. So she walked, leaving her backpack and boots behind. She walked towards the light, following the underground corridor as it continued on and on. She feel it still sloped ever-so-slightly downwards, even if that angle hadn't been enough to keep her rolling down. The tunnel was surprisingly large too; probably around double her height. Almost perfectly circular too, and smooth compared to the ramp that had first greeted her when she'd fallen down the hole. She wasn't an expert on caves or geology in general, but that seemed very odd to her.

She realised very soon that the shape and smoothness of the cave tunnel didn't matter very much at all. Not compared to what she had just found anyway. The source of that dim, yellowish light was a large disc-like shape at least two metres in diameter lying at the end of the cave with root-like tentacles sprawling out from underneath in just about every direction. From one part of the disc, pointing almost to the back wall of the tunnel, sprouted a near-conical, upward-turning growth that wasn't covered in the same glistening, luminescent skin as the rest of whatever this thing was, but was instead closer to white fish meat in appearance. It also had three rings around it of what appeared to be smooth black eyes sunken into little indents. So it was probably the "head" of this thing, and if that were the case, then opposite it on the disc, slopped on the ground but still pointing more or less at Tiara, was a "tail". It looked like it had two tubes, one on either side, that ran down it from where the edge of the disc merged with them all the way down to where they met in a wrinkled nub at the end of this "tail". Where the tubes weren't, the surface was ribbed and bumped in a wavy, almost sickening way. Tiara also noticed that this tentacle was the only part of this monstrosity aside from the "head" that wasn't faintly glowing, despite being covered in the same shiny, wet, yellowish skin that most of the rest of it was. Did that mean it was more important, like a head would be? Maybe less important, somehow? No, did she even know these were a head and a tail? She had no idea what this thing was.

"You have come," the "voice" now felt so loud and strong in Tiara's head that she fell to her knees clutching her head, squashing it between her arms to try and contain the pain, the discomfort. She was also only vaguely aware that she was screaming.

"Apologies," it echoed emotionlessly, clearly ignoring her suffering despite the apparent attempt to show some remorse. "We are close now. You will have to become acclimatised to my starker presence."

Tiara was in tears, cradling her head in her hands and rocking back and forth. At the very least she wasn't screaming aloud anymore. Presence!? Is that a joke?

"It is not. I am attempting to communicate with you." Tiara's eyes widened. It had responded directly to her thoughts. She looked up, back at the thing that lay in front of her.

"Is that... you?" She slowly asked. Her head still felt like it could split open, like the worst, most-sudden onset migraine that could ever happen, but it might've been starting to recede just a little now.

"The creature before your eyes now is indeed me, yes," the voice in Tiara's head answered.

"But... you're not speaking. It's like..." Tiara trailed off as she tried to think of a way to word what this thing "communicating" with her felt like.

"Almost like you are being made to think things, though you can tell they are not in fact your own thoughts," the thing said it for her just before she had a chance to voice it herself.

"Stop that," Tiara breathed. "Stop. That."

"I cannot. We are having a conversation."

"No, we're not," Tiara stood again, and was about to turn around to leave the cave when one of several of the creature's tentacles snaked along the ground until one of them leapt at her and wrapped itself tightly around her arm. She yelped in disgust and fear as she was yanked back onto her knees by the creature.

"No!" She cried out instinctively. "Let me go, let me leave!" She tried to pry the tentacle off her arm without even a hint of success. She stopped fighting. As much as this thing was slimy and vile, it was also far too strong to fight off. "Please. I want to go home."

"You cannot. You must help me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tiara spat at the creature. "And why would I? You're a thing in a cave and you're holding me captive!"

"It was necessary. You were attempting to leave, and refusing to listen." Tiara tried shaking off the tentacle again as the thing's "presence" continued to echo in her mind. "Please listen now."

Slowly, the painful, bloating feeling inside Tiara's skull began to fade, and once again she stopped fighting against the tentacle gripping her arm.

"I'm listening," she mumbled. There was a pause for a moment, as if the creature were making sure that Tiara really intended on listening.

"My thanks," the creature finally echoed. Another pause. "I am very likely the last of my people," it continued.

"Your... 'people'?" Tiara repeated aloud.

"Yes. I am from a race that existed far from your Earth. Our planet died long ago. We moved to ships and travelled space as vagrants. Those ships, however, eventually failed too. I fled on an escape pod and drifted. I am unsure for how long. Then, approximately 287 of this planet's full years ago, I crashed here, into this mountain. My pod is buried just behind what you have been considering the 'back wall' of this cave."

As ridiculous as this was sounding, Wormborg did have a local legend. A star that fell 300 years ago. The "star" in question was apparently never found, but naturally it was usually considered to have been a meteorite.

"A natural conclusion, but wrong all the same." Tiara wished this "alien" would stop reading and replying to her thoughts before she could have a chance to voice them, but it was becoming obvious that wasn't an option. "I had to make sure I was not discovered," it continued.

"Did you kill people?" Tiara asked the alien.

"I would have been too weak to had the need arisen, as I had been starving in the escape pod for some time. I used my psychic abilities to make people no longer wish to come too close to my crash site, and once I had recovered enough of my strength, I worked to conceal it entirely so that I could hide here."

"Ok," Tiara mulled over what she'd been told for a bit. "And then what?" She eventually asked. "You hid. You survived. But I came nearby and you were so eager to talk to me that you're making sure I can't leave."

"You wish to know what changed."

"Of course I do."

"You are suitable."

Tiara clapped her free hand to her forehead. "But what does that mean?"

"I have come up with a plan to restore my people's existence. You are well-suited to play the key role."

Tiara let out a fearful sigh. "So you brought me down here so you could... rape me? Implant me with some eggs I can incubate for you?"

"An understandable assumption," the alien's voice echoed in her head, ever emotionless, "but fortunately for you, incorrect."

"Then--"

"You are unsuitable for a motherhood role in my plan regardless," it interrupted her. Tiara didn't know whether to feel insulted or not, but she decided not to press that particular issue.

"What am I actually 'suitable' for then?"

"I wish to prepare you for a fatherhood role instead. The process would be relatively simple, and would involve co-opting and altering your oocytes in order to make them able to fertilise the oocytes of humans more suited for a motherhood role."

"What?" Tiara was sure this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. She broke into a nervous laugh. "Where's the part where I wake up and this is some stupid dream? 'Alter' me? 'Alter' me?"

"It is highly likely the process would be mostly painless, and even more likely that any changes would be reversible."

"What 'process'!? You don't know that, you don't know any of that!?" She started to try to fight the alien's tentacle off again, shaking her arm and even beating at the thing, but it only gripped tighter.

"Tiara, please--"

"Do not use my fucking name!" Tiara bellowed at the alien creature, "and let me go!"

"I would gladly," the alien responded, "but only if you would help me."

"With what? Your species is dead, even if you could somehow make more of you out of human eggs, there'd still be basically none of you, and you'd all be related. It would be a disaster!"

"Much of what you say is true," the alien admitted after a long period of silence. "Where a typical clutch would have been from 100 up to 200 birthed eggs for one of my people, it is unlikely that any human-grown clutch would be larger than 20 or 30. History has shown that we are infinitely more likely to suffer outbreeding depression rather than the inbreeding depression that concerns you, however, so I will not worry about that particular aspect of a small population."

"Oh..." Tiara murmured, barely taking in what she was hearing.

"I also struggle to believe that most humans would allow their people to die if the only way to save it was via inbreeding, but perhaps that is a key cultural difference between us. Regardless, I do not wish to control or otherwise force you into helping me, but I will also not wait for the coincidence of a second suitable fatherhood candidate to come to me after sharing this much information with a first."

"So...?"

"So you must help me. Help my people."

Tiara thought about everything she'd heard. She thought long and hard. Finally, she sighed.

"What is the 'process' that you mentioned? The one to... 'alter' my eggs or whatever it was."

"Yes. The part of me you have been thinking of as my tail is in fact more akin to an organ similar in nature to the human penis."

Tiara was somehow both surprised and entirely unsurprised. "So you're male then?"

"There is no such thing for the people of my species. We are, or perhaps were, each of us hermaphroditic. My vaginal opening is simply hidden from your view in my current position. I will continue answering your previous question."

"Right. Sorry."

"A concept you are familiar with is autotomy. The people of my species have this ability too; we may shed a limb, and can later choose to regenerate it." Tiara was beginning to worry about where this was going. "I will give you my penile tentacle this way, and it should in all likelihood be able to bind with your womb. The testis within my tentacle should, almost parasitically perhaps, use your oocytes as a reproductive material. Such experiments were done by my people, sometimes, although obviously never on humans. This process should still mean that, by combining human elements from your oocytes with the spermatocytes in my testis, you can act as a surrogate father and be able to impregnate other humans with my spermatocytes so that they may birth clutches of children."

Tiara didn't know where to start with this plan. It sounded like some of the fakest shit she'd ever heard.

"I am in fact fervently hoping that it is extremely effective in reviving my people, rather than, as you might believe, 'fake shit', though I can understand your perspective. If I am honest, I do not know whether it can work."

"But I should try... 'receiving'... your penis anyway?"

"I insist."

Tiara sighed, "and then what about 'mother' candidates? How would I know them when I'm going around with your tentacle in me? Actually, also, how do I even get them to agree to carry alien babies, eggs, whatever, to term?"

"Valid questions," the alien was quick to answer Tiara. "I believe that with a part of me bound to you, being kept alive within you, I will be able to 'see' through your eyes, still communicate with you and feel your thoughts, and also reach out from you and touch the minds of others." It paused for a moment, but Tiara didn't respond right away. "I believe this answers both of the questions you just asked."

"You're planning on using mind control!? And what about me!? It sounds like I'm going to be a puppet, like you've body-snatched me!"

"I will be unable to control you with my mind in as much as the way as I cannot use my psychic abilities on myself currently. I believe it will be as if our minds were one, but your own presence will vastly outmatch mine, leaving you firmly in control of your own body. I would also probably not be able to stop you if you betrayed me once you leave here, but likewise, you would have great difficulty disposing of my tentacle."

"And the mind control on other people? I understood that part correctly, right? That's why you didn't say anything already, right?"

"I understand the immorality of it. I would ask you to overcome these principles in this case. I am trying to save my people, and I would not steal these mother candidates; only have them birth to a single clutch of eggs."

Tiara tried to process what was going on in her own head with this conversation. She felt almost like she was coming around to agreeing to help this thing. She wanted to find a reason to scrap this plan, make the alien give up. Worse, she already knew all too well that it knew she wanted that too.

"Ok, but..." she finally started, but trailed off again. "No, wouldn't it be a little suspicious, even if these candidates are constantly mind-controlled, to people around them when they start to get baby bumps and then eventually lay eggs?"