How to Save the Planet

I’ve been working on this one for a while, and I finally decided that it’s past time to get it out there. I have a fair bit built up by now, so I should be able to submit two parts a week for the immediate future. This story’s heavy on the plot, which may end up being a little on the rambling side, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of sex as well. I hope you all enjoy!

“Hurry up,” Evan called over his shoulder to the rest of us. “It’s like we’re walking through a freezer.”

“Why didn’t you wear a jacket?” Rosemary called back. She had one, hugely oversized and flannel. She was sharing it with Kate, who was shorter than her by most of a foot and almost disappeared below the collar. The contrast was striking, Rosemary tall and slender where Kate was short and quite curvy. I wasn’t sure if they were actually dating yet, but I didn’t think it would be long.

“I didn’t think we’d be staying at the party so late!” Evan jogged in place, hands jammed in his armpits. Evan was average height, which actually made Rosemary a little taller than him, and he was pretty thin. Not much of a surprise he felt cold.

“Sorry!” said Justine, lifting her head off my shoulder for a moment. “Nobody said they were going to have actual music there.”

I smiled to myself. The music had been good. Someone had huge speakers, and although the house was too close to its neighbors to get away with a good pounding bass line, it was way better than the usual bluetooth speaker hooked up to someone’s phone.

There had been room to dance, too, and Justine had dragged us into the thick of it right away. I tried to keep up for a while, to limited success. If it wasn’t for a few slow jams in the mix, I wouldn’t have made it through the first hour, but Justine was something else. It was like dancing, even the wild, high-effort dancing she did most of the time, gave her more energy instead of wearing her out. Even now, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright from the combination of exercise and cheap whiskey.

She caught me looking at her. “Did you have fun, Alex?”

I pulled her in close. “Of course.”

Justine smiled a little. “But you’re glad we’re going back?”

I smiled too. It hadn’t even been a year since we started dating, but she knew me well. “I couldn’t hear myself think there, much less catch what anyone was saying.”

“I know,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Wasn’t it great?”

I laughed, and Evan looked up from where he was trying to hurry Kate and Rosemary along. “Fun for a bit,” I admitted. “But I start to miss playing cards in the apartment.”

“The night’s still young,” Lace said. I hadn’t realized she’d caught up with us, though it wasn’t surprising. She was in terrific shape, and could probably have run the distance from the party faster than I would have driven it.

“It’s after midnight,” Kate moaned from the depths of Rosemary’s jacket. “The night’s not old, it’s geriatric.”

“Come on, you nerd,” said Lace brightly. “We’re young. We’re in college. We’re free. There’ll be time to sleep when we’re dead.”

“Or when we’ve graduated,” I added.

“Same thing,” said Justine.

“Don’t tell me we’re waiting for Marcus and Stephanie,” Evan said. “If I have to spend one more second in this blizzard –”

“It’s not snowing,” I said.

“– in this arctic disaster,” he continued, “it’s going to kill me.”

Lace shrugged. “Maybe you should have worn a jacket.”

Evan threw his hands up. “I was wearing shorts this morning! It was hot out! How could I have known?”

“Anyway,” Lace went on, “we’re not waiting for them. They got a ride with someone, said they’d see us tomorrow.”

“Thank God,” Evan said.

“Someone sober?” Rosemary asked.

Lace nodded. “DD for their friends, but one of those friends hooked up with the host. They had space.”

“We should start designating a driver,” Justine said. “We wouldn’t have to walk so far.”

I nudged her. “Are you volunteering?”

Justine gave me a dirty look. “You don’t even like parties,” she muttered venomously. I laughed.

“Hey guys!” Evan shouted up ahead. “Let’s cut through this alleyway!”

Rosemary sighed. “Evan, how much did you drink?”

“Not enough,” he said, “or I wouldn’t be feeling so cold. Come on, it’s barely even an alleyway. It has a streetlight.”

Technically, that was true. One flickering bulb set in a lopsided metal shade lit the alleyway, all along its narrow winding length. There were shadows everywhere, and despite the light it was almost darker than the neighborhoods behind us. The buildings around it blocked the moonlight completely.

“You’re insane,” I said. “Six college kids taking a shortcut through an alleyway? That’s how horror movies start.”

“What, in Kearny, Wyoming?” Evan scoffed. “The college is like half the town. If there’s gonna be a horror movie around here, it’d be up in the mountains.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Lace warned him. “I’m camping up there next weekend.”

Evan nodded solemnly. “I’ll say something nice at your funeral.”

“I hate to say it,” Justine interrupted, “but I’m getting cold too. Can’t we just cut through the alley? It’s basically empty, and even if it wasn’t there’s six of us.”

I shrugged. “Is it even going to save us that much time?”

“Come on,” Evan said, “back your girl up!”

“Yeah Alex,” Justine said, leaning in close. She breathed in my ear, “I’ll show you how grateful I am later.”

Evan laughed. There was no way he could have heard what she said, but my face must have given the general direction of her words away. “Fine,” I grumbled, as much to stop the teasing as anything else. “Let’s just go.”

Lace shrugged, and although Kate looked apprehensive, she didn’t object.

“Shouldn’t Evan lead the way?” Rosemary asked sweetly. “Since it was his idea and all.”

“Little old me? We should put Alex in front. In case there’s a crazy homeless guy lurking in the shadows.”

“What am I going to do about a homeless guy?”

Evan shrugged. “Flex for him? Scare him off with those big, bulging muscles?”

I snorted. “Terrific. Those three hours a month I spend at the gym are finally going to pay off.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Take off the shirt, it’ll work better that way.”

We never really talked about it, and I hadn’t known Evan to ever go on dates, but I always kind of assumed he was gay. It might have been the incredibly subtle jokes about muscular men. It might have been the way he joined the theater program his first week at High Plains U. It might have been the time back in middle school when he checked out every issue of Sports Illustrated from the library except the swimsuit editions.

Really, who can say?

I certainly couldn’t blame him for keeping it quiet. We’d grown up together in Casper, just a few hours from Kearny. Things are better than they used to be, but a Wyoming public school sure isn’t the place I’d want to come out of the closet.

Lace rolled her eyes at the both of us, and lead the way down the dimly lit alley. She probably was the best equipped for a mugger, to be honest. I was taller than average and sturdy enough, but I wasn’t really athletic. Lace was in amazing shape, and where I got whatever muscle I had from lifting boxes in a warehouse over the summer, she got hers from more sports than I could really keep track of. I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if she was some kind of black belt, too.

The rest of us followed, the couples still huddling for warmth. It really was a better shortcut than it had seemed. As alleyways go, it was clean, clear of stuff, and thankfully empty. I didn’t see a rat hiding among the scattered trash cans, much less a lurking killer.

“What the hell is that?” Kate asked. She was about halfway through the alley, Lace a little further ahead.

“What the hell is what?”

She pointed. The building to her left looked abandoned, the windows boarded up, but when I followed her finger I saw a faint light creeping out from between two sheets of plywood. If the light above had been any steadier, the glow might not have been visible, but we could see it clearly when the bulb flickered dark.

“Come on,” Rosemary whispered. Her shoulders looked suddenly tense. “Probably squatters.”

Kate pulled away. “No, I don’t think –”

She leaned in, peeking through a gap in the boards, and gasped.

“What?” Justine asked. Her hand was gripping harder on my arm. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said, “but it’s beautiful.”

She shoved, and one big piece of plywood came right away from the frame. Then we could all see.

The light was coming from something strange, unsettling, and as Kate had said, beautiful. It was like a flower, almost a foot across and sprouting on a short bristly stem from an exposed metal beam in one of the walls. The petals were strange, glimmering oddly in the light that came from the flower’s center. They looked as though they might have been made of metal, something bright and silvery if it had been seen in daylight. They were long and thin, and curved back and forth, wavelike. They overlapped each other, two or three layers spiraling outward.

At the center of the flower was a screen. A phone, maybe, but it was round, and playing some kind of screensaver that looked like abstract art. It shifted constantly, colors blending into each other, shapes appearing and vanishing with perfect, dancelike timing. One moment the screen would be filled with softly colored geometric shapes, like a mandala or kaleidoscope. The next, after a short and undramatic shift, it would be thin lines racing across the screen on a background black as night, tracing out lightning in bold shades of red and gold and blue.

It was entrancing, and I was so fascinated by the view that I hardly noticed Kate ducking through the window.

“Hey!” Evan called after her. Lace said nothing, but followed, reaching for her shoulder.

“Guys,” Kate said, shaking off Lace’s hand, “look at this. Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“An art project,” Rosemary said dismissively. She was in the college’s art program herself. “Looks like they did okay.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kate said. I winced. Rosemary was very confident in her opinions on art, and disagreeing with her was a good way to kick off an argument.

Sure enough, she followed the other women through the window, back stiff and offended. “Maybe it’s well made, but these kinds of moving color displays haven’t been fresh since–”

“Not that,” Kate interrupted. “I mean it’s not an art project at all.”

We were all following them in, by then. I think Evan came along mostly to get out of the cold. It was a big building, and while I couldn’t even guess what had been there before, it looked like it was going to be a trendy bar when it was done. The lights, the ductwork, and the half-done walls had that kind of carefully unrefined, faux-industrial air to them.

“What do you mean?” Rosemary asked. She knelt beside Kate, looking closely at the shifting screen. Now it showed something that looked like a plant, shooting out vines and flowers in dizzying fractal patterns, the shapes recurring downwards in constantly changing colors.

“Look,” Kate said, pointing. “The way this stem connects to the wall. There’s no attachment point, it’s just… growing there. And does this screen look like anything you’ve seen before?”

I bent over Rosemary’s shoulder, following Kate’s finger. She was right — there were no weld marks or rivets at the base of the stem. It really did look like it was growing straight out of the metal. And the screen was odd as well. Not only had I never seen a round phone, or anything with a display like that, but it was joined seamlessly to the rest of the flower. It was thin, too, with no sign of any circuitry behind it, and nowhere in the sculpture that it could have been hidden.

“Guys,” Justine said, “I think we should go.”

“Look at this,” Rosemary murmured, pointing at the screen. It was showing something like a snowstorm, little lights in soft blue and green falling through a background of gray. When one light collided with another, they stopped falling and began to drift sideways, rise upwards, or circle slowly in place.

“Guys?” Nobody was listening to Justine. I turned and smiled, trying to reassure her. I couldn’t quite figure out what was bothering her so much. The building was empty, after all.

“What…?” Kate was leaning close to the screen, almost blocking my view of the flower. I caught a glimpse, and the little falling lights seemed like they were merging, growing, and forming vague shapes that could almost have been silhouettes. “Is that us?”

She lifted a hand, and brushed lightly against one of the thin petals.

There was a pulse through the air that felt like wind or maybe a static charge. My hair moved, my skin crawled, and Kate yelped in surprise.

The metal flower was twisting, the petals turning and opening wider and flexing until the whole surface had reshaped itself into a new and less familiar form. It looked more like some underwater plant or anemone than it did a normal flower, now. The petals continued to move slowly, contributing to the illusion.

And the screen was swirling with colors. Intense, varied, and rapidly changing, the patterns on the screen struck me with an instant wave of dizziness. I couldn’t look away. I thought I saw something taking shape in the middle.

The screen flared, and another pulse ran through the air, and I think all of us shouted or cried out at about the same time. And then there was a face looking out of the flower at us.

“Hello, and please don’t be alarmed.” The voice sounded a little unnatural, a little processed, like a text-to-speech program. At the same time, it somehow sounded like a person was there in the room with us, the way you don’t get from speakers without spending tens of thousands of dollars. And the face on the screen looked like a real person, not a computer graphic.

“Who the fuck are you?” Evan asked.

The figure on the screen paused. “I am Cybeline.”

“Whoa,” Evan said, stepping backwards. “This isn’t a recording? Did you just answer me?”

“Yes,” Cybeline said. “I did.”

“But how?” Kate peered around at the back of the flower, looked at the floor beneath it. “I can’t even see how this thing is powered, much less how it could be running a video call, or connect to the internet, or…”

The voice, Cybeline, was silent.

“Let’s just fucking go.” Justine’s voice cracked on the last word.

I looked down. She was shivering, eyes darting back and forth. I put my arms around her. “Babe, what’s wrong? It’s just some weird computer, a phone jammed into –”

“What’s this flower thing?” Kate asked.

“It is a message and a tool. I have been sent here to offer it to you, along with my assistance.”

“Sent by who?” I asked. ‘Sent here.’ It was a strange way to talk about a video call.

“Assistance?” Lace asked. “Assistance with what?”

“My memory of where I come from is limited,” Cybeline said. There was something odd about her expressions, too. She made an apologetic, regretful face, but did it just a little too smoothly, a little out of sync with her words.

Kate tensed. I frowned, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Kate seemed to be a step ahead of me, putting together the pieces in the odd phrasing of the person behind the screen.

“But,” the disembodied voice continued, “I know that I was sent from beyond the orbit of your sun. I am what you would call an artificial intelligence, sent by what you would consider an alien civilization.”

We all sat in a kind of stunned silence for a moment. As Cybeline spoke, it seemed like her words were coming more naturally. Was I just getting used to the slightly stilted tone? Or was she improving by listening to us?

Even if she was, it still didn’t make her an alien robot. Computers were getting so good these days, a student project could process speech like that. Couldn’t it?

“I am meant to help in several ways,” she continued, answering Lace’s question. “I offer information that may be useful, and advice if you should want it. I also have some tools and devices I can offer to you, though these are limited.”

Evan snorted. “Yeah, alien technology. Straight out of a movie.”

Cybeline said nothing.

“It’s an art project,” Rosemary insisted. “It’s clever, but it’s just… running off a watch battery, or something. You could fit a cord through that stem, I’m sure.”

“Maybe,” Kate said doubtfully. “But do you see a camera?”

“Why isn’t Cybeline reacting to any of this?” Lace asked. “She’s only answering direct questions.”

We all paused for a moment. Sure enough, the supposed AI had nothing to say.

“Cybeline,” Lace said, “why aren’t you saying anything when we talk about you?”

There was a pause. “I am not allowed to coerce or persuade you. I am only permitted to offer my help.”

“So this isn’t an alien invasion?” Evan asked. It was actually less sarcastic than I would have expected. Maybe a little of his concern was genuine.

“Correct,” Cybeline said. Human or AI, she acted like the question was sincere. “I have been sent alone, and will not act unless you ask for my help.”

“Don’t do it,” Justine said. “Guys, come on. This is really weird.”

“Sure, it’s weird, but what’s wrong with that?” I gave her a little hug, but she didn’t relax. “Come on, babe, it’s harmless. I’m pretty sure it’s some game thing. Or maybe advertising for a movie.”

“No,” she said. She was watching the flower. “I don’t think it is.”

“Cybeline,” Kate said, “can you prove to us that this is real?”

“I can. There is an object on the ground over there. Do you see it?”

“See –”

Rosemary touched Kate’s shoulder. Kate looked where she was pointing, and gasped. A power drill, apparently left here during construction of the space, was beginning to glow.

After a moment, I realized the light was coming from the flower, a perfect directed beam. I’d never seen a screen that could act as a flashlight like that. It was unsettling, and for the first time I wondered if this thing was for real.

“Okay,” Kate said, “I see it. Is there more to the demonstration than the light?”

“Yes,” Cybeline said. “Could you bring it closer?”

“What, you can’t make it levitate?” Evan asked.

“I cannot. That would require a larger and more elaborate device than this one.”

“Evan,” Kate warned. She grabbed the drill and held it in front of the flower. “Here.”

For a moment, there was silence. I think all of us there were holding our breaths. Then there was an odd little twist of the flower’s petals, a change in their texture, and perhaps just the hint of something passing through the air.

Then the drill came apart.

The plastic case unfolded, opening like a peeled orange. Wires unspooled from inside, gears rolled and tumbled to either side, and the metal block of the motor began to flay itself into writhing sheets and filaments. It was surreal, unbelievable, and impossible to deny.

Kate shrieked and dropped the drill. “It touched my arm,” she said, rubbing her wrist. “That was…”

“How did you do that?” Lace was looking at the flower like she was trying to stare down a dangerous dog.

“By use of the tools I mentioned earlier.”

“Nanomachines,” Kate breathed. There was just a little doubt in her voice.

Cybeline paused. “A term used in fiction. The tools are real, but the word is otherwise appropriate.”

“Hang on,” I said, “are you looking up the things we’re saying on the internet?”

There was another pause. “I am,” Cybeline confirmed. Her little avatar on the screen nodded, a second later. “A region of your internet called Wikipedia has been especially helpful.”

“Hmm,” Kate said. “I’m not sure I trust this thing anymore. It’s treating first contact the same way I treat my history papers.”

“You trusted it before that?” I asked. I didn’t know what to think, especially after that stunt with the drill forced me to accept that it was way more than a student project. But I did know I wasn’t ready to accept our benevolent alien overlords.

“Think about it,” Kate said. She jerked her head at the twisted drill. “With that kind of technology, if Cybeline wanted to exterminate all humans, she could. Have you ever heard of the gray goo scenario?”

She got five blank stares in response.

Kate sighed. “Cybeline has some kind of nanotechnology at her disposal. If you can make something to take apart a drill like that, you can make something that will use the materials it leaves behind for construction. And that construction could include more of those same machines, so you have nanobots building more nanobots, which also begin to build more nanobots…”

“Which would lead to exponential growth?” I looked at Evan, surprised he was following along. He shrugged. “I’m taking a bio lab this semester. Bacteria work just like that, apparently.”

“Yes!” Kate said, pointing at him. “Except instead of needing a petri dish with a controlled ecosystem, the machines could work in any environment. And we’d have no good way to get rid of them, even if we realized what was happening, so they could replicate and expand forever.”

“This doesn’t sound reassuring,” I said. Her description, Evan’s reference to bacteria, and the name ‘gray goo’ itself all conjured up a horrifying image of a planet covered in metallic slime.

“But it is!” Kate beamed. “Because Cybeline could destroy the world, and she hasn’t. Which means she doesn’t want to.”

“No,” Justine said. “But she wants to give us the power to do it.”

Kate frowned. “Maybe. All that stuff could be a risk, like fallout from nuclear waste. But having the ability to work on that scale, if we use it safely, could seriously change the world.”

“Is there any safe way to use alien technology?” Lace cut in. “And are we really the people to figure it out?”

“Why not us?” asked Kate. “We’re smart. We’re mostly compassionate –”

“What are you looking at me for?” asked Evan, smiling a lopsided grin.

“– and most importantly, we’re here,” Kate finished. “We found this, not anyone else.”

“Is that really enough of a reason?” I couldn’t quite believe how quickly Kate had moved towards the conclusion that we should awaken some kind of alien AI. Especially an alien AI with abilities that she was comparing to nuclear weapons. “Look, shouldn’t we think about this a little more?”

“What happens,” Rosemary wondered quietly, “if the government finds out about this?”

It was a sobering thought. The Euphrates mercenary scandal was in the middle of breaking, and I know it came to all of our minds just then.

Kate gripped Rosemary’s hand. “I think we should accept the offer,” Kate said. “We don’t have to use anything this AI tells us, or gives us. But it’ll give us the option if we need to.”

“I agree,” Rosemary said. “But I think we should put it to a vote.”

“Do we need to?” I asked. “We don’t all have to be… involved. Even if some of us want to mess around with it –”

“We all know about it,” Lace interrupted. “If any of us start talking with it, and the government finds out it exists, we’re all in danger. Not to mention the threat of making a mistake and gooing the planet.”

“But doesn’t that mean it’s too late?” I felt a knot of dread settle in my stomach. “We’re already talking with it.”

Lace looked at the flower. “We could always destroy it.”

Cybeline remained silent.

Kate looked like she was biting back a shout of protest, but she nodded. “Is that your vote, Lace?”

“I think so,” she said. “Yeah. If the rest of you want to see what it has to say, I’ll go along, but I think we’re all safer without it.”

“Okay,” Kate said, looking like someone had just threatened her puppy. She pointed at Rosemary, who nodded. “Two for accept, one against.”

“Two against,” I said. I surprised myself a little. I didn’t know that I’d made up my mind until I said it. “This… this is just too much. I don’t want any of us to get killed over this. How did we even end up making this decision?” I stopped, with an effort. It felt as if my head was spinning.

“Evan?” Kate asked. She sounded worried.

He shook his head. “This is all too much. I’m not used to being this serious about things.” He tried to smile, but it fell a little flat. “Besides, I don’t want to end up with a tie. Leave me out, and Justine can be the deciding vote.”

Well. That decided it. I turned to Justine, ready to hear her say —

“Cybeline,” she asked, and there was a strange note in her voice. “Why are you here?”

“To offer you these tools, and my help –”

“I remember that,” Justine interrupted. “But why are you offering those? Why do we need your help?”

There was a pause. “My information is currently limited.”

“Tell us what you do know.” I’d never heard such a hard edge to Justine’s words before.

“Your civilization is in danger.” Cybeline sounded almost apologetic. It was hard to make out the finer details on the small screen, but I thought her face looked sad. “Recent analysis puts the odds of its imminent partial collapse above ninety percent. The odds of complete collapse are above seventy percent. The odds of extinction or near-extinction of your species are around twenty percent. The odds of broad disruption of the biosphere –”

“That’s enough,” Justine said. The voice from the flower cut off instantly.

We all stood stunned.

“Whoa,” Evan said. For once, there was no humor in his voice. He just sounded scared.

“We have to take it,” Justine said, sounding defeated. “Cybeline, what are the odds if we accept your help?”

“I’m not able to update those calculations,” she said. “They’re based on a large amount of collected data, about both your world and the statistical trends seen in others. I don’t have access to that database.”

“Wait,” I said. “If the stakes are this high, shouldn’t –”

“Cybeline,” Justine said, ignoring me, “we accept your help.”

The screen on the flower pulsed. The colors cycled, shifting too quickly to really see. The metal petals flexed again, twisting and curving in.

And the flower severed itself from the beam and fell to the floor.

“If you would pick up this vessel,” Cybeline said, now slightly muffled, “we can leave for a safer location.”

– – – – –

Justine, Lace, and Kate shared an apartment. Evan and I did too, and ours was closer, but we had other roommates as well. The girls didn’t, which was a plus when it came to keeping secrets about the alien technology you were bringing home.

We arranged ourselves around the living room, filling the small space to the brim. It felt even more crowded because nobody wanted to sit too close to the little coffee table, where Justine set down the flower. The screen was dark, Cybeline’s avatar temporarily vanished, but it still felt as though it were watching me.

“What’s the plan?” Lace asked at last. “Interrogate the robot a little more?”

“We need to know more,” Justine said. “About why it’s here, about how it wants to help us.” She was huddled up on the couch, not touching me. She looked very small and scared, but somehow I didn’t know how to comfort her. Somehow, I was worried she didn’t want me to.

“And the impending end of human civilization,” Lace said. “That little detail.”

“Maybe we have to know,” Evan said, stretching, “but I’m not sure I could stand to hear any more tonight.”

“Evan,” Kate said, sounding shocked, “this is important.”

He nodded. “Important enough that I want to be sober for it,” Evan said. He sounded serious. “We’ve all had more than a little to drink, and it’s late as hell.”

“So we just… ignore it? Put it off until tomorrow?”

“Kate,” Rosemary said, touching her arm, “I think Evan’s right. You all started talking about tech stuff, and I was totally lost. We can all sleep, get coffee, and meet here in the morning.”

Kate looked stunned. Not upset, exactly, but certainly shocked that her almost-girlfriend wasn’t ready to dive into our little gift from the stars. “What do the rest of you think?” she finally managed to ask.

I shrugged. “Kate, this is kind of a lot to take in. I’m not even sure I really believe it’s happening yet.”

She opened her mouth, brow furrowing, ready to launch into a real argument.

“Yes, the drill proved it,” I said quickly, trying to head her off. “I dunno how it could have been faked, I dunno how anything human could have done that. I just mean… it hasn’t sunk in yet, you know? I’ve got no idea what questions to ask. I don’t even know what we need to know.”

The others were nodding along, except Justine. She was just sitting, hunched in and silent.

“Fine,” Kate said. “But I want to start this again in the morning.”

“Hangovers,” Evan moaned.

“You’re not that drunk,” Kate growled. “Chug some water tonight and as much coffee as you need tomorrow, because I want to see you here by ten. Got it?”

He put his hands up, miming surrender. Kate looked around the room, making sure the rest of us nodded our agreement as well. “Good. Then get some sleep.”

Kate grinned. “Tomorrow, we’ve got a planet to save.”

Evan groaned, muttering something about drama queens, and dodged the pillow Kate threw by ducking out the apartment’s front door. I almost got up to follow him, since we were heading to the same place, but I looked over at Justine and reconsidered. She wasn’t taking all of this very well. I couldn’t leave her that way.

“Rosemary,” Lace said, “do you want to crash on the couch? Kate has some blankets somewhere.”

“It is a long way back to my place,” Rosemary said. “I wouldn’t mind skipping that walk.”

“Take my bed,” Kate said absently. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Rosemary’s face fell.

Kate’s good with people. Really she is. There’s a lot of nerdy stereotypes that she falls into perfectly, but ‘antisocial and unwashed’ is not one of them. But somehow, she was the one person in the room who couldn’t hear what Rosemary wasn’t saying, her clear desire not to be sleeping alone.

Or maybe it was deliberate, and Kate was trying not to address the issue. So much had just happened, Kate might have just wanted to be alone. I couldn’t blame her for that.

Lace stood with Rosemary for a moment, watching Kate rummage through the tiny linen closet. Then she patted the tall girl on the shoulder in a way that I’m sure was meant to be reassuring but didn’t quite manage to be, and slipped into her bedroom without another word.

“Hey,” I said softly, resting my hand on Justine’s shoulder. For a moment, I thought she was still lost in whatever mess of emotions she was feeling, and hadn’t noticed. Then, she reached up and covered my hand with her own. Her fingers were cold, and when she met my eyes, there was something unsettling and distant about it.

“You should sleep,” I said. It sounded lame and awkward, but I didn’t know what else to do. Justine was worrying me.

“Come with me?” Her voice was small, quiet. She didn’t sound scared, exactly, but there was something similar there. Stress, perhaps. She sounded thoroughly overwhelmed.

I looked around, a little nervous. It wasn’t that we were pretending to save ourselves for marriage, or anything like that, but we’d never spent the night in her apartment with any of her roommates around. It seemed kind of rude, and I didn’t know how any of them would take it.

Of course, if we were ever going to be excused for spending the night together, the most dramatic night of our lives would probably do it. Lace and Kate shared a room, though it sounded like it was going to be Lace and Rosemary tonight, but with one roommate missing, Justine had a bedroom to herself this semester.

“Yeah,” I said to Justine. “Of course.”

She reached up, and I helped her off the couch. She leaned against me down the hallway, resting her weight on me as if a heavy wind was blowing straight through the walls, threatening to push her over. I nodded to Rosemary as we passed her, feeling awkward, but she smiled.

“Good night,” she murmured. And have fun, she mouthed silently. The smile became a smirk, just for a moment, and I felt my cheeks growing warm.

Then we were into the bedroom, and I pushed the door closed behind us.

Justine turned, and leaned into me. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close, and for a long time we just stood like that in the dark. I couldn’t sort out what was wrong, and I couldn’t think of any way to ask. It was a weird night, of course, but it had hit Justine so much harder than it had hit any of us.

“Thank you,” she whispered at last. Somewhere out in the living room, I heard a door closing. Rosemary must be heading to bed.

“I don’t feel like I did anything,” I admitted.

“You did,” Justine said into my chest. “You still are.”

She pulled me towards the bed, gently but firmly. It was a twin, so fitting two people in was no easy feat. Lucky that we liked each other, or it could have gotten pretty uncomfortable.

Justine turned us around, not letting go of me, and pushed me down onto the bed. I tried to pull her down, on top of me, but she pushed my hands back down to my sides. “No touching,” she whispered.

And she started to undress. It wasn’t a striptease, really. There was no music, and she wasn’t dancing. There were no dramatic flourishes, no coy little covering or turning away to prolong the suspense. But she took her time, and the little light filtering in around the edges of the curtains lent the whole affair an air of mystery. I could see her, but only barely, and it made me long to explore her with my hands and mouth.

If I had been a little less distracted, I might have wondered more about the complete reversal. She’d gone from huddling silently on the couch to completely taking the lead once we got into the bedroom. And I did think about it, just a little. Then her shirt hit the floor and I stopped.

Justine was wearing a black bra, a nice one. It was lacy, delicate, and sat low enough to expose quite a lot of her modestly sized breasts. Below, her jeans sat tight and low on her hips, showing off a long flat expanse of pale skin. In the dimly lit room, her hair appeared the same color as her bra, though in brighter light it was a deep, rich brown. The effect was intriguing, turning her almost into a black-and-white portrait in motion. It gave her an ethereal quality, as if she wasn’t quite there, as if she were floating through the room instead of standing on the floor.

And then she pulled the bra free, tossing her hair back, and all my appreciation of the artistry of the scene before me became pure lust.

I had been turned on since the hug. Justine was beautiful, and it had been a few days since we’d been able to get away alone. But as soon as the bra came off, I was as hard as rebar.

Her breasts were perfect handfuls, and I was just aching to hold them. From the little smile on her face, I could tell she knew what I wanted, but rather than step into arm’s reach she began to peel off her jeans. They came free slowly, agonizingly slowly, exposing black underwear that matched her bra and slim, pale legs that gleamed in the dimness. Her hair fell over her chest as Justine bent to free her feet from her jeans, and in that moment she looked like a dream.

She stood again, nearly naked before me. I was itching to leap up off the bed and take her in my arms, but if she told me to stay put she meant it. She was a small woman, though not tiny, slender but not without her own striking curves. I could have picked her up and tossed her on the bed without any particular effort.

But that night, she was the one in control.

“Stay there,” she said, voice husky. Then she climbed onto the bed, behind me, and pulled my shirt over my head.

I might have wondered, before that, if she was going slowly because she was less eager for me than I was for her. But she nearly ripped my shirt off, and I could hear the shift in her breathing as she did so. She was restraining herself, keeping her own desire in check, letting the anticipation grow and intensify in us both. And it was working.

She unbuckled my belt and dealt deftly with my pants. She laughed, soft and eager in my ear as her hand brushed over my erection, and I had to fight back a moan that the whole apartment would have heard. Justine dropped nimbly from the bed, and I barely had time to lean back and raise my hips slightly before she pulled off my jeans and boxers in a single motion.

Then she was on top of me. Somewhere in the middle she’d lost her panties, and this time I did moan as I felt her pressing against my shaft, wet and hot and teasing. It was quiet, but she put a finger against my lips, laughing almost silently.

“Eager boy,” she breathed against my ear. “Shhhhh.”

I reached up for her waist. My heart was pounding, my cock was aching. All I wanted was to lift Justine a little and bring her back down on top of it, thrusting all the way into her again and again. But she pushed my hand down, firmly enough that it was almost rough. “No,” she said. “Not tonight.”

She had a condom ready, which I hadn’t expected. This could very well have been her plan from the start, well before our night was interrupted by strange alien visitors. Any other night, I would have accepted the condom as a necessary evil, as neither of us were interested in parenting our way through college. Tonight, I was glad I had something to keep me from exploding after the third stroke.

But even once the condom was in place, she didn’t start riding me right away. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck, leaning close against me, breasts pressing against my skin. She ground into my lap, up and down, tracing small circles with her hips until I could feel her wetness running down onto my legs. Neither of us had ever been so ready for it, so hungry, even our very first time.

And still, Justine didn’t start fucking me. She kissed me instead, hard, pulling my face into hers with a hand on the back of my neck. She rose up, out of my lap, forcing me to look up to kiss her, almost at the same angle she had to take if both of us were standing. Her legs pressed against my chest to either side, and she held my cock firmly in her hand. She didn’t stroke it, or move at all. She just held it, at exactly the angle it would have to be for her to sink down onto me.

“Tell me what you want,” she breathed.

“I want to fuck you,” I said. “I need to fuck you.”

She was breathing hard, and bit her lip with a smile. But she shook her head.

It clicked, and I grinned, throbbing in her hand. “I need you to fuck me.”

And she did. My hands were still at my sides, her hand still on the back of my neck, now pulling me in to kiss her breasts and her neck as they moved downwards past me. She didn’t pause for an instant when her pussy met my cock, already gleaming with her wetness from long teasing. She slid me into her, neither fast nor slow, just one long, steady stroke that made me see stars.

She pulled me in for another kiss as she came down to the base of my cock, and it was a good thing she did. Both of us moaned into each others’ mouths, and I wasn’t thinking about what Justine’s roommates might hear anymore. Her breath was coming in pants and gasps, and mine sounded ragged in my ears.

Then, a moment later, she started to move.

We were still a new couple, and we didn’t have much practice in matching each others’ orgasms. Every time we’d had sex, one of us would finish first, and then the other would settle for hands or mouth or a break before a second round. We were getting closer, though, and with some effort and focus we had almost come at the same time the weekend before.