 By Leem |  Story Index |
This is story is a slight departure for me because it doesn’t feature
petrification or paralysis, but it was written with the same amount of TLC
(total loss of control...)
It’s based on an idea that’s been rattling around in my bonce for as long as I can remember. It was probably inspired by a children’s encyclopedia article about how long it would take to drive to Alpha Centauri. Only suppose you didn’t have a car?
The weary traveller wends his homeward way. Wearily, the traveller wends his homeward way. The traveller wearily wends his homeward way. Wending his homeward way is the weary traveller. His homeward way the traveller wearily wends. His way the weary traveller wends homeward. The traveller wends his weary homeward way. Wending wearily his homeward way is the traveller. His way the traveller wearily homeward wends. Homeward the traveller wends his way wearily. Etc, etc, etc.... |
I wanted to leave the Chagru planet, so they sent me. I kept telling them how much I wanted to go, but I could never have imagined how they would send me. If it wasn’t for that horny bastard Cha-ril this would be an intolerable experience. As it is...
I’m coming. I’m coming home.
“Sit down,” said the chief, stabbing at a button in front of him. A large holoimage appeared above the desk between us as I took my seat. I wasn’t certain why the chief had summoned me to his office, and the picture he was showing me left me none the wiser.
“Recognise this image?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s the Chagru homeworld, isn’t it? It was on the news about six months ago. They said the Zal had invaded. But I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
The Zal were the most ferocious warriors in the known Galaxy. Earth and its allies had taken two centuries just to fight them to a stalemate.
By contrast the Chagru were a primitive agricultural race, and their solar system had no useful raw materials, which was why Earth left them alone.
A landing party had once contacted the Chagru and spent a few months learning their language. They reported that they were subsistence farmers whose sedate way of life seemed to have been unchanged for millennia. There seemed to be no racial or cultural diversity; the planet’s climate and geology sowed no major global variations, and nor did Chagru culture or language. They were a stoical, slow-moving humanoid race, with no notable architecture, art, literature or music; furthermore, they seemed to have no drive, no ambition and no desire for progress. They lived as their ancestors did and were content in the knowledge that their descendants would live as they did.
All that could be said for them was that they were a peaceful race, polite, hospitable and tolerant of strangers - everything, in short, that the Zal were not.
In a fight with the Zal nobody in their right mind would have bet on the Chagru’s survival. I certainly hadn’t.
“This image is coming live via hyperwave from our probe orbiting the Chagru homeworld,” said the chief. “The Zal invaded six months ago. You can see a couple of their warships in this holo. Notice anything?”
I stared at the image, wondering what I was supposed to be seeing.
“No, sir,” I said. “There’s nothing happening at all.”
“That’s just the point,” the chief told me. “There’s no activity. No shuttles arriving or departing. No orbital correction manoeuvres. Nothing at all. Rather unusual behaviour for an invasion fleet, wouldn’t you say?”
“Um...well, yes, now that you mention it, sir. But I still don’t see how I fi -”
But the chief was busy expounding, and at those times there’s no interrupting him.
“Think about it. The first thing that happens when a Zal invasion force arrives is that they send down a landing party, just as we witnessed here. Yet after the initial landing the probes showed no further activity. Days went by with no sign of weapon fire. Weeks passed and the Zal communication channels remained silent. Months elapsed and the Zal motherships continued to orbit as if their crews had vanished. Now what does that suggest to you?”
“I...uh...well, sir, it’s a complete mystery. I can’t imagine why the Zal haven’t taken further action.”
“Of course,” said the Chief, “it’s possible the Chagru are so primitive the Zal didn’t need high-tech weaponry to subdue them.”
“Doesn’t seem like their style, though,” I said. “They like to make examples of their victims.”
“Well, it hardly seems possible that the Chagru could have defeated an entire Zal battalion,” said the Chief. “Unless they’ve somehow hypnotised them into behaving like honest, law-abiding reptilian monsters. Wouldn’t that be something? Of course, the only way we’ll ever find out for sure...”
I felt my mouth go dry. I had a bad feeling about this.
“...is to send someone to take a look.”
The chief placed a “reassuring” hand on my shoulder. “And you, my boy, have been chosen for that honour.”
My blood went cold. I’d wondered why he called me in, but this was worse than anything I could have imagined.
“But...but sir,” I spluttered, trying hard not to hyperventilate, “I’m in Expediting. I make sure supplies get sent via the correct hyperspace routes and delivered on time. I’m not an explorer.”
“Well, the funny thing is, your name came up under ‘Expeditions’ rather than ‘Expediting’. Of course I queried the records department, but they insisted that they never make mistakes. Fortunately you’re unmarried with no dependents.”
In other words, I was expendable.
“The ship’s fuelled and ready, course is laid in and supplies are all loaded.” The chief grinned. “I made sure the supplies were all expedited by someone else just to make sure they’d get here on time.”
He laughed out loud at his little joke. I groaned.
“Good luck, my boy,” he beamed, slapping me on the back. “If...that is, when you return you’ll be a hero.”
“Look, sir, this is crazy. You can’t send m -“
“Launch Bay 37J,” he growled. “Tomorrow, 0800 on the dot. You Will Not Be Late. Do you understand me?”
”I just stood there and gaped like a boned fish.
When I could finally speak, I stammered, “B-But sir, suppose it’s a trick and the Zal are just waiting for an Earth ship to arrive so they can blast it out of the cosmos?”
The chief just stared down at me.
“Well, then, as I said - you’ll be a hero. So: tomorrow. 0800 hours. Bay 37J. Dismissed.”
“But si -”
“DISMISSED!”
I’ll say one thing for the chief. When he dismisses you you know you’ve been dismissed.
And so, two days later I arrived at the Chagru’s homeworld in my one-seater scoutship. Luckily the orbiting Zal warships remained inactive. If they’d reacted to my arrival I’d have been fried instantly.
I landed close to what passed for the Chagru’s capital city. It consisted of several thousand mud huts surrounded by muddy fields, in which the Chagru grew scrubby food plants using giant mudspiders for ploughing. Even the planet’s moon was mud-coloured, though it was seldom visible due to the almost permanent overcast that shrouded the planet.
Just outside the city stood hundreds of Zal war machines, slowly settling into the mud. I walked the city from end to end but there wasn’t a single Zal to be seen. If they had conquered the planet they’d have enslaved the entire population by now and their generals would be strutting around like peacocks, or whatever the reptilian equivalent might be.
It was bizarre. There was not a trace of the Zal, not so much as a shed scale or claw on the muddy ground. Yet there was no doubt that the Zal’s assault troops had landed. I saw several of the Chagru using Zal helmets as pots, and some of the huts had been patched up using bits of Zal armour.
It was as if the Zal had just vanished into thin air, leaving their clothing and equipment behind for the Chagru to exploit.
Soon after I entered the city a young Chagru male greeted me and introduced himself as Cha-lan. The Chagru had no leaders as such, but over the coming days Cha-lan became the nearest thing the citizens had to a spokesman and ambassador.
Of course I asked Cha-lan what had happened to the Zal. He and his friends were only too happy to answer, but the answer was maddeningly uninformative.
“We didn’t want the Zal here,” they said. “We told them to go home, and they went.”
“But how?” I demanded. “Their landing craft are still here and their ships are still in orbit.”
The Chagru shook their arms loosely - their equivalent of a shrug - and said, “Nevertheless, we told them to go home, the usual way, and they went. That is all.”
For weeks I muddied my boots trudging from one end of the city to the other hoping to glean more information about the Zal’s disappearance, but I could never get anything else out of them. I was getting fed up with the tedium, the monotonous answers, the monotonous people and the monotonous ship’s food. I kept reporting my failures to Earth, praying that they’d also get fed up and recall me, but the replies were always the same: “Keep trying.”
On about the sixteenth or seventeenth day - I was beginning to lose track of time - the monotony was broken by a sudden commotion. Four or five mudspiders had gone berserk and were stampeding through the streets, scattering Chagru before them.
Then I saw a young male standing right in the path of one of the beasts. A human could have jumped clear in time, but the Chagru simply weren’t capable of moving that quickly. Without thinking I dashed in front of the spider and threw him clear.
The Chagru picked himself up as the spider thundered past, and embraced me with a degree of passion I’d never seen in a Chagru before.
“I am Cha-ril,” he trilled. “You saved my life. Will you have sex with me?”
That was such a non-sequitur that I was taken aback for a long moment. Admittedly it could have been an opportunity to learn about the Chagru’s sexual customs and practices, but the surroundings were hardly conducive. In any case, none of the Chagru, male or female, could exactly be considered attractive by human standards, and this fellow was no exception. When I could finally speak, I said, “Um...not that I’m not flattered, you understand, but no thank you.”
Cha-ril shook his arms in a shrug, and went off to resume whatever he had been doing.
Meanwhile the spiders had momentarily paused in their rampage and were attacking a hut. To my astonishment, about twenty Chagru, Cha-lan among them, formed a circle around the hut and the mudspiders and began dancing around them, chanting: “We don’t want you here. Go home. We don’t want you here. Go home. We don’t want you here. Go home.”
It was one of the most ridiculous things I had ever seen in my life (and I’d seen every single Three Centaurians holovid). Yet after a few moments the chanting seemed to work. The mudspiders suddenly ceased their attacks and began calmly walking away, back to the fields.
“That was amazing,” I told Cha-lan. “How did you do that?”
“Oh - you know,” he said. “The usual way.”
“Is that what you did to the Zal?”
“Yes. We told you.”
“But the Zal couldn’t have walked off the planet,” I insisted.
“But we told them to go home and they did,” Cha-lan insisted. The others murmured in agreement.
It was infuriating.
“Well, I wish you could tell all the Zal to go home,” I grumbled. “It would make the universe a much safer place.”
The Chagru looked thoughtful. Cha-lan asked, “How many Zal are there, who are not at home?”
Good grief. They were actually behaving as if they took the idea seriously.
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “Millions, I suppose, all over this spiral arm of the Galaxy, and all belligerent and heavily armed. If they all went away as suddenly as your lot did it’d be a miracle.”
I was pretty sure he didn’t know what a million was, but I figured he’d get the general idea.
Cha-lan said, “It would save lives?”
“It would save billions of lives,” I assured him.
I was pretty sure he didn’t know what a billion was either, but what the hell.
“If only I could make sense of how you got rid of them....”
The twenty Chagru went into a huddle. A few moments later Cha-lan turned to me and said, “It will take some time, but we will do our best.”
And then they walked away, leaving me convinced that they were all out of their mud-encrusted minds. Shaking my head, I walked back to my ship, past a group of Chagru who were already at work smoothing out the spider tracks in the muddy road.
Next morning I was woken by the sound of chanting. Donning a light tunic and boots, I stepped out of the ship, to be greeted by an extraordinary sight.
It seemed as if every able-bodied Chagru in the capital had assembled in the fields to chant. As I drew closer I began to make out what they were saying.
“We don’t want any Zal to be anywhere but home. Let them all go home, wherever they are. We don’t want any Zal to be anywhere but home. Let them all go home, wherever they are.”
Now I really knew the Chagru were mad.
I guess I could have shown some gratitude. After all, they were doing it for me. But a bunch of farmers droning away in a muddy field were never going to convince the most warlike race in the universe to just give up and go home.
Or were they?
After all, they had somehow persuaded the mudspiders to give up their stampede, and turned their planet into a Zal-free zone, and yet I was no closer to understanding how they’d done either of those things.
All day long the chanting continued. Like everything else on this dull brown planet it was unspeakably monotonous. I went back to the ship and turned on the meteor shield to block the sound, but I could still see them all chanting. They continued until nightfall, when by some unspoken signal they all just stopped suddenly and simultaneously and dispersed.
In the middle of the local night I was woken by the hyperwave relay’s Emergency Message alarm. Yawning, I staggered to the console and blinked at the message on the screen. Then I read it again, and again, wondering if I was still dreaming.
* ZAL CEASE HOSTILITIES ALL BATTLEFRONTS * ALL ZAL SHIPS AND WEAPONS BATTERIES DEAD * ALL FOOTSOLDIERS VANISHED WITHOUT TRACE * HUGE CELEBRATIONS THROUGHOUT GALAXY * NO SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR DISAPPEARANCE * ANY CONNECTION WITH APPARENT DISAPPEARANCE FROM CHAGRU HOMEWORLD QUERY * CHIEF DEMANDS ANSWERS *
I didn’t believe it. The muddy little bastards had done it. I asked them to get rid of the Zal and they got rid of them.
Wait a minute!
I asked them! It was me! I did it! I got rid of the Zal!
I felt like dancing. I almost felt like going out and making love to a Chagru. I had never been so elated.
With the aid of the Chagru, I had eliminated the biggest threat ever to face Galactic civilisation. I was the greatest hero in the history of the known universe....
....And no one was ever going to believe it. Except for the coincidence of timing, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to link the Zal’s disappearance to me, or to the Chagru. My elation popped like a soap bubble, leaving me even more despondent than I was before.
And I was still no closer to understanding how they’d done it.
In a fit of frustration I typed out the message: * THE CHIEF WILL HAVE HIS ANSWERS NEXT TIME * and jabbed the TRANSMIT button.
Of course the instant I sent the message I regretted it, but it was too late to recall it.
I sighed. One way or another, I was committed now. I went back to my bunk and slept fitfully for what was left of the night.
When morning arrived I was far from rested. Frustration and depression were churning in my head, my breakfast ration was so bland I felt like eating the packet on the theory that it couldn’t possibly taste any worse, and I was becoming convinced that I’d never get off the Chagru planet.
I almost envied the Zal. Wherever they were, at least they weren’t stuck in this stupid mudhole like me.
Not surprisingly, I was not in the most hospitable mood by the time I returned to the city and confronted Cha-lan and his friends once more.
“Are you not pleased, friend?” he asked. “We told all the Zal everywhere to go home. Have we not succeeded? Have we not pleased you in this?”
“Yes,” I said, fighting to control my impatience, “you made them go away, and everybody is indescribably grateful that they’re gone. But my chief still demands to know how you did it, and he won’t let me return home until I give him a proper explanation.”
The Chagru just looked puzzled. “Have we not explained this to you many times already?” they asked. It was the nearest I’d ever seen to impatience from them, and I was perversely pleased to have got a more animated reaction out of them at last.
“Explained?” I growled. “You call it an explanation? All you’ve ever told me is that -”
“- We told them to go away, the usual way, and they went. What more is there to tell?”
“How you did it,” I yelled. “Don’t you understand? All I’ve seen you do is chant. I can see how that might work on dumb animals like the mudspiders - they probably just got bored with it and walked away. But I really don’t know how you could make thousands of heavily-armed and armoured Zal warriors vanish into thin air without firing a shot. And don’t just tell me ‘the usual way,’ because whatever your ‘usual way,’ is, it seems pretty unusual by human standards.”
The Chagru went into a huddle. After a minute or two Cha-lan said, “Surely, friend, there have been times when you have told others to go away.”
“Well, of course there have,” I said, “but they didn’t always go.”
“How extraordinary,” he said. “Can it truly be that humans do not know the usual way?”
Another Chagru joined the discussion. “If the Zal did not know the usual way, it would certainly explain their unpleasant behaviour.”
There was general agreement among the crowd.
“Perhaps the things they call ‘war’ and ‘killing’ were just their way of making up for not being able to make others go away.”
“Poor things. Fancy not knowing the usual way. And the humans too. Such a pity.”
Now the ridiculous mud people actually felt sorry for me. It was infuriating. In fact it was more than infuriating, it was downright intolerable.
“Look,” I growled, clutching my throbbing head, “will you please try to understand? My chief won’t let me go back to Earth until I give him something more concrete. I can’t just tell him you told the Zal to go home the usual way. I don’t understand what the usual way is and neither will he. You have to give me more to go on.”
An unfortunate choice of words, I now realise.
“You wish to go home?” their spokesman asked. “You cannot return until you have knowledge of the usual way?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s it exactly.”
He exchanged glances with the rest of the crowd. “Well, then,” he said, “the solution to your dilemma could not be simpler.”
Then they formed a circle around me and began chanting: “You who wish to go home, go the usual way with our blessing. You who wish to go home, go the usual way with our blessing.”
“Look, this isn’t what I meant,” I protested. “I wasn’t asking for a dem... demons... tra... tion....”
Something was definitely happening to me. I was beginning to feel very peculiar.
Without warning my legs began to move of their own accord, turning me around and walking me steadily away from the crowd of Chagru, who were still chanting.
What’s happening? I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t speak.
And so, because I had no choice, I walked away. My legs continued to move involuntarily. No matter how I fought to regain control of my limbs, it was useless. I couldn’t stop, or even slow down. I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t cry for help.
I couldn’t do anything except keep walking.
It wasn’t long before I had left the Chagru city behind and was walking through the muddy fields. Farmers and their mudspiders cast me the odd curious glance as I passed and then went back to their work. I couldn’t turn my head to return their gaze.
My body was a helpless puppet, incapable of the slightest voluntary movement. Was this what the Chagru had done to the stampeding mudspiders and the Zal? I couldn’t imagine how they had done it. It surely could not be mere hypnosis. And where exactly was I walking to?
Just then I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I still couldn’t look round to see who it was, but I dared to hope Cha-lan and his band had realised their mistake and come to undo whatever they had done to me.
No such luck. As the solitary figure ran in front of me I realised it was Cha-ril, the Chagru I had saved from being trampled by mudspiders.
“I got here as soon as I could,” he said. “I only just heard you were going, and I couldn’t let you leave without showing my gratitude.”
Oh, no. He surely couldn’t mean -
But he could. While my legs continued to stride onward of their own accord, Cha-ril fell into step beside me and began to stroke my penis. Somehow without realising it I had left my clothes behind, and Cha-ril was only too willing to take advantage of the fact. He’d wanted to fuck me before, and I had refused, but now I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I couldn’t move my arms to push him away.
But his arms were moving freely, his fingers squeezing and manipulating my genitals which couldn’t help responding. My penis grew and hardened rapidly until it felt bigger and harder and more sensitive than humanly possible. Cha-ril squealed in delight, and beneath his careful fingertips it began sending long, slow waves of pleasure coursing through my entire body.
We were still walking through fields, and the farmers we passed watched us with apparent interest. One or two of them even shouted suggestions to Cha-ril for what he should do to me next.
Did the Chagru do this to the Zal too? I couldn’t recall ever hearing about the Zal’s reproductive habits. I didn’t even know if they were capable of being stimulated in this way.
I’d never felt so helpless, yet at the same time I’d never felt so alive. Cha-ril was virtually raping me, and yet my body and mind were hungry for stimulation after weeks of frustration on this drab planet.
Night fell and the air grew chill. Here and there through a break in the clouds could be seen stars and what might have been one or two of the abandoned Zal warships in orbit.
On and on I walked in a state of unbelievable sexual euphoria, thanks to Cha-ril. No matter how far we walked, neither his feet nor his hands ever slackened their pace. With every step, every touch, my ecstasy was growing, yet I didn’t seem to be getting any closer to orgasm. I was beginning to think Cha-ril was going to walk me right round the planet without making me come.
But then, almost without warning, my body erupted into ecstasy. Every nerve ending from head to foot was crying out with pleasure. I wanted to scream from the intensity of it, but I couldn’t even do that. My face remained an impassive mask as I walked steadily onward, but inside I was howling. It was like feeling every orgasm I’d ever had, and it just went on and on and on...
Oh, Cha-ril, you little pervert rapist bastard, I was thinking with my last remaining shred of consciousness, I love you! I want to stay with you forever!
...and on, and on, and on...
When at last the final burst of ecstasy faded away and I could think once more it must have been nearly midnight. The planet’s moon was shining dully through a gap in the clouds, lending some definition to the now-empty fields through which Cha-ril and I were still passing. The farmers and their mudspiders were certainly asleep by now, which meant that apart from a few nocturnal insects and scavengers Cha-ril and I were the only creatures that were still awake.
I’d been walking for more than half a day, yet I didn’t feel tired, hungry or thirsty.
I still felt horny, though. Cha-ril had finally let go, but my erection remained as solid as ever.
Out of the corner of my eye as I stared fixedly ahead I could still see Cha-ril walking alongside me in the moonlight, but I had a vague idea that there was something different about him.
There was something different about the path as well. The fields didn’t look any different; they were just as muddy as ever. But the ground I was walking on didn’t feel like mud. For that matter, it didn’t feel like soil or rock either. It felt more like soft leather. I couldn’t imagine what it was, and I couldn’t look down to see.
Then I suddenly realised what was different about Cha-ril. Before he had been crouching down to finger me, but now he was walking upright - and yet his head was no higher than it had been before. Which meant that either he was getting shorter somehow, or....
No, it couldn’t be. It was impossible.
But then, what wasn’t impossible about my entire situation?
I was rising above the ground. Whatever I was walking on wasn’t mud any more. It was like some kind of invisible path that was gradually sloping upwards.
And Cha-ril couldn’t walk on it with me, so he was still at ground level.
And if I was ascending...how far would I ascend? How far up did up go?
If I took that thought to its illogical conclusion... up could go all the way up.
All the way up into space. I had read somewhere that if you could walk straight up you could reach space in a day. And then...
All the way up out of the Chagru’s solar system. All the way to Earth.
All the way home.
After leaving the city I had walked a short distance around the curvature of the planet, until I was facing towards Earth. Then my feet had left the ground and begun following the invisible straight path that would lead me home.
Absurd? Yes. Impossible? Certainly. But no more absurd or impossible than a race of primitive farmers casually neutralising the greatest military force ever to threaten the universe.
By now Cha-ril was definitely lower with respect to me. For the moment the motion was almost imperceptible, but assuming I was right about all this, it surely could not be long before my walking speed would no longer match that of the planet’s rotation and we would be swept apart.
As if realising this, Cha-ril walked ahead of me and looked up.
“I wish I could go with you,” he said. “I cannot imagine how wonderful this journey will be for you.”
Wonderful? I thought. Helpless to do anything but walk all the way back to Earth? Do you really call that wonderful?!
“But though I cannot go with you,” he continued, “I can give you this gift, in memory of the love we have shared.”
Calling it shared love was of course stretching a point, but after the orgasm he had given me I could forgive that. My body was still tingling from it, and my erection was still solid as a rock.
Cha-ril, who was now more than half a metre below me, reached up to stroke it, giving me a short, sharp burst of pleasure, and began dancing around me, chanting:
“In memory of my love for you, I wish you to feel all the pleasure I have given you and all the pleasure I have wanted to give you. You will never stop feeling it until your journey’s end, and I shall be able to feel it too whenever I choose. In memory of my love for you, I wish you to feel all the pleasure I have given you...”
He repeated it all, word-perfect, dozens of times.
After he had been chanting for a few minutes I began to feel the most extraordinary sensations. It felt as if invisible hands were stroking my chest. Moments later they were joined by others caressing my back, my face, my arms, my legs, my buttocks, my scrotum....
I was being given foreplay by a crowd of ghosts. It felt wonderful. I wanted to thank Cha-ril, to reach down and hug him, but of course I couldn’t. I could only keep striding forward on my impossible, invisible path, incapable of the slightest voluntary response.
But as for my involuntary response...ripples of pleasure washed over my entire body and my erection began to grow and thicken even more.
It was another example of the Chagru’s incredible powers (and as I was soon to discover, there was more to come).
At last I understood the nature of the Chagru’s power, although I could not begin to imagine how it worked. By chanting and dancing the Chagru could make anything happen, anything they wanted.
By some vast cosmic irony these simple farmers had been given the power of gods. Anything their minds could conceive was theirs for the asking. With such power they could easily have conquered the universe.
But they didn’t want to. All they wanted to do was go on farming their scrubby vegetation, breed mudspiders and raise their families. Nothing for anthropologists to get excited about.
But they had the perfect defence against invaders. And their sex lives must have been unbelievable...if what I was feeling was anything to go by.
The invisible hands reached my throbbing erection and began kneading and stroking it with the same skill and sensitivity that Cha-ril had demonstrated. That wasn’t surprising, since he was the one who had conjured them. Under their tender care my penis gained another five centimetres in length and a centimetre in width, rose until it was almost vertical, and became as hard as steel. My pleasure grew and grew for what felt like hours, until it was released in another explosion of ecstasy that slowed down time until it seemed to last an eternity.
By the time I came to again, Cha-ril was almost a metre below me and walking at a noticeable angle. Reaching up to caress my buttocks, adding his real hand to the crowd of ghostly hands that were fondling me, he said, “Farewell, my friend. I wish you a safe journey. It is a pity we could not have become better acquainted. I know that no Chagru shall never see your like again. Farewell.”
And with those words he turned and walked away, while I walked onward and upward. The invisible hands continued to caress me as I went. My erection was permanent.
A little later I was treated to a new sensation, as a ghostly penis slid into my rectum and began thrusting against my prostate. As if invisible masturbation hadn’t been enough, now the little bastard was buggering me by proxy.
It was heaven.
And after that the invisible fingers returned, and then there was an invisible mouth and tongue...
And so I continued to walk into the upper atmosphere. In between my explosions of ecstasy I noticed that it was getting colder and colder as I ascended and the air was getting thinner and thinner, and yet I felt no discomfort. The cold that should have been painful was merely an abstract sensation, insignificant compared with my endless sexual pleasure, and the lack of air wasn’t affecting me at all.
All of which confirmed my suspicions about the Chagru’s power. If it could make me walk through air and space, then it could certainly keep me alive without breathing.
The sky gradually darkened and eventually became starry blackness. Naked and barefoot I walked into space, past the orbiting Zal ships, close enough to see the alien lettering on the nearest one, and onward and outward toward Earth.
The Chagru wanted the Zal to go home, and so they sent them home. They thought I wanted to go home, and so they sent me home.
The only thing is, the Chagru don’t understand interstellar distances. They could not begin to understand just how far away home is for the Zal and me.
Earth is approximately twenty light years from the Chagru planet - say two hundred trillion kilometres. That’s about two days’ journey in hyperspace. On foot, walking helplessly along this impossible road through space, it will take a bit longer.
At a steady walking pace, say four kilometres per hour, I’ll cover about thirty-five thousand kilometres in a year.
Assuming that the Chagru’s power prevents me from ageing and dying, which seems a reasonable assumption given all the other things it can do, it will be several thousand years before I even leave the Chagru’s solar system and embark upon the long dark journey through interstellar space.
I wished I could have thanked Cha-ril. His gift of sexual pleasure will help to make my journey bearable as I walk helplessly through the emptiness of space.
Every time I come, I imagine astronomers on some distant planet puzzling over my miniature supernovae and their white eruptions. I sometimes fantasise that some strange spacegoing life forms may encounter my semen as it drifts through space and become impregnated by it, creating a strange and wondrous new hybrid.
The invisible hands and lips continue to stroke my huge erection. Space is cold, but they will keep me warm. They’ll keep me red hot.
They’ll keep me hot for a very long time.
By the time I reach Earth at a mere four kilometres an hour, they’ll have been giving me orgasms for about... let me think...
About six billion years.
Six billion. If I think it fast I can almost kid myself that it doesn’t sound like much.
I should arrive just in time to see the Sun swell into a red giant and fry the Earth to a cinder.
And when I arrive on that burned out cinder, will I die without food or air, or will some even more bizarre occurrence conspire to keep me alive for still more billions of years?
Right now I can’t think about such things. That invisible erection is thrusting into me again, and it’s... just about bringing me... to another... another unbelievable... climax...
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, God, I’m coming...
Six... billion... years... of... this...!
I’m... coming...
Coming...
...home.
