Chapter 5: The Plorrian Proposition
The gel-bed’s afterglow still hummed in my muscles as Teela practically dragged me through the twisting access corridors of the Torus. My coveralls smelled of ozone and burnt insulation, a stark contrast to her clean, rain-on-metal scent.
“You’re going to love her,” she chirped, her hand a cool, pliable vise around my wrist.“K’lik is elegance. None of that messy Sslyssian dribble.It’s all about atmospheric exchange. Very philosophical.”
“Philosophical,” I grunted, trying to keep up with her buoyant stride. “You said that about the vendor who tried to sell us psychic fungus that sang lewd songs.”
“And that was hilarious! This is different. Trust me.”
We bypassed the main promenade, slipping instead into a service tunnel that ran like an artery behind the habitation rings. The thrum of the station’s life support was louder here, a visceral pulse in the grated floor. A flickering, handwritten placard marked our turnoff: The Spore’s End.Pleasure & Pour.
The door was a blast door, repurposed and scarred.Teela didn’t knock. She placed her palm against a bioscanner grown into the metal like a lichenous tumor. It glowed blue, matching her hue, and the door slid open with a gritty shriek.
The sensory overload was instantaneous.Sound hit first—a wall of dissonant harmony. A wailing, reedy instrument dueled with a bassline that wasn’t heard so much as felt in the hollows of my bones. Underneath it all, the wet, rhythmic clicking I recognized from Teela’s most contented moments pulsed like a heartbeat.Then, the light. The walls weren’t walls. They were vats, floor-to-ceiling, filled with churning neon algae that cycled through sickly yellows, venomous greens, and a deep, bruised purple. Their pulsating glow painted everyone in strokes of living shadow.The air was thick. It carried the sour tang of synth-grain alcohol, the peppery musk of a dozen different pheromones, and beneath it all, the damp, fertile smell of the living vines that crawled across the ceiling. They shifted color like mood rings, responding to the clusters of patrons below: flaring red around a boisterous table of hulking, scaled Taurians, softening to a tranquil blue near a solitary, hooded figure sipping something iridescent.This was Praxith’s place.
We moved through the chaos.A many-limbed creature with eyes on stalks whistled at Teela. She blew it a kiss, a drop of her substance flicking from her fingers to land on its carapace with a sizzle.It chittered in delight.
And there he was, behind a bar carved from a single, gigantic, petrified mushroom. Praxith the Grinning.He was a monument of chitinous grace, seven feet tall if an inch. His exoskeleton was a deep, iridescent purple that shifted to blue where the algae light caught it. Four arms moved with independent, precise efficiency: two polishing a glass with a soft cloth, two mixing several vials of glowing liquid into a shuddering concoction for a waiting customer. His head was a sleek, tapered helm, multiple lensed eyes arranged in a semicircle, all currently focused on different tasks. His mandibles didn’t move, but a speaker grill on his thorax emitted a series of rapid, friendly clicks and pops.
He saw us, and all his eyes swiveled to converge on our approach. A puff of faint, citrus-scented pheromones reached me—welcome, curiosity, amusement.
“Teela!” the clicks translated, the voice from the speaker a surprisingly mellow, synthetic baritone.“And the famously robust human.Ron. Your credit is good here, if your constitution is.”
“Praxith,” Teela said, sliding onto a stool that reshaped itself to accommodate her form.“We’re not here for credit. We’re here for conversation. Of the elevated kind.”
One of Praxith’s free hands made a delicate, fluttering gesture. Another puff of pheromones, this one tinged with intrigue.“Elevation is our specialty. What floats your gondola?”
“K’lik,” Teela said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Is she in the ether tonight?”
Praxith’s eyes performed a synchronized dance of consideration. One set kept watching the door, another monitored a Taurian who was getting too loud, a third remained on us. “She drifts in the upper vents.Contemplating the futility of solid form, last I sensed. I’ll send a spore up.She finds your human… intriguing.” The clicks paused. “She finds his metabolic byproducts even more so.”
I felt a blush warm my neck. My “metabolic byproducts” were currently sloshing happily inside Teela, keeping her gloriously, translucently full.The fact that it was public knowledge in this cesspool of gossip was strangely exhilarating.
“Great,” I muttered.
Praxith extracted a small, desiccated pod from a belt pouch.He crushed it between two delicate finger-claws. A cloud of silver dust, faintly luminescent, puffed upwards, caught in the bar’s faint air currents, and drifted toward a grille near the ceiling.We waited. Teela ordered something that smoked and swirled in its glass.I got a beer that tasted of rust and honey. The music shifted, the wailing instrument giving way to something that sounded like crystal wind chimes manipulated by a ghost.
Then, the air above the bar changed.It was a distortion at first, a heat shimmer over a desert highway. Then colors bled into it—pearlescent pinks, auroral greens, the deep violet of a twilight sky. It coalesced into a swirling, miniature nebula about the size of a beach ball, glowing with its own soft, internal light.It pulsed, languid and serene.
It descended until it floated just before my face.I could feel it. Not a temperature, but a charge.A gentle, static prickling over my skin, raising the hairs on my arms. It smelled like the air after a lightning strike, crisp and alive.
“Ron Hardin,” a voice emanated from the cloud. It was melodic, layered, like multiple voices speaking in unison from the bottom of a well. “Teela speaks of you with a frequency that bends local spacetime.”
Teela giggled, sipping her smoky drink.“He’s the real thing, K’lik. A closed-loop system.A fountain.”
The cloud—K’lik—drifted closer. A tendril of shimmering gas extended, brushing my cheek. The static shock was sharper this time, a tiny, pleasurable zap that went straight to my spine. My senses, already heightened from the morning’s activities and the surreal surroundings, dialed up another notch.
“Solid,” K’lik mused.“Dense.A walking thunderhead. Teela says you are… compatible with unique metabolisms.”
“I’ve been tested,” I said, my voice rough. I cleared my throat. “What exactly is it you need?”
“Exchange,” the cloud whispered, the multi-voiced harmony softening.“My people are ephemera. We condense thought into form, emotion into charge. But to sustain a tangible state, to truly feel the universe, we require a catalyst. A stable, energetic medium to react with.”
Teela cut in, her tone that of a proud scientist. “Human sexual bio-energy, specifically the electrical impulses and chemical compounds in seminal plasma, are excellent catalysts.But most beings are too fragile. The charge overloads their nervous system, or their output is too paltry to be meaningful. A flicker, not a storm.” She gestured to me with her glass. “But you… you’re a walking power plant.Invulnerable.Constant. You could feed her tangible form for hours.”
K’lik’s nebula contracted, then expanded, colors deepening. “I do not consume in the way Teela does.I do not absorb mass. I use the energy to polarize my own gaseous matrix, to hold a coherent shape.The experience for you would be… tactile. Energetic.A circuit completed.”
Another tendril, cooler this time, ghosted over my lips. I tasted ozone and something sweetly alien. My heart was drumming a steady, anticipatory beat against my ribs.This was madness.This was incredible.
“What does it feel like?” I asked, looking from the cloud to Teela.
Teela’s eyes were wide, glowing with mischief and a genuine, academic curiosity.“I don’t know!That’s the fun part. It’s not my physiology. But K’lik says for the donor, it’s like being the heart of a gentle lightning storm.Every nerve ending singing. And for her… well, you’ll see what she looks like condensed.”
Praxith, who had been polishing the same glass with three arms for the last five minutes, emitted a series of rapid, approving clicks. “Private room three is available.Sanitized for corporeal and non-corporeal guests. Neutral atmosphere, adjustable charge.”
The cloud hovered, waiting. Teela leaned into me, her cool body pressed against my side.“Go on,” she whispered, her breath a tickle in my ear. “It’s science.And I really want to watch.”
That sealed it. Her unabashed, voyeuristic joy was contagious.This wasn’t cheating; it was exploration. With her as my guide, my co-conspirator.I nodded to the cloud. “Okay.Let’s try.”
K’lik pulsed with a sudden, brilliant flare of gold. “Follow.”
The cloud drifted away from the bar, weaving through the crowded room. Teela took my hand, her excitement palpable. We followed the floating nebula to a recessed archway where Praxith, with a fourth arm I hadn’t noticed, keyed open a sealed door.
The room beyond was a stark contrast to the bar’s organic chaos. It was circular, padded on all surfaces with a soft, gray sound-absorbent material. The air was still, filtered, and smelled of nothing.In the center was a wide, low platform, similarly padded. The only light came from a single, recessed, neutral-white panel in the ceiling.
K’lik swirled into the center of the room, her colors muted in the sterile light.
Teela pulled me inside and the door sighed shut behind us, sealing out the bar’s cacophony. The silence was profound, broken only by the faint hum of the air scrubbers and the soft, whispery rustle of K’lik’s gaseous form.
“Okay,” Teela said, clapping her hands together with a soft squelch.“Ground rules.Ron, you’re the anchor. The battery.You just… be your wonderfully durable self.K’lik will initiate the exchange. It’s not penetration in a conventional sense.It’s an embrace.An interface. Just relax into it.”
“Relax,” I echoed, shrugging out of my coveralls. My invulnerability meant I had no physical fear, but the unfamiliarity buzzed in my mind. Teela helped me, her hands smoothing over my shoulders, her presence a calming constant.
I stood naked in the sterile room.K’lik’s cloud began to rotate faster, the colors swirling with purpose.
“Establish connection,” the layered voice echoed softly in the enclosed space.The cloud descended. It didn’t envelop me like a mist. Instead, it flowed around me, clinging to the contours of my body.The static charge was immediate and intense.It wasn’t painful. It was a full-body vibration, a deep, resonant thrum that started in my bones and spread outwards. Every hair stood on end.My skin tingled as if awash in a carbonated beverage.
Then, the cloud began to condense.
Where it touched me, the gaseous matter grew denser, more tangible.It was like watching frost form in reverse.From the nebulous haze, a shape emerged. Arms, shimmering and semi-transparent like solidified glass, wound around my torso. A form, vaguely feminine and sculpted from swirling, iridescent vapor, pressed against my back. I could feel her—not the firm pressure of Teela’s colloidal body, but a clinging, electric presence, humming with potential.
A face, beautiful and ethereal, formed in the cloud near my shoulder. It had the suggestion of features: eyes of sparkling amethyst light, a soft mouth that smiled with arcs of miniature lightning.
“Now,” K’lik’s voice came directly into my mind, intimate and clear.“The catalyst.”
The charge shifted. It focused, drawing inward from the broad vibration to a piercing, exquisite point of contact. It felt as if a perfectly conducted current had found its pathway: from the core of my being, through my swelling, electrified flesh, and into the receptive, condensing matrix of her form.
I wasn’t inside her in a physical way.It was better.It was as if our very energies were coupling. My arousal was a rising tide of voltage, and she was the conductor shaping it into something beautiful.
I groaned, my head falling back. My cock, heavy and throbbing, was sheathed not in flesh but in a scintillating vortex of charged gas. I could see it, outlined in crackling purple and gold energy, the dense shaft a dark, solid core within the brilliant storm. Every pulse of my heart, every twitch of my oversensitive flesh, sent cascades of light rippling through K’lik’s form.She solidified further with each surge. Her arms around me gained definition, cool and smooth as polished quartz. Her body, pressed along my back, developed curves I could feel against my spine.She was building herself from me.
Teela watched, utterly rapt, from a corner of the room.Her large eyes were unblinking, drinking in the spectacle. Her own body shivered in sympathetic resonance, little droplets of her blue-green essence quivering at her fingertips.
The peak, when it came, was unlike anything I’d experienced.
It wasn’t a violent explosion.It was a discharge.A sustained, ecstatic release of energy. My climax rolled through me in waves of pure, white current.The visual was staggering. Thick ropes of my release, visible only as violently glowing channels of bio-electricity, poured into K’lik’s core. They didn’t vanish into a reservoir like with Teela. They danced within her, becoming part of her structure, lighting her up from within like a neon sculpture.She solidified completely in that moment. For a few, breathless seconds, she was a statue of luminous, solid light in my arms, her features sharp and awestruck, her form perfect and real. The air crackled, smelling intensely of rain and heat.
Then, as the flow from me began to ebb, she softened. The solid light returned to swirling, shimmering gas, but now she was denser, brighter, her colors more vivid. She unwound from me, floating back, a satisfied, pulsing orb of energy.
The static cling faded from my skin, leaving a deep, humming satisfaction in every nerve.I was spent, but in a clean, energizing way. I took a shaky breath, looking down at myself.There was no mess.The exchange had been utterly efficient.
Teela bounced over, her eyes wide.“Wow,” she breathed.“That was… gorgeous. Like a fountain of living lightning.” She peered at K’lik.“You’re so bright now! How do you feel?”
K’lik’s cloud swelled with contentment. “Satiated.Tangible.I can hold this form for… days, perhaps. Thank you, Ron Hardin. You are a superlative catalyst.” She drifted closer, a tendril brushing my now-softening flesh with something akin to reverence.“An open invitation stands. My vents are always open to your storm.”
With a final, harmonious chime, the cloud of gas flowed upwards, slipping through a nearly invisible vent in the ceiling and disappearing.
The sterile room felt suddenly very quiet, very empty.Teela turned to me, a slow, supremely smug smile spreading across her cartoonish face. “See? Philosophy.”
I pulled her to me, feeling her cool, familiar substance against my oversensitive skin.The contrast was profound. “That was… intense.”
“Good intense?”
“Amazing intense.” I kissed her forehead. “And you just watched?”
“It was educational!” she protested, laughing.“And incredibly hot. Watching you light up like a reactor core… mmm.” She pressed herself against me.“I think you sparked something in me, too. I feel… energized.”
I could see it. Her translucence had a new depth, a sparkle where my essence swirled within her.The curving lines of her hips and breasts seemed a fraction more pronounced. The symbiosis was working, on levels I was only beginning to understand.
We dressed in a companionable silence, the shared experience a new thread woven between us. As we stepped back out into the pulsating chaos of The Spore’s End, the world felt different.Sharper. More full of possibility.Praxith caught our eyes as we passed the bar. All four of his arms were raised in a simultaneous gesture of cheerful inquiry. A complex pheromone cocktail wafted over: satisfaction, curiosity, offer.
Teela leaned over the bar, her voice a gleeful stage whisper.“A resounding success, Prax.Top marks. Tell K’lik her taste is impeccable.”
Praxith’s mandibles clacked softly.His speaker emitted a translated chuckle. “She already has.And it seems your reputation expands, Ron Hardin.Others are… curious. The Mycelial Synod has a delegate in town. They’ve heard of the human who feeds the nebulae. They find the concept… fertile.”
He gestured with a delicate claw toward a shadowy booth in the corner. A being sat there, its form obscured by a cloak of what looked like living, grey moss. A single, stalked eye peered out from the folds, watching us with unblinking interest.
Teela followed my gaze, her own eyes lighting up with a fresh, devious spark. She squeezed my hand, her voice dropping to a thrilling, intimate murmur only I could hear.“See?The night is young. And the Spore’s End is full of life waiting to be… experienced.”
She didn’t drag me this time. She simply led, and I followed willingly, the afterglow of lightning still dancing in my veins, and the promise of the strange and wonderful beckoning from the shadows.