Chapter 1: The Persistent Suitor
The hum of the observation lab was a constant, sterile drone. It seeped into the bones, colder than the polished concrete floor. Auren shifted, the subtle click of eight padded legs a quiet counter-rhythm to the machines. His world was a blur of white shapes and sharp light, the eight faint purple irises in his black sclera doing little to clarify details beyond movement and mass.
He focused on the three human-shaped blobs near the central workstation. The taller, rigid one was Dr. Helena Vance. Her scent was always the same—starch, ozone, and a thread of something sour, like old coffee. He found it amusing.
With a slow, deliberate shuffle, he moved forward. The great brown shaft between his front legs, heavy and equine in shape, swung gently. He let the tip of it drag across the floor. Scritch. Swish. It left a faint, glistening trail on the concrete, a sticky marker of his passage. He angled himself toward the rigid blur.
He pressed the warm, soft flesh of his phallus against the rough fabric of her lab coat, directly against her thigh. He began a slow, rhythmic nudging, a mindless, seeking motion.
“Ugh! God, again?” Helena’s voice was a sharp slap in the quiet room. She shoved at the massive weight with both hands, her movement one of pure revulsion. “Back! Get back, you mindless beast!” She stumbled a step, brushing frantically at her coat as if contaminated.
Auren let himself be pushed, his upper human torso swaying, his blank, wide-eyed face turning slowly as if confused by the disturbance. Inside, a silent laugh bubbled. Mindless. Yes.
“Persistent today, isn’t he?” Dr. Marcus Chen’s voice was warm with amusement. He approached, a smudged blob of color. Auren heard the rustle of his lab coat, sensed the shift in air as a hand reached out.
A tap. Two quick, almost playful raps against the sensitive spinneret at the very rear of Auren’s large, furry abdomen.
Auren jolted. It was an involuntary spasm, a sharp contraction of muscle. He let his front two arms flail slightly for balance, his head swinging around on his slender neck, all eight eyes blinking slowly at nothing in particular. Just a dumb creature reacting to a stimulus, Doctor.
“See? Pure reflex,” Chen said, chuckling. “No higher cognitive functions at play when the equipment is involved.”
“Disgusting,” grumbled the third blur, Dr. Viktor Orlov. His accent clipped the word. “Is a farm animal. Worse. Should be studying it from behind three-inch glass, not in here where it… dribbles on everything.”
“Protocol, Viktor,” Helena snapped, still scrubbing at her thigh with a disinfectant wipe. The chemical lemon scent cut through the air. “Proximity observation is key to mapping its behavioral patterns. Even the… repetitive ones.”
“Patterns?” Orlov snorted. “Pattern is it sees flat surface, tries to mate. Including your leg, Doctor.”
Helena’s rigid posture went, if possible, even stiffer. Auren detected the faintest heat rise from her blur. He found it fascinating.
Chen, still smiling, wandered closer to Auren’s front. He looked up at the placid, alien face—the floppy human ears, the wide mouth with its hidden, sharp mandibles. “What’s going on in there, huh? Anybody home?”
He reached out, not toward Auren’s humanoid hands, but lower. He gave the thick, brown shaft a familiar, almost condescending little pat-pat, like testing the firmness of a melon.
Auren remained perfectly still. Inside, the silent laugh curdled into something colder, sharper. The humiliation was a bright, precise point. He stored the sensation—the casual touch, the tone—next to Helena’s disgust and Orlov’s contempt. He let a long string of silken drool fall from the corner of his mouth onto the floor.
“See?” Chen said, turning back to the others. “Nothing. Basic biological firmware. Eat, sleep, seek tactile stimulation. A very complicated, very ugly plant.”
“Do not encourage it,” Helena muttered, finally giving up on her coat and throwing the wipe into a hazardous materials bin. “The last thing we need is for it to associate that… behavior… with positive attention.”
“What, you think he’s learning?” Orlov smirked, crossing his arms. “Please. Brain is smaller than my fist. Is all hydraulic pressure and instinct.”
Auren slowly turned away, his legs clicking as he moved toward the far wall where his water trough sat. He dipped his head, drinking noisily. The conversation continued behind him, discussing feeding schedules, nutrient mixes, the potential for controlled silk production.
Their words washed over him, meaningless. He was planning.
The hum of the main door opening registered. A new blur entered—smaller, carrying a familiar scent of processed grain and supplements. The feeding cart.
Auren shuffled forward with apparent eager clumsiness, his phallus still half-engorged and swinging. The junior technician, a blur of nervous yellow, froze, eyes wide.
“Just leave the bucket, Liam,” Chen called, kindly. “He’s harmless.”
Liam did, setting the heavy pail down and retreating quickly.
Auren nudged the bucket with his face, then with a foreleg. He tipped it. Not enough to spill it all, just enough for a generous slop of wet, sticky feed to cascade across the floor, directly into the path between the workstation and the door.
He then lowered his head and began to eat messily, slopping more of the paste onto the concrete.
“Fantastic,” Orlov groaned. “Now it makes a mess.”
“I’ll get it,” Chen said, sighing good-naturedly. He went to the maintenance closet for a mop and bucket.
Helena, distracted by her tablet, began to walk toward the door, her eyes on her screen. Auren tracked her progress through his blurry peripheral vision. His legs tensed minutely.
Her foot, clad in a practical flat shoe, hit the spill. There was a wet, sickening skid, a sharp intake of breath that was almost a yelp, and a frantic windmilling of arms.
She didn’t fall. She caught herself hard on the edge of the workstation, her tablet clattering away. Her composure shattered. “Damn it! Damn this creature!”
Orlov’s face turned purple. He doubled over, a choking sound escaping him. He spun on his heel and marched out of the lab, the door hissing shut behind him. From the corridor, muffled by the glass, came the unmistakable, roaring sound of his laughter.
Helena stood there, trembling with fury and mortification. Chen returned with the mop, his own face carefully neutral.
Auren lifted his head, a glob of feed dropping from his chin. He swiveled his eight eyes toward Helena, then toward the door where Orlov had exited. He made a soft, chittering noise deep in his throat—a sound logged in their files as a contented digestive sound.
He slowly, deliberately, lowered his head back to the spilled food, and continued to eat.
Helena straightened her coat, her jaw a tight line. “Clean this up, Marcus. And adjust its feed formula. Perhaps something less… adhesive.” Her voice was ice, but it cracked at the edges.
She retrieved her tablet and walked out, her steps precise and angry.
Chen mopped in silence for a minute. Then he walked over and stood near Auren. “You know,” he said softly, almost to himself. “For a dumb beast, you sure have a knack for timing.”
He gave Auren’s furry spider flank a light, almost companionable nudge with the mop handle.
Auren didn’t react. He just kept eating, the slow, rhythmic motion of his mandibles hidden behind his human lips. Inside, the cold, sharp thing settled. The game was far more interesting than they knew. And he had only just begun to play.