Alien Minds Part 3: Alien Memories

I just want to say that Bubba's Bounty Huntin' Bonanza may be my favorite thing to come out of this storyline.

 

Korien proved to be an excellent mate for Troy. He was attentive and stayed nearby like his faithful harem ruex, always ready to tend to the queen's needs. There must have been something with the queen's hormones because Troy found himself loving this lifestyle. That sense of tight, faintly squirming life inside his translucent guts had his senses pleasantly dulled, some combination of a painkillers and sedatives as best he could tell. He felt happier than he'd been since he made the change, and whether it was his smile or the fact that he was loaded with eggs, his people seemed more pleased to see him lately. They were usually dutiful and bowing when he went past, but they were beaming and talking about how beautiful he looked in this state.

The sense had started to fade after a couple days, but he knew how to fix that. Korien, like all the ruex, had no real notion of sex for pleasure, so that meant making more eggs. Troy ate plenty of his royal jelly to leave himself bloating and popping out a few more of the orbs, mixing in with their multicolored kin. Korien would then pierce his way back into Troy's egg sac, giving him that strange sensation of pressure before the numbness kicked in and he felt Korien's genitals worm its appendages inside him. He would still seize Troy by the horns even after he had stopped resisting. Troy wondered if it took a lot of leverage or if it was simply some barbaric instinct of theirs, but he was starting to enjoy the grip on his thin but solid spikes like he was some kind of living, fertile bicycle.

Time got a little hazy for Troy in his hormonally high state. He was too busy enjoying his life when Vank came in a couple weeks later, pushing along a shallow, empty pool some ten feet wide. "What's that for?" Troy asked, lounging in his giant bed with several servants grooming his antennae and leg joints for him.

"You're gonna want this when you start leaking," Vank said as he started removing the hover pods and started fastening it to the floor. "Clean dry surface. Easiest to stick something on to."

Troy's antennae raised and it looked like the room lit up a bit. "You think I'll finally start laying them?" he asked dreamily, rubbing a lower arm along his tightly packed stomach with the gently wiggling orbs inside.

"Pretty soon," Vank confirmed without slowing his work. "Your thorax is gonna leak like a rain cloud and you'll transfer the gooey little guys from that mess into another mess. They'll eat their way out and you'll be the one left feeding them 'til they can grow their own shells and hobble around for themselves."

"Why me? Don't I have servants for that?" Troy asked, even if he found himself looking forward to the idea. It must be so fulfilling to have his abundance of eggs form into more loving servants to his hive.

"Because ruex are cannibals by necessity, and nothing's quite as vulnerable or contributing less to the hive than a baby ruex. Their brains don't always put two and two together, but we had an incident about a hundred years ago with Queen Ombletch when one of her little ones scampered off. The sterile females will help do some basic grooming, but you're gonna be one hell of a mama bear for a while."

"It's worth it, then," Troy sighed, forcing himself onto his back. It took all four of his arms and one of his long legs to do it, but he loved how they sloshed around inside, the faintest of movements inside their bubbly shells.

Of course, Vank was right. Troy woke up one morning and scuttled over to the pool as if he were staggering out of bed for the bathroom. His arms and legs braced around it while a few waiting servants hurried over. It wasn't the best angle to see from, but he could feel their fingers pushing and rubbing at the fattened organ growing out of his hips. There was a thick purple oil that started building in the pool. After all those weeks of bloating, Troy was groaning with relief. It poured out of him like a freshly soaked dish towel.

While it wasn't an urge he'd thought of his entire time in this body, but it was such a glorious relief that his lower hand started masturbating. None of the servants said anything about it as they queen fingered herself until they had drained him empty. When they seemed done, Troy barely had the mind to try to keep his purple nesting slime pure and hobbled off of the pool to keep rubbing himself. It felt so right. His antennae curled up so that everything else faded, letting him focus on the feeling of pleasure and belonging as he fulfilled his role for his hive. Even something about Korien standing there watching patiently, unmoving until he would order him to, he felt so full. Sex for pleasure was overrated, he thought. This order, this purpose... that was the real pleasure.

Troy woke up screaming when the urge hit him. His thorax stayed deflated, back to the natural state as it was when he met Queen Yunmeshka (if slightly discolored from his excretions).There was a wet tearing sound as he stomped his awkward legs towards the pool, all four arms wrapping around his stomach. He could feel the fluids leaking through his fingers, but the eggs were large enough that he was able to keep them inside the thin line where his sac was split. The servants came and helped him hurry over to where the gel had started to thicken into one more questionable blob of jelly.

Troy felt himself black out for a moment, but he heard some wet tearing sound and felt his insides shifting. When he snapped back, he was being held up by the servants over the pool. They were working quickly and pushing the purple mush over the eggs where they'd landed in the mess. As soon as they saw Troy looking, they hurried to finish their work and scuttled back. His stomach was oddly light and he felt exhausted, but he counted twenty-three eggs that all looked full and healthy floating in the goop. That mix of pain and high and purpose filled him again, and he let himself collapse happy and exhausted by the pool containing his clutch of eggs.

There was this sort of tense pride that started to fill Troy over the next few days. He started taking his meals by the egg-laying pool (which he’d stopped caring about as little more than flavorful meat and jelly), just watching their vague jigglings. Vank said they weren’t really alive yet, but they moved like they were. Or they were trying to be. It was just plain fascinating. The next day, his handmaidens came by to apply some oils or the like to the eggs. Troy was surprised to find that he’d fallen asleep by the pool, and they wanted her permission to touch them. He thought it was weird, like nurses asking the doctor to confirm an injection. He let them do as they pleased, of course, since they seemed to know what they were doing more than he did. Even then, they were acting slow and careful. Vank’s book had told him that he’d be getting territorial about his nest, but he was feeling curious more than anything.

“What’s that do?” he asked as they reached into the goo to rub the oils over the eggs themselves.

“It’s a gene solvent,” one of the sterile ruex  explained. “It helps eliminate weaker traits and genetic illnesses like hive fever.”

“Kind of like a human booster shot,” Vank added.

“Oh. Good, then,” Troy said.

“It also controls the hormones in their hatchling state to minimize the number of females in the population,” the ruex aide continued.

“Except that part,” Vank corrected. They went on with these checkups over the days, always checking with his carefully before tending to each of the eggs. His diet was becoming consistently more flavorful now that he didn’t have to keep squeezing out eggs, but he found himself doing little besides watching the eggs and checking his old messenger account. The ruex (or more specifically, their hujaw underlings) were keeping his old bills paid up, even if he couldn’t really use his old insurance or anything. He mostly just kept up to let friends and family know he was fine… and that his eggs were coming along nicely.

He didn’t think it was out of the ordinary that he kept an eye on his eggs all day long. He was barely moving around, though apparently Ruex delivering their birth directly through the eggs meant they didn’t worry about putting on baby weight. They weren’t exactly active, so he could busy himself with other things like dispatching orders or browsing the cyberweb. He didn’t even need to do anything since the handmaidens knew how to handle the details. They were even able to handle the eggs without permission when they added more fluids.

Things didn’t get strange to him until it all suddenly snapped. He wasn't paying attention as he checked on some reports of the hive's harvest on nearby planets when some stranger laid her hands on her eggs. He'd later find out that it was a new handmaiden to replace the one who had an appointment today, but his mind didn't even consider that. The outrage was instant as the invading creature dared to intrude on his nest. The thieving, kiehkt, woosten whore from a rival hive was too weak to lay her own eggs and so was stealing his. Her hand had barely touched it when Troy threw himself at her, the angular legs of the ruex making his leap an especially powerful one. The unsuspecting handmaiden was slammed into the floor a good ten yards away with Troy on top of her, clinging with his lower limbs while his upper pair swung like slim hammers at her head and chest. Curses he had never used in his life rained down on her as she shrieked and shielded herself with all four of her limbs.

A few of the handmaidens made ginger attempts at restraining the furious Troy, but none wanted to risk hurting the queen. He heard shouting and pleading but the words didn't even reach through his outrage. Everything was almost painfully bright and clear to him as his antennae stood straight up like spikes on high alert. When her arms formed a capable wall to shield her body with, he grabbed her by the elbow and sank his teeth into the protecting limb. The aide screamed as he bit her arm clean off at the elbow in a short gush of purple blood.

"MAKE A HOLE, YA BIG BLUE IDIOTS!!" Vank shoved his way past the crowding but useless assistants, tapping frantically on a device until something finally reached Troy's mind as well as his ear slits.

“Lotta people ‘round here dunno what it’s like huntin’ bounties. But then again, them people ain’t Bubba. Me? I’m Bubba. This here’s Bubba’s Bounty Huntin’ Bonanza.”

Troy froze and let the bloody limb fall out of his mouth. Did the new season start? He hadn't heard the intro in so long... not since he finished the last box set. Bubba's was just the perfect mix of stupid, exciting, and charming a reality show needed about a redneck space trucker turned bounty hunter. It was his absolute favorite before...

Troy shook his head and clambered off the handmaiden. Things had gotten so bad, he had almost forgot there was a before. Before the egg sacs and those hormones that made him feel good and warm all the time. Before his mind became focused on a single purpose and felt full and content just from that.

"I found that in your user history before this whole alien brain shit happened," Vank explained. "Thought it might spark somethin'. It was that or a voice-comm from your mom, but..." He chortled. "That one looked funnier. How is that show anyway? I heard good things."

"Thanks... Vank." Troy got back to his feet unsteadily, with the handmaidens acting more concerned for his balance than they were for the female with the missing arm. "I kind of lost it."

"Told ya you'd go mama bear." The squat alien handed Troy's holopad back to him. "Ya alright?"

"I'm okay now." It was true. His head was clearer than it had been since the jump. Things dulled around him as his antennae relaxed and he walked over to his bed to sit down. The eggs would be fine. They had been the whole time, and they didn't need him stalking over them all the time. The nursemaids knew what they were doing more than him. It was why they explained everything they did because they fucking knew better than a crazy queen full of hormones. He felt awful.

"Is she going to be okay?" Troy asked as he looked at the wounded woman he'd attacked in his preggo berserker rage.

"Her? Oh yea," Vank said like he just remembered. "Ruex guts are weird like that. They're almost like... like your Earth Legos. The parts come off real easily because they have extras. She won't be on top of her game, but she'll get by."

Troy gulped. He knew what happened to ruex who didn't pull their weight. They ended up serving in the cafeteria, and not as a staff member. "Is there a way to fix her? Like, does it grow back?"

"Doesn't grow back. It'll seal off, but the only way to put one back on her is to find her a spare."

Troy tensed for a moment, but he'd done this to her in the first place. It was his responsibility. "She can have one of mine." There was an audible gasp from the servants, but Troy just raised his many arms. "I've got too many as it is. They keep getting in the way, and I'm not the one doing all the work around here. I'm sure the queen will understand."

The injured handmaiden broke into tears, throwing herself on the ground at Troy's feet. She started licking them with her raspy tongue and blubbering out praises and thanks. "Peace and glory to all your bloodline, Queen Troy! I am unworthy of your wisdom and grace, my beautiful queen! May you live a thousand lifetimes beloved and eternal in all your perfection!" Troy guessed this was a big deal, but Yunmeshka felt like the kind of sweetheart who would do this sort of thing. In a worst case, she came back to her body and ordered one off another servant. He just didn't want that on his conscience.

"Vank, can you schedule the surgery... or whatever? Also, can I get a burger tonight? No... make it a big bowl of chili from down at Hoffzek's. With the curly fries."

"You got it, kid."

Things changed for Troy as he started getting back to normal. The hormones weren't gone, but he was aware of them and he could keep them at bay. He'd wince a little when the servants went to work on the eggs, but he assured himself it was just natural paranoia. He relaxed and caught up on his shows and playing holovid games while he dispatched the occasional harmless command on his people. He kept his mate around, but they didn't mate at all. He knew it didn't give him any pleasure, just eggs, but he kept him around as a symbol to keep away the other males and let him enjoy the luxurious benefits of being the queen's former fuckbuddy. Vank seemed glad to find that he was more in control than most of the queens, and they wasted a lot of their evenings kicking back with Vank and Korien, showing them the last 5 seasons of Bubba's Bounty Huntin' Bonanza.

It helped kill the time until the eggs hatched, spawning a bunch of little squishy ruex. Troy felt that tingle again, but the handmaidens plucked the chirping little pupas up and with his casual approval, trotted them off for processing. "That wasn't so hard," Troy admitted as he flopped back into bed in front of the holograms. "Gross, but not hard."

"Frankly, kid, that's all a ruex can ask for," Vank said as he passed him the popcorn. Troy tucked it under his arm, finding it just as easy to hold with just three arms instead of four.