Krystabald and the Hermit
Krystabald was soaring through the Penoxion nebula in his Kreutz S-9000 at three times the theoretical speed allowed by the LGCPA (Local Group Civil Protectorate Agency). It was quiet, all indicator lights were blinking in harmonious way, and he could just relax on his stomach and let his new tentacle-tail massage his back.
It was a wonderful bargain, a treat long overdue after all his space adventures. It was grown from the stem cells of an Ralexian salt worm. The rugged, yet soft material did wonders when he needed his back scratched. Not to mention the wonders it did to his more private parts…
Those pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the blaring of the ship's alarm. “Object in path, advice course correction.”
“Stop the racket and do something about it, you miserable waste bucket!” He screamed at the panels in front of him, but then he remembered he sold the AI to the CyberSlavers on Gibson Alpha.
“Stupid digital piece of shit.” he muttered as he corrected the course and speed manually, soaring safely past the rock that could have ended him prematurely. But while doing that, he noticed the Terentz Crystal was running low on Kamancov Radiation. He swore again at the missing AI, deep down regretting he ever dealt with the Horse Head Debt Collectors. But the scans showed the rock he just passed was bathing in a nice dose of around 4000 Roentgens Kamancov Radiation, so why not stop there?
He turned the ship around, totally forgetting to compensate for two and a half theoretical moment that slammed him into the cockpit, pulverizing his bones and innards on impact. ‘Great’, his consciousness thought from the black box inside his former cranium. He waited patiently for the nanobots to reconstruct his body while the Kreutz parked itself safely on the rock. ‘Now you can fly nicely’ Krystobald thought grimly.
After agonizing moments of adjusting to his freshly reorganized body, he glimpsed the fuel meter. He had to radiate the ship for three standard days. ‘Ah, alright, let’s see what this rock has for me’.
Nothing. That was what he saw as he stepped of his Kreutz. Just endless fields of gray dust. Not even the sky with the green-yellow plumes stretched across was anything to hold anyone’s gaze.
Just endless field of gray dust.
He started hopping in the general direction away from his ride, careful not to become the rock’s satellite. He decided he needed the exercise, and hadn’t really tried the tentacle-tail in an open environment. It was weird how it was just floating around, and he was feeling a bit uncomfortable not knowing what to do with it.
“Who in the fuck are you?”
Krystabald turned towards the voice that almost scared him into orbit. It was coming from a hunched, shriveled, white-bearded, white-haired old man, supporting himself on a cane. Krystabald thought about considering why would anyone need a cane in gravity that barely held dust to the ground, but his thoughts and eyes were averted the moment he saw the old man was naked.
“Who the fuck are you?” the old man repeated “And why are you invading my home?”
Krystabald, realizing that the old man posed absolutely no treat, gathered his courage and replied in his most heroic voice:
“I’m Krystabald, hero of Triangulum, knight of Ursa Major, and bane of the Magellanic Clouds.” and then, turning to his polite voice “And whom do I address, oh person of age?”
“Your mother is a person of age!” shouted the old man in reply, snickering at his great joke. “I suggest you tell me what you intend to do to my home and daughter, or address your ass out of here!”. He snickered again.
“I just want to stay for a few days, to refuel my craft. I humbly ask for your permission.” Krystabald said, bowing as deep as the gravity would let him.
“Why do you speak as some asshole? And what do you want with my daughter?”
‘This man is raving mad’, thought Krystabald. “I wasn’t even aware you had a daughter, sir.”
The old man looked at him suspiciously. “Well, now you are.”- and then he turned his back. “Come with me.”
And so they hopped away, one after another, Krystabald trying hard to follow without noticing the various floating bits.
“I have lived here for so long, time seemed to have forgotten me. I simply wanted to keep my daughter away from your galavanting kinds, but no, you have to insist.” then the old man continued in a mocking way “Look at me, I’m an adventurer, I drive a can across space and time, invade homes and ravage people’s daughters...”
Krystabald was sure the man posed no threat. Ok, maybe a threat to his sanity, but not a physical one. In any case, he put his fingers on the hyperlaser gun hidden in the thighs of his suit. “I assure you, kind sir, I have no ill intentions towards your daughter..” And he was interrupted by the sudden stern look coming from the old man who, turning swiftly on his cane, was facing him now, bits still following their gained momentum.
“You are all the same, you come here, all pleasant, polite, but you are no-good-doers, all of you Local Cluster smart-asses, thinking your civilisation is all high and mighty, and think that gives you reason to come around and piss on other people’s property. Now, shut your mouth and let me feed you as the customs of my people ask of me.” He turned around again, and continued hopping towards what seemed like nothing.
“Might I ask who your people are, sir?”
“Oh by the Great Spiral Arm, what part of ‘shut the fuck up’ didn’t you understand?”
Krystabald thought about turning back at this point, and spending the next two-three days enjoying his new tail. But he got curious now, his adventure sense tingling. He wanted to see where this hermit lived, and what kind of lunch had he in mind.
And, after all this talk about a daughter, he was getting curious about that part too.
The old man stopped again. “Hurry up, you dimwit!” he yelled.
Not sure what to do, Krystabald stood besides the man, now close enough to see his wrinkles in greater detail. He was glad that no atmosphere ment no smell.
“Tuck your tail, it will be a fast ride down.” And as the old man said that, the floor fell below them, and Krystabald was flying down, suddenly pulled by an onset of artificial gravity. Needless to say, he slammed on the floor, but this time the suit did it’s work and absorbed most of the blow.
But not the pain. Groaningly, he stood on his feet, watching the old man slipping down along a metal pipe and gently landing on his feet.
“I always forget to mention the pipe. Oh, well, you seem ok. Start walking now, unless you are a light worlder. In that case, crawl through the corridor, and I’ll wait for you in the dining room.”
Krystabald rechecked his integrity and replied “The gravity is a most suiting one, kind sir. I will walk.”
“And stop speaking as an idiot! Stop speaking altogether!” the old man grumbled as he walked towards what must have been the dinning room. Krystabald noticed that he was no longer using his cane.
‘Great, more gray’ he thought as he followed the old man through the gray corridor. He turned around to see if the passage had closed. It had, but it was the same rock the asasteroid was made of. Easy to blast away in case of emergency.
“There, make yourself fucking comfortable, and help yourself with everything you wish. Stay as long as you like and then get the fuck out.”
Krystabald entered the room the old man was showing him, and his eyes weren’t really prepared for the sight before them.
The dining room was lavish even by the standards of the internebular tzars of the Magellanic cluster. The walls were painted with a soft non-blue color that could only be bought by negotiating with the Tau-Ceti Color Corp. And negotiating with the Tau-Ceti takes at least fifteen years on average.
For this particular non-blue, the negotiations could have easily taken half a century. And if that wasn’t enough, the wall was decorated by stripes of gold-encrusted platinum, that glittered merrily inspired by the warm glow of the latest SkySimulator above.
And that was only the walls. The floor was carpeted by the such fine embroidery that caused his eyes to water from the subtle beauty. He couldn’t recognize the craftsmanship, but then, he never really did notice carpets before. This one was simply too beautiful to miss.
He was a connoisseur of tables, though, for many of his adventures ended in marriage, and subsequent furniture shopping. And this was a fine table, although he had seen better. It was fire-treated timber from Beta Draconis, meticulously engraved by the finest AIs to make an unique pattern that was guaranteed to repeat only once in a sextillion tables. Same went for the chairs, and their seats guaranteed to fit any backside imaginable.
And the food… He was trying hard not to choke on his slobbering when his mind finally acknowledged the sheer perversity of the food served before him.
He recognized at least five different game. There were others, stuffed animals that he simply couldn’t recognize, but looked delicious nonetheless. It was all garnished with plethora of sochno vegetables. There was even a vegeduck, an endangered species illegal to hunt on their endemic planets in the Veganis Cluster.
And, it seemed that it was all for him, as there was only one plate on the table. He pulled up a chair and sat at the place, the chair comforting to his backside, even making a hole for his tail. He decided to start with the hipposaurus cotletes, as was the custom in Local Cluster dinning etiquette whenever hipposaurus cotletes were available.
“Mmmm, this is very good, compliments to the chef! Won’t you sit down with me, kind sir?”
Not getting an answer, he turned around and noticed the old man was gone. ‘That’s a bit strange’, he thought, and just shrugged and continued indulging his pallet.
After two hours and thirty four minutes he decided he was done. There was still more vegeduck in his plate, but his health computer listed the risks that further eating would pose to his organism, and although he could always repair his arteries and liver, he decided that a second rebuilding in one day was simply too much. So he just stood up, and went to find a bathroom.
“Kind sir,” he raised his voice as much as he could, but there was simply no room enough for air the way his diaphragm pressed his lungs, being stretched to accommodate the freshly enlarged stomach. “I thank you for the magnificent feast that you bestowed upon me. Now, I’m afraid that I must inquire about your facilities?”
“Ha!” the old man nearly startled the food out of him, suddenly appearing from the side. “You stuffed yourself pretty well, I see. Good, now you may go and defile my one place of quiet contemplation, and then go to your room, and have a nice sleep, and not bother me again.”
“Certainly sir, for I’ve bothered you quite enough already, and...”
“Oh for fuck sake just shut up and use your other hole for a change! It’s the second door to the left.”
It was a pretty standard toilet, which came as a bit of a disappointment to Krystabald. There wasn’t even a reading terminal. He wondered how can a man not get bored on a toilet, being hermit or not.
He finished up, and leaving the toilet, he was about to finish once again, for there was the old man in front of him, yelling again. He was getting pretty tired of his manners now, not to mention the walking around naked and all, but he took a deep breath and recollected himself. The food was extraordinary, and there was a bed waiting for him. Much better than staying in the Kreutz. He loved it, it was his home, but only when it was humming with power and soaring through the galaxies known and unknown… not when it was just a piece of metal on a piece of rock.
And after he had sold the AI, it was even duller. He should have never sold the damn AI.
“Are you going to move, or are you going to ponder your existence some more? It’s getting late, and I need sleep too.”
Krystabald followed the old hermit further down the corridor. He started thinking about how the corridors were really drab. And then, the toilet was also drab, gray, no terminal. So far only the dining room was extraordinary. It is as if the whole place existed only for the dining room.
And then he saw his room.
It was draped, from floor to roof, in the most magnificent carpets he had ever laid his eyes upon. Finer even than the ones in the dining room. He told himself that he should start appreciating that particular art more in the future, although he immediately though about how probably no other carpets would ever come close to owning his heart as much as what he witnessed on this day.
And then there was his bed. Platinum-encrusted frame, with just the right touch of plutonium lining to promise a perfect sleep. And needless to say, the beauty of the bed covers was only matched by the one of the carpets. The walls were the same non-blue, which, considering the effort to get the color, was quite acceptable, and it was soothing enough to bring good dreams. And the SkySimulator was set to a nice, medium-starred night somewhere in the alpha quadrant of Andromeda.
Krystabald laid on the bed, first on his back, and then, remembering he hadn’t really gotten used to his tail, switched back to lying on his stomach. His tail returned to massage his back, as he slowly drifted into the much needed sleep, letting his body settle into the comforting bed.
In his dreams, he was walking in a forest path. Birds chirped around him, insects gently buzzed. There was some brook bumbling far enough to be barely audible but nonetheless soothing. He was walking naked, and his tail was following his steps. He had finally mastered that.
His feet touched something soft, and when he looked below, he noticed the forest floor was carpeted with the magnificent carpets he witnessed before. He really was into carpets now.
And then he heard a song. It was the most beautiful song sang in the most beautiful voice he had ever heard. It was entering him not only through the ears, but through every pore on his body, stirring butterflies in his abdomen that fluttered and carried him forward towards the source.
The beautiful sound was complemented by a sweet smell of apricots and honey and chamomile, mixed together with lavender and touch of lime. It had a texture, it was soft, softer than Perminarian silkwool. Krystabald didn’t know the source, but knew he was in love.
And the sight of her nearly stopped his heart. She was sitting by the river, braiding her hair the color of Orion Nebulae, her skin as milky as the Milky way. She turned towards him, her eyes like pulsars, calling him to her.
“Say you want, me, and I’m yours.” -the sweet melodic voice whispered to his mind “Just say it, you need to say it… and I’m all yours.”
“Yes, yes, yes! I desire you most, my lady!” - he answered in earnest, and joined with her, in what was an experience that could silence even the poets on Tryem 3. Moons collided, their debris formed massive ring systems, which collided again, amalgamated together, then with its parent planet, then expanded further, further, encompassed whole systems.
Then the enormous object collapsed onto its weight, into an object a size of the pea. And for a magnificent moment, it held, freezing the moment before the inevitable big bang.
And there was Krystabald, in his room, trying to catch his breath, the beautiful creature giggling next to him, playfully tracing her fingers over his abdomen.
When, after what seemed an eon, he finally caught his breath, he noticed that the creature he dreamed of was not a dream. It was actually in his bed. He couldn’t help but smile back at her, totally at loss for words.
She just pressed her finger to her lips, telling him to be silent, and kissed him gently, sending tiny shocks that he could feel with every quark in his body.
He thought about how infinitely happy he was, how he could just lay here forever, as long as she was with him. He wanted to give her his body, every single particle of it…
And then he felt something else She was sucking on his tongue, but no longer in an errotic manner. The metaphorical devouring he imagined was turning out quite real.
His mind raced in horror. He couldn’t move, the creature had paralyzed him. His pants, and the gun strapped on them was just in reach of his tail, but he couldn’t move it. His mind was racing, as his tongue was being slowly dissolved and absorbed by the creature. She was a slow eater, enjoying every bite.
He finally managed to will some of his nanobots to move towards his tail, where they cleared the neurotoxin and restored some feeling to the tentacle. He quickly grabbed his pistol and shot the creature multiple times. It disengaged from him, followed by a terrible shriek, and jumped through the door, breaking it, as he was shooting it again.
It took some time for him to regain himself, pushing his bots to the limit. Once he finally could feel his feet tingling, He jumped from the bed, dressed himself quickly, and stormed through the door. He could still hear the shrieking, but the corridor was thankfully clear. He ran as fast as he could, severely impeded by the sheer amount of food his body was trying to process.
“I fucking told you. I fucking told you not to touch my daughter!” - the old men seemed to be shouting from somewhere behind, but Krystabald was to occupied to getting to the end of the tunnel to turn around.
“You haven’t said anything about her being a monster!” - he replied instead
“You fucking cunt, was ‘don’t fuck my daughter’ not a valid request after all the fucking hospitality I extended? Do you know how much of an effort it is for me to keep her from eating humanoids again! But, no, you adventurers never care for that. ” You just come here thinking you can fuck whatever you want. Wel…”
The old man continued ranting, but Krystabald was too busy climbing the pole to listen to him. The panel above was open, courtesy of the shrieking monster that must have fled to the surface. The shrieks had stopped, which meant she didn’t have any subdermal transmitters. He was glad about that at least. If he must face her again, he better do it in silence. He had set his laser pistol on highest setting while running, which insured that he will vaporize her instantly.
The old man, on the other hand, was having such an implant, and even in the cold almost-vacuum, he continued his dronning.
“..you even have the guile to call her a ‘monster’! She is Half-Verutian Mimic, you uneducated buffoon. You don’t even care to learn what the a person’s species is before you stick your dick inside!”
As the old man was explaining his daughters heritage, there she was before him, in her all non-mimicked glory.
“Holy-Mother-Of-Spirals... ” - Krystabald muttered silently as he set his gaze on the 11-tentacled greenish-blue monstrosity floating before him. He was terrified by the asymmetry, but then he noticed that it was caused by him, as the twelfth tentacle was just a stump making purple bubbles around the creature. He stopped his gag reflex, remembering that he would have to navigate through his vomit after if he let it all go out of him.
So he just shot at the monster, while hopping towards his Kreutz. While choking on his vomit, his body trying to process enormous amounts of food that were not yet back in his esophagus, shooting at the damn thing, and having the annoying voice of the hermit in his mind, he somehow managed to still get into his Kreutz, and shut the doors behind him.
“Take us out of here!” - he shouted once inside to the missing AI. Then he said a curse so terrible that would have caused deaths of millions on some polite planets. He set the course manually, and lifted off. The Kreutz was barely quarter fool, but that was a worry for another time. Now, he just reclined on the pilot’s chair, taking a breath.
“You fucking cunt! First you fuck her, now you shoot her! You miserable piece of... ” - and at that time the Kreutz was finally out of range, and Krystabald enjoyed the silence.
It was a wonderful bargain, a treat long overdue after all his space adventures. It was grown from the stem cells of an Ralexian salt worm. The rugged, yet soft material did wonders when he needed his back scratched. Not to mention the wonders it did to his more private parts…
Those pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the blaring of the ship's alarm. “Object in path, advice course correction.”
“Stop the racket and do something about it, you miserable waste bucket!” He screamed at the panels in front of him, but then he remembered he sold the AI to the CyberSlavers on Gibson Alpha.
“Stupid digital piece of shit.” he muttered as he corrected the course and speed manually, soaring safely past the rock that could have ended him prematurely. But while doing that, he noticed the Terentz Crystal was running low on Kamancov Radiation. He swore again at the missing AI, deep down regretting he ever dealt with the Horse Head Debt Collectors. But the scans showed the rock he just passed was bathing in a nice dose of around 4000 Roentgens Kamancov Radiation, so why not stop there?
He turned the ship around, totally forgetting to compensate for two and a half theoretical moment that slammed him into the cockpit, pulverizing his bones and innards on impact. ‘Great’, his consciousness thought from the black box inside his former cranium. He waited patiently for the nanobots to reconstruct his body while the Kreutz parked itself safely on the rock. ‘Now you can fly nicely’ Krystobald thought grimly.
After agonizing moments of adjusting to his freshly reorganized body, he glimpsed the fuel meter. He had to radiate the ship for three standard days. ‘Ah, alright, let’s see what this rock has for me’.
Nothing. That was what he saw as he stepped of his Kreutz. Just endless fields of gray dust. Not even the sky with the green-yellow plumes stretched across was anything to hold anyone’s gaze.
Just endless field of gray dust.
He started hopping in the general direction away from his ride, careful not to become the rock’s satellite. He decided he needed the exercise, and hadn’t really tried the tentacle-tail in an open environment. It was weird how it was just floating around, and he was feeling a bit uncomfortable not knowing what to do with it.
“Who in the fuck are you?”
Krystabald turned towards the voice that almost scared him into orbit. It was coming from a hunched, shriveled, white-bearded, white-haired old man, supporting himself on a cane. Krystabald thought about considering why would anyone need a cane in gravity that barely held dust to the ground, but his thoughts and eyes were averted the moment he saw the old man was naked.
“Who the fuck are you?” the old man repeated “And why are you invading my home?”
Krystabald, realizing that the old man posed absolutely no treat, gathered his courage and replied in his most heroic voice:
“I’m Krystabald, hero of Triangulum, knight of Ursa Major, and bane of the Magellanic Clouds.” and then, turning to his polite voice “And whom do I address, oh person of age?”
“Your mother is a person of age!” shouted the old man in reply, snickering at his great joke. “I suggest you tell me what you intend to do to my home and daughter, or address your ass out of here!”. He snickered again.
“I just want to stay for a few days, to refuel my craft. I humbly ask for your permission.” Krystabald said, bowing as deep as the gravity would let him.
“Why do you speak as some asshole? And what do you want with my daughter?”
‘This man is raving mad’, thought Krystabald. “I wasn’t even aware you had a daughter, sir.”
The old man looked at him suspiciously. “Well, now you are.”- and then he turned his back. “Come with me.”
And so they hopped away, one after another, Krystabald trying hard to follow without noticing the various floating bits.
“I have lived here for so long, time seemed to have forgotten me. I simply wanted to keep my daughter away from your galavanting kinds, but no, you have to insist.” then the old man continued in a mocking way “Look at me, I’m an adventurer, I drive a can across space and time, invade homes and ravage people’s daughters...”
Krystabald was sure the man posed no threat. Ok, maybe a threat to his sanity, but not a physical one. In any case, he put his fingers on the hyperlaser gun hidden in the thighs of his suit. “I assure you, kind sir, I have no ill intentions towards your daughter..” And he was interrupted by the sudden stern look coming from the old man who, turning swiftly on his cane, was facing him now, bits still following their gained momentum.
“You are all the same, you come here, all pleasant, polite, but you are no-good-doers, all of you Local Cluster smart-asses, thinking your civilisation is all high and mighty, and think that gives you reason to come around and piss on other people’s property. Now, shut your mouth and let me feed you as the customs of my people ask of me.” He turned around again, and continued hopping towards what seemed like nothing.
“Might I ask who your people are, sir?”
“Oh by the Great Spiral Arm, what part of ‘shut the fuck up’ didn’t you understand?”
Krystabald thought about turning back at this point, and spending the next two-three days enjoying his new tail. But he got curious now, his adventure sense tingling. He wanted to see where this hermit lived, and what kind of lunch had he in mind.
And, after all this talk about a daughter, he was getting curious about that part too.
The old man stopped again. “Hurry up, you dimwit!” he yelled.
Not sure what to do, Krystabald stood besides the man, now close enough to see his wrinkles in greater detail. He was glad that no atmosphere ment no smell.
“Tuck your tail, it will be a fast ride down.” And as the old man said that, the floor fell below them, and Krystabald was flying down, suddenly pulled by an onset of artificial gravity. Needless to say, he slammed on the floor, but this time the suit did it’s work and absorbed most of the blow.
But not the pain. Groaningly, he stood on his feet, watching the old man slipping down along a metal pipe and gently landing on his feet.
“I always forget to mention the pipe. Oh, well, you seem ok. Start walking now, unless you are a light worlder. In that case, crawl through the corridor, and I’ll wait for you in the dining room.”
Krystabald rechecked his integrity and replied “The gravity is a most suiting one, kind sir. I will walk.”
“And stop speaking as an idiot! Stop speaking altogether!” the old man grumbled as he walked towards what must have been the dinning room. Krystabald noticed that he was no longer using his cane.
‘Great, more gray’ he thought as he followed the old man through the gray corridor. He turned around to see if the passage had closed. It had, but it was the same rock the asasteroid was made of. Easy to blast away in case of emergency.
“There, make yourself fucking comfortable, and help yourself with everything you wish. Stay as long as you like and then get the fuck out.”
Krystabald entered the room the old man was showing him, and his eyes weren’t really prepared for the sight before them.
The dining room was lavish even by the standards of the internebular tzars of the Magellanic cluster. The walls were painted with a soft non-blue color that could only be bought by negotiating with the Tau-Ceti Color Corp. And negotiating with the Tau-Ceti takes at least fifteen years on average.
For this particular non-blue, the negotiations could have easily taken half a century. And if that wasn’t enough, the wall was decorated by stripes of gold-encrusted platinum, that glittered merrily inspired by the warm glow of the latest SkySimulator above.
And that was only the walls. The floor was carpeted by the such fine embroidery that caused his eyes to water from the subtle beauty. He couldn’t recognize the craftsmanship, but then, he never really did notice carpets before. This one was simply too beautiful to miss.
He was a connoisseur of tables, though, for many of his adventures ended in marriage, and subsequent furniture shopping. And this was a fine table, although he had seen better. It was fire-treated timber from Beta Draconis, meticulously engraved by the finest AIs to make an unique pattern that was guaranteed to repeat only once in a sextillion tables. Same went for the chairs, and their seats guaranteed to fit any backside imaginable.
And the food… He was trying hard not to choke on his slobbering when his mind finally acknowledged the sheer perversity of the food served before him.
He recognized at least five different game. There were others, stuffed animals that he simply couldn’t recognize, but looked delicious nonetheless. It was all garnished with plethora of sochno vegetables. There was even a vegeduck, an endangered species illegal to hunt on their endemic planets in the Veganis Cluster.
And, it seemed that it was all for him, as there was only one plate on the table. He pulled up a chair and sat at the place, the chair comforting to his backside, even making a hole for his tail. He decided to start with the hipposaurus cotletes, as was the custom in Local Cluster dinning etiquette whenever hipposaurus cotletes were available.
“Mmmm, this is very good, compliments to the chef! Won’t you sit down with me, kind sir?”
Not getting an answer, he turned around and noticed the old man was gone. ‘That’s a bit strange’, he thought, and just shrugged and continued indulging his pallet.
After two hours and thirty four minutes he decided he was done. There was still more vegeduck in his plate, but his health computer listed the risks that further eating would pose to his organism, and although he could always repair his arteries and liver, he decided that a second rebuilding in one day was simply too much. So he just stood up, and went to find a bathroom.
“Kind sir,” he raised his voice as much as he could, but there was simply no room enough for air the way his diaphragm pressed his lungs, being stretched to accommodate the freshly enlarged stomach. “I thank you for the magnificent feast that you bestowed upon me. Now, I’m afraid that I must inquire about your facilities?”
“Ha!” the old man nearly startled the food out of him, suddenly appearing from the side. “You stuffed yourself pretty well, I see. Good, now you may go and defile my one place of quiet contemplation, and then go to your room, and have a nice sleep, and not bother me again.”
“Certainly sir, for I’ve bothered you quite enough already, and...”
“Oh for fuck sake just shut up and use your other hole for a change! It’s the second door to the left.”
It was a pretty standard toilet, which came as a bit of a disappointment to Krystabald. There wasn’t even a reading terminal. He wondered how can a man not get bored on a toilet, being hermit or not.
He finished up, and leaving the toilet, he was about to finish once again, for there was the old man in front of him, yelling again. He was getting pretty tired of his manners now, not to mention the walking around naked and all, but he took a deep breath and recollected himself. The food was extraordinary, and there was a bed waiting for him. Much better than staying in the Kreutz. He loved it, it was his home, but only when it was humming with power and soaring through the galaxies known and unknown… not when it was just a piece of metal on a piece of rock.
And after he had sold the AI, it was even duller. He should have never sold the damn AI.
“Are you going to move, or are you going to ponder your existence some more? It’s getting late, and I need sleep too.”
Krystabald followed the old hermit further down the corridor. He started thinking about how the corridors were really drab. And then, the toilet was also drab, gray, no terminal. So far only the dining room was extraordinary. It is as if the whole place existed only for the dining room.
And then he saw his room.
It was draped, from floor to roof, in the most magnificent carpets he had ever laid his eyes upon. Finer even than the ones in the dining room. He told himself that he should start appreciating that particular art more in the future, although he immediately though about how probably no other carpets would ever come close to owning his heart as much as what he witnessed on this day.
And then there was his bed. Platinum-encrusted frame, with just the right touch of plutonium lining to promise a perfect sleep. And needless to say, the beauty of the bed covers was only matched by the one of the carpets. The walls were the same non-blue, which, considering the effort to get the color, was quite acceptable, and it was soothing enough to bring good dreams. And the SkySimulator was set to a nice, medium-starred night somewhere in the alpha quadrant of Andromeda.
Krystabald laid on the bed, first on his back, and then, remembering he hadn’t really gotten used to his tail, switched back to lying on his stomach. His tail returned to massage his back, as he slowly drifted into the much needed sleep, letting his body settle into the comforting bed.
In his dreams, he was walking in a forest path. Birds chirped around him, insects gently buzzed. There was some brook bumbling far enough to be barely audible but nonetheless soothing. He was walking naked, and his tail was following his steps. He had finally mastered that.
His feet touched something soft, and when he looked below, he noticed the forest floor was carpeted with the magnificent carpets he witnessed before. He really was into carpets now.
And then he heard a song. It was the most beautiful song sang in the most beautiful voice he had ever heard. It was entering him not only through the ears, but through every pore on his body, stirring butterflies in his abdomen that fluttered and carried him forward towards the source.
The beautiful sound was complemented by a sweet smell of apricots and honey and chamomile, mixed together with lavender and touch of lime. It had a texture, it was soft, softer than Perminarian silkwool. Krystabald didn’t know the source, but knew he was in love.
And the sight of her nearly stopped his heart. She was sitting by the river, braiding her hair the color of Orion Nebulae, her skin as milky as the Milky way. She turned towards him, her eyes like pulsars, calling him to her.
“Say you want, me, and I’m yours.” -the sweet melodic voice whispered to his mind “Just say it, you need to say it… and I’m all yours.”
“Yes, yes, yes! I desire you most, my lady!” - he answered in earnest, and joined with her, in what was an experience that could silence even the poets on Tryem 3. Moons collided, their debris formed massive ring systems, which collided again, amalgamated together, then with its parent planet, then expanded further, further, encompassed whole systems.
Then the enormous object collapsed onto its weight, into an object a size of the pea. And for a magnificent moment, it held, freezing the moment before the inevitable big bang.
And there was Krystabald, in his room, trying to catch his breath, the beautiful creature giggling next to him, playfully tracing her fingers over his abdomen.
When, after what seemed an eon, he finally caught his breath, he noticed that the creature he dreamed of was not a dream. It was actually in his bed. He couldn’t help but smile back at her, totally at loss for words.
She just pressed her finger to her lips, telling him to be silent, and kissed him gently, sending tiny shocks that he could feel with every quark in his body.
He thought about how infinitely happy he was, how he could just lay here forever, as long as she was with him. He wanted to give her his body, every single particle of it…
And then he felt something else She was sucking on his tongue, but no longer in an errotic manner. The metaphorical devouring he imagined was turning out quite real.
His mind raced in horror. He couldn’t move, the creature had paralyzed him. His pants, and the gun strapped on them was just in reach of his tail, but he couldn’t move it. His mind was racing, as his tongue was being slowly dissolved and absorbed by the creature. She was a slow eater, enjoying every bite.
He finally managed to will some of his nanobots to move towards his tail, where they cleared the neurotoxin and restored some feeling to the tentacle. He quickly grabbed his pistol and shot the creature multiple times. It disengaged from him, followed by a terrible shriek, and jumped through the door, breaking it, as he was shooting it again.
It took some time for him to regain himself, pushing his bots to the limit. Once he finally could feel his feet tingling, He jumped from the bed, dressed himself quickly, and stormed through the door. He could still hear the shrieking, but the corridor was thankfully clear. He ran as fast as he could, severely impeded by the sheer amount of food his body was trying to process.
“I fucking told you. I fucking told you not to touch my daughter!” - the old men seemed to be shouting from somewhere behind, but Krystabald was to occupied to getting to the end of the tunnel to turn around.
“You haven’t said anything about her being a monster!” - he replied instead
“You fucking cunt, was ‘don’t fuck my daughter’ not a valid request after all the fucking hospitality I extended? Do you know how much of an effort it is for me to keep her from eating humanoids again! But, no, you adventurers never care for that. ” You just come here thinking you can fuck whatever you want. Wel…”
The old man continued ranting, but Krystabald was too busy climbing the pole to listen to him. The panel above was open, courtesy of the shrieking monster that must have fled to the surface. The shrieks had stopped, which meant she didn’t have any subdermal transmitters. He was glad about that at least. If he must face her again, he better do it in silence. He had set his laser pistol on highest setting while running, which insured that he will vaporize her instantly.
The old man, on the other hand, was having such an implant, and even in the cold almost-vacuum, he continued his dronning.
“..you even have the guile to call her a ‘monster’! She is Half-Verutian Mimic, you uneducated buffoon. You don’t even care to learn what the a person’s species is before you stick your dick inside!”
As the old man was explaining his daughters heritage, there she was before him, in her all non-mimicked glory.
“Holy-Mother-Of-Spirals... ” - Krystabald muttered silently as he set his gaze on the 11-tentacled greenish-blue monstrosity floating before him. He was terrified by the asymmetry, but then he noticed that it was caused by him, as the twelfth tentacle was just a stump making purple bubbles around the creature. He stopped his gag reflex, remembering that he would have to navigate through his vomit after if he let it all go out of him.
So he just shot at the monster, while hopping towards his Kreutz. While choking on his vomit, his body trying to process enormous amounts of food that were not yet back in his esophagus, shooting at the damn thing, and having the annoying voice of the hermit in his mind, he somehow managed to still get into his Kreutz, and shut the doors behind him.
“Take us out of here!” - he shouted once inside to the missing AI. Then he said a curse so terrible that would have caused deaths of millions on some polite planets. He set the course manually, and lifted off. The Kreutz was barely quarter fool, but that was a worry for another time. Now, he just reclined on the pilot’s chair, taking a breath.
“You fucking cunt! First you fuck her, now you shoot her! You miserable piece of... ” - and at that time the Kreutz was finally out of range, and Krystabald enjoyed the silence.
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