Across the Threshold
Before long, Sir Come fell ill. Gasping and on the verge of death, he was surrounded by his wife and children who were weeping. Sir Plow, who went to call on him, said to his family, "Shush! Go away! Do not disturb transformation!" Then, leaning against the door, he spoke to Sir Come, "Great is the Transforming Creator! What next will he make of you? Where will he send you? Will he turn you into a rat's liver? Will he turn you into a bug's leg?" - Chuang Tzu, as translated by Victor Mair.
1…
"Penis here, only ten swoosh! Lognads, trantons, spinzdul for twenty-five swoosh! Pheromones and hormones of all types! Estrogen! Androstenol! Gonadotropin! Xletine! Fresh and ready to implant!"
The Gestonian flesh vendors hawked their wares in an archaic Terran manner, though Alex intuited this was the localization work of her translation node rather than the sincere diction and cadence of the local merchants. And while not completely sure, she suspected the Gestonian shopkeepers were marketing to her as they named particular body parts.
A newcomer to the planet, she learned through the Archangel's shipboard Tourism and Diplomacy archive how to differentiate between the native population and the other Type-1 Lifeforms living on Gestonia. It was nearly impossible by sight alone.
With their bioengineering skills unmatched across the Unified Galaxy and their bioethics nonexistent, each individual Gestonian varied wildly in appearance. Appendages, limbs, sex organs, and digits went in and out of fashion, and bodily secretions would be en vogue for one season and considered entirely passé in the next. Gestonians could graft an anemone onto a pseudo-pig or introduce a colony of Xlotian micro-sapients into the gut fauna of a Tumborian terror shrike. It was possible, though not yet commonplace, for more Faustian vendors to offer brain transplants into a sold (and occasionally stolen) body of a different species; wealthier patrons who favored these fullchanges could even manufacture their own novel biobuilds for brain and nervous system insertion.
But there is one telltale sign of a Gestonian: only in extremely rare cases did they deign to touch their vocalization organ. A bulbous, salientian protrusion traditionally situated on an appropriately private section of bodyspace, the orange-tinged, translucent sac was necessary for their breezy speech. Hardly anyone else could form the sounds required for the Gestonian language, save perhaps a scattered dozen of similarly evolved Type-1 species who rarely left their homeworlds. And so the Gestonian Planetary Guide included a pithy bit of advice: If it talks like a Gestonian but walks like a L!Zan or a Tumbor or a Terran... it's a Gestonian.
Though the sights and sounds of the flesh bazaar jarred her at first, Alex expected the butcherous welcome from her briefings. Further expected was the lack of smells. Gestonians considered pungency to be taboo save for ritual circumstances and released odor-neutralizing chemicals into the ventilation systems of their cities in alarmingly high quantities. It's like that's how they distance themselves from the grotesqueness of it all, Alex half-seriously observed, makes sense to me. She exited Market Module #7 of Spaceport City Doowoosh on route to her lodgings in Short Stay/Hospitality Module #1, setting a reminder in her notation node to return later for a more sophisticated amateur anthropology session.
2…
Doowoosh was a primitive modular spaceport, one of the cheapest ready-made options available to Contacted Type-1 Peoples. Further lending to the dinginess and unkempt nature of Doowoosh was the locals' complete disdain for mechanical engineering. Instead, Gestonia relied on foreign contractors to repair and refit their galactic government-leased doorway to the stars.
The Contact Corps tasked Alex with doing exactly this. Transport shuttle Archangel currently sat in low orbit around Gestonia and was scheduled to depart again in sixty Standard Orbits. Before this time was up, Alex and her team were supposed to have fixed a series of farcasting frequency arrays. Without the casters operational, communication to distant planets outside the local cluster was severely hampered.
The tight deadline clawed its way through alien distractions and to the forefront of Alex's mind as she trudged down one final corridor and entered an ovular portal into Short Stay/Hospitality Module #1. The neuropulses emanating from her navigation node indicated the Two-Leg Lodge was now a mere 50 meters away. SS/H1 was the single hospitality module on Doowoosh, and many wanderers, diplomats, and contractors found it lacking. Alex, on the other hand, expected far worse and was pleasantly surprised. An unspoken benefit of cynicism, she smiled wryly.
SS/H1 was a Size 4 Block, the dimensions of which were standardized across pre-fab spaceports: 507 Terran meters in length and 153 in width. The height of the ceiling was 52 meters, though none of the lodging buildings were higher than 35 meters. The center of SS/H1 featured a well-tended, rectangular garden filled with dully-colored native flora and a smattering of Type-1 tourists enjoying the 'outdoors' before retiring to their rooms. Alex saw that the sollights on the ceiling appeared about halfway finished with their dimming procedure. SS/H1 would be pitch-black in another Gestonian Cycle.
Each lodging was uniformly recessed several meters from the two avenues that flanked the inner courtyard. Tiny clouds lingering outside the taxonomized hotels displayed illuminated Unified Script signage within their gaseous forms—as far as Alex could tell, this was the sole way to differentiate the buildings due to their universally flat and featureless facades. Alex tepidly approached the Two-Leg Lodge and stepped through the doorless opening into the lobby of the allegedly humanoid-friendly establishment.
A diminutive Zrxva, a stump of flesh with three arms and two legs, stood in front of a similarly stunted terminal and waved mechanically to Alex: "Swooooooloosh chiiiiiii sssssssshhhu."
A fullchanger in the flesh, Alex (correctly) surmised. The translation node's slight delay ended, and a mental voiceover overtook the Gestonian speech: "Welcome, crosser of the Threshold. The Great Transforming Creator has brought you to our World in Flux. May this transitory period guide you to contentment."
"Thank you." Alex’s translation node reverted to a more literal localization setting befitting sensitive one-on-one conversations. "I would like to go to my room now."
Gestonian tolerance for cultural differences was unnaturally high, and Alex was too tired to follow up on the receptionist's otherworldly formality. Furthermore, she was unsure precisely what the ersatz Zrxva was hearing through its own implant, but figured a simple request should pierce any linguistic barrier.
The Gestonian/Zrxva swiveled the terminal's touchscreen toward Alex and explained the sign-in process. The Contact Corps covered the price of the room, and a porter would deliver three nutrition packs to her suite each morning. While still on Archangel, the thought of consuming those horrendous bars of slop disgusted Alex. But from what I saw in that cafeteria module, slop doesn't sound so bad.
Alex tapped her finger on the screen to finalize the transaction, and the receptionist spun the terminal back to its original position. "I wish you a pleasant time in the Domain of the Dreamer."
I assume that's a euphemism for sleep, Alex thought.
She took the lift up to her quarters and surveyed their spartan furnishings. While the hotel was designed to suit Type-1s with a bipedal anatomy, pleasing everyone is never easy. The bed was a splayed blob on the floor that the concierge promised was biologically programmed to form itself into a perfectly safe cocoon. She winced internally at biologically and externally at cocoon, but ultimately refused to waver in her commitment to cosmopolitanism.
There was a Terranlike chair that Alex hoped was inorganic, two small cubbies at waist-level in the far wall of the room, and an adjustable terminal that could be manipulated into various forms. Adjoining the sleeping space was the Excretion and Grooming chamber. The E&G, fortunately, was Terran compatible. She stripped off her clothes and entered the E&G for both its purposes, finally ready to process the events of her first offworld experience.
As the steam faded from the vapor shower and the lasers in the G device disintegrated any remaining specks of dirt and grime, Alex's mental fortitude began to strain under the unease of pent-up anxiety. She stimulated her pacification node, and the rabble of busy thoughts congealed into a concentrated stream of tasks and worries.
After plotting tomorrow's schedule in her mind and making contact with the other two members of her team, she gingerly descended into the surface of the colorless, opaque bed of slime and was enveloped in its angelically soft goop.
It was the best sleep of her life.
3…
As a child, Communication Technician Alex Aralica yearned for nothing more than a life of quiet contemplation. Born on Šafran, a wealthy and unquestionably beautiful service-based planet orbiting an inner-Galaxy star, she found school boring, sports unfulfilling, and socializing annoying.
Alex's Assigned Parents from the Tutelary Institute of Šafran were a trio of lawyers specializing in interplanetary estate planning. They were rarely home, allowing her a great degree of freedom in her youth. She used this time to laze around, but in a manner much more akin to a hermitic sage than a bohemian rich girl. So, while Alex disdained her formal education, she voraciously consumed the cultural output of the Unified Galaxy in her own time.
Her inward nature translated to adolescent self-awareness, and she supposed her obsession with dissecting the media of faraway cultures was a coping mechanism to attract positive attention from her always-traveling parents. One or two of them would go off on some fact-finding mission to Xlotia or Terra or wherever and come back to hear Alex barrage them with questions. Eventually, the questions became so incisive that her APs were rarely equipped to give her a satisfying answer.
And so, when faced with the reality of becoming a productive member of society after university, the choice was simple. She enlisted as an engineer in the Contact Corps, and no one was surprised.
4…
"Well, the Gestonian's definitely cheaped us on the bots." Fedor grumbled as he inspected the equipment unceremoniously dumped at the worksite. "But I'd still rather use them over those metal-eating ants they wanted to give us." While Alex was slightly less suspicious of biotech after her night in Two-Leg, she nodded at the junior engineer.
"Yeah, I'm with you. And honestly, I don't even recognize these models. We'll have to run their serial numbers through the archive really quick." Alex plucked the scanner off her utility belt and put it to work.
"I can't believe it," she exclaimed after the reading. "These are 2337s. I knew we'd get something substandard, but these are damn antiques. They're probably from the initial Benefaction." Fedor cocked his head toward Alex in disbelief. "No way. You're shitting me."
Suddenly, Alex heard Gestonian speech wafting from behind her crew. "The Construction Ants are more than appropriate for this task of transformation. We can have them ready as soon as possible." Speaking to Alex was a Gestonian modified for utilitarian functions: the look of the working people.
"Thanks, but we'll pass," whispered Arslan. He was a rather uppity youth apprenticed to Fedor, and Alex shot him a silencing glance.
"We appreciate the offer. But we're much more comfortable working with the bots," Alex said. "Are you Engineer Bosoon?"
"That's correct," the Gestonian replied. "Don't worry, I won't be too invasive. As crossers of the Threshold, your safety is paramount. The last crew to come through here was as obstinate as you are and refused our ways. Well, until we had to graft one of them a new arm when one of those bots sliced it clean off."
Alex wasn't sure how to read Gestonian humor yet, but the inflection from the translation's node voiceover hinted to her that this was a joke. "I know we're in capable hands," she said. "Should we start the preliminary safety training now? I'm ready if you are." Alex studied Bosoon closely as she met the engineer's gaze.
A squat body, four limbs clearly built for climbing, a prehensile tail, and manipulable digits. Across the engineer's chest was a utility vest holding dozens of biotech tools: a hammerlike animal with a primeval drive to bang its hardened exterior on anything and everything; a serpentlike being that could manipulate itself into small crevices for wiring and piping purposes; a bioluminescent flashlight of questionably useful brightness.
Alex thought the Gestonian was cute (though she knew not to say as much). She was instead sure to give the safety instructor the proper respect while the local explained the job site's risks and regulations.
Bosoon spoke differently than the other Gestonians Alex had met so far. She thought her translation node was unfairly painting the foreman as a casual character, so she manually switched it to a more formal setting. She was surprised to find this changed little. Our overseer is a joker after all.
Bosoon finished the lecture with a quip about giving Arslan an additional hand to speed up the work. Alex addressed her team. "Any questions?"
"I got nothing, boss," Fedor said.
Fedor was more experienced than Alex (though he lacked the formal education required for a managerial position in the Corps), and Alex could tell he was merely half-listening. But she trusted him and knew he would keep Arslan under control.
Without the AI assistance of later bot models, working with the 2337s was a slog of manual inputs and frequent work interruptions to appropriately retask them. The mission for today was diagnostic, and the difficulty lay in getting the bots to survey previous work done by other contract teams; they were myopically designed to work on a caster array fresh from the factory. The safety technician watched inquisitively from the sidelines, occasionally giving Alex or Fedor a word or two of advice regarding quirks in the archaic hardware. Arslan was relegated to an observational role for now, much to his chagrin.
As the sollights dimmed and the first shift of the project came to a close, Alex couldn't wait to get back into her 'bed.' There was something risqué about the sleeping arrangement, as if sleeping in a biological organism was the same as sleeping with it. Banishing the thought, she determined she sure as hell wasn't going to ask if the bed was sentient.
But the Transforming Creator made other plans for Alex.
When Bosoon invited the team to a party in Entertainment Module #2, she was the lone Terran too curious to say no.
5…
INDULGENCE
Written in Universal Script on one of those mysterious clouds, Club Indulgence lived up to its name. Bosoon looked as out of place as Alex in the party scene of Doowoosh: while the two new friends were built for business, the denizens of Indulgence were unquestionably built for pleasure. The bodies around them stood covered in sense organs, their skin rippling with sensitive nerve endings and shining with perspiration. The DJ was playing a Xlotian dirge (a deep cut, in fact, that Alex was proud to recognize), and the bone-bouncing bass of the funeral song shook the entire establishment.
Alex and Bosoon sat comfortably in their chairs, which, similar to her bed, were malleable organisms that adjusted their forms to suit the user. The alien foreman was in the middle of giving a review of the joint, and Alex listened intently. "The hormones here are top-notch, and I heard from the previous crew that they have great human neurotransmitters. As for the drinks and the drugs—well, I'm not a fan."
Alex was no saint, but she tended to stay on the sober side. She was quickly learning that Bosoon was a bit of a fiend and decided she would adopt a when in Rome attitude for the night. The Gestonian Safety Engineer drank a local intoxicant brewed from the discharge of a native reptiloid, and Alex sipped a liquor that tasted like jet fuel. Bosoon touted the other substances available at Indulgence, and as the alcohol seeped into Alex's brain, an intraventricular serotonin injection started to sound more and more attractive.
She asked about it.
"It's totally safe!" Bosoon assured her. "You can trust me. I mean, I am the best Safety Engineer you know."
"This isn't a construction site we're talking about," Alex said. "And you said they're going to shoot that shit right into my brain. I guess I'm a little hesitant."
"I oversaw a Great Brain reconstruction in Planning Module #3 seven Cycles ago," Bosoon countered. "I'm one of the first ones contacted whenever there's a neurological engineering problem in Doowoosh."
Alex giggled. Only here could a repair job and a brain surgery be the same thing. She took a swig of her drink. "All right. Here's a safety question for you then. What's the worst that could happen to me?"
"Death. But that would be from an extreme misdosage, same as with that swill you're drinking. Correctly dosed, the worst I can imagine is you wake up late for work tomorrow. And you could always take a nasty fall, I suppose."
"Okay, okay. But I'm the one drinking this. It's not like I'm letting the bartender pour this booze down my throat.”
"Would you like that? I've heard some other Type-1s prefer it that way.”
The Gestonian was either a master of dry humor or slightly lost in translation. Alex put on the appearance of difficultness despite already having made up her mind; any licensed Gestonian chem dispenser would be an undisputed professional, and the whole reason she went to the club in the first place was to try some local living.
Alex caved. "All right. Lay it on me." She flagged down the chem dispenser at the other end of the bar, and quicker than it takes to make a cocktail, the dispenser filled a syringe with serotonin and was ready to administer the shot.
Serotonin injected intraventricularly would usually just kill someone, but the Gestonians had their ways. Furthermore, the neurotransmitter is not simply a happiness chemical; serotonin controls a multitude of bodily functions. And as Alex would soon discover, when injected into those fluid-filled cavities abutting the spinal cord, the chemical acts as a stupefying party drug.
She felt it immediately.
There was a flash in her nervous system. Alex felt her limbs relaxing, her coordination faltering. Seconds later, the pleasure overwhelmed her. Brain buzzing with simulation, the feeling of pure joy concentrated itself on the top of her skull, as if it were an antenna receiving positive vibe transmissions from everyone around her.
"Holy fuck.”
Bosoon perked up. "I knew you would like it. Now, are you ready to dance?"
6…
It was pure ecstasy. The dance floor was an orgy of bodies, and Alex gleefully joined in. The injection and music combined created an irresistible desire to dance. Her limbs and hips swayed rhythmically. Each downbeat forced a bob of her head and a tap of her feet.
Flying party creatures cloaked in vivid paradisal scales fluttered through the metallic air of Indulgence. When the club lights pulsed, the tiny beasts reflected a kaleidoscope of color on the debaucherous throng below.
Bosoon danced beside her, the alien's body contorting into seemingly impossible configurations. As the party reached its zenith, the dancefloor devolved into a near riot: drinks in the air, fights breaking out, couples and throuples mashing their bodies together in hundreds of different ways. Though she stayed out of it, Alex learned more about the diversity of sexual anatomy than she previously cared to know.
After a hazy period of time, the sollights illuminated the floor. In her stupor, Alex had forgotten about work the next day. She was tired, sweaty, and in no mental state to do anything but sleep.
She looked around for Bosoon. Her guide was sitting at the bar, ordering something from the chem dispenser.
"Goddammit," she mumbled under her breath. How can a safety engineer expect a good day of work after a night like that?
The Gestonian was unconcerned.
"You need some adrenaline," Bosoon suggested. "I had Dootoo over here fix me up with the Gestonian analog. It will keep you going all day. Make sure not to overdo it though; I wouldn't go out again tonight."
Alex decided one more injection couldn't hurt. She turned to Dootoo. "Hit me."
7…
Testosterone makes you want to fuck constantly. It was Alex’s fifteenth Cycle on Gestonia, and she continued to experiment with help from the chem dispensers of Entertainment Module #2. Progesterone makes you want to get violently railed. The various melanocortins could do anything from working up an appetite to fixing erectile dysfunction. In case I ever want to sample the local fare and try on a dick at the same time.
The work on the caster arrays continued apace, but with Alex's increasingly deteriorating adrenaline-habit work performance, she couldn't take any of the credit. The apprentice, Arslan, had instead more than proved his worth, and Alex was ready to write him a commendation when they returned home. Though the two men on her team were yet to suspect that anything was seriously wrong with their leader, they certainly noticed her bleary eyes and sluggishness in the field.
It was a routine day at the worksite, but while physically present, Alex's mind wandered. She suspected her nodal implants were on the fritz due to the massive amount of injections she was taking nightly and resolved to no longer activate her pacification node. She was coming to enjoy the chaos of her natural thought patterns.
Hoka is doing a set at Club Trex in the early slot, and I can probably make it to Bar Ze afterward for the body smashing. Or I could skip Hoka's set and hit up Club ISO for their offworlder night—but God do I hate those Timborian assholes who crowd the floor. Bosoon is going to that illegal sesh in Storage Module #2; I wonder how late that goes...
"Alex!" Fedor shouted, disintegrating her daydream. She looked up.
A bot was gunning right toward her.
8…
Alex awoke to a bizarre sight.
Attached to various parts of her body were leech-like creatures, pulsating as if feeding. She was lying atop a goop bed, but this one was concave and much more rigid than the one in her hotel. Massaging her head was a thin, fleshy covering.
She was in a hospital of some kind; there was no doubt about that. The small room had the look of sterility, and a Gestonian orderly was lording over her while jotting down notes on a handheld terminal tablet. Present to the Gestonian's left was Arslan; standing with apprehension in the doorway was Fedor.
"She's awake," the Gestonian announced.
Alex tried to speak but could only mumble incoherently.
"Take it easy, boss," Fedor said.
"Yeah, you took a nasty pounding from one of those bots. You lost a lot of blood. Apparently, those things suckered to your body are replenishing it for you," Arslan added.
Glad I'm not being leeched. Alex was surprised she could joke to herself at a time like this. But then again, it truly did buoy her spirits to know she wasn’t destined to become a dry husk. She nodded off again, dreaming of dancing.
When Alex returned to the land of the living a few Cycles later, the project was a day behind. With some sweat, tears, and hopefully no more blood, the work could still be finished on time. Her hospital stay gave her a much-needed break, but her lust for excitement was far from satisfied.
In fact, Alex was ready for a real bender.
9…
"Fuck me up, Dootoo." Alex was already fucked up, but she was spiraling down an abyss with no end, and her newfound friends were not exactly the intervening type. Earlier in the night, she had taken a cocktail of hormones and endorphins from a species she couldn't even name. The combination set her off like a hummingbird smacked on a speedball.
The chem dispenser readied the syringe for a fourth injection as Alex tapped her fingers together impatiently. "Want another surprise?" Dootoo inquired.
"Do you even have to ask?" Alex sighed. She couldn't pronounce the good stuff, anyway.
"You should consider some sensory grafts," Dootoo said. "Or perhaps extra glands. This would please the Great Transforming Creator."
"I'm starting to love that guy.”
Alex headed toward the dancefloor and its illustrious flying disco balls.
After getting down to enough tracks to feel thirsty, Alex recused herself from the party and half-danced, half-walked to the water station. As one of the many quenching options available to the ever-altering Gestonians, the water cooler lay nestled between several other containers filled with various life-giving fluids.
As expected at any nightclub in the galaxy, you may be approached by a nefarious dealer of some sort. It was no different on Gestonia.
Creeping in from the shadows, a dangerously fashionable Gestonian solicited Alex, feline tail twitching with every word: "Any interest in a Falian scale? Makes the bass feel like it’s tingling your soul. I can call up a sculptor and get one on you before the next set even starts. Expedited; no waitlist required. Or perhaps something Terran? I have an augmented spine available, some extra nipples, a kidney, or two…"
Alex rebuffed the sketchy character, but the black market organ salesman refused to stop the pitch. "How about an Osspian fang?" the dealer meowed. "There's taste buds inside of it. You haven't eaten for real without one of these, believe me."
Alex just wanted to dance. She was curious, of course, but getting a new fang or scale installed wasn't on the itinerary for tonight. Until Bosoon showed up and tapped her on the shoulder.
"I see you have met Drookoo," Bosoon noted. "You should try out one of those Falian scales. I got one on my back weeks ago. You won’t notice the effects unless you’re around music."
"All right. I'll take the goddamn scale."
"Perfect," Drookoo hissed. "Follow me."
As promised, Alex was back before the next set. And when the DJ began with a classic Terran club hit, shivers of tingling pleasure ran down her back, culminating at the scale stitched to the base of her spine. She may have thought, This is what I've been missing. If only her brain hadn't been turned into hedonistic slush.
The Transforming Creator grinned.
10…
A new body, a new form.
Alex could feel the mechanical breeze of Doowoosh winding through the Muroidean flowers planted on her back and the buzz of passersby stimulating her nascent electro-sensory system.
She slinked through the spaceport. Her destination was a Bacchānal in EM3, unnamed, unposted, and unmarked; technically illegal. But it was more of a gray zone, and the authorities capable of taking it down were longtime visitors.
Alex had fucked a few of them.
Perhaps such a crude word is too undignified for her sexual entanglements in alien orgies. One might say she knew them. Biblically.
Because these were beings of higher taste, and the sex was on a sacred level. Delighting in the stimulations of those travelers beyond the stars, the pilgrims who ventured across the Threshold: this was the ultimate religious intoxicant. Such things pleased the Great Transforming Creator.
After several sessions of foreplay, Alex was prepared for the finale of her life. Blessed laypersons placed her in the center of the crowd and doused her in ritual oils and perfumes. Clergy chanted a low hum in the Gestonian tongue.
As the hymn came to a groaning climax, she took a deep gouging from the High Patron of Doowoosh as the alien priestess repeatedly clasped at a voluptuous, fleshy protuberance spliced into Alex’s mouth. The designer organ tingled with titillation. A second Gestonian pollinated the flowers on her back as a third sprayed a fine mist of pheromones into the air.
She was in a ritual trance brought about by ingesting enough psychedelics to kill an unmodified human, and she cared little for the physical aspects of the occasion. The real fuckfest was in her mind. A colony of microscopic worms, matured in a culture grafted onto her scalp, burrowed into her skull. The tiny teasers enhanced the already reality-shattering trip and manually stroked the pleasure centers of the brain.
Then they began to pull her apart.
Her synapses cascaded into a myriad of frames from thousands of different worlds: her last kiss, the genocide of the Primevals, the explosions of the suns of Gorgia. The birth of a rat king in a Brooklyn tenement. Gestonian Contact, Xlotian collapse. Mushroom spores. A gate. Decay. The cacti of the radioactive Senora in bloom. Factory slaughter of protein pups. Colors of God’s covenant. Ultraviolet. Blackness.
White. Light. The body shed itself, her nervous system untangled from its shackles and stretched like a crystalline spiderweb throughout the chamber. She inhabited the Threshold now: the space betwixt.
She was everything.
Illustration by Rocoto.