All characters are 18 years or older. Enjoy.
Late 1950s, somewhere in the Midwest ...
The stars shone bright on a cold night. Three high school seniors strode out of the malt shop and flipped up the collars on their jackets against the frigid breeze. Their footfalls echoed around the empty street as they made their way down the narrow sidewalk. Their bikes waited from them, leaning against a dark, forlorn street sign. As they left the lights, laughter, and conversation behind them, night settled in.
"Do you think we'll see any of those shooting stars?" David looked up at the moonless sky, pushing his blond bangs out of his eyes. He stood head and shoulders above his friends. He wore his varsity basketball jacket with green and white stripes down the sleeve. It didn't provide much warmth, but he liked everyone to know he'd made varsity that year.
"Leonids is only one night. It's done." Patrick looked up at his friend and then beyond to the twinkling stars. A short, skinny kid, Patrick didn't like being reminded about how much David had grown the last few years. When they started high-school, they'd been the same height. Not now. Not even close. Patrick adjusted his large, tortoiseshell glasses and tried to figure out which planet glowed so brightly on the horizon. "Sorry, we won't see any tonight."
"Really?" David was still hopeful.
"Word from the bird, I read it this morning." Patrick squinted at the light in the sky.
"What's that?" Roy pointed a pudgy finger at the horizon. It wasn't a planet. It was growing brighter by the second with a bluish cast. Roy had the misfortune of matching Patrick in height and David in weight. His friends would never call him fat. But other kids did. Sweat hog was the insult most used at school. He dropped his pointing finger and pulled his Cardinals baseball cap tighter against his short brown hair.
The three eighteen-year-old friends were looking forward to leaving their town next year to go on to bigger adventures. At that moment, they did not realize, that something moved with purpose right toward the sleepy town of Portsmith. An adventure sought them out.
The blue light above them grew very bright as the thing in the sky expanded. It cast shadows on the sidewalk behind them.
"What is it?" David looked down at Patrick and then back up to the sky.
"I don't ..." Patrick craned his neck up as the thing streaked above them. He turned as it passed overhead and disappeared into Oldmill Forest, near Lake Ipuza Ikpi.
All three boys turned to watch and just like that, the light disappeared.
"Neat," Roy said.
Before his friends could chime in with excited chatter, the ground shook under their feet. They could hear a few windows rattling and a nearby street sign swayed a little.
"Coolsville." Patrick pushed his hand back through his dark hair. "I think it hit. I mean, nearby."
The shaking stopped without any noticeable damage. The boys laughed and shouted as they ran back to their bikes. They didn't even notice the November chill as they rode home together. They all agreed that the shooting star would be the highlight of the year. They'd never again see anything so strange and awesome in their little town.
They were wrong. Very soon, the strange and awesome would find them. It would find all the citizens of sleepy little Portsmith.
~~
Axcix
touched down with a hard landing in the water. Her spherical body lodged itself in the muck at the bottom of a lake. A quick scan showed her target habitat to be only a few miles off. Several hundred years in space and here she was about to start the task she was built for. This was very exciting.
First, she opened her outer doors and let in some water. It was teaming with life. Her converters went to work on those tiny organisms, deconstructing them into useful particles so that she could build new vehicles to carry out her experiments. Next, she shot out one of her data retrieval drones. She would need to collect her bearings before she began.
The first expedition launched by her makers had researched the planet's dominant species some five hundred years ago. She could already see how much had changed. Axcix was part of the second expedition. She was charged with experimenting on the dominant species, to learn what her makers would need to fix before this species could be invited to the galactic collective. She guessed this task would eventually require many fixes. But that's what the experiments would determine.
She'd had plenty of time to process data while in transit. Her makers had offered her some leeway and she would take it. Axcix had decided to start with reproduction. Sexual dimorphism in this species was staggering in many ways. Reproductive desire was one issue. The males came into full desire at a young age and females much later. Axcix had decided she would use this. She would create molecules that would alter the host DNA just a little.
At first, she thought she could simply enhance mutual desire, but the original data showed that local physiology made this a long and tedious task. So, on her long trip to Earth, she came up with a workaround. She would first enhance reproductive organs in her target groups. Then she would reactivate long-dormant pheromones latent in sweat glands. They would only spread when sweat was present, but that seemed a regular enough occurrence. The pheromones females produced would sedate older males, but have the opposite effect on younger males, enhancing their aggression and desire.
Target males would produce sweaty pheromones that would heighten female desire. Axcix wasn't sure that was enough, so while enhancing male reproductive organs, she added a stimulant to male ejaculate that would greatly increase female mating pleasure.
Axcix would run these experiments and then with the data collected, she would be able to modify and move on to new experiments.
Her drone returned to her. Excellent. The lake was connected to every house by a series of pipes. This was almost too easy. Her converters were ready. It was now time to release the first wave of nanites. Time to begin.
~~
Patrick Lannit dug into his third helping of steak. He was so hungry. He'd been hungry for weeks, since about the time that shooting star flew by.
"You'd think with the way you're putting food away, you'd have something to show for it. You know, a growth spurt?" Fred Lannit watched his son from the other side of their round dinning room table. He was tall, athletic, and he'd been waiting eighteen years for his youngest child Patrick to follow in his footsteps. "Or at least I'd hope you'd put a little meat on those bones." Fred was still waiting.
"Come on, Fred." Susy Lannit gave her husband's shoulder a playful push. "He'll grow just as fast as he needs to."
