Capítulo 16: Chapter 16
**WARNING**Mature content inside**Suggestive topic, nudity**
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The entire food block had several compartments. There was the largest dining room, where all the workers gathered for meals, there was a main kitchen, where there were culinary devices, and fresh dishes were prepared, if someone preferred them, and also, across the corridor from the dining room, there was a small kitchen. The true purpose of this room was not exactly known to Chris, but he suspected that Erzketau was considered the main boss here when he sought rest at the Hinchinbrook base, so as not to engage the main kitchen for his personal purposes.
Chris stood on the threshold of the kitchen, scowling at the alien, all edgy, ready to jump out the door at any moment. He was dressed in a tee with a deep V-neck and low cropped shorts that fit his strong thighs very appetizingly. The small kitchen contained a nook with worktops, a spacious two-door refrigerator, and a table for eight people, so, standing where he was now, Chris was about four meters away from Tau, dressed all homey in sweatpants and barefoot.
"I need to go to town."
"So late? Why?" Tau was surprised, frozen in a half-turn with a spatula in his hands; in front of him on the countertop in a slow cooker sizzled vegetables in a sauce and fragrant steam, rising to the hood, tickled his nostrils with garlic and thyme. "Although, it doesn't matter, no, of course, you can't," cut off the zirka and returned to stirring.
"I need to... very much...," Chris tried again, but stopped when Tau turned a second time, piercing him with a black squint, and shot his eyes at the front door. "I-I need to relieve the tension. I'll take a car; it won't take long and..."
"Can you hear yourself?" Tau asked insinuatingly, just in case, turning off the stove. He himself would have eaten it raw, subjecting the products to heat treatment for the sole reason that he did not notice Chris gnawing in its original form on anything except cucumbers. "In your condition? Into the night? This is not negotiable! Mei, block all exits!"
In response to his command, the gear on the manager's hand vibrated and emitted a barely audible melodic tone, indicating that the task was accepted for execution.
"You...," Chris choked with such unheard-of impudence, walking a couple of steps forward, grabbed the back of the chair closest to him with all his might, restraining the approaching anger, "don't you think this is a little too much!?"
"Don't you think that you're a little in the wrong position to make such decisions, at the risk of sending all the research down the drain!?" Tau, boiling, tossed the spatula into the sink and approached the table from his side. "Switch back on your center of rationality. Do you not understand what you are going to risk? What is happening to you is a very valuable piece of research; it is a whole cluster of new and much anticipated information and opportunities!" Taking a deep breath to calm down, he continued more quietly. "You are our most valuable specimen at the moment. I cannot allow you, or rather; you cannot afford yourself to throw unknown variables into this complex equation. Where is your scientific responsibility?" He tilted his head slightly to one side and smiled.
Chris chuckled, took a more relaxed stance and, crossing his arms across his chest, answered defiantly, "Well, then I have no choice but to jump and rape my transplantology professor and announce the launch of phase 3 – sub-phase 3!"
"Do you even realize what you are talking about?" Tau whispered dumbfounded; all smiles gone.
"I'm trying to explain that I'm not in a state to realize anything," Chris lowered his eyes and mumbled quietly, "I can't cope, that's it, I'm tired, I just want to… just… at least with someone." He raised up his head again, uncoupled his hands and, raising his voice, dumped out all his frustration that was building up the whole day, "I'm so done, if this cramp will crush on me just once, I'll simply combust… will split myself open, rip that thing out and throw it into the sea! Why can't I solve this problem? Even those fucking polyps have been mating all night." He ran back to the door, jabbing fiercely, not exactly in the direction of the ocean, but certainly implying, "and I can't!?"
Tau stood in a daze, not blinking, looking wide-eyed and not believing his ears. At first, he got scared for Chris and his mental health, starting to sort out in his memory which sedatives are available at the center, and where they are stored. But then the conversation turned into a completely unexpected direction and he, unable to contain himself, burst out laughing.
"Chris, don't worry, everything will pass one way or another, and you can solve everything with one injection. But you're not going anywhere." He walked around the table and sat down on the chair facing Chris. "Besides, it will not bring you any relief. The thing that's provoking changes inside you will not calm down simply by 'mating with anyone'. Its goal is to consume DNA and start dividing. Or die, which is exactly what will happen in about three days."
"Three days," Chris repeated, helplessly falling back against the wall where he stood. "Then I choose my blue pill, because just one more day like this, and your valuable specimen will simply become unusable."
Tau did not move, continuing to look at Chris, contemplating several options, not forgetting to fight his own dark desires.
Let him go have some fun? Right, not on his, Tau's, shift! He's got enough seeing Chris walking here, emanating bedroom pheromones, moans behind the wall that Tau'd rather pour wax in his ears. Damn, he'd have to inject him in the morning, then let him master the sensations in a safe environment and away from Tau next time he ovulated. But then again, what's the probability that there will be a next time? That this is not the last ovulation for him? He swore internally. That little bastard… He had the nerve to offer... such... or, even more so, joke about this? Could he be talking seriously, or was that the hormones talking?
Chris stood there observing silent and thoughtful Erzketau, and, for some reason, he understood that he wouldn't like the outcome of his brainstorming session.
"Tell me, kri, is there anything else I need to know?" Carefully Chris tried to break the silence. Tau met his confused gaze and slowly shook his head. "Then decide something already, inject your cocktail and let's close this question."
"No, this is not an option," Tau finally squeezed out of himself and stood up, intending to return to cooking dinner, "the injection will simply distort the hormonal balance and with it – the whole picture that we are trying to explore. You are the first to be able to release an egg, and we have no right to interfere until you yourself understand how you did it and what is needed in order to be able to repeat the event. For the sake of the experiment, it would be best to do nothing as long as it does not threaten your health. But the final decision is yours."
"But…," Chris just couldn't believe it. How much more should he sacrifice for this experiment? He'd made so many concessions that he did not want to make, and where did it lead him? No, he shouldn't be thinking like that; he agreed to everything and did it not for himself but for the sake of humanity. Where did this selfishness come from? Why does he feel betrayed? No, that's beside the point. He was afraid when he went to the implantation surgery, he was afraid of the changes that would happen to him, he was afraid that he would not be able to suppress that "new creature" who would impersonate Christopher Newman. Hence, he got exactly that.
What a stupidity indeed! Holy Heavens, the lust had to parasite on his essence for only one single day so that Chris was ready to surrender himself to a ... what? A droplet of hormones? Three hundred grams of meat? He owns his persona, and no one else! He is here of his own free will, and will go further only because he decided to, decided that it was right. His scientific responsibility is strong and unshakable. Other lives, other fates depend on his decision. All for the sake of the experiment, all for the sake of humanity. Besides who said that this should be forced on him, that he had to sacrifice something? Chris chuckled at his own thoughts. Here his martyrdom will end, it's time to do what he was created for, and get the most of the actual pleasure from it.
Chris glanced from under his brows at Erzketau, who was still making dinner for them. One might have thought that the zirka had forgotten about the boy, but, looking closely, Chris noticed how the tips of his ears slightly changed the angle of rotation, scanning the situation in the room while his eyes were occupied. Then he checked the time, frowned slightly, and moved towards his professor.
"I agree," he said, stepping as close as possible without violating his personal space. "This is a wonderful opportunity to serve the experiment. But without your help, I'll gain nothing." Finishing, he absentmindedly picked up a twig of some dried grass from the tabletop and twisted it between his fingers, holding Erzketau's face with his eyes.
Tau took a break from seasoning the fillets and squinted at Chris. The young man spoke calmly, no edginess was in his pose; he just stood, looking directly at Tau. True, there was something new in this look. Something not entirely appropriate for his condition.
"Well. If so, sit down, I'll go get the injector and the drug." He thoroughly washed the oil and spices off his hands, but, turning to go to the laboratory, he saw that Chris had changed disposition, and was now standing in his way.
"No, I changed my mind. We will not develop this option. What would be the most correct thing to do now is to study the third sub-phase; no, I speak, and you listen." Chris threw up his hand, stopping the flow of counterarguments, which were stuck in the throat of the zirka, his eyes ready to shoot lightning. "You did not develop this theory without any foundation; it is much closer than others on the scale of valid ones, right?"
While speaking, Chris stepped one foot forward, nearer to Tau, although it was not even a step, but a barely noticeable shift by a couple of inches. "Physiologically realizable even better than the three-point-two-phase, there is only one unknown left – to determine whether the gametes are compatible. There is only one step left, the result of which will be able to increase at least twice the potential number of newborns, because there are more and more interracial couples. And if we take into account the ever-increasing possibilities that the Atlantic Biosphere provides." He stopped for a moment to draw in a breath. "If your race can," he slowly stretched out his hand forward, as if he wanted to touch the zirka, but stopped a centimeter from his bare chest. "Fertilize ours," just as slowly, he pointed to his face with his hand, "then the newborns' growth will be exponential, if not parabolic!"
Fixing his gaze on the widening black abysses in front of him that were looking back at Chris unblinkingly, he paused, giving them both some time to process what'd been said. He did not even expect that his brain, being under the heady influence of the Zirkan cocktail in his blood, would be able to produce such a stunning analysis, but in the process, while he was talking, with a sinking heart, he realized that, most likely, he was not so far from the truth. Maybe this is exactly what the green scientists have already thought of thirty years ago? Or maybe, in laboratory conditions, the compatibility of the germ cells of the two races has already been studied?
"Not to mention the economical side of the process, if it is possible to bypass, at least partially, all the difficulties associated with IVF…," Chris continued to speculate aloud, not forgetting to keep Erzketau in sight. "What do you say, kri? Will you share your DNA? Will there ever be a better time? No need for preliminary testing, training, hormone attacks – I'm ready, right now, with a living egg, as yet, in the most active phase, and ready to cooperate." He could not miss the chance to joke around, so he smiled again with one corner of his mouth, raised an eyebrow, as if saying, "Got the balls?"
At the same time, Rangira's remarks from their earlier video conversation flashed through Tau's memory with the speed of an intergalactic shuttle. A colleague, and a friend to him, called immediately after the information about the first spontaneous ovulation became known to all project coordinators. At this point in time, he had stopped pretending with kaia that he was indifferent to Chris. She seemed to know that Tau would need to refresh some of the nuances of this piquant process in females of her race, and, of course, to sympathize and cheer him up.
"I completely don't understand why won't you make his life easier? And yours, for that matter. The chance just jumps into your hands!" She asked with resentment in her voice. "It is high time for you to stop beating around the bush and get down to business. Don't you understand that the Universe is giving you a sign?"
"No, I don't understand, and I don't see any signs in this," Tau muttered in response. "He must learn to live with it, and as for me, I have perfect control over my mind and body."
"Yes, but you yourself know as well as I do that without you nothing would have happened to him and you know that all this means that he feels a lot–"
"This is nothing more than a hypothesis!" Tau sidetracked her rudely.
"You've completely dropped out of modernity with your experiment! This hypothesis, so to speak, was tested and proved on Sirkazai two hundred years ago!"
"Even if you are right, and I represent some kind of platonic interest for him, then he keeps it to himself, which means he is not ready." Tau said wearily, massaging the bridge of his nose. "I can't just take advantage of what you think is a 'convenient' situation, the guy's trust and, and in general… force it, you know."
A choked laugh was heard from the speakers, "You'd better keep an eye out so that he won't take advantage of you! Just promise me that you will think about what I said and stop discarding explicit and implicit tokens as invalid. Listen to him, look at him, and you will understand everything."
The zirka focused his gaze on the young man, frozen in front of him in a "ready for anything" position, persistently looking into Tau's eyes, looking for something there and desperately wanting to find it. Tau took a breath and realized that he stood motionless for about half a minute. He slowly brought his hand to Chris's face to stroke the crease between his eyebrows with the tip of his finger.
"Your words make sense, but…," Tau began slowly.
"But?" Chris exhaled noisily, as if he was holding his breath, waiting for the greenie to respond.
"If you're sure you know what that means."
"Am I sure?" Chris lowered his head for a second, hiding a smile of wild delight. "I have never felt my intention so consciously before... Damn it!" He twisted from another spasm and groaned.
Tau caught him by shoulder to support him. Chris steadied his breath, and looking up, swallowed everything he wanted to say meeting the pitch black pools of Tau's eyes, which he had never been afraid of before. He did not hesitate to look at the zirka without blinking, but right now there was something in those eyes, which made him suddenly feel slightly uncomfortable. He gasped for breath as he felt the touch on his cheek.
"I would still prefer you to think about this decision once again," Tau said quietly, brushing the tips of his already warmed fingers over his face, "because this is hardly something so commonplace for you, and I want you to be sure that you're ready before it's too late to roll back everything."
"I…," Chris struggled to collect his thoughts, but all of them had burned to ashes as soon as the zirka touched him. His skin was on fire; his whole consciousness felt as if it was enveloped in flames. With each new beat, his heart exploded with lava and pushed it down his veins, and settled in his lower abdomen with a red-hot desire. "I understand and I'm really ready," he grabbed Tau's palm when he was ready to take it away, and placed it back on his cheek, marveling at the sensation that sparkled in his empty head.
"Okay. Let's go." Tau curtly breathed and walked out of the kitchen and to the laboratory, not looking back to check if Chris was following him or staying behind, paralyzed by the understanding.
The main thing on the agenda was to ensure information security for Chris. It's one thing when his body decides to ovulate, and quite another, if the entire project headboard becomes aware of what will happen in the next few hours, and even more so when ... or if after a few days the information summaries of his physiological indicators are filled with chorionic1 cocktail articles. Tau shut his eyes hard as he imagined the tide of questions, controversies, and secret discussions that this might stir up.
It is better to solve everything with the members of the board from the closest circle first, and the rest can have their explanations later. Tau didn't really foresee anything, but had thought about such situations before, and he had come up with a certain algorithm, which he was planning to introduce to the system right now. He sat down at the computer and entered into the configuration code of the application, which read the data received by the nanites in Chris's body and then transferred it to the server.
By running the pre-written algorithm, the main idea of which was to loop the data updates of the past twenty-four hours so that the system would hold the new data reports until the master of the code decided to release the data to the server, this would ensure Chris's privacy. The data would be updated to the server at the beginning of the next day in an almost similar form with only minimal deviations in numbers. Such a ping for the whole day, during which Tau, the only owner of admin access to this configuration, could decide whether to pass the real indicators of the young man's state to the public, or continue to loop, or edit something in the reports.
Chris, who followed him, was a little surprised when he entered the lab and saw that the zirka was coding something instead of, like, taking his pants off. There was an idea to make a joke like if he really has to google how to do it with homo sapiens, but for some reason, Chris decided against it. Seeing how serious Erzketau was while he did what he was doing, he just sat down opposite him and waited. A couple of minutes later, the zirka removed his hands from the keyboard and looked at Chris.
"None of the team will know about anything," he explained, "it is better this way. Unless there is something drastically important that needs to be reported. Until then, I believe that it is more correct and generally best for your personal interests to keep this private."
Chris thought that he was probably right somehow, but…
"The nanites…?"
Tau nodded, understanding what Chris meant.
"They will keep silent until I allow the data to be shared," the greenie responded, not without a hint of smugness, and for the first time this evening, he smiled a genuine smile.
Chris lifted the corner of his mouth in response, nodding. It seems that he has not fully figured out his professor. In addition, he underestimated him in many ways.
"Shall I give you time to prepare?" Tau asked, entering the last command to the AI: "New project / Access – exclude everyone except the creator of the project / Start phase 3.3 / Subject m-0523."
Having received a negative headshake in response, the zirka got up and went to set up the transforming couch, lowering it and making it look more like a bed than a chair. "Mei, start the screens, display all of the subject's readings, and carry out continuous scanning of all tissues, organs, and brain activity."
"We… Right here?" Chris, in general, already understood that, but he felt like clarifying.
Tau looked at him oddly, and then replied, "The process might be a little... not really dangerous. Yet," he sighed, looking away for a second, "we do not have accurate data, and we cannot judge whether it is completely safe in your condition along with the other exceptional circumstances. Therefore, we will set up a more romantic atmosphere next time."
Next time. Chris was still digesting what he heard, assessing his reaction, sitting down on the edge of the makeshift bed, and pulling off his T-shirt. Having rid himself of his shorts, he looked at the zirka, who sat down next to him and didn't seem to be moving to undress.
"Are you gonna impregnate me with just a glance?"
The zirka answered him with an expression on his face that could be interpreted as "what a dummy", picked up his legs while turning to Chris and swiftly leaned his whole body forward, clearly aiming for the lips, but then froze, almost touching his nose to Chris's nose.
The young man was slightly taken aback but was betrayed, perhaps, by widened eyes only and a speeding heart rate; however, he did not recoil even a millimeter or flinched.
This pleased Tau. At least Chris is not repulsed by such closeness. With that understanding solved, they will be able to work out the rest.
"If anything, go ahead, no foreplay is fine," Chris muttered in a slightly shrunken voice, also pulling his legs under him, and settling himself in front of the zirka in his underwear.
"Tsk, that might become a problem. Foreplay is prescribed in the procedures manual," Tau said, feigning being apologetic, and taking Chris's face in his hands, "and my mother taught me otherwise."
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Chorionic gonadotropin (or human chorionic gonadotropin, HCG) is a hormone that begins to be produced by the chorionic tissue after the embryo is implanted into the body of the uterus.
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