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Footsteps herald his return and interrupt my thoughts. I let out a small scream of horror as I realize that he is holding a small, dead, furry creature in his big hand. It dangles limply, its little black eyes glazed with nonexistence. At first, I have no conception whatsoever of what he is doing with the animal, but then he holds it high, gives me a big white-toothed smile and declares:
“Food!”
My stomach turns. I forgot this part of the old ways. They used to eat animals, not protein grown in trays, but actual living creatures. It is disgusting and base, but I cannot look away as he plunges his knife into the skin and begins to slice into it.
I let out a whimper and turn away, unable to watch the barbaric dismembering of the recently living thing. I do not dare look back until a smell fills the air. It is rich and it calls to another one of my hungers, that which dwells in the pit of my stomach.
Onboard the ship, I quite often do not eat for days. A quick shot of vitamins and minerals keeps me going, and a protein amino slurry provides the rest of the energy my physical form needs.
I know what I am smelling is cooking flesh. I know that it is wrong, but that he does not know any better. I do, so I cannot partake. I try to quell the rumbling in my stomach. I try to block out my reaction to the very old way of making food. He has no choice but to do this. Primitive humans ate meat all the way up through the thirtieth century before the practice finally become utterly obsolete in the total loss of animal life on planet Earth. For thousands of years now, we have been recombining essential aminos and proteins from amoeba. I was raised on such fare. My body has never known animal food. I don’t know why it is suddenly reacting this way. My mouth is watering.
And then he tempts me.
“Eat,” he says, holding a sliver of meat out to me.
“No, thank you,” I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Must eat,” he grunts.
I keep my mouth closed. There is no must when it comes to eating. I choose what goes into my body. I choose…
He pinches my nose and when my mouth opens in protest, he slips the food into my mouth. My first thought is to spit it out, but I have already tasted it, and it is delicious. There is a richness and a fullness to the flavor, a satisfaction to the texture that makes me salivate and chew. Before I know what I am doing, I am swallowing—not only swallowing, but opening my mouth for more. My stomach is suddenly growling, as if it has awoken from a very long slumber and realized what it is for.
He feeds me patiently, cutting strips off the animal and letting me consume it one piece at a time. As I begin to get fuller, I close my lips and shake my head. What am I doing? What is it about this man creature who makes me give up all my principles, throw the very tenets by which I have sworn to live my life out of the window?
I am full. I am sated. Two desires that have been consuming me for years are now suddenly gone and I feel a sense of peace that is only disturbed by my growing guilt. Eating animals, having sex. I have done both things within hours of being on this planet’s soil. I am contaminated. I am…
I burst into tears of confused misery, and on some level, relief. There were parts of me that needed these things, even though I knew I shouldn’t have them. Maybe it was those parts of me that brought me to this planet, to the one person who could give me what I needed because he didn’t care what I thought I wanted.
Suddenly, big arms are around me. I am being pulled into his large lap and he is holding me so close, so tenderly. I nuzzle my face into the crook of his neck and I take deep breaths of his masculine scent. He smells like so many things my existence has been devoid of: sweat, dirt… and sex.
He comforts me with rumbles that aren’t words, but might be, soothing sounds that make me feel safer than I ever have before. All those many days and nights alone in my exploration craft have come to an immediate end, and it is because of him.
I don’t know if he is truly intelligent. I don’t know if he is capable of speech, but I know how he makes me feel. There are emotions and sensations running through me that I have not ever experienced in life. I was raised to believe that touch was unnecessary, that the desire for companionship was weakness. I was taught there were two options: solitude, or the frozen caskets that hold our species in stasis for another time. I chose exploration and solitude. I chose to make the Patron proud, to resist all calls of the flesh and become a cataloger of life, a lonely librarian among the stars.
