No doubt, uncertainty, or ambiguity. The surgical steel needle sounded precisely like the Cafe Sol's once-pristine, now scarcely freckled gold-trimmed front door, when Vidro was seated at the second table nearest to it. The one that rustily cried exactly like the demanding, eternally hungry green-eyed, ash-grey furred, crop-tailed tortoise-shell tabby kitten their third grade best friend, Agostinho Jorgena found on the street corner next to Rafa's Talhos shop... That door swung open/swung shut no more nor less than thirteen times in the twenty-seven minutes it took to order, eat, and pay five novueuroes and eighteen novucentavos for a nontraditional ensalada mixta (due to its surprising number of croutons), and when Vidro bit down on a painfully stale, practically tasteless one of...
Crammed into the Berrio's command capsule, hands locked in front of their face, every part of them thoroughly optimized towards a single, inarguable goal: to prevent the solar-sail propelled longship and its cargo of 300 hibernating miners from staying off course on its ten-year voyage to Haumea in the Kuiper Belt.
A decade for the Berrio and its cargo, though, compliments of the Company having tinkered with their neurochemistry, it'd seem more far, far less. Or a hellish eternity for Vidro if they couldn't find a way to cope with the, however perceptually reduced, isolation.
Their memories, holed, faded, broken, and warped, had failed them. But one thing Vidro did recall, their excitement tinged with quivering dread, was another Company-sponsored solution. And all they had to do was tell the longship's computer to, pretty please with sugar on top, pierce their skull with a needle-thin, surgical steel probe.
In a blinding instant, a migraine-lighting flash — a bellowing hurricane, burned cobwebs, blown dirt, swept dust — blasted through their debris-choked mind...
...leaving Vidro's memories as clear and new as when they were forged: every table, chair, cafe, door, cat, shop, meal, money, crouton, friend, and lover.
The Berrio's multitudinous indicators were mercifully quiet, shifting blissfully back and forth between NORMAL and LATER with nary a strident NOW to be perceived by their augmented senses. The longship's fully extended, completely unfurled tissue-thin gossamer sails caught just the right amount of the sun's outward bound photons to comfortably maintain it's steadily acceleration.
All was good, all was satisfactory, all was right in Vidro's horribly cramped, terrifyingly claustrophobic, and way, WAY too small world.
Best of all, with that electrode-lined needle jammed into their cerebral cortex, they didn't need the Berrio's Backup Oxygen Mixture Regulator's nipple-esque as their practically chalky, almost-tasteless, barely-edible Madeleine de Proust.
Nary a perhaps, maybe, could, or might-be; it was undeniably, positively June 14, 2042 at 15:12 and, yes, the early evening, late afternoon sun had sliced Alma's Barcelona — from whose rickety iron balcony they glimpsed the long-finished spires of Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia peeking their spindy tips over the city's ever-climbing skyline — into brilliant on one side, dark on the other. And as Vidro distractedly watched, the sun had gradually exposed two photographs: a grainy ferrotype of a pickle-faced dowager and a bleached-out Polaroid of a raggedly pig-tailed girl.
Dust… yes, though Alma's place wasn't filled with it. The kettle… yes, worn, but in clarified hindsight. Vidro now realized by how Alma delicately, worshipfully filled, boiled, and poured Camomile tea from its chipped spout, that it was a cherished link to a time, a place. Likely, the faded, pocked, and grainy face gazing down at them from a now fully-illuminated wall.
They were together for thirteen months and exactly one week, from February to March of the next year. Her apartment, that day, that hour marking when dating had effortlessly and comfortably slid into a relationship.
Her hand in theirs, pulling Vidro through the harsh brightness of the setting sun to the blood-warm, shaded darkness of her bedroom. Alma's hand on Vidro's face, her fingers discovering their lines and creases. Her eyes locked on Vidro and — as they held them longer, their pulse thrumming louder, louder in their ears — went through and all the way into Vidro's soul.
From their face to their bodies, Vidro and Alma caressed, discovered, explored. Riotous giggles as Alma softly explained why her right nipple drooped while its opposite remained playfully tilted upward. Happily, freely sliding a pair of practiced fingers between her lush thighs, churning her already slick wetness until fingers and thighs dripped and glistened from her furious determination. As her other fingers, performing their own well-rehearsed ritual, fiercely tugged at her hugely erect right nipple, lifting it up and out, then firmly down, elongating her already pendulously large right breast.
Her roar as Vidro's hand joined hers, the electric shiver up and down their spine at her heat, her wetness, her mesmerizing engorged clit, as each climbed and descended again and again until Alma moved a hand to their chest, hoarsely whispering, gutturally begging for Vidro to stop. Just for a little while. Just until she could catch her breath, keep her legs from twitching, her eyes from rolling…
Early evening to its late relative, almost forgotten to fully remembered: playing Alma's labia and clit with their tongue as she performed an equally impassioned melody on Vidro's own.
Fisting? Yes, Alma's puckered ass yielded to Vidro's tender, then determined kisses before — with the scarcest of hisses, moans, or cries — three, then four, then thumb. Her thoroughly lubricated frothiness plopped rhythmically, comedically onto Alma's once pristine, now juice stained, sheets.
Then indicators were hammering crimson emergencies through their lids and straight into their pupils, yanking them from the sweetly delicious, coconut-perfumed Madeleine to NOW NOW NOW NOW!
Hands fluttering, eyes darting, fingers skipping, lips pressed tightly together, teeth grinding, switch after switch, button after button, control after control, one indicator, then two, then four, then eight, then — heart easing, pulse slowing, blood pressure dropping — LATER began then swept blue across the Vidro's control board.
Hands unclenching, eyes softly shut, fingers uncurling, lips relaxing, teeth no longer aching, Vidro returned to the Mediterranean's indigo shore, where their high definition, surround sound, undeniably accurate memories unveiled the moon, which had been a breathtaking, polished silver coin set in a black, diamond-sprayed, velvet sheet. The night was sharply chilled, picking playfully at their cheeks as they haphazardly, often clumsily wandered the Marseille's labyrinthine avenues and alleyways.
Le Chat Rouge, Le Moineau Vert, Le Perroquet Bleu, L'âne Violet — add a color to an animal, stick a Cinzano umbrella in front of it, hang buzzing neon over it, stock it with sufficient liquor... Vidro walked in, stumbled out, and repeated until cobblestone streets wobbled and bounced, their stomach heaved up and nearly out with every unsteady step.
A leap, a jump, a skipping over why they were there, and there was Gonzalo's brick-laying, marble-cutting, steel-bending, shoulder-crushing grip, hauling the blurry, nauseous, unsteady Vidro back from the edge of the Mediterranean's alluring abyss. Clear as that brilliant night, Gonzalo had slapped them on their back, his quaking laugh neither insulting or patronizing.
"Not a good time for a swim, bon ami."
Lifting them up off their untrustworthy feet, Gonzalo sort of led, mostly carried, them through the Hotel Paradise's spider-web cracked the front door, past the licorice gum-chewing desk clerk — who neither lifted his greasy-haired head nor took his clawed fingers from the kaleidoscopic images flicking across cheap tablet he obsessively played with — and up the too worn-stepped stairs to number 5. Gonzalo's kick sent the room's door flying, slamming against the streaked plaster wall with a thunderous bang.
The giant hadn't said, "You're not going anywhere" but "I don't want you to go," the truth no less arousing, but changing what had been Gonzalo's massive, unwavering, unrelenting sexual near-brutality to the more realistic, human dimensions of ask not take, and swapping Vidro's whimpering, begging, "Yes, please" for silent consent.
Their initial kiss didn't change, Gonzalo's rum-scented mouth enveloping Vidro's own, the colossal Frenchman's lips wide enough to swallow their entire face, eyes, chin, nose and all.
Retrieved without distortion from their previously foggy memories, Vidro saw Gonzalo's cock for what it was: pipe-fitter's, iron-monger's, marble-layer's vein-wrapped, circumcised member. Its bruise-purpled, gleamingly swollen fist-pump bulb bobbed, a tear of pearlescent pre-cum seeping from it's tip. It wasn't, but it felt as long as it was thick, based on how Vidro's... must choose the right word... cunt and not their voice, screamed for him to stop.
Gonzalo's pummeling, high-test ferocity was there in all his groaning, heaving glory. A never slowing, never accelerating large-bore piston thrusting in, rolling back, thrusting in again, again, again and again; inescapably battering Vidro's consciousness further and further down into their body until all that remained was their voice — and their cunt — crying out for him to never, never, NEVER stop!
Then the Berrio made Vidro do what they and Gonzalo didn't. Its litany of red-hued emergencies a savage punch to the gut, a stinging slap to the face, a flesh-cracking arctic tsunami flash-freezing that was howling (him), shrieking (their) vivid recollection into a soggy pile of lukewarm mush.
Swearing, their voice painfully snapping back at them from the longship's too-tight confines. Hissing, the sound grating against their throbbing eardrum, spitting. The fan of miniature, oddly wobbling spheres momentarily turning their controls into a fairy dance party, Vidro coaxed, demanded, threatened and finally electronically beat the screeching NOWs into LATERs and into a placid cascade of blue-hued NORMALs.
From the smoldering embers of their previously incensed urgencies, Hughlene daintily pranced into their mind as vital, festive, joyous as when Vidro was initially enraptured by zir. Plumes domestic and exotic, pearls fake and authentic, diamonds manufactured and natural, zir song and dance that cramped Lisbon stage like a firework blasted cold winter's night.
Grinning inwardly, softly proud their memory — for once at least — hadn't failed them, Vidro relished in zir luxuriously crisp delivery, their head spinning from zir heady bouquet of seductively undulating verbs, alluringly tender nouns, and zir mischievously nibbling adverbs… yes, yes, yes.
"Love is not love, Which alters when it alteration finds..."
There was more to the evening. The whole night spelled out in the finest, most precise details, and while good to know everything was there should they want to experience it all again, Vidro didn't want what came before, only what happened after.
Hughlene's dress-cocooned dressing room and, projected onto their skull's interior screen, Vidro mesmerized as ze parted zir own costumed curtain, pulling aside plumes, pearls, and diamonds, proudly shining the spotlight of Vidro's sexually rapt attention on zir pride, zir joy, and soon to be, their intermingling pleasures.
Worthy of the Prado, the Louvre, the Hermitage, a classic example of the bodyshaper's art, under whose geneknitters, fleshweavers, and tissuechisels erotic chimera's like Hughlene rose to take flight. Nothing cobbled together, nothing slap, dash, or halfway. Zir clit — first small, then moderate, then impressive — rose, engorged, expanded as zir labia — first petite, then a bud, then a flower — filled the air with musky urgency.
Vidro explored as Hughlene experimented, and ze investigated while Vidro instigated. How did this feel when slid into that? What did that do after easing into this? Was this orgasm more tooth-rattling than that one? Why did that twist, that caress, that pinch, that stroke send Hughlene's crescendos higher and higher, breaking across and beyond the gowns and dresses, worrying Vidro they might be mistaken for fright and not delight.
Vidro held the memory tight, cycling its myriad details back and forth in a heaving, sweating, screaming, singing loop. They didn't want to leave. They didn't want to go back to the longship's perpetually troublesome sails, erratic filaments, or its incessantly difficult control mechanisms.
As their mnemonic orgasm peered over their augmented brain's horizon, clawing its way past layer after layer of the Company's steadfast conditioning, their blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygenation levels red-lighting their instruments instead of the longship's usually annoying indicators. Not NOW, not LATER — a different, horrifying alarm flooded their mind, washed away their arousal, froze every joint, tearing through Vidro's crystal clear memories, its razor-edged tone slicing Vidro to the bone.
"I HATE YOU - I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!"
To be continued... Check the Erotica section for the scintillating conclusion of the "Falling Glass" series.
