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Disclaimer - Fluffy romance this is not. Instead, this is a bottle of the harder stuff: namely science fiction. If the extinction of humanity as we know it is something that you can't confront, than I advise you sit this one out. However, if you think you can stomach it, then pour your self a tall frothy glass, because things are about to get weird. (Disclaimer - This is a work of horrific fiction. Please do not read if it would be illegal for you to do so.)

The Hive Ship

The government was already in shambles, and most of the major cities were all but abandoned. There was no reason for them to be here . . .

Malcolm hugged his knees to his chest as the cold wind shook the shed around him. The various rakes and shovels rattled together as he could see the sweeping lights through the cracks in the ceiling. His eyes went wide as the red tinted light suddenly intensified to bright blue. He rose to his feet, lunging towards the door before the roof began to creak, being torn away like paper as the screaming man looked upwards, squinting against the harsh light.

It hung there hundreds of feet above him like some kind of parasitic blimp, limp tendrils hanging beneath it. The ones dragging through the countryside amidst the beams of searching light seemed small and fragile from a distance, but up close they were thicker than a tree trunk. Malcolm pressed himself against the wall, eyes wide with terror as the fleshy gray tentacle snaked towards him. He threw himself down, trying to roll away as the undulating mass opened at its blunt tip into a gooey spreading orifice, darting in and engulfing his legs. His fingers scraped at the concrete floor of his shed as he was pulled back, feeling the rubbery entrance squeeze at his thighs, then his shoulders, and finally his face as it engulfed him in its slick rubbery insides.

There was the immediate feeling of movement, making his stomach roil up against his throat as he tried to scream. There wasn't any air inside of the gooey muscular tube though, and soon he inhaled viscous lung-fulls of the translucent pink substance that ran along the slick insides. It didn't burn his lungs in the same way that salt water would have, and he didn't pass out, even as the disorienting feeling of speed and pressure made his head spin, red and blue lights flashing against the fleshy tube from the outside. He kicked and resisted as the slick walls clenched around him, sliding him through the long muscular passage.

The world went dark as he was sucked into the inside of the biological ship, bends in the tube making him nauseous even as the goo he 'breathed' was making it hard to think straight. There was a squelching thump as he fell into a person-sized clear vertical tube with small veins running through it, accompanied by a plash of the thick pinkish fluid. He beat against the pulsing transparent walls surrounding him, causing small bulges against the pliant but tough material.

There was a sudden hissing as two pulsing pores on the fleshy pink ceiling began spraying in a thick yellow mist. Malcolm pressed his face against his elbow, trying to shield himself. The slick sodden material of his shirt stuck against his face, offering little protection. Where the bright neon substance fell on his body, it hissed like boiling water. He shouted, beating on the edges of his living tank as he watched the fabric of his shirt begin to dissolve. It should have hurt; he almost wished it did, but instead there was a cool almost mentholated tingle that ran through where the watery yellow sprinkled down on him.

The trapped man watched in horror as his clothes were seemingly liquified and his skin turned shiny and translucent. He could see his own terrified reflection in the clear surface of his cylindrical tank while he watched his hair melt away with the rest of his adornments. The trapped human could see his veins pulsing under his skin just as the ones in the clear walls of his cell were, screaming in terror as he hammered at the clear yielding pane.

The man fell back against the squishing malleable floor in shock as a circular fleshy portal strained open into the room containing his transparent prison. Two bizarre alien creatures walked inside on spindly insectoid legs.

They were somewhat mantis-like, one a pale blue while the other was a very sickly gray. They each had four thick legs sprouting from their thoraxes and long abdomen's that were covered by two halves of a patterned shell. Their upper bodies rose from those, four lanky arms protruding from around the tops of their torsos at each cardinal point, the gray one seemingly leaning in on the blue for support. The man recoiled as he watched their segmented mouths open, smaller writhing jaws on the inside latching together as the three multifaceted eyes on their impassive faces stared at each other. The gray one's body trembled as the blue held it up gently and they shared a truly alien kiss.

At this point Malcolm stared at his own fingers splayed out on the clear membrane around him. His fingertips were swelling, and as he pulled back, they stayed stuck to the clear surface, thick flesh colored goop dribbling down to the living floor. His scream turned into a gargle as he felt his tongue melting away, even as he was still aware of the points of contact that had been his fingertips tingling as they ran down the transparent pane. He wanted to flail in horror, but his body wouldn't react, his wide eyes staring at the aliens as his eyelids dissolved into a viscous pink protoplasm.

The blue mantid pulled back from their otherworldly kiss suddenly with a savage shake of his upper body, tearing out a chunk of the other creature's exoskeleton. With that, the gray monster collapsed to the floor, its pale ichor leaking into the concave shaped floor. The man's terrified floating eyes watched as the creature's essence pooled out, leaving a translucent husk as its mushy liquid was quickly absorbed by the living floor. His own melting reflection was superimposed over the grisly image. Was this a punishment? Was this what they were doing to him as well? Bubbles rose through his undulating form, tingling as they plopped at his surface.

He could barely move, muscle twitches becoming bulging pseudopods of his translucent flesh as he internally screamed. Then, the fleshy sacs in the ceiling of the tube bulged, and that same gray ichor that he had seen leak from the dead alien began to drip and then pour down on his melted consciousness in a cascading deluge. Malcolm tried to tense, only making his surface shudder as he felt the warm foreign substance make contact with his melting form.

Suddenly images began to percolate in Malcolm's mind, vague flashes of light at first, coalescing into sights and then sounds. He struggled, trying to reject the foreign influence as the sounds were joined by scents and tastes, and feelings that he didn't have words for.

A world destroyed long ago. A race coming together, joining as one to explore the stars. It wasn't just the memory of the gray bug . . . It was the entire experience of all of them: a galactic race, or one huge single organism that had lived for eons . . .

As the melting man mixed with the alien substance, the blue bug grabbed the translucent husk of its departed compatriot. It dragged the light shell over to a bulge in the wall, nudging a cluster of nerves with its three grasping fingers as a gaping orifice opened up, full of bands of hard calcified tooth-like sections. As the alien husk was tossed in, the bands condensed, breaking the tough elegant exoskeleton into shards as it sealed shut, fleshy protuberance undulating as it continued its work.

The exchange of experiences was going both ways as Malcolm could feel his whole life being read . . . not just replaced, but recorded. His childhood, his education, and every experience was being examined. He was no longer screaming internally, but rather mentally wide eyed as the two colors of formless sludge in the tank began to merge, color turning a bright and vibrant shade of pink.

This wasn't anything to be afraid of . . .

But it was so foreign. He didn't want to die.

This was just the cycle of their kind. This way the ideas of the man could live forever in the hive.

That wasn't him though. His body was gone . . .

This was them. And they had purpose, as a member of the collective.

Yes . . . Purpose . . .

As the thoughts of the man and the thoughts of the gray bug began to merge, the gooey protoplasm began to bubble and bulge, proteins forming into complex lattices, mixing new human DNA with that of the hive. As this happened, the pores in the top of the great glass membrane began to sprinkle down the shining crystal shards that it had ground the gray alien's hard shell into.

The two separate creatures were merging into one, the human losing his form, but gaining the knowledge of the cosmos as his mind slowly reached out, connecting with the neural network of his kind. Their body formed, pliant crystal shards joining themselves around their pink glistening muscles and organs as their limbs formed and they slowly rose, body creaking. The creature's four symmetrical arms formed, each straining out as their three manipulators clacked together at each end. The inside of the room came into focus as their three eyes developed, multifaceted picture joined by every image seen by his brethren across the galaxy as their antennas twitched.

They signaled for the chamber to rise, clear membrane sliding up from around them as they stepped out. The new pink mantoid rubbed its feelers against those of his blue worker-colleague. When the time came, they would do the same for their worker-colleague as it too would merge with others to forwards the genetic diversity of the hive. The two aliens both left through the fleshy door that opened before them, serving their role in the hive-ship as their species joined together, bringing order to another unenlightened race of the universe.