FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Space sucked. Not just in the literal sense, what with it being a giant vacuum. It sucked on a conceptual level. The massive, colossal, aeonic distances between points of interest in the universe were tedious to get through. It was a whole lot of wasted, empty space with nothing in it, and Lily greatly disliked traveling through it. The fact that there was nothing to see didn't help much. The lack of anything to do or the ability to even go outside helped less. And having to drink her own recycled urine was the worst. Sure, it tasted like water, but she knew it had been inside her bladder and that of her colleague. The food was grown in sanitized excrement, too.

Space sucked.

Traveling through space sucked.

Space existing as a thing was such a bad design that, as far as Lily was concerned, it disproved the possibility of a kind, sane creator.

And most people agreed with her. That's why people cheated.

Lily's ship, which she had named The Viscount to make it feel a little more exciting while traveling through the massive boring reaches of space, was equipped with a False-Point Drive. It was somewhat similar to the “warp drives" of old, which conjured a massive gravitational anomaly to fold space and then slipped through the cracks to their destination. That, she thought, was already cheating, but then there was the False-Point Drive, or FPD. It was what had happened when all the smart science men had realized that they didn't actually need the gravitational anomaly, which was extremely costly and energy-intensive to create. They only needed to make the universe think there was one, and the universe, it turned out, was easily fooled. And that was definitely cheating.

That had sparked quite a few theories suggesting that the universe was in fact a simulation. After all, the laws of physics didn't make mistakes. They couldn't be “tricked" into doing things, but a computer program could, if it wasn't perfect. Well, nobody had come up with any conclusive proof yet, but the idea was certainly in the zeitgeist.

The FPD created a dense object that, for all intents and purposes, looked like a hyper-dense black hole. It wasn't actually one, nor did it behave anything like one. The crew of a ship near it didn't need to take any precautions and could in fact move the object around with their own hands if it was necessary. It was akin to a child taking a cardboard box, painting it with military insignias, and pretending that it was a tank. Nobody had expected it to work, but it did, if the representation was accurate enough. As long as it looked like an ultra-dense black hole, space obediently folded around the False-Point – hence the name – until the universe wasn't exactly sure where the ship was located. Some numbers, somewhere, were fudged, and then they were at their destination.

Well, just about. Getting to the empty stretches of space where deploying the FPD was safe or possible at all still took months of puttering along with the age-old starship engines. That was the boring part.

There had been some concerns that “glitching" reality like that, as some very, very smart people called it, would cause cascading errors and abnormalities across existence, but then again, they had thought that an atom bomb would ignite the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere back in the 1940s, too. It hadn't happened, obviously, being that civilization had made it off the old globe and into the vast, surprisingly boring reaches of space. Someone had chosen to take that risk, and now they were taking an even bigger one.

Lily let out a demonstrative sigh that nobody else could hear. Her traveling partner was still in cryosleep. Usually, for these long stretches, they took turns. No point aging when you didn't have to, and one person was plenty to make sure ship's automated systems didn't misbehave. Still, her partner, Heather, who also happened to be a woman with a plant-based name – which seemed to amuse most people the duo spoke with – wouldn't have agreed, anyway. She liked taking risks; Lily was the responsible one in their little business.

Their business? Oh, they were planetary surveyors. Mostly the job was done by computers, these days, but computers were single-minded and frankly rather stupid, little more than predictive engines. Just on the last planet that Lily and Heather had surveyed, it turned out that the automated scans had missed enormous, truly gargantuan deposits of diamond just beneath the planet's crust. Nobody was entirely sure how that had formed, and that was why the computer had missed it – it wasn't considered a possibility – but now, after making the first company to mine the planet very rich, diamonds were worth very little, given the existence of a nearly planet-sized mass of the stuff.

Lily hadn't been able to shake the thought that it was because of the False-Point Drives on every long-distance ship. How would diamonds form in such enormous sizes just near the surface? Had the planet been peeled by something? She pictured some sort of progenitor civilization tearing the crust off like an orange peel for their own uses and leaving the former mantle and core to solidify, but that was impossible.

Lily shook her head. She was smart, cunning too, but she just wasn't one of those very smart people she kept noticing made statements in reports. The ones with titles and white, professional-looking coats. All she could hope for was that their little cheat engines weren't wrecking reality as a thing. And while she hoped for that, she moved to the cockpit to pull up a preview of the next planet they were headed towards. Kepler-296e, in the star system of Kepler-296.

Sometimes, the very smart people really didn't bother coming up with any sort of descriptive names, did they? Despite that, the planet was large and earth-like, with a breathable atmosphere. That was basically all they knew about it. At least the star it orbited was a binary system, and those always looked pretty in the skies. This one had a red dwarf too, which made for a sort of incandescent bulb kind of lighting that Lily had always found rather homely.

Lily sat down in the uncomfortable pilot's seat to watch the numbers tick on a hundred small displays. Through the windshield, it looked like they weren't moving at all. 296e in the distance was getting no bigger, even though the Viscount was traveling at maximum speed. It'd be days, yet, and there was nothing to see except this singular view. Space sucked. Sometimes Lily wished she could just stop working, retire on some cozy planet – maybe Earth itself, since the era of interplanetary empires had left it half empty – and start having fun instead of sitting here and watching an unchanging view.

At least it'd be a little more exciting.

She hit the scan destination button again, expecting nothing to happen, but much to Lily's surprise, the scanners accepted the command this time. Evidently, they had crossed whatever arbitrary distance was required to give a more accurate reading beyond “large earth-like planet with a generally breathable atmosphere".

The scanner made a ticking sound. Scan in progress. Lily stared at the screen as the bar very, very slowly filled up. She thought about getting her trusty dildo out just so she'd have something to do, but it was like her parents had always told her; patience was a virtue.

She pondered what might be on the planet. Maybe a material for a whole new superconductor. Maybe it'd be an undiscovered element that allowed for cold fusion, the same way the False-Point Drives worked. So far, nothing had looked similar enough to the required hypothetical materials for the universe to accept cold fusion, and maybe nothing ever would. Maybe it was a planet of tentacles, where every plant and animal wanted nothing more than to stuff their eggs into an errant earth-girl.

Lily shuddered, and then shook her head. She had been alone on the ship for almost a full week now, and it was getting to her something fierce. Everything started to look like a potential partner, or at least a dildo, if you were wound up enough. Her parents had never told her that, and why not, mom and dad? Would that have been the-

The scanner chimed. The little display read LIKELY PRESENCE OF LIFE. Lily nearly jumped out of her seat. Life? Now that was interesting.

“Sentient life?" she typed, waiting for the ship's computer to respond, which took a while. The Viscount was an old model with rudimentary artificial intelligence, which was how Lily liked it. She didn't want to get into arguments with her vehicle. But it did mean that replies were slow due to processing capacity.

ATMOSPHERE SHOWS POTENTIAL INDUSTRIAL ALTERATION, the display read. SENTIENT LIFE MAY BE PRESENT.

Well, wasn't that interesting? It wouldn't be the first time aliens were found and befriended, but it was a cosmically rare occurrence. Over thousands of years of space exploration, humanity had only found two sapient species across thousands of planets. One had been a species of little mole-like creatures who lived under their planet's crust because of a highly radioactive sun. As far as Lily knew, they still lived there, with precious little interest in cultural exchanges, even if they were fundamentally friendly.

The other had been a small tribe of “gaseous, floating pseudopods" on one of the gas giants. HD 100546b, maybe? They had no tools, and no industry, and primarily their entire purpose seemed to be drifting around aimlessly, but they loved discussing existentialism.

The notion of a species with industry was, in fact, entirely new. And Lily immediately recognized that it was enough reason to wake up Heather, too. She dashed to the cryopods and fingered in the thawing commands. It'd still take hours, but soon the world was going to change. And if it didn't, at least she'd have someone to talk to.

Sentient, industrial life. And maybe they'd like the look of humans. While waiting for her friend to wake up, Lily prepared her analytic visor. Unlike the ship, those were cutting edge; the most recent pocket-sized AI available, which she had felt was necessary to accurately analyze new lifeforms and substances that might not necessarily be in any kind of database yet. After all, there was a definite distinction between very likely to be toxic and safe to eat, and her naked eyes couldn't see the difference.

There were a lot of risks with exploring uncharted planets. More than a few errant explorers had been lost to exotic toxins, parasites, or needlessly ultraviolent fauna. Lily was determined not to meet that fate.

She quickly freshened herself up a little, too. A quick brushing of her auburn hair. A quick round of deodorant. Whatever she needed to appear a little less of a disheveled mess – a look that she quickly cultivated during long periods alone – when Heather woke up.

A few minutes later, Heather walked, groaning, into the cockpit. Groaning and naked. She had always been rather shameless about letting her everything hang out freely, but thankfully, it didn't bother Lily. She was bisexual, but there had never been any attraction between her and the pale, skinny red-haired Heather. Lily's preferences lay elsewhere.

“Wuzzat?" Heather asked, in characteristic post-cryosleep grogginess. “Whaddiwakeupfor?"

“The scanners say there might be life on 296e. Industrial life, even," Lily answered, and Heather's eyes went wide.

“Well holy crapola, should've woken up earlier!" Heather exclaimed, rushing back to her quarters, tits bouncing hard enough that Lily heard her yelp at the third step. But soon she was dressed in her standard uniform again – though her hair was still a tangled mess – and returned to the cockpit, taking her seat next to Lily and focusing her attention on the monitors and displays. “Huh. Life, right. Man, wouldn't that be pretty goddamn cool."

“Yeah, we'll just have to be a bit careful," Lily reminded her enthusiastic colleague. “How'd that old college saying go? Sapience doesn't guarantee…"

“Doesn't guarantee they won't eat you," Heather filled in, imitating their erstwhile professor's voice. “In fact, every human that killed and ate people for no reason was also sapient. You're right. But we have the visors and the stunners, right? So, it should be safe?"

“Safe enough, they might have guns too. So, we gotta plan this pretty carefully," Lily replied.

“Right. Standard diplomatic approach? It worked with the mole people and the gas balloons?" Heather asked.

The SDA, Standard Diplomatic Approach, was a strategy that those very smart and important people had come up with that was scientifically designed to not cause any offense. It made no demands of contacted species, and suggested that visitors agree to any bonding activities that the species offered. And some other stuff. Lily couldn't remember much more than those two main points. Accept offers, as long as the offers won't get you killed, and make no demands.

Everything seemed so abbreviation-driven these days, Lily thought. Like social interactions were a prepackaged lunch, to be heated up in the ship's microwave. But that was what earth authorities and corporations had established as the norm.

“Yeah, standard diplomatic approach," Lily replied. She flicked some switches. “We should keep scanning the planet every few hours. We'll pick up more detail as we get closer."

“Man. I'm all excited now. Still hungry as fuck after cryo though. Maybe it's breakfast time. I wonder what time it is on earth?" Heather pondered. They had decided to follow earth time, meaningless cosmological trivia as it was, while in deep space. On a planet, they had the planet's own sun. But space had none of that, no real way to structure your day except arbitrary and distant standards. It was another reason that Lily really didn't like space.

The ship was too small to have a canteen, but it did have an eating nook, just big enough for two people, and owing to the two passengers cycling cryosleep, they had nearly full stocks. Heather picked out her favorite; a tube of spaghetti paste with little chunks of meatball. She insisted that it tasted just like the real thing. Lily felt a little suspicious of it, as she always had, but she wasn't a picky eater. You really couldn't be a picky eater, out here in the middle of nowhere. She picked out the nondescript high-nutrition protein slurry with strawberry flavor.

“Do you think the natives of that planet have real food?" Heather asked. She had a wistful look on her face.

“I mean, what else would they have? They gotta eat something local, I doubt they've got ultra-processed nutrient paste growing on trees," Lily chuckled. She was very tired of the paste. Eating alien food was always a gamble, but they had their analytic visors, and those were accurate some ninety-nine percent of the time. “Unless one of us has already been there and blessed them with fast food chains."

It wasn't totally unheard of for “rogue" humans to go live on uncharted planets. That said, it was rather uncommon; few had the mental wherewithal to live alone their entire lives. With an alien civilization, it'd be easier, but that was only if they were accepted. The moles had never accepted humans, and the gasbags had no real way of sharing space the decidedly non-aerodynamic species of mankind. And it was very unlikely that someone had made it specifically to this Kepler-Number galaxy that seemed largely unremarkable until one got this close. There were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of planets with breathable atmospheres out there, as humanity had discovered after the advent of the FPDs.

Some argued that this hadn't been the case before those FPDs had been turned on, because as all the men in white coats had pointed out, earthlike planets had been common enough, but ones with breathable atmospheres was theorized to comprise only a fraction of those planets. But nobody could, specifically, prove that anything had changed. That was part of those concerns about the False-Point Drives; that humanity had inadvertently warped reality to match their desires and fears, or at least, created a lot of incoherent changes that they'd soon be paying the price for.

But there was nothing to do now except forge ahead, unless one wanted to dedicate their life to hunting down FPD-utilizing ships, which also numbered in the thousands.

It probably wasn't a concern, anyway.

Lily and Heather finished their meals, which were uninspiring as always, and then settled in for natural naps, for once not needing to freeze themselves as the end goal was only a couple of days away. And so went the rest of their journey; eat, sleep, and read what the ship's scanners reported as the beautiful blue globe of 296e slowly grew ahead of them, and Lily increasingly got that feeling of being very, very small in comparison with all the world outside of herself.

The scanners kept saying roughly the same things. Potential industry. Potential sapient life. Each statement was phrased in a way that made it unnecessarily difficult to interpret, but then, the ship's old scanners might simply not have had the capacity to fully analyze the data. “Potential industry" could, Lily supposed, mean that the lifeforms on the planet produced something that humans would need industry for, but they didn't.

The last nights before landing she kept tossing and turning in bed over that particular question, what they'd find on planet 296e. Heather, always the more adventurous of the two, showed no such concern; she seemed excited to confront whatever was down there, and she made no secret about it.

“Imagine if they're all like, basically humans but really hot?" she mused. “I hope that's it, because I'm getting a bit tired of the same old toys."

Classic Heather. Oversharing and usually naked. But she had saved Lily's life several times on their surveying adventures, and she was loyal to a fault. So, in the end, Lily didn't mind what she had taken to thinking of as Heather's “gremlin energy", even if she did take more risks. It was useful to have a person like that on the team.

“I hope not. We'd be the center of a whole new world order if they're humans. The whole panspermia debate? Probably solved in a heartbeat," Lily replied.

“Yeah, or it's the FPD breaking reality with some inspiration from our minds," Heather replied. “Hope not, though."

Tomorrow, they'd finally land, and while Heather dreamt of big-dicked humans, Lily's fantasies of what they might find drifted more towards the kind of discoveries that'd land her in the history books and allow her a comfortable retirement of relaxing on one of those resort planets for the rest of her life. Or maybe a little longer, if she got a few life-extending treatments too. Wouldn't that be something, she thought, to never again have to visit the tedious reaches of space and instead simply enjoy herself for as long as she wanted.

With that pleasant thought, she drifted off to sleep. Heather was already snoring.

The next “morning" – as they calculated morning, at any rate – she was first out of bed, brimming with excitement about what discoveries today might bring. They had finally entered the planet's atmosphere, and all there was left to do was to tell the autopilot to land. Not near any lifeforms, but not too far from them, either. Active camouflage on, just in case there were some spaceship-eating monsters that hadn't shown up scans. Sandworm-type creatures had ended more than a few explorers' careers. One final atmospheric scan to make sure that the air was safe to breathe; the answer was yes. Any microorganisms in it were unlikely to be harmful, the ratio of gases seemed agreeable to human physiology, and the odd trace chemicals that seemed to be from industry wouldn't have any known negative effects on them, either.

Finally, there was only one thing left to do: land. The ship would do that part automatically, while projecting an image of the surface beneath them onto the ship's windshield.

Down below, the planet looked beautiful. It was lush like few places on old Earth, and not merely green but colorful, with massive flowers and vines that ranged from the expected green to reddish-brown and purple. They saw no signs of sentient life, but the scanners assured them that it existed beneath the canopy. Not too far from that point was a clearing, covered in what looked like regular earth grass, and the computer quickly determined it to be the ideal landing spot.

The ship landed with the usual roar of the downwards thrusters slowing down the descent. There was a thump, and then still silence.

“Okay," Lily stated. “One of us should probably stay inside, just in case-"

“I'm going out. Can't stop me. I need to stretch my goddamn everything," Heather exclaimed, already walking towards the ship's cargo bay door.

Lily, though she definitely wanted to explore the planet also, was perfectly fine with that arrangement for now, admiring the scenery through a multitude of windows and cameras. She figured she could launch a drone too, and that way, she'd survey the surroundings far more efficiently than Lily could dream of on foot, under the thick canopy.

“Right, go for it. Just stay in touch. Scan things before touching them. Visor, remember?" Lily called out to her friend, though she was half drowned out by the pneumatic hissing of the cargo bay pistons slowly opening the way into a fully alien world.

But Heather was already out. She had brought her respirator, just in case. The air outside smelled incredibly fresh and clean, but it never hurt being prepared, just in case she ran into some sort of gas-geyser or perhaps some sort of toxic spores or pollen. There were all kinds of potential hazards out there, but Heather wasn't the kind of girl who let that stop her. So out she waltzed, equipped with her analytic visor, a respirator for emergencies, and her “stunner" – which were just standard issue stun-guns, hers with some personal enhancements – in the pocket of her uniform.

The jungle was inviting. It was humid, everything practically dripping with water, but Heather's uniform was quite waterproof. Everything was incredibly lush, bar for a path that had been worn into the undergrowth by some organism. She wasn't sure what type; the analytic visor only confirmed that it as most likely “caused by a lifeform" but concluded that it had been too long to make out any specific paw- or footprints.

Heather decided to follow it along. It'd give her an easy path back to the ship; though old, it was noticeable enough, and that meant it would lead somewhere. Hopefully a village, or a city. She wasn't really hearing anything that implied the presence of industry, though, which meant the ship scanners were probably wrong. But a tribal society could, to some degree, alter the atmospheric composition of the planet, depending on what they had access to.

Just then, Heather realized that she had never asked the ship what chemical, exactly, suggested potential sapient alteration of the atmosphere. But the air still smelled clean. Better than clean, actually. It was downright pleasant to breathe compared to the ship's recycled air, and seemed to be full of oxygen that invigorated Heather's every step.

A little too much so, maybe. It felt like the deeper into the jungle she went, the richer the air was, somehow. It was making her a little giddy. A tap on the analytic visor revealed nothing that should be significant; there were trace amounts of complex molecules, but they could've been from any of the local flowers and animals, and according to the visor “unlikely to have any significant effect on humans."

A more cautious explorer might've retreated, then, noting the unlikely part while feeling some manner of effect. But Heather was a risk-taker. She pushed on tirelessly until she happened upon another clearing, this one covered by the forest canopy. There was a little rustling sound, and there, looking at her, was a human-sized skunk with antennae on its forehead. The expression on its face was, as far as Heather could tell, curious and not aggressive, and the analytic visor confirmed that.

It also noted that the anthropomorphic and very terrestrial-animal appearing creature was “Strong evidence for panspermia, or potentially warped reality, if claims about False-Point Drives are correct. Convergent evolution is unlikely. Earth skunks are noted to have chemical weapons."

The skunk raised a hand towards her, and then said something.

While the visor analyzed the phonetic information, Heather couldn't help but notice that this alien was completely naked but for her – or potentially, his – thick, soft-looking fur, and that she also wasn't sure what gender it was. Certainly, it had breasts, but it also had a rather plump-looking sheath. And that was just the things Heather could see.

“Translation: 'Unfamiliar visitor. From above?' Hand gesture likely to be friendly."

“Tell him… her that I come from above, and that I am friendly," Heather told her visor, while the skunk looked at her quizzically. At least on earth, she figured that the breasts were enough to call the alien a she until informed otherwise.

The visor played a few heuristically determined sounds, and upon hearing them, the skunk grinned. She spoke again.

“Translation: 'I have always wanted to explore the stars.' Note: This suggests that the local life understands at least the possibility of space travel."

Before Heather could continue, the skunk motioned for her to approach; that gesture, at least, needed no translation. And a few more chittering, alien words.

“Translation: 'Please come closer, I would like to look at you.' The invitation appears genuine, SDA suggests approaching."

Heather gingerly stepped closer. The scent in the air seemed a bit stronger around the skunk. It would make sense if they had some kind of scent glands, just like earth skunks, but unlike their terrestrial cousins, this one seemed to smell rather wonderful. It was a kind of bubblegum scent that almost seemed artificial, mingling with far more natural notes of something floral and something musky. The fragrance tickled oddly in Heather's nostrils, but she approached regardless until she was standing right next to the alien creature.

“Ask her what she wants," Heather told the visor. “And tell her that we're only here briefly, to survey some of the planet."

The visor repeated the words, now in a more fluent tone; it learned new languages as it went, and there were only so many ways a word could be constructed with “mammalian" mouths, tongues, and throats. The skunk replied, with an even wider smile, and her tail slowly swayed back and forth behind her.

“Translation: 'I want to explore you, before you head back up there.' Creature is possibly attempting courtship. SDA recommends neither agreeing nor disagreeing as of this point."

The skunk's antennae wiggled. They looked like an almost translucent purple, and Heather wondered what they might be sensing. This was the first time she got the feeling that something was off, though. Yes, she had been fantasizing about aliens herself, but it hadn't really been her first real reaction upon meeting one. It seemed suspicious. The kind of thing a parasite or predator might attempt.

“Just one moment," she said, and then focused on speaking to her visor. “Risks?" Heather asked.

“Alien species might be attempting a luring strategy for consumption," the visor replied. “Unlikely – as there are unlikely to be many other sapient species on the planet – but possible."

“Maybe they ate all the other sapient species and this is an atavism? Maybe a harmless one?" Heather asked. She felt awfully serious, all of a sudden. But maybe it wasn't all that risky. The smell in the air was reassuring, somehow. A relaxing kind of nothing-wrong scent, like you'd get in a safe greenhouse full of your favorite plants on a warm summer's day.

“Possible. Species does appear predatory, but it is important to remember that humans also appear predatory but rarely eat other sapient species," the analytic visor answered. “Results inconclusive. It is possible that the species is simply hyper-amorous and wishes to indiscriminately mate with all others."

“Would that be harmful, if I were to consent?" Heather asked.

“Unlikely. The species is clearly carbon-based and not evidently toxic. Genetic compatibility would be impossible, even assuming panspermia, due to millions of years of independent evolution," the visor replied. “Being eaten, however, would naturally be catastrophic for your physical integrity."

Thanks, analytic visor. She did have a backup body that'd be activated back on earth if she were to get eaten – every explorer did – but at this point she'd lose so much time that being returned to that body would feel like a sledgehammer to the cortex, and having the recorded experiences written back into her new brain would feel twice as bad. She desperately wanted to avoid any surprising deaths.

On the other hand, the skunk did look really soft and inviting. She was curvy, just like a somewhat plump human might be, and that look was further enhanced by the long, soft fur. The breasts looked like they'd feel heavenly to squeeze or rest your head against. And well, as for what was below that – her sheath, framed by a pair of wide hips – Heather had never been ashamed about the fact that she liked cock. Loved it, even.

It was probably time to put on the respirator. It really did feel like there was something in the air, Heather told herself, but she just couldn't take her eyes off her new skunk friend. The smell was also too pleasant to just shut out like that. Maybe if the analytic visor sensed danger, she'd use it. Yes, that sounded like a perfect plan, if terribly unimportant compared to what she was about to experience.

She approached the skunk, who chittered eagerly. Noises indicate genuine excitement, the visor informed her quietly. The smell, though – it grew in the air as she approached, and she felt increasingly relaxed, like her head was slowly filling up with cotton, or helium, or something that made her feel really light-headed and fuzzy by the time the skunk reached out and placed a soft, warm hand on her shoulders. Her cock was peeking out. It didn't look quite human, but it had a defined glans and… well, from what Heather could tell, it'd probably work just like any other mammal's. She clenched at the thought, tingly excitement winning out over caution.

The analytic visor flashed red, suddenly. The display read psychoactive compounds present in air; recommend retreat, but the skunk smiled and gently lifted the device off her head, placing it onto a nearby rock, where it quickly switched to sleep mode as no user was detected. Heather didn't resist; she gasped at just how good the skunk's hands felt, roaming over her body. They passed over her breasts, over the much gentler curve of her own hips, and kept at it for a while.

The respirator that would've protected her from what was happening laid forgotten by her side.

Heather was, strictly speaking, aware that something was off. That the visor shouldn't have been off her head, and certainly that she shouldn't have had her uniform peeled off to her waist, so that her breasts were bared for the skunk. That she was being manipulated, somehow. But then, suddenly, the strong scent made her sneeze several times in rapid succession and left her feeling even more dazed and empty-headed than before. What was wrong again? Her breath hitched, and she sneezed. Oh, she had absolutely no idea what was going on.

It felt kind of nice, though, so she didn't care too much. She did give a little moan as the skunk cupped her groin, looking confused at first, as she might've been used to every one of her species having a cock.

The skunk said a few words, but without the visor translating what they were, Heather had no hope of understanding the rather complex-sounding alien tongue, and even if she did, she kept sneezing, and each time she did, it interrupted every sluggish thought in her head. What was true was that the skunk seemed a little disappointed, but at the same time, determined and lusty, if the alien's expressions could be assumed to map to their moods the same way a human's wound.

She gave Heather's pussy a reassuring squeeze. By now, her cock was sticking out fully, throbbing eagerly where it rested, half upright, against Heather's thigh, so whatever the skunk planned clearly turned it on. Slowly, it peeled off the human's uniform, and Heather was still far too deeply lost in the pleasant scent to really consider what was happening. It wasn't as if she was in any danger, right? The skunk just wanted to play with her, for a moment. That was alright. She was cute, and clearly horny, and she had just the kind of cock that Heather enjoyed.

When she was pushed down onto her knees in the tall grass, she didn't resist. In fact, Heather giggled a little at the thought of her first proper contact with an alien would be sucking its cock. But then, the skunk turned around instead, and wrapped its thick and surprisingly prehensive tail around Heather's body instead.

What was it that skunks did again? She couldn't remember anything except the feeling of the alien's soft, curvy ass pressed against her face and her luxurious, fluffy tail wrapped around her like a warm, comfortable blanket. And then suddenly, her lungs and nose were full of that sweet intoxicating scent, and it covered her in a pink mist, swallowing her entire consciousness into an almost vibrating, fuzzy paradise of lust, of becoming something else entirely.

Heather couldn't remember anything of that encounter except boundless ecstasy. Her pussy, as she stirred awake on her bed of soft green grass, ached like it'd been fucked for a day straight, and a lazy craning of her neck revealed her to be leaking a pink, viscous slime. The same slime seemed to cover most of her naked body, splattered across her entire form in droplets, and it was most focused around her nose. The scent was fading, but still rather wonderful. The skunk was nowhere to be seen, and her analytic visor was beeping furiously on the nearby rock. Heather stumbled over, picked it up, and put it on.'

The visor read HAZARDOUS MUTATIONS DETECTED, SEEK MEDICAL AID IMMEDIATELY in big, bold, red letters the instant it touched her head.

“…hello? You're finally there? Where the hell were you?" Lily yelled at her from the ship. “I thought you'd died or something! I had the drones look for you and-"

“Sorry, I-I met one of the… locals," Heather replied. What had she actually done with the skunk? She couldn't remember at all, only aware of how nice she felt. “Not… not totally sure where I am."

“Not sure where you are? Activate the pathfinding on the visor, it'll show you the way back. Step by step. Come on, you know how this works!" Lily yelled, though it wasn't in anger. The concern in her voice was very genuine. “Did you hit your head or something?"

“No, I'll be- I'll be there in a little bit, sorry. I gotta get dressed first," Heather replied, and before Lily could yell at her for being naked, she ended the call.

She didn't really want to get dressed. Being naked felt nice, just like the skunk had been. Her body felt softer and warmer than before, and as she raised an arm to examine why that was, she discovered a thin layer of black and white fur covering her skin.

Huh. That was definitely cause for concern. But she didn't feel concerned. She felt great. A little horny. No, scratch that, very horny, and hungry too. Heather picked a fruit from a nearby tree – it looked perfectly edible, a little bit like a plum, to the point she didn't even need her visor to analyze it – and took a big bite of it. It tasted incredibly sweet, and soon Heather was gorging herself on fruit after fruit, the juices running down her chin and dripping onto her breasts. She felt like she should absolutely keep eating.

The more she ate, the better she felt. Her body felt softer and softer. Warmer, too. And there was a kind of growing pressure between her legs that she had never felt before, like an insistent horniness that she couldn't stop focusing on. Heather was changing, she realized that much, but it felt so incredibly good to change. Into what? Into a skunk, of course. That was how her species reproduced, by overwriting other creatures into more of themselves. Mm. She ran her juice-soaked hands over her body, feeling every emphasized curve of herself just like the other skunk had earlier. By now she had enough fur that she could bury her hand in it.

The next time that hand dipped between her legs – rubbing herself felt just right, too, with how good she was feeling – it brushed against something stiff jutting out from her crotch. Oh! Of course. Everyone of this species had a cock, and Heather giggled a little as she glanced down to see her little clit, already grown maybe an inch, slowly swelling bigger, throbbing eagerly. She wrapped her fingers around it and gave it a lazy pump while chewing on another juicy, sugar-filled fruit to sate the demands of her changing body.

Her cock throbbed. It kept growing even as she stroked it, a sweet-smelling pink liquid drooling down the shaft. Heather had always liked cock, but she had never imagined having one would feel so good! She swiped a finger over the glans and let the strange nectar coat it, and then brought that finger to her mouth. It tasted just like the fruit she had been eating. Maybe it was some sort of symbiotic relationship, she reasoned, but reasoning was getting very difficult. All she wanted to do was lay there in the warm grass and pump her leaking cock until she squirted all over herself.

Only she didn't have time to.

“Heather? What the-" someone called out. Lily, of course. “Okay, we got a pretty serious situation here. Drones? Yeah, I will," she replied to whatever her analytic visor alerted her about. She pointed her stunner at Heather, and then everything went black.

Lily looked at her friend in the ship's makeshift cell, that she had ordered the drones to hastily construct. By now, she looked rather like an anthropomorphic skunk, with two semi-translucent purple antennae on her head, and, well. A rather large cock currently flopped out on her belly.

Lily's analytic visor told her that she had been “infected by an alien species that evidently reproduce by creating copies of themselves" and that she was in a “heavily altered mental state". All that to say, Heather wasn't exactly herself, and the visor couldn't answer if the condition could be cured or not. That worried her. The visor was programmed to be as optimistic as possible, and if it “wasn't sure" about a cure it meant the chances of it happening were very slim.

That said, maybe not all was lost. She wasn't sure how much of Heather was still herself, even if her body had changed, and was still changing. Just then, a rather long tail had begun to grow out of her backside. It first appeared as a thin rat-like tail and then thickened and grew fur, becoming just as one might expect a giant human-sized skunk's tail to look like. Lily asked herself if it could spray like earth skunks could, and before an answer could even form in her head, she had already grabbed her own respirator and fastened it over her face.

Just then Heather stirred. Waking up after being stunned with the modern kind of guns felt like waking up from a coma, or close enough, but she opened her eyes faster than most.

“Whuzz… oh, I'm on the… on the ship? Hiii Lily!" she slurred, slowly working herself into a sitting position.

Psychoactive compounds present in air, Lily's visor read. The respirator would protect her. Probably. “How are you feeling? Do you know what happened to you? Do you know who you are?" Lily asked.

“Of cooourse I know, silly. I'm Heather. Um, I met this really nice skunk lady while exploring, and we did something that I think felt amazing, and now I'm a skunk too," Heather answered, her sentences punctuated by little giggles or randomly drawn-out words, as if she was either drunk, had damaged her faculties some other way, or as if the language didn't come entirely naturally to her anymore. Maybe a little bit of all. “Why am I in a cage, thooough? I'm not dangerous!"

The old Heather would've been demanding to be let out, aggressively. Yet, there was something unmistakably her about the skunk-looking alien in the cage, regardless. Some part of her cheeky charisma, even if it had been reduced to something a little more… aloof and sexual were probably two good words to describe it, Lily thought.

“Well, whatever the skunk did to you is infectious in some way. That's why you're in the cage," Lily told her. “I can't really risk you transmitting it to me, too, or we'll have no way off the planet."

“Aww, but we cooould just take off first and let the autopilot kick it, and then I could turn you into a sexy skunk too!" Heather pleaded, with a wide grin on her face. “Then we'd get home but have fun the whole way there! This all feels pretty sweet."

Lily sighed, her voice muffled by the respirator filtering out whatever aphrodisiacs that Heather was, perhaps unconsciously, emitting. “You're not really yourself at the moment."

“Well, nooo, but I'm better," Heather squeaked. She was standing up, now, and Lily got a really good look at how much her body had changed. She looked almost like a fertility goddess. The old Heather had been toned and skinny. This one was… fluffy. And not only because of the fur. She had rather heavy breasts and wide hips, further emphasized by tail.

She also had a cock that seemed to leak a pink slime as it throbbed eagerly, evidently never going soft. At least not until it got used. Was she fantasizing about converting her, Lily wondered. If the species spread by some kind of virus or transformative chemical, it would probably be aroused by doing so. Lily wondered what'd happen if any of it got on her skin. If it was a virus, it probably wouldn't soak through undamaged skin, but then, she didn't know what it was, and the visor couldn't zoom in enough to detect viruses.

“You really should take that mask off," Heather sighed. “You'll feel a lot better all quickly-like."

“Mhm. But I don't want to be a human-sized skunk. And I don't think you want to be that either," Lily replied. “They just gassed you before you could stop it, didn't they? Or, well, sprayed you."

“I meaaan, kinda?" her friend giggled. “But I'm happy she did, because it feels really nice. Especially having a cock. And not having to think so much. And this big fluffy tail! You can touch it if you'd like."

Lily shook her head. There was a problem with all of this. If she took off now, she wouldn't make it back to earth before the filter on her respirator was all clogged up. She had a few spares, but not enough to last the whole journey. She could cryofreeze herself and have the automated systems alert earth, but then, Heather would starve, and she didn't have the heart to put her through that.

That left one real option. She had to put Heather into the cryofreeze. But that meant letting her out to begin with, and Lily had the sneaking suspicion that the skunk was much stronger than she looked.

“So, are you gonna let me out?" Heather asked, hopefully, even as her hand snuck down to her crotch, only barely resisting the urge to stroke her cock. “Promise I won't even do anything. I can control myself! See, I'm not even rubbing my big, sexy cock."

Lily tapped her analytic visor. According to it, Heather's body language suggested honesty, or at least, that she believed what she was saying, which was a kind of honesty even if she was wrong. She bit her lip. She had to let Lily out sooner or later to put her into the cryopod, and she didn't want to use the stunner again. They were safe once, maybe twice, and then they started doing permanent damage to a target's nervous system with repeated, high-frequency usage.

“Fine. Just don't try anything. Fight whatever it is you're feeling. Please. I don't want to have to use the stunner again," Lily grumbled. “We'll get you fixed up back on earth. Or have the memories untangled and stuffed into your spare."

“Mmm. You know, I can't belieeeve that we never fucked," Heather huffed. “But I can control myself, like I said."

The little antennae on her head wiggled, as if trying to sense something, but neither Lily nor her visor had any idea what, unless the skunk was trying to read her mind.

She leaned in to unlock the cell door - the drones had constructed a kind of Wild West-style cage with a simple but effective lock out of scrap metal on the ship – but just as she did, Heather suddenly sneezed. Pink slime splattered over Lily's face.

“What the fuck, Heather?" Lily growled, wiping off what she could. Thankfully, she was still wearing the respirator. “I trusted you!"

“I'm not- I'm not d-d-d-" the skunk stuttered, and then her breath hitched, and she sneezed again, though this time Lily was standing far enough away that she wasn't hit. The air filled with a pink mist that blanketed the cell door and most of the floor, too. It didn't seem quite airborne, not for long distances, but just enough that it was starting to clog Lily's respirator. Heather, for her part, was left with a half-blank, vapid smile on her face, as if someone had flicked a light switch in her head.

Heavy concentration of psychoactive chemicals detected. Recommend relocating to a different room, stated her analytic visor.

Fuck.

Lily stumbled out of the cargo bay where she kept Heather, into the quarters of their two-person crew, and pulled off her respirator to better wipe the slime off her face. It seemed to either be soaking into her skin or evaporating into some heavily-scented chemical that Lily had no choice but to breathe in. The ship also wasn't exactly airtight between the cargo bay and crew quarters, which meant that Heather's smell was probably leaking in here, too. She was starting to feel a little dizzy, struggling to figure out which way the filters came off so she could replace them.

Twist left? Twist right? It was a twist, right? Or was it the ones you just pulled on to… Lily found herself giggling at how dumb she felt. Wait, that wasn't right. There was nothing amusing about any of this. Fuck. Double fuck. She poured out a glass of water and splashed it over her face. The visor was waterproof, thankfully, so she managed to clear her mind a little, but it came with a grim realization that she had locked herself into the damn ship – the exit was through the cargo bay – and that the filters were stored in the medical box, which was also in the cargo bay.

Fucking triple-fuck. She couldn't stay, and she couldn't go. The respirator was too clogged with slime to work properly, even if she wasn't necessarily infected yet. But the longer she waited, the more the scent – like warm cotton candy or pink bubblegum – would incapacitate her, and at some point, she knew she'd just walk out of there and willingly get sprayed or sneezed or whatever the fuck the skunks did, and then she'd get fucked until she grew a big, sexy cock of her own.

Was any of this even real? Was it the doing of the False-Point Drives? It didn't make any sense. No goddamn species reproduced like this. But, even if it hadn't been real originally, it was real now, like a dream carried into reality.

If she were to be totally transformed and brainwashed, Lily knew she'd soon snap awake in her backup body soon if things went south, but she also knew that with her memories reset, her first thought would be to travel to Kepler 296e to finish what she'd started, and then she'd inevitably get skunked again. So that wasn't an option, she had to end this here and now, somehow.

Keep it together.

“Visor, any advice? Voice, please, I need to hear it," Lily sighed. Her whole body was starting to tingle already. Not like any sort of alien influence; just a giddy horniness that she was all too familiar with after all those journeys through deep space.

“Analyzing situation. Analysis: Alien species appears to be both infectious and intoxicating. No immediate signs of infection have yet been detected in your body. Therefore, hold your breath and run past your friend, until outside. Let your mind clear, hold your breath again, and run back inside to get more filters, without facing your friend. Then, use the stunner on her and place her in the cryopod," the visor replied in a calm, reassuring voice.

Even as Lily tried to focus on what was being said, her thoughts kept drifting to the idea of getting fucked by her friend. She didn't want that, but the fantasies came unbidden, as if carried by the sweet fragrance itself.

Okay. Hold breath, run out. You can do this. A baby could do this. Come on.

Lily took a deep breath, as instructed, though the aphrodisiac pheromones in the air tickling her lungs almost made her knees buckle. It was having a very noticeable effect already, reducing her ability to think, or even react with any sort of reasonable speed.

Either way, she grabbed her respirator, opened the door to the cargo bay, and ran. The cargo bay door opened with a simple button, and the opening was quick enough that it wouldn't cause any real risk. She didn't look at her friend while running. Lily had no idea what she would do with Heather, but that was a worry for another time, right now-

-her foot caught on something, and already leaning forward as she ran, Lily tripped on whatever it was and fell headlong onto the corrugated metal floor. Her visor flew off her face and clattered somewhere among the ship's cargo.

Lily groaned, turning her head to look at what exactly had tripped her, and in doing so, looked briefly towards Heather's cage. The moment she did, she saw her friend's thick tail leave the floor, and a split second later, caught a face full of the skunk's pink, sweet-smelling spray.

Fucking “self-control", if we make it out of here I'm going to strangle you, Lily thought, even as Heather giggled. She stumbled towards the back of the ship and slammed her palm against the cargo door button.

Oh, gods. Her lungs burned to breathe in, but if she did that now, there was absolutely no doubt at all as to what would happen. Even just being covered in the sticky, sexy slime made her want to rub herself all over. She could feel the crotch of her uniform growing wet and the rest of her body warm and flushed. It was incredible just how strong the drug-like spray was. But if she didn't succumb to it, nothing would happen, right?

Right? No, of course it wasn't. But maybe it'd slow the transformation down enough to make it back to earth.

The cargo bay door swung open and Lily all but fell out, gasping for air, though the evaporating slime that covered her face still mingled with each breath in, fueling the growing needs of her body. But it was fine, she told herself. She was out, sooner or later the effect would wear off, and then, if she didn't get exposed again, she'd probably be fine. Maybe she'd grow a tail at worst. Having a cock wouldn't be the end of the world either. She just wanted to be herself, and not a sexy, curvy, sweet-smelling skunk with a big, beautiful cock.

Oh, fuck.

Lily rolled onto her back in the grass and found herself staring up at one of the skunks. She looked almost identical to Heather, with the same kind of lopsided smile on her face. She looked stunning in the light of the setting sun. Lily wanted her.

“Please don't," she moaned, as if the alien could understand her. And perhaps she understood the sentiment even if not the words; the skunk knelt next to her and brushed her soft, feminine hand over the front of Lily's body in a slow, sensual gesture that seemed to indicate that she should relax. Like an unspoken confirmation that whatever was about to happen would be better than… better than anything, really. But just as Lily tried to get up and run away again, she sneezed, and that thought was gone. She felt a kind of detached terror at the fact that her sneeze sprayed out the pink mist that the other skunks did, but she couldn't really figure out why it alarmed her. Then, she sneezed again, and that thought of second-hand fear was gone, too.

The alien skunk had the same sweet smell as Heather did, and at that point, there was no way to get around breathing it in. Lily had lost, as she knew it, and besides, there was no reason to fight that she could think of anyway, so she breathed in normally, letting the fragrance fill her head with cotton candy, happiness, and a growing sense of slutty lustiness. It felt really, really good to surrender, and in just a few breaths she didn't really feel like she had to be worried at all as the skunk pulled her uniform off.

Her nudity revealed that she was already covered in a thin layer of fur. Lily knew that was a bad thing, but she just didn't have the mental presence to actively worry about it. Besides, her pussy ached to be filled, and her new friend was happy to oblige, already prying her relaxed legs apart.

“Ooh, that's gonna feel sooo good, I'm jealous," someone else chirped. Heather had managed to escape her cage when the key fell out of Lily's pocket when she slipped. Ah, well. It didn't matter at this point, and Lily was starting to understand why she was so happy to have been transformed, anyway. “Mm. Let her pump you full of that… skunk juice… I dunno, oh, I just can't wait until you have a pretty, sexy cock too!"

Heather sat down next to them, taking a first-row seat to watching her friend get fucked just as the other skunk pressed her thick, bulbous glands against Lily's naked, slippery folds. The pink slime, leaking out with every throb of her cock, quickly smeared over Lily's stiff little clit, and seemed to intensify all sensations thousandfold.

The skunk moved her hips with experienced ease, and leaned over Lily as she thrust in. Lily gasped; it immediately felt good, but it felt even better when the skunk's shaft twitched inside her, soaking her inner walls in that same transformative aphrodisiac. Lily closed her eyes to enjoy it, to bask in the beautiful glow of her soaked pussy finally getting to really clench around something, and at the same time, she equally enjoyed the sheer sexy radiance of what she was becoming.

Oh, why had she ever resisted? She just hadn't known how good it felt. Her hips bucked upwards as the skunk's fingers found her clit and began to knead it, smearing the slime over and into it firmly, and already, what had previous been merely a nub was long enough to fit between two of the alien lover's fingers. Lily gasped, barely able to comprehend what was happening, though at some level she realized she was growing a cock, just like all the other skunks had. Good skunks needed big sexy cocks to fuck each other with, to get drunk on each other's scents and tastes and… no. There was some sort of mental failsafe still, a final barrier that prevented her from enjoying it as much as she should have.

Recognizing that – and perhaps in psychic contact with the other skunk – Heather stood up again, and then climbed on top of Lily's heaving body.

“Don't worry, don't worry," she murmured. “You'll forget all about those worries soon. Just let your cock grow and we can have so much fun together, it's already coming along so nicely."

Then, as one skunk continued thrusting into Lily's clenching, helpless cunt, the other straddled her face, making sure that her friend's increasingly animal-like nose was pressed snug under her tail, with her slit leaking over her chin. “Just trust me, you've known me for so long," Heather crooned. “Take a deep breath and you'll really enjoy becoming a sexy, horny skunk like us."

Lily gasped as Heather sprayed her. The thought of holding her breath did flash through her mind, but with how the other skunk's cock was making her moan, it'd have been hopeless anyway. And so, half reflexively, she inhaled a deep lungful of the sweet scent and nearly passed out doing so. All her worries melted away into nothing, and she found herself sneezing at the intensity of it, splattering her lover with the same pink slime. And each sneeze left her mind feeling wonderfully empty and good.

That acceptance seemed to kick all the changes into overdrive. Lily felt both Heather's and the unnamed skunk's hands on her growing cock, because it was really too big for her to consider it a clit anymore, and it felt fantastic. Someone's wet fingers formed a tight hole for her to hump into, and she did, mind awash with the ecstasy of thrusting her new shaft into, well, what it was designed for; any warm, wet space that would have it. It felt like it was consuming her thoughts, like she couldn't think at all between the sneezing, the throbbing pleasure radiating from her swelling shaft, and the beautiful, deeply erotic wet friction of the other skunk's cock deep inside her, breeding her.

Not to mention Heather's scent flooding her mind so deeply that she couldn't really tell which way was up and which way was down until she hopped off to watch the show, while eagerly stroking her own, matching cock. Lily stared at it, watching the whole thing twitch and throb, leaking that delicious pink slime that she felt almost addicted to all of a sudden. But as Heather moved, she looked down at the other beautiful skunk rutting her, and saw her own cock in her grasp. It was stunning, leaking the same stuff as the other two were, drooling excitedly into her increasingly dense and long belly fur.

Gods, it felt obscene. It looked even more so, having that angry and veiny thick cock extend from just above her pussy. It looked so dirty, so perverted, so wrong to have on her otherwise fully feminine body, but at the same time she moaned out, nearly seeing stars every time the skunk squeezed it.

It was only further intensified by the fact that she was staring to feel what the other girls felt. The little antennae-nubs extending from her forehead were already starting to pick up on their emotions and sensations, and so, Lily could partially feel what fucking her own wet, slutty pussy felt like while also feeling her own side of the act in vivid color. And she felt Heather, felt the adoring admiration that her friend had for her, how turned on she was by watching her change, and how good her own cock felt as she stroked it.

Three different focuses were too much pleasure at once.

Lily realized she was going to cum. She was going to cum and squirt all over herself with that beautiful shaft, and then there'd be nothing left of her. It didn't make any sense to draw the line at cumming, but it felt right to her dazed mind. It was a natural exclamation mark to end her life as a human, as by now, she was covered in black and white fur, her face elongated into a snout, and a warm, fluffy tail slowly growing from the base of her spine. There was barely anything left to distinguish herself from them.

And that was alright. Being one of them felt just right.

“That's it! Cum all over yourself!" Heather cheered. “H-hmh, I'm gonna… g-gonna cum pretty soon too."

She aimed her stunning cock at Lily's breasts, which felt heavy and enormous compared to what she'd previously had. Just then, Lily felt the skunk throb heavily inside her, under that new appendage, and deep in the clutching wet hole that she was more familiar with having. The pink slime, or perhaps seed, erupted into her very core like a warm torrent of virility, while the skunk moaned with mismatched feminine bliss. That eruption of cum inside her was when Lily really stopped being Lily, when the transformation was completed. Oh, sure, just like Heather she kept her previous memories, even if they felt distant, but each spurt of cum that her leaking snatch eagerly swallowed further established her new identity, finalizing the infection that had begun when Heather sneezed on her.

She was a skunk, a skunk with a beautiful cock just like her two friends.

And she came hard, hips bucking as the first warm rope of cum – pink, like everything her species produced – erupted from her jerking cock and soaked her breasts. It felt so incredibly intense, and each moment was focused entirely on that shaft, rather than her whole body like the more feminine orgasms were, and she totally understood why the other skunks were so eager to slide theirs into every willing hole. Gods, she was, too. She moaned again as Heather joined them in orgasm, her feelings echoing through the other two as they all shared each other's pleasure. She felt more of that slick, sexy, sweet heat splatter across her curvy body, and she never wanted it to stop, never wanted to leave the almost divine level of release that she was caught in as she painted herself while being bred.

In the end, she and her new lover embraced each other, smearing the pink cum over each other like a gesture of deep affection that came totally naturally to her, now. It was a gift, a blessing, a thing shared between friends and those who would become friends soon. And Lily was thankful for it. Oh, she should've never resisted to begin with, because if she hadn't, she might've already had time to try out fucking Heather too.

She sneezed more pink slime over her lover's tits and then burst out into giggles as she felt her cock throb at the thought, still hard despite just coating her belly in cum. It was silly how much that sexy shaft wanted to be pushed into a wet pussy, but oh, this would be so much fun.

On earth, Lily gasped for air as her consciousness was suddenly jolted into being as the body bank discharged her, like something between an adult newborn and a cooked and canned whole turkey. It felt like a big bang in her head, as idle nerves suddenly sparked a firestorm of activity through her skull.

“Fuck," she groaned. A backup being restored like this meant something had gone catastrophically wrong, and the health sensors implanted into her previous body hadn't reported back to the ship, which hadn't reported that she was alive, because she probably wasn't.

The last time it had been a stray meteor that hit her ship right after landing. This time, she had no idea, because she had no memories past enabling the FPD on her way to… she strained her mind, trying to remember. Kepler 296e? That had to be it. She had been so excited because it was an earth-like planet, well worth surveying. Back in the distant 2000s they'd even called it an “object of interest," which more than anything should demonstrate its potential.

The problem was that Lily couldn't remember anything. The life sensors used a high priority system with minor local warping that used the ship's own drives to practically teleport the data to the destination. They were nearly instant at any distance. It was incredibly expensive, however, despite consisting of only a single bit – alive or not – and that system was too complicated for full memories.

Those full memories had already been sent back her way and would, in some months or years, arrive like unwanted flashbacks or alcoholic delirium. The planet was almost two thousand light years away, and so even with False-Point Relays scattered across the galaxy to speed up the flow of information, it'd be a while before she knew what happened.

Farewell, Viscount. Lily felt oddly melancholic about the old ship being stranded on some alien planet.

Some theories came to mind. The FPD might've malfunctioned. The ship might've crashed on the way to the distant system. Or she had found something on the planet that didn't like being found. Or maybe it liked being found and ate her.

She wondered how Heather was doing. Chances were that if she was dead, then Heather was no better off, but her backups were stored at a different location. Ah, well, nothing to it. She'd call on insurance, get a new – and better – ship and make the tedious journey to that binary system again. Though this time, she knew to be careful. There was clearly something wrong with it. She wiped the neo-amniotic fluid off her body, noted that she needed a wig until the replacement body grew natural hair, and started a holo-call with the insurance company.

Lily was not about to let some primitive predator or toxic plant on a distant planet beat her; she was entirely too stubborn to give up after only one death. She would survey that place.

And elsewhere, her older self was having the time of her life with the other skunks, very much enjoying her newfound cock… and wondering if she'd encounter her backup at some point in the future.