Changed by the Alien

"I'm going to miss it too, Kirsten," Carina had said.

"Carina, what is going to happen after you leave?" Renee's arms had been covering her chest now, as if the very thought made her cold.

"I return to my people. For one thing, they'll be able to make it so my body can survive without nanites tied to this ship."

"I get that, but what will it be like? You've been away from them for so long."

"I'll get up to speed on things very quickly. My consciousness will be re-uploaded into the group consciousness. All I've learned and experienced will be distributed to all other Yarakind via download. In the same way, everything the shared consciousness has learned in my time away will be downloaded into me."

Carina had mentioned the shared consciousness, uploading, and downloading to Kirsten shortly after they'd first made love. But only now, after they'd shared so much, had a painful question occur to her.

"All those memories of, I'm guessing, billions of Yarakind will be downloaded into your mind?" Kirsten had asked.

Carina had nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "That's right."

Kirsten stared at the beautiful alien.

"Kirsten, are you all right? Why are you looking at me like that?" Carina had asked.

Kirsten hadn't answered because the truth was too terrible—it caught in her throat. But perhaps she could show Carina...

With her fingers, Kirsten had reached for her breast and expressed a single drop of milk. It dropped into the pool, at first a thick blue world surrounding by crystal clear water. Then the blueness began to diffuse, its becoming mist-like and indeterminate. Finally all the blueness was gone, lost in the water as if it had never been.

Carina had watched, but did not seem to comprehend. Renee did, however. "Carina, your people that serve as space explorers—they're cut off from the group consciousness because of the vast distances, right?"

"Yes."

"And what's the average time your space explorers go between their upload and download routines?"

"Usually, the equivalent of one of your months at most."

"And you've been separated from this group mind for over 300 years?" Renee had asked.

"Yes."

"Is that the most any Yarakind has been separated from the group?"

"It would be."

"Do you think," Renee had said, "that you might be different than other of your explorers now because of all the time you've been away?"

"Of course, with all these experiences I've separately had and not been able to share."

Kirsten had finally found the words, and they'd come spilling out. "And that makes you special, special because you've been on your own for so long, special because of what you've shared with us."

"I understand your concern now, sweetness," Carina had said.

Kirsten's face had beamed in relief. "You do?"

"You're both afraid that all my memories will be diluted if they're uploaded into the group consciousness."

"That's right!" Renee had said.

"You don't understand. Dilution can sometimes be a good thing—alleviating painful memories. Disbursing guilt so that the one that engendered it is able to go on." Her eyes had drifted away from the mother-daughter pair.

"What are you talking about?" Kirsten had asked.

Carina's focused gaze had returned to them. "Just trying to make the point that the issue here isn't dilution. It's preservation. I have to upload my consciousness and share it precisely because of everything I've experienced here on Earth while alone, including my wonderful time with you."

Kirsten's jaw had been struck slack. "But you said you hadn't really lived until you met me."

"I hadn't. That incredible feeling of being with you, an experience that bordered on the religious for me. But what happens if this body is killed or captured by one of your governments? Everything we shared—the love we've felt—would be lost. If, however, those memories are shared between a billion Yarakind, they will be safe. Preserved. Existing forever. A monument to what we had."

Kirsten had been about to scream when a polite chime sounded in the poolroom. "Oh, the latest genetic analyses of the offspring are ready," Carina had said. "I'll be back in a few minutes to go over the results with you." Her lithe body had lifted itself from the pool, and wringing out her wet hair, Carina walked naked from the room to the ship's medical area.

Kirsten had watched the movement of Carina's exposed hips and ass as the beautiful alien had stepped from the chamber. Normally, it made Kirsten horny. This time, it had only made her sad.

"She's normally so much more aware of human emotion and social cues. It's like she's being deliberately obtuse. How can she not see it, Mom?" Kirsten had asked. "Getting uploaded now is just killing herself."

"Honey, this is tough enough without using such charged language."

Kirsten had begun to sob. "It's true!"

"This is what her people do."

"And that would be okay when everyone is the same person anyway, give or take a month of memories. The average Yarakind isn't an individual—not in any way that counts. Carina is now, and—oh god—she's going to throw it all away."

"Maybe she has a point about the memories being distributed, living forever in others..." Renee had said, partly trying to assure her daughter, partly herself.

"I think what's more likely is we'll just be stories other Yarakind tell, kind of like Carina's sex stories about other alien races. She had the memories of what happened, but she doesn't care about them because they belong to everybody, not her alone. It's the same as anything else."

Renee had waded across the pool and held her daughter. "Don't say that, honey, please, I don't want us to think like that."

But Kirsten hadn't been able to stop herself from telling the horrible truth. "And that's not the worst of it, Mom. I could live with the memories of us being alien jerk-off material if Carina would still appreciate us, cherish what we had here. But she won't, not when she's flooded with a billion memories herself. She'll be just like every other Yarakind—a generic copy. She's going to kill who she is, and not even realize she's doing it."

Both women had broken down crying.

It had only been that one time that Kirsten and Renee had acknowledged the pain. They'd never told the men their concerns, both mother and daughter burying the dread of Carina's departure by throwing themselves into the role of bred sluts. Being flooded by cum, and flooding others with theirs, was a form of pain relief.

But in her private moments, such as now as she studied her pregnant body in the mirror, Kirsten was very aware she would lose Carina, even if Carina did not appreciate that she would lose herself. It was especially acute today.

Her mother came into her room, similarly nude, body similarly heavy with life.

"You look amazing," Renee said, coming up behind her daughter. Kirsten felt the warmth of her mother's belly against her back, felt a kick from the child growing inside Renee. Owing to her swollen belly, Renee had to lean in order to fully wrap her arms around her daughter. "Are you excited?"

"I am. I can't believe it came up so fast."

"Me neither," Renee said. "I can't believe this is the day me and my little girl are going to become mommies together."

Birth is hard.

Yarakind science made it safer, to be sure. The ship's medical bay was more advanced than any hospital on Earth, violet-tinged tendrils of liquid metal descending from the ceiling to conduct scans and hand Carina instruments as needed.

The nanite-synthesized anesthetics were better than their human-produced counterparts, too, able to mitigate pain even as Kirsten and Renee's enhanced healing ability fought to break them down.

In the end, however, there was still blood, and pained grunts as daughter and mother, their beds side-by-side, pushed almost in unison.

Her father was by Kirsten's side, holding her hand, encouraging her, toweling off her brow. And Renee's son was by her side doing much the same, telling his mother how good she was doing, how much he loved her.

In the center of it all, Carina was like a conductor, guiding the ship's machines as they attended the women.

There had been no cries from the offspring once they were born, a sign of their Yarakind mental "hard drives" being functionless absent formatting. Both women found it unsettling even though Carina had warned them ahead of time. The liquid metal arms whisked the offspring to the medical pods for maturation.

Their healing abilities meant both women's bodies were almost fully back to their fit and tight selves within a few hours, but maturing the offspring to the equivalent of 20-year-olds, Carina said, would take about a week.

The next few days had passed slowly for Kirsten, even though she and her mother were finally again able to go out in public. Going to what few restaurants and shops the area offered hadn't been as satisfying as she'd expected, however. Having to wear clothes, having to behave around her family as if they weren't her lovers was constricting.

Renee had noticed her daughter's attitude while they were going to church for the first time in two months, pulling up into the parking lot. "Maybe you're looking at it wrong, honey. It's fun having our secret. Look at all these other families. What you see is what you get. That's not the case with us, though. None of these people have any idea what we do, what we've been changed into, how we give our family sex."

Kirsten liked that, found that it made her pussy soak her panties while standing in the pews. There she was, surrounded by good, churchgoing folk, and looking the part herself, nobody else knowing that once services were done, she would tentacle fuck her father, brother, and mother. Wearing clothes and acting normal in public quickly became an in-joke she shared with her family.

But she still preferred home, the freedom of being nude, the freedom of giving herself to her family whenever the mood struck. She also preferred being close to Carina, and visited the ship daily, watching the maturation progress with interest.

The medical pods were large, transparent tubes filled with a thick, clear liquid. In them, the offspring wore breathing apparatuses. A metallic ring surrounded each offspring's forehead, which Carina had said was for the downloading process. Nutrition lines ran into their arms and legs.

Kirsten and Renee were part of the nutrition system. Arms of violet-hued liquid metal would descend from the ceiling, attach to their tits, and begin to pump. Kirsten enjoyed watching her and Renee's blue milk fill the IV lines that flowed into their respective children. Despite the physical separation, it made her feel close to them. It made her feel like she was contributing. Like she was a mother.

By the seventh day, the offspring were fully-grown. Biologically, they were the same age as Kirsten, and like Carina would remain that way for centuries.

Their eyes were closed as if sleeping, no consciousness having yet been installed. "Your child takes after her father, I think," Carina commented to Kirsten as she and Renee were in for a pumping session.

"She really does," Renee agreed.

Kirsten's child had hair long as hers, but auburn instead of strawberry blonde. It waved as a single mass in the currents moving inside the maturation chamber. Her breasts were as big and pert as the woman who had bore her. The nose and area around the eyes, however, took more after Roger. Kirsten found that it made her heart swell.

Between her legs was what Kirsten couldn't help but think was the most feminine looking cock and balls she had ever seen—perfectly smooth, practically elegant in their shape. Kirsten could see her daughter's—was that even the correct term?—pussy as well.

Renee's new daughter, meanwhile, had beach blonde hair like Tyler's, and was similarly tall as he was. Her breasts were smaller than Kirsten's child—more athletic. Her skin, though, was slightly darker, an interesting contrast with her light hair.

This daughter, too, had the hermaphroditic cock and pussy tandem, though Kirsten noted with some jealousy that this daughter's dick was a little larger than her offspring's.

"Is it wrong that seeing them is making me hot?" Renee asked, her tentacle peaking out from her slit.

"It's natural, under the circumstances," Carina said. "Have you thought of a name, Renee?"

"We've decided on Phoebe."

"Really? That was the name of one of my copilots."

"I know. Kirsten told me. Tyler and I thought it a nice way to honor someone that, well, helped make you, you," Renee said.

"Daddy and I liked Tyler and Mommy's inspiration, so we are going with Ariel," Kirsten said. "Our children wouldn't be here if not for you, so naming them after a part of you just felt right."

"That...is incredibly sweet. Thank you." Carina said. "I look forward to you getting to know Ariel and Phoebe very soon."

That evening, the family sat around the patio fire pit. The moon hadn't risen yet, and the stars arched across the dark, rural night sky. The fire was small, meant just for light—no need to help the summer night's heat. A pleasant breeze lifted embers into the air. The girls had glasses of chilled white wine in their hands, the men drinking Sam Adams summer ale.

The firelight played over their nude bodies. At a distance, the family gathering would have looked like a the beginning of a pagan bacchanal.

"It won't be much longer now until they're out of the maturation pods," Kirsten said, cozying next to her brother. "Carina didn't give an exact time, but I have a feeling it'll be tomorrow."

"I went to see them this afternoon—beautiful," Roger said, his wife on his lap.

"Did she say how long after Phoebe and Ariel are out of the pods before they'll be leaving?" Tyler asked.

Kirsten shook her head. "She didn't."

"I hope they stay at least a little while longer," Tyler said. "Not to be sentimental or anything, but it would be nice to see who we brought into the world."

Kirsten stared into the firelight. "It would be really cruel after all this if we didn't get to interact with our offspring—our children—at least a tiny bit."

"Carina's not like that. She's not just going to whisk off until we're ready to say goodbye," Renee said.

What if we're never ready? Kirsten wondered.

"I don't know," Roger said, "a long goodbye might be harder. Getting to know Phoebe and Ariel, and then having them disappear into space, never to see them again." He took a long swig of his beer. "Sometimes it's better to rip the band-aide off quick."

The family was silent for a moment. The fire crackled, and around them the fireflies sparked. Kristen knew there was so much to talk about, so much to get ready for. Not just the departure of Carina and their offspring, but their lives here on Earth in the aftermath of all that had happened. A family of tentacle-dicked nymphomaniacs—where did they go from here?

Before the subject could be raised, Tyler saw something from the corner of his eye. He jumped up from the patio couch he was sharing with his sister. "There's someone coming from the woods." Far from where the firelight reached, a shadow emerged at the far edge of the lawn.

Roger pushed his wife off his lap, stood beside his son. "Girls, go inside."

Renee and Kirsten had begun to obey, but then they heard a melodious voice: "Beautiful night, isn't it?"

Mother and daughter would have kept going had it been a male speaking from the shadows, but the female voice made the approaching stranger less threatening.

Kirsten's curiosity was piqued. It couldn't be Carina. Was it some particularly perverse camper, far from the state park's main trails, lured here by their campfire like a moth? Would they have to force the stranger to drink their milk to make her forget what she'd seen?

As the shadow drew closer, it became clear it wasn't one person, but two. Another female voice, this one throatier, huskier, called to them. "Do you mind if we join you?"

The visitors were close enough now for firelight to begin to reach them: two nude females, one long and lean, the other a bit shorter and more curvy. Between their legs, an erect cock bobbed with their every step.

"Oh my god," Kirsten whispered, suddenly sounding on the verge of tears.

Renee's voice cracked as well. "Our babies?" The women returned to the fire, each instinctively drawing close to the man that had bred them.

Finally they arrived on the brick patio, the fire's light fully on them. Ariel—Kirsten and her father's daughter—with her auburn hair and full breasts. Phoebe—Tyler and his mother's daughter—with her blonde hair and athletic build.

"I guess I had it in my head you had to stay close to the ship, like Carina," Tyler said.

"Carina's body needs the ship to stay alive, but we don't," Ariel said in a low voice befitting a film noir's femme fatale.

"But you're both basically Carina, right? A copy of her consciousness downloaded into you?" Renee asked.

"It would be too strong to say we're essentially her," said Phoebe, her lighter voice matching her lighter hair. "Our bodies are different, and so give expression to the implanted consciousness in different ways. They also experience the world differently, and acquire different experiences, diverging further from the original consciousness."

"That's a long way of saying you shouldn't think of us as Carina clones," Ariel said.

"The copy of her consciousness we received was made before you'd told her our names," Phoebe said. "Carina had to tell us only after we'd emerged from the medical pods."

Ariel approached Roger and Kirsten. "We love our names, by the way," she said, kissing her parents on the mouth.

Phoebe similarly kissed hers, one hand caressing Renee's thigh, the other Tyler's cock. "We want to thank our parents for giving them to us."

Kirsten reached for her daughter's cock while Roger probed beneath Ariel's modest, smooth balls with his fingers, and found her wet slit. "How would a good girl like you thank her mommy and daddy, Ariel?"

"You know how, Daddy. I inherited more than just both of your looks. No limits for those I love."

"We have memories of what each of you like," Phoebe said, her own cock now being stroked by her father while Renee felt the new daughter's breasts. "But all these bodies' holes are virgin. It seems right for our mommies and daddies should help break us in, doesn't it?"

"And for good daughters like us to make the pussies and cocks that gave us life feel wonderful," Ariel added.

Roger's own dick was rock hard; it's tentacle extending from the yawning tip. "Your Mommy should be the first to have you—she earned it, doing the hard work of bringing you to term."

"That's sweet, and I so want to have her." Ariel looked at her father with fuck-me eyes. "Of course, but I don't want to leave out Daddy. There's no reason we can't all be together...at the same time."

Kirsten mouth dropped, a cocktail of perverse need and motherly pride mixing inside her.

"Yes, we should be fucked the first time by both our parents," Phoebe said, guiding Renee and Tyler onto the soft lawn. "They had to come together to make us, so coming together in us should be natural."

Kirsten watched as her mother lay down, and spread her legs. No tentacle emerging. Her pussy's slickness was obvious in the fire pit's light. Phoebe guided her shaft into Renee's ready folds.

"Mmmm, I can feel my daughter's hard dick—reminds me of her father's," Renee breathed.

"I can't believe how tight my mommy is." Phoebe turned to Tyler, standing behind her. She reached behind herself, fingered her pussy in front of her father. "And I don't think my daddy will believe how tight his little girl is."