Midnight Oil Change

Accompanying story by :

The datachron lit up and began to beep incessantly in the darkened room.

Bweep. Bweep. Bweep.

The only source of light came from the chirping gadget’s book-sized screen and a television that had been left on some hours ago, white snow filling it up inside with the sound thankfully muted, yet groans emanated from the pile of pillows and the open sleeping bag on the floor.

“Mmm… what is that? What’s going on?”

“Uuh, did we fall asleep together? Yasty?”

“Oooh…”

“… Yasty? Is it ‘time’?” Those words were spoken low, and hesitant. Almost afraid.

The aurin giggled and rose slightly from the mess of pillows and plushies that had become her nest. It had started out as a temporary bed at her friend’s house a while ago but, well, instincts had kicked in a few weeks ago and it had become something monstrous, as though she could fit in a family of five in there (and probably would soon, too). She peered blearily across the second floor of the house. “No no silly, not yet. I think it might be yours instead, Maldy. We nearly slept through your alarm.” Yasty realized.

Oh, god. The alarm. Usually he didn’t need to be reminded, he could feel the sensation in his veins and the back of his mind as the time drew nearer, but most mordesh had a blind spot when they were unconscious, or drunk, or napping. Formaldehyde sat up properly from where he had pitched his indoor bivouac against Yasty’s impenetrable cushion fortress and removed his arm from around her thin, tanned shoulders. His grey eyes glowed in the dark and seemed to be aghast. “Death and decay! We mustn’t do that again! What if we doze through it next time?”

He flailed at the datachron until it shut up and switched on a nearby lamp, the light popping on with a soft, orange glow. When he turned to check on her she was already up and on her hands and knees, wearing his old settler shirt because it was pretty much the only big, roomy thing that fit her by now to be used as pajamas. She smiled brightly at him and rubbed her little nose against his (“What do they call it? An Eskimo kiss? And what is an Eskimo anyway?” the mordesh thought briefly), taking secret pleasure in how it always seemed to catch him off guard each time.

“Oh, you fret about everything way too much. It’ll be okay. You’ll always have someone watching out for you, after all.” She reassured him, rocking back into a more comfortable position. “Now come on, it’s time to change your tanks.”

“Very well.” Formaldehyde acquiesced, sighing. It was a legitimate concern, of course, his personal fear was sleeping through his various fail-safes and into the next morning, waking early and refreshed enough to roll over and make a light meal of his small beloved and the myriad of fragile little lives she now carried for the sake of her fractured race. He’d woken up to cold sweats and shaking hands many times before due to such dark dreams, but of this he would tell no one. Not even her.

Yasty tried and failed to rise from the floor by herself, masking a glimmer of discouragement behind her eyes. She’d gotten way too big for her own good and she stared up at the tall, dark-skinned mordesh as he unfolded and rose without a hitch, the lucky thin SOB. “Help me up?” She asked, reaching out to him.

“There’s really no need to rise right now. I can manage my own medicine.” He told her, bending down to clear away some of the trash that had accumulated around Yasty’s nest last night and looking for his missing shirt, but then he recalled she was still wearing it and so he discontinued his search.

“It’s much quicker with some extra hands, right? And I need to stretch my legs.” Yasty insisted, her ears tilting back a little as though they were on the verge of a disagreement.

Formaldehyde saw this and took her by the hand, smiling in that small, sad way he always did. “Alright, but it is still dark. Be wary going down the stairs.”

He held her hand through each step anyway as she waddled her way down into the lab. The young aurin was a scientist before anything else and a lot of her stuff was there, but it was also the personal medbay of her mordesh companion and he performed his various maintenances here, along with the required vitalus exchange that burdened his people every day of their immortal lives. He was on his last two hours by now; a hundred and twenty minutes after that alarm and he would be delirious and suffering – twenty minutes after that and he wouldn’t be there anymore; a flesh-eating monster left in his place.

But Yasty was far too full of contentment and hope for the future to dwell for long on such things. She hummed to herself as she balanced the paper nurse’s cap she’d left in the lab for this occasion on top of her head, waiting and rubbing her swollen midsection as Formaldehyde fetched the heavy vitalus tanks by himself.

He had a well-stocked, high-quality supply; one of the many perks of being beloved of the exiles, she guessed. Yasty nudged the light plastic step over to the medical bench and balanced upon it with aurin grace. She wobbled.

Formaldehyde slipped an arm around her waist to keep her steady. “Careful.” He reminded her.

“I am, I am. Sheesh.” She rolled her eyes at him, fiddling with the tubes. The good stuff came in from the full tank while the bad denser stuff poured down into the empty one, but both liquids – old and new – still had the murky, glowy consistency of a lava lamp. He had to obligingly bend down a little so she could stretch and reach the access ports on both his shoulders, then it was only a matter of turning on the pumps. For his own part Formaldehyde tried not to point out that she was on the verge of getting tangled up in the pipes.

Yasty pressed a button on the medbay display. There was a soft hiss, the sound of air pressure release, and then the tank by their feet began to fill with the thick, gluggy fluid.

Moments passed by as the mordesh felt himself empty. It was a tense, hollow feeling and the new vitalus was working hard to catch up with the serum already lost, but for a brief few minutes there was always a gap, and for as deep as it went throughout his body and mind it was an unfathomable chasm.

Formaldehyde gripped the edge of the medbay bed with his free hand and clenched his jaw, his brow furrowing. He thought a lot about bloody meat when most of his reserves were empty, all kinds, so long as it was raw and rare and dripping, along with the fantasy of digging his sharp teeth into something soft and warm and pliant, and how he could not have possibly realized how so very, very, very hungry he was right now…

“Uh, Maldy? ‘Holding me a little tight there…” Yasty smiled, trying to hide a wince.

The fresh vitalus seeped into his guts. He visualized more than he felt the cool splash of it hitting the sides of his polymer tanks from the interior and, as it always did, those carnivorous bestial longings immediately began to fade. Slight nausea filled the void but it was bliss compared to what had come before and even that too would equalize with time.

He realized what he was doing and let go of her at once, allowing Yasty to breathe a sigh of relief. “Phew, thanks. I know we’re eager to get these little guys out of me so we can go back to exploring Nexus, but squeeze me too hard and I would’ve joined the Arborian insemination project for nothing!”

“Yasty.” Formaldehyde said.

“Not to mention the queen would kill me! She picked out the best and strongest of her consorts to-”

The mordesh gently unwound the pipes from the aurin’s body even as the dialysis continued. His eyes already seemed to be glowing brighter from the new, fresh serum. “I’ve been mulling it over for many months now and I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be around you once your babies are born.” He admitted with great sorrow.

Yasty forgot the rest of what she was going to say. Her ears flattened back against her skull. “Huh? Why?” She asked, perplexed.

“Tonight should have illustrated this perfectly.” He said, taking her delicately by the shoulders and smiling sadly. “Look at you. Your belly is brimming with primal life and I am the dead. Were I to turn ravenous I would seek that primal life like a homing missile and… I don’t know… there’s a multitude of reasons. I fear I will injure them, that I may cross-contaminate them with my cruel contagion and unlike yourself Yasty who has accepted this risk to be with me your young cannot consent. No, I’d rather inject myself with mortalus than live with the consequences of what I may do.”

He hesitated for a moment and wiped at his eyes briefly. He wasn’t crying, but maybe it was just a reflex-like action in case he was. “Death… it has no right to consort with the unsullied living.” He finished.

Yasty was silent and thinking his words through as the last few drops of the expended vitalus serum filled the tank. It would have to be disposed of later on, but they had an incinerator for that job right out the back. Soon the young aurin’s smile returned but it was pitying; understanding. She leaned forward enough to wrap her arms around his translucent midsection and gave him an awkward, what she considered to be well-deserved hug. “Oh Mal, you’re always so melodramatic. You should write soap operas.” She chided, affection infused within every word.

Before he could interrupt her again she shrugged one of his large hands from off of her shoulder and held the cool, gentle digits and palm against the side of her belly and waist. The little ones in there had been squirming and kicking around ever since the datachron had woke her up (nearly all six of them, as her scanbot had once checked out. Yes, she had used a scanbot on herself for that), but she hoped the sensation might help to get her feelings across.

“It’s true that these babies might not end up in the safe environment they deserve, like on Arboria, but they’re here because my people need a new generation of aurin here on Nexus. We’re on Nexus! Anything could kill us! Everything has tried! We’ll have to contend with the Dominion, the strain, pretty much just the planet itself trying to eat us up. I dunno… maybe I’m the cruel one thinking it’s okay to bring children into a world like this, but what I do know is that until these kittens are grown enough for the aurin commune to nurture and raise them properly they’re going to need a daddy, and I wanted it to be you. I don’t care if you’re a mordesh or a zombie or not even an aurin at all, you’re a great guy! And I love you, so there.”

By the time she had finished speaking she was already a sniffling mess. Formaldehyde leant down further to comfort her but felt the tug of the now empty pipes at his shoulders and sighed briefly in frustration as he unscrewed them first. When he was free he gathered Yasty up in his long, decayed arms, stroking a hand along her soft drooping ears and snow-white hair. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispered quickly, cursing himself, “ssh, darling. I love you too. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m not that adept at affection. It’s been a long time.”

“No, it’s okay. You made a lot of good points as well.” The aurin argued, drying her tears on the sleeve of her shirt. “Just don’t go. Don’t go.”

“I won’t.” He told her.

“For better or for worse. I promise.”