Interlude 1
Pantor Quigly is having a bad solar. Really, a bad lunar or perhaps even a bad orbital. If one were uncharitable one might conclude he was having a bad life. Although Quigly would quibble with that, since he considered his childhood to be a fairly happy one. His recent career move to Flotsam, he would grudgingly concede, has been an unmitigated disaster.
Quigly stops on the narrow footpath and is immediately barged into by the floating cargo drone carrying his meagre belongings. How did it come to this?
Quigly was nothing if not a methodical thinker, well trained in the Bureaucratic Method, so to him it seems his recent misfortune is an indirect consequence of his happy childhood. Baby Pantor was the son of Sanitation workers, a lower-middle manager mother in the Bureau of Refuse Disposal Logistics (Non-Hazardous Division) and a father who specialized in sewer unclogging. As a Quigly on the planet of Administradt he was expected, almost required really, to join the Sanitation Guild himself and carry on the proud family legacy of disposing of the unwanted and the unmentionable. But Quigly was loved as a child, some would say coddled even, and was raised to pursue his passions and to believe that he could do anything he wanted when he grew up. This belief festered as he aged, became a flaw in his character, a revolutionary idea that would normally have been stamped out by cold reality before his induction into a Guild. But alas Pantor Quigly was gifted, scoring exceptionally high on his Standard Aptitude Tests for Strategic Thinking, Organization, Memory, and Paperwork. In light of his academic achievement Quigly was granted a Promotionary Admission to the Central Management Academy and thus was given a chance to indulge his mad dream a little longer, the option to, perhaps, do whatever it was he wanted.
Now Quigly had no problem with working in Sanitation, in principle. He loved and respected his parents and knew from growing up in a Sanitation Family how important Waste Management Logistics were to Society. As his father was wont of saying, ‘No Citizen wants to think about shit until it’s flowing down the street.’ But he also felt that he was destined for something more, that he could better contribute to the Plan from closer to the top, maybe help guide Policy to beef up core infrastructure. More than anything Quigly wanted to get onto the Upper Management Track to join the Administrata. In Quigly’s misguided imagination he thought he had a legitimate chance.
Sometimes young Pantor would fret that his dream to avoid Sanitation would hurt his parents, whom he loved, but they overall seemed quite sanguine about his choice. They ultimately wanted their son to be happy and were very proud of his scholastic achievements. They could envision the benefits of having a Quigly in the Adminstrata, see infrastructure budgets swell enough to stop playing catch-up and start much needed upgrades to the system. But Quigly’s parents also knew, but didn’t say, that their son faced a significant uphill climb through entrenched power structures and nepotism. That unless he was very brilliant and very good at politics, he would eventually end up back in the family business.
“Please Mooooove! This one requires through!”
Quigly blinks himself back into the present and realizes he is blocking traffic. A very odd looking Blue is waiting impatiently, hands on very wide hips, a strange glandular mass on their crotch thrust forward. Was that an udder? And did they have breasts? Four of them? On a Blue? The alien snorts at him and pushes by, their hoofed feet clacking on the steel shod ground and their ropey tail whipping at him as they pass. Much, Quigly thought, like cattle dispatching a fly.
Quigly sighs deeply. He is making his way down the Flotsam City Mesa, toward the rough and no doubt cheaper districts near the edges. He had previously enjoyed a modest apartment in one of the lowest terraces, official lodging in the Administradt Consulate. Since he no longer worked for the Administradt Government, had in effect revoked his Employee-Citizenship, he was now homeless. Quigly was scrupulous about maintaining savings according to the Best Practices of Financial Security (Subsection Working Abroad), but those would only cover two Lunars unless he was thrifty. So he is off downslope to find a bargain apartment, likely in a slum.
He could always leave, couldn’t he? Buy a steerage ticket back to Administradt, return to his parents a complete failure. His father could probably get him instated in Sewage, he was always short on uncloggers and there was always another fatberg. It wasn’t as though Quigly even liked Flotsam very much. He gazed out over the Junk Desert, the heaps of space detritus that lay in random, disorganised piles as far as the eye could see, and shuddered. Absolute chaos. As the child of Sanitation administrators, the unregulated dumping ground was almost a personal insult. As a cultural bureaucrat, the city wasn’t much better: anarchy, organized crime, a lack of building codes, zoning, or inspections. It was downright barbaric. How could he have been so naive to think coming here was a good idea?
Quigly had gone to the Central Management Academy brimming with enthusiasm. Here was his chance to work amongst his peers, the best and brightest Administradt had to offer, and to distinguish himself as one of their number. He threw himself into his studies, a challenging curriculum designed to educate the next generation of top tier bureaucrats and administrators. It was endlessly fascinating to Quigly and he had a genuine aptitude for the work, and in fact quickly rose to the top of many of his classes. All of them, really, except for those with an element of networking and peer evaluation. Quigly, it must be said, was deeply unpopular with his fellow students.
Quigly always suspected he was disliked due to a kind of genetic character flaw. Quigly’s father was a wide and boisterous man, charming and fond of more than his allotment of drink rations. But he was also a very clever man, capable of ingenious solutions to even the most stubborn sewer obstruction and was thus widely respected by his peers. Quigly’s mother was small and tidy, a woman with exquisite organizational skills and the quiet tenacity to wear down any obstacle. She might not have been the most creative thinker, but she possessed the valuable ability to hold an entire system in her mind, and was therefore an ideal coordinatrix and bureaucrat. Quigly often felt that he had inherited his fathers creative spark and his mother’s administrative flair, but that their charisma and patience had completely skipped a generation. Which made Quigly come off, in hindsight, like an overtly earnest know-it-all prig.
Quigly did have one unlikely friend, Elisxa Blurgthistle, the eldest daughter of the Vice Chancellor of Reimbursements. She was, well, very beautiful, poised, and connected, ideally positioned really, to have an inside track to high office in the Administrata. Which made it so very peculiar when she singled out Quigly for a mutually beneficial association. Elisxa was deeply ambitious but also self-reflective enough to understand her strengths, that she was blonde and elegant and attractive and fundamentally good at people, but also her weaknesses, which tended toward the more technical side of Bureaucratic Theory. Since Quigly was at the top of every single class Elisxa struggled in, she had proposed a friendship wherein he would tutor her in the Bureaucratic Method and she, in turn, would teach him how to network and function within the highly transactional world of Upper Management. Somehow this strictly professional arrangement grew into a genuine friendship, and one night, while discussing liaisons as a form of career building, Elisxa seduced Quigly, and so began what was either a wonderful affair or a formal sexual alliance between an unpopular genius and a beautiful aristocratic shark. It was the first great romantic misadventure of Quigly’s monkish life and he quickly understood that he was deeply, problematically, in love with her. But while Elisxa was inexplicably fond of him and seemed to genuinely enjoy the sex, this was transparently mostly a networking tryst for her. Quigly, being rather bright, understood all of this intellectually, but deep inside he did not like it in the least.
Whenever Elisxa left his company dressed in her flirtiest, fanciest frocks to go for a night of ‘wetworking upward’, Quigly would silently seethe in the dark. He knew he shouldn’t take it personally, in fact that he should be grateful that such a beautiful woman and worthwhile professional contact had decided to spend any amount of her time with him, but he wanted more. It was provincial of him, a mark perhaps of growing up in a Guild family, but deep down he wished for the kind of mostly monogamous love pact his parents shared. He knew that would never happen with Elisxa, liaisons were too central to Administrata politics, but he could be in a Power Couple with her, her primary public partner and lover. Quigly might only be the son of Sanitation bureaucrats, but he was brilliant, among the smartest at the Academy. If he could leverage this into a good Internship, and from there a strong position in the Administrata maybe he could be worthy of Elisxa’s true affection. In the dark loneliness of his domicile, Quigly resolved that he would make himself worthy of her.
Of course, that isn’t at all how things worked out.
Quigly snaps back to attention as he happens upon one of the seemingly random funiculars of The Flotsam Mesa. This example was not much more than a large industrial platform mounted on a rail that zigged and zagged around buildings and stone spurs like a slow motion rollercoaster. But the contraption was heading downslope and Quigly was rather tired of trudging through the maze of refuse buildings and besides, his rented cargo pod was billing him by the hour, so even a paid shortcut was probably worth it. Even if it was via inexpertly planned ad hoc transit. Quigly taps his Keyband against the paystile and climbs aboard, his cargo pod obediently hovering into an empty space next to him. The funicular shudders worryingly into motion and makes its way downslope, grinding around a booster rocket apartment. Quigly studies his fellow riders: one a giant furry creature with huge red globular eyes and the other a truly beautiful if unorthodox woman. Quigly tries not to stare, but rather obviously is, looking at her angular face and silvery hair, seeing her ram horns with their dangling hoop earrings, eyes arresting on the way her three large breasts tented the tight indigo fabric of her simple long jersey dress. The woman coughs pointedly, and Quigly glances guiltily away, blushing. The woman smirks and rolls her eyes, and then clambers off the funicular at an intermediate stop, her hooved feet clicking on the steel platform. Quigly watches her walk away, her long sinuous tail waving out behind her shapely ass, the dress clinging to her swaying hips. Quigly sighs, there was certainly nobody like that on Administradt. Maybe Flotsam wasn’t all bad?
A few juddering minutes later, including a couple stomach twisting drops, and the funicular platform grinds to a halt at its lowest station. Quigly disembarks, laboriously checks his still unfamiliar Keyband for directions, and sets off still further downslope toward his future flop apartment home. His cargo pod barks an electronic chime signifying another fare increase, and follows him obediently down the gangway.
As Quigly walks down a winding, but surprisingly well paved road, his mind drifts back to Administradt and his path to Flotsam. One of the most important stages in the Central Management Academy curriculum was the Internship. Students competed for posts in Departments throughout the Bureaucracy, with the best students generally landing coveted internships in Administrata offices, surefire entry points to the Inside Track of Senior Leadership. Quigly had thought he and Elisxa would have no trouble landing excellent internship positions: Quigly was obviously one of the brightest students in his class and Elisxa, after his tutoring, was no slouch herself and besides had the Blargthistle bureaucratic dynasty cache. For Elisxa this proved entirely true: she had her pick of several lucrative Adminstrata posts and chose an internship in the Bureau of Political Grievances and Appointments that would allow her to network across Departments and begin amassing a stockpile of favours. Quigly, conversely, was shitfuck out of luck. It seemed that despite his aptitude no Administrata or Administrata-adjacent office would seriously consider hiring him. He remembered how interviewers’ eyes would glaze over as he mentioned his background, the limp handshakes, and then the warm back-clapping hugs and excitement when the inevitable gormless failson of a senior bureaucrat would show up for the next scheduled interview slot. It was apparent who the preferred candidates were. As more and more posts were filled by inferior students from powerful families, it became clear to Quigly that he couldn’t defeat the forces of institutional nepotism.
Quigly was infuriated about this in his quiet way: wasn’t he the best student at the academy? Hadn’t he proven himself, won the competition? To lose out on post after post was simply an injustice. And if he couldn’t land an excellent position, how would he ever win over Elisxa? He had to do something...
Quigly realized that he had to play the nepotism game himself, that he needed some sort of sponsor with clout. And so Quigly set a meeting with the Dean of Theoretical Bureaucracy, a very respected senior academic and an emeritus member of the Administrata Senior Committee on Policy. The wizened old man, all flowing white hair and beard, eyes made huge by antique glass spectacles, listened patiently as Quigly made his case, asked for a personal recommendation to the Department of Records or the Bureau of Paperwork, even the Internal Revenue Agency, anything really. The Dean rubbed the bridge of his nose, hummed in thought, and then, with exquisite sympathy in his voice, told Quigly no. Not because Quigly didn’t deserve a good internship, because he clearly did on merit, and not because Queegly was from Sanitation, since the Dean understood better than most the importance of infrastructure. He told Quigly no because, in his estimation, Pantor Quigly was dangerous to the System. Quigly was confused, he knew the System very well, was a full Citizen of the Plan. The System of Administradt was designed for a single purpose: to create a job for every citizen. The System was Revolutionary, a response to the hypercapitalism of what was once called Markitplasse and the forces of automation that made virtually everyone redundant to the economy. Except of course, as units of consumption. As wealth inequality grew exponentially between the owners of robotic manufacturing and furloughed workers, the Markitplasse economy essentially broke. Eventually the Robber Trillionaires conceded to a Basic Income for every citizen to drive economic demand, but this didn’t remove the shame and futility of a life spent unemployed. And so the System was implemented in a bloody coup, technology was rolled back, and labour was reorganized around the Bureaucracy and the Guilds and the promise of Work For All. The Dean shook his head and told Quigly that he was unhappy with his Natural Place in the System, that he was a Dreamer, an Innovator, and that he would use any power he had to Improve the System, which would invariably lead to Creative Destruction and the Displacement of Workers. The System was all about Stability, and Quigly was, well, unstable. The Dean could not recommend Quigly enter the Administrata. The Dean took Quigly’s stunned hand in his and shook it, looked him in the eye and told him that he would make a fantastic Senior Administrator of Sanitation one day, and bid him good luck.
That night Elisxa came to see Quigly one last time. For once she came in her full Bureaucratrix costume instead of the student loungewear or cute pajamas of their usual sessions. She took Quigly’s hand and marched him straight to his domicile, kissed him hungrily, and pushed him onto his narrow bed. Off came her impeccable structured jacket, crisp blouse, pencil skirt, and panties, all tossed into a calculated reckless pile on the floor. She stood above him, aroused and strangely wistful, wearing only her black lacy brassiere, garterbelt, stockings, and her stiletto pumps with the blood red soles. Elisxa reached up and unclipped her hair from its efficient updo, a deceptively effortless looking hairstyle that Quigly knew took her ages to compose, and shook it out, letting her hair cascade down her bare shoulders in a honey coloured wave. Quigly’s heart hammered in his chest, he was finally getting to see Elisxa Blargthistle at her weaponized seductive best.
Elisxa fucked Quigly hungrily, with an energy and enthusiasm that she seldom mustered. And then she made love to him slowly, tenderly, laying in his arms afterward in a way that was wasteful of time. She brushed his hair from his face and smiled at him sadly, told Pantor how much she cared for him, how much she enjoyed their time together when she could just be herself and relax. And then she broke Quigly’s heart, told him she couldn’t see him anymore, that with her new internship she had to focus full time on her career, and that she had to take lovers strategically. As she dressed to leave Elisxa explained that now wasn’t the time for romance, it was a time to build networking connections and amass the favours she would need to climb the Bureaucratic Ladder. She hoped Pantor could understand. She stepped back into her heels, kissed a stunned Pantor on the cheek, and told him to call her in the future when he needed to requisition a new fleet of garbage trucks. And then she walked out of his life.
Quigly was frantic, there had to be a way to win Elisxa back! He just needed, just needed to climb the bureaucratic org chart high enough to earn her esteem! Then he would be desirable! Professionally and personally! But without sponsorship or family connections, how was he to do it? It wasn’t as if he was the first outsider to pursue prestige in the Adminstrata, and some of the others had managed quite successfully. What did they do? The Vice-Minister of Propaganda came from non-management origins and had also tested into the Central Management Academy. Although she was raised in the Media Guilds, a much less humble origin than Sanitation, and was herself a perfect storm of ruthlessness, beauty, intelligence, and the ability to sound utterly convincing when reciting even the most implausible of platitudes. In hindsight, it was a wonder she wasn’t a Chancellor. Another outsider, ‘The Engineer’, gained a sort of power and infamy by seducing a top Party Secretary and then brilliantly engineering a series of personnel moves and jurisdictional rule changes that briefly made him one of the most powerful men on Administradt. His plan eventually crumbled around a misfiled reimbursement form and he was now serving a lifetime of exile in the Iron Colonies. Another powerful outsider was Mr. Lottery, the Inspector General of Pomp and Morale, who arose from an obscure life as an ordinary machinist after traveling to the junkyard planet Flotsam and discovering The Miracle Clock, a wondrous mechanical device that perpetually tells time without an apparent power source or advanced technology. The Miracle Clock has since become a living metaphor for the System, a machine kept forever active by the collective action of a trillion tiny gears, and Mr. Lottery, for his contribution, was elevated to High Office. Maybe something like that was the ticket? To leave Administradt and achieve something incredible, get back on the Career Track by Special Merit...
Something about Flotsam stuck in Quigly’s head. And then he remembered! Frantically he dug out the Book of Internships (Vol. 355.7.95, Updated) and leafed through the still open positions. There! There was still an internship available in the Bureau of Technological Acquisitions with a posting in the Adminstradt Consulate on Flotsam. It was a remote posting, far from the networking and power building on the homeworld, but it was still technically an Administrata position. A position that Quigly, as a top student, was profoundly overqualified for, so much so that they would have to hire him lest he file a Grievance with the Court of Human Resources. Quigly knew that a trip to Flotsam was a gamble, that he really had no hope of finding another Miracle Clock, but it was still theoretically a management track position and maybe there, free from all of the power games on Adminstradt, his competence would finally get him noticed. If he played his cards right, maybe he could leverage time on Flotsam into a toehold in the Ministry of Technnology or the Department of Extrasolar Affairs. It was either this or returning to Sanitation.
Quigly thought again of Elisxa, straddling him, her slick stockinged thighs clutching at him, her long hair free and wild, moaning as they fucked.
Quigly took out an application booklet and began to file the paperwork: Flotsam was the only choice.
Quigly stumbles as he takes a stair awkwardly, almost falling down a whole flight. This is a particularly uneven set, even for Flotsam, and is wedged into the gap between two solidly constructed concrete buildings, a rarity for the planet. Pantor puts out a hand to stabilize himself, grateful for the familiar rough solidity of brutalist construction. He never thought about it really, but he misses the orderly uniformity of heroic concrete architecture. It reminds him of home. Quigly navigates his way down the stairs and glances back, sees that the buildings are some sort of kiln or furnace business, that the concrete structures exist to contain industrial ovens. Quigly sighs, somehow disappointed by this.
Quigly follows a path around one of the furnace buildings, trying to find a more formal road or maybe another funicular or gondola, and instead encounters a shock of greenery. He stops and stares, agog: there, behind a row of strange seamless silver plinths, is a park, of sorts. There’s a wide meadow of grass and stretching upslope is a thicket of dense trees and shrubs growing haphazardly out of derelict buildings. Pantor clicks his tongue, offended a little at the lack of planning. Of course a Flotsam park is just a randomly planted, untamed forest. Parks on Administradt were serious bureaucratic business, either highly formal and landmark adjacent or opti-standardized for efficient sports, recreation, and childhood play. This is far more like the wilderness from a pre-civilization documentary. But well... it is the first bit of greenspace that Pantor has seen on Flotsam and he’s having a particularly shitty day. Quigly shrugs his shoulders and makes up his mind.
Quigly walks between the silver plinths and feels a kind of static charge pass through him. He walks into the middle of the meadow and takes off his synthetic tweed jacket, lays it on the grass, and sits on it, knees tucked under his shirt sleeved arms. His luggage drone bobs to a stop and hovers disapprovingly. Quigly looks around at the tall, slightly odd looking grass which is dotted with white flowers that have a slightly intoxicating smell. He feels himself relax just a little for the first time in what has felt like lunars. This is nice. He reaches over and plucks a blade of the strange grass and looks at it closely. Up close he can see it is serrated along the edge and is made up of a repeating pattern of tiny shapes. Pantor smiles, delighted by the fractal organization apparent in the plant, a greater whole built precisely from regular units arranged by some sort of biological algorithm. Despite the organic disorder apparent in the park, Quigly can sense the underlying principles of growth patterns and sunlight maximization that governed every plant and made the entire system work. In it’s own deceptive way, he figures, this park is probably the single most organized thing on Flotsam. Pastor lays on his back and laughs, maybe bureaucratic reasoning could thrive here after all.
Nepotism certainly could.
Quigly thought about his time working at the Administradt Consulate on Flotsam and frowns. He had such high hopes when he first arrived on the planet and walked into the narrow stone building perched high on the Mesa terraces. Between the use of verboten Disruptive Technology and the largely local staff, the Consulate had a transgressive, progressive air. The local Director of Adminstradt Affairs, an older woman partial to very large hair and enormous shoulder padded pantsuits, who Quigly privately called, not unfondly, The Flagship, was an open-minded administrator who could adhere to the strict guidelines of their position from Flotsam while simultaneously showing a degree of practical discretion about actually living on an alien world. She was very smart, far too qualified for her office, and quite content to be away from Administradt and whatever thumb she had previously been under. Most importantly she was sympathetic to Pantor’s position, as foolhardy as she found it, and seemed to give him a fair chance at advancement, even if she, not unfondly, called him Lottery Boy.
Working as a Technological Acquisitions Agent in the Administradt Consulate was not without challenges. The theoretical role of the Adminstradt offices was to acquire novel alien technology from the scrap heaps and orbiting derelicts of Flotsam. In reality this was substantially complicated by the laws limiting technological advancement on Administradt: most of the treasures on offer from Flotsam Scavengers were too disruptive to be imported and were often beyond the industrial capacity of Administradt to even produce. So the trick was to find a technological improvement that could be made by a largely analogue society that also wouldn’t cost more jobs than it produced. Given the overall Flotsam technology market was driven by a race for the best, the economic incentives just weren’t there for Scavengers to even look for Administradt compliant materials. Quigly was genuinely stumped.
The other great challenge of the Adminstradt Consulate offices was Terwry Chudswallow, the doughy third son of a senior bureaucrat on the Council of Foreign Guidelines and Recommendations. Terwry was very stupid and very entitled and clearly had been gifted his posting through the connections of his father. He was also working in the same internship as Quigly, making Terwry his extremely lazy de facto partner in Acquisitions.
For several weeks the pair had gotten nowhere finding a single viable technology. Quigly made trips to the Junk Markets, contacted Scavenger crews, bribed Salvagers, and generally tried to learn everything he could about how the Flotsam technology economy worked. He found lots of incredible, valuable items, but nothing that fit the extremely narrow parameters of his brief. Fucking Terwry found a desk, sampled the local drug flavour during business hours, and asked Quigly if he was making progress as if he were his boss. Quigly loathed Terwry and hated it whenever the younger man called him ‘son’. Quigly took solace that he would one day use his Administrata power to destroy him.
Eventually Quigly figured out an ingenious solution to the Flotsam technology problem. He had visited a Breakyard as part of his fact finding mission, one of those miserable work houses where the Flotsam poor disassemble bulky space machinery in exchange for meals and a place to sleep. Coming from a planet where everyone had a job and a degree of social safety, Pantor found these places abhorrent and made him thank the genius of the System. Quigly realized, however, that these horrid Breakyards were just what he needed: while intact alien machinery was often too advanced, some of the more mundane components could be exactly what Adminstradt needed, maybe even incorporated into existing supply chains and fabrication processes. Quigly could recruit Breakyard workers, explain to them what he was looking for, and since these sapients were generally pretty desperate, they would be incentivized to bring him anything that fit the description. Pantor could even morally rationalize the scheme since Administradt would pay a fair price for whatever they imported, which could help lift a few sapients out of poverty. It was a win-win scalable system of discovery.
A few conversations with some Breakers at two of the least repellent Breakyards and Quigly was soon holding an ingenious gasketted flange assembly that was perfect. Adminstradt could easily produce it, it took more labour to produce than what it was replacing, and it would decrease leaks and wastage. (Quigly was delighted that the component could appreciably improve Sanitation.) It was a perfect technological acquisition that, combined with his innovative Breakyard scheme, should be enough to get Quigly promoted and sent to a better, more permanent position on Administradt. He submitted the prototype flange and the various paperwork for item description, official provenance, Flotsam export, Adminsitradt import, patent application, material transfer, intellectual property licensing, and expenses and reimbursement all to The Flagship, and then anxiously awaited approval from the Committee for Technological Imports and Licensing.
Quigly was overjoyed when The Flagship called him into his office precisely six to eight solarclusters later to tell him the flange had received pending initial approval. His scheme had worked! He was sure this was it, the big moment for some well deserved cudos and a summons back to Administradt for promotion. Except… The Flagship didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked more stern than usual. Maybe even sad. She stated with true regret in her voice that the flange was approved for import to Administradt but that Terwry would be getting credit for the acquisition and the resulting promotion. Before Quigly could scream, she continued brusquely: she knew it was rank bullshit, but getting Terwry promoted was a necessary evil, a favour that guaranteed that the Flotsam Consulate would continue to exist independently. The needs of her office and staff superseded Quigly’s career advancement. Quigly was speechless, felt like he was suffocating, flabbergasted that all of his hard work had been to advance a fatuous asshole. The Flagship grimaced but continued on, told Quigly that she was doing him a favour, that someone like him would just keep hitting barriers like this if he tried to climb the Administrata. It would be better for him to take a permanent position here on Flotsam, to help her do the necessary work of acquiring the advanced technology that kept their interstellar capabilities afloat, to keep finding new technology that could improve the lives of the Administered. That she thought he would be happier here, free to do good work and live a life free from the toxic advancement culture of the homeworld. The Flagship smiled and told Quigly that she could envision him taking over for her as the Flotsam Director of Administradt Affairs one day.
Quigly screamed then, and taking great panting breaths, told The Flagship that he was tendering his resignation, effective as soon as he could fill out the hundreds of pages of paperwork to make it official.
The Director shook her head sadly, told Quigly to take his time filing the paperwork, see if he might change his mind. Told him that even if it might not seem like it, that she valued him and his work. She archly reminded him that his residence would end as soon as he formally quit, so that at the very least he should take time to make arrangements. Quigly nodded mutely and left her office, inside a fractured mess of anger, sadness, and confusion.
And then he bumped into Terwry.
“Queegly, old boy, did you hear the fantastic news! Our scheme worked, and I’m off to the home offices! Onwards and Upwards and all that!”
Quigly gasped, face going red, hands clenching into fists. True awesome hatred flowed through his veins.
Terwry had stuck out his hand for a handshake, “No hard feelings, son.”
Quigly has no memory of what happened next, just a flash of red and a rushing sound in his ears. He’s been told that it took three functionaries, a lawyer, and the cutest receptionist to drag him off Terwry, who had a broken nose, fractured orbital, and was missing somewhere between three and five teeth. The Flagship told him she had no choice but to accept his verbal resignation and that effective immediately he was evicted from the Consulate. He was also forbidden from contacting Administradt staff on Flotsam until Terwry was safely off planet, but (in a quieter voice) that should he wish to resume his position afterward, he should contact her. Finally she told him she was sorry, gave him a crisp hug, head pat, and told him good luck. And then she threw him and his belongings out into an uncaring junkyard world.
Quigly, for his part, mostly felt a sense of relief. That and a significant amount of pain from his bruised hands.
And so he searched the Networks for a cheap place to live, at least until he got back on his feet, and started walking down the Mesa slope toward the parts of the city which blended into the surrounding scrap.
Presently, Quigly lays on the grass, pillows his head on his hands, and looks up at the sky. It is very clear and very blue, so unlike the constant cloud cover and grey smog of Administradt. He breathes deeply of the grassy and floral air of the meadow. He feels himself unclench a little. This is nice. He wonders if he could find a cheap apartment close to this park.
“Hi there!”
Quietly squawks in surprise, sits up, and is confronted by a smiling green face. “Errr.... um... hello?”
The green face is attached to a green woman, with wide green hips and large, ponderous green breasts who is nude except for strands of brightly coloured bead necklaces and bracelets. Her long dark green hair is filled with vines and has white flowers growing from it. She smells like plants and flowers and the tangy musk of arousal. “I’m Halley,” she says while looking at him quite intently.
“Uh,” Quigly replies, blushing and feeling stupid.
“Do you want to have sex?”
“What!?”
“Sex. Y’know, the horizontal mambo? The beast with two backs? Doing the nasty?”
“Mombo? Beast?”
Halley the green woman nods, “Fucking.”
It dawns on Pantor that the woman is soliciting him for sex. He blushes even darker and his heart starts to beat faster. It has been a long time since Elixsa... “You want to have sex? With me?”
The woman bites her lower lip, smiles, and nods. Her nostrils flare and Quigly notices her dark green nipples are painfully hard. The air is heavy with the scent of pussy and flowers. Quigly can feel his cock getting hard. “How much will it cost?”
“Cost?” Halley looks surprised.
“What is the nature of the transaction? What do you want from me? Favours? Considerations? How do I pay you back?” Quigly feels like he is saying something wrong.
Halley smiles implishly and touches her necklaces. “I am partial to beads...” she giggles, “which is totally Girls Gone Wild of me.”
“Girls? Gone wild?”
“But I don’t want anything from you. Well, except for that cock of yours. In me, preferably.” Halley licks her lips and studies Pantor’s straining erection. Pantor moans a little, feels his hands start to shake. Halley drops to her knees and leans forward, green breasts hanging hugely. She smiles hungrily at Pantor, stares into his eyes “Sex is it’s own reward.”
And suddenly Pantor is kissing her, propelled by some sort of internal force that skips past analytical thought. Her lips are warm and taste faintly of honey. Halley makes a pleased sound in the back of her throat, nips his lips almost painfully and then pushes him over, rides him to the ground, straddles him. She leans over and kisses him again, hungrily, a too long and serpentine tongue pushing into his mouth. Her viney hair falls around their faces and smells alive like a jungle in bloom. She pulls his face against her breasts and pushes her naked crotch against Pantor’s and he can feel the hot cleft of her vulva grind against his cock through his trousers. She tilts her head back and moans, a single drawn out sounds of pleasure and frustration. Pantor can feel her wetness soaking into his pants. He has never wanted to be inside someone so desperately in his life.
“Clothes” he gasps. She nods, scooting back and pawing at the hooks of his shirt, untying the dark band of his neck closure while he reaches down and fights with his belt, the buttons of his trousers. She playfully rubs her cunt on his hands, soaking his idiot fingers with her hot juices, making them slippery and clumsy. He can feel how wet she is, smell an almost putridly sweet scent spicy with the fragrance of cunt. With a growl Pantor rips his pants open, tearing off buttons, freeing his cock. Halley moans in appreciation, helping him wiggle his pants and underwear down to his knees before pressing herself against him, sliding him slowly into her, into the slick, wet, boiling embrace of her pussy. “Yesssssss,” she hisses and Pantor can only groan in agreement. And then she is leaning forward again, pressing her weight down onto him, her wide green hips and soft green ass and huge green tits, his cock buried inside. He can feel the red hot knuckle of her clit between them, pulsing. Halley kisses him like this, just once, with a surprising tenderness like a benediction. And then she is consumed by frenzy, hips rocking on his, bouncing on his cock, breasts flapping, kissing him and biting hungrily, fucking him with a wild desperation. Her bead necklaces rattle and click as they sway wildly, a colourful hazard. Pantor hangs on as best he can, kissing back and gasping, cupping her ass and hips, trying to hold them together. The green woman comes, back arched and mouth open, groaning from somewhere deep inside. Pantor tries to hold onto himself, hold back, but as he feels her cunt muscles bare down, massage his length inhumanly, he comes too, erupting inside of her and grunting.
They flop bonelessly together, panting happily. Halley pushes herself up, rucks her flowering hair up out of her green face and smiles at him delighted. He smiles back. He feels giddy and feverish and somehow... different. He rubs his face, his pupils tickle. Halley stares into his eyes, her face becoming concerned. “Oh fuck!’
And then Pantor Quigly faints.
***
Pantor is dreaming, or at least he thinks he is. In his minds eye he is beset by images, flashes, sensations, mostly of green women fucking him but with a disjointed, fantastical quality.
A memory briefly of a whole group of green women gathered around him, prodding him, looking him over with concern and lust. The green woman with the beads that he fucked, Halley, crying and being consoled by other green women, who then collapse together into a sexual knot of cunnilingus and scissoring.
A flash of himself buried balls deep inside Halley again, fucking her roughly from behind while growling like an animal, his own green-tinted hands clutching her soft ass.
Another green woman, this one with an emerald penis of her own pressed up against his stomach as she straddles his lap with his cock in her ass. He howls and erupts inside her, and she clutches him as her own cock sprays all over his chest, her semen reeking of potpourri.
Looking down and seeing two green faces, plush green lips and long vine-like tongues kissing and caressing his cock, green now and larger and harder than ever before.
Being held down, thrashing, pinned under the weight of six or eight green women while one by one they suck him off, sing him lullabies, and beg him to sleep so they can rest too.
Feverish, burning flashes, orgasm after orgasm, a cascade of ejaculation.
***
And then suddenly he is lucid in a familiar bedroom: his domicile on Adminstradt.
He blinks his eyes, confused. Elisxa is there, dressed in her sexiest, most networkiest bra and stockings, the red soled high heels. She unclips her updo, let’s her long hair fall around her shoulders. It has a greenish tint and a white flower is growing out of it. “You came back magnificent,” she purrs, “like I just knew you would.”
She takes his hands, which he sees are long and green, pointed like claws. She guides him to the bed, biting her lip and ogling him. His hardened feet click and scrabble on the cheap linoleum floor. His cock is painfully erect. Elisxa stares into his eyes, kisses him hungrily, moans. He notices that her eyes are vividly green. She pushes him down onto the bed, crawls over him, kisses his cock, which is somehow green and much too long and thick. Her mouth strains to encompass his emerald girth and she gags as she tries to contain him. She rakes her fingers through the moss-like fur covering his legs, comes up for air. “So big,” she gasps. She straddles his lap, presses her cunt against his cock while running her fingers over his green abs and muscular chest, playing with the newly thick hair growing there. Elisxa smiles, her lips painted with a dark green lipstick. She grasps his huge cock, and grimacing a little, works it slowly into her wet vagina. He feels her part and stretch around his cock, but it’s still so tight. “Ahhhhhhhhh,” she gasps. She begins to ride him, reaching up to grab his branch-like antlers firmly, using them for leverage. He cups her ass, effortlessly helping her thrust with a newfound strength. “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” she groans, eyes lidded, green mouth open. He sees her skin change colour, go from palest cream to the lightest green. “Fffffffffuck!” She gasps, and then tightens and arches, clutches herself to him as she orgasms. Her hair is fully green now and her breasts seem bigger. Something about this drives him wildly over the edge, and suddenly he is coming too, pumping a torrent of cum inside of her. With each surge, her skin becomes a darker green, her hair more vine-like, her body more spectacularly curvy. She collapses against him, panting. Her neck is now roped in beaded necklaces and she is a green Elisxa but also Halley, the woman from the meadow. She looks up at him with a lazy, satisfied smile, her eyes now a dark, even green. She licks green lips with a prehensile green tongue.
“Come back to me my King, and this could all be yours.”
***
Pantor wakes with a start. Sits up partially, blinks his eyes. His heart is racing and his cock is hard. “Wh-what?”
“You’re awake!” A green woman’s face, “and speaking!”
Pantor rubs his face and notices his hands are green like the woman, with long pointed fingers like claws or branches. He turns them over and sees strands of mossy dark green fur growing on their backs. Just like in his dream. He wonders if he is still asleep.
“He’s still alive!?” A second green woman appears, familiar and wearing beads. Halley. “Oh thank Jesus!” She says, obvious relief on her emerald face.
“This is unexpected,” says a third green woman, one with vines instead of hair and skin that looks sort of waxy, like a succulent plant. “Unprecedented.”
Pantor sits up fully from where he’s laying on a moss covered stone slab and regards the green women. His eyes trace over Halley, her bountiful green body, his gaze drawn to her wet slit, arresting. He feels his erect cock tense as he thinks about what it feels like to be inside her. He drags his gaze away and looks at the first woman, green and curvy, with huge teardrop breasts and, nestled between generous thighs, a proudly hard cock and perfectly smooth testicles. She smiles at him hungrily from a tangle of green hair. She looks familiar, like someone he fucked in his dreams. The third woman is more alien: still a beautiful green woman with an hourglass figure, but with something just a little off about her posture and the way she moves, as if her anatomy is lacking the usual muscles and tendons. Her eyes, which look at him with naked lust, are an even, dark green lacking pupils. Pantor can smell female arousal thick in the air like pollen and feels a burning, almost maniacal need to fuck them all. His heart hammers in his chest and his cock aches. “What’s going on?” He asks in a voice too deep and raw to be his own.
“That’s a really good question,” replies the third woman, stroking her chin with elongated fingers that don’t quite move properly. “I’d better consult the Heartwood.” The green woman jogs off and Pantor watches her run, her breasts bobbling and her ass rippling with every step. Pantor bites his lip and finds himself growling, fights down a sudden urge to chase after her, to tackle her to the ground and fuck her. The green woman runs headlong into a large tree and disappears, seems to melt into it like a diver slipping into water. He shakes his head in disbelief.
“You’re been infected with the Sylvannic Funganoid,” Halley says to him, “from having sex with me.” She bites her lip and looks at him with sexual hunger. “Sorry,” she adds.
“Sylvannic Funganoid?” It was so hard for him to focus. His cock was so hard and all he wanted to do was fuck.
The first green woman, the one with the cock, leans over Pantor and grasps his enormous cock, which he sees is green: lighter green along the shaft but darker on the glans and veins. Pantor gasps and the woman runs her vine-like tongue along his length and then wraps her lips around his glans. He gasps at how sensitive he is, the soft wet warmth of her mouth. The green woman starts to bob her head and suck on his cock, her hands working at his shaft and his mossy-furry massive balls. He pants but strangely finds the oral sex focussing.
“The Sylvannic Funganoid,” Halley explains, “is some sort of plant-like alien parasite that infects humans and transforms them. In human females, the Funganoid causes Dryad Disease where we become green curvy nymphomaniacs. To spread the virus, since it’s sex-ual-ly transmitted. The infection slowly replaces all the human cells in our body with Funganoid cells, which turns us into plants and makes us part of The Grove, which is itself entirely made of funganoid units. Our minds are written into the Heartwood of the Grove, since this entire place is a kind of organic computer. We’re all functionally immortal, but also forever bound to this place.”
“And human males?” Pantor pants.
Halley chews her lip and breaks eye contact, “It causes Satyr Syndrome. Males become green too, grow mossy fur and antlers, and grow just spectacular cocks.” She looks at his cock as it is being orally worshipped by the other green woman and licks her lips. “It also drives them mad, makes them into wild sexual beasts designed to fuck and spread the Funganoid. Unlike females, their minds aren’t uploaded into the grove, and worse, after a few weeks of wild fucking the infected males burn out... and die.”
As Halley looks sadly at Pantor it dawns on him the predicament he’s in. He has been infected by a deadly parasite and has been transformed into a green sexual monster that is about to die. He’s also getting a blow job, which is very nice. Which... “If the Funganoid turns males into Satyrs and...” kills them... “the rest of it. Why is she a Dryad? She has a penis...”
The green woman sucking his cock pops her mouth free of his shaft, annoyance flashing on her face, “Fuck you! Just because I have a cock doesn’t mean I’m male.”
“Rylnx was on hormone modifying drugs when she got infected and we think the Satyr disease works because of testosterone levels.” Halley shrugs.
“Oh,” Pantor says, “sorry.” Rylnx straddles him, her back to him, and rubs his cock against her anus, getting his precum all over her butthole and his glans. She firmly but slowly inserts him into her rectum, his cock stretching the tight ring of her spinchter and pushing into the too hot depths of her bowls. She makes a kind of groaning, mewling sound as she bottoms out, taking his entire inhumanly large cock inside her body reverse cowgirl. “I forgive you,” she gasps stroking her own impressively hard cock.
“The crazy thing about your situation, well, crazier thing, is that your mind came back. You went into the Satyr frenzy and we green sisters have been fucking you continuously for weeks to keep you happy and distracted and away from unchanged humans. Most humans on Flotsam are immune to the Funganoid, but it’s best not to take chances and y’know not everyone appreciates being tackled by a ravenous sexy man beast....”
“Ohhhhh... I appreciate it....” Rylnx moans as she rolls her hips and paws her huge tits, still impaled on his cock. Pantor gasps, he can’t believe how good it feels to be buried in her ass.
“Anyway,” Halley continues, watching them fuck with a kind of trance like intensity, one hand idly touching her own slick vulva, “You were doing the whole Satyr thing, fucking and growling, eating and fucking, until after a pretty memorable orgy you fell asleep and didn’t wake up. For several days. Which, you’re my first Satyr, but I’ve been told this is usually how it goes... at the end. That you would sleep until your body weakened and failed and that would be that.” Halley shook her head sadly, “I’ve been keeping vigil over you, since well, I feel responsible for infecting you...” Halley twists her bead necklaces with one hand while her other is fingering her cunt.
“But.... ahhhh... then you woke up,” Rylnx gasps. She reaches behind herself, wordlessly directs Pantor up to his knees while keeping his cock in her ass. Pantor looks down, as he hunches behind her, sees his muscular green body, the thick mossy green fur on his legs. Instinctually he growls, clutches Rylnx’s breasts tightly, makes her squirm. Pantor savors this unfamiliar feeling of power while she wriggles around his cock buried so far inside her. She pushes back against him with her hips, “Ffffffuck me,” she pleads.
“Yes... you woke up,” Halley says, panting and bent forward masturbating, one hand madly stroking her clit, the other with its fingers buried in her snatch. “This.... this has never...ahhhh... happened be-before. Mmmmm. Which is why My-mythrie went into the Heartwood to consult The Alder.” Halley tips her head back, eyes slitted and lips parted, and tenses. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
At the same time Pantor is fucking Rylnx from behind who moans and humps back against him, her breasts swaying. She mewls in joyful discomfort with every thrust, buffeted by his strength and girth. His huge balls slap against her smaller ones. She reaches back, pulls his hands off her hips and drags one to her breasts and pushes the other against her hard cock. He starts to stroke it, making her groan, as he keeps fucking her, now entirely focused on the moment, on the heady floral smell of her body, the burning tight heat around his cock. Rylnx gasps, and he feels her cock tense and jump, pulse as it sprays cum with a powerful potpourri reek. Something about the smell or the sight of the two green women coming drives Pantor mad and he howls, crushing Rylnx against his strong body and comes himself, feeling his balls constrict powerfully, his cock erupt into a torrent of semen, pumping into Rlynx’s ass. Rylnx moans happily at the sensation and collapses below him, letting them fall together into a tangle of bodies.
Pantor gasps for breath and feels a calm and euphoria that he’s never consciously experienced before. He pulls himself off of Rylnx, surprised at how long it takes his softening member to slide out of her. He kneels and she looks back up at him, peeking out of a tangle of green hair. “Was it good for you?” She asks hesitantly, somehow shy now. All Pantor can do is nod his head, smile between gasps. She smiles back, radiant in her bliss.
Motion catches Pantor’s eyes and he sees a green shoot wriggle free of the ground. It unfurls, budding leaves like a timelapse of a tree sprouting. Pantor shakes his head in disbelief, watches it grow into a sapling and then rapidly expand into a tree that is as wide as a person, but short, only a dozen feet tall. The front of the new tree splits open and out wiggles the third green woman, Mythrie, who sniffs the air and looks at his glistening, softening dick, the disheveled and happy state of Rylnx, and smiles coyly. She pulls Halley into a hug and gives her a hungry kiss. The gash in the new tree widens and fills in with the head, neck, and armless torso of another green skinned woman, still embedded in the trunk. This dryad is even more plantlike than her sisters, her skin marked like bark, her huge breasts and cunt appearing almost like knots in the tree, leaking a richly scented sap. Pantor feels his cock stirring already, feels drawn to fuck this new tree woman. The dryad licks her lips, fucks Pantor back with her eyes. “So it’s true then. You’re conscious.”
“Yes,” Pantor says, somehow uncomfortable under the Alder’s wise gaze.
“What does it mean, Alder?” Halley asks, fingers nervously gripping her colourful necklaces.
“I think,” the Alder says, “That our Grove has finally born fruit. In the deepest rings of the Heartwood there is... an impression of Satyrs who live on. Of men with deep connections to far away places, who are infected with the Sylvannic Funganoid, but retain their faculties and live. Driven to return home and establish a new Funganoid Grove and become Forest Kings.”
“Does this mean he’ll live?” Halley asks, hope in her eyes.
The Alder smiles at her, “Nothing is certain, but I believe so.”
Halley squeals, breaks feee of Mythrie’s arms, tackles Pantor in a hug, mashing her breasts against his strong chest, buries her face in his neck. “Oh thank Jesus,” she says. Pantor breaths deeply of her scent, smells her botanical skin, the bouquet of her arousal. His heart beats faster and his cock is erect again.
“What does this mean for me?” he asks, trying to ignore his building sexual fires.
The Alder frowns, “It means you will live on in your current form for the rest of your expanded lifespan. You are infected with the Sylvannic Funganoid, and contagious. You will always feel a great urge for sex, a drive to spread the Funganoid to new hosts. I also suspect, if I am interpreting the root code correctly, that you have a sudden urge to return to your homeworld.” Pantor’s mind flashes on his vision of Elisxa fucking him, turning green. His hard cock oozes an enormous bead of floral smelling precum. He nods. “You cannot be allowed to leave this Grove. Sapients you encounter here will likely be immune, since the humans of Flotsam are patched against the Funganoid, and you may fuck them safely. If they allow it. But on a naive planet you could wreak untold havoc. We cannot allow this.”
“It’s not like leaving is even an option,” Halley says glumly. “Those silver plinths on the border of the Grove were put there by the Grey to contain us. If you were to cross that barrier...” She makes a bursting gesture with her hands, “Poof! Incinerated.”
The Alder nods, “Yes. So this Grove is now your home. I’d suggest you get used to the idea and try to make the best of it.”
Rylnx pushes herself up, rubs his hard cock with the cleft of her butt crack. “We’ll do our best to make it fun for you.”
Pantor’s mind whirls with emotion. He’s been transformed by an alien plant-parasite-thing into a muscular, hyper-endowed plant-animal creature. He has somehow survived a deadly disease, but is still infected. Infectious. And is now quarantined in this strange forest park with a tribe of green women who all seem very eager to fuck him. For the rest of his life, however long that may be. He can never return to Adminstradt, never climb the bureaucracy, never win Elisxa back. Never see his parents again. Part of him is filled with despair, recoiling at the unfairness. But, well, it wasn’t as if we was ever going to make it to the Administrata was it? Is a life spent fucking beautiful nymphomaniacs really worse than his probable future as a grey bureaucrat of rubbish transportation optimization? The warmth of Rlynx’s ass, which nudges and rubs his cock, is certainly lovely. A lifetime trapped here, amongst these beautiful sex maniacs does seem like a solid consolation. Doesn’t it?
And suddenly he is grabbed by his branch like antlers and kissing a soft pair of lips that taste of salt and tree sap. He is rolled off of Rylnx, guided to his back, and suddenly straddled by warm thighs and a wetness that leaves a hot moist streak on his hairy stomach. Large breasts with hard nipples and beaded necklaces touch his chest. Pantor moans, and the green woman, Halley, bites his lip. “My turn she purrs,” stilll gripping his antlers like handlebars and sliding his long, hard cock into her cunt. She hisses in pleasurable discomfort, and grinds herself against him. “What’s your name,” she gasps, rolling her hips and making her necklaces rattle.
“Quigly, Pantor Quigly.”
She giggles “Pan-tor. Pan. Tor. HaaAhhhhhh... that’s, that’s too perfect.”
Pantor grunts, “why?”
Halley moans and then kisses him hard on mouth. “I’ll tell you later, “ she gasps, “just fuck me, Pantor.”
Pantor grabs a handful of her soft ass and thrusts.
“Ohhh Pantor, yessss”
***
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