She lifted her hand into the air, crooked her finger, and said, “Come let your auntie pet you, ya little freaks.” And sure enough, one of the eels stopped circling, swam in close to her hand, and let her pet it. Mags smiled inside her mask.
“Having fun, Mags?” Celina asked.
“You know what? I am! Now let’s see what kind of juice they can kick out.”
She had set up several targets shaped like dragons. She snapped her fingers and pointed at them. “Eels, electrocute these motherfuckers!”
She did not expect what happened next. Still circling around her, the eels unleashed a barrage of lightning. Electric tendrils surged out of them, enveloping the targets. Inside her suit, Mags felt not so much as a tickle from the current. But the electromagnetic force blasted her backwards. She twisted in mid-air, landing on all fours on the rugged surface of the asteroid.
Electric current assaulted her targets. The lights inside Club Assteroid flickered. Celina said something, but her voice turned to garbled static in Mags’ ears.
“Fuck yeah!” Mags yelled. “Pour it on!” The eels did just that. Her entire field of view turned white. The power ripped apart not just her dragon targets but every target on the range.
Electrons whipped across the jagged plains of Vesta 4. All the bullets on Mags’ table uprange exploded. She dove to the ground and covered her head. The eels savagely cranked the air, their bodies undulating, writhing in the center of a massive ball of lightning. Targets burst into flame. Elements broke down into isotopes as their electrons were ripped away and drawn up into the storm.
Mags looked though her visor in awe. “Bloody fuck,” she whispered. The ground on the asteroid fused into black glass. The glass circle formed below the eels, then spread. Within seconds, it reached a diameter of twenty meters and kept growing. Cracks ran through it ringing out like bullets and thunder in Mags’ ears.
“Stop!” She waved her hands. “Stop!”
Just as suddenly as they had begun, the eels ended their attack. They swarmed around Mags, taking up their circling positions as if nothing had happened. With infinite robotic patience, they hovered around her.
She stood up and held out her hand. One by one, each eel circled around to rub its metallic snout against her open palm.
A vicious smile spread across her face. She heard the static crackle of Celina’s voice in her earpiece again, but she ignored it. She ran her suited fingertips along the length of each eel. Their teeth sparkled in the starlight.
Mags turned off her communicator. She stayed out there for as long as she liked, saying things to her eels no one else would ever hear. Eventually, she went back to the club. Her eels followed her faithfully.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
That night, Meteor Mags dreamed. In her dream, her headphones’ puffy pads pressed her ears. All of her favorite Kyuss songs played at an utterly unreasonable volume. The singer’s raspy voice called to her, describing her body in song.
“Goddamn sonofabitch,” Mags mumbled in her sleep. She felt the riff not just in her eardrums but on her skin. It moved over her body, caressing her curves. Her back arched. Her hands gripped the sheets.
A rippling light surrounded her. The hair on her tail stood on end. She felt herself wet and swollen. One by one, her trio of eels floated around her body in the darkness. Her fingers touched their sleek metal surfaces. She could not hear their electricity, but she felt it humming an electromagnetic serenade all around her. Her hand closed on one of the eels’ rounded snouts.
Mags dreamed another eel nuzzled her cheek. Its chrome tail wrapped around her breasts and cupped them. The third eel ran its metallic face over her thighs. Mags imagined the empires she could topple with such incredible power in her thrall. She envisioned the four of them, together, forging a new era, one electron at a time.
A snout pressed against her, warming its cold metal on her skin. She opened herself to it. The music blared in her ears. She hooked a leg around the eel and firmly clutched it.
Mags pressed its nose between her legs. She rubbed it in little circles. Then faster, faster—faster than a Kerry King guitar solo. Mags glistened. She eased the eel’s snout into her body. She stretched to grip its sinewy, cybernetic form.
The eel pulsed and crackled. Her womb glowed red from its electric light. Her body trembled. The eel writhed inside her. “Yes,” she whispered.
Then she cried out, shaking uncontrollably as her womb accepted the eel’s cybernetic seed. She gasped for breath.
The seed took root inside her. The eel’s tail spasmed in her hand. Mags gripped it tighter, squeezed it, and wrapped both of her legs around it.
Then she slept, and dreamed no more.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Thanks for coming with us, Donny. I don’t expect any trouble, but we sure don’t mind having back-up just in case.” Patches bumped Donny’s leg. Mags brought up Coltrane’s Crescent album on the speakers of the Queen Anne. The ship took a course for the asteroid lab she and Tarzi had raided the month before.
Donny kicked back with a beer. He thought Mags seemed especially mellow today. “No sweat. I’ve been curious to check this place out anyway. What did we bring for the little critters?”
“Crabs and polychaete worms, mostly. Yum! I hope they like them.”
He frowned and stuck out his tongue. “Ugh. Who wouldn’t?”
“Give me a break! It’s the best I could do on short notice.”
Patches mewed.
“That’s right, dear. It wouldn’t be very nice of us to help them all get born and then let them starve out here.” Mags recalled the sight of the decayed bodies in the tanks. Tarzi’s cybernetic seahorse had flooded the asteroid so the baby octopuses could hatch, but Mags knew they had nothing to eat on that rock.
“Congratulations,” said Donny. “Now you’ve got yourself the biggest aquarium in the System! Are you just going to keep dropping in and feeding them?”
“I don’t know what else to do! I feel responsible for them now. But—yeah. They don’t make very practical pets out here, do they?”
Donny shrugged. “You could take them back to Earth, maybe? Or build a giant aquarium on Vesta 4 and charge admission to the octopus zoo?”
Mags laughed. “That’s so bloody ridiculous it sounds fun. Let me know if you have any other bright ideas.” She walked to the bow of the ship and stared into space. She swayed in time with Elvin’s ride cymbal. “Love this tune.”
Donny quietly sipped his beer for a few minutes, letting her enjoy the music. Then he cleared his throat. “Listen, Mags. I just wanted to say sorry about getting in your personal business in the shop the other day. I just—I don’t know. I had you all wrong. I didn’t mean any offense.”
“Donny, you know what I like about you? You may be a grade-A fuck-up, but at least you know when to say you’re sorry!”
“Um—thanks?”
Mags sauntered over to hand him a cigarette. “But you don’t owe me an apology. I have seen and heard some shit as a dancer that makes the Psycho 78s’ locker room talk sound G-rated by comparison. You just hit a nerve, that’s all.”
“Good. The last time you were mad at me, I ended up getting shot at and losing my job.” Donny lit her cigarette, then his own.
“Such a gentleman. But that’s all water under the bridge now. You’re a stellar saxophonist, and a big help to Fuzzlow in the shop, regardless of what he says. I’m glad you came aboard.”
“Thanks, Mags.”
“So, look. Let me explain something.” She walked back to the window. She took in the sight of the stars, the planets, and the moons, undimmed by atmosphere. Her eyes traced the path of a distant comet. “You know what pheromones are?”
“Yeah, like scents and stuff.”
“Close enough. In mammals, they play a huge role in how two animals decide to get it on. But look at me, Donny.” She curled her tail up into her hand and pet it gently. “Do I look entirely human to you?”
He took a swig. “Now that you mention it, uh, not really? Are you like part cat or something?”
“Who knows? But I do know this. People just don’t smell right to me. I mean, they don’t smell disgusting. But they don’t smell…”
“Sexy?”
Mags chuckled. “Precisely.”
“I know this is none of my business but—do cats?”
“Ugh, no. As if that’s even physically feasible if they did.”
Donny scratched his chin. “You know, I can’t say I ever met anyone like you Mags. I mean, with the tail and all. If you’re not human, and you’re not cat, then—you’re one of a kind, aren’t you?”
The sparkle left her eyes. She turned back to the window. “Lucky me.”
Donny looked her over as she stood with her back to him. The tip of her tail flicked the air. She wasn’t exactly his type, but he had always found something strangely compelling about her: the way she moved when she danced, the carefree joy she took in displaying her ample yet agile body. But now he felt an unfamiliar sympathy for her. She had friends who loved her. She even had fans who admired her. But he had never stopped to think that the infamous Meteor Mags might feel all alone in the universe.
She stubbed out her smoke in an ashtray. “Anyway,” she said. “Sorry to get all mopey on you. It’s just been on my mind lately.” She walked back to the console and brought up a display. “Let me show you how to track me and Patches when we’re down there, okay?”
“What? I gotta stay on the ship while you two visit the zoo?”
“At least until we scope it out. I’ll have my mic with me. But Donny, last time we were here, Patches and I got our minds merged with the mama octopus, and it was like having your soul laid completely bare. Now, I like you, Donny, but I don’t want you in my friggin’ brain!”
“Fair enough. I don’t think I want to be in your brain either.”
“Hey, doorknob! What’s wrong with my brain?” Mags slugged him playfully on the arm.
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to find out!”
Then she showed him the tracking system, and the two of them chatted about music until the asteroid came into view.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Okay, Donny. This is as far as you go.” Mags stood at the elevator entrance to the former laboratory. Donny had helped her wheel the shipping crates full of crabs and worms from the Queen Anne to the elevator, but now she waved him off. “Patches and I will take it from here. Just keep an eye on us on the monitor.”
“Uh, you’re welcome?”
“Sorry, Captain Sensitive. Thanks for your help.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll be helping myself to all your beers now! Good luck.”
Patches stood in the doorway, holding it open as Mags rolled the crates in. Then they descended into the asteroid.
“Meow?”
“I don’t know, baby kitty. I hope they’re alright, but who knows what we’ll find down there.” She scratched her cat behind the ears until the doors opened.
Darkness greeted them. Mags switched on her headlamp. Only weeks before, Tarzi’s poor little seahorse had released a flood. His electric storm had killed all the lighting circuits, and apparently every sub-surface system but the GravGens. Mags’ light swept across the lab. Fog diffused it into a misty glow. Water dripped from fixtures and walls. The enclosure had thwarted evaporation. Now everything was damp and dripping.
“Hmpf. How bloody cheerful.” She wheeled the crates out of the elevator one by one, through the foggy laboratory, to the doorway leading to the caverns beyond. “At least we knew about the elevator this time around. Sodding mapmaker had one job to do.”
Patches offered no assistance but stopped to rub her face on every stone and corner along her path. She scampered to the door, meowing ceaselessly until Mags joined her with the final crate.
Mags punched buttons on the keypad, but nothing happened. “Hell. Sparky fried the shit out of everything down here. Time for Plan B, dear. Step back now.”
Patches complained.
Mags wheeled the crates along the wall to a safe place. “Yeah, yeah. You can’t be hurt. I should probably stop yelling at you to get out of the way in firefights, huh? Sorry.” She took a few blocks of C4 explosives from her kit and stuck them on the door. “I guess I still can’t get over it. Cut your auntie some slack, will you?” Mags set the detonator. “But seriously, unless you want to get shot through the air like a cannonball, I suggest you get the hell back now.”
They followed the wall until they were well out of blast range. “Fire in the hole!” Mags pressed her handheld switch. The doorway exploded.
Once the smoke cleared, she wheeled the crates back to the decimated doorway. “Shit, maybe we should have brought Donny down to move these things. At least men are good for something!”
Then she felt a familiar tug on her mind, and so did Patches. “I guess they know we’re here.” She called into the caverns. “Ahoy, krakens and krakenettes! Did you miss us? We brought you some din-din!”
Patches ran out onto the rocky bridge which rose only centimeters above the water filling the cavern. Mags wheeled the crates onto it and looked around for the giant tentacles of the mother octopus, but she saw nothing.
“Mama kraken,” she called out. “Babies! Nom-noms are here.” She aimed her headlamp into the water, searching. Slowly at first, and then in a cephalopodic chorus, tentacles rose from the water. First one, then two, and then hundreds upon hundreds of tentacles waved, swishing the fog that had settled over them.
Mags could hear them. They hummed to her, not in sound waves, but in telepathic communion. She smiled, unfastening the lids of the crates and pulling them off. “Could you all try to not fry my brain this time? I’m still having whacked-out dreams, you know.”
She hummed along with them and felt their approval. She kicked down the locks on the wheels of the first crate. With a generous heave, she pushed it over onto its side. The crate slammed onto the bridge, disgorging its contents into the water, splashing onto the waving tentacles. The octopuses greeted the slop of crabs and worms, crunching open the tasty prizes. Mags felt their excitement tickle her mind.
“There’s more where that came from! Hold on, little darlings.” She dumped another crate onto its side, emptying it on the opposite side of the bridge. Before she got to the third crate, their humming grew louder.
Patches ran back and forth. Waves of happiness flowed over her as her brain flooded with pleasure chemicals.
Mags smiled so hard her face hurt. She dumped the contents of the third crate into the water.
All along the sides of the bridge, tentacles splashed playfully. Mags knelt. Patches rubbed on her leg, purring wildly. Mags reached down to the nearest tentacle. “Do you like that, babies?” The tentacle wrapped around her hand in response.
Then she discovered what happened to the mother octopus.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
Something inhuman grew inside Club Assteroid. Unbeknownst to Meteor Mags, her eel dream was more than just a dream. But in reality, her eel did not impregnate her. Its technology removed a single ovum from her uterus to bond with its own synthetic DNA. As she slept, two of the eels returned to the black box which stored them in her room. The third had forced its way into the club’s ductwork to nest.
While Mags and Donny traveled to the asteroid where it had originated, the eel curled into a ball, motionless, hidden from sight. The eel’s internal machinery spliced Mags’ genetic sample to its own.
Fueled by the eel’s electric energy, a tiny zygote quickly grew into a fetus. The fetus assembled a body using the eel’s metal and machinery within a matter of hours. The eel felt neither pain nor remorse as its components broke down and became something else. The eel merely followed its programming.
By the time Mags was feeding the octopuses, a cybernetic organism the size of a child flexed its newly-formed fingers. It blinked its metallic eyelids and crawled through the club’s ductwork. It
smelled machinery, and organic matter nearby. It needed more material to assemble a larger body.
Soon, it would need to feed.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Don’t be scared.”
Mags heard the voice all around her. With her free hand, she ran her fingers along the tentacle encircling her wrist. The fog glowed white. But unlike her experience with the mother octopus, the white light did not completely envelop her. Sparkles like distant fireflies played over the water’s surface. They could not possibly be real, but Mags watched their movements anyway. They flowed in a non-repeating pattern which calmed her and drew her in.
Patches made a raspy meow showing the tips of her tiny teeth. Then she stretched out beside her friend and purred.
“It’s alright,” said Mags. “I’m not scared at all.”
“Good.” Hundreds of voices in multi-part harmony said at once, “Mama wanted us to show you something.”
Mags took a deep breath. She sat cross-legged on the barren bridge. “Okay, babies. Show me.” She closed her eyes.
The white light consumed Mags and Patches. They experienced floating below the water’s surface. The light faded to present a scene which had taken place after their last visit to the asteroid. They swept their tentacles through the water—Mags covered in stars, Patches covered in calico, but their bodies now resembling the octopuses. The cold pressed all around them, but they felt no fear. With gentle care, the baby octopuses regulated their neurochemicals so they would feel no distress.
Before them floated the mother octopus. Her giant eyes were cloudy now, and dim. Her babies swam around her, circling her in the pit, conversing with her on the mental plane. In a language composed of images and emotions rather than words, she gave them everything she had learned from the minds of Mags, and Patches, and the researchers who had mutated her. She taught the babies words from the humans’ minds, and their meanings. This knowledge, she made her children understand, would help them communicate with Mags and Patches when they returned.
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 32
