Chapter Two: Sarah Gets A Makeover

        Sarah’s eyes snapped open into utter darkness. Her mouth opened and she sucked in liquid. Her lungs clenched and her drowning reflexes kicked on – and then soothed away. It was as if someone had taken a warm wet rag and just wiped along her brain, pushing aside all those panicky thoughts. It was nearly as alarming as literally just...drowning, to have her thoughts wiped away like that. And just as soon as she had that alarming realization, her alarm at that alarm was wiped away. Her eyes hooded slowly and she breathed in another lungful of liquid. It flowed through her body like slow, sluggish air...but her brain was no longer screaming for oxygen…

        That was an improvement?

        Mmm…

        She started to slide her hands along her body in the liquid, hoping to find her survival packs. Instead, her palms rubbed along perfectly smooth skin – her skin. She felt the faint creases and rises of her chubby belly, the fullness of her breasts, her achingly hard nipples. God. This felt nice. This warm bath of fluid, surrounding her every body. She knew she should have been alarmed about how the alarm at not being alarmed had been wiped away – but she somehow couldn’t seem to muster up any more levels of meta-alarm. Instead, she just idly played with her nipples, as if she was laying in bed and in a randy mood. They were getting more sensitive by the moment, and as she teased and tweaked them, her lips split into a warm smile.

        Then…

        Light.

        Light began to grow before her. It was dull amber, as if shining through a mass of honey. It was growing ahead of her, and as she watched, it brightened and brightened, until she could see herself and her surroundings. She was inside of a pod, roughly two meters in diameter and three meters tall, giving her plenty of space while still being relatively small. The walls were smooth and rubbery looking, and faintly transparent. The light was coming from beyond it, from a single point that did not move. A lamp? She drew her hands away from her breasts, sheepish at being caught playing with herself. She started to try and swim towards the edge of the pod – her body moving sluggishly through the thick liquid. Tiny bubbles of air moved in it as she swept her hands. They didn’t rush to the top but instead remained in the place that her motions had put them, so she felt as if she was swimming through a constellation of stars.

        After what felt like an eternity, she came to the edge of the pod. Her palms touched it and she flashed on memories of touching her uncle’s pet pig. It was the same living, smooth skin. Not metal or plastic. Her eyes widened – and then the light from beyond grew brighter as the skin turned transparent.

        It wasn’t a light.

        It was an eye.

        No.

        Not an eye.

        It was  the Eye. It was an Eye that eclipsed and transcended all others – massive and staring and perfect. It never blinked, never twitched, never showed the little wobbling that human eyes needed. The iris was black and circular and it focused in on her body. Sarah screamed. Or, well. Tried too. Bubbling air rushed from her lungs, flowing into the thick liquid as she kicked and flailed her legs, trying to get away. Instead, it was like the nightmare again. She was stuck, unable to move as that thing kept looking at her. And she felt a prickling awareness rushing along her skin. Her nerves burned with shame as she realized it could see her every imperfect. Her chubby belly, her chunky thighs, the discolorations from the cheap subdermal hair removal service she had gotten when she had thought maybe it was her armpit hair that had scared off her boyfriend in a fit of depressive illogic. She tried to cover herself – but the Eye could still see so much of her.

         Acceptable clay.

         She hadn’t thought those words.

        Was…

        Was it hacking her HUD?

        Except that she hadn’t felt the tell tale buzz in her jaw that normally came when the implant triggered a sound effect. The effects weren’t created by tapping directly into her brain, after all, she wasn't made of money . It came through a small speaker attached to her inner ear, and because it was cheap even for such an old model, it buzzed whenever it turned on. Instead, that voice had come from inside her head like the voices of a god.

         Not a God.

         Sarah wanted to scream – but she was too terrified. Then the walls of the pod puckered. Small holes opened and sleek shapes started to emerge. Four of them were large, four were small. But each, she realized, was a tentacle. The small ones looked like tiny wires with bulbous tips, while the larger ones were more muscular and sturdy looking. A large tentacle bumped against her shoulder – and the point of contact flared with a heat that made her shudder – in pleasure and disgust. She opened her mouth, then closed it hurriedly as another larger tentacle pressed to her cheek, then rubbed along her lips. Her lips tingled and…

         A memory. Mika Gordon, the guy she’d been dating in college. His cock, rubbing against her face. His voice, whiny: Come on baby, we’ve been dating three weeks-

         She turned her head aside. The tentacle had tasted far better than the bitter, sharp taste of Mika. But, like Mika, the tentacle followed her head and pressed to her again. This time, not only did the fine smearing of liquid against her lips taste good, but it also made her head spin. Her mouth opened of its own curious accord and before she could stop herself, her tongue had darted along the edge of the tentacle’s tip. Was it just her imagination, or was the tentacle more phallic than it had been? She closed her mouth so tightly and so hard that she nearly bit it. The tentacle jerked backwards, as if offended.

        One of the smaller tentacles darted forward.

        It plunged into her ear.

        Sarah’s mouth opened and she froze, her body trembling. There was no pain from the penetration. Instead...it...it felt…

         Good .

        She could feel the tentacle inside her brain. She knew it should have been horrifying, but instead, she was more amazed by the tiny twitches, the slow pushing. The pressure increased and the tentacle pushed another few inches into her head. She could track it by the warmth buzzing through her gray matter. It was behind her left eye now, and she felt a throbbing pleasure, emanating from her ear, buzzing along her jaw. She trembled, her left eye twitching shut as she made a soft ‘hnnnh’ noise. Then the tentacle drew back and she felt a faint pressure...and then a pop as it came free.

        And she came.

        She came inside the pod, her thighs pressing together, her sex clenching on nothing. Her mouth fluttered open and her eyes snapped shut as she let out a soft: “Hoofuck.”

        She hadn’t cum that hard since…

        She blinked as the small tentacle darted past her and she saw that it was holding the tiny black bead of her HUD, trailing the equally tiny silver bead of the subcutaneous speaker and microphone. Her hand lifted, to touch her head, but instead, one of the larger tentacles slithered into her palm. Her hand closed around it without a thought, and she shivered. Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it hastily as the large tentacle came in to touch her lips again. She shook her head. She was scared. She was turned on. She...she wanted another tentacle inside of her, but she was terrified of how much she wanted it.

         What are you doing to me? She thought.

         Sharpening.

         Two more small tentacles drifted forward. For a dizzying moment, Sarah thought they would approach her nose. But instead, they brushed along her lips. She tightened her grip on the large tentacle in her hand – and it spurted a thin streamer of pre-cum, which floated in the amber liquid like a small cloud, drifting slowly against her. Then the smaller tentacles brushed against her lips. It was a feathery touch. Like a kiss. One slipped left. The other slipped right. Both ended up right above her breasts. She had a moment to feel fear and excitement both before they plunged into her nipples. She felt a sharp sensation of contact. Then a dull, throbbing ache of pleasure.

        She’d never been desperate enough to take pregnation drugs and sell herself to the people who like babyplay and pregplay.

        But...one of her roomates at college had told her, in brisk, cheerful terms, about what it felt to have milk sucked out of heavy, pregnant breasts. Sarah now knew what the reverse felt like. The tendrils that had pierced her nipples flowed and twitched, small beads of liquid flowing down them, visible to her eyes. They reached her nipples...then there was pressure. A flare of pain. Then pleasure. Such pleasure that she nearly wet herself, her body clenching, her hands tightening as she opened her mouth in wordless joy as the fluid pushed into her breasts, which began to...swell. Swell more.

        She had been busty before. But now she was easily in the upper tiers of breasts before they moved from human to cartoonish. Then the tendrils yanked free and her breasts began to shrink as she felt something flowing through her veins, flowing through her body. She could actually  see  her veins bulging slightly as the fluid forced itself from her breasts to her skin, before smoothing out once more. Her breasts shrank to the size they had been before – but they were smoother. Perkier. Firmer. Perfectly symmetrical. Her nipples had shifted their position slightly, so that each were exactly where porn and movie stars said they should be. And what was more...maybe it was the amber light fucking with her…

        But she was fairly certain that her skin was beginning to change color.

         Oh… she thought. Muzzily. Confused. Excited. Desperate. Terrified.

        The large tentacle pressed to her lips.

        She did not turn away. The tentacle slid into her mouth, past her teeth, and down her throat with a smoothness that shocked her. Her gag reflex didn’t even so much as rumble. Instead of gagging, she simply felt... full . Her hands went to her throat and she felt the bulge and her toes curled in delight as the tentacle started to gently thrust into her. She bobbed in time with the movement, her hips rocking in the middle of the pod, responding to the movement with the animal desire that was stoked inside of her. She hadn’t been laid in years . Those two small tentacles caressed along her neck, then slipped into her skin. Veins bulged as they pumped her full of chemicals and her head swam with the pleasure of her. Her hands groped outwards, and large, thick tentacles sithered along her wrists. They looped around her biceps, teased her shoulders, then jerked taut.

        Suddenly, Sarah was held in a cruciform position, the tentacles hardening and holding her still. The tentacle in her throat began to speed up, slamming into her deep enough for a small ache to begin in her jaw as it was stretched wider and wider. Her eyes rolled back and up into her head as she felt her pleasure roaring through her body, her legs flailing and twitching. Her toe scraped along the inner edge of the pod, and she strained, desperately. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to escape, trying to get more, trying...she was just trying for something, anything.

        Then another sting came – the small tendrils slipping from her neck. One slammed into her ear again. Her entire face went slack as she felt it slipping into her brain. Tingles ran along her skin from the inside out and she felt her vision shifting  and twisting. She...for a moment...tasted colors. She felt the thrumming sound of a deep humming, buzzing through her body – but she felt it like knives dragging along her back. Her eyes sparkled as she saw sound waves humming and warbling through her vision. Then a thick tentacle plunged between her shoulder blades. She felt it penetrating her skin and she came.

        Again.

        The tendril in her ear began to thrust into her ear, in time with the tentacle that was fucking her throat. Another thick tentacle wrapped around her ankle, holding her still so that two small tendrils could brush against her clit, then worry into her sex. She felt them sliding into her. She could practically trace the movements inside of her body, and what should have been searing pain instead felt like utter bliss . Her eyes shut tightly and she made a muffled little moan through the tentacle filling her throat.

        Her jaw creaked as she felt a bulge sliding through the tentacle, then flowing down her throat. She made a gagging, gulping slurping noise in the thick pod as the huge tentacle deposited something warm and wriggling inside of her. She wanted to squirm and laugh, it tickled. Then she saw another tendril reaching down. It hovered before her eye, but then split, and plunged up her nose, joining the tendril in her ear inside of her brain. She was being fucked in the head...and it felt glorious .

        New memories formed and crystallized in her thoughts, then were shattered apart before she could quite grasp them.

        Memories of movement.

        Of grace.

         History.

         She saw the star/thing, fusion form in collapsing gravity. It was centered around system, gas giants, huge, ponderous, moon/worlds, surrounding the gas giants, warmed within, cold beyond. Under ice, flowing, swift, sentience, growing. It came/arose, and it wished to become/be/all/entity. She shuddered as the tentacles slid out of her ear, gleaming and dripping and looking sharp. Then it thrust into her neck and more black veins spread across her skin. Sarah tried to scream – it was too much. But then the two tendrils buried in her sex began to fill her and she felt the warmth within her growing to a furnace heat.

        Consume.

        Be.

        All.

        Consume.

        Be.

        All.

        Consumebeall. Consumeconsumeconsume.

        Two tendrils plunged into her wide eyes. They penetrated deep and when they began to spurt the liquid into her, she knew a bliss that rivaled even the time she had tried tasping. Electrical currents running  straight into her pleasure centers was nothing compared to the transcendent perfection of those three words. Be. All. Consume. Be. All. Consume.

         Her back arched and her claws sprang out from her fingertips as Sarah Kappel saw the worlds shrouded in a haze of ascomycete mind-spores. She saw the seedships, sprawling and fat, glutted on billion strong biomatic reclamation systems, thinking a single thought every ten centuries as their glacial metabolism kept their hive-swarms in flash frozen storage sacks. They floated between the star/things, and they wanted more . And then she saw her own life compared to these glories.

         Sarah Kappel, starving and hungry in the sline section, begging for some food from the gangers who had set up shop around the Maker. Sarah Kappel getting into the Colotto and getting to hug her parents goodbye before she was slotted into the fifty thousand student slots that were provided for slines. Sarah Kappel, eating rice so she might be able to afford new corporate citizenship on a world with ten billion mouths and never quite enough to eat.

         Be.

         No, wait-

         All.

         Sarah shook her head fitfully, feeling the tug of the tendrils.

         Consume.

         More images. More sights. But this wasn’t of distant star/things or alien ships. It was of humans. Men and women, their eyes glassy, the backs of their heads molded and rotten, fungal spires swirling out of their softened skulls. They marched forward in single file, stumbling and shambling. They fell, without even jumping, over the edge of the ragged metal parapet into the vast circular mulcher. Their biomass, broken apart, turned into simple resources. And overhead, a sky shrouded with a thick haze of mind-spores.

         Be.

         No!

         All.

         No !

         Consume.

         Sarah twisted her head hard. She felt a stabbing, sharp pain in her ear, in her nose. Her hand writhed and slipped through slippery tentacles and she ripped at the tendrils in her neck. They didn’t tug free, but they parted. Tentacles drew backwards and wriggled away, and the Eye  blinked. It blinked . Sarah kicked and shot forward, her hand plunging through the thick, rubbery mass of the pod. Fluid flowed past her wrist and she dug her hand deep into something soft and spongy. Red exploded and the amber light vanished, covered entirely by black and red. Sarah writhed and struggled, scratching. Clawing. Memories of being half drugged, a weight over her body, hands holding her wrists over her head. Memories of a snarling voice, growling: Come on, bitch, you wanted it a few seconds ago.

         No! No!

         No!

        Sarah grabbed onto something solid and felt a dizzying rush of pleasure at the feeling of dirt crumbling between her fingertips. She hauled herself forward, up, outwards, upwards. She felt the ragged edges of the pod sucking at her skin, and she felt completely soaked with the thick, viscous fluid. It dripped off her in sheets, sticking between her thighs, worked between her toes. It was sticky enough that dirt clung to her as she clambered up, hand over hand, feet working into the wall. Her hand, finally, grabbed onto the edge of the pit and she saw light – real light! The ruddy red sunlight of Trappist-1a.

        She hauled herself up and out and rolled onto her side.

        There, she vomited a thick mass of the amber liquid. It fell from her lips and her lungs clenched and squeezed as she coughed and hacked and spat, until, at last, she could breath in. She sprawled on her back then and simply lay there, too spent, too utterly drained, to do anything but gasp. Pant.

        Whimper.

        “Wh...What...the fuck?” She mumbled.

        Pain. Pain exploded behind her eyes. That voice boomed between her ears. Weakness. Explain.

         She clutched her head, curling up into a fetal position, her eyes closing tight. She heard the bewildered, confused emotion behind those emotions and choked out a laugh that was halfway a sob. The...the thing had chosen her. The knowledge filled her from her bones outwards, an intuition that went beyond the spoken words. It had chosen her because she…she was the weakling. She was the pushed around, bullied, little Dr. Sarah Kappel. Terrified of her snotty middle manager, too scared to ask a boy out on a date because she was a little chubby.

        “Heh...heh...hahah...” She laughed, then rolled onto her hands and knees. When she opened her eyes, she saw she was still dripping. She saw that her fingers were black. Her fingernails had become large, sharp claws. When she slid her tongue along her teeth, she had inch long fangs that, when she tightened muscles she hadn’t had a few minutes ago, retracted back to normal canines. More hysterical giggles.

         EXPLAIN.

         “Fuck off,” she snarled. “You hear that? Fuck off!”

        The pain redoubled. Sarah screamed as she felt the searing attention of the Eye, burning through her lobes. She saw her memories in grainy, black and white, third person. Mercilessly, the Eye examined every inch of her childhood. She saw the plunge into the sewers. The hungry nights. The begging. The excitement of winning the lotto. She saw it all from an alien perspective – and felt the growing perplexity of the Eye. It was growing more and more confused as it cycled past her memories, rushing up to the last few years of her life. Finally, it was done.

         EXPLAIN.

         “What can I say,” Sarah hissed. “We’re a...fucking stubborn species.”

        Then, wham. Another memory exploded before her. It was her first day on a starship, when she had been excited, before she had learned what surveying was like. The engineer had been cute and dreamy and she hadn’t learned he was gay yet, so she had asked him to explain to her how the HPS Drive worked. At the time, she hadn’t listened to a damn thing, she had been too busy drooling over his abs in his very tight yellow jumpsuit. But the Eye listened to every word.

         Alternative chosen.

         With a snap , the connection was broken. She felt hollowed out. Emptied. As if someone had just...yanked the plug from her guts. Sarah sprawled on the ground, wheezing. Her eyes fluttered shut. For a time, Sarah simply wished to cease to be. She didn’t want to dream.

        She did not get her wish.

        She dreamed.

        She dreamed of the star/fusion, burning beneath a dozen worlds. She dreamed of teeming billions of chittering, hissing, crawling things . She dreamed of them. And she dreamed their name. Their name. Their name . The Eye and the Claw. The Claw. The Claw. And she dreamed their goal. She saw it reaching outwards, turning star after star from their normal hue to a throbbing infrared black. Shrouding them in spheres of biomatter, focusing on something . Something she couldn’t even begin to imagine. A goal that she wasn’t sure the Claw even understood.

        And she dreamed again.

        Of the dead eyed humans, marching forward, fungal growths using their rotting bodies like puppets. Plunging, by the millions. By the billions . Plunging into the mulchers.

        The last she saw were her parents.

        Falling.

***

        Sarah gasped herself awake.

        She was sprawled on her back and felt dry and creaky. Her every muscle ached and her sex throbbed. She’d have said it felt a lot like the night after good sex, except she’d never had good sex, so...she closed her eyes and put her hand over her face. Despite remembering clearly what happened, she reflexively tried to tap into her HUD. Rather than the normal blip and interface projected in her vision, there was just her own rattled thoughts and, beyond her eyelids, the incredibly short night of Trappist-1a. The planet was semi-tidally locked, meaning that it had a night once every few years. Of course, each year was only a few Earth days long, so that wasn’t saying much.

        At night, the jungles lit up. Bioluminescence shimmered from every tree and every flower. The fireflies – tiny, blue lights – sparked and came to life in vast, swirling rivers of illumination that flowed between the trees overhead. That was enough to soothe her for a moment...and then Sarah sat up.

        Her hand went to her throat. “I can breathe!” She said.

        And then she noticed her voice was different. She had always sounded kind of whiny and sniffly when she had spoken before. Now? Now, her voice sounded like the husky contralto of a movie star. “Bloop,” she said. “Bleep. Bloorgh?” She blinked. Even saying nonsense words still came off like she was about to croon the final speech from The Stars are Eternal. She shook her head and stood – and that movement sent her sprawling right back down on her belly again. Her arms slapped onto the ground and she groaned as she laid there. The funny thing was that...she hadn’t lost her balance because she was wobbly or anything.

        She had lost her balance because she had stood up with a smooth, fluid motion – going from on the ground to on her two feet so rapidly that she had psyched herself out. Sarah closed her eyes, worked her fingers into the ground. She felt how sharp her fingertips were. Her claws were. Her claws. Her claws . She had fucking claws . She breathed slowly, tasting the pollen rich air and the moist scent of the grass she was mashed against, and forced herself to stand. She moved slowly and carefully and when she got her feet underneath her, she was able to open her eyes and not fall flat on her face.

        The jungle – vast and dark and glowing – surrounded her in every direction. There was no sign of her hazard suit.

        Sarah knew she should look down. See what had been done to her. Instead, she clenched her hands, feeling the sharp prick of her fingers against her palms, and tried to psyche herself up for taking a step forward. She just had to head forward and-

        An ungodly screech filled her ears.

        Sarah screamed and, quite suddenly, she was standing on one of the high branches on the narrow, spindly trees. The branch bowed under her weight and Sarah screamed again as she wrapped her arms around the trunk that connected to the branch. The whole tree began to sway and she tried to figure out what it was that had made the noise. She craned her head back over her shoulder and realized that...despite it being extremely dark and lit only by the guttering lights of bioluminescent flowers, her eyes had shifted to see things clearly. Then they zoomed in on a skittering movement, as if she had a pair of auto-tracking telescopes in her skull with an AI cleaning up the image quality and removing jitter.

        The thing that had screeched was one of the...well, the researchers called them ungodly screechers. They looked a bit like slugs with frills around their midsections that they used as a sound producing surface – they could make that hideous noise. The team was still not sure if they used them to scare off predators, attract mates, or give researchers heart attacks. Sarah put her hand to her chest and closed her eyes. Her fingers/claws pressed to her skin and she could feel the differences, no matter how much she tried to ignore it.

        Sarah trembled. The arm that was wrapped around the tree should have been aching with exertion – memories of Chief Bakara screaming at her as she scrambled over the obstacle course during one of those hideous employee health seminars filled her head. She had pipe cleaners for arms. But right now, she felt as if she could cling to this tree for hours. Which was good she also felt like she was going to break down sobbing again and needed something to cling to.

        The wind picked up and the tree swayed hideously. She felt her stomach lurch...and for just a moment, Sarah had a thought that she had had many times, a thought that she had to beat off with sticks and with gritted teeth every time it crawled up from the black pits of her brain to trouble her conscious thoughts.

        Sometimes, when she looked forward and saw the sheer amount of work she had to get home, she thought of an easier way to get out of things. Sometimes, when the rice was exceptionally bland and the day had been exceptionally shitty and her coworkers had been exceptionally distant and focused on their own work, she felt the vast, grinding gears of the universe pressing against her spine and...and she started to wonder if this was all there was. Nine to seven work, for a paycheck that never quite managed to pay all the bills, juggling conversion between scrip and universal credits, writing infrequent letters home to her parents, and watching the programs that were provided for free on the entertainment service.

        When the realization/thought of that going on forever hit her in those dark nights, she would idly imagine playing with the oxygen/carbon dioxide/nitrogen mixture of her space suit the next time she was out and about. The nice thing about taking out oxygen and carbon dioxide in a life support system was that a human’s lungs couldn’t breathe nitrogen. But it also didn’t – couldn’t, even – notice nitrogen. There was no suffocation reflex, no carbon dioxide poisoning, no panic like when she had been struggling to breathe through her puffy lips and choked throat.

        You just...went to sleep.

        Sarah looked down at the distant jungle floor. At this height, she was pretty sure that she’d just... splat .

         You sure about that? She thought. I mean, the fucking thing that transformed you was part of some kind of interstellar civilization of fucked up bug people. Who knows what it could do, what engineering or materials science it had access to. Right? Right?!

        So, Sarah worked it out. She could see the biological mechanisms that would give her a vertical leap on this scale. There were engineering considerations and energy considerations – but it wasn’t that far out of the bounds of human science. There were biological nano that could construct exotic and hyper-tough materials. Using those to make bones and muscles could make structures strong enough. The energy requirements were a little more sophisticated, but then again, maybe she’d need to eat twenty six square meals a day to keep from starving. Not that she felt hungry.

        The ground and the easy way out looked downright tempting…

        Sarah’s grip tightened and she clenched her teeth. No.

        No.

        No no no no! She shook her head. She hadn’t kicked off the Eye’s awareness, she hadn’t dragged herself out of the pit, just to give up now. The road ahead might have looked dangerous. It might have looked terrifying, actually. She had no idea what she even looked like, or what her coworkers would say. But she knew that just dropping off the side of a tree and splatting herself on the ground was not how she was going to go. And so, Sarah started to loosen her grip. She just needed to-

        The branch under her snapped.

        Sarah plunged.

        She had time to think: I am getting sick of falling down.

         Then the ground rushed up and she struck head first. Her neck snapped and her skull fractured from the impact. Her ribs crunched and one of them punctured inwards towards one of her hearts – piercing it with a shard of bone the size of her pinkie finger. Sarah’s consciousness snapped out of existence as sudden as she had hoped and feared.