“Birds are hostile.” Fran watched the small shadows moving, brown stains in the blue sky, agitated in groups, flying in circles and chirping. “What if they all shat on us now?”
“That is statistically impossible, can’t you just enjoy the moment?”
“I am enjoying.” She said removing an acorn poking her ribs under her mat. Fran was not much of a nature person, and wished the birds dropped dead to have just an infinite blue above her eyes. The heat was another impediment, her temples and upper lip insisted on sweating, blotting her face was not enough. She hated her body. “Are you sure that’s what humans do?”
“Look around.” Don moved Fran’s head. Humans are watching the sky too. “I thought you wanted to relax, we come to Earth, now you complain about birds, sweating, the temperature, I asked which planet you wanted to go, you said it didn’t matter, but it does…”
“I can’t even express my own opinions, and you get angry, I’ll just say nothing. Why did you choose male bodies for both of us?”
“Does it matter? We aren’t exchanging gametes anymore, when was the last time anyways? If you read the briefing, you would know humans perform coitus without the intention of exchanging gametes, but you were more worried about gossiping with 85756b about 26546f’s home situation, do you even want to be here?”
“This is such a forsaken planet, their cubs look sticky and there is water everywhere. Are you sure they are the top species?”
“Yes” Don said, deflated. Earth was his idea. “We could try water animalia? Look.” Don showed Fran his tablet. “Ocean mammals, we could try dolphins, water should be fresher and they do not have advanced speech.”
“Do dolphins sweat?”
“They are water mammals, in which way sweat glands would make sense for them? They don’t need to regulate temperature the way primates do.” Don wondered why he agreed with partnering with Fran, he checked the time for partnership expiration, and they had another five cycles. Don could not wait to go back to partner pairing mart again.
“Great idea.” Fran got up, shook her masculine body from the soil, leaves, sticking to her sweated body. Perhaps she hated water as a semi dry animal, as a wet animal, she would love it. “Are we going to be two males again?”
“Male dolphins are larger and stronger than females. Besides, females and males live separately, males might live in pairs or trios.”
“Isn’t that already too complicated?”
“Do you want to go or not?” Don was already downloading the body composition to install on their bracelet. “Are you changing idea or not?”
“Dolphin it is, but after I will choose the animal.”
They went back to their parking lot before going through the metamorphosis. Earth was not a top destiny, it was farther from other better situated planets, but because of that, it was a cheap location, since you would have to burn more fuel, they gave a large discount for four metamorphosis and parking lot. Fran knew Don chose Earth because he enjoyed piloting and because they were budgeting and did not want anybody to know.
To everybody else, they were just an adventurous partnership duo going to the most inhospitable corners of the galaxy, edgy and fun, but they knew they were two meals short of losing their pod, but it was preferable to travel than having full meals each week. Back inside their ship they checked if gas, fuel and discharges were leaking before going into deep sleep for the body rebuild.
Don pitied Earth living things, attached to their body from birth to death. While their kind could remove Earthlings’ equivalent to the nervous system and attach it to other bodies. They were not eternal, because their mass aged, but without the body to take care, their longevity was the equivalent to centuries, and for few rich ones, even millennia.
While the smart ones of their kind worked incessantly, the regular folk traveled, not only for fun, but as an organized data collection system. Their kind knew too well they could learn even from the least developed beings. For Don and Fran, it was a funny discovery that humans thought aliens were fixated with anuses and flattening corn. Fran, however, enjoyed ass. Don preferred tits, especially large jiggly ones, not in a gamete exchanging manner, though. Now that they understood a little of the human mind, they were getting the dolphins’ point of view.
They laid down in their respective chambers and after sealed, it filled with a yellow liquid that dissolved slowly the human flesh, a process that took three days, the fluids did then hydrate and give energy to their encephalon. When tissues and bones washed away, their encephalon was kept apart in a compartment, filled with liquid while the machine built their dolphin body.
Don chose young males as body for them, strong enough to antagonize the adults, but not old enough to have responsibilities. The process took a week, between building the body, the insertion of the encephalon and the slow process of awakening, learning how to swim and breathe. The bracelets were used for beings with long limbs; the metamorphosis computer was inserted into their own brain, where the encephalon could control it directly.
“How do you feel?” Don asked, moving himself in pirouettes inside of his chamber.
“Like a torpedo. Look at my skin, shining, I love it. Shall I transport us?” And with Don’s approval, Fran took them to the Atlantic Ocean. They spoke about Pacific and Indic, but Atlantic was not so deep and they chose a place with calm waters to test their abilities first.
Water was not cold, but they forgot to emerge to breathe sometimes and coughed, a dolphin pod swam around the weird being passing for dolphins. “You should have learned how to breathe first before trying to mingle with us, just saying…”
“What do you mean? We are dolphins, we are dolphing around, like what dolphins do.” Don blurted out looking at Fran, that knew they had been unmasked.
“Hey Ted! We’ve got aliens again!” The dolphin screamed and it caught the attention of the whole group. “Ted, they don’t know how to breathe.” Both dolphins laughed.
“You must be the dumbest aliens that tried to swim with us. There are lots of you, Cid and I are designated to welcome you. We will give you the tour, you’ll use pufferfish and fuck a hole then get the fuck out.”
“Is that it? How… humans are top species, you know… they haven’t, nobody ever found us, none of us!”
“Go up to breathe, I’ll have the pufferfish ready. Time is fish, quick!”
By the time they came back down, Ted and Cid had a pufferfish ready, swollen, jumping around them. “Rules, you hold the pufferfish in your mouth and bite it ever so slightly, don’t harm it and don’t swallow it. Each one gets their time holding it and leave it to the other one, when everybody is high, we let Henry go.”
“Is he your friend?” Don asked, incredulous that a much smaller creature would befriend a dolphin and allow it to be bitten.
“He likes the teeth massage, we like to get high, don’t you have it in the place you came from?”
“We don’t have drugs, but some of us are sent to explore the galaxy.” Fran boasted.
“You so don’t understand your own kind.” Cid laughed. “They send you around to relax coz y’all nothing. If y’all there, y’all bothering.” He said after biting the pufferfish and floating.
“Dude… yeah, we are expendable, right?”
“Just like us” Ted shat himself and they all laughed. “Y’all gonna shit too…”
“I can’t swim!” Don’s voice was melting in water.
“Don’t bite Henry too strong!” Cid scolded Don.
They left the two aliens dressed as dolphins enjoying their good time and went to fetch two pieces of fish carcass. They launched it to them both.
“What now?” Fran tried to sniff, but odor did not work the same under water.
“Time to make love.” Ted demonstrated the process. While the two aliens watched swimming backwards.
“I won’t put my penis in there…”
“Everybody does, have fun!” Ted and Cid disappeared to give them privacy. Fran and Don observed the carcasses and while Fran refused, Don swam around it, thinking why not waste some gametes in water, they were forbidden to mate with locals, crossbreeds were not only forbidden, but dangerous for the part carrying the eventual fetus. Gametes in dead fish were just fun.
Fran, not blind by lust, was able to sport a swarm coming their direction preparing a coordinated attack, while Don had his dick out, she sprinted to him and pressed the device to return to the ship in the Earth parking lot.
“Really? You put us in danger! I don’t care what the contract says, we are going back now!”
“Chill out, it’s your turn to choose the next animal. After we can go. We already paid for the trip!”
Fran, still in a dolphin body, swam in circles, silent, it was her turn to choose their next body and adventure. “Birds are hostile, non-terrestrial flying objects might be hostile too. Let’s have real fun. Do we have their alien shape in our database?”
Don lightened up. “We do! Look, we have an update on their mythical monsters, which one?”
“I like myself traditional, let’s go gray!” And on a whim, they were back to their chambers to build their new body, their bottle nose dolphin body took long to dissolve, and the gray body was just sleek and tiny, like a human child, with big eyes and large head. Weeks went by until they crawled out of their chambers.
“So?”
“Let’s bend their food!” Fran and Don chose a land in South America known for cattle and sugarcane, they lifted and abducted every cow, painted them purple and sent back and bent the sugarcane in drawing the shape of the human male genitalia. They chose to do their mischief at night without a moon, with many clouds blurring the few lights from the stars. And before leaving, they flaunted their beautiful hyperspace travel wagon, humans wouldn’t understand, they owned the equivalent of their old cars, as for humans, flying vehicles were all fancy.
They flew over a tiny village and had every light on, and when they were sure people were observing, in shock, from their tiny houses, they left.
“Hicks!”
They were outside orbit again, having fun with purple cows and bent plantations. Don remembered why he paired Fran many cycles ago.
