Escape from the Nursery Planet (Commission) - Chapter 1

Here is the start of a new series that takes place in the Star Trek universe, commissioned by anonymous.

Stephen watched as the other cadet, Kelly, was engulfed in light, every atom of her shining like a diamond beneath the darkness of the starry sky. For an instant, he imagined what it might feel like to touch that light, to feel the atoms of his love as she disintegrated into pure energy. Then, her light vanished, beamed away into the sky. Stephen looked up then, as if he might follow the path of her instantaneous trip to their starship above. But, he saw no sign of her or of their waiting ship, only the ordinary stars and something frightful in the middle of them. Where one might have expected to find a sun or moon above, there was a disc of darkness, a black void, surrounded by the slow swirl of lensed light and matter dropping into it and disappearing into oblivion.

“Cadet,” called the away team commander, pulling his attention away from the stronger pull of the black hole. “Get your mind back on your work. Carry that artifact over here so that it can be beamed aboard the ship. We’re the last group going up.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said and picked up the strange glass and polished stone object that resembled a contorted hourglass with golden sand inside. “Do we know what this is?” he inquired.

“We think it might be some kind of time-keeping device used by the civilization that used to live here.”

Stephen gave the artifact a look. It seemed as though it might have been constructed yesterday. There was no sign of wear on it at all, not even a scratch. “How old do you think it is?”

“Ancient,” he said. “Probably from before the sun collapsed into a singularity. It might have something to do with the evidence of childcare we’ve found here.”

They had spotted some larger beds and many more smaller beds in adjacent rooms, leading them to the conclusion that children were living in these buildings with adult caretakers. There were even signs of playgrounds outside and rooms that might have been classrooms.

Stephen shifted the hourglass to the side and watched the sparkling gold sand shift inside. “So, you think this is older than the black hole?”

“Maybe, or maybe they used the distorted time caused by the black hole as part of their procreation and child rearing. Hard to say without further study, but we need to get moving. There’s some concerns that the black hole might be unstable. Let’s go.”

The few of them that remained on the surface lined up spacing themselves as they would be spaced on the pads in the teleporter room. Stephen held the artifact in his hands to keep it safe.

“Four to beam up,” the commander said.

Then, light engulfed them all. Although Stephen knew that he was being pulled apart and beamed away and put together again, he sensed only that the world was disappearing to be replaced by the teleporter room.

As soon as the energy had faded, there was a sudden jolt. Stephen felt himself tossed into the air and sideways into a wall. He landed hard on the deck and heard the sound of glass shattering beside him. Even as the ship shuddered and groaned and alarms blared and lights flashed red, his attention was drawn to the much closer catastrophe of the shattered glass of the artifact and the golden sand leaking out. He could smell it, something alien and metallic but not particularly unpleasant, just strange. Another jolt rolled the artifact from him and sent him tumbling over to the teleporter terminal.

“Emergency shut down!” declared a voice over the intercom that Stephen recognized as the chief engineer. “Containment breach!”

“What hit us?” the commander asked as he stood up.

“Something blasted from the black hole, I think,” the teleporter technician said. “It happened as soon as you beamed aboard.”

“I need to get to engineering,” Stephen said.

“Go,” the commander said. “Everyone else, to your stations.”

Stephen rushed out the door and nearly tripped over something on the floor in the corridor. It turned out to be a person laying there, unconscious. On closer inspection, Stephen recognized the person. “Kelly!” he cried and crouched down to help her. His heart dropped at the thought that she might be seriously injured or even dead.

When he turned her to face him, her eyes were shut. He saw a line of blood dripping down from her scalp just above her forehead. “Are you alright?” he asked her. “Speak to me.”

She grunted and groaned, and her eyes blinked open. “Stephen?” she said. “What’s going on?”

“The ship was hit with some kind of energy from the black hole,” he explained. “I think you stumbled and hit your head in the corridor.”

“So, that’s why I have a headache,” she said, putting a hand to the bloody spot on her scalp and sitting up.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Stephen said.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little woozy. We need to get to our posts in engineering right now.”

Stephen helped her to her feet, and the two of them ran to the nearest turbo lift and rode it to the nearest deck to reach engineering. For the first time ever, Stephen was grateful that he was not on a huge ship like the Enterprise. It would have taken forever to travel anywhere inside of it. On this ship, the Urchin, one could run from one extremity to another in less than 10 minutes. The two of them made it to engineering in less than 5.

Even before they spotted the door, they smelled the smoke drifting into the corridor, acrid and metallic, a clear sign of an electrical fire. They grabbed respirators and basic firefighting equipment from a storage box in the wall and headed inside. The scene in engineering was dire. Signs of explosions and fires were all over. Crew members were scattered all over the floor, some visibly injured others simply unconscious. Stephen and Kelly went around putting out fires and checking on crew members. Kelly made sure that the most healthy were tasked with caring for the most injured as Stephen went searching for the chief engineer, a pugnacious Klingon named Bergh. He found the Klingon struggling to escape from beneath some fallen panels near the reactor.

“Stephen,” Bergh said as he saw the cadet approach. “Hurry! There’s no time.”

“Let me help you up,” Stephen offered and started to try to lift the panels off of the engineer.

“No!” the trapped Klingon cried. “We need to shut down the reactor. The fail-safes are fried. Someone needs to go inside of containment to deactivate it manually.”

“You can do it when I get you out.”

“No!” he yelled. “It’ll be too late if you wait for me. Put on the suit and get in there, boy. Now!”

Stephen was not about to argue with a superior, especially not with one so potentially dangerous. He ran to the cabinets and followed his training to put on the environment suit with efficient enough swiftness that he was ready to enter the reactor only a minute or two later.

As he went to open the containment door, he turned to give Kelly one last look as she cared for the injured. Then, he focused his attention on saving the ship. Through the air-locked doors used to shield engineering from the heat and radiation inside, Stephen rushed along to the spot where he could detach the core and initiate an automatic shutdown. His shaking hands opened the panel and searched for the right valves he would need to turn.

“Alert,” announced a voice over the intercom. “A new, larger energy wave is approaching. Brace for impact.”

Stephen halted a moment with the awareness that turning off the reactor now would disable their shields. He decided to wait out the next wave, hoping that it would be the last. Only then would he shut down the reactor. Tense seconds passed as he hoped the ship would survive the next minute. He looked out the glass of the containment room and saw Kelly there, staring at him from outside. He held a hand up to her, as if to say goodbye. She mirrored his gesture, placing her hand on the glass.

Then, the wave hit, and Kelly was thrown back from him. Stephen was rolled to the side and hit the wall hard, but he managed to avoid serious injury. At worst, he had some broken ribs and possibly a broken ankle. Through the pain, he crawled back to the open panel, gripped the lever for the correct valve and pulled it. There was a rush of gasses and fluids through pipes and a pained groaning from the ship’s structure. Then, the sound of the ship gradually faded away. That dull hum that filled every hall, vibrating out of the very structure of the hull, was silenced. The reactor went dim and shut off. At least one catastrophe had been averted.

In the stillness that followed, Steven crawled back to the air-locked doors, activated the automatic decontamination shower, cycled the locks, and fell out of the door that led him back to the rest of the ship. It was there, back in the relative safety of engineering, where he passed out in his suit.

***

“Stephen,” a voice called to him from the darkness, he felt a distant shaking, maybe on his arm. “Stephen, are you alright?”

He recognized the voice. “Kelly?” he muttered, as he gradually regained consciousness. His eyes opened on her face, still smeared with blood and blurred through the environmental suit’s mask. “You’re not dead.”

“Neither are you,” she said, smiling. “I think we had better head to sick bay, though.”

He detached the helmet from the suit and lifted it off over his head. He now had a clearer view of the gash on her head, the blood around it had dried black, but the wound was still wet.

“Your head…” he said and coughed. His throat felt strangely raspy and reedy.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Barely even hurts anymore. Can you walk?”

“My ankle is feeling kind of sore.”

She got to her feet and held out her hand to him. “Let me help you up.”

Stephen took her hand and let her lift him to his feet, as he avoided putting weight on his bad ankle. He looked around the damaged engineering consoles. Most had gone dark like the reactor. The few that were running on emergency power were operated by a skeleton crew of the remaining engineers that had sustained only the lightest injuries during the tumult.

Then, he turned his attention back to Kelly. He gazed into her eyes and smiled a moment before he realized that something seemed off. He glanced down at her feet and back up into her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her smile fading.

“I thought you were standing on something or I was in a hole.”

“Why?”

“Well,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I was taller than you, unless you had a bit of a growth spurt recently.”

“Maybe you hit your head,” she suggested. “Come on. Let’s see if you can walk to sick bay.”

Kelly moved his arm over her shoulders and let him lean on her as he walked to keep his bad ankle from putting too much weight on the ground. It was awkward, though. Aside from being off balance, he had a sense that the suit was hanging surprisingly loosely on him now. His foot slid around in his boot with each step causing him to stumble more than once. Fortunately, Kelly, in a show of a surprising amount of strength, was able to keep him upright.

The emergency lighting cast only dimly through the corridors, but it was enough for them to find their way to sick bay. Cots had been laid out in the hall to accommodate the influx of injured crew. Triage had clearly moved the ones waiting there out of the way as more serious cases were taken care of inside. Not sure where the two of them belonged, they entered sick bay and were met by a nurse there.

They described their injuries and were sent into the hall to wait on the cots as the doctor worked on saving critical patients.

As they waited, Stephen looked around at the other crew there and was surprised at how many younger people there were among them. He knew there were families that lived on this ship, enough to require a school and a teacher, but he was surprised to see so many of them represented here. After a brief survey, he spotted at least two young teenagers and two more who were kids not yet in their teens. Not that he was very much older than them. At 18, he and Kelly were the youngest Starfleet cadets stationed on the ship. Still, he did not recall seeing most of these kids before.

Eventually, it was Kelly and Stephen’s turn to be checked out in sick bay. She helped him inside and they were led to a pair of beds. She assisted him as he removed his environment suit and gave him a hand getting up onto the bed. Then, she lay down next to him to wait to have her head looked after.

“There he is!” said a familiar voice. Stephen turned to see the chief engineer entering sick bay. “The boy of the hour.”

Following closely behind the Klingon was a Vulcan, Captain Mitrani. She took a moment to survey the injured in the room with clinical calculation before following Bergh over to Stephen’s bed.

Bergh asked him, “How are you feeling, Stephen? You badly injured?”

“Just my ankle,” he said. “No big deal.”

“‘No big deal,’” Bergh repeated. “You saved the whole ship. You’re a hero. I’ve been telling the captain all about you.”

“Indeed he has,” the Captain said with her controlled but soothing voice. “According to him, you are something of a prodigy.”

“I suppose so,” Stephen said, but it seemed a strange way to describe him. “Just doing my job.”

“You’re too modest,” Bergh said. “There’d be no ship left if you hadn’t been there to shut down the reactor.”

“Speaking of the reactor,” the captain said, “What is the status of our power supply?”

“Last I saw, we were down to just enough for life support and basic functions. Our communications are fried, and we have just enough impulse power remaining to station-keep our orbit. Beyond that…” he shrugged. “It’ll be days before we can get enough power to do anything aside from sit here and repair.”

“So, if the black hole emits more energy waves...?”

“We’ll be in big trouble.”

“Any ideas as to why the waves happened in the first place?”

“You know as much as I do. I’m sure the science team is trying to figure it out. Might have something to do with the planet, though, if I were to venture a guess.”

“Intriguing,” she said with a raised eyebrow.

“Anyway,” he said. “I’d better be getting back to engineering. Now that I’m healed up, I can start putting things right. Excuse me.” He backed away and left sick bay.

“Stephen,” the captain said. “I wish you a speedy recovery. Well done.”

“Thank you,” Stephen said, recognizing that her words were expressing a significant amount of gratitude for a Vulcan.

Then, she excused herself to check in with the doctor.

“Wow,” Kelly said.

Stephen turned to see her smiling at him. “What?”

“I think the captain almost smiled.”

“I think everyone is just relieved that we're still here. Wasn’t like I did anything special. Anyone else in the room could have done what I did.”

“But it was you that did it,” she said. “You deserve the kudos. Sorry, you don’t get to modest your way out of it.”

He smirked back at her. “Thanks.”

The doctor walked over and gave him a quick, “Hello, how are you feeling, son?” His attention was focused primarily on his datapad, even as he glanced up at Stephen.

“My ankle,” Stephen said. “I think it might be broken.”

The doctor performed a quick scan and said, “Not broken, but badly sprained. Should just take a minute to repair. Hold still.”

As he worked, the doctor said, “So, where were you when this happened? The school?”

“No,” he said. “Engineering.”

“Really?” the doctor replied. “What were you doing down that way?”

“I’m stationed there. I just got back from an away team on the surface, and we ran there together,” he said nodding towards Kelly.

“Forgive me if I doubt you, but they don’t normally send kids on away missions.”

Stephen felt himself getting frustrated. “I’m not a kid. I’m a cadet, an adult.”

The doctor finished up his work silently and said, “Did you hit your head at any point while the ship was rolling and shaking?”

“No,” he said. “Kelly did, but I didn’t.”

The doctor performed a quick scan of Stephen’s head and said, “No sign of contusions or swelling.”

“See,” Stephen said. “I told you.”

“What happened in engineering?”

“I had to go into the core to shut down the reactor,” Stephen said. “I might have some radiation exposure from it. However, I did have an environment suit on, of course.”

Again the doctor scanned him. “I don’t see any residual radiation readings that would indicate anything more than a normal background exposure.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“A person doesn’t need to be intentionally trying to deceive someone to say something untrue. You may just be… confused.”

“I’m not ‘confused.’ I’m telling you the truth.”

“How old are you?” the doctor asked.

“Isn’t that on my chart on your pad?”

“It is,” he said. “I just want you to verify it.”

“I’m 18,” Stephen said.

The doctor turned his pad to Stephen to show him his medical records. “That’s not right,” Stephen said after finding his age. “It says I’m 14.”

“It’s accurate,” the doctor said. “Frankly, you don’t look 18. I’m not sure where you found that uniform, but it doesn’t fit you particularly well.”

Stephen looked down at his clothes. It was true that his uniform seemed curiously loose on him at the moment as if everything he wore was a size or two larger than it should be.

“Kelly, tell him how old I am,” he said, turning her way, but a nurse was standing between them, working on Kelly’s injured head. Kelly’s eyes were shut. Stephen realized that most likely she was under some kind of anesthesia.

“Listen,” the doctor said. “I’m ordering you to rest for the remainder of the day. Come see me again tomorrow so that I can give you a follow up. Right now, I don’t see signs of a head injury, but it's possible that you’re suffering from shock. See if you can have your family and friends check on you tonight to make sure your condition isn’t deteriorating.”

“Fine.” Stephen sighed and asked, “Am I done here now?”

“Go,” the doctor said. “Get some rest, and clear your head. Come by tomorrow.”

Stephen stood up from the bed and tested his ankle. It was still a bit tender, but he could put weight on it now with no problem. Seeing that Kelly was still being treated, he decided to wait in the corridor until she was finished being patched up.

Stephen sat on a cot out there, trying to figure out why his records were wrong. “Maybe the computer was damaged during the attack,” he considered, but it seemed a long shot that the damage would only alter one number on his records as opposed to corrupting the whole thing. He looked down at his clothes again and bent over to tighten his boot laces. “I’m losing weight,” he said, trying to calm himself down. “That’s got to be all it is. Somethings wrong with the computer, and I’ve lost weight. That’s all.”

He was not convincing himself, though.

“Hey,” Kelly said after spotting him there. “You waited for me.”

“Of course I did,” Stephen said, standing up. His already shaken demeanor was worsened when he realized again that she seemed taller than she normally appeared. “I think I need to lie down,” he said and added, “Doctor’s orders.”

“Well,” she said. “I’ll escort you home, then. I don’t think Burgh will start missing me for another hour at least.”

***

They walked towards Stephen’s room in silence as he tried to think through all the strange things that were happening to him. Obviously, Kelly took notice.

“What’s bugging you?” she asked him.

“Some strange things I noticed,” he admitted. “My age was wrong in the records that the doctor showed me. It was the only thing that had changed, though.”

“That is strange,” she said. “Well, once we get communications back up, they can correct your charts, you know, verify your birth certificate.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That won’t be a big problem… only…”

“What?”

“Do I seem… smaller to you?”

She looked him up and down and said, “No, not any smaller than usual.”

“I need a mirror,” he said.

“Your room should be just around the corner.”

But, when they turned the corner, there was a closed blast door in the hallway blocking the entrance to the room with a guard standing by it.

“What’s the matter here?” Stephen asked.

“Sorry,” the guard said. “This hallway suffered hull damage during the attack. All the rooms beyond this point have been damaged or depressurized. No one is allowed to enter until repairs are completed.”

Stephen sighed. “Great,” he said. “Not only is my head a mess, but it looks like my room has been destroyed as well.”

“Hey,” Kelly said to Stephen. “Why don’t you come over to my room? I’m just down the hall the other way. You can rest up in there.”

“All right,” he said and followed her into her place.

“Over here,” she said and walked him to her bed. “You lie down here and try to get some rest. I’m going to engineering for a little while to help out. We can eat some dinner together when I’m back. Okay?”

“Sure,” Stephen said, taking a seat on her bed.

It was not the first time he had been alone with her in her room, but something felt strangely awkward about the situation this time, as if he were getting away with something that should be against the rules.

She leaned in and kissed his forehead. “I’ll be back soon,” she said and left Stephen blushing in her room.

***

Kelly returned a few hours later and found Stephen just waking up from a nap. “Hello,” she said, seeing him yawning. “Did you get some good rest?”

He nodded and finished yawning before replying. “I was more tired than I thought, it seems. How are things in engineering?”

“Not great,” she said. “Things are stable, but almost every system on the ship needs repairs. It’s going to be a while before things are operating normally.”

“I see,” he said. “What are you holding there?”

She looked down at the box in her arms. “Oh,” she said, looking back at him. “Replicators are down and your room is inaccessible, so I checked in the ship’s emergency supplies to find us some MREs to eat and a change of clothes for you. I think these should fit you.” She pulled out a pile of grey clothes from the box and set them on the bed next to him.

He held up the top of the outfit and frowned, seeing a strip of red, yellow, and blue stripes across the chest and around the shoulders. “This is like something a kid would wear,” he said. “Didn’t they have any uniforms there?”

“Nothing that looked like it would fit you,” she said. “Sorry.”

He sighed and stood up. “I’ll go get changed in your bathroom. Excuse me.”

In the bathroom, with the closed door providing some privacy, Stephen began to undress, and what a relief it was. He had put on this particular uniform when he woke up, and the day since then had included an away trip to the surface of a desolate planet and a journey through a malfunctioning reactor. Put simply, his uniform stunk of dust and sweat. Additionally, it seemed to have been stretched out of shape to the point that it hung loosely from him.

So, he was glad to be getting out of his clothes at last. However, as he revealed more and more of his skin, he grew increasingly concerned by what he saw. His limbs were skinnier than he was used to. Not that he was particularly muscular, but he felt unusually weak now. On top of that, his body hair had thinned out considerably. If the doctor had not ruled out radiation exposure as a medical condition, he might have suspected it as the cause of the changes he was finding. Once he was down to his underwear, he took a moment to look at himself in the mirror.

“Man,” he said to his reflection. “I do look younger.” It was hard to quantify just what had changed, but his face seemed more innocent and less mature. “Maybe I am confused,” he said. “The doctor told me I looked 14, so now when I look at myself, that’s what I see. Could be my mind is just playing tricks on me.” His stomach grumbled. “I’m hungry and exhausted. I’m not thinking clearly. That’s all it is. I’ll worry about it all in the morning.”

He picked up the plain clothes Kelly had found and sighed again. Reluctantly, he put them on. Despite thinking that they were too small, they ended up fitting him just fine, better than his old uniform had done. He avoided looking in the mirror again, not wanting to find out if the clothes had made him appear even younger.

Stephen returned to Kelly’s bedroom to find that she had set a table for them, laying out a packaged ration on a plate for each of them.

“Dinner is served,” she declared after hearing him leave the bathroom. “Dig in.”

“Looks delicious,” he said, taking a seat across from her at the small round table. He tore open the packaging, and found dry food that might have benefited from a little moisture. “Do we have any water to go with this?” he asked.

“One second,” she said and reached into the box on the floor by her shin. She pulled out a pair of water bottles and set them on the table. “And…” she said before reaching back into the box and retrieving a glass bottle with blue liquid inside, which she presented to him. “A gift from Bergh for saving the ship. I ran into him while looking for food. I said you were eating with me, and he wanted to reward you for your bravery. He insisted I bring this to you.”

“Is that…?”

She nodded. “Romulan Ale,” she confirmed, “and a good vintage, apparently.”

“Well,” Stephen said, smiling. “Let’s open it up and have a glass.”

She looked uncertain as he set the bottle down on the table to uncap it.

“Wait,” she said. “You probably shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” she said. “It’s supposed to be pretty strong. You think you’re ready for that?”

Thinking that she was referring to the stress and injuries from earlier that day, he waved off her concerns. “We’ll just have a glass,” he said. “Take it slow. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “I suppose you’ve earned it, and just a little shouldn’t hurt.”

He poured out a bit too much of it into a pair of glasses and they toasted their ship, The Urchin. “To our home, may it carry us safely to our destination.”

“Cheers,” she said, clinking glasses with him.

Then, they took a sip.

“Woah!” she said, breathing heavily. “That’s like flaming ice.”

“Yeah,” he said, setting his glass down. “It’s smooth, but you can feel it afterwards. Pretty nice taste too.”

“One glass,” she said.

“Of course,” he said.

***

By their third glass, the bottle was more than half empty. They had finished off their dinners a while ago, and at some point, they had moved to her bed to recline there as sitting up straight had become a challenge.

Stephen finished off his glass and set it on a bedside table. “Should I get a refill?” he asked.

Kelly finished her own drink and said, “I want to, but I don’t think we could make it to the table and back without spilling.”

“True,” he said. “I’m a bit tipsy wipsy.” He giggled, and she joined in.

“You drank like a champ,” she said. “Just like a man.”

“Hey,” he said. “I am a man.”

“You sure?” she said, sliding close to him.

With her near enough that he could feel her breath on his face, he found himself doubting if that was true. Somehow, she felt older all of a sudden, and he had the impression that he was a nervous boy in the presence of a grown woman. “M-maybe,” he said and felt his face flush red. “I dunno.”

She kissed him, and he felt his nervousness with her increase. Anticipation about what might be coming was making him hard, despite how inebriated he was.

She placed a hand on his cheek, tenderly, and said, “I can make you feel like a man.”

They started making out, and he found himself fumbling his way through it. Certainly, being drunk was affecting his coordination, but he felt strangely inexperienced on top of it all, as if this were the first time he was trying this. Thankfully, she seemed to be too drunk to notice or care how poorly he was performing with her. He was kissing too hard, and he was unsure of what to do with his hands, so they mainly groped her chest. He wished he could touch her bare breasts, but they were still sealed away inside of her uniform. He considered just unzipping it, but he worried about taking that much initiative. Undressing her seemed like a step too far, and he already felt as though he were getting away with something by kissing her at all.

Sensing his hesitation, she started to disrobe herself. He followed her lead, and started taking off the silly outfit she had found for him. When her top came off, revealing her bra, he was stunned by the size of her breasts. Beneath her uniform, they were somewhat flattened out and their shape was lost. Free from that constraint, their full round size was apparent at last. They were huge, and so was the rest of her, it seemed. Had she always been this big compared to him?

Then, she unhooked her bra and slid it off, giving him a good look at her nipples at last. His fingers leapt onto them as if pulled in by a magnetic force. He started tweaking and twisting them as if they were electrical knobs.

“Easy,” she said. “Be gentle there.”

He felt himself blush and calmed down on her nipples. Again, he was feeling lost.

“Here,” she said, gently rolling him to the side and climbing on top of him. “Let me show you how.”

They kissed and their hands ran up and down each other’s bodies. Occasionally, she would pause to direct him—move his hands there, speed up or slow down. He was an apt pupil, following her guidance. His only worry was that he might finish before they had even really started.

“Now,” she said. “Slowly, slide inside.”

Stephen was reminded of all the time he had spent docking a shuttle in the academy, although this time was much more pleasurable. Warm and wet and soft, he had to pause to avoid losing it immediately. She lowered her hips down, drawing him deeper inside, and then raised up again, sliding up his shaft.

It was almost too much for him to take, he had to close his eyes and focus his full attention on not coming too soon. She kept sliding up and down on him, keeping her pace slow, likely out of consideration for how excited he was already. He gripped her hips to offer some support and feedback for her, and she found a rhythm that both of them appreciated.

Somehow he held on, much longer than he had expected—probably the alcohol helped in that regard—still he came much faster than he would have normally. It felt fantastic, the best orgasm he could remember, as if it were the first time, a pleasure stronger than his body was prepared to handle. So lost was he in his orasm, that he barely noticed what became of Kelly. Then, in his drunkeness and postcoital bliss, he drifted off into a deep sleep.

***

What felt like years later, Stephen became aware of a pain in his head. Somewhere far off, he vaguely heard Kelly’s voice and felt a hand on his shoulder.

“What?” he said, his mouth dry like sandpaper. He opened his eyes, and the light of the room made him wince, so he shut them again. It was painful to think, but he knew he had to respond to something. “What’s the matter?”

“Put your clothes on,” she said, “before someone sees you in my bed like that.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I mean, what time is it?”

“It’s almost time for me to start my shift,” she said. “You’re probably going to be late for school, and I don’t want a teacher coming looking for you and finding you naked in my bed. God, what was I thinking?”

“School?” he said, daring to open his eyes again to see her pacing at the foot of the bed, dressed only in a robe. “What’re you talking about?”

“Please tell me you’re in high school at least,” she said. “I swear you looked so much older yesterday. Maybe it was the uniform. I figured you couldn’t be more than a year younger than me. What was I thinking giving you alcohol… and then…?” She seemed reluctant to go any further with that train of thought.

“But,” he said. “You’re only a little older than me, half a year, I think.”

“More like 3 or 4 years,” she said. “Oh, God. You can’t tell anyone about this. You hear me? I’ll be in so much trouble. We have to keep this a secret. No one can know. Oh, God.”

“Wait,” he said. “How old do you think I am?”

“Fifteen?” she said, hopefully. “Please tell me you’re at least fifteen.”

He was about to tell her he was 18, but he felt as though he were preparing to lie. It was true, or it had been. Of that much, he was certain. Yesterday morning, he had woken up as an 18-year-old man. Now, he felt much younger. He thought about his reflection in the mirror last night and the records the doctor had shown him yesterday. It was that number that felt right now, even if it made no sense, so he said it. “I’m fourteen.”

“Oh, God,” she said, holding her head in her hands. “No, no, no… What did I do?”

Although his head was aching, he knew that they had a serious problem that would require some serious thinking. “We need to talk to a science officer,” he said. “Something very strange is going on.”