Lost on an Alternate Earth

Cody charged up his plasma weapon as he checked the status of his cloaking device. The wind seemed to be picking up, meaning more of the fine rust-colored sand of this barren wasteland blasting around–enough fine grit to strip the paint off his starcraft, and the skin off his body, if his force-field went down. Plus, breathing was an absolute bitch during the last sandstorm he weathered. He simply didn’t have the resources to weather another.

If his cloaking device gave out, it was likely he wouldn’t survive until the next sandstorm.

He had no idea what the freakish beasts roaming this wasteland were called, but he knew they were twice the size of bears, twice as aggressive, and spoke no language he could decipher. The “Brutes” as he’d come to call them were 9-feet tall with silver-colored skin and deformed faces; some had horns, some several rows of teeth, while another had eyeballs covering its skull.

He had disarmed three since he’d arrived on this planet–or rather, “parallel Earth,” (as it was their world with an alternate history)--but each of them were shrugging off his most powerful plasma blasts and frag grenades. He wasn’t sure if any of them could be killed, only escaping thanks to the invisibility granted by his cloaking device.

Cody’s target was nearby, according to the suits back in the lab. They said their portal couldn’t pinpoint a location but they could drop in the general vicinity.

They told him he had six hours before the portal closed, leaving him stranded here. Since he had barely survived the three hours since he’d arrived, he knew he wouldn’t last long if that iridescent energy hole sealed up behind him.

He had to find Dr. Corvac.

Cody groaned as he took a step forward, expecting to trudge up another sandy hill but instead walking into something solid. He groaned, checked his nose–damn, dislocated!--and activated the scanning visor in his helmet.

The heavily armored mercenary could see the outline of a structure under a similar cloaking mechanism to his. He took a handful of sand and tossed it at the edge of the structure. As the sand fell, it seemed to outline a door.

Behind him, he could hear the growls of the giant Brutes padding along the sand in search of prey. The wind had escalated. He knew it wasn’t safe out in this bizarre environment.

He couldn’t be certain of his safety beyond that door, but it seemed to be the lesser of two bad situations. He felt around for a doorhandle and groaned when his finger touched a smooth plate. “Access denied,” the voice responded–not only in English, but in the same British voice that the devices back in the lab all spoke in! There was no doubt in his mind that Dr. Corvac was here.

“If it’s tech from our facility,” Cody theorized as he unreeled an interface cord from his helmet, “then I should be able to hack in…” Minutes after the magnetic interface cord had connected with the system, the door popped open. Just as he ran through it, he saw some Brutes about a kilometer away, charging at him through the swirling sands.

He slammed the door shut, throwing his wide back against it. He sighed as he stared around the fluorescence of the room he’d entered. Everything was sterile white. He was in a hallway lined with doors, with one large door at the end.

Plasma gun in hand, Cody proceeded carefully. “Dr. Corvac?” he called. He approached the first door; it was locked, so he moved on to the next.

He whirled around when he heard the hydraulic woosh of the door at the end of the hall sliding aside. Dr. Theodores Corvac strode out, albeit a bit greyer around the temples than he had looked in his files back at the facility.

“Good god, I hope you’re not here to murder me,” the Doctor said as he approached, his hands up in the air.

“Theodores Corvac?” Cody asked, pulling his plasma weapon aside. “I’m here to rescue you.”

“RESCUE me?” Dr. Corvac chuckled. “From what I witnessed from my drones, you were minutes away from succumbing to that nasty wasteland out there!”

Dr. Corvac approached, taking in Cody and all of his armor and weaponry. “You’re safe in here. You can get rid of all of that nonsense.”

“With all due respect, Dr. Corvac,” Cody said, “I don’t plan on staying long. I’ve been sent to escort you back to the gateway we’ve constructed. I’m here to bring you back to Gemini Tech, back on your original Earth.”

Dr. Corvac let out a sigh. He shook his head. “Good god, could you not have come more quickly?” he groaned.

“You’ve been gone for twenty-one days,” Cody said flatly.

“It’s been eleven years here,” Dr. Corvac stated. “I had a feeling there was an element of chronal dilation, but I had no way of knowing until now.”

Cody looked around. “Is this… your facility?”

“Why, yes,” Dr. Corvac said. He produced a small tablet from his pocket and tapped its surface, resulting in some pleasant tones. “I have a drone on its way with some nutrient fluid. You look like you could use it. Big guy like you probably can’t last too long without a hearty meal, eh?”

Cody glanced back at the door he’d come through, then at the doctor. Cody had lost a supply pod in his battle with the last brute. He was desperate for some food and water, and maybe a place to sit. But the muscular merc wasn’t trained to be weak while he was on the clock. He had a job to do.

“I’ll hydrate momentarily, but then we need to get you out of here,” Cody said.

“Oh, I won’t be leaving,” Dr. Corvac explained. “Yes, it’s true, the lab accident that trapped me here was quite a shock, but I’ve formed quite a life here. This planet is in the throes of a worldwide pandemic. I’ve been one of the few people able to come up with a solution! I may have singlehandedly saved humanity on this Earth. I can’t just abandon them now!”

Cody sighed as he looked at the weary scientist. Dr. Corvac’s casual way of speaking, the wrinkles around his eyes, and the way he cracked his knuckles one at a time reminded Cody of his father’s best friend Luco. Just like Luco, Dr. Corvac looked like he had been an incredibly sexy man in his youth, although the imperfections of age had improved that sexiness. Deep down, Cody wanted to lay down his weapon and collapse into a bed with Dr. Corvac. He could use a backrub and some food… cheese, maybe! It was the one ration he always craved but was never allowed to take on missions. Dr. Corvac no doubt had access to cheese here.

But if he didn’t get back to the gateway in three hours, they would be trapped there forever. GeminiTech had spent millions of dollars developing a way to recover the lost Dr. There was no way they would fund another expedition into this world.

“I’m sorry,” Cody said, taking up his plasma weapon and aiming it at the Doctor’s face. “But I’ve been ordered to retrieve you. I have to return you alive, but I’m allowed to harm you if necessary. We have to get back to the gateway NOW, Dr. Corvac. I’d prefer it if you came along willingly.”

A panel in the ceiling slid aside and a propeller-driven drone lowered into the hallway. Instinctively, Cody fired at it. It struct the ground, its shattered hydration capsules leaking out over the floor.

“Ah, I see,” Dr. Corvac said. “Let me guess: this isn’t so much about rescuing me as it is retrieving GeminiTech’s property, is it?”

Cody put his finger on the trigger of his weapon when it had fully charged again. “Let’s go, Dr. Corvac.”

They started toward the door leading back into the wastelands. “I have a transport,” Dr. Corvac offered, his hands still in the air to signify his passivity. “It’s far faster than walking. We can avoid the mutates, and the harsh weather.”

Cody considered this option. It could be a trick–he had threatened the Dr., who was not interesting in coming, after all. “Fine,” Cody finally agreed. “But only if you’ll allow me to keep my weapon trained on you the whole time.”

Dr. Corvac shrugged, then polished his glasses against his white lab coat. “If you wish,” he said, leading Cody through the hallway, down a steel ramp into a dimly lit hangar. Dr. Corvac approached a large transparent sphere with two seats. He tapped something on his tablet and the sphere split in two, allowing them to climb aboard.

“You’d be amazed by this,” he said. “I didn’t even invent it. It was native tech when I already arrived!”

The sphere hovered up, through a hole in the ceiling, finally emerging in the wasteland. It smoothly passed along about two feet off the ground, unaffected by the sandstorm.

“How are you controlling it?” Cody asked as he placed a hand against the inside of the sphere. It was cool and smooth.

Dr. Corvac tapped his temple. “With the same thing you were sent to retrieve. See, I was working on a chip that could allow organic matter and technology to communicate, but there was an electrical fire in the lab and I nearly lost my specimens. I couldn’t save the poor dears, but I could save the chip by inserting it into my own brain. Gemini Tech certainly wasn’t happy about that.”

Cody had already read all of this in the Doctor’s file. He groaned as he reached down to unclip the utility belt strapped around his chest. For some reason it felt unreasonably restricting.

“I guess I was quite accident prone,” Dr. Corvac explained. “Because two weeks later I ended up sucked through a gateway, dumped out onto this poor planet. But the chip in my brain greatly increased the odds of my survival. I was luckily rescued by some of the last survivors of this world and we started to search for a means to heal this world. We’ve come so far! We even have some safe zones erected. In the midst of the zones, you would think you were in a city, like from our world.”

Cody twitched, pointing his weapon at the edge of the bubble, as two hulking Brutes–or “mutates” as the Doctor had called them–ran along the ground with their fists like apes.

“They’re easily enraged,” the Doctor said. “You know, you haven’t asked about the nature of the pandemic, or even if you’re at risk.”

Cody was breathing heavily. He reached up to pull off his helmet, revealing his curly blond hair and bright blue eyes. “I… something’s… wrong…” he said, rubbing his chiseled face.

“You see, not every human is susceptible,” the Doctor said. “But men with a certain level of testosterone and muscle mass, once infected by this virus, start to transform… into… well, those things.”

Cody groaned as he started to remove more of his armor. His body was definitely getting bigger, he realized as he stripped until he was shirtless. He watched as his arms thickened, his shoulders widening. He groaned as his pecs swelled out of proportion to the rest, ballooning forward. “Oh, god,” he said, reaching out to grasp the swelling muscles, trying to squash them back to their original size.

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Corvac said. “You don’t turn into a murderous monster right away. It starts with the muscles…”

Cody was barely listening, stripping off the armor around his thighs, then nearly tearing his pants off. His legs were thickening as well, but not as much as his ass. His glutes ballooned behind him as he moaned, reaching back to try to squash them back into place.

Cody suddenly looked like a lewd cartoon character, his mammoth pecs bouncing as his hands sank into the soft expanse of his gigantic butt. The rest of him seemed hypermasculine: shredded, sinewy muscles plus a face that seemed to get more angular by the moment. But he had the massive pecs and gigantic ass of a silly himbo.

“Please, please,” Cody said as the swelling of his pecs and glutes continued. “I’m too big,” he said in a deeper voice. Truly, he was so large that he had very little room left to move in their spherical transport.

“Yes, let’s open up so you don’t crush us both.” The sphere split in half again, exposing the two to the dangerous elements. Cody was just grateful to not feel so claustrophic for a moment.

“Would you look at that,” Dr. Corvac said as naked Cody tried to cope with his absurd new proportions. He had grown another six inches taller, but that wasn’t enough height to properly distribute all the muscle on his body. Dr. Corvac snapped his fingers to catch the panicking mercenary’s attention before gesturing to the hill behind him.

Just half a kilometer away was the glowing gateway back to their original Earth.

“Now, we CAN go home,” Dr. Corvac said, somehow still calm as Cody hulked out into a musclebound freak, “but you are HEAVILY contagious. You’ll need to be treated and sterilized here unless you’re willing to doom your whole planet.”

“I… you… cure…” Cody’s thoughts were hard to gather. His brain felt slow and muddy. He wanted so badly to go home, knew a successful mission was just one sprint away, but if what the Doctor had said was true…

“Now, I have a treatment for your condition,” the Doctor said, producing a syringe. “It will not cure you per se, but it will neutralize the virus in your body. In time, we may be able to restore you to your original form, but until then… your cells are mutating at a rapid rate, so you have to realize this ‘cure’ will have some pretty significant changes as well–”

Cody grabbed the syringe from the Doctor and jabbed it into his throbbing pec. He plunged the needle and groaned. A moment later, the tension in his body seemed to relax.

“You feel better almost immediately, don’t you?” Dr. Corvac said. He reached out and started to pet the beautiful monstrosity, who was still to overcome with his sudden infection to form words. “Your thoughts will return in a moment. But just… wait… for the side effects…”

Cody gasped as he looked down to see his generously sized cock, which had been swinging loosely until then, suddenly started to twitch and shrivel. He pawed at it sadly as it shrank down from a substantial nine-inches to merely six, then three, then one. When it was over, the man’s unit was simply a vestigial little nub. He groaned as he realized his big dick, his pride and joy, the thing that had made men groan and scream for more, was ruined.

“Sadly, that’s not the end of it,” the Doctor said, clucking his tongue as the next change came over him. To Cody, it seemed that the Doctor, the chairs of the transport nearby, even his BODY, were starting to enlarge around him, but in reality his head was starting to shrink. Once again, Cody clumsily pawed at his changing body, helpless to prevent his head from dwindling down to the size of a plum.

“You poor thing,” Dr. Corvac said. “And now you’re totally vulnerable out here, of course. If the mutates smell us on the winds, we’re toast. You may be ten times as strong, but with that teensy little head…” Dr. Corvac reached out and rubbed Cody’s tiny noggin with his thumb, chuckling as the freakish muscle brute squealed in a high-pitched voice. “It appears you’ll be of no use until you’ve acclimated to your new… sizes.”

Dr. Corvac gestured behind him. “Your contagion is controlled, however. The virus is dormant. You can return to your world safely. Good luck, however, Gemini Tech will probably dissect you to see how all of this happened! They may want to reverse engineer the virus.”

Cody took a few clumsy steps toward the gateway, looked down at his nearly non-existant cock, and then slumped to his knees. He grabbed at his plasma weapon, groaning as he found that he was far too big to manipulate it with his gigantic hands. His armor was useless too; none of it would fit on his body anymore. He grabbed his helmet and shrieked when he slapped it on his thunderous traps, drowning his tiny head in darkness.

“Well, sadly, the mistake was made the moment you steppped through the Gateway. You were exposed immediately. But if you’d like, I can take you back to my lab. We are working on a way to reverse this. There are other men just like you! Would you like that?”

Cody nodded emphatically before clearing his voice and saying, “YES!” in a voice that sounded like it was fueled by helium-filled lungs.

“Good boy. The ride back may be uncomfortable, but…” Dr. Corvac waved his hands and the sphere sealed itself around them. As they hovered away, he clenched his fist just after making contact with the technology of the gateway. It sparked and exploded. Cody looked back sadly, realizing his chance at ever going home was gone.

Months later, Dr. Corvac invited Cody into his labs to see the results of his latest treatments. “Well, we’ve had 3% reduction of your pectoral and gluteal muscles,” the Dr. commented as he took measurements of the bulging musclefreak, now clad in simply a tiny set of shorts and bracelets on his ankles and wrists. “That must make moving around a lot easier!”

Cody nodded his still-miniscule head. “I actually tried to do some yoga yesterday,” he chirped. “I could do a few of the things, as well! But still, with all this…” He groped his mammoth pectorals.

“I know,” Dr. Corvac said, patting Cody on his huge deltoids. “I’m still trying.”

The door to their examination area slid in and a similarly shaped musclefreak lumbered in. He had the same massive build as Cody, the same tremendous pecs and ass, the same shrunken head. However, his skin was dark brown, his little skull crowned by a tiny tuft of black.

“Ah, Lexington!” Dr. Corvac commented as the big man waved at him before groping awkwardly with Cody, his boyfriend. The two mammoth men couldn’t get too close to each other, their giant pecs in the way, but they did their best. Vaccinated mutates usually interacted by rubbing pecs together and flexing their muscles against each other. Boyfriends like these two did so far more vigorously.

“Lexington,” Dr. Corvac said. “We were just reviewing the results of my latest treatment. Have you any further changes since my last session with you?”

The big man just shrugged. “Still huge!” he said. “But Cody LIKES it.”

“I’d still like to kiss you, though,” Cody said forlornly.

“Lexington, I have to say, I didn’t think Cody would be able to cope with being in this world, but you have helped him greatly.” The Doctor paused to clean his glasses. “And still, I promise you both that I won’t stop until I’ve returned you to your former…”

The two giant men were no longer listening, no rubbing their big asses together as each of them squeaked in ecstasy.

“Goodness,” the Doctor said, blushing. “You mutates and your crazy libidos!”