Ella’s flutters her hand over her mouth but says nothing. Perhaps I have shocked her.

“The more frightening aspect of this mating call is that the male becomes utterly out of control of his senses. He loses all reason and logic immediately and thinks of nothing but how to attain his female’s favor, complete the breeding process, and secure territory for her to gestate. He may enter a savage state in which he reverts entirely to animal instinct, but we don’t know much about this.” I explain this slowly and then add, “Do not be afraid for your safety. We are all safely chipped to prevent any such temporary insanity. Deviant Kar’Kali males are dangerous, but there are none allowed here on Earth.”

My colleagues and I await her response with bated breath. I wonder for a moment if she will request re-assignment, but I know humans are capable of similarly disgusting practices. Surely, the archaic mating practices are not so different from the human mating call. Especially considering some of the evidence I’ve seen.

“Ella-vi, now that you have heard this,” Mori urges, “What have you to say about human mating calls as compared to those of our ancestors?”

“No, humans do not have mating calls like that,” she says firmly, pressing her delightful pink lips into a flickering line. I believe she is trying not to laugh at us.

“How can this be?” I ask. “How is it this is true when we have seen clear evidence of a similar animalistic mating style, possibly even humans in the savage mating call state, fucking like wild animals?”

Her quivering lips show me she is amused. “It takes all kinds,” she says.

Maddening. It is a non-response by my approximation.

 “You are our liason. If you are to be forced upon us, we must at the very least be able to rely on you for basic information such as this,” I tell her. “We cannot work with such a vague reply.”

“What have you seen of human mating that has made you believe we fuck like animals? I mean, I’m not denying it… Hell, we even have a position called doggy style. Oh, and cowgirl.” Her face grows ponderous and I can only assume she searches her mind for more of these animalistic positions.

“We have studied the Alliance database for this information,” I state.

Mori leans forward, in disbelief. “The extent of their barbarism is truly maddening. They sexually imitate both canine and bovine creatures during the mating call? And you are certain their biology is a close match to our ancestors?”

Pakka nods grimly. “This female is the closest we have been to our evolutionary mother.”

“No ancestor of mine fucked a bovine calf,” Mori says.

Ella finally lets out the laughter I suspected her of hiding. Kiva has been fiddling around on his tap-pad while we spoke, and now lifts his head with a smile.

“Here,” he says, turning it around to show Ella. “This is one sample from the Alliance database that we used to craft our proposal. Can you confirm that this is an authentic record of human mating rituals?”

We all gather round the screen. I brace myself for the obscenity that surely awaits. The video player launches the clip of the bare-naked pair of humans, slamming against one another and screaming. The male is atop the female’s ass and he uses his arm to crush her face into the floor. He thrusts into her from behind, assaulting her with vigor. Kiva slides forward to pause the clip after quite enough slapping sounds have entered our eardrums.

Ella blinks silently for a moment.

“I hope you have not triggered a mating call in our colleague,” Pakka says gruffly to Kiva. “Irresponsible, thoughtless—”

The female begins shaking, and at first I fear we have triggered her into heat. Then a soft peal of laughter fills the room. The sound of it is quite lovely, I realize. Only for a moment though, because it soon becomes a cackle of hysteria. These humans are truly mad. How is that our brains are so biologically comparable?

“Oh my God,” she moans through her fits. “You guys downloaded porn from the government database—” She shivers all over and throws her head back. “— and made a science project out of it?”

With her head bent back, I cannot control my need to admire the delicate line of her exposed throat. Why is it that the sight fills me with a desire to take my tongue and slide it over that soft and vulnerable skin? The thought frightens me more than I would like to admit. Is it possible our hormone chips are not receiving proper updates from Kar’Kali? The lab has direct access to the Alliance transmission network, so I cannot imagine why that malfunction would occur.

“I believe the clip has caused a small bout of insanity,” Pakka says. “Ella-vi, do you require medical assistance?”

It’s becoming clearer with every moment I pass in Ella’s presence that I am the one who will soon be needing medical assistance.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 4

Ella

I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye, fighting to swallow my laughter. This is no way to act professionally, but then it’s not every day you watch a porn clip in a professional setting, is it?

“I’m alright,” I tell them, though they are hovering around me with wide eyes as though I might spontaneously combust. “Yes, that is technically an authentic record of human sex.”

Kiva has begun recording what I am saying on his little device. “What do you mean, technically?”

“Well, here on Earth, a lot of the people who are recorded having sex on camera like that are paid to do it. Sometimes they are exaggerating a little, to make things more … appealing for the people that watch it. I don’t think you guys want to rely on that as the most accurate idea of two people that are really together. Sometimes they give the men a pill to help them stay erect for longer.”

Having explained this, I wonder how the hell I ended up in this job. A couple weeks ago I was trying to explain to a giant reptile that grocery stores do not “steal” eggs from chickens that still have baby chicks inside them. She was personally offended by the idea that anyone would steal eggs from an innocent creature. Now, I’m explaining porn to a gang of hunky adult virgin men, one of whom I’ve already caught staring at my ass.

That reminds me. I have a bone to pick with Jen about how she never warned me that my new alien wards would be this attractive.

All five of the Kar’Kali scientists are over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and fit like Olympians. Their skin color comes in varying shades of a cool, silvery gray that shimmers iridescent in certain lighting. Kila, Mori, and Pakka all have thick black hair that shines and hangs pin straight. Vala has a striking head of silvery white that he keeps in a leather corded man-bun. Kiva has teal blue curls that flop around his boyish face, with dark blue freckles to match.

They are shockingly human-like, which shouldn’t surprise me considering their research revolves around the hope that human biology is a comparable match to their evolutionary ancestors. It’s funny how I’ve become more accustomed to reptiles, gelatinous blobs, pig-faces, and Skeletor look-alikes. These handsome figures, mirror images of humanity, seem to unsettle me more than the overtly ‘other’ species. I don’t spend much time thinking about the science that surrounds me at the facility, but their presence makes me wonder what humans will look like thousands of years in the future now that the intergalactic political world has grabbed us up into their web.

And that Kila? The one who said I cause him a ‘physical response’ and then had the gall to say that they can’t get sexually aroused? He needs to tell that little fact to the eyeballs he has attached to my ass. Anyways, this Kila is the worst—or should I say the best? His face reminds me of a sad-boy French model from a perfume ad, all in grayscale. He has this searing black-eyed gaze that burns through me every time he looks my way. And I notice him looking… often.