Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 10:52:36 -0800 (PST) From: erik ritler Subject: space ship boys, chapter 2 - the really long day As promised, here is the second installment in what I think may be the first homosexual pornographic sci-fi post apocalyptic space travel epic. First, let me generally respond here to the email inquiries I've received. Yes, there is a general story arc that I'll be taking you on (for better or for worse), and indeed you will soon find out more about the cause of the global disaster and the fate of the rest of humanity. Also, I promise some steamier sex is coming soon. This tale isn't all going to be vanilla wanking, but it's going to take a bit for this character to progress further than that. As always, for those who don't like too much plot, you can skip to the sex scenes by using the `find' feature in your browser to search for `xes'. Each sex scene has this listed before it. Hey, it's the little things that make an erotic story user-friendly. This chapter is a little long and a little heavy on the technical details. Oops, sorry. I promise to make up for it by writing something hotter and way more interactive in chapter three. And I'm always up for suggestions. As the story progresses, feel free to leave comments and suggestions at erikritler@yahoo.com. The direction of the story depends a lot on where you all want it to go. So, until the next exciting chapter, I hope you enjoy. Space Ship Boys Chapter 2 – The Really Long Day Have you ever had a couple of weeks where you're so busy things end up a complete blur? That's what the last two weeks have been like for me. About the time my circulatory system returned to normal after that completely unwise two-hour stint in a tiny compacted emergency access duct, we went on this whole new training program and things got a little crazy. And as you might expect, the whole thing with Sean and Dog has me on the lookout for other guys up to mischief. For the first couple months on the ship, pretty much my only thoughts about sex were when I was wanking it. Then I catch Sean and Dog going at it, and I'm like whoa, maybe there are a bunch of people on this piece-of-junk spaceship enjoying those kinds of extracurricular activities. So now I'm on hyper alert for any sign of that sort of thing. I'm kinda curious to see what everyone's going to do about our situation. And here's where I have a confession to make. After I finished checking the access tunnels for blockages or problems, I didn't exactly return the master key. I figure if I could luck into an amateur porno once, maybe it could happen again. Hey, I'm only human. I haven't really gone back to see if I can catch Sean and Dog at it again. I don't want to get caught by them, and I've been busy during work shift. But I have been slinking through there after hours sometimes, and I've seen a lot of messing around and goofing off, but not a whole lot of sex. I did catch this guy a couple floors down from me. I think his name is Mike, but I didn't know him on earth so I'm not really sure. Anyway, one day I'm "exploring" the tunnels and I come across him hanging out alone in his room. I was just crawling along and stopped at his vent because he was shirtless and by himself. That doesn't always mean anything, but he was sitting on the floor in the middle of his room, which struck me as odd. He's just a short little guy, probably at least a year or two younger than me, which is another reason I noticed him. There weren't all that many guys younger than me at JDU. I'm seventeen, which is still a year younger than most students. Still, there were always some `kid geniuses' that just couldn't wait to hit uni. Anyway, I notice Mike had a totally flat washboard tummy and a cute little chest, so I stop to check him out and no sooner do I settle in (which in the vent means lying sideways a little so my spine isn't all hunched over) than he starts rubbing the front of his jeans. Yee-haw – I had spent like sixteen hours over the last week crawling through here and hadn't seen a thing. Yes, I admit I am a bit of a freak, but it looked now like it had paid off and I might be in for a show. xes After just a couple seconds rubbing his pants, he unbuttons them and pushed both the jeans and his boxers to his knees. Out sprang a hard dick that was just as cute and boyish as he was. It was probably five or six inches long, but it stuck up at a 45 degree angle and curved a little towards his belly. He just sat there for a minute on his knees looking at it, which struck me as a little odd, but it sure gave me a good chance to take in the view. His chest and tummy were totally hairless, but the ample fuzz around his penis was the same dark chestnut color of his hair. My hair is brown, but the hair on my dick seems almost black. This kid looked like his pubes would be as soft as down. After a minute – I'm not sure if he was stretching or what – he pushed his dick so that it was almost pointing towards the floor, then let it go so that it sprung back up against his torso and slapped his abdomen with an audible `thunk', and then he repeated the movement. I don't know why he did that, and I've personally never beat off that way, but every time his dick hit his stomach and made that slapping sounds my cock got like ten times harder. Seeing as how I wore the special extra-loose shorts with no undies for just such an occasion, as you might expect in about three seconds I was hauling my own hard boner out of the leg of my shorts and adding that extra special enjoyment to the show. I had to be content with just some light squeezing again – after all I was only like six feet away from this guy on the other side of a metal door with a small vent in it. Still, it was enough. After hand slapping himself for a bit (I'd have to try that later), I guess he decided to go for the quickie because he took his hard cock into his fist and began pumping as fast as possible. It only took about twenty seconds of this to push him over the edge, and no sooner than he started grunting and grimacing he was spraying cum out onto the carpet. His cute little tan body was totally tensed, and he really got me going. Unfortunately, the sight of him cumming made me start leaking a pretty copious amount of precum, and I didn't want to alert him to any squishing noises from the access hatch, so I bit my lower lip and stowed my turgid boner back in my shorts. I started to crawl back down the tunnel, and I must have made a little noise because as I was turning Mike started and looked up at his dorm room door. In about a half second flat he pulled up his pants, jumped into what I presume is his bunk, and picked up a book. At first I thought I was totally busted, but I guess he just thought he heard someone in the common area or hallway outside his door. I decided not to press my luck any further and went back to my room, where I can attest I took a nice long shower and jacked off not once, not twice, but three times. Don't believe me? Well, you didn't see cute little Mike slapping his meat around. If you had, you'd need to cum three times in twenty minutes too. Other than that, I haven't had many other spying opportunities. My dormmates sometimes head to the bathroom late at night, and I suspect they're wanking it, but I can never tell. Besides, what I want to know is if there are any duets going on, and I don't think any of those guys are doing anything like that. So mostly it's been work, and a lot of self pleasuring sessions thinking about Sean, Dog and Mike. Hey, it's not fun being stuck on this floating hotel, and if beating off constantly helps pass the time, then that's what I'm gonna do. As I mentioned before, most of the people on this ship (which is mundanely and unceremoniously officially called EV5997, even though I think eventually someone will come up with the idea of having a contest or something to give it a better name) are escapees from John Ducker Third Level University. Not that we're escapees of the university, more like the planet the university was on. We all boarded the ship when it came time for the human race and the earth to part ways, and have been in space ever since. As for the training I mentioned, obviously most people who ended up on here aren't like pilots or engineers or anything, we're all mostly students. So one may wonder how we're going get a trillion ton spaceship across the galaxy and keep it in working order for the eighteen years this voyage is going to take. Well, fortunately we have a little help. Each of the thousands of escape vessels built were put underground, don't ask me why. There they sat for decades, since no one knew when they'd be needed. Above each ship was a kind of complex where everyone who maintained the ship lived, and there was always a crew on call in case the ship needed to take off. So when things happened and we all evacuated, there was an assigned crew and we were in pretty good hands. There are now a couple of pilots on board, some doctors other than the ones from the student health center, some engineers, and about a hundred others who were trained to assume specific roles in the event of an egress. This at least has helped us adapt and survive for the past three months, but eventually everyone is going to have to play a role in keeping EV5997 running. I mean, this is a completely self-contained environment that needs to survive and be kept in one piece on the 347 light year trip we're taking. We'll need to learn how to take care of it, keep it clean, and keep it working, not to mention learn how to keep ourselves working. A broken leg on earth would be no big deal, and it's something we can cope with here pretty well too, but it's not like we want to go out of our way to injure ourselves. We can make plenty of carrots and potatoes in this place, and we can even make penicillin, but it's not like was can manufacture citrylsidanel dexyl procloctamine. So anyway, once the ship got up to speed and we were on our way, it was time for the permanent crew to start training us for permanent duties on the ship. I think in the case of this ship, that's been somewhat of a challenge. I mean, the bulk of us are 17-23, which isn't the best age group to oversee. Besides that, we're all pretty smart. You had to have at least a 125 IQ to get into JDU, and third level is pretty far along the educational path. We were all planning on becoming doctors and architects and things like that. Well, I wasn't, I find that all a little dull, but most of the guys were, and about the third month when we all started to realize that in the new reality we would need people to do things like clean the toilets and make the food, there was some resistance. Nothing serious, but some guys who got assigned some duties they didn't like kind of refused to work, at which time we all became aware that this place actually has a brig. I guess I'd say ten of us became painfully aware of that fact, and will probably be more inclined to be helpful once their 30 days are up. Me, I've always been a pretty nice guy, so I haven't minded pitching in, even before I knew about the ample jail space. Regardless, when the whole little childish revolt thing happened, the crew came down on us pretty hard and decided it was time to start the permanent training routine. So we have classes each day to teach us all about the ship and how it works, then we have duty shifts to do stuff to get everything up and running. There's a lot to do too, you'd be surprised. There's a whole farm onboard, which needs a lot of manpower to run. Then there's the mechanics of the ship, which need constant checking and tuning. And, as I said, someone needs to cook dinner and clean toilets. I guess in the long run there's going to end up being some division between the mundane duties and the more specialized ones so that you end up with a specialty, but then you also have these revolving more menial tasks. I've taken an interest in the cooking, which is something I've always enjoyed doing, so I signed up for this area. The actual food prep is pretty simple right now (tossing pre-canned slop on a plate, essentially), but eventually we need to be a self-sustained environment that is producing about as much as we consume. Right now I'm just helping in the kitchens, but my test scores are pretty good in biology, so eventually I might be trained to be more specialized in dealing with the logistics of feeding everyone. Then, no matter what I end up doing in this area, I'll always have what I call `chores'. These rotate, so that no one gets stuck permanently doing the undesirable stuff. One week I may be on bathroom duty, then the next cleaning the rust off the water filtration chains in the hydrosphere. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not quite as sexy as all those scifi movies where the ship seems to stay spotlessly white the whole time. I don't mind the chores so much because they aren't really all that bad, and like I said at least they rotate. There's like a hundred things to do on the ship, so I figure any particular chore may not be all that fun to complete, but it should only come up in my queue every couple of years. I certainly hope it's at least a couple of years before I have to crawl through the emergency access tunnels again. That fucking sucked. But for now there's no sex and no work – I have the afternoon off and I'm just sitting in the dining area, waiting for Reid and Patrick to get off their shift and join me. I already got my food, which is this ration protein mush that is pretty horrid hot and even more terrible cold (we really have to get the farms up and running), but I kind of want to wait until they get here to eat, just so I can make an excuse to hang out with them a little longer. So while I wait, I watch the guys come and go. Two guys I know named Peter and Bronwyn (yeah, Bronwyn, I don't know what that's about) are walking towards my table on their way out of the dining hall. My experience with Sean and Dog have me looking at everything in a different light. Are these two guys `involved'? Does Peter take Bronwyn to the bathroom in the middle of the night and suck his cock for him? I kind of laugh out loud as they walk past and Bronwyn gives me a questionable look. I'm sorry, they aren't bad looking, but I have to laugh when I think of someone named Bronwyn having sex with anyone. It's just a funny name. Then there's this guy Ian two tables over eating along. I knew him from school, but not totally well. For a guy, he's kind of cute. He has these weird blue eyes that seem almost clear. It's always been hard for me to talk to someone directly with eyes like that, not necessarily because they're sexy, but more because they're hard to focus on. It's always like you're looking right through the person. But I kind of know Ian, and he seems to have a pretty good personality and a great body. If I had an invitation, would I crawl into bed with him at night? I might - in all honesty I think he may be a little prettier than Allie was. Then over in line is one of my other close friends from school, Connor. Connor is a totally great bud, and was always there for me back at school. I met him the beginning of my second year, and we got on really well. In a lot of ways, I think I have more in common with Connor than Reid or Patrick, but I've always been kind of a trio with those guys. For some reason, it was always hard to get Connor to hang out with me when I was around Reid and Patrick, and vice versa. I was never really sure if maybe one of them didn't like the other or what, but by the time I really noticed the earth was gone, so it didn't really matter anyway. Connor's a great kid, though. He has this kind of infectious smile that seems to cheer everyone up around him. I'm kind of quiet and sullen most of the time, so I think I was always a little jealous of how Connor could walk into a room and be fun and friendly with anyone. I mean, the guy was super-nice to the staff, the teachers, the janitors, and not in a brownnose sort of way. I think he was always just genuinely interested in going out of his way to be a nice guy. I notice he's just finishing getting his food, so I wave and get his attention. Now that I think about it, I haven't hung with him all that much since we took off. We met up on the second day, and after that I just saw him occasionally in the hallways and whatever. He sees me and walks over to my table. He looks kind of tired and haggard, to be honest, but when he sees me he still manages to flash a half smile. The guy has the whitest damn teeth. "There he is," he says as he sits down, his standard greeting. He looks a lot happier now than he did standing in line, so I'm glad I saw him and got him over here. He pulls the seal off his drink, which is some weird kind of purple juice beverage. Since he's eating, I figure there's no reason to wait around and pick up my fork, dredging it though the grey goop on my plate. "I was beginning to think you were sucked out a door into space. I haven't seen you in forever." "Yeah, training has been pretty rough. You know I was pre-med back at JD, right?" I nod, Connor was notoriously pre-med back at school. He talked about it all the time, to anyone who would listen. "Yeah. So they tell me they're going to try and make a doctor out of me. They say I can do double shift training, eventually become a field assistant to one of the current doctors, and train with him. It would be a lot of work, and not at all like medical school, but I'd end up a full MD eventually and what else do I have to do around here?" "Other than mildew duty?" I happened to know Connor had picked up one of my chores where it left off and I couldn't resist being a little sarcastic. He kind of laughed at my comment. Man, neither of us would have ever suspected that we'd be cleaning mold out of fixtures for a living. "But that's great, though, that you can still work on your degree. Good luck with that," I say. "Yeah, it is pretty cool." I knew he was playing down his excitement. All he ever wanted was to get into medical school. Thought he was going to save the world – go give free surgeries in sub-Saharan Africa and stuff like that. Now I guess he'll get his shot at saving the world, or what was left of it. "Just one thing," I interjected, "I am never, never, never letting you perform any sort of surgery on me. No offense, but you have to remember that I know how bad you are at video games." Connor had a pretty terrible record against me in the campus commons. He knew I was kidding, though, and just laughed at me. "We'll see if you change your mind when your appendix bursts and you have to choose between me," at which point he dramatically waived his butter knife in the air, "or a slow and painful death." He was finally giving me his 110% smile, which seemed to stretch a mile from cheek to cheek. He seemed kind of `off' today, so I was glad to be able to cheer him up. He has sure done that plenty of times for me. I kind of wonder if he's just tired from training, or if something else has him down. To be honest, a lot of people aren't doing too well up here. It's boring and dull, and that gives you way too much time to sit around thinking about what we've all lost. Connor digs into his slop, and I look down at my plate. I kind of kept swirling it around over and over until it was like some awful grey volcano or something. It's pretty bland and like eating plain poi, but there's no wasting on the ship so I figure I might as well get started on my portion. "Yummy," I mutter sarcastically, "everything a growing boy needs." Conner hears me and flashes another smile. I'm sure he hates the food too. As we eat, I notice something about Connor. He's a pretty cute guy, actually. Like I said, I've been pretty horned up lately. But seriously, I always knew I was attracted to Connor – as a friend. Back on earth, from the time I saw him in one of my classes I wanted to get to know him, and this is what caused me to introduce myself to him one afternoon. Now it's got me thinking about the nature of attraction. I mean, on earth I never once thought of Connor sexually. No, seriously. Maybe there's something genetic where your hormones point you in the right direction. With a couple thousand girls over at the other campus, my hormones pointed me to Allie, and all my sexual energy pushed me in that direction. Maybe now, with this whole new all-male way of life forced on me, my instincts would change and adapt to the new environment. It's not entirely implausible. Whatever the biology behind sexual impulses, I can't help but think of Connor in a more sexual manner. Does he masturbate? When and how often? I notice the way his raglan t-shirt falls against his frame. He has really nice shoulders. What would it feel like to rub them? To run my hands up into the sleeves and over his chest? What was his body like under his clothes? Come to think of it, I've never even seen him shirtless. I couldn't deny that there was some hormonal energy building up in me at these thoughts – I would have to calm down and wait at least five minutes before leaving the table now. That energy was never, never there before, so I had to wonder where it came from. Am I becoming more attracted to guys because of what I saw in the dorms, or because of this whole situation? And is it real, or just in my imagination? As we eat, Connor and I chat about our duties, life on the ship, and just bullshit stuff. It's good to see him again, and for a second I'm glad Reid and Patrick weren't here right now. I probably wouldn't have even noticed Connor in line and asked him to sit with me. We seem to pick up our friendship right where we left off, and like always things with Connor are just easy. I make a mental note to make a better effort to spend time with him now. I feel kind of bad that we hadn't really connected on the ship so far, but oh well. We have 18 years to remedy that – it's not like we're going anywhere. I finish up my tasteless goo. There's a layer of rice paper underneath, which you're supposed to also eat. It's a way of making sure every molecule of usable protein ends up where it can be of some use, even though my stomach is already telling me that this particular meal is probably going to end up in the toilet before my digestive system has much time with it. Gross, but true. I realize that my lunchtime is almost over and I need to get over to a training class. I see Reid and Patrick come into the cafeteria and get into line, but it's too late to eat with them anyway so I just leave. I'll catch them later in the bunks anyway. I do manage to set up something with Connor before I go, though. Just a little informal Friday night movie together, but I wanted to make sure he understood that I planned to get our friendship back on track. He was a really good bud to have, and as I said before I was starting to think I needed to examine my relationships on the ship to see who might be a good candidate for being more than a friend. My afternoon training went quickly enough. I'm learning all about food prep and cooking on a spaceship, which given my repeated dissatisfaction with the ration offerings makes this seem like a good area of study. Unfortunately, this wasn't a session designed to help me become a better cook, which are my favorites, but rather an in-depth class about macrobiotic elements and how to ensure a proper blend in any space-grown food. I was a biology geek on earth, so I kind of like this class, even though several of the other trainees seemed to be nodding off. I was totally sure this one guy Zane was going to burn out. He didn't seem to like cooking, the kitchen or food, so I wasn't clear on why he requested this area of specialization. Then there's this jerk called Brian in my training. He's a little older than me, probably like twenty. He's one of the guys that got in trouble for not wanting to work on the ship, although he didn't get involved in the whole strike thing that landed his friends in the brig. But once his friends are out next week I'm sure he'll go back to spending most of his free time hanging out with these guys Paul, Sandor and Steven and being a general dickwad. My schedule lately is kind of lucky because I have chores before my specialty training, so it's not like I get out of class to go directly to spending four hours unclogging pipes. Tonight I am especially grateful for this `upside down' schedule because I am totally beat. It's been a long day, to be honest, and my brain kind of hurts from thinking. Dang macrobiotic PH balance tables. The dorm areas (which are really bunks, but since I was previously at a college, it seems natural enough to refer to them as dorms), are these kind of mazelike endless hallways that all look the same. They take up a pretty big portion of the ship, of course, and they all look alike. Walking back to my room, I notice that just like the individual bedrooms, though, some of the areas are starting to get a little personality. Some of the guys have put posters on the doors leading into their personal areas, and some have even taken markers and scribbled stuff on their doors. I don't blame them. The designers may have built good ships, but they seemed inclined to label the bunks with grey lettering on grey walls with grey metal flooring. Kind of boring, and then kind of annoying when you get turned around. They could have at least made the signs different colors to denote what area you're in or something. I head back to my area – 23 E 5C, and when I open the door leading from the main hall to my quad, I can hear that a lot of the guys are already home for the `night'. Since we were all used to college living, we kind of just kept on living that way when we came on the ship. In the evenings, guys would all get back to their bunks and hang out. Within the quads themselves, most people usually leave all the bunk doors fully open, so that you can wander to each of the four rooms and see what's going on. Guys will be playing cards or watching movies or whatever, just like it used to be back on earth. If you don't find anything too entertaining in your own four adjoining rooms, you could go back out into the main hall and see what's up in other quads. People are, for the most part, friendly, and as long as their bunk doors aren't closed there's a kind of open invitation to come in and hang out. I guess that's all kind of a carryover from school, since that's how it worked there too, more or less. I stop by the bathroom first to check and see if my lunch is ready yet to mercifully leave my system. It's not, so I wash my face and go check in at my bunk to see what the news is. No one's there, and I figure they must all have later shifts tonight. Or this afternoon. I'm not really sure what time it is, which is something that happens frequently in this place. I lie down on my bunk and think about watching a video from my drive, but I must be pretty beat because before I know it I fall asleep. When I wake up, it must be several hours later because everyone is back, in bed, and also asleep. Reid is like the noisiest guy in the world, so I have no idea how I slept through him getting home. Maybe he was as tired as I was and fell into bed too. The door is still open, and the hallway is darkened and I can't hear anything from any of the other rooms, so I figure it's probably pretty late. Being on this ship is sometimes like being stuck in a huge hotel, and I often find myself missing the little things on earth that gave you a sense of the passage of time. Back home, if it were the middle of the night it would be cooler, darker, and there'd be a myriad of things telling you about what time it was. Here, nothing ever changes, so other than the fact the lights are off and everyone is asleep, it could be the middle of the day. I kind of fell asleep funny on the bed – lying sideways with my legs hanging off and my head up against the wall, so as I wake up I realize I'm all sore and my legs are numb. Dammit, what is it about this ship and that happening? I decide to get up and walk around for a while, so I head out into the hallway trying not to wake anyone else up. It can be kind of a pain sharing a small room with four other guys, but then they were designed for eight, so I should be thankful we're not at capacity. Packing eight guys into a 13 by 15 space seems a little claustrophobic. I guess that was the advantage of being someplace rural when we evacuated. My neck is a little sore, so I consider that taking a shower might alleviate that. Then I notice that I smell pretty darn bad, having not bathed since yesterday, so I second the motion for a late night shower and head to the bathroom. The bathrooms are pretty nice, actually. You might expect teeny tiny spaces, being on a ship and all, but they're actually quite large. Like I said, five rooms share a bathroom, so they're meant for 40 people. There aren't forty guys in our quad, thank god, so it's way less sharing for us. The shower area is a pretty large room that has both your standard communal shower heads in the center, like a gym, and then also some private stalls that close with either curtains or doors. Two of our eight private stalls are also tubs, which I have never used, but for some reason tonight I think a bath might be in order. I have spent FAR too much time crawling in small spaces and my napping while sitting funny has finally pushed my neck and back over the edge. So I run a tub of scorching hot water, pull the curtain closed and settle in for a hot soak. While I'm relaxing, I get to thinking about the whole escape and egress from earth. Last time I told you about how the alarms went out and we all got our stuff together to head to the ship. Well, once we grabbed out trunks and headed out we piled into Reid's car – he was the only one of us who had one on campus. Well, I didn't have one at all, on campus or otherwise, so I was grateful to have his around. The evacuation site was just a couple of miles from campus, but it would have sucked to have to walk. The drive was one I had taken dozens of times before, maybe hundreds. Wyoming was beautiful country, and I was always struck by how you just had to drive a couple of feet outside town to find rolling fields that were green and open and wild. Parts of the state are mountainous, of course, but our area was pretty flat. We drove the two miles to the evacuation site – it took about thirty minutes because we were in a big long line of cars. You'd think everyone would be running and panicked, but it wasn't like that at all. People were moderately calm and organized, and although there was tension in the air, it was more like the atmosphere you'd expect on the day of a big football game. The evacuation site was located in this huge orchard. When you leave JDU and the city for other places, you drive through what feels like a bazillion trees in neat rows. Even if you're driving at 90 kph, it seems like you're driving past all these trees for like an hour, and when you get some elevation you can see they seem to stretch as far north and south as they do along the east-west tracking road. I'm not sure what they all are – probably almonds and nectarines or something. I never bothered to find out. As you drive along, you see all these smaller streets branching off into the orchard. I've never seen farm equipment driving along here, but I assume that's how they get access to the orchard. Anyway, one of the branching streets isn't small at all and looks like a seven lane freeway complete with digital signs, street lights, and all that. This is the entrance to the evacuation center, and we take it. I've never been on this road before, but because it's so wide once we turn onto it Reid can speed up to near freeway speed. We're driving into the heart of the orchard, and I can see that some of the trees have fruit on them even though it isn't spring. Once we get about a mile from the main road, the transmission towers for the ship complex peak over the horizon. The escape ships are buried pretty deep underground, but they all have a network of buildings above them that house the crews, provide maintenance access, etc. It's hard to gauge distance in the orchard since it's nothing but lines of trees stretching in all directions, but I'd guess the ship itself is five or six miles from us. We don't have that far to go, however. After driving another couple of minutes we come to a huge parking lot in the middle of the orchard. Guys in orange plastic jackets are directing the cars into spaces in a row. Not spaces like you'd park if you were going to a concert or the mall, but all packed in with just a little room on either side to open the doors and get our stuff out. And that's when it hits me. We're parking like this because we're never coming back, because there's no need to make the cars easy to get out. Because those huge gigantic space ships we've been taught about since we were toddlers are really going to take off with us inside and never return. Suddenly the atmosphere in the car seems stale and hot, and I become overly conscious of the slight smell of ozone and carbon monoxide. I consider that I may throw up shortly, and that maybe I don't want to do that in Reid's car. Except, well, in a couple of hours it won't be Reid's car, so who cares. Still, I don't suppose my last act on earth should be messing up a friend's upholstery. Once I get some fresh air the nausea passes anyway, and we grab our trunks and head in the direction where everyone is walking. At the end of the parking lot is a large white building. It looks like a streamline moderne train station or something. Like something out of that movie `Metropolis' or `The Fountainhead'. This is the disembarkation area, which we know all about because of the yearly mandatory evac training. Entering the lobby, the atmosphere is a little noisier and chaotic than the parking lot, but not much. The building is more or less one tall room, and while I'm pretty sure it's not constructed out of marble, it seems to have a stone quality to it. Graceful white columns stretch from the floor to the ceiling thirty feet overhead, where long slender windows allow in thin shafts of sunlight. The light is so white and distinct that it seems to have almost a physical quality to it, like it's also part of the architecture and helping to hold up the building. It strikes me that until today this building was completely unused, and there's probably a lot of dust being stirred up to make the light do that. Still, it's kind of pretty. The sound of people talking and walking around and rolling their trucks echoes up to the ceiling in an eerie quality, and I notice that while most of the ceiling is made up of large squares of the same white stone the rest of the building is composed of, every once in a while the architect has placed a stained glass panels with a geometric design on it, which brings shafts of red and blue and orange light into the room. I'm wheeling my trunk to the far side of the room behind Reid and Patrick, who are nervously chatting about something, and somehow amidst this crazy evacuation and the thought that this may be the end of the earth and the fact that I may never see my parents or Allie again, the one thought that really sticks in my head is that the stained glass is really pretty. Someone must have cared to put that there, and it makes me kind of sad to think that today it may be destroyed. Maybe this thought is just an issue of what Allie would call transference (she was taking a psychology class, and it was really starting to annoy me). Maybe I was mentally using the windows to represent all of the great art and architecture we made while we called the earth our home, and the thought of losing all of that was getting me down. But I don't think so. Mostly, for this one second in time I was just really happy to be the one person on the planet enjoying this one piece of art, hidden away in this remote escape station for who knows how long, and I was also really worried about its fate – what would happen to the pleasing blue and orange geometric design that was shining these brilliant colors down into the monotone station. For a moment I considered how I could save this one piece of art – maybe find some scaffolding and climb up there, or get to it via the roof. Then I shake my head, as if to fling these silly thoughts out my ears. No, I won't be saving any stained glass windows, at least not today. The back half of the terminal is our destination. Here people are lining up to wait their turn to get into what I call `the tubes'. The main hall splits into like thirty or so lines, each of them leading up to the endpoint of a tube station. The college is pretty close to the disembarking station, so there really aren't that many people in line, and we easily find a slot where there are only ten or so people ahead of us. This is the pre-boarding area of the ship. As each person reaches the front of the line, a large eight foot capsule rises up out of the floor and is loaded into the tube track by machine. The capsules kind of look like giant Tylenol pill. They're white both inside and out, with no windows and just one door that lifts and lowers on the single seat inside. Basically, it's one rider per capsule, and you just throw your personal stuff in a small compartment at your feet and lie in the capsule. Then you hit the button, the capsule closes, and away you go, down into the earth and the loading bay of the ship. As we get near the front of the line, Reid is looking a little pale. Patrick and he have been joking all the way here, but he doesn't look like he's in a very good mood now. Patrick is babbling on about telephone numbers and ship-to-ship communication protocols or something, and doesn't seem to notice. "Hey, what's wrong?" I ask, putting my hand on Reid's shoulder. I notice that he feels kind of cold and clammy. "Uh, nothing," he tries to blow me off. Patrick notices that he's turning pretty white, or maybe the correct term is green, and stops smiling. "You know, this is all a little weird and scary, but these things will be just like the training modules," I reassure him. We had a week-long training course on evac once a year in school, and most of that covers the launch itself. These pods people are climbing in to are designed to facilitate the loading of the ship. Brilliant design actually. It serves to get you on board the ship, then you will stay in it until the launch is over. Once you enter on the station side and hit the `go' button, it scans you, inflates a plastic molding around you, and shoots you down a tube that takes you underground and into the ship. It's a little weird, but this way everyone gets locked in safe and sound for launch. Well, not everyone, and I guessed that's what's bothering Reid. See, the thing is, and you're going to think I'm a cold bastard when I tell you about this part, even though I'll tell you I had nothing to do with the design of the system or the launch protocols, not everyone who climbs into a capsule automatically gets a ticket to outer space. The scan the capsule does on you while it loads into the primary tubes takes all kinds of readings on you – pulse, blood pressure, weight, eye-color, and who knows what else. Then it cross-checks everything it finds against your medical records, social security records, etc, after which it runs through about 14,250 data check points to determine what is always referred to as `subject viability', which sounds all scientific but is just a nicer way of saying the machine is designed to decide who lives and who dies. There are more than twenty thousand ships buried all over the world. Some hold ten-thousand people, some up to a million, but all told, there could never be enough to take everyone on the planet. Even in the United States, which invested heavily in the program, there's only enough space for about half the population. In poorer countries it's more like five percent, and in really poor areas it's nothing at all. Given the limited space, the system is designed to only allow people on board who meet certain criteria. Like you can't be over fifty unless you have some career or knowledge the computer deems `necessary' for your particular ship. Like you may be old, but the only heart surgeon in the area. Then the computer would probably shoot you down into the ship, or maybe hold your capsule to the side to see if a 32 year-old heart surgeon happens to wander along. The system also denies anyone who has a terminal disease, and even a lot of non-fatal diseases. Once the launch happens, humanity may or may not make it, and the protocols are designed so that we don't survive the destruction of earth just to die of a flu pandemic on the ship. So what happens to everyone who climbs in a capsule and fails the scan? Well, we don't know for sure. What we do know is that if you pass your capsule is shot down into the ship, where you'll stay until the launch takes you pretty far into space. If you don't pass, you also get shot down into the earth, but put in a hold that isn't on the ship and isn't going anywhere. Either way the computer administers a sedative so you don't freak out and hurt yourself, but it's not public information exactly what happens to the fails if the launch goes forward. As kids, we always speculated. My friend Tobey growing up always said people who failed were given a lethal injection so they'd just go to sleep and miss the end. I always thought that was too cruel to be true, and besides, what if the ships were launched but the earth wasn't destroyed. It could happen, and I didn't think the government would kill people who may or may not die in the immediate future. Of course, this led to the problem of the launch itself. If people are stored underground but out of the ship and it takes off with a quadrillion bazillion tons of thrust and flies out of the earth like a bat out of hell, do they just get fried? Not a pleasant thought. Growing up, we always had fun with the launch capsule simulations. The training made sure we knew how to lock them right and what to have with us so we didn't send the computer a false negative. This part of the training always ended with a red `pass' or green `fail' on the screen (don't ask about the color reversal, we never understood that). So there'd always be jokes when you failed in the training and someone would emerge yelling `We're all dead! We're all dead!' It was funny back then, but now it's making me a little nauseous. Reid doesn't look very reassured by my lame comment, and to be honest it put my mind down a whole path of thinking that wasn't helping either. This had all been weird for sure, since the sirens went off, but kind of fun, you know? Like going to camp or something. Now it was getting a little scary. The line moved forward and we're the second party behind a group of four guys who have this general fraternity look about them and seem kind of like douche bags, or at least that was my first impression. Now that I notice, all the people in the terminal seem to be young guys. I always imagined evacuating families and kids running around and old people hobbling along, but now that I think about it, the demographics make sense. It was a boys' college after all, and most town people will probably head towards the smaller ship over by the other school. The first of the other guys is lying down in the capsule and pulling the door closed when Reid turns to me, "I don't think I'm going in there, I think I'll just go back to the school." "Uh, I don't think that's really an option," Patrick points out. I nod in agreement. I'm not sure what Reid's angle is, I mean we know this evac is for real. All the radio stations were talking about it on the way over. "No, yeah, no," he's kind of stammering now, "I think I'd really like just to go back and see what happens." The capsule makes a hissing sound as guy #1 hits the green button and goes whooshing down the track, either down into the ship or some nameless chamber to wait for death. Reid is in front of us in line, and starts to push his way through Patrick and me, wedging his bag in between us. We stand firm, not letting him through. I don't know what his problem is – maybe he think he should go check in with his family before taking off or something? Maybe he forgot something? Whatever it is, guy #2 is hurrying into his capsule and I judge that in about three minutes it will be our turn to get in or get out. "Look dude, seriously, we're not letting you go back to the school. If this is all for real, and it sure seems like it is, you'd totally die if you left now." I'm not sure that this was the best choice of words because a bit of a shadow crosses Reid's face as he seems to contemplate sitting in our dorm room when the thermostat hits fifty million degrees, then he looks at the tube (which is now reloading for guy #3) and he goes totally pale again. "I'm just not, I don't, the thing is, no, I'm not really getting in that thing," he points to the capsule. I'm about to start trying to rationally outline the situation to him, which is my usual lame attitude when a crisis hits, when Reid drops his bag and like totally tries to make a run for the door. More and more people are getting into the lines, though, and between us and the crowd behind us he doesn't get very far. There's a whoosh and guy three takes off. Guy #4 looks back at us nervously, somehow less cocky and arrogant for standing there alone without his buddies. He starts to hurriedly throw his trunk in the capsule and climb in. Reid is now totally freaking, and although I'm holding him by one shoulder and Patrick the other, he starts screaming and flailing around, trying to break our grip and get through. We're standing at the very head of the line, right next to the track, and Reid's feet slip out from under him on the stone floor, landing with an audible thud against the side of guy #4's capsule, which has started to close. Guy four looks out at Reid, and I can tell he's kind of pissed and kind of scared at the same time. I can relate – I'm afraid Reid might slip and fall onto the track right when the capsule takes off, and I don't know how much these things weigh, but I figure if someone was standing in front of it when it launched they'd get creamed. But that doesn't happen because the second I soften my grip to let Reid try and regain his balance, the fucker jumps up and shoves his fist right in my face. I don't think he meant to hit me, he seems totally frantic now, wild-eyed and sweating; I think my face just ended up in front of his flailing fist. Just my luck. I see white spots for a second and feel his thumbnail gouge into my cheek under my eye. It's one of those blows that doesn't feel like anything at all when it happens, but something tells me I'm going to start feeling it in about twenty seconds. There's a loud `whoosh' as guy number four heads off to face his fate, and it's our turn to start loading. Everyone behind us seems more or less calm, although how the hell would I know? I have a lunatic Reid trying to scratch my eyes out. But I know the people in line won't stay calm for long, and for that matter I'm about to start losing it too. I've never seen Reid act like a weirdo before, and I have no idea what's causing all this. Well, it is the end of the world, and I suspect that has something to do with it, but I didn't exactly have time to sit down and write a thesis about the fifty most plausible reasons Read was acting psycho, you know? So I figure what's needed is drastic action. I've never hit anyone in my life (well, there's always the boyhood scraps, but I never hit anyone hard and on purpose and in an emergency is what I mean), but Reid has just clocked me one and I figure turnabout is fair play. I'm still holding him back with my right hand and Patrick is trying to wrestle him to the ground, so I just pull back my left arm as far as it will go and swing at his face for everything I'm worth. The about seventy-three things happen in a half second. First, my fist connects with Reid's right eye and lands with a really horrid dull thud. It hurts like fuck and I hear at least one of my fingers snap, although I instantly lose all feeling in my fist. Reid starts to fall backwards again, and I think Patrick must have seen that I was going to punch him because he's grabbed Reid's pant leg and pulls it towards him. The top half of Reid is falling towards the track and the bottom half has been pulled out from under him towards us, and he kind of flips towards the track. This time he's lined up with the capsule perfectly, though, and his butt lands right across the seat so that he's half in and half out. He's stopped screaming for a second and just has this kind of dumb look on his face. I curse under my breath, hoping that I didn't cause any brain damage or break his nose, then feeling starts to return to my hand as the broken bones in my finger grate against one another, and think that maybe it would be ok if his nose was just a little broken. Patrick is more with it that I am at this point, and he grabs Reid's splayed legs and shoves them over the side of the capsule and into the seat. I get his left arm, which is hanging over the edge, and somehow between the two of us we manage to get him into the capsule. I grab the door, which opens over the capsule like a big Tupperware lid, and push down on it with all my weight. I think it's supposed to be shut electronically, but there must be some sort of failsafe because it lets us slam it this way. Right before it closes completely, I see a complete and utter look of terror cross Reid's face and instantly he goes from dazed to screaming and flailing again. He reaches for the door, and just about manages to get his fingers in the hatch, but I'm slightly faster and the door shuts and hisses a millisecond before he can stop it. The things are pretty soundproof, but we can hear muffled screams of anger and terror. I think something about how he's going to fuck my mother while I watch then kill her then kill me, but it also sounded like maybe he said his mother, but that wouldn't make sense would it? Whatever abominable curses were being incoherently flung at us, Patrick hit the failsafe capsule launch button on the outside and with a whoosh the frantic and insane Reid shoots down the track and into the dark subterranean hole at the end of the room. Suddenly everything seemed way too quiet and I looked up to discover that everyone was starting at us. I could hear Patrick panting. He was sweating through his t-shirt, which is torn at the neck and hanging loose over his shoulder, and looks terrified and dazed. He has three red lines along his neck that I assume are fingernail marks; they look painful and red, but they're not bleeding. He looks like he was in a brawl, which I guess he kind of was, and I can only assume I look just as bad, if not worse. My check was starting to throb, and I could feel something hot and wet dripping down my chin. I didn't need to look in a mirror to know it was blood – some has slid into my mouth and the taste of iron and salt was unmistakable. Patrick and I stood there breathing heavily for a second while the next capsule came forward on the track, and for a second I forgot where I was. The guy behind me kind of pushed forward as the line surged a little. I shook my head, trying to come back to my senses a little. What the holy fuck had just happened? Although Reid was long gone, there was a tension in the air, and I hate tension. Patrick still looked a little terrified, and being an irreverent smart ass I had to open my mouth, "Well that was fun. Do I get to beat the shit out of you too?" I think he took me completely seriously because he kind of flinched. "Dude, I'm just kidding, c'mon, this is going to be like the ride of our lives." I make an explosion gesture with my hands like a blooming flower (or immense fireball). He smiled a little, maybe because of my lame joke or maybe out of relief, or maybe a little of both. After that, things went smoother, thank god. Patrick went first, packing his trunk in the capsule and taking off without incident. I went next, sliding down into what was either to be my launch seat or my coffin. The capsule was all white inside, and the seat was kind of cold and squishy – almost like it was stuffed with grape jelly. Suddenly I was a little hungry. It smelled both a little too old and a little too new for my taste – like a pile of brand new stereos sitting in someone's moldy basement. Unlike Reid, I was more than willing to close the door myself, and when I hit the appropriate button on the arm of the chair there was a light electronic beeping noise as the windowless hatch slid down into place. The seat reclined a fair bit as it did so, so that when the door sealed I was more or less lying horizontal. It wasn't the most pleasant place in the world – once the door was closed it was only about four inches from my face. Suddenly I was feeling like I might freak out too. It was more than claustrophobic in this tiny white smelly piece of shit. I hit the only other button in the unit – the big red one marked `go'. From inside I couldn't hear the inevitable `whoosh' as my capsule left, but I could feel the acceleration as it headed out. I was pulled towards the back of my seat, and then for a second I thought something was wrong because it felt like the car grabbed me around my ankles to keep my head from slamming into the rear of the compartment. Then it was gripping my calves, thighs, waist and chest, and suddenly I thought something had gone horribly wrong and I was being crushed. Maybe the car had crashed or slammed into one of the ones in front of me. "Wha..." I managed to say out loud. Not sure if I was trying to say `what?' or `wait', but regardless there was no one there to hear. My voice sounded dead and flat in the tiny chamber. I tried to wiggle around, but the capsule just held tighter. My head cleared a little, and I remembered this was all part of the protocol. Jeez Devon, keep your freaking head on your shoulders, why don't you. What was happening was the `grape jelly' in the seat (I don't think that's what it really was to be honest) was expanding around me so that the capsule adjusted to be the perfect fit for one, and only one, Devon. Like a big white plasticy bad smelling Devon hot dog. Or like some horrific inanimate womb. Either way, gross. I could feel the capsule moving along the track and downwards into the earth. It was a relaxing sound, really, just a light `thump-a-thwack, thump-a-thwack, thump-a-thwack'. There was just one dim light in the capsule, which seemed to be getting dimmer and bluer. I could feel the seat exert a little pressure against my wrists, and I knew the computer was now scanning all my bio-signs, making a call to the central datacore to check into everything about me and decide if I got to ride or not. That's when I started to get a little scared again. What if the computer found some little flu bug in me and decided to fry me right there? Or what if I have a genetic marker predisposing me for Alzheimer's and the computer decides it doesn't want anyone with that gene? Or maybe I have some cancer cell sitting in me somewhere, like a biological sleeper agent trained to go off when I turn eighty. I'm thinking about all the weird diseases I might have that would disqualify me, but mostly I just wished it would stop squeezing my hand so much, it really hurt where I had punched Reid. Jesus, my hand. Oh my god, fuck. What if my broken finger (or maybe fingers, I hit him pretty hard) were enough to fail me? Or the cut on my face? And for that matter, what if Reid's punched eye failed him, and instead of saving his life by tossing the fucker on the train I condemned him to eternity in this horrid place. It was then that I really freaked out and started wiggling around, sure somehow if I could get loose I could open the door and discover I was just in my dorm asleep and everything had been some terrible dream. My left hand hurts about as bad as anything I've ever felt, so I leave it be and try to pull out of the seat with my right. Man, this plastic grape jelly shit is strong. Still, I can't imagine that it will be able to hold me in place if I pull hard, then I can unlatch the door and get out of here. As I struggle the thump-a-thwack of the train fades into the background and there's just the grunts and curses of my exertion. The light above my head goes fully blue (that can't be a good sign) and there's a hiss as a blast of cold air hits my face. It smells medicinal and leaves a bad taste on the roof of my mouth. I instantly think of Dr. Mullert, my pediatrician growing up. His office always smelled this way. I see myself as a four-year old asking for candy after a check up. I remember the floral design on my mother's summer dress and the huge fish tank that took up the whole wall of the waiting room. There was an eel that always hid in the crevices of a sculpted sunken castle. Whenever we went to the doctor I always immediately ran to see that eel, no matter how sick I might be. Suddenly I feel a lot calmer, like I don't need to get out so bad any more. Then I feel A LOT calmer, like I just had a good massage and three glasses of wine. I realize the damn capsule just drugged me. I'm about to call it several nasty names when things get hazy and go black. When I come to, I'm still lying in the capsule, but everything is dark and quiet. For a second I think I'm waking up, but then things go dark again. The next time I wake up for a full thirty seconds, but I'm absolutely positive I'm asleep in my bed at school. I turn my head to look over to where Reid is sleeping and find my nose crammed against a white wall that smells like a musty basement. I make a mental note to call maintenance about the weird extra wall in my dorm and fall back to sleep. Then I fully wake up and remember where I am. No idea how long I've been out. Something doesn't feel right. Did I fail the scan? Am I damned to this chamber until the end? Or am I on the ship? I'm a little scared, to be honest, but somehow my heart rate stays the same and I remain almost perfectly calm. I think the drugs are doing that. I notice that the seat isn't holding me so tight any more. I sit and wait. It gets boring pretty quick. It feels like I've been awake for at least three hours, but it's probably more like ten minutes. Who knows how long I slept before. There's nothing to do except stare at the door/ceiling. They should have put a picture or something here. Like most seventeen year-olds, when bored it takes me about three seconds to think of sex. And yes, even at the end of the world, sitting alone in a capsule deep in the earth waiting for an explosion unlike anything mankind has ever imagined, a seventeen year old boy will think about sex. Although I was freer, it was still a tight fit and my arms were crammed down by my sides. You have to promise not to tell anyone about this, but sitting there waiting I actually did manage to smoosh my good hand over my crotch and rub one out. It wasn't great – I'm not right handed and all I managed to do was get my hand in my fly to stroke and come fast and awkwardly, but I was bored and it passed at least ten more minutes. Then I sat and waited some more. Eventually I fell asleep again, or at least half asleep. Scared. Bored and alone. Waiting for the end, one way or the other. xes I've kind of drifted off sitting in the hot water of the bath tub, and maybe it's being encased in the warmth of the bath that made me all nostalgic for launch day. I realize I was about to fall asleep (And drown? I sure hope now, how lame would that be?) when I hear the bathroom door open. I pulled the curtain shut on my stall, but from where I'm sitting I can see into the main shower room through a small gap. In walks this guy from our quad, Chris. He isn't in the same room as me, but he's in one of my best friend, Beck's, room, so I've hung out with him before. It's pretty typical for him to stay up really late, and in fact all the guys in that room tend to be up well past 2 am. Chris intimidates me a little, I have to admit. While most of the guys on the ship are young and maybe a little soft, Chris is a bit rugged and has a full on build. I mean, this guy is ripped like a Marine. He knows it too, and is more than happy to strut around the quad in his boxer briefs all afternoon. He has a ripped washboard stomach and pretty huge pecs, and while I hadn't been into checking guys out until recently, I couldn't help but notice he maintains a pretty large bulge in his briefs. I didn't really come in here for a show, although I have to admit I had thought about hanging out in here to see if I could catch any of the guys beating off. So I figure I'll stay put and see what Chris is up to. He steps out of his boxer briefs and into the main shower circle, and I'm happy to note it's the one of the two I have a good view of. While a lot of the guys use the private stalls, and even wait in line to use them, Chris always seems to shower in the communal area. I've therefore caught glimpses of his dick before, but never got a really good view. From here I can see that he has a pretty dang plump cock that hangs down at least four inches soft. Somehow, in the same way his whole body seems more muscular than average, his dick seems somehow `built'. A picture of him lifting a ten pound weight with his cock flashes through my mind, and I have to stifle a laugh. It makes me consider the position I'm in. I want to catch the `Chris Shower Show', but I don't think he knows I'm here and I'd like to keep it that way. I decide to stay put, and if he figures out I'm here I'll pretend to be asleep in the tub, which I just about was a minute ago. He spends about three minutes soaping up and rinsing off. His hands move over his muscled chest quickly and efficiently, and I note that he bathes in the same terse, professional manner he does everything else in. I kind of expect him to immediately finish, dry off and leave, but like every 18 year old in a shower his hand finds its way to the fun parts. I'm learning a lot about guys' anatomies lately, and tonight I learn yet another neat trick. Chris grabs his soft dick by the tip in his right hand and pulls it straight down, almost like he wants to roughly yank it off his body. He's tugging it a lot harder than I think I've ever handled myself, and it gets hard really fast. I see that he doesn't disappoint – when he lets go and lets it stand at full mast it must be something like seven inches long. It's kind of darker brown than his skin and veiny, though, and while I have to admire the size it doesn't look as fun to play with as mine. Chris doesn't seem to have a problem playing with it, though, and once it's totally erect and ready to go, he widens his stance, leans back a little, and grabs it roughly with both hands. Dang, this guy's dick is going to fall off before he's thirty if this is how he always treats it. It's long enough that he can clutch it hand-over-hand, and it almost looks like he's driving his fingernails into the shaft. Unlike Mike, who spent about 20 seconds stroking before he came, Chris takes his time and spends a good ten minutes working his wet cock with his hands. I, of course, pop a total boner, and now I hope he doesn't find me in here because I suspect I'd have a hard time convincing him I was sleeping when I'm hard, but I figure if he really wanted privacy he'd do that in a stall rather than the communal shower. I restrain myself from touching, however, since I'm sure he'd notice if I sloshed around in the water too much. Chris seems to get even more into it and, if it's possible, begins grabbing and pumping himself a little rougher. He's bouncing up and down on his knees a little bit, and although the sound of the shower running on him has been enough to drown out most of the noise from his masturbation so far, he begins to groan and grunt audibly. With each downward stroke of his hands he starts pushing up with his knees and making a moderately loud `huhh' grunt. "Huhh, Huhh, Huhh!" he pushed down three times on his monster and takes a deep breath. "Huhh, Huhh, Huhh, HUHHH!" he grunts even louder than before. Fuck, how soundproof are these bathrooms? If he does this often, I'm shocked he never wakes us up! He's now a little louder than even a moderately loud conversation. He stops for a second, and like all my previous voyeuristic efforts, the pause makes my heart stop for a second and then start pounding. I'm totally sure I'm caught, but then Chris just takes a second to get into this impossibly wide stance. His feet are like three feet apart now and he's almost crouching down while he resumes stroking. All his weight must be on his thighs, and I can see all the muscles in his legs tensing up and looking totally ripped and awesome. "Huhh, Huhh, Haaa," He grunts, changing the rhythm to two hard short strokes and one long one. "Huhh, Huhh, HAAAAA, Huhh, Huhh, HAAAAA," he beats more vigorously. Oh my god, he's almost yelling now, and I imagine that somehow the sound of his grunting and gasping is vibrating and stroking my dick for me. I feel a knot in my stomach and consider that I might cum right here and now without ever once touching myself. Then I get a little scared Chris will hear me if I orgasm, and the thought make me push the feeling as deep in my balls as I can. "Huhh, Huhh, Fuck!" he escalates things. "Huhh, huhh, Fuck! Huhh, Huhh, FUCK!" he yells, almost literally screaming. He sounds like some sort of rutting marine soldier or something. Although he's obviously breathing since he's gasping air in and out of his lungs quite audibly, he turns redder and redder, and despite the shower running continuously over his muscular body, he seems to be sweating. And then all at once he tenses all over, and the true benefit of spending hundreds and hundreds of hours in the weight room become apparent. His abs flex into a deep washboard sixpack. His pecs bunch up into large slabs on his chest and his arms become a line of defined, tanned muscles. It strikes me that he almost looks like some sort of lean jungle cat or comic book hero in this position. His eyes roll up in his head, and I have a pretty good idea what comes next. "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck FUCK!!!" he yells, turning almost purple. His impressive cock seems to grow another inch and he clamps onto it as hard as I imagine he can without causing permanent injury. All at once it starts throbbing and ejecting stream after stream of semen. Some hits the shower pole and some flies two or three feet in the air before heading downward to splat on the shower floor. "Huhh, Huhh, Huhh," he grunts all the way through the orgasm. After four or five shots, his grunting gets quieter and his breathing seems to slow. For a second, I wonder if he's ever passed out beating off. I've never been one for making a good wank into an anaerobic exercise, but I guess whatever makes hours in the gym fun for Chris makes beating off hot and hard equally appealing. Once Chris has enjoyed the full effect of his orgasm, he walks across the room and leaves through the main door, his erection still 95% boned and swinging from side to side. Dang, I wish mine swung like that. It looks pretty sexy, although his is a little harsh looking to be honest. I think about getting out of the tub, but then I realize Chris left his towel and figure I should wait a minute. The water is still warm anyway, although it's the need to jerk off that compels me to get out more than cold water. After a few seconds Chris comes back into the room with a fistful of toilet paper or paper towels or something. His dick is now only half engorged, and I think it may be a little sexier that way. Less veiny. He walks over to the shower pole and wipes his spunk off, then wipes up anything that hit the floor. I always thought of Chris as kind of a coarse guy – maybe a little too terse and rough around the edges, but somehow seeing him taking the time to clean up after himself makes me think maybe he's more considerate than I give him credit for. It also makes me consider wearing shower shoes in here more often. Once he's done cleaning, he gets his towel, dries, wraps it around his waist and leaves, and I figure that the show is over for sure now. Well, Chris' portion anyway. I jerked off this morning in the shower, then again after lunch while I was bored waiting for my training unit. Three times is kind of a lot, even for me, but not unheard of, and after Chris' totally awesome full audio jerk-off I need to blow another wad. So I kick the drain with my foot so the water can start flowing out and get up on the tub to do a special trick that I'm kinda fond of. I may not be able to do the double fisted claw and jerk Chris favors, but I have discovered one of the many joys of bathtubs. I swing my right leg over and out of the tub, but then get down on my knees so that I'm half in and half out. My left knee sits at the bottom of the tub just right and the floor of the shower room is such that the rim of the tub pushes right up between my legs. I take a little weight off my knees so I can slide down a little, and the hard edge of the tub pushes up into my crotch. At first the porcelain is cold against my balls, which is a little of a thrill in itself, but soon it warms up and I position myself so that my weight is really pushing the rim of the tub into my groin. This pushes all the blood in my lower groin deep into my already throbbing penis, and it gets harder than hard. The tip turns super dark red and looks like it might explode. Rocking back and forth, I can fist my cock in it's hardest possible state, and I don't need long before I'm ready to blow. "Huhh, Huhh, Huhh!" I figure I'll give it a whirl as the orgasm builds, just to test drive Chris' method a little, although considerably quieter than he was. The tub is cold and smooth against my ass, and as my balls contract and the orgasm begins a put even more of my weight on my crotch. My balls are almost to the point of starting to hurt, but not quite, and that's part of what's great about this position. "Ugh, holy crap," I grunt as the full orgasm takes me. I cram down against the tub while the first two contractions rip through my body and into my brain. Nothing comes out, though, which is another part of this trick. After my dick has throbbed twice at its utmost rigidity, I push up on my knees and release the pressure of the tub under my groin. Some semen leaks out with the third contraction, which kind of tells my body that whatever was holding my lil soldiers back has been removed. I don't know the anatomy behind this, but my theory is that doing this gets your dick so excited it puts in an order for an extra-special orgasm. True to form, as my cock begins the fourth contraction I feel the orgasm `start over' in the back of my brain. I don't know if this method releases extra endorphins or what, but it gives me two orgasms in the head, or something like that. Only the second one is like ten times more extreme that the first. "FUCK!" I yell as the forth contraction results in a complete spray of cum. I was pointing my dick straight out when spurted, and the cum seems to fly at least four or five feet. Not that I'm paying much attention to it – at this point I'm seeing stars. This trick, which I always called `double docking' for some reason (not sure why), makes the rest of the orgasm a little weird. The second shot sprays almost as far as the first, but then the contractions kind of lose strength and the rest of my sperms glob out over my fist. I sit panting on the edge of the tub for a couple of minutes, coming down off the high of one fucking awesome cum. Now that I think about it, although I've jerked a lot since we took off and had fun doing it, this is my first double dock since earth and definitely my most intense orgasm. Well, I'm definitely glad I decided to take a bath tonight. So that's where I stand. For all the effort I've put into finding some couples to spy on, all I've really managed to do is catch a kid and a marine whacking it. Not a total loss, as the stream of slick cum dripping down the side of the tub will attest to, but not quite what I wanted. As I drain the tub and clean up after myself, I resolve to double my efforts. There's got to be some dirty sex play on this damn ship, and I'm going to find it. To be continued...