Fragments Fiction

ALIEN TRANSMUTATOR

September 1, 2007

Gunny Sergeant Johnson marched three naked and muscle-bound soldiers through security checks and into a shielded, ultra-secret laboratory. "Gentlemen, we have arrived."

"Uh Gunny, this hardly looks like astronaut training. It's more like a tanning studio." Bo Johansson, an over-muscled blond pointed to a cylindrical device fitted with energy pumps, field generators and a control panel. Little Carlos, the demolitions expert agreed.

"This doesn't resemble any rocket I'm familiar with," Rich Neville said, fingering the controls. Two lab techs pushed through the men.

"Gentlemen, don't touch the transmutator. It's sensitive, delicate and YES, you might break it. I'm Ben your lab technician for the day." His admonition prompted the soldiers to touch and handle everything in the room.

"Give us a break guys, Professor Dipshit is going to walk in and we'll be scrubbing bottles for weeks if you screw up any equipment." The nameless lab tech caught an expensive glass distillation column. Ben reached for a large folding screen and the soldiers tripped him letting him land flat on his ass with a thump and a loud oomph. The screen tumbled on top of him. Behind it, an alien snake-man sat coiled on a bejeweled body covered with golden-green scales. Its muscular arms folded over its chest and yellow eyes glaring at the soldiers.

Profane expressions of disbelief filled the room.

"Just couldn't resist touching and groping, could you soldier?" The snake-man rose up like a cobra. "Do you finger wet paint just to be sure it's wet? If a sign says don't walk to you walk anyway? Remind me, young man, of your human saying about curiosity and felines?"

"I'm sorry Prospero," Ben said.

"It's not your fault Ben," Prospero said. A forked tongue slid out of its mouth, past the snake's non-existent nose and flicking the air as if to accuse the soldiers. "It's their fault." He didn't smell fear.

"What the hell are you?" Gunny Sergeant Johnson asked. Bo extended a finger to touch the snake's body. It hissed.

"Ask before you touch, sir. We haven't even been properly introduced," Prospero's stern expression held for a few seconds then he laughed, slithering forward and shook Bo's hand. The snake's hands only had three fingers and a thumb.

"You're from another..."

"...another planet? Yes! ...Outerspace? Where else. My name is Prospero and I live on the planet Powawoogie-Sepharownsis circling the star you call Proxima Centauri. My spaceship crash-landed killing my crew and leaving me stranded. Ben rescued me, helped rebuild my spaceship, showed me your world. Although the rainforests of your planet are lovely and delightful, I want to go home."

"Let me guess, your spaceship is nearby and you need a crew." Gunny Sergeant Johnson stated the obvious.

"Why else would we be naked?" Bo asked. The soldiers snickered.

"Not on my account, soldier, your human bodies are unsuitable for spaceflight. They require modification." Prospero talked breathlessly, flicking his tongue as he spoke.

"Powawoogie-Sepharownsis doesn't have an oxygen atmosphere. We don't have lungs; we absorb oxygen through our skin. Y'all will have to be physically altered to absorb oxygen rather than breathe it,"

"The trip of a lifetime, but just not as Homo Sapien. more like Homo snakians," Bo said. The other soldiers added their special profanities and epithets.

"My profession is galactic exploration. Once we reach deep space, there will be little incentive to return to earth. The big question is; do you have the cojones, are you adventurous enough to join me?" Prospero leaned over toward Ben and nudged him. Ben nodded.

"Speaking for my men, I would feel better about this decision if we could inspect your body. We're willing to follow any order to get into space but it would be nice to understand what we're going to become."

"Agreed," Prospero held his arms out. The snake-man's torso -- buttocks, hips, abdomen, arms, neck, back and chest -- was human. Its entire body was a mass of muscle. They estimated its body at fifteen or eighteen feet long. They wanted to see its genitals but Prospero's long, well-muscled abdominal section revealed only a sizable male bulge. As they explored his body, Prospero tasted their bodies with his forked tongue.

Professor Deporabati entered the laboratory carrying a tray of hypodermics and bottles of green fluid and two heavily armed MPs at his side.

"Ah, I see that you've introduced yourselves -- good, more than good. I selected all of you for your inquisitiveness, adaptability and physical prowess. So it's all settled, Prospero, your crew is here. I have the refined venom and they are, like all the military men around here, good puppy dogs. Shall we get started?" Professor Deporabati said, ignoring any attempt at conversation.

He picked up a hypodermic handed it to Ben and pointed to Gunny Sergeant Johnson's arm. Then he snapped his fingers at the other lab tech and pointed to Bo. Bo began to ask a question, but Professor Deporabati dismissed him peremptorily. Each soldier received four injections, one in each thigh and bicep.

"You know what the doctor always says, don't you? Wait fifteen minutes for full effect before using the Smegmarator. Now, I'm going to dinner and then I'm going home. Don't bother me when you're done. I will see you all tomorrow to examine your new bodies and certify your space-worthiness," Professor Deporabati snapped his fingers in Ben's face as he left with the MPs.

"Officious little git, isn't he?" Gunny Sergeant Johnson said.

"...not to mention obnoxious," Bo added.

"We invented the name 'smegmarator' just to hear him say it."

"I'm tired of his arrogance." Ben shrugged his shoulders, took a deep breath and pulled his T-shirt up over his head with one hand to reveal a broad chest with chiseled muscles. He flexed his arms and braced as the snake-man coiled around him, resting its tail on the floor.

"I thought all lab techs were soft, pudgy couch-potato nerds who got their jollies playing WoW on the internet?" Gunny Sergeant Johnson said, admiring the young man's strength.

"Not in my family, I've been in locker rooms since age six. My father played professional football and when my mother died, he took me to every camp, practice session and game. I grew up with nothing but bug, hulking linebackers and defensemen around. I know more about internal medicine and men's muscles than Deporabati ever dreamed. He's an ass-kissing weasel and I need a change of pace, you might say. Besides, I have a bad case of ophiolatry," Ben rubbed his nose against Prospero's non-existent nose and braced as the snake-man sank his fangs deep into Ben's neck. Ben staggered, his knees bending for a second. Two thin lines of blood trickled down Ben's neck and over his chest.

"Dude, you did it. I mean, that must have hurt," the other lab tech said. Ben straightened up and walked to the trasmutator. Prospero slithered to the controls.

"I'm tired of being Deporabati's flunky. He can shove the conversion apparatus up his fat, overbearing ass, sideways. Tomorrow, if he asks you what happened, tell him that I died in the takeoff. Prospero can use a research assistant."

"You can still join him," Prospero said.

"I can't...," the lab tech said with his hands palm up.

"We understand. Take my wallet, my keys, take everything. My computer has all the records and my strong box has new identity papers. Get a new start away from this idiocy," Ben said. The namelss lab tech slid Ben's keys into his pocket.

As if on cue, Gunnery Sergeant Johnson's penis thickened and rose to a full erection. One by one, each soldier lost control of their manhood and sported thick, hard erections. They all stood embarrassed. Ben laughed.

"You're ready, guys. Erections are natures way of saying 'change me, my body is ready. I'm now malleable enough for the machine to transform,'" the lab tech said.

"Time to pay the piper, to use a sad, human cliché. Who's first?" Prospero said.

"Me, I'm first. I know what's going to happen," said Ben, climbing onto the bed of the transmutator and pulling the lid closed. They could see the outline of his body through the translucent lid.

"Son of a bitch," Gunny muttered, Lights flashed, energy fields glowed as streamers of plasma filled the transmutator radically altering Ben's body. His legs disappeared replaced by an elongated torso. The cycle lasted two minutes.

Prospero opened the lid flexing the muscles of his back and arms. The transmutator disgorged a green and gold snake-man sans human legs. Ben's scaly torso was nearly three times its human length and ended in a scaly tail. Scales covered his flat, earless head. His eyes, all yellow with slit-like pupils, had no nose between them. He retained the five fingers on his hands and his arms were longer and stronger. Thick, human pecs, deltoids and trapezius dominated his physique. Tiny, reflective scales covered his still erect human genitals.

"Damn Prospero, you said that wouldn't hurt but, bastard, it hurt like hell." Ben's voice hissed softly.

"Sue me, I lied. Go rest and let your mind adjust to all the physical changes," Prospero said. Ben flopped off the device, smacking the floor and wiggling idiotically. Two of the soldiers moved him to a sand box taking the opportunity to feel Ben's new body

"Your scales are so soft." Bo rubbed Ben's chest and abs.

"And he's still a man." Rick grabbed Ben's penis and giving it a good squeeze. Annoyed, Ben pushed him away and retracted his equipment inside his cylindrical body.

"Who's next?"

"I lead," Gunnery Sergeant Johnson said, climbing onto the table and closing the transmutator. Again, lights blinked and power flowed. Gunnery Sergeant Johnson screamed aloud as his body transformed from human to snake-man. One by one, the soldiers sealed themselves inside the cylinder and let the machine transform their human bodies into snake-men.

The new snake-men slithered around the laboratory learning how to move. Prospero explained the unfamiliar parts of their new bodies; the flaps to shield against sand and dirt, the eyelids, the senses of smell and taste based on their forked tongues.

Prospero and his new crew of snake-men slithered onto a pallet-sized, self-propelled handcart. The lab tech covered them with a tarp and started to lash it down. Under the tarp, Prospero hummed some human music and listened to the soldiers babble about touching each other's serpentine bodies. The lab tech pulled the tarp up.

"Shut up! You're snakes. You coil around each other. Do you want the guards to look under the tarp? Everyone will know what is happening." Wait until they discover that snakes are hermaphroditic egg layers, he thought.

He took a circuitous path to the hanger holding the spaceship. At one point, He had to buy Girl Scout cookies and few minutes later, someone wanted dating information. Finally, they were alone. The lab tech removed the tarp and the saw Prospero's spaceship.

The spaceship was completely alien -- neither round, nor cigar-shaped, nor cubic, but radically tubular like the curl of a wave, snaky and serpentine. Its width and height filled half of the hanger. The only orientation human scientists could determine for the spaceship was up and down because it obviously sat on a series of legs. It seemed to be a series of chambers connected by narrow tunnels. No human had been inside or had any knowledge of how the thing worked. Prospero slithered up to a blank spot, touched a panel and a round hatchway barely two feet in diameter opened above his head.

"Your new eyes can see the control surfaces." Prospero slid inside the spaceship. One by one, the new snake-men slithered inside. The spaceship glowed and hummed with energy. Prospero's head popped out of the open hatch. He gestured to the lab tech.

"Young man, you have my endearing thanks for all of your help," Prospero said, extending his hand in thanks.

"I would have come along, you know. I wanted to. My wife, we, her and me, well, I just had twin boys. I can't leave them," he apologized. Prospero smiled through his thin lips and licked the lab tech's hand.

"I understand completely. Maybe in twenty of your years, I'll return and see if you or your sons want to travel into space. Now go, quickly, if you want to live a long life, be elsewhere when we take off," Prospero shut the hatch.

The lab tech hurried away, taking a truck someone carelessly left running. he could hear the spaceship levitate as it prepared to leave the hanger. He twisted the rearview mirror so he couldn't see the energy blast that preceeded the spaceship crashing out of the hanger. He ignored the whining noise of the engines as the blasted the spaceship up into the air. He didn't even glance at the brilliant but brief rival to the sun as the space drive folded space and time and entered hyperspace for the trip to Proxima Centauri.

"Twenty years, nice round number," the lab tech muttered as he drove to his family.

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