From the Ashes

A sequel to The Binary Planet

by Altimexis

Hiroshima after The Atomic Bomb
 

Part One — The Phone Call

“Poppy, Poppy!” a young voice shouted out as our daughter ran into the living room. At nine years of age, Theresa was just beginning to take on the appearance of a young woman. She was one of a new generation of humans born after the liberation — a generation that had no memories of the invasion — a generation that never knew the world the way it was before.

“What is it, Sweetheart?” asked Lansley, my boyfriend, my lover, my partner in life.

“Can I spend the night at Maria’s? Please,” she replied.

“Why don’t you ask Daddy, OK?” Lansley responded.

Before I could even begin to process the request, I had an armful of girl sitting on my lap. The sight of her smiling face, however, was more than I could resist.

“Of course you can, precious, as long as it’s OK with Maria’s parents,” I replied, “but don’t you even think of being outside after dark.”

“I won’t, Daddy, I promise,” she answered, just before skipping out of the room and into her bedroom to grab some things for her sleepover with her best friend.

After she left the room, I glanced out the window to see our son, Miguel, playing one-on-one basketball with his friend, Bobby, in the driveway. At fourteen, Miguel was strikingly handsome with his dark skin glistening in the sunlight as sweat poured down his torso. Seeing the two teens together reminded me so much of when I taught Lansley how to play basketball all those years ago.

Yet I still remembered it as if it were yesterday. I’ll never forget the day Dad told us we’d be having a top secret guest coming to live with us. After swearing us to secrecy, he explained that Lansley was a boy, about my age, but from another planet! It was only later that I learned that calling him a ‘boy’ wasn’t really correct. Although he looked a lot like a human boy in spite of his bluish-grey skin, his fur-like red hair and his eyes with their vivid purple irises set against black sclera, his species lacked sexual dimorphism. In his kind, there were no males or females.

Among Lorans, as they were called, fertilized eggs resulted from the joining of two equal oocytes. There was no sperm and egg — Lorans produced only eggs. But to Lansley, it was we humans who were the strange ones. To him, being limited to choosing a mate of the opposite sex was incomprehensible. To him it seemed perfectly natural to be able to mate with anyone of his choosing. Perhaps that was why he had no problem accepting that I was gay.

The interesting thing was that while Lansley had all the equipment necessary to become pregnant, externally he looked much more like a boy than a girl. His mammary glands were internal, giving him a flat, muscular chest, and he even had vestigial nipples on his chest, too. His forniculus looked for all the world like a penis and, during sex, he ejaculated just like I did, except that his semen looked and even tasted a bit like chocolate and was laden with oocytes rather than sperm. He even pleasured himself by jerking off, just like human boys do.

Where he differed from humans was in that he had an ovulum, which served much as does the pouch in earth’s marsupial species, like the kangaroo. During sex, the center portion of the ovula, or perinaculum, opens up and joins with that of their partner, allowing the fornicula to come into contact and the oocytes to join. Hence there is no need for sexual differentiation.

One might think that two such different species would find it impossible to have sex with each other, but Lansley and I found we could do pretty much everything that two human boys, or two Lorans, could do together — and we did!

“Does that remind you of anything?” I heard Lansley say as he too looked out the window at our son and his best friend.

“I was just thinking about that,” I admitted, “about how we met and how I taught you how to play basketball.”

Placing his hand on my knee, he continued, “Those were special times, getting to know each other, learning new things, just being together and enjoying each other’s company — and more.”

As Lansley spoke, he started to rub his hand along the inside of my thigh, causing me to get an instant erection.

We froze when Theresa ran back into the living room and said, “OK, Daddy. OK, Poppy. I’m going over to Maria’s house now.”

“Did you remember to pack a toothbrush?” Lansley asked, causing our daughter to roll her eyes.

“Have fun, sweetheart,” I called out just as she disappeared through the door.

Although my erection had gone down the moment our daughter entered the room, it didn’t take long for it to return full-force as Lansley resumed stroking my inner thigh. The thought of us as teenagers, bare-chested and covered with sweat, was enough to make me achingly hard. I could almost smell the delightful scent of his sweat, which smelled for all the world like baked apples. Reaching for his hand, I led him to our bedroom so we could finish what he’d started in privacy.

Even now at the age of thirty earth years, Lansley looked beautiful to me. His skin was a slightly darker shade of blue, but it was still smooth and taut, with sinewy muscles underneath. His full, moist lips were alluring and his kisses were divine. The feel of his tongue against mine, even though it felt different from that of a human, owing to its smooth texture and its being attached in the front of the mouth, was almost enough in and of itself to send me over the edge.

And then there was his forniculus, which felt so like my own penis and yet delightfully different. Sex with Lansley was the perfect expression of the love we shared and had shared with each other for sixteen years.

It was just as Lansley was preparing to enter me that my phone rang. Talk about spoiling the mood!

Climbing out of bed and grabbing my jeans, I pulled out my phone and, after noticing the caller, answered, “Hey, Clark, what can I do for you?”

What came next were the dreaded words, “Steve, there's been an incident.” An ‘incident’ was a phrase we used to describe any kind of contact with our Cerenean enemies. It had been thirteen years since the end of the Cerenean invasion of earth and a decade since we’d last had contact with them. Although we’d thoroughly vanquished the Cereneans, they were hell-bent on domination of all species they encountered and one of the most important things we’d learned from Lansley was just how tenacious they could be. With a lifespan measured in centuries, the long distances involved in space travel meant nothing to them. They were relentless, and they were patient.

Even now Loran was still under Cerenean occupation and would be for many years to come. Our message of hope in the form of instructions for constructing a biologic weapon had been en route to the Loran Resistance Movement from the time of the initial Cerenean invasion of Earth, from when we first figured out how to construct a virus that could target Cereneans without affecting native human and Loran populations. Traveling at the speed of light, that message wouldn’t arrive on Loran for another five years. There was truly no one we could fall back upon to save Earth from another Cerenean invasion other than ourselves.

Taking a deep breath, I asked, “What kind of incident, Clark?”

“It’s not something I can discuss over the phone. Even with encryption, there’s too much risk that someone might overhear us. We’re all going to convene in the capital tomorrow at noon.”

“Thanks for the extensive notice,” I responded.

“I don’t need to tell you that time is short, my friend,” he replied. “We’ll send a shuttle to pick the two of you up at five AM, and be sure to fill in your boyfriend on what’s going on.”

“We have children, Clark,” I reminded my colleague. “We can’t simply drop everything and go without making arrangements.”

“But Miguel is, what, sixteen?” Clark asked.

“He's still only fourteen,” I replied, “and even though he’s very mature for his age, we’re not about to let him face the dangers of San Francisco on his own. There have been several incidents of wild animals attacking humans in recent weeks, and there are bands of looters literally out for blood.”

“It certainly gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘urban pioneer’,” Clark quipped, “but it’s a choice you made.”

“That we did,” I agreed, “but someone has to take responsibility for rebuilding our cities. I don’t need to tell you how hard America was hit in the initial barrage of antimatter bombs. Out of 57 detonations, twelve were in America. Twelve of America’s most populous and strategic cities were vaporized. Even China and India weren’t hit as hard, and their populations hardly decreased at all. We lost more than a third of ours.”

“And Japan lost more than half of theirs. Even still, we’re the third most populous nation on earth,” Clark challenged, “and with an open immigration policy, we’re well on our way to regaining what was lost.”

“Which is why we need to rebuild our cities,” I countered. “You have no idea what it’s like for us pioneers, living as you do in your comfortable home in Atlanta…”

“Steve, you know better than that!” Clark practically shouted into the phone, and I knew he was right. “I’m personally responsible for more than a million scientists who were displaced by the Cerenean invasion. Thank God we had the foresight to get them out of harm’s way.”

“And for that we are all grateful,” I acknowledged. It had been a last-minute decision based on what Lansley told us we could expect of a Cerenean invasion. He warned us the Cereneans would waste no time dismantling Earth’s institutions of higher education, rounding up all our scientists, intellectuals and leaders and executing them before they could become a threat to Cerenean rule. We tried to warn the rest of the world of what would happen, but not even Europe would listen. As a result, millions of the most learned men and women throughout the world perished during the first days of the invasion. That was everywhere except in the United States. Our scientists and scholars were dispersed to rural communities and they survived.

We were the only country with the knowledge and the expertise to apply Cerenean technology to rebuild the world. Had it not been for that fact, I had little doubt that the Chinese would have taken advantage and invaded America long ago. Indeed, it was only the threat of American force that caused them to back down when they made their move on Korea and Japan.

“Steve?” Clark asked, bringing me back to the moment at hand.

“We’ll make arrangements,” I assured our friend before hanging up the phone.

“The Cereneans?” Lansley asked and I nodded my head.

“Clark wouldn’t tell me over the phone,” I went on to explain.

“What are we going to do about the kids?” Lanlsey asked.

“Well, Theresa is already staying with Maria tonight,” I suggested. “Perhaps the Hernandezes could take her for a few more days.”

“I hate to impose, particularly since we can’t exactly tell them why,” Lansley replied, “but it's probably our best option. And perhaps the Wallaces can take care of Miguel,” he added.

“Miguel and Bobby are really tight,” I responded. “I'm sure his parents would be willing to help out. We just need to ensure our kids don’t slack off on their studies while we’re gone.”

“That, my love, is a given,” Lansley replied and then gave me a quick peck on the lips. San Francisco did not yet have an infrastructure for a school system, so it fell largely on the parents to ensure their children kept up with their studies over the Internet.

Reaching back for my phone, I gave the Hernandezes a call while Lansley called the Wallaces. A few minutes later, we were set.

We said our goodbyes to Theresa over the phone but we had yet to tell Miguel what was going on and so we called him and his friend into the living room. Moments later, we had two very sweaty boys sitting across from us.

“Boys,” I began, “there’s nothing to be afraid of, but Lansley and I have been called away to St. Louis for a few days.”

“To the capital?” Bobby asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Pop, Dad, what’s wrong,” Miguel asked. “Is it the Cereneans?”

Miguel knew about our work, and he knew we wouldn’t be called away unless it were very serious, so there was no point in sugar-coating it. Bobby was equally aware of our work — one of his best friend’s parents was an alien from another planet, after all, and his parents were among the scientists that had been saved.

“Yes, it’s the Cereneans,” I replied, “but we don’t know anything more than that at the moment. I’ll be able to tell you a lot more when we return, if there’s anything to tell, that is.”

“We don’t know how long we’ll be away,” Lansley added, “but Bobby, your parents have agreed to let Miguel stay with you.”

“I know the two of you will be there for each other and take care of each other wile we’re gone,” I threw in.

“We will, Dad,” Miguel answered, “and you two take care of each other, too. And hurry back home!”

“We’ll do our best,” Lansley assured our son. I only hoped we’d be able to keep our promise.