Saturnalia

Ashort Story

Saturnalia

“They say no-one will tell you how they made enough cash to start their first company.” He growled this and hunched further forward over his drink on the bar. I had mixed feelings about all of this, firstly – and perhaps most importantly – I hadn’t asked him anything more complicated than “You mind if I sit here?” while motioning at the barstool next to him.
The place was kind of a dump; a long white plastic bar at waist height, eight or ten barstools, the floor curved to conform with the .25 ring of the station. A long white light strip was embedded in the bar to make the drinks glow. Behind the bar a wall with a large cycling picture of a green meadow, blue sky, and an ecstatically singing blonde woman clad in brown. Her voice formed the ever-present muzak but was only audible when the jukebox was silent; which, at that moment, it wasn’t, instead it was playing some pleasantly rippling Philip Glass. There was no barman, just a post-mix dispenser bot on a little railway track that ran behind the bar. The Bot’s face was a lit plastic panel advertising “MescKist” with its brand mascot, a smiling rat in a straw hat. The stuff was a relatively new sensation, a fizzy “Grape Bubbleberry” flavoured drink with the legal maximum dose of added synthetic mescaline. I’d tried it once – seen odd dark things in the corners of my vision, ground my teeth for days, hadn’t slept for two nights – and vowed never to touch the shit again. Still, it was substantially cheaper than beer, even the horrible locally brewed stuff. They’ve never managed to synthesise beer properly. It’s always awful.

I looked at my companion. He was burly, clad in the uniform of a Station Loader of medium rank, and staring – though glowering might be a better word – into his drink, speaking of which, I had no idea what it actually was. Contained in a clear shot glass, it was almost transparent, faintly green, and smelled most delightfully expensive. I couldn’t resist; I asked him, hoping he would take my interest as an intention to buy him one.
“What’s that you’re drinking? It smells wonderful.”
He turned to face me and I was surprised; his face was far more interesting than his right ear. I had no idea how old he was. At a guess, silly as it sounds, somewhere between thirty and sixty, and his upper front teeth were quite large and showed signs of work. It was likely he’d been born with a quite large overbite, which was quite unusual in this age of foetus fiddling. His skin was very smooth, pink, and oddly almost babyish, though his eyes seemed far older. I got the shocking feeling that his eyes seemed to be about two hundred years old, and that what they hadn’t seen, wasn’t worth seeing, anyway. It was, probably, the face of a salesman, not handsome enough to be in movies, or plastic enough to be a reporter or a rep on commercial media, but he was as unlike a Station Loader as it was possible to get, and, I was certain, I’d never seen him before. I would have noticed.

He directed a long look at me, seemed to decide I was harmless, and answered.
“It’s a Bolivan liquor made from coco leaves. Of course this is a synthetic from a digitised earth original.Columbian. Pretty good copy really, they usually are. It’s making me homesick.”
“You’re from this Colombia?” I’d never heard of the place. “Is it on Earth?”

He seemed to find my ignorance amusing, and smiled “Yes. In South America. But I wasn’t born there, I’m actually from another place, a place called Australia. I just had a second house in Colombia because I really felt at home there.”

Two houses on Earth? What was he doing in a Loader’s uniform in an empty bar on Saturn Station?
“I sense a story. The kind of story that the media might want enough to pay for. They rarely pay much, but it’s a sideline Anyway, what did you mean before, about opening your first company?” I decided to go for the throat; after all, being a leggy blonde has Quite oftenhas its advantages. . from “What did you say your name was, again?”
“I didn’t, but it’s Paolo, Paolo Petrovsky. Since we’re on the subject, what’s yours?”
I decided to play it safe and stick with my work name. “Robyn. Robyn Christo.”
“Pleased to meet you Robyn. Now do you think I might buy you a drink? At the risk of your developing expensive tastes, perhaps one of these? I assure you, they taste even better than they smell.” It was an offer impossible to refuse, especially when it was accompanied by his smile.
The drink was called “Agwa,” and Paolo assured me that this facsimile was, if not exactly the same as the original, certainly easy enough to get used to. Myself, I thought it was almost beyond delicious, and obviously brutally strong. I loved the stuff, and when he offered me another, at 200 McPhees a shot, I accepted. After all, the way I figured it, I’d have been crazy not to, it was so far beyond the sort of credits I could afford to splurge on a drink, as to make my eyes water. I mean, maybe, just maybe, 200 Mcphees would get me a really good dress, or a pair of heels, but I don’t think the entire outfit I was wearing that night was worth one of those drinks, let alone two. As you can probably tell, by this time I was positively warming to Paolo and especially the heavy-handed way he treated his wallet.
So, think what you like, the station has a very unforgiving economy. Just see what happens when you can’t afford your air.

I described him as “burly” before, and it’s as good a word as any. Naked, his body was big, barrel-like, and glowed white pink. The nipples on his man boobs were small, bright pink, crinkled with arousal. Not the slightest trace of hair on his upper body. I briefly wondered if this, too, was the result of pre-natal gene tinkering or simply my good luck.
His penis was not that big, but circumcised, and as rampantly hard as any penis I have ever seen. It stuck out from his loins, hard as a tuning fork, looking so excited that it might ejaculate entirely on its own. My mouth watered at the sight. I felt a hot flush and went weak at the knees.

It’s unexpectedly hard to fuck in low gravity. Depending on the angle you’re at, things can get out of balance easily. You can’t trust the weight of your body to hold you in place; this translates as bouncing off the bed. If he thrusts, your body will absorb some of the energy, and recoil from the rest. Depending on your age, you can sustain an injury bouncing off the wall. If you think you’re playing it safe, and you’re at it in the missionary position, and you’ve forgotten the restraint belts, you’re kidding yourself. I had one guy banging away at me like there was no tomorrow, and he pulls out of me too hard, there’s no gravity to keep him in place, so he keeps right on going, orgasming as he goes, like a perfect example of Newton’s third law, with one of the silliest looks I’ve seen on a face, ever.
That’ll teach him to take a cheap 1/8 gravity room.

I’ll say this for Paolo though, he liked to nuzzle. This is the opposite of most men, who get their nuzzling with the person they suddenly remember at the moment they ejaculate and instantly feel guilty at having cheated on. I watch them busily formulating excuses for their hasty departure, after, or even during their tumultuous arrival.
Not this one though, and, it must be said, I didn’t mind a bit, his armpit was a comfortable rest for my head, and smelled really wonderful, I hooked my right knee up over his loins and now flaccid cock and, listening to the deep double beat of his heart, allowed myself a lovely doze. I awoke slowly, thinking over the events that had led us to this bed, this post-orgasmic snooze. I noticed dreamily that I was thinking of Paolo and I as “us” and not of myself in the singular, and hoped he’d be at least open to the idea when he woke up.
There was no middle stage, apparently. He snorted, his eyes rolled around wildly behind his closed lids, then he opened them. The irises were the brilliant blue of a fine summer day on Earth. For a moment I felt a pang of nostalgia that was almost a physical pain.
I played with his right nipple.
“So, Paolo, tell me the Paolo story.”
“What do yo mean?” He was gruff. I wondered what he’d been dreaming of.
“How did you get started? What do you do? What are you doing here?”
He sighed. Apparently, he was taking my inquisition seriously.
“Born in Sydney, city in a place called Australia, on Earth. The area was called Campsie. A poor area. My mother was what was called a prostitute in those days; she had sex with men for money. She formed a relationship with a client, a man she decided she loved. She got pregnant. I was the result. My father was supportive, both with money, and emotionally. I had a good childhood and succeeded in school well enough to gain a place in a good university, but my mind turned out not to have an academic bent. I became interested more in business. It was here that my father came into his own. He had, over time, set up and run, several small businesses, a suburban shop that sold sex stuff and allowed people, usually men, to have sex with each other in private, when they paid a fee. He asked me if I had an idea for a business to set up, and, as it happened, I did.
Long ago, I’d decided that children were weird, especially in their tastes in candy … at that time there was a rubbery jelly treat about the size of a man’s hand, shaped like a Bat, translucent green and lime-flavoured. The head was red and grape flavoured and it contained a small amount of sherbet, so, when you bit the head off, the “brain” burst with a pleasant fizzy zing. These were wildly popular in the 5-12 year demographic as were werewolf fangs, and leg bone lollipops shaped like a human femur and mint flavoured. It was this last that started me thinking about medical candy. Soft, jelly filled burst-in-the-mouth “eyeballs” that would sicken the average parent, and consequently enthuse their child.”

I remembered those “eyeballs.” I thought they were great.

He continued. “But my favourite, the one I was most proud of, was “Mallownomas.” Pink and red lumps that adhered to the skin with sticky sugar and could be bitten off the skin of your friend, and eaten. Filled with raspberry popping candy and sherbet for that special “cancerous” taste. Both tasty and educational. There was a big range.”
“Did you do “schnotz”? They were my favourite.”

“They were one of ours, yes, but the plastic nose dispenser was expensive to produce and made the line unprofitable, so the line was withdrawn.”
“They were good, I used to like the way they spurted into your mouth.”
“Your tastes developed early.”
That was when he started tickling me, and I started giggling.
I love being tickled.
Tickled, at its best turns into tangled, and it did then too, on a longer than usual pause, he spoke again.”Of course it didn’t end there – there was the second big sugar hate. That one nearly put us out of business, but we’d diversified, and now the least profitable company lines became our backbone. There was the pureed Carrot and “Potato” Squeezy Snak, “Apple” Squeezy Snak, a “Steak” one and of course a Brussel Sprout one, for dietary Gemmifera.”
His voice was a deep rumble inside his chest. I’d nearly dozed off again, I guessed why he was up here, on Saturn Station, and not admiring the view.

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