The First Moment
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Chapter 9: Ready
I admired Alice’s strong back muscles and defined arms. She had the cutest butt with larger-than-average legs. Against the idea of manhood everywhere, I missed the warm cuddle more than the loss of sex. Sex happens, normally great with someone you know and love, good with someone you like, but the moments of stillness, of perfect bliss, rarely happen, even with someone you love, and almost never with a stranger.
“I thought we had another week or two. It’s show time,” Alice said as she jumped out of bed, nude.
She slipped on a thick, red fabric full-body suit, complete with built-in hood, gloves, and boots. A blue one sat on the wooden bookcase beside where she grabbed hers. I hadn’t noticed the shelving unit when I entered the room, which I guess showed my exhaustion.
I stood, also naked, but no longer hard, and with her help, I put on my blue outfit. It felt tailor-made for me, and kept the boys snug. It made me feel like a child again, in a one-piece pajama.
“What are these for? Where are our clothes?” I asked as she zipped me up.
“Let’s go,” she said as she opened the door, grabbed my hand, and dragged me down the hallway, filled with other people of different nationalities. Everyone wore different solid colors that must correspond to their country of origin.
On the other side of the window, white coats ran in circles and bumped into each other, while the soldiers in green and tan uniforms exited red doorways in a sprint. Their superiors stood and pointed at positions along the walls.
As we walked down endless halls, our numbers grew, and the noise of the crowd grew, while the intercom repeated the instructions in multiple languages. I couldn’t see the speakers, but given the confusion from the other people and the echo in the hallway, they could have put them anywhere, and I wouldn’t have found them. It sounded like the lady’s voice arrived from all directions simultaneously.
“Where are we going? What’s going on?” I kept asking, but Alice didn’t say anything, just squeezed my hand each time I asked. We moved quickly, a fast shuffle, only a slight jostle as the odd person bumped their neighbors, but no one complained. I tried to listen to the various conversations, but only understood a few words: “Alien. Finally. Nervous.”
Right, left, left, down, and down, the hallways grew wider, and along the walls, soldiers in green with stern faces and black automatic weapons close to their chests increased in number. Ahead of us, a pair of red jumpsuited Chinese men talked over each other, almost like they just wanted to hear familiar sounds.
“Alice, what’s happening?” I asked and almost pulled her to a stop, but she stayed focused on moving forward, and I allowed her to drag me along.
She squeezed my hand again, began to say something, decided against it, and focused on shuffling forward. Behind us, an orange-jumpsuited woman bumped me, then moved past, her stride long, almost a run, and disappeared in the mass ahead of us. Alice yelled after her, “So impatient, we’re all going to the same place.”
We arrived in the cavern with the alien spaceship. Even close up, I couldn’t focus on the alien thing.
Inside, the cavern felt bigger than an NFL stadium, and I had attended a Rams game in their stadium, the largest by square footage. The walls disappeared in the gloom, while I felt like an ant.
White-coated scientists guided us toward a massive yellow square to the right of the spaceship. The black object still defied description. A fin, like a shark’s, jutted out from one side, which met a bulge, but the shadows didn’t make sense. They had set up lights all around the ship, ten big round movie-like lights on thin white poles that protruded from square white boxes with black wheels. The movie lights made me realize how much I rely on just recognizing things. I know that we don’t see like a camera. We don’t take a picture and upload it to our brain. We scan, like I tried to with the alien craft, pick out recognizable objects, and our brain fills it in. I could focus on lights and pick out the detail of blue rental words on the white ballast, which just added detail to the whole light structure. Yet, I couldn’t do the same with the alien ship, and as I tried to focus on a specific part, like the black fin, everything else would slip away.
Most of the others stared at the ship out of the corner of their eyes.
“I can’t figure out what it looks like,” I said as I turned away from the ship. Alice nodded as she stared at the people around us.