“Do you women know what she is talking about?” Tschenkar asked.
Ski Coach and Bartender shook their heads.
“We’ll start with learning to add numbers not on your fingers, Love,” I said, tugging on Tschenkar long enough that he finally leaned down so I could kiss him.
“It goes without saying,” Julia said, “that I am driving.”
We all piled into the car, but to my dismay, Tschenkar didn’t fit in the back seat. He had to sit up front, next to Julia. He also had to slide the seatwayback, which crushed into my knees.
Julia started the car, and I had to crane my neck to watch her work the controls. I’d seen videos, but I’d never seen an Eve Humper up close. Then I laughed, realizing I’d never be able to hear the name of this car again without thinking of two alien cocks humping me and pumping me full of cum. Tschenkar and Thuliak, and by extension the entire Khetar race, had a way of making everything about sex. Even in my own private subconsciousness, apparently.
Julia rotated the condenser rod, and the thrum of the oscillator was just like I’d heard in videos, but now I could even feel it under my feet. The car took off, hovering a half meter or so above the snow. Julia pressed the throttle lever up a centimeter or two, and the ‘69 Humper hovered forward, smooth as a bald baby’s head.
“I love how manual everything is,” I said, watching in awe as Julia deftly contracted the thrust field density to compensate for the narrow corridor of trees.
“Yeah,” she said, “I guess they’ll never make them like this again, huh? Not after all that alien tech eclipses everything we’ve ever built. Right, Engineer?”
I nodded, but was thinking of how Tschenkar told me he didn’t care about age. Juliawasa very pretty woman, and she kept looking over at Tschenkar. The look on her face when she smiled at him knocked a good fifteen years off her too.
Jealousy. Again.
Jealousy hurt a lot more when it was for a man that you thought of as yours. This was something High Command had protected us from; it was one of the really negative emotions they’d made sure I’d never felt. It still wasn’t worth the cost—not at all—but I did understand now that there were real things they had protected me from. They hadn’t been malicious, just misguided.
Once we were on the open road, Bartender Julia let the thrust field expand, and we hovered down lower, which let the oscillator really vibrate at peak efficiency, and we started to tear across the snowy road.
“Manual driving is a lot of fucking work,” Tschenkar said, shaking his head. “I have no idea how you humans put up with this shite. And I can’t believe we’re going to have to too.”
“It’s not so bad,” Julia said, “I can teach you, look—”
I watched—with growing jealousy—as Julia patiently and expertly explained to Tschenkar how to adjust the thrust field density, rotate the condenser rods, and shift the engine core into different gear states. I nearly lost it when she let Tschenkar touch the condenser rod. It was double jealousy too, becauseIwanted to touch the condenser rod, andIwanted Tschenkar to be paying attention to me. Not to her.
I powered through by constantly reminding myself how ridiculous and pathetic I was being. He wasn’t eventouchingher. I was jealous simply because he was—for the first time since I’d met him—paying attention to another woman for just a brief moment, in a completely non-sexual way.
The rationalization got me through it, at least long enough to fall asleep, even if it didn’t make the actual feeling of jealousy any easier.
I woke up with Tschenkar’s seat seemingly even further back. My knees and legs were aching, and I had lingering memories of very jealous, deranged dreams. I forgot the specifics of those dreams quickly. They dispersed like vapor as soon as I realized how bad I had to pee.
The doors were open. Ski Coach Cleopatra was already getting out of the car. My door opened, and I saw Tschenkar standing tall beside me. He reached out his hand, and I unbuckled my restraints, then took his hand.
He helped me out of the car and to my feet. My knees groaned in dull, throbbing pain.
“My knees hurt,” Tschenkar said.
I laughed. “Mine too.”
“I had the seat as far forward as I could handle, Love. Any further forward and my cock would have been hitting that quantum foam pattern on the plex field.”
“It’s notthatbig.”
He winked at me. “Yeah, it’s me knees that’s the problem. Fuck, you’re going to have to start building bigger cars.”
“For longer legs.”
He nodded. “Also for all the babies. Take our triumvirate. Say you get me and Thuliak in front—”
“Why can’t I drive?”
That question looked like it hurt his head. I saw his outright dismissal of the idea first, like he was about to laugh or make fun of me, but then the creases on his forehead came as he thought about the way a woman had just taught him to drive, and how he’d complained about how hard it looked.