Putting the Ace in Space
“What’s sex?” The adolescent girl asked me as we walked through the gardens of the estate.
A panicked looked overtook me, “Who taught you that word?”
“I heard Jack talking about it.”
I thought about it. Alice was a smart kid, she would figure it out eventually. Best she heard it in a safe context, “Sex is something people used to do before the bad times to make children.”
“Jack says that’s why there are two genders. They would feel attraction to each other.”
“Yes. Before the catastrophe, there was a type of person that felt sexual attraction to each other.”
“Sexual attraction?” she sounded confused, like I was speaking a foreign language.
“A type of attraction that made them want to have sex with each other. Most of those people died in the catastrophe, and we came up with the growth vat technology afterwards to continue reproduction.”
Alice looked down silently for a while as we walked along, before continuing in a quieter tone, “I think I might be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Have sexual attraction. I get these,” she stopped and looked at her feet, “feelings,” she said looking back up, “when I look at Jack.”
I took a deep breath, “Do not mention this to anyone else, do you understand?”
They look scared and nodded slowly. We walked along silently for a while after that. Eventually, they pipe up again, “I don’t understand. If there used to be sexual people, why aren’t there any now?”
I could tell she wasn’t going to drop it. It was time, “You’re old enough now. I suppose it is time you learned of our history. Of the catastrophe. And why things are the way they are.”
Before the catastrophe, I worked a simple job selling electronics in a store. It was a simple job, it paid for my needs. Food, art supplies, a roof over my head. I didn’t want for much. Then one day, I was putting out some new microwaves out for display, when the entire wall of Televisions in the store switched to all displaying the same image. It was a news broadcast of an incredible event. An alien ship had been spotted descending through the atmosphere. A large block box was decelerating through the atmosphere above New York. No one knew where it had come from. Was it friendly? Was it an attack? Talking heads on the TV talked about shooting it down. Before anyone could, more black boxes descending in the sky were detected. Above London, Moscow, Sydney, Beijing. The Russians shot off a missile, which seemingly did nothing upon impact. All we could do was wait for them to land and see what happened.
The New York box landed in the middle of a road in downtown Manhattan. The military tried to cordon off the area, but the media was able to get some cameras in. We all watched silently as the sides of the black cube opened, and some ramps descended to the ground. Out of the cubes walked some of the most attractive people I have ever seen. Men built of muscles, voluptuous women, black, white, Hispanic, whatever your type, all walked out of that cube. All wearing the most fashionable lingerie.
They walked right up to the military blockade and started talking. Soon, the reporter explained what the aliens were saying. They had identified themselves as coming from a race called The Grakalax. Apparently, they had told the military they had been specially genetically engineered To be the perfect sexual companions for mankind and were here to have sexual intercourse with the humans. A gift for humanity from The Grakalax. Of course, no one in their right minds trusted them. The military held the quarantine of the site for a while. But more and more boxes kept dropping, more than could be contained. Within a few hours, some had escaped into the general population. The will power of the soldiers manning the checkpoints started failing. Some were seen going off with the aliens to more private locations. Soon, reports started coming in of people disappearing after going off with the aliens; Of people being found dead from exhaustion. The aliens were fucking people to death. Soon things started to crumble. People gave into temptation over and over. Being asexual, I’ll never fully understand why, but I think people just thought things like “No way could I be fucked to death” or “It won’t happen to me” or something along those lines. More and more of the population gave in. Eventually, it was my turn to be temped.
I was walking down the street aimlessly. My job was gone after my manager had been tempted by The Grakalax. My housemate had been fucked to death while I was out grocery shopping. I didn’t have to pay for the groceries, as no one seemed to be manning the cash registers at the supermarket. I didn’t feel like hanging around the apartment with my housemate's corpse, so I wondered the streets, trying to think of what to do now the world was ending. Then an Adonis with flowing blonde hair and a chiselled torso, wearing nothing but a pair of silk boxer shorts, approached me.
“Hello there! Could I interest you in sex?” They greeted me in a very sincere manner, but with such honesty that they did not come off as human.
“Ah, no thank you,” I said and tried to walk away. But he persisted.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I attempted to walk away, but he just followed, “What are you doing?” I asked them.
“Just waiting for you to change your mind.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.”
“It will.”
“Nobody else has refused you?”
“At first, some have tried, but they all eventually give in?”
“Everybody?”
“Yes.”
I sighed and looked him over, “This whole thing, it’s an extermination, right?”
“Yes.”
I was taken aback, “You’re just going to admit it?”
“We’ve discovered that admitting the reason for our presence here on Earth does not seem to stop people from wanting to have sexual intercourse with us. At this point, the moral of your civilisation is so broken that people seem glad for a pleasurable way out of existence.”
“Why go to all this trouble?” I asked, “Why not just, I dunno, shoot us with ray guns like we always thought aliens would do.”
“Well, we have a moral code that forbids such outright violence. From your video and audio transmissions, we determined that sexual intercourse was considered one of the most pleasurable things in your lives, so killing you through sexual intercourse seems like the most humane way to do it.”
“Still seems like a lot of effort. If it’s a humane thing, why not just put us into a morphine induced coma then kills us.”
“Our moral code is also very anti drugs.”
“But fucking another planet to death is okay?”
“Yes.”
“What about children? They’re not sexual, they’ll survive.”
“We figured they would starve without their parents.”
“How is that a moral way to wipe out a planet?”
“Our morals are very advanced. Your primitive society would not understand them.”
“Fuck your morals!” I yelled, ”I’m asexual! I don’t like having sex with people! So you can give up on me right now!”
“Are you really sure you wouldn’t like sexual intercourse? I could stick my liquid waste removal appendage into your solid waste extraction orifice? We’ve come to understand that’s something you might enjoy?”
“No, thanks,” I said and folded my arms
“Are you sure? My appendage is readily filling with blood.” They winked at me.
“I’m good.” I turned away from them.
“I would be sure to wrap in latex rubber before insertion.”
“That does not make it sound any more appealing.”
“How about something else, then? We could rub some of our mucus membranes together?”
“None of that sounds enjoyable to me.”
“You do seem more resistant than others to my advances.”
“Really? This works on other people?”
“Yes. Usually fairly quickly.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
I just laugh.
The agent of The Grakalax looked in thought for a few moments, “Are there many of these asexuals like you?”
“Well, most estimates say around one percent of the population, but some studies suggest it could be as high as five percent.”
“That would leave tens of millions of human beings alive at the conclusion of our plan. This is not acceptable.”
I shrugged, “I don’t know what to tell you, some humans don’t like fucking.”
“This never came up in any of the audio or video transmissions we intercepted from your planet.”
“Yeah, that’s not surprising. Asexual representation in media is kind of awful.”
“Your media does not purposefully try to accurately represent every aspect of our society?”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Hmmm,” said The Grakalax, “Your kind definitely deserves to be wiped out.”
“Your morals seem worse and worse the more I learn about them.”
“Again, our morals are beyond the comprehension of your primitive minds.”
“Yes, how could I forget?”
The Grakalax decided to ignore me and bought out a device I could only surmise was some sort of communicator and start pressing buttons on it. Eventually, they turned their attention back to me and said, “Something occurs to us.”
“Yes?”
“If your species reproduces with sexual intercourse, and the only humans we leave alive do not participate in sexual intercourse, then will not your species die out?”
“Well, probably, I guess.”
“Then we shall proceed with our plan.”
“It would take us decades to fully die out.”
“That is likely to be faster than our ability to come up with a new plan.”
“Really?”
“Our political process is really inefficient and polarised. It’s honestly surprising we were able to execute this attack.”
And so once all the allosexuals had been fucked to death and no one left was responding to their advances, The Grakalax left in their giant black cubes. They assumed that we would die out due to our lack of sexual desires. But the remaining humans banded together and salvaged what we could of society. We created the technology to grow humans in tanks, so humanity could continue without us having to debase ourselves and resort to having sex with each other. However, The Grakalax were still out there, and while their leaders sounded incompetent, they were still a threat. Humanity could not assume we were safe. We had to strike back. So we started the intergalactic space laser cannon project. A weapon so powerful we could destroy The Grakalax home world upon completion. Such a technology was far beyond humanity before The Grakalax invasion of Earth, but we were able to make swift progress in its research and construction. It turns out, when you have a population who wasn't thinking about sex all the time, you’re able to get a lot done.
“So now you understand why there are not many people like you in our world,” I said after finishing telling the tale to Alice.
“It’s sad that so many people died,” said Alice quietly.
“Yes, it is.”
“But, if the Grakalax are gone, why must I hide who I am?”
“Some like how things are. Some are asexuals that had a bad life before the catastrophe, and are bitter about it. They never want to have to be in the minority again. Others are conservative or religious and think we’re better off without sex. They use the threat of The Grakalax returning to keep things how they like it.”
“Do you think we’re better off without sex?”
“No. I mean, I never liked sex. But I think we lost something in our society when we lost sex. Good jokes, for one thing. Comedians struggled after the catastrophe to make jokes without sex.”
“What’s a comedian?”
“Exactly. They’re basically extinct. We’re building what is essentially the most phallic object in the universe. It’s a giant space penis! And nobody’s laughing at it!”
Alice looked at the giant structure of the space cannon on the horizon, “I suppose it looks a little like one.”
“A little? I told them there was no reason to put the two xenon storage tanks at the base of the main cannon, but nooo, apparently a marginal efficiency gain is worth more to them than being a giant fucking joke.”
Alice giggled a little.
“See, you get it.”
“So, will we be safe from The Grakalax soon?”
“The cannon itself is complete. We’re just waiting on the last few fusion reactors to come online in order to power the weapon. Once The Grakalax are destroyed, sex can be allowed again. Jokes, art, passion, will all flourish again. And people like you will be free to do whatever they want.”
“I would like to be free to try sex.”
“You will be soon. You will all be free to have sex and get pregnant and give birth.”
“Give birth?”
“That’s where you push a baby through your vagina.”
“Uhhh,” Alice looked down at her pants, “I don’t think I want to do that.”
I laughed, ‘Fair enough. I wouldn’t either.”
We both laughed and headed back towards the house.