Saturday Matinee - The Fountain of Youth

 

 

 Forty-two years had passed since their ship had made an emergency landing on this deserted world....a world full of ruined technology and bones....

They had puzzled over it for a long time....it was obvious that there had been some kind of catastrophe here....something had happened that they couldn't survive....

There was no sign of war....whatever happened hadn't happened suddenly....it had taken some time.....

Much of the technology could still be used after making simple repairs....even the food replicators were repairable....despite that they had found hundreds of skeletons around every one of them....as if they had gathered there for food and died there when the machines wouldn't function....

The three men had labored to restore all that they needed to survive as they waited for rescue....the comms equipment on their ship had been destroyed in the rough landing they'd made here and they couldn't find anything approaching the nanowave emitter they needed to repair it...

They set up a series of short range distress beacons and hoped that someone entering this system would pick them up and respond....

In forty-two years it had not happened....they had grown old hoping but hope was now lost....

They had tinkered with the machine they had found in a secured compound....there was nothing to explain what it's function was....perhaps the answer could be found in the dozens of manuals in the adjacent offices but unfortunately the language they were written in was unknown....even to the universal translator....

The three men...Zyklo, Telor and Cron....had spent years trying to get the machine to power on....just to see what it did.....a dangerous pursuit but they had little else to do...

One evening after they had taken their meal Zyklo and Telor had gone to rest and view the entertainment holo's they had watched hundreds of times while Cron wanted to try something new on the device....

He had been gone for perhaps a Gtu (Galactic Time Unit) when the lights flickered and they heard Cron shouting....

"I've got it....It's powered on....it's...."

And just as suddenly the lights steadied and they didn't hear anymore from Cron....

The two old men moved as quickly as they could....afraid that something terrible awaited them....

Bursting into the room the first thing they saw was the device....clearly powered on....filling the room with a pink glow....

Then they saw her....

A young woman lying naked on the floor just a few feet from the machine....she was awake but completely unaware that they were there....

Her eyes were squeezed shut and she was....pleasuring herself....

The two men froze.....speechless....watching.....wanting.....lusting....they hadn't seen a woman since they left Starport....

Coming to their senses they looked at each other....and at the woman....and at each other...and they both silently said....

"Cron!"

Was it possible?

Had this been the purpose of the device?

To what end would it have been good for the society that built it?

When they could get their erstwhile colleague to stop his masturbatory actions...he...now she...had turned all of her sexual attention to them....to the point where they had to restrain her....

The replicator scanned her and soon she was dressed somewhat more modestly....while the two remaining men discussed what to do....

So this machine took Cron....a man of roughly our age and made him young....perhaps it's purpose was to serve as some kind of "Fountain of Youth"?"

"But the sex change?"

"Perhaps it was an unforeseen side effect....Cron seems more like a whore than a scientist at this point...."

"But look at him....at her....he's young again....perhaps that's worth it...."

"I'm not sure....it seems the effect has left him basically a....bimbo...."

"I know....but he's a young bimbo...."

"Do you think that's what happened here? It would explain so much....why they couldn't repair their technology....why the bones were piled up near the broken food replicators....is it possible that...."

"That they had used the device and it had ended up destroying their civilization?"

"Exactly...."

They fell into silence as they listened to their female colleague whimper and beg for them to take her....

"What must it be like?" Zyklo wondered, "To be young again....filled with the lusty desires of youth...."

Telor pondered the question for a moment....

"What must it be like to be a young woman? Almost a nymphomaniac? Driven by lust over all else?"

They looked at each other....

They had grown old here and the chance of rescue had faded long ago....

They looked at their colleague....squirming with desire....and without a word being spoken between them....

They reached for the switch and activated the device once more....

Bathed in the pink light....they felt all their worries slip away....replaced by something else...something almost feral.....and then they were young again...