41: Saturday, July 18, 1500 hours CST: Man Overboard
At 3 PM, Zach met Charisse and Alexis during their "morning" recreation time. He had put in another hour and a quarter of work after visiting Berte. He met them at their quarters, where they appeared naked at their hatch. They dragged him inside, gently removed his scrubs, and gave him a massage. "We think we should take care of you," Alexis said, digging into his shoulders.
"Yeah," added Charisse, massaging up his right leg and stroking his stiffening cock with oil. "We know we ask more attention from you, so we want to give more back, too. Thank you for your invention, Zach. It's exciting that all of us will be able to carry children on the way to Mars." Charisse continued guiltily, "I'm sorry I shushed you the other time. It was mean. I know your feelings are genuine. I just think you shouldn't go there."
"She's been hurt by men," Alexis interjected.
"And I've hurt men," Charisse confessed, stroking his cock lovingly.
"Please," Zach said, grabbing Charisse's hands. "I can't even hear what you're saying when you're doing that. It sounds important."
"I said I've hurt men," Charisse repeated. "It has been very messy for me to scratch my itch. Best to not get too attached. That's my warning to you. You'll get hurt."
Alexis continued to rub Zach's shoulders from behind as he cuddled Charisse lovingly in his arms. He kissed his forehead to Charisse's and looked into her concerned hazel eyes. "How would you hurt me?"
"I'll spread my legs for the next man on Mars. I'll spread my legs for many men after that, probably as many as I can get." She was defiant, as though she expected him to start an argument.
"Okay," said Zach. "And if you loved me before, would you love me less after you've had them?"
"In my experience, it gets complicated," Charisse argued.
"Life is complicated," Zach rejoined.
"All right you two," Alexis broke in, reaching around and restarting Charisse's dick stroking with her own oily hands. "You're not going to solve the world's problems in a single conversation."
"I just want to say—oh God, please stop for a moment Alexis. Charisse, I'm going to love and help raise our son, or daughter, or maybe one of each? I don't need you to behave in any sort of way. I want you to be you and fulfill you. If that means having every guy you see, including hopefully me, I'll happily always be in that line. I love you. I want to be close to you. I don't think that's going to change."
"I don't doubt you think you mean what you say," Charisse argued. Zach felt Alexis's impatience behind him, wanting to get off the discourse and on to the pussy stretching. Charisse continued, "This is hypothetical for you, purely hypothetical. I've been through it before too many times."
"My love is not hypothetical," said Zach, "And if I hurt, I can take it. You've made your likely path clear. I'm fine with it. You can handle me with ten other women today. I think I'll be able to handle you with ten or twenty or fifty other guys tomorrow."
"But it's different," said Charisse. "They're my friends."
"And those guys will no doubt be my friends. And I'll congratulate them when they get their cherry popped by the mind-blowing Charisse. Watch me and see if I don't. Anyone you want to give the gift of your body to, I want him to have the gift of your body. Then we'll both love you. We'll all love you."
"We'll see," said Charisse, clearly skeptical. She had a point. Zach didn't have the power to decree that human society evolve in the way he wanted it to on Mars. No doubt there would be some snags in leaving Earth's outdated practices behind.
"Please," groaned Alexis, stroking Zach's limp cock up to hardness again. "Please, I need it."
"And I want to give it, darling, kind, patient Alexis. I want to give you everything."
"Don't start with me as well," Alexis groaned.
"Don't worry," said Zach, "I haven't fallen for you yet. But we're buddies, right?"
"Always," smiled Alexis. She rubbed his cock to hardness deliciously. She twisted her hands around it with oily goodness as she stroked. "Always buddies. Always fuck-buddies. With an emphasis on fuck."
"Always, sweetheart," Zach assured Alexis. "If you need filling, I'll do the drilling." Charisse snickered. The subject had been thoroughly changed.
With that, they got down to serious business. Alexis, desperate, climbed on and rode Zach first. Charisse heightened Alexis's pleasure by inserting an L dildo in her own tight twat and excitedly fucking Alexis up the ass with it. This caused Alexis to scream and curse in a series of rolling orgasms. He couldn't stand it anymore and roared, blasted, and filled Alexis's writhing snapping cunt with cum.
Alexis moved over to Zach's face. Charisse sucked him up to hardness and rode him to her own great pleasure. As he jerked and otherwise indicated he was getting close, Charisse stopped. She said, "Do you really want to cum again? We hear you have a big night coming up. Save it for them. I'm satisfied. I'm not even ovulating, and Berte is."
"Are you sure?" Zach asked. Their interaction this time had been so weird. It was another weird twist for Charisse not to want to be creampied.
"Sure I'm sure," answered Charisse. "Get used to it."
And with that, Zach was redressed and summarily booted from their chamber even more confused than he had been. He shrugged and showered off in Head A2.
His next two hours of work gave him plenty of time to suffer about Charisse. He was determined not to. During this time, he was tasked with overhauling Waste Recycling A. The plant accepted a variety of trash and waste from the habitat areas of the ship. The cleaning spiders unloaded any dust or detritus they collected there. So did the air conditioning system. Waste containers located throughout the ship fed their waste there via a pneumatic system. Grey water and sewage from the sinks, showers, laundry, and toilets were pumped there. All this waste could be directed to either waste recycling plant or balanced between the two. At the moment, Waste from the A portion of the ship and the core was directed to Waste Recycling A; waste from the B portion of the ship was directed to Waste Recycling B.
The first stage of the waste recycling plant was a separation system for larger than particle-sized items. This made sure that somebody's class ring or cell phone was rescued before being ground into dust. The system recognized any larger than particle sized object it should be fully recycling. As he expected, Zach found the tray in which sanitized unidentified items were placed was empty.
The system ground everything that wasn't in fine particles into fine particles. This allowed the following stages of the recycling plant to work effectively on the waste. No feeds were automatically expected to completely consist of fine particles. All non-rejected input to the waste system had to go through the grinding mechanism to make sure.
The next several stages of the system consisted of reservoirs filled with bacteria engineered to eat various substances. Before the first reservoir, the sludge was sterilized to kill the existing bacteria. This is because the engineered bacteria would immediately be consumed by ordinary bacteria. The first pool separated out various toxic inorganic substances. This was the only product of the system that was eventually ejected into space; it shouldn't be in the habitat in the first place.
Zach spent some time analyzing this waste. He put a sample into his portable molecular weight analyzer. In here was lead from the astronaut's bodies. This was because of lead tetraethyl and other pollutants of the 20th century. To this day people carried 600 times the toxic load of this heavy metal than people who were alive in the 19th century. This was an expected finding. He found mercury, released into the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants. A few such plants were still in use in 2043. It was madness. There were other metals in smaller quantities such as uranium. Everything looked ordinary in terms of what this critical part of the recycler was turning up.
A vat broke down organic contaminants into matter that could be easily digested or recycled by the rest of the system. Soaps and detergents were dealt with here. Organic contaminants like acrylonitrile, phenol, polyvinyl chloride, and other long chain polymers and plastics were handled. These products were output as pure forms of six different plastics mixed or used in their basic form aboard ship. Organic contaminants that could not be turned into one of the six plastics were dealt with in the next vat. These bacteria specifically broke down the remaining contaminants into methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen gasses. These gasses were combined with these products produced in later stages. They could be used to produce other plastics and materials for use aboard the ship.
A vat employed engineered bacteria to sequester the vast majority of the remaining uncontaminated organic matter into standard fertilizer that could be used in the hydroponics bays. This product was sterile and odorless. Organic material rejected by the fertilizer creation process was sequestered in the next stage and output as methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen gases.
Silicates and ionic compounds were sequestered out with a combination of chemical treatment and filtration. Here is where silicates, boron compounds, and salt were removed, for example. The final product of the system was pure deionized water. This water was hardened with trace minerals to turn it into the water in general use on the ship. Deionized water could be tapped by the system and from the system as needed.
Zach fully checked out every stage of Waste Recycling A. The deionized water came out of the system at the end at about body temperature. Zach tasted it. It tasted flat, like absolutely pure water should. "Mmm," Zach said, "Love that recycled pee."
At 6 PM, Zach met Colleen in Control A as she handed command over. Alexis looked slutty and curvy as ever in a short black knit dress. She winked at him as she and Colleen went through the formalities. The dress accentuated Alexis's curves, and the circular neckline made him remark on what a long neck she had. She would be fully petite but for that beautiful long neck.
Colleen, whose back was to him, was wearing her form fitting flight suit, which she often did on duty. Her short blonde hair was a bit tousled. Her ass looked delicious from the back in the form-fitting suit. There was a definite thigh gap: absolutely lip smacking. Zach preferred dresses and skirts, but Colleen's tight flight suit and thigh gap, mmm. On Colleen, from the back, the flight suit totally made up for not being a dress. He figured that by now, Colby and Anming had been to see Colleen. She had probably said yes. He was curious to see how she would navigate the probable secret.
Once command had been formally handed over, Alexis said, "And there's Zach. I bet he's here for you."
"Yes, we have a date now," said Colleen, turning partly around and giving Zach a steamy look. He grabbed her up and hugged her, and they kissed, just a smooch for polite company. He carried her over a pace and grabbed up Alexis in his other arm.
