Valerie stood before her bookshelf, admiring her treasures from another stay on Earth. She had a fetish for the old things, so primitive with their paper pages and space consuming form factor. They were cumbersome inefficient relics of the past, and she cherished them.
The shelf was a creaky antique piece, hewn from the flesh of an Earth pine. To carve furniture from the fresh wood of trees was as illegal as it was to print media on their pulp. Those antique relics were her pride and joy, the centrepiece of her quarters. They were in stark contrast to the neutral blue and grey metal and plastics of the ship, and along with the detailed Persian rug beneath her feet they created a place of warmth and comfort, a place where her mind could reboot.
It was three weeks into the trip home, and she had already read half of her new acquisitions. She would have to start cutting her reading material with old favourites if they were to last the remaining two and a half months. She pulled out an ageing number on extinct Earthly biology and curled up on her rickety wicker chair.
By her third page she stopped. Her mind was wandering, and nothing she'd read had sunk in. For what seemed to be the millionth time, her thoughts had turned to that mysterious passenger in the stasis hold.
Could it really have been Eva? Eva Dennis, the missing Dennis-Hunt daughter, the one whose unorthodox genius was to thank for the utopian lives all goddesses were now enjoying on their own world? The story went that she had disappeared shortly after she had made the move to hand future control of space over to the goddesses. Some said it was all myth, that she had never actually existed...
Yet in the stasis hold, amongst row upon row of accepted human applicants, there was a sleeping woman who bore her name. Nude in the near-freezing stasis fluid, from the remarkably buxom and elegant perfection of her body to more... obvious features, it was plain to see that she was a goddess. Pale with purple streaked black hair like the famous Marla Dennis, she bore the look of her supposed mother.
Valerie couldn't help but wonder. Sometimes she'd even catch herself fantasizing. Alone in her ship, the solitude of travel was cruel. She was used to being on her own, and that was part of why she had accepted her job as a pilot between the planets. But, when weeks turned to months without speaking to another soul, the need for companionship grew achingly strong.
There were more rumours saying that young Eva, before her disappearance, had struggled with being as lonely as she... If that were so, maybe they were alike.
Chapter 1
I awoke waist deep in lukewarm water. My first instinct was to open my eyes, but to do so was laborious. I was drowsy, and the light was overbearing, so I kept them shut. My respirator tube was carefully being withdrawn from my throat.
"Hello, Eva." It was the clear voice of a young woman.
I lamely extended a twitching leg out of the chamber, setting a dripping foot out on the sterile grey surface of the ship's deck. Without the support of liquid that limb gave away and I collapsed, only to be caught in the capable arms of whoever it was who had ended my sleep. My legs had failed me, temporarily weakened from the weeks spent on ice.
"Whoa, easy there. You're very weak. Take your time," she said as she wrapped a towel around me.
"Have we arrived," I rasped, my voice a hoarse whisper.
"No, there's still a long way to go."
"How long until we reach Anatolia?"
She didn't reply, instead helping to guide my dripping self to a chair by a metal table, where she gently guided me down. My head was swimming. I clutched my towel close.
"Drink this," she said, stabbing a straw through the clear film over the opening of a plastic cup. She pushed it toward me. It was full of orange fluid, and the fog on the inner walls of the glass suggested it was hot.
I took a sip. The drink was delicious, nourishing and warming. I could tell it was packed with all the vitamins and stimulating chemicals I needed to recover from my sleep. Between gulps I repeated myself, my voice gaining clarity after draws of the hot beverage. "How long until Anatolia?"
"We aren't going to Anatolia," she said. I could hear the machine-like whirr and clunk of her closing my stasis chamber. "There is no such place."
"What... What do you mean?" I opened my eyes enough to blurrily look upon her as she seated herself beside me. From what I could make out she wore some sort of grey suit, and her skin was tanned while her hair was soft golden-blonde curls which she wore back in a ponytail.
"'Anatolia' is just a human name for our destination, based on a popular romanticization of ancient Anatolia having been a 'land of the goddesses'. Our home has a different name."
Her words suggested she was like myself. At that prospect I tried to fully open my eyes and focus my sight on her, but I wasn't yet up to the challenge.
"Take it slowly Eva. Recovering from stasis is never easy. Just finish your recovery drink, then we'll take you to your warm, cozy quarters."
***
It was a small room with a ceiling a few inches above my head. There was a single sized bed with a soft, metallic looking comforter which I'd immediately wrapped around myself. Across from the bed was a desk and chair, and there was a steel locker for storage. Built into the desk was a screen, where I could probably access some sort of computer. It was a very spartan living arrangement.
In my warm cocoon I sipped the last of my recovery drink. I could feel the strength returning to my body, the heat spreading to my extremities. My vision had cleared.
Hanging off my chair was some sort of grey leotard. It was very small but the metallic looking material, the same as my comforter, suggested it would stretch. I preferred to stay in my blanket, patiently waiting for whoever had ended my cryostasis to return.
If she was a goddess, she would be the first I'd met since 2014. I had questions, so many questions.
I was mentally preparing my first when I glanced at my wrist, wanting to access my Network Chip. It was gone, leaving only the faintest trace where the nubs had once pierced my skin.
Disappointed, I hopped over to the desk and rubbed the screen. It was unresponsive. There weren't any buttons, nor were there any cords or outlets to plug it in. I sighed. I'd only been connected to the Network for two days, but I was already hooked.
Eventually the door to my quarters opened.
"You're looking a lot better now Eva. The recovery drink is a miracle... as is our physiology. The humans usually need the entire day to get over the freeze!"
I took a moment to just take her in, as if I were still feeling slow after stasis. She wore the same metallic grey jumpsuit as I'd seen on my chair, which zipped up the front from crotch to collar. She was, as we all seem to be, slender yet sensually curved. Her chest was round, ample and pert, visibly challenging the material of her outfit. And along her right leg my eyes fell upon her long bulge, shamelessly revealed by the skintight fit. She looked a lot like the Aerotian princesses I'd played with in my interactive adventure the previous night, though her hair was instead sandy blonde and her complexion slightly lighter. She was breathtakingly gorgeous.
"Uh, yes... I'm starting to get my wits back."
"That's good. My name is Valerie," she said, stepping forward to shake my hand. "But everyone just calls me 'Val'".
