Sitting back at my table for one, I was a little embarrassed by the size of the mound of food on my plate. I'm not usually the buffet type, but the one at the Hollywood World casino in Las Vegas is as good as they get—and I was HUNGRY. I had used up lots of energy in the last 24 hours—seducing my first human female, playing blackjack until 6AM to burn off my after-sex energy, sleeping until noon, and now gorging myself on food from every one of your continents. It has been a long time since I'd experienced post-coital famishment—males of my species have positive charged ions in our fingers and negative ions in our thumbs, a disparity which which produces very pleasant microcurrents when touching a conductive surface, like the skin of a female. But it takes monumental amounts of energy to maintain that imbalance, and if you use it a lot, as I had the night before, you wake up mighty hungry.
As I ate, I thought about where I might find my next human partner for my experiments with interspecies cross-breeding. See, I was born on a planet 300 light-years away, yet we have so much in common that in a hundred of your years living on Earth no one has ever detected that I was anything but human. But because my planet is denser and, well, more hostile, I have what you would I suppose term super-human abilities. It was advanced technology, however, that made me the only being on Earth to know that the entire planetary system would be destroyed by a collision with an antimatter comet in twenty years time, unless it could somehow diverted. Humans had no means to do so, but perhaps if there were a few hundred others like me it could be done. Problem: there would be no other impacts with your planet large enough to create a time-travel wormhole in space-time, so I would have no opportunity to fetch reinforcements. Solution? Maybe, since we ARE so similar, if I can cross-breed with humans, some of those offspring will inherit enough of my abilities to pull it off. If not, well, then all anyone could do is sit back and wait for the inevitable. So, in violation of every law of ethics, I found myself trying to breed with the indigenous population.
My first attempt with Jessi, the waitress from upstairs, had gone as well as I could have hoped, at least as far as the insemination was concerned. It would be a few weeks before there would any way to tell if fertilization had occurred, and months before I would know whether the resulting fetus was viable. I didn't have time to wait and see the results of the experiment, though—I'd just have to keep mating with human females and hoping for the best. Besides, if Jessi was any indication, carrying out these experiments was easily the best time I'd had since arriving on your planet.
After lunch I walked in to the Caribbean Zone restaurant next to the Hollywood World and sat at the bar, much as I'd done the day before. My original plan had been to select one of their attractive, bikini-clad waitresses for my first experiment until by accident I found just what I was looking on the casino floor. I was back, giving the place a second chance, but while there were many fine physical specimens that I enjoyed observing, something all of them held be back from actually going for it. I decided that they were too aloof, which I suppose I could understand if your job consisted of walking around all day in less than a half-yard of clothing in full view of an entire shopping mall within a cultural context that has a hang-up about nudity.
There must be some other place to find likely partners, I thought, so I started to walk down the strip. I saw plenty of possibilities, but every female that caught my eye was with a boyfriend or husband—I had way too many women to screw in the coming years to invest the amount of time it would take to separate one from a significant other. So where would a single woman that looked like that go this evening? To a show, I thought, but I wasn't going to meet people sitting and watching the Cirque Francais.
I took the elevator up to the raised walkway crossing the boulevard. The walkway cleverly cut through one of the casinos on its way south; as I entered, a man by the doors stuffed a small card in my hand. I took the card just because it was easier than to not take it, wondering what it might be—I knew it couldn't be any of the adult services, they weren't permitted to conduct their pamphleting on casino property. I looked at the card as I continued walking. It read "One free admission to the Foxy Wolf. Doors open 6:00." And lo and behold, I finished reading it right as I passed in front of said establishment. The bar itself was closed, but there was a booth selling icy drinks and branded merchandise to the walkers-by. Attractive females in suggestive attire worked the booth, and video monitors hyped a party-time atmosphere. Aha! A party bar! EXACTLY where a group of single females looking for a good time would go. I looked at my watch—3:00. Good. Plenty of time to get back to the Roman Forum, put in my daily play requirement, make some cash of course, and get back once the party was actually started. With a hop in my step I went down the stairs and caught a cab.
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It was 10:30 when I returned, and there was a queue of people wanting to get in outside the door. I noticed that it was mostly men in the queue, whereas groups of young attractive females tended to be let right in, especially if scantily clad. I walked up to the doorman, ignoring the velvet rope of the queue. "Pardon me...is this the right place to use this?"
The burly bouncer took the card from me with an irritated look until his fingers informed him that something legal tender was tucked under the card. He flipped it around quickly, saw Mr. Jackson's face, and suddenly was quite helpful.
"Absolutely sir, this is the place. Are you alone this evening?"
"Not for long!" I grinned.
"Hah, that's the spirit," he said a bit too heartily. "Well as it happens, we're exactly ONE below the legal limit inside. If you had more in party you'd have to wait outside, but since there's just one of you..." He opened the velvet rope for me to pass though and held his arm out gesturing me inside.
"Excellent, thank you," I smiled and went in.
Liar. There was plenty of room for other customers inside. The problem was those that were waiting were the wrong KIND of customer. If you were young, attractive, and flaunting what you got, they would always find room for you. If you were average, overweight, and/or dressed like a tourist, well, and there probably WAS a strict limit to how many of THEM they would let in—possibly zero.
I ordered a gin and tonic and moved to the back of the bar to do a little window shopping. One of the bartenders got up on the bar and started to dance at one point to disproportionately loud cheers from the audience. She looked all right, but she wasn't much of a dancer. Nevertheless the crowd went wild, all playing along with the notion that there was something somehow wild and abandoned about dancing on the bar, even though it was a pre-scripted ritual repeated at regular intervals.
I watched for a little while until something more interesting caught my eye. A group of four girls was standing by the bar, sipping brightly-colored crushed ice cocktails in oversized, souvenir containers. Two had blonde highlighted hair and a vague familiar resemblance, possibly sisters or cousins. They both had on cropped tank tops, but the one in the skirt was a bit too pudgy to pull it off well. The other had pencil-leg jeans and both had pointy stilettos. One of their friends had long, curly brown hair, lightened by sun, and an even darker tan than the first two. She had on a plunging halter top that was almost a bikini, and although you could see almost her entire back there was no tan line to be seen. She had pronounced curves—her hips were wide, her waist was narrow, and her breasts were full. She also had on pencil-thin jeans, with strappy high-heeled sandals. The fourth one didn't quite seem to belong. She appeared much shorter than the others, although much of that may have been the fact that she just wore simple flip-flops rather than sexy heels. She had a pair of short-shorts and a top that also had a halter neck but was a full top; only the top of her back and about a half-inch of her belly were visible to onlookers like myself. But she was slimmer than the others, natural blonde it appeared, and most of all—she was just cute. She had the kind of face that barely-legal cheerleader dreams are made of.
I watched for a bit. The cute little one was clearly the quiet one; the others were loud and screaming at cheering for its own sake at every opportunity, and they were at least a half of a drink ahead of her. I squinted to use my infra-red to scan their fingers; the only one looked like they might have a wedding ring was the skinnier of the two highlighted crop-tops. It also looked like the brunette had pierced nipples and the heavy one, well, it looked she might have jewelry dangling between her legs. Well, I guess you've got to go a little sluttier to compensate for the extra fat, I thought.
I've never picked up a girl in a bar—it's hard to explain, but that is not the way mating pairs form among my kind, and until yesterday I'd had no interest in having sex with humans. I watched them for clues as to how I might break the ice with them. A couple of other guys had approached them, but were somehow quickly dispatched—I didn't want that to happen to me. Then two of them ordered refills of their brightly colored-drinks and it gave me an idea.
As if on cue, another bartender hopped up on the bar. While everyone else watched, the girls included, I sidled across the bar so that when the song ended I was right behind them. As soon as the music ended, I said to the four of them in general "So I've gotta ask you...those drinks look just like a big blue slurpy to me. Is that what they taste like?"
Almost in harmony, they all turned to me and said "No!!!"
"OK, OK...but ya gotta admit, it looks like one."
"Only because it's blue," said the fat one, "but it's not blue raspberry like a slushy."
"No? What is it?"
"Hmmm...that's actually hard to describe..." she took a hearty sip and thought about it. "I guess it just tastes...blue!"
"You mean as in how Blue Moon ice cream tastes...blue?" I asked.
