Poor Stephen. Poor man. He slumped back in his creaking chair, his cock twitching and sputtering, making Sweetie's ruined torso bounce about like a puppet on a stick.

Her arms were still twitching and writhing as he made a forlorn face, reaching out to lovingly stroke one of Sweetie's still jiggling tits.

"Awww. I… I was… I wanted to save that for tomorrow…" he murmured, looking so sad.

Marion held me for a moment, then slowly stood up. I could feel her legs trembling as Sweetie's jaw and tongue squelched off my bloodied breast and splashed into my untouched soup.

I couldn't do anything. My mind was gone. I was limp as a ragdoll.

He loved her. Really, really loved her! Loved her SO MUCH that he'd do that for her.

I could feel Marion's hand finding my wrist, holding me up. I dangled limply from that arm, legs buckling, head lolled off to one side.

Marion made a show of holding me at arm's length. She was so gentle, so careful setting me down. Lightly twisting my wrist to be sure my legs folded up safely, even while she made it look like she was dropping me like a soiled rag.

She set her hands on her hips, and tsk-tsk-tsked. "Ste-pheennnnn!" She mock-chided.

"You KNOW we're HOURS from the Big Finish! And did Sweetie even ENTER the lottery? HMMMMMMMM???"

Steven blushed and bowed his head, smiling bashfully. "I knooooow…" he said, drowned out by the laughter and applause.

I had slowly struggled up to a half-slumped, half-sitting position, shuddering in a puddle of Sweetie's gore, Stephen's cum, and god knows what else. The whine in my ears had faded enough to hear when Marion kissed his cheek, and she whispered. "It was so beautiful, Stephen. I've never seen a woman bursting with love like that."

He smiled softly, a fingertip stroking the one mostly-intact cheek of Sweetie's face, looking longingly into Sweetie's dead, milky eyes. I could see him thinking.

But Marion had strode over to me, warm, strong hands lifting wobbly, weak little me to my tottering, ankle-wrenching shoes. She held me tight, stroking my back, easing me back to our chair.

I felt a tremor in Marion, holding me close, gently rocking side to side as my mind came back together.

Having her dribbly nipple twirling against mine, tip of my tiny thumb-size teat rubbing over the hardening toothmarks I left around her cute billiard-ball nipple, wasn't at all a bad thing.

But then, carefully, she held my head in her hands, made me look in her eyes. Tears were running down her face, long streams of black mascara beautiful on her chocolate cheeks.

"Caitlynn… I… I mean, we…"

My mouth quivvered, and my eyes were hot and wet. I managed to get a long, thin finger to her soft, red lips. She suckled gently as we cried.

"… So many times before…" was all I managed to say, but she nodded.

The Machine… When The Hit broke the machine.

The ship was only meant to have twenty active crew. Twenty out of a quarter million men, and a quarter million women, stored inside its databanks.

When The Hit came, its broken mind panicked. It tried to print out EVERYONE.

But damage is never neat and clean. When The Machine broke… It broke in two.

The side that held the men, it could tell. The ship was healing. The ship will survive. The Mission will be completed.

The other half is still panicking to this very day, spewing us out as fast and as frantically as it could.

But there's only… You can only have so many people alive inside a ship this size.

Resources, food, space, oxygen, actual atoms to build bodies… The Machine was strangling itself to puke out as many broken Us-es as it could.

Hundreds. Hundreds of years of chaos.

We were all insane, once.

We fixed the ship, then realized what a mess we were in.

And we fell on each other.

So many variations of chaos, before some of us could tinker the broken parts together.

It still isn't… It isn't whole, The Machine. It's quite mad.

A -reasonable- crew of men. Conserve resources, keep everything intact, do maintenance. We can't shutter things, so open all the mothballed decks. Live. Invent. Expand. Learn. Make every day a reasonable day. PRINT OUT EVERY WOMAN, DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES.

When the Madness came, we fed on each other. Tooth and claw, in raw, rage-fueled madness. Rape, eat, kill, in some random order of those three.

And always, The Ship fed what was left over back to The Machine to print more of us.

I don't know how. But somehow… Somehow we started to stabilize. In our madness, pause the slaughter to… Fix that little thing. Then hunt more meat.

There was an era when we hunted each other. I ate and was eaten.

And another era. I was… I was livestock. Or I ran herd. Meat, or milk.

Then an era where… We knew. We knew what HAD to be done. We couldn't live with it, though.

Slave labour. Cullings. Bodies thrown at Ship systems to choke off the supply to the Machine.

We used ourselves as compost to make plants grow, make ourselves real food.

But we couldn't live with it. And we had to find our… We had to find the balance.

How many can live. How many need to live. How to deal with the insanity of The Machine.

No one wanted to live. Suicide was daily, but so frantically outpaced by The Cullings.

The Machine rolled through the roster so fast, minds that had died in abject horror came back fresh and new, dying again and again and again.

Until… Until I did something. I… I don't know how. When. Who I was.

None of us wanted to live. We were mad with grief and fear.

Until I… Until I changed something, in us. In all of us.

A life -fearing- death makes a society of misery.

But… What if we revel in it? Find joy and pleasure in the final release?

But those times were chaos. My work was sloppy.

I had to tie it to sex. Orgasms. Hedonism in the same horrific, body-rending, bone-shredding, flesh-tearing ways we threw at each other before.

And the ship went mad again, an orgy of murder. People raped and killed before the Machine even got them out of the Tubes.

So the Machine made The Club.

We fear death outside it, but long for ending inside.

Death outside The Club is horrific and painful and mourned.

Death inside The Club… Is beautiful. It's sensual. It's orgasmic.

Everyone works hard outside, keeping our ship alive. Bettering it. Helping it grow. Making our lives easier, so we can then make the ship… More better.

And when we've earned enough? Nights of hedonistic pleasure, and a lottery. Someone gets to have the Ultimate End, the Big Finish.

And we feed what's left back to The Machine.

It maintains a stable crew of one hundred males. All taught in the tube how every inch of the ship works, how to run it, how to maintain it.

And there are five thousand women, because The Machine panics if we don't let it churn us out as fast as it can.

And then… And then I messed with things, again.

The Machine wants to keep up its pace. So… So we have to be culled fast enough to keep from overrunning the ship.

So… So I made us all hedonists. Sex dolls. Eager for tongue or cock at the drop of a pin.

And if we don't hang around too long? If we get popped off quick?

Then the Bad Memories get muffled. They take time to come back.

So we hike up our ass, and get cum up our back, and gleefully get popped while we're still reeling from being sex-addled bimbos.

But sometimes, sometimes.

In the mad shuffle of life and death and sex on every solid surface, dreaming of the day your name comes up in the Big Lottery or the Monthly Culling

Sometimes you keep seeing the same face.

The same heart.
The same soul.
Over and over.

Maybe together.

Because… I have a secret.

Maybe I'll tell Marion someday.

The Machine… We fixed it.

Centuries ago.

But… But the Club, the Lotteries, the purges.

These bizarre bodies built just a step away from sex dolls, the conflicting urges of -be smart learn invent progress- and -spread your legs and take a cock in every hole-

We don't need them anymore.

We could stop… Whenever.

There's a planet, we were supposed to land…. I don't know how long ago.

We've sailed past it three times.

Because there is a horror in our past.

And the Machine is slowly paving it over with… Whatever the fuck we're doing now.

The cullings, the lottery. It keeps… Tinkering with the numbers.

The Captain lasted seven months this time.

That's better than a week, the first time we sailed past.

But every single time, now.

Somehow, I find my Marion, and she finds her Caitlynn.

And when we can last a lifetime together, instead of gleefully diving into the abyss, The Machine will let us land.

… It may be the mucking about in our heads I did that's messing with me, but I'm never giving up the bimbo tits, no gag reflex, and candy-flavour self-lubing ass, though. This is FUN.