Pluribus: Icebreaker

If you've read any of my Pluribus Series, this takes place in the same universe, but about a century in the future. I just want to make that clear to avoid confusion. For example, in this story Pluribus is the name of a moon, and in the main series it's the name of a ship. That is intentional and the reason will become clear at the end of the main series.

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It was a much more mundane process than I'd expected. After riding in a civilian transport for weeks, and landing on the small moon, I'd expected finding an apartment to be...a bit more exotic. Instead, the ad for an apartment with an opening was literally pinned to a corkboard in the terminal. It was the 25th century, not the 20th, but whatever. I texted the number on the ad, asking if I could rent a room. The apartment was in a cultural exchange complex, so the rates were low. Plus, I had come to Pluribus partly to meet aliens, so it was a perfect situation. Much better than I would have hoped for for a young man like me, right out of college, in my price range. Almost immediately, the leasing office replied and let me know they had an opening for a human. I accepted right away.

I grabbed the handle of the rolling suitcase that contained everything I owned, and walked out into the warm afternoon light. It felt like an early summer afternoon at home in my mid-size, midwestern city, but I couldn't remember what that meant for this moon. I remembered the cycle of the seasons on Pluribus from my astronomy class last year, but that didn't tell me what each season would feel like. It was such a rush, standing on an alien world. Even if it basically just looked like a modern city on Earth. At least I could feel the slightly reduced gravity in my steps. I wanted something to be different, alien. I bent down to touch the grass, wondering how different it would be to the grass of Earth. It seemed...wider? Like, the blades of grass might have been slightly larger, side to side, but that may have also been my imagination. I tried to squeeze and bend a blade of grass in my fingers, but I felt a tap on my back.

"Excuse me."

I stood up and turned to see a middle-aged man dressed in a suit. It was a human man. He must've been one of the immigration officials.

"Oh, hi! Am I supposed to talk to you? I just got here." I didn't know how the intake process worked. It had looked like I was done, but maybe I had some other form to fill out or something.

"Nope. You're just," he gestured with his hands. "You're kinda blocking the doorway, buddy. I've got to get to work." I only now registered the impatience on his face, and the fact that I was still standing in the doorway.

"Oh!" I stepped out onto the lawn of the entrance courtyard. "I'm so sorry."

"Forget about it," the man said over his shoulder as he walked past me. I saw that streets were mostly empty, and I realized that, beyond the seasons, I didn't even know what time of day it was. I checked my tab, swiping and tapping to get it up and running after it had been shut off for the landing. It updated after connecting to the local network. My appointment to sign my lease was in two hours. After that, I could move in. The place was furnished, so the only actual moving would be my clothes and the few other things I had packed from Earth.

It was only 10:00 AM, but I was hungry, so I decided to eat near my new home, both in case I was running late and to scope out some food options nearby. The subway ride is the first time I see the promise of Pluribus fulfilled: alien races from all over the Alliance, going about their daily lives side-by-side with humans. This is what I had wanted for years. Ever since we'd hosted an exchange student from the Zunit tribe of nux when I was in high school, I'd been fascinated by aliens. I also genuinely believed that Pluribus was going to be the hub of the Alliance economy and culture for a long time to come. It all just added up: this was where I needed to be.

Once I got off at my new stop, I pulled up the local restaurant search listings on my tab. There was a nux place nearby with good reviews, and I just had to try it. Cahpo, our exchange student, had gone on and on about Zunit cuisine, and I'd always wanted to try it, or at least something similar. I opened the door to the restaurant and stepped inside. It was cool and dark, compared to the sunny street outside. There were familiar booths and tables, but they were partially hidden by an obscene number of indoor plants. The server was friendly and helpful, and I enjoyed a fish that had been cooked in a sweet and citrusy sauce. It had taken two of them to bring it out. It was good, but something was missing. The twenty-centimeter tall, pixie-like nux must have seen the confusion on my face.

"Have you had any Jimina cuisine before?" I could tell by her expression that she knew I hadn't. I did know that Jimina was the planet that nux were from.

"No, we had a Zunit exchange student stay with us, and he always talked about how good it was, but I've never had any before."

She nodded, like that explained everything. "That's great! My mom is from Atzca, only a few days' flight from Zunit. I think she started this restaurant because she missed being on Jimina." She gestured to the salt shaker on the table that was practically half her size. "You should add salt. Humans need more salt."

That sounded familiar, like maybe Cahpo had said something and I hadn't been listening, but I was still surprised. "We do?"

She smiled. She was pretty, with her bright yellow hair and lime green skin. It was amazing how human she looked, once you got past her tiny size, brightly colored skin, and the fact that she was hovering like a hummingbird. I wished she would land somewhere so I could see her wings. Nux wings were always beautiful. "Yeah, there's not much salt on Jimina, so we don't add much to our food. It's on the table there. Add as much as you want."

I sprinkled a little salt on the fish. It did make a big difference. Now there were some really interesting floral notes coming through in the sauce. It was really good! I wondered what Cahpo had done while he lived with us to avoid salt. I never saw him eat differently than we did. Well, except for eating a lot less. He was less than twenty-five centimeters tall, after all.

After that, I walked to my new apartment complex and found the leasing office. The complex looked very modern and well-maintained. I was starting to look forward to living here. I walked into the leasing office and spoke to the human woman at the front desk. The whole process only took about fifteen minutes, and I was walking out of the leasing office with the entry code on my tab, pulling my luggage behind me. I had never rented an apartment outside of university housing, but this place seemed very efficient.

The walls were gray concrete. The windows I could see from the ground looked large. That would be nice. I liked letting in daylight. I wondered if my roommates would feel the same way. I found the right building and walked up. My apartment was on the second floor. I had the entry code on my tab, but I knocked anyway. I think I felt like it would be rude to barge in if someone was home, when they'd never met me. In just a few seconds, I could hear excited murmurs behind the door, and then the lock was turned. The door opened to reveal a small entryway, and an excited, out-of-breath malorc woman standing there, holding the door.

"Hi! You must be Marc?"

"I am. The leasing office told you I was moving in?"

She nodded. She was just under a meter and a half tall, but with the proportions of a taller human. She was slender, almost slight, but looks could be deceiving. I knew that malorcs were strong. Like, this petite little woman could probably toss me across the room. She was wearing a loose, flowy robe, a very pale pink in color. The material looked thick and soft, but still somehow almost translucent. She held out her hand to me, grinning ear to ear. I shook it. Her smooth, blue skin was soft and just slightly cooler than mine.

Her smile got even wider, somehow. "I'm Talipo, but you can call me Tally. Come in. Come in!"

She stepped back to let me in, and as I was stepping over the threshold I heard a stage-whispered chant start from inside the apartment.

"Fresh. Meat. Fresh. Meat."

Tally turned her head to where the voice was coming from. "You said you would be nice!"

I walk past the corner of the wall to see the apartment's living room. The room was spacious, with wood or faux-wood floors and a large gray rug in the center. The back wall was actually floor-to-ceiling windows with a sliding glass door that opened up to a small balcony. There were matching dark, leather sofas, one facing the window and another facing a screen on the wall. Curled, or coiled, up on the couch was the first lith I'd ever seen in person. She was smiling at me, scaled lips curled into a hungry grin. I mentally catalogued what I knew about liths. They were scaled, warm-blooded people with long, powerful tails instead of legs. The one sitting on the couch looked basically like a really buff, four-meter-long snake with arms and a face that wasn't that far off from human. Oh, and boobs! She had huge, round tits.

"I am being nice! Not as nice as I'd like to be, but still very nice."

Tally came to my defense. "Nalissa! You're scaring him!"

I was a bit scared, actually. It didn't help when Nalissa slithered off the couch and closer to me. She held out her hand in greeting, and I swear I didn't mean to flinch, but I did.

Luckily, she didn't seem too offended. "Oh, you've got one of the--those phobia things, huh? For the...uh...snakes, is it?"

I did, a little bit. Maybe a lot. It was her eyes that really got me. The lime green scales covering the front of her body and the dark green scales on her back were a big part of it, but the shape of her face was close enough to human that I didn't really freak out until I looked at her eyes: golden irises split by vertical, dark pupils. They were exactly like a snake's eyes, except I could see intelligence in them. Even if she hadn't looked like a giant snake with arms, though, I think Nalissa would've looked a bit intimidating. I'd seen pictures of liths with more muscle, and I'd seen human men who were gym rats with bigger arms, but Nalissa still looked as strong as I knew Tally was. Either of these women could easily bench press my body weight and then some. Fortunately, Nalissa was the only one who looked like she might want to. Liths had different sexual dimorphism than humans, which might have explained her boisterous, forward welcome. The women were generally much larger than the men, and built muscle much more easily.

At the same time that I was afraid of her, I was also noticing how attractive she was. A big part of that was that she was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress that was so off-the-shoulder that her left breast was completely exposed. It was a lith custom for females to always keep one breast exposed. It was symbolic of something I couldn't remember at the moment because it wasn't just the first real-life breast I'd ever seen, it was also magnificent. A huge, gravity-defying pillow of flesh that put every pornstar to shame, topped with a dark green nipple that I couldn't help but imagine between my lips.

It was hard being a twenty-two year old virgin, but I swallowed my nerves and hormones and I shook her hand. Her scales were warm and soft. Part of me was worried she wouldn't let go, but fortunately that fear was unfounded. Maybe I could warm up to my lith roommate with time. She did bite her teeth in the air at me in a gesture that I assumed was flirtatious. I wasn't sure whether or not it worked. The whole package made me feel like I was gaining and losing stiffness in my cock at the same time, and rapidly.

I cleared my throat. "Nice to meet you both. I'm Marc." I wondered if it was just the three of us. "This is a six bedroom, right?"

Tally stepped around me to point down one of the two hallways connecting the living room to the bedrooms. "Yup, that's one wing, with one open bedroom between Nalissa's room and Snowfall's room." She pointed down the other hallway. "And I'm down this wing with two open rooms. You're actually not the only new roommate moving in today, and then our sixth is supposed to move in tomorrow. She's on the transport from Wulk right now."

Nalissa's serpentine head snapped to the side to look at Talipo. "You didn't tell me she was a wulk."

Tally held out her hands, defensively. "I'm pretty sure I did. What does it matter anyway? You've got a problem with wulks?"

Nalissa sighed and shrugged. "Not really. They're just fucking weird is all."

She had a point, but I didn't want to acknowledge it. Wulks were evolved from ambush predators on a jungle world also called Wulk. It gave them a...different set of mannerisms. It wasn't the wulks' fault that they were so strange, after all. They probably felt the same way about the rest of us. Plus, I felt like I needed to move out of my comfort zone a little, and try to let Nalissa know I wasn't going to let a little phobia of snakes make me terrified of my roommate. So, I smirked and said something sarcastic. That's always a good way to make friends, right?

"Oh, and you're not?"

Nalissa's laugh was loud and boisterous. "I knew I was going to like you! You sure you want your own room? My bed's big enough for two..." She was smiling, so I was pretty sure she was mostly kidding.

Tally saved me again. "That would be in violation of the renter's agreement."

Nalissa shrugged. "Well, there's no rule against visiting." She pointed at me with a smirk. "Think about it."

Nalissa slithered off to her room, leaving me with the more unassuming malorc. "Is she always like that?"

Tally blushed, her face bluing above the neck. "I think so," she admitted with a shrug. "She only moved in a few days ago. This whole building just opened up last week."

"Oh wow, I guess I've got good timing, then." Moving into a brand new at this rate was a steal.

Tally nodded along. "Yeah, but you would've been fine. Humans are always underrepresented in cultural exchange housing."

That was true enough, mostly because Earth was the most developed planet in the Alliance. Lots of humans wanted to move to the moon of Pluribus, but for most of the other species we'd made contact with, it was also the fastest way to live in a city with truly modern infrastructure. The biggest exception was Bolkeh, the planet of the malorcs, and they had only laid data cables a couple of decades ago.

"So what brought you to Pluribus? All the malorc caves are well-developed, and I know there are jobs there." Malorcs had evolved in caves deep in canyons that cut across Bolkeh's harsh surface. They were usually between one and one and a half meters tall, bald, with pale blue skin. Their facial features were also just a bit larger than a human's: wide mouths, full lips, prominent noses, and big, anime-girl eyes. I thought Tally looked really cute. Cute enough that I was having to really think about how to sound normal.

Talipo's face blued again, and she squirmed in place. "Well, I...I wanted to be around aliens. I'm kind of obsessed with human culture."

"Oh! Okay."

"It's not weird or anything! I just grew up watching hollywood movies and playing human games and everything! I just didn't want to stay in Tippany and experience what was going on in the galaxy from a distance, you know!"

Tally was cute, getting embarrassed and defensive. Malorcs were cave-dwellers, and their sense organs were just slightly larger than the equivalent on a human. Her already large eyes were practically popping out of her bald head. I smiled at her, trying to help her get over her embarrassment.

"It's okay. I don't think it's weird. It'll give us something in common, right?"

She put a soft, warm hand on my arm. "Oh, you're sweet! I'm so glad you're sweet." She swallowed and removed her hand. "Um, do you want to check out the rooms?"

She showed me the available rooms, and I picked the one next to hers. Maybe it was because she was nice to me, without being as frightening as Nalissa. Maybe it was because I'm a man and she was cute. Maybe it was both.

I unpacked my things, which were mostly just clothes, and then I left to do some shopping for other things I needed. My room was furnished with a comfortable bed and a large desk and dresser, but I would need some more hardware for work. After I'd finished school, I had limited my job search to companies with an office on Pluribus, and after a year with this one I'd put in for a transfer. It turned out that the whole office worked remotely, only using the small rented space for meetings.

By the time I'd bought my equipment and made it back to my new apartment, Snowfall was home and our new roommate had moved in. Snowfall was a sibill, a symbiotic alien that looked like, for lack of a better comparison, an elaborate purple strap-on dildo. They generally spent their time bonded with a host, in Snowfall's case a Vessel they'd brought from Orbis Verpa, the home planet of the genderless sibillis. Sibillis was the plural of sibill. Vessels looked like a large sandy-furred ape, and Snowfall's Vessel was no exception. They held out their Vessel's hand for me to shake, and as I gripped the leathery paw an androgynous voice came out of the speaker they wore around their neck. "Greetings. Welcome. Myself: Falling Snow. Meeting you: Pleasant. Your name: Marc?"

I blinked a few times at the phrasing they'd used, but I was aware of how sibills who hadn't bonded to a speech user communicated. Before contact with humans, they communicated with each other by mentally sending ideas and images to each other. Other species had no way to "hear" those ideas, though, so now they could buy a speaker to turn them into words, but if they had never bonded with a speech-user before, they lacked the intuitive understanding of language that they needed to sound natural. The result wasn't exactly robotic, but it definitely took a bit more attention to listen to than most people.

"Yeah, I'm Marc. It's nice to meet you, Snowfall. You, too, Gevna."

Gevna was a stevan. She was barely a meter tall, with purple-gray skin, black horns, and large, demonic-looking wings behind her. Stevans basically looked like cartoon incubi and succubi, and Gevna seemed to have embraced the aesthetic, dressed in lots of black silk and leather. Her wings would have been very useful among the cliffs of Sartieghe, but she stuck to walking on her feet here in the apartment.

"It's nice to meet you, as well, Marc."

We decided to split a couple of pizzas that evening, and found a place that specialized in having something for everyone, a daunting task with so many different races. There was ground saller, a large herbivore from Sillah, the lith homeworld, for Nalissa, some kind of fish for Gevna, pepperoni for me, mushroom for Tally, a few slices of cheese just in case, and, shockingly, pineapple for Snowfall.

"Pineapple: Delicious. For Everyone: No. For Snowfall: Yes."

We ate together and talked about what had brought us to Pluribus and its capital, Levigne. Apparently Nalissa and Tally had lived on Pluribus for a while, and they had just moved to Levigne. Snowfall and Gevna had just immigrated, like me. We all wanted to live in a thriving, multi-species metropolis, and we had made it happen. I felt pretty good about my new living situation.

The next couple of days went by uneventfully. With Levigne's booming economy, all my roommates were working, so I had the apartment to myself during the day. There was usually at least someone around to eat a quick dinner with, but I didn't have much time to just hang out. The ansible on the transport ship had been reserved for official communication, so I had a lot of work to catch up on. I'd only been with the company for a year, too, so I didn't want anyone to think I was slacking off.