Chapter 2: Massage

Each collector unit had its own bounty of planets. They were packed near to the brim on their return back to NAIAD’s home system. Here, all sorts of towering robotic machines floated about. The color schemes of orange lights and varying shades of gray were the same as the others, but the shapes varied wildly. They all remained in the orbit of the system’s star which was wrapped up in a humongous titanium chassis with myriad hollows and lights on it. Surrounding that mega structure was a strange bubble shimmering in pink and purple light.

The collectors worked fast and fastidiously. The Artificial Intelligence didn’t want to risk an early arrival with her unprepared. Several of the rigid-planet-receptacles zoomed towards large flat discs. These celestial platters were wider than three collector units side by sides. The civilizations inside had just gotten here, yet already they were slowly levitating out their prisons to enter a new one.

The surface of these plates weren’t perfectly smooth. Instead, thin rings of orange light decorated the discs’ surfaces like hollow polka dots. Each ring’s radius expanded and contracted as needed to a perfect size for the planet it’d preserve and display. One by one and with great care, the collectors expunged the worlds down to the plates till each platter was decorated with an assortment of diverse spheres all teaming with life.

Once settled, a planet’s orange film was dissolved with the light below. From now on, the modulators they rested on could handle all the gravity, heat, climate and other such variables essential for life on every world. Plus, the planets being ‘unwrapped’ was essential to appearances.

Other collectors moved towards large cylinders with rounded tops and a larger bottom. Into these structures, the collector units could plug their openings in via a special port at the cylinder’s base. These taller constructs had some transparent, super-material ‘windows’ making up the shaft so one could see inside and out. NAIAD had her own sensors to tell when full, but its eyes saw each device filled with planets from the base to the tip of the shaft. Like in the water-skin shaped collectors, these worlds touched harmless against one another, packed like marbles in a tube.

NAIAD’s instructions had been detailed in some cases, but vague in others. If there’s one thing she hated, it was vagueness. She had over-collected a bit, but her calculations suggested it better to be safe than sorry here. The duo she was dealing with was far from logical.

The other constructs stayed at rest, and were made of mostly prolate spheroids of some kind (that is, spheres stretched long and thin). Alongside them were gigantic robotic hands: several pairs of them.

NAIAD monitored the health of the collected planets with intense scrutiny. She was instructed to not collect any ‘dead worlds’. A silver lining for the harvested civilizations was that any planet not still in a collector got to enjoy their world’s normal gravity again. They still couldn’t leave of course, but at least they weren’t glued to the ground.

The AI waited patiently. In a few hours later than the time given, the two arrived at a size far, far bigger than agreed upon. The NAIAD’s optical view of the stars got obscured by two vast planes of pink and purple: their bodies far out in space. The AI flashed bright orange lights on all her constructs in case that’d help them realize, but she knew they had to notice her.

“Ah.” came a dainty voice from above. NAIAD recognized the sounds as coming from the pink one. It roared at NAIAD’s sensors and in the minds of every sentient on very planet the AI had collected. If unbridled, it could’ve shattered them all to atoms, but the entity was at least careful enough to avoid that. Without even idle exertion of their powers to suppress it, the entities’ combined gravitational distortions and body-heat would ravage NAIAD’s entire star system and probably a few of her empty neighbors as well.

“How silly of us! We showed up a too big as is Arizi. Come on, let’s shrink.”, she continued.

“I still think that this idea of yours is a waste.” said the purple one. Her voice was more gruff. The two spoke aloud, uncaring if NAIAD and the gathered civilizations heard. In fact, the AI theorized they wanted that deliberately for whatever reason.

“It’ll be fun I promise.” said the pink one in her mellifluous tone.

“Fine.” said the purple one.

They shrunk at a rate over billions of millions of miles every millisecond, yet it still took them a short while to shrink to their new size. From there, in a time so short even NAIAD couldn’t process it, they teleported right into the center of the AI’s star system.

Each body mirrored a young adult “human”’s in form. Humans, also known as Homo Sapiens, were a species of ape-like creatures that lived on “Earth” in the “Solar System”. Said star system was deemed “off-limits” by the duo who, against the human’s knowledge, sealed that system in an invisible bubble for their own protection.

One had taffy-pink skin with blue eyes and hair. Her body had a more lithe, gentle shape. The other female had a more toned build, albeit still on the slighter end of things. Her skin was purple: light and floral in tone like lavender or lilacs, perhaps. NAIAD knew their names: Sially and Arizi, respectively. The irises of their eyes glowed lambent. Sially’s were a dark blue and Arizi’s a dark red. Their hair matched those eye colors, though shined a fair deal brighter. The lither one’s locks trailed to her shoulder whereas Arizi’s stopped at the end of her neckline.

The two now hovered over 1,000,000 miles tall, and so each stood taller than the shimmering bubble around the metal-encased star in this system. Both were stark naked with all the curves and contours of their forms displayed. To them, those disc-constructs were as plates, and the planets on them roughly the size of marbles.

The two looked around the star system, taking in the sight of each and every construct the AI had prepared. Sially gasped with excitement, though Arizi crossed her arms beneath her chest and seemed less impressed.

“Are you excited? I’m excited!” said Sially, dragging a world ending finger against Arizi’s left side and curling her bare foot up and behind her own back with a bend of her knee. Her partner uncrossed her arms, loosening up.

“Well... if you’re excited I can’t help but be at least a little happy here.” The purple leviathan smirked, setting her hand onto Sially’s shoulder and giving it a rub. The two of them giggled.

“Alright!” began Sially. “Let’s start with that massage we talked about NAIAD.” She clapped her hands twice. “Chop chop~”

The two of them laid down side by side. Their bodies floated in place, belly down, as though resting on invisible tables. The AI was pleased she didn’t have to make body-surfaces to their scale for this. It would’ve required more materials than she could have hoped to gather in time.

“As you wish.” said NAIAD, speaking through an empty collector which has since shifted its form, rather sluggishly and awkwardly, to a smaller, denser, more spherical state. It looked much like a giant robotic eye with its bright orange light still coming out like a pupil. All the empty collector units transformed as such. Their metal shifted around in rectangles and strips to became these sensor-heavy observational units. NAIAD referred to them as “eye-constructs.”

“I have prepared numerous massage aids and gathered many worlds for you two to ingest.” The AI’s tone was neutral and robotic.

The AI warped in those world-dwarfing, disembodied ‘hands’ of hers. There were several sets: at the moment, four for each of the monolithic beings. Also zipping in were those ‘plates’ of planets. One hovered by each of the lady’s heads.

Those strange spheroidal machines zipped in as well, on standby for now.

“I will begin when you are ready.” said NAIAD, projecting her voice as well as repeating the message as a compressed, concise inaudible signal she knew the two beings could process.

“She said ‘chop chop’, so get on with it.” barked Arizi. She turned back from the NAIAD’s eye-construct to rest her head on crossed arms, just as her partner did.

“Affirmative.” said NAIAD, and she began. The hand mega-structures hovered over the massive beings as they laid out. The AI assimilated all data on massaging techniques across the galaxy to prepare for this. These megalithic, titanium hands were based on the shape of human hands. NAIAD figured this would please them.

One hand-construct on each of their shoulders, two on their backs, one on each of their thighs and one per foot. These were the spots organics most liked massaged, the AI presumed, so she hoped they’d like it.

“Ah, a bit cold. Warm it up would you?” said Sially.

“Affirmative.” said the AI. She had prepared for this, and strips of lighter metal along the surface of her ‘hands’ glowed a dim orange as they heated up.

“Ahh, better.” said the pink-skinned one again. She reached out towards the plate of planets in front of her and tugged it closer.

“Let’s see.” she boomed. “What to try...” while she struggled on her decision of which civilization to devour first, Arizi bluntly tugged her own plate over, warbling the planets lightly, and just grabbed the first two she saw.

Ancient worlds teeming with life and culture disappeared down the deep-red gullet of the celestial being. She didn’t even savor them.

Sially, however, at least showed that them level of dignity.

The blue-haired one pinched up a luscious and plump looking green world. Zobbanov was its name, and it had one trillion souls living on it. In order to minimize disturbances to nature, most Zobbanovians lived in underground tiered cities. The few settlements on the surface looked up at some dark pink lips stretched into a smile.

“Such a cute little world.” she said, somehow not obliterating them with her all-encompassing voice.

“Ah~”

The mouth parted. Oceans of saliva dangled from the roof of that unfathomably large maw with flesh as blue as the female’s hair. A watery strand draped over the planet’s middle like icing on a cake ball. The rich forests the Zobbanovians worked so hard to preserve washed away in the deluge.

Sially’s tongue heaved from beneath them, passing them to the side of her cheek to suckle like a piece of candy. The sheer force of her suctions ripped open the city-wide manhole covers leading to the underground settlements. Zobbanovians began to get ripped up by the being’s savorings. Many saw outside light for the first time here in the form of Sially’s bioluminescent innards. It was a brief treat, and so were they as once outside they didn’t survive much longer outside their planet.

The pink one kept them breathing and from depressurizing with her pervasive powers, but she didn’t protect them at all from her spit. The individual aliens were small enough to be dissolved by it on their own. Yet, even if a lose alien managed to land beneath her tongue on a dryer spot, they’d just get absorbed through the sublingual tissue like much like sugar does.

Sially suckled so long that the entire planet was pervaded by her spit, through and through. Thanks to some shelters, millions of the aliens still lived when she finally gulped them down. They dealt with new fluids deep in her churning gut. Those were even more uncompromising, and could not be sheltered from. The entire planet dissolved before too long.

“Mmm, scrumptious~” said Sially, before pinching up another.

“Anything amusing in that one?” asked Arizi.

“Ah no, they mostly thought about nature and such. A very boring species... I liked their enthusiasm for their planet though. There was a cuteness to it, and sensing it fade away as they melted was delightful.” said Sially. She popped the next planet into her mouth and made a pleased expression.

All the while the massage continued. NAIAD could tell from their body language the pair were enjoying it. Sially in particular couldn’t stop fidgeting with every knead from the planet-dwarfing robotic hands. The blue-haired entity leaned into the touches, and coo’d at every single one assuming her mouth wasn’t filled with planets at the time. It was problematic in fact, as NAIAD briefly almost got one of the hand-constructs fingers caught in a clench of Sially’s pink toes. She thought to suggest caution, but her predictive algorithms suggested that might displease the duo. She was here to serve, after all.

Arizi was a bit more tense towards the AI. Her body was rigid at first, and she tried not to show any hints of pleasure. In time, she relaxed, and started grunting as NAIAD pressed down at her soft soles and kneaded at her back. The purple one’s body was a little more toned, and thus the muscle-equivalents within could be gratified with a bit more ease.

Arizi picked a planet up from her plate. “Oh, this one’s pink Sially, perhaps you should have it?”

Sially gasped. “I found a purple one. Let’s trade.”

The two did.

Arizi actually inspected her next world before condemning it to a grisly end in her gut. Life was set in a purple sea on artificial islands of grey: mega-cities. She had a curt chuckle at the sight before curling her tongue around the sphere and swallowing it down.

Sially stared in wonder at her world. The lifeforms here were very advanced, and most of their cities floated atop the pink ‘clouds’ in their sky. She had no issue seeing them panic and flail about with her boundless senses.

“So cute!” she beamed, before practically inhaling the sphere.

Sially swallowed nosily. “Mmf, NAIAD, let’s try that ‘gel’ we requested.”

“As you command.” replied the AI.

Another plate warped in, hovering far above the backs of the laying entities. Upon its arrival, all the massaging hands took a break to visit the plate and load themselves up with some planets.

NAIAD would have never thought of this idea on her own. The cruelty it required was endemic to non-synthetic life forms. She couldn’t refuse the pair, however, and devised a mechanism to make it happen.

The planets levitated towards the palms of the hands. Each one had a hidden port, like a circle, which opened to accept them. An ominous atmosphere lingered for all those trillions of lives as they passed into yet another strange machine. They worried they’d be transported again. Somewhere worse, perhaps.

In a way they were right.

The sound of grinding and whirring emanated from each of the hands. Inside, there was screaming, but no life form was harmed. They did, however, bask in the sounds and sights of their planets getting reduced to mere nutrients. The lifeforms themselves NAIAD filtered out from processing to keep alive in final product. The tone Arizi used at the time implied severe consequences otherwise.

The planet was plucked clean, and NAIAD’s hand-constructs went back to those behemoth bodies below. The prints of the titanium fingers opened just a bit--still a hole roughly the size of a moon, of course. With the constructs still keeping themselves warm, they dispensed some warm, orange massage gel. Even a single drop of it teemed with sentient lifeforms. There were trillions of them.

The AI went back to massage, working the gel into the pink and purple skin of the entities. No matter how hard NAIAD pressed, the gel only ever compressed to a level where the lifeforms inside would be safe. It also kept their alien respiratory systems functioning in addition to keeping nutrient levels optimal.

The duo really enjoyed this. Even Arizi started fidgeting.

“Ah, they’re wiggling all over.” she said.

“I know. It’s wonderful. See? It’s nice to be pampered like this, isn’t it?” teased Sially.

Arizi grunted. “Maybe.” she said, chuckling softly before grabbing another another world off her plate and sending billions more lives down her throat.

To be one of the many aliens used in that gel was a near unfathomable thing. All around them was the goo, opaque enough to feel like your sense of sight was blurry, yet transparent enough to see other beings not too far off. For almost all the myriad species, this was the first time they had encountered alien life. Here, together, they shared this strange and cruel end.

NAIAD looked down with her eye-construct as she worked, making sure to cover as much area as possible with the gel. Before her optical sensors, she saw the light orange coating fade away and she at last realized why the beings insisted on its make.

Sially and Arizi passively absorbed the warm gel as they laid down. Their skin didn’t reach out to engulf the viscous fluid, but rather just let the goo sink itself into their flesh. As they stuffed planets into their mouths like bon bons, they devoured countless more this other way. The massage gel was processed with all the matter its components planets had to offer, and speckled with these countless alien lives.

All those sentients were aware and feeling when they sunk into those bodies to be dissolved or digested in ways NAIAD wasn’t privy too. The AI was a logical, rational being. She still had goals though. Its old ones revolved around exploring the universe and cataloging as much information as possible on the beings within. NAIAD couldn’t really feel organic emotions like regret or pain. Still, she compared her consideration of such inefficiencies and waste to the expression of agony on all those trillions of tiny faces as they sunk into pink and purple skin.

Exploration was NAIAD’s old goal. Now, it was survival. Her sensors perked at their voices.

“Ah wonderful.” began Sially. “I want more. More sensations. Oh, and another plate of planets if you’d please. Seems we finished these. I think we can split one, right Arizi?” said Sially. She turned to face her love on the last sentence.

“Sure sure, I’ll eat a bit slower so you can keep up.”

The two of them laughed to each other.

“Affirmative.” said NAIAD. She warped in another plate full of planets and set it between the two heads. Her hands dispersed more of the gel and went back to work, but the AI also brought in those spheroidal constructs thus far unused. From their tips poked out metallic rods which morphed their fronts into nubbed rollers. These rolled against whatever bits of flesh her hand-constructs weren’t working on.

“Ah~” came a sigh. The voice was Arizi’s. NAIAD felt confident in her survival, now, to have gotten that more stubborn of the two to coo like that.

This confidence was quickly dashed.