The Drifter in the Dark

How many cautionary tales exist in mankind's collective consciousness of a man gaining his fondest wish and finding it to be unbearable torment? The man known as the Navigator could have answered that question, for he had access to man's collective consciousness. At least, he could have answered the question if it hadn't happened to him. As such, he couldn't even appreciate the irony of it. He was the world's greatest psychic, and the world needed him because of that. He answered their call, but out of hatred, not love. His life was constant torment, a thousand emotions tearing him in every direction at once, because of his inability to block out the thoughts of others. Mankind's darkest thoughts clawed their way into his mind every time he tried to rest. Joy and love were equally torturous, as he felt others' longing and desires, but in his heart he abhorred his fellow man. He was sickened by the thought of sharing in their pleasures. He was plagued by the sufferings of others, forced to feel their loneliness when he wanted solitude, forced to feel heartsick when he hated others. Physical intimacy was unthinkable to him; man's obsession with all things carnal had given him enough vicarious perversions to gall him. Everyone around him seemed to think only of joining their bodies in a way that he was all too familiar with (secondhand, of course) when he only wanted to be alone to have thoughts of his own.

His curse, as he saw it, held certain advantages, however. He could use his power to protect himself. If it were not the case, he would have lived for decades in a mental asylum. Men came at him with guns, fists, and chains, and found themselves weeping, unable to stand, unable to meet the gaze of the one they sought to capture. Sharing a moment of his pain with them had rendered them so. He avoided that as much as he could, for projecting his thoughts to others was even more distasteful than receiving theirs, akin to embracing one's rapist.

Another advantage was the rapidity with which he could absorb knowledge. When his travels finally took him to the secluded monastery where he at last found life tolerable, he was able to learn the mantras and meditations of the monks therein in a matter of weeks, a feat usually taking a lifetime. His enlightenment did not result in Nirvana, however. He was merely able to tolerate living. The world still whispered its disgusting secrets to him, with the calming thoughts of the monks providing a gentle droning which disturbed him as little as he could have hoped. He entered a deep slumber, a trance aided by his unsurpassed skills of the mind. In this state, he did not age as the decades marched on, and was just entering his second century of life when he heard the call.

The world came under one government while he was removed from it, an overarching pseudo-democracy in which nations voted by weight of coin. World peace had brought its own problem: over-population and depletion of resources. Technology brought a solution in the form of space travel: a mass exodus to colonize other worlds. Then the breeding program started.

Scientists had discovered that they could genetically match people who would have a good chance of having psychic offspring, whom they would need to navigate their ships across the stars. As these fledgling psychics began to emerge, the one who would be called the Navigator felt their presence, and they his. He was intrigued at the chance to leave Earth on a starship, and gladly volunteered.

Months later, the chatter of Earthly thoughts had been left behind and the Navigator was looking forward to years of blissful silence. Yet here in the emptiness, in the void where he thought he would finally be at peace, a tiny voice was making itself heard. Too faint to be noticed on Earth, it made itself known just as a star does when the sun withdraws its fiery radiance from the sky. Tiny, keening, insistent, incessant, in its singularity it assailed his mind. It spoke a message, he was certain, but it was too faint to make out, and so it wore his sanity down as he tried to strain his awareness to decipher its meaning and tried to block it out at the same time. Ever so slowly, the voice pushed aside everything else in his consciousness, demanding more and more of his attention. The question of what it was became eclipsed by the question of what it had to say, and as everything else faded from his mind but the plaintive call, he forgot his mission and veered his starship towards it, a man obsessed.

Darkness. Loneliness. Despair. And hunger. A burning hunger, ravenous, mind-consuming, a hunger that no creature should have ever felt, a hunger that that should have ended with merciful starvation untold millennia ago. It knew these things, and only these things. It had no awareness outside of itself, and in its desperate state, it had never occurred to it that anything existed besides itself. It knew only that it had desires, and that it didn't know of anything that would fulfill those desires. In fact, this overwhelming desire to feed had eliminated anything other than itself. It had no physical presence, and it had no thoughts. Hunger had become its essence. When something finally entered its awareness, its immediate response was to consume it.

The Navigator had a split-second to absorb the fact that the tiny voice had belonged to an extremely large mind before it engulfed him. Join with me! it screamed in his mind. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing except the pain of his mind being torn apart, every facet of his personality and knowledge separated. Every thought he'd ever had, every misery he'd ever shared with his fellow man, was experienced at once by the Drifter. He was forced to confront the enormity of the other being, feel a pain that was impossible for a human mind to feel, and relive his own miserable life in a single instant.

Another instant later, and he was back in his own body. The being had rejected him. His mind had been too different for the Drifter to absorb; where he sought only isolation, it wanted only togetherness. It had tried to join their minds together, but instead had found them too dissimilar. He knew it to be true, because he had shared its mind for that brief instant. Yet something was not the same...

Marikoshi Cho was a Gen-3 psychic, meaning all four of his grandparents had been products of the breeding program. He had been given gene and hormone therapy his entire life to enhance the expression of his mental abilities and speed up his physical development. He was technically the pilot of the starship Selene. In reality, he was the wetware that linked up to the hardware of the ship. He had the simple task of following the psychic wake of the Navigator, who piloted the Selene's sister ship, the Helios. Heavily drugged, he would not age or sleep, nor disturb the Navigator with errant thoughts. He had two duties: to follow the Helios, and alert the rest of the crew if there was a problem. For the first time, his second duty was about to be carried out. Helios had put out a distress signal.

Doctor Sinaya Martin had been dreaming about home when the reviving drugs flowed into her IV and began the process of waking her from the hibernation coma. Four others were also slowly returning to consciousness; the distress call had been general. The five were expected to handle any emergency that the two starships might encounter, whether it was medical, mechanical, or otherwise.

Marikoshi didn't look up as the others filtered into the bridge in various states of alertness. The drugs created a mental state similar to autism, allowing great focus without boredom, and eliminating emotions, an important effect to keep the Navigator from being distracted. The captain, Kurt Roening, and the security chief, Gavin Harris, both had military experience and had learned to wake up instantly from the deepest sleep and address issues quickly and decisively. Slightly behind them was Dr. Martin, the medical officer, who had learned to catch sleep whenever possible while working as an ER doctor in Chicago. The computer technician and engineer were equally inferior to the others in that regard and entered last. Mariko recited the statement the computerized voice had already played for them, that there was a general distress call from the Helios, and would have continued with a second-by-second countdown to the time the ships docked if the captain hadn't gently placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

Minutes passed as the two ships went through an automated series of maneuvers to bring their airlocks together, a dance in the vacuum choreographed by powerful AI. The crew looked at each other, but didn't bother to ask questions with no answers.

The passageways of the Helios seemed no different than those of the Selene as they stepped across the boundary that separated the two ships. They found the Navigator lying facedown on the floor of the bridge. Doctor Martin rushed to his side, checked his pulse and found it rapid and erratic, but steadying. She turned him over after assessing that he probably did not have a broken neck. His eyes opened, but showed only white.

Join with me!

Sinaya heard the wordless plea. She had never experienced telepathy before, and did not recognize at first that the voice in her head came from the seemingly unconscious man.

Join with me!

The hair on the back of her neck stood up as the Navigator repeated what the Drifter said. Harris and Roening started forward to offer assistance, and heard it as well. Before they could reach him, the Navigator's thoughts solidified and his experience with the Drifter was psychically broadcasted to everyone around him. The horrifying pain and utterly alien feelings were incomprehensible to their minds, and each of them fell to the deck, completely unconscious.

Sinaya woke up as the Navigator was removing the last of her clothing. He found himself wanting that which had disgusted him before the encounter with the being. It still seemed distasteful to him, but the physical needs he had suppressed for decades had suddenly made themselves known, and it seemed that the Drifter's desires had combined with them to alter his basic nature. Anger and fear welled up within her as she realized what he was doing, but the Navigator ignored what he felt and held her immobile with his mind. Her naked body spun as it levitated and slowly righted itself until she hovered a foot off the floor, her legs spread slightly. He would have taken any woman at that moment, but as he inspected her body while it lifted, he counted himself lucky that she happened to be as fine a specimen as she was.

As a doctor, Sinaya knew how to take care of herself and was the picture of health (something that had recommended her for duty in space above even some of her more medically-adept colleagues), but genetics had blessed her as well. Her light brown skin, inherited from her Indian mother, was at once exotic and familiar to the Navigator, who had spent the greater part of his life around central Asia, and it was unblemished and even in tone all over. Her nipples were erect and very dark, perched high on her round breasts. Everything about her body and looks was average, except that there were none of the usual minor imperfections that even stunning women often have. Her face would have been extremely beautiful except for her slightly long nose, which was still thin and straight, and gave her a much more approachable appearance. Her hair was dark and bound up in a businesslike fashion, but the Navigator undid the fastener that held it in place so that it tumbled free around her shoulders. He had never seen a woman nude firsthand, and found it an interesting experience.

Panic began to take hold of her mind, disturbing the Navigator. He decided that he did not want her to feel that emotion, and with a little concentration, found that he could make her feel otherwise. He had never been able to create feelings in others before, but he could tell that his psychic abilities had been enhanced by the other being. Instead, her mind was filled with what the Navigator wanted her to feel: lust.

Sinaya felt her heart stop pounding so hard as the feelings of fear immediately left her. She felt the presence of the psychic intrusion, but could not generate any feelings about that whatsoever. The Navigator's thoughts were not being projected in her mind, but the way he was studying her body made his intentions fairly clear. Then she felt it. A heat seemed to fill her. Her heart began pounding again as arousal overcame her senses. She had never felt anything like this in her life. Desires of the flesh so strong that they seemed more urgent than the need to breath. No human being had ever felt more longing to be touched than she did at that moment. A thousand orgies played themselves out in her mind, heat spread from the juncture of her thighs to her breasts and back down again, and the need became so strong that it was painful. Pulses were going through her internal muscles as she tried to squeeze her thighs together but was stopped by the Navigator's telekinetic grasp.

Pressure seemed to be building at the very core of her being, begging to be released, while she imagined her vagina as an empty void, a vacuum inside that needed to be filled. All the while, the Navigator continued to peruse her flesh, aware but not concerned with her distress. She wanted him, anyone, to touch her, to penetrate her in every orifice. Her body could not have survived the sexual acts she would have attempted at that moment if given the opportunity.

The Navigator raised her body to inspect the center of her womanliness, a part he had never before personally seen on a woman. He knew that most men preferred that a woman shave that portion of their body, but was not disappointed to find that Sinaya trimmed but did not completely denude herself. The short curly hairs were damp, and her tangy scent wafted into his nostrils. As he exhaled, he saw a trickle of the moisture run down the inner side of her thigh. He scooped up the liquid on his finger, and noted the way her muscles strained against his control, trying to move her body towards his touch. He tasted it, finding it intriguing, certainly not the sweet honey it was often described as in more poetic erotica, but still something desirable. The flow of juice increased, and the Navigator watched for a moment, thrilled by the sight of the seemingly placid body of the doctor while fully aware of the turmoil of raging passion in her mind.

He slowly inserted two fingers into her vagina, savoring every centimeter of her moist velvety flesh that he touched, imagining how it would feel when he did the same thing with his penis. He believed he would enjoy it; the temperature, the smoothness, the wetness all seemed very favorable. He relaxed some of his control over her, allowing her internal muscles to move slightly, and felt her love canal clench around his digits rhythmically and insistently.

Sinaya felt as if she had gone unsatisfied for centuries. His lightest touch would have brought her to orgasm had her pelvic muscles not been paralyzed, and she felt one start and fail to finish each time she clamped down on his fingers, like a breath that failed catches in the throat. Then he touched her clitoris, lightly, just a brushing of his thumb, and she climaxed more intensely than ever before in her life. The first contraction that went through her body was more pleasurable than most other entire nights of passion, and each following one diminished only slightly as the orgasm faded. She was just coming down from it when she realized that the burning need had not left her, but the Navigator brushed his thumb across her clitoris again and her second orgasm overtook her, obliterating all thought.

It's possible that her heart could not have handled the strain if her entire body had been free to move during these climaxes, but the Navigator's tight control over her meant that only the parts of her that were directly involved could move. Copious amounts of her fluids had run out over his hand during both orgasms. He stroked her a few more times, relaxing his control a little each time, allowing more and more of her body to carry out its natural reactions. Now her back was free to arch, and her hips bucked in rhythm to the pulsating flood of pleasure that washed over her body outwards from her groin to her feet and head, then back again. With a little imagination, and his intimate connection with her mind, the Navigator could almost see the warm wave of pleasure flowing up and down the length of her body. A steady stream ran over his fingers now, with small amounts almost squirting with each contraction. He could feel her becoming exhausted, her clitoris making demands her body couldn't meet, as it forced orgasm after orgasm on her. He watched her face, her breasts, every part of her through a dozen orgasms, marking each detail of her reaction to the excruciating pleasure. She was hyperventilating, and her heart rate was straining to pump enough blood to her body when he finally stopped. He set her down, realizing she needed a rest or would not survive.

Roening and Harris woke up near the end of Doctor Martin's long string of orgasms, not comprehending at first what was going on. The scene was almost demonic, with her levitating and half-screaming, half-groaning, while not seeming to be truly awake, the Navigator seeming an eerie, emotionless incubus as he coldly manipulated her sexual organs without any hint of passion evident on his face. They rose as she fell, the Navigator lowering her to the deck and glancing at them. He withdrew his fingers, and Sinaya fell into a state somewhere between unconsciousness and sleep. Harris, the security officer, pulled out his sidearm, a plastic pistol which shot tranquilizer darts and pointed it at the Navigator. He was unable to pull the trigger. His finger would not move. Veins stood out on his forehead, and sweat ran down his face as he struggled to keep the weapon trained on his target and depress the mechanism. Finally, his hands began shaking so violently that he was no longer aiming at the Navigator, and his finger was allowed to move, firing off an entire clip, but hitting nowhere near the grim psychic. The darts, propelled by compressed gas, hissed and whined as they ricocheted. Slowly, the ageless man rose to his feet, looking every inch the mystic that he was, except for the electrode contact points taped to his shaved scalp. Such an air of menace projected from his eyes that both men fled, not understanding what had occurred or why. He let them go, focusing on the doctor once more.

Sinaya could feel the cold floor beneath her. She could smell the heady musk of her own passion, feel the wetness beneath her thighs. She remembered the burning desire, and the strenuous orgasms, but was too exhausted to think about anything but rest. Then she realized that she wanted to rest so that she could start all over again, and that the monstrous lust that filled her had been addressed, but not satisfied. Her body was only recovering for the express purpose of more ecstasy. She would be touching herself now if she had the energy to move. She was not in control of herself, and neither was the Navigator. Her vagina demanded, and she would obey as soon as she could. She wanted to weep, but if she had the energy to do that, it would instead be spent on pleasing the demanding monster between her legs.

The Navigator was waiting patiently for Sinaya to be ready again. He had satisfied his curiosity, and soon would satisfy his flesh. Slowly, gently, he pried her thighs apart, his sensitive fingers taking in the silky sleekness that seemed to define every part of her. He positioned his manhood at her entrance and slowly pressed in until he was completely inside. Her muscles tried and failed to clutch at him, hungry for the attention but barely responsive. He stayed there, unmoving, and caressed the rest of her. Strength slowly began to return to her body, his hands on her breasts seeming a rejuvenating massage. Fingers traced her ribs and her hips, massaged sore muscles throughout her torso. It was an incredible display of tenderness and skill, and utterly absurd in light of his previous treatment and the fact that he was currently penetrating her. He was doing what a lover should, after already ravishing her to exhaustion.