Probe

Environmental testing is important . . . but sometimes rough on the test subjects.

grey alien

Sitting in the back forty with a case of beer might not be the best way to get over a breakup, but it’s better than some others. I had a buzz on. The sort that makes laying in the back of my pick-up looking at the stars feel like a good idea.

I noticed some stars blinking out. Too many for it to be a bird or an airliner. And it was too quiet to be a helicopter. My brain sought for other possibilities and offered ‘dunno.’

Then the light shone out at me. I was floating. My Clark hat flew off and away as I rose into the air. The world tumbled around me. I could see the pickup receding.

The rest of my clothes followed my hat. Something was peeling them off me. I tried to hold onto my briefs with both hands but they slithered out of my grasp.

The light reflecting off me illuminated the thing dragging me up.

A God damned flying saucer.

Like in the cartoons. Looked like two pasta dishes pressed together. I was being pulled into the middle of the bottom dish.

A hole appeared. I went through it. The floor was solid when I looked down. Whatever was pulling on me dumped me onto a table. I felt straps tighten around me, but couldn’t see them. The air smelled of ozone and chemicals.

Somebody walked into the room. I twisted my head to look.

It was an alien. Grey skin. Big eyes. Half my size. Yeah, like the cartoons.

“Greetings,” said the alien. “Thank you for your participation in our research. I apologize for any discomfort you may endure.”

I responded with a string of obscenities, focusing on its ancestry and what it could do to itself.

“We will now begin.”

I felt a hatch in the table open under my butt. An instant later I was cursing even more.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to apply the anesthetic ray,” said the alien. “Is that better?”

The pain went away. But the probe was still violating me. “You little bastard, okay, it stopped hurting, but you’ve still violated my, my, my dignity!”

“Yes, that is necessary for the testing. The forces must be applied directly to internal organs.”

“Uh . . . what forces? Why?”

It shrugged. “Regulations. Exposing you to external hyperwave radiation isn’t considered sufficient proof of safety.”

“Safety for what?” It sure as heck didn’t sound safe for me. Wouldn’t be safe for the alien if I could get loose, either.

“We’re checking if your species will be adversely affected by a change in the translight routes in this sector. Going directly past your star will cut three percent off the transit time between—well, you wouldn’t know them. But to get permission the Regularchy insists we prove the increased hyperwave emissions won’t affect the native intelligent species.”

“Affect how?” As if being kidnapped, tied up, and anally probed wasn’t bad enough, they were going to irradiate me?

“In theory, there should be no effect at all.”

That didn’t sound ominous. “Has this theory ever been tested?”

“Certainly. There was a full set of testing on humans when the original translight route went through Alpha Centauri.”

“And what happened to them?”

The alien kept fiddling with a console, making lights appear and change. “Nothing. Completely unaffected. Could’ve stopped with the first fifty subjects we tested, but the contract was for a thousand, so we did them all.”

“Oh, God. You’re testing me just to make your quota?” Bad enough to be abused. But to be abused for no point at all? That’s adding a cherry to the kidnapped-stripped-and-violated sundae.

“No, we’ve just started this series. You’re in the first day of samples.”

I cursed it out some more.

“Relax,” said the alien. “I’ve already started the hyperwave dosages. You haven’t noticed anything, have you?”

“No,” I said nervously, “but you numbed my entire midsection.”

“Hyperwaves propagate for multiple light years. You’d feel it everywhere.”

That triggered a desperate wiggling, trying to find some weakness in the invisible bonds holding me down. Nothing. The only reason I could move at all was that I could squish my flesh.

“Let me know if you do. It’s part of the test criteria. That’s why I had to learn your language. And this is for posterity, so be honest.” The alien stared at its console and nudged a control.

I didn’t feel any different. Nothing happened for a while. Then I felt bored. You might think it’s weird being bored while kidnapped by aliens, but once you’ve done total terror the body starts to relax, you know?

Grey skin dude kept pushing on its controls. I started trying to think of a good slur for greyskins, something that would really cheese it off. Struck out.

Then I did come up with an idea. I watched its hands. The next time it touched a control, I screamed. “Oh, God! It burns! I’m burning up! It hurts so much! Please, help me! Stop it!”

Dude didn’t even look up from its console. “Nice try. But your blood pressure didn’t change until after you yelled. Your adrenaline level hasn’t changed at all. Don’t make me mute you.”

So I shut up.

Some parts of its console were now glowing yellow and orange where they’d been green and blue before. “Hey. This isn’t some test to destruction thing, is it?”

Grey Skin looked up from its controls. “Cosmic Forces, I wish it was. That was our original proposal. We could have done destructive tests on five samples and been done. But the Interstellar Review Board rejected it. Said it was cruel. Okay, true. But now we have to grab a thousand specimens to ensure we have enough statistical power for a valid result.”

Should I wish the IRB let them do it the other way so I would’ve been skipped? Nah. With my luck I’d be the “sample” hyperwaved into little bitty pieces.

“Good news, human,” said Grey Skin. “We’re more than halfway through the test sequence.”

I contemplated whether to thank it or tell it to eff off. By the time I made up my mind the moment had passed, so I stayed quiet.

More of the yellow console lights turned orange. An orange went red. Would they put colors in the same order we do? I guess. Rainbows are physics, not something specific to Earth. That was one of the few bits of high school science I paid attention to.

The soles of my feet tingled a little. I flexed them, trying to find some way to scratch them. The heels could rub against the table but everything else was just hanging in the air. I’d just have to live with it.

Okay, it was more than a tingle. It was . . . how to describe it? My ex would tickle my feet when she caught me not paying attention. It was like that, except from the inside of the skin.

Then a tickle started in my love handles. Which brought back more bad memories of the ex.

I giggled.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying your time here. Thank you for your cooperation with the research,” said Grey Skin.

That made me clamp my jaw shut and not make a sound. Willpower let me stay silent for a minute or two. Then the tickle intensified.

I tried, I really tried, but it burst out in this “hee hee hee hee hee hee” sound I make when getting tickled. I hate it.

Should’ve taken a deep breath when I could. The next intensification had me laughing out loud, loud and long, until my lungs were empty. I wheezed for a moment, trying to force out another “ha,” then the spasm ended. I gasped in air, exhaled it and took another, and then I was laughing again.

I was being tickled more than just on my feet and love handles now. I could feel on the backs of my knees, my armpits, and even a little bit on my scalp. The laughs were real belly laughs now, shaking my whole body. It kept going until my lungs were empty again.

“That’s a humor response, isn’t it?” said Grey Skin. “What’s so funny?”

Couldn’t answer. Had gasped in some air, was laughing again. Laughed my lungs empty. My belly muscles were starting to ache from the laughing.

When I gasped some air in, I managed to say, “Not funny. Tickle.” Then I was belly laughing again.

“If it’s not funny, why are you laughing?”

It’s hard to think when you’re laughing so hard it feels like your guts are going to burst out your belly button. But I managed to remember one of those terms from science class. The next time I gasped in some air, I said, “Involuntary reflex.”

Then more laughing. My skin was being tickled everywhere. My lungs were hurting. My throat was hurting. My stomach muscles were hurting.

Suddenly it stopped. No tickling anywhere. The laughing trailed off. I drew in deep breaths, panting, then tried to control my breathing before I hyperventilated. Happiness is relative. I felt so good no longer being tickled, I wasn’t even pissed at my ex.

“I’ve paused the experiment,” Grey Skin declared. “You will explain this reaction. Are you feeling pain?”

I could speak normally now. “A little. Laughing that hard is rough. I have muscles aching.”

“What was amusing you?”

“Nothing amused me. I was being tickled. From inside, it felt like.”

The big eyes squinted. “What does ‘tickled’ mean?”

Aliens, man. They don’t know anything. “It’s . . . being touched in a way that makes you laugh. Usually it’s a sensitive part of your skin. It varies from person to person.”

“I am not familiar with this phenomenon.”

“Yeah, well, look it up.”

There was a pause, then it moved to a different console. “I do have access to your planetary data system.”

“Search on ‘tickle torture,’ that’ll get you the best explanation.”

While the alien fiddled with controls, I lay there and enjoyed breathing normally. You just don’t appreciate breathing enough until it’s been taken from you.

“Cosmic Forces. Cosmic Forces! Oh, you people are disgusting. I can’t believe you’d do such things to each other.”

I wasn’t going to take that lying down, except for the literally lying down part. “Hey. We’re not the ones going to other planets and kidnapping people to force stuff up their butts. You’re the real perverts.”

Grey Skin snapped, “Don’t think I’m doing this for the fun of it. If I didn’t need field experience to graduate, I wouldn’t have come inside your planet’s magnetosphere.”

Great. A grad student. No wonder it was so damn bad at its job.

“This ‘tickle’ effect seems to be real, but not well defined. We will have to cooperate to define the threshold of hyperwave intensity to trigger ‘tickling.’”

“Yeah? What’s my incentive to cooperate with you?”

It stood by my table, big eyes looking straight into mine. “If I have to find the threshold without your cooperation, it will take much longer and I’ll have to increase the intensity to produce physiological effects I can measure without your input.”

Didn’t take me long to make up my mind about that. “I’ll help.”

“Good. I will resume the test from a lower level. Notify me when you feel the ‘tickle’ sensation.”

“Okay.”

The alien fiddled with its console, returning the lights to green and yellow. Then it began pressing a button every ten seconds or so. I lay there, trying to concentrate on my feet. There’s always some random itches on a body. When you’re thinking about them, there’s more. But they weren’t a real tickle.

Then I felt it. “That’s it, I feel a tickle on my feet.”

“Thank you, I have noted the intensity.”

It kept working on the console. Orange lights appeared. I felt more tickling. The giggles began.

“Um, you don’t have to turn it up any higher. I’m already being tickled.”

“I must verify the accuracy of what I found in my data system research.”

Suddenly I regretted suggesting ‘tickle torture’ as a search term.

Then I was laughing too hard to worry about that. I was pushed into the belly laughs, gasping for air between each bout of laughter. My muscles were aching again.

It got worse than the first time. I managed to gasp out, “Please. Stop.”

The alien kept it going.

I reached a point where the spasms of laughter were so strong I couldn’t even try to breathe air in. I just froze, my lungs trying to force out more air like an empty stomach forcing dry heaves when trying to vomit.

A burst of happiness washed over me as the tickling stopped. I breathed sweet, sweet air. I even loved the touch of ozone and the nasty smells.

“That confirms the response to the stimulation is involuntary. Your blood oxygen levels dropped as your laughter increased, and then were falling so severely you would have lost consciousness if I hadn’t paused the experiment. This is fascinating. I may get a publication from this trip after all.”

“Well, I’m happy to do my part for science.” Do aliens understand sarcasm? I’m pretty sure this one didn’t.

“We’re almost done. I want to do a few more threshold checks for consistency.”

That wasn’t so bad. It just played with the intensity to see when I’d report the tickling starting. After six times there was enough data.

“That’s all we need. Thank you for your contribution to the research.”

That was goodbye. The probe slid out, the invisible restraints pushed me off the table, and I fell through a hatch in the floor.

Damn alien let me fall for four seconds before it snapped the tractor beam on me. I tried to look for where my clothes ended up. I did spot my pants before landing on my pick-up.

My boots landed close by the truck. I found one sock. The t-shirt and briefs were nowhere to be seen. Once I dressed as best I could, I started drinking the rest of that case of beer.

I mean, what else was I going to do? Tell somebody?

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This story is dedicated to the seals conscripted for SpaceX environmental impact testing.

More stories by Karl K. Gallagher are on Amazon and Audible.