“Become a scientist, they said.”

The green and red letters and numbers moving across the screen beeped as they gave normal readings for the fourth miserable day in a row.

“It’ll be great, they said.”

Nothing changed in this dark, miserable wasteland. It made the minutes drag. And we still had another full day inside.

“You’ll make great, life-changing discoveries that will alter the course of humanity, they said.”

I clicked the screen, clearing another data set and bringing up the next one, which all read normal. Levels of vital nutrients normal. Levels of waste, normal. Everything the same. This mission was a waste.

“You’ll get to spend your days inside a giant asshole, rooting through some woman’s shit as part of your doctorate research, they said. No wait, they never said that because no one would’ve fucking signed up.”

I waited for someone to respond. Dr. Rosenthal was ignoring me as she went through sheets of her own data across from me. I could usually count on Parker to engage with me, but he was either lost in his own thoughts or hadn’t come up with anything to say yet.

“I think Dr. Suess left out this chapter in “Oh, The Places You’ll Go.””

Finally, I got to Parker.

“Y’know Erin, it could be worse.” he said. I snorted.

“Please.” I said.

“You could be in some guy’s asshole.”

“Ugh. Gross.”

“You could be in my asshole.”

Across the room, Dr. Rosenthal laughed.

“Jesus Christ.”

He was grinning ear to ear now as he clicked his pen, monitoring the readouts not for the giant fecal matter we were surrounded by, but for the operational vitality of the ship we were in. He was our engineer. And he was disgusting.

“I’m dead serious, Erin. I eat a lot of Taco Bell.”

“Oh my God, enough.”

“I’m just saying, this girl eats a pretty solid diet, especially for a college student. You should’ve seen the last girl I was in, was much worse.”

“I can’t believe you’ve done this more than once.”

“This is my fourth time.”

“This is my twenty-third mission.” Dr. Rosenthal said, still not looking up from her datasheet. She pushed a hair behind her ear and seemed to focus more, despite the conversation. I was in disbelief. I knew Dr. Rosenthal had done plenty of these, but twenty-three times volunteering to go up someone’s butt and study their shit?

“It’s just so—disgusting. And beyond that, it’s boring. Healthy diet or not, there’s very little irregularity in the data we’re able to mine. The variance in Rebecca’s diet has changed very little about what her body turns it into. I can’t imagine that changes much from person to person. Maybe if we were to study people with Crohn’s, or Diverticulitis. I’m as interested in the human body as anyone, but these readings have been almost the exact same for four days now.”

No one said anything for a few moments and I sighed. Parker clicked his pen and wrote a few things down. I clicked the screen and watched as more data fed through. A few minutes passed before Dr. Rosenthal looked up from her papers and fixed me with a stern gaze. It was a severe look, something I’d have expected from my mother right before I got a lecture.

“On a very basic, basic level what we are doing boils down to rooting around in someone’s shit, yes. But the work we’re doing by studying the miniscule variances in data could one day lead to us finding a way to catch diseases far in advance. You mentioned Krohn’s disease, how much of a relief do you think it would be for chronic patients to have a microchip feeding data to their doctors so they know what medication and treatments their bodies are responding to on an almost molecular level.”

Her face was getting a bit red as she spoke, but she spoke with passion.

“Or perhaps we may even be able to learn exactly what to look for at the earliest onset of colon cancer. Do these things seem boring or disgusting to you?”

“N-no.” I said. Now my face was red.

“So yes, I may just be rooting around in shit but if I can make one person suffering from disease live a little easier, or heaven forbid catch something early enough to save a life, well I’ll do it as many times as it takes. That’s what medical research is, Miss Graves. That’s why I thought you were here.” she said, staring me down. My throat was dry.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It is why I’m here.”

“Good.” she said. I turned away and went back to looking at the data on my screen. Suddenly it seemed very interesting. Over my shoulder I heard Dr. Rosenthal get up and leave the cockpit of the microship. Parker and I sat for a bit, I was too embarrassed to say anything and he must have sensed that. All I heard was the beeping of my screen and the clicking of his pen.

“You didn’t know.” he said, finally.

“Didn’t know?” I said.

“Colon cancer, killed her father.” he said. I wanted to cry. How could I have been such an asshole?

We remained silent for the next thirty minutes or so, before Parker got up to leave the cockpit, asking if I needed anything from the pantry. I gave him a quick no.

And then all hell broke loose.

The microship was jarred by something huge, I was thrown out of my seat.Sirens wailed and lights flashed throughout the ship, which began to heave violently in every direction.

“What the fuck!” Parker shouted as something on the cockpit keyboard exploded and we smelled smoke. The entire ship heaved upward and we were tossed around, helpless. I screamed. The ship heaved the other direction and Parker caught my arm. I didn’t know which direction was up. This seemed to continue forever. Lights flashed, warnings blared. Then it was over. We came to a crashing halt. My heart thundered in my chest and everything ached, especially my head. I felt woozy.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Parker said, pulling himself up and me with him. Parker was already going to the control board for the ship. I wobbled on my feet, trying not to panic. Trying not to cry.

“Go check on the Doctor, now!” Somehow, my brain auto-piloted my body to follow his instructions and I left the cockpit.

I didn’t have to look far. Dr. Rosenthal was collapsed on the floor, right outside our sleeping quarters. The lights on the ship were flickering as I ran to her. She had a gash right on her forehead. Thankfully my body’s autopilot worked as I checked her vitals. She was breathing, pulse, everything normal. I tried not to move her much. She groaned when I touched her. I returned back to Parker in the cockpit.

“She’s hurt, unconscious, probably concussed but she’s breathing.” I told him.

“Okay. I don’t mean to alarm you but we have much bigger problems. Whatever knocked us loose put us into a freefall. We went from being attached to the apex of the sigmoid colon to—if I’m not mistaken, we’re right near her sphincter. The exit.”

“Oh. Okay. Okay so, call in a mayday. Tell the labs, tell the girl to—Jesus she could shit us out. Flush. Jesus.”

“Her last bowel movement was about two hours ago, so we have time there. Worse news though, whatever hit us wrecked the Comms Unit. I can’t get in touch with the lab, or our host.”

“Jesus Christ. Can you fix it?”

“I’m diagnosing that right now, but from what it looks like, it seems I’ll have to fix it from the outside. I’ll have to put on a suit and go do it.”

“How long will it take?”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, just clicked away at the screen. The Microship’s schematic came up. Nothing about it made sense to me, but several sections flashed red.  

“Thirty minutes. An hour.” Parker said.

“Christ. What about the ship, we have flight capabilities, can’t we just like, fly out of her?”

“Too much damage, and even if we could do that, being in her underwear is even more dangerous. All she’d have to do is sit down at the wrong angle and we’d be crushed.”

“Jesus Christ. Why. What happened? We can’t die here. Parker.”

“We won’t. I’ll fix this. We’ll put in a mayday and the labs will tell our host and they’ll extract us. We’ll be fine.”

And he was in motion. It didn’t take long for him to get into the Exo-Suit while I checked on Dr. Rosenthal. Parker looked like an astronaut as he exited the ship. We were only able to talk through the suit’s built in communication device. I brought up the camera on his helmet that allowed me to see what he was working on. I understood none of what he was doing, but I watched his hands work, praying for him to succeed. He seemed frustrated at how difficult it was to work with the wiring on the Comms Unit while inside the Exo-suit. I chewed my lip.

And then light came flooding in to our host’s rectum. Parker yelped and turned to look. Terror welled up within me as I saw what he saw. The sphincter was being pushed open from the outside. Even with the limited light, the ridges on the human finger were identifiable. The nail was massive.

“Oh my God.” I said. Parker simply stared, unable to move as the titanic digit encroached. It stopped short of our ship by a distance of a few hundred yards. It probed, slowly and deliberately for a moment, before receding, taking the light with it. Some primal part of my mind told me there was an indescribable danger that we were now in. The most depraved act of my undergrad career poked its way into my memory and I began to worry.

“P-Parker. Get back in. Please.”

“I’m almost done. I just have to-“

“Parker, please!”

Light, again. Some other incredibly monstrous thing was snaking its way into our host’s rectum. It was too terrifying to be believed. It was twice the size of the finger, round and fleshy with a gaping chasm down its center. It lumbered its way through her sphincter and came right for us. Parker was screaming as the gigantic cock slammed into the ship and dragged us along. All I could hear was grating metal as the monster made us a part of its disgusting invasion. I watched Parker’s screen. The pillar of taut flesh mashed him up against the ship and his screaming was cut off in a disgusting gurgle. Alarms wailed.

I slammed my hand against the controls as the violent rocking of the ship continued. I tried to turn the Comms Unit on. The air in the ship grew suddenly foul and I gagged. I was no longer just breathing air. The hull had been breached.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Dr. Rosenthal’s voice. We were rocked again by another forward motion. The air was running out.

“I told the host to— I wanted to study it. See the effects of—I’m so sorry.” She choked and coughed.

“You what? You told the host to what?”

Talking was becoming difficult, and then something happened, we felt the pressure change at once. The air left our ship. It got overwhelmingly hot in an instant, and then liquid flooded in. I knew where we were. I knew what was happening. I knew what the liquid was, but it was just too sick to process. It filled my mouth. It filled my nostrils. Somewhere outside, our host was basking in the afterglow of anal sex, completely unaware of the casualties inside her.