Alien Exchange Program Ch. 02

Droos dreamed of food. He had always loved food, loved trying new textures and tastes as much as he could. Molk, his homeworld, certainly had its own share of variety, but it always left something wanting for him. As a species, the folifodes had never made great strides in animal husbandry, relying instead on a robust system of agriculture and foraging. Spices, which never saw much import, tended to be whatever happened to grow locally, meaning most meals were fairly plain. Eating meat was also rare, and usually reserved for celebrations. Portion size was fit for their small metabolism, and so the two daily meals they had were often quick, and simple, and not exactly a flavor sensation.

In Droos's dream, however, he had a full plate of rich food, enough to last the average folifode a week. Beautiful, tall humans crowded around him, taking turns pressing more food past his lips. Every bite was decadence, and the humans cooed words of encouragement, telling him he was doing so good, eating so well. More and more was fed to him, something unplaceable but savory and fatty; despite how good it all was, he couldn't help but begin to feel full. Regardless, the humans kept feeding, never giving him a moment to rest. He tried to speak, but with the constant intake of food, he couldn't utter a syllable in his defense. Instead, he could only struggle weakly as he found himself being fed more than he could physically take. Once he felt like he couldn't have another bite more, he heard a soft human voice say:

"Time for the meal to begin~"

with a start, he sputtered awake. It took him a moment to understand why he was in such otherworldly comfort, and it had to do with the comfortable world he had forgotten he was on. Somehow in his sleep he had been moved from the car and onto the most ungodly soft couch he had ever experienced. He was bundled in a vast blanket, so soft and heavy, warm and fuzzy that he felt like he was melting into it. As he leaned into a head consuming pillow, he felt like he could easily sink back into sleep.

Trying to maintain some level of lucidity, he looked around at the room he was in. It was lit warmly by a large fireplace (he would learn the word later), around which the couch and many other large, comfortable chairs were arranged. Seated in the chair nearest to him was Maribelle, who looked up from the book she was reading right as his gaze met hers.

"Oh, are you trying to wake up now sleepy head?" She said with a smile. She put her book down, and got up to approach him. Now out of her coat, he had a much clearer view of how she was shaped, and Droos felt a rising intimidation at just how much there was to her. Her- her thighs, he remembered they were called- each one was as large around as he was, restrained in tight bright blue fabric from her middle to the end of her legs. Her torso was covered in something stretchier and fuzzier, a thin material which hugged her large, round chest and tummy in ways that made Droos genuinely uncertain how he had felt attraction to any of his own kind before.

Maribelle grinned at his prolonged silence, and tipped her head to the side, "Can't speak sweetheart?"

Droos realized how he'd been staring without uttering a word, and struggled to quickly think of something to say. "Ah, um, how- how did I get here? Weren't we just driving?"

Maribelle's amusement turned to sudden understanding, "Oh, of course! You poor thing, you have no idea where you are," she stepped around to the back side of the couch, and Droos could hear the sound of lightly crumpling paper as she seemed to grab something. Droos watched as she moved back in front of him, and could see in her hands a brown paper bag and some type of white paper cylinder. "Once I drove us all the way back to my farm, you were just so cute sleeping, and so small and light, that I decided to just carry you back in. Of course, I did pick us up dinner first." She placed the paper bag and cylinder down. Looking closer at the two objects, Droos could make out dark, oily stains along the bottom of the bag, and an obvious weight to whatever was in it. The paper cylinder was covered in speckles of water, like condensation on plant leaves, and as it was settled down, he could faintly hear the sound of something clinking together from inside.

Droos stared at it suspiciously. "Um, what is it?" There was a smell coming from the bag that he didn't know if he liked or not, and Droos felt sudden trepidation at the prospect of human food. He knew everything he'd read had said it tasted far better than anything on Molk, that initial visitors refused to leave from the quality of food alone. Nevertheless, he felt like he'd gone to the deep end right as he'd learned to swim, had moved to another planet when he hadn't even tried the food before. Nervously, he looked into the bag.

Maribelle watched him attentively, "Well, I know how ya haven't had anything from Earth, so I thought I'd start ya off with something classic."

Out of the bag, he pulled something warm with heft, wrapped in paper. Unwrapping the little present, he found a truly odd looking object: it seemed to be made of multiple disparate layers, some brown and spongy, others more gristled like cooked meat. A particularly dubious yellow square had its corners hanging off the edges, partially melted. Oddest of all was the sheer size of the mystery food, big enough to easily fill both of his hands at once. Besides it, sitting untouched at the bottom of the bag, there also sat an even smaller paper bag of long, thin, yellowish-browns... things.

"It's a cheeseburger with fries," she said plainly, as if that explained the aberration staring Droos in the face.

"And what does one... do, with a cheeseburger and fries?" Droos felt increasingly like an idiot in front of the attractive alien; this wasn't helped by her laughter.

"Take a bite~" she said, her eyes studying him with an intentness that he could not notice in his current state of foreboding. With the care and deliberation of one approaching the Molkian Eyeball-Eating squid face first, Droos slowly took a bite from the "cheeseburger".

It is for a moment that I ask a reader to appreciate the cuckoo bird. The cuckoo (the etymological origin for the word "cuckoldry"), is a brood parasite, meaning that it does not build its own nest, but instead lays its eggs in the nests of other bird species. Remarkably, despite in no way resembling the host bird species, and usually outweighing the host parent at birth, they receive the majority of the attention from their unwittingly adoptive guardians, all the while they kill off their new siblings. The reasoning behind this is even more interesting: in essence, the young cuckoo is, by the host parent's standards, preternaturally cute. Cuckoo's are evolved to not only mimic the other hatchlings, but to be an amplified version of all the desirable characteristics in those young. This same response to heightened attractive characteristics can also be seen in humans: while illustrated characters with huge fucking tits and a pencil thin waste would almost immediately snap in half from the phsyiological lack of support, they are never the less more attractive to many people. Though something is unhealthy or reckless, heightened stimuli can easily throw all common sense out the window.

It is with this in mind that I say that Droos's conscious mind shut down the second he tasted his food. As meat and cheese and grease saturated his unprepared tongue, the sudden influx of salts, fats, proteins, and carbs were sending powerful dopamine signals to his brain. Pure animal instinct overtook him, his mind pounded with the absolute need to cram all of this inside of him as quickly as possible. It was all Droos could do just to chew as he began to voraciously rip into the burger. Everything he'd eaten before, all of his wildest dreams of what good food could be, paled next to this human food someone had haphazardly thrown into a paper bag. He barely had time to taste it before all that was left was the condiment smeared paper, which he quickly licked clean.

That entire time, Maribelle watched on in pure delight. She was half concerned he was going to bite off one of his fingers at the rate he was going, but decided to just let him savor the moment rather than get him to slow down. As he finished the burger, she tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the grease stained bag. "Just so you know cutie, you still have french fries waiting for you. "

Droos's eyes darted toward the oily paper, and with not much restraint at all, grabbed it and pulled it toward himself. The fries were half spilled at the bottom of the bag, barely contained by the paper they had been thrown in. He took one, and in half the time it took him to try the first bite of burger, the fry was in his mouth. Again, his brain lit up with pleasure signals, and he moaned audibly through the food as his teeth broke through the thin crispy skin into the fluffy interior. Salt in greater concentration than the burger led him to shove 10 more fries into his mouth, as he sought as much sensation as possible. Droos grabbed handful following handful, fingers growing slick with oil. He gasped, barely having had breathed during his feast, and realized that soon enough, the fries too were gone. Before that could register, however, he heard an odd sound, and he turned to see Maribelle plunging a thin, rigid tube into the lid of the white paper cylinder.

"And here's something to wash it all down with," She said, passing it to him. Curiously, he tried sucking on the long thin tube: the fluid that filled his mouth was colder than anything else he'd ever had, painfully so. So painfully, in fact, he spat it out in a mist of soda, coughing and sputtering as he was suddenly drawn out of his food based euphoria. He became acutely aware of how fucking full he felt, and lowered a hand under a blanket to feel his gut. He was startled to find it physically protuded outward, tight and round like a folifode pregnant with their first brood.

Maribelle cursed inwardly, and turned to Droos all smiles, "Oh, I'm sorry sweetie, I forget folifodes aren't used to much cold food. How about I go get you something a little more warm to drink?"

Droos continued to touch at his packed stomach in disbelief. How had he eaten that much? How was the food that good? Even now, he felt like he could eat more, despite the growing bloated pain from his abdomen. "No, um, I don't think-"

"But sweetheart, you need to drink something after eating all that. Imagine what would happen if you suffered from dehydration under my supervision!" She knew she was pushing her luck, but she just had to see how much he could fit. She had never had a folifode be so single minded in their hunger, and had to follow this out to the end.

Droos considered this. He certainly didn't want Maribelle to get in trouble, especially not after how well she had treated him so far. Certainly someone this kind could only mean him well? These were the points he used to rationalize the deeping, growing, gnawing desire welling up inside of him for more. The little bit of drink that had remained in his mouth was far too good to just sample and be done with, and with his brain under a chokehold by his hypothalamus, he nodded sheepishly to Maribelle.

"Okay, just, um, just not a lot."

The self-pleased expression that crossed Maribelle's face was unreadable to Droos, and so as she left to fetch him a new drink, he had no idea how much he had just made her happy.