When they were moved the next time, Timothy went quietly. He was nervous, but in the past... how long had it been? Two weeks? A month? Well, however long he'd been there, he'd come to trust the reddish amoebas. They hadn't hurt him, or any of the other men; they'd given them food, shelter, and a strangely paradise-like atmosphere. Sure, it wasn't as good as if they'd taken everyone home, but where was home, anymore? Were they even in the same universe as Earth? The same dimension?
Timothy wasn't sure whether or not the amoebas were actually aliens, but he assumed they were. It was the best explanation he could come up with.
So when the large white carrying room made a re-appearance, Timothy was nervous, but not as frightened as he'd been before. The red amoebas were rounding them up, and they seemed to have their captives' best interests in mind, more or less. So he entered the small enclosed space without a fuss.
They were in it for rather a long time, this time. It wasn't all the men he'd come there with, either. Only about half of them were in the strange room for the move. He waited quietly to see what would happen.
When they were let out again, it was to another green meadow with a lake and a feeding house very similar to the first. The difference was that here little huts - which looked very man-made, actually - dotted the field. As Timothy and the other captives looked around warily and began to exit, a number of men poked their heads curiously out of the huts and smiled upon seeing them.
"Hey!" said one of the inhabitants of this new place, a large, hispanic man who looked to be in his fifties or so. "Welcome! We have mostly English-speakers here, yes? I'm guessing?"
"How did you know?" asked Timothy, surprised to actually be talking to someone; the other men he'd been captured with had been too traumatized to talk much, and they'd all mostly been silent together. Although recently that had begun to change.
"There's only so many places they go to get people," said the man with a smile. "I'm Roberto. You?"
"Timothy," said Timothy. "Or Tim, if you like."
"Welcome!" said Roberto again, and then widened his gesture to include everyone. "It's nice to see you all! As soon as the blobs give us some supplies for you, we'll start on building you houses of your own! 'Til then, settle in, get some grub!" The men took his cue, although most still seemed wary, and began to meander out into the field.
"Blobs?" Timothy asked.
"You know, the creatures. The things. Whatever they are. Some people think they're aliens. A couple people think they're demons. Whatever. They're blobs, right?"
"Right..." said Timothy, uncertain. Just then, his stomach growled. Well, first things first. He went off to get some food.
Some time later, as he dozed lazily in the sun on the edge of the lake, he spotted Roberto walking away from the food... place? Cafeteria? It seemed weird to call it something so normal. "Hey!" he called to the man. Roberto saw him and smiled, changing direction to move towards him.
"What's up?" he asked.
"You said something about building houses earlier, didn't you?" asked Timothy. "What's up with that?"
"The blobs'll give us wood. We have a few tools and stuff we made, too. Whenever we get new guys in, they give us materials to build with. Not sure why - not like they couldn't make the huts for us way more easily than we ever could. But it's nice to have something to do, I guess. That's the one problem around here; gets a little boring sometimes."
"Do the blobs... do they come around? I mean... is it safe?"
"Sure man, of course it's safe. Well," Roberto's expression changed to a scowl. "Sometimes we get a troublemaker. But he hasn't been by in quite a while, and other than that they're just fine."
"He?"
Roberto shrugged. "He. It. Whatever. Not sure they even have a gender, you know? But eventually you get to recognize some of them after a while, and it feels weird to call 'em 'it,' you know?"
"I guess," said Timothy, not sure he'd ever be able to think of the blobs in any way that might make them seem like a... like a... person. But before he could say anything else, there was a loud, droning sound, like several hundred bees buzzing at once.
"What's that?" asked Timothy, alarmed.
"That's the call to milking," said Roberto, grinning.
Timothy felt panic rising up in him. "M-milking? What? What are they-"
"Relax, man," said Roberto. "It's cool. You'll like it. Come on."
Roberto led the way to where a line of men was already forming. The other captives who'd come in with Timothy were wary, but the men who'd been there longer were coaxing them gently into coming along. The line seemed to disappear into one of the walls, but looking closely Timothy could see that there was a darker patch that might indicate some kind of doorway.
"Now, when you get to the egg, if it's still white it's unoccupied," Roberto was saying to him. "You just step right into it. Looks like it's solid, but you'll go right through, I promise. It can be a little weird the first time. Red eggs means there's someone in it already, so just go to the next one."
Timothy was about to ask Roberto what the hell he was talking about, when the line moved and they moved past the wall that wasn't a wall into the room beyond.
Lining the large hallway on either side of the corridor were large white egg-shaped objects. They were more than large enough to fit a man. As Timothy watched, the men in line in front of him broke off and moved towards the eggs, stepping into them. As Roberto had said, once a man entered the egg it began to glow a pale red. Here and there men stepped back out of the eggs with happy, dopey smiles on their faces, and made their way back out to the meadow.
"What-" Timothy started to ask, but then realized that Roberto had already gone to one of the eggs. Slightly unsure of himself, Timothy looked around for one that was white and therefore, presumably unoccupied. He found one slightly ahead on his right and went to it.
Stepping into the egg was incredibly strange. Unlike the wall, which he had passed through as though it wasn't there, stepping into the egg felt like being enveloped by a cool gel. For a moment Timothy was afraid he wouldn't be able to breathe, but then he realized that he was already inside the egg and breathing normally. The gel seemed to suck him in, grabbing him up and floating him like an ocean current. It cradled him, leaning him back slightly, and he started to lose his sense of which way was up, whether he was standing or lying down, or just suspended in space.
Suddenly the gel around him grew brighter, although not bright enough to be painful or even unpleasant. It was a pale, warm light, and accompanied by a sense of physical warmth and a very soft humming noise. Timothy felt oddly soothed listening to it, and allowed himself to drift.
The pleasure came up very slowly. At first it was soft, like sunlight on his skin, the pleasure of warmth and contentment. Then it began to seep further into him, stimulating some happy part of his brain that made him feel good all over, tingling in every inch of skin and crevice of his body. Then gradually it became sexual, arousing him without touching, stimulating his body from the inside. He gasped; it was so strange, a feeling of strong sexual pleasure that came from everywhere and nowhere. It lapped over him like waves, moving his body in shuddering swells, the tide of sensation rising, rising, taking him over, cresting up with him, swelling-
With a gasp, Timothy came. The gel seemed to absorb his seed from the air itself, cooling him and letting him come down from his sexual high gradually. After a moment, the gel righted him, giving him back his sense of balance, and Timothy took a shaky step forward.
He felt the gel release him, and found himself once again in the corridor with the eggs. He staggered somewhat shakily back towards the meadow. When he got there, he found Roberto waiting for him with a grin.
"Nice, huh?" he said. He chuckled, and slapped Timothy on the back of the shoulder. "And the best part is, we get to do it every day!"