It was the summer before my senior year of college when it happened.

Up until then, I wouldn’t say I was one of those disbelievers; I was merely one of those people under the impression that the idea was so crazy it couldn’t possibly happen to me.

Aliens zapping unsuspecting humans away to some far-off spacecraft or world for experimentation only happened in stories or movies. To me, it was merely a notion of traditional modern-day societal entertainment with a dash of intrigue.

But if it was just left as an alien abduction and nothing more, that actually would have been passable to come to terms with. I mean, how many people in history have already claimed to have taken some kind of unmerited intergalactic trip in the dead of night?

Even if I had come to terms with a sense of acceptance, how profound would it truly be compared to all the others? It would be white noise. Nothing special. We are so dumbed down by what Hollywood has depicted as every race, shape, size, and intention of extraterrestrial visitors imaginable that no one would simply care if I came forward publicly with it.

No, it was what happened during the abduction that made it a truly unique—and life-changing—experience.

I lived at home with my mother. My father left the picture seven years earlier. I see him a couple of times a year, but our relationship is nothing short of casual and passive, which is what made my connection with my mother much better and stronger. She was like my best friend, yet we still had that appropriate barrier up to limit more personal and private things that BFFs would otherwise have revealed long ago.

By all means I have never been a “mama’s boy”. She was just simply cool, and still being in her mid-forties she was young enough to realistically relate to someone my age without being too far down the line of elderly proportions (I mean, come on, don’t all of us under the age of twenty-five still view forty and up like it’s eighty?).

I had plenty of close friends, but my mom and I spent a good amount of time together when I wasn’t in class or studying, and being summer vacation, we were able to get out and do things we couldn’t enjoy otherwise during the wintered limitations of our northern small-town locale.

One of those was hiking. I’ve always loved to explore and usually kept it simple to day trips, but there was a mountain range I had always wanted to tackle and she had always wanted to relish in the breathtaking sights of, so we decided to pack a small tent and stay the night, and hike back to the car by afternoon the next day.

The small portable heater was keeping us just comfortable enough inside the tent where our electric lantern had been turned off, shrouding us in darkness with the exception of the natural moon glow. The buzzing of insects and crickets outside aided us on a journey to an easy and calm sleep after a long day of working our calf muscles and feet, miles away from any other bothersome living human soul.

I was the first to wake in the dead of night. I wasn’t sure what did it. It wasn’t a noise.

It was just an eerie, peculiar feeling, like emerging from the depths of an ominous nightmare, only I could not recall having one.

I was ready to ignore it and fall back asleep when my mom groggily stirred to life as well. “What’s wrong?” she asked, brushing her brunette hair away from her eyes before rubbing them.

“Nothing. Sorry if I woke you,” I said.

“You didn’t. I don’t know why I woke up. I just got this strange feeling.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I agreed. “It’s like I don’t even feel tired anymore—all of a sudden when I should still be feeling dead after our hike.”

That’s when the light hit us out of nowhere, coming from everywhere. Our tent was lit with a bright blue and white hue. It was almost like pure daylight.

“Was is that?” my mom asked with sudden, sharp concern as she sat up and twisted her head all around. “Is it morning already?”

“No way,” I assured her, craning my neck. “It’s only two in the morning.”

“It can’t be the moon. It’s way too bright.”

“Gotta be big truck headlights or floodlights or something, from a forest ranger maybe,” I suggested. “I’m gonna check it out.”

I grabbed the tent door to unzip it, but the tent started to shake and rattle as if we were party to some kind of spontaneous earthquake. A loud humming noise like some kind of machinery revving to life reverberated in circles around us.

My mom kicked her blankets off and tumbled back against me in her panties and thin long-sleeved shirt. “What the hell is that?!” she yelled in fear, grabbing hold of my arm.

All I could do was dart my wide eyes around and spin my head in confusion until the light got so brightly white it was practically blinding. I heard my mom scream, shielding her eyes into my shoulder as the rumbling wildly overtook our tent.

And just like that, it was over.

I managed to slowly pry my tightly closed eyes back open to see that the tent was gone.

No, it wasn’t the tent that had gone away… it was us. We were no longer inside its comfortable confines but sitting on the bed of a moderately illuminated room of some sort.

“What the…” was all I could manage to mumble as I started to graze my eyes around.

At that point, my mom had reopened hers and loosened her terrified grip on my arm, slightly parting as she wondrously examined the new situation.

“Where are we? How did we get here?” she murmured.

I stood up, my socked feet shuffling across the bare floor. There didn’t seem to be any doors or windows, and the bed, covered by a generic sheet and equipped with two simple pillows, was the only thing other than us in there. I felt around the smooth, metal-like doors.

“Where the hell are we?!” my mom huffed in an almost demanding tone.

“I don’t remember us being brought anywhere. Maybe it was an earthquake or some kind of natural disaster, and the lights we saw were some kind of emergency rescue team that brought us here,” I hypothesized. I banged my hands against the wall. “Hello?! Anybody?!” I called out.

“Silence!” a voice bellowed, jolting our awareness even more sharply. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It almost sounded like a loudspeaker without the static and crackle of one, only there were none that I could see, and I didn’t think it had originated from another room. It was almost as if it was coming from inside my own mind, clear and audibly crisp.

“Who are you? What are we doing here? What happened?” I directed to the ceiling.

“We are a species not from your world,” the voice flatly responded. “You are aboard one of our vessels for an experimentation exercise.”

I scoffed. “What?! Is this some kind of joke?"

It was at that point when the images flooded into our minds simultaneously like a film strip… images of THEM. I knew these weren’t my own thoughts. They had been put there by someone else. Something else. Something real enough to convince us that this was no ordinary kidnapping. I looked at my mom, who traded a wordlessly shocked expression with me.

“Please don’t hurt us! We’ll do whatever you want!” I called out.

“We do not wish to harm you,” the voice stated. “But if you do not comply with our requests, unfortunately it will be both of our planets that end up suffering.”

“What do you mean? Look, I’ll do whatever you want. Just let my mom go!” I called out.

“No!” she retaliated in sudden anguish, grabbing my arm.

“She is needed for the experiment,” the voice said.

“What experiment? What are you planning to do?” I asked.

“We need to study your human anatomies and physical activities performed by those anatomies. We will need you to consummate.”

I scratched my head with a look of confusion molding across my face. “Consummate? What? What are you talking about?”

“You must consummate in sexual intercourse with the female,” the voice calmly but firmly demanded.

I was at a loss for words as I looked at my mom, who couldn’t believe what we had just heard. I pushed myself up to my feet as my mom joined me, staying close. “Wait… I… you… what? You want us… to have sex?! Together?!” I asked.

“Up until now our species has not required traditional procreational methods. We have performed genetic births to keep ourselves going but alas our science has been failing us in ways your intelligence cannot comprehend. We have reproductive organs for sexual intercourse but are lost on as how to use them. So we must observe."

I was dumbfounded and this relayed as so in my next response when I barked, "You can fly across the universe but you can't come up with a way to procreate? You don't have access to our endless pornographic videos from earth to use as study?"

"Video and audio will not suffice. Live observation is the best course of action."

I slightly waved my arms and shook my head. “Whatever. I don’t think you understand. This is my mother. She’s related to me.”

“Relation is irrelevant,” the voice retorted.

“I think there’s some kind of mistake here,” I said, scratching for the right way to put it. “I’m not sure that you fully understand the situation, or how it is with your species. But, she’s my mother, my biological blood mother. That kind of thing doesn’t happen with our species. It’s not supposed to happen. It’s unnatural.”

“You are a male adult and she is a female adult. Our initial scans indicate you both have properly functioning sexual reproductive organs. There is nothing to biologically prohibit you from performing sexual intercourse together,” the voice noted.

“Yeah, I get that,” I said with annoyance in my tone. “I’m not saying it’s physically impossible. I’m saying that we are blood-related. There are many things that come into a factor which make it wrong. It could be psychologically or emotionally damaging. People who are related can’t reproduce together because the blending of similar genes may cause birth defects in the child. That should be lesson number one for your procreation ventures with your kind.”

My mom had her hand against her forehead, slightly pacing. “This is a nightmare. This is just a really, really fucked up dream. I just want to wake up.”

I could tell she was starting to lose it a little. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was a nightmare. Or maybe they were aliens. Or maybe they were humans conducting an experiment, or some twisted sicko millionaire.

Regardless, I couldn’t wake up, and I wasn’t going anywhere, so I had to do my best to roll things along. “All right, fine, then! Take me! I’ll do it! But just get me a different woman and take my mother back!” I pleaded.

“Unfortunately this can be our only trip to your planet until we have sufficient replenished energy to return, and that cannot happen until the ranks in our species has increased. Time is of the essence! You have been chosen. There can be no deviations from our plans or it means our people are doomed,” the voice insisted.

“What kind of intelligent species are you?!” my mom jumped in by coldly scolding. “I'm sorry for your troubles but how can you do this to people? He’s trying to explain the absurdity and wrongness behind this situation and you have zero compunction or reasoning!”

“Look, you don’t want me as a test subject anyway, I promise you,” I called out.

“Explanation needed,” the voice erupted.

I gave a long, dejected sigh. “Because I… I’m a…” I was searching for the right way to say it. I guess it didn’t matter at that point anyway. “I’ve never had sex before, okay? I’m a virgin. I’m inexperienced. I wouldn’t make a suitable test subject. So it’s better that you just return us and pick some other people.”

“Experience factor is irrelevant. You have suitable organs to perform the consummation and our scans indicate you are equipped with appropriate knowledge,” the voice said. “In return we can come back and assist your planet in its own troubles by helping with intellectual guidance, technological advances and medical improvements.”

"Quite a trade-off," I sarcastically noted.

"Free will is your own," the voice said. "We can return you now if desired, but we implore you to help."

“I know it sounds messed up, honey, but we have to start thinking realistically,” my mom attempted to reason. “I wish this were a bad dream, but it’s pretty apparent it isn’t. I really think they mean what they say.”

“How do we know they’ll keep their word and let us go?” I questioned. "How do we know any of what they are saying and promising is true?"

“We don’t. But if it is, we could be condemning two different planets by not helping,” she noted. "I love you too much for something stupid like this to be the reason humanity doesn't improve to a higher form of being.”

“But it’s… sex. Us, having sex.”

“I know. It’s twisted. But we’re both adults. We can get through it. It’s… not a big deal. It’s just physical stuff. Like giving each other a hug.”

“I’d say there’s a big difference between giving you a huge and sticking my dick inside you,” I dryly and sarcastically quipped.

The predicament was starting to remind me of all of those dumb scenarios you conjure up with your idiot friends, like saying if someone put a gun to your head would you do this or that?

I’d say this particular situation was much along those lines, only the gun was being replaced by some kind of moral dilemma. Or the “would you rather do this or that?” scenario when both of the choices were really losing choices and you simply had to decide which was the lesser of two evils.

My mom shuffled a little closer to me on the bed and softly took my hand in hers, directing her eyes into mine with that “serious motherly look” I had received so many times over the years before receiving a firm talk. “You just have to trust me, sweetheart. We have to trust each other.”

I took a deep breath, almost as if mulling it over. There was nothing to mull over, though. Would I really choose screwing over an entire planet's species over having sex with my mother? Or being the reason we as humans couldn't achieve a righteous state of mind? My sense of humanoid pride normally didn’t really burrow that deep.

Our species had its rules, but honestly, we are a boastful, arrogantly narcissistic life form that has been rewarded death over anything and everything on the planet’s course of centuries over religion, politics, and personal beliefs.

Maybe I could be the hero our crazy planet needed to set things straight. Even if that meant no one ever knowing. After all, not like I'd want a monument constructed depicting how I fucked my own mother to improve human progress.

“I mean, I guess it’s just sex,” I ended up finally claiming. “I don’t want to be that guy who dooms two planets.”

“It’ll be like going to the dentist or something. We’ll just get it over with and it’ll be done with,” she said in a manner of trying to remain positive for me as much as for herself.

I flashed a smirk. “Well, quick timing probably won’t be an issue with your inexperienced virgin son,” I joked, although part of it was serious because while I considered myself a pro in longevity with masturbation sessions over the years, I couldn’t predict how I would perform at my first go-through with an actual female, let alone the awkwardness of it being my own mother.

The voice returned with, “Timing will be a necessary factor in the experiment. Failure to meet our requirements will result in you having to repeat the process until we are satisfied with the results.”

“How long would we have to go?” I asked.

“That answer is irrelevant. We will simply inform you if the time falls short of our needs,” the voice answered.

“Great. That inspires a lot of confidence,” I blurted with a shrug.

My mom gently placed a hand on my arm. “There’s been no judgments from me with whatever you’ve done in your life. You know that,” she tried to console me.

“I can’t believe we’re gonna do this,” I said under my breath.

“You may start when ready,” the voice commanded.

“Maybe we should leave on the necessary clothes we have on, you know, to make things a little easier on us,” I suggested.

The voice interrupted by saying, “All clothing must be removed for us to properly gauge the experiment.”

I rolled my eyes and took another deep breath, looking at my mom. “So, how do we… do this? I mean, how do we start?”

She licked her lips in thought and shrugged. “Well, you heard them. We should probably start by taking our clothes off.”

I nodded. There was a long, awkward pause between us that she finally ended by straightening her upper half up more promptly. “Right. So, I’ll just go first, okay? Maybe that will be easier for you if I go first.”

“Yeah, sure, okay,” I mumbled.

She took a ready breath and grabbed her top, pulling it and stopping midway in brief hesitation before peeling it off fully and leaving her only in her bra and panties. She nervously swallowed a lump in her throat. “It’s just nudity. Okay? Just the naked form. We’re both adults. You know what a naked woman looks like. It’s not a big deal. I’ve got boobs and a vagina. You’ve got a penis. Simple as that. No reason why we can’t be mature about it and just treat it from a more… biologically clinical perspective.”

I bobbed my head. “Yeah.”

She took another breath and reached behind her back; her fingers twiddling and fiddling to unlatch...