Day 298 or so, check

I had been doing most of my days doing my ‘doctoring’ but I still spent some with Andrew, so I wasn’t too surprised when we showed up together. But what I was surprised by was… June! I said, and ran over and hugged her.

She reached out, with an amused look on her face, “Thank you for the thought, dear, but I’m not really here so I can’t feel you hug. It is nice to see you again, though.

I looked around and saw more and more of my old shift… and my new shift… appearing. Andrew came over next to me and, together, we watched until basically everyone was there. One of the ship crew appeared almost last and we gathered around him. We knew he was the instructor because he was the only one in a uniform.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “You all will be doing a long range sim over the next few days, leaving it only for sleep time. It is a combat sim, against the enemy; but one that is a much more strategic sim than most of you have done before.”

“The ladies,” he said, his gaze still fixed on the boys, “Will be preparing meals and things over there, in those huts. They can get going now.”

We were used to being addressed in the third person like that, and all trooped off. As we went I heard him say, “Now, as for the men, here is what you will be doing…”

“Hey love,” Andrew said, some minutes later. “I have the first hour or so off, so I thought I would come cuddle.”

“Can we?” I asked, “I mean I have work…”

“Go with your partner!” June commanded. “That is the way we work it. When he has time off, you have time off. Take advantage, there won’t be much of it.”

I didn’t exactly want to spend time with Andrew, but, then, I didn’t exactly want to spend time cooking, either, so I let him take my hand (it was important everyone see we were dong our ‘together’ thing). “Where can we go?” I asked.

“Well, not that way,” he said, pointing. “There is a river that way, and that is where the Enemy are. We need to be careful here, too, but just juvies and packs. The others who are off should be coming this way too.”

I looked and, sure enough, there were others coming our way. Or close to our way. It was a nice enough walk, even if I did have to share it with Andrew. “So, what are we doing here?” I asked him.

“We are fighting The Enemy, or practicing anyway. It is a real cool plan. And good for me, too. It uses archers and that is my best skill, you know that. I’ll be up in one of the towers, getting to shoot at The Enemy. Real Enemy!”

“Adults?” I asked.

“Yes! We have this whole big plan. We’re building these towers…”

“Here?” I asked, “I thought you said there were no adult Enemy here?”

“Not quite here,” he said. “We are making the bricks here… you want to see?”

I could see that it was what he wanted, so I agreed, and, pulling my by the hand, he took me back to the work area. “Look at this,” he said.

There were a bunch of boys, stripped to their shorts, all digging up dirt and putting it in these skid barrows. Other boys were dragging these barrows over to this great big machine, which was where Andrew had taken me. There other boys were shoveling the dirt in.

“What does it do?” I asked.

“It is really cool. It is high tech way of doing low tech. It takes the dirt in, mixes it really well with water, and the squishes them really good.”

“Them?”

“The bricks. Look.”

We went to the far end of the machine where other boys, including Martin, were taking a bunch of bricks, big bricks, about as big as my head, out of the end of the machine and taking them over to a field they had cleared. “You see, the machine squishes almost all of the water out, so they dry pretty quickly. In a couple of days we should have enough to make the first tower.”

“We’ll take them over to near where the adults actually live, and build these towers, where the archers, like me, will start killing adults.”

“Ok, but why? Just to kill them?”

“No, no. We are going to build a whole bunch of towers and then we will build this big wall to block off The Enemy here from The Enemy downstream.”

“OK, but why?”

“Well, we’re going to kill all the Enemy upstream, and then we are going to put something in the water that will keep The Enemy from using the water to breed.”

“What?” I asked, blushing but interested in the same time. How could you prevent…?

“It is some chemical, and if we put it in the water so the boy enemy can’t tell boy enemy from girl enemy, so they won’t be able to breed.

I stared at him in amazement. “Really?”

“Yes, apparently they only tell by smell, or something. So, anyway, the boys will all get frustrated and go further downstream, since they will think there are no girls here, and then we can go downstream and do the whole thing over again. Except we won’t, this is just a sim. But they are thinking this is something that will work on an enemy planet, so we are kind of testing it, the combat part.”

“So… not much fighting, then? Just archery?”

“Oh, no,” he said, looking at me with a very concerned look. “The archery is just the beginning. Once we start building the wall I’m sure that there will be plenty of hand to hand combat; and plenty for you to do with your surgery. You should get plenty of practice.”

“I don’t want that kind of practice!” I said, thinking of all of the poor boys. He turned and looked at me, very seriously,

“You need all of the practice you can get,” he said. “Just think, one day it might be me, one of our offspring, or any of our team that you might be saving.”

I walked alongside him in stunned silence. This was hardly the Andrew I knew. I wondered if this was part of his depression about his lack of skills; and he was trying to make it up by pushing me forward. I hugged him, which he returned… and I think I was successful at getting his mind off his depression, as he turned us back into the woods and we cuddled for the rest of his hour off.

—

“Food, anyone?” I asked, coming up into Andrew’s tower a few days later.

“Thanks, Aliya,” Greg said, keeping his eye on the window. “Just put it down there. Andrew, you can take a few minutes off to cuddle with your wife. Seth, you can eat. Then Aliya will have to go back and we can rotate around.

“How’s it going?” I asked Andrew, a few minutes later, as we sat in a corner of the stairs, as far away from the others as we could get. I didn’t feel at all bad having this time with Andrew, as all of the other partners had already visited and, from what I heard, had their time to cuddle as well.

“Good,” Andrew said, his mind not really on my question. “I killed one today. It was kind of gross.”

“Gross?” I asked.

“Yeh, we have packs and Juvy’s coming around and waiting and every time we kill an adult, they move in and eat the body. How are you doing?” He asked.

“Oh, fine,” I said. “Mostly boring. But I’ve got my surgery pretty well set up, and I have been allowed some sub-sim time to work on my techniques.”

“Great, he said. “We start the wall tomorrow.”

“I know,” I said, and subsided into silence and some serious cuddling. I knew. Tomorrow would be my first day as a ‘real’ surgeon, in charge of other people and people’s lives, at least in simulation. Tomorrow I would move from short simulations to long, and ugly, surgery… blood, guts, screaming, nakedness… tomorrow it would all start.

—

Greg, as leader, needed to talk to us: me as surgeon, and the other girls, who would be acting as medics, nurses, that kind of thing, but, of course, since we were girls, he had all of our partners present so he could honor, at least in image, the rule that he wasn’t supposed to be talking to other boy’s partners. “We are almost ready to begin our attack. Aliya has set up the surgery here, under the shadow of this tower. And no,” he said, to the laughs of several of the girls, “Not just so she can cuddle with her partner. We figure this is the safest location for the surgery.”

“I will be assigning two groups of boys to the surgery. The first, commanded by Adam, here, will be foot soldiers, dedicated to protecting the surgery tents. The second, commanded by Allen, will be runners and stretcher bearers, taking injured boys back here from the front line.”

“I will be in charge of the overall operation here, and I will be up in the tower for the most part, where I can see everything going on. One warning that I have is, if I order an evacuation, everyone will have to leave right away, and not try to evacuate all of the wounded, the ones that can’t walk. Remember if we get the girls away, we can bring them back to do more surgery. But if you all get killed, then we will have no one to bring the boys to.”

I quailed at that thought. “Are there any questions?”

I could have spoken at that point, since Andrew was right there, but I didn’t have any questions. I looked at my team, but none of them seemed to have questions either. So I just shook my head and he dismissed us.

The boys, except for a couple of runners, left. Some of the girls had partners among the runners or guards and so I dismissed them to cuddle. I would find Andrew myself in a moment. I looked at the girls I had left. They were all trained largely in first aid, except for a couple with more advanced skills. “I know you know this,” I said, “so this is as much for my benefit as for yours, but a reminder. I only get the red cases, or yellow cases if I have time. Green and black have to wait until after the battle, or get dealt with by a first aider or advanced aider.”

They nodded, they all knew that.

“OK,” I said, “If you can’t cuddle, nap or whatever. The runners,” I said, not speaking to them directly, “will give us a warning if there are wounded coming in, and the fort will warn us if there are Enemy anywhere near.

Andrew appreciated my coming, and we got in a good half an hour of cuddling before I heard a cry, from the tower actually (we were cuddling next to three other couples on the stairs), “Wounded coming in,” the boy said, and with a sigh and a last, long, kiss, Andrew left me.

“What is it?” I asked, as I came into the tent.

“Oh, oh, it’s horrible!” Jane said. “It’s Julie’s husband and it is just horrible.”

I sighed, and, using my best voice, tried again. “Report!” I snapped out.

She straightened up a bit, slowed her breathing, and tried again. “We have a patient ma`am who is badly injured.”

I sighed. I loved Jane, and she did wonderful with Grant, but this was not her strong suit. “What type of injury?” I asked. “What class?”

She screwed up her eyes. We had gone over and over our surgery classifications, but they were still tricky at times. I knew that Beth, my advanced aid, was already stabilizing the patient, so I wasn’t in a rush. Finally Jane, with a horrified look on her face, said, “Black class, ma`am.”

“Very well, then,” I said, turning to go back to Andrew.

“But Aliya,” she said, grabbing me by the arm, “It’s Julie’s husband. You have to do something for him.”

I sighed, and went to look. It was, indeed, horrible. An Enemy had obviously gotten close enough to bite him and his entire right shoulder was gone. “Can you help him?” Jane asked, clinging to my arm.

“Not now,” I said. “That is hours of surgery. Beth and the others will stabilize him and, if he lives, I will work on him after the battle.”

I turned to go again but she caught my arm again, “But that will be hours!” she said.

“Yes, probably,” I said. I sighed and went back to the stretcher. Julie, her face all over tears, looked up…

“Oh, Aliya, can you do something?”

“Not now, Julie, you know that.”

“Ooooh, oooh,” she said, and turned back to her partner and gave him another drink from our ‘strong liquor’ bag. He gagged it down and looked at me.

“Good thing this isn’t real, eh?” he asked. “Or my cuddling would be definitely handicapped.”

He laughed, but I could hear the pain in his voice. “Keep drinking,” I said. “If you live you will need it for all of my sewing, later.”

I turned away to go, and Jane wasn’t the only one who looked at me with a hurt look. Embarrassed I fled off to my ‘office’ and spent a few useless minutes re-arranging my supplies. Finally I could waste no more time and went back to Andrew.

“Easy case?” he asked me, as we settled back down into the stairway.

“It wasn’t a case for me,” I said, avoiding the subject. He wasn’t really interested anyway and returned to his cuddling.

As time went on, and on, however, I felt worse and worse. No other injuries came in. I could have been… no, I couldn’t, I told myself. You wouldn’t have been near done by now, and then, when the real work came in, you wouldn’t have been ready. Beth will do all that needs done. She probably isn’t even working on him anymore. Finally Andrew noticed my nervousness. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. I actually probably wouldn’t have minded telling him, but not with the others around. He squeezed me and looked into my face. “Nothing,” I repeated, looking around at the others.

“Later?” he whispered into my ear.

“Yeah, later,” I whispered back.

“Everybody up!” Greg said, suddenly. “Looks like we have a bit of an attack coming in.”

I hurried downstairs, arriving with a dozen other girls, some of them out of breath and disheveled. Since no patients seemed to be arriving just at that second I went off to see how Julies husband was doing. Beth met me at the door, “He died a few minutes ago,” she said. “He’s already resurrected and on his way back to the front lines. I let he and Julie spend a couple of minutes together, but he left when the alert was called.”

“Was it bad?” I asked.

“Pretty bad. Pretty painful, and we just couldn’t stop the blood loss.”

“I should’ve…”

“You should’ve done exactly what you did, and you know it,” Beth said. “Now pull yourself together, we should be getting casualties soon.”

“I…”

“You’re the doctor. Cool, calm, collected, impersonal… that’s your job. Don’t worry, you get bloody enough.”

“I…”

“Doctor,” a girl said, hurrying up. I knew her name, too, if only I could think of it. “We have our first case, and he has a slashed artery.”

I hurried off and, The Creator be blessed, it was a ‘red’ case. Indeed it was a simple one. The enemy had gotten a good bit on his left arm, up above the elbow and, in spite of my nurses best efforts, the blood was still spurting out. “Clamp,” I yelled, and some girl handed me one. Seconds later I had had the artery clamped. “Scalpel,” I said, and soon was busy getting the flesh cut back enough to allow me to work at the artery…

“There,” I said, ten minutes later, “I think that will hold. Keep an eye on it though.”

“Can someone else close,” Jane asked, from my elbow. “Beth is calling for you in the next room.”

This was a good job for Jane, I thought. Right up her alley… running messages. Jane wasn’t really here, of course, not in full sim. She was just doing glasses and gloves. But it worked well enough. “What do you have, Beth?”

“Bowel,” she said to me, and I cursed. Not out loud, of course. We were trying hard to attempt to keep someone alive with a bowel wound, given the very basic equipment we would have to work with in the field. But it needed to be tried, and we had some nice new techniques… new primitive techniques. “I have it resected,” she said, holding it out to me. The wound itself, in the flesh, wasn’t that bad. And it wasn’t that bad a bowel nick.

I took the bowel, after washing my hands in our feverwash, and Beth, beside me, started barking orders for the abdominal wash. As I cleaned and closed the bowel I washed them. This was the technique… basically filling and emptying the abdomen with feverwash over and over again, hoping to both rinse out all of the bowel contents lost inside there and to prevent bugs from growing from what was left.

It was powerful stuff, the feverwash and, as we all knew, not exactly pleasant stuff. The boy, at his other end, was moaning and vomiting powerfully. Vomiting was good, actually, as it meant he would have less stomach contents to move down into the bowel. Who knows, we might save him. Although he himself would probably rather die quickly than live through this.

The bowel finished I put it back in, rearranging the contents a bit to fit in in, and checking to see that nothing was kinked or anything. The other girls finished their washing, and I began cleaning and sewing the outside wound. I had just gotten started when Jane, clearing her throat, said, “When you’re done Julie really needs you…”

I looked at Beth, sighed, and she took over…

—

“Ooooh,” I said, letting the hot water play over me that night. “I don’t think I have ever been so tired.”

“And yet all you did was stand there,” Andrew said, watching me. It was one of ‘those nights’. I still can’t tell you how he knew, but it was ‘OK’ for him to watch me tonight. He wasn’t even all that ‘interested’ either. I think he was exhausted as well.

“Stand there working frantically, and then move to the next room and do it all over again. I don’t think I finished a single patient all day!”

He came in the shower and started rubbing my shoulders and then my back, while I moaned in pain and pleasure… my shoulders hurt abominably. “Tension, my love, tension,” he said. “This was good practice for you, but you need to remember it is all simulation.”

“All too real simulations. And the emotions of the other girls aren’t simulated. Higher, please,” I said. His hands had been straying lower and, while I knew we were going to go there, I really wanted his hands back on my shoulders. He really was strong, this my partner. “Oh, yes!” I said, almost screamed, when he got back to my shoulder. My right shoulder was almost on fire.

“Well, that’s true,” he said. One thing I really liked about him is he could keep working even while talking. I tended to forget what I was doing with my hands (annoying him mightily) whenever I got interested in what I was saying. “we boys don’t tend to do the whole ‘relationship’ thing much.”

“Higher, please,” I said again…

—

Day 300, morning

I had been expecting it since forever, but the beep and the red light still took me by surprise. So much by surprise that I just stood there, staring in shock as the door opened. “Oh, Aliya!!” June said, coming over to me and pulling me out of the booth by main force. “Oh, Aliya, I am so glad for you!”

I cried. It was too much. It was just way too much. Yesterday, last night, I had almost been able to forget who I was partnered with, but now… now I was carrying his baby! Someone who had signed up just to force me to partner with him and now… oh, I cried. How could I…?

“Come here, dear,” June said, pulling at me. I thought she was taking me to the separate room where all of the pregnant women simmed, but instead she pulled me over to a corner, forcing me to sit and then sitting right next to me. The girl in charge of the booth, a bit bemused, sent a girl over with my robe and, when I was decently attired, June started in.

“You really need to talk to me, dear,” she said, in a voice that brooked no opposition. “What has happened between Andrew and you? It has been horrible to watch. The two of you were doing so well, and then that one morning…”

“He isn’t who you think he is,” I said, trying, and failing, to keep my voice down. “He… he…” I shut up, appalled. He was my partner, how could I betray his confidence like this. He was the father of my…. I broke down crying again.

“I know exactly who he is,” June said, her voice harsh. “But all I would need to know is that he is the partner The Creator assigned you.”

“The Creator?” I said, “The Creator didn’t assign us. Some computer back on New Texas…”

“Don’t blaspheme, dear, no matter how upset you are. Of course The Creator picked him. The Creator is in charge of everything, and He certainly took care to give Andrew exactly the helpmeet he needed. So you can be sure that’s who you are.”

“But what about me?” I wailed, getting glances from other girls…but I was beyond caring.

“What do you mean?”

“What about me? Does The Creator care who I get for my partner?”

“Of course He cares, didn’t I just say that?”

“No, you said that I was the right help-meet for him. But is he right for me?”

June looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking Greek. “But dear, The Creator… He… He made you to be Andrew’s help-meet. How can there be anything more right for you than that?”

“I…. it isn’t fair, I said, petulantly.

“Fair? Who said anything about fair? The Creator isn’t ‘fair’. If He was, we would all be dead. But He is just, and merciful. And you need to pull yourself together and start being obedient, or you are going to have a horrible pregnancy. Pregnancy is hard enough without fighting against The Creator the entire time.”

“I….” I hiccuped several times, “but how can I?! You don’t know who he is!”

“Yes, yes I do, dear,” she said, very quietly. “He told Martin the whole story right after his letter. And Martin yelled at him, I can assure you. Not telling you all that time! But he is your partner, and your lord. And you need to act like it.”

I stared at her, my eyes wide. “You knew?!”

“Yes, dear, Martin told me, of course. We have been hoping that you two would reconcile. Is that really all you are upset about?”

“Well, yes,” I said. How could she accept this so casually?

“Well, that was silly of you,” she said. “Here you are with a group where half the men have committed quite deliberate crimes, a couple of them even rape, and you are worried about a partner who, stupidly and foolishly, perhaps, joined the Colonization Force just to avoid the humiliation of final choice… and then lied about it? You work with Jane and… well, I know you know some of what she goes through. Now, tell me honestly, does Andrew ever do things like that?”

“No!” I said, appalled, thinking of how patiently he had rubbed my back last night. Well, sort of patiently. But he rubbed it for an hour or so before we had moved on to bed play, and he had even started that by rubbing my legs!

“Well, then, stop complaining and stop whining and start being a good partner. If nothing else, for your child. It will soak up all of the emotions between you like a sponge.”

“I… I never thought….”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “So start now. And stop using your old name, it is just an insult to him. Haven’t you noticed how everyone else has changed?”

I stared at her. This wasn’t what partnering was all about! Sure my parents had loved each other, but they had always kept to the rules. My dad had never insisted that my mom…

But this wasn’t Andrew insisting. He had insisted on some things, some spiritual things. Praying together, headcoverings… but he had never insisted I take his name. He had always turned his back when I wanted him to. He had never… but this wasn’t Andrew. This was June, and she was just talking to me. This was my spiritual ‘mother’ and she was telling me that I was sinning, big time. But how could I…?

“I need to get you in sim,” she said, probably taking my silence for rejection. “You are late already. A good reason, but you’re late.”

Finally she took me into the room, the room where the pregnant women were. They looked odd, with their gloves and goggles, all moving around oddly. Of course, the girls in sim suits always looked odd as well, but this was, well, different… since they were mostly wearing their robes or uniforms. “Ok, get up here,” June said, taking me over to one spot on the floor. I didn’t really have to get ‘up’, it was just a circle on the floor… kind of a dull grey. I stood on it gingerly, but it didn’t move… despite the fact I saw it rolling freely under the feet of the other girls as they ‘moved’ about. Once I was there she handed me the gloves dangling from the ceiling, and helped me put on the left hand one… once my right hand was already encased. “This will be very odd for you,” she said. “You’ve probably gotten very used to regular simming. You won’t be able to feel anything except with your hands, and you will be able to see this room as well as the sim. We do that because the moving circles aren’t omniscient… every once in a while someone steps off one. Ready?” she asked, and handed me the goggles.

“Aliya!” Andrew said, spotting me where I stood, blinking in confusion. This was odd! And I felt unsteady on my feet, although that was probably an illusion. “What took you so long?” he asked, hugging me… which I did my best to return. I could at least feel him with my hands… it was bizarre not to feel him against my chest. “Are you OK?”

“Yes,” I said, “very, very OK,” I said… and he looked confused but Beth, who had been standing nearby listening and, truth be told had probably seen me come in the sim room ‘through a glass darkly’ came up and hugged me,

“Oh, Aliya!” she screamed and, my poor partner still looking confused, a dozen other girls came over and hugged me. “She’s pregnant, you silly,” Beth said, and, finally, his face lit up.

“Really?” he asked and then a shadow of fear crossed his face.

“Yes, really!” I said. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I asked, hugging him again.

“Yes… yes,” he said, fear still evident in his face. I changed my hug into a kiss, doing my best to make it a very, very intimate kiss (which was very hard without any feedback) and I moved my hands into a ‘cuddle’… yes, right in front of everyone. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person to do it, although he and I never did. I did my best to watch his face (not easy with that kind of kiss) and I saw him relax. I assumed he moved his hands, too, but I couldn’t really tell. This new sim was annoying!

Once everyone one left us (which our cuddle definitely helped with, it was kind of a standing rule that you ignored people who were cuddling or ‘otherwise engaged’) he whispered in my ear, “Are you OK with it?”

“Of course,” I said, “haven’t we been trying?”

“Yes, but…”

“That’s over,” I said, decisively. “Forget about that.”

“But…”

“I said forget about it. I think I have the right to make that request. If you don’t think so we could ask Martin.”

“Ask Martin?” he said, his face paling, “but…”

“He already knows,” I said. “June gave me a big lecture about it, and how I was behaving. So, I’m sorry already and if you could, please, stop talking about it and kiss me again.”

He did, and he did, but of course I couldn’t feel any of it. “How’s the battle going?” I asked, as he walked me over to my surgeons tent after our kiss and cuddle (none of which I felt! This new sim was annoying!!)

“Well, it’s a lot harder than we thought it would be,” he said. “They, the enemy, seem to have some kind of territorial instinct thing, so whenever we kill some of them, more move into that territory to take their place. So we’re basically having to just build the wall through constant battle.”

And we didn’t know about this territorial thing? How did the computer know?”

“We don’t quite know. It could be it is just a testing thing, or it could be that the computer knows how to model the enemy behavior but not how to tell us about it. Anyway, it is what we have to deal with.”

This was a sim, of course, so time could have basically stood still during our absence. But we were working with three separate shifts so the battle was always raging. “Aliya,” Jane said, from where she stood by the door of my tent, “congratulations and we need you…”

Andrew laughed, then turned and whispered in my ear, “I need you too, never forget that. And I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said, willing my heart to mean what I said, and to act on my will. With one last kiss (and, I think, he did something intimate with his hands, but I couldn’t feel it, he left for his tower, and I left for my tent.

—

I felt really guilty when I saw him next. I had missed two whole break sessions, due to an absolute overload of patients. Cuddling was sure not to be fun for me, even if I did manage to scrape together the desire for it, but I knew Andrew would miss it. And, coming right after the announcement, I was sure he would worry that I was doing it on purpose.

“Andrew?” Greg said, “I finally gave him a break, since you didn’t come. But it’s OK, you two can still have time.”

I looked around, “But where is he?” I asked. Greg laughed,

“He’s over the edge,” he said, and pointed. I looked and, sure enough, there was a rope dangling over the edge. “What on earth is he doing there?” I asked, going and looking down. “Andrew?!” I called.

He looked up from where he dangled, several feet below me. “Oh, hello love, coming,” he said, and putting something in his pocket, he climbed up the rope.

“Whatever were you doing?” I asked, helping him over the edge.

“Come, and I’ll show you he said, taking me by the hand (which I could feel) and running me down the stairs. “Come, come look…” he said, dragging me outside.

“What, what am I looking at?” I asked.

“Look!” he said, sounding triumphant and turning me around. I stared. At the tower. At… “The New Texas Flag?” I said.

“I couldn’t think of what else to draw, but I plan on doing more. Do you like it?”

I could hear the excitement in his voice, so I would have said I liked it anyway, but I did like it, actually. The tower, before, had been all boring stone, and now it was… I dunno how to say it. It was more alive, more personal, more like something in the middle of a war should be.

It’s great,” I said. He admired it for another few seconds, and then began admiring me. I still couldn’t feel any of it!! After a few minutes he stopped, “Are you OK?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” I said.

“You don’t seem to be, ummm…”

“I can’t feel any of it, with this new sim,” I said.

“What?!” he said, stopping and sitting up. “Why?” he asked.

“I am only wearing goggles and gloves,” I said. “I can feel you with my hands, though,” I said, grinning at him.

“But, then…?”

“Look, almost all the other girls are in the same situation,” I said. “They manage, we’ll manage.”

“But…” he said, and I kissed him to get him to shut up.

—

Day 344

The next two weeks were such chaos that I didn’t have a scrap of energy for anything except duty. Andrew stopped, without my even saying anything about it, turning around for showers, and I enjoyed his frank admiration even while I struggled with keeping my emotions under control. It made our evening routine quicker though (I’ll let you figure out how and why on your own) which I was glad for as I needed all my energy for my work. I learned tons more about surgery than during all my classes, and we even had an outbreak of some horrible rash (which I never got, and wouldn’t have felt anyway) that we, after a long struggle, figured out was being caused by some plants that the boys were always having to go through. Andrew caught it really bad, and the computer even had one boy die when the leader (without asking me, I can assure you) had them burn the plants. He inhaled the vapor and was dead, from the reaction, within minutes. I’m afraid I got a little disrespectful toward the leader just then, but Andrew later asked forgiveness for me.

The battle went fine. We won, anyway, and got our wall extended all the way to the river, put the chemicals in, and all that. Andrew could tell you more, I was mostly busy with surgery and all.

So, anyway, it was two weeks more of sim and two weeks before I had energy for anything. So it was two weeks before, after actually delivering one girl of her baby, before (after showering and taking a short break) I got a look at the statistics board. “June?” I said, “What’s up with the board?”

June never did pay much attention to the board, but came over when I called and looked at it with me. “What’s different?” she asked.

“There’s a bunch of people missing!” I said. I had actually been looking at Andrew’s ranking, which showed him rising steadily over the last two weeks. I guess he was doing really good in this sim. But what I had noticed after that was, “There are a whole bunch of people that have dropped out of the rankings. Julie’s partner, for example.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard? They’ve been assigned. They’re ship crew now. They moved, what was it, two days ago?”

“Ship crew? Really?” I wondered how I felt about that. I didn’t really think I wanted to be ship crew. I didn’t know what I did want. I always assumed we would be colonists. Most people were. I had been afraid that we were to be soldiers. Most of the infertile couples were assigned that duty, for the disgusting if understandable reason that if they got killed no breeding power would be lost. “Are they assigning anyone else yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. Ship crew is probably the first since, you know, we are already on board ship. They can get to work right away.”

That made sense, I supposed. I looked again at the standings. Poor Andrew. He was moving up but, like he said, he really wasn’t ‘good’ at anything. His overall ranking was OK, but none of the individual ones.

Ironically it was later than, when Andrew and I were on our way home, that I ran into Julie herself. “Wow, Julie,” I said, “look at you!”

She did look good in her grey’s. Good, but harassed. “Oh, hi, Aliya. Nice seeing you.”

But I was having none of that, and grabbed her by the arm. “How is it going? What’s it like being ship crew?”

She stopped. “Oh, it’s great! My partner especially he likes it. It’s how we got in, you know, he’s really good at ship handling. We’ll be getting to go back to New Texas to shuttle people up and down, and I’ll like that, you know, getting to see my folks more often.”

That did sound good. I hadn’t thought of that. I had another question, though, “But… how is the life? I mean, the dorm and all.”

She flushed. “Ah, well, yes, that is hard. Really, really hard. My partner he does OK but… my folks were pretty private and all and, well, living all together like that.” She looked at me. “Well, you can understand that. That was always a very hard thing for you, too.”

I nodded my head and, just then, her wristband beeped. She looked at it, paled, and ran off with, “I’ve got to go…”

I looked at Andrew, who grinned. “I guess it’s good we haven’t been assigned yet,” he said. And then, more seriously, “You would have a problem with their kind of living, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh,” I said, breezily, and not at all accurately, “I’m sure I’ll do OK. The sims were really helpful, you know, getting me used to that kind of thing.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and I flushed. I’m sure he knew I was lying, but what could I do about it? I knew it was necessary, common logic told me that once I thought about it. So, being necessary, I would have to adapt. And it wouldn’t help me to worry about it now, would it?

“Ah, well, sufficient unto the day,” he said, echoing my thoughts in a rather spiritualized manner. “I’m sure you’ll adapt. You’ve adapted to worse things.”

I looked at him. That was the closest he had come to mentioning… my little problem… since I had told him not to. But I guess it was an OK way to mention it. “How did your day go?” I asked him, taking him by the arm.

“Oh, really well,” he said. “I have some art to show you.”

“You do?” I asked, pleased. “How did you get the time?”

“The computer has been giving me more time to do art,” he said, as he reached out and opened the door. “I guess… oh, hi guys,” he said to XXX and YYY, who were busy getting dressed, “How are you guys doing?”

“Just great,” YYY said, tightening his belt over his shirt, “we got word that we are going to be assigned today.”

“Really?” Andrew said, pulling his shirt off. “What to?”

“We don’t know,” YYY said, “We’re hoping soldiers, of course.”

I looked at XXX, as I pulled my own shirt off. I knew that she was terribly disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant, but we both knew that YYY had joined up in order to be a soldier, so she had been as encouraging as she could be. Her face was a study but, overall, she did seem pleased. Of course, it wasn’t like soldiers couldn’t have kids.

“Well, leave us a note or something so we’ll know, eh?” Andrew said, fiddling with his comp pad. “We’ll miss running into you each of your mornings.”

YYY laughed, grabbing XXX by the hand and pulling her toward the door. “OK, ok, so we’re not so fast in the mornings. You don’t have to rub it in!”

They left and, as I finished undressing (I never could bring myself to finish while they were still there, although it was perfectly legal and the computer was probably docking me for it. Julie had been right, I was going to find group living hard. ) Andrew pulled up some new pictures. “Oh, Andrew!” I said, getting into the shower. “Those are marvelous.”

They were, too, I wasn’t just saying that. He had done a series of animal studies, including that wolf with scales thing that we had fought on that one sim. And he had done a koala bear, too, which was one of my absolute favorites.

“So, soldiers eh?” Andrew said, joining me. “Is that what you want?” he looked down at my stomach, as if he could see the baby growing… which of course he couldn’t, even with me naked, I was nowhere near far enough along for that. “Or do you want to do ship, like Julie?”

“I want to go home…” I said, and then, realizing what that must have sounded like, added “with you, of course.”

“Of course,” he said, kissing me. “But seriously, what job do you want?”

“What does it matter?” I asked. “They’re not going to give me a job because I ask for it. And it’s not like…” I stopped, panicked.

“It’s not like I’m good at anything, in particular,” he said, bitterly.

“I didn’t mean…” I started, but that was a useless lie. “I love you,” I said, “and you don’t need to be good at anything in particular. You are good at lot’s of things in general, and that is what colonists need.”

“So you want to be a colonist?” he asked.

“I guess so,” I said, doing my best to distract him from my foolish comment. I didn’t really care, but if I could convince him that he was good at what I wanted to be. “I mean, the colony’s need doctors and midwives, and you are great at colony skills.”

“Well, not great,” he said, but I got busier with my distracting and he shut up.

—

Day 345 evening I think

“Well, they did get to be soldiers,” Andrew said to me when he met me in the hallway. “I got a message from YYY today. Apparently he and about five hundred other guys were working with the ship types to make them a dorm. We’ll be getting new roommates.”

We did, too, and I was incredibly excited. It was AAA and BBB and little Lydia and the baby. Lydia was excited too, running around her mother’s skirts and hugging my knees. “Aliya,” AAA said, kissing me, “Andrew. We had no idea, we didn’t even bother to look it up. They kicked us out of our room and just told us to come here. It is so nice it is you.”

It may have been nice, indeed I’m sure it was, but that didn’t mean they stayed long to greet us. They were always rather duty bound, AAA and her husband.

“So,” I said, as we lay together later, “one thousand people picked to be soldiers?”

“Yes. That will be all for them, though. We should be meeting their ship in a couple of weeks, and they will be taken off to their advanced training. And then off to the front. But the others, the ship people and all, they should be getting more and more over the next few days, or so I’ve heard.”

It became a habit, over the next few days, for us to gather, each morning, at the board, and see who had gotten chosen for each job. We all knew that, if it was us, we would get told off individually, but there was still that thrill of suspicion that our name would not be on the list. And then, finally, one day…

Day 350 morning

“It seems to have slowed down,” Jane said.

“It seems to have stopped!” I said. “Two couples yesterday, and none today. Five thousand chosen in total. The rest of us must be colonists.”

One thousand in total had been chosen for ship crew, and four thousand for soldiers. How did I feel about that? Not being chosen. Did I want to be a colonist? It was the safest path except for serving on a ship. And, my heart suddenly leapt, I would only have to share a house with my family. Sure, we would be in tight quarters, if the video’s were anything to go by. But it would just be Andrew, I, and our children. I patted my stomach. I could live with that. I would have to but, still, I could live with that. And maybe we would get put somewhere, some forest or something, where it was easy to build.

“I have to get to work,” I said to June and went and got on my glasses and goggles. Appropriately enough, the lady teaching us announced that we would be learning how to make bread with grains other than wheat today. As I kneaded my first batch I sighed, contentedly, to myself. If this was to be my life, I could live with it.