Russ’ Version–>

The End of my life

Much Ado about Something

We would be putting on ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ for our graduation party, and I was getting to play Beatrice, a part which pleased me greatly. My friend Jon had gotten the part of Benedict, and was sitting across the circle from me as we ran through our lines. We had reached the scene where I got to listen through a hedge to my cousin and the others talking about how much he loved me, and he was grinning at me when, in the silence, a voice from a girl sitting by the window broke in, urgently, “The Cull!”
The Cull?! I thought to myself, But it is Wednesday!
We all came to school in a bit of a panic on Mondays, as that was the day when almost all culling took place… Rounding up partners for anyone who had confessed to a crime, one not worthy of death. Usually they came for girls as most criminals were boys. Some boys did get culled, although, and so our boys were nervous on Monday’s too.
But we usually got to relax the rest of the week. Only a boy who fought his sentence got pulled in on a regular weekday like today… and as they tended to get convicted anyway, and added a whipping to their sentence for their pains, almost everybody that was actually guilty just confessed and got to spend their last couple of days with their folks.
We all tried to concentrate on the play, but it was impossible, even for our teacher. We were all too busy counting the seconds in our heads, knowing exactly how long it took The Cull to enter the building, get to the stairs, climb them and… we all heard the door at the top of the stairs open and knew that it wasn’t someone from one of the classes downstairs that they were looking for. Our ears strained to hear every footstep, which came closer and closer and then, painfully loud in the silence, our door opened and we saw them.
I hadn’t seen these two before, but everyone knew by the way they were dressed who they were. How they were dressed, and what the binder held in his hand. The reader, consulting his comp, cleared his throat and began his standard speech. “We represent the government of New Texas, and we have come because one of you has been chosen to serve our nation in the Colonization Force.” He paused, and my heart pounded, loudly, in my ears. “Aliyah Brendon…” I heard, and I almost fainted. I knew the rest of his speech, everyone knew this speech. Hundreds of videos had this speech in their beginning, as some ‘hero’ was chosen, culled: “Aliyah Brendon, you have been chosen, for the good of the nation, to serve as our representative in the war against the alien Bnentarri…”
He stopped and the binder started walking toward me. My eyes raced frantically around the room, hoping that some boy would claim me as his partner; but they were all keeping their eyes carefully focused on the ground, at the teacher, at the reader… anywhere but at me. It wasn’t too late, surely one of them would…
And then I felt it. The binder took my hand, held it up, and I felt the cold smoothness of the metal encircling my wrist. And then I heard a loud snap and, finally, forced myself to look down at my wrist. My wrist with encircled bright yellow wristband of a cull, an involuntary recruit.
I had always scorned those girls who broke down and screamed; screams you could hear even from downstairs. I had always told myself that, if it happened to me, I would not break down, I would not scream. But I failed, miserably. When the band closed around my wrist, when I looked down and saw the finality of that awful yellow band, I let out a cry I am sure they could hear in the next building, let alone downstairs, “But why? Why me?”
The reader, in the silence, answered my cry as if it had been a question and not a scream marking the end of my entire life. “There was an unpartenered recruit inducted today in Victoria. You will meet him tomorrow on the recruiting ship.”
I looked up, a ray of hope entering my heart. “A recruit?” Not a prisoner? Not some monster of… my mind fled from what might have been. A recruit. I straightened up. I would show them now what I was made of, even if I had failed at first.
“Very well,” I said, taking a deep breath. I stood to my legs… which were shaking with nervousness. I knew what I needed to say: what I had agreed to say when I signed up for finishing school. It took another breath, and managed to get the words out: “For the good of the nation I am ready to go.”
The teacher reached up to the wall and pressed the ‘salute’ button. The whole class rose to their feet and gave me the NT salute.
“Good bye!” my friend Marcy said, her voice shaking with emotion. We weren’t great friends but I knew I would miss her, and she looked like she would miss me too. Although not enough to volunteer to go with me, I was sure.
“Serve well,” Jon said, finally looking at me, his eyes filled with guilt, and fear. But I didn’t yell at him, as much as he deserved it. Although, if I had been in his place, would I have ‘saved’ him?
“Breed well!” Mark said, with a grin. Mark had never been one to stand on ceremony. I knew his crude comment that I knew would earn him a whipping by the teacher once I was gone… but I also knew he didn’t care as long as he was able to push the envelope and get attention. It was my job to breed well, but it was considered very crass to speak of it, especially now.
The reader nodded, and turned toward the door. The binder stood, waiting for me to follow him, which I did amidst the salutes of the rest of my classmates.
The binder followed me casually. He could have, and would have, stopped me if I had tried to run, but everyone knew that even if I had gotten away it would not have been for more than a few minutes at best. The bracelet, if taken a certain distance from the binder, would flash, and whistle, and administer a punishing and debilitating series of shocks. I had even seen it do so, once, when I was younger. I had been walking with my parents past a school when a young man had come out at a dead run. He hadn’t even gotten off the school grounds before he had been stopped by the pain, and lay writhing on the parking lot.
When I got to the hallway all the rest of the boys and girls lining the hallway and saluting. Supposedly they were honoring me but here, at least, I figured they were mostly congratulating themselves that it wasn’t them that was chosen. That had always been my reaction, anyway, until today: ‘The Creator bless you on your trip’ coming loudly out my mouth while ‘Thank The Creator it wasn’t me’ echoed through my heart.
I followed the reader down the hallway, down the stairs, and down the next hallway; most kids just mouthing platitudes but some of them blessing me by name. One girl was even crying: Susan, my best friend outside my family. And my cousin, Brett, called out, from where he stood, downstairs, “I’ll let everyone know!”
The school would officially inform my parents of course. But Brett would, I knew, dash home to get there before that news. No one wanted to find out about culling from the officials. Brett wasn’t even eligible for culling… his older sister and her partner had volunteered and he had gotten her exemption, so he was just in finishing school to get his degree. His prospective partenere was in the same class, and had an exemption herself, so they were both tension free.
I looked toward the end of the hallway where Mr. Kvorack, the principal, was standing waiting for us. I heard, rather than saw, my class and the other classes from upstairs, following me down the stairs and then down the hallway and up to the principal.
He was standing in front of the list; the placard on the hall with the names, and assignments, of all of ‘our’ culls… all the culls from the founding of the school. I looked at the bottom of the list, where my name would be appearing soon… my name, then my partner’s name, then our assignment. Year after year students would walk by the list, as I had done so many times, and look at my name… honoring me for my sacrifice, honoring me… all while hoping not to imitate me!
We came, finally, to a stop, in front of the principal, his secretary, and the vice principal (and, yes, I was just as scared of him as everyone else was). They were all in their suits with the Hallettsville colored tie: a kind of maroon that I had never really liked.
“Aliyah,” the principal said. “I have saluted many a cull, but few like you. New Texas, in losing you, is losing a great writer. The Colonization Force, in gaining you, is gaining something that none of us can tell.”
He looked at the rest of the crowd, “Each of you, as I did in my time, came to finishing school knowing that being culled was a risk you were taking. It wasn’t why you came here; you came here because you were academically focused, and wanted the intensive teaching we could provide. Or you were career focused, especially you boys, and wanted the jump that our school provides.”
“Or, perhaps especially for you girls, perhaps you weren’t ready to settle down with a partner and children.”
“But you all knew that this day was a possibility. You knew that one day your nation, your race, might call upon you to serve, as we have called up on Aliyah to serve.”
He looked at me, “Aliyah, you have been called to serve, serve well. We will follow your progress with great interest.”
I nodded my head and, to the cheers and shouts of the entire hallway I walked out, following the reader, and the kids ran out after us onto the sidewalk to shout and cheer.

#
I finally got outside, walking between the two flags whipping in the stiff breeze: the New Texas flag with its single star, and the Hallettsville flag, A red field with one of those old fashioned cannons shooting out sparks and smoke.
The van stood in front of us, the van that I had seen (it or its cousins) dozens of times parked in front of our school or driving down our road. Painted on one side, the side nearest me, with the NT flag, I knew the other side was painted with the stars and galaxy of the CF flag. It didn’t always carry culls, of course. Prisoners and, especially from smaller towns like Hallettsville, recruits would be taken from our town to Victoria; which was the nearest shuttle base.
But my ordeal wasn’t over. Our school was on a pretty popular street and the first kid that had seen the Cull Van had, no doubt, called out to his family and friends and the whole street was out, standing on the sidewalk, and cheering me. I waved back; as I didn’t want to get known as a jerk, and the kids got even louder, waving and cheering excitedly. I walked by these kids, these families, every day, and today would be my last time to see them. Probably my last time on the planet, unless I ever got to come back on leave or something.
The reader opened the back door for me, and, with a last wave, I pulled up my skirts and hopped in, sitting in the middle of one of the rows of wooden seats. I had come so close! Eleven months ago, when I had first come to the finishing school, I had lived every day in fear that I would be chosen, culled. Then my fear had settled on Mondays. And then, as my year neared an end, I had begun to really hope that I would make it through.
<put a crying fit in here somewhere, more emotions>
I could have been partnered; protected from the cull. I had had three offers. But two of them had actually been boys who wanted to sign up! And I wanted to stay home. And the other boy… like an idiot I had said to myself that I could do better, that, once out of school, I could find someone in a big town, someone more intellectual. He had been nice but… he wanted to be a plumber, and stay right in Hallettsville! He had partnered with another girl a week after he had asked me (he had begged me not to tell anyone he had asked me; which I had done. Poor girl, spending the rest of her life as ‘second place’).
I remembered my father taking me on a walk, right after I had announced, at dinner, that I was going to go for finishing school. He looked different than I had ever seen him; almost angry and he never got angry.
“Aliyah, we need to talk.”
“Daddy?”
“Listen. It is your decision whether or not to go for finishing school. I know what you want, you want to get a job where you can make a name for yourself.”
“Listen, Aliyah… you’re smart. You’re incredibly smart. I don’t know where you got it, definitely not from me. But you’re not always smart about everything, and I want you to make sure you’re not making a mistake.”
“You know the odds for finishing school. Especially for girls. Odds are you won’t finish, you won’t get to go for that ‘interesting’ writing job you want so much. Odds are, two years from now, we’ll be sending video messages back and forth to some colony planet where you’re raising some rapist’s kids.”
“I know the odds, Daddy, but I want…”
“I know what you want, but I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to promise me something. I want you to promise me that you’re ready to live with the consequences of your actions.”
“What… What do you mean, Daddy?”
“You’re choosing this. I know you could have partnered by now; and you could still go to final choice this year, you know you could. So you’re choosing this.”
“I know, Daddy, but…”
“Then I want you to make me a promise. I want you to promise me that when they come for you, when they come to make you partner with some rapist, and to live on some planet where all you get to eat are beetles and tea leaves, that you’re going to use all of strong will and all of your intelligence to make the best partnership I have ever seen.”
“Daddy?”
“You’re choosing finishing school. That means you’re choosing to risk being culled. I want you to promise me that, if you do get culled, you’ll understand that you have chosen to get culled. You have chosen to partner with some boy you don’t know. You have chosen to make your life, with him, on some strange planet. Do you understand?”
In that moment I almost changed my mind. Daddy let me just walk along, not saying anything.
“Are you mad at me, Daddy?”
“Oh, darling, no, I’m not mad. I don’t understand you, I’ll admit that. I can’t stand the thought of you being culled. I’d love it, your mother would love it, if you had already partnered, settled down, and were bulging out with my latest grandkid. But I think we have always known that you were kind of different, that way, and we had to let you… be you… whoever that is.”
“But I want you to be honest about it, and fair about it, to your partner, your unit, whoever. No one is forcing you to do this, you’re choosing it yourself…”
I started to feel like I was going to cry, which I wasn’t going to do, especially in front of these two guys, so I scrunched up and looked over the front bench at my companions. They looked bored. This was, obviously, what they did every day, so, for them, there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about today, however much it represented the end of my life.
But, “Say, do you know?” I asked, leaning over the seat, “Is the recruit I am partnered with a life recruit or a short term?”
The reader picked up his pad, while my heart raced. Maybe he had just signed up for five years. Maybe we would come back and I could still…
“Life,” he said. “Sorry. You had plans? Already had a job lined up?”
“Yeah,” I said. Of course I did. Finishing schools were all hotbeds of recruiters. “I had already started my internship.”
“Doing what?”
“Writing. I’m an out-writer for the Advocate. I’ve already had some articles published, and a few of my short stories. I was scheduled to go full time next week.”
“Whoa, sorry. I guess it’s kind of hard to break in as a writer as a partenere?”
“Almost impossible. You know the courses at the finishing schools are intense, and really focused. I signed up for writing, of course, plus a couple of minor things, and I’ve been doing really well. Can’t exactly do that when you’re busy with a husband and babies.”
“I had a friend that didn’t so so well in finishing school, and she just dropped out and partnered. She’s got an bun in the oven and everything. She’ll never write, not really.”
“I never even dreamed of going to finishing school, myself,” the binder said. “I had an exemption, and used most of my year to train for the recruiting service. We don’t just do this, you know. We also do interviews. Those are interesting.”
I had a cousin who was a reader, and I had, before, always admired him: with his dark blue uniform shirt and pants, his shiny black boots. These two were wearing just the same, but, somehow, in the back of the van it looked different.
I had known he did interviews, although he was forbidden from talking about them, of course. I remember my interviews… those had been incredibly intense. They asked all sorts of questions, some that made sense and some that were just weird. And you had to answer truthfully, too… their machines could tell. I remember crying a couple of times during mine.
I sat back, feeling oddly out of place, sitting here in the back of this van in my starched white school shirt and short maroon cotton skirt. There were nothing but wooden benches, four of them, so I felt like I ought to be wearing a denim skirt, a working shirt, and a bandanna… like I always did when we worked on my uncle’s ranch during the summer and harvest.
How had I gotten myself into this? Why had it been so important to me to go to finishing school? Or was it… rejecting a partnership? Rejecting children? Rejecting the life that my parents had mapped out for me?
Shaking my head at emotions I couldn’t handle, I got up and tried to look out of the small window in the back doors, but I didn’t know the trip to Victoria well enough to recognize any landmarks. My eyes teared up at the sight of the New Texas plains.
My family lived in the city, but almost all of my girlfriends lived out on farms and things, so these plains, these farms, these ranches, were nearly as much home to me as my own bedroom. I would so miss them…
“Are we nearly there?” I asked, going back up to the front, and leaning over the bench. The reader, turning away from the window smiled and looked at his watch.
“Ten minutes or so,” he said. “We’ll drop you off and then we have to go to the jail house in Victoria.”
That sentence killed any desire I might have had to keep talking to him, and I slumped back in my seat. Sure, I was going to partner with a recruit, but I was still a ‘cull’, people weeded from our society, usually to marry criminals. That is how all of my family and friends back home would think of me, those were the people I would be associating with. Brett would have told them, at least, that I was partnered with a recruit… except he didn’t know! Would he ask Jon? What would mother be thinking?
I thought back to my class. What would they be doing right now? Talking about me, no doubt. Talking about who I would get for a partner (the boys and girls; the boys would have been wondering how awful a criminal I was getting, except that I was marrying a recruit.), talking about where I would get assigned (boys and girls), and when I would get pregnant (the girls. Even in finishing school that was our girls prime subject of conversation; that and who was likely to partner with who.)
I was, again, deep in my morbid ‘homesick’ mode when, suddenly, the van slowed, and turned. I looked out the window again, my heart racing. We were on the road that went to the shuttle zone. I recognized it. I had come here with my dad several times, picking up things for his business. Always before this had been a very exciting, and pleasurable, trip. Today…
The van drove past the warehouse my dad and I always picked things up and, my heart pounding out of my chest, I watched out the back window as it continued down the street. Finally it stopped.
#
I looked out the window, but I couldn’t see anything except the plains. The binder got out of his door, came around to the back and opened the door there, holding out his hand to help me down.
“You go in there,” he said, pointing, and I turned, and saw my fate. It wasn’t a very typical New Texas building. It was all made of plastic, or something similar, all white and shiny. Except the front, facing me, which was mostly that silvered glass; I suppose so real people didn’t have to look at us lowly culls. Flying overhead were, again, two flags. This time though, instead of the Hallettsville or Victoria flags, there was the dark blue stars and galaxy flag of the Colonization Force flying alongside the New Texas flag. Playing on the PA system was the local ‘patriotic’ station; some romantic song about two pathfinders that fall in love and partnering; totally ironic considering my situation.
The left side of the building, right next to the big, silvered, window, had a door with a girl, in skirts, on it, and the words “Female Induction”. I took a few steps toward the door and looked back. The binder and the reader were standing by the van, talking to each other, but still watching me casually. I suppose it would take a real idiot to run away from here, I thought. Where would you go? I sighed, walked the last few steps, and opened the door.
Inside the door, which was all silvery like the window, there was a small room, hardly ten by ten, with rows of benches all facing one of those ‘talk through’ windows like you have at an office. Behind the window was a woman, talking to a girl, a cull like me, her bracelet evident on her wrist. Just to the girl’s right was another door, leading toward the boy’s section.
There were only three girls on the benches, all sitting together on the front bench, nearest the girl at the window, all sitting together. The walls were covered with recruitment posters from all the services: Fleet, Soldiers, Colonists; even the Deep Space Miners and other minor branches. The same stupid station was playing over the PA in here, as well; with the girl just crooning about how much she loved the boy, how gorgeous he was, and all that.
I walked up and sat down on a bench, glancing at the other girls. They weren’t from our school; I mean, duh, they hadn’t come with me, had they? but I couldn’t help looking at their clothes. The one girl, one of the ones on the bench, was actually wearing a dress: a cotton print dress. I had no idea what school she came from. Maybe they had had the day off and they had inducted her from home, in her house dress.
The other girls on the bench, and the girl standing at the window, were wearing a uniform I recognized from a Victoria school: like ours only their shirt was white.
The girl up front was standing slumped, resigned, answering questions in a wooden voice. I couldn’t hear what she was saying at first but, as I sat on the bench, the girl stepped back and I heard, to my utter shock, the lady behind the window say, “Take off your clothes and hand them to me.”
If you are reading this and are from another planet, especially Newtonia or New Sparta, or even from another part of New Texas, and especially if you grew up in the CF, you probably don’t understand how shocking this was for me at the time. New Texas girls, at least in my time, never got naked in public. Boys, sure, you know, swimming and all. In private, well, we were a fairly new colony and it wasn’t like our houses were huge. We didn’t even have a bathroom at my house, just an outhouse, and I shared a bedroom with all my sisters, and my brothers too, when we had company. But in public? Without even a changing screen or anything?
The girl at the window must have been prepared for this, though, as she quickly stripped off all of her clothes without even a protest and put them in a box that the woman held out. Then the girl put her hand into a hole in the wall, again without being asked. Seconds later she pulled it out, bare, her cull bracelet gone. Then, following the ladies instructions, she turned and walked through a door next to the window.
“Next,” the woman said, sounding bored, and the girl on other the end of the bench from me got up.
The other girls and I scooched over, and just then two more girls came in the door I had just passed through; one of them sobbing bitterly. “We were going to be partners, we were!” she sobbed.
Stupid girl, I said to myself. Everyone knew if you could get a boy to partner with you registered and slept with him right away. No one would believe some story about what was going to happen. And it didn’t matter anyway. When the binder and reader showed up if you weren’t registered, or if the boy wasn’t present to claim you, you were out of luck. Well, at least unless you could prove physically that you had… hmmm. Anyway, everyone knew you didn’t wait. Ever! Not if you were subject to cull already.
The sobbing girl was accompanied by a guard, who held her arm tightly, and sat her down next to me. The girl looked at me, her eyes wild, but said nothing else, just sobbed. I had no idea what to do. I had no desire to hug her, but it seemed the thing to do, so I reached out my arm and she flopped over on top of me, her long black hair cascading down my lap. She was as skinny as a rail, I wondered if she ever ate.
“Next!” the lady at the window said, loudly, looking right at me and looking up, startled, I realized that she had finished the other girls and the girl in front of me was just going through the doorway. With difficulty I disentangled myself from the girl on my lap and went to the window, just as the door behind me opened, again, to more girls.
“Who do you want your exemption to go to?” the woman asked me, distracting me from the new arrivals, two of whom were actually chatting with each other as if they were on their way to a party or something! I know we were supposed to be all excited about being patriotic and all, but they seemed ridiculous!
“My sister, ma`am,” I said, having to force myself to think, to answer, “my oldest unpartnered sister, Beth-any Brendon, ma`am. Hallettsville, Texas.” Beth-any would be eligible soon and this would give her a tension free final year, if she wanted it. If not, then she and Father could sell the exemption, or give it away. She was a good sister. I would miss her. I would miss all of them.
“Very well. And your bonus?”
“My parents, please.”
She typed that in and then looked up at me, “Very well. Please take all of your clothes off.”
Even prepared for this indecency it was impossible, but I hastily undressed, trying to face away from both the woman and the now dozen girls chatting on the bench. I only stole a quick look at them but they were all ignoring me: some of them chatting, some staring into space, and my ‘friend’ still slumped over, sobbing quietly. With a shock I realized that the chatting girls didn’t have cull bracelets on! And one of them was obviously pregnant.
I struggled to put down the jealousy that I immediately felt. These girls were probably all from the same church and they, their partners, and all their friends had, spent half the day yesterday with a sending off party… all flags and banners and speeches and barbecue. I couldn’t count how many of those I had attended. This morning they had gone to their local center, and, along with local culls, been brought here in the van.
And here I was, culled. No party, no barbecue, no congratulations… my family and friends would only now even be learning that I was gone!
As soon as I put my clothes in the box the woman held out I put my hand in the hole. A sharp click and, without even looking at my newly clear wrist, or waiting for her instructions, I stepped into the door at my right, the one she had sent the other girls through.
#
The next room was bizarre. Small, at least, it seemed small, because it was crowded with dozens of what, I recognized in a glance, were medical cylinders… things I had only heard about.
“Come here, dear,” a voice said and I looked to see a middle aged woman, a baby strapped to her back, pushing a cylinder out into the main part of the room and opening it. She was wearing a grey ship suit, something I had seen on innumerable videos, and which meant she was assigned to the Colonization Force fleet service. “Climb in, dear,” she said, when I came up to her, “don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”
“How can they do this?!” I pleaded even as I got in, and turned around to face her, “I would have graduated tomorrow!”
“I’m sorry, dear, just a step back,” she said, urging me all the way into the cylinder. “It’s all for the best, all in The Creator’s will.”
I reluctantly took a step back, one that seemed very final. “But my life is finished!” I wailed, and her face changed, hardened.
“Dear,” she said, closing the bottom half of the cylinder. I felt the sensor fingers closing over me, and relaxed a little as I was now covered below my waist at least. “I’ll set up a reminder on my comp and, in ten years, I’ll write to you. And you’ll write back and tell me that today was the best day of your entire life.
She closed the top of the cylinder and, even as I felt a wave of sleepiness cover me my brain struggled, unsuccessfully, to grasp her statement. The best day of my life…?
#
<8/2/2095 4:25:49 AM>Day 2 early
I awoke with a start. It felt like pins and needles were jabbing me all over. As I struggled to open my eyes, which felt glued shut, I heard a door opening in my face. “Wake up, dear,” I heard, and I finally got them open to see that same lady, in her same grey suit, with her same baby on her back, staring at me with concern. “Can you stand?” she asked me. “The exam always makes people rather weak.” I moved my feet a little, testing how I did and then I nodded, she opened the rest of the cylinder.
“Go take a seat on the floor, dear,” she said, pointing around the far side of the cylinder. When I went around I saw, to my shock, that I was in a small, solid metal room and that there were already rows of girls sitting on the floor on lines marked their.
Blushing, trying not to look at anyone, and to not look embarrassed at the same time, I walked over and sat down, ending up next to my ‘friend’ from the office, the one with the dumb story about the boy. Standing in front of us was an older woman, also dressed in gray, who stared out at us with an amused, mocking, and condescending look on her face. She glanced at me and I started to cover myself and, even as I stopped myself, embarrassed, I saw her mocking grin grow wider and she moved her glance to the next girl to come out of the cylinders… who came hurrying across the room to sit next to me, as bright pink as I felt.
I felt a hand in mine. It was my neighbor from the center, the one with the boy story. She didn’t say anything, just squeezed my hand and, not loath for the company, if a bit surprised by the intimacy, I squeezed her back we sat together like that, waiting.
As we waited I looked around the room. A couple of the girls from the station were here, but none of the one that had come in chatting, or pregnant. There were no children here, not even nursing babes. They must have gathered all the culls together.
“Welcome to the Colonization Force,” the lady in front said, finally, after several more girls emerged blushing and sat down next to us and then behind us, filling the next couple of rows. The first lady, the one with the baby on her back who had called me ‘dear’, was pushing the last of the cylinders back out of a door even as the lady in front spoke. “You are mere culls and currently useless, but, never fear, we may make something out of some of you.”
As she spoke I struggled to understand her accent. It took me a while. It was Newtonian, full of strange sounds, sharp vowels, and it made everything she said sound cold and detached. She didn’t look Newtonian, but, really, Newton had been settled by all sorts of people, so there really wasn’t a ‘look’.
“You have been culled in order to be partners to criminals from your own planet. If you had joined up yourselves, or at least partnered, you would not be here, with this crowd, but you were too foolish or selfish for that. I have a brief lecture for you on various rules and expectations; what we will expect from you over the next few days and weeks.”
“The first is that you are expected to couple with you partner, to have sex, to breed, immediately. I’m sure you know that, no colony is so foolish as to ignore that fundamental aspect of life.”
My ears burnt at such a casual and open way of discussing the great mystery of physical union. When I had turned twelve I had found, on my bed, ‘Gruden’s Guide to Partnerships”, the book that practically everyone in our town… and all of New Texas for all I knew… gave to their children at ‘that time of life. ‘ It had been incredibly hard for me to read, even though it had done its best to couch everything in very euphemistic and spiritual terms. My mom had left me a note, encouraging me to ask her if I had any questions but, seriously, who could do that?
“But I know, everyone knows, that people from NT are incredibly prudish,” she continued, “and that you are very poorly educated in sexual matters, so one of the first things you will need to learn on ship is what sex is all about. Sex is a wonderful thing, and I am going to tell you about it. . .”
And she did. She launched into an incredibly detailed account of what we, and our partners, would be doing ‘in bed’, even bringing up a picture of a room (with no one in it, thank The Creator) like the one we would be sharing with our partner. I was appalled, and shocked, and embarrassed. My ears glowed bright red and I stared straight ahead, unable to even dream of letting another girl see me hearing this.
At the same time at a couple of points in her description I listened very carefully as it was, actually, useful to have some things laid out concretely that Gruden’s had treated very euphemistically… and that had left me confused. I blushed, horribly, at all of the pictures, especially the ones of boy’s, you know, private bits. Not that I had never seen them, of course, I did have brothers, and cousins, and all. But, to be sitting here with a bunch of girls while some lady lectured us on them, the various parts, and what the boy would be doing with those parts, with pictures of those parts right on the screen! But, still, it was good to know, and to see, what some of Gruden’s had actually meant.
“Now I think that even on New Texas they would have managed to tell you those things, the basics. Now I am going to tell you some other things, other ways to please your partner… and ways he can please you, for that matter, although I prefer to let the boys tell the boys that stuff.”
“The first is that you and your partner are allowed to spend your time in bed, and in your room together, undressed. The ship is climate controlled so it’s not like anybody needs clothing. Most partners appreciate seeing their partenaires undressed, so I definitely recommend the practice. It makes them feel good, and it doesn’t hurt, so why not? Next…” she said, and proceeded with a list so graphic that it was all I could do to keep from screaming. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would be willing to do some of those thing!
Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and the lady with the baby was there, handing me a uniform. The girl next to me already had hers and was standing up and struggling into it. And several other girls were already dressed.
I looked at the uniform. It was a loose, one piece, jump suit, with pants, like she was wearing herself. I had never worn pants before, but right now I was glad to get anything at all to wear. I had a panicky few seconds as I looked for underwear and then, out of the corner of my eye, noticed my neighbor pulling her jump suit on commando, and hurried into the suit myself.
As I zipped up the front zipper I was a bit annoyed. This suit didn’t fit at all! It was very, very loose: as I finished and sat down it flopped and rubbed uncomfortably. But, then, as I sat trying to listen, it started to feel very different. It was shrinking! Literally shrinking all over my body. Over the next couple of minutes it got tighter and tighter. As it finished I glanced down, and looked hastily back up. The top of the chest had tightened and fit more closely than any bra I had ever worn. I looked… startling… on top!
#
The Newtonian lady eventually ran out of sexual instructions, ending with this warning: “Remember, you and your partner will be together the rest of your lives, however long that is. It does you no good to have an unhappy partner, and a partner that isn’t getting it in bed is an unhappy partner. So do your best to overcome your silly NT prejudices and make him happy. Who knows, perhaps you will even learn to enjoy it yourselves.”
“Next my friend, Mellissa Trentin , will teach you all about your ship-suits,” the Newtonian said, stepping back.
The lady in gray came forward with a shy grin. “It’s so nice to meet you all,” she said. “We probably won’t see much of each other, since I will be rather busy with my job and you all will be busy training, and you will be going on without us, but it is still nice to meet you.”
“Your ship-suits are extremely important,” she said, pulling at hers. “They are built by Newtonia and have saved many lives. They are also rather versatile.”
“I gave you your suit as one piece, but it is actually able to split into several parts. Watch!”
So saying she gave us a quick demonstration of how the shirt section, the sleeves, and the upper and lower leg sections could be taken on and off, with a finger on the right part of the various seams opening them up. She had us practice… not taking them on and off (which would have been awkward, with so many of us, and embarrassing) but just opening and closing the seam.
“You also should know that the suit is able to do some very basic medical actions for you… it even has a very limited supply of oxygen that it can put directly into your blood stream in the case of a partial decompression. It also carries a very limited supply of drugs, including sugar, in case of emergencies. The suit can tighten up if part of you gets cut off, although we hope and pray that none of these problems ever happens.”
“Now, on to the orientation video,” she said, and stepped out of the way of the huge computer screen which made up all of the front wall… the one the Newtonian lady had used for her presentation.
I was prepared to be bored with the video. After all, who ever saw an ‘orientation’ video that wasn’t boring? And I was already familiar with its subject: the colonization fleet. I knew about its main branches: the colonists, which was where most of us would end up; the soldiers, which was the second largest branch; and the space force, which had always struck me as the most boring. I’d even heard of the smaller, elite branches: the Scouts, the Pathfinders, and the Deep-space Miners, but about all I’d known about them was that the last had the reputation of being crazy. The joke was that if you could be a space miner without going crazy, you had to be insane.
But the whole tone of this video was very different than any I had ever heard before. Colonization Fleet videos back on NT were always well, patriotic. You know, bands playing, flags waving. This video was almost the opposite: clinical, full of facts and statistics.
“As members of the Colonization Force you will receive pay, one silver per day. This pay does not vary per rank. This pay is not, obviously, given to you until some possibility exists for spending it. Colonists will receive their pay for this training period once they are placed on a planet. The will also receive a basic set of equipment, which varies for each planet.”
Rank in the Colonization Force varies per service…” she said, but I knew, we all knew all of this. The soldiers rank was pretty standard Army ranks, except they had new kinds of generals depending on who they controlled: an army, a sector, or a front. The space fleet was boring, and just used grades. The pathfinders echoed the soldiers, sort of, except they had no rank higher than colonel, and the miners and scouts didn’t really have ranks.
“The ship you are currently on resembles a ‘barge’, in that it has no engines. These barges are, as you know, parked at a planet for the duration of an induction which, in the case of New Texas, takes approximately a month. In two weeks or so the ship that will transport us will arrive, that is the engine and crew compartment.
Your training will take approximately one year which, for this current deployment, is just a bit longer than the trip. Sometimes on the NT route the time frame is much quicker, as we are only about a week from the front at its closest.
The layout of this ship is rather simple…” she said and I watched, bored, as they laid out the entire ship, with a tiny ‘you are here’ marker on one end at the very bottom. My boredom turned to embarrassment and even anger when I saw that the ship, the passenger section, was segregated, divided into areas for recruits, prisoners with families and those, like us, who were with culls.
When I finally did get bored with the video my thoughts turned to the rest of my new life. I didn’t know how the rest of these girls felt, but I was scared. I was used to being in control. Even my decision to go to finishing school instead of partnering was part of that; I just couldn’t imagine what life with a partner would be like… totally out of my control. And now my whole life was out of control. I was away from my house, my family, my world… on a strange new ship and, in a few minutes, I would have a partner.
The video was done and the Newtonian lady came back to the front of the room with a comp. “Well, I hope you are all ready,” she said, “because now is the time. Partner time. The boy in your bed. The boy (sorry, I cannot repeat what she said next. I just can’t. ) When I call your name, stand up. ”
“Christina Sethton.” A girl in the middle stood up and the Newtonian lady looked at her, smirked, and said, “Fraud.”
“Fraud”? I thought, they were announcing the partners’ crimes?! In front of everyone else? “Stripe Red Green Red, Room A18F.” she finished. When the girl stood there, the Newtonian looked at her and said, “Out the door, follow stripe red green red, to room A18F. Surely even a New Texas could follow those directions?”
The girl finally hurried out and the Newtonian continued with her torture, calling up girl after girl and announcing their partner’s crimes. “Breaking and entering.” “Robbery.” I shuddered, watching each of the girls go and tried not to gloat too badly at the idea that I, at least, was going to be partnering with a recruit…
Then suddenly the Newtonian announced a name, and my head snapped up, for her voice and her entire demeanor had changed. “Jessica Clarkson, you are assigned as the replacement partenere for Daniel Huddleton. Officer Huddleton is a third rank soldier. His partenere and one of his children were killed in combat. You will find him and his remaining children in chamber B27, stripe red yellow red. Congratulations, Mrs. Huddleton,” she added, standing straight and saluting Jessica, who returned her salute awkwardly, looking shocked, and wandered off, followed by envious glances from the rest of us. An officer?
But that assignment seemed to be the exception. I listened nervously as I waited in line at a window. “Embezzlement.” “Forgery.” “Extortion.” “Assault.” Several of us looked pitifully at the girl who’d just gotten that news.
Then it was my turn. “Aliyah Brendon,” she said, in a patronizing voice, “Well, aren’t you lucky. You get a recruit for a partner. I hope you’re worthy of him. Stripe red green red…. Cubicle A18B.”
I turned toward the door, trying not to look at the other girls. Some of my pride was gone though, thinking about that other girl, partnered with an officer.

Russ’ Version–>