Any Questions?

When I finally closed the helmet, my world changed.  Suddenly I was standing on a beach in some kind of swimming outfit with several other girls, and a different girl standing in front of us.  “Welcome,” she said to me, “we will wait just a few minutes for the rest of your group.”

“Just our group, ma`am?” I asked her, “not any of those others, the one’s in the robes?”

“You’ll come tomorrow in robes, if you’re smart,” the girl said, “and avoid all the changing.  I’m from NT myself, and understand your embarrassment and, believe me, dropping a robe is a lot easier than getting slowly undressed.  But, no, I just need to be here for the first day, so no, just your group.  After today I will discuss things with you individually, not as a group.  But, for right now, she said, as three more girls emerged almost simultaneously, “we will be working together.  My name, for those of you just showing up, is Esther Hampton,” she said, “my partner is Greg Hampton and, as I said, we, like you, are from new Texas.”

I knew some partenaires did take their partners last names.  My mother hadn’t, and I didn’t think I would.  It was too demeaning, as if we girls weren’t really anyone till we had a partner.  No one commented on her statement, however.  Most of us just stood there listening and looking at each other and at the view.  It was really a beautiful beach, with two small islands sitting right offshore.

“Many of the crew on this run are from New Texas, and from Hallycone, but you will meet people from all over… not Muslims, of course.”

“OK, that’s all of you,” she said, after at least a dozen more girls had come in, “Let’s get going.  Follow me.” She added, and started off at a brisk walk.  A very brisk walk.  All this time in school had taken its toll on my ability to do the whole ‘brisk walk’ thing.

“Today is your orientation day,” she said as we raced along with her, “I will be introducing you to your new life.  First off, a few rules.  Your schedule will be posted on the computer each day, for you and your partner.  You are to obey that schedule exactly.  If you have some problem with it, you should contact me.  The computer can get a hold of me at almost any time.  Any order from me or any other member of the ship crew must be followed immediately.”

That sounded obvious enough.  The videos sometimes had some of this training time in them (not with the nudity, of course!) and they stressed obedience, and all the physical training, and weapons training, of course.  These suits were amazing.  I could hardly tell I was in one, except for a slight catch behind my left knee and a scrunch over my right ear.  I reached up to try to adjust it but, since I was wearing a sim suit, I couldn’t feel the sim suit!

Second rule: No one is allowed in anyone else’s cell at any time.  No visiting over.  You won’t really have much time for visiting outside of training, but what you do do will have to be done in the hallway, or during your break day.”

Third: You must be fully dressed at all times with the following exceptions, Nursing, of course.  Your cell, also of course.  And your break room which, since you all are from New Texas you probably won’t take advantage of, but other cultures have other rules, and those are the rules on ship.”

Since we were from New Texas? Other cultures might undress in their break room? Why?

“Each of you will have a break room for your break day and it will be up to you all to set your own rules there.  Fully dressed means a full robe, or a top and bottom that covers everything.  You only have the robes and the uniforms, there is really nothing else to wear.  Nursing mothers may take all or part of their tops off, anywhere at any time, that is expected.  Oh, and you may be ‘undressed’ during training…  which is all on the computer, but only with each other or your own partner, not with each other’s partners.

“Fourth: After today, Ship talk exclusively.  I know all of you have studied it some, and starting tomorrow the training will all be in that language, so you will get immersed quickly.”

Ship talk.  Well, that shouldn’t be hard, I had know how to speak in Ship Talk since I was five or so.  My brothers and sisters had used it so much around me, as a way of keeping me from understanding them, that I had picked it up naturally, annoying them no end.  And then, of course, it was part of my schooling when I was young.

Fifth: No talking with anyone else’s partner.  At all.  Except on an assignment, for the purposes of the assignment, and then only if absolutely necessary.

Sixth: We are all part of a team.  Partners, training partners, and everyone with the ship crew, and all of us as part of the colonization fleet.  Any disruption of that team, any deliberate destruction of the team, will be punished, up to and including death.  One girl, and no, I won’t say who, has already been punished.  We have a nice neural whip that causes lot’s of pain and leaves no mark.  When you are punished, it will be in front of those you offended, and no one else.

“Any questions?” She asked.

“Can, can we change partners?” One girl asked.

“Change partners?! No!” the girl responded, and I was as shocked as she sounded at the question.  What kind of person would…  and then I remembered, and looked at her out of the corner of my eye.  I was lucky.  All of these girls were partnered with some criminal.  Not that bad a criminal, or he would have been executed.  But still.

“You mentioned break,” another girl asked, “When do we get break?”

“Why, on your break day, of course,” the girl answered, speeding up a bit.  We had started at a brisk walk and were now ‘trotting’.  I, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one, was getting a bit tired.  We ran on for another fifteen minutes, and, especially with this sand, my lungs and calves were both burning.  “The computer will tell you when that is.”

#

“OK, time for a swim,” the girl said, and she dove into the water.  We all followed her and we were quite a ways along before I noticed that I was suddenly naked.  I looked over, you know, without letting anyone see I was looking, and, well, you couldn’t really see anything.  Not while we were swimming.  The tops of heads, an occasional backside, but that was all really.  Still, I felt very embarrassed.

And even more so when we got to the island we were swimming to.  But, just as we started out of the water, we were back in our track suits.  I glanced and saw that several other girls were looking relieved.

I was relieved to be out of the water, too.  I got to swim a lot during the summer, at home… at swimming holes… you know, a couple dozen yards across at the biggest… a bunch of girls splashing and screaming. But here we had gone a half a mile, easy. I had gone in with my legs and lungs burning and now my lungs were still on fire but all sorts of new muscles were burning as well.

“OK, now for something a little different,” the girl said, and walked us up a stream that flowed down to the beach.  In a few minutes we reached a waterfall, a tall cliff with a chute of water coming down it.  “This is our next assignment,” she said.  We get to climb this.

So saying she went over and grabbed a handhold at the bottom of the cliff and started pulling herself up.  She was about ten feet up, with most of us staring at her in horror as a couple of the braver girls were moving to follow her, when one girl wailed, “But, but I am afraid of heights! I can’t climb that!”

“You can, and you will,” the girl said.  “And you don’t need to be afraid, you know.  You aren’t really here.  If you do lose your grip. . .” she said, deliberately letting go, “the computer will control what happens to you. . .” so saying she fell the ten feet, backwards, and landed in a beautiful dive into the pond underneath the water fall.  “Now, get going or    you will find that I can punish you right through those suits.”

It took us about an hour to get to the top, mostly because we had to get that one girl up.  We ended up putting her in the middle.  I went two girls after her, and it wasn’t until I was about ten feet up before I noticed I was naked again! What with the spray and having to get handholds and all, it was a couple of minutes before I could see another girl and then, to my horror, I saw that she was dressed! It was the girl in front of me, or, above me.  I tried a couple of times but I couldn’t see the girl below me, at least, until I reached the top.  The girl above me reached down and helped me up, and I turned to help the girl below me.  And she was dressed too! I blushed furiously, but helped her up.

I noticed, when I got up, that I became dressed again.  But I was still embarrassed, and angry.  So when the last girl was up I said, loudly, “I have another question!”

“Yes?” the leader said.

“Why… what’s up with all the nakedness? I realize we are all girls, but still.  And why me.  particularly?”

The girl laughed, which I thought rude.  “It wasn’t you, particularly,” she said.  The other girls were all looking at me in shock, and with embarrassment.  At me, not the leader.

“What do you mean? While we were climbing it was just me!”

She laughed again, “No.  It was all of you, but you could only see yourself.”

Oh.  Oh, but, “But why, why all the nakedness?”

She looked more serious.  “I’ll show you,” she said, and, after she had mumbled to herself for a second the world suddenly flickered, and changed, and we were standing on a vast prairie, in front of a very small building.  The girl opened the door, and we entered a room about the size of my room at home, maybe a little bigger.  “This is a standard first generation colony house,” the girl said.  We looked around.  The room was filled.  A table in the middle, an old fashioned stove in one corner, and what looked like shelves with blankets on them all around.

“What are those?” One girl asked, pointing at the shelves.

“This,” the girls said, pointing to one of the larger shelves, “Is the partners’ bed.  The others are beds for the offspring.  They usually put two or three offspring in each bed.”

My mouth dropped open, and I wasn’t alone.  The partners? The shelf was hardly a half meter wide? I would consider that a small bed for myself!

“But, I still don’t understand,” I said.

“Don’t you see? Imagine living here, you, your partner, all of your offspring in this one room all the time.  And if anyone comes to visit you, you give them a bed and your offspring    double up more or sleep on the floor.  Bathing, changing, sleeping. . .” she looked at us significantly…  “all has to happen in this one room.”

“Oh, I said, “So you are trying to get us ready in case we colonize in a place like that? But what about the other jobs; soldier, Pathfinder, or on ship like you?”

“Oh, we get even less privacy.”

“What?” I said, “But, don’t you have cells like us?”

The world flickered and changed again, and I, we, were in a long room; a long room with sleeping mats all down both sides.  “This is what our quarters are like,” the girl said.  “You all take up a lot more room that we do.  We sleep in three shifts, so this room will do for several hundred people: partners, partenaires and off spring.  We do have shower areas separated, girls and children on one side, partners and children, children can use either shower, on the other end.  Soldiers live like this on board ship as well.”

The world flickered and changed and I found myself in a very small ship.  “This is where trailblazers spend a lot of time,” she said.  “Bunks pull out from the walls.” The world flickered again, and we were all standing in a jungelish area, in front of a tent, “And this is how they frequently spend their time on the ground.”

Suddenly we were back on the top of the cliff, “The only people that really get any modesty are Deep Space Miners and Scouts, and they have other issues, living practically on top of two other couples for months at a time.  So the computer will keep playing with your mind until you get rather blasé about the whole ‘naked’ thing, at least with those around whom you can be appropriately naked.  We enforce a rather dramatic modesty most of the time, but we need for you to be able to handle tight quarters as well, using a shower or toilet with fifty people around you, or sharing a bed with your partner in a common room.  The computer can tell how freaked out you are, and will keep working at you until you are comfortable.”

“I remember my own orientation.  I was incredibly shy.  I was an only child… my mom had some medical problem.  So I wasn’t even used to sisters and brothers.  My first day the computer kept me naked the whole time, the entire day, along with every other girl around me… in my eyes, anyway.  And then, I got back to my cell and my partner asked me…” she shook her head.  “But, anyway, it worked.  After an incredibly embarrassing few days I got over it, and now I live in one of those dorms, along with my partner and three children and a hundred or so of my fellow crew, and I only blush a dozen times or so.” She grinned.  “Speaking of which,” she said, looking at the girl with the fear of heights, “go jump off the cliff.”

That took another ten minutes, and we had to practically throw her bodily.  The first time the computer just brought her right back.  Then we threw her again and again until she would jump herself.  Then, and this was cool, she kept having to jump again and again, and the computer had her fall further and further until coming back, until she finally made it to the pool.  By that time other girls were begging to jump and, remembering what the girl had said about ‘being freaked out,” I tried it myself just to prove (to the computer) that I could, as did several other girls.

“OK, off we go again,” the girl said, and led us over to a hole in the ground.  This led down to a long cave system, and we found out that a couple girls had issues with being underground.  My clothes kept appearing and disappearing, but now that I knew it was all a trick of the computer I just ignored it.  I tried to ignore it when the other girls were suddenly naked too, although that was harder.  Especially when we both noticed at once.  But, I got used to it fast enough.  Sort of.

#

During one particularly difficult climb, and after we had learned that we could all hear each other speak regardless of distance, another girl had a question, “Why do you all do this, anyway?” She asked.

“Do what?” the leader said.

“Cull us.”

“To provide partenaires for the criminals, obviously.”

“No, I mean…  why were we chosen?”

“Ah.  Well. .  I would have to explain the whole system to get to that.” She paused, cocked her head to one side, mumbled, and said, “Well, I guess we    have time.  OK:”

“You see, the colonization fleet needs people.  And so we have this general rule: ten percent of all the newly aged people from each planet.^[1]  But nobody, no planet, wants to do exactly that.  So we let them ‘negotiate’.  Each thing they negotiate, The CF makes sure that they get some benefit from .  So, let’s see:

First of all, New Texas wanted paid exclusions.  This meant that some of the best and brightest would be exempt from joining the CF, at least from being drafted. Fine, we said, but the bulk of the money comes to us; which of course we need to build ships and pay for other materials.  We set up a neat system, you can read about it later^[2], that gets us the maximum money for those exclusions.

I knew about those paid exclusions, all those rich people buying exclusions for their children, even their boys sometimes, although if they weren’t’ quite so rich they let their boys take their chances.

Then New Texas wanted us to take prisoners. A lot of planets do that, it is almost as good as recruits as far as keeping down public resentment. And, actually, they often make some of the best material for soldiers and the like.  ‘Fine,’ we said, ‘but we get to exclude people from the draft who have genetic issues and people below a certain IQ. ‘ You and your friends didn’t know it, but there are a certain number of your friends with genetic issues that, although they were in class with you, couldn’t have been culled.

Then they wanted to reward recruits and draftees, or what you call ‘culls’, to make things more palatable for the families left behind.  ‘Fine,’ we said, ‘that doesn’t hurt us at all. ‘ But if they rewarded with exemptions, which of course they wanted to do, the exemptions have to be transferable, for a fee, all of which we get; again, helping us pay for our ships and all.

After all was said and done, the CF ended up with a system on New Texas that still gets us who we need, a mostly random selection of people but without any genetic issues or mental issues, and also gives us a great deal of money, which we use to buy supplies to make new ships.

“But you, particularly? Well, a couple of reasons.  As you know, as I know, you went to the doctor, and got certified for puberty.  Then you went down to the recruitment center and got tested.  What, three days of tests? That’s how many I went through.  Psych tests, physical tests, all sorts of junk.  These did a couple of things.  The first, and the one you know about, is they matched  you with various boys.  Not just one boy, obviously, that would be stupid.  But it ranked you against thousands of boys on your planet.  Even other planets, truth be told, although we don’t use those rankings much, just in an emergency.”

“But it also ranked you for our purposes.  How would you do in the CF? what kind of specialties might we expect from you? How would you do, just you and a partner, alone on a colony planet? Raising kids? Fighting ships?  Spending months and months alone with just your partner and a couple of other partners on a deep space ship or scout? We’re not idiots… you culls are actually people who we hope will have a lot of skills and attitudes that will make you very valuable to the CF.

“So then, when your partner joined up, however that happened, the computer ran through its data base and picked you.  What did your partner need, what did the CF need? And then, bango, the fleet knocked on your door.”

“So, does that mean that our partner, and us, that we are right for each other?”

The woman stopped, so startled was she.  “Right for you? What would that mean, anyway? You’ll be right for your partner if you decide to be, and vice versa.  Although,” she said, starting walking again, “it really will be more you.  Boys are pretty simple.  Get a few things right and they’re happy.  But we girls, we can really get messed up if we let ourselves.”

“Anyway, let’s keep going.” I had noticed the girls in front of me (I won’t bother to tell you any more what they, or I, were wearing, it was getting way too weird) were getting into some open area, but it wasn’t until I had gotten closer that I saw that it was a big, well lit cave.  And then, when I got it, I saw that it had a big table in the middle of it.

“Anyone hungry? This group is all Christian, who would like to pray?” I noticed, right before the girl who volunteered started, that the clothes all came back, and several girls suddenly had something covering their hair, “Lord,” the girl said, “we thank you for this day, for this food, for our new partners, and for this our leader.  We ask that you bless us in our new life, and help us to glorify you.”

“Amen”, we all said, and sat down at the table to eat.

‘What…  what is this?” one girl asked, picking up a piece of some light-green meat (I think it was some kind of meat) sitting on her plate.

“No idea,” the leader said, busily piling up pieces of meat and vegetables over something that looked rice-like.  “Another learning experience.  You might call it ‘eat weird things’.  You will need to get used to some strange foods if you are a colonist, soldier, or a Pathfinder.  Shipboard is nicer; except for training exercises like this.”

I followed her example and started eating, not worrying about what the food was.  I’d never had a real problem with food, anyway.  The green meat was spicy and slimy.  The ‘rice like’ stuff was far crunchier than rice.  All in all I kind of liked it.  I wondered if Andrew was going through the same kind of thing.

“Do we ever see our partners on training?” another girl asked, mirroring my thoughts.

“Later.”

“How much later?” the girl persisted.  I guess she liked her partner and wanted to be with him.  Either that or she hated him.

“Depends on you.  And him.  Not much I can answer there.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt either way.  Of course, I had hardly seen my partner.  I had showed up, we had shared a quick and very awkward bed, we had had a far too brief talk, and then we had dressed and come to training.

“Five minutes, girls,” the leader said.  “We have a lot more to do today.”

“What’s next?” one girl asked.

“Disaster drill,” the leader said.

‘Disaster drill’, which we got to through a hatchway, in the side of the cave, turned out to really be ‘disaster drills’.  We learned how to escape from the ship from just about anywhere on it, and in just about every disaster…  fire, flood, decompression.  I noticed that they kept testing us.  Yes, the whole nakedness thing, but also fear of fire, fear of drowning, fear of decompression (which, from the fake bodies they showed us, was a horrible way to die…  although better than drowning.  Of course, fire was bad too. )