We were two months into our new shift when the announcement came over all of the computers, as part of our morning assignment message:

Vessel dropping into Hallycone orbit at 1600 universal.  Expect new recruits.

Unlike NT Hallycone, being very small, had to basically hold all their recruits, prisoners, and culls until the ship came through… once a month, I think.  I had heard that they had an enormous party, once a month.  On NT that would have meant barbecue, on Hallycone, wet-bamboo grilled fish.  I would have loved to try some but, of course, it wasn’t like we were going down.

Our shifts were all fouled up, of course, and 1800 universal was the end of our sleep shift.  And so, at 1750 it was our turn to get walked in on, with me in the shower!

In the millisecond before I turned around, trying to act casual, I saw that it was a boy and girl, almost certainly from Hallycone, with their arms around each other and the boys eyes gazing at me.

“Hi,” I heard from behind me. “I’m Fenta and this is my partnere Mystarrin. I guess we’ll be sharing your bunks. We just got in and they sent us right here. Didn’t expect such a nice view!”

“Nice view!” I heard and turned at Andrew’s voice, turned just in time to see him launching himself at the Hallycone boy, who caught his arm and twisted him in some fashion. Andrew, his right arm held, tried to hit out with his other arm, but the boy grabbed that too.

“Andrew!” I shouted, running over at him to pull him off while the other girl, Mystarrin, grabbed at her own partner.

But Andrew ignored me, and I was soaking wet so my arm kept slipping off. The two boys struggled back and forth and, finally, Fenta sort of tripped over Mystarrin and we all stumbled, as a group, out into the hallyway.

I struggled to keep hold of Andrew and pull him back. “Andrew, calm down!”

“How dare he!? Andrew said, seeming to notice me for the first time. “How dare he say… Aliyah??!”

I looked where he was looking and blushed. Then I looked up and saw several couples and one grey suited boy all staring at us, at me.

With a shriek I darted back into our room. My training in ‘nakedness’ hadn’t innured me enough to be able to be stared at, naked and dripping, in the middle of our hallway. Blushing I hurried over and dried and pulled on a robe and then, finally, turned around.

Andrew was alone, and the door was closed. “How could you!” I shrieked.

“He… he was looking at you. He said, ‘nice view’, meaning you! How could I stand there…”

“They’re from Hallycone! You’ve been doing the training vids just like me! You know they swim naked half the time, or mostly naked, anyway, and showere in their back yards and all!”

“That doesn’t mean he should… should talk about it!”

“They’re probably used to doing that. Don’t you boys do that? Talk about girls?”

“Not in front of them!”

“Well, maybe they do…”

I stopped as there was a tentative knock at the door. Andrew, glowering, opened it. “I… ummm…” the boy said, but Andrew interrupted him,

“We have to get to our class now,” he said, and stormed out. I gave them an apologetic look, but followed him without saying anything. Indeed I could hardly even look at the boy.

Day 68, morning

Still blushing from the incident I hurriedly was examined and put on my suit.  I was fully expecting to come out and see Andrew, and whatever world we were training on, and was a bit bemused to find myself alone in a large, metal room.  A room with harsh, artificial light.  I wasn’t alone long enough to get really freaked out though as, just a few seconds after I arrived girls started appearing here and there in the room (looking at me as curiously as I looked at them) and then, finally, a soldier dressed girl appeared in the front of the room.

“Good morning,” she said, as soon as we appeared.  “Today is an exciting day for me.  So far, all of our time together, you have been doing basically ‘basic training’.  This is important, of course.  We have no idea, yet, what kind of work you will be doing… colonist, soldier, space.  But regardless, you all needed the ‘basic training’… and of course it is helping us determine what you are good at.”

“But, as I say, you have had your ‘basic training’.  And that will continue.  But for some of you, particularly you here today, you will be adding to your basic training some advance training.  In your case, medical training.”

I looked around, to meet the other’s shocked looks.  In my wildest dreams I had never imagined this! “You each have shown aptitude for the training that you have received so far, and we think you can learn much, much more.  As you know, the life we will be living will, for the most part, be extraordinarily primitive.  And so your training, while the best we can give you in the short time we have, will focus mainly on very primitive fixes… and such more advanced tools as we are able to more easily give you.  For those of you going into space, combat, or even trailblazing, your training will go on past that, eventually.”

She paused and I tentatively raised my hand, “Ma’am, what do you mean by ‘medical training’? We don’t have that long before we arrive at our assignements, or that’s what I understand. What kind of training…?”

“That depends. Some of you will be going on to be full field doctors. Others field paramedics. It depends on your apptitudes.”

“So… so if we do go on to be doctors, how much time will that take?”

“Oh, we’ll have you finished by the time we get to your assignment.”

She saw the looks were were giving each other. “You probably have a wrong idea about two things: firstly what a CF doctor is, and secondly you underestimate our training.”

“Firstly a CF doctor has a lot less book knowledge than his groundside peers. For one thing because we aren’t so bound by history. Our computer diagnostic tools are so much better than they used to have that it is foolish of us to try to stuff so much knowledge into a doctors head.

What we do ‘stuff’ is knowledge into their muscles, and muscle brain connections. It used to be that doctor could only see very few of a certain type of surgery or procedure before having to do it, and do very few before they were considered proficient.

With our CATPRT system this has completely changed. Your sim suits not only know exactly what your muscles are doing, but can force them to do the right thing from the beginning. So when you learn you never move a muscle wrong, until your muscles are trained. Then it starts relaxing control until you do the thing automatically.”

“So each skill that we will teach you will be well taught… but not overtaught. In the old days a tech might start one hundred IV’s before doing one NG tube. So they might have well learned the IV stystem, and be poor at inserting NG’s. Not with our system. Our system learns when you have something down and moves on. And it sees when you don’t have something and repeats it. And refreshes whenever you are in danger of forgetting or falling out of habit.

So, to make a long story short, you will learn very well and very quickly, but not nearly so much ‘book knowledge.’

“Now, to begin, we will be doing study in anatomy.” Suddenly the room flickered and we were each standing in front of a table with a sheet covering… “You have each been given a cadaver.  Don’t worry, it isn’t really a dead person, but a simulation.  But it is very well simulated, and all of the anatomy is correct, and very detailed.  In fact, being simulated means you will be able to zoom into any level of detail that you need to examine various structures.

Working with these cadavors will train you not only in knowledge of the anatomy, but of the kinds of cuts, sutures, and the like that you will need for your medical work.

Now, if you would, take the sheet off of your patient.”

I did, and, just my luck, I got a male patient.  But he was dead, at least, and wasn’t likely to ask me to ‘love’ him, so I didn’t have to compare him too badly with Andrew.  The instructor began discussing ‘gross anatomy’ (a term I thought very appropriate) and I was soon lost in the details of all of the way the body worked.

We had barely touched ‘gross’ anatomy and yet two hours had passed.  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I need a bit of a break,” the instructor said.  “Wash up and the break room is in there.”

We washed up and followed her and, sure enough, there were some tables, one of which had some food on it.  The instructor wasn’t there, however, and we all, after taking some food, looked around a bit awkwardly.  I don’t think anyone here knew anyone any more than I did.  “Hey,” I said, as we finally sat down at the table and I found myself next to a short, serious looking girl with simply enormously long brown hair.  “I’m Aliyah.”

“Beth,” she said, nodding her head at me.

“I, um, we haven’t met.”

“No, I haven’t met any of these girls.  What part of New Texas are you from?”

“Victoria area.  You?”

“A small town near Houston.” There was another awkward pause, and then she blurted out, “I’m a cull, partnered to a young man convicted of fraud.  You?”

“Cull,” I said, almost gasping with relief that we had gotten this part of the introductions over.  I could tell from the way they were looking at us, and almost inching away on their seats, that many, at least, of our classmates weren’t culls.  “My partner was a recruit.”

“Are you enjoying this class?” she asked me.  “I am so excited to get picked for this…”

#

The room had gotten rather quiet, and Beth and I looked around.  There, standing by the door, was a new girl, one that hadn’t been in the class this morning, looking rather confused.  But, when she saw me, she brightened up, “Aliyah!” she said, hurrying over and plopping herself down next to me, “Oh, Aliyah, I’m so confused.  Where are we?”

Everyone was still looking at us.  “Mystarrin,” I said, “this is Beth, and this is medical class.  Or, at least, it will be in a couple of minutes when we get done break.  You should probably get yourself some food.”

She looked around at this and hurried off to the table.  As soon as she was gone everyone started talking, again, and Beth leaned over toward me, “Who is she?”

“New cull, from Hallycone.  Partner some kind of criminal…”

“Oh, Aliyah, I am so glad to be in class with you.  And you say your name is Beth?”

“Yes,” Beth said, rather taken aback by this loud Hallyconer.  Her Ship Talk was almost flawless but her manners were, well, loud.

 

“Did Aliyah tell you how we met, this morning?” Mystarrin asked, grinning.  “Oh, my poor partner, he felt so bad!”

“He felt bad?!” I asked.  “He certainly didn’t act it! I don’t think I have ever met a boy so rude!”

I had spoken way too loudly, and the entire room, again, turned and looked at me.  “Oh, I’m so sorry.  I know your partner was very upset but I… we still don’t  understand.  He… I thought he… what did Fenta do wrong?”

“Well, he shouldn’t have looked at me, for one thing!”

“But… how could he… I mean, there you were… he is a boy!”

“Excuse me,” a girl said, from across the table.  The rest of the girls, embarrassed, had eventually turned away from our conversation but this girl had actually scooshed over closer and was now leaning forward, toward us.  Mystarrin was crying now, and I’m sure my face was red.  This girl had a NT accent but, from her features, I would almost have said she was from Hallycone herself.

“I couldn’t help overhearing, indeed I imagine the whole world couldn’t help overhearing, and I think I might be able to be of help.  You see, I’m from NT, and my father is from NT, but my mother is from Hallycone, and I think I may know what the problem is.”

“Let me guess.  They came, this morning, and walked in on the two of you in the middle of bed play?”

I blushed bright red and stammered out, “No! I was… I was in the shower.”

“Ah, OK, same concept.  And the boy, your partner, he looked at her?”

Mystarrin nodded, tears still flowing down her face.

“And made some kind of compliment?”

“Yes,” Mystarrin said.  “At least, I thought it was a compliment, and I’m sure he meant it that way.  I don’t know what she expected him to say.”

“She’s from NT,” the girl said.  “What she expected was for him to turn around, blush, and stammer out some kind of apology.”

“But, but we didn’t do it on purpose!” the girl said, sounding horrified.

“No, but Aliyah here is from NT, and that is the way they, we, behave when we walk in on someone.  Aliyah,” she said to me, “you have to understand.  That boy, he was probably just as embarrassed as you.  Not in seeing you naked, that doesn’t mean much to those from Hallycone, but from ‘walking in’ on you when you expected to be in private.  And he did his best to apologize.  You see, to a Hallyconer, telling a naked girl, or any girl, that she is beautiful is considered a very polite thing to do.  A little dangerous if it goes too far, but I bet he said something to his own partenere, too?” she asked,

“He didn’t have time!” Mystarrin protested. Her partner attacked him!

“Well, of course he did!” I said. “He was defending  my honor.”

“You… you tried to stop him?” she protested.

“Of course,” I protested, and the girl laughed.

“Oh, Mystarrin! New Texas can be confusing.”

We all stared at her as she explained, “When Andrew got angry at your partner and attacked him, he was doing his job as a NT  male: standing up for a woman, being all chivalrous. Aliyah reacted as she has been taught to, attempting to defuse the male aggression. If there were nothing but NT involved, the girls would have separated the boys, and the boys would have ‘calmed down’… once they knew their girls understood ‘how mad they were’… and the girls would have talked the whole thing out… and then had each other over for barbecue or something.

We all laughed at that last, except Mystarrin. “but I don’t understand why he was angry!”

Hallyconers are rather open about nudity,” the girl said.  “My mother was always getting in trouble about that.  And they are very open about compliments, even very sexual compliments. But New Texans aren’t, especially in mixed company. When your partner complimented Aliyah Andrew took it as if Aliyah was some sort of naked model, for Fenta to stare at.

Mystarrin grew beet red… “he didn’t mean that!!”

“No, but Andrew didn’t know that.”

“So why did he say… what he said?” I asked.

Fenta wasn’t embarrassed that you were naked.  But he could tell that you had expected to be alone, and was trying to ‘make it up’ to you by complimenting you.”

“I can’t tell you how hard it was for my mother, even after years and years amongst us, when people would not compliment her when apologizing.  The NT way of just stammering something incoherent, she always took to be very insincere.  ‘If they really want to build the relationship back’, she would say, ‘they need to say something positive.  Tell me I bake a good apple pie, or something!'”

“Luckily my father was good at compliments and, for a New Texan, rather immodest, so they got along great.”

“I… I…” I stammered out, and suddenly everyone laughed, including me, at my typical New Texan way of being embarrassed.  I turned to Mystarrin, “Let see if we can start our relationship again.  Let me see.  You seem to be a very friendly girl, very nice, have a partner that,” I gulped, “looks very, umm, nice… and I am looking forward to getting to know you.”

Mystariin grinned gain, dried her tears, and said, “Let me see if I can get this right.  I… I… oh, I’m, we’re so sorry for walking in on you… won’t happen again…”

Everyone laughed.  “It’s just like on the videos!” she said.  “There is this video series, ‘The Star of Texas’ and, well, we all like it but we always laughed at this one character who always was getting himself in embarrassing situations and then blushing and stammering and all.  Did I do it right?”

Everyone agreed that she had done it right, and the room went back to break.  “What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked.  “I thought this was your sleep shift.”

“Oh, no,” she said, breezily.  “We were just coming together for our first bed play, and then the computer sent us off to train.”

“Your first… now? Haven’t you been together for a month or so?”

She laughed, “Some of them have, but I didn’t get assigned to my partner till yesterday, and we were too busy at the party to get time for a quiet cuddle.”

“So what are you doing here? I thought this was only for those who had finished their basic training.”

“Oh, I did.  We did.  Hallycone has an awesome set of VR suites, and the CF, since they can’t do what they do with you all, have downloaded all of their programs onto them.  We even have people learning stuff for fun.”

“Oh, Nestin is going to be so upset when I tell him about this morning.  We even talked about it for several minutes before we got started on bed play, if you can believe that.”

“Don’t tell him,” I said.  “I don’t want to make him feel bad.”

“Oh, no, I have to,” she said, shaking her head.  “We need to learn to deal with other cultures, and I’m sure that most of them tend to act more like you than like us… or different in some other way.”

“Well, tell him I appreciate the compliment, then, anyway, even if I didn’t at the time.”

“Oh, I knew that,” she said.

“Say,” I said to that girl, who was still sitting across from us listening to the whole thing, “How did your folks get together, anyway?”

“Just like this, almost,” she said. My dad was recruited, five year term. He has never admitted this, but I think he just wanted to get ‘recruit’ on his resume. He partnered up with a nice girl from New Texas, got her with a bun, and got ‘recruited’.”

They got a month out and she, my dad’s first partenere, started hemorrhaging. It had something to do with the pregnancy and it happened in the middle of the night and she never even woke up. My dad woke up to a pool of blood. It was horrible.

Anyway, they were just getting to Hallycone and they pulled my mother up for him. She still tells us the story. She wasn’t recruited in the regular way. Apparently a couple of CF officials showed up in a jeep in front of her house right as she was about to go to bed. They sat her down, told her the story, told her that they, and the computer, had decided that she would be a great partenere for him.

She told us that she agreed without leaving the couch or asking a question. Her mother was all upset, but she just left, went upstairs, said goodbye to her siblings, and came back, ready to go.

“Wow!” I said, and Mystariin nodded her head,

“I don’t think I could have done that!” she said.

“I know I couldn’t have!” I said.

“I’m Ulina,” the girl said, reaching out her hand.

“You’re a recruit, and you’re willing to talk to us?” I asked Ulina.

Her face fel a bit but she answered, bravely, “Look, we’re all going to end up in the same place in the end, anyway. And have to work together.”

“OK, so regular recruits tend to dislike Culls. Finishing schoolers, always boasting about their education and jobs… not doing their duty to the country… sitting at school while the rest of us wipe bottom… I’m sure you’ve heard it all.”

“And, come on, you’ve got to admit there’s some truth in it. It isn’t like just ordinary people go to finishing school. You’ve got to have something to prove, and some way to prove it. Me, I jumped at the first guy that offered to partner with me. Not that he isn’t a great guy, but I just jumped at him. We…” she blushed.

“I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one jealous at someone brave enough to sign up to finishing school… skipping first choice and risking being culled.”

“You were jealous of me?” I asked. “I mean, not me but people like me?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re not surprised?”

“Surprised?!” I said. “Do you have any idea how jealous I was of girls like you? Girls that could say ‘yes’ to a partner… to commit the rest of your life to some guy, to sleep with him, obey him, have his children?”

“Ladies,” a voice came from the doorway, “Time is up, let’s get back to your corpses…”

#

Mystarriin, of course, hadn’t had a corpse but, the computer being what it was, she had one when we got back. She, and a half a dozen other new women that had, apparently, came directly into the room right before we got back. The instructor must have already introduced them to the class because she just had to introduce Mystariin, who ended up right next to me and, right after the introduction, as she started carving, started talking, to me, “So, this is y’alls first day in the class, I didn’t miss anything?”

“Yes,” I said, sort of wondering how being walked in on made us best buddies already. “What do you think?”

“Oh, it’s kind of gross, but I think I’ll like it. I like people, and doing doctor stuff means getting to deal with people a lot, no?”

I guess it did. I hadn’t thought of that. I was enjoying the knowledge bit. This sim was a wonderful way to do this. I could cut and re-cut, and cut here and there and then have it go back together, figuring out how everything worked. I was still embarrassed by my corpses nakedness just staring at me. I would have covered it but… who knows… they might have flunked me for that. Certainly none of the other girls had covered theirs.

“And everyone else is here from NT, eh?” she asked, into the silence.

“Yes, yes,” I said.

“Well, we didn’t bring as many as you did and, well, it is true that most Hallyconers wouldn’t really be up to learning all this. I was considered very odd, back at home. Wanting to learn things instead of wanting to swim.”

“Really?” I asked, startled. I could imagine some of my friends thinking this, but I couldn’t  imagine any of them saying it!

“Life’s too easy on Hallycone,” she said. “Our island was only about two miles across at the widest, and four miles long. So no one was more than a mile from the beach, and most of us a lot less. My house was right on the beach. I would sit there, on the porch, with my reader, and kids from the town would stream past to go swimming.”

“Wow, that must have made it hard to study,” I said, uncovering the liver and staring at the vessels connecting it. Huge blood vessels… which the computer was labeling in mid air, a bizarre kind of sim effect.

“Oh, yuck!” she said and I turned. Yuck indeed.

“You’d better replay that!” I said.

“What?” she asked. “How do I do that?”

Replay wasn’t a common feature of anything but game sims, so I showed her how to get the computer to ‘rewind’ her actions and get the bowel reunited. “Thanks!” she said, as I went back to my corpse.

She kept talking for the next couple of hours and then even she got a bit wrapped up in what she was doing. Several other girls were kind of talkative. But I, I enjoyed listening but couldn’t really talk while I was doing this kind of work.

#

It was kind of late in the day, but I didn’t think it was fully evening, when my world suddenly flickered and I found myself back in the changing room. Pretty much all alone, too. Only Mystarrin was changing with me, and June was there, looking serious.

Aliyah, I’m afraid you are up on discipline charges, she said, once I had my robe on. Mystarrin, you are called to the same hearing, but not under charges.

“I… what?” I said.

“You are up on charges for violating the dress code.”

“I…!!!” I blushed as I suddenly realized what she meant.

Mystarrin and I followed June and she led us down our hallway, then out into the main hallway and for about ten more minutes. She paused at the door of a room, looked at us as if asking if we were ready but she didn’t say anything before keying the lock.

“I bring the accused,” she said, “And the witness Mystarrin.”

Blushing brightly again I moved forward as she moved out of the way. There was a table at the front of the room, at which several officers were sitting. Two in grey and the rest in colors of other branches.

I didn’t have much time to look at them, though, as Andrew was there with a bunch of others, standing to the side of the room. “Aliyah!” he said, trying to come forward and being restrained by a grey suited guard type and a couple of other men, men from our hallway.

“The witness will remain silent,” the man sitting in the middle of the table said.

“I am her partner!” Andrew said, turning to him.

“Noted,” the man said. “Do you need time to speak to her in private? Do you wish to offer her advise?”

“I… no… I suppose not.”

“Aliyah nee Brendon, do you wish counsel?”

“I… I don’t understand,” I said.

“You have been accused of violating the dress code rules. Witnesses have been taken. You will not be asked to testify. Do you wish to seek legal advise before sentence is passed?”

I thought about it. I had broken the dress code, even if I hadn’t done it on purpose…

“Can I ask a question? Of the court?”

The men put their heads together, whispered, and then the head man said, “You may. We will not consider it testimony, so you may say whatever you wish.”

“I… does it make a difference if I did not do it on purpose?”

The head man looked to a man on his right, who, I guess, knew this kind of thing.

“There are three answers to that,” he said. “Firstly, if this were a matter of a true accident, or even an emergency, there would be no case. If the door had fallen off, or there had been an explosion, or even if some illness had presented itself… then your nudity would not be a fault.”

“If you were being accused of willfully presenting yourself nude in the cooridor, as has happened with some cultures, then your punishment would be more severe.”

“What you are being accused of, here, is of a failure to properly control your actions. The witnesses have testified that you were attempting to restrain your partner from offering physical violence in an inappropriate way. He has already been punished for his actions, but his punishment would have been more severe without your actions.”

“However a soldier or other member of the CF must have enough presence of mind to realize where they are at all times. You should have realized that, when the fight threatened to spill into the hallway, your duty lay in obeying CF regulations. The evidence showed that there was no danger of the scuffle becoming overly dangerous… certainly no more than your partner undergoes in his training.”

“Therefore we have ruled that you will be given three lashes, barring any protest you wish to lodge against this punishment.”

Three lashes… and I had been stupid. If I let my emotions carry me away against the BN…

“But it was our fault,” Mystarrin suddenly said. “We didn’t handle the encounter well. We should have apologized quicker.”

The head man took up the talking. “Indeed, you did handle it poorly. This encounter was actually planned by the staff… altho we hadn’t expected it to get this out of hand. All four of you are suffering from a difficulty in understanding alternative points of view.

Andrew,” he said, turning to him, “You are aware that many of the CF cultures view nudity very differently than the NT culture. And that most cultures handle conflict differently. Yet you leapt to the conclusion that Fenta was being insulting of your partner. In general we judge this a result of your own insecurity in your partnership.

Fenta, we know that your training on Hallycone included handling modest culture such as New Texas, New Geneva, or… others. You were aware of difficulties this has made on Hallycone. We do not fault your for trying to defuse the situation, but you will need to work on your immediate reaction of apology.

Mystarrin, we believe you handled the situation well.

Aliyah, let me speak frankly. You are one of the most gifted recruits… well, in your case culls, we have had in a long time. We think that your partnership with Andrew will make one of our most powerful partnerships. You were even chosen, just last week, for medical training.

But in order to use those gifts you will have to develop more situational awareness. A trait you failed in this morning.

Your punishment has been ordered, unless you have further protest.

“I… no,” I said. Three lashes. I suppose I had received worse pain during training. And it was just a neural whip, it would not actually cause any damage…

“I will take the punishment,” Andrew said, startling me.

“What? No!” I said.

“That is your right,” the judge said.

“What?! No!” I said, again, and the judge looked at me.

“As your partner, it is his right. Carry out the punishment.”

I made to move forward, to stop them, but Mystarrin held me back, and a couple of other girls looked like they would help, so I stopped trying. But I couldn’t believe this! Why was he being punished? He had tried to defend me! He had done everything right!!

The punishment was very quick. They had his shirt off and the first lash before I could even really finish my protest in my own head. Andrew screamed and I tried to rush forward again, but the girls were ready and held me back.

When the third lash fell they let me go, and I rushed forward to him. “Oh, Andrew!” I said, coming up and hugging him, then stopping, confused. Did that hurt?

“Well,” he said, hugging me back, “At least I get a hug out of it.”

“Oh, Andrew…”

“It’s not that bad, and it really was my fault,” he said. “Let’s go home now.”

Day 68, evening

I kept expecting Andrew to wince, or limp, or do something, on the way home… still not really comprehending the ‘no damage’ of the neural whip, finding it impossible to reconcile after the pain that I had seen on his face.

“How was your day?” Andrew asked me, as we made it through the door. “I mean, after this morning and before this?”

“Oh… You’ll never guess!” I squealed, glad to change the subject.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I got chosen to be a doctor!” I said. “Or, something medical anyway, and I don’t think a nurse, either. A doctor, or a field paramedic. I’m not sure what those are, but, still, it sounds exciting.”

“That’s what the judge said. How did they choose you?”

“I dunno, they just took us to the class today, first thing, for sim.”

“I noticed you werent’ there,” he said, getting into the showere.  I turned around and took my robe off, hanging it up”So, what did you do?” he asked.

“I had to cut up a dead person,” I said, shivering.

“Oh, yuck,” he said.

“He wasn’t really dead,” I said, “and I get to be a doctor!” I couldn’t control myself any longer and ran across and hugged him.  Which of course got me wet, and so I just stayed in the shower.  But I didn’t care, not today.  Today I was excited. And… and not at all sure how to handle the fact that he had taken what should have been my punishment

We got to bed really late that night, what with talking and duty, and carefully avoiding talking about the punishment, but I didn’t care, I would have been too excited to sleep anyway.

#

“Greetings,” our  instructor said.  “This may seem a bit strange to you, but today we are going to deliver babies.  Our classes for the next few weeks will keep going back and forth.  Once again, you don’t need to worry, today’s patients are all simulations.  Soon, however, we will be delivering real babies.  As you know many women come to us pregnant so we are already busy. But we’ll get a lot busier as time goes on.”

“Now, the most important thing to realize about child birth is that it is natural. Women were designed, by The Creator, to have babies. Men, well, that’s another story, and not one I need to tell you I’m sure. But we women were designed to have babies. Let’s look at a pregnant woman,” she said, and suddenly there, in front of us, was a pregnant woman… naked, of course. Grossly pregnant, too, eight months at least, if I had my guess. “Look inside here,” she said, splitting the woman open with a wave of her hand, and showing us the growing baby inside of it. You probably already know this, but the baby is attached to the mother by a placenta…”

#

“How did today go?” Andrew asked me, that evening.  We had arrived before Mystarrin and her husband had left, but they were dressed, sitting talking. I think Mystarrin actually stayed so she could say hello. We hadn’t gotten to talk hardly at all today, except for break, and I think she was just bursting to talk.

“Oh, I so loved today!” she said, gushing and hugging me, while Andrew and Nestin looked on, grinning.

“I kind of liked yesterday, better,” I said. “Surgery on a dead person is easier for me that dealing with some screaming pregnant woman that keeps telling me what an idiot I am.”

She laughed. We had had a patient like that yesterday, and we had each had to handle her, on our own, before the teacher had shown us how it was done. We had each tried to, you know, defend ourselves. Mystarriin had been practically in tears by the time it was done. But the teacher, working with the patient, practically ignoring the patient while she screamed and cursed her, rubbing her back, encouraging her to walk around.

“Well, we need to go,” she said, reluctantly, with a final hug, leaving me alone with Andrew. I could tell he was hoping for a repeat of yesterday.

“How did it go?” He asked me, getting into the shower.

“OK,” I said. “I’ve had better days, I’ve had worse days.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked, coming forward and putting his (wet!) hand on my shoulder.

“Well, today was all about childbirth,” I said, bowing to the inevitable and taking my robe off and moving with him back to the shower, letting him rub my back

“Didn’t you like childbirth?” he asked, not as distracted as I would have liked by my joining it.

“I loved it,” I said.  “I was just jealous.”

He turned me around, and not so he could see me naked either, but to hug me and say, “You’ll get pregnant! The tests all say we are both fine.  It hasn’t been that long.  Lot’s of couples don’t get pregnant right away.  They say only 85% in their first year.”

“Well, it seems to me like the 85% are already pregnant,” I said, moping.

“Well, we’ll just have to try harder,” he said, grinning, and I slapped him.  But, actually, he liked it when I slapped him like that and pretty soon we were out of the shower and ‘trying’.  But my heart wasn’t really in it.  I was beginning to be convinced that I couldn’t have a baby.

#

That next evening I was surprised, and quite a bit nervous, to see that Mystarrin and I were, again, dismissed early. As soon as I pulled off my helment I looked at June, but she was grinning. “Special evening,” she said.

“What?”

“Both of us?” Mystarrin asked, coming up next to me.

“A special evening, both of you, and your husbands, Room R45, Hurry along.”

Mystarrin and I looked at each other and ‘hurried along’. I knew the layout well enough that I didn’t need directions, and Myst followed me.

“What do you suppose is up?” she asked.

“I have no idea. None of the other girls seem to be  invited.”

“She said it was ‘a special evening’. That doestn’t sound like something work related. Do you suppose Fenta and Andrew will be there?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope so,” she said, and I tried to decide if I wanted Andrew to be ‘there’ or not. But, if he was going to be there we would have met him, met them, at the door to the changing room, no?

“How far do we have to go?” she asked me.

“It’s quite a ways,” I said. “And we have to go up this ladder.”

 

Up that ladder, then down a hallway, then up another ladder, then to a door, which I opned and… “Andrew?!”

Andrew was standing by an enourmous fire, one of the two in the room.Yes, you heard that right, two fires in this room. It had a high rounded ceiling, with stars or somesuch painted on the ceiling.

“Hey, Love!” Andrew yelled… the room being big and the fire making a bunch of noise. “Help us get ready?”

“Get ready for what?” I asked him, as I hurried over, Mystarrin doing the same thing for Fetna on the other side of the room. “Barbeque!” he said. “We’re hosting a barbeque… and fish steam,” he added, wrinkling his nose.

“We are?”

“Yeah, I got permission from my commander. Our whole group is coming, about fifty people total.  You and Myst need to get the other stuff organized, they’ll all be here in about an hour.

“What?!” I squealed, and looked off to Mystarrin, who was busy talking with Fenta. “What are we having?”

“All the usual… Pork ribs, brisket, chicken… they even had some lamb. You need to get the salads and everything ready.”

“For fifty people?” I squealed. “Where do I get everything?”

“Oh, there’s some fridges back over there,” he said, nodding.

“Oh, my,” I said, hurrying off.

Praise the creator they already had a lot of food all chopped and everything, so throwing together potato salad, coleslaw, and the like wasn’t actually that hard. In fact I got done before Mystarrin.

“What is that?” I asked her.

“It’s our standard fish sauce,” she said. “One of them, anyway. Mayonaisse, pickles and pickle juice, and horseradish. Plus a pepper that we grow on Hallycone. I was lucky they had some.”

I tasted it and kind of squealed. It was kind of spicy, in a very different way.

“you like it?” she asked, as I tried again.

“I might on the fish,” I said. “What are all those?”

“Pickled salads,” she said. “Not that they’ll be that pickled today, I could kill that boy, giving us only a couple of hours to get ready.”

“Andrew said one hour.”

“That’s when the guests arrive. Or start arriving. But the meal will need to be in two hours. Or, rather, she said, glancing at her com, one hour and fifteen minutes from now. Fenta said your partner would have some ‘cracked ribs’ to start with? How do they eat them?”

“Oh, with their fingers. We put them in large bowls…” I suddenly realized that the ‘we’ was me, and rushed off to find the bowls.

Andrew had had the cracker and I had just gotten a half dozen ribs cracked when the door opened and our first ‘guests’ walked in: a couple I hardly knew from our hallway, a different shift.

“Aliyah,” the woman said, and came and kissed me. She was hugely pregnant and we had to lean over her stomach to get the kiss done. “Thank you for inviting us!”

“Well, you’ll have to thank Andrew,” I said, ruefully, he put this whole thing together.

“Oh, you just pass it on,” she said, “the boys are already arguing barbeque technique. I guess Andrew and Fenta have made up?’

“I…” I said, suddenly in my own head realizing that that was what this was, “Oh, yes. They’ll probably end up best friends.”

She laughed, “And you are done blushing?”

I blushed, and she laughed again.

She left a minute later to talk to a friend that had just arrived and I hurried off to Andrew. “Did you do this to make up?” I whispered.

“I guess,” he said. “Fenta and I worked it up together. Surprised?”

“Yes,” I said, kissing him and earning us some cheers. But it had been really well thought of.

 

#

“Oh, Andrew, that went so well!” I said that night in the shower.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said. “I really am sorry for not controlling myself better, back then.”

“I thought you were wonderful. It is hard dealing with these others, but I think we’ll get used to it. Mystarrin was really fun tonight. I had no idea she could play the guitar!”

I think it was called a ‘lute’, Andrew said. But it was kind of like a guitar, wasn’t it. I love you, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “I love you too.”

As we finished showering I mused on the fact that that was true, and yet I was still furious at him for how he had gotten us together.

Over the next few days we vacillated, but eventually went back to the ‘turn around’ and ‘lights out’ except when I had a particularly good day at the sims… or when he had a particularly bad day.  Which I had learned to tell.

“I’m just not good at anything,” he moped one day, after we got done and he was in his ‘I can’t sleep yet’ mood.  Everyone else beats me in everything.”

“I’m sure you’re not that bad,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” he said, rolling over and facing me in the light of the jungle scene that was our current bedroom wall mural.  “You’ve seen my scores.  I’m not near the top in anything!”

“Well, you don’t need to be.  You aren’t near the bottom in anything.”

“That’s helpful,” he said, grumping.  I held him and, like he always did, he drifted right off to sleep and left me worrying about his problems.  It was true, none of his scores, not that we really knew what they were about, were very good.  Out of the ten thousand people in training, he rarely rose above the 5,000 mark, and that usually only for a few days.  Not that anybody ever complained, and most of our new shift, and most of our old shift, were about the same.

Jill’s partner, on the other hand, was really starring in one of his scores.  They seemed to go up every day.

Switching shifts

Day 29, midnight

Life continued like that for the next two weeks.  I did my duty with Andrew, and he kept his eyes off me.  June finally stopped asking me what was wrong.  Andrew must have continued to do badly in his studies, because his score barely budged.  I did, finally, learn to sleep.  I just pretended that he was some pillow or stuffed animal or something, and he probably enjoyed it.

But I did not enjoy it when, after those two weeks, the computer suddenly woke us up with the light as if we were late.

“It’s only four hours into our sleep shift!” I complained, sitting up and clutching the blanket to myself while Andrew blinked stupidly.

“You are going to be changing shifts and so you need to begin the change today.  Please finish all morning activities.”

Even Andrew didn’t seem to enjoy our bedplay this time, but we quickly finished and showered.  I was too sleepy to even care which direction he faced, and I think he was too sleepy to care (much) either.

I wandered down the empty hall to our sim room, and came in… to emptiness.  That is, there were no naked girls lined up to get in the med chamber.  There was the usual gray suited girl there, who just looked up from her console and nodded at me, “Shift change, eh? I hate those.”

I hung up my robe, “It’s my first.  Do we do them often?”

“Not too often, mostly in the beginning.  They’re messing with the teams a bit, seeing how you react to other girls, how your partner does with different boys.”

“So, any advice on how to handle it?”

“Well, try to be friendly, but don’t break up existing friendships,” she said.  “Shift change is a good time to get close to your partner, as they always shift with you and, for the next few weeks, they will be the only person you know well.”

Oh, great! I got into the chamber, and then into my suit.

“Hey, Aliyah,” Andrew said.  I looked around.

“Where on Earth are we?” I asked.

“It does look like a different sim,” he said, shrugging.  “City life, I guess.”

“Not like any city I’ve ever been in!” I said.

“No, colony cities, I guess.”

We stared in front of us at the extraordinary structure.  Surrounded by a wall, a wall made, it seemed, of stone and mud, the structure was… small.  It couldn’t cover more than a hundred yard, if that, on each side.  But inside that hundred yards there were dozens of structures.  And the smell.

“Come on,” said Andrew, reaching out instinctively for my hand and then flinching back as if burned when I refused him.  “Our bouncing ball leads us forward.”

I followed him, sparing a glance for his clothes, and my clothes.  Right out of a history book they were.  I kind of liked my fluffy dress, but he looked really stupid in those tights things.  I had to admit he was a lot more muscular than when we had first gotten on the ship.  I remembered those first few glances I had stolen at him in the shower…

“Look out,” he said, reaching out and stopping me with his hand.  I looked down…

“Gross! They put that right in the streets?”

“I think there is kind of a gutter thing for it,” he said.

“Still!” I said.

“Bread?” a man asked, yelled really, at me, holding up a loaf from a table in front of him.

“No, no thanks,” I said, accepting Andrews hand as the crowd, which had been coming in and out of the gate, flowed around us and as I tried to avoid getting any of the disgusting flow on my skirts.

“Come, love,” he said.  “Our ball continues.”

I glanced at him, but this hardly seemed the time or the place to object to being called ‘love’.  And besides, I think he thought he meant it.  I pleased him in bed, obviously, and that meant more for boys than for girls, or so I had been told.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“I can answer that, actually,” said a voice from besides me.  I jumped, startled.  “I don’t know you, though.  You can’t be new, we left the planet a long time ago.”

“No, no, we’re not new,” I said, talking to the girl.  “We are changing shift.”

“Oh… are you then? Well that explains… that explains why the Smith’s had to leave in mid sim.  Well, welcome to our shift.  We have been doing this sim for a while and it is, well, in some ways it is easy, in some ways it is hard.”

“What do we do?”

“Well, in a word, live… and live on top of each other.  You’ll be assigned some occupation, not too hard, something you can do, and then you… live.”

Just then our little green ball began bouncing away, so we followed it… to a restaurant.  “Ah, good, more help,” the very harassed man at the front desk said to Andrew.  “Your partenere can help in the back, with my partenere, and you can help me up here, setting and serving tables.  The napkins are over here…”

I followed his hand to the back, where several women were busy ‘cooking’.  “Ah, more help?” a woman asked, looking at me quizzically, but coming forward and kissing me on both cheeks.  I guess that was the greeting for this city.  It was better than that primitive sim where the boys (thankfully not the girls) spit on their hands and then shook them.  “You are new?”

“Shift change,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, nonplussed.  I guess it wasn’t common for them, either.  “Well, anyway, we are happy to have you.  How long will you be staying?”

“The computer said twelve more hours.”

“Oh, then you’re on C shift.  Half the people here right now are on C shift.  I’m B shift myself, we get to sleep in about four hours or so.  Anyway, here is what you need to do…”

She set me to work, chopping onions.  I had the standard pack on my back (did I still want that to be a real baby?) but otherwise the work wasn’t hard.  Suddenly I felt a pull on my skirts.  I looked down, “You new?” The small form asked.  It was a little girl, who looked to be about four years old.

“Yes,” I said.  It was the first time I had seen a child on board ship, except for June’s baby and an occasional small boy or girl hustling past me in the halls with his mother or father.  It was certainly the first time I had gotten to talk to one.  “We just came today.”

“Why?” she asked.

“This is my new place to be for right now,” I said, which was easier than saying that the computer, or whoever programmed the computer, had assigned us. .

“Cutting onions?” she asked, going on tiptoe to look onto the table.

“Yes,” I said, “Do you like onions?”

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head, and I laughed.  “I didn’t when I was little either; until I found out that they made spaghetti with onions.  And spaghetti was my favorite, so I decided I liked onions.”

#

“I like spaghetti…” she started to say, when a loud bell clanged out over the town.  Everyone froze for a second, and then went back to work.  But the lady who had met me when I came it came over to me, “Dear, we have to assign someone, some girl, to the walls, and as you are the newest and know the least about what we are doing here, I wonder if you would go.”

“Sure,” I said, putting down my knife gratefully.  “What’s going on?”

“Take off your dress,” she said, hauling me over to a corner, and handing me a very plain dress covered in blood stains.  “Quickly.  Don’t worry, the men never come in here.”

I glanced around and had my dress off in a couple of minutes… it being of a rather different type than any I had worn before.  I slipped the new one on while she talked.

“It is an attack.  All of the boys will be on the walls, and we will have to keep them fed and all.” She started tucking cloths into my waist belt.  “But you and a couple of other girls will start by taking water to them.  The water is over in that barrel there.”

“Attack?” I asked, “By what? The enemy?”

“Oh, no.  This simulation has no enemy, or, if they are, they are too far away for us to worry about.  But there are these other animals, kind of like wolves, only worse.  They hunt in packs, and they hate people.  They come out in the late afternoon and hunt till almost midnight… it is weird.”

“Ah, OK.  What are the cloths for?” I asked.

“Oh, those, we will all have those.  Those are for injuries.  These animals have a mean bite, and their claws are almost worse.  They can jump really high, so stay away from the edge of the wall.”

“Got it,” I said.  “Another combat scenario.”

“Well, sort of.  But this is more a question of living together, of getting along.  You’ll see.”

Wondering, I left, going by the barrel and picking up a bucket.  It took me a while to find the way up the wall, which was a ladder.  Getting up the ladder was difficult, but I was very glad she had had me change, it would have been impossible in the other skirts.

Stay away from the edge? The whole wall was only a meter wide! I came up right behind two men who were yelling and thrusting with some kind of spear.  At least, one of them was, and the other had a sword, a very short sword.  I crept along behind them… against them, really, but they paid me no mind, and then, not able to resist, I leant forward…

“Aaah!” I screamed, leaping backwards, dropping my water, and almost falling off the wall.

“Careful lady!” the man with the sword said, pulling on my shirt and rescuing me from a very painful fall.  “They can really jump.”

Really Jump indeed! I had only seen it for that flash of a second, and I had mostly only seen his mouth, with it’s enormous, jagged, teeth… but it had been very like a wolf indeed.  Well, except for the scales.

“Water?” I asked the man, who was still holding on to me.

“Naw,” he said, letting go.  “Jack and I just got onto the walls.  Maybe along there, there were a couple of guys that had been on the walls for a while, they might be thirsty.  We all will be eventually, though.  Just make the rounds.”

I nodded, and, after going back down for another bucket of water, began walking around.  Sure enough, as he had said, there were a couple of men aways along that were thirsty.  And then, a few feet along, I met Andrew.  He was standing behind some sort of shield thing and he had his bow.  It was his best weapon, I knew that.

“Hey, love,” he said, sparing me a quick kiss.

“Water?” I asked, him, holding out my bucket.

“Not now,” he said, “thanks.” Suddenly he drew back an arrow and fired.

“Did you get it?” I asked.

“I hit it,” he said, but I don’t think I hurt it.  The scales make it difficult.”

“I guess so,” I said.  “Well, I have to go on.”

I hadn’t gotten another four steps before the man in front of me, just before I got to ask him whether he wanted water, jerked back from the wall, screaming.  I ran forward…

“Can I help you?” I asked him, and then screamed myself, as something heavy landed on my back.  I heard yelling, and then felt blood streaming down my shoulder.

“Aliyah? Are you all right?” Andrew’s voice asked me, just after the weight was lifted off my back.”

“I, I don’t know,” I said, staring at the blood.  It was a strange color… I felt myself all over.  “I think so, was all of that from him?”

“Yes, I hope so,” he said, examining me.  “You’ld better help him, though, he said, pointing to the man underneath me.

“Oh, oh, yes,” I said, and took one of the rags off of my belt and began wiping, and then tying it on, his arm.  He had a very nasty slash… I think it got one of his arteries.  I watched as the cloth got tighter and tighter and then, finally, the blood flow stopped.

“Oooow!” he said.  “I hate these creatures.”

Just then the men in front of us stepped back simultaneously, almost stepping on us both.  We scrambled to our feet, I trying to gather my things, and he holding his hand.  “Will you be all right?”

“Getting down the wall is gong to be a bother, but I’ll be all right.  The women have a clinic downstairs, someone will practice their sewing skills on me.”

I shuddered at the thought, but, gathering my stuff I went on.  Twice more men wanted a drink, and then another man got hurt, this time far in front of me.  The men around yelled for me.

This one was worse.  He was clutching his stomach and blood was oozing out around his fingers.  “Let me see,” I said, but he shook his head.

“Don’t bother,” he said.  “We’ve both been here before.  Just help me get out of the way so I don’t bother the others.  You could get me something to drink, if you like.” He looked down at my bucket, “Something stronger than that.”

I nodded, helped him into kind of a corner, and rushed off down the ladder.  “Drink?” the lady at the bar asked.  “Oh, for the walls.  Yes, we have a supply, we keep it right here.  These skins are easy to handle, and easy for the men to drink from.”

“Thanks,” I said, and took it and rushed away.

“Thanks,” the man said, when I gave him the skin.  I looked at him.  I wanted to do something else, but he just waved me on.

The attack ended an hour later.  I learned that we had killed three of the creatures, and driven off the rest.  “there were a dozen easily,” Andrew said.  I got some good shots, but I don’t know if I hurt them at all.  They are very difficult to hurt.  Did you do OK?”

“Yes, but… that man got  hurt.  That was hard.”

“Well, you’ve seen death before.  Simulated death, anyway.”

“Yes, but always you or me.  Never anyone else.  Somehow it was different.”

“Huh,” he said.  “I never thought about it that way.  Well, I guess we need to get back to our regular work, anyway.”

We climbed down the ladder, in the middle of a group of others, and went off to the restaurant… which was suddenly very popular.  “Oh, good, you’re back,” the lady said, looking even more harassed.  “Those onions are still waiting for you, as is my daughter, who seems to have taken a liking to you.”

I looked and, sure enough, there was the little girl, standing by my table, looking at me hopefully.  “She is kind of lonely, poor thing,” the mother said.  “She just has her little brother to play with.”

Well, I liked children, especially girls, so I was pleased to get back.  It turns out she liked stories, so I set her up on the table and told her several that I knew.

“Tell me about you,” she said.  “What is your story?”

“Oh, there is nothing interesting about my story,” I said.

“Do you have any sisters?” she asked.

“Yes, two little sisters,” I said.  “And three big brothers, and two little ones.  One I haven’t even seen.”

“How can you have a brother you haven’t’ even seen?” she asked.

“When I was culled, my mother was pregnant, and she didn’t have the baby before I left, so I haven’t even seen a picture.”

“So how do you know it is a brother, and not a sister?” she asked.

“Because the doctors have a little camera that they can use to look in and see.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding.

“Aliya, dear, could you debone this meat for me?”

I looked at it.  “That’s not…”

“Oh, no, dear.  Vile stuff, that meat.  This comes from a thing kind of like a deer.”

Well, better kind of like a deer than kind of like a wolf, I thought as I started to cut it up and little Lydia started to tell me how much she liked some dish made with this particular meat which her mother made… and which didn’t, at least she thought it didn’t, include onions.  I only understood about half of it but, as it turned out, it was what we were making, so I got to learn how to make it (and it did include onions) and got to taste it, as did Andrew.  They gave the two of us a few minutes together to eat, which was nice.  It was kind of lonely, here, without all my girlfriends.

Suddenly, after a few hours of working, my ‘ball’ appeared. “Oh, guess you gotta go,” XXX said. “Next part of life here.”

The next part was a meal in a different resteraunt, with Andrew. “How was your time ofn the walls?” I asked.

“I didn’t die,” he said. “Those scaly wolves are nasty things. They attack in  packs. No idea why. It’s not like they get to eat any of us. They guys think it is a territorial thing. We interfere with their territory.”

“How do the people live here, anyway? I mean, I know this is a sim but, if it weren’t?”

“The wolves, bizarrely enough, are very diurnal… the only come out during the day. The people here do a lot of work at night. Logging and all. Food is a bit harder, but the wolves can’t eat Earth animals, and they don’t eat vegegables at all, so they don’t touch the fields. They have some tall towers out there at the fields, too tall for even these leaping stupid wolves. This food is good!”

I laughed. “You’ve got the same recipe we were making at the place I was working. I had it earlier. That’s the reason I had this steak. It tastes like pork, but then a lot does, eh?”

He laughed. “Isn’t it about time for our shift to be over?” he asked, and suddenly the world flickered, and changed… and we were standing, together, in a bare metal room with that Newtonian lady.

#

“Take your helmets off,” she said.

“You are going to be undergoing a new simulation today. As has been explained to you, community living within the CF often involves very tight sleeping quarters. So, for all new inductees, especially those from a society such as New Texas, we have a sim designed to simulate this. But, unlike most sims, this sim cannot legally be done in a sim suit. Come here.”

We both walked awkwardly into a small room she took us to… awkward in our suits. “This is where you will be sleeping for this sim,” she said. It was a tiny room with a cot in it. “As soon as you remove your suits I will turn on the wall sim. I am required to inform you that no human will review this sim. The computer will monitor your behavior only to measure how well you adjust to these tight quarters. But no human will be able to review your sexual activities, or listen to your private communications.”

She stopped and we stared at each other, and then, reluctantly, took off our suits. “No shower?” Andrew asked, his voice tinged with embarrassment.

“No, this is a primitive sim. I will bring your suits back to you in the morning. Have a pleasnt evening.”

She walked out the door and, as it closed, the walls lit up and I gave a squeal, as we were suddenly ‘in’ a large room, divided up by blankets. Around  us we could hear dozens of voices, all ages, babies crying and the like. Our little area was divided from the others by hanging blankets but they were kind of droopy so we could see out quite a bit and…

I ducked down onto our bed, blushing. No one had noticed our sudden appearance but I wasn’t wearing anything and the man in the next booth, the one who was yelling at his son well, I could see him so obviously…

“Well, this is different,” Andrew said, sitting down next to me and, well, staring at me. “But, remember, they aren’t real people. That lady said this was all  a simulation. In fact, she was a simulation, you know.”

“What?” I asked, turning to him.

“Yeah. Would have been against the rules, otherwise. Outside of our room she couldn’t have stood there and watched me as I dressed. And, from what they tell me, a Newtonian would have smirked at me as I undressed, this  one didn’t even bat an eye. Just a simulation. Like everybody here.”

“I… yeah, I guess we got to get used to this,” I said, my brain still overwhelmed by the sounds from around us. “You didn’t seem to be OK with her watching you,” I challenged.

“Well, yeah, I mean…”

I laughed, and hugged him, which he really enjoyed.

 

 

 

 

 

<fix>

“Time to go, love,” Andrew said, coming up behind me and squeezing me, in the way I used to like, just a while ago.  “The next shift is here.”

They were indeed.  The shift that had left soon after we had come were back from their sleep shift.  It was good, I was groggy tired.  “How much sleep do you think we will get this time?” I asked.

“Well, I think a full eight,” he said, “Minus shower and all.” He squeezed me to show me how much he appreciated the ‘and all’.  He tried, anyway, but I just couldn’t for get that, if he had run a little less quickly, he would now be dead, executed.  I had to carry on though…

<have them ‘sleep’ in the new city>

#

Day 30, morning

It had been a hard evening but I had concentrated on the idea that I was being graded and that these ‘people’ were all fake and had done, I thought, a pretty good job. Andrew seemed pleased, anyway. I hated not getting to shower, though, and using this awful chamber pot thing, which stunk.

Little Lydia was delighted to see me when I made it to my ‘work’, running over to me and hugging my legs. “Aliyah!!” she said.

“What are we doing today?” I asked.

“You can do some serving,” her mother said. “How was your night?”

“Long and noisy,” I said, breezily, trying to convince the computer that I hadn’t minded sleeping with all of those  other people just a blanket away.

“Well, our breakfast cereal is in the pot there. If you could take bowls of it out. It’s what everyone will be having, so just bring it out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, grabbing a tray and some bowls…

The ‘wolf’ attack lasted for  hours that day, and three boys got killed, although not Andrew.  I delivered water for part of the day, but got to cook most of it.  When we were just finishing Lydia’s mother came over to me, “We’ll see Aliyah tomorrow, too, Lydia,” she said, and I looked at her,

“Tomorrow is break day,” I protested.

“Yes.  I checked, and you are assigned to our break day.”

My face must have fallen, and she said, “Surely you realize that you couldn’t go to your old break day while on our shift.”

“I guess I didn’t think about it,” I said, and sighed.

“We have a very nice group,” she said, patting me on the arm.  “And Lydia will enjoy having you.  She has taken to you so well!”

I bent down and gave Lydia two little kisses.  I wasn’t sure where on New Texas these people were from, but wherever it was the girls all did a lot of kissing of each other, and a lot of greetings overall, and I didn’t want to stand out.  Not that I had gotten to know hardly any of them, except Lydia and her mother.  “See you tomorrow, then,” I said, and Lydia duly kissed me back, smiling.

“How was your day?” Andrew asked me, as we sat down to our evening meal.

“Fine, Break day tomorrow,” I said, “With a new group.”

“Yes, the men were discussing it.  Apparently I will have to participate.”

I stopped and looked at him, “What?”

“Yes.  That is their way.  Each man brings something. Their ‘pastor’ talked to me.”

“What are you going to bring?” I asked.

“I haven’t fully decided,” he said; which I suspected was a slight untruth to cover his nervousness.

“Well, I’m sure it will be good,” I said.

“Want to go on a walk before bed?” he asked me, when we had finished eating.

“In that forest?” I asked. “And get eaten?”

“Nah, I asked, and the simulator will turn off the danger so we can have some private time together. They say that even in the worst of settings we should be able to find somethign to do alone.”

“Oh, well, yeah. That should be great.”

 

 

#

Day 31, morning

 

We woke up in that little room. It had been a very long night. Very long. I think they program had turned ‘up’ to test us. And then, of course, we woke up naked in that room, with that simulated Newtonian standing there with our uniforms. And this time she smirked… “You’re right, young man, I am just a simulation. But thank you for the information on how you determined that. I was meant to be a test for you.”

Andrew just ignored her, and she went on, “You may go back to your room to prepare for break day. The information for it’s location will be on your wall screen.”

It was wonderful to shower that morning. Wonderful. And we both spent a long time in the shower, and talking through the last night.

It was a much longer walk to this break day room, and, for some reason, I was very nervous.  We were almost there when we met up with Lydia and her mother; along with her partner and their son, who he was carrying.  “Good morning!” Lydia’s mother said, as we all went through the greeting rituals.  They were dressed in their robes, and Lydia and her mother both had headcoverings on.  I was surprised by the robes, but I suppose it was legal.  The rules were you could wear, or not wear, anything in the break room so I guess it was all right.  And the robe had to be easier for her to nurse, I thought, looking at their son.  He was a little old, but a lot of mothers continued well until two years old or more, nowadays.  My mother had always thought that was strange, but it was all the rage on New Texas right now.

But my surprise at seeing them was nothing compared to when we got into the room.  They were all in robes! And all the women were covered; their heads, that is.  A little nervously, Lydia’s mother came up to me with headcovering, her partner walking alongside of her.  “It is our custom,” he said to Andrew, “All of our women are covered for service.”

I looked at Andrew, appalled.  I had never, ever, worn a headcovering.  Well, that wasn’t true, I had worn one to a friends church when I was smaller.  But we didn’t…

“She will wear one from now on,” he said, shocking me with his authority.  He had never, before, presumed to give me orders although, by the rules, he could.  Surely he should have left me to decide… I realized that everyone was looking at me and, not willing to create a fuss no matter how much I didn’t want to wear this stupid thing, I quickly put it on and tied it.

“We can begin now,” Lydia’s father said, and everyone began sitting down.  I saw, we saw, almost immediately that it was not going to be like our service.  First of all, everyone was sitting in a great big circle.  Secondly, the partners were sitting together! That was never done in our area.  Kids, sure, they could sit with either parent, although most sat with their same sex parent; but once you were ‘of age’ you never sat with the opposite sex in church!

Andrew, who I’m sure had never done this either, took it in stride, however, and led me to an open spot… with two couples squooshing over a bit to let us in.  He kept his arm around me, which I found doubly distressing, but, looking around, I saw it was the regular rule.  All of the partners had their arms, or hands, on, or around, their partners in some fashion.  I leaned against him, put my hand on his leg, and waited to see what other bizarre things would happen here.

“I’m sure we would all like to welcome the new couple, Andrew and Aliyah Tome’.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but shut it with a snap, glaring at Andrew.  But he just looked placidly on as the leader continued, “They have joined us from another shift, and are both from the area around Victoria.  I have examined Andrew and his doctrine, while different in points, is still, I believe, acceptable enough to allow him to speak in our meetings.  I have warned him to be ready, as their meeting did things a bit differently.”

It sure did, I thought to myself.  The next part of the service wasn’t that odd, as the leader got out a computer board and began a sermon on I Peter 3:15.  It was a short little message and, when he was done, he led us in a hymn: a rather familiar hymn to me.  Then he passed the computer pad to the next man, who, himself, gave another message.  It went like that until it came around to Andrew who, very nervously, pulled up a passage and read,

Psa 86  Bow down thine ear, O   LORD , hear me: for I am poor and needy.  Preserve my soul; for I am holy: O thou my Elohim, save thy servant that trusteth in thee. 

Be merciful unto me, O   LORD : for I cry unto thee daily.  Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O   LORD , do I lift up my soul. 

For thou,   LORD , art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. 

Give ear, O   LORD , unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplications. 

In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me. 

Among the elohim there is none like unto thee, O   LORD ; neither are there any works like unto thy works. 

All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O   LORD ; and shall glorify thy name.  For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art Elohim alone. 

Teach me thy way, O   LORD ; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name.  I will praise thee, O   LORD my Elohim, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore. 

For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. 

O Elohim, the proud are risen against me, and the assemblies of violent men have sought after my soul; and have not set thee before them.  But thou, O   LORD , art an Elohim full of compassion, and gracious, long suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. 

O turn unto me, and have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto thy servant, and save the son of thine handmaid. 

Shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed: because thou,   LORD , hast holpen me, and comforted me.

My heart was beating out of my chest by the time he finished but, when he looked up from the computer, he didn’t look at me, but at the leader.  “This Psalm has been very meaningful to me, recently.  I have sinned, and sinned greatly, and hurt people around me, people who I love.  This Psalm is encouraging that, even as I still have to live with the results of my sin here in this life, I can still look to The Creator; both for comfort here and for His final, everlasting love…”

I listened, unsure whether to be angry or… or not.  If he was asking for my forgiveness, he wasn’t going to get it.  And what else did he want from me, anyway? I did my duty, didn’t I? And I held his hand, and cuddled, and did that kind of thing to make him look good in public, didn’t I?

His ‘talk’ was mercifully brief and he suggested a Hymn and we moved onto the next man.  But I paid him no attention, being far too busy with my own thoughts and emotions.

“That was a nice message,” the leader said, coming up to us after the service.  “I sense you had your heart in it.”

“Yes,” Andrew said, briefly.  “I have a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“The dress code.  Not the headcoverings, I understand that, but the robes…”

“Ah, well, that was a decision we made the first week.  You see, we like to emphasize the Sabbath as a day of rest.  And it seemed to us that our uniforms were very much a representation of our ‘job’… so to come to our Day of Rest in our uniform, well, we thought it wasn’t properly symbolic of ‘rest’.”

“I see,” said Andrew.  “Well, we will certainly follow your lead…”

We would? Come to Break Day…? I looked around.  Well, it was us that stuck out now.

It was funny.  They sat together during the service but now, now that service and lunch were done, they sat apart… the boys in one group and the girls in another.  Andrew had taken me into a corner, however, and I sat on his lap, his hands slowly busy.  I relaxed.  I was used to this, anyway, even if I still didn’t care to have him do it.  I knew how important it was to him.  And besides, I was sleepy…

“Wake up, my love,” Andrew whispered in my ear and I sat up with a start.  A couple of the girls looked at me with grins on their faces.  Let them try changing shift.  “It’s time to go home and… go to sleep,” he said, with chuckle.

Home, I couldn’t sleep.  Andrew, after doing his duty, did though.  We were so cuddled up I couldn’t move, which added to my frustration.  I couldn’t stand him, but there was no way to be rid of him.

Letters from home

Day 15, evening

I was incredibly excited about getting a letter from home, so much so I was almost bouncing around our cell.  I wasn’t too distracted not to notice that Andrew wasn’t so excited.  “What’s up, love?” I asked him, clinging to his arm, as we waited for the countdown.  “Didn’t you like the letter we sent?”

He brightened up, “Oh, no, that was great.  Much better than anything I could have done on my own.” His face shifted, again, “It’s, well… you’ve never met my parents and… well… I hope you like them.”

Now I was nervous.  He was clearly lying.  The couple of times he had tried to lie, so far, I had quickly caught him.  He hated it when he had done poorly in training and, twice so far, had tried to cover it up.  I had quickly caught it, and challenged him on it, and he had stopped trying.  But I had no idea what he was lying about now.

I glanced up at the clock.  We still had twenty minutes.  “You want a quick cuddle?” I asked him.

So it was that twenty minutes later we were pulling our clothes back on (the letter was entirely one way, of course, but somehow neither of us wanted to face our parents undressed).  The timer counted down and the two letters popped up in our inbox.  “Yours or mine, first?” I asked him, trying to be cheerful.  Our time together had barely distracted him, and I was now totally freaked out.

“Yours!” he said, quickly, and I relaxed a bit.  At least he wasn’t worried about my parents.  I reached forward and pushed play…

“Oh, Aliyah!” my mother gushed.  She stood with my father, my siblings, and what looked like all of our extended clan, including half a dozen nursing babes, and her face was just alive with excitement.  “Oh, Aliyah I was so excited, I just couldn’t believe it when we heard! I so wish I had been there, to give you the salute.  Oh, Aliyah! I’m so looking forward to hearing all about him…”

Andrew pushed play, a confused look on his face.  “Your mother is excited that you got culled?” he asked.

“No, silly, she’s excited that I finally partnered.  Hardly a day went by when she didn’t hint that if, you know, I partnered, then I would get to start having children, and how exciting it would be to have the boy in our family, and all of that.  She is very, very New Texan, my mother, and believes that life starts at partnering… or maybe the first birth.  She’s a midwife for our church, actually.  Not the main one, but a backup one, and a duoula.”

“Oh,” he said, and pushed play again.

It was an incredibly long letter.  My mother gushed about my getting partnered, gushed about Andrew… although when she had written the letter she hadn’t even known his name, gushed about the baby she was sure I was already pregnant with… but if not, don’t worry dear, it will come soon enough.

Then each of my siblings, and cousins, and cousines, etc.  all got their say.  After they were all done my father came forward.  “Well, Aliyah.” He paused.  “The Creator bless.  Bless your partner, and serve well.  And know that we will always be praying for you, and all yours.”

So saying he bowed his head and, the clan getting almost silent for once, prayed, indeed, for me, Andrew (‘Aliyah’s partner’), our work, our children, our elders…

When he finished, he reached forward, and the video stopped.

“Well,” I said, into the silence.  “Shall we play your letter now?”

“I guess,” said Andrew, flatly, and pushed ‘play’.

#

The scene couldn’t have been more different.  The room this letter was in was empty, except for what was obviously his father and, standing behind his father, looking nervous and upset, his mother.  And his father was looking stern, almost angry.

“Andrew!” his father said.  “I hope that you are going to let your partenere watch this letter, because I want, we want, to pass our apologies on in person.  I can’t believe, I seriously can’t believe, that you let it get this far.  The fact that you were willing to wait until final choice was bad enough, but at least there the girls would be expecting a rather abrupt partnership.”

“I can’t imagine what you have put that poor girl through, and all because you failed to man up and actually ask a girl yourself!”

“Anyway, to your poor partenere, our sincere apologies.  We hope that you both will do well in the Colonization Force, obviously, and will be praying for you and your children, when you have one.  Hopefully Andrew…” he stopped, blushed, and changed topics.

“Anyway, we are looking forward to finding out, from your letter, who your partenere is, and meeting her family and all.  Apparently it is the regular thing, I asked around, for the families of Colonization Force partnerships to get together from time to time.  Once you join your unit, we will even have unit meetings.  Not many people in our family have volunteered, so much of this is new to us.”

“Your mother would like to say a few words…” he said, and left.

Andrew’s mother did indeed ‘say a few words’, and nice ones too.  She welcomed me to their family, and told me all about them: much I had already learned from Andrew but some new stuff too.  Then she had his siblings all come in.  They didn’t seem to have caught on that Andrew was in trouble.

But I hardly heard any of it, my mind was whirling with what his father had said.  At first it made no sense, but suddenly it hit me what he was accusing Andrew of.

Everyone knew about boys that were too shy to ask a girl to partner with them.  Every once in a rare while one of them would actually go to final choice.  But most of them managed to find some way to get around their problem: ask a sister or other girl relative to go and ‘sound out’ the girl involved, or just, you know, hang around enough so that she got the point and forced the issue.  I even heard about one boy, this might have been just a rumor, I didn’t know him that well, who actually, you know, went ahead with Gruden’s without even asking officially.  Obviously the girl was willing enough… rumor had it they were in her own room at the time… but he had been too shy to actually ask.

People did volunteer without choosing a partner, however, so what made Andrew so different? And that’s what suddenly it hit me.  He hadn’t ‘not chosen’, he must have ‘not asked’.  There had been a girl, for all I knew there were half a dozen girls, who he would have wanted to ask but, because he had been afraid, he had, instead forced me…

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.  OK, so prisoners had no choice.  It wasn’t like you could suddenly ask a girl from your prison cell… and even less like they would agree! And if he had just, you know, wanted to be a colonist and not found any girl that wanted to come with him, well, OK, everyone knew that that was a part of what the cull was about.  That even happened to boys, sometimes!

But to have a girl, or girls, that you wanted, or at least were willing to partner with, and then, because you were too shy, or too lazy, to ask them to partner with you, so you just go and  volunteer and have the computer pick a partner for you…! He could at least have gone to the computer before hand! And then come to me… it would have told him my name… and at least asked me!

That was why he had waited to last day! He had probably had half a dozen girls on his list and he had just hemmed and hawed… I knew how he could be… until, finally, he had realized it was too late.  He had realized what a colossal idiot he would look like to go and ask one of them,  on his last day.  And what girl would even accept someone that close to final choice, unless they were days away too!

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.  I had been so close, and for me to have gotten culled not because some computer picked me, or even because some boy had gotten himself in trouble with the law, but because he had just… waited! Not decided! And as a result I was forced to…

In a hot flash it came over me what he had forced, and what I had allowed.  And not just allowed, encouraged.  I had thought about what a good partenere I was getting to be, pleasing him in bed, in the shower, encouraging him at work, talking about his interests, letting him draw me… and all the time he was sitting there, lying to me, letting me think he had just ‘volunteered’!

It came to me that the letter was over, and he was sitting there, trying to say something…

“Aliyah,” he managed finally, just as I said,

“I can’t believe it! How many girls did you have on your list, that you were afraid to ask?”

“I…”

“And, of course, you were afraid to ask me, too.  You knew you could do that, right? It isn’t like the make a secret of it, or it costs anything.  You could have gone down at any time, to any recruitment center, and just asked who your match was!”

“But I…”

“Obviously your parents didn’t put you up to it.  All this time I thought you just suddenly decided to join up.  I asked, you and you said ‘you didn’t know’ why you didn’t partner.  Liar!”

The word hung in the air between us until I, finally, said, “Lights out!” I had already done my duty to him for this evening and he didn’t deserve to see me undress.

He tried, over the next few minutes, to reach out and touch me, the way we had been doing for the last couple weeks now, but I was having none of it.  I would do my duty, for my country and my race.  But this boy didn’t deserve any ‘affection’.  Everyone knew that you didn’t do… what he did.  You didn’t use the Colonization Force to just force some girl to partner with you!

#

Day 16 morning

I awoke to his hand moving across my back and, for the first couple of seconds, relaxed to the accustomed feeling.  Then my brain suddenly filled with what had happened last night and I stiffened.  He must have felt me, because he didn’t even suggest that we turn the lights on until we were finished and I was dressed in my robe.

“I…” he started, but I cut him off.

“We’ll talk later,” I said.  “We have to get to training.”

“I… OK,” he said.

I normally liked how perceptive June was, but it played me false that morning.  She must have seen something in my face because she came up to me, touching my arm, “feeling sick this morning, dear?” she asked.  “No,” I said, stripping off my robe and getting in line.  “The machine would catch that, you know that.”

“Are you OK?” she asked, with a totally different tone.

“No,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No!” I said.  It was my problem, and it wouldn’t help to spread it around.

“But dear,” she said.  Just then, however, her baby cried and she turned away for long enough for me to get in the med chamber.

“Hey,” I heard from behind me, and turned, reluctantly.  It was Andrew, of course.

“Hey,” I said, turning back toward ‘my’ sector.  The weight on my back, representing the baby I was supposed to have for this boy, weighed more heavily on my back than it ever had before.

“I’m sorry…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.  “This is training time, not personal time.  We’ll talk about it tonight.”

“OK,” he said, lifting his rifle and picking off an Enemy, long range.  Today’s geography was very, very different: mountains, cliffs, tall trees.  And, just in front of us, an enormous, rapid, river.  It was a hot day and, after an hour or so I wanted nothing so much as to go swimming in it.  Not that I would, of course, not with enemy about… including the enemy walking alongside me.

Suddenly the green ball disappeared and Andrew put his head to one side, then said, “OK.”

“What?” I said.

“Orders,” he said.  “We’re to find high ground and snipe.”

“Oh,” I said, looking around.  “Up there?” I asked, jerking my head, ‘pointing’ at a ledge about fifty feet up.

“Yeah, that should be great,” he said, then he looked at me.  “Tell you what, let me carry the ‘baby’ up, while you cover us.”

The… oh, “Are we allowed?” I asked.

“What? Of course,” he said.  “You think I won’t ever carry our baby once you have him?” he asked.

“Or her!” I said, as I reached around and unstrapped my pack.

“Her?” he said, indignantly, and then laughed, “Or her, love…”

His voice trailed off at that last and, without another word, he started up the cliff.  I turned and faced outwards, watching until I heard him yell, “OK, come on up!”

I hated to admit it, but I was very  glad he had taken the pack away.  It wasn’t that hard a climb, and of course I knew I was in sim, but still, it would have been very hard with that pack on.

“Here,” he said, when I got close enough so he could reach his hand out to me.  I reached out and grabbed him, and let him pull me up.  I didn’t want to even touch him, but I was exhausted.

“Great,” he said.  Now, which side do you want?

I looked around and realized what a mistake I had made.  And it was my fault, too.  I had picked this ledge to do our ‘sniping’ on and, well, it wasn’t very big.  I sighed, “I’ll take this side,” I said, pointing to the upstream side.  I took my pack back (I didn’t need him to owe me anything else) and laid down, focusing my attention on the river and nearby.  Andrew lay down and, glancing back, I could see he’d done as good as he could to not touch me.  In fact, “I won’t bite,” I said.  “You don’t have to fall off the ledge just because I’m mad at you,” I said, and he moved his legs over on top of mine.  I wiggled, he wiggled, and we eventually arrived at a kind of compromise which didn’t make me too uncomfortable… and which he probably enjoyed.  He enjoyed far too much of this, in my opinion.

“Bang!” Andrew shouted, causing me to jump.

“Andrew!” I said, “you almost made me fall off!”

He looked over his shoulder at me, “No chance of that, love.  Not with that backpack on your back and our legs all knotted up like that.”

I fumed to myself.  He was enjoying this far too much!

This was a good position, though.  No way they could get at us here.  The closest they came over the next few hours was one adult who managed to launch an arrow or whatever at us.  It fell dramatically short, and my shot took him in the… well, not heart, but that liver/kidney thing, after passing through his lungs/chest.

I felt Andrew twitch, but didn’t hear a shot.  I turned, and he had his head turned, like they do… “What’s up?”

“Lunch call,” he said.  “A ways up the mountain from here.  Come on.”

Lunch? I wasn’t sure I could face everyone.  I felt him pulling at my pack, but I jerked away.  “I can do it!” I said, and his face fell.

“Don’t be like that!” he said, “It isn’t your fault you aren’t as strong as me.  I’m your partner, it won’t be just your baby your carrying.  And you know, in real life, you would let me carry it down this cliff.”

“Oh, very well,” I said.  He was right, the idiot.  I gave him the ‘baby’ and followed him down the cliff.  “Which way?” I asked him.

“Up here,” he said, and we started off, with him in the lead, since he knew where we were going.  Why hadn’t the computer told me? Why always Andrew?

“There they are,” he said, pointing up ahead.  I had to say, the computer had picked a gorgeous place for our meeting.  A plateau overlooking a bend in the river.  The gang was already there, different folks from yesterday.  I didn’t know many of them, which was good.  Jeryl was there, and I went up and sat next to her.

“Hey,” I said.

“Nice day, eh?” Jeryl said, which was about the worst thing she could have said, but I put that aside.

“Very pretty,” I said.  “What’s for lunch?”

“I dunno,” she said.  “I haven’t opened the basket yet.  How was your hunting?”

“Profitable,” I said.  “Sniping is certainly less dangerous than just walking through a field.  We must have killed a couple of dozen Packs and Juvies, and we each killed a couple of adults, too.”

“Well,” Jeryl started, but just then her partner plopped himself down behind her,

“My turn off duty,” he said, reaching his hands around her.

“Well!” Jeryl said, again, “We had a good time on duty!” she grinned as he hugged her.  “I like being a sniper, as long as I get to do it with my partner!”

I did my best to keep my feelings off my face, and listened to a couple of other girls, who were talking about being pregnant.  No one else was worrying about lunch, yet, so I took it on myself to start preparing it.  Lisa came and joined me.

“Did you have a good day?” I asked her.

“Well, I find all of this killing hard,” she said.  “I know we have to do it, but I wish I didn’t have to.”

“Maybe you ought to get a job on shipboard,” I said.

“Oh, that’s what I’m hoping for,” she said.  “Jeremy doesn’t particularly like all of this, either.”

I looked at Jeremy as I pulled the meat out of basket.  He didn’t look like the kind of guy that would enjoy this.  Small, skinny, he looked like he would be happier in a library.

“What is that?” Lisa asked me, and I looked down at the ‘meat’ I was holding.

“I dunno,” I said.  “Some kind of bird, I guess.”

“With two sets of wings?” she asked me, picking one  up.  Sure enough, it would have had two sets of wings, and feet, too.  And a long neck, which they had left on when they roasted it.  Oh, well, I hope it tasted good.  We’d probably be catching and eating them on the next sim.

Our reverie was interrupted by a burst of fire and Lisa, along with the rest of us, spun around weapon in hand.  It was a pack and the boys had already downed three of them, but there seemed to be about ten… which was big for a pack, at least in my experience.  When the rest of us opened up we finished them off quickly enough.  “Want to cook some Pack?” One of the boys asked.  Technically he was asking his partenere, but she looked at us.

“It would taste better,” I said.

“But it’d be a lot of work,” Jeryl said, sitting down on her partners lap again.

“And we might not have time to finish before our lunch hour is up,” Lisa finished, so we let the Pack lay there and finished taking out the rest of the meal.

The meal was very awkward.  For one thing they asked Andrew to pray.  How had he gotten a reputation for religion? And then, of course, they gave Andrew his turn ‘off’, which the rest of them were using to, well, cuddle, with their parteneres.  He came nervously up to me but, not willing to utterly humiliate him in front of his friends, no matter what he had done to me, I sat him down in front of me, and hugged him, like the other girls were doing, or, almost, anyway.  We didn’t talk but, we might not have talked anyway.  Several other couples weren’t talking.

Still, all in all, I was glad when lunch was over and we moved off together.  It turned out, ironically I thought, that our very next assignment was to kill and cook lunch, which turned out to be Pack.

#

Day 16, evening

Andrew came out of the boy’s door at the exact same second I came out of ours, and we both paused, awkwardly.  Then we walked down to our room and, even more awkwardly, had to wait while the other couple finished dressing and left.  This wasn’t the first time this had happened but it was always awkward, with everyone facing away from each other and all.  Finally they left and, as I walked toward the shower Andrew said, “I…”

“Turn around!” I snapped.  When he did I said, “Well?”

“I… I’m sorry for what my Dad said…”

“Was it true?” I asked… and the silence answered me even before he said,

“I guess so.  I mean, I didn’t plan it that way! I just… I just couldn’t ask anyone… and final choice was coming closer and closer.  It was probably too close for me to get anyone anyway, who wants someone that has waited that long? My sisters told me that any girl I asked would feel like they were just asked because I was desperate.”

“And I was desperate.  I really did want to partner! I’ve always wanted to! But I never could ask anyone.  And then I was walking to work from the bus stop and, there it was, the induction center.  And all I could think of was I would get a partner, and everyone would be so proud of me because I had volunteered.  Honestly, I didn’t think about…”

“About me?!” I asked, and he almost slumped over.

“Who was she?” I asked, and he started to turn around to ask me,

“Who was who?”

“The girl you were going to ask? The girl you wanted instead of me?”

“Instead of you?” he asked, doing his best to sound bemused, as if he didn’t know what I meant.

“There must have been some girl you wanted to ask, some girl you dreamed of!” I turned off the shower and started drying.  “Some girl you just couldn’t bring yourself to ask because she was just too good.  So instead you forced me…!”

I pulled on my robe and pushed past him, and he turned and undressed.

“It wasn’t like that, honest!” he said.

“There was no other girl you wanted to ask?” I asked him, and he blushed.

“Well, I would have…” his voice trailed off and he finished showering, and the rest of our activities, with neither of us speaking.

—

#

Day 17, morning

The next morning I felt June’s eyes on me as I stood in line. I tried to act relaxed but I obviously failed. As I turned to go to my suit she pulled me aside.

“Aliyah,” June said, her voice almost motherly, “You need to tell me what is wrong.”

I turned to face her.  “Is this an official thing?” I asked.  “Do I really have to tell you?”

She shrank back as if I had slapped her.  “No, no dear, but…”

“Then leave me alone,” I said, and turned back toward the med chamber, everyone’s eyes on me, shocked. Few peopel were ever rude to June. And I felt horrible about it. But I felt worse about what Andrew had done to me, and I knew what she would recommend: forgiving him. But what he did was unforgiveable. Absoloutely unforgiveable. If only he had told me, it might not have been so bad. If he had told me right away. But to let me live with him, do Grudens with him, all these days, thinking he had just ‘signed up’!

#

Day 17, morning

“Hey, Aliyah,” Jill said, coming in sim with me the next morning which, thankfully, I was doing ‘alone’, ie without Andrew.  It was a space warfare sim, which was about the most boring thing in the world, and I was glad to have someone come sim with me… both of us sitting at our own consoles, but we got to talk, anyway.  “What’s up with Andrew?” she asked.

I sighed.  I desperately wanted to talk, but not about me and Andrew! “Oh, nothing.  Why?”

“Well, something’s up.  His rankings are in the toilet.”

“What?” I said, sitting up and looking at her.

“You didn’t notice? I guess you were too busy talking with June.  Yesterday he was at 2100 on the overall rankings… not too bad, almost top fifth.  Today he’s at 7602.  That’s quite a drop for one day.  Did he tell you how his day went yesterday? Did he royally fail some test? Crash some spaceship or something? I hear the boys have been doing a lot of work with ships.”

I cringed at her words.  It hadn’t been a ship that had crashed.  Did they listen to what we said… and did… in the Dorm? My outraged modesty clashed with fear that they knew what Andrew had done to me.  What would they do to him? Not that it was, technically, illegal.

“Not that I heard,” I said.  “I’ll ask him tonight.”

“You do that.  Did you hear that Marsha is pregnant? You and I are going to be alone in the full sims, soon.”

I didn’t know what to think about that, actually.  I was embarrassed that I wasn’t pregnant, even if Jill was exaggerating a bit, it couldn’t be more than half our class that had already gotten pregnant.  It was something that I was… we were supposed to be doing, our duty, and, while I knew I wasn’t failing at my duty, maybe the other girls might start thinking I was.

But, at the same time, the very thought of carrying his child was disgusting.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted children, but the idea that they would be his children, because we had…

“Yes, I saw her light turn red,” I said.  “She was excited.”

“Jealous?” Jill asked, startling me.

“What, I, well, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” she said.  And then, “Is everything OK with you and Andrew? Are you still… you know?”

“Yes!” I said.  “It isn’t because of that.  You know what they told us, we can’t all get pregnant every time…” Suddenly I realized what I had heard in her voice.

“Is everything OK with you all?” I asked her.

“I… I hope so.  I didn’t think boys were supposed to be ‘too tired’.”

I blushed.  I couldn’t believe that I was having this conversation.  But, she was obviously hurting.  “Is he often too tired?”

“Just this last week,” she said.  “He certainly never was before.”

“Has anything changed this last week?” I asked her.

We talked for quite a while and it turned out that, a few days prior, they hadn’t been quite dressed, afterward, when the other couple came in.  Her partner hadn’t said anything but…

“He was probably really embarrassed,” I said.  “And now, whenever you two, when… maybe he thinks about that and it makes his scared or something.”

“But what should I do?” she asked.

I blushed, but gritted my teeth.  She obviously really wanted my advice.  “Wake him up,” I said.  “In the middle of the night.  You can’t get walked in on then!”

“Do you think… but he tells me he is too tired…”

“Don’t you think that is just an excuse?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said, and we moved on to other topics.

Space Sim was very boring and obviously the computer thought I was getting out of shape and I needed exercise, because, after about six hours of space sim, I was suddenly back on the beach, running in the sand.

Which gave me time to think about something other than Jill and her partner.  After a few hours thought I came around to Andrew’s scores I realized that they probably hadn’t listened to us in our dorm… they wouldn’t care anyway that he joined because he hadn’t been able to get up the nerve to ask a girl.  They just cared how he was doing.

And, just as obviously, he was probably doing badly because he was all freaked out by what had happened between us.  Any idiot would know that a boy who had a partenere that was mad at him wouldn’t do as well in his training.  And I knew they listened to us during our training, and, well, we hadn’t been doing well then, either.

Did I care? I guess I did.  We were partners, and what he did would reflect on me.  But… I couldn’t just turn off being mad.

Day 18 afternoon

“Hello, Aliyah,” I heard, and turned to see June. “Are you done being mad at me?”

“I… I wasn’t mad at you,” I protested. “I’m mad at Andrew.”

“Of course you are. And it is killing you.”

“Well, of course! He…”

#

Day 17, evening

“Listen,” I said, that night.  “I’m mad at you.  You know that.  What you did was… it was almost unspeakable.”

“I…”

“But we’re partners, for life.  You can’t change that, and I certainly can’t change that.  So I don’t want you thinking I’m not going to do my duty, or that you are going to come home to…” This had sounded so good when I had said to myself earlier in the day.

“I will be a good partenere,” I concluded, lamely.  “I don’t want you to be afraid to come home.”

He stood there, staring at me.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I never meant to hurt anyone, and, I would never want to hurt you, honestly.”

I stared at him.  I had no idea what to say.  “Lights out,” I said, finally.

#

Day 20, mid day

“Hey Jill,” I said, blushing.  I didn’t really want to talk about her problem again but I knew I couldn’t really avoid it, so I had accepted her ‘invitation’.  “How did things go?” I asked, deciding to go ahead and bite the bullet.

“Oh, Aliyah, I can’t think you enough!”

“It worked, then?”

“Yes, yes, although I really didn’t tell you the truth.  I didn’t know it myself, I think.  I woke him up, like you said but, when I thought about it, I had to figure out what to say! I couldn’t just ask him, you know, if he wanted to.  So I decided, I decided to say that I wanted to.”

That worked, like a charm, and it was just like before.  Better even.  And, after we got done, I suddenly realized that it was me that had been nervous.  Because I wasn’t nervous… in the middle of the night.  He must have sensed this, that next night.  So, once I told him I wanted it, why, he was back to his old self.”

“Ah, well, good.” Hard to believe that I was giving advice on partnership! I hardly knew what I was doing.

“How’s it going with Andrew?” she asked.

“Better,” I said.

“What was wrong?” she asked.  “You two used to be real cuddly and then, bang…”

“I can’t really talk about it,” I said.  “I got mad at him over something I can’t talk about and then June read me the riot act.”

“June’s good at that,” she said.  “She wasn’t so helpful with my problem, not as much as you, anyway.  She was all full of advice about being gentle, and willing, and all.  But nothing so practical as ‘wake him up in the middle of the night’.  You need to go into counseling.”

“Oh, please,” I said, laughing.  “I would hate that! I’m glad I was helpful but… sitting in a chair all day saying, ‘tell me how your are feeling…'”

Jill had the grace to laugh and started talking about how her partner was doing with his space sims which, apparently, he loved.

—

#

The beginning of the trip, when it came, was very anti-climactic.  Everyone knows that you don’t slip into underspace directly from a planet’s orbit, and that thrusters, well, that thrusters are the slowest part of a trip, but, still.  We were even in sim when it happened, and got to watch, and it was still nothing.  Just New Texas starting to get smaller and smaller, and then the sun getting dimmer and dimmer until, after about an hour, the entire view was replaced, first by the grey of underspace, then an abstract star chart and then, “Back to work, darling,” Andrew said, when the ‘sky’ vanished and our current world replaced it.  “We need to learn how to plant these potatoes.”

I groaned, and leaned back down, the weight on my back seeming like it threatened to sink me into the dirt itself.  Meant to simulate the weight of a (very heavy!) baby Andrew didn’t have to wear it.  But, then, he wasn’t wearing much at all, except weapons; just a kind of loin cloth thing.  And the weapons… completely primitive for this simulation.  I still didn’t really believe that we planted colonies and let them devolve this completely.

This sim had started the morning after Andrew and I had our ‘fight’, and Andrew had seemed to decide to just paper over my anger and pretend that we were real ‘partners’.  His use of the word ‘darling’ was an example.  But it didn’t seem like objecting would help… especially in a sim where everything *was* getting recorded and analyzed.

“There’s a Juvy!” Andrew said, suddenly, and, carefully got out his bow.  It was a very young one, which meant it was still very stupid… ‘twang’.

“Missed!” Andrew said, as the Juvy ran off.

“No, no you didn’t,” I yelled.  I saw it go in.  You must have just injured it.  Go after it!”

I had yelled kind of urgently, as I was hungry, and in these sims you literally didn’t eat unless you caught something, or had something ‘stocked up’; which meant I had to cook it.  Actually, in either case I had to cook , but some roast Juvy would go very well with these potatoes if he would just… I watched him lope off.  At first I had been mad at him for going so slowly, but had learned, myself, that his seemingly slow lope was not only actually rather quick, but that he was able to keep it going for a long while.  I stood up, and wiped my brow.  Either way, we would be eating some potatoes.  Now I just had to plant these, by myself, and then go inside, get some water boiling, chunk and boil the potatoes, set the table with spices and things and… if I was lucky and had time, take a quick bath with some of the water as it heated.

#

Day 22, evening

“Hey,” Andrew said to me, coming in to our cell.

“Turn around,” I said, “or turn the lights out.”

“OK…” he said, disappointment evident in his voice but dutifully turning around and taking his clothes off.  “How did your day go?” He asked, nervously.

“Fine,” I said.  “Yours?”

“Pretty good, actually.  I got to fly this shuttle… by sim, of course… and I had to bank it around this…”

“Turn around!” I snapped as he began to move his hands in a half circle that, I knew, would turn him toward me.

“Sorry,” he said.  “Anyway, it was cool.  What did you do?”

“Space warfare,” I said.  “Totally boring.  You can shower now.”

“Thanks.”

I lay in bed, later, and glowered.  This room was so small that he basically had to touch me when we slept but the kind of intimate embrace that, just last night, I had welcomed, was now irritating.  But he was asleep, what could I do? I couldn’t wake him up each time he moved over, could I?

How could he do that to me? Let me live with him all that time thinking he was a recruit…

“Aliyah?” He put his arm around me and tried to roll me over, but I resisted him.  “Aliyah, is there anything I can do…?”

“You’ve already done, quite enough, thank you,” I snapped.

We lay together in silence for a few minutes, and then I felt his back relax where it lay against mine.  The idiot was asleep! How could he sleep when I… I cried, more, quietly this time.

Leaving and calling

 

Day 7, morning

“Hey, Love,” Andrew said, and I turned around, startled.  I had just gotten in the simulator and did not expect him.  “I guess we get to sim together today,” he said, pulling me toward him and kissing me.

“Ummm, I guess so,” I said.  I had known this was coming, but it still took me by surprise.

“I have been looking forward to simming together!” he said, unwrapping his hands and taking mine.  “Look, the little green ball.  Let’s see where it goes.”

We were walking across a beautiful flat plain, similar to New Texas.  Ahead of us I saw a river and, looking down and seeing that I was in a soldier suit and carrying one of those big rifles, I tightened my grip and starting watching out on one side while Andrew stared out the other.  Even with our attention our first alien took us by surprise, and I had to fire three times before Andrew, turning, killed him with a head shot.  I cursed, to myself, and tried to pay even more attention.

It was difficult fighting, however.  Whoever this was has planted crops, reasonably tall crops, right down to the river side, and the aliens could come out of the fields at a dead run, continuously surprising me.

I was also surprised when it wasn’t me that was killed first.  I had just killed a Juvy that had come out on my side when I heard a choking noise and turned to see Andrew, attacked by three Pack at the same time, going down with one of them on his throat.  They were so busy killing Andrew that I got all three of them before they could turn on me.  I stared in horror at Andrew’s body on the ground and then, hearing rustling, had to turn and fight off my own pack of Pack, one of which bit me soundly, but rather ineffectively, on the chest.

I was rubbing myself where it had bit me when I heard, from the ground behind me, some decidedly non-Christian language.  I turned and saw Andrew getting up, his throat miraculously repaired and once again breathing.  He had the grace to blush, “Sorry, but that was really painful.  I’ll try to not use that kind of language again.  Especially over a little thing like dying in sim.  Look out!” he shouted and I turned and was rather proud of the way I took the adult coming at me with a hip shot.

“Thanks,” I said, hearing him get up and turn back to back with me.  “Come on, our ball leadeth us.”

He chuckled at my Biblical allusion and we continued walking, talking, and killing.

“Ouch!” Andrew said, when the computer brought him back from his second ‘death’.  “That hurt!”

“I’m sorry, Andrew,” I said, “I couldn’t get my gun around in time.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.  “I’m supposed to be able to defend myself, you, and the baby.  That’s the partner’s job.”

“And what’s my job?” I asked, wearily picking up my pack again, as the stupid little bouncing ball moved on again.

“Why, you know,” he said, awkwardly.  “Having kids.  You remember what they said, about how we breed so slowly.”

“We breed slowly, anyway,” I said.  “Another girl showed up pregnant this morning.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, slapping me on the back.  “We’ll succeed one of these nights.”

“I hope so,” I said.  “I would like to have your child.”

“Children, dear, children,” he said, slapping me again.  “Many, many children to fight the enemy…”

Suddenly we had real enemies to fight, and our conversation was over for a while.  But my thoughts weren’t.  Children, breeding, fighting… that was what my life was reduced to.  I thought, jealously, about the job that I was missing… the job I had actually been hired on for before I graduated, subject, of course, to my not being culled.

This job… we were practically animals.  Harvest, eat, breed, sleep… fight.  I dropped asleep each night physically exhausted.  I was tired in places I didn’t know you could even have muscles.  And, of course, none of my tiredness slowed Andrew down in his attempts to get me with child.  Not that I thought he would slow down once I was with child! He had made that clear, as had the Newtonian.  And, in their own way, Gruden’s and my mother.

“Ouch!” Andrew said, again, and I looked over to see him killing an alien who had just bit him in the leg.  I hurried over and put pressure on his wound.  “Ouch!!” he repeated, scanning all around us.  “Those teeth are sharp!”

We had a very nice surprise at lunch time, coming around a corner and seeing five other couples standing around what was obviously a picnic.  June and Marten, Grant and Jane, Jill…

“What’s this?”Andrew said, as we came closer.

“Lunch!” Marten said.

“Time off?” Andrew said, looking out into the brush.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Grant said, seriously.  “We’d better keep guards out.”

I sighed.  Must be always training? Were we never going to get to just relax? I was exhausted.

As it turned out I didn’t have to worry about myself.  The boys took turns guarding and we girls, except for when we were actually being attacked, which only happened about five times during lunch, mostly sat around and got stuff ready or cleaned it up… and ate, of course.  The meal itself was delicious, sandwiches with roast, sliced, cold Juvy… and some delicious pickles that I didn’t recognize.

And it was really neat to meet with our ‘gang’ outside of official break time.  Martin prayed for lunch, of course, but outside of that there were no ‘spiritual’ bits; not for us girls, anyway.  I heard the boys discussing something called ‘preterism’, but I ignored them.

“This is so beautiful,” Jill said, after lunch, as we sat there putting things away.

“Just like home,” I said.

“Except for the enemy,” Jill added, laughing.

“There is that,” I admitted ruefully, with a quick glance at the other major thing that was different from home.  He was listening to, but not participating in, the discussion.  “And the food,” I added, lifting up a bit of roast Juvy.

“Well, we’ll be eating a lot of it where we’re going,” Jill said, “We’d best get used to it.”

—

#

We broke for lunch and Andrew and I went our way together, walking the rivers edge and killing aliens all the way.  I think, once, I even got a shot at an enemy female, and we found, and destroyed, a nest of eggs twice.  Stripping out of my suit and pulling my robe on, I went to the door and came out just at the same time as Andrew.  “I loved spending the day with you,” he said, reaching out for my hand.  Several other people were coming out the door and we had to hurry out of their way.

“Me, too,” I said, almost meaning it, but definitely feeling the difference in our relationship.  Our walk wasn’t long since out room was in the same hallway as our training room, and I was on the side toward the door when we got there, so I reached out and put my hand on the plate.

#

Day 7, evening

“Oh!” I said, when the door opened to reveal a boy, obviously just out of the shower, pulling on his shirt.  “I’m so sorry,” I said, embarrassed and looking back at the door plate.  I thought…”

“Come in, come in,” a girl said, from next to the door.  “It’s all right, you didn’t get the room wrong.  The computer said that you would be along.  Sorry we’re so late getting ready to go, but we’ll be out of here in a second.”

“I… I don’t understand,” I said, as Andrew pushed me into the room so the door could close.  The boy, as he finished pulling on his shirt, said.

“It’s called ‘hot-bunking’.  In the end there will be six of us in each room, for eight hours each.  Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Andrew said as the boy, the girl in tow, scooshed past us toward the door.  “See you…”

“Tomorrow morning, our time,” the boy said as the door closed, laughing.

“Well, that’s new,” Andrew said, pulling off his own shirt.  “Come shower with me? I thought of a new passage, today,” he said, as we undressed.  “I even thought of something to say about it.  I realized, last night, that I really should try to pick something neutral.  It isn’t like I’m really ready to ‘preach’ to you.  So I found a passage that really talked to me, when I was younger.  It’s in Philippians chapter four…”

He must have been excited about that passage because we actually did our ‘worship time’ before, you know, other things.  I lay there, afterward, wondering how I felt about this new super spiritual husband.  He would probably forget all about it after a while, I decided.  He was just reacting to Marten’s admonition.  And, besides, it was probably good we got together, religiously, before we suddenly had children.

#

Day ten, church, morning

 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Martin said.  “I’ve been asked to make an announcement.  As you all know the ship is getting full, and ready to leave.  So soon you will get to make your first, and only, ‘letter home’ during this training period.  Here’s how it will work.  Today you can record your letter.  It can be as long as you like, and to as many people.  The letter will get sent down to the planet and then, when you time comes, it will get sent to your parents or whoever you send it to.  At the same time any letter or letters that people have sent you will come up.  Your letters downplanet will, of course, need to be screened.”

“Screened?” Jane asked.

Censored,” he said.  “Now that you have been told the truth, they have to make sure you don’t let it out.  The computer can do a lot of it, but, in this case, they want a person listening in on each call.”

“Someone will be listening?”

“Yes.  Some random member of the crew, who will not care how much you say you love your mother or whatever.  They will just care whether or not you give out the secret.”

“Where will we write these ‘letters’?” another girl asked.

“In your rooms,” Martin said.  “That is the only real place where you have any privacy.”

It was a good thing he said that this week.  Last week I would have thought that my cabin was the worst place for privacy.  I squeezed Andrew’s hand, and he looked at me in surprise.  Boys.

“And then, the big news you all knew was coming, in a few days we will be heading off to the front.  Which gives us a huge load of things we should be praying about…”

Andrew and I, after service and lunch, were cuddling in a corner.  A lot of other couples did this, more and more each week.  I found it very restful now that, well, now that we were really partners.  “Are you excited, or terrified?” he asked me.

“About the enemy? Or writing a letter to my mother?”

He laughed, “Both, I guess.”

“Both, I guess.”

He laughed again.  “I’m so glad to be going with you,” he said, cuddling me closer.  “I was worried about what kind of partner I would get.”

“I suppose we all worry about that,” I said, cuddling back.  “but, really, what can I say about you in the letter? I feel like I hardly know you!”

He gave me his ‘evening’ look and I punched his arm, “Outside of that, I mean.  And I know how many brothers you have.  But, really, do you have any hobbies?”

“Well, I did,” he said.  “I really liked to draw.”

I sat up, “That’s right!” I said, “Can you draw something for my family?”

“I never have any time, nowadays,” he protested.

“Well, you have time today,” I said.

“But, I don’t have any materials,” he said, again, more weakly.

I darted off and, after a short conversation with June, opened a cupboard and came back, “Can you do chalk?” I asked, holding up the computer chalkboard.

“It… It’s my favorite,” he said.  “Now, hold still.”

“What?” I squealed but,

“Hold still!” he ordered again, and I ‘held still’.

It was annoying, holding so still for so long, and not getting to see.  I could see his glance darting back and forth from my face to his board, and see the quick, long, strokes he was making, the board held carefully on his crossed legs.  “Are you… can I see?” I asked.

“Hold still!” he said, again, more sharply, and I settled back (without moving) to wait.

“There,” he said, a half an hour later, and handed me the board.

“Ooooh,” I said, for it was me! Laying there with my legs crossed in my uniform.  You could really tell.  I thought he was just, that he just ‘liked’ to draw.  But he really could draw.

“Like it?” he asked, nervously.

“Jane!” I said, as the only girl that wasn’t actively wrapped up in her partner.  “Jane, come look!”

Jane, and Grant, came over.  Jane ‘ooohed’ appreciatively, but Grant, picking it up, nodded.  “Good job.  No wonder you are so good at maps and things.  You really have an eye.”

I stared at Andrew.  “I’m not really good at them,” he said, “Just better than at some other things.”

Grant  laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, “You’re OK, Andrew,” he said and then, taking Jane by the waist, went back to their area.

“Wow,” I said, cuddling up next to Andrew and holding the board where we could both see.  “This is really good.  What else can you draw?”

“People are my favorite,” he said.  “But I like animals too.”

“Can I… can I show my mother?”

“What?!” he said.

“Can I show my mother, can I send a copy? I think it will help, help make you, you know, a real person.”

“Ummm, sure.  It’s not my best.  Here, let me try again.”

“OK,” I said, “But I am going to copy this one, as your first.”

“My first… oh,” he said, grinning and took the board back after I had entered the necessary commands.

He did another picture of me, then one of June nursing.  Martin came over to oogle his wife on paper, and that caused everyone to come look and Andrew to be mightily embarrassed.  In the end practically every partner wanted a picture of his partenere and Andrew was busy the rest of break day.

—

#

Day ten evening

“Do you want to start?” I asked Andrew, as soon as we got back to our room.

“huh?” he said, caught in the act of pulling off his shirt.

“The letter,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, pulling his shirt back on.  He thought for a minute.  “So you want to do them together?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“The Letter.  Do you want to do the letter together?”

“Oh.  Oh, yeah! That should be great!” I said.  I had thought we would just take turns, but together would be so much better.  My folks would just love it, I was sure, as would my siblings.  I sat down in front of the computer and, zipping his shirt back in place, he sat down next to me.

“Computer! Record, voice and video,” I said, and the screen lit up.  I changed the focus some, I didn’t really want my folks to see the tiny room we were living in, and started.

“Hey, Mom, Dad, kiddos! Remember me?” I giggled, “This is Andrew, my partner!” I drew him closer to me.  “He’s been really great to me and we’re doing all sorts of training.”

I went on and on about the training for a while, and then, “Oh, and I’ve met some new friends…” and told them all about June, and Jane, and Jill, and then suddenly I remembered and said, “Say something, Andrew!”

“Umm, hi,” he said.  “My name is Andrew Tome and my folks live in La Grange, and Aliyah is just great.  I… I was going to be an artist and Aliyah has a picture that I drew of her that she wants to send you.  I’m not sure what else to say.”

“Silly, Andrew,” I said, clinging to his arm.  “He is kind of shy, mom, can you imagine me with a shy boy? And no, Mom, not yet, but hopefully soon,” I said, talking my way around a question I knew she would want answered.  “How is everyone back home?” I asked.  “How did graduation go without me there? How did my poor stand in do? Did anyone partner?”

It was a strange phenomenon, but most graduation parties resulted in several partnerships.  People who had lived through the stress of cull all year suddenly broke down after they were safe and partnered.  “I gave you my exemption, Beth,” I said, “Although I doubt you will need it.  I’m sure you will just say yes to the first boy that asks.  But if you do you can give it away to someone else, or sell it, Daddy will like that!”

“Well, we’ll record more later, bye now,” I said, and told the computer to stop recording.

“Are you ready for yours?” I asked, and then suddenly realized we were supposed to be doing it together.  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said.

“No, no, my folks will love that,” he said.  “We can attach them together, and then everyone will get both letters.”

“OK,” I said.  “Your turn?”

“I’m kind of tired,” he said, “Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“OK,” I said, and we got undressed, showered, and went to bed.

Normalizing the relationship

<8/5/2095 5:55:00 AM>Day four, monday

The next day, when we walked into our assignment room… I not only wore a robe this time but took it off right away as pretty much all the other girls were doing.  The training had pretty much inured me to being naked, at least around these other girls.  I got there a little earlier too, and had time to really look at that board that made up all of one wall.  “What is that?” I asked the girl in front of me in line.

“Rankings, I think,” the girl in front of me said.  “Look at it.  You can see the names, and what must be rankings.”

I looked and saw what she meant.  Listed on it were dozens of last names, hundreds really, with several scores after them.  “What do you think the scores are?” I asked her.

“I dunno, except the front one seems to be what ranks you on the board.”

I looked down then, and she was right.  The names were all in descending order by their first score.  The highest name had 978 and then…

Suddenly the door, which had just closed on someone, beeped and flashed red… then immediately opened again.  Jane was standing there, looking nervous.

“Oh, my dear!” June said from across the room, “Congratulations!”

It took me, and the other girls, several seconds to translate ‘congratulations’ and then we all gathered round her, echoing June’s excitement.  Jane just glowed.  “Oh, Grant will be so thrilled!” she said.  “He was so hoping.  He said…” then she blushed, and I gathered that what he said was not for public consumption.  “But,” she added after a moment, “Why did it turn red and all?”

“Because you can’t do sims now that you are pregnant, or nursing,” June said.  “You will have to learn with me and the others.  Oh, what wonderful news,” she said, pulling Jane out of line and allowing the rest of us to continue.  I was a trifle disappointed when the door didn’t flash for me.  I hadn’t known that that meant I wasn’t pregnant and, well, I was sure Andrew would be thrilled, too, if I was.  He often talked about kids some, after.

I had only been exercising for a few minutes when I was surprised to find myself, today, not only extremely well dressed, in the sense of clothes that covered me rather completely, but standing with a bunch of other girls in front of an instructor again.  Standing in bare metal room.

Good afternoon,” she said.  “Today is going to be one of our harder sessions.  I hope that you all are doing well with your partners, because you are going to need all of the comforting you can get, tonight.”

My heart started beating fast.  Here I was a cull, assigned to go who knows where, assigned to sleep with some guy I didn’t know and didn’t even really like, and she was worried that she was going to give me bad news? How bad could it be?

“I’m afraid that you have been lied to pretty much all of your life.”

She paused there, as if letting that settle.  But, who lied to us? Almost before I could frame the question my world disappeared…

I appeared among the stars, literally.  I gave a small shriek.  None of my other sims had started anything like this.  I was floating, apparently in deep space, in my uniform.  At least I wasn’t naked, that probably would have been too much.

“All of your life,” a deep voice began, as I rotated among the stars and started moving toward a planet which I eventually recognized as New Sparta, “You have been told things about our war with the Bn.  Most of these have been untrue, and all of them have been misleading.  Today you will be told the truth.  This truth is something you can never share with anyone back on your home planet, but which all of us in the fleet understand, as do your planetary leaders.”

My heart started racing, why had we been lied to? What part of what I understood was a lie?

“You may have heard about the planet of New Sparta.  What you may not know is that New Sparta is not its name.  The local inhabitants, who speak a very difficult language, call it something closer to ‘Haven’.  It got its new name, which no one from the planet uses amongst themselves, in the beginning of the war.”

“New Sparta^[1] was settled by a group fleeing, and fearing, persecution.  When they settled their planet they made the vow that they would stand there, and never be driven off.  Thus, while colonizing their planet, they simultaneously set up a series of military defenses to their planet.  These defenses were to serve them in good stead.  If any planet except New Sparta had been the first for the aliens to attack, the Creator only knows what would have been the result for our history.  Certainly none of us would be here, and many if not most of us would be dead.”

“The Bnentarri sent a colonizing ship to New Sparta.  When it arrived in local space it destroyed a communication beacon and defense that New Sparta had set up precisely for the purpose of drawing an enemy’s attention.  Given their evidently hostile intentions the rulers of New Sparta had no hesitation in ordering the destruction of the alien ship which, given their large number of stealthed missile stations, they accomplished easily.  As you perhaps know, the Bnentarri almost never use stealth, so, well, they are very easily destroyed by stealthed missiles.”

“New Sparta was not content with merely destroying this incursion, however, but immediately began arming for any future conflicts.  At the time the only thing known about the Bnentarri was the result of various autopsies of flash frozen corpses, so they assumed, as would be logical, that the Bnentarri operated as we  did and the other aliens, on their initial ship not reporting back, would immediately send a larger and better armed fleet to destroy New Sparta.”

“In addition to arming they immediately sent out dozens of scouts in an attempt to find the origin of these invaders; a task they accomplished in spades.  Ship after ship came back with reports of whole planets settled by the Bnentarri.  The confusing thing, of course, was that these planets, for the most part, seemed to have little or no technology.”

“Simultaneous with these actions, New Sparta contacted several nearby planets, planets that shared certain of their cultural assumptions.  Planets, in a word, that they felt they could trust.  These formed the ‘joint’ space council and decided on several rather draconian rules.  At first they thought of only imposing these rules upon their own planets but, as the true nature of the threat became more and more apparent, they changed their mind and made their rules obligatory on all other planets in the local sector.”

In telling this story I am greatly abbreviating.  For one thing, the whole time that the voice had been talking I had been floating around in space: watching the New Sparta attack and defense, zipping along with various scouts, and even shuttle and landing parties.  Now the perspective changed to a kind of three dimensional map.

“They discovered, in the first place, that the aliens had already settled an enormous area of the galaxy.” The map suddenly lit up with a swath of red, vaguely circular.  “Our local group of colonies was threatened with almost immediate destruction.”

“Or so they thought.  While they debated and decided, the scientists they had studying the issue came up with some amazing conclusions about the alien life cycle, conclusions that were at the same time reassuring and incredibly worrying.

Suddenly the scene shifted and I was standing on a beach.  “The enemy,” the voice said, “are amphibians.  They mate in the water, and live a great deal of time in the water.  The females, ” it said, as an enemy female pulled her swollen body out of the water, “come on to the land to lay their eggs.”

I watched, fascinated, as the female, indeed, laid her eggs… dozens of slightly pink, slightly yellow eggs; as large as my head and with very soft shells.  She laid them, dozens of them, buried them in the sand, and then crawled back into the water, seemingly exhausted.

“These eggs hatch, six months later, and then go back into the water.  For the females, that is about it.  For the most part they shall live out their whole lives in the sea, lake, or river only coming ashore to lay eggs.”

“The males have a different life pattern.  The males, once they reach a certain age, not quite what we would call adolescence, they come ashore and live there.  At first they go rather deep ashore, perhaps even ten twelve miles ashore, and they are what we would call ‘feral’.  They live completely off the land, they cooperate with each other rarely if at all. We call this the ‘Juvy’ stage”

“After a while, and this we have slightly more nailed down, we think it is five years more or less, they begin their ‘pack’ stage.  Each of these stages, by the way, is driven by an actual change in their brains.  Unlike humans Bnentarri actually grow new brain material.  Some scientists literally call each new set of material a new brain.  With this change the Bnentarri males began hunting in packs.

You must not confuse this behavior,” he said, while I watched a group of seven small aliens chasing down a deer like animal, “with what we are accustomed to seeing in our animals and humans.  It is not ‘herd’ behavior.  The aliens do not ‘care for’ each other the way we are used to and expect.  It is much, much more of a mutual advantage situation.  A Bnentarri that is injured or killed with be immediately attacked and eaten by it’s fellows.  The pack serves as a way for each member to get more to eat than they would otherwise.

This stage lasts about ten years.  At the end of that time they enter what we are calling the ‘worker’ phase, and move back closer to water.  Much closer.  Workers and other ‘adult’s almost never live more than three miles from deep water: a major river, lake, or ocean: somewhere where females live.  All during this phase they can mate, and do mate.  There seems to be no competition, no sort of pairing off.  An individual male will just go off into the water several times a year, for a week or so, presumably to mate.  It is unknown whether they only mate with one or multiple females during this time.

During the ‘worker’ stage a new adult almost always works for another, more mature, adult; thus the name.  there doesn’t seem to be any kind of obligation, it is very much a mutual benefit thing.  A worker working in the fields will be fed from the mature adults stock of grain, for example.

Their linguistic capabilities are a mystery.  It seems that they actually have an instinctive ability to speak, which develops during their juvie stage, and then comes out fully during the pack and adult phases.

Workers have almost no scientific ability.  They can use technology when it is explained to them, but they can invent nothing.  All of this changes during the next phase, which we call the ‘genius’ phase.  After substantial brain growth the ‘worker’ becomes a pocket Einstein.  We estimate that they have at least a ten percent advantage over us in IQ… and all of this is focused on technology.

They need this advantage because, for the most part, each ‘genius’ needs to start from scratch.  There seems to be almost no use of history, books, or even verbal records.  The individual genius organizes his workers to produce food and the like, and, because of his genius, can do so much more effectively than a worker alone or a pack of them.  Thus the mutual benefit.

The other thing you need to know about these geniuses is that they do not die of old age.  They can be killed certainly, there is nothing superhuman about them.  But their cells seem to have no natural way of killing the organism. No ‘aging’ as we know it. Older geniuses just keep growing, learning, and inventing.

After a while each genius gets a hankering to colonize.  This seems to be instinctive.  At first this is limited to the planet they are on.  When that begins to fill up, which happens rather quickly, the genius, well, they invent space travel.  We’ve seen it happen three different times on three different planets that we were observing, and they literally invent space travel from the ground up.

So, this is what they learned about the Bnentarri.  That, plus the fact that they have an incredibly high birth rate, means that, well, their ability to settle is fantastic, but very erratic.  One of our scientists compares it to radioactive decay.  You can never tell when an individual planet will suddenly pop out a genius and his ship, or fleet.  Some of them, although they have no concrete evidence yet, postulate the formation of a ‘super genius’, a stage more advanced than genius.

Even among the New Spartans, who are our most warlike of cultures, there were some who spoke of peace. However experiment after experiment showed that this was impossible. They seem to have some kind of physiological drive to not murder each other except when driven to it; but none toward humans. The lower classes simply can’t cooperate with us at all. The genius class, on the other hand, can do so… as long as it is in their particular interest. As soon as that stops, however, they slaughter us cheerfully. Luckily most of these experiments involved simulations, so very few humans lost their lives in figuring this out.

When this was all thoroughly studied New Spartans came up with our current plan, which involves the following elements:

Firstly, it was necessary to increase everyone’s birth rate; especially that of the various planets that weren’t part of the original coalition.  The first few planets already had a culture of birth that averaged seven children per woman.  They still call their women ‘wives’ when they partner, and they are very much organized around large, extended, families.  The other planets tended to have a lower birth rate, closer to four children per woman.

Secondly, we needed to build ourselves a space fleet capable, for the most part, of defeating enemy incursions.  People were needed for this fleet, obviously, as well as equipment.

Thirdly, we need to settle planets outside of the enemy influence.  This is largely what the planets that lay on the far side of the enemy are doing.

Fourthly, and this affects New Texas, planets on the enemy side are responsible for settling enemy planets.  These planets have no real defenses, and there are huge swaths of each planet that the aliens, the adults at least, don’t settle, can’t settle, really.

Fifthly, we are engaged in culling.” My thoughts raced when he said this, completely misunderstanding his point.  “Each of our colonies on an alien planet is responsible for keeping down the local population of geniuses.  We settle the planet and the colonists support soldiers and fleet who, at the first sign of change among the aliens, attack and wipe out the new genius.”

Before I go on to the history of New Texas in this, do you have any questions?” a different voice asked, a girl’s voice.

“Yes,” I asked, “what about the women? The alien females?”

“Ah, they are more of a mystery.  They go through the same phases the males do, at least that is what our few autopsies have shown, but as they never leave the water our studies have been more limited as to how they associate. After all, following one of them around in the water with some kind of probe has been rather difficult. And they seem to die in captivity, we think, again, instinctively.

Some of our scientists are afraid that what they do is communicate.  That they are what does pass for history and books and the like among the aliens.  It would help describe some of the meteoric rise of technology.”

“So, they’re not just breeders?”

“We know almost nothing about them, but that certainly doesn’t seem what they are.”

I thought some more.  “But how did we get involved, then? All you have shown is those few planets.  How did New Texas get involved?”

“I’ve seen the films,” I continued, “But they always gloss over that part.  I remember councilor Perry coming forward and saying ‘we have decided to join’, but history always seems to skip over the part right before that.”

“Yes,” the girl said, “and for a good reason.  That’s the second part of our orientation…”

“The Space Council,” the deep voice began again, “ran projections as to the possible future.  At their decisive meeting, this is the projection that was shown to them by their scientists.”

The three dimensional map came up again, and I watched as it showed one of those projections like they use for the weather.  The bottom of the screen showed a little slider moving across.  One year passed while the surface of the red bubbled, and, here and there, burst, engulfing new planets all around the circle.  At three years the first bubble burst toward human space, but was easily defeated.  Five years, ten, all were similar.  But by now the red had taken over several planets around human space.  More and more time passed and, at the end of twenty years, human space was almost completely surrounded, and was being constantly attacked.

Several planets in the rear of our area were taken, then more, and more, till, by the time the slider reached forty years, most of human space had been taken.  The planets of the council still held out, but were now taking attacks almost every year.  Not from the newly taken planets, which obviously hadn’t reached that maturity yet, but because they were now the closest ‘unoccupied’ planet to dozens of ‘mature’ planets.  Finally, after one hundred years, the first SC planet was taken, and it was two hundred years before the last one, New Sparta itself, fell.

“This simulation led the SC to make the rather draconian solution they decide upon.  Although they declared that the reasons for their decisions were purely pragmatic, most observers note that many of the decisions forced their neighbors into line with some of their most important cultural values.  All of the planets, for example, outlawed the murder of children in the womb while many of their neighbors, including New Texas, allowed it under some circumstances.”

“What?” I said, and the lady came back and spent several minutes trying to convince us that this had ever happened on our planet.  In the end I wasn’t convinced, but told her to go ahead with the rest of the film.

“The decision was also made to approach the various planets… carefully.  It was well known that the proposed solution would be considered radical, totalitarian, immoral… and resentment would delay the entire implementation.  So they made a rather stealthy approach.  In the midst of a diplomatic visit during some New Texas celebration, then called the NT leaders into a secret meeting:

“We can’t do that!” Councilman Perry was saying.  “I refuse to even think about it!” He sat down on the nearest couch with a thud.

A New Spartan that I didn’t know was sitting across from him and, at this, he leaned forward.  “Well, before you make that decision there are three things you need to know.  The first is what we’ve just shown you.  Our best scientists project absolutely no hope for the human race, let alone our colonies, if we do not take dramatic action, and soon.”

“But what can we do?”

“Our plan is not easy, but we believe it will work.  Watch.”

Councilman Perry and the other councilors watched the map.  This time the bubbling red was not the only movement on the screen.  After a few years there was a blue flash on the screen and a red planet went purple.  Then, year after year, various other planets, on the far side, turned blue.  Then another planet went purple, and another…

I, and the councilmen, watched fascinated as, over the next hundred years, dozens of planets turned purple, and other dozens turned blue.  The ‘boiling’ affect near the human planets settled down dramatically.  A hundred years after that and the entire core of the alien sphere was purple, and the human sphere was approaching their size.  There were many purple planets in the human sphere, human planets settled by the aliens, but most of them were blue.

“Well, that’s all very good, but we still can’t…” Councilor Perry began, and the New Spartan held up his hand.

The other two reasons are these.  If you don’t agree to our terms you will not leave this ship.  We will pass on to your planet that news that you perished, horribly, in a shuttle accident, complete with pictures.  No autopsies, since the shuttle will burn up in the atmosphere.

“You, you can’t…” Perry spluttered.

“The third reason is that, if all of your planetary leaders continue recalcitrant, well, we do have the only space navy in the area.  There are other options.”

Councilor Perry went white, and it was left to councilor Dewhurst to lean forward and say, “What do you want us to do?”

“First of all, this meeting never happened.  You are going to decide, on your own, that New Texas is going to join the council.  You will make loud, public, speeches about all of the sacrifices that will be necessary.  We will help you with films and the like, showing the evil aliens.”

“Listen,” he said.  “We have no desire at all to rule your planet.  We are busy enough with the war, with protecting the entire human race from destruction or oblivion.  We have worked out your quota of recruits, you just make sure you meet it.  Invent some story, and stick to it.  Sell it.”

It must have been some story, I thought to myself.  All my life I had grown up knowing that New Texas was an eager member of the council, boasting along with the rest of our people at how patriotic we were, at how we were all making the necessary sacrifices to insure the survival of the human race.  There was even some sotte voce comments about how we always exceeded our quota of recruits, at how few pure culls we needed.  Our local papers all had at least one page, and usually several, dedicated solely to reports from our soldiers, colonists, and ship handlers… promotions, battles, deaths, births.  And it was all a lie? Well, I thought, not really a lie anymore.  Everyone I knew did believe that we should contribute.  If nothing else, we all had dozens of brothers, sisters, cousins, etc.  who were fighting on the front line or living in some colony.

“So, we will continue to rule here?” Councilor Perry asked, sitting up.

“Absolutely.  And one of you will even be given a seat on the Space Council.  Once you are fully integrated, that is; and you have sent your quota of recruits or culls.”

“Culls?” Dewhurst said, and I listened to them as they, between them, worked out the entire system of recruits, culls, exemptions that I knew so well.  The New Spartan leader, or any of his team, would repeat, over and over again, the same thing,

“In the end, we don’t care how you do it, as long as you meet the quota.  Now, if you want an exemption from this area, that is fine, as long as you…”

#

Suddenly I was standing back in the grey room again, and the woman began speaking.  “I need to remind you, again, that this story can never go back to the planet.  New Texas is an upstanding member of the council, and fomenting rebellion is treason.  However, we do wish to let you know that, in the end, the goal is to defeat the enemy and save the human race.  Several times individuals have come up with ideas, including changes in basic agreements, which have resulted in great benefit.  One of the most spectacular was the invention of the Pathfinders, which came about when a boy from Newtonia, upon first learning of the plan, sent his leaders a proposal for a new branch of the service…

“Your government has been lying to you for your whole lives.  And to a certain extent we, in the fleet, have colluded in the lies.  You see, all of your life you have been led to believe that you might volunteer, or be culled, in order to fight The Enemy… in order that the human race might, one day, achieve victory in our war.”

I could see other heads nodding, as mine did.  Was that all fake? Was there no enemy? Were all of those videos from the front just fake? Why did I have to sleep with this guy then? Why were we here?

“There is no enemy?” one of the girls shouted out and, even though  I had just thought the same thing myself, I heard how stupid that sounded.  What had that video been about if there was no enemy?

“Oh, there is an enemy,” the girl said.  “An implacable, deadly enemy, one that has killed thousands upon thousands of our people.”

“But you said they lied,” another girl said.

“They lied… about victory.”

“We… we aren’t winning?” I gasped out, along with several others.

“We can’t win,” she said, and the room became very still.  “But do not despair, that doesn’t mean we will lose.”

Now I was confused, and, looking around, saw I wasn’t the only one.  She saw it too, and said, “Listen, let me explain it all, and then you can ask questions…”

“You see, they are nothing at all like us in the way they cooperate.  We have had people studying them for years now, and we still don’t understand them.  But they don’t seem to have any hierarchy at all, no group consciousness.  Each new member of the community finds a place where they work, and they are ‘paid’ for their work by someone that has been there before.  But they don’t seem, to us anyway, to have any ‘bosses.  But somehow they make things work.”

“So this makes going to war with them rather… bizarre.  If you shoot one of them, well, the others will shoot back because that is what they do… they hunt humans and any other higher animal.  But they won’t get upset, they won’t get organized, they won’t start forming troops and organizing armies.”

“It’s the same in space… well, I need to tell you why they go to space.  You see, once they get to a certain level of civilization, they just start building spaceships.  And then the females leave the water, and join the males on the ships, which go off… to wherever.”

“So each spaceship is kind of an independent colony.  So when we meet up with it, the spaceship itself will fight, but none of them will fight together.”

“Well, then, if they won’t fight together, why can’t we beat them?” one of the girls asked.

“Do the math!” the instructor said, almost shouting.  “Once we leave here next week we can expect to be about a year to get to the front lines.  During that time many of you can hope to give birth to one child.  Over that period the average enemy female might give birth twice! And to dozens of young each time.”

“But most of them die, don’t they?”

“Yes.  Indeed, when the population starts to get too much, they start fighting and even eating each other.  But that doesn’t matter.  The point is that they breed like crazy and then, when they reach a certain saturation and level of technology, they start colonizing like crazy.  Our soldiers are doing a wonderful job.  There have been almost no successful landings on any of our planets.  But we are settling planets at a rate of ten per year…”

“Ten per year!” The girl standing next to me said, “That’s fantastic!”

“Yes, and we hope to settle fifteen this year, and you all will be part of that.  But the enemy, we think they will settle one hundred.”

“One hundred?” the room got silent again.  “So are doing all this just to lose?”

“Not to lose, just not to win.  You remember what I said about the way they live, how they live near water? Well, we don’t have to.  So we can settle planets where the Enemy live.  We do settle planets where the Enemy live.  Indeed, that is where we are going… to an Enemy sector.  New Texas is right on the frontier.”

There was silence after that, until the instructor said, “We’ve picked weapons practice for the rest of today, we thought it was appropriate.”

om got silent again. “So are doing all this just to lose?”

“Not to lose, just not to win. You remember what I said about the way they live, how they live near water? Well, we don’t have to. So we can settle planets where the Enemy live. We do settle planets where the Enemy live. Indeed, that is where we are going… to an Enemy sector. New Texas is right on the frontier.”

There was silence after that, until the instructor said, “We’ve picked weapons practice for the rest of today, we thought it was appropriate.”

Home Life

<8/2/2095 9:45:00 PM>Day two late

And it took up the rest of the day too, except for a few minutes eating (and a few minutes finding and using the toilets).  A full sixteen hour day.  Which had come on top of my regular day, or most of it, and the time with my partner.  Well I had slept in there somewhere, in the med cylinder, I guess, but I was exhausted when we got out of sim.

Getting out of the suits was almost worse than getting in.  For one thing, we all, all of us newbies, got out of the sim at the same time, and had to try to get out of our suits all bumping into each other.  And then, of course, we had to go into the next room and get into our uniforms.  Certainly a robe would have made this easier.

I was just zipping the front of my shirt closed when I noticed, standing next to me, that girl from the induction center, the girl with the guy who ‘promised’.  She was already dressed, and just looking at me.  “Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” she said.  “I’m Jane, Jane Seymor,” she said.  “I know your name, from listening to you get assigned.  We’re in the same hallway.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.  “Want to walk home? Together?”

“Yeah,” she said, and we left, together.  It was only a little walk to her door, but she passed it up and went, with me, to mine.

“Night,” she said, as I put my hand up to the door plate.

“Night,” I said, putting my hand to the plate.

“Hi!” he said, when the door opened.  He was sitting, like he had done yesterday, on the bed.

“Lights out,” I said, “I want to shower.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just turned my back again?” he asked.

“Oh, OK,” I said, not exactly trusting him.  But it would be easier.  “We can keep the lights on.”

“How was your day?” he asked me, spinning around on the mattress as I started to take off my shirt.  It was probably rude of me to have gone first.  But I was so tired!

“Just exhausting,” I said, dropping my pants and putting everything in the hamper.  “You?”

“Same here,” he said.  “Lot’s of running and stuff.”

I fooled with the water letting the hot water play over me and facing him.  If the computer was still grading me this had to be better, didn’t it? “We ran, and swum, and climbed, and then did hours and hours and hours of disaster drill.”

“How would you get to the lifepod from here?’ he asked, starting to turn, naturally, toward me to ask the question, and then turning awkwardly back.

“Oh, that’s not hard,” I said, “Down our corridor, turn right, and go to the end.”

“Too easy,” he laughed.  “What would you do if our hall was evacuated?”

“Pray,” I said, grabbing some soap from the dispenser and doing my hair.  I hadn’t done it yesterday and it was getting a bit greasy.  “Now, come on, tell me more about your day?”

“Seriously boring,” he said.  “A lot of running, climbing.  They have this kind of cool waterfall that we get to climb.”

“Oh, we climbed that!” I said.  They tested one girls fear of falling with it.”

“We had a couple of boys like that.  Practically… umm, anyway, they had a real hard time with it.  I loved it, though.  Of course, after a couple of hundred feet it gets a little scary.”

My hair was taking a long time, “Sorry I’m taking so long,” I said.

“Oh, take as long as you like,” he said.  “So, did they give you any interesting food?”

“Yes.  Some funny green stuff and some vegetables I had never seen.  Did they…  did they train you in nakedness?” I asked.

“Nakedness?” he asked, almost turning again, “No…  no I don’t’ think so.  What do you mean?”

So I told him all I had gone through, and he was laughing by the time I got done.

He laughed, “No, no I didn’t do anything like that! Maybe some other boys did, I don’t know.  Certainly nobody was as brave as you and asked.  Of course, we boys, you know, we swim together all the time and all.  And I had brothers and sisters and all.”

“I guess maybe it isn’t as hard for you, then.” I said.

“What isn’t?”

“Living like this…  with each other.”

“Oh, I like it,” he said.  “Of course, I would like it a lot more if I could turn around.”

“Go ahead,” I said, and you should have seen the disappointed look on his face when he turned to see me in my robe.  “Your turn,” I said, going and waiting for him.  When he was done we pulled down the sleeping mat.

(And no, I won’t describe what happened next.  I probably said too much about last night.  I will say that he seemed less nervous, was a lot less awkward and, if anything, seemed even more excited.  I was extremely tired, and so I wasn’t even that nervous.  And it almost felt good, too. )

#

<8/3/2095 5:30:00 AM>Day three early

“Huh!” I said.  I had just awoken, and the room was light.  Not bright, but with a dull light.  Andrew was sitting staring at me.  “Andrew!” I said, “Computer, light off!”

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding at all sorry.  “I couldn’t resist.  The computer turns the lights on a half an hour before we have to leave so we have time for, ummm, everything we need to do.”

I giggled at the way he said ‘everything’.  He started through his Gruden’s routine and was about halfway done (it went quicker when we were already undressed) when I heard him pause and, before he could ask I said, “No.  I would really rather keep the lights out.”

“OK,” he said, sounding disappointed, and we finished quickly and showered, finishing just in time to hurry off to training.

—

#

I arrived in my robe, but I wasn’t quite blasé enough about it to drop it before I got in line.  I waited (as did several others of my class) until it was almost my turn and threw it in a corner.

“Shalom,” a voice said, when I pulled my helmet on, and then continued in Ship talk, which I spoke pretty much the rest of the time of this book, so I won’t even bother to reproduce, “today   is your second day in training.  Your instructor will not be physically present, but you can talk to her at any time.  In addition, you can request to join any other trainee and that request will be made known to the other trainee.  We ask that you not be upset if they decline, as they may be busy with a drill that needs to be done alone, or they may be with another trainee.”

I was at a different beach this time, and all by myself.  There was a really huge surf which, just after I arrived, drenched me.  I started out, following my little bouncing ball and tried to think about who, if anyone, I wanted to invite but, before I could really make any kind of decision, either way, the computer voice said, “Trainee Jill Trenton requests to join your session.”

“Sure,” I said, glad to have the decision taken away from me.

“I hate this sand!” she said, appearing next to me.

“Good exercise, I suppose,” I said.  “How are you doing?”

“Dead, of course!” she said, “you?”

“Of course.  And then I got woken up by this stupid light.”

“Oh?” she said, and I told her the whole story.  Rather laying the blame on Andrew, although I didn’t exactly give details of what he did wrong.  “Did that happen to you too?”

“Oh, no.  We sleep with lights dimmed anyway, not off.  I was used to it at home, as my sister was scared of the dark.  And Bill doesn’t mind.”

“I bet he doesn’t!” I said, and she grinned.

“So, tell my about your family,” I said.

“Oh, I have five sisters,” she said…

We had reached the caves, and were starting down, and we had talked all about our families, when she reluctantly asked, “So, you don’t like Andrew?”

“Oh, he’s OK.”

“You sound like you’re mad at him.”

“Oh, not really.  But I only had one day to go, and I would have been a bachelorette!”

“Join the club,” she said.  “At least you got to marry a recruit!”

“You like your partner?” I tried, figuring that was where she wanted us to go.

“Oh, he’s fine.  He doesn’t like to let me sleep,” she laughed.

“What? Why not?” I asked, and she blushed,

“Well, you know. . .”

I didn’t know, and I didn’t think I wanted to.  “Well, we should probably spend some time with some more of our team,” I said, “you remember rule, what, six?”

“OK,” she said, and after mumbling to the computer, disappeared.

I pulled up a list of the girls in my head, and went through them.  But they each seemed to be busy, until finally that one girl, the one with the boy story, Jane Seymor her name was, finally accepted.

“Hi,” she said, shyly, and I suddenly realized that she was the girl who had asked about changing partners, yesterday.

“Hi,” I answered.  The computer had us in a new situation, chopping down trees.  It was kind of fun, although lopping off all the little branches was boring.  I noticed after a few minutes of silence that the computer was keeping my clothes on all the time, and that Jane had something going on.

“Jane, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Wrong?” She said, “nothing.”

I put down my chopping machine, and went over to her.  I took her face in my hand and tried to turn it toward me.  The whole time she had been there she had kept the left side of her face toward me.  “Computer,” she started to say, but I succeeded first.

“Jane!” I said, “What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said.  But it didn’t look like nothing.  She had a black eye.  Not a bad one, but a definite black eye.  “I didn’t think the computer would show it,” she added, resentfully.

“Did your partner hit   you?” I asked, mortified and embarrassed, and she nodded.

“I got him angry.  I shouldn’t have done it,” she said, defensively.

“He shouldn’t have done that!” I said, “They should do something about him!”

“They did,” she said.  “It was awful.  I didn’t get to sleep for hours.  He slept before I did.  He slept right away.”

“How did they know?” I asked, appalled at the idea that someone was listening to our quarters.  No doubt that Newtonian to make sure we…

“I called them,” she said.  “When he hit me I screamed for the help to the computer and, seconds later, a gang of big boys all in grey came in.”

“Oh,” I said.  “The neural whip?”

She nodded again.  “You should see it! I mean, you shouldn’t.  It is just awful.  He is big and strong and brave and all and he cried.  They held him, and beat him, and he cried.  Oh.  I shouldn’t have told   you that.  Don’t tell anyone else, please,” she said, clinging to my arm.

“But, OK.  But why?”

“Well, he’s my partner.  I wouldn’t’ want him telling everyone what I did.”

“They probably do, anyway.”

“I…  I don’t’ think he does.  He said he didn’t, and he sounded angry about it.”

“Oh, well.  I guess I can ask Andrew.”

“You wouldn’t’ tell him!”

“I would tell him not to tell anyone else.  He is my. . .” my voice trailed off.

I was going to say ‘partner’, as if that meant something.  But, did it? “… my partner,” I finished, eventually.  I had to say something!

“Oh, yeah, OK, but make sure he doesn’t say anything.  We’re going to work it out.  I’m sure.”

We stopped, and I hugged her.  “I’m sure you will too.”

“How is it going with your partner?” she asked.

“Oh, fine, about like you might expect.  He is very interested in sleeping together, and wants to see me naked.”

“Oh, mine too.  He loves to see me naked,” she said, and I realized she had misunderstood me.  Did all the other girls prance around naked for their partners? Was I the odd one out, wanting to preserve some shred of myself for myself?

“I’m looking forward to getting to know him better on break day,” I said, changing the subject.

“When is your break day?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, and her face lit up,

“Really? Ours too!”

We spent most of the rest of the day together, Jane and I, which was odd, as we were really different.  But, somehow, we got along.  She was quiet, and shy, but seemed to really enjoy being with me, and listening to me.  And I just had to have someone to talk to, to talk out all of my frustrations, and she didn’t seem to mind.  She was kind of ‘touchy’, like she had been in the induction center, and was always patting me on the arm or something.  But I had a sister like that, Beth-any, and so, after the first few minutes, I got used to it.

#

 <8/3/2095 10:05:00 PM>

Jane and I got  undressed together too  but this time I walked her back to her room.  I thought of waiting for her to trigger the sensor but then, blushing, I realized he might be in the shower.  He was a boy, after all, and was probably all hot and sweaty from the day.

“Hey,” Andrew said from the shower as I walked in.  It was funny, as he had been facing the door, and turned quickly around when the door opened, showing the hallway his backside.  But when he heard it close he turned right back to me.  I guess this my looking at him while he was naked thing didn’t bother him, anymore.  “How was your day?” He asked, shampooing his own hair.  Which was good, it really was kind of greasy.

“Fine,” I said, “Say, can you keep a secret? I have something I need to talk to you about, but you can’t tell anyone.”

“Sure, we’re partners,” trying to look at me from under the shampoo.

“Good, cause you really can’t tell anyone.  Do you know Jane Seymour’s partner?”

“Well, I might, but, not by that name,” he said, getting out of the shower, and standing in the dryer, turning around  and around with his arms out so he could dry.  “Why?”

“He beats her!” I said, getting up and starting to get undressed, facing away from him.

“Oh,” he said, “I probably know who he is, then.  His name is Grant, Grant Jones, and, well, he’s a convict who has a huge problem with his temper.  And, and I think he got whipped this morning before class.  He kind of looked like it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” I said, slipping gratefully past him into the shower, his back appropriately turned away from me.  “I feel so sorry for her,” I said.

“Well… yeah…” he said, and I stopped to look at him, curious.  He was still dutifully facing away from me but even from there I could tell he had something he was nervous about saying.

“But what?” I asked.

“I didn’t say… well, you’re right, of course, about the beating and all.  That must be awful.  But I think he is going to do really well in class.  He finds the language hard, but is just great at the physical stuff.”

“Say,” he continued, “You’re doing great at ship talk.”

I laughed, suddenly realizing that he and I had been talking ship talk instead of NT English.  Oh well, good to get started.  It was what we would be talking the rest of our lives, probably, “So, do you have any friends among the boys?” I asked him, desperate to get to know a little more about this boy that I was forced to sleep with, and would be spending the rest of my life with, one way or another.

“Well, not friends, not yet.  And our training has been pretty physical, it’s not like we have energy for talking.”

“What do you do?” I asked him.

“Well, a lot of running.  Then there’s climbing, swimming, combat…”

“Combat?”

“Yeah.  Mostly hand to hand so far, but they say we will be using weapons soon.  And of course more of the disaster drills.  Are you ready for bed?” he asked, trying (and failing) to sound casual.

I sighed, moving over to the dryer.  “Sure, go ahead and put it down, I’ll just get dry.  Then turn the lights out, please!” I said.

#

 <8/4/2095 5:45:00 AM>Day three morning: Sunday

I had gotten to program the computer during the day to wake us up with a cute little song before the fateful half hour, so the morning went better.  When we were both up, showered, and dressed, I asked him, “So, what’s break day like here?”

“I dunno,” he said, “I’ve never been.  I just got here the day before you, you know.  I guess we will find out together.  Room a25n, green, blue, red from here,” he read off the computer.  “Let’s go find it.”

We walked down the hallway together, hand in hand, and down another long corridor, then another hallway, and then into the room.

There were about two dozen people in the room, standing around in groups, but the first person I noticed was a woman with a baby, nursing, across the room.  I loved babies, at least, other people’s babies, and I went across the room to see it.

“Hello,” the woman said, looking up from the baby as I got closer, “Welcome to break day.  My name is June, June Smith.  My partner is Martin Smith, over there with those other boys.  And you?”

“I’m Aliyah, Aliyah Bendon,” I said, “And thanks for the welcome.  Do we, do we do anything?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “my partner will be leading us in a few minutes.”

“Oh.  Is he, is he a pastor or something?”

She laughed, ‘Faux de mieux’, she said, which I recognized as French but… Seeing my quizzical look, she said, “for want of anyone else.  My poor partner has had to really grow up recently, and I must say he has really done well.”

“You mean, since you two had a baby?” I asked, just as she took the baby off her breast and put it on her shoulder.

“Oh, this isn’t his baby! I mean, it is now, but he wasn’t my partner when… I am telling this so badly.”

A couple of other girls came up, and we got introduced.  And then Jane (and her huge, ugly looking, partner) came in and I introduced Jane to June and the other girls.  “While I have all of you here, I will tell my story, so I don’t have to do so for everyone separately,” June said, after Grant wandered off away from the girl talk.  The baby duly burped, she put it to her other breast and began, “I was partnered, pre-cull.  A very nice boy, a bookkeeper, at least that was what he was studying to be.  And we got pregnant, and he was very, very happy.  But then he died.” Her face was a study, you could tell she was trying to be calm, “It was a brain tumor, and a bad one.  Apparently it had been growing for quite a while before we noticed it.  And then, when they tried to operate, he died.”

She paused for a minute.  A couple of the girls were crying and I could see Andrew, from across the room, staring at us curiously.

“So, then, after he died, and just before the baby was born, I got a cull notice.  My year wasn’t up, you see.”

“I didn’t know they could do that!” Jane said.

“I didn’t either,” June said.  “It came as quite a shock, believe me.  It’s obviously very rare.  But I was culled, and brought up here, just like you all, and got to partner with Martin.  Martin!” she said, raising her voice slightly, “Come meet the girls, will you?”

Martin came over, along with Grant, Jane’s partner, and several other boys.  June, with a skill I wish I had had, introduced all of us, and Martin introduced the boys.

“Will he be ready to sleep soon?” Martin asked, looking at his step-son.

“Not quite yet, dear, he seems very hungry, maybe a half an hour?”

“OK.  We will start services then,” Martin said, and he and the boys wandered back off.

“Is he a pastor, then?” one of the girls, called ‘Jeryl’, if I remember correctly, asked.

“No, dear.  But we were one of the first onto this ship in this section, and so we had to manage for ourselves.  The other couple, the Drendons, that were with us at first, well, he wasn’t very comfortable leading worship, so my Martin got to do it.  Poor boy, a new, pregnant, partner, and to have to lead worship too, but he has done very well.”

I tried to imagine Andrew suddenly leading worship, but failed.  But then, I didn’t really know anything about him, did I? Perhaps he was very religious, and would enjoy it.

A couple of the other girls started talking about some girl they knew back home, who had had twins, and they drifted off.  But I sat down next to June.  “So, is he a good partner, then?” I asked her.  I mean, after all, he must be some kind of criminal! Unless he was a recruit, like my Andrew.  But how could I ask?

“Oh, the best,” she said.  “For me, anyway.  I am sure that… what did you say your partners name was?”

“Andrew, Andrew Tome’,” I said, blushing.  For, of course I hadn’t said.

“Oh, yes, a nice looking boy.  Anyway, I’m sure that Andrew is the best partner for you.  The Creator always knows best.”

I shut up after that, but the other girls took up the slack and soon the baby was duly nurse, burped, and put down on a small blanket June had brought.

“Well,” said Martin, clearing his throat.  “I want to welcome all of you newcomers.  I have only been here two and a half weeks but I’m sure that seems like forever compared to some of you.  This is our break day, of course and, so far, I have been the one that has preached.  I have prepared a message for today as well but if anyone wants to preach next week?”

He looked out hopefully, but no one said anything.  A couple of the girls were busy putting their headcoverings on, but none of the boys did or said anything.  Finally he cleared his throat again and said, “Well, even if not there is a time where the men can share after I get done preaching.  But before then we will do some singing.  Most of you know Psalm One, I hope?” he asked, as heads nodded.  My own church didn’t sing the Psalms routinely, but I did know several of them from visits to other churches, and Psalm one was one of those, so I was able to keep up my part.

“Good, good,” he said.  “Does anyone have any other suggestions? All Psalms, please, since we have a mixed group and I don’t want to offend anyone.”

Several other Psalms were suggested and sung.  Someone suggested Psalm 98 but Martin deferred, saying that they always sung that one last, after the sermon and the sharing time.

“Well, I suppose I should start, now, he said.  “It is a bit trite, but I will be speaking on the importance of partner relations.  As you know the old term for partners was ‘partner and partner’ and so the text I will be speaking on will use those words.  The text is I Cor 7…”

How like a boy, I thought to myself, to focus on the physical aspect of partnership.  Of course, in our position, that was about all that we had right now.  I snuck a glance over at Andrew, who was sitting with the other ‘men’ trying to look all serious and wise.  We certainly weren’t ‘partners’ in any sense of the word except the physical.  I looked over at June… how did she do it? How did she manage to love and respect someone who had been foisted upon her while she was pregnant with some other boys baby? And I thought I had it hard.  And what crime could Martin have committed?

Martin eventually wore down, after an hour and a half, and then we sang another song and the ‘men’ started in with their questions and comments.  Even my Andrew had a question, something about how to lead a partner spiritually under ‘these conditions’, which Martin answered by saying that, if he only had a few minutes with his ‘partner’ he needed to use those few minutes.  I wasn’t looking forward to that!

But, finally, we got to sing Psalm 98 and break for lunch.  I stayed with June as much as I could.  She was very popular but most of the girls found someone else to talk to and, eventually, it ended up just Jane and I.  I noticed Jane looking at me nervously.  “I told him, but he already knew,” I said.

“Oh, OK,” she whispered back.  Of course, with her face I don’t see how she thought anybody wouldn’t know.

“Would you care to hold him again?” June asked me, just then, and I gratefully took the baby.

I got to hold him for another fifteen minutes or so before he needed his napkin changed.  After I handed him over I looked around, and saw Andrew fiddling about with his comp.  “What are you doing?” I asked, wandering over.

“Oh, you’re free,” he said, waving me to a seat next to him.  “Martin told me that we could program the walls of our room.”

“Program them?” I asked.

“With pictures and such… a bed-night program.”

“Oh,” I said.  I’d heard of those but our family was too poor for such things.  “What are you putting on?”

“I wasn’t, yet,” he said, “I was waiting for you.  What do you want?”

“What do they have?” I asked, leaning over against him.  “Do they have stars?”

Andrew laughed, “Stars! You should see the stars…”

In the end we came up with a couple of dozen programs, including one that had a couple of hundred types of star charts and all.  And a jungle one that Andrew really liked, and a couple right out of the New Texas plains.

And I got to hold the baby several more times too…

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. )

<—Russ’ Version

#

The first thing I noticed

Once outside the door (and the view of that Newtonian) I stopped, looked at the ground, and, sure enough, a multitude of stripes.  And one of them was indeed, red green red.  That is a thin red stripe on either side of a thin green stripe, all making up one stripe.  I followed the stripe down a long hall, passing only a couple of ship crew, in their grey uniforms, then up a ladder, and then to a hallway.  Hallway A18.

A door at the far end of the hallway was just closing and, after watching that, I glanced at the doors to either side.  The doors were all labeled, with ‘A18a’ on one side of me and ‘A18t’ on the other.  And then, the next door past A was clearly marked ‘A18b’.  My door.  Our door.  I stared at it.  At first because I was nervous at the thought of this my new home, new life, new partner; and then because it wasn’t obvious how it opened.  There was no handle or anything.

Eventually I realized that there was a square area right next to the door, about eye height.  I had just started to reach out my hand to it, to push it, when I heard a noise.

I turned.  It was the girl, the one with the boy story, whose name I still didn’t know, and she was staring down the same hallway I was in, looking almost as nervous as I felt.  We stared at each other, after a couple of seconds then, swallowing hard, I turned back to the door, and put my hand up against the square, pushing.

I was wrong, though.  It wasn’t a button.  It was some kind of sensor, and it flashed green when I touched it.  It flashed, and the door slid open.

The first thing I noticed was the boy… I suppose in the circumstances I should call him a man.  He had been sitting in the middle of the cell, and, when I came in, leapt to his feet, turning to face me.  He was medium build, for a boy: black hair, darkish skin, not exactly tall but not short.  And very, very nervous.  I looked him in the eye, “Hi.  My name is Aliya Brendon…, and I guess I am your partenere.”

He took my hand, pumping it several times, nervously.  “Yes, yes… I heard you were coming, I mean, the computer told me.  I’m Andrew, Andrew Tome.” I heard a noise behind me and turned to catch the face of the girl that had followed me into the hallway, just as the door slid close between us.  I turned back, looked at him, and the silence stretched out between us.  We both knew what we were supposed to be doing.  After that lecture from the Newtonian I certainly did!

“I guess we better get started,” I said.  He didn’t say anything so it was left to me to say, “Lights out.” hoping the computer had voice controls.  It did, and the lights went out.  All the way out.  Everything was all sealed, this being a spaceship and all, and I couldn’t see a thing.  I stumbled over toward him.  He had been standing on the bed, after all, which was where we needed to…  to end up, anyway.  I kind of reached forward with my hands, trying not to bump into anything, and after a couple of steps, my hands bumped into him and I jerked them back.

“Shall we… do you want to sit to get started?” he asked, nervously, his voice sounding incredibly close, in the dark.

“I guess, OK, if you want,” I said.  I definitely didn’t want to start lying down, and standing seemed awkward already.  I sat down, trying to not bump into him in the dark, and I heard him sit, too.

We just sat there, listening to each other breath for a couple of minutes and then I heard him scrunching over toward me and tensed up.  But instead of touching me, as he was supposed to be doing, as I expected him to do, as I was even, sort of, wanting him to do, he started talking, instead, “I, I’ve never done this,” he said, then, “of course you know I’ve never done this.  I just, I don’t quite know…”

I was already scared enough, and embarrassed enough; I didn’t appreciate him to acting all scared and everything.  He must be just putting it on, he was a boy.  Everything I had ever read or heard, including that Newtonian’s horrible speech, told me that boys didn’t need any particular lessons and were always eager for… for what we were supposed to do.  “You’ve read Gruden’s, I suppose,” I snapped out.  “Everyone has.”

“Yes…” he said.

“Well, then you know what you are supposed to be doing!”

“So, you’re Ok if I…”

“Just do it, will you?!” I snapped.  How could he ask if I was ‘OK’? Of course I was ‘OK’! Did he think I didn’t know what my duty was? Did he think that I was one of those girls the Newtonian had gone about, who failed their country and their race by… by not doing their duty to their partner? Why did he have to make this harder than it already was? I hadn’t asked for this, especially now and with him, but I knew my duty!

Besides which, my dad’s voice kept echoing in my head… “Remember, you chose this…” I had chosen this. I had decided to go to finishing school, and make myself available for the cull. This boy had the right to expect that I would… would be a good, loyal, partner.

Andrew didn’t answer me, at least not verbally.  I suppose he finally felt he had ‘permission’ though as, a few seconds later I felt his groping hand hit my shoulder and trace its way up to my face.  “This might be easier in the light,” he suggested, tentatively, as his hand hit my nose and he pulled it back.

“Keep the lights out!” I snapped, and I felt him stiffen.  “Well, keep going,” I said and reached out his hand again and felt along my face, tentatively, nervously.  I felt his other hand move to my other shoulder and I could hear him shuffling his body even closer and sitting up on his knees.  I closed my eyes (which I suppose you think was silly, since it was pitch dark, but it was what Gruden’s said to do) and his mouth, after stumbling around for a while against my nose, eventually found my mouth, and we kissed. My first ‘real’ kiss.

We practiced kissing for some minutes, and I was just almost getting comfortable, when I felt his hands leave my shoulder.  This was Gruden’s second step, and he was supposed to be doing it but…  but it was too fast for me.

I didn’t object though, and his hands traveled down my back.  All the way down my back.  It felt, well, kind of good.  He liked it too, and didn’t seem in a hurry to move on.  We kept kissing and he kept his hands on my backside for quite a while before moving them lower, toward my legs.

I kind of jumped, and he stopped.  But neither of us said anything and I felt his hands moving back toward me.  He didn’t move them back to my legs, however, moving them instead toward my, well, chest.  He liked that too, very definitely, but it made it very hard to kiss and, eventually, he moved his hands back to my backside, and then to my legs.  More prepared I just let him do it, contenting myself with getting better at kissing and with my hands, you know, around his shoulders and all.

“I think, I think it’s your turn,” he said.  It was, too.  Gruden’s had made it clear that, while the boy could, or even should, start the ‘touching’ phase the girl needed to do it too.  I followed, basically, the same pattern he had set, figuring that that was safe.  He kept up with his own touchings and, after a while, even after the most intimate touchings, I started to get really comfortable, almost wondering if I should suggest we should lay down.  Gruden’s had said that some of these touchings were easier that way.

Suddenly I felt him fumbling with my zipper and my fear, and my anger, which had almost died away, came back.  I wasn’t nearly done, I wasn’t nearly ready for that! But, of course, I couldn’t object, as, according to both Gruden’s and that crazy Newtonian lady, he was just doing what he was supposed to be doing next.

And then my anger was replaced with panic as I realized I didn’t have anything on underneath this jump suit! I was about to say something, to warn him or something, when that Newtonian lady’s lecture came back to me.  My anger returned as I realized that, far from being annoyed, or embarrassed, he would probably enjoy it!

And he did enjoy it, too, or at least it seemed like he did.  He seemed to enjoy everything.  I tried, I really did.  But even the Newtonian had said that, for girls, the first time was often uncomfortable… especially when, like now, their heart wasn’t really in it.  If only he wasn’t so nervous, so tentative… and if he didn’t enjoy it so much! It wasn’t fair!

And then, suddenly, or at least it seemed sudden to me, he was done.

#

“Wow!” he said, “That was great.  Thanks.  Should I turn the lights on now?” he asked, desire evident in his voice.

“No, thank you,” I said, stepping over him and manipulating the controls to the shower in the dark.  After getting myself a faceful of freezing cold water I snapped out, “I can’t see these controls.  Turn around so I can turn the lights on.”

‘OK,” he said, and I heard a rustle, “Lights on,” he added.

I glanced at his back for a second and then turned back toward the shower controls, which were on the far side, hoping that he was at least honest enough to keep his back turned while I had my back turned and wouldn’t steal a peek.  I got the water right and turned back, quickly, but he was still facing away.

The shower felt good, as did the dryer, but I wasn’t really comfortable until, having watched him closely the whole time to see that he stayed turned around, I reached into a closet and pulled out robe.  “OK,” I said, pulling it on, “I’m dressed.”

He got up eagerly and I turned toward the wall as he brushed past me.

“So, what next?” I asked him, while he manipulated the shower controls.  “Sleep?” I suggested, hopefully.  I wasn’t sure how long I had spent in that medical cylinder, but I was exhausted.

“Oh, no,” he said, finally getting the water to the temperature he wanted.  It was actually kind funny to watch him, as he wasn’t at all as blasé about my watching him while he showered as he wanted to be, and he kept glancing at me nervously.  He didn’t ask me to turn around, though, and I figured he deserved this, so I kept staring at him and trying not to grin, or blush.

This was just the end of my sleep period, our sleep period,” he said.  “In an hour or so the computer should light up with today’s assignment.

“So we have an hour, great,” I said to him.  How about if you tell me all about yourself?”  I was going to have to live the rest of my life with this… boy, I might as well learn something about him.

As I waited I picked up the bed… sliding it up one wall of the room and wiping it off with a rag I found in a closet, which I rinsed in the shower, standing right in front of him and causing him to blush furiously.  “Well?” I asked him, grinning freely now.  This part was fun, anyway.  He really was kind of scrawny, but not that bad looking, really.

“I, I’m a recruit from La Grange,” he said, eventually.

“La Grange?” I asked him, “did you induct there?  Is there a station?”

“Umm, no.  In Victoria.  I work in Victoria.  It was a bit of a bus ride, but a decent job, money wise, a half gram a day, which isn’t bad for right out of school.”

Well, that made sense; it explained why I got picked up.  Since I lived in Hallettsville and he lived in La Grange, we would have been in the same cull database.  “And you just decided, in your eleventh month, to induct? Why go through all of that tension?”

“I, um, no.  I have been out of finishing school for almost a year now.”

I stopped.  “What? Why? I mean, you went all the way through school and then… why? Why not wait until you had a partenere and get double bonuses? Get her pregnant and get three times the bonus!”

“Oh, I dunno.  And you, you were culled?”

I flushed.  It seemed a silly question but I guess, theoretically, I could have been a recruit too.  I didn’t know how they worked that. ^[1] “Yes.  I was planning on, well, never mind that.  But how did you know?”

“Your outfit.  Culls wear red, and those who came as partners for a widow or widower wear white.  Life recruits, like me, wear blue, and temps wear green.”

“Both kinds?”

“Yes, five years and ten years both wear green.  They told me about that in that video we had to watch in the center.”

“Video?”

“Didn’t you have a video? It was so annoying.  I came into the center, they asked me a bunch of questions, did a quick medical exam, and then I had to sit and wait like three hours before a van came to get me.  Me, and the others that came in, we just sat there and watched this interminable video.  But you didn’t have that?”

I blushed, thinking about what had happened to me.  “No, no, I guess we didn’t have time.”

“Do you, do you have any siblings?” he asked, breaking into my thoughts.

“Oh, yes,” I said.  “But, did you have some lady… or guy show you some video and… and give you a lecture?” I asked, “When you got on board ship?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his face lighting up.  “He was a really nice guy, he and his partner.  From Hallycone.  He welcomed us to the ship, told us all about it.  He talked a lot about partnering, and answered a lot of questions.  Then he showed us this video, and then we got assigned to our quarters.  It was odd, for me, since I was the only one there unpartnered, and I had to wait until everyone else was assigned before he talked to me, and told me about you… not your name and all since they couldn’t be totally sure you hadn’t partnered.  I just found out about that last night, my time.  Then he and his partenere walked me to my room, and showed me around.  It was mid day for our shift so, after looking at it, he walked me down to the training room and I started training right away.”

Well, that was certainly different than what had happened to me! And all because I was a ‘cull’, no doubt, a second class citizen.

“What did you study in school?” I asked, trying to get my mind out of ‘poor pitiful me’ mode.

“Art!” He laughed.  “Oh, yeah.  I’m an artist, or I was hoping to be.  I was hoping to do graphic design or something like that.”

“Wow, that’s kind of a hard field.”

“Yeah, not much call for that kind of thing in New Texas.  That’s why I was working as a delivery driver for some farms in our area.  I even thought of going off-planet, sometimes, but you know how hard that is to arrange.”

He smiled at me.  “I’d love to draw you.  When we get some time, I mean.”

“Oh.  Well.” I guess I blushed a bit at that.

“What about you?” he asked, “What did you want to do?” he asked me.

He shouldn’t have asked that – not if he didn’t want to hear me go on and on.  I’d always fancied myself as a sort of artist, too, but of a literary style.  I’d written stories, and done plays, and… a career as a writer wasn’t all that easy to get, either, but I could have done it while home with my babies, at least once I’d established myself.  He was very patient, listening to me telling him all about my dreams.  I’d imagined myself giving video performances of plays I’d create, dramatic readings of books I was going to write.

I’d planned to find a partner late in my bachelor years, and then if it took me a few months to get pregnant, I could have had almost three years to become known as a writer.  Then people would be waiting eagerly for what I’d write even while raising my family.

My friend Jon had laughed when I’d told him, saying that it was harder than I thought, but Andrew didn’t laugh.  “If you do get a chance, I’d love to illustrate your books,” he said.

“Like I’ll get a chance to write, here,” I said, and his face fell.

“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching forward and patting him on the hand, “it was a nice thought, I’m just not totally reconciled to having been culled.  It was kind of a surprise, you know.”

“I suppose it was…,” he started to say, just as the computer up.  I stared at the screen:

Aliyah: Report to training room a18

Andrew: Report to training room a18

“Ah, same room?” I said.

“No, no, not exactly,” he said and led me out the door and down the hall.  There, at the end, I saw several other girls and boys, the girls vanishing into the right hand and the boys the left.  “You see?” he said, and I nodded and followed a couple of girls into ‘our’ doorway.

#

The door led to a room, about three by five meters, and I joined the line going in.  At the front of the room stood a slightly older woman, older than any of us I judged, who was also dramatically pregnant, and who wore the gray fleet uniform.  “Come, in, come in,” she was saying, “and line up facing that door,” she added, pointing to door to my right.

I got in line, trying to figure out what accent this lady had.  I was pretty sure it was Halycone.  “OK, OK, you will do this every morning, first thing,” the girl said, “until you are pregnant.  Line up, strip off and go into the med cabinet, one at a time of course.  Then when it lets you out, get into a suit over here, she said, pointing to the left side of the room, where a series of cabinets stood open.  Well! Get going.”

The first girls in line started reluctantly getting undressed.  I figured I had a couple of minutes and looked around the room.

It’s only real features were the door beside the crew, which was, well, a door… with a green light on top it; a closet at the other side of the room where another crew girl stood waiting; and a huge computer screen taking up one whole wall.  There was a spreadsheet of some kind on the wall and I was just starting to try to figure out what it was when I noticed the girl in front of me was practically naked.

I had just started taking my ‘shirt’ off, not wanting to go ‘too’ fast, when the door opened again, and three new girls walked in, talking busily.  I hurriedly covered myself but, but these new girls didn’t even glance at any of us.  They didn’t have their uniforms on, but were wearing their robes, which they immediately proceeded to take off and get in line, still talking animatedly to each other.

I reluctantly finished undressing and watched the girls in front of me, one after another, being ushered through the door, which no doubt was a med scan room.  Each girl would go in and then, second later, the door would pop open again, ready for the next girl.

The first girl, when she came out, had been directed across the room where the other crew lady helped her figure out how to get dressed.  I did my best to watch her with one eye, the new girls with the other, and try to not let anyone see how embarrassed I was.  Finally, to my relief, I was able to enter the booth.

I didn’t get at all sleepy this time, but I did get warm.  Seconds later, too quickly for my modesty, the door opened again and the girl behind me stood impatiently waiting for me to get out.

Two of the girls before me were ‘gone’ when I got to the suits.  In their place were two black-coated girl-shaped suits with helmets on hanging from the ceiling, being moved along a track into what I had taken for a closet.  They seemed as if they were standing, which looked weird in midair, and one of the shapes suddenly scratched herself, at her hip, just as she went through the doorway… which looked even weirder.

I stood there awkwardly while the crew lady waited for two more girls to join me.  “I will teach the three of you at once,” she said, once the third girl had arrived.  “You all, find your suit and listen.  These are not hard,” she said as I fumbled through the hanging suits for one with my name on it, “they are just very tight.  They fit you exactly.  At first you will think you can’t get in it,” she said, helping one girl’s suit up her leg, “but, after a few days, you will wonder why you had any problems.”

“OK, you three,” she said to three new, naked, girls, who stood blushing and holding themselves awkwardly, as the girls with me pulled our suits on, “find your suits and let me help you get them on.  That’s right, girls,” she said to my group, “now pull the helmet on and attach it with those straps.”

I felt much better now that this suit covered my body, and worked on my helmet slowly, watching the very embarrassed group around me grow larger and larger.  A couple of girls pushed past me, totally casually, and grabbed suits from the ‘closet’, pulling them on easily, and being pulled up the ceiling.  I had almost never been naked in front of anyone outside my family or girlfriends since I was in diapers, and I was shocked by this casual nudity.  I was sure the door had opened several times while I had stood there (I hadn’t looked, of course!) and I knew the boys door was right outside there.  I guess I had to hope they hadn’t looked.

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–>

Russ’s version ->

<7/30/2095 12:00:00 AM> T minus two days

The sergeant picked up his com, “Think we might have some business, Charlie.”
“Good,” Charlie said, “This has been a boring morning, so far. What’s up?”
“I’ve got a boy, well into puberty, looking nervous. He’s been back and forth in front of our office several times already and visited the database… twice.”
“No Mommy and Daddy?” Charlie asked with a chuckle.
“Not this one. I’ve seen his type before. Odds are his parents are clueless. Gotta go, here he comes. . .”
The door opened and the young man walked in, closing the door carefully behind him and standing in front of it, as far from the desk as you could get. If the sergeant hadn’t had his smile plastered to his face he would have laughed out loud at the contrast between this timid, thin young man and the statuesque blond giant, posing with a laser gun in his hand and a comet over his shoulder, on the CF poster behind him.
“I… I’d like to sign up,” the young man said, finally coming quickly to the counter, looking almost furtive, but determined.
“Very good, sir,” the sergeant said easily, rising quickly from his chair and pushing the button in front of him which silvered the glass and locked the door. “I will lock the door while we complete our business. Standard procedure, you understand. Come right over here and put your hand on the scanner, please.” He didn’t usually lock the door, actually; not at this stage of the process. But this one looked so nervous the sergeant was afraid someone else coming in might just spook him.
The young man, with one last look over his shoulder, came over and put his right hand on the glowing plate on the desk, which beeped and turned green. “Very good sir,” the sergeant said, when the new recruits identity confirmation came up on his comp. “Now, if would look right into the camera here and repeat after me, ‘I… then say your name sir… do hereby freely and without reservation join the Colonization force. ‘”
The young man repeated the words, and the sergeant relaxed, smiled, and said, “Excellent, sir. A couple of questions, and then we can get on to the physical. Do you have a partenere, sir?”
“No, no partenere. I haven’t… no, no partenere.”
“Ah, that is a shame,” the sergeant said, sighing to himself at the loss of the bonus that a partner meant for him. He had worked hard to wrangle himself this recruiting job and the bonuses that came with it, and he hated each missed opportunity.
“Will you be joining for five years, ten years, or life, sir?” He asked, and held his breath. The situation seemed obvious enough, but you never could be sure. Perhaps the boy was running from his parents, or a young lady instead of…
“Life,” the boy said, and the sergeant grinned: Life was as good as a partenere, as far as his bonus went. Although, of course, life and a partenere, or, better yet, with children, each bringing him a bonus! Those were the best and, quite frankly, the routine. But, still, each little bit counted toward the day, hopefully not long away now, when he could retire.
“Excellent, sir. And who do you want to get your exemption, and your bonus?” The young man stammered out several names and the sergeant patiently typed them in and then said, “There, that is all the questions I have for you. Now if you will just take your clothes off and step into that door there.”
The sergeant loved this part. His own modesty had been burnt away first by his boot camp experience and then by several years in this job but New Texas was a fairly modest society and so, even though the boy should have known that this was the routine, he blushed and fumbled with his buttons, glancing back several times at the silvered window. It was always funny to watch but this time, with a boy this shy, it was truly hilarious. Accustomed to the diplomacy he needed for his job, though, the recruiting sergeant just smiled serenely through the process. Eventually the last bit of clothing had dropped to the floor and the naked lad turned away from the sergeant and toward the door to the exam room. “Just step right inside, sir,” the sergeant encouraged him, wondering whether to unlock the door and unsilver the window. That would get him moving. “The medic is waiting for you.”
“What about my clothes and things?” the boy asked, nervously, glancing back and forth between the room beyond and the room he was leaving.
“Don’t worry about them, sir,” the sergeant said, coming forward. “I will take care of them.”
He would, too, he said to himself as the boy finally opened the door and he Charlie’s greeting and instructions starting. The sergeant picked the clothes up and pulled everything out of the pockets. The cash he put in his pocket, something he only got to do when the kid came without parents. He stared at the credit card but, since that big scandal over in Dallas, draining that would be too risky. He had the kids parents address, so he addressed an envelope to them and put the card in it. He was just turning to put the boy’s clothes into a donation box he kept behind the counter just for this when his communication bell rang. It was Charlie, the Colonization Force crew in the next room. The boy was obviously all packaged up already.
“What was that about?” George asked, as the sergeant answered. “He’s nervous as a cat! And you said he came in alone?”
“Yep,” the sergeant said.
“But no Mommy or Daddy… even unpartnered?”
“Happens sometimes,” the sergeant said. “I’ve seen his type before.”
“Oh?”
“Yup,” the sergeant said, pulling out his book reader again and sitting back, watching the crowd, hopefully. “You see…”
He broke off as the door opened, to reveal a shy young couple, and what were obviously both sets of parents. “Gotta call you back, Charlie,” he said, hastily, into his com. “Good morning,” he said, coming out from behind the counter to shake the fathers’ hands, “How can I help you…?”

Russ’s version ->