This story is fiction. Actually, the setting of an artificial world in Space and the year being 2109 should have been enough to clue you in about that.
I don't care how old are. I don't care how young you are. However, the law does care, so if you are too young, go away (or at least try not to get caught).
If this story is against the law where you live, then like the young folk, go away. Or at least...
Anzu James: Naked in Orbit, Part 15 (Sunday)
(zero-G ff, rom, skinnydipping, history)
There was no dream or song this morning, just the feeling of Botilda gently sucking my right nipple. After a while she noticed I was awake and used her mouth for speaking.
“Now that you’re up, we gotta get out of here.”
“Nnnhhh,” I moaned. “I’m only half awake; you need to do the other one.”
“I did do the other one,” she insisted, “for longer than I’ve been doing this one,” and she gave my right nip a little bite.
“Oooo, cannibal,” I murmured, stretching. “Maybe I’m only two-thirds awake.” I opened my legs.
“You glutton!” she laughed, but she put her head between my thighs and started licking.
Soon I returned the favor, again taking advantage of the freedom of movement zero-G provides. To tell you the truth, we seldom do sixty-nine in full gravity. But here; ah here it’s wonderful. We didn’t kiss and such, but just basically worked on providing each other quick orgasms. Really, we might almost have jilled ourselves for all the lovey-dovey that we skipped, but even when rushed, I like it better when my lover makes me cum than when I do it myself.
It didn’t take that long, and it’s a good thing, because when I noticed what time it was I shrieked.
“If we aren’t out of here in forty minutes, we’re gonna have to pay for another night!”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” she chuckled, “but then you wanted to…”
“Never mind that,” I interrupted, “Let’s just shower off and get!”
It was a brief, utterly practical shower with no funny business. We helped each other towel off, brushed our teeth, combed our hair, and I counted spent fireflies as she dressed. They had collected around one of the vents which kept the air circulating through the suite. If the air wasn’t kept moving, a bubble of exhaled carbon dioxide could form around a person’s head and asphyxiate her. Remember, no gas is lighter than another when everything’s weightless. I’d counted eighty-seven of the tiny no-longer-glowing ornithopters by the time Botilda started putting her shoes on. Damn, but getting dressed can take a long time.
“OK,” she said at last, “we’ve got seven minutes to turn in our key.”
We collected our few carry-in items and made sure the rest of our stuff was properly marked for delivery back to our homes. Then we left and, locking the door behind us with the key-codes in our cells, canceled those codes whilst floating down the hall. Just like that, we were no longer tenants of that suite, and with two minutes to spare.
“I’m starving,” my girlfriend told me. “You got your heart set on anything for breakfast? I mean lunch.”
Yes, there had been something. Something Botilda had eaten yesterday? No. Something Rashida had…
“Weiner schnitzel.”
It didn’t take us long to get to the Starry Knight; we would’ve gotten there sooner if not for people wanting to take pictures of and pose with me, the only one of our original trio still “in costume.” Even Botilda took another, though she had plenty from yesterday.
Technically, the con was still going on. But there generally isn’t a lot to do Sunday, so I wasn’t going to stay longer than necessary. Besides, I still had a full day ahead of me.
So there we were, drinking green tea and waiting for our lunch. The X3 I’d taken last night had completely worn off, and I knew that the time-release capsule had added some 5-HTP to my system as I slept. I felt a bit worn, but that was as much the staying up late and being so active all day and all night as it was the X3.
My Weiner schnitzel arrived, along with some spaetzel and garlic sauce. Weiner schnitzel is made with pork or veal. I like both, but got veal today. The boneless cut of meat is pounded thin and sprinkled with salt and pepper before being breaded in tef flour, dunked in egg, and breaded again in panko bread crumbs. Then, it’s pan fried in butter or olive oil. Granted, the tef is Ethiopian and the panko is Japanese, but German food evolves just like food from anywhere else, and it’s good.
The spaetzel was the small kind, which is what I like. Spaetzel is kind of the missing link between dumplings and pasta. The thick batter, almost a dough, is forced through small holes into a pot of boiling water. When it floats, it’s done. It can then be used in casseroles or sautéed with garlic and Munster cheese, which is how I had it. A chocolate-chip cookie finished up that meal.
Botilda had a couple of waffles with buckwheat honey and some breakfast sausage with a small fruit cup. We both drank orange juice with added vitamin B-12. Orange juice is good after certain psychtives, and B-12 helps after a long active night, psychtives or not.
The food was good, and we took our sweet time eating it and talking about stuff. Not the Program, not even movies, just stuff, like we always do. We discussed college, the end of high school, and our half-formed notions of touring Earth for a year after graduation. No reason we can’t take a year off between high school and college. We talked about maybe heading for High Vail during Spring Break, week after next, or then again maybe a camping trip in the new Lunar Wilderness Park, a lava tube on the Moon over eight kilometres long and two hundred metres wide and high which had recently been sealed and made habitable.
We were still talking these things over as we made our way to the concourse, with me posing for many pictures. I even posed a couple of times while floating in line to board the david back to Mendocino.
This time, launch caused me no queasiness. I even watched it on my cell. Sure enough, at the exact moment we were released, another commutesphere was caught. It would be the same mass as we were, to the gram. Water tanks were loaded or drained before release to insure this. The trip itself was uneventful except for when a fellow passenger caught my attention just before arrival.
“Excuse me, but are you coming back from Holly-Kon?” he asked.
“Sure am,” I nodded, “both of us.”
“I’ve figured out that you must be in the Program,” he continued, “but I have no idea how you managed to make that a part of the con. Did you call it a costume?”
Ah, one last chance to recite my list! But first…
“Yep, this is my costume. Care to guess who I am?”
“OK,” he agreed, “maybe every third tribeswoman to appear in a National Geographic Special?”
I laughed. That was a good one, and I might have gone for it if I’d thought of it. Which would have been too bad, because I liked my actual “costume” better. I shook my head.
“Well it can’t just be some random actress known for doing nude scenes,” he chuckled. “Bo Derrick or Jenny Agutter or Ursula Andress.”
“You just got part of it,” I assured him, and winked. “But we’re about to arrive. You wanna take one more guess, or should I just tell you?”
“Hhhmmmnnn……” He stroked his beard. “Unless the part I got right was Ursula Andress and you’re supposed to be a collection of Bond Girls, you better just tell me.”
“OK,” and I took a deep breath. We were about to arrive, and I’d need to do this in one breath if I was going to beat the time.
“I’m Shirley Mills in Child Bride and Shirley Temple in Curly Top. I’m Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby. I’m Olivia Hussey in Romeo & Juliet, Jenny Agutter in Walkabout. I’m Kate Maberly in The Secret Garden. I’m Olivia D’Abo in Bolero, Melanie Griffith in Night Moves, Tatum O’Neal in Circle of Two and Daniella Edmund in Alien 3.” I had to stop and take a quick breath. “I’m Mischa Barton in Lawn Dogs and Thora Birch in OOFF!! Thora Birch in American Beauty. That G-and-a-half hits you hard when you’re trying to talk.”
“I like your list,” he chuckled. “Some of these movies I’ve never heard of. I’ll have to look into them. You might want to add Nastassja Kinski in To the Devil… a Daughter.”
“How old was she in that?” I asked.
“Fifteen,” the man answered.
“But,” Botilda asked, “how naked did she get?”
“Full frontal,” he answered, “but only for a couple of seconds.”
As we were slowed down and reeled back in I assured him I would look into it, and I repeated my list while he took notes. I guess he likes old movies with naked teenage girls, which is understandable.
Before long we were floating out into the concourse at Mendocino Island. I gave the man a hug, and so did Botilda. She’s prettier than I am, but I suspect he liked my hug better.
Getting out was easy, because we didn’t have to concern ourselves with finding the right line and standing in it; any of the two exits would do. Then it was down to where we’d left our bikes.
We stopped for a few moments to watch some of the fliers. There were a lot of kids, it being the weekend. There were one or two four-year-olds, trying out their first wings, and a few younger who still flew strapped to a parent or older sibling or whatever. Botilda pointed out that by the time she was big enough to carry a little kid aloft, Diego had grown enough to fly on his own.
“Hey Bo!” I heard a shout. Looking up and east, I saw that it was Kim, one of Botilda’s cousins. He landed right next to us, and his eyes were so glued to me that I wondered how he managed not to crash.
“Hey, Anzu,” he grinned, “Heard you were in the Program. How you holdin’ up?”
“Doing fine,” I grinned right back. “It’s amazing how fast you get used to it. I think maybe this is humanity’s natural state, and it’s only because of a lifetime of training that we find it tough at first.”
“Well,” he shrugged, “that’s what the Yanomamo would probably say.”
The Yanomamo are a tribe in South America who, about forty years ago, had come up with a “program” of their own. At ages ten, fifteen, twenty-five and forty, a Yanomamo was expected to spend six months living in traditional ways. This included living in the rain forest, hunting, traditional religion, and of course running around naked. It wasn’t exactly required that this be done, but there were scholarships and prestige and financial incentives to go along. Many of them opted for a full year, instead of the half-year expected, and a very few spent their whole lives, or nearly so, in the rain forest living the way their ancestors had for hundreds or thousands of years. These few held the highest status in the rain forest, and almost none in the cities where most Yanomamo lived there lives when they weren’t “going ancestral,” as they put it.
Kim flapped his dark green wings and was gone, flying in this low gravity. He was still staring, which is why he nearly bumped into somebody else… twice. Kim is actually one of the best fliers in the eighth grade, and O’Neill High School was looking forward to having him. It occurred to me that Kim had no chance of avoiding the Program, unlike even the sophomores this year. Well, maybe by then everybody will be used to the idea.
Botilda and I took our bikes and headed for home. When we reached the spot where we needed to split up, we gave each other a quick hug and promised to keep an eye out for each other during the Nude Walk. We did say one thing to each other that we hadn’t before.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
That felt really good. We hadn’t just stopped hiding our feelings from the rest of the Solar System; we’d quit hiding the true depths from ourselves.
I arrived home a couple of minutes later, and as soon as I stepped in Mom waved me to the table. There were several oatmeal raisin cookies on a saucer waiting for me, along with a cup of milk. Uh-oh.
“How’d you hold up, Apricot?” she asked as I nibbled at a cookie.
“It was cool,” I assured her. I took a real bite and waited until I’d chewed and swallowed before continuing. “A few times I almost forgot about it, and the other times, well, it doesn’t bother me like it did Monday. At Holly-Kon, it’s like I’m just another cosplayer.”
Mom nodded while I ate the rest of the cookie. “And how about the psychtives? I know it’s just fun, but in a stressful situation you might be tempted to take more than usual. A mother can’t help but worry.”
I was careful not to roll my eyes and sipped my milk just in case. She hates it when I roll my eyes at her.
“I had a couple of X3, and that’s it. Well, some coffee with lunch. Botilda had a couple X3 too, and she ate a Choco-Weed bar. Rashida only had one X3, but she ate a ‘shroom and dropped a bit of acid. Not much. I was the least-enhanced one of the three. It just wasn’t as stressful as you think.”
Another sip of milk.
“Well,” I granted, “maybe when the band had me up on stage and sang right at me in front of two thousand people, but I’d already taken by then, so I wasn’t going to take any more. And I didn’t need any more. I’ve been taking drugs for a while now; I know what I like.”
She chuckled. “You know, those are exactly the same words I said to my mother. Exactly the same.”
“And were the words true?” I pressed, “Were you doing too much, or did you know when to quit?”
“I knew when to quit,” she admitted, “and I guess you do too, but I’d rather check and not have to than have to check and not.”
“Makes sense,” I nodded. I passed the last cookie and the rest of the milk to her. “But Mom, there is something I should tell you.”
“What’s that?” she asked, frowning as she dunked her cookie.
“Mom,” I told her, “you have GOT to rave naked some time! Make sure you’re rolling a little, and let people touch. It’s fantastic without clothes in the way! Not sexual, really, but very, just… wow!”
She laughed. She ate a bite of the cookie, started to speak, and laughed again.
“I haven’t rolled since you were four years old,“ she said, finally. “I haven’t raved since you were ten… nine, actually. And besides,” she ate another bite, “before noon tomorrow you’ll be an ex-Program kid, and can go to raves as bare as you care. Where am I going to get the chance to rave naked?”
That was a good question, and I didn’t have a good answer. I admitted this, and excused myself to do homework. I hadn’t gotten any done yesterday or this morning, or even Friday night.
“Have at it, Apricot,” she told me, “just don’t forget the Nude Walk at four. The whole Island is looking forward to it.”
Just what had I gotten myself into now? Oh well, if anybody in this place hasn’t seen me naked already, it isn’t my fault.
For an hour and a half I worked on this journal and accepted the fact that all of both Homerooms tomorrow would be dedicated to catching up, even though I’d have another hour tonight. Most of the journal itself I did have finished when I finally headed out for the Nude Walk, but not all of it. And the rest of my homework? Homeroom.
As I headed out the door, I realized that I didn’t know where to meet up with anybody, except presumably the beach. I checked my mail as I walked, and sure enough, there were five mails on this very subject. We were to meet at the north end of Pacific Bridge. Easy enough.
There was also a quick note from Bret: “Be sure to bring your drum. Lots of us are bringing instruments. See you there.”
This was turning into a lot more than just a cool thing to do on a Sunday afternoon. This was turning into an event, a political demonstration perhaps, and I wondered if that’s what I wanted to be a part of. Just what statement would I be making by participating? More than “look at me, I’m naked” or even “look at me, I can be naked any time I want for the rest of my life.” No, this was turning out to be bigger than that.
I returned home, got my drum, and headed back to the beach. As I got closer to Pacific Bridge, I saw a huge crowd, easily a thousand. Several were naked, but most were clothed. I saw the press; they were fully dressed, and most of the spectators were in swimsuits. I spotted Jeness.
I headed in a different direction. If Jeness were still all soft-spoken and child-like around me, well, I’d just as soon avoid that. If her old personality had returned, I didn’t want her trying to embarrass me on camera. I managed to disappear into a group of Program kids, Current or Former I didn’t know. From here I could watch Jeness without being seen. She didn’t see me, and finally wandered off. I had to wonder what she would be like with her clothes back on, and with me dressed too.
Just then my cell beeped, and it was Bret. There was a text which read “THIS WAY” and a pointing arrow. I followed the arrow, knowing that it would keep pointing at him no matter which way we moved. There were transceivers all over Mendocino, including both poles, and so it was easy to pinpoint any cell’s location in all three dimensions to within a millimetre, though there were a lot of privacy regulations about who could and could not do that. For instance, anybody could locate himself to another person, like Bret had just done. But I couldn’t have just located him, unless we were both subscribed to a service to do that. That’s why I had to go to him: he didn’t know where I was, because my location was only given if I asked for it to be. I hadn’t thought to do so, but he had, so here I was, following an arrow which seemed to float about a metre in front of me. This was of course something only I could see, projected through my eyetap.
I saw him then, but he still didn’t know where I was. He wasn’t even looking in my direction. I was about to shout and wave when suddenly Jeness was right in front of me. She was just there, looking at me, and there was no way to pretend I didn’t see her.
“Um, hi Anzu,” she murmured, “You look nice. Ah, how was your birthday?”
I felt trapped. I couldn’t be a bitch to her, not when she was being so damned nice. That would make me the bad guy. At least I no longer suspected her of setting me up for something.
“Birthday was fine,” I told her. “My weekend was fine, too. It was a blast. Um, how about you.”
“Awful. Girls are playing with me all the time!” She frowned a moment. “It wasn’t your fault exactly. Well, no, not really. You didn’t know.”
Didn’t know what? Didn’t she read the pamphlet? I needed to point out a couple of things to her, and quick.
“Jeness,” I started, “you do know that you can refuse Reasonable Requests, if they’re not reasonable? For instance, you can tell women no, because you’re not gay.”
“I know, but… but…” and she mumbled something I couldn’t make out.
“What?” I asked her. “Jeness, speak up.”
She looked at me like she was asking for something. “I can’t tell anybody no. I don’t know why, but I can’t.”
I saw a tear starting in her eye, and felt myself juice up again. Damn that woman! She’s turning me into a pervert.
“Jeness,” I said, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice, “you don’t have to grant any requests, not even Reasonable ones, outside of school. In fact, you’re not supposed to.”
“I can’t help it!” she pleaded, and sniffed. “And so many girls keep having me do stuff. Cynthia, Miranda, Diana, Alice. Alice is the worst! She’s not innocent like she lets on. She made me…” Jeness leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “She made me lick her, her pussy while she fingered me. And she let her friends watch, and then they all wanted to kiss me and… Oh Anzu it was awful!”
I actually felt sorry for her. For Jeness, the Program had turned out to be everything we fear it is, and nothing we hope for. I felt sorry for her, but at the same time…
I am a pervert. I really am, because I had to clench my fists to keep myself from saying, “Jeness, lick my cunt NOW!” I felt my pussy twitch as I thought those words, and it twitched again just now as I typed them. I saw in my mind’s eye, almost like I was watching it on my cell, the look of horror on her face, I could hear her crying, “No! Oh God no, please!” I saw her bursting into tears and sobbing uncontrollably…
And doing it anyway. I imagined the crowd gathering, laughing at the poor woman as, her naked body wracked with sobs and tears flowing, she licked me straight in the vagina, her face twisted in disgust and her humiliation all the greater because she couldn’t make herself NOT do this. I imagined myself crying out, “Girls, she’ll do any of you! She’ll do ALL of you, just ask!” I could hear Jeness screaming in mindless horror as dozens of female hands reached out to…
Excuse me.
OK, I’m back. Do you know what I just did? I’m ashamed, but I have to admit it. I just jilled myself. That’s right: I got so worked up typing this down, and thinking about it, that I couldn’t concentrate on my typing and had to jill myself. I needed relief, because I’m sick.
The Program is supposed to help us get in touch with our sexuality, with the truth about ourselves. It seems to have put me in touch with some dark, evil, ugly part of myself that I’d’ve just as soon never known about. I’m going to see the school shrink tomorrow, I really am.
To my credit, I didn’t do any of that. Somehow, even with her almost on top of me, I resisted the urge to start groping her. God, but I wanted to. My nipples were hard like laminated sapphire, even as warm as it was. I can’t believe she couldn’t smell me.
“Jeness,” I told her, “just try to stay away from women until Monday. You’ll be putting your clothes on, and you won’t be subject to RRs anymore.”
I suddenly thought of something, and wondered if any of the Program kids, past or present, were skipping this whole thing. It wasn’t required or anything, and they’d be within their rights to sit it out.
“You know, you probably shouldn’t even be doing this walk. Why aren’t you at home, keeping away from women?”
“I, I had to talk to you,” she whimpered, “I knew you’d be here. Anzu, what if… what if I’m still like this after the Program is over?”
‘Then I’ll grope the hell out you every day and ram my tongue down your throat every chance I get,’ I thought, and noticed that my thighs were slippery. I bit my lip for a moment, and told her, “If that happens, you need to see the school shrink.”
“The shrink? I’m not crazy.”
“Jeness, please. You can’t stand girl/girl stuff, but you do it any time somebody asks you to, even though you don’t have to. Now, maybe that isn’t crazy, but it sure ain’t normal!”
“I… I guess so.” She leaned forward a bit more, and I felt her skin touch mine. Every muscle in my body tensed as I fought the urge to, well, to molest the poor girl. I think I might’ve done it, too, if Bret hadn’t shown up just then.
“Hey, Anzu,” he greeted me. “Hey Jeness, you know Alice Liddell is looking for you? She’s asked me at least three times where…”
Jeness went white as death and her eyes looked like they were going to pop out from her head.
“Oh God, not Alice! Please!” And with that she was running like Satan himself was chasing her.
“Well,” Bret muttered, “that was… weird.”
I filled him in on what was happening between those two as we made our way to the bridge. These bridges of ours are huge, though as soon as I typed that I remembered that you have larger ones. Here is a diagram I made. All three bridges are just like this.
Keith, the first Program kid in Mendocino Island history, was giving us our marching orders. He had his hand blinking, so bright that we could see it even in the bright sunshine. I wondered if he’d had it modified over the weekend; I didn’t think it could be that bright. I’d always kind of liked his hand, though; industrial looking and cool.
He’d lost his left hand on a trip to the Moon a year and three months ago. He was messing around in a construction area he wasn’t supposed to be in and, to avoid getting caught, had gone into an area even the workmen who supervised the machinery avoided. The machinery was started up, because nobody knew he was there, and suddenly his hand was severed, squashed, ground up and incinerated. He was lucky not to lose the whole arm. It was possible to grow the half a forearm and hand back, but it would’ve taken three years, during which time his embryonic hand would be useless. So he opted for a plan that spent six months growing most of his forearm back, and concluded with installing a bionic wrist and hand. He also opted to sit out the rest of the school year (he’d already missed the first five weeks), and just go the next year. Thus, he was the second-oldest senior, at nineteen and a half.
Most people who get a bionic part have it made up to look as natural as possible, and unless you look hard and know what you’re looking for, you really can’t tell the diff most of the time. Some, though, go a different route and play up the bionic part, making it a sort of fashion statement. Keith had taken this option, so his left hand was brushed aluminum with LEDs for fingernails and black rubber padding on palm and fingertips. It could rotate 360° and had his cell built right in.
He wasn’t really a major stud or a star athlete or anything like that, but most everybody liked him and thought he was pretty cool. Most of us suspected that he wasn’t chosen randomly for the Program. It seemed a bit much that a senior (and thus he had a three-to-one chance of graduating Program-free) who also happened to be maybe the most admired man on campus just happened to be randomly chosen before anybody else. He’d handled it well, too. If there was going to be a general revolt from students, it was quashed when Keith just went along like it was nothing.
“What we’ve decided to do,” the man with the hand was shouting, “or at least what I was told we’ve decided, is that, at exactly 4:00 PM we’re going to cross this bridge, Pacific Bridge, and then walk east until we get to California Bridge, cross it, walk east until we get to Redwood Forest bridge, which isn’t within ten thousand kilometres of a redwood forest, cross that bridge, and walk east until we get back to this bridge. Then we’ll cross it and be right back where we started. Then, having accomplished whatever it is we think we’re accomplishing with this, we can go back to whatever we normally do on Sunday.”
There was a huge round of applause, and I cheered along with anybody else. It seemed that maybe all the Program participants were there, and I saw parents, and teachers, and police. I saw dressed kids, all ages, and little boys pointing out cute, naked women to each other. News people were there, and I knew that I and all the other Currents and Formers would be seen by the one or two people in this Island who hadn’t seen us already.
“Two minutes!” Keith shouted, and suddenly there was a tension in the air, like before the spoccer championship game. I heard somebody shaking a rattle, probably a maraca, and then a tambourine joined in. I started on my frame drum, and when Keith shouted “One minute!” many other instruments were heard. I felt Bret’s arm circle my waist, and gave him a grin.
When Keith shouted “NOW!” and the walk started, we had fallen into a very basic four-beat rhythm. Ahead of me was Marcia Brady, playing her cello. She had it in a cart, with fat soft tires which rolled over the sand easily. There were several of these carts, which is why large instruments like cellos and marimbas were there. The carts were obviously self-propelled. The way Marcia’s nude body moved, the way her cute butt wiggled, I could tell she wasn’t pushing it herself. She really is a cutie.
We weren’t in any specific order, but just sort of crossed the bridge in a mob. After reaching the other side, we headed around the beach for the next bridge, California. We thinned somewhat, so that by the time we arrived at that bridge we were only about ten abreast. I’d love to say that we “poured over” two of the bridge’s three limbs, but really there were only about a hundred of us. So about sixty or so crossed one limb and forty or so the other and we were headed east again. The third limb, with no Program kids on it, was actually more crowded with media and spectators than were the two we used.
About the time we were merging together I noticed Jeness about six metres ahead. I also saw somebody walking purposefully towards her, and my eyes grew wide as I saw that it was Alice. She slipped up behind my one-time enemy and casually started to caress her butt. I saw Jeness tense, but she did nothing to stop what Alice was doing. I glanced around; nobody was paying attention to what anybody else was doing. I wouldn’t’ve noticed myself if it wasn’t for my, um, connection to Jeness. Another glance showed that the police and media probably couldn’t see it either. We were nearly in the middle of the group, and only those near the edges could be seen full-length from outside. Jeness’ and Alice’s tits would be on the evening news (and so, I reminded myself, would mine), but our asses and pussies would not. Alice obviously knew this, as her hands never rose above waist level, but those buns of Jeness’ were being fondled like mad.
My eyes were glued to the scene. I knew I should do something, but I was loving it too much. Alice was standing next to Jeness now, almost rubbing hips with her, and I saw a hand steal around to the front. I couldn’t actually see it make contact with the poor girl’s pussy, but I knew it did from the way Jeness stiffened. She was walking almost like somebody from your time imitating a robot. Of course a real robot is more graceful than any human being, but that’s what Jeness’ stiff-legged walk reminded me of. Oh, how I wished I could see the girl’s face! I bet she was crying, at least a few tears. I wanted to see those tears, the look on her face. But there wasn’t any way for me to watch without her seeing me.
“Hey, what’s with you?” Bret hissed in my ear. “You’re not getting all bashful again, are you?”
For the first time since I was on stage with Martha’s Igloo, I felt myself blush. I pointed. He glanced, and it was time for his eyes to grow wide. He chuckled and gave me a squeeze.
“If you want to rescue her,” he told me, “I won’t try to stop you.” He kissed my cheek before adding, “But I say let her suffer. Serves her right. Besides, it’s sexy.”
I agreed it was sexy, but I’m not sure it was the same reason he thought it was. Or maybe it was; he did say “suffer.” I glanced, and he was hard. Of course, that might have just been the whole nude walk thing, or even me. He was having an effect on me, too; it isn’t only Jeness’ torment that turns me on.
I heard a guitar playing, acoustic, and I glanced around to see if it was Botida. It was, and she was improvising something that sorta-kinda went with all the other improvisational stuff being played. I waved, and she broke off playing long enough to wave back. By the time we got to Redwood Forest Bridge (and Keith is right: there isn’t a redwood forest within at least ten thousand kilometres of Mendocino Island) Bret and I were on the outside edge of the group. This means that those outside could see us full length, but Bret didn’t seem worried about his hard-on being on public display. Well, I didn’t worry about my shaved crotch on the news, but it doesn’t show arousal as obviously as a rock-cock does.
Alice and Jeness had also moved to the edge, and Alice had quit her molestation at just the moment that there was a real danger of being caught. Oh, she was slick. And you know, she does always give the impression of innocence, even though everybody knows better.
I didn’t really know Alice Liddell well, though we had Music together. We talked sometimes. Alice is seventeen but looks fourteen, is blonde with blue eyes and fair skin, and always comes off as naïve, childlike, and oh so innocent. She parties hard every weekend, and when she had her Program week back in February, she’d almost taken over Ehawee as the most sexually active woman on campus. She’s fond of very specific (and expensive) psychtives, such as SyneSence, which produces only synesthesia, and a couple called Grow↑ and Grow↓, which do exactly that. I mean, they cause changes in perception of size. I tried them, and from the point of view of the person taking it, one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. I didn’t get them from Alice, though; I got them from my mother believe it or not. But the first couple were duds; they didn’t do anything at all. The thing with Alice, though, is that she often uses these at school, like more often than not. The effects are narrow enough that she can still do her work and stuff, but still, that’s pretty wild.
Even with all of that, I was surprised by this level of meanness. Maybe it was as much a turn-on for Alice as it was for me. I was sure hoping to see some more of it. It’s not that I wanted to get back at Jeness for anything; I simply enjoyed seeing her humiliated, degraded. It had nothing to do with revenge, but it had a lot to do with me being a lot less good than I like to think I am. I’m not really any more innocent than Alice.
We crossed the bridge, keeping ourselves to two limbs and the press and spectators crowding the other. It hadn’t been planned that way, it just kind of worked out. It’s like everybody realized that they needed a limb to themselves, so we gave them one. Co-operative behavior without planning, like ants building a complex den. It was emergence, like those Nature Children folks on the Moon are always rattling on about. I think they’re up to something, those Nature Children. They just always act like they KNOW SOMETHING, you know?
In all the milling around, I lost track of Jeness and Alice. Bret and I had drifted towards the middle of the group and then back to the edge again. This might have been a mistake, because a woman with blonde hair arranged into an impossible style shoved a microphone in Bret’s face.
“Excuse me young man, I’m Kizzi Haakensdatter with the Mendocino Island Times. Could I have your name?”
“As long as I get it back,” Bret told her, and winked. “I’m Bret Austen, seventeen years old, high school junior, former Program participant. And this vision,” he waved one hand at me while tightening the arm around my waist, “is Anzu James, seventeen years old, high school junior, current Program participant and my new girlfriend, which makes me a damn lucky guy.”
I felt myself blush again. It’s nice to hear somebody say things like that, but Vishnu, did he have to say it on camera?
“Hello Anzu,” the reporter said. “Perhaps the two of you can tell us: what exactly is this march accomplishing?”
“Now that,” Bret told her, “is a good question. For me, it’s just a way of saying ‘OK, we get it. The Program’s worked, and look: we are naked and not ashamed, like in the Garden of Eden. So don’t worry about us, we get it.’ And sure enough, here we are, starking it.”
Kizzi nodded. “And how does the girlfriend feel about this?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” and Bret waved a hand at me again. “She‘s right here, brains and all.”
Kizzi blushed, and it was very visible. “Of course,” she nodded. “Ansu, how do you feel about this?”
“Well,” and I hesitated. Never mind the mispronunciation of my name; what was this accomplishing? Demonstrating that we aren’t bashful anymore? A few of us start skinny-dipping and that’s pretty obvious. But it just seemed to be a bit more than that to me.
“The Program,” I started again, “was dumped on us. We don’t volunteer; we’re drafted, like one of those old Vietnam War movies.”
Maybe a bad choice of example. What does anybody today know of the Vietnam War? Or the draft, for that matter. But I pressed on.
“The recent law passed by the Council makes it more than something we have to do to graduate. It gives us a right we didn’t have before. And that, Kizzi, lets us take the Program and make it our own. We’re taking it for ourselves. The adult community may have dumped it on us, because we’re too young to vote about it, but from now on, the Program belongs to the young!”
Gah, where did all that come from? I’ve been watching too many hippy movies.
Kizzi just nodded and said, “Thank you, Brad and Ansu,” before heading off to ask questions of somebody else. Brad and Ansu? Come on, our names aren’t that hard to pronounce, Ms. Haakensdatter.
Bret gave me a squeeze. “Guess I picked the right girl,” he said and winked.
I get such a flutter when he says things like that. Could I be in love? But I love Botilda.
I could see Pacific Bridge up ahead. Actually, you can see all three bridges from almost anywhere in Mendocino. You can see almost any part of Mendocino from any other part. It’s only the size of the place that keeps it from being like living in one big room your whole life. I’ve been in some of the spherical I1 sized habitats; I’d never survive a lifetime there. But then, the people who live in the I3s say the same thing about I2 sized spheres. I guess it depends on where you grow up.
But anyway, I could see that we’d be on the bridge before long. When we’d crossed it, this grand whatever-it-is would be finished. The whole thing was only going to be about an hour and a half, maybe less. Well, Mendocino Island is only a bit over six kilometres in circumference, and even with all the bridge-crossing, it wasn’t more than six and a half. Five kilometres an hour is a pretty standard walking speed for a group that knows where it’s going, and we’d started at four, so naturally it was all over before five-thirty.
Well, now what do I do? I’d need to home by six for dinner, and Steve after that. But I didn’t wonder for long what to do with my extra half-hour, as nude classmates began charging and diving into the water. Well, why not a bit of skinny-dipping? I was dressed for it, or rather I wasn’t.
I soon found myself waist-deep, talking to Bret and to Botilda, who looked sizzling in her tiny one-piece. I’m going to have to find some place she can skinny-dip with me, Program or no. Nude Fridays? She won’t do it.
I saw Alice, who was catching a wave further out. I swam over to her before she started paddling out again.
“Hey Alice.”
“Oh, hey Anzu,” she waved, and paddled over to me. Her little blonde triangle was neatly trimmed, her eyes were wide and innocent, and the hair on her head was in a ponytail. She was the picture of sweet girlhood, only naked.
I leaned in close before telling her, “I saw what you were doing to Jeness.”
“Yeah,” she said, a huge smile spreading over her face, “isn’t it just so hot? I wish she could be in the Program for another week, so I could keep doing stuff to her. Wow, but it makes me so wet!”
I hadn’t expected her to be so open about it, so gleeful. The look in her eyes was exactly what I felt when Jeness was telling me about it. I grinned in spite of myself. Alice was only doing what I wanted to. I was just holding myself back.
But wasn’t that a good thing? I mean, I’m thinking it, and fantasizing about it, and getting all wet over it, and jilling myself over it, but I’m not actually DOING it, right? That’s got to make some difference.
Alice grinned at me, like she knew something. “It turns you on too, doesn’t it? I mean, you started it when you made out with her. You know she puked?”
Alice rubbed her thighs together like she had an itch, which she sort of did. Just like I did. She licked her lips before speaking again. “I made Jeness puke too. She just can’t help herself! I keep thinking, ‘this time I’ve gone too far; this time she won’t do it.’ But she always does. God, I love it! You know I’ve stopped taking X3 this week? Makes me too nice to do stuff to her. I don’t want to be nice with this.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was turned on by all this, but at least I felt guilty about it. I’d never heard of somebody not taking X3 because they “don’t want to be nice.” Well, not taking it before a game so you keep your competitive edge, but that’s not quite the same.
I excused myself as nicely as I could, but I had to get away from this girl. As I returned to Botilda and Bret, I heard Alice shout, “I wrote down everything, Anzu! I could mail it to you.”
Mail it to me? I could read all about the things poor Jeness had been put through? I wasn’t able to hold back a moan, and I’m so glad nobody heard it. Alice was scaring me, because I’m not like her, but I am. She was only doing the things I wanted to do, the things I might do if I didn’t avoid Jeness altogether. The things I might still do if I let somebody like Alice egg me on. I had to get away from Alice.
I swam back over to Botilda and Bret, and found them looking serious. I only caught a snippet of conversation.
“I can respect that,” Botilda was saying.
“Then it’s official,” Bret nodded, “friends unified through mutual intere.. Hey, Anzu! So what’s the deal with Alice and Jeness?”
“I…” I screwed up my face a bit. “I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”
“Go ask Alice,” Botilda chuckled, “I think she’ll know.”
By this time, I needed to get back home. There was a young boy counting on me, and besides, I was feeling hungry again. I’d had a good lunch, but no breakfast. Bret and Botilda offered to walk me home.
Botilda started strumming her guitar, so I started a basic four-beat rhythm. Bret whistled. We could hear other bits of music in the distance. Bret and I were dry by the time we all got to my place, but Botilda’s swimsuit was still wet. Bare skin dries faster than cloth.
Dad opened the door; his eyes went wide. I suddenly realized: I’ve just brought a naked man home! Dad recovered quickly, though.
“Come on in. Botilda, you need to get out of that wet suit. I can get you a robe, unless you want to go naked like your friends.”
The look she gave him would curdle milk. “I’ll take the robe, thank you.”
Dad went to bring the robe, and Mom walked in and did a double take herself. But like Dad, she recovered gracefully.
“You were beautiful on the news, Apricot. Bret, Botilda, will the two of you be staying for dinner?”
“I’ll check,” they said together, and chuckled, even bumping fists.
A couple of minutes on their cells and they were staying for dinner. Botilda had stepped into the bathroom and changed out of her suit and into the robe. Bret stayed nude, and of course so did I.
Dinner was bucatini pasta with tuna-cheese sauce. I’d smelled it as soon as we got in. Dad has this basic cheese sauce he makes, and about six variants. This one combined feta and parmesan cheeses with herbs, spices, shredded tuna and milk with a white roux. Served over the bucatini, it was wonderful. Unhopped ale went great with the cheesy tuna sauce. Mom had made a salad to go with it, with baby spinach, grape tomatoes, romaine lettuce, carrot and pecans with a ginger dressing. Desert was cherry turnovers.
We had just finished up and Botilda was changing back into her now-dry suit when there was a knock on the door. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, so I answered.
It was Steve, who took two steps in and froze. His gaze went from me, to Bret, to Botilda, and then flickered back and forth between the three of us.
“I, um, ah…” he started, “I didn’t, um, interrupt anything, did I?”
Botilda walked up to him and leaned over, her cleavage at eye level. She gently stroked the side of his face.
“Poor boy; you JUST missed the threesome.” She stood straight and gestured to Bret. “Walk me home, handsome? That is, if you’re rested up enough.”
Bret chuckled, gave me a quick hug and kiss, just a peck, and walked out the door with Botilda, calling behind him, “Study hard, Steve, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
And with that they were gone, leaving me once again feeling glad that it’s hard to tell when I’m blushing. The way Steve was looking at me with his mouth open didn’t help.
“Steve, look,” I began, “I have to tell you that…”
“Don’t tell me,” the boy interrupted. “I mean, I don’t think you really had a threesome, but maybe you did. And it’s more fun to think maybe you did than, uh, than to know for sure you didn’t, you know? So don’t tell me you didn’t, OK?”
That caught me off guard, but really, why ruin the fantasy? He’d get a lot of, er, utility thinking about all the things we might have done. In fact…
“OK,” I told him, “I won’t say that we did, and I won’t say that we didn’t. But I will tell you this much: five minutes before you got here, Botilda wasn’t wearing that swimsuit, and that’s the truth.”
Steve’s mouth opened and closed, silently, like a fish or something. I wondered if he’d even get any sleep tonight.
“By the way,” I asked, “do you remember what tonight’s subject is?”
“Huh?” he asked. “Wha… uh… ur…”
“Starts with an ‘S’ and rhymes with ‘bravery,’” I suggested, “which is what you probably need a lot of to live through it?”
“Bravery? What? Huh? Oh!” He gave his head a shake. “We’re talking about slavery, which I’m glad we don’t do anymore.”
“Me too,” I granted. “Now, in ancient Greece…” and the session was on.
Steve chuckled over Aristotle’s reply when chided that the famous Athenian democracy was supported by slaves: “When looms weave by themselves, slavery will end.”
Soon the boy noticed a pattern.
“I didn’t know the word ‘slave’ came from ‘Slav,’” he remarked, “but you know, it was other Europeans enslaving them. Kazoids owning Kazoids. And the Greeks were enslaving other Greeks, except when it was Persians. Kazoids owning Kazoids again. It wasn’t one race owning another.”
“That’s true,” I told him. “In some parts of Africa about this same time, you had Afrins owning other Afrins. The first European and American slavers didn’t capture slaves in Africa; they simply bought them. Raiding for slaves came later.”
Slavery in the New World is a complicated thing, and I don’t know how well I untangled it for Steve.
“The shift from religious justifications (what’s a few decades of hard work compared to the eternity in hell we’ve saved them from by bringing them the Gospel?) to race-based slavery was a very gradual process,” I told him.
“But why did it shift at all?” he asked. “I don’t think the ‘save from hell’ justification is a good one, I mean you can preach to people without making them slaves. But at least it was something. Why did it change to race?”
“That,” I told him, “is a good question. Not sure I have a good answer. My own best guess is that so many countries started converting to Christianity, and thus didn’t need slave-owners to save their souls, that slave-owners needed another excuse. By this time, slaves were being taken from Africa, and they looked, well, like me. So the difference in looks, something as obvious as skin color, became the new justification.”
“Why not stick with indentured servitude?” he wanted to know. “Then the justification is ‘he’s paying for his crimes,’ and you don’t have the whole racial thing.”
“You really are paying attention!” I patted him on the back. “The problem with indentured servants is that they eventually become free, and their children are born free. So you don’t get the life-long, self-perpetuating workforce you do with chattel slavery. Also, you have to treat your servant a little better if he’s going to someday be a citizen just like you. There was so much work to do in the New World, and so much of it was work free people would rather not do, that colonization pretty much revived slavery, which had almost died out in Europe.”
“You almost make it sound like it was OK because, because…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Because it was needed.”
“Well I want to make it clear I do NOT think that slavery was justified! I do think it was inevitable, though. Human beings have always used labor-saving devices, and unfortunately at the time the only ‘device’ that could do what needed to be done was another human being. Myself, I think they should have sucked it up and done their own work, but…” I heaved a big sigh. “No, I’m afraid slavery was inevitable. Not a necessary evil, but an inevitable evil.”
We continued with the New World, and the debate among the American founders, and the patchwork of slave codes in the various states. I thought Steve was going to pull his hair out over Thomas Jefferson. Understandable. I didn’t know whether to praise Jefferson or curse him half the time.
“Let me get this straight.” The boy had stood up and was pacing back and forth. “He owned slaves, but wanted to ban slavery. When he was the president he signed the law to stop importing slaves from Africa, but when the slaves in Haiti revolted, he was on the slave-owners’ side. He called his slaves his family and boasted he took care of them, but then he fucked one of them.”
His eyes ran over my bare form again.
“OK, if Sally Hemmings really did look like you I understand that part. Still… AUGH!”
“People are still arguing over Jefferson,” I told him, “and he’s a perfect example of how complicated real historical figures usually are. It’s seldom either William Wilberforce or Adolf Hitler, seldom Pol Pot or Martin Luther King. It’s usually Thomas Jefferson or Oliver Cromwell.”
He heaved a sigh. “OK, so how did it end? Slavery, I mean.”
“Well, it ended at different times in different parts of the world.” I thought it over and decided against a nation-by-nation, date-by-date rundown, in part because it wasn’t necessary, in part because I knew I would get a few wrong doing it from memory; I didn’t have notes for it.
“In each case,” I told Steve instead, “slavery lingered longest in agricultural areas where crops were grown for export, and faded in area where manufacturing and a heavy reliance on machinery were the basis of the economy. Harvesting and such took a lot of people doing tasks where a few overseers could manage all that labor. Manufacturing took a longer chain of command and fewer people to do the work, most of the sheer oomph being provided by the machines. Not that slaves couldn’t work factories, but to do so was usually more trouble than it was worth, economically. There were many who wondered if the tobacco, sugar, and cotton plantations of the New World could turn a profit without slave labor. So you get industrialists sympathizing with the abolitionists, and plantation owners fearing that all of their wealth will vanish if the abolitionists win.”
Steve wrinkled his nose. “What kind of machines did they have in the Nineteenth Century? Pocket watches, maybe.”
“You’d be surprised,” I assured him. “There were spinning jennies, instead of spinning wheels which needed one person each. There were Jacquard looms that ran on punch-cards and steam engines and a lot of things.”
“Punch cards?” Steve scratched his head. “Like the early computers?”
“Well,” I allowed, “the Jacquard loom didn’t do any calculations, but it was early automation. Change the punch cards, and the loom would weave a different pattern. Part of the reason the earliest computers used punch cards is because they were an already developed technology.”
Steve wrinkled up his little face.
“So the looms started weaving by themselves, and slavery ended.” He scratched his head again. “So Aristotle was right.”
“Well,” I chuckled, “it’s not exactly controversial to say that Aristotle was a smart guy.”
I yawned and stretched, shifting my position a bit.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I’m not bored; I just didn’t get much sleep last… what’s with you?”
Steve was staring, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open. I suddenly realized that I had reverted back to the straddle-legged sitting posture I use sometimes when I sit on the floor.
“You’ve seen it already,” I reminded him, being careful not to close my legs.
“Yeeeaaahhhh,” he sighed. Then he looked me in the eye and grinned.
“I’m really gonna miss seeing you like this, Anzu. I mean, you’re probably glad your week is over, and I’m happy for you, but I’m gonna miss it.”
I bit my lower lip and thought for a moment before I said it, but I knew I was going to say it before he’d finished speaking.
“Steve,” I started, and then I did bring my legs back together, “Steve, I could still be naked one session each week, if you like. I mean, you’ve been such a gentleman about it all, I guess we could make Sundays my nude tutoring day.”
I can’t really describe the look on his face at that moment.
“You… you’d do that for me?”
“Well, yeah,” I shrugged. “I mean, being naked doesn’t really bother me anymore, and you like it, so why not?”
“You are the coolest girl in Mendocino Island. In the whole Solar System!”
I laughed, and he laughed. After that, though, I had to tell him we were done until Tuesday.
“When the coolest girl in the whole Solar System will have her clothes back on!” I teased.
“That’s OK,” he chuckled just before I opened the door, “you look good even with clothes.”
He stepped out and turned to sweep me with his eyes yet again.
“Did Sally Hemmings really look like you?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “She wouldn’t have had my hint of Orin features, and she was a lot lighter-skinned than I am. In fact, several of her and Jefferson’s children passed themselves off as Kazoids, and avoided slavery altogether. About a year ago, though, I had a dream that I was her.”
“I wouldn’t mind being in that dream,” he chuckled. “Well, good night!”
“Good night!” I returned, and with that he was gone.
I went back inside, up to my room, watched my soap, and checked my mail. There was the standard letter from Botilda informing me that yet another week would pass without her being in the Program. She added that seeing me with clothes on was going to seem strange after a solid week of nudity.
There was also a mail from Alice, with an attachment. I didn’t save the attachment, but I didn’t delete it either. I knew I would read it. I’m not proud of that, but I know that I’ll read it.
I decided to get a little bit of homework done before getting to sleep. I was still going to use up both of my Homeroom classes, but I’d have it all done in time.
As I drifted off to sleep, I had one of those snippets of not-exactly-dreaming that you sometimes get just before you’re actually asleep. Thomas Jefferson was telling me to take my clothes off, and then he asked who I thought I was.
“I’m Shirley Mills in Child Bride and Shirley Temple in Curly Top. I’m Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby. I’m Natasjia Kinski in To the Daughter a Devil and Sally Hemmings in… in…”
I was suddenly awake, and had to pee. I went to the bathroom, peed, went back to bed and was out like a light.
* * *