Chapter 9: A Meeting of Minds

Emma. 1

Jess was screaming. It was amazing how she could make it sound so real when Emma knew that it was anything but. As one of the best, most requested whores on the colony, Jess had a constant stream of men passing through their shared little apartment, and each of them paid an eye-watering amount of credits to get inside her. But god-damn, did that girl know how to put on a show. The headboard of her bed was knocking against the wall, and the fainter but growing grunts of her John were almost being drowned out as she screamed out the words that invariably hurried the whole process along.

“Oh fuck!” Jess’s muffled voice sounded through the thin walls. “Fuck that big dick into my slutty teenaged cunt, use it; you paid for it, it’s fucking yours! Do it, fucking dump that load into me, make me feel it, make me feel you cum, do it, baby, fucking ruin me!”

Jess watched too much porn.

Fortunately, it would seem that the men who paid for her company did too. Emma found it cringe-worthy. It was tacky, it was cheesy, and she couldn’t imagine for the life of her how anybody could get off on something so obviously scripted ... both the porn and Jess’s panted tirade. She literally used those words, verbatim, on everyone. Of course, there was something to be said, Jess claimed, for the throes of passion. Seeing such a pretty face using such dirty words, the guy knowing where that mouth had been and what it was capable of. It was the loss of one’s self into the fantasy, and although none of these guys ever made her climax, she enjoyed the fantasy almost as much as they did. Men didn’t pay her for sex, she had said in one of her more thoughtful moments; they paid her for the fantasy, and then they paid her to leave. Or, more accurately - since Jess lived here - they paid for the ability to be able to leave, guilt-free.

That made less than no sense to Emma. It seemed to run contrary to everything she thought she knew about sex, love, or relationships.

But then, even Emma had to admit that she knew as close to nothing about those subjects as it was possible for her to know. Emma wasn’t quite a virgin, but she may as well have been. She was nineteen, and one fumble with a former boyfriend a few years previously did not a woman make. It had been quick, it had been unsatisfying, it had been confusing, and it had been more than a little tainted by the fact that the boy in question - a boy she had convinced herself loved her - had scurried out of the room immediately afterwards, only to dump her the next day, then hook up with someone more ... worldly ... about a week later. That had been her last foray into the world of sexual adventure.

Jess had no such qualms. Her body count had been in the double figures long before she realized that men would pay good money - a lot of good money - to get access to her body. Jess had it all: she had the sultry good looks, the killer body, the overly healthy attitude toward sex, and the dirtiest mind of any woman Emma had ever met. More than that, Jess argued, her father had always told her that the key to a happy life was to find something she loved to do and then find a way to get paid for it. Emma doubted this was what the man had in mind, but Jess loved to fuck, and she sure as hell had found a way to make it pay.

Emma’s own father had given rather different advice.

“There are two types of boys,” her father had said, sitting her down one day to have his version of ‘the talk’ with her. At the time, she had wanted the ground to swallow her whole; she had been mortifyingly embarrassed, but the more time had gone on since that day, the more sense everything he had said now made. “There are real men, and there are dogs, players, fuck boys, or whatever you want to call them. Now, no real man is born that way; a real man is made. He is made through sacrifice, hard work, through investing time in himself and in the people around him. It is his mission, his purpose in life, to improve himself, and a real man will take you with him on that journey. He will look after you; he won’t treat you like property, but you will be the most valuable thing in his life, and that is the way he will treat you. But a real man wants a good woman, and all women, at some point in their lives, want a real man.

“Fuck boys are the opposite. Either unwilling or unable to put the time or effort into improving themselves. They see dating as a game, and the only thing they are looking for is found in just one place ... Between your legs. They can be manipulative, abusive, inconsiderate, objectifying, and immature. It doesn’t matter how good of a person they are; if they have never put the time in to build their own lives up, they cannot possibly know how to be a positive part of yours. They don’t care if you are a good woman; they want to win the dating or the hook-up game and the prize for that victory is what is between your legs. Access to that, be it for one night or for years at a time, is the sum of their ambition. They will take a good woman, drag her down to their level, and then beat them into submission with experience.

“This is the main difference between men and women. To have any sort of value at all, a man has to earn it. Success, ambition, drive, maturity, life experience, the ability to provide. Women are born with value. A woman’s sexuality is the highest of all prizes for a man, for any kind of man, and women come tailor-made to be everything a man could ever want. They come of age already in possession of their youth, their beauty, their femininity, their fertility, and their purity. I know it sounds awful, but no matter how evolved we think we are as human beings, we are still primal, instinctually driven creatures. Those are the women that men are biologically hardwired to desire because they are the ones most likely to continue his genetic line. But each time they give their sexuality to a man, it loses value.”

“So, what?” the younger Emma had argued defiantly, railing against the misogynism she felt she was hearing. “I have to save myself for the right man? No sex before marriage? Should I prepare myself for a life in the kitchen, too?”

Her father shook his head. “No, those concepts are, thankfully, long gone. What I am saying is that you should be selective in who you give yourself to. You should wake up each morning, look in the mirror, and see yourself for what you are. Not some trophy housewife or some piece of arm candy, but a vibrant, intelligent, beautiful woman that any man in the entire galaxy would be lucky to get. So if any man is to get you, then he had better damned well be worth it. Because by giving yourself to any guy who shows you attention, all you are doing is cheapening the value that every man should aspire to be worthy of. The more you do it, the cheaper it gets, until the men out there who you deserve, the ones you will eventually want to be with, won’t want something that everyone else has already been given for free.

“There are a million things that make a girl into a good woman, things she can do, just like men, to build herself up. Get your education, be the woman who challenges her man to be better, be able to match him, hell, beat him on an intellectual level. Find your passions and chase them with everything you have. Develop your sense of self, learn that there is a difference between being smart and being wise, that there is a difference between being hot and being beautiful, and that when it comes to a relationship, every single human being alive, men or women, are only the sum of what they can bring to the table. Beauty will never fade with age, hotness does, but beautiful women are born every day, you need to have more than that, and a man needs to be looking for more than that to deserve you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be telling me to find love or something?” She had asked.

“Love is the most important and powerful thing on earth, Ems,” he sighed, using the pet name he had given her as an infant. “But love comes later. This is just to start the relationship; this is to get the door open. Love is through the door, but it can and will remain sealed closed if both you and your future partner aren’t careful now. And you deserve love.

“Every good, real man out there has been on a journey to build himself up for his entire life; he has built himself up to be a King of his own world. But contrary to what the magazines and the movies tell you, a King doesn’t want a Princess; he wants a Queen. But even if you are a Queen in every single other way imaginable, no King is going to settle for a woman who gave away the most intrinsically valuable part of herself to anybody who caught her eye at the time.”

“Jesus, Dad,” she had groaned. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I am a man,” he answered simply. “And I know how men think. More than that, I am the only man who is going to tell you the truth about this because I am the only man who is not going to try to manipulate or charm you into bed. One day, you will want to settle down, you’ll want to find someone, and you will want to be happy; I’m giving you the one piece of advice that nobody else can.”

“I’m not sure Mom would agree with that.”

“Who do you think asked me to talk to you about it?” he’d shrugged. “When I met your mother, I was 32, and she was 26; she had been with three people before me.”

“Oh, so she wasn’t a good woman ‘cause she’d given it away?” Emma snorted.

“Three men in eight years, assuming she started at 18, is not giving it away. That is being in a few relationships that she dedicated herself to, and they didn’t work out. That is being selective. Your mom was 26 when we met, your aunt Kim was 22, and she had already fucked around with about 30 different guys. Tell me, what is the one thing that she always complains about now?”

Emma failed to stifle another groan as she thought about the long, wine-filled nights that she had been forced to listen to as her Aunt bitched to her mother. “That she can’t find a good man and that the only men interested in her are only after one thing.”

“She chased the cheap thrill. She lied, she cheated, she threw away the good men who were all around her because she wanted the next shiny object. Then, when her looks had dried up, and a new generation of easy women came along to replace her, she was left dealing with the consequences of her actions.”

“But mom tells her that she’ll find someone. So she’s lying? To her own sister?”

“Yup. Because your Mom doesn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her the truth. She made stupid decisions, poor choices, and chased attention instead of affection. And now, real men won’t take her seriously because she can never be his Queen. Sure, they’ll fuck her; no single man is going to turn down free sex, but when it comes down to what she brings to the table, that is all she has, and it’s all used up.”

She had to admit, thinking about the miserable, lonely, bitter woman and then hearing her alcohol-fuelled recollections of her wilder, younger days, this was marking a morbid kind of sense. “So, what are you saying I should do?”

“Date, be normal, find happiness, just be selective. If you think a guy is only with you for sex, he probably is. If he ever says something like, “If you loved me, you will ... whatever,” dump him. Immediately!”

“But what if I really like him?”

“That’s even more reason to get rid of him. If a man loves you how you will want him to love you, he will never ask you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. He will put you first. That goes for sex, that goes for being around heights, or closed spaces, or big crowds, or eating shellfish, or wearing the color yellow. It doesn’t matter. If a guy is using the fact that you love him to make you do something you don’t want to do, then he is manipulating you, and he needs to go.”

“But if he’s not doing all that, if he’s treating me well, and I want to ... you know?”

“Go for it, enjoy it, but take it seriously. Sex is wonderful; it is beautiful, and it’s special. So treat it that way, have fun, learn what you like and don’t like, decide where your boundaries are, and then stick to them. But only when you are ready for it and only when you want it. The right guy will wait because he will see you as the goal, not the sex. Then, when you’re all grown up and want to settle down, you will have the men lining up to be with you, then you will be able to pick who you want to be with, and trust me, that is not a position many women find themselves in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Women control access to sex. They decide who gets it, when, why, and how much. Any girl... any girl ... can walk into any bar, in any town, at any time of day or night, and is almost guaranteed to be able to find someone to fuck her. It’s easy for them. Men can’t do that; that is why they will take the free sex when it’s offered but don’t respect the women who offer it. But when the dust settles, and the woman grows up, when she wants to settle down, it is the man who decides who he wants to commit to; they control access to relationships, and a woman’s past will play a big part in that. So if you are selective now, you won’t only be safer, happier, and feel more fulfilled by any relationships you do have, but when you are looking for a life partner, your past can’t be something you are judged by, but something you are desired for.”

That conversation had happened a few years ago. Her father, ever the sage and worldly wise professor of human psychology, had retired with her mom to Capricorn, the paradise planet, leaving her with enough of his sizable retirement fund to get her settled on her own two feet. For a long time, his advice had made sense, but she could never really see how it fitted into her reality. But then she had decided to give her V-card to that boy. It had been a mistake, she was pretty sure she had known it was a mistake when she was making it. The whole thing had left her feeling cheap, used, and disrespected, and her father’s words had come flooding back to her. Suddenly, they tied up perfectly with reality. She had been played, and she had fallen for it. After that, she followed his advice to the letter. She had been in a handful of short-lasting relationships, but the red flags he had told her to look out for had always reared their ugly heads, and she had cut them off before they ever got between her legs.

Then, she had met Jess. Jess was a wild child. They had first been introduced in college. Emma was aiming for medical school, and Jess was toying with the idea of going into childcare, two very different subjects requiring the same foundation academic credits. Jess had always been a party girl; she had been the center of attention in any social gathering she had been involved in, and Emma had been given a front-row seat to the deeper and deeper depths of her sexual adventurousness.

Literally, in some cases.

Jess had wholeheartedly agreed with the advice given by Emma’s father. She hated the way men treated her. “Fuck meat,” she called herself. “A hot piece of ass.” It had made her very cynical when it came to relationships, let alone concepts such as love. Jess’s attitude, however, was that the damage was already done, so why not milk it for as long as her looks and her vagina held out. And milking it was exactly what she had done. She made more money in a few weeks of sex work than anyone in the childcare profession could hope to earn in a year. As for her future happiness, that was a bridge Jess was content to burn when she came to it. Men would only ever see her as a whore, she had decided. Even if she packed up sticks and moved to a whole new planet, the only way she would be able to escape her life before her middle age would be to lie about it, and her reasoning is that what kind of relationship would it be if it was based on the lie she had been forced to give in order to start it.

The problem was Emma agreed with her. Jess was her best friend; she was like the sister she had never had. Born of very different lives in very different worlds, they had become the closest of friends under the most unlikely of circumstances. But Emma could admit that her appeal as a wife or even as a serious girlfriend was practically zero.

“Oh fuck yes!” her friend’s howling voice echoed through the walls. “Dump that hot cum inside me, fuck baby, I can feel it; I can feel you filling me! God, I’m going to ... fuck ... I’m cumming!”

She wasn’t—she wasn’t even close. And the script that she had been screaming out a few times a day for the past year that Jess had been doing this, was predictable enough for Emma to mouth the words along to. That always made her giggle.

There were a few muffled grunts, a few quieter groans, and silence descended on the apartment. About ten minutes later, a set of footsteps echoed along the corridor outside Jess’s room and then sheepishly out the front door. It would seem that this guy was done. If he was anything like the others, he had probably barely said more than a few words to Jess before dressing, paying up, and leaving. And just like that, she had made more creds than her work at the local clinic paid her in a week.

The world was crazy.

As the man was leaving the apartment, Emma listened as the shower in Jess’s ensuite turned on, and - another ten minutes later - Jess stepped into the room wearing a robe and rubbing a towel through her hair. “I swear to god,” she chuckled as she looked over at Emma. “The worst part of this job is the number of showers I have to take. My hair is fucked from all the washing it.”

Emma smiled. She was curled up on their old but exquisitely comfortable sofa, reading a book. Well, she wasn’t. She couldn’t afford an actual paper book; those things cost a small fortune these days. She was reading a novel on her holo pad. “You know you can have a shower without washing your hair, right?”

“Depends where the guy cums,” Jess winked back playfully to her. “How’s the book?” She asked as she walked into the kitchen to grab a drink from the dispenser.

“Meh,” Emma shrugged, putting the holo pad down. “It’s the middle of the series, and this is the book that’s setting up the next big event, so nothing is really happening, but it has all the stuff in it that gets important later.”

“I’ll wait for the movie,” Jess smirked as she dropped down onto the other end of the sofa. “Any chance of going out for a drink tonight? I could do with getting out of here.”

Jess was flitting. She did it quite a lot on days like today; she was bouncing very quickly from one subject to the next with barely a breath between. When Emma was first getting to know her, she had wrongly thought that it was a lack of interest in what she was saying and had taken offense on more than one occasion. But as their friendship had blossomed, she had learned differently. Jess was feeling antsy, probably because she hadn’t been able to get herself off, and she was feeling frustrated. That last guy had been her third and final client of the day; she was probably aching in ways and in places that Emma could scarcely imagine, and she was - sexually speaking - wound as tight as a drum. Going out for drinks very often led to Jess finding someone to hook up with properly, just to get off. Not for money, not to give the guy what he wanted, but to get something for herself.

Emma didn’t mind that, provided they did it back at the guy’s place. As loud as Jess was when she was pretending to enjoy her sex with clients, she was really fucking loud when she was actually hitting her climax, and Emma needed her sleep. “Yeah, why not?” She smiled, tossing the now unneeded holo pad onto the side table and glancing over at the time.

“Yes!” Jess grinned. “That’s my girl. Hey, you never know; maybe you will meet Mr. Right tonight.”

“One can hope,” Emma smiled back, loving her friend’s youthful exuberance, enthusiasm, and general zest for life.

“Well, one would be ideal, but more than one can get awkward. There are too many legs involved.”

“That is why humans made laser scalpels,” Emma grinned, not rising to Jess’s playful jibe. Jess threw her head back, laughing loud and long.

“Okay, I’m gonna go get ready. Meet here in half an hour?”

“Sounds good to me,”

Jess was on her feet and skipping out of the living room door before Emma could even pull herself off the sofa. She picked up the holo pad to safely stow it in her bedroom, ready for later, and walked to her own room. Closing the bedroom door behind her, Emma stopped to look herself over in the mirror.

Generally speaking, she was happy with what she saw. She was far from flawless, but - at least in her own opinion - those little imperfections added something to her overall look rather than detracted from them. She would never call herself hot - an opinion strongly and vehemently disputed by Jess and the occasional male suitor - but she was content to call herself pretty. Her long, flowing, blonde hair fell past her shoulder blades, and although she usually wore it in a loose, comfortable ponytail, she could tease it into waves, or curls, or some other fancy-worded style if she wanted. She had a cute nose, full lips, a nice smile, and a long, slender neck - perhaps a little too long. Her body was pretty nice, too; it had better be for the amount of torture she had put herself through to stay in shape. Her chest was about right for her frame, a little more than a handful, but not too big and not too small, and her hips flared out to just the right degree. She was short, too, which made her legs look a lot longer than they actually were.

But of everything about her, it was her eyes that she liked the most, and that was where most of the compliments about her appearance started. Deep, deep blue, almost endlessly so, there was an energy behind them; it was a hard description to pin down.

But sometimes, in the right light and from the right angle, when she was in the right mood.

They seemed to almost glow.

Laura. 10

For reasons that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, the strangest thing about walking onto the bridge that morning was the fact that Elijah wasn’t in the Captain’s chair. She had no idea whatsoever why she found that odd; she had only seen him in it for about an hour the previous day, and yet he already seemed like he belonged there. The boy was young; she had no idea how many years he had under his belt, but it couldn’t possibly be enough of them for him to seem perfectly at home in command of a vessel like the Atlas. And yet he did. This juxtaposition was more than a little jarring. In her experience, Captains attained their rank through knowledge and experience gathered over decades of service, and although Elijah had apparently downloaded both of these attributes from the ship itself, that didn’t mean that he should look the part.

Except he did.

There was something about him, something she now realized was present in every Captain she had ever served under - at least the ones who had earned her respect. A confidence, a self-assuredness, a focus, a purpose, a commitment, a loyalty, and an honor. These men and women literally made the safety of their crew their personal responsibility, and although she had never seen it for herself, she had heard tales of spiraling depression visited upon Captains who had lost someone. It wasn’t just responsibility; it was the highest of duties. There were things that this boy simply shouldn’t have, yet he exuded them by the bucket load. She found herself drawn to his air of authority and ability. She should have been absolutely shitting herself the previous day when he had faced down a whole squadron of Imperium warships, and yet, she hadn’t doubted Elijah’s abilities for a moment. She had wondered what the ship was capable of; she had gawked in wide-eyed astonishment at the display of alien power, but she hadn’t doubted the ship’s captain for a single second.

That was odd.

Laura doubted everyone.

She worked alone. With the exception of a few years with the research team on the Primus, she had worked alone for most of her career. Being a Mariner almost automatically demanded service; everyone contributed to the greater whole, but the ways you could contribute were as vast and varied as they were in any other sort of society. There were ship engineers, there were hydroponics workers, there were teachers and nurses, and entertainers. Sure, some of the more mundane roles of a normal society, like interior decorators, weren’t really a thing, but there was nothing at all stopping Laura from deciding to be a plumber. Making sure the toilets worked and the water flowed to the dispensers was as essential a role as the people who manned the fleet helms. But Laura liked the solitude, she liked the independence, she liked the responsibility and she was infinitely happier and more comfortable alone than she was in a crowded room. She had her mission, she had her orders, but as long as she got it done, she was left more or less to get on with things. On a day-to-day basis, she neither answered to anyone nor was she ever in a position where she had to trust her life or her safety to anyone else. More importantly, her solitude gave her two things that she was inordinately grateful to have: Her ship and the freedom to explore the stars. Never in her entire life had she wanted anything more than that, and she couldn’t imagine any reality where she would willingly give it up.

So it was more than a little disconcerting, looking at the very young Elijah and seeing in him a man she would willingly follow. Someone she could already start to feel herself looking up to, but most of all, someone she could feel herself starting to trust.

To make things even more confusing, she was starting to see other things as well. The authority he seemed to wear so easily looked good on him. It’s not that she found him attractive; she was literally old enough to be his mother, but the simple fact was that there was something very alluring about a man able to take power in his stride and handle it so effortlessly.

“Marshal,” Wu smiled over at his younger compatriot, hunched over a screen and scanning through endless reams of indecipherable gibberish on it, or at least indecipherable to her. “You’re up early.”

“Up?” Elijah turned to face them with a frown before glancing down at his vambrace-mounted computer, apparently checking the time. “Oh, yeah, it would seem so.”

Wu’s grin seemed to spread a little wider. “You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”

Elijah smiled bashfully but nodded. “I started reading through the archives, blinked, and you two were coming back.”

Wu chuckled. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

Laura watched the interaction with interest, but this time, her attention wasn’t focused on the young, dashing Marshal but his seemingly ancient-beyond-measure companion. Wu’s personality, his way of talking, and his entire demeanor seemed to jump to and from different extremes almost randomly. At one point, he could be serious and stony, like a wizened old professor; other times, he could be mischievous and teasing. Other times still he could vary between professional and paternal. There seemed to be no underlying character to the man, at least no further than his current mood dictated. It was oddly endearing. The only way she could describe it was that the man was ... honest. Almost comically so.

“Hmm, yeah, apparently so.” Elijah smiled and straightened himself up, sitting back from the monitor. Laura got the distinct impression that Elijah had been in that hunched-over position for hours and probably hadn’t moved more than a few inches in that entire time.

“Anything you want to share with the class?” Wu asked, still grinning, as he dropped into the chair beside the captain’s seat.

“Ermmm,” Elijah answered in a long, drawn-out, higher-pitched tone, glancing back at the screen. “Yeah, but not yet. I haven’t finished reading about it yet, and I’m not sure what to think about the information I do have.”

“Sounds intriguing,”

“It really is,” Elijah replied thoughtfully, his eyes drifting back to the screen for a moment before returning to the two of them. “It’s giving me a lot to think about.”

“So, umm,” Laura interrupted as the conversation came to a screeching halt. Wu apparently chose not to probe further. “What’s the plan for today?”

“We’ll be hitting the edge of the system soon,” Elijah said after a few seconds of staring into the middle distance, looking like he was interfacing with the information he was getting from the ship. “So aside from jumping to hyperspace once we’re clear of the gravity wells ... I don’t have any. Is there anything you were hoping for?”

Laura blinked, not expecting to even be consulted, let alone outright asked. “I ... hmmm,” she hadn’t actually thought of this when she had asked the question. She had expected to just be going along with whatever the two men were planning, being their ‘guest’ and all. “I suppose I would quite like to explore the Atlas. I mean, if that’s okay?”

Wu looked over to Elijah. “I don’t see why not; you aren’t a prisoner here. The ship is yours to explore at your leisure.”