Baby Makes Four
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 9
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 9 - The United States settled the Project 1950s as a lifeboat in case of a nuclear war. The founders picked an alternate time line where humanity died out with the Mt. Toba eruption of 75,000 BC. It is currently some 18,000 BCE, and the height of one of the periodic ice ages. Wendy van Veldt is an engineer-in-training. Her plans for the next few years are to start her career, and live happily ever after with her husband and her wife. Things don't quite work out that way.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Romantic Fiction Science Fiction Pregnancy
Chris joined us that night. He wrapped us in his strong arms, protecting us, holding us, making us feel safe and together. You can make love and not get all naked and sweaty, and we did. I fell in love with him all over again that night.
I’m an engineer, and one of the things that means is that I get practical at the oddest times (at least as far as other people think). On Monday, I took some steps to safeguard Amy. As the construction had progressed, the cookhouse and bunkhouse complex had gotten farther and farther from where we were actually working. We were losing time just going to lunch (at least that’s how I justified it in my reports). I also wanted to limit access to the site more than it was already, and make sure there was always somebody around. I didn’t want to risk Amy getting kidnapped again. That doesn’t mean someone couldn’t open a portal and snatch her the same way they had before, but I could protect her against everything else.
The river was in flood, which meant we monitored it, but couldn’t work in it. That freed up enough people for a work party so we could get everything moved in just a couple of days. We moved the cookhouse “closer to the construction site”, and I had one of my teams erect a shed where we could all eat. I also scheduled the barracks to be moved. This was long past due, and I just moved it up in my budget and timeline.
That put people around Amy all of the time. If something happened, if her kidnapper reappeared, there would be someone around to fight for her.
Amy understood, and responded by cooking up something involving hot corned beef sandwiches for the crew. Her ovens and stoves were shut down, but that dear sweet girl managed to do it with cast iron cookware and open flames. Genius. Guys who normally bolted their food went back for seconds—did I mention the potato salad?—and for a bit it looked like everyone was going to kick back and digest. That’s when Amy brought out the cherry cobbler.
Heaven is cherry cobbler with vanilla ice cream on a warm day.
“Your food is making me fat,” Bob finally said, patting his stomach. “It’s going to take me weeks to work it off.”
Amy waved her spatula at him. “You only have yourself to blame. I saw you taking seconds.”
“Seriously, ma’am,” he told me. “It’ll be at least tomorrow before we have the bunkhouse moved. Where are people going to sleep?”
“Remember those tents we used the first week we were here? Let’s get them out. It’ll only be for one or two nights.”
“I’ll get on it.” He heaved himself to his feet, motioned to a couple of others, and they headed for our storage sheds. I looked over the site. The only place that wasn’t muddy was the road. The guys would have to pitch their tents in the trees. It would be messy and inconvenient, but Bob was right. We’d moved the cookhouse first, and that meant we weren’t going to have the bunkhouse done until the next day. I didn’t know about priorities, but I did understand that good food made inconveniences disappear.
“Nobody is going to sleep in the mud,” I said. I had my two interns organize the wood-cutting. I told them to give me a pleasant surprise, and they did. Not only did every tent have a raised wooden floor, but they found bedding that had been ruined a few months before that we’d never cleaned out, got it fumigated and cleaned, and the guys actually had soft beds to sleep in.
Deborah Perrin showed up in the middle of all of this hustle and bustle. “Moving day?” she asked, looking around.
“Something the bad weather is giving us a chance to do,” I replied. “We should have done this a few weeks ago.”
“Bad weather?” It was sunny and warm, with just enough of a breeze to dispel the heat.
“Up there,” I said, waving at the mountain. It was covered with dark clouds, and we could almost smell the rain on the slopes above us. “This is a good test of our flood containment plan.”
“I thought you already tried that.”
“That was a couple of weeks ago, and we missed a couple of things. Not now.”
“You seem pretty confident.”
I just smiled. “Give me some good news. I have enough worries.”
Instead, she looked at the cookhouse and smiled at the interesting smells. “Not much I can tell you other than that we’re still investigating.”
I nodded. “Portals. Gates. Whatever they are. How do they form when there isn’t something already planned for them? Or is that top secret?”
“Not really. And I do have permission to tell you. They look for something that forms a complete circuit. I really can’t describe it closer than that. It has to be grounded, too.”
I thought that was how they worked. “So if I set up a chain-link fence, it would keep a portal from forming.”
“More or less. A gate would form, but it would be very small.”
“Pat!” I called and waved. “Get that fence in place like we discussed.” I turned back to Deborah. “Do you know what a Faraday Cage is?” She shook her head. “You surround something on all sides with grounded conductive wire. You get very little external electromagnetic phenomena inside. Have you noticed how a radio will fade out when you go across a metal bridge?” She nodded. “That’s why.”
“So you’re going to try the same thing with a gate?”
“Only Amy will be on the inside, and the bastard who kidnapped her will be on the outside, along with a lot of very pissed-off people.” I’d spread some hints of what Amy had gone through, and wouldn’t care to be the kidnapper if he showed up.
“It might work,” she said slowly.
“Why don’t you check? It’ll be nice to know for sure.”
“I will.”
I saw her the next day, and by then the cookhouse had become our storage place for chain-link fencing: walls, ceilings, floor, and so on. Double layers, mostly, and in a few cases, more than that. We even covered rooms on the inside (I had a lot of chain-link fencing). Amy was going to be as safe as I could make her.
Her kids were another problem. I couldn’t protect them, not like I could Amy, and I had a sneaking suspicion that if her kidnapper couldn’t get her, he’d go after the kids. After all, he’d think they were his, and he’d want them.
Deborah did what she could. She talked to school officials, and she put some tracking equipment nearby, and more of it at home. I was also introduced to the only person who ever truly scared me.
The Security Commission has what they call ‘Operatives’. These are people who chase the bad guys who flee into the Alternates. They also rescue research teams, tourists, and so on. There was a popular TV show that recounted some of their more public cases. I pictured sleek actors with an iron will, tough, no-nonsense people who were super competent. I was not prepared for a woman who looked like a teenager.
“Marge Lewis,” this pretty, blonde-haired woman said, and offered me her hand. She was my height, with a cute face, and curves that would make any man stop in his tracks. She was wearing a light blue dress that matched her eyes, complemented by a white belt.
“Care for some tea?” I asked. “Come in and sit down.” We were at home, and Deborah Perrin had brought her around.
“Why thank you.”
After I got my guests settled and served, I pasted on my best smile. “And what do you do for the Commission?” I asked.
“I shoot people,” Marge said. Her body language and her voice said she was dead serious. “I’m between assignments right now, so they have me helping out on some of the other cases. Technically, I suppose this could be considered a rest. I just came off an assignment, and they like to give me things like this as a form of relaxation.”
“And you ... shoot people?”
She nodded. “I have absolutely no problem with it. The joke is I’m the Commission’s troubleshooter because I shoot trouble. Deborah here thought I might be of some use.”
“If our suspect opens a gate,” Deborah said, “we’ll only have a few seconds to act. Marge will stay with your kids, at least for the next few days. That’s the best protection we can give them.”
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