Chapter 1: I failed

They let me regain consciousness. It looked like a hospital. The place had to be a prison. I am a dangerous enemy alien, after all. They caught me sneaking into their system and snooping where I wasn't welcome.

"Nolan, you're going home," someone announced as my eyelids fluttered open. The world was too bright and very fuzzy, a result of having my eyes shut for a long time—not that much different from suspended animation, really. Something else happened to me. "I'm your new mommy."

"That seems congruent," I muttered, my voice raspy from disuse—or perhaps from screaming my head off under intense interrogation. Can't call it 'torture' because only the enemy does that. "When I return to base they are going to put me on trial, I'm going to confess my guilt, and then I will be slowly and painfully executed for my treason. Why assign someone to nurture me?"

"Oh you silly!" the voice said. "You are going to my home. You'll have a mother and me and three sisters to take care of you until you're ready to become an adult again."

That made absolutely no sense to me, but I didn't argue. No point. I welcomed death. The horrifying alternative was a long, slow, humiliating death. I didn't know what was really going on, and I wouldn't have believed the incredible truth.

Something brought me upright and then my feet touched the floor. Someone took my right hand and someone took my left and I was wobbly but standing. Three people. The ones left and right were about my size and weight. Someone considerably larger was behind me, hands around my waist as I got my land legs back.

"Easy, Nolan," the person behind me said. "You have to learn to walk all over again."

"It won't take so long this time," the person on the right said.

I was a large man, 100 kilos and 2 meters. The person behind me was perhaps 50% larger. Was I in a sim? I could buy the two flanking me. The hard physics of the cube square law made it unlikely that the person behind me was three meters tall and 150 kilos. See how my mind works? Anyway, we stopped at the end of a corridor. Some sort of light swept over me.

CITIZEN BECKY AND CITIZEN BABS MOVE FORWARD, a voice said. The wall in front of us opened up and the two moved forward. As the door slid shut I realized that they were naked. So was I. They had red hair and something about their butts was sexy. When my penis went stiff, I realized that I was also naked. This sim was just getting better and better.

CITIZEN NOLAN MOVE FORWARD the voice seemed to be inside my head. The wall opened up again and I walked forward. I felt the wall seal behind me and the wall in front opened up again. CITIZEN NOLAN MOVE FORWARD. Becky and Babs were in front of me. I complied, turned to watch the wall. It seemed to iris shut. When the wall opened again, much like one of the wipes from an old vid, there was a large, well-proportioned nude woman with brown hair standing in front of me.

"Get in," the woman pointed behind me.

When I turned around, I felt really stupid. I wasn't myself. I hadn't noticed the vehicle. The two others were sitting on one side. I got in, and the large woman got in behind me—and the vehicle closed clam shell doors behind us. The vehicle was roomy and I didn't notice movement. Good inertial compensation makes it nearly impossible to detect if the vehicle is in motion.

"My name is Mandy," the woman told me. "Sit on my lap. I'm your mommy. You are going to grow up all over again as a citizen. Babs and Becky are your sisters and they will grow up with you."

"Ma'am," I asked, "am I under sedation? I feel detached."

"Mild," Mommy Mandy told me as I sat on her lap. "You are in for a series of shocks. The meds will cushion the blows. I told you that you were going to grow up all over again. Right now you are a little boy."

My philosophy in sims is to treat them as reality—as fully-instrumented reality. The Service frequently tests us operatives. Little boy, eh? Okay, I would play along. Mommy Mandy, the woman, explained that a machine would regress people back to childhood.

"Never mind the details," she explained. "Everybody becomes a little girl again—except you didn't. The machine didn't make you a girl, refused to make you a girl. You are supposed to grow up as a boy. Look at your hand."

There was a silver mark on the backs of both hands, a trident or a Saguaro cactus or a three-candle holder—or perhaps it was the letter Psi. The girls showed me their hands—they had what appeared to be a snake wrapped around a winged staff. Mommy Mandy didn't have anything on the backs of her hands. Only 'children' had marks—because even though 'children' were Citizens, they had limited rights.

"Now I don't want you harming yourself, Nolan," Mommy Mandy commanded. "You are a wonderful person. The Council determined that you were innocent of wrong-doing, but you need to learn our ways."

"What of the rest of the crew?" I asked.

"They're criminals," Mommy Mandy explained. "You have been conditioned. You were a puppet. Your free will was compromised."

"Criminals," I mused. "I can't claim that I'm fond of them, ma'am--"

"The honorific is 'mum, ' and you'll have to get rid of the 'sir, ' you males are a minority here," Mommy Mandy enlightened me. "There is only one male for every thousand females. Female is the norm here."

Something clicked in my foggy brain,

"You mentioned a machine," I said. "How do you handle criminals here?"

"We regress them and they grow up again under close supervision," Mommy Mandy declared. "All the rest of your crew are little girls. You can't see them right now. It isn't good for you. You might hurt them."

"May I record an apology?" I asked. "My priority duty was preventing their capture."

The three females exhibited distress when I explained my priority duty, my secret mission aboard the Futility-class Intruder, the Futile Gesture, one of thirteen stealth starships designed to sneek into a system and harvest its secrets. I was designated Navigator and Second Officer, third out of eight men in the crew. Futility-class Intruders could have crews as large as 16 or as small as 3; for this mission there were 8 of us and the ship's mascot, Silvia. One crew position was Special Security Officer—and there could be several of us on board. I was there to prevent the ship and crew from being captured.

"I detected the surveillance," I said, "but couldn't prove it to Captain Barnes or First Officer Rogers, so we continued collecting information. I programmed the Futile Gesture for rapid hyperspace insertion—even if we were within a gravity well and would suffer a navigation error, it was an acceptable risk to avoid capture. I began evasion and locked down our signature so that we were invisible—but your people saw us and trapped us."

We force professionals share the nightmare of nothing working. I lived the nightmare. The hyperspace drive shut down. The power supply went off-line, and with it the artificial gravity and inertial compensation. We couldn't maneuver. We became visible to the naked eye. It got worse—the automatic computer memory dump wouldn't work without power. I tried the self-destruct, and even Captain Barnes required a second officer to destroy the Futile Gesture: the First Officer or the Engineer or myself. Or I could authorize automatic self-destruct using an expedient procedure. Normal self-destruct would give a five minute count-down, long enough to get in the launch and escape the resulting explosion. My special code would immediately implode the Futile Gesture.

Chapter 2 »