Chapter 4

Morning came sooner than I would have liked. Yet to my surprise and to that of my bed companions, I felt refreshed, as if I had slept the whole night through. It was the same for Emma and the girls, for while they had a little stiffness in muscles that hadn't been employed as vigorously as before last night, they were still as bright eyed as I was, and ready for whatever this world was going to throw at us. Or at least that was what I had thought until I pulled myself away from my wife and children, and forced myself out into the morning light.

We were the last to have risen. When I exited the tent, clad only in the towel that my wife had worn back from the shower, I saw to my surprise the remainder of my family and my in-laws gathered about the kitchen unit, some standing and some sitting upon the ground or at the picnic table. All of them were staring at me and all of them were smiling. It was a knowing smile and it made me blush.

Silently, I hurried to the bath unit and the safety of the toilet. Afterwards, I went and took a shower.

Emma and the girls joined me just a few moments later.

"They all know," I said in a low voice as Emma stepped up to me to give me a kiss.

"Of course they do silly," she said with a giggle. "We all talked about it while you were out doing your own thinking."

"Hi Daddy," each of my girls chirped cheerfully as they entered the shower.

"You talked about it ... yesterday?" I said ignoring my daughters' greetings.

"Of course we did silly," Emma replied, turning on a shower and sticking her head under it. "What did you think we did while you were gone? We certainly didn't watch soap operas or play video games."

"Of course we talked about it Daddy," Sarah interjected as her mother focused for a moment on her own shower. "What you never thought about was how this was affecting us. Maybe you didn't realize it but we were all horny for you yesterday after we had set up the tent. It was like ... one minute we were totally focused on what we needed to get done in order to survive and then ... wham we were all horny."

"It's true honey," Emma piped in, picking up the story again. "That's why your mother and sisters joined you in the shower yesterday."

"Yeah Daddy," added Lizzy, "you don't think Grandma and Aunt Jane and Aunt Heather would have done that if they weren't compelled to do it."

"But that means..." I tried to say.

"It means nothing Jack," Emma said tersely. "It doesn't matter why we all wanted to have sex with you or more importantly, our need for you to father children on us. What mattered was your response. We all knew that you were upset with what happened. We all understand that our 'benefactors' have put you in an awkward situation; however, you have to realize that this situation is awkward for us as well. We don't have a choice in this. They've chosen you to be the next Adam and we're all going to be Eve. So we talked and we came to an agreement."

"An agreement?" I said slowly.

"Yes an agreement," Emma said, turning off the water as she spoke. "We've accepted the conditioning of our 'benefactors' and have decided to help you accept it as well. We decided that we wouldn't push, but we would make the opportunities palatable to you. Last night was our first attempt."

"At what?" I asked dumbly.

My daughters giggled in response.

"At making you understand," Emma said, walking up to me and slipping into my arms. As her flesh touched mine, she leaned up and kissed me gently on the lips. I returned her embrace, slipping my arms about her and resting my hands upon the roundness of her ass. A moment later we were joined by our three girls.

The kiss and the hugging lasted a few more minutes.

"We wanted you to understand Jack," Emma continued when at last our kiss ended, "that we all love you. The girls and I love you. Your mother and sisters and their girls love you. In fact, even my sisters and their girls and my mother love you in their own fashion."

"Oh really... ?" I said staring in disbelief at my wife.

"Yes, really!" Emma snapped back, giving me a poke in the chest. "It doesn't matter whether they're madly in love with you or if they only like you a lot. What matters is that you accept the situation and treat everyone with love, respect and caring. That was what last night was about."

"Really?" I asked again.

"Yes Dad, really!" replied my kids, giving me another hug as they spoke.

"Will you treat everyone with love and caring Dad?" Lizzy asked bluntly.

"Of course!" I replied sharply. "What kind of person do you think I am?"

"You're a good person Jack," Emma said, glaring at Lizzy as she responded.

"And a great Dad," my daughters piped in.

"And we know that you'll do right by everyone," Emma said with a nod and a peck on my cheek again.

I looked at them and nodded in silence.

"Good," she said thoughtfully, "and now it's time for us to towel off and go have some breakfast. I'm starved and I'm certain that you're starved as well, and besides I think today is going to be a big day."

And she was right.

Emma, the girls and I got dressed and went off to breakfast. There were glances and looks but nobody mentioned what had happened last night. Then when the meal was done, things started to happen.

Suddenly, out of nowhere popped a new sea container. It took us by surprise. I stood there with the family staring at it, wondering what this container held. The answer came a second later.

"Dad," cried my daughter Sarah, "the light on the terminal is blinking again."

Silently I turned and looked. My daughter was right, it was blinking. We walked over to the computer terminal and looked at the monitor.

'Build permanent shelter' blinked brightly on the screen.

So that was it. We had built the temporary shelter yesterday and had settled ourselves in. Now our 'benefactors' wanted us to move things up a notch. After all, we were here to ensure that mankind survived.

"Touch it son," my mother said flatly.

I did. Instantaneously, each and every one of us knew what we had to do. Our 'benefactors' had decided that we needed to build a compound for our extended family, one designed to meet the needs of a growing population. Their plans were for us to build an 'Earth Ship', a home built into the side of the nearby hill, the vast majority of it located underground. The house would be built using earthen filled tires and an adobe-like wall plaster. It would be self contained and environmentally friendly. It was suddenly obvious to us that our 'benefactors' were little green men after all. Pun intended.

Of course, later I would wonder at the whole situation. Here was a race of beings who had saved us from death and who had whisked us off to another world. Pretty powerful if you asked me, however it made me question just how smart they were. Perhaps if they had gathered more people, instead of the tens of thousands of old tires that we eventually used to build our home, maybe I would have felt better about this whole saving the human race. I mean, one man and a whack of women is a pretty small gene pool.

Fortunately, I didn't start thinking about it until long after we had started building the house.

With the instructions loaded up into our brains, we went to work. Once more, Emma took the job of surveying where we were to build the house and compound, while I and my daughters went over and opened up the other sea container. That left the others to tidy up the tent and the kitchen area.

The sea container held two vehicles that would become the first of many that we would need to accomplish the task given us by our 'benefactors'. They were two industrial tractors. One was fitted out with a dozer blade and an auger attachment, while the second had a bucket loader and backhoe attachment. As with everything we touched, the moment my hand gripped the steering column of the first tractor, the knowledge of its use flooded my mind. Sarah, who drove out the second vehicle, reported the same. As well, the container held surveyor equipment and everything that my wife needed to mark out the site where we would have to dig.

Our 'benefactors' had already picked out the general location for our future home. It was going to be in the large rise that dominated the hill that rose up just north of our temporary shelter. It was about half a mile away.

The initial survey took most of the day, with my wife and sisters-in-law and their daughters taking care of that. This left me to poke around in the other containers. In the one that mounted the terminal and that had carried the ATV I found a couple of surprises. The first was that the middle half of the container was a workshop. It opened up just like the kitchen unit and the bath unit. In it were all the tools a handyman would need to fix things and more. It also contained a bench mounted lathe, a drill press, a grinder, and metal punch. It was very impressive.

However, the most impressive surprise was in the part of the container that had housed the ATV and its trailer. Built into the back wall was a weapon cabinet. Honestly I couldn't remember if it had been there yesterday or not, but it certainly was now.

Opening it I found hanging from the inside of the doors half a dozen automatic pistols similar to the one I had acquired the day before. As well, the back of the cabinet held an assortment of weapons that included a couple of hunting rifles, a single automatic rifle that looked like a M-16 but newer, a couple of pump action shotguns, and one awesome looking rifle with a powerful scope on it. Picking it up to inspect it told me everything I needed to know about it. It was a .50-cal sniper rifle similar to what the Special Forces would use. I put it back wondering what kind of animal might live on this planet that needed something that powerful to take it down.

Further inspection revealed drawers filled with ammunition a-plenty for each of the weapons, two dozen hunting knives, and cleaning and tool kits for the weapons.

It was an interesting find, one that I told everyone about over lunch.

Of course the talk about the weapons raised a lot of concerns with the women. It wasn't because the women in my family were the type that got scared easily, because they weren't. After all, they had all been raised in the country and they had all had to deal with varmints once or twice in their lives; particularly the older members of the family.

The problem was that we knew nothing about this planet that we were on. Yes we could breathe the air and from appearances, it looked a hell of a lot like Earth, but it wasn't. The double moon last night made that clear to everyone. Beyond our little campsite, we really didn't know anything about the place and the fact that our 'benefactors' had decided to give us weapons made us wonder if we were safe.

Chapter 5 »