When they announced that aliens were incoming and that Average Joes was a glimpse of the future, women’s fashions had changed quickly. See through clothing showed up everywhere. Body paint became common. Someone, somewhere, had decreed that the minimum was a thong and that for sanitary reasons. Almost anything might show up at a bar on Saturday night. It gave 78 year old guys like me a feast of eye candy.

Along with the clothing revolution the dropping the age of consent to fourteen had introduced even more eye candy to the mix. The state had dropped the drinking age back to eighteen and many bars, especially rural ones like My Friend’s Place Bar and Grill either ignored that or had house rules. The Place had house rules. If you looked teen age you could have two drinks. Illegal and the bar could be fined, but the owner was filthy rich and didn’t give a damn. The barkeeps paid special attention to the young ones. Buy a third drink for your under age girlfriend and get banned for a month. Get noticed slipping something into a girl’s drink and you were never seen again. Ever. Anywhere. By anyone. So My Friend’s Place had teen chicks to ogle.

The eye candy was especially good this Saturday at My Friend’s Place.

Girls (when you’re 78 any woman under fifty is a girl) came to My Friend’s Place either with a guy or in a gaggle. It brought back amusing memories while watching a single guy trying to separate a girl from her gaggle.

Tonight along with the usual eye candy there were three other girl gaggles aging from teens to high thirties. The teens were a local soccer team that had just won a tri-county competition. There was a twenty something gaggle having a bachelorette party. I couldn’t figure out the half dozen women in the high thirties group. They were somber and working hard at getting plastered.

I, and every other guy in the bar, got distracted when these four late teen girls walked in. The tallest, at about six foot, was pure Scandinavian blonde. The shortest, not quite five foot, was classic Japanese. The two average height girls were also classics in their racial backgrounds of Negro and Hispanic. They all rated eleven on a ten point scale. There were a lot of eights and nines in the bar tonight, but these four were special.

They walked in with cat like grace. It was like a lion’s pride on the hunt. They sat down at a centrally located table, placed their purses on that table, gave their orders to a waitress and began to talk among themselves.

Very old, hard earned lessons kicked in. My favorite spot at the bar let me directly view two thirds of the room and the mirror behind the bar gave me another quarter of the space. These girls were talking to each other, but scanning the room over the shoulders of the girl sitting opposite them. Every once and a while one of them got a thoughtful look and glanced at the ceiling. The little oriental had me in her quadrant. My mind classed them all as high order threats and I began to wonder if I should leave. This was a recon scout team. Been there, done that, about fifty-five years ago.

I saw the eyes of the Japanese girl assess and dismiss me. When she started to look elsewhere I grinned and saw her eyes snap back to me. I saw her change my status from old bar fly to low order threat.

Who were they? All the Confederacy types I had seen were two meter tall super soldiers. Then it hit me. If the Confederacy could alter the average Joe to two meters they could keep the size and still install strength and speed. I had no doubt these four could clear the bar barehanded. Whatever was in the purses would just allow the clearing to be faster.

I pickup up a napkin, wrote a note, and folded it into an origami crane. I gave a waitress a five to deliver it to the Japanese chick. The waitress gave me a look of both pity and amusement, but did deliver the crane. I got a harsh look from her, but she did read the note. Then I got a smile and a thoughtful ceiling look for my effort.

“4 EF corner booth your right. 2 end of bar on your left. You probably already know, but more eyes the better. I’m too old to help, but you undoubtedly don’t need my help to clear the room. LR7.4”

I’m Larry Reynolds, ex first-in recon scout. After I got out I got a job at the local steel pipe mill, got married, had a son and daughter who both went to the stars as volunteers about a year ago. Lost my love to cancer sixteen years back. Nowadays I occupy my time with amateur carpentry, drinking scotch at least old enough to vote, and looking a pretty girls.

When this Sa’arm mess was announced and CAP testing made mandatory I tested and got a volunteer level 7.4 score. I chose the Marines never expecting, even after the kids got picked up, to be at a spot that would have a pick up. I live in the rural boonies. I’d heard the BS that if I did get lucky I could be a teenager again, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound and have the stamina to give multiple women multiple orgasms multiple times a night. Yeah, right. However, if you can make someone a two meter tall super soldier you might be able to manage that trick.

The girls finished their drinks. Several things happened all at once. All of the girls reached into their purses. The view out the windows went grayscale. The Hispanic girl came out a with a brass knuckle looking thing and a rolled up tube that she dropped on the floor. The other three came out with the brass knuckles. The blonde and the Negro turned to the corner booth and my Japanese girl turned toward the end of the bar. There were several loud and evil sounding zaps. Everyone in the corner booth slumped down, either onto the table or farther into the booth. The two guys on the end of the bar slid bonelessly onto the floor. The Hispanic girl was trying to cover the rest of the room. The tube had unrolled and was now a shimmery blue circle on the floor. Two meter tall Marines in light armor and more brass knuckles began erupting from it.

When the fun and games began there had been lots of screaming, ducking and general foolishness. That’s when I noticed the older woman sitting near me pull a little pistol from her silvery looking purse. I swatted her arm hard with my solid wood cane, probably breaking both her forearm bones. She screeched in surprise and pain, dropping the pistol on the bar.

That of course drew the attention of one of the big dudes who started moving toward me. The oriental chick used command voice and said “Private, stand down! He’s a volunteer.” I used my cane to brush the pistol into the sink behind the bar.

When her pistol went out of reach she turned and tried to punch me with her unbroken hand. ZAP! She dropped to the floor. The private came over, picked her up, and dumped her onto the shimmery blue thing. She disappeared. Other troops were doing the equivalent with the EF guys.

Then someone on a PA said, “Everyone freeze in place. If you are standing ... SIT! You may have figured out that this is a Confederacy pick up. I am Lieutenant Kristi Beck. If you have a firearm, knife, mace or pepper spray, or anything else that might be classed as a weapon slowly and gently place it on the table or bar in front of you. We will tag and bag these items and if you are still here later you can get them back. The six unconscious guys and maybe that woman are Earth First and would have started randomly shooting when we showed up. We are taking them to our station in orbit where we will interrogate them and then return them to Earth.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. This drew a lot of eyes. I stopped and put my hand that didn’t have the cane on my mouth. The very tall lady who had been speaking glared at me. Well, being dropped from orbit would be a form of ‘returned to Earth’.

She continued her spiel. “I am giving everyone here one more minute to bring out weapons. Then if we find any we will stun you. If that happens you’ll wake in about an hour with the mother of all headaches and we will be gone. To eleven of you people you have just been activated into the Confederacy. To the others in the building these eleven people can take 32 concubines and their immediate dependents with them. While we are collecting weapons will Terrance Hawkins, George Briggs, Lawrence Reynolds, Sheila Cross, Daisy Allen, Annie Powers, Anthony McDonald, Gerald Harper, Jason Pappas, Brendan Fields, and Austin Stevens please go over to Sergeant Hoffman.” One of the tall guys waved his hand. “He will give you card readers which will give you advice on your choices, and will give a brief tutorial on these readers.”

I downed the rest of my Scotch, letting most of the other volunteers get a head start toward the Sergeant. As I wandered over I was intercepted by the little oriental.

“Hi. I’m Mariko Matsura.” she said. “You knew. How?”

“I used to do what you are doing.” I answered. “You made a few mistakes.”

“What mistakes?” she asked. “Mistakes can get us killed. What did we do wrong?”

I laughed and said, “Nothing real obvious. One thing is that you all are elevens on a ten point scale. You stand out. Scouts should blend in. You move like big cats on the hunt. When you sat down and started talking together none of you looked at who you were taking to. Your entire attention was on the rest of the room. You all have the same odd quirk. You’ll get a thoughtful expression and look up at the ceiling.”

She got wide eyed and then said, “Hai, Sensai! Teach me, please.”

I cocked my head and said, “I have no idea where I will be assigned, gakusei.” That’s Japanese for student. I did four years in Japan just before I got out.

“Hai! We will see if we can get you assigned to our unit.” she said. “Now go see the Sergeant.”

The tutorial consisted of ‘put the card here, look at the major sub-scores, and then if you want to you can drill down to even lower sub-scores’.

There were seven volunteers that could pick two concubines. The Sergeant suggested that the ladies, especially the two in the 6.something range, pick another female to share the baby care workload. He suggested Sheila Cross at 7.1 get two guys and two women. He told Terrance Hawkins, the 8.3, that he should seriously consider taking another guy to share the load of keeping five women happy. The rest of us guys, the high sixes and the sevens could do as we wanted, which would probably be to pick all women.

So if we followed his suggestion we would select six guys and twenty-six women. The last thing he said was that we didn’t have all day so get busy.

About this time the Lieutenant got back on the PA and said, “If there is anyone here without their CAP card or under fourteen or just plain don’t want to go, please go over and sit down near the door. Everyone else get naked, but keep your card near. It’ll save time. Now here’s the word on concubines. Right now you have the right to say no and we will enforce that. As soon as you say ‘I am this person’s concubine’ you are chattel. You are owned. If your owner says jump, be in the air when you ask how high. If your owner wants sex in public or wants you to have sex with someone else just do it. Also, if you think that a medical or beauty reason will get you rejected you need to remember that the Darjee medpods can cure most health problems and your sponsors can have you looking like whatever turns them on. Sergeant Askolsdottir, would you mind sharing your past?”

The blonde of the quartet stood up and said, “Not at all, sir. Ladies! Look at me. I am Ingrid Askolsdottir. Yeah, I’m a volunteer and got to choose my look, which you as a concubine won’t. That said most sponsors will allow input and if you have kids they shouldn’t change you enough to be unrecognizable to those kids. That can be traumatic and the AI frowns on hurting kids. I was forty years old, five foot five and weighed 250 lbs. when I was picked up. You can, and probably will be, changed. I had thyroid cancer. That was cured the first day.”

I drifted over to Mariko and asked, “I’m a 7.4 and get four concubines. Is it true that I’ll be young again?”

“Yes, Sensai. You will be young and vigorous.” she answered. “We have discussed things with the AI and have approval for your assignment to our unit. We will truly be your gakusei.”

“So student, do you have any suggestions as to the girls I will select?” I said.

“Hmmm!” she mused. “A head bitch, a mother, and two fuck bunnies would be the mix I would suggest. Wait a minute.” She got thoughtful and pointedly looked at the floor, then reached into her purse and took out an iPad look-a-like. She showed me a light gray screen surrounded by white with multicolored dots. “The gray shows this building. Green dots are Confederacy personnel, including you new guys. White dots have too many personality differences or are male. Black dots are selected concubines. Red dots would make a good head bitch. Yellow dots have outstanding mothering scores. Pink dots have high sex scores for your fuck bunnies.

“Thanks.” I said, looked at the screen and headed toward the soccer team. The nude eye candy was very pretty. A lot of the guy volunteers had gravitated to the teens.

At least one of the nude soccer mom’s saw the approach of a dirty old man who only wanted to fuck teenagers. Maybe even her daughter. She started to get in my face when Mariko lit into her.

“Be silent old woman.” she said while making her stunner obvious. “Your daughter will find out about sex, be it here on a test drive or in the back seat of a car with some pimply faced boy who doesn’t know jack shit about what to do to make a girl happy. Besides, I believe that Sensai Reynolds wishes to speak with the team coach.”

This early thirties woman with a nice C-cup rack and mousy brown hair heard this and turned to me saying, “Yes? I’m the coach.”

“I get four.” I said while checking the pad. The woman near my dot was a red dot “I figure a coach would have the leadership skills to be my straw boss.”

Mariko muttered loud enough to be heard, “Head Bitch.” I laughed and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Yeah, after six years coaching I could do that.” she said. “I have two kids, a boy who’s six and a girl that’s three. My husband says if I get a chance to go for it. He’ll miss me, but be happy that the kids and I are safe.”

Mariko piped up again, “Safeish. Shit happens.”