Chapter 7: Cinema Extraction Part 2

The next day on board the Mammoth-3 started with CAP tests for those without an ID and medical scans for sponsors and concubines. The Mammoth-3 had more space for passengers than the older Mammoth Class ships since the hangars for the two shuttles had been removed. All of the passenger cabins were small apartments with two bedrooms. For people with high CAP scores, up to four cabins could get joined to one single apartment. The cabins had replicators but currently nobody was allowed to use them. This enforced social contacts when everybody had to go to one of the four canteens to get food, clothing or anything else. Only a sponsor with all his concubine slots filled got full access to the apartment’s replicator.

Currently, up to six unassigned concubines or two sponsors had to share one apartment. There had been twenty-six sponsors with pre-packs who already had their own apartment.

Nina Frannik thought about last night’s event. It had been completely different from what she had planned for her twentieth birthday. She went to the cinema with her best friends and ended up in a dorm with two women she didn’t know, one of them snoring loudly, the other was with two little children. Nina’s CAP score of 4.4 made her a concubine. She had given up her freedom without knowing anything for certain.

It was common knowledge that the Sa’arm were approaching and it seemed to be a bad idea to stay in their way. But half of her family sympathized with Earth First. Her uncle was a preacher of the New Church, preaching that all aliens were demons and the only chance for the humans would be to believe in God and fight the aliens on Earth. Then, when the opportunity came, she followed the lead of her friends, stripped down to nothing and walked through the transporter. She was even a little disappointed that she wasn’t fucked at the pick-up. That would have been a birthday event!

Nina checked her watch. It was half past six in the morning. She silently stood up and reached for her the clothing she wore to the theater when the AI observed, <Concubine Nina Frannik, the clothing allowed for concubines is a gray shift or nothing.> Nina was startled. The snoring woman moved fitfully. Nina looked around and found a stack of shifts on a stool.

“Oh well,” Nina thought, “new rules. But attracting a sponsor while wearing this? No chance.” Nina knew she needed someone to lead her. In the past it had been her family and sometimes her friends. Now it would be a sponsor. She took her make-up from her handbag and went to the bathroom. She opened a closet but there were only several empty boxes and a marker inside. She looked around. “Where can I find shampoo and a ladyshave?” she mumbled.

<If you need something you have to go to the canteen and get it from a replicator, > the AI advised.

Nina jumped again. She quickly dressed with the shift, took one of the boxes and walked to the canteen that was just fifty meters down the corridor. There were only a few people in uniforms at that early hour. Nina greeted them and went to one of the replicators to search through the menu for the toiletries. Then she returned to the apartment, took a shower and prepared for the day. She could do nothing about her prominent teeth but she was eager to prepare her body to be as attractive as possible.

Nina’s plan for the day was simple: Present her body as if it was a pick-up to get a sponsor soon. She hoped for the best. She checked her image in the full-length mirror. She had a few kilos too much but she wasn’t fat. She was 165 centimeters high weighing 63 kilos, with all the weight in the right places. Round ass, impressive bust, and no hip bones showing where a boy could hurt himself. Her shoulder-length curled brown hair looked good. Her slightly dark skin color was a gift from her southern Italian ancestors. No bikini stripes. Nina took the black collar that a Marine had given her when she had arrived on the ship and attached her CAP ID to it. Then she took a deep breath and left the apartment, wearing nothing more than that.

Rebecca and Susan Mills had been called for the CAP test at eight o’clock in the morning. They both wore shifts when walking to the med bay since none of them thought that they would make it to 6.5 or above. The Marines had given them a quick introduction to the basic rules when they had arrived late the night before.

Susan came out of the tube first. She was told that she had reached a CAP score of 5.7. A Civil Service woman handed her a CAP card and mentioned, “5.7 is not that bad, you know? I have 6.0 and I have this wonderful job. I’ve heard your story. Centurion Debir will call for you later today. She said something about finding your mother.” Susan was excited. She hadn’t really believed that her mother was dead.

Ten minutes later Rebecca emerged from the med tube. The AI pronounced, <Congratulations, Rebecca Mills, you have reached a CAP score of 6.5.> The Civil Service concubine congratulated Rebecca for her test result and the AI continued, <You can now volunteer for the Marines, the Navy, the Fleet Auxiliary, the Civil Service or, as promised by Centurion Debir, leave the ship and stay on Earth. Susan Mills, you have the option to become a concubine or leave the ship and stay on Earth. You have to decide immediately if you want to leave the ship, since we will leave orbit within twelve hours.>

“Would I get support from the Confederacy if I stay on Earth?” Rebecca asked.

<No, it would be just as if you had been CAP tested at a test station on Earth.>

“Then that’s not really an option. I will stay on board. Do I have some time for the other decision? I don’t know anything about Fleet Auxiliary or the Civil Service.”

<You should make your decision within one week.>

“I want to stay with my sister,” Susan said.

“Okay then, let’s go get some breakfast,” Rebecca said.

<Is this a request to take Rebecca Mills as your concubine?> the AI asked.

The sisters were stunned. “To be honest, I haven’t thought about that,” Rebecca answered. “I hadn’t even expected to become a sponsor when I woke up this morning.” Rebecca looked at her sister. “Would you like to be my concubine?”

Susan lowered her head. “I know I’ve been a tease sometimes. I promise to be a good girl when you take me as your concubine.”

<Concubine Susan Mills is now assigned to sponsor Rebecca Mills, > the AI acknowledged. <Apartment B-19 has been assigned to you. Your property will be delivered there within fifteen minutes. You can get a white necklace for your concubine and a black bracelet for yourself from the local replicator in the med bay.>

At nine o’clock, L’ielit talked to all passengers in canteen one. Her speech was broadcast all over the ship.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to explain some rules to you. We have noticed that several of the concubines wore their old clothes this morning, ignoring the direction of the AI. You are only allowed to wear the gray shifts found in your current cabins or go nude. This has three main reasons. It makes it easier to differentiate between concubines and sponsors. It is a lesson in obedience and it will help you overcome your shyness.

“Children and sponsors wear normal clothes. Unassigned concubines have to wear the black necklaces and carry their CAP cards at all times. The necklaces contain a communication link. You’ll get a warning if we find you without that necklace once. You’ll be in trouble if we find you without it twice. Assigned concubines have to wear white necklaces. Children please wear the green bracelets. Please make even the babies wear one. It helps locate them if they get lost.

“Sponsors please wear the black bracelets. In addition to a communication link, they contain a few other useful gadgets like a CAP card reader. Sponsors with their slots full get a white bracelet. You see, we make it easy for you to identify possible partners. Just look at the color of the necklace or bracelet.

“Sponsors, please search actively for concubines. You know how many you are allowed to take. If you find one and she’s willing to follow you, just vocalize it. The AI will record and confirm it. I suggest you talk a lot of people in order to find somebody you can cope with. Sponsors, use the card readers to check the candidate’s compatibility. I also suggest test drives as they would happen on a normal extraction.

“Sponsors with at least one concubine get their own apartment. Sponsors with all their slots filled get full access to the apartment’s replicator. That is meant as a little encouragement to fill your slots quickly. This procedure makes it necessary that unassigned concubines and lazy sponsors have to move from time to time. I hope this procedure is much more pleasant than a normal pick-up and must be over within one week.

“Every day there will be briefings where we will inform you about the rules of your new life. They are mandatory. You will be informed about when and where you’ll have to go. Thanks for your attention.”

Peter Ford woke up late as usual. He needed a few seconds to remember that this was not his small flat in New York where he had lived with his pre-pack for nearly two years. This was an apartment on a Confederacy colony ship that had been assigned to him when he arrived with his two concubines. Venus snuggled against him as usual. Carol was up early as usual. Venus was a 170 centimeter tall black nymph with a well proportioned figure. She had been a porn model for those cheap pick-up movies for three years when Peter stumbled upon her in a bar.

He recognized her face from some films in his private collection. He had the courage to talk to her and learned that she had been fired because, in the producer’s opinion, she looked too old. At that time she had been nineteen. Venus had tried to drown her depression in martinis. Peter had been twenty-six and had been single since he had left his family and moved to New York for a job. Their relation started as a one-night stand but turned into friendship with sex included the very next day.

A few weeks later they found Carol crying, sitting on the staircase of the house where Peter lived. Carol was a slender fifteen-year-old red-head. She was the daughter of a neighbor Peter barely knew. Carol told them that her whole family had been picked up at a Pizza Hut extraction while she had been late. Peter and Venus invited Carol in and tried to comfort her. During their talking the idea was born to build a pre-pack.

Now he was on board a colony ship and Venus and Carol were truly his concubines. “Hey Venus, wake up. No time to sleep. We need to learn a lot about our new life.”

Venus yawned and opened her eyes. “So it wasn’t just a dream? Oh my. Now I have to behave and obey your orders? No more seducing for cuddling?”

Peter laughed. “If you do that I’ll trade you for a concubine with more spirit.” He hugged Venus tight. “I like you exactly as you have been all the time. But now let’s get up. I’m a little hungry, and that includes hunger for more information.”

They found Carol in the living room. In the past two years she had grown into a beautiful, wild seventeen-year-old. “Hi boss,” she greeted Peter. “Hi, Venus. Boss, could you please order the replicator to create two white necklaces for us and a matching bracelet for yourself? When I went out to the canteen to get breakfast I got my first warning. I ran into a Marine who told me that assigned concubines need to wear a white necklace all the time. He also criticized my dress code. Concubines have to wear these ugly shifts or nothing. I wore yesterday’s clothing.” Carol held up one of the gray shifts. “Looking at this, I’d prefer to go nude. According to the Marine, the necklace should be a better protection from molesting sponsors than a chastity belt. Anybody who tries to force our legs open will end up tied to a wall, except for our own sponsor of course.”

Peter and Venus giggled while they listened to Carol. Her cheeky talk had caused her some trouble in the past and would cause even more in the future, but Peter would do anything to keep her exactly that way. “Okay, ahem, replicator, please produce two white necklaces and a bracelet?”

Carol frowned. “I think they like to be called AI and the replicator is just a machine like on Earth. I don’t know if they feel offended by being called replicator.”

<The concubine called Carol is right, even though I can’t feel offended, > the AI mentioned.

“Yeehaw! It’s finally reacting on me!” Carol cheered. “You know, I’ve tried to get a necklace out of this machine for an hour or so but it simply ignored me.”

Carol and Venus took their necklaces from the replicator and tossed the bracelet to Peter. “So you want to go nude in public?” Venus asked. “I can’t stand behind you there. After all I am the porn actress, not you,” she grinned.

<Peter Ford, your concubines seem to be very insubordinate, even for Vandergast standards. They need advice how to behave as concubines it seems, > the AI said.

“I hope that was a joke,” Peter said. “Two leashes would be nice though. Just in case.”

“Hey!” the two girls shouted.

“Please explain to me why you didn’t react to Carol’s wish and why my concubines should change their behavior,” Peter asked.

<A concubine has very limited rights. Every interaction with the AI is restricted to what privileges you grant them. That doesn’t mean that the AI does not observe their doings and listens to their talking all the time. In rare cases an AI will react to a concubine’s words or actions without her sponsor’s permission. You will learn about that later. The behavior of your concubines is not very obedient. I learned that you are comfortable with that. But they have to learn that they are your property now. According to Confederacy law they have only the rights you grant them. For interaction with other sponsors it might be in the interest of a longer life to not be that cocky.>

“I’m not cocky!” Carol shouted.

<Should I replay her words from when you were still asleep, Peter Ford?> the AI asked.

“Uhm, maybe a little...” Carol gave in.

Peter laughed out loud. “No thanks, that’s not necessary. But you have a point there. Outside my home my girls have to behave. Ladies, you have to behave even better than back on Earth. I think that’s important. I don’t really want to punish you and I absolutely don’t want to lose you.”

Carol and Venus nodded their understanding.

Peter suddenly changed the topic. “High-heeled sandals! That’s what really would complete your costumes for a walk in public. AI, I need pink ones for Venus and red ones for Carol.”

Five minutes later, Peter, Carol and Venus were on their way to the nearest canteen for breakfast. Peter wore his normal clothing while Carol and Venus wore a necklace and high-heeled sandals with a leash attached to the necklace. The women walked two steps ahead of Peter, their heads proudly erect as if they wore the finest clothes. Their self-confidence drew a lot of attention.

Rashid Clark entered the canteen dragging his reluctant concubine Amelie with him. They got some toast and two pots of coffee from a replicator and searched for a free table.

“Listen, Amelie, it was not my idea that you aren’t allowed to wear a skirt. I agree with you that these shifts look bad. But look around. All other concubines wear them too.” Rashid looked around for the first time since he had entered the canteen. “Well, except for those who wear nothing at all...?”

“Rashid!” Amelie was upset. “Yesterday you talked me into a date and today you are looking for other women? I’m so disappointed.”

Ruth, a concubine wearing a gray uniform of the Civil Service approached and sat down next to Amelie without asking. “Listen missy, jealousy is something you should forget really fast. Your sponsor is not only allowed to have more than one concubine, he is highly encouraged to get more. The society at a colony is completely different from what you know.”

Amelie tried to interrupt the other woman. “But...”

“No ‘but’. Get it in your head or you’ll end up alone with a growing number of children from different men.”

“WHAT? I’m not that type of girl!” Amelie shouted.

Ruth sighed. “No you are not that type of woman. You are a concubine now. That means you please one sponsor so much that he keeps you or you annoy him enough to get fired. As an unassigned concubine your only purpose according to Confederacy rules is to breed. On most colonies that means you are a brothel whore without birth control. It doesn’t matter if you like that. It’s a fact. Disobeying is seldom tolerated.”

Amelie was shocked. “But that’s slavery! You are a woman yourself. How can you tolerate this?!?”

Ruth took Amelie’s CAP card without asking and checked it with a card reader. “Sir, did you check her sub-scores before you accepted her as your concubine?”

Rashid answered, “No, we practically came up as a pre-pack but I didn’t really know her. It was a decision on her looks and her behavior in the cinema’s snack bar. But I convinced her to come with me. Now I feel responsible for her.”

Ruth turned to Amelie again. “You have to face the facts. This is really important. Okay?”

Amelie cried. “Okay, I’ll try.”

Ruth left the couple and talked to the AI sub-vocally, “We have to keep an eye on Amelie. She’s dumb, frigid, dominant, jealous and aggressive. I hate to say that but she’s a candidate for recycling.”

Sophie Spero sat near the entrance of the canteen with a cup of tea and watched the people entering for lunch. Sophie had been in the cinema with her girlfriends from the Mensa Society for a recreational evening. Mensa had quickly turned into a hidden network when Earth First appeared on the scene, where the words ‘Mensa’ and ‘intelligence quotient’ were never said in an unsafe environment.

Whoever planted the rumor that highly intelligent people were frigid didn’t know Sophie and her friends. Sex was as important for her as quantum physics, history, Tae-Kwon-Do or playing poker. These were her main interests beside her medical studies. The evening at the cinema should have been the beginning of a weekend full of flirting and maybe a one-night stand or two in the nightlife of Manhattan. Lesbian one-night stands in her case. Now it was Saturday noon and Sophie and her friends were all sponsors on board a colony ship. They not only had a chance for some nice fucks, everybody expected them to select several partners. Four in her case.

In Sophie’s opinion this had killed the mood a little. Sophie was half American Indian half Afro-American, age twenty, with shoulder-length black hair. She was one-hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall and weighed sixty-six kilos. She wore the outfit from last night, a tight black lacquer dress with matching nylons and heeled ankle boots.

<Sophie Spero, sponsor Aerie Bookapple wants to talk to you, > the AI announced through Sophie’s bracelet.

“Put it through,” Sophie said. Aerie was one of her friends. They had been separated in the morning when Sophie had been called for her medical check.

“Hi Sophie, where are you? What are you doing?”

“I’m in canteen three, enjoying a cup of green tea, watching the meat market. How are you and the others?”

“Lorna and I just had a briefing. They told us something about responsibility and respect. It seems they think a lot of sponsors are ruthless predators. The others are who knows where. You were the first one I called.”

“Well, I’ve seen one or two sponsors doing degrading things to a concubine, even by my standards. Maybe a briefing like that is necessary. Talking about concubines: did you select some already?”

“No. I talked to a few but they were no match.”

Sophie sighed. “No concubine will be a good match for you as long as you look for someone to talk with. Hell, you were president of the philosophers’ debating society when you were eleven years old. You won Jeopardy online three times. You don’t have a CAP score of 7.9 for your physical skills or your aggressiveness.”

“Yeah I know. Lorna said that too,” Aerie laughed. “How about this: We all meet for dinner at eight o’clock and everybody has to present at least one concubine?”

Sophie heard Lorna laughing in the background. “Sounds good to me. To up the ante, it’s not allowed to discard that concubine for one week. Okay?”

“Okay,” Aerie said. “See you later!”

Sophie looked at the people that paraded in front of her table with renewed interest. ‘I can watch them all day long, that won’t lead to a decision,’ she thought. “You!” Sophie pointed randomly at a woman in a gray shift. “Come here!” Sophie’s order intimidated the probably thirty-year-old woman and she quickly obeyed. Sophie stood up and went around the table. “Stand up straight, feet shoulder width apart. Tits out, belly in! Are you interested in women?”

“I never did...” the woman started to say but Sophie interrupted her.

“I didn’t ask you if you did it. Are you interested in women?”

“I’m open to new experiences,” the woman answered, almost looking frightened.

Sophie grinned. “Go get your dinner and return to my table if you are interested in a female sponsor.” The woman quickly departed and Sophie sat down again. A minute later, the woman returned with a cup of tea and sat down across from Sophie. “You are not hungry?” Sophie asked.

“I thought it would be impolite to eat while you don’t. My name is Maria Russeau. As I said, I’m open to new experiences, but I’m not experienced. My husband prefers vanilla sex.”

Sophie took a sip of her tea. “My name is Sophie Spero. My CAP score allows me to get four concubines and I’d like to take four females. So you are married?”

Maria thought for a second before she answered, “Not anymore. Confederacy quick divorce. My former husband Paul will show up in a few minutes with our two children Helena and Robert. We wanted to meet here. I had a longer stay in the med tube than expected.”

“Something serious?” Sophie asked.

“They said they found an early stage of leukemia and flushed it. I’m not really surprised. I worked in a chemical plant that was closed due to poor safety standards. All the workers had been exposed to carcinogenic chemicals for a long time. I saw several former co-workers die from cancer. It was plain old dumb luck that I was caught in this extraction. We have no health insurance.”

“Yes, that was luck. Those med tubes are pure magic compared to our own butcher medicine.” They both sipped at their tea. “Would you agree to be my concubine if it means you have to leave your husband? I’d take the children too.”

“To be honest, if I had an offer of a sponsor who takes us both I’d prefer that. I’m aware that the sponsor is the focus of a concubine, but still ... Unfortunately I have no such offer. So I’d say yes with an aching heart.”

“I like you,” Sophie said. “You are a fine person, it seems. I will not ask you for a quickie and then shoo you away. This is only the first day, so I wish you good luck finding a sponsor who will take you both.”

“Thank you, madam,” Maria said. She stood up and walked away, getting lunch and searching for her family.

Sophie waited for a minute, and then she pointed randomly at another woman. “You! Come here!”

Fred Blanche unhappily chewed on the sandwich he had taken for lunch and watched the people in the canteen. At one of the entrances, a dark-skinned bitch was ordering women around. In a corner, a young man was fucking a voluptuous girl with a white bracelet. She seemed to be his willing slave. Women were walking around naked. Male concubines like him were not allowed to wear trousers. Children were watching. This was all so wrong. To make things worse, he wasn’t able to find his girlfriend, the woman who had talked him into viewing that dumb film where they had been picked up. Anger was slowly boiling up in Fred.

When a couple took a seat at his table and talked about their chances of being selected together by a sponsor, he left and threw his tray violently into a recycler. Fred left the canteen.