Chapter 62: SM03-Pi, Day 9, continued

Steve left his bedroom, and headed for his 'office' to prepare for his meeting with his brothers. He stopped along the way to update Anna on what he'd done with Linda, and to ask her to check up on his slave periodically if he was tied up in his meeting for too long. A quick hug and kiss later, he was on his way to the office.

Once there, Steve made a quick call to Laura Braun in the Steve/Eta household. Antonia had told him privately that she was going to update Laura on their actions with regard to Linda, to see if she had any advice on the best way to handle Linda's problems. Antonia had been willing to 'enable' Linda's avowed need for a master as an emergency measure, but she was unsure it was a good idea for the long term.

Once Steve was connected to Laura, he told her what he'd done to Linda after they'd left Antonia's presence, including the reasoning that led him to use the leash and the cage to confine her. His intent was to place a strong limit on her movement, while simultaneously 'protecting' her from the outside world. The leash kept her close, where he could protect her, while the cage kept the world away from her so she could sleep when they were apart.

Laura sounded impressed at his insight into Linda's issues, and approved of his reasoning, even if the resulting strategy was extremely unconventional. She told him that it was important to avoid an explicit statement that he was 'protecting' her; the strength of his plan was that it reassured her subconscious without reminding her consciously that there were 'bad people' out there.

Her final point, which he'd already thought of, was that Linda's present need to submit might diminish over time, as her fears receded. She probably wouldn't be consciously aware of the change, so Steve was going to have to keep his eye out for it. If he monitored her closely, he could probably move her from 'slave' to 'wife' so gradually she wouldn't even notice the change until the first time she declined a sexual advance.

Steve thanked Laura for her help, and signed off with a promise to get together socially in the near future, so that she could observe Linda without it being an obvious examination. In a parting comment, Laura praised his devotion to Linda, then said she wouldn't have expected anything else from a Steve Miller; she obviously thought very highly of her own Steve, and expected his strengths to be reflected in the other Steves as well.

The phone call out of the way, Steve was slightly at a loss for what to do next; he expected his brothers at any moment, so he didn't want to start anything that would need to be interrupted. As luck would have it, his dithering was interrupted by the arrival of his first guest, who identified himself as Steve/Psi. Steve had created the same type of badges as Tau's Priya had designed, and put on his own as he handed Psi's to him.

The two men exchanged small talk for a few minutes before Chi arrived, and picked up his badge. Steve finally remembered to offer refreshments, and preparing and distributing them frittered away just enough time to allow Phi to arrive.

Steve welcomed his three guests, and was about to start in on the briefing when Chi interrupted, and reported that his wives had been busy gathering information and that they had prepared a briefing video that might be useful to review. Amused, Steve invited him to present it.

As the video began, he saw 'himself' sitting in a chair in what was obviously a standard alien-issue living room, with a few women around him. His image turned to the 'camera, ' and began to speak about how they'd come to be under the alien's "care," what they'd learned about their situation, and about how "we" were working on a plan to educate humanity on its new capabilities. Further updates were promised once a tentative plan was ready to be reviewed by a larger group.

When the tape was finished, Steve sat back in awe at the professional job that had been done, both in presentation and in organization. Everything that Tau and Pi had discovered between them was covered, as well as a few interesting implications they hadn't had time to discuss during their own meeting. Steve complimented Chi on his and his wives' efforts, and got a big grin in return.

"I knew you were going to be blown away by it. I'm impressed with their work myself, and I've had a lot of time to watch it grow. I want to be clear: about all I did was read their script, and make a very very few comments. All the real work was done by my wives.

"We've got several other versions that are 'dumbed' down for use when the man of the house isn't technologically or biologically sophisticated, or if he might freak out because he's been raised from the dead. We'll want to use those sparingly, unless we plan to isolate the people in those households, because there's no way it can be kept a secret. Too many people have already found out one way or another."

Steve and his other two brothers nodded, unsurprised at the reasoning. Steve said, "I'm curious as to how you know so much about what other people know. Care to spell it out for us?"

Chi nodded, and said, "My wife Kelly came up with the idea the first day; she asked the monitor to summarize the most common questions and report questions and answers to her. She later expanded the net to catch all new questions, and to track how frequently they were asked and answered. When Tau was given 'command, ' his questions showed up on her report like a fire alarm. That's when she and the rest really went to town, and gathered a bunch of additional information. They prepared a written report, for "Steves' Eyes Only," and there's another video briefing that gives you the executive summary."

More than somewhat curious, Steve invited him to play the second tape. This time, the women took turns presenting the questions they'd researched, and the answers they'd gotten, along with their methodologies. By the end of the tape, Steve and the other two men were in more than a little shock at the additional information that had been squeezed out of the room monitors.

Chi's women had mastered the fine art of asking statistical summary questions of the monitors; questions that would not be answered individually due to privacy limitations, but that would be answered in the aggregate. They couldn't ask if Steve Miller #4 had impregnated all of his women, but they could ask how many women the most efficient male of the Miller group had impregnated, and the average number impregnated by all of the Steves. By asking a great many similar questions, they'd amassed a large body of interesting statistics.

They'd been able to determine that the Steve Millers of the new world were the 'best' at building a unified family, and that several other men had been almost as successful. They'd also found that, on average, 75 percent of the women in a household had 'bonded' with their male sufficiently well to get pregnant, either by him or by proxy. They'd even gotten an estimate that, of the remaining quarter of the female population, 90 percent would be able to find a 'match' among one of the other males in their 'clan' without bloating his family's size beyond reason.

The bad news was that the remaining 2.5 percent of women were 'stuck' without a man. Of the roughly 250 women involved, an undetermined number were no doubt lesbian, but it was unlikely that all of them were, and the statistical claim that only 250 were 'in need' wasn't completely certain; it could easily be somewhat higher, since they weren't able to nail down the probability that a given 'woman in need' would be able to live in harmony with the women who already 'owned' the man that would be a good match for her.

At the moment, things weren't in danger of blowing wide open, but once they started opening the channels of communication, people were going to start trying to move to a friendlier environment, and too many of the women playing musical chairs would be left standing when the music stopped. It wasn't at all clear how the problem could be solved, and until it was, it might not be a good idea to start the education process. On the other hand, it didn't seem right to block the 22.5 percent of the population who would benefit from the shuffle just because the Steves were worried about the 2.5 percent that wouldn't.

"That's a pretty nasty problem we've got brewing there," Steve said, "I'm going to buck it up to Tau for distribution to all of us, to see what kind of ideas we can come up with. The first thing we need to do is try to validate the assumptions behind the numbers; I have this gut feeling that the logic is just a bit too pat; I think there's at least one invalid assumption in there, and probably more than one, but I don't know if they reinforce or cancel out.

"Be that as it may, there's one important set of facts that neither of Chi's briefing tapes included. This is extremely sensitive information; don't share it with anyone." Steve went on to reveal the existence of Prime, and the true cause of the destruction of Earth. He saw the same rapid evolution of emotions on their faces that he'd felt when he first heard the news: surprise, changing to shock, then outrage, then pure rage. "We're not privy to the details yet, mostly from pure lack of need-to-know, but we've been told that there will be payback, and we were promised a death toll on the order of a billion."

Steve imagined he must have had the same feral grin on his face when Prime told him what was planned for the 'Borgias.' He'd been too shocked to notice what Tau and his fellow slave-masters' reactions had been, but he knew it was the same as what this set of Steves was feeling. That thought reminded him that these Steves hadn't gotten the 'owners of submissives' invitation, so they needed to be warned about a few things.

He ran down the list of their fellow males that needed 'checking up on, ' and included a warning about their previously unsuspected bisexual tendencies. "I'm not saying you have to 'take in' Johnny, if he's already happy where he is, but don't be surprised if you get the same urge to protect him that you've gotten in the past with the weaker women in your life. I'm told that he's a pretty good cocksucker and that fucking his ass is a real power trip. 'My' Johnny was killed before I could meet him, so I can't tell you personally how it feels, but Eta actually got a bit misty-eyed about the guy.