Chapter 103

Time: Thursday evening, October 14, 2019 10:29 PM GHT, eleven days after the death of Ricardo

It was late, six hours after sundown, and Fatima felt as if she were floating on her bed. It was her first night to sleep with Mark and they had just finished a very energetic coupling. Mark was lying on his back and sighing and Fatima was by his side, her hand lazily playing with his nipples. A thin sheet of sweat covered them both. “Wow,” she whispered with a kiss.

Mark turned slightly and grinned at Fatima in the darkness. The stars and the red moon outside were their only illumination. Mark told her he loved her and his hand lovingly cupped her pubis. “Does it still hurt?” he whispered. Fatima gave her head a small shake no. Earlier they had linked their boosted minds before linking bodies. Mark knew about the pain of the virgin tear of Fatima’s hymen as fully as if he had his own vagina.

Mark kissed her. “What are you thinking?”

“Oh, lots of things I guess. Our marriage, our future, having children. Holly’s and Toshi’s sons! They will be my children too. And sex! I’m thinking of lots and lots of sexy images! It’s even better than I imagined!” Fatima laughed. “I’ve got this crazy phrase running in my mind, over and over again. Today I am a woman!”

Her Leophone rang before Mark could reply. Fatima blinked and answered it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Fatima,” replied Amber. “Whitney and Kiyoko are here with me. Got time for a little chat?”

Fatima sighed as her mind switched gears. “Yes, I suppose. Mark is here with me. Okay to put you guys on speakerphone?”

“Sure, that’s be fine ... Hi, Mark!”

“Hi yourself. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, nothing too urgent. Say, Fatima! You’re with Mark?! Is this your wedding night?! OH MY GOSH!!! I’m so sorry!”

Yesterday early Wednesday morning in what people were playfully calling seven brides for one brother, Mark had married Aggie, Ashley, Emily, Fatima, Hannah, Holly, and Jada, with Mark and Jada exchanging their vows over Leophones. Toshi and Frida acted as bridesmaids. Mark now had nine wives, and of course they were keeping their sleeping arrangements private.

Fatima laughed good naturedly. “No, we were finished.”

Mark leaned over and whispered playfully in her ear, “Don’t be so sure!” Fatima gave him a mock disapproving look and playfully pushed him away with her hand.

Amber meanwhile was still apologetic. “Uh ... I should call back later.”

“Amber,” Fatima continued, “it really is okay. I’m assuming you have a reason for calling so late.”

“Well ... Yes, the reason I called now, and I know how late it is and I really hate taking up your wedding night, but Jessica and Doug asked permission to go off and sleep together. They’re not here now. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to call you.”

Fatima paused. “That’s interesting. Are Jessica and Doug are becoming a couple?”

“Yes, I think so. Not that I blame them. I’m sure you remember what it’s like to be unboosted and be around boosted people. In terms of mental abilities, Kiyoko, Whitney and I are almost another species to them. And to us they seem like small children. It’s only natural Jessica and Doug relate to each other more.”

Fatima sat up in bed and nodded while gentle hands were lightly caressing her calves and ankles. “Yes, I remember. The gulf is vast. Is it putting a stress on your team?”

“Oh no. Jessica and Doug, I couldn’t ask for nicer people. I called you to talk about something more fundamental. Fatima, both Doug and Jessica are worried about their past crimes at Black Mall. Kiyoko, Whitney and I can all see it clearly when we link with them. Fatima, how can I reassure them?

Fatima sighed. “I’d like to say there’s an easy answer, but I don’t want to rule by decree on this. There’s quite a bit of opposition, and not just from the victims of Black Mall either. Doug raped a large number of women, and Jessica even more.”

Fatima paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. “The women from White, Green, and Yellow Malls didn’t have the struggle we went through to accept Tom and Charles.

A lot of these people feel a price needs to be paid for what Doug and Jessica did. I know the two have helped us, are helping us now, but there’s a general feeling they still need to be punished.”

Amber replied, “Oh hell. You’re saying there’s a real risk they’ll be banished?”

Fatima gave a deep sigh. “Yes, I am.”

Amber grimaced. “I wish you could link and see their minds. Doug and Jessica would agree with you completely that they deserve punishment.” She paused. “It’s interesting that you talked about price. Ever since we’ve been here, we have had such an infinite amount of goods at our disposal...”

Fatima also paused to reflect. “Yes, I know what you mean. I haven’t thought about money for so long, it’s almost a foreign concept.” She sighed. “How can we punish them? Fines don’t exist, and I don’t want to get us into the business of running jails. I suppose in some future year that might become ... unavoidable. But boy, I sure don’t want to start now, especially with the primitive government we have. Where is our judicial system?”

Amber nodded. “Oh, I agree. Fatima? Kiyoko and Whitney want to talk too. I’ll let Kiyoko go first.”

“Hi, Mark. Hi, Fatima. I’ve been doing therapy linking with Doug. Whitney has been working with Jessica. At their requests, we were showing them their actions from their victims’ perspectives.”

Fatima blinked as she realized what Kiyoko was saying. “You shared your memories of Doug raping you?”

“Yes. He willingly accepted the perspective of my body and mind. He’s lived through the experiences in our dreams, my despair during the rapes, the violation of by body, my anger and depression afterwards. Fatima, it was a horrible thing for him to go through but he wanted to be punished. He will never, ever desire to rape again. Just link with his mind. His sincerity is an open book.”

Fatima sighed. “I’ve talked with his other victims. They describe him as an overeager sex fiend. He was just so hot to copulate with anyone wearing a skirt. What drove him to it?”

“From what I got from our dreams, it was combination of immaturity and a willful disregard of his morals. He knew better! But perhaps unlike a classic rapist, he doesn’t hate women. Yes, there was a desire for sexual domination but it was a mostly a basic animalistic desire to fuck. His sex drive was not based on cruelty.”

Kiyoko paused in thought for a moment before continuing. “Doug was a pure beach-master driven to copulate with as many females as possible. It almost didn’t matter whom he mounted. I dreamed him through each of his rapes. Except for his memories with me, we had to use his male perspective.” Kiyoko gave a mirthless laugh. “I am very familiar now with the feeling of being a male and mounting a female who doesn’t want me.”

“Oh, Kiyoko! Are you okay?”

“Yes. Thank you, Fatima, I’m okay. His first attempt at rape is especially interesting. Allison was the first girl he checked out. This was at the very beginning, just a few days after Christmas when the frat boys were just setting up the pussy barn system. Diego and Frida had a big fight over what was happening earlier in the day. And then later that evening Diego picked Allison for his evening’s entertainment.”

Fatima paused. “We’ve had frank discussions about Doug. Allison never mentioned Diego raped her.”

“He never did. I saw the memory. He brought Allie to his bedroom and tried to kiss her and she slapped him. Diego did not get violent back. He just checked her back into the pussy barn. A half hour later Santos and Fidel took her for a double rape. Allie talked about her experience later that night. What they did was absolutely brutal.”

Kiyoko sighed. “My memories of life in the pussy barn are so vivid. The word quickly spread among the women slaves. If you’re picked by Diego, your choice is to endure a simple rape while being petted or risk something far worse. Allison was the only women who physically resisted him. I did not. It was still absolute coercion of course. We both knew it was rape. But I did not physically resist, and that’s all Diego asked of me.”

“It’s still a hell of a problem,” Fatima commented darkly.

Kiyoko continued. “Doug and I explored his childhood. Did you know as a boy he used to stutter badly when he was around girls, especially those near his age? He did it even in high school, a great pubescent eagerness for sex but socially very inept. But he was a top student, and when he was a freshman at Burlington his academic excellence caught the eye of Frida. They started studying together, and eventually they started dating.”

Kiyoko took a moment to reflect. “From his memories, they started off okay. They had a lot of tenderness for each other and Doug was thrilled about having Frida as his girlfriend. But then he got involved with Beta Sigma Rho, and soon afterwards Doug became Diego. That damn frat was a really bad influence on him. Fatima, he’s not trying to excuse his actions. These are my opinions, not his.”

Another voice spoke up. “Fatima, this is Whitney. I’d like to talk about Jessica. She is one complicated case. I find it confusing to link with her. I’m no psychiatrist, but I have a feeling Ricardo somehow fractured Jessica’s mind during the time he was alone with her. After she escaped from him, she put her self-identity back together again by using the core of her child persona. Her cruelty with the insane contraband inspections is like a bad dream to her now. Believe me, Jessica alone with Ricardo was far more than any person should have to bear. She’s been punished already, more than enough!”

Fatima replied, “People, I trust your instincts, but I still don’t want to rule by decree on this. We need broad support for accepting new members, maybe not consensus, but certainly a clear majority. And right now we don’t have it!”

Amber spoke up. “Okay, we understand that. Jessica and Doug do too. Doug even suggested denying him the Bee Park as punishment. I’d really, really hate for us to do that. It would create a vulnerable second class of citizen for us. People might be tempted to abuse their boosted power. Remember how we struggled with the incident with Toshi?”

Fatima shuddered. “Of course. And she’s my sister wife now. She would be horrified if we went down that path again. Amber, do you have any suggestions?”

“Yes, that’s why we’re calling you. How about a public ceremony when we eventually get out of here? Whitney, Kiyoko, and I are thinking of a ritual punishment where people can publicly express their disgust for what Doug and Jessica did. It would be a time where people can say Doug and Jessica should be ostracized from our Society. It would also be a time to express forgiveness.”

Mark’s hands travel up Fatima’s legs and across her hips, eventually settling to stroke her around her navel. She briefly touched his hand to ask him to wait and then replied, “Sounds intriguing. Tell me more.” The phone conversation lasted another five minutes. Mark’s caresses resumed afterwards and delightfully lasted a lot longer.

Three weeks later.

Time: Thursday, December 7, 2019 10:45 AM GHT

Mark sat alone at his all-time favorite work area, the library console at Red Mall on the eastern side of the room. He was enjoying a delightful morning of solitude after an incredibly hectic three weeks. Through the windows the sky outside was almost as dark as night, but it wasn’t purely the seasonal progression. Mark grinned and pulled up a table on his display to satisfy his curiosity. Today the sun was scheduled to set at 1:24 PM and theoretically it had risen ten minutes ago. He never could have guessed that by looking out the windows. The scene was of a fierce pre-winter blizzard, a view of wild chaotic motion with the sky as dark as late twilight.

So fast! It seemed like such a short time ago that the world was a world full of light with little peaceful darkness. Now they were down to less that three precious hours of sunlight a day, and even that was fast disappearing. In a mere eight days they would be at the winter solstice where the sun would not break the horizon. Mark leaned back and enjoyed the raw violence of the storm. It had moved fast and according to his weather display would leave just as quickly. There was a flash of lightning with the associated thunder completely absent in the soundproof room.

“Executive override,” Mark commanded his console on a whim. “Cancel room soundproofing, these coordinates, for ... uh, twenty minutes. And execute.” An instant later he could hear distant rumbles of the blizzard’s thunder and the fury of the wind. Nice! Mark wondered if he should bring up the issue of soundproofing with the Society at some future meeting. It was great for privacy and sleeping but it also isolated them from the outdoors and the beauty of nature’s sounds. Mark made a mental note to speak to Fatima about it.

And then he gave a small frown. He was the only person that had the authority to cancel room or building soundproofing status. Even the janitors couldn’t do it, and Mark couldn’t delegate his authority. His ability now took his mind back to the time when it all began. “Almost twenty days now,” he thought, “almost twenty days of being a mini-god.” On Friday November 1^st, Mark had been in this room and in this every chair. His new wife Emily was with him and she was working at the other console across the room. They were often pausing to smile at each other. Tonight would be their wedding night.

At 2 PM that Friday afternoon, Mark was startled to see a short message from the interface appear on his screen. He was being requested to click an accept box. He read for a moment and then yelled for his wife to come over.

With absolutely no fanfare or comment, the interface had just offered him employment as Acting Director of Astronomy. Mark and Emily were dumbfounded. Could this possibly mean what they thought it meant?! Mark clicked accept and then the first thing he tested was his access to internal interface logs. Yes! He had executive authority to read them all. Mark could now see into the interface’s core decision loops. Emily whooped with delight and ran to her console to inform the others.

Soon the library was filled with people. Lucia was the first to point out an issue with celestial time. Mark had been offered his employment at 2 PM Friday, November 1, 2019. Lucia’s Citizen ID was 16. She was third from the last of eighteen people to take the first elevator ride at 1:57 PM, December 21, 2018. With her boosted memory, she also knew her group walked out at 2 PM, exactly 168 days before Mark was offered his employment. Mark’s employment offer came exactly one local orbital year after the first human set foot in their new world.

What to try next? People! Where were the other lost members from the other Parties?! Mark typed eagerly on his keyboard. He found that his executive authority allowed him to query the location of any person by Citizen ID within any structure where he was physically present, and that the entire Great Hexagon was considered an integrated physical structure in this context. Within minutes Mark was querying all the lost IDs. The four lost members of Yellow Mall, Cindy, Alice, Eugene and Bridget, IDs 63, 64, 68, and 69, they were pinpointed immediately. They were together, in a building Fatima remembered once passing at a distance but never investigating. Farideh as Party #6 janitor organized a quick posse and they left immediately.

No other lost members were at the Great Hexagon. This was partially understandable. The eight lost people from Green Mall were scattered as two teams somewhere in the expanse of Africa. Finding them would still be a long-term mission. But what of the seventeen lost women of Blue Mall? They were still listed on the employment logs. Everyone’s guess was that they had found a trapdoor sometime in the past year. The Blue Mall surface area would be the place to start looking, but the people would not be found there. The Society would need to change their objective and search the Blue Mall surface for trapdoors.

Next on the menu: Wobanakik! Did Mark have the authority to activate the elevator at the entrance rooms? Nothing was more important than to see. What followed was a fast trip, a quick jump to the White Mall lounge and then boarding the Speedo stair cats. With Emily and Suvarna as company, Mark arrived at the bottom of the great stairwell at 3 PM.

He gave a verbal command to activate the elevator and the keyboard came to life! For a moment the director and the two janitors felt bewildered. Could it possibly be this easy? After memorizing the new twenty-character code in the display, Mark typed the code for home. The elevator closed and unexpectedly stayed closed. Instead a blue time index of 00:00:34 appeared on the display above the keyboard, the seconds counting down as their ears began to pop. Emily pointed out that the system was giving them time to adjust to the pressure gradient between Wobanakik and the planet’s surface.

The trip ended as they hoped, and from a Red Mall library console they told their friends at Manhattan the joyful news. Then there was a decision to make. Should the Manhattan people evacuate today?

It was 3:03 PM and Wobanakik was entering the fourth week of its nine-week autumn. The linear sun would set in two hours, not nearly enough time for Jada and her group to kayak the Missisquoi back to the entrance rooms. Should they risk a night journey? There would be some moonlight, a waxing crescent moon from 9 PM to 3 AM if the weather stayed fair. But in the end Jada decided not to push the issue. They had waited so long already, why not another day? Her team would leave Manhattan in the predawn twilight on Saturday, sometime after 7 AM. With luck they should be at the activated elevator well before noon.

Next on the agenda, Amber and her group trapped in Black Mall’s surface area. Mark and the janitors spent hours studying new engineering data that Mark was able to access. Late Friday evening, they thought they had a solution. There should be executive controls on both the Pink and Green Towers that would allow Mark to freeze the foam and create a static return path for Amber and her group. Mark gave the credit to Emily and Aggie for planning the procedure. The control sequence wasn’t obvious.

Just before dawn the next morning Mark, Emily, and Aggie traveled to the Pink Tower and successfully shut down the maze. The foam sank more than a dozen meters, revealing the narrow walkways to be the tops of curving ridgelines with shear vertical walls. At the other end of the maze at the Green Tower, Amber’s group began their difficult journey back home, stopping occasionally when the wind blew too briskly. There were no guardrails at the edges of the 2.5 meter-wide walkways and a fall into the foam would be certain death. Amber’s group came home one painfully slow and careful step at a time.