Chapter 46

One week later.

Time: Saturday, February 9, 2019 8:22 AM

Jada woke and stirred, kissing sleeping Mark around his face until he sighed and smiled at her. Jada then sat up and stretched and admired the views of the pine park out the eastern windows. Sunrise seemed just a moment away.

Jada and Mark had married yesterday in the early evening, or more precisely, Toshi, Frida, and Jada had a joint marriage ceremony with Mark in the lounge. Everyone in their group except Madison was there. It was a very touching ceremony, and Jada, Toshi, and Frida all had tears in their eyes as they hugged each other. And later that night Jada had retired alone with Mark for her honeymoon. Toshi and Frida had insisted that they had a year’s worth of intimate memories with Mark and it was now Jada’s turn, especially since Jada and Mark would not be together after Monday morning. Jada accepted their kind gift without protest.

Paris! She had never been there in real life, but now she felt very familiar with the city’s layout. Jada and Mark had spent more than a subjective week there in a three-hour link, playing and laughing as they explored each other’s bodies and minds. And then very early this morning they consummated their marriage in reality, offering each other their virginities.

So much had occurred in the last week. Weighing heavily on all the members of the new society was the decline of the master census counter. The death of the unknown woman on February 1^st had not been the end of it. There was another on the 2^nd, two downticks on the 4^th, and then one a day for the next four days. The census counter was currently at 010:092, and nobody was expecting the count to stabilize. People from parties unknown were dying, and the prime focus of their society was to save as many as they could.

Why the new deaths now, after all the weeks of relative stability? Were there other ways besides the Mall for the six groups to reach each other, and if so, had an interparty war broken out? Was one group fighting within themselves, or trying to do something that had lethal risks involved? Perhaps the most likely conjecture was that at least one group of partygoers was trapped somewhere without food. After seven weeks of fasting, they were starving to death.

This week had been spent in an intensive effort to prepare for hexagon-wide search and rescue missions. They had also transported their six large kayaks down to Madison’s location, one per day, along with large amounts of food and survival gear. Today would be their last day of preparation and training. All three janitors had been pulling in long hours as teachers, training the new recruits not to make the mistake that Madison had. And early tomorrow morning on February 10^th, three volunteers were scheduled to descend and join Madison. The next day they would begin practicing with the kayaks in the nearby lake.

The group of twenty-five had voted and adopted a simple division of labor. There were five search teams of four people each, with one team was assigned to every Mall area except Black Mall. The final five people were called Team-0 formed a central control team and were not expected to be involved with exploration.

Team-0 was headed by Kiyoko and included Lynn, Akiko, Toshi, and Holly. Akiko and Lynn were working on a communications project to activate a supply of two dozen Leophones found in a Blue Mall Verizon store, and that work was considered to be so potentially beneficial, no one wanted to risk the two on exploratory missions. Kiyoko was the janitor of Black Mall, and since they were not exploring Black Mall territory, she was the natural choice to stay behind and be a resource to give advice to the exploration teams without janitors. And as for Toshi and Holly, both women were pregnant and were considered too valuable to risk.

A month of rapes by Uno’s fraternity had resulted to two pregnancies. Holly had been raped repeatedly by Geraldo and Segundo, and once by Ernesto. Who was the father of her child was uncertain, but regardless, she was carrying a priceless and irreplaceable genome, and she would work in the Hilton complex along with Toshi as monitors and helping Lynn and Akiko any way they could.

Team-1 was headed by janitor Emily and would explore the surface around Red Mall. Her team included Ashley, Frida, and Ann.

Team-2 was headed by Jada and would explore the great underground world with Madison, Tom, and Mandy. Part of the selection process for Team-2 was to pick people in top physical condition which included Jada and Mandy, and there was also the added bonus that Jada was a world-class swimmer and Mandy was a world-class kayaker. Tom was a natural fourth for the team. He was physically very fit, an excellent shot with a pistol, and had spent years doing extensive canoeing in upstate New York. He was also determined to be with Madison. Team-2 would be the best armed group.

Team-3 was headed by Mark and would explore the surface area of Blue Mall with Cassidy, Paige, and Whitney. Team-4 had the obvious choice of leader in janitor Aggie and would explore Green Mall with Amber, Charles, and Brandi. And finally Team-6 was headed by Fatima and would explore the surface area of Yellow Mall with Heather, Allison, and Hannah.

Their society only had three working Leophones, and one would be dedicated to Jada’s expedition. The other four search teams would share the remaining two phones, and communications between the search teams and home base was considered absolutely essential. Thus at most two search teams would be away exploring the surface at any one time. On their off days, the other teams would pore over satellite maps of their coverage areas and plan their new missions.

Over the past week, there was one other issue that had been investigated, the advancement of Mark’s, Toshi’s, and Frida’s minds. In a triple mind, the three could experience an accelerated time of around two hundred. The society tried many combinations of replacing one of the three with another person, but it seemed all three minds needed to be advanced for a triple link.

But binary links between advanced and non-advanced minds were possible, with typical time acceleration of twenty to forty, and Jada and Mark thought their linkage was pushing the acceleration to a factor of sixty. That was also the value Mark could achieve with Toshi or Frida alone. And in his battle with Alfredo, Mark had demonstrated a brief ability to accelerate subjective time without the benefit of another mind. The experience had left him very tired, and the risks of attempting it again were unknown. The group had decided not to pursue the issue for now.

Mark lifted a hand and lazily caressed Jada’s cheek. “Oh, how I love sleeping in late,” he said with a smile.

Jada nodded. “Yes, I know. I feel decadent too. I just want to curl up and play with you and never leave this bed.” She leaned over for a simple kiss, and then their eyes locks as she gazed at him.

“This is so amazing,” she thought. “A part of me is remembering our wedding as happening last night, but the Paris part of me is insisting our wedding happened more than a week ago.”

Mark thought back, “I know. It does get a little difficult at times, trying to align the two perspectives. In a sense, they’re both real.”

Jada mentally nodded. “Yes, because the thoughts are real, they really occurred. Hah! Your calendar helps. It’s so easy to follow, exactly two weeks every month. Have you noticed? The weeks now, they seem to start on a Friday and end on a Thursday. It didn’t seem that way in January. But now the months have fourteen days, and it just seems so natural to jump to the new system. And thinking of new things, we probably should find Toshi and Frida, at least have breakfast with them.”

Mark smiled in love. “Feeling guilty?”

“Just a bit. Last night was their wedding night too. I know tomorrow I’ll be gone and they’ll still be around, but still...”

“Jada, it really is okay with them.”

“Oh, I know. Wow, Mark! I have two sister wives! I have so much work to do.”

“Work?”

Jada nodded. “I’m a little envious of Frida and Toshi. They seemed to have their relationship all worked out.”

Mark gave her a shy smile, nodding his understanding, and then he broke the link as his eyes drifted to the sight of an aroused nipple. “Hmm, you look so delightfully sexy...”

Jada shivered in delight as Mark latched onto her breast and began to suckle her. She caught one last emotional construct in his mind before the link broke. It was primal, pure male sexual desire. Jada began to feel her own arousal, and the moment evolved into an hour of sexual frolic.

For their final position, Jada climbed on top and rode Mark, vigorously bouncing up and down and staring at the pleasure she was giving her husband. Mark started to give short, shallow pants, and Jada realized he was about to cum again, less than three hours after his previous orgasm. She groaned at the end of the coitus but had the discipline to uncouple and grab a tiny soft cup from the night table and fit it over Mark’s penis head. Then she grabbed the shaft of his erection and jerked hard. She was rewarded with two small splashes of semen inside the cup.

“Mark, you sexual tiger!” she hissed. “I didn’t know males could do this.”

Mark just gave her a brainless grin in response.

Jada jumped out of bed and threw on her bathrobe. “Back in a few minutes.”

“Oh, I’ll be here,” he replied, still with his sleepy after-sex grin.

Jada dashed down the length of the Red Mall home complex with her prize. She entered the lounge elevator and typed in the access code for the Red Mall sky-bridge. After the door closed, she got a warning beep that her destination sky-bridge elevator was currently open. She would have to wait. About ten seconds later both short sides of the elevator started to open. Jada took one step and realized she was headed into the Wing Yip Superstore. She gave a fleeting grin and turned around.

It was at a meeting on Tom’s and Charles’ second day with the group that Brandi had suggested the creation of a sperm bank. The two men had laughed with approval and then insisted that one location in particular would be the perfect site. “Oh, men!” Jada thought now with a grin. “They can be so juvenile sometimes!” She turned and headed for the reserved aisle in the Wild Oats Health Foods Store.

And there very unexpectedly was Holly, loading a sperm cup into Charles’ bank. Holly turned to Jada and blinked. “Hi, Jada.”