Chapter 12: Kilu Arc

This story is fiction. Actually, the year being 2063 should have been enough to clue you in about that.

I don't care how old are. I don't care how young you are. However, the law does care, so if you are too young, go away (or at least try not to get caught).

If this story is against the law where you live, then like the young folk, go away. Or at least...

Basement, Smith House

8:17 P.M. Friday, December 7, 2063

"I can't be­lieve you guys talked me into this," Lisa Lagrange said, rolling her eyes as she set the empty 2-litre bottle in front of her on the linoleum floor. She sat behind the bottle, two metres to the left of Gloria Lynstad, and looked across to Ted Hartmore, seated grinning in front of his own bottle, eight metres in front of her.

"Oh come on, Lisa," Amethyst Smith urged her friend. "It's not like we're talking sex here or anything. Hell, you might not even wind up naked."

Lisa turned her head to glare at her friend, seated two metres to the right of Amy Tellington, herself seated two metres to Gloria's right. For about a second, she managed a pretty harsh look, then grinned in spite of herself.

"Yeah, I might not wind up naked. Then again, I might end up stark buck-ass naked nude in front of all of you! I might even be the first one naked!"

"I hope so," Ted quipped from across the room.

"Stow it, Space Boy!" Amy snapped back at him, and everybody chuckled. This little stripping game had been his idea, as it was commonly played on Island Two/H, where he had lived until just six months ago. Even in 2063, somebody who had been born in space, and raised there for fifteen years, was considered pretty exotic in Chicago. Ted had hated being called 'Space Boy' at first, but then had decided that it was no different than a strong guy be­ing called 'Muscles, ' or a smart guy being called 'The Brain.' He rather liked being Space Boy now. There were still things he missed about his old home, of course. Like kilu. Nobody on Earth seemed to have heard of it.

'Nobody in Chicago, ' he reminded himself. Earth was a very big place, and the game of kilu had been in­vented in Hawaii. Just because the people in Chicago hadn't heard of it didn't mean that there weren't Hawaiian teens stripping every hour on the hour to this game. Well, now some teens in Chicago were going to.

He'd played a lot of kilu back on the Island, and while he wasn't all that good, he didn't mind the other teens seeing him naked, as long as he got to see them. He did regret that there was no way to introduce his new friends to weightless 3-deminsional kilu, with its interesting viewing angles of the human body, but oh well. If Earth's con­stant 9.8 metres per second per second of gravitational acceleration was what he had to work with, then so be it. It was his duty to act as a cultural ambassador, he told himself, and tried not to laugh.

Two metres to Ted's left sat Veejay Rai, just fourteen years old himself. He wished everybody would stop talk­ing and start playing. He wanted to see some skin. Also, the idea of having to strip down in front of everybody, espe­cially the girls, was very exciting to him. Almost more exciting than the prospect of seeing Amy, Lisa, Ame­thyst, or Gloria naked. He'd done a little making out in his young life, but hadn't seen any girl really naked, nor had any girl seen him naked, since the childhood days of playing doctor. Lisa's comment about being the first one na­ked had reminded him that he could himself be first, and as he thought of having to strip off his briefs while the four fully clothed girls watched, grinning, he could feel himself getting harder. And they would be able to see that too.

Genma Mizuno winked at Amy, and she winked back. They had seen each other sans clothing on several oc­casions. The young lovers (she 15, he 16) had been together for almost a year, and whatever happened with the others, this game was going to lead to lovemaking for the two of them. He wondered if the others would want to watch, and wasn't sure how he felt about that. He sure wouldn't mind getting it into one of the other girls, but wasn't sure how Amy would feel about that. Of course, he was going to sooner or later have full-on sex with Coach Tina McArthur, but then Amy was going to have it with Coach Harold Michaels. But that was all official and profes­sional and they were both in participatory sex-ed classes. To share themselves with other teens...

Phil Huedon was scared spitless of the idea of being naked in front of a girl, much less four of them. But the chance to see the girls strip down was too good an opportunity to pass up. Of course, when he'd agreed to this game, he had thought that it was going to be played until somebody lost all clothing, at which point it would end. This gave him a one in eight chance of winding up starkers, and a fifty/fifty chance of seeing one of the girls nude, and a big chance of at least seeing some titty. Acceptable odds. But now that the game was beginning, the fifteen-year-old was rather surprised to discover that the game was going to be played until only one person had anything on at all. Now he'd have to actually win this thing to avoid showing off all the Good Lord had blessed him with. He almost felt sick. These were not good odds! He suspected that this had been Gloria's idea. But there was no way to back out now without looking like a total wuss, and that was the one thing that scared him more than the idea of stripping down in front of these girls.

The rules of this game were simple: The girls sat side-by-side and straddle-legged on one side of the room, the boys on the other. Each person placed the bottle between her/his ankles. The line of girls and line of boys were eight metres apart. The object was simply to knock over bottles on the other side of the room by rolling the ball. If one's bottle was knocked over, that person would stand up and remove one item of clothing, then sit back down, set the bottle back up betwixt wide-spread ankles, and the game continued. No covering up would be al­lowed, and the game would continue until everybody was naked, except for one person, who would be declared the winner. However, if all the girls or all the boys ended up stripped bare, the game would end. It had been decided that the order would be alternating girls and boys: Amy, Ted, Lisa, Veejay, Amethyst, Phil, Gloria, Genma.

Each boy wore five items of clothing: a pair of shoes (counted as one item), a pair of socks (also counted as one item), a shirt, a pair of pants, and underwear. The girls wore the same, except that Amethyst wore a skirt instead of pants, and the girls were allowed to count bra and panties as two separate items. This gave each girl a slight ad­vantage, as she had to lose six times to be completely naked, while a boy only had five items to lose. None of the girls were wearing dresses, so there was no problem with counting blouses separately from skirts.

The teens were all seated now, and Amy smiled as she let the ball roll. To nobody's particular surprise, Genma was the target. Just barely she missed. Now it was Ted's turn. A hit! But it wasn't Lisa, who he had been aiming for, but Gloria. His eyes bugged out, then he laughed.

"Forgot there's no Coriolis here," he explained, "This is the first time I've ever played this on Earth. No com­plaints about the result, though." He grinned at Gloria as she stood and took off her shoes.

The fact that a girl had missed, and that another girl was the first to take anything off, lifted Phil's spirits a bit. Maybe he wouldn't be naked by the end of this game after all. If all the girls wound up bare ... Or if all the boys wound up in their birthday suits, he reminded himself. He watched Lisa take aim and let roll. Straight as an arrow the softball rolled to strike Phil's bottle, felling it. His stomach shuddered a bit as he stood to remove his shoes. Just his luck to be singled out by an Annie Oakley! Maybe she'd just been lucky.

Veejay wondered if he should try for Gloria, who was already shoeless, or Lisa, who was the one he most wanted to see naked. Suddenly it dawned on him that all four of the girls were in a participatory sex-ed course, and so were used to being nude, at least in front of each other. Only Genma, among the guys, was in such a course, and he was sexually active. Everybody knew about him and Amy. Ted was a well-known lady's man, but Veejay was still a virgin, and he suspected that Phil was too. Well, nothing for it but to take aim. A hit! Lisa smiled nerv­ously as she took off first one shoe, then the other.

Over the next ten minutes, there were various hits and misses. Lisa never missed, but at least she spread her deadly accuracy among the boys, rather than just picking on one. Had she concentrated on one guy, that guy would've been 'letting it all hang out' by now. As it was, every teen in the basement was shoeless, all but Gloria were sockless, and both Veejay and Phil were shirtless. Amy was also sans blouse, and Amethyst had just de­cided to remove her skirt instead of her blouse.

"With this skirt, you guys were getting panty shots anyway," she said matter-of-factly, "so I might as well just give you a better view of what you've already seen, instead of showing you anything new, hey?"

Poor Phil was blushing furiously, and he knew it. He tried to reassure himself. 'So you've got your shirt off, ' he thought to himself, 'big deal. Hell, man, you run around in nothing but swimming trunks all summer long. You think girls don't see you then? Just calm your ass down.' It helped, but only a little. He took aim, tried not to let his hands shake, and just barely clipped Gloria's bottle. For several agonizing seconds, the bottle wobbled before fi­nally falling over.