Chapter 44

Gina Tafarelli:

So we went to breakfast. We went by a roundabout route -- longer than before, it seemed to me. At one point, the corridor opened to a large room, one wall of which was a huge window. I knew why we were there, once I looked out...

"Wow! It's really pretty, isn't it?" Johnny commented, his tone hushed and reverent. I had to agree; Earth was this giant ball, hanging there in the window or porthole, or whatever it was.

"Okay, I'm convinced..." I said, after a bit, looking at the ceiling.

"Your mental health appears to have improved, Gina Tafarelli," the voice in the air said.

I nodded. "It was just too much, yesterday ... You're one of those AI thingies?"

"Affirmative. There is more to come, Gina Tafarelli. It is suggested that you discuss your questions with your daughter in order to be properly prepared."

"Okay." There really didn't seem to be anything else to say...

After a bit more looking out the window, we finished making our way to breakfast. There were nude women present -- most of whom were horribly embarrassed. "How long... ?" I asked Johnny.

"A couple of hours, max," he replied. "They're early, but I bet by lunch people wearing clothes will be a LOT fewer in number..."

"I wish I'd gotten a bikini trim," I muttered.

"We can get one at Medical, Mama," Mona assured me. "That's where we'll probably lose our clothes, but they can make minor adjustments..."

"So, what is up, exactly? Don't you usually have to be, you know, attached to somebody to be here?" I asked.

"Yes." Mona toyed with her toast. "We were in a special group -- new rules. But eventually, we have to be assigned somewhere."

"So, what do we do? Put out want ads?"

"Right now, we're under Johnny's protection." Mona didn't look at me.

"But?" I asked. There seemed to be one, somewhere.

"We can STAY under Johnny's protection," Mona explained, "but we would have to meet our obligations -- with Johnny."

"What obligations?"

"To have kids."

"WHAT?" I gasped. "That's incest!"

"Yeah, supposedly," Mona replied, apparently indifferent.

"No supposedly about it! It IS!"

"It's bullshit, Mama -- we've had classes in it."

"It's scientific fact!" I argued.

"No, Mama. The incest rule was laid down before genetics was a science. As a result, it's a little too general. To be safe, they said, 'Never do this' -- but it's done with plants and animals all the time, and only if you repeat it multiple times is it a problem. If you have kids with Johnny, it's unlikely to be a problem. If Johnny has a little girl with you, and then he gets her pregnant and has a little girl, then gets HER pregnant, THEN we're pushing it. But Confederacy medical science can fix just about anything, anyway, so the big hairy genetic danger thing is bullshit," Mona insisted. "That leaves religion -- but the religious thing didn't come from God, it goes back to the general injunction not to that we've already talked about -- they just wrapped it in mumbo-jumbo. So it's bullshit."

"I can't go to confession and tell a priest I'm having..." I blustered.

"In the first place, you won't have to, Mama -- in the colonies, religion is between you and God. All the religious educational materials in the world are out there, but there are no churches," Mona rasped. "In the second -- what do you know about this? Who do you trust? The Catholics? They spent hundreds and hundreds of years trying to turn religion into empire -- basically unopposed -- and they used that old saw, 'If so-and-so said it, that's as good as if God said it.' Only it isn't, Mama -- if the Catholics were right, there would BE no Lutherans -- or Methodists, or Baptists or Episcopalians, for that matter. All of those religions broke away from Catholicism because they were trying to separate religion from the body of crap the Catholics wrapped around it in the name of politics!"

"Mona! That's heresy!" I erupted.

"Which is a fine word for 'not politically correct'!" Mona argued. "In the Old Testament, how many wives did men have? Several. Why, do you think? Because they had pestilence and disease and childbirth picking them off -- and those they had needed HELP raising the family! What do you think we're doing here? We're trying to save OURSELVES as a species! If a man married a young girl with a widowed mother, what do you think became of her? What do you want to bet... ?"

"So what is the wonderful up-side, here?" I grated.

"We're family. Wouldn't you like to STAY a family?" Mona pressed. "Or would you rather hunt down a stranger and spread your legs for him?"

"Mona!" I turned to Johnny, who had said nothing all this time, allowing his sister to carry the conversation. The look on his face reminded me of his father -- strong, predatory. He was waiting -- waiting for me to become agitated and make a fatal mistake. Or maybe he was letting Mona batter me until I became too tired to defend myself ... Turning back to Mona, I challenged, "What are YOU going to do?"

Her reply froze me where I sat. "It's already done. Last night, remember? Johnny is my Master."

"H--have you consummated this?" I gasped.

"No. Want to watch?"

"Mona!" Johnny snapped. "You're not here to agitate Mama -- you're here to help!"

Mona ducked her head and looked away. "Yes, Master. But she's such an idiot!"

"She has her beliefs," Johnny replied, chiding. "When you go to the briefings, make sure she hears what she needs to. We have time." His gaze swept to me and his father looked out of his eyes. "Limited amounts, but we have time."

After that, we ate in silence.

Almost immediately after breakfast, we were called to go to Medical. If I'd been in denial still when I got there, it would have been difficult to continue with it. There was this lengthy row of tubes -- maybe a hundred -- and medics in something that looked sort of like scrubs, and other people -- many of whom were nude. I was glad for whatever had been done to help me overnight. A medic took our CAP cards from Johnny and fed them to a slot in three tubes. "Mona Tafarelli -- bound concubine. Any changes?" The medic asked Johnny, not Mona.

Johnny smiled. "Not at this time. Get naked, Mona."

Mona stripped, right there, and looked over her shoulder at her brother. "Master? Maybe a little off the butt?"

Johnny stepped forward and got VERY familiar with his sister, squatting to feel her ass and her thighs. I was TERRIBLY embarrassed, but, looking around, I could see that perhaps this wasn't unusual -- except for their relationship. "The ass is fine, Mona, but you're skating close to some cellulite here on the outside of your upper thigh." Turning to the medic, he said, "Shave off a little." He stood and cupped his sister's breasts from behind. "Maybe just a touch of a lift here, with support -- nothing unnatural. Hair ... If she's going to show a moustache, take care of it. No hair on the legs or the pits."

"Pubes?" the medic asked.

Johnny knelt before his sister. "Spread a bit." He ruffled her pubic hair. "Hmmm. Turn around and bend..." Mona did these things like they were the most natural thing in the world... "Make it neater on the mons and trim it up and make it uniform, then retard growth -- but I like bush. I like the way these thin dark ones grow toward her opening, but they're too long, so bring them back to the point that they won't get pulled or anything when she's fucking. Fix this little tear in her left pussy lip. Oh, and fix the old broken toe on her right foot."

"You did that..." Mona looked at her brother fondly -- from between her legs. It was ... disconcerting...

"I love the way they hang..." Johnny told his sister, grinning.

Mona rolled her shoulders so her breasts would sway, "Why, thank you, Master!"

"You two..." I felt that I just HAD to say SOMETHING...

"Yo, Tafarelli!" somebody yelled from a few tubes over, "You lucky sonofabitch! Moaning Mona..." Johnny stood, grinned from ear to ear, and clasped his hands over his head and pumped them in that universal sign of the winner. "Woo Hoo!!!" whoever it was clapped. "Is that Mama? Holy shit, Dude! You're blessed!"

I was never so embarrassed in my life!

Mona climbed into the tube and settled in and the cover closed and the medic turned to me.

"Gina Tafarelli, unbound concubine..." He shrugged.

I had things to say! "That's your sister you stood there treating like a prize cow!"

"Not any longer!" Johnny rasped, his eyes icy. "She's my concubine -- and if I wish to treat her as a prize cow, she'll calve for me -- regularly -- and maybe produce milk for my table! She gets it -- why don't you?"

"Like that, huh?" The medic eyed me. "Shame ... Well, if she's gonna insist, she'll find someone pretty quick -- she's a hot one."

"I'm still hoping," Johnny grunted, "but she's SOOO slow. Still, she's probably where Mona got her response..."

"Yeah..." The medic looked at his displays. "Pretty impressive, too."

Johnny nodded. "Papa was selective -- and he valued that over intelligence. Well, it worked for Mona..."

"Johnny!" It was clear that I'd been insulted. "I'm not just eye-candy!"

"No," Johnny replied sharply, "the numbers say you fuck like a mink, too." He turned to the medic, "I don't know, personally, you understand." I just stood there, flabbergasted.

"Not much sense, the way she talks to a sponsor..." The medic shook his head. "Can't do much, since she isn't bound."

"Get undressed, Mama," Johnny directed.

"I WILL..." But I shut up; Johnny's eyes had his father in them again.

"Shut up and do as you're told!" he snapped -- but I already had. It was perfect, too -- his father's intonation, the clear confidence in his superiority ... If I HADN'T already started, I WOULD have, at that point, almost reflexively. With his father, the next thing coming was an open-handed slap...

I undressed, trying to maintain my dignity. For my age, I'm a good-looking woman, so it wasn't as humiliating as it could have been. Johnny held up a warning finger as he knelt before me and shoved a hand between my knees to get me to spread my legs -- but he didn't touch me otherwise, and he didn't make me bend over and display my pussy and my ass that way. "Can you at least trim her up as I specified for Mona?"

"Yeah, that's superficial. But since she isn't bound, health maintenance is about all the further we can go," the medic replied.

"She won't need anything, given the competition," Johnny rasped. "If she continues to be a fucking idiot, her new master can do what he wants, but I think I would just roll her back a few..."

I was angry -- I was his MOTHER, for God's sake! But this wasn't my little boy ... It was as if his father was standing there, purged of the evil that underlay his powerful personality. Johnny had come into his own -- and I dared not challenge him, mother or not! Johnny glared at me, daring me to get stupid -- and he knew what to do if I did, and I knew he did, too. "Get in the tube, Mama."

I got in the tube.

When the cover slid back and I sat up, Johnny was wearing a coverall and an AI was talking to him; I could hear the conversation through a collar that had somehow appeared around my throat. <She is much better psychologically, John Tafarelli, than she was yesterday. It appears that she had a psychological breakdown when she discovered that she was being extracted due to an unresolved fear that your father might extract his revenge upon her. Rest and a chance to work through the changes has restored her mental health. She is submissive, as you are no doubt aware -- and you have removed her master.>

"What are the chances that she will allow me to replace him?"

<Unclear. SOMEONE will, and she will resume her previous mindset; the conditions of concubinage actually agree with her. But for now, many of her anchor points are severed -- and she will hang onto others irrationally until she finds new ones, > the AI replied. <She is listening.>

Johnny sighed. "It's all so simple ... But you can lead a horse to water..."

<Yes, she is stubborn. The incest issue has not been approached properly -- or perhaps it just gives her something to rally herself around -- to everyone's detriment. Good luck, John Tafarelli.>

"Thanks." Johnny looked at me. "Come on, Mama, you're holding up progress."

"Do I get clothes?" I asked, knowing the answer, as I got down from the tube. I expected clippings in my pubes, but there were none when I brushed them. My bush was a lot neater, nonetheless.

"No. Thank God you're good looking -- you can hold your head up. Just pretend you're wearing that new suit at the pool..." Johnny was brusque about the whole thing; he waved Mona forward and said, "We're headed in separate directions. Take care of her, Mona." He eyed me and shook his head. "I'll see both of you later, with any luck."

It struck me that if he didn't see one of us, it would be me... "Come on, Mama," Mona murmured, leading me off. The AI's voice came through my collar, <Take the door on the left... >

We followed the AI's directions to a room that was filling with other naked women. The floor was covered with mats; each of us took one; Mona settled next to me, in a position that was somewhat central, but toward the back. The room took thirty minutes to fill, and then without preamble, the AI began delivering instructions in proper concubine behavior to us. Periodically, it would ask a question; Mona was apparently bored, so she was a favorite target. "Are you allowed to slap a sponsor? Mona Tafarelli?"

"No," Mona replied.

"What are the repercussions?"

"The sponsor may proffer any punishment, up to and including death," Mona replied, as if by rote.

"Correct," the AI replied. "Your boredom was evident. Clearly, it is a result of the effects of repetition. Your scholastic achievement is also evident, Mona Tafarelli. You may leave the room if you wish."

"I'm staying for Mama."

"Very well."

"So you know all this?" I whispered.

"We had it in school," Mona whispered back. "I made straight 'A's in Concubine Studies."

"That's right..." I remembered her report card -- and wondering what Concubine Studies was. "You made it seem like Home Economics."

"It IS, for concubines," Mona replied. "It's also Sex Ed."

"Oh?" I looked at her, my mind a blank.

"Pay attention..." Mona hissed. "If the AI picks YOU, you're fucked!"

It did, too, soon after, and I was -- I stumbled through three wrong answers with the AI chiding me for my lack of attention before handing off to Mona for what was apparently the textbook answer.