Dear Mom and Dad:

Well, by now you'll have been notified long ago, but this message will confirm it: your little girls were picked up a month ago.

Just like you told us to do, we both went to try to get a sponsor. Tiffany's sponsor is some guy with a 7.4 CAP score. She's with her best friend Katie and some couple with two kids about eight and ten. My sponsor is Gerry, a really nice guy with a 6.8 CAP score who is going to be doing Technical Analysis of the Swarm's stuff. My sister concubine is Eleanor, a lady in her early 30's with a couple of kids, five year old Maggie and seven year old Chuck. Both are bundles of energy, and keep the two of us running. Fortunately Eleanor (she likes to be called Elle) has a nice high nurturing CAP score so she keeps up with them well.

It was a month ago now that we were picked up. We'd made it to the supermarket and had started on the grocery list you'd given us when the big front windows turned grey. We both squealed (very embarrassing, we were trying to be smooth and sophisticated but blew that immediately!) and started looking around.

The Marines (there must have been at least five) took us all up to the front of the store, except those idiots who didn't want to go (they were sent to the stockroom to wait out the extraction) and the littler kids who were sent over to the Produce aisle for the 12 and 13-year-olds to babysit.

The head Marine was cute, I guess — I'm not into girls so I really can't judge — but big! She must have been at least six and a half feet tall, and full of muscles. She announced there were five volunteers at the store, and that they got to choose twelve concubines. The race was on to find a sponsor. I think the first piece of clothing hit the floor before the Sergeant finished her speech.

You know how you'd been criticizing me for wearing so much? Y'know, a shirt with my shorts or miniskirts? Well it came in handy here — the other girls' body paint looked like they were still wearing tops when it was obvious I was nude. This may be TMI, but I definitely got a second look from the boys when lots of the other girls didn't.

Gerry had quickly picked the Mom — highest nurturing CAP score — and started in on the "early Teen" line, and stopped at me. He liked my nurturing skills too, even though my experience drove that number down. He figures that having all the kids around, including those I pop out, will raise my CAP score significantly.

Anyway, Gerry quickly found out I still had my cherry, and decided to test me by having me give him a blowjob. It's not something I was very experienced with, but it seemed to be enough for him. At least I knew enough to keep my teeth off the pole!

You know how you can make wholesale changes to your body with the Darjee medical technology? Because I'm still only 15, Gerry didn't do much except get rid of the zits and fix my teeth and eyesight. Other than that, he says he wants me to "mature" into my role naturally. When I turn 22, he'll lock me into that look.

And so I'm still looking pretty much like I did — but I won't for long. Both Elle and I are preggers, and the AI says they're both boys! You're gonna be grandparents!! As soon as they're born, I'll ask Gerry to send you guys pictures.

Love, Chrissie

Dear Chrissie:

I just got your message. Mom and I both read it, and we're happy for both our daughters. Although we were raised that a 15-year-old was a mite young for a mother, it's a new world and we're happy for you. Yes, please send pictures — also, please send pictures of the rest of your new family.

We also heard from Tiffany. She's pregnant too, she proudly reports, with twins, a boy and a girl. Granted she's seventeen, but even that would still have been considered "too young" when we were that age. You are still "our little girls".

How is life on the colony? We dearly would love to know.

Around here, we've seen a number of houses emptied by the extractions. The Feldenkampfs across the street vanished yesterday, and the Graysons' granddaughter Amanda got picked up with her three little ones. The Graysons are stuck, though, because Martha's too old for kids anymore and Doug has been complaining about the CAP scores — he's way too low to be a sponsor, to nobody's surprise but his. Everyone I've talked to in the neighbourhood agrees Amanda's much better off without her grandfather making her life miserable. It might even raise her CAP score!!

We agreed to take in that Fred Buxton boy from two doors down. He's 15 with a sponsor CAP score, but his parents are now headed off to the stars — they were dining out for their anniversary on the same night that the Confederacy chose to extract from that restaurant. He's looking at putting a pre-pack together, so it looks like we'll have a couple of ladies staying with us as well before too much longer. I've told him what the Public Service Announcements are telling us on TV: "Go for at least one mother and one organizer".

There must be about five houses for sale on this block alone because their occupants have gone to the stars, either as sponsors or as concubines. It's had a depressing impact on the value of housing, and on furniture, cars and other goods, as more and more housing comes on to the market.

Speaking of which, I just read that yet another cloth manufacturer has gone out of business. We just aren't buying so many clothes these days, and the clothes we are buying, don't use nearly as much fabric. I shudder to think what will happen to our economy if those Confederacy replicators end up in wide use.

While your mother is still disturbed by the rampant display of flesh, I find myself curiously unaffected. Oh, sure, in the beginning I almost crashed the family car several times, but by now I've become inured to women wearing little more than body paint.

We've had some good news here: we went for our annual retest the week after your extraction, and I'm now a six point seven, which means I can sponsor your mother. She and I are looking around for a second "spouse" to fill out my pre-pack, preferably with kids of her own. Between my pre-pack and Fred's, we may go from having spare bedrooms with you two extracted to being short on space.

Please send more messages, and we'll keep you up to date on what's happening around here.

Love, Dad

Dear Mom and Dad:

We've been at our new colony for about a month now, and we seem to have settled in. Gerry has finished his Basic Training and is now a Confederacy Navy lieutenant, and looks like he'll be promoted to commander real soon. He's in Intelligence, which means he doesn't go on cruises but stays here.

The colony of Nova Roma is fairly new and we're still terraforming the planet, but we already boast roads and streetlights, and community centres. We've got several townships, each clustered around a set of pods set up by the Civil Service officer (we only have the one for the whole planet, a harassed, overworked woman named Faith Beldane). The little grouping of Civil Service pods is referred to as the "community centre" and provides us with a transporter nexus, a medical bay, classrooms, a nice large party room with a stage, and an interview room. I talked to Faith and got her to set up playgrounds right beside the community centre, and talked Gerry and Elle into volunteering Elle's time to run a drop-in centre for the inexperienced mothers. They've set up this drop-in centre in the party room of the community centre.

Not everyone's as smart as Gerry! Lots of the sponsors thought with their "little head" when they were extracted and picked a pair of fourteen-year-olds who were cute but fluffy, if you get my meaning. This means those sponsors have no concubine in their family with any experience in raising kids and need all the help they can get, so the drop-in centre is proving very popular.

Next month, we're hoping to have baseball diamonds and soccer fields set up. One family's sponsor is from Minnesota and she wants hockey arenas set up, but that's going to have to wait until after more settlers arrive. Apparently a hockey arena is a little too big to fit in a standard pod even when it's expanded to maximum size so the building will have to be purpose-built.

So right now, the colony looks like a high-tech trailer park, but without the grass and trees. Some ship arrived recently with a pod full of plants and trees which we concubines have been busily transplanting around the colony, but it still looks like a rocky desert.

Gerry wants both of us to raise our CAP scores, saying we can have a "shared household" with him if we become volunteers. He had the AI install an additional sleep trainer so that we can trade off between child care and education. He's even got a list of subjects for us to learn, and an order of priority.

I hope you like the pictures. You'll notice I'm not showing yet. It's still too early.

Write back soon. How are my old classmates doing? Has Fred been extracted yet?

Love, Chrissie

Dear Chrissie:

Got your last letter. Before I say much else, let me assure you that everything is OK here. No, Fred's still hoping to be extracted. He's got his two girlfriends, one being his high school Math teacher and the other a classmate. The school is looking the other way as long as they keep their concubine/sponsor relationship confined to outside of regular school hours and extra school events. They're both staying with us, along with his teacher's two little kids who are both as cute as buttons.

Well, we had quite the excitement here last night, let me tell you.

We woke up at about three in the morning to gunshots and yells and cursing, and then there were a few explosion-type "bangs". I got the family into the basement as quick as I could, and we just stayed in the root cellar for the next hour. Not until we could see police cars' lights flashing through the basement windows did we figure it would be safe to come up.

The excitement was over at Peter Johanson's place. It turns out the lucky so-and-so had managed to score a 9.2 on his last CAP test, and somehow the Earth Firsters had gotten wind of it. They decided to eliminate him along with his whole family before they could be extracted.

They didn't, though, because apparently the Confederacy was watching. Two of the attackers were killed outright and five others injured. The Johansons were shaken but unhurt. The Widow Thomas, who lives next door to the Johansons, was cut by flying glass, but other than disrupted sleep and frazzled nerves that seems to be it for any of the neighbours. I'm going around door-to-door to make sure everyone's OK. I might be being nosey, but I'd rather be accused of being nosey than of leaving a neighbour hurt with nobody to check on them.

We haven't heard exactly who the idiot Earth First crew were, but I have to wonder why they'd try to kill those we need most desperately to stop the Swarm. Are they suicidal?

There was another big extraction earlier this week, which might have set off the Earth Firsters — the local elementary school had an open house, and the Confederacy took advantage of that. The school's in sad shape now, with half the students gone with at least one of their parents (and apparently in the majority of cases, BOTH parents) and so are two-thirds of the staff. They're scrambling to get replacement teachers and a replacement Vice-Principal. I've agreed to coach the school's extra-curricular sports, as their regular coach was one of the extractees. I'm told it'll be good for my CAP score, and besides your mother likes to go watch the kids.

We've been warned we can expect more extractions: another colony transport is going to be over the area this weekend, and apparently it's one of those new kilopod ships.

You may recognize some of the recent extractees: the local TV station got hit and lost most of their on-air personalities. They've been replaced by a couple of retirees and some sprogs right out of high school. The community college is rotating their Media Arts students through the TV studio.

Sometimes these extractions leave a mass of confusion behind. Fred, two doors down, had his car in at the repair shop. The mechanic who'd worked on his car is now heading to the stars, and the Confederacy had to find another mechanic to confirm that the repairs were done and then collect the repair bill from Fred. It took him an extra day and a half before he could actually get his car back. No extra charge for the loaner.

The local restaurants have taken to posting signs boasting of how many people have been extracted at their locations. I don't know if this will encourage or discourage people from going there: Has the Confederacy used up their safe times going back to this fishing hole for awhile, or will they try again? Do you want to get extracted, or avoid the situation entirely?

Because of the increased rate of extractions, your mother and I are going everywhere together. She's given up her job at the social services agency, and goes into Dakins Engineering with me. They've cut back our hours, so I'm now working on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and off on Thursday and Friday, which we spend at the elementary school.

Write back as soon as you can, and with more pictures if possible. I'm enclosing pictures of Fred and his pre-pack. Maybe that will encourage the Confederacy to extract them!

Love, Dad

Dear Mom and Dad:

Wow! That DOES sound like you had excitement there! Our excitement has been much less lethal, and I for one hope it stays that way.

We had a big celebration for the launching of two new ships: a kilopod transport named Capricorn Princess and a huge new assault carrier, the New Orleans. We couldn't be up there in orbit, but we gathered in the capital township's central square and oohed and ahhed at the appropriate times. The Navy and Marines and Fleet Auxiliary were all dressed to the nines in their dress uniforms with their Sam Browne belts and shiny boots, and the Governor gave this short (not short enough!) and interesting (OK, boring!) speech. They had a nice martial parade and then they marched through a line of transporter nexuses to board their new vessels.

The carrier is off on training to some other colony for awhile, while the transport is heading back to Earthat (did you know that's the new name for our old Solar System?) to extract another thousand volunteers. Apparently the next colony ship will be one of those new cube ships, and then we'll REALLY start to grow!

The next excitement was smaller, just for our township. The nanites have finished creating the soccer and baseball fields, and as soon as they were ready we had a dozen kids lined up fielding fly balls and dribbling soccer balls. The kids were so excited, and wore themselves right out — my fellow concubines reported their little ones had the best night of sleep since they got here. Elle's two were right in the thick of things.

By the way, they've started to call their own mom "Mom Elle" and me "Mom Chrissie". It makes me feel even more connected to them when they say that. I just love them to pieces. Gerry insists on having us both respond whenever they say, "Mom?" without a name, which he says encourages them to think of both of us as their mothers. It seems to be working.

More of those big ships, the kilopod transports, have arrived recently and the result is tons more people. Our township is full, and so are two others that started after we got here. Poor Faith, she really needs more help. She's got her own concubines helping her, but she only has five of those. She's starting to get some of the other sponsors' concubines doing various jobs around the colony that free up sponsors for more value-added work. Elle now has another three concubines helping her in this township's childcare drop-in centre, and the four are on call if Faith needs an emergency babysitter. The "emergency babysitters" are pre-cleared with their sponsors so all Faith has to do is tell the AI and the concubine is ordered to the community centre, even if the sponsor is on duty up in orbit or on a cruise somewhere. We are also being encouraged to get amateur theatricals and chorus groups going.