June 5, 2067

I woke to the sound of our cabin door's soft, pneumatic closing. I opened my eyes just in time to see my wife come into our spacious living quarters. We had five rooms which was nearly unheard of. Besides the large double-sized bedroom, we had a living room, an observation room and another room, that currently was being used only for storage. That didn't include of course, the large bathroom, and the kitchenette.

Most families on the ship were squeezed into one or 2 small rooms, regardless of the number of people in the family. Square footage was a premium commodity, when all of humanity was crowded into one of the three or four surviving ships that had escaped Earth's destruction. Six had initially launched, two were destroyed before leaving the planet's atmosphere. Another one of the ships had simply disappeared as we travelled together, before splitting up to go our separate ways. The goal being, that whichever ship found a hospitable planet, would contact the other two.

Each ship was roughly the size of a city block square, I couldn't tell what was going on aboard the other ships, but on ours, the population was dwindling faster than our resources.

We had breeding animals for occasional fresh meat, and hydroponic gardens for all the fresh fruits and vegetables we needed. There were also synthetic foods, of numerous types, that could be mixed and thickened and texturized, to simulate almost anything.

Food was not a problem, but depression, over-crowding, and a truly alarming rate of suicide, might doom us long before we either found a new home, or perished in space.

During the first few months it was determined that the disruption of the circadian rhythm, might be contributing to the mental problems and suicides. To solve this problem the ship now simulated periods of day and night. Initially the suicide rates did drop, but in recent months, the numbers of suicides, and outright lawlessness, had increased.

To some degree the fascination with death, destruction and refusal to obey rules had been spurred on by a new breed of would be saviors, who told all who would listen that we were doomed. One of the worst of these bastards, was Brandon Patton, who had personally influenced nearly half of the most recent suicides.

Brandon claimed that we had become a new type of society, so the rules and laws of the old one somehow, no longer seemed to apply. Many of the young, and a few of the not so young people on the ship, believed this crap, including my wife Kelly who was currently both embracing Brandon's creed, and fucking Brandon.

I watched Kelly watching me, as she walked into the bedroom, fresh from another night with Brandon.

"You should have your suits made with zippers," I said to her, "That way, you could get into, and out of them faster."

"Let me handle the fashion advice," she snapped, starting another morning argument.

"Kelly, why can't we just get a divorce, and just go our separate ways," I asked her for probably the 20th time.

"Brandon's just a fling, it'll end," she said trying to hug me.

"Kelly, it's been over a month," I told her as I moved just out of her reach.

"You know I love you Tommy," she said as if that was supposed to mean something.

"Then why do you spend all of your fucking time, fucking Brandon?" I snapped.

Kelly flinched at the anger in my tone.

"Because, I'm bored with us right now," she said.

"For right now, I don't want to be loved and cuddled and made love to," she said.

"I want to be chained and humiliated and fucked," she snapped.

"You aren't capable of doing that, because you love me," she said quietly, "I'm precious to you."

"So I had to find someone who can give me what I need," she added.

At that moment, she really did not understand how close I was, to giving her what she needed, and more.

"It probably didn't help, that we were happy, before he started filling your head up with all of his crap," I snapped, "Let's just get the divorce."

"A divorce is not in either of our best interests," she added.

"All a divorce would mean is that we would no longer be married," she added.

"That would be bad for you, because you wouldn't be able to have sex with me anymore," she said.

"And we wouldn't be able to spend all our time together," she said.

"And you love being with me," she said, assured of both my love and her beauty.

"Then in a few weeks when I'm tired of Brandon, and you realize how much you miss me, we'd just have to get married all over again," she said smiling.

"We belong together Tommy, for all time," she said, "There'll never really be anyone else for either of us."

"So you need to be mature and indulge me, just this once," she said, "Because getting a divorce would not be a good thing for you,"

"I might just decide to make you suffer for a while, before I took you back," she said, " I might even fuck a few more guys, out of spite."

"When you consider how much you love me, and how jealous you get, a divorce would not be a good thing for you, my love." she said.

"It would be pretty shitty for you too," I snapped.

"Going back to your old status," I continued, and I realized that I had finally figured it out.

"There was no more personal wealth aboard the ship. Status was everything in the onboard hierarchy. Status, determined when you ate, and how much. Status determined where you lived, and the size of your living quarters. Status determined whether or not you had to work, and the kind of work you did.

If I threw her out, or divorced her, my beautiful wife would have to go back to working. She'd also return to living in the cramped quarters she had shared with five others, when I met her.

She probably loved having Brandon smacking her around and using her, but she loved living with me just as much. I turned away from her, and started to dress.

"What are you doing," she asked, "I need you right now."

As I watched, she began taking off her clothes. The sight of her perfect body never failed to excite me.

"Brandon, just hit me and spit on me, and made me suck him off, last night," she said.

"I could use some of that love and affection of yours right now," she whined.

"I have something to do this morning," I said.

"You're saying that you don't want to have sex with me?" she asked. Her face took on a very serious look, because this was new territory.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, save it up for Brandon," I snapped.

I opened the closet that was built into the wall, and grabbed some clothes. I took them into the bathroom with me. This was another of our luxuries, the private bathroom in our cabin. Fewer than 10% of the quarters on the ship had private bathrooms. Our bathroom had an actual fluid tub and shower. It was a synthetic fluid true enough, but no one, had actual water tubs anymore. Water was too valuable to waste for cleaning or bathing. But the fluid tub was still a very rare luxury. Most used infrared or ultrasonic showers, and few if any, had tubs of any sort.

"Tommy, there are lots of marriages, like ours and even worse," she told me as she walked in on my shower.

"Except for the problem we're having right now, we're very happy," she said. "And I keep telling you this will be over soon, and I'll be faithful again," she added.

"Do you think that temporarily, until the thing with Brandon runs its course, we might consider an open marriage?" she asked. "I know you were angry with me, after the Miranda thing, but I did it for you," she said. "I was sure you'd like her, and then my being with Brandon, wouldn't matter so much," she said, "Maybe I just picked the wrong woman."

"I know lots of other women though, who would leap at the chance to be with you," she said. "I picked Miranda, because she's my friend, and wouldn't try to steal you from me, " she said, "But also because she's nowhere near, as pretty as I am," she added. "I'm not going to let some other woman, end up being married to you," she spat.

"Kelly, we finally agree on something," I said.

"The only problem we have, is in the terminology," I continued.

"You want to call it an open marriage, I want to call it a divorce," I said.

"No!" she said, "No divorce."

"Kelly," I said as I dressed, "I'm tired of you and Brandon."

"Open marriages are good for our society," she said, "It gives us the chance to spread our genetic material around." "There are so few babies being born now, that we have to be willing to do whatever it takes; Just to make sure that our species continues."

"Think of what it would mean if we had a baby," she said.

"It would mean, that you and Brandon, might be able to live together, in a slightly bigger dorm, with slightly fewer people." I said.

"I would never, try to raise a child with Brandon," she said seriously.

"He's just not daddy material," she said trying to kiss me.

She looked at me in shock, as I pushed her away.

"Kelly," I told her, "I've never been very good at dancing, so let's stop dancing around."

"I want you to think very seriously, about what you want, because very soon, one way or another, our lives are about to change," I said.

She put out her hand to touch me, and I moved.

"Why are you being such an asshole?" she snapped. "I told you I don't love Brandon, I love you," she said. "But life on this fucking ship, is like one long slow march to the grave," She cried. "It's just the same God Damned thing, over and over and over again," she said. "There's no change, no variety, no fun, no uncertainty," she snapped.

"I love you, very, very much, but I need to do something wild and crazy every once in a while, or I'll go fucking insane," she screamed. "And that's why I go to Brandon," she snapped. "I don't even think he knows my name," she said, "To him I'm just some bitch. He'd just as soon slap the shit out of me, as fuck me," she said.

"I'm not even sure he isn't gay, because he only actually fucks me when I beg him to," she said, "And even then, he fucks me like he hates me."

"But having him beat me, or just grab me and shove his dick down my throat, and then throw me out into the hallway half naked; it lets me know that I was close to being injured or killed," she continued. "And it just revs me up to the point, that all I want to do is come home, and have you pamper me, and love me," she cried.

"And now you don't want to do that," she said quietly. "You won't even kiss me," she said.

"You're supposed to be my husband who loves me, and you won't even kiss me," she whined.

"Nope, maybe if I start treating you a little bit shittier, I'll remind you of Brandon," I said as I left the chamber.

There were several different classes of people on the ship. Class one was comprised of Engineers and Scientists. Class two, was the Medical staff and the upper levels of the Military. Class three, Academics and Politicians. Class four were Service and Maintenance technicians. And finally class five were Entertainers, Artists and Athletes.

The lower your class number the higher your status. there were also subclasses within the main designations.

I was a senior engineer, Kelly was a dancer, the funny thing about it was that for the first few years that we were together, we were very happy. She'd never said a fucking thing about being bored or depressed, until she met Brandon.

I went into one of my labs on B deck. I logged onto a terminal as if I was checking my messages. I looked around to see if anyone was observing me, and I needn't have worried, since B deck was off limits to 95% of the passengers and crew.

Then I checked the recorded feeds from my hidden digital cameras. As the video feed came up I, smiled. Kelly and Brandon were still using life pod 113 for their trysts. I had steered them to it, by making sure that it was the only one, that was ever unlocked during the times that they could meet.

As I watched the video feed, I chuckled a little bit, because Kelly hadn't actually lied to me. I saw Her and Brandon enter the pod's cramped confines. Brandon immediately slapped Kelly across her face, hard. Then he knocked her down, and bent one of her arms behind her back. While she struggled, he reached into one of the wall pockets in the pod, and brought out some kind of paddle. he pushed Kelly's face down into the floor, so her ass was sticking up. Then he put his foot on her head, and started smashing her pretty face into the pod's carpet covered flooring. He also pulled Kelly's pants down, and beat her bare ass with the paddle. Her ass turned a bright shade of red, and she was crying and begging him to fuck her.

Then Kelly collapsed on the floor, as he let her go.

"Get up you stupid bitch," said Brandon. Kelly dutifully got up, and started trying to get to her feet.

Brandon spit on her several times, then pushed her back down to her knees, and told her to open her mouth.

"Suck it bitch!" he snapped.

I watched as my wife walked quickly over to him on her knees and reached out for Brandon's dick. As she started trying to give him a blowjob, Brandon smacked her in the side of her head.

"You can't do shit right, you useless cunt!" he screamed. He grabbed her and jammed his dick down her throat, then started fucking her face as hard as he could.

It was really difficult, not to turn away from the screen, because it just seemed so brutal to me. The sounds alone, were more than I could stand, and luckily I didn't have to watch anymore as the chiming from my communicator alerted me to a call.

I knew that it would probably be Kelly, now that she'd had a chance to decompress from what Brandon was still doing to her on the screen, she'd really be in the mood to be pampered and stroked.

I was surprised to see the call was from Kelly's friend Miranda.

Miranda was really nice, she was a lower level scientist, a historian really, and she worked really hard at her job.

She and Kelly had been friends despite their differences, for a long time.

Where Kelly was lithe and beautiful, and gregarious; Miranda had a different type of beauty.

Kelly had short, nearly platinum blond hair, and a megawatt smile, she could work a crowd or a party, like no one else.

Miranda, was shorter and more voluptuous, her long unrestrained, dark hair, and glasses, went well with her shy reticent personality. But if you looked closely enough, you could see that there was a fire burning, underneath that nerd girl image.

I guess that's why I had been avoiding her for the past 3 weeks. Deep down I knew that I might possibly have feelings for Miranda, ever since the incident, and I didn't want them to grow and threaten my marriage. Kelly was my life. Even though she and Brandon had both, instigated and perpetrated the incident.

As soon as I found out about Kelly's affair, I had confronted her about Brandon, she suggested that I meet him and we should all talk.

In our society, marriage was no longer a legally binding arrangement. It was semi formal, and either party needed only say "We're divorced," then fill out a form on the internet. After that the computers did it all. They sent notice to the other party immediately. If the other party was in agreement, the divorce was granted immediately.

If the other party protested the divorce or refused it, both parties would be locked into a chamber together for 24 hours, to work out their differences. If they worked their problems out, there was no divorce and things continued on. If there was no resolution to their disputes, or they both agreed to the divorce, then the divorce was immediately granted. The party that had not agreed was entitled to counseling.

After the divorce, both parties moved back to the status they had without the marriage. In our case I'd continue being a level 1-2, Kelly would go back to being a level 5-4.

In many marriages, both parties had lovers, or simply slept with anyone they chose. Society encouraged sexual freedom, because with the genetic pool being so strained, and the lack of infants being born, we needed to try and procreate more, if only to assure that humanity survived.

Kelly had known how I felt about this, and indeed she'd felt the same way before meeting Brandon. We'd both decided that if we wanted to screw around, what was the point in getting married?

"You belong to me alone," she often told me, even now. If only that went the other way as well.

The meeting with Brandon had taken place, but not the way I'd expected. There was no sit down and talk to each other. We were at a party, Kelly introduced me to him and I was underwhelmed. He seemed like every other drunk, greasy, pissed off twenty something guy to me. He had the reputation of being some kind of Messiah of the Misinformed, but his charm was lost on me; maybe it was just blocked by my jealousy.

At any rate after a drink or 2, I was feeling horny as hell, and dizzy. I remember fucking, like I had never done before, it was raw and animalistic, and it felt like I had expended all of my bodily fluids at once.

I woke up with the biggest smile on my face, I was sure that Kelly would dump Brandon after that. I reached for her, and noticed that her skin, seemed somehow softer. I cupped her breast and it was softer as well, and much larger. I almost couldn't feel the stiffness caused by the saline bags. Shit, in my dazed state, her breast felt real. Then she stirred and moaned. The sound of her voice got my attention, because it wasn't Kelly's voice.

I sat up in bed and blinked my eyes to see what was going on.

I was in bed with Miranda. I jumped out of the bed and looked for my clothes. I quickly dressed and my movements lured Miranda out of her dream state. I noticed that before her eyes opened she had a smile like the one I'd felt upon awakening. I quickly made coffee, to help her get over what was bound to be an unpleasant shock for her. I had my suuspisions as to what had happened but I needed to be sure so I called for a nurse to do a drug screening on both of us.

I got warm, dry and wet towels, from the bathroom and slowly approached the bed.

"Miranda," I said softly.

Her eyes clicked open, and she reached for her glasses. I looked around the room and found them, discarded in a corner near the bed. I handed them to her, and she looked at me. Her shock wasn't nearly as great as mine had been, but there did seem to be some embarrassment. I could tell this because she pulled the sheet up, to cover those amazing breasts.

I handed her the coffee, and she took a sip without saying anything. Then I handed her a warm towel, and told her I'd find her clothes, and give her some privacy.

"I'm sorry," I said to her as I handed her clothes to her, "Can I get you breakfast?"

She simply got out of bed, and started dressing in front of me, and though I was trying to be a gentleman my body was reacting to her nakedness.

"Well that's a change," she said, "Last time one of Brandon's friends raped me, I didn't get treated half as nice as this."

"I woke up, not knowing what had happened," she began," And some idiot wearing makeup, like a woman, was leaning over me, telling me to get my fat ass out of his dorm."

"But this time, I get good coffee and an offer of breakfast," she said, "I guess that's to cover your guilt."

"Apparently," she said looking at my obvious erection, "You didn't get enough last night."

"I'm sorry I find you attractive," I said, "But that's beyond my control."

"I have no intention of trying to do anything about it though," I said.

"Why do you think I'm attractive," she asked, "Fat girls really aren't in style."

"So would you like that breakfast?" I asked avoiding the question.

"Yes I am a little bit hungry," she said, "But I'd like to talk, more than eat though."

She followed me, to our small dinning and kitchenette area, looking around as she walked.

"Holy shit, this place is huge," she exclaimed.

We sat down and had coffee, toast, and synthetic bacon. She looked at me over her glasses. The eyes behind the glasses, were the bluest I'd ever seen. An unusual shade of blue as well. Most blue eyes, are the sky blue shade, hers were so deep and dark a blue that it was like looking at those pictures or videos of the ocean.

"I'd never have expected this of you," she said, breaking our temporary silent period.

"You're Kelly's husband, aren't you?" she asked.

"Why do this?" she asked, "Kelly's beautiful, she should be enough for you."

A chiming interrupted my response. I rose from the table and opened the door. I went back into the kitchenette, followed by a woman in a nurse's uniform. She removed a syringe from her kit and had me roll up my sleeve. She then withdrew a small amount of blood from me, and labeled the syringe. She stood in front of Miranda.

"Miranda, she needs a blood sample from you as well," I said. Miranda held out her arm as she continued to eat her breakfast.

A few minutes later the nurse was gone leaving us the instantaneous results of the test.

"You weren't a part of this were you?" she asked, "I should have figured that out, you're acting too nice."

I shook my head.

"They drugged you too," she said in an exasperated voice as she read the test results.

"It would seem that way," I said.

"I should have known there was a reason for you to be all over me like that," she said quietly.

"I confronted Kelly about Brandon, and I guess this is part of some plan she has," I said.

"Like I said before, I'm sorry if my problems dragged you into this," I continued.

"Kelly and I obviously have some talking to do," I said.

"So, do you think you guys are going to go the open marriage route?" she asked.

"Never!" I said," I bit harsher than I intended.

"I guess I'm a little bit old fashioned when it comes to things like that," I said softer.

"I really believe that if we are to rebuild, or transplant our society," I began, "We need to do it with all of our values, including the sanctity of marriage, and the family intact."

"Even the animals, down on the zoo and breeding levels, have a family structure of some type." I said.

"I want to live out the rest of my life, whether we find a planet, or just pass this ship on to the next generation, waking up to the same, warm comfortable woman, who loves me," I said.

"Not wondering where the hell she is, or who she slept with," I said.

As I was doing my speech, I failed to hear Kelly enter the room.

"I need a full time wife, not a part time whore," I said, "I can get all the sex I want, just by offering a night or two in my chamber to some level 1 woman."

I heard Kelly start crying, and run into our bedroom, too late to do anything about it.

Kelly had cried for hours, before I could even calm her down enough to talk. I guess from hearing only the tail end of my conversation with Miranda, she'd come to the conclusion that I was calling her a whore. And I also got the impression, that on some level, she really did love me, but Brandon just touched her somewhere that I couldn't reach.

Brandon, preached Anarchy, to those who would listen. His whole spiel said that basically we were flying through space, on a mission to nowhere, and we'd all die of boredom eventually. We did the same things day in and day out, but to what end. Perhaps a quick death would be better than slowly dying over an endless parade of wasted days made up of the same old things.

A lot of the people bought into it. Others gave him nicknames like, Doctor Doom, Dispenser of Depression, Messiah of Morons, Baron of Bullshit, to name a few. My favorite was "the Raven" referring to a historical writer Edgar Allen Poe's harbinger of doom.

The one thing, that most of the truly thinking people realized, was that though Brandon preached, ending the boredom, or dying a quick death. He had never taken the opportunity to do so himself. In fact, for a man who had done so much to encourage suicide, he was amazingly lacking when it came to having the courage to do it himself. For a man who preached pain as a way of affirming that one was still alive, he was always the one dishing out the pain, and never the one who received it.

After a few days that were almost back to normal, Kelly of course, returned to Brandon, and until this call, I hadn't heard from Miranda.

"Miranda," I said, answering the call.

"How've you been?" I said.

"I'm fine," she said in a bubbly voice. I didn't know what to expect when I'd taken the call, but this wasn't it.

"Actually," she continued, "I might be better than fine, but I need to talk to you."

"When," I asked cautiously.

"How about now?" she said, "I'm in the Transport museum, have you ever been here?"

"No," I said.

"OK," she chirped, "No big deal, hardly anyone ever comes here anyway. I'm sending you coordinates," she said, "Get here as quickly as you can."

I guess sometimes I forget how big this ship really is, it took me nearly fifteen minutes to walk to the Transport museum. I really had nothing to do today anyway, other than some routine computer maintenance. I was probably going to work on my scorched earth plan, for dealing with Brandon, but the mechanics of that were already in motion, and I hoped that it wouldn't be necessary.

The Transport museum was of course deserted. On a ship where space was a premium, I really didn't understand why we dedicated so much space to items from the past anyway. Most of the important things could be viewed as 3-D holograms anyway. For things that had to show growth or change over time, there were 4-D holograms as well.

I hated coming into areas like this. The computer that monitored power consumption was barely providing any power to the lights in this area, because it was so God damned deserted.

Then a thought crossed my mind. Maybe Miranda was luring me down here, as some sort of revenge for what happened to us? No, that wasn't plausible because we'd both been used by Brandon and Kelly. Maybe Brandon was using her to lure me down here to have me killed or captured. But that also wouldn't make sense because Kelly would never allow it. If anything happened to me, she was back to being a level 1-4 and Brandon was even lower than she was.

As I contemplated the reason for my possible demise, the door to the Transport museum opened.

Miranda waved me inside excitedly and closed the door behind us. Miranda had changed over the past 3 weeks. Her long dark brown hair had been cut to mid back length, instead of its previous below the butt dimension. She also had it styled in soft waves and curls, which was striking and quite different from the way most women wore their hair.

The current trend was alarmingly straight hair, that was very short or to collar length at the most. Women looked more like those Anime characters from the 80's comic books than female human beings.

The difference in the length of her hair made an astounding difference, though one wouldn't have thought it. I guess hair below the butt says my hair has never been cut and I'm 200 years old. Hair at mid back with those highlights just said, I'm different from all of those look- a- like cartoon characters, so take a look.

The giant glasses were gone, thank God, and the way those soft waves of brown hair framed those special blue eyes was intoxicating.

Miranda had changed the clothes she wore as well. Instead of wearing a simple one piece jumpsuit, or two piece uniform like nearly everyone wore; Miranda had on period clothing.

I don't remember the years that they'd been in fashion, but I liked it. She had on a top that was cut out in the front to show those beautiful breasts that I remembered. If I looked closely I could see some kind of harness under the top was supporting them.

On her lower body, she had on some kind of garment that went from her waist to just below her butt, it showed nearly all of her legs. I was sure that if she sat down wrong, I'd be able to see what she wore under it. Her legs were bare, which was amazing to me because outside of porn, I'd never seen bare legs on any woman other than Kelly, and Miranda of course.

Miranda's body wasn't like Kelly's. Kelly had the kind of body that most women sought these days. She was tall and thin, with slim hips, and she'd had implants put in, that gave her an almost disproportionate breast size.

Miranda on the other hand was shorter, thicker and her hips were nowhere near slim. Miranda's behind was rounded and padded. I'd thought a lot over the past few weeks about how comfortable I'd been waking up next to that large soft butt; I couldn't get it out of my mind.

Miranda's breasts, like I've already mentioned were amazing. Where Kelly's, were sculptured to perfection and always pointed up at an angle; Miranda's were far larger and they hung lower. They were also so soft and smooth and yielding. I imagined her leaning over me and them dangling just out of reach of my tongue. Kelly's breasts were like firm sponges and never moved, regardless of the position she was in. As much as I loved Kelly I don't think I'd ever spent nearly as much time thinking about her breasts over the years, as I had thinking about Miranda's over the past 3 weeks.