Chapter 5

Note: When the conversation is telepathic, it is indicated by italic font.

Sarah, Sally, Terry and Rusty had just sat down to lunch when Sarah asked Donna to replay the conversation they’d had shortly after she woke up. After the replay it was quiet for a few moments then Sally said, “I understand why you reacted the way you did. You certainly did it better than I would have.” Terry nodded her agreement. “So now that both of you have had time to think about it, what’s your assessment?”

“Don’t have one yet. We’ve batted around options and sort of prioritized them,” replied Rusty. “I think, that is all we can do until we meet with the administers.”

“I picked up on those earlier.”

Sarah said, “We had dinner with Dorothy and Maria last night. Afterward Dorothy told us about her experiences since her disappearance. Basically both of them ended up at Sylvia’s baby farm in some remote location. Based on her description and time to get there, it likely in the high plains. From what we heard, it isn’t clear that Sylvia initiated their enslavement, but she apparently acquired them to assist the farm’s doctor. They were given the choice of doing that or having babies. We are impressed by how well they handled the humiliation and abuse.”

“It sounded like what was intended for Zoe’s group,” added Rusty.

“Yes. Without comparing the details, Dorothy and Maria’s conditioning seems better planned and executed. Donna, may have recorded it if you want to hear it first-hand.”

Sally responded with, “I think I would like to hear it, if it’s recorded, to see how it fits with the tales Zoe’s group told. If Dorothy tells the story again fine, but I’ll have no part in encouraging her to.”

“Donna, did you record the story Dorothy told last night?”

“Most of it. I missed the first part as it didn’t seem to be appropriate. What I have begins with the game of tag to the end. After hearing it, I thought it was appropriate to send to the administrators for their review. I hope you are comfortable with me doing that.”

“At the moment, I’m very glad you did. Would you replay that for us?”

“Sure.”

As they listened to it Sally and Terry didn’t try to control their emotions. When it was over, Sally said, “That was awful. Although I think Alicia got off easy. She basically killed six people in a very bizarre and extreme manner for strictly selfish reasons.”

“Based on what I heard, there are some differences between their conditioning and what Zoe’s group experienced,” added Terry. “It is not clear to me the reason for the differences.”

“Well it looks like there might be another chapter,” replied Sarah then told them of last night’s dream.

“You both had the same dream which took you to Sylvia’s farm!” responded Terry. Her tone clearly indicated her amazement. “How? Why?”

“Actually,” said Rusty, “we went together in the dream. How or why, we don’t know.”

“So was this dream different to the one you had of us coming here?” asked Sally.

“Yes. Very different. Last night was more like a travel log than a dream, sort of like the old TV series ‘You are there.’”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It ran in the mid 1950’s. It was pretty neat.”

“Sarah,” said Donna, “may I share that with the administrators?”

With Rusty nodding Sarah said, “I presume you mean that we had a dream, and sure. We’ve never had a dream quite like that. So if they have some insight we would like to hear it.”

It was an hour or so later when the four of them entered the conference room and sat down next to each other at the table. Their attention was soon drawn to five shimmering images forming across the table from them. As the images gained substance, they could see four women and one man. Sarah and her friends stood up and smiled as their images took solid form.

“Welcome to our new outpost,” said the man.

“Thank you,” said Sarah. “It is a very beautiful place from what I’ve seen.”

“We agree. My associates and I have been overseeing this outpost since we acquired it about nine months ago. We hope you find the accommodations acceptable. We know there are issues which we will try to address and see if we can find acceptable resolutions.

“Between us, we normally communicate utilizing our mind-link which we believe is very similar to the link between the four of you. Our mind-link is telepathic in nature but provides us with more information than verbal communication. Because of this, we seldom address each other by name. So, to make things easier for us to communicate with you, we have decided to begin using names that you should be comfortable with. So please call me Jim. The lady next to me is Amy. Together we oversee the operation of this location. Next is Erica who handles security issues and tactical operations. Next are Betsy and Connie who are key members of our small medical staff.” Each nodded as he said their names. “Our mind-link is currently slightly different than yours in that, we communicate telepathically with Donna. She has told us that you have many questions for us. But first, Donna please have Dorothy bring us some refreshments.”

While he was talking, Sarah and her friends had looked them over very carefully. They were all very beautiful people. All four appeared to be well over six feet tall, probably close to seven feet, but not as tall as they were. Their shoulders were broad like theirs. They were wearing a light semi-transparent covering that clung to their bodies. Due to their covering it wasn’t clear, but it looked like their breasts were as large and as firm as theirs. Their hair reached down to just below their shoulders. It didn’t take long for Sarah and her friends to individually realize that their bodies were now very similar to their hosts. When they opened their mind-link a bit, they realized their perceptions were similar. They glanced at each other and then back to their hosts.

Dorothy arrived with refreshments and then quickly left. She hardly looked around while she was in the room.

After refreshments were served Jim continued with, “We have made some adjustments in our operations here since Sarah and Donna first met. Donna will now relay your questions to us immediately. That need will likely diminish when your telepathic ability is stronger. We expect this growth will enable you to converse with her telepathically and with us on the ship. We don’t know how quickly that will happen but we want to slowly open our telepathic network to you. The reason for including you is to avoid misunderstandings. We are doing it slowly so we don’t overwhelm you with information. At the moment our medical staff is unsure of your telepathic dynamics or its limitations as they seem to be a bit different than ours. We are impressed with the way Sarah’s and Rusty’s has grown since they’ve been up. You’ve all reacted very positively to suddenly being in a very different environment with significant unexpected changes in your bodies. We hope this bodes well for us working together. To be honest, we are not sure we would have adjusted as well as you all seem to be doing.

“We have a lot to cover and we are willing to answer any questions we can as they come up. But if you could hold them until the end, we think, we will have answered most if not all of them by the time we complete our presentation. Will that be okay?”

“Yes,” replied Sarah with her friends nodding their agreement. “Hope you don’t mind if we add a comment, if we feel it’s necessary.”

“Please do. We just didn’t want to get bogged down in questions and answers and miss a key point. Now when we arranged to bring you here, we were under the impression you had fully agreed to participate in our project. To be clear, the project was for women to fill the role of surrogate mother for us. In that role, they would bear two sets of twins for each of ten birthing cycles. The compensation had several aspects to it. Those were: Funding for four years at a top tier college or equivalent cash. An extended lifetime. Health would be unaffected by having babies. A lifetime of health care. Elimination of any chronic health issues. In addition there would be a few minor changes in their body. I think I covered all the main items, but I am sure Connie will correct me where necessary. So that was the purpose of our project. The why we will address in a bit.

“We’ve had one group of surrogate mothers assist us. There contract was up over a year ago. They chose to remain a family group so they bought a farm. We assisted them with the move and getting settled.

“We began looking several months before their contract was up. Previously we ran ads in college community papers, we were reluctant to do that again. This time we found a website devoted to surrogate mothers. After monitoring it, we expressed an interest in finding women to fill the role as surrogate mothers as part of a medical study. We indicated it was a long term study and thus our preference for a group of friends. The response was pretty good. We were working through the list of those interested when we received an inquiry from Sylvia. She indicated that she was sure she could find us suitable candidates if she knew the details of our criteria for a finders fee of course.

“After some back and forth, she provided us with a group of candidates several weeks later. So we dropped our efforts. It started off well, they seemed to get along well and readily assisted with different things around the site. However, about the time, we were at the point for them to become pregnant, significant incompatibilities surfaced among the participants. While attempts were made to resolve them, we soon came to the realization that the group would not be suitable. So we decided to release them from their contract. When we advised Sylvia of the issue and that we planned to release them, she immediately apologized and offered to handle their return. So arrangements were made and the group departed.

“While this was taking place, Sylvia indicated that she knew of another group that appeared to be a much better fit for what we were seeking. She assured us that this proposed group were very close friends and had been together for several years. We indicated an interest so a few days later she provided profiles and medical histories for this new group. After reviewing the information, we agreed to accept the group. She told us it would take the group a month to make arrangements. We found that acceptable. As you’ve likely guessed, this was your group.

“While we stipulated that we wanted you all to arrive at the departure point asleep, the way you arrived was not quite what we expected. Connie was surprised by the way you all were transported. She did inspect it before agreeing to accept you all. From what she could tell, you had been fed and had water available during the trip. A quick health check confirmed you all were okay, just sedated. Rather than wake you, you were carried to the plane. Connie had Dorothy and Maria to gather their things and board the plane. With the plane ready to depart, Connie authorized a wire transfer of the agreed to finders fee to Sylvia.

“You all arrived here with no problems. Betsy, me, and several bots assisted Connie, Dorothy and Maria in moving you to a sleeping area. Betsy and Connie carefully checked all of you over. During this they took blood and tissue samples. A technician began their analysis shortly after that. About this time, Dorothy asked Connie what to do with the vials in the bag. When Connie checked it she found several vials for each of you along with treatment instructions. With that question and finiding, the situation began to go side ways.

“One vial contained the initial sedative you were given by injection as we planned. The food you consumed also had a sedative in it as we planned. What wasn’t a part of the plan were the other vials. Each had one of your names on them, with instructions. Per the instructions, they were suppose to give you an injection periodically from these vials. They gave the initial injection to each of you. The following injections were at timed intervals, however, that is hard to do if you don’t have a watch or a clock.

“Since our protocol did not include any injections, none were given on your arrival. Not having the equipment here to analyze the solution in the vials, Betsy sent them to the ship. About this time the bot had the results from the blood and tissue analysis. Both doctors noticed several parameters were out of bounds based on your medical history, which caused them to wonder about the vials contents.

“So while they waited for the results from the ship, they coached each of you through using the benches to exercise and consume some nutrients. It was the next morning when the results came back from the ship. The vials contained hormones and growth factors. Several vials had additional items for which they were trying to determine their purpose.

“We knew right away that the growth factors would alter portions of your body and their effect was enhanced by the hormone inclusion. On reviewing your paper work, there is no indication that you all wanted to modify your appearance. Betsy and Connie decide to raise your awareness so they could telepathically interview you. This is not as easy as it sounds, in part due to the difference in how we think and store information. The interviews seemed to go well. Medical history checked. During this they learnt that you had entered the trailer willingly but felt drugged. All of you indicated you were abducted. They found no indication that any of you wanted to alter your body.

“After conferring with those on the ship, it was decided that we should place you in the incubators. So right after you were fed and exercised, they brought you to the ship. On arrival each of you were prep’d then placed in an incubator. We found it difficult to determine the intended affect of the components we had trouble identifying. Eventually we found an obscure study where it claimed that the odd components enhanced the growth factors activity. With the discovery of this information, we thought that the women’s breasts would see a significant increase in size, perhaps double. Along with this there would be a substantial increase in milk production. With no other changes in the body, we knew it was a recipe for a lot of discomfort and health issues.

“It was quickly agreed that there was only one solution. That was to treat you as if you were one of us who had a life threatening injury. A cocktail was prepared for each of you while the discussion raged on whether our directives permitted us to act as we needed to. Normally we require verbal agreement from the individual or their legal representative before beginning. In your case it wasn’t possible. The issue was solved by answering the simple question of ‘If it was me would I want to proceed.’ No one could bring themselves to say no. So here we are.

“All of us hope you agree with our choice.”

Sarah looked at her friends then said, “Thank you. While not changes I would have sought, I am quite comfortable with my appearance.”

Terry, Sally, and Rusty said, “We agree.”

“Now before we go further, we wish to apologize for approach Donna took with Sarah right after she woke up. At the time, we still weren’t sure that we fully understood your responses during the telepathic interview. So the intent of her questions was to clarify the situation. It is obvious now that we were deceived. What is not clear is why Sylvia felt the needed to inject you with the other stuff. Regardless, we’re responsible for you being here so correcting your health issues was our first priority, so we focused on that. Between your arrival and Sarah waking up, we found more clues of her deception but no hard facts. When we heard the interaction between Sarah and Donna confirmed our worst fears. So, again all we can do now is to apologize and find a solution that works for all of you.”

Sarah said, “While I was a bit irritated at the time, I now have a better of appreciation of why you chose to treat us the way you did. So apology accepted but I don’t feel one was needed.”

“A simpler explanation of the treatment you received is that we combined our DNA with yours in a very specific manner. This is a very basic way to alter a body with minimal complications if any. This capability was established a very long time ago to deal with severe injuries and or major health issues. It is a technique that is well beyond Earth’s current medical knowledge. We have had use of it for a very long time and has been a significant asset on long voyages. It is also the only way we were certain, that the initiated changes in you could be thwarted.

“Are there any questions regarding this?”

Laughing Rusty said, “I think you covered it well. Again thanks for considering it as if you were wearing my shoes. From my perspective let’s move on.” Sarah, Terry, and Sally nodded their agreement.

“Okay. Another item noted in our initial telepathic interviews, each of you expressed concerns regarding Alice, Bob, Nancy and your other friends at the estate. A short time after you were in the incubators, we heard through a reliable source, that the eight of you had simply disappeared. Although the way it was described, vanished is probably a better term. Even though you left a note, your friends were very worried. Based on these comments, we did a little checking then arranged for a document to appear on their dining room table just before they sat down for a meal. In it we basically said, all of you arrived safely and were recovering from some health issues. We assured them you would be in contact with them as soon as you were well. The time span we indicated was about now.”

“Thank you,” said Sarah. “In the note I left before we were abducted, I simply described a dream I kept having. In it I could identify Rusty, Sally and Terry being with me at a place similar to this along with some other people. While I thought I knew the others, I couldn’t put names to them.”

“Excuse me,” said Connie. “That is sometimes referred to as precognition. Has this happened to you before?”

“Off hand, not that I can remember. If it did, it was nothing like this dream, as this one reoccurred periodically for several months perhaps a year. Each time it was a little different and I retained some of the information. Which in itself is surprising as I don’t normally remember the details of a dream.”

“Thank you.”

“As you have probably guessed, we are not from your planet, nor this galaxy. So the way you phrase ideas sometimes can make it difficult for us to understand the full meaning. This also may have played a role during our initial interviews.

“The first group to assist us consisted of seven women and a man. This group provided us with 185 babies over the course of ten years. Most had at least twins every year. The children were all either placed with adoptive parents on Earth or on our ship. Our ship is currently following Mars in what you know as the Sol – Mars L5 Lagrangian point. The children currently range in age from two to twelve years old. We do monitor the children we placed with adoptive parents.

“Why are we doing this? It is because we need people to repopulate the ship’s crew. We are here because of an accident on our primary ship that occurred a number of years ago for us, considerably more than a century ago by your time scale. The accident resulted in our primary ship entering this solar system on this time line. Currently it is in a stable but at an activity level below standby. It is sufficient to just support us. Of the several thousand crew members only about forty of us survived the accident.” Sarah’s group gasped. “Currently we are just keeping up with repairs. We need to increase the number of biological crew members before we can tackle the more serious damage.

“Our life span is generally several hundred years in your terms. A side effect of the accident is that we are sterile. Several survivors have physical limitations that can’t currently be resolved using the incubators. Our limited medical staff on the ship has been unable to resolve our reproduction problem. For this reason, outside assistance seemed to be our only solution. The other complication is that we don’t know where our home system is, or have the means to contact them. So that approach is blocked.”

Sally said, “Excuse me. Biological crew members?”

“Yes. Sorry I should have been clearer about the crew. On the ship we have sixty-one active androids in addition to the forty crew members. There are more androids but they are currently inactive. Androids resemble us and can handle complex tasks with little or no supervision. We also have quite a significant number of robots. We use the term robot for those designed to do specific tasks. Some of those did the remodeling of these facilities. Is that enough for now?”

“Yes.”

“Our society’s rules generally do not permit us to interact with a species that is more primitive than us, except in emergencies. When your civilization reached the point where you started working on bioengineering via genetics and similar techniques, it began to approach our basic knowledge level. We assisted in establishing a medical research organization. Our initial goal was to see if your species could help us with our fertility problem. As we suspected, there are significant similarities in our DNA. Betsy and Connie set up the facility and hired the key staff to start and run it. The goal of the medical research was to develop techniques for modifying a human’s genetic makeup. They were very successful in developing and perfecting those techniques. These techniques are the basis of current research to correct chronic illness and birth defects. This work has created some political issues on Earth as you probably know.

“Our staff on the ship used similar techniques to transfer significant characteristics of ours to selected humans. The research staff on Earth were not told of our origins or anything about the foundation’s backers. The selected humans were approached with the idea of helping develop new drugs and treatment methodology. Project length was 10 years of relative isolation from Earth’s societies. The other difficulty was that we felt limited in what we could tell them before they committed to the project. There were several other critical characteristics they needed to have before even being considered. Fortunately there were few problems with the first group when we modified their DNA to contain portions of ours.

“Unfortunately, we now know that some of the staff at the center took advantage of these techniques and knowledge to create genetic viruses to alter other humans. They did not have access to our DNA so the mixing of ours and your species was avoided. We believe some of the treatments Sarah received before her arrival here were based on this knowledge. Those treatments created some significant challenges for us in finding a suitable solution for her. If left unchanged, she would have had an unbalanced set of physical attributes which would lead to poor health. This would have been true for the rest of you but we don’t believe they would have been as serious.”

Jim nodded to Amy who said, “Once we knew we could use our techniques to incorporate the appropriate DNA strings in human genes, we began our project to find surrogate mothers. We focused on college age and slightly older and found quite a few interested in the project even though the offer was vague. Betsy and Connie conducted personal interviews with about 60 students before selecting the first group. The selection took a lot longer than we expected. As Jim noted, the exact details of the participation were not disclosed to them until they were at our site on Earth. After arriving and hearing the proposal, they were given the option of not participating. Yes. Doing that created some risks but we felt they were minimal.

“The changes we made were to breasts, overall health and length of life. Even at this point, we weren’t sure how much change was necessary for their babies to develop telepathy and be close to our stature. Telepathic ability is only one of several characteristics required to be a crew member. This aspect was the most difficult one as we haven’t found many humans with a basic potential for telepathy or other psionic abilities.

“All potential participants were told that if accepted they would receive full medical care for life. They would receive sufficient funds to cover four years of college to use as they chose. Our intent was for them to finish their degrees or go to graduate school. The first group of participants was a reasonable success. Once the group of eight were at our remote site, we explained to them in detail what we wanted to do. The first was to make some changes to their bodies before they became pregnant. This delay had the unexpected benefit of the group growing together. After their treatments were complete each female delivered at least twins every year for ten years. We guaranteed them that they would age very little or experience few, if any, physical changes due to delivering 20 or more babies. Any birthing would stop if their health was endangered with no change in compensation. With the modifications to their body any long term diseases would be eliminated or cured. Once the project started none could leave until the end. All the candidates chose to participate. We were thrilled.

“When the first group fulfilled their contract with us, they left as a group. While not acquainted before arriving here, they quickly became good friends and subsequently bonded with one another after about a year. Group bonding is typical for us. But we have learned that it is very unusual for your civilization as you tend to pair up. Even then bonding as we know it rarely occurs. This also seems to be driven by the religious aspects of Earth’s culture which discourages anything other than mating with a single spouse. From our first group, we learned a lot about what we were trying to do. We also learned a lot about human interactions but considering what’s happened not enough.

“We quickly found that it was best if we arranged for the babies to be adopted within a month of birth. If they went for adoption, we sought to ensure that they only went to families with the resources to help a child with exceptional abilities. As expected all children had high IQ’s and to develop rapidly. We plan on approaching them to join us once they reach legal age. A number of the children have already lived up to our expectations. Others have not, but we think a significant part of that was due to the foster family’s environment. Fortunately monitoring the adopted children, enabled us to remove a few of them from a family when their well-being was endangered. Those who went to the ship have generally done reasonably well, but the crew has had some difficulty relating to them. We think this is due to their inexperience with children. A few children do not appear to have the psionic abilities which are needed to participate as a crew member. However, the children are still quite young.

“After your arrival and learning about the treatments administered to Sarah, we had Erica initiate additional checks on the medical research facility staff and Sylvia. Those findings were incredibly shocking and disheartening. We found that several staff members were providing custom genetic virus cocktails to several people including Sylvia. These cocktails were to alter the recipient to make them more sexually appealing and increase their reproductive capabilities. There were other cocktails designed to change other aspects of a human. These clandestine treatments were often administered without consent or consideration of the impact on the recipients health. This activity in our civilization would result in being severely punished.

“Sylvia used these cocktails to expand her ‘farm’. From Dorothy and Maria we’ve learned that she now keeps about sixty women there plus a small staff. Dorothy described the facilities last night and are similar to what you saw in one building here. The treatments result in the recipient being more fertile and able to carry multiple babies with minimal complications. Their breasts are increased to something between what you call an H to J cup. The women seldom go more than two months between pregnancies and lactate continuously. After about ten birthing cycles she sells them through an auction. Women who don’t live up to expectations are sold earlier. The usual buyers are auctioneers, private S&M clubs, brothels and individuals. Some she sells while pregnant. As you know Dorothy and Maria were there before Sylvia had them accompany you here. They have both received augmentation treatments but do not appear to have been over treated.

“Erica found that she is not the only one operating a baby farm but has been unable to locate any others. For the ones she’s been told about, all reportedly use some variation of the genetic virus techniques developed at our facility. Again none of our genetic material is involved.

“On our home planet those actions would get you at least a hundred years of public agony. Erica found indications that Sylvia took the group we rejected to her baby farm. Based on Dorothy’s description, we understand that her farm is quite well hidden in a very desolate area. Based on what was relayed to us today, I think Rusty and Sarah visited it last nights dreams.”