This tale is written as a series of first-person narratives by the characters involved -- something none too easy, as it turns out. As a result, a scene may be revisited -- more than once -- each time from the perspective of the individual involved, reflecting how he or she felt about things and what was important -- or unimportant -- to him (or her). You may find this repetitious in places, but I hope you enjoy the variety of responses of the individuals involved -- that was the intent.

Chapter 1

Earth. Frankly, I never thought I'd see the home world again. I got extracted in Year Three of the Diaspora in a classic pickup from a fast food restaurant and transported in a thousand-pod transport to the new colony of Nuevo Angelino, along with a shitload of other Californians (and Mexicans and transplants from a whole lot of other places doing the whole migration to the Land of Opportunity thing). Well, Nuevo Angelino was undoubtedly going to be a better opportunity than anything available in East L. A. after the Swarm hit, so I was more than pleased.

Nuevo Angelino was to be a huge naval base and shipyard. We got what I was given to understand later was a somewhat different start than other colonies, as the Governor, COL Sharpe, wasn't satisfied that we had the asset base that would make us successful. One of the first things he did -- while we were still in transit -- was to collect employment histories for every concubine. COL Sharpe liked to come out with old aphorisms like, "Idle hands are the Devil's playground," -- and be more or less serious about it. His basic platform was that we had a lot of sponsor bodies, but without the support structure -- butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers -- we were going to have a huge bleed-off from our efforts. Concubines sitting at home on their thumbs were a waste of assets. Therefore, he wanted 50% of the concubines employed in colony support at any given point in time.

I had two concubines -- and first Tina, then Dottie entered the workforce in rotation, Tina going first as Dottie was the first pregnant. Were they super-helpful to anyone? Maybe not. Tina, in particular, was 'the lunch girl' at the transporter station that ported the workforce to the orbital shipyards. But you could argue the point (and the Support Directorate chickie -- also a concubine -- who requested her for that job did) that if the workforce didn't have to port down to grab their lunch, there was more time for them to work. Groundside jobs tended to go to the Support Directorate -- which was a fancy name for concubines and a few Civil Service overseers. Anyway, a few months back things switched up and Dottie was doing the working Mom thing as shift supervisor at a distribution center and Tina, who was now about six months preggers, was home trying to get a handle on motherhood by watching Jack Jr. when he wasn't at the local crèche -- a day care for a half-dozen or so families run by a concubine next door who has good nurturing skills.

'Families' is the proper term. Despite horror stories about concubines being recycled into meatloaf at the snack bar and various 'you can kill 'em as long as you don't make a mess' lectures, the bottom line was that concubines are SUPPOSED to be your good right arm -- and need to be treated as such. There are plenty of ways to handle personality conflicts between yourself and your concubine short of turning her into glop -- you can get glop anywhere. You can paddle her ass or whatever, or if she bitches, you can pop over to Medical and shut down her vocal cords for a while. If the whole thing just isn't flying, you can trade her to someone else or for a Civil Service wench who knows a good thing when she sees one. Governor Sharpe put his foot down over excesses early on and it was a good thing, in my opinion. Oh, sure, you can still kill a concubine if you have to, but the review board is going to go into the meeting with a bad attitude; the whole, 'You can't shoot a dog but you can shoot a concubine' thing just didn't make sense...

Bottom line, abusing the mother of your children is counter-productive for domestic tranquility -- and I'm a big believer in domestic tranquility. Just about everyone I know is in total agreement with me, too...

I seem to have drifted, some... Earth. I'd been away a bit over two years; doing something mundane like standing in a supermarket checkout line was sort of surreal, but I was there undercover while we conducted some negotiations -- um, yeah, more about that later. The point was, I was living in a hotel room and I needed supplies to take me through the next few days -- not to mention a pack of strawberry Twizzlers and some other luxuries to take back home for replication purposes. Replicator technology had removed some links in the economic food chain, but supermarkets were still distribution centers for a whole lot of things, since on Earth there still wasn't a replicator in every home -- and there wouldn't be, before all Hell broke loose. So I was standing there, waving my debit card while the chickie at the checkout waved things over the scanner and some girl wandered over to bag things for me...

Real tits sag. Real women who have had real kids have had their breasts swell up and then shrink back -- and that means they don't stick out, unsupported, like gun turrets. Lots of real women come to that point purely through weight gain and loss without going through pregnancy -- but a mother is CERTAINLY going to have some droop to her bust...

Now, I know you're asking yourself, 'What the fuck...?' so I'm going to explain myself, here. You see, the average concubine's tits do NOT droop; through the miracles of Confederacy medicine, a young woman can have fine, puffy, high-riding breasts of just about any shape and size her back will allow her to carry -- and THAT, too, is adjustable. The vast majority of concubines, fourteen or forty four, tend to look like they're somewhere between eighteen and twenty five -- and belong on the cover of a fashion magazine. Pregnancy changes this not a whit -- although it tends to make the poor things look incredibly ungainly while they push around that basketball under their navel -- because as soon as they deliver, nannites start putting them back into the unspoiled, virginal shape they started out with.

Now, in general, this isn't the fault of the concubine; sponsors drive it, and they're looking for the ideal woman when they do it. And we're all naughty little boys and tend to have oddly similar concepts of feminine perfection -- driven largely by the media, in most cases. So there are a lot of blonde concubines out there with breastworks that don't sag a millimeter and killer legs all the way to their asses and, well, you get the picture...

So this sweet thing bends over in front of me to bag my stuff and I end up looking down her tank top at a pair of hooters that are definitely being squashed a bit but are hanging and displaying a deep, soft cleavage -- and I'm all over it, moving here and there so I can track that canyon as it sweeps back and forth...

Well, she catches me and turns a bit pink and turns a bit to the side to rob me of my view -- and I'm standing there wondering exactly WHY I want to climb over the counter so I can reposition...

The checkout chickie is amused; I'm making a total ass of myself for what is clearly no good reason. I get a grip and start the payment transaction and Sweet Thing says to the checkout chickie, "Frieda, can I thut down theven? I need to clean it..." -- and I get this MAJOR boner! She LISPS, for God's sake! I take a good look at her face; she's wearing braces and her upper lip laps over her lower because she doesn't have much in the way of a chin. She has thick, bushy, dark, reddish hair pulled back from a wide forehead into a bushy mass at the back of her head that releases springy little wispies at her neck. Her face is very pale (and a bit pink at the moment, under my startled gaze) and dusted with freckles. Thick, bushy eyebrows almost meet above muddy hazel eyes that hide behind the frames of the glasses that sit on her nose -- which is unfortunately short enough that turning up at the tip makes it a bit hoglike...

I gather myself and circle around to the bagging area to collect my purchases; Sweet Thing goes around behind the counter next to Checkout Chickie and starts digging under the counter, saying, "I need the cleaner..." And Checkout Chickie stands there watching me as my eyeballs trace the three inch strip of pale skin that appears above the three inch strip of flowered cotton panties that appears above the top of Sweet Thing's jeans as she bends over...

Now, the ass in question here was, jeez, twenty-four inches wide if it was a millimeter. Tina could almost have been standing there twice! But I'm ogling it and taking in the little translucent hairs that appear here and there in an expanse so pale you can see the blue of the capillaries under it...

So, to recap, ten days ago before I left home, I got a blowjob from a narrow blonde supermodel (well, she's a bit misshapen from being six months along, but the basics are still there), then fucked a curvy brunette goddess -- both of whom belonged to me and me alone. In transit, I'd fucked two or three similarly stunning specimens placed on board the transport for our entertainment by the Civil Service -- but I was making a total ass of myself over a big-assed, slack-tittied, chunky, brainless looking piece in blue jeans and a tank top under an open jean shirt!

Sober reflection on the matter over the course of several days has led me to understand that, to me, Sweet Thing was exotic. To the normal North American male resident of Earth, she was a commodity, and better could be found just about anywhere you cared to look -- Checkout Chickie wasn't totally hot by any means, but she had Sweet Thing beat -- but I had been looking at carbon-copy 'ideal women' for a couple of years, and her pear shape was something I'd developed a hunger for... At the time, though, I couldn't explain it for the life of me!

Sweet Thing backed out from under the counter to find me where I shouldn't be, between that counter and the next, hovering over her so I could watch that strip of bare skin at the saddle of her back pass by as she backed. She looked at me, startled, then looked at Checkout Chickie, who was grinning, and blushed furiously. I stood there, invading her personal space as she slowly shifted to the vertical -- and my mouth said, "Hey, uh, you wouldn't want to go out or anything...?"

I don't know who was more surprised -- Sweet Thing, Checkout Chickie -- or me!

"I don't think so," she husked.

Reality intruded. I'd done the rejection thing many, many times -- or it seemed that way, anyway. Jack Version 2.0 looked twenty three rather than thirty six, had a bit more hair, whiter and straighter teeth and a bit more chin, but that didn't mean I should have expected much. Oh, I'm more muscular -- but I'm Navy, not a Marine, so I didn't look like the Incredible Hulk. Similarly, I hadn't had my cock up-sized to the length and girth of a Tall Boy (a sixteen ounce beer can); it seemed stupid to then have to alter my women so the damned thing fit them anywhere. I'd been packing a decent eight inches to start with, so I opted to have the thing's recharge time reduced, added a touch of girth, and left it at that. Dottie would describe me as 'boyishly handsome' when she was flirting with me, trying to wheedle me out of something -- but that didn't mean I believed it. Without the cachet of 'sponsorship,' I was no more in demand than Sweet Thing... "Uh, yeah, sorry -- I got carried away," I stammered, and grabbed my four bags of goodies, tucked my head, and slithered toward the door.

The team AI pinged me with, "Are those the selection parameters for the new concubine you are collecting, Jack Harper?" Some AIs don't seem to have any sense of humor, but I fancied that this one had been after me ever since I told it, "Call me 'Jack'." It had responded exactly the way Mrs. Ratzenburger, my fourth grade teacher had, "But your records indicate that your name is John..." Mrs. Ratzenburger had eyed me over her half-glasses and added, "Therefore, you are 'John'," as if that ended the matter. I'd responded to THAT as I always do -- and as I'd responded to the AI twenty-four years later -- "Nobody calls me 'John'." Mrs. Ratzenburger had attempted to press home a victory -- but I refused to respond when she called upon 'John' and eventually, she relented; the AI and I had a short discussion about the relationship between the names John and Jack. I figured it was needling me; surely it knew such things. This time, I growled under my breath at it...

"Mithter..." there was a pluck at my sleeve. I turned and Sweet Thing held out a wad of register coupons -- clearly more than I would have earned. "You forgot theeth...!"

I blinked and accepted them, muttering, "Thank you."

"I was thurprithed..." she murmured, then eyed me sidelong. "Where would we go if I thead yeth?"

'Some where I could fuck your brains out!' my brain screamed. Fortunately, my mouth said, "Dinner? A movie? What's your name?"

"Beth." Later, I was to learn that it was actually Elizabeth -- Elizabeth Hopkins. Ironically, she'd been stuck with a name she couldn't pronounce. "I, um, get off at theven-thirty," she announced coyly.

I looked up; Checkout Chickie was watching us fixedly -- and had probably been the source of the coupon gambit. Seven-thirty was a half-hour away, and I had nothing in my clutch of groceries that required special handling. "I'll wait at the coffee shop next door."

"Okay!" She bounced a little and I thought she was going to clap, then she bustled off, that ass of hers rocking and rolling. Checkout Chickie was grinning from ear to ear. I grinned back and hit the door.

I don't know how it happened; it was like those magazine people just suddenly showed up at the door with the big check and the balloons and TV cameras and stuff! I got up and went in to do my shift as usual -- and everything changed...

I'm nothing special -- well, maybe for a small elephant or something. I've got a lot of problems when it comes to trying to look hot -- too many, actually, and that's BEFORE I have to open my mouth! I have what some people call an underslung jaw -- and not only does it make me look TOTALLY chinless, I don't have room in it for all the teeth that want to be there and it messed up the upper teeth because they moved around, trying to match... And I lisp. Maybe it's the mess in my mouth and maybe it isn't, but I talk funny. Not funny 'ha ha' even though I get laughed at a lot -- it's more funny 'weird' -- and guys stay away...

As for the rest of me, it's 'Yuck!' more or less. I got boobies when I was eleven and they puffed up really big and got me attention despite everything else for about a year, then they went droopy while everyone else's came in nice and firm. But my ass kept growing -- and growing -- and growing... I'm like a size eighteen now and it's mostly butt... There aren't tons of juddering flab -- I don't have chicken wings under my arms or anything and my belly is poochy but doesn't run to rolls... I'm not carrying a fat innertube on my hips, even, but my ass looks like two basketballs stuffed in a gunnysack! Well, maybe soccer balls...

What else? Let's see... I have bushy eyebrows that threaten to be a unibrow and make me look even more like a Neanderthal and I have coarse, muddy auburn hair that's a major fight to get to do anything, so I usually pull it back in a scrunchy or control it with combs -- all I need is streaks to look like the Bride of Frankenstein!

I'm not stupid, but I'm not what Papa used to call 'the brightest bulb in the circuit.' College seemed a waste; there had to be cheaper ways to hunt guys, and besides, I'm the oldest of four in my family; Papa couldn't afford to give me a free ride. So I got a job at the local grocery store...

The lisp causes a lot of people to think I'm mentally challenged, like the bag boys who have Down Syndrome -- but it's just my mouth. Still, it took me a year and a half to get a checkout, while a half dozen REAL ditzes came and went. Frieda, the shift leader, stuck up for me and management finally realized that I wasn't a charity case after all. It was just another fight -- one I won, more or less...

Anyway... That day, I went on shift at eleven-thirty. Things went back and forth, from lines three deep to nothing at all. I bounced around, but was mostly on register seven, and Frieda was on eight. It got slow around six-thirty and I started thinking about shutting seven down -- then some woman came through and dumped hamburger on the belt all tilted and got beef blood on it and that pretty much made up my mind for me. I shut off the light, but I still had to get permission and I still had to clean it up, so I went over to where Frieda was checking out some dude and started bagging his stuff.

It was all bachelor stuff -- you know, shaving soap and junk food and soda and candy -- no real cooking food. I looked up to see what he looked like and he was decent -- short brown hair, nice teeth, strong jaw, nice build... He was ALSO looking down my blouse! I turned a bit to my right, embarrassed, to get his eyeballs out of there, wondering why my saggy boobs had generated that much interest and he moved on to swiping his debit card.

I glanced up at Frieda and said, "Frieda, can I shut down seven? I need to clean it..." Okay, it was REALLY, "Frieda, can I thut down theven? I need to clean it...", but the first one is what I meant... Anyway, the guy's head snaps around and he gets the strangest look on his face! Now, I've had every kind of reaction in the world to my little problem -- except maybe this one. I caught it and looked away, prepared to ignore the whole thing; instead, I moved in to dig under Frieda's counter so I could clean up that beef blood, saying, "I need the cleaner..." I dig around and get the spray bottle and the paper towels and Frieda isn't moving as I straighten up -- AND THAT GUY is like RIGHT THERE next to me! So I look up at him, mildly freaked, and he goes, "Hey, uh, you wouldn't want to go out or anything...?"

So I'm looking at him and I think my brain shut down totally, and I sprouted chicken feathers and mumbled, "I don't think so..."

The guy looked like I hit him! Then he stammers, "Uh, yeah, sorry -- I got carried away," and he wanders off...

Frieda jumped on me with both feet! "Beth!" she hissed, "When is the last time a hot guy asked you out? I don't know what it was exactly, but he was INTO you -- and you just blew him off..."

"I freaked!" I defended myself. "I didn't know what to say..."

"Well you fucked it up!" Frieda snorted. "Here..." She reeled off a handful of register coupons. "Chase him down with these..." The next thing I know I'm tugging his sleeve, going, "Mister, you forgot these!"

The guy turns around and blinks at the coupons, and I realize that he's not dumb enough to think he EARNED all that crap -- which means I'm exposed -- but what ELSE was I to do? He took them and said "Thank you," kind of distractedly, and then he stood there, waiting...

I tucked my head and mumbled, "I was surprised..." I plucked up my nerve and followed up with, "Where would we go if I said yes?"

He got all hot-eyed -- but he said, "Dinner? A movie? What's your name?"

I don't think that was what he was thinking, but I wasn't giving up at THIS point! There was always pepper spray... "Beth. I get off at seven-thirty..." I had NO IDEA where the guts to carry on this conversation were coming from!

He looked over at Frieda -- I'm pretty sure he realized that she was playing matchmaker -- thought about it a moment, and said, "I'll wait at the coffee shop next door."

I had a date! I HAD A DATE! I didn't know what to do with myself; I almost did a cheer or something before limiting myself to "Okay!" and getting out of there... He was gone when I looked back, but Frieda was grinning from ear to ear. "Here!" She shoved the spray bottle and paper towels at me. "Hurry up and shut down seven so we can work on your make-up!"

When Beth came through the door at seven-thirty (on the dot, mind you!) I stood up nervously and discovered that she was just about tall enough that I could kiss her on the forehead without bending any. You can see where my head was at -- and it was dark up there... She had fewer freckles showing and her cheeks were pinker -- but the giveaway was the eyeliner, which was NOT subtle. That didn't matter; I was eyeballing her breastbone between her fun bags -- and there seemed to be more of a valley there. This time, she didn't seem to see it as being an urgent requirement to remove the view from my field of vision, either. Still, since it was rude and counter-productive to linger too long, I pulled my eyeballs out of the soft, shadowy darkness and smiled at her face. "I'm new in town, so you're going to have to show me where things are. Dinner first, or the movie?"

She blinked and might as well have said, "Both?" but recovered nicely. "We would have to ruth to get to the movie, but the next thow is probably around ten..."

"I'm a big boy," I grinned. "Mama lets me stay up late."

Beth grinned back. "Tho how long have you been in town?"

I cursed myself for starting this conversational thread. It was all too likely to cause her to assume that I wasn't worth the effort because I was going to be out of here in a week -- and the only way to disabuse her of THAT was to commit to taking her. Since I still had no idea what the source of the magic pixie dust that made her seem so hot was, that didn't seem sensible. Unfortunately, that left lying... "I just got in a day or two ago; I'm staying in a hotel until I can get organized." Even that wasn't good -- it left her with the assumption that I moved around a lot and that she might just be an evening's entertainment -- but it was all I had.

She went, "Oh, okay," and I waited for her to back off -- but fortunately, she didn't.

I moved on to, "So, where is a good place to eat around here?" A couple of minutes later, we were in my rental car and she was navigating, replete with assurances that I would return her to the store to pick up her car.

Getting to the restaurant didn't take long -- but I became deeply concerned immediately that we would have to wait until after the next showing of the movie just to get a table! The parking lot was JAMMED! "What's up?" I asked, "This is Monday..."

Beth looked a little embarrassed. "It's a popular plathe -- there are a lot of pickupth from this franchithe..."

"Okay, well, is the food any good?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah! There'th a GREAT thalad bar!" Beth enthused.

"Well, okay." I like salad as well as the next guy, but...

I followed her through the door; there must have been forty people in the entryway, waiting for a table -- and seats for maybe eight. We filtered our way through the crowd to the hostess and got her attention -- no mean feat. There was a lot of jostling going on so I did what I would have done to Dottie or Tina; I wrapped my arm around Beth and palmed her little belly. When I got done ensuring that the hostess could spell 'Jack' and that her mathematical attainments extended to the number two, I became aware that Beth was ogling me over her shoulder, her eyes and mouth both wide open...

"Oops! Sorry!" Being a fully domesticated male who lived with a couple of women I was thoroughly fond of -- and completely in charge of -- I'd developed habits of familiarity that didn't necessarily fly with a girl I'd only known for a few minutes. I made to withdraw my hand.

Beth thought about it -- hard -- and collected my hand, replacing it and holding it in place with hers. "No, itth okay..." Once she'd made up her mind, it was all okay; she started running her hand from mine up my forearm and back. "You thurprithed me again, that'th all..."

"I'm getting good at that," I muttered. "I just didn't want us separated in this mess..."

"Uh huh," Beth nodded, and I got the feeling she'd have accepted just about any excuse, but mine was better than most. "I jutht didn't exthpect it -- and, well, I'm fat..."

I frowned, surprised, because my hand said different. "You're not fat. If I wanted to be rude, I could point out fat all around us, but this..." I rubbed her belly, "isn't fat."

"It ith too!" Beth argued -- but she was clearly tickled pink. "Next you'll tell me my butt ithn't..."

"At the risk of ruining your opinion of me, I'm going to have to say that your belly and your butt are two different propositions," I said carefully. "But I like your butt, anyway."

Beth snorted. "What'th there to like?"

"Shhh," I replied, "This is one of those issues that there is no right answer for -- so, if you don't mind, I'd rather avoid it."

"Okay." Beth went back to rubbing my arm. She seemed perfectly happy to back against me -- and I was perfectly happy to bury my boner in the split between the cheeks of the ass in question while wondering vaguely why she didn't seem to be taking notice. Well, if I had to, I could explain away the gallant reflex -- since it WAS gallant...

We stood around for a good forty minutes; by the end of it, I was of a mind to tell her we should go get a burger and she shouldn't worry about a pickup, but I held my peace. Finally, we were seated -- and I ended up ordering a burger anyway. On the other hand, it wasn't any fast food joint burger -- and the salad bar WAS good -- well worth the price. We made small talk while eating, and I learned that she was the eldest of four and wasn't married (duh!) and never had been. I didn't ask her age, for two reasons -- a gentleman doesn't, and I couldn't afford to respond. I LOOKED like I was in my early twenties, but I'm thirty-six; the difference between the appearance and reality would lead me to have to either lie or be unmasked. Besides, it was an item of little or no concern; given the fact that she more closely resembled a primitive fertility goddess than a swimsuit model and that she was clearly under thirty, if not twenty, what did I care? Hands-on experience had added 'cuddly' to her descriptors, too. I'd have given a lot to get a look at her CAP scores -- but turnabout was fair play and again, I couldn't go there.

Despite slow service -- ESPECIALLY in picking up the check -- we managed to get out before ten and Beth directed me to the local cinema. I let her pick the movie and stood her to her choice in snack bar selections (she limited herself to a diet soda) and we settled in to watch a movie -- or she did. I spent a lot of time playing the old arm on the back of the theater seat game (without ever going so far as to try to get a handful of her right tit) and delighting in how delicate the little loose sprigs of hair at her neck made it look. I was totally lost -- and I STILL couldn't say why...

Beth was... cooperative. She let me play with her arm and her shoulder -- and even her neck -- and smiled a lot and looked embarrassed but happy. She didn't seem to know what to do with her hands, but never did anything overt, so I was an absolute Boy Scout -- not that I wanted to be. Finally, the damned movie was over; I wanted it gone -- except we hadn't really covered the kind of ground that led to her coming back to my place, which led me to wish that it wasn't. I just didn't know how we were going to get to where I wanted us to be...