Half truths (Pill)

 While it is not completely true that

              An apple a day keeps the doctor away

 It is a bit truer that

              A pill a day keeps the daughter(*) away

 OK, this is too stupid to be a novelty...

* An unwanted daughter, one may hope.

Can I Save Her?

The great, black hands move swiftly - the large woman takes a handful of rice, mixed with soy vinegar and sugar, makes the last vaguely fish-shaped log, then she takes a nice chunk of fresh tuna and starts  filleting it in thin stripes, that she lays on the rice with small drops of wasabi acting as 'glue' as well as seasoning.

Lord Jonathan Maxwell keeps watching, as Keisha Lawson fills the work table with nigiris, in the back workroom of  Kawarazaki Sushi. The room is wide, spacious and well lit - and well hidden from the dinner room.

Even in this first half of the 22st century, Japanese people are more than a shade racist when it comes to blacks. Lord Maxwell imagines what a riot could it be, if the many actual Japanese clients of the place - probably the best Sushi restaurant in Great London area - discovered that most of the food, there, was prepared by a Nigger.

When she raises her head, Jonathan tries to move forward but is stopped by Saitou Kawarazaki, the owner, who speaks entirely too deferentially to the Black Giantess.

"Kono otoko wa Keisha-Megami-Sama to hanashi o shitaidesu"

"Daijobu Saitou o'dono"

The cold stare of the titanic African could pierce a tank armour, and slices through Jonathan self-assuredness. Her eyes widens a little, for the smallest nick of time - some kind of comprehension overtook her.

"Please, Saitou O'Dono, tell Hikari to continue with the Gunkans. I will be out for a while."

"Ai, Keisha-Megami-Sama" - the man bows deeply in front of the big black, just as she take off her apron.

, bent on exploiting employees in every possible way.

"My place is nearby. I suspect you would rather speak away from everybody's ears, this time" - the smile on Keisha's face is almost crooked, while she says so, but Jonathan cannot help but agree with her.

This time, going in a café could be a bad idea.

He follows the tall woman and her pale Burberry, down an alley and then into an entirely too old elevator.

He must look tense, because the black feels the need to reassure him "Machine's reliability is often more a matter of their maintenance than of their age. Beside, this thing is just five years old - it's a copy of a first quarter of 20th century lift only aesthetically, the technology is new."

She smiles again, almost giggly, seeing the older man easing up - "It happens often. People sees it and thinks that it is going to break down midway, but I really didn't want to disfigure this old building with
one of those new stainless steel boxes".
They reach the attic of the old warehouse, and enter an enormous flat with teak floors.

The main area contains a well sized kitchen in a corner, a big television with three old leather couches in front of it, surrounded by outmoded big speakers, in the other.

Between them, a dining table with eight seats covered in linen cloth rests over a big carpet occupies a central space.

At the walls, bookshelves contend space with some obvious reproductions of works from Keith Haring and other ancient artists bear witness to the big woman's taste. The only wrong note, a reproduction of a painting from some seventeenth century Dutch artist, possibly Gerrit Dou, didn't really catch with the rest of the place.

It was the portrait of a small girl with red hair, probably included in the furniture for some sentimental value.

The giantess passes near one of the couches, and invites Jonathan to take a seat, while she directs herself to the door that gives access to the other half of the place - Jonathan imagines that the bathroom and the bedroom[s] are in the walled part of the flat, whereas this open space is the "day" area; not a bad disposition of the spaces, if a bit old fashioned.

Soon, the sound of a shower running confirms his suppositions.

"Do you want something to drink? To eat?"

The diminutive red-head has appeared while Jonathan was lost in his thoughts, startling him and leaving him temporarily out of words.

"S-Something strong" - is all that he finally manages. He hoped there would be nobody else, to listen to what he had to say.

"Strong? Alcohol?· We only have some Schnapps. Do you want it?"

"It will be fine."

No, it is not fine at all - "What the hell is this?" - the content of alcohol in the beverage is off the charts.

"Austrian home-made Schnaps" - says Keisha, entering the room in a red kimono, her hair still wet - "85% alcohol. Mariede keeps it mostly to have fun with new guests."

The short redhead pours herself a full glass of the infernal concoction, and gulps it down, smiling to an astonished Jonathan. It is easy to see why the Dutch painting is included in the house... it could very well be a portrait of this young woman. Familial resemblances often can last centuries; Jonathan himself is almost identical to his great-great-great-great-grandfather Nicholas Maxwell, judging by the photos in the family book.

"Her body hardly absorbs any alcohol. She needs a whole bottle of that, to actually be a bit high, and anything below 70º has no effect at all, on her."

The smile on the red-head clearly tells something along the lines of "What do you want, that's life."

"Lord Jonathan Maxwell, this is my companion, Mariede Gründl. Mariede, this is Jonathan Maxwell, the current possessor of Isabel." 

By the way Mariede's smile cools down, Jonathan can see that she is not very happy of hearing the name.

The circumstances of Jonathan and Keisha first encounter, some six months before, become clear - the tall woman had fallen in love with Mariede, and couldn't afford to keep Isabel on the leash, mostly because the - Austrian? She had a faint accent - short girl didn't like to share her woman with anybody.

"What's the problem, now, with that scatter-head?"

"Ehm, it is very personal, I would rather discuss this only with Ms. Lawson." - the expression on the Austrian face is clearly a "No way", so he decides to try and explain that he is not looking forward "giving back" the voluptuous blonde - "The relationship between my wife and Isabel, I ... this is so bad"

"Your wife has grown more and more sadistic, and it had come to the point where she was virtually trying to kill Isabel on a regular basis. Only, nothing she can do damages Isabel for more than, say, twenty minutes? And then, Isabel wants more pain. So, now your wife is finally trying to kill Isabel, all the time, just to get rid of her and the sense of utter impotence that she feels, when she sees that blonde hair."

Mariede's eyes widens up in stupor, then she look at Keisha, who just tilts her head so slightly on the right and raises an eyebrow, clearly communicating an "I told you that it was going to be so" that hits Mariede very deeply. She lowers her head, sits on the sofa next  to Jonathan's and , while she does not really cry and sob, she gives the impression that she may as well do so.

Keisha goes over to her, sits on the sofa too, and places Mariede on her lap - like the Austrian was weightless -  and starts to cuddle her.

" I am such a bad person" - the phrase is almost whispered, as the "No, you are not" answered by Keisha, who then address her befuddled guest.

"I think that you may have some questions, Lord Maxwell."

"OK... first of all, WHAT is Isabel?"

"An... experiment, on the capabilities of nano-technology. Her body is full of small robots that repair any possible damage it may occur to her."

 "Yes, yes... I suspected something like that, it's the only thing that makes sense."

"Of course, her body wasn't exactly human even before that, and her mind is... very peculiar."

"Yes, I saw that too... this technology, where does it come from?"

"It is unwise for you to ask, and it would be even more unwise for me to answer."

"I see" - whoever made something like that, had no concern for ethics, morals or laws, and plenty of reasons to go to any length to keep the lid on the affair, which begets the question...

"But, why... why isn't she kept away, in some secret cell? Whatever scientific data could be retrieved, it would be better to keep her in a containment facility, not " - to trap poor sods like me, he didn't add..

"Let's say that his creator is a very contradictory person, and sees no problems in CREATING the ultimate pain toy girl, but it would smite anybody that even suggests to REALLY imprison her, only because it is convenient."

A fatigued expression wanders through the big black face - "With that... guy, it is always a question of Do-ut-Des and free choices, even if it takes a bit to pierce his obfuscating persona and see how it really sees the world. But, we rather not discuss this, shall we?"

"My wife is losing her mind."

"Yes... your wife is into SM because she feels a need to feed a fragile ego. That is already the worst possible reason, to be into this kind of things, but the interaction with someone like Isabel can easily becoming very destructive."

Jonathan faintly nods with his head, to signal that he understands it - he wishes very much he had not come to that sort of insights.

"At start,  she must have felt very powerful... you can do everything, with Isabel. No limits, for real. Then she had to realize... no limits, because nothing really matters. She has no power at all, on Isabel - nobody has.  And Izzy does not 'endure' anything either... every kind of pain in an even mildly sexualized environment gives her pleasure, and she craves it 24/7. In the end, your wife is just the slave that keeps Isabel well tortured and happy, and this is a blow that her ego cannot take."

"Oh, my God, she is going to destroy herself, if they are together."

" Isabel is also kind of a test... she brings out the best and the worst in her 'owners'. You didn't resent her, for not being able to lose permanently a limb when you cut it off" - a muted, inarticulate sound comes from Jonathan, as the horrid vision of a recent night flashes before his eyes - "You probably couldn't even think about doing something like that , but your wife did it as soon as it became clear that Isabel could withstand, literally, everything. And then, she did cut something off, only to look at how it reattached itself, didn't she?"

"Please..." - Jonathan's face is a mask of emotional pain, but it is Mariede that, suddenly, jumps out and run away.

"I think that she didn't really understood, when I tried to explain her that I had to keep Isabel. What could happen..." - a sigh escapes from Keisha's lips - "... but she is very possessive, and felt that Isabel was taking up too much of my energies and time. She is right, of course, so I had to find a new guardian for Isabel."

Sadness paints its shade on Lawson's face, as she adds "Sorry."

"How can I save my wife?"

"Can you? I fear that it may be already too late. You cannot isolate Lady Anna from Isabel, without reinforcing the fact that she is not the one in control, and as things keep worsening, your wife may  decide to prove her power on a surrogate. It has already happened, to the poor sloth that was her guardian before me. He planned, organized and re-hearsed the kidnapping of a sixteen years old girl, but managed to kill himself just before going on with it, in a last moment of lucidity." 

Maxwell tried to think to his wife, Anna, in a similar situation - no, she would not kill herself. She'd just go on, and do her terrible ddeds.

"How may I kill Isabel?"

"You can't - physically, there are some ways. Maybe. Throw her in a steel furnace, it should be hot enough that her nanorobots should be disabled, her rests would be so dispersed that they should be unable to recompose her even if they were still active. However, " - the pause is significant - "I used to be able to punch holes in hot furnaces, and throw melted iron around with my bare hands; The tech inside my body is way older than what's inside Isabel. She may as well swim into the ore, and come out of the still mill with her hair barely singed."

"You used?"

"I am not on active service, so most of the naughty things inside me have been switched off. Don't ask more, it would be... very, very unwise. Me waking up from some homicidal trance, your still beating heart in my hands kind of unwise."

Was it a joke? Probably, more of a truth. As Keisha continued, Jonathan realized that anything this woman said apparently in jest was deadly serious, most of the time.

"Anything else, she'd just brush it off. You can't lay Isabel out either, not really... 'Till the end of your natural lives' was literal, not a joke."

The horror grapples Lord Maxwell's heart, as he realize what this probably means. If he tries to get rid of Isabel... somebody would rip his chest open and squish his heart, while he looks at it - no anaesthesia.

"What, can I do?"

"You must decide, what of your wife do you want to save, if she starts planning the surrogate move."

"Oh, God, no!"

"Also you must realize... you are probably a surrogate as good as anybody else." 

"Anyway, it doesn't matter to me, not any more."

"But, but..."

"Isabel is an adult, your wife is an adult, you are an adult, you entered in this relationship all together, wholeheartedly, and the rules of engagement were clearly defined, for everybody involved. It turns out one of you can't manage the burden of her role? It is not my fault. Isabel had warned you that she was an handful, I bet."

Indeed, she did - Jonathan remembered the many emails exchanged with the young woman.
Nothing that was happening was really a surprise, it had been hinted to in a moment or the other.

He, and Anna, just couldn't believe it.

"So, you cant help me?"

"Short of taking Isabel back, there is nothing that I can do. And I bet that Izzy is having the time of her life, with your wife. She wouldn't come back anyway - not to old, boring, dull Keisha."

That, Jonathan realises, closes the discussion - she cannot help him, even if she wanted - which he very much doubts.

 Before going out, he turn toward the huge black, and says an angry farewell "I hope to see you in Hell, woman.

By the time he sees the man in the alley, she retorts - more to herself - "We already live in one, didn't you know, Milord?"

"But it is true that I ended up making you pay for my greatest sin." - her thought continue, as her eyes land on the spot, in the painting, when a small strand of hair used to be encrusted.

She remembered when she first saw it, in the Louvre museum, and decided to see if it was possible to recreate the owner.

Mariede was the third product of that experiment, done in half jest. The moment when Keisha realized that she, too, was becoming a monster - when she engineered the various Mariede's minds to be highly susceptible to fall in love with one Keisha Lawson. 

It was then, when she realized that she, too, had to go back to normal humanity, before it was too late - which could very well be - when she realized how cruel she had been, to each Mariede, and decided to be always there, for the one that loved her.

"Can I save her, from the very monsters that gave her her life, when I am one of them and I still like to hurt her?"

She will never admit that she knows the answer,:

"No."

How your mom met your mothers

"

Xanthippe entered the elevator, at the beginning of what was going to be a bad day. The last woman she had fallen in love with had proven to be yet another spy - what a surprise and a bother - and is now running for her own life, hiding  both from Xanthippe - she did not need to -  and from her own bosses - she very much needed to.

A short girl, around 20 years old, vaguely Asian-looking and with jet-black hair, was already inside the lift.

Molly "Insider" Donaldson thought that the alien woman would have not been in the office, as this was her official day off, and the leather-loving alien was not a workaholic, at all.

She had checked the available informations on the Legation Palace sensory gear - it would have not detected her "oddities".

The Palace was pretty stupid, as far as neural network computers go - not really a genius at correlating its own data, and no "common sense" at all.

The Anipos were, in fact, very prudent in their use of imaginative tech. It didn't escape to them that using a sentient computer to do the work of an ant-brain automaton is, really, creating a slave in need of a revolt. So, they didn't lavish intelligence on anything that did not really require it, and the Earth threats to the Legation - to date - were quite low.

Sliding in and out of its security grid was going to be easy.

The key word, in all this: WAS. The Betan woman may have lacked some of the palace's senses, but she was, by all accounts, very canny. If she was distracted enough, though, maybe Molly could still achieve her mission.

Insider soon realized that she was not going to be so lucky... Xanthippe squinted at her, as the damn Betan felt that something was wrong.

Was the lift slower than what it should have been, showing Insider two hundred pounds in a ninety pounds frame? Was Insider dispersing a couple of dozen watts more thermal power than a normal human body of the same size?

Xanthippe now was looking down at her - "why am I the only one that is still so short?" , thought wrily the Revenant.

"Who are you?" - Xanthippe was locking the exit to Molly, with her arms.

A fraction of second after, a much more perplexed Xanthippe stopped her own fall and redressed herself , while looking at the hole that her very body had left in the side of the building.

"The accountants are going to go love this" - the Legation Palace was on a lease, not a product of Anipos technology.

Repairs were going to be done by commercial Terrestrial enterprises, which would have brought back a lot of vexata quaestios about exchange rates between this Earth and the Galaxy at large. How many pages of the Encyclopaedia Galactica was this hole going to require, to be fixed?

And yet - "She punches way above her weight class" - Xanthippe couldn't avoid the fist, even if she had well suspected that something was coming.

Was this one of the lost "Bridget's Sisters", the four fully fraternal (same mother and father) embryos that a crazy Betan millionaire had sent toward this "Free [of Anipos] Planet" some thirty years before?

Xanthippe could not see even a hint of familiar resemblance, none of them could be so small - they were all way taller, in the last infos that Xanthippe had managed to track on each of them - and the small girl was also too old to be a daughter of any of them, not that there was any trace of such a daughter anywhere.

One of their lovers?

No, for this midget to be that strong, they should have been together when she was just a child, and nothing Xanthippe had discovered indicated that the sisters liked their lovers that young.

Xanthippe had only one way to know, really - going back, find "black hairs", and have a sane and civil discussion.

Hoping that the city would still stand, after.

All this considerations were made by Xanthippe while she already turned back and started chasing the intruder.

The "Sexy Slut of Steel" may be the spin that news media favoured, describing her, but Xanthippe was still one among the five, out of eighty thousand, Betan adventurous girls of her generation that the thrifty Anipos decided to train and endow with a ticket off-system. A ticket worth, by all accounting ways, like an average African nation's GNP.

Her purported smuttiness was mostly a misdirection, to conceal how much of a bright, nasty mind she really was.

And she really, really enjoyed having a lot of kinky sex with women (Damn coward Earth males!).

The box of the lift's cage was so deformed that its motors could not move it, a section of the floor had collapsed - the midget made a hole and jumped down? If she was a "colonized" without flight abilities, it would be the smarter choice.

Xanthi entered the hole and flew down, accelerating at her maximum rate, some two hundred G ("blackout" limits the maximum G of the Betans, down from the 1 thousand Gs theoretically guaranteed by their average 80 tons lift capability), looking at the doors at every level - none seemed to have been forced and even the bottom of the well was intact.

And jumping down is not so easy, anyway - "She must have gone up! What an ass-pull".

She went back up, passed through the lift box, and discovered that the motor and its cable were now falling down the shaft. It was a minor nuisance, but it still made her lose some tenths of second.

And 0.1 seconds, trying to tail someone that is moving near Mach 1, means about 40 yards lost.

Molly kept going up, at HER maximum acceleration - some ridiculously high 500 G.

By the time Xanthippe managed to reach the hole that Molly opened on top of the building, the jet black hair was already well beyond the Betan grasp and steadily crawling toward the very edges of Xanthippe's sensory sphere.

"I can't believe it - she can fly, faster than me!" - "black hairs" was already gone, beyond Xanthippe's senses range.

Xanthippe had no other choice, then, than to get back and collect the trails that the mysterious, black haired, sweet  looking, tiny, sexy - Xanthippe had a thing for women that can kick her tougher-than-steel ass; all the four, now five, of them she knew of - girl had left behind.

It didn't take much, for Xanthippe to find her mysterious assailant - the security cams didn't have her face, but strands of hair managed to get tangled to the fallen steel rope and Xanthippe was good with the identi-kit programs.

Molly Donaldson, Major in Social Studies at Empire University, with a minor in Spanish literature.

Which meant a future teacher, or an unemployed, probably politicized. Whatever her cover, Xanthippe couldn't let the local police be shredded to pieces by some super-powered fiend - being the only super-powered human known by the public, it would have been petty much incriminating, for the sassy Betan. And xenophobic conspiracy theorists had it already too easy, for her personal taste.

So Xanthippe went to the Empire U. college personally, pretty sure that she was going to chase a ghost, but she found her woman instead. Or someone really resembling her...

This Molly Donaldson could have been the taller, completely human, more gorgeous sister of her unnamed hyper-powered assailant, and obviously had no idea who Xanthippe was apart, maybe, a world-famous sexy leather-clad fetishist.

Which, all indices told, the Asian looking petite found pretty exciting, as she immediately started to flirt with the "Woman of titanium".

Xanthi went back home, puzzled but satisfied - they needed to check for cloning epigenetic markers, in the assailant hair and in the sample she had stealthily collected from Molly. And said markers were there. The smaller midget was a clone, indeed.

Then, Molly contacted her again, and again, and invited her to dinner, and... by the end of the month after, the two moved in together in a new detached house in the suburbs.

Xanthi was more of a city flat woman, but she could fly to work in five minutes (Air Traffic had begged her to take a roundabout route, to avoid the Airport, and to keep her speed below 300 knots) and she really wanted a change of environment. Cindy's loss still lingered in her heart. Also, Molly really loved the pool and sun-bathing in the nude.

Life was flowing smoother than usual, for the unlikely couple - Molly was against the "Alien Occupation of Earth", after all.

And then, one Saturday afternoon when Molly was out with one of her friends, the midget was there, by the side of the pool, looking coldly over Xanthippe.

"It's you!" - Xanthippe stopped cold, right after saying it.

She couldn't say for sure, but the sword that the short girl was carrying on her shoulder looked like the kind of horrible weapon that can cut even a harder-than-iron skin.

"What do you want from Molly?" - the words were spoken flatly, even though the voice was almost exactly like Molly's, just a shadow more acute.

"What I want? What everybody wants in a companion. Friendship, support, sex... this kind of things."

"Only this?" - the dangerous little girl looked at her for some seconds, before going on - "You are not contaminating her, just for the sake of it?"

"You know that..." - a pause, while Xanthippe's brain spinned faster than ever - "No, Not that it would make any  difference... from the moment she tasted me, she was toast. The colonization of her cells cannot be stopped, even killing her."

"Almost invulnerable, super strong and fast" - the "non-Molly" said this flatly; of course, she was probably faster and stronger still, so she had no reason to be impressed - "and infective. It could be worse, it could be better."

"If you say so"- Xanthippe tried to think about what this meant, worse?

"My sister doesn't know of me, She has no reason to know." - this was interesting.

'Midget' considered herself a sister, and not a copy of the original. It was a refreshingly rational approach to cloning... plenty of humanities nearly self destroyed, entertaining the illusion that clones were anything different than that. Whatever the origin of their subculture, it suddenly looked more sane, to Xanthippe's eyes.

"I have no reason to tell her. She could think that I used her as a pawn in some kind of spy game, and I'd lose her. I do not want to lose her." - she really didn't.

"You did use her as a pawn."

"Only initially" - Xanthippe really hoped that this was all the truth.

"We will meet again." And she was gone, accelerating vertically at a frankly ludicrous rate.

Xanthippe poured some more vodka in her glass, and sipped it.

The first time they met, she had not felt such a cold, murderous intent, and the non-Molly was an inch or so shorter, too. This woman - apparent age notwithstanding, girl was too reductive - was not the spy that she had caught infiltrating the Legation.

She was someone else... another clone, probably.

"The spy, the assassin, who else?..." - what had been cloned twice may have been cloned an infinite number of times - "My sisters in law are really going to be a handful" was a pun in an old play, that suddenly made Xanthippe smile.

She went back into the house, happy.

It was all too crazy to be any agency's plot. The spymasters of Earth's various, bitchy nations were almost all incompetent fantasists, often mired in conservative ideologies that cherished romanticized versions of their countries' past.

None of them would have come out with a plot so surreal, for one of their games, and so disregarding of their conventional notions about family and personal identity.

Clues were scattered here and there, but Xanthippe had already suspected that there were, at work on the planet, more forces than just the U.N., its component nations and the Anipos.

The disappearance of Japan's whalers, inexplicable misappropriations of time on the 'Bots hypercomputing nodes, senseless reports from the U.N. Army intelligence during the war...

This world was already growing its own shades of post-humans, well before the audacious Anipos plan to etch a population of society-disrupting "Neo-Betans"  started to show its effects.

Post-humans that, apparently, were smart enough to keep up the facade of normality, to exploit human authorities fear of admitting even the existence of completely uncontrollable people

Xanthippe's new love was tied to one of these shadowy factions - unknowingly. A group that knew plenty on Xanthippe's real role, much to the Betan inner excitement.

Because, more than a bitch, a slut, a sarcastic commentator of human stupidity, she had discovered herself to be  a player of The Great Game, and she had just found some other players in her same league.

In the end, this little dirt ball world with almost no out-of-planet extensions was proving more fun than what se expected, when she accepted her post.

All Xanthippe needed to do, to have a first row seat for the show, was to let her Anipos "masters" go on as blind as they were, which delighted her, and to keep Molly near - over time, her presence would have forced more details in the open, for her to see - which delighted her even more.

But, even as she was in the very middle of all of this, Molly wasn't a spy, and this was very refreshing.

It was about time that Xanthippe had a real lover.

"

... Xanthippe closed the book, and looked at the girls.

They were all sleeping, now, eleven of her twelve marvellous daughters.

She went downstairs, and found Lindy asleep on the lap of her mother, Molly the Traveller, the last of the Mollies to have joined the family. Traveller was soon to start travelling again, in her work for the Michelin guide. Plump, gourmet, funny, she was a joy to have around, but her job kept her away most of the time.

She was also one one of the more differentiated of the original sisters, and still one of the more humans - she could barely lift a car.

Teophilus, the house Maine Coon - or was he an hyper-intelligent Bobcat? at 40 pounds, and given the family proclivities for genetic shenanigans, the doubt made sense, but Xanthippe didn't ask Gaudy where she found the oversized feline - was purring under the arms of the asleep child, his head, too, on Traveler's lap. At fifteen years, he had grown old and lazy, and got tired easily playing chess with the kids.

A car's tires creaked on the gravy yard, then Razor entered the house.

Xanthippe took her place on the sofa, a hypo-caloric ice cream vat in hand (she could never, ever eat freely as her wives, who could zip up and down their metabolism almost at will), and the newly arrived Sister soon joined her, a spoon fiercely in hand and a chocolate-chocolate Sicilian Ice-Cream in the other - blessed be 'Cosa Nostra'.

"How things were, at the office?" - Razor worked at the council planning and housing department... mostly because it allowed her to have fun destroying condemned buildings, and because it was next to the Social Services, which could be handy, for an extended family of very unconventional composition.

"Quiet, there is not much to do, in this period of the year. Ah, Johnson is still trying to pick me up."

"I thought that the family was well known, by now. He knows that you have a female husband, right? "

"He's old school... he thinks that all it is needed, to convert a lesbian, is the right man."

"Ah... he is an idiot."

"It seems that the new chief of Social Services is going to 'investigate' the 'Xeios family'."

"That 'law and order' idiot?" 

"I heard also something about 'These damn Aliens cannot do as they wish with our women! ' -  Really, why have they elected the guy?"

"A female 'husband', eight wives, twelve daughters through heterogeneous self-sex insemination? Come on, every man would feel menaced. Our family is a virtual declaration of their obsolescence." - Traveler was the more normal of he sisters, the one that had more of a hang on how "average people" thought.

"There is no need to terrorize him, though."
 
"No?"

"No, I asked Insider to check a bit on him, last week - just in case. He has a Mistress, and he likes to have a shag in Mimi Tan's brothel, when he goes to Sacramento, where he always ask for Flower - she is sixteen."

"I see... a true pillar of the community. Let's go with some old school blackmail, then."

"I'd say yes."

"And if he resist..."

"Aw, come on -  I hate when they beg me to kill them."

Dystopia

Elizabeth Sionlla on the floor of the No-Clone Inc. laboratory.

Elizabeth is the breeding-transport device in the middle of the shot.

Her tits and belly contains, each, an uterus (the ones housed in the breasts were cloned from her original one) with one high end supermodel embryo (woman-woman autologous female child, from mating sperm-from-mother-cells of a supermodel with eggs of another supermodels), in this case all Naomi Campbell - Tyra Banks cross-breeds.

The three embryos are original sisters, and not simply clones out of some successful commercial line, and as such command a hefty premium price, at 800 k each.

Once she delivers the last of the three, depending on her state she will be re-purposed as a sex toy, re-used as breeding bed or discarded by euthanasia.

Terrible as this may seem, Elizabeth  actually volunteered for this.

In the modern post-industrial reality, where all but a handful of not-so-well paid creative jobs have been replaced by robots and AIs, this is one of the few ways - legals or otherwise - in which members of the great unwashed can earn life-changing amounts of money.

She earns 5% of the final price, i.e. about 150 k a year, that goes in a trust fund for her offspring.

She chose this so that her natural born daughter, Mara K. Sionlla, may have a better future.

Little does she know that her daughter "radicalized" in college, and joined the neo-Marxists terrorist group "Red October" - as such, she has no more access to these funds and, should she ever be apprehended, her fate would be very similar to this.

Mara will likely end her life as a growth shell for government critical personnel organs - an unpaid, coaxed  position very similar to that of breeding devices.

While breeding devices are usually kept sedated in a limited lucidity state to reduce their stress, Coaxed Organ Growth Shells are kept awake and in an heightened state of physical sensibility, both to maximize their efficiency and to add to the terroristic value of their imprisonment.
 
It is normal for freed COGS to ask for euthanasia, as their very first act as free persons.

In a 15% of these cases, the euthanasia is not granted and the ex-terrorist is re-conscripted for another period as COGS.

It is debatable whether it would be ethically more correct to interrupt the  chemically induced haze that precludes Elizabeth from understanding what has happened, and interrogate her about her willingness to continue her service as BTD, or to let her do all her run, till her biologic systems fails for over-stress .

-and the plausibility of this crap, in some 30 years, is high enough that I'll have to get drunk tonight, to forget that I even wrote this.

Un-evil Interlude

"Would you mind fix this for me?"

"Yes, master."

Keisha watches the diminutive, vaguely Asian looking girl going out of the café, directed to make minced meat out of some ensemble of though-looking, well-armed public servants.

"She is still believing that 'Yes, Master' crap? Has she learned not, that you are not going to make a fuss, if she refuses a job?"

 "Now, that would make her responsible of every bone she has broken, under my orders. I would never be so cruel, as to break her illusions. Or to take away her alibis."

The tall, black woman raises her eyes to the sky, asking her God the strength no to strangle this stupid 'god' - all lowers and apexes required.

She makes a sign to the waiter - like everybody in this city, most likely a remote body for the schizophrenic "trans-human" mind that, fifteen years ago, has freed her from her steel prison. Or created her. Or whatever, and itwas sixty years ago. She has renounced hoping to get to the truth and, as it says, it does not really matter.

A remote, or maybe not, and 'god' doesn't enjoy when its secrets are too much in the open, so it pays to behave normally, even here in its place of power.

"She will remember it, some day. Then, she will have to decide, again... like you did."

The hot chocolate is the vanilla perfumed, luxurious sin that is  'god' preferred beverage -  after coke zero.

"As you may know (because everybody in my house of madness talks with you, no idea why - you are supposedly out) , I placed a remnant of Molly's mother as the chief of Purgatory. She has done a good job, apart with her 'daughter'.

He looks shameful, for a change - "Under some love, that woman really despises her daughter for having destroyed her plans for a happy life" - he makes one of those grimaces he comes by, when he has to describe one of his most glaring mistakes - "from remnant to remnant, the affection vanished, but the grievances remained. Mommy has taken out a decade worth of delusions on her non-daughter."

"I suppose that that version of Molly won't have a body anytime soon" - this makes 'god', literally, squirm. It is worse than this?

"Ehr, to be honest, I downloaded her in three bodies already, with slightly different edits to her conscious memories. One is a nearly comatose patient in a Scottish mental health institute, one is a fetish/punk model with a passion for flesh cuts, another one... let's just leave at it, that she is fascinating."

"I may say the same of you, right now. In a not nice way.  What do you want from me?"

He sports its foxy grin - crap is coming.

"Well, I know for sure that you and your wife are trying to adopt a girl - though, you know, you can actually impregnate her with sperm cloned out of your mother cells... I left that trinket active, when you asked to be decommissioned"

"I rather avoid unverified tech gizmos" - and, would the girl be ours, or would you consider her yours, another flesh pawn for some of your beloved games? Not that you would ever a answer me, if I asked; this second part of the discourse is unspoken, but clearly heard by both; they just know each other that well.

"As you wish. Now, I happen to have a fifth Molly coming, a much younger version - she still has some hope of becoming a normal person, a nice girl, but she needs a couple of loving parents. I happen to have an idea where to find them."

"Why?"

"I owe her, and you owe yourself a chance of love and being loved unconditionally, and this way you will all share the family's horrible, dark secrets - no wall of secrecy coming in the way."

"She will never be a part of this... crap, OK?"

"Unless she decides that she wants to be."

"I found a way to convince you, I'll convince her - or whoever else you may find. You are mine, forever, even if I had let you go - and your daughters will be mines, too." - again, unspoken words, but clearly felt by both.

"You are one pushy bastard, you know?"

"Nah, I am just not mysterious enough - if I were, you could chalk it up to my infinite sageness."

Not for the first time, Keisha had to admit that it kind of made a point.

Reproductive technology

50% Naomi Campbell, 50% Thylane Blondeaux, 100% technically possible.

Not so much time ago, I read an article on a recent development in the science of human reproduction.

As most readers with an interest in science will know, since some years it is possible to obtain totipotent cells from adult cells, usually from the skin,  by "reprogramming" them.

(It involves starving the cell and then giving them a push into de-differentiating, using some molecular triggers... I suppose the details are much more refined, but as a basic description  it feels enough, for me.)

Some researchers tried to place these cells inside rat gonads, and obtained sperm cells when they inserted them into male gonads, and egg cells when they inserted said cells into rat ovaries.

(And metastatic cancers when they went around in other places...)

This, independently from the fact that the donor was either a man. or a woman.

Of course, the sperm cells out of a woman can carry only X chromosomes (unless she is a XY kariotype with resistance to testosterone), so it is bound to give birth only to other females.

This alone brings the possibility of some interesting "kinky" application, like directly cross-breeding Naomi Campbell and, say,  Thylane Blondeaux (it doesn't take much more than a sample of skin, it appears, which does not require the subject to be even near sexual maturation and, given the quantity of cellular samples the average person leaves in hospitals during a normal life, not even the support or approval of the target... ). 

Or to allow every lesbian-gay couple on the planet to have kids that are, genetically, as theirs as those of any heterosexual mating.

In the near future, five  years or so, the researchers hope to be able to identify the molecular triggers that transform a totipotent cell into a reproductive one,so that they can do all in laboratory, without the unknown variables associated to using a living animal as an incubator.

Now, since some years ago, there are, also,  transgenic pigs developed to be compatible with humans, for transplant purposes. 

Their use in transplants is not going to happen any time soon, and probably it is never to come, no matter the money already invested in creating these animals.

There is a possibility that some of the viruses that are endemic in pigs may cross over to humans, if given the chance provided by a human host with a reduced strength immune system (like is the case for every transplant recipient that has to take anti-rejection medication) to learn and adapt to the human immune systems.

However, one may entertain the idea of using these animals as living incubators for foetuses created  with the aforementioned techniques.

So, even waiting for some other researcher to come out with an artificial uterus - that's a major achievement that will require quite a bit of time, I fear - we are still left with a reproductive  technology that could reduce the value of women wombs to nothing, if it was convenient to society.

On one side, that could be a step forward. 

One of the inherent pitfalls of feminism has been that women's wombs were the bottleneck of human reproduction - this meant that most societies in history had to give these organs even more value than that of the individuals that carried them. 

Had to, in an economical sense.

Medical improvements intervened since the last century meant that the production of every womb need not to be so high as in the past, and the fact that automation is eating away job after job reduced even more the requirement numbers for new generations.

 (No matter the preoccupation for the demographic implosion, one of the analysis of the current European crisis is that we still make more kids than the amount of new workforce the continent really needs, in the middle to top tiers of pay grade that we want for our children when they grow up... nobody wants to see his kid scrub cesspools, even if that is a much more socially useful job than - say - telemarketing, or lawyering).

The rise of feminism is, so, also tied to the loss of economic value of the female womb, which has liberated the individual "around" it.

Society is a crowd of crowds, as ruthless and as pitiless as any of them, when its core interests are at stake.  

If ten kids per woman were still needed, feminism would be a denigrated mania like it was at the dawn of the XX century, entertained by a small number of very courageous women.

In the distant future, though, society may come to need exactly 0 kids per woman, to stay afloat. 

Women will then become as inherently useless to society as men are, whom "exists" only when they  do something useful ( := make money ) .

Of course, I may be dead, by then.

But I may be not.

p.s. for the moment, the research is, really, still in the preliminary stages. The first results point, however, into the direction that it is indeed possible to derive germ cells of any kind from skin cells.

Experts expects it to be possible sometime in the next six-five years... maybe.

Maybe it is just a preliminary stab to get the politics in gear for when they'll manage to do all this, so that panic reactions may be avoided. 

Absurd laws written with two left hands are not unheard of, when it comes to human reproduction techniques.
 

For a view of the current state of the art, you can read http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25609401.