The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Humanity, 2.0

YEAR 146, DAY 181

Bethany lay on my left, Naomi on my right; both were dozing, nude, but I lay mostly awake. It wasn’t any one thing that kept me up—I just didn’t really sleep well at all in those years; even after the awkward and intense threesome we’d just had while crammed in this tight little spot. My thoughts went to my children not there with me—both those still in this world at that time, and those not.

The bare-bones aircraft we were on rocked and shook with turbulence, but all of us had long since gotten used to sleeping through that. We were between two heavy storage containers with our hardsuits and their associated gear stowed inside, my back against the airframe and part of a folded seat while the two girls nestled on either side of me—my discarded clothes functioning as a fractional blanket between the three of us. It was still more than we’d had to make do with on a number of occasions.

Glancing through a small window over my shoulder, I could see the night air around the outside was clear, for once, and the stars were passing by through the outer window. Emily would be up front, flying us in, but the plane’s onboard computer could have gotten us to Malta on its own easily enough.

I felt the aircraft’s nose inch downward slightly, and knew we were on final approach. A tap of my foot to the side of the crate and I sensed my J5’s readiness. It was at full charge, and very much wanted to wrap itself around my body and turn me into a killing machine... but I let it sleep. A precaution only, to bring it—and parts of it would be recycled for the new one that I was due to be fitted for, later on this trip.

Instead, I stood up, letting the girls snuggle together and rummaging for a real blanket to put over them before getting dressed again in my dress pants and white collared shirt. An additional twenty pounds of muscle filled out my frame now, the product of endless training in the Vault—there wasn’t much else to do there.

The cockpit was a change of pace after a six-hour flight from the UK and endless diplomatic meetings. The world may have considered World War 4 to be over, the Imperial Peninsula to have been reduced to a crater and its ally Axum now under the effect of every embargo and sanction imaginable to keep its power in check—but we knew better.

I had no doubt that Nadine was fighting tirelessly to get us more air support from NATO, but despite all that effort, we were still woefully short of what we needed. NATO simply considered the Axum—and thus Naglfar—problem to be... contained, to northern and eastern Africa. New Malta, Osana, and the million refugees there were a tertiary concern, a money sink for charitable donations but not a real political problem.

Emily sat in the left of the two side-by-side seats in the cockpit. Her blue neoprene flight jumpsuit, form-fitted perfectly to her skinny frame, would have been indistinguishable from nudity had it been too dark. The seam on the front was loose down to her navel, carelessly allowing a glimpse of a dark and stiff nipple. Large, old-school headphones covered her ears, a boom microphone hovering in front of her mouth.

She tapped the pedals with her narrow feet in an entirely unnecessary manner, only her head, fingers, and toes visible through the openings in her outfit. She could easily have controlled the whole plane from anywhere inside it. Any of us could. Maybe she was just staying in practice, in case the electronics went.

“Hey.” I thudded down in the co-pilot’s seat, finally buttoning up my shirt. She didn’t respond, so I put a headset on and spoke into the mike. “Hey. What you thinking about?”

“Hmm... oh.” She glanced over at me and gave me a weak smile. “Just now? You, actually. Glad you’re out of the Vault. We need it. Need you.”

I wasn’t sold, but I wasn’t about to argue it either, given why I’d come out. “Sorry about before. Hadn’t seen you in what, three years now? We meet up in Toulouse, get on the plane... and I spent the whole first two hours in the plane having a nice little fuckfest with those two.” I stabbed a thumb toward the back of the cabin. “They’d just been out to the Vault too. You could have joined us, you know. This thing isn’t old enough to have no t-pilot.”

She shrugged. “We kissed, and linked a little. I wanted to go over it all in my head before we talked anyway.” She smiled and nodded back toward the cockpit door. “So? Were they rusty when it came to real men? I think they’ve only eaten pussy full-time for most of a year.”

I waved it off. “They remembered quick enough.”

We both smiled, and kissed again, this time more deeply. I had leaned over her and practically lifted my sister out of the pilot’s chair this time by the time it broke, and felt her hot breath on my face as she stared up at me for a few moments after.

“You’re so tired... but so wound up too.” She gave me another quick peck. “Beijing go well?” She paused. “Dumb question?”

“Yes and no. There’s no deal, obviously.” I frowned. “Still learned a lot about their development plans for the Gobi, though. Talked to Nadine and the triplets after—it’s not as bad as we thought for Elysium. The water table won’t be affected much. We think a few strategic stock buyouts will keep Baikal free of carcinogens until...”

I went on for a few more minutes. My warnings from 15226 of a world drowning in its own poisons, thrashed by its own unchained weather, and sick with super-bugs all seemed not so distant and unlikely now. They were practically common knowledge, even among regular humans. Politics in those days was really all about making sure someone else paid the price.

“That’s good.” Emily shrugged. “Maeve already knows?”

I nodded; Maeve’s own daughter had been there in Beijing with us and had flown directly to Elysium after. Maeve is Nadine’s fifteenth daughter; another gorgeous, pale redhead, fresh from four years spent as liaison to a naval picket around the Horn... but by then interested in taking more of a hand in our other affairs.

Elysium ran itself by that point—half a million residents, local elections and heavy business investment, but we still ended up closely involved at all levels and needed at least one of us on-site full-time. There was a great deal to be learned there, and if nothing else I wanted many of us to be acquainted well with the challenges of building a working city. If my big dumb plan to save the world didn’t work, we’d need lots of that expertise.

“Least she’ll have some of her own around so she’ll be able to get some real sex.” Emily let out a loud sigh, stretching in her chair. “Had to be the hardest part of that job.”

“Now I’m curious.” I stood up, coming around behind her chair and rubbing her shoulders.

“Hmm?” She was tapping the instrument panel, probably inputting something directly to the flight computer.

I came down alongside her face, quiet in her ear. “If you’re ‘rusty’ too.”

“Hmmm...” She gave me a sideways smile. “I don’t know... it’s just been me in Elysium for who knows how long... I had a few friends with benefits around, but none were one of us...” She bit her lip. “I might need a refresher on what parts of the man go where again.”

“Well, I think I can help with that.” I slipped a hand inside the front of her suit, finding her nipple with my fingers, then slid it over the other as I kissed alongside her neck... awkward, to be sure, from that position, but she was inching herself upward to meet me. I whispered again to her. “No preggers though.”

“S’fine...” She turned, kissing me again as she finally turned the damn t-pilot on. Another deep kiss, this time both my hands finding their way under her top and pushing it back, slipping her arms out of it and baring those wonderful little tits as blue fell away to reveal her sexy caramel skin. “... I’m not really feeling the baby-making today. Just fuck me.”

Emily stood up, straddling the throttle and plucking off her headphones. Our hands joined lower down, finding the little tightseam notch at the bottom of her suit’s opening, the two of us grasping it together to complete her nudity—the garment quickly sliding off her body as it loosened, falling in a loose mess about her thighs and on the seat, revealing her perfectly bare sex.

She gingerly stepped out of it, careful not to press any buttons, then undid my belt and stripped me with rapid, expert precision. We soon were in the back of the cockpit, the only place with something like standing room, and we kissed a few more times. I took each of her nipples into my mouth before turning her around and moving her to press her hands on the windows as she bent over.

Her dark and pink entrance beckoned, and I placed myself against her—then, both of us pushing our bodies together, I felt her tight incest-pussy gradually welcome me after so long. She sucked in air through her teeth as the first few inches stretched her wide.

“So that’s where that goes... thanks for... oh... reminding me.” Her knuckles were white where she had one hand on the head of a chair, the other pressed flat to the edge of the window.

I chuckled as I took my time on it, entering her inch by inch until the base of my cock was being kissed by her folds. I always had to bend my knees and stand in a wide stance in this position, even Emily not quite being tall enough for it—but it gave me more leverage for slow, varied thrusts. I was in no rush, having just come twice in Naomi’s and Bethany’s throats, even if I was craving a tight pussy after.

I was firm but gentle with her, taking control and assuming dominant force. I moved her hands where I wanted them, and elicited moans and gasps as I pleased from my sister. I could feel her thoughts melting through the link, turning into a lethargic goop of pleasure and love; running my mental fingers through that, touching her mind with mine, was always the hardest part of keeping myself from erupting too soon with Emily.

Her expression turned blank and open, mouth open wide and eyes sometimes rolling up as she obediently accepted every thrust. Her mumbles of yearning for my cum told me she needed me to begin our orgasm, but I delayed it, savoring how dependent she became in these few private moments.

“You wanna cum, Em?” I stroked a hand along her hair, through her shoulder blades and down to the small of her back—exerting pressure and controlling the pace. Her ass was bony, not really the nice bubble Bethany had, not that I really thought it was a bad thing. Variety, and so on.

“Yeaaahhhh...” She moaned. I imaged her playing with her super-stiff nipples, and her hand quickly moved to obey.

“Gonna cum in you... fill you up...” I grunted, speeding up as I felt the eruption impending. As it always was when it was just Em and I, our thoughts bled together through the link, sensations of my own body and her own become difficult to distinguish. While it’s possible with any hominus lover, when it’s my sister and I it becomes inevitable. Our powerful love connected it all, but at the moment it was overwhelmed by the sheer animal need for our incest.

The tightness of her sex and the sensation of her brother’s stiff cock stretching her wide became one and the same, as well as the wondrous play with her hard nipples and their taught, stiff toughness in my fingers. There was no sense holding back now; I could feel her own mind boiling, thoughts dissolving completely as our sibling-bond shared my pleasure and hers through the link. My cock, ready to burst inside her, was the only picture in her mind. “... Ohhhh yeaahhh...”

My balls churned, as they are wont to do—and I felt the volcano explode, firing rope after rope of thick cum into my sister’s secret place. She cried out silently, mouth wide as my messy explosion flooded into her mind as well, filling it completely and washing back into my own thoughts as I felt echoes of strange, feminine pulses surging out of her center. Together, our bodies moving in an almost-forgotten primal motion, we experienced a single massive orgasm, split between male and female bodies.

I slammed myself into her a few more times, emptying my balls completely as her body writhed to some unheard music. We played with her breasts together as the pleasure continued to splash her thoughts into a mess, our shared pleasure extended by the pulses she felt around her sex... they always lasted a bit longer for her than with other girls.

It’s not possible to keep such an intense and intimate link for very long... or wasn’t at the time, at our level of experience. I eventually let my spent cock slip out of her, and again collapsed into the co-pilot’s seat. She stayed in her bent-over pose for another few moments before turning around and letting herself fall into my lap, leaning into my shoulder and placing her head near my neck. Our bodies, coated with light sweat, kept us more than warm in the cool and thin air of the cabin.

We watched Osana approach together, the city skyline now more than just diffuse light; individual buildings could be distinguished, as well as the tiny airport. Docks and boats were visible at the sea, and off to the far western side we could see the lights of the secluded Banana Boat—our base there. I felt Emily shift, sitting directly atop my soft cock now—but it wasn’t sexual, she just wanted to talk up close and personal.

“Wanna tell you Ben...” Emily’s face, inches from mine, seemed as beautiful as ever in post-coital glow; our foreheads touched, and I felt her sincerity and love, and she let across how much she’d missed me—thoughts of nights spent alone, drinking too much wine as she thought about better years, when we were together more, just two kids in an impossible situation. She’d spend hours going through old pictures, sometimes frigging herself to thoughts of me... but most nights just wanting to be with me at all.

My sister smiled as she moved away, only an inch or two. “I told the Uruguay kids... I’ll be a bit behind schedule moving in there. Maybe a year.” She kissed me again, with a feeling buried inside the impulses I got—giddy at a momentous decision. “I’m staying with you. Wherever you go for the next year or so, I go.”

Hmm. Once, we never could have spared her from her executive roles in our peacetime efforts, but... that had been a long time ago. Things were still in a horrible state of affairs, to be certain, but I supposed it did free me to be with my sister. “And what if I announce some huge offensive today? All hands on deck and head to the front lines again?”

“Like hell you would. But if you did, I’d be there with you.” She stared at me, glowering for a moment, then shrugged. “Osana’s about as close as you can get to that at the moment anyway.”

I laughed, agreeing. Chances were she’d just be spending more time in the Vault with me, but I’d welcome her company there. I sure needed it, and the extra help with the nine kids we had there would be no less welcome.

Satisfied, we both took some time to catch our breath and let our renewed love sink in as we watched the city approach; Emily slid back into her pilot’s chair on final approach, not bothering to get dressed again save for her headphones. The plane slipped through a cloud, and I gave my sister another kiss—a few moments later, it broke, and we dipped beneath the cloud to see the shining light of Osana fill the windows.

It was a cacophony of multi-colored light, like the Hong Kong of the Mediterranean—but without the money. Lamps and the old-school bulbs of a million homes and offices ran from the interior of the main island, all the way to the waterfront.

It made a stark contrast to the scattered, dim lights of the larger southern island, visible to the far left—that was what most would have thought of as ‘Malta’ proper, when Emily and I were young. Hopefully we’d avoid the subject of the other island during this visit.

The long artificial peninsulas on either side of Osana housed countless people, some even below sea level—built with a fleet of hand-me-down AC robots we’d given them after the bulk of Elysium’s construction was done. The glint of the countless blue-white LEDs keeping the city awake and moving was garish, though it made the aging orange-yellow sodium lights of the city’s airstrip easy to spot.

Emily brought us around and set us down alongside the strip, the small plane’s jets going vertical a few moments before landing. There wasn’t any security worth calling that—and Farhad had us all on special license anyway. I heard Emily start the hatch opening cycle in the back, and a loud hiss sounded from the pressure equalizing, as well as various creaks and groans as the engines and frame cooled.

I held Emily’s blue neoprene in front of her as she took her headset off. She smiled, taking the shoulder of it in her teeth as she tapped on a few more old-school switches. Stepping into the back again, I got dressed for the second time in the hour and walked back to Bethany and Naomi; Bethany was searching for her clothes, having only found her bra and shirt thus far, while Naomi hadn’t bothered getting dressed, and had a hand pressed to the side of her stowed hardsuit.

I suppose most of you never would have met Naomi. They have a term now for what she became—one of the Lost Mothers. She would have hated that name. Naomi’s short black hair didn’t quite go to her shoulders, and her bangs ran to just over her eyebrows; gorgeous, sharp-cheeked Asian features and vivid, dark eyes both made her alluring—and sensual as hell too. An incredible athletic figure and handful-size breasts came together to make her look like something between a tennis star and a model.

Naomi flashed me a wicked grin before she slapped the lozenge-shaped hardsuit, which unfurled into boarding mode. She turned, facing me and standing spread-eagled, and stepped backward into it as it opened and accepted her inside, closing around her nude form in seconds. Once closed, a few hisses and sounds and it was sealed, covering her in a matte black composite.

It hugged her figure admirably; the flight hardsuits all did, of course. Each still had to be built to custom and extremely specific dimensions for the person inside it, to the point that even gaining or losing a few pounds could throw off its calibration and break its environmental seals in flight.

She looked like a feminine robot, almost human save for the smooth helmet she wore, the four stubby wings—more for control surface and mountings for the hyperfans than actual lift—and the two heavy power cylinders jutting outward from her back. Her arms, feet, and shoulders bristled with weapons, as well as a few others hiding within bulges on the sides of her thighs and a belt-like thing on her waist.

At the time, our male and female hardsuits differed quite dramatically. We were limited by basic facts of hominus sexual dimorphism. The female suits were lightly armored—less than a quarter inch over most of the body—and were intended to fly full-time in combat. My own suit, which was also in stowage mode, filled half the width of the fuselage, and weighed almost eight times as much as the girls’ versions. It was an old assault suit, dated but still what I trusted most.

Naomi’s voice came over speakers, unnaturally clear. “Going out for a spin. See ya.” She hopped backward, impossibly agile with the assistance of the suit’s muscles, kicking off the ceiling once then bolting out through the narrow gap of the opening hatch, igniting her pack in midair and rocketing outward and up into the night sky... leaving us to wave off the blast of heat and reactant-tinged air in her wake.

I frowned, shaking my head and seeing Bethany roll her eyes. There was one fortunate side effect—Bethany’s black panties came floating through the air, carried aloft by the blast of thrust, and she deftly snatched them with her fingers as they flew past. Smiling to herself, she sat down to put them on, then her skirt and sandals.

“Hey.” Emily turned the corner, putting hers on as well. She looked up toward the door, about to say something. “Oh...” I looked over as well.

There you were, Rasima.

You were young, of course, at the time. I’d met you before, but you were even more young at the time—much of that when you were seven to eight, then again at thirteen... a young girl regardless, often away with her mother. Now you were nineteen, and every bit the image of beauty your mother had been—and then some.

You stood at the bottom of the ramp into the plane, long black curls still swirling around in the wake of Naomi’s stunt, five feet and four inches tall, dark-skinned, and with the same bright hazel eyes I remembered. Your bony frame had a certain strength to it.

You wore a long dark blue dress with gold highlights—hugging more tightly to your figure than your father would have liked—with an oversized dark green military jacket draped over it, though your arms didn’t go into the sleeves. You were holding your hands together in front of your waist with a bit of trepidation as you stepped forward. Your eyes widened as you saw how my two companions were dressed... or weren’t.

“Uh, hi Rasima... sorry!” Emily hopped partly behind the end of my stowed hardsuit, only one foot in her outfit—small tits bouncing only a little with each awkward hop. Bethany only shrugged, finishing putting her skirt on, then stepping into her sandals.

“Rasima! I almost didn’t recognize you. Didn’t expect to see you so soon!” I stepped forward, arms wide and smiling at my friend’s daughter, curiously blocking her line of sight to Emily and the cockpit—and sensed my sister dash at the opportunity, hopping into the cockpit and grabbing the rest of her clothes.

“Yes...” You were obviously a little off-balance—Farhad knew everything, but I actually wasn’t sure right at that moment how much you actually knew about us. I doubted it was much, if anything, but you may not have even been aware of our... lifestyle—and though Osana was hardly a conservative place, I knew that Farhad kept you quite sheltered after your mother died. “Father wanted to be here, but he was called away to the defenses. He sent me and wants you to stop by before heading out to the boat.”

I nodded. Interesting note—originally, Rasima tried her hardest to get me to basically write her out of this, and all other, chapters. She does the ‘biblical signature’ thing for her own work, where the author’s own appearances are as oblique, vague cameos only, and she was actually pretty angry when I tried to not only describe her young, pre-hominus self in any detail—she actually wanted me to delete her in near-entirety from my journal.

Well, I’m not going to just say there was ‘some girl’ at the bottom of the ramp then ignore you for the rest of the story completely, Rasima. You’re as much a part of this as any of the others from before the war, and it would be pretty damn hard to tell my own story in WW5 without mentioning you in your adult years. Hopefully it won’t take too long for you to forgive me for the little editing switcheroo I pulled to get you into this chapter.

You stepped forward, diligently hugging me by the side as you led me out—only after I picked up the box I’d stashed on the plane, behind my stowed hardsuit. Bethany fell in behind. A truck was backing up to the end of the ramp, beeping loudly, three uniformed men outside and one driving—here to pick up some of the gear in the plane, for delivery to the Banana Boat. My own and Emily’s hardsuits would stay here. We wouldn’t be staying in Osana long.

Outside, the smell of the Mediterranean immediately hit us all, coupled with the bizarre panoply of odors that always accompanied the chaotic city of Osana. The airport itself was little more than a few hastily built sheet-metal hangars and a wooden, two-story control tower; almost everything important was done automatically anyway. The chain link fence that cordoned off the area was topped with concertina wire and lined up against the backs of several housing projects.

There was a long black sedan waiting to the left, a suited driver standing next to it and holding the large door open, limo-like seats—facing one another—in the back. I could already see the bottle of Grand Marnier and tumblers sitting ready on the little table inside; so, today would be bad news then. Farhad may have come from a culture that didn’t drink, but the lifelong atheist himself did so like a fish. The sedan was idling behind a military SUV, an older model that likely had half of Farhad’s security detail inside and ready to go.

I gestured for Rasima to get in, holding her hand in a gentlemanly manner as she stepped inside, then did the same for Bethany. I had to wait another minute for Emily to catch up—she hopped out, now wearing her blue flight jumpsuit with a grey sweater tied loosely about her waist, and a pair of black flats. She got in, then I did as well, and we all sat together as the car started going.

The car was a hand-me-down, actually once one of our own—like many things in Osana. It was well-furnished inside, though certainly more threadbare and worn than one would expect for the vehicle ostensibly used to receive foreign heads of state. It wasn’t as if foreign heads of state were lining up to visit easily-forgotten Osana, though.

Rasima’s phone buzzed with a message just as we sat, and she checked it; she looked up at me as she put it back into her coat pocket. “Father just got away from the defenses. He wants to meet you for dinner at the residence.”

I nodded as the car pulled out, driving toward the exit. “Just me?”

“He...” Rasima seemed puzzled for a moment, suddenly off balance. He must not have had her doing things like this very much, I assumed. “... he didn’t say. I assume present company? He sees the people at the boat often anyway.” She frowned. “I can message him back—”

I waved it off. “Let’s all head there. Naomi never sat still long enough for a polite dinner anyway, and who knows when she’ll be back from her spin.”

“That was her flying out of the plane? What was that?” Rasima seemed to abruptly remember the stunt. “I’ve never had one fly that close! What if—”

I reassured you that hominus had far more fine control and finesse with tricky flying than whatever simple remote-control hardware Farhad had on loan from NATO. As we pulled out of the airport, I noticed how few other aircraft were there; trade and travel hadn’t tapered off completely, but there was only so much we could do on our own now that most of NATO had come to view Osana as an endless money sink and no longer their problem.

We spent the next twenty minutes chatting; Rasima was in college now, a sophomore at the local university. Her father could have sent her away, and had been more than tempted to, but she had insisted it would send the wrong message and went to the city’s only college anyway. She still hadn’t declared her major, though it would quite obviously be something liberal-artsy. Journalism, maybe, or political theory... maybe composition or philosophy.

No, she normally didn’t run about and handle things like this for Farhad. I sensed an edge to that, a subtle tone she had put into it that doesn’t come across well in English—we were speaking in Arabic—but the way she’d said it seemed to be directed at me, personally.

Emily must have sensed it too; she took over after that, talking politely about Rasima’s plans for the future outside of school. She always seemed to have a soft spot for my sister, though it would be a decade before Rasima told my sister what a role model she’d been. Bethany spent most of the time on her phone, listening in to what sounded like a conference call. Very high-end biochemistry stuff, far beyond my training. She was here for a totally different reason than Emily and I to begin with.

I took the opportunity to spend more time looking out the windows. Even at night, the city was still so alive. As had evolved into a local tradition, the many storefronts were all lit by what we would have called white Christmas lights, and every home had a unique door; some took it further, decorating every visible part of their home with all sorts of things. Tall tenements and housing projects lined most streets, so those wildly colorful decorations climbed up so high, one had to crane their neck to see them all.

The streets were mostly paved with polycrete, which showed cracks all over—little grass or weeds popped out of them, sometimes. Recovered streetlamps from wrecked cities along the coast had been used to light the place—an initiative of Farhad’s—but they were every different shape and color, making the place look cobbled together. We had to wait, occasionally, as the crowded crosswalks parted to make way for our official transport.

There were people dressed in every way imaginable, a hundred kinds of modern and a hundred different traditional forms of garb—formal, casual, sportswear, a few in scavenged and tattered remnants. Even Farhad couldn’t fix all poverty. Restaurants lined some of the streets we passed, most of them with verandas out front where people sat and ate together under umbrellas, enjoying the cool summer air of the Mediterranean.

Navigating the place was the same nightmare as always, the automated driver freaking out at the crowds walking in all directions, hand-pulled carts, dogs and cats—everything. The human driver was just there to look good and make sure the computer didn’t screw up too badly, basically—you don’t see that these days, of course.

Osana had been another project we were involved in, though in this case it was a much more secondary role—it was largely NATO that once footed the bill, though now we were the only sponsors left worth mentioning. Once known as Gozo, the smaller of the two islands of Malta, Osana had sprung up over the ruins of what had once been a small island town in the aftermath of the napalming at the height of World War Four.

That had been nearly twenty years ago, and millions of people had been fleeing Africa to try and escape the Naglfar-backed empire that was spreading like wildfire... and consuming all in its path, like the same. We had bled our share then, too—and then some—and even those of us who lived came out scarred, both physically and mentally.

I might get some flak, I think, from many, for skipping those early years of the war with this journal. They were ugly, brutal, and bloody. A few years into it we had begun fitting our hardsuits with what we called failsafe devices, which were bombs fitted at the base of the skull-

I should stop. I hate talking about the war. About the children I lost. I would lose more before it was done. If you’re here looking for those stories, others have written very detailed accounts of their years on the front lines; Blake’s Music of Machines, Music of God is a grisly, if accurate, experience of the front lines in a bunker crash hardsuit—and his World War Fourever is fantastically detailed analysis of the overall strategic play-by-play and political aftermath of every major action, if it takes ages to get through.

Rasima herself has written several poignant, harsh volumes of her years on the civilian side of the war, in clinics and mobile aid units after her father died and she had to change her name. Similarly, Bethany’s daughter Jacinta—the only one to also go into medicine—wrote a few of her own time in mobile medical units, and focused far less on the technical and medical side than I expected; it encapsulated the hopelessness and brutality of the war well.

Sienna’s Blood-Feather is a brilliant portrayal of the lightning-fast, deadly reality of flying an interceptor hardsuit over Turkey at the height of the war, up to and including losing both of her sisters in a single day. Tristan—yes, I’m saying it—wrote the surprisingly brief, and even more surprisingly apolitical, summary of a single day on the front—titled after the day itself; January 27th, 2126.

It was the day we lost Jacob, if you were wondering and hadn’t read it.

People tend to view me differently after reading Tristan’s little book—and I accept that. War is horror, the worst parts of humanity scaled up to industrial levels. I made a choice that day that left Tristan and I forever changed. Saying it like that makes it sound like I’ve come to terms with that pain, but the truth is it’s simply dulled with age... along with many other things. I’ll never truly come to terms with-

I’m talking about the war again. I’ll stop.

Suffice it to say, overall, that I’m fine with this journal not capturing where my thoughts went in the darker periods of World War 4. I’m fine with the darkest of all of those dying with me, actually.

We pulled up to the mayor’s residence, a large and antiquated estate that was one of the few remaining buildings from before the napalm. It hadn’t been the mayor’s house then, just some rich guy’s villa, but now it was effectively Farhad’s home for life—he was invincibly popular, a widower that had built this city up from nothing and fought tirelessly for the poor and sick refugees that filled the place, hammered crime out of the streets whether it came from at home or abroad, gave his people new lives and opportunities...

I still scratch my head at how he did it. It wasn’t like nobody tried it before, and he had started with far less than most who had; what sorcery did he have that let him gather so many to his cause so easily? In hindsight, I might have been wise to spend more time just shadowing him, watching how he led people. Maybe things would have gone differently then.

The place was a two-story mansion, built in the Southern American style—a wraparound porch on both floors with windows facing out in all directions—all in white and light beige. High bushes and trees obscured some parts of it, planted strategically by his security chief years back after an assassination attempt that had missed his heart by only inches. We pulled up to the front and I took Rasima’s hand as she scowled at me, bringing her out, then Bethany and my sister.

The front doors burst open, and there he was—tall and gangly, looking older than ever, but still full of energy. He was wearing a white linen shirt and long beige linen pants, with sandals and a pair of thick glasses; feigning a day off, then. Farhad’s smile was wide and his stride strong, even now in his early sixties, and he immediately came down the stairs toward us, his arms still outstretched.

“BENEDICT!” He shouted, and we hugged, slapping each other’s backs. At six feet and three inches tall, though barely half my weight, he was one of the few people who was almost as tall as me. He took a step back. “It is wonderful to see you, old friend.”

“And you as well.” We were speaking in Arabic still; Emily knew it, but Bethany didn’t, not well... though she was still absorbed in her conference call. There’s going to be some translation inaccuracies here, you’ll have to forgive me—a lot of it is loaded in some contextual stuff in Arabic that doesn’t come across perfectly.

“Emily, you are the image of beauty.” He bent down and kissed her on the cheeks, like a gentleman, and she returned it; she was always charmed by his genuine style and grace, even if she had turned down two of his marriage proposals. Don’t ask her about those, it puts her in a bad mood. Rasima too.

He turned to Bethany, who had put the phone down a moment to smile at him and meet his kisses. “Dr. Lazar. My house is blessed to receive incredible beauty twice in one night. Surely, there shall not be another shred of luck for the rest of my life.” He said it in English, which, well, he was good with in some areas, but not so good with in others. Seductive lines were not one of the good areas; it came off like a bad movie script.

Emily laughed. “Farhad, you used that one on me last time.”

“I did?” He looked puzzled. “No no, that was when Nina and some of the others were here for dinner. Only last week.”

“You’ve used it twice before then too, Father.” Rasima glared at him, letting out an audible, entirely teenage sigh.

“Oh.” He paused. “But it is such a good one—perhaps age, then. Come inside..” He gestured toward the door, then faced Bethany. “Doctor, I know your time is short. A car will take you to the facility shortly, the team is working late and has something to show you... but I prevailed on them for just an hour, to take in dinner. A hotel suite is prepared for you; only the best for our savior.”

“Don’t call me that until the vaccine works.” Bethany shook her head. “I am starving though.” She smiled, finally putting away the holo and taking his arm as he led her inside; she was hilariously short next to his towering, gaunt frame, but then I supposed the same was true of both his late wives.

The place might have looked American from the outside, but within it was a mixture of a dozen styles; the art on the walls was all locally made, yet had roots all over Africa and Asia. There were worked wood wall sculptures, framed fossils, carefully worked stone candle-holders and sumptuous leather couches. Most of it had been donated, and while each piece was fantastic, none of it ever quite matched.

We sat together at a heavy mahogany dinner table in the anteroom, Farhad at the head and myself at his right, Rasima at his left; Emily and Bethany on the opposite sides of one another beyond that. Tama, his chef at the time, wheeled out a cart with dinner servings; he knew I wasn’t up to goof around with appetizers after a long flight.

A small framed photo, old and 2-D, of Farhad and his late second wife—Rasima’s mother—was sitting on the table behind him; the whole rest of the room was in white damask wallpaper and decorative plates submitted in some contest from a local pottery school. Both my girls were unfailingly polite, familiar with table manners across the globe and with a palate that could appreciate virtually anything edible.

Rasima was another story. I should forgive her; at nineteen, she were just full of hell enough to be no end of trouble for her father, just smart enough to be dangerous, and just ambitious enough to constantly pester him about involving her more in the state. Even he, with his strict rules about nepotism and preventing the corruption he’d seen overtake so many other places, had trouble telling her no.

She was twiddling her hair idly and stabbing the pepper steak with a fork as the rest of us were fully in course. Bethany wasn’t lying; she gobbled up the whole plate and was done in a flash, and begged off. Farhad wasn’t about to keep her, with how close the team was to a vaccine—her insight could be the breakthrough they needed. She was gone a minute later.

Emily tried to start another conversation with Rasima, but she was being a little teenage porcupine—rolled up into a ball. Teenagers and their theatrics seemed a lot more hot and sexy back when I was one. Now that I’d raised a few dozen, I actually felt no real attraction to her at all—not that way.

What few thoughts of sex I had at the moment were all about Emily. For Rasima, then, it was more a uncle/niece thing—but the old school kind, not sexual. It would be many years before my desire for her surged so powerfully that I’d brave fire and death to reach her.

“Father, I found something upstairs before.” Suddenly a light of mischief was in her eyes. I glanced over at him, and she were pulling something out of the inside of the pocket in the coat she’d draped over the back of her chair. A picture—she slid it over the table to him.

“Ahhh... this.” He smiled, taking it, then showing it to me. I smiled back. “What a fucking day that was, ah Ben?” He’d said it in English, the NATO standard we all used in that particular theater. You weren’t that good at it yet then, Rasima.

It was a photo of Farhad and I, in fatigues, posing a mile in front to an Axumite fuel depot that we’d torched—the flames behind us rose high into the sky, cigars in our teeth and some looted Grand Marnier in tumblers in our hands. Don’t ask where we got either. It had been the first week into the third big Nile offensive—the only one that got anywhere. It sure as hell hadn’t felt like it on the ground after that day, though.

Rasima’s voice was still flat. “I didn’t know you knew him from the war, Father.”

“Ah, I never mentioned that, did I...” He trailed off, his smile suddenly weakening. Clearly, he’d told her absolutely nothing about the reality of who we were. “Rasima, where did you find this?”

“You had used it as a bookmark, in the library.” She paused, glaring at him—then me. “Father, that picture is from thirty years ago. ‘Uncle’ Ben cannot have been more than—”

He waved it off. “Ben has just aged well. He is the envy of men. Do not worry about this, Rasima.”

“Nobody ages that well, Father!” She slapped the table. “He is tricking you, he is an agent in a disguise... or something. Mother said there would be spies all about, and you are too careless—”

“Who?” I finally spoke. She suddenly looked back at me, wide-eyed. Emily hadn’t stopped eating the whole time, largely uninterested in this particular drama. I shrugged, trying to sound conciliatory, and looking at Farhad then his daughter again. “I’m curious. Who am I an agent, ‘or something’, of?”

Farhad shook his head. “Ben, relax. This is for me to resolve.” Farhad turned to her. “Rasima, stop trying to fill in for your mother. You will learn but you are not so good at it now as she was. You have class work, yes? Do not lose time, and work on it now. We will talk about this tomorrow.”

She crossed your arms over her chest, glaring at me through her father’s warning. “If you are here, and no older than grad students teaching my courses, then you are obviously not the man who fought with my father on the Nile offensive. It doesn’t matter who you are now, only that you are not who you say you are, which is reason enough to shun you.”

I nodded. “Well, okay. A little sloppy, but you don’t have much to work with, so I’ll give you credit for having the right idea.” I looked over at Farhad. “I guess I’m somebody else, working for... somebody else too. It’s a pretty big deal—sorry, man.”

“Oh, is that so.” Farhad said it flatly, glaring at his daughter. “Perhaps I am a somebody-else too. Perhaps everyone here except Rasima is an agent of the men in black, in helicopters and hiding the aliens in the basement.”

He turned to you again, as you rolled your eyes. “Go to bed, Rasima. Ben is the man in this photo. I know this beyond doubt, and would know it right away if this ‘they’ sent a fake; he would not even get through the door of my house. He saved my life several times. You have class work to do tonight, yes? I will walk you to your room.” He glanced at Emily and I. “Forgive me. I will have Tama send in the gelato. Fresh from Italy. The finest.”

Farhad nodded at me as you and he stepped out—and I caught sight of you shooting me an evil glare as the door closed. Emily was pointing toward the chair you’d been sitting in, but I already knew. I could practically feel the electric buzzing of the inept ‘bug’ you’d planted—your phone, crammed into a tear in the fabric of your seat cushion. It practically sang aloud to anyone with electrophoridae.

Quite bold of you. I mean, if I’d been some kind of international agent hooked up to a world-spanning syndicate, did you think I would not only fail to notice that but also fail to do something horrible to you to follow it up? As it was, I just left it there as we resumed talking.

I turned to Emily. “So how’s the world domination plan going? Are the midgets in place?”

My sister brightened, obviously also sensing the ‘bug’. “Yeah, and the laser-shark tanks too. Soon the whole of Earth will feel the Doom-Wrath.”

I snorted, and we kissed again. Our lips had just parted when Tama came in. Emily clapped happily. I might have been a chef, but cooking and making gelato are two completely different things. In fact, I kind of sucked at pastry and desserts in general anyway. We had to outsource all the sugary treats inside the Vault’s stores.

“World domination plan on hold! Gelato time!” Emily dug in after Tama left, gobbling up the chocolate-caramel stuff. It was a little too much for me, and how she kept her super-skinny figure while eating like that was a mystery even to other hominus, with our fantastic metabolisms. A lot of people these days marvel at pictures of fat people from the old world, thinking they’re obviously doctored or extremely rare cases. They weren’t.

Farhad returned ten minutes later. I’d written about his daughter’s ‘bug’ on a napkin, leaving it next to his plate. His mouth was agape, and he almost stormed back upstairs to let her hear it—but we calmed him down, and we even managed to do it without talking. She had to have her little secret.

Instead, we discussed some boring stuff for a while, mostly defense plans and the specifics of what help Nadine had secured from Washington—which and how many missiles, the launcher trucks and the fuel they’d need, how to hook up guidance systems, and how his people would need to hook in the intel data feeds from our interceptor girls, zipping through the skies in hardsuits but not flying directly into the action anymore.

This was our strategy, in the wake of the first Axum war—known to most of the planet as World War Four. It was Farhad’s own idea; after he’d saved my life on the Nile, he and I became close friends and I’d told him everything about us.

That was when he was much younger, of course; he was in his thirties, and I... well, I would have been about four times that, but age is funny. Humans didn’t just age faster than us, they actually matured faster too. Despite the huge gap of years, I often felt outflanked by Farhad’s wisdom.

We had fought our way south, mile by mile, paying in blood the whole way—I’d lost children and wives, and he his brothers, and he got news along the way—his young first wife had died, only weeks after their wedding... another victim of a retaliatory attack by enraged Axum soldiers.

Farhad and I kept each other sane for a few years, pretending we weren’t unraveling as we saw everything we bled for fall apart. The offensive didn’t hold any seized territory for long; NATO simply couldn’t maintain the supply lines, and the strategy changed from total destruction of Axum to simple containment.

A diplomatic solution, that under any other circumstances I would have supported—except I knew what kind of monster was behind Axum’s rise, and that it would never stop, never accept or even understand peace. Axum didn’t truly control Naglfar; it was never simply a weapon system. All we were doing with this peace was giving it a breather.

From early in its history, as far back as when Axum was still the Sept of the Glorious Yah, it was backed by Naglfar’s largest and strongest single cell—which we simply referred to as the Axum cell. The only cell that ever truly worked ‘with’ humans, rather than for or against them—but even then, it was only working with the Axumite cult leadership insofar as doing so provided near-unlimited harvest for its pods.

Naglfar had about a dozen cells we knew about then, each with its own quirks, patterns, and weaknesses. They even fought amongst themselves, though none dared face the Axum cell. A few of our number worked on hunting down the few other cells, but the bulk of our post-WW4 effort was focused on Axum and the Naglfar cell behind it.

The Axumites understood Naglfar as something different than just a cyber-technological machine; they though it was an order of corporeal warrior-angels, so to speak... but then, only we ever understood the Naglfar network as a single continuum of hive-mind entities, all secretly communicating and sharing information. In their defense, it was all well-hidden, and we would have been labelled conspiracy theorists at best.

To the rest of the world, there was no common thread; they just called them wet networks, and they were known as a common framework for employing cybernetically repurposed—but otherwise non-sentient- brain matter, recovered from the dying the same way organs might be used for transplant. The penchant for wet networks toward friendly fire and adding the harvested brains of fallen enemies and allies both to its collective was just a persistent bug in the design.

While a long and concerted effort by ourselves and allied causes had eventually gotten the creation and use of wet networks banned by the UN, they were still in-use by a half-dozen belligerent countries, and we had reason to think a few NATO members were playing around with their own secret versions in well-hidden research facilities. I’m sure the people working on it told themselves it was just about knowing how to counter their frightening offensive power, but I knew better.

It was all fueled by desperation, I suppose; NATO itself was fraying, resources were strained and centuries-old alliances were wearing thin. The writing was on the wall for much of the First World—their economic model had less than a century left in it, but the same old and tired ‘someone will surely invent something’ motto was keeping anyone from making any hard choices about what had to go. Same as when I was a kid, I assumed, and I wasn’t any better than the rest of them.

It was Farhad who suggested our change in war strategy. With our numbers so few, it made more sense to simply support a real country, with a military, rather than take the fight to Naglfar ourselves. We’d thought of it who knew how many times before—but none of us could trust any of the players on the map. Elysium was bound by treaty to maintain no standing military, which wasn’t due to expire for another ninety years.

So there we were, the shadowy benefactors of two players—Elysium on one side, and Osana on the other. We provided intel, ran defense grids, had a few people embedded in all the big players’ diplomatic corps and greasing the wheels—like Nadine with her help on NATO airstrikes. We also provided electrophoric mastery and long-range support, like Tristan with his solenoid array that locked down Osana’s airspace.

The moral of the story, to me, was that my children weren’t out in hardsuits that could never be heavily armored enough, charging into ghilman formations and dying. We weren’t winning the war anymore, but we weren’t dying either.

Well, at the time, anyway. Naglfar wised up to the strategy, but not for a while yet. There would be far more of our blood shed in World War Five, in the following decade.

Farhad knew everything, and we winked at each other as we blatantly discussed secrets kept between us—knowing Rasima would be listening in tomorrow. She later told me that it had confused the holy shit out of her, but she figured at the time that we knew she had placed the bug and were playing with her, spinning a wild tale about immortal space people living in a hollowed-out Henderson Island in the Pitcairns—when they weren’t hiding in plain sight.

“What was it you got called away for earlier?” We’d finished our business, and Emily was leaning against my side as she took little sips of her liquor. I held out my glass of our shared favorite toward Farhad.

“Ahhh... that.” He let out a long breath. “Let’s retire to the living room, yes?”

We got up together, and walked to Farhad’s living room, him sitting down on a plush red armchair and Emily and I on a love seat across from him; she was lying down, head on my lap.

“Another, ah... compromised... refugee boat.” He sighed. “This city was built by and for refugees—and while few come to us now, those that do, they are the most desperate. The Axumite council, they know that. In the last year we’ve seen them send us people with dormant nerve wires embedded in them.”

“Mother fucker.” I almost crushed the glass in my hand. I’d heard about it elsewhere, mostly used in Axum-planted spies abroad—but this was beyond low. “They stay alive that long now?”

He only nodded. “Since last year. We just turn them away. What else can we do? Axum is playing it in the news like we’re spoiled fools who only care about ourselves, and a few NATO players are actually buying it. They have turned away the same boats, but nobody’s reading that part of the story.” He chuckled at me. “Some kids in today’s—”

“Enough.” I took another drink. “Enough, enough...” Even I knew when to stop listening, or get dragged into the mire of despair that was the stories of many people in that age. “... can we talk about it tomorrow? I don’t want to ruin Sheldon’s party.”

“Of course.” Farhad took another drink himself, longer and deeper than mine. “I sometimes want to spend entire days drinking this stuff.” He put the glass aside. “This truth, with the nerve wires, is mine to bear, not yours.” He leaned back in his chair, pointing at us. “But for you to know, though, Ben—our scanners for this, they are not well developed.

“My man running this, he thinks we only catch maybe three-quarters of them. We took care tonight, but we should assume Axum knows you are here, or will know very soon. Much as I love to have you about, my city is not as secure as others; you should not stay more than a day.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine. The plan isn’t super solid, but I have other places to be at soon.”

“Don’t even tell me where it is you are going next.” He smiled. “We will see each other again, I’m sure.”

Sadly, that night was the last time I ever saw him. Osana was decimated by chemical attacks before I could get back there again.

He moved to retire upstairs after finishing his drink, and offering us the guest room to ‘commit grievous sin under my roof’. He always loved to joke about the incestuous relationship between Emily and I. We begged off, knowing we had another engagement—Sheldon’s big 40th, tonight on the Banana Boat.

We got back in the car, where my case of beer still waited—the driver taking us through small side roads, through the city’s burgeoning red-light district to a wharf where a small motorboat was idling, piloted by none other than Nina... one of the First Four.

The kids had only just started using that term, and she already hated it. The speedboat was painted white, and had just a small windshield in the front and four seats in the back, with a pair of heavy engines purring.

Nina didn’t get out of the boat to greet us, instead letting Emily jump into her arms, then idly locking fingers with me with one hand as I dropped down onto its plastic decking. Nina was wearing a dark blue sundress and sandals; a glance at her midsection, thigh, and ass confirmed she had lost some weight in my absence, and not the healthy kind of weight loss. She was as skinny as Emily now. It had to be the stress, and worrying over Blake.

The two girls kissed and hugged for a time, Emily’s small breasts pressing into Nina’s larger ones as they mumbled something about ‘been so long’ between kisses. Their attentions weren’t simply lustful; there was a desperation to them, like two women who’d just suddenly surfaced after ten minutes underwater. I untied the mooring ropes then relaxed in the back, still holding the drink I’d refilled before leaving Farhad’s, sipping it as Nina and Emily caught up.

Nina managed to drag my sister over toward the front seat and power it up, keying in a destination on the t-pilot before returning her attention to Emily. I savored the orange-hinted bite of the liquor as we rode, the ocean spray occasionally misting over my face—looking back toward the city as I vaguely became aware that it was getting increasingly heavy between the two girls up front.

I waved to a nearby crab-fisher, an older man pulling up traps along the shore, as he stared wide-eyed at the two women making out in the front seat while we left. He smiled back idly as we got further away, only then noticing the laconic, tall man lounging in the back, drinking and pointedly ignoring the sex-addled lesbians up front.

It was just an hour before midnight then, and the party was supposed to be a surprise. Sheldon knew there was going to be a party for his fortieth birthday, but he was of the understanding that it was a small gathering of those already there—ten or twenty at most. It would still be small, but he didn’t know anyone was flying in.

Bethany couldn’t make it tonight, the vaccine was in a critical phase and every hour really did count, but she asked Emily to give him a little present from her—one that was still in her bag, discarded on a chair as she and Nina groped each other. Bethany always had a special place in her heart for Sheldon; Wren herself said she might have popped him out of her belly, but she suspected he thought of Bethany as his mother as much as she.

Osana gleamed brilliantly, reflecting on the bay in a stunning way. It looked a bit Asian, in the way they seemed to cram lights and displays onto everything, but it had an entirely unique character—I counted the text of at least six languages on display.

It’s all gone now, of course. Without anyone left after the chemical bombings, the buildings—which had been hastily put up—crumbled under the Atlantic hypercanes quicker than we saw in the better-build European population centers. Even before the last human died, Osana was turning to dust. Only a couple rusting steel frames remain, and half-buried statues and stonework.

Before my time ends, I intend to build a memorial there, at the site of his old place. I’m still drawing up the plans; I would use something that would last for eons, maybe longer than the island itself. I could hire someone, a true artist, but... I can’t. I have to do it myself, even if I have to learn the entire damn art from the beginning. It won’t be today or tomorrow, but it will be done before I am.

We approached the Banana Boat a few minutes later. Not sure who gave it that name, but it stuck; it was never an actual banana boat, though. It was also a brand of sun protectant at the time—or maybe they’d gone under by then, I don’t know. It was the remains of a beached cargo ship, sitting on the side of a peninsula that had a fantastic view of the whole city.

Most of the ship had been cannibalized for metal, but we’d saved the aft—propping it up with girders sunk deep into the surrounding coral stone, and used it as a temporary command center when we were first building up the charred wreck of an island as a refugee haven. Farhad, his wife, and little Rasima had even lived there for a while.

When things really began to come together with the city, Farhad and them moved out and into the mayor’s residence—and now, it was basically the city’s hominus apartment building and love nest, and also doubled as a watch tower and hardsuit base. It had become a landmark for the city, and even drew some tourists—though at a distance. It was, allegedly, used as a training facility for intelligence-related contractors.

The Banana Boat rose up about five stories, its big propellers still partly visible—though half-buried in sand. The aging shells of barnacles covered some of the lower hull, and parts of the girders supporting it that went down into the sea sported the younger, living kind. The lower half of the hull was painted in red enamel, with the original name of the boat long since painted over, and the conn tower rose above that in a sun-bleached white.

It was lit by floodlamps on posts attached to the railings above, and the conn tower had a few lights of its own. The bulkheads exposed to the outside where the rest of the hull had been cut away had all been sealed, and we had added elevators and stairs where we needed to. Some of the corridors within had to be widened to accommodate us over-sized hominus men.

A small dock was fixed to one side that dipped into the sea, wooden boards on little plastic floats, facing to a door that we had welded onto the side—jutting out from the red enamel, what would have been beneath the waterline on the original boat. Over the steel hatch that served as a door, someone had hung a small wooden sign reading “FIGHT, FLY, FUCK: THE BANANA BOAT WAY”.

On the dock and leaning against the door stood Rain, arms folded under her breasts and smiling. She was wearing a tight red tee-shirt and black yoga pants that covered all but her toes, a common thing among the hominus girls then. She helped me tie the boat down and gave me a kiss as I stepped off, then to her two aunts as well. Rain had seen me not too long ago at the Vault, but it was still good to see my oldest daughter.

She was in on the plan, of course—it had been her idea; Sheldon had done too much, was too brave for his 40th to just be another forgettable orgy with a mere four or five girls. He got that every night anyway, being one of only four men among thirty-four women stationed here. It had to be an event.

Inside, the Banana Boat was far more welcoming than the exterior made it out to be. Shag carpeting—who knew where Sylvia had found it—covered every floor, and local art was hung on every wall you could find, sometimes painted directly on it, and a few pieces even made by some of us. A handful of those are still around, mostly in the Vault Museum. The bottom floor where we came in was part of what used to be the engine room, and was mostly used for storage.

Rain sneaked ahead, going up the stairs, making sure Sheldon wasn’t around to see us—finally poking back down to give us a sign. We followed her up two flights of stairs, to the third level, where we sat down together at one of the two circular tables that dominated this room, the mess and galley. We found a place to stash my beer case along the way.

The place was already decorated to the occasion—SHELDON or 40 was on nearly anything they could fit party decorations on, some handmade. Ice buckets and booze were set up on the counter top in front of the galley, along with dozens of little finger-food type things from all over town.

For once, I wouldn’t be cooking. The clock drew closer to midnight, and others began to arrive—mostly the younger generation, those that lived here full-time. My children, and their children, even some of their children. Those in the first generations aged quicker, of course; only from the fourth generation on did it take eighty years for my kids to reach adult, reproductive age.

Saffron and Ivy came as a pair, wrapped in tight black cocktail dresses, then Monique and Kat carrying some choice bottles of wine. Naomi finally showed up after her wild flight around town, then Gretchen, Sylvia... soon Kendrick, Lancaster, Ava, Tina, Xu, more came in after that than I could keep track of.

Finally, only ten minutes out, we heard another boat arrive, and a minute later Wren hopped up the stairs—welcomed with warm scorn by many. She was wearing a narrow tabard-style black dress that left her tattooed sides bare, showing both legs otherwise only hidden by her flats. No bra or panties encumbered her skinny figure and small breasts, and she wore her stringy hair straight down, just the way she knew he liked.

She had flown in yesterday, but had been hiding out in a hotel in town, making a few calls to local firms to advise them on some projects around town. Wren would obviously be laying first claim to her only son tonight—that particular tradition really does date back that far, though not so scandalously young as only 40 now—but he’d be getting a hell of a lot more pussy than hers before sunrise.

Wren looked excited about something for once, but also a little confused and she hovered over everything right away, reconfirming a thousand details and worrying constantly that something wasn’t right. Sylvia, Claudia’s ninth and probably the closest to Sheldon, assured her that it wasn’t her first rodeo and confirmed every little detail with her.

I don’t know why they bothered going over the specific arrangement of nachos, crab cakes, deviled eggs and other things; we all knew it would be drinks and partying for only an hour, two at best—and all that really needed was the drinks. The rest of the docket would be the inevitable fuckfest until morning, and yes, Sylvia had made plenty of arrangements for that too. She had an thirty-item list of orgy games prepared—including a few I had never even heard of, let alone tried. I made sure she gave me a copy before I went back into the Vault.

Just before the stroke of midnight, tall and handsome, sandy-haired Sheldon blundered in, thinking he was being sent down to pick up some drinks for a small toast with his elder brothers on the top decks. The conspirators in keeping him away, Blake and Tristan, soon followed in behind, laughing and congratulating him. Wren dove into his arms, kissing her towering son full on the lips after having to practically climb his seven-foot figure.

I walked up and shook his hand, taking pictures with the three of us; it was always a great occasion. He was stunned, and hadn’t even known I was out of the Vault for a few weeks. Sheldon had an odd magnetism to him, and while he was still a bit unsure of himself in life, he never let it show to anyone outside the family. He was too young to have fought during the height of the war—but in the skirmishes that followed over the years, despite his youth he was brave and focused and had proven himself a dozen times over.

The party got rolling quickly, music was put on and a copious amount of booze and appetizers vanished onto plates in minutes. Sheldon sat at the head of a long table, Wren’s small butt on his lap and feeding him crab cakes by hand—asking him a thousand questions ranging from his diet and exact fuck schedule with the girls on-base, to how much of her research he’d kept up on... he tried, but few could even begin to follow Wren’s work.

The party went on for an hour or two of just laughing and talking, until it began to break down the way our parties inevitably do... people splitting off to go find a place for foreplay, or sometimes not bothering with finding another place. Kendrick had vanished with Xu and Gretchen at some point, and Blake and Tristan had gone back upstairs after a few drinks; they saw Sheldon every day.

Rain and Wren were each curled up on either side of Sheldon, and the other girls were starting to pile on. Wren’s hand was front and center on his pants, stroking the stiff, long shape bulging there as they whispered things to him, giggling in between. The other girls that weren’t all over him were starting to cuddle up to each other, but still gathering ever closer around Sheldon—the man of the hour.

One of them said something I didn’t catch, he responded with an ‘Oh yeah?’ and there was an awkward pause—then a sudden cheer as eleven sex-hungry women descended on him. Wren had to push a few away to get at his soon-exposed cock first, two others helping tug off his pants as she straddled him—Rain untying the small belt that held Wren’s loose dress on at the same time, then slipping the whole thing off the genius mother’s head and taking a pink nipple in her mouth.

I caught a glimpse of Wren’s shapely, tattooed ass descending, then the head of Sheldon’s cock entering his mother’s sex—before the crowd closed around them and Sheldon was buried in a writhing mass of nude, sex-soaked femininity. A long masculine groan sounded from within, met with a chorus of soft coos and moans as every part of him was enveloped in woman.

I wandered off, leaving my son to his fate and trying to find Emily. I’d barely seen her at the party before she and Nina vanished. I went down a deck, to the quarters level—if I remembered right, that one was Rain’s... Rain herself, of course, was still upstairs, but I suspected I’d find the two who brought me to the Boat inside.

Rain removed the hatch proper for her room, replacing it with strings of beads with tiny lights in them that she could change the colors of—indicating if she was inside, asleep, or accepting ‘visitors’—for conversation, sex, or both. I parted them as I ducked within, my foot meeting with the huge, over-thick Persian rug that was slightly too wide for the small cabin. It was dark inside, lit only by a few electric candles.

All around were a chaotic assortment of knicknacks she’d found all over the world—a mandala tapestry on one wall, a painted bear skull on an aging carved-oak table under it, a small pot next to it with a pair of aphrodisiac-laced incense sticks smoking lazily inside. The bed was a simple mattress tossed on the floor, with no frame, and a positively ancient record deck was playing The Doors.

Upon the bed were Nina and my sister, both completely naked and writhing to the funky guitar’s wail; Nina’s legs were spread wide, her fingers digging into Emily’s scalp as my sister ate her out lovingly, her bare ass weaving about in a sinuous motion to the music as she glanced back at me for only an instant. She smiled before her tongue vanished back into the pink folds of Nina’s sex, her lips again totally enclosing the other girl’s pussy a moment later. Soft, feminine moans vaguely matched the lyrics.

I’d suspected they’d gotten away for this, and they’d be expecting me to join them—hence the erection already straining under my pants. How I’d longed to fuck either of these two for all that time in the Vault... now they were both in front of me, nude and willing. I dropped my pants unceremoniously, tossing away my shirt as well before coming down alongside my sister to treat Nina to a two-sibling special.

Together, Emily and I lovingly ate out the blonde general, tongues dancing on her delicate clit and fingers large and small pumping in and out in an unpredictable pattern. Through our link I could feel the tension and stress gradually melting within Nina, years of it built up; just a fuck, however good, wasn’t about to make it all go away... but we could sure as hell try to put a dent in it.

Emily, too, was all but broadcasting a lustful hunger for the other girl—I could sense it with every brush against her skin, now uncontained and highly contagious. She’d been away by herself for too long, that one time in the plane wouldn’t possibly be enough. Right then was about Nina, though. Emily didn’t let her animal desire for Nina get in our way, though, working in perfect tandem with me as we gradually brought the blonde closer and closer to release.

We’d advanced past the climb-and-deny thing that was so common in people that were considered good at sex among humans. When I put it that way, I sound like such a snob... it was all they had. We could easily pace ourselves just right, stimulating Nina bit by bit as her orgasm approached over five or six minutes—using what we called a ‘nerve hack’ at the time, but now there’s a half-dozen terms for the general category.

A few delicate touches and gently allowed linking by Nina let us fool her nervous system into working at our pace—dragging out the pleasure for far longer than was natural, each languid wave of pleasure lasting almost a minute. It was easier to achieve for hominus women than men, and for us guys it only worked well with blowjobs, but I have as much fun giving that experience as receiving it.

She gasped and her back arched for a minute, then two, then three... pleasure crept out from her center, a tsunami in slow-motion. It subsumed her, enveloping her thoughts for a full six minutes before she finally came down, Emily gradually licking her folds the entire time together with me.

Emily climbed atop her as her pleasure slowed, showing her glistening sex to me the whole time. She and Nina kissed, their pussies drawing close together as their legs and hands intertwined. They both knew what I’d do in this position, and Emily was spreading her legs wide—inviting me to claim her again.

I came up behind her, knees on the bed, and took her ass with one hand. Placing my shaft at my sister’s slick pussy, I savored the warm wetness of her folds against my cockhead for a moment. Emily and Nina both looked up at me, and with a lazy grin, Nina’s hands went to Emily’s hips too—fingers locked with mine, pushing my sister’s ass back toward me and staring into my sister’s widening eyes.

We speared her together, making Emily gasp. Moments later, Nina and I were fucking my sibling with a shared motion, my cock soon going full-speed in and out with rough, powerful strokes. Nina occasionally kissed Emily or toyed with her small breasts, but was mostly content to just watch her friend and lover be fucked by her brother right in front of her face. Nina’s legs crossed underneath our joining as she kissed Emily deeply; Nina wanted to see my sister cum before I fucked her in turn.

Just because we can drag orgasms out over a few minutes, doesn’t mean we always did. A short cum can be as good as a long one, just in a different way. Nina’s fingers danced over Emily’s clit for a time, and my sister gave a low moan. I slowed my pace, which oddly often had the effect of bringing Emily closer. My strokes took on more vertical motion in sync with Nina’s perfect strumming.

At just the right moment, Nina’s hand went behind Emily’s neck and she pulled my sister in for a tight kiss, their lips and breasts pressing together. Her fingers played hard on Emily’s clit and I stroked strong and direct, no vertical or horizontal—letting Nina do the honors, providing the delicate and loving attention of another woman while my cock just did the heavy lifting... or pounding.

I felt her quivering and impending loss of control, speeding up the pace and nodding at Nina. A sensuous touch to Emily’s clit, one finger brushing my balls—and she shared mental images of the rest of her plan for the two’s erotic night together. Nina diving upon Emily’s pussy, then the two locked in a sixty-nine, a nude dip in the ocean together with drinks in the late night, an hour spent at one another’s breasts before spearing themselves together on her favorite double-header, a good-night cum...

Emily shuddered and came, not dragged out like Nina’s—but wild and sensual, the sensation of my sister’s stiff nipples pressed into Nina’s own breasts shared messily through the link. With it came the lingering taste of my sister on Emily’s tongue, and a stray thought about the lovely contrast their skin colors made... and no small amount of deep, warm affection and love for us both.

We took a few breaths, and I let my softening length slide out of Emily. Nina and my sister kissed for a while, and I stood and stretched, taking a few moments to catch my breath as the two made out in slow-motion.

“Damn...” I came down on the side of the bed, Nina drawing Emily up into her arms. The two looked at me, hair in a sweaty mess, their bodies glistening in the candle-light with our exertion—but they looked fucking glorious, sexy as hell.

Even I couldn’t get hard again that soon though. Feeling thirsty, not bothering to get dressed—nobody else would be, judging by the sounds filling the Banana Boat—I went to pick us up something to drink. Not booze, we just needed hydration. I padded up the stairs to the third level, where the guest of honor was still receiving... honor.

Sheldon was still buried in a pile of female flesh that I couldn’t even begin to get a head count on. Was it still eleven, or had some latecomers to the party decided to strip and fuck the birthday boy too? It was hard to even distinguish where one body ended and another began. Wren stepped out of the pile for a moment, and blew me a kiss as I went back downstairs after grabbing some fruit juice stuff.

Returning to the cabin, I found the girls nestled up close to each other, talking about—oh. Gloriously naked and sweaty as those two beauties were, wrapped up in each other’s bodies and the taste of each other’s pussies still on their tongues... and they were talking about their favorite World Cup players.

I tossed them the cold drinks I’d found, then plopped down behind Nina, stroking her bare ass with one hand and letting my half-stiff cock press between her cheeks. They kept talking about it for a while, finally agreeing on... something. I don’t really remember much of it, I was the last remaining hominus at the time who was too American for the lost sport of soccer.

Instead just got lost in the music, bobbing my head to the eerie sounds; it had been too long since I listened to much, the modern stuff of that era simply didn’t appeal to me. I’d make a point to bring more of the classics back to the Vault.

The conversation never ended exactly; Nina’s body nestled a bit closer every minute or two, and Emily’s wandering fingers over Nina’s breasts wandered south, finding where my cock rested against the blonde’s ass cheeks. Nina didn’t even stop talking about some Brazilian goalie she was in love with as Emily took my cock in her mouth again.

Nina joined her at some point, after making out with me for a time—Emily moved to my balls, popping them in and out of her lips, while Nina had my cock halfway down her throat, her hand pumping the shaft. She stopped briefly to kiss my sister and they switched, each doing the opposite, then switching again... and again...

“You’re going with him to Geneva, right...” Nina said it, breathless, between kisses to my sister—before she licked the head of my cock passionately once more, making me groan.

“Yeah... everywhere after too...” Emily smiled at the blonde. “Do the honors.”

“All aboard...” She stood up, and I laid back on the bed. Nina climbed atop me, pointing my cock upward and slowly impaling herself on me with my sister’s gentle assistance and fingers on her clit—and right as the wailing bass hit a climactic note. The two made out as Nina lowered herself onto my shaft, until finally her labia met the skin at the base of my cock, her legs spread flat like a gymnast’s. She gasped, letting it fill her completely for a few moments as her wondrous, hand-filling breasts wobbled in tune.

Emily turned herself around, presenting her sex to my lips as she faced Nina. Nina began to bounce, wasting little time in assuming what she knew was a pace that would keep me at the edge of control, incredibly hot but not quite ready to seize her and fuck to a thunderous end right away. Her tight sex was so flexible, powerful muscles within able to contort and shape themselves in ways impossible for a normal human woman... she sort of wrote the book on using the female hominus body that way.

Her channel writhed about me as she slipped up and down, sweaty skin against mine as my sister straddled my face, facing Emily and the two kissing—Emily’s taste soon flooding my tongue. I didn’t need to see Nina to know what she was doing with every motion, her body twisting and undulating perfectly against my own animal, upward thrusting—meeting my fire with water, as it’s called now. It feels a little frustrating at first, but the way she does it becomes strangely erotic after a minute or two—you’re never quite coming, but never not almost there.

The two were kissing again, but Nina never let Emily’s hands on her wonderful boobs distract her from our union. She sensed my closeness, and with a casual ease decided it was time—her motions shifted in moments and before I knew it, I was moaning aloud into my sister’s folds, my eruption suddenly impending.

Five seconds later, I was blasting cum into Nina’s pussy, rope after rope filling the inside of her with spunk. She kept up her undulations the whole time, breasts heaving and body ripe with sweat by the time the residual pleasure I broadcasted—I never got good at suppressing that, bad manners at an orgy, I know—seeped up into her, setting off Emily as she juddered on my lips.

Compared to my sibling, Nina’s orgasm was nearly undetectable; I only knew because I could feel it through my cock, even through the thunder of my own pleasure as it subsided. Tiny quivers inside her body told me she, too, had cum, short but hard, travelling right up her center, arching her back. Emily slipped off my face, not quite ready to cum again, but she would have more treatment from Nina and myself before sunrise. After, too.

We collapsed together, the two nestling together next to me. I laid there for a while, catching my breath, letting the taste of the two girls dissolve in my mouth. Thick sweat covered us, gradually carried away by the bumbling air conditioning which had rumbled to life from the rampant sex overtaking the whole structure—the A/C was never the place’s strong suit.

After half an hour of simply lazing with the two girls, I felt something like rested. It was still too hot, so I left the two naked girls in the now-humid room to themselves, a blanket tossed next to them if the air started to blast again, and pulled my pants and shirt back on.

It was time for the other reason—the other other reason—I’d come out to Osana. I found the case of beer I’d hidden, now nice and cold, and made my way upstairs, past the orgy on the third floor which was still going strong. The look on Sheldon’s face was hilarious—an intense, wide-eyed stare, teeth showing and gritted tight... like he was trying to single-handedly fight off an army of savage Viking sluts by fucking every one of them into submission.

My payload hefted over my shoulder, I climbed the heavy, rusted stairs to the top deck above the Banana Boat. Salty night air greeted me first, mixed with oil and steel, and the faint hints of the various fluids maintaining the bargain-basement superconductors in the intel clusters and Tristan’s array up there.

As I stepped out of the door, I saw the bristling assortment of it all bolted onto the aging steel of the cabin’s roof, where various radar and communication hardware had once been mounted—back when the ship could do anything more than just float in the bay.

Tall guns, nearly twenty feet long—mostly part of Tristan’s quench array, stood proud like flagpoles all around, pointing straight upward and as closely packed as a freshly planted birchwood forest. Sensors were mostly around the sides, and were perhaps even more critical than the guns themselves; they were mostly swaying in the wind on whip-thin antennae, or mounted in clusters around the edge of the top deck.

On the far side, next to a railing on the deck’s edge and looking out toward the shore and the city skyline, I saw my two oldest living sons—Tristan and Blake, sitting back with tall glass beer mugs, talking quietly over a cheap card table they’d set up there atop the control sphere for the solenoid array. Good, they were both here.

Two well-known public figures now, each with a story as long as mine to tell—but to me they’re my sons, and I’ll describe them as I knew them then. Tristan was tall and imposing, with a whip-like narrowness of build but sense of power to him; he radiated assurance and focus, even when he was leaning back and relaxing as right then.

His reddish hair was short, skin nearly as pale as his mother Nadine’s though he had none of her freckles. His left arm was an oddly pinkish shade compared to his right, where he’d lost and regrown the whole thing only a few months back from a lucky shot by a drone during a coastal patrol.

Blake is short by hominus male standards—five and a half feet tall, but built like a tank. His wide frame had been stocky in his youth, but as a man he’d filled out to become a genuine heavyweight, thick arms and legs on a barrel chest, every part of him shouting ‘strength’.

Despite his apparent bulk, he’d never let his raw size and muscle make him stupid or take shortcuts. His skin was a deep tan, between his mother Nina’s and my own, and his blonde hair was kept in a buzz cut. There were only three long scars on his face then, and a somber expression from his blue eyes.

They held their near-empty beer mugs up to me as I stepped out, then returned to talking to each other right away. It’s a mistake to think the bad blood between them goes back that far. Yes, they were always rivals—and in the planning room, in politics during the Vault years, even on the battlefield there was no end of heated words between them... but it would be another few centuries before they never spoke again.

It wasn’t Jacob’s death that did it, not at all; Sana has it all wrong there, sorry. Blake and Tristan actually got along very well in most circumstances outside of war planning and politics, and they worked together fantastically once a decision was reached. They had the same sense of humor, liked different types of girls, cheered for the same soccer teams; hell, they even liked the same drinks. I intended to make use of that last bit tonight.

“I think you took a wrong turn, old man.” Tristan spoke first, looking over at his shoulder toward me, then pointing back toward the hatch I’d come through. “The girls are back downstairs.”

“The girls are fine with the birthday boy.” I shrugged with the other shoulder as I approached them.

“Doesn’t mean they don’t want to experience the man and the legend tonight, the one night you’re here.” Blake held a hand out to the door. “We’re just being boring up here.”

“That so?” I dropped the cooler down on the card table with a thud, finding a nearby folding chair to sat down alongside them both, to the left of Blake—Tristan on the far side. Their eyes went wide as they saw me open it and extract its contents; it was a case of prized Irish stout. The genuine article, fresh from the only remaining brewery... and nearly impossible to get one’s hands on outside of the British Isles at the time. I smiled. “Maybe a tad less boring now.”

“Ohhh fuck a duck.” Blake’s eyes widened, and Tristan immediately fell forward, his chair returning to all four legs on the ground.

The attention of both was immediately focused on the case. I hadn’t brought it all this way just to fuck around with them, and I immediately rendered one to each of my sons there, and opened one myself. We toasted then took the first drink together.

“Ahhh...” Tristan rested his can against his forehead. “God, how long has it been since I had a good beer? Been stuck in Osana for... feels like years now.”

“Oh wow.” Blake nodded toward Tristan. I could see the bags under his eyes; he still wasn’t sleeping well. He looked at me. “So how’s Sasha?”

“Better. Worse some days, and never, you know... much better... but she is better.” I shrugged. “Someone stays right there with her, basically all the time now. We think it helps if she links with someone regularly.”

“Good.” Tristan nodded, interested.

“They’re sure now that the brain tissue is regenerating, but the best guess is her body isn’t sure how it’s the neurons are supposed to be put back together. Linking like that may be... guiding it, I guess.” I shrugged. “As always... the link goes both ways though.”

Nobody liked taking their turn at her side; it wasn’t just sharing the pain with her, it was the... broken, one could say, thoughts that came across. Shattered and incomprehensible, chewing at the edges of sanity even after the link was broken. Despite over a century of research, there were still enormous surprises about ourselves we learned all the time—including being able to survive... in a sense... taking a sniper’s shot through the frontal lobe.

“I see...” Tristan leaned back again, sighing. “So it’s like Jacinta was thinking. She may wake up, eventually, but... she may not be the Sasha we knew when she does.”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“Wait a minute.” Tristan held up a finger. “If you all are linking to her, you know, guiding her brain on how to rebuild itself... and you have Mackenzie and Jill there full-time keeping an eye on her...” He glanced back and forth between us. “... what if her brain rebuilds itself to be more like them?” He smiled as Blake rolled his eyes, waiting for it to hit. “What if she comes out talking like a valley girl and wants in on that cheerleader routine thing they used to do?”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud, even as Blake was hiding his eyes. I could tell he was slowly beginning to laugh too.

“Oh shit... oh my god...” Blake’s shoulders were moving, but he couldn’t look up. The image was kind of hilarious, and it would have had Wren cackling for days... for all the wrong reasons. Most of all, I was glad Blake could laugh about something, at least. Nina had sounded so worried in her messages; he had become so withdrawn.

We sound like terrible people, as I read again this entry from centuries ago. I’ll let everyone else be the judge. Sasha had been under for the better part of four years by then, and the reality had sunk in some time ago. We all knew her well enough before to know that she’d have been the first one to joke about it if she could.

I tried to take another drink, and failed—almost spilling the precious beer. “She’d kill us. She wouldn’t want to wake up, if she knew that was what it would cost.”

“I know, I know...” Tristan took another long drink.

I took one myself, then looked back at my two oldest living sons. “So what were you two—oh god... what were you two talking about before?”

“Oh.” Blake rolled his eyes. “Genetic politics.”

“Ah shit, forget I asked. Maybe I will find someone to fuck downstairs.” I pretended to leave, then sat down again. “Ah, whatever. Whose?”

Blake shrugged. “Euro, mostly. Some Turkish, some Brazilian. Hard to tell who’s more harsh. Guess there’s one thing you can say about the US, though; at least they haven’t gotten themselves into that shit. Plenty of other stupidity, just... not that.”

“Here’s to freedom, democracy, and bombing the shit out of anyone what doesn’t have both.” I held up my beer and drank.

I’ll leave the specifics of genetic politics in the early 23rd century out for now; I could put an entire chapter into ranting about the horrors inflicted by the resurgence of eugenics. I’d also probably piss off too many Jovians, and that’s not what I wanted to do... in this chapter, anyway.

Tristan shrugged. “I’d actually like it if they did a bit more bombing out this way. A bit south of here, there’s some psychos worshiping an uncaring machine god. Any bombs they can spare would be welcome, really.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to your mother about that.” I was scheduled to spend a few days in New York and DC after Geneva, before heading to Uruguay to get another hardsuit measured and fitted, then back to the dreaded Vault. I sat back, remembering. “I’m supposed to head up to Geneva soon—something about that. Genetic politics, I mean.”

“Have fun with that.” Tristan rolled his eyes. “What you giving away this time?”

I sighed, waving down Blake’s scowl at his brother. “No, seriously. Leo and them derived a few more compounds, based on stuff we naturally produce. He thinks one might straight-up cure Alzheimer’s. Our bodies can fix mis-folded protein chains on their own, apparently. Nothing points back to us, and the foundation is handling the patents. Don’t worry.”

“Really? Good, I guess... I mean, really. Good.” Tristan shrugged. “Shit. First time anyone’s actually cured one of their diseases in what, a hundred years?” He pointed his beer out over the bay, toward Osana.

I shrugged back. “Well, it’ll be years before it’s ready for human testing, but... yeah.”

“That is good. I hadn’t been keeping up with the med tech side much, I didn’t know we were that far on the prion front.” Blake looked at me, nodding. “You should do that. Geneva, I mean. Maybe even spend some time in Leo’s lab. I heard you’re a doctor now too.”

I shook my head, not wanting to get into all that. “Just a bunch of holo training bullshit. I have yet to treat anything other than cuts and bruises. Haven’t touched any research-medicine stuff.” Don’t even ask me about of some of the shit I had to do keep my own body alive and ticking in the field, twenty years ago against the original Naglfar cell in Chile and then Kazakhstan.

“Yeah.” Tristan glanced over at me, pursing his lips, putting his beer down and folding his hands together as he leaned back. “You should maybe go sooner, rather than later... actually.”

“T...” Blake shook his head. “The fuck, man, he just got here...”

Tristan shook his head back. “Why wait? He shouldn’t be here. He knows that better than anyone.”

“It’s fine, Blake.” I turned to Tristan. “I’m heading out tomorrow midday anyhow. Let him say his piece.”

“About said it, actually.” Tristan shrugged. “You know why you ought to be in the Vault, punching out kids. We all agreed on it. You’re the only one who can produce the retrovirus, and we can’t store it. You shouldn’t be out here.”

“And here I am.” I looked at him.

He frowned. “The war is going to fire up again, and it’ll probably start right here. Naglfar’s not creative, but it’s not stupid. It won’t play with some escalation bullshit. It doesn’t have to do politics, with its own people or anyone else’s. It knows what we have on the perimeter, and it’ll bring ten times that—and it won’t let up until it’s killed or harvested every living person here.”

“And?” I sat back, taking a drink. It wasn’t like I didn’t know. I thought about it constantly, ran hundreds of simulations, kept some of the intel feeds fresh myself. “What would you do differently?” I waved a hand out to the side slowly. “Say me, the other First Five, we all... I don’t know, choke on pretzels and die tomorrow. It’s the Tristan Show. What do you do?”

“Pretzels?” I waved a hand as I took a drink; he was too young for the reference, but he got the idea. He paused. “You goofing around... or really asking?”

There was a silence for a moment, and I put down my beer. “T, we know I love Sheldon, but you two know I didn’t risk leaving the Vault just for another fuck party.” I rolled my eyes. “Practically can’t get away from them in the Vault. As soon as the kids are tucked in, it’s all there is for the adults to do.”

“Yeah...” He paused, looking at Blake then myself. “... We figured you were just coming to see your bro Farhad.”

“I was all but pining for my bro Farhad—but I could have seen him in Brussels next week instead, and it’d be safer.” I looked at Blake again, then Tristan. “I came here for a little summit with you two. Strategy meeting.”

Blake raised an eyebrow. “A strategy meeting... without my mom.”

“Yeah, without your mom.” I let it sink in briefly. Nina did have kind of a powerful presence when she was in charge of anything, often terrifying everyone under her command—but I wanted a private meeting with these two this time. I had to be sure.

I held my arms out. “I never thought it would be two guys, in a family that’s eighty-five percent girls... dumb luck, I guess... but you two run circles around everyone else when it comes to tactics. You have a unique insight when it comes to beating the monster in the field.” I put my arms down. “I just sent off another of Rain’s daughters to Uruguay for hardsuit training, before I left the Vault, you know.” I closed my eyes for a few moments, recalling years-old pain. “I sent a few off like that some years before—”

“—and none of them never came back. You’re sensing it too.” Blake nodded. “Axum’s getting its pieces in place. It’s going to hit us again soon, and hard, and this time it’s going to hunt us down anywhere it can find us.” He took a drink, nodding after. “You want to make sure every option has been considered. That it’s not just another bloodbath.”

I nodded, looking at the two of them. “I know there might be things neither of you will say when Nina is listening. So here, tonight, I want to hear it. Even if it’s something she—or I—would never float.”

“You sure she isn’t hiding behind the damn door?” Tristan nodded over toward where I’d come out.

I dismissed it with a hand. “If Emily isn’t eating her out again, she’s asleep.”

Blake nodded, looking impressed and then giving a weak smile. “Fuck, but you must be hard up for ideas. The sims have to look terrible.” He paused. “You know Mom won’t—”

“I know she won’t.” I waved a hand. Nina would know about this meeting... afterward. I didn’t keep it from her for too long. Family drama... you know.

“I’ll start.” Tristan spoke, after finishing the last of his beer and opening another. “Malta. Proper, I mean.” He pointed out in another direction, across the narrow ocean channel separating Osana from the larger island in the pair—visible in the distance, not as massively crowded as Osana and not half as bright. “These days, it’s just a pile of idiots over there, thinking nobody can touch them if they buy a shitload of guns with fancy scopes.”

“What about them?” I peered at Tristan, letting him begin.

I guess this might be an obscure period and region of history to many, so here’s a lesson. The main island of Malta in the Mediterranean had also been repopulated after the same events that had made a charred wreck of both islands... but the other island had been filled up with violent white supremacists seeking a refuge from Western nations only too happy to be rid of their increasingly popular movement.

Now a quarter-million of them were living on the other island in some kind of experimental quasi-anarchist state. Quarrels with them were endless, and a constant source of headache for Farhad—made no better by their apparent inability to decide who was in charge, every leader disregarding all agreements the last one reached.

“Old man, they’re going to die when Naglfar comes.”

I nodded. Clear as day. “A lot of people will die when it comes. What about them specifically?”

He pointed out over the sea, to the south. “We know how it thinks—always the path of least resistance. It comes for the softest targets first, then the ones with the biggest harvest yield. It only fights if there’s something in between it and its harvest, and there’s no easier options... but it will never stop trying to harvest.”

Tristan leaned forward, looking me in the eyes as he put down his beer. “We’ve got a lot more civilians here, but they’re bunkered down pretty hard. Farhad knows the score and doesn’t fuck around—so when the monster comes, it’ll send the largest chunk of its forces to Malta first... including most every harvest carrier it’s got stationed along the coast.”

“I don’t like this already.” It was a sickening thought, but I’d seen it happen too many times in WW4. Brisbane, Tripoli, most of Sri Lanka...

“My principle is: Win first. Feel good about yourself later.” He gestured toward the other island again. “We plant five, maybe six nukes around the-

“We what?” My throat caught.

He paused, looking at Blake, who was scowling at him. “Well we’ve got twelve, right?” Blake finally nodded, then Tristan looked back at me. “You thought we didn’t know.”

The hand gripping my beer tightened, the aluminum bending. “I thought only me, Wren, Nina, and your mother Nadine knew. Sasha, if she remembers anything at all. Hell, I did the entire recovery myself.” I looked out over the ocean, toward the other island, fuming to myself. Yes, it was stupid to think—but no, we’d all solemnly agreed...

Damn it. Worst fucking idea I ever had, to not get rid of those things.

I looked back at Tristan. “My own fucking sister—your aunt Emily, right downstairs from us—even she doesn’t know. None of the others. No... Blake, Tristan, I didn’t think you knew about my fucking nuclear arsenal.” I took a long drink, slamming the beer down—hearing the little plastic ball inside clang around. Somehow, the burnt taste of the stuff had become so much more apparent now. “Should I even ask who told you?”

Tristan shook his head. “No, you shouldn’t. And we haven’t told anyone else, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He gave me a conciliatory gesture. “We agree, it should stay under wraps basically forever. Even if we have to use some of them, we should still find a way to pawn it off on a third party. Too many questions, inside and out. Some in the family might break away because of it. We can’t afford that.”

“Sorry, old man. I can say—it didn’t happen the way you’re thinking.” Blake patted me on the arm, taking another drink then giving me an understanding look.

I shook my head. Should I move them? Change the arming codes? I tabled it for now. “So tell me the rest of the idea.”

“You haven’t guessed the rest?” Blake cut off Tristan before he could resume. “We bait them into raiding Malta proper, wait until harvest is in full swing, then set off the nukes.” He made a gesture with his hand. “Boom. A few box shots to pick off stragglers as we’re rushing south—full offensive, scour Libya and push as far as we can get. Try to rope in NATO to help, but if we’re following the whole plan and open with a huge missile blitz, we probably wouldn’t need them... if we don’t get stupid.”

He waved his beer around, one finger pointed out and tracing a downward path in the air. “Scorched earth. Don’t bother taking or holding a thing—just torch it all, everything, avoid any dug-in forces and just divert to softer targets constantly, use our mobility... burn everything we can until we’re spent.”

Blake glared at Tristan, repeating a plan he obviously had heard before. “Then we bail—hide in Osana or preferably the Vault while the rest of the world goes into a feeding frenzy on Axum. Come back out a few years later, stay off the radar and focus on cleaning up the other, isolated little shithead cells once we have both hands free to do it.”

Tristan nodded. “About the size of it, yeah.” He was glaring at Blake for most of the time, finally turning back to me. “So that’s my idea. If you want Osana safe and sound, Naglfar dead as hell—that’s the play we need to make. It won’t be pretty, or clean, but it’s the way we win.”

I was silent for a time, not wanting to hear Blake’s idea just yet. I pulled out another beer from the case, holding the cold can against my head and thinking it through. It would require a lot of risk—the Axumites might not fully commit on rushing in, and it was unclear exactly how much control they exerted over the cell’s ghilmen. How soon could they react if the cell sensed a trap? Would it matter?

The rush south would be brutal and fast; if done right it could inflict catastrophic damage, particularly if we had a year or two to build up a huge supply of missiles and stash them somewhere Axum wouldn’t see... it might not cost me any more of my own kin’s blood, if we didn’t get stupid. We just had to ignore the untold millions of Axumites and those under their rule who would die in the resulting inferno.

A number of you may be shocked and disgusted—some that Tristan suggested all this, others that I seriously considered it. I’ll say again—war is a brutal and horrific thing, and he was right about one thing... the inhabitants of the other island—now allegedly called New Rhodesia, but still Malta to most—weren’t long for the world.

They styled themselves invincible and brilliant, but virtually none of them had any training, let alone experience. Their government was a sham, rife with extortion and corruption, and they were the butt of constant jokes in all the media from East to West. It was a place for those who enshrined greed and cynicism to play at being philosopher-kings, at least until another philosopher-king stole the shirt off their back, or shot them due to a perceived lack of ideological purity.

New Rhodesia was so rampantly unpopular that it was unlikely anyone would rush to their aid if Axum came to harvest them, which was actually worrying. Every brain added to its pods was another to be used against the rest of the world, even if many of them didn’t realize that. It was one of many complications with the war against Naglfar.

Unfortunately, the ‘harvest’ was widely believed by humankind to be something akin to a religious ceremony to the Axumites, performed on fallen enemies on the battlefield, helped along by no small amount of the shit-tastic journalism that you would often see in wartime.

Virtually none believed in the reality of what happened to those harvested—that they became part of the monster. We were a bit lucky, insofar as the monster had yet to find a way to add a hominus mind to its collective... but it hadn’t stopped trying. That was the reason for the failsafe devices, machines that I hated as much as Naglfar itself.

Still... I knew the cost of Tristan’s suggestion as well. The blood of a quarter million people on our hands, and that would just be the start; we didn’t have accurate figures on the population of North Africa under Axumite rule, but it had to be at least fifteen million. In a best-case scenario, near-total achievement of our goals, ten to twenty percent of the civlian population would die in such an onslaught.

Yes, many in Rhodesia were awful people, who thrived on hatred and hypocrisy—but many were also simply their children, or those who had gone there because they had family there, or because nowhere else would take them. Many had fled the advance of Axum as it conquered North Africa, but that didn’t mean those who remained there welcomed the invaders. I couldn’t ignore any of that, even in those years.

“Well, now I know why you don’t say this around Nina.” I shrugged. I looked up at Tristan. “T, I get the plan. But don’t just think about surviving the war. Think about surviving the world after it, that may well hunt us into extinction for that kind of genocide. Barring that, think about surviving your own conscience for the rest of your life. Could be centuries. It’s a line I don’t want to cross.”

“They’re all toast, no matter who pulls the trigger, old man.” He seemed unperturbed. “You’re really going to put your own conscience in front of stopping Axum? In front of another however many dozen of our kids—”

“Enough, T.” Blake was moving to stand up, clenching his fists.

I put my hand on his forearm, stopping him and shaking my head. “Blake. I asked him. Sit down.”

Tristan paused as Blake sat back down, then waited a few moments longer. “... Yeah, I did go a bit too far on that one.” He took another drink. “But you get the idea. A lot of them are my kids too, you know.”

“I know.”

I’d lost fourteen of my own kids and two of my wives by that point... my youngest wives, now Lost Mothers. Every morning, I recited the names to myself, looking again through a small, old-school picture book I’d long since memorized. The knowledge of it weighed on me constantly, like a wet blanket thrown atop my mind. I constantly wondered what else I could have done, what I could have done differently to prevent each’s loss.

It was no better for my sons. Tristan had lost four of his own children, and his brother Jacob. While we all suffered, Blake was perhaps the worst off; not a single one of his nine children from before the war’s outbreak had survived. He hadn’t told me directly, but I had it through Nina that he’d said he wouldn’t father even one more until the last cell was dead.

It was the youngest ones, you see, who had the worst chances. Naglfar figured out, sometime early into WW4, the weakness of the hominus species—neurotoxins. Our mixed genetics blended from dozens of different animals made us vulnerable to a broader spectrum of them than humans. So it mass-produced them, coming up with designer cocktails of the stuff—usually encapsulated within armor-puncturing uranium shatter darts.

Our incredible abilities of self-control, down to the cellular level, enable us to neutralize poisons within our own bodies, within limits—but I’m sure readers both young and old can attest: reaching that level isn’t easy. It’s rare for any of us to have that skill mastered before our first century. Doing it under battlefield conditions is even harder. It’s little wonder that the list of those who survived World Wars Four and Five is skewed so heavily toward those of us who were of age prior to their outbreak.

Tristan finished his thoughts. “This way keeps Osana and all the clowns here safe, and by extension keeps Axum from reaching Europe.” He leaned back, frowning at my expression. “But if you don’t like it—I get it. Not writing the future in blood, or whatever poetic bullshit Blake is—”

I held up a hand. “Be nice.”

He only shrugged, but stopped. I turned to Blake. “So your thoughts, Sage Blake?”

He shrugged, taking a drink. “Don’t call me that.” He paused. “We definitely can’t EMP the fuckers from on high?”

“Not at this stage.” I shook my head. “It’s not on our feeds, but the US internal reports have it on good authority that every key facility of theirs is heavily shielded or fiber-based—but most NATO stuff is too old to shield. It would hurt us more than them, and that’s not even looking at the civilian cost.”

“Okay...” He rolled his eyes.

I glanced at Tristan, who was giving him the same narrow-eyed stare, then wen t back to Blake. “Don’t tell me you didn’t already know that.”

“I had a decent guess. I wasn’t sure if it was that, or just the only people with enough EMPs want to hang onto them in case Axum tries to make it across the Atlantic.”

I shrugged. “That might be a factor, but I think you’re underestimating exactly how many bombs and missiles they like to make back home. Every flavor and variety.”

He held a hand up. “Okay... then we don’t have a lot of good options. Get NATO to put another half-dozen missile subs in the Mediterranean, and it would buy us another few years before it comes, but I think your mom is already on the ball with that.” He nodded towards Tristan, who nodded back. “If that works—which they would be stupid to ignore, not at current force strength—then we’ve got... say four years.”

He put his beer down. “The truth is—Tristan, there’s no way in hell you’re the only one who thought up your plan. There’s probably a whole case file on it in the Pentagon, a few other places, where they’ve simmed through every possible scenario on it a hundred times. If we don’t nuke or otherwise fry New Rhodesia in that situation, someone else will. It knows that. It won’t lunge in on a single full-commit like we’d need.”

“If you say so.” Tristan shook his head. “Even if it’s smart enough to know, can it even stop itself? Running the thing into traps was the most effective strategy we had for the entire war. Hunger is its only motivation. More harvest, more pods. On top of that—the stories we get from refugees now are the same as before. They haven’t learned; the priests are just going to double down going into the next war. It’s all they understand.”

Blake waved a hand. “I still don’t think the priests matter. They’re just selling to the public what they’re guessing the machine is going to do. You’re confusing the network’s hunger with stupidity.”

Blake took another drink, then held up a finger. “It’s plenty smart, it just can’t see or think of anything past its desire to fill more pods. Everything else is just an obstacle to that, but over time it’s gotten a lot smarter about how it approaches that goal. It’s survived without an offensive thus far by eating the Axumite underclass, but that’s not going to last much longer. I really doubt we’d get away with a nice, clean trap like that to wipe out the entire North African contingent. It’s not going to lose another war; it does learn, we’ve seen it adapt.”

“So what then?” I held out a hand.

“So Tristan has one thing right.” Blake nodded to his brother. “Stay out and contain it, eventually hide when the time is right—and hope it doesn’t find us, with no allies under our rock...” He paused, frowning. “... or go all in and burn the fucking thing to the ground.”

He put his beer down, turning to me. “There’s not going to be a silver bullet. There’s no virus we can sneak into its systems or loophole in its program we can abuse. Mom’s ‘light, fast, surgical’ doctrine isn’t wrong exactly, but it’s only going to piss the thing off long-term. If we can’t nuke or EMP the holy shit out of it, and NATO isn’t going to get off their ass, then we split up or hide in the Vault, hope that works... or we settle in for an even longer, uglier slog than the last war.”

There was silence for a time. It had been what I was afraid of. Nina was still pushing for a series of targeted raids, surgical stuff to keep Naglfar from crossing the sea, but I had doubts it would do much. There were just so few of us, and I agreed that hiding all of us in the Vault was a horrible idea. Piling on the defenses at Osana alone would be even worse; any more here than we had, and the place would just become a bigger target.

Tristan nodded, holding up his beer, finishing it in a few final gulps, then looking between us. “Meeting adjourned?”

I took a long breath, then gave a shrug. Tristan mentioned something about wanting to bang Wren while she was here and headed downstairs, leaving Blake and I. An ocean breeze came through, warm but comfortable.

“Another?” I gestured to the case.

“Nah...” He waved a hand.

“Your mother tells me...” He was already rolling his eyes. “Hey. Your mother tells me you’re sleeping alone most nights.”

He was quiet for a while. “Do we have to? Now?”

I nodded. “We have to.”

“It’s...” He shrugged. “... something like an experiment, I guess. How long can I go?”

I shook my head. “You aren’t even banging them when they come to sleep with you, are you.” A sigh escaped; it had been what I feared. “Blake—”

“When I... lost interest for a while... I thought it would get harder to resist, you know, the urge—over time anyway. For the first few weeks, sure. It was almost mechanical, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I just slept it off. But now? It’s gotten easier every day.” He turned to me, meeting my gaze. “If you’re here to tell me it’s actually about my daughters and I haven’t dealt with it...” He shook his head. “... don’t bother. It’s not like I don’t know.”

I frowned. He’d had exactly two left after the war, both later lost to skirmishes and assassinations by suicide drones. None had been children, but all still young by any standard. Tasha, the last and his daughter by Claudia, had died only a few months before then. It had nearly broken him. I put a hand on his shoulder. “You know none of the girls here would even sneak another on you, right? You can trust everyone in the family.”

“It’s not that. I’m not worried about that.” He went silent for a time. “I will, okay? Just... I’ve been spending time in the city. Going to different temples, madrassas, even a few of these bullshit hippie circle things about a Supreme Energy Being. Smoked some herbs of choice. Trying to find something. Anything.” He paused. “Still haven’t found shit. While we’re on the subject, how’d you deal with, you know... Jacob.”

I was silent myself for a time, then finished my own beer. “I still haven’t either.” I gave him an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t have your answer, Blake. I’m not going to order you to go bang some girls or whatever either. Just... wanted to mention it. Hope I helped.”

He shrugged. We sat for a while longer, maybe ten minutes, saying nothing; we just looked out over the sea through the forest of particle cannons and quench guns around us. Eventually we went downstairs, where most involved in the festivities were passed out naked in one place or another; we tossed a few blankets around, then he went back to his room and I found Emily and Nina again, each curled up against the others. They hadn’t followed through on the whole of Nina’s sexy little plan, but I could smell the salt water on them both and knew they’d made love in the sea and the shower after.

My sister and I went back to the city in the morning, meeting with Farhad again to go over their nerve wire scanners and some other defensive plans. We met with his trade ministers after, negotiating more electronics and building material shipments from our firms in Elysium, all critical. The rest could be handled by other people who lived in Osana full-time.

We left around midday for Geneva to oversee the new prion treatment package release; I don’t know how much I really helped, but it helped me a lot to see something real being done, an unequivocal Good Thing being added to the world. There were so few of them we had to offer now, compared to back when we were building Elysium. I often wanted to laugh at my old self’s naivete.

We were leaving Geneva when we got word of the raid on the Banana Boat. Three sub drone carriers, targeting us specifically, approached the Boat from all directions—raining poison death from all directions. The kids had scrambled, and put on a valiant defense.

The carriers were likely driven by pods near expiration—an easy way that Naglfar disposed of neural matter near the end of its usefulness, while eliminating some of us in the process. It had done this before, but not on the same scale, and had used some new kind of stealth tech we didn’t know much about yet to get that close. The kids’ defense was valiant. Many took shots in the process, but none died... except one.

Sheldon had charged out first, single-handedly destroying a carrier with only his bunker crash suit—but had taken too many hits. They got him back inside, but he only lasted another half-hour, even with six of us linked to help with the toxins. It was simply too much, and overwhelmed his heart. His mother had just landed in New York when she heard, and she was a wreck for months.

My daily list of names became one longer.