The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“We’re almost there, Zuzanna,” I said, maneuvering the Land Cruiser around the last few curves before the turnoff. When she didn’t answer, I glanced over and saw her staring out the window. It was hard to get a reply out of her, unless the conversation was specifically about her colony or her job.

The closer I got to The Mountain, the more a sense of dread built inside me. I hadn’t been back “home” in four years, and while I got along well enough with my parents, I was predicting a lot of yelling in our future when they saw the present I’d brought them.

I still couldn’t define exactly why I’d done it. All I knew was that before I could stop myself, I’d tranquilized Zuzanna, and tucked her onto the same gurney with the unconscious Dr. Rachel. The trip to the hospital basement and out the delivery dock had put me on the edge of having a heart attack, but no one had stopped me, and no alarms had sounded. I’d wheeled the awkward bed down a back street, and into a shed that looked like it hadn’t been used since the Separation.

The next six hours had been some of the longest of my life, as I’d waited with all of my senses on high alert. Finally, night had fallen, and I’d finished my journey, rolling the bed to the border of UCLA, to the abandoned house where I’d parked my car.

It might have looked suspicious, leaving town the same night that two workers went missing from a colony, but only Queen Alexander had even known I was in town, and most Queens didn’t communicate with their neighbors unless they had to. I hadn’t bothered to check in with the Guard outpost, and while my distinctive car had been in plain view both coming and going, I’d never driven close to UCLA colony. My escape was sloppier than I would have preferred, but as I left the outskirts of the L.A. mega-cluster and headed north, I’d been pretty confident that I’d gotten away clean.

Two days later, Queen Melissa had been ecstatic at receiving the reprogrammed Dr. Rachel. Along with the balance of my payment, she’d left me a long, rambling note that positively sang my praises. It still amused me that my clients all thought I was a Queen like them. Melissa had even suggested that we meet in person, because she’d heard that sex with another Queen was a hundred times better than with a Worker, and something about being naughty and stealing from another colony had gotten her blood pumping…

I’d seen Queen Melissa from a distance, and the offer hadn’t appealed to me at all. Like most Queens, she was obese from a life of self-indulgence, and the way she ordered her workers about told me she would be just as selfish and demanding in bed. So I’d politely declined, wished her good luck with her new doctor, and promised her that she was safe from retaliation. No one could hire me to work against her now that she as on my client list.

During most of the drive north Zuzanna had been passive; eating and sleeping when told, but otherwise keeping to herself. I’d converted Dr. Rachel in an abandoned house in Stockton, and after she was reprogrammed, I’d been able to get a bit more from my sister. Even though Dr. Rachel belonged to Queen Melissa by that point, Zuzanna still responded to her as member of UCLA colony; an authority figure that she was programmed to obey. Once I’d gotten Dr. Rachel to order my sister to trust me, I’d been able to question Zuzanna for the rest of the trip, putting together a picture of her life as a Worker.

My mother never talked much about my brothers and sisters, but I knew that Zuzanna had been born when I was three. I was the third of four children that my parents had conceived, and I was the only one who’d been born immune. The others had shown their first signs of being Workers at about nine months, and had been placed in colonies with Queens that Mother trusted.

It must have been hard for my parents, to know that their children would be slaves to someone else, but that was life in the new world of the Separation. Moons were rare, and Queens were even more rare, and everyone else was just another drone. For that reason, very few Moons ever got married, and even fewer had children within the marriage, but my parents had always been a little different; doing their own thing rather than following the norms. I liked to think that was where my own odd attitudes came from.

In all of the Guard studies of Post-Separation birth rates, it had been established that Workers mating with Workers had the lowest rate of producing an exceptional child. Queens mating with Workers had a slightly higher rate, while Moons mating with Workers only had a higher rate of producing other Moons, not Queens. What no one had been able to quantify with any certainty, were the rates from Queen on Queen, or Moon on Moon children. The sample sizes of those two groups were simply too small.

While my parents hadn’t really believed that their offspring would beat the odds, they’d decided that they wouldn’t shy away from having a family just because all of their kids might end up as Workers. They loved each other, and they would love their children, even if those children couldn’t return that love.

My two older brothers, Jakub and Marcel, had been born Workers, and they’d been placed with very stable —and for their kind, very responsible—Queens in Cleveland, and Des Moines. Mother kept tabs on them through her caravan network.

According to Mother, they’d been disappointed at having two Worker children, but not discouraged. They’d tried again, ending up with the first immune child born to Moon parents in over twenty years: me. My birth had caused a brief period of excitement in the Moon community, but it had cooled once my parents’ fourth child was born. Like my older brothers, Zuzanna was destined to serve a Queen, and had been placed in the UCLA colony with Queen Wendy’s predecessor, Queen Trevor.

Once I got her to talk, Zuzanna had told me about her life. Her years in the colony creche had been filled with study and fitness activities. Queen Trevor had had a motto: Mens sana in corpore sano, which translated as “A healthy mind in a healthy body,” and Queen Wendy had continued the trend when she took over a decade ago. Zuzanna had taken tests in her teens to figure out her capabilities, and when she’d left the creche at around eighteen, she’d already spent years training as a laboratory technician. She’d been put to work making vaccines in one of the colony labs, and had been there for most of her adult life.

The child she was carrying was her third, so somewhere in the UCLA colony I had a niece and a nephew who would never know me. The colony used a “scientific” method of pairing workers for procreation, and Zuzanna had met her current baby’s father, Nurse Taalib O Neg, only after they’d been screened for genetic compatibility. For purposes of genomic diversity, her other two kids had different fathers than the baby she carried now, and her Life Schedule showed she was due for two more pregnancies, with two new fathers, sometime in the future.

It had been eye-opening, then sad, then ultimately infuriating to hear my sister recap her life. The Workers of the world had been reduced to no more than animals, like the birds and insects and creatures of the wild. Their purpose was to exist, nothing more. Their life benefitted others, but ultimately they got no benefit of their own. They were assets, bred for the sole purpose of being exploited by greedy, arrogant Queens.

As depressing as it had been to hear Zuzanna’s story, I’d kept asking her questions during the drive to Colorado, hoping to hear at least one instant of spontaneous emotion in her voice. While I’d been navigating the crumbling roads that skirted the Salt Lake cluster, I’d had a sudden and very disturbing realization: as pissed off as I was at the Queens, I was also becoming more ashamed of myself.

Even though I knew that Workers were people, just like Moons and Queens, they had unconsciously become things in my mind; commodities to be traded from one Queen to another. I had a hundred ways that I could justify what I’d done, but seeing my sister staring out the window of the Rover, her mind totally devoid of anything that hadn’t been put there by someone else, it made me realize the gift I’d been born with, and how little I’d actually done with it. How little all of us had done.

I wouldn’t expect the Queens to want the world to change—all they wanted were more resources for their colony and more free time to indulge themselves—but the Moons should have been different. We were the outsiders, the ones who could imagine something beyond the present, so why weren’t we imagining a world without Queens, or a world where Workers could at least choose the fathers of their own damned children.

I’d been in a real mood the last hundred kilometers or so, but fortunately Zuzanna hadn’t been programmed to pick up on Moonie emotions. She did what I told her and answered what I asked, and otherwise stared out the window at the grandeur of the Rockies.

It was a week after I’d snatched her from her home, when we passed through the remnants of the first checkpoint on the access road to The Mountain. I’d always been amused at the number of stern warnings and officious signs posted on poles or hung on sagging chain link fences around the tall peak. The old United States had kept something valuable in the network of tunnels under the hollowed-out mountain, but the USA was long gone, and their signs threatening arrest and imprisonment, under this or that penal code, always struck me as funny. Too bad no one back then had created a law to prevent climate collapse, which was ultimately the reason we were all in this mess.

The road got steeper as we climbed to the main entrance, and I worried about the strain on the Land Cruiser’s engine. We’d run out of juice once already, back in Idaho. A capacitor had failed, and I’d been forced to use some of my dwindling supply of diesel to keep the batteries charged the rest of the way. Hopefully with the gold from my last two jobs, I could afford to get the old girl overhauled while I was here.

I saw my first human when we got half way up the mountain. A lonely looking sentry in a grey and black Guard uniform stood up straight as I approached, then relaxed when he saw the paint job on the car. He spoke into a radio on his collar, then waved me through, before retreating back into the shade of the rundown guard house. I searched his face as we drove past, but I didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t seem to know me.

The Mountain held one of the largest concentrations of Moons in the world, even though the idea of “large” in modern times meant there were about five hundred of us here, barely filling a tenth of the cavernous facility.

Back before there had been a Guard—during the Dark Times after the Separation—a former U.S. government worker named Seetal Rihan had claimed the place and set it up as a refuge for immunes. Before the Queens had come to understand the usefulness of having us around, anyone who couldn’t be enslaved was imprisoned or killed. With its built in defenses, The Mountain had been the place that immunes flocked to for protection. Eventually, several of the smartest among them had come up with a plan for our kind to survive and possibly thrive in the new world order. Seetal was still revered as the Mother of the American Guard, and there was a plaque and a memorial in one of the larger meeting halls.

I passed a line of vehicles parked on the shoulder; trucks, cargo vans, even a sleek-looking tour bus. All were painted in Moonie grey, with a large black circle filled with half black and half white, on the hoods and doors. Supposedly, the Guard symbol was meant to represent the actual, celestial Moon at First Quarter. Not much for a logo, but most of humanity’s creativity had died out with the lack of free minds.

When I arrived at the final gate, there were two sentries on duty, both very young and probably new to the Guard. The young woman was so busy flirting with her gawky partner that they hardly glanced in our direction as we swept past. I remembered those times, after the excitement of joining the Guard had worn off, but before the apathy of doing the same thing over and over had taken hold. I’d met a lot of new people in my first year, including a lot of women who were all my age and eager for adventure.

The afternoon had been cloud free and surprisingly warm for this elevation, and I’d had the air conditioner on for the last fifty kilometers. In spite of that, I squirmed in my seat as sweat ran down the back of my neck. Dread had been building inside me since the moment I’d decided to kidnap my sister and bring her with me. I had no idea how my parents were going to react, but I doubted it would be pleasant. Taking Zuzanna had been purely an emotional decision, which wasn’t like me at all. I knew that my father was going to lecture me on every reason that I shouldn’t have brought her home, but it was my mother that I was worried about facing. Would she consider the return of her only daughter a gift, or an insult?

I’d thought a hundred times about turning back for L.A. and returning Zuzanna to her colony. No one would ever have to know, and I could go back to the life I’d had before without getting anyone upset. The only thing that kept me from doing it was a nagging thought in the back of my mind, that it hadn’t happened by coincidence. There had to be a deeper meaning to finding my only sister, out of the blue, in the middle of a job. Fate must have been at work, or maybe the hand of some Pre-Separation deity. Something more than random chance was at work, and I had a cosmic obligation to see this through, no matter what my parents said.

Up ahead were the colossal metal doors that led into The Mountain, and all thoughts of gods and fate left me. Standing at the entrance in his rumpled grey and black Guard uniform was Takayama Daichi, Head Archivist for North America, and Vice-Chairman of the Global Archive. My father.

I’d almost finished downloading my newest haul of porn from the Archives, but I was stretching out the process as long as I could. Mother was sealed in her room with Zuzanna, and Father had been called away by one of his assistants, so I’d taken the chance to hide myself in the deepest levels of The Mountain. As awkward as my homecomings sometimes got, this one had been something special. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been any explosive arguments, just lots of disappointed looks and awkward silences.

My father had immediately recognized Zuzanna in the passenger seat, and gotten on his radio. Before he’d even come around to greet me, my mother had burst from the depths of the tunnels and extracted my pregnant sister from the car. The look that Mother gave me as she led Zuzanna away had me wishing that I’d listened to my gut and turned around before the first checkpoint.

Father hadn’t asked me any questions as we hugged in front of the cavernous entrance to the Moonie stronghold. That was his way, though, and I knew that the questions would come later. For the moment, he’d just said that he was glad to see me, and that I looked healthy.

I actually had a permanent room assigned to me in The Mountain, just down the concrete corridor from my parents’ suite. I remembered the state I’d left it in four years ago, and hadn’t been looking forward to cleaning it before getting some sleep, but when I’d opened the door, I’d found that my mother had arranged everything just like it had been when I was a teenager.

Now that I’d actually done it—brought my sister home—I felt like a complete idiot. Some strange emotional need had overwhelmed me in that hospital room, and I’d let it overrule every bit of logic I’d thrown at it. I’d completed my quest and “saved” Zuzanna, but all I could think about was how much shit I’d called down on myself. And it wasn’t just the anger or disappointment of my parents; my entire livelihood was in danger of being exposed.

Mother would question Zuzanna, and discover that I’d kidnapped a doctor from UCLA along with her, and that I’d left that Worker with Queen Melissa in Spokane, even though that would normally doom her to a slow death. I’d created plenty of lies and cover stories for what I did, but those had been for dealing with slow-witted Queens and even dumber Guard officers. Neither one of my parents was an idiot—they both were considered among the smartest of the Moons—and they knew me better than anyone else did.

So rather than hang around to discuss Zuzanna’s homecoming, I’d left a note on my door saying I was tired and needed to rest, then run down the four flights of stairs to the seventh level and tried to lose myself in the Archives. I figured I could dodge most of their search parties, until the Land Cruiser was fixed, then I could find a way to sneak out of here and get back to my life.

This particular data terminal was tucked into an alcove, created where two tunnels didn’t quite meet squarely. It was on the lowest level of the Archive, and had been my secret spot ever since I’d been old enough to work an input pad. It was here that I’d discovered all of the wonders and blunders of the old world. I’d gone to school like every other Moon, but because my father was who he was, I’d had access to so much more; stuff that didn’t show up on any lesson plan.

The terminal beeped as the attached drive finished copying the latest batch of porn files. Father’s corps of data seekers had been busy out in the world: there was a lot more new smut than I’d expected. I had a feeling that was his doing, even if he would never admit it. He might not approve of the life I’d chosen, but if his son was going to survive by selling dirty vids to Queens, he’d make sure that I had ample inventory to offer them.

I still had a couple hours left until dark, which was probably the earliest that I could gather my stuff and sneak out of here. I’d already decided to head east, to get lost among the mega-clusters along the Atlantic seaboard. Maybe even swing through Columbia and look in on Elise. If she wasn’t married by now, or if she was even still in the District Palace, maybe we could rekindle some of the things we’d had before. Five years of having nothing but Workers for bed partners had me missing her more than I’d ever expected.

I didn’t hear my father come up behind me so much as I felt his presence. For such a small, quiet man, he still commanded attention.

“I finished downloading and categorizing,” I said, holding up the tablet that I’d stolen from UCLA. Even though it wasn’t connected to their network, there was still a lot of data in local memory and cache files. I’d learned from a young age that no scrap of information was too trivial to be added to Father’s archive. “There’s some good census data there, and some medical surveys.”

“Thank you, son,” he said, coming up behind my chair and resting a hand on my shoulder.

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, but it wasn’t comfortable either; it simply was. Some time ago, Father had discovered an ancient religion called Zen among his files, and could sit quietly for hours without moving. I’d always admired his skill, but never learned the trick myself.

“Has Mother calmed down yet?” I asked finally.

“She had cast aside her anger before you even left,” he said. “It was the shock of seeing your sister that made her upset, but she is focused now on seeing to Zuzanna’s welfare, and is very happy to see her daughter again. As am I.”

“But I still screwed up bringing her here, didn’t I?”

“It’s not the action I would have recommended.”

That was my father’s way of saying that, yes, I’d screwed up. Royally.

“I don’t know why I did it. Really…I can’t remember what was even going through my head when I smuggled her out of the colony.”

“I understand, son, and I’m sure your mother does, too, but you know that ultimately you will have to return Zuzanna to her colony. She can’t be without her Queen forever.”

“Fuck all Queens,” I snarled. “Why do they get to have everything, live however they want, when I can’t even take my sister on a trip to see our parents?”

His grip on my shoulder tightened. “You have no patience, Leo. That was always your problem, in school, and later in the Guard. You aren’t willing to allow things to develop naturally. Instead, you try to find the easy answer, and that leads to problems that you haven’t foreseen.”

He was wrong, at least about one thing. I’d found one easy answer that solved more problems than it created. I wanted to shout at him that if the Spokane colony had been left to “develop naturally,” then a lot of Workers would have died from lack of a doctor. My impatience had made me a damned hero to that colony. Unfortunately, Father was the last person I could let in on my successes.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, and keep from blurting out things that would get me in trouble. “I don’t see how patience would have helped,” I said, swiveling my chair to face him. “The world is stuck, and we’re doomed to repeat the same actions, over and over again. Forever.” It was one of my favorite explanations when people asked my why I’d left the Guard to become a wandering Bagger.

“That’s not true,” Father said. I watched his face, and saw that he wasn’t just placating my temper.

“How is it not true?” My voice rose as old frustrations started bubbling to the surface again. “Queens are Queens, and they always work for their own selfish needs. Workers live and die like animals, adding nothing to the system but their mindless labor. And the Guard flutter their hands and cluck about ‘efficiency’ and ‘common purpose,’ and try desperately to keep the whole system from collapsing in on itself. Rinse and repeat, until the end of the world.”

“Change is coming, son. It won’t happen in my lifetime, or even yours, but we’re making progress. The world will get better.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, Leo. This is my life’s work—I wouldn’t joke about it. If everything continues as predicted, in a hundred years or so, humanity can finally start to rebuild the world that was lost.”

That was news to me. No one had ever mentioned a plan that went beyond the next five years, let alone a hundred. “How are we supposed to do that? There aren’t enough Moons to do more than keep the Queens from killing each other.”

“Right now there aren’t. What do you remember of your history? Of the old world and the rise of the Queens?”

I remembered a lot, and he knew that. He must be setting me up for something, but without knowing what, all I could do was play along. “The old civilizations were dying. Too many people, and they were wasting the planet..ruining the atmosphere. Then the GODS came online.”

“Yes, the GODS machines were what disrupted everything, but in their way, they also saved humanity.”

As part of my schooling, my father had made me read the original report, called a “white paper” that had been presented to the old U.S. government. It talked about the build-up of harmful gasses in the atmosphere, and how the increasing temperatures would eventually lead to environmental collapse. But before that happened, a team of scientists from “Sweden” had created a system—giant machines, three hundred meters across, that performed a function called “carbon scrubbing” on the air.

The U.S. government, in an attempt to be clever, had labeled it the Global Oxygenation and De-carbonization System, or GODS. The machines had been hailed as the answer to all of the planet’s problems, and thousands of them had sprung up in “scrubber farms” all over the world.

A dozen years later, the New York Times had published a story titled “Ragnarok: How the GODS Have Destroyed Us.” It detailed the fatal flaw in the system; how the catalyzation of that much carbon was producing unintended byproducts. How a specific molecular combination of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen had entered the atmosphere and dispersed throughout the globe. How it had stayed undetected until critical saturation had been achieved, far too late to reverse the effects.

The substance was dubbed apiscene, named for apis melliflora, the common honeybee, and it had brought about the Great Separation. It had taken three years for the new substance to affect everyone on the planet, turning them into Queens or Workers, with only a small percentage of people remaining immune. What had followed was the Dark Times, when a third of the population died from violence, disease and starvation, and a huge portion of mankind’s knowledge had been lost forever.

It had taken twenty years for the planet to stabilize, and another twenty before the current system of Guard caravans and cluster colonies had shaken out. Eventually though, we’d settled into the repetitive rut that continued until today, and would persist into the future. At least until a giant asteroid slammed into the Earth and put the final exclamation point on what used to be called humanity.

That’s what I’d believed since I was a teen, until Father’s words just turned it all upside down. A hundred years, and we could start making real changes? And why not sooner?

“What’s going to happen in a hundred years that isn’t happening now?” I asked.

“Art,” he said.

“Damn it, stop talking in riddles!” I stood up from my chair, towering over my shorter father, but he stood his ground, like he always did during my moods. He never showed any fear, or even tension in the face of my anger, just the same unflappable certainty that he always projected.

“It’s not a riddle, Leopold. Humans—at least the old version of us—created societies based on a fundamental desire to fulfill the people’s needs. The more successful a culture was, the more needs they could fulfill, and the more complex their desires grew.

“Early man was only concerned about the basics; food, shelter, and safety. As the population increased, and they became better at securing these needs, their desires became more complex, and more cerebral. When you don’t have to worry about your next meal, your mind can shift to less critical, but more fulfilling thoughts.”

“Like art,” I said.

I was surprised to see the hint of a smile crease his face. “Like art,” he said. “For the last eighty years, humanity has been focused on survival, but slowly, through the efforts of the Guard, and the Global Plan, we’re moving beyond the ‘primitive’ stage of our new evolutionary path.”

“What’s this Global Plan? You’ve never mentioned it before.”

“Because it was still being developed when you were younger, and has only been adapted into practical applications in the last ten years. And because only a few in the highest ranks of the Guard are aware of the total plan.”

“So why are you telling me?”

“Because I know you will understand, and maybe, in the course of your…unique lifestyle…you will help the Plan along in your own way.”

“Maybe I can, if I think it’s worth helping. Tell me about it.”

“The entire Plan is extremely complex, but in essence, we believe that by increasing the efficiency of trade, and fostering interdependence among the colonies, we can bring the world to a state where the majority of the Moon population isn’t always ‘desperately trying to keep the whole system from collapsing in on itself,’ as you put it.”

“That assumes that the Queens will cooperate. What’s their incentive, when they get all of their fulfillment from within their own colony? Why would they care if Moonies want to have easier lives?” Not that I would object if they could get the Queens to behave, but it wasn’t something I was willing to bet on.

“It’s my view, and the view of many who work on the Plan, that eventually we can make the Queens as compliant to our wishes as Workers are to their Queens.”

“You’re serious? Are you working on a cure for apiscene?”

He shook his head. “No. That path died with the last of our pre-Separation scientists, thirty years ago. The world will never be free of Queens and colonies, but by careful manipulation, we hope to reduce their power, or at least their ability to cause disruptions.”

“You’re going to enslave the enslavers?”

“Nothing so dramatic. We’ll simply use their own hedonism against them. Eventually, we’ll have a system that is so good at delivering whatever a Queen wants, that they’ll become dependent on the Guard for their pleasures, instead of their own Workers. Once that happens, we’ll have the leverage we need to curb their wilder impulses. I see a day, perhaps in your lifetime, when the Queens are nothing more than a control mechanism for their Workers; a middle-manager who follows our orders and works toward our goals, without really knowing why.”

My natural urge to argue with Father had me searching for the flaws in what he’d said, but I had to admit that in theory, it was a workable plan. I’d dealt with enough Queens to know that their absolute power was also their weakness. Within their own colony, they could get their Workers to do anything they could think of, but that power was still limited by that single Queen’s knowledge and resources. What if they could get new ideas and new toys from all around the world without having to go through the hassle of doing it themselves? Any Queen would jump at the opportunity.

When I thought about it, it was actually the same basis for my business. For both businesses. Queen Hector had wanted to drink better tequila, so I’d delivered the means for him to do it. Queen Alexander had wanted new ideas on how to screw his harem, and I’d provided those as well. And because of that, I had at least minimal leverage over both Queens. What would happen if the Guard got into the same game?

I’d be out of work, first of all. But, the way Father talked about it, it would be decades before the Guard got around to formalizing anything, and I planned to be comfortably retired by then. Plus, they didn’t have my re-programming trick.

“That sounds like it could work,” I admitted, then smiled to myself as I saw Father’s reaction. It was hard to surprise the old man. “So the Queens do what the Guard says…then what?”

“Then, there are fewer and fewer of us needed to watch over them. We can dedicate more of the world’s free minds to discovery…to science and art. To creating the next stage of human evolution.”

I wanted to point out that it wasn’t the Moons who were evolving—that there wasn’t a next stage of our humanity, just another chapter of our continuing saga. Genetically, we were the same as the people who’d started this mess eighty years ago, and were just as likely to make the same mistakes as they had. Before I had a chance to point out my observation, though, his radio crackled to life. I heard Mother’s distorted voice, calling us to the mess hall for dinner.

I’d been so caught up in Father’s futuristic dreams, that I’d forgotten about the reality of why I was here. I still had to fix the problem of Zuzanna, and I couldn’t hide from it any longer.

As Father signed off, I caught a look at his profile, and could swear he was grinning.

“Your mother says that she has a surprise for you,” he said. When he faced me again, his face was back to carved granite, but I could still see the crinkle of amusement around his eyes. What was that about?

“Oh, shit, Elise, I’m going to…”

“Do it, Leo. Cum for me!’

I dug my fingers into the flare of her hips and pulled her back hard. She felt so good around me; the wet warmth and tight grip of her pussy. But more than that, her raw excitement—her genuine enthusiasm—had me right on the edge. With one final thrust, I collapsed on her back, crushing her into the bed as I groaned and filled her with a deluge of cum.

Elise hummed happily as I laid on top of her, my cock pulsing in her warm grip. I kissed her neck and pulled back the sweat-streaked hair covering her face. She turned her head so I could kiss her for real, while her hands reached back to grip my butt, holding me against her until my dick gave one last weak twitch and went still.

“Mmm…what a nice welcome,” she said.

I rolled onto my side, pulling her with me so we spooned on the narrow bed. I cupped her full breast, not to start anything new, but just to hold her warm flesh. “What an incredible surprise,” I said.

She snuggled against me as I pulled the thin blanket up over us. We didn’t have time to drift off to sleep, although that would have been nice. She had a meeting with my mother and her staff in ten minutes, and I had to get on the road back to Los Angeles. At least we could enjoy each other for another few minutes.

“Too bad that I got caught in Dayton for that extra day, or we could have had more time to catch up,” she said. “More time” meant more than the twenty hours we’d already been locked in my room.

“Too bad that I was such an idiot, and dragged a Worker away from her Queen for so long, otherwise I’d be able to stay.”

“It’s OK, Leo. I understand. I mean, I never had a sister, at least that I know about, but I can imagine how it must have felt to see her after so many years.”

“That’s just it, I did everything based on feelings, not even thinking about the consequences.”

Her whole body shook in my arms as she burst out laughing. “Leo…I swear, sometimes…you do remember that we’re the only ones on the planet who can feel anymore? I think it’s sweet that you wanted to rescue your sister, even if it wasn’t logical.”

Damn, I missed this. Missed her. Too bad I could never say it out loud. I’d learned over time to keep a wall between myself and other Moons, even those closest to me. Mostly it was to avoid questions about my life and my secret job. But partly it was because, with a few exceptions like my parents and Elise, the Guard couldn’t be trusted.

Just like with Queens, there wasn’t an IQ requirement to be born immune, and most Moons had been indoctrinated since birth with all of the Guard propaganda about their duty to the human race. That led to a lot of self-important Defenders of Humanity running around, with very little sense of humor, and a particular need to point out the flaws in those who didn’t follow the same path.

The official line was that every Moon was an equal in the struggle to get the world back on track, but the truth was that the Guard was in many ways like a colony, with a lot of mindless drones running around following orders from the top. The only real difference was that the top level of the Guard wasn’t a single person.

The highest level of leadership was the General’s Congress, made up of the top ranked officer from each of the eighteen Districts that had replaced the countries and states of the old world. Most of the Congress was made up of smart people, genuinely interested in the fate of the planet, but a growing percentage were self-serving opportunists, as bad as any Queen.

Luckily, with our small and scattered numbers, there wasn’t a lot that a would-be Moon dictator could do to gather power. But the number of officious idiots in charge of things had been one of my prime reasons for quitting. The other had been that I’d grown up with the truth, not the filtered version that most Moon kids were fed. If being born a Moon was a blessing, being born the son of the Head Archivist was a damned curse.

Elise wiggled her butt against me, snapping me out of my thoughts. “So how are you going to get her back into the colony without causing an incident?” she asked.

I almost slipped and told her that I was an expert at sneaking into colonies undetected, but years of concealing my special talents came to my rescue. “I’ve got connections with the Queen of Santa Monica, which shares a border. It won’t be hard to get her back, but what happens after that might be rough. There’s no way that I can order her to forget the last two weeks, so after I turn her loose, her Queen can probably get the whole story out of her.”

I’d been afraid that Mother had already done that—gotten the whole story of the last two weeks, including the fact that I could reprogram workers and sell them to other Queens. I’d been dreading the moment that she or my father confronted me about it, but with only a few hours left for me in The Mountain, neither one had said a word.

“Even if she does figure it out, what can she really do except take her Worker back?” Elise said.

“My mother thinks Queen Wendy might lodge a complaint with the Guard, and I might have to pay a fine of some kind. Either way, I probably won’t be welcome in UCLA colony any more, so once I say goodbye to Zuzanna, that’s it. I’ll never see her again.”

Elise reached back to stroke my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Leo.”

I really didn’t want to dwell on it, especially when my time with Elise was so short. She’d traveled from the District Palace in Columbia all the way to The Mountain, to spend ten days coordinating with Mother on caravan schedules. Elise had been a logistics apprentice when we’d first met, but her intelligence was moving her rapidly up the ranks. In fact, she was high enough now that maybe…

“What do you know about the Great Plan?” I asked.

She pulled away, spinning on the narrow bed to face me. “You mean the Global Plan? Who told you about that?” Her face had lost all traces of her normal sunniness. Her eyes bored into mine, searching, but after a moment her shoulders slumped and she looked away. “Of course…Daichi,” she said. “I guess technically he can tell anyone he wants, since he’s the architect of the whole thing, but still…”

“The architect? Really? Like, it’s all his plan?”

“Every bit of it, from what I’ve heard, but I was only read in on parts of it.”

It was a shock, but it also made sense. Father was without a doubt the smartest person I knew; probably the smartest Moon as well, which would make him the smartest free person in world. Combine his intelligence with Mother’s and they were a true force among the Guard, even if they were too humble to flaunt it.

“So what do you think?” I asked. “Is Father right? Are we going to see the Queens bowing to Moonie orders in our lifetime?”

“It’ll be longer than that. Maybe our children’s children will…” She stopped short, her face flushed. “I mean, in the next couple of Moon generations. Not our children, specifically.” Her serious expression faded and she smiled awkwardly at her slip. Having kids was always a touchy subject with Moon women. “But, yes. I believe he’s on the right track, and so do a lot of the Guard leadership.”

“It’s just an odd thing to think about; affecting the world rather than having it always affecting you.”

“Your mother calls it action versus reaction. They think it’s time for Moons to stop reacting to the world we inherited, and act to make it better.”

I gathered he close and gave her a long kiss. I’d forgotten how incredible it was to have her around. It made leaving her to journey back to L.A. that much more unpleasant to think about. Emotionally and physically we were such a good match. It was too bad that ultimately, she was practical and rational and dedicated, and I was…none of that. No matter how much we enjoyed each other in the short term, when the conversation turned to the future, things got frustrating for both of us.

Her hand reached between us and stroked my hardening cock. “I can probably push back my meeting if you want to…?”

“I can make up time on the road, I’m sure,” I said, “and Zuzanna’s got a few more days before she starts feeling the absence of her Queen.”

With that decided, she laid back on the bed and I climbed between her open legs, and we set about saying goodbye one more time.

I was surprised to see a small crowd gathered at the front entrance to see me off. I recognized most of them as people who worked for my parents, so they were probably there to kiss ass with their bosses rather than from any concern for me. Or else to make sure that the Bagger troublemaker was really gone.

I’d said my final-final goodbye to Elise in her quarters, so my parents were the only ones I’d have to deal with before I got going. Mother was there, holding Zuzanna’s arm, while my sister looked around with whatever curiosity Queen Wendy had allowed her to keep. Other than a few family meals, I hadn’t really sat down with Mother this trip, mostly because I felt like I’d disappointed her the most. First of all with my choice of lifestyle, and secondly by bringing her daughter back into her life.

I knew that she kept tabs on all of her children, but that couldn’t be the same as having them in your home, and seeing what they’d become under their Queens’ influence. There wouldn’t be any real conversation, and no shared dreams for the future. Mother said she’d already known about Zuzanna’s previous children, and while she hadn’t known that my sister was pregnant with her third, she’d long ago gotten a copy of her daughter’s Life Schedule from the UCLA computer, and had known that this latest baby was imminent.

I knew it was tough on her, but the whole thing had been bad for me as well, since it reinforced what a screw-up I must be in her eyes. I knew my parents had big dreams for me—the only Moon born of Moons in the last forty years—but I’d never wanted their life. My year in the Guard had shown me that.

I actually blamed them for what I’d become, although not to their faces. I’d been exposed to so much knowledge and free thought, growing up with two of the greatest Moon minds on the planet. How could I possibly give that up? Go where they sent me, and follow orders like some Worker instead of using my freedom to do what I thought was best?

So while I sympathized with Mother’s pain, and had already apologized a dozen times for bringing my sister home with me, I still wasn’t going to apologize for the life I lived.

When she saw me, Mother said something to Zuzanna and left her standing next to the Land Cruiser. I tensed as she got closer, but she didn’t look like she wanted to fight. Or even make me feel guilty. Instead, she wrapped her arms around me and gave me the tightest squeeze I’d ever felt from her.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said. “Promise you’ll come back soon.”

“I promise,” I said, although I’d made the same vow before.

She stared at me for a long while, our shared silence so alike and yet so different from my father. She had her hair in her traditional braid, and looked very fit for her age in her sharply pressed Guard uniform. I hadn’t inherited her blue eyes or her blonde hair, but I had her genetics to thank for my above-average height, and my wiry frame. Mostly though, I was glad that she’d passed down her intelligence and her practicality—even if I rarely looked like I had either.

“Leo…your sister told me something when I asked about your trip from L.A., and…” She squeezed my hands and looked around to see if anyone else is listening. “This thing that you can do…are you being careful?”

I started shaking as adrenaline hit me. She knew. I’d suspected that she did, but now she’d just confirmed it. Which meant that Father would soon know, if he didn’t already. I’d often daydreamed about what would happen if my secret life came out, and in all of the times I’d mulled it over, I’d never pinned down what either of my parents would do.

All I knew at the moment was that Mother hadn’t delayed my journey, and Father hadn’t sent anyone to take me into custody. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone, and wanted me to get away before the shit hit the turbine? “I’m as careful as I can be, Mother. Although I may have slipped up with Zuzanna.” I was still looking for inspiration on that front—how was I supposed to keep Queen Wendy from finding out the same things that my mother had?

“You can’t feel…were you maybe trying to…to set her free?” The hope in her face nearly made me cry.

“No, I’m sorry. I…” I wanted to confess everything to her, to share the burden with her and hope that maybe she could come up with an answer where I’d failed. But at the same time, I knew that the less I admitted, the more I could protect them from whatever consequences came from it.

“Is there anything you can do? Anything to keep you safe? Use the gas to make her forget?”

I was stunned, first that she already had a handle on my process, and secondly that she would suggest something like that. “But, we’re talking about your daughter. My sister. I couldn’t just—”

“Your sister is a Worker, Leo. Enslaved to a Queen. I love her, just like I love her brothers, but the reality of this world is that I love you more. I need you to be safe, even if that means Zuzanna has to lose her memories. Even if…even if you have to keep her away from her Queen until she can’t betray you.”

“Mother! Don’t say that.” I had to force myself to relax, or I would have crushed her hands in mine. “I would never…”

I’d only seen my mother cry a handful of times in my life, but a stream of tears flowed down her cheeks as she stared up at me. I suddenly felt terrible for everything I’d ever done; everything in my life that had brought me to this moment, when my mother had to chose between two of her children, and had decided that my life was worth more than Zuzanna’s.

“I’ll disappear if I have to. I have enough resources that I can go anywhere. If I avoid the colonies, no one would ever find me.”

“If that’s what it takes, Leo.” She finally released my hands and wiped at her face with her sleeve. “But before that, you do anything you can…anything…to stay safe. Remember, you promised that you’d come back to us.”

My thoughts were spinning, digesting everything Mother had just said, as well as chewing on some new possibilities. I’d never even considered using my process on my own sister. Mostly because I’d wanted to present her to Mother just like I’d found her. Her life in UCLA wasn’t nearly as bad as she would have experienced in other colonies, and I’d wanted my parents to see that.

But now that I’d done what I’d set out to do, and now that Mother had just given me tacit permission…maybe the future wasn’t so bleak as I’d thought.

“I will,” I said, wrapping my mother in a hug. “I’ll come back.”

I didn’t want to let her go, because even with all of my promises, there was no guarantee that I’d ever see her again, and I was starting to realize how sad that would make me.

“Ah, there you two are.”

Father’s voice was never loud, but it always got through whatever else was occupying my mind. I forced myself to let go of my mother, and stepped back to let him join our little family circle. I was surprised to see that he was carrying the data pad that I’d stolen from UCLA.

“Sorry I’m late, but you’ll have to hold off on leaving for a few minutes more. I need to tell you something.”

As different as my parents were, there was something comforting about seeing them side by side. It was the picture that I’d always associated with family. My father had shown me a Chinese symbol once; a circle with two teardrop shapes inside, one white and one black swirling around each other. He’d said it showed how two people can be opposites, but still complete each other.

“I downloaded everything on that tablet already,” I said. “I’m sure UCLA doesn’t need it back, and it would just be an extra risk.”

He looked down at the device in his hand. “Yes. I was actually going through the data this morning, at least until my assistant reminded me of the time.” He waved behind him to where the small crowd still milled around, and Zuzanna still waited patiently by the Land Cruiser. “There was something odd among the files, and I needed to ask you about it before you left.”

I knew Father was rarely emotional, but after the talk I’d just had with Mother, his lack of sentiment was particularly jarring. He actually seemed more serious than usual, almost as if…

“You found something that worries you,” I said. “Something that’s happening at that colony.”

He nodded. “I had to run more than thirty queries, but something wasn’t adding up. Several of the medical specialties actually have more trained Workers than is feasible. Almost twice as many in areas like infectious diseases and genetic therapies.”

“What does that mean?” Mother asked, beating me to the question.

“I’m not sure, I could only find Life Schedules for four of the nearly one hundred extra doctors, but their files show that they spent at least three extra years in training, with additional focus on things called CRISPR and RNA delivery.”

“And you looked up what those are?” I knew, even before I asked, that of course he’d looked then up, and his expression just confirmed it.

“Pure genetic manipulation,” he said, ”of a kind that we haven’t seen since the last of the pre-Separation scientists died. Their work on trying to cure the effects of the GODS…it’s the same thing that that this Queen…?”

“Wendy,” I supplied.

“That Queen Wendy seems to be reviving in her laboratories.”

“Why would a Queen want to research ways to bring back the old world?” Mother asked.

None of us had a feasible answer.

“So, obviously this is worrying you,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

I’d never seen my father hesitate before, but he actually broke eye contact with me and looked down at his toes. Either this thing was really bothering him, or he was reluctant to ask me for my help. Or…maybe he didn’t believe that I could help him. I had a long history of being unreliable, after all.

“Just tell me what you need me to find out,” I said. “I’m pretty good at getting in and out of colonies without raising alarms.”

My father arched his eyebrows at my revelation, and my mother looked thoughtful, like she was seeing me differently in light of her new discovery.

“Well, Leo. If you can manage it, the schedule shows all of the extra doctors meeting in a place called Whistler Hall. There are several laboratories in the basement. The Guard would be interested in knowing what Queen Wendy is planning to do with her research, especially if it will disrupt the Global Plan.”

Of course..anything that would interfere with Father’s masterpiece.

“I’ll find out what I can,” I said. I took the tablet from him, then turned toward my waiting car.”If I’m going to keep my schedule though, I’ve got to get on the road.”

Zuzanna looked up as we approached, and I swore that I saw the hint of a smile on her lips, like she was looking forward to going home. But it vanished just as quickly, leaving me doubting it was ever there.