Fragment

Fragment Chapter 4

Tales of Three Worlds

By ColumbusGuy

Fragment Four: Pillow Talk

"Why are you looking at me that way?"

"Do you remember when we first met," I asked Jakob one night as I lay next to him, stroking his dark hair idly. For my part, I was still marveling over the changes the `thals new nano-bots had made in our bodies. It was like we were twenty again...only we had our appreciation of life our long-time bond had given us. So much had changed over the decades and centuries those same bots had gifted us with, but our feelings for one another were undiminished. On Earth, the number of people who could claim more than two centuries was small, due to the Genetic Authority's ban on any use of nanos in humans other than for the curing of terminal illnesses. On Mars and Luna the numbers were larger, since the GA had no way to impose its sanctions on those two worlds.

Damn them...the bastards had killed my mother! Anna-Marie Hallbach developed an inoperable brain tumor which the early nanos could treat, but it was a painful process, and one she refused after the second recurrence. There was a new treatment which could have prevented it from coming back, but the GA had forbidden it when it would have altered her genome. There had been a lot of potential disasters from the early researches into genetic manipulation, but the Authority really gained impetus when the Neanderthals became a visible reminder of homo sapiens' shortcomings. It didn't help when investigations showed that the only `tampering' had been with their resistance to the common cold and flu viruses.

The Hallbach-Sommers Combine hadn't been large enough or powerful enough back in 2175 to defy them openly, and my mother's wish was that I not attempt the treatment without permission...the last time I'd ever have her loving protection. That triggered my twin goals in life: to become strong enough to bring about a better future for mankind, and to bring down the Genetic Authority. My accidental meeting with Jakob Sommers would eventually aid me in reaching for those goals, though they were unformed at the time.

I could hear Jakob sigh as he brushed my cheek with his fingers, then his lips. "Of course I do—it was in the Life Sciences library at the Polytechnik Institute. You were looking for the copy of Principles of Applied Genetic Reconstruction for a class, but I had checked it out for my Restoring Ecosystems paper..."

I laughed but tweaked his nose, a thing he hated but endured because I'd always follow it up with a kiss, as I did once more. Jakob moved his fingers through my red hair as we kissed, then I pulled back. "Sorry, you must be getting old, Jake...it was at the `Save The Rainforest' Dance in 2100, our second year at Neu Bonn. That's when I first saw you, but we didn't speak until the library thing two weeks later."

I saw Jake frown in the dim light from his apartment's hall. "I didn't see you there, so it doesn't really count." He shuddered a bit before going on. "I went with that awful Matthias Something-Or-Other...the guy with the Jupiter-sized ego."

"You went out with him because he had a cock the size of your arm," I snickered.

"How...it wasn't...Wait—how did you know that his dick was so big?"

I couldn't resist poking him in the ribs...Jakob had always paid more attention to his studies than the social scene on campus. "Because he tried it on me a week before...my friend Pavel warned me he'd laid nearly every guy in our class in those first six months of school, so I gave him a very old-fashioned hand-job but nothing else, I took Pavel to the dance by way of thanking him, but you made an impression on me that night despite being with such a goon."

"Pavel? Wasn't he the tall blond Cossack? The one we had a threesome with on our first anniversary?" When I nodded, his eyes grew misty with old memories, and I gave him another soft kiss. "Whatever happened to Pavel...and Matthias?"

I gave a long sigh as thoughts of my blond friend surfaced again after more than a century of being buried. He'd gone up in the same plasma flare that destroyed the Star-Seeker. "He died when the interstellar ship blew up...he'd become my brother's husband about ten years before..."

I pushed those thoughts aside when Jakob asked again about Matthias' fate. "I found out quite by accident...after college, he became a porn star on the old Shoot It Network...his biggest film was a gay remake of Prisoner of Zenda. I think it had lot of dungeon scenes which were holoed just for him. It would never win an award, but it wasn't too bad either." Matthias had been a severely conceited man, and looked down on all the other guys in our class, but none of us would ever have called him ugly...so it was no surprise that he'd made a fortune in holo-porn.

"I wish I'd been warned about him...I walked funny for days after that dance...by the time I met you in the library, he'd already moved on to his next conquest."

I couldn't resist my next remark. "Is that why you didn't let me take you until our second date? I thought you just didn't want to appear too eager...?" Jakob punched my arm playfully, but his next words got me right in the heart.

"No...I was going to make you wait until the third, but those eyes of yours melted my resolve. They're your best feature, and only seeing them in person does them any justice, my love." Jake moved in to take hold of my hard dick, and we spent the next hour making love all over again...we hadn't reached the end of the promised two day sex-a-thon, but it was coming closer by the hour. I owed Two-Sapphire a huge debt for our new bots and their abilities.

I missed his next question, since I was busy working my way down his body with my tongue, but he pulled a bit at my red hair to get my attention on more worldly things. "I asked, `what were the conditions Two set for reproducing with his co-mates...'"

I stopped licking up his juices and swirled my fingers in them as I answered...I'd be back at that task before it could dry. Jake might be easily side-tracked, but not me, especially when I hadn't seen my husband for five years.

"As far as I know, there's only one...that he and Green-Fawn both be the sperm donors..." In the early years of the Neanderthal Project, our scientists had done a lot of manipulation to insure a diverse gene-pool, and each batch of newborns had been raised in Combine nurseries. Some were allowed to be fostered by carefully selected couples, as Two-Sapphire had been with Jakob and I...but the majority had had loving nannies and educators once they grew old enough to move into apartment-like dorms at Hallbach-Sommers research facility in Finland. Gradual news releases had informed the world of their existence, but the location had been kept secret. When the `thals had come of age, they'd been allowed and encouraged to mate with whomever they wished, and have children with multiple partners. After about fifty years of experimentation, the `thals had come up with their triad marriage system, and a way to continue the broadening of the species' genetic base...hence the Triad Board.

Jakob and I knew that each triad could potentially produce children from any pairing of opposite sex members, but it was common for one male to be the father, leaving the second male in a support role. The same was often true of the two female-one male triad. The Board's main duty was to broaden the gene-pool by not allowing those too closely related to have children, and preferred that each member of a triad breed with each opposite sex partner, but they couldn't enforce that except by denying the match. As a strange corollary, they might allow the birth of `twins' using sperm from each male to fertilize two eggs during the female cycle, but thought it unsound to mix the genetic codes of any two partners with that of the co-mate, even if all three were willing.

Jake purred as I cleaned him off, and turned around to take me into his own mouth, but he gave a soft chuckle first. "They must really want Two-Sapphire's genes in the next generation to break their traditions like that..."

I ran my fingers through Jakob's black hair as he began to lick my shaft..."Shut up and get to work, my love...we've only got one day left of the two I promised you."