Author: Sterling Title: A Sexy Doppelganger Helpmeet For Everyone Summary: In a distant future, everyone has an identical twin. One is like any ordinary person today, the other is engineered to be cheerful and eager to help. Help with the menial jobs of society, help with child rearing, help with housework -- and help with sex, providing to anyone who asks just what they want. Keywords: MF ScFi oral piv allegory commentary NOTICE: This story contains explicit sex. First posted 9/1/2019. I'm always eager for comments, whether good, bad or mixed. Comments to sterling27@live.com. I have written many other stories and they can all be found at /files/Authors/Sterling/ For an index see /files/Authors/Sterling/A%20%20SUBJECT%20INDE X.txt There is a more user-friendly web version of most of my stories from before 2016 here: /files/Authors/Sterlin g/www/ Sterling ============================================================ A Sexy Doppelganger Helpmeet For Everyone Earth! Finally, earth again! It had been visible on screens for many days, but Justin could see it with the naked eye now, looking through the one tiny actual window on their spacecraft, in the very center of one end of the cylinder they lived in. Earth, that lovely place with blue oceans, white clouds, and open space. So much space. He and Alison and Jason and Melissa had left earth in 2060 and been gone two years... Two years in space. Their living quarters were a rather small tin can. It rotated to provide artificial gravity. He and Alison were a couple, and got to sleep together at night and have sex. Tom and Melissa were the other couple. There was a running track, a simple loop where a bystander would see you run up the wall, over the ceiling, and down the other wall again, over and over. You yourself would just experience running on the level. There was no end of computer-based entertainment. There was virtual reality of nature, culture, mundane living -- everything the mission designers could think to include. A reasonable variety of food. One perk available to no one on earth was the tube on the center axis for floating. Both couples practiced plenty of zero-G sex. Still, their entire living space had been a cylinder thirty feet in diameter and twenty feet in length, for two years. Their mission? Passing time. They weren't selected for their skills -- the computers handled everything. They had been accelerated for several months to very near the speed of light, and traveled at that speed for nearly two years. Now they had been slowing down for months. What they really were was a 4-person time capsule. They would arrive back on earth four hundred years after they left, in 2466, to be exact, though for them it had only been two years. People on earth of their apparent age would be descendants twelve generations on from the people who walked the earth with them before they left. In another four hundred years, another foursome sent into space in 2060 would return to earth. With a speed closer to that of light, they too would have been away only two years, subjectively. But Justin, Alison, Tom and Melissa were the first time capsule humans to return to earth. When they landed, their lives were suddenly very busy and very different. Jason had had dreams of grand ticker-tape parades, but in fact they were sequestered. They were experimental subjects. The society of the past had set in motion this experiment for the benefit of the society four hundred years in their future. They were medically examined in every way possible, tested in all sorts of devices, given no end of computer-based tests using words, patterns, and colors, asked about their beliefs, and told to write stories on various themes. There were questions like, "Exactly what procedure did you use when you took a shower before you left earth? What parts did you wash, in what order?" They were shown video clips from their time and asked questions about them -- who was thinking what? There were a surprising number of things that nobody had thought to record four hundred years before but were of intense interest to the moderns. For a full year, they were not allowed to learn much of anything about the new world they had arrived back into, for that would contaminate them. Their handlers had been trained to speak and dress in the manner the four of them were accustomed to, though the training was imperfect. The accents were slightly different, and now and then one of the moderns would shush another who used a word they were unfamiliar with. Finally, after a year, Justin and Alison were put on a new path. They said farewell to Tom and Melissa, who would remain ignorant of the new world and undergo more tests. But Justin and Alison were slowly told about the new world, bit by bit, their reactions measured in detail. The climate crisis had been severe. World population was 3 billion, roughly a quarter of what it had been in 2060. Much of the decline had been due to starvation, heat stroke, and lack of water, but then things had stabilized, then improved. There was no longer any involuntary poverty, though a few groups of people chose to live traditional lifestyles with very little material comfort. Things now were energy-efficient to a degree they would never have dreamed of. High-rise buildings sat in bucolic surroundings, and they traveled within their city in small, silent, driverless cars. People lived to roughly 100, but suffered the same deterioration and decline towards the end as had everyone in 2060. The food was very tasty, and they swore that the meat and dairy tasted exactly as it had when they left, before learning that it was now all fabricated, without the involvement of animals at all. But much was unchanged. What is the meaning of life? What should I do with my life? There was corruption, racial and ethnic animosity, and there were even small-scale wars here and there. Artists of all sorts still strove to express their truths through prose, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, theater, and performance art. But there was one thing that was decidedly different -- the twins. Twins, twins, everywhere. Twins who were identical in most respects, but also very different in one key way. One of each pair was the smarty, and the other the help. Help were genetically engineered to be not especially smart, but cheerful, happy,and very helpful. And to feel OK about what looked to an outsider like their lower status. --------------------------------------------------------- Jason's handlers dropped him off at a large apartment on the 27th floor. He knew he was to live with a typical married foursome, if they all found it a harmonious situation. The foursome was of course deeply honored. Only one other family on earth was similarly honored, the one Alison was going to live with. "Hello, you are named Justin, is it not so?" said a man who opened the door. "That's me." "This is Gertrude and Gertrudehelp, That's Ebenezerhelp, and I'm to be called Ebenezer." It was apparent at once that the two women were identical twins, as were the two men. One of each pair was dressed in around-the-house clothes, the other in a more stylish fashion. He thought he could also tell them apart based on their demeanor. The help siblings were relaxed and smiled. The other two had more complex expressions. He naturally thought about race. Both sets of twins were hard to place. Some East Asian, quite a bit of European white in both. Anything African? The men had very curly hair, cut short, though it was light brown in color. Some Indian subcontinent in the women? They had rather dark complexions, but blonde hair, which he would later determine was natural. The men were about six feet tall, the women five foot six. He himself was five foot ten, and a blue-eyed Nordic blond. "You'se one the whiz-bang outer space folk, really? Quite the honor, much the honor," said Ebenezerhelp. "You will have to become... accustomed to our new ways of talking," said Ebenezer, haltingly. This foursome had not been chosen at all randomly. Ebenezer was a linguist, and Gertrude a historian. "Oh, Ell-oh-ell, you do oldtalk, no no?" said Gertrudehelp. Justin shrugged. "I guess I just talk the way I always have. Whatever you call it now." "Cool cool accentuation!" said Gertrude. Justin gradually learned to understand the new lingo, the new words, the new expressions, and translated them in his mind into the English of 2060. "Any time you wanna fuck, I'm ready," said Gertrudehelp with a seductive smile. Justin sat up straight, his surprise as evident in 2467 as it would have been in 2060. "They wouldn't have said that back in your day, would they?" said Ebenezer. "Uh, no, not in a situation like this," said Justin. "I'm four months pregnant, but I still love to make men happy," said Gertrudehelp. Gertrude said, "Back in his day, twins were very rare, and identical twins even rarer. And they had no special roles. Each was his own person, some more like us smarties and some more like you helps." "So how did they work things out? Who did the help work and who did the smart work?" asked Ebenezerhelp. "Some people did the help work, but they got paid less and often lived in poverty. Others did the smart work, and they got paid more and lived better," said Gertrude. "Does that sound right?" Justin agreed that sounded about right. That was the human condition, and he had thought it was the way things had to be. The only way things could be, as socialist utopian experiments had been such uniform failures. "It's almost time for lunch," said Gertrude. "Ebenezerhelp will prepare it. Sure you don't want a quick fuck with Gertrudehelp? It would be our way." Ebenezerhelp went off to the kitchen. Jason gulped. "Well, OK." He stood up. "You see a woman like her, you want to fuck her, right?" "Um, yeah. But in my day I'd hardly ever get to. I'd see lots of women I'd like to have sex with, but didn't get to very often." "One way the modern world is better. I'm curious how a guy from ancient history would do it..." said Ebenezer. Gertrudehelp came up to face him, put her arms on his shoulders, and raised her face for a gentle kiss. Gertrude and Ebenezer just sat and looked on with interest. "Uh, you're going to watch?" said Jason. "Oh, right, privacy!" said Ebenezer, with a face-palm. "Go to the guest room and shut the door," he said to Gertrudehelp. "OK, shy guy," she said with a giggle and led him into the guest room. Soon they were both naked, and she got on her knees in front of him and admired his stiff cock, which got even stiffer as she began licking it. "Or, what do you like better?" she said. "What... what would be the custom?" said Jason, feeling lingering pleasure from her oral attentions to his penis. "From the rear, like horses, that's the way lots of guys like to start out." "That sounds good," said Jason with a smile. And there was Gertrudehelp, in doggy position on the bed, back arched, holding her pussy lips apart, looking around at him and smiling. Jason approached from behind on his knees and slid his cock in. He thought of himself and Alison. Three years together before the flight, two years in space, and two years since -- they had never once done it that way. She would have been offended at the idea... Now here he was behind Gertrudehelp, his cock deep inside her from the rear, and she was moaning with delight at his vigorous sexual motion. "What about you?" he asked. "What about me?" "When do you have your orgasm?" "Me, orgasm? Oh, if you really want to I could some time, but not now, surely?" "OK," said Jason, grabbing her hips and fucking with greater intensity. "Most guys wouldn't last much longer than a stallion," she said with a giggle. "No need to hold back... Any time you want to do it again, just let me know..." Jason was primed for orgasm, and within thirty seconds he lunged deep and ejaculated way up inside Gertrudehelp. Satisfied, he withdrew and sat on the bed, breathing deeply. "I can tell you liked that," said Gertrudehelp, turning and sitting beside him. "Lunch, any time," came Ebenezerhelp's voice outside the door. Gertrudehelp got dressed, as did he, and the five of them ate a delicious lunch of steak, potatoes, broccoli, and a tossed salad, served by Ebenezerhelp. When lunch was over, Gertrudehelp worked on the clean-up, Ebenezer said he had to check in with work online, while the other three of them retired to the living room. "Thinking about the two of you got me in the mood, I have to say," said Gertrude. Jason wondered if she was going to seduce him too, but she soon clarified when she addressed him. "You mind if we do it out here?" "Uh, no..." said Jason. "You can watch if you want." Gertrude lay back on the sofa and smiled. Ebenezerhelp kissed her for several seconds, then set to work below. He massaged the inside of her bare thighs, his hands moving up under her dress towards her crotch. He then flipped up her dress and pulled her panties down and off, and then he set to work with his tongue on Gertrude's organ of female pleasure. The pleasure was plainly visible on her face. Minutes went by, and Jason was soon turned on. Gertrudehelp emerged from the kitchen, saw the one couple engaged together and the bulge in Jason's pants, and said, "Hey, want to do it? Out here, the modern way?" "Uh, OK," said Jason. And there was Gertrudehelp on her back on the other sofa, naked from the waist down, legs spread wide. The other two looked briefly to see what was going on but went back to their cunnilingus. And with his pants around his ankles, Jason mounted Gertrudehelp and entered her, and began thrusting. On the other sofa, Gertrude gasped and bucked her hips in what must surely have been an orgasm. She smiled at Ebenezerhelp and he smiled at her, and then she whispered, "More!" He went right back to licking her. Ebenezer walked in. Jason's upbringing prepared him to be irate at this other man doing it with his wife -- one of his wives? -- but he just smiled. Jason had been going three minutes but felt like finishing up. It seemed that was the norm, that he would just finish when he felt like it. He felt like it. He panted and groaned and shot his second load of the day into Gertrudehelp. He had to admit he liked this way of doing sex better than with Alison, where it was all about timing and mood and balancing desires and lasting a long time while she got sufficiently aroused and finally came. "Hey, my turn," said Ebenezer, as Jason withdrew his slick cock from Gertrudehelp. "Of course, sweety," said Gertrudehelp, as Jason sat in the armchair to watch. Ebenezer just fished his stiff cock out of his pants, mounted, entered her, and thrust for ten seconds before groaning and sighing, then withdrew. Gertrudehelp smiled sweetly. As the three of them put themselves back together, Gertrude said, "Help-man, puncture me and just in-and-shoot after I fly!" The modern phrasing was so distinctive that Jason made a mental note of it. In seconds, Ebenezerhelp stripped, his stiff cock on display, and went back to licking Gertrude. In a minute, she gasped and groaned and moaned. Ebenezerhelp stopped licking, mounted her and thrust his cock into her all the way in one fast invasion. Gertrude gasped and moaned again, and Ebenezerhelp said, "Oh, yes!" apparently ejaculating just as Gertrude had requested. When he was done he lay down on her and they kissed. After thirty seconds she motioned him up, sat up herself and said, "Everyone happy?" They all nodded, got dressed and the conversation turned to other topics. --------------------------------------------------------- Later, when he was alone with Ebenezer, he said, "I noticed the pairings. You never did it with Gertrude, nor did I, and the two helps never did it with each other." Ebenezer looked surprised. "Oh, oh, sure. You wouldn't know. Mostly smarties are attracted to helps and vice versa, and almost all the sex happens that way. You're obviously in the smarty class, so Gertrude wouldn't do you." "What if I asked her?" Ebenezer looked uncomfortable. "You could, I guess. But it would be rude. Gertrudehelp looks just like her, and if you want sex with Gertrude, you do it with Gertrudehelp instead. Of course, there's no Jasonhelp around, so if Gertrude did have the hots for you she'd be out of luck -- or have to break tradition." "And you don't mind me doing it to Gertrudehelp? Being like... I don't know, your sexual partner within this marriage?" "Nah, not at all. She'll do it with any man who asks. And if I see some other help woman, she'll be happy to let me do her. And I do, plenty. All the females get an implant at puberty and they're never fertile unless they take a specific drug. And when Gertrudehelp was that way, she would never do it with another guy. She'd only do it with me. So the baby would be ours." "Yours plural?" "Me and Ebenezerhelp. We're the same person, genetically speaking." There was a great deal of what Jason had been raised to call "sleeping around." He had also learned that the problem of sexually transmitted infections had been solved completely hundreds of years before. --------------------------------------------------------- On another occasion he caught Gertrude alone. "So, the help people. What work do they do? Aside from cooking and cleaning?" "Well, they do all the child care. Gertrudehelp and Ebenezerhelp will raise the boys when they're born... Mortimer and Mortimerhelp." "Boys, right. Identical twins. And how will you know which is which? Or do you do something to turn one into a help and the other into a smarty?" "No, that's determined before birth, and it becomes apparent pretty soon. Helps are always easy babies. Smarties often aren't. Smarties have temper tantrums later, helps don't." "What about outside the home? Do the helps work outside?" "Oh, sure... nursing aids, delivery people, janitors, hairdressers, yard-work people." "And the rest of you?" "All the other jobs, the higher ones. Engineers, managers, scientists, lawyers, therapists, inventors. Anything that takes more initiative and judgment and skill." "From the perspective of my time, we'd call it a class society... exploitation. Don't the help people resent it?" Gertrude paused to look at him. "No, they don't want anything more. Some don't even want the responsibility of being a fast food restaurant shift supervisor, for instance. Too much thinking. But some are willing. So it all works out." "What about the differential pay?" "Every smarty and help pair are a single economic unit. We're inseparable. What belongs to one belongs to the other. You ever see how we sleep at night?" Soon after he'd arrived, he got up in the middle of the night, and on his way back to bed looked into the master bedroom. The identical twins slept with each other, the one spooned against the other. "I think I can see how it will work out. How did this whole system get started?" "I don't know the details -- that's not my field exactly -- but they did a bunch of experiments and this seemed to be the one that worked best." Jason had learned a version of all this before he came to live with the family, but wanted to hear first-hand accounts, not just rely on the truths this society advertised about itself publicly. --------------------------------------------------------- Jason sometimes found Ebenezer and Gertrude sitting in the living room talking earnestly. Often they invited him to join them and they discussed all manner of big questions -- the political controversies of the day, the modern controversies in art, the sensational stories that were still with humanity in the 27th century. Naturally their conversations tended to a comparison of Jason's time with their own. There was a great deal to discuss. Other times he saw them holding hands, perhaps with Gertrude's head on Ebenezer's shoulder. They certainly had affection for each other. --------------------------------------------------------- "Ebenezerhelp, I want to ask you something." "Sure. What can I do for you?" "Are you happy living like this?" "I'm happy. Living like what?" "Ebenezer gets to go out in the world and do interesting things. So does Gertrude. You and Gertrudehelp stay home and are their servants." "I wouldn't want to do those 'interesting things'. They take a lot of knowledge and are very hard. I'm happy helping them in any way I can." "You don't get to make any of the big decisions." "They're better at making decisions than I am." Jason paused to consider. "Doesn't it bother you that you never had any choice? That you were destined to be this way from birth?" "Why would it? I'm luckier than Ebenezer. He worries about things. He's happy sometimes but sometimes he's not. I'm always happy." "Would you kiss my knee?" "Sure." He kissed Jason's knee. "Would you lie on your back and say, 'ga ga goo goo'?... Would you say, 'I'm the smartest person ever'?... Would you lick my shoe?... Would you say, 'People have six legs."? Ebenezerhelp did everything Jason asked. "Would you say, 'Ebenezer is a bad man'?" Ebenezerhelp hesitated. "No, I'd never say that." "Why not? I mean, you said other things you didn't think are true." "Yeah, but that's different. I love Ebenezer." "Would you say 'Jason, you're an ugly freak'?" Pause. "I'm not sure ... Not right now. You are confusing me." "Does that bother you?" "A little." He frowned, but then his face relaxed into a smile. "But I'll ask Ebenezer. He'll tell me what to do." --------------------------------------------------------- "Hello, Gertrudehelp. I wanted to ask you some things." They were in the living room. "Me? The smarties know everything I know and a lot more." Jason was aware of Gertrude's luscious female form, and remembered their many prior encounters. "Well, um, let me see..." Gertrudehelp noticed. "Why not fuck me first and save the questions for later?" When Jason hesitated, she pulled her panties down to mid-thigh, stood at the end of the sofa and flopped her front along the back of the sofa, flipping her dress up over her back. She then tilted her butt up so the angle would work perfectly for his cock to slide right in. It seemed she was always lubricated. His total contribution to foreplay had been hesitating when Gertrude suggested sex. Having observed what Ebenezer often did, he just pulled his dick out through his fly, stepped up behind her, and plunged in. Gertrudehelp cooed. He pumped in and out, grunting, pleasure and excitement building with his pace, and then held himself deep inside as his cock pulsed orgasm. When he caught his breath he pulled back. It had taken almost a whole minute. She stood up and made herself decent, as did he, putting his cock back in his pants. "I liked that, and you sure seemed to. Glad to help." She kissed him on the cheek and turned to leave. "Wait, I wanted to ask you questions." "Oh, right." "Gertrude makes all the decisions and tells you what to do. Doesn't that bother you?" "No! Why should it? She knows a lot more than I do." "Don't you ever want something different? Like eggs for breakfast instead of cereal?" She shrugged. "Everyone makes compromises in life, right? I'm happier doing what she wants rather than doing whatever other little thing I might like better." Jason sighed. "What if she asked you to eat her feces?" Gertrudehelp's eyes went wide. "She'd never do that!" "But what if she did?" "Oh, you're so confusing with a 'what if' question like that." "Next time you see her, you can tell her I asked you that." Jason smiled. Gertrudehelp's face was troubled, but then relaxed. "I will -- she'll tell me what to think of that strange question." Ebenezerhelp walked into the living room, headed somewhere else. "Wait, Ebenezerhelp, I've got a question for both of you." He stopped. "Yes?" "Do you ever have sex with each other?" Gertrudehelp said, "Sure. When the smarties get busy and don't want it so much, and one of us is in the mood. It's usually him who's in the mood." Her eyes twinkled as she looked at Ebenezerhelp. "And you like to help him too, the way you help Ebenezer and me?" "Sure!" "Would you do it out here in the living room?" "Probably not, if one of the smarties might walk through. Somehow I think it might distract them." "Is either of you in the mood now?" "He's always in the mood," said Gertrudehelp. "We do it at least once a week." "Would you do it here, now, while I watch?" The two helps hesitated. Gertrude said, "You want us to? You're asking us to... Even if one of the smarties walked through, I think that would be OK." Ebenezerhelp nodded, and Gertrude began to position herself over the back of the sofa. Jason said, "No, what about face to face down on the sofa..." The mating pair looked at each other, shrugged, and did as he asked. Ebenezerhelp pulled his pants and underpants down to his ankles and mounted. Gertrudehelp smiled at him lovingly, he closed his eyes, and fifteen seconds later he groaned and relaxed, then disengaged. "I like getting to see your face when you come," said Gertrudehelp. Jason watched as the two of them became decent again -- then reminded himself that they had never been 'indecent', but their clothing was now configured for ordinary around-the-house activity instead of sex. "Hey, Jason, you're hard, do me again!" she said. "Not right now, thanks." "OK." "So, you're not having orgasms when we men do quickies like that, are you?" She murmured, "A 'quicky', what's that?" before answering him, "Oh, I see! Sex that's quick! No." "Don't you mind?" "Oh, no, that's fine. Though, sometimes..." she said, suddenly shy. Ebenezerhelp gave a big smile. "Sometimes she gets in the mood, and I'll lick her out for like an hour, and she'll come over and over again." "When the smarties are out, or sometimes in the middle of the night. It doesn't interfere with helping them," she said. "Do you ever do sexual things with Ebenezerhelp for a long time, like, I don't know, give him a blow job for an hour at a time?" "I would if he wanted to." They looked at Ebenezerhelp. "I'm more a quick fuck guy. Go with the urges. Do it many times -- if I still feel like it." "Yeah, you probably do me twenty times for every time I do you, but you spend longer at it that one time..." Jason said, "But for Gertrude, you'd do it a long time. Just keep fucking her for an hour?" "Oh, of course. We have done that a couple times over the years. But mostly she likes the oral sex part to be long, with the actual fucking pretty quick." --------------------------------------------------------- Jason woke up at 3am, feeling horny. He could jerk off, but then Gertrudehelp was always delighted to make him happy. She said she and Ebenezerhelp sometimes had their long sex sessions in the middle of the night, so they must sometimes get up from the pairings they slept in. He padded into the master bedroom with the two double beds. And there were the Gertrudes, smarty and help. They looked an awful lot alike... He tapped the shoulder of the one he thought was Gertrudehelp. She opened her eyes and looked at him pleasantly. He whispered, "You willing to have sex? ... I was in the mood." She smiled and said softly, "I trust you're looking for Gertrudehelp." Oops. She had woken up at the sound of words, and whispered, "Sure, sure, but let's go in the other room so as to not wake the others up." "Have fun," murmured Gertrude, turning over away from them in bed. In his room, he had both of them strip and lie in bed. He kissed her. She kissed him back with a bright smile. Then he mounted and pumped in and out slowly. Then after ten minutes he got on his back and asked her to mount him and do him cowgirl style. "This is different. Going on so long like this!" she said with a bright smile. She did cowgirl for five minutes. Then he had her swivel around 180 degrees and they did reverse cowgirl. Then he did her doggy style. They went back to missionary position. He just wanted to keep fucking and fucking. They did it on their sides, facing each other. Then she turned away and he did her from the rear on their sides. Pump in tight, pull back, surge in again. It felt so good. They'd been at in an hour. And then she yawned. "Oh, no!" she said, alarmed. "I'm so sorry!" Jason smiled, still pumping away. "You're upset because your attention wandered from making me just as happy as you can." "Well, yeah, I'm a help after all." "It's just fine. You're only human." He pulled out of her, slid her onto her back, and mounted her missionary style. "Yeah, I guess. It's just pretty rude." "You were sleepy and kind of bored." "Oh, no, it's so much more important to make you happy!" "That may be, I get that's how you feel. But you yourself were feeling sleepy and bored." Gertrudehelp bit her lip. "Um, yeah, I guess I was. I shouldn't be, though. No man in my life has ever gone on so long with me. I mean, I've spent hours in bed, but the guy always comes, rests, and then does it and comes again." "Do the smarties every ask if you're tired or bored?" "Yeah, not about sex... but about other things, sometimes. Now and then." Jason kissed her passionately as he pumped with sharp, deep thrusts into her pussy. Now he had a definite goal in mind. An ending. And he was going to achieve it. In thirty seconds he came, a most satisfying orgasm. And what else did he feel through the fog of orgasm? Contractions in her vagina? He pulled out and lay beside her. "You came, right? You had an orgasm?" "Um, well, would you mind if I did?" "Of course not!" "Oh, good. I mean, you never told me not to. I never dreamed I would, just from a cock going in and out, but you went on so long it just got me excited... And you were so nice about it when I yawned." "I was a better lover this time than Ebenezer has ever been?" "Well, that's not how I look at it. I make him happy, and Ebenezerhelp, and any man who asks." "But no smarty has ever given you an orgasm?" "None has ever tried." "Could I lick you and try to give you another one?" "If you really want. I hope Gertrude isn't getting lonely in bed." "Your call." "Oh, go ahead," she said with a smile. "If that's what you really want to do." Jason licked her. In ten minutes she had an orgasm. In five minutes she had another. He kept licking. "Jason?" "Yes?" "I don't know, um. For me, how it feels to me personally, I've felt enough pleasure. But if you want to go on licking me you're welcome to." He smiled. The helper mentality, through and through. He kissed her and sent her back to Gertrude, her one and only true love. --------------------------------------------------------- Jason consulted an online history text. One of the big motivations for the change was a plunging birth rate. Birth rates had been below replacement rate in the developed world long before he had left earth in 2060. As the rest of the world developed and women had free access to effective contraception, their birth rates plummeted too. This was fine for a while, as the world needed a smaller population to be sustainable, but it couldn't go on forever. Lots of women didn't want any children at all. Compared to the myriad opportunities for career advancement, creative work, recreation and self-actualization, raising children was just not very inspiring. Despite technological advances, children are fundamentally emotionally needy, and parenthood is a lot of drudgery and an emotional drain. Some women wanted one child, to have the experience. Some wanted two, so their children would have a sibling. Only a rare woman wanted three or more. Everyone agreed that no one could force a woman to have more children than she wanted. That was where things had stood 300 years before. What to do? Genetic engineering was definitely a possibility. Some countries tried an experiment where they made strains of women who liked having and raising children. Not just three. Four, five, or six children. Everyone could see their genes would propagate and the world population would be under pressure again. One solution was that the other women could be egg donors and the women who loved children would raise many children who weren't genetically theirs, most of whom would not be the kind who loved to reproduce. The breeding women didn't mind that idea. But surprisingly few regular women were interested in egg donation either. There was definitely an emerging problem with class too. People looked down on those women who liked having babies. It was not an ideal solution. One idea would be a genetic modification so women enjoyed having children, but only to a level that was consistent with a stable population. That specificity of that psychological attitude turned out to be too fine-grained for the techniques available. That level of intervention also made people uneasy. There had been interest for years in the idea of making better people -- eugenics. It had its pernicious forms linked to racism, but it had more innocent forms as well. Why not make people who were happy, cooperative, industrious, and valued the common welfare over their own? But there was also deep concern about getting rid of human diversity. Were human still humans without all the angst and strife? Without the visionary who imagined how the world could be better? Could it be that even the rare psychopath added something important? An ideal solution was one that would not restrict human genetic diversity, yet would allow for sufficient reproduction to keep a stable population. A secondary problem that had been with humanity through all of history if not before was the class nature of society. In older times that had involved wealth and power achieved through a variety of means. But in recent times it had become meritocratic. It was the smarter people who segregated themselves out, took more of the wealth, and looked down on those of lesser intellectual ability who were stuck doing menial work or not working at all. The identical twin idea had many advantages. The most obvious was that help women were delighted to have as many babies as their smarty thought fit, keeping in mind the need for a stable world population. The genes that caused the twin solution ran through all bloodlines, but they only were expressed when certain artificially synthesized protein factors were present. If people got tired of the twin solution, the world would rapidly devolve into the diverse humanity we had been for so many thousands of years. For those with the long view, the vital thing was that humanity would be restored to its natural condition in the face of societal breakdown and chaos. But as long as those rare protein factors were made and administered, there were two effects. The subtle one was that the ordinary humans who wouldn't ordinarily be all that smart were much smarter. The obvious one was that all pregnancies were identical twins, and in the womb, they sorted themselves out into a smarty and a help. And the help was a new sort of human, designed to be cheerful, to love children, to think all work was honorable, and above all to want to help others. Emotionally, the twins had a deep bond. They wanted to sleep together by the time they were a few months old, and often fell asleep hugging. The idea of separating them was unthinkable. If a smarty died, his or her help had a tough life ahead, still helpful but fundamentally depressed. If a help died, the smarty was also deeply troubled. In old age, when one died the other usually died shortly after. Sexually the helps were capable of arousal and orgasm, but fundamentally they were happy to help whoever wanted them. Smarties had no sexual interest in their own helps -- the incest taboo remained strong there. It was smarties who attracted each other romantically, who shared future plans, deep conversations, and came to love each other deeply. But it made far more sense for each to have sex with the other's help. The help would do for them exactly what they wanted sexually, whenever they wanted it. The help really was the same person, in a sense. They looked almost identical. So smarties could connect in every other way, but each smarty was fully satisfied sexually in a way that most couples in Jason's day could only dream of. A hundred years before the relationship counselors had recommended that smarties shouldn't try having sex with each other even once -- it was likely to leave an unpleasant memory. Far better to imagine that the smarty would be as good as his or her help was in bed without being disappointed. So smarty-smarty sex had vanished from the world. Homosexual smarties were much rarer than gays and lesbians in 2060, but any help was as enthusiastic about meeting the sexual needs of a same-sex partner as an opposite sex one. There were also smarty men and women who weren't all that inclined to form emotional bonds with other smarties. Some would generally be considered physically unappealing. But the helps were delighted to help them meet their sexual desires as much as they were for anyone else. Male and female smarties could enter the world of work on an equal footing, with the demands of motherhood no more serious than the demands of fatherhood in the traditional world of the 20th century, when sex roles were more rigid even than in Jason's day. Miners and forestry workers might still live and work in challenging conditions, but their smarties were right there with them every night, using their class standing to make sure conditions were not bad for their beloved other half. The extra smarties who were not needed for supervision or planning could telecommute -- or work on their writing or poetry or art inspired by the unusual surroundings. --------------------------------------------------------- Alison decided to join Jason, living with the Gertrudes and Ebenezers as a permanent arrangement. They had each other to hug at night. They could share the bond of having grown up in the 21st century, which no one else in the world could understand. They tried having sex with each other, but quickly decided it just wasn't much fun. Alison could get exactly what she wanted and exactly when she wanted it from Ebenezerhelp, and Jason could get his fantasies and needs met by Gertrudehelp. When Mortimer and Mortimerhelp were born, the two refugees from the past got to see the new world as it pertained to children. They could quickly tell which twin was which, and could watch them sleep close together at night. They could see Ebenezerhelp as well as Gertrudehelp showing a genuine interest in playing with them and doing the work of parenthood. They could watch Mortimer steal toys Mortimerhelp, causing no complaint from the latter. The smarties in the family also bonded with the boys in more limited doses. Their involvement got more extensive as they got older and soon focused primarily on Mortimer, who had much to learn that the helps could not teach. At the age of six or so, schooling diverged. The help needed no more than an eighth grade education, while the smarties went on to learn much more. Jason and Alison had not actually been chosen randomly... they had been chosen for a broad intelligence, education, and incisive thinking about the world they left. Their main contribution now was writing essays on this new world from the perspective of the one of four centuries past. Sexual frustration was gone. Each person had a secure emotional life-long attachment in the person of his or her twin. The scutwork of the world was done cheerfully and efficiently. The overall fate of the world was in the hands of the same rich diversity that had always guided it. Jason and Alison had to admit that this world of twins who were both identical and markedly different was a better world. The world of the 27th century rested slightly easier hearing two people from the past make that judgment. ============================================================ What did you think? I'm always eager for comments, whether positive, negative or mixed. Comments to sterling27@live.com.