Cattle Call

When I first decided to take a CAP test during the run of "Joe Average" it was an effort to find something objective about myself to feel good about. Getting a score of 7.0 did work well as something of an antidepressant being a good objective measure of my worth.

That does not mean that my wife found me any more valuable to her, of course, but, then, I suspect many other married men feel under-valued anyway.

I eventually volunteered for the Confederacy Navy once the CAP testing had been exposed as a measure to sort out humans needed to defend the Confederacy's races from the Sa'arm. It also worked to sort out many of the jackals, wolves and hyenas from the human gene pool, too, and was part of the selection criteria for the evacuation and colonization effort. The good news that a volunteer scoring over 6.5 had an opportunity to sponsor others, whose CAP scores were lower than 6.5, to leave the Earth, ensuring that it wasn't just another eugenics program.

However, in imagining my own extraction, I never actually foresaw any of the little complications I was facing when it finally happened around me.

Extractions of Confederacy volunteers are done "out of the blue" in public spaces that get locked down. The volunteers are limited in choosing those around them to take off to the Colonies...

So, getting to leave, even if you've volunteered and have all of your paper-work in order, is still something of a crapshoot. There are no guarantees that you will be in the right place at the right time to be picked up. By this time I had already adjusted my habits and found any excuse to go out to a sit-down restaurant, even if only for a cup of tea. There's that hope that you'll be picked up.

I do consider myself fortunate to have only a 7 as my raw CAP score since I've heard stories about high 8s and 9s being followed everywhere by hopefuls, almost like groupies. Women with high CAP scores, I've heard, go far to hide that fact than men do. Men with CAP scores below the magic number of 6.5 tend to be in a lot less demand than any woman with the same score. It was interesting, really, how these extractions quickly changed quite a few demographics as women tended to get scarcer.

In the women's cases it is more like being stalked than any kind of groupies, too, though there are women who seem to bask in it. In such cases, of course, these "stalkers" do tend to be very careful not to piss off the stalkee... and often shower gifts on the woman.

And, yeah, enough of those men are zeroes because they have no real empathy and feel that the only way off is to try manipulation and flattery, expecting the women to fall under their spell. Even though they'd be, functionally, no better than property, I suspect many of these men do not consider it a fate worse than death.

And, really, it comes down to hope. Even for a volunteer like me, there was always some hope, even if it was entirely dependant upon chance, to be picked up. All I needed to do was be in the right place at the right time.

Well, I was finally in the right place at the right time. The interdiction field locked down this restaurant with both volunteers and those we could sponsor.

The good news was that my wife was with me.

The bad news? My wife was with me.

Once I got home with my CAP score my wife chose to stay as close to me as she could, especially for lunches and dinners out. The ironic thing is that she neglected to take care of the one detail she would need as a pre-requisite to travel with me.

You guessed it-- she believed that mandatory CAP testing did not apply to the spouses of high scorers and would not listen when I encouraged her get tested. Sometimes you are married to people who will not listen to anything other than what they want to believe and nothing will shake them loose until it's too late.

It was now too late for my wife to get tested in order to leave with me. Except for her tendency to not listen to viewpoints that didn't agree with her own, I felt that she would likely score pretty well on her own. For all I knew her score could even be higher than my own.

So there I stood, my wife lying unconscious on the floor after being stunned, then rolled into a corner so that her body would not be in the way, all because she could not present an ID card with a CAP score.

All right, so that alone isn't why she got stunned. She got truculent about having to be left behind, feeling that the the pick-up team should cut her some slack.

She was no longer my problem... and, I was told, if I made it my problem, I would likely be going nowhere myself.

I still wanted off this rock. If I couldn't take her with me-- and, truly, the idea that she would be under my authority for a change had appealed to me-- I was still leaving.

So now I had to choose four people present here in this restaurant to be my companions in the colonial effort.

What a dilemma!

Whoever I did not choose would likely die when the Sa'arm finally arrived, assuming that subsequent pick-ups didn't have someone willing to take them.

How does one make a choice like this?

What are the smartest... and "right"... selection criteria?

Everyone in the room seemed to be waving their hands for the attention of the three Confederacy volunteers this whole extraction had been staged for. All of this despite the pair standing next to something that had to have been done to bust our chops: a blue police box. I suspected that the extraction crew had twisted sense of humor and was likely getting a laugh out of how many people weren't getting the joke. Of the three volunteers, I suspect that I was the only one to catch it.

So it came time for me to pick and choose. The other two selectees-- a man and a woman-- were each picking through the people while I stood there, still in a bit of a shock.

Because my place was assured elsewhere it took a good ten minutes for me to realize that all of these people here were now playing the ultimate game of Survivor! with Neilsen Media Research completely out of the picture.

One group of three men decided to try stacking the odds by pulling out guns and, like fugitives from Pulp Fiction, waving them around demanding to be taken. The two soldiers running this whole extraction didn't want it to turn into a complete cluster fuck shot the three with their stunners-- which, as I'd already seen with my wife, , were far from painless-- and one of the idiots' guns went off as he went down. Fortunately the bullet was stopped by the head of one of his compatriots. This caused another pause in the proceedings as these three bodies were rolled out of the way so the collection process could continue. I watched another five people-- men and women-- carefully remove guns from their persons and purses and put them on the floor and kick them as far away from themselves as possible.

Well, at least the two soldiers got a smile out of it as the rest of us heaved a sigh of relief.

In my face, though, were a lot of women, all eager to be chosen by me, despite the implied price-tag. The most vocal of these tended to be the decorative variety that still, even thirty plus years after the fact, populated my nightmares. I didn't need these women reminding me of the pain, anxiety and rejection I experienced during adolescence. I just couldn't trust them, and, to me, these were not the kind of people I would choose to breed more of.

Oh, sure, the trait for sexual cruely might be more nurture than nature, but I didn't like the feel I had. It wasn't until later-- much later-- that the idea that I could have had some fun "getting even" occurred to me, but, then, who would I have become? I think I did better to avoid bringing this irony onto myself...

And, yes, sure, my choices would be my slaves... but, given my personality... or lack thereof... I wanted more for my companions than for them to be merely slaves.

I'm sure you have heard of the "two minute dating" fad, right? This situation was no where near as civilized, here, given the way people were pushing and advertising themselves. I finally lost my temper and snapped for the most aggressive to quiet down as I tried to look around...

I spied two women at a small table in the corner of the dining room. They hadn't even approached any of us and had just shrugged when it was suggested that they at least try to play the game and sell one of us to sponsor them. I decided to go outside the box and just walked over to their table, the wall of supplicants parting for me like I was Moses. I think the menacing look of the female member of the extraction team helped me look like more than I was.

One of the seated women was a tall, thin, blonde, and, despite her apparently natural spectacular hair color, was pretty plain looking. She was thin to the point of having no womanly curves to speak of and wore fairly thick glasses. She looked a lot like a female version of me... and, to my eye, seemed pretty downcast. I spoke up, asking her name.

"Dawn. I'm a secretary two blocks over." She sighed, a sad look crossing her face. "I have nothing you want, you know, so don't waste your time on me. Talk to Kim, here, she's at least an engineer."

Now, realize, that she didn't sound like a stereotypical blonde. Her voice was not the polished smoothness of a "princess" nor did she have a problem with word choice or sentence structure. This one obviously had a good brain in her head. Her face, to me, exuded character. And, to be honest, it was a character I found likeable.

I then turned to Kim, a small woman, likely Korean, her face no more beautiful than Dawn's, certainly not ugly, and with another body like Dawn's that could have been drawn most accurately as a stick figure. She gave me a sad smile, too, before she shook her head and waved me off.

"Thank you, Dawn, Kim, I'm sorry, but I want to see your CAP scores. Please show me your IDs, OK?"

The showed no enthusiasm in showing me their IDs... which impressed me. The little device to give me an itemized list of their scores was helpful and helped me make my decision.

I thanked them and stepped away, not letting them know that they were in. Dawn's CAP of 5.9 and Kim's of 6.2 made them an easy choice, and, yeah, they were bisexual, thankfully, and capable of passion and emotion.

Except for the raw scores being lower, their sub-scores were the female equivalents of my own. Hell, yes, they were in. I liked the idea that their arousal curves were steep.

I cast my eyes around the room again and spied a woman sitting alone over near the other wall of the restaurant and started walking towards her. Given that I wasn't working my way through the line of women who'd gotten up to sell themselves, the woman from the extraction team following me.

I told my benefactor quietly, over my shoulder, "I want both of those two women I just talked to, OK?"

The woman softly replied with "No problem. Can you tell me why you chose those two?"

I stopped and sighed, turning to this soldier. "I felt like I was talking to me. They didn't raise a finger to compete for survival... so I want them because of that."

The woman waved at the room, with a flourish that seemed to point at the two women I'd just chosen as companions, saying to me "So, do you really think that a weak survival instinct coupled with being, uh, pretty mediocre fucks, is a good thing?"

How to make my comment comprehensible to someone who, as a soldier, must have had a finely honed survival instinct and who may not have needed to think in the terms I was choosing at this point? Well, I felt a need to wing it. "I think both of them have been beaten down to one degree or another and convinced, to some degree, that they have nothing to offer anyone. It is because they've been through a lot of what I feel I have been through that makes me feel like they'd at least have a chance of understanding me... and me, them. On top of that... I'm pretty sure I'm a deader fuck than they could ever hope to be. I'm pretty sure I don't even reach mediocrity, despite my sexual function sub-scores."

The woman sighed. "All right, I understand. I suspect that you will want their bodies modified, right?"

I chuckled. "I might like some slight changes, but, to be honest, I want function, not cosmetics. As long as their bodies will function properly for procreation I have no objection at all of making only restorative changes. Like good eyesight, for instance. Unless I miss my mark they likely have their own ideas which I'll be interested in hearing. I want to be able to recognize them at the other end, too. Now I wanna talk to that one."

The lone woman was a wonderful shade of brown with a fairly expressive face on a small and thin body, just like the two I'd already chosen. I figured that they were so different in body type from the woman I'd been married to for the last twenty-five years that I found them alluring. "Your name?" I asked her. "And your ID?"

She looked up at me and I could almost see hope in her eyes. A hope that I soon saw fade, as she pulled out her ID, before she spoke. "Pam. My name is Pam. I... am dying, anyway, so I'm not worth much, right now."

This proved that she hadn't listened, before. I wondered why and asked her, having checked her CAP scores. She was no slouch either, coming in with a 5.5. I liked a lot of her sub-scores, too.

Her eyes looked wet. "HIV. AIDS. My boyfriend didn't turn out to be my friend."

The soldier asked me "You want this one too?"

"Yes. You can clean out the infections?"

A rumbling laugh formed from the the big woman. "Of course. We can work that out-- though we may want to take extra time on her to ensure that she's fully cleared."

Pam looked up at me, her eyes glowing.

The woman touched my shoulder, gathering my attention. "One more. You can pick just one more."

I sighed. "My wife."

She sighed, again. "Don't go there. Without a CAP score she CAN'T go at all. Find someone eligible inside this room ASAP."

Oh, shit. Damn!

Well, I had tried once more to change their minds but the rules were apparently inflexible in this regard.

I looked through the crowd. I didn't want to piss away a lot of time so it was my turn to ask questions going through the line and settled on a tall woman who had to have weighed over two hundred fifty pounds... of which very little was fat. Kate wasn't one of the brighter lights in the eager crowd so everyone watched incredulously as she, along with little Pamela, stepped to the blue box and vanished.

I finally got the attention of Dawn and Kim and waved them over to me. They ambled over, unsure of what was going on with me.

They looked more and more scared as they came closer to me. I told them "Get in the box. Now."

They both stared at me.

"Now!" and I slapped Dawn's butt. She squealed and jumped in, followed closely by Kim. God, she had a bony ass! That was something that was going to change! Kim didn't need the extra incentive to go.

When it was my turn I nodded and stepped through the door, never to return to the planet of my birth.

I'll admit that the bedlam on the colony ship as we arrived was startling. I followed directions and had my four female companions sit down on the deck, and, truly, they all stood out because they were all fully dressed, and await processing.

Pam went into the medbay first and would be there for more than an hour. Given how retroviruses like HIV work, all of the nanomachines needed the extra time to sort through all of her DNA.

Kate turned out to be happy to be with me and I first saw a hint of potential problems with both Dawn and Kim as they sat there, shrinking.

"Kate," I started, "pull Dawn onto your lap and cuddle her, all right?"

Dawn tried to keep from being wrapped up in Kate's arms but soon quieted down, taking comfort from being held. When I did the same with Kim she didn't try to resist and soon held me tight, her tears wetting my shirt. Kate looked at me, her eyes meeting mine, and told me, "Someone's hurt both these girls. If I ever find out who..."

I nodded and answered "I don't think we need to worry much about that." I squeezed Kim, who tried to get closer to me in this hug, adding "And, I think, these two will need a whole shitload of cuddling."

Kate smiled. "I'm no brain surgeon, just a physical therapist, but, yeah, they need a whole lot of low-pressure loving."

When Pam finally returned she found both Dawn and Kim sleeping on our laps. I'll admit that it felt good to be able to provide some kind of an anchor for Kim.

Pam, with the weight of HIV lifted from her, looked like a new woman. I was glad she didn't need a lap given the shortage we had at that moment.

Getting our pod assignment cheered us up and Pam was just strong enough to help me up without awakening Kim. I was very impressed with how Kate had no problem carrying Dawn without awakening her passenger, too.

Kate's thirteen year-old daughter was collected that evening. Kate's former husband wasn't happy that he could not leave with the child but could do little when facing a Confederacy Marine. Marlene was taller than both Kim and Pam, too, which was an amusing sight.

Somehow-- somehow-- Kim and Dawn steadied down during the briefings where they learned how much they had given up in accepting my invitation. Kate was far more accepting-- thankfully, given her sheer size-- and Pam was more than merely happy to be alive with prospects of staying so.

That doesn't mean they were happy, you know.

Pam was the first to undergo edits to her body. She wasn't thrilled, to start with, given the fact that her hips got wider and she accumulated some meat on her bones. She did complain that Kate didn't have to through any of the changes she did, as if Kate would have any problem carrying or birthing a child. Marlene had been born with almost no trauma at all, Kate saying she could've just squatted behind some bushes. As it was, Pam did quiet down when she saw what I was going through in adapting to the changes my body needed for my future career.

It was my choice to defer any major edits to Dawn or Kim until they both felt comfortable with us. They still spent a lot of time having to be cuddled with the rest of us. I hoped that some of their fears would ease soon, just to see them smile without needing to be prompted.

And, just to be the weird ones on the colony ship, we didn't have sex for over a week. By the time Kate and I got together, away from Dawn and Kim, it was actually helpful to me in accomodating the changes my body was still in the midst of.

OK, OK, I admit it, I did upgrade my "member", too. I went from five inches-- well, four and seven-eigths, erect, that eigth past four and three-quarters is more important than you really want to know-- to a meatier seven and a half. I made sure that Pam would be able to accomodate my new body though this change wasn't one she would be able to notice right away. Kate didn't need any changes at all... though I snuck in more sensitivity to her nipples and an enlarged "g-spot". I didn't realize that Kate didn't really need any of those changes...

All right, so I made sure all of my concubines would, when they finally had sex with me, go off like rockets.

Kate's first time with me seemed like, well, magic. Not only did she reach her climax with little effort, but...

I had not needed to make any edits; it turned out that Kate had always been multi-orgasmic. What the edits did was make her trip over into a state where she goes into an orgasm and stays there for minutes at a time. I'll admit that this did wonders for my ego, which, given my meagre experience, could use all the help it could get.

I edited her back down a little bit-- I wasn't going to give up any advantage I could hang on to-- but that took another week for her to stabilize and she ended up bouncing in and out of orgasms. I felt... wonderful.

She also felt wonderfully... drained. Even with her natural reserves she was, to be honest, brain fried after one of our bouts.

The looks she gave me afterwards, though... WOW!

Pam woke me one morning by being seated on my morning wood, which shook me up. I was still worried about how Kim and Dawn would react to seeing me have sex.

So I was right to worry, early on, but the watched Pam ride me, using their hands to help Pam get off on this ride. As if Pam needed any help; her body was soon vibrating on top of me as she reached her climax... and got my gift to her. Like Kate, the look of happiness and bliss on Pam's face reached deep inside me and pleased me enormously.

Dawn then joined me in the shower and we washed each other in the small cubicle. That she did her best to get me hard again surprised me, yes, but, when she dragged me over to the bed and pulled me on top of her, I was shocked.

"Are you sure, hon?" I asked, worried about her mental state.

She smiled. "Yes, I'm sure. I want you. I want to look as happy as Pam just did, and the way Kate looks at you..."

We took our time. My edits to give me an unfair advantage worked as expected, and, when we were cuddling and glowing, her face looked like the others.

Kim cornered me that evening, and, with help from the others, we made love, all together. Kim's look gave me yet another jolt of confidence, too.

By the time our pod was landed on the new colony world I was very happy with my concubines. Oh, sure, officially they were my slaves, but, truly, they'd all chosen to work as a team to keep me happy.

Of course, having four women pregnant at the same time was a shock, but, hey, that was part of the job.

It's a fucking job... but someone has to do it, y'know?