Dirty Girls

by Rodzil LaBraun

  "My scent is not sprayed on if that is what you are saying. It comes from my body. That is what I meant by it being my chosen scent. Don't women do that where you are from?"

  "No, I don't think so," I replied slowly, still confused. "How does it come from your body?"

  "It's one of the modifications that we are permitted to choose after reaching age seventeen. My mod surgery took care of it. I'm not supposed to need a dose-up until age twenty-five. I thought scent-modding was universal across the Commonwealth."

  "I feel like I've been asleep for a very long time," I told her. "What is this Commonwealth?"

  Cinnamon stopped in her tracks. When she turned around to face me her eyes were huge. She was alarmed by my query, but I could see that she might have doubted my ignorance as well.

  "Where are you from? Really?"

  "I told you, Earth. And I honestly don't understand why you don't believe me."

  Cinnamon squatted down beside another sticky bush. I watched as her fingernails transitioned from a creamy yellow to a milk chocolate brown. Her uniform was so tight that I expected it to limit her movement, but that was clearly not the case. The material flexed comfortably with her gorgeous body.

  "Kash," she addressed me with all seriousness. "That's not possible."

  "Yeah, I understand that you believe that it is not possible. But I don't know why. Except for a few puzzling things. You say that you arrived on this planet by spaceship and refer to a Commonwealth government. Your body naturally smells like Cinnamon and your fingernails change colors automatically. I was not aware of any of those things being possible. The last I heard we have only sent manned spacecraft to Mars. Another star system would be a huge jump."

  "Are you being serious with me right now, Kash?" After I nodded, she said, "I can't believe this is really happening. I mean, they make full-vids about time travel, but I didn't know that it was actually possible."

  "Time travel?" I wanted to doubt, but it appeared to be the most feasible explanation. As logical as the notion of time travel could be anyway. The most reasonable conclusion was that my new associate was deceiving me. I expected the portal to be the only way to reach this planet. Maybe she was a convict like me and developed this whole elaborate scheme to fool the next guy through. But to what end? Was it just to humor herself? She certainly didn't look like a criminal to me. And where would she have gotten that nice uniform, or the weapon?

  "Kash, nobody has lived on Earth for over thirty years. Those that didn't leave the Solar system relocated to Luna, Mars, or one of the many orbiting stations. We've been building spaceships capable of rip-jumping for a hundred years. Mod-surgery has been around since before I was born. The Galactic Human Commonwealth is the government that connects almost all the colonies. If this is all news to you there is no other explanation than that you came here from the past. How many people lived on Earth when you left?"

  "Billions."

  "Billions?" Cinnamon showed surprise again. "Wow. You must be from a hundred and fifty years ago. Natural catastrophes and rampant disease thinned out the population dramatically before humans even started living on Luna."

  "What year is it?" I asked, letting the reality set in. Honestly, it wasn't that difficult. Taking a portal to another planet ranked right up there with being transported through time.

  "Seventy-seven."

  "Seventy-seven?"

  "GE," she added. "Galactic Era. I guess that came after your time, didn't it? Let's see, if I remember history lessons correctly, we started the new date system in the year twenty-one ten. So, to you it is the year twenty-one eighty-seven. I think the people on Luna still hold to the old calendar."

  "Seventy-seven Earth years?" I didn't know much about astronomy. One of the few things that I did know was that different planets had varied lengths to their year, dependent on how long it took it to circle the Sun. Other star systems had to have the same situation.

  "Yes, sort of," Cinnamon answered as she glanced around for trouble again. I was down on one knee within arms-length of her. I got the feeling that our new friendship was growing stronger with this revelation that we were from different times. It gave her a feeling of superiority. Not like she was holding it over me. It was more like she felt compelled to help me adjust.

  "The galactic year was based on the Earth year," she continued. "The speed of movement of the stars in the galaxy was matched up with the revolution of Earth around Sol, or something like that. A galactic year represents a length of time now that is not associated with any particular planet but is roughly the same length of time that you know."

  "So, if you are not from Earth, where did you grow up?" I asked. I was grasping the world of Cinnamon about as fast as I would a bizarre sci-fi flick.

  "I was born on Infinity Station Vega," she told me very convincingly. "I lived there until I was seventeen. I studied cargo management because it was one of the easiest courses that could land me a job on a freighter. I've been traveling for three years now."

  "So, you are twenty years old?" I asked. My last girlfriend was twenty-three, a few years younger than me. Age twenty wasn't out of my reach. A girl as beautiful as Cinnamon could be any age though and be beyond my grasp.

  "Yes, I'm twenty. How old are you?"

  "Apparently, I'm almost a hundred and eighty," I replied.

  Cinnamon laughed outright for the first time since we had met. It was a wonderful sight to witness. Not only did it add to her attraction, but it made me feel good to still have some comedic value. I would need a lot of new material for jokes. Current events were no longer anywhere near current anymore.

  "It's good that you still have your sense of humor. I think that you are going to adapt well to your new time. Of course, it doesn't matter much if we don't get rescued off this planet."

  Planet Z. That was what I was calling it, after Doctor Asia Zhang. That woman somehow meant a lot to me when I had nobody. But now she was barely a memory. Planet C would be more appropriate. C for Cinnamon. I didn't want to say that out loud and scare off my new friend. Naming things after a girl was something that was only acceptable if you were in a very serious relationship with said girl. Otherwise you got labelled as a psycho stalker.

  "You worked three years on your ship before it crashed here?" I asked. I wanted to keep the conversation going more than I desired information about the future universe. While stuck on dragon world knowledge regarding life zooming between stars wouldn't make much difference.

  "No, I didn't get the job on the Arketa Koreta until a few months ago. I was working a Vega Company transport before that. Just one of the loader controllers."

  "What made you change jobs?" It was an incredibly casual conversation for our situation. Something I would ask the girl on the next stool in a bar, if I could get her attention.

  "Money, Kash," she replied, then smiling big at her own joke. "Yeah, they offered me three times as much as I was making before. And all expenses paid, too."

  "Wow," I replied. I assumed her income had to be in the trillions of dollars if inflation continued like it was back on Earth, in my time. "Why the big increase?"

  "Officially," Cinnamon answered. I could see a hint of a touchy subject coming. "It was because the ship was listed as an exotic materials transport. We would be visiting small colonies and unoccupied planets, which warranted what they referred to as hazard pay."

  "Unofficially?" I asked.

  "The captain was sort of a pervert," Cinnamon replied. "His pilot was, too. They staffed the ship with young women that they considered attractive and put us in these tiny uniforms. We were being paid as much for our appearance as we were our jobs."

  "There are more women here as beautiful as you?" I asked, hoping not to sound as perverted as her captain.

  "Kash?" Cinnamon blushed. That was the response I was hoping for.

  Naturally, I missed Earth something terrible. Not the prison, of course, but my life before that. Friends and family. Hell, even hundreds of strangers mopi
ng around would be better than being alone. However, if I had to choose between going back to a reduced sentence on Earth or surviving here with multiple gorgeous women? As long as I didn’t get thrown in the brig, I was probably better off here.

  "Actually," Cinnamon said. "I hope the other girls are okay. Three of them left to find a source of fresh water two days ago and haven't returned."

  "How many lovely young ladies total, once they return?" I asked.

  "There are six of us."

  CHAPTER NINE:

  Six beautiful women? Just three men? I liked those odds very much. Even as a newcomer I should be able to get close to one of them. Being unfamiliar might even work to my advantage. Add my irresistible charm to the mix and I was feeling quite good about my chances.

  Cinnamon would be my first choice, even though I had not yet met the others. They couldn't possibly be more desirable than her. Plus, I was already building a connection with this one.

  When we mounted the next ridge, I was caught off guard. I was expecting Cinnamon's ship to look something like the Space Shuttle from my world. It certainly did not. Roughly rectangular in shape it had to be nearly two hundred feet long. And thirty feet high. It was massive but not the least bit aerodynamic in design.

  The ship had obliterated hundreds of trees and bushes caught in its path, including one jumbo red that had been flattened to a pile of logs. Another of the largest version of tree appeared to have contributed to the stop of the space vessel, lodged under the front right corner with thick roots being pulled out of the ground.

  Another surprising feature was the color. It was painted jet black. Or the metal used to build it was already that color before assembly. There were some small colored sections scattered about, but no windows visible. I had expected white or light gray like the movies. Perhaps they used light colors in motion picture production to help us see the ship against the dark backdrop of oblivion. In reality it was probably better to blend in, depending on the purpose of the ship.

  Most of the exterior was smooth, but there were a few areas where sections protruded from the surface. Some were shaped like cones. I figured they were for communication or sensors. I wasn't much of a science fiction buff while growing up, so I had some learning to do.

  A fair piece of the Arketa Koreta was hanging precariously over a cliff. The front left corner jutted at least thirty feet out over nothing. Basic physics told me there was enough of the ship resting on land to provide stability, assuming that the structural integrity of the freighter continued to hold.

  I approached her from the rear. The ship, not Cinnamon. Though the young woman's back end was much more inviting than the unmarked metal of the craft. The ship had suffered damage in many places but did not appear to be in bad shape. There was a gap designed like a tunnel high enough to walk upright between the bulky engines. At the end of the space was a double door. I followed as Cinnamon walked right up to it.

  "Stay back a bit," she instructed me. "They are not expecting me to bring home a guest."

  She typed in an access code on the panel too fast for me to memorize. There were then two quick chirps of a siren, like a police car coming to an intersection. A second later a crack appeared in the center as the two separate doors parted and slid out of the way. Inside was a set of metal stairs that went up.

  Cinnamon stood motionless waiting for a greeting party apparently. Footsteps sounded inside the ship and another young woman appeared on the steps. From my vantage point I could only see her legs. My new friend had motioned for the girl to stop where she was.

  Her legs were slender like Cinnamon's, but shorter. Her skin was a very light shade of green. I would have expected that particular color to make a person look like a frog, but it was actually nice. She was barefoot, but I could make out the bottom of her black uniform shorts. Skinny feet ended with dark green toenails. There was a series of white rings around her ankles. Not jewelry. Skin modification. She was not covered in dirt like my associate. I realized that wouldn’t be necessary within the safety of the ship.

  "Honeysuckle," Cinnamon addressed the other girl. I sniffed the air to find a scent present matching her name. My grandmother had a house in the suburbs where ground cover had taken over the front yard and bottom of the porch. The smell of the white flowered vine was the same as I was breathing in now. It immediately made me feel like I was someplace safe.

  "I have someone with me," Cinnamon told her.

  "Who is it?" the girl asked, taking one more step down the entrance stairway. "Is she hurt?"

  "No," Cinnamon replied, pushing her hand forward again to encourage the girl to stop. "It's not one of the girls. I found a man."

  "A man?" The young woman stepped back up where she was, sounding shocked. "How?"

  "He's from somewhere else. Go get Vanilla. She has to give permission to bring him into the ship."

  Vanilla? There is another girl that smells like vanilla? She sounds nice already.

  "You want to bring him into the ship? Are you sure?"

  "Yes, Honey. Please. Go get her."

  Honeysuckle then bent over to dip her head low enough to see me. She had bleached white hair and strangely an eye color to match. It was an unexpected look, but appealing. She was very pretty, too. And a little bigger breasted than my friend, with ample cleavage revealed as she dipped forward. When I gave her a friendly wave she quickly dashed back into the ship.

  "Be patient, Kash," Cinnamon said to me. "This might require a convincing argument to get you in."

  "Cinnamon!" I heard the voice from within. She sounded older than the two other women. If she was currently in charge, that would stand to reason. "What have you done?"

  "It's okay, Van," Cinnamon pleaded. "He is not a threat."

  When the woman slowly stepped down the entrance way, I immediately noticed a variation. Her uniform was white. The shoes were identical to Cinnamon’s except the color. However, she wore a skirt to mid-thigh instead of shorts. The skin on her legs was nearly as white as her clothes, but she may have been wearing stockings. I saw a brown shimmer periodically pulse over her flesh.

  Her top was the same design as the others, only white. Luxurious long hair floated in the air behind her, three distinctly different shades of brown. She was downright gorgeous, too. Like a hot nurse in a porno. Or better yet, the model for the mail-order role-playing outfits. They could make a bestselling sex doll in her image. Her beige and cream-colored eyes were mesmerizing. A narrow face, but with pleasant features. She gave the appearance of an angel descending from heaven as she glided down the stairs.

  "He has a weapon," Vanilla said authoritatively.

  "I know," Cinnamon replied. "He used it to protect me from a dragon. He cut the thing's hand right off."

  "Well, he can't bring it in here. What is in his pack?" She sounded like she was already entertaining the idea of letting me enter. Her soft voice was completely free of any harsh tone.

  "I don't know," Cinnamon answered patiently. "He did give me a bottle of water from there." She raised it up for her friend to see.

  "You drank from it?" the sexy nurse asked, looking appalled.

  "Yes, I did. And I'm still alive. He means us no harm. He arrived just yesterday and has no place safe to stay."

  "He can stay in his own ship," Vanilla insisted. Then her face brightened as she asked, “Is he to rescue us?”

  "No, he doesn't have a ship."

  "Well, how can that be? Where did he...?"

  "Vanilla, we can get answers to all of your questions," Cinnamon pleaded. "Please, let us in. We are tired. I need to rest. He's been with me all day. I guarantee that he isn't going to hurt anyone."

  Vanilla stepped onto the ground slowly, but never went past her friend, my advocate. Then she asked quietly while eyeballing me from head to toe, "What is he like?"

  "He's actually nice," Cinnamon defended me. She then turned toward me and smiled. When Honeysuckle joined them, I was sure that I was at the gates of heaven. Three beaut
iful women debating on letting me into their home. I had to make the decision easy for them.

  I slowly tossed my machete on the ground in front me. Far enough to make it clear that I was surrendering it, but not letting it land close to them to be considered a threat. Then I took off my backpack and set it in front of me as well. Raising my hands looked like I was surrendering. In my mind I was encouraging a body search.

  Vanilla motioned for Honeysuckle. She responded by rushing forward in her bare feet and grabbing my weapon. When she stepped up to take my pack she said softly, "Hi." I saw an eagerness in her eyes. She was open to having a new friend, I surmised, especially a male.

  Once my possessions were secured and out of reach, I waited for the older woman to decide. She couldn't have been more than thirty years old. Of course, futuristic modifications could mask her age significantly.