Brooke gasped as Leea’s finger found the opening and thrust all the way in. Reaching back behind her, Brooke put her hands through the bars and felt for Leea’s stomach. Searching the front of her black prisoner jumpsuit, Brooke found the opening; the suit was designed to be used by men and women, and it had a fly for men just large enough to give Brooke’s small hand access to Leea’s pussy.
Brooke was so stimulated by Leea’s hand that she didn’t start with any foreplay, but immediately pushed her finger in and began to fuck Leea’s hole. It was already wet, and she could feel Leea’s hot, sticky precum on her finger. Soon both women moaned in an alternating fashion; as Brooke’s finger went into Leea, a moan would escape Leea, and as Leea’s finger penetrated Brooke deeply, she would moan in return. This seesaw of ecstasy soon fueled each woman, the excitement of one igniting the other, until both women moaned together.
“Cum for me, Brooke,” Leea pleaded. “I can’t hold back much longer.”
“I’m almost there,” Brooke said passionately. “Harder.”
Leea thrust her finger rapidly into Brooke’s pussy as far as it would go. It made a loud slapping noise as Brooke’s wet juice ran down her digit. Brooke moaned loudly as she came, and soon Leea’s voice joined in as she climaxed on Brooke’s finger.
Both women stopped thrusting and slowly moved only their fingertips, causing a deep-pressure sensation that ended at each woman’s G-spot. It was all the lovers could physically take without stopping.
As Leea pulled her finger out of Brooke, a long, shiny string of clear cum came out with it. Careful not to waste it, Leea tilted her head back and let the cum dangle into her throat.
“Mmmm, you taste so good,” she said to Brooke.
Brooke’s finger was still in Leea. She didn’t want to remove it yet because she knew it would mean that she would have to leave her lover and sneak back to her quarters and be alone. She savored the moment like lovers do, still intertwined in each other’s embrace, and it was several long minutes before she withdrew her finger. Leea moaned with pleasure as she pulled it out.
“I hate leaving you. I feel like I’m leaving a piece of myself here when I walk away,” Brooke said tenderly.
“You are,” said Leea. “I just swallowed it. You better come back soon and leave more.”
Kissing her own fingertip, Brooke pushed it through the bars to Leea’s lips. Pulling her cloak back up over her face, Brooke turned and ran into the darkness of the ship.
Leea was alone again.
Chapter Sixty
Spice was worried. The soil matrix wasn’t replenishing itself fast enough. She was overfarming the garden to feed the nearly one hundred women on board. Even the most fertile areas in the world could only grow so much produce. The soil matrix in the garden was laced with nutrients to act like an artificial form of dirt. It was doing a great job, but unlike real soil, it wasn’t self-sustaining from fertilization and the working of the soil by a farmer. Its stored nutrients were finite, and each crop that followed a mature harvest was less abundant and had lower nutritional quality than the previous.
It was a slow, losing game when nothing of value could be grown in the matrix. Spice knew that the crew’s survival was dependent on reaching A-64 before everyone starved to death. Hopefully, the new planet would be in the habitable zone and they could grow produce there or find a new food source. Spice had secretly hidden a small allotment of her earthly seeds in a hydrogen-sealed tin. There weren’t enough seeds to feed a hundred people, but there were enough to plant every one of the species of plants still alive on board to start a new sustainable garden, if A-64 had a good climate and a suitable growing medium like dirt rich in its planet’s nutrients.
That was a big if. If the crew began to starve prior to landing on A-64, then this hidden tin of seeds would only be used by the women who survived. It was a horrible thought: natural selection of only the fittest. Spice didn’t want to be involved in the decision of who lived and who died. It sickened her to think of her ship’s family enduring hardship—or even worse, cannibalism.
Looking up at one of her bee colonies, she considered that the mature bees could be dried and ground down into a protein-rich flour. But only as a last resort.
Maybe it was time she informed the captain. Maybe the crew needed to be on stricter rations to extend the food supply as long as possible. The last thing she wanted to do was add another worry to the already demoralized crew.
Just then, Spuds showed up unannounced and patted Spice on her arm.
“I’m getting a little low on food in the kitchen and I wanted to come and see you first,” Spuds said in a hushed tone.
“I’m worried too,” said Spice. “It didn’t help when Leea split that steam pipe open. The hot steam cooked a third of all my plants that were ready to be harvested. I know this is a morbid thought, but if Leea had been put to death, I wonder if Connie could have cloned some type of super fly whose larva would feed on the prisoner’s corpse and provide safer biomass than Leea herself. It would be a form of cannibalism, I know, but not directly. We would be eating what ate her.”
“You are a sick person to even think that,” said Spuds with an involuntary shudder.
“Well, it may come to that,” said Spice. “If you put two rats in a hole in the ground with no food, one will eat the other. The more desperate, stronger animal will always eat the other.”
“I would rather die than make that decision,” said Spuds.
“Then someone will eat you.”
*
Connie’s head was throbbing, both from the blow from Leea and the unexplained loss of A-64.
It wasn’t like her to fail or give up, but she had a tight, insecure feeling in her chest that felt like it was strangling her confidence. Most truly intelligent and successful people are scared of failure, and it is this double-edged sword that makes them brilliant. Connie didn’t feel brilliant at the moment, but rather, defeated. The crew depended on her to find A-64, but she couldn’t even explain where it had gone.
What if it wasn’t even there? What if it was like the light of a burnt-out star that would continue to shine for light-years because of the extreme distances in space? A-64 could have died a long time ago. Maybe that final image was the last source of light it had transmitted just before its death. Maybe a giant asteroid had wiped the planet out, and with it, the salvation of the crew.
Connie had totally forgotten the gene sequencer. Glancing at the LED screen, she saw that it was still flashing “Incomplete.”
“Fuck me. Can’t anything go right?” she muttered.
Releasing the hidden latch in the back of the fume hood, Connie removed a plastic bag that contained some of the most potent buds she had harvested off of her pot plant. She needed to sink deeply into the knowledge of her mind and come up with a solution.
“Please don’t fail me now,” she whispered as the small butane torch seared the end of the joint. As Connie inhaled deeply, the thick vapor warmed her lungs and released its desired effect. She soon began to relax, and her mind stopped eating at itself. Eventually, she felt peace.
The chief science officer went to another dimension and began logically going through myriad scientific possibilities as to what had happened to the planet. The needle was there.
Ignore the heavy weight of the smothering hay. Relax, relax! You don’t need air to breathe in the hay. The hay is light and fragile. It is a mental distraction to cause you to fail. Relax.
She put her lips together and blew. At first, nothing happened, but as she continued, the hay became loose and fell apart. Soon, the hay began to swirl and disintegrate like chaff in the wind. Something long and shiny and sharp became exposed and disappeared, only to immediately reappear. Connie kept looking until her eyes locked onto it. Reaching into her mind, she grabbed it and held on. She had it, she had it! She had the needle.
Chapter Sixty-One
“I don’t want my daughter going to med school, and that is final!” yelled the man.
“But she is a 4.0 student!” responded the mother. “And she really wants this.”
“I don’t care. My decision is final,” the man yelled. “She is going to stay here and keep working in the family business. We need her here.”
“But she got accepted into Harvard Medical School,” said the woman in a faltering voice.
“School is no place for her. She stays. My mind is made up.”
“Surely you want more for your daughter than this.”
“A dry cleaning business is a noble profession. Our family has done it for many generations. It is good enough for us, so why is it not good enough for her? Besides, she is supposed to get married to the butcher’s son. They have money. She will be marrying into a wealthy family.”
“Don’t you care what your only daughter wants?” yelled the woman. “That is an arranged marriage, and she doesn’t love him. Your daughter is a genius and wants more than what this small town can offer. She doesn’t want money. She wants to be a doctor and help people.”
“She is staying and that is final. I’m the head of this household and she must obey me.”
The old woman laughed.
“What is so funny?” bellowed the man.
“She is already gone,” said the woman.
“I don’t believe it,” said the father. He ran to her bedroom and yelled out in dismay. “Tina, where are you?”
The neat and modest room was empty. Their daughter was gone.
Walking back into the kitchen, he sat down at the table and began to weep. “Why did you let her go?” he cried.
“Because I had to. This little village was a prison for our Tina. She was meant for bigger things. You must understand, my dear husband, our daughter will do great things one day. We can’t shatter her dreams.”
“But she has no money. We can’t protect her in another country. I will never see my flower again.”
The woman put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, my love. One day she will come back, and until then you have me.”
Pickle did come back, but not for another ten years. It wasn’t for a joyous occasion, either. Her father had died from a freak boating accident while out fishing. A monster wave had capsized his small boat, and the body wasn’t found for several weeks. Initially the body was too decomposed from the sea to determine the cause of death. Morbidly, the head was missing and never found. His identity wasn’t confirmed till Pickle’s DNA swab was returned a month later.
Her mother was devastated. They had been married over fifty years, and this was a horrible way to see your loved one before the casket was closed: headless, decayed, bloated, and unrecognizable. The last time Pickle had talked to her mother was the night before launch. Little did she know at the time that that would be the last time they would ever talk.
If she had known, she would have told her mother how much she loved her. She felt tremendous guilt. She hadn’t told her father either, and now they were both gone.
Forcing back tears, Pickle slid her freshly harvested embryos, encased in their plastic sheaths, down the neck of the liquid nitrogen tank. As she inserted the plug into the tank’s mouth, chilled air flowed out like a river and down the sides of the tank, entombing the frozen half seed of life within. It was her third month of harvesting her own embryos, and she was thrilled that she was now contributing her genetics to the future colony’s pool of life. Trying to forget her parents’ love was like trying to cut out a piece of her heart, and the only thing that weakened her grief was the thought that one day her eggs would yield grandchildren for her parents.
With a new sense of determination, Pickle pulled the cadaver out of the freezer and scanned the body. She could see where Connie had already cut a section out of the femur, and she knew Connie had removed a tooth, but neither had yielded their stored treasure to the gene sequencer. There had to be some way to remove the DNA and save the women on board.
Even though the radioactive isotope preserved the body, it didn’t stop the body from weeping small amounts of interstitial fluid, which pooled onto the stainless steel gurney. It had refrozen in the freezer and had attached the body to the gurney. Pickle wasn’t strong enough to break it free by herself. Sliding the chrome-plated medical chisel under the cadaver’s glute, she hit it with a hammer. Nothing happened, but a piece of the fluid-saturated ice fractured off and hit Pickle in the face.
Letting out a cry, she almost dropped the hammer. With renewed determination, she hit the end of the chisel again. This time, a frozen splitting sound was heard, the same kind of noise an axe makes when cutting a hole through the ice of a pond.
She tried flipping the cadaver again, but it was still stuck. She repeated the chiseling action under both shoulder blades. This time, the body was freed from the gurney. With a little struggle, she flipped the rigid corpse over. Looking at the cadaver’s neck, Pickle decided that taking a section of spine might yield some trapped DNA. Getting a scalpel out of a nearby drawer, she went to cut into the flesh at the back of the neck, then stopped.
We can’t afford to waste any of this body, she thought. Getting some hair clippers, she trimmed the hair off of the neck to the base of the skull. At first she saw nothing out of the ordinary, but each pass of hair off the neck revealed a colored marking on the skin that had been hidden by the once present hairline.
A tattoo.
A band of black straight lines ran about a quarter inch high and three inches long. Pickle had never seen a tattoo like this before. The lines made no sense to her. Was it some type of code?
The door opened and in walked Connie. With a surprised look, she asked, “What are you doing with my man?”
“I’m trying to help you, sir,” stammered Pickle. “I thought another set of eyes may help, and look what I found.”
Walking over to the gurney, Connie looked at where Pickle was pointing.
“A tattoo? What is my cadaver doing with a tattoo?”
“I’ve never seen one like it,” said Pickle.
“Me neither,” said Connie. “But I recognize it. That’s a UPC, also known as a universal product code. A thousand years ago it was on food, clothing, and all consumer goods. It would carry the item’s price and help the stores keep track of inventory. If I scan it with my eye monitor, I wonder if my computer can run the code.”
“Try, sir,” said Pickle.
Leaning down and looking directly at the tattoo, Connie scanned the UPC and transmitted this image to her computer’s desktop. The LED screen lit up as the computer left sleep mode and began searching its database. After several minutes, the screen pulled up a face that matched their corpse. It was a prison record from 450 years ago.
“According to this, our cadaver has a name. His name is Felix Alexander Johnson, and he was a murderer.”
“A murderer?” murmured Pickle.
“He was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection at the largest maximum-security prison in the United States,” said Connie.
“Who did he murder?” asked Pickle.
“It doesn’t say,” Connie responded. “Let’s search some more archives and see what else we can dig up.”
Within a few minutes, Connie found another article: “Man found innocent after being put to death.”
Mr. Felix A. Johnson, a college track star, was headed home one night when he saw a group of college students raping a white girl on a picnic table in a park. He singlehandedly took on the six men and succeeded in breaking one man’s nose, another’s jaw, dislocating another’s knee, and breaking another’s arm, but was eventually overcome by the other two men and severely beaten. The police arrived and were told by the six men that it was Mr. Johnson who had assaulted the girl, and that they had intervened aft
er hearing cries of help.
The boys were on their way home from football practice. Three had full college scholarships, and the local law enforcement believed their story. The girl also confirmed that it was Mr. Johnson who had raped her, so the district attorney believed he had a home-run case. He sought and was awarded the death penalty, even though there was no DNA of the accused ever found on or in the victim.
But ten years later, the victim, Cindi Johansen, came forward with a startling revelation: it was the six football stars who had actually raped her, and not Felix Johnson. The boys had concocted the story to protect themselves, and had pinned the blame onto the unfortunate Good Samaritan. The girl, who was told her life would be threatened if she ever told the truth, confessed that if Felix hadn’t have saved her, she probably would have died.
“His body was never given a proper burial,” Connie said after reading the article. “The metal tag in Felix’s ear was his new name, a long series of numbers that dehumanized him. What a tragedy. This man is an unsung hero, lost like so many other souls forgotten in time.”
Connie gazed at Felix. “We won’t desecrate you. We will get the genetic code trapped inside your shell. You will be our hero.”
“And the savior of the human race,” said Pickle with tears in her eyes.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Hiccup awoke alone in a heated kitty bed that Connie had made for her, a cardboard medical box with a circular hole cut in one end and a med blanket stuffed inside. The chief science officer had duct-taped the box to a leg of her desk.
Hiccup’s light blue eyes were alert and bright; the adolescent cat wanted her mother. The kitten went up to the stainless steel doors and rubbed on them, but nothing happened. Then she tried scratching the doors, but they remained shut. Refusing to give up, the kitten sat down and meowed loudly. She was about to give up when, miraculously, they opened.
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