Humanity 2.0, Year 029, Day 039

HUMANITY 2.0
YEAR 029, DAY 039

I stirred the pot briefly, and then brought a spoonful of the chunky dark red substance to my mouth and sampled the mixture. It needed more pepper and cumin, but not yet. I'd give it another hour to stew. I closed the lid, leaving the machine on low heat, and then went back to the opposite counter. I set out the flour, some garlic, and a large bowl, and set to work making the bread.

We were at Nadine's "winter palace", as she called it, in Arizona – that's part of the southwestern desert in North America. The living room I overlooked was open to the air on one side; the whole house was set up that way, in the Spanish villa style. The living room was separated from the central plaza of the house – which was open to the sky – by only a few dark orange stone columns. Geometric patterns and pictures of simple plants and scenery adorned everything, another Spanish affectation.

It was hot, but not unbearably so, and a few ceiling fans lazily spun in the ceiling to keep me cool. I wore a loose pair of linen pants and no shirt, instead just donning my thick white apron before I set to work. It had been a gift from Emily a few months ago – it read 'Kiss the Cook', which seemed to be interpreted as a command most of the time I wore it.

We were living in the US again – that was the native country for all of the First Four, but not most of the others – and the Foot Clan hadn't been a problem since my rescue. Nadine hadn't been kidding when she told me that she was rich and powerful – she wasn't quite another Nigel Miller, but she had more than enough resources to keep us safely hidden away from any prying eyes or hostile forces.

Most of us hadn't quite gotten ourselves back out of the life-on-the-run mindset quite yet; Nadine's comparatively leisurely elite lifestyle left us all constantly feeling like the other shoe was about to drop. It would be another few years before we stopped constantly keeping a mental inventory of entrances and exits, and formulating ways to subdue anyone and everyone we met. Without the Foot Clan chasing her around, Nadine had had the opportunity to create and consolidate a massive financial empire – one which she now shared freely with us.

The big flatscreen in the living room was playing a news program I'd left on while I worked. They'd spent the last half-hour jabbering about something meaningless – all I remember was that it had to do with dog DNA – and they'd just gotten back to reporting things that halfway mattered. I mixed the dough up and pounded it into shape as I watched.

World War III, as it wasn't yet officially called, was well underway – between China, another powerful nation of the time, and a loosely affiliated array of other regional powers who weren't big fans of them. The US wasn't involved, and had had something of a rally lately – the last round of budget changes seemed to have actually done something – but it wouldn't last. It was only a matter of time before the war would make its way across the ocean. I even knew that much then.

I sighed. Could nothing be done? Nadine told me over and over that money couldn't solve any of these problems, only make them worse. She always said it with a sadness in her; I hadn't gotten her to elaborate much, only getting the impression she'd tried for many years to try and change things for the better and had eventually despaired. I shook my head as the program switched gears again, now going on about predictions of the worst hurricane season ever.

The TV suddenly clicked off. I had been looking briefly in on the chili again, and turned to see lovely Nadine putting down the TV remote. She wore a bikini top, plain white, holding up her generous boobs, and she had a blue towel wrapped around her waist. Her pale skin could never take the sun well, even after she became a hominus; I could see the shades of pink and red along the bridge of her nose, her shoulders, and upper chest where she'd burned a little. She was shoeless and her hair was damp; she must have just taken a swim. As she walked over toward the counter, sitting on a stool opposite it, she placed her head in both hands and rested her elbows on the table, and I smelled the tinge of chlorine on her from the pool. She smiled and watched me work for a time.

"I'll summarize the news for you: another day of bad to worse."

"About right." I gave a bored, humorless smile, my thoughts still dwelling on the worsening situation. I noted something missing from the crook of Nadine's arm. "Where's Tristan?" As I'm told he loves to remind everyone, that's my second child, and first son – born to Nadine only a few months ago.

"With Nina." Nadine let one hand fall, tilting her head as she let the weight of her head rest on the other. "I'm letting all of them borrow him as much as I can. Trying to spread the baby-making bug around, you know."

I chuckled. "Don't rush it. I don't want anyone pregnant but having second thoughts. We've got plenty of time."

"Maybe." She smiled. "Doesn't hurt to show him around, though. You know, remind them they could just as easily have one of their own. Every one of them is thinking about it when they hold him."

I shrugged. Nadine had only found out for certain about her increased lifespan after we were reunited; she hadn't quite yet found the patience we cultivate and even take for granted in one another. I was prepared to wait many years for any of the girls to come around on the subject of children; I was even prepared to accept some of them never wanting any, as long as it wasn't all of them. Nadine felt otherwise. Silence returned for a while as I went back to work, kneading the dough, shaping it, then finally placing it on the pans and putting it into the oven. Once the timer had been set, I looked back at her.

I leaned back, untying the back of my apron then hanging it on a peg. "Two hours or so before this is ready. Let's rest a bit."

"Let's." She slid off the chair, and fell in against my side as we stepped out into the plaza. Nadine still intrigued and surprised me daily; she could alternate between a calculating CEO and chairwoman, doting mother, and sweet, quiet lover, all in only a few moments. Her figure had not been diminished in any way after having her second child; her hourglass shape and wonderfully firm and heavy boobs still stood proud, even with the added weight of the milk she carried for Tristan.

We stepped out onto the veranda out the back of the house, which overlooked the Olympic pool just outside the back of the house; through its crystal-clear water, I could see two dark female figures submerged, sitting on the bottom of the pool. Rain must have challenged someone again...

I led her over toward a wide lounge chair under a massive umbrella, and laid down, pulling her down atop me. We had a nice view of the pool and the girls below – and from this angle, I noticed that I'd missed before that Bethany was there too, in a cute black one-piece, curled up on a wooden chair off toward a corner, under an umbrella herself and reading a book through sunglasses. She had a stopwatch resting on a table next to her. I could just make out the bulge of her pregnancy, now five months along.

The desert stretched out in all directions – high rock formations jutting out of stony beige rock, and the occasional scrub-like bush and small flowering cactus otherwise dotting the wild scenery. The sky was utterly clear, and we were nearing sunset – the brilliant blue of the sky now fading towards an orange-pink color. Only a small dirt road led to this place, from a little-used highway, and we used that less than we used the small airstrip which was a quarter-mile away.

Nadine seemed content to simply cuddle against me, and I was content to simply hold her as I looked down below. The sky itself was interesting enough to watch, as it changed its hue gradually and the sun touched the horizon. There was only the sound of the wind for a time, then it was suddenly broken by a splash, and a huge gasp. I glanced down below, to see Rain treading water and taking massive gasps of air – but she didn't seem to be in any danger. She'd been underwater for quite some time. Bethany reached over and grabbed the stopwatch, clicking it.

"Fourteen minutes, eight seconds." She said it blithely. "Sorry, Rainy." Bethany set the watch back down and returned to her book.

Rain made a few frustrated splashes in the water, then skulked over toward the edge and pulled herself up onto the side. She wore a dark green bikini, similar in design to Nadine's, but better suited to her color – a smooth deep tan hue, something in between my own mixed heritage and Nadine's pale Welsh roots. She kicked her legs about in the water for a while, before speaking aloud.

"Oh, come on! You don't need to rub it in!"

There was silence for a while, then a quiet splash as Claudia rose up out of the water, tall, dark, and elegant – and simply began breathing again, calm and composed as always. It looked like her sixteen-minute record would go unchallenged another day. She smiled broadly at Rain, who only rolled her eyes and looked away. Claudia dipped back under for a moment to jet over toward the edge, and in a smooth motion hopped out and stood up. It hadn't been a reflection of the sunlight – she was wearing a bright yellow bikini, adorned with a few shiny beads and trinkets on the strings.

I suppose I haven't introduced Claudia to you all – though I imagine most have met her. Claudia was the eighth of my girls to join the family – there were a total of nine at the time – and despite being in the first generation, was about four years younger than my only daughter at the time, Rain. Claudia is easily the tallest of the girls, more so than Melody and Nina, at nearly six feet high – only I myself made her look small and feminine in comparison.

She was athletic of build, with a body like that of a tennis star – strong, supple, and even before I'd turned her into one of us, she was well-coordinated and quick both of body and mind like few humans were. She had caught my eye the moment I'd first seen her in Kuala Lumpur, in a bike race of all things; like Emily and I, she was an in-betweener, having one native Okinawan parent and one Australian Aborigine. She knew that same feeling of never quite being one of any group, but she'd never let it weigh her down.

Despite the use of my power on her, it had almost been her seducing me. She'd spent hardly two days sick with the retrovirus before emerging even taller and stronger than she'd once been. Her straight, shiny black hair would normally be in a small bowl cut, with long tresses on the sides adorned with colorful beads on the ends – but slick as it was with water at the moment, the mass of shiny black hair simply clung to her head. When I'd found her, she had been paying her own way through school, studying genetics; she was still working on it, though she didn't have to worry about the bills anymore.

"You have improved tremendously, love." Claudia's low, Oxford-accented voice was clearly audible from a distance, even quiet as it was. "I've been diving since I was nine. You amaze me every day."

Rain let out a long breath. She was, at the very least, able to control her competitive streak much better now. I heard them all continue talking quietly, but was distracted for a moment by the feel of a shifting female body at my side. Nadine reached over and took hold of the far armrest, and smoothly pulled herself atop me. Once settled, she planted both of her elbows on my chest and her head in her palms and stared down at me. Her red curls caught the light of the setting sun that made her look, for a moment, like she wore a mane of fire.

"I told you that you're gorgeous lately, right?" I gave her a lopsided grin. "If I haven't, well, you still are. Just an FYI."

"I am?" She gave me an exaggerated expression of searching herself. "I don't think you had said so today yet. But you might have after midnight sometime, Emily and I were pretty drunk."

"Oh really? I didn't stick around that late."

"Yeah, cause you were banging little miss Claudia all night." She gave me a playful slap. "You're letting her monopolize you."

"I'm here for all to share. Don't complain if Claudia isn't afraid to take what she wants." I sighed. "Besides, she's only been one of us a few years... I want to keep a close eye on her, make sure she deals with it well. I don't want her to end up like Wren."

"I don't think there's any danger of that." Nadine sighed. "Wren was probably going to be something of a loner even if she hadn't been hurt so badly. She's opening up a little lately. Last night, she visited Bethany and I, and slept with us... I was expecting her to just walk out after sex, like normal, but she actually slept with us in the same bed. And she and Rain have something going on between them... I see them touching a lot, and their expressions just change out of nowhere. It's kind of weird. I've been meaning to ask her about that... and to see if I can talk Wren into you putting a baby in her."

"Don't rush her." I glanced over at Nadine, who was smirking. "I'm serious... it's one thing to push the others on that subject, but not Wren."

Nadine shook her head. "She's strong. She isn't going to break. You're too stuck thinking of her as the wallflower she was when you met."

"I don't think of her as a wallflower. I think of her as..." I groaned. "Forget it. What are we going to do about you?"

"Tell you what. I'll leave Wren be on one condition."

"You're making demands now?" I gave her a faux-incredulous look.

"Sure. If I can't rush Wren into making a baby, you'll just have to put another in me." She paused for a while, staring off into the distance. "It's time, you know."

I took a brief moment to compose my thoughts. "I figured, from how you've been carrying on the last week. Try to get Bethany to sign off on it first. Tristan was only a couple months ago."

"She gave me a pretty close examination last night..." Nadine's hand slid down past my head as she inched closer to my face.

I snorted. "The real kind of examination, not the tongue-in-pussy test."

She laughed. "No, she really did. The three of us only fucked after that. Even she says that all she has are best guesses about us anyway." She let her arms down, sliding them under my back to hug herself to me tightly. "I can just kind of feel it. Something in my body tells me I'm ready again."

"Just hell-bent aren't you..." I sighed. "I'll just have to resign myself to fucking all of these hotties all of the time."

She gave a low chuckle, but otherwise remained quiet – as did I. She laid there for a time, almost dozing as I sat and just watched the fading colors of the sky. The brightest stars and Venus began to appear as I looked upward for a time, thinking back on how my days in captivity seemed so dim and vague, yet recent. There were times even then that I woke up expecting to find myself in chains again, and that all of the past year had just been a hallucination brought on by my frayed mind and the cocktails of drugs they'd given me. It was a relief each morning to find that it was real.

I heard the sound of light, tapping steps of a woman in heels behind me; a few moments of listening and I knew they were Emily's. She was back, too, then. I was hoping she would get in from the city before it was dark. She stopped for a moment, and I heard a shuffling, then her steps were much softer after she kicked off her heels. I smiled and looked up and to my right as she came around my side, and slid her little butt up next to me. Her slender hand, color almost matching my own, ran along my chest for a few moments, then slid over toward Nadine. The redhead stirred for a moment and looked up at my sister briefly, smiling dimly back.

Nadine stirred, and mumbled something to her. "Everything go okay?"

"Yeah. The merger is official in the nineteenth." Emily paused. "If all goes well."

"Hmmm..." Nadine gave a slow, exaggerated shrug, and nestled herself even closer to me – if that were even possible. "We'll talk about it with Nina tomorrow in the conference call. Forget about the company for tonight."

Emily's skills as a lawyer may have gotten somewhat rusty in our two decades of life on the run – but, for all the suffering that it was, those years had given her, and Nina especially, a kind of hard-edged, focused thinking that made them excellent business leaders. What started as Nadine offering them a few side jobs was now a true partnership, with Nadine owning forty-nine percent, the remainder split evenly between Nina and Emily.

The whole arrangement seemed incredibly complicated – every time I thought I'd figured out who was running what, it turned out I was wrong or that was old information. I stayed out of the whole thing, knowing I'd make a mess of it if I tried. Somehow, they never hit any snags or had serious arguments about it all... or they were hiding it from me, and doing a damn good job.

"There's a lot to go over, though..."

"Dinner will be ready in half an hour... just long enough." Nadine gave a lopsided grin. "I can feel it in you. Don't worry, you won't have to jill yourself off before dinnertime. I've got something special for us." Nadine came up, leaning on one arm next to me – and stretched out one hand, stroking my stiffening cock through my pants. "Want to help your brother get me pregnant?"

Emily inhaled sharply, and bit her lip. She and Nadine's eyes met, and I felt something deep between them. Nadine knew Emily was conflicted about the subject of having a child by me. I could tell when I saw her with Tristan that she wanted to, but there was something was holding her back; I don't think it was some lingering doubts about our incestuous relationship.

There was no genetic issue with it, 15226 had somehow solved that problem. It was something else that she didn't want to talk about; I'd gotten the impression Bethany and Nina knew, but were staying tight-lipped. Nadine, of course, liked to prod people, and openly encouraged me not only to get my sister pregnant, but our own daughter too. Rain hadn't come around to the idea... yet.

It wasn't long before Emily's prim business suit and slacks were draped over the railing and the two stood naked, making out in front of me. I lay in place, knowing they were making a big show of it so that I'd have a nice and heavy load for Nadine when it was time. We'd done something like this when I made her pregnant with Tristan, but it had been Rain in Emily's place.

They were very close to each other in height, only highlighting the differences in the two's bodies. Nadine's sparse freckles extended down to the top of her shoulders, providing a smattering of color on her rosy-pale skin. Her sumptuously large breasts squashed flat against Emily's small, pointy-nippled tits as the two made out. Next to such a lightly colored girl, Emily looked dark and exotic; she'd let her hair grow out longer lately, and her almost-black tresses reflected the last glimmers of the sunset.

Soft and feminine sounds came from the two as they let their passions grow; Nadine's probing fingers found their way to my sister's folds and lightly massaged her clit, triggering an immediate shudder in her. She'd gone without this for a few days now, longer than any of us were used to lately.

I heard other sounds, from down below. I sat up, and rested my elbows on my knees as I glanced downward toward the poolside. Rain had set out a large towel, and the tangled couple of Bethany and Claudia fell onto it; their embrace wasn't much pushed apart by Bethany's swollen belly, and Claudia having almost a foot of height on her meant that the pregnant woman found Claudia's breasts conveniently in front of her mouth. Her lips closed over the nipples, even hidden by the swimsuit fabric as they were.