The Women in Blue Ch. 06

The Women in Blue Ch. 06

A Little History Lesson

As soon as Connor left the room, Irene Shapiro dried her tears and went to find Polly Patrick. She went over her results. The process of summarizing them for Polly made her doubt her own work. It sounded crazy when she reviewed what Connor had done. Too good to be true. Polly asked several key questions, essentially proposing some more difficult and granular tests that would erase any doubt. Polly called in Admiral Parker and in his typical fashion, he asked two very frank and definitive questions, like military people often did. If the capability were there, you had to assume that it would eventually be used, even if it arose much sooner than they had ever dreamed. You just wanted to make sure you were ready for it, or at least as ready as you could be. Irene began to develop some new testing instruments that might answer their questions.

Connor went back to his room and almost passed out on his bed. He was not sure why. All he had been doing was sitting in a chair watching pictures flashing by on a screen, but suddenly he was totally exhausted. His body went limp, and he did not even remember having any dreams. He was awakened by a pressing message from his bladder, and immediately felt better as he voided. But then he became alarmed. His urine stream was much darker and denser than usual, felt hotter, and smelled much stronger than usual. Had he developed kidney disease overnight? He was so concerned that he dropped by to see Barbara, the nurse, and told her what had just happened. She took his temperature (slightly elevated), blood pressure (slightly low) and a quick blood sample and demanded that he drink one liter of Gatorade and one of bottled water and come back to leave a urine sample in 30 minutes. He wolfed down breakfast, left the sample, and then went back to see Dr. Shapiro at the appointed time.

Irene Shapiro was up all night building the best possible testing ensemble. At 10:30 she put Connor through the three-hour battery of new tests she had cobbled together overnight, to test her almost frightening hypothesis about him and confirm her previous results. It seemed clear that he was "the one" the Admiral had told them to watch for 30 years ago. But they had not expected someone like him to be born for 2 or 3 more generations. Were they ready? Clearly not. Could they still make it work? Maybe. Perhaps they had no choice.

By the time Connor sat down to a very late lunch with Polly and Admiral Parker, he realized he was already tired and hungry from the morning testing. Why did looking at pictures and answering questions about them wear him out so? The Parkers were both looking at him funny, like they had something to tell him but were not sure how to broach the subject. That was their problem. He was ravenously hungry and thirsty, so he would happily eat and drink while they decided what to say. He was just beginning to feel full when the Polly began to speak.

"First, Connor, to put your mind as ease, Barbara just told me your test results a few minutes ago, and you have not developed any disease. In fact, they are indicative of how good your overall health is and fast you recover from strenuous exercise."

Connor was confused. "What exercise? I was sitting in a chair looking at pictures."

"Well, thinking can be hard exercise too, Connor. The brain burns energy at different rates depending on what it is doing at the time. We are starting to recognize that the human brain can do things computers cannot, and in ways we never noticed before. We have recently discovered multiple ionic transport systems for IPSPs, EPSPs, and action potentials that do not involve sodium ions. And it's not just about processing numbers and sequences. It can also do many things at the same time, and maybe even in different places at the same time, and some of our theoretical people say it can do the same thing in all possible ways and then wait to see which outcome it wants to instantiate as reality. And that would burn a lot of energy! We think that is what happened to you. According to Barbara's numbers, you burned as much energy doing those tests as you would have sprinting for 5 hours!"

Polly fixed him with a gaze. "Connor, I know you have made a cursory study of American and World history in your schooling so far, but we want to talk to you about another historic theme, and some conclusions that have not been reached anywhere else but here, as far as we know. And that is the history of sexual behavior and how it has changed over time."

"As humans evolved civilization changed, too. These days civilization changes at a much faster rate than the genome, and that difference is likely to accelerate until we eventually escape the original biological form. Sexual behavior will be obsolete at that point, and most folks then will not even know to miss it!"

"But it will probably be thousands of years before we must worry about that. What we can see clearly now is that sexual behavior alone cannot be allowed to define marriage and family formation, at least for all families. Our recent cultural problems are witness to that. We still need the nuclear family, and will until the singularity, and likely after, but the way families form and endure must change."

Admiral Parker began to speak in his own blunt way. "Animals did genetic selection by survival -- top dog killed off his competitors and got to fuck all the females and reproduce, so his genes increased in frequency in the population. But that was not growing the total population effectively because the losers died and produced no offspring. So, humans as a species could not dominate the other animals and rule the world and expand to explore the universe. But cooperation and hunting in groups produced much better results, growing the population rapidly, and humans were highly successful survivors."

"Prehistoric men didn't kill off each other as frequently, but often mated randomly, many times per day, and each female might couple with several males in a day, and genetic selection was by which sperm could swim the best and fertilize the female's egg. This let the total population grow, while still increasing genetic variety, and selecting for vigor.

"To oversimplify and perpetuate a stereotype, a stone age man formed a family by hitting a woman over the head and getting her pregnant. They then defended and supported each other and their children until the offspring could repeat the cycle. Which woman ended up with which man was combination of geographic distance, random chance, pheromones, physical prowess, and only occasionally physical attraction and what modern romance novels call "chemistry". Most people had a tough enough struggle just to survive and did not have the resources or time to be choosy nor romantic. But being in a family unit, even one we today would consider dysfunctional, greatly increased their chances of survival. Agriculture made cooperation even more likely to increase survival."

"The nuclear family, from the first crude ones through those that still exist today, was key to the survival chances of most humans. But the modern age is impinging on that model in many ways. People are much more aware of the world around them, travel a lot more and further away, have more free time after basic survival needs are met, and are much more informed on sexual issues. The number of choices of a lifestyle after someone becomes is an adult has multiplied many times over. But the basic child development process has not changed in thousands of years. That mismatch is the nexus of many problems."

"We know that women historically and inherently are attracted to men that they perceive have good chances of survival and successful fatherhood. Men and women are similarly attracted to a symmetrical face because it is usually a phenotypic marker of non-defective genes. Likewise, women are attracted to a mesomorphic body type. Men like women with a waist that is proportionally small compared to their hips, because that is predictive of cardiovascular health, and they like wide hips as a predictor of uncomplicated childbirth. These are all inherent, natural unthinking tendencies that in general have served humanity well, so far."

"The railroad and then the automobile drastically changed society, offering more freedom and mobility and more economic specialization, but it also changed sexual behavior, at least as much as they changed transportation. Women met men from much further away. Young people had more unsupervised private time, and the relatively expensive automobile became a status symbol that had sexual significance for some women. This began some not so good trends.

"People today are drastically oversexualizing children, and the commonplace breakdown of the nuclear family is short circuiting and damaging their development. That is a primary goal of ours, to stop those processes. It seems to be the political goal of some factions to increase that damage, to make the state more important than the family, by breaking down the family."

Connor was confused. "I thought sexual freedom and liberation were one of the main points of all this!"

"But only for adults! We can argue about whether that means 18 or 21 years old, and some people say 26, but clearly children and adolescents should not be bombarded with sexual messages or put in sexually charged situations with older people before they develop the emotional ability to deal with themselves as an independent person."

"So, you don't support, for instance, the North American Man Boy Love Association?"

The Admiral made an angry face. "I would support public hanging for them, but Polly insists we must re-educate and re-socialize them. I am totally okay with man-on-man sex, or girl-on-girl, or many on many, if it is between adults and is private, consensual, and not prostitution. But it is abundantly clear that men who dominate and violate young girls or boys destroy their ability to form good adult bonds and stable families in the future. Also, I know that the lack of a real father figure severely disturbs the process of adolescents maturing into functioning adults. Young girls with no fathers in their lives end up especially vulnerable to manipulation, for example."

Connor had a thought. "So, the overall goal is stable families?"

"Yes, and those must be formed both rationally and emotionally and satisfy the needs of each member long term. We must transition from the idea of the family bond being primarily based on sexual attraction and fidelity to one of long-standing emotional fidelity, shared values, and well socialized children. I don't want to continue to see women forming families with the guy who has the best drugs or the most expensive car. I want to encourage family formation not based on impulsive and fleeting hormonal urges but on emotional compatibility and long-term commitment. We must be sure that each and every child has a mother and a father at home and are being socialized by them constantly and properly. Mom and Dad may have sex with lots of other folks, too, but the child should not be aware of it until they are ready to process it."

Polly took my hand. "Connor, the whole point of your internship here, and all the plays you see and act in, is to teach you how to move our goals forward. Frankly, you will have to learn to curb your personal freedom in service to the long-term freedom and wellbeing of people in general. You have special skills, Connor, and Irene Shapiro has confirmed your gifts with her latest testing. Each thing you learn here with help you develop and grow. You didn't enlist in the marines, but we want you to enlist in our version of the special forces. You are about to finish your initial rotation with the logging crews and start working in the mill. That will also mark a new stage in your training."

Admiral Parker looked me in the eye. "Like all effective warriors, you are going to have to make some sacrifices, son, and learn to endure some things. "

"Like?"

"Well, never masturbating, staying away from a certain extremely attractive redheaded female, for example, and forming relationships with people you may not find the most attractive, on the outside at least. One of your talents, I believe, will be the ability to recognize "inner beauty" for lack of a better term until you progress further in your training. Most of your "social obligations" for the rest of the summer will be designed to improve your ability to recognize and develop people like yourself."

"Polly, what happens to me after this summer?"

"Without sounding too mysterious, I don't know yet. We must see how you react to certain things and how your abilities develop. You are still in the first month of your internship. At summer's end, the Admiral and I will tell you what we think you should do, but it will always be up to you."

Admiral Parker handed Connor an old paperback book. "Take some time off this afternoon and read this story. We have three plays tonight, and while you won't be on stage, you may find watching these plays just as strenuous as you did "sitting and looking at pictures."

He looked down at the page: "Methuselah's Children" by Robert Heinlein, published in 1941. Connor's high school history teacher had the class read "Starship Troopers" to begin a discussion about voting rights. He wondered what thoughts this tale was supposed to engender. He fell asleep about halfway through it. But he got the gist of it by then. How did that fit in with what the Patricks were doing?

.....

Connor's alarm startled him. He had been sleeping deeply. He had to hurry to get dressed for dinner, and he was famished and highly thus motivated. He had a hunch that tonight's playbill would challenge him. Polly, the Admiral, and Irene Shapiro had all hinted at its importance verbally, and he could feel an undertone in their conversations he had not detected before. It was almost as if some crucial things were being left unsaid, to see of Connor would say them on his own.

He also noticed earlier today that there were some new faces around -- he heard they were people who had internships here in previous years and were now coming back for visits in the summer. They were all young, like Connor, and he was curious about them. Where did they go and what did they do after their internships? Why were they back at the estate now? When he entered the downstairs dinner area, he discovered he was not to be seated with anyone whose names he recognized.

Dana was at the next table over, waiting for the other people assigned there to come in. Polly was on the other side, also seated by herself, with 7 empty seats around her. More people began to filter into the room. Soon seven young males were seated with Polly and seven more with Dana, while seven more young woman were at a table with Admiral Parker Patrick. The admiral was absolutely beaming. All the males looked starstruck, staring at each of the women with almost hypnotized looks, probably not unlike the way Connor looked at them when he first arrived. He chuckled to himself. He knew both women were even more amazing than their looks alone conveyed. Were these guys just meeting them for the first time? He thought they had been here on internships before, and they looked just a little older than Connor.

Suddenly he too was surrounded, by seven young women. They all looked fresh scrubbed and dressed in red jumpsuits. Were they about to become women in red? A few were stunningly beautiful, but some were not at all attractive to look at. They were staring at Connor the same way that the other young men were looking at Dana and Polly. He supposed he should introduce himself and begin learning their names. He was now highly curious about them.

Irene Shapiro watched Connor carefully from her upstairs office, switching the HD video feeds from the dining room cameras like a Vegas casino boss scrutinizing a card counter or cheat signaler. Part of yesterday's "testing" of Connor had been in fact a programming session, using disguised high speed video flash cards to take advantage of Connor's amazing visual and empathic skills. If it worked the way Polly and the Admiral expected, when Connor connected emotionally with each of these young ladies, all of whom had completed an internship last summer, he would also connect with all the factual data they had on them. Not just names and faces, but their family tree, history, medical records, psychological testing data, and even their high school activities, classes, and grades. He would not know how he knew these things, but he would, and he could connect to them instantly and use them to further his connection with and understanding of each girl. He would also supply his own unique and powerful kind of empathic intuition, connecting with some of the girls via what the biophysics people thought was some sort of quantum entanglement mechanism. Irene did not know how it worked, but her testing showed that it did, far beyond statistical uncertainty.

Connor found two of the girls just as fascinating as they found him. One, a very tall cinnamon-skinned charmer with raven hair and almost black eyes, made the same kind of first impression that gorgeous copper-headed Chrissy had -- and yet he sensed a similar need to avoid this new girl, as Polly had advised with Chrissy. The other girl was frankly not at all attractive -- she was a little pudgy, clumsy and had an extraordinarily strong jaw line -- the word that occurred to him was porcine. Somehow, he knew her nickname, "Porker", and that she hated it, and that she had been a very fat child and was some sort of academic whiz kid, which made her an even more inviting target for catty girls and bullies. Yet he was drawn to her, with that same kind of "can't look away" feeling that he knew was some sort of spinal sexual reflex that he did not yet understand. Her eyes flashed the same kind of awareness and fire that Dana's did. He could not ignore that. He went around the table and spoke to each girl, trying to make some sort of connection with each one. Somehow, he knew he should do that. But try as he might, only those two made a strong impression on him.

Pamela "Porker" Parker was seated to the left of Connor, the boy that she had been warned about, and as the salad course was served, she forced herself to overcome her normal shyness and begin a conversation with him.

"Did you begin your internship with a logging crew, Connor?"

He startled, she knew his name, but he realized he knew hers, Pamela "Porker" Parker. Somehow, he knew a lot about her. She looked right at him with those shining eyes. "Yes, then I go to the mill and then sales. What did you do?" He almost called her Porker.

"Same stuff, different order." She hesitated, but Polly had said to always tell Connor the truth. "I did the sales office stuff first, then the mill, then logging. They wanted me to lose 50 pounds before I started climbing, and so I did. I have always been pretty strong." Connor looked her over, slowly and unapologetically. She found she liked it. He suddenly found his mind full of images of him straining against her. He liked that too, even though it surprised him.

Polly stood up and banged a spoon on a glass and instantly had everyone's attention.

.....

Irene Shapiro was too nervous to listen carefully to what Polly was telling the gathering. She knew it pretty much by heart now, having helped Polly draft and rehearse it. What she was interested in was the reactions of some of the listeners, six of them to be precise. Connor and two potentially important female former interns being her priority, and Dana and two promising male former interns her second choice. Normally, the young male students seated with Polly would have been her focus for intensive observation, but they did not make the cut tonight.