The Stratagem

The son was at least five years older than her. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know any of their names. She wasn’t a part of their family. She was the slave. But, it was clear to her that the son liked her and had a crush on her.

Every now and then it would enter her mind that whatever God commands is right.

She didn’t know where she was getting that from; and, she didn’t know whether she was using it as an excuse to condone her sins and wrong choices, or if God really wanted her to escape. But, she kept getting the feeling that she needed to entice the son and convince him to let her out of her prison. She just instinctively knew that he could do it if he chose to do so, because he was being groomed and trained to take his father’s position as her Master should his father ever die, and he liked to brag.

The romance novels were having an effect on her and giving her ideas too.

In the past, she had offered to let the son kiss her, fondle her breasts, and see her naked in exchange for a visit outside to see the world. She had promised not to tell anyone. If they were caught, she had promised to confess to everything being voluntary and her own idea, so that the son wouldn’t get into any trouble. She had to do it now, because after she became the Master’s concubine, she would be off-limits or out-of-bounds to the son, and the son was the only way out of her prison.

Now the son was standing before her and had apparently decided to take her up on her offer.

Before proceeding, the son tried to make her promise not to escape.

She lied, and convincingly. She had to. She had to try to get out of there and escape. She said truthfully, “Why would I try to escape or run away? Where would I go? I don’t have any money. I don’t know anyone out there. Nobody out there would be willing to take me in. I wouldn’t know what to do or where to go if I ran away.”

She was right, and the son knew it.

Inwardly, she was hoping that after they caught her that her Master would kill her as punishment, so that she wouldn’t have to be his sex slave for the rest of her life. If he didn’t kill her, then it would be no worse than what she was already getting from him, so she had nothing to lose and just as well make an attempt to escape if at all possible.

Again, the words popped into her mind, “Whatever God commands is right.”

Enough with that already! She didn’t believe in God. She knew that God doesn’t exist. She knew that she was on her own. She just couldn’t escape the feeling that she had to do whatever she could do to escape and get out of there. She didn’t know where she had heard it before or read it before, but the duty of any prisoner is to escape by whatever means necessary.

After a lot of kissing and fondling, she had undressed in front of the son, taking off all of her rags and standing naked there in front of the son – she didn’t have underwear, didn’t even know what it was at the time; and then when he was done touching her all over, he gave her a really nice dress to wear. It was the first nice piece of clothing that she had seen in all of her life. Humans don’t give good food and clothing to their pets and their slaves.

Again, she didn’t know it at the time, but she had matured early and fast for her age, and it was obvious that the son liked what he saw and touched. It was the only thing she had to bargain with.

She could tell that the whole experience was very exciting for him. Boys really are at a disadvantage when it comes to this sort of thing, because it’s really easy to tell what they like and how much they like it. He couldn’t have sex with her because she wasn’t his and she wasn’t fourteen. So, he could only do what they had already done. She really did hope that she would end up with the son rather than the Owner and the Master. The son was awkward, eager, and even cute. He was also gentle. She hoped that he wouldn’t change for the worse should he become her Owner.

Along with the dress, the son had given her some comfortable flats to wear as shoes. She’d never had shoes before.

Even though he was at least five years older than her, she was taller than him. He was wearing these weird shoes or platforms that made him as tall as her so that he could look her in the eyes instead of having to look up to her.

Then the son disabled and removed her tracking devices, had apparently already disabled the building’s cameras and tracking devices somehow, had removed all the machines from the path that they would be taking out of the house, snuck her out of the concrete bunker, out of the house, into his car, and had taken her to the mall to show her off to all of his friends as his new girlfriend.

He drove rather than turning on the computer and engaging the autopilot.

The son told her that the mall that he was taking her to had been designed exclusively for The Military and that they didn’t allow anyone else in there without an escort. If anyone questioned her, she was to say that she was with him. It was a privilege to be going where she was going.

She studied everything on the way in and tried to absorb as much information as she could. While entering the building, she was studying different ways to get out of the building. It was huge with lots of different stores on the inside. She was expecting there to be surveillance cameras everywhere, but apparently, nobody had ever tried to escape in their society, so there weren’t any surveillance cameras to be seen. It really was a peaceful society with The Military in charge. Apparently the rumors and propaganda were true. They hadn’t had any wars or civil unrest for centuries. It was one world-wide united government with nobody to fight against.

Yet, something wasn’t quite right. The propaganda had repeatedly stated that their society and The Military are radically advanced technologically, yet in the mall, they didn’t have computers, tablets, telephones, smartphones, Wi-Fi, robots, cameras, security, or electronic currency exchange. They used coins for money and a mechanical cash register. Everything seemed ancient and in somewhat disrepair. They had electric lights, but everything else seemed ordinary or even ancient. This society had been around for a long time yet hadn’t seemed to make any progress. The disconnect between the propaganda and the actuality was a bit disconcerting. Yet, at the same time it gave her hope that she might be able to escape unnoticed and be hard to find after she was gone.

The son met with his friends and bought her lunch. It was the best thing she had ever tasted in her life. She didn’t even know what it was. The son seemed excited to show her off; but, the other kids didn’t seem all that interested in her, except for a few of the other boys who were curious to know how she had gotten so tall, and tight, and perky, and butch. The son said that she had been specially bred for him as a supreme specimen of womanhood – whatever that meant. Maybe that was the whole point, to impress the boys.

All the girls were in short dresses like her. One of the girls bent over to pick up something from the floor, and she could see that these girls were naked under their dresses just like she was. The whole system had been designed to give the men and the boys easy access to the good bits. It was demeaning.

She could only sense disdain from the girls. She could tell that they didn’t like her and that they automatically hated her. Fascinating! She was taller than them and looked down on them. She was as tall as the boys, if not taller, and at least as strong. She could sense that the girls were jealous of her. Interesting! The boys didn’t seem to have a lot of respect for the girls. The girls were just there, maybe for a free meal. The girls were kind of ugly actually.

Thankfully, they never asked her what her name was; and, she never said anything more than “hello” to the group. The son seemed perfectly fine with it all.

They were a crude, profane, and rude bunch of kids – the elite. She automatically knew that she would never fit in. They weren’t readers-of-books – they weren’t cultured – they were being raised to become part of The Military establishment. They were lazy, boring, uninteresting, and ignorant individuals. The only thing they had going for them was that they were well-dressed and properly groomed.

After holding hands with the son and kissing him a lot, she excused herself, went to the public restroom, and gave him the slip by eventually climbing out the back window.

THE EPIPHANY

She had gotten this overwhelming feeling that she needed to leave, and leave now, and even got a sense or a feeling as to which way she should go. She could have gone to a couple of different restrooms, but this one just seemed like the right one. It seemed surreal or supernatural, as if she weren’t in complete control of her physical body. She seemed to have an intuitive streak, and she had no idea where that was coming from. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush. She was really going to do this. Again, she kept getting this feeling or this thought in her mind, “Whatever God commands is right.” She didn’t know where that was coming from. Maybe she was just trying to justify her actions. She didn’t believe in God, but she knew that she was going to leave and try to escape to freedom. She wanted to see how far she could get. It was exciting and scary all at the same time.

The restroom was empty. She had chosen the restroom rather than a door where she would be seen leaving. She figured that there most likely wouldn’t be any surveillance in the restrooms. If the restroom didn’t have any windows, then she would be forced to use the doors, but this restroom had windows that she could actually open and climb out of. What are the odds? She had no idea how rare or unique that was in this society.

On the way through the restroom, she was stopped in front of the mirror and had a good look at herself for the first time in her life. She really was beautiful. Brunette. Brown eyes. Caucasian. She was healthy and strong and well-bred. She was athletic, toned, and her breasts were larger and more firm and perky than the other girls. She was more solid. She looked like she was ten years older than them, even though she wasn’t. She could tell immediately that she was vastly superior to the military caste and the other girls in the son’s school. In comparison to her, they were small and sickly looking. Some of them really were ugly – both on the inside and the outside.

They say that first impressions are usually right. Humans have a good intuitive sense for the truth until it is trained out of them or conditioned out of them by their society. She just knew that she was vastly superior to these people in every way.

Given all that she had gone through, she should have been insane or withdrawn or depressed or sickly, but she wasn’t. She was stable and normal emotionally. She had untapped reserves. Again, she didn’t know where any of that came from, but she knew that if any of those other girls had gone through what she had gone through, it would have destroyed them, but not her.

Instantly, as a flash of insight or pure knowledge, she just knew that the military caste were the result of millennia of vice, addiction, sin, sexually transmitted diseases, and genetic degradation. The children of the military caste were inferior to her in every way. The human genome is robust, but it can only take so much abuse before the genetic defects start to show. The military caste was on their way to extinction. They were sinning, drugging, drinking, and fornicating their way into extinction. She had a glow, and a tone, and a life about her that they didn’t have. The difference was stark and obvious.

Something was clearly off here. The Military supposedly had nanotech, medical-robots, advanced medical care, and genetic engineering; yet, they weren’t using any of it to fix their bodies and their broken genomes. It wasn’t adding up. Something wasn’t right. She’d been lied to once again. There was a mystery here, and she was beginning to wonder what the truth really is about this society and this world.

Yet simultaneously, she automatically and correctly KNEW that the boys out there in that mall had to remain sober and in control of themselves so that they could safely maintain and run The Military’s machinery. This was clearly a male-dominated society. All of the privileges and education went to the males.

In contrast, the girls out there in that mall had no such protection in their lives. Most of them were already addicted to crap; and being five to ten years older than her, they had already settled into their role as objects to be used and then thrown away by the men in their lives. Most of them had already been sexually abused and used by their fathers and their uncles. They were now being passed around from one boy to the next, and they were already on birth control pills.

These were the elite women from the superior Military Race, yet they had actually been treated worse than she had been; and, this had been going on for thousands of years.

Her life of deprivation and servitude as a slave had protected her from all of this. As a slave, she wasn’t entitled to the pharmacological protection and numbification that the women of Hearth were receiving. There in those girls were living examples of what she and her life would become if she didn’t find a way to escape. She had hope; whereas, they led quiet solitary lives of desperation in total misery and despair all the time. She felt sorry for them.

It was an ugly society that these people had created for themselves, especially for the women.

Then, with another flash of insight, she realized that those girls out there in that mall would never be wives. In fact, they were the rejects – the ugly ones – the ones that the men didn’t want. They’d been discarded. They’d been handed down to the boys because the men didn’t want them. No wonder they were jealous of her. They’d already received similar treatment from other “beautiful” women who had shown up on the scene. These girls were prostitutes, and they would never be anything more. She found herself wishing that she could do something for them to help them, but she had to figure out how to help herself first.

Eventually she would learn for a surety but she could already sense that on Hearth during this era, they exterminated babies who were born deformed, and they euthanized children who were mentally retarded. They considered it the humane thing to do. Genetic entropy or the deterioration of the gene pool was taking a heavy toll on Hearth, especially among the Military caste; and although it was never publicly revealed nor talked about, it was estimated that at least half of the live births on Hearth contained deformities, and those babies were exterminated. The Military caste was experiencing zero population growth, and they were actually going extinct.

All of this insight, inspiration, and knowledge happened in a flash, in a matter of seconds, although from her perspective it seemed to last longer than that.

Then once again, she got this overwhelming feeling that it was time to leave. Yet again, the words came to her mind, “Whatever God commands is right.” This time it felt right, and she knew that it was right. She didn’t question it.

She climbed out the window, and she was gone, running as fast as she could to get away. The son had done his job well. She really wasn’t being tracked by anyone or anything, but she also knew that this wouldn’t last for long. Once the son realized that she was gone, he would try to find her, and the hunt would be on.

She was on the run now, determined to see how far she could get and determined to see as much of the world as she possibly could, before being captured and being beaten to within an inch of her life once again.

This was her last chance to see the world before turning fourteen and becoming the Master’s concubine and sex slave. She intended to make the most of it while she could, because she would never get such a chance ever again. And oh, was the world beautiful! It was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen in her life.

Mark My Words – Stealth Commander, Second Class

Soulmates