by Alma Nilsson
It had been the most difficult for her eldest daughter Ellie. When Admiral Tir had asked for volunteers to return with him, she had tried to join that group of human women bound for the Alliance. Jim and Sandra had to physically restrain her from coming. Jane had cried so much when she had heard that. She had VMed her daughter, Earth technology was not advanced enough to RVMs across the galaxy yet and had told her that she didn’t want her to come to the Alliance and be subjected to the same fate she was.
Her daughter had messaged her back, “Mom, I don’t know why you act as if it might be the worst thing in the galaxy to go to the Alliance Empire. Are they not the most powerful in the galaxy and a place where everyone is treated well? Are you not still serving in the fleet with Captain Rainer as you always were, but on a much better ship with much more exciting missions?”
Jane was terrified that her daughter would volunteer, as she knew the Alliance planned on having an ongoing program to encourage volunteers from Earth. She wanted to make up lies about the Alliance to deter Ellie from ever coming, but as she was sure all of her transmissions were monitored, she couldn’t do it. All she could say in the end was, “Ellie, I want you to have a human life. There’s nothing greater or more special than that to a human. Don’t be drawn in by the material wealth of the Alliance.” Ellie did not react well to Jane’s VM at all. She swore at her mother, and they didn’t speak for months afterward. It broke Jane’s heart, but the last thing she wanted was for her daughter to move there and become a second-class citizen, as all humans were in the Empire. And whether Jane admitted it to herself or not, she didn’t want Ellie there because she would be a liability. As Head of House Human, Jane was responsible for a lot of women, adult women, but no one could use any of those women as leverage to get Jane to do something. However, Ellie could be easily used against her.
Jane poured herself a glass of scotch and sat down on the floor, thinking. She always thought better on the floor, it was a bad habit. She drank the scotch slowly and thought about how to handle this blow. She took deep breaths and then finished her drink, stood, and said, “Computer delete all VMs and messages from Jim Hughes.”
“Messages and VMs from Jim Hughes deleted,” replied the computer.
Jane poured herself another drink and sat back down on the floor. She finished that drink and then opened the internal communications, “Kiu, please come to my quarters as soon as you can.”
“On my way,” a male voice replied.
Minutes later, Jane’s door chimed, and she allowed the Alliance slave artist into her quarters. Kiu wore very little clothing over his muscular grey skin, just a small green covering over his genitals. His thick long black hair was tied back in an intricate braid that hung almost down to his slim hips, and he wore beautiful silver ornaments that made a soft chiming sound as he moved. He was Jane’s preferred slave artist for the last year onboard the Zuin. At first, she had been repulsed by the Alliance’s sexual practices, but after some months of being surrounded by everyone having constant sex, she welcomed Kiu’s touch. His expertise in sex and didn’t think twice about paying for it.
Kiu came in and as soon as the door closed behind him, he began kissing her. His hands in her short hair, similar to the look of a goddess. His tongue was teasing hers. He could taste the human drink on her tongue, and he reveled in the exoticness of it. His hands ran from her hair down the smooth human clothing that he loved to rub his body against. He pinched and rubbed her unpierced nipples through the silky human fabric. Then he moved one hand between her legs and rubbed her fur until she began to moan. Then he whispered seductively in her ear, “Is this what you need, Jane?”
She brought his lips to hers with her hands and then said breathlessly, “Yes, I need this so much. Make me forget what it was like to ever be with a human man.”
This was a frequent request that she had for him. He quickly picked her up and carried her to the bed and laid her down on her back. Kiu then stripped off the little clothing, revealing his perfectly toned and muscular body and said, looking down at her with his erect cock in his hand, “Human men have not been blessed with ridged penises,” he stroked his large penis as she watched. “And human men have been cursed with fur all over their bodies,” he ran his hands slowly from his penis to his chest, “Alliance men are hairless, beautiful and most of all,” Kiu began removing Jane’s silky pajamas skillfully as if they were melting off of her, “we love the taste of women on our tongues.” When Kiu had removed all of her clothing, he began licking her sex up and down, kissing the inside of her thighs and then finally sucking on her clitoris to make her writhe beneath him. He knew exactly how to make Jane come for him and what she liked. After she came, he flipped her on her stomach and covered her body with his, easing his ridged penis into her wet vagina from behind hitting her g-spot perfectly and said in her ear, “And Alliance penises feel so much better. It’s the way the goddess intended men to be, not smooth.” He slowly moved in and out as her hands grasped the blankets on the bed in pleasure.
Jane paid for Kiu to stay with her all night. They had sex countless times. It was what she needed, but she knew when he left, it wouldn’t be enough. Sex with Kiu was hollow. What she really needed was to forget about Jim and the children for a while, to accept her new situation, but she didn’t know how to do that. She so often told the other human women that they needed to accept their new Alliance life. She chided herself then and thought, I need to do as I say.
The next weeks were uneventful on the Zuin. The fleet was in transit towards a new Alliance colony, Leta, that was having issues. As Jane understood it, the citizens of Leta were refusing to accept Alliance rule. Admiral Tir’s fleet was joining Admiral Jei’s fleet carrying ground forces and diplomats to suppress the new colony’s residents.
When they arrived in orbit around Leta, Jane ate the midday meal at the officer’s table with Kara. After discussing the official plans, she told Kara about Jim and Sandra again. She had VMed with her children, and it had been heartbreaking how normal it had all been for them. Jane was so hurt. She had wanted her children to have some revolt against Sandra just taking her place in their house, but there had been nothing of the kind. They were all content.
“You should try this amnesia drug called forget-me-not. It’s straight out of Through the Looking Glass. It’ll make you forget Jim ever existed for a while. Apparently, it’s how Alliance people get over things faster.” Kara was a decade younger than Jane but had been her commanding officer both in the human and now the Alliance fleet. Not only were they crewmates, but they were friends as well.
“I don’t think I need to do that,” Jane said adamantly, but actually was already wondering how the drug would work and what that would feel like. Jane didn’t like to admit defeat, but she did want something to help her, she felt old and betrayed by Jim and Sandra. She had tried to reason with herself that Sandra would be a good stepmother to her children, and all the children, Sandra and Jane’s children, got along well. And that this solution was the next best thing to her being there. But every time she thought about Sandra in bed with Jim, she couldn’t move past it. And since Jim had told her, Sandra had not VMed her, and she had not reached out to Sandra. This silence hurt Jane immensely, but she didn’t know what to say to her friend either. Every time she thought about them in bed together, she became irrationally jealous and couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been going on.
“It’s not forever, just long enough that you can move past this. By the time the memories or feelings come back, I must admit I don’t know exactly how it works, but by the time it wears off, you’ll have already created a better life for yourself here, emotionally.”
“That might work if it was a true break up, and I had to see Jim and Sandra around every day, but I’m here, and they are there. It wasn’t a true breakup,” Jane explained.
Kara just shook her head, “It doesn’t matter how the breakup happened. It was a true break up as you were never going to get back togethe
r with Jim as you are never going back to Earth. But I guess you still had your fantasy that he would pine away for you forever. Go see John in sickbay, he will explain how the drug works. It’s the very least you can do. If you don’t want to take it after he explains it then just carry on feeling sorry for yourself, I’ll listen. I’m not that cold-hearted,” Kara said, thinking that Jane just needed to get over Jim, and she was so tired of this conversation. It was obvious to her that Jim and Sandra had been probably having this relationship for a long time and now that Jane was out of the picture, they waited an appropriate amount of time and then came clean. Kara didn’t point out that this is probably why the children were so comfortable with it as well, Sandra had been around a lot even before Jane had been relocated to the Alliance.
“I’m not that bad,” Jane said quietly, annoyed with Kara for making her out to be some whiny teenager. She and Jim had been together for decades and had children together.
“I know what kind of coffee Jim prefers. You are terrible. You need to forget about him,” Kara said just as quietly. “He’s moved on and you need to do the same.”
Jane didn’t have a response to that. She just nodded and finished her lunch silently. Afterward, she went by sickbay. She told herself if she saw John through the glass and he didn’t look busy, she would drop by. If he was working, she would just keep going. It was fate, she thought and then berated herself, You’re becoming so Alliance, believing in fate. The Alliance Empire was steeped in religion, requiring its citizens to pray every day, and as a result, many people believed that the gods controlled all of their destinies. Jane had never been religious, as very few people on Earth believed in religion anymore. Still, when she caught herself thinking about fate like this, she did start to wonder if all this pseudo praying, she was doing was becoming real praying. Sometimes she wondered if she would go to pray one day and truly feel that the gods were genuine, and that prayer mattered.
As Jane casually passed sickbay and looked in, John was there with one of his staff and no one else. She sighed and said, “Fate,” under her breath, and went in.
“Jane,” John greeted her with a smile. They had served together for many years on different starships in both the human and now Alliance fleet. John had even met Jim and her children on several occasions. “What can I do for you?”
“Can I talk to you privately?”
“Sure,” he gestured towards his circular glass office in the center of sickbay. When they were both inside, he closed the door and made sure that what they said, thought and did would be completely private. All of John’s Alliance medical staff were telepathic, and he never knew when they were listening to his thoughts. John sat down and looked at Jane, she looked tired, “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Jane lied.
“Okay,” John said, not convinced at all that she was fine given her bedraggled appearance, “What’s happened?”
Jane began to cry as if being with John alone was all the permission, she needed to let her guard down and after a couple minutes, said, “Jim has found someone else. I’ve been telling him to do that ever since we were deemed ‘traitors to humanity,’ but for the last year, he told me he would never stop loving me. But now… he told me a couple weeks ago he found someone new and now I’m completely heartbroken as if I were still there and we were still together. I feel like he is cheating on me, even though he isn’t. I can’t shake the feeling. I don’t know why I can’t move on.” Jane sobbed into her hands.
John just waited for Jane to continue. He knew she was a sensible woman and that her partner finding someone else was not the issue necessarily, that there was more.
“What’s really difficult is that now he’s with my best friend, Sandra. And she’s moved into our home, I mean, Jim’s home now, with her children and is now a stepmother to my children,” Jane sobbed. “I feel like I’m a ghost hanging around for any information about them through VMs, and it’s turning me into a poltergeist.”
John had not been expecting her to say that and had to hold back a smile at calling herself a poltergeist. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Jane. This situation must be so tough. But let me reassure you that I doubt anything was going on while you and Jim were together. He loved you, and you two had a great relationship. He has waited almost over a year, all the while you telling him you are never coming back. I know you don’t want to hear this, but sometimes when people both lose someone they love, that loss brings them together. I suspect that’s what has happened with Jim and Sandra. They have bonded over the loss of you, as difficult as that is to hear.”
“I don’t know, I’ve been going over everything in my mind, and I can’t stop wondering. Was there a look or comment here or there, and I missed it because I was so enamored with him? We had always been together, he was my first love, my first everything.” She started to sob again, “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
John put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, “I’m sorry. Our situation is not an easy one. Having to give up all of our relationships back home. Have you spoken to Jim or Sandra about it?”
Jane shook her head, “I’ve been too upset. I didn’t want to say something I’d regret to either of them. It was my fault for putting all of us in this situation, to begin with. I’m the one who joined the fleet and who signed up for the war with the Jahay. I knew the risks. If Admiral Tir hadn’t taken us prisoner, we’d all be dead, but now, sometimes, I have to admit, maybe that would’ve been better. This heartache is killing me. I never understood how someone could die from a broken heart,” she put her hand over her heart with her fist and said, “but now I know. I know, and it’s the most dreadful feeling I’ve ever experienced, and I don’t know if I can go on.” She wiped the tears away and looked down at her boots.
John knew that Jane was not a woman of inaction, “So, what have you been doing about these feelings?”
“I’ve been sleeping with my favorite slave artist and drinking a lot of whiskey.”
“And is that helping?”
“You know it’s not, or I wouldn’t be here,” she snapped.
John smiled at her, sympathetically, “Would you like to set up some psychotherapy sessions to talk through all of this?”
“With you?”
“Would you prefer one of my Alliance doctors?”
“No, I’d prefer no one. Kara told me about an amnesia drug, you could give me to make me forget Jim for a while.”
“Forget-Me-Not,” John said quietly. “It’s not really the rational human way to do it. I’m surprised that you, of all people, are requesting it.”
“We aren’t on Earth anymore; John and I don’t want to suffer through this. Jim and Sandra aren’t suffering, and I need to VM my children without making them feel guilty about what their father and Sandra are doing,” she broke down crying again. “I’m never going to be there again; I don’t want to cause trouble from afar because I’m weak. I want to talk to them freely without this hovering over our conversations like a raincloud. I want them to be able to talk to me about everything. Those VMs are all I have left of them and I can’t gamble with them. And I know every time I talk to them now, I’m on the verge of ruining those relationships too.”
John looked at Jane, considering, “Fine, I’ll do it, but only for a few months, less than a year. I know you, Jane, and you’ll want to heal naturally from this, not just wish it away. But I also understand that you don’t want to make this anymore awkward for your children or jeopardize those relationships when you’re so far away. Maybe it’s good you set a healthy foundation with the help of the forget-me-not procedure,” John stood up then and escorted Jane out of his office to a padded silver medical bed. “Please,” he indicated she should lie down.
Jane wiped the tears from her blue eyes, red from crying and drinking, and followed John to the medical bed where she proceeded to lie down.
“I cannot just erase Jim and Sandra from your life, obviously, but I’ll dampen them in your consciousness. Yo
u’ll know them, who they are to you, and remember everything, but you’ll feel nothing towards them, it’ll be like I’m putting them in a closed jar on the pantry shelf for a while. You’ll know you have those memories, but you won’t be able to access them. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” replied Jane, not really understanding how all of this would work, but she trusted John with her body and mind.
John nodded to one of his assistants, “I’ll need Doctor Ko to help me enter your mind and do this. Just relax.” Alliance doctors not only had access to superior medicine but were also mind-readers and manipulators.
Jane suddenly felt cold Alliance hands holding one of hers as John programmed a computer. She saw an image of her brain light up on a nearby transparent medical screen.
“Close your eyes,” John instructed gently.
Jane obeyed and waited. She felt nothing except the Alliance doctor’s hands on hers.
“Jane,” Doctor Ko said softly, “I’m in the process finding these memories and separating your emotions from them. As there are many years, and these are deep emotions, it will take some time. Also, I must warn you while you have this emotional separation, you may react to things differently as many of these memories and emotional experiences shaped who you are now. Be wary of being too optimistic or carefree in the next months as it is one of the most common side effects of altering such a vast number of emotions. And you don’t want to make too many drastic decisions while your memories are blocked.”
