Alex Wakes Up

The caretaker's facility was a small quaint white building on the outside, but inside it was all aseptic, sterile, barren, disinfected, and probably re-infected. The most homely thing there was an endless loop movie of some coral reef. Thankfully no humans were involved.

Now me against a computer? No question who was going to win in this backwater place. As I walked into the open exam room, I was already causing my implant to interface with the caretakers. I had to figure out how to hack the system ten years ago. Now it was like slipping between nice warm sheets.

I placed his body on the exam table and let the system do its job. The medical computer was freaking out over the difference in anatomy, but I soothed it. At least there was nothing major physically wrong with him. My 'claws' dug their way through the system and forged an ID for him. He sort of looked familiar to me, but if he was in my ship when it was destroyed, I couldn't remember him. I named him Alex. As he had been wearing neural network embedded armor just like mine, he had to be from my time. But why the ten-year gap? He looked somewhere around twelve, but we had kids as old as eighteen onboard.

I had the caretaker system manufacture a kind of plastron to hide the only visible difference between the sexes. After I fitted him with the flesh colored silicon plastron, he did not look significantly different than a young prepubescent girl. And as the caretakers had 'required' him to wear the plastron for protection, no one would comment on it after finding that out.

The caretaker system wanted to keep Alex for observation, which suited me just fine. I would have plenty of time to create a paper trail of how he got here before morning. I pulled up a reclining chair and settled down beside him. Letting my fingers run through his unfashionably long silky hair.

His eyes were green, his hair sandy blonde. His build was slightly effeminate, which would help with my masquerade. I fell asleep wondering what his story was.

Dianna, which is what I named the artificial intelligence that resided in my implanted neural network would keep watch. Dianna is a much cooler name than Bit, or Simp don't you think so too?

***

Morning bloomed just like any other morning. My eyes cracked open, and I felt disoriented to see that I was not in my bed. Then I moved and immediately felt his long silky hair slide through my fingers and fully woke up in a hurry. It was the first time I had ever slept with a boy and to have kept my hands in his hair all night! Just what was I thinking?

Seeing that he was still resting in a deep sleep, I hurried out and found one of my lieutenants. "Joan?"

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"As soon as your team finishes breakfast, relieve Dora and her team. Relay my orders to get breakfast and then get some sleep."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

I grabbed a change of clothes and headed for the showers. There were still a few stragglers primping before their morning started. It seemed to me that primping must be a universal female trait. I couldn't say that I was much different.

I think the water droplets hit most of my skin, but I was in and out so fast that I could have missed a few spots. I kept my hair simple; straight, long, and naturally fiery. A bit of eye shadow to make my large expressive powder blue eyes even more so. Then red lipstick to make my sensuous lips pop. A glance reminded me of my mother; I had a lot of her looks and all my curves where right where they should be. I had to laugh at myself, just because I had not seen a boy for ten years, was I turning into a typical eighteen-year-old overly hormonal girl?

I shoveled a couple of over easy eggs down with a slice of toast and a piece of bacon. Ahh, I hear the question marks all the way over here. Well, as best as I can determine the history of this planet. One of the exploration ships during the early part of space exploration must have crash landed. All ships back then carried a wide variety of seeds and zygotes of all kinds of species in suspended animation cryostasis tanks. Parthenogenesis will only yield two X chromosomes so even if it were a mixed crew reproducing this way after some sort of accidental damage to the males, which I doubt, the end product would be a colony of females.

All of my speculations and assumptions explained the all-female population in the here and now. I suspect that the crèches are massively old antiques. The caretakers must have collected every bit of DNA available and randomly threw it together, and the results were baked in artificial wombs. Over time that has become just the way, things are done. I doubt that any woman on this planet has ever born a child naturally. When a new baby is required, the caretaker- system assigns one of the crèches to care for it until the child turns into a trained adult. In any case, this all happened so many generations ago that there is not even a word left in their vocabulary to describe different sexes.

After breakfast, I hurriedly made my rounds. We functioned on an almost military basis, which makes me think that the shipwrecked crew was an all-female naval ship. Which, at the time-period, I suspect the crash happened, was a stand operating procedure. I saw things this morning that I had not really seen previously; couples being couples, girls dressing in close to nothing, it is going to be interesting around here.

Making myself comfortable next to 'Alex' I prepared to wait it out. At first, I just enjoyed looking at him, but the night's events snuck up on me. I woke up to an awareness that I was being watched.

Opening my eyes, I saw a pair of green eyes looking at me. "Did I die and go to heaven? Alex asked in very good Imperium. I could feel my face turning red.

"Umm, No." I managed to get through my suddenly constricted throat because his voice was as silky as his hair. "I rescued you after you crash landed. What do you remember of the crash?"

"Crash? I umm." Alex waffled, "I don't seem to have much of a memory, before waking up to see you sleeping next to me."

That's not good, I thought, "OK, how about your name?

Alex got that curious wondering look on his face, and I could almost feel the struggle to remember. "I don't remember."

"Well how about we call you Alex for now until you do remember? But what can you remember?"

Alex still had that almost cute, but frustrated look on his face as he struggled with a mind that was not cooperating. "Alex?" he stuttered, "Alex sounds nice. But I can't remember anything, it is all a blank!" his face exploded with sudden panic.

In that instant, my motherly instincts turned on—ragingly explosive mama bird type full-protective-mode instincts. Tears were starting to flood his eyes. His pout was flaring on to a full force young-cute-need-protection looking pout. I did what any protective mother type would do and pulled him into a hug, protecting him.

The tsunami of tears did not diminish as I simply held him, his face buried in my chest as his tears soaked my blouse. I was rocking back and forth as If I was holding one of the littles, comforting her. Just letting the flood of tears diminish naturally. Eventually, the hiccup stage arrived, and I could feel him starting to, hesitantly, pull away. His hand was blindly searching for his eyes to wipe away the tears. As his hand brushed past my breast, something in me erupted with a secret passion. I'd never say anything and how on earth I could have a feeling like this strike me out of nowhere about a total stranger—I had no comprehension. It had to be that protective feeling that I was experiencing.

Eventually, he recovered enough to sit back. Scrubbing his eyes, he mumbled," Sorry." He was opening his eyes when his red face turned scarlet. Mumbling and stumbling over his unintelligible words he kind of pointed towards my chest, before ducking and turning his head towards the wall.

That was when I realized that lots of tears on a white blouse had turned it translucent. Plus added on was that no one here wore a bra unless it was physically needed for support… Considering the mores of Terra where I had been raised, let alone the relaxed customs of my family—clothes or lack of them did not bother me. The only iron-clad rule was look but don't touch. But on some of the more colonial planets, they still covered up all the time. If that was where he was from… Oh my!

I had thought that I would have him bunk with me at first until he learned the language and customs of the Crèche. I could not think of a way around this. My room had bunks for me and my second in command. I could hide Alex until we figured out how to cope. If I stuck him in one of the dorm halls, there was no way we could keep his secret.

While my mind had been running around in circles, I had fluffed my blouse so that two little details no longer were visible through the material. And Alex had recovered his composure—or most of it.

"Are you feeling better? I asked.

Still red of face, Alex replied. "I'll live."

"Good to hear. Just relax and go with the flow. Things are far different here than anything you have ever experienced. I'll brief you on a few of the bigger things you are going to encounter. But first, did you grow up in one of the newer colonies?"

"Yes," Alex replied. "I grew up on..., I grew up on…"

"Easy." I interrupted, "It is OK, we just have to give you some time to recover. But I will be here for you. Relax, it is going to be OK." His breathing started to slow. "Sorry, but I need to hit you square between the eyes with one of the first big issues you are going to have to cope with. This won't be easy for you, but you are the only male on this planet."