Broken Heart?

Most days were just like the previous day, and we had a routine that was set out for us. We rotated chores around between all the teams. There were cows to milk and chickens laid eggs which we had to find and gather. Gardens had to be weeded and tended. In short, all the tasks a small self-sufficient group would need to do.

Studies were essential, and if anyone fell behind I had to have the 'Talk' with them. Very few of our littles ever had more than one talk from me, once they reached their intermediate level. The young littles? Like all of them everywhere, they were short of attention span. The very young littles? An appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other….

I suspect that the farm style life was the way that it had always been done ever since the first Crèche was started. In my mind, it might have continued for two simple reasons: one, it worked and if ain't broke, don't fix it. Two, caring for babies, both human and animal, will instill a massive sense of responsibility in the ones caring for these babies.

Nothing seemed to be happening on the kidnapped front. On the Alex front, he appeared to be coping nicely. Ariel and Ai-chan seemed to be fighting over him at first. Yes, he still slept in my room, only now we were much more relaxed about changing in front of each other. If it were bath time, you would be likely to find Alex in the pool with Ai-chan on one arm and Ariel on the other. Depending on the chore rotation you could pick almost any one of my Ninja team and substitute one of them for either Ariel or Ai-chan. Everyone seemed to be on a kissing relationship with him, but those two had the edge over the rest.

Accidents happened all the time; it was almost impossible to live in such close quarters without accidents happening. No one else could figure out why Alex would still go bright red when he slipped and fell. For instance, there was the time he took Kate down with him on the slippery shower floor. He fell on his butt and slid a bit, knocking Kate down like a ten pin. She landed spread wide on his chest, facing almost into his mouth. Poor Alex about fainted that time.

Girls know what feels good on their bodies. I had more than once watched someone invite Alex to 'play' using the most direct of all invitations, only to see Alex pull away. Once I heard him as he was drifting off to sleep repeating to himself, 'look don't touch.' It was well known that if you played with Alex that hugging and kissing were within his limits, but beyond that, you would be not allowed back into his presence for a week. Surprisingly this punishment worked.

What I did know was that the more time I spent with him, the more, he grew to fit inside my heart. But I was not inside his hugging and kissing group, and my heart broke more every time I felt rejected.

My mom's had told me all kinds of stories about my Dad and all of them when they lived in a small one bathroom home before they all formed one big family, and now I was living their stories. It was too funny.

Days turned in to weeks, which turned into months. The one thing I noticed is that Alex was very diligent about keeping in shape and perfecting his fighting skills. Day by day, his shoulders were broadening out, creating that heart-stopping delta shape from shoulders hips. I was noticing a fine dusting of hair appearing on his chest. If I saw them, others would also. Also, his plastron was continually needing to be replaced to keep something hidden. If this kept on, I would have to have a serious talk with my team, as they were the only ones that Alex got close to in the showers. I also noticed that the closer Alex got to the girls on my team, the further he kept himself from me, and my heart started to break. I was also seeing that over the months, his favorite girl slowly changed. No one held the number one spot for long.

It was about time for me to leave the crèche, and I had been working with Dianna to tweak the caretaker's system so that all of my team would be graduated at the same time. Once we entered the world outside the caretaker system, is where things would start to get real. In the crèche, we were limited and under intense scrutiny by the caretakers even if it did not appear that way on the surface. But with Dianna's help, I had hacked their system, and I knew better.

One of the things that bothered me was that information about the abductions had been censored. Why would the caretaker system censor critical information like this? Once we graduated, I hoped that we would be free to answer a few questions.

On our last night before graduation, Alex climbed up into my bunk, laying almost on top of me, "I'm sorry, he whispered. Then it dawned on me he was not whispering, but rather this was direct communication through my neural network. I started to respond verbally, but his lips sealed mine. Even while my lips were sealed in the best way possible, he kept talking through our implants. "We have a lot to talk about, not the least is how to get back home. But right now I want you to know why I've avoided you. The powers that be did find some of the girls that had been kidnapped. The caretaker system killed them."

I started to thrash around, but his body held mine down, and his lips would not let a sound escape. The longer he kissed me, the more pliant I became. Until I relaxed against him and I started kissing him instead. The longer we kissed, the less my heart hurt. "OK, I think I can take it, finish your story."

Hesitating, he paused then said, " The kicker was they were killed because they were pregnant."

"Oh, no!" I sobbed into his mouth. "No, that can't be!"

"It is. My system finally reconnected with my mind; by the way, her name is Athena. She was able to hack into the core memory of the caretaker system." He laughed into my mouth, "That is one of the advantages of having hardware that is thousands of years more advanced, but at the same time harder as Athena had to reverse engineer a lot of old protocols before she could get into the data bank."

"Remember Skynet? Of classic movie fame? I know you've seen it, your Dad told us about it during training."

I interrupted Alex, "You know my Dad?"

"Oh, yeah. Don't make mistakes around your Dad! If you do you WILL remember him…"

I had to admit that he had a point.

"I'm afraid that the caretaker system has turned into a Skynet and is taking action to preserve its own existence."

Feeling a cold shiver run down my spine I said, "OK, so what do we do now."

Alex sighed, "Well, first, we escape. I did not dare act any different than any other girl here. And even more, I did not dare do anything that may compromise you. The system is already suspicious of both of us. In spite of all your devious hacking. I just wish that Athena had completed full repairs sooner because it hurt me to see you suffer."

"Suffer? You must be mistaken!" I lied and denied it.

His lips softened against mine, and I could not stand it. Then he shot me right in the heart. I doubt we will ever get back home and who knows what will happen tomorrow, but I want you to know that I've fallen in love with you."