The Inter-Galactic Transfer Point 27
Part 1 – On a world, far away
I was off-duty and sitting at an observation window looking out into the dark void when my best, that is, only friend joined me to contemplate the darkness of space. I say darkness but it wasn’t truly dark; there were millions of light specks out there, all showing where a sun and a possibly inhabited world may be.
My friend is Epsilon 32 and, as you would probably guess, is a little older than me, as my name is Gamma 12. Everyone on the Transfer Point has a name that signifies how long they have been here. I do remember, when I was very young, being spoken to by Alpha 60, the last of the original crew, but it was now long gone and the oldest Officer is Beta 12. Most of the working stiffs in the Transfer Point are Deltas and I am now the youngest to be trained in the mysterious methods of Transfer. My friend, Epsi, and I work together on our shift but it tends to spend its whole time looking at its device, leaving me with all the work
IGTP 27 is a tiny spot on a tiny world in a vast and endless arm of the Andromeda Galaxy. What we do is mine a specific mineral which this world has in abundance and it gets taken away in transport jump-cruisers. The mineral is in great demand as it is processed with other elements to make the fuel that the jump engines use. I have the idea that there are only a few worlds with such a supply of high grade mineral in the whole Universe.
Epsi had been lucky to get such a good job in the main pod as most of the younger crew were busy mining and that meant that the workers were mainly Epsilons, although there were only two other Gammas on the planet besides me. It sat next to me and we just gazed outwards for a while before it said that we had better get some food as it was nearly time for our shift.
After grabbing some munchies from the CrewChef we went to our duty post, a stuffy room with lots of screens, panels and about a zillion switches that was our pride and joy for the next eight planetary hours. Looking at our roster we saw that there was a jump-cruiser due in about an hour, which gave us time to check the systems. The transfer itself never took long, we were using a device which everyone called ‘Scottie’ and it de-materialised the items at one end and re-materialised it at the other. It was not a difficult job, one just had to remember that the code for the link being secure was ‘The Beam is up’ and a successful transfer was confirmed by the code ‘Cargo is Spock on’. It all seemed strange to me but I had been drilled with the correct codes and told that they were a remnant of our history and should never be forgotten.
There was a vague rumour that I remember from my early days that the ‘Scottie’ had once been used to transport humans but we never used it for that these days. My training had insisted on that and the reason given was that our particular ‘Scottie’ had a glitch which affected a human passing through it, no matter what direction you were going. They were going to send us another one, or so someone said about twenty planetary years ago, but we just had to put up with the one we had for the moment. It had no effect on the cargo, though. We got all the supplies we needed and the mineral went as it should.
When the jump-cruiser appeared at the jump end point we opened up communications with the crew and verified what they were sending down to us. This time we had fifty empty mineral containers and twenty containers of supplies. There was an automated system we used and one-by-one the containers were ‘Scottied’ down with the system taking them to the right place on the base. We then lined up fifty full containers of mineral which were sent up to the cruiser. We monitored all of the process on screens to make sure everything went well. We could see their ‘Scottie bay’ on our screen so that we never sent something into a space already occupied.
The whole process took up most of our shift and the Captain of the jump-cruiser or else one of its officers remained in constant communication with us. At the end of it they thanked us for a job well done and then laughed when they signed off, saying “Tranny 27, we will be back.” After they jumped away we shut down our ‘Scottie’ as there was not another transfer scheduled until our next shift. I commented that we seemed to get all of the transfers lately and Epsi said that it was probably because we were the best operators on the planet.
As we walked the corridor to our quarters I said “I wonder why they never turn their vid-link on; we can see their ‘Scottie’ bay but we never get to see the crew. I suppose they can’t see us, either.” Epsi laughed and said “Sure they can see us, there are two vid-links in the control room and they are on the whole time we are in operation. I suspect that they have a good reason for us not seeing their control room but I have not yet figured out what it could be.”
It then showed me what it had been doing today while I did all the work. It had delved into the base library and pulled up as much history of the planet as it could. We went and sat by the window again while I had a look at it. There were some pictures of some of the original settlers and I recognised Alpha 60. It was listed as the head of the youngest ‘family’ that had been sent to this planet. I asked Epsi what a family was and it didn’t know and said that there was nothing in the records that explained the word but there were big chunks of records that had been wiped out.
We had an after-shift snack from the CrewChef and went to our own rooms. My room was not large but you don’t need it to be when all you do there is sleep. All our clothing was issued into a slot every start of our day and the old clothes went into a hopper for recycling. Other than my sleeping tube there was just a set of drawers with some keepsakes in them, such as some of the toys I played with when I was very young. Growing up on Tranny 27 meant learning about living and working on the base.
My toys were mainly models of the mining machines and bits and pieces of the equipment we used every day. I had learned how to repair pretty much every bit of equipment we used inside the base and I know that most of the Epsilons had learned how to take a mining machine apart and put it back together again. As I thought about it I was struck by the fact that there were so few of us Gammas here and that there had been no new crew-members since I was created. I knew that the other two Gammas worked with the Betas in their section. The only time I had met with one it looked different from me.
All of the workers on the base kept their hair in a buzz-cut for overall cleanliness. This Gamma, however, had longer hair down to its shoulders. Its clothing was different to mine and was a much finer material that draped very nicely on its body. Mine was a good, hard wearing cloth and much duller. Gamma 3 told me that it had been told to talk to a certain Delta on our decks and had been surprised at how plain our quarters were, compared to the Beta ones. I asked it about its hair and uniform and it said that it was what the Betas wanted to see and its companion there, Gamma 7, looked much the same. We didn’t have much time to talk and that was the last time I saw another Gamma for quite a while.
I lay in my sleeping tube and, for the first time, wondered about the future. I had been of working age now for over ten planetary years and there had never been a sign that there would be more of us. I had been pretty much all over the base and no-where had I seen a facility that could be used to make replacements. There were medical rooms but no-where looked like it could be used for cloning. Then it struck me that we could not be cloned as almost every crew member I have even seen looked a bit different. It was a real puzzle but I allowed myself to sleep to the soothing music inside my tube.
When I woke up I stood in the cleaning tube for a few minutes as the ultra-sonics cleaned my body and then took my new uniform and put my arms and head into the holes and allowed the material to drop over my body and then I was ready for some food. We all wore soft slippers inside the base and my movements were almost silent as I went to the CrewChef and got some munchies and a drink. A few minutes later Epsi joined me and asked me to come with it to a quiet corner because it had found out some interesting things.
Firstly, it said, of the twenty containers we had received on our last shift, fifteen of those had contained droids. My head shot up at this as droids were a rare commodity at the best of times and never been known of on Tranny 27. It said that two containers contained what was described as ‘domestic/pleasure’ droids and had been consigned to the Beta and some Delta quarters. The rest were ‘mining worker’ droids and had gone straight out to the mining site. That was weird, my thoughts had been answered,; the miners were going to be replaced by droids. I had no idea what the ‘pleasure’ part of the other droids was, it was an alien concept to both of us as the only pleasure we had experienced was the joy of a job well done. I now wanted to know much more but had no idea of how to go about it.
Marianne G 2021
Inter-Galactic Transfer Point 27
Part 2 The Visitor.
A few planetary weeks later another part of the puzzle was answered, if not shown to us completely, but at least we were given a few more facts. At the start of one day the two other Gammas joined us at the CrewChef and told us that they had been re-assigned because the new droids did everything better than they did, without any complaining or needing extra rations.
They said that the droids looked far better than they had on a good day and the Betas were now all smiles. I said that they now had the same uniforms and haircut as the rest of us and Gamma 7 said that it had been the worst time of its life when it was buzz-cut and the comfortable uniform had been exchanged to the rough and scratchy ones they now wore. I had never thought of mine as scratchy but as soon as it said that it felt rough.
The two of them had been assigned to the ‘Scottie’ system and were spending their days working through the lessons on how to operate it. They had been told that there would be more jump-cruisers coming our way in the future and that we would need to run two shifts. I had not been told of this and wondered about the veracity of the information but kept my peace. Epsi was over the moon at having a couple of extra bodies to help out, even if it did very little of the work.
The weeks passed and eventually we were all rostered on the same shift to give the new ones a hands-on trial with the ‘Scottie’. They had been trained well and when a jump-cruiser arrived we all took turns to receive and then send containers. Well, three of us did while Epsi kept referring to its device and making notes of the container numbers as they arrived. When we sent the cruiser on its way Epsi announced that the load had contained another large supply of mining droids and some more ‘domestic/pleasure’ droids that were destined for the Delta quarters. The other two Gammas exchanged looks at this bit of information. They still had not told us what they actually did for the Betas above cleaning and entertaining.
On our next shift we did not have a cruiser rostered but were instructed to take the two Gammas though the whole process and mark them to see if they could do it alone. We did a few trial exchanges without pushing the Spock button and they worked out quite well. Suddenly the speaker announced that a jump-ship was about to appear and to be ready. When it did arrive it was not a jump-cruiser with a cargo, no; this one was something we had never seen before, a Jump-liner and the only things it carried were passengers.
When we made contact with their ‘Scottie’ control we were very surprised when the screens flickered into life and we could see them. At first there was just an officer who told us that they had experienced some troubles and gave us a list of things that they needed and that they would stay in orbit until we could send it all up to them so that they could complete the repairs needed. It said that they knew that there would be no trips to the planet for the passengers as we had a glitch with our ‘Scottie’ and that they were sorry about that. It then said something very strange. It said “I think that I now see why they call you Tranny 27.”
We sent the list to our stores to make up the containers and then it was a waiting period until we could make the transfer. During that time some of the crew came into their control room to say ‘Hello’ and they were all wearing a uniform which had a separate tube for each leg. We wondered among ourselves about this at seemed very odd to us. And then a crewmember walked into view that changed our thinking dramatically.
It was of similar height but the body shape was different and wrapped in a uniform that showed the body to best advantage. The hair, though, was a mass of curls, tumbling down its back. The two other Gammas were almost crying when they saw it, saying that theirs had been nearly as long when they had been buzz-cut. This wondrous crew-member looked at the screens and then said “What’s the problem with you lot, haven’t you seen a real woman before?” The screens and communications then went black and silent. Epsi asked the one question we all were thinking of; “What’s a woman?”
I said ”If that’s a woman, then it is wearing a similar uniform to us, but so much nicer.” The other two Gammas were now crying great sobs and we sat them in easy chairs for them to get themselves together. When they did recover Gamma 7 said that the Betas used to refer to them as their women and that they had been always dressed in a similar fashion when they were in ‘pleasure mode’. We looked blank and it dawned on them that we had no idea of what they were talking about. Gamma 3 said quietly that if we knew of a very isolated spot on the base that was not covered by vid they would gladly show us.
The important change was that now they were both certain that they wanted to get on board that liner. We told them that no human had gone through the ‘Scottie’ for many years as it was faulty. Gamma 3 insisted that it would be better off dead than carry on in the way it was now forced to. Gamma 7 was in total agreement and I must say that I was starting to feel the same way myself. Epsi was very quiet and studying his device.
When the screens came back on there was a senior officer looking at us and it asked us if we knew what the problems with our ‘Scottie’ was and we said that we had no idea but had been told that it was dangerous for humans. It told us that they would need several planetary rotations to do the repairs after we had sent the needed equipment and that it would get back to us with some more information later but for now it said it was needed in a meeting.
What threw me was that it said it had a package that we could look at if we activated the ‘Scottie’ and asked where the package should be consigned to so that only the four of us would see it. We gave it that information and took delivery of a package which the automated system delivered to Epsis’ quarters. We left the other two to monitor the system while Epsi and I went to pick up the package.
Back in our control room we locked the doors and Epsi did a bit of programming on his device which, he assured us, turned off the vid-links in the room. He then took the device that had been sent to us and turned it on to start looking through the options. It turned out to be a history module and when we looked up Transfer Point 27 we found a whole new world that opened up for us and changed us all for ever.
The biggest thing was that we discovered what a woman was and saw that we were a human they called men. We then found that a ‘family’ included a man and a woman and small ones they called ‘children’. The story was that Tranny 27 had been built and then twenty ‘families’ had been sent down using the ‘Scottie’ and the builders had left them to settle in. It looked like the first twenty years went well but some of the ‘Alpha women’ started dying in childbirth and all the subsequent ‘children’ were men. Some ‘Beta women’ did give birth to more ‘Delta women’ and the ones that produced us three Gammas were the last on the planet. Any woman sent down by ‘Scottie’ arrived unable to reproduce and generally only lived a few planetary years.
Looking at the list I found that the Alpha I remembered had been the last one alive and happened to be an ancestor of mine. I learned how we came into the world and it was a lot to take in. I also discovered that the ‘woman’ that had created me had been Delta 17 and that her body had been the last human body to be sent to a jump-ship for a return to ‘her’ home world that arrived unchanged.
The whole concept of men/women/families/birth was totally new to me but was not so strange to the other Gammas. With the doors locked and the vid-links off they then showed us what the word ‘pleasure’ meant and it made me feel very odd indeed. My pee-pipe did things that it had never done before. What made me feel stranger was the fact that I was the last of the line. That’s why all of these mining droids were coming down. No-one would come and join us and the ones remaining had been given the means to be well looked after before they died. I expect that the whole base would be automated long before the last one passed away.
It was the final part of the information that sealed our fate. It stated that every ‘man’ who was ‘Scottied’ up to a waiting jump-ship after the Delta 17 transfer arrived having been changed to a ‘woman’ and it had been decided that no more would be allowed to leave. Gamma 7 made a shrill cry when we read that and said “If we get into a package going up we would arrive changed. It would be wonderful!”
I must say I was not so sure I wanted to look like the wondrous creature we had seen but the idea slowly crept up on me. We re-activated the vid-links and told our Beta officer that we would man the ‘Scottie’ controls around the clock with overlapping shifts so that the liner would be away as soon as they could. It, or should I say, ‘he’ was very happy to hear that and told us to get them away as quickly as we could because there would be a jump-cruiser rostered in a couple of days. We split the next few days into constant shifts with me and Gamma 3 taking half the time and Epsi and Gamma 7 taking the other half. We decided that we would sort out any attempt to stow-away when the time came. In the meantime we were to find out everything we could.
We contacted the liner and told them that we would be available around the clock and they were happy about that. They did say that they could move to another orbital point while they did the repairs so we could do our thing with the incoming cruiser. Our first shift was just a sixth of the day and Epsilon 32 and Gamma 7 went off to catch a bit of shut-eye and some food. While they were away Gamma 3 showed me again what pleasuring was all about and what it meant to be pleasured if I was able to get off-planet. I was starting to like it!
Marianne G 2021
Inter-Galactic Transfer Point 27
Part 3 – Escape Plans!
After Epsi and 3 came back, more refreshed but bearing munchies to help them stay awake, 7 and I went off for our one-sixth break. After this we would be moving to one-third breaks so that everyone would get a proper rest.
In my sleeping tube I set an alarm and tried to get some sleep but my mind was racing around in circles with all the information that had come my way. Eventually, the efforts of a half-day shift caught up with me but it felt that I had only got a few minutes before the alarm woke me. I met up with 7 at the CrewChef for some munchies and we took some more with us to the control room. While we had been away the other two had been busy sending equipment up to the liner and Epsi told me to see if I could look at the new device when I had a chance. He had left a list of pages I should look at.
There were more containers being lined up as we started the shift so we dealt with those first. When we had a bit of spare time 7 wanted to show me more pleasuring but I said that it could wait as we needed information more than that. When I looked at the device I saw that Epsi had been looking at the history of the personnel on the planet. There were some pictures and I gasped when I saw one of Delta 17. I looked a lot like it, or should I say ‘her’ now. All this he/she/him/her stuff was making my brain hurt.
The last page it had noted was a list of the current crew on the base. There were just four Betas left, eight Deltas and fifteen Epsilons; plus us three Gammas. Epsi had made a note that the last shipment of ‘pleasure droids’ were enough for all the Betas and Deltas. We kept the vid-links on and tried to look as if everything was normal. Which was lucky as our Beta officer came on screen and told us that the jump-cruiser was scheduled for two shifts in the future; and that it had a lot of containers to ‘Scottie’ down. It was up to us to get the liner loaded and away from the jump point.
I contacted the control room on the liner and gave them the deadline and the officer there said that there was not much more he needed. It sent a check-list and I sent that down to stores to get them to hurry it up. During our shift the stores put together everything needed and we sent it up to the liner. They then prepared to move position in the planetary orbit for us. The rest of our shift was quiet and 7 started telling me of what went on between the Betas and the two Gammas. I must say I was shocked at the things it described but it told me that the worst Beta was the one who was our officer and that it was very mixed up Beta indeed!
When Epsi and 3 relieved us I told them that the jump-cruiser could be getting to us towards the end of their shift and that we had been told that there were a lot of containers coming down. I told Epsi that if it arrived towards the end of the shift to give us a call to get us back early as I expected that there would be too much work for one if Epsi was going to monitor the cargo manifests.
It did happen just as we thought and 7 and I met at the CrewChef and loaded up with munchies for all of us. Between us we down-shipped fifty containers and Epsi was madly trying to keep up with the manifest as none were empty. The other two then left for a shorter break as they were almost asleep, while 7 and I sent the fifty containers of minerals up to the cruiser. Looking at the destinations of the cargo that came down, even I could see that something big was going on.
When Epsi and 3 came to relieve us it did the device thing and gave us full privacy. Only then it told us that the loads that came down included twenty ‘pleasure droids’ which would be enough for the rest of us on planet, as well as a brand new ‘Scottie’ with a capacity three times more than our current one. There were also a full team of ‘construction droids’ and extra equipment which it thought would turn the new ‘Scottie’ into one that could be automated or controlled by the visiting cruiser. We were about to be made redundant.
We were able to get back into a better work level once the cruiser had jumped away. The liner was still at the repair point but we were able to talk to their control room and became quite friendly with a couple of the officers. The ‘woman’ officer did come back and apologised for its outburst and said that it had been brought up to speed with our situation and was very sorry for us. It asked us why we all wore a ‘dress and it was explained that this was standard uniform that the base computer issued every day, grey for the Deltas and any Epsilon or Gamma on the base and yellow for all those who did the mining. 7 told her that the Betas in charge wore red or gold ones which was something I did not know, having never seen one in the flesh.
We told ‘her’ that we were all about to be made redundant and were destined to live our lives out on the planet with absolutely nothing to do as we had just taken delivery of enough droids to do all the work, as well as a brand new automated ‘Scottie’. Both 3 and 7 wished that they could get transferred to the liner as they were prepared to take the chance of death rather than endless boredom and ‘she’ said “Leave it with me, I will see what I can do.”
The liner stayed where it was for several rotations while we got another cruiser visit, this one being more normal with just everyday supplies and empties coming down and minerals going up. Finally the high level officer came on our screens and asked us which ones were prepared to chance our ‘Scottie’ and we were all wanting to go, having agreed on that some shifts ago. It told us that they would be able to move to the jump point soon and that, when they were there, they would put in a request for a number of items that may take a couple of shifts to make.
They would send us a device that we could splice into our controls which would give them control of our end and that it would be up to us to be inside the ‘Scottie’ when they uplifted the container remotely. This sounded doable to us and we made our plans to leave the planet with that shipment. When they were back at the jump point the request included four sleeping tubes to ‘replace faulty ones’.
From talking to the odd Delta we came across at the CrewChef we discovered that the new ‘Scottie’ was coming along apace and we realised that this uplift may be the very last one we would have a chance to be part of. The device that they sent was duly spliced into our system and we tested it with a small container of medical supplies. The four of us then locked the control room and made our way, very carefully, to the last container and secreted ourselves in the four replacement sleeping tubes. I lay there waiting to be changed or, maybe, to die. 3 and 7 were hyper and I could hear them fidgeting in their tubes. Epsi was quiet as it had the most to lose.
In fact Epsi had been very quiet for a number of shifts, ever since we proved that the override worked. I knew that it was not sure about becoming a ‘woman’ but the concept of spending the rest of its life looking out the window while droids did all the work was not something it could consider. One day it had suddenly said to me as we were changing over the shifts “Do you wonder that there may be droids we have taken on-planet that may be programmed to vent the base once the new system is working. No-one will ever know, or care.”
We felt the movement as the container was placed in the ‘Scottie’ and I waited to die. What happened next was almost too quick to take in. It was if I had blacked out for a few seconds and then I was fully conscious again, only now I felt very different. When the container was shifted away from the ships ‘Scottie’ it was opened up and I heard voices saying, “There they are, get the medics.”
As I was helped out of the sleeping tube I could feel bits of me that had not been there before, as well as an odd feeling where my pee-pipe had been. Another thing that was different was that I now had masses of hair. As I stood I saw that I was still wearing my issue uniform but that it fitted a lot better than it used to. I got a real shock when my companions stood in front of me as they were all identical. I said, in a very different voice, you all look the same and one of them looked at the others and me and said “Yes, and you are identical as well.”
When I looked closer I saw that a lot of features were the same that I used to have and then I staggered and said “We go through all of that and we end up looking like Delta 17!” One of the ships officers asked “Who is Delta 17?” I told him that ‘she’ was my ‘mother’ and it was her body we all had been re-materialised in. “That’s the reason for the glitch” I said “The ‘Scottie’ must have saved ‘her’ profile for all subsequent humans that went through the machine. No-one has ever explained how the ‘women’ died and it could be that they just stopped working. I don’t feel ill or infirm.”
We were taken in hand by the ‘woman’ officer who told us to call her Gloria. ‘She’ took us to a medical centre where we were tested and measured and given an old-fashioned bath in scented water. This was a new experience for all of us as there was never enough water on Tranny 27 to wash in, let alone immerse oneself in. We were then given a very sleek uniform that Gloria called a ‘nightie’ and told to get into our beds and sleep as long as we wanted.
Marianne G 2021
Inter-Galactic Transfer Point 27
Part 4 – A very different life!
I really don’t know how long I slept but I woke feeling refreshed and alive. I was no longer at the beck and call of a Beta or Delta and realised that, in appearance, I was Delta myself. All of that worry, all of that fear and all of that planning and I ended up the spitting image of my ‘mother!’
As I opened my eyes I saw one of the team that had looked after us previously and ‘she’ said that I must have been very tired as they were now a very long way from Tranny 27. Gradually I was cleaned and dressed in a very form-fitting version of my old uniform, given some soft slippers to wear and taken into another cabin where I found the other three eating a meal together. They all stood and enveloped me in their arms, saying, “Thank goodness you are all right, we were worried.”
They each had a badge attached to their uniform, all similar to the one I wore, and I was given one myself. It read 17 and I realised that I was, as far as everyone was concerned, the recreation of my mother. The others had 3, 7 and 32 so that I could see which was which. While we ate a meal unlike any other I had experienced, the team assembled and we were told that we would have duties while we were on the liner and that we would need to undertake an instruction course on who we were now, with especial concentration on how to act like a woman.
As we spoke I could start to see the personalities of my companions coming through. 3 and 7 were almost bubbling over with excitement which was redoubled after they had been told that they would be put to work as ‘hostesses’ on the pleasure deck. It was a job they had been training for all their short lives and I was happy for them. 7, in particular, was looking forward to seeing how her new body worked. Epsi and I had impressed the officers with our skill at the ‘Scottie’ desk and we were told that we would be employed there as it was a very busy facility with a usual planetary visit. They had tracking systems so that anyone who went down could be called back instantly if needed.
And so my new life started, now a long way from home with very little reason to go back. Epsi told us that he had looked at the list of names of everyone on board and had decided that she wanted to be called Eve in future. I said that I just had to be Delta. We spent the next few weeks being shown what our bodies needed to stay healthy, how to walk, talk and act so that no-one would believe that we had never been anybody but the girls we now were.
On top of that we had a lot of sessions with the “Scottie’ officers on a far newer system than the one we were used to. This one could put goods or humans into multiple locations, monitor them and bring them back. At times we were sent down to planets to see for ourselves what the experience was like and then spent some time working as ground-based crew to look after the passengers. It was a whole new world for us, made even more different when we hooked up with a couple of the officers and found out just what pleasure could be had with our new equipment.
Eve had developed a liking for studious clothing and was the first of us to wear a blouse and skirt. I became quite colourful and just loved flowing dresses that were a long way from the old uniforms. It was strange that our whole life in those same uniforms had set us up to transfer to proper clothing that a woman would wear. 3 and 7, or Jenny and Julie as they liked to be called now, had gone the whole way to be a ‘pleasure hostess’ and their outfits never left much to the imagination. They did say that they were having a lot more fun than looking after randy Betas and that they both had been amassing nice gifts.
The thing that really brought home to us about the big change we had made was the other men and women we met among the crew and the passengers. They all looked different! They had not been descended from the same set of families and it was almost intoxicating to be in their midst as we were sent down to a new planet. Even before we had been re-materialised looking similar it was odd how similar we had all looked like on Tranny 27.
The ‘Sultans Harem’ that our liner was called, jumped from planet to planet, across to other constellations and hardly ever stopped for long anywhere. I was told that we were one of several liners where you could buy a trip to be looked after in every way possible, from food and experiences to all kinds of pleasure for as long as you could afford it or even stand it. Some passengers left us on planets to wait for the next liner to arrive and then head off somewhere else.
Our partners asked Eve and I if we wanted to spend some time on a planet and get up-loaded onto another liner as the two of us had become well respected ‘Scottie’ operators with messages from other liners asking us to come and work with them. We thought about it for a long time and it was just that our Captain told us that we had well and truly worked our passage which put us over the edge to take a break. Our guys, as I now thought of them, were very happy and we made arrangements to go down to a very nice planet with breathable air and a moderate climate. We spent a couple of months just relaxing and getting a lot of pleasure there before being picked up by another liner, this one was a specialised one for the older passenger and it was a lot easier than the ‘Harem’.
The ‘God Jumper 10’ was a lot quieter and the passengers far more polite and easy to get along with. One day I was helping an older woman on a planetary visit when she remarked “You know, you look a lot like the picture I have of my great-great-grand aunt.” She showed it to me and I was amazed. I asked her if her name was Delta and she laughed, saying “Oh no, she was called Elsie and she married a man who took her off to some god-forsaken planet with a group of first settlers to operate some mine.”
I asked if the planet was called Inter-Galactic Transfer Point 27 and she said “Why yes, it was, how did you know? Did you hear of the terrible thing that happened there a little while ago, it was on the news that a break occurred in the base and everyone there had been killed, such a terrible loss of life.” I said that I knew someone who had been there but that I was sure that they may have left the planet. Next time I saw Eve I told her that she was spot on with her prediction and, together, we looked up the liner library files and saw that the ‘base had been allowed to run down due to poor maintenance and that those who were killed probably deserved it, being so slack.’ I commented that they were probably all so busy being pleasured they hardly knew what had happened to them.
In the fullness of time we both fell pregnant to our partners and gave birth to beautiful daughters aboard the ‘God Jumper’ with much appreciation of the assembled passengers who thought that it was such a happy event for both of us that they had a whip-round for each of the babies as they came along. Unlike the system on Tranny 27 we were encouraged to rear our girls and both our partners were shamed into marrying us by the rest of the crew. Luckily we had a retired celebrant on board, well, we had those regularly. He performed a double ceremony and we were bound to our men for life.
Together we moved up through the ranks on board as crew members left and new ones arrived. My husband became one of the main Officers as did Eves. We both became training Officers for new crew members with our speciality being the new and improved ‘Scottie’ that had been recently installed. It cost the passengers a fortune but it could send them down to a planet of their choice with a totally new body of their choice and our liner became the place to be.
I was sure that some of those we sent down that way were doing so out of a need to escape something but, hey, if you can pay the piper, you pick the tune. Neither of us had any desire to be reverted to men and, besides, we couldn’t even afford the down payment. What I found surprising was that the technology had been developed on the old ‘Harem’ based on the glitch that had been in the old Tranny 27 ‘Scottie’.
By the time our daughters were starting to walk and talk we were both carrying another. Eventually we both had sons and we did not die. Both our husbands were over the moon. We stayed on the ‘God Jumper’ for over twenty earth years and only left it when our children needed a better schooling as they were all far too bright to be living on a jump-liner. The eight of us talked about it for ages before we came up with a planet that was calm and peaceful with a good education system and, oddly, openings for well educated people who were needed to administer the populace.
Our husbands became well respected members of the community and Eve and I took over running the planet ‘Scottie’. Our children got the sort of training that would allow them to take over this world, if not this universe. Well, maybe not the universe but I am a bit biased.
I think that I had become the person that my mother could have been if given the chance and we were both thankful that we had escaped Tranny 27 when we did. Funnily enough, we got a message from Jenny and Julie and they came to visit us while on an Intergalactic Cruise with their billionaire husbands. We had to laugh when we saw them as they had all been through the new ‘Scottie’ and looked like teenagers. The said that they planned to take the same trip whenever they felt old again so may well live for ever.
In her death, bearing me, my mother had brought eternal life within reach, if only for the very rich.
Marianne G 2021