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“There’s not much more we can tell you, I’m afraid. We don’t know exactly what was going on. That’s part of the problem. All we know about what Mercenia was doing here is what Brooks has told us. She’s military tier, not a scientist, so we know the general information, not details.”
“Which is?” I say, losing patience with the obfuscation. I know Novak’s scenarios are often short on specifics, but this one is particularly vague.
The same hesitation as before the alien planet announcement. Even the facilitators think this experiment is pushing the limits of plausibility too far.
“It was a breeding program.”
My eyes skate back to her own pregnant bump, and I think she notices, her hand coming to cradle it protectively. At least that explains why she’s being used for this scenario. Normally, Mercenia is really funny about letting pregnant women from tiers like science tier do anything besides convalesce. The next generation of little scientists is far more important than whatever contributions they can make to their projects. That’s why seeing her and the blonde so obviously pregnant felt off. They should be hidden away somewhere, focusing on nothing but getting the best nutrition and following the correct exercise program to promote healthy pregnancy and birth.
But selling a breeding program scenario - it was never going to be as convincing without a few baby bumps.
“If you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them,” Liv says. “But, like I said, there’s not a lot we know about what was going on here.”
Questions. I have a ton of them. But probably not the kind she’s imagining. Like always with these weird experiments, I wonder what they’re trying to prove. Sometimes I can almost see the point of it. Telling a group of people that they can’t go outside because of radiation forces them to work together in close proximity to survive. There are useful applications for the learning that might come out of observing how they behave. Interstellar travel would be one of them. A crew operating in an enclosed environment like a spaceship would encounter similar obstacles and problems.
But a breeding program? Presumably with the local alien species, because otherwise why the conceit about cryostasis and alien planets. What are they looking to learn from that?
Memories of Screening rise in my mind, all the more potent and visceral thanks to the dream. They had their categories and criteria. The boxes they wanted to slot us into. Perhaps that checklist was informed by experiments like this.
The women who were prepared to breed with aliens exhibited the following personality characteristics. If your subject displays any of these, proceed with caution.
Or maybe they want the women that are prepared to lie back and send their brains somewhere else while they’re ‘bred’.
Either way, it will be wrong somehow. That’s the truth of being a woman under Mercenia’s rule. Nothing we do is right.
“A breeding program,” I repeat. “With the little green men that live here?”
Something like a genuine smirk comes on to Liv’s face, her eyes flashing with amusement. It stops her from looking awkward and uncomfortable - makes her look more real.
“Not so little,” she says. “But yes, that’s what they wanted.”
“Why?” I ask, because I’m curious what reason they’re going to give.
“Super soldiers,” Brooks says. “Mercenia has been trying to create them for years. They pushed selective human breeding to the limits. Why not throw some new genetic material into the mix?”
Because it wouldn’t work.
“So, I was frozen, brought out here to an alien planet, where I was going to be subjected to a breeding program with the aliens that live here.” Saying it again and again doesn’t make it sound any less ludicrous. “But that all happened twenty years ago, and now?”
The time jump I don’t get. What’s the purpose of it? Why nineteen years? Wouldn’t it take hundreds to get to the nearest planet outside of our solar system? Apart from distancing me from my ‘old’ life, why bother with the whole charade?
“Now we crash landed here about six months ago, then stumbled across this old military base and found you,” Liv says.
“And six months ago, immediately resumed the breeding program?”
Another amused smirk. “Except it’s not a breeding program any more. Mercenia isn’t here pulling the strings. It’s just us girls trying to live our lives. We were lucky enough to be rescued by a local tribe after we crashed. And then some of us were lucky enough to find companionship, love.”
“With the aliens?” I manage to resist rolling my eyes. “Because the alien women aren’t good enough for them?”
Darkness flickers in Liv’s expression for a moment. “There are no alien women.”
Of course there aren’t.
“Where did they all go?”
Liv’s mouth presses into a thin line and she looks at Brooks and the blonde briefly before focusing back on me.
“Look, Angie, there are layers upon layers of things going on here. We could sit down and go through it all step by step. But I don’t think you’re asking these questions in good faith.”
