Control Room [https://i.imgur.com/cMyLmBS.png]
Concept art of the control room.
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The captain was sitting in a control room. There he had monitors displaying different angles of the shower room with faces of each person and their vital readings. Other statistics and analyses were being performed automatically.
He was ambivalent to the shower room situation. Human cocoons remained unmoving on the monitor. Instead a large format newspaper enveloped the entirety of his visual field.
Penelope entered the room and stared at a few different feeds before sitting down next to the Captain.
"Captain Sunderland."
"Ahh Penelope." He flicked one side of the newspaper down to glance at her briefly before continuing to read. "Good work today."
"Oh you know, it's my favourite time of the week. Taking out the weeds."
She began to type on the massive console, and many more analyses started. Penelope scrubbed through the recordings and watched the scene in the auditorium, jotting down notes for herself.
"You're always reading the paper. What do you like about it?"
He pushed down one side of the paper and observed her, sniffed, and went back to reading. She continued, "it's all the same really. Battlefield this, hero that, scandal this."
"Wrong. This is the Nexus times. As public servants we must always be ready for the Nexus' next move. There will always be propaganda that will hint at it." He lay the paper flat on the console, covering Penelope's fingers. Penelope pursed her lips and her hands continued to flick around underneath, touch typing on the console with hundreds of buttons.
"Stop that, I'm trying to show you something and you're making the paper rustle and rift near unreadable". She sighed and stopped. The captain gestured to an ad, "look, they posted the same ad 1 month ago asking for citizens to recruit to the main army. Citizens, Penelope, not conscripted slaves. They must've been really desperate. But look at the words on the ad now. Now they want to show how incredible their army is. Something happened, and the only reason I can think of is that they are now winning on the battlefield. Either they developed some new technology or they landed a big fish."
He picked up the paper again and leaned back in his chair smiling, "either way it means less stress from management for us to raise the probationary soldiers."
"And the rest of the paper? Well, I completely agree. It's drivel that I use to pass the time."
Penelope snorted. "Drivel that you enjoy reading."
There was a knock at the door and then two people in white lab coats entered the room and saluted.
"Captain Sunderland. Drill sergeant."
Captain Sunderland stood up from his chair and walked over, giving the two men a hearty handshake.
"Penelope, meet Captain Jason Philips and Captain Thomas Spike. Captain Philips leads the genetics team and Captain Spike leads the psychoeducation team."
"Call me Tom.” Captain Spike offered a hand to Penelope. “Jerric, I thought we were past formalities."
"Occupational hazard. I hope you'll forgive me."
Penelope walked up to Tom and shook his hand, "the pleasure is all mine. The Spike and Philips families are citadel renowned. I am used to seeing your assistants, what brings you two sirs to the shower room today?"
"A touch of nostalgia and meeting up with our colleagues. After all we're one big unit, aren't we?"
Jason interrupted, "ugh you Psycho-Ed boys always beat around the bush. Jerric, we're here to see the new recruits. But yes", he nods, "it is a good change to see the other side of the test tube."
"You're oddly very interested." Penelope narrowed her eyes skeptically. She turned around and walked back to the console, hands furiously typing. She hit the last button with a flourish and paper printouts shot out of the console.
"Normally I just hand this to your assistants. But since you're here, Tom first."
She scanned down the page.
"52% of living subjects chose the army." She looked up to Captain Sunderland. "At this rate we're going to need a new auditorium. It looked like quite a tight fit today."
"Hmm I agree. Not enough seats, a few had to stand in the aisles. I'll put in a request to management for more funding."
Penelope looked back at Tom. "All were compliant in the hallway walk."
"Death of the traitors was met with silence".
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"There were murmurings when commanded to undress, but otherwise no dissent against a superior officer."
"The whole shower room initiation took 15 minutes, but no chatter or opposition to our actions were raised. Surprising even though we've shown them such cruel acts."
Tom replied, “Fantastic. We really doubled down on the submission to superiors aspect, though a little more individuality would be better than mindless drones. I'll try to fix that with later generations”.
Penelope frowned as she scanned down.
"Resiliency this time was low. 40% began to show signs of a panic attack 1 min after being exposed to the traumatic scene."
"Almost everyone was respectful to their naked colleagues. There was 1 misdemeanour in the shower room which required immediate euthanasia."
“Ah yes, the token 1 example.”
"45% of males had an erection upon seeing their naked colleagues."
Tom was astounded. "Wonderful! That's a 30 percent rise!" and he clapped his hands together jovially. "We'll still have a compliant, healthy society yet."
Penelope looked up from the printouts confused. "These numbers are incredible, they're so different from last week. How did you do it?"
This time Jason interjected. "We received orders from the Nexus to drastically change our programs."
"What did you change?" Both she and Jerric leaned in, interested.
"That's a need-to-know basis for now. The Nexus wants us to keep everything under wraps while we certify the authenticity of our changes." He rolled his eyes.
Penelope looked at the captain, astounded that he had already suspected something similar.
"I must inform you of one thing because it affects your training of these new recruits." Captain Sunderland began to frown when Tom continued, "We cut out all their cerebral combat training time and focused entirely on sexuality."
"What?!"
Captain Sunderland smashed the table leaving a giant dent in the metal surface. "Are you telling me that none of these recruits are combat ready?"
Captain Spike shrugged. "That was part of the directive. It seems the Nexus is more concerned about our low birth rate."
"This is unacceptable. I'm going to call the chief." He took out his communication device and started looking for his boss' name.
Captain Philips stepped over and put his hand on Captain Sunderland's wrist. "Captain, you can call the chief, but the directive came from above her. I want humanity to succeed as much as you do, but you of all people should know what such a command means."
"Don't stop me Thomas." He practically spat out Tom's name. Captain Sunderland yanked his arm away, pulling out his phaser from its holster with his free hand and pointing it at Tom, finger poised on the trigger. "As far as I am concerned, what you just told me amounts to treason."
Tom took a step back and put his hands up. Captain Sunderland used the opportunity to call his superior. A small hologram appeared in the room.
"Jerric, put down the gun. What happened?"
"Teresa, is this true?"
"Is Tom there?" There was an audible sigh. "Jerric, listen to Tom. This order came from the top. This is what the Nexus wants."
Captain Sunderland closed his eyes and took a long breath. Masseter muscles clenching and releasing rhythmically. He hung up without saying anything else. His phaser was still pointing at Tom. Finally he took his finger off the trigger, put the safety back on, and dropped his arm.
“I’m sorry for doubting you.”
“No offence taken.”
Jason, wanting to change the conversation, turned to Penelope, "tell me Penelope, what about the genetic stats?"
Captain Sunderland and Drill Sergeant Penelope looked at each other. He was fuming. She looked down to another printout and read out loud while he sat slowly back down.
"14% more people delivered to the quadrangle lawn. 8% dead on arrival."
"Of those who chose the army, median epigenetic age 25, youngest 22, oldest 34."
She shuffled through other printouts, "from other epigenetics reports prior to arrival at the facility, most are at their optimum age. Looks like... They've got another 3 years of peak performance without bluflo before their bodies start to degrade."
She continued to read down the report.
"Looking at the average of this cohort compared to the average for the year, there is a 2 percent loss of pectoralis mass. 5 percent loss of deltoid mass. 3 percent loss of rectus abdominis mass, but a 5 percent gain in gluteus medius mass, 3 percent gain in transverse abdominis mass, 5 percent gain in perineal mass, 10 percent gain in penile girth, 7 percent gain in penile length, and… 8 percent gain in vaginal secretions? Why is this even measured?"
"Fair question. It's a KPI the nexus is concerned about. Something about the girth to orgasm equation and lubrication to orgasm coefficient. Anyway, we can't measure these KPIs actively in the test tubes because," he shrugs, "well, they're sleeping."
"Don't they get erections with the psychoeducation?"
"Well technically yes, but the KPI specifically asks for spontaneous awake erection size and spontaneous awake arousal secretion amounts. It's to best estimate real life performance. 4 years ago we tried to wake subjects up for testing before their batch date, and that was a total disaster. They knew they were test subjects and all hell broke loose when they came out. We lost a whole generation of lab staff and 7 generations of humanity".
Captain Sunderland spoke in a soft voice, asking. "Philips, why did you favour a better core and a larger penis over important fighting muscles? They need their deltoids to carry equipment and ammunition, and pecs to fight."
"That’s need-to-know. Actually no you should know. They won't need to fight because their main objective is baby making. They instead need a better core to support all that hip work." He turned to Tom and Penelope. "Anyway, that's wonderful to hear such good news about this batch. I have to tell you, I was quite scared before coming in." He chuckled, "this was months in the making after all."
"This is terrible! They have no combat training AND they are weaker than our average recruit. How will they survive? They're conscripted SOLDIERS! You're meant to give me combat ready SOLDIERS Philips, not dead weight. What am I going to tell the Chief when whole fleets of humans are dying because I've been given trash?"
"Don't put them on portal duty then. Give them non-combatant jobs. Hell, give some to us, we could always use the extra hands. All the Nexus wants from them are babies. Forget the power orbs."
"Trust me, the initial tests show wonderful results. Captain, focus especially on those with libido that outperforms their trauma. If we can get that libido to translate into real life, the Nexus might just give us all a promotion out of here."
Captain Sunderland was having none of it.
"Jerric, really, don't stress, this is just a test run. The Nexus knows this. After this batch everything will go back to normal. Next week you'll get your usual kings of the battlefield. If it works, and only if, you yourself will see the results, and there will still be years before we even consider implementing any formal changes.”
"Just imagine! Being an aristocrat in the Nexus. Making decisions that alter the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Haven't you dreamed of that power and authority? It's so close!"
"I don't care about that. I actually like my job.”
Tom replied, "Jerric, this is our answer to one of humanity's key problems. They are our future."
"Let me meet you halfway, you can borrow one of our population psychoeducation machines to use on the recruits when they are sleeping. They’ll just need to sleep in the same room. After a few months you won’t notice a difference.”
"And look, it's not that we don't want them to be combat ready. We're limited by resources. Our departments are already producing humans at the fastest rate we can, but that's still not enough for the Nexus. We need humanity producing humans naturally. They live far longer and have far greater potentials. These are growing pains, captain. We're playing the long game now and your team needs to change with the times."
He turned to Penelope, "Thank you Penelope for the data. Keep them alive, captain!"
And with that, the 2 men both walked out. As the door closed, Jerric and Penelope could hear them nervously chuckle. "These obedient dogs have a bite. I'm going to file a report to the chief."