How To Have Sex On Mars
Part 10 of 16
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Mars. For millennia, the Red Planet has fired humanity's imagination.
Scientists like Percival Lowell thought it was an "abode of life" with irrigation canals transporting water from the polar icecaps to farms in the warm equatorial region. Novelists like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, and Robert A. Heinlein imagined Martian civilizations.
NASA spacecraft revealed that Mars is a cold desert, but that vast amounts of frozen water can be found just below the dusty surface. Today, members of groups like The Mars Society are making plans to build a permanent colony there.
That work would be done by people like our protagonist, Mike Russell, an astronaut who spends years working and living on Mars. What would it be like to be one of the first people to call Mars home? For Mike, it includes the discovery that sex on Mars is very different from on Earth - and Vive la différence!
Here in Part 10, the astronauts agree to try something completely new as a cure for their deep sense of loneliness. Parts 11 through 16 are finished and will be available as soon as the good people at Literotica can read and post them.
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Grace discussed her observations and concerns with other people. Elke and the base's medical director, Dr. Addy Hoffmann, got Grace's reports. I wasn't involved in those conversations, but I know they couldn't figure out a solution.
Elke told Grace to interview every member of the crew and look for insights into what was happening. Grace learned lots of interesting things, but her most significant finding was that people involved in intimate relationships were doing better than people who weren't. I remember when Grace predicted that would happen, Now we had proof she was right.
But what were we supposed to do with that information? Dr. Hoffmann couldn't prescribe doses of intimacy. We didn't stock that particular item in our pharmacy. Elke made a decision that she thought might cause trouble if the commanders on Earth found out about it, but she did it anyway because she was so concerned.
She decided to encourage all of us to have multiple sexual partners.
Read that last sentence again. Make sure you understand what we were told to do. It's the most important thing you need to know about
How To Have Sex on Mars.
Elke started by talking with each of the men on the base, beginning with me. "The women on Mars are lonely. More than lonely," she said. "They need a lot of support to get through the remainder of their tours on Mars, but the main thing most of them need is attention from a man. Or men. I want you to be open-minded about this.
"I want you to consider finding more time for your female crewmates. We are in a situation where we need to say goodbye to conventional attitudes about relationships. We need to rise above jealousy. I'm not going to order anyone to participate in this. I know some of you may object to the whole idea. But I want you to remember that your colleagues are getting desperate. If you can't support this yourself, at least avoid criticizing it to others."
Next, Elke talked to each woman. I'm not sure exactly what she said, but Adeline told me that Elke encouraged women to enter into romantic relationships with us men, even though we were all involved in relationships already. I guess she mentioned how the shortage of men in France after the devastation of World War 1 led to the women there pursuing unconventional romantic arrangements.
"Elke told us that this is temporary, and it might help us survive the rest of our tour," Adeline said.
It was like firing a starter pistol. Apparently, a lot of the women on Mars needed permission to do something they'd been considering already. Everyone on the base knew about relationships like the ones I had with Adeline, Elke, and Agatha. It seemed to be working for us, so that made others willing to try.
I began getting requests from women all over the base. I didn't say no to anybody because I didn't think it was right to say yes to one woman and no to another. This caused a problem, because there wasn't enough time in my schedule to give these women the attention they wanted.
As always, the solution came from Grace. At her suggestion, I spent one night each week with Adeline, Elke, and Agatha. That left four nights for everyone else. I ended up having seven women who wanted to be friends with benefits, so I had Grace set up a rotation schedule. I wanted to make sure everyone understood that Grace was in charge of letting my new girlfriends know when they were scheduled to see me. Otherwise, there might be feelings of jealousy if anyone suspected I was giving one of them more attention than the other. We had total transparency.
I just re-read what I've written in this chapter so far. Does it seem weird to you? It seemed weird to me. I think I made it sound like we were rationing sex the same way people ration food during times of famine. One reason it worked is that everybody on Mars had a similar mindset. We were all good at math. We all believed in logic. It made sense that we'd all look for a solution that conformed to mathematical reasoning. Even when it came to sex.
The most important fact I need to report is that Elke's solution improved morale immediately. The women who'd been starved for intimacy for so long became very excited at the prospect of having a man between their legs again. The women who asked to belong to what came to be called "Mike's Harem" began flirting with me at every opportunity.
"Looking good today, Mike," a woman named Christine said to me the day after I put her on my rotation. "I can't wait to see what you look like naked."
I was not used to hearing comments like that from women I barely knew. But I began hearing them all the time. All. The. Time. The atmosphere on the base began to resemble something like a bachelorette party. We men were treated like the strippers.
I spent the evening with Elke on the last night before I began having sex with my new girlfriends. "I'm relieved," she said. "This is the best morale I've seen since we landed. I wish I'd done this months ago. It's the weirdest order I've ever issued, but it might be the smartest."
"We'll find out," I said.
"Nervous?" she asked.
"Very," I said. "Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be expected to sexually satisfy a bunch of women I know almost nothing about. I'm feeling some performance anxiety. That's a lot of new girlfriends to handle all at once."
"Have you heard what they're calling themselves?" Elke asked. "Harem girls. You and the other guys now have harems."
"Very droll," I said. "Does that make me a sultan?"
"Seems appropriate."
"This is, without question, the weirdest thing I've ever done," I said.
"Bullshit, Mike," Elke said. "The weirdest thing is doing a tour on Mars. Compared to that, having casual sex with a bunch of women is pretty normal."
"Not for me," I said.
