I Was an SSMV240 (Sex Slave Male Variant 240)
Mission 1: Rebellion
By 2200, so much scientific progress had been made that the standard of living of even the poorest human beings was dramatically higher than the richest only a few generations before, and the human population soared to hundreds of billions. Virtually all infectious disease had been eliminated except for the occasional new organism or mutation discovered at the frontier, and materials science had advanced such that feats of engineering previously thought impossible were commonplace. The average human lifetime was 150 years. Cheap solar power technology made fresh water abundant via desalinization and/or condensation, and advanced microbiological agriculture and nano-filtration and smart membrane technology made nutritious and pollution free food abundant. The same technology made cheap and effective sewage treatment universal and 100% recycling and reuse was an everyday practice.
Pioneering colony ships to nearly planets established beachhead colonies and then larger suspended animation and multi-generation colony ships populated distant earthlike planets, which turned out to be much more abundant than anyone expected, but few had any native life. Faster than light 'probability' drives killed thousands of test pilots and never really proved practical for widespread and affordable travel. FTL ships were eventually developed that were merely very risky and very expensive and were primarily used by the military or hardy explorers seeking new natural wormhole junctions and new systems and planets for colonization.
By 2300, artificial wormhole based 'anchored hyper-tube' technology linked most populated planets to each other in a network not unlike the railroads of the old American West, and exotic trade goods and travelers rapidly traversed the network as disposable incomes of billions of affluent citizens created demand and pulled in new and interesting things to buy and discovered wonderful and exotic places to see.
The search for other intelligent civilizations had borne fruit, but in an ultimately disappointing way. Although there proved to be to be a many thousands of times more planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' for liquid water and thus carbon based life than had ever been estimated before the galaxy was explored, the other serial probability coefficient terms of the Drake equation were far smaller than previously thought. The vast majority of earthlike planets were young and had only simple life forms. Some had none at all. Humans appeared to be the only living sentient race in the Milky Way galaxy, but there was widely accepted archeological evidence of one non-human advanced civilization, which apparently died out long before recorded human history. SETI signals were found that were thought to be of intelligent origin, but from such vast distances that they were almost half as old as the universe itself when they reached human receivers. Most scientists now believed that ultimately there would prove to be only one or two advanced civilizations per galaxy, and that they were so widely separated that conflicts would prove unlikely.
Modern human civilization was even more sexually 'liberated' than people of the 21st century could have ever thought possible. Bisexuality was the norm, and there had been almost a complete mixing of what were formerly known as 'races' such that few previously stereotyped groups were even identifiable. Sexually transmitted diseases were virtually exterminated, and almost all sexual dysfunction had been eliminated by modern medicine. Bestiality was universally eschewed, because a complete understanding of membranes and cellular recognition and signaling pathways proved that it was inevitably damaging to both species involved, and allowed some dangerous organisms to jump from one species to another. Child sexuality was also universally shunned, and even teenaged sexuality was now frowned upon, with the growing understanding that some important brain pathways were not fully mature until an individual reached their twenties. The longer lifespan meant that even those who did not begin sexual activity until then could still look forward to at least 100 more years of an active sex life.
Surprising many pundits, 'test tube babies' and other 'reproductive technology' had proved as dangerous, unreliable, and expensive as FTL drives, generating literally thousands of defective and non-viable beings for each functional one, and as a result the traditional 'two parents of opposite sex' family unit was still almost universal throughout human civilization. Those parents might have sex with lots of other partners of either sex, or with groups of them, and practice almost any sexual variation that made them happy, but barring accidental deaths, parents generally stayed together as a family unit until all their children reached full adulthood, and families in general were large, averaging six children per. The high birth rate, longer lifespan and greater prosperity also meant there were more multi-generational households with more grandparents and great grandparents around for child care, and more young people to take care of the really old ones.
But human civilization was far from ideal. It was fortunate that there were no 'alien monsters' to threaten, as there were still more than enough monstrous human beings around to threaten everyone. Genetically engineered humans, clones and chimeras were created in secret and used primarily in crime, and the defective and damaged beings created by the processes were murdered and either sold for parts or recycled for food on the planets that engaged in such activity. As entertainment, stimulation, and titillation became an export commodity with a huge and easily addressable market, and new colonies needed effective workers more than any other resource, genetic slavery flourished as an underground black market economy. The arguments often paralleled those from many years earlier in the fight over child pornography: 'If the image is created on a computer out of digital bits or is just written as a story and has never been an actual child, then the depictions are not exploitative and should be completely acceptable.'
The genetic slavers and the planets that harbored them held that beings created specifically for slavery could not possibly be the victims of a crime, since they would not exist at all if they had not been created for the very purposes they served. The vast majority of planets disagreed and held that any kind of slavery was wrong, and a genetically created slave was no more acceptable than a formerly free being that had been forced into slavery. Enforcement of the anti-slavery laws on those planets was almost universal, and a virtual ongoing state of war existed between the slave and non-slave planets. The slave planets were constantly trying to sell their products and make new colony planets adopt slavery and become customers, and most other governments tried to prevent the movement of slaves and slave produced goods through the hyper tube railroads, and to track and board any slave ships and liberate their cargo.
JANUARY 2459 UCC
