Editor's note: this fictional work contains scenes of completely fictional mind control, rough, reluctant, dubiously consensual, consensually non-consensual (CNC), or non-consensual sex or scenarios.
*****
Consent is important. All characters in this story consented; I checked.
Another day dawned on the cold, hard, unforgiving red planet. Almost everyone here was second or third generation Marser, now ("Martian" seemed too twee and didn't catch on). Anyone who had been on Earth was finding it harder and harder to recall detail with any degree of accuracy, and there were few who could contradict them anyway. Humans fought hard to survive on Mars. Between the higher levels of radiation from the paper-thin atmosphere, and the 600-odd days in a Martian year, most 20-year-olds looked in their sixties (although really they were forty).
Unusually for human colonisers there had been rather little bloodshed, and while the first people to land on the red planet were nicknamed "the founding fathers", such was order and progress, that the team had in fact been a balance of genders, and with strict orders to be civilised.
In the decades leading up to the climate disaster on Earth there had been considerable efforts to demystify the Red Planet. Ironically, the millions of tons of carbon used in firing off rockets exacerbated the problem. It became a leap of faith: stop taking steps to colonise Mars and concentrate on Earth, or redouble efforts to repopulate Mars at the obvious expense of Earth. In the end the money talked. There was more money to be made in space exploration than there was in staying put. Humans had been living comfortably in human made habitats on Mars since. Messages still came from Earth from time to time, but the transport ceased decades past. Down on Earth it was every person for themselves, while in the various habitats on Mars, there were some very strict, and very different social orders.
Those used to urban living adapted the quickest, while those used to living in rural areas with streams and trees and sheep, they took longer to acclimatise. And while the Martian day lasted little more than a half hour longer than that of Earth, the year was almost twice as long on Mars, and that made for some very long, depressing winters. On paper, Mars was quite similar to earth, but in reality, the leap was too far. Humans had made Mars safe and habitable, even enjoyable, but biologically, humans had failed to adapt at the required pace to keep humankind alive.
As the gender gap finally closed towards the end of human's time on earth, they brought the balance of power to Mars with them. All genders were educated equally, and as such, the natural birth rate fell, as it had in countries on Earth. This wasn't the only reason, but it was one. And since science had partially caused this problem, science was tasked to find a solution.
~#~#~
Colleen was reading in her luxurious room, when her watch chimed with a message. She glanced down at it, noticed that the flashing light was red, and immediately her pulse quickened. Red notifications were important. The message, which was sent automatically when it registered certain conditions in Colleen's body, read: "Ovulation; please proceed immediately to Court". This was a message she'd been expecting, but it was no less potent for that. Adrenaline sped her up and out of her room, and along the corridor into the small suite of rooms laid out in sequence to prepare her for her Court debut.
Colleen was a Vessel. Vessels were women of childbearing age, chosen from the Mars population primarily for their family's fertility and production of healthy babies, but also their genetic resistance to skin cancers, which was a useful trait on the sun-battered planet. No other traits were screened for. There was no ideal eye colour, nor preferred hair... this was about survival.
At 173cm, Colleen was short for a Marser. She had long strawberry-blond hair, hanging in dense curls, and her heavily freckled face was round, and cute, and her green-grey eyes shone with a constant threat of mischief. Her training had been in therapeutic sciences, and although forced to take a break in her educational progression, she appreciated the importance, and value, of taking part in the programme. That didn't make her any less nervous as she closed the door behind her in the first room of the suite, and slipped out of her clothes, padding barefoot into the adjoining bathroom.
~#~#~
In the small room off the main office module, where all the day to day running of the auxiliary planet took place was a team of three, under the heading Human Resources. All were busy at screens, organising rotas and staffing rosters.
One of the Human Resources team received an alert on their screen, which they clicked to enlarge. It read "Eye-watch of COLLEEN: Citz#4388289 Alert: Ovulation DaT: 14:61"
With a world-weary sigh, they cross-referenced the citizen information with that on the system (and indeed she was ovulating as predicted) and then checked the list of Suitors. There were twenty on the list, two of them on an amber list, having already successfully fathered two children, the rest fine. They were all sent the following message, pinging immediately on their watches:
"Please adjourn immediately to the Depository".
~#~#~
Amiri, too, was reading in his quarters when his wristwatch alerted him to a message. The red light of the officials. His room was not the plush and decadent room of the Vessels, but as an equal part of the procreation programme, they were considerably better than the dormitories that the rest of this peers occupied.
He'd worked hard all his life, achieving academic success alongside an obvious physical prowess, but this particular reward was icing and cherry on cake. Amiri was a Suitor. As part of the procreation programme, Suitors were men selected for their desirable genetic code, and as part of the process, a pool of Suitors were assigned to a Vessel (women with complimentary genetic traits), in order that enough viable sperm would be introduced into the Vessel's uterus, in a survival of the fittest race, clinically designed to hasten the evolution of humankind to have a chance of surviving on the harsh planet they now called home.
Twenty of the dormitory rooms emptied out into the corridor, which was filling with his co-Suitors as they made their way to the Depository. The block contained approximately 120 rooms, but for each event there were only twenty Suitors required, selected carefully by the algorithm to make sure they hadn't already fathered more than three children in the programme, and that they were not related to the Vessel. As they walked down the corridor to the Depository, colloquially known as "the wank bank", they chatted excitably, loud enough that other doors opened, so that the Suitors not selected today could cheer them on and jostle and tease the men as they headed quickly to the Depository. This was a time sensitive operation.
At the end of their dormitory corridor, through a set of double doors marked "Depository", were a set of rooms laid out like an old sports changing room, with bench seating and clothes hooks, cubicles and showers. Through an archway lay a narrow room containing two rows of ten small cubicles made of a moulded medical grade polymer (white) that was easy to hose down. Each cubicle was private from the next, except open at the rear. On the inside was a screen, to which was sent a high definition video link to a shower cubicle, although as the men entered the room the screens were dark. To the left were bog standard beech-effect bench changing rooms, and to the right, showers. The men all filed into the changing rooms on the left, the new guy following behind, nervous.
The men did not get any fancy contraption to help them ejaculate, even though synthetic vaginas had been readily available on earth. It simply wasn't deemed necessary, since the male body did not need to be convinced it was having sex in order to succeed in its part of conception. Tests had been conducted and the sperm sample from masturbating was exactly the same as the sample provided from artificial vaginas, except this way they didn't need to add lubrication, keeping the sample pure. The Human Resources department needed the sperm of multiple men (in this case, in the need for efficiency and a broad competitive pool, twenty men), and it was harvested and delivered within twenty minutes.
