Nova Terra Gen2

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Disclaimer: On the world of Nova Terra, 20 is the age of adulthood, equivalent to 18 on Earth, so all described sexual activity is between characters over that age.

If you haven't read the first Nova Terra story, please do. While I try to capture some of the past through Generation 2's eyes, they bring their own biases to it, so reading Chad Romson's recounting might bring insight. I hope you enjoy.

Note: Minor correction edits made.

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Cooper Messner-Romson's Journal

Friday, 16 October, CY26.

Why am I starting a journal? Because the twenty-somethings are plotting a coup, and I'm involved, and I think I want to record things for history.

How could we take over the government of the colony of Nova Terra that was barely older than the oldest members of our cabal, themselves just 25?

Easy. Our parents made the "mistake" of having so many kids in their first five years on-planet, that the Gen2 kids capable of voting almost outnumbered Gen1s now, and soon would. It was simple demographics. Ultimately Generation 2 would outnumber Generation 1 at least 4-to-1, and it was only a voting age of 21 that had kept them in power this far. We'd simply vote them out once we had the majority in a few more months, and then we'd try to fix their past fuckups, and deal with preventing them from making any more.

To hear my sperm-father Chad Romson tell it, he and the other SFs had saved Nova Terra from an underpopulation problem. The problem was they replaced it with an OVERpopulation problem that had nearly wrecked the overall plan for the colony, producing crisis after crisis. From food shortages to degradation of our farmland, having too many kids was a serious problem, too. You would think they would have learned something from Old Terra's mistakes.

And they just wouldn't stop trying to make it worse. As Gen2 girls started coming of age, the sperm-fathers hit on any who weren't their biological daughters, even young women in their own damn polys who thought of them as "Dad", wanting to keep right on procreating, trying to "run up the score", as they each got to brag on how many children they'd fathered. Chad was in the lead and wanted to stay that way. I even heard a few of them talk about "fresh meat." Even some of the infertile men wanted a piece of the action.

It was disgusting.

Our mothers may have needed to spread their legs, willingly and even lustfully, for these 16 bastards so we could be born, but our sisters, our girlfriends and wives, shouldn't have to. Gen2 didn't have any fertility problem. It just had a pack of Gen1 horndogs to deal with. It was time to kennel them.

The first action we'd take when we had enough votes would be to lower the voting age from 21 to 20 NT years, which only needed a majority vote. That would tip the balance of power towards Gen2 even further.

Next, we'd need to get some of the moms on our side, to reach the 2/3rds majority needed to amend the Charter. I'd already proposed an amendment that would treat the poly families as the family units they were supposed to be, and define sex outside of it as infidelity. Not everyone agreed with me, but quietly I was managing to convince more and more people. Another amendment I'd proposed would keep the new adults who were still living with their parent's poly from remaining members of it, putting them off limits, too.

Time for the sex parties to end and the growth rate to go back to doubling per generation, instead of 4x or even 5x as the sperm-fathers were doing.

If this journal gets transmitted back to Old Terra, and you're a bit confused, let me explain a few things.

First, the Nova Terran year is 9% shorter than yours. Our day is longer, so we wind up with 302 of them in our year, ten 30 day months composed of five six day weeks. We kicked out Wednesday from the list of days of the week, just because nobody liked spelling it. Every month started on a Monday.

We kicked July and August out of the calendar, restoring September, October, November and December to their rightful places as the seventh through tenth months of the year, as originally intended.

Finally, we observed Old Year's Day and New Year's Day as festival days to end and begin the years, outside of the months or weeks, for the total of 302. We were only going to need a leap day every 45 years, and we'd do that by extending the festival. We hadn't even reached the first one yet.

Because our year is shorter, our age climbs faster. A 20-year-old on Nova Terra would be 18.2 years old on Old Terra. And 25 NT years is equivalent to 22.75 OT years.

Polys are our families. The name derives from the term polyamorous families, in which more than two adults are engaged in a romantic and sexual relationship together, as compared to monogamy, where a person has just one spouse. Monogamy ended officially on Nova Terra in Colony Year 12, and the polys are our only marriage form now. Smallest is a quad, two men, two women. Largest currently is a deca, five of each gender. A group once tried a 20, but it only lasted two years, before breaking apart into 3 polys different than the originals had been.

All of the children living in a poly who aren't genetically related, are considered poly-siblings to each other, while those who are genetically related are referred to as blood-siblings, most of them half-siblings. We also have other blood-siblings in other polys, from the same sperm-father but other mothers. The distinction between poly-sibling and blood-sibling didn't matter to us until we were older, when we began thinking about sex, and needed to be told what incest is.

And the term 'sperm-father'? Because of an accident on our colony-ship, only 16 men retained their fertility on their way to Nova Terra, resulting in an 8-to-1 imbalance between women and fertile men. They were the only ones still making sperm, and it became their totally-not-onerous task to impregnate all the women, so Gen2 could be born.

But instead of doing it at a reasonable pace, they competed with each other, the fuckers. Literally, the fuckers.

And they won't stop competing even now, so we're going to have to stop them, even if we have to snip their balls off to do it.

Gen2, when we began marrying and having our own kids, the beginning of Gen3, rejected the term sperm-father, preferring to call ourselves 'blood-fathers' to biological children, and poly-fathers to those kids in our poly who weren't. Mostly kids use 'Dad' and 'Mom' whether blood or poly related.

Outnumbering our poly-siblings, most of our siblings are genetically half-siblings, and we had a lot of them, given that each of our sperm-fathers had impregnated at least a quarter of the Gen1 women in the colony. Some like Chad had topped the 50% mark, and if menopause weren't intervening, I swear he wanted to reach 100%.

I didn't live with Chad. I grew up in a sextet poly with my blood-mom Andrea Messner, poly-dads David Messner, Jack Andrews and Sven Mattsson and my 2 poly-moms Julia Andrews and Carla Mattsson and all of the kids born to my three moms, a total of nine blood siblings and 17 poly-sibs. 33 of us as one family. Our house was huge, and meals were chaos, but there was always a lot of love. Among my blood-siblings, Marco Mattsson-Romson and Marina Andrews-Romson are also Chad's kids.

I probably saw more of Chad than most of his blood-kids outside of his poly, just because there were three of his kids here, but even that wasn't that often. But I do bear his name. All of us Gen2s have two surnames, one our sperm-father's, the other our blood-mother's "married name", dating back to when they were all in monogamous marriages prior to Launch. If not for the infertility, their husbands, who were still our poly-dads, would have been our biological ones. But other than sharing a last name with David through his original marriage to Mom, he was just one of my three poly-dads, all of whom mattered to me more than Chad could. I might have owed Chad for the beginning of my life, but it was my six parents who made it a good one.

And tomorrow I leave them. I'm Cooper Messner-Romson, I'm 22 and tomorrow's my wedding day.

For Gen1, getting married was easy, because it was monogamy at first - they only had to find one person and become a couple, and if they found the other person special enough, they got married. Then over time as our parents transitioned from monogamy to polyamory, they navigated that process as couples, deciding to join two marriages into one, then perhaps adding more couples over time. Many still think of themselves as a group of couples.

But for those of us born to the second generation, monogamous marriages aren't performed any more, so we have to make the leap from being four or even six single teens into a poly-dating-group instead of being two or three couples first. It has made courting and dating into a really complex dance, as we boys and girls getting ready to be men and women tried to not just find one person to date, but three or even five, in equal numbers of male and female. Our parents had it easy.

This isn't like double-dating in the days of monogamy - we weren't two couples, we were quads, or even sextets, spending time together, trying to gauge compatibility, and if we were all over 20 we could get engaged and start our marriage applications. We never hung out except as the group. No favorites, if one person didn't fit, we had to find another to take their place or break the whole group up and start over. If it was the group itself that didn't fit, start over. It took me three quads to get it right, and that's a low number.

We usually started dating at 18, but it was taking some people years to find the right groupings, and even when we get engaged, we have to undergo both genetic compatibility testing, as well as social compatibility testing. Those who failed that often wound up heart-broken. A couple of my older poly-brothers were still trying to find the right mix. My older blood-sister, Carrie, had just gotten married two months ago, at 25, after dating in 10 different quads.

Let me tell you about my fiancée's:

Chinah Chan-O'Reilly is actually my younger blood-sister Tammy Messner-O'Reilly's own blood-sister, but not my sister at all. Tammy and I share our blood-mother Andrea Messner, but Tammy and Chinah share a sperm-father, Thom O'Reilly, with whom Chinah grew up, in a poly a couple of farms away. Thom tries hard to make time for all of his blood-children, and Tammy and Chinah became best friends as kids during her visits to Thom's farm, then Chinah was a frequent guest at our poly as well. So when it came time to start dating, it seemed natural to ask her to be in my first dating quad.

Her heritage is Irish, African, Chinese and Polynesian. We jokingly call her a mutt, but she is unbelievably beautiful, 5'5", 34B-27-31, with wavy brown hair, green eyes, and a pixie nose between high cheeks. Her skin is the color of coffee with a bit of cream in it, one of the few luxury crops our colony grows, after the food crises a decade ago. She made me laugh as kids, and that continued as adults. Not so much jokes as the kind of witty observations that just made you bust a gut laughing. As she got older, those got more bawdy, and my gut wasn't the only part of me reacting.

She wasn't to blame when that first dating quad crashed and burned, because the other two were totally wrong for us. When my second quad fell apart even faster, Tammy urged me to reconsider Chinah for my third. Best advice I've received in my life, to date. I think I'll name my first daughter with Chinah after Tammy.

Matt Spinsky-Martinez, who everyone just calls "Spinz", is a year older than Chinah and me, 5'10", 200 lbs of solid muscle from farm work, black-haired, handsome as some greek god and probably the most sought-after guy in our quadrant of the colony, he'd recruited me to be in my second dating quad (his sixth already), and we got along great, even though that quad sputtered out. He gets our senses of humor, and tells some great jokes of his own.

Spinz even helped me invent a game we call poly-chess, that can be played by four people, and it was a hit in the colony, especially among underage dating quads, who organize whole dates around it. There are even plans to start tournaments, to encourage more socialization across the colony. We just thought it was fun.

Spinz lived in the poly between Chinah's and mine. So when I suggested Chinah for our next quad, he already knew her, and agreed.

Our final piece of the puzzle. Melany Anders-Davidson, known as Mel, is from my neighboring poly in the other direction from Chinah and Spinz. Almost two years younger than the three of us, she had just turned 18 when we asked her to join this quad, and the four of us clicked immediately. She has a wicked sense of humor, and isn't thin-skinned when we joke with her. She quickly out-paced Spinz and I at poly-chess, beating the other three of us 70% of the time. We think she is a lock to win the tournament when it is held. 5'6" and 36C-29-32 now that she's 20, reddish-blonde, with expressive hazel eyes that could decide to be green one minute and brown the next, she seemed to freckle everywhere. From a distance, she looked almost as dark as Chinah, they were that plentiful. I look forward to finding out whether that extends everywhere under her clothes.

That's right, I haven't seen my fiancee naked yet. After the over-the-top licentiousness of Gen1, most Gen2 kids are choosing to stay virgins until marriage. I'd seen Chinah naked before, as that first dating quad had gone skinny dipping a few times before dissolving, but no such opportunity had presented itself with Melany. But we could all tell that Melany had a huge reservoir of passion ready to be unlocked, just from dates where we made out with each other. We can't wait to experience it with her.

And how do I describe myself? 5'9", 170 pounds, blonde and blue-eyed, not as muscular as Spinz, but you couldn't grow up doing chores on a Nova Terran farm and not develop a muscled physique. The hair on my body, while plentiful, was so fair and thin that most people thought it invisible.

The four of us have been together two and a half years, engaged six months ago when Melany finally turned 20, then we worked through the various testing procedures needed to get a marriage license, and began the process of getting a new farm started to the north, with the colony's assistance. We'd move in tomorrow night after the wedding.

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Monday 19 October CY26:

Hi, again journal. Well, we're married. A lot happened over the weekend, so I might have to retell it in pieces. Let me start with the wedding and party after...

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The girls looked radiant, in matching full length white zilk dresses, produced by weaving-bots to their exact measurements, then embellished by their moms. They were skin-tight, seamless and highlighted every curve. Spin and I were in new white zilk shirts over black pants and black shoes. We each wore necklaces made from Nova Terran seashells.

For readers on Old Terra, Zilkplant is what we call a native plant similar to cotton but producing dyeable fibres as soft as your silk. Its natural color could be compared to ivory, and the girls' dresses were undyed. Our parents used to go out into the countryside to harvest it, until it was found to be a really good rotation crop, helping replenish the soil of our farms. So now it was cultivated on several farms at a time to provide our cloth needs.

My sperm-dad, Chad Romson, is on the Colony Council, although I don't think he knows yet his days there are numbered. Anyway, he offered to officiate our wedding, since a Council member would have officiated regardless, and we agreed. The ceremony was pretty simple, so I didn't think he could fuck it up.

"Friends, family, we are here today to witness the wedding vows of Chinah, Cooper, Melany and Matt-" he began.

"Spinz," he interrupted.

"Spinz, we know that's the name you prefer, but for this marriage to be official, I have to use your legal name. You've already turned in your name-change paperwork as part of the marriage application, but they become official together. Until then, you're still Matt."

"Okay, sorry."

"Accepted and forgiven." Turning to the audience, Chad continued, "Anyway, we are here to witness these four form their own poly, the foundation of a new family on Nova Terra. All the flowery words I could say won't change the fact that you will need to work hard at this, to be good spouses to each other, united in body, heart, mind and spirit, and good parents to your eventual children. I will ask each of you for your consent to this marriage, please respond when I call your names. Chinah Chan-O'Reilly, do you consent to this marriage, to bind yourself to Cooper, Matt and Melany?"

"I do," she said, her voice breaking just a little. Nobody who didn't know her as well as we did would have noticed, but we did. We'd tease her for that later. Right now, we just smiled.

After we each answered in the affirmative, Chad continued with, "Under the authority of the Colony Council, I declare this poly family founded. Have you chosen a name to announce to the colony?"

I answered for us all, "Yes, we would like to be known as the Chess Family." Everyone clapped, knowing it was a perfect choice for us.

Gen1 started our hyphenated naming as a way to let blood-siblings know of that relationship easily, because the response to the infertility crisis caused us to have dozens of blood-siblings, most living in different polys. There were still a few of mine that I had yet to meet, because they lived on the opposite side of the colony, and our families didn't interact much. But most of us in Gen2 found our names incredibly cumbersome, after that one benefit got used. So, when the very first Gen2 quad applied to get married, they also privately petitioned the Council to change their surnames to a single shared name, effective with the marriage itself, and chose Primus, and announced it at their wedding. It became Gen2 tradition, and was now part of the marriage applications. Like all new polys, it was kept confidential until announced at the end of the ceremony. Spinz simply added a request to change his first name legally as well. He likes the fact that, because his nickname originated in his hyphenated name, he was effectively retaining a piece of that name.

Chad finished the ceremony with, "Moms and dads, brothers and sisters and friends, please welcome Chinah, Cooper, Melany and Spinz Chess. Now, let's party!"

And so we did. Heartily, toasting with dubash wine, dancing through the evening, and mixing with our guests. Everyone was having a great time.

Until the moment Chad, ever the horndog, hinted to me that he'd love an invitation to our wedding night lovemaking, as if he were a king and it was his prerogative to deflower the virgin brides. I totally blew up at him, telling him to go fuck himself and gave him graphically explicit instructions on just how to do it. I hardly remember which words I used, I was so pissed. He sputtered, and left fuming. Good riddance.

Spinz and our mutual blood-brother Mario Spinsky-Romson came over, from where they'd been talking about poly-chess with a group of enthusiasts, and said, "What the fuck was that all about?"

"Oh, just my ever-horny dad thinking that he was entitled to fuck our wives tonight."

Spinz turned red. "He said that?"

I nodded. "He couched it in terms of being honored if he were invited, but it amounts to the same thing. He expects it. I cannot wait for Gen2 to reach majority, so we can lock him and all the sperm fathers inside their polys. He's not going to know what to do. He might even have to follow my self-fucking instructions!"

I could have gotten blotto at that point, if not for knowing that it would spoil our wedding night. We'd looked forward to it for so long, I didn't want my anger at Chad to cost me that. We let our wives know what had gone on, and they really helped me shake it off. Just one more reason why I loved all three of them.