The day Chase figured out the code, he was a mess. He was stumbling all over the house, forgetting things his parents had told him just minutes earlier, and nervous they knew what he was planning. This wasn't just any code, this was the code that would allow him to access the forbidden files on the island intranet. Not only would he be able to see the files he wasn't supposed to see until he had bonded his family to another family, but his parent's level of access would give him access to every beach picture, every publicly filmed bonding ceremony, and any other images the island surveillance system picked up.
Chase was nearly 19 but still living at home per the customs of the island. He had graduated from the local school and had spent time bouncing between mainland universities but, to reinforce the importance of family and the bonds of their pod mates, young adults lived with their family until they bonded with a partner of their own. His parents' place in the islands' governance, a body of administrators who served rolling terms, meant their home terminal granted them tremendous access to the islands' data assets.
The plan was simple. His father was spending the weekend inspecting crops on Osisi, the island in their archipelago where most of the farming took place. That just left his mother, who was spending the night out with her friends. That meant he'd have at least a few hours to log on to the family terminal and access the videos and pictures collected from various family bonding and pod orgy sessions that people of his mother and father's stature could access.
"You aren't going to the beach with your friends, tonight?" Chase's mother asked in her sing-songy voice as she checked herself out in the full length mirror next to the door and then used it to look directly at Chase. She brushed her wavy thick brown hair away from her shoulders. In her reflection, he could see the neckline of her purple dress plunging into a v to separate the fabric holding back her thick round breasts. The silver sash tied at the waist of the dress signaled her high status on the island and cinched her waistline, creating an hourglass form. The dress was loose at the bottom, flowing off her round buttocks before stopping just below her knees.
Chase couldn't help but feel a certain attraction to his mother's body. While rules of the island strictly prohibited incest between family members, due to the fear of polluting the island gene pool, the liberated culture of the island meant he'd grown up accustomed to being naked in the presence of his family. Young members of the island were taught that no one should be ashamed of their body shape or size. Family members were allowed to or even encouraged to admire the bodies of their relatives as a point of pride. Chase had watched his mother's forty four year old body fill out in his eighteen years, but time had just made her more attractive in his eyes.
"I'm not feeling very well," Chase lied. "You look beautiful, though, have fun."
As soon as the door closed behind her, Chase lept off the couch in the living room at the back of the section of their villa his family called home and ran to the front room, closing the shade and then typing in his father's username to the terminal. Everyone's usernames followed a common pattern and he'd figured out his father's common access password years ago but it was the higher level administrative password that had eluded him. His hands shook as he carefully typed in the common access password. A prompt on the screen greeted him by his father's name, Spiro.
He then entered a hotkey combination that would open the command password prompt, giving him access to exclusive files that he had only dreamed existed. Slowly, he pecked out every character of the secret passphrase. The code had been written for years under the desk that supported the family terminal. It wasn't until today that he'd finally pieced it together.
"Bingo!" Chase threw a fist in the air as a whole new level of folders and subfolders unlocked for him. He started in the first directory he saw and was disappointed when it was just pictures of some of the older adults naked in the forbidden section of the beach. He could see naked people in the open adult section, where non-bonded adults like him were allowed to carouse in a clothing optional area with bonded adults. What he wanted to see what the thing that had alluded him - the bonded adults at play.
He started navigating through the files, and he finally got the hang of some of the shorthand that annotated different folder contents. The system automatically indexed pictures and videos as it received them. Individual pods only saw their own files or files of pods that were sharing files for the purposes of forming new bonds between them. What his father's level of access gave him was access to everything. Every bonding ceremony that had been filmed. Every beach fuck caught on security camera. Every selfie taken by all of his former classmates who were now scattered around the archipelago at various positions. These files were not intended for Chase.
Chase figured out the files were organized by pod and location where they were captured but there were years worth of files in the island's private network. He flipped through folders until he found one of photos from what looked like a slightly older bonding ceremony. There was a young adult couple lost in the ecstacy of a doggy-style fuck. Chase thought he recognized Itzak and Celementina, a couple who were now in their early 30's with children of their own. Celementiana was on her hands and knees, red curls pulled back by Itzak's hand while he kneeled behind her, and used his other hand to grip her small apple shaped breast. In the background, their parents were seated around them, smiling warmly as they enjoyed their children's bonding ceremony.
The bonding ceremony joined pods together by way of bonding one family in a pod to another. After the ceremony, members of the pods were free to intermingle working together toward common goals and, in most cases engaging in free swinging sexual relationships, just so long as incestual acts weren't involved.
"Incest is a threat," Chase quoted the slogan that had been drummed into island residents' heads as he looked at one nude family portrait after another. Since the sexual relations with minors was the greatest of banishable sins on the island, he knew he at least wasn't at risk of running into any of the wrong kinds of pictures. Otherwise, the island governance rotated families in and out of the island as they could - no family who wanted to leave was ever given any trouble so long as they followed the confidentiality agreement - but this was a delicate eco-system and rule breakers could be punished harshly.
Chase had fantasized about his own bonding ceremony for years, and he had a feeling a match was close since he and his parents had been socializing frequently with specific families on the island. For now, a few pictures from Itzak and Celementiana's ceremony would have to substitute. He soon grew bored of this history lesson, though.