They spend nearly two months calling women in the area that want to relocate to Nokoto, setting up appointments, meeting with them, scanning them, interviewing and performing psychological tests of their own. Several are eliminated because of addiction issues. Several more are eliminated because they have been sterilized and don't want to be unsterilized. They have selected fifty-two women with twenty-three children between them. Out of the women who have children, more than half have never been married, there are a couple of young widows and the rest are divorced. As for women without children, none have been married. And out of all the women as a whole, nearly half have been making their living in the sex industry, a few prostitutes, sexual surrogates, phone sex girls and even a porn star. They have asked them all to the University for a meeting in a borrowed lecture hall.
"Thank you all so much for coming," greets Elder Coo. "And congratulations, you have all been selected for relocation to Nokoto."
The women respond with a happy excited cheer. After they quiet, Elder Coo continues, "As you have all already been informed, Nokoto is a world suffering from a shortage of females and you will each be assigned to a group of brothers that are in need of a mate. So essentially, you will each end up with more than one husband, some of you two, some of you three, and a few of you four. You will be matched up based upon your compatibility. You will find yourselves very much adored.
But let us get down to business. The purpose of this meeting is to prepare you for your new lives as much as possible. All of the women from five years ago initially suffered from culture shock after they arrived and began to settle in. We want to make the transition for you as easy as possible. We have learned much from our previous experience, and know that they were not well enough prepared for their new lives. They knew they were going to be assigned to brothers in need of a mate based on compatibility, but not much beyond that.
This is Kamaki. He is a doctor. He is going to go over some basic Koto biology, how Koto males and females are similar and different from Earth males and females."
Kamaki steps forward. He quickly and efficiently delivers a basic Koto biology and sex education class with pictures and models. He adds, "If any of you think of any other questions, just raise your hands."
Kamaki steps back as Elder Coo steps back up. Elder Coo informs the women, "Now, you will hear from my personal assistant, Nokoto Elder Advisor, Zeta of House Voltrand"
Zeta steps forward smiling, "Thank you Elder Coo. I would also like to thank President Manhunter and Third Vice President Schwarzenegger for being here. I was watching your faces as my friend, Kamaki, gave his lesson and I know you ladies are learning a lot. I would also like to thank the administrators of this university for lending us this lecture hall and for providing babysitting and snacks for the children. Thank you very much. I can see you are all learning a lot too.
Nearly five and half years ago now, the Elders' Council of Nokoto sent its first envoy to Earth hoping it would be welcome like the president said it would. In exchange for advances in technology Earth hadn't mastered yet, the envoy of thirteen men would be allowed to take up to five hundred people from Earth back to Nokoto with them and they were given a list of people to choose from. Even though, I met Kamaki and my mate, Anlo, during their first visit to Earth, as you all know, I was not on that list."
"Anlo's not available," says a woman disappointed.
"Sorry, ladies, Anlo's taken. He's one of mine."
"What about Kamaki," ask another woman, "Is he still available?"
"Sorry again," responds Zeta. "Stand up and wave, Mary."
Mary stands and waves to the other women then sits back down.
"That's my sister, Mary. Kamaki is her mate now."
"Don't tell me we're going to get stuck with ugly ones," says a woman.
"Ladies," shares Zeta with a smile and a giggle, "I have never met an ugly Koto male. They are all drop dead gorgeous, which means on Nokoto, none of them are seen as anything special…
So I woke up on another planet. Happens every day, right? Kamaki knew Anlo and I were becoming close while here on Earth, so he had Anlo take me home. And I knew nothing except the little bit I knew about Anlo like he's the oldest of seven brothers. I didn't know males outnumbered females by more than thirteen to one. Anlo had mentioned volunteers returning to their planet with them, but I didn't know what was going on. All I knew was this intelligent, tall, gorgeous man was interested in little ole me. And the plan was we would keep in touch, and after the gate was complete here at Earth, we would start visiting each other.
I am actually very grateful to my in-laws, the former generals, on so many levels. I have been so greatly blessed. They have no idea what a huge favor they have done for me. But I certainly didn't feel like that at first.
I'll give you a little back ground on me. I am technically an only child. But my parents were foster parents and that's how I got my beautiful sister, Mary. We were home schooled and grew up keeping a garden, goats and chickens. I grew up a bit sheltered from a lot of worldly things. So on my wedding night to my deceased husband, Bryan, I was a virgin. The only mating I had ever seen were the chickens and goats. And me, who had only ever had sex with one man, ended up on Nokoto, a planet where the men outnumber the women and brothers have been sharing a mate for generations. That was the first part of my culture shock.
You need to remember that this is a different planet with a different type of people on it. That means a different way of life. There's no money, no cars, no car notes, no mortgages, no utility bills, no credit scores and no taxes. Nokotoans don't believe that people can own the land, the land owns you. This is where I've been living… (aerial shot of Anlo's farm appears on the screen behind Zeta) Beautiful isn't it? But we don't own this, we're its caretakers, we over see it, kind of like park rangers. And if we failed to take care of it properly, just like the park ranger, we'ld be fired and the Elders' Council would reassign us to someplace else. That might not sound fair to you, but there are no homeless nor starving people on Nokoto."
Zeta looks at her audience of women, "The point in me sharing with you is to help prepare you for some of the things I and the other women had trouble with. And to give you an opportunity to back out now if some of the things I share with you freak you out and you don't think you can adapt.
I can say this, no one that relocated to Nokoto five years ago thinks of Earth as home anymore. I am here because I'm Elder Coo's personal assistant and most importantly, I'm here to get my two oldest children I've been separated from and take them home.
A good number of you have been making a living in the sex industry. We believe that you will adapt the fastest and easiest to your new lives. This is a world where the men outnumber the women. So there are lots and lots of desperately horny men everywhere.
I woke up at this beautiful place with seven desperately horny men. But I didn't know that. The first time I got naked with Anlo, I was expecting to see some kind of penis. I asked him if he was sure he was male. I thought I had made a mistake of some kind. Anlo quickly explained how he was different from human males." Zeta picks up Kamaki's Koto male penis model, "Then this came sliding out at me and I thought: No matter where he puts it, I'm going to choke on it, but I'll die happy. Like Kamaki said, this is about the average size for a Koto male, some are a little bigger, some are a little smaller, but not much smaller.
I met his parents first," Zeta brings up a picture of Anlo's mother and three fathers. "Anlo told me all three of these men were his fathers and I thought a female Koto needed sperm from three different men in order to get pregnant. Anlo got to explain that just like with humans, one sperm to fertilize an egg and how the men outnumber the women and that there aren't enough women for each man to have his own so brothers share a mate. But I really didn't see how any of this affected me because I wasn't a volunteer and I just didn't get it.
Next, I met his brothers," Zeta brings up a picture of Anlo's six brothers. "Now you all hate me," Zeta smiling.
She continues, "They were all looking at me like they were starving and I was food and I didn't have a clue why. And it didn't make sense to me that they didn't think it was fair that I was having sex with Anlo and not them too. I unintentionally caused family conflict with my narrow mindedness.
Then we went to the market to trade for clothes, shoes and personal items for me." She brings up a picture taken at the market which kind of reminds some of the women of a flea market, but nothing out of the ordinary is taking place. "On a world with no money, you trade for things you don't produce yourself…
Then I saw a transaction like this taking place." She brings up a picture of a woman trading mating. "Now, it's easy to see who doesn't work in the sex industry by the shocked faces. And I was shocked too. You should have seen me standing there in my jeans and a t-shirt with my hands over my closed eyes freaking out.
There is no word for privacy in the Kotowahn language. And with lots and lots of horny men all around you. If you offer sex in trade for something, they'll accept it delightedly. This particular woman traded sex for vegetables. It's considered rude for the shop keeper to ask for sex in trade, but it's fine for you to offer the shop keeper sex for what you want or need. And they do not go find a private place. I cannot tell you how many times my new in-laws have mated during a meal. When the urge hits them, they just do it. While walking through the market, you may pass a woman trading sex for items she wants, having sex with one of her mates or with a good friend of her mates. Anlo warned me, but I was still shocked and I told Anlo there was no way I could bring my children from Earth for a visit, let alone live there. I had been on Nokoto for less than three days and not even conscious for one full day and I had decided it was something I could never expose my children to.
Next we head to the food court of the market where I saw two men walking this." A picture of a targe appears behind Zeta. Not a very pleasant animal to look at in my opinion. Yet targes are a very popular family pet. They are both male and female. Every home has at least one. There are wild ones in parts of the planet that live in packs. This of course is a domesticated one, our pet targe, Krag. But I hadn't seen or at least I didn't remember seeing it my first day there. The drug Bryan's parents used affects memory creation and I was still suffering its affects the first two days I was there. I have some scars because my first day there it accidentally hurt me somehow, but I have no memory of it or at least nothing clear in my mind. All I can tell you is I still don't like that thing.
So Anlo explains that it's a very useful and popular pet. The only use I could conceive of in my mind was possibly something like a guard dog. Anlo explained they have a soft spot for them because they have an evolutionary ancestor in common with them like we do with chimpanzees and gorillas. They do make good guarding pets, but they're not really used for that any more. There is nearly zero crime on Nokoto. They are still used to herd animals that are similar to goats, sheep and cows here. They have an acute sense of smell, taste and sight. And while there are no STDs on Nokoto, targes while only able to breed with other targes, enjoy recreational sex and will have sex with anything or anyone that is safe to have sex with. They used to be used to detect if someone had a contagious STD. If your targe wouldn't have sex with someone when given the opportunity, that person wasn't safe to have sex with. They were essential in the detection and eradication of STDs on Nokoto.
So I was like, okay, STDs are gone here, so why do you still keep them as pets? To which Anlo reminded me his is a world with a female shortage. So if a family has sons, which is every family with children on the planet, then they have at least one as a pet for their sons to have sex with."
Zeta smiles, "Now even some of the women from the sex industry are making a disgusted face too. And at the time, I was disgusted too. Then it dawned on me," she brings up a picture of all seven of her mates standing outside with Krag. "I'd had sex with Anlo for the first time the morning of my third day there, the day they took me to the market for the first time. They have one of these as a pet, which meant Anlo probably had sex with it and I sex with him. The thought disgusted me and I accused him of having sex with it which he didn't deny.
But I had hurt his feelings and it was painfully obvious I had hurt his feelings as he apologized to me. He apologized for not being perfect. He apologized for his world not being perfect like mine and for not being good enough for me.
Earth doesn't have a nearly zero crime rate. Earth still has STDs, some quite deadly and disfiguring. Earth still has homeless and starving men, women and children. Many people on Earth still don't have adequate health care. And not good enough for me…
I have never been good enough for my first husband's parents. First thing that was wrong with me was I was home schooled by my parents. For them this means there is no way I was educated properly. Second thing that was wrong with me, I have no military back ground what so ever. We're all supposed to have two years of community service by the time we're twenty-one. Many of us get it by joining the military for two years when we're eighteen or nineteen. I didn't do that because I earned my two years of community service doing volunteer hours at the local food bank, day care center and elderly care center. My parents started taking me and Mary to volunteer when we were eight. They taught us that serving and giving back to your community is very important. So we both had our 2 years of community service by the time we were sixteen. But for Bryan's parents, not having at least two years of military service meant I had never learned discipline. And since I had never learned discipline, I lacked an essential skill for raising their grandchildren, which is why they kidnapped me, drugged me and popped me into an empty stasis unit headed to Nokoto with an uncalibrated oxygen saturation level. My father-in-law deliberately didn't calibrate the oxygen saturation in the hopes that I would expire before they got around to opening the unit I was in or at the very least I would have suffered severe brain damage. If the second occurred, I would still be light years away unable to communicate effectively if I could communicate at all, it would still be very hard to identify me. Except, the oxygen saturation on all occupied units was double checked before takeoff so my oxygen saturation was corrected. Bryan's parents also didn't know I had begun a relationship with Anlo while he was here on Earth. I woke up to a familiar face on a strange world very far away from my children, but I was alive and I was healthy and able to tell what had happened up to the point I had been rendered unconscious, all because they had deemed me unworthy, not good enough.
Then I realized I was doing the same thing Bryan's parents had done to me. Except I was judging a whole world and all its people. I certainly didn't appreciate the way Bryan's parents judged me. And I certainly didn't want to be like Bryan's parents.
I apologized to Anlo for being so ignorant and hateful. And decided I need to work on being more open minded. I had only been on Nokoto for three days, and I was unconscious for the first two days. It was not my place to judge, only to learn.
Was everything perfect after that? Hell no." Zeta laughs, "I had horrible homesickness. I missed my children and sister terribly and suffered depression as a result. I had only been there three months when I learned I was pregnant by Anlo. I suffered horrible guilt because I felt like by getting pregnant I had somehow betrayed my first two children. Then there were these other six men hovering over me waiting, waiting for me to accept them.
My first pregnancy on Nokoto caused even more family strife because there was no doubt Anlo was the biological father because he was the only one I was having sex with."
"How could knowing who's your baby's daddy be a problem," ask a woman.
"It's only a problem if you cheated on your husband and don't want him to find out he's not the daddy," says another woman.
Zeta smiles, "Shortly after we all learned I was pregnant, there was an argument. I still hadn't mastered enough of the language to follow or hold a conversation. But arguing sounds pretty much the same in every language. Except I was so in shock and just flat out unhappy about being pregnant, I didn't care what they were arguing about. I had pretty much accepted that someone was going to cop a feel or rub up on me when I wasn't expecting it. I did my best to be understanding about it because the only other female around was their mother. I was the only female available to them.
But there I am, pregnant, shocked to find myself pregnant because we're two different humanoid species, the first human female to get pregnant by a Koto male and I'm not happy about it in the least and suffering from what has to be the worst case of morning sickness ever when Bayden, the second oldest, hits on me. I grabbed a stick, beat the crap out of him with it and attempted to beat the crap out of our pet targe with it, but it ran too fast. I was that distraught and it was oblivious that the pregnancy had upset Anlo's brothers. In my head, this just couldn't be happening to me.
Then there's the fact that my pregnancy is a big deal. The whole Elders Council came for my first official prenatal checkup a week later. I'm homesick, I have morning sickness and I miss my children and my sister. I was terribly upset about missing my daughter Jasmine's fifth birthday and I felt guilty. I wished I was dead… And I wasn't thinking about how helpless Anlo was feeling because he couldn't make things better for me. But when he started to cry because I wanted to be dead, I realized I wasn't suffering alone. He was suffering with me. Then I saw our baby on the screen for the first time and I cried happy tears for the first time. I remembered that I love this man and he loves me. And all he wants for me is happiness. But I was letting all this other crap get in the way. I still didn't tell my family back here on Earth I was pregnant until after I began to show.
But at that prenatal visit, I met Elder Coo and she sent everyone out of the room so we could talk. It was a talk that helped me a lot. She was very empathetic. She explained that there are a lot of advantages to being a woman on Nokoto. Women may be a minority on Nokoto, but they are a powerful minority. I was still a little confused about some things and asked about why women were trading sex. In my mind, any woman that would do such a thing had something wrong with her. But all the women that had come to Nokoto willingly were troubled by this. It was a problem they hadn't anticipated because prostitution is legal here. To a Koto woman, a man willing to accept sex in trade for an item or his labor is a fool. And a Koto woman who stretches her family's resources by trading sex is seen as frugal."
"But what if she gets pregnant by someone that's not one of her husbands," ask a woman.
"I asked the same question," shares Zeta, "which also brings us back to: How is knowing who fathered your child a problem? Well, if she got pregnant during trading that could be the pregnancy that blesses her family with a baby girl. And on a planet where brothers need to share a mate, worrying about who is the biological father of which child causes contention. It causes contention because if you have four mates, but you only have two children then somebody is not a daddy. And to know you didn't get to have a child with the mate you love and cherish would hurt. So they don't focus on who's the daddy. All my mates are the daddy, but they were upset because they knew our first baby was Anlo's.
I still didn't see exactly how this related to me. So Elder Coo explained how my pregnancy had changed my status. I lived with Anlo. I ate with him, played with him, worked alongside him on the land that owns us all. I had sex with him and slept in his bed every night. I could no longer get a good night's sleep without him beside me. And becoming pregnant under these circumstances officially made me his mate, which also made me his brothers' mate. And me standing around insisting I hadn't agreed to be anybody's mate wasn't fooling anyone but myself.
My denial and outright pigheadedness was causing contention. His brothers thought Anlo was being selfish with me when Anlo was just honoring my wishes like a good mate should. But the fact of the matter was the contention was affecting the overseeing of the land we live on negatively and House Voltrand was in danger of losing the home they had occupied for generations.
Elder Coo's talk helped, but I had no idea how this was going to work. I did not want the man I love and his family to lose the only home they had ever known. And it had been so long since that many brothers had shared a single mate, no one had any advice for me. And poor Elder Coo was just asking that even though I hadn't asked for any of this, that even though I wasn't there willingly, would I please just try to be a proper mate for all of them…
Elder Coo asked me to be an advisor because it was obvious they had a lot to learn about interacting with people from Earth. And I accepted the position of advisor because I had a lot to learn about how things worked on this planet I had suddenly found myself on. Plus, it sounded like I could be useful.
I began to attend the Elders' Council meetings. Kamaki served as my interpreter. I made new friends, some from other worlds. I worked hard to learn the language so I wouldn't need an interpreter. After nearly five years, there isn't one of us that needs an interpreter now.
I did call a meeting with Anlo's brothers where Anlo and Kamaki served as interpreters. At that point, I really hadn't tried to communicate with them. I had just tried to ignore the problem. But I did my best to explain how over whelmed I was by everything and how here on Earth women who juggled multiple sex partners were seen in a negative light. And if that sounded strange to them, imagine how strange it was for me to suddenly find myself drowning in strange and foreign ways of thinking and doing things. I was being asked to do things I was uncomfortable with, that didn't make sense in my mind, which I often also found disturbing and offensive. I asked for their patience, to be less demanding and give me the time and space I needed to adapt to all these new thing that were all coming at me all at once. They asked me if I would try being a little more affectionate with them, let them hold my hand, hug them, maybe a little kissing. And they asked to be allowed to watch me and Anlo have sex sometimes. That request blew me away. I did not want to agree to that one, but Anlo asked me what it was hurting to let them watch once in a while. I didn't have a good answer so I had to concede. I didn't bond with all of them at the same rate. But I did begin to bond with all of them. And by the time Akanke' was born I had accepted all of them.
Then once I had accepted them I had a new problem, seven of them and only one of me. They were wearing me out. It seemed like every time I took two steps I got stopped for sex by one of them. So after going into the green house bathroom to pee one day and getting pulled back in the restroom first by Zarek for sex and then a second time by Sextus for sex, I decided we need a schedule and a couple of rules.
The first rule is no one bothers me for a quickie before all their chores are completed properly. I learned and know all the chores required for overseeing the land we live on. So I know what's required for each chore to be completed properly and approximately how long it takes to complete them properly. If Rayou comes to me, and it's usually Rayou, and it's too soon for his chores for that day to be completed properly, I'll go check it. If the chore hasn't been completed properly, he's not getting the quickie he asked for and he can't ask again until he's completed his chores properly everyday for a week. If he fails to complete all his chores properly for a week, he'll also lose his turn in the schedule. Every night Anlo sleeps on one side of me and his brothers take turns sleeping on the other side of me.
Yes, ladies, you too will soon sleep between two beautiful men every night if you chose to relocate to Nokoto. You also need to know that no one else had all the difficulties adjusting to life on Nokoto that I had…
This is a picture of a very good friend of mine. It was taken shortly after her four new mates from House Marlus picked her and her daughter up and took them home. I'm sure you're seeing the same things I saw when I met her for the first time at the market's food court. She's scared, terrified even. Anlo asked her a question and she couldn't even make eye contact with him let alone answer him. She only peeked at me, but she would talk to me. I quickly learned that she had been married before and her ex-husband had beaten and abused her severely. He had been arrested while she was pregnant with their daughter and she had been able to obtain a divorce. Except even from prison he taunted her and hunted her down. She would move and he would call her own mother and pick the information from her.
My friend was certain that when he was finally released from prison, he would find her and kill her. Social workers believed it too. That's how she got on the list of possibles for relocation. They believed it was the only way to truly save her life, for her to finally be free…
I think my friend is one of the bravest people I have ever met. She said to me that day I first met her, 'I'm not sure how I feel about having four husbands all of the sudden. But they promised me I would never be beaten here, that my daughter and I will be safe and well cared for.' And more than she wanted a better life for herself, she wanted a better life for her daughter who was four when this picture was taken…"
Zeta changes the picture. "This is House Marlus now…," Zeta smiling, "Look at those smiles. Gone is the timid woman who couldn't even make full eye contact with another woman. She is now vibrant and outgoing. Her second daughter is a feisty three year old. Her first daughter is a much cherished nine year old who looks forward to having her own mates one day. She wants four just like her No-no, No-nee, No-ni and No-na, her first father, second father, third father and fourth father.
My friend found that better life she was seeking for herself and her daughter. And we both found something neither of us expected.
We don't know exactly when it happened. But we found ourselves the heads of our households. We're the queens of our castles. We just know our new mother-in-laws guided us there. They're still there when and if we need them. They let us run the show. They're happy retired ladies now that spend their days playing with the grandkids."
Zeta brings up their family portrait taken just before she returned to Earth to assist Elder Coo and Kamaki and to get Gabe and Jasmine. "This is my family. I'm looking forward to adding my first two children to our family portrait. The world I was so anxious to get off of… that I thought I could never bring my children to… is now my home. And I'm looking forward to going home with all of my children. And I hope you will all grab tightly to this opportunity, and make Nokoto your home too." Then she walks quickly over to Anlo and hugs him tightly. He wipes away the tears that welled up and over as she concluded and kisses her deeply.
Hands go up, and most of the questions are for Zeta, a few are for Anlo, Elder Coo and Kamaki.
A woman ask, "How do you deal with things like sex happening while you're shopping?"
"At first," Zeta admits, "not very well. But it is such a part of daily life, it quickly becomes background noise. You're busy with your own shopping and negotiating, watching children play. I still get shocked or surprised occasionally and I blush embarrassed. Sometimes I'm awed when I see a new position and then I get to tell my mates, 'Oh no, I am not trying that.'"
Another ask, "Anlo, it doesn't bother you to share her?"
Anlo answers, "I never expected to have a mate to myself. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have her to myself, but I am not bothered. This is just normal everyday life for us"
One ask, "Zeta, have you ever traded sex?"
Zeta takes a deep breath and blows it out, "Yes, once. We needed a part to repair a wind-well. Anlo was negotiating, but they refused all his offers. And every time the two brothers refused one of his offers, they would look at me. Bayden was with us and he pulled Anlo aside. I asked what was wrong. Anlo didn't want to tell me, but Bayden did.
The good thing about having more than one mate is there is always one that'll tell you everything. And Bayden informed me they weren't accepting any of the offers Anlo was making, but they kept looking at me. He suspected that all they wanted for the part was me… We needed that part and there wasn't any place else we could get it. I didn't enjoy it and I'm not proud of it, but I did what I had to do."
"That bothered me," states Anlo.
"I would like to add," Elder Coo speaking up, "that we do not approve of that type of behavior from our vendors. They were reassigned and we now have two families that produce those parts. But I would like to commend Zeta. This part was what you would call expensive. So she saved her family much in resources."
"Do you know who the father is for the child you're carrying now," someone ask.
"All seven of them," answers Zeta.
"This fascination with who the biological father is, is something we find strange," shares Anlo. "All three of those men are my fathers. In a family where there is one female with multiple mates, what if they only have one or two children? If there are more fathers than children, you know someone did not father a child. To know you are no one's father and have no child would hurt. Thus, so no one feels hurt or left out, we do not focus on who is the biological father. We share being the father. No man wants to know he has no children with the mate he loves."
"Are you in love with all of your husbands, Zeta?"
"I love them all, yes. Romantically in love with all of them, no. And I would say the same applies for them. They all love me, but they don't all feel romantic love for me."
"Do you think some of your husbands still use that pet thing?"
"I have a, don't ask don't tell policy on that," answers Zeta. "There's seven of them and only one of me. We tried the sex on demand thing and that just wasn't working. I'm fairly sure a couple of them still use Krag occasionally. But I don't want to know. That's another thing you could see at the market, males that don't have a mate using their pet targe."
They spend about another hour answering questions. And none of the women back out of going to Nokoto.
Zeta only has one last thing to do before they return to Nokoto.