Descend- Seeing Stars by Sean Oswald (the ebook reader .TXT) 📕

      “There are two hundred and ninety-five human adults left, not including the sleepers. With the sixty women that Cecelia and Trudi brought we have more than half of those people. Even though we are the strongest, ruling simply by might is not a good long-term strategy. So, we need to grow Team Jay,” Trina said.

      “We barely know those women,” Jay protested.

      “You barely know them. We have assigned the women of Team Jay to make friends with them as best we can. While it has only been a day on the leviathan and a week on the ship, tense times like this help form quick friendships. We have gone out of our way to bring them onto the team. And that is saying a lot cause you know I’m not the friendliest person in the world. Hell, neither of us are,” Amelia said and then smiled at Trina who simply nodded.

      “I assumed that Miguel would take on at least half the girls, I already have sixty girls on my…” Jay paused, searching for the right word. Actually, he knew the right word, but was somehow still hesitant to use it.

      “Harem, I think that is the word you were looking for. Just call it what it is,” Trina said.

      Amelia continued, “And we knew that was what you were gonna be thinking. Here is the deal though. We identified about nine of the newcomers that we don’t really get along with or don’t think would fit into Team Jay, but we would like you to offer a place to the rest of them.”

      “How do you even have time to get to know all these girls?” Jay asked.

“Delegating, something that you still need to work on,” Trina said.

      “Oh yeah, and we only have sex a couple times a day at best not dozens of times. Even with your time powers you still have a lot on your plate,” Amelia said laughing. Then she continued, “And don’t even let me hear you complain about having to sleep with more girls. In the grand scheme of things if that is what secures our future you can make the sacrifice.”

      Trina burst out laughing at that too. Jay couldn’t do anything but stand there and look at them. He suddenly realized what this was. They likely both realized he would have come to this conclusion eventually, but they were trying to circumvent his usual hand wringing.

      “Well, we should go into this meeting. I will trust you both though to point out who I should be inviting to join the team and who you think we should be fusing with next,” Jay said.

      “Oh, great so now we get to be his pimps just like Huong,” Amelia replied, laughing. Jay just ignored her and the three of them walked into the room.

      Inside he found all of Team Miguel, the rest of Team Jay and all of the sixty newcomers. With everyone here even the children had to be present, but they were all being kept by their mothers. Even Meikiyo was here.

      Jay did the smiling and making small talk before walking to the place obviously set aside for him to address the room. At first, he started explaining the decisions made earlier about containing the other clusters. The discussion took longer than he expected but, in the end, it seemed like everyone came around to understanding the necessity of it.

      The awkward question came from Cecelia. “Is that what you are going to do to us?”

      Trina answered, “First off it is very humane, you would hardly experience the passage of any time.”

      “Yeah but it would remove us from being able to work for our future,” a girl that Jay didn’t know said.

      Trina glared at having been interrupted before she continued, “But you have a choice. First off, we expect everyone from Team Jay and Team Miguel to participate and contribute. You all need to carry your weight. Jay may be too nice, but Amelia and I will make sure everyone is.”

      Huong jumped in and said, “Trina of course means to say that everyone has been doing their part.”

      Trina seemed to realize that she had been coming off too harshly because she didn’t even glare at Huong but instead said, “That is right. Now for everyone who was originally in Cecelia or Trudi’s clusters you have a decision to make. You can either agree to go into a field where it will only seem like an hour passes or you can join one of the two teams here.”

      Another girl that Jay didn’t know the name of called out, “You mean the decision is ours to make?”

      Amelia stepped in now and said, “It is a two-way street. Both the team and you get a say in it. I can’t speak for what the specific requirements are for Team Miguel, but Jay’s team has some rules, and you will have to agree to them. There are also perks obviously.”

      Miguel said, “I have discussed it with the rest of my team and under the circumstances we are willing to take on as many as a dozen more members, but I simply can’t divide my time any more than that. This will already be a sacrifice, so you need to be sure you are serious about it.”

      From there the room broke out into about forty conversations at the same time. Jay realized he wasn’t gonna get a word in edgewise, so he walked over to the nearest of his children, Sara, who was Rosa’s daughter. He leaned in and kissed Rosa on the cheek. She wasn’t exactly the most romantic with him, but they had continued to sleep together even if not as often as with many of the other girls.

Jay had however decided that he didn’t want