Natty Stories/Page14

We who love the BDSM world may feel threatened by this story. It wrote itself out of my qualms about the wisdom of the rejuve system, but it is a fairly accurate and ignorant portrayal of our culture "from the outside looking in."

From Alex's Perspective
I miss my sweet Natalie so much. I live so far from where she is now imprisoned. And I could move, but in 5 years when she moves on, there's no saying where she will be. They might move her away from me just to be cruel. This system certainly knows all it needs to about calculated cruelty.

Why, for instance, must Penitatas move from parent to parent every five or six years? What about stability? What about love? Of course, the same parent could not care for a child throughout a fifty year sentence. But what are they afraid of? That a bond will be developed?

I know my darling has had some counseling following her kidnap and rape. But nowhere near enough. They've just depended on child flexibility to snap her back to normal. I've seen her since the rape. She even cringes from me! It's heartbreaking. But her "parents" just think she's shy.

She'd only been with them a day before she was kidnapped. They don't know the real Natalie. Do they want to? Can they appreciate my sweetheart for the depth of her integrity, her phenomenal intelligence, and her quirky humor? Are they jealous that she is a world renowned specialist? Probably. A glorified construction worker and a computer nerd. I've had intellectual conversations with Natalie on the comm, and I've seen the blank looks on that Sarah's face. Knowing those kind of people, they're probably jealous of Natalie's intelligence, and they take it out on her ever suffering bottom. I hear those sort of perverts even beat each other up, often in reaction to misdeeds from one or the other. As if one of them was the child and the other the parent. Do they know what mutual respect means?

What is she supposed to learn from being beaten? That she never wants this to happen again? I must confess myself that I do not understand why she traded three months of anguish on the part of her patient for fifty years of her own, but Natalie has always looked out for others first. She knew euthanasia was illegal, but she and I were both astonished and profoundly disturbed by the witch hunting that followed the discovery of what she had done.

She is a world renowned specialist, and has pioneered programs that have eradicated half the diseases that plagued the primitives. She has saved millions of lives and many more from unnecessary rejuves. Not that I don't, as a doctor, understand the importance of a single life, but why, why, did it ever make it to trial? Couldn't they weigh the good she has done? It's not even the family that prosecuted; they were grateful. It's not as if the patient could have been saved. What has become of our society that it cannot face the reality of death?

As doctors, we see too many patients who have lived three or four hundred years. They're tired. They're bored. They've done it all, seen it all, been it all. Some of them are religious, and curious about the next life. Natalie and I are religious ourselves, and we have not decided yet as to whether we wish to die. How do you make such a choice? The surety of eternal life on Earth or one of the colonies, dealing with the faults of humanity, or the chance of God's holy presence?

And as a culture, won't we stagnate without the infusion of new blood? There are four times as many Penitatas as Kindern, and each year, we see the numbers of Kindern decreasing.

There are no easy answers, and I don't know what to think. But I know one thing for sure. It becomes a lot more up close and personal when it is MY wife who is suffering. And I, a world famous doctor myself, can do nothing to help her. -
 * This story runs into the sequel - Little Susie