The Education Department by Mulligan
The Education Department
by Mulligan
The Swarm Cycle Universe ©2007 The Thinking Horndog
The Swarm Cycle is a collection of stories manufactured around a concept introduced by the Thinking Horndog positing an alien invasion and Earth’s reaction. The intent is for this to be a multi-author universe similar to the popular Naked In School stories. If you’re a budding author of erotica or sci-fi and see something here that strikes your fancy, head over to the Author’s Page for more info on what’s going on here and how to submit a story for this collection.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyrighted with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. Reproduction for profit is forbidden. Any distribution must include this note and the author’s email address.
My thanks to The Thinker and The Duke for advice and guidance and editing — any errors are my own.
“School Sucks!”
She yelled it at her mother and followed through with “And Dan won’t make me go, either! He said so!”
With that the 11 year-old turned toward me and stuck out her tongue and then stormed off down the pod tunnel toward her ‘family’ home.
“Mac, she really knows better,” apologized her mother. “What Dan told her was that she ‘wouldn’t have to go to school the way she used to, on Earth’. I guess she just didn’t realize that his emphasis was on the last part of his statement — and she probably stopped listening at the end of first part of what he said. She’ll be at your first meeting next week.”
Actually, that wasn’t the first vocally negative response I’d been the recipient of since the Civil Service office had announced that school would be starting soon in the newly opened Civil Service pod corridor of our township and that I’d be the headmaster of a K-12 equivalent school system for the same township. Not that I wanted the job! I had thought I’d put all this behind me. I had intended to be an explorer!
“It’s OK, Delores. I’ve heard it from a lot of kids. School has all too often been something they didn’t enjoy after they left kindergarten. We’re hoping that our new system will be somewhat more enjoyable or, at least, more bearable. Families have been pushing for this so it’s going to happen whether the kids like it or not! Sponsors have started demanding it. But it’s still going to be school.”
“OK, but good luck!” she said as she turned to follow her daughter down the tunnel.
Since our collection and transportation to Demeter, our new colony planet, most people and definitely all the kids had been too busy to even miss school. But for about the last six months some of the concubine parents had been pushing the colony leadership to put something like school in place. Settling in had apparently been completed in our township, and parents (moms mostly, but often the sponsor, male or female, was the spokesperson for a ‘family’ grouping) had started to notice that while they were busy learning about their new world and life, their kids were no longer receiving any kind of structured education. The colony’s busy civil leader (Governor Flowers) had passed the issue off to the Civil Service — a favorite place to dispose of hot issues the government doesn’t yet know how to handle yet.
Tribune ap Rhys had tabled the request for about a month, but after the military told the parents that we (the Civil Service, that is) were going to be responsible for education we started getting all the flack about setting up schools. He apparently looked at the records of his subordinates and decided that I’d be his ‘Ed. person’. Not that he had many people to check through. So he stuck me with the job based on my ‘prior experience’! So much for starting over in my new life!
I guess I’d better identify myself. I’m John McIntyre (Mac to my friends); a 62 year-old retired schoolteacher. At least I was before being collected, at the Home Depot for gosh sakes! It’s a silly story but you need to know at least part of it to understand what happened.
I’d stopped by my old school a few times after retiring to settle some retirement stuff with the business office and always dropped into the faculty room to visit with my former colleagues. I’d stopped in and had lunch with them one Friday (pizza day) and the conversation at our table moved around to Kristi’s need for some ‘male’ help. Kristi was in her second year of teaching at our high school and didn’t have any relatives nearby when she needed some help and guidance in homebuilding. This time she needed help with painting a couple of the rooms in her new - to her - (the previous month) apartment.
At least 5 people at the table immediately pointed at me and said that I’d better help her out. They explained to her that my summer work for years had been painting for other people, and reminded me that since I was retired I had plenty of time to ‘help Kristi out’. I wasn’t going to fight the idea too hard, for reasons of my own. The upshot of it was that I showed up at her place at 9 the next morning with a tape measure and pad in hand. After figuring out how big the two rooms were and getting some idea of what kind of paint she wanted we headed out to the local Home Depot to pick out the colors and get the material. It was the last place in the world I ever expected to see marines collecting volunteers.
I’ve always been a Science Fiction fan and had taken the CAP test more out of my SciFi interest than a real expectation of being extracted. I was just 60 at the time they became required and was far more interested in taking an expected early retirement than expecting to be part of the exodus from Earth. The threatened Sa’arm invasion of earth probably wouldn’t happen until after I was too old to fight, or maybe dead. My score of 7.3 had surprised me but I really had no intention of doing any fighting. I’d done enough of that back in Vietnam and had no interest in reliving that unsatisfactory part of my life. I guess I’d gotten that idea over to the AI doing the testing because my card had me labeled as a non-combatant. I really didn’t think I’d ever get to go, but I kind of figured that if I had to be collected I’d get myself rebuilt and join the Fleet Auxiliary we were starting to hear about. I’d help to do some galactic exploring, I thought. To ‘Go where no man had gone before’ sounded interesting to this ex-history teacher.
It didn’t work out that way, and it’s probably Kristi’s fault. I suppose I love her all the more because it’s her fault!
“My God, it’s an extraction,” she said brilliantly when the officer in charge told everyone in the store to gather at the cash registers. She threw the paint color samples down on the floor and took off toward the front of the store. I wasn’t impressed by her response. As I watched her go I also watched as her sweatshirt and bra hit the floor, left behind like the clothing of so many other people. For an old fart like me the landscape was suddenly very interesting there were bare boobs everywhere! There were probably 60 people in the store for some sale they had going and it must have been something interesting to women because about 45 of the people there were women. Quite an unusual customer makeup for a home materials box store. And most of them were topless right now — Very Interesting!
As I moved more slowly toward the cash registers I picked up her hastily discarded purse. I saw her again among the younger women in the group. She was skinning out of her jeans after toeing off her tennis shoes. I’d kind of lusted after her last year when she came on board but I doubt that anyone knew. After all, what could a 60 year-old expect with a 22 year-old? I had enjoyed her company a lot. She was a pretty girl, dirty blond, vivacious, and energetic. She had a very nice 5 foot 3 figure with generous curves in all the right places. And she was smart.
That’s why I was surprised to find her stripping like the greater majority of the women and girls there. As I walked up to her group she did a pirouette wearing nothing but a little thong, and grinned up at me.
“Well Mac — am I as good as you thought I’d be?”
“Kris what are you doing here? What was your CAP?”
“A lousy 6.4! And they won’t let me retake the interview for at least another year. So I’m going to try to peddle this body you’ve been sneaking peeks at for the last year. If I can get a sponsor to be as interested in me as you’ve been I can get a ride out of here right now!”
And here I hadn’t thought anyone else knew that I’d been watching her. Probably nobody else did know, except for the object of my attention. Right there her grin at me and the realization that she’d kept my attention a secret changed several of my intentions.
“OK young lady, here’s your purse — you need it unless you’re hiding your CAP card someplace in your birthday suit. And I don’t think that would be comfortable.”
“God, that would have screwed this up royally, wouldn’t it? Thanks, I hope to need this card this morning,” she said as she skinned out of the thong and stuffed it into her purse, in the process revealing that the carpet matched the drapes in the form of a cute little dirty blond mohawk trim.
Stepping back to complete the new view I responded, “Oh, I can guarantee that you need it so start digging. And as soon as you find it give it to me and then start helping me find two other women and a man. We need three more!”
The look on her face was priceless.
“Mac! What is your score — wait — if you want four then …
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