Age of the Orc

Then
21 July 2008, Fourth Age
10:24:01

The artist didn't know how to draw Orc women. The bubble-headed bimbo on the cover of the comic had massive breasts, but a slim waist and flaring hips, the limbs too long and not proportioned correctly. The eyes were too big, her ears were as sharp as an Elf's, and the dainty jaw couldn't support her protruding fangs. In one hand she held a frankly ridiculous-looking laser rifle, the other raised to hold a curved blade that had spikes on its spikes.

Zoch flipped through the stack of comic books. They were the cheap kind, printed in Mordor. Supposedly by Orcs, for Orcs, and probably actually drawn by a Hobbit up in Bree. Science fiction stories of militant futures where Orcs conquered and ruled. The title splashed across the top in Man-blood red was AGE OF THE ORC. The age that had been promised for thousands of years and recruited a hundred generations of Orcs into armies, gangs, cults, megacorps. A shining bright future that never materialized, except in shitty cheap comics and pulp novels.

The Orc licked his lips and felt the wire of his braces. Zoch knew he was lucky to get any dental care. Most Orc kids weren't so lucky, but Mordor Cybernetics had been generous. "Giving back to the community," which meant tax write-offs for letting dental school students and cybersurgeons practice on the cohorts of young Orcs growing up in the outskirts of Barad-dûr.

It was supposed to be different, up North, or in the mountain villages, or out East with the nomadic tribes. Some Orcs paired off, or had line-marriages. Actually raised their own kids. Zoch's parents had probably met in the breeding pit, and had been dropped off at the communal creche while still wet and mewling. All of Zoch's eighteen years had been in the Greater Barad-dûr Metropolitan Communal Youth System, with cohort 2990Z. Jeng, Gorbad, Badaz, Hazog, Morgrir...they'd gone through school together, lived in the dorms together. Most cohorts broke apart when they hit the age of majority, each Orc going their own way, while others were recruited directly into the army or megacorporate security as a unit.

That wouldn't be Zoch's fate. Zoch's scores had been higher than average on the standardized tests, even when young. Advanced placement classes. Hours spent reading instead of training or visiting the breeding pit, once they'd come of age to visit the breeding pit. Teachers had **** the young Orc into dual enrollment courses during the summer months, when Morgrir and the rest did their final summer training camp out in the wilds. Morgrir, biggest and strongest and fastest of their cohort, had won a junior unarmed combat contest out there on the plains, unaugmented featherweight. His fate would be different too.

Then the scholarships had come through. Zoch remembered the party the rest of the cohort held. Mordor Cybernetics had picked up the tab for both of them: Zoch to the University at Grey Heavens, to study physics. Morgrir had signed away his body for augmentation and unarmed combat, cybersurgery suites and fight rings, for cheering crowds and holocameras. Megacorporate sponsorship could take Morgrir to the top of the hand-to-hand combat game...and maybe, just maybe, keep Zoch from coming back to Barad-dûr.

The cheap printing flattened out the many shades of Orc skin color to a near-universal green or a muddy olive. Comics and magazines were for the Orcs who couldn't afford a proper tablet or direct neural interface. Like Zoch, who pushed the glasses back up a freckled olive nose as he got near the bottom of the pile. Caught sight of the glossy magazine in the pile of pulp paper.

There was just a bare leg. Feminine, immaculate. The curly red hairs covered not just the toes but the entire top of the foot. The Orc beneath her was dressed just in his underwear, but the bulge was obvious through the tight white boxer briefs. There was just a hunt of a damp spot at the tip, where the big toe touched it. There was an almost mathematical beauty in the curve of that calf, that bulge. A sensual framing that touched something deep in Zoch's brain.

Looking about to make sure no one was looking, Zoch opened the porn magazine. Slick paper. It fell open to a photospread of a she-Orc in white lingerie, the swollen, too-perfect breasts that spoke of implants, long dark hair tinged with green, through which her ears poked out. Except between her legs dangled a flacid cock and balls, hairless, huge even when not erect.

In a second, Zoch felt the tension inside. The deep throb that made the Orc's thighs press together. A constant ache that flared up at the slightest impulse and throbbed. Because unlike the others in the cohort, Zoch didn't dare go to the breeding pit, and the dorm didn't allow enough privacy to take matters into hand. All Zoch could do was wait for it to go down on its own...and suffer the exquisite agony of an urge that could never be dealt with.

Another reason he wanted out of here.

With a hard swallow, Zoch buried the magazine back into the stack and proceeded to the counter. The old Orc behind the newsstand barely glanced at the stack of yellowing paper. One wrinkled hand scratched at a metal plate that covered half of his skull. Zoch traded the last of the silver pennies the cohort earned for city-stipulated mandatory afterschool jobs for the heap of comics and the one hidden secret. There was no use for cash in the Grey Havens. It was all credchips there.

With a giddy heart, Zoch stepped back out into the sunlight. Barad-dûr's ancient stone fortifications overlaid and overbuilt with neon and concrete. Flashing lights that advertized casinos, hotels, restaurants, small gaudy museums, breeding pits for Orcs and more upscale bordellos open to all peoples. The humid air smelled of too many bodies, mixed with the black smoke of petrol engines, the sickly, fruity scent of ****. There were Orcs that brewed beer fresh each day, low **** content, fizzy, sweet just enough to be safer to drink than the water. Almost everyone had a cup of it as they walked the dusty streets.

Zoch licked dry lips. Money all spent.

"You ready, brother?" Morgrir said, as Zoch arrived at the bus stop. The cohort-brother grinned, tall and lithe, broad of shoulder, hair shaved down to an inky dark strip down the center of his head. They were dressed the same. Institutional clothes: grey jeans, shapeless yellow-grey t-shirts, black sneakers whose soles wore thin too fast. Except on Morgrir, it looked good; muscle bulged across his chest, the jeans painted his thighs, emphasized the bulge down his left pants leg.

By comparison, Zoch felt small, ill-kempt. Hair a buzz cut, because only girls were allowd to grew it out long in the youth system. None of the clothes seemed to fit right; body too weedy, too short. Runt of the cohort. Morgrir had kept the others from bullying him too much. Zoch had heard tales of what happened to runts in the other cohorts. Felt lucky there were a few girls in their cohort, or else...well, puberty hit Orcs as hard as Men or Hobbits. In another ten months, some of the girls from their cohort would be handing off their cubs to the city to raise.

The endless fucking cycle. Literally. Orcs trapped, generation after generation. The shithole that Zoch didn't want to be home anymore.

Morgrir glanced at the comics that Zoch stuffed into his bag. The backpack held everything the Orc owned. Some clothes, a pocketknife, an ancient graphing calculator Zoch had to use because they were too young for even the cheapest headware implants. The city didn't give kids the chance to accumulate many possessions.

"Age of the Orc," he read the garish title, splayed across the cover above the big-breasted bimbo with the crude fangs. Morgrir gave my shoulder a little squeeze. "You remember that, brother, when you're out there with all those round-ears. One day, we'll be on top."

"One day," Zoch said, unable to match the other Orc's conviction. During the summer camps, the veterans would tell stories about when the Age of the Orc would come. The same propaganda that they had been feeding young Orcs for thousands of years. Zoch stared at Morgrir's eyes, wondering at the strange light in them. Wondered how much of that bullshit they'd been raised on that the other Orc actually believed. "When is your first surgery scheduled?"

"Three days," Morgrir said, lips peeling away in an eager grin. "Tonight, I'm going in for some more medical assessments. They've been talking to me about what they want to do. It's exciting...experimental, bleeding edge. By the time you get back, I'll be a regular super-Orc!"

Then the bus pulled up. Zoch's ticket was loaded into the identity-chip implanted in the back of the Orc's palm. Standard city issue, along with the System Identification Number, health records, grades from school...everything that the system said defined who and what Zoch was.

Zoch looked back at Morgrir through the dirty glass, and the muscular Orc waved at as the bus pulled out. A part of Zoch wondered if any of their cohort would meet again, after graduation. Technically, Zoch and Morgrir were both already indentured to Mordor Cybernetics. They paid for the education, and the Orcs paid them back by working for them. But it would be years before Zoch was back. Years and who knew how many surgeries, how many rounds of combat for Morgir. The rest of the cohort would find their own place in the world...or not.

A part of Zoch hoped there would be no coming back. And that if Zoch ever did return, that Morgrir wouldn't recognize his cohort-brother at all.