And who picks the road?

Jesse got back to the little room in block H of Home 23 far into the early hours of tomorrow. His beautiful dress was splashed with stains of whiskey and fluids far more human… but that was nothing the automated laundry service wouldn’t be able to handle. Besides, John and Miranda would never get him to wear it out with them again. You didn’t pay a ridiculous amount of money to dress up one of your living dolls and then let them be seen escorting you in the same outfit twice! That would just be shameful…

Betsy’s motionless form was in its usual place on her bed. She must have got in hours ago. The pair of them were gradually getting used to the idea of seeing each other less during those private hours of the morning and evening where once they would have been inseparable. New responsibilities were claiming their lives one by one, after all… and really they were both aware that a day would come soon when she would have to move out for a while. The breeding corporations didn’t like to take any risks when the moment of return on all their investments came close. The pregnant teenager would be expected to stay in a section of the pit with state-of-the-art medical facilities, constantly monitoring her for any issues her baby might face.

Jesse didn’t quite know how he might face that coming month alone. He was glad that his best friend would be being so well looked after, of course… but the little femboy had slept next to her or near her for almost every night he could remember. Even the idea of settling down in a room cold and empty from her presence seemed too strange to think about. Suzy had offered to let him stay with him and Daddy for the entire time… yet, even that was not a prospect that eased the sissy’s worries. This was Home. Betsy was part of that. No amount of extra time with the femboyfriend he loved could replace it.

Betsy herself lay awake. Eyes open, but facing the wall. She heard the most precious person in her world come in and quietly choose his own bed… not wanting to risk disturbing her. Little did he know that she had only entered the room herself some half-an-hour earlier, and her thoughts were still racing around far too fast to allow a chance at sleeping. The information that she had gleaned from that small and flickering screen hidden behind walls she wasn’t supposed to pass, scored into her mind. 25%. 25% match. Her child-to-be was 25% Jesse, the measure of a half-sibling.

It wasn’t so unlikely, really… that just meant that whoever had impregnated her had done the same to Jesse’s mother, some 18 years ago. That wasn’t so strange a coincidence. There were only so many breeding centres, and a certain collection of men who had a penchant for visiting them more regularly than others. Except… she hadn’t been able to resist. She’d looked at Finder’s genetic comparison too:

50%. He was the father. Her new, old friend was the parent of both her unborn child and the boy she had grown up beside. Slowly falling in love with and watching be dragged away. In her belly, right now… pushing up awkwardly against her bladder, was Jesse’s little brother or sister.

It all made it seem more real. More condensed and claustrophobic. The walls of the society they lived in squeezing tighter from all sides. Again… it made sense. Finder must have impregnated hundreds of women by now; living and working where he did. He’d certainly fucked her more times than anyone else. Yet, somehow… it was all too neat. Too deftly pre-arranged. Betsy didn’t believe in fate. But then, you really didn’t need to when you knew for a fact that there was some invisible, guiding hand directing all aspects of your life. Just how much of all this had the Algorithm purposefully set in motion?! How much did it know about what went on inside her head? Did it even know that she would break the rules to find this out?!

For the first time in her life, the young woman dedicated to the ideal that all this was the best way for humanity to arrange itself… looked around the room and shivered at the notion that some great, ineffable presence was watching her. Waiting for her to behave in exactly the ways its infinitely-complex probability matrices assumed she would. Her eyes were drawn to sweetly-sleeping Jesse, already fast asleep after another late, late night of being fucked by those who’d paid for the pleasure. Could she tell him? Or was that what the electronic mind wanted her to do? Another step in its plans to forge him into the perfect, human sex-toy. Should she tell Finder? Would he want that extra connection and landmark in the complicated matter of who he was and how long he’d been an incarcerated worker?

There was one more thing she’d learned, after all: The man who had fathered her first child…

His name was Joseph.