Otherworld

by MCC

Chapter One

Ever tried to wake up, and found your body fighting you the whole time? Almost like you were trying to push through a wall made of pudding. That’s how I felt. Like something was trying to keep me asleep. Slowly I pushed away the curtains of blackness, and finally opened my eyes.

I was in a hospital room. What’s more, I hurt.

I tried to remember what I had done, where I had been, what I had been doing, that might have caused me to land in the hospital. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember anything. The last thing I remembered, was laying down to go to bed. On a Wednesday night. At nine. So, how the hell did I end up here?

I slowly turned my head to one side, trying to take stock of my predicament. Part of the pain was in my neck, that was for sure. Just turning it sent stabs of hot pain down my shoulders and up into my scalp. I grimaced, and kept turning. There, next to the bed, was an IV stand, with a blue box attached to it. I’d been in the hospital before, and knew what an infusion pump was. I slowly moved my left hand, and them my right, looking for what I knew must be there. Ah, there it was, something cylindrical. I wrapped my fingers around it, and jabbed my thumb into the end. Within seconds, a coldness entered my arm, and a second later sweet euphoria introduced itself. I thought it would be a minute dose, but the pump kept humming, and the coldness stayed in my arm, and my head got heavier. The humming stopped, and it was all I could do to turn my head back to its starting position. I noted, however, that the maneuver no longer hurt.

I later surmised that activating the pump had triggered an alarm, for it was only seconds after I got dosed that a nurse entered the room. I knew it was a nurse, for she wore a traditional nurse’s uniform, though the style reminded me more of what my mother used to wear back in the 1970’s than what they were wearing in the first part of the twenty-first century. She walked up to my bed, leaned over and smiled at me, long strands of honey-blond hair cascading down from her nurse’s hat. I felt something weird, but I wasn’t sure of it was love, lust, or whatever. Before I could decide, she spoke.

"Hello, Mike, how are you?" Hmm, she knew my name. "I’m sure you’re very confused, as well as in a great deal of discomfort." Nurses never used the word ‘hurt’, they always said ‘discomfort’. Hmmm. "Let me explain a few things, though I doubt you’ll absorb everything all at once. You are in a place we call ‘Otherworld’. You’ve heard of science fiction stories of civilizations where there are no women, that capture females to take back to their world? Well, this is a place like that, only the other way around. Because of a biological weapon that was released a long, long time ago, there are very few men born here, and the ones that are born are sterile. Therefore, to perpetuate society, we have to bring in men."

Though my mouth seemed filled with peanut butter and cotton, I managed to voice what I thought was a brilliant observation. "Bullshit."

The nurse smiled. "That’s almost exactly what every man says when they are brought here, but it’s true."

"What country are we in?" Not quite as brilliant, but I was proud of it nonetheless.

"Not another country, another world. Actually, the same world, but a parallel universe. All the continents you know exist here, but the civilization advanced differently. For the past seven hundred years we have existed only by being able to bring males from your universe to ours."

"So is that why I hurt? Because you brought me here?" Scotty might be upset that his transporter is somewhat less than painless.

"No, and yes. Getting you here caused you no harm. The reason you are uncomfortable was the extraction process."

I didn’t say anything, but the look on my face must have spoken volumes. She picked up a large mirror from a table, then pulled down the sheets, holding the mirror so that I could see my lower abdomen.

There were three – not one, not two, but THREE – tubes exiting my penis. I could see fluids going into my body through one of them, and fluid coming out in another. The third appeared to be a standard catheter, and the clear tubing it was connected to had a slow procession of dark yellow fluid in it. I moved my hand over and gingerly examined all those parts I could see. Yep, they were sore too, even through the pain medicine.

"You see, we need men for fertilization, but we’ve moved away from what you would consider normal ways of doing it. Where normal sexual intercourse would result in you expelling millions of sperm cells, with only a one-in-five chance of fertilization under the best of conditions, we have perfected a process where by we can achieve a ninety-four percent success rate of fertilization using only four sperm cells. This in-vitro process is carried out under the most sterile conditions, and to insure this high success rate, the sperm must be collected under equally-sterile conditions. When you were brought here, you were unconscious, and you were kept that way throughout the harvesting procedure. Unfortunately, the procedure requires the use of electric muscle stimulation, and lasts for approximately forty hours. We try to restrain donors, and keep them sedated to prevent injury, but invariably, they suffer from sever muscle strains over almost their entire body. Which is why you are somewhat uncomfortable right now."

I looked from her to the three tubes, and back to her, with a horrified look on my face. "Don’t worry, two of those will be removed tomorrow, and the catheter a few days after that. You will be asleep for the procedure, so you won’t feel a thing." She then smiled broadly. "After that, a week or two of rest, and you will have free reign."

My mouth was starting to feel numb from the medication, but I managed a few more words. "Free reign for what?"

Her smiled changed from glee to genuine warmth. "As a reward for donating, you will have free reign in our society for as long as the donation lasts, at which time you will be given the choice to either donate again, or go back to the time and place where you left your world." She turned her head slightly and raised an eyebrow. "There are restrictions, of course, but I think you’ll like it." She pulled the covers back over me, and reached for the infusion pump. She stopped, leaned over and kissed my forehead, then pressed a button on the pump. It started humming again, and she said, "Pleasant dreams."

Actually, I didn’t dream, but I did wake up two days later, feeling not nearly as sore, though still a bit uncomfortable. The same nurse returned, and I learned her name was Lorie. I also learned that it had been over a week since I had arrived at this place. Within a day, the IV was removed, though not before the catheter, and I got an extra burst of painkiller as it was removed. It really didn’t hurt all that much, though the first time I urinated after it was out, I thought I was gonna die.

I also learned some of the rules for Otherworld. As a donor, I literally had free reign to come and go as I pleased, with an official residence in this city, maintained by a small staff. I could ask for just about anything, and go anywhere I wanted. Though this society had perfected a process of initiating pregnancy that involved only a laboratory, there were some women who were intent on doing it the old fashioned way, and I was encouraged to oblige them. I could also ask anyone I wanted to spend the night with me, though I could not force them to. I did not have the right to harm anyone, though, I learned, I did have a rare official duty to mete out punishment in some types of criminal cases (it was explained that my predecessor, during his five-year visit, exercised this particular power on only two occasions).

I was also regaled with a brief history of the ten donors who preceded me, with emphasis on what their particular tastes were. A couple were just plain lecherous (one actually got expelled from Otherworld, an extremely rare happenstance), one was into leather, two into serious rubber, and one was into tapioca pudding (literally, he spent most of his time relaxing in a large tub filled with tapioca pudding. The tub was specially built to keep it from spoiling for as long as possible, and with large drains so that the batch could be changed quickly). The point of this, I was told, was to impress on me that almost any behavior was tolerated, and that I should have no inhibitions about what I asked for – I had donated, and therefore was entitled to be treated as a king.

I told them I’d get back to them on that.

The official residence was stately, to say the least. The previous resident had it decorated in the likeness of a sports bar (five bedrooms, three dens and the library), a theme which I indicated I had no interest in. My hosts graciously agreed to renovate the place, and offered to put me up in a luxury hotel during the construction. I asked, rather sheepishly, if I could remain at the hospital, providing of course, I would not be taking up a bed needed for a patient. Lorie, who turned out to be not just my own private nurse, but apparently my guide and secretary, gave me a puzzled look. I proceeded to explain to her the history of my back and neck, with detailed explanations of the injuries and surgeries involved, along with a listing of the symptoms I still suffered from. She was shocked, suddenly realizing how much the "donation" process must have aggravated my problems. I reassured her that I would live, but that, if the facilities weren’t needed for someone else, I would like to try a few things that my doctors back in my world were reluctant to try. I explained what I wanted to try, afraid that she’d really think I was a loon, and saying as much when I finished my speech. She said something to the driver, who headed towards a more built-up part of town.

Lorie said nothing as we drove towards a group of large buildings, she just sat there and looked at me in a strange way. I was beginning to wonder if I had crossed the line in making what I thought was a simple request, and was about to be sent packing back to my own universe. We turned a corner, and drove slowly down a downtown street. It was evening, the air was cool, and people (women, actually, all women) were strolling down the sidewalk. We rolled down the windows, and I turned and looked at them as we passed. Almost immediately, I saw a woman in her early twenties whose long blond hair and long, thin neck were accentuated by the vertical bars and neck ring of a Milwaukee brace. I turned in my seat as we passed, keeping my eyes on her. It was extremely rare to see anyone in a Milwaukee brace anymore, let alone a woman out of her teens. I started to turn back around when another flash of metal caught my eye. Another woman wearing a Milwaukee brace! And this one had a chin pad! I discovered I had turned around in my seat to watch this woman as well. I faced forward again, hoping my host had not spotted what caught my eye. To camouflage my actions, I intentionally turned to watch two other women, one walking on each side of the street, as if I was enjoying seeing all of them (which, in truth, I was, as most all the women walking on this street this evening were stunningly beautiful). There was a flash of metal out of he corner of my eye, and before I could stop myself, I spun around to see yet another woman in a Milwaukee brace. Before I could recover, Lorie spoke up.

"One of the effects of the biological weapon which rendered our society without males, was a propensity towards certain medical conditions. The most prevalent of these is spinal curvature, mainly scoliosis. Eighty percent of the population of this world has some sort of spinal curvature. Of that eighty percent, four-fifths responds to non-surgical treatment. Two thirds of the population of this world will use some form of spinal brace sometime in their lifetime. Some, like those you were looking at, wear one long into their adult years. Others are treated with traction, and casting." She pointed to the right side of the car, and walking down the sidewalk was a woman who was encased in a pink fiberglass cast from her hips up to the top of her head. The woman she was walking with was in a Milwaukee brace, this one with a chin pad. Women passing them gave them little special notice. "So, you see, what you asked for wasn’t really all that spectacular." I was still looking out the window, and didn’t see her reach over. Suddenly I felt her hand clamp down on my crotch, and the erection which I hoped would not be noticed was plainly felt by my host. I looked down, then up at her. Now I knew I would be expelled, but that thought faded as I saw her expression. She leaned over and kissed my sweetly, then sat back and said, "oh yes, you will fit in here nicely."