Updating Her

© 2019 by Walter Reimer


Thumbnail art by  rabbi-tom


Varan smiled as she viewed the hologram in her quarters. Two older mares were sitting in adjoining beds, looking tired but smiling happily as they each cradled one infant male. One of them, on the left, had the same golden palomino fur as Meredith, making her Thea, Meredith’s birth mother. The piebald mare on the right was her comother, Marie.

The two boys (colts, Varan reminded herself) looked healthy as they slept in their mothers’ arms. Marie’s had a piebald coat, but the splotches were slightly lighter than her own, while Thea’s son’s fur was a glossy iron-gray. Their father, Javid, sat between them with Meredith while her Terran friend talked.

“Varan, I want you to meet my brothers,” the mare said with a grin. “They’re both named after their father and their mother’s father. “So this,” and she gestured at Marie, “is Javamir d’Estcourt.” Marie gently grasped her baby’s paw and waved at the holocam.

“Isn’t he beautiful, Varan?” Marie asked, getting the name’s pronunciation right.

“And this is Javiberto d’Estcourt.” Thea smiled and held the little colt up, then busied herself with opening up her hospital gown to let her son nurse.

“I’m afraid he’s not allowed to talk with his mouth full,” Javid said dryly, and all four adults chuckled before the scene in the projection changed to show the interior of Meredith’s quarters aboard the Kiss Me in the Dark.

“I hope everything’s going well, lir demef,” the mare said, “and I promised you that I’d let you know my decision about having a baby.” Meredith’s smile slipped a bit.

“Transcosm’s operations director told me – we talked via hypercomsat in real time; he insisted – that they don’t have plans to set up an office on Downtime until next year. That’d be about eight months from now. On the positive side, he said that they’d be happy to consider my request for a transfer then.

“I didn’t get much out of Personnel either, “ she said as she got up and moved around the room, shedding her jumpsuit and getting a bottle of beer from her refrigerator. She took a deep swallow from it before sitting back down. “The nearest opening for office staff is on Medusa, and I’m not going anywhere near a Core world if I can possibly help it. Again, she told me that they’ll let me know if one opens up nearer.” Meredith shrugged before giggling softly.

“I did check the artsem clinic here on This Far. Naturally, I looked at all the stallions who’d donated sperm, and I couldn’t believe it.” She leaned forward and Varan’s ears went back as the palomino mare inadvertently made her breasts move. The vir had to admit that it was a wonderful view.

“A lot of the donors are anonymous, of course, but I saw that my father’s been donating to the clinic,” Meredith said in a conspiratorial tone. “I asked Thea and Marie about it, and they said that they’d given him permission to do it, too.” She grinned. “Which got me thinking of getting the procedure done with his sperm.”

Varan’s ears went straight up and her tail thrashed involuntarily, knocking over a nearby chair. Incest in the Empire was only illegal if there was a product from such a coupling; apart from that one prohibition, incest was fairly common in large families. She herself had lost her virginity to her father, after she and her mother had twined tails first and the younger vir had been introduced to contraception.

“I decided against that, but I did consider it,” Meredith said. “Father’s a wonderful stallion, but the clinic’s technician told me that even with perfect genetic scans and computer models, there’s still a possibility of something bad happening to the fetus, and I don’t want that.”

That’s a relief, the vir thought to herself.

Meredith’s monologue changed to an explanation of the latest game module. She’d tried to recover the Amulet of Sadness and barely succeeded. Acting on a hunch, she had unleashed the Amulet on the clowns in the Land of Contusion. While she spoke, the projection replayed the results, which were fairly spectacular as each of the clowns exploded in clouds of glitter.

“We’ll have to look at the rest of the land before we can move on,” the mare told the vir. “I think that the game has a few more tricks in store for us.

“I wish I could give you better news, my beloved,” Meredith sighed, “but that’s how things are right now. Our next stop after we leave This Far is Xinjia, close to the Core.” The mare rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to be going dirtside. I’ll sit in here in a pressure suit first. It’ll be weeks before we get to go back to Downtime, and I’ll be missing you the entire time.

“I love you, Varan.” She waved, and the projection faded, leaving a small icon that told her that there was an attachment, likely the game module.

Varan sat back, thinking as her tail coiled up in her lap.