Chapter 36

Dave Rossi's House
Alexandria, VA
Day # 17

Spencer

"Well, the human sexual response cycle isn't all that different from the hunger response cycle." Spencer told them. "If you can condition responses around one you can condition responses around the other. And how easily you can condition the one in an individual reflects how easily you can condition the other. But it's easier to test and analyze hunger since you can more easily control the variables."

"So they were trying to change their sexuality?" Emily asked.

Spencer nodded. "Based on my observations I'd say yes. Using the female as the example..." Because I am not ready to talk about the male, he thought, "…Masters and Johnson broke the sexual response cycle down into four phases, excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution. Loudon later added a fifth stage which she called interest or willingness, before the excitement point of the cycle. From what I could tell, male Sisterian biology nearly perfectly matches with male Terran biology in that regard, both are capable of going through all four or five phases in one encounter, as are Terran women. But female Sisterian biology is quite different."

"Keep talking." Dave took his potatoes over to the kitchen proper to start working on dinner, but he was still within hearing range.

"Sisterian women are not inherently orgasmic, at least not from birth. In addition they don't have a menstrual cycle like Terran women. Instead they have a feedback loop that reacts in the first case to sexual stimulation and in the second to the presence of semen in the reproductive tract. In order to become fertile and sexually mature Sisterian women need a long period of what might be called proto- sexual play and then pre-sexual play to fully make their way through the response cycle."

"Proto-play?" Emily asked.

"Physical activities that develop what you referred to as the mind-body connection, which encouraged them to be fully present within the body and to focus on the senses. Um, dance, playing music, singing, horseback riding, preparing and consuming meals, creative endeavors, even preening activities and those hot baths you talked about, all of it formed the basis for them to enter Louden's Interest stage, a process that could take anywhere from one to three years. After that would come a period of flirtatious play with whoever could fit the appropriate parameters for a partner in the community until one was singled out and they'd enter what we'd call the excitement phase, activities would gradually become more erotic and as a result their bodies would start changing, what we would call arousal. The first time out this could take up to three months while their bodies literally physically adapted to accommodate the changes."

"But their bodies wouldn't change like that until they were stimulated?" Emily said.

"No, it was a feedback mechanism, the more they were stimulated the more they could be stimulated. It was…it was as if their breasts didn't develop until they were already engaging in…heavy petting activates with a partner, except in their case the changes were internal. During this phase partners would expect to spend time together daily if not more so to engage in some sort of sexual play."

"Three months to warm up a virgin." Dave chuckled. "Those were some patient guys."

"Once they reached the plateau phase things would quickly progress to the orgasmic stage, within a single encounter." Spencer said.

"Wait a minute; they were walking around turned on for three months?" Emily asked

"More than that, the refractory phase, when the body returns to normal after orgasm could last up to a month, but if they allowed themselves to return to a state of zero arousal they would have to go through the whole three month excitement phase again. Ideally they would resume pre-sexual play within at most seventy-two hours of attaining orgasm thereby not letting their arousal actually die down. In addition every time they completed a cycle their bodies became more accustomed and it became easier and faster next time, forming a positive feedback loop leading directly to reproduction. It had the side effect of near constant arousal during the fertile years of their lives, waxing and waning but only broken by pregnancy and nursing. The Missionaries referred to this as being fully alive and was seen as the ideal state."

"So the entire planet was like that?' Dave asked.

"No, that was the problem. The society in the villages at least was extremely patriarchal and the men there didn't want to wait around for the women to become aroused enough to welcome actual intercourse. So instead they based their societal mores on the idea that only men were supposed to enjoy sex, 'decent' women didn't feel pleasure at all. Young women were denied any form of proto-pleasure, singing, dancing and creative expression were forbidden, flirting and preening exercises were seen as sinful, even spiced foods and most forms of physical exercise were condemned. All women were supposed to do was work and pray. Marriages were arranged, usually as soon as the woman's body completed development of external secondary sex characteristics as that was the ideal time to program the mind for arousal, or to shut down the development of such programming all together. Once married the couple would immediately begin daily intercourse, giving her no time to learn to take pleasure from any other act. The idea was that the women would never know what they were missing and so they wouldn't say no to giving the men what they wanted."

"That explained why that village was such a drab, depressing place, especially compared to the abbey." Emily nodded. "No one cared. And why some of the villagers actually called us whores while we were walking down the street, by comparison the Missionaries must have been seen as licentious."

Spencer nodded. "The associated biological reaction was that once the chemicals in semen were absorbed into the blood stream through the mucosa membranes in the reproductive tract the woman's body would start working toward ovulation. A…daily dose was required over a number of weeks before her uterine lining would develop and she would ovulate. That was actually a benefit to the species, the women's bodies didn't waste energy preparing for ovulation without knowing if it would occur, and it meant that there was a regular partner around to protect the mother through pregnancy. Once a woman became pregnant her body would change in ways that would prevent sexual arousal, and not change back until her child was weaned. Or children, twins were the most common form of pregnancy. Given the gestation period and that initial three month arousal period that would naturally space pregnancies almost two years apart, giving mothers a chance to recover and ensuring that infants had the best possible start. But because they didn't respect the woman's cycle often women would become pregnant within two or three months of the last pregnancy, with the expected results on maternal and infant outcomes."

Emily's eyes sparked with anger. "Someday someone is going to rebel against that."

"And when they do they'll remember that the people in blue and white taught them that there was a better way." Dave pointed out. "And that the folks in red and black protected them. You said that the Guardians were always training?"

"Of course," Emily gasped. "They weren't just bodyguards; Mother Abbot was training the Guardians to be an officer's corps."

"Exactly," Dave nodded. He turned back to Spencer. "So, how did life in a Skinner box change their sexuality?"

"Let me guess." Emily spoke up. "With no warm-up women were expected to just lie there and think of England. In a situation like that even the guys weren't having that much fun. The ideal woman would be one who enjoyed what the guys were dishing out and want more."

Spencer nodded. The analysis kept it all remote, he could almost believe this all happened to someone else, that he'd read it in a file and was now regurgitating it for his co-workers. "A Skinner box is already designed to limit stimulation, in addition if the women were captured with any kind of significant other they would be kept together, knowing that the violation of sacred sexual norms would quickly destroy the relationship and any support they had there. Then they would…flood them with semen to quickly make them reach the point where they were near to ovulating, when they would become the most sensitive…." Oh. Oh, he couldn't remember that. It was right there but it was too hard…

They must have seen his face. "Skip that part." Dave said, gently. "We'll come back to it when you're ready."

Spencer did, carefully turning two pages in that mental file. "…ahem, anyway they would only allow specific forms of stimulation. With nothing else eventually the women would become conditioned to respond only to those stimuli, up to and including reaching orgasm."

"In other words, the ideal slut," Emily nodded. "But they couldn't have captured one for every man, even for every wealthy technocrat."

"Technocrat," Dave mused as he stirred a pot. He looked over at Spencer. "Don't answer this if you're not comfortable but I'm betting that they had an internet."

Emily groaned as it hit her. "And the internet was built for porn. That was why they had an annual quota of new faces."

"And why they'd condition the women to respond to stimuli so far outside their biology." Dave looked over at Spencer. "You haven't talked about the men yet." Spencer just shook his head; he was not ready to go there, at all. "All right," Dave said kindly. "If they were conditioning people not to eat as a way of testing how easy they were to condition then how did people stay alive for the full year?"

This was safer ground. "We were periodically taken to what looked like a medical ward and sedated." Spencer replied. "I suspect we received IV nutrition at that time."

"But once they came off of that support, once they were back in the community, most of the victims would just waste away." Emily said, "Back to the idea of government control. But even the ones who did survive would have to go through the extended refractory period…"

"All the while craving something the community considered sinful and taboo." Dave followed her thought. "And knowing that they were never going to be stimulated to pleasure in any way again, and having to endure the shame of being marked as a whore in front of the community if they lost their hair. I'm guessing the most common cause of death after starvation was suicide."

"It was." Spencer replied. "From what Kira explained the Missionaries would provide medical and psychological support through the re-feeding and refractory period, then therapy to overcome the trauma and finally help them and their partners approach their sexuality from a female-based perspective."

"Rather than telling the women to speed up they taught the guys to slow down." Emily nodded.

"And then everyone gets to enjoy playtime." Dave agreed. "I'd go for that. And if there wasn't someone to play with in a survivor's life a surrogate would be provided until you were well and truly on your way. Which, given the rape trauma, probably took twice as long the first time."

"Andrew." Emily said. "That was his gift. That man exuded patience, he was practically Buddha. If anyone could endure three to six months of blue balls it would be him."

"Uh-huh." Dave agreed. "But if he's their go-to guy for helping unattached females learn what their bodies can do who's going to teach his sister?"

Just then Morgan and Penelope got to the door. Spencer had never been more grateful.