Jonni Future: Sovereign of the Space Slatterns (Patreon)

Jonni turned her head. One of the computerized displays in the Coelacanth was lit up, displaying reams of gibberish text. Not the gibberish of her own internet, but the gibberish of far-flung future writing.

Jonni had been piloting the Coelacanth often enough to know this wasn’t a warning; Jermaal had shown her how to work the clutch and shift gears, so to speak. But everything under the hood she left to him. This seemed to fit that.

“Jermaal, I’m trying my best to adapt to life in the Crepusculum, but reading Galactese is still beyond me. You mind giving me a summary?”

Jermaal bounced his wiry frame out of the co-pilot’s seat and took a look at the display, supporting himself with a tawny army over the screen he leaned up to, as well as his tail flicking out behind him. “You remember the Seraglio of the Stars you encountered a few months ago?”

Jonni resisted the urge to ask him whether it had been a few of her months or his months, time having a certain laziness about moving consistently between her time period and his. But then, she supposed it was hard for anything to stay the same after four billion years, even Time itself.

“How could I forget?”

She really didn’t go nude all that often in her adventures, but when she did, it was as memorable for her as anyone who saw her. Besides which, that’d been the closest she’d come to getting laid since her encounter with the Cyber-Plant—and she wondered if those pollenated dreams of woman after woman trying to embrace her had had anything to do with her time in the Seraglio with a similar beauteous bevy.

“Well, Mistress, as you’ll recall, you left the Seraglio in the care of the women who’d been forced to join its ranks—while they held their former guards captive, planning to force them into the same, ah, predicament that had been planned for them. With the miners?”

Jonni winced. “Right.” At the time, smarting from the violation of being abducted and charged with righteous fury, it’d seemed like poetic justice. Now she felt a little like one of those weirdos who thought prison rape was part and parcel of the justice system’s deterrents. Much as those guards had deserved to pay for their crimes, she didn’t think her uncle would’ve endorsed sinking to their level so… literally.

“Unfortunately, the ship was impounded by Gray Organization patrollers. You know how they feel about slavers.”

Jonni winced harder. “They didn’t really think the girls were the bad guys, did they?”

“No, Mistress, why would they?” Jermaal asked in confusion. Of course, after four billion years of legal reform, he didn’t understand why a government body designed to solve a problem would be bad at solving that problem. “But the girls did technically break the law. Under the circumstances, though, the GO feels the Seraglio women were suffering from a sexual imbalance.”

“Sexual imbalance?” Jonni demanded, refusing to ponder if that was anything like it sounded like. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s a pretty modern theory—for my time,” Jermaal equivocated. “The idea is that the women went from being too sexualized to suddenly being celibate. The flux is akin to being intoxicated, so they’re not considered responsible for their actions.”

Jonni was about to denounce that as bullshit when she actually pictured Silk, Duplola, and the others. Who knew how their bodies worked? Even the humans were only human if you took into account four billion years of evolution. And if this silliness at least spared the women a punishment they didn’t deserve…

“So what’s going to happen to them?”

“That’s why the GO is messaging us, Mistress. As their liberator, you’re considered responsible for the women. If you agree to treat their imbalance, they’ll be released into your custody.”

“Treat? Treat how?”

***

Jonni didn’t speak to Jermaal for thirty minutes, as the Coelacanth flew for its new heading. You’d think even a Para-Man could be more of a gentleman.

After the silence became uncomfortable, she cleared her throat. “And this will convince the GO to let them go?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Jermaal answered, grateful for the return to conviviality. “Many of the women have… hmm… paired off, so you won’t have to… not all of them…”

“That’s a relief.” Jonni wasn’t one to body-shame, but the Seraglio had truly been for all tastes, some of which inevitably struck her palate as more like turducken than anything she’d actually want to eat..

But most of them had been rather attractive, like many beings seemed to be in this particular slice of future—she could see why her uncle kept coming back here…

Though actually being given an entire harem, and being expected to keep them from being sexually frustrated on pain of… of… of habeas corpus… it just seemed so on-the-nose!

“Did anything like this ever happen to Johnny Future?” she asked Jermaal.

“Mistress, please,” Jermaal sighed. “Your uncle swore me to secrecy.”

***

The truly weird part was that when Jonni got to the snail-shaped ship, not all that much had changed. The atmosphere seemed less dark, less oppressive, with the guards now sentenced and imprisoned, the cameras taken out, and the globe now free to be entered and exited.

But the girls still seemed to spend most of their time in that cosmic Playboy Mansion, still wearing skimpy attire that befitted a burlesque show—or going altogether naked. And with Jonni there, they preened and flaunted themselves to her, clearly aroused and eager to catch her eye. Maybe there was something to a sexual flux driving them around the bend…

“I take it that all of you need… treatment?” she asked, grateful she’d ordered Jermaal to take the Coelacanth back home and give it some long-overdue service. She’d never live down having him see her play the part of pimp!

The girls nodded eagerly. Lamia spoke: “Many of the others either returned to their families or found companionship here. The law didn’t hold them accountable—peer pressure. We thought it best that they depart the ship… so as not to distract you.”

Jonni gulped. Looking around the massive, open-air sphere, she could still see a good two dozen women, all beautiful, but some in a very exotic way. But, looking at them, there were no dealbreakers… so to speak. In fact, her heart began to race, looking at so many creamy thighs, abundant breasts, ample booties. They might’ve appealed to different tastes, but they were all the most delicious flavors imaginable—and that made for a feast.

Jonni cleared her throat. Lucky for her she’d thought through where to start. “Amorpha, let’s… get some privacy…”

***

Amorpha was a slender reed of a woman, with milky white skin caressed by golden scales running up her limbs and covering her scalp like a coral reef. Sylphlike, she lacked the supple curves that so many of the other women have. Even Jonni was more voluptuous than her… of course, Jonni had been kidnapped into the Seraglio in the first place.

What Amorpha did possess was the ability to appear different from the narrow figure she actually was. She could literally be any man’s dream girl. But only a man; her power was entirely heterosexual. To a woman, she only appeared as the modestly endowed being that paled in comparison to the walking fantasies all around her.

Jonni had figured that Amorpha felt like she would if, as a flat-chested teenager, she’d been sent to a school full of cheerleaders. The woman could use a win. And she wasn’t unattractive. Her face was cutely gamine, her figure fleet and nubile, her tomboyish look its own kind of exotic among the flood of gorgeousness competing for the eye all around her.

With the guards gone, the women didn’t live in the globe anymore, but in the quarters their former captors had occupied. Jonni went to Amorpha’s, where she looked at herself in the mirror. Her war suit was as much like lingerie as could be asked for, with skintight pants caressing her long legs and toned derriere, while metal armor partly protected her torso, but mostly covered the upper reaches of her cleavage before leaving hanging lace to coat the undersides of her breasts and some of her lean belly. It was no wonder she’d been abducted—the Space Panjandrum seeing no need to replace her original outfit to make her look a suitable…

“Jonni?”

Lost in her own thoughts, Jonni panicked at Amorpha’s entrance—the alien having wanted to prepare herself before being offered to her new mistress. She still wore the same casual, unflattering clothes—pants on her stick-like legs and a vest over her small breasts. It was like she hadn’t even bothered trying to pretty herself up. Well, admittedly, Jonni hadn’t either, but she knew how revealing her costume already was. And how much she had to reveal.

Still, Jonni sighed with relief that the surprise hadn’t been an unwelcome one. “You have to keep on your toes in the Grand Array,” she opined. “Even when you’re going on your back.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Amorpha said, softly apologetic—though she always sounded softly apologetic.

“Nonsense,” Jonni replied. “I should’ve expected you. I was waiting for you, after all.”

Amorpha looked at her, shy and innocent, her doe-like eyes big and sparkling. Jonni could feel the girl envying her her endowments. “It was a nice thing you did, saying you wanted me first, but you don’t have to actually go through with it. I know how I really look and my power doesn’t work on women. I’d love to look like another girl for you, but I can’t, I just can’t…”

“Ae,” Jonni said, bestowing the girl with her old nickname, “I don’t want you to. You look fine just the way you are.”

“Be serious,” Amorpha said, dropping her gaze from Jonni to avoid putting too much force into her retort. “I wish I had your looks. You don’t wish you had mine.”

“You must be joking,” Jonni said with a smile. “Didn’t I say to you that I wanted to have you? What’s that except me saying that I want your looks?”

“You’re just being nice,” Amorpha said with a sigh. “It’s alright. I like that you’re nice to me. I appreciate it. But I know that you’ll enjoy yourself more with Lamia or… any of the others…”

Jonni decided she couldn’t talk Amorpha out of her low self-esteem. She’d have to show her how beautiful she was. “Which side of the bed do you want, Ae?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Amorpha replied dolefully. She stripped off her vest and trousers, showing that there were no hidden curves—she was as lithe and slim as she appeared, her limbs even lanky in proportion to her small chest and tiny ass.

She got into the bed without looking at Jonni strip, but Jonni still felt a little queasy, displaying her ripe, naked curves to such a shy girl. It felt like boasting. She tried to get under the covers as soon as possible. The lights went out and Jonni’s first night as the master of a harem began.

“Goodnight, Jonni,” Amorpha said, clearly thinking that nothing would happen except slumber and then maybe Jonni telling the others about a night of passion to boast her ego.

That’s what she thought.

Jonni didn’t rush it, though. She relaxed in the silence, the soft darkness a relief after all the mindboggling things her eyes saw in the Grand Array. The cool sheets were of a piece with the drowsiness that blanketed her thoughts.

But the quiet night was cracked by a muffled sob. Jonni opened her eyes, her pupils widening to drink in the faint light emanating from the power conduits running up the walls. “Amorpha?” she whispered.

There was a pause—a silence that felt focused, like Amorpha was trying to will it into place, even into the past, to cover up the sound she had made that had gotten Jonni’s attention—then a strained “Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” Amorpha answered, through the words came with sniffles escorting each of them.

Jonni could now hear the hitched breathing of sobs. She turned on the light on the nightstand. “Why aren’t you fine now?”

“Oh, Jonni!” Amorpha cried openly. “I don’t deserve you!”