Chapter 11

Amanda spent two days so far trying to get everything in her life in order for the upcoming event. She met with her lawyer for several hours the second day, and by the end of the first hour, the lawyer was getting distressed.

“Amanda,” Corinne said in dismay, “You’re giving everything away? A lot of this is stuff are things you really value. You’re going to want most of it. And this stuff with your will? You’ve never needed a will before. You really want everything you aren’t giving out to be sold and the money go to a select few people? Who is Markus Peterman, and why is he getting the bulk of your estate?”

“Corinne,” she started quietly, “Something is going to happen to me, and I won’t be needing any of this anymore.”

“Are you sick? Do you have cancer? Something else?”

“No, that’s not it at all.”

“Well, then what is it? You’re scaring me. If anything happens to you, I will be completely distressed. You are an amazing young actor, and an even more amazing young woman. You have your whole life ahead of you. Besides, modern medicine can heal almost anything now, or at least turn what used to be terminal conditions into chronic ones. What is happening? Tell me, and we will fight it together.”

“Corinne, I am not coming back from the movie. I am going to actually be terminated and butchered on screen in the movie for the cast and crew to eat.”

Corinne stared at her young client in utter shock and dismay as the color drained from her face.

“What did you say?” Corinne said in a strained whisper. “Tell me I didn’t hear what I thought you just said.”

Amanda sighed as she tried to gather her thoughts and go through this once more, but it was difficult. She had known Corinne since she was twelve, and she greatly valued the advice and service that the older woman had been providing her for a long time now.

“Corinne, I can’t go on living after the film is done. You know what’s at stake in this. You know what the film is trying to accomplish. And you know what will happen if it fails. You’ve read all the same reports and analyses that I have. The only way to make the film succeed and to get our people to embrace this is for me to take this step. Otherwise, the film itself will tear this country apart as the haves try to get out of it, and the have-nots go to war, literally wage civil war, over class issues of privilege and power.”

“But that can be solved by selecting someone from the privileged class and processing them! They don’t have to do this to you!” Corinne was getting desperate as she tried to think of any way to talk her favorite client out of what was going to be an act of assisted suicide.

“Even if we could bring in someone else, it’s not fair to them to be selected just so I can live. I will be viewed as the person who—listen to me! You have to listen! I am not changing my mind. This is my choice. I made the decision, I brought it to Gilda and Sharra, and I convinced them. Then I went to the President and made the same case to him. He didn’t like it, but he understood my reasons why, and accepted it. I will be, just as the movie says about Kara, my character, the first of millions.”

Corinne was openly weeping now, but she fought the instinct to turn away.

“I could get out of it if I really wanted to, but I don’t. I don’t want to live with the guilt if I just run away from this. I will never be able to look anyone in the eye again, and I will never be able to look at myself in the mirror and not be horrified at what I am.”

The words began to register in Corinne’s mind, and she slowly fought to struggle to understand.

“The guilt and shame of convincing everyone else that they need to embrace this, while not doing it myself, will destroy me. I will be responsible for helping millions of women accept sacrificing their lives so they will save resources for others by not having more children and so they can be eaten by others to save their lives ... I can’t live with that. I won’t. You know me. I feel guilt and shame about throwing out food.”

Corinne wept. She couldn’t help it. She was suddenly in mourning for losing Amanda, and the grief was overwhelming.

“When I figured this out, I stopped being able to sleep. My soul was tormented. It was eating me up from the inside. Then when I realized I had a path in front of me that could save me, I slept once more. When I finally embraced this, I could sleep once more. That tells me this is the only way for me.

“It sucks. I will never be a mother, something you know was my goal, to be able to not have to work while raising two or three children. That’s gone for me. Not everyone gets that chance, and I never will.”

Tears fell from Amanda’s eyes as she felt the pain of what she was losing, but her resolution didn’t change.

“There are a ton of things I had hoped to do, to accomplish in this life. All that is gone. The only thing I can do is try to save as many others as I can. Think of it as me giving up my place in a lifeboat so others can make it to shore.”

Corinne fought mightily against the realization that Amanda was doing what was the best of only bad choices for her, but she knew deep inside that she was going to lose; that she already had lost. She knew Amanda’s conscience and strong sense of justice would destroy the young actor. She had known her long enough, and she had watched over her through her disastrous drunk driving incident, where they had to make sure someone was around her day and night to keep her from harming herself.

“Oh my God, this truly sucks.” Corinne took a deep breath in, and her grief washed over her, leaving her with her head in her hands as she sobbed uncontrollably. A moment or two later, she felt Amanda’s arms around her as the two of them curled up on the couch they’d been working on and tried to get through it together.

“Hey, Craig. It’s Kara. Want to come over and hang out for a while? I want to get some pizza, and we can watch some movies or something.”

“Hey Kara, sure. I was thinking about you. It’s noon now. What time?”

“I was thinking as soon as you can get here. I’m bored.”

Craig laughed. “Oh no! We have to do something about that! I’m on my way! See you in a few.”

“See you then.”

“CUT! Excellent. Okay, let’s get setup for the next scene everyone.”

“Hey, Jason, let’s talk a minute about the scene, okay?”

“Sure Amanda. Where do you want to talk?”

“I think that conference room over there is good, okay?”

The door closed behind her, and she turned with a smile on her face.

“You looking forward to this scene? I am.”

“Well, I think it’s going to be a challenge. I am somewhat body shy to begin with, so being in bed with you will be difficult.” Jason looked away as he said it.

“Why’s that? I just want to understand so we can do the best scene, get it right.”

“Uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but...”

“Are you worried about being aroused? Erect?”

Jason blushed mightily.

“That is definitely going to be happening. I should try to take care of it before hand, but, well, I’m young and fit, and you are incredibly beautiful inside and out. I don’t think I will be able to avoid it.”

She giggled as she blushed, which was adorable to him. Hell, he was starting to get erect now.

“It’s hard to think that people fantasize about me. Do you? Have you? I know that’s not a nice question to ask, but I am curious. It’s good for my ego, you know?” She laughed as she tried to hide behind her hair.

“Oh God, I’m going to hell for this. Please don’t think badly of me, okay? I want to be able to work in this town in the future. Well, you know what I mean.”

“I would never think badly of you. I am sure your career is going to be a huge success.”

“Thank you! That’s so nice of you to say!”

“So. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of fantasies? I mean, what are we doing in them? Tell me everything. I promise I won’t be upset or mad at you. I truly promise.”

Jason decided that Amanda was probably just building rapport with him for the benefit of the scene, so it was probably a good thing to tell her about it.

“Well, I have this fantasy about taking you around the world.”

“Around the world? What does that mean?”

Now it was Jason’s turn to blush, and he really did.

“Well, ahh, it means, uhm ... it means I bring you to orgasm with my mouth, with my penis in your vagina, and my penis in your ... ass...”

“Ohhh! Oh my! That sounds like fun! Uh, but it probably wouldn’t be the kind of scene Gilda will go for.” She laughed at that last sentence.

“Yeah, no, I’m not in the porn industry.”

“Could you be? Are you average? Larger?”

He blushed once more at the intimate question.

“I, ahh, I’ve been told that I’m slightly above average. I don’t really know where I fall in those things.”

“Oh. That’s cool. Can I see?”

“Wait, what? You want to see my...?”

“Yeah, can I? I want to see you fully up. Can I see that?”

“Uhm, I think that’s a really bad idea, Amanda. I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Well, no one will know. The door is locked and the cameras in here go to secure, encrypted storage only. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. It’ll be fun! Like if we were in grade school!” Her infectious smile and the mischievous look in her eyes were making him feel bubbly inside, but...

“I don’t know. I don’t want this to change things between us.”

“It won’t. I promise. I just have had almost no experience with this, and I want to do some advanced recon before we get into the scene. I want to be comfortable around you. You know it’s fully nude for both of us, including full frontal nudity. And you will most likely be erect during it. It’s common now. It’s mainstream. It’s not like it used to be where people would run screaming from the theater or shut off the flat screen if that comes on. It’s accepted. And I don’t want to take one look at you and run screaming from the set. That would be bad for a lot of reasons.”

“I get that, and yeah, I know that’s coming. But ... are you sure you want to do this? Here? Now?”

“Yes! You think I’m beautiful! I think you are, too! And since we are going to be doing a very intimate scene together in a few hours, let’s ... rehearse a little bit. It’s fine, I’m not worried about it. But I want it to look realistic. Accurate. What do you say?”

He thought about it, then nodded, but couldn’t meet her eyes when he did so.

“Okay great! I’ll start us off. One piece each until we are buck-ass naked, okay?”

“Not sure this is a good idea, but okay.”

Amanda stood and pulled her shirt up over her head and folded it before setting it on the table between them and off to the side. Since the costume department had provided their current clothing, she wanted it to stay neat.

She looked over at Jason and waited for him to turn his head. He wouldn’t look at her, but she cleared her throat.

“My body is over here, Jason,” she said in a fake angry tone the way women have been saying, ‘my eyes are up here, buster!’ for decades.

He laughed and looked at her, and he stopped breathing at the site of her in her bra.

“Okay, stop the acting. I know you’ve seen me in a two-piece before.”

“Okay, okay, I was just kidding. Not really, but I was. Kinda.”

She laughed, and then spoke up.

“But remember, you are supposed to be looking. That’s the whole point.”

“Yes, ma’am. Whatever you say, ma’am.” That brought a laugh from her.

“Off with the shirt, buster!”

He pulled it off and also folded it carefully before setting it on the table.

“Whoa. You have really nice abs, man. Okay, nexties.”

She unhooked her bra, pulled it off, and set it aside while he watched this time, and he looked at her in appreciation.

“So far you are perfect.”

“Yeah, sure. Pants, buddy. Pants.”

He kicked off his shoes then pulled them off, followed by his stockings and stood there just in his boxers, an obvious tent pole forming where there was normally not as much.

“Mmmm. Nice. Okay, my pants.” She pulled off her shoes and stockings. Then her pants followed, and she folded them carefully as he remembered what he was holding and hastened to do the same. Setting them aside, they both looked at the other, taking in the sights in front of them as their arousal grew.

“I think we should move to the end of the table. What do you say?”

All he could do was nod, and they both moved to the wide aisle at the end of the table, again openly staring at each other.

“Okay, at the same time, we drop the undies. Ready?”

He nodded a short, jerky motion, then looked her in the eyes.

“Okay, go.”

They both pulled off the last item on their bodies and stood there in the buff, gazing at each other in fascination.

She watched as his fully erect penis throbbed in time to his rapid heartbeat and felt her own pulse speeding up. ‘This is going to work’, she thought to herself.

When she talked to Gilda about what she wanted to do, the older woman was first opposed to it, but like everything else, she had eventually come around to what Amanda wanted.

“It’ll make the scene much more realistic,” she had said with a smile on her face.

Gilda had just turned away with a huff, saying, “Fine, but you have to convince him. I’m not touching that situation with a ten-foot pole.”

“It doesn’t have to be ten feet, or even ten inches. You know THAT, Gilda.”

Gilda had spun around in shock and stared at the younger woman, who was beginning to giggle. The whole thing made Gilda giggle as well.

Now, to make her pitch.

“Jason, in the scene coming up, I don’t want to put a chastity pillow between us. We can do this without that. Okay?”

“Uhh, okay? Whatever you want in this is fine with me.”

“Good. Because I want you to actually make love to me. I don’t want you to fake penetration. I spoke with Gilda about it, and she will setup some camera angles to hide the most of it if you want, but it is fairly common these days. Mainstream actors are doing un-simulated scenes quite often. You can even tell in about half of them. It hasn’t really been frowned on for the last thirty years or so. We don’t have to make it gratuitous if you don’t want to. Frankly, I am fine with it either way.”

He thought about it for a few minutes, then looked in her eyes.

“Are you sure you want this? Because I could do that if you want, but I don’t want you to be saying years from now that I coerced you into this, or this went places you didn’t expect when it started. That is toxic behavior, and I don’t want that to come between us. I like you and respect you, and I want us to be good friends after this. Good people are hard to find, and I happen to genuinely like you.”

“Aww, you’re so sweet. I am willing to record a video statement and sign a witnessed written statement to that effect. In fact, I think that’s a good idea. We should both do that together. It will be good for the historical record.”

Jason was in the majority of the people on the set who didn’t know the story behind the project, and he was not aware of what was going to happen to her, she thought to herself. ‘I hope he will be okay after this.’

“Okay, then I am fine with it. How do you want this to play out?”

“Well, I don’t want you to take me around the world. That is something I can’t do on camera.”

“Agreed, that is out, definitely.”

“But other than that, I want you to treat me like I am someone you are in love with. I want you to make love to me. I will do the same to you. You can finish inside me each time if we get to more than one. In fact, I want you to do this as much as possible until you can’t get an erection anymore. I want this to be memorable. Are you okay with that?”

“Yes, sure. What about your needs? I want you to be happy with this when we are done.”

“Certainly, I want as many orgasms as I can get out of this. That’s the memorable part.” She said with a smile. “Are you good at doing that?”

“I will find a way to make sure you have more orgasms than I do. Are you okay with me giving you oral? That is how I would start it off. A couple of them orally for you before I even get going.”

“Ooooh, that would be perfect. You’re so sweet. Then, maybe I give you oral to get you off first to make you last longer? I will swallow it to make sure it’s not a mess on screen that they have to CG over.”

His erection twitched and seemed to get even harder.

“I see someone likes that idea. Okay, that’s the start. Then we move on to actual intercourse.”

“Is all this going to be okay with Gilda? Have you run this by her?”

“She knows what I’m doing. You and I can block this out now, and I will set it out for her so she can figure out how she wants to film it. Then we will just go for it. Hopefully this will be a single take, but things will stop and start a few times as they get reset. The crew will be a minimum, but there will be a few around to set things up and run things. And if we have to do this more than once over a few days, the more fun for us. Is that okay?”

“I think it will be alright. Do you want to be on top, or the bottom? Switch around? Other positions?”

The conversation continued, and when it was finished, Amanda went to Gilda, and they took down notes and worked out the scene as it was going to play out. Gilda wasn’t surprised at Amanda getting Jason to go along. Attitudes had been steadily relaxing for decades now towards what was called Category III in Asian and European filmmaking. She had even done some work as a director in that area, so she wasn’t bothered by it.

Craig and Kara were making out on the couch in the brightly lit main room of Kara’s parent’s house in the afternoon. She had moved back home because of her volunteer status, and she had only one more day before she was required to report for termination. Everything else was wrapped up in her life. This was her last goodbye to her ex-boyfriend. They had broken up some weeks before, and now it seemed that they would never get back together, since she was going to die the next day.

Kara had decided to volunteer because her mother had been selected. Her mother was needed to care for her twin sisters, who had been born prematurely and had health and cognitive issues, and her father, who was in failing health. Because she volunteered, her mother would be exempt for five years, which put her past the age of selection, and she would be safe for the rest of her life. This had prompted a lot of arguments and tears in the last few days, especially since the legislation had only been passed two months ago.

Kara’s mother Andrea had been chosen the very first time a selection lottery had happened. To make things worse, Andrea was the only person chosen in the nation in this first selection. She was chosen as a legal test case, with the state Population Management Board stating that they wanted the legal aspects of the case decided before the selection numbers were increased.

A lawsuit had been filed in state court immediately that challenged the legality of every aspect of the laws. The state court promptly dismissed the suit, saying that since the laws were dictated from the Federal level and had Federal laws and legislation as the foundation and underpinnings, the state courts had no jurisdiction, and the suit had to be refiled in Federal court. That dismissal was appealed to a higher court, but the state Supreme Court had intervened, taking the case from the appeals court dismissed the case entirely. There the case had been dismissed for exactly the same legal reason.

The filing in Federal court had not fared any better. The suit there, much the same as what had been filed at the state level except referencing the proper Federal laws and statutes, had been dismissed with prejudice, stating that the country was in a state of national emergency, and that under emergency powers, the duly passed laws were legal. The dismissal prompted an immediate appeal to the Federal Appellate court. However, to allow legal proceedings to be resolved and the legalities of the laws to be firmly established, the Federal court upheld the request for an injunction preventing action until the legal questions were resolved.

Just as had happened at the state level, the US Supreme Court intervened immediately, an action that was as unheard-of at that level as it was at the state level. But the response was the same: the legally declared National State of Emergency allowed the laws to be in place and take effect, and there were no legal recourses available to the selectees to avoid selection, termination, and processing. The injunction allowed by the Federal district court was lifted, and Andrea was given two weeks to get her affairs in order before she was to report to a just-finished facility that was built specifically for the task of termination and butchering human females.

When the last of the legal options was exhausted and the injunction was lifted, a teary-eyed Kara had gone to her mother and stated her intention to volunteer, as allowed by law, to replace her mother as a selectee. Andrea had been adamant against her doing this because she had her whole life ahead of her. She was only twenty years old. Her mother was thirty-seven.