Breeder feeder

chapters 1-2

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1

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I had wanted to be a stockbreeder since I was a boy. Back on Earth, the licensing and networking you had to have for this, not to mention the basic psyche workups, made it almost impossible. But here on Lairatessa, a young colony just opening up its GMH workforce, it was as easy as signing up and paying up.

Breeding genetically modified hybrids - artificial persons, or APs - and especially humanoids, had become a necessity of industrial life by the 33rd century. But most important of all was their use in establishing colonies. Sending massive machines into space inevitably meant massive costs, even if they were just the machines necessary to build other machines. But sending biological essentials and a few embryo assemblers? Very, very cheap. And thus had quote-unquote slave labor become the basis for interstellar colonization, just as it once had been for colonies on earth. Only now, the slaves were by design, docile, and engineered to love their lives and be very effective at them. Disturbing concepts by ancient standards, perhaps, but money, and the human need to spread (and the desire to have someone else do the labor), conquers all morality. Not that morality has ever been much of hurdle—just take my brother and his odd proclivities… and he still lives on Earth.

Anyway, now, hundreds of years since this regime’s inception, we no longer even think of it as slavery. It is domestication, the keeping of livestock—their form being so like that of a human is inconsequential. Or nearly…


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2

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The mainly-occupied continent of Lairatessa was a largely plainy, hilly, and sometimes rocky plateau in the subtropics, thickly grassed and with frequent bushes, but few trees. Due the expense (and frustration) of billy APs, and the difficulty stallion APs had with such rocky terrain, the main AP class here, as of yet, was a subvariant of the boar class that lacked tusks and had rather longer tails than usual of the type, but were generally well-muscled in the males, easy to breed in the females, and highly productive in both.

Generally, when trying to get started in this business anywhere, the best way is to buy a breeding mother from a local dealer. This tends to be outrageously expensive though, as they know there’s a good chance you may compete with them for business someday, and on top of that they are losing both the sow herself and any future children from her. So, what I had opted to do was to bring seminal stock with me from earth where it is almost free, and then buy an untested generic female here and breed her myself once I had her properly trained. The only problem:

“…she keeps escaping,” the local ‘tailor’, a surly, shrewd, and tired man by the name of Carlisle Benshin, said to me.

“That’s about the sum of it. I’ve treated her well, tried to get her used to her new home, but she just won’t stay. Almost wish I’d gone for a non-humanoid now. At least then she wouldn’t be able to open the locks.” Or however it was she kept escaping. I hadn’t even figured it out yet, but that was the last thing I’d tell to this jovial turd.

“Perhaps, but that is also what you get for buying an untrained, unbred, unmoded female and hoping you can turn her into prime breeding stock. Quite the risky venture, putting everything you have into opening a farm on a colony you’ve never seen. Suppose you thought it’d be easy money, and big, going for the humanoids too…” The old man eyed me wearily. I knew what I had gotten myself into, I didn’t need his patronage. What I did need was his experience, and so I smiled obligingly, though it caused me great pain.

“Who’d you manage to purchase her from any way? Telluris? Sarkoh? You know they’d only sell you if they didn’t think it’d affect their business, know what I mean.” It wasn’t a question. But the answers were Sarkoh and yes, yes, I’d guessed - that’s why I was dipping into my remaining capital to pay for this piss-poor advice and attitude, the only other remaining source of funds I had being my ship, and that I planned to make seed-worthy for the upsale.

“Well,” he continued in an acquiescing drawl, “there’s a few solutions I’ve seen work. She's a slight little piglet, dexterous,” obviously, “and seems exceptionally intelligent… APs can have such an antitalent for procedural - little idiot savants… so just reinforcing your pens will be problematic. You could hobble her easily enough instead, tie her legs, or even maim her;” I felt my stomach turn sharply, “she doesn’t need to walk well, or for that matter see well, just to be breeding stock.”

After a careful pause, choking back my bile, I shook my head no.

“Eh, just grow back anyway, wouldn’t help the attitude much,” he muttered to himself.

Turning to me: “Well then, you probably gonna have to make her fat. She's so thin in the waist and arms and so thick in the caboose, give you credit for that, fat should distribute perfectly on her for breeding, gynoid, lower belly and hips, with a good bit to arms and breasts - and face, of course, since she’s swine class.

“And you’d have to fatten her a little anyway, it’s how we tell the ones we want to breed that that’s their purpose, kicks their primal drives on. Workers just eat what they want, stay in shape and work hard. But breeders have to be turned on, if you know what I mean. Overfeed them for a few weeks, and eventually their genes will realize what’s what and shift their mode to breeder and start gaining fat (or muscle if you’re doing males—though that’s a dangerous prospect—same way we make mandingos)… And, once they do, you generally stop the overfeeding, and they go back to eating normally. May lose a little, stay a goodly chubby though, that’s their new normal then, they’re breeders.

“But for you, it doesn’t mean you have to stop feeding her there. She’ll stay ravenous and gaining until you restrict her food for a few weeks yourself. Honestly… its best to get them a little fatter than necessary anyway if you plan on intensive breeding. They don’t react like humans or animals, get diseases of metabolism or vascularity or anything; they’ll eat more, ‘course, which can get expensive fast, but the fat itself just makes them better able to carry multiples, maybe a bit faster on gestation too, recovery, good nursing. And of course, relevant for your case, it makes them slower.”


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