Intermediates: A Cuckoo for Mankind

By DW Cook

They co-evolved with us. They are unknown to mankind, and have our external physical appearance, with one difference: They phase from one gender to the other, as part of their reproductive cycle, seducing unwitting humans of both genders. Their continued survival as a species depends on taking their offspring from duped human mothers and in regarding mankind as a useful tool. They call themselves “Intermediates”.

Jeri is a young Intermediate born with a female appearance. Jeri makes a choice that will change the course of its life and set it on a collision course with Jeri’s shadow government. An organization known as a “Syndicate” in the Western World. The Syndicate regards the propagation of Jeri’s genes as more important than its existence.

Even is an Intermediate doing its best to survive in a system that it chooses to accept -within limits. It was born with a male appearance, but Even will first experience love, sex, and seduction as a female, and then later as a male. He’ll discover that the romantic strategies of the former gender don’t always work for the later.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DW Cook
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370033706

DW Cook

I live in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. I am a lawyer by day, but I enjoy writing both fiction and non-fiction. My hobbies include: dancing, target shooting, and learning about almost everything under the sun.

Book preview

Jeri first laid eyes on Robin when he was assigned as her bunkmate at the pre-breeder Center on the outskirts of Seattle. Her original bunkmate had just turned 13 and had gone to live in one of the teenager dorms.

She had known before he arrived that his name was Robin 1983-3. The information had been printed on the sticker attached to the end of their bed the day before. The 1983 indicated the year he was born, making him ten years old, and the 3 indicated that he was the third person their Syndicate had named Robin in the year of his birth. (The name was randomly selected from a database of approved names.) Jeri’s full name was Jeri 1981-1, meaning she was the first Jeri born and taken from her human mother by the Syndicate, in the year of her birth, 1981.

Aside from his Syndicate number, Jeri also knew that Robin was ten because he had just arrived. Until age ten, all of their Syndicate’s pre-breeders came from the infants and young children’s facility near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Now she could connect a person to the name. He had been born with the appearance of a human male and he had long, curly blonde hair. His clothing draped over his twigish frame. He was very small for his age.

Small and vulnerable, Jeri thought.

He had picked the top bunk and was playing chess with another kid in their dorm. Jeri walked up and watched them play. Robin moved a knight.

Checkmate in three moves, Robin declared. Then showed his opponent that he was right.

As they were putting away the chess pieces, the lights out bell rang, and the other kid hopped out of Robin’s bed and ran back to his own bunk. Robin looked at Jeri for the first time. His eyes were a pale blue, that was almost gray, and he had high check bones. Jeri had once read a book written by a human called The Hobbit. Jeri thought he fit the description of one of the elves.

On impulse, she reached up, and brushed his long hair to the side, and was disappointed when she saw that the resemblance to a Tolkien character did not include his ears.

Why did you do that? Robin asked, quizzical, but unperturbed.

I thought you might not be human, she said.

Robin laughed.

Jeri felt her face grow hot. Why are you laughing?

We’re all not human, here! he said between giggles.

Jeri began to smile herself. It was easy to forget what they were when they looked like the humans.

About a week after Robin had moved in at the Seattle Center, Jeri heard him climb down out of his top bunk several hours after the lights out bell. She thought nothing of it, assuming he was going to the bathroom, which was permitted. She had fallen back asleep, but was awoken again several hours later by Robin climbing back into his bunk. He reeked of mud and creek water.

The second night he left his bunk, Jeri saw Robin’s silhouette drop down out of their bunk bed, and slink towards the door to the playground, which wasn’t locked at night because no one could get very far. Unlike the other doors exiting their dorm, the playground door wasn’t monitored by CCTV. The preteens weren’t considered much of a discipline problem by the Syndicate, so they were only sporadically checked on by Security personnel, although Jeri knew that Robin would be punished if he were caught.

Jeri worried that if Security caught him outside, they might punish her as well. They would say that it was her duty, as his bunkmate, to know what he was up to and to report the infraction. Those who tolerate a breach of our laws are themselves law-breakers, was part of their daily oath of allegiance to the Syndicate prior to classes. Jeri decided she wouldn’t report Robin, but she would convince him to stop whatever he was up to out on the playground late at night.

Once Robin had shut the playground door, Jeri got out of bed, put on her shoes, and followed. The playground was about a quarter the size of a football field. It was enclosed by the building of the dorm on one side, two barbed wire fences on the north and south side, and a fifteen foot concrete wall, toped with razor wire, that enclosed the entire Seattle Center, on the side opposite their dormitory. Jeri saw Robin running towards a group of small trees that ran along a stream that meandered along the northwest side of the playground, next to the concrete wall. When Jeri saw where Robin was headed, she suddenly realized why he had smelt like mud and creek water the night before.

By the time Jeri got to the stream herself, it was only with enough time to see Robin’s feet snaking inside of a very small culvert that allowed the creek to travel under the concrete wall and back to the outside world. Robin was sneaking out of the Center at night through a drainage pipe that only he was small enough to fit through.

Jeri sat against a tree, and waited. She dozed off, but was awoken when a wadded up pair of boy’s shorts landed next to her, followed by a pair of shoes, a shirt, and a dirty towel. A few minutes later, she saw Robin’s blonde head emerge from the culvert. He wormed his way out, covered in mud. Jeri picked up the towel, stood up, and held it out to Robin as he climbed up out of the creek bottom. He looked at the towel, then looked up at Jeri.

Are you going to turn me in? he asked.

No, Jeri said.

Why not? It’s your duty to turn in rule-breakers, Robin said. He took the offered towel and began to clean himself off.

What did you see out there? Jeri asked.

They did go outside the Center periodically to interact with the humans. It was considered an important part of the educational process, but it was always with a teacher. They would be sent into various social situations, and told to interact with particular humans, and then their performance was graded.

Going outside without a chaperone, however, was unheard of. A major infraction like Robin’s would jeopardize his chances of ever being certified as a breeder. Those who weren’t breeder-certified by the end of puberty were of no use to the Syndicate.

Robin didn’t answer.

Did you hear me? What’s it like?

Wonderful, Robin whispered.

Chapter 2

Jeri accompanied Robin out to the culvert every night after that. She had only tried to fit into the drainage pipe one time, and, after a panicked moment of thrashing around with her head and right shoulder stuck inside its maw, she gave up. Instead, she would wait for Robin to return each night with whatever treasures he had gathered as the humans slept.

At first he only pulled things out of garbage cans, such as old newspapers and magazines. Human news sources were not admitted to the Center without being heavily censored first.

In one such paper, she read about a human group in the city of Waco, Texas that had recently burned to death after the human nation’s law enforcement had raided their compound. Jeri saw why this news story was censored. It concerned a religious group that kept itself separate from the rest of humanity, and was considered to have unorthodox beliefs. It had too many parallels to how they lived, and it might create a panic amongst the residents of the Center. If the humans ever discovered them, they would receive worse treatment than this religious group had received.

After a few weeks of hunting through garbage cans, Robin got bolder. He stole a Polaroid Instamatic camera and some film from an unlocked car, disabled the flash on it, and started coming back with pictures.

They’re having sex in this one, Jeri noted as Robin lay a group of pictures out in front her by the stream one night. It was a picture of a bedroom to a house, with a human man mounted atop a female. Her long legs were rapped around his muscular lower back, while he had her arms pinned above her with one hand. His other hand held him up on the bed as he plunged inside of her.

The books we read about human sexuality don’t do it justice, Robin noted. I watched them all the way from foreplay to ejaculation. At first I thought he was trying to hurt her. She would sort of resist, but not really. He was very forceful, but the rougher he was, the more excited she became. By the time he actually penetrated her, she must have been close to orgasm, because she started screaming loud enough to cause the dog in their backyard to howl.

Do you think she’s pregnant with a human baby now? Jeri asked.

Impossible to tell. It would be a while before even a doctor could know, and, for all we know, he’s one of us.

"Or she is," Jeri added.

Jeri tried to imagine her Intermediate parent in female phase, having sex with her human father. Had she enjoyed it like the woman in the photo? Then Jeri thought of her Intermediate parent, later in one of its male phases, having sex with her human mother. Her human father’s genetic material having been combined inside the body of her Intermediate parent with its own genome, and then ejaculated inside of her human mother, impregnating her ovum with not-entirely-human DNA. Impregnating her with Jeri.

Did she have an orgasm like this human woman? Jeri wondered.

Regardless, about nine months later, just like a human baby, Jeri had been born, and her Intermediate parent would have reported it to the Syndicate. They would have sent members of Security to surreptitiously karyotype Jeri’s genome, looking for the characteristic extra chromosomes that indicated she was not human. Then they took her away, to be raised by her own kind, so that someday, after taking the enzyme, she too could go out into the human world and carry on her Intermediate parent’s genetic lineage.

The ones in the English-speaking countries called themselves Intermediates. Their kind took a great interest in the fields of genetics and biology. Their own scientists often debated whether they should be thought of as a sort of parasite gender or as another species –a sort of genetic cuckoo for mankind. They had their own culture and recorded history that went back to the times of Mesopotamia, but they were unknown to the mass of mankind. Here at the end of the 20th Century, human astronomers turned their radio telescopes to the stars in search of extraterrestrials, but the aliens were amongst them, hidden in plain site, and had been from the beginning, quietly evolving alongside mankind.

When Robin started sneaking into human houses, Jeri got scared again.

You’ll get caught! she said one night when he brought back a bag filled with cash.

I watch certain people every night. I know their routines and their sleeping patterns. I know the doors they frequently forget to lock. I just walk in and look around, and I only take things they won’t miss.

Someone’s going to notice that much money missing, Jeri said.

The person I took it from is a criminal by human law. He made the money selling illegal narcotics, so he won’t call the police. Besides, he had so much, I don’t even think he’ll notice.

My god, Robin, then he’s dangerous. If he caught you…

He had been consuming alcohol and some of his own product. He was out cold.

What do you even need the money for?

I’m going to leave here, eventually. I’ll need it when I go.

You’re going to desert? They’ll find you, and you’ll be punished. You’ll never be certified to take the enzyme and leave the Center as a breeder.

I don’t want to be a breeder. I want to live like the humans.

You can’t live like the humans. We can’t have children like they do.

I don’t care. I want to live free of the Syndicate, and have a human wife. Maybe we’ll adopt human children.

When will you leave? Jeri asked.

In a few weeks. I want to gather a few more supplies outside the Center first. Then, one day, I’ll just leave and not come back. By the time they find out I’m gone, I’ll be far away.

But, it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Chapter 3

It was unseasonably rainy that year, even for Seattle. Half the playground outside their dorm was flooded, including the creek and the trees. The culvert and pipe that the creek traveled through under the wall had gone from its normal height of less than an inch to completely flooded with water. It took three weeks for the excess water in the playground and the creek to drain off.

When Jeri and Robin went out to the culvert again, he no longer fit. After struggling for half an hour, Jeri watched as Robin stepped away from the pipe, and began to thrash about in the water, punching the muddy bank with his small hands.

I don’t fit anymore! he said as tears began to stream down his face. Jeri stepped down into the creek and tried to pull him close to her. He resisted, at first, but then he buried his head against her, and began to sob uncontrollably. She did her best to muffle the sound of his moaning in her chest.

Shh…shhh..It’s going to be okay, she said as she stroked his hair.

She took all of his clothes off, as well as her own, and hid them in a hollow tree stump. They walked back to the dorm, naked and covered in mud and creek water. They snuck into the large communal shower area in the bathroom of their dorm, where Robin lay on the shower floor, lost in his own melancholy. Once she had finished cleaning her own body, she turned her attention to Robin’s.

She guided him back to their bunk, and put him in bed with her. They lay together until close to dawn, at which point Robin got up and climbed into his own bunk. After that night, Robin started climbing down into her bed to sleep with her after the lights out bell.

Jeri was secretly happy that Robin couldn’t fit in the culvert anymore. She didn’t want him to leave her.

Chapter 4

A few months later, Jeri turned 13, and was moved to a teenager dorm. She still saw Robin during the day. They would play during free time and sit together at lunch. She would go and visit him before lights out bell at the pre-teen dorm, but she was lonely at night without him next to her in bed.

One day, he told her not to go to sleep after lights out that night. As she lay there, she heard feet approaching her bed, and opened her eyes to see the silhouette of a boy approaching her bed.

Hey, Robin whispered as he slipped under her covers, and lay next to her.

Robin? How did you get in here?

Same way I got out of my dorm. There’s a small, high window in every dorm’s bathroom, he whispered.

Overcome with joy, Jeri turned on her side, facing away from Robin, and pulled his arm over her body, and against her chest, locking it in place with her own