They woke me for lunch and a walk. Cindy fed me my lunch like I was unable to do it but she was happy again even if she did have to sit on a pillow so I wasn’t arguing. After lunch they put me in a pair of soft khaki pants, boots and no shirt. We went out and walked around I noticed that the wood shed was now totally filled and all the logs that were stacked to be cut and split were gone.

“How in the hell did that get done? I was asleep for three days not three weeks!”

“We had to stay here to take care of you and you have everything running so well it was actually pretty easy.” Cindy told me.

I looked at her and said, “Bullshit!” Then I let it drop.

We walked for a little while and then she took me back in and to bed. Sam came and relieved her as my guard and nurse. “You certainly are moving around better than I had expected. Cindy said that she told you about some of our herbal remedies and their rather interesting effects. Even allowing for that Danny, you have the constitution of an ox!” She was sitting on the floor beside the bed so we were face to face since I was on my belly. She kissed me. “You are some special sweet Man. I am even more impressed in the healing you did on Cindy than I am in your own healing. You did a wonderful job!”

“I did what she asked me to do…Well mostly. I threw in the ass scorching because it just felt like the right thing to do. She was seeking a cathartic release and felt terribly guilty about her… accident with my back so I assisted her in paying what she saw as a debt to me.”

“You read her just right Danny. She has been nothing but long faces and tears since it happened. She felt awful and needed to settle up with you. JR tore her ass up that night after I put you to sleep but she needed it from YOU. The sweeter you were about it the worse she felt.”

“I really never WAS mad at her you know!”

“I know and am amazed but I believe you. I would have been PISSED!”

“She didn’t do it on purpose. I actually still don’t understand how she did so much damage. Hysterical strength is all I can think of. She was just so pumped with adrenalin she was inhumanly strong.”

Sam looked at me and shook her head. “You seem to have an innate ability to amaze me Danny. You claim to have very little education and yet you offer up these things like a biologist or psychologist. Like her needing a cathartic release. Where in the hell does a guy like you come up with that?”

“I never said that I wasn’t educated Sam. I just have no formal education or alphabet soup after my name. My family always treated me as if I was a bit slow. It was easy to fulfill their beliefs but I read fast and forget very little. I read every text book that they brought home in private. I used to think it was a joke when my sibling the MD Doctor was struggling so hard with the anatomy and physiology in pre-med. I read the book and knew the names and locations of every bone, nerve, blood vessel and artery in the human body before bed the first night he brought the book home.”

“You have a photographic memory?”

“No, I forget things but not if I concentrate on it and WANT to remember it. A true photographic memory records EVERYTHING you see hear and smell and it is there without effort. I can’t read a book and like tell you what is on page 94 line 12 or that sort of thing but I can remember what I want to remember. I think that is kind of where their idea that I wasn’t to bright came from. I learned to read by just memorizing words. They thought it was cute that I could read by the time I was 4. All I was doing though was looking at the word and saying it. I didn’t learn the alphabet or the sounds of the letters, just the spoken word that a certain group of letters represented. To me written words were like pictographs. They had a specific meaning but the letters meant nothing to me individually.

The problem was when confronted by an unknown word I was at a loss. I couldn’t actually read and didn’t know how to sound out the words. I did the same thing with arithmetic. Memorizing something and understanding it is not the same thing. I memorized the flash cards the first time through but that didn’t mean that I knew how to add. I had to go back and relearn a lot of things once I understood that. By that time my parents were embarrassed to have a “special” kid that maybe wasn’t so smart and I just let it go on that way.”

“Weren’t you ever tested?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled “the results were wildly odd and they actually diagnosed me as borderline autistic. My Father went through the roof and it was never mentioned again and I took no more tests. By the time I was older I knew and understood the tests well enough to score what I wanted to and my Dad was happier to settle for a normal kid instead of some sort of retard which is what he thought I was anyway. I heard him make a comment about me having a bit of the idiot savant syndrome one time to a golf buddy when I had rattled off the batting averages of a half dozen local baseball players. I was standing right there but he assumed that I wouldn’t understand.”

Sam suddenly sat up straight. “What about the tests you took at your physical?”

I looked at her grinning. “I was wondering when you would think of that. I was truthful in the profile questions but only did a slightly above normal on the questions that were to measure my IQ and stuff. Those don’t mean anything with me anyway. I LIKE puzzles and IQ tests and it is rare for me to see something new on one so my scores don’t reflect my intellect, they reflect my memory and experience at taking those kinds of tests. Same would be true of almost any standardized testing of any kind. The Rorschach ink blots…I know every answer for every type of personality or deviant personalities. I almost brought the psychologist to tears the only time anyone ever tried to use those on me. I’m not all that smart; I just have a good memory…and a talent for things mechanical. I am afraid that I’m a little lazy as well and not the most ambitious soul in the world…at least not as most people see ambition.”

“You have got to tell Cindy. She will be ecstatic!”

“Why?” I asked puzzled.

Sam got suddenly quiet. After a little while she said slowly and with great thought, “Danny, the only place on the physical that you were slightly less than perfectly EVERYTHING we could have wished for WAS in the IQ part.”

“Why, what difference does it make as long as I am good at what you want me to do and compliant in the things you required me to accept like the enemas and spankings?”

She paused again before finally saying, “I think that is something that you would be better off discussing with JR or maybe Cindy after I have talked to her and JR. I’ll tell you what; if you will promise to stay in the bed until I come back I will go and talk to JR now.”

“I promise. After you talk to her will you be able to fill in a few of the gaps about things around here?”

“Maybe, We’ll see. I’ll be back in a little bit. Don’t you dare get out of that bed!”

She left and I wondered what was going to come of this. I knew something odd was going on and also knew there was more to the girls than just what I was being told. For one thing JR especially had a way of answering unasked questions as if I had spoken the question. Sam was also unusually perceptive and contrary to what Cindy inferred, they were NOT reading my body language…nobody could because I consciously controlled the signals I put out. If made me extremely likable and persuasive. I would have been an amazing lawyer. The problem is that lawyers have to spend WAY too much time with and around lawyers for me. Doctors are around sick people and I’m not all THAT fond of people. That is probably why I always liked working on machines.

I think I may have nodded off because Sam was gently patting my leg telling me to wake up the next thing that I knew. I looked around and saw that everyone was there and looked very serious. “Ah Oh, you all don’t look happy! I guess Sam told you about my little secret and you don’t like it huh?”

JR answered, “It isn’t that we don’t like it Danny. We just were not prepared for a surprise.”

“We all have our secrets JR. Mine won’t hurt you or really matter. I have decades of experience being the dumb blue collar worker and see no reason to change. Would you have been happier if I had just not told Sam? I just felt that there was a bond and I for the first time in my life didn’t want to wear the mask 24/7.” I smiled, “My wife didn’t even know. She thought I was just a big dumb jock and that is what she liked so I never told her any different. For some reason I felt different about you four and wanted to clear the air a bit.”

“You were right Danny. It is time to clear some things up. I will tell you now that we have decided to share with you but only a little at a time. We want you to have time to adjust but just as you have secrets we do too. We want them ALL laid aside but not all of the secrets are ours to share at this time but we will share what we can.” She looked at Sam and Sam took over.

“First thing has to do with the question you asked that I couldn’t answer. It had to do with why we were a little disappointed in the tests results considering your intellect and why Cindy is thrilled about your deception. Danny you were right about wondering why we looked so hard and long for just the right man for this job. That is because we…well we want more from you than some repairs and pleasant bed play. Danny we were picking the man we want to father our children. You were perfect in every way and your tests indicated that you were above average in intelligence. Since you have been here we had already decided that the tests were lower than the actuality but when you are picking for the father of your children you want the best that you can get.” She looked at me and shrugged. “I guess in some ways I am asking you to marry us. How do you feel about polygamy? We want you to be more than just a sperm donor Danny.”

I was stunned. I had played out a lot of possibilities and NONE went down any road any thing like this! “I don’t know what to say…Why just me? Why out here all alone and isolated?”

Cindy sat on the bed beside me, “Danny the depth of the tests went far beyond just health, fitness, intelligence and personality type. We were looking for a specific gene also. That is one reason your apparently normal IQ puzzled me. This gene nearly always is connected to people in the upper 1% of the population IQ wise and generally with special talents and abilities. Even when we found the gene it also had to be in the other parameters or the man wouldn’t fit in here or ever be happy. Your happiness is of paramount importance to us. Why only one man??? We were beginning to wonder if we were ever going to even find ONE!”

“Why is this gene so important to you?”

JR answered, “Because Danny if we are right when your gene pairs up with a similar gene that we all carry, the children will be…remarkable to say the least. We are not alone in this Danny and if the theories are right you are Adam with 4 Eves and this will be the Garden of Eden for what may be an entirely new race.”