The sun came
slanting through the window of the transport, making a hot pool on
the last row of the imitation leather seats. Rachel was sitting in
the sunlight, weeping, her body slumped weakly against the ripped and
dirty fabric. To add insult to injury, the transport's loud speaker
was blaring some hideous ad for Mix-U-Much portable cocktail mixer,
complete with thumping party music. “Be your own walking party,”
announced a deep male voice in a tone that was probably meant to
sound encouraging but seemed ominous and demanding to Rachel,
especially in her current state. Then, the ad was abruptly cut off,
in the midst of the narrator describing the company's current sale.
"Amerca
Medical," the automated driving system called out. "Last
stop on Asia." No one wanted to stop, so the transport did not
even bother descending to the ground. Rachel picked at a torn scrap
of cloth on the seat back next to her cheek, while snot ran down her
face, the sunlight illuminating her long hair and glinting off the
sequins of her tube top as well as the rhinestones on her long,
curved nails. Rachel was a whore, a whore of Her-Babylon and, right
now, she was a whore out of a job. Her brothel sisters would be so
disappointed as this would lose them significant monthly revenue, to
say nothing of her personal shame at being rejected. For a computer!
She let out a broken sob just as the speaker switched back over to
the radio with a loud crackle. The ad for Mix-U-Much had ended and
now an excited voice was babbling about how the CEO of Vissathron had
just been spotted with Lucinda from Gregory's. Rachel clutched her
head, trying to force the throbbing pain back through her eyeballs.
She hadn't had to concern herself with this kind of gossipy drivel in
years, and now she would be thrust back into the midst of it...now
that she was no longer fit to compete in the world to which it
belonged.
Outside, the
offices of the Paltte-Ine Meat Production Plant zoomed by on the
left. The building loomed up, a great block of muddy orange stone,
the diagonal slits that served it as windows scored down its sides
like claw marks. As they turned off Asia, Rachel's window looked
down on the front entrance and she saw the row of lumbering pillars
designed to make the building look majestic. Instead, they only made
it look pathetic, streaked with black from countless rains, funded by
sponsors too cheap to have the water properly purified first. Today,
however, was clear and she could see faintly rising in the distance,
the outline of one of the seven pillars of the space elevator, each
built on one of the hills of the city, that workers ascended to reach
the Ring, in order to tend the solar panels and the aquaculture tanks
where they farmed the algae that was the base component of all food.
The sunlight, however, just made the black stains on the building
look even more bleak and disfiguring.
"Just like
my life," Rachel thought. She turned away from the window to
glare at her immediate surroundings. As she did so, her tight
art-pleather pants creaked audibly. The inside of the transport was
almost completely empty. Probably because no one could stand to be
near someone who was crying, Rachel thought smugly. Well, fuck them,
she had to deal with her problems so they could just deal with them
too. The only other people in the whole compartment were a woman in
a long dark dress and the two little potential employees with her.
From the dress, Rachel knew the woman must be a governess of a
boarding house and the two girls were her wards. They were cowering
in horror at the disgusting display of emotion Rachel was putting on
but, at the same time, kept glancing at her furtively, overcome with
sick fascination. Their governess was leaning forward to block the
eyes of her charges from this horrible behavioral example, at the
same time, giving Rachel an evil look while fumbling in her purse for
relief as expected. Governesses were responsible for training all
the potential employees under their care to behave properly so they
would be appealing to future employers. If this woman’s wards
started picking up “bad habits” from Rachel it might cut into the
donations she received from wealthy businesses hoping to get first
pick of her charges. So much the better. Rachel returned her stare,
matching, and exceeding the amount of malice in the woman's eyes.
Slowly, and deliberately, she raised her middle finger, then jabbed
it upwards in a quick savage motion, not bothering to watch the
governess's response as she turned to look out the window again.
They were taking
a short-cut over the top of the Middlemarch Arena, a privilege of the
transports that could rise high enough into the air. This sunken
stadium was crowned with a bare metal dome, silver in color and
supported by grids of the same, running from the dome into the
ground. Altogether, Middlemarch Arena looked like a giant fat
spider. Rachel was glad spiders were extinct. They sounded creepy.
Now, they were directly over the dome and the sun reflected off of it
with painful brightness. The metal was freshly polished, which meant
there must be a show coming up soon. Not that that mattered.
Nothing mattered now.
"Next stop,
Luther's,” the navigation
system called. Rachel sat up and reached for her luggage. Soon,
this torture would be over and another worse torture would begin, in
which she would have to explain to the other brothel girls why their
income was being reduced and, in so doing, relive all her own pain.
Grimly, she pushed the "stop" button and the buzzer rang
loud in the emptiness. Soon, the garish vermilion facade of Luther's
swung into view. Overall hung the huge sign with the words
"Luther's: The Reformed
Brothel" spelled out on it in multicolored light bulbs. Rachel
felt a deep pang as she looked at the faux gold balconies hung with
florescent streamers. The intricate trellis over the door in bright
gold was actually real plastic, indicating Luther's
prestige, as opposed to the much cheaper plasticite from which such
things—and almost everything else in Her-Babylon—were usually
made. She had been so proud and filled with hope when she left this
place three years ago to take up her job as Esteban's official house
pet, ridiculously thrilled to be able to proclaim her status by using
“Esteban's” as her middle name. Now she returned, the unwanted
reject,
just plain Rachel of Luther's
again.
There was a
slight shudder as the transport lowered itself to the ground.
"Luther's brothel,"
the system announced and the doors snapped open. Rachel walked down
the length of the transport, her head held high and her eyes proud,
past the surly governess and her two potential employees, who she
flicked off once more for good measure, hopefully driving the woman
to dig in her purse again. Then, she stepped out of the door and
home, dragging herself wearily up the stairs that she had raced down
so eagerly when she had moved out, back when she was still young and
fresh and famous, before she even turned twenty, the same train of
suitcases and hover baskets trailing along behind her. When Rachel
stepped through the door into the entryway of the brothel, the other
girls were, at first, very happy to see her, or at least pretended to
be...until they saw that she had her luggage with her and noticed the
frigid expression on her face. As she sobbed out her story, they
patted her back and tried to sooth her. But she saw them exchanging
troubled glances when they thought she could not see.
Besides, Rachel
knew the brothel needed the money she had made being Esteban's house
pet. Luther's was no longer
the most popular brothel in Her-Babylon. It had been superseded by
Gregory's and even, rumor had
it, by Calvin's. Now, the
girls were hard put to raise the funds they needed to keep Luther's
on the list of five-star brothels, especially without the
contribution of several thousand mega dollars a month Rachel had been
making before, a respectable sum despite the run-away inflation that
had been going on since before she was born. Soft hands were helping
her to her feet. Mary was crooning that everything would be all
right and there was no need to cry, though, unlike Rachel, she was
sniffling heavily at the moment. Rachel's tears had gone cold and
dry by now. It seemed ages ago that she had grown weary of shedding
tears for Esteban, though, often, she still could not help herself.
They were in the main office now and Stacy was pulling up the
registry file to see which rooms had vacancies. Rachel cringed with
pain and rage at the sight of the computer and wished she never had
to see another one. But that was a ridiculously impossible wish,
since computers were a central part of life in Her-Babylon.
"Here's a
vacancy,” said Stacy, closing the room status spreadsheet. "Your
roommate is a new hire named is Alice."
"I suppose
you want me to help her with her lessons," said Rachel a bit
crossly.
"It is
your duty to further the interests of the brothel," said Elissa
a trifle shortly, as much as to say, “your personal problems are of
no consequence when we also have problems.” She had harbored no
illusions that Elissa would have any kind of sympathy for her.
Still, Rachel could not help wishing that she had not been in the
main room when Rachel arrived so she would not have had to witness
Elissa's reaction firsthand.
"You could
help her with oral sex," said Stacy, as if that made it better.
"She's having special trouble with that."
“She's having
trouble with everything,” one of the other women muttered in the
background.
"I'm afraid
I'm the wrong person to give lessons," said Rachel bitterly.
"I'm not particularly skilled. I can't even make sex interesting
enough to distract a guy from his virtual ‘raiding.’”
"Sometimes,
keeping busy can make you feel better," Mary's voice squeaked in
her effort to offer comforting advice, with no context as she
probably had no idea what Rachel had just alluded to.
"Oh, fuck
off," said Rachel, as she followed Stacy to her new room. A
girl, who must be Alice, was sitting on her bed, studying her Art
of Perfect Sex manual, the foundational text for all new hires,
her head snapping up sharply as they entered. She looked far too old
to still be working on the basics, with dull blond hair and freckles,
more cute than beautiful. Her eyes were wide with fear and her
cheeks red with shame. Rachel knew exactly what she was thinking.
In a world where the only possible roles for women were whore and
menial labor as an unprofitable, one of those
who had not had the talent or good fortune to be picked up by any of
the paying jobs, you had to prove
yourself worthy to stay in the better position and, right now, Alice
was doubting her worthiness. Governess didn’t really count as a
job because there were so few of them and they always hand-picked
their successors at a young age. Becoming a governess was not an
option for a failed whore. Actually, not failing was pretty much the
only option. Even a lower ranking brothel would hesitate to take on
someone who had been clearly established as a failure. Ignoring
Alice, Stacy typed a code into a touchscreen on the wall and another
bed folded down on the opposite side of the room, complete with
fluffy pillows and flowered sheets. Rachel stared at it in disgust,
then shoved Stacy aside and punched in another code. The bright
colors faded to a dull gray. Alice, who had been watching this
disturbance with increasing unease, now chocked back a sob.
"Alice, this
is your new roommate, Rachel," said Stacy. "She's a highly
accomplished prostitute and you could learn a lot from her," she
added severely. "Be sure to take advantage of this last chance
we're giving you." Then she was gone, before Alice could even
stammer out a “thank you, Essem,” as was proper for still virgin
girls when addressing their superiors.
"Oh,
wonderful. Now she'll be pestering me every fucking second,"
thought Rachel. "Thanks, Stacy, thanks a lot." She walked
over and sat on the bed, the hover baskets holding her luggage
following her and settling on the floor by her feet. She sighed,
bent down, and took out a digi-book, Sensuous Subtleties, one
of her favorites, then decided that it might intimidate Alice and
swapped it for Color Theory: A New Path to Harmony.
It was one of her obsessions at the moment and she sincerely hoped it
would not turn out like Control your Aura, Control your Life.
That had been great too, until she realized that controlling your
life really just meant controlling your emotions, at which point she
had had no option but to rip the book to pieces and flush it down the
toilet. Not wanting to listen to a lecture from Stacy or, worse,
Elissa about setting a bad example, Rachel refrained from throwing
something at the memory and buried her nose in her current, still
unspoiled, book. Time passed and Alice did not ask her any questions.
She was probably intimidated. Things could be worse.
A few hours
later, the "dinner is served" message flashed on the
monitor over the door. Alice leaped up at once and ran out eagerly,
but Rachel remained seated, having no wish to talk to anyone.
Doubtless, the food dispensers in the rooms still malfunctioned if
you looked at them wrong. Of
course, the brothel had not used any of her house pet money to
upgrade them. After all, why waste funds on something clients would
never see? She would visit the kitchen later. Right now, she would
take a nap. Lying down, she pulled the covers up to her chin and
closed her eyes. Reaching under them, she undid the fly of her tight
art-pleather pants and the clasp of her metal reinforced bra, which
allowed her body to relax. But sleep refused to come. Instead,
images of Esteban passed before her mind's eye, his hands against the
curves of her body, bringing first arousal, then pain when she
remembered what could never be again, those hands having long since
lost all interest in caressing anything except a keyboard. Her own
hands flexed, then clenched into fists, as she imagined herself
gleefully smashing computers. The combination of longing and anger
kept her restless for what felt like hours, in that half drowsing
state where it was easy for the mind to wander into the cruelest
places, memories of how things had been back in the blessed early
days, before everything was poisoned.
Esteban had been
around for a long time before Rachel took any notice of him. He had
first been introduced to Luther's
at a business party. As an up and coming computer programmer, he was
often invited to dine with the executives of Kumquat
Komputers. The head of the company had been heavily
patronizing Rachel at the time, so they wound up at many of the same
parties. Of course, they never sat together because the executive
was keeping Rachel to himself, though she did find Esteban very
amusing when playing party games, like “trivia or tricks”. At
one of these dinners, Esteban was paired with Grace and, soon, they
had become associates-with-benefits.
Then, one night,
Esteban tried to hire Grace to accompany him to a BYOB (Bring Your
Own Babe) party, when she already had an important assignment and the
brothel had attempted to placate him by sending Rachel instead. They
got along fabulously, finding they had exactly the same coarse sense
of humor and, after that, he always specifically asked for Rachel
when Grace was busy. Whenever she spent time with a man at a party,
Rachel always wondered a bit what it would be like to go to bed with
him. She couldn't help it since her job could very easily require
her to do exactly that. But, usually, once the party was over, she
never saw him again. If a guy was interested enough in her to make
the effort to see her again, he didn't wait long to sleep with her.
Being the understudy for a man who was already sleeping with one of
her co-workers gradually preyed on Rachel's mind more and more until
it came to obsess her. Every time she went to bed with a client, she
found herself imagining it was Esteban and, when she was with him, it
was all she could do to hold herself back from doing something not
included in her commission. It wasn't that they never touched. He
was fond of teasing her and flirting with her, which often involved
pinching, poking, and tickling her...which Rachel couldn't help doing
in return, perhaps more than she should have. One night, when they
had won a game together over tough competition, he leaned in and
nipped her cheek in pure delight at the victory and Rachel had
thought she would die.
At last came the
event Rachel had been dreaming of for months. Grace was booked on a
night when Esteban wanted more than companionship and no one thought
twice about having Rachel take her place. No one but Rachel that is.
She had received news of her assignment that morning and immediately
broke into a panic of preparations. No ordinary beauty regime or set
of bedroom tricks would do for this occasion. Rachel had spent the
morning reading the Art of Perfect Sex and every other manual
she could get her hands on, memorizing tips and little slights of
hand to make her performance seem more impressive. She had even gone
down into the storage room and dug through every back issue of
Corportini, aka
Corpro, that Luther's had
on file. But, by noon, she was in an absolute tizzy, trying to
remember and reconcile the advice to “hop on top for a round of
cowgirl, so you can run your hands all over your gorgeous bod as you
do him, giving extra attention to your twins for an additional wow
factor” with the requirement that she must “use the nails on your
oh-so-sexy manicure to tickle his package right as he's about to hit
his O.” To follow it all she would need at least three arms, one
in the middle of her back. Never mind the fact that Rachel had
always found the term “cowgirl” to refer to a sex position highly
offensive. She had gathered that, in the past, the cow had been a
rather unsightly animal, a fact that the preserved skeleton at the
Corridor of Visions museum had been unable to confirm or deny, so
calling someone a cowgirl was basically saying they were ugly, which
only made it idea of “reverse cowgirl” even worse, suggesting
facing away during sex was really the only viable option for someone
like that.
Books alone would
never suffice. She needed real life advice. But any other girl at
the brothel would take a very dim view of her trying to steal Grace's
gig. So, Rachel got special permission to call Beatrice, one of the
oldest and most successful members of Luther's.
She had been away from the brothel, working as a house pet for many
years and, consequently, knew nothing about what was going on.
Rachel simply told her she had a very important client she needed to
impress and begged for an emergency training session. Beatrice had
come over and drilled Rachel in her flashiest moves for almost four
solid hours. By the end, Rachel was so sore she could barely move
but she knew that, when the time came, she would find the strength.
Then, she raced out for a professional skin care treatment, hair
artistry, pheromone adjustment, and make-up application.
Even now, her
pulse quickened as she remembered sitting in the ruby room, one of
the special performance rooms Luther's kept for when clients decided
to come visit a woman in the brothel, with strings of clear red beads
hung from the ceiling to match the crimson sheets on the bed. Rachel
had run her fingers over the smooth silkone, waiting for Esteban to
arrive. She had been in place about ten minutes before the
appointment was scheduled and would have been there even earlier but
had barely gotten back from all her appointments on time. She could
hardly breathe and every heartbeat felt like her heart was being
violently squeezed as she writhed with impatience, wishing she could
check the time every other second, cursing the brothel policy that
forbade clocks in the performance rooms. This agony lasted quite
some time since Esteban, as she might have predicted, was late. Nor
did he seem to be in any sort a hurry, sauntering in, as best as
Rachel could estimate, nearly twenty minutes after he had been
expected, though, of course, it felt like much longer to her, dressed
like he had just gotten out of his own bed. Rachel didn't care. The
mere sight of him, along with the knowledge that she was finally free
to let her longing loose, drove out all other thoughts, even the
memory of all the wonderful moves she had just spent hours learning
and on which she had pinned all her hopes. Instead, she sprang out
of the bed and rushed at him in a truly undignified way. Then,
hooking her fingers claw-like into his shirt and shoulders, she
pressed herself to him with such force that her breasts, unnaturally
swollen from an overdose of fullness pills, a cocktail of every brand
she could get her hands on, were crushed against his chest. In the
back of her mind, Rachel was aware she was behaving just like a woman
from a lowly two-star brothel, without a single touch of class, but
she was past shame.
Amazingly,
Esteban didn't seem to mind. Grinning so broadly that his mouth
looked almost skull-like, he tossed the loose front lock of his hair
back out of the way as he bent to her. Her knees buckled with
overwhelming lust and she staggered as if she were fainting. He
stooped as if to catch her, dragging her down on top of him instead.
The beautiful bed with its artfully folded silkone sheets they never
touched. Instead, they spent the night on the floor, rutting like a
pair of long extinct wild animals on an ancient natural history show,
like the clips she had seen at the museum. It worked. Rachel never
knew what she had done right, but she must have done something
because, after that night, she took Grace's place as Esteban's
primary hire. And, with that, she had felt true triumph for the
first time in her life. The dull apathy that ate away so much of her
time had vanished, consumed by the devouring fire of her passion.
Yes, her passion. Back in the present, she felt a surge like an
electric current go through her at the memory, searing and stinging
but also generating vibrancy and energy. She felt her back arch from
the mattress and she writhed until it felt as though her spine was in
a knot, her arms going in one direction and her legs in another.
Gradually, she
drifted off into a vivid dream about Esteban and woke up eventually
with sweaty sheets and a foul mood. Without the ecstasy she had
dreamed, the world was flat and gray as the color she had set the
room to. Even pain was welcome sometimes as a red reminder that
there was still color in the world. With nothing else to look
forward to, it was hard to even muster the energy to get out of bed
but, finally, she heaved herself upright, not feeling terribly
rested, her body loose and heavy as a bag of wet cement. The room
was dark, but Alice was sitting up in bed, reading The Art of
Perfect Sex with the dim light form the flickering demo video on
the open page. She glanced up nervously when Rachel sat up, then
made haste to be unobtrusive. Rachel ignored her as she took off her
tight public clothes and slipped into a loose robe and a pair of soft
fuzzy slippers with kitten heels, one of the thousand minor
inconveniences, in addition to her grief, that she would have to cope
with being back in the brothel. Alice was another, though she could
easily become more than a minor inconvenience, Rachel thought grimly
as she went down to the kitchen to have a meal in peace and quiet,
now that the clock over the door had told her meal-time was over and
the other women should have vacated the area. She could
always order food from the room's wall dispenser, but she had no
patience for delays or screw-ups right now, another brothel
inconvenience she would have to deal with.
Reaching the
bottom of the stairs, Rachel turned to one side and slid open the
kitchen door cautiously. Fortunately, her gamble had paid off and it
was empty. As she had expected, the kitchen had not improved, as the
girls preferred to spend money on themselves, or at least on things
clients were likely to see, rather than on improving the living areas
of the brothel. The same cherry stain woodide cabinets lined the
walls, topped with the same faux composite granite counters and the
same stove-for show that was not designed to turn on. The highest
quality stoves were made to actually light and Stacy had been
desperate to buy one for Luther's
a few years back, right before Rachel had moved in with Esteban, but,
apparently that plan had come to nothing. Rachel cared less about
these things as they were just cosmetic. But she also noticed they
still had the universal toaster that boasted it could do twenty jobs
but failed at all of them, the hydration gun that was crappy and
leaked, and the compact ELF wave cooker that had to be propped up on
one side to cook evenly. The third speed setting on the old food
mixing machine still did not work, which meant it was impossible to
make creams, custards, honey, hummus, or mayonnaise, at the least.
Not that she intended to mix food from scratch anyways. Although the
mixer in the kitchen was more reliable than the food dispensers in
the bedrooms, adding the appropriate flavor packet to the machine,
waiting for the food to mix and then set, would take far too long,
even if the button had been working.
She wanted to just grab something quickly to stash in the mini-fridge
upstairs and so she headed over to the refrigerator to get herself
some of the prepackaged food stored inside and saw it was the same
old refrigerator, gleaming stainless steel several generations ago,
but now heavily scuffed and scratched and with no ice-maker.
It was a well-kept secret that a five-star brothel like Luther’s
couldn’t even afford an ice-maker, much less a new food mixing
machine. She frowned, another inconvenience. In the time it would
take her to actually get ice out of the freezer, someone might come
in and try to start a conversation. To avoid such a tragedy, she
opened the refrigerator and began sorting through the various boxes
and containers inside as quickly as possible, feeling the tension
across her forehead and between her eyes. After what seemed an
eternity of tossing aside packs of chicken nuggets and re-wrapped
half-eaten cupcakes, the nasty kind with mint frosting and
sickly-sweet pink sprinkles, she finally found something remotely
edible, a plaZtic container of falafel with hummus dip. But, just at
that moment, she heard someone in the hall right outside the door
and, fearful that they would come into the kitchen, she yanked the
falafel container loose, upsetting half the precariously stacked food
in the refrigerator, and fled up the back stairs on the other side of
the kitchen.
On her return to her room, Alice approached her shyly and asked her
to clarify a passage in the text describing a position called "the
oyster," which it declared was guaranteed to “get his rocket
ready for blast off,” as if sex was some kind of audition for a
General Rush commercial. Since the book was so fundamental, a new
edition was released every few years, with the most up-to date
looping video clips and diagrams but Alice was, evidently, too dense,
even for this level of instruction and Rachel was not in the mood to
humor her.
"Let me help
you, Alice," she snapped. "Find a man who spends all his
time on competitive gun games like Aftershock III and
Full-Life.” Alice looked confused at the word gun. “You
know, like you use in laser tag or paintball, you moron,” cried
Rachel impatiently. “Or, even better on those long-form online
games that are always releasing new content, as he will be so busy
doing that that he will never have sex with you, so your skills will
be completely inconsequential." Alice pulled back her head
sharply and looked like she might cry. Rachel sniffed
contemptuously, a sniff that was almost a sneer, and stalked over to
her mattress. Her hover baskets raced to settle at her feet and she
began distractedly unpacking her possessions. She did not even have
a clear idea of what was in the baskets. The misery clouded packing
was intentionally vague in her mind. The only reason she had
acquiesced to it at all was the realization that, if she returned
with nothing, Luther's could
accuse her of robbing the brothel for abandoning things bought with
brothel funds and might even contact Esteban or, worst of all, try to
make her do so, in order to get them back. So she had thrown enough
random clothing and jewelry into the baskets to forestall this
horrifying development. There was no need to take everything as some
clothing could have been lost or damage during her years away, some
could be argued to have been purchased with Esteban's money directly,
not Lurther's, and some
Lurther's probably didn't
know about. But she could only use such excuses a finite number of
times.
She pulled a
purple lounge robe out of the basket and threw it onto the bed
without even looking at it. It was fine. She had owned it for ages,
even before her Sacrifice, the
formal ceremony where a new hire auctioned off her virginity and
became an full-fledged member of the brothel,
and she had never worn it for anything memorable during her time as a
house pet, so it was free of contamination. Of course, some things
she had definitely not brought back with her, like her most recent
lingerie purchase. Rachel felt a wave of agony pass through her body
just at the memory. Only a few short days ago. She could still
count on her fingers the sunrises since that time, when the world
seemed stable, had not yet fallen in pieces. Some items were clearly
in, others clearly out. But most were more complicated, like the
purple and blue swirl tie-die crop top and matching mini-skirt. This
too, she had owned and worn often before meeting Esteban, but she
also had a clear memory of wearing them when she had accompanied him
to some corporate beach event the previous year. At the time, she
had not enjoyed the outing, though the sponsor had made the day too
bright and hot, didn't like when the host burned the hot dogs on
their little beach grill, or when she got sand inside her flip-flops.
Now, the whole thing seems an absolute personification of paradise
and she would give anything, anything, to be back there. What was
she to do with these items? Wad them up and stuff them into the
bottom of the clothing dispenser, the public one next to the upstairs
lounge? Of course, if the pile of such items was big enough it might
even cause the mechanism to jam and give someone a bad time repairing
it on her day off.
And so it went,
Rachel sorting her belongings into three piles, the items that were
still untainted and could be kept freely, the truly contaminated
items that had gotten into her luggage by mistake, which she shredded
with scissors on the spot, and, the largest pile, questionable items
that did not warrant immediate destruction but still gave her a pang,
to be jammed as forcefully as possible into the public clothing
dispenser. Wedged into the corner of her basket, she felt something
hard and, pulling it out, found it was a digi book. Hopefully not a
sensuality novel. That would be too painful but she would not be
able to destroy it since all such books should be given to Susan, who
had probably lent them to her in the first place. But, when she had
extracted it, she saw it was something far worse, the Manual of
House Pet Behavior. This was so far beyond anything she would
ever need in the future that it was simply unendurable. With a
scream, she seized a cover of the book in each hand and tore it down
the spine, then began ripping individual pages. There were some
fleeting pops and sparks as well as a very faint burning smell as the
tiny electrical circuits within were ruptured and the animated
displays on the pages winked into darkness.
Breathing hard,
Rachel looked up from the pile of rubble in front of her and saw
Alice, probably alerted by her shriek, staring at her with a white
face and frightened eyes. She looked from the crumpled remains of
the book to Rachel and back with an expression, almost, of regret,
like, maybe, she would have liked the book for herself. “Don't
worry, it would have been of no use to you either,” sneered Rachel.
“Neither of use will ever qualify for a situation where we would
need that information.” Not wasting any further attention on
Alice, she swept the remains into her growing pile of trash and went
on with her sorting. She thought she heard a sob or two but not
enough to be certain and she did not bother to check. She considered
blasting some metal to help her deal with the process but decided
Alice was preferable in a less alert state.
When, after who
knew how many hours, her task was done and her face swollen and
throat raw from crying, she kicked the pile of “keep” items into
a corner to put away later, then stuffed each of the other piles its
own hover basket and headed out. The trash she dumped outside the
bathroom closest to Grace's room, or where Grace's room used to be.
She might always have moved rooms in the intervening years, but there
was no way to know, so this was the best odds for having her trip
over it. The other basket she stuffed into the public clothing
dispenser as planned, though it took three failed tries to pull it
off, as she had to stop multiple times because someone was passing
through the lounge. Rachel had forgotten what irregular hours
brothel girls kept, as they were likely to have just returned from
work at whatever unnatural time this was, then cringed in pain,
remembering what she had been doing all the time she had not been
here dealing with that. Her task complete, she ate breakfast at a
non-usual time, if two am could be called unusual, the wall slot, as
predicted, was faulty, read some more of her books, practiced her
stretches and vaginal contractions, and spent hours staring at the
ceiling of her room in a daze of pain. She continued much the same
haphazard activities during the following days, but always felt the
oppressive emptiness growing heavier and heavier, a suffocating
weight. The torture of both her dreams and her free roaming thoughts
in the hazy, vulnerable period where she hovered on the edge of
sleep, kept her from proper rest and she was always tired, an added
weight on top of the already crushing burden of grief.
Worst of all, she
could not chase from her mind the memories of her times with Esteban.
At the beginning, it had been delightful. She would spend virtually
the whole day beautifying herself, then waiting by the window for
when he came back after work. For the first few months they would
rarely make it out of the entry way before having sex at least once.
Later, he would at least take the time to have a drink and sit down
for a bit first but Rachel didn't mind as this at least gave him a
chance to admire all the work she had done preparing herself before
it was all ruined by rolling around on the floor. Sometimes he would
be late, but the prolonged anticipation only made the eventual payoff
all the sweeter and she did her best not to notice how these
occasions became more frequent as time passed. On and on it went,
tormenting her with what had been, what could never be again. She
remembered when it had all started to go wrong, when one of his
friends at work had introduced him to Eternaraid. At first,
Rachel had thought nothing of it. Esteban was always obsessed with
some new game. He would play it fourteen hours a day, sometimes
taking time off of work to facilitate this, while Rachel was
relegated to fetching and carrying food and other necessities. But
she did not mind, at least not too much. At that rate, he could
finish most games quickly or at least get to a level where they were
no longer challenging, at which point he would suddenly realize he
hadn’t had sex in quite a while and would start marathoning that
instead, though never, sadly, for as long as he had marathoned the
game. She had initially thought Eternaraid would be no
different. But what she had failed to realize was that Eternaraid
constantly released both new and engaging content, well engaging to
him that is. Rachel was unable to comprehend how Eternaraid
could be interesting, not that she would have been allowed to play
anyway as no serious gamer would permit themselves to be seen in game
with a house pet.
Certainly, most
modern games were designed to be never ending but they were so inane
and brainless, some were even designed to attract brothel girls, like
Shoe Scramble, Sweet Smash, and My Personal Plant. Of
course, they would hold no interest for someone who thought of
themselves as serious about games so she had not been on guard
against this particular danger. As if she could have somehow changed
things if she had, she thought bitterly. Trying to interfere with
the current obsession of her hOwner, as men who kept house pets were
called, never made him less interested in it, just cranky. It was
not in Rachel's professional training to use pestering or guilt to
get sex, quiet the reverse, but, once or twice, early on, she had
been so desperate she had done so instinctively and, at first, had
thought it had worked, as he actually left the computer and came to
the bedroom with her. But she wasn't stupid. She could tell he
wasn't really into it which was far, far worse than just not doing it
at all. Afterwards, she had locked herself for hours in the luxury
bathroom with the wall slot, infinitely superior to the shitty ones
at Luther's, so he couldn't hear her cry while she indulged in an
endless stream of ice cream and corpirtinis, “what discerning
whores drink to impress businessmen”. In retrospect, such
precautions were probably not necessary as his special pancake-sized
Souwnbloche gaming earphones were back in place within moments of him
finishing.
So, what was she
supposed to do? Seduce him? But, since both her passion and her
training had decreed she give him whatever he wanted from day one,
she had nothing to dangle as an incentive. None of the options made
sense, so Rachel did what she had always done, waited for him to get
bored and notice her again and, as she usually did, tried to shut off
her conscious mind and go on auto-pilot so it wouldn't hurt too
much in the meantime. Thus, it was suddenly, out of nowhere, that
she realized three or four months had passed with no sex at all and
started to get worried and upset. And then...Rachel snarled, not
wanting to pursue this train of painful thought any further. She got
up and kicked the wall savagely a few times but, as she was not
wearing her mandatory at-home kitten heel mules, she did more damage
to her foot than the wall and flopped back into bed, seething at her
inability to effectively vent her rage on anything, animate or
otherwise.
It was time for
another nap. That was the all-around best way to temporarily forget
about her ever-present pain, assuming, this time, she could manage to
get to sleep in the first place. Besides, there really wasn't much
else to do in general. Going out was certainly too much work.
The other women would demand that she make herself look nice, which
took effort, and also created the risk that some man would see her
and try to hire her, which was the last thing she wanted. Besides,
even without these added barriers, there wasn't anything she could
think of that would make the effort of just walking out the door
worthwhile. Dinner at the best restaurants, shopping at the big
department stores, luxury boutiques, or super swanky mall, or an
outing to the theater, all failed to appeal. Even the thought of
fulfilling her long cherished dream of a trip to the Europa Valley
Greenhouse to see actual living plants, held no thrill for her now.
Inside, prospects were no better. All anyone at Luther's
ever did besides sleep was socialize, practice, and,
occasionally, read sensuality novels. The last was certainly out.
Reading about other people's bedroom delights would only make her
feel her own loss more keenly. As far as practice went, her physical
technique was flawless and that still hadn't kept her hOwner
interested, so why bother? She did the most basic exercises to keep
in shape, just so the other girls wouldn't bug her about it but that
wasn't enough to keep her occupied. And socializing? That could be
fun...if she could think of a sure-fire way to make everyone else as
miserable as she was. But she couldn't, having a desperate fear they
would do their best to ignore any scene she tried to make, just like
Esteban, and she couldn't bear being overlooked any more.
To sleep then.
But, even as Rachel pulled the cover up to her chin and tried to will
her mind to blankness, she feel a deep yearning inside her for
freedom, not just from pain, but from the ubiquitous boredom that had
been there all along she now realized, lifting only shortly during
the highest intensity of her passion, a longing for there to be
something she could do that would hold her attention for more than a
day or so, that made her feel she had achieved something. Other that
pure monetary success, of course. But, as she had feared, true sleep
and true oblivion did not come. Instead, she slipped into the hazy
half-world where her mind wandered, leaving her alone with her
memories, as all the pain of that very last day came crashing back
over her. Esteban had come back late from work, not unusual, and
immediately sat down at his computer, even less unusual, ignoring the
way Rachel had carefully draped her robe to reveal a strategic
glimpse of the brand-new crystal-studded black lace lingerie set she
had purchased that morning. Rachel had tried hard not to be upset
and sat patiently in the back of the room, continuing to make sure
her robe was still correctly arranged to fall open, even though he
never turned around, and doing her best not to think too hard about
the fact that this was how she now spent such a large portion of her
time. Was it just her imagination, or did the black velveet
half-couch she had installed now have two slight imprints from her
left butt cheek and right knee from the way she always sat with one
leg drawn partway under her?
After about an
hour and a half, Rachel got herself a drink to dull the pain. She
had felt the need much sooner but had kept careful track of the time
because she had learned this was the point when Esteban would want
something himself. Sliding off the couch, she gathered the silkone
skirt of her robe in one hand so it would trail behind her as she
swept out of the room and made her way to the kitchen. The room did
have a wall slot and it did work, unlike the ones at Luther's.
Of course it did. Otherwise, how would Esteban have gotten food for
himself while gaming before he had a house pet to do it for him? But
Rachel felt she needed to get some blood back into her legs...and
work off some of the angry energy that was starting to simmer below
the surface. In reality, she just got her own drink out of the wall
slot in the kitchen but everything she brought for him was carefully
prepared by hand from the various raw ingredients like artistic bread
and cheese that she had purchased in her copious free time.
Back upstairs,
she set her own drink on the floor and advanced carefully, holding
the plate and glass, one in each hand. From long practice, she had
learned the exact spot on the table in which to slide the items, such
that he could reach them easily but not so close that they would be
in his way while he was otherwise occupied, as well as the precise
way to slide them into place so that there would be no sounds or
sudden motions to distract him. Then she retreated to her couch and
sipped her personal variation on a corpritini,
leaving out the grape syrup and compensating with extra grapefruit
juice, feeling the exceptionally strong alcohol she had added burn
all the way down and relishing the distraction of the pain. A few
moments later, a hand reached out from behind the high back of the
designer chair, specially constructed for extended, very
extended, computer use, grabbed the sandwich and disappeared again,
reappearing a few seconds later with the slices of bread over a third
gone already. Once the food was all consumed, Rachel would wait for
a likely moment and remove the dishes with the same care she had used
to place them. She scowled, remembering how, before she had started
doing this, the entire table and floor around had been covered by
tottering towers of used dishes since, in the heat of his games, he
certainly could not be bothered to remove them himself. Like most
wealthy men, and some who were not so wealthy, he did hire a
professional cleaning service but, since he didn't care about such
things, never bothered to have them come more than once a month.
She was not sure
how late it was when the back of the chair finally moved, but enough
time had passed that she had begun considering if it might be time to
bring him something from the kitchen again. As soon as the
top-of-the-line chemical leather, spread over a padded frame of real
plastic, even displaying the coveted “10%
heirloom” icon, on the back Esteban's luxury gaming chair
shifted, Rachel felt her heart start hammering furiously. Even
though the actual occurrence had long averaged less than twice a
month, and that was even before he had discovered Eternaraid,
she had realized she could never stop herself from feeling faint with
the hope that he might want something else...and then feeling a surge
of angry disappointment when he passed her by with hardly a glance at
the outfit she had usually spent all day preparing. Although it was
considered highly unprofessional, Rachel had succumbed more and more
to the temptation to try and initiate physical contact, forcefully if
need be, in the hope that this would inspire something the sight of
her alone no longer could. Tonight, as he made his way past her,
perhaps with just a hair more tempting slowness, Rachel stood up and
took his arm, careful to keep her robe partially open the whole time
while looking like it was an accident.
Although Esteban
did not disengage his arm, that was only because he seemed to give no
sign of being aware she was holding it in the first place. “I only
have about five minutes to get ready,” he said shortly.
“Ready for
what?” Rachel asked, feeling something catch in her throat, which,
thankfully, gave her the pause she needed to clamp her mouth closed
before she could say the next thing that came into her mind—“at
the beginning we didn't need five minutes.”
“Kumquot
Komputers is have a party for the new head programmer they
hired.”
“What?”
Rachel's voice rapidly rose to a shriek. “You think time is tight
for you? How can I possibly get ready in five minutes?”
“You aren't
going. Look, it isn't a BYOB party,” he added when Rachel
continued to give him a death glare. “It would be rude for me to
bring you when they've already gone and hired people.” This was
true enough, though Rachel had found this fact increasingly difficult
to deal with as Esteban had spent less and less time with her. It
wasn't even jealousy. She knew he would never do anything with any
of the party girls as it would take far too much effort. She just
resented yet another giant chunk of time she could not spend with
him. After work and Eternaraid there was already so little
left. Still, it might have all ended there if Esteban had not let
slip that the brothel supplying the entertainment was Gregory's,
one of Luther's primary rivals. Before she could stop
herself, Rachel had shrieked the word traitor. Esteban had just
walked out of the room without saying another word and she had spent
the rest of the night crying on the floor, the straps and crystals on
her lingerie digging into her. The worse part was that Rachel, as a
house pet, had no real motivation for feeling threatened by one
brothel over another. The hair-trigger hatred she had been raised to
feel for Luther's direct
competition had simply burst out of her under the pressure of all her
other feelings.
Rachel wrenched herself up from bed with a cry of agony. She could
not stand to think about these things for a second longer. She must
find a way to shut off her brain, drown out her memories. Not even
bothering to put on her slippers, if anyone scolded her for going
flat-footed she would punch them, she flung her self out the door of
her room and down the hallway. Scrambling to take the stairs in
double quick time and almost tripping more than once, she made her
way to the kitchen and started frantically typing in numbers on the
food mixing machine, trying to program it to make a soufflé, one of
its most complicated functions, to distract her mind. Unfortunately,
this used the non-functional third speed so the machine kept hanging
and giving her error messages. Rachel shrieked and shook the
appliance violently, after which it would churn along for maybe a few
more seconds. It was all in vain anyway as she was unable to shut
out her memories, now the worse of all, of what had happened at
Esteban's house the morning after the party, when he had dismissed
her. She had clung to his leg and begged and pleaded, at the time
thinking only of keeping him. But now she realized she had also been
clinging to her one and only lifeline out of the abyss of empty
limbo. In bitter frustration, she punched the command panel of the
food mixing machine, cutting her hand in the process and completely
jamming the panel. At least it felt good to punch something. In
disgust, she left the room, not even bothering to bind her dripping
hand. Let someone else fix the machine—and clean up the blood.
She was much too miserable to be bothered.
Sometime later,
probably prompted by complaints about the mess, Stacy came to her
room and tried to have a conversation with her, largely
unsuccessfully. "We've been missing you at meals," she
said cheerfully. "But, since your figure does not appear to be
suffering, it's up to you."
"...."
"Well, some
of us are going to a game-day party the CEO of Pittsanto
Steel is throwing. You would be
an excellent person to attend."
"No."
There was silence. "You don't want me there," exclaimed
Rachel sharply, when Stacy refused to leave. "A chain is only
as strong as its weakest link,” she said mockingly. “Surely you
can't have forgotten one of our most important mottoes. I could ruin
the entire evening for the rest of you." Stacy took the hint
and went away and, thankfully, she must have told the others that
Rachel was still decidedly out of commission for no one else bothered
her either. Even if the idea of going to a party and being expected
to pretend she wasn't miserable wasn't utterly revolting to Rachel,
she certainly did not want to be involved in anything related to the
Pittsanto sports team, having always hated their creepy mascot,
resembling a short squat man in a suit with ridiculously huge upward
pointing mustache and sunglasses all in the company's black and
golden orange color scheme, having had nightmares about it after
seeing it at a game as a new hire where it had climbed up into the
bleachers and waved the matching towel it carried in her face.
Relieved at having escaped both unpleasant prospects so easily, for
the time being at least, Rachel got up and viciously slid closed the
door to the room that Stacy had stupidly or maliciously left open,
wishing for the hundredth time that there was some way to lock it.
Unfortunately, there were no locks on any of the brothel doors, at
least in the living quarters. Anyone could walk into your room
anytime they pleased. There wasn't even a way to wedge them closed.
Not that Rachel hadn't tried...many times. Fuming at her lack of
control, even over such small things, she shuffled across the room
and flung herself back onto the bed.
©Amanda Hamlin 2025
