by Rizer, Bibi
“I love you, Tully.”
He sighs, laying one hand on his heart. “I love you too, O’Mara. I’ll see you soon.”
A guard sweeps along the fence, herding citizens towards the magway. I face backwards as the walkway takes me back into the controlled city. All of the citizens with me do the same, watching our forbidden lovers retreat in the distance.
“Is that your boyfriend?” a kind faced older woman asks me.
I can’t answer her in words. I’m holding back a flood of tears, a storm of sobs. I don’t even know what I’ve done, what this means for me. I only nod.
Chapter Seven – Tully
When O’Mara wrote the story about her visit to my boudoir, she changed one key detail. Instead of letting her million readers know that it was me who fucked her in her dream, she invented someone. She even gave him a name, Alejandro. It’s an old fashioned name, like something from a fairytale. I wasn’t actually in her dream with her, so I don’t know if any of the other details of her lucid reverie are exaggerated or invented. The story was titillating, as I’m sure was her goal; lurid in detail and bawdy in language. It was funny too, though I don’t remember much laughing in the moment.
In fact she cried. She woke up crying after sleep-speaking those words that burned into my mind to repeat hour after hour, day after day.
I love you, Tully. I love you with all my heart.
Is it any wonder I fell in love with her too?
O’Mara didn’t mention love in her review. And it’s a testament to my own fucked up heart that I took that as a sign. A message to me. If I wasn’t trapped here in the Pleasures I might have tracked her down at her offices and put on one of those romantic scenes from the banned movies people find in the ruins. Declare myself hers. Vow eternal devotion. I thought about it enough. I thought about her all the time. Only knowing the ridicule that would surely follow such a performance—a Cull vowing to love a free woman—stopped me. That and knowing if I leave the Pleasures that way, if I get caught in the controlled areas without a pass, I could end up in jail.
So I kept my feelings to myself, held them so close that they began to feel like a secret treasure, something no one could ever take away from me.
That is what love is. I know that now.
The diamond bracelet was just an impulse. The old harem wife grunted and moaned, sweating in my boudoir as I modulated the current of the electrodes. And something on her wrist twinkled and reminded me of stars, and the tears on O’Mara’s smooth cheeks. So I took it. And the old wife noticed it missing later the next day. And the guards came and searched me and found it in my pocket, because after all sometimes I’m as foolish as a teenager.
Two weeks in a cell with nothing to keep me going but my secret. And another three weeks locked out of my account, my boudoir cold and dark, living off furtive sexual favors and the occasional generosity of those who aren’t quite as badly off as me.
But all of it—all of the disordered thoughts, all the emotional turmoil, the humiliation of the guards putting their hands on places where I can’t stand to be touched, pacing in the dim cell, stomach clenching with hunger, and the degrading things I do for money to eat—all of it was worth it if it led up to the brief time I just spent with her, with O’Mara.
I have never felt more like a man than I do right now.
I turn away from the gate, away from the last stragglers retreating back into the controlled zones on the magways. O’Mara was crying again, which made my heart ache and swell until it was hard to breathe. But we all stood there, servants, almost prisoners behind the iron gate. We could leave—the gate is wide open from dusk to dawn, and the scanners are mindlessly happy to record the departure of a servant. Getting back in is the trick. And out there in the controlled areas, the abuses and exploitation wrought on Culls and other non-citizens are sometimes worse than in the Pleasures. At least here we have access to medical care, and someone to incinerate our bodies with a modicum of dignity when we die.
So we don’t leave. We stand and watch the magway moving until nothing is left of our loved ones but after images and lingering smells and tastes. I grip the bars of the gate, tightly, feeling the muscles of my hands begin to ache on the cold metal. I know what’s coming. After getting so close to O’Mara, after what we did, my mutilated body likes to punish me too sometimes, and I can feel it building. I need to get indoors, back to my boudoir where I might find something to swallow or smoke that might make it more bearable, what’s coming.
I let go of the bars and turn, striding purposefully back towards the Obsidian Stairway. I know it’s cold and dark in my rooms but it’s better than breaking down out here on the promenade where everyone can see. There are a few Culls I know wandering around in search of breakfast or perhaps some company for their morning nap. The younger Culls don’t understand though, and the older ones are mostly dead. I’m the grand old gentlemen of our kind, the one the boys come to for advice, or to be talked out of slitting their own throat. As though I’m some kind of expert on that.
It hits me like a bolt of lightning, right outside the entrance to Emerald. One second I’m walking, trying to look like nothing is chasing me, and the next I’m on the ground, one hand clutching at my groin, the other clamped over my mouth to keep from screaming. Phantom pain. Sometimes it is simply an ache in the missing limb or tissue. Sometimes it is like losing that part all over again. It’s the latter with me. I stare at the dirty pavement, eyes swimming with tears, nausea churning up, reliving the pain of having my cock and balls cut off by masked bandits.
I don’t remember the actual moment. My consciousness graciously deleted that experience from the permanent memory banks. I only remember a bloody struggle wherein three bandits lost their lives, and I crawled away covered in their blood and mine. The next thing I remember was waking in a hospice nearly a week later. The doctor transfused me with his own blood, he said. Stitched up what was left of me and saved my life.
I don’t remember the pain, but the pain remembers me. The pain remembers to lay me low at regular enough intervals that I’ll never forget what I am. Not a man. Not a woman. Nothing.
I blink tears away, blink and look down and realize I’ve puked up most of the dumpling soup.
Two Lickers look down on me as they emerge from the misty Emerald gate. They shake their heads sadly but don’t make any move to help.
“Tully! Fucking hell!”
Now someone is lifting me upright, which sends jolts of agony up my stomach and chest to my neck.
“Where? Where do you want to go?” It’s Bray, I see through blurred vision. “Come on Buddy, I’ve got you. Let’s go.”
“My boudoir,” I manage to whimper. “Obsidian Nine.”
Bray drags me across the promenade to a drop passage. Drop passages are crazy fast and cost coin which I don’t have but I don’t argue. We step onto the platform and Bray waves his pass over the censor.
“Obsidian Nine,” he says, and the floor falls away. I feel gravity release me until it’s as though only the still excruciating pain in my groin is keeping me tethered to the earth. The platform does a hard turn, jostling us, and Bray tightens his grip on me, holding me under the arms, across my chest.
“You’ll be okay, Tully,” he says. “Just hang on.”
A bell rings so loud it rattles my teeth, then Bray is dragging me to the sensor outside my boudoir. The door hisses open and we tumble inside.
I land in a heap on the floor.
“Lights!” Bray says.
The terminal by the door replies in a bored tone. “The lighting function is disabled in this suite.”
“Emergency override and I’ll pay for it and don’t be a dick.” Bray says. That almost makes me laugh. His kindness will cost him about a day’s worth of minty massages. Just to get the lights on.
Bray hovers over me as the lights flicker to life. “You have any painkillers? Any weed?”
I take my hand off my mouth, curling into a ball on my side. “Bath
room.” It’ll pass, I tell myself. It always passes eventually. Bray disappears and reappears in what seems to be less than a second. I think I might have briefly lost consciousness. He has a handful of pills, which I shovel into my mouth, chewing them, before swallowing painfully. In his other hand a small amount of powder on a spoon, which he shoves against my nostril.
“Sniff hard,” he says.
I obey. The grinding and snorting of pharmaceuticals is not new to me. Speeds absorption, increases potency. I used to take a lot of drugs, and not always for pain. I close my eyes against the familiar burning in my nose, pinching tears out of my eyes.
In the darkness behind my eyelids I’m in a tunnel, blazing fire at one end, cooling water at the other. I have only to walk in the direction of the water as whatever I just shoved up my nose begins to take effect.
It works fast. The fire flies away from me like a missile. The muscles in my stomach relax as I uncurl and roll over on to my back. Bray puts his hand on my chest, stroking lightly. I open my eyes to see him smiling down on me, his face uncomfortably close to mine.
“You smell like pussy,” he says with a grin.
I shove him away. “Get off me, you little pervert.”
He stands languidly and flops into my armchair. “Some gratitude,” he says. “Takes one to know one.”
I stare up at the glowing tungsten bulbs, strung along my ceiling like a low tech vine. I built this whole suite from scratch—floors, electrical, the plumbing in the tiny bathroom—all of it was scavenged from the ruins, or from shambling, tumbledown corners of the Pleasures. All that was here on the ninth level of Obsidian when I got here was a tangle of wires and circuitry. Admin was quick to set up scanners though, when I turned up. The tungsten lights are just a quirk of mine. I prefer their golden light over the white light of LEDs. There’s a whole warehouse full of the old bulbs in the ruins. But when they run out…well, like me their time will come to an end, leaving little behind.
But maybe all that has changed with O’Mara in my life. Maybe she will remember me when I’m gone. I’m almost certain she’ll out-live me. I hope she does, anyway.
“She found you then?” Bray says.
“Who found me?” I sit up painfully, crossing my legs.
“The black haired girl with the cute tits.”
I’d punch him in the face if I could stand up. The thought makes me feel pretty good though, despite the lingering pain. “Fuck you, Bray. Stay away from her.”
We only manage a few seconds before we both start laughing. Bray stands and disappears back through the hidden door to my bath and bunk room. He comes back with a wet wash cloth and a glass of water, both of which I accept with begrudging thanks.
Truth is, I don’t want to wash O’Mara’s smell off me.
“You okay now, Tully?” Bray asks, as I dab at my face with the cloth. “I’m sweaty from dragging your ass halfway down the promenade. I’m going for a bath and a smoke in Emerald.”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you later.” He presses the door release panel and the door clicks open to the servant stairway. He could take the drop platform back up but it costs even more than coming down. Anyway, the pool he’s headed to is only one level up. He’ll likely take one of the back passageways.
“Hey, Bray?”
He pokes his head back into the door.
“I told her, O’Mara, the girl, that if she can’t get in touch with me she can give a message to you. Or if she can’t find me that she should send you to look for me. I don’t want her wandering around the Columns alone again.”
Bray gives me a funny look, his head tilted to the side.
“I’m serious, though,” I add. “Don’t touch her.”
“I never touch without permission,” he says gravely.
“Yeah, well don’t even ask to touch her. I’ll kick your ass.”
I’m not sure he completely understands the sentiment. I trust him, but only in that he would just do as I ask because we’re friends and colleagues. This jealousy I’m showing, this possessiveness – where would he have even seen it before? He grew up in a heartless group home. And he’s been selling his body for as long as I’ve known him and that’s at least five years. What would Bray know of love?
“You can count on me, brother,” he says, before disappearing into the dark passage.
Maybe brotherhood will be enough.
I try to move over to the armchair and find I have to crawl. Whatever was in that handful of pills Bray gave me, it’s making me a little unbalanced. I drag myself up into the chair, falling into it with a relieved sigh. Even though the pain in my groin lingers, it’s so much less than it was that it feels like ecstasy. Something lumpy in my back pocket presses into me. I fish it out.
It’s the packaging and instructions for my new implant. I completely forgot about that. Thinking of it makes the new skin growing over the incision where the implant was inserted itch. I scratch it as I read the specifications sheet out loud to fill up the silence.
“Version 37.801 Internal Sensor Implant…bullshit bullshit…confidential. Practitioner use only…implanting procedure blah blah blah…upgrades on previous versions. Size…wow. They really are small. Holy shit. Externally programmable?”
That’s ominous. I read on.
“Improved functionality includes coded pulses for electrical resuscitation… handy.…disorienting or incapacitating for crowd or behavior control…great. Just what we need. Emergency pain relief or sedation.”
Pain relief. Now they tell me. Still the “externally programmable” is pretty hard to resist too.
I peel the tissue thin information sheets apart. The second and third pages include detailed instructions on how to activate the new features from a hand-held or wall terminal. The unique code of my implant is stamped on the third page. It will have been recorded in the Administration system of the Pleasures and also uploaded to the Authority mainframe. So I guess if they ever want to incapacitate me remotely they can.
Unless I reprogram my implant with a new code. Which I have every intention of doing once I figure out how. And the coded impulses—the exact frequencies for those are listed on the instruction sheet. It seems almost too easy. I start to feel a little paranoid, like this is some kind of trap. Admin knows I’m a hacker—I’ve been fined for it several times. It was all stupid stuff in the past, things I did for amusement rather than any real reason. I messed with the controllers for the light show at Lapis Lauzuli—made the show go so fast the whole thing was over in about thirty seconds. Once I disabled the water heaters in Emerald one by one until all the patrons were crammed into the one remaining heated pool.
But this—if I can reprogram my implant with a new access code then it can’t be used against me. In theory I might be able slip in and out of the gate like a citizen. If the scanner doesn’t recognize my code will it even register that I’m a person? It might read the signal as if I’m a machine—someone’s media jacket or a cleaning bot. That’s a bit of a long shot, because there’s no information about how to change a code in the information sheets. I can dream though.
But the electrical pulses – as long as I had someone’s access code I might be able to control the impulses precisely enough that the implant will work just like the electrodes on my dream machine. In other words, patrons could buy sex dreams anywhere, not just in my boudoir. They could dream a wild orgy of ass-fucking and cock-sucking while soaking in the cannabis pool. Or out in the controlled areas, sitting at their desks or waiting for a hair appointment. Or in the comfort of their own homes.
Holy shit. I’m going to be a fucking millionaire.
Chapter Eight – O’Mara
“Okay, onto the social pages.” The screen behind Goldwyn’s head clicks over to another list. “This month were plugging everything spring. So spring colors, spring food, spring clothes. Spring, spring, spring!” She laughs brightly and everyone but me chuckles along with her. “Doulton?”
Doulton leans forward so her massive
breasts rest on the boardroom table top. “There’s a new coffee-shop where they use human breast milk instead of Synth-Lac.”
“And how is that spring?”
Doulton is stumped. Doulton IS a stump. If she was any dumber she would forget how to stand up.
“Fertility?” I suggest, helpfully. “Rebirth? New life etc.?”
“Right. That.”
“Fine, we’ll put that in on Friday.” Goldwyn says. She types “breast milk coffee” onto the screen. I wonder where the breast milk comes from. I mean, who has any to spare? As for me, I’m so desperate for coffee right now I would drink it if it was made with human piss instead of Synth-Lac.
“What else?” Goldwyn says, hopefully.
“They’re re-glazing the whole Admin Tower.” Meier says. Meier can’t complete a sentence without putting super-normal emphasis on at least one word. “The glass came from the mainland. Apparently the Authority Guards had to supervise opening all the containers.”
“And that’s a spring story because…?”
“The glass is pink.”
Goldwyn actually applauds, clapping her perfectly manicured hands together gleefully. “Perfect! Saturday. O’Mara?”
I watch the words “pink glass” appear in Saturday’s box on the screen.
“O’Mara?”
I don’t have anything. I haven’t even noticed that it’s spring. But I pull something out of my ass at the last minute, as usual, inspired by Goldwyn’s fingernails.
“Matching your nailpolish with your ice-cream is a thing now.” It isn’t, but we can make it become one.
“That sounds colorful!” Goldwyn says. “Let’s make that the landing story on Sunday.” She types. “Everyone cover the usual nonsense. Meier, it’s your turn to review at the Pleasures, right? Anything else?”
There’s a silence. Every face turns to look at me, expectantly. Goldwyn even looks a little bored.