But as the sound of thrusting began, they distinctly heard her say, "I love you."
And his response, audible between the rhythmic thumping, was, "I love you too."
The one observer turned to the other. "Do you think--" he started, and then stopped. She was staring at the screen, a tear escaping down her cheek. "What's the matter?"
She pointed. "Why are we doing this? Why are we obsessively watching these two people who are just trying to live their lives? What's wrong with this picture?"
He shook his head. "I'm not sure myself. HSHQ was so certain they were subversive... and their relationship clearly violates the Rules of Morality, so technically at this point we should report it and let the system take over... yet it seems like all they really are is lonely."
"And in love," she added bluntly, turning her full face to his.
He blinked, surprised. In the three years they'd worked together in Surveillance, just out of school, she'd never looked straight into his eyes before. They'd always been trained that meeting someone's gaze was a direct invitation to... he tried anxiously to stop that pattern of thought, and instead found himself blurting out something almost as treacherous. "You really believe that, Vera? You believe in love? After all that's happened? In our world?"
"I believe they do. You said it yourself--in our world. Would you do what they're doing, risk what they are risking, for anything less than love?"
"They can't know we're watching them."
"They can't assume they're not being watched by someone, somewhere. Again, as you so clearly state, not in our world of today." She paused and bit her lip, still not dropping her eyes. "Are you going to turn them in, Miri?"
Her questions were burning him almost as much as her eyes were. He looked away, and his eyes fell on the tapscreen showing that the couple in 1212 lay together, spent, silent, content, her head on his shoulder and his hand stroking her hair.
Insistent, she repeated, "Are you? Can you?"
He looked back at her in turn, seeing the streaks of salt in her face and the rise of fear behind her eyes as she challenged him to...
He reached across and put his finger on the tapscreen, bringing up the menu and the red button labeled Report. "Agent Mike-One-Seven-Victor reporting in on Casefile X-ray-One-Two. Surveillance equipment installation was defective and we were unable to observe latest meeting of subjects." He paused, and went on, hoping his voice did not sound as nervous as he felt. "Recommend our team continue surveillance of subject meetings as necessary, but only until we can absolutely confirm or deny that the subjects are not a threat to national security."
He shut off the Report feature, changed controls to delete the surveillance recording and send the report alone, and turned back to his partner. "I hope I did the right thing, Vera."
"I think you did," she stated, eyes bright with unshed tears that she turned away to hide. "You know, I signed up to protect people from terror. Not to cause more of it to innocents."
"Hardly innocents," he protested, remembering the knife, and the gun, and the anger. "But yes, I'm giving them a chance to be together."
"Yes, at least they're getting a chance." Hey voice was choked, husky, possibly because of the tears she was fighting with. "But what about us? What chance do we have?"
So maybe that look, that gaze had not just been... yet he spoke cautiously, still fearing a trap. "Us? I've always thought we were in this together--more than ever, now that we've just lied to HSHQ."
"We're together every day, Miri. And every day I see you--I think about how much I've always admired you and respected you, and how well we work together--and yet... I am lonely, too." Her eyes came back to his again, and this time the sense of invitation was unmistakable, as well as the knowledge that her confession was changing everything between them in some fashion. "But I always assumed you would think it was wrong--that I was wrong."
He nodded, realizing that he needed somehow to reach out past his own fear, shame and confusion. "Because of the Rules... and other things. I've always been glad you were my partner too, that we fit together so well, that I found I could trust you. But I never thought of you... I never wanted... no, that's not right, I never knew what I wanted. Not the way they do, certainly."
She blushed. "Well, I don't think I could want quite the way they do."
"Me neither. At least I wouldn't want to go through the crazy, angry parts we saw."
"But I do think I want you. Could you... want me?" she asked, touching his face with a slightly shaky fingertip.
He smiled. "To quote our subjects: let's find out."
Their first kiss was soft, awkward, flat-mouthed. But the only electric shocks involved were good ones, and they were both smiling when it stopped.
His hands moved to pull her shirt off, and once that was done, she extended her hands in turn to unbutton his and remove it. With some surprise he felt himself stirring, already getting hard as her fingers fumbled and brushed against his chest and sides.
Their mouths met again as they embraced, more urgently on his side, more nervously on hers. He wondered if he should open his mouth any, but decided to let her dictate the pace until she got more comfortable.
She stroked his back, pressing him to her body, a bit shocked at how warm she already felt from a few simple kisses and his arms firmly wrapped around her. Her bra was getting tight, and she started to reach behind her back to unhook it, but he interpreted her movements and attempted to do it himself. However, it was clear from his struggles that he had never tried it before, so she turned her body sideways to give him a better view and angle. Finally, the hooks came loose and she breathed a little easier.
He enjoyed the look of the slight swelling of her breasts in profile, and even more the sensation of her chest rubbing against his and the nipples hardening as they kissed a third time.
When they stopped for breath this time, her eyes seemed a bit dazed and so he asked, a little concerned, "How are you? How do you feel?"
Her smile was slow, but sure. "Right. I feel... right. You?"
"Very right," he answered, and his erection grew stronger as he realized it did feel very right to touch her and hold her. "Do you want to keep going?"
She leaned back on the bed and held out her arms invitingly. "Oh, yes," she breathed. "I want to go all the way with you."
* * * *
The man and woman who were observing the observers via the delayed video feed in Room 1216 regarded each other with weak smiles of relief. "I thought they'd never do it," the man said, shaking his head in amazement as he crossed the room and poured them both glasses of black-market vodka in celebration.
The woman rubbed her temples with her forefingers, massaging away the tension of watching. "For a while, I wasn't sure either. The so-called therapy administered in government day care centers and schools to try and minimize children's feelings of love or empathy--the 'shame and pain' indoctrination sessions masquerading as 'optional seminars in correct political thinking' as they grow older--and the mandates that marriage is only between a man and a woman and that sex is only for purposes of procreation, all those messages have become so powerful and pervasive in the last few years." She shuddered. "I wonder if either of us would ever have broken free without help, if the Andrean Government had controlled our environment as subtly but closely as it does theirs."
He walked up behind her and handed her the drink, sliding one arm around her waist and the other arm around her shoulders. She leaned back against him with a grateful sigh, "But we did break free."
"Yes, and once again we've broken someone else loose. As usual, Marina will contact them in a few days with a copy of the recording and make it clear to them that they are not alone." She gulped from the smoky highball glass, harsh potato alcohol burning the back of her throat for a moment, savoring one more victory for the Liberation Front. "Whether they actively join our side or simply work against HSHQ from the inside like the people who helped us set this up, at least we've won another battle
and weakened their control."
"Do you want to keep watching?" she asked, motioning to the plasi-screen where the feed, coming from the "broken" telescreen of 1214, showed Miri pulling off Vera's pants and snuggling up against her after he shed his own.
"No," he murmured, kissing her neck fondly. "Let's give them a little privacy for their first time. Right now, my love," he added, sliding his hand under the waistband of her pants and finding her already wet, "I believe I would rather celebrate our own freedom by fucking."
A Private Moment
Julian Oliver-Fenn
Everything is known. Everything is written.
The daemon chatters and more words are added to the endless spool of parchment that spits from its metal guts: / she walks down Biblio Street into the wind / thinking about sex with Brian / imagining what his cock would be like inside her / TREASONOUS THOUGHT / TREASONOUS THOUGHT / she shivers with cold / she knows she is being monitored / TREASONOUS THOUGHT / she runs her finger along the scar at the back of her skull / she stops to check her reflection in the window of Café Utopia / she feels slightly melancholy but does not know why /
She thinks about sex a lot. Far more than the last woman I was assigned to. And when she fucks, there is an incredible urgency to it. Of course, that might just be a function of the daemon I'm working with now. Not many people outside the Agency know this, but each machine has its own idiom, its own literary style, if you will. The public imagines the records to be exhaustive and utterly objective, but that would be impossible. Just try it some time and you'll see what I mean. Try writing down everything you think and experience, leaving nothing out. Try to check your subjectivity at the door. You will either grind to a halt before you begin, or you will find yourself selecting and filtering and editing.
We are all curators of our experience, and the daemons are no different. One might focus more on a subject's thoughts, another on her sensory experiences; one might over-report strong emotional reactions, another might over-report barely-articulated stream-of-consciousness babble.
So perhaps this one is particularly exercised by sex. Perhaps. But I like to believe it's her. I like to believe that she feels it more intensely than other women. And sometimes, when she's fucking, I read the words that the daemon spits out and I bring myself off, in my barren little office, to descriptions of her fucking.
* * * *
She was a person of interest before she was implanted, and we were suspicious of her even before that. She thinks about that day sometimes, the day she was arrested. She doesn't remember it well, because of the anesthetic, and sometimes she wonders if it was a dream. But then she feels the scar at the back of her skull and she knows it is there, inside her head, listening.
* * * *
On Monday morning my supervisor, Mary, came to my office: "Billy, we have a situation. Elizabeth Peacock is spreading treason."
"Impossible," I told her, as I have told her before. "Her head is full of treasonous thoughts, but she never breathes a word of them to anyone. She's a model citizen, in that respect. One of the most scrupulous I've ever worked with."
"It's her," said Mary. "We're certain of it. We suspect she's an anarchist agitator. Just listen to this." She clutched copies of records from other daemons on other desks, elsewhere in the Agency's vast office complex. "She met one Jeremy Phillips at a café back in November. She flirted with him, took him home to her apartment."
"I remember," I said. / She pushes herself down onto him fast and hard / her breathing is jagged / her pleasure comes in waves, swelling and churning inside her / she is hyperventilating / she says "oh god yes" / she can feel her orgasm rising in her belly / she can feel him thrusting up into her / into the wetness that fills her / she says "don't stop" / AND SHE STARTS…SHE STARTS TO COME… /
"A casual fling," I told Mary.
"Jeremy Phillips was implanted at birth," she replied, looking annoyed. "He came from a good family. He had a good job. But since November he has been harboring treasonous thoughts. They started after he slept with Elizabeth Peacock."
"Coincidence," I said. "I remember that night. They just fucked and fell asleep. He left early the next morning. He told her he had to go to work. She had plenty of treasonous thoughts before and after the sex, but while they were fucking they were all business. In fact, pretty much the only times she doesn't think about treason is when she's having sex."
"I know," said Mary, impatiently. "I've read her records. But there are more examples. Muriel Primrose. Later that same month."
I thought back to that night: / Another woman's softness beneath her / the squash of breasts against breasts / it feels almost too luxurious to her / decadent / like desert after desert / she reaches between the woman's legs and slides her fingertips against her vulva / HER FINGERTIPS BECOME SLIPPERY/… DELIGHTED by this slipperiness / she hears the woman's breath catch / takes this as a signal to GO FURTHER / she PUSHES her middle finger into the woman's VAGINAL OPENING…just a little way /
"Again, it was nothing but sex," I told Mary. "Nothing incriminating happened."
"She's quite the slut, isn't she, your Elizabeth? And you seem to have a good memory for her encounters." Mary laughed, unkindly, and I felt protective of her, as if she was my lover. "If it was just sex then why did Muriel Primrose start having treasonous thoughts as soon as they had finished?"
I shrugged. "They didn't speak of treason. Elizabeth has never spoken of treason to anybody for as long as I have been reading her. Like I said, she seems to be a model citizen. 'Keep it to yourself and we can all get along.' "
"Don't quote propaganda at me, Billy," said Mary. "John Fanshaw. Bertie Marnak. Peter Goodman. Shannon Finley. All of them started thinking about treason after having sex with your Elizabeth Peacock. This is not a coincidence."
"It's not a crime to have treasonous thoughts," I reminded her. Speaking treasonous words is a crime; distributing treasonous materials is a crime; making treasonous images is a crime; performing treasonous gestures is a crime; inciting or disseminating treason in any way is a crime. But having treasonous thoughts? We can't stop that.
"I know the law," snapped Mary, glaring at me. "Listen to me: Elizabeth Peacock is spreading treason. We just don't know how. And we want you to find out."
My throat was suddenly very dry. My heart began to race. "I'm…" I began, but found my tongue had become thick and clumsy.
"Yes. We're sending you out. We want you to meet her and find out how she's doing it."
"I don't know if I can…" I began. Something that was mostly terror grabbed at my gut, but the terror was cut with something unfamiliar, an undercurrent of almost unbearable excitement.
"That's an order, Billy. I wouldn't have chosen you myself, but this came from upstairs." Her eyes darted towards the ceiling. "You've been reading her for two years now. You know her better than anyone. Befriend her. Gain her trust. Figure out how she's doing it. We want proof, and we don't care how you obtain it. Once we have that, we can pass things over to the Committee."
* * * *
Once Mary was gone I felt a compulsion to giggle and scream at the same time. It was happening at last. I was being sent out on a mission. This is how I had imagined my job when I first joined the Agency; this is what I had dreamed about as a child. But over the years I had grown utterly comfortable working at a desk, poring over the spools of paper that the daemon spat out. I had settled into such a state of complacent contentment that I no longer imagined any other possible life.
And now I was being sent out on a mission. And my mission was to meet her. Her: the woman whose most intimate thoughts I had read for the last two years. Her: the woman I had fallen in love with.
* * * *
She lives in Dutchtown, in a basement apartment with which she is mildly dissatisfied. She would like to move, and she knows she could afford it, but just can't bring herself to do the leg-work. She works as a freelance, mid-stream encryptrix. She takes messages written in one secret code and transla
tes them into another secret code. This is suspicious activity, but is not illegal, because she can't read either of these codes herself and so there is no way to prove she is transmitting treason. (But then what messages would require this kind of secrecy, apart from treasonous messages?) She does this work from home, and in the evenings she goes out to the cafés to socialize and pick up lovers. She loves the thrill of rapidly escalating intimacy, the too-fast rush from polite small talk to brazen sexual overtures. She loves the moment when a man realizes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's going to get laid tonight, the look on his face, the blush-and-grin. She loves to be daring and outrageous with women. "You know what I've always wanted to try?" is her favourite line, and each time she says it as if she has never said it before, as if she is taking a breathless risk.
All this I know, but I don't know what she looks like, because she never thinks about how she looks in any great detail. Like most adults, she has so internalized her appearance that she isn't consciously aware of it any more, even when she looks in a mirror, and so her daemon doesn't describe it. Maybe a more meticulous daemon would pick up some of it, but not hers.
So I wait for her to come to me, as I know she will eventually. I know what attracts her to a man; I know the sort of man she approaches. She likes a man who drinks his espresso black. She likes a man who reads interesting art magazines, like Systems Weekly and Bleed Journal. She likes a man who dresses in cheap, rugged clothes, but does it with some flair and attitude.
So I put on jeans and a flannel shirt, and tie a bright scarf around my neck. I take the metro to Dutchtown and order an espresso at Café Utopia, then I bury my nose in a back issue of Systems Weekly and I wait for her to come to me.
She's a mystery. That's why I'm here. The Agency can't stand mysteries. Or perhaps it loves them. One or the other. It amounts to the same thing in the end. She seems to be spreading treason while doing nothing illegal, and that is very problematic and very interesting. Having sex with her spawns treasonous thoughts, as if treason was an STI and she was a carrier.
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