But I know every detail of every sexual encounter she has had over the last two years. I have read and--I admit it--reread descriptions of every thought she has had while fucking, everything she has felt, every movement she has made, every gasp, every lick, every orgasm. There is nothing unusual about it, other than its breathtaking beauty and intensity.
* * * *
"Excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but I can't help but noticing…is that the issue with the photos of naked factory workers?"
She's used that line before. It's the reason I chose this particular issue of Systems Weekly. I chose it as bait. I've read it cover-to-cover a dozen times over the last three days, and I've drunk so much espresso that I think I might have given myself an ulcer.
"Why yes it is," I say. My voice trembles a little as I speak, and my hands tremble as I put down the magazine. It is not intentional, but I know she won't mind. She likes men who are a little shy, a little nervous at first.
She doesn't look how I expected. She's older than I thought she would be, older than me. The hair behind her ears in greying, and there are creases around her eyes, but there is also a youthful radiance about her face, an intensity to her stare that I find very attractive.
"I loved that issue," she says. "I often wonder if I would have had the guts to do that, to strip naked in front of all those total strangers." She sits down across the table from me, and plays with her earlobe as she talks. "I'd like to think I would have. I think I would have enjoyed it."
I smile at her, shyly. "I'm not sure, myself," I say. "I'd like to become less shy about my body, but I've always been a bit…" I look down and blush. I've read conversations almost exactly like this one, conversations she's had with other men. And yet this all feels very natural. I'm hardly acting.
"You shouldn't be shy," she says. "Your body looks very nice to me. I'm Elizabeth, by the way." She extends a hand and squeezes mine in a handshake that lingers a little too long.
* * * *
We go back to her dim, basement apartment, stopping only kiss for a while, under a lamppost. I tell her I've never done anything like this before, and she tells me she never has either. She's lying, of course. When we get to her apartment she opens a bottle of wine and she sits in my lap on her couch. We take long swigs, straight from the bottle and kiss each other with red-stained lips.
I want to tell her everything. I want to tell her that I know what she felt when her best friend was taken away. I want to tell her that I know that the sound of the ocean brings her close to tears. I want to tell her that I know what she fantasizes about when she masturbates. I want to tell her that I know about her insomnia, and her love of trashy novels and her embarrassment at her flatulence after eating chili at her uncle and aunt's house that time.
I want to tell her that I know her as well as she knows herself, that I have read twenty-five million words of her thoughts, and that I have fallen in love with her over two years. But telling her any of that would mean revealing the Agency's methods, and that would be treason. It would also creep her the fuck out, so I only open my mouth to kiss her lips, and fingers, and then later her bare nipples.
I'm nervous and hesitant throughout. I know exactly what she likes and how she likes it, but I'm used to reading her reactions on a printed spool of paper, not on her body. I'm used to having her desires and pleasures interpreted and described by the daemon; I've never had to interpret them myself. I'm suddenly disoriented and out of my depth. It is both frightening and thrilling.
She is not hesitant. She never is. She removes her clothes slowly, piece by piece, making me wait to see each new part of her, but it is only to tease me and make me gasp with arousal. She reaches for my cock with confidence, and she knows just how hard to squeeze.
For my part, I'm full of questions. Her fucking has always been linguistic to me, and I need words to reassure me now. "Is this good?...What do you want me to do?...Is that too hard?...Is this comfortable?" She laughs at my questions, but she's good-natured about it. There have been other men like me, and I know that she thinks my hesitancy is sweet and endearing.
When I enter her I have all but forgotten my mission. All that matters is the impossible closeness of our naked bodies and the great wash of pleasure that is about to break over us.
She is adept at spinning things out. I approach the edge quickly, but then I hang there as she slows us down, preventing me from reaching the point of no return, the event horizon of orgasm. She reaches between our bellies and touches her clitoris, rushing to catch up with me.
And then she begins to speak. Her voice comes out breathless and broken with the strain of pleasure, but she speaks fast and with a wide-eyed seriousness.
"Listen very carefully. I have been implanted, but my comrades have discovered a secret. While we are this close to orgasm their daemons cannot hear us. Our words and thoughts are drowned out by our pleasure. At this moment, and no other, we can speak in privacy."
I cannot hold back any longer. Everything that I am rushes down through my belly, and for a moment it seems that there is nothing in the universe but my cock and the cunt into which it is erupting. And as I come she presses her lips close and whispers treasonous words into my ear.
* * * *
I return to the Agency late that night to make my report. I tell them my findings have proved inconclusive thus far and that I need more time to establish a closer relationship with the suspect.
I don't know if they believe me. I am, of course, implanted, as all agents are. Somewhere in the Agency's Offices there is a daemon printing my thoughts to a spool of paper, and an agent reading those thoughts. The Agency will know that I have begun to think treasonous thoughts. They will not know the specifics, because communicating the contents of treasonous thoughts is itself treason, and so the daemons are programmed to exclude those details. But they will know those thoughts started after I made love to her. And they will know that I am thinking about her now, full of love and hope and fear.
* * * *
/ He thinks about the moment of orgasm / that most intimate of moments / that most private of moments / TREASONOUS THOUGHT / he thinks about what he will say the next time he makes love to Elizabeth Peacock /
Giving Up The Spook
Max Erica Scott
Seph had been carrying anger around in her bones for five years before being approached, then recruited by Reperio Group to work intelligence for them. Her oldest brother--her piggyback rides, her tree-climbing booster, her holiday cookie thief accomplice, her spare change dispenser at festival markets, her bear hugs after nightmares and awards--was murdered feet away from her on their town green, and Seph had been worried and sure that she would never feel anything again but vengeful.
It was in the middle of a late spring day. She was with her oldest brother and her younger brother. They had been walking home from a Saturday stroll around the shopping district. As had become recent custom, they bowed their heads when passing a pair of the occupying soldiers stationed at the intersection of the shops' street and one of the streets forming the side of the town square. When they had reached the grass and started to cross the square, her oldest brother turned back to the soldiers and shouted, "Look alive, boys! I've just seen chairs that could do your job! And with nicer legs!" A bullet whipped through him just above his eyebrows. Seph heard her younger brother scream. No one else dared.
Things had been getting especially tense between the people of Dweryslo and these soldiers from Belliskray, which had once been a friendly neighbor country before its war for independence from its motherland. Refugees from this neighbor had been welcome, but when soldiers came they did not meet with a similar reception. Nobody on either side believed that they were here as "an advanced protective measure for an allied state."
They started out as acting like and being regarded as buffoonish security guards, stopping you to ask you why you were out after dark, or even what you just bought at the bakery or the butcher's. But the ever extending length of
their stay began to tire both sides, the Belliskray soldiers further aggravated by the boredom of their post in such a tiny, rural place so far from home, their perceived futility and impotence in maintaining this post when their comrades were in actual combat, and the fact that their country was not even faring well in its war. Incidents of soldiers verbally harassing, or even striking blows on Dweryslo residents, for imagined offenses or even no reason, were becoming common and commonly known.
So Seph was not surprised that her brother's comment was taken so personally, or even that it was taken so personally and reprimanded with some form of physical violence. But the grossly disproportionate punishment of a killshot to the head for the teasing of invading forces imposing their guard on a neighborhood corner, was an injustice that ripped at her nerves so hard it felt like her skin would catch fire. The only thing that made her halt her second oldest brother from marching out of their house to return the favor with their father's gun that night, was the concern for her parents and younger siblings, and herself, that another kid in the family would be lost. Not that she would even have the luxury of family for much longer.
After the very public killing of her brother, whenever soldiers pushed residents, residents pushed back. Many even attacked soldiers first, some in honor of Seph's brother, and some just used him as a good excuse to finally retaliate for everything done wrong against them as people and country.
"Allied state" became police state, and it was a short matter of time before the adults were rounded up for conscription into the war, the children were shipped off to military schools to await their turn for a similar fate, if the fighting lasted that long, and Dweryslo as anyone knew it was dissolved.
Seph, at age 14, was to be sent to school, being a year shy of the Belliskray enlistment age. When asked for her name so she could be recorded and stamped, she gave them her oldest brother's first name with her last name: Joseph Kitko. The man in uniform making the list on his tablet twisted his lips. He was a regional station, then. As riotous as Dweryslo's rebellion had been, not everyone in Belliskray knew about it. Civilian or service member. It was regarded as a scandal, a failed operation, bad for morale. And while the soldiers who'd been stationed in or within a 50-mile radius of her country couldn't tell one of its citizens from another, couldn't've told you a common or popular name among those citizens, they all knew the name "Joseph Kitko". What man it had belonged to, what it meant and what it had caused.
The uniform tried to put down this rebellion too.
"Joseph? Strange name for a girl," he said.
Seph didn't reply, just continued to meet his glare, unafraid. She would take her brother's name and live for him. Keep him alive in spite of them. And she would take on his voicelessness as well by refusing to speak, aside from answering her name as being his. She would represent him. She wouldn't let him be pushed away and forgotten--a skeleton in a closet. She would not let him be gone.
The uniform narrowed his eyes until they were almost shut, and asked for her name again.
"Joseph Kitko," she repeated.
"I doubt that that is actually your name, miss, please give me your name."
"Joseph. Kitko."
"Young woman, give me your name."
"Joseph Kitko."
"If you--" he paused, took a breath. He would take a different tack. She was standing in a line, flanked by tens of her fellow nationals on either side of her shoulders. He wouldn't engage her further, wouldn't indulge her and inspire the others to be insolent. He would ignore this. Ignore the importance of Joseph Kitko. Of his importance to Dweryslo. Ignore Dweryslo, because it was a country that no longer existed anyway. He would diminish her, and therefore her threat. He relaxed his eyes and face into a look of calm. He lips formed a small smile.
"If you insist, dear, that must be your name. Very well." He didn't speak the name out loud himself as he recorded it, as he had with all the other names so far. But it was recorded, so that anyone who scanned the bar code they would later tattoo to her forearm would be brought to her data page, Joseph Kitko the heading at the top.
So she became Joseph Kitko. And proved to be quite an adequate fighter in an army she loathed. Her years on various community sports teams had given her stamina, and strength in her upper body and legs, making humping a rifle and a backpack full of gear through the woods and around the outskirts of cities just a chore instead of a challenge. And she could sling that rifle with the mediocre of them, for while her aim was not sniper-worthy she always made a hit somewhere on the body, because every target and person she shot through was that soldier on the corner. The bruises beat into her shoulder from the butt of the gun when it recoiled felt more like pats on the back, from her brother, from herself, for trying so damn hard all the time. For fighting. Even if not quite in the way she wanted to.
She only had to wait a few years for Reperio Group to step in and offer her a more preferable outlet.
* * * *
Seph had been on a 24-hour liberty pass and crept off for a rare night out all to herself. Usually she was content enough to follow her teammates, who on liberty nights doubled as their commander's entourage, to the local straight bar/dance club. She'd slip into a booth and watch them all scatter into the dark, seeking drinks, dates, and an open space on the dance floor. She served as their checkpoint--they would report back to her when they needed to catch their breath or a brief respite from rejection before stepping back out and trying their lines and smiles on a new mark. Even Commander Grasmus himself frequently plopped beside her into the booth and enlisted her help with acquiring targets. And as much fun as it was to help her commander pick out his hookups for the night, and pick them out for him even better than he could, Seph relished time to just look for herself. Luckily for her, they were stationed at the base where they completed basic training--their home base, if they could be considered as having one, given how much wandering they did--so she was very familiar with the entertainment options available and already had a favorite place to head to.
Zaychicks was a bar with warm-colored wooden floors, tables, and bar surface, making the room appear brighter without having to turn the overhead lighting all the way up. Pink, red, and blue lights swept the dance floor, which always held about half the crowd of girls, and green glass lamps hung over each of the pool tables in a darker corner. Seph always watched the games, and maybe one or two of the players, with a certain longing, but she had never quite worked up the courage to try and insert herself into that particular scene of the bar. There was the bar itself, wide and U-shaped and always with just about every stool full, and just beyond it was the doorway to the darker and more intimate lounge.
Seph seated herself in the left front corner of the bar, her spot when she could claim it, because it allowed her to observe all the action without having to be right in the middle of it, turning and turning her head around until her neck hurt. Out of a sense of wanting to always maintain control, and because she doubted what little pay she was allowed to carry could actually buy something strong enough to be worth it if she changed her mind, she always ordered ice water, so she wasn't exactly the bartenders' favorite customer. But she always smiled, tipped, and never caused a scene, so while she wasn't the most profitable customer, she was at least a kind and an easy one, and the bartenders did appreciate that. They smiled whenever they saw her, fetched her order right away.
After gulping down a few mouthfuls of cold water, letting the ice slide down the glass to press against her upper lip, and then setting the drink down with a sigh, Seph began her usual rounds. Dance floor--Dresses? How many? Colors? Lengths? Other outfits? Who can actually dance tonight? And who looks good just trying? Pool tables--Butches? Femmes? Tattoos? Good tattoos? Any trick shooters tonight or just straight corner-pocket skills? A short scan to the lounge--Anyone headed there yet? Who?
Seph was pretty strictly a crowd watcher. She never really looked at anyone in particular, never locked eyes. But on this night Seph kept catching glances wit
h a curly-haired girl sitting on the corner of the bar directly across from her; she showed up in Seph's line of sight whenever she'd look over to the lounge entrance. Well, it wasn't so much catching glances as it was that the girl was staring at Seph, and Seph kept meeting her gaze, then letting her own wander. Dance floor, pool tables, other end of the bar and so, Curls--there she was, right where Seph left her: eyes still set on Seph. It wasn't exactly an unwelcome stare. It wasn't blank or mean, though not quite admiring either. It was a kind of intently curious. Seph's return glances were slowly becoming admiring though, particularly of this girl's hair, a reddish-brown color, and the curls--long, down to her chest, and tight. Seph wanted to wrap her finger in one.
The girl smiled, a tiny curve of her lips only, as Seph finally gave in and held her gaze. The girl raised her brow. Seph didn't look away. She would see what this was about then. See if this girl had any intention of coming over to her, or maybe of summoning Seph over there. Seph wasn't really sure how this worked. It had never happened before.
A bartender suddenly blocked Seph's view and Seph looked up, realizing that she was approaching her. She set a pint of a dark beer in front of her, and when Seph frowned, the bartender turned and pointed over her shoulder to who else? Seph nodded and looked around the bartender as she walked away. Curls waved at her.
Seph sighed. This was going to be awkward. Which should she address first, the not drinking, or the not speaking?
She grabbed the beer and made her way over to the girl's corner, careful not to spill as she wove her way around stools and girls exiting the dance floor.
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