by G M Steenrod
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE The Stage
CHAPTER TWO Fresh Breath
CHAPTER THREE Shadows
CHAPTER FOUR New Port
CHAPTER FIVE Systems
CHAPTER SIX Repairs
CHAPTER SEVEN The Work
CHAPTER EIGHT Futures
CHAPTER NINE Mother's Love
CHAPTER TEN Blue and Red
CHAPTER ELEVEN Music for Earth
CHAPTER TWELVE School Marm
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Pork
CHAPTER FOURTEEN To the Priestess
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Spider's Web
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Whisper
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Real
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Longest Light
CHAPTER NINETEEN Coming Down
CHAPTER TWENTY Washing Clean
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Old Mother
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Creator
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Hunger
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Practice, Practice, Practice
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Pax
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Antonio
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Venus
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Theophany
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Lair
CHAPTER THIRTY Pending Books
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE About the Author
TOMORROW: LOVE AND TROUBLES
GM Steenrod
This is a work of fiction.
Cover Art by Tomy Reapx
Copyright ©2019, G.M. Steenrod
All Rights Reserved.
In Memory of My Parents and For MCV.
CHAPTER ONE
The Stage
“I swear I can feel these things,” thought Cassie.
The thing was a battery terminal jutting out of the cool, brown earth. It had a molded, hard, white exterior. It was EMF neutral—a result of that hard exterior. She had checked it herself, with the most sensitive, portable EMF detector that credits could buy. There was no significant variation from background.
She had read the papers on the battery terminals underlying tech. They had been designed specifically to be EMF silent for space flight.
Still, despite all the proof to the contrary, now and then she could feel them vibrate like a great gong being sounded silently.
“You can feel them too, Samuel. I see it in your eyes,” she said. Samuel looked up at her with the accepting eyes of a pug.
They both stood a short distance from a turn in the path that banked slightly down and behind a copse of trees. It was a well-designed turn. Cassie had built it. The two walked the turn, and went down around the trees. It opened into a small clearing in the tree cover with roots bulging up near the sides of the walkway. The path itself was well-maintained and smooth.
Cassie started down it. Samuel walked a short distance and started to pull back. He was done with this walk.
“You're not buying it, are you Samuel? You are always such a harsh critic.” Samuel snorted in response.
“Alfie, end program.” The woods and pathways faded quickly away. The screens draped throughout the room surrounding them went to their neutral gray along with the screens laid across the floor. She had laid them flat and wrinkle free. Cassie had never cared for using screen folds to simulate terrain. At a certain point, the room would cross over into the realm of a hard form model, and that's not what she did.
The turn had been placed to give the walker a chance to traverse the floor again while simulating new pathway. Cassie's turns had a following of millions because they were discrete and natural. Her secret was Samuel. The better the environment, the longer Samuel would walk it with her. Samuel liked this turn but wasn't buying the pathway.
Animals were difficult to deceive, though. Much more difficult than humans. Their remaining senses were mostly unengaged by the image fields. Maybe there was something primal too that said, “This isn't where you belong.”
Cassie touched the battery terminal mounted on her floor. A light shadow flickered across the screens, the terminal pulsed a light orange and went completely off.
“Hmm. Still some bits in the buffer somewhere,” she said of the shadow.
There was no need for Cassie to turn off the battery. It was a habit she had learned from her mother. At the power levels used by the screens, the battery was effectively infinite.
***
“Samuel,” she said, “I think it's time for private time with Kumar.”
It was Tuesday. Cassie had put Samuel into his doggie room—a place filled with wonders to entertain the mind of a pug. He was occupying himself with a sock, “Socky,” as Cassie called it. She didn't care for him watching.
Kumar thought it was an unusual prudish streak in his beloved. She hadn't inherited it from her mother who was unabashed about “the human experience” or from her grandmother, a renown sexual libertine. Those were conservative eras too. The close confines of space travel, and human immersion into the screens had made privacy a mostly moot point in the modern era. Most everyone's “human experience” was a somewhat public experience.
Cassie slipped into a small leather outfit. She liked the pressure of the straps and the feeling of the cool, metal rivets against her skin.
“Mirrors,” she said.
The screens on her walls and ceiling came alive. She struck some poses—and the walls reflected her from every angle. Cassie adjusted her body, revealing a bit more in one pose, and concealing a bit more in another pose.
My skin's a bit off today. Maybe some water retention. Maybe the wrong vegetables for lunch.
“Alfie, add filter.” The screens tremored slightly, and a very subtle visual filter processed her image. Cassie had programmed the filter herself. She preferred a natural look. Many filters changed breast size, added more curvature to the butt, or enhanced the look of labia arousal. Cassie's balanced her skin tones very subtly, added exquisite highlights and volume to her hair, and touched up her nails. It was a classic Cassie piece, filled with subtlety.
With her leather outfit, it also improved the shadows and highlights. The changes made her piece look even tighter.
“Alfie, poses.” The screens, dutifully played a random slideshow of her best shots. She compared herself to them, and imitated the body positions. After 30 minutes of practice, she pointed at the best poses and they floated up to the juncture between the ceiling and wall. There they would serve as out-of-the-way reminders during her rendezvous.
She slipped on a light silk robe to better the eventual reveal.
It was another expertly crafted Cassie moment.
One corner of her encounter room had already been set up with a meal. Cassie's home was new and had been built 5 years ago to support her lifestyle and, in particular, her work needs as a developer.
Every home built in the last 7 years came with an encounter room, even condos and apartments being built now included them. Cassie's had been built according to her custom specifications. Strangely, Cassie had often got a small ping of nostalgia when she entered her encounter room after it was first built. The feeling had puzzled her. It seemed out of place with the sexual adventures she often had there.
One month after her custom room had been built, she had been occupying herself with an old friend, Bordeaux, in the room and an image of her mother came to Cassie, almost like a flicker on the screens.
Her mother had invented the encounter room. The concept, the design, the structure, even the engineering.
“One day, Cassie, these will be everywhere. Everywhere is money,” Ada had said as she stood in the room she had built. It was an ideal combination of screens, power systems, software, and feng shui.
Cassie sat at the table and waited for Kumar to arrive.
Jose Kumar was a dashing young man that had excellent taste in screen images and a flair for exotic hats. He had been assigned by an investor group, one of the many nameless corporations that Cassie dealt with, to “handle” her project flow.
Cassie had been taken with his thin, lightly muscled build, and his strong grip.
Cassie herself was a dark-haired beauty that had her mother's curly hair, and the brilliance that ran in her lineage.
While he normally went by his first name, Jose, Cassie had immediately started calling him by his last name. She had never explained why; it was because she had actually not heard his first name and assumed “Kumar” was his first name.
Strangely, the change stuck. It only took someone hearing Cassie refer to him as Kumar once, and the name change seemed to be natural and real. The listener would forget that he had ever been known as “Jose.”
Kumar had put up with it, briefly. Cassie was a big pay check, and she had certain eccentricities. Her family had been known for their eccentricities. He had studied them at great depth. Kumar was a firm believer that each person was an expression of his or her family history.
Then, it changed.
It was a conversation with his father. His father referred to him as “Jose.” It rang odd in his ears, and he spent a brief moment processing that his father was referring to him and not some other Jose.
Cassie had converted him to Kumar. And he liked it.
***
Cassie shifted her plate slightly, automatically, to a more favorable angle. Kumar thrilled her. Sexually, they were explosive together. Cassie was always titillated by his commanding manner, and boldness.
Kumar entered the room abruptly. He was dressed well, in a thin collared, tight fitting suit that revealed his underlying cat-like body. On his head was a black leather pork pie hat circled by a thin white band.
He sat across the table from her. Cassie leaned in expectantly.
“You look very official today,” she purred.
Kumar stroked his chin and leaned back in his chair. His head turned slightly to the right. It was a crafted maneuver. He sighed.
“Cassie, you're behind on your project. You were supposed to have a proof of concept by now.”
“I don't think that's important right now, Kumar. Why don't we enjoy some of this great meal.” She flared her chest slightly on the word, “enjoy.”
“Listen to me,” he demanded subtly, “Our clients are pressuring me for product.”
Cassie pulled lightly on one of her straps. Many times their meals were postponed by a sexual appetizer.
Kumar shrugged off her gesture. And reddened slightly.
“Is that anger?” thought Cassie.
“Kumar, are you...angry at me?” she asked him.
He shifted nervously, and became stony in his countenance. He glanced off to his right.
“I keep as much of the pressure off of you as possible. That doesn't mean that there is no pressure. It just goes on me. When you just do things for your own pleasure, it makes me angry. Lol.”
“For me? Do you think I do all this for me?” she asked, flustered, and off her message.
“Cassie, stop being such a perfectionist. Just get a proof of concept to me, will you. You're upset too much right now.”
Kumar waved his hand in the air, and faded away from the table.
Kumar was sitting at his table in his screen room. He look satisfied.
“That went well,” he thought, “I barely had to use the prompts.” The screen wall to his right had adaptive prompts floating across it. He had started using “guiding” software after he blew up in a fit of complete anger when talking with Cassie three months prior. His behavior had been unseemly, but Cassie was skilled at manipulating him. He had found himself being cornered emotionally, and had lashed out. It was a lack of control that was not favored in his family. With great trepidation, he had raised the incident with his father.
His father, perched Brahman-like on a pillow next to an overlook of the bustling city below, had glanced at him casually.
“My son, try guiding software. Your passion for Cassie blinds you to reasonable behavior. The software will guide you back to reason,” he pronounced.
While the price was dear, the software was a remarkable adjunct to his behavior. It would intercept his conversation with all his clients, in particular Cassie, and project possible responses on the screen. It changed on the fly. So, if he went “off guidance,” a different set of alternative responses would scroll quickly up onto the screen.
With a little luck, Cassie would adjust her behavior and deliver the proof of concept. Her reputation for slow delivery was well known in the industry. Kumar was considered a miracle worker when it came to getting Cassie to deliver in a reasonable time frame. That ability alone made Kumar the preferred agent for dealing with Cassie, so much so that 88% of Cassie's contracts now came through him.
Of course, Cassie had benefited with dramatic rises in her personal income.
This new project was “late,” but still far ahead of the anticipated timetable. As any high end client understood, you could get timely delivery from a technician, but it would be a technician's product. Cassie was a creative genius, so timetables were set during negotiations between Kumar and the client with a wink and a nod, and used to pressure her.
Kumar had played Cassie well. Using the timetable, and catching her unawares to drive her to produce was a solid tactic. It was a delicate balance, and he had orchestrated it with the touch of a maestro. With the aid of the guiding software.
He sighed, and leaned back into his chair. “Those straps,” he thought, “She certainly knows how to wear those straps.”
***
“Screens off!” She shouted, but didn't have to. The screens could recognize cues leading to auto-terminate based on history of interaction. It was an outgrowth of some notable litigation surrounding inadvertent broadcasts by politicians.
“I can't breathe,” Cassie's chest heaved. She tugged at the straps of her outfit and slid it off of her down to the floor. In a few more moments, she was in a jumpsuit with Samuel tucked under her arm, and then out the front door.
CHAPTER TWO
Fresh Breath
It was hot. About 34.5 degrees. Humidity at about 80%.
“Alfie.” It was reflex. Cassie had started to call to adjust the environment.
She glanced around quickly and furtively to see if anyone had by chance seen her do it. Among the wrong people, mixing indoor and outdoor behavior was considered a faux pas.
She set Samuel down onto the grass. He snorted and pawed the ground.
“I just can't match it can I, Samuel?”
He gave her a pant in reply, and was off across the lawn.
Cassie had used the payment from her first scene sale to buy land in the north eastern United States, a short distance from a river. She lived in a custom built home designed in the style of a 2 story Cape Cod from the early 1900s. A very appropriate home for the region.
The property was an hour away from a major city center, so she had few close neighbors. She was at the fringe of an area that had originally been incorporated as the town of Tempest Mills. Within the United States, the concept of the town had been abandoned as the need for local centers of services and governance disappeared.
***
“Samuel! Wait up!”
Tomorrow was the Spring Equinox. There would be people out strolling, trying to catch the last remnants of the more seasonable winter temperatures. Spring marked the movement into an intense and unpleasant rainy season, where only the most determined of strollers ventured around.
“Samuel!” Cassie caught up to him, and Samuel looked up at her with his dark, round Pug eyes. Cassie
clipped the leash onto his collar, and they were off down the trail. It was a solid, packed clay trail peppered by round stones. Cassie could smell the river to her left, before she could see it or hear it. It smelled both fresh, and slightly of decay.
The pug grunted and pulled her more toward the river. Cassie followed him down to the branch of the trail that ran immediately adjacent to the river, along the bank.
The trail was muddy. Samuel charged through it, coating his belly with red soil.
“You're a little bulldozer, aren't you?” Cassie stepped gingerly around the mud. There was a small rise ahead surrounded by early milkweed. Samuel pulled her up to it, and started to sniff among the stones. Cassie left him to his explorations and watched the river.
The water was blue gray and slightly swollen in the banks. There had been significant winter rains. Immediately below the rise there was a small gravel island. The water had submerged about a ¼ of what was normally exposed. A rusted wheel rim lay partly buried in the middle of the island. Tufts of grass rose through the gaps in it.