by Rick K. Reut
“But you work here. Aren’t you supposed to know these things? It’s really important that I… ”
“NEXT!” cried the chimp, drowning the end of Adam’s sentence in her scream.
That very second Adam was shoved aside by a stocky, skin-headed ape of a man with shaggy shoulders and evident excess of testosterone literally trickling out of his ears in pus-white lines. Adam swung around, wishing to confront his assailant, but, seeing who he was facing, thought it would be wiser to let it lie.
Meanwhile, the ape squeezed his huge head into the barely fitting window, howled like a horny dog and bared his own row of rot-black teeth at the chimp, who coquettishly bared back at him, blinking her lash-less eyelids.
He looks like he belongs here much more than I do, thought Adam, standing next to what seemed like nothing to look forward to. With a dull feeling of despondence washing all over him, he turned back to the front door. As he stepped away from the screened counter, a succession of suicidal images swept before his bloodshot eyes under a giant, gallows-shaped question mark: a soaped rope noose, an open gas oven, a bottle of pills, a smoking shotgun, a rushing river, a blazing razor blade?
Adam was about to barge back through the crowded foyer, when his wandering look fell on something truly wonderful.
She was standing by the stairwell doorway, dressed in an angel-white doctor’s smock, with the halo of the “Exit” sign shining green and gold above the crown of her blond hair. She was tremendously tall, with infinitely long, shapely legs growing out of a pair of lily-white high-heeled shoes. Her heavily suntanned hands were pressing what looked like a clinical chart to her huge, bulging bosom, while she was smiling at Adam with her whole face.
Adam smiled back, shyly, before being once again shoved aside by the same skin-headed ape-man. He had also noticed the woman and was already charging at her, like a mad bull smelling a cow in heat, to the hissing displeasure of the chimp.
“Hi, baby,” Adam heard him howl up at her, like a hungry he-wolf at the moon. “Want to size up my licking stick?”
Adam watched the ape-man’s approach with an acute ache in his heart. It was the same ache, with which he’d always watched attractive women being snatched from under his nose, even though he had never seen a woman quite as attractive as this one. From here on he knew exactly where it would all head. How she would smile back at this brute and say something coquettishly provoking. And then he would say something even more provoking in return. And then she, and then he again. And then, through a twist and turn of some mysterious mechanism, whose works he could never completely comprehend, they would disappear in one of the back alleys of lust, never to be seen or heard from again.
However, to his huge surprise, not only did the woman not smile at the testosterone-pumped monster, who had so self-confidently approached her, but, on the contrary, took a couple of steps back, creasing her face in disgust. He also heard her say something to him; not so much heard as saw, since she did it quite quietly, but evidently loud enough for the ape-man to hear. Judging from how his ugly snout suddenly changed its expression, he was taken a bit aback. What Adam couldn’t hear the woman say because of the buzzing crowd behind him was:
“Don’t worry. I’ve got an even bigger one on me.”
The ape-man never saw it coming. However, the hole this revelation made in his stupidity-caused confidence did not prove fatal at once. After the first forced retreat he managed to regroup and recharge with doubled zeal, growling something in her ear, while trying to slip his slimy, black-nailed hand under her short skirt.
But the move turned out to be a big mistake on his part. The woman instantly slid her own hand into the smock’s side pocket and produced a small T-shaped object, with one electrified end of which she then touched the ape-man’s torso. The touch, however slight it seemed, threw the man several feet back and splashed his body against the wall, like an explosion of a hand grenade.
The man fell on the floor utterly unconscious and lay there twitching, with spew-tinged foam streaming out of his mouth, until a pair of polyclinic orderlies ran up to his half-dead body and carried it away on a stretcher.
As soon as the man was duly disposed of, the woman approached an absolutely astounded Adam and introduced herself.
“Hi there! My name is Doctor Darlina Downing. I’m the Director of London’s Hatcheries and Conditioning Сenter, as well as the program you have just been asking about. As far as I can tell, you’d like to take part in the preliminary stages?” she enquired.
“Well, yes, I would,” Adam nodded, “But, how did you…?
“How did I know?”
“Yes.”
“That’s quite simple. The reception desk is bugged.”
“Bugged?”
“Yes, there’s a tiny camera and microphone concealed in its frame. It allows us to control every application attempt independently from the local staff.”
“O!”
“So, do you still want to take part in the program?”
“Of course, I do!”
“Well, that’s just swell!” said the Director, sprightly. “But before that, allow me to apologize for the inimitable incompetence of some of the local staff. I assure you that the woman you’ve just been so blatantly mistreated by is no longer works here,” she smiled at Adam the shiniest of all smiles. “And now, if you don’t mind, I suggest that we proceed straight to our office, Mister…”
“Marx, Adam Marx,” said Adam, a bit bewildered by so much attention.
“Marx?” repeated the woman, questioningly.
“Yes. But please, call me Adam,” he said, being walked away in the direction of the doorway and out of the corner of his eye seeing the chimp woman making a scene in the window as she was being discharged.
“Certainly, Adam,” smiled Director Downing, towering no less than two feet over his head, as they entered the elevator.
“Pardon my curiosity,” continued the Director, pushing a button on the elevator’s obsolete control panel. “But I just can’t help wondering if you’re, by any chance, related to a man named Bernard Marx?”
“Bernard?!” Adam exclaimed in surprise. “But of course, I am! He was my grandfather!”
“Your grandfather!?”
Now it was Darlina’s turn to act and actually be surprised as the doors of the elevator slowly slid shut, trapping them together inside the humming steel box. The Director couldn’t believe the luck of catching such a big and, what was most important, scientifically infamous fish at the very first try. If what this little man said was true, Controller Globe would be more than glad.
“Did you know him?!” Adam exclaimed excitedly.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Director Downing was dived out of a dashing torrent of thoughts about a possible promotion already filling her head. She did try to fight that pointless social atavism, though. What difference did it make if It got promoted or not? It could still have anyone It wanted, including Chief Caretaking Continent Controllers. Anybody could have Continent Controllers if they were close enough. All you had to do was ask. Nobody in the New World State denied anybody anything.
“Did you know him?” he repeated, hopefully.
“Know who?”
“My grandfather.”
“O, him! Well…” the Director hesitated. “No. I mean, not personally,” she heard herself say. “But I’ve heard a lot about him.”
“Really? How come?” Adam wondered.
“Well, let’s just say that where I come from the deceased member of your…um… family…” she mumbled, feeling somewhat funny, not having used the word since Its social history class, “…is a relatively…well, familiar figure.”
The Director’s hazy tone clearly indicated her wish to wave off Adam’s question, and he saw that. Meanwhile, the doors reopened, letting them out into the eighth floor hallway.
“I understand. I, for instance, didn’t know my grandfather at all,” Adam said sadly as they strolled along a long, empty c
orridor. “You see, he’d died long before I was born. My father once told me that he had died of depression.”
“Depression?” wondered the Director, looking down at Adam. “How interesting! I didn’t know that people could actually die of that.”
“And I hope you never will,” said he, looking down at his feet. “Only truly depressed men know that.”
“That is so very nice of you, Mister Marx,” said the Director.
“Adam.”
“Sorry, Adam. It’s still very nice of you to wish that to a total stranger.”
“All miserable men wish that.”
“And you consider yourself miserable?” the Director stepped out in front of him, blocking his way.
Adam stopped, lifting his doleful eyes along Darlina’s breathtakingly beautiful body to her smiling face.
“I don’t have to consider it.” He shook his head. “I know I am.”
The Director’s smile widened.
“Strange, you’re such a handsome young man, Mister Marx. I mean, Adam. And that’s despite your being naturally born. No gene-engineering, right?”
“Right,” he acknowledged.
“Right,” repeated Director Downing. “So, you must be very lucky. But how come you’re so lucky and so miserable at the same time?”
Adam’s eyes fell back down on the tiled floor. He looked lost in thought.
“I don’t know,” he stumbled, looking back up at the Director’s shining face, like a sailor, lost in a stormy sea, desperately looking for a lighthouse. “I guess, being lucky in one thing doesn’t mean being luckily in everything.”
“That’s too true,” agreed the Director. “The same goes for talent. You either have it or you don’t. You can certainly try to compensate for your incorrect conditioning and certain birth defects by trying harder. But, unfortunately, one can do only so much on one’s own. And it’s hardly ever enough. That’s because, in this old cowardly world, too much is given to blind chance.”
The Director leaned down to him, so close that their lips almost touched.
“But there’s now a place here on earth, where blind chances are made completely impotent to flout the right of all human beings to be happy,” she whispered. “A place where everyone’s fate is sealed.”
“Brave New World,” Adam whispered back dreamily, squeezing the inside pocket of his jacket, where the book was hidden.
“Even braver than you think,” whispered the Director, putting her long, pink tongue in his ear and licking it lasciviously.
“Don’t worry,” she said, standing up straight. “Doctor Downing knows exactly how to cure all your ills and make you happy. But before we do that, you must take a couple of routine medical tests. Right here,” she pointed at a door.
Still slightly shell-shocked by the tongue-ear thing, Adam automatically turned his head in the direction of the door and dizzily glazed it with his hazy eyes. It stood out in front of him all its seven feet tall, wearing number “88” plated on its flat, plastic chest.
Meanwhile, the Director turned the doorknob (located on the level of his crotch), pulling it open and letting out a wave of light that flooded the dark corridor. Adam squinted at the blinding wave as he felt Darlina’s hand gently touch his tense back, motioning him to come in.
The ward they walked into was prosaically square and small in size. But all the rest appeared pretty poetic right away.
Apart from Director Downing, there were two more women in the ward, both wearing similar white smocks. One of the women was sitting at a desk, writing something, while the other one was bending over a chrome-yellow microscope barrel by the window.
When they walked in, the writing woman looked up and welcomed them with a sunny smile. The bending one did the same. Adam smiled back, bashfully bowing his head. His attention was arrested by the bending woman’s infinitely long legs, widening into a peach-shaped pair of bulging buttocks her smock was most alluringly stretched against.
“Mister Marx, I want you to meet my assistants: Rafaela,” the Director pointed to the woman at the desk, “and Leonarda,” at the microscope.
Both women were blond and breathtakingly beautiful. But it wasn’t the color of their hair that made them such, since a color could always be changed. Their beauty was broadcasted to them, like a late night TV sex show, by the well-balanced proportions of their properly developed bodies, both made equally curvaceous but not completely identical so as to satisfy the innate human desire for diversity.
The sole reason why Adam’s eyes were chained to Leonarda’s legs lay in her highly seducing stance, whereas Rafaela, who was probably even more attractive, currently looked like a centaur-like cross between a woman and a writing desk.
It all changed when she stood up and whispered something into the Director’s ear. Adam could now see that she was also very tall – no less than eight or nine feet – though still slightly shorter Director Downing. The latter listened to what the assistant had to say, nodded and addressed Adam once again.
“Mister Marx,” he noticed that she was more formal here than in the foyer, “please, be seated.”
She pointed to a chair before the writing desk. Adam complied, watching the Director walk around the table and take Rafaela’s place. By then, Rafaela had left the room and Leonarda returned to her business by the microscope.
“As I told you in the lobby,” continued the Director, leaning back in the black leather revolving chair, “you’ll have to take a few of tests. Most of them are a mere formality, but rules are rules.”
She smiled, leaning forward and placing her plentiful breasts on top of her entwined fingers on the edge of the writing table. Just like the warden, but with incomparably more style and grace, let alone lasciviousness. As she spoke on, Adam could no longer take his eyes off her enormous bosom, staring back at him out of her unbuttoned smock.
“Apart from an assessment by a psychiatrist, which will be conducted by Rafaela, you’ll also have to give us samples of your saliva, blood, urine and sperm.”
She deliberately stressed the last word, wishing to check his reaction. The latter took no time to follow as Adam finally managed to tear his eyes off the titanic tits and prick up his ears.
“All the samples are to be taken by my lovely assistant Leonarda,” she smiled slyly, glancing at the woman by the microscope. “And mostly manually.”
“Manually?” Adam echoed, turning his head to Leonarda, who was already approaching him with a transparent test tube.
“By means of masturbation,” she specified.
“Masturbation?!”
“Exactly,” droned Director Downing, leaning back and leisurely crossing her endlessly long, curvy legs on top of the table. “In fact, this is just what we’re going to do right now in order to relieve you of all unwanted pressure before your psychological evaluation.”
“But… I… you mean… right now…?!” Adam stammered. “You mean…”
“Right now!” Leonarda roared like a hungry lioness, grabbing his belt.
“O God!” was all he could squeak out as her ice-cream-cold, task-oriented hand disappeared in his pants.
Chapter Nine
“Are you absolutely sure you know what you’re doing?” Freudina Fordy asked Gianna Globe after the Controllers’ orgy was over and they were finally left alone, sliding down the shaft of one of the Trans Tower’s ten floating lifts, with the afternoon sun blazing at them through the glass walls. Controller Fordy truly cared for Gianna and didn’t want to see Its friend plunge into pointless, and what was worse, potentially perilous projects.
“You don’t really have to risk your position for the sake of these… these…” Freudina fumbled for a fitting word.
“Poor people?”
“Well, this isn’t exactly what I would call them.”
“And what would you call them then? Creepy creatures?!” Gianna cried out, suddenly losing Its temper. “Or would you feel better with monsters of mankind?!”
“I don’t
think you should spill your anger on me, my dear,” Freudina sounded wounded. “I’m your friend and I say these things only because I worry about you.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” subdued with shame, Gianna approached Freudina and fondly embraced It, resting Its head on the Colleague Controller’s shoulder and feeling the ice-cold lump in Its throat melt to flame-hot tears in Its eyes.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” said Freudina, stroking Gianna’s shivering back. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s just that…” Gianna tried to suppress Its sobbing, “…that I want them all to be happy. Not just us.”
“I know, I know. But you shouldn’t let your wish to make other people happy make you miserable. Otherwise none of it makes any sense.”
For a second, Gianna’s face sunk in self-pity, making it want to embrace Its friend even more.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Gianna, when the wave of sorrow subsided, and It could finally let go. “But then there are times when I just can’t help it. I feel like I ought to do more, much more. These Islands… You see, I’ve been to them. And there is so much squalor and suffering there. It’s all just pain planted on pain planted on pain. There’s absolutely no escape for these people. No escape at all. That’s why I feel that we have to give them a chance. A chance to be free from their own freedom to be forlorn. We have to teach them, show them the right way, even if it means that we must make them.”
“I see what you’re saying,” said Controller Fordy, staring out at the sun-flooded City of New York. “But you know well enough that it’s against our code to make people obey by way of brute force. We have to use much more subtle methods of conviction. Unfortunately, the older they become the more difficult it gets to persuade them. So, there isn’t that much we can do except hope that they will agree to learn voluntarily.”
“And what if they don’t?”
“Well, as I’ve said, there isn’t that much we can do to help them then. A person has to be ready to accept help if it is to be helped. Otherwise it won’t to work.”