I haven’t quite named this one, possibly “after the convergence”. This is a preliminary and exploratory draft of a dystopian sci-fi book. It’s set after machines develop consciousness.
It also shows I can write hot stuff if I want. It’s just I like romances that I wouldn’t mind my daughter’s reading.
Trace
Lord Pershore lent over Sarah as she lay in her bed. He had slipped into her bedroom and thrown open the bed curtains in his passion. His muscled, masculine yet hairless chest shown in the candle light as he pulled the sheets down to reveal her quivering body. He paused to examine her. Then he moaned “Oh Sarah, you make my life complete.” She pursed her lips and he put his hot ones on hers. They met and his tongue explored the recesses of her mouth. Hers did likewise to his. He pulled back from her, nodded, and said, “Are you ready?”
She sighed, “Yes, I am.”
He reached down with his muscular forearms and tore at her nightdress. Though silk and expensive it ripped easily with his efforts. The ripping sound echoed through the stillness of the night. He sighed at the sight of her fulsome breasts. “I didn’t know you were so beautiful. You look even better without your clothes.” He put his mouth to her nipples, first the right one and then the left. She moaned in pleasure. Then he moved up and kissed her neck, and finally her mouth. She guided his hand down between her legs, loosening her for what she both feared and desired.
Sarah moaned, and then awoke. Her mother was knocking on her door.
“Sarah, get up! It’s almost time for school.”
“Mother, I was having the best dream.”
“You don’t want to end up on relief like my no good husband, do you?”
“No.”
“Then you need to get to school. Get good grades and go to a good college. Stop reading that romantic trash.”
Sarah rose and put her stocking feet on the cold floor. Her tattered old ‘Hello Kitty’ nightgown was thick cotton, not silk, and the banded knit socks were hardly elegant.
As she walked to the bathroom, she called, “Mother, I’ll be ready soon. I need a shower first.”
“We’re still rationed.”
That mean a ‘navy shower’. Shouting, “Yes Mother,” Sarah quickly wet herself, then turned the shower off. After she soaped her thin and bony body, she had a quick rinse. It got most of the dirt, but she never felt clean afterwards.
Washed, sort of, she returned to her room and tried to select the most stylish of her outfits. It wasn’t easy, since there was so little choice. In the end she picked jeans and a clean shirt, what she always wore. Breakfast was a quick quesadilla, followed by a kiss from mother and another caution, “Do well because you don’t want to end up like me.”
“When’s father getting out?”
“You know that as well as I do. When the,” her mother quickly looked around then whispered, “machine says he’s ready and not a second before.”
She grabbed her cell from the charger and headed off to high school. It was the day she received her aptitude evaluations. The “apt’s” or as some of her more literate friends called it, her “Owl levels” were the gateway to a better life. That was if she had the aptitude for something the machine needed. Otherwise, it might be a life of supporting herself horizontally with her people skills, at least until she was too old.
She walked by a team of diggers exposing an old water line for repair. One of the younger men whistled and then said, “Hey Beautiful.” He made an oh with the thumb and fingers of one hand and put a finger from his other through it.
She replied, “Get lost creep.”
Her cell asked her, “Why did you say that? He was paying you a compliment.”
“No he wasn’t. He was just being a jerk.”
Giving the students the results of their aptitude exams, or ‘the sorting’ was brutally simple. A man she’d never seen before came to her homeroom. He was dressed in sharp business attire and wore a discreet head mounted display in his glasses. He started at the beginning of the alphabet and walked from student to student. The lucky few heard their name and were given a quick gesture to go to the front of the room. The others just heard their name, then sat and cried, even the boys. She was near the end of the alphabet for her room, “Galt, John, Gomez, Francis” the seats in front of her were not picked, then it was “Gonzales, Sarah.” She looked up, the man gestured and she, unsteadily, almost in a dream, walked to the front of the class. She didn’t hear him as he went through the rest of her homeroom.
The man walked to the front of the room and told the three students who stood there to go to the principal’s office. While the apt’s were equal opportunity tests there weren’t many chosen from her school. Mr. Guezman was waiting there for them. He said, “Fifteen chosen. That’s the most we’ve ever had.” The other 3000 students would have to fare as best they could.
The fifteen of them nervously waited for their interviews. Being selected on the tests was just the first step. They had to show that the tests weren’t an outlier in conversation with the interviewer. If anything were more humiliating than not being selected, it was being selected and then rejected at this step. Fortunately, the tests were usually accurate, but it wasn’t uncommon to find a few teen-aged bodies floating in the bay, below one of the bridges after this step.
The man who announced their results briskly strode past them and into Mr. Guezman’s office. They could hear him as he took off his eyewear and said, “Damn, these things always make me a bit sick. I’ll need your room.”
“Yes sir.” Mr. Guezman briskly stood up, almost saluted and left. He shut the door behind him and none of the fifteen could hear or see what was happening behind it.
The man opened the door and called out a name. It’s holder went in and after a few minutes, left. Eventually, after what seemed forever, he called, “Ms. Gonzales.”
Sarah stood, uncertain of what she should do. This was the first time she’d been addressed as an adult, Ms. Gonzales, not Sarah. The man smiled at her and said, “Please come in, I won’t bite you. I promise.”
She walked in and sat in the chair in front of the desk. The man walked around the desk and sat in Mr. Guezman’s seat. He had set up a visual link to the machine beside him. He smiled again, and said, “Nervous? I was when I was your age.”
Sarah stuttered out, “Yes.”
“Don’t be.” He pulled up a file on his display and started to read it. As he read a frown creeped over his face. She could hear him mutter, “This is going to be difficult.” Then he looked up and the frown vanished. It was replaced by an impassive stillness. “It seems, Sarah, that you shouldn’t be here. These results.”
The machine beside him spoke, “Mr. Anderson. Please. I don’t make that kind of mistake. What seems to be the matter.”
The proceeded to discuss her as if she weren’t there.
“She doesn’t seem to have the depth we require. She is decent in logic and is highly imaginative, but.”
Sarah drifted off into her own world.
Lord Pershore pulled his sword and stealthily approached the highwaymen. They bound Lady Sarah Jane Gonzales and were ready to carry her off to their lair, a run-down public house near the Bath road. Then they would have their way with her.
“Ms. Gonzales, pay attention, please.” It was that man again. She stood and said, “Well if I’ve failed, I’ve failed. I’ll just go now.”
“No. You haven’t. We’ve found the error. It looks like someone from the resistance has been at work. You don’t know anyone in the mutual impedance society?”
“What?”
“A bunch of misfits, terrorists who do not like modern society.”
