The Amber Columns (The City of Dark Pleasures Book 2) (8 page)

Unless I reprogram my implant with a new code. Which I have every intention of doing once I figure out how. And the coded impulses—the exact frequencies for those are listed on the instruction sheet. It seems almost too easy. I start to feel a little paranoid, like this is some kind of trap. Admin knows I’m a hacker—I’ve been fined for it several times. It was all stupid stuff in the past, things I did for amusement rather than any real reason. I messed with the controllers for the light show at Lapis Lauzuli—made the show go so fast the whole thing was over in about thirty seconds. Once I disabled the water heaters in Emerald one by one until all the patrons were crammed into the one remaining heated pool.

But this—if I can reprogram my implant with a new access code then it can’t be used against me. In theory I might be able slip in and out of the gate like a citizen. If the scanner doesn’t recognize my code will it even register that I’m a person? It might read the signal as if I’m a machine—someone’s media jacket or a cleaning bot. That’s a bit of a long shot, because there’s no information about how to change a code in the information sheets. I can dream though.

But the electrical pulses – as long as I
had
someone’s access code I might be able to control the impulses precisely enough that the implant will work just like the electrodes on my dream machine. In other words, patrons could buy sex dreams anywhere, not just in my boudoir. They could dream a wild orgy of ass-fucking and cock-sucking while soaking in the cannabis pool. Or out in the controlled areas, sitting at their desks or waiting for a hair appointment. Or in the comfort of their own homes.

Holy shit. I’m going to be a fucking millionaire.

Chapter Eight – O’Mara

“Okay, onto the social pages.” The screen behind Goldwyn’s head clicks over to another list. “This month were plugging everything spring. So spring colors, spring food, spring clothes. Spring, spring, spring!” She laughs brightly and everyone but me chuckles along with her. “Doulton?”

Doulton leans forward so her massive breasts rest on the boardroom table top. “There’s a new coffee-shop where they use human breast milk instead of Synth-Lac.”

“And how is that spring?”

Doulton is stumped. Doulton IS a stump. If she was any dumber she would forget how to stand up.

“Fertility?” I suggest, helpfully. “Rebirth? New life etc.?”

“Right. That.”

“Fine, we’ll put that in on Friday.” Goldwyn says. She types “breast milk coffee” onto the screen. I wonder where the breast milk comes from. I mean, who has any to spare?  As for me, I’m so desperate for coffee right now I would drink it if it was made with human
piss
instead of Synth-Lac.

“What else?” Goldwyn says, hopefully.

“They’re re-glazing the
whole
Admin Tower.” Meier says. Meier can’t complete a sentence without putting
super
-
normal
emphasis on at least one word.  “The glass came from the
mainland.
Apparently the
Authority
Guards
had to supervise opening
all
the containers.”

“And that’s a spring story because…?”

“The glass is
pink
.”

Goldwyn actually applauds, clapping her perfectly manicured hands together gleefully. “Perfect! Saturday. O’Mara?”

I watch the words “pink glass” appear in Saturday’s box on the screen.

“O’Mara?”

I don’t have anything. I haven’t even noticed that it’s spring. But I pull something out of my ass at the last minute, as usual, inspired by Goldwyn’s fingernails.

“Matching your nailpolish with your ice-cream is a thing now.” It isn’t, but we can make it become one.

“That sounds colorful!” Goldwyn says. “Let’s make that the landing story on Sunday.” She types. “Everyone cover the usual nonsense. Meier, it’s your turn to review at the Pleasures, right? Anything else?”

There’s a silence. Every face turns to look at me, expectantly. Goldwyn even looks a little bored.

“I’d like to write something about the Culls,” I recite, dutifully, like I’ve been saying in every editorial meeting for two months. Doulton stifles a laugh behind her chubby hand. Meier just shakes her head.

“No one wants to read about the Culls right now, O’Mara,” Goldwyn says, dully. “Not in springtime.”

She says it as though by autumn things will have changed.

“Okay?” The brightness has returned to her voice. “Let’s have a great week everyone.”

We all stand. Goldwyn lays her hand on my arm. “Stay for a moment, O’Mara.”

I sit as we watch the others leave. Goldwyn closes the door.

“You know it’s not because I don’t care about the Culls,” she says.

I nod, looking at my own chewed fingernails. Barely two hours has passed since Tully had his tongue and fingers inside me, but it’s already starting to feel like those things happened to someone else. As soon as I got to a terminal I tried to book another pass to the Pleasures for tonight, but I was declined. “Recent negative sexual experience is contraindicated” the bot said. I could have asked for a human review but how would that go? Me crying and begging to be allowed to see him again? Not a good idea.

“Are you okay, O’Mara?” Goldwyn asks in the kind of motherly tone that only makes things worse.

“I’m fine. I was up late last night.”

“Some fabulous party I wasn’t invited to?”

I’m supposed to think she’s being witty, but I know she’s fishing for details. Goldwyn can’t turn off her journalistic curiosity. She thinks there’s a story lurking under every used coffee cup.

“I went to the Pleasures for a massage, but one thing led to another.”

Goldwyn claps her hands again. Nothing excites her more than hearing about someone else getting penetrated. She confessed to me once, in hushed tones, that she doesn’t care for penetration herself. Lucky for her that her wife feels the same way. And she knows I strongly prefer men. “Boy crazy” she called me once, affectionately, as though such inclinations are not socially crippling in our world.

“And who did you find?” she asks gleefully. “Someone nice? Did you ever try that man with the tattoos again?”

I would never tell her the truth. Even if I didn’t have the idea that falling in love with a Cull might be something not discussed in polite company, I wouldn’t tell her. I want to keep it to myself. And I don’t want to lose my shit in front of her.

“I tried a machine in Obsidian,” I say, and even manage to blush convincingly.

“Lovely! Machines are always fun. No pressure. No surprises. I sometimes wish they’d allow them outside the gates.”

I just nod and we fall into one of those silences that screams “someone please change the subject!”

“I do understand you’re looking for something a bit more in depth,” Goldwyn says.

I’m confused for a second. More in depth than a fucking machine? Are we really going to discuss my sexual needs in such intimate detail? But she saves me.

“Something to sink your teeth into,” she continues. “A real story about real things. I know you think all we do here is fluff but there is room for more serious stuff.”

“Okay.”

“I think I have just the thing for you. I was going to give it to Doulton but her work has been so dull lately. Ever since she joined her harem she’s lost her edge. It always happens.”

I’m not sure that Doulton ever had an edge but I keep that thought to myself.

“It’s an interview,” Goldwyn goes on. “If I gave it to Meier she’d turn it into a puff piece but since you’re feeling so feisty lately you might be able to make something quite substantial out of it.

I should hope so. I spent months studying interview techniques in my course. Techniques I’ve barely used. I tried to interview Tully the first time I met him. And look how
that
turned out.

Also,” Goldwyn adds with a conspiratorial gleam in her eye, “The subject asked for you by name.”

“Who is the subject?” I ask.

“Trenoweth Portero.”

I cough. “
The
Trenoweth Portero?”

“The one and only. I knew you’d be pleased.”

“But he NEVER gives interviews. And why would he agree to an interview with our...uh…feed?” I nearly said “stupid feed”. I’m pretty sure Goldwyn feels the same way but still. It’s not something that should be said out loud to your boss.

“People are making noises about elections and such, probably. The Portero family does a media blitz every five years or so, just to firm up their position. It’s been this way since before…well, you know.”

I know. The thing no one talks about. The genocide, the roots of which are only ever whispered, and even then with a conspiratorial giggle, as though it’s juicy gossip rather than the murder and mutilation of a million young men.

“When is this interview booked?” I ask.

“Friday. So you have a few days to prepare. No late nights at the Pleasures for you this week, young lady.” She wags her pointing pink talon at me, fixing me in a falsely stern glare. I force a laugh.

“Can I have a pass to the restricted data servers?”

“I’ll look into it,” Goldwyn says as she gathers her files, teetering towards the door in her precarious heels. “In the meantime there’s a bit of information on the open servers. You can start there.”

I watch her round ass in the lime green trousers wiggle away down the hall to her office. As an intern I don’t have an office; I usually work wherever I can find the space and a free terminal.

“Scheduler? Who has the boardroom booked for the rest of the day?”

“The boardroom is free until six PM,” the bot says from the wall terminal.

I sit back down at the table and activate one of the terminals. “Open server search,” I say. “Authority Chairman, Trenoweth Portero.”

I get the predictable results. All stuff I know. He’s sixty years old, though it seems to me he’s been sixty years old for several years now. There’s a thousand reports of awesome things he’s done. Designated funds to the college. Repelled a squadron of mainland submarines in the Opal Sea that he assured us were headed for our off shore oil rigs. Patted a three legged puppy. I’m not sure anyone believes any of these stories. There are rumors that he hardly leaves the Chairman’s palace anymore. He has over a thousand wives, apparently. How would he find the time?

I snicker to myself, giving thanks that no one has invented a mind-reading bot. Such unpatriotic thoughts about the Chairman would have my name added to some dire list somewhere. People don’t disappear these days as much as they used to, but I remember my mother’s friends who just never came around anymore. I wonder if they ended up at the Pleasures.

Trenoweth Portero’s tanned and wide jawed face fills the terminal screen. He wears a military uniform wherever he goes, when he is seen, even though I don’t think he ever actually served. He denies ever being on a cut gang. He claims he survived the violence of the Expiation by remaining in his wealthy family’s compound. But he was the chairman already by that time. As if the gangs would have gone for the chairman and his family.

He has many children, we hear, though no one identifies as such. It’s thought they go by other names, attend the more expensive schools and live with their mothers in the posh domed neighborhoods around the palace.

I’ve never seen vids of him with any wives or children. Perhaps he visits them under cover of darkness, in the middle of the curfew. Maybe he has underground passages directly into their bedrooms. Or he might bring them to the palace by bus, like a maintenance team.

Now I’m giggling. Outside the boardroom door, Doulton shambles by, turning her plump face to look quizzically at me.

“Cat video,” I say. One of the few media imports still allowed from the mainland. There are hardly any cats left on our island, and those there are live wild in the ruins. But people still love the vids.

Doulton just frowns dumbly and wanders away.

What to ask the most powerful man in my world? There’s nothing on the open server of any interest. And it could be days before I get a permit to use the restricted server, if at all. As I shut the terminal down I think of something my mother use to say, when I was struggling to complete my assignments in journalism school: “When in doubt, try a hard copy.” Her voice was feather light by this time, weakened by an illness that took her lungs away cell by cell.

I gather my jacket and bag, stride out past the cubicles and wave my wrist pass over the exit scanner.

“Research at the Archiva. Leave my timecard logged in.”

“Approved,” the bot intones. The door to the magways swishes open.

In the Expiation many records were destroyed on purpose. Mainly it was economic records at first. With so many men dying people just claimed their property, destroying any records of ownership. But as the conflagration grew that violence spread to other records – history books, archives, evidence of a past so long removed that few remember it without help. And a lot of that help was lost. At the height of the chaos several groups of women formed the Archiva, gathering hard copy documents and securing them in secret locations. Now the fruits of their labor are available to select citizens (journalists and students included) to view on request.

I cross onto the magway that will take me to the center of the information district, where the Archiva occupies one of the few old buildings outside the Pleasures.

The incongruous marble columns rise up from the magnetized walkway, extending all the way up the glass dome and through it, into the blazing blue sky above. It’s days like these I’m tempted to leave the controlled areas most, if only to enjoy fresh air and sunshine directly, rather than have it mediated by UV protective glass, pumps and filters. Only in the Pleasures do citizens regularly enjoy the actual outdoors, and even there it’s a simulated environment, colored by lights and smoke and artificial scents.

School kids visit the forests and gardens outside the controlled city in field trips. They all make it back alive. I don’t know why adults don’t do it to. Maybe we like our cages.

The door to the archive is ornate and carved, reminding me painfully of the door to Tully’s boudoir. I scan my wrist pass and my press ID pops up on the scanner screen.

“Welcome citizen O’Mara Tanner,” the bot says as I pass.

But I’ve already been overcome with that magical smell and sight: shelves and shelves of books.

An archivist looks up from her work as I enter, giving me a welcoming smile.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m O’Mara Tanner, a journalist with Island News. I’ve been assigned a piece about the Portero family and I wondered if you had anything.”