Like an Iron Fist
Dystopian Erotica
edited by Katherine Bergeron and Cecilia Tan
Published by Circlet Press, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Circlet Press, Inc.
Published by
Circlet Press, Inc.
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Cambridge, MA 02138
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Contents
Performance Anxiety: Reina Delacroix
The Corporation Loves You: Monique Poirier
A Vision in X-Ray and Visible Light: Nobilis Reed
Tragedy, then Farce: Peter Tupper
What is so erotic about dystopia?
A dystopia is best described as a utopia with a fatal flaw--a society's striving toward perfection gone horribly wrong. In literature, dystopia assumes many forms: an all-seeing police state in George Orwell's 1984, a genetically-engineered caste system in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a Biblical theocracy in Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale. None of these classics are strictly erotica, but all contain sexuality as major plot points.
Without Julia's temptation of Winston Smith, Winston might never have had the nerve to stray from the Party's anti-sex dictates in 1984. The World State in Brave New World attempts to distract (and control) its citizens with constant orgies, while suppressing more lasting emotional attachments. The handmaids and whores of Handmaid's Tale must endure the sexual exploitation of the ultra-Christian ruling class, but the handmaid heroine rebells by having a love affair with a chauffeur.
Sex is one of the most anarchic forces in life, so it stands to reason that an oppressive system must figure out how to control it. Ironically, by enforcing limits on sex, a dystopia makes sensuality all the more enticing to its subjects.
A coded love note. A whispered come-on. A meaningful glance. The tricks of seduction are the necessary tools of the oppressed, the watched, and the hunted. While we the readers can delight in the dangerous liaisons of the characters contained within this anthology, we also have the privilege of closing it with a sigh of relief, safe in our mundane world.
For now...
Katherine Bergeron
Cambridge, MA
by Eric Del Carlo
We laugh, crouched in roadside ditches, at your gleaming jackboots marching past. We smother snickers on our sleeves at every broadcast from the Moral Axis. You are foolish to us, laughingstocks. You have mistaken the puritanical for the ethical; or, rather, your forebears have done so, at least nine Vat-grown generations back. The prudishness of those bygone ages, when your ascetic ilk was limited to pulpit-pounding and the institutional instilling of bodily shame, seems now an era of reason, even enlightenment.
Back then, after all, people were at least allowed to have their genitals.
I glide through the crowd. Gray is the day; gray are the people. This is just how the Morals like it. If they could arrange it, I'm sure they'd want every day to be overcast, without a hint of stimulating blue in the sky. Everyone is dressed in proper dour suits, in stiff fabrics that give little clue to the shapes of the bodies underneath. Again, it's just how they want it. Our bodies--even now, even de-sexed and scarcely human any longer--are, so say the Precepts, vessels of sin and disgrace and filth.
So, sinful, disgraced and filthy, I work the crowd. This is an industrial area, and I perform a task in one of the factories. I'm good at what I do. But I'm better at this, because my heart is in it. This is my cause. This is how I can laugh at you, ridicule you. Because I expose the hypocrisy behind the Moral Axis.
My eyes are quick, my steps graceful. This is a wide common, paved in--what else?--gray stones. Foot traffic is heavy here, as it is a nexus connecting a number of the larger industrial plants with the shuttle station. The air is crisp. Faces pass me on every side. There is little talking. Here and there a cloaked helmeted Moralizer stands, shockstick at the ready. They are imposing figures; they're meant to be. But I've seen beneath the cloak. Yes, I have lured one of these enforcers of the Precepts, who are the hands of the Axis, brutal and unforgiving. If a Moralizer is susceptible, then anyone can be enticed. And so I and my comrades cackle with giddy disdain. We are Jones. And we laugh at you.
Direct eye contact is dangerous, but this is a hazardous business. I am, essentially, no different from any of those around me. I can tell you my Vat number. I can recite the Precepts. I received standard flash-training for my job. I know just how to behave, even here, among this not quite orderly swirl of people. Their shapes excite me. Their possibilities arouse me. I can imagine what they look like beneath their austere suits, bared, because I've seen it before. And here's the joy of it: once you've seen it, it changes you forever. You perceive the world differently.
Two years ago I became Jones. Not a day, not an hour, has passed since my initial seduction that resembles any day or hour which preceded the event. I maintain appearances, of course. I'm good at that too.
But here I am at my best, reading the crowd, letting instinct and skill guide me. I see the weariness of those who have labored at physical tasks. I note the unfocused bleariness of the ones who've worked with cascades of data all day. Everyone is efficient. The world is irrefutably productive. But this is only because there is nowhere else to concentrate one's energies. The living drives have no other outlet.
I cross behind one of the Moralizers, Vat-grown for bulk, for strength. The one I enticed, once divested of the articles of hees office, whimpered and mewled. But when we finally engaged, hee became eager, ravenous. Afterward, hee laughed along with me at an Axis broadcast.
Intuition snaps through me. My eyes track a distinct figure, picking heem out from the others. I alter my course. I look purposeful as I cross the common, as though I have a definite destination. You can't just wander; that's a giveaway they watch for. The Axis knows about Jones, though you never hear mention of it on any broadcast. Doesn't matter. We spread our truth by the most effective means possible: we demonstrate what it is the world has been denied since the Moral Uprising.
And like I said, once you have the experience, nothing will erase it. Which is why, of course, the Jones are Cleansed on detection. It's the only way. That measure has Moral backing, naturally. The Sixth Precept tells you all you need to know about the necessity of Cleansing.
We approach each other. I note the stained fingertips. Oil, in under the nails. There is something in the gait that has alerted me, or maybe it's the tension, visible even under the suit, of the shoulders. In this crowded gray-stoned plaza somehow I have singled heem out.
Hee comes straight on; I'm going the opposite way. At the last instant I jog, just a bit, a quarter-step, and my sleeve brushes hees. Even with the surrounding rumble of footfalls and the sighing of the cool breeze, I hear the tiny rasp of rigid fabric, the small sweet sensual sound of contact.
As we pass, I flash eyes up at heem. I see hees face, the startled cast. Hee will call for a nearby Moralizer now or not. I believe hee will not.
Hee doesn't disappoint me. I slow, fumbling with the case I am carrying under one arm. This would likely contain some item from my plant that I am taking back to my dormitory with me, so to work on it further. What do we have but our jobs, after all? But the case doesn't hold anything official. In fact, inside is the most damning possible evidence of what I am.
The person with the stained fingers has turned about and come alongside me as I fuss with the case. Hee looks past me, but hees eyes strain at their corners.
I make flashing but direct eye contact again, communicating volumes with that single look. I've already sensed the hunger in heem, the latent need. But can I entice heem to act on it? Around us, the crowd continues its movements. We can't stay still for long.
It's dangerous, fantastically so. But I take risks. The cause is too important.
In a whisper, the faintest hint of sound, carrying only to hees ears, I say, "Fuck."
I hear the suck of hees breath. A gust of chilly air snaps across the common, catching hees suit's collar. I tuck my case firmly under my arm and start walking again, heading into the maze of industrial structures.
A few rapid heartbeats later I hear hees footsteps, following.
* * * *
You can't quite erase history. It's not a living thing which, once Cleansed, will speak no more. Bits and traces linger, and it's amazing what can simply be pieced together with the application of a little logic and imagination.
Even the Vats haven't yet obliterated the deepest human instincts. We still have them, though the Morals count on indoctrination to keep them dormant. For the most part, this is a successful strategy. You can shape reality for many, many people simply by stating and restating your version of it. We all know the Precepts almost from the moment of our emergence from the Vats. It's the flash-training, the initial hardwiring. We step shivering from the sloshing canisters, spindly children-adults, thin-limbed and naked. And in that same instant we are taught the vileness of our sexless bodies, so that shame is what we all first experience. It is, for most of us, the last time we will see ourselves unclothed.
But the instincts abide. The drives buzz deep inside us. All it takes is the awakening. That is the task of the Jones.
More than the physical enticements, though, we pass on the history as we have learned it from others of our kind. We illustrate the messy, wonderful, glorious method of pre-Vat births. We tell our initiates how the world used to be, before the Uprising. And once one knows that, everything that has come since seems hilarious. And we laugh. You are fools. We are Jones.
* * * *
There is Contamination, no matter how much you Cleanse. Even the Precepts--if you read between the lines with a discerning eye--admit to this fact. So it is that the individual with the oil-stained fingertips has recognized that profane archaism: fuck. What a good and glorious word, and how useful even now, untold ages after its invention.
I lead heem deeper into the clanking, smoking labyrinth. Sooty walls loom, and smokestacks seethe far overhead. Down here, we pick our way over increasingly uneven ground, where waste is strewn. It's far different from the open public spaces, which are kept tidy. Already we are in violation, having passed several warning signs, but I know the lay of this land from coming here a number of times before. There are no monitors watching us. The eyes of the Moral Axis, no matter what you want us to believe, are not everywhere.
The cool air warms, but it's a feverish sort of warmth, the heat of machines. These factories produce all manner of goods, though everything, ultimately, is for the furthering of the Moral Agenda. Whole cities must be built, to accommodate the next generation of Vat-grown citizens. With each new wave, modifications are made. People live longer. The flash-training received at emergence is more rigorous and effective. You are perfecting.
But we still laugh at you.
Hee is half a dozen steps behind me. We have left the plaza far behind. I can feel hees piqued curiosity, hear the hesitant yet eager fall of hees feet. Hee splashes a small puddle and mutters something in a dark tone. I stop and turn around. And smile.
It unnerves heem. Hees eyes snap wide. I look down at hees damp shoe tip. Hee steps back out of the muddy little circle of water, as if ashamed. I gaze back up at hees face, still wearing my smile. I note once more the tense set of hees shoulders, a strain that affects hees whole posture, though only subtly, only to eyes--my eyes--that look for such telltales.
"Who is here?" hee asks. Hee doesn't reciprocate my smile. Nor do I expect heem to.
"No one," I say. "Us. No one." Patently we are alone. The soaring walls close us in. This is an unused hollow, a trench of forgotten space between the rumbling behemoths of the manufactories. The ground is vaguely soggy. A miasma of gray vapor lays over the scene. And yet it is far more cheerful than, say, the plaza or the interior of any one of these industrial plants or one's own dormitory. It's cheerier because the sense of isolation is palpable.
Two years ago I was enticed to a similar sort of locale, some tiny unused corner at the edge of a residential sector. Even before my true seduction commenced, I was overcome by the lively feeling of liberty that came of knowing I and this other individual were out from under all scrutiny. Anything, I remember thinking at the time, might happen here between us. I might be harmed, even, but my lurer, of course, had no such intentions. What occurred that day was wonderful.
What I intend for this person with the oil-crescented fingernails will, I hope, be just as spectacular.
I take a step toward heem, but only the one, measuring hees response, seeing the automatic twitch of fear go through heem. Hee too is probably imagining some fanciful scenario where I murder heem or at least beat heem severely. Hee might even be thinking that I'm some sort of clandestine Moralizer, sent to specifically investigate heem. However, if hee's come with me this far, then sacrileges have likely already occurred to heem. Perhaps hee has even silently questioned the Precepts.
But it might be nothing so dramatic. Maybe hee is just curious, seeing me as a diversion at the end of a wearying workday. That's fine with me. I am happy to entertain heem.
"Speak that word again," hee says, surprising me with hees initiative.
Again, I'm happy to oblige. "Fuck," I pronounce for heem. I continue to smile. It's a taxing expression. The Vats don't develop the necessary facial muscles. But the smile still functions on some primal human level. Every individual I have enticed as a Jones has responded to it.
Hee has a broad forehead. It furrows now. Hees features are standard, but I note the variations--the mild delicacy of the jawline, the mole under the right eye. We don't all yet look exactly alike.
"I've never heard that word before," hee says, "and yet..."
And yet hee has. Many people have. Language, like history, still manages to scamper loose occasionally.
"Say it yourself." I take another step toward heem. Excitement grows in me. "Say it." My heart is beating harder. I drop my case to the ground. It lands with a wet thump.
Hees eyes widen with the fear again, but also, I believe, flashing with a responding excitation. "I don't---"
"Say it."
"Fuck." Hee gasps. Hees mouth twitches, and hee claps hees hands over it. But I see hees face flush. Hees knees quiver.
I splash through the puddle and stand immediately before heem. We are the same height, both no doubt Vat-grown for factory work. My smile strains the corners of my mouth. I lean in and kiss heem.
Hee backs away, spluttering. Hee doesn't understand what has just happened. I give heem a few seconds to think it over, then stride forward again, seize hees face with both my hands and mash my mouth down on top of hees. Hee's as strong as me, but I've got the leverage and I know what I'm doing.
I feel hees resistance giving way. I am not being gentle. This first kiss is a shock hee must overcome. I give heem the chance to do so, and as I press my lips aggressively on hees, I feel heem starting to answer, to understand. The fantastic intimacy of the act is overwhelming initially. I know. Every Jones knows. But there is hardwiring that is programmed deeper than any flash-training; it's the ghost of our purloined biology.
Hee starts to press back against me. It's not resistance. Hee is imitating. Hees hand rises to tentatively brush the side of my face. I let my lips melt apart and slip my tongue, gently now, against his mouth. This new aspect of the kiss baffles heem, but the event is already in motion and hee must go with it. I feel hees tongue emerge, soft and unsure, blunted by my probing one.
I press my body closer, and the stiff fabrics of our suits come into contact again. I drop a hand from hees face to take a grip of hees shoulder, feeling the socket through a layer of muscle. The shoulder flexes, but it is only hees arm moving, hees other hand lifting. Hee places this on my skull, oil-smudged fingers exploring, raking through the dark stubble of my hair. Our tongues are fairly tangling by now, mouths devouring. I taste hees heating breath.
With a bold practiced move that never fails to electrify me, I reach for the topmost catch of hees suit. It's not easy to undo. Clothing is self-laundering; there is rarely any authorized reason to remove it. But I have the knack. The catch gives, and air, warmed by the industrial commotion all around us, rushes in.
Hee shudders. Our kiss breaks. I work another fastener with deft fingers, and the garment begins to part, exposing shoulders and sternum. Hee looks down on these patches of exposed flesh, eyes brimming with terrified wonder.
I give heem time, though we don't have an abundance of it. This place is isolated and unmonitored, but danger always lurks. The Moralizers are efficient. I ease back several steps and start to undo the catches of my own drearily colored suit. My body peeks through in stages, and I watch heem watching me, which adds to my own arousal. The stiff garb drops down my arms. I wriggle them free, then push the bunched fabric to my waist, over my hips. I bare my belly, my pelvis, my thighs, until I finally step wholly out of the shell of my stiff clothing. I stand naked. The exposure and vulnerability are thrilling. I display myself to heem, feet planted apart, arms spread wide, the grin now aching on my face.
Where my legs join to my trunk, at that hinging place of limbs to body, the flesh is smooth, hairless. Once, this was the anatomical site of the human genitalia. But no longer.
Yet, even still, the exhilaration of nudity is potent. I am excited. So is the person I have lured here.
Hees eyes goggle. Hee studies me up and down, marveling at all the revealed sin, disgrace and filth, yet responding to it with emotions hee no doubt hardly comprehends. Barefoot, I move toward heem again. I finish what I started, releasing the complicated clasps, letting hees suit fall away. I help heem step out, and we stand together, unclothed, unfettered.
It is beautiful.
"Fuck," hee says again, with passion in hees voice now, with an eagerness to see this strange and exciting episode through to whatever end it holds.
"Fuck," I agree. But there's more to it. I turn and go retrieve my case from the ground. Bending over, I expose my anus, the sole eliminatory vent the Vats allow us. "Fuck. Cunt. Cock." I open the valise. I take out the apparatus, one in each hand.
Hee gapes. Hee has never seen anything like these before. How could he have?
Again demonstration is necessary. I strap on first. The cock adheres to my crotch, the synthetic flesh warm to the touch. The testicles, bristling with dark wiry curls, dangle pendulously beneath the shaft. Immediately on contact, the sensitivity conductors activate. The sensations whip through me. The organ is extravagantly responsive. As I handle it, making sure it is secured to me, it starts to stir. Even the faint tickle of the air causes growth. I thicken. A kind of ticklishness roils inside the testicles. I am attached. The artificial flesh, designed by Jones who worked in specialized medical centers and covertly manufactured by ones with machining jobs, is now a part of me, accepted, natural. My body has been added to. I am greater. I'm restored.
I stand before heem again, displaying myself, fiercely proud. That pride is another instinctive impulse, one I can't--and don't try to--explain.
"This is yours," I tell heem, brandishing the other apparatus.
"It's... different."
"It is indeed."
I bring it to heem, and hee submits. The furred furrow is beautiful. The organic nature of it is breathtaking, utterly convincing. The mound is somewhat exaggerated, so to allow necessary depth. I seal simulated flesh to what is natural, having already issued the warning of what sensations to expect. Nevertheless, I see the shock go through her body. Her damp lips part on a half-cry. She looks down at herself, bewilderment bordering on deliriousness hot in her eyes, as if this is something from a dream.
Tentatively she reaches for herself. Oil-lined fingertips quiver. But she only brushes the soft outer curls.
"Female. Male." I point back and forth between us. "Cunt. Cock."
She looks at me, confused and longing. How lovely she is, with the juncture of her legs marked by the thatch of hair. My cock twitches. A greater, more specific excitement ripples through me.
We come together and kiss again. I swell against her. Her hands scrabble at me now, across my shoulders and back. I cup the nape of her neck and crush my mouth on hers. I taste her tongue. My other hand slides across her nipple-less chest. The Vats eliminated the vestigial buds several generations ago; but I know of those anatomical curiosities, just as I know, from fellow Jones, the history of our species which the Morals have tried to eradicate.
When we break the kiss this time, she is panting. I take her hand, tug her over toward the nearer industrial wall. I unroll the sheet of innocuous-looking plastic, and draw her down onto it with me. It crinkles under our bodies.
"I want... I want--" She reaches for my cock. This time she makes contact. A jolt of pleasure rocks me as she closes her fingers around my girth. I can feel every vein-lined millimeter of my shaft, every throb of my swollen cockhead. I surge into full hardness in her grip. Her hand is warm, strong. She looks up into my face, sees the rapture there. She experiments, moving her hand on my staff, and notes my reactions. She learns quickly, but--again--it's instinct, wiring that the Vats haven't deleted.