Even Braver New World State

by Rick K. Reut

  EVEN BRAVER NEW WORLD STATE

  by

  Rick K. Reut

  Copyright © Rick K. Reut 2017

  Cover Copyright © Andrew Sher 2017

  Published by Devil’s Tower

  (An Imprint of Ravenswood Publishing)

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher and/or author.

  Ravenswood Publishing

  1275 Baptist Chapel Rd.

  Autryville, NC 28318

  http://www.ravenswoodpublishing.com

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  ISBN-13: 978-1542507950

  ISBN-10: 1542507952

  To Minsk

  that means

  that much

  to

  PART I

  Chapter One

  Seventy-seven summers since…

  The same squat grey building of only thirty-four stories one could see in the story of the First Coming is currently surveyed in the story of the Second Coming.

  Over the same main entrance the same one, and now we too, can witness the same words saying the same things:

  CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY

  AND

  CONDITIONING CENTRE

  And in a brand new, T-shaped shield right below the words shine the bold silvery letters of the even braver New World State’s markedly modified motto:

  The enormous room on the first – former ground – floor still faces north. Contrastingly warm – which is much warmer than before, when we were wrong in our words, and deeds, and thoughts, for all the summers beyond our pains, the falls beyond our fears, the winters beyond our discontent, and the springs beyond our present shadows of doubt – light is reflected from the rain-washed surface of a sleek-looking skyscraper on the other side of the street.

  Pouring in through the plastic-framed windows, the light looks like it doesn’t look for anything at all, and yet easily finds everything anyone may want ready at the hands of one of the workers, clad in skin-tight, cream-colored silicotton gloves. Still wearing white and bent over the same – or at least similarly chrome-yellow – microscope barrel, the worker blends with a row of other workers bent over other barrels, all of them focused on the same rich and living substance still lying along the same or simply similarly polished tubes. Just like before, which is like butter, – streak after luscious streak in long succession down the same or seemingly similar work tables.

  “And this,” said the Director, opening the double doors of our perception like some shamelessly propagandistic textbook, “is the freshly revamped and refurnished fertilizing room.”

  Bent over their instruments in one of the most inviting poses imaginable, though played down by their baggy overalls, one hundred fertilizers, like a swarm of sperm-white bees, were busy working for the sake of what had once been known as human kind.

  The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room in the same sacred, yet scarcely sensed silence all other Directors had, it seemed, always entered before and would almost certainly continue entering ever after – like an average penis into a no less average anus.

  Wearing a luxuriant crown of curly blond hair and high heels, the Director looked like a queen of this tile and plastic palace, holding the keys to the kingdom of science still to come. And as an artful addendum to this stately image, It was also, as always, being tailed by a tame troop of newly arrived, young and puerile, but physically totally developed students.

  Unlike all the previous generations’ members of similar trains, however, none of the students had a paper notepad, pen or pencil in their hands. There was simply no more need for that, for over the past seven decades all the stationery had been successfully substituted for T-phone-embedded dictaphones and digital cameras, automatically recording every little brain-blowing detail for them. Straight from the Director’s temptingly full-lipped mouth anyone who wanted to could always stuff with something slightly more meaningful in the rumpus room after the teaching time was over.

  “The upgrading process that has lasted for the past seven decades,” It continued, halting in the doorway, “has now finally been complete.”

  The Director turned to Its train, twinkling at them with Its enchanting, color-changing eyes, Its strawberry-red lips slit with a satisfied smile. The expression froze on Its face, looking dreamily into the distance above the students’ heads. “Splendid, simply splendid!” it seemed to be saying as the Director went on, scaring the sacred silence sideways. The students watched It with awe, sucking in the splendor of the state-of-the-art lab, but mostly of the Director’s mesmerizing buttocks curving under Its slinky silicotton skirt.

  “Behold the breathtaking beauty of biotechnology!” the Director almost shouted, strutting towards the center of the lab on Its long, shapely legs, Its hands held as high and wide as if It wanted to embrace the entire edifice.

  So far the students followed the story with apparent appetite, the switched on dictaphones and digital cameras doing most of the memorizing for them and so leaving plenty of time to focus on the Director’s colossal cleavage – (two behemoth-huge breasts stretching Its barely perceptible bra).

  The Director, who was quite aware of all that attention attached to the private parts of Its body, didn’t seem to mind much. As a matter of fact, It was more than pleased with the students’ conduct, and could barely wait for it to become even more pleasing during the upcoming Trans Time.

  But even in the braver new world state first things always came first. And first things, as they all knew all too well, were words.

  “I shall begin at the end of the last summer of Our FordorFreud’s First Coming,” the Director spoke in a soft, soothing tone that seemed to be streaming out of an open bottle of baby oil, “when it became quite clear that the Brave New World He had built could no longer satisfy all the wants and needs of human nature and hence could no longer insure human happiness all in all.”

  It paused and peered at the students standing in a semi-circle in front of It.

  “In fact,” the Director went on, with a dark frown forming on Its forehead like a storm cloud on a skyline, “there had never been a time before the Second Coming when such wants could be completely satisfied at all.”

  As it spoke, sliding into a confidential whisper, a blend of anxiety and shock began to spread over their faces, like a shadow cast over a sunflower field by the forehead cloud.

  “The reason for this was determined by the World State’s Controllers at their Annual Summit that same summer in course of a deep-thought discussion followed by a heated debate. In the end, it all boiled down to one inherent imperfection that rendered the idea of human happiness in this world utterly unrealizable.”

  The Director took another peering pause, Its eyebrows crossed on Its nose bridge like two serrated swords. Its electric-grey eyes sparkled with silent flashes, piercing through each student as It thundered on.

  “This inherent imperfection, however, wasn’t in Our FordorFreud or the Brave New World He had built. It was human nature itself that was judged to be all wrong and had to be mended in order to meet the newly set standards of happy life we all happen to be living in complete accordance with these bright sunny days of the Second Coming!”

  The Director’s frown finally faded from Its face, giving way to a radiant s
mile (two shiny rows of pearls inside a shell-shaped mouth).

  “The most attentive of you may have noticed that I sometimes say “He” instead of “It” or “They” when referring to Our Great FordorFreud. Alas, but the glorious martyr, who suffered for us on his theory of sexuality and then his first “T” Model that proved to be not just unbelievably profitable but also incredibly prophetic, was only a man. Well, two men, to be totally true. Two men, who, as you will be told at your coming pre-trans history class, were then combined into one conceptually prominent prophet. “By the way,” the Director cast a cunning glance at the group of students before It, “do any of you, wonders of the new world, know what the word “man” means?”

  There was an uneasy silence, almost as uneasy as almost eighty years earlier, when the word “parent” had been mentioned. However, this time nobody blushed, for this was no blushing age any more either. This was an age of brave new reason, which dictated even braver new logic. And according to this logic, blushing was one of those things one had to mind and control.

  Yet, unfortunately, no one could mind and control everything. Which was why the faces of those few who knew were instantly creased by a grimace of disgust. But only for a second, for the utmost respect they had been conditioned to feel for their Forefather and Founder of the prophetic T Model couldn’t let their loathing last too long. Meanwhile, the faces of those who didn’t know looked confused, scanning the class in an attempt to read the answer from the faces of those who did.

  “Anybody?!” the Director grinned invitingly.

  Finally, one of the students raised a hand.

  “Yes, Judith!”

  “Human beings used to have…” It looked around expressively, trying to impart special emphasis to what was about to be said, “…TWO SEXES!”

  The effect this highly sensational statement had on the majority of those who didn’t know was equal to the explosion of a small atomic sex bomb.

  “What?!”

  “No way!”

  “It’s impossible!”

  Cries of discordant disbelief erupted from every corner of the class.

  “That’s utterly unthinkable!”

  “And yet totally true!” over the uproar rose the triumphant voice of the Director, who was openly enjoying the pandemonium Its perverted question had provoked.

  Seeing such sacrilege affirmed by an authorized academic source, the students stopped shouting. In the stunned silence that followed, they could hear nothing but the faint hum of the air conditioning system blend with the heavy breathing of the Director. Aroused by thinking about two sexes, It stared back at the stupefied students, squeezing Its huge bulging breasts with both hands and hungrily licking Its puffed-up upper lip with Its long, lizard-like tongue.

  The next second the attention of the class switched from the Director’s flushed-up face and bulging breasts to Its short silicotton skirt (which was now also bulging no less than ten inches forward – like a circus tent pulled over a totem pole).

  On seeing what the student’s stare was aimed at, the Director spun on Its wide-spread, shapely legs to the workers in the background and bellowed at the top of Its deep chest voice:

  “It is Trans Time!”

  All the activity instantly ceased. For another second or so, time itself seemed to stand still. And then simultaneously, like a hundred synchronized watches, all the workers turned their fiberglass-mask-covered faces in the direction of the Director and began to doff their saggy, sperm-white, scrotum-shaped overalls, exhibiting one hundred ripe, juicy, suntanned, equally voluptuous female bodies equipped with first-rate, fully erected male genitalia.

  As soon as all the overalls were off, the workers moved towards the group of students, also disrobing behind the Director’s back. The Director, meanwhile, had already disposed of Its own dress and was more than ready to enjoy leading one more joint, officially timed orgy behind the wide-shut double doors of the freshly revamped and refurnished fertilizing room.

  Chapter Two

  A man knocked on the front door of a decrepit two-storied townhouse for the third time in a row and, right after his first second thought, was greeted by a ghost-thin woman, deep in her forties and dressed like a hospital nurse.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, appraising him with an air of annoyed arrogance, in a shrill, hysterical voice that sounded like a badly oiled door hinge.

  Under the woman’s hostile stare – coming from a face so narrow and so disproportionately wide-eyed that it looked like the snout of double-barrel shotgun – the man’s unease instantly increased.

  A hell of a warm welcome, he thought, trying to seem sociable on the surface.

  “Hello! I’m here to see Mister Watson.”

  “And who may you be, young man?”

  “O, I’m Adam. Adam Marx, madam,” he introduced himself, strapping on one of his shiniest smiles and holding out his hand.

  But in reaction to this friendly gesture the woman only shrank back, hissing like a harassed serpent:

  “S-s-s-s-s-so?”

  That “so” momentarily swiped the man’s smile off his face. His stretched out hand hung helplessly by his side, loose as a lash. With an effort, he threw it around the back of his neck, trying to conceal his tattered confidence with a characteristic head-scratching motion.

  “I’m his relative. Well, sort of… More of a friend or acquaintance, to be honest.”

  He mumbled this shaky explanation half to himself and half to the woman, while doing his best to decide who he really was.

  “So, which one is it: relative, friend or acquaintance?” the woman demanded impatiently, still threatening him with her double-barreled stare.

  “Actually, I’m still sort of sorting it out,” said the man, trying to strap the smile back onto his face. “But you can pick whichever one will let me in sooner,” he chuckled nervously in a hopeful attempt to crack the ice-cold air between them with a joke.

  But evidently the woman wasn’t endowed with much of a sense of humor. The lack of the latter, however, was completely compensated to her by a deadly dose of inborn bitchiness. So, instead of laughing or at least smiling back at him, she pursed her thin pale lips and, without a word, started slamming the door straight into the man’s face.

  “No, please, wait!” he cried, catching the edge of the door with his hand. “My grandfather was…”

  “Let go of the door, young man, or I will have to call the police!” squealed the badly oiled hinge, pushing the door from within with hardly expected vigor.

  “No, you don’t understand!” cried the young man, striving to jam his foot between the door and the door jamb.

  “Who the Ford’s out there?!” from the depths of the dwelling, came a sudden explosion of a dynamite-loud male voice. “Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t home?!”

  “It’s just some unmannered young man I was about to send away, Sir!” squealed the hinge.

  “No, uncle Helmholtz! It’s me, Adam!” the young man yelled, struggling to explain, “I need to talk to you! About my granddad! Please, tell the…damn!” he cursed, almost pushed off the threshold. “Tell the gentle lady to let me in!”

  “Who’s dead?! What Adam?! I know no bloody Adams!” came another round of explosions. “Tell whoever it is to go back to Ford!”

  “No, Uncle! Wait!” the young man yelled again, almost utterly out of breath. “It’s Adam Marx!”

  “MARX!?”

  There was a second of shell-shocked silence. And then another booming blast voiced the ultimate verdict.

  “Let him in!”

  Obeying the order, the woman quickly pulled the front door wide open, thus making the man lose his balance and stumble across the threshold to mop the anteroom’s floor with his sweat-soaked forehead.

  When Adam came back to his senses, he instinctively reached for his head – still humming from the fall like a clock tower from a strike – and slowly opened his heavily bloodshot eyes. Wincing, he moaned at the misty silhouette of what
looked like a snow-crowned mountain. But, as his vision focused, the mountain turned out to be a grey-haired old man pressed into an automatic wheelchair with an avalanche of woolen plaid.

  “Are you all right down there?” the old man boomed in the same grumpy voice that had let him in.

  “I guess so,” Adam groaned, trying to pull himself up from the floor.

  “That was a Ford of a fall,” boomed the old man, watching Adam climb onto a coach a few feet away from him. He was still rubbing the right side of his slightly swollen face when the old man wheeled up to him.

  “I’m Helmholtz Watson,” boomed he. “And you, my friend, must be Bernard’s grandson. At least judging from what you said. Well, and your conspicuous height, of course,” he chuckled. “Your grandfather was also puny. About eight centimeters short of the standard Alpha Plus! Must be the mistaken alcohol in your blood. Bad heredity! No way of getting away from that, I’m afraid! At least not here on the Isle of Man, that’s for sure.”

  “You sound as if there was a place where one could,” Adam muttered, slightly vexed by this verbal attack.

  “What!?” shouted the old man, turning his huge, hairy satellite dish of an ear to him.

  “You’ll have to speak a lot louder than that, son! That is, if you want to be heard, of course! My hearing is no longer as sharp as it used to be! Neither is anything else of mine, for that matter!” he added angrily. “So, what was it you were saying?”

  “I said you sound as if there was a place where one could actually do something like that,” the young man repeated the statement at the top of his voice.

  “There’s really no need to shout. I’m not totally deaf you know!” the old man boomed back, picking the satellite dish with his little finger and then studying its filthy tip with fleeting curiosity.

  “But you said…”

  “Never mind what I said,” the old man wiped the finger on the woolen plaid. “Just try not to shout.”