Even Braver New World State

by Rick K. Reut

  If Gianna did want to gain additional control over Adam, it was not because It wanted to turn him into Its private sex slave, but because It wanted to make him as public as he could possibly be by persuading him to change his sex and so turn him into a transsexual she-male, a task It simply couldn’t complete without his voluntary consent. And so, it was in order to gain this consent, which would automatically render the Controller’s campaign of converting most of the Islanders into Its faith a success, that Its Freudship tried to trick Adam into a state of mind, in which he would be willing to do absolutely anything for his new mistress.

  This was the truth. But this was also the truth that no member of the Controller’s Council could be allowed to know, for it had been plainly stated in the memorandum of the annual meeting that the adult inhabitants of the Isolated Islands could be converted only if they expressed such a desire of their own accord. Otherwise, it would endanger the entire edifice of the New World State, which was a risk most of Council members would never agree to run, preferring total annihilation of the Isolated Islands’ populace as the only possible alternative.

  Thus, that true-like lies to the West Asian Controller, as well as that love torture of Adam, were supposed to be good gestures on Gianna Globe’s part, since their ultimate goal was to save as many innocent lives as possible. Besides, Controller Globe did not think that Adam’s current plight was that painful. In fact, Its Freudship was quite sure that it would be better for everyone including Adam himself in the end, when he would finally be rewarded for his undeserved suffering and cured of all his ills.

  So far, however, he certainly had to stay sick and suffer. And suffer a lot, for there can’t possibly be any romantic love without suffering, as suffering is love’s only food and drink. Romantic love feeds on suffering the same way a snake feeds on rabbit flesh. Sometimes even feasts on it, in case the rabbit happens to be way too sensitive and so especially enjoyable for a skillful sadist. And since Adam was exactly such a rabbit – tender, trusting, innocent and inexperienced – it was no problem at all for the European Continent Controller, who, like any other member of the Controllers’ Council, had to have a doctor’s degree in practical psychology.

  All the European Controller needed to do was to deprive Adam of any chance to satisfy his sexual appetite for Its body. Keep him just out of reach. Not too far and yet not too close. Like the earth’s surface from the sun, which would scorch it if it was too close or freeze it if it was too far off. The distance had to be just right to render the soil fertile. Just enough for the venomous fruit of feeling to grow, thrive and multiply on it. And this soil was Adam’s soul, whereas the sun was Gianna Globe’s body. The body had to make sure that the soul was always revolving around it, being permanently present in its orbit so that the body, like the sun, could excite this tiny satellite planet to life. And this was exactly what the Controller was currently busy doing on a daily basis.

  Ever since Gianna Globe had started Its promotion campaign tour around the world, Adam had been compelled to share the European Controller’s company every day. Sometimes even every night, when the couple took prolonged intercontinental trips in Its Freudship’s Trans-Rocket, soaring all the way up to the orbit and staying there.

  All this time the Controller remained relentlessly cold to Adam. Colder than a northern stream to a southern sea, colder than the open space they were in, since even space, though airless, was still open, whereas Controller Globe was always tight shut for him and him only, for It certainly kept having other sex partners at every presented opportunity, doing all It could to make sure that Adam knew everything about Its devilish debaucheries.

  There is no better manure to guarantee the growth of the weeds of romantic love than jealousy. And the more of this manure a man gets, the more the weeds of love will thrive in his soul till they turn it into a barren field of hatred. However, turning Adam’s soul into such a field was never a part of Its Freudship’s plan. The European Controller wasn’t a woman, and so It couldn’t derive any sadistic pleasure from being a source of someone’s pain. Only typical naturally born women and men could do that. That was one of the reasons they’d been exiled from the New World State around eight decades earlier, rendering it free from all gender-generated gardeners of senseless sorrow and suffering.

  As for Adam’s sorrow and suffering, it most certainly made perfect sense under the European Chief’s constant control and supervision as a sacrifice to the State’s Greater Good. Besides, that sorrow was only temporary, with an exact time limit, at the end of which Controller Globe was planning not only to cure all Adam’s ills and injuries, but also to compensate him with something extra for his heartache, provided he was a good boy and behaved exactly the way he was told to.

  And so, he suffered. Suffered like no one else on the mainland since the death of John Savage. Adam had read about him in Helmholtz’s book and found his behavior truly bizarre, to say the least. To refuse to have sex with a woman who asked for it and he was actually able and wanted to have sex with, was an apogee of absurdity. One could certainly understand that kind of conduct in case it was a sign of protest, a way of objecting to being mistreated and denied something one wants to have. But when one was actually offered what he wanted, and he, instead of taking it and saying thank you, spurned it and called someone who wished to please him insulting names, and then killed himself only because he finally had what he wanted… well, that was not only over the line of common civility, but over the line of logic.

  As a result, Adam considered the Savage a very stupid man. Even more stupid than the average Epsilon, for the average Epsilon had no choice but to behave the way it did, while he had one but still preferred to behave stupidly. But in spite of his swelling scorn for the Savage’s stupidity and cowardice (yes, cowardice, for what else could it be that prevented him from enjoying his life in the Brave New World but cowardice and fear to take things easily instead of taking them so hard), Adam couldn’t help noticing certain similarities between himself and that pathetic fool.

  The Savage had certainly been a coward. But wasn’t he one too? Especially if one took into account that there are different kinds of cowardice. Some people seem to be brave only because they fear being called cowards much more than the things the fear of which makes other people call them cowards. It is a different kind of fear, fear of other people’s opinion, but it is still fear. It takes courage to choose to comport oneself in a cowardly way before other people without looking for excuses. It also takes courage to admit that you are a coward, sometimes even more courage than to stop seeming like one. After all, it’s only a matter of perception, and perception tends to change.

  Adam’s perception of himself in the braver new world around him was also changing. He felt like he was becoming a little braver as well. But he still couldn’t stop feeling like the coward the Savage had been completely. The reason for that was that he was even more of a Savage in the even braver new world than the Savage had been in the brave new one. Not only had he been brought up beyond its borders, but he actually looked different from all its denizens. The Savage, had he chosen to change his indigenous savage clothes would have looked like a standard Alpha Plus in the Brave New World, whereas Adam had to change much more than that to be able to blend in.

  And so, just like the Savage, he was afraid. Afraid to change. He would often think about a conversation he’d had with Controller Globe on one of those fourteen draining days and almost totally sleepless nights they had spent together on the promotion tour. He remembered it so well because it was the first and so far only time he’d gathered enough courage to make tangible advances to Its Freudship.

  It happened in course of one of their transcontinental flights from Berlin to Bangkok. Or was it Calcutta? Adam couldn’t remember. After this controversial conversation with the Controller, everything was covered with thick fog of forgetfulness.

  He vaguely recalled himself sitting at the back of the trans-rocket’s main saloon, in one of its c
reepily comfortable wingchairs, which somehow didn’t seem to comfort him that much this time. He felt frightfully fidgety and for some reason couldn’t stop staring at Controller Globe who had just entered the saloon and sat in a similar wingchair fairly far from him. Adam, however, could still see It, and it seemed that this oddly ostentatious ice show had been staged on purpose just to attract his attention. After all, the Controller could have chosen any other chair in any other compartment if It truly felt as much contempt for him and his company as It appeared to at every presented opportunity.

  What the Ford for? thought he, having mastered most of the New World State’s most common interjections, but still having a Freud of a problem with mastering some of its inhabitants most intimate motifs. Perhaps this particular trans-queen was much more womanish than he’d suspected. If so, It must also be much more passive in Its behavior. That is, not being used to approaching anybody, It prefers to be approached instead. Despite his disastrously unsuccessful amorous experience on the Island, though partly due to it, he knew well enough that the majority of women very rarely made sexual advances to men. And when they did so – as a matter of epic exception – it was only to those men who, they were confident, were confident enough to make those advances themselves.

  But unfortunately for Adam, he wasn’t one of such men. His horrendous heredity combined with completely incorrect conditioning prevented him from feeling confident enough to woo a woman. And with women those feelings had to come absolutely naturally. There was no time to think. One had to act instantly and on instinct alone. But Adam just couldn’t do it. The same way he couldn’t grab a knife and stab someone in the heart. There is just too much thought and therefore too much feeling and indecision inside.

  Before you can kill someone, you have to kill yourself first by becoming a callous, cold-blooded beast, a crocodile of a man to be wanted to be had by a woman who has an inbred weakness for anything hard and heartless. And that is because no woman really needs a man. What she needs is a solid brick wall with a perpetual glory-hole hard-on and a safe deposit box full of cash securely immured in it. A cash box only she has the key and knows the combination to. But Adam wasn’t such a bank vault, and women sensed that. They sensed that with some sixth or seventh sense nature had equipped them with at some stage of evolution to sense exactly such things for natural selection’s sake so that only the strongest offspring would survive. And so sense these things they did, and when they did so, they shunned him like a rabid bitch a bath of warm water.

  Maybe she was one of those sex-bound dirty bitches dying to be put on a leash and punished? With a whip! Adam thought, staring at Controller Globe. Still, there was no way he could be completely certain. Unless… The Controller looked up from the laptop and their eyes met. Adam instantly averted his gaze and pretended to be looking out of the window with his heart hammering its way out of his chest. Like a hare caught in the corner of a cabbage field, he could feel the Controller’s all-seeing stare coil around him like a snake. As cold and slippery as his own sweat now breaking out all over his body, he could sense the snaky stare tie him down head to foot. He felt he had to do something to raise himself above suspicion. But what?! What could he possibly do? His thoughts felt so transparent that it seemed pointless to deny them.

  The only way to escape further embarrassment was to acknowledge them with a smile of fake confidence plastered across his face. At least that was what he thought, shifting his eyes back to Its Freudship and stretching his lips as wide as his tense facial muscles let him. It looked pathetic and felt even worse, but there was nothing he could do. Besides, the Controller did not smile back, choosing to return to work as if he wasn’t even there.

  The Controller’s conduct embarrassed Adam even more and even enraged a little, making him want to win Its attention at all costs. Maybe that’s exactly what this cold-blooded bitch is waiting for: to be won! He thought, springing up from his seat and starting towards the typing Controller.

  With his heart hammering even harder than before – like an enhanced echo of every step he took and keyboard punch he heard – Adam approached the yawning chasm of chance. Trying to seem cool and careless, ergo confident, he plopped into the pink wingchair directly opposite to the Controller’s, keeping the crooked crossbow of his smile ready for reaction. However, to his huge surprise, no reaction followed. The Controller appeared absolutely absorbed by the process of writing, with Its infinitely long legs crossed on top of one another. Strange, thought Adam, clearing his throat with a cough. Still no reaction. The Controller’s eyes remained locked on the other side of the laptop’s screen.

  Adam watched Its Freudship for a while and then, annoyed at Its indifference, slid down from his seat onto his knees and carefully slipped the shoe off the Controller’s hanging foot, revealing a neat row of pearl-nailed, milk-chocolate toes. A pleasant smell of peanut butter and strawberry cream lotions mixed with the scent of sweet she-male sweat tickled his nose. Adam raised his eyes from the toes all the way up to the Controller’s face, still concealed by the computer’s screen. Nothing but the steady percussion-like sound of swiftly pressed keys came from behind it.

  Alright, thought Adam, focusing on the foot again, as he opened his mouth and testily licked the big toe, which happened to taste even better than it smelled. Then he looked up at the laptop again. Still no response. Even more emboldened by his indignation at being so straightforwardly ignored, Adam stuck the whole toe inside his mouth and started sucking it stubbornly.

  After a while his anger started to simmer down a little, giving way to a warm creamy sensation of serenity that spread through his whole body. He felt like a newly born baby nibbling at its mother’s nipple for fresh milk. The whole wide world suddenly ceased to exist, having narrowed down to the tip of Gianna Globe’s toe, this sweet, succulent, sweaty toe he was now sucking as if it was her cock.

  Adam was on the brink of sucking himself to sleep and starting to wet-dream about it when the sound of Controller Globe’s low chest voice (stern, but calm and clear in his ears) startled him out of his newly regained paradise.

  “What do you think you’re doing down there, Mister Marx?”

  Suddenly all his serenity was gone. Like a drug in the blood stream of a veteran addict, it dissolved into pure dread.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he mumbled, trying to conceal his fear with a hardworking smile tearing through his tense facial muscles, before sticking the toe back into his mouth and mounting his eyes back to the laptop. The Controller had lowered the latter and was staring down at him with an air of steady sternness like a BDSM mistress at Its sex slave.

  “It looks like you’re licking my toe,” commented the Controller, coolly.

  “Moo-hoo,” Adam lowed, with the toe still in his mouth.

  “I don’t remember giving you permission to do that, Mister Marx. So, please, return me my toe and take your teat – I mean – seat!”

  Confronted by the Controller’s cold, snake-like stare, Adam had no choice but to comply. He reluctantly pulled himself up and perched on the edge of the pink wingchair behind him, feeling overwhelmingly embarrassed.

  “I need to tell you something, and I want you to listen very carefully. Can you do me that favor, Mister Marx?”

  “Can you call me Adam?” he muttered meekly, looking up into Controller Globe’s eyes with fading hope.

  “No, Mister Marx. I can’t say I can call you that just yet. And even though it does go against the law of mandatory promiscuity in the New World State, I must ask you to keep the distance between us undefiled.”

  There was a long spell of silence.

  “Why?” asked Adam, finally managing to master the tremor in his voice.

  “Cause you’re different,” smiled the Controller.

  “Different?”

  “Yes, different. Obsolete, if you like. And I, alas, cannot be attracted to such an obsolete-looking creature.

  “So, I have no chance?” he asked quietly, almos
t incoherently, with his eyes dropping from the Controller’s face.

  “Not if you stay the way you are instead of becoming what I want you to be.”

  “What you want me to be?” echoed Adam.

  “Yes, what I want you to be,” said the Controller, turning the laptop around.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “The Trans-Formation

  of a

  Naturally Born, Full-Grown Human Male

  into a

  Trans-Human She-Male”

  This was the title of an article the Controller was working on. Written for a popular Trans-Net periodical called “Transsexualism Today”, it claimed to have a viable solution to the most serious challenge the New World State had ever faced. Namely, what to do with the Isolated Islands and their inhabitants who, by living conserved in their pre-transsexual past, posed a potential threat to the security and wellbeing of the whole the globalized world.

  “For the past several years, the Central Transvestigations’ Agency has succeeded in detecting and eliminating over thirty terrorist organizations operating on the islands. Fortunately, none of them have managed to build a network powerful enough to subvert the New World State’s order so far. But their hate-fueled ideology remains rather robust and so requires either rapid eradication or even more rapid reconciliation…,” read one of the paragraphs.