9. CodeRed #2
They sell it as freedom of choice, curated design, and as progress, but progress doesn’t erase women and call it innovation.
These cities are run by men who’ve never been told no, who’ve turned desire into product, and obedience into design. They build systems where women are either decorative, silent, or simulated, and then they have the audacity to say equality has been achieved.
For my generation, though? I get it. Those of us who can afford to buy love, do so because we seek mirrors for ourselves and our desires. We still want to find that perfect someone who won’t judge us for being gifted or different.
We still want something real.
I don’t want perfection. I just want someone. A messy, human choice. I’ll take their anger, their joy, their love. All of it. I want a world where no one can be replaced by light and code and told it’s an upgrade.
The corporations won’t give human emotion back to us. Perhaps that’s why we join the rebellion, so we can forcefully take it.
A couple passes by, snapping me out of my rant. Only I can enter a room made for pleasure and fill it with overthinking and rage.
They smile at me as they pass, his holo-date gliding over the backlit tiles of the floor.
My face lights up red with the reflection of the bar as I watch them slip into a side door. I sit back further to hide myself.
A cybernetic AI woman approaches me from behind the bar.
All honed angles and soft curves, her skin glitches every few seconds between flawless, porcelain-like skin and raw flickers of chrome.
One eye glows crimson, the other a deep human brown, like she can use it to see your internal code.
Her hair flows like liquid fiber optics, colors shifting with the music, scarlet when she smiles, ultraviolet when she frowns.
From the waist up, she’s almost entirely human; from the waist down, faint seams in her skin suggest hidden mechanics, probably created by some tech asshole at VikkCorp.
“Welcome,” she purrs, voice like smooth static, “What do you desire tonight?” She shoves a napkin at me. Before I can answer, she’s already using that cold red eye to scan me. The ice blue words scroll across a screen built into her wrist:
STRESS LEVELS: ELEVATED
CURIOSITY: RISING
FEAR: 37%
AROUSAL POTENTIAL: 92%
Yes, yes, I’m a ball of female rage who hasn’t had a date in a while...now kindly go fuck yourself while I address this arousal potential.
She cuts me off in an obvious hurry to get to other customers. “Dream, love, ecstasy, nostalgia, which will it be?” She wears a choker made of broken circuit boards that make a faint click-click when she moves.
“I’ll just have water for now please.” I’m so lame.
She chuckles robotically “First timer, eh?” She points a finger at a spout that dispenses ice and water into a glowing glass.
“That obvious?” I sink down in my seat further.
She walks away. I tap my glass nervously. A slight breeze of movement registers behind me, I turn to see who it is. I don’t think I’m ready to participate yet. Still observing.
On the velvet bed in the far corner, a very tall man stands in the shadows, as if he commands the darkness.
He shrugs out of a long black coat, letting it slide from his shoulders and fall soundlessly over the back of a stool.
His pants and boots stay on, a deliberate choice, like he’s on a mission.
He’s shirtless, sculpted, and devastating. An obsidian dragon tattoo coils down the length of his spine, ink so dark it seems to disappear in the low red light.
Its tail disappears just beneath the waistband of his pants like an invitation. His face is hidden behind a mask, sleek and fox-shaped.
I don’t know who he is. I only know the room seems to tilt toward him, like everything in here was designed for his indulgence.
I glance around the room only to realize most of the crowd now has masks or hoods up to conceal their identities.
Some sort of masquerade? Corporates trying to hide maybe?
Who knows, but I don’t see the point since basically none of this is real, the beauty of the DreamNet and VR melding seamlessly.
He doesn’t sit at the bar like others. Instead, he claims his own space at the end of the bed like he comes here often, a king without a throne. I turn to get a better look without him noticing.
Stars, what’s wrong with me? I can’t look away.
He faces the corner, and I get a side glimpse of more tattoos running up his chest to the top of his neck. Daggers and vines swirl downward and come to a point just below his waistband, just as an ‘X’ would mark the spot for treasure. My brows raise in interest.
He steps into the neon glow, and I get an even better view. Not a fox mask. A kitsune. Clever, dangerous, a trickster from Japanese lore.
Hot. Mask kink unlocked.
You find out something new about yourself every day in this city.
The mask’s painted grin hides his expression. His movement hums with the kind of confidence that commands attention. He’s certainly got mine.
He’s not alone.
A woman with raven dark hair peppered with neon-pink highlights, much like my own, appears beside him in nothing but a black lace thong. Her face is hidden in shadow, but I can sense that this man dreamed up his own custom holo-beauty just for this occasion.
What I wouldn’t give to be looked at like that, worshipped like that.
One of the elite must be slumming it with the rest of us tonight.