The Demi-Monde: Winter Read Online Free
Author: Rod Rees
It wasn’t polite. Anyway, she wasn’t ‘pretty’, she was more than just ‘pretty’: she was tall and slim and beautiful. Eat your heart out, Halle Berry.
‘And she is an African-American,’ observed the General absent-mindedly.
What had that to do with the price of beans? Haven’t these guys heard of racial discrimination?
‘Miss Thomas is in first-class physical condition and, as you rightly observe, she has the correct racial antecedents,’ agreed the Captain, who made it sound as though they were discussing a second-hand car. ‘The rigours of the Demi-Monde shouldn’t pose her any problems.’
Demi-Monde? wondered Ella. Weird name for a club.
‘Psychological assessment?’
‘Excellent,’ confirmed the Captain. ‘Her profile is an almost perfect match for the psychological template developed by PsychOps. She has a robust psyche, is flexible-minded and quite pragmatic. Phlegmatic, I suppose the word is. Phlegmatic with just a dash of rebelliousness.’
Phlegmatic?
Now there was a word Ella didn’t hear every day. That was a ten-dollar word and she went to a two-bit school. To the guysshe hung with ‘phlegmatic’ was what you did when you spat on the sidewalk. She flicked through her synonyms. Phlegmatic aka cool.
Yeah, she was cool. So cool she was straight from the freezer, man.
‘Miss Thomas has almost optimum levels of both serotonin receptors and p-eleven … she should have no difficulty in coping with the stress levels extant in the Demi-Monde. She also scored very highly in both the leadership and the initiative tests … very highly.’
Yeah, if the Army ever wanted someone to organise the building of a raft from a couple of old oil drums, some drift-wood and a length of rope and use it to float across a river then Ella was their girl.
The things they’d made her do over the past week.
Ella looked to check out the two men who were discussing her in such an impersonal way but neither of them met her gaze. She had the distinct impression that they had started to talk around her, as though she wasn’t there with them in the room. It took an effort to still a feeling of irritation. She took another deep breath, reminding herself as she did of how much she needed the gig.
The rent was due tomorrow.
‘She also scored well in the IQ tests,’ added the Captain encouragingly. ‘Very well. At the upper end of the top quartile.’
The General looked up from the report and spent several long seconds silently examining Ella. He didn’t say a word: it was as though he was reluctant to speak. Finally he let out a long, doleful sigh and turned to the Captain. ‘Miss Thomas is your preferred candidate? She is very young; only eighteen last birthday.’
‘Miss Thomas is old beyond her years, Sir. She’s by far themost impressive of all the candidates, and her resemblance to Professor Bole’s Dupe is uncanny.’
She’d got the gig!
Though this Dupe shit wasn’t strumming her strings.
The Captain noted her confusion. ‘A Dupe is our term for a cyber-duplicate of a real person.’ The General looked across the desk towards Ella, his expression hugely serious: the shadows under his eyes seemed suddenly to have got deeper and darker.
There was another long silence. Finally, reluctantly, he spoke. ‘Miss Thomas … how would you like to earn a million dollars?’
2
The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004
UnFunDaMentalism is an array of political, racial, metaPhysical, sexual and social ideas and philosophies relating to the purification of the Demi-Mondian race, the triumph of the Aryan people and the rehabilitation of the semi-mythological Pre-Folk. Adopted as the state religion of the ForthRight, the ultimate aim of UnFunDaMentalism is, by a process of selective breeding and measured culling, to eliminate the contamination of the UnderMentionable races from the Demi-Monde’s Aryan stock (Aryans are generally considered to be the Anglo-Slavic races) and by doing so to return
‘And she is an African-American,’ observed the General absent-mindedly.
What had that to do with the price of beans? Haven’t these guys heard of racial discrimination?
‘Miss Thomas is in first-class physical condition and, as you rightly observe, she has the correct racial antecedents,’ agreed the Captain, who made it sound as though they were discussing a second-hand car. ‘The rigours of the Demi-Monde shouldn’t pose her any problems.’
Demi-Monde? wondered Ella. Weird name for a club.
‘Psychological assessment?’
‘Excellent,’ confirmed the Captain. ‘Her profile is an almost perfect match for the psychological template developed by PsychOps. She has a robust psyche, is flexible-minded and quite pragmatic. Phlegmatic, I suppose the word is. Phlegmatic with just a dash of rebelliousness.’
Phlegmatic?
Now there was a word Ella didn’t hear every day. That was a ten-dollar word and she went to a two-bit school. To the guysshe hung with ‘phlegmatic’ was what you did when you spat on the sidewalk. She flicked through her synonyms. Phlegmatic aka cool.
Yeah, she was cool. So cool she was straight from the freezer, man.
‘Miss Thomas has almost optimum levels of both serotonin receptors and p-eleven … she should have no difficulty in coping with the stress levels extant in the Demi-Monde. She also scored very highly in both the leadership and the initiative tests … very highly.’
Yeah, if the Army ever wanted someone to organise the building of a raft from a couple of old oil drums, some drift-wood and a length of rope and use it to float across a river then Ella was their girl.
The things they’d made her do over the past week.
Ella looked to check out the two men who were discussing her in such an impersonal way but neither of them met her gaze. She had the distinct impression that they had started to talk around her, as though she wasn’t there with them in the room. It took an effort to still a feeling of irritation. She took another deep breath, reminding herself as she did of how much she needed the gig.
The rent was due tomorrow.
‘She also scored well in the IQ tests,’ added the Captain encouragingly. ‘Very well. At the upper end of the top quartile.’
The General looked up from the report and spent several long seconds silently examining Ella. He didn’t say a word: it was as though he was reluctant to speak. Finally he let out a long, doleful sigh and turned to the Captain. ‘Miss Thomas is your preferred candidate? She is very young; only eighteen last birthday.’
‘Miss Thomas is old beyond her years, Sir. She’s by far themost impressive of all the candidates, and her resemblance to Professor Bole’s Dupe is uncanny.’
She’d got the gig!
Though this Dupe shit wasn’t strumming her strings.
The Captain noted her confusion. ‘A Dupe is our term for a cyber-duplicate of a real person.’ The General looked across the desk towards Ella, his expression hugely serious: the shadows under his eyes seemed suddenly to have got deeper and darker.
There was another long silence. Finally, reluctantly, he spoke. ‘Miss Thomas … how would you like to earn a million dollars?’
2
The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004
UnFunDaMentalism is an array of political, racial, metaPhysical, sexual and social ideas and philosophies relating to the purification of the Demi-Mondian race, the triumph of the Aryan people and the rehabilitation of the semi-mythological Pre-Folk. Adopted as the state religion of the ForthRight, the ultimate aim of UnFunDaMentalism is, by a process of selective breeding and measured culling, to eliminate the contamination of the UnderMentionable races from the Demi-Monde’s Aryan stock (Aryans are generally considered to be the Anglo-Slavic races) and by doing so to return
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