Smokedawg “Tales of the Poisoned World: Expressions of Power”

About the Author

J. Jefferson (aka Smokedawg) is a middle-aged editor and journalist manifesting his mid-life crisis with a flurry of fiction writing instead of a sports car and trophy mistress. He began work on a sci-fi novel in 2008, then fell into erotica in 2009 by starting his blog ”Better With Smoke” (http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com) before branching out to the Smoking Fetish Kingdom, the Celis T. Rono Writer’s Collective, SmokingStories, and elsewhere with smoking and non-smoking erotica, as well as non-erotic fare. You can e-mail him at: pseudojeff@msn.com.

I began my “Poisoned World” stories with the “Venomous Passions” trilogy at: http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com/category/venomous-passions-trilogy/

Tales of the Poisoned World:

Expressions of Power

Noon came dimly in New Philadelphia, as was usually the case—the sun a sepia globe, it’s golden light filtered through the constant dun haze in the sky. Except when it rained hard with droplets that stung the skin, and cleared the air enough for people to remember the sky was supposed to be blue.

Or at least bluish.

Noon on this day was darker than usual, at least in the office of the city’s Executive Mayor, thanks to the mood of the man who had three months earlier won 60% of the vote to claim this office. Oswald K. Drummond IV. The third-richest man in the city and someone who was accustomed to being farther in-city, surrounded by only the rich. Cocooned from the dregs.

The central government building were in a clean part of the city. A safe place. A moneyed city-sector. But still, not the gem that City Center was. Where the upper stratas lived.

But this is where I need to be, to serve God and my fellow leaders of society, Oswald groaned inwardly. I’ll give up a few comforts to do what needs doing.

“Abominations and dangerous criminals,” he muttered.

“Pardon, sir?” asked Danica Peters, the City Administrator. Hers was a position of employment, not of election, and she carried out most of the real work of the executive mayoral office. And yet in the few months that Oswald Drummond had been in office, this was the first time he had summoned her to his office.

He’s tossed duties and orders at me from afar until now, just like most of the pompous upper strata who do the old-worlder religious thing, she considered. To them, women aren’t important except for bearing genetically healthy heirs—and yet he can’t just fire me outright. Which must be hell, especially for a Holy Word Baptist like himself.

The irony of his religious preconceptions was that she herself was one of the relatively few people anymore who went to a traditional old-worlder kind of church. They were both, technically speaking, Christian. She was Catholic, but the pastor at her church didn’t feel beholden to Vatican bullshit—unlike the other two Catholic churches in the city that hung on the Pope’s every edict—and he preached more about matters of the spirit than piddling little rules and social distinctions that God couldn’t possibly care about.

If the Eastern Regional Diocese wasn’t so worried about losing more faithful to the looser and more carnal religions, they would have defrocked Pastor Ortega long ago, she realized.

Finally, the mayor seemed to register her query, or at least decided that he’d kept her waiting an appropriate amount of time for someone of her “weaker feminine status.”

“Pardon?” he repeated back to her. “You do not know what I speak of? I speak of the Sprawls, Miss Peters.”

She hated the way he emphasized that old-world “miss” to remind her that women in his strata were married or kept, not employed.

“What about the sprawlhoods, sir?” she asked, keeping her voice neutral, and wondering what had possessed the voters to pick a man such as this for a change from the previous, incompetent mayor. Why replace incompetence with zealotry? “It is true that much crime occurs there, but they haven’t posed any particular threat or problem in years.”

“The problem is their very existence, woman,” he snarled, dropping pretense of civility with her. “The Sprawls hide a multitude of not just sinners but criminals. People—no, most of them aren’t even people anymore—creatures who flout the genome laws and alter their bodies in ways that are not simply illegal but repellant, and possibly dangerous to the genetic health of those who still call themselves proud to be unaltered humans.”

“Yes, but they are contained, sir,” she reminded them. “They have their sprawlhoods, and they rarely venture into the mid-strata neighborhoods and almost never into upper-strata city-sectors.”

“But they exist. And they breed. And they continue to alter themselves and pursue dangerous technologies,” he snapped. “And they offer nothing back to the city at all.”

“Not true, sir,” Danica interjected. “While there is a lower percentage of citizens there who actually pay taxes, the sprawlhoods do have a net-positive effect on the economy of the city and do contribute heavily to business throughout the…”

“So, are you counting criminal activities—the illicit drugs and the forbidden forms of prostitution and all the rest, Miss Peters?” he growled.

“Actually, sir, while those things do actually add to the city’s budget in various indirect ways, even when you factor out those trades, the Sprawls are still important. The other businesses and activities that are totally legit or that avoid skirting the edge of illegal ones—and that we simply see as dirty or unpleasant—are still important. Fringies and Wyldthings may scoff at a lot of the laws and ignore them in the sprawlhoods, but many of them actually work for people like you who own companies. Well, the Fringies, at least.”

Oswald had a look on his face that suggested he was annoyed at being unable to ruffle her, but then he put on a more contemplative face on and reached into his humidor to pull out a cigar, and light it slowly, meditatively.

Danica took this as a cue that she could relax a bit, and pulled out one of her Femmeboro Citrons, a lemony-scented cigarette that she had been smoking since high school. Oswald looked up through the smoke of his cigar and shook his head.

“No, you will not smoke one of those in my office, Miss Peters. Many like me who attend churches and temples eschew smoking entirely, but while I respect a cigar, with nothing but tobacco in it, I will not tolerate one of those chem-filled abominations sullying my lungs.”

She slid her cigarette back into the pack, and looked him in the eyes. He might want to fire her, but he’d have to get the Legislative Mayor or the Judicial Mayor on his side to do that, and both of them were secular, and hated everything Oswald stood for. “Then if you are going to keep me here for whatever speech you have, give me one of those,” Danica said, pointing to his humidor. “I’m not going to suffer this without some nicotine.”

He made a grumbling noise deep in his throat, but then opened the humidor and tossed a cigar to her. It was rude, but Danica said nothing, and simply snatched it out of the air, then lit it with her hotpen. “So,” she continued as she blew out a thick stream of acrid smoke, “what is it that’s bothering you, sir?”

“Why don’t the police go into the Sprawls and arrest the overt criminals at least,” he said. “It vexes me that there are Outliers in there—being who’ve made themselves almost wholly inhuman—who not only flout genetic laws but also deal in very illegal activities that leak out into the neighborhoods.”

“I wouldn’t think you would care what happens in the neighborhoods, until closer to re-election time,” Danica drawled though a mouthful of smoke. “As long as it doesn’t creep into the city-sectors where you and yours live.”

“But it has, Miss Peters. One of my long-standing business allies, a very competent and traditional Hebrew gentleman, has had to disown his only son for taking up with Wyldthings and has had to make his eldest daughter his defined heir.”

“Among your religious circles, a female heir is frowned upon,” Danica said, “but there are plenty of secular upper-stratas who couldn’t care less. Why take one lost Jewish boy so personally? Particularly when he’s not your son?”

“It’s a symptom, Miss Peters,” Oswald responded. “Why do we let such actions continue in our city. Why don’t we arrest the criminals?”

“Because the average citizen cares more about the police keeping murder, kidnapping, property destruction and robbery rates down than they do about violations of body purity laws or the occasional luring of a mid-strata or upper-strata citizen to the dark side,” Danica said. “Plus, many citizens like their drugs, and the best ones come from the Sprawls.”

“I’ll tell you why the Sprawls go untended and unpunished,” Oswald countered. “Because the sprawlhood denizens kill the police when they go in, unless they go in full-force with tanks and armor. And the police will only do that if they are forced to hunt truly high-profile game, like a terrorist or a thrill-killer.”

“The sprawlhoods do a good job keeping things in line within their borders,” Danica responded. “They hire vigilantes and form them up in teams, and they have hired militias. There’s even some coordination of activities from time to time. So they don’t need police, because they provide their own.”

“And yet they let city services in unmolested,” Oswald said, seeming to ignore her—she realized, though, that he was doing anything but. “Street repair crews can get in. They will let people in to fix power conduits. Fire safety and ambulance services are allowed in. But not the police.”

“Small price for us to pay for keeping the peace and keeping the budgets intact,” Danica answered. “Better than going in with cannons blazing.”

“Not in my view,” Oswald snapped.

“I suspect I might know what you’re planning, sir, and I wouldn’t recommend it. You should consult with the Legislative Mayor once the City Council goes into session again in six weeks before you mobilize the police in some kind of provocative action.”

“I don’t care what you recommend, woman,” Oswald said. “I may have to suffer you, but you can’t simply ignore my orders. And I’m not planning to simply send our police into a bloodbath to round up the abominations. I have something much more effective in mind.”

Danica was glad to have the cigar in hand, as she listened in horrified patience at Oswald’s intentions. Because there was no way she could have remained as calm as she did without something to smoke.

But, she thought as she went back to her office two hours later, wondering how she would survive this plan, it would have been so much better if I could have smoked down half a pack of Citrons instead.

* * *

The first few days of Oswald’s machinations saw Danica ordering all garbage collection and waste processing crews to stand down from any activities in New Philadelphia’s five sprawlhoods.

She was very careful in the webnet and comm transmissions announcing cessation of waste-handling services to note that this was a mayoral edict, in the hopes that she could keep any kind of retribution aimed away from her and at the top office instead.

But two days later, not feeling terribly confident that such subtle distinctions would be appreciated, she contacted Pastor Ortega and told him that she needed to get a message to the top Outlier clans. These weren’t people Danica desired to become involved with directly. But her pastor’s activities brought him in into contact with Fringies. Fringies interacted with Wyldthing populations. Wyldthings ultimately answered—well, most of them anyway—to the Outlier families who were the “upper strata” of what society considered the lowest of the low.

Low, but not without power, Danica thought. Low, but not without wealth.

After another two days, Pastor Ortega told her that he was 90% certain the message had gotten to where it needed to go, and handed her a printsheet he had received with an image of the mayor on one side and her on the other. But between them had been drawn a stark black line.

It didn’t make her sleep with total ease, but at least it allowed her to sleep at night fitfully.

In the end, though, the cessation of waste services went off with no repercussions. The Sprawls had always been good about making use of things that others cast away. Aside from a smattering of vocal complaints, no one rioted over the lack of services. Though Danica was fairly certain that much of the waste would be reused in consumer products, drinks, food, drugs and clothing that was produced in the Sprawls. Meaning that one or two mayoral administrations from now, the office-holder was going to have to deal with issues around all the toxic backlash to the mid-strata citizens that might arise from those tainted products.

That lack of angry response, though, also meant that the Sprawls weren’t cowed, and when Oswald attempted to get some police into one of the sprawlhoods, they were repelled, with one death and two injuries.

The next week, Oswald had her shut down roadway and walkway maintenance in the Sprawls. This time, the response was more noticeable, as Fringies and Wyldthings tore up pieces of the streets and walks in low-strata neighborhoods just outside the Sprawls. When that didn’t get the city to relent, they started tearing up pieces of the mid-strata neighborhoods. Oswald simply had Danica redeploy the crews that weren’t going into the sprawlhoods, and told her to send in the police after some genetic criminals on his personal hit list.

The police were repelled again, with three deaths among them, and one among the Fringies.

Then Oswald told her to begin rolling brownouts in the power grids of the Sprawls.

Not only did this not gain the police freedom of movement in Sprawl, but it gained Danica an unwanted visitor instead.

* * *

She smelled the smoke in her apartment the moment she opened the door, and she paused; got ready to close the door again and flee.

“I am not here to hurt you. Yet,” said a voice from inside. “Please enter. If not, if you run, an associate will tackle you at the end of the hall and drag you back. I am Huang.”

Danica swallowed hard, entered her home, and turned on the light.

The man on her sofa smiled to show her his twin fangs amongst his teeth. To let her know he was a Vamp Outlier. To let her know she was dealing with a feratu specifically, one of the more genetically altered groups among the Vamps. He then put his lips around the end of a tube, sucked deep, and exhaled a stream of sweet smoke. Danica saw the belt-hookah at his side. She sat down, and waited.

“Why are you doing this to us, Administrator Peters?” Huang asked.

“My hands are tied,” she answered.

“No, they are not, but I could correct that if you desire some recreation before we continue this talk,” Huang said. Danica was uncomfortably aware of his lean and well-muscled body. The sleek line of his jaw and the almond-shaped eyes.

Also very aware of the wetness growing between her own thighs. No doubt the pheromones wafting from him. She was grateful they had sent a feratu rather than an incubus or succubus, or she’d be doomed. She might be able to hold out against a feratu’s biochemical aura.

“No, I have far too many responsibilities and discussions to have with colleagues tonight to spend time on recreation,” Danica lied, hoping to worry him with the prospect that someone might make note if she went missing tonight. “But you know what I mean. I cannot countermand the mayor’s edicts and there is no way I can sneak city services into the Sprawls.”

“How have we come to this point, Administrator Peters?” Huang asked. “For years, there has been détente. We are patient, and we know that in 50 to 100 years, unaltered humans like you will be few in number. Servants or slaves. Fringies and Wyldthings will inherit the Earth, at least in the Americas, Asia and Europe. And Outliers will rule above them. But perhaps we should not be so patient as to let the rich and foolish collapse under their own bloat?”

“We have come to this point because voters were foolish enough to elect a man who was not only upper-strata but a zealot,” Danica said, her chest feeling sluggish and thick, and her tongue salivating at thoughts of what Huang’s sweat might taste like, much less other and more intimate fluids. “Upper strata powerbrokers rarely run for office. They prefer profits to politics. Usually, mid-strata men and women become politicians. They are closer to the Sprawls and understand the need not to upset the balance unless necessary. Oswald Drummond feels he is doing God’s will.”

“Voters are foolish.”

“Perhaps next time the Outliers will pay attention and pour money into the campaign coffers of someone more secular and farther down the strata,” Danica shot back, hoping that a little tension might take her mind off fucking this feratu and asking to be taken back to the Vamp compound from which he had been dispatched.

Huang laughed, and the sound was grating, which was good. It snapped Danica a bit out of thoughts of sex and submission.

“So what do we do?” Huang said. “To correct this. Before things turn…messy.”

“You kill the mayor,” she said simply. She owed the man no loyalty and assumed he’d done plenty of evil in life to deserve death. It would be better for everyone.

“Not possible,” Huang said. “It would be all too clear the assassination came from the Sprawls. Then we would be terrorists. Mayor Drummond might receive aid from the FedCops and military, and might invade the Sprawls in truth and cleanse us. Or try to. It would be inconvenient.”

“Well, then, learn to make water out of nothing then, because the mayor’s next move will be to disrupt your water supply I’m sure,” Danica noted. “And I will resign and leave this city before you decide to take me down as a warning to the mayor. Not that he would be angry if you killed me. He would likely send you a gift.”

“This will not be necessary. You want an end to this madness, true?” Huang asked, and Danica nodded. He continued then: “We require some things from you. You will give them, and we will handle from there. If not, the black line between you and the mayor will be erased, and you will share his fate.”

Danica listened, and then she gave him everything he asked, and was relieved when he left without ever having touched her.

Though a tiny little treacherous part of her was disappointed that he hadn’t.

* * *

In the end, very little that Danica had to do to save herself was illegal, aside from sharing some personal information on the mayor that she had no business sharing. The most instrumental and direct thing she did, though, was to arrange a meeting between the Outliers and the Oswald, and to that end, she was now, three days after the meeting with Huang, ushering a well-dressed man into the mayor’s office.

Then she withdrew, and left them to each other, Oswald turned to the man and studied him. “You do not look like a Fringie. You are probably not Wyldthing. You are certainly not an Outlier. I wish to speak with the leaders in the Sprawls, not some underling that lurks among us real humans.”

“My name is Wallace Petrovic, and I am a duly certified medion,” the man said, sliding a datacard to the mayor, along with a thin strip of printsheet. “I have been employed to channel an Outlier named Huang dusk-Chi. The Sprawls have designated him their representative in this negotiation.”

“There will be no negotiation. There will be obedience,” Oswald said.

“Mayor Drummond, I am a medion. I have no affiliation with the parties you oppose, except as a means for them to avoid coming here and for you to avoid entering the Sprawls. There will be nothing unless you provide me with a secure data line to the addy on that printstrip, so that you can talk to them.”

It took ten minutes to arrange the data line, as Wallace pulled a datacable from his briefcase, plugged it into a port at the back of his neck, hidden in a dynamic tattoo of a yellow sun that swelled to redness, exploded into a nova, and contracted to become a white dwarf, repeating the cycle every 30 seconds—then plugged that cable into a terminal. Five minutes after that he was synched, and his posture and inflections changed as Huang took temporary control of his body remotely.

“Mayor,” Huang said tartly via the medion’s mouth. “You will restore city services to the Sprawls.”

“Allow police unchallenged access to the sprawlhoods, and I shall,” Oswald said.

“They are not welcome in our home,” Huang said. “The other city servants, however, are very welcome. I would offer you a bribe, but I already know that you will not deign to take money from Outliers, much less Vamps.”

“So why are we conducting this meeting if you know that I won’t budge and you don’t plan to either?”

“I wished to express my condolences that your eldest daughter has so suddenly elected to give up her successful career as a neurosurgeon, abandon her faculty post at the Philadelplex University Medical School, and join my family’s compound as a fucktoy,” Huang said, smiling with the medion’s mouth. “Though it is our gain, of course, for she is a very healthy and entertaining specimen. Why, I myself tasted her just last evening.”

Oswald was silent for a moment. “She would, of course, never do such a thing…”

“Let us not waste time, Mayor. Certainly, the mechanism by which she left the campus hospital and came to us may not have been, strictly speaking, by her own will. But she is enjoying herself immensely now despite herself, and in a few days, she will be quite convinced that life with us is all she has ever wanted.”

“And I suppose if I reinstate city services to the Sprawls, you will return her,” Oswald responded, trying to ascertain how best to punish these abominations. He didn’t want his daughter back, frankly, if they had put their filthy fingers on her and filthier things inside her, but she could at least be avenged.

“No,” Huang said. “We do not return things that rightfully belong to us. She is partial payment against your insult to us. She could be full payment if you cease your madness now.”

“And if I don’t comply, you will start to take my other children, and then work your way to second-degree relatives, and so on,” Oswald said, trying to appear bored and impassive, but wondering what might become of his three sons; whether he could get guards around them soon enough to protect them.

“No, the next person we bring to the Sprawls will be your wife, but we won’t keep her. You will not, however, like the way she returns to you, I am guessing,” Huang said. “Then, if you are still not swayed, we will move on to your other children. And then to your avowed mistress. And the third-mate whom the church has sanctioned for you. All of them will become ours, one by one, until only you and your wife remain, alone and disgraced.”

“Get out of my office,” Oswald said, and severed the data connection. A few moments later, Wallace blinked, stretched, and got accustomed to having his body back.

“Has the meeting concluded?” the medion asked, unaware of the content of the proceedings.

“It has,” Oswald responded. “Get out of my office before I find an excuse to make you culpable as an accessory.”

“No need to bring the wrath of the Union of Medions and Arbitrators onto your head as well as the Outliers, Mayor,” Wallace said, turning and sauntering out of the office. “We have worse weapons than they do. We have an army of attorneys.”

* * *

Oswald ignored Huang’s threats, doubled security around his family—and tripled it around his sons—and then sent seven riot teams into the sprawlhood from which Huang was thought to originate. They did not penetrate far into the Sprawls before they were repelled, many Fringies and Wyldthings left dead in their wake.

Three days later, the Sprawls were still without most basic services, mid-strata neighborhoods were beginning to complain about backlash, and Danica locked herself in her office every day and refused all calls from the mayor, lest he order her to cut off more services. She also blocked his webaccount.

Then the next morning, Oswald woke to find his wife missing.

He didn’t fret about it overly much. Huang had said she would be returned in a manner he would not like. Probably with body mods or disfiguring injuries or tainted in some other way. The church leaders would grant him a quiet divorce from her under such circumstances.

Life would continue.

And at least his sons were safe.

* * *

By evening, his wife was back in their home, and Oswald entered, smiling for her benefit. She looked normal, and he wondered what changes they had wrought that he couldn’t see.

She launched herself at him immediately, spitting and cursing. She rained blow after blow against his face and chest before he got her in a bear hug.

It took ten minutes of struggling before she was spent enough to begin making sense.

Before she was exhausted enough that coherent information began to filter through her swearing.

Before Oswald discovered that his wife had been taken to the Vamp compound to see their daughter. To watch her rut with two Outliers at once. To watch one of them violate her vagina and the other one violate a second vagina that has been installed on her body—a fully functional one at that. To watch her daughter’s pleasure and glee at the invasions. To see what other things had been altered on her body. To hear her daughter beg her mother to join in the unholy escapades.

When his wife got her wind back, and her anger flared at her freshly shared revelations, she began hitting him again.

Oswald called in a physician to have his wife sedated.

He added more security around his sons.

He did not, however, restore city services to the sprawlhoods.

Two days later, Oswald discovered the four bodyguards assigned to his youngest son were missing, and their families were demanding to know what had happened to them. His son, meanwhile, was babbling something about his “red winged goddess.” This worried Oswald, but he was happy his son had somehow avoided abduction.

By morning, though, the young man had slipped out of the home and vanished into the Sprawl, his last known location having been a vehicle owned by someone named Astarte sin-Lux. Oswald issued a news release that his son had decided to travel abroad for an indeterminate period of time.

Oswald pounded on Danica’s office door for two hours before she relented and let him in. He told her what he wanted her to do, and for once, she was happy to hear his orders. By the afternoon, the brownouts had ended. By the end of day, waste handling was back online in the Sprawl. Two days later, road and walkway repairs were being handled again.

The police, however, politely refused Oswald’s order that they investigate some disappearances into the Sprawl of several individuals of “personal interest” to him.

Danica delivered that message personally, the first time she had visited Oswald’s office since the debacle began. Ignoring his irritation, she pulled a Citron cigarette from her pack, lit it with her hotpen, and savored the lemony flavor with its hints of orange and lime.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be seeking re-election,” Danica noted acidly, blowing smoke directly across his desk, then leaning forward to stare into his eyes.

Oswald said nothing. Instead, he turned his chair to face the window of his office, and watched the dark ochre hue of the sunset over the sprawlhood.

Where two of my children now cavort with freaks.

Danica stood there watching him the entire time, until her long cigarette was spent, flicking ashes on his floor and savoring his pain the entire time. When she took her last puff, she ground the butt out on his desk.

“Are you happy woman?” he asked, voice full of hatred, but with so little actual energy behind it. When she didn’t respond, he added, “I know that you have the beginnings of a campaign fund. Started up by Fringie and Wyldthing coalitions several days ago.”

“It’s not a secret. Huang is confident he can put me in your position four years from now. He also tells me that I had better have as much confidence when repairing the damage that you’ve done, and no doubt will continue to do, to relations between the Sprawls and the rest of the city.”

“So they are your new friends now? You are as unfaithful and weak a woman as any I have met,” he hissed at her.

“They aren’t my friends, but I’d rather be fucked two ways by them than suffer your insanity.”

“Fucked two ways,” Oswald muttered. “My daughter would know a thing or two about that.”

“I know,” Danica said mildly but with a trace of venom toward him in her tone.

Oswald winced at the knowledge that the City Administrator was aware of his daughter’s fate; wondered what else she was privy to.

“She was quite verbose about it when Huang brought her with him during a dinner meeting with me about my future campaign,” Danica said. “He encouraged her to go on and on about her body mods. Frankly, I’m not sure if it was meant to be a warning to me…or an enticement.”

With that, Danica turned and walked toward the door.

“I hope you live long enough to see them take control of society one day, and serve under them,” he said quietly.

Danica paused, considered his words. She knew they were meant to be a curse, but she answered, “I hope you’re right.”