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Chapter 7 - Ego

 

Bianca had already worked more than her contracted twenty hours this week and on Friday was doing something at home. This was upsetting to Margery who wanted to consolidate her success with her Christmas story and take her recruitment to the next level. She was delighted that Bianca had been so concerned about Mohandas. The girl was obviously, more in love with him that she was prepared to admit. So, sharing her progress with Mohandas was both a malicious pleasure and a useful ploy to put her off guard.

Fortunately, just after lunch, Bianca came in to collect something and Margery suggested that they go for quick drink. Bianca was still feeling grateful to Margery for her expensive gift and sorry to have misjudged her, so she agreed happily and started telling Margery some nonsense about an educated Bogan and droning on about some student's progress.

Margery was obviously, not interested, so Bianca changed the subject to something she knew would interest Margery. She asked her how she had seduced Mohandas so quickly, right there in front of everyone at the party.

Margery was delighted that Bianca was obviously, concerned. Now she could continue her initiation. The next step was to be hypnotic suggestion. In her low melodic voice so that only Bianca could hear, she began to recounted her various manoeuvres in meticulous detail, describing how Mohandas' hand had felt creeping up her thigh and how excited he'd become; and how excited she'd become as a result. As she expected Bianca was not really listening. She was watching Margery's hands. As she spoke, she kept playing with a strange ring on her finger. It was odd because it was silver or white gold or platinum while her necklace and charm bracelet, with all those little things hanging off it, were of yellow gold. The ring was very well worn, as if very old, and there was some sort of star or circle faintly visible.

"So, do you do this often?" Bianca asked distractedly, watching the ring circling the finger.

"I like to keep my hand in. Well actually their hand. You should try it. With a certain kind of man, it's sure fire."

A short time ago this remark would had disgusted Bianca but now she found it somehow, appropriate to the situation. Margery's tone of voice had become modulated almost like a song or a chant and made it sound seductive. Again, Bianca was struck by how beautiful she is. Her real age is still a mystery but she's no spring chicken. She's already admitted to having 'work' done on her breasts, perhaps her face too?  Bianca's concentration was drifting.

"The only thing to know is that it's best done in public places to avoid misunderstandings about how far you want to take it. And it's much more fun doing something like that in public. You know at concerts, like at the opera, or on a long flight."

"I can't imagine doing that in public," said Bianca dreamily, trying to imagine it.

"It's much more exciting like that in front of everyone. Parties are best, surrounded by girls the guy would like to impress is ideal, if you can set that up. They provide the added opportunity to really humiliate him."

"Why would you want to do that?"

With the word 'humiliate' Margery's tone had sharpened briefly as if in anger and Bianca had snapped out of her daydream. How had Margery done that to her?  For a moment she'd recruited Bianca as her confrère in seduction, imagining a man's hand sliding up her own leg. Had she been distracted by the ring?  She was very tired; it had been an eventful day. She stood up and stretched rotating her head on her neck.

Margery's voice immediately changed. She was speaking normally again, with a definite touch of anger.

"Some men deserve to be humiliated. Others need to be. There's nothing better than a Christmas party when St Knicker-less comes early," she then laughed. "As I sometimes whisper to them: at the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold. It's not just the thrill you get feeling a hand slowly creeping up your inner thigh like that; it's the power you feel as you grant him that 'special' privilege when he discovers your nakedness; seeing his excitement build under your spell."

"How does that humiliate him? It sounds to me that you are the one who is likely to be humiliated," Bianca asked, now getting cross herself, thinking that she would not like to be considered a slut by allowing a strange man to do that to her at a party.

"Obviously, you don't let anyone see. It's best under a table; but a coat or something like that might do. Heterosexual men who have gone that far are invariably very aroused. Their libido is their Achilles Heel. Once suitably primed their libido needs to be assuaged. It takes very little further encouragement for them to 'shoot their load', as they say in the classics."

"I still don't understand. How does that help you?"

"That's why it's best to do it when other women are around. As soon as an obvious wet area appears you can accuse him in front of his female friends. My favourite is to say in a loud voice: Leave me alone! You're disgusting - you pervert - can't you keep it to yourself - just look what you've done to your pants!  Or something of the sort."

"That's terrible!"

"No. Humiliation should be every woman's goal. It doesn't have to be about sex. Telling him off and enumerating his weaknesses in front of his work colleagues or friends is a time-honoured way of doing it. Humiliating a man robs part of his ego. If you're the one who used his libido to diminish his ego, you get to own that part of him. His lost ego passes to you. It's all in Freud."

Bianca seriously doubted that this was what Freud had said or intended.

"If you later apologise the right way: I'm truly truly sorry it's just that you gave me such a surprise! Will you ever forgive me? And so on; their lost ego will be restored. But only for you, those other girls will be gone for him, and he'll be yours again whenever you want him."

Bianca realised that this was close to what Margery had done to her. First, she had tricked her into shedding her knickers and made he feel dreadful about it; and then she had given her back a better pair. It was the old stick and carrot game. She was annoyed that she had felt so grateful. But it was complicated by the fact that she now loved her new knickers. The only solution would be to go back to Bergeroff Goodman and buy another pair the same to return to Margery with thanks, but no thanks. How annoying!

"I'm finding this hard to believe," she said, with too much anger.

"Well, you should, because you have the power too," replied Margery, surprised at her reaction. "I'm not doing anything illegal. Quite the contrary I'm creating net happiness under The Golden Algorithm."

Bianca accepted that Mohandas was probably happy that he had become Margery's plaything. Obviously, he could simply end the affair if he was not. But she was concerned as she was responsible for pointing him out to Margery.

"Is this what you've done to Mohandas?"

"No he's more the 'hurt me', then 'kiss me better', type. Tonight, he'll be waiting for me with his tongue hanging out."

Bianca's expression had changed back to one of annoyance. It was probably true but was he a free agent in this?  Is someone who's been deliberately addicted to heroin a free agent when they return to their seducer for another fix?

"Yes, she is in love with him," Margery thought, misinterpreting Bianca's reaction.

Now was the time to enjoy Bianca's jealousy and put her off guard.

Their cocktails arrived and there was an uneasy silence. Bianca wanted to ask more about Mohandas but didn't want it to be too obvious.

Finally, she said casually: "So, are you going somewhere special tonight?"

"Oh, my goodness gracious me no," Margery replied in a fake Indian accent, making it clear that she realised what Bianca was enquiring about. "Mohandas is not the sort of man I want to be seen about town with. He's strictly meals-on-wheels - for home visits only."

"Is that much fun? What do you intend to do? Watch MV together?"

"You're kidding, right? Watch MV! No, as I told you yesterday, I'm introducing him to sexual craving. He's already at the point where he desperately needs to libido assuaged again. Soon he'll be wondering where I am and getting desperate that I might not come. And I can assure you that's one thing I fully intend to do. Several times."

She put her glass to her lips and licked the rim, smiling lasciviously, hoping to reduce Bianca to tears.

"Here we go again," thought Bianca.

The thought of him falling into Margery's hands was disturbing because he's a nice vulnerable and very bright guy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet there was something terribly seductive about Margery's enthusiastic approach to sex. And as she said he's a willing victim. She was playing with that ring again.

"What have you made Mohandas do?" Bianca asked, now fascinated by the ring and Margery's exploitation of the male libido.

"Mohandas was such an easy one. He never knew what hit him last night. Inexperience makes them wonderfully vulnerable. Mohandas is like a novice opium addict. He's taken his first few hits and is already hanging out for his next fix," Margery said, lowering her voice again and smiling, misinterpreting the disturbed look on Bianca's face as she used the very opium analogy that had occurred to Bianca earlier. She was now convinced that Bianca is in love with him yet she was cleverly pretending to be purely analytical.

"Are you recording Mohandas each time you see him?"

"Yes of course. All the time, like a reality MV show. I could already give you a copy. But he's still a beginner. I'll soon have something a lot better - maybe at lunch on Monday?"

Bianca was sorry to have asked. Margery was obviously, going out of her way to be disturbing, playing with her ring like that, relishing her discomfort. That was enough of Margery's voice droning on about her sex life for one afternoon. Bianca had become so sleepy that she'd been on the verge of nodding off. She stood abruptly and apologised to Margery but she had a meeting. She had to rush. It was with young William and somehow, she was already running late. How had that happened?

And for some reason she'd already agreed to have lunch with Margery on Monday.

***

Arriving home that evening Margery was ambivalent. Bianca's reactions had been difficult to interpret. She wasn't nearly as suggestible as Margery had hoped and was very good at controlling her state of mind. The only thing she was sure of was that she had 'a thing' for Mohandas.

She would be better prepared on Monday and would have a lot more to tell Bianca about her ex-boyfriend Mohandas, who'd already become Kat's plaything.

Her alter-ego, Kat, now had all the time she desired to play with this latest mouse; softening-up her captive all the while, as domestic cats do; in the perverse central panel; until his eventual introduction to the third panel and his inevitable, delicious, demise.

***

As Margery had told Bianca, these days she keeps a virtual-reality-diary of all her conquests. It's not to gain control through blackmail, although that can be done, or even for the sexual pleasure that she derives from replaying her recordings, although she often prefers them to the original experience, it's her Art.

What started out as a useful means of controlling others has become her hobby, her raison d'être.

Margery would have been most at home in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic when debauchery, hedonism and eroticism became 'High Art'. She admires the expressionist films of the period and Kat has more than once performed her interpretation of Brigitte Helm's dance sequence from Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction film masterpiece 'Metropolis'. This takes place in a man's feverish delirium and Mohandas will be the next man in that role. It will not be watched in scratchy soft-focus black and white, with censorious underwear hiding nipples and abdomen, but experienced, as if a participant, in 6D total, naked reality.

Like other hobbyists she keeps abreast of the technology and employs the latest micro-cameras. They're chameleon, clinging to and mimicking any background surface. And by some magic of adaptive lighting, they don't cast a shadow. This makes them almost invisible, even on a flat surface, except for the tiny lens, that seems to hover in space like an insect, that swivels and pans, automatically framing any movement.

Placement is an art in itself. Like Hitchcock she likes one high and another low for unusual angles but others around a space at eyelevel. As Kat performs a seduction, Margery likes to imagine that there's a diminutive homunculus inside each camera panning and zooming, focussing in on the carnal action; leaning forward lecherously; peering through each peephole; becoming increasingly excited; before popping, one after the other, as the crescendo is reached; like a string of fireworks at Chinese New Year.

Post-production is another aspect. Bots in The Cloud, provided by the camera manufacturer, can compile all the input streams into a single multidimensional production in less than a second, that allows a virtual reality viewer to move around within the action. But Margery likes to savour the best parts of this process. She has her own post-production system so that she can take more time adjusting the sound and making changes here and there to suit her special predilections, like the more stimulating feed from headband cameras and body sensors. She's become a true Virtual Reality (VR) artist, creating performance works for herself and perhaps for an intimate friend.

Viewing technology has also made recent leaps forward. Most families have a six-dimensional viewing room, a Vidicube with screens on all six surfaces that viewed in stereo appear to fully recreate a visual scene: from a ship in a sea that stretches to the horizon; to being in a cupboard surrounded by hanging clothes. Similarly, sound panels recreate the original sound sensations. The better Vidicubes have hot and cold scented atmospherics. When wearing a haptic body stocking, that stimulates the appropriate nerves to reproduce skin sensations and muscle reactions, the viewer can become an that person and experience not only the person's original visual and auditory point of view but the tactile sensations recorded by that person; or in the case of a commercial vidi those added in post-production by people called Foley-actors or bots that do the same job.

Thus, where the fabric is in close proximity to the nerves and corresponds in position to the original, the wearer feels the recorded sensation. A light breeze; a phantom punch or tickle; a squeeze of the arm; or being thrown about in a storm are samples used to market the technology. Of course, like many things technical the initial market was sexual and face masks, around the cheeks and lips, and male and female Panteez preceded the more encompassing bodystocking that can be purchased with or without sexual stimulation.

Again, Margery has the latest best credit can buy. Of course, like almost everyone, she has a Vidicube. But in addition, in several other rooms, like her private bedroom and bathroom, every square centimetre of every fixed surface incorporates several million tiny 'pixies'. Each pixie twinkles and calls according to the visual and audio scene to be reproduced, just pixels do a in a conventional screen, but pixies also observe the gaze of every viewer so that anywhere one looks the light entering each eye recreates the original, stereoscopic, sensation of depth. Their billions of tiny voices, calling in unison, more accurately reproduce any sound-pressure wave-front that any other sound panel or ancient 'speaker'.

So, even when in bed or in the bath Margery can make the room disappear, to be replaced by any scene she likes, for example looking down from her hover-bike over the city, or being under the covers with Phillip, her present boyfriend. And anyone else in the room has a similar, yet different, visual and sound experience according to where they stand sit or lie, without the need for a VR headset or glasses.

But if Margery also wants to actually feel what it was like as Phillip makes love to her, she still needs to wear a women's haptic body stocking.

It's been a little while since she's been able to share her reproductions. They obviously, must remain locked away while Margery is still active in the world. Yet there will come a time when she will open her library. Her whole archive will then be released for downloading, as her gift to posterity. Then everyone with a Vidicube and haptic accoutrements will be empowered to assume the various roles of Kat and/or her victims. Being or seeing Kat; inflicting of feeling the pleasure and pain; experiencing arousal to the point of orgasm; and maybe, becoming a victim, addicted to Kat's attentions to the point of self-destruction.

So, until now her productions are only shared with intimate friends. Margery's last disciple, Annette, proved to be unsuitable in other ways and met with a nasty accident. But soon Bianca will be sufficiently close to appreciate Kat's art with her, perhaps in bed or the bath.

Margery decided that after today's exertions that's where she's going now. Circe, anticipating her, had already run her bath, just as she liked it, the scent of sandalwood is already wafting out. And the pixies are conjuring Philip's bathroom.

The virtual sex with Philip will be even better than when she recorded this, thanks to her recent editorial changes and enhancements.

Then, if she still has the inclination, after Phillip's vigorous attentions, she'll go to her bedroom and conjure Mohandas' apartment where she has some delicious options. She can choose to observe, as if a ghost in the room, the apparently completely real, Kat and Mohandas in 'Doppelganger' mode; or if she chooses to re-experience Kat as herself: in 'Point-of-View' mode. She can switch between modes and move backwards and forwards in time to savour the most exquisite moments of Mohandas' subjugation.

She can't wait to experience this with Bianca. But to fully appreciate her art Bianca will soon need a haptic suite too. As an ulterior motive for their recent shopping trip Circe gathered complete record of Bianca's clothing sizes and scanned her physical appearance in her underwear. So, Margery told Circe to put in the order.

Circe had anticipated this too, after Margery promptly used the data to remaster a past experience, replacing Annette with Bianca's appearance. And soon after, retiring to her bedroom.

Yet she knows that Margery is never satisfied and will soon be seeking something new.

 

 

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Travel

Europe 2022 - Part 1

 

 

In July and August 2022 Wendy and I travelled to Europe and to the United Kingdom (no longer in Europe - at least politically).

This, our first European trip since the Covid-19 pandemic, began in Berlin to visit my daughter Emily, her Partner Guido, and their children, Leander and Tilda, our grandchildren there.

Part 1 of this report touches on places in Germany then on a Baltic Cruise, landing in: Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and the Netherlands. Part 2 takes place in northern France; and Part 3, to come later, in England and Scotland.

Read more: Europe 2022 - Part 1

Fiction, Recollections & News

Love in the time of Coronavirus

 

 

 

 

Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera lies abandoned on my bookshelf.  I lost patience with his mysticism - or maybe it was One Hundred Years of Solitude that drove me bananas?  Yet like Albert Camus' The Plague it's a title that seems fit for the times.  In some ways writing anything just now feels like a similar undertaking.

My next travel diary on this website was to have been about the wonders of Cruising - expanding on my photo diary of our recent trip to Papua New Guinea.

 


Cruising to PNG - click on the image to see more

 

Somehow that project now seems a little like advocating passing time with that entertaining game: Russian Roulette. A trip on Corona Cruise Lines perhaps?

In the meantime I've been drawn into several Facebook discussions about the 1918-20 Spanish Influenza pandemic.

After a little consideration I've concluded that it's a bad time to be a National or State leader as they will soon be forced to make the unenviable choice between the Scylla and Charybdis that I end this essay with.

On a brighter note, I've discovered that the economy can be expected to bounce back invigorated. We have all heard of the Roaring Twenties

So the cruise industry, can take heart, because the most remarkable thing about Spanish Influenza pandemic was just how quickly people got over it after it passed.

Read more: Love in the time of Coronavirus

Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

 

 

 

 

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field. 

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world.  Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures?  In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

Read more: Luther - Father of the Modern World?

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