Insurance - part 6

[miriam_e]

(1954 words)

total so far:

11,420 / 50,000

OK. A bit more sensual and less expository lump this chapter.
I've departed from my story map a little. I've dropped two chapters that didn't develop the story much and moved straight to this.

Let me know what you think.

Note that what follows contains adult concepts.
The love of two females for each other is central to this story so if you are offended by that stop reading now.

06 - dance

06 - dance

The train doors slid open and Rachel stepped out into Sally's arms. She held her tight and murmured into her blonde hair, "Oh, love I'm so glad to be back. I missed you so much."

Sally laughed softly, "It's only been two days."

"Two days too many. It's official, I'm addicted to you."

Sally noticed they were starting to attract looks. She disentangled from her partner and, holding hands, walked her toward the exit. She noticed the small bag over Rachel's shoulder and asked about it.

"A surprise. You'll see soon."

Sally was intigued, but let it go for the moment. "So, tell me what happened. You said you met the mysterious Zoe and she isn't the scary moster of android tales." She laughed. "I never believed that stuff anyway."

"Sure. You say that now..." Rachel kidded.

"Your big-city sweetheart did though. Huh. Who'd have thought." Sally chuckled.

"Hey!" She playfully punched Sally's arm. "Don't call her that."

"OK. I'm sorry. Your metropolis honey?"

"Hey!"

"The other woman?"

Rachel pleaded, "Sally..."

"You didn't tell me how the case went. Spill the beans. Did you win?"

Rachel frowned and looked at the ground glumly. "Uh yeah, we won."

"Ooh! Calm down. Such exuberance!"

Rachel frowned at her nutty sweetheart. "I don't think we should have won. I think by winning, the insurance industry may actually have lost."

"I'm sure that what you said really makes sense. Explain it to me."

As they walked along the grassy path toward home in the late afternoon Rachel told Sally about what Zoe had told them. That the only way to get through to the executives was via their own people and that the law suit didn't really mean anything. Zoe hadn't even bothered returning to the court for the verdict. "She'd held my hand and Savannah's and said it was up to us now."

"What did you say to your boss, the guy at Insurers Consolidated?"

"I told him I thought it was worth investigating the proposition Zoe made. He just dismissed it. All he cared about was winning the case." Her face was clouded in thought. "I really need to go down there again and try to convince them. The more I think about it the more I realise Zoe was right. This is really important." She stopped and turned to face Sally, holding both her hands. "And Zoe made me understand something else. Recognising veeps as human is the first step to recognising androids as human. It needs to be done."

Sally felt overwhelmed. She hugged Rachel, closing her eyes. God she loved this woman!

Rachel whispered, "But tonight we dance. I scored tickets to the coolest show!"

----

Sally was naked and standing in the bath, protesting, "Honey I don't know if this is a good idea..."

Rachel was sitting on the floor stirring a wide necked bottle of dark liquid. "Why? It's a great idea."

"Well, I don't know... maybe the fact that it is illegal? What if it comes off?"

Rachel started painting Sally with the green dye. "It's a stupid law. I don't want to go dancing by myself."

"I'm sure the 'stupid law' defense will work well when we're caught. And we don't have to go dancing. I'm sure we could think of some way to have fun at home." She grabbed a handful of Rachel's glossy black hair, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her strongly. Normally Rachel was taller than Sally, but the bath changed that. Sally put a hand up inside Rachel's halterneck top and massaged her breast. Rachel groaned and pulled away, shaking her head, panting a little.

"Distractions distractions," she sighed and squatted to continue the painting.

"What about the hair? Won't green hair look a little odd?"

"Oh it will wash off your hair with water, but locks onto your silicone skin until that enzyme," she pointed to another bottle, "breaks the bond."

"Where did you get this miracle substance? From Savannah? Do the androids in the city like to mix with the humans, undetected?"

"No." She stopped for a moment to look up at her sweetheart. "Zoe. She planned the whole thing." She continued to paint.

Sally just stood, thinking on that for a while.

---

When Sally was completely green she washed the patches of green off her hair. As Rachel had said it just came right off, but remained fixed to the skin. "This stuff is amazing!" She marvelled, looking at herself in the mirror.

"Incredible." Rachel agreed, her gaze wandering up and down her mate.

Sally got a mischievous look on her face. "I think in the interests of science we are going to have to roadtest this stuff before we take it out into the public." She pressed her now-green body up against Rachel's and pushed Rachel's miniskirt down to the floor. Her fingers found Rachel's slippery folds.

"Ummm... whatever do you mean?" Rachel grinned.

"I'm sure I can find a way to explain." She cupped her hand with a few fingers inside Rachel, her palm pressing up, holding her.

Rachel closed her eyes, sighed, and moaned. Her legs were getting weak.

Sally kissed her... long and devouring. She whispered, "Bedroom?"

[Sorry folks. I'm finding it harder than I thought writing sex scenes. It is like being in bed with someone you love while a bunch of friends and family stand around the bed and watch. Hi Mum. :) Maybe it just needs for me to get carried away with the moment. Perhaps they'll pick up in the rewrite. In my notes I've mapped out one of the chapters near the end of the book to be almost entirely about sex (there is a good reason for that -- it isn't just gratuitous sex), so I'll find it hard to wimp out there.]

---

Feeling like naughty children, they stepped out in the cool night air both dressed in identical, thin, white bikinis and white capes streaming behind them in case it rained or got cold later. Both had white sandles on, strong silver eye-shadow, and white lipstick. They were going to a humans-only event together. They walked briskly down the path, the lights turning on ahead of them, rippling on far down the path at their movement. Each light had simple intelligence, but they were connected together and were able to decide as a whole whether to stay on or switch off based on ambient light levels, how many people were on the paths, how fast they were moving, and so on. They even responded to voice commands.

They weren't going to the station. They struck out across the valley. The dance was being held on top of a hill just beyond the hills rimming their valley.

Sally saw a light moving high in the air. "A boat." She looked as Rachel questioningly. "It would be quicker..."

Rachel grinned "And someone did make us late."

Sally looked innocent. "It was in the cause of science," she protested.

Rachel looked up and sent a call from her cap to any other boats in the area. They stopped walking then and turned to face each other.

Sally looked up into Rachel's beautifully asian eyes. "Have I told you lately how much I adore you?"

Rachel could only manage hoarsely, "Ditto."

They embraced. Standing bodies pressed together for a while, laughter started to bubble from Sally, "'Ditto' -- real suave, honey. That's so romantic." She smiled up at her lover and they kissed, then just stood there foreheads together.

A man and woman holding hands walked past smiling at the display of affection between the two apparently human women.

Sally sighed. "I'm so happy I feel like I could burst into flame."

Rachel was going to reply but a boat was decending from overhead. She turned to the couple who had just passed and called out, "Can we offer you folks a lift? We're going to the Tiësto concert."

The man called back, "Thanks, so are we. That would be great," and they ran back to the girls just as the boat landed.

All four boarded through the door in the front of the little boat and seated themselves on the lounge running around the room. Sally spoke to the machine, asking it to take them to the concert. It responded with "Certainly madam."

Sally's face glowed with happiness as she whispered in Rachel's ear, "Did you hear what it called me?"

Rachel smiled back and kissed her cheek.

The rounded base grew. Gently the boat floated into the air. What looked like a big cushion inflating around its sides was in fact an extremely rigid structure whose shape could be controlled electrically. The vacumm inside the balloon-shaped structure was much lighter than air and the boat's buoyancy was easily controlled like a fish's swim-bladder. It had two wide, flat, flexible tails out the back that propelled it silently with snake-like waves. Being out of phase with each other they delivered a steady ride without the wobble that single-tailed craft produced.

The man leaned forward and introduced his partner and himself, "This Laurel, and I'm Marten. We live near the bottom of the valley behind this hill. We're running a bit late because ummm..."

Laurel wrapped an arm around him. "Because I couldn't keep my hands off him."

Marten said "Ditto," looking lovingly into Laurel's eyes.

Sally chuckled.

Laurel held Marten's jaw in her hand and teased, "He's so romantic."

Sally and Rachel burst into laughter.

The flight was short, but a delight. Laurel was a statistician working with a team of sociologists and Marten was researching silico-nanite materials for a book he was writing. Rachel explained that she was a psyhologist working for the insurance industry and Sally introduced herself as Rachel's wife, "Just a dilettante -- I read a lot of books." Marten rubbed his hands together and said he was all in favor of people reading books.

The dancehall was an enormous building set inside the entire top of a round hill. It had archway entrances all around its perimeter, and there was a constant trickle of people entering and leaving.

The boat landed gently, the front door folded out and down to the ground, the four passengers disembarked and strolled to the nearest entrance.

Over each entrance were the words "no harm" in meter-high letters.

As they approached they could hear the thump of music within. The dancehall was old. It was begun by people in the dance culture in response to increasing police raids on raves, trance clubs, and dance clubs. Nobody owned the dancehall. It was totally automated and community run. It was impossible to gain entrance with any weapon and anybody who coerced another inside was remembered by the AIs and not allowed admission again. This had caused similar buildings to proliferate around the world. They were places to have a good time safe from any threat. Of course violence was almost non-existent now, but the dancehalls had become a part of culture and remained popular playing music 24/7. Tonight DJ Tiësto was guest. The place was full.

Inside, the vast circular room, 200 meters across, was full of thousands of people, many decorated with glowing light jewellry. Most people were dancing to the music. The raised circular stage was in the center with spotlights on the performers.

The music was far too loud for speech so Rachel and Sally "spoke" via her cap. Holding hands they ran through the sparser parts of the crowd to a place nearer the center, then stopped. Facing each other they held hands and grinned, eyes aglow with joy. Sally saw tears in Rachel's eyes. She drew her into her arms and they danced.

---------

Comments

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

You don't have to write explicit sex scenes, you know! It's not to say there's anything wrong with them, but there's also nothing wrong with not writing them.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

True :)

It just bothers me that I want to write them, but am having a heck of a difficult time doing so. Like I said in that instalment, it feels like I'm in bed with someone I love and a lot of friends and family are standing around watching. :)

And near the end there will be a sexual sequence that is kinda important to the story. It'll be interesting to see if I get over my embarrassment by then. It will be hard (and probably boring) to imply sex for most of a chapter.

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Writing sex is tricky. I always have problems with it and, from what I've gathered, most writers do.

Some explicit sex scenes, for example, come across kind of like a bad porn movie. Others read more like a how-to manual—either excessively distanced and remote or excessively encouraging.

And yet, I am always drawn to persist in writing sex, writing about sex, because I like writing about the interesting things that happen to people and shape people, and a lot of them (not all of them) happen during sex. People use sex all the time to achieve ends—relaxation before sleep, babies, the illusion of intimacy, forgetting the self, gaining a hold on someone that they'll never entirely be able to escape—heaps more. It's a very intense thing, and not writing about the emotional/psychological/behavourial fallout seems like cheating, or cutting myself off from a true understanding of what my characters are going through.

That being said, I personally have come to feel like less is more. There don't have to be sex scenes every chapter and not every sex scene has to be explored in excruciating detail. It's like anything else one writes about: subject to the filter of "is this necessary? how does it advance the plot? or the character development? have I already made this point? does this just seem boring/repetitious or is there something new and interesting which is being revealed? do the characters want this written?"—not necessarily asked in this order, mind you.

This is not to say I think you're writing too much sex (although I confess that Rachel and Sally's ongoing schmoopiness is getting a bit gratingly cute and perfect-love-ish; I like characters a little less love-blinded and a bit more flawed). Your sex scenes, so far, don't have me doing anything obscene while reading, but do make me feel pleasantly aroused and a bit sad that I have such horrible luck with women and am likely to only experience the kinds of things you're writing about vicariously. In other words, I think they're working.

I must disagree with you about implied sex, though. It may well be hard to write, but not at all boring, either to write or read! Think about lingerie, or partial undress—what isn't revealed is almost more important than what is. Sometimes seeing full-frontal nudity is less interesting than having some things mysterious, hidden, unexplored in print so that they can be in the imagination—or can remain mysteries.

Just my thoughts, anyway, coming to you from a room in which I am quite possibly the oldest person. There's so many damn teenage pheromones floating around I'm surprised they're not all getting pregnant just from looking at each other. :)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Gotta say I agree with everything you said... even the part where you disagree with me about implied sex! :)

On Rachel and Sally being soppily and totally in love: there is a good reason for that. It hadn't occurred to me that the saccharine nature of their relationship might be a bit too much. I'm a little worried now as you've made me realise that if I was reading someone else's story with these characters I might find it a bit too much. I'll have to see if I can find a way to break it up a bit without damaging the storyline.

I hope my latest chapter doesn't make you do anything obscene. :) ...Or maybe I do. heheheh
Anyway, don't blame me. The characters wrote that bit themselves. I had absolutely no intention of putting a sex scene in today. They just went and got all hot and heavy and I didn't have a choice.