Life on Zion

Part 1

Levi:

I don't much remember Home, but I remember it was Daddy had the big dreams. Mama said look, we got the manna to keep us eating, good times and bad -- why go running off to Zion? We got kids, she said, we ain't no young ruffsters got nothing to lose. We got family.

Daddy, he said it is because we got kids, that is why we can't stay. This ain't no life for nobody. I don't remember why he said that was so, but he said it. The manna, it filled your belly okay, as I recall. Didn't taste like much, but what did I know back then? Never tasted no better. And Daddy kept at it. Then one day Mama says okay, but if we's all kilt it's your fault.

And we was all kilt. All but me.

Going out to Zion was easy enough -- big old world, lots of room, and the Home Rulers happy enough to pop you in the Ziptran and send you right off. The Professor explained it to me. Home was kind of used up. Bad air, bad water, bad earth, and more and more of the core minerals going to run the grid and make the manna. Yes, and run the Ziptran.

So we just packed up what little we had one day, and headed down to the Ziptran terminal. We didn't have much -- it all fit in a couple of kylon bags. Some clothes, Daddy's tool kit, one toy each for Jeremy and me. We didn't know where on Zion we would wind up in because they didn't tell you.

So we wound up in Bezelar, one of the Wild Countries, in this village out towards the Edge. Newers usually get sent way off to the Edge of the Edge, but we wasn't sent all the way because Daddy knew tools. There was real wood growing in Bezelar, and they said they needed Daddy to use his tools the way they was meant, not just on crappy recyke.

It was hard, but not bad for a while. The farmers fed us, and Daddy built and mended what they needed. Somebody gave us a chicken, and I got to eat eggs for the first time. Even Mama was kind of happy, though she never stopped being scared. Then the raiders come, and everybody was kilt. Everybody but me.

The Professor:

They call me The Professor because I'm not an idiot. In the early days of the Ziptran, only idiots made the trip to Zion -- idiots and felons, who often are pretty much one and the same. Frankly, it was more than a little idiotic of me to get myself in all that trouble, but I did. Love is my excuse -- love, which makes idiots of us all. Care to guess my crime?

Sodomy. Yes, sodomy. And how, you wonder, could anybody manage to get himself arrested for sodomy at a time when the flesh markets operated openly on almost every street corner? When anybody with a few extra credits could buy men, women, girls, boys, infants, poodles, dwarves, hermaphrodites, albinos, cretins, dead bodies, and virtually anything else you can think of (if you're willing to shop around a little), all willing (except the dead bodies) to perform any bizarre act you might care to try?

Sigh.

Well, in my case, it was a boy. The problem, you see, is that he was a rich boy, the only son of one of our wealthier oligarchs, and the nephew of the Secretary General of the Home Rule Committee. They zipped me off to Zion faster than you can say "extraordinary rendition," and the reputations of Antonio, his father, and his uncle were saved -- for the moment, at least. Antonio was a hot little cockteaser, and I'm sure that losing me didn't cramp his style for long.

I was a member of what they called the "creative class" back then -- and maybe they still do, because how would I know marooned out here on Zion? We produced useless shit for the oligarchy, and called ourselves "artists." That's how I met Antonio. I was hired to design his "special playhouse," which was supposed to be "special" enough to keep him from sneaking off the family estate and "interacting" with the commoners. The little monster was ten years old.

Of course, I didn't know he was a monster when I met him, and any boy-attracted bastard in the world would have fallen just as hard, just as fast. He was unbelievably beautiful, and unbelievably sexy. When I first laid eyes on him, my jaw dropped, and only the presence of General Beltrán, his father, kept the drool inside my mouth.

"Antonio," said the General, "will tell you what he wants, and you will accomplish it." Well, that's pretty much what I did, and it got me convicted of sodomy and zipped off to Zion.

Puck:

I don't remember nothing from before the Professor bought me from the orphanage, and any time I accidentally remember I just go ahead and forget it. What's there to remember from that shithole that you wouldn't just as soon forget? All I ever learned there was how to suck the big guys' cocks, and I never even learned that too good.

Now the Professor is teaching me reading and writing and numbers, and how to make the tonic so I has a trade someday. He also says I am a much better cocksucker now, and he ought to know because I practice on him every morning. He says I am his little cocksucking alarm clock. Sometimes he's in the mood to suck me back, and that feels real good. I like it, being with the Professor. He's nice.

Levi:

When the raiders come, I was down under the cabin digging for wigglers to use for bait. I was hoping to catch me a wild bogglehen, which is supposed to taste like a duck, but I don't know how anyone knows that because I never knew nobody ever even seen a duck, much less ate one. They had them back Home, I hear, but just for rich people.

So I am talking about ducks because I don't like to think on those raiders. They had crossbows, and put a bolt in Daddy right off. I heard him yell hi to them when they came up the road, being friendly like always, and they went and shot him just like that. First I was seeing just his feet from under the cabin, and then he was down, and I seen all of him laying on the ground with those bolts sticking out. He never moved again.

Then they come up and went in the cabin. Three of them. I heard their boots on the boards over my head, and I heard Mama yell, and the raiders was saying my my and woo hoo and stuff, and Jeremy started crying. He was just little, not even four years old. There was more noises, and I didn't know what they was doing then but now I do. But I knew they was hurting Mama, and I was thinking about trying to get Daddy's big hatchet from the shed and doing something, but then there was this big slam against a wall, and Jeremy's crying just stopped, just like that, and I was even more scared, so I just stayed there under the cabin.

I don't know how long they was in the cabin. I was holding my ears, trying not to hear. Then they was going out. They took Daddy's tools, and his extra shirt. They took our chicken. We didn't have much else. Before they went away, one of them bent down and looked under the cabin, I guess to see if anything good was there. He didn't see me, I guess because the shade was too dark, but I seen his face real good, and I will remember.

Everybody was kilt. Everybody but me.

The Professor:

We were looking at some different shapes for the playhouse, and I was pushing the dome because they go up fast and they don't require a lot of expensive materials, both of which increase your profit margin. Also, they have a nice feel on the inside, and anything you build into them integrates with the structure in interesting ways.

We were sitting in Antonio's suite, in the main mansion. As I sketched things for him, he climbed up behind me and wrapped his arms around my neck. Next thing I know, he's tonguing my neck and nibbling my earlobe. I was wearing my standard creative class smock, so I knew he couldn't see how hard he'd made me. He, on the other hand, was dressed in what was the latest fashion for sons of the oligarchy -- a skin tight, semi-transparent jumpsuit printed in a leopard-skin pattern. The legs came to just above his knees, the sleeves to just above his elbows. It had a wide, scoop neck, which also was the way you climbed into it. The material was so thin and clung so tight that if it weren't for the leopard spots you might not have known he was dressed at all.

People who never got anywhere near any of the oligarchs -- which is to say the vast majority of people back Home -- may wonder why they dress their children in ways that are so blatantly sexual. The answer, I believe, is that they like to display just how much more beautiful their children are than children of the lower classes; and they compete amongst themselves to see which of them can produce the most perfect offspring. Yes, it's a class thing.

Those forced to eat a great deal of manna are pasty looking and flabby, with dull hair and eyes, bad teeth, and a sour aroma. You can identify the very poor by how unpleasant it is to be around them. The less manna and the more real food in a child's diet, the better looking he or she tends to turn out. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that children of the very rich have access to orthodontists, cosmetic surgeons, personal trainers, and all the other specialists money -- lots of it -- can buy. Beauty, and the lack of it, are class markers back Home.

Antonio was a prime specimen. One look at him and you knew his family was loaded.

"Antonio," I said, "are you even looking at the drawings?"

"Kind of," he replied, relinquishing my neck and my ear and climbing around to the front of me, planting his elbows on the desk where my drawings were and his knees on my legs so that his pert buttocks were waving in my face. "Yeah," he said, "the dome looks nice." Then he looked back over his shoulder, to where his ass was wiggling at me, and said, "You really want to bite it, don't you?"

Yes, dear reader, I really wanted to bite it, but I pretended I didn't understand what he was talking about.

"Don't act like an idiot," he said. "You know you want to stick your face right into my ass crack and rub it all around, and I know it too. What you might not know is how much I'd like it if you did."

"Well," I said, "regardless of what you'd like or what I might like, I'm pretty sure your father wouldn't like it."

"Oh, who cares about him," he answered, already pulling his arms out of the leopard patterned jumpsuit. "He's never around, and I do what I like."

"Well, there's bound to be somebody around," I observed, although already weakening rapidly.

"You mean servants?" he asked, pushing the flimsy material down to his waist. "They know better than to come up here unless I call them."

With that, he bared his ass and gave it one more wiggle. I looked at the perfect pink rosebud between his soft round cheeks, and I was lost. My head fell forward and my tongue got busy eating his hole. That was day one.

Puck:

I'm pretty, and everybody says so. I cost twice as much as Levi, but don't tell him I said that because I don't think he knows. They say I never lived back on Home, and Zion is better for you, and that's how I turned out so pretty.

Levi is looking better, though, lots better since the Professor bought us. He feeds us good.

Levi:

I stayed under the cabin a long time, too scared to go out and see what they did to Mama, but Daddy was laid out there right in front of me, so after a while I decided if they was still around and wanted to kill me too, they could just do it. So I crawled out.

Mama was on the bed, her skirt shoved up and no underpants and not breathing. I pulled the skirt down and covered her thing. I didn't want to look at it. Her face was all blue, and I saw a cord tied around her neck where they choked her. Then I saw Jeremy, where they flung him against the wall and broke open his head. That was the bang, I guess.

I ran out of the cabin and I throwed up. I didn't know what to do next, so I didn't do nothing for a while. Then I set out on the path to where the Ryans lived, the next house down, maybe a mile or so. But they was kilt too, so I kept going. It was dark when I got to the soldiers' camp. I didn't know they was there, it was just on accident I found them. And I told them. Turned out they was looking for those raiders.

I don't know if they ever found them, or what happened if they did. Next night I was in the orphanage, and I never seen them soldiers again.

The Professor:

Oh, Antonio.

The dome went up fast, as they do, and I started planning in the various recreational stations. Antonio had a couple of fairly odd requests, which was only to be expected because he was quite an odd boy. The glass cell was an example, a place where he could chain his little playmates if they were "bad."

Some of those playmates didn't fare too well, especially if they were boys of the lower classes brought in for the amusement of that rich little beast. When we played, though, he always wanted to be the bad boy. He loved the feel of my large, craftsman's hands against his bare bottom as I spanked him. He loved the feel of a dildo penetrating the hole between his reddened buttocks, and kneeling in submission, hands cuffed together, to be "forced" to suck my cock.

We had a safe word. He never used it.

As the play house neared completion, he demanded more and more subjugation. I fucked him, hard, and he kept screaming, "Harder! Harder! Make it hurt!" I rammed my dick up his little ass over and over, harder and harder, slamming my crotch against his ass until he convulsed with masochistic pleasure. I drained every drop of my man juice into that little shit, sometimes thinking it wouldn't even matter if his father never paid me for the work I'd been hired to do.

As it turned out, I never was paid. Two days before we were scheduled to open the doors on a complete, truly magnificent playhouse -- at which time, I was scheduled to receive the largest fee I'd ever earned -- the little shit met me with three of his father's bully boys.

"You didn't think you could treat me like that and not pay a price?" he said. The next day, I was dumped into the Ziptran and on my way to Zion.

So here I am.

billy_budz@hush.ai