Bordello della Libertà (Aethertales Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

was lightning, and, like a primeval,
omnipotent force of nature, they cast down everything in their path as if the
obstacles were dead trees and paper houses.
    Digital
billboards that once flaunted flashy, expensive ads for all sorts of useless
commodities, and even more useless celebrities, now proudly broadcast the faces
of the women and men who marched for their right to be compensated for their
services, no matter how base or carnal. They were the champions of civil
liberties, though too many dismissed them for the vulgar nature of their
highest goals; they were the preservers of a free market in which a government
had no right to deny an exchange between consenting adults; they were the
“Freedom Whores with a Right to Work” whose name shone from news screens across
the city of Talpretta, who fought for the freedom to do business as
individuals, not a devalued whole. At every street corner they found a blazing
torch in place of a lamppost. On the sidewalks and in dark alleys, they saw
paths paved with gold.
    “Unions,
get off our planet!” they
chanted.
    “Capitalism,
not cronyism!” they
demanded.
    “Sex
is money, and money is good!” they proclaimed. “Let us have both!”
    Every
planetary news network burst into a frenzied panic, and every reporter, anchor
and pundit trembled with visible anxiety as they announced that a city-wide
strike had paralyzed Talpretta: it was not orchestrated by the unions, who
cared little for the financial stability of those who could not afford to
strike, but had no choice. The workers who marched on the legislature exercised
their freedom of choice and chose to rise up against the insidious tyranny of
coerced compassion at gunpoint, which led only to the abolition of ambition and
the prosecution of productivity. They had a right to work, they chanted; no man
or woman had the right to tell them the limits of their contributions or the
extent of their involuntary charity. It was not their place to lower themselves
to the level of those beneath them. For Talpretta to prosper again, those
beneath them would have to find the virtue to raise themselves higher, but
until the legislature accepted their demands, there would be no prosperity.
    “This
is what your beloved union has done!” Sudika
shouted before the regal doors of the whitewashed temple of corrupted law. The
elegant halls of the Bordello della Libertà appeared on the billboard
screens, recorded by Lucia’s security cameras for the world to see the
atrocities committed at the hands of the peaceful and tolerant wards of the
union and its collectivist bosses. The city gasped at each thrust of a Shatarin
rapist inside an innocent woman, and cursed the Xaztechuans who stuffed their
pockets with the hard-earned property of those who were forced to support them
and accept their roles as victims. But it was when the smug face of Mr.
Trygassi, the reputable, respectable and progressive advocate of the most
genuinely benevolent Sexual Labor Union of Tapretta, grinned in sick
satisfaction on each screen in every public square and private home, that the
citizens of a city gone astray declared their outrage, and the politicians who
cowered in their offices had no choice but to surrender.
    “We
concede!” cried the speaker for the planetary legislature, gripping his
microphone as if it were a rope, and he had just been thrown overboard from a
ship that carried escaped slaves to freedom in a foreign land. “You will have
your right to work!”
    “We
have always had it!” Sudika
testified with Lucia’s hand in hers, and the crowd exploded with applause. “And
it will never be taken from us again!”
    ••
    L UCIA
    In a few
short months the Bordello della Libertà rose from the ashes and stood
more proudly than it ever had before. The Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta paid
for the rebuilding in full, having been hopelessly defeated in court after the
Freedom Whores sued it for damages, and Lucia made sure to bleed it dry,
sparing