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knew my name
and a lot about me. It was definitely her arresting
beauty.
    “ I know
your name because I asked,” she said. “We live in a world where we
put all of our lives freely available to anyone with a computer or
a telephone and then we get upset when people find out things about
us.”
    “ I don’t
do that online stuff,” I said. I didn’t. I didn’t share every
snapshot of every minute of my daily life. I didn’t post, publish,
update or upload. And I was fiercely intentional about
it.
    “ Ah, but
you do,” she said. “You bank and you shop and you have friends who
do all of those things. Are you aware how many photos of you there
are online thanks to your girlfriend? Your girlfriend who then goes
and posts, albeit anonymously, on discussion boards, complaining
her boyfriend and all sorts of other details of her life she is
desperate to broadcast?”
    I felt trapped.
Victoria was always snapping stupid phone pictures of us, uploading
them to Instabook or Facechat or whatever she called those
websites, captioning and tagging and presenting and posing. I might
have hated it about her if everyone else hadn’t been doing the same
thing. It was like hating someone for watching television.
    “ I don’t
want you to worry, Rev. You have been selected. Chosen. It’s a good
thing I’m offering you and you’re quite welcome to say no, return
to your life as it was before, never see me again. Though I had
hoped that we might become…” She paused and reached out a hand to
my cheek, stroking a perfectly manicured finger down to my jaw. My
skin tingled with electric waves and another unbidden stirring. “…
friends.”
    She dropped her
hand and continued walking along the pebbled path, stopping at a
sliver elevator door. A set of clothes hung on the wall. She
pressed the button to go down and the lift shunted to life
somewhere deep in the building.
    “ This is
the way out,” she said. “And as promised, a clean set of clothes
printed fresh and made especially for your body. I hope they’re to
your liking”
    A white t-shirt
and a pair of black shorts, exactly like the set I’d been wearing
at Saturn’s before coming here, but the fabric was crisp and new,
iridescent white and a black glossy in its newness. Every day I
washed out my clothes by hand in my kitchen, not wanting to waste
money on a laundromat. Everything I wore was softened and fuzzed
around the edges, colours muted and everything just that little bit
grey. I knew about the tech of printing your own clothes but it was
just one of those irrelevant facts I’d never bothered to pay
attention to, until now, when this outfit, something as a simple as
a pair of training shorts and a boring old T-shirt seemed like the
most outlandish extravagance. I held them close to my chest. They
smelled like plastic.
    The lift opened
with a beep.
    “ See?
You’re not being held against your will.”
    “ And I
still wouldn’t know what I would be being held for,” I said. Sexy
as she was, the evasiveness was beginning to annoy me.
    “ Forgive
me, my mind does tend to wander among thoughts.” Her lips pulled
into that same small smile and she looked almost bashful. It was
gorgeous. “Rev, and let me remind you it won’t take me long to
discover if that’s really your name or just an ideologically
appropriate nickname, I am offering you a membership to a very
private club. A place to perform your nightly worship to your own
body. I own a very elite… we’ll call it a fitness centre, and I
would like you to come and work for me.”
    That’s the big
reveal? She was offering me a new job in a gym?

Chapter Seven

Sanctuary

    I’d done as
Sveta had ordered me to do before I left her place and was waiting
on the other side her building. It was late in the afternoon.
    I must’ve
walked by this place a thousand times or more and never thought
what might be behind these windows, blacked and completely
clandestine. There was no signage to betray there was