Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 6
Porter
I got the alert as I left Senator Hathaway’s office. The vibration came through my phone in two neat pulses just before I reached the elevator bank.
I glanced down, expecting a staff update or some trivial scheduling nuisance, and instead saw the Selecta Arrangements icon, a cherry red lock and key, at the left side of a banner that read:
High-compatibility associate profile available in your area.
I almost laughed at the incongruousness of getting that alert at that moment.
I had joined Selecta Arrangements two years earlier, during a period in which I’d been working too hard and allowing myself too little company. I’d used the app with extreme selectivity. The system featured a good deal of efficiency, I would give it that. It cut through a great deal of mess.
But it also had a way of making appetites feel administrative, which I disliked. Most of the women it suggested to me were either too practiced in their submission to interest me or so eager to perform innocence that I lost patience before reaching the end of the profile.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped in, alone, and the doors began to close.
Then I touched the notification.
Perhaps it was the lingering impressions from my meeting with Frances Hathaway. Perhaps the residue of our conversation, which had not been especially pleasant even by her standards, had left me frustrated in more ways than one.
I wanted real support for the new generation of assistive tech. The senator wanted votes and language and plausible morality draped over a subsidy framework that would, if we were honest, chiefly enrich the manufacturers of Hathaway’s state and place the right families more firmly in control of the economy.
I had agreed to help the bill’s billionaire sponsor because the legislation would do useful things and because influence, once accumulated, ought to be exercised. But Hathaway had seemed sharper than usual, and beneath her polish I had sensed irritation of a more personal sort.
So when the app opened and the face on the screen was Alexandra Murphy’s, my first thought was not desire.
It was, Talk about a coincidence. And then, Maybe that’s why Hathaway had a larger stick up her ass than usual.
Red hair. Blue eyes. A profile photograph so conservative it almost read as defiance: blouse buttoned high, expression composed, chin lifted just enough to imply self-command. The second picture gave more away. Slender figure, formal dress, long pale legs, beauty she had tried to frame as poise. The third seemed newer and more honest, though probably not Alex had intended honesty. Ivory lingerie. Face partially obscured by her hair. Knees parted just enough to suggest either bravery or inexperience. Probably both.
I felt a certain stillness come over me that I knew well: something important, but uncontrolled, had just cropped up in my usually well-structured life.
I had seen Alex once before, though not at close range, and not so that she would have remembered me. At a reception several weeks back, standing three people away from Hathaway and pretending not to notice the men noticing her. I remembered thinking she looked too young for the expression she kept trying to wear. I remembered also thinking that if she lasted a year on the Hill without being eaten alive, it would be because she learned very quickly.
Apparently she hadn’t learned much.
The profile text was careful in a way that told on itself.
Intelligent, feminine, discreet. New to arrangements but not to pleasing demanding men. I value generosity, clarity, and strong leadership. I can be shy at first, but I respond deeply to confidence, consistency, and a firm hand. Looking for a sponsor who appreciates honesty, polish, and a woman who wants to learn.
I read it twice.
The app displayed its usual metrics in the corner—match confidence, preference overlap, geographic compatibility, disciplinary alignment. I ignored most of that. Selecta’s predictive systems were often impressive but also generally tedious.
What interested me was the strain in the language. Women entirely comfortable with submission did not write like that. Nor did women merely curious. This read like a bright girl trying to draft her own surrender in terms that would let her preserve her pride while still obtaining what she has begun to understand she needed.
That interested me more than it should have, maybe.
* * *
Alex
I woke up to twenty-three notifications from the Selecta Arrangements app. I stared at the number for several seconds before I unlocked my phone.
Twenty-three.
The app had arranged them in a neat vertical list, each with a blurred profile image, a display name, a sponsor tier, and the first line of the message. The effect seemed distressingly efficient. I felt as if I had woken up to discover that sometime in the night my body had been put out for bid and a line had formed.
The first one called himself CapitolTraditionalist and opened with: