No Future
Chapter 83: Home is Where the Heart is

Copyright© 2012 by Bradley Stoke

Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 83: Home is Where the Heart is - This is a future history of England over the Twenty-First Century and into the next. It is a multi-threaded narrative that travels from place-to-place, succeeds from year-to-year, and passes from one person to another. England's green and pleasant land is visited by famine, plague, war and pestilence. Governments come and go. The ocean levels inexorably rise. International relations worsen. And the English people stumble through the chaos as best they can. Who said there was No Future?

Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa   Ma/Ma   Lesbian   Swinging   Orgy   Interracial   Black Female   Oral Sex   Anal Sex   Prostitution  

Iris

2060

It would never have been Iris' ideal choice of career, but there weren't many choices still available to her. Though there'd been an evident expansion in employment opportunities as the White Death receded, this brief boom vanished at almost the same rate as the last bodies were being incinerating. The jobs that appeared to address the need to clean up after the pandemic vanished all too soon. The Government's policy of dissuading foreign influence had also destroyed any residual foreign appetite for inward investment and the Republic of England was now a place of even fewer opportunities and rather less hope.

As there were no openings for a career in Biotechnology even in London, Iris decided that having already stooped somewhat lower than she'd ever intended when she chose to work for Empire Cleaning Services, her pride was no longer an obstacle with regards to any decision she made to make money. As she'd already made a living by masquerading as a cleaning maid, perhaps now she should actually work as one. So Iris began to look more favourably at the many vacancies for domestic servants that were being posted on the internet. It was one of the few sectors in the Kingdom's economy where job opportunities were continuing to grow, but the job opportunities were all cloistered well away from what Iris viewed as the ordinary world. And that was the world where she believed she belonged. This other world where most domestic servants in London worked was secluded behind the electric fences and high gates of the affluent private estates. The relatively prosperous wanted to maintain a good distance away from the ungrateful taxpayer, but they still needed people to mow their lawn, make their beds and do the ironing.

A few years earlier when Iris' source of income was also to provide services for the comfortably well-to-do, she'd very much been the centre of her employers' attentions (though perhaps not in a good way). Nowadays when she'd gained access into the homes of the fortunate few—having been vetted by security guards at the electric gates—she was entirely peripheral. As far as her employers were concerned, she was nothing more than an invisible presence. All they wanted from her was to ensure that the detritus of daily life was removed without fuss and with no trace. Toilet bowls cleaned. Shirts ironed. Beds made. Parquet floors polished and cleaned.

Iris was sure that even in just three years there'd been an appreciable hardening in the attitude expressed by the affluent towards those less fortunate. Her employers previously betrayed the occasional sign of embarrassment at being in possession of so much more wealth than those no less deserving than themselves. Now, after seven years of the Government of National Unity and a year of the White Death, there was nothing that could tarnish their innate sense of superiority.

Iris soon came to rather prefer the secluded, secure and tidy world of immaculate lawns behind the electric fences to the perils of her life outside. This was ironic because it was only outside that she was able to enjoy her free time. The world where she worked was a place where the roads were lit in the dark; where the electricity was always on and reliable; and where she was safe from harassment and arbitrary violence. The hedges that enclose the houses were as trim and tidy as the lawns. When she was inside the houses—shaking sheets, ironing denim jeans, dusting behind the furniture—she became almost house-proud for the well-appointed homes whose corners and alcoves she'd got to know in more intimate detail than did the actual home-owners.

When she walked home at the end of the day, having cleaned, tidied and scrubbed in five or six homes for ten or more hours at a rate of pay that was barely more than she'd once used to receive at the Work Experience Centre, she had to pass through a cordon of security guards. Even though they all recognised her, because they were themselves monitored by security cameras, they had to behave as officiously now as on the first day that Iris first worked in the private housing estate. Any evidence of sloppiness would be noticed by the attendant software and their employment would be abruptly terminated.

And then through the barrier gates, into the dark streets where the only functioning street-lights were those few not yet vandalised and which were, in any case, only as bright as their solar batteries allowed. Iris would walk home in a group of other domestic servants in the hope that sheer numbers would provide the desperately needed security for the next several kilometres walk and subsequent bus-ride. When she at last settled down on the decrepit ancient bus with its smashed-up security camera and punched-open windows that let in the wind and rain, she watched the North West London streets on the journey to her house-share just by the periphery of Heathrow Airport.

Once upon a time, this had been a part of London with many jobs but also the constant disruption that came from being right under the flight-path of aeroplanes flying across the Atlantic or to parts of Europe. Although there were still many such flights, they were rather fewer in number than Iris remembered from her childhood when she and her mother took holidays together in Spain and Florida. Even though her recollection of these holidays were marred by the accompanying memory of her mother's constant moaning about her feckless ex-husband and Iris' father, she still recalled the childhood pleasure of sitting by the aeroplane window and looking out at the clouds below. Rather fewer people could afford to fly these days and as fuel prices continued their inexorable rise, this was a number that could only continue to fall.

The people who owned the houses that Iris kept so spotlessly clean would have little trouble in affording the occasional plane flight. For them, the experience of flying would be quite different from what Iris remembered. There would be emptier airport lounges, smaller crowds and shorter queues at Passport Control. Not that Iris could be sure about this. Although news stories in the mostly sympathetic media emphasised how strict and rigorous immigration checks now were under the present government, Iris imagined that those few who could afford to fly were unlikely to be the ones whose freedom of movement the Prime Minister wanted to restrict. In fact: quite the opposite.

A plane thundered overhead as Iris turned the key in one of the three locks that secured the heavily reinforced front door. She looked upwards to the sky as cold autumn drizzle pasted her cheeks and could just about make out the livery of the Republic of North America. It was ironic that those of the original United States who'd previously been most enthusiastic about the benefits of unfettered capitalism were the same ones who were now nationalising almost every industry still based in the Southern states to prevent them re-locating to Mexico or the Western Union. And then, in through the door, with a final check that no one was following behind, and up the dimly lit staircase to her bedroom.

 
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