*cracks knuckles*
It's been a while guys, I thought up a new story here and there, and I think I'll do some longform story.
WARNING:
some implied borderline-unacceptable squick,
probably more non-ASFR meandering than I should be posting on a site aimed at ASFR,
some southern style hatred of things that aren't cishet,
devil's bargains.
I'm literally begging to get banned here with what I'm putting into this story.
If any of this disagrees with you, feel free to block this post on your view. i
if any of this is illegal to board rules, feel free to reach out to me to warn me I'm screwing up and I'll stop publishing/delete this story.
Chapter 1 - The Morning Interview
The morning sunrise did the same thing it always did this time of year, gleaming through the slight parting of the curtains, spilling across the bedroom floor on his side of the room, and drawing a line across that spilled a little into one eye.
Marcus Manners squinted a little, the slight pain of the orangey yellow light pinging against his eyeball waking him. He stirred a little, shifting his hands a little to find the other half of the bed emptied. He opened his eyes, watching a curvy figure slowly disrobe in front of the bedroom mirror, the shimmery rose pink sleeping gown slowly sliding down skin lightly tanned from a regime of sunbathing and busying with a life of decadent luxury in the garden and kitchen.
The face of a well-kept middle-aged sybarite framed by dark hazelnut hair examined itself in the mirror, blinking slowly as her slightly wrinkled hands carefully applied the usual combination so beloved of women trying to stay young: a little foundation, subtle black eyeliner just thick enough to make eyelashes and eyebrows obvious but not thick enough to look made-up, a dash of lipstick in a modest red going across her lips, her aquiline grey eyes examining the makeup work even as Marcus appreciated the curves spilling from her head down her neck, across her waist and down to a butt that didn’t know how to sag in compliance with age.
Marcus could have kept looking. He also knew that Julie hated voyeurs, even if they were the man they married.
After a little longer than he felt prudent, he gave a small “Ahem. Morning, honey...”
Julie yelped, quickly turning a little to glance at Marcus. “And a beautiful morning to you, dear...” Viewed from the side, the way her E-cupped breasts hung bountifully in defiance of gravity and age gave Marcus a frisson of guilty pleasure, the strains of Rammstein singing about Dicke Titten playing in his mind almost causing him to laugh.
Almost as if sensing what he was enjoying and trying to deny him the joy of it, Julie tilted her head as she rose from her stool, reaching for a nearby set of midnight blue bra and panties, carefully putting them onto her curved frame and taking care to ease her breasts into the floral lace. She always planned her morning outfit in advance the night before, if not the rest of the day’s wear, and this time, it was a simple rough-looking red and white gingham dress, intended for the rigors of the kitchen, followed by a white apron with a bluebird she had embroidered onto the front with great care for a week after it had first arrived all bare and unadorned. “You’re waking up late. How about I make you something quick to eat and bring you your medications before the interviewer? Get your beard trimmed and wash up properly while I do it?” She asks matter of factly as she starts for the doorway to the bedroom.
Marcus glanced at the bedroom clock, giving a small ‘eep’ as he realised that no, Julie was not joking. The interview he was giving would start in an hour, little time for dawdling. He sprung out of bed and quickly paced to the bathroom, doing his usual morning shower and trimming his greyish beard with a little more urgency, before rushing to don a simple black sweater and his favorite old loyal jeans, now faded with age and worn after decades as his trademark uniform in the public eye.
It was only a matter of moments before he was in the study, at the table he had used for all his design work and casual reading. As he sat down, he glanced at the old Neelix The Cat clock on one wall, his only one damning indictment against his sense of taste in a room curated heavily to give the impression of a man who had never gone out of style for decades. He smiled. It had been the first thing on his wall back in college in the dorms, and he would be damned if he did not still enjoy the absurdity of its tail swishing lazily with the passing of seconds even as Neelix’s eyes flashed back and forth across the room, an antique from a long-gone era. Perhaps he was the only person left alive who truly appreciated the old comics about the Cat.
He still had time before the interview.
A tuna sandwich stuffed with romaine lettuce leaves and dried tomato slices filled Marcus’ mouth a small bite at a time , paired with some preventive medication that helped him keep his apparent age four or five decades younger than he actually was. It was all the rage with people of a certain moneyed status, and he jolly damned well had done quite enough to be part of that group, rather than just taking the cheaper generics that kept people alive longer, but not younger.
The glass of plain water that washed the last bits of sandwich down with the assorted pills and capsules was nothing special. Just local groundwater and extracted humidity carefully sterilized and chilled to a certain level of cold he favored. It still tasted like ambrosia, just as it had when he was a child, though there was now a lot less chance of it making him sick without being boiled first.
There was a knock on the door of the study. A short moment later, it opened, an old man glancing in. The limits of rejuvenation therapy were clearly visible, wrinkles rippling across his tired face as he came in with a small blotter and several small camera drones hovering around him, set to a conservative pattern that valued stability and good stills over catching every single bit of the the action. Just the kind of getup a man would use while interviewing someone of stature with seriousness, rather than some crazy young man full of zing and energy. “Mr Osworn here. I believe we talked before on the comms about talking about Arendtcore’s history....”
Marcus nodded and motioned to a nearby single-seater couch. “Have a seat. Thanks for giving me some of your time.”
“Pleasure’s more mine, Mr Manners.” Mr Osworn made the couch creak as he settled his dark blue blazer and pants combo into it. “Surely a man of your stature has so much demanding his time, your offer to talk about the company in detail surprised me.”
Marcus grinned, slightly yellow teeth glinting as he looked at the drones slowly rearrange themselves into a better pattern to capture the usual “serious interview” angles everyone knew. “Well, when the Independent Enquirer asks for our time, it’s probably best to oblige. Goddess knows what would happen if we made you work harder to find the details by old-fashioned gumshoe work.” An intrusive inner voice briefly surfaced in Marcus’ mind. “Oh, we have so many ideas.” Arendtcore had tried its best to keep a clean sheet all these years, but Marcus was privy to a lot of compromises that had been made in the offices. There was so much dirty laundry, it was definitely for the better that he had agreed to this chat and stuffed the laundry several floors down in the figurative basement.
Mr Osworn chuckled “so we all know the official story about Arendtcore. Four frat house brothers, lucking into a virtual monopoly on premium house robotics through a combination of hard work and a few canny deals. But I’d like to think we could start right at the beginning rather than from the official essay everyone loves to quote... could we do that?”
Marcus glanced at a photo on his table... it was old and worn on its original media, and some of the damage had still persisted even past a few transfers and scans. They had shunned the idea putting AI to work prettifying it, and it was still the same slightly ghostly, low-contrast 3D that had come out of a certain disposable budget partycam. Ten dollars for a camera that claimed to do 3D photos, and barf them out on the spot, but clearly a camera for capturing a moment rather than doing proper photography. It was also loaded with a lot of memories.
Four crazy young men in a frat house party, each toting matching blue plastic cups filled with something presumably fun and intoxicating, wearing shirts that turned out later to have been badly mistranslated greek that meant something different from what they had thought the words meant. One of the young men, a slightly bearded redhead, wore a lampshade with a polkadot pattern and was bellowing something loudly. He winced momentarily – there were few moments he would have changed in the past, but that was DEFINITELY one of them.
The Artist.
The Engineer.
The AI Sculptor Par Excellence.
The Legalist.
The world had changed them over the years, but Marcus did think they gave as good as they got, growing Arendtcore into a multinational even as they had kept a small cosy chunk for themselves near where they had started. The thought gave him a small smile... “There’s an awful shitton I would need to run past my legal department, but I can still spill a tonne of beans...”
