The vices of drugs, excessive food and alcohol and squabbling amongst special interest groups (race, gender) over whose most disadvantaged, these kinds of subversive, divide and conquer methods are obfuscating those low on the socioeconomic scale from seeing deeper issues like poverty-stricken, living conditions tantamount to slavery in a country where others can afford yachts and it serves politicians and pundits well.” Mist Gray rose high in his shoes to emphasize his nice, six foot two height as he spoke over a podium at a political rally under Aryan's approving eye.

  Many girls in the crowd near fainted just bearing witness to his golden-lashed, silvery-headed, violet-eyed beauty and the muscular shift of his limbs. His full chest. His richly-handsome face. His flirtatious little wink at them caused pleased squeals though the boy's charming demeanor became one of mere boredom as soon their faces plainly or prettily turned the other way. Three hours later he met up with fellow, virus creature, Shiver.

  The neighbourhood they had just entered lacked nano-eyes and was notorious for its near-exclusive lump and proletariat residency consisting largely of drug addicts, petty criminals, immigrant and refugee populations and gangs.

  Shiver stood, with a very slightly shape-shifted appearance and purse brimming with gold, cards and cash, skirt split, and delicate little leg extended. Each high, fine yet heavied breast much exposed and heaving. Under eyes blinking most sweetly and their overhanging, black lashes, made-up rather overly. Mist, vaguely altered, donned tight, girlish pants and a long, silver stock of worthily-effete hair. Together, the pair waltzed about, shouting at the top of their voices.

  “Hey darling, you hung horse, that sex last night was socking!!! Nearly blacked me out!!!” Shiver yelled.

  “Oh yeah my honey flower, punching-bag, it bulldozed me right over too.”

  Visibly aroused, one of the men from a group of seedy lookers outside the pub walked over.

  “You’re cute. Can anyone take a turn girly? How about some mischief. Tell me the truth. Good-looking thing like you likes sex hey?”

  “Thank-you for the compliment. Yet no. Well, I would,” Shiver said “Only… you don’t look very well,” she added concernedly.

  The other men all lean, dark-skinned were started to form a leering line. Making escape impossible.

  “How about that purse before we start?”

  One of them made to shove Mist.

  “You sexless little faggot, hair long enough for you?” Yet a wave of illness sent him to ground.

  “Maybe. Not now. You need a hospital all of you,” Shiver meanwhile replied as she shook a dainty head sadly.

  The men’s faces and lips had simultaneously paled, and their hands were greenish-tinged as one by one begun to collapse. Shiver and Mist went in and had root beer and pies while ambulances siren’d.

  Aryan found out and was furious he called Shiver and Mist home through Monovalent immediately.

  “Was this supposed to be humorous? You’re jeopardising so much with these little pranks,” he said grasping Shiver by her hair as she entered the manor.

  “Ow, you’re harassing me. I am a woman and don’t give you permission to touch me assailant, assaulter!!!!”

  “Hue and cry, hue and cry,”

  “Oh, cease this idiocy; you are no vulnerable human female, you’re a beast, a weapon and made as such.”

  “Gee monsters have feelings too Aryan,” she faux-snivelled indignantly.

  “You just assailed a woman.” Mist's eyes widened with a beauteous, false horror. “Nay a child.”

  “She’s practically a baby, Aryan; a lifetime in prison full of sodomizing for you. Also, she said hue and cry. She’s calling for your castration Aryan. Might not want to do that Shiv; law said the animals he owned were mutilated too and even lost their poor, pretty little tails and you like animals.”

  “Poor babies, okay I retract,” Shiver said. Besides I am not a child. Since my birthday last month, Which you asses all forgot. Geez so some stupid woman being harassed was worth maiming poor innocent creatures just with the assailant associated. What a bitch complaining for anything but the life-threatening or disabling in the first place if knew that outcome.”

  “You want to marry a castrated man you moronic girl?” Aryan asked dryly.

  “No” she admitted begrudgingly.

  “Jesting aside you’ll be punished next time heed my warning.”

  Shiver, frightened, shuddered then gave Aryan an adoring look that wept a rather pitiful passion, hoping he did indeed mean to marry her. He however soon walked away.

  She remembered meeting him; when she still went by her old name. What a grand, glorious day of light and brightest things.

  When they arrived at Aryan’s huge mansion it turned out to be a nineteenth century, castle-like manor made of gray stone which, due to his apt last name was now called Gray Manor after him and its appearance. It was picked out by Monovalent, and it encompassed enormous, lush, sweeping acres of gardens. Gardens filled with greenery and beauty.

  Heavily shaded with tall, high-reaching trees and a rainbow of flowers. Set by a pretty little river creek, with fish and frogs and owls. Parrots, bats and possums nestled in oak branches. There were Victorian angel statues and gargoyles and sculptures of birds like starlings and nightingales as well as foxes, wolves, dingoes and wild cats by a famous sculptor at the garden entrance. A large orchard out the back had cherry blossom trees whose branches grew a delicate array of snowy white and pink blossoms.

  As Emanuel put it “Aryan I declare with envy you're now in possession of a huge stone manor and nineteenth century folly. Its entrance a silver gate with white marble foundations with several tower turrets and balconies for admiring the view."

  She had noted very large open windows. Lovely, draping, muslin curtains, an enormous winding staircase. Fifty huge, high-ceilinged rooms with chandeliers, velvet carpets and a beautiful, stone fireplace From the air conditioning to seven bathrooms ones decorated in dark-blue and green with large silver-framed mirrors, black marble sinks and smooth, dark-blue stone, Sea-lighted tiles were in one green bathroom and she was taken to see clawed, pearly white porcelain baths with spas. All meticulously crafted.

  They had been greeted at the door by a pretty, slender woman with a gentle face and soft, chestnut dark-brown curls of around twenty-three or four. It was no wonder she made such a lovely, amorous, demon-slayer in the virtual realm. Driving poor Jacob mad.

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  She had then led them into the house and presented them with gifts. “From Master Aryan,” she'd said in a high, pleasant voice. The gift for Mist was a small tree in a pot designed by Emanuel and created by a team of botanists. Mist had stared at it. It was an unusual-looking tree; it’s trunk so dark as to appear that it was actually black and beset by an array of silver, shimmery leaves.

  “It is a most spectacular specimen as I think you’ll agree, we have the only successfully genetically engineered copy in the world,” the woman informed them smiling. “It even glows blue in the dark.”

  “My name is Anne-Marie by the way,” interrupted the dark-haired young woman, “and this present I have here is for her whom I presume to be the new young lady of the house,” she said stepping near and handing something to Shiver.

  It was a bouquet with a large wreath of black and white flowers wrapped up in deep violet-coloured paper. Shiver peeked inside curiously “Are those roses??” She asked, perplexed.

  “Yes,” said Anne-Marie nodding well done.”

  “There’re black though or at least some of them are, the rest are white,” Alice had said, “and I know for a fact wild roses don’t grow in black and can’t be engineered that way with current technology.”

  “Look at the roses on the black side again dear,” Anne-Marie pointed. Right in the middle of all the other, duskiest roses was one of such a dark midnight blue shade, you could have been forgiven for mistaking it for black at a first glance as Shiver had.

  “Wow!” She had gasped picking it out and then looked disappointed. “So, they’re painted or dyed or whatever it is right?” She asked. “After all, they have been trying to genetically engineer blue and black roses for years and years and never been successful.”

  “No dear. No colouring, no dyes only very superior genetic engineering, you’re looking at the very first black and white rose bouquet and it’s all yours a gift from our master Aryan to you.”

  “I asked for black and dark-blue roses per Monovalent’s suggestion… and the purple-dark ones he mentioned too, they're planted here in the garden but a black and white rose bouquet how… glorious, simply magnificent” Shiver had said awed.

  “Your appreciation for black roses must be genetic… As is your face and artistic nature. On another note, Aryan will be coming down to meet you shortly, he’ll explain to you further what I mean,” Anne Marie had said bowing graciously, then leaving with a swift, soft-footed departure.

  Alice had knew she'd met Aryan before yet only had the haziest recollection. With having been lying half dead in a room in his mansion hooked up to a bizarre looking machine which turned out to be Monovalent the computer which had artificial intelligence in its truest form….

  “The ability to create something out of what to others seems like nothing and to see new patterns both in maths, science and studies into human behaviour. “Most humans can’t do that,” Aryan said, “they just reflect the world around them and perform simple set tasks like worker bee drones and absorb pointless facts and truths discovered by greater minds… They are the true mindless drones not my Monovalent.”

  "I have made many extraordinary things: including brain-wave communicators for the disabled, virtual worlds of wonder, machine-cell interface treatments that cure many ailments, cancers and even slow aging. Yet many humans foolish waste my gifts and slip right back into slop-wanting and ruining their forms with drug and lifestyle-inflicted disease. Squandering resources on frivolous pleasures and plastics."

  Aryan though a very charming man, all at once wealthy, brilliant-minded, and successful and marble- sculpture handsome as a Greek God had, like many spoilt people blessed with too much fortune, the look of someone desperately encumbered, cold and desolate with their lot in life.

  His eyes as he'd looked at them were intense and sincere as he'd told Alice she was “a very pretty girl, most lovely indeed,” They had then shone with rapidly quashed lust and desire. Evan, he informed the boy, was “extremely good-looking and had a refined makeup about him”. His face changed, hardened however when he tried to defend his actions what he had created them for.

  “I hope you may come to understand I do not believe killing people is good but rather necessary to minimize the damage humans have done to other species the environment and of course ourselves.”

  Alice had waited patiently through his speech, she did not care about the earth; given a choice she would ditch it in an instant for a nice, new, greener planet half-way across the galaxy. This plan for the moment however seemed more feasible.

  “Peaceful communalism is not a mere ideal; it is truly conceivable. The best way of life and the only way if we are to survive,” Aryan said in a dark, serious tone. Humans have overpopulated: we kill just enough of them to limit our carbon footprint, we free the exploited underpaid labour force, switch to more synthetic meat and to safe, environmentally-friendly forms of energy, create prosperity and freedom and democracy in third-world countries, you know the drill."

  “I’m hungry” had been uttered by Evan. Quitely. His attention waning. Alice however had been listening intently to what he was saying. Not Aryan’s words so much as his voice. A beautiful deep, masculine voice a lyrical baritone that was elegant almost musical in nature. When he spoke it was in a manner that was soft, pained and beautiful in a harsh kind of way.

  Her large, dark, expressive eyes had scanned his face as meticulously as a hawk; noticing something about it, something unusual particularly when he smiled. His smile was both sweet and rotten at the same time it was as if he had once had all the beauty and wonder and new life of a plant but was now disillusioned and despondent and seething with rage and it showed like the brown dying edges of a flower wilted.

  Except he was young, so the aging was in his emotions, from a euphoric person with a love and lustre for life, he had become one who was disillusioned, angrily sorrowful, disdainful of the world. Yet in some form the pure, untouched newness, naivety still existed. It was still there simmering below the surface, trying to escape and thereby unleashing its sunlight, into a man who had become for all intents and purposes, a night garden. She had smelt it too, with her heightened senses. The scent of old flowers dying, starting to fade and go rotten but only just, and of worn-out but clean and perfumed clothes.

  “I solemnly regret to my hearts core all the people I have and must in the future kill.” Alice had frowned at this: his expression having told her he was lying. No longer the sad, desperate truth of aged beauty. His eyes had instead appeared smilingly-amicable and pleasant but with an undertone of rotting rubbish: that sweet, nauseating smell that comes with spraying lavender or similar, perfumed scents into a rubbish-strewn area to disguise the stench. Instead of dissipating, the smell merely worsens to something that smells faintly sweet but is rotten to its core. The smell did not fool Alice’s small but adept nose. The smell slowly grew more sickening than ever or so she felt when seeing someone with that much proclaimed integrity lie on such a phenomenally large scale.

  She did not care though she merely found it interesting. Evan had been able to tell by Alice’s expression how Aryan mesmerised her. Her animated eyes grew vaster and livelier and happier but almost hauntingly, with each sentence. She clearly adored him: he was intelligent, intense and soft-voiced, a true tragic hero. A genius with a menacing past.

  His real poverty-stricken parents were dead (Aryan was adopted from Russia or somewhere, he read in an article), and his adoptive parent had betrayed him by being fiscally conservative and in Aryan's opinion, semi-fascist. He was messed-up and ugly, but Evan had suspected this only added to the attraction. Alice wanted someone she was bettered than and to need her absolutely someone who in saving her would ultimately save himself.

  “My life was nothing but loss and pain until I found you.” He imagined she would imagine her perfect hero saying. An intelligent girl’s hero Aryan was rather, Evan had thought, though only perhaps if the little princess herself was slightly unbalanced.

  “He’s ugly,” Evan had said seriously to Alice when they were alone together in her new bedroom and sitting atop her Victorian era four-poster bed. Velvet carpet but deep and azure softened with gray; the walls of the room painted a beautiful, vivid sea- green, muslin curtains were tassels of midnight, so dark-blue.

  The room itself was huge; soft bedding underneath a snowy-white quilt filled with soft silky goose-down and large windows overlooking a backyard. It was modelled by Monovalent on one of Emanuel’s similar-coloured rooms. Decorated equally airily and he had just as many spacious rooms in his sandstone castle.

  “No, he’s not,” Alice had proclaimed giving him a weird look “he’s beautiful.”

  “For an inferior creature,” Evan had conceded “but for us he’s ugly he looks far too human.”

  Alice had smiled to herself: “I can see his type of good looks would or might seem a little strange to one of our kind, that I can admit. It’s true that he is very purely masculine which seems a more human trait.”

  “As Monovalent says, “Our men if there will be anymore truly, what with shape altering, will all be like you and much more achingly-delicate. Albeit strong. However, he’s still got a nicely masculine look, and I find his more ruggedness lovely.”

  “Better ask him to take his shirt off for you then Alice, see if his chest matches his manly face,” Evan had said with a mirthful grin.

  Alice had merely replied mildly, “Maybe I will,” with a sort of half-seriousness and a dreamy, faraway look in her eye and a smile had ventured forth from the crimson cusp of her lips.

  Evan somewhat taken aback and even impressed by her good-natured taking of his ribbing lapsed into silence and they had both said nothing for a while.