It oddly, took Jacob several hours to watch the virtualiser.

  He had a fairly clear idea of what was on it. Yet he had to know for certain.

  He turned the virtualiser on. He was taken to a pretty, shadowy room where the light hailed down in slippery, yellow rays. He could see the outline of an uppermost limb, the wide, dark silhouette of a breast and the elegant little slant of a feminine shoulder. Finally, he glimpsed a fine, curved waist that almost flew in and out with a great tapering as she moved.

  He saw a young man’s enviably broad, muscular, heavy shoulders and his slight thinness that implied very late adolescence. He was tempted to turn it off, but he then heard Mist’s voice, soft, slightly laughing but almost affectionate? it seemed unnatural.

  He then climbed onto the bed quite gracefully and the movement spread out some of his hair so it like a great, haunting curtain of silver fell across his young lover’s dimmed face….

  Okay, he didn’t need to watch anymore. So, Shiver had disobeyed the purity agreement she had with the creepy swamp beast. A nickname Jacob used to pity the man for, when had heard other people using it to describe Monovalent’s inventor. The pity had, needless to say, dried up.

  Jacob realised, perhaps God was watching after all, and he had cleverly set it up so the devils would pay out their own dues with their mistrust and envy of one another and their spitting spite. Those things that can destroy evil as effectively as good’s righteous hand.

  Yet he was oddly reluctant to hand the man the virtualizer. He knew without her Shiverla capabilities, which Emanuel could revoke at any point, she was as vulnerable as any young girl. He would hand an unstable man this girl like a shivering lamb for a beastly slaughter. Yet if Emanuel Roe took away the Shiverla’s powers out of spite and rage, then the terrible bioweapons would both be finally laid to rest. Only Monovalent would remain as needing to be destroyed. Jacob would have struck quite the blow for humankind. For God’s people. Of which he was not sure Shiver and Mist qualified. Did they even have spirits? Or just great, empty vessels with blackened edges? Where the fiery, tempest winds of hell blew?

  Not that she wasn’t somewhat in that position of being at her creators' mercy anyway but her blood being on Jacob’s hands if she was slain or maimed in revenge wasn’t something he could bear. Not that she had shown others such grace. So, he should not care. Yet she helped him, and gave up everything to do so. This seemed a lousy reward. Though perhaps this was her penance, her remorse, her punishment. He just wished he didn’t have to be the one to dole it out.

  Suddenly a loud, urgent rapping came at the door; something about it terrified Jacob and he soon saw Mist standing there.

  “Hand it over,” he said very quietly.

  The darkling timbre, the graving danger in his tone, one that seemingly-beat alongside the darkest of shadowy wings, slithered into Jacob’s ear with hideous, sinister grace.

  Yet he shook his head at the other boy.

  Suddenly Jacob felt the most despairing wave of illness, his heart seemed to be struggling; thumping harder and harder and yet feeling like it was both tightening and shrinking. He realised the cells were being destroyed by Mist from the inside.

  He realised he could not breathe properly and he soon fell dizzyingly to the ground: suddenly he saw Shiver floating upwards in her dear, little red-and-white cloud, dimly and through a darkling vision; she was racing up towards the house. As she hurried toward the steps, he felt such sweet warmth and brightness alongside a great, moving, gentle finger slowly winding into the musical and golden thrum of healing.

  “No, you will not slay my knight. He won fair and square,” she said indignantly.

  “All because you just couldn’t accept what you gloriously-were;” Mist hissed.

  ‘You had to pretend you were some little damsel who needed to be rescued by a fair Prince. You are a Shiverla, you don’t need human help. Accept the grand, seraphim beauty of what you are. A magical siren. A beatified gargoyle; an angel-faced terror.”

  Shiver suddenly clasped his arm. “I know. Let’s just go home. He loves me too much to show anyone the virtualiser I swear. So, his win means nothing.”

  “It better not.” The pair then walked away without even a glance backwards as Jacob went to be violently ill and then go sleep as dismayingly and deeply as he ever had.

  Why companies prefer to hire the childless and men, over women with children.

  Not a sexist conspiracy but a mere exploitation of her happenstance weakness and the utilization of a young man’s usefulness and strength by the powerful. Corporations and armies often use it to its holder’s detriment. This is why infant-bound women are culled from the workforce whilst initially the heartier man is welcomed; until he’s soon worn and bloodied from harsh labour. He is then hence torn from the fold.

  Businesses don’t necessarily set out to sell sexualised images of bodies fertile and youthful to create looseness and promiscuity, yet the Sexual Revolution flowered open a new ability to seize the Almighty dollar. They saw a chance to reap resources from lust bestial and promises-of-rutting. Leaving the people poorer but titillated.

  Everything is defined in terms of competition: nothing is a greater insult than welfare queen, uneducated, leeching loser, basement dweller, incel, or namely failures yet this loathing is not about valuing the joy of earning. It is not about your contributions creating a society of well-made things and gold that functions to bring about both technological wonders and a safe haven home. Nor is it about the sweet savour a touching hand brings; for the utterer usually values none of these. They would pollute the world into salted ground for a silver piece. It is more a mere fight for your status amongst the wealthy and worthy, that alone brings glory. To keep you mindlessly working for elites; hoping to one day join their ranks.

  Both the modern left and right-wing branches often advocate “pure choice” in birth, marriage and “love” which turns into sexual looseness as godliness, the erotic body as a commodity and man from his female counter split. The hole ready for the miser to with goods fill. Rewards of the isolated, childless. Flowing with the bronze of low-earnings.

  Simon had felt some desire to understand Emanuel and Aryan and their beliefs and had thus begun reading Emanuel’s published, philosophy text, Farewell, The Miser. It had been eye-opening in some ways, but it was overwrought and overwritten for those who didn’t stuff their noses in old philosophy textbooks, and he did find it to be just a little too grim and, cynical and scathing.

  “Maybe the man should stick to AI engineering and mathematics,” Simon muttered. Suddenly a knock came at the door. Simon started. Jacob, with his dark, dishevelled hair and eyes oddly-dusted with the cold was standing on his doorstep.

  He soon ushered the boy in and proclaimed in a friendly tone, “How are you friend, you look a little shaken.”

  Jacob handed Simon the virtualizer; as silently as Shiver had gifted it to him.

  Simon watched to roughly the point Jacob did. He frowned and seemed embarrassed and merely confused and Jacob realised he had no idea about the promise of the dove-pure betrothal, the deal for a Shiverla’s hand in marriage.

  He explained it to the slightly older man.

  Simon listened. Bemused. No wonder Shiver had such a dark and sorrowful slant to her great eyes, the last time Simon had gone to see her.

  Oh, dear God.” Simon finally shook his head. “Poor little Shiver…”

  “Poor? She murdered millions of people; possibly as many a hundred on purpose.”

  “Yes, I don’t know why I sometimes forget.” Simon again shook his golden head. “You’re right; she is not simply acting under Aryan’s auspices. Under his command.”

  “Yet she helped you…” Simon said softly. With a certain compassion that trailed at the end of his tone. “She did the right and righteous thing at her on peril…”

  “Should I hand it over…”

  “Well, we don’t even know what the beast will actually do,” Simon frowned.

  “Perhaps he will not revoke her AI-powered gifts at all…Simply reprogram her mind and make her his perfect bride…. Once Aryan is felled and can’t use her as a bioweapon. He may well have the capacity to do so. He can then use her as a bioweapon and for any other repellent purposes he might…Be inclined to.”

  Jacob blinked. He hadn’t thought of this at all. His mind toppled and twisted and in its desperate for distraction, turned to dwelling on random things. He glanced down to where he was leaning on his strong, uppermost limbs. Soon he was smiling proudly as he recalled how his long, muscular arms had made even Shiver’s both mad and saddened eyes light up.

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  “Yet, it is still an important find, Jacob. He may well disown the pair out of spite and rage as you claim, and Shiver certainly seems to believe. He may lose the will to continue his bid for political take-over. So, Shiver thinks he would burn the whole thing to the ground rather than accept her betrayal? Well, she knows him far better than either of us do. I have only read the generic reports of him as a somewhat reclusive genius and who in his youth was a bit of a trickster.”

  “Don’t forget the dead bride,” Jacob muttered. “That he just can’t let go.”

  Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of their conversings, Shiver was curled up sweetly. Watching one of Aryan''s old speeches.

  “So essentially it will cost less in the long run as products will last five years instead of eight months. Not to mention better-working wages as when the supply of workers exceeds demand wages drastically fall. Soon people can’t afford necessities like housing and food the economy suffers as people are not purchasing. Over time technology will improve so robots can replace unskilled labour and improve quality of life for more citizens.”

  “As long people are willing to put up with shoddy products to save money (in theory) and there's a cheap supply of workers here and overseas there will not be enough incentive to improve technology’s capacity for longevity (products are shorter-lived than ten, twenty even forty years plus years ago) or to build androids to replace the humans in difficult and dangerous jobs. Crony Globalist Capitalism is hindering technology.”

  Shiver’s mind again turned off completely around the part where he moved on to discussing the labour and societal worth of the lower and middle classes. Though she was certainly trying to listen and appreciate her Dark Hero.

  "People cannot survive on the wages currently paid to them, water and land must be conserved and migration limited; for starters, it takes doctors from truly needy third-world nations who already do without medical care too often. Third-world people are desperate enough to take back-breaking unskilled work but it’s not sustainable and they must find different work or end up homeless and all it does is promote discontent among the unskilled labour force (divide and conquer rule.)”

  “Humans are social beings who over time formed a collective of specialized knowledge,” Aryan said, his words concise and carefully enunciated. “Thus, we can conduct a prosperous, complex, industrial society that maximizes mass production and innovation. This is best achieved by having people taught to execute and perform important specialized skills. This maximizes productivity more than unskilled labour and is essential because we cannot survive without our poor or middle class.”

  She was enamoured of Aryan and his political ideology. Most of the time. Yet the blood boiled throughout her shapely, little body and limbs recalling what was happening around the time he first gave this speech.

  Several weeks after she and Mist moved into his house Aryan went out and brought a woman back with him. A young woman early to mid-twenties and pretty in a bland way, he introduced her as my "friend" Natalie.

  “He's been trolling the streets for easy sluts,” had commented Mist to a distraught Shiver who had been rather love-struck of Aryan lately. This happened more and more with Aryan bringing different women each time as the weeks flew by and Mist and Shiver campaigned and attended rallies, charity events, and meetings of various left-wing groups.

  “I hate those women,” Shiver would miserably and frequently tell Mist and Anne-Marie and Laurence and anyone who would listen. Then she would block her ears to the sound of Aryan and his lady friends. The newspapers started reporting on his numerous affairs after a while and saying perhaps at thirty-nine he should be thinking of settling down and raising a family. Shiver stormed out at this.

  Aryan saw his reputation being hit however and suggested one night at the dinner table that perhaps he should marry, to get the public on his side. Shiver at this pushed her plate away and as far as Mist could tell didn’t eat for a week. Aryan had been telling Shiver he loved her but like a precious jewel or doll is loved. Monovalent explained to her that this meant his love was distant and so he had trouble expressing it.

  Aryan meanwhile wrote poems and love letters which he gave to Shiver, and he told her he wanted to be her lover. If only she were older, he claimed, it was she he would marry. All this seemed to make her very happy though Mist was suspicious as Aryan treated them both with a cool reserve and showed little to no affection.

  He bought the pair many gifts that Shiver misconstrued to be symbols and tokens of his love and devotion. Mist who hailed from a wealthy, but shallow family knew, however, that such elaborate gifts were often a substitute for love not a sign of it. Sweet nothings and lies or not, the gifts she received were all aesthetically beautiful and pleasing.

  Mist for his part had been gifted a collection of painstakingly, handsomely-crafted, antique radios and some watches and sleek, motor vehicles crafted at the height of the industry. Some vintage French cabinets.

  A Crimson dark lamp, dragon statues, frog statues and gargoyles in black pots. Even professional photographs depicting dark but stunning scenery, including a dew-covered rose shot in ultraviolet light and a deliberately slightly blurred shot of the Snowy Mountains. Photos of a half-grown Siamese cat shot in infrared light.

  Shiver picked out some of these trinkets herself as did Aryan and Mist but Monovalent picked the overwhelming majority under Emanuel’s instruction and insistence. Shiver filled her room with giant, realistic doll houses. With slender-built, silver, copper, cobalt, and gold vases filled with dear little garden flowers and even a large white rocking horse.

  Later, Shiver was cheerfully eating a pineapple doughnut she had bought from the local bakery, even though she and Mist had eaten an entire packet of Anzac biscuits two hours earlier not to mention that double cheese pizza last night.

  She felt both starving and ill but gave in to hungry sugar cravings. Largely since a sugar/fat rush would get her through all the boring functions she had to attend.

  She got up from the sofa with a sigh and squawked loudly when her little black and flame-gold electronic fruit bat flew by and landed on her own red-gold hair. “You scared the hell out of me, Sealy,” she said which was what she had named the toy. She proceeded to her bedroom to choose a respectable-looking outfit and prepare for a night of socializing with do-gooder cretins and both right-wing and progressive-wing zealots. This was her weary burden since becoming a political activist.

  As he moved toward her, from the primrose hall, he saw her ensconced on the sofa with a few plush wine-red cushions, her feet poking out the sides and a little snowy-colored bear and a cat toy( both electronic) in each crooked arm. The velvet rug was a similar shade to Shiver’s dress, very deeply-blue. More dark violet. With heavy, wine-shading muslin curtains, it mirrored a room in Emanuel’s mansion. Monovalent its designer had liked the colour scheme and stolen it from him. Shiver sat near the enormous virtualiser TV.

  Her “cold white-gold” cat toy (a shade Shiver had coined as strands of hair or fur coloured ashen white, cream-gold, and silvery-gold) was writhing about. It had black markings and huge, round, blue-gray eyes. Its label called it Shady, a yellow fluffy-furred savannah, and it meowed and chased insects and Shiver’s electronic mice, numbats, and bilbies. Controlled by Monovalent's AI whose capabilities never failed to fill Shiver with a rather whimsical delight.

  The other electronic creature was an equally pale and soft-furred baby bear that growled and bit everyone and though its nips were gentle, and they didn’t hurt, it got rather trying. The two electronic animals kept emitting mewling, protesting noises and trying to escape from Shiver’s unwilling arms.

  She was watching and utterly engrossed in the Science Streamer's channel. Shiver was the only girl Mist knew or even heard of who watched the science streaming channel. The other things Shiver liked besides science fiction was Ghibli anime for its beautiful, soulful imagery (almost like an art form), voices and characters. She also revered Swedish, Asian German and other Nordic but especially French movies. She was indeed a pouncy little thing. She liked the women’s striking faces in foreign films.

  They expressed with subtle movements and a look in the eyes love and rage, joy and despair instead of the crying, hollering, hair-pulling and soulless face-wrenching, contorting and twisting of big ugly mouths Americans used to display emotion.

  Mist cleared his throat loudly to get Shiver’s attention. “Hey, Shiv, surely you aren’t watching studies of the brain concerning the cerebral cortex again?

  He knew it was cruel to interrupt her when she looked so jubilee. He interrupted her anyway though mainly because he was bored and since she was the only person he didn’t despise, basically he either spent time with her or with nobody. Shiver blinked up at him in surprise her face changing from mild shock to looking somewhat offended.

  “This stuff is cool,” she protested. “Really Mist, it’s fascinating if you would just give it a chance.”

  “It’s actually about what happens when the connection between our right and left brain is severed and how one woman who had it happen to her was shown a picture of a naked person while covering her right eye. She blushed because one side of her brain told her she was seeing something inappropriate, but it couldn’t communicate the image to the left or language side, so she had no idea why she was embarrassed.”

  “Plus, there’s a special on human chimeras tonight. They are interesting but not nearly as amazing as we are."

  Then we cover parthenogenesis in higher animals like sharks and snakes and the turkey, then one on alien hand syndrome where a subconscious part of your brain can’t communicate with the rest of the brain as the neuron connections are damaged or severed. That part however somehow takes control of one of your hands, so it moves seemingly of its own accord. Picking things up, even trying to strangle you in your sleep and you can’t stop it.”

  “It’s frequently seen in patients with brain damage. Though electro-brain wave therapy that Aryan devised has been ameliorating a lot of brain malfunctions. Finally, there is a documentary on the probability of the existence of intelligent life on other planets.”

  Mist smiled to himself he’d just thought of a perfect way to rile her up.

  “You know,” he said mischievously “Old Aryan also loves the exceedingly boring study of science and anatomy; that’s why he has so many different, ancient books on it.”

  Shiver glared at him, “well I’m not Aryan, Mist,” she said her tone peevish. Mist was completely unaffected by this and began munching nonchalantly and with disaffection on a pack of toffees and glugging down an energy drink he had brought over from the fridge.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong Shiv, I love my little geeky girl who helps me in studying the behaviour and internal ticking of our favourite animals the humans too Mist told her after a pause. What I don’t get is why you don’t leave all the boring physical science behind it to geeks like Aryan.”

  Shiver glared at him again. “Don’t lie to yourself Mist, you don’t find the behaviour of humans fascinating; you just like making them scared. You basically just like tormenting them,” she said. Mist shook his head grinning widely: he was seriously starting to enjoy himself. Shiver was always fun she made such a great debating partner.

  “Well yes and no, my dear girl,” he said.

  “I’d have to say you’re half-right. I’m still studying them; I’m studying what makes them scared or angry, who cares about making them happy? Positive emotions in people are generally very boring and predictable; the many ways of inciting fear or rage are far more complex.”

  Shiver’s face as Mist explained this to her appeared to be only half-listening; it seemed she had lost interest in the discussion. He wasn’t surprised. Shiver was usually up for any debate for a least several hours, however recently she’d had one of her episodes and her concentration was as always lacking, for a least a few days afterwards.

  It had been a truly spectacular episode this one, involving her screaming that humans didn’t even deserve to be alive due to the fact that they were a stupid, ugly, weak-bodied, repulsive species. Yet somehow, they still managed to find someone and to have more children; children who always turned out invariably to be just as stupid, hideous and repellent as they were. Whilst she and Mist were alone, possibly infertile (who knew what side effects tampering with their genes had wrought) and their wonderful "race" might even die out.

  “We’ll never win!” She had sobbed “The humans will inherit the earth forever with their lousy genetics and our race of creatures that never have to experience illness or death will die!” She then shouted, “It was a crime against Mother Nature,” and ran to her bedroom crying. She locked herself in and proceeded to wallow in abject misery.

  She played despairing songs whilst Aryan was disgusted and told her, that she, Mist and Monovalent were, as Emanuel wrote “Beings made valiantly by me and who need entirely a more soft, apologetic nature; splaying faultless tears of those gifted the wonder of the living. What a cold if not unforeseeable heresy, to resist their capacity to remedy the ailments and ills of a humanity forsaken.”