Tim slid forward to the edge of his seat again, a bright-faced hunk of burning love right out of the Elvis song, certain that she would include him in any arrangement that excited her. I wanted to pull my pistol and shoot him in the foot. I didn’t. To this day, I remain impressed with my restraint.
He said, “You simply approach them and ask them. No is not in the language of the Way. You may follow the Way in your suite—or, if a larger scenario is envisioned, you may follow the Way here in these rooms, where many options can be available at the same time. It would be most exciting for us if you did that. It is an honor to follow the Way with the Light himself”—he touched two fingers to his forehead, his lips, and then his heart in what I suppose was some sign of reverence—“or with one of his esteemed visitors.”
Sparky spoke up. Combining a scowl and a leer in an expression of subtle menace, looking less like a slimmed-down Santa Claus than like a degenerate whose presence at a grade-school playground would alarm any parent, he said, “Maybe somebody wants something rough. You mean every one of your soul siblings would be up for that?”
Tim clapped his hands as a child might clap when exclaiming goody-goody, and he once again sprang to his feet, as if he never got out of a chair other than by appearing to be propelled from it like a fighter pilot from an ejection seat. “Okay, yeah, many soul children may have a taste for what you suggest, but of course not all. It’s not forbidden. It’s a matter of desire, of interest. If the pleasure you wish isn’t one my siblings wish to indulge, then you’ll always be welcomed by the Special Selections. The Specials are reserved for the Light and his visitors. My soul siblings and I may not touch them. We aren’t spiritually armored enough to play with their kind without being contaminated. We produce alpha waves in abundance. Those who are in the Special Selection emit only gamma rays, which is true of all their kind. They aren’t and never can be of the Way. They’re Moujiks, oppressed from birth and unable to rise above their prejudices. They take pride in their ignorance and enjoy their oppression. But they’re ideal vessels for someone who has an interest in experiences of the sterner kind that you suggest. The Light himself and his spiritually pure visitors—you guys!—are impervious to the effects of gamma rays. Come along, come with me. We’ll finish our little orientation with the Special Selection.”
We followed him across the larger chamber to a corner bar with eight stools and a large TV screen, now blank. If you needed a break during an orgy, maybe you could come here and sit and have a drink and watch porn until you were revitalized to rejoin the debauchery behind you. Apparently, a deep dive into decadence involved periods of tedium and exhaustion.
Rather than sit on the stools and therefore turn our backs to the room, we stood, alert for arrivals.
Tim stepped behind the bar and took a Crestron control panel from its charging station. Whether the Oasis received a spectrum of programs by way of a satellite dish, I don’t know, but I doubt it. The soul children could best be controlled by keeping them away from those temptations of the world that were less urgently carnal than the lavish smorgasbord they could partake of here. Anyway, as good old Tim touched the Crestron screen, a closed-circuit menu appeared on the television. Among other options of local interest were THE LIGHT DEFINES TRUTH, THE LIGHT DEFINES LOVE, THE LATEST FROM THE LIGHT, and MEET THE NOVICES, from all of which we were spared when he opened instead SPECIAL SELECTIONS.
There was music that might have accompanied a BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. The screen filled with a placeholder video loop of a field of wildflowers swaying sensuously in a soft breeze.
Soul Timothy conducted this tour rather like a museum docent leading us through a wing devoted to famous portraits. “Currently, as you will see, there are seven women and three men available as Special Selections. Visitors who are interested in the exercise of the freedoms of domination, who want to express their liberation to the fullest possible extent, tend to prefer Moujik women rather than Moujik men. Those of either sex that you’ll see here greatly enjoy being subservient to whatever extent, to any extent, you wish to subject them. We’ll start with the seven women. If any appeals to you, she is most likely available, as you are the only visitors at the moment, unless the Light has reserved her.”
Reserved her. Like a table in a restaurant, a rental car at the airport.
Short of an extermination camp, I could imagine no place more disgusting than the Oasis, not merely because it was a cesspool of iniquity, not even primarily because of that. Even more repugnant was that Bodie Emmerich’s “Way” had taken the human sex drive and separated it from all higher human feelings and noble aspirations, stripping romance out of it, romance and love and the creation of a true family and any meaningful connection of one heart with another. He had shown a bright genius for the construction of companies, and subsequently a sinister genius for the deconstruction of this most complex of human desires, reducing it to a crude animal compulsion. Even worse than that, there was a mechanical quality to all of this, as though he must be preparing his followers for the Singularity, the melding of human and machine. Thereafter, protracted orgasm might be achieved with no more effort than pushing a button on yourself where a navel had once been, a five-minute ecstasy that would not interfere with the individual’s contribution to the GDP.