Aftermath

I stagger to my own bed and crumble face down into it. I really should shower, but the delayed shock of my realisation is making my legs tremble and I doubt I'd be able to stay on my feet. Although I feel numb, I'm horribly aware of the thick dribble that reluctantly started its journey down my inner thigh while I made the trip across the corridor; the fat glob that now quivers on my skin, not quite heavy enough to succumb to gravity and continue its altered downward trajectory. 97th percentile flashes in my head like a klaxon, but my body is refusing the urgency that my brain is feeling.

I realise that I'm still naked. My clothes are on his floor. That's fine, I ponder sluggishly, as I doubt I'll ever want to wear them again. They'll probably remain there for months or years, unless the robot disposes of them discreetly on my behalf while Evan sleeps.

Knowing now that she has her own agency - is an unwilling participant in my brother's base and carnal lifestyle - makes me wonder what she gets up to in these moments of peace. I suppose that she's always linked into the net and probably has a digital existence even more immersive and authentic than the VR worlds us humans place ourselves in. It's sort of comforting to imagine that some component of her personality is so distinct from mine, even though the basic structure of her brain is mapped to the femtometer against my own, and it's definitely comforting to think that there might be a level of escape from her circumstances that I can't even comprehend. The alternative; the apparent reality, knowing what I know now, is just too awful to consider.

Still unable to move, I **** my thoughts to move past the WHAT THE FUCK signals that continue to flare and onto practicalities. Thanks to the advances in medical nanotech, the now clinically immortal Supreme Court justices appointed in the late 2010's remain on the bench and, increasingly divorced from already distorted worldly concerns, have maintained their moralistic crusade against reproductive rights. My only hope, seeing as the last legal abortion was performed in 2026, and infractions since punished with ever more draconian measures, is to obtain some emergency contraception. But even that is frighteningly distant. Medicines of all kinds are one of the rare categories of thing that can't be 'bought' with volunteer credits, and have to be paid for with the cold, hard cash of stipend money. Stipend cash which I, as a still live-in dependent of my father, do not have. And of which, I'm sure, Dad has precious little to spare, considering his profligate taste for beer and addiction to pay per view events on the ultradef cable sports channels. I haven't seen him watching sport for a couple of weeks, suggesting that the coffers are dry until the next UBS payout comes through.

Only two options remain.

I can try to panhandle among my friends. Some of them have more responsible parents, a few even have managed to escape their family homes and become UBS recipients in their own right. A handful of them might be able to chuck a few bucks my way. It will be humiliating and I'll probably have to find a way to conceal the shameful truth of my predicament from people who, knowing how sexless my life has been recently, will suspiciously enquire what's changed. Scraping together the hundred and fifty I need... well, I wouldn't bet the farm on being able to do it.

Or I can try to track down my mother who, deadbeat paranoiac though she is, has a hoarding mentality that defies all logic. Last I was aware, she'd managed to squirrel away over fifteen percent of every UBS check received in the last decade. What for, I've never been able to guess at, but maybe helping her estranged daughter avoid a life of raising an incestuous brat would fall under the emergency criteria that might induce her to part with some of her wealth.

Neither option is appealing, but the third and fourth ways are unthinkable. One has me ending up probably dead, bleeding out in a back alley clinic or definitely dead at the hands of a state executioner, while the other has me accepting a metaphorical ****, giving up on my already meagre hopes for life, as the mother of my disgusting brother's baby.

What's it gonna be?