Bigger Brother

Оглавление

Matthew Vandenberg. Bigger Brother

Level Playing Field

Doubtfully NSFW

TB Continued

Extract

Extra Credit

Twenty Twenty Now

Responsive Tug

Taxation With Representation

Soft Power High

Back Again

Congolese Pyramids

Intruders

Table For Three

Scoot Sez

Basic

Maide

Frozen Match

Live Thai

Hair

Collapsed Wave Function: Royal Maids

Ever Cutar

Gay

Drafting A Nikah Nama

Manga Kissa

Step Away From The Durians

Work Or Pleasure?

Fresh (NSFW)

Mental Stretch

Afghani Exiles

Albanian Exile

Algerian Exile

Andorran Exile

Angolan Exile

Antiguan Exile

Argentinian Exile

Armenian Exile

Australian Exile

Austrian Exile

Azerbaijani Exile

Bahamian Exile

Bahraini Exile

Bangladeshi Exile

Barbadian/Bajan Exile

Belarusian Exile (NSFW)

Belgian Exile

Belizian Exile

Beninese Exile

Bhutanese Exile

Bolivian Exile

Bosnian Exile

Motswana Exile

Brazilian Exile

Bruneian Exile

Bulgarian Exile

Burkinabé Exile

Burundian Exile

Cabo Verdean Exile

Cambodian Exile

Cameroonian Exile

Canadian Exiles

Central African Exile

Chadian Exile: Closing Time

Farther Afield

Academic Scholarship: Mexico's Long-Lost Shadow

Appetite For Control

Coming Out

ID

Board A Fence For Borders

Own Extras

Soaps, Waterworks, And Clean Hands

Chew

Overwait

Copitalism V Socialism

Отрывок из книги

Shay slips into a slow run, like motion is tangible, as she approaches her new workplace on George Street in Sydney. Her heels aren't high, but flat like the Netherlands, and so she clears the clear light rail tracks with ease, like a minister for transport clearing part of the system for operation. The tracks are relatively new - call them Flevoland - and the first of their kind post World War Three. It's almost nine years now since a nuclear bomb was dropped on Sydney. More on that if you read into it. But now, for reasons other than nuclear radiation, air is not clear. Climate is changing like the times, and so the gift Shay has for Matt is apt and comical at the same time, like prose she has no time to write (apt and comical have this time covered). Two mouth masks are in her hand, packaged in too much plastic like most Japanese goods. On them are pictures of cute, anthropomorphic, flamboyant, animated flames, which could be offensive to Australians during the season of fires, but the line drawn here is the mask itself: at least you're paying attention to it.

Shay, masks on hand, is Matt's Secret Santa, but there's no clause in his contract entitling him to acceptance of mouth masks. He doesn't think of himself as entitled, and doesn't think anyone should be. She knows this about him, his little secret, his passion for socialism, acutely fetishized. He likes the natural smell and voice of common women far more than obstacles like material goods. But it's funny, right? The masks that represent barriers, that can hang in the air like boring superfluous earrings or the standard scent of fiery make-up, to be presented to him now: a need but not a want, as smoke swallows Sydney whole like a male God's obsessed with vorarephilia, but not in an ideal way.

.....

'What's he saying?' Shay asks.

'I was thinking he couldn't say anything about us. We're above him. In more ways than one, since every spot here is now like a secret back way to enter the store through, an office of sorts for management,' Ja-ram quips. 'But I don't think censorship is required. That's what makes this show so appealing. He can say almost anything, not that he's mentioned any of us yet.'

.....