This story takes place in the year 2029. America is a very different place. New laws have abolished personal bankruptcies and debtors' prisons have been revived. Janie, our twentysomething heroine, was about to be sentenced to just such a prison when she was tricked into signing up for a pilot program that keeps her in a kind of chemical captivity. Medicine released within her body causes debilitating nausea and other symptoms every 48 hours, unless she is administered a rescue dose of another medicine. The rescue dose is delivered through the ejaculation of the man for whom she will be a personal domestic servant, a latter-day concubine. Janie's just been chosen by Mr. Gilpin, the butler of billionaire industrialist Richard Balfour, to be his boss's Gal-Friday-with-benefits, but she's not yet met him.
Read the earlier chapters if you want to know how Janie got to this point.
***
Richard Balfour's house was like none other I'd ever seen, or imagined. It was a vast and sprawling mansion built on several levels on a Northern California hillside, overlooking the rolling waves of the Pacific. The place had been built to his specifications, and included every comfort.
Because Balfour's fortune came from computer hardware and software, it also wasn't surprising that the house boasted the latest wireless connections throughout, as well as a host of "smart" features that I was forever discovering.
Balfour had a number of people discreetly working for him both inside the house and out. Except for Mr. Gilpin, the butler-cum-household-manager, few had clearly-defined roles, but all seemed to pitch in where needed, under Gilpin's overall direction. Phil, the Asian-American man who drove us from the local executive airport to the house, for instance, wasn't a chauffeur in the old-fashioned sense. He had responsibilities in grounds maintenance and security. The car he drove us in was nothing so ostentatious as a limo -- that wasn't Balfour's style, it seemed -- but rather a well-appointed luxury SUV.
Gilpin led me in through a back door and gave me a quick tour of the house's principal rooms. There were grand spaces for entertaining a large number of guests, as well as smaller, cozier rooms for times when the master of the house pretty much had the place to himself.
"This will be your room," Gilpin said at last, pushing open a solid-wood door. I was astounded at the size of it, as well as the view over the Pacific visible from its small balcony.