A/N: This story is based on an adult erotic/colony simulation game called Free Cities, which can be found only a Google search away. It will contain themes of femdom, slavery, body modification as well as, in later chapters, gender transformation. I am relatively new to erotic fiction so any feedback would be appreciated, and if any readers are familiar with Free Cities, feel free to give suggestions as to where you'd like to see the future development of the story go.
It is the year 2037, and the past 21 years have not been kind.
When my parents were growing up, they basked in the sunlight of the end of the Cold War. Life could afford to be carefree and happy, and for a decade, a brief decade suspended like a mote in history's sunbeam, the world dared hope that the future would be peaceful.
We know now that their hopes were naive. I grew up to the backdrop of global alarm over climate change, dwindling resources, and looming catastrophe. Scientists and old world governments promised that the technological solution was just around the corner - new agricultural techniques to feed the booming human population, machines that could pump carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, ambitious Hail Mary schemes to settle Mars.
None of it came true. Technology marched on, and there were remarkable advances in food production and even new and pioneering fields like robotics and cybernetics, but the pace of this technological advance was far too slow to save everyone. Billions remain trapped on an Earth torn and fragmented, like so many chickens scrabbling and pecking at arid dirt just to keep themselves alive another day. Those old world governments that remain standing proclaim authority over desperate teeming cities surrounded by vast wilderness, but organised bands of criminals and mercenaries openly operate, ignoring the pointless voice of the helpless authorities.
As central authority crumbled, those who were rich or lucky enough escaped the collapse of civilisation and built worlds of their own in the form of immense arcologies that served as self-contained cities. They typically resemble great steel-and-glass shards jutting up out of the ruins of the old world, rising from the basement levels where the machinery that powers the arcology is stored, up through the petty commercial enterprises and the common residential areas, right up to the luxury of the arcology penthouse where the shard narrows to a single point.
Establishing an arcology is not a difficult thing to do, as long as you have money, land and labour to help you do so. They started springing up all over the world in the mid-2020s, wherever the central authority was tenuous enough that it either couldn't or wouldn't stop an attempt at secession, and they tend to be established in clusters - even within sight of one another - for ease and convenience of trade. No-one wants to battle their way through an old world bush war just to conduct trade with the next arcology over.
Free trade is the founding principle of the arcology system. The first arcology builders had it in mind that they were going to create some libertarian paradise; they called the network of arcologies the Free Cities, and enthusiastically proclaimed that the future would be decentralised and technologically driven. They succeeded in some of their endeavours - commerce in the Free Cities is fueled by a digital currency known ubiquitously as credits - but their paradise never quite came to pass. Just like any other human society since the dawn of time, an arcology is a good place to be on top, and a horrible place to be at the bottom.
At the bottom in the Free Cities are, of course, the slaves. There are no laws per se here, for the highest law in the land is the enforcement of contracts, in true libertarian vein. A landlord or arcology owner might include clauses in their contracts prescribing conduct that would have been considered "criminal" in the old world. Invariably, contracts were breached, and offended parties demanded recompense. Some arcologies experimented with indentured servitude. They found themselves swamped with desperate citizens of the old world, begging to sell themselves for a shot at escaping the nightmare world outside.
For some, slavery was an easy sell. For others, it was a desperate, difficult one, but the penniless, powerless outsiders who dared approach an arcology's gates were given a simple choice: sign a contract of slavery, or leave and take your final chances. More stayed than left. Thriving slave markets sprang up almost overnight, and the economies of the Free Cities boomed. Menial labour was always in high demand, but by far the highest prices were paid for the pretty young slave girls who were to serve their Master's pleasure, or else be sent to earn money walking the streets or serving in one of the arcology's many brothels and sex arcades. Some of the smartest accepted their position, and many times I watched a slave girl drive a ferocious bidding war by something so simple as the way she stuck out her ass on the auction block. Some were not so quick to accept their new lot in life, and the slave owners of the Free Cities were quick to find inventive ways to force their girls into line.
Arcology owners relished their newfound power to impose their own vision of society on their little private fiefdoms. Some saw themselves as carrying on the legacy of some great old world nation and styled themselves as such; others hearkened back to the grand, triumphalist styles of empires from millennia ago. Some arcology owners were wise, and invested shrewdly, and caused their own fortunes and reputations to grow. If you want to become popular as an arcology owner in the Free Cities, you must make sure your citizens have their basic needs provided for: you must keep the arcology growing and producing enough food for all, keep the economy and standard of living improving, and - crucially - you must make sure that all of your citizens have an outlet for their sexual needs and impulses.
You do that, in turn, by assuring that your arcology operates a wide range of sexual services and entertainments fit for any budget. The millionaires, the shareholders and wealthy investors must be able to call upon a classy, eager, well trained slut at any hour of the day or night, or they'll withdraw their investment and take it to an arcology where their needs will be better serviced. The respectable but not wealthy middle classes need brothels and clubs where they can go to fulfill any fancy they can imagine, for a price. Those who still earn their keep by the sweat of their brow, but remain free, often just want a wet hole to fuck to relieve the stress of a hard day's labour, and generally frequent the glory holes in the arcade or look for a street hooker.
My name is Lorelei Blackthorn. I was born in what was central Pennsylvania - I suppose it still is, in as much as the state borders have any relevance any more - in 2002, making me presently 35. I stand 5'7" tall, but I'm not above wearing a striking pair of heels to punctuate that with a few extra inches. My complexion is naturally pale, and I love the sharp contrast between my ice-blue eyes and the waves of long white hair that tumble down my back. I'm also proud of my D-cup breasts and my shapely ass, which have proven an asset to me in life more than once.
I was fortunate enough between about 16 and 20 to have made some lucky investments in cryptocurrency before that market collapsed, and to see the writing on the wall when everything in the world outside started to go to hell. At 23, I was able to buy into the imaginatively named Arcology X-3, the third of a cluster of six located at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay, about halfway between Philadelphia and Washington DC, and I quickly grew to despise the arcology owner, a weaselly little shit named Marshall Stone who may well have financed the arcology's construction, but he'd made his money through an insurance company that had dropped into his lap when his dad, who'd owned it, had suddenly died. The man himself had the business acumen of a dead squirrel and, tasked with running the equivalent of a small but wealthy first world country, quickly made himself very unpopular.
The one thing he was good at was pitting potential rivals to his control against one another, and so for years, he'd been able to keep other shareholders in the arcology stabbing each other in the back enough to keep the uncontested balance of power for himself. I spent the next three years keeping to myself, learning as much as I could about Free Cities contract law, and making a few well chosen investments so that I could grow my bankroll slowly enough to not attract any of the wrong sort of attention. I found out very quickly that it was a man's world out there, with men dominating every aspect of the business and economic spheres of the Free Cities, but there were ways in which that worked to my advantage; a man who underestimated me would soon find that there were bigger fish than him in this pond.
Word got out, as it was bound to do in such a tightly knit and enclosed environment as the arcology, and I suppose I really made a splash when I bought my first shares in the arcology. It was a tiny fraction, about a third of a percent, but I was entitled to attend the arcology's shareholder meeting and I don't mind saying that I turned a few heads when I did so. I suppose I would, being the only woman in the room, not counting the slave girls who kneeled or stood at attention by their masters' feet. I, being such a minor shareholder, simply sat in the corner and took notes, and let the whisperers speak for themselves.
The next few years saw me engaged in a war of attrition with Stone, as well as some of the other shareholders, but I showed that I could play them off against each other just as well as he could. I took advantage of some arbitrage opportunities that I had, I was successful in shorting some of his positions, and on a couple of occasions I simply got lucky enough to outguess him. If you want to rise to the top, you've got to have luck on your side, and my sights were set firmly on the penthouse at the top of the arcology.
It was after one particularly robust exchange that I saw him lose his temper with me for the first time. "I'm going to take you down to nothing, you bitch," he'd promised. "And when I do, I'm not even going to bother keeping you for myself. I'm going to put you in stocks with your ass and your mouth spread open for every last man in this arcology to get their rocks off, you just mark my words."
