Crimson and Ivory
- 3 years ago
- 14
- 0
No FutureChapter 69: Ivory Towers free porn video
Iris
2058
Iris had never lived anywhere other than London before in her life, but now here she was: renting a room in an ancient sprawling house in the suburbs of Oxford. Although she'd had to make new friends, was now earning somewhat less money than she'd used to and had to sleep on a disgusting mattress that should have been replaced years ago, Iris was happier than she'd been for years. The year in which she'd made a living as a prostitute now seemed like nothing more than a nightmare from which she'd at last awoken.
Her current job at the Biotech lab for Sigma Cybernetics plc was one for which she was ridiculously over-qualified and which only two years ago she'd never have contemplated ever applying for. And the fact that she'd had to re-locate to Oxfordshire, some seventy or eighty kilometres from London, would have placed a job opportunity like this right at the bottom of the list. But now when she went to sleep she no longer had the odour of aging men adhering to her body and no residual memory of their repulsive cocks between her thighs that no amount of scrubbing could remove.
Although the same river ran through Oxford as it did London, there were none of the elaborate flood barriers that were being built throughout the capital city just as they were on the English beaches. Nonetheless, Oxford wasn't without walls and those weren't only the ancient mediaeval walls that attracted the few tourists who'd ventured so far from London. The student riots of the last few years had embarrassed a government whose legitimacy had been secured by a promise to banish the chaos and anarchy of public disorder. The city council was determined to demonstrate its commitment to the government's effort to restore civility and order to the Kingdom and, like other tourist cities in England such as York, Bath and Norwich, the City of Oxford had constructed a wall around the town centre that had at least provided employment to privately resourced security staff and building maintenance workers.
In practical terms the wall was just a bloody nuisance for Iris. Every morning she had to stand in line until she could flash her work permit and the shiny new Government Issue ID that verified that she was eligible to work in the city centre and therefore wasn't an illegal immigrant. It didn't normally take her long to get through the security checks, but other people in the same queue were often delayed for much longer, especially those that looked slightly foreign or were dressed in a fashion that bothered the security staff. It wasn't just a person's skin colour or accent (especially Scottish or Welsh) that might earn special attention. There were other characteristics such as hair that was too long or too short, too many tattoos or body-piercings, or clothes deemed to be too eccentric.
There was a clear difference between the world inside the city walls and that outside. It was almost as if Oxford was one big gated community. Outside the walls were derelict and aging properties where the unemployed, the poorly-paid and the criminal underclass had to live, work and most likely die. Inside the walls, the streets were clean, the buildings properly maintained and the shops well-stocked. But, most of all, the people inside the city walls were better dressed, better spoken and better fed. In actual fact, a higher proportion of those confined within the walls were of foreign origin than those outside. Many were tourists from China, Korea and Brazil, but most of the others were students at the venerable University of Oxford. Although they mostly came from the same wealthy countries as the tourists, some even came from Africa and the Middle East. There were no Americans, of course. Few of them could afford to travel so far abroad these days. And there weren't many from Europe now that the Kingdom of England had such hostile relations with almost all its immediate neighbours, especially those with which it had so recently been constitutionally bound.
The main consolation Iris had from her boring work was her daily stroll through the city centre. This was sometimes along the grassy banks of the River Thames where she might pass the occasional punt and even a few ducks. This was a privilege that would have been denied her if she hadn't happened to be employed within the city walls. Passes into the city centre were usually only issued to students and tourists.
The contrast to the peaceful and elegant streets of central Oxford couldn't be greater than with the suburb where Iris rented a room in a large sprawling house. It was nearly an hour's walk home along roads where most street-lamps no longer functioned and where prostitutes lurked in the shadows. It was always a relief to get home and through the front door even though now, in midwinter, it was scarcely much warmer indoors than outside. The only room that was heated was the living room where she and the other residents, mostly young people like Iris, would gather around the television and share the warmth emanating from the coal-burning stove.
Deciding what to watch on television was always a compromise and inevitably the news channels were the ones about which there was least dispute. The choice was principally between the various affiliates of Fox UK and the rather diminished service provided by the EBC. Ever since the government abolished the license fee system, the EBC had struggled to provide an impartial service and even this was still censured for its supposed liberal bias by the government and the majority of the privately owned media. If the other spin-offs from the venerable BBC based in Scotland and Wales weren't so parochial, Iris would have relied on them for news, but instead, like everyone else, she settled for either the sparkle and glitter of Fox News UK or the static images on EBC News 24.
"What does this England First policy really mean?" asked Sue who was sitting beside Iris on the sofa dressed in a thick jumper, scarf and woollen mittens. "How's it gonna be any different from what the government's been doing anyway for the last few years?"
"It's just a slogan," said Steve, another housemate. "It probably doesn't mean anything at all."
"I don't like the government posters," said Sudesh who was rolling a spliff on the back of an old magazine.
"What's wrong with them?" asked Iris.
He smoothed out the tube of cigarette paper and twisted one end. "I dunno," he said. "They're a bit sinister. All those white faces, English flags and village greens. It's nostalgia for an England that never existed and it's scarcely what you could call inclusive."
Fawn
- 05.09.2021
- 7
- 0
