By the way Laree peered at the glimmering stone he held out to her, it looked as if little Miss Gold-Digger harbored doubts of her own. The predatory heat in her eyes told him they didn’t concern the Love Center, also known as the LC, but the con man in front of her.
She snatched the ring from him. “Is this real?”
Yes. No contaminated carbon. Pure and shiny, it had cost a fortune. He sighed. “Of course.”
Her narrowed gaze told him she’d get the rock appraised at first chance.
Greedy young lady, but she expects that I love her.
Ripples of guilt danced down his spine. A good man would come clean. Try to get her onboard, literally, but with eyes wide open.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t get past his gut instinct to trust that she’d err on the side of the greater good, just too eager to join her peers doing whatever it took to avoid being a bridesmaid left on Earth. She’d pursued him aggressively once she saw he met her expectations of attractiveness and had a decent amount in the bank. He’d made a big mistake. Should have ended it on the first date, but he’d hoped that getting to know her better would prove him wrong about both her and the LC.
Now it was too late to walk away. If he spilled the truth to Laree, she’d either dump him or turn him in as a potential terrorist expecting that the LC would reward her with a lot more than marriage and a free ride into space.
Laree jammed the diamond on her finger, and held her hand up to catch the light. “Pretty. For now. Get up, Samuel. I’ve everything planned—dress, tuxedo, new luggage. You need to send off payments.”
He slumped. He’d played the role of an infatuated shmuck, but seriously? How could any bride be this shallow and not give the groom more part in a life’s milestone, other than footing the bill? He pushed to his feet, his goofy smile in place. “Will do, babe. You’ve made me the happiest guy alive.”
His heart thumped painfully. The end part of that—alive—was accurate, but logic said not for long
.
Odds were he’d stop breathing within days of her demands and extravagances emptying out the bank account he’d given her access to. After he crossed his fingers behind his back and said ‘I do’, there’d be no rocket into the sunset that’d end well for him.
The most optimistic scenario? He’d survive a lunar landing and begin divorce proceedings only to be gutted, stabbed in the back by his money-hungry bride upon learning that he was a famous multimillionaire who had fallen for a conspiracy that didn’t exist and trolled her into it.
There was the chance his lover would also be dead before the honeymoon started, if Laree figured out who he really was and ratted him out to the LC. Could be the corporation would rather see her have an accident than pay her off. He should be ecstatic she’d yet to see beyond the sparkly bauble to the impostor in front of her. Long blonde tresses, legs that didn’t know how to end and a curvaceous figure guaranteed she’d snag a real hubby, if only she survived his treachery.
Laree snorted. “Get up, darling, and come sign where I tell you. I won’t settle for any honeymoon other than the moon.”
“Then the moon it shall be.” He stood and gestured her to the com-desk.
She walked across the cramped bedroom. “We must get top marks.”
“Understood.” He had the application memorized and was certain, assuming his bride-to-be didn’t screw things up, they’d score the deadly jackpot.
Laree sat down in the only chair. “Anna, a brain surgeon in her prime, didn’t qualify. But that slut Denise who dances in a strip club won a condo—Mars or some satellite of Jupiter.” Her slender fingers danced, tapping angrily on the touch screen com-desk. “Do you think the LC’s corrupt? Takes bribes?” She angled in the seat to peer at him. “How much are you willing to offer them?”
He winked at her. “Whatever it takes. On second thought, why don’t you go hop in the shower? I’ll handle this then join you. Okay, my love?”
Babe, angel, my love—how many inane endearments can I cram into two minutes?
“I’m not sharing that dinky little bathroom with you ever again,” Laree grumbled. “And no, I don’t trust you with something this important.” She returned her attention to the screen. “It doesn’t seem right so many losers I know won a paid honeymoon
and
a free, three-story manor on Mars or a Jupiter satellite.”
Bingo.
Vacationing in upscale resorts within massive domes welded onto lunar rock sure looked fantastic online. Shopping malls that stretched on and on, golf courses where a ball could travel as far as a man could hit, spacious hotel rooms that’d easily fit a three or foursome in the shower with only the right spots getting banged—pretty much anything a couple could want on an out-of-this-world getaway.
The catch? According to the Love Center there was but one. If you won the fab trip to the moon, you’d be incommunicado with Earth, unless you could afford a mere ten thousand, five hundred dollars for twenty seconds of email privileges, payable in advance in increments of ten seconds, with a minimum of a minute and yep, that included time lag if others jammed the server at the same time. He suspected they’d not offer face-time as well as messaging, meaning that someone could be sitting anywhere on Earth to intercept the message and pretend to be anyone, such as a loving relative.
The other, more insidious condition—which the LC didn’t broadcast—was that they practiced discrimination. All of the couples who rated high enough on the application to secure a seat on the shuttles fit a specific profile. His Intel showed that healthy heterosexuals or bisexuals, personalities with aggressive, materialistic interests, consistently won at least the free honeymoon. No sick, gays, or ‘don’t care if you live in a closet-sizes space on an overcrowded planet’ allowed. He chuckled at the irony.
“What’s so funny? Pay attention and write what I say, you doofus,” Laree said. “Think I’d marry a loser?”
No. Just sleep with one, despite no chemistry, just casual sex
. “Yes, dear, and no, dear. The questionnaire won’t take long. Whereas I, massaging your gorgeous body in the shower, will require at least a half hour or so, right?”
She didn’t answer. He scowled. The tip of her tongue between her lips and, he imagined, visions of white gowns dancing in her head, Laree concentrated on the screen.
Stop stalling and embrace your doom
. He walked the three feet to the desk, grasped her shoulders and examined the page centered on the acrylic desktop monitor with the Love Center logo across the top. Two gleaming gold and diamond bands shaped like hearts bounced toward each other, coming together to interlink with a capital L and C as they rolled across a silver full moon. The same emotion gripped him every time he saw the damn symbol—the urge to howl and smash his fist on it. He forced himself to unclench his fingers and direct his gaze to the questionnaire.
Not good. Glaring problems already.
Jackass.
Had he wasted a month seducing this woman? It was time to throw the lady aside and claim the com-chair. Gambling with so many lives required him to function without any margin for error.
He tightened his grip on her. “That program records how often you change answers. Stop touching the screen and let me fill that out.”
Before I break those manicured fingers.
“I know what I’m doing,” Laree snapped.
“World-renowned shrinks formulated those questions. The answer for number five won’t win us seats.”
Her jaw sagged. “But I hate kids.”
“Saying you’ve thought about it doesn’t mean you plan to be a parent.”
And never with me as the sperm donor.
He made damn sure he used the foolproof condoms the government issued for free. Not any of the vibrating, drug-saturated, gimmicky ones offered on the black market for a price and a .009 percent slip-off-the-dick chance.
She jerked against his hold. “I’m not stupid.”
Right.
“This questionnaire uses reverse psychology.” His voice tone patient, regret churned in his stomach as he released her.
I’ll never hear a little voice call me Daddy
. “Most women want children. If you say not ever, not even as a possibility in the distant future, it tags you as a liar.”
“Oh.”
“Same concept for number eight,” he said. “Change your answer saying the government shouldn’t be allowed to dictate progeny based on income. Yes to a GSA is good. Claiming you’d get a government-sponsored abortion shows you understand population control is a critical issue.” And by marking no for GSS—government-sponsored sterilization—it tipped them off that she could well skip the birth control at some point. “Most importantly, no way do we agree to any archaic snipping of nuts.” Why bother? Not like he’d impregnate anyone if he was either dead or in prison.
She glowered at him. “I want—I
deserve
a nice home, and what I do
not
want is a child, so who turns down a free vasectomy? It’s simple, darling. I think they reward the pairs who won’t contribute to the start of overpopulation on other worlds.”
Wrong.
They gathered the couples most likely to breed. He couldn’t understand any reason for excluding gays and sterilized heterosexuals other than a diabolical one.
“There is no way I can afford this,” he murmured. “Either we win or we honeymoon here on Earth in grimy Las Vegas. You want the bloody moon? Stop arguing and trust me.”
She glanced at his groin, inches from her face. “Trust you’ll never have my mouth on…”
He tuned her out and shoved her fingers away from the com. The thought of the BJs he’d be forced to give a three hundred pound cellmate before he was executed had his cock shriveled and his hands shaking.
Shortly, he’d have more evidence supporting his theory that lower income heteros who admitted to wanting at least one child automatically won a luxurious honeymoon, or he’d learn he’d best grab a tinfoil hat and join the spouting paranoid-crap club. He finished the questionnaire and stood so his lovely fiancée had full view of the com-screen.
“Okay, yeah, I guess this looks good,” she muttered, as he stepped to stare blankly out of the window into a dusty gray-blue sky.
He couldn’t wrap his head around this marriage broker not only creating a quadrillion dollar infrastructure on the barely colonized moon, but that they had all these shuttle-rockets strategically placed around Earth, ready to transport newlyweds wanting to celebrate nuptials on the moon. Then, the crème de la crème on an already unbelievable package? Each passenger was entered into a lotto where winners were handed deeds to property on the outer planets.
Comfortable living in the Milky Way was plausible. Eons
after the sound barrier was broken by an object made of matter, the difficulties of cracking the speed of light barrier had burst. Figuring out how an object could travel faster than the electromagnetic fields linking its atoms—moving a rocket at the speed of light by adding infinity energy—was credited to a pair of siblings.
The real miracle was the fact that the brother and sister hadn’t been aborted. If the mom hadn’t stayed off the grid, avoided healthcare, the first prenatal chromosome scan would have shown the fetuses with gross defects. The twins lacked functional synapses in alternate sides of their brains. The parents hid their existence until the eight-year-olds got themselves published in science journals with articles on tachyons, wormholes, space-time warping with the negative implications of creating time paradoxes being redundant.
In the simplistic terms he understood, they’d shown a doable means to draw IE—infinite energy—from a vacuum and utilize it within a spaceship. That in turn provided the power needed to alter time by speeding through time-space. He’d read the publications, got the gist of maybe one percent of the math, and been thrilled to imagine the possibilities of colonizing space in his lifetime.
The past decade had also seen tremendous advances in technology, including mass-production of sheets of graphene. They’d developed carbon nanotubes able to retain their ultralight and strongest alloy in existence properties, even when stitched together.
Affiliates of the LC claimed to have successfully colonized planets on a massive scale. Homes and gardens built inside translucent domes were made out of this newfangled super-graphene alloys and supposedly tested with consistent results showing the terrarium-style enclosures could withstand extreme temperatures and pummeling by massive meteoroids, even comet collisions.
It was an amazing era to be alive.
And a terrible one to have a life cut short.
If only he had a solid grasp of evil intent—but no. Circling the bleeding neurons that made up his mind, he had little but fears that’d started out as minnows named WTF, then morphed into giant sharks who answered to Martyr, Masochist, Attention-Seeker and so on. Meanwhile, the question of why he didn’t go public—let the authorities sort it out—got pushed farther and farther into the abyss of no return.
He sighed as he stared out over the neon-lit city, so thick with SHIT—what the locals called the buildings, based on the acronym of the slogan
Scraping Heaven is Tangible
, dreamed up by some marketing idiot—he couldn’t tell if the dull sparks in the gray sky were stars or beacons marking the pinnacles.
Suspecting without proof—other than bigotry toward gays and guys with documented vasectomy points—the nefarious nature of the homes on offer was one thing. Creating an elaborate ruse in hope of exposing a powerful monopoly with ties to every government on Earth was quite another. Not like he was police, licensed journalist or had a family member duped into whatever this was or wasn’t.