Free Accelerando by Charles Stross Page A

Arianespace right out of the Polytechnique and has been management track ever since: Korou, Manhattan Island, Paris. “You’ve never been married, I take it.”
    She chuckles. “Time is too short! I am still young.” She picks up a forkful of food, and adds quietly, “Besides, the government would insist on paying.”
    â€œAh.” Manfred tucks into his bowl thoughtfully. With the birthrate declining across Europe, the EC bureaucracy is worried; the old EU started subsidizing babies, a new generation of carers, a decade ago, and it still hasn’t dented the problem. All it’s done is alienate the brightest women of childbearing age. Soon they’ll have to look to the east for a solution, importing a new generation of citizens—unless the long-promised aging hacks prove workable, or cheap AI comes along.
    â€œDo you have a hotel?” Annette asks suddenly.
    â€œIn Paris?” Manfred is startled. “Not yet.”
    â€œYou must come home with me, then.” She looks at him quizzically.
    â€œI’m not sure I—” He catches her expression. “What is it?”
    â€œOh, nothing. My friend Henri, he says I take in strays too easily. But you are not a stray. I think you can look after yourself. Besides, it isthe Friday today. Come with me, and I will file your press release for the Company to read. Tell me, do you dance? You look as if you need a wild week ending, to help forget your troubles!”

    Annette drives a steamroller seduction through Manfred’s plans for the weekend. He intended to find a hotel, file a press release, then spend some time researching the corporate funding structure of Parents for Traditional Children and the dimensionality of confidence variation on the reputation exchanges—then head for Rome. Instead, Annette drags him back to her apartment, a large studio flat tucked away behind an alley in the Marais. She sits him at the breakfast bar while she tidies away his luggage, then makes him close his eyes and swallow two dubious-tasting capsules. Next, she pours them each a tall glass of freezing-cold Aqvavit that tastes exactly like Polish rye bread. When they finish it, she just about rips his clothes off. Manfred is startled to discover that he has a crowbar-stiff erection; since the last blazing row with Pamela, he’d vaguely assumed he was no longer interested in sex. Instead, they end up naked on the sofa, surrounded by discarded clothing—Annette is very conservative, preferring the naked penetrative fuck of the last century to the more sophisticated fetishes of the present day.
    Afterward, he’s even more surprised to discover that he’s still tumescent. “The capsules?” he asks.
    She sprawls a well-muscled but thin thigh across him, then reaches down to grab his penis. Squeezes it. “Yes,” she admits. “You need much special help to unwind, I think.” Another squeeze. “Crystal meth and a traditional phosphodiesterase inhibitor.” He grabs one of her small breasts, feeling very brutish and primitive. Naked . He’s not sure Pamela ever let him see her fully naked: She thought skin was more sexy when it was covered. Annette squeezes him again, and he stiffens. “More!”
    By the time they finish, he’s aching, and she shows him how to use the bidet. Everything is crystal clear, and her touch is electrifying. While she showers, he sits on the toilet seat lid and rants about Turing-completeness as an attribute of company law, about cellular automata and the blind knapsack problem, about his work on solving the Communist Central Planning problem using a network of interlocking unmanned companies. About the impending market adjustment inintegrity, the sinister resurrection of the recording music industry, and the still-pressing need to dismantle Mars.
    When she steps out of the shower, he tells her that he loves her. She kisses him and slides his glasses