The following two weeks saw Dick working in parallel on a new assignment at the Ministry; a publicity campaign in support of the forthcoming ‘National Hat Week’. When Vera first told him about this project Dick’s instinctive reaction was to exclaim, ‘What the fuck?!’ Fortunately, however, he managed to correct himself in time and what he actually said was, ‘What the fedora?!’. Of course, this didn’t make any sense at all but at least it was hat-related. Just from his observations so far Dick knew that everyone in this society loved hats. The women loved them because they were a fashion item that could be changed according to whim or the season. The men loved them because they could doff them to women and appear courteous. And everyone loved them because they kept them dry(ish) when the weather was inclement.
A small team in Dick’s department was responsible for creating a real buzz about National Hat Week, making it an exciting, stimulating and compelling event. Dick wasn’t sure that this was at all possible as he immersed himself in statistics about hat wearing, hat manufacturing, hat distribution, hat history, hat accessorising, hat care, hat pioneers — in fact anything and everything about hats. He found this a completely unstimulating exercise but threw himself into it like a loyal Party member.
Benjamin was part of this team so there was regular contact between the two of them. Although he hadn’t demonstrated any recent signs of resentment over Dick apparently being lined-up for promotion, Dick still didn’t trust him. He had the distinct feeling that everything he did or said was being scrutinised by his colleague. He wondered how long it would take before Benjamin discovered through his own sources that Dick didn’t actually have a close relative in the Party. And once he found this out, would he delve deeper into Dick’s past and discover that as far as this world went, he didn’t actually have one?
They were the last to leave a particularly dreary bowler hat sub-committee meeting when Benjamin asked Dick how the ‘secret education project’ was coming along, trying with varying degrees of unsubtlety to find out exactly what it was about and why it was so secretive. Dick wasn’t sure if this was because Benjamin wanted to show willingness in trying to help him or whether he was just snooping.
Of course, there might be another reason. Dick didn’t know where this particular idea originated. At first he thought it was just another example of paranoia on his part and he tried to dismiss it but the more he dwelled on it, the more he thought there could be an element of truth about it. It was an alarming thought; that Benjamin might actually also be a member of the Resistance… But if he was, then what was he doing here? Maybe Benjamin had been planted in the Ministry like Dick to find out about Project Gladstone and feed information back to Taylor. But why, Dick pondered, do this if he already had it covered? Was it that Taylor didn’t have enough faith in Dick, and Benjamin was there as a back-up? Did Taylor see Dick as being expendable and if something happened to him — and by that he meant something bad — he’d have another operative in place to take over where Dick had failed? Or, even more alarming, was Taylor actually planning to sacrifice Dick in order to throw the Party off the scent of the Resistance? After all, if Benjamin compromised Dick’s identity and Dick was arrested, it was unlikely the Party would consider there were two people who’d infiltrated the department. And this would mean Benjamin could continue his work virtually above suspicion. The Resistance would never do this, would they? But then again, maybe the end justified the means?
The more Dick thought about this, the more confused he was. He’d been told that he was ‘The One’, but based on what he’d learned, that actually didn’t mean much. Perhaps Benjamin was ‘Another One’. Perhaps there were actually lots of ‘Ones’ and the Resistance purposely kept them apart. Maybe the Oracle had seen them all in her dreams as if she was counting sheep. Is that what all the ‘Ones’ had been. Just sheep; all eventually heading for the slaughter? Dick felt his imagination running away with him. He didn’t like the feeling and was desperately trying to catch it up. The longer he dwelled on it, the more worried Dick became. Given the huge secrecy that Taylor sought to maintain around the Resistance, Dick wouldn’t have put it past him to have a devious plan like this. He was still trying to keep up with his imagination when he felt a strong, manly hand on his shoulder. Dick turned round to see Vera standing next to his desk with a quizzical, yet still stern, look.
‘Mr. Brunel, are you all right?’, she said in her low voice, leaning towards him. ‘You seem lost in your thoughts’.
Dick shuddered in his seat, shaking himself out of the world of paranoia and into the world of his unsightly boss invading his personal space.
‘Yes Miss Darling’, Dick said, quickly composing himself. ‘I was, er, thinking about the Project and possible solutions’.
‘Good show, Mr. Brunel’, said Vera, who’d now moved even more uncomfortably closer, her slightly greasy nose almost nuzzling his ear. ‘I want to discuss that with you after work’.
Part of Dick interpreted this as a work-related request but there was a small, teeny-weeny part of him that interpreted it as a chat-up line (although not a very good one, granted). The last two hours passed very slowly as Dick contemplated spending even more time in the company of Vera. By six thirty only Dick, Vera and Benjamin remained in the department. Being his normal, toadying self, Benjamin asked Vera if she wanted his assistance that evening. Without raising her head from the pile of files that perpetually covered her desk Vera waved her hand to dismiss him as if she was shooing away a particularly irritating fly. Dick buried his head in his work trying to avoid the inevitable. The thing about the inevitable, however, is that it always happens. In this instance the inevitable was heralded by the sound of a large heavy report being slammed shut. The noise startled him.
‘Right’, said Vera standing up from her desk and rubbing her sweaty hands together. ‘Quality time on Project Gladstone’.
She walked passed him and locked the department door.
‘Can’t take any chances. The Resistance might have spies anywhere’.
She looked at Dick, and from her raised eyebrows, was either expecting a response or was suffering from some form of involuntary eyebrow spasm.
Dick replied with as much naivety as he could muster. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘Mr. Brunel, as servants of the Party we cannot afford to take any chances whatsoever. The Resistance are an insidious, evil bunch of malcontents who would stop at nothing to frustrate the ambitions of the Party. They could have agents anywhere. An office cleaner or maintenance person for example might walk passed this room or even enter it, cunningly looking for information or just eavesdropping on conversations’.
‘Do you think that’s true. I mean, that members of the Resistance are here among us?’, Dick asked, watching and shuddering inside as Vera dropped the office door key into her ample cleavage like some poor unfortunate victim falling into a dark, bottomless pit.
‘It is highly unlikely given the employee screening processes in place, but that does not make it impossible’, Vera replied, walking towards Meeting Room A. ‘Which is why we cannot afford to take any chances. Bring your documentation in here so we’re further shielded from prying eyes or ears’.
Dick wasn’t exactly sure whether ears could be prying but he unlocked his desk drawer, removed his report and joined Vera in the meeting room. She locked the door and hid this key exactly as before. Dick shuddered again. Vera explained that there had been a disappointing response so far. No one involved with Project Gladstone had come up with a practical, workable or even sensible solution to the problem. Someone had suggested that the police should be given special powers to poke all women with a knitting needle. If they didn’t shout then that proved they were man-made. Someone else proposed that the mechanical prostitutes could be identified by placing large and powerful magnets on every street corner. Another idea involved keeping every single woman in London immersed in salt water for two weeks to see if they exhibited signs of rust. Faced with this level of thinking and incompetence the Party hierarchy and the Leader himself were becoming nervous and agitated that it was taking so long to solve this particular problem.
With a sigh that indicated ‘here goes nothing’ Dick opened his folder. He took Vera through his notes and outlined his thoughts, cautiously at first as he wasn’t sure if they would be viewed as too crazy, but then with greater conviction as Vera demonstrated an unexpected high degree of enthusiasm about his plans. For his solution to succeed, Dick explained, he needed access to, and the co-operation of, the engineers who had designed and built the original mechanical prostitutes. Vera scanned his report, nodding at regular intervals then folded her arms, her face contorted with what Dick interpreted as a very, very slight smile.
‘Mr. Brunel’, Vera said, leaning back in her seat which protested with a groan, ‘Your solution, while radical, some might say even outrageous, has a ring of possibility about it. Your plan seems practical and effective! It’s not every day that I get excited, in fact it’s very rare that I get excited at all, but today is one of those days! If you can condense these thoughts into a proposal I will pass it to the Party with my recommendations that it is given the most serious consideration’.
‘I’ve already taken the liberty of preparing such a document’, Dick said, reaching into the back of the folder and presenting Vera with a few sheets of paper headed ‘Executive Summary’.
‘Mr. Brunel, you are truly remarkable!’
There was that very slight inkling of a smile again which was becoming disconcerting. Dick smiled back.
‘You haven’t shared these thoughts with anyone else I hope?’ Vera asked.
‘Of course not’, Dick replied with a shake of his head.
‘And everyone still thinks you’re working on that education project?’. Dick nodded.
‘Good, good. Just checking. You will of course receive full credit for your solution but if it is adopted and effective, we will both bask in the glory of its success’.
Dick was pleased that his proposal, while inventive and definitely a long shot, would be championed by Vera. He saw a ticker tape parade in his honour; being carried shoulder high and having a shiny medal pinned on his chest by the Leader himself. His imagination was running away with him again — but this time in a good way.
‘Stay here. I won’t be a moment’, Vera said retrieving the meeting room key from the depths of her bosom and getting up. ‘There’s something I need’.
She returned minutes later not holding yet more papers or files as Dick had expected, but a large bottle of brandy and two glasses. She locked the door once more, set the bottle down and filled the glasses.
‘I keep these locked in my filing cabinet for special occasions’, she explained. ‘It’s outside of regular working hours so I think we can do this without feeling too guilty’. She raised her glass and Dick followed suit. ‘To a genius idea Mr. Brunel, a genius idea!’.
They clinked glasses and toasted potential success. It would have been all right if they had stopped there, put the bottle, glasses and papers away then went home. But they didn’t. Toasting Dick’s proposal was swiftly followed by toasting it once more. Then again. Then again. Then Vera proposed a toast to the Party. Then the Leader. Then the Ministry of Information. Then the downfall of the Resistance (Dick suggested this toast to make sure he came across a true Party supporter). From then on the toasts became just as frequent but increasingly obscure. To the production of more bridges. To increased steel production. To the digging of more canals. Deeper ones. To more colourful hovercars. Green ones. To more comfortable office chairs. Brown ones. To toothpaste with a more minty taste. To shiny shoes. To carpet. To the sky. To the letter ‘J’. To even numbers. To prime numbers between one and twenty. To words that don’t rhyme with anything, like orange, mirror, month and purple.
Each toast was preceded by the filling of glasses and followed by the downing of their entire contents. By the time they’d toasted the office carpet for the third time, having completely forgotten the two previous mentions, the brandy bottle was empty and Dick was feeling particularly mellow. He wasn’t sure exactly what Vera was feeling but he had a good guess as she lunged forward across the table and grabbed him, prising his lips apart with a snake-like tongue. This totally unexpected and inappropriate gesture from his department manager caught Dick completely unawares. As Vera’s darting tongue probed deep down his throat threatening to find his spleen, Dick found himself simultaneously caught in her strong grip. In a clumsy but powerful, and ultimately irresistible move, she yanked him up from his seat and embraced him. Dick’s mind was hazy under the influence of so much brandy but as far as he could remember he’d never wrestled with a large bear before, and most definitely not one that was squeezing his buttocks in an overtly sexual manner. He was sure though, that if this ever happened, it would feel exactly like this. In extreme conditions the body produces extra adrenaline that gives it almost superhuman strength. Dick felt certain this was happening to Vera but in this case her strength wasn’t used to outrun enemies or raise a car off an accident victim, it was used to force him down on the meeting room table. He was thinking about whether he should resist or comply as Vera straddled his wriggling body, pinning him down by his hands. She leant forward, her breasts smothering him.
‘I need you Jeremy. I want you’, she slurred. ‘I want us to make the beast with two backs’.
Dick was in danger of suffocation and decided to save his breath for breathing rather than waste it on talking or crying for help. Unfortunately for him an increasingly passionate Vera took his lack of response as a sign of consent. Still straddling Dick, she sat back. Dick caught his breath and gasped. Transfixed as if he’d been staring at a gorgon Dick could only stare in horror as Vera began to unbutton her blouse. Her discarded top revealed a corset which look liked it had been made from a tarpaulin and which demonstrated the same structural engineering skills that had built the railways or canals, and which certainly contained the same amount of metal work. Vera’s hands were now fumbling with the various cords and fixings that kept her large body safely contained.
By now Dick had conceded that resistance was futile. His expression had changed from that of someone caught staring at Medusa to that of a deer caught in headlights. Except that in Dick’s case the headlights were Vera’s enormously saggy breasts. Instinct took over and Dick found his hands involuntarily reaching up and fondling them. They felt like two enormous sandbags and just as sexually stimulating. Kneeding them gave Dick no pleasure at all but Vera moaned like an animal; in this case, road kill gasping its last agonising breath before expiring. The amount of brandy consumed would have dented any man’s libido but Dick wasn’t any man. By instinct his penis grew in response to Vera writhing and grinding her hips in slow circles. She looked down at the growing bulge in his trousers.
‘Take me here, you sexual beast’, Vera cried, dribbling. ‘Relieve me of my maidenhood!’
If Dick was worried before, his level of concern had just crept into the red. Not only was he about to have sex with his boss in the workplace, but he was about to take her virginity. Dick panicked. Not just at the gruesome and hideous task that was about to befall him, but because Vera would surely comment on the size of his penis and report him. Dick thought back to his dream when he was exhibited as a medical curiosity, and what had happened. Of course, there was a chance that in Vera’s drunken state she might not remember the exact details of what was taking place. Dick was still mulling this over while Vera unbuttoned his trousers and fiddled with his zip. Plunging her hands in deep through his fly as if she was at a fairground lucky dip stall, Vera soon found a prize. She gasped as thirteen inches of Dick’s dick were relived from the confines of his underwear and sprang to attention.
Vera gasped and stared, the response Dick had come to expect when women clasped their eyes on his erect penis for the first time. Dick thought for a moment that she would go into shock. He’d seen it in many women, several of whom had to undergo CPR and one who was temporarily admitted to a sanatorium. Vera’s constitution, however, was as sturdy as the rest of her. She blinked twice, licked her lips three times and demonstrating an unexpected degree of athleticism, wriggled and writhed, somehow simultaneously hoisting up her skirt and undoing an enormous pair of split-crotch knickers that looked as though they had been made from the same type, and quantity, of fabric that covered airships. Dick knew the inevitable was about to happen and he did what anyone what anyone would do in his position. Lie back and think of England. Vera wriggled some more and tried to lower herself on Dick’s rigid member. Dick thought of that joke about how do you make love to a fat woman: you roll them in flour and look for the wet patch — but at this precise moment it didn’t seem funny at all. With each bounce Dick felt that irreparable damaged being down to his internal organs. He thought he heard his pelvis cracking. Or it could have been two of his ribs. Or a vertebrae. Or all of the above.
Vera’s hymen, it seemed, was like the New Guinea rainforest; unexplored and impenetrable. The whole experience, Dick thought, was futile, like running full pelt at a huge rubber sheet stretched across a road and trying to make a hole in it. However after many attempts and many variations of angle, Dick eventually managed to enter Vera in the classic Cowgirl position. This was not so much making love as being impaled. At first Vera screamed the sort of scream after you tread on an upturned plug with bare feet, but as she bounced up and down her cries of passion soon turned into what Dick thought sounded like whale song. Albeit a whale that had been harpooned and which was being slowly and painfully winched towards a Japanese factory ship.
Dick matched each of Vera’s bounces with a thrust. And Vera matched each of Dick’s thrusts with a more energetic bounce. For a while they were out of sync and the meeting room table started to vibrate and shudder across the floor. Dick thought that any cleaner or maintenance worker still in the building would deduce from the commotion that the furniture in this department had suddenly become animated. Or that two really angry velociraptors were locked in a deadly battle. The table was banging against the wall before Dick and Vera’s thrusts coincided and a rhythm started to develop. A rhythm like that of Burundi war drums but a rhythm nonetheless. Eventually Vera went stiff. As stiff as Dick. She threw back her head back and uttered once last primeval, guttural scream.
The following silence was deafening. Vera remained straddling Dick. Sweat was dripping off her face and hair on to his face and hair. A few salty drops went in his mouth and he gagged. Sensing her momentary weakness Dick tried to extricate himself from beneath her enormous thighs. It was like trying to escape from a giant mattress. A giant warm, moist mattress. Like an escapologist using extreme muscle control to liberate himself from a confined space, Dick managed to wriggle his way free inch by inch, sliding out from under her enormous bulk as she gently flopped on to the table.
Dick dressed himself and took stock of the situation. There was a massively semi-naked fat woman making the sounds of a buzz saw asleep on the meeting room table. Drawing on huge amounts of will-power to prevent himself from being sick, Dick used Vera’s discarded blouse to soak up and wipe away any traces of sex from her sweaty thighs. The whole exercise was, he felt, like swabbing the deck of a very large and very smelly trawler after a record-breaking catch. But a hundred thousand times less fulfilling.
Summoning every single reserve of strength he had Dick dressed Vera as best as he could. The keys to the meeting room and the department door had flown out once Vera had removed her corset. Dick retrieved them and after a short while, returned to the room pushing the trolley that delivered the mail each day. Fortunately the trolley was almost the same height as the table so it was a relatively simple task to roll the still sleeping Vera on to it. The trolley groaned and one wheel buckled but Dick managed to push her back into the office and up to her desk. He didn’t have the strength to lift her up to her seat so Dick rather unceremoniously pushed her on to the top of the raised platform. Vera’s head hit the floor with a dull thud that made Dick wince but which remarkably, failed to rouse her.
Going back into Meeting Room A, Dick moved the table back into the centre of the room and with a cloth, wiped it clean of any traces of bodily juices then threw away the bottle and glasses. He knew the ultra efficient air conditioning that kicked in an hour before work would remove the tell-tale smells of brandy, sweat and sex, while the garbage compactor programmed for the same time would take care of the rest of the evidence. Before he left Dick looked once more at the peaceful Vera laying next to her desk. He wiped some drool from her mouth and adjusted her clothing as best as he could. Dick thought she would probably wake up after a few hours and take herself home. Looking at her current state he doubted whether she’d remember much about of what happened; the problem was that he did.
He felt dirty, cheap and violated. He shook as if a whole platoon of soldiers wearing heavy boots and 60lb combat packs had just walked over his grave. Then he shrugged. At least he’d got laid.