It was always hard to tell if Gaia was actually clever or just good at improvisation. She seemed to live her life without a steering wheel, but just as she was about to hit the wall, she'd swerve into another lane entirely. Belinda reluctantly agreed to go and eat with Gaia; at worst she assumed it would be an awkward hour wasted and then she could scurry back to her own apartment and try to enjoy what was left of her drab and quiet evening. But when the office was closing for the day, Gaia stumbled into her private office and left Belinda nervously clutching her purse in the main room, sweating in her gray overcoat.
"I forgot. I'm trying to hide from the landlord. Don't have the rent this month, whoops," Gaia tittered. She was wearing a cocktail dress that left very little to the imagination.
It hugged every bulge of her overly fluffy curvaceous body, her big tits nearly popping out of the outrageous neckline with every jiggle of her bulbous belly. She cocked one ponderous hip and winked sloppily at her flabbergasted employee; she had obviously started drinking.
"Um. Um." Belinda mumbled.
She didn't exactly have a 'thing' for big women: her ex Jamie had been as slim as she was serious. But Belinda had to admit that Gaia 'cleaned up' nicely; her hair was still sticking up a bit and one of the damn pens was still stuck in a knot but other than that she had a definite charisma, a self-confident swagger that was like 'yeah I'm fat and drunk at work and broke but dammit look at THESE.'
"So. We're gonna get some burgs and then you and me are gonna go clubbin'," Gaia said with a flip of her bangle-wrapped wrist, "on account of my normal bestie bailing on me... no, being on bail. Now THAT was a night to remember!"
"Buh-but it's Tuesday..." Belinda stammered.
"I know right! Gotta get over that hump, a little dry-humping on the dance floor and some shots and shit'll help, trust me, it's done me wonders," Gaia chuckled. "Don't be a little chickenshit bitch, Linda. You said you were gonna eat with me," Gaia said, throwing one heavy arm around Belinda's narrow shoulders to stage-whisper/belch into her ear "and maybe I can overlook you eating cake on company time if you take that stick out of your ass and have a good time with me, kay?"
Belinda froze, beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. This job was pretty shit, but she needed it. She needed it desperately, more than ever.
"Yeah it'll be fun," she murmured.
"Thas the spirit! Come on, let's go get Harvard and we'll go."
Harvard was one of the security bots for the building, not even vaguely humanoid with a sloping metal chassis on a pair of treads concealing all sorts of nasty weaponry. It was, of course, a Yancy model.
"C'mon Harv, let's go," Gaia called to the robot as it sat motionless in its charging port, "gonna go drinky and have some fun with Lina here!"
"Ma'am," Harvard's droning speech synthesizer replied, "I must remind you that taking Yancy property off the corporate campus is a serious offense."
"An' I got one of those little flashsticks that have, ah, your favorite 'programing' on it," Gaia said, literally doing the bunny ears gesture with her fingers and giving Belinda what was probably meant to be a sly wink.
"Ma'am, ready and rarin' to go," Harvard replied, rolling out of his port without a second protest.
Belinda could guess what was on the stick; probably some sort of pirated app that would simulate an ecstatic high in the robot's processing; basically stimms for computers. The odd trio left the Yancy Corporate enclave, Gaia already swaying, Harv tripping balls but still ready to blast any threat at a moments notice, and Belinda having a low-key panic attack. She wasn't really the type to actually go out and experience 0b-City's nightlife. Her routine of commuting to the Yancy enclave in a Yancy robotic bus and back to her self-contained, Yancy owned corporate housing was dull and unexciting and most of all safe. The apartment block even had its own mini-mall and it was as easy as tapping through a few ads on her holoband to order anything she wanted (and could afford) through drone shipment. So actually stepping into the city streets was as exotic, scary and exhilarating as anything the timid and underachieving office worker could imagine.
0b-City was one thing, and many things. It was a city, and although the official census and its very name indicated a population of around 15,000, it was difficult to really say for sure. It almost certainly had more; the various corporations who had local branches invariably lied about the number of employees they had for one reason or the other and the Solume mayoral dynasty didn't really give a shit as long as the corporate kickbacks and bribes kept coming. Add to that the unregistered inhabitants of the city and migrant drifters staying for a season on the outskirts and you had a pretty decent town. And to Belinda, it felt like all 15,000 plus were out in the streets looking for some meaning and excitement, Tuesday be damned.
There were corporate suits and office drones looking for a buzz to alleviate the drudgery of corporate wageslavery, execs slumming it with bodyguards and robotic escorts, androids, drifters in their dusty studded jackets, scavengers out of the old 'burbs, evangelists preaching against the sins of fornication and digital downloads, pimps, whores, pushers, scalpers, muggers, stimmheads, bums, drunks, gangsters in bowler hats, cops, and Belinda was swept into it all, clutching her purse tightly and hugging up against Harvard's metal side every time someone walked by. Gaia swaggered with the confidence of a woman who had a military grade security robot in her retinue and an unwilling audience, and she was constantly stopping to blather with so-and-so stallminder, flashing her tits at catcalls from upper apartment windows, and generally having a hell of a time.
They finally got to the MacDonaghs, that ubiquitous and frankly somewhat vile eatery, and Gaia eagerly continued to throw her proverbial and literal weight around.
"What the hell do you mean you're not hungry? We walked like, three blocks to get here! I'm fuggin' famished, and you are too!"
"Um.. no, I ate a lot of luh-lunch today," Belinda muttered.
"What, that little packet of noodles really did you in? Or was it the three pieces of cake," Gaia said with a smirk. "C'mon, you're buying anyways so you might as well get yourself something to munch on, we're gonna burn it off dancing anyways."
It took a bit to actually order; the cashier, a grubby and sullen woman so fat she made Gaia look kind of slim and put together, was deep in conversation with an endlessly chattering red-headed pipsqueak of a woman who was nursing a serious food-baby while glutting herself on a heaping tray of burgers. Seeing that doughy burger-filled tummy made Belinda feel a tiny bit better about eating again, but her own stomach was seriously bloated by the time she finished her combo meal. Meanwhile, Gaia gobbled her way through three burgers and a heap of fries, even butting into the private chatter between the heifer behind the counter and the bubbly burgerfiend, and by the time they were back on the street Belinda was dizzy from hearing "so-so this and that" and Gaia's obnoxious braying laughter.
"Kay girl, Linsy," Gaia gurgled, rubbing a blob of mustard off her lip with the back of her hand and then wiping it on her sweaty and swollen chest, "let's get you lookin' good for the club. You're still in your office duds."
"I don't have clothes at work, ma'am," Belinda started, and squeaked in indignation as Gaia abruptly reached and yanked the top of her blouse open. Buttons rattled into the gutter as Gaia tugged at Belinda's shirt.
"There, get a a bit of cleavage out there, what little there is," she grunted, "let those girls breeeathe, yeah? And lemme just..."
She yanked up the hem of the shirt from Belinda's skirt, revealing her bloated pale belly.
"We'll just have to tell the bartender you're just stuffed, not pregnant, nothing I haven't been through," Gaia chuckled while Belinda went red in the face.
The Raster on Sixth, which was no where near Sixth Street, Belinda realized, was a raucous, garish pit, and within seconds of entering the mild and muddled woman was nearly deafened by the boom-boom-boom of the bass that reverberated through every surface and nearly blinded and rendered epileptic by the strobes that turned the packed dancefloor into a shutter slideshow of writhing bodies. It was geared towards a certain clientele, Belinda soon realized as she struggled to wrangle the newest shocks to her system; it was a primarily female-presenting bunch, and the dancers on the floor and up on elevated platforms where they gyrated and twisted around illuminated poles were largely heavy-set.
"Perfect place for a gal like me to get a few drinks just for flashing my tits," Gaia shouted in her ear.
Belinda nodded stoically; she hadn't heard one word in five but she got the gist of the meaning anyways.
"C'mon, let's boogie!"
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