Toys Read Free Page B

a piston. Don’t you think, Hays? I’ll bet you anything
     these dolls were programmed by a man—and probably one between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. They should let a woman
     redo the code if they really want them to sell.”
    “Thinking about volunteering?” I said. Biocircuitry was Lizbeth’s specialty—she was one of the foremost experts at the Agency
     of Change. “And what would you do differently, dear heart? Have all the Jacobs look like me?”
    Her lips brushed my ear. “That’s not such a terrible idea, Hays. Say, I’m thinking this party has served its official purpose
     for us,” she murmured. “What do you say we go home? Maybe play some games of our own?”
    “Umm, coming through,” I said, taking her hand and leading her off the crowded floor. The best night of our professional lives
     was about to get even better, and on a much more intimate level.
    Jinxie and I were going home.
    Yippee!

Chapter 7
    THIS WAS WHERE the slope began to get slippery, dangerously slippery indeed.
    Outside the presidential mansion, more iJeeves butlers were escorting rich and famous guests to a long line of waiting limos.
     Lizbeth and I were soon settled back in our Agency-loaned driverless vehicle to enjoy the air ride through the beautiful Elite
     zone of New Lake City.
    Glittering hundred-story buildings stretched out before us for miles, with impossibly fast-moving flying cars, trucks, and
     buses streaking between them. As Jinxie had said earlier,
We really do run the world.
In truth, we Elites had saved the planet, so why not?
    Off toward the outskirts of the high-rises, you could see the dark gaps of the human slums. Sad stuff, even if you despised
     the humans. But maybe the president’s plan wouldfix that once and for all. The humans had proved they couldn’t be trusted under any circumstances.
    Lizbeth and I snuggled together like giddy teenagers inside the limo, whetting our appetites for later on. She kept making
     jokes about how “beautiful” I was.
    “I want you to try the new Rapture pill, Hays. Two-minute orgasms.”
    “Contact your physician if orgasm lasts an hour or longer,” I said as I leaned in for a kiss.
    Then—out of nowhere—it felt like a giant boulder had crashed into the roof of the Daimler. The impact buckled the incredibly
     strong titanium roof, rocking us from side to side, then bringing the car to a graceless, airbag-assisted landing on the street
     below.
    “Hays?” Lizbeth said in alarm. “Are we being attacked? We are, aren’t we?
How dare they?
”
    At first I could see nothing outside the smashed-open windows. But I definitely heard yelling and pounding feet. Five, six,
     seven people coming toward us—fast.
    Even as I ordered the limo to disengage our safety restraints, I could smell their foul body odor.
Humans.
Damn them. They must have crashed another vehicle on top of ours and forced us down, and they were now moving in for the
     kill. Robbery, of course, possibly rape—for both of us.
    Like all Elites, I thoroughly distrusted humans. They were terminally lazy and stupid, and their flesh reeked of the greasy
     food they gobbled. The popular Elite term for them was
skunks,
although they were a bit more like hyenas, or wild dogs, in terms of the lives they led. Violence, deceit, andopportunism ruled their petty days and nights, just as it had through most of history. Hell, they had even written books about
     it, from Horace and Homer to Thomas Friedman and Stieg Larsson.
    As Agents of Change, Lizbeth and I were dedicated to bringing fairness and justice to their barbaric ways and making them
     pay for their crimes. An act this outrageous—entering a restricted-access area and actually attacking Elites—made these vandals
     candidates for the harshest penalty there was:
slow death.
    I could see now that they were an ugly bunch, even for humans: grim-faced and menacing, armed with knives and scalpel-sharp
     box cutters, plus a few old-fashioned