No Future Ch. 10

X
The Good Seed
Alex
2023

It was like joining a club. Not a very exclusive club of course, as it already had over eight million members, but certainly one with crippling membership fees. It was a club to which Alex had long aspired to be a member and that was to be one of those who lived within the circumference of the M25 and could call themselves Londoners.

For sure, Rickmansworth wasn't that far inside the M25. The Metropolitan Line through the suburb continued above ground to places like Amersham that were way beyond the London orbital, but it was good enough. And living here was just about within Alex's income as long as he managed to keep his job and there wasn't another sudden hike in interest rates.

As a commentator on VR politics and economics, Alex's future employment was contingent on a section of the media that nowadays might seem unassailable but could so easily become a mere footnote of history like tablet computers and 3D TV. For the moment, however, Alex was as much a media presence in the world of Virtual Reality as anyone although his online avatar hardly resembled him at all.

As a Londoner, he could now join the daily squeeze on the Tube. Every day, for the prohibitive price of a season ticket, he could press his nose into other passengers' armpits while body odour and farts filled the carriage, but he could also now spend his evenings in the capital, where he could watch a show or drink in a pub. He could become part of the vibrant heart of one of the ten largest cities in Europe and still one of the most wealthy and powerful in the world. However, he'd also learnt the necessity of keeping a watchful eye on the time if he didn't want to miss the last tube home and have to spend a fortune on a late-night taxi.

Unfortunately, the West End wasn't the part of London with which Alex was becoming most familiar. Rather, it was the mundane attractions of Rickmansworth like the Park Road Shopping Centre, the old pubs and restaurants on the High Street, and the modern establishments on Parsonage Road and Rectory Lane. A night out in Rickmansworth for a single man usually involved him watching a movie at the Fox Cineplex, which was only marginally better than watching it at home, or nursing a lonely pint in the garish but anonymous pubs on the Parsonage Road.

There was a huge choice of women to date within the London area, in both the real and virtual sense, but most of those who lived nearby in a strictly geographical sense were actually quite awkward to meet in a practical one. Almost everyone he contacted through dating websites lived in a part of London to the South, East or Central that was very tricky to get to. And, if things didn't go to plan, it was more awkward still to return home. Who could have anticipated the logistical nightmare of getting back to Rickmansworth from Richmond, Peckham, Epping Forest, Croydon or Uxbridge?

There were many nights when Alex ventured out from his modest one-bedroom, one-reception terrace house, walked all the way to the town centre along roads with rustic names like Meadow Way and Nightingale Road that were fast being swamped by new apartment blocks and housing estates. And then he was in streets filled with shrieking young men and women whose inhibitions were lost to alcohol and drugs. The choice was then between sitting in a desolate antique pub that sought to attract custom with gourmet lunches and imported lagers or more modern establishments where he was wedged in by the youth of Rickmansworth and unlikely to find a comfortable seat.

"It's crap here, isn't it?" Alex heard one day when he'd ventured inside a pub that from outside had initially seemed promising but inside was nothing special at all. In fact, the only thing that kept his attention was the presence of attractive young women including—it had to be said—the person who was addressing him.

"I don't know why I come here," joked Alex in the hope of keeping her attention. "It can't be the beer. It tastes like piss."

"We just rent it," she replied. "It's recycled on the premises."

Although it was an old joke, Alex gave the expected laugh and steered the subject of conversation towards finding more out about the woman who'd spoken to him.

She was attractive, but probably not to everyone's taste. She had a freshly-scrubbed, pale-freckled appearance. Not even her skimpy outfit could make her look more urban. She looked uncomfortable in the stilettos she wore. The sheer stockings she wore over her full thighs didn't really suit her. She was gripping a full pint glass in her hand rather than a more modest glass of wine.

"Are you waiting for someone?" Alex asked Gabby after she'd told him her name.

"Sort of," she said. "Or perhaps not. Maybe you'll do."

"Sorry?" asked Alex who wasn't sure he quite got the drift of what she'd said.

"I live near here," Gabby said, without really addressing Alex's question. "My Dad owns Greenfields Farm. It lies a few miles from here, just by the M25. It's surrounded by country lanes."

"You wouldn't think there was much countryside round here..."

"There's not as much left as when I was a little girl," Gabby replied. "The town gets closer and closer to the farm every day. Soon there won't be any green belt round London at all. So, I'm a Farmer's Daughter. Just like the ones you see on the web, but I don't fuck goats and cows, let alone dogs and horses. Why should I when there are better studs to fuck?"

"There are?" said Alex who was both aroused and alarmed by the direction the conversation was taking.

"This is a good place," continued Gabby, as she continued to survey the lounge. "It's a kind of singles bar. Did you know that?"

"No," admitted Alex, who now resolved to position the pub higher on his list of occasional haunts.

"Not a proper singles bar, of course. Not like the ones in the smoke. Ricky's not that kind of town, even though it's changed a lot in the last decade or so."

"Is this the kind of place you come to regularly?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you ever go to nightclubs?"

"Of course I do, but the nearest decent one is miles away. I wouldn't want to waste the night dancing to the same fucking moronic pap you hear in a place like this. All that twenty year old telly talent show drivel! How naff. So, tell me, Alan..."

"Alex."

"Alex. Tell me, do you have a girlfriend? Or are you some kind of sad git?"

"A sad git," said Alex, choosing to conveniently forget the one-night stand he'd had with Melissa from Kensal Green who wasn't quite as good in the flesh as her photo on West One Dating suggested.

"Have you ever had a girlfriend?"

"Of course. Last proper one was in Ashton Lovelock."

"That's in the Midlands, isn't it? What was she like?"

"A bit of a hippy. Very Green."

"I have a problems with Green," sniffed Gabby. "Being a Farmer's Daughter and all. You can't do business in the modern age, not with the pressure from WalMart, Tesco's and the rest to supply product at a low price. If Greens had their way, we'd never eat meat. And food would cost three times as much."

Opinions like this were refreshing to Alex's ears after having heard so much about how his eating habits were raping the environment and poisoning the planet.

"I'd rather have affordable steak any day," he agreed.

"Well, let's just hope it doesn't go the way of fish," Gabby remarked. "Fish and chips costs far more than most people can afford."

"No wonder there are no chippies left anymore."

Gabby was refreshingly old-fashioned in her attitudes, despite her youth and high level of education. After a few more drinks she not only lit up a cigarette when they left the pub together but announced that her car was parked in the Rectory Road Multi-storey car park.

"I don't know which is the more expensive vice these days. Fucking ciggies or fucking driving. It costs a bloody fortune to fill the car up and the parking fees are criminal. Do you drive, Alex?"

"Used to. I had to sell the car when I bought a house in Rickmansworth."

"Really and where do you live?"

"Just over a mile or so from here."

"I'll give you a lift home, shall I?"

Alex was pleased at how little work he'd needed to do this evening. Nearly three months in Rickmansworth and he'd never suspected that his postcode search on the internet dating sites didn't need to go much further than WD3.

"How can you afford to smoke and drive?" he couldn't help asking Gabby, after he'd turned down the offer of a cigarette.

"Living with Dad helps," said Gabby, as she reversed her Four by Four out of the tight parking space on the sixth floor of the car park. "No rent or mortgage. Makes a fuck of a difference. Working for Dad helps even more."

"You're a Farmer as well as a Farmer's Daughter?" said Alex.

"Don't look so bloody surprised. Farming's not a bad profession, you know. It's like running a business and an employment agency and a retail outlet and everything at once. You've got to be pretty sharp to do all that these days. When Dad retires, I'm the one who'll take over the whole show. I just hope he doesn't retire till he's fucking ninety..."

"How old is he now?"

"I dunno. Quite old. Fifty or something."

The drive to Alex's house was almost as slow as it would have been if he'd walked. It was only when you were in a car that you realised the impact of the traffic calming and one-way systems that bedevilled even an outer suburb like Rickmansworth. The roads were incredibly narrow for a Four by Four, especially when driven by someone who disregarded the drink-driving regulations. Cars were parked on both sides of every road. It took more than five minutes to find a space in the streets and cul-de-sacs around Ashwood Lane.

"Small house, eh?" commented Gabby, when she saw Alex's home squeezed in the middle of a long row of virtually identical houses all with paved-over front gardens and white-framed energy-efficient windows.

"The mortgage costs me a small fortune," Alex told her as he pushed open the door into a cramped hallway that led straight on to the staircase.

"I'm so grateful I'll never have to get into the fucking property market," remarked Gabby. "Where's your bedroom? Upstairs?"

"There's only the one," Alex said as he walked up the steep stairs behind her.

The bedroom was small. A double bed dominated it and made the room seem smaller still. Alex had dismantled his bed in Ashton Lovelock and reassembled it in Rickmansworth with much cursing. And the bed was just about the only thing that Gabby was interested in.

She didn't like to waste time. She didn't say much at all as she pulled off her clothes, although she was careful not to rip them as she did so. Gabby was soon totally naked and very comfortable with it. It was unlikely that she was a girl who sat naked in the sun on holidays to Ibiza or Lanzarote. Her pale skin betrayed no tan lines or any other evidence of exposure to ultraviolet radiation.

She also revealed a vagina that could never be described as neat and tidy. When Alex entered its slippery, moist and warm cavern, his prick slipped out so often that Gabby had to keep pushing it back inside.

"It always does that," she said with no evident embarrassment. "I guess it's meant to take two rather than one. When you're fully stiff it'll be okay. There are some condoms that'll give your cock the friction you need..."

"Are there?"

"I can order you some off the internet, if you like."

Sex with Gabby was simply, unequivocally and unreservedly just sex. While their two bodies were engaged with each other, sex was all that there was between them. All she wanted was to be fucked. She was very strict on the use of condoms, but also expert in revitalising Alex's penis when it flagged.

"We've got all night, you know," she said.

"I've got to go to work tomorrow," Alex remarked feebly.

"Well, fuck that! There are more important things in life than work, you know. Just get your cock back inside me where it belongs."