Clovenhoof (50 page)
Read the opening chapter here and if you enjoy it, the novel is available on Amazon:
Million Dollar Dress
Chapter 1
Justine pushed the vacuum cleaner across the floor, strutting to Slam Dunk’s newest hit. For the evening shift cleaning the studio, she rocked and shimmied her way from one task to the next.
She was usually alone in the evenings, unless Serge stayed late. Their routines could overlap easily, and they worked around each other like a carefully tuned machine.
The studio was near to Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, and Serge had said that he chose it because it used to be a ribbon-maker’s workshop, years ago, which was why it had such huge windows. Justine had tried to picture how you’d weave a ribbon and decided that it didn’t sound like a rewarding job. She reminded herself of the ribbon weavers when she grumbled at cleaning the large windows. There were definitely worse jobs. Occasionally Serge asked her to help him which Justine loved, it made her feel part of something important. Serge was a fashion designer. She didn’t think he was the rich, internationally famous kind, but she was confident that he was up and coming, so being his model was a huge treat. Serge didn’t mind that she was a bit lumpy in places, as most of his clients wore larger sizes.
“Justine, would you mind slipping the dress on for me?”
Serge had his head round the door and she smiled at him. He even looked like a fashion designer. Skinnier than most people thought was healthy, punky hair that steered just clear of being a mullet and he always wore stripes. Stripes were Serge’s signature and he combined them in ways that flattered and deceived the eye when designing for his ladies. For himself he used them to more attention-seeking effect and sometimes Justine thought he looked as if he needed tuning in properly.
Serge put his arm round her shoulder and whispered in her ear.
“I have a visitor tonight – we must impress him, he’s the money!”
Justine gave him a look.
“Money? You’re not hard up, surely? You’ve got loads of clients.”
“I have big plans, Justine, and he is a potential investor. Smile for the man Sweetie!”
She rolled her eyes and followed him into the workshop. She looked at The Money, who acknowledged her with a curt flip of his hand. She went to the dress stand with Serge who handed her the dress. She took it behind the screen and put it on.
This was different to Serge’s usual style of clothing; the dress was almost drab. It was a plain beige dress with a high neckline and a very low hemline. She had asked him on a previous occasion if he was making a sideline for nuns. She stepped out from behind the screen and did a twirl for them.
“Keep walking around, Justine,” said Serge.
He went to his desk and opened up a laptop. The Money looked rather bored.
“So tell me, did you see the James Bond film, “Die Another Day”?” Serge asked.
The Money shook his head.
“That’s a shame, because it might have helped. He had a car that could become invisible. It had tiny cameras along each side, with a corresponding projector on the opposite side of the car. So when James Bond hit the switch, the image from behind the car was projected forward, making it invisible.”
The Money shrugged and looked confused.
Serge pressed some buttons on the laptop and the Money gasped. It was the first time Justine had heard him make a noise. He was staring at her. She looked down at the dress and saw why – her body had disappeared.
The Money recovered his cynical snarl.
“So you made an invisibility cloak. But I can still see her head.”
Serge pressed some more buttons on the laptop.
“Well that is just one thing that this dress can do, but it’s not the real selling point. If I can make you see nothing then I can make you see anything!”
The Money rolled his eyes impatiently.
“If I choose to project Justine’s body as that of Angelina Jolie, then I can do that.”
He pressed a button with a flourish.
This time Justine gasped. She looked down to see the kind of body that she had always dreamed of. It wasn’t hers of course, but just for a moment she was prepared to believe that it might be. Hello-boys breasts that pushed out over a tiny waist. Hips that flared provocatively. And the dress that she was wearing, where had that come from? It was a shimmer fabric that hugged the curves as if she’d been misted with water. She looked up and saw the Money ogling her. She blushed. Even though she knew he wasn’t ogling her own body it was impossible not to feel that he was.
Serge cleared his throat gently.
“So, you see what it is I have done? I can give to women what they most desire. I can let them change their body as they want to. I am in the course of plotting Marilyn Monroe’s vital statistics into the computer, but they can be as curvy or as skinny as they want to be. They can also change their outfits to be anything that they can think of.”
Serge clicked his mouse and Justine was wearing a wedding dress. He clicked again and she was wearing a demure trouser suit. He clicked a third time and she was wearing the skimpiest bikini she had ever seen.
“Hey!” she shouted, seeing the lecherous smile on the Money’s face.
Serge clicked hurriedly and changed Justine into a 1960’s Austin Powers mini dress with platform boots.
As she looked at herself and walked slowly around the room, Serge put his arm around the Money’s shoulders and led him gently away, seeing that he was going to get no reaction while he was transfixed by Justine’s curves. Serge indicated the view from the window where the sun was setting across the city.
“Do you see what we have here? This is so huge that I can barely imagine it myself. No woman will ever want to wear normal clothes when she has seen what this can do. I have never met a woman who is happy with her body. Even the ones that look great to me have some tiny thing that they worry about. So we sell them the dress, and we sell them the service of programming the changes that they want.”
Justine was grateful that the two of them were distracted. She studied herself in the mirror. Her haircut suited the style of the dress. She would never have even looked at clothes like this, but here she was wearing them! She felt as though her life had been changed in the last five minutes. She walked over to see what was on the laptop. There were icons showing the different outfits. It looked so easy to use.
Serge was still talking.
“And it doesn’t end there! Fashions change all the time. Women crave variety and individuality in their attire. We can release software for a ready to wear line. They can download those from the internet and we won’t even need a point of sale. And maybe we can even return to the golden days of couture. It can be more attainable because the work will be done by computer programmers instead of seamstresses, and the client doesn’t even need have to have fittings! There are so many ways that we can sell this to the world.”
The Money was nodding and looking slightly animated. Justine imagined he didn’t often get that way. Serge seemed to be encouraged by his response.
“The technology is fairly expensive right now, but I know we can drive down the costs with the sort of demand that we’re going to get. This prototype here is the only one I have at the moment, and it cost me as much as a semi in Solihull.”
Justine sighed at that. The chances of her owning a dress like this were nil. She really wanted to enjoy it for a little while longer.
But this was the only one. She looked down at it again, and considered the laptop in front of her. She could borrow it for a little while and then give it back. It would be helpful research for Serge. She quietly closed the laptop and picked it up. Serge was still making expansive gestures over the rooftops. It had to be now. Justine padded quietly from the room and then scuttled down the stairs without looking back.
To read the rest of The Million Dollar Dress please follow the link:
The Machine By Tom Aston
THE MACHINE by Tom Aston, is an adventure thriller - a stunning page-turner starring the unlikely Professor of Peace, Ethan Stone.
Stone is ex-SAS turned peace activist - a cool customer, with a hard, sarcastic edge. But under the laconic exterior, Stone is a troubled individual, constantly forced to face up to the demons of his violent past. Sceptical, radical, contrary – but with the eyes of a man who has done terrible things.
Steven Semyonov is a 29 year-old tech billionaire. But that’s not why everyone wants to meet him. Billionaires, after all, are commonplace. They want to meet Semyonov because he is the cleverest man alive.
So when Semyonov gives up his billions in California and defects to China, never to return, there must be a reason. That reason is something called the Machine.
Ethan Stone now runs an anonymous leaks web site, called NotFutile.com. When a mysterious video clip appears through the site, Stone believes he has stumbled on Semyonov’s secret. He flies to Hong Kong in pursuit, but the dark forces around Semyonov are ready for him, and he finds himself hunted for murder. He is forced to use every ounce of his cunning to survive, and his resolve to put his violent past in Special Forces behind him is tested to the limit. Stone goes undercover with a spiky Chinese dissident woman, travelling deeper and deeper into China to evade the Gong An Public Security Bureau, and track down the truth about Semyonov and the Machine.
Read the opening chapter here and if you enjoy it, the novel is available on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Machine-Ethan-Stone-Thriller-ebook/dp/B008BUHC1Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340967139&sr=8-1
Chapter 1 - 4:04pm 21 March, San Jose, California
The conference hall was overflowing with journalists. Junko Terashima had covered some big stuff in her short time as a reporter with Global News Network, but she’d never known a press conference build so much excitement, so much
buzz
. All the big guys were here - MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, BBC, Washington Post. Junko felt like what she was – a rookie reporter, a small, willowy Japanese girl. But this was her moment. She was there to make the news, not just report it. Her stomach fluttered with nerves.
The VP of Communications for SearchIgnition Technologies looked tiny in her neat grey suit as she rose to introduce
The Man
. Steven Semyonov, billionaire founder of SearchIgnition – loved, admired…
revered
. Four-metre TV screens at either side carried her image as she read a short introduction.
‘Steven Semyonov is well known to everyone here...’
Not as well known as you think
,
Missy
, thought Junko.
‘One of the three founders of SearchIgnition, Steven Semyonov is the brains behind the world’s most powerful search system, now used by all four major search engines in the US and countless others across the world. I’ll give you just one statistic today, ladies and gentlemen. Steven Semyonov’s technology is used daily by over ninety per cent of web users across the globe...’
The screens were now showing a close up of
The Man,
Semyonov, seated beside the diminutive VP. The intro was superfluous, of course. Semyonov’s face was known to everyone in the room and to billions more besides.
‘As Chief Software Architect of SearchIgnition,’ said the VP, reading from an autocue, ‘Steven has been a driving force in taking SI from start-up to a corporation valued at eighty billion dollars in just seven years...’
The big screen zoomed further in. Semyonov’s features were indeed familiar to everyone. Because they were unique – his face and head entirely smooth and hairless – like an overgrown baby. The hi-def screen showed his wide, fleshy face had no jowl or wrinkle. The word was “sleek”, thought Junko, forming her next chunk of copy in her mind.
Like a sleek, overgrown piglet, babyish and pink, with intense, red eyes...
There was no stubble on his chin, just pale, downy hair. His teeth looked small in his big face, but what caught the camera were his eyes. The TV screens zoomed in on his preternaturally red eyes intimidating the throng with his intelligence, like an inscrutable Buddha of white jade.
‘It is with great regret that I tell you…’ The spokeswoman’s voice was cracking with emotion, and it wasn’t an act. ‘That Steven Semyonov is stepping down from SearchIgnition, the business he did so much to create...’ She went on for a few more sentences, but she looked as thunderstruck as anyone in that room, and by the time she sat down, she was dabbing at the corner of her eye.
Before the words had sunk in, Semyonov himself stood up to speak, looking suddenly huge beside the tiny spokeswoman. Behind him the four-metre screens were filled again with his pink face and penetrating eyes. Not a wrinkle or stress line, thought Junko, for the second time. Half the world knew that face, but no one else knew what she did. She’d done nothing for three months but dig up details on Semyonov. She’d nearly lost her job over it. After today, she almost certainly would.
The predictable questions rolled in from the journalists. ‘
What drove you to leave the firm you loved?’, ‘Does this signal the end for SearchIgnition?’, ‘Is this a new phase for the Web?’, ‘What new technologies excite you?
’
Junko felt her heart beat faster as she raised her hand to ask a question. He’d see her and pick her out, she was sure of that. He had an eye for attractive women. He’d pick her out, but he’d never guess what she was going to ask. There was a prickle of sweat on the nape of her neck.
Semyonov’s answers to the journalists were smooth, articulate, delivered with a knowing smile in his relaxed baritone. Even predictable answers sounded surprising and witty. There was laughter, occasionally some applause. A bravura performance. Not for the first time, Semyonov had hardened journalists eating out of his hand.
