China World, Chapter 8

Unfortunately, Penelope got stuck with that particular bedroll. She would come home to it every night, usually needing to push the dirty socks off of it so she could have room to lie down. The work was very exhausting. Between her long work hours and the meager nutritional drinks, she spent most of her free time sleeping. Penelope was constantly trying to replenish her drained energy, but she was feeling noticeably more tired and depleted with each passing day. She was determined not to give into passivity, though,  and took every opportunity to talk with her roommates to find a job that was easier.
	She had been here for several weeks now. She hadn't been tunneling – the most benefit she got from her meeting with Sarah was the ability to browse the Internet. Doing this was certainly informative despite how badly it, too, was censored and controlled even for someone with 'full access.' One night, she was leaning on a counter in the kitchen talking to Rhea.
	"Have you ever been on a vacation?" Penelope asked the Germanic girl with lily white skin and white blonde hair.
	"When I was younger, I went," she answered, "Before the world recession."
	Rhea looked happy thinking about that memory, although there wasn't much light to see her face by. The 'world recession' was a financial crash that tanked the world economy then provoked a backlash of laws and regulations to fix it. White women were penalized disproportionately by these reforms, even though they had very little to begin with and had contributed the least to the crash. The Council passed laws that created heavy new taxes while also incentivizing employers to put white women to work to pay those taxes.
	Essentially, the Council created money that they gave to Asian women so that they could hire white women to staff their shops, detail their cars, and polish their nails – any sort of employment could earn them a favorable loan. Certain conditions had to be met, of course; particularly the ones about paying girls poorly and subjecting them to long hours with strict punishments for any sort of misdeed. Penelope had used her smartwatch to learn the history of this world so that she could fit in better, and because she wanted to know how things had gotten this bad.
	"We went to Falong Beach," Reah continued,
	"It was really fun! The city looks beautiful from across the river. We stayed on the beach until really late at night, just watching all the lights in the city. How about you?"
	It broke Penelope's heart that this woman who was probably 28 years old had only been on vacation once, and it was just a trip to look at their city from across the river.
	"I never have," she lied, "Tell me more about the beach."
	Rhea had a habit of playing absentmindedly playing with her feet while she spoke. She would flex and point her toes, or stick her foot out, rotate an ankle then run it up and down her opposite shin. She talked about how she had got sun burnt and how the water was cold. She didn't know how to swim. Penelope noticed welts on her upper legs that had faded already, and there more on the backs than on the front.
	She kept yawning, and it was a struggle for her to stay awake as she listened to Rhea. The feeling reminded her of the sleeping pills people would take in her own world, where if you stay awake instead of sleeping they got you very high. She wasn't just sleepy: she was warm, relaxed, picturing a nice sandy beach where she could lie down and...
	"Let's go to sleep," Rhea said when she saw Penelope yawn for the fourth time.
	"Sorry! No, let's talk," Penelope replied, "Or let's go out somewhere."
	"Haha sorry I'm way too tired for that," Rhea said, "I have to be up for work in five hours."
	The petite girl excused herself and walked back to her bed roll to lie down.
	Nobody ever had the energy to go out. Penelope shouldn't even be going outside in the first place, because of the odds that the Council was looking for her. But after three weeks of grueling work and nothing else, she was losing her patience. When she got back to her sleeping mat she angrily pushed away the various socks that had fallen onto it, causing some of them to tumble onto her neighbor's bed. She fell asleep very quickly.
	**
	Her smartwatch alarm went off before it was supposed to, in the middle of the night. The strange part was that it didn't make any sound. Instead, it woke her using strong vibrations that affected only her wrist, so it didn't wake anyone nearby. It might have even zapped her, but that could have been the jolt of being pulled out of a dream. She looked at the screen:
	"Daughters Meeting. 3:23 AM. Urgent." then directions appeared showing her she needed to leave now.
	Penelope got dressed quickly. She had to walk the entire way to this meeting place. Until now, she had never been out in the city this late and it was scary. Unlike New Beijing which always had people walking around at all times of the day, New Tehran was practically empty this early in the morning. She walked at a fast pace, keeping her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes constantly looking around for any danger. There were homeless people here. She saw a few Arabic men sleeping against buildings and in cars stuffed with personal possessions.
	The trash cans overflowing with litter and the spray paint on the walls only heightened her anxiety. It made the streets look ill-kept and seedy, and conjured thoughts of criminals and vagrants. The Council wouldn't help her if one of these men harassed her. She was scared to think about whether her new ID would even hold up under questioning. The state had her fingerprints and her DNA – unless the Daughters had altered her files, she would be discovered even under light scrutiny.
	But the men sleeping on the streets scared her more than that.
	If one of those homeless people were to demand she stop, what were her options? She probably owed them submission on the basis of who they were – even though they had nothing they could still call her over and demand ego-gratifying things from a lowly white courtesan. She cringed as she thought of their dirty hands rifling through her pockets and groping her bra under the pretext of some search for stolen goods.
	'A white woman walking around this early? Must be a thief or a prostitute. Stand against the wall, please.'
	It didn't happen that night, but Penelope had seen this sort of thing before. She had been walking home when she noticed a young white woman was standing with her arms against the wall and her shoulders down low. She stayed there with her head stooped down and her feet shoulder's distance apart as a group of Arabic men crowded around her. They were taking turns grabbing at her body, looking for places she might be hiding condoms. The cowering brown-haired girl did her best to hide how mortified she was, but Penelope could see that she was on the verge of tears as they conducted this 'search' by grabbing her breasts and suggesting that she was a white whore.
	Persian and Arabic women would walk by, feeling no shared sisterhood with the skinny woman pressed up against the wall. They just shook their heads to see another white girl caught up in prostitution – and they wanted to see her punished for it, too. Penelope started walking faster because there was man up ahead, talking to himself angrily. She absolutely didn't want to deal with this alone in the dark.
	Her watch was no comfort. All it did was show her the path to follow and the distance remaining. The guy was out of his mind and she stormed past him, pretending like he didn't exist. She was enormously grateful he didn't attempt anything apart from mumbling some hostile and sexist words as she passed by.
	She made it to the place on time, a little out of breath from walking so fast. It was a small 1 bedroom apartment located directly above a shuttered business.
	"Come in," said the Nordic girl who answered the door, indicating that Penelope should hurry out of sight.
	"Get some food. We will begin the meeting in fifteen."
	Without hesitation, Penelope went over to the food. It wasn't much: some cherry tomatoes and other assorted vegetables on a bed of lettuce. There was so little food that she felt self-conscious taking a share of it. She could have eaten everything on that table, she was so hungry and she really missed french fries and chicken and actual food. Even this little was welcome though: the tomatoes were bursting with sharp flavor that made her scarf them down. Her head was swimming to have some actual food in her stomach, and she immediately liked everyone here for sharing it with her.
	The apartment was smaller than Penelope's but with much fewer people living there, apparently. Unsure of what to do, she just walked to some nearby women and smiled and listened to their conversation. One of them was very tall and she had her long blonde hair in a pony tail.
	"Stephanie brought the tomatoes," the tall woman said, "It was nice of her."
	"There's a princess staying at her hotel and she didn't like these at all. She wanted them all thrown out... Did you try the lychee last time?"
	"Yes, it was good.. How has work been?"
	"Ugh, horrible. Miss Polat says that the electric tools are hurting her migraines. So now, I can't use the vacuum or the dishwasher. But she still wants me to finish the job in the same amount of time!"
	The girl telling this story was maybe 25, petite, didn't smile much. She continued:
	"I wish I hadn't taken the job. She gets a white rag, and wipes it on the floor. If she finds any bit of dust, she will show it to her husband. Then, he will spank me, and they go off to the bedroom together while I have to clean the floor again on my hands and knees. The next morning, Miss Polat has me use the same hairbrush that her husband spanked me with to brush her hair. If I don't do it in just the right way – maybe I tug on a knot accidentally – she will use it to smack me. And she's even meaner than he is!"
	"That's horrible!" Penelope said.
	"He acts like such an important person, her husband. Around the house, he pretends like he is a sheik because he has a white woman waiting on his wife. When they don't even own the apartment they live in. They pay rent!"
	They all laughed, trying to keep it quiet.
	"I have to wax her arms and her lip every day because it grows back so fast! Not to mention other parts of her body..."
	"Hahaha!"
	The tall blonde woman's name was Yvonne and this maid girl was Ariel.
	"Where do you work at?" one of them asked Penelope.
	"I'm at a cafe where they have us doing foot massages on women, and cleaning their hands as they eat or drink coffee," Penelope replied,
	"It's pretty bad. The whole day, they have us cooped up under a table and women stick their legs and their feet on us, for massages. Sometimes, they don't even want a massage, but they'll still put their dirty feet on our thighs so they're not resting on the floor. Then we have to lick their hands clean between dishes, meanwhile we're starving!"
	"Ugh, yeah I tried working at one of those," said Yvonne, "but I was too big to fit under the table. There was no room for their fat walrus legs!"
	Penelope laughed so loudly that they had to tell her to keep it down. They commiserated like this for a while, and it was probably the most fun she had since arriving here. Definitely better than the bar hopping and kowkan binges in New Beijing. They just talked about their lives and made jokes until the meeting began.
	Someone came around and called for people to take their seats. Penelope sat next to Yvonne and Ariel, which made her feel like she was among friends. But were they her friends? One woman got up and started addressing everyone; she was in her early 30s and and had a black eye.
	  "We have a new arrival," she said, pointing to Penelope, "This is Heidi. Don't ask her where she's from."
	Penelope blushed to be put on the spot, and bashfully waved hello to the other women in the group. Some were smiling and attentive, others were fighting off sleep. Two of them weren't even paying attention but were talking to each other, catching up as friends.
	"Mary DeGraves was sent to prison, since our last meeting."
	This cast a pall over the gathering, and the women had a moment of quiet contemplation for her.
	"Her boss told her to remove all the pilling from her cashmere garments, before the fall season. But the woman was unhappy with her work – she said that Mary was doing a bad job on purpose. She filed a complaint, and had her arrested. Now Mary will be in prison for two months, then she will be released back into her employer's custody."
	"It's not fair!" one of the girls complained.
	She was ethnically ambiguous; mostly white but with obvious Persian heritage and she had a very soft voice. The mixed-race woman continued:
	"When they complain, we get arrested! Then we have to pay money for being arrested. And when we're in prison, we're still doing work just for no money! And then it's right back to our bosses, who know that we'll try hard to avoid prison again."
	"Good point, Cici," the lead woman responded.
	Penelope and the rest of the women nodded their heads as they listened to Cici vent. A woman came with glasses full of alcohol of some kind which was supposed to help them stay awake. It was nearly 4 in the morning.
	Did this meeting have a purpose? It consisted of women taking turns talking about their lives while generally validating each other's struggle to stay afloat.
	One woman asked:
	"Why do they take our daughters from us?"
	Another wanted to know the right way to leave a job as a live-in maid so the owners wouldn't destroy everything she owned before she left.
	"It's worse in Cairopolis," a woman announced, "because it's all farming jobs out there. And they'll really work you! Then at night, they make you use your tongue to.. you know."
	Cross-talk was allowed. Yvonne leaned over to whisper some things to Penelope while this poor girl described how many hours and nights she spent kneeling before her black mistress, licking her womanhood again and again in the pursuit of giving her the perfect orgasm. And the women were never completely satisfied; even when they climaxed again and again from marathon pussy worship sessions, they told the girl she could have done a better job. On some estates, the landladies made the white girls practice going down on each other so they could learn to do it better.
	Yvonne whispered to Penelope:
	"You're new to the Daughters, right? Sarah just brought you in?"
	"Yes."
	"You should know that Sarah is very... like, committed to the cause," Yvonne said,
	"You don't have to be as devoted as she is. Some women just come here to spend time together, and share their stories with each other. Also... If you get called here and you don't want to come, you can ignore the call. Unless it says 'Urgent' -- 'urgent' means that Sarah or someone like her is going to boss you around, haha."
	"Thanks. It's nice being here," Penelope said.
	They seemed to be a secular organization – none of them talked about salvation, or paradise or a fate in the afterlife. But they did have a few call and response phrases: At the end of her rant, a woman might say, "but what can we do? The prophets are all dead."
	And when they heard this, the rest of the group replied in unison, "There were no prophets."
	It was heresy. If they said this kind of thing in their employer's presence they would be beaten for it, at least.
	'Maybe they mean that none of the prophets have been white women?' Penelope speculated.
	Suddenly, an Arab man came through the front door into the apartment without knocking. Penelope's heart froze when she saw him – she instantly felt more vulnerable and scrutinized now. He was apparently there to see the Nordic girl who answered the door, and this was her apartment. She got up to greet him at the door, and they kissed passionately for quite some time.
	"He's helping Clara pay the rent here," Yvonne explained,
	"He is an ally to us."
	Again, it was a pretty small apartment, so the two young lovers found a place in the corner of the room where they could kiss more privately even though they were still in full view of everyone. Although the guy was an ally, Penelope disliked the fact that the Daughters depended on a man's cooperation to exist, especially an Arabic man. But based on how much he and the girl were smiling, they did seem to enjoy each other's company, and it certainly helped to have this space. Still, what would happen if they broke up? Or if the guy got married and his wife didn't want him supporting some white floozy?
	Or if it was revealed that he was giving aid to the Daughters -- it would be the end of his life. She glanced at them every so often, trying to scrutinizing him without being obvious about it. He was risking a lot by doing this, did he love Clara that much?
	Sometimes the swarthy guy would glance over at the women as they continued their meeting, and he could definitely hear everything they said. If he had a thing for white girls (which he did, judging by the Nordic beauty sitting on his lap) he was definitely getting his fill right now. A lot of the women became more uncomfortable about speaking now that a man was in the room, but nobody commented on it. He at least didn't gawk at them, but it still changed the whole energy of the place. Penelope soon asked when she could leave, and Yvonne told her she could go whenever she wanted.
	"Want to walk with me?"
	Yvonne accepted the invitation and they left together. More people were awake now, and they started to blend in with all the other white women, up early for work.
	"If I want to go back to New Beijing," Penelope asked, "how do I make that happen?"
	"Wait a while," Yvonne said, "And come up with a good reason for why you need to go back there. Get to know people, first, so you're not just coming in as a stranger making demands. Let's talk about something else."
	The reason they stopped talking was because two Councilwomen were up ahead in their green uniforms.
	They were scanning the smartwatch of each girl who passed by them. At least, one of them was. The other was standing over a white girl who was down on her knees. She kept her cheek resting against the sidewalk, which meant that rear end up was up in the air. The Asian woman was resting the dagger point of her stiletto heels against the girl's wrists to keep them in place: crossed and pinned against her lower back. Penelope was terrified, but did her best to play it off, not even speaking when the woman who scanned her watch. Everything was in order for her and Yvonne, but Penelope felt sympathy for the girl now acting as a footrest for the cruel-looking Chinese woman.
	She was a mousy brunette who wilted beneath the Councilwoman's harsh words. The unfortunate white girl was wanted for tax evasion because she had failed to pay the taxes on behalf of her employer as well as herself. She'd be dragged right to the courtroom and found guilty, maybe having to enter into an arrangement with an Arabic family where they would help her with the debt in exchange for satisfactory live-in service.
	Penelope couldn't watch for long – that would represent idleness. If it happened during the day, though, Middle Easterners would be invited to stop what they were doing to witness the Council's discipline. And the white girl would go through the exact same treatment even on a summer's afternoon when the sidewalk was unbearably hot – Penelope heard that women complain of being red-faced for weeks after being made to hold that position. And the councilwoman could, later that morning, go get a delightful foot massage from a white girl at any number of cafes, to help make her feet feel better after working so hard.
	'How much worse would my punishment be, if I got caught?" Penelope thought to herself,
	"I saw the prisons, and I'm sure they have worse ones. If a customer, or my boss, complains about me, I'll be caught. They even locked a woman up for accidentally nicking her client's legs while she was shaving them! What hope is there for any of us?"
	Despite all the things Penelope wished she could say, they just talked about 'safe' subjects and neither of them knew when or if they would see the other person again. It diminished Penelope even further, like she was a performing doll, walking on a tightrope to nowhere as indolent Eastern women watched her, laughing and making certain her failure then profiting from it.