Chapter 7

At night, the Castle was a blaze of bright lights. Adelle and Kassel sat at a table on a private balcony near the top of the tower, high above the rest of the complex. Far below they could see people dancing, eating and drinking, and a few swimming in the Castle's central pool. Kassel was dressed comfortably in white twill pants and a knit shirt, while Adelle wore an extremely short black strapless dress.

"Is that pool open to the ocean?" Adelle asked curiously.

"Not completely," Kassel assured her. "We have a wire mesh around it to keep out things like sharks and jellyfish. Also it makes it much easier to recover anything that gets dropped in."

Adelle nodded in approval. "You do pay attention to the details."

"Always," Kassel said. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

Adelle took a sip of champagne from a glass on the table, and then asked, "And why, exactly, are you here, Mr. Kassel?" He raised a quizzical eyebrow, so she waved her arm over the balcony's railing. "All of this – out here in the middle of the ocean. It would have been much easier, and much less expensive, to build your castle on the land, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," Kassel agreed. "But that wasn't the point."

"So what was the point, Viktor?" Adelle asked. "Surely not just control – a man as wealthy as you could buy and sell entire governments."

"The point, Adelle, should be obvious to you." Kassel sat back in his chair. "After all, you came here with your own bodyguard, yes?"

"Boyd?" Adelle asked. "What's he got to do with this?"

"The extremely rich have their own peculiar concerns," Kassel explained. "My clients and their families are often subject to kidnapping attempts or other threats to their safety. Many of them have tried retreating from the world in various ways – gated communities, walled compounds, and the like. But the situation is only going to grow worse for them."

He gestured towards the crowds of people far below and said, "I fear that the recent collapse of the world financial system is only the beginning, Adelle. We could be seeing more than a billion newly impoverished people worldwide over the next decade. These people are going to be very angry, and it should already be obvious where that anger is going to be directed."

Adelle stood up and gazed over the balcony's railing. "So all of this…"

"Is a refuge." Kassel got out of his chair and stood beside her. "A refuge where my clients can be safe from the mobs of people who would loot their homes and hang them from the nearest tree. Where they can be safe from the politicians who would seize their assets and subject them to prosecution for the crime of being rich in a poor world. A refuge where they can ride out the coming storm that will consume the rest of the world."

"So it's not just a pleasure dome," Adelle mused.

Kassel waved a dismissive hand. "This glorified hotel that I'm running is just a way of covering some of my operating costs until the true crisis hits. But already some of my clients are seeing the light. Nearly five hundred of my guests are long-term residents already. They have moved themselves, their families, and their financial assets to the Castle on a permanent basis, where they can be assured of complete safety. You've seen my security procedures. Nobody gets into this facility unless they have been carefully screened. That goes for the staff as well as the guests."

Adelle nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I can see that. But…" She hesitated, and then said, "How, exactly, does the Dollhouse fit into this?"

"I can provide my clients with safety, and I can give them a cadre of loyal servants devoted to fulfilling their every desire," Kassel said. "But what I cannot give them is – eternal youth."

"What?" Adelle asked, startled.

"You said yourself that Adelle DeWitt is forty years old," Kassel said. "Yet you are – what, twenty-five, physically?"

"But I am not Adelle DeWitt," Adelle said. "I have many of her memories, yes…"

Kassel waved a hand, cutting her off. "You have all of them, don't you? Plus more – you have skills that she does not, yes?"

"I was given the standard self-defense package," she said cautiously. "Black belt in five martial arts, plus firearms training."

"But that does not substantially change your basic identity, does it? If you have Adelle DeWitt's memory and personality, then you are Adelle DeWitt."

"But not permanently," Adelle protested. "Single-personality imprints are inherently unstable. Even as carefully crafted as this imprint is, I'd turn into a raving psychotic in a few weeks at most if I wasn't wiped."

Kassel nodded. "So the technology is not yet mature," he said. "But come now, Adelle, you know the Dollhouse's operating budget. Can you really claim that the money you bring in comes even close to covering your expenses?"

Adelle stared at him silently. Kassel laughed, and nodded. "That's what I thought," he said. "The Dollhouse is nothing but a testbed for your imprinting process, isn't it? A place where you can experiment, to develop the technology towards its real intended use."

"You are… quite perceptive, Mr. Kassel," Adelle said.

"Once you perfect the process, you will then be able to imprint entire, intact personalities into new, younger bodies, yes?"

"And this interests you because?" Adelle challenged.

"I am fifty-five years old, Adelle," Kassel said. "My father died of a heart attack when he was fifty-three. I live a much healthier lifestyle than he did, but even so, my cholesterol and blood pressure are higher than is desirable. Diet and exercise can only counteract genetics but so much." He looked into Adelle's eyes and said, "My doctors tell me I can expect to live another ten years, fifteen at the outside."

He turned away then, staring up into the night sky. "But what if your organization's research arm received a massive infusion of cash, and the chance to operate freely? Wouldn't that speed up the development of your process dramatically? Could you have it perfected in, say, ten years' time?"

"Allowing you to live forever," Adelle said.

"Not just me," Kassel said. "Though I admit that is my main concern. But think of how much people would pay for the chance to be young again!" He looked back at Adelle, and said, "Tell me yourself. I've seen pictures of Adelle DeWitt, and she is an extraordinarily attractive woman. But what will she be like in twenty year's time? In thirty? Will men still find her so beautiful?"

"I wish I could say that I don't know what you mean, but I do," Adelle admitted. "I – that is, Adelle DeWitt – didn't truly appreciate what it meant to have men turn their heads to look at her as she walked by, until they stopped doing it. It's been something of a blow to her ego."

"And now?" Kassel prompted.

"In this body?" Adelle asked. "Yes, now I know what it means to be a young and desirable woman again. To have men look at me like this." She gestured towards her dress, and said, "Adelle DeWitt would never have worn a dress like this, even when she had the figure for it. But when I see men looking at me, and mentally stripping me out of it…"

She stepped closer to Kassel, reaching her hands out and putting them on his shoulders. "Sometimes, I want to let them strip me out of it," she whispered coyly.

"I think Ms. DeWitt underestimates herself," Kassel said dryly. "And I think that you may overestimate the attraction that a nubile body holds for a man of my means."

"What," Adelle purred, moving closer to him, "you don't find this body attractive?"

"What I mean is, if a quick shag with an attractive body is what I want, I have my choice of hundreds," Kassel sneered. "It's nothing extraordinarily special to me."

"Right," Adelle snapped, pulling back a step. "You can have any woman you want. Except the one you do want, of course."

"I think you had better leave now, Ms. Echo," Kassel said calmly. "My private life is my own business. As for our business, we can resume discussing it in the morning, after you've come to your senses."

Before she could reply, he turned on his heel and walked away from her.