The District, Chapter One

by VMontilla

As a psychologist for the Bureau, I train young women to serve the intimacy starved men of Sky City. Courtesans. Geishas. Concubines. They say she's a lost cause. But this student isn't just any student. They sent me the one woman who has haunted me every day for ten years. Now her life, her fate is in my hands and there is no way I can let them do this.

Dr. Eamon Brand

The masses have never thirsted after truth.

-Gustave Le Bon

Suddenly but gradually.

That's how things changed.

If you pick through time, sorting through small clues and innuendo, it creates a pattern that underscores a slow descent. Still, no one cries fire if there is no smoke. It wouldn't have changed anything had I recognized it was happening.

Las Vegas was a fresh start. It's where my career bloomed after the long haul of post-graduate education. Though I'd been raised on the East Coast, a stone's throw away from the Appalachian Mountains, my affinity for quaint New England towns, deciduous forests and the imposing cities off the Atlantic Ocean were paled in comparison to my love of the sparse, quixotic landscape of the Great Basin and the ghosts that haunt it.

Nevada's biggest city was pure sin and mainlined decadence - an odd place to bring up kids. Further out from the Strip, its bucolic suburbs on the west side were safe were clean and had decent schools. That was good enough for us.

Cowboys, hustlers and housewives, all their jagged pieces superglued together to create one of the world's best playground. I didn't expect to find salvation but I'd make something out of it.

Anfisa and Chloe trekked with me from Massachusetts to Sin City. I'd accepted an internship with Dr. Philip Hunt, head of the American West Center of Social-Psychology. I'd expected to work in the private sector as a family therapist but placements were hard to come by. I'd applied for the position as a backup in case I was rejected by the other six high profile institutions and college. I didn't have the appropriate coursework behind me in research and sociology so applied on a lark - I'd come across Dr. Hunt's work in my own research and found his ideas compelling. Although I was inevitably offered placements at Yale, Johns Hopkins and Berkeley, it was the offer from Dr. Hunt that enticed me. He'd had been looking for someone that like me.

My wife was thrilled about the move. She'd be leaving Boston behind and likewise, closing the door on a past she wanted to leave behind that included her first marriage and the hot and cold relationship she had with her Russian-American family anchored in Allston. The baby came A few months after we arrived. We named her Aquila after Anfisa's grandmother. Chloe called her Quill.

My personal life and my vocation were aligned and I had within sights, the life I'd worked so hard for. That was not the case with the world at large. Politics had were deeply contentious and a Grand Canyon sized rift cleaved people apart.

The world careened in limbo. On final push and it tumbled over the precipice. Everyone was terrified, spectators to the hypersonic erosion of everything we knew. The U.S. military tried for a few months to control the death spiral but that ended when the union fell apart or should I say, come to its bloody end in a clash of factions that all wanted to kill one another.

Two years. That's how long it took the Luminous to defeat them all. The army. The cartels. The gangs. The Chinese.

They made restored public services to the city center right away. They built a wall around the ruins of the hotels and neighborhoods around the Strip. They resurrected what was left, turning the salvageable buildings into residences and offices.

They triaged the survivors, like me, and if designated useful in some way, they were offered a choice which was no choice of all: live here and embody our ideology or waste away in the Dregs, the slums outside the city wall or in one of the labor camps around Lake Mead. Some were expelled into the Lawless Zone. Many were slaughtered.

Built on the ruins of the city of sin, the new settlement was called Sky City. A former actuary from Phoenix had the charisma to be the foremost cult leader this side of the Colorado River.

The man of who I speak, named Dash Traux, held informal meetings in the basement of a Lutheran Church in a suburb southwest of the Strip. A man of the cloth he was not (neither was Keith Raniere or Charles Manson) yet he had a vision: create a new church, incorporating the best of what all religions and philosophy had to offer with a side dish of paganism and New Age sensibility. A smorgasbord from which to pluck clarity and purpose. A neo-post-modern solution to a society spinning like a whirling dervish.

People hardly took him seriously. At first.

But the fire that burned in his belly was undeniable. He quit his job and mortgaged his house. He bought a small building that used to sell horse tack and chicken feed and began preaching at the pulpit he constructed within it. People responded to what he had to say. Found answers they were looking for and divined a reason for being. Dash siphons miracles, they said. Illnesses overcome, addiction vanquished, marriages mended.

Dash called his new religion the Luminus as his congregant are "lit from the inside,"shedding the trappings of modern life in order to be vessels of God.

Now, his portrait hangs in every governmental office and residential building. His sermons are broadcast 24 hours a day one of two channels produced in Sky City.

Inside the city walls live the citizens. The converted. By choice or compulsion. The elite live in the Corp, a collection of former hotel high-rises within less than a square mile of land at the north end of what we used to call Las Vegas Boulevard or the Strip.

The rest of us live in the District, in one of the hotels in the old City Center compound which included the Waldorf, the Aria hotel and some others. The arena is just behind the District where four major holidays and four minor ones are celebrated eight times a year in an ostentatious display of pagan performance and ritual.

The beliefs and practices of the religion are all laid out in a formidable religious text called the Manifest. It's articulate bullshit, most of it is borrowed from other sources. A melange of philosophies and religious scripture put together without rhyme or reason but its ingredients have baked together to form something resembling moral law.

The book lays it all out, both the practical and esoteric. The structure of its organizational hierarchy. How, when and where to pray and receive guidance. How to go about everyday life. Who to marry. What to believe. The steps a person takes towards enlightenment. Down to the letter.

The Luminus presupposed that by no chance would hot blooded men have the power to suppress their instinct towards sin. The solution was to require all able bodied citizens of the Sky Kingdom to marry in the traditional sense, one man and one woman, and to do so by a certain age or otherwise serve a penalty or be sent away to the labor camps. These marriages are arranged by order of caste - a person's role in society. Ergo, Elite marry among themselves as do people in the District. The Ferals -the people living outside the city walls in the Dregs - want to marry, they marry among themselves.

By the time I became interred by the Luminus, in what used to be the Clark County jail, I was already divorced, finalized in the last months before total war broke out. My children were gone: Chloe died. Quill was with Anfisa and her new husband. I suppose this made it easier for them to figure out what to do with me. If our family had remained intact, perhaps they would have sent us to the Dregs. I doubt I would be working for the Andron.

The powers that be figured I could be useful to them. They gave me a choice. Option one: Labor in one of the camps outside the city. The second option was to become a Andron employee - I would teach women how to give men what they needed to cage the animal inside them.

The Raja Dash determined that in order to maintain the structural integrity of the family, men need a route by which to divert sexual energy. The Andron is the Sky City administrative body that trains women to be courtesans, what we call "tribute brides" or just "tribs" for short, a title that has to do with the terms by which elite men can procure such a woman - the Luminus rewards them for their work by assigning them points, enough of which can allow them this privilege.

I train women to service men in any way they wish, to fulfill any and every fantasy, to be experts and giving and receiving pleasure and I've been doing it for nearly ten years, a future I could not imagine in a million years back when I was in grad school.

We arrived in Las Vegas the same year that Dash Traux was quoted in the Las Vegas Sun saying he was converting into his religion a thousand members a month from all over the world. It didn't shock anyone in a land home to Mormons, Scientologists, NXIVM, and all manner of spiritual movements.

That first year in the desert city, I started my internship at Dr. Hunt's clinic and Anfisa found a job as an occupational therapist at the local hospital. We enrolled our girls in schools where they thrived. We didn't attend church. Atheism most closely defined my view on God. Anfisa was staunchly areligious. As was my wife's experience, my white, middle class parents only took me to church once a year at Christmas, a holiday that meant presents and that's about it.

The first time Anfisa mentioned the Luminus was one night at dinner. She laughed as she told me about her friend who started wearing The Luminus uniform at work, a gold and white tunic over crisply ironed ivory trousers.

"Liberace meets hospital orderly," she said, rolling her eyes but then added,"she does seem happier though. Finally yeeted that asshole she was with."

So it seemed innocuous when Anfisa announced that this friend had invited her to a women's support group organized by the Luminus that met at the nearby community center.

"Tracy says the group isn't a religious thing,"she explained afterwards standing in front of the kitchen sink eating tepid baked ziti out of the plastic container I'd microwaved it in. "Mostly, they all bitch about their jobs. Their love lives. But it was fun. It's a good group of women."

Her assessment made me happy. I liked seeing that shine in her eyes. Anfisa had been lonely since we moved to Las Vegas. She was bright and educated, and I figured she'd never really buy into the bullshit philosophy that the Luminus espoused, that she's make a few friends and leave the rest.

How wrong I was.

Clearly, I should have listened to the needling gut feeling of mine that screamed danger. But her rapid descent into a charismatic cult was not something I ever expected. Not my teflon strong wife, the one who questioned everything.

Anfisa attended the women's group faithfully every week. It breathed life into her and she always had a smile on her face. We had an easy, affectionate marriage despite the handful of rows we had each year and she loved her job, she loved being a parent.

In knowing she had few complaints about her life, I wondered what she talked about at those meetings. The fact that she didn't have any real problems offered no protection; the Luminus made sure to feed her a malaise that slowly broke her down. They looked for the cracks in the foundation: the failure of her first marriage. The emotional abuse she suffered as a child. The grief she had felt leaving Russia all those years ago. It's not hard to convince someone that they're being oppressed by something.

Neither did she much talk about what was discussed inside her meetings. When I asked about them, she would breezily summarize the meetings, rolling her eyes and waving me away, saying, "We talk about everything." The Luminus paraphernalia - books, pamphlets, and later, a thick tome called The Manifest - amassed in a stack on her bedside table.

One night, as she closed one of the books and reached to turn out her bedside lamp, I questioned her about it. "I thought you weren't into religion."

She shrugged as she crawled into bed. "I'm not. Not really." She turned to look at me, the glow from the bedside lamp backlighting her features. "It's interesting, though. And some of it actually makes sense. It makes me feel better to read it, you know? Lightens the load."

"Uh oh," I said, grimacing playfully as I glanced at her boobs, soft curves under the silk fabric of her nightgown, wondering if she was up for horsing around despite the late hour and work in the morning. "Are we going to have to deprogram you?"

Listen," she continued, squeezing my forearm affectionately, "It's food for thought. That's it. Nothing more."

"No?" I threw back, hiking up a brow.

"No," she retorts, lightly pecking her shapely lips to mine. She blinked twice then dropped her head down on her pillow, pulling the covers up over her beautiful breasts I never ceased to appreciate. A lopsided smirk ticked up the corner of her mouth. Though she recognized my sudden lust, it also annoyed her. "Now, I am going to sleep but if you want to stay up and read, you can leave your light on." And that was the end of it. No sex was forthcoming. Maybe my questions put her off.

When she began to attend the Luminous religious services two days a week, it unsettled me but I reminded myself that our relationship was based in a trust we'd developed over the course of our marriage. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something ominous was happening.

Seeking answers in so far as my own analysis of how things had been, I began to rewind the film of my life with Anfisa and the years before that. Neither of us were perfect. I'd certainly made plenty of mistakes.

My pattern was to fall in love with women that were elusive, that mirrored my mother's skittish and insecure character. My first wife demonstrated that, it's what forced me to try and face my own demons, especially after she had an affair and left our marriage.

Fortified by my own participation in psychotherapy, I wisened up and became much more discerning of where my compass was pointing. Then Anfisa came into my life. She was unexpected. I wasn't looking for love. She worked for a local non-profit that helped children who had PTSD and because of that, we crossed paths once in a while at various conferences. Finally, we started talking one night at dinner party where we were seated next to each other.

At first it seemed that she was nothing like the women I gravitated towards but a few fights into our relationships and I understood that Anfisa's love would be temperamental, just as my mother's had been. Yet, she was also self aware and willing to confront that damage that could be done by her emotional distance. And she did things to take care of me that made me feel loved even if she couldn't always express it.

In the end, however, it was my own hubris that allowed the excuses, that reasoned away my worry about Anfisa's involvement in the shiny, sexy cult, that discouraged me from investigating more thoroughly. Forr ignoring my own base instincts. My expertise was in the psychology of individuals, not the dynamics of groups nor how ideologies infiltrate the mind.

Had I done so, I would have found the articles that pinpointed the red flags apparent in the church's teachings and its methods. The ugly rumors circulating at the periphery would have wended themselves into my awareness and I would have put more weight into my apprehensions. Maybe. Then again, Anfisa had agency over her own life. There was only so much I could without making her feel like I was being overbearing and intrusive.

We were chopping vegetables for a dinner salad. I peeled carrots over the sink. Anfisa split radishes with a paring knife over the romaine lettuce already shucked, washed, and cut, piled into a cedar wood salad bowl. Chloe and Quill were jabbering in the den, watching a show on HBO they weren't supposed to watch because of the sex scenes despite the fact the main characters were in high school. The dialogue seemed safe enough at the moment, buying a little time until one of us could change the channel.

"Come with me some night," Anfisa suggested.

She had her hair up in a messy bun that exposed her sexy, lithe neck. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at me as I finished slicing the last carrot, a quarter sized piece rolling to a stop on the cutting board.

"They ask about you," she continued, setting down the paring knife. She reached across the counter for the opened can of sweet and sour wax beans and pulled some out to set on a side plate nearby. She rested the butt of both palms on the edge of the counter, leaning forward slightly, then twisted her head towards me to continue the conversation.

"They want to meet you," she said, smiling. "You'd like it, Eamon. You might make friends. You've said you missed having friends."

"That's true," I admitted as I chopped the last carrot into quarter sized pieces before halving them. It was true. My social life had taken a hit but for me, dipping my toe in the water was more along the lines of having beers after work with colleagues not joining a religious movement.

Besides, a pestering weight in the middle of me, an uneasy caution, gave me pause. It felt off. The people I'd met so far, the handful who'd come over to study for a class about the Manifest, never expressed doubts or a downside, always spoke in superlatives about Dash Traux and the religion. I didn't like it.

"Bring over the salad bowl," I told her, gesturing a flick of my chin. Anfisa wiped her hands on a kitchen towel, the one with the illustration of a prickly pear cactus printed on one side, then carried the wood bowl over, positioning its rim parallel to the rounded edge of the granite countertop. With two rounded hands, I scooped up the carrot slices and scattered them over the lettuce.

"Let's just say growing up Catholic did not bode well for my future as a religious disciple," I respond finally, swiping my hands together before letting them drop to my sides. Anfisa looked up at me, the bowl clutched to her middle. "Let's see how it goes."

She sighed and looked to one side, her eyes pointed towards the darkened window at one side of the kitchen that offered a view to the back yard. She was pensive, maybe disappointed, but I was focused on her neck, the tiny blond wisps at her hairline, a pleasant distraction to the feeling of unease building in the core of me. I wanted the conversation to be over. I wasn't going to change my mind and I didn't want my wife to resent me.

Her head hinged towards me again, her tepid expression conveying her irritation. "I figured you'd say that. It's fine," she continued, her tone clipped. "You'll come around, I know it. You just need to get past your reservations."

My reluctance remained robust. Looking back, I can see that her persuasion was purposefully tenuous, that in a sense she was grooming me as they groomed her. It wasn't like Anfisa to be patient and methodical. Generally, when she wanted something from me she was impatient, demanding even. She aimed for breaking me down in order to get her way. In so far as my entry into the Luminous, she was strategic likely because they'd coached her to do so. But I couldn't say as much. She'd deny it.

In medicine, they warn surgeons not to operate on people they love because they're too close to them, that the intensity of their emotions can disrupt the logical calm and steady hand necessary in use of a scalpel. Anfisa was too close to me. My prejudice in regards to my wife blinded me to her slow transformation into an automaton. I could not see clearly enough to recognize the insidious process taking place inside her mind. Maybe I didn't want to see it.

Not long after this kitchen conversation, Anfisa purchased some tunics and loose cotton pants to wear when she went to the Luminus gatherings, the sherwani style with the Nehru collar. At first she only wore them when she was at the Luminus church but within a couple of weeks, she was wearing the clothes to work and everywhere else. The baggy utilitarian look of the outfits did nothing to compliment her figure or her face, but they were plain and commonplace enough not to attract attention. When she started wearing the head scarf, she attracted more attention, not that I minded. Her modesty was refreshing in a sea of spandex leggings and crop tops though the girls hated how people stared and asked questions.

Anfisa began to pressure me to allow Chloe and Quill to participate in the children and teen programs the Luminus offered which lead to a protracted argument that lasted the course of a couple weeks. We came to compromise. Quill was too young to grasp fed any ideology (it's not a ideology, Eamon, Anfisa insisted). I made her she promise not to involve Quill until she was a little older.

Chloe was another matter. For one, I hadn't adopted her yet so legally, her father maintained the right to make decisions about her jointly with Anfisa. Chloe's father didn't have a problem with her attending Luminus services, as he explained one night on a zoom call with us all the way from his high-rise apartment in Ykaterinburg, his new baby boy bleating in the background. The ugly truth, the one we didn't mention, was that he no longer really cared what Chloe did.

Chloe wanted to go, God knows why. So far, her high school years meant an ongoing push and pull between our authority and her self-will. I theorized her difficult behavior was a manifestation of her anger at having an absent father, further acerbated by each interaction she had with Igor. The Luminus offered her a method - an spiritual indoctrination soaked with false promises - by which to channel those feelings. It was better therapy than TikTok.

A few weeks after Anfisa started taking Chloe to Luminus services with her, Chloe came marching out of her bedroom in a beige long sleeved linen tunic, matched with a calf length skirt that reached below her knees, with black leggings underneath. She wore a baby blue silk scarf wrapped around her head and tied at the back of her neck. Chloe loved jewelry and makeup but that night, she'd scrubbed her face clean.

My hand reached the remote in front of me on the coffee table. I muted it then set it down. "Where are you going?" I demanded to know, one brow lifting as I leaned back slowly.

"With Mom." She twisted her features and shrugged, not understanding why I was using that tone of voice.

Raking my gaze over the shapeless outfit, I gave her costume a second appraisal. I hated her usual ensemble of ripped skinny jeans and midriff barring tank tops but this was almost as offensive for the opposite reason. Chloe was the artist in the family, the carefully placed pink and violet wisps of dye in her hair one expression of a soul that never felt the need to conform. I adored this in her. It takes courage to be an outlier. Layering herself in clothes purposely duplicated as so she'd fit in did not align with the girl I knew.

I cleared my throat. "While I'm glad you're well covered," I said at last,"it's a little ridiculous for Las Vegas on a late Spring night." A second then two went by as she scowled at me. "Don't you think?"

"I feel fine," she replied as peered down at herself and pulled the skirt wide by its hidden side pockets. She peered up again, then stated more defiantly," I'm not changing. It's comfortable."

One night's choice of clothing wasn't worth the argument. Besides, Anfisa and Chloe were really getting along, bonding through a mutual interest. Chloe wasn't skipping classes any longer and we stopped smelling weed on the jackets she hung in the mudroom. Maybe I could shut up about the outfit.

Chose your battles. Yeah, I understood that. But fuck, no one tells you that sometimes it's those many insignificant skirmishes you lose that lead to the enemy's victory. When I chose not to act, their door creaked open that much wider. The Luminus had made its claim on my family and like a dog with a bone, wouldn't let go until it consumed everything.