Chapter Text
Yor had been standing in front of the television for about fifteen minutes.
She wasn't proud of this. Much the opposite. The whole topic just made her feel queasy in the first place, and bringing the filthy video cassette into their home and viewing it where her daughter watched cartoons felt like a perversion of their home. Baiting Bond into her bedroom with dinner and shutting him inside particularly dug at her, however acquiescent he had been about it.
But, the teasing from the girls was only getting worse, and she couldn't rely on the Chief stumbling in conveniently again.
She pushed the tape in. Or tried to. Her hand was shaking too badly. Then she realized she was holding it backwards. Finally she got it in after that, sitting down on the couch as it started playing. Opening her notepad, she wrote'Sex notes'at the top of the first open page.
The Ostanian People's Ministry of Culture and Entertainment's logo came emblazoned over the screen, and Yor instinctively rose for the national anthem.[1] Not merely the first verse, but the entire run ofOstania Before All, which Yor supposed was only appropriate.
It faded to black, the screen emerging onto a shot of a factory, and a bored-sounding narrator began speaking in a dull tone.
"Comrade Oskar works at the Ostanian People's Steelworks in Isserlohn, the largest industrial complex in all of Europa. Today, with the ideals of our revolution driving him, he produced over three dozen shovels for our farmers' work. If only every man and woman worked as diligently as does Oskar, then truly our revolution would know no bounds. For his labors, Oskar was awarded the Workers' Merit Badge."
The shot went black, and cut to a man and woman standing naked by their bed. Yor went red immediately. The woman was very thin, and visibly shivering. The man was very fat, but sweaty, and snorted inaudibly. He raised what looked like a real Workers' Merit Badge, although the name stamped on was "Fergus Heathridge," not Oskar.
"When he gets home that evening, Oskar's gorgeous wife Frederica is excited to celebrate with her fine husband. Frederica's greatest goal in life has always been to have five children of her own, so their labors may carry on our revolution,"the narrator monotoned.
Yor wrote a note:'sex - celebrating special occasions?'
Midway through the sentence, Oskar and Frederica turned towards each other and started kissing. He pawed for her breast but she swatted his hand away.
"Um, Yor?" she heard from behind her. And then things happened very fast.
Yor snapped right, to see Loid standing at the mouth of the living room, still in his coat. Yor snapped left. Oskar and Frederica were grotesquely mashing their faces together - and it wasn't as though they'd put on clothes since Loid walked in, and the remote control was nowhere to be found. Her hand found her glass of water and launched it with the speed of an anti-tank rocket, shattering the television display into a mess of cobweb cracks and dousing the electronics with tapwater, purging the screen of the dirty film.
"I, uh, I, uh, uh, uh, I was just watching, uh, I was uh–"
"Yor, it's ok–"
"I wasn't watching, uh, we confiscated this at work and I had to see it to uh, make sure it's not contraband!"
"But the ministry produced it-" Loid corrected, and Yor buried her face in her hands and shrieked.
I'm stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I screw up everything except killing people because I'm just so stupid. Loid's going to divorce me because of this.
She could already see him in court. "Your honor," her imaginary Loid said, "my wife is a pervert! I caught her watchingComrades Oskar and Frederica Celebrate his Exceeding of Shovel Production Quotason the same television my daughter watches cartoons on! I demand a divorce!" And the judge roared, "Unacceptable! Call the SSS and send her to Sibirya this instant!"
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Before she could go for the knife she kept in the couch, Loid said, "It's okay, Yor. Please don't be so hard on yourself - Anya's out on a trip and you thought I'd be working late. I'm sorry I gave you a fright."
OK. Maybe no divorce. But she was still probably getting sent to Sibirya, and was struggling not to sob. Loid ran his thumb along her shoulder. That didn't feel awful. "Please don't feel bad, Yor," he said. "You're an adult with… certain needs, and with Anya on her trip and me working late, you thought you'd have the place to yourself. You didn't do anything wrong."
"That, uh, thank you, Loid," she stammered. A beat passed. "But that's not even why I was watching it," she mumbled.
"Oh?" he asked.
"The other girls at work… they're teasing me about us, how we, uh…"
She couldn't even say it. It was Loid who managed to.
"About us being physical."
Yor's throat closed, and the best she could do was nod. He knew. Of course it was on his mind.I'm such a stupid useless failure of a fake wife,was all she could think.
Loid took her hand before she could speak again. "Let's talk about this in a minute," he said. "I just need to take my coat off, and I'll make us some tea, ok?" She nodded weakly. He stood up, and reached past her over the couch. A second later he draped a loose blanket over her. "Thanks," she mumbled, wrapping it tightly around herself, her fingers white.
She couldn't help but wonder if her couch knife offered the best way out. A murder-suicide-videotape destruction to erase the shame. But then nobody would be available to pick Anya up after her trip, so Yor just sat slumped forward with her face in her hands.
1. WISE Intelligence Dossier:
Following the general military fiasco of the war, the Ostanian government began a cultural initiative called the "New Ostanian Man", cracking down on narcotics usage, pornography, the sport of baseball, and deviant lifestyles, believing the expulsion of such elements would instill a more militant spirit in the populace. Success was mixed, with black markets filling in the demand for most banned goods, although Ostanian baseball leagues never recovered.
In an attempt to meet the people where they were, the Ostanian People's Military of Culture and Entertainment began production of pornography "in alignment with revolutionary and patriotic values," reassigning to this purpose the cast and crew of the highly awaited film adaptation of "Standing at the River's Edge", a gripping novel on the horrors of the war.
Copies of the resulting films inevitably leaked to the west, turning the OPMCE into a laughing stock in the international press. A Westalian production company inevitably filmed its own pornographic parodies of the Workers' Erotic Cinema Collection, which once smuggled into Ostania sold better than the originals ever had.