The Eden Nexus#

The Eden Nexus sat downriver in a stretch of transformed landscape so deliberate it looked almost fictional from the train.

Domes rose from former industrial ground with a confidence Anna found immediately appealing: environmental engineering made visible, but not ugly, and every structure carrying the same British instinct she had already begun to recognize elsewhere. Nothing merely existed. Everything managed something.

Julien seemed pleased by her eagerness.

He had dressed her in one of the teal catsuits under a Victorian blouse, latex stockings, and an inflated skirt restrictive enough to keep her pace short without making a day trip impossible. Her hands were locked into the muff again. A hat with layered veils softened her face without muting her completely. The rail attachment at her corset kept her beside him in a calm line of dependence she now found more soothing than embarrassing.

Their guide introduced herself as Jonathan Vane’s Eleanor.

Anna’s first reaction was confusion so sharp it nearly became offense.

Eleanor looked more exposed than any respectable woman in Geneva ever would have, even though her outfit was plainly functional rather than provocative. Heavy protective latex still streaked with mud. Practical platform boots. A broad collar. An integrated corset line. The visible maintenance adapter of her chastity belt under the suit. Her face hidden by a hood made for field conditions, not prettiness. She looked like someone the weather and the work had been allowed to touch directly.

Anna, arranged in careful British elegance at Julien’s side, felt both superior and immediately defensive.

Eleanor did not appear to notice.

“Mr. Moreau,” she said. “And this must be Anna.”

Julien made the introductions. Anna answered with a polite greeting through her veil.

“Good,” Eleanor said. “That will save time.”

The remark should have charmed Anna.

Instead it unsettled her. Eleanor moved through the place with the loose authority of a woman whose usefulness had made certain concessions possible. She was obviously restrained, but according to a logic different from Anna’s own, not less dependent so much as dependent elsewhere.

Eleanor led them through biome domes that recreated climates and managed transitions with technical confidence: fog capture, rainwater systems, thermal layering, preserved habitats, invasive newcomers, pre-collapse landscapes held in careful simulation beside their altered descendants. Julien was genuinely interested. Anna was too, but she kept finding her attention pulled sideways toward Eleanor.

She watched how Julien listened to her. She watched how easily old familiarity moved between them. She watched Eleanor stride where Anna had to glide.

The jealousy started there, quietly.

It was not a simple fear of losing Julien to Eleanor. Eleanor represented a kind of female usefulness Anna did not possess, one that seemed to earn freedom of movement, practical clothing, open competence, conversational equality. Anna, clipped to Julien and prettied into dependence, suddenly felt ornamental in a way that stung.

Eleanor was explaining one of the colder domes when Julien laughed at something from an older field story. Eleanor laughed too, and for a second they were visibly people who had once known each other before Anna existed in this arrangement at all.

The feeling in Anna’s chest sharpened.

Her hands were shut away in the muff. She could not break into the conversation gracefully, and even turning toward Julien required permission from the rail and skirt. The whole outfit that had pleased her so much an hour earlier now seemed built to remind her of her place.

That was, of course, because it was.

She hated how much the thought steadied her.

When they stopped in the administration building so Eleanor could clean up after field work, Julien unhitched Anna from the outdoor rail and adjusted the attachment for indoor range. The freedom was relative, but enough. Eleanor disappeared into the women’s service area and reappeared a moment later holding out a hose with matter-of-fact confidence.

“Would you mind?”

Anna took it at once.

Helping another woman undress for maintenance should have felt intimate in a way she would need to think about later. In the moment it mostly felt practical. She rinsed mud from the latex while Eleanor stood with her arms slightly out from her sides and the water sheeted down over the dark material. The suit was engineered for labor, and the labor had marked it openly.

When Eleanor peeled back the hood, Anna saw a face almost shockingly bare: no painted softness, no ornamental veil, no effort spent on prettiness beyond simple care. For a second Anna felt almost embarrassed by the amount of time she herself spent being arranged.

That feeling did not survive what came next.

Eleanor stepped into the maintenance booth to attach the evacuation adapter to her chastity belt with the same resigned ease Anna used when lifting her veils to eat in public. The process was not decorative and did not attempt to be. Foot clamps. Wrist grips. The adapter rising between her feet to meet the exposed fitting of the belt. Cleaning, emptying, rinsing, reset. Everything done by system. Everything efficient. Everything beyond her control for the duration.

Anna watched with something like fascination.

Eleanor, noticing, gave the smallest shrug available under the mechanism.

“Field day,” she said. “Best not to romanticize the practicals.”

Anna lowered her gaze briefly in acknowledgment.

“I was not mocking.”

“I know.”

When Eleanor emerged and began dressing for the administrative part of the day, the earlier contrast clarified itself. She did not become less controlled when she changed. She became differently controlled. Blouse. Latex skirt. Bonnet. Veils. Public composure layered over the hidden mechanical necessities of a working ward whose body had to be managed for reasons Anna herself did not share.

It struck Anna then that jealousy had been too simple a word for what she felt.

Eleanor’s life contained ugliness Anna would not have wanted. Anna’s life contained ornamental dependence Eleanor clearly did not receive. Neither of them was free. Both of them were cherished in ways shaped by use.

That last thought startled her.

She said it quietly while fastening the last of the outer buttons for her:

“You work very hard.”

Eleanor’s eyes flicked to hers.

“So do you.”

Anna almost denied it. Then she stopped.

Because from Eleanor’s point of view the answer was probably obvious. The clothes. The rail. The muff. The posture. The effort of being beautiful in the approved way all day long. That too was labor, only in another register.

“Differently.”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “Differently.”

That was the moment the jealousy began to loosen.

It did not loosen into friendship, not yet, but into recognition.

By the time they returned to Julien, Anna no longer felt diminished by Eleanor’s practicality. She had glimpsed another branch of the same order: another way a woman could be bound, maintained, and valued inside it.

Julien looked between them and saw enough to ask no foolish questions.

“All well?”

Anna answered with deliberate clarity.

“Yes, Sir. Thank you for bringing me.”

He watched her face.

“You mean that.”

“Yes, Sir.”

And she did. The day had shown her something useful about the world being larger than the small vanity of imagining her own restrictions the only meaningful kind. Her life was not better than Eleanor’s or worse, only shaped for another use. Walking back through the Nexus at Julien’s side, rail lightly guiding her and muff warm at her waist, Anna felt lighter for having understood that.