On my way to the Pleasure Zone, I think about its history. I think about its lack of freedom.
Many centuries ago, a powerful Council divided the land on Earth into two Zones: the Free Zone, where industrious, ambitious persons could realize their most lofty goals, and the Pleasure Zone, where anyone with even the slightest trace of humanity could gratify any conceivable pleasure.
Humanity had evolved to a place where this division seemed natural, but it was the Council who made it official.
In the beginning, inhabitants of the Pleasure Zone were free to enjoy, even indulge, their deepest, most cherished pleasures. Limited only by their imaginations, they were free to experience every conceivable pleasure in their own separate domains, from the most depraved to the most refined.
For them, it was one pleasure after another, with no respite from the pursuit, a constant pursuit that made them oblivious to effort of the painstaking variety, where they no longer cared to imagine living any life other than a life of pleasure. For them, life in the Free Zone was a colossal waste of time and effort.
Those in the Free Zone, the freedom lovers, however, knew better: the pleasure seekers could no longer keep up with advances made in the Free Zone.
Freedom lovers knew what the most advanced BioSynthetics in the Free Zone could achieve with the most advanced Synthetics. Ceilings of attainment had been reached in many areas of endeavor on Earth, drawing many aspirants into the environs of Earth, through the solar system, and beyond.
What the pleasure seekers didn't know now was that their habitat of pleasure had become an essential item of negotiation within the Council.
