The Cage of Zeus by Sayuri Ueda, Takami Nieda Read Free Book Online Page B

you’ll forget your problems,” she told Tei. “Fortia and Album are in charge of the special district now and their tenures won’t end for a while. If you want to do something comparable, the ambassadorship will be perfect for you.”
    Tei had accepted the offer immediately.
    Ey didn’t want to go on wallowing in self-isolation over something so trivial as a physical aberration.
    Tei also aspired to be on equal footing with the Monaurals. The feeling of inferiority that surfaced among the Rounds when they encountered people from outside the special district, despite being the newer generation of human, had always troubled Tei.
    Tei resolved to be equal. To live on equal terms with the Monaurals.
    Having been born on Jupiter-I, Tei had no concept of racial discrimination, and such antiquated feelings were similarly alien to the supervisors of the space station.
    Tei got along with the station staff immediately. Owing to eir burgeoning medical knowledge and skill, Tei earned the trust and honest respect of the staff with each achievement.
    As ey became more used to eir duties, Tei also grew to enjoy having sex with other Rounds as a means of social interaction.
    Adolescence was short for the Rounds, who matured three times faster than Monaurals.
    Tei quickly became an adult and was approaching middle age.
    Having lost the tendency to dwell on eir differences as ey did when ey was younger, Tei became a doctor and also a counselor to the younger generation.
    And yet, there were times Tei still felt a void.
    A feeling that something was missing.
    That the universe was incomplete.
    A nagging matter that no one could empathize with.
    Tei, closing eir eyes, tilted eir head upward into the shower stream and rubbed eir face with both hands.
    Ey recalled the meeting when ey was mistaken for a woman by the new security team member.
    A smile escaped eir lips.
    The security team members that came to Jupiter-I were always only able to recognize Tei as having one sex. The male officers mistook Tei for female. The female officers mistook Tei for male. To Tei, nothing was as inconvenient or as baffling as the Monaural concept of gender. The Monaurals were callow beings held captive by outdated values.
    On the other hand, at times Tei found emself envying them. That they operated under a gender binary system seemed to intensify their romantic feelings. The passion with which Monaurals lusted after what they lacked was a quality that a sexually uniform race like the Rounds did not have.
    Of course, love was ultimately an interpersonal fantasy and so wasn’t something that blossomed exclusively between two sexes. In that sense, Rounds and Monaurals were no different.
    Even so…
    Tei was amazed by the Monaurals’ unflagging fixation with sex. In certain cases, they couldn’t help violating the objects of their affection. Just how were they driven to such madness?
    Tei yearned to know with the same curiosity that sparked eir desire to gaze at the end of the universe.

III
    1
    SHIROSAKI DECIDED TO get a lay of the land in the two weeks before the first cargo vessel arrived at Jupiter-I. After ordering the security team members to familiarize themselves with every inch of the station, he inspected each of the facilities himself with Kline.
    First they visited the residential district for the station staff and the administrative facilities.
    The area was further subdivided into smaller sections and looked much like a floor in an ordinary office building. Because the walls of the corridors obstructed his view at fixed intervals as Shirosaki walked, he hardly noticed the curved contours of the cylindrical station.
    The inside of the administrative facilities was pleasant enough to make Shirosaki forget that outside its confines was the Jovian system.
    Located in this section were the control rooms for each of the station’s systems, the research facilities, food factories, health and wellness facilities, storehouse, mess, recreation center,