Kayan’na Atal is bored. With her sites set on an appointment to the Naval Academy, she has no interest in her planet’s vapid culture or the sybaritic rites of the parties she and her father must attend. So Kaya decides to make trouble–and a very public spectacle–by victimizing spoiled rich kid and media idol Sestus Blaurich. This story contains explicit sexual content.

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It’s like this: Nobilis Reed had proposed erotica readings at Farpoint 2009, and I didn’t want to be left out of something that all the cool kids were doing. I had never published actual erotica, but I was pretty sure I could write a story, especially in the Arbiters universe, where sex was the, er, driving force. The plot was just sort of an extended dirty joke, but, as I wrote it in Kaya’s voice, I found myself developing and describing parts of my universe which had never occurred to me before. I also found myself falling slightly in love with Kaya, a character I’d always been emotionally distant from. The experience of writing “porn” actually deepened my understanding of my characters and the world they live in. I read an abridged version at the con, then turned the full manuscript over to Nobilis for consideration for his podcast. He said he’d never laughed so hard while turned on in his life. So I guess the story was a success. Give it a listen, if sex, salmon and physiologically unlikely acts with vegetables don’t offend you.