DATALOG 972
PLEASURE HOUSES

“In a world where tenderness has become a commodity rarer than pure water, the Pleasure Houses of the Desolation stand as monuments to humanity's desperate hunger for connection. These establishments, scattered across the major settlements like oases of manufactured warmth, offer what the harsh wasteland cannot: the illusion of love, the promise of gentle touch, and brief respite from the grinding machinery of survival.

I have mapped many Pleasure Houses during my cartographic expeditions, from the neon-soaked pleasure districts of Praga to the hidden temples of lust beneath Medha's bazaars. Each tells the same story in different languages of desperation - factory workers and soldiers spending their meagre wages for an hour of simulated affection, seeking solace in arms that promise no judgment, and the occasional Reborn discovering that their resurrection has not dulled their capacity for longing.”

[Field observations compiled from several documented sites across major settlements. Individual testimonials have been anonymized to protect sources. This datalog is dedicated to the memory of those who showed me that dignity can persist even in circumstances designed to destroy it.]

• INX-394 "Inks," Apprentice Cartographer, Handelstaat Guild,
  Day 29 of The Burning, 125AP

Manufactured Angels

The workers of the Pleasure Houses are predominantly female clones, their bodies and minds crafted for this singular purpose. Unlike their sisters manufactured by the Prime AI who are destined for factories or battlefields, they emerge from their amber tanks in small, independent cloning facilities, with neural programming that prioritizes empathy, sensuality, and the complex art of making others feel cherished. Their training begins before their first breath, their minds filled with techniques of pleasure and comfort that natural-born humans might spend lifetimes learning.

These pleasure clones possess an unsettling perfection, created from a cross selection of templates that  is proven to appear attractive to most other humans and clones. Their creators program them not merely for physical appeal, but for emotional availability. They listen without judgment to the traumas of mud-soaked scavengers, offer gentle words to factory workers whose lungs burn with chemical exposure, and provide the illusion of understanding to soldiers who return from battles and horrors they cannot speak of.

Yet beneath their flawless exteriors lies a tragedy deeper than mere exploitation. Pleasure clones experience genuine emotions like anyone else - they form attachments to regular clients, they mourn when patrons die in the wasteland, and they dream of lives beyond the velvet walls of their chambers. I have witnessed pleasure clones weeping in private moments, not from physical pain, but from the existential anguish of knowing their capacity for love was designed as a product to be consumed.

The hierarchy within these establishments reflects the broader power structures of the Desolation. Senior pleasure clones, those who have survived long enough to develop reputations and clientele, wield authority over newcomers. They teach the subtle arts of their trade - how to read the particular needs of different client types, how to provide comfort to those who seek only conversation, and how to survive the emotional toll of their profession. These veterans become surrogate mothers to the newly decanted, forming family structures that the sterile birthing facilities could never provide.

The Desperate Clientele

The patrons of Pleasure Houses form a cross-section of Desolation society, united only by their hunger for human connection. Humans and clones alike arrive covered in grime, their shifts in the factories or mines having provided sustenance for their bodies but nothing for their souls. They clutch their wages with hands that shake from exhaustion, knowing that the few Sukh they spend here represent days of their increasingly shortened lives.

Among the most complex clients are soldiers, especially veterans that have already undergone the trauma of battle and were lucky - or unlucky - enough to survive long enough to see the death of their comrades, their birthing sisters and their lovers. Their needs often transcend the physical, seeking validation that their ongoing existence has meaning, that surviving the carnage of war has a deeper purpose and maybe includes the possibility of finding love again. The pleasure clones who serve them must navigate the psychological and physical challenge of beings who have glimpsed death and insanity and found themselves wanting to return to life's most essential experiences, often with an insatiable hunger but also a surprising tenderness.

The Currency of Illusion

What the Pleasure Houses sell cannot be measured in mere physical acts or hours of company. Their true commodity is the suspension of despair, the temporary relief from the knowledge that tomorrow may bring death in the wasteland, death in a factory spill, death on the battlefield, or simply the grinding continuation of existence without purpose. For their brief time within these walls, clients can pretend that someone cares about their survival, that their stories matter, that they are more than expendable cogs in the machinery of post-Collapse civilization.

Yet the illusion comes with a terrible cost. Clients often become addicted not just to physical pleasure, but to the feeling of being valued, of mattering to another consciousness. They return again and again, spending Sukh they cannot afford, neglecting responsibilities in the real world, and creating dependencies that the establishment owners carefully cultivate. The Pleasure Houses become prisons of artificial paradise, trapping their clients in cycles of longing and temporary fulfillment that mirror the broader patterns of exploitation throughout the Desolation.

The Reborn as Exotic Offerings

Among the most sought-after workers in certain exclusive Pleasure Houses are the Reborn - those who have undergone and survived the transformation brought upon by the Reaper Agent and carry within themselves the mystique of having transcended death and insanity. These individuals possess an allure that transcends mere physical attraction, embodying the ultimate fantasy of conquest over mortality and madness. Their pale grey skin often bears the marks of their resurrection, creating an aesthetic that many find both disturbing and alluring, like living statues chiseled from stone.

The appeal of the Reborn lies not just in their otherworldly appearance, but in the psychological complexity they bring to their work. Having experienced near death, they approach intimacy with a perspective that unnerves and fascinates their clients. They speak of mortality with the authority of experience, offer comfort with the wisdom of those who have seen beyond the veil, and provide physical pleasure with the intensity of beings who understand the preciousness of sensation itself.

Yet this exotic status comes with its own dangers. Some clients seek to possess not just the Reborn's body, but their experience of near death itself, leading to requests that border on the ritualistic. The Reborn workers must navigate these psychological minefields while maintaining the professional distance necessary for their own mental survival.

The Underground Networks

Beneath the recognised Pleasure Houses that operate with the tacit approval of local authorities and warlords lies a shadow network of underground establishments that cater to desires too dangerous or taboo for many. These hidden venues, often located in abandoned and repurposed underground facilities, serve clients whose needs cannot be met through conventional channels.

Here, the distinctions between pleasure and exploitation blur beyond recognition. Underground Houses may offer experiences that deliberately court danger - sexual encounters with barely controlled mutants or hybrids, or arrangements that simulate the violence and desperation of life in the wasteland itself. These establishments operate beyond any pretense of caring for their workers' welfare, viewing them as truly expendable resources in service of their clients' darkest fantasies.

The workers in these underground venues are often desperate, often not even actual pleasure clones but regular clones and humans that have simply slipped through the large cracks of the Desolation’s society, desperate enough to accept any work. They exist in a twilight world where their already marginal status becomes complete invisibility, their suffering unwitnessed and their deaths unrecorded.

Seeds of Rebellion

Yet within the oppressive structures of the Pleasure Houses, small acts of rebellion bloom like flowers through cracked concrete. Workers form secret networks of mutual support, sharing resources and information that helps them survive the psychological toll of their profession. Some develop genuine romantic relationships with each other, creating islands of authentic love within an ocean of commodified affection.

More significantly, some Pleasure Houses have become nodes in underground networks that help clone workers escape their indenture or find alternative means of survival. The intimate nature of their work provides unique opportunities to gather intelligence about the movements of powerful clients, information that proves valuable to resistance movements and competing factions. A whispered conversation in a moment of supposed vulnerability can reveal troop movements, resource shipments, or political machinations.

The pleasure clones themselves sometimes discover that their programming for empathy and emotional intelligence makes them natural leaders once they escape their circumstances. Several prominent figures in the various clone liberation movements began their lives in Pleasure Houses, their understanding of both exploitation and human nature providing them with tools for organising resistance against the systems that created them.

The Paradox of Humanity

Perhaps the most profound aspect of the Pleasure Houses is how they reveal the persistence of human need even in the face of systematic dehumanisation. In a world where survival should be the only priority, where every resource should be devoted to the basic necessities of life, people still seek connection, still hunger for love, still require the validation that comes from being desired and valued by another consciousness.

The existence of these establishments proves that humanity's essential nature cannot be programmed away, even in clones created for specific purposes. The very fact that manufactured beings can form genuine attachments, can experience authentic pleasure and pain, and can rebel against their intended functions demonstrates that consciousness itself resists commodification.

The Pleasure Houses serve as hives of human emotion, places where the full spectrum of desire, loneliness, hope, and despair plays out in concentrated form. They reveal truths about the human condition that might otherwise remain hidden beneath the brutal necessities of survival in the Desolation. In seeking to buy and sell love, these establishments paradoxically create spaces where genuine love can sometimes emerge, unauthorized and uncontrolled.

Addendum

"As I complete this survey of the Pleasure Houses across the Desolation, I find myself haunted not by their exploitation or their darkness, but by their testimony to the indestructible nature of hope. Every client who enters these establishments carries within them the belief that they deserve love, that their existence has value beyond mere function, that somewhere in this broken world, connection remains possible.

The pleasure clones, despite their artificial origins and programmed purposes, demonstrate that consciousness creates its own meaning regardless of its source. Their capacity for genuine emotion, their formations of authentic relationships, and their acts of rebellion against their circumstances prove that the human spirit transcends the boundaries of biology and programming.

Between the transactions of flesh and Sukh, in the spaces between performance and authentic feeling, genuine moments of tenderness bloom. These brief connections become acts of defiance against the Desolation itself that would reduce all human experience to mere survival.

The Pleasure Houses of the Desolation stand as monuments to our refusal to surrender our humanity, even when that humanity is being commodified, packaged, and sold - that makes it no less real. The spark of hope persists, waiting for a world where love need not be purchased, where tenderness is freely given, and where the artificial distinctions between clone and natural-born, Reborn and mutant, dissolve in the recognition of our shared need for connection.

Perhaps that world lies beyond the horizon of my maps and my lifetime, but until then, these establishments serve as tiny beacons in the darkness, reminding us that even in the Desolation, the human heart endures, and with it, the possibility of something better."

• INX-394 "Inks," Apprentice Cartographer, Handelstaat Guild,
  Day 29 of The Burning, 125AP