A crash and the sound of twisting metal woke Cato abruptly from a dreamless sleep. His eyes flew open, but a bulky arm covered in hair lay on his chest and kept him from sitting up. As his ears adjusted to the relative quiet of the bedroom punctuated by angry shouts from outside the open window, he heard the soft snoring of the man sleeping soundly next to him. Cato turned his head to the left and saw a bearded face with a thin line of drool pooling on one of the pillows. The man's face was slightly rounded, the product of a few years' prosperity under Cato's father Tiberius after many years of hard work on his own. His beard was thick and black and nearly joined the hair on his chest and torso. It was a bit too long for Cato's taste, but not prohibitively so. The man's body resembled his face: a thickly muscled frame covered by a layer of padding just plush enough to round out some of his hard edges. Cato predicted that after a few more years as Tiberius's foreman, the man would look like he had never worked a day in his life, betraying his past achievements as a carpenter. The man's name was Bren, and he was unconsciously keeping Cato trapped in bed with him.
Cato followed the lines of Bren's body down towards his waist, his substantial member partially obscured by a thin sheet. Cato gave a small grin as he moved the sheet out of the way with a free arm to reveal the whole thing, remembering the previous night's pleasure. Bren's cock was thicker than Cato had seen on any other man, so much so that Bren had to spend a long time with his tongue inside Cato before his cock could take its place. Remembering the feeling of something so large and wide inside him was enough to start the blood flowing to Cato's groin and he gazed at Bren's foreskin, eager to revisit that area with his mouth. Cato turned to his right and saw Aida, Bren's wife, snoring softly beside him, her breasts catching the light as it filtered in through the dirty bedroom window. She had enjoyed sharing herself and her husband with Cato, or at least that's what her frequent and loud moaning the night before had made Cato believe, with Bren inside her from the front and Cato taking care of her ass. Cato occasionally enjoyed the company of women, but he had rarely taken his eyes off of Bren that whole evening.
Cato inched towards the foot of the bed, making sure not to disturb his bedmates. Once he was free, he stood up and stretched, working out the knots from a night of sleeping in odd positions. He was not especially tall, only reaching to just above Bren's chin, but they weighed nearly the same, with Cato's body sporting very well-developed muscles in contrast to Bren's slowly increasing pudge. Cato's skin was rather fair, but his hair was dark and his eyes were blue with brown rims. His almost complete lack of body hair was pronounced against Bren's hirsuteness, often prompting both men and women to ask if he shaved. This made Cato laugh, because in his mind the gods had traded his father's height for smooth skin when deciding what Cato would look like, an action they did not repeat for his two younger brothers.
As Cato began to dress, he heard the rustle of sheets from the bed. Bren opened one sleepy eye and watched Cato as he put on his tunic and shoes. Bren smiled when Cato bent over to cinch one foot and then the other, admiring how the fabric of his tunic folded around his callipygian backside.
"Can't you stay for just a little while longer?" asked Bren in a raspy voice. "My wife and I like to welcome the new day around this time."
"While I'm sure my father would be happy to know that I'm getting along with his colleagues," replied Cato as he sat down on the foot of the bed, "he'll be pretty angry if I'm late."
"What's he got you doing this early?" said Bren.
"One of his customer's sons is coming of age today and he wants me to go to Calor with him to meet them formally. And you know how much my father loves to be on time." Cato stood up from the bed and walked to the doorway.
"When will I see you again?" asked Bren, a look of worry breaking out on his bearded face.
"Soon," said Cato with a smile. "I'm not going to let this be just a one time deal." Bren watched him leave the room and then laid back down on the bed, sighing softly.
Cato stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Bren's apartment building and saw why he had been woken up. A metal supply cart had flipped after going around a corner too quickly, spilling produce all over the road. The market day had already proved to be especially busy, and this was not helping the traffic to the Forum along at all. He unlocked his bicycle and quickly sped around heads of lettuce as he made his way north towards home.
The area known as the Forum had been extensively bombed during the New Roman Conquest, which conveniently provided the wide open space that allowed for the sprawling marketplace to convene. Large basements and underground structures from the fallen skyscrapers were used as living space for merchants, black market dealers, and prostitutes with proximity to their place of work a keen advantage over living in the slums somewhere else. With the right questions and some persistence, one could acquire almost anything above ground, but true contraband was only sold in those basements beneath the streets.
Cato had fond memories of accompanying his father to the Forum when he was young. The bustling throng of shouting merchants and eager customers fascinated him. The whole area was a range of squalid single-room tents pitched next to palatial retail complexes for the more wealthy members of the Common class. The air was always suffused with the scent of fish from the docks, sawdust from the lumber yard, vegetables from farms nearby, and spices being hauled off massive nuclear-powered ships. Truly a wild place, this domain of the Common was a distinct departure from the halcyon gardens and villas of the Elite. Cato had seen both, and he much preferred the barely-contained chaos at the southern tip of the island once known as Manhattan.
As Cato rode farther away from the Forum, the poorly-maintained rubble gave way to more and more new buildings made out of stone with looming columns and impressive sculptures made out of metal and glass. The wealthier Common classes made their residences around the perimeter of the Garden of Eden, the rectangular area once known as Central Park and the home of the Elite citizens of New Caledonia City. Cato and his family lived in an impressive set of apartments that overlooked the southeastern corner of the Garden. As Tiberius had gotten richer and richer through his luxury goods business, he had moved his family closer towards the Garden, but also to higher and higher floors. They now owned the top two floors of their building, but they would still never be allowed to live in any of the humble single-storey villas that they saw from their windows every day.
Cato maneuvered past a metal stanchion that separated the pedestrian walkways around the Garden from the crowded motorways where hand-drawn carts, horse carriages, and automobiles of every shape, size, and condition made traversing on foot a hazard. Cato's mother hated the idea of her son riding his bicycle outside of the confines of those stanchions, but with a smile and a sincere assurance, Cato could convince his mother of anything. The gray sidewalks with cracked and pitted pavement became cobblestoned promenades replete with shade trees. Car horns and the shouts of commerce gave way to birdsong and the sound of falling water. Quickly and extensively rebuilt after the establishment of the Eastern Empire, the Perimeter neighborhood sported sensible townhouses and high-rise apartment buildings paneled in red brick and white marble. Rooftop gardens allowed each Common to have their own little piece of the greenery they envied from their skyscrapers.
After rounding a corner, Cato had reached the Garden border, a low row of neatly kept hedges the only thing separating his people from their betters. He had a clear view west towards his building and east towards the Emperor's Circle with its large mosaic depicting Eastern Emperor Honorus I and his victory over the Ungoverned during the New Roman Conquest. And on the circle's western side, hidden in plain sight, was the bath known as Thermal. Originally created as Calor's twin, it occupied the building formerly known as The Shops at Columbus Circle, with its immense front face retrofitted with one-way glass. At first glance the structure was unsuspecting, but to those who knew of its true nature, it represented freedom in a way that no liberty monument could ever equal.
After riding a few more blocks east, Cato arrived at his family's building and ascended to the top floor. He stepped out of the elevator shaft into a receiving room with its own fountain. Through an archway at the opposite end he made his way to the main area of the apartment. Each section of the open floor plan was sunken into the floor with little to no separation between the different areas. The master suite occupied the northwest corner with its own balcony and dumbwaiter to the servants' area in the floor below, with the other bedrooms along the western wall. Cato's father was sitting down in the viewing area watching a news report on the wallscreen in front of him.
"Another one of your all-night rides?" queried Tiberius, eyeing Cato's bicycle and turning back to the viewscreen. "Did you run into any of my associates this time?"
"That foreman of yours, Bren," replied Cato, setting down the bicycle and sitting next to his father. "He and his wife are very hospitable."
Tiberius sent Cato a knowing look. "In a year I'd better not be seeing any kids with our family nose at that house." Cato smirked and went to the window, gazing at the Garden below.
"At least you aren't late," said Tiberius after a few moments. "It's very important that we make a good impression on Titus today. His brother Marcus the Younger is going to be running their father's business in a few years, but I have no doubt that Titus's word will carry weight in the coming future."
"You have an accident outside Bren's apartment to thank for my punctuality. Otherwise, I probably would have slept until noon."
"You? A late sleeper? Perish the thought." Cato smiled at his father's jest. He could see the whole Garden from this window, but he didn't look at it the way Tiberius did. When Tiberius stood here, he watched with a jealous and calculating eye. Cato saw opportunity.
"Did you want me to wear anything in particular to Calor today?" asked Cato, turning his back to the window and walking towards his room on the east side.
"Whatever you have that's clean and won't disappoint me," replied his father. "Gods know I won't live down that burlap sack you managed to cram yourself into for the Emperor's birthday."
"Don't worry, that thing was much itchier than I had anticipated."