The Felicity Complex

by August Clarke

Genres: Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

Annie Bot meets Fallout in this dystopian satire: six women created in a lab, designed to serve the billionaires of the future in a luxury fallout shelter, rebel against their programming after the end times arrive.

Welcome to the Felicity Complex! Constructed during the height of the Cold War, our unique hotel is prepared to protect you, the billionaire class, from nuclear annihilation! Shielded from radiation and supplemented with closed air systems and hydroponic gardens, this resort bunker offers a prime existence underground: full gymnasium and spa, gourmet meals, top-tier medical care, and the best in entertainment.

Meet Hallelujah! Grown in a lab and educated in the ways of concierge hospitality, she believes in her duty to comfort the Lord-anointed refugees of the apocalypse. (Even if her lover Anastasia disagrees. Even if her creator Dr. Younghusband is disappointed in her.) Don’t worry—everyone is safe from communists in the Felicity Complex!

Look, Hallelujah, guests have finally arrived! Hallelujah and her sister specimens have waited ages for you. Never mind the secrets other rich survivalists may be hiding. Just make sure they don’t notice the violent intentions behind our staff’s wide, wide smiles…

A sendup of traditional womanhood and lampooning the paranoias of the elite, The Felicity Complex questions the ambitions behind the entitled few who plan for the end times—and who truly survives them.

Release date: July 28, 2026

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

The specimen resembles a girl. It has tits. It has no concept of identity beyond its murky understanding of itself as Specimen 679-b, which isn’t exactly a name or title. The tubes down its throat and wrists are hooked up to some unseen display. It drifts otherwise untethered in the narrow confines of a glass vat, submerged in milky fluid, and stares directly at the fluorescent lamps overhead. The lamps buzz. A fly buzzes too, and bounces suicidally off the long, skinny bulbs. This is the only movement in the room.

The specimen is playing a game.

The game is a race. Staring directly at the light hurts, which is the point. It fries its eyes with the lamplight, then counts through the duration of the itchy, fizzy, healing feeling that follows. How fast can the specimen repair its retinas?

So fast! The specimen’s personal best is twenty Mississippis. It’s trying to get its time down to fifteen.

This is a bad run. Its eyes are still fizzing at thirty.

Around the specimen, complex white boxes blink and hum, but it has become completely desensitized to the various box sounds. Its world is made of beige control panels with brown knobs, racks of blue wires, towering steel implements, and other glass vats.

This specimen doesn’t know if there are other specimens in those vats. Other specimens probably existed at some point, for instance Specimen 1 through Specimen 679-a. Sometimes things fail in this laboratory and that pisses the scientists off. They curse and smoke cigarettes inside when that happens. The inciting incident could be the death and dissolution of other specimens.

Who’s to say? The specimen has limited vision beyond the lamp above it. It can’t investigate.

The lamp game is getting boring.

The specimen considers bashing its head against the glass. It seems like something to do. A busted face would be more complicated to heal, so could make for a higher-stakes game. The idea gains momentum for the specimen. It thinks about what would happen to the milky fluid and the tubes in its face. It thinks about the possible skull-glass sounds. Glass is breakable! If it breaks the glass, perhaps somebody will show up and give the specimen attention. The specimen likes attention. It’s so exciting when somebody comes by to talk to it.

Maybe Doctor Younghusband would visit. Now that’s a thought. Maybe he’d make a note on his clipboard. Maybe he’d examine the wound and personally chart its progress. Maybe he’d say, That’s interesting.

Thirty-one Mississippi, thirty-two Mississippi, thirty-three Mississippi. The purple splotches fade from their vision. Embarrassing stuff.

The specimen experiments with a headbutt.

Thunk. The glass doesn’t break. Dull thud of pain, then something new: worry. The tube tugs at the back of its throat, which is irritating, then frightening. It gags, tries to swallow, and suddenly the glass vat shrinks. The specimen is trapped. It can’t extend its arms. It kicks and twists its hips, the milky fluid sloshes against the walls of the vat, and the tubes in its wrists scrape against the inside of its skin. Drugs and acclimation only last so long. It properly notices the tubes for the first time in a while. It hates the tubes. The tubes feel separate from the specimen, invasive. It looks at its wrists, and its body growing around the tubes implanted there. Hot-pink meat twines up the plastic like ribbons on a ballerina’s shoe. The specimen was shown a picture of a ballerina recently. It was on a slideshow. The specimen bites down hard on the tube in its mouth and screams.

A machine above the specimen beeps like crazy. The laboratory door groans open and is quickly followed by the comforting squeak of loafers on vinyl. The scientists are here! The specimen prays that they will save it.

“Jiminy Christmas,” says Doctor Slagle. He’s a scrawny man with shiny hair and a thick mustache. He wears a necktie with blue and brown stripes and his lab coat is too big for him. He has other qualities the specimen cannot parse in the middle of its panic attack. He looks like a weasel. He has tiny pointy weasel teeth. He fumbles his rubber-gloved hands over the vat’s latch and opens it. Cold air on the specimen’s face. Its nose and brow float just above the fluid’s surface. Milky liquid clings to its eyelashes in big, shiny dewdrops.

Doctor Slagle lifts the specimen’s wrist out of the fluid. He feels for its pulse, measures it against the information on the monitor. He mutters something. Next, he measures the new growth of the specimen’s errant flesh around the tubes, then pinches the flesh ribbons and unwinds them. It hurts when he pinches. His eyebrows scrunch up. He produces a scalpel from somewhere and slices off the flesh ribbons. Ouch. He nabs the severed flesh with tweezers and stashes it in a little vial. The flesh ribbons writhe around in the vial, then go slack.

He grimaces. He blinks at the cut he made. Not enough Mississippis have passed yet. It’s bleeding a lot. The milky fluid in the vat is turning pink. He peers at the specimen’s face. Contorted in terror. It is trembling all over. The specimen can’t speak while intubated, and the screams come out mangled and slurred.

He says, “Okay. Tranquilizers, Pye.”

The specimen doesn’t know how many scientists are in the room with it. It tries to count. It needs to know what’s going on.

Doctor Pye grunts. He’s been looking at the monitor, the specimen can see him now from its vantage in the vat. He twists some knobs, then turns his back on the specimen. He fills a needle, flicks it. He loads up the specimen with a potent translucent liquid.

The tranquilizer hits. Smoothness rolls through the specimen. Everything feels good. It no longer cares about the tubes or how many doctors are watching it. It chews on the plastic, dazed.

The cuts on its wrists seal shut around the tubes. Itchy, funny. The water is still pink.

“Now that we’re done freaking out,” says Doctor Slagle, addressing the specimen. It’s clear when he’s talking to the specimen because he overenunciates his consonants. “It’s a big day for Project Materia Prima. We got a new funding lead. Smile!”

It smiles around the tube.

“Just like that. Now, Doctor Younghusband is giving Mister Pink a tour of the laboratory today. Mister Pink is a very rich man. His money is Project Materia Prima’s only shot. If he likes you, we can afford to keep you alive. This is make or break, vat baby.” Doctor Slagle’s eyes flash. His pupils are huge, and the specimen can see itself reflected in them. He leans closer. He smells like sweat and bubble gum. His stripy tie dangles over the specimen’s face. The fabric brushes the tip of its nose.

He says, “You’ve gotta do your very best impression of a normal human woman. You’ve got to sell it, Specimen 679-b. It’s life or death. Continuation or destruction. If we can’t sell you, that’s curtains. I’m going to take the tube out. Don’t bite me. Do not bite me. Understand?”

The specimen looks at the curls in his hair. It tries to count the curls, but the curls are a maze, and the specimen is lost inside it. Wandering spirals forever. The curls have no beginning and no end and are therefore innumerable. They churn like waves in the ocean. Cresting, breaking, flowing. The specimen was recently shown footage of several natural landscapes, and the ocean was easily the best one. Very vat-like.

Doctor Pye presses down on the specimen’s forehead, pushes it under the milky surface. As he tilts the specimen’s head back, its mouth opens, and Doctor Slagle reaches inside. There is something pleasurable and revolting about how it feels when he drags the tube out of its throat. The specimen likes how discomfort gives way to satisfaction. Liking things is easy right now.

Doctor Pye puts the throat tubes away. No luck for the wrist ones, those stay hooked up. The specimen forgets the annoyance as soon as it thinks to be annoyed. Wavy and smooth.

Its throat is obviously empty now. Breathing feels hilarious. The specimen coughs. The milky fluid gets in its mouth. It takes a swallow of blood-pink creamy brine. Mistake. Nausea rakes its insides, and the specimen retches and yucks.

“Stop that. Be cool,” says Doctor Slagle. “It’s showtime.”

“Doctor Younghusband. Mister Pink,” says Doctor Pye.

“Boys!” booms a stranger.

A molten, embarrassing specialness creeps up the specimen’s belly. It cranes its neck to see its maker.

Doctor Younghusband stands perfectly still in the doorway. He is shorter, thinner, and older than anyone else in the lab. He is almost colorless. His tie is gray, and so are his slacks. He wears his necktie with a fancy knot. The specimen wonders who knots his ties for him. It wants to kill whoever that person is. Elegantly, Doctor Younghusband doesn’t say anything. That’s normal. Maintaining a professional mystery is part of his charm. The specimen has heard him speak three times, ever. He doesn’t greet his subordinates, doesn’t inspect the hugely expensive inscrutable equipment in the room, and doesn’t come greet the specimen. He stares unblinking at the fly on the fluorescent lamps. The specimen loves him so. The enormity of the specimen’s love for Doctor Younghusband momentarily obscures the stranger. Then it blinks, and all at once, Mister Pink fills the room.

Mister Pink is an immense person in a white linen suit. His yellow hair wafts off his head like his skull is on fire. Apple-red cheeks, bright blue eyes, adorable little snub nose, and a wide, curving mouth. The specimen has never seen anybody so tall before. On tiptoe, this man could bite the ceiling lamp in half.

Mister Pink takes huge, cartoonish strides into the laboratory. He runs his bejeweled hands over all the knobs and levers. Whenever he brushes up against something that makes Doctor Slagle or Doctor Pye cringe, he lingers there and tweaks the fiddly bits. He grins from temple to temple and whistles a jolly song. He flips a few switches.

Doctor Slagle tries, “That’s—”

But Doctor Younghusband silences him with a glance.

Mister Pink takes his time wandering around. He looks at everything, touches everything. He traces a stubby finger along a bright blue cable and says in a chesty voice: “Mighty fine place you boys have here. What’s this one do?”

Doctor Slagle says, “That one—”

Mister Pink pulls the cord. A droning sound cuts out.

Doctor Pye says, “Specimen 679-b, sir.”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Mister Pink stands over the specimen. He plucks a cigarillo from thin air and pops it between his huge, square, gleaming white teeth. He lights it before the scientists can say anything. He takes a drag. The smoke cloud swirls around the specimen. Then, he drags up a chair. He sits down beside the vat.

“You poor, sweet creature, moldering in plastic Eden. Don’t worry, sugar. I’m here.” He rolls up his sleeve, plunges his thick forearm into the milky vat fluid. He takes the specimen’s wrist just above the tube and props it on the vat’s edge. Its hand dangles over the side.

Mister Pink pulls a lacy handkerchief from his pocket. He gently dries the specimen’s hand. Then he shakes out the handkerchief, tucks it underneath the specimen’s wrist, and fishes around in yet another pocket. This time he produces a bottle that the specimen recognizes from magazines. It’s nail polish. Summery red.

A smell fills the air. Acrid, sharp. Mister Pink swishes a wet, red brush down the length of the specimen’s index fingernail. Middle next, and so on.

As he paints the specimen’s nails, Mister Pink says, “This one’s uglier than the last one, Stephen. How many more options do you have for me?”

“This is the sixth and last specimen that’s internally coherent, reasonably sexually dimorphic, non-contagious, and verbal. The rest fall short. You won’t want them,” says Doctor Younghusband.

It’s so exciting to hear Doctor Younghusband speak that the specimen doesn’t glean anything from what he says. His voice is crisp and precise. It feels clean.

“You’ll make more eventually. For now, I’ll take the lot,” says Mister Pink. He paints the specimen’s thumbnail, then leans back, examines it again. He twists up his mouth. “That’s better. Darling, I am taking you away from this dreadful place. The world outside is dangerous and does evil things to beautiful people, but I’m in hospitality. I’m building a fortress. You’re invited. You’ll work for room and board in the Felicity Complex, my luxury bunker, and you’ll tend the modern kings and geniuses of the free world. If the Communists drop bombs on us to destroy the world, you’ll be the last champion of happiness. Picture the world smashed flat, and you done up in a frilly maid costume making sure civilization persists until tomorrow. Like the sound of that?”

The specimen, her now, looks at her red painted nails. She wiggles her fingertips. She pictures it. In her mind, she sees some indistinct metropolis crushed to powder. The orange sky is empty, and the land is gouged and silvery, like the face of the moon. Loud, hot breezes sprinkle poisonous confetti on the rubble. The air itself is evil. There is no life at all. Then, an open gulch. There’s a bedroom at the bottom, like the ones in the movies. Glamorous, stately. Big wooden headboards, feather pillows, velvet throws, marble statues in the corners, candles flickering. Self-billowing curtains that open to nowhere. In the middle of the gulch bedroom stands the specimen as a frilly maid. She imagines her red nails curled around a feather duster. A flick of the wrist and the gloom is gone along with the cobwebs. Champion of happiness! No tubes.

Doctor Younghusband jots something down on his clipboard.

“Oh, yes,” says the specimen. “I’d like that very much.”

Five internally coherent, reasonably sexually dimorphic, non-contagious, and verbal specimens sit together in a conference room. Several researchers from the lab, including Doctor Slagle, Doctor Pye, Doctor Cortez, Doctor Lloyd, and Doctor Martin, and a smattering of investors, architects, interior designers, and security guards have also crammed into the conference room. Mister Pink is there. Doctor Younghusband is not.

The specimens sit with IV drips. Wrist tubes remain mandatory. The milky, salty fluid looks cloudier in the bag than it does in the vats. The specimens wear minty-green hospital gowns. They look different than each other, so they’re probably not clones, but they seem similar in age. Vaguely womanly. Vaguely young-ish. Fit for university enrollment.

It is difficult for this specimen to catch a glimpse of the other specimens. She’s got Doctor Slagle standing beside her, manually pumping the IV drip bag and inspecting how the meat of her forearm responds. None of the other doctors seem to be doing this to their respective charges. It feels stiff and chilly, that fluid pushing through her arm. She is not nearly drugged enough to suppress annoyance this time.

The other specimens are spaced between doctors and interlopers. She sees flashes of wet hair and faces whenever a scientist shifts his weight. A specimen to her left looks dead, slack. To the left of that, a specimen is doubled over in her wheelchair, hugging her thighs and weeping. A specimen to her right keeps trembling and glancing around the room. Beside her, a specimen is whispering to the immovable Doctor Pye, tugging his sleeve, panting.

At the table’s head, Mister Pink stands up. His white linen suit strains across his shoulders. Beneath all that fabric, he must be muscled like an ox. He clasps his hands together, steeples his many-ringed fingers up to the sky, and he says, “Oh, my sweet Lord. Thank you for this opportunity. By Doctor Stephen Younghusband’s miraculous scientific means, my vision of comfort and ease prevailing against the direst mischance and anti-American persecution has fruited today. The inaugural Felicity Complex has its angels, gentlemen.

“These girls, endowed with beauty and endurance, but unimpeded by modern corruption, popular defilements, rock ’n’ roll, and greed, will tend the Felicity Complex. They’ll be cooks, maids, entertainers. They’ll be security detail, medical staff, and engineering team. With charm, poise, wit, and diligence, these girls will keep the American elite not only safe, but happy come nuclear Armageddon. Perfect stewards. Perfect helpmeets.”

He opens his hands wide and says, “Anastasia!”

The door to the conference room swings open.

A hush comes over the contractors.

This specimen holds her breath. She knots her hands in the flimsy minty hospital gown fabric, tears it. The tube squirms against the tension in her arm. She wants to kill herself.

A beautiful woman drifts into the room. All the harsh flickering overhead fluorescent lamps transform when she passes beneath them. The light that touches her is gold and soft. Her hair is impossible. Glossy blond curls float around her waist, brushed to silk, fragrant like jasmine. They tumble and bounce when she walks. She walks with her hips and shoulders, swaying, flowing, casting a hypnotic shadow on the sticky vinyl floor. Her skin is luminous. She’s peachy flush across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Straight brows, uncreased by fear or worry, over sleepy half-lidded eyes. Her eyelashes are curled and painted black. Plush lips parting, sighing. A Hollywood nymph.

The beautiful woman stands in front of Mister Pink. She’s a head shorter than him, narrower. His toothy smile is visible over the top of her head. Mister Pink clasps his bejeweled hands on her shoulders and says, “Gentlemen, this little lady is Specimen 659-a. She can read, she can sing, she can dance, she can clean. She always says please and thank you. She will operate the water tank and filtration system in the Felicity Complex, which is responsible not only for waste management and safe drinking but for maintaining the blacklight garden and our various water features. She’s a real wiz about pumps and pipes.”

This specimen shivers. Her mouth is dry, her tongue is heavy and swollen. She bites it. She stares at the glowing effervescent self-luminous specimen and thinks in these exact words: Anastasia is beautiful. Nothing has ever been so beautiful. This specimen covets her. She suffers. This specimen wonders, for the very first time, if she herself is beautiful. Surely not so beautiful as Anastasia. She wonders whether she could personally operate a water tank and filtration system, whatever that entails, and sing and dance and move like that. She wonders about whether Doctor Younghusband spent more time on Anastasia. Worked harder on her. If she’s the best one.

The rest of the specimens flinch and moan. One gnaws at the tube in her arm uncorrected as her watchful doctor, Doctor Martin, is struck by Anastasia’s nearness and ignores his lesser charge.

Doctor Martin and the rest of the scientists are not looking at Anastasia’s perfect hair. They’re looking at her tubeless arms.

Anastasia beams. She tilts her head to the side. Her hair glints as it spills over the slant of her pale shoulder. This specimen sees her collarbone, partially revealed at this angle, and the sight overwhelms her. She touches her own collarbone. How marvelous! Doctor Slagle is strangling her IV bag, twisting and jerking and pumping his hands, and this specimen hardly even notices. The fluid pumping through her melts into real, red blood. This specimen feels alive. She wants to hear Anastasia speak. What does her voice sound like? Is it low and thick like honey? Is it high and clear like wine?

Anastasia opens her mouth, and anticipation makes this specimen woozy.

Mister Pink pulls something lacquered and black from his breast pocket. There’s a pearly enamel cross on the handle. He flicks it open. A knife. The blade is as long as his hand. Mister Pink rolls his shoulders, then wraps one broad hand across the top of Anastasia’s head. His fingertips press below her cheekbones. He pulls Anastasia’s body against his, braces her against his chest. Between his knuckles, her green eyes go wide.

Mister Pink readjusts his grip on her skull. He taps her ear with his thumb, lifts her head so that she strains on tiptoe. He brings the switchblade parallel with her collarbone. He looks around the room. Looks at all the scientists, the contractors, the specimens. He nods. He cuts Anastasia from breastbone to throat.

Blood slips down the front of Anastasia’s dress.

Nobody screams. Nobody moves. Doctor Slagle’s hand . . .