Choke Collar: Positron, Episode Two

In this second, steamy episode of the new Byliner Serial "Positron," the Booker Prize–winning Margaret Atwood picks up where she left off in her dystopian dark comedy, mining wholly deviant territory where a totalitarian state collides with the chaos of human desire. "As seamless as a stocking, and shockingly believable" is how the "Globe and Mail" describes "I'm Starved for You," the first installment of "Positron." In this new episode, the stocking comes off, with husband and wife Stan and Charmaine facing more troubles in safe but carefully controlled Consilience, a social experiment in which the lawful are locked up and, beyond the gates, criminals roam the wasteland that is the America of Margaret Atwood's creepily plausible near future. Stan understands the Faustian deal he and his wife have made. What he doesn't anticipate is the stupefying boredom. What wakes him? An illicit lover's note written by a mysterious woman who also lives in Consilience. Breaking the rules, he stalks her and is delivered not into the arms of the nympho of his dreams but into a nightmare of mind games and some very kinky forced labor. In the world of "Choke Collar," when you surrender your civil liberties, you enter a funhouse of someone else's making. Stay tuned as the episodes of Atwood's futuristic thriller "Positron" are released, and discover if anyone can overcome the greatest treachery of all—human nature.