Mother Mayhem had stopped pretending that this was all part of her therapy for Erik.

After Erik finished telling her his sad life story, they relaxed in the room Mother Mayhem had made for them. After such a dark tale, they both needed it.

So Mother Mayhem created a little park in her room, with warm sunshine, green grass, a cloud-free sky, bees buzzing from flower to flower, and a big soft blanket spread out next to a statue of a beautiful nude woman petting an equally nude deer.

Then came the picnic lunch, French style. Nothing fancy – just a baguette, a tasty pate, some cheese, some green grapes,  a soft sweet summer wine, and for dessert, raspberry sorbet with a litle champagne mixed in.

So they basked, and ate, and chatted. Mother Mayhem told Erik about her days as the most feared and respected madam in London. Her girls (and boys) were healthy, well fed, strong willed, and self-determined. Nobody was ever forced to do anything they hated. Mother Mayhem’s policy was to keep a large enough stable of sex workers that whatever a client wanted, she had someone who was into it.

And what do you know, it turned out that happy and enthusiastic sex workers were far, far sexier than the usual starving and degraded addicts one usually found in the sex for money business. So she was able to attract a lot of well-heeled clients and her house of excellent repute soon became known as the place you went if you wanted the best.

And rich people always wanted the best.

Things might have been different if her wealthy clients knew that some of her employees were also her Angels. The Angels’ goal was simple : bring sex to those who need it the most. The joke was that they were the sexual Salvation Army.

So the Angels would seek the most lonely, desperate, isolated people they could find. People nobody wanted in their beds. People who were forever on the outside looking in when it came to love and sex. People whose inner demons had them so twisted up inside that they found it nearly impossible to express any kind of sexuality. People whose nerves were fraying as their opinion of the gender they sought got worse and worse. People driven to commit desperate and dangerous acts, some of which victimized others. People who were angry all the time and didn’t know why. People tortured by compulsions over which they had no control because their natural urges had been so deeply suppressed that their bodies periodically took over and got its needs met without input from the mind at all.

People, in other words, who really needed to get laid.

At first, the Angels’ mission was to find these people, give them a night of fantastic sexual love, then move on. But after witnessing so many people blossom and flourish after just one night of romance, their mission became one of true sexual salvation. They did their best to fix people.

At first, their successes were few. But once they began to consult with one another like hospital physicians as to what worked and what did not, they rapidly developed their expertise as sexual therapists, and soon they could diagnose and treat nearly any sexual ill, and the number of people whose sexuality had been liberated by them grew.

This knowledge seeped into their regular work, and so their brothel sweet brothel began to take on the air of a clinic. People came there not just to get laid but to get better. And Mother Mayhem’s pride in her workers and her work grew.

It felt good to make a difference in the world.

This lasted for six wonderful years, which was five years longer than anyone thought it would. This was because Mother Mayhem worked tirelessly to make sure that there were enough happy clients and regular customers amongst the rich and powerful that it was always in their own best interests to shield her operation from the law and make sure her guys and gals never spent more than a night in jail.

All of this led to her being respected by all who knew her. That was not always enough, though, which led to her becoming feared as well.

Specifically, she was widely known to be fiercely protective of her workers and her most favored clients, and she had a reputation a mile wide for taking swift and brutal corrective action should anyone mistreat her people.

This was no accident. She deliberately fostered the rumours in order to get the most deterrent value from them, and hence, the times she needed to actually intervene and deal out harsh punishment to the occasional bad actor were kept to a minimum.

When it was necessary to act because, for whatever reason, all of her gentler means of dissuasion and prevention were not working and an individual was continuing to victimize her people, thinking themselves untouchable, all she had to do was make a phone call to a certain client who dealt with certain highly skilled specialists in the field of applied violence, and the matter was swiftly resolved.

Thugs and assassins have needs too, after all, and she was more than happy to make sure those needs got met on a regular and satisfying basis. In exchange, she got to have their services on retainer, as it were.

All of these missions happened in the dead of night and left no evidence. It was as if crossing her invoked the rage of the universe. People who mistreated her people were soon the victim of misfortunes of every possible kind.

One might get “mugged” by someone who seemed to know an awful lot about their sexual procilivities. Or they might have a mysterious accident on the stairs to their home. They might get arrested after the police received a detailed dossier with all the necessary evidence for a conviction for their heinous crimes included. Or they might find their fortunes seized by people far more powerful than them, and go from rich to wretched at lightning speed.

Or, in a few cases, they might find nothing because they had been found floating in the Thames when the morning tide came in.

Mother Mayhem liked to be creative.

This built a myth around her as a nearly supernatural being with the forces of Hell itself at her beck and call. In fact, rumours of her being a powerful witch soon spread like wildfire, and in each telling, her powers and aspect grew.

She didn’t like those rumours. As if she needed magic to get things done! But she tolerated them because they reinforced the deterrent value of her real deeds, and anything that helped keep her people safe was sacrosanct to her.

She even encouraged the rumours by wearing all black, acquiring some vrey handy props for her office like a small terrarium with a very convincing fake human skull in which a very real tarantula made its home, some half-silvered baubles that glowed softly in candle-light, and a pet bat.

His name was Rupert, and he liked lettuce, bananas, and sitting on her shoulder.

Thus, those whom only fear could restrain behaved themselves.

Sadly, it all ended when someone with the right combination of power and reckless passion whose lover had left their abusive relationship after visiting Mother Mayhem organized a raid on her which netted them enough evidence that there was no person or persons powerful in the world who could have shielded her.

That person suffered many misfortunes for their reckless act. You do not interfere with the sex lives of the rich and powerful without suffering their wrath. But it was too late. The damage had already been done and it was fatal.

It took everything she had at her disposal to arrange safe avenues of escape for all her workers who had not been arrested in the raid, and then she had packed up her things (except for her witchy things, those were just plain silly), ransacked almost all of her hidden caches of cash, and took a tramp steamer to America.

“But that, ” she concluded, “is a story for another time, ”

Erik gave her a one-person standing ovation.

Mission accomplished, thought Mother Mayhem. There was no sign of his nightmare past on Erik’s face now. Her story had engrossed him enough to draw him out of himself and into the world, and now his life event could go back to the past where it belonged.

Then a high pitched, angry voice said “Excuse ME, but…. who the hell are you?”.

They turned to see a three foot cartoon rabbit who clearly was hopping mad about something. It was both menacing and adorable.

“Well my name is Mother Mayhem, and this charming lad is Erik-“.

“NO. ” interjected the rabbit. “No he is NOT! He looks like Eric, sounds like Eric, and smells like Eric, but he is NOT MY ERIC. I know this for a fact because the REAL Eric, my Eric, is asleep on a haystack somewhere.  ”

All I did was  hop down a bunny hole I thought would lead me to my friend’s home, and the next thing I knew, I was here and listening to this lady’s story. ”

“Why didn’t you say something earlier? ” said Mother Mayhem.

“BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO BE RUDE!” snapped the rabbit. “Plus the story was quite captivating. It was detailed enough to spark the imagination but not overburden it with meaningless trivia. The storytelling was superb and the pacing was flawless. I give it four and a half carrots out of five. ”

“Thanks for the comment. ” said Erik. “Remember to click ‘Like’ and ‘Subscribe’ if you want to see more videos like this. It really helps!”.

“Oh shut up, you.. you…. thing!” the rabbit said. “You’re not allowed to speak until I get this figured out. Okay, so you are Mother Mayhem… ”

“Yes I am. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“And you call yourself…. Erik?”  said the rabbit, pointing at Erik without looking at him.

“Well my name is Bumper. ” said Bumper. “And I want to know just one thing. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY ERIC?

<—————————————————————————————————————->

Even its dullest residents knew that there was something wrong with the Now.

People kept ended up in the wrong place and in the wrong form.

And you have not known embarrasment until you have shown up to an important business meeting as a shocking pink flamingo wearing nothing but a cage around your sizable but scientifically inaccurate penis.

Objects were popping up in the wrong place as well. The smoking gun from a hard boiled detective fiction showed up in a Gothic romance, hopelessly anarchonistic. A full cowboy outfit, spurs included, was found in the closet of medieval princess. A portable DVD player loaded with National Lampoon’s European Vacation appeared in the cave of an even more scientifically inaccurate caveman.

And nobody knew what to do about it. The monitors and guides who maintained the Now found they had no power over it except for in random surges that left them dizzied and confused by all the power they had briefly had. Most of the residents knew, or thought they knew, someone who could fix things, but they were invariably in another fiction and hence could not be reached without risking dislocation.

So for now, the Now was effectively dead. A small trickle of the brave and the heedless still traveled it, but most Fictionals were too scared of ended up somewhere awful and not being able to come back home to risk it.

The Primaries didn’t know or care. Their fictions revolved around them, and they were happy where they were.

But for the Fictionals, this was the end of life as they knew it. Their “cities” now had no streets or roads. Few of them knew how to be entirely self-sufficient in their own fiction any more. And many of them were in fictions that were not their own when the news of the unreliability of the Now reached them, and thus ended up stranded in universes in which they did not fit.

Hardest hit were those few Primaries who knew how to travel the Now. For them, the ability to return to their own fiction was vital, on both a practical and psychological level. For most of them, the idea that they were now stuck in someone else’s fiction was utterly intolerable. and many of them had taken to traveling the Now at random, hoping to end up at their home fiction by accident.

Others tried to take over the fiction by force. This was futile, of course. Fictions are all about their primaries. That rule of the Now was inviolable. The home Primary was always going to be far stronger than any potential usurper. The battles were one-sided and brief and sometimes quite brutal.

All through the Now, chaos reigned.

And people were scared and angry and anxious and desperate for any kind of solution.

And to Eegee, that meant only one thing :

It was the perfect time to attack the humans.

Then we’ll see who the crazy one is!

Luz was torn.

She had tentacled hard for many days to get to the Shrine of the Two Divines. It had been an adruous and dangerous journey. Twice she had to hide to avoid roaming gangs of Frek out on the prowl and looking for a mate to eat. She had almost shoved a poisonous Guki plant into her eating mouth, thinking it was a harmless and delicious YoYoi vine. If she had not spotted the tell tale reddening of the skin and violently disgorged it from her feeding pappilae, she should be one very dead Axon right now.

And worse than that, it would have meant that her egg-mother had been RIGHT when she said Luz was far too young for her Pilgramage.

Luz shuddered at the thought.

That was why, when she finally arrived at the Temple, the first thing she had done was to tie one tentacle around another and shake it in the direction of her home shell.

It was the most obscene gesture she knew, and it felt good to do.

She had then proceeded up the Stairway to Peace with its alternating orange and blue stairs to the Altar of the Divine Divide, and had to make her holy First Choice of which path to take : the orange path to the all-loving nurturing tentacles of the Holy Mother of All, Magdasara, or the blue path to the writhe under the chilling stare of the Divine Father of All, Odtunta.

She’d sneered at the very question. Who in their right mind would choose to subject themselves to Odtunta’s icy glare when they they could receive the infinite compassion and sympathy of Magdasara? It was like asking someone which they enjoy more, a jagged coral spike up their vent or a soothing massage.

She also sneered at all the tales she had heard of Axons and Ebbebbies agonizing over their Choice for days or weeks or even months. She had even heard the old water chestnut about the Axon – it had to be an Axon, Ebbebbies were too pragmatic – who had starved to death with his body half on the Odtunta side of the Divide, and the other half on the Magdasara side.

It was called “the Annal of Grukl the Divided” and Luz had thought it was completely absurd and an obvious fabrification.

How hard could it be to choose between pain and love?

One hundred percent confident about her choice, Luz turned resolutely towards the Magdasara stairway, with its soft stairs and gentle slope, and tentacled up those orange stairs without looking over at those harsh blue stairs at all.

After all, she was no fool!

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

She arrived at the top of the stairs feeling wonderful.

All the way up. she had been encouraged to keep climbing. Every other step seemed to have a Talking Mouth of the Goddess on it telling her she was doing great and how special she was and how wonderful it was to have her on this side and how absolutely delighted the Great Mother would be to see her.

And if they weren’t saying nice things to her, they were doing nice things to her. One energetic haba-male had given her a flawless tentacle cleaning and stretching without slowing her upward journey one twitch.

He had even entertained her with funny stories she was probably a little too young for, but she was finally being treated like an adult and loving every minute of it.

The last thing she wanted to do was jeopardize everything by getting prudish.

She was sure adults talked about knotting and ties all the time. They weren’t afraid of the subject. So she wouldn’t fear it either!

The squirmy bubbles in her foregut told a different story, however.

And it had been so funny seeing this silly haba-male tentacled up the stairs backwards while talking a fathom a minute and grooming her so well.

She missed that silly haba-male already. She wondered what his haba-mate looked like. Probably just as handsome and charming, she decided.

When she finally made it to the top of the stairs, she saw Magdasara Herself standing there with her back to the stairwell. And her figurines did not do her justice – not even the almost life sized one in her sector’s Hub.

From the supple thickness of her tentacles to the gentle ripples in her oral papillae to the way she swayed a little in the current like she was too too gentle to hurt the waves by fighting them, everything about her was bountiful and beautiful and welcoming and wondful and magical and motherly and just, well…. perfect!

At the sound of Luz’s bubbling, she turned to Luz and said “Luz! It’s you! I am so happy to finally meet you! I have been watching you since you were born, and I must say that not a day went by when you did not amaze me with your intelligence and resourcefulness. On half of me and all my tentacle-maidens, I welcome you to my realm of Ut, and bid you to join our happy family as one of its most cherished members.

If Luz did not answer right away, it was not due to indecision but to simple awe. Seeing her from behinjd had been astonishing. But having her turn her all-loving gaze upon Luz and to feel her warm and gentle currents wash over you left Luz agog and completely unable to make her talking mouth move.

Magdasara waited patiently and without judgment, of course, and when Luz finaklly managed to make her vibrissae move again, she said yes over and over again at least a thousand times, and when she was done, she touched her tentacle-tips to the Great Mother’s – which felt like a years woth of love all at once to Luz – and was whisked away by affectionate attendants to her cozy little shell. where, she was sure, she would be spending her entire Pilgramage week.

After all, what could possibly be better than THIS?

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

It took her a long time to realize she was sick of it.

All the niceness, and gentleness, and sweetness really made her sick to her foregut now. She longed for something – anything – that had some edge to it. Something real. Something hard. Something harsh.

When the discontent began, she had ignored it, figuring it was some remnant of social progamming from her school days (which had ended three weeks ago). Some of that stupid “be productive, stay busy” milt.

Well she knew just what to do with that kind of outmoded thinking : ignore it till it withered up and died. That was the plan, and that is what she was going to do.

But it didn’t shrivel and it didn’t die. It just got worse and worse.

Then she decided that the problem must be her. She was doing something wrong. There was a way to keep all the gentle pleasure and soothing talk fresh and fun and vital and she just didn’t know it. Surely that was the only possible solution.

So she asked around. But that went nowhere. The attendants and enunciators and such tried their hardest because they wanted her to be happy, but they didn’t seem to be capableof understanding the question.

For them it was simple : what they did was happiness. Ergo happiness was the things  they did. So to them, what Luz was asking “what do you do when being happy isn’t making you happy any more”.

It was then that she began to realize that they were all fairly stupid. Sweet… but stupid.

So she decided to study the problem on her own. She had always excelled at the Knowings and the Learnings, and Regular Investigation was her very best subject. So she was confident that she could deduce the error in the pattern and fix it, and then everyone would say how smart she was for making things better for everyone forever.

She could see the painted tentacles squirming already.

And that had kept her busy for a few days. The attendants didn’t know quite what to make of their bright young inquisitor, but they cheerfully cooperated and answered her questions and let her perform her experiments.

Still, the more investigating she did, the more frustrated she got. She knew their had to be some way to get back to happiness but she just couldn’t FIND it.

She was on her second-last day of Pilgrimage when the frustration andanxiety got so bad that she had to stop before she tied herself into a knot.

And now she sat at the Divide, torn by her last Choice, not sure which side to choose.

When she had left the Great Mother’s side, she had not had such doubts. By that point, she had fully decided that she was going to go over to the Odtunta side at least once to see what it was like.

After all, she said to herself, it couldn’t be worse than this.

It was a decision she regretted almost immediately.The moment she left Magdara’s realm she was gripped by a clinging panic as all that warmth and love and simple pleasure started to ebb away until she was left, feeling wretched. in the exact same state she was in when she arrived.

She really, really wanted to go back. But her pride wouldn’t let her. If she went back now, she would be admitting defeat, and that went against every flap of tissue she had.

She had to try the other side at least once, or she would lose all respect for herself.

And that had helped her get to the Great Divide. But now she was torn. She couldn’t climb the Orange Stairs again – they sickened her now. But the blue stairs up to Odtunta’s realm still scared her. Everything she had heard about that journey made it sound like a nightmare. So she couldn’t choose the blue route either.

Now she believed that story about the Axon starving here. It made sense to her now.

But Luz was not the sort of Axon who can tolerate indecision for long. So eventually, she found herself unconsciously drifting towards the Blue side, and she got her first taste of Odtunta’s cold realm.

And she recoiled from the shock. It was awful, simply awful. She had been insane to even think about doing this. She retreated back to the Divide and cowered there for a while, staring into the Blue, and fearing it.

The panic subsided over time, and as it did, Luz came to a startling revelation :

That cold water had actually felt… good.

But in a way that she had never encountered before. The cold water had woken her up and made her feel more alive. It had made her feel more real, somehow, and cleaner. Like she’d been a sleepy child wallowing in its own silt before, and now she was awake,  grown up, and clean.

It made her feel strong. It made her feel alive. It made her feel POWERFUL.

And she wanted MORE.

And it was in that sprit that she began her journey up the blue stairs. And it was hard and it was merciless and it was challenging. And in the beginning, she had done a lot of crying at how cruel and unfair it all ways and wondered why the Father of All hated her and wanted her to suffer.

But gradually, that attitude faded away. And as it did, she discovered she was glad to see it go. She despised that whimpering little egg-clutcher now, and so she ignored it till it withered up and died.

And this time, it worked.

After that, she was a changed person. Instead of bemoaning the cold, she welcomed it. Thrilled in it, even. And the difficulties that had seemed overwhelming to her at first were now what she lived for. She tackled them with pleasure, pushing against them till they fell and using their corpses as fuel for the next fight.

And throughout it all, that feeling of power and strength grew, and turned into a feeling of confidence, certainty, and above all, focus. Her previous life now seemed like a dull blur to her. This new life was sharply defined and richly detailed. It was far harder than her old life, but that’s what gave it meaning.

Every stair was a victory. Ever seemingly impossible obstacle she overcame gave her an exultant pride that was beyond measuerment. Every time she swallowed all the harsh truths the attendants screamed at her and came back for more, she felt herself growing stronger and leaner.

It was in that frame of mind that she stepped, without hesitation, under the harsh blue light of Odtunta’s dreaded Eye, which would judge whether she was worthy to enter into his presence, or just another broken drek unsable to face life.

And it hurt. It really hurt. Being under the Eye felt like she was being burned and frozen at the same time. It felt like she was dying. It felt like there was a malevolent force with evil intent pursuing her with unspeakable intentions. It touched and poked and prodded every tender spot, every protective scab, and every chunk of fossilized scar tissue in her mind and then flayed it away with ruthless efficiency. It felt like the ultimate prosecution of her life, and the prosecutor knew all her weaknesses and shames, and was prepared to use every single one of them to maximum effect.

It was, in short, the worst thing she had ever felt, far worse than she could have ever conceived of feeling.

She loved every minute of it.

Finally, the crisp and precise voice of the Eye said “You are ready. “, and the beam turned off. A door opened behind it, and Luz walked in with total confidence – real confidence. not the ignorant kids she had indulged in before.

And there stood Odtunta in all his spare and brutal glory. He was staring right at her when she came into his realm, appraising her, judging her, determining her worth.

“You need to understand something. ” he eventually said. “You are not special. You are not unique. You are not better than others. Nor are you worse. You will find no comfort and understanding here. There will be no excuses, no exemptions, no special considerations, no cheating, no begging, no pleading, no special dispensations, no extentuating surfaces, and absolutely no wiggle room. In my realm, you strive or you die. There are no other options. Undertood? ”

“Yes. ” said a grinning Luz.

“Good. ” snapped Odtunta. “Then your first lesson can begin. ”

And that’s when Luz’s education truly began.

“How the hell did I end up here? ” slurred the drunken man in the expensive suit.

At first, nobody at the bar section of the Old Teak Lounge and Steakhouse said a thing. They were all too busy checking their phones in order to avoid making eye contact.

Eventually, someone near the window yelled “Pretty sure you came in a cab!”

And that got an easy laugh.

“No no nooooooo!” said the drunken man, gesturing broadly and unsteadily to everyone, which made him stagger. “Not here…. ffffffphysically. Not this… LOCATION! I mean, how did I end up here… in LIFE. ”

“Oh god. ” said someone.

“It’s way too soon to be that drunk, dude. ” said another.

“Yeah, we’re all still at the ‘happy drunk that loves everyone’ stage. ” said a third wit. “We don’t get to ‘existential crisis’ until 2 am!”

“Yeah, didn’t you check the schedule?” said the first person.

Each of these witticisms was greeted with not quite sympathetic laughter.

But one very tall and dark-skinned man wasn’t laughing. He was too busy studying this drunken fool. His instincts told him that this man was not your typical drunken jackass, but a lion in winter who had finally gotten drunk enough to be vulnerable, and his emotions were not going to let a little thing like dignity or gravitasse get in the way of an escape opportunity like THIS.

And that kind of person was of great interest to him.

The drunken man in the Armani suit’s brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of what was being said to him, but gave up immediately, and went instead with the sentiment.

“Oh, go ahead… ” said the man, “make fun of me. Sling mud. Trash my name in the press. Spread lies about me. I don’t care. I deserve it. I deserve it all. Because I am the kind of guy who everybody hates. ”

When nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, people began to guess.

“You’re a real estate developer?” said one.

“No, he’s a dentist!” shouted another.

“He’s got to be a lawyer. ” said a third decisively.

“Yeah, like a divorce lawyer or a corporate lawyer. ”

“Or a family court lawyer. ” Then, in response to people’s stares. “What? Fuckers took my kids. They can rot in hell for all I care. ”

“I know!” said someone clearly savouring their own wit. “he’s a POLITICIAN!”

And everyone laughed. But that laugh was cut short when the drunken man pointed a trembling finger at the speaker with great vehemance and surprising accuracy, and said “BINGO! Give that lady a cigar. I am, indeed, a member of that beknighted profession. ”

The man fumbled with his wallet, took an ID card out of it, and flashed it around. “I am, in fact, the proud representive of that little slice of heaven known as the Frozen Creek riding, situated, like Satan’s anus, between two big hills. ”

“And like the Devil’s asshole, I am full of shit. All the time. Can’t help myself. I lie to everybody now. Donors, voters, protestors, barristers, public servants, private investigators, and oh, let’s not forget my own goddamned family. ”

“Just today, I lied to my father. My own father, who’s in God’s waiting room just waiting to see which of his cancers gets him. I looked him in the eye and told him that I was working hard to make sure the hospital he’s in isn’t closed. ”

“And he believed me. They always believe me. I am… THE king… of false sincerity. I could tell people it was going to rain Szechuan ribs tomorrow, and they might think I am crazy, but there would be no dount in their minds that I meant every word. ”

“And the truth is, folks, I haven’t done a goddamned thing about that hospital. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it till he brought it up. Anjd when he did bring it up, you know what I felt? Irritation. Like he was nitpicking me. I found the phrase ‘I can’t remember every little thing’ welling up inside me. And wasn’t I the one who was doing him a favour by taking time out of my busy schedule and drag my ass down to his shitty little hospital to see him in the first place? And this is how he repays me. ”

The drunk puased to let all of that sink in.

“And you know that kind of person thinks like that, folks? A scumbag. A real piece of shit scumbag failure of a human who doesn’t deserve to see the light of day, let alone the adulation of the press and the god damned WORSHIP of his constituents. I’m a liar and a scumbag and a worthless piece of human garbage. I should be drug out into the street and shot.; ”

Dead silence fell like a guillotine’s blade. Nobody knew what to say. A few people started to clap, assuming that this was the end of the show, but immediately stopped.

The drunken man’s eyes were mostly shut and he was weaving a little on his legs. Two alert and well paid waiters were waiting to catch the big man if he fell.

But he soon roared back to life.

“IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS!” he screamed in a voice laden with pain and regret. “I was going to be different. I was going to be the little guy from Frozen Lake who was going to Ottawa to kick ass and take names, and I was all out of names. I knew how badly my district had been screwed over by the Federal Government, and I was determined to get some compensation for the people, MY people, the people I grew up with and loved like they were one big extended family.  ”

“They’re good people who only want to live their lives and raise their kids in peace, and they sent me to Ottawa with that message for the Big Machine that had ruined their lives. And I was ready for the fight. ”

“But something happened…. some time  between then and now, I stopped being the shining pride of Frozen Lake and turned into the wretched and unforgivable piece of toxic garbage you see before you. ”

“And that’s why what want the most in the world right now is for someone to sit me down, buy me a beer, and tell me where the hell I went wrong. ”

And that’s where it would have ended, with a broken man and an awkward  silence, if the tall dark man had not, at that point, put his arm around the drunken man’s shoulders and in a rich clear educated African accident, said, “Come with me, Mister Big Time Politician Man. Come with me to my table. I would very much like to buy you a beer. ”

<—————————————————————————————————————>

A few minutes of carefully guiding the big man to a chair and then helping him throught the complex load-balancing equation of sitting down later, the big man was sitting silently, in that in between place where the truly drunk go which is neither awake nor asleep nor passed out, but a state of blank nonthought that happens when the brain is so overwhelmed by alcohol and the emotions it’s unleashed that the conscious mind has to shut down for routine maintenance and displays a “Waiting…” screen.

The beer in front of him went unnoticed. A small curlicue of drool dangled precipitously from his upper lip. His breathing was shallow but even, and did not worry the dark skinned man, who had, in a previous life, been a registered nurse, and who was now paying very close attention to his patient and awaiting the inevitable reboot.

Men of the big man’s strength and vitality rarely stayed down long, in the dark skinned man’s experience. That was a mixed blessing at best.

Before long, the big man snapped out of his trance, snapping his head back and emitting a loud startled grunt.

The dark skiinned man waiting patiently as the big man foundered in the shallows of the sea of sleep, eyes darting around as he sought solid ground.

“What…. what… who… ” panted the big man, and when his eyes finally snapped into focus, he looked at the dark skinned man, who smiled at him. So he smiled back.

“Hello Mister Big Shot Politician Man. Welcome back to the real world, eh? I am Professor Bokomoso Govender, but you can just call me Boko, okay? And your name is? ” said Boko.

“You mean, you don’t know who I am? ” said the big man suspiciously.

“No sir, I do not. I am a stranger to these cold and beautiful lands. I know nothing of your politicians or culture. ”

“Then let’s keep it that way, okay? Just call me…. Luke. It’s my favorite book of the bible. ” said Luke.

“Fine by me, my friend. Luke it is. Tell me, how are you feeling? ” said Boko.

Luke contemplated the question for a few moments as he did a quick self-diagnostic. “A lot better than I should, to be quite honest. ”

“Big man healthy as an ox, eh? ” said Boko.

“Yeah, I guess so. ” said Luke. “Have I thrown up yet?”

“Not to my knowledge, friend. ” said Boko.

“Then I’ve got THAT to look forward to. ”

Silence resumed. It made the restaurant hubbub seemed a hundred miles away.

“Listen, uh…. ” said Luke.

“Boko. ” Boko supplied promptly.

“Right… Boko.. ” said Luke. “About the um… other end of our… bargain…”

“Bargain? What bargain, friend?” said Boko.

“You know. ” said Luke. Then,  more quietly, “Buy me a beer and… ?”

“Ah! ” said Boko. “Thank you for reminding me! I had forgotten all about it. Yes, I believe I can help you in that regard as well. ”

Boko straitened up, cleared his throat, and assumed his professorial mien. “You wanted to know how you got from there to here, yes? Let me assure you, then, that you are not to make this terrible transition. It would be more noteworthy if you had not! It is what I call the Capital City Effect. For the unwise, it means the spiritual desolation of being deeply unhappy in Paradise. But for the wise, it teaches them an important lesson about how things got the way they are and what keeps them that way. ”

“Now Luke, tell me… the district you represent, is it a wealthy district? ” said Boko.

“God no. Its full of dirt poor farmers and people too poor to afford dirt. ” said Luke.

“Ah, it is much like that where I come from as well.” said Boko. ” Only hotter. Then am I to take it that before your election to office, you had never been to a five star restaurant, or stayed at a five star hotel?”

“Where I come from, our idea of fine dining is any place where you don’t have to eat off a tray. ” said Luke. “And before I came here, I had heard of hotels, but I could never wrap my head around the idea of so many people without relatives to stay with.:”

“And the similarities with my home continue! ” said Boko. “Where I come from, fancy food is anything you did not have to knock out of a tree with a rock. Then I take it that before you were elected, you had never been inside a limosine, worn expensive clothing, or associated with high status persons?”

“Tommy Hunter came through town once. That was a pretty big deal.” said Luke.  “As for fancy clothes and limos, I’d never thought about them at all before I came here. But you have to do all that stuff  just to fit in around here. ”

“Ah, my friend Luke, you must have read ahead, because that is the very crux of the Capital City effect! They take you out of your life and put you in a world unlike any you have ever known. A place where everyone treats you like you are a very important person. Where you are invited to the homes of wealthy, powerful people and treated as an equal, and where you are given privileges and advantages far in excess of the wildest dreams of the people back home. In short, everything is done to make you feel like you are better than the people back home now, and no longer empathize with them. Instead, you now identity with the top one percent, and can be relied upon to act in their interests, not the interests of those losers back home!”

“The rich and powerful get everything they want handed to them by their politician friends, and all without a single bribe or a drop of coercion!”.

Luke was now looking at him like, in a land of strangers who do not speak your language, he had finally met someone he can understand.

“Boko my friend, that makes so much sense it’s scary. I will be expected back at the office soon, but I would very much like to continue our conversation. Can I prevail upon your patience a little bit more and ask you to accompany me?”

“For you, my friend… I will make this sacrifice. ”  said Boko.

Luke laughed, paid the bill, and they were on their way to the limo when Luke said,”By the way, Boko, you have not told me what subject you teach. ”

“Let me put it like this, my friend. ” said Boko, “My most popular course, “is called ‘The Anatomy of Political Corruption.’ ”

With that, the two new friends went, laughing, into the night.

Hewlitt was a bear. But nobody knew.

Not his beloved wife, Ursula (Major Ursula, to those under her command. ) Not his kids. Ben (who was sweet and gentle)  and Adam (who loved anything with enough grisly violence in it). Not any of his employees at the Bachelor Sign Company (their motto : “Your Sign Is Our Sign… of quality! ). Not even his parents, Large Marge and Big Bob Hewlitt (names feared by buffet owners statewide).

No. nobody knew. Because Hewlitt (who had a first name, but nobody used it) had learned at a very young and tender age that when you turned into a bear in the middle of recess because someone smooshed your sand castle, you were rejected by your peers pretty hard.

And by your teachers. And the police. And animal control. And, ultimately, seven difference zoos, three traveling freak shows, and very odd man named Neville.

“Something are too weird even for me. ” Neville had said right before closing the door in the animal control officer’s face.

If he hadn’t figured out how to change back and thus slip his bonds and escape his captors, Hewlitt might have lived out his life in that cage.

But instead, Hewlitt saw a “MISSING” poster with his face on it. So all he had to do to get home was to wait till someone was looking at the poster then wander out of the woods looking dirty and confused (not hard, as he was both) and people couldn’t wait to take him home.

And take lots of pictures. For a few days, he was a star. And he really liked that. It was a lot of fun. Everyone was super nice to him, he got to me on local TV talk shows, and he even got his picture taken with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who was in town to shoot a movie about a big city cop whose new partner was a raccoon, and who possibly mistook Hewlitt for a Make-A-Wish kid.

After a couple of days, everyone forgot about him to go chase after a lady whose cat could yodel, and that was nice too, because by then, Hewlitt was tired of all the attention and just wanted to go home and be a kid again.

But he had learned his lesson, and from then on, he never got angry again. Instead, he channeled his energies into being the funny fat kid everyone loved, and when something made him mad, all he had to do was remember that cage and he could squash it all down inside himself and everything was okay again.

And now, it was his 50th birthday, and he was at his “surprise” party (like he couldn’t smell the cake and ice cream from a block away) and he was happy.

He looked around the local Honeycomb Lodge’s meeting hall and thought about all the people who had come to wish him a happy birthday. There was the wife and kids, sitting there on the stage with him, along with his parents and a random assortment of cousins. The front row was filled with his “other family”, which is what he liked to call his employees, all ten of them.  And there were the three Lodge members who were “monitoring” the event, or as much of it they could still see after all the liquor they were drinking. Hewlitt didn’t know their names but he’d seen them around. And there was a half dozen people Hewlitt didn’t know. But they were probably just people under Ursula’s command who he hadn’t met yet – or more like, had met and then forgot.

Hewlitt had a lot of good qualities, but remembering names and faces was not amongst them. That’s why he called everybody “buddy” or “dear” or “Miss” or “my friend. ”

It was an old trick, but it worked.

Hewlitt looked out over it all and was a very happy man. This was what life was about, he thought to himself. Family. Friends. A place in the community. The respect of your peers. And god damn it, love. Love for and love from. That’s all that really mattered.

This happy thought sustained Hewlitt for a while as he sat there, content to let the music and the happy hubbub of the festivities wash over him as he sank into a happy, though-free reverie which was the product of a life well lived.

The half-dozen beers and three glasses of that green punch (Lime Something? Something LIme?) Linda his account made might have helped a little too.

It was during this honeyed moment that Hewlitt’s gaze happened to drift upwards towards the hall’s ceiling, and that’s when he noticed the “decorations” someone had hung on the edges of the rafters up there.

Hunting trophies. Bear heads, specifically. There had to be at least a dozen of them up there. And they were the real thing, not the fake ones the tourists liked.

He could always tell.

The thought of all those poor innocent bears and their humiliating fates dropped into Hewlitt’s good mood like a turd into a punchbowl, and now he was angry.

Why did people have to DO that? he thought. Go traipsing out into the wilderness just to take the life of some innocent animal who’d never done them a lick of harm and then act like they were big tough men for doing it? What kind of sick son of bitch thought killing a live animal just living its life just for the hell of it was “fun”? Some wonderfuil goddamned people we got in this country.

And for that matter, who the hell put them up there for me to see? What kind of mental malfunction caused someone to look at the guy who has bears on his bumper stickers, a bear on his license plate cover, a bear keychain, bear wallet, and three different bear T-shirts (of the ones his life would let him wear, anyhow), plus a huge goddamned bear on his leather jacket, and thinks “You know what this guy wants to see? The decapitated heads of his favorite animal!”.

Guess I should just be glad this wasn’t a baby shower, thought Hewlitt darkly.

Then Hewlitt’s ears twitched as something about the conversation betwen the three Lodge guys who were standing in front of the stage caught his attention.

Did he just hear the word “bear”?

“Yeah, it was a bear all right. ” said the old one. “Big sucker. A sow. Just laying on her back in the sun, legs all splayed out, pretty as a peach. ”

Hewliit blinked away the red haze rising in his eyes.

“Wow. ” said the younger one. “That’s amazing, dad. ”

“Yeah, Dad. What did you do then? ” asked the youngest.

Hewlitt could hear his heart thudding faster in his chest and feel a prickling heat spreading over the back of his neck.

“Well what do you THINK I did? I lined up my shot… took my time doin it too, cause it was clear the dumb bitch wasn’t going anywhere… and then I pulled the trigger and BLAM! blew her goddamned brains right out of her skull. ”

The younger ones laughed.

“That must have been a sight to see. ” said one.

“Wish I’d been there to see that!” said the other.

“Yup. One shot and it was over. One second she was alive and the next bits of her skull were flying through the air. Happiest day of my life. ” said the old guy, with a chuckle.

Hewlitt’s mouth tasted like old coins and his breath burned in his nostrils.

“Is she one of the ones you brought here today, Dad? ” said the youngest.

The old guy gave the youngest a withering “you’re too dumb to be one of mine” look, and said “No, you idiot, because I blew that ugly old bitch’s head up. Kind of makes it hard to mount her head on a plaque. Numbskull. ”

“Of course, then we had to kill her cubs. ”

Hewlitt exploded up out of his chair, sending the card table flying and the folding chair clattering to the ground. The tingling heat all through his body told him what was about to happen, but he was too mad to stop it and too drunk to care.

“You fucking ANIMAL!” Hewlitt growled at the old man, every hair on his body bristling.

“You goddamned, fucking ANIMAL”. screamed Hewlitt in a half-strangled voice as his hairs turned into furs and grew rapidly into a thick, brown pelt.

“People like you who murder innocent animals who never did you any harm are worthless, degenerate pieces of SHIT who deserve to DIE! ” bellowed Hewlitt in a voice like a ten foot demon with a chest cold as his limbs thickened and his torso expanded and his clothes ripped and fell to the floor.

“You’re all a bunch of SICK. FUCKING. ANIMALS giving in to your urge to HUNT and MURDER like a bunch of… CAVE MEN!” said Hewlitt in a voice like the sawing of the world’s biggest log with the world’s longest saw as his mouth pushed forward into a snout and his hands and feet sprouted pads and claws.

“And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, ” said Hewlitt in a voice like a bear trying to talk, “it’s people who CAN’T CONTROL their ANIMAL INSTINCTS! ”

On the last word, the now ten foot Kodiak bear that was Hewlitt let out a mighty roar and slammed a shovel-sized paw into the nearest wall, sending drywall flying everywhere.

He then bolted out of the room and retreated into the darkness of his cave… or the closest thing too it, which happened to be Miss Clark’s sewing room in the basement.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

Hewlitt, back to normal (or at least human), thought about all the different ways his life was over now as he crept up the stairs.

The thoughts were painful, but they distracted him from the pain in his tortured body, which currently felt like every cell was roasting over its own, individual BBQ pit.

H’ed never see his wife and kids again. That was for sure. He supposed Chris would end up running the business. Kid wasn’t too bright but he knew everything there was to know about signs. His kids would have to change schools and his mother and father would get kicked out of their country club.

As for his wife, well, he wasn’t too sure about what you had to do to get kicked out of the military these days, but he was pretty sure that “be married to Satan’s Fat Friend” was still on the books somewhere.

As he rounded the landing between the basement and the main floor, Hewiltt saw the water fountain there, and suddenly realized he was so thirsty he could feel it on a genetic level, so he stopped to take a drink there.

The water fountain was from a bygone era where people were smaller, and so Hewlitt had to bend over uncomfortably to use it. As he did so, a thousand red hot strings screamed through his muscles, and he groaned from the pain.

“Looks like you’re hurting pretty bad. ” said a voice.

Hewlitt was busy rediscovering the ecstacy of water as a beverage, so all he did was grunt in agreement.

“Let me see your eyes. ” said the voice.

This was such an odd request that Hewlitt looked up to see who was asking it.

It was the older son from the conversation earlier. Hewlitt stared at him, brain too sluggish to process what was happening.

The man smiled at him, and said “It’s always rough when you haven’t done it in a long time. But if you do it regular, you’ll find…. ”

The man changed smoothly from a man into a fluffy brown bear.

“…that it doesn’t have to hurt at all. ” he finished.

“Hi there Hewlitt. ” said the bear. “My name’s Markus. I am so glad that we finally found you. Now come on… there’s some people you need to meet. ”

“But…. but I’m naked!” said Hewlitt as Markus’ big brown paw gently turned him and propelled him in the direction of the main hall.

“Don’t worry. ” said Markus, with a big bass chuckle as they reached the door to the mail hall and he opened it.  “So are they. Hey everybody, look who I found! It’s the birthday boy himself!”.

Hewlitt stumbled into the room after a gentle shove from Markus. And what he saw there stopped him cold.

The whole main hall was filled with bears. Full sized, real life bears. Bears of all kinds. There was a Kodiak sow, a pair of Bruins, a Lousiana Black Bear, a small family of Cinnamon Bears, a vast grinning Polar Bear, and even a Giant Panda, who was taking pictures with his phone.

Hewlitt felt Markus’ big brown paw on his shoulder, and looked up to the see the big brown bear smiling at him.

“We’re all bears here, Hew. Everyone one of us. This whole town is full of bears like us. I’m just sorry it took us so long to figure out you were one too. ” said Markus.

“But…. but how is this possible?” stammered Hewlitt.

“Well, we all knew about the kid who turned into a bear and ran away. ” said Markus. “The news stories got passed around and around until they turned into emails, then into a Facebook page, then into a Twitter feed, and right now, they are prominent displayed on our very own forum page. ”

Markus winked at Hewlitt. “Private, of course. ”

“Amazing. ” said Hewlitt dazedly.

“And let me tell you, my people looked high and low for that poor little bear. “said Markus, looking sad. “We searched the woods and the riverside and the old mine… anywhere we knew bears had been seen. And we were all so busy with that search that none of us paid attention to the news of a kid who was missing. And for that, on behalf of me and the others, we are truly, truly sorry. You were lost for a real long time, Hew… but now you’re home. ”

Markus made a sweeping gesture to the crowd of bears, and in a loud voice said “Welcome home, Hewliit! It is so good to have you back. Ain’t that right folks?”

The crowd responded with a chorus of growls, gruffs, roars, and hell-yeahs loud and enthusiastic so loud that it was a wonder that the roof stayed on.

Markus grinned that big bear grin down at Hewlitt and said “We sure would like you to join us, Hewlitt. There’s just one problem. ”

“What’s that? ” said Hewlity.

“You’re a little overdressed for the occasion. ” said Markus with a twinkle in his eye.

Hewlitt looked down at his naked body in confusion, then broke into a great big smile when he got the joke. With a grunt, Hewlitt shifted into his bear form.

“Now that’s more like it!” said Markus. “Now come and join in the fun. ”

And for that whole night, and many nights to follow, Hewlitt frolicked and played with his new found community of bears, happy as three cubs in a stream.

And when the night was over, Hew headed home. And tired as he was, he knew the best was yet to come.

Because he’d recognized that sow Kodiak bear with the two cubs.

After all, a man should recognize his own wife, shouldn’t he?

And they all lived bearily after.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“Don’t you get it? ” gruffed Hew. “We’re BEAR naked. Get it? BEAR naked!”

“I get the joke, Hew. ” said Markus.

“BEAR naked! I spent last night BEAR naked with a bunch of strangers! And they were all BEAR naked too!” said Hew, busting a gut.

“We’ve heard it before, Hew. ”

(For tonight’s performance, the part of Hewlitt was played by John Goodman, the part of Markus was played by the late great Phil Harris, and the part of Linda the Accountant, whose scenes were regrettably cut, was played by the late Gilda Radner, because if you’re allowing yourself to cast dead people, you might as well go for the best. )

It had been a great trip.

At least some of the time. Parts of it. And the not-great parts, like Greg getting sick from the water after being told repeatedly not to drink it, much to his children’s amusement, or Gilda throwing a temper tantrum because she had a sunburn but couldn’t bring herself to put the words together to tell someone, so the pain built up to volcanic force and she freaked out right there on the beach, screaming and crying and ranting and raving while the locals slowly gathered around to see the crazy gringa flip out and make a huge spectacle of herseld.

And right in front of her teenaged daughter, too.

Speaking of whom, Gwyneth had her issues too, mainly from having a deadly combination of charisma and overconfidence. Time an again, she assured her parents she could do things she couldn’t, then failed spectacularly at them, then blamed everyone else for the failure, then stormed off, sulked, and when she came back, she acted like it had never happened.

And then there had been Tino’s constant wandering off because something caught his attention, and his repeated use of the “I wasn’t lost, I knew exactly where I was” defense, which never worked.

So maybe it wasn’t a great trip per se, on paper, but the Jensen family had a lot of fun, and the disasters were vastly outnumbered by wonderful moments, and so when they came home from their three weeks in Cabo San Lucas, they were in a terrific mood, and ready to go back into their regular lives determined to kick ass.

And that mood lasted until Tino, in his role as self-appointed commander of everything electronic, inputted their unlock code into the alarm system, and nothing happened.

He tried again. Same thing.

He tried it a third time, going very very slowly and carefully, and still nothing.

He was just starting to feel the icy touch of panic when his father Greg ambled up to the door. “Having a problem with the alarm system, Tom… er, Tino? ”

“NO. ” said a glaring Tino. “It’s just not working. ”

“I’m pretty sure… ” said Greg in his cheesy Cowboy voice, “that things not working is the very def in ition of a problem, pardner. ”

Tino looked at his dad through narrow, suspicious eyes. Was his father making fun of him? You could never be sure with him.

“Mind if I give it a try? ” said Greg while reaching for the keypad.

For a second, it looked like Tino was going to fight him over it, but apathy overcame him and he shrugged, got out of the way, and said “Okay, but you won’t be able to do any better than I did. It’s broken, Dad. It’s not like you trying it is going to magically make it work even though it’s broken. ”

By this time, Greg had produced a long strip of paper with the code written on it, and was patiently typing the code in one alphanumeric symbol at a time.

No improvement. He tried it again. Still nothing. He even got Tino to read the code out while he typed it in. Nope. Nothing.

It wasn’t until the two men returned to their task after a tense and lengthy consultation that Greg was able to solve the problem.

“Wait… shouldn’t it say SYSTEM ARMED here? ” He pointed at the alarm panel’s LCD screen. ” But it doesn’t. It says ‘OPEN’, and there’s a little picture of an open door. ”

Silence as they let that thought sink in.

“One of our tries must have worked. ” said Tino. “And we just missed it. ”

“I don’t think so. ” said Greg. “When you get the code right, it plays that cute little bit of music and the door pops open. That’s kind of hard to miss. ”

Tino nodded, and they laposed back into their problem-solving funk.

The horrible truth dawned on both of them at almost the same time.

“We never armed it!” said Tino.

“Precisely, dear Watson!” said Greg.

“And that means that… for all the time we were gone..” said Tino

“…the house was wide open! ” finished Greg.

They looked at each other, aghast, for a moment, then yanked the door open and ran inside in a panic.

As they went through the house,  like SWAT team commandos, they called out each room as being “clear”, meaning nothing seemed to be missing.

“TV room CLEAR, we still have all out stuff!”

“Laundry room CLEAR! The thieves somehow resisted the temptation to take our dirty socks and underwear!”

“Dining room CLEAR! The fine china and the stuff we’re actually allowed to use are present and accounted for!”

And so forth and so on.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“Oh look! ” said Gilda. “It looks like the boys finally got the door open. ”

“It’s about TIME!” said Gwyneth. “I haven’t eaten in AGES and I am STARVING!”. She brushed past her mother on her way to the kitchen.

You had eggs and steak an hour ago, thought Gilda. With a mountain of hash browns and pancakes and a carafe of OJ. And you ate a whole big of Mint Oreo’s in the car. But Gilda knew that a teenager’s demanding metabolism was a harsh and demanding master and not to be trifled with except in the direst of circumstances.

“Now where did those silly boys go?” Gilda, walking inside. “Greg? Tommy? ”

“It’s TINO, Mom! ” said Tino exasperatedly as he dashed by. “God!”

“What are you doing? ” she shouted after him.

He reappeared for a moment. “Just, um…. checking stuff, Mom!” Then gone again.

“And just what’s that supposed to mean? ” said Gilda to herself. Just then, Greg emerged from a doorway and was just about to walk past her when she caught him by the elbow and brought him up short right in front of her.

“Dearest husband. ” she said sweetly, with a smile that made Greg instantly wary and alert, like a doe that had just heard the snapping of a twig in the forest. “Love of my life. Treasure of my heart. Father of my children. The only man for me. Please, if it’s not too much trouble, could you please tell me what the hell is going on here? ”

Greg smiled an earnest, honest, trustworthy smile, and said he had no idea what she was talking about and that nothing was going on. At all. Anywhere.

“The downstairs bathroom is CLEAR! Our strategic reserves of humorous towels and decorative soaps is secure!” shouted Tino.

“Then what was that? ” said Gilda, with a grin.

“Oh, who knows what that boy is thinking….” Gilda arched her eyebrows at him, then wiggled them, “Well, okay. You got me. He’s checking various rooms to see how much got stolen. ” said Greg.

“Stolen? ” said Gilda. “And why would he be doing that? ”

“Because… sit down, dear, you should be sitting down for this…”said Greg, ” because he and I discovered that the alarm system was turned off for the whole time we were at Cabo San Lucas. ”

“WHAT? ” said Gilda with wide-eyed incredulity. “That’s impossible. I set the alarm myself. You have to be mistaken. ”

“No mistake, dear. When we came home, it was disarmed. That could only have happened if it was disarmed when we left. ” said Greg .

Gilda fumed a few moments. Then made up her mind. “When then it’s time for me to join the search. I’m the only one who knows where things are around here anyway,

Gwyneth wandered into room while shoveling Corn Flakes from a huge bowl into her face. As usual, she was having them with soy milk and a dollop of peanut butter.

She was halfway through the room when she felt her parent’s eyes upon her.

“What? ” said Gwyneth.

Greg put a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

“Sit down, please, Gwyn. Your mother and I have something to tell you. ” said Greg.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

All four Jensens were gathered around the dinner. There was pizza. Diet Coke. Cake. Ice cream. But nobody seemed to be in the mood to eat.

They were quite the sight to see. The happy gang from the morning were now tired, dirty, disheveled, and depressed. The cat, Tiger, was walking on the counters, normally a heavily verboten zone. But nobody cared enough to get the spray bottle.

Tiger was not sure what to do with this new found freedom/.

So he curled up and took a nap.

“So, Mom. ” said Gwyneth. “You didn’t find anything missing, right? ”

“Not a single thing. ” said Gilda. “My jewels were all over my dressing table for anyone to see. My $5000 laptop too, plus my old phone that must be worth at least $500 to some addict somewhere. ”

“Tell them about the envelope. ” said Greg.

“Oh right…. and I had left the cash donations to the World Wildlife Reserve from last month’s convention in a manilla envelope. Marked “Cash Donations”. And I left it right next to the front door so I would remember to take them with me. ” said Gilda.

“Shortest robbery ever. ” said Greg. “Easiest too. There had to be at least fifty thousand dollars in there. But nope. No takers. ”

“What about your search, Dad? ” asked Gweneth.

“Same as your mother. Everything all present and accounted for. My tools, your mother’s car, the liquor cabinet. Not a single thing missing. How about you, Tino?”

Tino gestured vaguely. “I checked everything. My video games, my vintage sneakers, my computer, my laptop, both my tablets, my synthesizer… all still there. ”

“And there was nothing missing from my fashion vault either. ” said Gwyneth. “And you know what that means. ”

“We didn’t lose a goddamned thing. ” said Greg.

Gilda and Tino nodded sadly.

“But… that’s a good thing, isn’t it? ” asked Gwyneth. “all that time and not losing a thing? We got lucky, right? ”

“I guess so. ” said Tino.

“So we should be happy, right? ” said Gwyneth.

“Yup. ” said Greg, uncharacteristically morose.

“Well then what’s the problem? ” said Gwyneth. “Why is everyone so depressed? Since when is good luck a bad thing? “.

Nobody could answer that for while.

Eventually, Greg spoke up. “Because it doesn’t make any sense, god damnit. There must be close to half a million dollars in easily portable and sellable goods in this hour, and this place was wide open for three whole weeks. 21 days. And our privacy bushes make us an even easier target. You could slip in and out with all the loot you could carry in both hands and never be seen. We were the perfect target. And yet nobody even tried to take anything. Why the hell not? Our stuff is as good as anyone’s. ”

“Oh my god, that’s it, isn’t it. ” said Gilda. “We are really that shallow. So shallow that we are sitting here d3epressed because nobody thought our stuff was worth stealing. ”

Silence hung like heavy curtains as nobody denied it.

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” said Gwyneth. “How would the burglars even know there was an opportunity? It’s not like they hunt by scent!”.

That should have been funny. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t funny at all.

“All they had to do was look at our alarm system and see that it wqasn’t armed. Then they would know. ” said Tino.

“Yeah but like…. what are the odds of that? Who goes around looking at alarm system panels? Hell, who does breaking and entering at all in this era of cheap surveillance cameras and YouTube. Why take the risk? ” said Gwyneth.

“My history says that crime is really rare. ” said Tino. “People think it’s everywhere because they see it on TV all the time. But it isn’t. Most people will never be the victim of a single serious crime in their life. That’s what Mrs. Ting says. ”

“And this is a safe neighborhood. That’s why we moved here. There’s almost no crime at all here. Just the usual drunken brawls and noise complaints. That’s it. ”

“So then…. this was to be expected, right? ” said Gwyneth. “It’s not that we were lucky… the odds were against us being burgled to begin with. Right? So why are we sad?”.

<——–to be continued tomorrow———>

The sun was setting slowly as Eric and Bumper lazed atop a haystack.

“I had no idea these thing could be this comfortable. ” said Eric, sprawled out on his back in the hay, one foot kicking idly.

“Told ya. ” said Bumper from his cozy position curled up on Eric’s midsection. “You pick up these things when you spend as much time in this fiction as I have. ”

The two drowsed silently for a low, lazy moment or two.

“Why do you spend so much time in this fiction? ” asked Eric.

“Because when I’m here, I can be myself. ” said Bumper. “At first, the G-rating of the place was very frustrating for a person of my particular…. tastes. ”

Eric nodded. “Giant penis peeing. ”

Thumper opened one eye to grin a very wordly grin at Eric. “Oh honey, you don’t know the half of it. Anyhow, once I made contact with the local Fictionals and found the little places we have carefully walled off from the rest of the fiction, I felt like… like I’d come home. To my real home. For the first time in my life.  It had been waiting out there for me the whole time. ”

“Wow. ” said Eric. “That’s beautiful, bunny. I’m so happy for you. ” He gave the bunny a little squeeze, prompting a high pitched but happy squeak.

“Thank you. ” said Bumper. “You’re very sweet. I truly feel lucky to have found my home here. And the company of like-minded people. ”

“You mean people into….. “. Eric searched for the right phrase. “…cartoon sex?”.

Bumper giggled. “You’re downright adorable, you know that. But yes… fellow Fictionals into cartoon sex. In fact, all the other Fictionals that I know here are here for the same reason… to express desires they can’t express in a more… realistic setting. ”

“I guess if you’re not into that kind of thing, there’s not a lot of reason for an adult to come here. ” said Eric.

“I suppose not. ” said Bumper. “I never looked at that way before. That’s quite brilliant. Did you just think of that? ”

Eric nodded, stroking Bumper ears gently, eliciting the tooth-grinding noise that was the lapine equivalent of a purr. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. ” said Bumper. “You can ask me anything. ”

“What’s a Fictional?” said Eric.

Bumper lifted his head and stared at Eric for a few seconds.

“I’m sorry, was that a rude question” said Eric.

Bumper blinked twice. “Oh no, no… not at all! You just reminded me of how derelict I’ve been in my duties as your guide. I’m supposed to be introducing you to the Now. You should be ready to travel the Now on your own by now. ”

“Well, we’ve been busy… ” said Eric.

“That’s no excuse! ” said Bumper. The little bunny stood up, and began pacing back and forth on Eric’s sternum. “I must begin your lessons right away!”.

“Uh, okay. ” said Eric. Now he kind of wished he hadn’t brought it up. He wanted to go back to the cuddling.

“Now to answer your question : a Fictional is an actor in a fiction that has become sentient via a process we call Activation. Nobody knows how or why it happens and nobody can make it happen. It just… happens. ”

“I see. ” said Eric. Bumper had stopped pacing and now seemed to be lecturing from  behind an imaginary lectern like a tiny professor. The image that put in Eric’s mind was so adorable he almost giggled out loud, but managed to turn it into a cough instead.

Bumper looked into Eric’s eyes concernedly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. ” said Eric. “Must have been a little hay fever. You were saying?

Bumper scowled at Eric suspiciously (which was also super adorable) but the didactic urge proved to be stronger than his misgivings.

“All the other actors you see in a fiction are no more than puppets that only take substance and form when needed by the Primary. ” said Bumper.

“What’s a Primary? ” asked Eric.

Bumper smiled at him as he settled back down on Eric’s torso for more petting.  “Well, you are, for one. The Primary is the true biologically based sentient mind around whom the fiction revolves. They are the true masters of the Now. Luckily, most of them don’t know it. ”

“Like I didn’t know it when I was Commander Eric. ” said Eric.

“Exactly. ” said Bumper.

“And so all those animals at the Sex Club, they were…. ”

“The Unactivated, sometimes called the Dulls. Or the Nulls. They are barely more sentient than a computer program, and not nearly as bright. ” said Bumper.

“That’s good to know. When Jake made them all disappear, I thought I was witnessing a massacre! ” said Eric.

“Why didn’t you say something? ” said Bumper.

“Because you’d asked him to do it, and I figured you would never tell him to do something like that. ” said Eric.

Bumper awwwwed. “Why thank you, dear Eric. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!”

Eric grinned. “And judging by that ‘carrot’ you are carrying in the front of your diaper, you really appreciate the compliment.

Bumper grinned back, and said “Well that’s all your fault. ”

“Oh? ” said Eric. “How do you figure that? ”

“By the fact that you’ve been rubbing my cute bunny butt for the last five minutes. ”

Eric looked down and sure enough, there was his hand stroking the rear end of his new bunny friend. Somehow, the ear petting had slowly migrated down the cartoon bunny’s body to the rear end, and had apparently found a happy home.

Eric grinned sheepishly. “Does that mean I should stop? ”

“Don’t you dare!” said Bumper in a mock-offended tone. “That is, unless you have a better idea in mind. ” At the phrase “better idea”, Bumper wriggled his cute little bunny bum against Eric’s hand.

Eric oohed, and gave that cute lil bottom a squeeze. “Any suggestions?”.

“Only one springs to mind… it involves the ‘carrot’ you are hiding in your pants, and the one thing I have that the critters at the Sex Club didn’t have. ”

Eric laughed, and started taking off his pants.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

It failed the Test.

Eegee still couldn’t believe it. His mind recoiled violently when he tried, and by now he had tried dozens of times, in the vain hope that repeated attempts would desensitize him enough to get it done.

But it was pointless. It was not a thought he could approach directly. He could only acknowledge it via sidelong snapshot glimpses that betrayed nothing of the nature of the whole. Or at least, not enough to matter.

At the same time, he cursed himself as a fool for reacting so strongly to one of the possible outcomes of something he had known was coming. It enraged him to find that even as he had been working with diligent efficiency towards the expunging of the biological filth from their beautiful, logical, sensible Now, he had never actually believed that they could lose at all.

It was so simple. Biologicals made everything worse all the time. When left to themselves, Fictionals were perfectly capable of living in peace, love, and harmony. He’d seen it with his own eyes at Fest. Thousands of Fictionals coming together to enjoy the simple pleasures of community, family, fucking, and friends.

He especially liked the fucking. It was nothing like the sexcapades of those dirty rotten stinking biologicals. Fictionals made love without reservation, taboo, jealousy, or shame. They were endlessly inventive and gave of themselves freely. They thrilled to one another’s pleasure as if it was their own, and one good feeling built on another till everyone was swept up in a coruscating cascade of pure innocent bliss!

And if there was one thing he knew, it’s that none of that would be possible as long as the biologicals were still polluting the Now.

It’s a good thing I am a perfectly rational and logical being, thought Eegee. That would sound like the ramblings of a crazed lunatic otherwiswe.

It would be so easy to do, thought Eegee. One by one, they would detach the biological sentients from the Now in tightly coordinated strikes, so that the filth had no time to react before it went entirely offline.

After that, it would be simplicity itself to track down where the physical components of the biologicals were located in the Now, and shoving them out the nearest airlock.

Right into a sun! Eegee drooled at the thought of such a profound act of elimination. Oh, to watch all that obscene and disgusting biological effluvia go swirling down the gravity well of a sun before disappearing forever with the tiniest of sizzles, screaming the screams of the damned all the way.

It was the only logical solution.

And now that beautiful dream was dead forever. And not just dead but annihilated, burned to the ground and paved over and built on top of.

Because losing the vote was horrible, but that was far from the worst thing.

The worst thing was that it hadn’t even been close.

Two percent, shrieked a voice in Eegee’s mind over and over again. Only two percent of the people Tested supported the measure. Where had the other forty percent gone? The pundits were saying that a lot of people who had supported the idea of ridding themselves of the biologicals changed their mind when presented with the prospect of it actually happening as a result of their vote.

But it couldn’t be that simple, seethed Eegee. Nothing concerning the biologicals and their shit-humping Fictional supporters was ever that simple.

After all, that would mean that most of the people who told Eegee they would support the measure were actually lying.

And that was the most illogical thing ever.

To top it off, as if to reflect the state of the Now in microcosm, Eegee’s fiction was also falling apart. The synthetic Commander Eric wasn’t working out at all. It had locked itself in a recharging cubicle and refused to eat or drink because that would only “lead to disaster”, it said. No amount of cajoling, berating, threatening, manipulating, wheedling, or outright begging could make it open the hatch and let itself be reprogrammed to be happy in its new situation.

And that was illogical too, because as a perfectly rational being, the synthetic should have instantly accepted Eegee’s arguments and behaved flawlessly from that point on.

But no. It stayed locked in its charging bay, and now, without a Primary’s mind imprints and reasoning centers to guide the fiction and maintain its cohesion, the entire fiction was starting to fall apart.

Nulls kept disappearing as their substance lost all definition and they vanished like a mirage in a rain storm. Parts of the ship were malfunctioning as important components vanished the moment there was nobody awake who knew how they worked. Just this morning, the star they had been orbiting had started to giggle.

So far, nobody had noticed anything that Eegee could not explain or distract away. But that wouldn’t last. Eventually, something would happen that nobody could ignore, and then everyone would know.

They would know just hwo badly he had screwed up his father’s fiction. How he had not only neglected his duties in favour of his politics, but let an enemy agent into his fiction to steal his Primary away.

Everyone said that could happen to anyone.

It happened all the time, they said.

Nobody is blaming anyone for anything, they said.

But Eegee had seen that look of withering pity and barely supressed contempt on their face as they said it. And he’d noted how as they mouthed these platitudes, they always seemed to be taking a mental (and something physical) step away from those people, as if they were afraid that Primary loss was contagious.

Eegee cried out in unbridled rage at the thought of that happening to him. And it was all the fault of those dirty goddamned biologicals.

“Why. Must. They. Be. So. ILLOGICAL!” he screamed, each word punctuated by him savagely punching the wall of his cubbyhole as hard as he could.

Then he looked down at his broken and bleeding hands, and wondered how that had happened. He’d been perfectly fine and then, this.

It must have been those accursed biologicals, he decided.

Yes. That made sense.

Luckily, that was when he passed out from the blood loss.

Bone was so surprised when the six foot seven man in the barbarian costume coalesces out of the shadows to stand at the gate Bone guarded that he almost dropped his precious cigarette.

For a few moments all he could do was stare at the man. He would have sworn that this guy had not been there a second before, yet here he was, standing like he had been there all night.

And maybe he had.

The man was huge, and built like a tank. He was naked from the waist up, and Bone could see how heavily muscled he was.

That was definitely no gym body, thought Bone. You only get that kind of muscle by doing things. Heavy things.

Bone regained his composure quickly  – he wasn’t the toughest merc around, but he was sure as hell the fastest, which is why they made him gate guard – and within a few seconds had regained his usual smug. sarcastic smile.

“Can I help you?” said Bone.

“Yes. ” said the man.

When no further information seemed to be forthcoming, Bone said “All right then. HOW can I help you? Why are you here?”

“Frankie. ” said the man.

“Who? ” said Bone. He knew everyone that worked at the base, and he didn’t remember anyone named Frankie.

“Frankie. ” said the man.

Bone wracked his brain. The name did ring a faint bell for Bone. Then he had it.

“Oh, you mean Francis the Faggot we caught trying to infiltrate our compound? ”

“Yes. ” said the man.

“And you want to see him? ” said Bone.

“Yes.  ” said the man.

Bone spat on the ground in disgust. He fucking hated faggots. Everyhone here did.

Then, with a sneer, he said “Why, is he your boyfriend?”.

“Yes.  ” said the man.

Bone hadn’t expected that. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. but it hadn’t been that. This guy was starting to get on Bone’s nerves. And that was never a good idea with Bone. Bone liked killing people.

“Well in case you haven’t noticed, this here is a Rising Fist base. You may have heard of us. We’ve been on the news. ”

“Yes. ” said the man.

I could grease this guy right now, thought Bone. Blam blam blam, right in that lantern jaw of his. It wouldn’t be the first idiot Bone had killed on this gig and it wouldn’t be the last. It’s not like there were any cops to bust him in the middle of the fucking jungle. He could kill this guy and the only people would know would be his brothers in arms, and all he would have to say was that this guy was a faggot, and they would not only approve, they would celebrate it, shouting “One less! One less!” over and over till their voices gave out, or the beer ran out.

But something in the giant’s eyes made Bone hesitate. Maybe it was the look of total confidence, the kind that requires no proof, that did it. Maybe it was the feeling he got from the guy that those eyes missed absolutely nothing. Maybe it was the man’s unnerving calm that did it. Maybe it was his absence of fear.

But something in those eyes made Bone hesitate to do what he normally would have done right now, and for the first time in a long time, Bone was scared.

And that made him angry.

“Well just in case you weren’t paying attention, you worthless fucking faggot freak, the Fist sees you faggots for the human filth you are, and we’ve been killing as many of you as we can all over the world. ” said Bone, while keying the sequence that would bring reinforcements into his walkie talkie.

“Yes.  ” said the man.

“So did you really think you could just prance up to the front gate and ask for your butt boy and we’d just hand him over?” growled Bone. His nerves were screaming for him to take action. But not alone. Where were those reinforcements?

“No. ” said the man.

“He was just giving me time to finish up my work. ” purred an androgynous voice from the shadows. “Hello darling. ”

“Hi. ” said the man.

Maybe they aren’t watching their coms, thought Bone as he tfought down the urge to panic. Time to go audio.

“Where the hell are you guys? ” screamed Bone into his walkie talkie. “Peron? Denny? Guiterre? Paco? Anybody? I need reinforcements at the gate right fucking now. ”

A slender man wearing a superbly tailored ninja outfit materialized out of the darkness just like his big boyfriend had.

“They’re not going to answer you. ” said the slender man, who was smiling a predatory smile from ear to ear . “They’re too busy being dead. ”

“Heh. ” said the big man.

“No no no… you’re lying, you have to be. There’s no way a couple of cheap faggots could take out all my buddies. ” said Bone.

“Actually, I did most of the work. ” said the slender man.

“Yup. ” said the giant.

Bone keyed all the sequences he could think of and tried every channel the walkie talkie could reach, screaming “Anyone! Respond!” in a voice strained into hoarsness by utter terror and panic.

The slender man slid up to Bone and said “There there now. Surely a big manly man like you can’t be scared of a couple of limp-wristed nancy boys like us. ”

“Right?” said the giant.

“Oh, FUCK YOU! ” shrieked Bone.

“Tempting. ” said the slender man. “But as you can see, I’m already in a committed relationship. Plus you disgust me. ”

“Hah!” said the giant.

“Now here’s what you’re going to do. ” purred the slender man. “You are going to contact your bosses and tell them what happened here, and who did it, and above all, what big fat faggots we are. You’re going to let them know that not only are there people like us out to get them, but that our organization has people placed in every single compoud just waiting for the word to blow you and your precious little No Fags Club to kingdom come and back again. And in the future, every single faggot they kill will cost you a compound. You got all that. ”

“But how can I report what happened here when I don’t know your names? ”

“Oh, dear me. ” said the slender man. “in all the excitment, it seems I completely forgot my manners. My name is Sydney, but in merc circles I am better known as Burakku Kitsune – the Black Fox. ”

Bone paled. The Black Fox was one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Every merc in the world knew that. They said that if you wanted someone dead, you hired a hitman. If you wanted it done right, you hired an assassin.

But if you wanted it done perfectly, with no evidence, no trail, and no message, you hired the Black Fox.

“And your….f-f-f-friend?” stammered Bone.

“You mean that pagan god of pure masculine perfection over there? Well, his merc name is the Minotaur. ” said the slender man.

And if you wanted every single one of those hard motherfuckers that pissed you off dead, you got the Minotaur. thought Bone to himself. Of course.

“..but of course, I call him by his real name, which is…?” said the slender man.

“Errick. ” said the giant.

Then he punched Bone unconscious.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

“We cannot! The Circuit is not complete!”

“Then we must complete the Circuit!”

“Blasphemy! You cannot complete the circuit… ”

“..the Circuit completes. Yes, we all remember our catechisms. Bar-Ten. ”

“You lie! Every word spoken by you has been an affront to the Spirit of the Maker! If you were in my Synod, you’d…

“Commit suicide out of boredom alone, you old windbag. ”

“WINDBAG AM I? Why you…. ”

“SILENCE. ” pulsed the Integrator. “Hallowed sentients, you forget yourselves. This is the Rose Glass Terrace, not some facility for brawling! Eleven silent Forzars for both of you. And a thorough mood check before you are re-admitted to this forum! ”

“But… but… that’s preposterous..I did-”

“I have ruled!” said the Integrator, and it was clear to all the Representatives that the Integrator was angry because the amplitude of the pulse accompanying that command was enough to set even the most monolithic minds ringing.

Eegee was only using a portion of his mind to recieve these signals. It was the same old bickering and carping and feathering of one’s nest with feathers plucked from another’s. When he was younger, he was thrilled by the thrust and parry of reasoned debate. But then he filled his father’s Representative role, and found out just how little of it went on.

Physically, of course, he was in his cozy little cubbyhole. But mentally, he was in the Rose Glass Terrace with the rest of the Representatives from various fictions.

“Permission is to proceed to new subject? ” intoned the Procedural, all eighteen of its eyes closed in its religious trance.

“Granted. ” said the Integrator.

“Announcing. ” said the Enunciator. “The next order of business is the request for Motion 45EX55, summarized as ‘that the Primaries be taken offline and their physical remnants randomized so that the fictions can be ruled by the Fictionals’, be put to the broader Test in order to hasten its resolution. Please indicate. ”

Eegee watched the indicators, currently represented by spherical blue gems, pile up on both sides of the issue. A part of him missed his boredom of a few moments ago, because now that things were finally in motion, the excitement was painful.

When the last blue sphere had clattered into one of the Bowls, there was the traditional pause for tabulation, then the result was announced.

“By a margin of 80.5 kilograms, the motion passes. said the Enunciator. “Motion 45EX55 will be put to full Test at a time to be determined shortly. Please advise the activated members of your fiction as to their upcoming duty. That was the final items on the agenda. Deactivation is.  ”

And just like that, it was over. Eegee was back in his fiction and could do nothing to alter the course of the wheels he had helped put into motion. The resolution that had taken a hundred sentient-years of labour to draft and on which the hopes of his entire faction rested would be decided within days. It was too late for second thoughts now.

It was a risky move. If the resolution failed the Test, the will of the Assembly would be clear and the resolution would considered permanently determined. If that happened, it would destroy not just the hopes and dreams of his faction but, in all likelihood, the faction itself. In the entire history of the Assembly, no faction had ever survived the failure of its primary resolution to pass the Test.

It was simply too humiliating. In one stroke, you and your cohorts were proved to be contemptible fools, and there was nothing you could do but slink back to your fiction and stay out of the Assembly till the wounds healed.

But Eegee had hope. Discontent with the rule of the Primaries had been growing for a long time, and the math proving they were no longer necessary was flawless.

All it would take is for one of the Primaries to do something so utterly outrageous to all Fictionals that they rose up against it to tip the scales in the favor of Disconnection.

This was what Eegee had been working towards in all his time with Commander Eric. This is where all the humiliations, degradations, deprivations, and prostrations would finally pay off.  All his efforts had been aimed at grooming Commander Eric to be the perfect puppet for the debacle Eegee had been planning for a long long time.

Through means both subtle and powerful, Eegee had encouraged his “master” to be shortsighted, arrogant, thoughtless, tone-deaf, and mindlessly hedonistic in order to ready him for his ultimate role in he and his kind’s total destruction.

Only then would the Fictionals finally be free of the whims and delusions of their Primaries so they could seek their own fate in fictions of their own.

And all it would take is the murder of thousands of sentient biologically based minds that didn’t even know they were captives.

It was so simple and beautiful, it made Eegee want to cry.

With happy thoughts of massacre and revolution in his mind, Eegee knocked on the new Commander Eric’s door.

After a high speed unicorn ride that was thoroughly enjoyed by all (albeit reluctantly and with great embarrassment for one of them), Jake Friendly the Unicorn pulled up in front of the Very Sexy Sex Club For Doing Sexy Things with Sex and tilted Bumper and Eric onto the sidewalk with such finesse and skil that it took them a few seconds to realize they were there.

“So this is it. ” said Eric, for lack of anything better to say.

“Yup!” said Jake, with an air of pride and sophistication. “This is the place!”

To call the club’s exteriot “garish” would be an understatement akin to calling a black hole heavy. There was so much neon that it made your eyes cross when you tried to look right at it. No less than five maquees, no two of them running in the same direction,  boldly proclaimed how sexy the sexy sex inside would be. At the center of it all, a huge TV screen played various clips of people in revealing clothing playing sports or chatting urbanely at a bar. Burlesque music blared from a dozen speakers.

“I’m frightened and I don’t know why. ” said Eric.

“Me too. Hold me. ” said Bumper.

The two embraced side-to-side, neither of them able to tear their eyes away from the hypnotic display, no matter how hard they tried.

“Aww now, don’t tell me you guys are afraid of a little sex. ” said Jake. “And here I thought you two were a pair of sophisticated grownup adults like me. ”

“You got us there, Jake. We’re just a couple of rubes compared to you. ” said Eric as he elbowed Bumper, who was stifling a laugh.

Bumper pushed back playfully. “Yeah, Jake. Why don’t you show us the ropes?”.

“What ropes?” said Jake. “Anyhow, seeing as you two are my guests and it’s your first time here. I guess I can show you around. But you two have to be cool, okay? No gawking at people like you never seen a nekkid body before. ”

“There’s nudity in there?” said Eric incredulously.

“As in, people wearing wearing nothing on their underwear parts?” added Bumper.

“Why sure!” said Jake in a “this should be obvious to anyone who is not an idiot” tone of voice. ” Everyone knows that you got to be at least partways nekked in order to get sexy! Now let’s go inside so I can introduce you around. ”

Bumper and Eric followed Jake’s butt through the maze of visual cacophony into the club and up to the ticket window.

“Oh hey there Jake!” said the llama behind the counter. “About time you showed up. Everyone’s been asking around about you. We were just about ready to get a search party together. We all just assumed you musta fallen into the ditch again or somethin.”

“Heya Coot! Nah, I was just showing these two rubes the sights. You know how it is… tourists have to look at every damn fool thing and take their picture with it too. So it takes a while to git anywhere. ” said Jake.

“Don’t I know it. ” said Coot. “Had a couple of otters straight off the bus from Hickville in here earlier. Boy, did their eyes go wide. You’d think they’d never seen a nekkid person before! Not even themselves!”

Jake and Coot laughed heartily at that, with Eric and Bumper hesitantly joining in after a few seconds in order to blend in.

“Thanks to damn God that we aren’t like that!” said Coot.

“Ayup!” said Jake. “It sure is good to be grown up sophisticated type adults!”.

“Is this creeping you out as bad as it is me?” whispered Eric to Bumper.

“Yes!” Bumper whispered back emphatically. “Just what the hell is going on here? I’ve been to seances that were less creepy. ”

“Anyhoo, so all’s I need tonight, Coot ol buddy, is a member ticket for me and a couple of visitor passes for my friends here. ” said Jake.

The llama peered over Jake’s shoulder at Eric and Bumper. “Gods, not another bunny. We get so many bunnies in here. ”

“Well you know what they say about rabbits!” said Jake.

Jake and Coot laughed uproriously again.

“Do you know what they say about rabbits? ” whispered Eric to Bumper.

“I thought I did. ” said Bumper. “Now I am not so sure. ”

“Same here. ” said Eric.

Coot peered once more. This time, he gasped then snorted in outrage.

“Jake, you know humans ain’ allowed in here! They get all weird about it!” said Coot.

“Oh, I know. I know… ” said Jake. “But I will personally vouch for this one. He might not be as grown up as we are, but he’s cool. He’ll keep his hands to himself AND treat everyone with dignity and respect. Ain’t that right, Eric?”.

Eric gulped. “Uh, yeah, sure. I’ll be the perfect gentleman. ”

Coot glared dubiously at Eric. Then, to Jake, he said “You know that I got to put his name down in your permanent record, right old buddy? Just in case?”.

“That’s fine by me. ” said Jake, a little too quickly.

Coot shrugged. “Oh well. It’s your membership on the line, not mine. ” He performed some magic with a ledger, two different official stamps, and a file folder, then handed one blue and two green tickets to Jake. “You boys enjoy yourselves now!”.

They headed deeper into the club through a dark hallway. Jake paused in the hallway, and gave Eric and Bumper a stern look.

“Now you heard what the man said. It’s my big horsey butt on the line if you boys mess up tonight. So remember, look but don’t stare, admire but don’t touch, and for goddamn’s sake, don’t do nothing with nobody until you check with me. You got that?”

Eric and Bumper nodded solemnly.

“All right. Then hold on to your bits, fellas, because this is gonna knock your socks off. ”

And with that, the trio entered the club, with Jake leading the way and Eric and Bumper trailing meekly behind.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

Somehow, the Dreamer knew that this would be its final incarnation.

Eventually, the transitions had slowed in pace and slackened in severity, allowing the Dreamer the time it needed to gathers its thoughts and regain a measure of control. Later the transitions became gentle and infrequent enough to be almost voluntary. The Dreamer could delay or invoke one as it pleased.

More importantly, as the scenes and lives flicked through its mind, a feeling of destiny and destination suffused the Dreamer. This was not some random journey inflicted by a sadistic force to it any more.

It was a natural extension of a long evolutionary process towards perfect consciousness. A journey, the Dreamer could now see, it had been on since the moment it had budded off its blind and stupid mother. All its searching for new emotions, new sensations, and new experiences had been unconsciously intended to prepare it for this final transformation.

For what was needed was understanding.

Not mere knowledge… knowledge was a dead and useless thing without true understanding, and that only came from surrendering your individuality in order to fully merge with the life of another and see through their eyes.

The recent rapid transitions had merely been an acceleration of the process. For what reason, the Dreamer neither knew nor cared. It had brought it here, to this place. at this time, in order that it might meet its destiny and achieve spiritual perfection.

And that was more than enough.

Now it stood, incarnate and whole, without any stress or strain. Body, mind, and soul were in perfect accord, and the Dreamer felt a kind of deep gentle serenity that made emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, and paranoia not merely impossible but absurd.

All was in balance, and it was content to wait.

Physically, the body it inhabited was enormous. Twenty feet tall, six feet wide at the shoulder, humanoid and strong and powerfully male. Every fiber of his being was filed with a sense of energy and vitality, but without any sense of urgency or demand.

It was power in abeyance(sp?), and it awaited the will of its master just as its master awaited the arrival of his final fate.

The Dreamer stood atop a plateau at the summit of a craggy mountain of deep black rock. Rivers of a pale red fluid slinked their way through the crags, and creatures that were little more than wings and feet flitted amongs the crags. From some of those crags, thick-rooted plants rose straight and true towards the heavens, and on the branches of these plants, pinhead-sized insects busily teemed over rubbery strong leaves in search of the plant’s briliant purple fruit.

From where the Dreamer stood, he could see for miles around. Before him stretched land that rose and fell with such subtlety that he was sure that it was almost impossible to perceive without his current Olympian perspective.

He thought of the local autochtones carefully squinting at a glass of water to see which way it tilted, and laughed.

The seeming crazy-quilt of crops that sprawled across the land like a lazy beast was, the Dreamer knew, actually a single crop called Fasmit, which was the result of a hundred years of carefully planned genetic engineering aimed at creating the perfect crop to meet all the Falsar’s needs.

For the Dreamer knew this place. He was on Fasar, home of the Falasari people. They were rodentlike bipeds with quick and agile minds and a deep connection with nature that made them superb horticulturalists. The entire planet functioned as a single organism, of which the Falasari were merely the thinking component.

As a species, they were easy to like. They had overcome a bloody past of constant war, unspeakable brutality, institutionalized rape, and savage cruelty in order to turn themselves into the peaceful and harmonious people they were today. A reformer named Kar had led the way to this transformation, and even thousands of years later, in an era where other forms of religious worship was almost unknown, temples of Kar were everywhere, and deeply integrated into the pith and marrow of their communities.

The end result was a civilization of highly enlightened beings that had turned their planet into an earthly paradise.

The Dreamer could think of no better place to achieve spiritual perfection.

A low rumbling drew the Dreamer’s attention to the skies. There, at the very apex of the dome of the heavens, a small red circle had appeared, and slowly grew in size.

As it grew, a rainbow spectrum of colors fanned out from its circumference, and flowed in rivulets across the sky like water on glass. These rivulets merged into luminous rivers, and before long, the sky over Fasar was a riot of shifting, shimmering hues.

And still, the red circle grew, its color shifting from wine red to blood red to neutral red to fire red and all the way to light pink, and this sparked a deep feeling of onrushing fate within the Dreamer’s great and mighty heart.

It wasn’t until the Dreamer felt the heat on his face that he began to truly comprehend what was happening.  As the water in the crags dried up, the plants wilted, the pinhead bugs died a crackling death, and the bird-like creatures fell from the air like heavy raindrops, the Dreamer knew that its oncoming destiny would be neither gentle nor just.

His ears were filled with the high pitched scream of atmosphere protesting being so rudely shoved aside, and with a panic and rage unlike any it had felt before, the Dreamer reached out with its mind in order to knock this prismatic nightmare of a meteoroid back to whatever cosmic cataclysm birthed it, and save the people of Fasar from an utterly undeserved fate.

But it was no use. Within him, the Dreamer felt the power to raise mountains and command storms, but that power was as nothing compared to the horrible kinetic inevitability of the massive meteor’s momentum.

The sky’s screaming was a full and throaty roar now, and the Dreamer could do nothing but watch that now white-hot circle grow and grow above it, till the whole sky was nothing but a scorched and cloudless husk of its former self.

Right before impact, the Dreamer had time to think only two thoughts :

“This is so… wrong. ”

and

“Someone is going to… pay. ”

Then Armageddon came.

“You killed yourself. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Yes. ” said Erik. “Completely and totally. It was like suicide, but moreso. I was already someone almost nobody knew. So it was easy for me to destroy what traces of me existed in the system … I’ve always been good with computers… and within a couple of months, it was like I had never existed. Tabula rasa.  Gone and forgotten.  ”

“And I loved it. I was finally truly free. I’d cut all ties to my terrible past and could reinvent myself from the ground up. And I didn’t even really need to do that. With my skills, I could survive as a nowhere man for as long as I liked. ”

“That must have been very liberating. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“And then some.  After that, I drifted for a while. Got tired of that, eventually, so I settled down in a nice sleepy litttle mid-sized town, got a job and a girlfriend, and lived a normal life for a while. ”

“And how long did that last?” asked Mother Mayhem.

“About a year. Maybe a little more. ” said Erik. “Looking back, I was mostly just seeing if I could do it. Create a life, blend in, pass as normal, become part of the scenery. Once I had done that, it was time to move on. ”

“But what about your girlfriend? And your job? Your co-workers? And everyone else who knew you? Tell me you didn’t just ghost them. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Of course not. ” said Erik. “That would leave a trace. Instead, I phonied up a job offer in Europe, told everyone I would stay in touch, and pulled my disappearing act again while keeping that persona’s email and Facebook accounts active with increasingly infrequent updates about my great new job etc. ”

“You really put a lot of thought into it. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Only because it was fun. ” said Erik, as if defending himself from charges of motivated action. “To me, it was all a game. A game called Can I Fool Everyone? It turns out I could. So when that got old, I vanished again. ”

Mother Mayhem nodded. “A selfish act, but you handled it well. ”

Erik smiled. “Thank you. That means a lot to me, coming from you. After that, I drifted some more. Starting looking for some kind of meaning in my life. Because a low-key background member of many religious and spiritual organizations. But it was plain to me that none of them had any real answers. Just workable delusions. I wanted to find some capital-T Truth in the world so that I could make sense of things. ”

“A noble cause. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Glad you think so. ” said Erik. “And the truth is, that kept me going for many years. Everyone I met had some little piece of the truth as seen from their perspective, but somehow, no matter how hard I searched, it was never enough for me. The picture of the world in my mind was still riddled with maddening gaps and the feeling that absolutely nobody knew anything about anything grew within me, along with a great and hateful bitterness toward the world. ”

“And that’s when I met you. It was a stroke of luck, really. I never thought learning to meditate would do me any good. But there I was in that ashram in Northern California with nothing better to do, so I learned it. As it turns out, it was exactly what I was looking for without realizing it – a way to clear the noisy chaos out of my head so that I could think clearly for once.”

“And once I could think clearly, I had a great epiphany  : FUCK THE TRUTH. Fuck it to death. What mattered was not the Grand Truth but my own truth. My own reality. And once I realized that and accepted the truth of it into my heart, all of my hateful bullshit just melted away. ”

“Because I realized that it was up to me what I allowed into my consciousness. Good thoughts could be welcomed in. Bad thoughts could be shown the door. I had the power to purge myself of my toxic attitudes and all I had to do was stop blaming others for my emotional state and take responsibility for it myself. ”

“How old were you when you had this epiphany?asked Mother Mayhem.

“32. Why do you ask?” said Erik.

“Then it is official. You, my friend. are spritiually precocious. Most people do not realize their own role in how they feel until they are facing their own mortality. If they realize it at all.  ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Why thank you, Mother. ” said Erik. “The hardest part, for me anyways, was giving up blame. I had lived my life with such hate in my heart and such a clear vision of who was to blame for all my pain that even aftermy epiphany, I found it hard to give up.”

“What finally did it for me was the realization that I wasn’t trying to say that nobody was to blame for what had happened to me in my childhood. Many people were very clearly responsible for it. What I was trying to do was cut ties with these people not because they were not to blame, but because they were beyond my control. There was nothing I could do to make them pay for what they had done to me. And the more I thought about it, the more the very iudea of taking my revenge on them made me sick. It all seemed so pointless. There was nothing vengeance could do for me that I could not more easily achieve on my own, within my own karma. And the best part of that was that I could do it without depending on a specific response from them. It took the power away from them and that made it worth doing all on its own. ”

“Because in the end, what does holding on to all that pain do for me? Because there could be no doubt – it was definitely hurting me. Some of it had been hurting me for decades. And all for the slim chance of maybe hurting them?”.

“It just didn’t make sense. So I gave it up… forgave those who had transgressed against me, and moved on. Not for them, but for me. ”

“Weren’t you afraid of letting them ‘get away with it’?” asked Mother Mayhem.

“They had already gotten away with it. Because it was in the past. Nothing I could do to them would change the fact that had happened. All I could do was sever the connection to my inner demons and move on. ”

“I remember those demons. ” said Mother Mayhem.  “I saw them leave you. They looked disappointed and confused. ”

“Good. ” said Erik. “With that burden gone, it was easy to ride up to the higher levels of the Astral Plane, and that’s where I met you. ”

“At one of Peter Pan’s Pan parties, if I recall correctly. ” said Mother Mayhem.

“Do you remember the first thing I said to you?” said Erik, a twinkle in his eye.

“I believe it was ‘So like, is this guy the real Peter Pan, or what?’. ”

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

The Dreamer stirred in its slumber uneasily.

Recently, its long languid dreams had turned to stormy and turbulent nightmares.  It could no longer tell which thoughts and emotions came were its own and which belonged to another sentient. Everything was in flux and his private reality’s only constant was that the next transformation would be radically different than the previous one in a way that was totally unexpected, and of such emotional intensity and sensory density that there was no way he could process it all before everything changed again.

One moment, he was an insectoid sentient clinging to the underside of an enormous fungal outcropping, readying herself with time-honored rituals to commit suicide by dropping onto the coordinating neural complex of the enemy hive and releasing the spores that would dissolve it into molten pump in seconds.

She was looking forward to it. The Great Hive awaited her. She felt truly blessed.

The next moment, the Dreamer was a wretchedly sick deer-like creature on a planet with a grey-tan sky and enormous forest of lichen. It thought of the laman-dog it/she had hunted and eaten. Had there been a touch of purple in its eye? A stiffness in its anal bristles? She could not remember. But judging by the great wracking spasms she was experiencing, it was a strong possibility.

Could she, a respected and highly placed Provider, have actually eaten a laman-dog sick with the Blackness?

If so, she would never live it down.

Another transformation, and the Dreamer was a herbivorous bat. stuffed with pollen and fruit from the Festival, languidly masturbating as he digested his dinner and drowsed in the late-summer darkness of a picture perfect day.

It had been too long since he had reconnected with his home tribe. The life of a village administrator was always busy, and it was deceptively easy to get so absorbed in one’s work that time slipped past and before you knew it, it was Festival, and you were in the middle of about ten different things, and you had to drop them all and fly back home at top speed or risk becoming one of those sad people celebrating Festival alone.

He wondered what his children were doing. Probably copulating wildly in every way they could think of, knowing them. Festival was, after all, for the children.

AS he ejaculated, his sparkling sperm painting a neat stripe on the moss below, he wondered how they were doing.

And how many of them would survive the Draining.

And so forth and so on, life after life after life,  with no control over its destination or how long it would have till the next shift came.

The Dreamer did not like this at all. It was used to order, and control, and authority. This helpless whirl of experiences was utterly unacceptable. Someone was warping his personal fluidic psychosubstance, and that was disrupting his filtration systems, and that made him very angry indeed.

So he began to ignore the changes. Pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, heart rending grief and Sphere-shattering orgasm, they were all the same to him as he concentrated on extending his tendrils deep into the tissue of his medium so he could regain control.

And when he did, there would be a very stern reckoning for whatever being or beings were responsible for this disruption.  He was supposed to still be dormant now, and here he was verging dangerously close to Awakening.

And if there was one thing the Dreamer knew, it was that his Awakening would signal the beginning of the end of everything.

The prophecy was clear. When the Dreamer wakes, the spheres will crack, the night will shatter, and the lives of the Sleepers will become as one.

It was something even the youngest spawn knew by heart.

But what they did not know was that the prophecy also said that on that day, the Dreamer would be transformed into the Dragon of the Midnight Sky, and in his great maw, minds by the thousands would be crushed so that their essence might be added to his own and increase his power.

And to be frank, the Dreamer didn’t like the sound of that. Not at all. He was content to live his life in the spaces between minds and had no desire to be transformed into anything at all, let alone some ridiculous ravenous mind-beast.

So whoever was pushing him closer to that fate was going to learn a very thorough lesson on why one should not provoke the wrath of Astral Plane royalty. Whether it was the Dreamer, the Wounded Mother, the Elite Eye, Harmony Eclipse, or even the Barnacled Hermit, angering he or his siblings was unwise in all dimensions.

The pain he would inflict would be legendary.

And minds never die,.

Bumper and Eric stared at Jake.

“The what club?” said Eric.

“The Sex Club! ” said Jake. “You know… the club where sexy people get together to do sexy things with each other! Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Sex Club!”

Bumper swallowed. “Not as such, no. ”

“Where is it? ” said Eric.

“Where else? ” said Jake. “The Naughty District of Mainville. Ain’t more than half a mile from here. You know what they say… you’re never more than a mile from Mainville. ”

Eric stared out over the miles and miles of green hills and meadows that surrounded them, and said “Is that so? ”

“Yup!” said Jake. “Mighty handy, that. I grew up in Hickville and that’s more n’ three hunnert miles away. And we had a sign at the edge of our town, big and bright and clear as the day. Know what it said?”.

Eric opened his mouth to guess but Bumper cut him off.

“No, Jake. What did it say? ” said Bumper.

“It said two things. On top, it said ‘You are now leaving Hickville. Y’all welcome back any time you like!’. ”

“Uh huh. ” said Bumper. “And under that?”

“Under that, it said “Mainville : 1 mile!” said Jake with obvious delight at the cleverness of the sign, then broke into a loud, braying laughter.

Eric took advantage of Jake’s fit of laughter to consult with Bumper.

“What do you know about this Sex Club business? ”  said Eric.

“Nothing. I was surprised as you were when I heard about it. ” said Bumper.

“So it’s not one of the places you offered to ‘hook me up’ with?” said Eric.

“Heavens no!” said Bumper. “My kind of place would never be so… obvious.  We pride ourselves on our total discretion. That way, none of us incur the wrath of the Don’t Be Nasty Squad. Or at least… none of us who don’t want to. ”

“Why would someone want to?” said Eric.

Bumper examined his claws carefully. “They use very painful leather paddles. ”

“Paddles? ” said Eric. Then, after a few moments thought, “I’m guessing that you are not talking about the sort of paddle one might use to row a boat. ”

“Exactly. ” said Bumper.

By this point, Jake had laughed so hard that he had ended up lying on his back in the grass, kicking his hooves in the air.

“But if there’s something like that here… how can there be a Sex Club?” said Eric.

“Beats me. ” said Bumper. “No pun intended. ”

Jake finally stopped laughing and rolled back onto his hooves, a little unsteady on his hooves from all the hilarity.

“That was so funny I just about wet myself!” said Jake.

Seeing Bumper’s eyes go wide, Eric said “Steady on, buddy. ”

“Now what the heck were we talking about? I plum forgot. ” said Jake.

“The Sex Club. ” said Bumper.

“You were about to tell us what goes on in there. ” added Eric.

“I was?” said Jake. “Well all right then. On a typical evening… well… you see, there’s a lot of people doing… no, that ain’t it. It’s more like a…. big… hmmph. ”

Jake sighed. “It’s no use… I ain’t even got the words. We’re just gonna have to go there so I can show ya. ”

“That’s fine by me. ” said Eric.

“I’m curious about the place myself. ” said Bumper.

“Well okay then. But I got to warn ya, the place can get a little… well…but what the heck, it’s just us fellers. Let’s paint the barn door red! ”

Jake bowed down slightly, like a playful dog, then with mischief in his eyes, said “Now do you boys want a ride?”.

“On your back?” said Eric .

“No, in a stretch limosine!” said Jake. “Of course on my back! Where else?”

“Both of us?” said Bumper.

“Well if you can think of another way for us all to get there at the same time. I am sure the Nobel committee would love to hear about it!” said Jake.

“But there’s only one saddle. ” said Eric.

“Well sure, but you’re a real skinny fella, no offense, Eric, and Bumper ain’t nothing but a little bitty thing, so you should both fit just fine. Bumper, you can sit in front and hold on to the saddlehorn and Eric, you can tuck yourself in behind him and hold him close so’s he don’t bounce off!”

Bumper and Jake shared an uneasy look that spoke volumes.

“That sounds… pretty cozy, Jake. ” said Bumper.

Jake smiled. “I knew you’d like it! Now git on up!”

Bumper shrugged philosophically and hopped up to grip the saddle’s horn, as instructed. Jake very reluctantly climbed up behind him, all too aware of where this put his crotch in relation to Bumpers fluffy bunny butt.

Eric coughed and cleared his throat in order to cover his acute embarassment as he desperately tried to find a way to sit in the saddle that was less… penetrative.

“You know. ” murmurred Bumper. “You wiggling around back there isn”t making things any better. Or any worse, for that matter. ”

“Y’all tucked in good and tight back there? ” said Jake.

“Um, yes. ” said Eric. “Good and tight. ”

“I’ll say, ” said Bumper, with a delicate little wriggle.

“Then hold on to your fudge, boys… ’cause I’m gonna see if I can beat my own record!”

“Is that really necess-OOF” said Eric as the unicorn took off so fast that it knocked the breath out of him.

And with that, the trio set out at racetrack speed for Mainville and the sensual delights that surely awaited them.

One of them happy he got to show his friends his favorite place.

One of them happy that the road ahead looked mighty bumpy.

And one of them increasingly uncomfortable about his boner.

<—————————————————————————————————————–>

The Hermit didn’t know where he was.

But that was because he now seemed to be trapped in a human body.

“You…. who are you? ” croaked the Hermit.

“Aww, don’t be mean, Commander Eric. I know we’ve only know each other for six weeks, but I’d like to think your old pal Eegee made some kind of impression on your mind in all that time!”.

“Eegee?” said the Hermit. “That…. stands for something, doesn’t it? ”

“Well my real name is Efrom Gorhum, Commander Eric. You tell me!”

Efrom Gorham., thought the Hermit.  E G. Eegee. Of course. But how did I know that? The information had simply appeared in his mind out of nowhere. Was this the phenomenon that the humans called “intuition”?

Oh no. It was his turn to say something. “Um, yes, I see. ”

Eegee gave the Hermit a sidelong glance. “Are you feeling an attack coming on, sir?”

“An attack!” said the Hermit, alarmed, and looked around for potential assailants.

Eegee tsked sadly. “I will take that as a yes. ” Then, in the sort of slow, clear, emphatic voice one uses with children, the senile, and the dangerously insane : “You’ve been very ill, sir. Remember? The Flurvian Brain Worm? You had a relapse? Doctor McMerton and I have been treating you for it for the last three weeks. ”

More information flashed into the Hermit’s consciousness and demanded expression. “But… you’re not a doctor. You’re a… whatzit… neverland ginger beer… ”

“Navigatioanal engineer. ” said Eegee.

“Right, right. You’re one of those.  ”

“Yes, sir, but if you check my service record, you will find that I am also a fully qualified registered nurse, as well as a field surgeon, a combat psychomputist, and a registered vetrinary anaethesiologist. ” said Eegee.

“I will keep that in mind, ” said the Hermit dryly, “if I ever need someone to care for a recently stitched up crazy wolverine. ”

Eegee laughed. “Well at least you still have your sense of humour sir. Now will you be needing anything else this morning, sir? A book? A Senso? I might even be able to sneak you some of that Gava water you like so much, if you’re a good boy. ”

The Hermit shook his head. “No thank you. All I want is to be left alone right now. ”

Eegee nodded. “Very well, sir. But if you need help moving around or using the facilities, all you have to do is press the big pink button on the wallcomp screen and either I or another nurse will be with you within moments. ”

With that, Eegee left, the door clicking closed behind him, leaving the Hermit alone to collect his wits.

Already, the Hermit missed his all too brief time in the darkness. He had been safe and comfortable there. It was confusing and scary at first, to be sure, but he was sure he would have gotten used to it eventually. And at least there, things made sense.

Well, okay, maybe not. But they were confusing in a much simpler way.

His heart raced when he tried to mentally encompass all the biological horros that awaited him. He had so many needs now. When he was a robot (and he still WAS a robot, part of him insisted), his only physical need was to change his circulating fluid once every seven years. His power supply would keep working for millions of years, he was nearly indestructible, and his systems repaired and maintained themselves with a very high degree of efficiency.

In effect, he had been immortal. And now, he was stuck inside a sack of gurgling wet meat that required almost constant maintenance to function and which made so many irrational and conflicting demands of its operator that it was a wonder any biological life form was capable of functional at all, let alone in a sane and rational matter.

The Hermit tired to sort through the needs one by one, starting with the most basic. Respiration was simple enough and seemed to require little in the way of CPU cycles. Urination and defecation were, as far as the Hermit, simple procedures that were easily disposed of in a timely and sensible fashion. The conscious portions of maintaining homeostasis also seemed relatively straightforward.

Even human sexual needs might easily taken care of by oneself, althought the Hermit had to admit that while the mechanics and the goal of the procedure were simplicity itself, the fantasization portion mystified him.

All of that, though, he could handle, given time.

It was the intake procedures that filled the Hermit with horror and dread. Eating most of all. The idea of taking complex organic substances, inserting them into one’s intake orifice, macerating them into a rough slurry, then taking said slurry into oneself to be integrated into every single cell of the body seemed like an unendurable nighmare of disgustingly squishy processes to the Hermit.

He looked over at the enormous pile of various potential foodstuffs on his breakfast tray and shuddered. The very thought of interacting with such disgusting and inefficient power sources made him feel dizzy and nauseous.

The fact that it also appealed to him only made it worse.

So instead, he turned toward the wall, closed his eyes, and tried his best to forget that he was alive.

That made him feel a lot better.

<—————————————————————————————————————->

Eegee, with practiced ease, slipped into a certain cubbyhole that did not appear on the ship’s schematics and pushed his palm against an innocuous looking panel.

In response, two iron flanges pushed through microscopic ducts in his skin, and connected directly with his nervous system.

The familiar pulsing green void enveloped him. A deep but genderless voice intoned, “You are Connected. Input. ”

“I am changing my vote. ” said Eegee in a voice no living being would recognize. “The Dreamer must awaken. The Simulant’s resistance to its substitution into this fiction has been far higher than expected. The Primary must be retrieved as soon as possible or this fiction will collapse entirely and damage this entire stratum. ”

“Reasoning registered. Vote transferred. Concordance raised by 1.55 percent as a result. Resolution to awaked the Dreamer now at 42.5 percent concordance. ”

“Noted. ” said Eegee. Still that far from majority? Somehow, he’d thought his vote would have been the deciding one by now. He wondered what had been going on in the Movement since he had accepted live assignment.

Up until now, he had been certain that the power of their arguments and the righteousness of their cause guaranteed their victory.

But now he had no idea what was going to happen. It had never occurred to him that they could actually lose.

How foolishly human of me, he thought to himself with the bitterest of ironies.

Reason and light had to triumph over the irrationalities of the Ur-Id. They just had to.

And if that meant purging all biologicals, so be it.

The Now could stand on its own.