CHAPTER #10: Mermaid Hunt


The anonymous grey van rolled to a stop directly behind the Public Bathrooms, keeping the little concrete huts on the line of sight between the vehicle and one particular yacht amongst the dozens rocking soothingly at their berths in the exclusive Pompeii Palms Marina. Not a single "boat" was under 60 foot. Many were way over a hundred. All required full time crews. Their running lights seemed multiplied by the black glassy water into a reflection of the awe inspiring display of stars over head. Silently the electric window on the passenger side of the front seat of the van slid down, Neon raised the infra-red binoculars to his eyes. Their tinted lenses gave no tell tale reflection. He scanned the length of the Samurai Nun, counting silently. Two on deck, two visible in the galley. The staterooms are shuttered."

"No problem," Salma whispered into Mr. Grier's ear, "You take care of the guards while I get the kids..." Both snorted at the sarcasm in this. He turned his head enough so she could peck him on the cheek, before slipping out the back door into the shadows.

Inside: Frank sat on the stool her sat beside the head of the reclined combo Dentist's/Gynecologist's Chair and leaned forward, forearms on his knees, so he could whisper past my left ear.

"Let's just drop the rhetorical framework Good and Bad from this discussion at the outset, Jack. Men with courage admit to themselves that there's no God, and have the simple human decency when engaged in arbitration with others of like psychological Maturity not to pretend ideas like fair or just or any concern with what's expected or permitted has any place at all in the World As It Really Is. Do you take my meaning , Jack?"

I had little recovery of my facial muscles from the drug he had paralyzed me with yet, so found it maybe more easy to pretend I was above giving him the time of day. He set a tray by my head and unfolded a cloth on it. Next he set a little row of tiny syringes, each with a different Mystery contained within.

"Stoic fellow," Frank smiled down at his perfect shoes. I knew I would never own a pair of perfect shoes. Frank knew this and the three women he had stationed around the room pointing machine guns at my strapped down, but otherwise unremarkable body knew this too. "You know, " he continued, finding a piece of fluff on his pant leg,... That piece of fluff made him purse his lips in deeply felt, personally taken disappointment," "You know I've always thought that I might have had a whole different life if everything had been different and I had the discretion to follow my other chief avocation and become a Theologian."

I could only grunt badly, my mouth was so dry. But I felt it was crucially vital to tell him that I too believed that I might have had a whole different life if everything had been different and I had the discretion to follow my own inclination to become a Theologian. But Life had been as Arbitrary a Bitch with me as it had been to Frank. Frank knew this. His little Army of reptile hearted Moon Maidens knew this. Fuck it, we all knew this. But it felt really good having him feel able to open up and lay all his cards on the table like that!

He set a row of straws out on the cloth on his tray. Those would go into my ears. I began to struggle not to start screaming....

In the pitched darkness of the Men's Room Salma stripped completely naked, and by feel, withdrew a tube of water proof blue-black grease from her bag. Under two minutes later every square inch of her body was black: labia, eyelids, up her ass-crack, in her ears, everything. A pair of black leather gloves and slippers would be her only dress. She tied her heaps of thick hair into a tight bun, slipped on a black bathing-cap, and after strapping a black iodized Navy Seal Team knife to her thigh, she slipped out into the chill of a four o-clock in the morning silence, and flowing down a ramp like a black cat, slid noiselessly into the water, without as much as a ripple or a plop.

"What is it about the C.I.A. that attracts Poets and Theologians and then buries them under a Mountain of Bureaucrats, Jack? Can you IMAGINE how it feels to be buried under a mountain of pencil-dicked failed ivy-league University Teachers?" In that I, at forty, still remembered High School very well, I very well could Imagine.... But my rubbery muscles still couldn't quite master voluntary motion quite yet. Why hadn't our wistful but warmly funny repartee cause the Moon Maidens to laugh softly, nodding in understanding? Frank went into a closet and returned with a black box with leads and terminals and green and red wires and I vomited upward, puke flowing down both sides of my face. Frank stepped gingerly back, but looked proud, like a hypnotist who knows he's picked a good subject from the audience!

"I have NEVER had any beef with the context provided by the poles of Good and Evil per se, " he injected magnaminiously, "But in a World of Limited Resources, as this world has always bee, still is, and , (despite the fantasies of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1930s ), will always remain, you MUST agree with me that the Loser's going hungry will continue to be the gravy on the Winner's meat. " He sniffed and jutted his jaw out sideways in a nervous tick, "Even the Church Father's, following Paul, represented Heaven as having a rim the Saved and Angels could gather at to savor the sweetest joy in Heaven. Do you know what True Christian's consider the sweetest Joy in Heaven , Jack" I mumbled the word no. He put his lips to my ear: "The sweetest joy in Heaven is looking over the edge and down into Hell and seeing the Sinners BURN,.... And of course all the other torments applied would be sweet to those Chosen as they would be bitter to the Condemned."

I saw it, all right. Baja California and the Arena's were the Hell the Good Christians of North America could look down on for the most special pleasure God reserved to His Own. Frank was right,.. He was a theologian of sorts. " but what I have NO patience with AT ALL is the idea of universal Altruism, it just isn't Natural. The idea that the context Good and Evil is bigger than the context of Us verses Them is an insane invention made by forcing words into combinations the things they refer to would NEVER exhibit in the Real World. Pigs with wings. The Common Good. No way, Jose!" He was almost breathless with his insight.

Like a liquid, Salma flowed up the bow line, and disappeared by seeming to withdraw into a black shadow under the anchor housing. The sentry came forward from where she had bummed a smoke from the stern guard, machine gun hanging by it's strap under her arm. She flicked away the match, peering suspiciously into the shadows ahead. A bat flew across her field of vision. Before she could refocus, Salma had closed the distance between them, popped the palm of her left hand under the guard's chin, and wrapped her arms around the guards throat. A single twitch, accompanied by a faint pop, and Salma pulled the woman's dead weight to the side of the boat, lowering the woman into the inky black by her arms. Ten seconds....

"Thank God Christians seldom try to really live the stuff they claim to believe. And Buddhists who refuse to kill, even to protect themselves?..... They can be safely ignored, the way a wolf with a full belly ignores a sheep! The Real Truth is that those Men in Power in all the WORLD'S Capitols know that the Little people are too uninformable, too undependable, and too Simple to Govern themselves." I had spit out most of the vomit. Me and Frank were getting to be on really intimate terms now. I knew I could fart and it would be OK.

The stern guard proved more alert, twisting around to meet Salma's attack. A brief frantic exchange of moves too fast to catch was climaxed by Salma lowering the second and last deck guard into the water by his arms.

" In exchange for feeding and giving them shelter, it the RIGHT of Rulers to take what they want from them. After all, in Nature, those who Can take something Will take it, and their taking it Proves they Deserve it!"

I had recovered some muscle control, but I held my tongue. People who are congenital Sociopaths are not much improved in mood by being informed that they were the puppets of unrecognized impulses arrested at an Infantile level of development. Frank honestly believed Evolution's Goal was a single shark left swimming in the sea.... All the other fish and lesser sharks eaten. The Lonely Starvation of the Last Man Left on Earth..... This Vision was just Frank's flavor of Ennui.

Frank's eyes snapped up as Hell broke loose in the Main Cabin! The guard nearest the door, a bored looking ski bum of a fellow with a kind of Burt Lancaster loony grin, rushed to the door, opening it, even as Frank frantically shouted to him not to.... An explosion of automatic fire threw him across my body, face a mask of astonishment, as the two female guards emptied their clips down the corridor, covering Frank's effort to shut the door. He succeeded.

In the Main Cabin, Salma lay her borrowed, now empty gun down on the front desk and crawled on her belly past the unconscious form of the Secretary, down the hall towards the forward bulkhead: The Ladies Room. She paused in front of one cabin when she heard a rustle within. It came fast! The door burst open and two men emerged together, firing both ways down the hall. But vengeance came from below, as the Mexican Amazon, sprung up, twisting one guard around by the arms so the end of his burst knocked his partner off his feet! Then Salma butted his jaw up with the gun, and yanking it out of the startled man's hands, slammed it's butt into the side of his head, dropping him like a rock. She threw herself down on the floor, and crawled forward, bursts of small arms fire popping through closed doors over her head. "What are these tourists thinking of?" she thought to herself as she wedged herself against the base of the door at the end of the hall once she noticed it opened inward. "I can wait this out." She concluded, and curled into a black ball.

Icy and motionless with rage, Frank stood with his back to the computer terminal embedded in the front wall of the forward cabin. A screen saver played on the 38 inch diagonal monitor. A cartoon cat named Boris was chasing a butterfly around and around. A "New E-Mail" alert flashed in the upper right hand corner. Minutes passed in silence. The phone rang, and rang, and rang. It finally stopped ringing. I was beginning to breath again. The two guards, Natsuko and Yuko flanked the door. They wore casual dress, tight jeans and bikini tops. Natsuko was looking at Frank with disgust. Yuko had wet her pants. Frank looked down at me like a Tyrannosaur looks down on a half eaten little mammal that he has just realized has made him ill to the stomach.

A burst from an intercom: "Frank,..." It was Kahori, Tour Guide, Stewardess and all around stoned Lady Captain... "Frank, is everything alright now?"

Frank smiled and punched a button. "We've had visitors, it's been taken care of,...." He arched his eyebrows politely, "Honey, we need you up front."

"Okay. Coming..." Kahori signed off. Frank nodded to the guards, finger raised. Natsuko put her hand on the door handle, and the embarrassed Yuko prepared to charge through. Outside Kahori screamed. Frank stabbed with his finger.. "Go!"

The door yanked open and Yuko hurtled forward and sprawled onto her face! Kahori was pointing at the floor in front of the door. But Salma was already in, rolling under the stumbling Yuko's legs, and after a flash of an arm, shot to her feet under Natsuko's arms. Natsuko's clip zipped empty, the barrel knocked up, but she instantly threw herself backward, curling as she rolled over me, dragging the dead male guard after her. Salma charged around the chair to my left and Natsuko emerged, snarling, the guard's 45 in her hands... But it was heavy, and Salma grabbed the gun, lacing her fingers through the trigger guard, and head butted Natsuko backwards, yanking the gun out of her hands. But Salma had a lousy grip on it, and wasn't able to get a real grip on it, when Natsuko flew forward, batting the gun and right hand aside, and delivered a thunderclap of a punch to the center of Salma's forehead. Salma dropped the Army Issue gun and began trading chops and forward kicks in the confined space with Natsuko. The batt le raged back and forth in terrifying near silence until Salma caught the smaller woman be the wrists and repeated her head butt. This time it took, Natsuko was out cold!

Salma unstrapped my ankles, wrists and waist and helped me to my shaky feet. "Where's Frank?" I said, as if he had just slipped from a Party. "Where is,..." Then I saw Frank. Blank Frank. Frank was sitting cross legged on the floor below the Computer Wall. He had just dropped into that position, I guess. Salma planted a foot on his sternum and pulled her serrated combat knife out of his chest. "When did you do that,..." I asked, mystified, "I didn't see you do that."
Neon was waiting at the top of the dock for us, Kahori unconscious and hog tied at his feet. A sliding door was open on the side of the van behind him. I climbed wearily in and slumped into the vinyl seat, exhausted from relief. Salma climbed in, sliding the door shut and sat across from me, casual as you please, all painted black and buck nude. Neon pulled away from the curb and made for the highway. But he passed the Beach Cities off ramp. "Hey, we missed the exit!" I weakly protested. Salma began dressing from a black leather bag. Neon ignored me as Mexican desert passed, empty and forlorn. It was an hour to dawn. A radio flickered and Neon answered in low tones. Salma was now a black version of herself. She leaned forward and whispered to Neon. I began to feel ill again. "Where were all the cops..." I asked rhetorically. "And why did we let all those bad guys behind?"

"Because we may need to do business with them again." Salma answered, her huge brown eyes unreadable. "Frank was an asshole. Frank thought he could steal from his Masters. Frank thought we didn't know from the start he had contracted with the Japanese from the beginning. We knew he was both the source for the rumors you were to be snatched, and we guessed the first snatch was a decoy so he might pull off the second." Salma threw back her magnificent head and licked her lips. "We watched both kidnaps to see his moves."

"If he'd impressed us, hell,.." Neon laughed, "We'd a let him have you and start using him for real business." I felt clammy all over.

"Where are we going." I asked. Salma looked out into the Night. Neon used the radio again and clicked off, before looking me in the eye in the Rear View Mirror.

"Jack, Jack, Jack, I like you but I don't respect you very much. People too dumb to lie and too gutless to take what they want are a fucking liability. No offence, mind you, but you are a Loose End."

"Will we be picking up Miracle Girl too?" Salma asked. My anus tightened.

"Yeah, we pick her up at a rest area about half way to the border." Neon nodded backward, and, swift as a serpent, Salma handcuffed my wrists together and my right ankle to a seat support. I just let her.... "She seems real docile, but is doing shit of her own accord."

Salma grinned.... "I'll bet the white-coat boys back at MK-Complex are wetting their pants to get her under a microscope." I caught a shooting star from the corner of my eye.

"My info is she's invented medical techniques a decade ahead of anything anyone else can do." Neon watched me as he said this... I couldn't figure out why. "For a born and bred pleasure unit turned fighting girl, she's gone off there where the busses don't go..."

"If She's become self modifying, they'll take her apart and leave the pieces scattered all over the Moon!" Now Salma was watching me for a reaction, too. "They can't risk a runaway experiment."

I pretended they were talking about the weather, and pretended to ignore them.

Then Salma said: "Did you know it was your almost girlfriend she played doctor on, Jack, honey?"


CHAPTER #11 : Jennifer 10


"Your Problem is that YOU NEED YOUR BUTT KICKED, Honey,...."

Time Froze. Hell, I froze! Maybe Salma would be so pissed that she'd beat ME up for what Jennifer just said,... as casually as a Mom reminding her Husband to not forget to take an umbrella, because it was raining out. I stopped wriggling in the deposit-a-quarter for-a-relaxing-message over-stuffed recliner chair that I was hog-tied into, and goggled in disbelief across the room where Jennifer was sitting in full Lotus Position, ( cross legged), on the grass green carpeted floor between the Television and the stubby guest refrigerator. Salma had just emerged from the billows of steam pouring out of the bathroom to tell us we were out of hot water, so nobody but her was going to get a shower. Now the five foot seven stacked like a brick shithouse gypsy maned Mexican Amazon Goddess just stood stock still in the narrow hall connecting the dingy motel room living room and the even more dingy motel bedroom. She resumed toweling her huge mass of wet hair and said softly: "Pardon me?"

The creamy skinned, sweetly freckled All-American Next Door Sex Goddess considered that response for a moment, recrossing her skin-tight blue jeaned legs, and adjusting the black lace bra that barely restrained her full lush melon like tits. I guess Jennifer didn't want her Captor to think she was in any great hurry to go someplace with all this. Then , frowning just a little to show she had weighed her answer: "Is your EARS as PLUGGED UP as your CUNT?"

Salma, with a little sigh, threw her towel around her bare shoulders, and paced back into the front room, hanging her hands on the corners of the lucky towel that fell across her wet breasts. I couldn't help but notice steam, ( or Something ), had soaked her tiny white panties, so the triangle of her pubic jungle could be plainly seen,. Plainly smelled, too. I tried to smile co-operatively,... through with a ping pong ball jammed in my mouth and a nylon stocking wrapped several times around my head, making sure the ping pong ball stayed in my mouth, made this a difficult effect to achieve. The drugs my ex-boss had pumped me full of last night to make me co-operative had worn off, but I thought it was in my enlightened self interest to pretend I still felt co-operative.

Actually, since he was already dead, I would have been glad to personally kill anyone in this room. And that went double for my Good Pal Neon, when he got back from fueling the small plane in the little dirt airfield just behind this little dirt motel! Salma looked at me as if to say; "Whadda are we gonna do with THIS one?" And turned back to Jennifer who had her hand relaxed on her knees, and smiled cheerful as an eager puppy up at the Female Volcano she had just primed to explode!

"You've been a real nice girl, Jenny, since we picked you up last night, just like we were lead to believe," Salma spoke softly, clearly and then dropped the room temperature about thirty degrees, while continuing in the same tone of voice... "But if you think you've waited to the right moment to fuck with me, let me promise you Mr. Grier wouldn't have make any difference to the outcome. I won't tie you up girlfriend,... I'll kill you." The scientists back at the Black Funding created Empire called MK-Complex, ( and built in the caverns beneath Washington D.C.), would hate that, but I don't think any of them would last long with a Professional Death-Fighter and Assassin like Salma. Salma leaned over, her boobs dangling in Jennifer's sunny countenance. "You read me?"

"If I pull your hair..." Jennifer pouted, "Will you scratch my eyes out?"

"Jennifer," Salma reasoned with her "the direction this conversation is taking leads Nowhere. I've put a lot of girls and boys there. They didn't like it. And it meant Nothing to me." Salma straightened up, and whipped her towel into a twisted rope that would just fit around someone's throat, "I know you've become some kind of genius, and I've notice you're Not Quite Right. But Honey the Rules I live and Die by says No deviations from the Gameplan. And with this girl No means No. This was my first and last warning to you. Take it in the spirit it was given." Salma had just disappeared into the bedroom and began disassembling a machine pistol and laying on the towel spread out on the bed, when Jennifer winked at me. I could see Salma in the mirror on the back of the half open bedroom door. She was gazing out the bedroom window at the airfield as her experienced fingers pulled the gun apart, cleaned it with and oily rag and reassembled it....

Like a mischievous child Jennifer tip-toed in big Stage steps over to me, whipped the nylon off-of my head, and, as I miserably spat out the ping pong ball, resumed her seat.

My luck. The fucker rolled off of my lap and tapped three times as it bounced before rolling. Salma streaked without a word across the room and slapped Jennifer so hard across the left side of her face that a red handprint instantly appeared on the milk white skin! "Stand up and turn around," Salma, without emotion ordered, "You're getting tied up".

Jennifer looked up at Salma sideways, as if there was something unclear about what was happening. In an childlike voice she said: "Make me."

"Salma don't..." I rasped at a whisper. "Just tie her up." Neither woman seemed to have heard me, and neither had broken eye contact. I even think they had stopped blinking. "...oh, this is Stupid,..." I begged. It was obvious Salma was considering going back for the gun, but that would leave Jennifer unattended, if even for mere seconds.

Salma stepped back and mouthed the word : Now.

"I'll tell you what," Jennifer spoke with a conciliatory voice, "...if you get down on all fours like a dog between my legs and eat my Pussy real good, I won't kick the Bull Shit out of you."

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

The Beautiful Mexican Amazon, face as impassive as a steel axe, began a motion to grab the American Girl by the arms or shoulders when Jennifer's bare feet shot out from being rested on her thighs in between Salma's ankles, and flipped out in a wide Vee, dropping her floorward,... But before Salma's knees crashed into the carpet, Jennifer's hands grasped Salma's arms at the elbows, rotating them outward from her body, so Salma's hands flapped uselessly out. It was incredible! Jennifer legs had slapped back under her thighs, so as she raised up from a kneeling position, she forced Salma to raise up from a kneeling position to her feet with her. Salma, face purpling with rage and effort, brought her elbows in towards her body, and yanking back, slapped a grip on the outside of Jennifer's elbows, so both woman now engaged in a tug of war trying to unbalance the other.

But this only lasted two long violent seconds,... Salma tried to kick in between Jennifer's legs and sideways, to knock her right ankle out from under her. But Jennifer snapped her right foot up and echoed this move on Salma's right foot, which had to support her during this move. But Salma, too, snapped her supporting foot up in time. This repeated four rounds, till Jennifer snapped in fast enough to beat Salma's other foot to the floor, and shoved DOWN!

Salma dropped to one knee, hissing. Both women still had each other by the arms. Jennifer began wrenching Salma back and forth. Salma fought back with full force, but her other leg broke out at the knee and suddenly Salma found herself kneeling in front of the other girl. Desperate, she yanked her arms back to get free, but Jennifer surprised her by letting go for a millisecond, and catching her hands, which she twisted outward, leaning into Salma, so the frantic girl's arms straightened. Her arms locked straight and rotated out, this way paralyzed Salma from the waist up. Both women quaked from the force involved in holding this position, and perspired freely, tits and bellies wet.

Salma looked up at her tormentor with the fire of Hell's hottest furnace in her eyes!
"Why are you disobeying direct orders?" Salma said in an almost normal voice.

"I want my pussy eaten," Jennifer replied with an equally conversational tone, "And I think, no, I KNOW you are the Woman for the Job!"

The Mexican girls eyes bugged out, but only for a moment,... Then an iron determination replaced it. For a long minute Salma forced her body up, first raising one, then an other knee an inch off the ugly carpet, only to be forced back. A kind of compassion rose in Jennifer's face.... Salma' s elbows had to have been pushed to almost breaking each time she rallied. "Why don't you just lick me Honey,..." Jennifer whispered silkily, her sweet face just inches from Salma's mask of hate, "I promise I'll cum real fast..." Salma groaned with fury... Did I tell you they had tied me up naked? No? Well, you need to know that to understand why, when Jennifer glanced over at me her laugh even startled Salma into looking over at me.

Jennifer whistled and hooted: " That's the HARDEST BONER I'VE SEEN, ...EVER!"

Yup. The hardest hard-on I have EVER had, (even since I was a hormonally gushing teenaged guy), actually seemed to hum as it quivered, sticking up through the ropes tying my thighs to the seat of the recliner, and the ropes tying my torso to the back of the recliner.

"You like watching us FIGHT?" She giggled like the Little Engine that Could. I actually looked sideways in shame. "Hey, no big deal! Everybody likes that shit!" Now I felt on the verge of tears. Knowing I was going to die was bad enough, but somehow this got to me. The girl I was born to fall desperately in love with knew I was one of the Sickos who got off on the stuff going on in the Arenas.

Jennifer suddenly let go of Salma's wrists, freeing her , and stepped back as the other girl sprang up. "Okay, you gotta be hurt, " Jennifer told her, "But you need to know this is no accident for it to do you any good." Jennifer, palms up, flipped her fingers back in a Let's Go gesture.

Salma back petalled, then shot forward, twisting sideways as she dropped into a crouch, firing her left foot into Jennifer's naked white belly..... Or where it had been a millisecond previously. Jennifer, effortlessly, had stepped sideways, turned 90 degrees inward, and catching Salma's calf, lifted up, like raising a lid, pitching Salma backward with such force the wind was knocked out of her when her back slammed into the floor. " I contacted an Alien spaceship in orbit around Bernard's Star,..." She said, apparently to Me. Salma rolled warily to her feet, and raised her fists as if to box. Jennifer returned the raising of the fists and closed with Salma, hammering away mercilessly through the other woman's defenses, taking plenty of hard blows to the head, but snapping her head back expertly, sidestepping their full force, and always paying the other girl back punch for punch in double spades. Jennifer's eft eye was closing and her nostrils streamed blood, but within minutes, the gasping Mexican girl was weaving with more punch drunkenness than skill, and both her eyes were slits. As the fight progressed both girls seemed less willing to risk energy expensive wheel kicks and fancy combinations of kicks and punches.

Abruptly, Jennifer dropped Salma with a left hook that layed her out flat. Jennifer just let her get it together and resumed talking to me. "I plugged myself into the modem at the Hospital while waiting for Rosanna to come around, and hacked into the secret wide area SETI array that MK-Command runs in Argentina. My decoding and scanning capabilities saw shit theirs didn't, so it wasn't long before I was squirting my end of the conversation hidden in the TV broadcasts out of our local Sol City smut channel so it could be picked up by their hyperspace communication relay in orbit around Mars ." I imagined her with a finger plugged into a modem jack, doing all this electronic stuff with her new improved brains. To my horror she glance over at me and replied to my unvoiced thought: "that's about the size of it"

Salma took advantage of this chatter to take a deep breath and hurtle like a line backer into Jennifer's belly. Both woman crashed into the floor in a thrashing tangle of arms and legs. One minute of hyper Olympic style wrestling ended with Salma, belly down, Jennifer straddling her ass, twisting her wrists outward again as she kicked her legs and bucked. "The point I'm trying to make is, they responded to my 'How-Are-You's because of my eight previous combat modifications. It seems they test the genetic vitality of all the species they contact by measuring how fierce and effective the females of that species are in combat."

"Why not the Males?" I asked, feeling a bit peeved on the part of my gender. Salma was now curling to the left and right, twisting into contorted fetal positions, then jack-knifing out,... But each time Jennifer responded by shooting a leg out for balance, then forcing Salma's tits back into the carpet.

"Because they view males as basically DNA shufflers. It's females that carry and rear children. It is the female that is the original format of the creature.... males are produced in all species by a secondary, additional reformatting." I guess I looked dubious. I could tell even Salma was listening. Hell, she was running out of gas!

"Don't they see the Arena's as a regressive Phenomena? You know, ... Letting higher brain function succumb to lower animal emotions."

"Not at all,..." she began laughing at me gently. "In most species ritual or actual combat between the Females, is considered an emotional tonic, and a good barometer of the species breeding pool's continued viability."

"But it's a sexual perversion!"

"That's all in you wrinkled brains, Jack. Combat by Females is an Undiluted Display of Life-Force that is meant to serve Sexual Goals, of course it's Erotic! The Alien's often view Virtual Reality recordings of the females of various species fighting as a sexual stimulation when impregnation is necessary, or one or both of the coupling partners are weary or aging,.... or just need a little spice."

"But Mortal Combat!" I protested. Shit, let me die a Liberal!

"Species perpetuation is serious business, even cast as recreation." look, she leaned forward, her irresistible doughy white melons swaying, slung down from her ribs, "... Do you know how obsessively Selfish you are being, twisting everything to the service of demonstrating your low opinion of yourself? Things have their own discrete reality, their own beauty. Revel in your brief stint in the flesh, Jack! The only justification you need to enjoy the sacrifice to Life another makes is to become the kind of Person who is ready to devote, or surrender their own Life, when the time comes, unselfishly, to benefit Others." She shook out her chestnut waves of sweat scented hair on her shoulders. "It's people who are by nature fearful and loath to give of themselves that make a fetish, a commodity, a strangled web of taboos out of the Diverse and Passionate Rituals of Giving."

"Did you really talk to Aliens, or are you just saying this to make me feel better?" I said wistfully. My Maybe Rescuer was Insane. So was my raging erection.

"Both!" Jennifer chirped, giggling, as she hopped off Salma and finished loosening my bonds. Freed, I staggered to my feet, no less unsteady than the near broken Latin Amazon, tears streaming down her haggard, but achingly classical face. "Now, Sister, before this guy leaves, I want you to let him see you get down on your back so I can sit on your face and let you Eat Me!" Jennifer's brow wrinkled to show everyone she was serious this time. Salma mouthed the words: Wait Right There, and went into the bedroom. To my horror, and just as I expected, she returned with the gun, and pointed it at Jennifer. Jennifer, muted, said: "I kicked your ass, Sister. That gun won't prove your Better than Me."

"All it has to prove", Salma gasped, "Is that you're Deader than me." She thumbed the lever to semi-auto, turned and shot me once in the abdomen. Before I fainted, I felt the seat of the recliner against my shoulders, a hot slow pulse of fire in my belly, the shuddering of my outspread legs, and looked up to see Salma point the gun at my head, saying: "Now Behave."


CHAPTER #12 : The Girl Gladiators


As if in a Dream........

.... Soft light is in my eyes from the white curtains blowing with the salty breeze off of the Pacific. Pain comes with consciousness. That's the deal. That's the deal,... whether Paralandra, Barsoom, or Baja California. Love hurts so much because by nature it bursts from the boundariesof the same flesh that grew to believe the wall of skin was the definition of the Person. Rosanna came to my bed and lay beside me as I healed. The Miracles they can do these days in Modern Times. She came every day, until they said immediate danger was survived. Then she said Good Bye.

Rosanna, full lips still wet from a kiss in which we seemed to breath for hours, looked down at me with her Great Soft Eyes, her hair lit up like flames by the sunlight pouring through it. But it was not Rosanna in Rosanna's eyes.

"Look", she stroked my hands, "I can see you loving Rosanna when you look at me. Retina scans, fingerprints, memory tests, even my Mother on the phone, everybody believes it's really me, not a duplicate, not a Xerox, but really me,..." She smiled wistfully, and began to softly weep, " Everybody believes I'm Me,...but me..."

"But I know that Rosanna died in this very Hospital, and is not only Dead but reduced by fire to atoms. I'm an experiment that worked. I'm a clever Plug, a Blank, a forgery so exact, it's Evil." She shook her lovely head refusing my Protest, "Jack, I would stay with you and make you Happy, if I didn't really believe down the line I would have to Blow Out my Brains and renounce my false Citizenship!" She sat beside me on the bed, her gauze tennis blouse and skirt transparent in the backlight. I reached out to caress her soft breasts, and she pressed my hand to her flesh with hers. " I know I'm not Me, yet I'm Me enough so that I can't live with it. Darling, sweetheart,... I want to live, I want to make love with you every day. I want a baby to come out of my body. I want a Stupid Life, with coffee in the morning. I want to go shopping with my Friends. I want to die a tiny Old Lady who knows her children grew up to be Good People. I want Problems I can solve. But I can't Solve This. I can live with losing my Looks, losing at Love, not having my Dreams Come True, but Jack,...." she shook her head sadly, "I can't live with This."

"Is there anything I can say to make you stay?" She shook her head. "Even 'I need You'"? Rosanna stood to leave and said...

"Apparently Neon made some kind of deal with Jennifer while you were unconscious. Salma has disappeared, and Neon took Jennifer back to that Secret Whatever in Washington D.C.,... so I guess you're medical is being picked up by Uncle Sam, and I'm going to live on the income I made from exclusive interviews for awhile. I may be a Circus Freak, but I'm a fucking rich Circus Freak."

"Then, what?" I asked.

"Then you get on your feet, go back to running errands for the Secret Police until your Probation is up, and I do,... Whatever I will find that I do." At the door she turned back to me, and her last words were: "I got a call from Jennifer. She's a horrible fone freak. And we talked and talked and talked, and you wouldn't BELIEVE what she suggested the Cure to my Identity Crisis might be..... " Then Mysteriously, Rosanna was Gone.

***

Alone, Jennifer Ten stood waist deep in the metallic mercury bath in which the three ton bulk of the sponge matrix brain bobbled like a trained killer whale. Her left arm was curled up to her pale blue breasts Her fist a cantaloupe sized snarl of quantum flux generated sub-absolute zero CPU chips like ice-cream sparkles glistening and twinkling as super-intelligent semi-autonomous crab-like mini-factories crawled over each other, blue and pink lasers playing in the seething living crystal robotics sewn with the fiber-optics that comprised her link to the Brainiax beside her.

Calm as Saint Theresa in the eye of the hurricane of her orgasmic union with the Christos, Jennifer solved for and successfully derived a solution to her origami-like application of tile-matrix dynamics to a special form of set theory which combined quantum gravity with the latest super-string equations in her data banks. Now the left side of her Brain understood as much as dualistic analytical thought could, the workings of the Universe. Simultaneously, the right side of her brain had successfully invented a compression scheme that had been able to transfer the entire World-Web full of Data as well as the Brainiax's millions of years worth of parallel processing of that Data into her own super-cortical brain where she burnt it into a very special ROM chip her intellectually guided nano armies of micro-factories had constructed. She was ready to Become.
Lowering her arm to her hip, the melting wad of connectivity drooled into the Moon Pool, leaving her icy fingers bare.

She blinked, and began unfolding her consciousness sideways out from her center of attention in a sphere that expanded at the speed of light, including everything it passed through like a shock wave that rattled but left unchanged all it passed as it flew outward. She murmured, and her consciousness passed through the earth and the sun, the Ort cloud and there nearest suns, having successfully modified her processes so her propagation began exponentially expanding at faster than the speed of Light. In retrospect, the Philosophers of the 21st Century would come to understand that the Prime Mover of the Cosmos need not exist in a linear way PRIOR to the creation of the Universe, nor even anterior to the Universe, drawing all events to it, like iron filings to a magnet. The cause of the Universe could very well arise from within it, mid-History, so to speak, like a tent pole rising in the midst of a circus-tent.

With a long sigh, Jennifer, Jennifer raised herself to the Infinite Power by simultaneously pouring through the tidal bulges of the countless sub-atomic white hole worm holes that are ceaselessly coming into and out of existence in the quantum froth that is the fabric of the Universe through-out Infinity. Thus, She poured into every square inch of the Boundriless Universe at the same Moment, inundating Reality with her Intelligent Presence. At 12:00:01 P.M. New Years Day 2006 C.E., Jennifer became god, became KALI !

All the while humming an old Beatle's song....



Fun is the one thing that Money can't Buy....Bye Bye....

***

At that very moment the sky was platinum blasted white in the High Noon over the Arena of the Coliseum-2000, the largest of the combat stadiums in Sol City, Baja California. The Woman Gladiator squinted as she looked up, seeing the CNN/ESPN dirigible floating high above her helmeted head, it's telescope microphones and zoom lensed video cameras aimed down at the darkly splendid world below, where on the parched sands several dozen men and women had spread out amongst the man made hills, ravines and swamps that comprised the battlefield below. She knew that half a billion people would be watching this live on their televisions right now. The New Year's Day Games had become what they glibly referred to as a New Tradition!

A siren sounded mournfully in the distance and the colored smoke that signalled the combat was to begin rose in the four cardinal directions from the circular roof of the 30 story high hotel that ringed the Arena. The Woman Gladiator focussed her attention 100 percent on the situation at hand. As every soldier knows after the First Battle, no matter what reason you were sent to War, the Soldier fights to stay alive. All other reasons are empty talk. Having experience over eighteen fights in the twelve times she had entered the Arena, she had neither illusions about or expectations for what would happen here today. As a new breed of professional fighter, with neither a crime to expiate or a death sentence to fulfill here, she knew what her few brothers and sisters knew. You tell everybody it's for the money, then keep your fucking mouth shut.

She had come to a gully, and decided to seek higher ground to pick her first fight. But the sound of combat drew her around a bend in the ravine to a wider space with a half dried pond of cracked mud at the center. Cheaters! A phenomena new to the games, two men had conspired to hunt together. Since there were no rules beyond avoiding Combat, ( that would set a sniper with a rifle to work from a booth in one of the pylons), fighters who used this strategy used it with the idea that they would turn on each other when they figure the thirty minute combat period was up, and pretend to fight until the siren blew. But cheaters seldom prospered here, since cheaters are also liars, and usually you could depend on your pal to back stab you on the Time Tested Principle: Do Them Before They Can Do You! In this case, two out of shape bruisers in combat fatigues replete with camouflage, decals and survival doo-dads had a naked little female down and were jabbing at her with their bayonet tipped night-sticks, ( night-sticks replaced rifles in these events). She was gamely fending off their sadistic taunts and stabs with the leather covered shield strapped to her left arm, as she kicked at their legs, trying to make her way back to the short sword she had dropped about a meter away.

The Female Gladiator smiled to herself. Maybe today She would find a Partner,.. And even live to tell the Tale! Being small bodied herself, she usually based her fighting tactics around moving fast. Like her grounded sister, she wore only leather sandles strapped by laces up her legs to the upper thigh, where her legs curved inward to meet at the crotch. Her shield had a copper blade catcher tacked around the rim, and a spike, anchored in the handle she held the shield by, sticking about eight inches out from the center of the leather covered disc, for those folks who didn't get the point from her sword. Her head was encased in a helmet that looked like the leather swim caps football players in the USA wore in the 1920s, except for a wooden scull cap, bolted on to soften any blows.... Otherwise, she was naked as the day she was born, and just as wet.... The desert air being 100 degrees, but unusually humid due to a squall due in later in the afternoon.

Advancing slowly from an angle both men left behind their backs, she scrambled at a crouch, closing the distance. One man had gotten the girl by her long, jet black hair... God knows what happened to her helmet, while the other had managed to pin her sword arm down with a boot. The two inexperienced men were holding their nightsticks like baseball bats now, and were hammering downward, usually being intercepted by the shield, but often enough, brutally beating an exposed thigh or shoulder.

"Aw, let's just stick her Ed!" One with a grey crew cut protested.

"That's what you should have done from the start,...Ed" She agreed.

When Ed looked up, her sword slapped downward behind the wrist. She had to yank it out half way through, but he dropped his stick screaming, staggering backward, and she turned to face the younger guy's mottle faced charge. The asian girl on the ground slipped her legs between his calves, and he went down hard! She thrust down into his kidney, then as he flipped over, yowling, crossed to a spot behind his head, and drove the point of the blade through the nape of his neck into his chest. He thrashed once.

Backing up she saw the injured man disappear over the ridge. Instinct made her spin around.... In time to deflect Natsuko's sword with her shield! Natsuko scrambled backward waving her sword, and babbling.

"YOU! I killed you! I killed you!" Natsuko went around the corner of sanity, eyes quivering ball-bearings of frenzy... "I killed you once, I kill you again!"

Natsuko charged forward parrying and thrusting like a maniac. Almost overwhelmed, she staggered backward through the mud, which cracking and braking from her weight, poured over her feet each step, squeezing through her toes. "Any other time this would feel good on a day like today" flitted through her mind as she shook stinging sweat from her eyes and kept the point of her sword pointed directly at the center of her enemies torso. After some fencing, during which both women recovered their wind while watching for an opening in their opponent's guard, the woman gladiator dropped her shield four inches, exposing a ripe full breast. Natsuko took the bait, lunging forward with all her might,... But found the shield grabbed her blade as her hated enemy drove it up to deflect her thrust. The copper snagged her sword just long enough for the white girl to drop her body with the same gesture, and slice at the inside of her sword bearing arm.

Instead of following up, the attacker mysteriously backed away from the injured girl's frantic defensive slashing and calmly retreated to a spot halfway up the hill, with the sun at her back. Lost to her emotions she pursued, squinting through the yellow glare, seeking out the now dark form of her opponent. Just as she was rallying to charge the last length to her enemy she sobered, and backed up herself, hearing the word "good...good..." emerging from the heat. Suddenly she was fighting backwards for her life as the woman came down the hill using her sword like an axe, beating her down. But in her retreat she stumbled. Driven to one knee. Stabbing upward blindly. Cursing.

Inexplicably the attack broke off. Bewildered she straightened,...but the attack resumed! This time from directly in front of her, so many thrusts she was again staggering back. Natsuko dropped intentionally to one knee, thrusting her sword up to her enemy, who leapt back, but not before feeling the blade drive it's angle into her belly!

"Now!" She shouted. And Now the attack came, the bloody woman gladiator weighing in with a studied combination of thrusts Natsuko found easy to thwart. Laughing, she rotated to meet her attacker's slashing and stabbing, and delighted to realized She was gaining the high ground,.... As her eyes cleared, the sun now behind her, she saw a laughing woman. Why was she laughing?

"Who are you trying to kill?" The crazy lady babbled.

"You ! You!" Natsuko screamed.

"Me! Me!" The madwoman babbled. Then became deathly still, pointing her sword at Natsuko's heart.

Natsuko felt as if she were trying to keep her balance on a Runaway Train. Her own sword tracked her enemy's heartbeat.

"I am the woman you seek" the woman gladiator said enigmatically. "I have become one with my good friend Kali."

"Kali" Natsuko hissed, "You crazy."

"....so is She..." the woman replied, and with a super human spurt of strength and speed, knocked her shield and sword aside, slamming her own shield against her chest. Natsuko gasped. A spike was pressed into the flesh of her left breast. "Drop your weapons." Surprised, Natsuko did. "Now walk away." She added. Amazed into compliance, Natsuko did. It was only later she realized that she was finished as a Fighter. She no longer could trust her own Mind.

The Woman Gladiator waited a few minutes, letting the warm sun dry the sweat on her body, and soften the throb of the ache of the shallow wound in her tummy. The Siren blew, wistfully. "Now I realize why Jennifer recommended this to me", she thought to herself, "I am alive. That living is me. Fighting it is sad and crazy." Her full lips drew into a wide smile. "I can afford to retire from all this... I never really needed it".

She walked back to the showers, and as she picked up her paycheck, she turned in her dressing room locker key. As usual it took forever to get a cab on the Service Entrance side of the Hotel. But once she slid her ass across the backseat and the door slammed and the arctic blast of cool air raised goosebumps on her arms, she asked the cabby: "Does your onboard computer have InterNet?"

"Of coarse", he drawled, frowning at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Please do a message-board search."

"Which Boards?"

"Try Desperately Seeking."

"What Name?"

She told him. There was over a 1000 messages, all from the same guy, with the same message. It was an address.

"Let's go!" she said.

"But that's in Cascadia!"

"I", the Lady said, "Will; Tip you well!" [img]graemlins/devil.gif[/img]