24 Like a Virgin
Laughter rippled through the restaurant as I described our frightening helicopter journey from Switzerland to Cyprus, then the aftermath at Nicosia International Airport, then the shaky flight back to the USA.
“And I was singing the Star Spangled Banner to keep our morale up!” I said. ‘…and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air…’ That’s all I could remember of the friggin’ song. But that was the scene in the helicopter: bombs and rockets bouncing off our force field and falling back to earth. Our force field held. We survived.”
“Obviously,” said Hacker smugly.
“No mierda!” said Benny Bravo. “Whad’ja do then, Boss?”
“Do you guys remember South Vietnam? The last helicopter out of the place before the war was officially over? Americans scrambling to get on that chopper and get the heck out of there? That was how it felt for us.” It was Greta, speaking up from behind a tall glass of Oak Creek Amber that nearly hid her from view.
Hacker looked affectionately at the newest member of our little posse, the diminutive Greta, who had flown to America with us because her job as a mole at Black Swan Beta was over and no new orders from the State Department were forthcoming and she had nowhere else to go.
“Listen up!” said Leela, cutting through the maze of cross-talk at our table. We were the only people in the Navajo Room of the luxury Enchanted Forest Hotel. “Thanks to my beloved husband, Marty, here”—she paused to give my reddening cheek a pinch— “we were able to bluster our way onto the last plane at the Nicosia airport, which was a decrepit Russian Condor military transport, which already had sixty nuns from the Russian Orthodox Church in Nicosia on board.”
Everybody roared. “The plane was already overweight because they had hundreds of cases of vodka and half a ton of caviar in the cargo hold,” said Jill. “They were on their way to someplace in Canada, Nova Scotia, I think, but Marty convinced the pilots to drop us off at Andrews Air Force Base. We also felt we should take the two American helicopter pilots who had flown us into Nicosia with the bombs bursting in air. The Russkies agreed to give them a ride if Leela and Greta and I would give them an erotic massage when we landed. The Russkies, that is.”
More laughter. “And…and…and…?” said Hacker.
“Well,” I said, picking up the thread, “when we landed at Andrews, practically nobody was minding the store. The place seemed to be deserted. So we found a nice hospitality room for foreign VIPs. We ushered the Russian flight crew in there, and about six of the youngest nuns. Then Leela hypnotized all of ’em, ordered everybody to strip down, and the erotic massages just kinda happened on their own. We split when the moans and groans got too loud.”
“And now you are here,” observed Hacker. “How? Did you three psychics teleport from Andrews to Sedona and take Greta along for the ride?”
Oops. Unknowingly, Hacker had given away my secret psychic identity. Everyone at the table knew it except Benny. I tapped into his cabeza to see if the remark had registered. He was thinking in English, fortunately. When Hacker dropped his giveaway line, Benny thought, “What the fu—”, then his thoughts went skittering off to something about women’s legs and breasts. I would tell him later, at a better time, I decided.
“No, we didn’t teleport back to Sedona,” I told the group. I explained that we had hitched a ride from Andrews on some ancient U.S. military transport plane, which lacked such amenities as flush toilets and padded seats, but which delivered us directly to the Sedona airport after the ladies promised to give the pilot a psychic reading and a chakra energy clearing upon arrival.
The Enchanted Forest (which we nicknamed the EF), once the plushest resort in Sedona, had become both our hideout and our headquarters. We had the whole place practically to ourselves, save for a skeleton crew of cooks and waiters, room cleaners, masseuses, one concierge and one assistant manager. The staff all lived on the property. A few wealthy guests were also there, including two movie star couples, a former NFL quarterback, a rapper, and four CEOs of big corporations. The rich and famous were apparently fearful of leaving the secluded resort and going back into the chaos that the American landscape had become.
My little group was welcome at the EF, first because of Hacker’s specialized hacking skills, and second because Benny Bravo used to work for the gas company. The computer genius hacked a nearby electrical power pole and delivered a constant flow of juice into the EF’s little grid; Benny managed to tap into a working gas pipe, directing enough gas to the resort to supply its needs. The EF had its own wells, so water was not an issue.
Leela, Jill, and I moved into a two-bedroom casita on the edge of the property, alternating sleeping arrangements so that all three of us were satisfied. It was absolutely wild. Hacker had fallen in love with Greta—actually, the incurable foot fetishist had fallen in love with her tiny feet—and they had moved into a luxury suite together. “Most beautiful feet I have ever tasted…er…ever seen,” my old friend told me, “and that includes Jill’s tasty tootsies!”
Hacker and Greta: this was a true odd couple. John Hack, the kinky, dope-smoking ladies’ man, and Greta, the naïve nerd who had been with only one other man in her forty years, her ex-husband. But both were computer geniuses, and they spent hours huddled over a laptop in their suite, presumably swapping algorithms and hacking secrets. I would wager that they also discussed Hacker’s deadly Bird Flu Virus, whose launch code he had transmitted to Jill at Black Swan Beta HQ—and which helped to take down that firm’s Internet sabotage scheme.
Benny Bravo had his own suite, but he insisted on also spending time at his Sedona home, threading his way through the roadblocks and military checkpoints on his tiny electric scooter. One evening I sat him down and told him the whole story of my newly-acquired psi abilities, including some of the incredible adventures that had just happened in Europe.
Benny was very cool about it; he shrugged and said, “In Español we would call you a psíquico, a psychic, or un lector de la mente, a reader of the mind. No problemo, vato.” He laughed heartily. “I’m safe. Most of my sexy thoughts are in Spanish!”
Our casita arrangements went like this: Leela and Jill each had their own bedroom, and I was like a roving ambassador, spending a night or two with Leela, and a night or two with Jill. It didn’t seem to matter to the ladies which one I was with, as they had the remote coupling mode turned to ON. Whatever Leela was experiencing with me was fully shared by Jill, and vice versa.
The first time with Leela since the rescue at Black Swan Beta in Davos was a true memory-maker. It was almost like being with a virgin. At first Leela was trembling, scared, her legs locked together. She was still thin and bony; she seemed like a young teenager. I took my time, my mouth brushing her full lips, her erect nipples, her concave belly, her soft bush. After what seemed like hours of foreplay, I rolled on top of her. Her chest was heaving and she was thrusting her pelvis toward my rigid maleness.
“Please…please…please, Marty, now now now now now!” Leela begged. When I finally penetrated her, in the next room Jill let out a scream that must have frightened away every coyote within a mile of the resort. “Ohhhh!” Jill howled. “Ohhh, Marty, yes yes yes yes! Harder! Harder!”
This was new to me. This was so new, and so astounding, that I almost lost my precious erection. Fortunately, I didn’t. Suddenly, I thought, I have to satisfy two demanding women, two for the price of one, double your pleasure double your fun, two screamers, two women who I loved deeply, and… Suddenly I realized that I had to get out of my head, and fast. I focused on the physical phenomenon that was underway, the joining—three psi people, through our loins—of body, mind, and spirit.
Leela moaned, jerked violently, and exploded under me with a shudder and a primal sound that I had never heard from her. In the next room, Jill also exploded. “Omigod!” she screamed. “Omigod! Ahhhhhg! Ahhhhhggggg!” And then I exploded, a kaleidoscope
of lights going off in my brain, a synaptic firestorm, a gusher of white liquid heat passing through me into Leela, wave upon wave of volcanic eruptions, Leela’s body slowly and finally coming to a full stop.
I rolled off her, exhausted. Silence. After five or ten or twenty minutes, a voice from the next room: “Hey, that was pretty good, guys! Was it good for you too?” Jill appeared in the doorway, naked, backlit by moonlight, her body a sensuous silhouette. “Mind if I join you?”
Without waiting for an answer, Jill sprang into Leela’s bedroom like a cat on the hunt, wedging herself between Leela and I. She faced me, her full breasts pushed against my chest, her legs tangled with mine. “Let’s do that again,” she murmured in my ear. Leela, picking up on the verbal as well as non-verbal cues, snuggled up against Jill, her hands cupping those big breasts and kneading the hard nipples.
The heat was rising. This time around I entered Jill, we lying face to face, belly to belly, while Leela held on to Jill from the back and absorbed the energy. This was a delicious arrangement, pure Tantra, almost no movement, silence save for deep breathing, a Zen ballet of heightened consciousness. The energy continued to build, we three breathing as one, until finally we reached a kind of inner explosion. Together. This peak seemed to last forever.
I can say this about the female orgasm: It is awesome. We poor males are orgasmically challenged. I appreciate the male’s rocket-into-outer-space effect, the fireworks, the explosion, the release. But it is essentially genital-centric. The female orgasm is a full body event, a shuddering, tingling, wave upon wave upon delicious wave. It goes on and on and on. Multiple orgasms. Whew!
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, and I’m not jealous of woman’s orgasm. Actually, I am one lucky sonofabitch. I was able to experience the coveted multiple orgasm sandwiched between two lusty women, to feel every sensation, to travel to that sacred zone of pure female energy.
During our stay at the EF, I climbed to these climactic heights many times, thanks to remote coupling—which wasn’t so remote when we three shared a bed. But how long, I wondered, would my psi gifts last? I had already gone well beyond the two hundred hours the docs in Cyprus had promised me. The pineal gland chip implant should have dissolved by now. And yet, my psi powers seemed to be getting stronger. The remote coupling switch was turned on!
What happened? I loved my new state of being. How could I ever go back to being plain ol’ Marty? I drifted off sandwiched between my lovers and dreamed of blue skies and flamingos and tall pine trees and naked people dancing like faeries through the woods. But from somewhere in a remote corner of the dreamscape, an alarm bell was sounding. Sirens, explosions, screams, the rise and fall of frightened voices. Awareness of dream state. Suddenly the sounds stopped. Duly noted. Lucid dreaming, take one.
25 We’ve Gone Too Far
A Day Earlier
Hacker knew right away that there was something different about me. We were sitting on the deck of his West Sedona home, taking in the red rock views. It was ten a.m., and below us, the little jewel of a city was amazingly quiet. Anybody with any sense had already left town.
Leela, Jill, Greta and I had just arrived in town the day before, and after piling into an auto-rickshaw at the airport, we made our way to our house, Leela’s and mine, up in the hills near Sugarloaf Rock, an isolated and quiet part of town. Exhausted, we spent a quiet night. Jill and Greta each had their own rooms.
“What’s up, Marty?” inquired Hacker, peering deeply into my eyes. “Something’s happened to you, hasn’t it. Something new. Something…awesome. You feel like, like, damn, I dunno, like more than you were before. Explain, dawg.”
I told him everything: the chip implant I got in Cyprus, the Davos adventure, the Leela rescue, the dolphin, our escape, the huge explosion and rockslide on the road back to St. Moritz. Patiently I tried to describe my new psi abilities, what it was like to read people’s thoughts, the tricks I could do like move objects with my mind, the enhanced memory, and the ability to communicate with other telepaths.
Hacker wasn’t impressed. “So you’re probably reading my thoughts right now, right? You know what I’m thinking about, what my schemes are, what ladies I want to get it on with, feet feet feet fuckin’ feet! You know my deepest, darkest secrets, dude! That just sucks! How can I ever hang out with you again? How can I get the edge on you with my superior brainpower?! You know what I’m gonna say before I say it!”
“Look, Hacker, I’ve got better things to do than read your mind. It’s just not that interesting. Plus I only use my new abilities in the line of duty—you know, serving our country, rescuing fair maidens, saving the world from arch-villains.” I told him about the supposed time limitation on my chip implant, that it could dissolve at any time and I would be right back to plain ol’ ordinary Marty.
Hacker seemed to soften. He sat back in his easy chair and released a mighty outbreath. “Sounds like a mixed blessing to me, Marty,” he said quietly. “If that chip melted right when you’re in the middle of some crazy trick, like teleporting to Las Vegas or jumping over the Grand Canyon, you might get trapped between dimensions. We’d have to hire a, what, an exorcist to get you out of there.”
“Hacker, old friend, we have some serious work ahead of us. We could use another trusted psychic on our team. How about you getting a chip implanted in your thick skull? It’s painless, and the rewards are many.” I was half-serious, half-kidding. Actually, more serious than not.
“Ha! Are you putting me on? I don’t wanna be like some kind of zombie, like a walking seed pod with higher consciousness linking up with other seed pods. Know what I mean? Remember that great film from the Fifties, that Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
“I don’t know what the effin’ hell you are talking about, brother, but I know it’s time we got serious. Forget the chip implant. Now, could you please fill me in on what’s been going on in this troubled world?”
My friend sighed, closed his eyes, was silent for a minute or two. “Where should I start? Okay, after Jill dropped my Bird Flu Virus into the Black Swan hardware, me and some hacker buddies from Silicon Valley fixed the Internet, so it’s up and running again. We put up some new electronic barbed wire around the DNS, you know, the Domain Name System that Black Swan Beta attacked and completely fucked up and used to extract big bucks from innocent people’s bank accounts. And totally screwed up the way business is conducted on this planet right now.
“You remember that message I had Benny send you? Just the letters DNS? I was trying to tell you that that was the heart of the Internet’s problems. Didja get it?”
“Yeah, bro’, I got it, and I got it. I ain’t exactly a retard, y’know. You and I had already talked about your suspicions regarding DNS attacks months ago. So I passed the info on to Jill and she used it to start the counterattack on Beta’s attack programs.”
“Well, just checking, Marty. I know you’re a hip dude and all that. Anyway, we patched up the damage and tried to make sure it can’t happen again.” He paused, took a deep breath. “Unless it does happen again. And it could. But don’t tell anyone that.”
“Hmmmm, okay, I promise. What else, Hacker? How bad is the world situation? My little group has been out of touch for a few weeks.”
“Oh. Right. The Web was down, so you couldn’t get the news. Well, it’s pretty bad, Marty. The infrastructures in most countries have just collapsed, you know, electricity and water and fuel oil supplies are just sporadic. Most of the airports of the world are closed so people can’t fly anywhere. The trains are still running in most places, at least for now. Unless they run on electricity.”
“Sounds pretty bad, man. What else?”
“Well, people can’t drive their cars like they used to either because oil production and delivery has broken down everywhere. Gas is around ten to twenty bucks a gallon. In the good ol’ USA there is looting
going on everywhere. People are desperate. Some cities are just finished. Caput. Detroit. Oakland. Philly. Little Rock. Baltimore. There is no government left in those places. Anarchy. Tent cities springing up everywhere.”
“What about D.C.?” I asked.
“A real mess. An Army battalion is surrounding the White House as we speak. Angry mobs trying to break through, thousands of people. The president has declared a national state of emergency and is sending troops and National Guard into every big city to restore order. Good luck, I say.”
“Wow. Amazing. And what about the rest of the world? What’s been going on?”
“More bad news, bro. Little wars are breaking out everywhere because people are totally freaked out so they turn against their neighbors. Religious wars, too: Muslims versus Hindus, Christians versus everybody else. Millions of refugees on the move, starvation, genocide, even cannibalism, I hear. People eating their babies. It’s a bad scene, Marty, scary as hell. Lots of people waiting for J.C. to come back, lots of folks praying for the end of it all, a lot of suicides and just a black cloud coming down on the whole damn thing.”
“Look, Hacker, I—”
“You know me, Marty, I may be a sarcastic asshole and a skeptic about New Age-type shit and miracles and auras and angels and psychic readings, etcetera, etcetera, and especially a skeptic about a higher power and God and all that, but I have always believed in people. And technology. And the future. I always thought the people of Earth could have a good life, that someday we could all get together and share the goodies, and everybody get along. Now…I don’t think so. I think it’s too late. We’ve gone too far. Hate has won. I think we are all doomed.”
I looked at Hacker, stared at him for a long time. His eyes were filled with tears. I had never seen that before. I looked into him. His mind and his heart were enveloped in a great, overwhelming fog of sadness. It was almost more than I could bear.
“Hacker,” I said gently. “Hacker, old friend. You remember last winter we had dinner at Sushi Town and we were talking about Black Swan Galactic and what the name ‘Black Swan’ was all about? And the weirdoes who were triggering these environmental disasters and taking strange drugs and blackmailing all the governments? And you said, I remember your exact words, you said, ‘Nothing like this has ever happened in human history. We could all be headed for the trash heap unless something happens to turn this around.’”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember that dinner. I was worried about the future. I got a bunch of intel from the hacker network about these creeps and I was totally freaked out. And I remember that good beer was cheaper than water that night at Sushi Town. And I remember the great legs and cute toes on our waitress, who was from Singapore or something. And we talked about you and Jill and—”
“Right. Right. We talked about your surveillance of my meeting with Jill, and blah blah blah. We talked about the whacko sci-fi fantasies of the Black Swan Galactic leadership, their quest for the stars, etcetera, etcetera. Yesterday’s news. Here’s some late-breaking, my brother.
“Their space station is nearly complete and they are preparing for a manned rocket launch in the very near future. They blackmailed the mighty U.S. Government into letting them use the White Sands Missile Range in the New Mexico desert for their launch site. This is the next step in their plan to conquer the stars, dude!”
“Wha-a-a-a-a-t?” said Hacker, his eyes darkening with anger. “So that’s what it’s really all about, eh? All this global disruption, this hijacking of the planet’s operating systems, millions of innocent people dying, just so a few crazies can escape this mess we’re in and beat the Grim Reaper and fly to the moon? Have you got any documentation on all this, good buddy?”
“Yeah. Me and the girls brought back petabytes of data that we downloaded from the Black Swan matrix in Davos. We’ve got their organizational chart, who the bigwigs are. You won’t believe some of that. We’ve got their business plan. We’ve got their training videos for building a space station. We’ve got little animated movies on what life will be like on their space station. We’ve got CGI versions of their vision for exploring the galaxy. Amazing stuff, Hacker.”
“How do I get my hands on this data, Marty?” His eyes were suddenly on fire; the dark clouds were gone.
“First, I want you to meet our new friend, Greta Eisner. She was the State Department’s mole at Black Swan Beta. She helped Jill upload your killer virus to take out the Black Swan matrix. She’s the one who risked her life to download all these petabytes of data onto flash drives which she smuggled out of the building, don’t ask me how. We brought her back to Sedona with us. You’ll meet her maybe later today. She is a real sweetheart, real smart, and a computer nerd.”
“Does she have pretty feet?” asked the Hacker, suddenly innocent and boyish.
“I, uh, didn’t really notice,” I said. “Probably, I dunno. She is a small lady, kinda pretty, wears glasses, shy, perky, sorta naïve.”
“Hmmmmm,” said Hacker, deep in thought and fantasy, and I couldn’t resist: I looked into his mind and saw an image of a face—Hacker’s, looking skyward—with a big smile on it and a petite foot planted squarely on the face. Hacker suddenly snapped to attention. “Hey! Are you rummaging around in my mind? I think I felt something in there.”
“Why, Hacker, I wouldn’t think of violating your mental privacy. If you want to fantasize about feet, I…oops!”
“I knew it!” he cried. “Damn you, Marty!” And then he exploded into a fit of hilarious laughter. Soon I joined him. It was a joyous relief, after the tense talk about the world situation. Then Hacker got very serious.
“Marty,” he began, “we can’t come back here anymore. To my house, I mean. At least for now. It’s too dangerous.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, although I already knew from a quick mind scan. The three teenage girls who had been staying in his house had fled the day before; destination: Chickentown. There had been telephone threats by men with Slavic accents, graffiti spray-painted on his wooden fence, loads of feces, human and otherwise, dumped into his front yard. Drive-by shootings had become a daily occurrence, but only his fence had been hit with sprays of bullets. Hacker had electrified his wooden fence and studded it with alarms and videocams, but that didn’t stop the thugs who were harassing him.
“You just read me, right?” said Hacker. “I think I felt you inside my skull.”
“Yeah, I got it, brother, I got the pictures. What do you intend to do?”
“These guys mean business. I think my life is in danger if I stay here. They know I’m connected with you and Leela and Jill. I’ve got a plan. I’ll give you the details later.”
“The Brotherhood,” I said simply. “A gang of goons from Eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union. The enforcement arm of Black Swan Galactic. They’re the ones who tried to bump us off in Switzerland, and they’re the ones who tried to run us off the road in Oak Creek Canyon last summer. They are a vicious bunch of killers. If they are the ones who have been harassing you, it would be best to evacuate the premises, my man. Immediately.”
“I hate to give up my humble abode, Marty, but you’re right. Let me pack up a few things, including an ounce of primo weed and my favorite bowl, and we’ll get the hell out of here. Plus the toilets haven’t worked for two weeks and the smell is starting to get to me. That’s one of the main reasons the teenies left—they had to do their business outside. They didn’t appreciate that. I told them to pretend they were camping out. Okay, Marty, I—”
A tremendous explosion interrupted Hacker mid-sentence. It seemed to come from just outside the front door. The house shook; framed photographs and paintings of women’s feet fell off the walls. Smoke and an acrid chemical smell filled the house.
“What was that?!” I shouted. “Hacker, I think we have just been bombed.” I ran to a window and saw that his sturdy redwood fence ha
d been decimated, probably by a pipe bomb. What remained of the fence was on fire. “Get your stuff together, my brother, and let us flee this scene! Or maybe you should put out this fire first!”
Hacker dashed through the front door carrying a miniature fire extinguisher, spraying the fire dead and stomping angrily on the still-burning embers that littered the front yard. “Damn! Shit! Fuck! Mierda! Friggin’ sumbitches!”
It was a wonderful catharsis for my friend. It seemed to calm him down and to help him focus on the job at hand, which was to get the hell out of there. Ten minutes later we were on his sleek Harley Volt 100 series motorcycle, the first all-electric bike to be available to consumers. The saddle bags were packed with clothes, a laptop, and his potent stash of top-grade marijuana.
I scanned his thoughts during the wild ride through West Sedona, avoiding the checkpoints and the cops, on the way to my house to wrap things up there. Ol’ Hacker had something up his sleeve, all right. He had made arrangements with the Enchanted Forest Resort for us to stay there. It was all arranged. We needed a headquarters and a hideout. He didn’t seem surprised that I had read his thoughts and deduced his plans. It saved a lot of needless chit-chat, he said.
And for all of us—Leela, Jill, Greta, Hacker, myself—it was to be a new beginning, another leap into the void. I tried to peek into the future, but all I got was chaos, upheaval, non-stop noise, the shrill cry of birds on a mass migration. And darkness.
But one image came through very clear: a confrontation with Goddess Kali, now an all-powerful entity with madness in her eyes. In my vision she had a new name: Big Mama Lakshmi. This made no sense at the time.
It would soon enough.
26 The Road to Chickentown
We spent a joyous week at the Enchanted Forest resort, soaking up much-needed R&R for our exhausted bodies and stressed-out minds. The spa was our favorite hangout. We ate like royalty. We hiked on nearby trails. We made love. We meditated. And we made love often, the two psi ladies and I. My chip implant seemed to enhance every sensation, every feeling, every moment.
We even put together our own little rock band, using instruments that had been left behind by a group that had stayed at the EF, a Christian heavy metal outfit called Loaves & Fishes. When the musicians and their roadies heard the end of the world might be approaching, they left immediately with only the clothes on their backs, leaving their instruments behind.
The Seventh Chakra, we called ourselves. Hacker on lead guitar, Benny Bravo on bass, me on keyboard, Leela on drums, and Jill on flute and vocals. At first Greta declined to join us, falling back on her claim of terminal shyness. In time she joined Jill on vocals, and turned out to have an amazing knack for singing harmony. We created several original songs spontaneously, chords, melody, lyrics, just by tuning in to the creative Source. Of course the synchronous mindscape of the three psychics helped to make it all happen.
Meanwhile, we were all anxiously awaiting a message from the State Department. What next? With the Internet back up and running, Leela took a chance and sent an encrypted message to the Secretary. Her whereabouts were unknown, we were told; we knew she and her people at the embassy in Nicosia had escaped before civil war enveloped Cyprus. Within an hour we got an encrypted message back from the Secretary’s deputy.
Our orders were clear: First, turn over all computer files that we had liberated from Black Swan Beta headquarters. This was to be accomplished thusly: a military helicopter would land on a grassy area of the Enchanted Forest property, a colonel in uniform would rappel down to the ground, spot Leela by sight, and give personal information about her that was known only to the State Department. This would be like a password; nobody was taking any chances of subterfuge. Leela would then turn over the hard drive containing precious petabytes of information. (Secretly, we would keep a copy.)
Second: Our little group was to locate a person of interest named Wolfgang Maximus, the purported head of Black Swan Galactic. He was last known to be in New Mexico, somewhere near Santa Fe and Los Alamos. We were to take him into custody, if possible. This was a tall order, as he was rumored to be protected by several layers of security.
Third: We were to locate a white female who had joined Maximus and Black Swan to further their dark and dirty agenda. This person’s assignment was to trigger eco-disasters, sabotage the global economy, and essentially screw up all of the fragile systems and procedures that once kept the planet Earth glued together. She allegedly had the supernatural ability to make things happen. She formerly lived in Sedona and was known then as Goddess Kali. Now she was known by another name, Big Mama Lakshmi. Our assignment: If possible, terminate Big Mama Lakshmi, with extreme prejudice. If possible.
“BINGO!” shouted Leela, reading our orders to Jill and I from the decoded transmission. “Big Mama Lakshmi, is it? My old girlfriend, Aura Adelstein? She’s hit the big time now! It wasn’t enough to be a goddess and have her own Tantra temple, now she has to hook up with the biggest villains on the world stage!”
“The orb that invaded her body out on Bell Rock must have something to do with this,” I said. “Aura, Kali, Lakshmi—whoever she is now—must have learned how to manipulate that entity and use its power to fuck things up!”
“Right on,” said Jill. “How are we supposed to ‘terminate’ this person, anyway? I have heard she has enormous power now—probably due to that freakin’ misplaced orb, as Marty said—and that she can do things like affect the weather and cause earthquakes and volcanoes and hurricanes and floods and get inside people’s heads and make them go insane. And be in two or three places at the same time. Not to mention bringing people back from the dead and other weird stuff too gross to talk about. How could we even get close to her? Sorry, Leela, this gig freaks me out. Plus ‘terminating’ people was not in our job description.”
Leela nodded. “I understand where you’re coming from, girlfriend, I really do. Possibly you and I and Marty could pool our psi power and set up a force field around the Big Mama, but she could probably flick us away like mosquitoes. And she would know that we were approaching and create some horrible event to keep us away, like a forest fire or a tornado. Plus our lives would be in danger. No, kids, we need something else for this assignment.”
“Like a whole elite battalion of marines, with futuristic weapons and air cover?” I said sarcastically. My recent vision of an opponent named Big Mama Lakshmi made sense, now.
“No,” said Jill, “just one little man with shabby clothes and mismatched facial features and an empty mind, remember? He’s got some inside info on Big Mama. You met him at my house not that long ago.”
“Harry the Handyman,” I said with a sigh. “The dude who held my hand and took me into outer space.”
“Right,” said Leela. “That’s our guy. We need him with us on this gig. I’ve got his Psi-Fi handset code somewhere in my memory banks—oh, thanks, Jill.” Obviously a quick transmission had just flashed between the two telepaths, a reminder that there were no secrets in our little triad. “I’ll give Mr. Handyman a holler and find out when he can join us.”
Leela ducked into her bedroom, leaving Jill and I in Jill’s room. I looked at her, sprawled across the big bed, wearing a skimpy halter top and short shorts. I looked into her mind and to my surprise caught an image of Jill and I writhing about, naked, on her bed. A projection of the future, perhaps?
I looked her straight in the eye and sent a message:
Tonight, Jill. Tonight is our night. Just you and me.
She nodded, and a wicked smile played around her lips. That was definitely a yes.
Leela flowed back into Jill’s room and said just one word: “Chickentown.” She paused a beat, then: “Harry said to go to that tent city outside of town as soon as possible and find Kali’s Dakinis. Bring ’em back here. They’re wearing amulets that might be the key to taking down Kali, or Big Mama Lakshmi, whateve
r. He said he would join us when we came back here. And he said to pack our bags and get ready for a road trip.”
“A road trip to New Mexico, no doubt,” I said, dubiously. “For a showdown with a very powerful, very dangerous, and probably psychotic woman, and the head of the organization that has been trashing our planet. Brilliant.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head, Marty,” said my beloved wife. “Harry will be coming with us to New Mexico. He may hold the key to this whole operation. In fact, I have a strong feeling that he holds the key to the future of the human race, no less.”