

Cover image: The cover image is titled Elite Dangerous / Docked. It was produced by Stefan S and is being used under a Creative Commons By License.

Verum Et Inventa

DARK FICTION BY RAYMOND TOWERS

This is a magazine of dark fiction, mostly, in the genres of fantasy, horror and science fiction. Primarily, I am here to promote my fiction writing, but I am also looking forward to including submitted material from other writers with similar styles or non-traditional ideas, as well as contributions from reviewers, commentators and, hopefully, one day, even fans. In addition, and following what you might be familiar with from print digest-type magazines, I will also include articles based on my personal research, or the research of others, many of which will be controversial and difficult to absorb for the normies. Honestly, there are plenty of other outlets out there that pull their punches or whitewash what is true and promote what is fabrication. Verum Et Inventa is Latin for Truth and Fables, or Truth and Fiction, if you will. If you've come to read an adventure, I will give you one. If, after that, you want to read an article that might cause you to see things in a different way than before, I'm aiming to provide that as well.

_Most people can't handle what they can't control. That's what makes them Sheep, and Sheep will always follow their Shepherds. Even if the Shepherds are really wolves, the Sheep will still follow._ \- Raymond Towers

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2018 Raymond Towers

**Smashwords Edition, License Notes:** Thank you for viewing or downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share this ebook with your friends provided that it remains in its complete original form and is not used for any commercial purpose. If you enjoy reading this story, please consider posting a review or making a purchase of one of the author's other titles. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All of the characters in this e-book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This is issue number 1 of Verum Et Inventa magazine, with an official release date of November 1st, 2018. With any luck, this magazine will be produced on a bi-monthly schedule, with a minimum of 100 pages of content per issue. Links to future (and back) issues of this magazine can be found on the Freebie page at Raymond Towers Dot Com.

Rating: This issue contains a MEDIUM to EXTREME amount of controversial subject matter.

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### Table Of Contents

Editorial

Science Fiction

Variant Worlds 2

Asteroid QQ37 - Part 1

The Anomaly Of Object AA

Asteroid QQ37 - Part 2

Apocalypse Fiction

Rothschild Apocalypse

Rothschild Apocalypse Excerpt

Non-Fiction Section

Articles

How I Became My Male Characters

Science-Based Starships And Colonies

Media Reviews

Story Starters

I Want Contributors!

About The Publisher / Author

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### Editorial

Welcome, beautiful readers. This magazine is all about meee! That's right, meee!

Okay, seriously. I have no choice here, as I'm just starting out and I don't know any better. Everything has to revolve around me until I start getting things rolling and I get some regular contributors or really hot interns. This is what I would like to do, and you can help me get there. I write full-time in the darker fantasy, horror and science fiction genres, plus in some other genres that I don't delve into as often, like kid's poetry, which was probably a mistake on my part. Uh, I was drunk when I wrote that stuff!

In the last 7 years, I have written and e-published 35 titles under my official pen name of Raymond Towers. Most of these are full-length novels and collections of short stories that run over the official novel length of 100,000 words, so yeah, I've been busy! The problem is that nobody out there knows who I am, as an author I mean. As a conspiracy theorist that posts verifiable info from Not Fake News and lurks in online controversial forums, well, that's another story...

So... You can think of this magazine as a one-man show for the time being, where I'm basically (and freely) giving out material for you to read. I have done this before, where I gave out first chapters and short stories in a sampler through my e-book distributor Smashwords. Then they said, hold on, bucko, you have to give out full works and not bits and pieces. I searched Smashwords for samplers from other authors, where lo and behold, I found over ten of them just on the first search page. Why can't I do it and they can, I asked. Well, they said, we have to look into this further. The result was that I discontinued my 2 books of story samples. At that point, sampler book number 1 was 242 pages long, and sample book 2 was at 250 pages. Alas, book 3 was only at 39 pages. That poor fledgling never grew enough wings to fly, fly, fly into the heavens like its brothers!

I'm going to admit something to you; I am a little stubborn. Here I am, at it again with a new format for me to get my stories out and my name known. (And potentially, your name and stories as well!) This time, I'm going with a bi-monthly magazine. Right now, right now, I'm aiming for around 100 pages of material per issue. If I get some contributors, that would be great (and impressive!), but even if I don't, you'll still get to read a lot of stuff for free, even if it is only from me personally. Yes, I did say FREEE!!!

Now, what am I going to put in here? Uh, let's see. I have this bad habit of checking and re-checking my e-books, ugh, constantly. It comes with me being a hardheaded detail-obsessed perfectionist. Since I edit and review my material so often, I can post the updated versions here and updated published versions online at the same time. But that's not all! For only $9.95 you get so much more! Fine print: plus shipping and handling, and any applicable taxes. Besides excerpts from my previously published work, which I hope you will consider purchasing, hint, hint, I'm also including rough drafts of work that will be published in the future, articles I've written on writing, and whatever else I might toss in that goes along with the theme of darker fiction and non-fiction.

You can contribute! I want your stories, your feedback, your interviews, your reviews, whatever you want... Well, not whatever you want, but more in a literary sense, you know what I mean? See the appropriate Contribute section for details on what I would like to publish and how you can get it to me.

Ah, what else? Let's see. It's a warm day in San Diego as I'm writing this. I'm listening the The Smiths Greatest Hits (some girls' mothers are bigger than other girls' mothers!), and I've completed my fiction writing, 4 hours worth, for the morning. I intend on putting on my armor and equipping myself with short sword and shield so I can hit the conspiracy forums in a bit, and I might write more or do some research later tonight, probably on the hidden history of New Zealand and its original blonde and redheaded inhabitants. What else do you want to know?

There, I've given you an icebreaker to start a conversation with. Ardent readers, hopeful and / or established writers, fans and lurkers with an alternative bent, I want to hear from you!

Raymond Towers

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### Variant Worlds 2

_This collection of science fiction stories was released on October 1_ st _, 2018._

About this series: New worlds, variant worlds, beckon for you to come and explore them. These worlds are full of fantasy and science fiction. Travel through space, through jungles, into your own backyard and even into your mind. These worlds begin where your reality ends, and they will take you everywhere. In these collections of short stories, you will see, hear and smell the exotic. You will experience everything, and everything will experience you.

About this collection: This science fiction collection features multiple arcs, woven around the central theme of space exploration and the Starship Neptune. Meet the people: the military contractors, the scientists, the common workers, the prisoners and even the sex bots, in a setting where bold moves could reap great benefits, uncover unexpected sensuality or result in dire repercussions. Rating: HIGH controversy.

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Asteroid QQ37 - Part 1

There are places that not even god can reach.

Asteroid QQ37 was one of those places. Men with severe prison sentences were taken there to mine, because capital punishment had long since been abolished on the civilized worlds. That's what they said, anyway, but everyone knew it wasn't true. The elites that ran the Federation Of Planets used every excuse they could think of to murder their constituents. The elites killed the masses through the food they consumed, the water they drank and with the radiation they sprayed into the skies. Autism, cancer and other induced maladies were running rampant all over the colonized worlds. The masses were too stupid, as always, to comprehend how they were being systematically weakened.

Lender wasn't among the stupid ones. Lender figured things out and he was vocal about it. That's how he got his prison sentence. After appearing in one too many protests and posting one too many links to real evidence online, the elite cleansing program targeted him. A hit squad broke into his home to murder his wife and two children, and to plant incriminating files onto his computer. The operatives branded him a murderer and a conspirator. They made up their 'official story' that he was trying to overthrow the government. They invented that he was part of a plot to assassinate the president, who was on her third clone by then after previous successful attempts on her life. Nobody knew that, by the way, except for those like Lender that used advanced facial recognition programs to study down to the pores of the president's face. That bitch had been killed twice and reproduced by the elites, while the public couldn't be bothered to see that her irises had a synthetic pattern in them. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look.

Len hated religion, as he knew how religious leaders manipulated belief and faith to control the masses. If someone had told him a few years ago that he would one day turn into a religious man, Len would have laughed in their faces. He'd been indoctrinated into Chrislam, of course, like so many others before him, and been taught to bow toward the rising sun of the east every morning. That had only lasted as far as Len's teenage years, until he discovered that the leaders of the colonized worlds had years before conspired to merge the great religions into one, and that many other diverse religions had existed before the advent of Chrislam.

A new religion, a secret religion, was spreading among the many miners like him whom had lost their hope. Their new god had a name, but the deity's worshippers kept that name out of their minds as much as they could. The new god had horns and carried a flaming sword in one hand and a book of law in the other. This was a god of vengeance first, of strict holy cleansing and the wiping out of corruption. He would become a god of purity and light only after the cancer of the galactic elite was excised and burned away. In the interim, the god's flaming sword would swing with fury. The reason Len and others who followed this deity kept their religion out of their brains was because the wardens continually ran mind scans on their prisoners. Too many restricted thoughts would get a miner taken to Interrogation, and that was not a good place for any man to end up. Many times, those men would not come back.

Before the mining sentence, Len had not been a religious man. He hadn't been a homosexual man either. After getting raped in dark places one time too many by roving bands of desperate men, he had no choice but to adapt to his new circumstances. Len searched out who the political dissidents in the mining colony were, the Truthers like him. He found an Asian man who was nearly as tall as he was, another loner being abused in the same way, and just as strong. He beat that man and raped him, and he made the man watch over Len's cot as he slept, and to follow him around when he had to go into dark places.

The man's name was Kyu. He was from New Korea, some new country that was established on one of Saturn's moons, but Len always forgot which moon. After having enough of being raped, Kyu waited until Len was fast asleep. He beat Len senseless with his shoe and returned the favor. When Kyu was done, he demanded to be treated like a man and not like a slave. By then, both men had gotten accustomed to being near one another. Neither wanted to walk dark corridors alone where bands of men might find them. They become lovers. Kyu no longer sat on the floor while Len slept; now they slept on the same cot. If violence came their way, they stood by each other's side and faced it together.

Len had seen similar relationships among the other prisoners. Sometimes one man would be the husband, while the other acted like the wife. That wasn't the case with he and Kyu. They were both men, and that's what they acted like. Their new god understood that they were committing unnatural acts out of necessity and oppression, and forgave the two men for that.

The two men walked astride, from the crowded dormitory and over to the suiting up area. As they stripped nude in preparation for the compression area, Kyu reached over to slap Len on the bare ass. It was a habit the Asian man had taken up recently. At first, the act had irritated Len, but he'd since gotten used to it.

"You have more meat on your butt than I do on mine." Kyu had explained this to him once. "Sometimes while we are having sex, I can close my eyes and pretend you are a woman."

Too bad that didn't work both ways, Len had frowned upon hearing that. Kyu's ass was narrow, leaving no doubt as to his partner's biological sex. "Just don't do that while everyone is watching."

Kyu hadn't listened, of course. He seemed to get a kick out of embarrassing Len that way. Len found he could tolerate the act after at time, once he started viewing it as a sign of affection. In a remote, lonely place like QQ37, genuine love was hard to come by.

As the two men donned their thin specialized suits, along with about ten others, they took their last few breaths of cool, filtered air. Once the suits were on and they were out in the mining tunnels, they would be breathing their own hot sweat until their shift was finished. After checking each other's suits, they lined up with the other men to wait for the acclimatization chamber to open up. If any tiny leaks or punctures were found on their suits, they would show up in chamber, before the men went into the tunnels. A hole in a suit could become a fatal flaw out in the asteroid's underground atmosphere.

As the chamber shifted from the human environment into the asteroid's, Len couldn't help but think of all the petty jealousies circulating among their little squad. They had worked with those same men for a couple of months now, or at least that's what Len calculated, as it was difficult to keep track of day cycles when only the wardens had clocks and calendars. He couldn't even talk to Kyu during their work shift, as their compact helmets were not equipped with transmitters. Only the supervisors could be heard speaking, and god help the prisoners if one of the supers was in a bad mood, as there was no way to shut the radios off. They would have to listen to the supervisor ranting and raving all day.

What was Len just thinking of?

Oh, the jealousies. Some of those were so stupid and arose from the simple fact that the men had nothing else to think about. Len and Kyu were resented because they were efficient at their jobs, as if being rebellious against the supervisors was a sign of heroism. Others hated that they were Truthers who had committed no real crime other than to expose the truth, while they were cheats, scoundrels and murderers. Some even hated the two men because they were from different races. Never mind that they were all prisoners and being kept under the thumb of the same few people tasked with watching over them. Even in space, the dumb sheep still chose to remain dumb sheep; they would turn on each other because they were too stupid to band together and overthrow their rulers, the same as the people on Len's home planet of Earth.

The compression chamber warning lights went from yellow-check to green-go. Several men crowded near the exit, eager to hurry out and claim the best excavators and sorters. It would be nice if all of the equipment was in good working condition, but the main reason the men were running out in a hurry was because they were lazy. Some of the digging machines were easy to operate, while others had to be constantly watched or broke down a lot.

It didn't matter so much to either Len or Kyu; regardless, they would be out there for six long hours. The machines that were harder to work on also strengthened their muscles and kept them fit. The colony had a fitness and workout center, but too many prisoners would be thrown in there all at once, clogging everything up. Besides that, the prison gangs took over certain machines or sections of the gym, preventing anyone else from using the equipment. Doing the hard labor in the mines was a good alternative to having to fight some asshole for the grand privilege of using the bench-press station.

QQ37 was set up in the usual way. The giant asteroid had been plucked out of the belt between Mars and Jupiter, by a starship capable of producing electromagnetic waves that singled out asteroids full of metallic ores. The asteroid was shaped like a rough potato with a size of about seventy by a hundred miles. A domed colony was set up on the surface, tough enough to counter the surface temperatures of minus 100 Fahrenheit. Once QQ37 was deemed to be feasible for mining, the prison colony was built under the dome, and under the surface. The miners could dig in any direction they wanted to, basically, in order to extract the ores and to break the asteroid up into smaller fragments. They didn't have to worry about tunnels collapsing as the starship was holding the fragments together electromagnetically. Even if the tunnels did cave in on top of their heads, losing a few miners in the armpit of space was no big news story. Hell, it probably wouldn't even be reported.

Since they were working underground, at least they didn't have to worry about micrometeorites tearing through their suits, Len thought, as he and Kyu made their way to the last of the excavating equipment. As expected, the other rabble had left them with the sorter, or feeder-breaker if you want the technical name for it. The two men had the unenviable task of waiting for the batch-hauler to come by with a load of full bins. It would be up to Len and Kyu to take out the material, one heavy bucket at a time, and dump it into the sorter. The machine could filter out the material by size and type, and put it into new bins. These bins were sealed up and readied for pick-up by the starship later. The problem was that the sorter had to be watched closely, as it wasn't perfect in its selection process and it had a tendency to jam up a lot. If it threw too much material into the wrong bin after jamming, then the entire stupid bin had to be emptied out and sorted all over again.

Kyu got into the sorting machine and drove it out to the tunnels they were working on, while Len simply followed alongside on foot. They were alternating turns, with Kyu driving out and Len driving back. That was pretty much all the novelty they could expect for that day. The rest of it was a long and laborious effort of filling buckets up, dumping them into the sorter, and making sure the sorter ran smoothly.

Another machine followed them: the bin collector. This vehicle could carry four full bins at a time, taking them to the hangar where they could be picked up by drone ships and taken up to the starship floating in space. That's the job most of the prisoners wanted and would come to fisticuffs over. By entering the hangar, those lucky men would enter a human environment where they wouldn't have to wear their suits. Scientists would check the material in the bins, which took hours sometimes depending on the quality. After that, the full bins were secured to the drone ships, which could also take hours if the prisoners doing it took their sweet time. Of course, this extended waiting time meant a backlog at all stages of their line prior to the hangar, until the angry supervisors came by to rattle the laggards and got it all going again.

Because they could not talk, Len and Kyu went through a complex series of back and forth hand signals. The sorter was cleared out and ready to go. It was set to separate the poorer soil from the richer amounts of bauxite, haemitite and pentlandite, which would produce aluminum, iron and nickel, respectively. They had half a bin of material to go through from their last shift, and four empty bins sitting behind them waiting to be filled up. They checked the electric charge on the sorter, the oil in the gearbox and the ice that melted over the processor to keep it cool. Everything got a thumbs-up, until Kyu found a jagged rock stuck in the vehicle's tire tread. He pried the rock out carefully, before it tore up the thick rubber the tire was made of any further.

Len went to fill up the first of the buckets. He would dump them, they'd get sorted, and Kyu would watch what came out the other side. When Len got tired, they'd simply switch places. It would be a typical day for them, just like the last few days had been.

A supervisor came by after about three hours to check on them. All supervisors were hated men, even if they were nice guys. They were prisoners who'd been working on the asteroids for some time. For every day a supervisor worked, two days would be taken off their sentences, even if they'd committed heinous crimes in the past. Most of them were assholes that liked to lord it over the rest of them, but the rank and file hated them all, even the nice ones, because of the way their sentences were being reduced.

"We need ice for the hydroponics gardens." The supervisor came to yell at them.

That was no problem. Kyu went to point at a bin that was two-thirds full of ice, which they'd been using to cool down the sorter. The supervisor took a good measure of what they had.

"I need about half of that." The supervisor decided.

That's when Len frowned. It was going to be a pain in the ass, because it meant they'd have to jump into the bin and hack the ice apart with a small pick-axe. All the broken chunks would be going into a new bin.

Kyu pointed at the sorter and waved his hands to the sides.

"Yes, turn off the sorter so you can do this." The supervisor nodded back. He looked at the two lazy bastards manning the bin collector. Those men had done nothing all day. "Kyu, Len, I want you to push the bin into hydroponics. These other two shits are going to watch the sorter while you two are gone, and they'd better not fuck anything up!"

Once their superior had walked off to berate the others, Len and Kyu glanced at one another. Pushing the bin was a pain on the uneven ground, at least until they got inside. After that, it was a breeze. Even better, they would have the chance to take their suits off because they would be in human environment. With half their shift already over, there was a good chance they wouldn't have to go back outside that day.

Kyu was grinning, and after a moment, Len was grinning as well. It had been a while since they'd seen any women, but they were bound to catch an eyeful of them in the hydroponics area.

Since Kyu was the fresher of the two, he jumped into the bin with the small axe, while Len went to grab an empty bin from the bunch.

At a rough estimate, there were about two hundred people living on that asteroid, but they did not all live together. It was actually a big secret as to how many of them lived in which sectors, and what the civilian contractors did besides the mining. From what Len had been able to gather, the prisoners were kept in groups of twenty to twenty-five. This number included the supervisors. That was manageable enough for the five prison staff members that watched over them. He didn't know how many groups of prisoners there were in total. Maybe they were the only bunch currently on QQ37 and the higher-ups had lied about the rest of it. Who knew?

Besides the prisoners there were a small number of scientists studying the material and grading it, and other bunches of people who maintained the energy to power the colony, to keep up the food production and to take care of the waste recycling.

Most of the time, prisoners were called into recycling for waste clean-up when something went wrong, like clearing out solids that had accidentally ended up in the biodegradable processors. That was a horribly smelling job, by the way. Because the prisoners went into that area so frequently, they could estimate that only four full-time engineers ran it.

The prisoners were never allowed into the energy production area. They didn't even know what that area looked like; let alone how many technicians worked in it. If there was an administrative division in the colony, they'd never seen that either. Hydroponics, on the other hand, called the mining division for manual labor every so often. The reports from the prisoners who had been there indicated that there were multiple females, that they ranged in age from older to younger, and that the women outnumbered the men.

Len and Kyu took a good hour to get the necessary amount of ice into the rolling bin. They took another half hour to roll the bin over to the acclimatization chamber. The bin didn't have wheels but ran instead on two long treads like a tank, which made the bin a bitch to turn in a tight corner. Before they entered the chamber, they cleaned the treads as best they could, so they wouldn't leave tracks all over.

"What is in the bin?" A surveillance officer asked through a microphone, the moment the men sealed the chamber door behind them.

Kyu reached into the bin to pull out a chunk of ice. The officer cleared them to proceed, as it was not the usual time for any of them to be returning from the mines.

Two officers armed with electric stunners waited for them to come into human environment. One motioned the prisoners to the side, while the other peered into the bin to make sure it was filled only with ice.

"Proceed." The officer told them.

Len and Kyu both checked the treads again for excess soil, before they each took a side and started pushing the bin out of the chamber. When the door closed up behind them, the prisoners removed their helmets. Their faces shone with sweat, and they knew they smelled bad, but at least they weren't outside anymore.

"Let's get a move on." One officer motioned ahead with his stunner. "We don't want all that ice melted before it gets delivered."

The bins were leak-proof, and the people in hydroponics were going to use the water and not the ice, but apparently their guards still felt the need to bully them around. Len took one side, while Kyu went to push from the other. One guard walked ahead of them to warn off any passerby that the bin was coming. The second guard walked in back, to keep his eye on the pushers.

Instead of heading down the corridor to the prisoner dormitories, the first guard used his access card to open up a new pathway. It was large enough for an Earth car to drive through easily, Len saw, or maybe for two bins to sit side by side. They pushed their burden down that corridor until the guard called out for them to stop. After using his card again, their escort took them into civilian population.

The lighting and walls were brighter here, almost white, contrasting with the dingy and darker gray they'd left behind. The prisoner section had light fixtures with burned out bulbs and walls with scuffmarks, but this new area showed much better maintenance.

"A guy could get snow blindness in here." Len joked to the guard behind them.

The officer didn't reply. He looked like the sort who would rather stun him unconscious than talk to him, so Len decided to keep his mouth shut.

They did run into a minor obstacle when they came to an intersection. The bin's treads had to make a near right angle turn, but they were never designed for such a maneuver. That meant Len had to push his end while Kyu held the other side still. It took them a couple of tries, but they managed to get the bin around that corner.

As the prisoners got the bin to face forward in the new route, Len glanced down another corridor. Two people in their twenties were standing there, both wearing silvery tunics with a company insignia over the left side of their chest. One was a black man, the other a white woman. For some reason, Len felt contempt at the black man, for simply standing next to that woman. He didn't understand this feeling at all. He'd never been racist; that much was evident from him having taken an Asian as a lover. Also, he saw so very few women that he hardly thought about them at all.

Len scrutinized his angry reaction as he and Kyu resumed pushing the bin. No, he did not hate the black man or the white woman. He did not hate that they were standing together either. It was freedom, he decided. He hated that they could stand there freely, watching two lowly prisoners performing a menial task, while wardens and supervisors and guards were always watching them.

Kyu was in the mood to talk smack, as he turned his head toward the guard behind them. "You're the kind that likes spying on civilians, aren't you? I know you wank off while watching women like that strip for bed, or when they're in the shower. Or is it that Negro? Are you the kind who likes watching Negroes take off their clothes, when they think they're undressing privately? Which one do you wank off to?"

Len heard the guard chuckle. He didn't want to look back in case the officer became angry enough stun them. If the man did hurt Kyu, Len would have no choice but to defend his lover, just as he would against any other attack.

"Are you going to tell me?" Kyu persisted.

"I have a love bot." The guard revealed.

"What is that like?" Kyu asked. "What does she look like? Is the bot a she?"

This time, Len did look back. He saw the officer shrugging.

"It looks like whoever I want it to." The man admitted. "As long as I download a new program for it, anyway."

"Come on. Tell us more about that. I've never had a love bot. What about you, Len?"

"No, never." Len shook his head.

"It cost me three thousand digi-coins." The guard replied.

"Holy fuck! You must get paid in gold, man!" Kyu marveled.

"No, no, just regular digi-coin." The guard said. "The standard model comes in either a man's body or a woman's. Pretty generic, really. Black hair, black eyes, white skin, average body shape so it can conform to any Caucasoid race. The base price is bad enough, but where they really get you is the downloads. Those go from three hundred credits up to a thousand. I download a new program, the bot conforms to it in three to five days, and then the bot looks like somebody new."

"A thousand coin to get your bot to look like somebody new?" Kyu shook his head. "Those must be the biggest celebrities in the galaxy to warrant such a high price."

"Yes, they are." The officer confirmed. "Celebrities go for around eight hundred. The most expensive makeovers are the customized programs. That's where you might have a college sweetheart or a co-worker you have a crush on. The bot company will go through all sorts of social media and background info for that person, and it will design a unique personality program based on that person. That will cost a thousand digi-coins. I'm sorry, but I'm not spending that much on my bot. The lower priced programs are good enough for me."

"And they walk and talk and everything?" Kyu asked. "You're not going to tell us what your bot looks like, are you?"

"They do everything a real person does, except have temper tantrums and go to the toilet all day." The man replied. "My bot will have dinner waiting for me when I go off-shift, cooked to perfection and just the way I want it. Sure, I'll tell you what she looks like. Some guys, they want to change the way their bot looks every few months, but not me. All I did to the standard model was change her hair from black to brown and curly. I gave her C-cup breasts and added about twenty pounds to her weight. She's no beauty queen, but who wants a fucking beauty queen? You see how those bitches act on the tele-vid. I don't want a bitch that looks like that at home. Yeah, you could say that I'm happy with what I got."

"I have you beat." Kyu joked.

"How is that?"

"I've got Len here. He becomes whoever I want when I close my eyes, and I don't have to pay a single coin for that!"

Len was surprised to hear the guard laughing. Maybe the man wasn't as big an asshole as he thought at first.

"Stop!" The guard up front said, just a few seconds later. For a moment, the haulers didn't hear anything. They soon understood the guard was speaking with someone on an intercom. "Hello? This is Officer Murphy. I have two workers here from mining division. They've brought over a bin half full of ice, as requested."

They didn't hear the answer, as it came in a low voice.

"Yes, they were both evaluated while in decompression." Murphy said. "Neither of them has much of a violent history. They were sentenced for dissent and political crimes, but nothing like terrorism."

"We're not violent men." Len felt compelled to tell the guard standing behind them.

The guard up front appeared to be listening for about half a minute, before he called out, "We're entering hydroponics division now. You men are to be on your best behavior. Any problems will be reported to the wardens. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." Both Len and Kyu replied.

The prisoners heard the door beeping as the guard used his access card.

"All right." Murphy informed them. "There is a slight warp here on the floor, between the corridor and the next room. Be careful with that."

The pushers looked to either side, seeing how much clearance they had for the bin before they moved it forward. It was no problem getting the bin past that hump, as the bin had treads. A cart with wheels might have presented a problem.

"Set it here, against the wall for now." A woman's voice was heard next.

Len couldn't see her, as she was over on Kyu's side. Once he helped settle the bin back into the spot, he became very interested in who the speaker was. The woman was older than him, in her forties, with a studious face and silver-white hair. Len thought her handsome, with a slender body. That's all he could see of her form, as she wore a lab coat that went to her thighs, and loose pants under that.

"I don't want any problems from either of you, and I mean that!" The woman came to scold the men whom she'd just met. "Tell me your names. So, you are Len and you are Kyu. Wonderful. I am Dr. Ilsa and these are my projects. I expect full compliance from both of you. Do you understand? I was told that you were coming from the mines, and you certainly smell of that. In that corner we have showers. I want you both to clean yourselves off and put on the uniforms I've left there for you. You shouldn't tarry too long. I have a lot of work to do and not enough staff to do it."

"You have showers here?" Len asked.

"Well, of course we do. You do know how to take a shower, don't you?"

"I'm not sure." Len admitted.

Ilsa looked angry, thinking she was being mocked.

"These men don't use showers." Murphy explained. "They use humidifiers. All they do is step into the humidifier and a high-pressure steam cleans them off. They simply step in and step out without touching any controls or handles. The humidifiers are automatic."

"I did not know that." Ilsa replied to the officer. "Perhaps you can show them how to turn the shower on. They can leave those dirty suits on the floor. I'll have a maintenance man come by to pick them up and return them to mining division."

"These men won't have any clothing to wear when they go back." Murphy said, checking the time on his hand computer. "Their shift will end in just under an hour."

"Oh, no." Ilsa shook her head. "I thought I made that perfectly clear. These men aren't going back right away. I need them here for at least two days. I cleared all of this with the watch commander!"

Murphy frowned. "Let me check with our dispatch. All we were told was to escort two prisoners with low security risks from point A to point B. We weren't told they would be out of their area for that long."

Ilsa crossed her arms and looked irritated. "I already went through this with the watch commander! I can't do all I have to do with my limited staff!"

"This will just take a minute." Murphy said, using his 'puter to call his boss.

The other guard pulled his hand-held out also, but for an entirely different purpose. He held the 'puter out to the prisoners. "That's her."

Kyu chuckled. "She's gorgeous, man! I can't believe she's a... You know."

Intrigued, Len went to have a look for himself. He saw the officer in casual attire and with a big smile on his face. Standing next to him was a very attractive woman with big, round breasts. He wouldn't have believed that was an artificial person if he hadn't been told ahead of time. Even knowing that, the person in the image looked as real as anyone he'd ever seen.

"Here's a close-up." The man flipped past a couple of images, showing off the right one. "That's my Jenny."

"Will you marry her?" Kyu wondered.

"I might." The guard shrugged. "I'm thinking about it."

That was one of the big debates on Earth, Len recalled. Humans who married artificial people bestowed certain rights upon their bots. The extent of these rights was something that was hotly debated, with one side saying it was unnatural, and the other arguing that a human could love and bestow rights on whoever or whatever they chose. Cases where people left property and wealth to their cats and dogs were constantly being referred to in the matter. In Earth's past, people had even married their stuffed animals or their pillows!

"We're good here." Murphy announced to everyone. "These two men are to remain under Dr. Ilsa's supervision until she tells us to take them back." He gave the prisoners a hard glare. "Remember what I said. You need to be on your best behavior. Any screw-ups and you're going right back where we got you."

"We understand." Kyu nodded.

"What about you?" Murphy looked at Len.

Len was in shock. He hadn't been out in civilian population in years! He nodded as well. "Exemplary behavior, sir, as good as we showed back in the mines, if not better."

Murphy turned to go. "Randy, you stay here for an hour or two. These two men don't really have any bad marks against them, so I'm not too worried. Why don't you walk them over to the showers while I have a little talk with Dr. Ilsa here?"

Randy nodded, motioning for the prisoners to follow.

The shower stall was a cubicle much like the humidifier. It had a single handle on it that was pulled out to start the water flow, and to either side to make it hotter or colder. Kyu showered first, with the officer having to show him how to hold a bar of soap, as the man had always used dispensers with liquid soap in them. Len had used soap bars on Earth, but the archaic pull handle was new to him. Due to water conservation, showers on his home planet were automatic and measured to a maximum of eight minutes.

"Where is the timer on this?" He asked, glancing around.

"This shower doesn't have any." Randy explained. "There are no water restrictions because we can always grab an icy asteroid out here and melt it down. Our recycling center is about as good as they get."

This peeved Len a little, since the civilians could shower all day while the prisoners were blasted with fragrant steam for ten seconds. Once he stepped in, he forgot about that. He had so much water dropping down on his head he thought he was a fish!

Len took a good five minutes in that shower, before he stepped out. He found a real towel! It was hanging right there within reach, and it was soft! He was chuckling as he dried his body, as so much of this day was turning out to be too good to be true. After he dried himself, he went over to put on the clothes that were set out for him. He had a white shirt made of cotton, men's briefs, a set of loose pants that conformed to his waist, but were slightly too short in the legs, and his own scientist's coat. Len couldn't remember the last time he'd worn something other than his prison garb.

Kyu looked to have found a new friend in Randy. The officer had called his female robot and given his 'puter over to the Asian man. Apparently, Kyu was having a blast in talking to the bot, as he was grinning wide and chuckling frequently.

Dr. Ilsa came over several minutes later. "That ice you men brought here is pliant enough for us to put it into the purifiers."

Her voice was stern and expectant, Len noticed. Hoping to make a good impression on the woman, he tapped his partner on the arm and started toward the bin. Thankfully, Kyu did not delay in following him.

"And where is the purifier?" Len asked.

"There is more than one." Ilsa briskly strode behind them. "I have much work for you to do and very little time to get it done. Take hold of that thing and follow me."

Kyu was still grinning, having never expected to get this opportunity away from the same old, everyday drudgery. Len hadn't seen his lover so happy in days.

Once he took hold of the bin, Len thought, why not let myself be happy, even if it is only for a short time. He matched Kyu's grin with his own, as the men began pushing the container after the strict Dr. Ilsa.

#####

The Anomaly Of Object AA

Harry Paxton had tits. That's right, he had blonde hair, big tits and a nice sun tan all over his body. The forty year-old man was wearing a skimpy bikini and lying on a well-rendered facsimile of Venice Beach, California. The landscape was provided courtesy of the starship's historical archives. His womanly costume, on the other hand, was designed by one of his ship's current batch of sexual deviants, the Chinese astronaut Yu Yun Guan Rong. And boy, Yu Yun had really Gone Wrong this time.

He recognized Yu Yun when she entered the scene, or at least he sensed it was she. She looked like a tall anime hero with spiked hair and a sleek, midnight blue cloak. When Yu paused before Harry, she shed her coat and revealed a lean man's body with taut muscles and a strong erection.

Oh, boy, Harry thought, here it comes.

They made meaningless small talk, mostly because Yu was nervous about doing this with the ship's captain. Harry could understand that, so he flirted in a manner he thought an interested blonde would employ. One thing led to another, and the holographic version of the Asian man ended up on top of the hologram of the hot blonde.

After having talked with Yu and others who had entertained themselves this way, Harry figured he had an idea of what this would feel like. He had a good imagination, right? But no, he'd been wrong. He hadn't even been close to getting this one pegged. All of the sensations of his womanly form being taken on a sunny day, on a ruffled towel on warm sand, were first person and in the moment. His tits bounced while he was getting throttled. Harry shut his eyes, and those cries that came out of his mouth, well those weren't manly at all, but lusty and sexy and high-pitched, just like the clamor a hot blonde would really make.

"That was something different." Harry said breathlessly, once the scenario faded away and he found himself sitting in the hologram room with Yu.

Harry didn't think he'd felt that thrilled, or that embarrassed, in many years. When he glanced into the tech-chair Yu was occupying, the man discovered the Asian woman was just as flustered as he was. Yu couldn't even face him directly.

"I hope it was enjoyable for you." She said.

Harry started laughing. "Well, I've never been humped as a woman before, that's for sure!"

The ship's captain noticed something else. He thought he would be coming out of the experience with an erection, but no, that was gone. In its place were his flaccid member and a whole lot of stickiness. He felt nervous about that, but also that he should mention it. "I think I wet myself."

"It will happen sometimes." Yu replied. "We both need to visit the humidifier."

"Yeah, okay. Let's do that."

By all outward appearances, Yu was reserved and largely unremarkable. Her hair hung down in a loose bob, as if she didn't want to put a whole lot of effort into preening it. She was several inches shorter than Harry, with small breasts and a narrow behind.

Most guys out on a street would have passed by Yu without giving her a second look. Not Harry. He thought Yu was pretty, even if she was a bit skinny. Besides, that woman had very high scores on aptitude and intelligence tests. Harry always like smart girls, no matter what race they were.

Harry noticed that Yu was staying away from him while they cleaned their bodies in the humidifier. That was odd, since they'd just been sexually intimate in a virtual world. To ease her anxiety, and also because he liked her, Harry pulled her close and kissed her. Yu seemed to be waiting for that moment, as she wrapped her arms around the captain and kissed back.

The starship was a scout class science vessel, designed for braving through tough space and planetary environments, conducting initial data scans on celestial objects and minimal specimen retrieval. Officially, it was called Space Corps Starship Light Reconnaissance Vessel, with a short string of numbers coming after. Unofficially, Harry called it the Seven Seas, to further cement its mission of exploration and advancing scientific knowledge.

Their host, the much larger SCS Neptune, carried over a dozen of the little scout ships on it. As the ship roamed far and wide through the outer reaches of the Sol System, it would send out its tiny satellites to explore any objects or oddities it came across. The Neptune would stay in a slow drift, giving the scout ships a few days to do whatever they'd been assigned to, before the satellites returned to the mother ship to report their findings.

As far as personnel went, only the captain's spot was constant. Harry had been in charge of the Seven Seas for about eight months now. It wasn't difficult to fill out a crew roster, however, as the Neptune carried dozens of veteran and junior scientists eager to make new discoveries and explore the cosmos in a hands-on fashion.

Harry had a preference for a couple of people he'd worked with before, like Indian Rashad and British Beth, but for the others he went along with the Neptune's random lottery system. That's how he'd come across Chinese Yu. To further stimulate interaction between the crewmembers, the total number of crew always had to remain an uneven balance of men and women. That is, Harry could choose five, seven or nine people total for his ship, with half male and half female, and the last being the odd person out. This prevented couples from forming up and causing disturbances with other couples, or at least that was the general idea. This rule wasn't as important for short missions that lasted only a day or two, but it was when the Seven Seas might take five or six days on a task such as the one they were on now.

The captain walked away from the sleeping quarters area with Yu following close behind. His ship was shaped like a traditional rocket, but sort of bulging fatter in the middle as if a giant were pushing down on its top. Opposite the sleeping quarters and lavatories were the tiny kitchen, the small dining nook and the cozy lounge. Running through the length of the ship was a hallway that ended at the bridge.

The door slid open upon detecting Harry.

"Officer on deck." The officious Rashad announced, standing up and causing the other two people present to automatically follow suit.

Rounding out the crew was Morty, a young American who, like Yu, was making his first trip on the Seven Seas. Everyone was at their station. To his left on the rounded bridge, Rashad and Beth watched over scanners and outside systems. To his right, Yu went around the captain to join Morty in supervising internal systems like hull integrity and life support, among many others.

"At ease." Harry called out, prompting his ensigns to relax and take their seats.

The captain liked Rashad's dedication and attention to detail, enough that he wanted to keep the young Indian on his crew and despite that Rashad could be very bullheaded at times. For the first day or two, Harry would allow Rashad to follow Space Corp officer protocol to the letter. After that, once the idea that Harry was the captain was firmly cemented in the minds of the newcomers, Harry would discreetly inform Rashad not to make such a dramatic entrance for him.

Harry noticed that Beth watched Yu heading over to her chair, before she brought her eyes to rest squarely on the captain's face. Harry and Beth had gone into the virtual room a couple of times, during other missions. The mature, strawberry blonde was not exactly the most exciting person to imagine having sex with, as she was always so set in how she wanted things done. Never in a million years would Beth adopt a man's virtual form as Yu had willingly done just a short while ago.

Harry wondered if Beth might be jealous, but if she was, she covered up her emotions well. The blonde turned and methodically went back to her systems checks.

The captain took his seat in the center of the bridge, with two ensigns to the left, two to the right, and the wide panoramic video monitor straight ahead.

"Rashad, can you give me a status report on our flight?" Harry requested.

"Definitely, captain." The young man nodded. "Our estimated time of arrival to Object AA is just under five hours, Earth Standard. This calculation is based on our maintaining our current momentum."

"Would you like for me to increase our speed, captain?" Beth asked, in her pleasant English accent.

"No, I think we should approach our destination at a casual clip." Harry decided. "Rashad, will you put Object AA on the screen?"

"Yes, sir."

Since the ensign already had the object centered on his personal computer, it was a minor task to transfer the image over to the larger monitor. Harry leaned forward, setting his elbow on his hand-rest and rubbing his chin with his hand.

He was looking at a round planetoid, or rather a very small moon, colored in an electric blue similar to Uranus. This gave the impression that the moon was covered in bright blue water. That was unusual enough, but surrounding the object was a cloud of blue debris made of fine particulates. The long-range scanners on the Neptune had assumed this was a very slow moving comet, but now that Harry was getting a closer look at it, he realized it was something else entirely.

"Which of you is looking into the object's specs?" Harry asked.

"I am, captain." Beth spoke up.

"Give me some general features."

"It is moving at a lethargic, constant speed." Beth glanced at her screen. "The object is not rotating at all, as it should be due to the vacuum of space. There are indications of cooler temperatures on opposite ends and a warmer zone across the center..."

"Wait." Harry stopped her. "Are you saying this object has some of the attributes of a large planet?"

"It is generating its own light and heat." Rashad cut in.

Beth's brow furrowed, as she did not like when her fellow stepped on her toes.

"Go on, Beth." Harry said.

"He's right. The object is creating its own light and heat. It has temperature zones the same as Earth, and it has high concentrations of water coming out from it."

"Hold on." Harry halted her again. "Are you saying that debris cloud we're seeing is made of water?"

"Yes, captain." Beth nodded. "If you want my scientific WAG, I think we are looking at a huge, heated swimming pool floating through space."

"What's a wag?" Morty asked, from the opposite end of the small bridge.

"Wild Ass Guess." Harry absently replied. "It's a military slang term."

"For an object of that size, it is emitting a large amount of electromagnetic energy." Beth continued. "Enough energy to create a surface tension that is keeping most of the water contained into the spheroid shape we're seeing."

"May I say something?" Rashad spoke up. Once he had the captain's nod, he said, "I believe that micrometeorites are striking the object and puncturing it in many millions of places at once. This causes the water dispersal we are looking at. The electromagnetic energy coming from the object's core is sealing up the apertures, and possibly even ejecting the micrometeorites back out into space with a jet of water."

"Could Object AA be alive?" Harry wondered. "Or is there evidence that the energy is being created by machinery?"

His two most seasoned hands glanced back at him.

"We are not close enough to make a WAG about that, captain." Rashad finally answered. "I suggest we orbit the object in a diminishing spiral, and not to fly toward it directly. If the object is mechanical, perhaps it has defensive measures it can employ against us."

"And if it is alive, it might try to eat us." Beth suggested.

"You really think that thing is alive?" Morty asked, sounding squeamish.

"Yu, you haven't said anything yet." Harry noticed. "What do you think?"

The Asian shrugged. "If the object is made of water, and this ship is designed to move through water, I think we should have a swim in it."

"I don't want to get eaten!" Morty exclaimed.

"Rashad, let's make our approach in the spiral pattern you mentioned." Harry decided. "Beth, Morty, you two can take an hour break if you'd like to. Rashad, you can go after they return. I want everyone a little rested before we get any closer."

"Let's go over the new developments again, for the benefit of those that missed them." Harry said, once Beth and Morty returned from their break.

Rashad was too excited to leave his seat. "Beth, you are not going to believe this! Object AA is a miniature version of the Jupiter moon Ganymede!"

"Really?" The blonde asked as she took her spot. "Well, tell me all about it!"

"Look at the screen first." Rashad pointed.

Beth had been doing just that. The object was much larger now, and showed small dots that were undoubtedly land masses. Not continents, mind you, as they weren't very large, but still many upon many of them.

The captain said, "Rashad, begin with the outer areas and move inward toward the surface."

This threw the Indian off for a moment, as he was more excited about the potential for intelligent life than he was about anything else. He regrouped his thoughts before they ran wild on him. "I will try. Object AA has a radius of nearly sixty kilometers. If it were an asteroid, it would be of a medium size. It has a magnetosphere and an atmosphere full of oxygen. I have detected only a very small amount of sodium on the surface."

"Are we looking at a giant freshwater ocean?" Beth asked, also picking up on the idea that life could very easily exist.

"That is correct." Rashad nodded. "The object must have high conductivity to create a magnetosphere in the first place. It has a very low moment of inertia, indicating that the water we see is truly very deep. The core or machine producing the electromagnetic and heat energy must be very small and very stable."

"But also very powerful." Harry cut in. "Bear in mind that the core of Object AA is strong enough to produce effects normally seen on planets and large moons."

"And it could be alive." Morty said, worriedly.

"That's important, too." Harry nodded. "If the core is sentient or some form of Artificial Intelligence, it may react to our presence in an adverse fashion. We are proceeding, but we are proceeding very carefully. Go on, Rashad."

The Indian magnified the screen several times, focusing and centering on one of the larger masses. "Can you see this, Beth? It is not soil or rock. It is pumice! It exists as islands and bergs. There is no other terrestrial material on the entire object! Can you understand what this means?"

"If there are no volcanoes on Object AA, it means the pumice was intentionally put there." The woman reasoned. "In fact, this entire object looks to be more designed than natural."

"You will love this next part, Beth!" Rashad magnified the image on the screen further. "Prepare to become amazed!"

The eyes of both Beth and Morty gaped, the same as the eyes of the others had done when they'd seen the images earlier. A large amount of vegetation in green and brown was seen over many areas. They saw hills with concentric circles around them, and patches of ground marked off by road-like perimeters, both apparent signs of farming. As Rashad excitedly manipulated the image on the screen, the witnesses saw more roads, and groups of small buildings that had to be huts and villages. Finally, the image centered on a dome structure that appeared to be made of glass.

"Have you seen any people yet?" Beth asked.

"Not yet." Harry declared. "Which is strange, as these islands are only a few miles across and look fully developed. You would think they would be teeming with natives."

"They must be humanoid!" Rashad exclaimed. "They make houses and roads, and they farm!"

"They are probably peaceful." Yu, who had been largely quiet until then, finally spoke up. "We have seen no signs of aggression towards people or nature in all the scans we've done."

"Rashad, you were right!" Beth laughed in disbelief. "I am amazed!"

"Atmospheric conditions are optimal." Rashad mentioned, after they'd pierced the object's upper atmosphere and settled into Near-Object Orbit. "The air on this object has a little more water than what we are accustomed to, but it is within breathing range."

"Check them again in five minutes." Harry ordered. The captain was becoming more and more nervous, as the habitat they were entering was in many ways ideally suited for humans. That should not have been possible. "Beth, I want you on continuous surface scans. Yu, you'll be focused on proximity alerts, and Morty, stay on systems integrity."

"Nothing so far over open water." Beth announced, five minutes later.

"Atmospheric readings have not changed." Rashad said right after.

"This ship is still intact, captain." Morty half-joked out of anxiety.

"We won't be needing our space suits." Yu commented.

Harry was so preoccupied with the object that he hadn't yet considered they would be setting foot on it. "Who thinks we should make a landing?"

"No, no." Morty shook his head. "Definitely not."

"I want to." Yu countered.

The captain looked to his most experienced personnel.

"I believe we should continue to investigate at low altitude." Rashad considered.

"We won't be able to gather samples that way." Beth reminded him.

"This is true." The Indian bowed his head, as if he were having a struggle in his head. "We must have the samples for study. I have changed my opinion, captain. I now believe we should attempt a landing, but only for as long as it takes to collect samples. We can wear the respirators in place of the entire suits we have available to us."

Harry hated the suits, despite that they were fairly lightweight and of advanced design. They were hot and smelly, and a pain in the ass to put on and take off.

"What about insects?" Beth asked.

"Oh, I forgot about that." Rashad's brow furrowed. "Perhaps we should reconsider using only our respirators."

"We'll have a discussion on that in a moment." Harry decided. "For now, Rashad, bring us closer to a coast. The rest of you continue to man your stations. Report any unusual sightings right away."

He didn't really need to say that last part, the captain thought, but he was getting as jumpy as Morty and as queasy as Beth by then.

"This is a contradiction." Beth stated, a short while later. "Everything we see is well maintained, from the housing to the farming. Where are all the people?"

"I agree, captain." Rashad seconded. "We see nothing that is coming apart due to neglect. The entire population is missing."

"And the air content is still breathable?" Harry wondered.

"Yes, captain."

The man in charge took a deep breath. "Let's put this baby down and have ourselves a look. Rashad, find us a good spot near the glass dome."

Although the Seven Seas had the design of an archaic jet-propulsion rocket, the ship had strong thrusters mounted on several corners, for lateral movement as well as vertical. In fact, the rocket shape was practical for the way the small vessels were lined up on the mother ship, one next to the other. When ready to launch, the vessel could simply shoot forward out of its docking bay like a car leaving a garage. On this occasion, the Seven Seas hovered over the outskirts of the village, finding a spot where the powerful thrusters would cause only a minimal disruption on the local agriculture. As the hydrogen bursts reduced in intensity, the ship came in for a soft landing with only a slight bump.

The crew met at the hatch, all of them wearing respirators except for Morty, who was staying behind.

"Radio check." Harry said.

One by one, the members of his exploratory team identified themselves into their hand-helds.

"Did you catch everyone, Morty?" Harry asked.

"Yes." The young man nodded. He had a hand 'puter as well, and access to the ship's radio channel that had a broader reach. He tried both to a good result.

"We stay together no matter what." Harry said, sternly. "If we have to drift apart to collect our samples, we will always go in pairs. Rashad, Beth, you're Team 2. Since this is Yu's first time, she'll be with me on Team 1. Use your plasma pistol only if you have to. Are we understood?"

That had been a big point of contention with Beth. At first, the blonde had flatly refused to carry any weapon at all on her person. This was despite the fact that she, like everyone else in the crew, had basic arms training and knew the potential dangers as well as anyone. Harry figured that even if some predator jumped on Beth and started mauling her, she probably still wouldn't blast it.

"Beth, you need to agree to this, otherwise you're staying behind with Morty." Harry insisted. "If something nasty jumps on Rashad, I need to know that you're ready to save his life."

"If it comes to that, I will use my weapon." Beth nodded. "I won't let either of us get attacked, I promise you that."

Since everyone was tense, Harry thought he should lighten things up. "I don't know about Yu's aim. Maybe I should have her in front of me instead of behind me."

Rashad got the joke right away and laughed. Beth made a face as if it was in bad taste. The dry British sense of humor was still out of the captain's reach, apparently.

"I know how to use a plasma pistol!" Yu balked, before reaching out to playfully shove at Harry's arm.

It was a flirty move, Harry noticed, and he also noticed that Beth noticed it too. The idea that Beth was jealous of Yu messing around with him resurfaced.

"One last check, and we're going out the hatch." Harry told the others.

They would be exiting in their official Space Corps uniforms of shirts in solid colors, black pants and short but rugged boots. For the sake of uniformity, the men wore gray and the women purple. The respirators were fine, the radios were fine and the hand-helds were fine.

So far, so good, thought Harry, before he nodded for Rashad to open the inner hatch. Two people could fit into the small space at a time. Harry and Yu went in first. Their instruments showed that the atmosphere outside was roughly equivalent to the inside of the ship, but Harry was keeping to standard procedure regardless. The acclimatization area speedily switched from human environment to Object AA environment. If they were wearing their full spacesuits they would go full vacuum, but since it was a mere transfer from one oxygen rich air for another, the process was finished much faster.

Once the ship's lights went from red-stop, to yellow-wait, to green-go, Harry opened the outer hatch and stepped out with Yu. They took a few moments to check their air-filtration masks and to call inside, finding everything working normally. In a couple of minutes, Rashad and Beth were standing next to them.

"So far, so good." Harry noted, as he directed the team toward the village.

They had only gone a few yards when an old man appeared from a short distance away. Literally, the man stepped out of thin air, not there one moment and there the next. It unnerved all of them, as if they'd just witnessed a ghost become corporeal.

"Rashad, are you taking notes?" Harry asked, his voice slightly muffled by the air filter he wore over his mouth.

"I am captain." The Indian said.

"So am I." Beth chimed in.

Good, Harry thought. Rashad was assigned to collect information on the structures and people, if they found any, while Beth would cover the flora, and again if they found any, the fauna. Harry was basically there to supervise, and Yu was collecting samples on air, water and soil.

The old man walking toward them was about five and a half feet tall. He had wizened hair and beard in salt and pepper gray, with a thick brow over his eyes, a bulbous nose and large ears. He wore a garment in the form of a tunic, made of leaves woven together with vines, and ambled along with the aid of a gnarled staff.

"I believe he is a shaman." Rashad whispered.

"I agree." Beth said. "He has the look of one."

Harry's first idea was to raise his hand in greeting, but he had no idea how the old man would take the gesture. Instead, and hoping the old man would catch his emotions more than his words, he spoke out, "We are visitors here. We have come in peace."

The old man held his staff out and replied in a rough, unknown tongue. He shook his staff at them, before he motioned his arms as if he were scooping up a large amount of air. The old man shook his staff and walked away in a different direction than he'd come from. After half a dozen steps, he glanced back and shook his staff again.

"I think he wants us to follow him." Harry interpreted.

"Maybe you should ask him how he appeared from nowhere first." Yu worried. "What if we go into another dimension?"

"Rashad, give Morty an update." Harry said. "I'm not going to split us up this early, so I guess we're all going together."

The four humans followed. When the old man saw this, he started off again.

"He could be Cro-Magnon." Beth suspected. "We don't know much about those people, other than they showed up on Earth suddenly, and vanished just as suddenly. He's not Neanderthal because his face isn't ape-like and his eyes aren't huge."

"Proto-human?" Rashad wondered.

"Yes." Beth confirmed. "The historians always want to present Cro-Magnon as being hairy beast-men, but they had culture. They weren't so hairy either, because there is evidence that they used needles of bone to make their own clothing."

"I wish he was not leading us away from the village." Rashad frowned. "I would like to document that place."

Following a short walk, the team became aware that the shaman was taking them to the glass dome they'd seen from the sky. As the explorers neared it, they found that the dome wasn't constructed of glass but crystal. Also, the dome was raised on large arches and open on all sides, letting an observer see all the way through and out the other end. In the center of the ground under the dome, were ten very large and rounded pumice stones in the shape of featureless mannequin heads. The heads were each the size of a small two-story house.

The shaman shook his staff before an arch, before he stepped away from the light and into the shadows of the dome. He shook his staff again, as if he was impatient that the team was not following at his heels.

"Let's see what he wants." Harry said, motioning for the rest to continue.

Once they were all under the dome, the old man started chattering away. He showed signs of annoyance at the humans, who were only standing there watching him.

Harry cringed back when the old man approached him. A strong and sinewy arm led up to equally robust fingers, the man noticed. The shaman actually touched Harry's lips and began to move them about.

"He wants us to talk." Beth realized. "He wants us to keep talking, the same way he is doing."

"Okay." Harry nodded, glad someone had figured this out. "Let's all introduce ourselves. I'll go first."

As each member of the team did this, a look of contentment took over the shaman's face. He took a stride back to watch them. When the introductions were over, the old man spouted off in a monologue that lasted some five minutes.

"This is pointless." Harry frowned. "We still can't understand what he's saying."

The shaman came forward, again moving at Harry's lips as if he wanted to listen to further speech.

"All right, we'll humor him a bit longer." Harry relented. "We have to record our reports anyway. Rashad, why don't you speak out your observations while you're getting them on the 'puter."

Over the next couple of minutes, the Indian gave a surprisingly extensive report of their short trek. They were a quarter mile from their landing site, Harry noted, and the dome was about a hundred feet across and fifty feet high. Further, Rashad described platelets in the form of pentagons making up the roof of the dome, which Harry had not even noticed yet. The Indian compared them to the shapes found in a hive of bees.

Beth gave her report next, focusing on the old man, from his physical attributes to his mannerism. She paused, however, and looked alarmed when she saw how the strange mannequin heads were changing.

Harry had his back to the heads. Now that he turned around, he saw those changes for himself. The pumice texture of the nearest four heads was transforming into what appeared to be flesh. Formerly featureless, the heads now showed definite lines for the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Just as odd were the tufts of hair now sprouting out of their heads.

"They look the same as our heads." Rashad noticed.

It was true, Harry discovered. His features were being reproduced on one of the heads. He saw how frightened Beth was becoming, before he reached out to take her arm and pulled her close to his side. The blonde came willingly, grasping Harry's arm as if he had become her lifeline. Rashad and Yu both took in the changing heads with a great amount of fascination.

The shaman began a repetitive chant. At first, it was gibberish to the humans. As the chant continued, Harry thought he heard the words 'speak' and 'gods' coming through. With more time, the chant came across more clearly. In the end, it was fully translated.

"The gods will speak, the gods will speak." The shaman sang.

"We can understand you now." Harry said. "Can you understand us?"

"Through the will of the gods, all will be shown." The old man replied.

The idea that he could be understood now, when he hadn't been before, caused Beth to pull even closer to Harry. The woman was so terrified she was trembling.

"Do you see?" Rashad pointed at her. "You always want to argue with me that there is no such thing as god. When I say divine providence, you say hidden technology and science. Here is the truth in front of your face. An advanced civilization has created a paradise for a primitive society. What is your definition of god now? Where has your broken theory of evolution gone?"

That's right, Harry remembered. Beth was an ardent atheist who believed in Darwinism and gradual evolution on isolated worlds. She simply refused to allow that higher beings could pose as deities and intervene in lesser-advanced cultures. She scoffed at the notion that such beings promoted or even forced evolutionary changes on primitive societies. It was Beth that had first brought up Cro-Magnon society. In her view, those people had just shown up and later they'd vanished. Now, she had to readjust her way of thinking. Cro-Magnon hadn't just shown up; they were brought to Earth by other beings, and they were taken away later or perhaps died out when they could not survive the cold temperatures Earth had back then.

Whether any of that was true or not was beyond Harry's head, but at least he could admit that it was possible. Beth, on the other hand, was so adamant in her way of thinking that she could no longer function rationally.

"Rashad, Beth looks a little distraught right now." Harry said, as gently as he could. "I would like for you to return her to the ship. You are not to antagonize her about what is happening here. Once she is safely inside, you can come back here by yourself."

The Indian frowned, as he wanted to stay. It took him a moment to realize just how badly Beth was shaken up. Once he did, he relented and grabbed her arm as a father would an errant child. Beth was older than Rashad by about six years, but the Indian's traditional upbringing led him to see women as being inferior to men. In this case, Harry thought that was a good thing. Rashad would not pester the unstable woman further, but would hurry to get her 'home' so Rashad could came back to handle what he considered to be 'adult' business.

"Come with me." The Indian said, brusquely. "I will return you to the ship."

As the pair left the shade and walked off into the clear daylight, Harry turned toward Yu. She was staring at the giant heads. Hers and Harry's were continuing to take shape, while Rashad's and Beth's had stopped in mid-transformation.

"Are you okay?" Harry reached out to nudge the Asian woman's shoulder.

Without saying a word, Yu nodded back.

"The gods will speak with you." The shaman said, before retreating to sit on the ground, with his back to an arch footing.

"I guess he means the giant heads." Harry said. Because he didn't want to go alone, he took Yu by the arm and started tugging her forward.

The Asian woman took his hand and placed it in hers. As a couple, they approached the two-story structures that continued to evolve in their likeness.

"Your place or mine?" Harry kidded.

"Do you really think these heads will speak?" Yu marveled. "I wouldn't know what to ask a goddess who looks like me. Let's try yours first."

"I don't know if I'd call them gods." Harry led them off. "Advanced technology, maybe."

"Any advanced technology presented to a primitive culture will look like magic." Yu recalled. "Wasn't it Arthur Clarke that said that once? How many times have we seen studies hypothesizing that we live in a virtual simulation? Have you ever considered that god might be advanced AI?"

"I'm a ship's captain, not an astrophysicist." Harry joked.

"I know that line!" Yu giggled. "I saw that movie when I was a little girl. I'm a doctor, not a physicist!"

Harry couldn't help but smile. He liked that he was discovering Yu and he had so many things in common.

They halted before the giant copy of Harry's face. By this time, the captain's head hair and facial hair had been faithfully reproduced. Within moments, the giant eyes had opened and were focused on the relatively tiny humans.

"Beth would have fainted if she was seeing this." Harry knew. "So, Yu Gone Wrong, what should I ask my twenty-foot face?"

"I like when you call me Gone Wrong." Yu nudged him. "I think it's a cute name for me."

Before them, the giant head's lips showed contentment. The eyes beamed joy. The giant mouth opened up to show teeth the size of human hands. "You have found your soul mate, Harry. Cherish her."

The captain stood there astonished. Images of past lives he'd experienced flashed through his mind. He saw Yu in many of them, in her past incarnations as his lover, his wife, his mother, his daughter, his aunt, and so many other forms, both male and female. It caused him to shiver. He asked the giant head, "Who are you?"

"I am your future self." The face replied, sounding a lot like Harry, but with a much deeper voice that rumbled out of the large mouth like an old locomotive. "This place has called me so that I may speak with you and comfort you."

"What is this place?" Harry asked.

"You have already guessed." The giant head replied.

More images sprung into Harry's head. He saw a great catastrophe on a distant world. In the seconds before the Cro-Magnon people living there were wiped out, Object AA had come in to scoop a large number of them up. The object created a habitat for them, calling it Heaven. Now, Object AA was searching for a suitable planet to deposit the Cro-Magnon. Once the cargo was delivered, Object AA would head back into deep space, searching for other people or animals to rescue.

"We see the houses and the farms, but other than the shaman, we haven't seen any of the people." Harry voiced. "Where the heck are they?"

The head sent him a new wave of images. The Cro-Magnon were living on Object AA, but they were in another dimension. They existed in a slower time, so they would not die off during their travels across the immense distances of space. Those people were living tens of thousands of years and they didn't even know it. Only the shaman had the ability to traverse the two dimensions between the Cro-Magnon and the astronauts. To the rest of those proto-humans, Harry and his crew would only be seen as momentary flickers or ghosts. In order not to panic any of them, the shaman had come to lead them away from the village.

"There are many dimensions here." Harry saw in his mind. "We're in one, the Cro-Magnon are in another one, and many other kinds of people and animals are in still more of them."

"Don't you understand what this means?" Yu asked.

Harry shook his head. "No. Tell me."

"These people have been told this is Heaven, where one god or many gods are seeing to their welfare." The Asian elaborated. "In a sense, they are a lot like Adam and Eve. When they are taken to a new planet, it will be feel as if they are getting kicked out of the Garden of Paradise."

"That's so profound it's fucking insane." Harry shook his head in disbelief. "I've always wondered about the story of Noah's Ark. How can so many animals fit into one single wooden boat, unless..."

"Unless it was a boat like Object AA, which can exist in multiple dimensions." Yu finished off. Suddenly, the Asian woman was pulling on Harry's arm, taking him a distance of fifty or more feet until they stood before the giant head that looked like her. "Is Harry really my soul mate? Are you really the spirit of my future self?"

The giant Asian face smiled back with Yu's exact smile.

She turned to face Harry. "Do you believe them?"

"I think it's true." He nodded. "I feel it's true."

"Me too!" Yu was suddenly jumpy.

She broke away from him, running toward that giant face too quickly for Harry to stop her. The mouth on the giant opened up as wide as a door.

"Yu!" Harry called out.

It was too late. The Asian woman jumped into the head and was swallowed up by it. She completely vanished, leaving the captain stunned and unable to move.

"Captain!" Rashad's voice shouted, causing Harry to whirl around. The Indian was running under the dome in his direction. "Why did Yu do that? Is she dead now?"

When Harry faced the giant Asian head again, he saw that its mouth was wide open again. "Rashad, you're not going to understand this, but it is something I feel I have to do. Did Beth make it back okay?"

"I walked with her until the ship was in sight." The Indian verified. "I called ahead to tell Morty to expect her, and then I told Beth to run quickly. She did run. When I saw the airlock was shut, I came running back here."

"Rashad, I don't have time to explain." Harry told him. "Just stay here until Yu and I come back."

"Where are you going?"

Harry started toward the giant maw. "I have no idea. I just know I'll be back soon. Wait here for us."

"I will, captain."

Yu had simply jumped into the open mouth. In contrast, Harry hoped his shoes weren't full of grass or pebbles, before he leaned into the mouth with his hands. He felt the strange bumps of a very coarse but moist tongue. After grumbling a bit, he pulled his respirator off and dropped it on the ground. Next, he pulled a knee up, and then the other, before he crawled into the cave of that giant mouth.

The moment he was inside, it closed up behind him.

Harry imagined he was dreaming. He was nude and chasing after Yu, who was also nude and running away from him. They were both laughing as they chased one another. Harry could not focus on their surroundings; they could have been running anywhere, on any planet, at any time.

Finally, Harry caught up to Yu. He grabbed her arm and turned her to face him. The captain expected to see the Asian's pretty face. Yu's hair and ears were still in the right places, but the rest of her face was gone. Instead, there was a very large vagina stretching from her forehead down to where her lips should have been. Harry shuddered at the repulsive sight, while at the same time he was fascinated by it.

He heard laughter. When he looked down to Yu's stomach, he saw her face there, beginning just below her breasts and ending at the waist. She was playing a very strange joke on him and finding it uproariously funny.

Yu's stomach-face turned serious, however, when she saw Harry's face appearing on his stomach, and a large, erect penis protruding away from his head. They moved toward each other. In a normal world, they would have been kissing. In this bizarre dimension they were found in, the normal rules simply did not apply.

When Harry and Yu stepped out of the giant mouth, they were in a calm, elated state, like a couple still in love after having been married for ten years or more.

They saw Rashad sitting on the ground in a yoga meditation position. He had his legs crossed and his hands over his knees, with his fingers in the 'okay' position. Before the Indian man stood a tall, ten-foot goddess with blue skin and six arms. The goddess was dressed in a lavish sari colored in red, orange and yellow. The garment left one shoulder bare and was beaded will all manner of gold and jewel adornments. The blue goddess stood before the giant Rashad head, perfectly balanced on one foot and with her six arms poised up in the air.

"I am happy to see you have returned, captain." Rashad said, on noticing the couple's approach.

"Where did you find her?" Harry motioned toward the living deity.

"This is the female form of Shiva, the end and beginning of all things." The Indian explained. "I asked my future self if it was possible to meet her, and my self said it was. Shiva has come to tell me all the secrets of the universe."

"That sounds interesting." Harry chuckled. "Boy, are we going to have one good story when we get back to the Neptune."

"You don't understand, captain." Rashad frowned. "When we leave Object AA, all that we have learned will be forgotten. The only possible way we will not forget is if we remain here until the object finds a new home for the Cro-Magnon people."

"I won't remember that Harry is my soul mate?" Yu worriedly asked.

"You will not." Rashad answered. "That is nothing. I know all there is to know here, and that will all be forgotten as well."

"It's important to me!" Yu snapped, before turning to face Harry. "It isn't fair! I just found you!"

"You're not losing me." Harry shook his head.

"Of course I will!" Yu argued. "Look at me! I'm so skinny and worthless! You'll have an affair with me, and then you'll find a more attractive woman and you'll leave me for her!"

"What?" Harry asked. "How can you even say that?"

"I asked my future self! That is my destiny for this life! My one true love will leave me and I will never love another man again! I will die alone because you leave me!"

The captain was left stunned. For a second, he considered going to his giant head and demanding to know if that was true. Quickly, he changed his mind. He didn't want to know anything about his future, even if he was obliged to forget it the moment he left that strange planetoid.

"I don't know what to say." Harry mumbled. "If that's what's really meant to happen, I'm sorry."

Yu ran to Harry and clung to him fiercely. Harry had only met her a few days ago, but already he knew he was falling in love with her. Already he hated the idea that their love was to be doomed by some sort of karmic design.

"If you stay here, the course of your spiritual path will change by necessity." Rashad commented. "Your path cannot continue in the same way if you are no longer a part of our original universe. Object AA exists in multiple dimensions. We may end up in an entirely different dimension than the one where the starship Neptune exists."

"That sounds as if you're not coming back with us." Harry noticed.

"I will stay here." Rashad replied. "I have made my decision. My future self will cause my incarnation as Rashad to be erased completely. Once you leave Object AA, you will not remember me because I was never born in your dimension."

Harry was so overwhelmed he felt he was about to lose his marbles like Beth had. He hadn't let go of Yu yet, and held her even tighter.

"You won't stay here." Yu lamented. "And neither will I. We will both return to our ship and fly away, and forget all of this. We will report Object AA to the Neptune as an anomalous cloud with strange energy fluctuations, and that is all."

"Captain, I must tell you this." Rashad spoke up. "If you stay too much longer, Object AA will shift into another dimension. It will not be possible for you to return to the Neptune."

"How much time do we have?" Harry said, alarmed.

"Forever, if you remain under this dome."

"But if we step out of the dome, we only have enough time to board our ship and leave?"

"You are understanding the principles of Object AA." Rashad assumed.

"No, that was a scientific WAG." Harry denied. With a pained face, he looked into Yu's soft eyes. "I don't know what to do. The longer I stay here, the more I hate what will happen once we leave. But the faster I go, the faster I'll forget this ever happened."

"Make love to me once more, while we can still remember." Yu resolved. "We'll have no funny disguises this time. It will be only your body and my body."

"I'll make love to you forever!" Harry fought against his fate.

"You can't." Yu frowned. "Our lives are intertwined with Beth and Morty. They cannot remain trapped here because of our stubbornness."

Harry kissed her several times. After this, he took her by the hand and led her toward the edge of the dome. "I can't make love to you, not here, not knowing what's in store for our future. Let's just get back on the ship and get this over with."

"I understand." Yu replied. "I don't hate you for this. It probably is the best way." She looked over her shoulder. "Goodbye, Rashad!"

The Indian man held his hand up, while a few meters from him, the form of Shiva held out six hands in the same farewell.

Yu took one last glance at the giant heads of Harry and she. Their eyes were cast down, their expressions full of sorrow.

A few moments after this, they were out in the daylight and both running toward the Seven Seas, as fast as they could.

#####

Asteroid QQ37 - Part 2

Things were going well in Hydroponics Division, Lender thought. At first, the stern Dr. Ilsa had kept her eyes constantly looking over the men's shoulders, partly because she didn't trust them, and partly because she wanted her procedures done right. After his lover Kyu and he had proven their worthiness, Ilsa went off to take care of the work that she'd been neglecting.

"That bitch is as bad as our supervisors." Kyu commented one day, when the two prisoners had been left alone with ten broad water tanks to tend to. "But I'd rather look at her than any of them!"

Out of habit, Len glanced up at the far corners of the ceiling. That's where the mind scanners would be mounted in the prisoner areas. There were no scanners in Hydroponics Division, but for some paranoid reason Len was always checking for them.

In the beginning, both Kyu and he expected to be thrilled to be around women, but that novelty had soon worn off. Dr. Ilsa was a crusty bitch with the personality of an ice cube. A second white woman, named Beatrice but nicknamed Bibi, was also of that same workaholic mold. Bibi was nearly as tall as Len. She had auburn hair, and while she was quiet and studious, there was a rebellious streak in her, as she wore archaic eyeglasses in lieu of having standard eye surgery done. If Len wanted to be a rebel, he would have chosen a much better cause to champion that an eye malady.

One final person worked with them, a transgender named Jackie. She had been born male, and had been a natural male up until she'd left public schooling. After that, she'd undergone the process to soften up her face and had hormone procedures to expand her chest and backside, while keeping her original set of genitals. Jackie was a tall, chubby and light-skinned Negro, who walked, talked and acted like a woman, so much that Len was soon forgetting that she was a cross between both sexes. Kyu, on the other hand, was not so lenient with his memory.

"If we get that one into a dark corner," The Asian joked one day, when Jackie was puttering around on the far end of the room. "You'll be taking her, not me."

That's the way prisoners talked, Len knew, always belittling others with insinuations of rape. For the next few moments, he evaluated how he felt about the false woman.

"Oh, I don't know." Len shrugged. "Jackie has more personality than Ilsa and Bibi put together."

Kyu made a face at him. "But she's unnatural!"

"That may be true, but I refuse to judge her for that." Len replied.

"The Light of Luz states that anything unnatural must be destroyed." Kyu reminded him. "And she is unnatural!"

"No, the Light of Luz states that anything that oppresses a man's holy nature must be destroyed." Len corrected. "That is a statute against unnatural law more than unnatural people. If you start interpreting the Light of Luz anyway you please, you'll end up doing the same things the religious leaders on our worlds were doing. Say it with me, Kyu, all men are born... what?"

"All men are born equal."

"And all women are..."

"Equal under men." Kyu finished off. "If Luz meant for women to be more than that, he would have made them the dominant gender. What about Jackie? She's neither one nor the other. Where does a half-woman like that fit into the hierarchy?"

Absently, Len turned to glance at the tall woman, only to discover that she was standing up straight and staring at them. This unnerved Len, as his paranoid way of thinking made him suspect she might be wearing a listening device. It was bad enough that the prisoners were speaking of their occult god Luz out in the open, along with joking about rape and questioning the idea that men and women were legally equal in the view of the Federation of Worlds. Any of those allegedly radical ideas could get them tossed into Interrogation in a heartbeat.

"Come on." Kyu patted Len on the arm. "We need to talk to her anyway."

Hydroponics Division had three different rooms. The rooms all contained plants, but at various stages of growth, from bulbs to growing stages to mature and ready to harvest. Their three overseers would take turns in watching over the long tubs holding the plants. Currently, Ilsa was managing the buds and bulbs, which was the most important part of the process, while Bibi was on the opposite end gauging which plants were ready to eat. That left Jackie in charge of the center room, and the two felons.

The black woman had always been anxious about being around the prisoners. This became more and more apparent as Len and Kyu walked up to her. She actually cringed back against a tub, holding her pen and clipboard up to her prominent chest, as if they meant to attack her.

"We're out of solution." Kyu said, casually.

"I'll authorize a new batch." Jackie replied, nervously. With Len standing to one side and Kyu to the other, she could hardly decide whom to watch more closely. "I'll bring a cart out to you."

"We wanted to ask you something." Kyu said.

"You should go back to your tub." She replied.

"We used the last of the solution on it." Kyu told her. "If we get new solution, we'll be moving over to another tub anyway."

"Just go back and wait over there." The flustered Negro tried to shoo them off.

Those two simply were not going to get along, Len observed. He decided to try a different tact to pry information out of her, or him, whatever that person was. "Sure, we'll go right away. We were just wondering why only three people are assigned to tend to such a large area. Shouldn't there be a staff of something like ten people working here?"

There, Len thought. He'd gotten several sentences out at once, instead of only one at a time like his lover had. This caused a momentary confusion to sweep over Jackie. His hope was that she would blurt out something important as she mentally panicked to get them to walk away from her.

"We had eight technicians before, under Ilsa." Jackie revealed. "Space Corps took five out and left just the three of us."

"Why would they leave Hydroponics so short-staffed?" Len pressured. "This is the most important part of maintaining a colony, isn't it?"

"Of course it is, along with the power generators." Jackie answered. "They didn't tell us why they split the department up like that. They just said; you guys are going here and the rest of you are staying."

It was obvious that she was scared of them. Len decided that was enough, as if they stayed before her any longer she might accuse them of something. He pointed back, close to where they'd been working. "We'll be waiting by the next tub in the line. You'll bring the solution out to us, or do you want us to roll the cart over?"

"I'll bring it out." Jackie said, flustered and wanting them to leave.

"Come on, honey." Len told his lover.

He hardly ever used affectionate terms around Kyu. Maybe Jackie didn't realize they were lovers. Regardless, if she understood that the two men were a couple, maybe she wouldn't be so scared of them. It was a ploy to get her to talk, as Jackie was the most talkative of the three civilians they worked with, albeit only with her coworkers. Len hoped the Asian wouldn't disrupt his secret little plan. Kyu didn't. He simply stepped in line behind the other man and followed.

The jobs the prisoners did were very simple. In the bulb room, they helped Dr. Ilsa put fertile seeds into small, biodegradable sacks full of nutrients. These little sacks went into little baskets, thousands of them, that were sorted on shelving by date and type. The science was so advanced that very few of the seeds would not sprout. At the point where the seeds outgrew their sack of nutrients, they were moved into the growing room and placed into the tubs full of a second nutrient solution. In the growing room, the two men basically monitored the solution and rotated the tubs so that the plants closest to maturity were set next to the harvest room. The harvesting was done fairly quickly, resulting in fresh carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and other healthy vegetables. The prisoners were even allowed to sample the food, where both they and the civilian staff gave their thoughts on taste and texture, and other similar attributes.

When the tasks in the other two rooms were minimal, Len and Kyu stayed in the growing room, mostly watching over the stability of the plants and the nutrient solution. The overall process was called Water Culture. The plants were suspended into the water by mechanical arms that came down from the ceiling. The plants went through cyclical periods of focused light, warmth and oxygen. Optimal portions of potassium, nitrate, and several different types of sulfates were maintained in the vats. The levels and check times were all listed on the clipboards secured to the end of each tub.

Early on, Len and his partner were dismayed to learn that most of the food taken to the prisoner section was made of civilian leftovers or vegetables that were close to spoiling. The civilians got the freshest food in abundance, while the incarcerated men got the crumbs. Both men knew this is how things went; they weren't naive about that. At the same time, they hated discovering they'd been right all along about such things.

Not everything the prisoners ate was sub-standard, however. Twenty percent of the tubs in the growing room were reserved for the prison section. These tubs had red stickers on them. They had clipboards on their ends, with similar nutrient listings to the rest, but they also had additional ingredients that weren't mirrored in the civilian sheets. The two felons couldn't even tell what was being added to their food, as the secret ingredients had code names such as Additive X, Additive Y and Additive Z.

In her haste to deliver the new bags of plant solution to the workers, Jackie quickly unlocked a cabinet and loaded up a cart. She rolled the cart over, becoming unnerved at Kyu's leering grin so much that she spun around and quickly strode away. Because she'd done this in a hurry, she'd left a deciphering slip on the cart, buried along with the full and clear solution bags. The men couldn't simply take the slip, because if they were caught with it, they would be accused of smuggling contraband. That didn't mean they couldn't stare at the secret contents of what they were eating in their food.

"They're all jumbled in together." Kyu said about the solution bags, trying to sound casual. "Let me grab an empty cart and we'll sort them between the regulars and the reds."

While the men divided up the solution bags, Jackie had gone back to the cabinet to finish up whatever details she had to jot down. At some point, she realized the slip with the red mark on it was missing. The woman was in some state of alarm as she hurried over to retrieve it from the cart. Jackie snatched it up, knowing full well that it was uncovered and that the men had read it.

"We're not stupid." Kyu said, glaring at her.

Len saw the look on the black woman's face, and he didn't like it. Scared people did things without thinking, and that could very well get the two men in hot water.

"Why don't you get started with the civilian vats?" Len asked, hoping to defuse what was quickly escalating to be a prickly situation.

Because he could be as stubborn as Len, the Asian stood in place.

Len tried again, this time with Jackie. "Will you hear me out? We like working here, don't we, Kyu? We like this place a hell of a lot more than we like working in the mines. Because we just read the items on that list you're holding, we are in now in trouble and you could very well report us. At the same time, you're in trouble too, because you left that slip out where we could read it. Let's pretend that you never left that slip out, and that we never read it. It was an unfortunate accident that never happened."

Before Jackie had the time to digest the treaty, Kyu cut in, "We should blackmail her for being so stupid."

Len was reminded of his time in Interrogation. If the interrogators were after some secret bit of information, they would play the good cop / bad cop game against their victims. Because this incident had fallen into their lap quite suddenly, he figured Kyu was acting the opposite to Len, the bad cop to his good. Surely, Kyu hadn't had time to think of any demands. He assumed it was an empty threat, because what could they really ask for past their cushy new job, with women and better food around, and showers they could use whenever they wanted to?

"No, no." Len took up his part. "We all make mistakes, don't we? We don't want to make any trouble for Jackie, because we don't want her to make any trouble for us."

The black woman still looked terrified, as if the two men would pounce on her and beat her to death.

"She's going to report us." Kyu said.

"No, I won't!" Jackie blurted out. "I won't say a thing! I promise you!"

"You see?" Len consoled his partner. "Let's put this behind us, honey. Let's go work on the regular tubs. We'll do the red tubs later."

The Asian nodded, taking hold of the new cart and pushing it away.

"This never happened." Len said to Jackie, before he followed Kyu.

The black woman stood there for a moment longer, before she started back to the cabinet wall. Jackie was so preoccupied with her worries that she wasn't paying any attention to the men, Len noticed.

Kyu caught the same thing. As he settled the cart to a stop, he whispered, "I can't believe that woman has a swinging cock between her legs."

"Neither can I." Len admitted. "Did you really have a demand to make?"

"No. I was hoping you could think of one."

Len considered this. "Maybe I will later. It will have to be something small. We can't very well ask for an all expenses paid trip back home, can we?"

Both men started laughing, loud enough to carry throughout the room. Len saw that Jackie was nervously staring at them.

"You see?" Len motioned to his partner, while addressing the woman across the room. "I've gotten Kyu into a good mood again. You don't have anything to worry about from us. We're both very happy to work here."

"He's right." Kyu said. "I am very happy to work here. You've never worked in the mines, have you? Of course not! This place is a thousand times better than the mines."

They'd only been in Hydroponics for four days by then, but to Len it felt as if they'd been away from the prison sector for a lifetime. He nudged for his partner to get to work. For the next few minutes, they could feel Jackie's eyes on their backs.

"She probably thinks we'll dump too much solution into a tub and ruin it." Kyu suspected.

"It won't be ruined." Len shook his head. "The monitors will start beeping and the tub will be replaced with an empty one. It's just like when the sorter would break down. The tub will be refilled and measured properly. We won't be doing the refilling, since we'll be going back to the mines."

"I don't want to go back there." Kyu frowned. "Can you imagine what kind of reception we'll get from the other guys, since we've been here working with civilian women while they've been digging out dirt all these days?"

"A whole lot of hate." Len knew. He took a chance to see if Jackie was still watching them, but she'd gone on to doing something else. Secretively, he asked his partner, "What ingredients did you see on the red list?"

"Fluoride and Ferrous Sulfate."

"Fluoride yes, but not the sulfate. That's a normal ingredient, except we only add it every three to four weeks, unlike the other stuff that gets pumped in more often. What else?"

"I can't remember anymore. None of the names looked familiar. What about you?"

"Pentothal."

"What is that?"

"On Earth, psychiatrists give it to their patients so they can talk freely about their thoughts and emotions. Back when I was looking into conspiracies, I discovered that Pentothal was injected into victims of interrogations. It was a sort of truth serum."

"Why would they be putting that into our food?"

"I couldn't say." Len shrugged. "Maybe it has something to do with the brain scans. We know the Fluoride is used to make us docile, while the Pentothal will make us tell the truth. Who knows what else those drugs can do in combination with the other red list ingredients."

"And that bitch back there slipped up and let us see the list."

"You know what these people always say. They're just doing their job."

"That's how the universe got all fucked up. People are just doing their job, even if their job is to kill other people."

"I know." Len nodded. "I know."

If Hydroponics were fully staffed, two technicians would have been assigned to watch over the plants during off-shift. The plants weren't expected to climb out of their tanks or anything, but for whatever reasons, some vegetable tubs would decide to suck up more nutrients than others. This would not be a problem if they were on Earth, where if a batch was late in maturing or discarded, a simple trip to the grocery store would take care of the needed food. They were floating out in space, however, on a big, fat rock with no grocery stores. If the vegetables were late, people weren't going to eat. Everything had its schedule and accounting, almost down to the hour and meal it would be used for. Technicians had to be around at all times to make sure everything rolled along as smoothly as possible.

For this reason, Len and Kyu had been given cots in the harvesting room. Neither man minded, as the mature vegetables there gave off the scents of nature, smells that would not be found anywhere else in the colony except for the kitchens. It was as close to the outdoors as any of the colonists could get, so the prisoners considered it almost as a bonus. The plants weren't very bothersome, either. Their alarm beepers only went off every other night or so, and that was usually only for a minor correction. That taken care of, the men could look forward to the remainder of their sleep being uninterrupted.

"I'll be going to your cot later, when you fall asleep." Kyu had threatened earlier.

"These cots won't hold both our weights." Len smirked. "You'll be explaining to Dr. Ilsa about how we broke them."

"I'll ask her if she wants a demonstration. She comes across as a woman that hasn't slept with a man in the last decade."

Both prisoners laughed.

Kyu drifted into to sleep later, leaving Len alone with his thoughts. It was strange, but he hadn't slept with the Asian since they'd left the prison sector. Back there, he could look forward to sex every night, but now, nothing. It had all dried up overnight, despite that both men were happy in their new environment. That was strange, right?

Bibi, the technician with the dark auburn hair, was always the first to arrive in the morning. She did a quick survey of all three plant rooms and went over the overnight data. A couple of times, she'd stepped in while the men were taking showers. Len saw how Bibi looked at the two men while they dried up their bodies and got dressed, as the prisoners did not have any privacy. Dr. Ilsa might not have slept with a man in the last ten years, Len grinned, but apparently Bibi was coming in at close second place.

At the same time, Len was not attracted to her. He still harbored a deep hate for the way his wife and child had been murdered before his eyes, by the very same government people that had sworn to uphold the law. The emotional duress Len had suffered through after the loss of his family had changed him. He never wanted to open that portion of his heart again to any other woman. In fact, if he had his choice between Bibi and Kyu, the Asian would always come out on top.

On the sixth evening of working Hydroponics, Dr. Ilsa came up to the two prisoners, as they were finishing up in the harvest room. The strict woman had something to say to them, but as usual, she went in a roundabout way to get there.

"How was the harvesting?" She asked them both.

Len reached into a plastic basket and picked out a tomato. "These came out excellent. They're very tasty."

"And what will you be doing next?" She queried, this time addressing Kyu.

"We are going to pull the harvested plants off the line. After we gather them all, we'll put them into the organic recycling bin. These two tubs will be emptied out and ready for re-use before night."

"Very good." Ilsa nodded. "I understand that after every five days of work, prisoners are given two days of no work."

Len and Kyu both wondered when this was coming. It would not be healthy for them to return to a bunch of resentful incarcerated men, not after they'd spent the last six days in human environment and were only returning to prison sector to take two days off.

"I hope we can come back here after our rest days." Len said.

"Oh, no, I don't want you to leave." Ilsa shook her head. "There is simply too much work here for me and my two helpers. I understand that I have to allow for some sort of accommodation for you two. At the same time, you're prisoners. I can't keep you here without rest, and I can't let you walk around in civilian population either. I think I've come up with an acceptable compromise. There is a guard that is willing to volunteer to watch over you for the night."

"We don't know any guards." Kyu replied.

"Well, you must know this one." Ilsa refuted. "His name is Officer Forrester. No? At any rate, he will come by in a short while. This guard will be like a chaperone for you. If you do well tonight, I may allow Mr. Forrester to perform this function again. Your time away from Hydroponics will be tracked by these cards."

The men took the cards and studied them. The items had accurate computer-generated images of their faces, their names, and they listed the occupations of both men as technicians.

"I understand that you won't receive the full forty-eight hours of rest that you should be getting." Ilsa went on. "We'll have to come up with a better system later, but for now your time off will accumulate on that card. Are there any questions?"

"Who will watch over the monitors if we're gone?" Kyu asked.

"We're within parameters." Ilsa answered. "The plants will survive if we don't watch over them for one night. I don't want either of you to get into trouble. Do you understand? I've spent a lot of time training you for my department, and I don't want to go through all of that with any new people. Between the two of you, you're doing the jobs of four to six people, at a fraction of the cost. I've already spoken with the watch commander over how prisoners are compensated for the work they do in their various tasks. There will be a value accrued for all the time you're spending in my care. Perhaps your unused rest time will also roll over into value. At any rate, everything will go on those cards you're holding, so try not to lose them."

Bibi and Jackie walked by, both holding their satchels and looking ready to leave.

Ilsa took a quick glance at the women, before she went back to the men. "Your escort will be here soon. Don't get into any trouble tonight."

Once the three females were gone, the men scrutinized their new identification cards closer.

"It's almost like being free men." Len commented.

"I don't like how Ilsa watches us like a mother." Kyu sounded resentful.

"Look at it from her side," Len reasoned. "If her department comes undone, we will all starve and she'll be replaced. I know she watches us like a hawk, but she's doing it because she wants us to be successful, in a way."

"If we succeed, she succeeds?"

"Right." Len nodded. "Who else wants you to succeed in this whole fucking colony?"

Kyu mulled that over. "Only you, I guess."

"You're damned right I want you to succeed!" Len laughed and slapped his lover on the arm. "You're my partner, aren't you?"

"Yes, honey!"

The Asian had said that so mockingly they both started laughing.

"I wonder who this asshole is that's coming to meet us." Len said next.

Kyu turned toward the door. "We'll find out."

Officer Forrest turned out to be Randy, the guard who had escorted the prisoners out of the prison sector nearly a week before. Other than having shared a long walk and a few jokes with the man, there was really no reason for the pair of felons to expect Randy to remember them, let alone volunteer to take them on a night out. The man didn't even look like an officer when he showed up, as he wore civilian attire of a thigh-length tunic in a soft brown color and loose pants in beige.

"I got your sizes from your personnel files." Randy said, after greeting the men. He held out two large bags containing full sets of clothes, down to undergarments and shoes. "Kyu, I hope you don't mind green, and Len, the blue top is for you. I'll give you a quick rundown on the rules while you're getting dressed."

Since they were used to having no privacy in the prison sector, both men removed their lab garments before the off-duty sentry. Len noticed how Randy was giving his Asian lover long, lingering looks.

"You both know this isn't a big colony." Randy started. "If you manage to get away from me, you will be caught sooner or later, but you might make a mess of things while you're on the loose. The only places we may not look for escaped men might be in the trash compactors or the recycling bins, but I wouldn't recommend taking that route for your personal safety."

"We have too much to lose." Kyu said. "We won't try to escape."

"I believe you." Randy nodded, pulling two matching bracelets from his pocket and showing them to the men. They were made with several strips of dark leather separated by colored beads. "I checked both of your profiles. You've both always been honest men, and as far as the law is concerned, you've never tried to falsify anything. We don't have tracking devices for prisoners, because prisoners hardly ever leave their sector. We do have these, however." He handed the bracelets over. "Each one of these has a radio chip in it, so our sensors can follow you as long as you have them on. They don't lock on to your wrists and they don't have an alarm on them that will sound if you take them off. Actually, bracelets like these are popular among the gay men here. Anybody that sees these will assume you two are a couple."

As the prisoners began dressing in the clothing Randy had brought, Len again noticed that the officer was giving his lover the once over. This time, he felt he had to say something. "Randy, are you gay?"

"No, not exactly." The officer admitted. "We can talk about that now, or we can talk about that later. I'll leave it up to the two of you to decide."

"What is it, Randy?" Kyu asked. "What are you hiding from us?"

"I wouldn't say I'm hiding anything." The officer shook his head. "Let me just put it this way. Part of it is business, and the other part is pleasure. I don't want to get the two things mixed up, and I don't want to give the impression that I'm up to something funny. You just said you don't want any trouble, Kyu, and neither do I. The last thing I want is a scandal that might cause me to lose my position here. I propose that we take care of the business end first. That means we'll go out and have a little fun. There are some places we can go and some places that are off-limits. We'll be out a minimum of four hours, or longer if you two aren't falling asleep by then. After you've had your fun, you can just let me know and I'll bring you back here. At that point, I will make you a proposition. This proposition will cause things to go from official business to my personal business. You can say yes or no to my proposition, and we can go from there. I can tell you about it now, but as I said, I don't want my proposition hanging over your heads like some kind of blackmail."

"We understand." Kyu nodded. "I think I can speak on behalf of my partner. We'd like to hear your deal now."

"All right." Randy replied. "Let's just say I wouldn't mind trying something new. I know you two are a couple, and to tell you the truth, I'd rather be negotiating with a couple than with only one man. This way, you two can be witnesses for each other. The deal is this. I get to try something new, and in exchange I'll introduce you to my Jenny."

Len noticed that Randy was talking exclusively to Kyu.

The guard passed the bracelets over. "You don't have to answer now. I want you to talk it over with Len. This is entirely separate from me taking you out for a night on the town. I want to be sure the both of you understand that."

"We understand." Kyu replied. "I'll discuss this with my partner."

"So far, it's all gravy." Randy grinned. "I only have two rules for you. You stay close to me and you obey my commands. If I lose track of you for even two minutes, I have to call it in, and then we're all in the shitter. We all have a lot to lose here."

It was awkward for Len to find himself in civilian population again. He was actually glad when Randy informed the two men they were restricted from going into the main social hubs. As it was, he didn't know how to act or where to look when they ran into other people. He noticed that Kyu was having the same social issues.

Randy walked ahead of the two men, trying not to look like their escort. He failed mostly because the lovers were always trailing behind and timid, as they would be when they were led around in the prison sector.

"You two have to loosen up some." Randy mentioned, more than once.

The officer greeted or waved at nearly half the people he ran into.

"Who are your friends, Randy?" An obviously gay man stopped before the officer, peering over his shoulder at the followers. Besides being dressed in flamboyant orange and yellow garb, he had an eccentric haircut of a modified bob and purple lipstick. "They're both cute."

"They're visitors from the Starship Neptune." Randy said. "Pardon them for being shy, but they've been that way ever since they found out this was a prison colony."

"We're not all prisoners!" The colorful man laughed. "You bring them by the Whirlwind later, and we'll make them feel right at home. Goodbye, cuties!"

The man swayed past them and was soon gone into a side corridor.

"Sorry, the Whirlwind is off-limits." Randy apologized. He walked them into a wide chamber with many tables and seats, and a food counter set against one wall. "This is the main cafeteria. As you can see, there aren't that many people in here now. That's because this is late second shift. People are either at the social hubs or in their beds asleep. I know the prison food isn't anything to write home about. You can order anything you want if you're hungry."

"Who's paying for this?" Len asked. "And who paid for the clothes we're wearing?"

"You are." Randy said, solemnly. A moment later the man was laughing. "I got you, didn't I? I thought you were going to cough out a frog! Don't worry about the cost, but hold on to the transaction slip the cashier will give you. The colony does this with all of the contractors that do business here. The cashier will scan your IDs, you say you're with prison sector, and the cashier will hand you a slip. Nobody knows who you are here. You could be painters or fitness instructors or any other person contracted with your sector."

"We can order anything we want to?" Kyu asked.

"Wait, wait." Randy held his hand out. "Let me say that over before you bankrupt the place. You can order any one-person meal the eatery offers. One meal for each of you. That would be an order of food, a drink and dessert, if you want one. This is a fast food place, so nothing here costs that much anyway. That's why I said don't worry about the cost. Are we clear on that?"

When both men nodded, Randy walked them over to the counter.

"Len, these are Earth dishes." Kyu noted, as he took in the dozens of items in the heated trays. "Will you order for me?"

"You've never had food from Earth before?" Randy asked in a low voice.

"No." Kyu answered. "In New Korea we ate mostly military rations and stews cooked in giant vats. Our food always came in packaged portions. When we ate chicken, it came in glops, not like that." He pointed at a tray full of breaded pieces. "I don't even know what that tastes like."

"You can ask for a sample." Randy told him. "Just choose a couple you want to taste and the clerk will give you a small piece."

"That's American-cooked." Len showed his friend. "This one is Asian spicy, and that one is Asian sweet."

"Len, what will you order?" Kyu wondered.

"I miss American cooking." He answered. "Let's try this. We don't want spicy, because we haven't eaten spicy food in who knows how long? I'll order different things than you. That way we can taste twice as much food."

Once Kyu agreed, they each chose a few items and beverages. Randy accompanied the two men to the cashier station, making sure everything went smoothly, before he walked them to a table.

"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Len asked.

"I will in a few minutes." The man replied. "Don't let me hold you up. Dig in."

Kyu was soon marveling over buttered corn and steamed peas and carrots, while Len grinned and chewed on American fried chicken, and later on Asian chicken pieces with broccoli mixed in. The two men were engrossed in the novel food, but paused when Randy stood up to greet an approaching person.

It was a woman, the two prisoners saw. She was tall and gorgeous, with bouncy brown hair, intense green eyes and a smile with a lot of beautiful teeth in it. While she wore a similar outfit to everyone else, her tunic was in a strong red and her pants were black.

"Hi, sweetheart." Randy hugged the woman. "I want you to meet my new friends. This is Kyu and this is Len. They're private contractors doing work in prison sector."

"Oh, hi, Kyu!" The woman greeted warmly, reaching out to shake the Asian's hand, before she turned toward the second man. "Oh, hi, Len!"

"This is my sweetheart, Jenny." Randy proudly said. "Let's go grab a bite to eat, honey. I know how you like to eat small."

"I always watch my figure for you." Jenny flirted. She turned back to the prisoners. "We'll be right back, boys!"

Arm in arm, Randy and his tall, beautiful woman stepped away. The prisoners were in a state of shock. They couldn't help but notice how sweet and curvy Jenny was.

"I thought Randy said his woman was a love bot." Kyu mentioned.

"He did say that." Len agreed.

"And her name was Jenny, the same as this woman."

"Right. That's what I remember."

"Obviously, this woman Jenny and the love bot Jenny are two different women."

This time, Len could only shrug back. "I remember seeing ads for love bots, but I didn't really pay attention to them. I could never afford one. Besides, I was married back then."

"This Jenny looks like the picture Randy showed us last week." Kyu recalled. "Is it rude if I ask Randy if this is his love bot?"

"That would be rude." Len decided. "This woman might get offended if you do that. Maybe she doesn't know that Randy has a love bot that looks like her."

Kyu glanced around the cafeteria. "Jenny is the most beautiful woman here. She is the most beautiful woman we've seen since we were brought out of prison sector. Are you sure she isn't the bot Randy was talking about?"

"She can't be." Len denied. "That's a real woman!"

"What do you think about Randy's offer?" Kyu changed the topic. "I know he wants to sleep with me. I believe he will allow me to have a conversation with his love bot if I agree to sleep with him. I'm not sure because he has not said this directly."

"I got the same impression. We'll ask him when we get him alone."

"What do you think about the offer?"

"I don't know." Len sighed. "Are you asking me in an emotional way or in a practical way?"

"Practical."

"I kind of like Randy, now that I'm starting to know him."

"Me too." Kyu nodded.

"I think... I think he'd be a good friend to have on the outside."

"I think the same. What about emotionally?"

"Emotionally, I don't want you to sleep with him." Len admitted. "How would you feel if he wanted me instead of you?"

"I would be angry and jealous. I know you don't get as angry as I do. You have a level head, while I have a temper. You would have to promise me that you love me and that you won't leave me for him. I would understand if you slept with him partly because you wanted to have a friend on the outside."

"Okay, so let me turn that back on you." Len decided. "Promise me that you love me, and that you won't leave me for Randy."
"Of course not! I do love you! If I didn't, I would never have stayed with you as long as I have!"

"You haven't slept with me ever since we left prison sector." Len reminded him.

"I know." Kyu looked down at his food. "I'm uncomfortable in the lab. I always feel as if Dr. Ilsa has hidden cameras watching us."

"I don't think she does, but I'm sure the surveillance people do."

"I'm accustomed to the surveillance people, but not with Dr. Ilsa. Maybe this is because she is a woman. I don't like to think of her watching a video of us having sex. In prison sector, that is the way things are. Everything we do is watched, even when we shit. Here in civilian sector, I feel we shouldn't be watched at all, and especially not by a frigid supervisor like Dr. Ilsa. She isn't a warden or a guard; she's a scientist farmer woman. What right does she have to watch us having sex?"

The men clammed up when Randy and his woman returned. Randy had a plate heaped up with food, while Jenny carried a small bowl with something that looked like pudding in it.

"What are you eating, Randy?" Kyu leaned over for a closer look.

"This is spicy Asian chicken with peanuts and red peppers." Randy said, stabbing a pepper with his fork and holding it up. "This right here, this is hot enough to put hair on your chest."

"And what are you eating, Jenny?" The Asian wondered.

"Tofu." She said, brightly.

"I've never heard of that. What is it made of?"

"Extract of soybeans." She answered. "I can't eat all the things you men can. My stomach just wasn't designed that way. My food has to be soft and easy for my enzymes to break down. I'm going to make Randy buy me some ice cream or yogurt later, and I do like my ice cream!"

Kyu glanced around, before he leaned over the table and peered closely at her face. "Jenny, are you really a robot?"

The woman mimicked the Asian exactly. She glanced to both sides, leaned over with a mischievous expression on her face, and peered closely into his eyes. "I hope you don't tell anyone. I've got them all in the palm of my hand. I'd show you my servos, except we've only just met. I'm not that kind of girl!"

Jenny started giggling, while beside her, Randy laughed.

"Isn't she something?" Randy asked, with a wide smile plastered on his face.

"But she looks so..." Kyu started, but he caught himself. "I mean; she is so beautiful!"

"All this and a sense of humor." Jenny smiled and winked.

"Best digi-coin I ever spent." Randy nodded.

Len was so stunned he couldn't even speak anymore. He was convinced that Jenny was a real woman. If she was a robot, his paranoid mind conjectured, then maybe Randy was one too. And if Randy was one, then what about Kyu? What if robots had replaced all of humanity except for Len? Wait... What if Len had an advanced AI built into him? What if he was a robot who thought he was a human? What if all of his memories were carefully embedded lies?

Driving all those rampant thoughts out of his head, Len went back to eating his food. He said, "This chicken is very good."

The three men and one artificial woman walked through the colony's commissary. During the day, humans ran the very small department store. On third shift, a handful of robots took over, allowing the store to remain open indefinitely. Actually, the various sections of the store were set up like vendor booths, each one with its own specialty such as clothes, electronic gadgets or packaged food.

Randy hadn't taken the prisoners into the commissary with the intention of buying anything. They ended up there because mostly every other place where a large number of people gathered was restricted.

Len didn't mind. Despite that he'd always been against materialism, because he'd been imprisoned for so long he could not help but marvel at the clothing colors and styles, and at a number of other things he saw.

A robot fashioned as a very pretty teenage girl walked up to them with a small tray full of cookie samples. The robot's features were Asian, with a schoolgirl's uniform and pigtails on either side of her head. This was the cookie company's 'mascot,' apparently. She offered the samples, prompting Kyu to take a couple. Randy took one right after. Len wondered if it was proper etiquette to refuse. His belly was full from his prior meal, but he ended up taking a cookie anyway.

A very strange exchange of information took place between Jenny and the Asian girl. They looked at each other as if one were a boat coming to dock at the other's port. Once a link was made between their robot brains, the women began speaking so fast their conversation was impossible to follow. The robots spoke simultaneously at first, but as the dialogue continued, Jenny spoke less and less. Finally, only the Asian girl was left talking.

"This is how the robots get news updates." Randy explained. "Anybody can walk up to an artificial person and ask them for the latest information, as opposed to having to sit down somewhere to watch a tele-vid. The advantage is that unlike most colonists, I have Jenny. She files everything into her head and keeps it organized on the off-chance that I might ask her about it. She's my little news station with an archive going all the way back to when I first booted her up."

After their tour of the store, the four went outside into an empty corridor with dim after-hours lighting.

"I hate to say this, but we've walked all over the colony now, or at least through all of the public access areas that I'm allowed to take you to." Randy said, fishing his 'puter out of his pocket. "We've been out for just over three hours now. I'm obliged to keep you out for another forty-five minutes. After that, I'll take you two back and we'll call it a night, or we can talk about my proposition."

"I want to talk about that." Kyu said. "Tell me the exact terms and conditions of your proposition. I want to have a good think about it before I decide."

"All right." Randy nodded. "Let's just walk into one of these longer corridors, because they're not as heavily monitored as these central hubs are." Once they were away from hidden cameras and microphones, the guard went on. "I want you to understand that I can't make this kind of arrangement with anyone I know. It would just be too much of a scandal if that person went public with it. Everybody in the civilian sector would know what I did, and they'd talk it up like they do with every other local scandal we have here. One of the administrators, a married woman mind you, tried to seduce a young man at the dance club. This man secretly had a 'puter recording their conversation. He refused the offer to go to bed with this woman, but he went ahead and posted the recording on the public Internet anyway. The woman, and she was very stupid here, but she went into a lot of graphic detail over what she would be doing to the young man. Her husband saw the video, the admin people saw it, and it became a huge scandal. Not because the young man had anything against the woman really, but because he wanted some notoriety and popularity among his little crowd. The scandal was bad enough that all three of them got transferred out."

"You want me because I'm in prison sector, and isolated from the rest of the colony." Kyu extrapolated.

"Let's stop here for a moment." Randy said, glancing down the corridor to make sure no one else was approaching. "I'm a straight man. I've always been straight. I've had to sit down for entire shifts while watching surveillance tapes of prisoners doing their everyday functions. It's a boring job, so sometimes I skip over the drier parts and get to the places where the prisoners are messing around. After watching enough of that, I thought, maybe I want to try that out one time. I can't just ask somebody in my squad, hey, I feel like being on top of a guy right now. Would you like to volunteer for that?"

"But we've seen a number of gay men tonight. Why not ask one of them?"

"Because they like to brag about their partners. That's the thing about the gay men here on the colony. It's trendy to brag. They just can't keep their mouths shut. In a half-shift, the entire colony would know that Randy Forrester, the straight Randy Forrester, was seen with gay so and so. In the last few days, I've watched video of you and Len in prison sector. You guys stick together. From what I've seen, you don't go bragging to the rest of the prisoners like you have something to prove. Maybe that's the kind of, uh, let's call it discretion, that I'm looking for."

"So the deal is that we sleep together, and in exchange I get to meet Jenny." Kyu reasoned. "But I've already met her. What if I say no to your offer now? Would you be upset over that?"

"I don't understand what you're saying." Randy frowned.

"Well, I've met Jenny." Kyu motioned at the robot. "She's here in front of me. I've already interacted with her. That ruins the deal, doesn't it?"

Both Kyu and Randy managed to look confused.

"Kyu," Len cut in. "I think you have it wrong. What Randy is saying is that if you sleep with him, he will let you sleep with Jenny."

"You mean I will have sex with this woman?" Kyu looked astonished. Dumbly, he looked at the robot, before he turned back to Randy. "Really?" He looked at Jenny a second time. "What do you think about that?"

"I'm not that kind of girl." The artificial woman replied saucily. "But I could be."

"That idea never crossed my mind, because it's so personal." Kyu admitted. "It feels more personal to me than if you were trying to seduce me away from Len. Jenny is your... your..."

Len felt he had to interject again. "What he means is that we have gotten so used to not having any privacy, that he can't understand it when someone who does have privacy wants to share it with us for any reason. In prison sector, we're grouped together like animals in a pen. Our personal lives are an open book to anyone who sits down before a monitor and reviews our videos. We never speak about personal matters with the guards."

"That's part of it." Kyu nodded. "The other part is that Jenny is the most personal thing in your life. I mean the most personal woman."

"I see it as an even trade." Randy said. "Len is the most personal man in your life, isn't he? And to Len, you're the most personal man in his life, right?"

"That's different." Kyu replied.

"In what way?"

"I feel that simply by talking to Jenny, I'm invading your privacy. I was ready to go through with your deal just for letting me have a conversation with her."

"In that case, maybe I shouldn't have told you the rest of it!" Randy laughed. "I don't keep Jenny hidden. I take her dancing and I show her off. I have her wear skimpy outfits when I have guests over. But you're right. She is very personal to me. I would never allow for anyone to put their hands on her in a sexual way. I figure that's the way you and Len think about each other."

"I need more time to think about this." Kyu said. "It changes everything now that I know sleeping with Jenny is part of the deal."

"Well, you don't have to!" Randy laughed again. "I'm not going to force you to sleep with her! You can think about it as long as you want. In the meantime, let's walk somewhere. We've already covered all of the public areas, so we'll have to go through them a second time."

"I don't care where we go." Kyu said. "As long as it is open space."

"Open space, huh? We can do that."

The prisoners didn't know what Randy meant until he walked them into the controller's room for the hangar. Both the guard and the artificial woman were qualified to fly drone ships. Since it was off-hours, the little ships were all lined up in the hanger waiting for the full bins from the mines.

After chatting with the controller for a few minutes, Randy introduced Len and Kyu as private contractors. Had the controller checked their ID cards, he would have known they were felons and probably denied Randy's request. Or perhaps Randy could have talked his way into flying a ship anyway. The end result was that the controller didn't check, and the four were soon strolling down the aisle before the drone ships.

The ships had four long claws that clamped around full bins, with the actual vessel some ten feet off the ground. An artificial man rolled a large stepladder before one of the drones. It was only rarely that Len got to see one of those vehicles up close.

"Why don't you sit up front with Jenny?" Randy asked. "She's going to do the flying. Kyu, do you mind sitting in the back with me?"

"I'll sit with you." The Asian agreed.

From the ground level, Len had always assumed the drones were only built for one or two human pilots. He was surprised when, after trotting up the stepladder, he counted eight seats with a narrow aisle cutting through their number.

"Most of the drones are built for only one pilot." Randy said, after Len asked about it. "This one is a deluxe model. It can take cargo and people back and forth from the Neptune. Sometimes on my rest days, Jenny and I have a fly around the big ship. She knows the route. Don't you, sweetheart?"

"Of course." Jenny smiled. "And I love to fly!"

"Go ahead and prep the ship." Randy told her. "Len, you can take the front seat to the right of Jenny."

The artificial woman strode through the seats. Len meant to follow, when Kyu stopped him.

"Is it natural that I want to sleep with a robot?" The Asian asked.

"She's an attractive robot!" Randy laughed.

Len, on the other hand, was a little more philosophical. "I think you have to make that decision for yourself."

"Would you sleep with her?"

Kyu had never lost a wife the way he had, Len knew. "I can't answer that right away. I would have to think it over the same way you're doing now."

The drone ship was in an enclosed bay along with several others. Jenny set the ship to hover and directed it to float out of its bay and past a single airlock door. This allowed them to enter the larger hangar. At the moment, the hangar doors were wide open, as a few drones were still expected to return, after having dropped off their cargo in the mother ship floating in space.

"Here is a tour of Asteroid QQ37." Jenny said, as the drone quickly picked up speed and flew over the barren gray surface.

Len stood up and leaned over the control panel, peering out through the windshield. It was such a strange landscape to look at, with flat stretches, impact craters and even small dunes of softer material, or dust, that had accumulated over time. Only about a week prior, Len had been under that surface along with the other miners. The drone went around the entire asteroid in only a few minutes.

"Now, we'll take a look at the mother ship." Jenny said, excitedly.

She was a robot, Len kept reminding himself. She was not real in a human sense. The distinction was hazy, however. To him, Jenny was as real as he was. He didn't even know how to talk to her.

"Cat got your tongue?" Jenny joked.

The front window showed a long stretch of black space and distant stars, before the immense structure of the Starship Neptune came into view. The ship was as large as an aircraft carrier from Earth at five hundred feet long.

As Len watched, Jenny typed a long series of commands into her control console, at a magnificent speed that humans would never equal.

"Say something!" Jenny exclaimed.

"You fly this ship very well." Len commented, because he didn't know what else to say.

"I aced the flight sims and the training exams."

"How do you feel?"

"Very happy!"

"I mean, what causes you to feel?"

"Oh!" She giggled. "I have nerve receptors based on human equivalents. I use ocular and mental programming to absorb and interpret data. Everything I learn is processed within my cortex through several algorithms based on human behavior."

"Do you believe you are alive?"

"Of course I am! I can contemplate on the abstract concept of I Am with the best philosophers humanity has ever produced. I think, therefore I am. And I can think with the best of them!"

"What do you want from your life?"

"I want to be happy and to make Randy happy."

There were people in the Truther community who believed that all artificial people had to be destroyed, that they were a mockery of God's divine plan for humanity. Since Len had hardly ever been around these robots with advanced AI brains, he'd never taken a side on that issue. His main motto was to follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you.

"Humans have their ideas on what God is and what the purpose of humanity is." Len remarked. "I wonder if people like you, artificial people, have taken those human ideas and come up with something different. Your brains are quantum leaps faster than ours."

With a very mechanical motion, Jenny turned to face him and grinned.

"You have, haven't you?"

Jenny gave him a wide smile.

Len knew that look. He'd seen actors on the tele-vid, pretending to have been victims of some terrorist attack that had really been set up by the world government. The actors had the task of convincing the public the false attack had really taken place, while at the same time they pushed the government's propaganda. At some point, the actor's contrived story would start to fall apart and they were left grinning sheepishly at the reporter, or even laughing when they should have been crying over lost loved ones. The term for that was called Duping Delight. This is what he was seeing on Jenny's face.

"So, robots keep secrets from people." Len concluded.

Jenny turned her artificial eyes away from him and went back to the controls. "They're not really secrets. People just wouldn't understand."

Len glanced into the back of the passenger area. Kyu and Randy were kissing. This sent a pang of jealousy through Len's body. He wanted to go back there to break things up, while at the same time he hated feeling that he was Kyu's owner. The Asian had made a sexual agreement, a contract almost, and he was simply fulfilling it.

When the men started removing their clothes to have sex, Len faced forward. He took in the vast stretches of metal alloy and the various communications towers that made up the Neptune's topside.

Randy didn't return them to Hydroponics. Instead, he took the prisoners to his apartment. Len was so tired by then that he simply flopped down on a couch and lay his head back. Jenny asked if he'd like the tele-vid on, but he said no. She went into Randy's bedroom along with the other two men.

The artificial woman came back a few minutes later. She'd changed into a white halter-top and tight shorts that shone as if they were made of plastic. Most of her skin was revealed to the man on the couch. As Len watched her, Jenny began to dance in front of him. It was a dance with a lot of bouncy movements. He was fatigued enough that the erotic dance mesmerized him. Len imagined he was becoming a rat, and that Jenny was turning into a snake. She was beautiful to watch, however.

After a time, Randy stepped into the living room, wearing only blue boxers with white designs on them. He told Jenny to go have fun with Kyu. She left promptly.

"You didn't sleep with Jenny?" Randy asked.

"No, I'm too tired." Len admitted.

The man started laughing. "Too tired to sleep with Jenny? I don't believe you! Are you upset because of what I did with Kyu? I don't want you upset with me."

Len had to get a yawn out of the way, before he made his reply. "I was jealous while we were on the drone, but not anymore."

"Not anymore? That's good. I hate having to look over my shoulder, you know?"

As Len watched, Randy removed his last bit of clothing and sat down next to him on the couch. The man had an erection on him.

"What are you doing now?" Len asked.

"Oh, just getting friendly with you. Do you mind?"

"I should because you just slept with my lover."

"But you don't mind, do you?" Randy asked, as he scooted closer.

"Your deal was with Kyu, not with me." Len reminded him.

"I tried to make a deal with you, but you turned Jenny down!" Randy laughed. "I still can't believe you did that! How about it, cowboy? Are you going to turn me down, too?"

Len looked at the man's face, and on his erection. "I don't know. I'm tired and I wasn't expecting this."

Randy got close enough to kiss at Len's neck.

"I'll probably fall asleep on you." Len said, for the most part giving up.

Randy lulled Len by kissing him, enough that Len didn't put up a defense when he was being undressed. He expected that Randy would be dominant with him, but was surprised when the man gave Len his back. Kyu was always complimenting Len for having a meaty ass, and as he studied Randy, he saw that man had a meaty ass as well. Len was attracted to Kyu, and to no other man until that moment. He liked Randy, enough to take him there on the couch. When he finished, Randy still had enough energy left to turn Len around and return the action.

Len did not put up a fight.

Somehow, the two prisoners made it back to Hydroponics.

It was late the next morning when Len opened his eyes, seeing the bright ceiling lights that were used to heat the plants in the growing room. Somebody was making a racket, he thought, and that noise was making his head hurt.

Len sat up, coming to understand that he was on his little cot, still wearing the clothing Randy had given him. Behind him, Kyu was snoring heavily.

For a moment, Len wondered if what he recalled from the previous night was real. Maybe those were all implanted memories given to him through serum injections and false programming. Maybe Kyu had never slept with Randy, and Kyu hadn't slept with Jenny, and Len hadn't slept with Randy. As he stood, he started laughing at the strange love triangle he might have simply dreamed up.

"I need you to help me with the harvesting." A woman's hard voice announced to him.

Len looked across the room, where the technician with the auburn hair was going from one vegetable tub to the other, checking their readings on the solution monitor.

"Nice clothes." Bibi mentioned, sarcastically.

She wanted him in his lab clothes, Len knew. To spite her, he undressed before her eyes and walked over to the shower stall in the corner. Len was about to turn the shower on, when he realized he was still wearing Randy's tracking bracelet. He actually liked that piece of jewelry, and also that Kyu had a matching piece. Len decided to leave it on, even if it could be used to track them. It's not like they ever left the lab area, anyway.

Len took his shower, using the bar of soap generously and vigorously. Because it was an open space, Bibi cast several dark glances at him. Maybe it was true that she had no lover, as he and Kyu had surmised before. Maybe she hated the prisoners, or at least harbored a strong dislike for them.

Len didn't care, or more precisely, he did care, but only because Bibi could affect his placement out of prison sector. The man finished up his shower, dried himself off and put on his lab clothing. Len made it a point to do everything Bibi told him to, following her instructions to the letter so she'd have absolutely nothing to gripe about. Only two people were needed for the task she wanted done, anyway, so Kyu could have his full sleep this time.

#####

Rothschild Apocalypse

_This excerpt comes from my novel Rothschild Apocalypse. This novel is scheduled for release on December 1_ st _, 2018. You can pre-order the novel before its release date for only 99 cents. I don't have a teaser ready for it, and it hasn't undergone its final review, so there may be a few minor blemishes in this excerpt that I haven't caught yet._

The inset image is believed to be in the public domain. I don't have any details for it other than it features three tough chola chicks, similar to the heroines of my novel. I will say that the home-girl to the right reminds me my ex-wife.

Intro: Here is an excerpt from a novel I recently finished up. To give you an idea of what you can expect, I'll say that my influences were movie cult favorites like Kill Bill, The Warriors and Nude Nuns With Big Guns. On top of that, I wanted to make this project as controversial as I could. As I went along, I tossed in a lot of verifiable, but not necessarily officially validated 'conspiracy theories.' That is, I put in info on what today's Truthers and alternative news outlets suspect, which is routinely swept under the rug by controlled Fake News media. They're still telling us that the JFK assassination was caused by a 'lone gunman,' remember, when it was the CIA that first pushed that term into the collective consciousness.

Anyway, here is how my main heroine got her start, and that's plenty contentious on its own. Some content might change slightly, as this project is not yet in its finalized form.

The inset images are from my personal photo collection, circa 1990. Ah, the good old days. The girls pictured are from a neighborhood that rivaled where I lived. There was some adventure taking place during the times when I'd go over to pay these young ladies a visit. The first shot shows Rosie, myself partially obscured in the background, and my arm hooked around Jokette's neck to make sure she didn't get away from me. That's the woman I was with for over 20 years. The second image is an incomplete group shot of the girls from that rival neighborhood. I don't remember all their names, but top left is Rosie, next to Jokette. Bottom middle and right are M and V, Jokette's sisters. Jokette, my ex-wife, was the toughest of the bunch. She had a reputation for body-slamming young men when I first met her.

Here's a good story. One night I drove over to see her. Several rivals came by to pick a fight with me. I was alone and I didn't want any beef with their 'hood, so I told them I wasn't going to fight. Trust me, it would have been a mess, and it was later, if both of our gangs got into a feud. I got into my car and tried to drive away, but the thugs would not budge. So Jokette told me to scoot over and took the wheel. She gave the thugs one last warning before she gunned the motor. One smart guy didn't move, so he bounced on the hood, roof and trunk of my car before he hit the dirt alley. That night I didn't get into any squabbles. Over the next couple of years, I was jumped by that gang twice, in their 'hood and mine, and I had guns pointed at my face and chest multiple times at close range. You could say that I got the worst of it, by myself, but my gang as a whole didn't. We caught them slipping a couple of times, too.

#####

Rothschild Apocalypse; An Excerpt

_The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings._ \- John F. Kennedy

Every story has a beginning. Most stories, they start up from a fixed point, and they roll ahead from there. This story, it's a lot more complicated. It started undercover, so we didn't even know about all this shit until it crept up on us, bad enough that we had it coming at us from all sides. I did my research, ay. You won't believe most of it, because it is just too out there, too crazy to believe. But they left a paper trail, along with the piles of millions and millions of dead bodies. That's some occult Illuminati shit right there. You could say that everything started up right after World War II, when the crypto Jews and crypto Nazis in the United States began taking over the government. Then the CIA made that secret deal with Walt Disney. That's when things really got rolling.

That's too far back for me. I was only born in '95, here in Diego Town, So Cal by the U.S. border. My mom is a fourth generation chola gang-banger, who had to raise my brother and me as best she could. Rest In Peace, Topo. That was my brother's tag. It is Spanish for Gopher, because he was always going underground to hide from the fascist, corporate pigs. He ate it in a drive by a few years ago, while he was standing in the front yard at his homies' house and drinking beer from a bottle. I never met that man who is supposed to be my father. I guess he was from L.A., from Echo Park Lokos Gang. Who gives a shit about him?

My name is Silvia. You don't need to know my last name. That's how they get you on the birth certificates, by spelling your name out in all CAPS and turning you into a fucking corporation. Let's just leave it at Silvia or Silvie. At first, they called me Angel, because I was quiet and shy when I first started hanging around with the home-girls. You know, 'pure' and all that shit like angels are supposed to be. They would have called me Shy Girl, except that tag was already taken. So I was known as Angel at first. When I started blasting fools, I became Angel of Death. Nowadays, my home-girls introduce me as simply Death. You should see the way fools look at me when they hear that I'm called Death. They take one look at my face and my clothes, and their fighting balls shrink away into little raisins.

I didn't always look this way. I didn't always dress this way. Shit just happened. It is what it is.

Anyway, I guess I should get started on this stupid story, because everybody wants me to leave a record of it, and nobody else has the patience to write it all down. I should have taken notes, because I'm sure I'm going to forget something or get things mixed up out of order somewhere down the line.

Fuck it. Here goes.

My name is Death, and this is how it all began for me.

" _One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."_ –K.M. Heaton, national educator

I was a good girl when I was little. I listened to my teachers and I did my fucking homework. I was never tardy to class. Even as late as my sophomore year, I stayed out of trouble, mostly. I was already hanging out with my home-girls and dressing like they did. I used to tease my hair up high and act tough, but past all that I was really goofy. I look so stupid in my old pictures from back then. If some bitch tried to start a fight with me, my home-girls would swarm in on them. Like I said, they called me Angel back then. I acted tough and I talked a lot of shit, but I was a softie underneath.

My brother got shot when I was sixteen, just as I was going into my junior year of high school. It was a crazy time for me. I was used to seeing Topo every day at my mom's house, and suddenly I'm standing at the cemetery and watching his casket going into the ground. He was a troublemaker, yeah, but he wasn't violent. Sometimes you have to twist the law just to survive out here, unless you bend over and let the system fuck you up the ass all the time. Most people bend over because they like that shit, because they are fucking cowards.

I almost quit school back then, because what was the point of going when the school was only grooming you for a life of bending over? I took a week off to grieve for my brother. The people at the school only wanted to give me three days, because according to them that's how long the grieving process lasted. I guess they've never seen widows in Mexico wearing black for years and years after they lose their husbands. I said fuck the school and I took the entire week off anyway.

I kind of fucked up one day. I went into my brother's room and I saw all of his things. Knowing he would never come back made me cry, and I left the house and went for a long walk. I wasn't paying attention. I just kept walking, ignoring how my feet got to complain about it and how empty my stomach felt. I didn't care if I lived or died that day, to tell you the truth. There didn't seem to be much point in going on. When it got dark, I looked around and said, oh shit, I'm not in my neighborhood anymore. I was way down there in Chula Vista somewhere, off of Palomar Street where all the stores are. I backtracked through Chula and was halfway through National City when shit started up.

It was, I don't know, nine or ten at night by then. I guess I should have taken the big streets where all the lights are. At the same time, I felt more comfortable walking along the darker streets with their mostly quiet houses. I was happier in the shadows.

This car pulled up, a beat up cruiser with wire-wheel hubcaps and two couples inside. One of the chicks leaned out the window and challenged me. She asked me what 'hood I was from. After years of having said it at high school, the words rolled off my tongue like water.

"Stoner Town, bitch!" I cried out. "Dead End Gang! What's up now?"

If I said I stood there because I was tough, it would be a lie. I stood there because I froze when I saw these two chicks jumping out of their car. I wasn't at my high school. I didn't have my home-girls ready to back me up. I was alone and I was too scared to run away. I didn't know how to fight either, so I got my ass kicked.

One bitch, she pounded my ass into the ground. "I'm not going to stop until you say name, bitch! I'm Rosie from Insane Girls! Say it, bitch!"

Rosie was bigger than me, and a lot stronger. I tried not to say her name, but she kept pounding on me. I opened my mouth when I couldn't take any more. Maybe she thought I was about to talk more shit, because she popped me a good one and I couldn't even talk anymore. I just curled up and covered my face until she tired out. When Rosie finally stopped, I heard the others laughing at me. They were laughing because I had started crying halfway during the beat-down.

The other girl, she was just watching as Rosie pulled me up to my feet.

"You ain't ready." Rosie said. "You come back when you're ready, and I'll fuck you up again. Get out of here!"

Rosie pushed me so hard I ended up tumbling on the sidewalk and rolling into a fence. A lot of dogs were barking as they got back into their car and left. I stood up, beaten, bloody, with my clothes all dirty and ripped up. I was still crying as I walked home, out of anger, humiliation and even fear that Rosie would come back to hurt me some more. After a while, I stopped crying. I just walked.

My mother and my home-girls demanded to know who had beaten me up. I lied and said it was a girl gang, when it was really only two girls. I didn't even remember the second girl's face anymore. All I remembered was Rosie and her fat knuckles slamming into my head. If someone had put a gun in my hand and we'd gone out cruising for Rosie, I would have killed her.

That's when I started changing inside.

My brother's death told me that life could end at any moment. Everything you wanted to get done would never get done. You'd be gone and all of these things you wanted to do would be halfway finished, and nobody would ever come along to finish them for you. It didn't feel right to me, that a person could be born into this world and taken out so suddenly, before their time. That's when I decided never to waver, never to do anything half-ass. It was all the way or nothing.

Getting my ass kicked by Rosie told me a lot of things about myself. I wasn't a coward, not really, but I was a wimp. I didn't know how to defend myself. I didn't know how to punch anybody. I started play fighting with my home-girls. We would wrestle each other to the ground. I learned how to grab handfuls of hair and use my weight to bring a bitch down. I learned how to trip a bitch that was bigger than me. I mounted my girlfriends, where it didn't matter if they had grabbed my hair or not, because I was already punching them in the face. The toughest girls showed me how to file my nails sharp, as sharp as razor blades, so I could scratch like a cat and leave blood trails everywhere.

And then I got my chance to get revenge on Rosie.

"Hey, listen up, bitch." My friend Happy called. Her real name is Julieta, in Spanish, but she hates it so much we never use it. "There's a party going on down at the boundary between us and Nalga Town. I heard that bitch Rosie from IG is there."

Nalga Town. That's what we called National City. It translates as Ass Town or Butt Cheek Town, which pisses off their thugs like crazy. It's all perspective. I know that now. They called our side Shit Town, and we'd get all Conan the Barbarian over that too.

"What you wanna do about that bitch?" Happy asked.

"I want to take her down, that's what."

We picked up another home-girl, Mala, which translates as Bad Girl.

Happy drove us over to the party. She parked a block and a half away. Once we did what we went there to do, we were going to run through an alley and jump into her car. If we did it right, we weren't going to get caught.

Mala and me walked into the house like it was nothing. Mostly it was people from Stoner Town there, like the Dukes and 36th Street. Some of them didn't bang, but they dressed up like they did. We call that bunch the posers or the wannabes. You know, the type you can't depend on when shit goes down, and that you have to watch out for if the pigs start asking their bullshit questions.

Looking back on that night, I fucked up by walking into the party with Mala. If I could do it over again, I would have asked her to step in first to scope things out. What happened was that Mala and me walked in from the house's driveway, and we saw Rosie and a few others standing at the far edge of the yard. Rosie was standing there, laughing with her friends, when she casually scanned the yard and saw me. For a split second, we had eye contact, before I broke it off and I got on Mala's far side. I thought, fuck, I hope that bitch didn't recognize me, or else I wouldn't get close enough to shank that bitch.

With my head down and looking away, I said, "Mala, keep going around the house. Let's go in the backyard."

There were people back there, listening to loud music and drinking beer. These were older heads from Stoner Town, people in their twenties, the next generation up from us. All the young people were up front, while the second tier was chilling in back. We went and introduced ourselves to the heads we knew, while at the same time we were casing the yard for our getaway. The people in the front yard, we couldn't trust them, but these older thugs had been around the block a few times. They knew what's up. They wouldn't have ratted us out. We saw the back fence that we could jump over, and the alley right behind it. Mala and me went into the house, checking where all the rooms were.

"Check it." I said. "Let's get that bitch into one of these bedrooms. I'll do what I came here for, and I'll go out the window. We'll leave through the backyard like nothing and jump the fence."

That was the mission. Shank that bitch and get the fuck out. To get the plan rolling, Mala and me went outside again. We found the best looking thug out there.

"Hey, hey, what's up?" Mala went up to this fool. "I need you to do me a favor, ay?"

"What kind of favor?" The thug asked.

"It's a bedroom favor." Mala flirted. "We need you to get this bitch into one of the rooms here. Don't worry about why. Later, you and me will hook up in your bedroom."

Rest In Peace. Cops took down that motherfucker later, after he stole a car. He was on the news and everything, with the fucking chopper chasing after him. He didn't go out like a chump, on his knees with his hands behind his head. No, this fool went out with his gun blazing, the way a real warrior should.

"Yeah, all right." He nodded. "I'll do it."

He did it, too. He went out to the front yard and pretended to flirt with some of the girls out there. When he got to Rosie, I guess he really turned up the charm, because that bitch came in like a puppy after his ass. He said, hey, girl, you stay in this room for a minute, while I go grab a couple of beers for us. Rosie stayed, while this fool went into the backyard and motioned at us with his head.

Mala and me walked inside. She was supposed to stand by the door, while I went in to handle my business.

I can't say Rosie was surprised to see me, when I walked in and shut the door behind me. She was sitting down on a chair, facing the door. I had a flip-knife in my pocket. I can flip a knife open with only my thumb today, but back then I was pulling them open with both hands.

"Let's go, bitch." I challenged, opening up my chest and holding the knife out at my side. "You know who I am and you know why I'm here."

The problem is, this bitch didn't get up and rush me like I thought she would. I didn't want to jump on her, because maybe she would pick up that chair or maybe she had something in her pocket too. I stood there waiting for Rosie to make a move, but she didn't make no move.

"You got the guts to use that?" She asked. "I don't think you do."

I saw her get up, and I braced myself, getting ready to stick my knife into her stomach. Rosie walked over like she didn't give a shit.

Ever since she'd jumped me, I had imagined that she was this huge, fat ogre with baseball mitts for fists. I saw her like, I don't know, like a giant or something. Now that she was in the same room with me, with real lights and not out in the dark, I realized that Rosie wasn't that much bigger than I was. She wasn't fat, either.

Let me tell you what Rosie looked like. She'd dyed her hair in a reddish blonde, feathered back and teased up at the top. She looked mean despite the light hair color, like a Pit Bull. She was wearing a shirt striped in black and gray that had her big tits sticking out of it. Her jeans were new and tight. Her body was thick, but not fat.

Rosie knew I couldn't stab her. That's why she walked over and stood so close to me that our chests were touching. She stared me down, and I stared back. Then she reached over and picked my arm up. She lifted my hand so that my knife was pressed against her neck.

"Come on, then." She dared. "You Stoner Town bitches ain't shit, just like the bitches from my 'hood. All talk and no guts."

It made me mad to hear her talk like that. I pressed the knife closer, but the stupid knife wasn't that sharp. I didn't know enough back then to sharpen my shit before I tried to use it.

Fucking Rosie, she put her arms around me and just held me like that. I was so stupid I froze again. I had gone in there ready for a fight, and here this bitch is hugging me and I didn't know what to do about it.

"Why don't you put your knife down?" She asked. "I've been waiting for you."

"You saw me when I walked in."

"I did, but that's not what I'm talking about." Rosie corrected me. "Do you remember what I said, when I fucked you up that night?"

"You said I wasn't ready. You told me to come back when I was ready so you could fuck me up again."

"I've done that same shit to a hundred little bitches before you. And you know what? None of them had the guts to come back. You're the first one. You know what that means?"

I didn't know what to say to that. I just knew this bitch that I'd come to shank was hugging me and I wasn't bothered by it.

Rosie came in close and kissed me on the cheek. She kissed me a couple more times, before she moved over to my lips. I let her.

"Put your knife away before I take it from you." She growled. "If I get it, I'm going to carve my initials into your ass, because you belong to me now."

"Is that right?" I asked.

"You want to find out? When I say something, I mean it, bitch."

I folded my knife up and stuck it in my pocket.

That's when Mala opened the door and came in.

Rosie went on her guard. She took a couple of steps back, away from both of us. "Come on then, bitches. I'll take on both of you."

Mala was the same size as Rosie. With me jumping in too, I don't think that bitch could have won. Rosie had the guts to try, though. That's what impressed me the most. She was going to do it with her bare hands. I would have been looking for a weapon if I had two bitches coming at me.

"What's going on?" Mala asked me.

"Nothing." I said. "Let's just go. I've got nothing to do here."

We turned to leave, when Rosie called out, "You bitches got beer?"

We got some beer. We drove out to Southcrest park and started drinking, keeping to the dark spots where the pigs couldn't see us.

Hands down, Rosie was the toughest bitch I'd ever met. Even when she was drinking, she was daring Mala, Happy and me to jump her. Mala and Rosie got into a shoving match where they almost threw punches, but that was mostly over their 'hoods and nothing personal.

"I never got officially jumped into Insane Girls." Rosie admitted, later when things mellowed out. "Three of them bitches tried it once, but I drop hammers like a man. They didn't try it again. You know what pisses me off? They respect me because they fear me. They like when I'm around because I'm tougher than they are. Without me, they fold up like a house of cards. I put in the work they can't. I can't respect that! If I got their backs, then who in the fuck has my back? I went to Youth Authority for six months because of fighting. None of them IG bitches ever went to YA like that. How 'bout you bitches?"

Happy glanced at me, buzzed on alcohol but still sober enough to know we were out of Rosie's league.

"I did two months." Mala admitted. "For possession and fighting. I got out early because of good behavior. There were just too many bitches in the program when I was in there."

"Fucking good behavior!" Rosie started laughing, pissing Mala off.

Mala got up and went to slap Rosie on the side of the head. Let me tell you, that bitch Mala can slap hard. This caused Rosie to start laughing even more.

"What the fuck?" Happy asked. "Is that bitch made out of wood or what?"

Mala looked ready to jump on Rosie, but I went over and got in the way.

"Just let her fucking be." I told Mala. "Sit your ass down so I can ask this bitch something."

Mala had respect for Rosie. I could see that already. Both of them were tough bitches. Mala wasn't going to let Rosie talk shit on her, but she knew a warrior when she saw one. Mala went and sat down where she'd been sitting before.

"You get one free hit on me, and only one." Rosie said, drunkenly. "After that, it's on between you and me. To the fucking death, bitch."

"I can fuck you up." Mala replied.

"Maybe you can." Rosie shrugged. "I'll tell you this. I'm the hardest bitch you ever met. There is not one bitch in National City that can kick my ass. Oh, they might win one time out of ten, or out of twenty, but the rest of the time I own those bitches."

"Hey." I called out. "How did you know I wasn't going to shank you?"

"You don't have what it takes." Rosie revealed. She looked up at the sky for a second, but there were no stars out that night. "Let me tell you something. Back when I was a little girl, my brother, all he talked about was how he was going to grow up to become a ninja. I mean a real ninja assassin like in the movies."

The rest of us started laughing.

"He was serious about it." Rosie went on. "He got my dad to buy him these little rubber stars that he could throw around, and these orange, plastic nun-chucks he could play with. When he was like thirteen or fourteen, he started asking my dad to buy him real weapons, right, like knives and swords and shit. I think I was like ten back then. My dad was always going to the swap meet to buy cheap shit, and my brother and I would tag along with him. My brother said, buy me this and buy me that. One day, my dad got pissed off, and he said, wait until we get home."

Happy was starting to fall asleep, I noticed.

"Go sleep in the car, bitch." I told her.

"I'm all right." Happy replied.

Rosie waited until we were paying attention to her, before she started up again. "So we get home. My dad tells my brother to wait by the front porch. I thought he was going to get his ass whupped, so I went inside and watched from the screen door. I don't know where my dad found it, but he came back with a kitten. He told my brother, hold this for a minute. Then my dad goes into the house, and he comes back out with a big-ass kitchen knife. He gives the knife to my brother and he asks, you think you're a bad-ass? If you want to play with toys; that's one thing. If you want to play with real weapons, that's a whole other thing. My dad said, you take that knife and you cut that kitten's head off, and that will show me you've got the balls to use a real weapon. My dad went inside and he told me to get away from the door. I wanted to see what my brother would do, so I went over to the window to watch from there. After a couple of minutes, my brother crouched down and let the kitten go. Then he went to put the knife back in the kitchen. I never forgot that day."

Rosie looked straight at me. "It's in the eyes. I saw your eyes going all over the place, because you were thinking about it too much. You were like second-guessing if you were down enough to do it or not. You might do it here, in front of your home-girls, because if you didn't you'd look bad. But by yourself, nah, you're not ready."

I wasn't ready, not then. Things changed as time went on.

I remember one more thing about that night. Happy was sleeping in the front of the car, while Mala was lying on the back seat. I was leaning on the fender, with Rosie holding me. We ended up kissing each other until the sun showed up.

I'm going to jump around a little bit, because some of this shit isn't that important.

I'll say this about Rosie. I had two boyfriends before her. The first asshole took my virginity, and then he bragged about it to the entire neighborhood the next day. Back then, things like that would hurt my feelings. He took me the right way, but he also took me the wrong way. You know what I mean. He fucking lied and said it wasn't going to hurt, and then he did it and he told everybody.

The second guy, I never let him get that far. I only dated him for a couple of months. He was trying to get into my pants from day one. I told him if he wanted me that bad, he was going to have to wait until I was ready. I didn't want to go through that same shit again, where if he had a big fucking mouth everybody would be looking at me and know what we'd done. When I found out he was messing around with another girl, I just stopped talking to him and that was it.

Rosie was different. She kissed me all the time. She held me when my last two boyfriends were always trying to rub my butt. Rosie would push me against walls and into corners, and she'd mess around with me until I let her stick her hands in my panties. After a while, it wasn't only her doing things to me. I started doing things to her, too.

Another thing about Rosie was that she had family connections everywhere. She had family in National City, in Spring Valley and in Langley Heights. That's another reason she didn't want to get jumped into a gang. If she did that, she wouldn't be able to go into all these other neighborhoods. National City got along with Langley, but they didn't get along with Spring Valley. My 'hood and Langley were mortal enemies.

At first, us girls were affiliated with the Stoner Town Dead End Boys. We weren't in that gang, not exactly, because we were girls and all the Dead End Boys were, obviously, young men. Even worse, some of my home-girls didn't like Rosie coming around, or her cousin Charlene from Spring Valley. That started up a rift between us home-girls. It got bad enough that we decided to make our own little separate clique. We didn't need to jump each other in because we were already best friends and we had each other's backs. That was Rosie, Happy, Mala, Charlene and me. The five of us were O.G., Originals in the Stoner Town Harpies Gang. Anybody that came in after us was going to have to go through an initiation against all of us at once.

Happy's mother had a property with two houses on it. The back house was a two-bedroom place with shitty tenants that were always late in paying the rent. When the tenants got kicked out, Happy convinced her mother to let us move in. Happy's mom met my mom, who was working back then and getting benefits, so that helped out a lot. Mala had a job at the supermarket, so we ended up sharing the second bedroom. I was a junior and Rosie was a senior, but we didn't go to the same schools. Regardless, Rosie would always end up at the house in the afternoons, so she could be with me.

I'll just say a couple of things about that place, before I move on. The four of us, Rosie, Mala, Happy and me, were always in the house when my mom was at work. At first, Rosie and Mala were fighting all the time. I mean all the time, every day. They were both fine one second, and then they were in each other's faces talking shit. They'd end up grabbing each other's hair and slugging it out until Happy and me broke them apart.

It took me a good minute to figure out that Mala was jealous of Rosie and me. I don't know why I didn't catch this earlier. Mala had a thing for me. I told Rosie, hey, bitch, I can have two lovers if I want. I thought Rosie would pitch a bitch over that, but she didn't. That's when I started fooling around with Mala, and everything calmed down between those two. Those two were like... I guess like tomcats. They did their thing all day long, but they wanted to come home and have their itches scratched for a little while, before they went out again. Mala and Rosie never did anything together, and they didn't fight over me any more. I was able to keep them both, well, this is going to sound funny, but I kept them both satisfied.

The last thing... And this still gets me mad when I think about it. Some asshole got Happy pregnant. He talked her into doing it without a condom, saying this and that about how much better it would feel without one. Well, he fucked her a few times, and then she was pregnant and it was a big mess with that guy. Happy went crazy over him. She really loved that guy, I guess. She would go over to his house and start crying at his door and making a huge drama about it. When the asshole started hitting her to make her leave, the rest of us thought we should do something about it.

Happy drove us over and told us to wait in the car. She went to the asshole's door, but he wouldn't open up for her. When he did come out, they made a big scene like they always did. This asshole started yelling at Happy, pushing her around while she cried and tried to cling to him. When he pushed her to the ground, we got off the car. Rosie, Mala and I were going to teach that guy not to ever treat a woman like that again.

I don't know who called the pigs. Maybe it was somebody from inside that house, or one of the neighbors. That same drama had been happening for weeks by then. Everyone on the block would see it and hear it. Well, the fucking pigs come rolling in like there's a massacre going on. We hadn't even reached Happy's asshole boyfriend before they jumped on all of us. A fucking pig hit me in the face. Like fifty pigs shoved Rosie and Mala down and fucked them up with their stun guns. Both bitches got hit by elbows and knees, even after they were cuffed. Happy's stupid boyfriend got his arm broken...

I saw one pig kick Happy in the stomach. She was four and a half months pregnant by then. Thanks to that fucking pig, she miscarried and almost died. That was the last time I ever called those assholes cops. The pigs blamed us for everything they'd done, and of course the judge took their side.

That's how we got found out. All of us bitches were taken in and strip-searched. The pigs found the letter H tattooed on our backs, by our left shoulders. They figured out we were a gang, but we never told them what the H stood for. Some fucking pig thought he was being funny by calling us Hookers. That's the name he entered into our files.

We couldn't do anything against Happy's boyfriend anymore, because the pigs warned us. If we did, Rosie was going straight to jail because she already had a bad record. That was all right. People owed us favors. We called some people up and said, hey, we need this asshole taken care of. The good thing for us was that Happy's boyfriend had enemies all over San Diego. Nobody looked twice at us when someone walked up to his car and blasted him. By then, Happy's baby was gone and she didn't care what happened to that guy.

" _We have before us the opportunity to forge, for ourselves and for future generations, a New World Order. A world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, rules all nations. When we are successful–and we will be–we have a real chance at this New World Order. An order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping forces to fulfill the promise and vision of its founders."_ —George H.W. Bush, March 21, 1991

What happened next?

Let me skip over to my senior year in high school. That's when I met Alex. Shit, I have to explain how I met him. Let me backtrack.

You already know that we're one tough bunch of bitches. That includes Charlene, even though I haven't talked about her much. She was Rosie's cousin, who would come over on the weekends and hang out with us. Hold on; hold on. I'm getting ahead of myself again.

All right, in my senior year of high school, we were still living in that same two-bedroom house. Happy was doing her own thing. She pulled away from the rest of us, even though she lived right next door. Rosie, Mala and my mom were working, while I was the only one still going to school.

We were going out to parties a lot. Mala had a car, and she'd drive us all over the place as long as we paid for her gas. We ended up at this reception hall one night, at a big family party between two rival neighborhoods, on the east end of National City where it bordered with Paradise Hills. We didn't really know anybody there, so we didn't expect anybody to come mess with us. We were four heads deep that night: Rosie, Mala, Charlene and me.

Out of nowhere, this bunch of PH bitches shows up. I don't know how many of them there were, seven or eight maybe. They came in talking mass shit because they thought we were from Lomita. Even when we told these bitches we were from Stoner Town, and how we were there to party and not to start shit, these bitches kept acting like they were going to wipe the floor with us. They were showing off for their men. I didn't blame them; if it was our 'hood we would have been acting hard like that too.

I told them, hey, we'll just go and party somewhere else. It wasn't that big a deal. Of our group, only Charlene was interested in any of the PH guys anyway. The rest of us were just there to dance and drink and listen to the music. We started leaving, when a couple of these dumb bitches thought we were going to let them shove us out the door.

Fucking Rosie. Some bitch pushed her from behind. Not even a heartbeat later, she's in the middle of these PH bitches and taking that bitch down. I saw a right hand, followed by another one and another one, and that bitch was on the floor getting pounded. One of her friends tried to jump on Rosie, but Mala sucker-punched her and knocked her out. Some other bitch tried to come up on Rosie's other side, but I kicked her in the gut hard enough to wind her. Maybe it was all that play fighting we did at home that toughened us up, but I did not expect their first line of defense to go down like paper. One stupid bitch grabbed Rosie's hair, until Rosie smashed her fist into that bitch's face and broke her nose. I remember somebody hitting me on my back and going for my hair. Whoever that was got five gashes on their arm from my sharp nails.

In those situations, the fights become blurs where you don't really know where you are or who you're fighting with. I was swinging at people standing in front of me, and kicking when I got them down. Anybody that put their hands on me got scratched bloody. Anyone that got a hold of my hair had me for a second, until I used them for a punching bag and they let me go.

I heard a scream behind me. When I turned around, I saw Charlene fighting with some bitch, until a guy punched her in the chest and her knocked her over. After what happened to Happy, I really lost it that time. Rosie got there first, where she started boxing with that asshole that dared to hit Charlene. That guy figured out what Rosie's fists were made of after the first four or five punches, because that's how long it took for her to stun him. The next shot put him on his back, with his eyes rolling up into his head.

I took care of the bitch that was kicking Charlene when she was down. I raked my nails on her arm, on her back and on her face, leaving her in a screaming, red mess. I only stopped when I heard Mala shouting behind me.

"Let's go!" She yelled. "We have to go!"

I looked around. The guys from PH were holding their women back, but there wasn't any fight left in any of those bitches. Most of them were bleeding. Half of them were still on the floor.

Rosie pointed at the whores that had been doing most of the shit-talking. "You fucking started this shit! We were already walking to the door and you just had to put your hands on us! We fucking taught you a lesson, didn't we?"

The four of us came in close together, wondering if another rush was coming. Mala and Charlene had bruises on their faces, but nobody had really gotten a good hit on Rosie or me. Rosie, being Rosie, brazenly took her phone out and got a picture of the punk she'd knocked out.

"We didn't come here to disrespect, but you disrespected us." Rosie taunted everyone there. "Fuck your bitches and fuck your gang! You're all a bunch of lames! It's all about the Stoner Town Harpies and fuck the rest! We'll put all of you bitches into body bags if you step into our 'hood!"

Certain things you couldn't say when you were in somebody else's territory. Rosie didn't give a shit. She said them anyway.

"Let's go." Mala slapped Rosie's arm, hard enough to get her attention.

We walked out like conquerors, but once outside all four of us ran to Mala's car. We knew how these things went. If we stayed too long, the tide would turn against us. We'd have not only the PH bitches on us, but their punk thugs on top. They would probably beat us until they killed us all.

As we jumped into the car, we saw them swarming out of the hall after us. Rosie opened up the window and laughed at them.

A couple of days later, word got back to us that the PH girls wanted revenge.

"They won't do shit." Mala said. "We just have to be careful not to go where they are. After what happened, they're not stupid enough to come here looking for us."

"Those bitches ain't shit." Rosie nodded. "They're just puffing their necks up like they have guts. Fucking Silvie, you cut those bitches up good, didn't you?"

"I barely remember doing that." I said. I'd just come back from the kitchen, where I had heated up a bag of popcorn. I set the bowl on our coffee table."

"Well, I remember it." Rosie joked. "Every time those bitches look in the mirror, all they're going to see is scars."

"I think we have to ready for anything." Mala said.

Rosie looked at her. "Like what?"

"Charlene lives fifteen minutes away, and Happy hasn't been hanging out ever since... what happened to her." Mala explained. "That leaves only three of us. Either we find some more Harpies or we buy some guns."

"Is that what we need to do?" I wondered.

"That's our next step." Rosie agreed. "We'll start passing the word around about that stuff. In the meantime, I think we should learn how to fight better. Just us three is not going to be enough unless we stay in our 'hood all the time."

Now I can talk about Alex.

There's one big commercial gym in Stoner Town, but we didn't like it very much. It's too crowded most of the time, and the people there are... ugh. The usual crowd we saw there included navy guys and women from the local nursing college. It was a meat market more than a gym, with people from a whole other income bracket than ours. The men there didn't understand that we preferred our private company to their stupid come-on lines. We saw jocks and perverts on the men's side, and preening bitches that thought they were supermodels on the women's end. We lasted all of three visits there.

Our other choice was Santiago's Gym off of 43rd. That was a real gymnasium and not just a workout center. Half of it was filled with free weights and machines, while the rest was set aside for boxing, wrestling and most recently, for mixed martial arts classes. This was the place where the Stoner Town Dukes went to work out. Alex was one of them.

Rosie knew a little bit about boxing, but Mala and I didn't know anything. They didn't have any women trainers for that, so we signed up with the guys. From the start, it was clear that Rosie could challenge some of the smaller and medium-size men in the ring, but she was rough around the edges. One of the trainers was so impressed with her punching strength that he took her aside and made her his personal project.

A few other women were in those classes with us. A couple of them were fierce and determined, but they weren't vicious. When we landed our strikes, we were looking to cause damage, and not to simply keep in shape like they were. The trainers took us away from the basic classes and had us spar against the intermediate men. The men weren't using their full force on us, but we could really let go against them. When we got good at boxing, we went into wrestling. When we got good at that, we went into jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts.

Alex was my favorite sparring partner. He was a good all-around athlete and liked getting into fights as much as Rosie did. I could tell he liked me, because he was always there when I needed a guy to punch, kick and wrestle with. He asked for my number a lot, but I wasn't ready to give it to him. I still had two women to make love to me if I needed that kind of company.

"I'm a lesbian." I told him once.

"That's funny, because so am I." He said, laughing.

Alex was starting to charm me, enough that I had a talk with Rosie and Mala about him.

"He's cute." Rosie shrugged. "I don't care if you mess around with him."

"He might know somebody who can get guns for us." Mala suggested.

"I don't know." I shook my head. "What if he does what my other boyfriends did to me? If he starts bragging about how he fucks me, I'm going to scratch his eyes out."

"So let him fuck Mala first." Rosie decided. "If he doesn't brag about her, then I don't think he'll brag about you. Besides, Mala likes him too."

"I think he's fine." Mala shrugged. "If you don't get him, I will."

I gave Alex my number, and I asked him to come over by himself. He showed up and had a few drinks at the house. At first, he didn't know what to make of us, because he had Mala on one side and me on the other, and we were both flirting with him. The beer got him to loosen up, enough that he took Mala into the bedroom and fucked her. I was so excited by then that I would have gone next, except my mother showed up from work. We made Alex leave, and I ended up fooling around with Rosie instead.

The second time Alex came over, I slept with him. I waited a few days before I called him again, just to see if he'd been bragging about us in the neighborhood. Lucky for him, he wasn't saying anything at all.

The third time, I asked about guns.

Alex smiled back at me and nodded. "I can get guns. How many do you want?"

We drove out in two cars, past El Cajon and the big casino, out into the heat of the desert. The whole crew went that time, even Happy, who was finally getting over her long depression. This was, I don't know, about halfway through my senior year. All five of us Harpies went out with Alex and two other Dukes.

We balked at first, because the men wouldn't let us touch the real guns. They gave us air pistols and rifles to play with, and they set up tin cans for us to shoot at. They said that bullets cost money, and since we were just starting out, it didn't make sense for us to waste their ammo. If we got good with the toy guns, we would see about handling the rest of them.

The Harpies looked at me. I hadn't started out wanting to be their leader, but the more time went by, the more the girls were looking to me for direction. I was irritated when Alex refused to let me shoot a real gun, thinking that maybe the men had tricked us into taking that long drive just so they could get laid.

Alex put a nine-millimeter Glock in my hand, with no bullets in it. He said the only way he could trust me to shoot a live round was if I did things the way he instructed me to. All three of the men, he said, had paid money to certified gun instructors so they could get shown how to do things the right way. I gave up and told the girls to shoot the stupid air guns.

These were the same guys we sparred with at the gym, so they were used to teaching us and pointing out what we were doing wrong. Wait, let me say that again because it sounds like we were a bunch of fuck-ups. They saw what we had to work with, and they improved our techniques. That's much better.

They showed us the many parts of the air guns: the barrel, the slider, the trigger, the hammer, the safety switch, etc. They had us load the shiny gas cartridges in the guns and the tiny pellets into the magazine's reservoir. The men drew a line for us and they walked off to set up our targets. When they came back, we took turns using two air guns and one rifle, and we started shooting. Looking back on it, I can say that Alex was right not to give us the real guns from the start. It took us hours just to learn how to hold the weapons and steady our aims.

The second time we went out there was three weeks later, because that's the only time the eight of us were available. This time, the Dukes put the air guns, the CO2 gas and the pellet bottles in our hands. We loaded our own weapons, set up our targets and started popping bee-bees on our own. Charlene and Happy were making moves on Alex's friends, but that didn't bother me or the other chicks. Alex was still fucking Mala and me back then. Even Rosie was starting to want a piece of him.

We'd been shooting for a couple of hours, when Alex brought out the real guns. He had us hold the guns for a few minutes, without any bullets in them. He called one of them a Saturday Night Special. It was a little gun that could almost fit into my pocket. This was a throwaway gun; you used it and you got rid of it. The other handgun we'd already seen. It was the Glock. One of the other Dukes went into the back of his car and brought out an automatic rifle. He said it was an AR-15, a lot like what U.S. soldiers used. I didn't know if that was true or not back then, but I liked that gun a lot. It made me feel sexy just to hold it.

I don't know why I'd been so angry at the bee-bee guns before. As Alex and the other guys went over the parts, I saw that the toys and the real guns all had the same parts. Their magazines and actions worked the same way. Their sights worked the same. The biggest differences were the lethal size of the rounds, the loud noise and the kickback the real guns made. We put on cheap earplugs and we started blasting.

And we got good at using them.

I graduated with a B average. I supposed I could have been a better student back then and gotten the golden, coveted GPA the colleges fight over. Looking back on things, I'm actually glad I didn't have an A average. That was a worthless rank, anyway. It did not mean one person was smarter than the next; it meant one person had gotten sucked into the controlled system of memorization more than the rest. That's fine if you want to play by their rules. That's how they control you.

Fuck that. I make my own rules.

Anyway, I was out of high school and going more or less steady with Alex. I would still mess around with Rosie and Mala, both of whom were wild as ever and struggling to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. Either they became hardcore gang-bangers and criminals, or they got sucked into the system with everyone else. It didn't take much for Mala to seduce Alex away from me for a night or two. I let her. We'd been through so much by then that it didn't bother me all that much. At least there wouldn't be any drama if she slept with Alex. Happy got pregnant by a Stoner Town Duke, who was a much better fit for her than that asshole we'd put a hit on. And as for Charlene... Oh, that girl!

Charlene went from one guy to the next. She lasted a month, two weeks, one week with them before she moved on. I think she was looking for the perfect man, but that is a mythical beast like a unicorn. Every man has his faults. I'm laughing here. I want to say that Rosie and I were perfect women, but you probably wouldn't believe that. We were not perfect in the way society might see us, but we stood tall and proud in who we were. We did what we wanted, we said what we wanted, and we didn't take any shit from any motherfucker out there. So, yeah. If you call being bold and honest perfect, and not bending over for the system like the cowards did, we were both at that level. We were perfect.

But back to Charlene; that dumb-ass was the youngest Harpy in the our gang. She had just turned eighteen when she ran away from home and shacked up with a thirty year-old drug dealer. The dealer would stand on the corner of a strip mall and sell pot to bums and high school kids. What was that street called, Havishaw, Hamishaw? Something like that. He was a small-time dealer who barely made enough money to pay his rent. One night while he was out there peddling his little shit, a car full of PH boys drove by and gunned him down. We know it was PH because Charlene kept her ear on the grapevine. One guy bragged about it to a Lomita girl, she passed the news along to a Spring Valley girl, and it got back to the dead drug dealer's friends, who were looking for payback.

That was a weak bunch. They couldn't do shit against an established gang like the thugs from Paradise Hills. They just didn't have the balls for it. So Charlene called Rosie and asked us to do something about it.

We went on a mission. Once the heat died down, the PH boys were peddling on that same corner where they'd murdered the drug dealer. It wasn't that hard for Rosie and me to walk up to those guys and start flirting. We didn't dress like home-girls, but like the kind of preppy bitches you might see at the mall. Shop at The Gap, motherfuckers!

They thought we were trying to get a good price on the shit they were selling. Did we want to hang out later, they asked. We can't tonight, because we've got shit to do. How about tomorrow night? They came back with, how many friends you got? I asked, how many friends you want? I played those suckers good. I gave them the number from a throwaway phone and I told them to give me a call.

Men do stupid shit when they think they're going to get some pussy. Since we didn't look like home-girls, and we gave them an address to a nice part of Spring Valley, they dropped their guard and cruised over. At the last moment, we said we were walking down the street on our way to Hamishaw. Those thugs from PH found us strolling by a park. It was ten at night by then, on a weeknight, so most people were home and probably getting ready to go to sleep. We had the park with a few dim, yellow lights to one side, and a long row of houses across the street.

The car pulled up next to us, with four heads in it. When they called us over, Rosie and me went on opposite sides, leaning into the windows while making sure we weren't leaving any fingerprints.

"You girls want to party or what?" One sucker said.

"Hell, yeah!" I said, making eyes at the driver. "What you got for us?"

"Stoner Town Harpies, motherfucker." Rosie said, as she pulled out her forty-five.

I pulled out my Sig Sauer nine. Cock that bitch back to load the chamber, aim and squeeze the trigger. One, two, three, one, two, three. Two to the chest, one to the head; four motherfuckers in the car dead.

Rosie and me ran down the block, screaming our crazy heads off about somebody shooting at us. Then we shut up and crossed through the darkest part of the park. We piled into the back of Mala's car, lying on top of each other as the car drove off. If anyone bothered to look, they would only see Mala at the wheel. They wouldn't have heard Rosie laughing because all the windows were shut.

Charlene started to panic, when the pigs started rounding up her dead boyfriend's friends and customers for questioning. She was staying with her parents, until we made her get on a bus and come to a spot where we could pick her up. She was sleeping on the living room couch in our house after that. When the pigs started banging on her parents' door in Spring Valley, Charlene's little sister told her best friend, and it was her best friend who was reporting to us.

"Happy buried the guns under the main house." I said, one night when the five of us were together. "How else can the pigs trace us?"

"I've got people in three 'hoods spreading the word that PH wants revenge on anybody associated with Charlene's dead man." Rosie said. "That makes it believable that Charlene would go into hiding." She pointed at her cousin. "You're the weakest link, bitch. If they come here looking for you and drag you in for questioning, are you tough enough to keep your mouth shut?"

Charlene looked scared. She had looked that way ever since we picked her up.

Rosie watched her cousin closely, before she looked at me. "We can't stay here. I have to take Charlene away until all this shit blows over."

"Where are you going to go?" I asked.

Rosie huffed, before she set her hands on her hips and looked away. She bit at her bottom lip for a few moments, until she got a flash of inspiration. "Mexico. I have relatives in Baja that will take us in."

"What the hell are we going to do in Mexico?" Mala asked.

Rosie was surprised to hear this. "You want to come along with us?"

"We're all coming." I said. "All of us except for Happy, because she's pregnant. The rest of us are sticking together no matter what happens."

That's most of our background, I guess. There were some other things I could have mentioned. I might bring them up later, if I think they're important. You'll probably forget them if I tell you about them too early.

We ended up in Rosarito. Rosie had a friend of the family that lived there. He was a seventy year-old man who lived alone with his wife, in a house with four bedrooms. The old couple was actually glad to have us staying there. They said it made the house happy again, after all their children had grown up and gone off to do their own thing.

The old lady told me once that her children were waiting for them to die, so they could sell the house and split the money. She said she wasn't ready to die yet, even if her children were good and ready to escort her into the grave. She still had plenty of years left in her, she said. I think she liked me, because I was always doing things for her before she even asked. I washed her clothes when they need washing, I watched the beans when they were on the stove cooking, so the old lady could take a nap. I did all kinds of things for her, mostly because she was too old to do them for herself.

We got jobs at the same hotel. It was a ten-story hotel by the beach, where a lot of rich tourists would stay. Rosie and Mala got hired as housekeepers, and later they got Charlene hired on, too. It was easy because they spoke English and Spanish, except for Rosie's cousin. She was a _Pocha_ , which means she was a Hispanic chick that spoke no Spanish. She picked it up as she went along. Their duties were to clean rooms, to wash laundry and to do whatever other general thing needed doing. They did all that for about twelve dollars a day.

I got lucky. I was pretty enough to get fifteen, when I got hired as a hostess for a restaurant. All I had to do was smile a lot and walk people to their tables. Later, I got switched over to working at the front desk, and finally I was a concierge. For some reason, a lot of men thought I was for sale, but I have no idea how they got that idea into their heads.

What else?

We didn't dress like home-girls anymore. At work, we all had our uniforms to wear. On our time off, we adopted the same kind of clothing the local young women wore. The local bitches, they hated us at first because we were American. These bitches came at us in droves, so we had to put them down with our fists.

Rosie did what was probably the smartest thing I've ever seen her do. She offered to teach the local hoes how to fight. That way they wouldn't get tossed around like we did to them, and they wouldn't have their boyfriends beating up on them all the time. They could pay us with money, alcohol, weed or pussy. Let me tell you; these bitches were hungry to get ahead. A bunch of them had been out on the street since they were ten or twelve years old, barely able to scrape up enough crumbs to eat, let alone fill their bellies. Charlene was scared of a lot of those girls, but not me, and not Rosie or Mala. Like finds like, and these bitches were the same kind of predators we were. They were the same kind of dirty fighters.

We got into it with a serial killer once. He's buried in the hills now, but I can't remember exactly where. After that, we started up the Rosarito Chapter of our Harpies Gang. Membership was very severely limited.

Oh, yeah. Alex got tossed in prison for Intent To Sell. That dumb-ass loaded his trunk with coke and thought he could drive it halfway across the county. Somebody ratted him out. From what I hear, he tried to fight it out with the cops, but they tossed him in the can anyway. At least he didn't drop down on his knees and waited to be cuffed like a bitch.

_Angel De La Muerte_. Angel of Death. That's what they started calling me.

Now, let me tell you about how the Rothschild Apocalypse started.

" _The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. Do I mean a conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, incredibly evil in intent."_ –Rep. Larry P. MacDonald, killed in the crash of Korean Air Lines 007, 1983

We're catching up to real time now, as in today. The four of us Harpies went into Mexico in 2013, when we were just out of high school. Pretty much, we'd all been working at the hotel for about four years by then, when the shit really hit the fucking fan. It was getting close to my 23rd birthday by then.

Rosie and Mala were waiting for me to get off work, because my shift was offset from theirs by about an hour and a half. Part of it was because I got an hour lunch, while they only got half of that. We were wearing our street clothes, since we left our uniforms in our lockers after our shifts were over. Charlene wasn't with us because she was dating some businessman who picked her up right after she got off work.

We had some spending money, so the three of us took a walk down the boulevard and stopped at this place that sold _mariscos_ , or seafood. Mala and me could eat anything that came out of the water, from clams to shrimp to whatever is clever. We even tried some octopus once, but that shit was so slimy it almost made me throw up. It was like picking a slug up off the ground and sticking it into my mouth. Fucking yuck!

Rosie was always a picky bitch. She didn't like seafood at all, so she stuck with beef tacos or _chimichangas_ or _tortas_. We sat down to eat at this table that had a good view of the beach, but there weren't that many people out there that day.

I noticed that both Rosie and Mala kept looking up at the sky. So I looked too.

"What are you bitches looking at?" I asked.

"That plane up there." Mala pointed. "Every day we see a plane flying by like normal, right. And then for no fucking reason it goes straight up into the sky like a rocket. It always leaves this big gray trail behind it, and that trail spreads out over the ocean and turns into a cloud by the time it reaches the beach. I swear, we see the same shit every day, don't we, Rosie? What's up with that?"

That was our first step down the rabbit hole. Since we didn't have any hobbies to take up our evenings, we all started looking into shit like Chemtrails and vaccinations and GMO foods and stuff...

Hmmm...

You know, this is some boring shit. It's boring just writing it down, so it must be boring if you're the fool that has to read it.

How 'bout this? I'll just drop some Red Pills on you every once in a while, and I can do like... like flashbacks and shit to keep the story going.

Here's what you need to know. Chemtrails are bad for us. They're full of aluminum and some other shit that fucks up our bodies, but they're also being sprayed up into the sky for some other fucking reason we haven't figured out yet. The jets we saw were flying horizontal, and all of a sudden they were flying upward in a forty to fifty degree angle. They didn't flatten out again until they were out of sight and hidden behind the chemical spray they were creating. It was more than one plane doing it, but we would only see one at a time. When one was gone, another one would come by and do the same thing. Sometimes they created parallel lines in the sky, and sometimes the lines became like checkerboard patterns. We would see all the lines from the beach, as they were being sprayed out over the water. Once the breeze brought the chemicals over land, they were all spread out and looking like clouds.

Some other shit was going on at the same time. People were getting sunburned, even when the sky was full of those fake clouds. There weren't that many insects, as if they just started dying off. Oh, and the water along the edge of the beach kept rising. Over the last thirty years or so, the ocean kept eroding parts of the beach so that land, houses and even part of a highway fell into the water. The businesses right at the edge of the beach would have water coming in up to people's ankles at high tide, forcing the businesses to relocate.

The hotel we worked in was on the main street, but the water was creeping in pretty close to that, too. They always had sand bags out there to keep the ocean water from seeping into the tennis courts and the big swimming pool. I always thought that was kind of funny; that a hotel right along the beach would need a swimming pool.

Once we really got into the research, we learned as much as we could in general, but we also specialized in one specific area. Rosie was mostly into weapons and fighting. Mala did our prepping and disaster preparedness. The other girls were keeping their ears on the local grapevine and handled communications. I got into international politics and how the banking system worked. We had fringe Harpies doing some other things...

Let me go back a bit, so I can tell you about the new Harpies.

When we first got to Rosarito, we didn't know anybody. Even the old couple we were staying with was only a loose contact with Rosie's family.

At first, the four of us would go out to the big spots along the beach to party. This was where all the Spring Break types went. That sort of atmosphere got old really quick. We had all these white guys running around drunk, swearing they would get laid with us and picking fights with each other. Their girls were mostly snooty bitches who raised their noses at us because they thought we were Mexican. They thought they could push us around too, until Rosie and me would go tribal on them and choke them out in front of their boyfriends. It didn't matter if they pulled on our hair, because a couple of punches later they were getting knocked the fuck out. Worldstar!

Anyways, we left the boulevard and went into the local bars. Let me tell you about them! We saw all these old Mexicans and all these young prostitutes hanging out in those places. These local people, they would take one look at us and know we didn't belong with them, partly because of our clothes, but also because of the way we carried ourselves. The way we stood and walked, the way we sat down, the way we talked, even in Spanish, all of it gave us away as foreigners. We didn't last very long in any of those places.

All four of us were Americanized Hispanics. The whites at the beach couldn't handle us, and the Mexicans in the bars didn't like us. What did that leave us with? We were like eighteen and nineteen years old back then! We didn't want to sit in an old couple's house on the weekend!

Our only other choice was to get invited to house parties with other young people like us. I was the hostess, right, so we'd take a walk around the neighborhood on Friday and Saturday nights. If we heard music and walked up to some young people hanging out, it was up to me to see if I could talk my way inside. Most times, the young men would see us as new faces among the crowd of regulars and invite us in. The local chicks were always jealous and suspicious of us, but that's just the way it goes in all 'hoods.

Because this was like our last option, all of us did our best to stay out of fights and drama. At the same time, the young people at these parties were lames. Just like the U.S. has their system of control over its people, so does Mexico. These young people were, I don't know, like making the transition between being college students or apprentices, and getting ready to become part of the hamster wheel of daily work that always led into the debt system. They just weren't our crowd; you know what I mean?

So check it. The old couple we lived with, they told us where the good and bad areas of town were. We'd gone all over most of the barrios in Rosarito by then, and we said, fuck it, let's go out to the _colonias_ , which are the poorer streets up in the hills. Mala drove us around while the rest of us drank, until we heard something like American hip hop music playing and pulled over.

These people were partying outside, right there on the dirt in some empty field between the houses. They had a DJ set up with his big speakers and his rotating disco lights. As we walked up, we saw that a lot of the people were dressed up gangster style. They did not look anything like the gang-bangers in San Diego, but a lot of them wore dark clothes and ball caps. Some of the guys were even wearing shirts with U.S. heavy metal band names, and a couple of them had dreadlocks. It was a weird mix of fashion compared to what we were used to seeing.

We didn't even make it into the party. Some guys that were hanging out on the sidewalk came out to talk to us. They thought we were _fresas_ , or strawberries, like poor preppy types, because of the clothes we had on.

As we kept chatting, other people from the party became aware of us. Several of them drifted out, including thugs and their old ladies. Some kind of argument started up, where a bunch of them wanted us to leave because we were strawberries. The guys we'd been talking to said we could stay. They had their gangster girls, who were spread out in the crowd. When they saw a common enemy in us, all of a sudden they were coming together to try and surround us.

"Do you want to start some shit?" Rosie challenged them. "I'm going to tell you something. You bitches think we're strawberries, but we're not. We're only wearing these fucking clothes because we had to leave San Diego in a hurry."

These bitches didn't listen. They kept trying to get around us, while we watched them and formed our little circle.

"Come on then." Rosie waved them closer. "We'll box with all of you bitches. That's going to fuck up your party, but if that's what you want, let's go. How about this? You send your toughest bitch out here, and you have her go against one of us. If you win, we leave. If we win, we stay and we all have a good time."

I didn't know it back then, but the local pigs didn't even go into that 'hood, because no matter what crime had happened or who was at fault, pretty much everybody in that _colonia_ would come out against the pigs.

One rough looking bitch stood out from the rest. Her name was Marta. She walked around, taking a good look at each of us. For a second, it looked like she was going to pick out Charlene. At the last moment, and probably because I was the prettiest, she called me out. I'm sure Marta thought I wasn't any kind of fighter, despite that I already had the face of a hawk.

I moved away from the others. Marta expected for me to rush at her, so she held her hands out like a wrestler. I went into a boxing stance. I didn't know what kind of skills she had, so I made like I was sparring at the gym. I did my little weaving and ducking, sending out a quick straight or jab. I always caught Marta on the arms. She was fast enough to avoid getting hit in the face or body; I have to give her some credit for that.

The crowd started pressuring Marta to finish me off. This is where she fucked up. She ran in close, trying to grab me so she could shove me to the ground. Fuck that, I had good clothes on! I tied her hands up with mine, twisting her to one side so I could give her a knee to the gut. When she went to protect her stomach, I got the Muay Thai clinch on her head and gave her one knee to the face and two to chest. That was enough to wind her and drop her. I got a side-mount, before I rolled her over on her back. Marta started flailing her arms around to protect her face, while all I was doing was holding her wrists with my hands. After a few seconds, she figured out I wasn't hitting her, but she also knew I could have done a lot more damage if I wanted to. She tried to buck me off by raising her hips.

I squeezed my nails into her wrists, so she could feel how sharp they were. "If you do that again, I'm going to scratch your face so deep you'll have a scar left forever."

"Let her up." Rosie said, patting my shoulder.

I got off, just as Rosie reached out to help Marta. The Mexican girl avoided the helping hand and got up by herself. She went to stand with her girlfriends.

"That means we can stay." Rosie announced. "Unless somebody else wants to get down. What is it going to be? Anybody got beer?"

Rosie sauntered off toward the DJ, who'd stopped the music when the fight had started up. That left two Harpies standing behind me.

"We live here now." Mala announced. "We're outlaws in San Diego. We can't go back there any more."

"What did you do?" Someone asked.

"We killed four men."

Several of the posers laughed, because they didn't believe her. A few others, they couldn't tell one way or the other.

Rosie came back with two red beer cans. "What is this Three X shit? I hope you people have better beer than this." She walked up to Marta, holding a beer out to her. "Hey, we don't want any shit here. You respect us and we'll respect you. That's what we all want, right? Respect? My friend could have fucked you up, but she didn't do that. We just want to be friends with you guys."

Marta took the beer. When she walked away, several of the gangster girls who'd tried to surround us left with her.

"I'm Rosario." Rosie told the girls that remained. "You bitches can call me Rosie or Rosa, if you want. What can I call you?"

The second time we went out there, Marta picked a fight with Charlene. If it had been a straight up catfight, Marta would have won. She was landing stronger punches. Marta ended up getting overconfident as she rained down blows. Charlene caught one of her flailing arms. When Marta started thrashing her arm to get loose, Charlene kicked out her knee and dropped her. Once Charlene took a side-mount, she started dropping fists on Marta's arms and head. Overwhelmed, the Mexican turned on her stomach and covered up, which was the worst position she could take. Charlene kept hitting her until Rosie and me pulled her off.

Marta tried to scamper away, until Rosie caught her and shoved her down again. Rosie mounted the Mexican by sitting on her waist. Marta tried to wrestle her way out, discovering how strong Rosie was the hard way.

"You don't know how to fight, bitch." Rosie told her. "Do you want me to teach you?"

"Let me go!" Marta spat back, kicking out with her legs.

Rosie smacked Marta on the face, once and hard enough to jar her. The rest of us were standing around them to make sure nobody else would jump in.

"You don't like being caught like this, do you?" Rosie asked. "That's three of us that have put you into this same spot. If we hated you, you would be getting fucked up for the third time. I'm going to help you up."

The moment Marta was on her feet, she ran off and came back with an unopened beer bottle. She held it up as if she wanted to bring it down on Rosie's head.

"If you hit me with that, I'm going to kill you." Rosie said. "Why don't you put that shit down? Or better yet, open it up and drink it. Grab a chair, bitch. There are plenty of chairs around here. Grab two, so we can sit here and have a talk."

Marta slammed the bottle on the floor, sending shards and beer all over.

"Was that a bottle of Three X shit?" Rosie asked. "If it was, I can't blame you. Stay right there. I'm going to get two chairs for us."

I kept a close watch on Marta. We'd had a talk about her before we'd driven out there that night. Rosie and Mala both thought that Marta was the type that might stab one of us in the back, literally. If we could subdue her, the primary threat against us would be gone. If she had as much sway over the other girls as it appeared, then our problems with those people would be over.

For a short time, it looked as if Marta was going to storm away. She moved over to the spot her friends were standing in, where they started up a quiet conversation.

Rosie returned with two plastic chairs, setting them close together. She told the rest of us, "You see that? They know we're a bunch of tough bitches, so they want to keep us close. It's just like in San Diego. They only want us around because of what we bring to the table. They're going to try and make us part of their gang, but that's not what we want because then they'll get us into their shit. Their shit is probably a lot of petty shit, so I don't think that will be worth it."

"We want to be part of the crowd here, but independent from them." Mala replied.

"Something like that." Rosie shrugged. "Unless we want to take over. I want the freedom to move around without having to watch my back all the time. It's the same problem we had in San Diego. There are just a few of us. We can't go anywhere without having half a neighborhood of bitches jumping on us."

"Let's make them our wannabes." I suggested. "We'll back them up and they'll back us up. We'll make it part of the deal that we won't get into any petty shit. The last thing I want is to be in a turf war over some graffiti."

Marta came back, with a handful of other girls close behind her. "I want you to show me how to fight."

"If I teach you, and you use my training against me, I'm going to fuck you up good." Rosie threatened. "So how are you going to pay us?"

"We have to pay you?" Marta asked.

"Sure. Everybody has to pay, one way or the other. Nothing happens for free in this world. You got money? No? Well, what do you have? Do you have beer or weed?"

"We can try to get some."

"All right, you get what you can." Rosie nodded, before she motioned at the rest of us. "All of us can teach all of you. We were in a school in San Diego, where we learned all kinds of shit about fighting. I'll tell you what. If you can't come up with any money or beer, there is another way."

"We have to do something for you?" Marta asked.

"I like women." Rosie shrugged. "You can pay me with pussy."

That was something Marta did not expect. She looked dumbfounded.

"Are the rest of you listening?" Rosie called out. "The same deal goes for all of you. We're not teaching you bitches for free. That would be stupid, right? What if we teach all of you for nothing, and then you jump us and kick our butts later? That means we have to get something right now. Go talk to your friends, Marta. Maybe you guys can come up with a better idea."

When the Mexicans moved away, Mala started giggling. "Are you serious about this?"

"Of course I am." Rosie grinned. "I'm telling you; I'm afraid of Marta. She looks like a backstabber, really. I think she'll kill one of us if she catches us alone, just to keep her place here at the top of the pecking order. That's another reason we should stay apart from these bitches. We do not want to get involved in their spats. I think if we get Marta in bed a few times, she'll start liking it and then we won't have to worry about her sneaking up on us. Whoever messes around with her has to put it in her fat head that we are not her enemy."

"I'll do it." Mala volunteered.

"I won't!" Charlene said.

"She doesn't look at either of you that much." Rosie replied. "But she does look at Silvie an awful lot. I'm just letting you know, Silvie."

Sure enough, when Marta returned, she came to stand in front of me. She started nodding before she spoke. "We want you to teach us how to fight."

Marta was the kind of chick that liked to wrestle in bed.

We took her back to the old couple's house, where her eyes gaped open at all the fancy shit she could steal. We made it a point to search her whenever she stepped inside, in case she had a weapon on her, or when she went to leave, in case she was pilfering. Since Marta looked so scraggly, we made her take a shower and gave her some of our strawberry clothes. You'd think that bitch would have hated us for dressing her that way, like a preppy chick, but she didn't. Marta would sit in front of a mirror and stare at her reflection. She'd cry sometimes, for no reason at all.

That's why she hated strawberries so much, because she would never have enough money to buy the right clothes, to get the right look, so she could be one of them. Marta had become a rebel against a level of society she would never attain. We changed her life just by lending her an outfit.

"I'm brushing your hair, bitch." I told her. "It's going to hurt because you've got fucking knots in it."

I was joking, of course, trying to lighten things up with her. Marta cleaned up nice. She was more handsome than pretty, but she had the same predator eyes we had. She was always thinking, like we were. By brushing her hair, I got her used to me being close to her. It made it easier for when I made my move and started messing around with her.

I fucked her first, and then Mala got her, and then Rosie. By the time we were done, Marta would have followed us anywhere. Rosie taught her how to box, Charlene and Mala showed her how to wrestle, and I showed her pressure points, headlocks and armlocks.

That's another thing. The old couple had an enclosed backyard, so we'd go out there wearing tight shirts and skimpy shorts for the hell of it. When we'd train indoors, we wore even less than that. After we'd worn ourselves out, we were so excited from all the bumping and rubbing that we'd jump in the shower, and right after jump on a bed. All of us except for Charlene, that is. She never got into girls as much as the rest of us did.

When we took Marta back to her 'hood, her friends were really disgusted with her because she was dressed like a strawberry. That's the kind of clothes we wore around town.

"Don't get mad, don't get mad." Rosie went around and told the home-girls. "We're just showing Marta how to be undercover."

It was true. We kept Marta with us for an entire workweek. When she was in the old couple's house, she did chores and kept the place cleaned up like a maid would. When we got off work, we'd pick her up and take her down to the main boulevard, where she could walk around with middle class and upper class people. We ate at nice places, and we took her into the clubs so she could see what they were like. Marta was so impressed with the hotel we worked at that she wanted to get a job there.

We were trying to get a message across to the girls in the _colonia_. Once we felt we'd done that, we stripped down to our underwear, all five of us. We did it right there on the sidewalk, and we stood there to give the other girls a chance to see what we looked like under our clothes. After that, we got dressed up in the gangster clothes we'd brought from San Diego. (We lent Marta a shirt and jeans, and fool, that bitch was high-happy to put our stuff on!) Now we looked the part, like Chicano home-girls and not like the Mexican cholas standing in front of us.

Marta got big respect from her girls, because she'd gone from being the local ass-kicker to a wimpy, hated preppy to an American gangster girl, all in a short span of time. Those Mexican chicks, they knew there wasn't shit for them if they stayed in their 'hood. They saw how easy it was for somebody from their clique to step into another role and become a whole other person. Those chicks figured out that we were the facilitators, the lube that could get them into the tight places they wanted to go.

Not all of them, but most. Some of those chicks followed our lead. They got their preppy clothes and they used fake addresses when they applied for jobs. If they didn't get hired at our hotel, they got into other hotels or worked at the bazaar or the fish market. We pilfered small shit, but with so many of us doing it, we started a black market in their _colonia_ and made enough money to keep us drunk and high. The money the girls made from their jobs went into renting a two-bedroom apartment where like ten of them ended up staying, before they started pitching in together to buy cars. Some of those bitches were too lazy, or they just couldn't hang with keeping a steady job. They became drug addicts and prostitutes, but we couldn't do shit for them. We had our hands full with the girls that were actually trying.

We were like, I don't know, like the Al Capones of that neighborhood. We'd drive over with Mala's trunk full of toilet paper, cleaning supplies and banquet food the hotel was going to toss out. The other girls would bring fish, candy, fucking shoes, phones and whatever else they got their hands on that nobody would miss right away. Sunglasses were a big deal for those bitches.

At first, we cleared out as much as we could in one night. If we had too much shit, we'd stop stealing for a few days until it was gone. Marta went in with a couple of people that had little shops in her neighborhood. They'd sell our excess for a fifty percent cut. Marta agreed to that because it meant more money all at once, instead of dealing with one or two people at a time. She rented somebody's garage in exchange for supplies and cash, and then we'd stockpile our excess shit until we had enough to go wholesale.

That's the business side of things, but we were having fun out there too. We lined the girls up right there on the street and showed them how to set their feet into a balanced stance. They were taught how to throw a punch, and how to weave their bodies around to avoid one. We'd flatten out an empty lot with a heavy-duty rake and throw old blankets on the dirt, before we'd put on a wrestling clinic. If any girls had a grudge, we'd form a circle and let them squash their shit in the middle.

The young thugs came out to see what the Rosarito Harpies were all about. If they were cool, we'd let them party with us. If they got out of line, they'd have close to fifteen angry bitches pounding on their heads and scratching them up. Charlene was going from one guy to the next, both at work and at home, but she was always like that. Mala would find a guy she liked every once in a while, but as for Rosie and me, ha, we stayed with the fairer sex.

It went like this, okay. If one of those Mexican chicks proved themselves worthy, we'd give them a graduated jump-in that lasted one minute. It started off with the new girl going against one of us, usually Charlene because she was the weakest. Every ten seconds, another Harpy would come in. At the end of the minute, six chicks would be jumping in our new initiate.

This one chick named Efenia managed to stay on her feet for the entire minute. She was the only one, not because she was big and tough but because she was light and quick. Efenia kept squeezing past us, making us chase her, avoiding Rosie's hammers and our tries at grabbing her arms and back. She was smart enough to cut her hair short right before the jump-in, so we had nothing to pull on. We call her Green Eyes now.

Anyway, after the violent jump-in, we had the bedroom jump-in. We would take the new Harpies over to the old couple's house and we'd screw around with them. By then, the old couple was used to seeing us walking around in our underwear, and they knew what went on in the bedrooms among all us girls. They didn't mind so much, as long as we didn't bring any drama into the house. We could respect that.

That was something. Imagine driving into a dark street, where you've got all these crazy gangster chicks hanging out and drinking. All of a sudden, you've got three or four of them coming over and poking their heads into your car, to see what's up with you. We made deals, we passed news around, we heard the rumors about who wanted to start shit with us. If you stepped out of line, you'd get pulled out of your car and have your head stomped by some hard bitches that knew how to stomp. God help you if you hit one of us and we found out.

What else? Okay, we had all these little kids in the neighborhood. They were real little, like eight years old and shit, up to twelve. Their parents didn't give a shit about them, so these kids would basically run around the streets all day. When these kids saw us play-fighting in the empty lot, they'd come over and watch us. Rosie had the idea to show them how to fight. In exchange for that, the kids became our eyes and ears in the 'hood. They walked around, getting into places we couldn't and seeing who was talking to who, and where our enemies or potential enemies went and what they did.

Happy kept us in the loop with the goings-on in San Diego. Get this, she actually wrote letters to us, instead of calling us on the phone, on account of how all the phone conversations are recorded by New World Order goons. Every week, we got a letter from her. Happy told us when it was safe to go back into San Diego, because the whole thing with the PH boys had blown over. At that point, us O.G. Harpies had a private meeting. We took a vote and decided to stay in Rosarito. We just had too much of a good thing going to walk away from it. Even Charlene, who missed San Diego the most, knew that she wouldn't have it so good back in Stoner Town.

We were a bunch of lesbian, Amazon bitches. Shaaa! That's right, I said it. We were the most unrepentant gang of bitches you've ever seen, ready to stick you in the gut with a _filero_ if you so much as looked at us the wrong way. The other gangs in the _colonias_ feared us. The pigs were sadistic motherfuckers if they caught us, but they got what's coming to them if they came into our streets. Nobody liked those grafting sons of bitches, always trying to get their bribe or their cut for shit that didn't belong to them. It was partly because of the stupid pigs that we got into it with the drug dealers. I'll tell you about that in a minute.

Get this. Half the time, we didn't even have guys at our parties. It was just us girls shuffling around in the empty lot, with a girl DJ scratching shit up on the turntables and girl rappers spitting in the mike. I could rap! Shaa! They have this dance the gangster chicks did down there. It was called _Baile Gavilan_. Basically, it is a shuffle where you pretend you're drunk and you amble around and wiggle your butt and keep your hands close to your body. I guess this dance was started by drunks who shuffled around with their bottles in their hands at parties, but it became a phenomenon in Mexico among us gangster types. It even went mainstream for a while, with the aerobics chicks dancing it for their zumba classes. The music was gangster Cumbia, which was so different than the slow-paced Oldies we danced to in San Diego. All of us Harpies got good at dancing _Baile Gavilan_ , partly because we liked it, but also because we were drunk off our butts when we did it.

"Guau!" That's another thing we picked up. It's spelled like gu-ow, and it sounds like the noise a jaguar makes and the word 'wow' put together. I always thought it was funny the way that sounded, like feral and shit, especially when Mala said it. "Guau!"

Yeah, looking back on things, I can say we were having the time of our lives when we were in Rosarito.

" _The 'affirmative task' before us is to create a New World Order."_ –Vice President Joe Biden, speech at Import Export Bank, April 5, 2013

Let me tell you how pigs improve neighborhoods in Mexico. They walk into the poor parts of town, find a bunch of homeless, drug addicted kids while they're sleeping, and they drop big stones on their heads to kill those kids. The pigs blame the drug dealers later, like some drug deal had gone bad, and that's the end of it.

That's what happened to some of our lookouts. They were sleeping on the steps of a church, of all places, because we sent them there to see what a rival gang was up to. We lost two of them thanks to the fucking pigs, but we didn't know who had done it right then. Our first impression was that it was the rival gang, so we made plans to get revenge on them and their families. Then the police report came out saying it was drug dealers, and this threw us off. The drug dealers in Rosarito weren't doing insane shit like that to homeless kids, because the kids were basically their customers. We took a couple of steps back to see the bigger picture.

We never wanted beef with the drug dealers, because they had all the big guns and they could basically wipe the entire gang of us out in one good run. They did their thing and we did ours. They ran their business and we made sure our business didn't conflict with theirs. We took great care not to step on their toes.

At that time, we had two warring drug cartels in Rosarito. The bigger mob was called New Generation. They dealt with rich people in the business district and the hordes of American tourists that showed up to party on the beach. The second cartel was just as big and just as vicious. They were called _La Santa Muerte_ , or The Holy Death. They ran things in the communities where the poor people lived. If you've heard about the big massacres and shootings in Tijuana, chances are these two cartels were responsible for them. All those other cartels you hear about, like from Juarez or Sinaloa, those run shit over in Texas and other places. The west coast cartels had their own way of transporting drugs from the interior of Mexico into Tijuana and across the border, that had nothing to do with Chapo or any of those other kingpins you hear about on TV.

The Harpies kept their feelers out, hoping to find out which side had killed those kids, but we couldn't figure it out. The Holy Death cartel was kidnapping tourists from the main streets of Rosarito. This was bad for business for the New Generation cartel, but they had their hands full dealing with the Mexican Army and the Federal pigs. The price of gas kept going up in Mexico, thanks to their asshole president Pena-Nieto, who was affiliated with the Juarez Cartel. It's all a big complicated mess down there!

The meat of it is that the NG cartel was digging around pipelines and sucking up gasoline to put on tanker trucks. The local police couldn't do shit because they didn't have any big guns. When the army or the federals showed up, the NG henchmen would actually shoot it out with them. Sometimes they won and got away. The president of Mexico was using government resources to keep the competing drug cartels back, while he was giving the Juarez cartel a free pass to do whatever they wanted. That's how crazy things were back then.

After a few days of snooping around and using our spies, we figured out how the Holy Death was smuggling drugs across Rosarito. They had mid-size trucks driving through the hills with two cars of armed goons for each truck. The trucks came into town, and the merchandise was divided out and taken in the trunks of cars up to Tijuana. Once in TJ, the cartel had a big distribution network for taking the drugs across the border, including underground tunnels, human mules and people driving into San Diego.

If someone from the Holy Death had killed those poor kids, our Harpies Gang could not stand toe to toe with them. We figured the next best thing we could do was to False Flag them. Our network was pretty good in our part of town, so we passed a message along to the New Generation cartel about when and where the next Holy Death drug truck was driving into town. We figured the NG people would go out there and start up shit, and they'd kill each other off. That's the best way we thought we could get revenge for the dead kids. We learned the hard way that we shouldn't have done that. I mean... Really the hard way.

It wasn't NG that showed up to stop that truck full of drugs, it was the local pigs from here in Rosarito. They blocked off the cartel's little caravan front and back. This is what the witnesses who were out there spying told us. The goons in the caravan started arguing with the local pigs. Nobody fired a shot. In the end, the goons relented and gave up their guns to the pigs. They let themselves get arrested, and they let their cars and their truck full of drugs get confiscated. We thought, oh shit, what's going on?

A couple of days later, a bunch of reporters from the U.S. were in town to film news segments about this big drug bust in Rosarito. They had the truck, the drugs and the guns they'd confiscated on display. The American reporters kept insisting to their viewers that the 'War On Drugs' was really working. After the reporters went home, the six or seven men from the Holy Death that had been captured magically escaped from jail. Everything went back to business as usual.

Just so you know, everything being reported about the War On Drugs is fucking fake. That's right. All those drug busts are staged in some way, because the Mexican pigs can't look completely incompetent. Every once in a while, they'll pretend they did their jobs and catch somebody, and then they'll have a little parade so the reporters can come and take their pictures and get their interviews. It's good for the news, and it's good to influence public opinion so citizens can keep trusting their crooked politicians. What you don't hear about in the U.S. is about the thousands of judges, lawyers, news people, pigs and even teachers that get murdered by the cartels every year.

We learned it the hard way. The Harpies were keeping a low profile then. Us O.G. girls were still going to our jobs, but we weren't doing any pilfering for the time being. Most of us would go straight home after work and stay there. The only one still going out was Charlene, who was dating all these guys like she usually did. Well, one night she didn't come back home. A couple of days later, the pigs found the car of the guy she'd been dating. He was sitting in the front seat with five bullets in him. A few days after that, a briefcase with arms, legs and a head was dropped off in the lobby of the hotel we worked in. Rest In Peace, Charlene.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that a drug cartel was sending a direct message to us Harpies. Whoever had done that was not fucking around. We had been keeping a low profile already, but after that we pretty much became saints. Straight to work and straight home, with not a single second of standing out in the open where somebody could snatch us or pop a round into our heads.

Charlene's remains were boxed up and shipped into the United States. The O.G. Harpies took a vote. We decided it would be better not to attend her funeral, because there was too much open road between us and the cemetery they buried her in.

Things were just starting to settle down, when two big goons showed up at the gate to the old couple's home. Those poor old people; they were usually oblivious to what the Harpies were doing, but even they'd heard that we were in trouble with the cartels. They were scared, but they'd grown to love us and they would have never thrown us out. As I was saying, these goons were knocking on the gate and calling us out. Rosie went to talk to them, while Mala and me watched from the window.

Rosie came back inside, saying, " _Remolino_ wants to see us."

That's Spanish for twister or tornado; something like that. He was the kingpin for the Holy Death cartel in Rosarito. We took a quick vote. Rosie and me would go. If we didn't come back by that night, Mala was to take a taxi to the border and get the hell out of Mexico.

The goons drove us into the hills, into a part of the _colonias_ we wouldn't have dared to go in by ourselves. Those were the kinds of places that people went into to buy drugs, and they were never seen again. This _Remolino_ guy was legit, as far as mafia types went. He'd bought up or scared people out of an entire street, so that if any enemies rolled in, they'd be getting shot at by thugs from ten different houses. At the end of that block, this guy had built himself a rich man's compound with high walls and a fancy, two-story house. He had the works: fountains, a big pool and even a fucking waterfall in his living room. He had horses in a stable that we were looking at when we drove in.

The goons didn't take us inside the house. They walked us all the way around to where the pool was. _Remolino_ was sitting out there, under a parasol to ward off the hot sun. When Rosie and me were standing in front of him, he motioned for both of us to sit down, while his goons went to sit under the next parasol over. _Remolino_ was skinny and dark-skinned. He was wearing a polo shirt and tan slacks, with a pair of designer sunglasses sitting on the parasol table.

Rosie and I were positive we were going to die there. We thought, fuck it; we all have to die sometime. Hopefully Mala would get away later.

"Do you know that when I was a little boy, my father threw me out of the house when I was only nine years old." _Remolino_ started. "I was twelve years old when I first killed a man. He was a drunk that refused to give us the little money he carried on him. The boys I was with knocked him over and beat him, but I was the one that picked up a rock and bashed that drunk's head in."

Rosie glanced at me. I knew what she was thinking. We were both fucked.

"It was not much later than that when I learned who the Holy Death is." The drug dealer went on. "She came to me in a vision. She said, give me blood and give me bodies, and I will make you a rich man. Do you know how many bodies I have given her?"

_Remolino_ stood up and tapped his belt buckle. It was silver and had the number 800 on it. The rumor was that members of the drug cartels wore belt buckles like that to show off how many people they'd murdered.

"Soon, it will be nine hundred." The man said, as he sat back down. "A few months ago, I was driving through my territory and I picked up a few homeless boys. I brought them here and I fed them and gave them new clothes. I do this because I was once just like them. While those boys were here, they began to play-fight. They stood there like little boxers and threw good combinations and jabs and hooks just like real boxers. I was very impressed with them. I asked these boys who had taught them how to fight. They said it was Rosa from the new girl gang. They said this woman had hands of stone. Come here, Rosa, let me see your hands."

With the goons on the next table over watching her closely, Rosie went to hold her hands out to him. _Remolino_ inspected them with his eyes, before he touched them. He scrutinized her large, battered knuckles, then turned her hands over and ran his fingers over her rough calluses.

"Sit down." He motioned, before he instructed his goons. "Jose, bring some beer out for us."

"Not that Three X shit." Rosie said. "I hate that shit. I'll drink some Tecate or some Budweiser."

"Bring us Budweiser." _Remolino_ ordered.

The drug dealer started talking about us as we drank. He knew where we worked, where we lived, and who our friends were. He showed us actual schedules for each one of us, for every day of the week. All of the details were on his papers, including addresses and phone numbers.

_Remolino_ took the paper with Charlene's name on it and crumpled it up in front of our faces. "I don't need this one anymore."

Rosie leaned forward in her chair. "One day, we're going to kill the man who did that to our friend."

"Not if that man kills you first." He replied, chuckling. "Do you know what I see? I see a group of American girls starting up a business here in Rosarito. I have no problem with this. Where I have a problem is when these same girls think they can cut into my business. These little girls have grown up and now they want to become drug dealers."

"That's not what happened." I said.

"No? Tell me your story then."

I explained about how the kids had gotten their heads bashed in, and how the news blamed the drug cartels.

"There is a saying, you never shit on your own doorstep." _Remolino_ told us. "It would be stupid for my people to kill others in this part of town. It would risk drawing the attention of the army or the federals. It would be equally stupid for my enemies to step into my territory and do this to me, especially when they have other problems to deal with. To an outsider, it may seem as if the drug cartels kill at random, but we don't do things that way. We kill to send a strong message to our enemies. I understand that people make mistakes. Some mistakes are more costly than others. In this case, you have made a big mistake and now there is one less girl in your gang."

The drug dealer paused, maybe expecting us to start begging for our lives. Maybe he thought we'd try to jump him in front of his goons. None of that happened. He sat there watching us, while we watched him.

"You are American girls." He said, finally. "What do you care about homeless Mexican boys, anyway?"

I told him about my brother Topo, and how he'd gotten shot down while I was still in high school. I said that it wasn't right for my brother to have his life taken away like that, when he still had so much life ahead of him. It was the same thing for those poor kids. They were born into a shitty situation, and they were robbed of their chance to make things better for themselves. Just thinking about those kids reminded me of my brother, and I started crying. I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried, because it happened so rarely. I kept drinking my beer, but those stupid tears just kept coming out.

_Remolino_ watched me closely. Maybe he thought I was faking it so he'd go easy on us. I guess I convinced him otherwise.

"You have your business." He said. "Everyone I have spoken to has told me that you are being fair with the local people. You may keep your business going, as long as you don't get in my way. This man that likes to kill children, I will find him. What will you do to him when I find him?"

"I'll break his head open, like he did to those kids." Rosie said.

_Remolino_ nodded. "You will have your chance. I may have work for you. There are times when I send men to do a job for me, but these are all rough men that make people nervous simply by walking in together. It would not attract as much suspicion if my men walked in with women. I have women who can do this, but they get nervous and make things even worse. Rough women would know enough not to become scared."

"What do you want us to do?" Rosie asked.

_Remolino_ grinned. "You are always direct, both of you. That is good. I might ask you to accompany my men somewhere. All you would have to do is to pretend you are their dates or their girlfriends. Once my men are in position, they will do their job and you will watch their flank. When the job is done, you will report to me and I will give you a payment."

"We'll need guns." Rosie said.

The drug dealer nodded, before he smiled. "What do you know about guns?"

"We know how to shoot them. You don't have to pay us in money. You can pay us in guns and bullets. We're out of practice, so we'll need somewhere that we can shoot them at. Once we're ready, we're good to go."

"We will talk again soon." _Remolino_ told us, before he instructed his men to drive us back home.

Rosie stood up and snatched his expensive sunglasses off the table. She put the glasses on and stared at the drug dealer, as if daring him to take them from her. "I'm keeping these. That way I can tell my friends that I stole them from the most powerful man in Rosarito. Besides, you can afford to buy new ones."

_Remolino_ was smiling as we were led away.

You might think that I was too quiet that day when we met the drug dealer. Maybe that was true. I'm supposed to be calling the shots for the Harpies, right? The thing is, I had no idea what to say to a man who could have us killed just by snapping his fingers. I'm the kind of person that likes to think things out beforehand, so I can consider all the angles that might come into play later. Rosie was good at making decisions on the spot, while I was better at coming up with plans.

About a week later, we heard the rumor that a pig tried to murder some homeless boys sleeping in an alley, by dropping a rock on their heads. The kids were smart enough to have a lookout while the rest of them slept. When the boy saw the pig approaching with the rock, he raised an alarm and woke them all up. They started throwing rocks at the pig until he ran back to his police car and took off. The kids saw what he looked like and got his car number.

A couple of _Remolino's_ goons came by the house. Rosie and me went out to talk to them. They said they wanted Mala's car keys. We gave them the keys, and they drove off in their car and hers. That night, they dropped off Mala's car and told us they had a surprise for us in the trunk.

We had a look. It was the murdering pig, still in uniform and tied up. They'd drugged him up with something so that he was sweating a lot and staring up at us with a glazed look. We left him in the trunk for the entire night, once we drove into Marta's neighborhood and parked in an empty lot. We had a long talk about what we were going to do next.

In the morning, the O.G. Harpies piled into Mala's car and drove into the hills. That was Rosie, Mala, Marta, Green Eyes and me. We went to, I don't know, like a dry creek or something, where the ground was soft and there was brush on the sides. If it rained enough, or when the spring thaw came, water would run down that creek a couple of feet high. We brought two shovels out with us, and in the memory of Charlene, we each took turns digging out a grave. The pig was sober by then, and he put up a real fight against us when we carried him over to his final resting place. We kicked him and rolled him over until he fell into the hole we'd made.

You might think we were dumb and when the rains came they would expose the body and maybe even carry it downstream. That wasn't going to happen. We dug into the soft dirt, covered him up with that, and then put stones on top so he wouldn't move. The only part we didn't cover up was his face. Because he was still tied up around the mouth, wrists and ankles, he wasn't going anywhere.

We started drinking around that captured pig. We told him about Charlene and some of the happy times we'd had with her. I talked about my brother, and how I hating losing him, and how upset I was that the pig had killed those homeless children. The other girls said a few things, including explaining how we'd fucked up and lost Charlene.

"You die like a man or you die like a bitch." Rosie told him, as she bent down to pull that pig's gag away. "I don't want to hear any moaning from you."

He looked at all of us, one by one. If Charlene had been there, she might have turned away from those cold and at the same time pleading eyes. Not us. We were hardcore bitches who didn't give a fuck. I guess this kind of shit happens in the Italian Mafia back in the states. You just know your time has come and you accept it.

"Open your mouth." Rosie said.

When he did, she poured some beer out. The pig lapped it up.

"One more time." He said.

After he had his little drink, Rosie gagged him again. We covered up his face with dirt and got ready to leave. All of us were swearing our butts off that day.

"Check it." Mala said.

We looked back. Right where that pig's head had been, these tiny little puffs of dust were coming out of the ground. All of us looked around at each other. Rosie went and packed more dirt on top, and a couple of stones just in case.

After that, we left him to the worms.

Let me finish up this part of our lives, before I get on to the shit that went down later.

Even though Charlene's remains got sent up to San Diego, we all pitched in and purchased a gravestone for her. We stuck it into the ground in a corner of the empty lot we hung out in. It was a nice marker, with her name, birth date and death date on it. The gravestone looked like a cross with a circle around it, kind of like a Celtic cross. Charlene would have liked it. We danced around that cross at night and we poured beer on it. I guess in primitive cultures that would have been called ancestor worship.

Rest In Peace, girl. We still miss you.

We did a few jobs for _Remolino_. They were simple jobs at first. Once he started to trust us, he had us handle heavier shit, like taking money from one end of town to the other. We never handled the drugs; actually, we hardly even saw them, as he had other people doing that for him. We carried out a couple of hits for him, on enemies that his men couldn't get to. They were always the bad guys, and not judges or lawyers or people like that who were standing up to corruption. I guess it doesn't make a difference if we killed good people or bad, because in the end we were still assassins.

Rosie had an affair with _Remolino_. That surprised everybody, because before and after, she had never slept with a man. Rosie didn't do it for the power or the money, but for the notoriety. _Remolino_ was so smitten with her that he kept buying her shit. At first, Rosie refused. Later, when he forced her to accept his gifts, she sold them and put the money into the gang, or into helping people who were poorer than us.

Once a week, we went to the drug dealer's house to practice shooting guns. We handled rifles the Mexican army used and American AR-15s. The local pigs showed off to the public how they'd taken guns from raids and arrests, but later they sold the guns at wholesale to the drug dealers. Whenever _Remolino_ got a new bunch, we'd get to try them all out. The Uzis always jammed on us, and one U.S. Army M-16 would always overheat, but I guess all the older models were like that. The drug dealer wouldn't let us take the rifles home, because if we were caught with them we would be talking major torture by the Mexican government. We did take smaller handguns with us, mostly nine-millimeter weapons with NATO approved rounds. Once the local gangs found out that _Remolino_ had our backs, they pretty much left us alone.

Rosie had her thing going with _Remolino_ for a while. Only the O.G. Originals ever went to his compound, where some of our Harpies messed around with the drug dealer's men. Mala and me kept mostly to ourselves. Besides, we had enough pussy back in the 'hood, where we were still training the new home-girls how to fight, wrestle, and choke fools out with their own shirts.

We jumped in a couple of new girls. They went through the one-minute beat-down in public, and a private bedroom initiation that lasted from days to weeks. They were Olga, who we called Gata, or Cat, and Josefina, who we called Josie. Oh, and Happy sent us two more firecrackers from San Diego who were on the run. These were the Gutierrez sisters, Melba and Norma, who we called Mousey and Rascal, respectively. The sisters were small and dark-skinned, but that didn't stop them from stabbing three gangsters from Langley Heights after one of them got raped. They were good enough at stabbing that two of those fools never got back up again.

How many of us were there? Let me do a roll call right here. Let's see...

Silvia (that's me, asshole)

Rosie

Mala (okay, her real name is Teresa)

Martha

Efenia, Green Eyes

Olga, Gata

Josie, Josefina

Melba, Mousey

Norma, Rascal

Counting Happy in San Diego that made ten of us.

Rest In Peace, Charlene. You would have made us eleven, a lucky number.

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Non-Fiction Section

I do a lot of research on a lot of different subjects, including history, mythology, metaphysics, politics and science. Much of my research coincides with whatever fiction project I'm currently working on, but sometimes I'll break away from the pattern and head off in some other direction at random. I will study both mainstream and alternative sources, in the form of non-fiction books, documentaries, lectures and discussions, in trying to come up with a good basis to form my opinions on, or a good foundation for whatever concept I'm trying to incorporate into my stories. Often, I will write articles based on my research and state my sources, so that readers can see how I came to my conclusions.

I also enjoy going through a lot of entertainment media of many types, including written fiction, movies, cosplay, comic books, music, you name it. I do this for my creative writing to set the mood, if you will, or to see points of view on what others have done in certain genres, such as military science fiction, medieval costuming, zombies or whatever other subject I'm delving into.

As a result, I end up with a tremendous amount of notes that I can reference later, or media reviews that I can sort through if I want to stimulate my brain with science fiction, horror or any other particular genre. Many of these articles and reviews will also be found on either my writer's blog or my conspiracy blog. (Links to both are found at the end of this magazine.) Since a lot of this information comes from online sources and Youtube videos, I recommend looking up any referenced articles or videos that interest you for additional resources and links. In general, my research and Truther posts will be found on the conspiracy blog, while all writing related stuff and finished articles will be on the writer's blog.

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### Articles

How I Became My Male Characters

Here is my story, from a candid and literary point of view. One of my earliest childhood memories is a dream I had, when I was, I don't know, five or six years old. In this dream, I saw myself as a man, standing proud and dressed in the garb of an ancient Roman warrior. I held a short sword and shield, and wore headgear with a sort of plume on it. The rest of my uniform was undistinguishable. I stood in a still pose, with the sword held out before me, while the shield was kept close to my chest. As I dreamed on, the sword became a thick tome, which for many years I took to represent the Bible. Now, I tend to think this tome represents books in general. In later versions of this same dream, which occurred throughout my years in primary school, the sword also turned into a writing instrument, a pen or pencil. When you consider that my given name of Ramon, or Raymond in English, means counselor, defender, protector and wise man, it further reinforces the idea of the person I am at my core.

As far back as I can remember, I have been a storyteller. When I was a child, before I even learned to write, I would make fanciful impressions with crayons. I hated staying between the lines in coloring books, because I felt the crayons had their own directions to take past what the book dictated. I had a neighbor who was a little girl. She would bring out her toy dolls to play with. I would be attracted to the way she played, enough that I would go and play with her. Soon enough, the dolls were in my hands, and I sat there creating stories for these dolls to act in. (Later, I did the same thing with Star Wars and G.I. Joe action figures.)

My stepfather did not like that his son, who was perhaps three or four years old at that time, played with dolls meant for a little girl. He was a United States Marine who had suffered through a traumatic tour in Vietnam. He was also a drunkard who would drink all afternoon, and a porn addict who collected dirty magazines like Hustler and Penthouse. It so upset this man to see me, his little boy, touching a little girl's playthings, that he beat me for it. On another occasion, a little boy from another apartment unit came by and maliciously broke many of my crayons, out of jealousy, I believe, but jealousy for what I don't remember. I cried over my broken crayons. I bawled and wailed and went through an entire drama because that is how much they meant to me. My stepfather's answer was to beat me even more, because I didn't go over to that other little boy right away and punch his lights out. Sometimes, this man, my supposed father, the strongest male role model I had in my young life, would become angry enough with me to break my crayons as well. In his eyes, the crayons and the stories I created with them were meaningless. By destroying them he was showing me what he thought of me.

Despite this animosity, my fascination with fantasy persisted. When I learned how to read and write, I developed a voracious appetite for both hobbies. I especially enjoyed reading comic books, which went for twenty-five cents or thirty-five cents back in those days. I loved the idea of heroism and adventure, where strong heroes would stand up against tyranny and protect the weak. In retrospect, I can see how this was a form of defensive projection for the abuses I suffered through as a child.

In the third grade, I was ready to start writing my own stories. I would take blank sheets of paper, fold them in half and staple them together, and create crude comic books of eight or twelve pages. The heroes were those from mainstream comics, but the simple dialogue and the plots were all mine. In a sense, I became Batman, Captain America or Spiderman. There were very few minority superheroes at the time, but I especially liked Luke Cage, Power Man, because he was tough and came from a bad neighborhood, and I respected other Negro characters like Black Panther and Black Falcon. They were the closest things I had to a Hispanic superhero. I had another, special affinity for The Incredible Hulk, especially in the TV show starring Bill Bixby, because he was the oft-abused milksop that I was, until in times of conflict and rage he would become the destructive green monster who finally stood up for himself.

I wrote and sold my crude comic books to my friends, for five or ten cents, and I believe I might have had up to five or so titles that I put out once a week. I even invented a superhero of my own. This character's name was Surcle, derived from Circle. He had a big, round, yellow head on a muscleman's body, and his superpowers came from the sun. His uniform was blue like Superman's, while his accents: his cape, his belt and his boots, were yellow. The look is comparable to the attire of Doctor Fate from DC Comics, although at the time I don't think I'd ever heard of Dr. Fate.

I also collected trading cards back then. I had grand assortments of cards from Star Wars, several series in fact, Alien, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, etc., along with a sizable collection of baseball cards. In his drunken rages, my stepfather would destroy my cards, because he wanted to destroy my inner self, just as much as he damaged my outer self with his vicious beatings. In the end, I stopped collecting anything for a few years, because whatever I collected ended up in tatters.

I recall one particularly traumatic incident that took place at Logan Elementary, in Logan Heights, San Diego. I loved going to the school library, but I was awkward and didn't know how to act when I went there. I talked too much or laughed too much, I don't remember that part so well. One of the librarians saw that a group of us had come in, sent together by our teacher, who was still in class with the other students. This librarian came over to me and singled me out of the group. He pointed at a poster with the image of a brown cartoon turkey on it, as it was close to Thanksgiving. He said, we don't want any turkeys in here, and you are a turkey, so go back to class. I was so hurt by this that I walked out of the library and started crying. I found a door that was propped open, with enough space behind it that I could hide in. I stayed there and cried the entire time. I couldn't help that I'd been beaten ever since I was three or four, that my mother didn't have the strength to stop this abuse because she was getting beaten as well, and that I didn't know how to act in a library. When I saw my classmates leaving the library, I tagged along behind them and pretended I'd stayed with the group. Nobody figured out that I'd hidden and cried for all of that time.

When junior high came along, I discovered horror. Stephen King's Carrie, Cujo, and Salem's Lot titillated me. I wanted to write like King, and create the same sort of tension he created in his books. I stayed up late to watch the old Night Stalker series, where actor Darren McGavin played an inept reporter who always ended up having to face some monstrous creature at the end of every episode.

I also watched movies hosted by Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark. This put me in an erotic daze, where my adolescent hormones were mesmerized by Elvira's dark wardrobe, her gorgeous face, and of course her large, succulent breasts. I can barely remember who the other popular pin-up girls of the early to mid 1980s were, but I knew I had found the right one for me. Her name was Cassandra Peterson, a.k.a. Elvira. I fantasized about her in the same way other young men would fantasize about other, more mainstream models like Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs.

(Well, let me correct that last paragraph a bit. There was one other actress who I fawned over quite intensely. This was Linda Carter, who played the lead in the series Wonder Woman. She was assertive, strong, as beautiful as Elvira in my eyes, and with the same sort of hypnotic cleavage that demanded I stare whenever she was onscreen.)

I discovered science fiction during this time as well. I read Asimov, Clarke, Farmer, Heinlein and many others. I wanted to write like these authors in the same way I hoped to emulate King, but it was all so difficult for me, because while I am analytical and can be scientific, I refused to take the time to do the required amount of research to write a good sci-fi story. Science Fiction was somewhere else, in a galaxy far, far way, while Horror was right now, standing in front of me whenever I turned off the lights, or heard creaks that sounded like steps inside my house.

(I won't linger on this paranormal aspect of my life too long, but let me just say that many of these creepy things, these bumps in the dark, were very real for me. I've been documenting them in my Thorns series of books.)

I was very socially awkward when I got into high school. At first, I thought nobody liked me. I got bullied a lot, which made things even worse. I never learned how to fight, because my parents divorced when I was ten years old, and a timid, cold mother took over in raising me. I got excellent grades, because my mother never allowed me out of the house or yard, she was that overprotective after my father's abuse, and so I would spend most of my time in my room reading or doing school work.

Slowly, gradually, I figured out ways to get people to pay attention to me. I was intelligent enough to get into advanced classes for college-bound students. My teachers liked me because I was courteous and was always striving to do better. I could hold my own in conversations with the Anglo students from Point Loma High, who were the offspring of wealthy and well educated parents. I joked with the boys and flirted with the girls, enough that some of these peers would seek me out and actually befriend me. I hung out with cheerleaders, gang members, nerds, stoners, Goths, etc., sort of fitting in with their factions, but never really feeling that I belonged to any of them.

I wanted to belong, but I didn't know what clique I wanted to belong to. This is the first time I started studying the way people interact with other people. The wealthier kids had social cliques that were usually bright and cheery. Sometimes they were boastful, but strangely enough, some individuals were full of doubts, as if they were given shoes by their parents that were too big to fill.

The students in the middle range made up the majority of the school's alumni. These people were mostly accepting of their lot in life, with some resentments and jealousies toward those who had more wealth than they did. They had their dreams and ambitions, but these students knew clearly that they would have to work hard to attain their dreams. At the time, and despite being in college-bound classes with comparatively rich students, I felt like a fish that was in the nicest pond around, trying to get back into the middle pond where my true peers were.

The last group is what the majority of society would term as undesirables. They flipped the bird to traditional customs and standards, turning themselves into outcasts similar to what I myself was. The Goths had their strange clothes and dark hairstyles. The stoners had their shirts with their heavy metal bands on them and their torn denim jeans. Lastly, the gang members had their gang colors to separate them from the crowd, their penchant for sudden violence, and a unity or brotherhood that made them instantly come to each other's aid in times of trouble.

About halfway through my eleventh grade year, I figured something out that would affect me pretty much for the rest of my life. The wealthier students at Point Loma would talk about going skiing during winter vacation, or traveling to Europe during summer. Their parents would be buying new cars for them on graduation day. I knew kids my age whose parents were setting up businesses for them, kids who were accepted to prestigious art schools, whose parents dined with the Reagans, and whose parents were involved in yacht races like the America's Cup that made local and sometimes national news. I wasn't jealous in a way that I wanted to take their wealth away from them, but I was angry that these kids had such a great start to their lives, when my life and the lives of kids from my neighborhood were so different. I understood that I would in all likelihood have to work for years and years, just to attain what these fellow students already had given to them at the start.

The Goths had parents in the same affluent economic bracket, although they pretended they didn't. The stoners were riffraff local to Point Loma, but I did know a Hispanic guy from my poor neighborhood who spent a lot of time up there, and who had a lot of Anglo surfer and stoner friends. My choices for true camaraderie were quickly being narrowed down. I rode the school bus out to Point Loma every day. In that bus, ninety percent of the kids who rode with me were willing to fall into the established social paradigm. The other ten percent or so flatly refused to be part of any rat race. These last few were the gang members from the neighborhood.

I was no great fighter, and never have been. At that time, I was a pushover, and for the most part I was alone. The gang members accepted me, because I joked around with them and I came from the same neighborhood. Rival gang members from our part of town were also bused in, and this gang was much larger than 'ours.' I was absorbed quickly into the ranks of 'my' gang because of the need for more numbers on our side. I started dressing like they did, talking like they did, and acting like they did. What's more, the homegirls from the neighborhood looked like little Elviras. They teased their dark hair up, used eyeliner and dark lipstick, and oozed the same sort of bad attitude my TV heroine did. Just like the young men from my neighborhood, these rough girls didn't give a shit about society's standards. With very little provocation, these girls would start up a scrap at the cafeteria or around the school lockers, using their sharpened fingernails like razor blades.

I went from being an outcast to being a rebel, and I learned a lot of things from my new clique. These gang members would show me the blades they carried, while they rode the bus with me to school. They would sometimes bicker with each other, and get into fights as soon as they got off the bus. Once, while the school bus was still in motion, two of the older boys opened the back door and jumped out, ready to give chase to rivals they'd seen walking on the street. One of those boys had a ten-inch Buck knife in his hand.

At Point Loma, whenever one of us did something, it would enhance the reputation of the entire gang. We were the villains, the pirates of the school, and I started gaining an infamy with the more docile students in the college-bound classes. They saw me as an oddity, to be feared sometimes, and some of the Anglo girls were even attracted to this new darker aura around me. I studied how some of the gang members would sit in the bus. A few were so quiet they were like stones. They kept their answers short, and they showed little emotion around non-gang members. I'd watched old Clint Eastwood movies, where his gunslinger character exhibited much the same attitude and qualities. I thought, that's what I want people to see in me, whenever they look in my direction. I emulated a hybrid of the Eastwood character mixed in with the attitudes of my new homies. I saw life from an entirely different perspective, because I thought differently than before, and people were looking at me differently when I wore rebellious clothes.

My writing became much darker during that time. I started writing poetry and short stories about demons and evil things, about savagery and carnage. Many of these earlier works have become the basis for my short story collection Demonic Murmurs. I would still draw heroes with capes, who could fly and had muscles rippling all over their bodies. The faces of my heroes changed, into a Hispanic character who wore dark shades and sported a goatee. It took a friend to point out that I was in effect drawing a new, idealized version of myself. This is the character I hoped to become in real life.

I was never a big fighter, but I was loud and aggressive when I had to be. All that reading and writing gave me a command of words and tone. If one of my homies was getting picked on, me and my loud voice would go over there to defend him. This kept our adversaries at bay, until more and more of our homies would come by and even the odds, or tilt them in our favor. You could say that I was a barking dog with no bite at first, but I did start growing fangs as time went on. I saw how my voice and stance could intimidate a guy who could very well kick my ass, and how a strong enough push would break that guy's doubtful resolve. At school, I was one of any number of gang members. At home, a lot of guys started coming around to my house, where I was smart enough to analyze situations, give advice, and later, when eight to twelve or us were around, even to call the shots.

My mother always wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, but this wasn't in the cards for me. I suppose I was intelligent enough to pursue such a career, but that would have put me on a mundane, predictable path of going to college, getting a job, raising a family and buying a house. Even back then, I recognized this as a rat race, and I've always hated the idea of being a controlled rat.

My mother shifted tactics. If I wasn't going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then I should learn construction work. Once she made that decision, it became ingrained in her head forever. She will never be happy with me unless I can build an entire house from the ground up. Even now, when I'm in my mid-forties, she'll tell me to work on the house's electricity, 'because it's not that hard.' She'll tell me to climb up on the roof to fix something, forgetting the fact that I have a fear of heights, or she'll tell me to go and stand with the illegal workers by the Home Depot store, because 'those guys make ten dollars an hour.'

There was a time when I worked as loader at Home Depot. You'll see the location I worked at pop up now and then in my early stories. As a loader, I calculated reasonably that on busy days I picked up and loaded between twelve to fifteen thousand pounds worth of material. I did this when I was forty to forty-two years old, approximately. Most of the guys who were assigned to help me load were younger guys. They would rather push shopping carts than load ninety-pound bags of powder cement or heavy building blocks. These youngsters would go inside the store to flirt with the female cashiers, or brown-nose the supervisors into being transferred inside the store and away from the loading area, or they would simply find a place to hide so they could chat on their phones all day.

My supervisor would come out and bitch at me, because I had a long line of customers waiting to have their purchases loaded. As a result, I would overextend myself and I ended up hurting my back. Not enough to really hurt it, but enough that I have to be careful with it for the rest of my life. On cold days, or if I turn the wrong way, I'll feel the twitch, and sometimes a stab of pain. My mother doesn't see any of that. Instead, she sees me as a failure in life, because I refuse to do heavy construction work or climb ladders to stand on peoples' roofs.

This is what she was like when I was younger, as well. In her limited perception, she cannot imagine that somebody could use their brain, and only their brain, to become successful. My mother will sit for hours on end, every day including weekends, watching Spanish soap operas. I try to point out to her how somebody wrote the script for those, or put together the scenery or the costuming or whatnot, and how those behind the scenes people were getting paid for doing that. Still, it won't sink into my mother's head that somebody like me can make money by using my mind.

Up until I turned eighteen and finally left my mother's house, my mother did a lot to discourage me from even considering becoming a writer. Never mind that my high school English teacher compared my work to early Stephen King, or that girls in school would cry and feel emotion over my short stories and poetry, or that I made it to the regional spelling bee and was the best speller at my junior high two separate years, because of my mind. If I didn't use my hands and my back to make money, according to my mother, I was never going to be successful.

I met Rebecca when I was still eighteen. She was one of those Elviras that I had grown so fond of, who teased her hair, had big breasts and hung out with her homegirls. I spent the next twenty years of my life with this woman. Rebecca was a sharp contrast to my mother. My mother was timid, manipulative, soft-spoken and very much a coward. Rebecca was strong, direct, aggressive and confrontational. Unfortunately, Rebecca refused to give me the chance to develop and blossom as an individual. She had it in her mind what a happy relationship and marriage was, or should be, and nothing could shake her away from that paradigm. At first, she tried to mold me into something like the father figure in the Brady Bunch. As time went on, I compared myself to the Homer Simpson character from the animated sitcom The Simpsons. That's not who I wanted to be, but again, it was somebody else's expectations that I was being forced to achieve. My writing became sort of a hidden hobby, thanks to Rebecca. It was something that I couldn't do for very long before it began to irritate her, and so I would always jot down notes and ideas for stories while at work. If I wanted to sit down and flesh out an idea into a short story on my days off, Rebecca would make herself a distraction for me, complaining that there were chores to be done, or shopping to take care of, or whatever else.

Because my mother didn't believe in me, and because my ex-wife didn't believe in me, I never took the craft of writing seriously. I split up with Rebecca in September of 2010. Up until then, because I let my mother and my ex-wife get in the way of what I've wanted to do ever since I was four or five, I had completed zero books. The break-up was very painful for me, because by then I had five children whom I loved very much. Even though my relationship with my wife had been deteriorating for the last five years or so, it was still a great shock for me to suddenly be single after over twenty years.

What am I going to do with my life? That's the question I kept asking myself. My mother's advice was for me to find another woman, start up another life and do the same thing all over again. That idea repelled me. I spent the first eighteen-plus years of my life living with a woman who kept trying to mold me into somebody that I was not, and the next twenty-plus with a second woman who was trying to do the same thing. At forty years of age, I had never truly been allowed to be myself, partly because of the females who I let control me, but also because I wanted to be a good son, husband and father. All that time, I lacked the courage to follow my dreams. I was not about to get involved with another woman right away, I decided, and potentially end up in the same situation a third time.

Ever since I've known my ex-father-in-law, he's dreamed of owning his own business. I was twenty, and he'd tell me how he wanted to open up a restaurant. He had relatives who already owned a couple of restaurants, who were willing to help him get started up. These relatives could recommend a good cook, give him advice, supplies and support. All he really needed to do was to fully commit to doing this, but he lacked the courage and the drive. This same man again said he wanted to start up this dream restaurant when I was thirty, and also when I was forty. It was a fantasy that my father-in-law was never going to accomplish, because he's never taken even the first step into realizing it.

Was that the person who I wanted to be? The guy who's old and worn out, who keeps looking into his past and saying, I wish I'd done this or that back then, but now it's too late? The guy who hardly loves his wife after being married to her so long, who has his little, meager job to go to five days a week, with no ambition, and who stays home whenever he takes a vacation?

In September of 2010, I decided that I was finally serious about becoming a writer. I had a couple of million words in my writing repository by then. In the past, I'd submitted my short stories to magazines and websites, but I wasn't good enough for the bigger venues. Smaller literary markets were more accepting, which was good, and every once in a while I would get a compliment on whatever story had been published. It was the feedback that spurred me on, because I was writing about things that people thought were worth taking the time to read.

September of 2010 was the month when I split up with my ex-wife. It was also the month that I decided I did not want to look back upon my life wishing I had done more about my writing. I wanted to give it my best shot after all that time, because then I would not regret it, like my father-in-law did with his dream of one day owning his own restaurant. Before that month, I had published a handful of short stories in a handful of small venues, including making it into the San Diego Reader twice. I hadn't published any complete books. Today, in January of 2016, just under five years and a half years later, I have over thirty complete and published titles, and at least another ten still waiting for final revisions. (Update: That number is at over sixty as of early October 2018.)

I am not yet where I want to be, but I am getting there. Maybe the money will come, and maybe it won't. I've put wealth as secondary to accomplishment, in terms of success. In terms of the time I've spent and the sacrifices I've made, there is no doubt that I am taking the correct steps. I find success every time I write the final sentence of every poem or short story, or at the end of every completed novel.

I have over half a dozen novels that I've been waiting to write for over twenty years. Only one of these novels, A Terrible Thing To Waste, has made it into finished form so far. I also planned to write two or three novels in a series, to be titled The Kingdom Of Ranth. Because of the enormity of this project, I thought to write one novel as a prequel, to set up the Ranth series in the first place. This is the reason I first created the Chaos Rift series, a sort of fantasy and horror mix that would include mingling together characters from yesterday, today, and possibly even tomorrow. To date, I have written eight novels in the Chaos Rift series, I have two more unpublished, and I haven't even gotten to the Ranth books yet! After that, I have another three books planned revolving around a group of misfits and mutants to be set in the near future, and at least a couple of novels set in a post-apocalyptic far future, and...

Forty titles in five and a half years; since the month when I dedicated my entire life to making my dreams possible. Time and God willing, I expect to write a whole lot more. I am just getting started.

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Science-Based Starships And Colonies (And Aliens!)

Contents

Introduction

Types Of Interstellar Ships

Types Of Interstellar Propulsion

Interstellar Highways

Propulsion Notes

Advantages Of Space Habitats

Space Habitat Necessities

Types Of Rotating Habitats

Lunar Bases

Space Colony Notes

Dead Aliens

Improbability Issues

Sources

Introduction

I loved Space 1999. This was a science fiction TV show from the 1970s that ran for 2 seasons with a total of 24 episodes per season. I loved this series about the same as I loved Star Trek, The Original Series, from the mid-sixties, and this was a lot more than TV shows that came later in the eighties, such as Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century and the original V series.

I think part of the draw was that the fantasy world in Space 1999 was only a couple of steps more advanced than contemporary technology was back then, more in the realm of plausible sci-fi than other franchises in line with the first Star Wars movie, which was full of alien races, medieval fantasy weapons such as light sabers, and giant Death Stars the size of moons. The characters in Space 1999 were regular people in my eyes, back when I was in elementary and junior high watching the reruns of those shows. Martin Landau was usually cool and collected, but if his tantrum buttons were pushed he'd bark at his crew and often make decisions against the consensus. Barbara Bain was a silver-haired fox for me, and still is as I watch the old shows when I can find them on Youtube (Or on the Tubi app!). The show was filmed on a low budget, but I wasn't too worried about plastic models being used for spaceships and temporary scenery backdrops. I was more interested in whatever new concept would be presented, and how the crew would get out of trouble during the one hour program.

As a tribute to this TV show that helped stoke my love for science fiction, I wanted to go back and watch the old episodes and gain inspiration from them. There was a problem! A lot of the science was inaccurate back then, and is downright ridiculous in today's world. Just look at the premise of the show: an explosion of nuclear waste causes Luna to be propelled out of orbit, and now Luna and the colony on it are hurtling through space with no hope of rescue and no way to remedy the situation. Moon Base Alpha gets obliterated every other episode, and they lose half of their Eagle ships whenever they have a dogfight in space, but miraculously everything is renewed in time for the next episode. There are no issues with maintaining a breathable environment, replenishing food, water, electricity, fuel for the ships, etc. I know, I know, some of this stuff has to necessarily be simplified for a TV program, such as alien races speaking English for the benefit of the audience, and the ability for the cast to walk around on exotic new worlds without wearing spacesuits.

I can accept some of that stretching of the imagination, and I do similar things myself depending on the writing project I'm working on. However, as a writer trying to present a plausible space environment and ensuing adventure to a reader, I have to make sure that most of my science is grounded on actual facts, and is reasonably extrapolated from what is known today. For those reasons, I'm doing research on the practicality of interstellar ships, space colonies of various types, and a few other related topics. Space 1999 will still be my inspiration, but the web of fantasy I weave my stories around will have a much better real-world grounding. The information I've gathered is credible, fairly practical and can be backed up by science.

I'm showing this from a general, semi-detailed perspective, so if any of these ideas interests you, you can do more research on your own. The math on some of this stuff is very complex, and too meticulous for the depth of my project. Also, I've left out some of the more fanciful concepts, such as Larry Niven's Ringworld idea, where a giant human habitat is constructed around an entire planet. That's really not feasible or practical, as it would take the nickel and iron content of a dozen worlds or more to create. The concepts I'm presenting are much closer to home and could be possible as working models within our lifetimes. Most of the concepts are within our reach with the science and technology we have today, and that will make for a more credible story for you and I to write.

Types Of Interstellar Ships

1. Methuselah ships - The crew on these ships has extremely long life spans and can survive the voyage from start to finish.

2. Sleeper ships - These ships have hibernation areas and a small, active skeleton crew.

3. Generation ships - These ships are designed with the ideas of multiple generations of families living and breeding on board. To prevent genetic stagnation and inbreeding problems, human egg and sperm cells can be frozen for measured durations before they begin to deteriorate, or DNA printing can add new / diversified genetic code onto existing DNA strands.

4. Seed ships - This concept is for a very small and heavily automated ship that carries seeds of life or advanced printing technology. Humans, animals, vegetation and terraforming would be done mechanically upon arrival at a destination. Machines or robots would raise humans once the initial set-up work has been done.

5. Data ships - Another very small ship, this one would carry vast amounts of data that could unpack itself upon arrival, by using local material.

Types Of Interstellar Propulsion

1. Nuclear fusion - At present, these ships are very expensive. Small, controlled (and potentially very dangerous) nuclear explosions would propel a ship forward to approx. 10 percent of light speed. Estimated costs for building this type of ship are around $350 billion dollars. The advantage is they could potentially move huge amounts of cargo, but they would use a tremendous amount of power materials and be difficult to speed up and slow down. A hybrid ship type named the Bussard Ramjet would suck space material in and use that for additional power. The Star Trek ship Enterprise design has twin Bussard Ramscoops on the ends of its wings.

2. Anti-Matter - I'm going to skip this idea, because we can't make anti-matter, and even if we could, we have no way to safely store it. Basically, anti-matter would provide huge propulsion for a ship.

3. Black hole - This theory is beyond me. I don't understand the physics of safely using a black hole's gravity pull to move a ship between stars. Next!

4. Light sails - This concept I really like. Solar panels made of ultra-thin graphene absorb light energy and use it to propel a ship forward. The shape of the sail might be a problem. The further away from a star, the slower the sail would move. Also, the shape of the sail would create drag on the non-solar side. The sail would end up becoming more of a parachute. Lasers or microwaves could boost the sail's velocity. 1463 Gigawatts of laser power would accelerate the light sail by 1 Gee. A laser may be needed at the destination to slow the sail down.

Interstellar Highways

In the traditional rocket fuel model, Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation tells us that when a rocket-based ship launches, 63% of its weight will be fuel. For a rocket-based ship to land or slow down, 86% of its weight must be fuel. That is the amount of fuel needed to achieve Exhaust Velocity. To propel a ship at twice Exhaust Velocity, the percentages increase to 86% at launch and 98% for slow-down. This is about 400 pounds of fuel for every 1 pound of cargo at 1 times Exhaust Velocity.

Shooting light photon lasers at a graphene sail is more cost effective, but there are problems with making sure the laser hits the sail at just the right angle and also when the laser and sail are too far apart from each other. The proposed thickness for a graphene sail would be 1 micrometer thick. A galactic GPS network will be necessary to keep things in alignment and for course correction. A sister laser at the destination could help slow the sail down. Additional lasers can be spaced out along the travel route.

Alternatives to photon lasers are charged particles aimed at magnetic sails and also solar neutrinos, if a new material were invented capable of reflecting them.

A sample sail ship could weight 10 million kilograms (10,000 pounds) and have the shape of a cone to lessen drag and deflect incoming objects. The amount of laser power needed to push this size ship is tremendous, comparable to the noonday sun shining over an entire continent. The laser can also be used as a particle accelerator and for communications.

50 relays per light year at 2000 light years of highway equals 100,000 total relays. These relays would use about a trillion kilograms of hydrogen fuel per day to power the lasers. There are projections that such a system could power a ship fast enough to reach relativistic speeds, but for the purpose of my writing project, I'll probably set a more practical cap of 10% of light speed.

Propulsion Notes

Newton's First Law - Objects only change speed if force is exerted on them. This will play an important part in my sci-fi project based on the Space 1999 TV series. In that scenario, Luna was wrenched off its orbit by exploding nuclear waste. The human colony on Luna had no way to slow the moon down, which made up the basic premise of the series; a runaway moon with people on it.

Asteroids could serve as way stations to replenish fuel supplies.

If a ship travels at 10% of light speed, one year on the ship equals 1 year and 2 days on Earth.

Advantages Of Space Habitats

1. Access To Solar Energy

2. Easier Trade - Trade from a space habitat to a planet would be easier than from one planet to another, due to less hassles entering and exiting planetary gravitational fields.

3. Space Manufacturing - A space habitat can become self-sufficient in producing food and water for its population. Raw materials can be acquired from asteroids to produce tradable goods. There is enough building material in our main asteroid belt to build enough habitats to equal the surface area of 3,000 Earths.

4. Zero-G Environment - For swimming, hang-gliding and flying airplanes!

Space Habitat Necessities

Oxygen can be obtained from lunar rocks. Nitrogen can be brought in and recycled, or extracted from comets and moons. Air can be recycled through gardens or hydroponics food production. Catalytic burners can decompose industrial pollutants such as volatile oils, as used in nuclear submarines. Cryogenic distillation can slowly remove tougher mercury vapor and noble gases that cannot be catalytically burned. After the distillation, carbon dioxide and water can go straight into agriculture. Nitrates, potassium and sodium in leftover ash can be recycled as fertilizer. Minerals such as iron, nickel and silicon can be purified and reused industrially.

Zero gravity weakens bones and muscles, and imbalances calcium and the immune system in humans. To counter this, a colony would have to rotate to simulate gravity. Most people are comfortable with a rotational radius of 500 meters at a rate of less than one revolution per minute. A small percentage will experience dizziness and vertigo.

The habitat could be shielded from cosmic rays by its outer structure and air. (I would also suggest a barrier of water, as it absorbs radiation, or a coat of regolith or other space dirt or rock to repel cosmic rays.) When it comes to heat, a space habitat is like a giant thermos bottle. Solar heat is absorbed from the outside and radiates toward the center. Convection or chilled coolant could help keep the population on the edges of the habitat comfortably cool. The outer surface must be able to withstand or avoid impacts from meteorites and cosmic dust. Large mirrors or periscopes could be used to direct sunlight into the habitat.

A good location for a habitat is near Luna, for the access to raw materials and the proximity to a major trade market in Earth.

Types Of Rotating Habitats

An O'Neill Cylinder is 20 miles long and 5 miles wide, and made of steel. It has a total surface area of 314 square miles. This is roughly the size of Guam, Malta or Rhode Island. A Bishop's Ring can be larger, the size of continents, if a strong material is used, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. McKendree Cylinders are huge at 10,000 km, or 6,200 miles, and can be linked together like a string of sausages.

Rotating habitats are extremely difficult to finance and build, as materials have to be moved from a terrestrial world into space. Care must be taken with heat dispersion and habitat size, or else some sections will be too warm and uncomfortable. Excess heat must radiate out into space. A rotating habitat is designed like a washing machine. That is, it has an outer shell that stays stationary, and an inner section that turns. You cannot see this habitat spinning in space, because the velocity would cause it to break apart.

The outer shielding super-structure can be reinforced by hydrogen and helium, which are both plentiful in space. This would be an effective barrier against cosmic radiation. Consider that higher Earth's atmosphere has 14 pounds per square inch of pressure, preventing most cosmic radiation from reaching the planet's surface.

The interior habitat doesn't have to be built flat. It can have dips and rises to simulate lakes and hills. A dedicated reactor suspended in the center of the cylindrical habitat can maintain universal lighting. One difficult effect to reproduce is a natural-looking blue sky. Perhaps an additional colored layer can be inserted between the light reactor and the population level. A lot more dirt will be needed to simulate a natural landscape and agriculture, but less if hydroponics are utilized to produce food.

Bernal Sphere - First proposed in 1929, this habitat is shaped in a hollow spherical shell. This was designed for a target population of 20,000 to 30,000 people. Updates to this concept include Island One. This design has a diameter of 500 m (1600 feet) and spins are 1.9 RPM, enough to produce full Earth gravity at the equator. This is described as a long valley running along the equator, big enough for 10,000 people. It is an optimal size for air pressure and radiation shielding, and would be lit by angled mirrors. Island Two is larger at 1800 meters diameter, with an equator of 6.5 km (4 miles), and a good size for an industrial base.

Stanford Torus - This NASA design can house an estimated 10,000 to 140,000 people. The model for 10,000 people is 1.8 km (1.1 miles) wide and shaped like a doughnut. It rotates once per minute, creating 0.9 or 1.0g of artificial gravity. Spokes connect to a central hub with zero gravity, making it a good place for ship docking and some industry. The interior would appear as a river and valley with the ends curving upward. Areas in the ring would be dedicated to agriculture and housing.

Building materials would come from the moon or asteroid mining, and moved to the ring by a mass driver. The diameter of the tube is 130 m (430 feet). Six spokes linking to the hub would each have a diameter of 15 m (49 feet). The radiation shield would be composed of almost 2 meters (6 feet) or raw lunar soil.

O'Neill Cylinder - Proposed in the mid-1970s, this habitat consists of two separate cylinders, one within the other, spinning counter to each other to cancel out gyroscopic difficulties presented when aiming the habitat at the sun. The two cylinders are 8 km in diameter (5 miles), and up to 32 km long (20 miles). Each cylinder has six 'stripes' on it, running lengthwise. These stripes alternate as transparent windows and habitable land masses. A third ring (16 km, 10 miles in radius), would spin at a different speed to allow for farming. The industrial sector is located in the center of this ring, taking advantage of lesser gravity and benefiting some manufacturing processes. Building materials would come from the moon, shot out like a train or cannon from a mass driver.

To simulate gravity O'Neill's Cylinder would rotate 2 times per hour. People would not notice this unless they turn their heads or drop an object, which would fall a few centimeters from the expected spot. Air pressure would be half that found on Earth, to save on gases and allowing for thinner walls. Mirrors outside the windows would reflect sunlight into the habitat. The windows would not be designed as giant panes of glass, but as smaller units in case they get damaged. The movement of the cylinders can create momentum to turn the habitat 360 degrees, without the use of rockets and saving fuel.

Lunar Bases

The most important factor in setting up a lunar colony is WHY would you do it? Simply explaining this off as a research center, such as in the Space 1999 scenario, is not feasibly enough. The most valuable material found on Luna is Helium 3, but it simply isn't worth the trouble to set up a base and mine for that because of the vast amount of regolith that has to be sifted through to get at the Helium 3. Other abundant lunar material such as oxygen, silicon and nickel we already have plenty of.

Solar power is good for a moon base, as Luna's thinner atmosphere lets a lot more sunlight in. Vehicles running on solar energy would be ideal. Solar collectors built as towers would get more sun, as the horizon wouldn't obscure them. Polar bases would get sunlight longer than equatorial bases. Nuclear power is a good second choice.

Glass or clear surface domes are a bad choice for moon bases. This is because of the heavy amounts of solar and cosmic radiation that would normally be blocked off or filtered on Earth, but they won't be on Luna. A better choice would be an underground base, or a surface base covered with moon regolith with mirrors reflecting sunlight in.

Communication time between the moon and Earth would lag by 4 to 5 seconds. This would make for stunted conversations and clunky Earth people to Luna robot remote control.

Telescopes and giant lasers could be built bigger and will work more efficiently than on Earth.

Space Colony Notes

Dunbar's Number - This estimates the approximate number of people one individual needs around them to maintain healthy social and romantic relationships.

About 5 - very close friends

15 - 20 - good friends

35 - 50 - acquaintances

150 - 160 - total members in a tribe

Over 160 - additional recognizable people

A colony of 10,000 people is calculated to double every 25 years. It would take approx. 500 years for the initial colony to reach Earth's present population.

Dead Aliens

Wrap your head around this, which I tried to simplify a bit. If, in the last 10 billion years, 10% of stars spawned an intelligent civilization, and if each civilization is visible for an average of 10,000 years, then every 1 million stars would have 1 currently visible civilization. This area would be a circle of 400 light years in radius. That means that theoretically we would have at least one other intelligent, interstellar species, besides us, somewhere around us right now. In a sci-fi scenario, that would translate to one space-capable species every 400 light years.

Two good candidate solar systems for possible extinct alien species are 82 G Eridan and Delta Pavonis. Both stars are about 20 light years away from Earth, and are estimated to be at least 6 billion years old. The species on any life-supporting planets would have gone extinct hundred of thousands or millions of years ago. There would be nothing left of their society except rubble, and no ruins or buried technology as seen in pop movies. A destroyed or collapsed atmosphere might cause some artifacts to erode slower. Artifacts might last longer on moons, unless meteor impacts have demolished them.

Arriving colonists would not be colonizing planets right away, as they would have mastered space habitats and interstellar, long duration travel by then. They won't jump off their ship immediately. A colonizing ship might first spot alien technology on a moon, and send probes in for a closer look. A manned exploration vessel would go in next. If any habitats, doors or walls are found, explorers will not try to enter them. They will use drills to make holes, keeping internal pressures intact, and send in devices with cameras attached to them.

Explorers might take the door apart for study on how it was constructed. They will not try to pressurize any structures so they can walk around without space suits, because this will cause oxygen to be present that would erode any sensitive artifacts. If the aliens from the moon base watched their home planet get destroyed due to war or disaster, they may have left a record of their culture behind, including mummified bodies and a collection of their accomplishments and knowledge. The last survivors might even leave a trail of clues to the bottom of a shaded crater, where colder temperatures can preserve bodies or other artifacts for a longer time than on the surface. It is even possible that DNA or other genetic material might be hidden there that would allow these people or their clones to be replicated.

Not every single living creature on an extinct planet might have perished. Life might still be found in the bottom of the oceans, or in deep cave systems.

As a general rule of thumb, the more advanced a civilization is, the faster its tech will degrade and vanish. Think about that! We're more likely to find cave paintings on an extinct alien planet than computer chips!

Improbability Issues

This topic strays away from the main purpose of the article. I thought it worthwhile to include it, as I will certainly delve into quantum jumping and multi-verse subplots in my fiction project.

Mechanistic Universe - Everything in the universe runs strictly on mathematical principles. There is no random chance or novelty, as the future is predetermined and can be predicted by math.

Copenhagen Interpretation - There is only one reality, and everything within the universe is in a constant state of flux. The future is random or novel until an observer witnesses it. (See the example of Shrodinger's Cat.) The fluctuation is going on at the atomic level.

Many Worlds Theory - In this theory, everything that can possibly happen does happen on an infinite number of worlds. (See the Butterfly Effect in Time Travel paradox speculation. Basically, this is where something minor you do today can affect people greatly in the far future.)

Pilot Wave Theory - This wasn't mentioned in the video I watched, but I thought it worthy of inclusion. In this theory, a ball is dropped into viscous liquid that has no friction, bounces an infinite number of times and creates new ripples with every bounce. These ripples intersect each other as seen in the Double Slit Experiment. They represent space-time and can be measured as a range or pattern. The uniqueness of Pilot Wave Theory, from my metaphysical perspective, is who initially drops the ball? Just like you need an observer to create the Double Slit Experiment by shooting photons through apertures, in Pilot Wave you need an initiator to start the process. None of the other theories proposed by scientists really addresses the idea of Intelligent Design.

Moving on; if you become Dr. Who and transport yourself to a location on another world, is the person who arrives at the destination truly you, or is it a collection of your possibly false memories? If a super 3D printer maps you down to the atomic level and reproduces you, is that really you? Can there be two of you at once, and is the You on a different planet the same as the You on Earth? Isaac Arthur put together a very good and though-provoking analysis, which I will jot down below.

Dyson Dilemma Conditions

1. It is actually possible to build a Dyson Sphere, and doing so makes sense.

2. It is possible to engage in interstellar colonization.

3. No method of power generation exists which is vastly superior to stars, nor can matter and energy simply be summoned from nowhere for free.

4. Faster Than Light Travel, or to travel to other realities or dimensions, is either not possible or not incredibly easy.

5. Civilizations do not inevitably wipe themselves out.

6. Most civilizations will expand their population, territory and resources if they can comfortably do so.

Following these conditions, a civilization doesn't need to expand and colonize into space. Potentially, it can travel to other realities or dimensions, find a suitable new planet there with the right living conditions or resources, and simply take what it needs. If that's the case, we might be competing with other Earths that develop the same inter-dimensional travel methods for the best new planets out there.

Again, if you travel to another universe, is it your data or your mass? If your data is duplicated from empty space-matter, i.e. reassembly of atoms, that's not you. If it is your actual mass that travels from Point A to Point B, then you've just added mass and energy to another dimension, therefore increasing the size of the new universe and decreasing it from the one you've left behind. In Many Worlds Theory, your jumping from one place to the next could theoretically happen trillions of times, with only a small variance between your selves.

(See the story of John Titor, Time Traveler, for a Many Worlds Theory where similar worlds have variances between 3 and 5 percent. That also ties in with Quantum / Mandela Effect where some people, like myself, are noticing how the universe is constantly changing around them in all aspects.)

Isaac Arthur doesn't like Many Worlds Theory. I heard one physicist stating that nature would conserve its energy with temporary time-line splits, or short tributaries in a river of time, that would later join back up with the main body. That makes more sense to me, based on what I can see in Earth nature and biological or weather cycles. Nature does not simply waste its energy. From a metaphysical point of view, it also makes sense, as some people have very strange experiences that defy what is known in physics, events that cannot be replicated and are usually dismissed by academia, but which are very real for the person who went through them. Reality refuses to be categorized and defined by Science. In a Hologram Universe, Many Worlds and time-line splits are as possible as a person playing a video game, having their character die, and then resuming the game with a revived character. (If your video game character dies and is revived, is it really the same character, or a different one? Do you see what I'm saying now, about transporting yourself to another planet / dimension and you still being you?)

Sources

Dead Aliens by Isaac Arthur (Youtube)

Infinite Improbability Issues by Isaac Arthur (Youtube)

Interstellar Colonization by Isaac Arthur (Youtube)

Interstellar Highways by Isaac Arthur (Youtube)

Megastructures 04 - Rotating Habitats by Isaac Arthur (Youtube)

Moon Base Concepts by Isaac Arthur (Youtube)

O'Neill Cylinder, article on Wikipedia

Space Habitats, article on Wikipedia

Stanford Torus, article on Wikipedia

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### Media Reviews

Movies

Writer's Review: Blade Runner (1982) starring Harrison Ford

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Starring: Harrison Ford, Rugter Hauer, Sean Young, Edward J. Olmos, Darryl Hannah

Genre: science fiction

Storyline: In the 21st century, a corporation develops human clones to be used as slaves in colonies outside the Earth, identified as replicants. In 2019, a former police officer is hired to hunt down a fugitive group of clones living undercover in Los Angeles.

Run time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

Rating: 8.2 on Imbd, 5 out of 5 on my scorecard

There was a time when I disliked this movie because of its slow pacing. I wanted to take a load off, sit down and watch a lot of action onscreen, while chilling out with my family or friends, munching on pizza and having a social experience. That was before I started writing full time and getting into complex character development and plots designed to make the audience think. I believe I watched this movie four times back then, twice with a crowd where we all thought it was slow or boring, once when I was alone and I found it so slow I turned it off after about twenty minutes, and only once did I watch this movie all the way through to where I barely started to appreciate it.

Cut to ten years later. I got a hold of a DVD copy about a year and a half ago. I stuck it into my laptop and watched it on my little 13" screen, and I thought, wow, there is so much here that I never even noticed before. I have to watch this movie again, I decided, and this time, I want it to inspire me into writing something just as sophisticated and profound. As it happened, the movie was released on the Pluto TV app this month of October 2018, and I thought, now is a good time to watch this on a big screen, especially with the sequel Blade Runner 2049 available on HBO. This way, I figured, I could watch both movies and compare / contrast them based on my writer's point of view.

It goes without saying that this movie was light years ahead of its time. It was first released in 1982, and for me, the best version is the Director's Cut that does not have the onscreen narration included. Where do I start? The ambience was expertly set with the dismal skyline backdrops and the eerie music and sound effects. The building of tension throughout the movie was excellent, except for a couple of short sequences where the director wanted to be _avante garde_ , I guess, and he ended up jostling the flow a bit before things calmed down and the movie got back into its rhythm. The cut scenes showing Darryl Hannah making faces and rolling her eyes, while waiting for Harrison Ford to show up at the loft, is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

The plot was fairly straightforward: The Blade Runner is assigned to go out and kill the Replicants. However, there is a lot going on with all the characters to draw the attention away from this simple idea. Emmet Walsh as police captain Bryant had a lot of personality, for example, and he was only a bit character. Joe Turkel as Tyrell, the creator of the Replicants, and William Sanderson as Sebastian, the geneticist toymaker, both showed depth in their minor roles because of their expressions and body language, and I could see complexity in their lives despite that they were only in the movie for a short time. About the only character I didn't like was Edward J. Olmos as Gaff, the tough cop who didn't say anything, and who didn't do anything really, other than harass Ford and make pointless origami figures (except for the unicorn at the end). All Gaff really did was stand around, growl a little and bore me.

This movie had four really strong characters for me. I've seen Rutger Hauer in other movies where he's basically a two-dimensional hero or villain, in that he grunts, points a weapon and shoots at everyone. In this movie, however, he has the most dynamic range of anyone, as he goes from subdued innocence to valor to sadism in quick jumps. Darryl Hannah also does an awesome job for the most part, such as when she displays genuine happiness to her prey, where we know that she's really up to no good. One bit that I did not like about her is that she could have killed Ford in their showdown, but instead she runs off to do back-flips and ends up getting blasted as a result.

Sean Young as the naive clone that is unaware she's a clone is also a great role. She has that bird with a clipped wing look most of the time, but in her eyes I could see how she was thinking things over, and always coming to negative conclusions. With Ford, it was the opposite. He had a casual, friendly personality, unless he was in danger, and then he was all business. The scene where Ford seduces Young is one of the best love scenes I've ever watched. It fit perfectly with the tone of the movie, and with the awkwardness of a clone hunter putting the moves on a clone questioning the meaning of her life.

Is this the best science fiction movie ever made? You know, I think it is. It beats any movie in the Star Wars franchise for its complexity and development among most of the characters, it has a realistic version of the future that you can see already in the electronic billboards in Tokyo and New York, and the smog looks just as bad as it does in Hong Kong. (You can see that smog from space!) This movie isn't in some galaxy far, far away, but only ten to twenty years in our future, especially if we ever get weaned off the petro-dollar and inventors are allowed to bring their hover-cars and flying cars to market. Unlike most other futuristic sci-fi movies, this one shows what lies right around the corner in many of today's sciences, including cloning. You can make a good case for the best sci-fi movie ever being The Matrix, because it also had a lot of great elements, thrills and chills, and strong characters, but I'm giving Blade Runner the nod because it came first, and because it set standards so high that even today, over 35 years later, very few movies can reach up to.

Extras: The sci-fi movie Soldier starring Kurt Russell was originally written as an off-shoot sequel to Blade Runner. Sean Young played the transgender villainess cop in the first Ace Ventura movie.

Writer's Review: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) starring Ryan Gosling

Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Ana De Armas, Harrison Ford

Genre: science fiction

Storyline: Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

Run time: 2 hours, 44 minutes.

Rating: 8.1 on Imbd, 5 out of 5 on my scorecard

I'm going to try to make the opening paragraph for this movie as a stand-alone film, because you know it will soon slip over to a comparison and contrast with the original Ridley Scott movie, a movie that pushed science fiction in a bold new direction, way back in '82.

Blade Runner 2049 was fantastic! The mood picked up right where the first movie left off; it was somber, overcast in gray and gray-blue and felt like something broken that can't easily be fixed. We finally got a chance to see what the outside of post-modern Los Angeles looks like. To my artistic eye, the broad backdrops and landscape shots were so beautiful I can see myself actually living there among those grimy people, with the smog, mist and rain broken up by glitzy electronic eye candy. As an example, post-apocalypse San Diego looked so much better than the post-anything of most zombie movies. Post-apoc Las Vegas was also aesthetically stunning. I want to go there! Sign me up!

Ryan Gosling didn't have much range in his role as the main protagonist K. He had a kind of half-smirk going on as if he was mentally deficient in some way, with no true shows of happiness or love when he had the opportunity to express them. He sounded friendly in how he said things at times, but he didn't look friendly, sort of like no acting range whatsoever Nicholas Cage, bleah! Even when he was facing an emotional crisis, such as when he lost his holo-lover Joi, or when it dawned on him that he had memories from the San Diego orphanage, or when he was told he wasn't the Chosen One after all, Gosling didn't show good reactions. His character simply had no feelings.

Gosling's lack of expressiveness meant that co-star Ana De Armas, playing Joi the holo-babe, had to work that much harder to engage the audience's emotions. She was up to the task, fortunately, with her look of sweet innocence, plus a little playfulness and sass to go along with that. Armas managed to look gorgeous in every scene, including the hubba, hubba nude giantess bits where she flirts and poses next to skyscrapers. I cringed when she was about to meld with the pink-haired hooker... Don't do it! Don't demean yourself so much! Agh! But she did it anyway, and that was pretty much the only visual romance scene we had in the entire movie. By the way, when she was destroyed by the evil clone lady, Gosling should have been outraged or depressed for a long time, but no, he was more worried about his Chosen One status and walked off with a bloody face for the rest of the flick. Yeah, showing anguish after losing the person you love the most might have been good, ya think?

Now that I'm thinking about it, most of the cast was pretty bland. Harrison Ford was good to very good, but not great. I liked Robin Wright as Lieutenant Joshi, because her motivation and strength were clearly expressed. She played a pseudo-military career woman, and it showed.

The villains in this movie were pretty weak. I'm not online at the moment, so I don't have the names of all the actors or characters right now, but... Wallace, the head of the clone corporation, wasn't very well fleshed out. He was a bad clone, bad, bad, clone boss who wanted to get his hands on the baby Replicant so he could... Do what to her? He wanted his super clones to breed, but for what purpose? His business was to sell merch. If his merch had the ability to breed, wouldn't that cut into his sales? If he wanted to show the world that his creations could breed, wouldn't that put him more in line with the rebel Replicants instead of playing the greedy capitalist? That guy was so evil he killed his own product! Wow, really? Are we sinking down to comic book, evil mastermind level here? And then you have evil clone lady, who is a public relations hostess by day, and a cold-blooded assassin by night. Again with the contrived comic book plots! You would think that an evil mastermind who runs a multi-planetary corporation would have a dedicated assassin on the payroll!

The whole rebel Replicant army could have been excised from the movie, by the way. All they added was clutter that was left unresolved at the end, just like how nothing happened to the evil mastermind Wallace. Hellooo, resolution please!

I'll finish up with what I thought of the story, but first let me get into the comparison between this movie and the original.

Scenery: BR 1982 - good to very good, BR 2017 \- jaw-dropping, inspiring

Music: BR 82 - excellent, BR 17 - also excellent

Movie Flow: BR 82 - very good, BR 17 - excellent

Acting: BR 82 - very good to excellent, BR 27 \- adequate to good

Story: BR 82 - comic book simple, BR 17 - sophisticated thriller, whodunit-type detective story

You get the idea, right? The '82 movie had a lot of quirky, expressive characters, while the '17 movie had one. The '82 story was Point A to Point B, with only a couple of twists, while the '17 movie had many twists as the protagonist tracked down clues and kept having to shift directions. Scenery and music were great in both movies, and I gave both movies five star ratings overall.

Here is what I think happened. Director Villeneuve was given this blockbuster movie to emulate, and he decided he should tone down his characters and concentrate on visually stunning his audience while taking them on a sophisticated but typical detective hunt. The director did not want to take any big chances here to expand the Blade Runner universe, so he simply created next-level clones, that look just like the old clones, and he still had Blade Runner cops hunting down the old clones, which used to have 4 year life spans, but let's ignore that for now and say they had longer life spans all along, since 30 years have passed by, after all. Villeneuve was so worried about screwing this up that he didn't even give his lead character a personality, and he created cookie cutter bad guys.

So, the big new concept we got is that somehow, a clone named Rachel got pregnant despite that she wasn't designed that way. Well, guess what, too bad trying to replicate that, because an apocalypse took place and the technical details were lost forever, just like NASA claims they lost their telemetry data, thus preventing us from returning to the moon, because it's just too darn hard to calculate that all over again! Wah! Basically, we're looking at a Virgin Mary situation here, where the God of All Clones must have used his (or her) divine electronic influence to make a miracle happen. (It reminds me of the Jurassic Park quote, 'nature finds a way!') And what do we get but the Clone Savior or Chosen One incarnating, which we saw in The Matrix, in the original Star Wars and in countless other movies? Ho hum, Isaac Asimov was already contemplating Robot Saviors as far back as the 1950s, so again, the concept is nothing new, and it keeps this movie safe, as long as everything else is done right.

That's how this director did it; by making everything past the weak acting and the overused savior plot go right. The audience kept turning their heads this way and that thanks to the clues dropping at regularly scheduled intervals, with the gorgeous backdrops, the cool music and special effects pumping out the bells and whistles. (I mean, come on, you have a remote orphanage out there in the middle of nowhere, with armed scavengers coming out in droves and giant dumpster ships dropping trash to form huge mountains all over the place. Are you telling me that makes sense?) This movie barely had any sensuality in it, except for Joi's flirting and that weird virtual reality threesome. But again, the director did enough things right that I can overlook the several weaknesses that would have ruined most other movies, and I still ended up having a great experience watching this one.

Do I have any ideas that could have made this movie better Hmm... Let me think about that. Okay, how about the evil mastermind gets his just desserts in the end? What's more, in the movie we were told that only tiny fragments of Rachel's memories had survived, right? But later we have a complete reproduction of Rachel that apparently knows enough about Harrison Ford / Deckard that she tries to remind him of the love they once had. You see that doesn't make sense, but for the sake of closure and having a good ending, let's take that one step further. In my proposed conclusion, Savior Girl, the daughter of Deckard and Rachel, takes their memories and sends them into a pair of newer model clones, and the rejuvenated clones run off and live happily ever after. The actual ending with good guy Gosling croaking on snowy steps, and his holo-babe being crunched by an evil boot earlier, left me feeling like that was an injustice that was never truly rectified. Ford may have had his happy ending by reuniting with his daughter, but the real hero of this movie, the one we were following around for almost three hours, got left out in the cold, and that sucked. Was it really that hard to have Gosling standing in the background, while Ford went up to his estranged daughter in the final shot?

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### Story Starters

Okay, you may have heard of these goofs that think their story idea, which is only one or two sentences long, is destined to become a Hollywood blockbuster or a New York Times bestseller. These are the goofs that jump up and down crying out, so and so author stole my idea! First off, if their idea was so incredibly awesome, why aren't they sitting down and writing their screenplay or novel? I have come across too many non-writers who think creative writing appears like magic, and the cash flow will always follow like a magnet, or a flood. That's not the way it works, folks. There is a lot of hard work and research, and a lot of time sacrificed from other things, like a social life, that go into producing a finished written work. After that, there is a further obstacle in marketing the work and hoping the public will one day discover it.

I have, right now, 280 pages worth of story ideas that are sitting around doing nothing except gathering digital dust. I'm going to present some of these ideas in this magazine, because if I can't get to them, maybe they can inspire you to write something. If you do, I'll put your story here in my magazine. As a further incentive, if you find anything in my magazines that inspires you into writing a story, do it. That's how writing works: you read something, you see something, and you write something as a result. See my Contribute section for how you can get your writing to me.

Here is this issue's Story Starters. Can you do anything with them?

03.16.18 - Diversify stereotypical characters types for medieval stories. This may include sorcerers with daggers / knives and shields, or sorcerers that have wands built into the handle of their swords or that implement their staffs into spears or pikes. In another twist, female characters that are usually seen wielding shorter weapons such as sabers might do well with swords, since both weigh about the same. Females could also use spears to compensate for their shorter arm range. (The point here is to avoid the Tolkien and D&D stereotypes.)

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08.05.18 - Two mages priests argue over how brightly the sun is shining. This may fit into a future medieval humor plot.

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08.05.18 - "Gods burn their children!" - Quote for unknown medieval or ancient story setting. Used as derogatory curse or insult.

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### Bulldozed

11.14.00 - Bulldozers knock down an ancient (or at least very old) building, then clock out for the day. Neighborhood kids play on the site, and a couple of boys find an old bottle (or box?) and somehow, the contents of this item distort and magnify their own personalities. The mean kid becomes monstrous and evil, while the good kid becomes lighter and just (and maybe even furrier!).

Transformation knocks them both out, and when they come to, of course they clash. Not sure where to take this story from here, maybe at a later time, other people become involved and have to stop a war between the two. The two main characters settle the story, or the story never gets written.

10.03.18 - Update: Yes, I do write smart-aleck comments to myself, if only to get me motivated into doing something with all these idea fragments. Actually, I might use this in the medieval project I'm working on now, where an evil influence comes in and changes my adventurers into creatures based on their driving emotions or corruptions. Good! I can use this and take it off my list!

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### Block Wars 2

03.13.07 - More of a Mad Max futuristic setting, where one section of town controls and hoards the water supply. Other poorer districts must pay tribute, and since they don't have much, they tend to squabble and loot amongst themselves. Main in this story at first rebels against the whole idea, then starts a revolt within his meager community. As usual, the elders are too set in their ways, so main instead forms a small gang. They cause some minor trouble and the controlling interests take note, which leads to this group's exile.

As outcasts, they may have to join forces with another, more vicious band (a group that main has encountered before), although they prefer to keep their own identity. (I might complicate this story and add lots of gangs, similar to The Warriors, not sure yet.)

Plot might revolve around a takeover attempt by several gangs, but when the most influential of these is bribed by the Water Authority, the other gangs panic and become desperate. All out war begins, gangs take sides, ideals are forgotten, until main figures out that they can take out the entire dam, and flood the area with fresh water.

10.03.2018 - Update: You know, this might work for my medieval project, too. I've already got a bunch of small villages going hungry and worrying about attacks from the bad guys. We will see about this!

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### I Want Contributors!

ADVERTISERS: If you have artwork, a book, a movie or some other product you'd like to promote, send me an e-mail and let's see if it fits in with the e-zine. I would love to promote material from amateur or independent producers. It's a straight deal at this point; I will post your ad, and you can help me promote the e-zine. I don't think I'll get a sudden flood of advertisers, but if I do, this barter idea might evolve into something more complex. For now, free is the key word!

GENERAL PUBLIC: Readers, I am looking for submissions from you! You can send in your short stories (up to 10 \- 15 pages or around 6,000 words), sample chapters, digital artwork, media reviews, commentary, author interviews, general feedback and articles on writing. These can be in a variety of topics, including history, mythology, the paranormal, the metaphysical, political corruption, advances in science, LARPing, whatever, as long as it has some kind of non-mainstream strangeness to it. How about some poetry? Fiction can range from MEDIUM to HIGH controversy, or about from PG to R ratings, because I don't like pop culture fluff or vicarious cat stories. Bleah! I take cats apart here, sew them up and make little Frankenstein Kitties out of them.

This e-zine is a FREE publication with no outside advertising. As such, I can only reward contributors with exposure and a free digital copy. On the plus side, you have a new venue that you can pass around while promoting your work. Anything that comes along my way will be considered Creative Commons 'copy and share' material, and everything submitted will remain the property of the creator.

Send your submissions to:

raymondtowers777 @ yahoo dot com

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### About The Publisher / Author

Greetings, reader. Raymond Towers is an author of fantasy, horror and science fiction that strays away from the mainstream, plus a little in the way of true paranormal and other genres. He has written and independently published over forty titles, most of them full-length novels and collections, with several more on the way. The author has been a lifelong resident of warm and sunny southern California, a location that pops up frequently in his writing. At the moment, the author is looking for ways to reach new readers all over the world, in addition to pursuing his great love of writing and taking it to the next level.

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https://raymondmtowers.wordpress.com/

Verum Et Inventa conspiracy blog:

https://verumetinventa.wordpress.com/

