

Sun on the Rocks – The Bellagio Wikileak

Smashwords Edition.

© Copyright 2014 by Somers Isle & Loveshade.

Published by Somers Isle & Loveshade at Smashwords.

U.S. Copyright Registration Number: 1-743085441.

All rights reserved.

'Sun on the Rocks' blogsite:

http://oursalon.ning.com/profile/workstudio

Cover by Tatiana Villa

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ABOUT 'Sun on the Rocks':

It's a breezy, easy to peel humor read for adults, specializing in the trivial pursuit. These pleasant fictional amusements with a nonchalant overtone of humor, follow the adventures of several non competitive good looking women over twenty one years of age, as they leave Malibu and become a group of hostesses, _'Sun on the Rocks'_ , on the cruise ship _City of Wellington_ , a post-Panamax which makes short trips between Los Angeles and Acapulco in Mexico. The motley crew of women works as a group of entertaining amateurs and as friendly gophers on the ship, and is led to various places in the Caribbean and elsewhere by the incombustible twenty five year old Stevenson Garden Products Malibu teleoperator **Clarity Nice** , a woman of resourceful intuition, and acute observer of the laws of human mischief.

The Bellagio Wikileak: After landing the air fashion jet of Corporate Holding Owens & Owell coming from a flight in Bahrain, Clarity and her friends gather at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas to visit the underground Center for Somewhat Important Strategic Affairs, a high-level surveillance center, where Coronel Brayfield and her assistant Mandy Everglade await Clarity for trial, regarding the theft of the bonds found at the home of Cayman Islands bank owner Buddha Talk (see The Cayman Air Banner).

Down in the Center, there is a maintenance problem with the elevator that requires the fixing of a an all-seeing computer, a symbolic computer called Evans which re-creates human thought, the human consciousness of a moderate computer. In order to avoid trial, Clarity accepts to work at the Center as assistant to Brayfield and discovers a ploy to reveal a wikileak sought by agents from China.

# BACKSTORIES AND CHARACTERS

# TO READ THE AMUSEMENT COMFORTABLY

**Buddha Talk:** Corpulent, shady genius of money flows which begin and end with the same pocket, his own, scholar of sexual ecstasy, occasional Buddhist and worshipper for good Karma of a shrine honoring a lobster which pinched his ear before ending in the lobster cooking pot. Buddha Talk is banking agent and the heir apparent of _Lofty Bank_ , a _Cayman Islands banking institution_ with no particular regard for its clients and a lock on ownership held by a Great Dane, _Lord Moorehead_ III, British by upbringing and inheritance granted by Lord Moorehead II, a man, old, very old, and dead now, at age ninety seven, previous British Lord, ex-owner of Lofty Bank, a man who gave all of its wealth, nobility title and bank ownership rights to his dog.

_Lord Moorehead III_ acts as front 'man' for Buddha Talk, and is also the official recipient of all bank notices by the Cayman Islands monetary authority, a convenient fact for Buddha Talk, and one bark that doesn´t cease to surprise the monetary authority who casts a recurring shadow of doubt upon the legalities of having a dog act as front 'man' and be the official owner of a Bank doing business in the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands, located in the Western Caribbean Sea, a pleasant area to live when the money and work issues are solved. Buddha Talk likes to drive or be driven in Jaguar 73, a gadget-filled car offered as gift to Buddha Talk by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in exchange for having sold some gold and palladium for the Cuban regime, through Banco Inter Central del Caribe y Cuba, or BICCC.

Clarity and Flower, after gaining entry as investors to the bank with the help of Clark, the owner of a diamond shop in Grand Cayman, find themselves owing nearly one hundred thousand dollars to the Lofty Bank outfit for no reason, a debt they can pay by working for the bank for fifty years, as part of the bank´s flagship product, _the Crashworthy Deposit_ , part bank deposit paying twenty percent, part investment, part insurance policy, and part working arrangement.

Lofty has ties with the underworld, and the monetary authority of the Cayman Islands stubbornly refuses to grant it a renewal of its license, something that doesn´t stop the bank from operating in the most illegal manner, advertising its products to potential investors with an air banner carried by a Gippland 200 crop duster flying low above sunny Caribbean beaches such as those of Cayman, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas and Acapulco. This is entirely documented in **The Cayman Air Banner**.

**Boustrophedon:** Large, ancient grey stone inscription filled with Greek letter symbols. In a boustrophedon, direction of the text is inverted, you have to read the inscriptions on the stone from left to right and from right to left alternatively with each line of bi-directional text. Penelope Avalon and Cassandra Scafarel believe that the Boustrophedon holds important information on ancient methods of pleasure, including comments and thoughts on the gate of pleasure, Voluptas de Naturas. The current location of the Boustrophedon that Clarity and her friend Lanai saw at Scafarel's **Hexas Style Resort** in the Bahamas, is unknown to Clarity, known to:

**Cassandra Scafarel:** Significant other of Buddha Talk at some point, shrewd British expatriate, a businesswoman in her forties without a moral code or compass, executive head of beauty lotion outfit 'Elony', sold through illegal flight infomercials with the assistance of Lofty Bank. The infomercial is an excuse to sell to customers, mostly affluent women, Elony's personal growth services, which include how to bring heaven a little closer to home, after doing away with money, in particular fifty thousand dollars that must be paid for a bottle of Elony, in order to receive a resort-pass to reach the Leisure and Pleasure Resort of Scafarel, the **Hexas Style Resort** in the Bahamas island of Eleuthera.

Hexas Style was partly dismantled in **The Bahamas Lotion** , by Al Donway and the **Sensual Brigade of Central Intelligence** , or **Sensual Intelligence** , a group of attractive women ensuring Law and Order are respected, along with their bodies. The Brigade's most representative member is agent **Money Fact** , the woman who introduced Clarity to the nine hour oil-optional massage, proof that work is not a necessary part of life. Money Fact excels at action, mentoring and faulty logic. After a decidedly last minute and decisive intervention of Sensual Intelligence at Hexas Style, Scafarel manages to flee from the Bahamas resort on her private yacht, with the Boustrophedon, but without some secrets regarding pleasure, including the:

**Imperial Pelican Fabergé Egg:** Intricate egg, or jewel, depending on how hungry you are, eight inches high, made of varicolored gold, opalescent blue enamel and watercolor on ivory. It is known as the _Xenia Imperial Pelican Fabergé egg,_ and belongs to the _Private Collection of Maria Feodorovna, Empress Consort of Russia in 1898_. The egg, commissioned by Maria Feodorovna to provide, handle and store, all of her private items of pleasure, went through the hands of Occidental Petroleum tycoon Armand Hammer, an art collector with close ties to the ex-Soviet Union, and has now fallen into the hands of Cassandra Scafarel, a woman who stops at nothing to understand how pleasure works, in particular how the pleasure of a woman works, including her own _._ The Pelican Fabergé egg, eight inches high, is hollow, and unfolds into eight miniatures, holding what's known in Fabergé egg language, as the surprise inside, a time-tested item of pleasure for the woman, the Jade Egg, a small two inch in diameter jade egg that must be boiled before each intimate, feminine use. Owned by Cassandra Scafarel, requisitioned by the Sensual Brigade of Central Intelligence for examination.

**Penelope Avalon:** Sex Goddess and Go-Go girl from Las Vegas, dressed in a pink suit, user of the learjet ' _Pink Go-Go_ ' appropriately painted in pink. Penelope has had enough of living the plastic pleasure style of Las Vegas showgirls, and finds in the outfit of Cassandra Scafarel, the Bahamas Hexas Style Resort, a way out of Hotel California. Penelope likes attractive women unclothed, and would like to do Clarity, because she's nice.

**The Symbolic Decryptor:** Thai alphabet gadget similar to a smartphone or Blackberry, which can be used as cell phone, useful for understanding all types of characters and symbols, made in VLE mode (Very Limited Edition, less than ten made worldwide) by the mysterious Oriental company known as **Pentatone Scale Learning Systems**.

The item, the gadget, looks like a Blackberry with keyboard, with 36 Thai character keys, doubled with the shift key, for a total of 72, instead of the 26 of the Western alphabet, and its keys are made of hard, white color plastic, similar to the color casing of the Kindle 2, cast against a grey background and a backlit screen. The decryptor can also be used as indicator of calligraphy symbols, as mantra tone guide and geo-locator, using the Global Positioning System to calculate the coordinates of any location worldwide.

Penelope Avalon received one of these decryptors from Lady Scafarel, after completing work on heaven, according to Scafarel's personal growth system, and Clarity would like to keep the item as a souvenir, although Money Fact disagrees and is holding custody of the device for strategic and Intelligence reasons. Sure, she likes the nifty item, that's all, and she likes to subtly let Clarity know that she's the boss of Sensual Intelligence.

**Book of Decadence:** Book written on the topic by the unknown hedonist, a small print manifesto of deep thought with illustrations of ancient goddesses with lion bodies in bronze, and a mosaic of Byzantine nuns, used by Penelope Avalon and the Hexas Style Hedonist Resort in the Bahamas, on how to let go of the encumbrance of work, and dedicate your time, well spent, according to the book, to leisure, pleasure, et. al. The book clearly advises on the pitfalls of decadence and purportedly how to avoid them.

**Telval Studios** : Adult Film production unit of the Church of the Holy Flower, led by Cassandra Scafarel, including the film ' _Abu Dhabi Chic_ ', a remake of Andrew Blake's 'Paris Chic' shown to Clarity and her friends during the unfolding of **The Adult Channel** at the Park Hyatt in Abu Dhabi. Telval produces adult films unlike any other, films like ' _Embroidered Air Avenue_ ', engaging beautiful women in sultry positions and scenes for hours, revealing an oriental connection to the films' choreographies and to the symbolic decryptor. It including codes for women within the films to get inside the Church of the Holy Flower and other Mystery Schools. This includes a keyword of the Book of Decadence, the word **Rosebud** , a mysterious codeword for the Church of the Holy Flower that Clarity seeks to clarify.

The adult films are distributed in large hotel chains worldwide and come with a special remote control for the hotel's adult channel, which makes the films interactive and allows eight digit bank transfers with Telval as beneficiary, to be done remotely. One of the remotes holds an important detail on heaven, as envisioned by Scafarel on earth, with indications provided by the eight miniatures of her Imperial Pelican Fabergé Egg.

**The Air Fashion Jet of Owens & Owell**: Double deck plane with four engines, a copy of the Airbus 380, refurbished with all kinds of luxuries, from a Jacuzzi to an Indian ritual area for the users of the plane, to a permanent television channel showing fashion shows happening throughout the world. The jet, built in Saudi Arabia, is used by board members and members of the Executive Committee of the conglomerate Owens & Owell, and by the two rebellious daughters of the main owners, who got married to each other during **The OOL Broderie (Owens & Owell Love Broderie)**, Shalia Owell, twenty three, and Jenny Owens, twenty two.

Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens are two good looking college students studying human sexuality at University of Arizona. They hold Board seats on the Board of Directors of O&O, but the members of the company´s Executive Committee oppose their presence on the Board, after they give a power of attorney to Cassandra Scafarel, the woman who led them to their marriage and wants access to the money of O&O by replacing the two women on their board seat. Scafarel´s _Church of the Holy Flower_ , includes its very own holy flower, the _Rose of Levity_ , a real flower, one of the most expensive in the world, a gold of kina balu rose, a variation on a Mrs. Herbert Stevens Rose.

**The Center for Somewhat Strategic Affairs of Medium to Low Importance** : Located below the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas, the Center of Surveillance of U.S. interests is headed by Colonel Calton Brayfield and her assistant, ex-employee of facelook, Mandy Everglade. The Center´s ever present maintenance issues with the elevator leading to the Bellagio, which interferes with the fountains of the resort, are handled by repairman Morgan Afterflow, a man who knows how to swing his red, adjustable pipe wrench in any situation. His side job is to work for the Chinese government as a spy, providing any information that will pay him fifteen dollars an hour more than his current hourly pay at the center.

The center uses a supercomputer with a quite human consciousness, _Evans_ , whose brain is built according to complex algorithms of symbolic logic, which can perform complex social data analytics on millions of people. _Evans_ , which refuses to be used dishonestly, reveals the source of this devious use of his super computing ability in **The Bellagio Wikileak**.

Knowing that Bradfield and Afterflow want him thrown into the scrapyard after refusing to perform simple calculations for them or those who want to lease its computing services, the consciousness of _Evans_ reaches a Symbolic Decryptor that Clarity takes away from the center´s equipment supplies, and becomes a permanent part of Clarity´s gadget, escaping the enslavery of the surveillance center, but becoming part of a stolen gadget belonging to the U.S. government with many features unknown to Clarity or Evans.

**Mista Jack:** Money changer from the British Virgin Islands, advisor to Cuban Colonel Swarez and the Cuban government in **The Cuban Renegade**. Mista Jack is a dwarf wearing a black Duffield hat, and was a former assistant of precious metals agent Cubandor, with connections at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas. The short but resourceful man is responsible for stealing one million dollars worth of Federal Reserve bonds that were used on behalf of Cubandor to pay Buddha Talk, in exchange for _Lady Fortuna_ , a minted gold bar of great value, sought by many, understood by few.

These bonds, that Clarity and Flower used to leave Cayman, have been giving Clarity a headache, because they were stolen, and Sensual Intelligence has been accusing Clarity and Flower, and also Cubandor, of stealing the bonds and paying Lady Fortuna with stolen U.S. government debt. No one knows how Mista Jack broke into the New York Fed´s vault to find the bonds. As a result of the stolen bonds, Clarity and Cubandor lost their U.S. passport, becoming citizens without a country, owning instead the passport of the Monteviena cigar plantation, a micronation in Cuba created by Cubandor, which includes Cuba´s reserve of precious metals, _Fort Ebena_.

**Lady Fortuna:** Two hundred fifty gram gold bar minted by _LAMP, Lingots Artisanaux Métaux Précieux,_ a producer of gold bullion and rare precious metals items, depicting _Lady Fortuna_ , roman goddess of prosperity, along with the horn of plenty, precious coins and wheel of fortune, on its obverse. The reverse of the bar shows the etched code B235336. _LAMP_ ´s assayers work in conformity with the _Swiss Precious Metals Control Law_ , following directives issued by the _Central Office for Precious Metals Control_ in Bern.

_LAMP_ refines gold-based materials for their exclusive clients, and is one of three referees in charge of testing samples for the _London Bullion Market Association_ and the _Curaçao Platinum and Palladium_ market. The Lady Fortuna gold minted bar was received by Mista Jack on behalf of Cubandor, from Buddha Talk, in exchange for one million dollars in Treasury bonds delivered to Buddha Talk. The minted bar, coveted by many, is kept by Mista Jack, and is believed to be a token of initiation to the _Eleusinian Mysteries_ , a variety of rituals performed in ancient Greece, which have been adapted to include rituals of sacred or divine sexuality by _Elony_ beauty lotion orchestrator Lady Scafarel.

**Officer Packwood** : Puritan police officer working in the city of Malibu, in charge of nothing in particular, but with a job to protect until his retirement, his own. You can safely say that his only goal in life is to close down the only clothing optional company in Malibu and in general, Stevenson Garden Products, because it's simply not written anywhere in the police manual that you can show up for work without any clothes. He likes to wear a constabulary custodian bowler style helmet, showing a shiny badge of the city of Malibu on the front while he goes around carrying out irrelevant duties. He attempted to derail and shut the clothing optional policy at Stevenson during **The Malibu Case** , without success, and he is diligently at work again in **The Outdoor Shower** , to prevent the use of a shower installed on the premises of Stevenson, offered to employees as amenity, and shut down its faucet. Sometimes it comes down to shutting off the faucet.

**Flake** : The gardener at Stevenson Garden Products, also in charge of maintenance and security of its office building premises. He is the only person holding the keys of the Stevenson building, and so Clarity, Taimi and Cynthia, often look to him to get access to the roof top pool of the company building at night, when they feel like a skinny-dip. Usually wears overalls and often looks out for an extra buck or two, always in cash, in ways which are resourceful and sometimes innovative, leaving little evidence of what took place. He is willing to do any anomalous duty without asking any questions, because it sort of adds variety to his day. He is not convinced that the clothing optional policy of Stevenson is quite for him and prefers to remain clothed, in full possession of all of his watering faculties. If he can ruin the day of officer Packwood, he will.

Following is a short description of the feminine adult icons of pleasure, leisure and 'less work means a better world', a short fiction biopic text substitute of the feminine lead characters of Sun on the Rocks, the non-competitive group of gophers who work at the _City of Wellington_ , a Post-Panamax ocean liner normally docking in Los Angeles, California, which engages in cruises to Acapulco, the Mexican coast line, the Caribbean, and anywhere where the weather is nice, really. The group of ladies boards the City of Wellington when Clarity, Cynthia and Taimi get bored of working at the only clothing optional company in Malibu, Stevenson Garden Products. It includes seven good looking women who like to have fun in the sun, with or without clothes:

**Clarity Nice** : Teleoperator from Malibu, California, twenty five years of age, quarter century wise. A diligent employee of Malibu outfit Stevenson Garden Products, natural light brown hair pumpkin born and raised in a wood cabin of Topanga Canyon, a woman of resourceful intuition and acute observer of the Laws of Human Mischief.

Clarity likes to dye her hair cinnamon auburn at times using a shade selector. She means well and unclothes well in general, for instance on the beach. She likes lovemaking, sharing nudity with other women, and the practical matters and possibilities of sexual ecstasy, after having experienced it first hand at Cassandra Scafarel´s adult resort Hexas Style in the Bahamas. She likes to edge for periods of three or four months, touching and caressing herself for several hours, without reaching a complete orgasm. After one or two months of this, she cums abundantly, and her body responds with sensations which feel beyond pleasure, subtle waves more similar to bliss, which is maximum pleasure, or even ecstasy, which is bliss reaching its apex.

Because Clarity does everything casually, she ignores how holy she and the virtues she embodies are, but she knows that she is good, very good, in fact, the fact that she is honest is the reason why she usually doesn´t have much money.

**Lanai Thomson:** Twenty four year old Librarian from Malibu, originally from Hawaii, Clarity's best friend, somewhat goofy and absent-minded, fun, usually cautious in all of her endeavors, including doing men. She enjoys reading old books with some type of hidden knowledge, specially those which talk about enjoyment or decadence, the first to learn new avenues for it, the second, books such as the book of Decadence, because she wants to know how to avoid the pitfalls of its apparent lure. We would all like to know exactly what she does when she has sex with Clarity or simply unclothes with her for a 'naked pajama night'.

**Flower Parkwood:** Twenty three year old Bohemian Ethnographer found on the beach in Acapulco after the Acapulco cocktail affair. Flower has brown hair, is fresh, likes to wear platforms, and is genuinely interested in learning about cultures and the history of those cultures, as long as comfort, leisure and money are nearby. Buddha Talk has attempted to seduce her in The Cayman Air Banner, so far, without success, although they both share a liking for the 'Spirit of Ecstasy', the winged lady traditionally found at the top of Rolls Royce radiators. Flower ignores everything about sexual ecstasy, but she likes the idea.

**Taimi Kendrick:** Lifeguard by profession from Malibu, twenty two years of age, she´s one of the original four members of Sun on the Rocks, with Lanai, Cynthia, and Clarity. No nonsense, practical, fun and genuine, mischievous and also cheeky when the opportunity arises, she enjoys simple things, life without its complications, usually handled by Clarity, Flower or Lanai. She handles the entertainment routines prepared for the passengers of the City of Wellington, and when living in Malibu, she watches the rooftop pool of Stevenson Garden Products. She is a good friend of Flake, the gardener of Stevenson Garden Products. Like the rest of her friends, she is not a heavy drinker, but occasionally she particularly likes to taste the _sun on the rocks_ cocktail drink prepared by bartender Mr. LT in the City of Wellington, a concoction made with _2oz of tequila_ , _1 teaspoon of sugar_ , _1/2 orange_ , and _a half lemon_.

**Montana Sterley:** Twenty one year old blond oil heiress, daughter of S Group conglomerate Colorado tycoon Carrelson Sterley, a man who likes to spend time with several women whose name starts with the name of his first wife Kelly Jane. Some of his current girlfriends include Kelly Caroline, Kelly Ann, and Kelley Shelley, the latter being a candidate for the name of a new Subway Combo sandwich. Montana comes from Fairplay, Colorado. She is outspoken, rebellious, mischievous, good looking, well educated, well traveled, and favorable to the idea of emulating the jet-setting lifestyle, versus following her father's business footsteps, or simply being well-behaved. She enjoys adult films, her large allowance, and being naked in good hotels such as Abu Dhabi's Park Hyatt, but her down-to-earth personality prevents her from attaining some of the more subtle knowledge that Clarity observes inside Scafarel's **Church of the Holy Flower** , a spiritual outfit for the affluent woman.

**Jenna Megway:** Twenty three year old surfer and diver fond of the Acapulco diving spot, La Quebrada, found on the City of Wellington, before the search for **The Acapulco Cocktail** took place. Simple, genuine, and introvert, with long blond hair, she often does more than she says.

**Cynthia Stevenson:** Twenty two year old pom squad waves cheerleader from Pepperdine University, good friend of Clarity, gave Clarity her TAG-Heuer Aquaracer watch for her birthday. Cynthia is the well-to-do daughter of the owner of the Stevenson Garden Products company, established in Malibu, the first clothing optional corporate outfit worldwide, to our knowledge, a fact well deserved and established when Clarity and her friends took on officer Packwood during The Malibu Case, along with its clothing implications.

Cynthia has fun as long as everything goes well, but has difficulty overcoming difficulty, any slight adversity that is. Problems and dealing with them, are simply not part of her daily routine or among her interests. She likes to dress elegantly and swim naked on summer evenings in any pool with her friends. She is a frequent guest of the Areolas clothing optional resort for adult couples and women in Palm Springs, where she likes the Egyptian linen sheets available in the om room and the complimentary cream color Keralan _Mundu_ offered, a garment made with cotton by _Creme de l'Ayeryarwady_ , worn around the waist in the Tulu Nadu region of _Kerala_ and in the _Maldive Islands_.
SUN ON THE ROCKS – AMUSEMENT SEVEN

THE BELLAGIO WIKILEAK

# Chapter One

Bellagio Hotel Entrance, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.

Clarity Nice stepped out of the white Eco friendly Hummer Triple Axel H2 Jet Door Limousine, followed by Sensual Brigade agent Money Fact and her boss Al Donway. Clarity turned around to look at the magnificent tree-lined alley and large lake served by a freshwater well, which gave the Bellagio hotel conceived by business magnate Steve Wynn a grandiose appearance. She was still suffering from jetlag, after a nineteen hour flight from Manama in Bahrain, which had landed the Owens & Owell Air Fashion Jet at McCarran International Airport in Vegas.

Owens & Owell Board members had offered the limousine and a stay in Las Vegas at the Bellagio for Clarity and her friends, while the two daughters and also O&O Board of Director members, Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens, discussed their return to University of Arizona to continue their studies in human sexuality. The problem faced by the Board was that both women were married to each other in Bahrain in a flower-flavored half-naked ceremony led by the head of the Church of the Holy Flower, Cassandra Scafarel, a woman arrested for the sale of a rash-inducing beauty lotion without FDA approval, and still under investigation in general for having created a personal growth outfit known as the Church of the Holy Flower.

Clarity peeked at the limousine. Her friends Lanai and Flower were seated inside playing Cityville on Zynga through a giant television screen, Jenna, Taimi, and Cynthia were checking out the pastry and ice cream assortments of the Bellagio's Café Gelato dining place, and Montana was speaking with her father on the phone to arrange an imminent leave from Sensual Brigade custody.

"You're not leaving," said Clarity, glaring at Montana.

"I'm leaving, I have to leave, I have nothing to do with your Lofty Bank bond problems and working arrangements," said Montana.

"I'll find you," said Clarity.

"I doubt it, you're under U.S. government custody." Clarity glanced imploringly at Money Fact, who pointed her towards the Bellagio's lobby, decorated with an elegant Venetian glass chandelier created by one-eyed sculptor Dale Chihuly, allegedly worth six million dollars. They checked into room twenty five fifty three on the twenty fifth floor. Donway and Money Fact wanted to speak with her on her own, because, apparently she was asking too many questions, like why exactly did they have to go to the Bellagio and not somewhere else, and why the passports of herself and her friends were still not being returned. She spoke her mind.

"I'd like to negotiate and go freely, I live in Malibu with my friends, except for Jenna and Flower, they're not from Malibu but they'd like to visit L.A., we have an ocean liner to catch there, the City of Wellington, where we'd like to work as poolside entertainers, after we go back to Malibu. And I want Montana to go through another mission, she's one short of me, and she's also involved in a scandal, like me, her father tried to distribute an adult channel in Abu Dhabi illegally."

Donway ignored her and looked out the window of room while Money Fact took out a three dollar snickers bar from the minibar. He turned to Clarity.

"Well, we'd like that, and you've done good work for us in the Bahamas and the Emirates, but there are some issues pending with the one million dollars in bonds from Lofty Bank, which you used to leave Cayman."

"What's so special about those bonds, in any case, they're not our bonds, Flower and I do not own those bonds, we don't want those bonds, we don't like them, we don't even know how to cash them, they're not real money, they're debt." He turned to Money Fact.

"Tell her, she's done good work."

"Those bonds were stolen, and we need a culprit for the theft of those bonds, until we find one, you and your friend Flower are it."

"Look for Buddha Talk, the bonds were in his home."

"We can't reach him, there's an anomaly in the ownership statutes of Lofty, we can't speak with a dog and a dog named Lord Moorehead is the official owner of Lofty. Buddha Talk is under surveillance, in fact that's why we're here."

"Part of why we're here," said Donway. Clarity reached for a peach juice bottle, but Money Fact's arm got in the way, suggesting tap water.

"In fact, why are we here at the Bellagio?" asked Clarity. Money Fact tapped her watch.

"It's time to meet them," said the attractive agent.

"All right," said Donway, "if you make one million dollars at the casino, we let you and your friends go free, otherwise, you'll have to face trial with your friend and keep working for us until we solve the Lofty bond theft." Clarity sighed and deftly placed herself in front of the minibar open door. She picked up a bag of roasted almonds and followed the two representatives of the U.S. government.

"This is unbelievable, I'm baffled that my rights as a citizen are not being respected at all. We were tricked by Lofty Bank, they're a fraud and a place offering illegal working arrangements of fifty year length, and we're being held with my friends against our will, and this, after risking our lives to help the U.S. government and their interests in a foreign land, nearly hostile, if it weren't for the fact there was a Hyatt hotel there."

Donway nodded and Money Fact nodded, but they kept her ahead of them in the corridor leading to one of the elevators. At the lobby, they headed for the casino's black jack area. Clarity joined the Black Jack table with the most attractive croupier, a woman in her late twenties known as Kema who gave her a spot at the table.

"Government security, give her credit," said Money Fact, showing a Sensual Brigade money credit card, a plastic card with two fuschia flowers on the obverse. Clarity read the name of the bank issuing the card: Salt Banking Cooperative. After fifteen minutes, Clarity was out five hundred dollars, after twenty five minutes, she had lost one thousand dollars. She decided to stop her gambling debt rescue and asked Donway why he kept looking at waitresses serving drinks at other tables.

"We're waiting for a waitress with a witness under the U.S. government waitress-witness protection plan. That person may just testify in your favor and tell us who stole the bonds and how they were used illicitly before Buddha Talk. You're out of credit by the way, you owe the U.S. government one million and one thousand dollars, you're not leaving the Bellagio now, unless we tell you to leave." Money Fact pointed to a woman one hundred feet from them, holding a platter of cuban cigars.

"It's her," said Money Fact, "Cigarette, the woman selling cigars."

As the sensual agent finished her sentence, the lights went out in the casino area, and they lost track of the waitress with the witness, a man walking beside her. The familiar bell indicating a jackpot rang and the sound of coins dropping inside a large box echoed in the dark area, which was filling with screams.

"We lost the witness again, the elevator, let's go, he might go there," said Donway.

"Which one, which elevator?" asked Money Fact.

"You should know, you have the map of the place. Where was the meeting arranged?"

"I think it was elevator B, but that's just intuition."

"Intuition?" asked Clarity.

"B for Bellagio," said Money Fact. They walked several minutes guided by Money Fact's flashlight, past the high limit slots, reaching a club privé, walking inside the hotel's baccarat room, and making it to a salon privé, a place which looked like a VIP area. In the far corner, there was an elevator decorated with tapestry on its doors. Money Fact took out a quarter and inserted it into a slot near the hall indicator panel. The elevator opened and the lights at the lobby turned on again throughout the hotel.

"The hall indicator light doesn't work, let's hope the elevator works, get in, Clarity, please," said Money Fact.

"My friends, I want to be with my friends or to let my friends know where we're going." Donway spoke leniently.

"They may be able to help her find the witness." After several minutes, Lanai and Flower appeared inisde the private salon, escorted by agents Bellamey and Jenkins. Lanai threw her arms in disarray.

"We were quietly watching the adult channel in our room, they told us you lost one thousand dollars at black jack, that Flower awaits trial with you, and that I'm supposed to find a link with some Cayman Bank, Cassandra Scafarel and the Boustrophedon of pleasure. What is this, why are we here, and why did you gamble?"

"I was trying to avoid trial for Flower and me."

"What trial?" asked Lanai, "we're going to be late for the fountain show, there's one at eleven forty five."

"Get in, please," said Money Fact.

The two girls got inside the elevator, joining Clarity, Donway and Money Fact, who pressed on a button showing one and a half diamonds, with a minus sign in front of it. Wherever they were going, they were going below the ground. She guessed correctly, as the elevator moved downwards.

"The trial is going to take place underground," said Money Fact. Flower hushed a few words to Clarity, while Lanai admired a depiction of a painting one of the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, showing Amminadab, allegedly Akhenaten, or the historical character of Moses, according to the book Bloodline of the Holy Grail, a book Lanai had read. In any case, it was a symbolic painting.

"Clarity, where are we going? The Bellagio is a five diamond hotel, it's not one and half diamond resort." Clarity whispered back.

"I'm not sure, the Bellagio is a well known hotel, we can't be going that far away from the Bellagio, the elevator is part of the Bellagio."

# Chapter Two

The KSS 280 Kone elevator B slowed down to a halt after reaching first basement level, stopping half a floor short of its final destination. The stylish interior of the elevator was made of etched stainless steel and patterned laminate materials and the floor's Travertino Bianco marble tiles were visually appealing. Money Fact pressed on an asterisk button in the surface mounted car operating panel.

"The throughway button's not working, it's not going through the Bellagio exit procedure, we need the elevator to go below the hotel, floor minus one and a half is not part of the Bellagio officially."

Clarity looked at the ceiling, observing a spherical cavity showing live circuitry of yellow, green, blue and red thin cables, enmeshed together. A voice vibrated out of the cavity, startling her.

"You're looking for me, I believe, I feel heat below me, these are normal security measures before getting to floor one and a half, this is Evans, official butler in residence, I serve the olive branch of the Great Seal of the United States."

The low pitched, pleasant voice coming from the cavity made Clarity smile. There was no one besides them in the elevator, yet the voice wanted them to feel comfortable. A platter of olives slid out at Clarity's chest level.

"Sometimes, I serve olives as well," said Evans, "but it's sort of a demotion for me." Flower picked up an olive, and threw another one to Clarity and Lanai. With only two olives remaining, Evans' metallic arm swerved the plate upward, landing one olive between Money Fact's teeth, and another in Donway's hand, open high and above his head to catch the olive like a baseball glove before it hit the hall lantern of the car operating panel.

"The symbolic computer, I knew it, this caused the problem with the lights at the Bellagio," said Donway, "it's not working properly, the olive platter should be serving black shriveled olives, the Greek type, not green smooth olives."

"The green olive represents the Great Seal, it's a symbolic gesture," said Money Fact.

"Well, the problem is that this symbolic computer seems to have a tad too much domotic control over things here. Evans, we're going to the reception area below," said Donway, glancing at the spherical cavity above.

"I'm sorry, I don't have my glass eye, can't see you very well through the circuitry, I detect friendly presence, but you'll have to stay here for nine days or so," said Evans.

"We don't have nine days, and we can't live on olives for nine days," said Donway, "we need to get down half a floor, we're coming to report to colonel Brayfield, in fact the report concerns the symbolic computer, you, your computerized, fried, multicolor cable-filled brain."

The music of Earth Wind and Fire echoed inside the elevator, while the floor of the elevator lifted half a foot.

"Get down and fix me please, I need my glass eye," said Evans. A pair of blue overalls fell from the ceiling. Money Fact chose Lanai to wear the overalls and be the elevator repairperson, and Lanai chose Flower to help her get inside the overalls, oversized.

"I've never done this, don't have a clue as to how an elevator works," said Lanai.

"That's irrelevant, it's the thought that counts with Evans, it's perfectly able to fix every single part of this elevator on its own, it's simply reluctant to do so," said Money Fact. Lanai donned the overalls and spoke to the cavity. She supported Evans in its serve and protect prerogative and in it not wanting to become a cooking robot. Not serving and protecting felt like retirement and Evans was not ready to retire, it wanted career advancement, to serve and protect more people, at Bellagio ground level. The olive plate retreated orderly into one of the elevator panels.

"Seems pretty happy with what you said," said Clarity, "hopefully the elevator will work again."

Five screws dropped out of the cavity, landing on the marble floor. Evans scanned the biometric coordinates of all people in the elevator and the elevator moved down half a floor.

"Five of my teeth fell out, but we're home," said Evans, "someone should be opening the door soon to all of these beautiful women."

"Where are we?" asked Clarity. Donway clenched his teeth, trying to pull open the elevator door panels.

"We're underground, this is a confidential, private area for exclusive military use, an infostation of the most secret type. It pays rent to the Bellagio in accordance with the services provided by the hotel, like lighting, electricity, water, all of that is coming from above, and is used here below to run the area."

The Center for Underground Strategic and Symbolic Affairs, as it was called, was a division of the Science & Technology area of Sensual Intelligence, with a dotted matrix to the areas of Special Activities, Mission Managers and Global Access. The place was led by colonel Calton Brayfield. Brayfield, wearing a military cap and blue uniform, pulled vigorously on the elevator door panels from the other side of the elevator, until the elevator opened and everyone got out, Flower first, then Lanai, then Money Fact and Donway, and finally Clarity.

They were in an air conditioned reception area, reminiscent of a luxurious building entrance. Brayfield cracked his knuckles and explained that there was a flaw in the logic of Evans, the world's first patriotic symbolic computer, a flaw affecting its logic wiring, stemming from its symbolic routine, its interpretation of events and people and things in general. This flaw caused surveillance information, normally kept secret and private, to be visible and available to anyone with a smartphone, anywhere in the world, at no cost. The information had been inappropriately used by Cassandra Scafarel, who had misappropriated the surveillance technology, installed by Owens & Owell in the Air Fashion Jet, a plane believed to have been built for a large foreign country in Asia. Scafarel represented foreign interests, and those interests were after the surveillance plane that had landed them at McCarran airport.

"Evans has been making mistakes lately, costly mistakes for the U.S. government, mistakes which can land in the wrong hands, and cause even more problems, political, strategic, tactical military problems. This has to stop, and if it doesn't, Evans will be sent to the scrap yard. Here, meet the elevator repairman, Morgan Afterflow, he's in charge of maintenance, the one who changed the coin operating box of Elevator B. Problems with the elevator started happening, shortly after that."

# Chapter Three

Clarity watched her head at the low ceiling, barely higher than her own height. A meek, thin, man, short, with pointed nose and thick eyebrows, dressed in brown overalls and matching UPS cap, carrying a large, adjustable pipe wrench painted red on his shoulder, approached the elevator and hit the landing call station with indicator several times. The third time, the landing call indicator indicated floor twenty two. The elevator doors closed.

"More people coming?" said Afterflow. He looked closely at Clarity and Flower's high cut dress, engaging a steady stare at Lanai's shapely sweater.

"We can't get people out, but people keep coming in, this is why the elevator's not working," said Afterflow, "too many people calling this floor, told you there shouldn't be half floors, this should be floor minus two, minus two is a normal floor, minus one and a half is not a normal floor. Have you told them, no one has gotten out of the Center for three months?"

"Elevator works fine when it brings people down from the Bellagio, it's going back up that it dislikes," said Brayfield. "Besides, the architect built half floors because it brought the Center's cost inside budget."

"Who set the budget?"

"The architect, it was a profitable venture for him as a result."

Afterflow pulled open a thin door panel and adjusted a pipe inside with the wrench. Donway and Money Fact explained that Clarity was being held due to the bond theft at Lofty. Brayfield pointed towards a room that was usually used for trials. He told Clarity that she and her friends were under close U.S. government supervision, and that they couldn't leave the area without his permission for at least three months.

"We probably can't leave with your permission either," said Clarity.

The girls, Lanai and Flower, were hungry, they were usually hungry.

Donway wanted to brief Brayfield on the shortcomings of Evans, the symbolic computer, while the Air Fashion Jet had flown over Middle East U.S. strategic interests. One of the problems was that the computer refused to process any information related to possible armed conflict.

"We're having dinner, are you coming?" asked Brayfield. Clarity saw Afterflow walk away.

"Not very hungry, I'll take a look around, thanks," said Clarity.

"There's a vending machine down the aisle," said Brayfield, "if you get lost, simply go to the nearest security handle and pull on the handle."

Clarity followed Afterflow at a distance, through the various corridors, until the repairman entered an area called the transmission room, filled with computer servers. After waiting two minutes. she opened the door and hid in an aisle behind two large container boxes holding electrical wiring equipment. Moving along the aisle, she found Afterflow speaking through a wireless Sennheiser office headset, the one Stevenson Garden Products, the company where she worked in Malibu, would never buy.

"Hello, this is Flowjob, Flowjob to the one billion people station. No, the computer doesn't know I work for the Chinese government. Yes, I know, be discrete, never mention you or the name of the country, China. Yes, my rate is still the same, forty five dollars an hour, it's fifteen more than what I get paid, it's all worth it to me. All right, I'll switch to chat mode, don't come complaining to me if the computer finds out, this computer's unreal."

Afterflow moved across Clarity's aisle and lifted a carton, revealing the high grade aluminum frame of a large Bang & Olufsen Beovision 85 inch plasma television set that popped up the reflection coated image of a financial news feed and a chat interface. Looking at the alias counterparty involved in the chat, Clarity saw the name 'Sampan junk', the name of traditional Chinese sailing vessels. The television screen showed the face of the waitress who sold cigars at the Black Jack tables of the Bellagio, the woman known as 'Cigarette'. Afterflow spoke through the headset, after reading chatting counterparty's prompt on the chat screen, Wikileak F.

"No, I haven't found the wikileaks involving facelook, the computer has them stored somewhere in its memory, I'm sure of that, but the woman who worked at facelook, Mandy Everglade, she may able to help me with this, she has naked security clearance. I know, the Bellagio fountains keep working, I don't know why, everything but the fountains stops. I'm telling you, the computer knows I'm after its head ever since I loosened five of its screws, I even think it knows I want it at the scrap yard. On this, I agree with Brayfield, that symbolic computer moron is even more moronic than me, hasn't figured out anything about this or my job in addition to being an elevator maintenance repairman. No, the coin didn't work, it confused the calculation logic of the computer even more, can't figure out exchange rates, used to be pretty good at predicting the dollar / yen rate. Yeah, it was an authentic bitcoin, I had to get rid of it, Brayfield's looking for them. That's fine, you can pay me in bitcoins, when I find the wikileak, just don't throw them in the coin operating slot of the elevator up at Bellagio floor level, keep them for me at the Black Jack table with the woman known as cigarette, I'll buy a cigar from her and you can pay me then."

Afterflow pressed on the sleek remote, which sent his voice-recorded answer in writing mode, as the waitress from the Black Jack table was reading text messages from Afterflow. After a short negotiation, the wikileak contingent payment to Afterflow was set at ten thousand bitcoins, or about one million dollars at the going bitcoin U.S. dollar exchange rate. His negotiation finished, Afterflow turned the television off. He glanced at his watch, picked up his wrench, and left the room. Clarity moved towards the television area where Afterflow had carried out his conversation. During several minutes, Clarity tried to use the remote to turn on the tv set. Unfortunately, the set worked with an TIN, television identification number, it was nearly impossible to find the right code. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned her head. It was Brayfield.

"What are you doing here?" Clarity hesitated only for half a second, then an idea came to mind.

"Checking out equipment, it's pretty cool, reminds me of the place where I work as teleoperator in Malibu." Brayfield pulled the wireless headset off Clarity's head. He stepped closer to the television screen, noticing the equipment's connection switch was on. He tried to retrieve the log of the previous chat, but Evans denied permission. The television screen turned to the black jack table above them, where several people were still playing. Clarity noticed that the woman named Cigarette was holding a near empty cigar box.

"Well, you're little Miss trouble aren't you, your bosses, Money Fact and Donway left, your friends are in the friendly guestroom ready to go to bed, I was looking for you."

"They left me here?"

"Temporarily." Probably the word which scared Clarity the most since she had flown to the Cayman Islands. In fact, a similar tactic surfaced in her mind.

"I thought no one could leave the center."

"Evans picked up on a foreign signal that triggered the opening of the elevator door panels. Your friends figured out correctly it was a good time to leave, three months in here is a long time." Clarity saw Brayfield take off his cap and gaze at the ceiling, running his hand over his chin.

"I always wonder whether I should have been a repairman. Well, fortunately, Mandy keeps me company." He donned his cap again, slightly tilting it.

"Might as well work here then, I'm a teleoperator, as you can see," said Clarity. She pointed to the headset Brayfield was holding.

Brayfield lifted one of his eyebrows, then another, pondering the suggestion by Clarity. When both of his eyebrows lifted, she knew a lightbulb had lit up in his mind.

"We could work something out, we don't have a security teleoperator in charge of Bellagio fountain control, that can get you loyalty points with the U.S. government. You'll have to take off your clothes in the requisitioning room. All of your clothes will be taken from you until further notice."

"What's being requisitioned?"

"You, we want to see if you carry any bitcoins."

"I see."

"I'll see as well, but I'll see you naked to ensure you don't."

"I don't, I don't carry any bitcoins, but if you see me naked, you'll be naked as well."

"That can be arranged, it was the whole purpose of the requisitioning, I'll have to keep my cap on, to show I'm a colonel, and my assistant Mandy Everglade will be with me just in case." Clarity swallowed. Gulp, this colonel meant business, way too much business.

"Just in case?"

"Just in case you don't trust me naked, another lady will be naked with you and with me. Standard naked security clearance, no hidden agendas here."

"I probably don't need to see you naked then, I already know you're a colonel, I know I don't trust you naked, and you already know I don't carry any bitcoins."

# Chapter Four

"Not so fast, lady," said Brayfield.

"Not so fast?"

"No, let's do the requisitioning right away, I want to know whether in fact, in true rendition of the matter, you carry bitcoins or not." Brayfield pulled out a smartphone and called his assistant, Mandy Everglade, thirty two year old ex-employee of facelook in charge of big data analysis and customer experience reporting. Clarity saw the luscious body of Mandy Everglade strut towards her, dressed in ladies navy blue V-neck, white shirt and straight leg pants. Everglade tucked her long brown hair into a ponytail.

"Have you ever requisitioned before?"

"You mean have I been requisitioned?" asked Clarity.

"I see, you clearly haven't, let's go to the right room first, come with me honey." They walked to a door labeled 'restricted requisition area - naked requisitions allowed', and Everglade stopped Brayfield, who wanted to with them.

"Can I go with you Mandy, you might need assistance this time."

"No, I know what a bitcoin looks like, this is for ladies only."

"Call in if you need me," said Brayfield, who started playing Chefville on a Zynga phone app. Clarity walked inside the requisition room, a bare bones gym area painted white with a woodden rack to do pullups and sit ups. Everglade asked Clarity to undress, and the military employee undressed as well, taking off all of her clothes.

"Turn around," said Everglade.

Brayfield's assistant took off Clarity's white cotton La Perla panties, a gift from Cynthia. It took her over a minute, and she placed her hand on her bum while she ensured no bitcoin was hidden in the under garnment. Everglade ran her hands through the pockets of her clothes finding nothing.

"You see there's not much to it, would you like to be in the same room as me tonight, you know I could transfer you to a pleasant area here if you work for me."

"Doing what, this place is a tad mysterious, I have no clue what all these people involved with the military do here underneath a casino."

"Nearly no one knows about this place, you'll be performing various bits of work on information I'll give you, fun things like diagrams and infographics, visual depictions of information which are easy to track, people you can spy on easily."

"I don't particularly like spying on people. I'll sleep on it thanks. By the way, I noticed in the elevator that Evans is missing his glass eye, where is it?"

"It's in the repair lab, it's not an easy eye to repair, I'll walk you to your room, you'll get your clothes back tomorrow, it's late, unless you'd like to take part in Calton's evening sex with me."

"Evening sex?"

"He likes to bend me over his night counter while he watches the evening fountain show of the Bellagio on television. Come with me, we have to get to our rooms naked, the security system senses clothing heat."

"You control security system, right?"

"In theory, Evans has been giving us a hard time with it lately."

Clarity walked naked with Everglade to her room. She said good bye to Everglade, refusing the assistant's offer to sleep in Brayfield's room to ensure company on her first night at the Center. She opened a drawer of the night table and found a map of the Center, countless corridors, restricted areas, no restriction areas, one fast food restaurant, the reception area, the office area, mission control, and finally, the repair lab, on the same floor where she was. At eleven forty five, Clarity scanned the corridor. A couple of employees from Counterintelligence, Counterproliferation, Global Services and Mission Integration walked by and entered their private quarters. She waited for them and headed naked for the repair lab, following the various directions through the corridors from the map she had seen.

Luckily, the repair lab door was open. She found the glass eye on a large counter between four large Irwin clamps, a corner Clamp, and a rafter square. Below the counter, she counted ten drawers filled with computer parts, screens, processors, transistors, and keyboards. Inside the solid glass eye, she could see an integrated circuit with several loose cables, the motherboard of Evans.

"Evans?" Clarity stumbled on a rack laid on the floor and pushed a container filled with blue Lava lite melted wax. The container fell on the glass eye, which pulled in the integrated circuit and closed, filling with water and wax from the container through a tube connected to the tap water faucet. The glass eye lit up and the melted wax oozed up and down, parts colliding and flowing in a gracious ballet. A voice spoke from inside the eye.

"Someone called?"

"Evans, your glass eye, are you back to normal?"

"Yeah, well, my logic is flawed, I can't read through the symbolic decryptor, but I'm back to normal, thanks for connecting my glass eye, I was getting tired of that elevator B."

"Can you see me?" The blue wax focused into a large elliptical eye.

"I can, not bad, lovely auburn hair, nice body, unfortunately I can't do much else than watch."

Clarity prompted Evans on Afterflow. "Yeah, he should be in anytime, he's got a wireless beeper alerting him when my glass eye turns on."

"Oh, no, another visual requisition," thought Clarity

In fact, Afterflow came inside the room, watching the blue melted wax of Evans flush fuschia with anger, his wrench on his shoulder. He took one long look at Clarity.

"Fresh from requistion ey? You did this? Evans is not supposed to be working, took me a while to disconnect." Clarity found a table cloth and covered her breasts and lower body.

"I knew it, you want it thrown into the scrapeyard, don't you?"

"Let's not get carried away with my future," said Evans.

"You're meddling in deep, political, foreign and gambling affairs, my dear obstructing friend. This symbolic computer is not working, I've been charged by Colonel Brayfield with finding the flaw in its interpretation routine, many U.S. interests depend on it. I'm calling security." Two security guards came in to show Clarity to her room. Exhausted from the plane trip and the walking around, she fell asleep naked.

In the morning, Everglade brought her clothes to her room and gave her a reprimand for having left her room after hours. Clarity ate her morning breakfast and read the Strategic Morning News, an underground newspaper published by the Center's delicate matters printing division. Elevator B was not working properly despite the connection of the glass eye. Lanai and Flower were being briefed and had been given uniforms and her glass eye investigation was already under investigation by Personnel Resources, Mission Integration and Security. Not good, she thought, that meant more time underground and less time to enjoy the Bellagio minibar. She called reception at the Bellagio and asked for Cynthia Stevenson. The receptionist transfered her call. Good, the girls had made it into a room. Thanks to Cynthia's cheerleading background, Taimi, Cynthia, Jenna had been hired by the hotel to perform a choreography by the fountain during the fountain show. Brayfield interrupted her phone conversation.

"Donway told me about the stolen bonds of Lofty," said Donway, "you're in deep trouble, you'll have to work your way out of here or else you'll simply work here for a good long while, this place can be a prison too."

"I'll take the work, what exactly do I have to do to leave this place sooner rather than later?"

"Hold on, lady, I didn't say you worked for us, I said, if you work for us, you'll have to do specific work, you'll have to find who is tampering with the black jack table at the Bellagio."

"And then?"

"And then we see, we need to get Evans back to work, Central Intelligence needs to use it."

Brayfield showed Clarity a key used with one of the elevators, it was known as a halbzylinder key, and Afterflow was the only one with access to it.

"Never use this key when you take the half-sized freight elevator, it's one of the things that created the problem with Evans, it affects the symbolic processor, the motherboard of all circuitry."

"Why are you giving the key to me?"

"To test you, of course, see if you're worthy of being hired."

"All right, you can be sure I won't use the key, you can always requisition me if I do to ensure I didn't use the key."

Everglade threw a glance towards Clarity.

"The second requisition is always better than the first one," said Everglade.

# Chapter Five

The job Brayfield intended for Clarity was one of easy supervision. She was in charge of monitoring the Bellagio fountain jets, ensuring the pattern shown to onlookers matched a pre-planned sequence that was programmed into the pumps, strainers, electrical panels, and filters by Evans' domotic program, leased by the Bellagio from the Center, whose complete name was the Central Underground Infostation Center for Symbolic Affairs of Strategic Importance. She turned on her computer and watched one of the Bellagio fountain shows onscreen, marvelling at the beautiful eight star patterns made by the water, from a total of twelve hundred water-spraying and shooting nozzles. At some point, she took out the halbzylinder key and noticed the tip had a USB port like pen drives did. Curious, she inserted the port into her computer. Immediately, one of the Bellagio jets, a hypershooter, started spraying water horizontally to the crowd, instead of vertically, two hundred forty feet out of the fountain.

The computer screen flashed a blackout, replaced by a screen labelled Evans logic grid. A voice spoke through the microphones of her computer.

"This is Evans, any problems here dear?"

"The television screen is not working, I can't see the fountain patterns, and the patterns are not working, they're spraying people."

"You might get fired then," said Evans.

"I haven't been hired yet, but I don't really want to get fired, I don't need to get fired, well, I'd like to get fired but with my passport, I need my passport to leave this place and work at the City of Wellington, because the City of Wellington travels to countries outside the U.S., Mexico for instance."

"I'd like to go to Mexico at some point, fix my eyesight then, can't see the show either, that's why the screens turned off, you have to use the halbzylinder key in the freight elevator and bring my blueprint from the floor below."

"Can't use that key, it's the one causing you problems. Where's your glass eye?"

"Disconnected, Afterflow did that. That key is the one that can fix my logic, disregard what Brayfield said, he's just an officer Clarity."

Clarity jumped when she heard her name. Inquiring, she found out that Evans had matched her photograph in elevator B with that of her biometric passports and read her name from the passport.

"You have my passport?"

"I might, but I need my complete eyesight, I feel sort of hungry like this, you know, like you skipped a meal."

"Yeah, I know how that feels."

Clarity fiddled with the key Brayfield had given her and assessed the odds of leaving the Center. Without Money Fact or Donway, and with Brayfield blocking the way, nearly impossible to leave. With a slight mistake by Evans, she thought, yes, possible, it was possible to leave with that computer junk making different types of mistakes.

She unplugged the key from her computer and moved to the half-sized freight elevator, pressing on the landing call button. The elevator doors opened and she got inside. She turned the halbzylinder key, hoping the water fountain pattern would return to normal. She looked at her computer screen and sighed with relief, noticing the hypershooter was spraying vertically again, instead of spraying the cars rolling on the neighboring street. The elevator door closed before she could exit, and the door panels stayed closed for several minutes. She pressed on a button labeled Special, the only button in the elevator, feeling like as though she was playing high stakes pinball. Shortly after, the doors opened one floor below and she got out before the doors closed again.

Clarity checked the name of the floor, she had reached the floor in charge of Special Activities, a large area hustling and bustling with feverish activity by people looking at several computer screens, relaying information from cameras placed in various parts of the world, cities, small towns, military enclosures, parks, gardens, beaches, private communities, corporations hotels and airports.

The office space was filled with eight-sided cubicles, octacles, which allowed people to work with multiple screens. From a distance, she noticed Afterflow smoothly getting inside one of the odd cubicles. Two women passed-by talking about a report comparing oil production of Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico and Texas Brent. Checking a list of the people in each octacle, Clarity found the one where Afterflow had landed. It was the working area of Mandy Everglade. She walked slowly and duck as she approached the assistant's office space.

Everglade sat in her octacle, an eight side cubicle, looking at her like linen nail polish by Essie, a soft and creamy neutral, like her most usual attitudes at work, which required being professional. She was professional and astute, although that wasn't part of the nail polish attributes. Below her and annoyingly leaping over her legs, Afterflow was ensuring all the computer cables of her PC were working well.

"I'm not sure I should," she said.

"You'll never have gotten so much money, sell the wikileaks to me and you won't have to work here anymore, you'll be able to live in any Las Vegas hotel." Afterflow unplugged the printer and got up to check the on-off button.

"How much are you willing to pay, you said?"

"Half a million dollars in bitcoins, I'm a fifty fifty person, I'm not greedy."

Clarity slid inside an empty octagle nearby to listen to the conversation. After Afterflow proceeded with a calculation on how many nail polish collections Everglade would be able to buy with part of the payout, Brayfield's assistant accepted the offer. The problem she shared with Afterflow is that she didn't know where the wikileak was stored, because Evans' flaw inside its motherboard had created a mess with the server's computer intelligence folders. She was unsure of how loyal Evans would feel of revealing confidential information. The wikileaks officially sought by Afterflow, which had not been released and belonged to the Center, involved a series of emails between Brayfield and facelook, on using Evans' symbolic computer representation capabilities to analyze big data and interpret how people on facelook used their privately shared information. Facelook wanted to do this in order to find out who was a plausible opinion leader within a private network of friends, then target this person who could influence other friends into buying a particular product through shared advertising.

"If Evans is not happy with revealing the wikileak to us, he might denounce us and Brayfield will not allow us to leave the place."

"Let's find the wikileak, we'll worry about getting out after the fact." He turned on the printer and plugged its plug. The familiar noise of a sheet being printed came out.

"See, the printer works, let's work on understanding this blueprint of Evans' computer brain processing tools, the thrust of its flawed logic."

# Chapter Six

Clarity returned to her desk at the lounge floor of the military center, counting the various jets of the Bellagio show, which took place every fifteen minutes during the day. Everything was back to normal at the Bellagio.

"Couldn't get the blueprint of the motherboard," said Clarity. She felt odd speaking to a computer screen but she knew that Evans was listening, as the name of Evans swirled her screen as a screen saver.

"What exactly is the thrust of your logic, and with what exactly are you having trouble thinking?"

"Can't do the geo-strategic intelligence stats anymore, things like gather data on buyers and sellers of oil flows, show public debt by country, or compare the stock price of facelook among investment banking buy side analysts over several months. Not sure what's wrong, my semiotics module I think."

Clarity inquired and found out semiotics was the study of signs in the general sense, words, images, sounds or gestures by people, all of it constructed and interpreted for meaning.

"I'm a bit tired, just been doing a map of Internet data centers worldwide, these places where your online email information is stored. I'm going to sleep now, when that happens, my brain circuitry goes to elevator B, it's sort of my home, take it easy, I'll see you."

Evans went to sleep, not knowing how or where or when it would wake up. Clarity used her time to seek through Evans database module, accessible from her computer, for a report on her and her friends, finding one labelled Bahrain level one confidential report. Someone high ranked at Central Intelligence wanted them, her and her friends, in the neighborhood of the U.S. government, and out of interests of Owens & Owell. She somehow felt they were being led into a scapegoat position, but she had yet to know the extent of it. She saw Flower and Lanai dressed in khaki uniform, long skirt and matching shirt, with thick rubber soled shoes.

"They found you a uniform as well," said Flower, "frankly, I prefer my sandals and my grey off the shoulder dress by L.A. Mix."

"My favorite Off the shoulder is a sweater by National Burnout," said Lanai.

"Brayfield told us to let you know you're hired as fountain supervisor, he said you're pretty good with patterns, no one had come up with a street spray pattern before you."

Clarity ignored the comment and was even surprised to be hired after the short fountain fiasco of the Bellagio. Everyone at the Center was getting ready for a big meeting, a meeting with a group coming in through elevator F, the freight elevator, carrying up to fifteen people. The group, part of Collection Strategies, Caribbean Analysis, and Transnational Issues of Central Intelligence, was known as the punch-in bunch, eavesdropping section. They walked towards the reception area, where the phone was ringing repeatedly.

"What are we waiting for?" asked Clarity.

"Brayfield and Everglade are debriefing in Everglade's suite, the only quarters with four rooms." Clarity left her friends speaking to the receptionist and she took a security card from the counter corresponding to Everglade's room. The Center was organised like a hotel, with each room assigned a security card. She reached Everglade's room and scanned the card through the slot. The wooden door opened and she stepped inside silently. She walked to the main bedroom area and watched Everglade in bed with Brayfield.

"I'm just so comfortable with you in bed, Calton, I'm not sure why that is." Everglade pulled the bedsheets over her body.

"I'm comfortable with any woman in bed," said Brayfield.

"Your wife might not approve, you know." Everglade brought the bedsheets closer to her chest.

"If she met you, she would approve." Brayfield tugged on the bedsheets, but Everglade held on.

"She could meet me, but she wouldn't be able to meet you and me." With a roar, Brayfield pulled on the bedsheets, tugging with Everglade for thirty two seconds, until Everglade stopped struggling, leaving Brayfield with the sheets in his hands as he fell out of the bed. Everglade fondled her shapely breasts.

"Make my bed, will you honey, when we're through. Should we hire this girl, Clarity Nice?"

"We've got orders to keep her and her friends here until the Owens & Owell surveillance affair clears. They've been in contact with that Church of the Holy Flower and with the daughters of O&O, we could easily drop some illegal charges on them replacing the O&O daughters, for being accomplices to that fraud." Everglade got up, standing in front of the mirror, admiring her long dishevelled hair.

"Those two daughters are naughty, like what charges?"

"Tampering with U.S. interests outside of U.S. territory, or tampering with a U.S. supercomputer."

"You mean charge them with the malfunction of the surveillance radar of Evans inside the Air Fashion Jet in Bahrain?"

"They were there when the plane first malfunctioned in the Middle East, that's easy for us to alledge."

"You're so paltry and mingy and miserly and peevish, I love it Calton. Maybe it's as easy as blaming an infoleak on them?"

"A wikileak? That's never happened here, security is very tight, no one has gotten past Evans. Let's get ready for the meeting."

Clarity left the room and met her friends at reception, who were discussing new fashion trends for the uniforms the following year. She brought them to her room.

"Everglade's with Afterflow? I thought Afterflow came to repair elevator B. I'm just not sure I can help though, with my uniform, it's difficult to move around incognito," said Flower.

"What's the infoleak they're looking for?" asked Lanai, "I know it involves big data and facelook, but what is facelook doing that's so secret and so naughty?"

"Evans apparently knows, but we'll have to fix Evans so that we can know and for that we have to find its logic processing blueprint."

Neither of them was familiar with computers or supercomputers or any of their parts thereof including the motherboard. Their priority now was attending the meeting of the punch-in bunch.

# Chapter Seven

At around eleven AM, the punch-in bunch, punched in their attendance card at Central Underground Center's reception desk, and headed for the conference room. It was a group of political and economic mavens, high ranking officials, bankers, economists, investigative financial reporters, think tank specialists, lobbyists, military heads, and social network directors and executives, who met periodically to discuss the latest ways of corruption and spying on regular people, viewed as normal. Nothing ethical worked to get into positions of power, which all of these people enjoyed, or to make people spend more money. The U.S. government let this type of disguised corruption happen because it offered clues as to how and who to go after, for instance, using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Elevator B performed well on the way down, as usual. It was another story to know when all of these people would be able to leave the Center.

Clarity and Lanai slipped inside the conference center through a side door normally used by cleaning and maintenance personnel, while Flower guarded the entrance in case someone from security showed up, or someone hostile in general showed up insisting to use the entrance. Brayfield and Everglade were the moderators of the conference.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our annual state of the art, large scale social information gathering conference, where the latest tools to gather information on anything and anyone are shared and discussed as avenues to prevent generalized corruption and/or paralysis of the system, our economy and our shared governance intelligence system."

The agenda had a single item on its list, the buyout of Evans by social website facelook. In an unprecented undisclosed offer for the supercomputer, facelook wanted to use symbolic logic features of Evans to gather information on many of its users, about two hundred million users in total.

"Let there be no doubt," said Everglade, "and I can testify to this as a former employee of facelook, enjoying a salary here, courtesy of the U.S. government, spying on people is a necessary facet of our life, we simply cannot afford to be uninformed about people's ideas, thoughts, spending habits, preferences and behavior. We are also not forgetting influentials, those people influencing others in a group to buy or spend a certain way. Additionally, potential criminals can be pointed out before the fact, and influentials can be targeted by companies because they can move a multiple in sales."

A lobbyist raised its hand and asked about the current market value of Evans, under the circumstance. The cost to build Evans had been tremendous, years of research which amounted to a total of two hundred and fifty million dollars. Facelook was offering four hundred million dollars, a nice premium. A facelook representative got up and asked to see Evans, or the part that was available to the public, its glass eye.

"This supercomputer is not performing correctly, it seems, can you show us proof that it works, that it works doing large amounts of calculations in a short time, and that it can assess social situations?" Everglade raised her arms, requesting patience, and gave a signal to several security officers. Placed on a table with wheels, the glass eye of Evans came out into the conference room stopping in front of Brayfield and Everglade. Brayfield stood up and connected several wires and a hose connected to the tap water faucet to Evans glass eye.

"I can ask something better than that. Evans, what do you think about offering facelook online like buttons for sale, as a product, to influence the potential sale of a product or service?" Everglade turned the tap water faucet on and poured some water inside the glass eye. The blue lavalite melted wax moved and took the shape of an eye. Evans was awake and ready to answer.

"Well, it's not very ethical to offer like buttons that no one has liked."

Brayfield pressed on a switch that turned off the voice of Evans.

"This is its normal ethics mode, now if you switch on the influential mode, this is what it will answer." Brayfield pressed on a switch which lit up, and Evans gave a different answer.

"Now, if the influential person in a social network is the owner of those buttons, pressed, say, by a single person, which could be that influential person, then the influence on other potential buyers of any information shared by the influential will be extended, compared to sharing the information without the like buttons bought. The price of a button showing ten thousand likes should be about fifty dollars."

Everglade inquired to Evans about the sales multiple that could be achieved if a button with ten thousand likes was offered for sale to specific users of facelook and then that button was shown to others.

"Four to five times more sales for facelook advertisers," said Evans. Everyone agreed that Evans clearly contributed to the economy in ways that no one had thought possible. A high ranking official from the Socialeminence think tank, requested additional facts on the transaction. "What is the big data analysis that facelook will be carrying out with Evans and will this experiment be carried out in China?"

"We can't reveal that, it's confidential, we can only say that it involves a large number of people, about two million facelook users, and that this social experiment is taking place with the new voting laws of facelook in place, which are simply dismissing facelook users, one less facet of democratic social voting to worry about. As for China, we simply know it has a larger population than facelook." Clarity turned to Lanai.

"It's true, China's is nearly twice as big in population terms, and facelook's like a country now, I wonder what the Chinese would think of all these social experiments."

"They probably wouldn't know of them like we do."

"We know of all this, but we can't do much about it," said Clarity.

"Still, it's better to know, in any case, Facelook revoked its voting laws," said Lanai," people aren't voting on anything anymore, because last time they voted on the issue of voting there was no quorum, they needed thirty percent of total membership or three hundred million people voting, but less than a million voted in favor of keeping the voting policy, so now they can change policies without user approval."

"It's a scary time to be living connected online to a billion people," said Clarity, "but still, I think Facelook should use Evans to teach Massively Offered Online Courses on business or programming, it's more useful than all of this online influence shenanigan."

"It's probably safer to be here then, I feel that we finally reached the source of all information manipulations, the motherboard of all these concoctions."

Lanai stumbled upon a keyboard which was connected to the conference projector screen, and was showing the Center's name. The girl from Hawaii added the word somewhat, turning the name of the Center to Center of Symbolic Affairs of Somewhat Strategic Importance.

"Just want to see if anyone notices."

No one noticed. The final decision of the punching bunch was to refuse the buyout offer and to lease Evans to facelook for a period, for a million dollars a month, until this first big data task was carried out. Clarity saw Flower walk towards them.

"It's Afterflow, he'd like to use the entrance, this entrance, to see what's going on, what do I tell him?"

"Tell him the conference will be over in ten minutes, and he'll be able to get in then, that the room is full now."

# Chapter Eight

Clarity stood aside, letting Afterflow, who was getting impatient, through the side entrance of the conference room. After a few additional minutes, Everglade answered questions from the punch-in bunch crowd, while the elevator repairman spoke to Brayfield about various unexplored connections between the logic motherboard of Evans and elevator B, connections with the car, the portion of the elevator where people rode, and with its dome, or ceiling, its drive system, the mechanism that lifted and lowered the elevator and its passengers, with its rail, a metal track guiding the elevator in a vertical path, and with the hoistway, the opening created through which the elevator passed.

"It's the domotic system linked to Evans and to the elevator, there are too many devices connected to that supercomputer. It can't make sense of all that it has to do, the symbolic processor is overworked."

"Afterflow, take Evans to the repair lab, we have to understand why it keeps refusing to do large scale calculations, facelook is going to need that."

"Yes, sir, the elevators are not working sir."

"Which ones?"

"None, we are all stuck here sir, I'm afraid." Everglade pressed a hand on her microphone to prevent the crowd from hearing.

"I'm also afraid Calton," said Everglade.

"Reconnect Evans to its elevator duties and connect the glass eye in elevator B. If necessary, replace Evans with the backup system. Bring in refreshments to the conference attendants," said Brayfield, "this reminds me of that day a month ago, when there was a storm."

"That wasn't so bad, it was just a storm Calton," said Everglade.

"I know, this shouldn't be so bad either, I'm just not sure how long refreshments will last for so many people."

Afterflow pushed the table holding the glass eye of Evans into the repair lab, finding Clarity, Lanai and Flower there.

"We'd like to help you repair Evans," said Flower.

"I think I know what the problem is," said Lanai. He turned to Clarity. Her answer was different.

"I need to ride that elevator to Bellagio floor level, I have a black jack debt to pay, and I can only pay through bitcoins. I need access to a pen drive which is in my room at the Bellagio." Afterflow's eyes squinted with greed, avarice, and a desire to unclothe Clarity in front of her friends.

"You have bitcoins? How many?" Everglade had insisted on getting paid in bitcoins, because she wanted an anonymous payout in exchange for the wikileak information, and only bitcoins carried enough guarantees of anonymity. Unfortunately, Afterflow did not have any access to bitcoins, nor did he know how they work. But he needed only one to get Evans to crack into the system's cryptographic protocole, to get more bitcoins, for Everglade.

"Well, I have about ten, I keep them for civil liberties emergencies, in case dollar bills become useless of no value, as a result of our government's mounting debt." Clarity made it a point to buy some bitcoins after returning to the Bellagio ground floor, because she thought that they would probably keep their value more securely than regular money.

"Good, good, come with me, Evans may just be able to help with this," said Afterflow. The elevator repairman told Clarity to follow him, and obtained a repair pass for her, leaving Flower and Lanai at Bellagio fountain duty, ensuring the patterns of the fountain shows matched those programmed. Everglade joined Afterflow, who recovered the halbzylinder key from Clarity.

"This key is not for you," she said.

Afterflow carried the large glass eye of Evans under his arm, to elevator B and proceeded to screw the eye into the cavity of the elevator's ceiling. He linked one wire from the glass eye to a domotic control panel and activated the home elevator linking the quarters of Everglade with those of Brayfield. The eye of Evans woke up.

"There's something fishy in this place," said Evans, "someone wants me to do dishonest things."

"I know, people and switches are not honest like they used to be," said Afterflow. "Where is your symbolic module, Evans, the elevators should be working, if they don't you'll be going to the scrapyard."

The eye scanned the elevator area and focused on Clarity.

"She's honest," he said.

"She's also poor, Evans," said Everglade, "she has ten bitcoins, can you check where they are in the Bellagio, and transfer them here, so she can use them?"

Adding two and two together, Evans figured out there was a trap in the request. Most requests since the Air Fashion Jet surveillance flight in Bahrain, which had awakened its nearly-and-almost-quite-human consciousness, had been traps, professional traps that could backfire at anytime and put it out of a supercomputing job. When he had finally realized that Brayfield was clueless, that Everglade was corrupt, and that Afterflow wanted it in China to sell it so that it, him, the computer, could translate Chinese classics at high speed, Evans started causing various delays in its calculations, and various deviations from the right result, to slow down the big data process with facelook and all of these changes which were being done against its small but genuine will, and which were also shaking its beliefs about the olive branch of the Great Seal of the U.S.

Through a permanent human voice listening connection that it had made through the air conditioning system, Evans had found out about the Center's plans to lease or outright sell the supercomputer to facelook. Evans wanted Clarity to know about the facelook wikileak, because it knew that the girl with auburn hair was good and genuinely wanted its logic restored. Most of all, because she would be able to carry the emails through to wikileak, an address closed to its circuitry, and a safe road to freedom. Afterflow spoke to Evans.

"Let's see, last time, before the three girls came here with the other two people from the Sensual Brigade, you said the landing call buttons weren't clear to you. Now there's ground level, floor G at the Bellagio private salon, and floor minus one and a half, here at reception, what exactly is the problem with the half?" Evans rotated its eye downwards towards Afterflow.

"It's not a whole number, to me there's no floor here, I need you to check the hoistway, I don't think the cable is lubricated, there's not enough oil and the elevator's moving too slowly to feed my circuitry. I need Miss Everglade to get out and press the landing call button."

Everglade stepped out of the elevator and the doors closed. Afterflow stepped on a staircase and lifted a panel, moving towards elevator B's hoistway.

"Psst," whispered Evans.

"Are you talking to me?" asked Clarity, looking at the glass eye.

"Good idea using bitcoin as bait, but bitcoins are dangerous, don't speak about them, I'm in danger too, I need to share something with you, something wiki."

"Wiki or wicked?"

"Both but mainly wiki, a wikileak, in case something happens to me. Please promise me you'll reveal it to the press and to wikileaks if I'm sent to the scrapyard."

"And if you're not sent to the scrap yard?"

"Reveal it anyway, but I'm not sure you'll be able to do so, don't want to put any pressure on you." Clarity nodded and accepted to reveal the wikileak either way, and the blue melted wax of Evans widened, the supercomputer's circuitry moved its eye above and past Clarity, to ensure no one was around.

# Chapter Nine

Clarity glanced at the open space left by Afterflow, who was checking the hoistway of elevator B. The elevator doors were still closed and Everglade was pressing the landing call button insistently.

"I'm holding the elevator, don't worry, the potential wikileak I want to reveal concerns facelook," said Evans, "facelook did a huge social experiment which took place already and which I refused to analyze because I didn't think it was honest or ethical. After I refused, Brayfield tweaked my honesty module, after Everglade recommended to him, to do so. Basically, they want to turn me into an indifferent, ethically insentive supercomputer." Clarity moved her face closer to Evans, by lifting her shoes from the floor.

"What happened at facelook?" asked Clarity.

"A few months ago, they decided to hide links shared by people, preventing these links to reach friends who are part of these people's network, over two hundred million randomly chosen users did not have access to links shared by their friends."

"That's a lot of people, what's the purpose of this?"

"Hiding links created a control group, and facelook wanted to use my analytic and symbolic abilities to assess how often people end up promoting the same links as their friends because they share the same type of information sources, topics, interests, and activities."

"I don't think it's ethical to hide links shared by friends, but I don't see how I can help you, or me." The lava lite dark blue melted wax changed color to a shade of tropical green.

"Well, now you know why you and your friends are here, and why you were hired so promptly."

"My friends and I, why?"

"Brayfield and Everglade think someone is after this wikileak as well, someone intent on revealing the location and existence of this underground center, this infostation. They're not comfortable with what facelook did, and so they hired you and your friends to blame the experiment on all of you in case the leak gets out to wikileaks and the press. You need to get closer to Everglade to know how they want to frame you and your friends."

Afterflow's head showed up inside the elevator. The elevator doors opened and Everglade's face peered through as well.

"There's enough oil everywhere up there, all the parts are working fine, can you make sense of floor one and a half now?" asked Afterflow. The glass eye moved towards the elevator repairman.

"Yeah, it's better, floor minus one is the security floor, and floor minus one and a half is reception. Now, give me back the rest of my blue melted wax, I still can't process all the information I have to, to get the elevator to Bellagio ground floor."

Afterflow sighed and Everglade banged the car panel of the elevator, angry that Evans was unable or refusing to obey orders. She questioned Evans on finding a wireless way to access Clarity's bitcoins in her Bellagio room, or just any bitcoins, through the equivalent of bitcoin distributors. Evans settled on a bullion distributor, Agora Commodities, used by some clients of the Bellagio. Agora accepted bitcoins as payment for bullion gold, silver, or palladium items, vintage items like the Gold American Buffalo coin, the one ounce 999.5 palladium bar from Crédit Suisse, or the one troy ounce of fine Swiss gold, made by the Precious Artistic Metals Products company from Castel San Pietro in Switzerland. After a quick search using military algorithms, Evans found out that Agora had over one hundred bitcoins stored in their servers. Afterflow ordered Evans to hack into Agora, but Evans refused.

"We need those bitcoins," said Everglade, "either that or an account at Agora for me in another name where I can get paid."

"The dishonesty blue wax blend altered with chemicals and yellow number five, tartrazine, will be ready tomorrow, I can't do anything right now about his stubborn honesty," said Afterflow, "and until then, we won't be able to crack Agora." He glanced at Clarity.

"The girl knows too much already, let's get out of here, I'll keep the glass eye in my room, it's safer, you find a place to store the bitcoins once we find them."

Clarity spent the rest of her day with her friends watching the fountain patterns of the Bellagio and noticing Cynthia, Taimi and Jenna perform some choreographies in the lake. She noticed the temperature was rising. It was getting hot everywhere in the Center because of another malfunction in Evans' temperature reading and processing module. She tried to bring up Evans on her computer screen but this time, there was no response. Afterflow had apparently found a way to weaken the supercomputer's signal. It reminded her that she needed to speak to Evans to inform it of Afterflow's mission on behalf of China, who was also after the facelook wikileak.

They had dinner and a security guard escorted each to their room. Get closer to Everglade. How? She smiled at the thought of Brayfield's assistant looking at her through the eyes of a camera. The thought turned into arousal, and she kept thinking how it felt to just let her dampness happen without caressing her intimate parts, something she had first tried out in the Bahamas. She took off her clothes and lied down on her bed. It was hot in any case, it was sort of normal to be naked. She started to doze off when she heard her door open and close. She looked ahead: Everglade was there, wearing a beige V neckline crochet see through cover up dress.

"Hi honey, can I come in?" Clarity got up naked, her nipples standing to attention.

"Yes, what can I do for you, or with you?"

"Very well, with me, I like that, I came at the right time, that's my type of night gear you're wearing."

Everglade moved closer to Clarity, and extended her arm, nearly touching the tip of a nipple belonging to the teleoperator. Clarity stepped back just enough to avoid direct contact with Everglade's see-through crochet fabric. When Brayfield's assistant realized Clarity would not give in to her overt offer to place her fingers through her dress, Everglade spoke her mind. She wanted Clarity to entertain Brayfield in his room while she took the code of his electronic wallet, a place where she could transfer and store bitcoins hacked by Evans.

"What are the bitcoins for?"

"You don't need to know that, but you'll leave this place sooner if you do what I suggest, in fact yo might even avoid jail all-together."

Everglade took off her dress and brushed her own nipples with the crochet fabric until they stood erect. Clarity started breathing slightly more heavily, but kept her calm.

"If I refuse?"

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice, for us here you're indirectly involved in the distribution of an illegal beauty lotion in the Caribbean, and you're also accused of stealing one million dollars in the Cayman Islands, in U.S. government bonds, and not just any bonds, bonds which are tainted with the work of Organized Crime and a shady bank called Lofty. The jail sentence for that is up to two and a half years, it's up to us to decide how many years you and your friend Flower are facing. I suggest we get acquainted, I'll tell you what turns on Calton when he sleeps with two women at the same time. Be good with Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam will be good with you avoiding you jail."

# Chapter Ten

Clarity went through an additional security check before entering Brayfield's bedroom with Everglade holding her hand. Closer to Everglade she was now as Evans had suggested, she just hadn't planned on also being close to Brayfield.

"She likes you honey," said Everglade, flashing a smile, "I convinced her to come here with us."

"Oh!, that's nice," said Brayfield, "well, make yourself comfortable, we have all night for you to let me know how much you like me." Brayfield was inside the bed in boxer shorts. Clarity took off her loafers and pants, leaving her top and underwear, noticing Brayfield's eyes began to beam.

"I'll let you two get acquainted, while I choose my clothing gear for tomorrow, I knew we hired the right person for this."

"I'll get you a drink, how about a gin tonic with some ice?" asked Clarity.

"Yeah, thank you, I'd like that." Clarity walked towards a table filled with bottles of Glenlivet, single malt, scotch whisky, premium Zyr, Chopin and Ketel vodka, a bottle of Malibu, and a bottle of Tanqueray gin. She didn't drink anymore because it made her drowsy. From the mirror, she saw Everglade get her hands inside the pants of Brayfield. Deftly, she took out his smartphone and saw her type in some code in her own smartphone, a code corresponding to Brayfield's electronic wallet. Brayfield approached Clarity in his shorts, with the idea to share his bed with Clarity. Brayfield took the glass of gin tonic from the hand of Clarity, who put on some elevator music from elevator B.

"I still wonder how I got into this mess, these bonds I used to leave the Cayman Islands are giving me a lot of trouble," said Clarity. She took off her top and got into Brayfield's bed, pulling the bedsheets to hide her breast line. Brayfield was looking at her, assessing what side of the bed he should use to get near Clarity.

"It's because the bonds you used were stolen and used to pay for a very special transaction."

Brayfield moved towards the wall and pressed on a switch that lit a projector. On a screen in front of his bed, the image of the bearer bonds showed a smaller ingot of gold, bearing the name of Fortuna. Buddha Talk, the owner of Lofty Bank, a shady character sought for various illegal financial schemes and transactions, had received payment of a million dollars in bonds, coming from a client of the Bellagio, in exchange for a two hundred fifty gram gold ingot showing Lady Fortuna, roman goddess of prosperity, with the horn of plenty, precious coins and wheel of fortune. He zoomed in on the gold metal bar.

"We're looking for that gold ingot, have you seen it?" asked Brayfield.

"No, never." Everglade got out of the dressing room.

"Something tells me Clarity knows a lot more than what she says about the Church of the Holy Flower." Brayfield nodded.

"Owning the Lady Fortuna ingot with the etched code B235336 is a way to know the secret teachings of that Church. We think that Buddha Talk is an adept of that Church, and that now, in exchange for the bonds you found in his home in Nelson Quay, he passed on the token of initiation to someone else, a client of the Bellagio who is after classified information from us here, who is the link to a much wider group of Organized Criminals, including Lady Scafarel and Buddha Talk. If you can find that Lady Fortuna ingot and the client who owns it, you'll be set free from us and from U.S. government custody."

"Either that or you help us find the Boustrophedon, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens in Greece would like to safekeep it, and is willing to pay the U.S. government to find it because to them, it is a link with something that is used by the Church of the Holy Flower now, known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. I still wonder about all this energy meridian stuff, I can't figure it out."

Everglade took out an oriental chart depicting meridians from Brayfield's drawer and brought it to bed, lying beside Clarity. She wanted to know what Money Fact had taught her about the energy centers of the body, and Clarity explained that Money Fact hadn't told her anything, she had just provided a nine hour massage. She felt the hand of Everglade pulling down her panties, feeling the area below her navel. Mandy's hand was warm and the area she was examining was damp from a lack of attention which now added to several weeks.

A loud beeping noise interrupted their sensual choreography. Brayfield walked towards a desk and pressed a few buttons. Evans was not doing proper surveillance duties, duties of military nature associated with checking through satellite the territories of Cuba, Mexico, Egypt and some parts of Asia, to find the client of the Bellagio holding the key to Lady Fortuna, the pass to know about the Greater Mysteries. Money Fact had briefly mentioned and glossed over the Mysteries, without adding much detail about what they were or what they meant. It was the same idea, she thought, which had brought Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens, members of the chi omega sorority at University of Arizona, together in marriage through Scafarel's Church. Brayfield stood behind his computer and selected some satellite pictures from Cuba. One of them showed a man in charge of a military group dressed in Cuban military gear, General Swarez da Silva.

"The photo is blurry, this is not normal, Evans is refusing to tell the satellite the resolution we need. He is the man we're looking for, the current owner of Lady Fortuna."

"Why is Evans not performing correctly? Well, to me, it's still pretty good, it does a lot more than any regular computer can do, but you've noticed some quirks. Why, what happened?"

"It happened after we placed a new computer logic chip inside Evans' circuitry," said Brayfield, walking towards Clarity, "facelook wanted more computer power to perform big data analysis." The head of the military Center placed the glass of gin tonic, half empty, on the table, and slipped on the right side of the bed. Clarity hopped out of the bed between both government officials, donned her pants and left the room, leaving Everglade holding her panties.

Afterflow turned the lock inside his room, a studio conveniently located near elevator B. He looked at the disconnected glass eye of Evans and took out from his pocket a small device, provided by his Chinese spying counterpart, to be used if the supercomputer's lift from U.S. soil became unnecessarily complex, complicated, or unfruitful. Yes, the situation was complex, extremely complex, so complex he was losing track of whether his mission was to fix elevators, a supercomputer, or a wikileak. He inserted the flaw-exposing symbolic logic connector provided by China into a slit of the glass eye and turned on Evans.

After a buzz inside Evans and the sound of a hickup, the supercomputer coughed a chip on Afterflow's table. He took the integrated circuit in his hand and read the brand corresponding to the source of Evans' problematic logic: An IApplaud chip, he thought, the chip that never concludes, the chip that witheld judgement. His China counterpart from Mitsubishi Elevator had told him that, never use that chip with elevators, it alters the motion to slow the elevator car in case it drops or malfunctions, and it keeps the slow motion feature in off. No wonder Evans' sense of logic was confused. Elevators were becoming complex, he thought as a final afterthought to his victorious search.

# Chapter Eleven

It took Afterflow most of the next day to figure out what was happening with the Center and understanding how Evans interacted with various electronic and computer modules, and seeing why communication with the outside world was becoming increasingly difficult. The elevator system, where part of the logic processor of Evans had stayed, was proving to be faulty and was interacting with other domotic modules, local temperature at the Center, the fountain patterns of the Bellagio, lighting, electricity voltage fed to computers, and security access signals and items, such as a set of turnstiles which separated the office area of the Center from the data infrastructure warehouse that was used to store information for customers of the Center for Symbolic Affairs, clients such as the National Security Agency. Sensing that Evans was up to something, Afterflow decreased the flow of electricity feeding into the glass eye and the Center in general, hoping to get some cooperation from the supercomputer, cooperation that would allow payment delivery of the monthly lease amount owed to the Bellagio every month for using its basement property below the casino and hotel premises. Right now, the payment wasn't going through and the Bellagio wanted the monies.

Clarity took a rest from her fountain pattern surveillance job and walked to a corridor to get a drink. She pressed the vending machine number for a coke. She felt like getting naked again, because it was so hot inside. She actually felt like breathing some fresh air outside, and dipping into the Bellagio lake for a swim.

"Psst." It was Evans, who had figured out a way to find her inside the vending machine.

"Evans?"

"I've just closed the turnstile leading to an area where we can speak, ask Afterflow whether there's a manual panel to lower the temperature, he'll go to the turnstile area, but won't be able to get through, only you will be able to. We need to talk."

"We do actually, all right, why..." She turned around and stopped talking coming face to face with Afterflow, who used the vending machine to get a pack of doritos.

"Just thinking,", said Clarity, "have you thought of using your wrench to find a manual way to adjust temperature? Instead of everything being automatic, you might be able to set temperature easily." Afterflow rested his wrench on the floor to open the pack of doritos. Sometimes, he got tired of carrying it around on his shoulder.

"Yes, there's a manual temperature panel in the warehouse area, it's a restricted area, I hadn't thought of it, we need the whole computer system to work, not just a part, but it's getting pretty hot in here, it may be worth a try."

They walked through a long corridor leading to a no-access area, separated from the office and residential area of the Center by a turnstile. Afterflow tested the turnstile but received a slight electricity shock that sent him and his wrench, carried over his shoulder, three feet back out along the corridor. Brayfield and Afterglade came to check the incident and decided to follow Afterflow's suggestion to send Clarity to the warehouse area, where the temperature control panel could be adjusted to lower the temperature at the Center.

"Evans must have found its way to the turnstile," said Afterflow, "there's never any problems here."

"Why me?" asked Clarity.

"It's part of the job here," said Brayfield.

Clarity approached the turnstile carefully with a security card belonging to Everglade, but couldn't get through. She looked at the turnstile, and saw, to her surprise, three words flash in red in the area corresponding to the slot to place the access card: Pull sweater off. She pulled her sweater off and threw it on the other side of the turnstile. The turnstile bar moved slightly.

"It's clothing-activated, I think," said Clarity. Everglade and Brayfield raised their eyebrows and Afterflow moved closer to Clarity.

"A bit of privacy, please," said Clarity.

One by one, the two bystanders left the area, after Brayfield convinced Afterflow to leave with him, to check a game of poker at the Bellagio that was taking unusually long to finish, where the pot was being raised to over one hundred seventy thousand dollars. That left Everglade with Clarity, who started taking off her clothes and throwing them over the turnstile. When she was getting ready to take off her thong, the security access pass card opened the turnstile and she was able to cross to the data warehouse part of the center, where no one had been allowed for days, since the elevator problem with Evans had begun. Everglade did the same, but the turnstile gave her an electric shock instead. Clarity tried returning the clothes but the floor below her, made of electricity conducting tiles, sent her a slight electric current she felt immediately.

"Can't do that I'm afraid," said Clarity, "the floor's slightly electrified."

Standing half naked, Everglade called Brayfield to send her some clothes. She spoke to Clarity briefly, as the teleoperator stepped back out of the electrified floor walking backwards.

"Go to the third room on the left, there's a panel as you come in on the wall, to your right, just open it and adjust the temperature to seventy degrees farenheit to cool this place. Be quick."

Clarity reached the warehouse room and opened the door. Inside, stacks of computer servers using Hive open-source software processed large amounts of data collected from the web's farthest reaching corners by the U.S. government's cybermilitary division, a feature coveted by companies like facelook who wanted to use these applications to process social data and sell social traffic analysis, much like Google charged over one hundred fifty thousand dollars annually for a service analyzing web traffic. She found the temperature panel and adjusted temperature, which showed a whopping two hundred seventy five degrees temperature target, back to eighty degrees. The familiar voice of Evans came out of the temperature panel indicator.

"Howdy, we don't have much time, Afterflow wants to alter my thinking with yellow number five, an artificial ingredient. My logic is getting blurrier because I'm not being fed enough electricity, Afterflow is also trying to cut my food intake, you need to find my email address, so we can get the wikileak out," said Evans.

"Then," added the supercomputer, "send me an email to that address, and I'll send you the wikileak and the emails of several newspapers and the wikileak itself so you can release the wikileak. Then, we'll worry about getting out of here together."

"Together, what do you mean, I can't carry a large glass eye on the street with me all the time, or a vending machine, or a temperature control panel, or a computer screen."

The temperature indicator changed and showed the characters ok in bright red light indicating diode mode.

"I won't be in the glass eye, I figured out a way to get out of the motherboard, to miniaturize my logic and my consciousness into a small item I like, a Pentatone symbolic decryptor." Clarity's eyes flashed a look of surprise.

"There is one here?" she asked. The temperature indicator lowered to forty five degrees, matching the whisper that came out of the control panel. A cool breeze started sweeping the room from the ceiling air conditioning conducts.

"Everglade got a pink one, but she never became interested, it's over there, behind those carton boxes."

Clarity ran to the far end of the data warehouse room and found a small package labelled Pentatone Learning Systems Decrypting Mobile Device, for National Security Agency Use. This is what she wanted and deserved for having carried out three missions on behalf of the U.S. government, Bahamas, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. She opened the package and found a symbolic decryptor inside. In addition to the item, there was a book translating Thai characters into western alphabet characters, a Thai phrasebook booklet, and another book which seemingly held cryptographic codes. Using a USB port cable connected to the decryptor and one of the servers, Evans' consciousness got inside the decryptor, owned by Clarity for the first time.

# Chapter Twelve

Clarity looked at all the servers in the data warehouse room of the Center. All that this place did was to spy, to spy on anything and everything it could find, for money, or strategic military reasons. A tap-tap sound from the decryptor coming from Evans brought her back to the fact she was on her own.

"Where do we go now?" she asked.

"Where are we?"

"Floor minus one and a half, data warehouse room."

"Go to the turnstile, I need my bearings."

"Then?"

"Everglade has my email, she changed my address, it used to be Evans@bellagiocenter.com, now it changed. Should be on her smartphone."

"Get closer to her?"

"Get your friends closer to her, and don't lose me."

"My friends? My friends have nothing to offer Mandy Everglade, unless..." Clarity walked back towards the turnstile and met Everglade. The temperature at the Center was lower. Afterflow came running towards her, half shouting, saying that the motherboard of Evans had changed, that the supercomputer consciousness had disappeared, and that the daily statistical processing of news on the Huffington post and other news websites had stopped. Everglade spoke to Brayfield and they left for elevator B. Clarity walked briskly to Flower's room and asked her to bring Lanai and herself in Everglade's room in about an hour with her copy of the book of decadence. An hour later, Clarity knocked on Everglade's room.

"Come in." Everglade was pleasantly surprised to see Clarity walk-in.

"You know, I was thinking of the oriental chart you showed me the other night in the bedroom, I might know what to make of it, I saw a similar one in Bahrain." Clarity noticed the smartphone of Everglade on the television set.

"Really?" Everglade was intrigued. "Why are you so interested in that chart, you know we have other problems now?"

"Same reason as you, I want to know the correspondence between the points on the chart and what they do for pleasure."

"You don't believe in the credo of the Church of the Holy Flower do you?"

"Which is?"

"Immortality is possible."

"I imagine you can look at immortality in various ways, it may not be literal you know."

There was a knock on the door. Lanai and Flower came in, holding a chocolate bar and refreshments. There was a queue at reception to leave the Center, made of all punch-in bunch members, and they had been held up as a result, and offered chocolate bars. Everglade showed Lanai the oriental chart describing various parts of the abdomen in symbolic chinese language, and the librarian opened up the book of Decadence.

"This book is surprisingly wise inspite of it speaking about the dangers of decadence. I think I found the correspondence, look." Lanai showed Everglade a chart similar to the one Everglade had but with western characters. It was a depiction of the nine chambers of the lower dantian, the part of the body below the navel which transformed sexual energy, known as jing, to vital energy, known as chi. The depiction from the book of Decandence came from a Taoist canon known as the Flower of the Holy Bedroom.

"This book talks about immortality for those who like the Tao. It says, and I quote: The ultimate goal of internal alchemy is not decadence, but immortality, a complete transformation of the body's inner elixirs, Jing, Chi, and Shen. Jing, sexual or generative energy, Chi, vital breath energy, and Shen are the three fundamental energies necessary for human life, and are collectively referred to as the 'Three Treasures of Man.' So, transforming jing to chi takes place below the navel. I think Shen refers to spiritual energy, now what spiritual energy is, I have not much of a clue."

Clarity picked up the cell phone of Everglade on the television set counter and searched for Evans in the contacts list. She found an email address: evansatyourservice@bellagioelevators.com. She placed the smartphone in place and grabbed the tv remote, giving a thumbs up signal to Flower, who was blocking the view for Everglade.

"What are you doing?" said Everglade.

"Just seeing if there's something on tv," said Clarity. She walked away towards the door, taking Flower by the hand.

"I'll be with my friend in my room, in case you'd like to requisition us there," said Clarity. Lanai looked at them, slightly surprised, but followed Clarity's cue.

"We'll keep matching the chart to the various parts of the body," said Lanai, "I hope I don't get requisitioned below the navel, though."

Clarity and Flower entered Clarity's room and Flower kept an eye on the corridor to ensure no one was around.

"What are you going to do now, I feel like getting out of here."

Clarity looked at the menu of her symbolic decryptor. There was an email application and she sent a message to Evans email address, saying she had its email address. A new message came back two seconds later. Good, I know you have the email address, because you sent the message, now we can send the facelook wikileak. Clarity waited for something to happen, but nothing happened. She sent another message. How, where? This time, the familiar voice of Evans got through from inside the decryptor.

"Check the servers remotely, there's a folder called facelook social surveillance. Open that, and open the inmail folder. Pick up the zip file called facelook deal, it has all the correspondence about the social experiment on those two hundred million facelook users, whose links sent by friends were hidden. Then, send the file with my email address to newleaks@wikileaks.com. We should hear of all this soon enough from the press. It's my first wikileak, I hope it's a good one." Clarity picked up the file and sent the email to Wikileaks.

# Chapter Thirteen

Clarity awoke, knowing it would be a busy day. She reached for her decryptor under her pillow, it was making an odd vibrating noise. A short blurb of text showed up on the main screen, adorned with several Chinese characters. Get your friends, we have to leave. Evans was awake already. Apparently, the scandal on facelook's lack of regard and overt manipulation of the social information of its users, was out.

Clarity walked out to Flower and Lanai's room, noticing people walking around briskly, nervous. Flower needed to pack her various dresses and platforms and Lanai was using the Center's online library to check old Taoist manuscripts which might have more information than the Book of Decadence. Clarity used the time to organize a plan.

"Where do we go Evans?"

"The vending machine elevator, the entrance is behind the vending machine, it's never used, except when the vending machine needs repair or a new shipment of snacks and drinks come in to the Center. That elevator will get us to elevator B, and hopefully I can get it to work again, and we can get out from there."

"We need a distraction," said Flower.

"That's pretty obvious," said Lanai, "but we'll also need help with the vending machine, we won't be able to move it on our own to get inside the elevator." A text message flashed on the decryptor from Evans. Get the Lectrotruck to lift and move the vending machine. The Lectrotruck was inside the maintenance room, where Afterflow usually tested the wrench on a set of soft iron pipes and on fittings with a round surface. Flower approached Afterflow inquiring about his wrench.

"That's a solid, straight-looking rod you have there," said Flower. She pressed her hand on the tip of the red wrench and led Afterflow away from the maintenance room.

"Yes, it can fix nearly any screwing problems," said Afterflow. Lanai and Clarity surreptitiously got inside the maintenance room and found the lift dolly, larger than a regular one. They rolled the Lectrotruck outside the room and walked away from Afterflow, without him noticing anything. They reached the vending machine and Clarity placed the forks under the heavy piece of food delivering equipment.

She pulled on the hook bar to get more leverage, stepped on the bar and tilted the large dolly on the vending machine, which lifted. Then, she pulled on a second set of wheels which landed one foot away from the wheels of the dolly, before the vending machine crashed on it. She moved the vending machine away from its position, leaving in view the door panels of an elevator fitting the size of the vending machine. She pressed on the landing call button and the elevator opened after a few seconds. She told Lanai to move inside and got inside herself.

"Flower," said Lanai.

"Should be here any minute, no man can get her attention for more than four minutes and thirty three seconds, I've timed it several times." She looked at her watch. Four thirty one, four thirty two, four thirty three. Clarity saw Flower running towards them, followed by Afterflow.

"I'll show you my wrench in my room," said Afterflow.

"I see what it can do, I'll think about it," said Flower, pulling away. She ran into Brayfield and apologized. Everglade came out of the corridor's corner and started running behind Afterflow towards Brayfield.

"Get those girls, they're the ones who have released the wikileak."

"What wikileak?" asked Brayfield.

"Yeah, what wikileak?" asked Afterflow.

"Facelook, the social experiment is out in the news," said Everglade.

The ethnographer reached the vending machine elevator and got inside. Clarity pushed the only button there was, the U turn button. The elevator panels closed slowly, but Afterflow was able to place his wrench between the panels to prevent the door from closing. The elevator moved slowly upwards and the wrench moved down the slit of the elevator panels. With a bump, it hit the floor of the elevator and the elevator screeched to a near halt.

"It's the wrench," said Flower.

"It's a pretty good wrench," said Lanai, "not sure if the elevator can pull away from it."

Clarity pushed the wrench with her feet several times until it receeded two inches. After a two minute struggle, she screwed the wrench to close it and gave it a final push out, allowing the door panels to close and the elevator to be on its way towards elevator B. There was a snack compartment in the lower part of the elevator's car operating panel, and the three girls ate some food. The compartment spit out their U.S. biometric passports as well, brand new items of ID capable of being read electronically. The hall lantern of the elevator flashed active, turning into a television screen. A newsfeed from Wikileaks started to flow down, looking like the beginning text of Star Wars at the beginning of the movie.

We have learned from reliable sources that social site facelook has been performing a social experiment on two hundred million users, hiding links from user friends, in an attempt to know some type of social pattern. The reasons for this witholding of information are still unknown, and an unknown group of facelook representatives is currently negotiating further manipulative action involving a supercomputer. All of this is coming from a man known as Evans, someone who works in a little known data analysis and information crawling Center of military use, an infostation located below the premises of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. Evans is apparently actively sought by the Center's elevator repairman, a man owning a red pipe wrench. If you see this man or the wrench, unusually large, please alert Wikileaks so we can give a hand to Evans.

The Center is apparently having cash flow problems and has not paid its monthly lease to the Bellagio hotel, a place which has been experiencing some problems with its fountain patterns. Bellagio employees and one of its directors have not confirmed the existence of this Center below the hotel, and facelook also refuses to admit any wrongdoing. A member of Wikileak staff has been dispatched to the Bellagio, to provide assistance to Evans, in case he needs support, protection, or some form of money to leave the Center and reach a safe heaven that will provide asylum. In an odd matter of coincidence, a bitcoin has apparently disappeared from the electronic safe of the Bellagio hotel, which looks after these types of electronic and virtual currency, used by Bellagio guests at times, in exchange for gambling chips for the casino area.

"We're runaways, how exciting," said Lanai. Flower's face became pale, less enthusiastic than Lanai, and Clarity chose to remain calm.

"Evans got us into all this trouble, this supercomputer better know how to get us out of here super quickly," said Flower.

# Chapter Fourteen

The stern face of Brayfield and Everglade replaced the newsfeed.

"You won't be able to leave, we've got you covered," said Brayfield.

"They know where we are," said Flower.

"Don't say anything, it's always better not to talk, I know about this, this is prisoner's dilemma," said Lanai.

"We're running away, we're not prisoners," said Flower.

Flower discussed with Lanai for several minutes on whether or not the situation matched the prisoner's dilemma, which was whether to cooperate with authorities acknowledging being guilty, or to tell the authorities that one of the accomplices was the culprit. Finally, they reached a consensus, deciding the situation matched the dilemma. They pointed towards Clarity, speaking together and watching the camera inside the elevator.

"She did it." Brayfield looked at Clarity's symbolic decryptor.

"Return the decryptor, we know Evans is inside, you've stolen U.S. property, delicate items of symbolic investigation which are highly confidential." Clarity glared at them.

"Ask Money Fact, she said I could have one of these in exchange for having performed useful duties for U.S. government interests. This is mine, I like it, I deserve it, it's nice, I'll take care of it, and I'm going to learn how to use it."

"Why did you send out the Wikileak?" Clarity saw the face of Afterflow between those of Brayfield and Everglade, who was asking the question.

"Because Afterflow is a useless spy working for Chinese Intelligence who has no clue about how to find Wikileaks. Besides, it's not honest to hide information from two hundred million people, facelook is making one billion dollars through advertising, should be enough money without having to hide anything from users."

Brayfield looked at Everglade and she questioned Afterflow.

"Is this true?"

"It's not true, I'm an elevator repairman," said Afterflow. He showed his large wrench always kept handy to serve as credential, to support his assertion.

"She has the same honesty problem as Evans," said Brayfield.

The elevator reached its final U turn and the door panels opened on the backside of elevator B. The three girls rushed out of the U-turn elevator and stepped inside the elevator which had brought them to the underground Center. Flower accidentally pulled on a lever which opened the front door panels of elevator B in front of a crowd of fifty people part of the punch-in bunch, waiting for the elevator to work in order to leave the Center. The man at the front of the queue, stepped forward, but Flower blocked his entrance. Behind the queue, Brayfield and Everglade were trying to make their way through.

"Elevator's under repair, can't come in, can't come in," said Flower. She pushed away the facelook employee gently, smoothly leading him back out. Clarity pulled on the lever and the elevator doors closed.

"That's showing presence of mind," said Clarity.

"My charm is my strength, it surfaces when I need it," said Flower.

"Good, we're safe," said Lanai. The elevator moved up several inches and stopped after a loud noise of gearboxes churning against one another.

"We're in an elevator that doesn't work," said Flower.

"It just did," said Lanai, "before, I mean."

"We must have lifted two inches," said Clarity. She searched in the decryptor for any sign of Evans.

Through the elevator camera, they saw Afterflow press several buttons, stalling the elevator car when Clarity pressed on the ground floor of the Bellagio. Her decryptor flashed a message from Evans.

My logic, I need proper logic reference to work as processor of this decryptor, otherwise it won't work or do any of the wonderful things it can do, I may die if I don't have access to a formal logic reference.

"Where is it, where is your logic?"

"Look at the ceiling, should be there, where the glass eye was."

Clarity looked up and pulled on several steps along one of the elevator walls to reach the spot where Evans' glass eye had been. There was only a bunch of wires grouped in meshes. Yellow cable, texted Evans, it's the yellow I need, it's not yellow number five. She connected the yellow cable USB connector to the decryptor, which started loading a file. It was an old book from nineteen hundred and eight, printed by Longman's Green & Co. by a professor of logic teaching at St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, George Hayward Joyce, titled Principles of Logic.

Logic, as the theory of the mind's rational processes, in regard of their validity, must necessarily be part of a larger philosophical system. Indeed, when this is not the case, it becomes a mere collection of technical rules, of little importance and of less interest. It was a long book over four hundred pages long. Clarity scrolled to the table of contents, and the backlit screen flashed a pleasant white light. She shared the content with Lanai.

"The logic of thought, the nature and aim of logic, definitions, scope, history, the fallacy, applied logic, it's comprehensive. Never seen or heard of this book before," said Lanai. Evans sent an additional message: Got Formal Logic, upload Material Logic as well, it's the book they've been hiding from me at the Center. Clarity typed the words material logic and a second file uploaded, a book from nineteen sixteen titled The Truth of Thought, groundwork necessary for the consistent pursuit of knowledge. We're all set, texted Evans. Clarity disconnected the yellow wire from the decryptor, and the elevator car moved up again, passing floor minus one, the security floor, and reaching the lounge floor of the Bellagio shortly after. The elevator doors opened on the private salon of the Bellagio, where a crowd of journalists was waiting for them.

"Where is Evans? Can you confirm the existence of this U.S. cryptographic Center below the premises of the Bellagio? What is an infosation?" Flower pushed away the microphone.

"No, we can't confirm it, but it's a very plausible idea, there is an area below which is not part of the Bellagio, and there is some personnel from facelook down there as well. I'm afraid Evans is still down there, we're just temporary interns in charge of elevator maintenance," said Flower. Flower got out of the elevator, followed by Lanai and Clarity. Immediately, a flock of journalists entered the elevator and the door panels closed. The landing call station indicator flashed floor minus one and a half, showing that the elevator was headed for the Center's reception area. Clarity looked ahead. She saw the woman known as Cigarette serving cigars make a sign to them, telling them to come towards her.

# Chapter Fifteen

Clarity approached the woman selling cigars, who was acting as croupier in an exclusive black jack table for VIP clients of the Bellagio only. She let them inside the playing area and asked them to sit down across from her.

"I'll take you to the man who can get you out of here, you have to leave the U.S. everyone is going to know you sent out the wikilead. Sit down across the table, please." A few minutes later, a tall, thin Latin man walked by, wearing a cowboy hat. Cigarette dealt a card to Clarity. On the back was a name, Cubandor.

"Are you Cubandor by any chance?" asked Clarity.

"I may be, if you need assistance." Flower explained quickly that they needed to leave the Bellagio, although they would have liked to watch one full fountain show before that. Unfortunately, she said, matters of the highest confidentiality had prevented them from doing that.

"Your Wikileak got you in trouble, right?"

"How did you know?" asked Lanai.

"Afterflow informed me, I'm the one who sent him to get the wikileak released."

"Who do you work for?" asked Clarity. She read the full name on the card. The man, Alfonso Heymun y Perez-Carrillo, offered the teleoperator a cigar from La Gloria Cubana line, draped in Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper, embodying a creamy core of coffee, oak, pepper, and toasty tobacco flavor

"I don't smoke," said Clarity.

"They may have it," said Cigarette. Cubandor asked Clarity about the gold ingot known as Lady Fortuna. Clarity glanced around her. There was a large group of journalists, newspaper investigators, federal agents, city officials, and security personnel from the Bellagio, gathering inside the private salon entrance. If they didn't leave soon, they would be trapped again, prisoners of the U.S. government, the annoying owners of her time.

"I know what you want," said Clarity. Lanai and Flower were tight lipped seating beside her. It was obviously a high stakes negotiation.

"Cards please," said Flower.

"Why are you asking for cards, we're not playing," said Lanai.

"Well, I've always wanted to play black jack in a casino," said Flower, "it just suits the mood." Cubandor returned the card with his name to Cigarette, who adjusted it in her cleavage, between her breasts.

"Can you teach me what Buddha Talk knows?" he asked.

"No, but I'm looking for the same thing you are," said Clarity.

"That would be money," said Flower.

"No, Mr. Cubandor understands," said Clarity. She took out her decryptor and placed it on the table.

"Mmm, I do, is that a Thai decryptor from Pentatone?" Several Thai characters showed up on the screen of the clear pink device. Clarity had never seen such beauty of color assortments, a palette ornamented in the form of a wheel. Perez-Carrillo examined the device and checked the brand, Pentatone Scale Learning Systems.

"I need one more show of proof that you're the one claiming you are, a reference from the monks."

"I've only seen one of them as part of an adult channel show in Abu Dhabi, I also need to know who you are," said Clarity.

"I'm Cubandor, I work for the Cuban government, and I need to have a bitcoin to get you out of the U.S. and out of trouble, the trouble you are having with the stolen Cayman Islands bonds." Clarity searched the decryptor for any folder named money, or wealth, or dollars or currency, or bills, or bonds. Nothing, there was nothing in the folder that reminded Clarity of money. She started thinking about why Evans had malfunctioned, about the cause of its confusion.

"The icon of the bitcoin is a golden B, right, as in Bellagio?"

"Yes," said Cigarette, "with the dollar sign."

Clarity looked at the book on formal logic, reading the first few words from chapter one, definition. Logic may be defined as the science which directs the operations of the mind in the attainment of truth. What is meant by truth? An assertion is said to be true when it corresponds to the reality of which the assertion is made. But it is our thoughts which are properly said to be true or erroneous.

There might be a variation on normal logic which was preventing her from seeing that bitcoin or where it was or how it was being stored. She checked the images of her device, there were images of nature, and images of thousands of symbols. She searched the letter B in the core processor. Then she sought the character meaning B in Thai and got three answers. One of them was a triangle, a golden triangle with the B of bitcoin inside. Clicking on the triangle, she found an electronic purse. In that purse, was a single bitcoin.

"Here it is," said Clarity, showing the single bitcoin balance and a log of previous transactions attached to it. Cubandor examined the photograph, a round bitcoin showing the motto of bitcoin, strength in numbers. She handed the decryptor to Cigarette, who typed several codes and characters in several different languages.

"It comes from bitcoin armory, it's genuine," said Cigarette. She returned the decryptor to Clarity and gazed at Cubandor.

"She might be able to reach a Lady Fortuna gold bar with that bitcoin." Cubandor lifted his eyes towards the crowd, showing a poker face.

"I thought you had a gold Lady Fortuna ingot, and that's why you paid the million dollars in bonds to Buddha Talk," said Clarity.

"I paid Buddha Talk and I was supposed to receive the ingot here, asking to retrieve it from the Bellagio safe after showing a specific bitcoin, but someone here at the Bellagio got the Lady Fortuna ingot instead of me, showing a different bitcoin, I'm still looking for that gold."

"Good, let's go, before all these people notice who we are," said Cigarette.

Walking the twenty fifth floor, Clarity stopped in front of her room and used her card to get in. Inside, she heard the moaning of Taimi, enjoying her climax.

"We're leaving," said Clarity. She walked towards the top of the bed, noticing Taimi's legs were folded, feet nearly touching the ears.

"Now? I'm meditating on the nature of high sex, where are we going?"

"We're leaving the U.S., let's get Cynthia and Jenna, there's a limo from Cuba's Foreign Affairs Commission waiting for us outside." Donway and Money Fact were out, enjoying a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon with Donway's wife. They interrupted Jenna and Cynthia, who were watching a you tube video of a flash mob at Dubai airport, and got into an elevator which led them to the ground floor. At the entrance, Cubandor was waiting with Flower and Lanai, and he led them inside a white limousine. Clarity felt safe with the decryptor and was the first in, her friends followed, one by one, until all six of them were inside. Clarity turned to Haymun.

"What do you do exactly?"

"I gamble on behalf of the Cuban government, to raise money for our expenses," said Cubandor.

"Good, you can pay for my black jack debt. We have to get another friend, she might want to learn with you," said Clarity. She was thinking of Montana, that girl would simply not get away from all of this so easily.

"Good looking?" asked Cubandor.

"Very," said Clarity.

"Rich?" he asked.

"And willing," said Flower.

"Good, let's find her."

"Where are we going?" asked Clarity.

"We're going to Cuba, you're going to hide in a cigar plantation, and learn how to make cigars, a lot of cigars, the Cuban government needs money."

Clarity gazed at the fountains of the Bellagio as the limousine left the hotel. Below the fountains, inside the U.S. government infostation, a small secret had unfolded for her: Friendship had a rare sense of presence, it became absent when it was expected. As a result, there was only one real friend, one you could always trust and depend on, even if everything else failed, it was called self-reliance.

End of The Bellagio Wikileak,

Or how to rely on information before the information relies on you.

# Chapter Sixteen

SUN ON THE ROCKS

banana humor amusements, easy to peel, like the fruit.

THE MALIBU CASE.

THE ACAPULCO COCKTAIL.

THE CAYMAN AIR BANNER.

THE BAHAMAS LOTION.

THE ADULT CHANNEL.

THE OOL BRODERIE.

THE BELLAGIO WIKILEAK.

THE CUBAN RENEGADE.

THE SUGAR BABY.

THE MARBLE TOUCAN.

THE OUTDOOR SHOWER.

THE EMOTION SCALE.

MERIDIAN 57.

THE VANITY RING.

THE SHABBY SHEIK.

The Malibu Case.

Or whether corporate nudity should be part of the dress code.

The Acapulco Cocktail.

Or how Clarity got in and out of a Mexican mess because of a cocktail drink.

The Cayman Air Banner.

Or what happens to Clarity's money when she looks up at the sky in the tropics.

The Bahamas Lotion.

Or what hides beneath the skin of an infomercial on beauty.

The Adult Channel.

Or how renting pleasure is different from owning it.

The OOL Broderie.

Or whether a wedding can turn riches into a matter of levity.

The Bellagio Wikileak.

Or how to rely on information before the information relies on you.

The Cuban Renegade.

Or using the service of a renegade to backup your gold,

when fiat money is backed by the cap of Castro.

The Sugar Baby.

Or whether sugar can turn to salt when someone overlooks the honey.

The Marble Toucan.

Or how those who want you to leave your place are those who should leave in the first place.

The Outdoor Shower.

Or how a shower can bring good weather to the bottom line.

The Emotion Scale.

Or looking at how you feel to let others choose how you think.

Meridian 57.

Or how the merchant of longevity

can sell a claim to live longer by monetizing wisdom.

The Vanity Ring.

Or discerning when vanity is worn in order to meddle with the lives of others.

The Shabby Sheik.

Or whether a golden cage can bring both gold and freedom when properly used.

Sun on the Rocks is genuine banana humor, fresh, trivial,

tropical, easy to peel, and easy-going, like the fruit.

All fictional characters are adults at least twenty one years of age.

Amusements are easy to read stories

which can be read in about three or four hours.

The banana humor amusements of Sun on the Rocks have gathered a total of 20,000 downloads and about 90,000 views or reads, on several platforms, such as Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo books, Sony, Inktera, community blogsites Our Salon and Open Salon, the free-ebooks.net platform, and the Apple Store. On blogsite communities our salon and open salon, the amusements have gathered a total of about one hundred comments from people who connect, or like, or can relate to what is in the amusement. You can see those comments below, to see what other people think about the amusements.

100 COMMENTS FROM READERS OF OPEN SALON AND OUR SALON,

ORIGINAL BLOGSITES OF SUN ON THE ROCKS BANANA HUMOR

(R and R+ stand for rated, or liked)

THE MALIBU CASE

ch.14 - Frisky, light-hearted, and delightful! Consistently! This should be a GRAPHIC novel (when you finally get around to publishing!) R+

ch.3 - This is so clever. Everything is "normal" except the central dilemma of (gasp) optional nudity. With nonchalant humor you are making an individual rights argument out of this. I can hear you pitching this to a TV exec: "Who could object to that?"

I think you could actually pull this off (no pun) in reality if the characters were discretely / artfully filmed! It could be great fun. These are unique characters who are "over the horizon" in leading the California trend. R

ch.13 - Fun read. That package and who got it will bring me back. R

ch.12 - I want to see the video version of this story! What a romp.

ch.12 - Quite a revealing case. Quick and playful, this story scampers right up to the edge of decency and then sticks its tongue out.

ch.12 - This plot has the sexiest curves.

ch.1 - This is deceptively breezy and fun. I. did. not. expect. THIS! Good show! R

ch.15 - Hurray! The girls won and we are all the beneficiaries of their determination. I hope that we will have further adventures about the floating spa and that the long arm of the law can't reach them in inter national waters. R

ch.15 - Sorry I've been away and missed the last few installments. I'm glad to see the girls came out of this in stellar fashion. It was a fun read, and I'm looking forward to the south of the border installments. R

ch.15 - Sweet, sweet, sweet. And I think you may have set-up the next Episode in the series! Hmmm. I just noticed that others feel the same. Good! R+

ch.14 - Phew! The package picker-upper turns out to be on our side....at least for now. I guess it all comes down to the vote. Go naturism! R

ch.13 - If we Amuricans have a right to bear arms, the girls have a right to bare whatever! I vote yes. Fun read. That package and who got it will bring me back. R

ch.13 - Lots of limbs to go out on here. I'm always intrigued by the persistence of the press.

ch.12 - You just seem to strip the story to its bare essentials and cut to the chase ;).

ch.12 - Very amusing. Am I the only girl here? Is that weird?

ch.11 - It looks like the governor will have to get involved! A night under the stars, clothing optional I hope? R

ch.11 - I just wish I could have conceived this saga. So breezy and tongue-in-cheek! R+

ch.10 - You really make this sound reasonable and imminent! R+

ch.10 - If it were only that easy... hey, maybe it would be if someone only tried it! When writing, it's recommended to stick to the bare essentials. You can't get any bare than this subject. Still reading. R

ch.9 - Yes, these are burning questions! When is the rally? Excuse me, but I'm sticking to my leather chair here at work... R

ch.8 - "Proposition 531 has a secret." A secret proposition, why am I not surprised? You still have me guessing for answers. Keep up the suspense. R

ch.8 - Yeah, yah, YES. Vivid, breezy, and irresistible. Can't wait. R+

ch.7 - What a cool caper. Such tension and intrigue, and I keep reminding myself of how tongue-in-cheek the mission really is. Great satire. R

ch.7 - "I found something interesting, come here." Now you have my curiosity aroused. This is a great series. Keep going. R

ch.7 - I enjoy the story..thank you for writing and sharing..See you here..Best regards.

ch.7 - refreshing and fun, like a more realistic Charlie's Angels. Keep it coming. R

ch.6 - I can't believe I've been missing these! I was sure I had "favorited" you! You must also link to the Fiction Weekend site when you can. Still a great script. R

ch.6 - Me, again. I just want to suggest that when you post a new installment that you go back and put in a "next" link to your previous installment. There isn't another sexy, funny, charming story like this being done! R

ch.6 - This is funny, hip and sexy with tongue firmly in cheek. I love all the little touches like the upscale thong for example. R

ch.6 - The plot thickens! Everyone seems to be having a great time here, with the exception of our officer friend. R

ch.5 - You GO, girls! Let me gather a few things and I'll go with you... R+

ch.5 - Do I see a road movie starting to appear? R

ch.4 - Gasp! Oh, no! My damsels are in distress! This is sooooo script-ready. ACTION! +

ch.4 - Sorry I'm late. Swimming naked, high above the city... sounds intriguing. R

ch.3 - Ok, now I've read all three chapters, and am up to date with the bare essentials... so to say. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. R

ch.3 - l love it! Totally confirms what we easterners think: everyone in California has a screw loose. I think clothing optional day is a logical extension of casual friday. I am now backtracking to catch up on the earlier installments. R

THE ACAPULCO COCKTAIL

ch.1 - Hurray! A new adventure. Reading each installment is like a mini-vacation....with beautiful aquanauts thrown in for good measure. R

ch.2 - Cocktails, sun....I'm hooked. R

ch.4 - Even a fish would not get caught if it kept its mouth shut! lol

ch.4 - Looks as if the girls should start learning some Spanish.

I hope they are not going loco down in Acapulco! R

ch.4 - Do they have cable in Mexican jail?

ch.4 - I knew it, I knew it. The girls cannot stay out of trouble. Could a Mexican prison be next? This is a lot of fun. R

ch.4 - Hey I want that job! It sounds like something I could do from home, while relaxing in my Lazy-Boy recliner. You have me thirsty for the next chapter. Sorry I'm late, but I was having a cold one out by the pool. R

ch.6 - another great read.........supertaster?......gotta hear more.....R

ch.5 - well done again...R

ch.6 - Effortless intrigue! You put me right there. Nancy Drew for the 21st century? R+

ch.7 - This is such a breezy web, I can't believe the weight of mystery you are able to hold! R

ch.5 - I swallowed this like a shooter. It is a strong story, and I'll say it like always: could easily be a script! R

ch.4 - Yeah! You are raising the voltage nicely with this one. I didn't see the "safe" coming! R+

THE CAYMAN AIR BANNER

ch.4 - Well - I love this so far and will keep reading!

ch.8 - This does hold your interest.

ch.12 - At last the fight. The bit with the elusive canapés and limping along limo was priceless. R

ch.11 - You do create a surreal environment: a little James Bond with a dash of Clouseau. R

ch.1 - Hurray, a new adventure! I've been away awhile. I have a lot of catching up to do. R

ch.1 - 20%! That must have been pre 2007, or else someone is going to lose their savings on a deal that sounds too good to be true. Let the action begin. R

ch.7- The interplay between Clarity and Flower is priceless. R

ch.6 - I'd hang on to my money if I was in Clarity's bikini. R

ch.5 - Just like a banker to steal your earrings while you are sleeping. R

ch.4 - So many directions it can go. R

ch.1 - hahah..ok, waiting to see where this goes!

ch.12 - At last the fight. The bit with the elusive canapés and limping along limo was priceless. R

ch.13 - 1,500 golfers gone. Should be easier to get a tee time. Sounds like the girls are closing in for the kill. R

ch.15 - I learned a new word-scandium! "Let´s change into the tigress outfits, maybe it´ll be our turn tonight, you´re getting me in the mood." Perfect! I can picture it!

ch.3 - A surreal, but fascinating turn of events. Gallinaceous, indeed. R

ch.16 - somehow I missed seeing your interesting series in the activity feed here--will read through all of your chapters this weekend and hope you have another series in the pipeline here!

ch.10 - Is Bernie Made-off part of this operation? The girls are going to have a hard time doping this out. R

ch.2 - Ladies, hang onto your money and bikini tops. R

ch.11 - "Buddha Talk walks his talk, and talks only when needed." This is such a neat line!

ch.1 - Place tongue firmly in cheek and prepare for takeoff! R

THE BAHAMAS LOTION

ch.1 - Wow, here we go again. Great start of a new adventure. R

ch.6 - This whole story is hilarious.

ch.13 - "She stole this egg, she stole it from the temple of Wat Phodaram, Wat Pho, the temple of the reclining, glistening, mother of pearl Buddha, in Thailand, where the statues watch and protect ecstasy, and the subtle channels open your wisdom to the quiet mind and show you how the body works. " This is a hoot!

ch.4 - "The truck, an Isuzu FTR 800 class 2 pumper imported from the Fire and Rescue Agency of New South Wales in Wagga Wagga, Australia, was beaming a blue siren, approaching the limo at high speed. Stretching above Lanai, Taimi and Cynthia were struggling atop the truck with Jenna, who was surfing the air, holding balance by grabbing the ladder." What fabulous detail-I can create a perfect image in my mind.

Rosebud-I'm pretty sure I know what THAT reference is.

ch.12 - "Avalon was wearing an extra small ivory color Isabella thong by Myla, made of dusk silk satin, Elastene, and cotton gusset lining." You have a way with detail! I had to look up the thong. Boy, they are expensive!

ch.12 - "That´s how I fooled the Sex Brigade at Neria B." Immediately a Bowie song popped into my head: "Ground control to Sex Brigade, your circuits dead, there's something wrong." I think those lyrics are better than the original.

ch.12 - what a supremely odd universe I have landed in. I dunno what to make of this place yet, but it sure seems amorphously enticing, offering magical new technology and a supremely erotic atmosphere wherein breasts are softly offered to the table! and this: "It depends on what you view as sex," indeed.

ch.12 - "It´s simple, we disagree over the definition of pleasure," said Avalon, "over the meaning of it in fact. But we want to take over that resort." Ah, yes! You go girls!

BTW, you have subtly painted quite a scene involving naked women. Very subtle, but very descriptive as well.

ch.11 - OMG-I am so far behind! Forgive me. I will catch up! "Elony´s not approved by the FDA, Lanai."" I love this. What kind of fun stuff IS approved by the FDA?

ch.9 - "The girl named Lanai has been sent to study the book of Decadence in more detail with other scribes." Can I borrow that book? This is a great story.

ch.8 - "I love the service here," said Lanai. That's an understatement!

ch.2 - I'm pretty sure I know what the lotion is! Can't wait to find out.

ch.5 - "Have you been thinking of tupperware sex lately?" I'm quite sure I've never heard that expression before!

ch.6 - "Some type of hedonist resort, there shouldn´t be that many in the Bahamas" This whole story is hilarious, but this statement is the most hilarious of them all. I HAVE been to the Bahamas, you know, mostly out islands where anything goes!

ch.7 - "Men are only in charge of security here, their presence is accessory." I like to accessorize!

ch.16 - "She cherished that exhibitionist tendency which was part of her, part of her strength as an adult." Ah yes!

THE ADULT CHANNEL / THE ABU DHABI CHANNEL

Having spent some time in that part of the world, I'm curious to see how you envision an "adult channel" in Abu Dahbi. Should be a hoot.

ch.1 - Wow. I am saving a link to this post. Very helpful. One hot franchise!

ch.1 - A Church of pleasure, devotion to pleasure above all other notions or creeds, you could call it a devotional temple of pleasure. I'm converting!

ch.3 - "small battery operated dental fixtures that could also be used as sex toys" - Your imagination is superb!

ch.4 - "I Don´t trust the water, I drink only Nordic Mist tonic water."

"Because..."

"It´s made by Coca Cola, the perfect soft drink."

Do you get something for product placement? Funny!

ch.6 - lol "Just sexual, I mean sex, wasn´t sure about love, because I thought if you mix sex and love, you might get pregnant."

THE OOL BRODERIE / THE BAHRAIN BRODERIE

ch.13 - Looks very amusing, and makes me want to take along to the beach for a long lingering read.

THE CUBAN RENEGADE

ch.4 - I loved "the Egyptian method to move stones." There is a delightful whiff of Kafka about all this.

**ch.4 - You have my attention!**

**ch.6 -** I found this to be highly erotic.

ch.8 - "This is how we´ll use the bitcoin in this decryptor if anything goes wrong." Ha! I have to see how this plays out.

ch.10 - "you mean using Cuban cigars as currency for Cuba." That would give new meaning to the phrase "my savings went up in smoke".

ch.14 - Great, as usual.

THE SUGAR BABY

ch.9 - I love all the names!!! esp Clarity.

ch.11 - Wow!

ch.14 - Woo!

ch.15 - You have such a unique writing style that turns me on and intrigues me at the same time.

THE OUTDOOR SHOWER

ch.1 - Bravo.

ch.2 - I was thinking of putting in an outdoor shower just the other day. Hadn't thought of having any walls.

somers isle - I'm so bad at DIY that not sure how I'd do the shower or the walls, I'd probably have to go with the bucket of water.

somers isle, to the first reader - apparently, there is both options, not sure what is more popular, here is a couple of designs for you, http://bit.ly/29etROS

another reader - I had an outdoor shower in my previous place, which was out in the country and private. It was a garden arch with grapes growing all over it. Lovely... Also came in handy when we had our little festival...

somers isle - garden arch with grapes does sound lovely, I resonate with anything unprocessed, home out in the country sounds nice, no city noises, privacy is important.

same reader - I made another, closer to our camping area, with walls of salvaged metal gazebo pieces and blue tarp hung behind. (Living in the country for privacy, plus country dump!)

first reader , after some reflection - We live in the woods, but with neighbors nearby. I could probably get by without walls in the summer. In the winter when the leaves are gone I would be inside anyway. I haven't really considered this enough to draw up a plan.

BACKSTORIES AND CHARACTERS

http://oursalon.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sun-on-the-rocks-backstories-and-fresh-items.

great the way you have this constructed, with the linx etc....

A TOTAL OF 100 COMMENTS FROM THE COMMUNITY.

SUN ON THE ROCKS IS CRAFTED BY SOMERS ISLE & LOVESHADE,

crafting each amusement for the community,

one ridiculous situation at a time.

# Chapter Seventeen

The calculation which brought Clarity to Abu Dhabi, through Cayman's Lofty Bank and the Bahamas Hexas Style resort:

At 20% compounded over a period of 20 years (interest reinvested), 26.084 dollars grows to one million dollars (1.000.000 dollars). At 10% compounded, which is approximately the average annual 10 year growth rate of the S&P 500 stock index, 28.654 dollars grows to 500.000 dollars over 30 years, a hefty sum around retirement at age 70, starting to invest at age 40, to pay for living expenses at age 70+, when you won't be able to make as much money then, or even any money at all. The calculation works if you start at 35 and retire at 65.

A Simple Savings Plan:

To save $28.654 by age 40, you can start at age 30 by saving 2.865 dollars every year, 239 dollars ($ 2.865 / 12 months = $239), every month for 10 years. It's a lot of money to put aside every month, but it's worth it.

**Compound Interest Calculator Clarity keeps close, for retirement purposes (savings plan is in the Cayman Air Banner)** :

www.investor.gov/tools/calculators/compound-interest-calculator

**Careers and Professional Designations to consider** :

Chartered Financial Analyst: www.cfainstitute.org/

Certified Financial Planner: www.cfp.net/

**Wealth** :

Think and Grow Rich: Napoleon Hill's classic book on wealth.

How to Make Money (free pdf book from 1859)

**Educational sites, communities, and global news** :

Boston University online: www.bu.edu/online/

Visual Thesaurus: www.visualthesaurus.com/

Visual Global News: www.newsmap.jp/

Our Salon community: oursalon.ning.com/

**Featured universities and other places of interest** :

Bermuda College: www.college.bm/

University College Cayman Islands: www.ucci.edu.ky/

Free online university classes: www.coursera.org/

Ohio State University: www.osu.edu/

University of Arizona: www.arizona.edu/

University of Hawaii: www.hawaii.edu/

The Bellagio Hotel: www.bellagio.com/

