

Sun on the Rocks – The Emotion Scale

Smashwords Edition.

© Copyright 2016 by Somers Isle & Loveshade.

Published by Somers Isle & Loveshade at Smashwords.

U.S. Copyright Registration Number: Tx-8-138-916.

All rights reserved.

'Sun on the Rocks' blogsite:

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

Cover by Tatiana Villa.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

# ABOUT 'Sun on the Rocks':

It's a breezy humor read for adults, specializing in the trivial pursuit. These pleasant fictional amusements with an overtone of humor, follow the adventures of several non competitive good looking women over twenty one years of age, as they become a group of synchronized swimming 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 Emotion Scale: Clarity visits the headquarters of Herbaline in Orange County, a herbal, diet and weight prevention company, known for its aggressive marketing methods. Seeing on a corporate chart that the president of the company, Lyle Matchett, has never been seen and is not shown anywhere in the annual report of the company, she decides to explore the company's premises afterhours, and stumbles upon an area inside the company building labeled emotician office. Emotician Coley Manglove finds Clarity in her office and reveals to her the secretive project that she has been told to carry out by the head of human studies at Herbaline: A chart of emotion that can be used to describe the personality of employees and to elicit sales from a customer, even those reticent to buy Herbaline products.

Clarity and her friend Lanai sign an agreement to work for Herbaline, with their duties undefined and their compensation contingent on dubious aspects of their performance. They board a plane for Cayman where the company has a sales training center, led by Herbaline motivational guru Coleman Cartmel. After looking at the poor sales performance of Clarity and Lanai, Manglove decides to send both of them to the Herbaline language facility in Palm Springs, where a company employee, Ambi Mivel, is being held against her will, because she shows signs of consistent company language refusal of the company's official sales language, 'Herbaspeak'.

At the facility, Clarity gets into the 'antisale' area, the room where Mivel is being held against her will. Clarity realizes that Cartmel is manipulating the emotions of Herbaline employees, using an emotion scale that measures human emotions, assigning a subjective 'emotional tendency' number to each employee based on personality, which is used to promote or criticise the worker. The emotion scale links to a brain wave technology device known as the inducer, to prevent or cut off from employee thinking, any emotion that has to do with negative emotions, like impatience, hostility, animosity or open, overt disagreement with company sales policy. Signing off on a relational agreement with Cartmel, Clarity leaves the facility with the recluse, going to a relational board house in Nevada, 'Honey Ranch', belonging to Herbaline, in order to denounce the illegal policies of Herbaline, leave the place, and find their human blueprint, measured by the emotion scale, and shared with a shady group pulling the strings of Herbaline, known as the privilege club.

# 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 government, 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 on 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 all documented in **The Cayman Air Banner**.

**Boustrophedon:** Large, ancient gray stone inscription filled with Greek letter symbols. In a boustrophedon, letters are 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, 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** , 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 from 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 gray background and a backlit screen. The decryptor can also be used as indicator of calligraphy, 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 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. 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, and including codes for women within the films to get inside the Church of the Holy Flower. 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 Underground Center for Strategic and Symbolic Affairs** : 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 facebook, 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 or more than that, 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.

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 swimming team who works at **the City of Wellington** , a Post-Panamax ocean liner normally docking in Los Angeles, California, which engages in cruises to Acapulco, the Mexican coastline, the Caribbean, and anywhere where the weather is nice, really. Sun on the Rocks 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, auburn 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 means well and unclothes well in general or 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. Because she 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 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. 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 Likeway:** 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 TWELVE

THE EMOTION SCALE

# Chapter One

Orange County, California

Herbaline headquarters parking area

Clarity parked her pink Chevette in the guest parking area of the Herbaline herbal, diet and weight prevention company building in Orange County. Across from her, the magnificent company building made of large glass panels reflecting morning sunshine showed the company logo, a large green clover encircled within a green circle.

Herbaline was publicly quoted in the stock market, known for talking to analysts extensively and treating them particularly well, making the news quite often, as a result of a large spike in sales, amounting to several hundred million dollars. The good results apparently came from a well managed set of people, sales groups and departments, including the person heading the company, a man known as Lyle Matchett, the _strategist_ of the company and the person behind its success. Clarity squinted while looking at the logo, noticing a smaller icon below the clover, something which looked like a small h letter. A woman overseeing the area wearing a security guard uniform, approached her. Her breasts filled her shirt prominently, and she looked attractive, despite the masculine outfit.

"Do you work here?"

"No," said Clarity, "just visiting."

"Can't do that, this building is not open to the public, you have to go to one of the distributors if you're looking for something in particular."

"Just waiting for a friend interviewing for the company."

Clarity slid the keys off the car's contact and lifted her foot from the brake. Heather Camendale, the assistant of her friend Brock Cheevers, the head of human resources at Stevenson, where she worked as teleoperator, was planning to leave the garden equipment company, in order to work at Herbaline. And her interview was scheduled for that day. The security guard, whose name was Corinna, leaned against Clarity's door and she landed her forearm on the Chevette rooftop.

"Can't do that, you have to take a course here, otherwise you'll have to leave."

"A course?" Asked Clarity. Corinna pointed to the building entrance.

"Go to the entrance, you'll see them. Company employees seeking new members to work, people call them _missionaries_ here, they offer leaflets which you can read that will lead you to some of the courses offered."

Intrigued, Clarity nodded and paid ten dollars to leave the car all day in the Herbaline parking lot. She stepped out of her Chevette and walked to the building entrance. The hallway was humming with people talking, busy with several groups of eight or nine people, gathered around a few company employees proselytizing the benefits of Herbaline's weight loss program and their herbal range of products. Herbaline sold nationwide, and was trying to make its way into Starbucks with its line of five herbal teas. One of the _missionaries_ , a young woman wearing a name tag, walked towards Clarity.

"I'm Ivy, would you like to join us?"

The girl with dirty blond hair reaching past her shoulders was twenty two or twenty three at the most. She was wearing jeans and a peach color sweater, showing a gentle and sweet smile.

"Join, for what?"

"Our complimentary course on communication and reality tuning, you might end up working here with us."

Clarity peeked behind Ivy, noticing a large sign to the left of reception, which said _course conference area_. A few people queued in front of the sign, waiting for one of the missionaries to provide them with a name tag and a booklet.

"All right, sure," said Clarity.

She followed Ivy to the conference area queuing line, letting the girl with the peach color sweater tag her with a label showing her name. Within minutes, she sat Clarity in a large amphitheatre, displaying a large projection screen that flashed images of the company building taken by the company's public relations and communications group, and showing the company motto, _making the world healthy_ _with herbal_. The booklet material was based on the works of motivational guru Coleman Cartmel, a man who gave conferences nationwide, talking about notions like _repetition conversations_ , which purportedly allowed one to gain control and full confidence when talking to someone by rehearsing several times what you wanted to say.

Cartmel, the _evangelist_ of the company, turned on the projector and began selling the company's great strength, the relevance it gave to communication. The guru, defined communication as the act of translating for someone else an idea, an object, a query, what Cartmel defined as _the thing_. The thing communicated sometimes flew somewhere else, instead of flying to its intended recipient, as a result of faulty attention from the recipient, or as a result of a distraction from the person communicating. As a rule of thumb, the thing could only fly to the recipient, things flying around elsewhere were to be avoided, because communication then would not happen as intended. The thing also had to include the content of the original message. Any confusion here could also delay communication.

After a few minutes of watching Cartmel and several people from the crowd called to ' _communicate'_ on stage, the lights came off, leaving only the front stage area lit and Cartmel on it. Clarity glanced to the right, seeing a sign which said, _communications lab area_. She looked around and behind her. The crowd area of the amphitheatre was dark, the ushers were staying outside the presentation, behind the closed double doors of the theatre. Clarity got up from her seat and walked slowly to the door under the sign. She pushed the door and it came open. She walked through it quietly and closed the door behind her. The door led to an elevator which offered three floors. She pressed the second floor, which was labeled _emotician practical office._ She'd never heard the word emotician before, was not sure of its meaning.

She found no one in the second floor corridor, and found the door leading to the emotician office. Again, she turned the door knob, and the door opened. She walked inside a room that looked like a doctor's office, with several charts depicting the human body. Lying around sparsely were several comfortable lounge chairs, sound and light equipment. Facing her was a desk with a computer, and behind it, framed on the wall, a chart of the company's valuable employees and flagship products featured a group of eight people and their role. The roles included _long range sales_ , _marketing design_ , _product quality and taste area, business affairs, course development, legal affairs and department matters,_ and _food and lodge area_. The last group added was the _emotician group_ , and it featured a good looking woman wearing a white robe, whose name was Coley Manglove, displaying dirty blond hair and a disarming smile.

Clarity walked closer past the desk and looked at the list of Herbaline products on the left, which had allowed the company to grow profitably over the years. One of them was the _Elony_ beauty lotion, a lotion she'd come across in the Bahamas, sold illegally without FDA approval by Cassandra Scafarel inside the dismantled _Hexas Style_ resort offering personal growth services. Herbaline manufactured Elony and was trying to get FDA approval for it. Glancing at the center of the chart on the wall, she noticed that the photo corresponding to the person at the top of the company, the person heading Herbaline, had been erased. She read the name of the label below: _Lyle Matchett, Herbaline President and guiding executive._

# Chapter Two

Clarity heard the door close and turned around. A good looking woman in her thirties with blondish hair appeared in front of her, wearing a physician white robe, a skirt, and high heels. Clarity saw the label on her white robe, which said _Coley Manglove, emotician_.

"What are you doing here?" said the physician.

"Saw the sign on the door." Clarity pointed to the doorway. She didn't quite know why she said that, but she sensed that it made sense, although she had never come across the word emotician. Who exactly was Manglove and what did she do at Herbaline?

"Are you coming for the experiment on arousal?"

Coley spoke to her so matter-of-factly and calmly, and she looked so at ease with herself, that Clarity nodded without realizing it, the back of her mind registering that it was past normal office hours for regular employees of Herbaline.

"Yes," she stated.

"Good, come with me, we'll go to the lab, it's only twenty minutes from here."

She took Clarity by her forearm, and guided her to a van with a driver.

They drove into the afternoon traffic until they reached a shop open to the public, which said _Aedes shop_ , _beauty care esthetician for Herbaline_. Coley pressed the palm of her hand on Clarity's back and led her to a room painted white, filled with a wide lounge table covered in soft cushion. A pleasant odor, almost scentless, filled the room. The emotician closed the door, leaving Clarity face to face with her. The good looking physician was in her early thirties, and that turned on Clarity immediately, she liked the idea of being around a slightly older, experienced woman.

"How long have you felt arousal without touching yourself?"

Clarity had not mentioned anything to Coley about her preference to feel and look at her pleasure, turning her awareness to her own body, instead of touching and masturbating. How could she possibly know that?

The question took Clarity off guard.

"About eighty days," said Clarity. Her own answer stirred her clitoris, which rose to attention. The emotician didn't react, and moved towards the table.

"Please take off your clothes," said Coley.

Clarity noticed a chart on the wall depicting a woman, and what looked like channels of energy running vertically along her body. She noticed a line pointing to the bum cheeks of the woman, and walked closer to read what it said, reading the words _second flower_.

"We call the back of the bum of the woman the second flower here," said Coley. She grabbed the clothes of Clarity and placed them on a chair.

"I'll do a general check first, then you can move to the table and lie down, the monitoring will take about three or four hours."

Coley placed Clarity on a weight scale, noting her weight and height. She ran her hand along her chest and moved to her belly, stopping there. Then, she looked down at her pubic area, and ran her hands along her venus mound.

"Do you like showing your naked body to me?"

"Yes," said Clarity. A wave of a warm electrical current rushed to her head.

Clarity began to feel aroused and relaxed at the same time. She turned on her stomach, lying face down on the ergonomic table cushion. She grabbed the edges of the table with both hands and turned her head sideways. Coley placed a warm towel over her back, and pressed her hands warmly on her. She lifted the towel towards her back, leaving her round bum in view.

Coley walked slowly to the front of the table, and pulled back the long auburn hair of Clarity. She touched the shoulders of Clarity with her hands, shaking them slightly.

The emotician slid her hands from Clarity's thighs to her bum, and she grabbed one of the cheeks loosely. She held the cheek and shook it several times, noticing the muscle was relaxed. She spanked the cheek a few times, and kept it loose. Clarity felt an indescribable sense of inner body awareness and arousal flow inside her.

"I'm just placing a nice probe inside you, it'll feel very good, simply go along with your pleasure, and when the inner heat and current turn into a thin river of arousal reaching your head, think of the word bliss."

Clarity felt the arousal reaching a peak level. Her muscles contracted and she let out a moan of pleasure.

"Ivy told me about you, she went through this as well, don't worry baby, you're safe here."

Coley breathed out and caressed the back muscles of Clarity. Her awareness was very present, and at the same time, her sense of bliss pervaded every single part of her body.

"Relax dear."

Coley placed two fingers near the eyes of Clarity, moving them gently to the nose and the mouth. The ring muscles were working in tune, balanced like a musical scale. Clarity was in good health.

A wave of bliss entered the mind of Clarity, she was connecting with herself, the universe, nature, and her exquisite sense of arousal. She felt a deep connection of arousal with Coley, and opened her legs to show her her bum. Coley ran her fingers along her back. Her temple began pulsating in slow movements of expansion and contraction, blooming and protecting her body. She was in heat.

"Orgasmic bliss, let go of any remaining inhibition or barrier between you and your pleasure, relax and let the bliss stay in the crown of your head."

Clarity panted a few seconds and felt a second wave of pleasure flow inside her.

"Good, baby, you're going to be in ecstasy for a few minutes, nothing wrong with it, simply let go and feel the heat in your body."

Hearing those words, Clarity melted, feeling a slight sense of command in Coley's voice, at the same time matching or getting rid of internal barriers coming from her subconscious. A rush of orgasmic energy entered her mind and a flow running from head to toe, began moving within her. The rush was so deep, that all of the muscles of her face became numb, charged magnetically and sexually.

"Good, baby, your mommy is here, taking care of you, open up to your mommy."

Clarity felt inner streams of orgasmic and slightly vibrating energy running up her body. The voice of Coley was so soothing to her, she felt safe. Coley reached between the legs of Clarity, sliding her index and middle fingers between both cheeks.

"Your arousal is like an antenna, it knows where good and protective things for you are. It can lead you to safety if you feel lost anywhere."

Clarity remained in orgasmic bliss for about three hours. Eventually, Coley ran her hand across her back, reaching for her watch, letting Clarity know that the monitoring was finished. The teleoperator opened her eyes, stepping off the table slowly. Clarity was shaking slightly, feeling a buzz in her head. Coley placed her hands on hers, calming her. Clarity breathed deeply and looked into the emotician's eyes.

"What do you do here exactly?"

"We do orgasmic research, monitor the orgasm."

"How did mine look?"

"Did you cum?"

"I'm cumming now, just looking at you, my head is so warm, tingling."

"It'll take a while for you to calm down, a few hours, maybe, you were in bliss, that's what you're feeling."

"Bliss is a physical state?"

"Not many know it is, yes, it is, and you can feel like that every day."

"What exactly is bliss?"

"It's your pleasure reaching sort of a peak," said Coley.

After pleasure, there was bliss, the thought intrigued Clarity, who thought that bliss was a notion, an idea, but not a physical sensation. Her own experience was beginning to show something quite different. She felt a tingling under her skin. Coley gave Clarity a pass to attend the _Beverly Hills Hotel_ poolside the next day. She recommended spending the following morning there and resting, without doing any particular activity for a few days, until the body registered the sensations fully and returned to normal. Clarity donned her clothes, while Coley went outside to an adjacent room to talk to her boss. Intrigued, she peeked through the keyhole, looking at the results of her orgasm on a large screen monitoring hundreds of features in her body. A face emerged from the left part of the screen, a man named Mattelson Stive, in his late thirties, sitting in an office table, explaining Herbaline course material to another man sitting in a different room, the company's motivational guru, Coleman Cartmel, that Clarity had seen earlier.

Stive was talking from the company's official headquarters in Georgetown, in the Cayman Islands, and in front of him, was a new agreement with Cartmel which involved teaching and evaluating the employees of Herbaline in charge of carrying out sales work, the core area of Herbaline. A chart showing the results of Clarity's orgasmic monitoring showed onscreen and Coley lit up the relevant parts using a wireless wand.

"Her body shows a good sense of health, the ring muscle spirals show seven octaves and colors, it's all singing properly, in the lower octave, reaching high pitched, acute frequency in the crown area. Vertical spiral copies the genital, she remained aroused and swollen for three hours, she shows proper attunement with the pineal gland."

Stive took a few notes, and asked for some additional facts from Coley.

"The mouth was nice and relaxed, she is a good candidate to work here at Herbaline, somewhat submissive, like Ivy, very sociable, she likes to please others and she has a good disposition, smiles slightly less than Ivy."

After the conference with Stive, Coley came back and gave Clarity a pamphlet, with some recommendations about what to do after an arousal session. These included not driving a car or any vehicle, slowing down the regular pace of daily living, ensuring your memory worked all right, so that you remembered everything you'd done before the session, and also noting that the sense of arousal lowered back to normal.

"Stay here for the night," said Coley, "we got a spare room, we'll drive you to the Beverly Hills hotel poolside tomorrow, you should rest there the rest of the day. You can get the results of the test in a few days."

Clarity liked the idea of getting some sun in a nice pool. She nodded.

"All right," said Clarity, intrigued by the generous offer.

# Chapter Three

The following day, Clarity had a good breakfast compliment of the _Aedes_ beauty care shop owned by Herbaline, and she read the pamphlet given by Manglove for those who took part in arousal sessions. _General tingling under the skin should disappear after a day or two, if the sensation remains, please see one of our beauty care specialists or emoticians._ Around ten in the morning, Clarity stepped out of the shop and took one of the Herbaline vans to the Beverly Hills hotel. The general tingling under her skin had disappeared, and her thinking was back to normal. The pool side of the Beverly Hills hotel and the bar and pool area was booked by Herbaline for the whole day. Regular hotel customers had a small area for them, and reception was telling them the event was just an exception, and that they could go to the _Pink Flamingo_ poolside instead, if they wanted more space or less people around.

The poolside barman, Fred, served a chilled apricot juice to Clarity, while she sat on the bar bench, watching a crew hired by Herbaline connect thick cables and cameras, getting ready to shoot the ad for a new company herbal lotion, ' _she is there'_ , meaning that the lotion, or the woman wearing it, made an impression on those around her. Fred had been working at the Beverly Hills hotel for about five years, in various positions, reception, concierge, coffee shop, and maintenance. After finding a book on how to prepare cocktails and noticing his friends liked what he prepared for them when they came home for a barbecue or a chill out lunch or dinner, Fred decided to give bartending a go.

The barman pointed to a group of people brought in by the Herbaline van from its Orange County building. Some of the faces were familiar to Fred because they came every week. According to him, several people who came to relax at the pool had been living in the Herbaline building for months. Rumor was that there was a confidential project being put in place by the company, and that the official head of the outfit, Lyle Matchett, did not exist.

"Months, living in a company building, you know, that's kind of strange."

"What do you think is going on?" Asked Clarity.

"Someone else may be pulling the strings in that place, it's not a normal place."

He turned and glanced at a group of several people who were talking about the ad. One of the men in the group, a former car salesman, came to the pool every four or five days and usually had a drink at the bar, every time giving a tip to Fred of five dollars more than the previous time. After several weeks of this routine, Fred was getting about fifty dollars to prepare a drink from the former salesman. He showed Clarity a crisp one hundred dollar bill, which he took out of the cash drawer. The day before, a group of four Herbaline employees had chipped in that one hundred dollar bill. Herbaline was a place where the workers made money, and that was something suspicious to Fred.

Clarity pulled aside the former car salesman, Grohn Jameson, inviting him to a drink prepared by Fred.

"Oh, you went to the emotician lab, I've never been there." Clarity commented on the fact that there was no portrait of the company head, the current president and general manager, Lyle Matchett, available to those wanting to work for the company.

"Have you seen Lyle Matchett?" She asked.

"No, not many people have seen him, he's very busy."

"You're ok with that?"

"Yeah, some things are confidential at Herbaline, you just go on with your business and no one bothers you." Clarity stayed with Grohn exchanging small talk and the man invited her to the poolside for a drink. All the lounge chairs were taken except four. Grohn took two of them and offered one to Clarity. They exchanged experiences, listening to some mellow music. After a couple of hours, Clarity probed Grohn for a question that was hovering around in her mind.

"Why are you working in this place, at Herbaline?" Grohn looked away, then pulled his lounge chair closer.

"Good perks, I need a job, this place works."

A woman dressed in a flowery dress, Susan, a former head of sales at a small wireless and cable communications company, approached Grohn. She sat on one of the remaining chairs and glanced briefly at Clarity. Grohn nodded, explaining that Clarity had been to the emotician lab. It was ok to share information about the company with her. Susan pointed to the empty lounge chair.

"Ambi is not coming today," said Susan, "she refuses to go through company procedure and be involved with this ad and the new project, she just wants to leave the company. Stive called in person from Cayman the other day, to tell her she had to go back to the Orange County building. I think the van took her back, that's why she's not at the pool today. The driver said this poolside chair should remain empty." Grohn frowned, but wasn't completely surprised by hearing the news.

"Yeah, well, if she didn't follow the procedures, that's normal."

"Grohn, I'm not sure she'll be able to leave this place."

Susan showed him an article, taken from a lesser known news site on the web, saying that there was an _information gathering order_ placed on Herbaline from the bureau of business legitimacy and the federal trade commission, which questioned the business practices of the company.

"Right, and?"

"This is not good, Grohn, I'm not sure about Matchett, it's sort of strange we never see him or his picture. I think the rumors may be true. There may be no Lyle Matchett, there just may be this thing people call the _hierarchy hemisphere_ ruling Herbaline and what it does, and deciding about all the people working there." Herbaline logo included a snow globe, and Susan thought this secretive group known as the hierarchy hemisphere completed the globe, making a full sphere.

"Just want a job, Susan, it doesn't change much," said Grohn, "this is not a bad place, gives out a lot of perks." Susan ignored the answer and lowered her shades.

Around seven PM, the crew filming the ad left the hotel and people began to leave the pool in small groups assigned to several Herbaline shuttles. Grohn said to Clarity they had to go back to the Herbaline building, which is where they were staying to complete surveys requested by the company.

"You're staying in their building?" Asked Clarity.

"Yeah, been there a few weeks, hoping for permanent employment, there's a trial and testing period, filling out surveys and interpreting them, then the company decides if they wanna hire you. You coming?"

"I'll think about it," said Clarity. She texted her friend Lanai, letting her know that she should meet her at the Beverly Hills poolside right then and there. She wanted to be sure someone else knew where she was and what she was doing at Herbaline.

The driver of the last Herbaline shuttle showed up at seven forty five in the evening to do one last round at the pool before getting back to the Orange County building. He had received clear instructions to leave the pool with anyone who had talked to the prospective group of employees. He walked towards Clarity, who was the only person remaining in the pool, and gave her a brief head to toe look.

"You coming?"

"Yeah," said Clarity. Clarity followed the driver and stepped into the van, followed by Lanai, who hopped in at the last minute, after insistently telling the hotel receptionist that she was a friend of one of the people in the van. Clarity breathed deeply with a sense of relief.

"You made your way here," said Clarity.

"I was finishing an article on Mayan and Egyptian similarities in culture and pyramid construction, that Miss Marples wants to put on the Malibu library page."

The driver slid the door closed with a loud bang and left the familiar pick-up area of the Beverly Hills hotel. They were the only two people in the van.

"Where are we headed?" Asked Lanai.

"Orange County."

Noticing that the driver lifted his head when Clarity began talking, the Malibu teleoperator stopped talking and began texting Lanai about what she knew from her poolside conversation. Her friend read the messages and remained silent but looked at Clarity somewhat apprehensively, like saying to Clarity that she was getting her into a new kind of trouble and she should have known of it before getting into a van heading to a company building in the evening. Clarity dismissed her friend's slightly worried look and rested her head comfortably on the van seat, watching the evening traffic along the four oh five highway. She wasn't completely comfortable with all that she had seen in the past two days, but she wanted to know what Herbaline did under the official cover of a health company.

# Chapter Four

The driver of the van dropped Clarity and Lanai in front of the Herbaline building during the evening, around eight o'clock. The company entrance hall was nearly empty. A security guard, Ivy dressed in security guard gear, showed both of them to the sign up sheet at reception.

"You also work as security here?" Asked Clarity.

"Yes, the evening usually, part time only though, all prospective employees are in their room already, welcome to Herbaline."

They took an elevator and reached the second floor. Ivy took them along a corridor showing a persian carpet design, and stopped in one of the rooms, labeled, _floritician decor_.

"This is your room, our floritician used to live here, she was our specialist on flowers, which is a line of products complementary to our herbal range of products. Flowers came after our first herbal cleanser product, _Glutafoam_ , with glutamic acid, to give skin a nice, matte finish. You can go to the emotician terrace on the second floor tomorrow, Coley will be there to speak with you and tell you what she told you she would tell you."

"She didn't tell you?"

"She did, but it's confidential," said Ivy, "anything pertaining to arousal is confidential here."

Clarity nodded, thinking arousal was very confidential indeed at Herbaline. Lanai nodded as well, somewhat intrigued. They opened the door and found two beds and a light, take out dinner, which included roast beef and salad. They ate dinner and went to bed, wondering what Manglove would tell them the next day. The following day, Ivy brought them a good breakfast around eight thirty in the morning.

"You can show up at nine thirty to speak with Coley," said Ivy, "she is working already."

After eating their breakfast, they walked to the company terrace on the second floor, a nice area filled with a large desk, some furniture, a few odd items, and flowerpots laid out side by side on the balcony. A nice breeze was flowing, and the sun was up, bathing the terrace with its morning warmth. Clarity walked towards Manglove, followed by Lanai. The terrace door panels closed behind them, showing the four-leaf shamrock logo of Herbaline meeting its two halves, surrounded by a circle that looked like a halo. The emotician was sitting on her desk, busy looking at some of the results which came out of the various surveys filed by those prospective employees who wanted to be part of Herbaline.

"You found your way back here," said Manglove.

"Yes, I thought I would come back, I was wondering if you had the results of my monitoring, you said the results would be in."

Manglove inquired about Clarity's friend, and Clarity explained that Lanai was a good friend who worked as a librarian. The emotician ignored Clarity and began paying attention to Lanai.

"Oh, very good, you like books, what about booklets?"

"I like booklets," said Lanai. Manglove asked the librarian from Hawaii whether she would be willing to do an arousal test like Clarity. Lanai nodded, unsure of what it meant. The emotician pointed to a chair a few feet from her desk, and told Lanai to undress. Lanai took off her pants and panties, then her shirt and bra. Looking at the naked body of the librarian, Manglove returned to her seat and grabbed several pages which had the report on Clarity.

The arousal of Clarity was resolutely healthy, she was able to validate arousal very well, the only thing which was perplexing Manglove is that Clarity had hit ninety seven out of one hundred in arousal, when the mean or average level, even for people doing the arousal test, was fifty three.

"You're very healthy, you know," said Manglove, "never seen ninety seven with anyone taking the test here, I've hit eighty four and I have a pretty healthy sex drive."

"Yeah, thank you, I like my body, it's very nice. Now, can you explain what happened with this tingling, there came to be too much tingling under my skin at one point, and I'm not sure how it came to be."

"Do you feel anything now?"

"I don't, I feel pretty normal, but I like to know when my tingling arises."

"It arises when you're aroused," said Manglove. Clarity tapped on the emotician's desk, slightly annoyed by the roundabout answer.

"All right, if you don't want to share that, that's fine. What do you do here, Coley, what are you working on? There are rumors that there is a confidential project under way at Herbaline."

"If I tell you, you'll have to work here for a while, both of you."

Clarity noticed a small Herbaline snowglobe that Manglove grabbed, which began to show green clover snow flakes. A semisphere, thought Clarity. The rumor spread by Susan on the herbal company came to her mind.

"I'd like to call my own company first," said the teleoperator, "otherwise they might miss me at work."

"You'll make plenty of money here. You can't call anyone, though, there are no phones in this terrace," said Manglove, "you'll have to call from your phone." She pointed to a sign across the room, which looked like a traffic sign, which depicted a large cell phone and a red bar across it.

"This is a wi-fi-free area," said Manglove, "it's a conversation area." She pointed to another sign facing the first, showing the familiar silhouettes of a man shown at the entrance of public bathrooms. Two of these simple shapes were depicted talking to each other, with one caption saying _hi_ , and extending one arm, and the other, from the other silhouette, showing a more elaborate caption which said ' _hello, I'm more talkative than you'_.

Clarity walked slowly along the emotician's table, and reached a piece of wooden furniture, which had a Graham Bell original phone from the twenties on top. She could tell that communication was important at Herbaline, and that was confirmed when Clarity saw a booklet on Manglove's desk, labeled ' _Communication booklet for two or more people_ '. Clarity lifted the rudimentary ear piece. The old phone device did not work, but something, namely the old phone being there, told Clarity that there was another phone in the room, one that worked. She opened several drawers of the chest and in the third, she found a cell phone that she'd seen a few times at a cell phone memorabilia online exhibit, the Nokia 3310, a phone from the year two thousand, with a green color cover matching the color of the company.

"This is a phone," said Clarity. She tapped on the crystal screen of the device. Manglove lifted her eyebrows.

"If you know how to use it, you can use it," said Manglove. Clarity turned on the phone. The device was working, the battery was working properly.

Listening to the conversation between Clarity and Manglove, Lanai stood there naked and her clitoris rose to attention, feeling a sudden sense of apprehension and arousal at the same time. Her clitoris had never responded like this before, to an immediate, but not overwhelming sense of danger. The sensation was not unpleasant, simply different from her normal sensation of arousal.

Clarity grabbed the Nokia cell phone and dialed the number of Stevenson garden products. Flake answered the phone and she asked to speak with Brock.

"Hello, Brock, hi, it's Clarity, yeah, everything is going all right, just calling to let you know that I won't be coming back to work at Stevenson for a while, two or three months I think. No, I'm not going to work for another company, what makes you think that, just learning some stuff. Can you fill a leave of absence for me?"

Brock began explaining that she would have to fill a leave of absence request and give it to him or Heather, but Clarity was not in a mood for paperwork. She asked to speak with Stevenson counsel Lareya Marquez, who was more understanding.

"Sure, no problem," said Lareya, "I'll tell Mr. Stevenson, I'll send a leave of absence document to your email at work."

Lanai raised her hand, looking at Manglove.

"Can I do the same, I work at the library in Malibu, I need my job again in a few months." Manglove nodded, pointing Lanai to a weight scale.

Lanai stepped on the weight scale, thinking that the head of the library, Mrs. Marples would not be pleased with her leaving her job. Fortunately, Lanai was finished putting all the information together on the Egypt and Maya culture exhibit, and everything was now available on the Malibu library web page. Manglove got up from her chair and walked towards the librarian. She ran her hands between the breasts of Lanai and noticed the librarian's nipples becoming quite hard. She lowered her hand and brushed the lower lips of Clarity's friend, including the shaft of her clitoris and the tip of it, which was slightly more protruding than Clarity's clitoris. Lanai was open-jawed, a warm tingling sensation reached her head.

"You can call after her," said Manglove, pointing to Clarity.

Lanai stepped off the weight scale and grabbed her panties, wishing the doctor's exam had gone on a few more minutes.

"All right, very good, I can tell you what I do now," said Manglove, unfolding a two foot long by one foot sheet in front of her.

Clarity lowered her head and looked closely at the piece of fine paper, it was titled _chart of emotions_. It was a graph filled with words describing emotions in eight different areas. The chart showed a list of emotions positioned according to various attributes, _positive versus negative emotion_ , _arousal, or assertion emotion versus calm_ , or _passive,_ emotion, _high and low sense of control_ , and _preventing, hindering, or impeding_ emotion, versus _conducive or contributive_ emotion. The teleoperator counted over one hundred emotions listed. She was particularly curious about the _emotion of arousal_ , which was placed in the aroused, positive emotion, preventive, or hindering area. _Feeling orgasm_ , a separate emotion in the chart, was roughly in the same good emotion area, but in a different quadrant, the contributive or conducive one.

"Arousal is a hindering emotion?" Asked Lanai.

"It can be, depending on how you react to it," said Manglove.

Clarity said nothing, simply observing Manglove looking at the chart.

"As emotician here at Herbaline, I'm a specialist of emotion, I understand basic and sophisticated emotion," added Manglove. "I'd like both of you to help me with this chart, we need to complete it, and you can help me do that, I think, once you understand our basic sales method."

Ivy knocked on the door and came in, noticing Lanai dressed in her underwear, bra in hand.

"Hi, you're getting your first check?" Lanai nodded, her nipples still showing a very healthy arousal. Manglove's assistant took a good look at the nipples, walking in front of the Hawaiian girl, catching a view of her Brazilian shave.

"Mr. Stive would like to talk to you, Ms. Manglove," said Ivy. A phone call beep on Skype confirmed what Ivy was saying and interrupted their conversation. Stive wanted to talk to Manglove about one of the employees working at Herbaline, a person known as employee clr, who wasn't able to be at the pool of the Beverly Hills hotel the previous day, the woman known as Ambi. Manglove excused herself and left the emotician room, stepping into the video-conference area to pick up the call on Skype, sending Ivy for several documents that Clarity and Lanai had to sign to begin their work at Herbaline.

While Manglove took the conference call and spoke with Stive, Clarity lunged on the emotician's computer, finding a _chart of emotion_ icon on the desktop. She double-clicked on it, and a file opened, listing all employees of Herbaline. One of the rows stood out in red, it listed the name of Ambi Mivel, and one of the attributes her record displayed sounded somewhat strange to Clarity, it said _employee showed signs of_ _consistent language refusal_ , abbreviated as ' _CLR'_ , _not engaged in sales work, not pleased with Herbaline sales course, will be assigned to the sales refusal correction room for a few weeks_. Ambi Mivel was known as ' _Employee CLR'_ at Herbaline, a company which studied way too much the way its employees acted and revealed their personality.

# Chapter Five

An assistant of Manglove, Dwayle, came into the room, bringing a tray filled with food ordered from the cafeteria area of Herbaline. While the waiter began serving a platter of salad with tomato and balsamic vinegar to Manglove, Clarity noticed a pen drive to the side of the laptop. She inserted the pen drive into the USB port and copied the employee file of Herbaline and a second file listing the occupation of top employees working there. Beside the laptop, near a small metal box filled with business cards, there was a packet of several pen drives, one of them, the same nondescript gray color as the pen drive Clarity was using. She grabbed the pen drive, reaching under the plastic casing and placed the information storage device where the first pen drive was located. She inserted the first pen drive in her pocket, and caught the waiter closing the lid of the salad platter, before he lifted his eyes towards her.

The waiter gave Clarity a pouch filled with toiletries, some of them made by Herbaline. He called to Clarity's attention that the flight to Cayman was leaving in a few hours, and that she would have to be ready at the transportation entrance of the building, in the back of Herbaline building, around four in the afternoon.

"What flight?" Asked Clarity.

"Ms. Manglove has informed me that you are going to Cayman with prospective employees recruited for the company, to go over some sales material the company has been preparing. You'll have to retrieve the boarding passes at the business center area, on the ground floor, connect to the boardroomside website, typing triple L, dot boardroomside.com."

"Triple L, the site is not part of the world wide web?"

"No, it follows a new protocol, sttp, triple L stands called the lawgiving lateral channel, the third l is the l of channel."

"So I type sttp, colon, two backslashes, and then LLL.boardroomside.com," said Clarity.

"Yes, that's right," said the waiter, pushing the food cart forward towards the adjacent room.

Clarity nodded and left the room, heading for the conference room of Herbaline, taking the central elevator, an elevator which skipped a floor and took employees directly to the ground level. Before entering the amphitheater past the lounge and glass hallway of the company, Clarity found a business center and a row of several computers aligned. She sat in front of one of the computers, and inserted the pen drive in the USB port, opening the file which had the records of Herbaline director-level employees. The only record available was that of Stive, and Clarity noticed that the former clerk honed his cash counting skills at a cost cutting department store, and that he had received a shady online doctorate in human studies, having presented a thesis titled, _on the proper channelling of pleasure in the body_.

Herbaline had a sales training center in Cayman, in a posh building known as the _Midland Civic Center_ on Elgin Avenue, between the _government administration building_ and the _department of tourism_. Clarity connected to the lawgiving lateral channel website, LLL.boardroomside.com, noticing the sttp:// protocol label in front of it. She searched the web and found a single link relevant to the new message format and transmission method devised by SARPA, an unofficial non governmental body named _Sales Advanced Research Projects Agency_ , explaining sttp://, the new protocol, stood for _sales text transfer protocol_.

A fill-in sheet was enabled in one of the web tabs labeled Herbaline multilevel travel schedule. She filled in the information on the short questionnaire, pertaining to her and Lanai, and printed two boarding passes providing access to a plane leaving Orange County airport.

Clarity felt the warm cheek of Ivy leaning against her own cheek.

"Got the boarding passes?"

"Yes," said Clarity.

"Come with me, your friend is ready to sign the employee agreement of Herbaline. Two of our lawyers are present."

Ivy led Clarity by the hand, like a girlfriend would, to the official legal area of the company, the LRO, or _Law Resource Office_ , a luxurious room with high ceilings reaching ten or twelve feet, slightly higher than a regular ceiling. Clarity noticed Lanai walking calmly a few feet behind her, followed by Grohn and Susan, who were discussing the implications of signing the company labor agreement. Two former employees of well-known human resource firms, Horn Ferry, and Svencer Stuarb, worked there as administrative assistants, and were placing a copy of the contract in front of several intricate wooden chairs. One of the human resource employees, Nahan Trimm, handed the agreement to Clarity and pointed to one of the chairs.

"You have twenty eight minutes to read the agreement and two minutes to make additional herbal tea in the teapot over there, a total of half an hour, a reasonable moment of reflection for all of you present here."

"Why the tea?" Asked Clarity.

"In order to enjoy signing the agreement," said Nahan.

Clarity began sipping some Herbaline tea, diligently handed over by Ivy, and read the relevant part of the agreement, the part regarding compensation, an area contingent upon several things. Among those things influencing compensation were performance, sales, and trademark exposure of Herbaline to the public. The small letter print showed a paragraph explaining conditions of dismissal and promotion within the company. _The employee will not receive compensation if he or she engages in Herbaline language refusal. In these cases, the employee may be sent to the antisale room, and corporate subsequent areas, where proper linguistic adjustments will be made, according to the official sales manual of the company. The diligent employee will add its name on the guest list of the manual, a book of indefinite length._

Clarity lifted her hand, waving at Nahan.

"The antisale room? Could you explain what it is?"

"A place that will engage your sales potential to good fruition for you and the company."

"For you and the company, in the company of women," added Ivy, who was diligently preparing a cookie for Clarity, behind the back of Clarity, that the Malibu teleoperator could dip in her tea.

"There should be an explanation of this antisale room," said Clarity.

"There is but it is in the sales glossary, which is part of the sales manual, but you can have access to it, only if you sign the agreement to work here," added Nahan.

Clarity glanced to her left and saw Grohn and Lanai signing the agreement. Susan was leaving the room after handling her own agreement to Nahan. Clarity opted for signing the agreement and heading for Cayman. Clarity wondered whether Herbaline offered a pool for employees at Cayman, or whether _Midland Civic Center_ residents preferred to swim in the Caribbean sea. The Herbaline Civic Center boasted a Caribbean beach front residence similar to a four or five star resort, hopefully a good place to get some sunshine for her bumline, and to get rid of her tan lines.

# Chapter Six

The 737 of Cayman Airways brought in from Miami international airport showed a distinct set of tropical assortment colors in its tail, reminiscent of a fruit basket. Clarity climbed up the airport staircase in the back of the plane, followed by Lanai, observing a truck driving past the left wing of the plane towing a trailer which was labeled _Herbaline course work material_. The material was uploaded into the plane through a conveyor belt leading to the luggage area of the plane.

Clarity sat down in one of the back rows of the plane, liking the idea of being able to watch all passengers seated in front of her. Two hostesses dressed in Herbaline uniform, a grayish skirt and matching shirt, with a green scarf, walked elegantly past the passengers, all of them, new and prospective Herbaline employees, who had signed the agreement offered by the company. One of the hostesses stopped in front of Clarity, offering her a badge of the company, a small pin, with the B letter in green clearly on it, B for beginner, _beginner at sales_ , according to the hostess.

"What type of course work does the truck carry?" Asked Clarity, looking out the window. The hostess, hired on a temp basis, offered Clarity a magazine titled High Rise Apartment, featuring naked women, shown against ample, sunny, glass window background of what clearly was one of the floors of a lush fifteen floor skyscraper.

"It's the coursework used by our sales guru Coleman Cartmel. He is a well known authority on sales, with plenty of tutorials on YouTube, living between the islands of Fidji, the Bahamas, and Cayman." She handed Clarity a booklet, labeled with the number 055.

"This is your beginner course work, our basic booklet, all sales for you at Herbaline begin and end with this booklet."

Clarity read the title, ' _Public relations and communications booklet for the poor sales person aspiring to a lush lifestyle_.' The hostess looked at a list she had in front and handed a variation of the same booklet to Lanai, one labeled with the number 056 entitled ' _Public relations and communications booklet for the follower of the poor sales person aspiring to a lush lifestyle_.' Clarity looked closely at her own leaflet and found a white square placed top right, with the words HTSA, _Herbaline Testing Service for Adults_. The word promotion was conspicuously absent from the booklet, replaced by the expression _gaining agreement_ , agreement with Herbaline supervisors, and with other employees or customers. Public relations was defined as a principled social science, with laws and idiomatic principles, like any science, derived from language, instead of numbers.

The flight landed late in the evening at Owen Roberts International airport in Cayman. Herbaline paid for access to a rented parking airport slot for its planes, next to the slot of the _Virgin Caribbean Airways_ 747 flown in from Heathrow every week.

The driver of the shuttle leading them to the _Midland Civic Center_ , picked them up off the tarmac of the airport, forfeiting the passenger transfer vehicle, a luxury limousine stationed there only for Manglove and Stive, or for company workers having a tenure in the company of more than four years. The shuttle driver boasted a large Herbaline badge. He was the same driver that Clarity had seen at the Beverly Hills hotel pool. His name was Fletcher Conahue, and he seemed unusually jovial, and genuine, showing a distinct pattern of friendliness that was not noticeable when he drove through highway four oh five, in Los Angeles, to Orange County. Clarity shared her observation with Lanai.

"It's just being here, I think, that makes him so happy," said Lanai, "it's the same driver we saw in Los Angeles. Maybe it's the weather."

"It can't be just the weather, he has been here before, he's used to the weather, his badge says, weathered six years of Cayman Island weather."

"Maybe the weather makes him nice. Not sure, yeah."

Fletcher drove them to the giant entrance of the Midland Civic Center, a resort and educational center spanning three hundred ample rooms for its guests. They were led to a cocktail area offering, and Nahan, the official lawyer in charge of human resource affairs, gave them a survey titled _adaptable relational ability_. Their room on the second floor of the five floor building included a safety box made of scandium, as shown on a bronze etching below the three letter combination area of the box. The manufacturer of the box was _Caribbean Alloy Limited_ , a company based in the Cayman Islands, in Nelson Quay, belonging to a prominent businessman of the island, _Buddha Talk_ , that Clarity knew from a previous trip. A vertical etching on the scandium box, read _Ad Iudicium_ , an expression which meant _common sense_ , as per the explanation written below, in English.

The next day, Clarity and Lanai put on their swimsuits and went out to the Center's pool, which was built right near the Caribbean sea. Half of the people in the pool were naked. Clarity took off her swimsuit and dove naked into the warm Caribbean shore. She loved the Caribbean and enjoyed swimming naked with the sun bathing her skin. After a few moments hesitation, Lanai took off her bikini and followed Clarity. They took two lounge chairs and laid out in the sun without any clothes.

"This is good," said Clarity, feeling the warm sunshine dry the salty water droplets.

Ivy came by forty minutes later around lunch time.

"Time to get back to your room, got to do some work."

After lunch, a maid came into their room and filled out a survey with Lanai and Clarity, asking them to define and look for the wording of common sense, the meaning of it.

"Language is important at Herbaline," said the maid.

"Common sense is just something you do that makes sense, sometimes practical, sometimes following what others you trust say about that," said Lanai. The maid looked at Lanai, and filled in her own remarks on the comment. She glossed over a second page and stared at Clarity, eliciting a response.

"Common sense, with or without the Latin inscription on the box?" Asked Clarity.

"With it," said the maid.

"Then, somewhat of a definition might be, wisdom with a touch of understanding, the understanding that our Herbaline agreement stands as long as the stay here is not permanent, and is also pleasant."

The good looking maid kept staring at Clarity, noticing the look of Clarity was firm, quite feminine, and firm. After jotting down a few checks and balances on her pad, all coming out of or leading to the word level-headed, she placed the pad on a round table meant to carry out and fill out surveys.

"Very good, now I'll do the room with you, and check out both of you naked. Got to check your arousal, Manglove said so."

"That's nice of you," said Lanai, scared by the expression which had come out of her mind so immediately.

"Coley gave you a soft brush for the hair in Los Angeles, didn't she?"

"True, it was pretty useful to comb my hair," said Lanai. Clarity observed the maid somewhat sheepishly. She checked the toiletries pouch that the waiter in Orange County had given her, and took out a soft brush made of hard plastic.

"You can use it to comb my bum cheeks," said Lanai unabashedly. The maid liked the answer and went along.

"Very good, I'll get you ready for the sales course tomorrow," said the maid.

# Chapter Seven

The course of Herbaline on sales proficiency ' _feeling affinity with our sales work_ ' involved notions normally not associated with sales work, things like shedding the word emotion or emotional or e-motion, or words coming from the word emotion, and replacing them, with a better sense of logic or thinking. Clarity entered the ' _Sales Truth_ ' business room of the Midland civic center. Coleman Cartmel, the motivational guru of the company, was handling loose leaf index cards, corresponding to the presentation someone else had prepared for him. The conference room was filled with former salespeople who held positions at prominent companies, positions pertaining to promotion, publicity, digital marketing, sales, and distribution, avenues of bringing the dollar to the bottom line of any company once the product or service was ready to be sold.

Clarity followed the usher of the business room, a man dressed in the uniform of a bottled water delivery man, who ushered attendants to the talk painstakingly slowly, ensuring each attendant remained in the room and received a small ten ounce bottle of ' _Herbafina_ ' mineral water, a bottled water claiming to have been drunk by one of the heads of the earlier manifestations of the company, when it produced pecans, nuts and pistachios instead of herbs, out of Tulsa County in Oklahoma, back when the company was called _Howell Pecan & Nut Treeline_ instead of Herbaline.

"Now, when it says manifestations of this company, what do they mean?"

"It means the company went bankrupt earlier, and the company reappeared in its new, renewed version, its current way of existing, as Herbaline." Cartmel lifted his eyes, glancing towards Clarity, while he adjusted the range of colors in a software built by the company, called _Drawmeadow_ , a landmark discovery of the in-house programmers of Herbaline, which was made available to those employees who were familiar with the importance and origin of color for mankind and for marketing herbal tea. Color was relevant for Clarity, because over the course of her brief stint at studying in a two year college program in L.A. County, she waived a course in web design that involved working with Illustrator, a software which included a sophisticated color palette, in order to attend a brief course on communication, at the Learning Annex, which allowed her to get hired as teleoperator, at Stevenson, by Brock Cheevers, the head of human resources there.

Clarity sat down with Lanai on row nine of the conference room. Cartmel turned on the projector, and began speaking in front of roughly two or three hundred people. He began his speech by giving out slides to everyone seated in the first five rows, the 'department aisle', as it was internally called, which headed sales at Herbaline, the sales hierarchy group, which was supervised by Stive. A large projected-on-screen live video, showed a television set branded with the name Zooropa showing the face of Stive, calmly observing a black and white television monitor to his right. A camera was filming Stive, and another camera hooked or linked to the television set Stive was watching, showing some room in the Civic Center or distributor in California. Stive was sitting at the front entrance security cabin of the Center, performing the duties of a security guard at Herbaline, to show that he was able to do any job at the company himself and that distributors were closely monitored by the company.

Ivy appeared from the right hand side of the conference room, and she sat calmly in the seat next to Clarity, holding a small device known at Herbaline as _the docket_. Clarity glossed over the docket screen, and noticed that Ivy was completing, or translating, the name of the conference Center, which was an expression. Ivy pressed a key on the device, which returned a definition, or translation of the conference center room name, ' _Sales Truth_ '. The docket spat out an explanation for the name of the room: ' _As lies stop being told, truth emanates from words spoken_ '. The following expression was more illustrative of its meaning. ' _When some genuine aspect of a person is uncovered, the real person shows openly, without a social mask conditioning his or her personality._ ' A further explanatory note added a more subtle line of meaning. ' _When the lack of truth shows subtly in the face of the person across you, you can easily invoke or bring forth the truth hiding beneath that lie, in order to close a sale or lead the person to it_.' Some of the people specialists at Herbaline were very good at understanding personality, and at applying that to sales. Ivy turned to Clarity, noticing she was looking at the docket and the text showing.

"You know, you're not a bad employee, you can be a good supervisor of the sales group here."

"I'm not exactly an employee, my agreement with the company is not standard, I was hired to work on the chart of emotion." Ivy wanted to educate Clarity in ' _areas of sales_ ' that had not been explored by the Topanga Canyon teleoperator or by the course work itself. The hostess was overtly assuming the role of mentor of Clarity, a role assigned to her by Manglove, whose complete title was health doctor, emotician and arousal physician of Herbaline. Ivy showed Clarity a full color palette from _Drawmeadow_ , linked to her smartphone.

"The discovery of printed color has been a landmark of humanity and marketing for Herbaline, since the new headquarters of the company was established in Orange County and our training center opened in Cayman. The new _Drawmeadow_ software we own is so versatile, offering thousands of color variations, that it is being offered to prominent car making companies for the development of car paint."

Cartmel walked slowly up the ramp of the amphitheater, with words echoing those of an evangelist, which he unabashedly was. One of the positions he held at Herbaline was chief evangelist and motivational guru of the sales hierarchy group, a dotted position mirroring his other position, that of being a distributor of herbal products at the company in Los Angeles. He stopped in front of Lanai, microphone held in hand, and turned to her, while the projector showed an infographic, depicting growth at Herbaline.

"The lady here on row nine, we'd like to know how you work really, and how your mind works when you shop or purchase any item or service, please show everyone how you do, if you would. In terms of understanding what drives your thinking, your motivational avenues of shopping, working, engaging in consumption, satisfying your uttermost gut desires, how do you do it?"

Lanai was taken by surprise by the comment. She was not used to those mundane, everyday questions.

"I simply do what I tend to think, what I hear from my friends, or I just get some ideas to buy a few things, depending on whether I need them or not, for me, it is that simple."

"Yeah, but what lies beneath the idea to get something?" Ivy was thinking the same about Clarity's pants, reaching beneath the fabric to check the teleoperator's panties. Lanai turned to Clarity, who was feeling wet while Ivy's soft hands made their way to her pants, unzipping them, and reaching the soft area of her mound. Clarity whispered in Lanai's ear.

"Say your family, they're the ones who told you first about what things to buy, your ideas come from them." Lanai turned to Cartmel and looked at him.

"My family, my deepest consumption desire is a muffin, and my mother made good muffins, not as good as Starbucks muffins, but nonetheless, they were good muffins."

"Well, certainly illustrative of our current well-to-do standard of living. But no, no, no, your purchase habits are driven by your motivational feminine engine, which is driven by your values, and your values are derived from the way you associate pleasure with cumming, and relate that pleasure to your values and the tasks you have to do, later on, at home, at work, or in a social context, with friends and family."

Cartmel paused. He added. "In fact, what do you do for a living, lady, and do you consider yourself competent at what you do at work?" Lanai was not ready for such probing questions on her intrinsic professional value, turning to Clarity.

"That is so scary that I feel wet, Clarity, what do I say?" Clarity turned away, looking at Ivy, who was writing her name on a docket jotting page labeled ' _relational girlfriends_ '. The agenda that Ivy was using was known as the ' _docket'_ within the company. The name _docket_ came from the Orange County legal court system. It referred to the calendar of a court, listing the cases pending, and showed the summary of a court's activities. Stive had decided to adopt the name _docket_ , to show everyone at the company that the agenda of Herbaline had to be followed strictly every day. At a loss for words, Lanai opted for the alternative to her own answer, when she did not know the answer to a topic, the expression known as a question.

"I'm a librarian, in a well-to-do place called Malibu, in Southern Cal, but I don't understand your question in some ways. How can I do what you say, understand the values I use at work and with friends when I shop or at work?" Cartmel pressed on the slide button and showed the next slide, a sleek one page leaflet depicting Herbaline course material.

"You can read our communications workbook closely." Clarity glanced at the right most area of the slide, noticing the soft curves of Ivy depicted as unabashed, casual maid, a role the Herbaline employee cherished and liked without any type of qualms. Her role included wearing white panties every day, for white was the mystical color of balance and harmony to Herbaline. Ivy loved to wear white panties and show them to other employees at the company every day, and in particular during ' _casual panty-wearing day_ ', usually Friday.

Cartmel stopped talking and the presentation continued with Stive filling the screen. Stive began to talk about the topic that Cartmel was not allowed to explain or study in too much depth, the relational policy of Herbaline employees, which included relational agreements, and pre-nuptials, involving several people in a polyamorous group, preferably one man, and several good looking women. Herbaline considered emotional stability important and Polyamory the way to preserve it. Stive announced openly that his own relational group was still in the making, and that only his first significant other was defined as such. The face of his partner appeared onscreen. It was Manglove, she was his sexual and work mate at Herbaline, and he was looking for one or two additional women, young women, in their relational group, women also working at Herbaline.

# Chapter Eight

Sales performance of Clarity in Cayman as a door to door Herbaline saleswoman was dismal, she took in less than ten percent of sales reported by other employees of Herbaline sampled, sales persons working out of Cayman and California, a total of one hundred and seventy people, excluding Lanai, who had done moderately poorly, at a bashful fifteen percent of sales, of the next poorest employee of Herbaline on the sample list after Clarity. Lanai was left in her room, and Clarity was told to show up at Coley's office.

"It's not a good performance, Clarity," said Coley.

"Door to door is not for me," said Clarity.

"Clarity, you are reacting to your performance, without really thinking. It's not you, really."

Manglove showed Clarity a plastified chart labeled ' _emotion scale_ '.

"You have hit the reactive point on the scale, the point labeled six in the emotion scale labeling the emotional range of people between the number one and the number ten, where one is rational and anything above five is emotional."

Clarity looked at the title of the chart. It said scale, the word scale implied measuring, and Coley was measuring her emotion. The chart of emotions to help out employees working at Herbaline was not as such. There was a lie sold as truth at the company, the chart of emotions was not there to provide sales assistance to employees. Instead, it measured people's emotional profile with a number, labeling them emotional, as a result of just venting out in open disagreement.

"So this is a scale that ranges between the areas of one and ten," said Clarity.

"Yes. Your interest makes me think I'm going to put you to work outside the sales group. If you work on this chart, you'll have to bring out the 90 areas that will make this chart a genuine useful diagram, that can be used by the professional employee today, at Herbaline and other places, breaking up each unit in the scale into ten emotion units, smaller, amounting to ten units for each of the original units, for a total of one hundred units, in the scale."

"That's going to be a lot of work."

Clarity looked at the emotion scale. The attributes of a person listed ranged from reasonable and logical, level-headed, clear-headed, professional and competent, to emotional, impulsive, easily annoyed, hostile, or showing a tendency to over-react. All those latter attributes were what Herbaline called reactive attributes of a personality, when, according to Clarity, the person was really showing critical judgement or the ability to disagree, the ability to think on her own. The rightmost area of the chart showed the word bliss, the unexplored area of human pleasure which lied after pleasure, casually explained by the chart, as any form of pleasure that the person feels, at times combined with arousal, sexual arousal in particular. She saw that Manglove was working with a remote that controlled a screen displayed in front of her. There was a brief click noise, flashing the words arousal and bliss, with a definition for each, followed by generic words, such as sexual bliss and love, and words related to the business of Herbaline, like purchase, consumption, private property, hastily shown one after the next by Manglove. For Herbaline, arousal, not money, ruled the world, including the world of business.

"Work on the chart and let me know what you find," said Manglove.

The emotician left the room, leaving Clarity on her own. She reached for the remote, but the device did not work, a connection had been turned off by Manglove, and the screen, did not show any text. The computer was off. The rightmost area of the room had a panel. Clarity opened it and found a copy of a document labeled confidential. Oddly, it was a dictionary, a book written in-house by the writing specialists of Herbaline, the glossary department, those who had created the electronic dictionary and translator, _Wordlay_ , which is what Clarity had seen onscreen showing some _Herbaspeak_ used in-house. The password access sheet for the remote was shown underneath the dictionary, depicting a single word. She turned on the computer of Manglove, and typed the word _pennyshow_ on the color application software _Sterial Drawmeadow_. The onscreen projector turned on when she pressed enter and she used the mouse of the computer to guide and navigate through the content of the dictionary.

The preface of the glossary showed that words and ' _marketing linguistics_ ' defined the company's trade secrets, strategic business plan, and overall business compass for the company, placing sales and salespeople at the top of the company. The _Wordlay_ emotion translator, made by a company showing as _Ballmacks Instruments_ , listing a single office in Asia, was a log of all of the sales technique landmarks accomplished by the company.

Clarity noticed a red signal on the upper left side of the screen. She pressed on the square and the screen projector turned into chat mode.

"Hello there."

"Who are you?" Asked Clarity, typing calmly on the keyboard.

"I'm Ambi, I'm held as recluse at Herbaline, at the Palm Springs Language facility."

"Are you connected to the dictionary?"

"I think so, they are using my skills to add definitions to the company's sales translator. I'm being asked to adopt the role of a difficult client and answer a set of emotion queries. The dictionary queried me with one word, the word emotion, and then added ten words, expanding to nearly one hundred words, linking my own various reported emotions with all of those words."

The text started trickling a cloud of words in chat mode. According to Ambi, emotion was a cluster of meaning embedded with reason, not only with emotion, in reaction to a threat or to excessive effort or adversity, a compass for daily life to restore balance, which had to do with managing and modulating flow, qualitative aspects of the person, not with assigning a number to each type of emotion, something she did not approve. Emotion had a logic and it was the reason for surviving alongside the rational, as part of evolution, for thousands of years.

"How big is the cluster, and what exactly is the cluster of meaning here at Herbaline," said Clarity.

The door opened, showing Manglove, handbook of emotion in hand, Lanai behind her.

"You naughty girl," said Manglove, "you've explored our sales glossary, and how it links to emotion, I hope Ambi did not confuse your thinking with her emotion-is-good rhetoric."

Manglove turned off the emotion translator and showed Clarity and Lanai a board listing a piece of paper in chalk-like font showing her name.

"You are clearly emotional in your work, Clarity, you have reached and tapped the emotional point of our emotion scale, bypassing your common sense and ability to close a sale."

The scale monitor suggested the range of Clarity's emotional reactions was related to exhibitionism, to her extroverted personality, and to her word cloud, which was yet to be defined by her in the official dictionary of the company. According to the emotion scale interpreters, a group of people working out of the language facility of Herbaline in Palm Springs, it was difficult to throw Clarity 'out of the positive area of the dictionary', where positive meant the favorable or amiable area of the dictionary in terms of words used by Clarity. The word favorable spit out in stock market feed mode out of the projector text screen, just as Clarity and Lanai read it.

"What is this feed, Coley?" Asked Lanai.

Manglove blushed at the feminine voice of Lanai.

"The emotion scale monitor is a wifi computer using speech recognition software that can actually record anybody's thought, it is tuned to our voices Lanai, and to our group of interpreters."

"Can it think and explain what you are thinking, then, or the logic of the company's sales manual?" Asked Clarity. Coley Manglove showed a poker face, unmoved by the comment of Clarity.

The projector spit out a set of sentences coming from the group of interpreters. _Those dastardly women, they found out that Herbaline monitors the conversation of employees and that it uses a sales manual_.

"We saw that," said Clarity. She pointed to the screen.

"We'd like to see your thoughts on us," said Clarity, "we'd like to see on the computer screen feed what you are thinking about us, what you have been thinking about us."

There was a brief pause of several seconds during which nothing was said. Manglove did not move. Lanai moved. She moved towards the projector, open-mouthed, marvelled at the technology shown to her for the first time, a technology unknown to her having to do with language.

"Is this available for sale? I want to know what Taimi and Jenna think, about the perfect boyfriend that is, simply by recording their conversation about shopping."

"Think serious, Lanai," said Clarity, "a computer can't relate conversation to love life." Manglove pressed the off-button to cut short any possibilities of love spying for Lanai, to disconnect the projector.

"Your reaction to your friend is nonsense Clarity," said Manglove, "you are being closed-minded, you are more emotional than you think. I'm going to put you back on sales work before you get to the chart of emotion. Please get back to work, to sales work, you have to get rid of five boxes of our herbal tea which still shows in your inventory. And you have to pay for those boxes if you don't sell the merchandise to a customer or to another Herbaline sales person."

"I'm not doing well here," said Clarity, "or it may be sales, not sure." Manglove looked at the emotion scale diagram of Clarity, showing her profile, and made up her mind.

"In Palm Springs you can do well there working for Herbaline, you'll work on the chart of emotion. You are catching the five forty plane this afternoon on _Cayman Caribbean_ Airlines, heading back to Orange County. Fletcher will drive you to Palm Springs."

In the afternoon, Clarity and Lanai reached their seat, where a hostess, Ivy, greeted them. Ivy was dressed as a Cayman Caribbean hostess, in grayish skirt and matching shirt, with a green scarf matching the green color of the Herbaline clover. Herbaline was a shareholder of Cayman Caribbean airlines, and was slowly infiltrating various managing aspects of the airline. Ivy handed them a badge with their 'emotion label' rating, which said capital F, for _fluffy_ , along with a report written by Manglove, and an ID, a number that was similar to the one extended by the department of motor vehicles in California.

Clarity read the report, labeled ' _bad girl report_ ', a ten page report with solved assignments, purportedly meant to lower her excessive emotional display and to curb her tendency to disagree or be 'hostile' to ideas that clashed with her own. Remedies included spanking, by Lanai on Clarity, soft spanking, for hours, four hours in particular, a mighty long time, thought Clarity, looking at Lanai listen to the music coming out of her seat with the earphones offered by the attractive hostess. Clarity waved at Ivy, and asked her about the chart of emotion and whether there was a comprehensive one.

"There is a genuine chart of emotion, but it is not made available to regular employees of Herbaline, it is only shown to level five and above employees of Herbaline, those deft at relational pairing working with the relational brain, those who have adopted the relational outlook of the company, the polyamorous outlook, and are able to apply that method to build a collaborative environment at work."

Clarity thought for a second, and stared into the eyes of Ivy.

"I'd like to be paired together with Lanai, then," said Clarity, "because I'm working on the chart of emotion and she is as well."

Ivy nodded and glossed over the naughty manual that Clarity was reading. It would be a close, very close sensual escapade, carefree, but she would spank Clarity eventually, softly, for hours, to turn her into an obedient employee of Herbaline, obedient to her own arousal, and wet to engage in it fully aware, so that she could bring in inventory sales for her. Ivy was a level two employee and watching Clarity closely is what Coley had told her to do. It was the right thing to do, as Coley was good at managing Herbaline inventory, in addition to understanding arousal quite well.

# Chapter Nine

The morning airport van driven by Fletcher took Clarity and Lanai out of Los Angeles, taking the road to Palm Springs, East of L.A. They stopped several times to refuel at gas stations along the way, while Fletcher kept reading a page from an old paper edition of the _Desert Sun_ , indicating the opening of the _correctional language facility_ of Herbaline a few years earlier, a place unknown to most employees of the company.

"So you are happy here, at this place, at Herbaline, driving for them?"

"It's not bad, I get to see the landscape of the U.S."

"Yeah, California desert areas do have pleasant sightseeing spots, like this."

Clarity kept throwing furtive looks at the newspaper page that Fletcher was holding in his left hand.

"This page has interesting news, right, you have been holding it for quite a while today," said Clarity.

"Yeah, it's not bad, it has the news for today, or relevant news for me that is."

"Palm Springs is certainly a well-to-do city."

Fletcher glanced at her, looking quite intrigued by her statement. Clarity held the stare.

"I mean the page is outdated, it shows twenty january twenty oh eight, 2008 is not today," said Clarity.

"This paper shows the location of the language facility area."

"Really, where is it, can you show it to me?"

Fletcher set aside Clarity, away from Lanai and the gas station employee, sitting down on a picnic table bench brought in from Yellowstone park by a ranger who'd made a few dollars, selling it for a lesser fistful of dollars, taking it there with a transportation company owned by a friend of his.

"This article shows what the language center does and it shows the way to get there from Los Angeles."

"What does it do?"

"It's where all the course material of the company is designed, a sort of marketing lab. No one really knows what's going on there."

Fletcher pointed towards the top of the newspaper page, taken out of the miscellaneous events feature from the Palm Springs Gazette. "This is my map to drive you there," he added, "when the place opened a few years ago, the article included directions to get there and words from the mayor who said Herbaline was bringing business to the Palm Springs community."

"It's just odd that you get directions from a newspaper," asked Clarity.

He unfolded a plastified map of the state of California, a new map made by Rand McNally.

"I can always refer to this, I don't trust these Herbaline guys with directions really."

The language facility of Herbaline was set along a palm tree avenue of Palm Springs, not too far from the mayor's city Hall and office building, yet far enough, not to draw attention to it. Lanai and Clarity were assigned to their quarters and they were told that they would work with Coleman Cartmel, level four salesman and distributor at Herbaline, in addition to being the motivational guru of the place, solely in charge of all the training that took place there, and of all the sales training in particular.

Clarity caught Fletcher on his lunch break and took him aside, inviting him to an iced tea near the counter of the self-service food area of the facility. The cook of the facility waved at her from behind the kitchen counter.

"So what does Coleman Cartmel do here?" Fletcher pointed to the cook.

"Not sure, you have to go through the kitchen area to find out, the cook knows something here that no one else knows about him."

"You mean about his sales work?" The facial expression of Fletcher changed, showing a grimace.

"Yeah, yeah, sales work, Cartmel sells all kinds of things to anyone, kitchen appliances, cookware, furniture, Herbaline products, Chevron gas stations, Wolfgang Puck rest areas, and Jack in the Box key rings. This guy is unlike any other guy I know, he can sell anything to anyone."

He pointed towards the kitchen, behind the counter serving food. Clarity followed her intuition and entered the kitchen coming face to face with the cook, Clarkson, a cousin of Clark, the guy owning the Diamond shop in Grand Cayman, who had taken Clarity and Flower in a golf cart through to the Lofty bank vault. Clarity learned from Clarkson that Lofty bank had changed names, becoming Lofty & Jennings private bank, and that the bank was now owned by Buddha Talk, a former bank representative who lived in Cayman, in his luxurious home in Nelson Quay.

"I don't know much about Cartmel, but I know he's involved in the study of a person here, he is using someone as a sort of a guinea pig to know more about how a person thinks, in order to prompt a sale of Herbaline products. Cartmel jots all that he knows in the sales database of the language interpreters, who are the ones coming up with the next version of the company sales manual. The manual is updated once a year or so, every twelve months."

"Who is the person being studied, is it a woman named Ambi?" Clarkson lowered his voice.

"You know too much already, you're headed for trouble if you keep talking like that."

"I didn't say much." She added. "Where is Ambi?"

"Room one oh three, can't go in, all that I know from where she is, is that you can talk through to the person across the door, if you know what to say to the person or to the door."

Intrigued, Clarity walked out of the kitchen through the kitchen back door, into a corridor, noticing the door behind her closed. The back of the kitchen door facing her was labeled with a sign saying " _No Exit this way, the exit is where you are_."

She saw the poster of an emotion scale attached with pins to the corridor wall. The negative part of the emotion scale was considered unproductive, anything associated with annoyance, or hostility, was labelled inefficient, non conducive to sales performance. Cartmel imposed positive emotion on sales employees of the company, to lead them towards a half-filled brain filled with only half of all the range of human emotion, ranging from the friendly to the amiable, and to the persistent, labeled clearly in the chart, and away from the angry or the animosity or slight animosity area of the chart, placed on the negative part of the chart, clearly away from any hostile, belligerent emotion, the likes of frustration, impatience or irritability, attributes Clarity considered as part of the natural range of human emotion. This emotion scale was being used by American universities in psychology classes, in particular at University of Arizona, one of the universities included in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings which received funding to carry out the project begun by Herbaline. In exchange for carrying out social experiments, Herbaline donated several million to the university each year.

Room one oh three was kept closed by a heavy wood door decorated with a thin steel-coated layer indicating inviolability. The door acted as a vault and there was a knob indicating access to the person living there, a person who'd been living there for months, a ' _language recluse_ ', as she was known in that inhospitable area of the language facility. Ambi Mivel was known at Herbaline, but no one wanted to talk to her or be with her, because everyone knew she was at odds with Manglove.

"Ambi, are you there?" Asked Clarity. The feminine voice of a woman answered from the other side of the door.

"Yeah, who is this?"

"A friend, are you all right?"

"I am all right, but I'm a bit tired of this place. There's no sudoku in here, no crosswords. I'm just a bit bored to tell you the truth."

"Would you like to get out?"

"Yes," said Ambi.

"How do you get in there, in your room? I don't see any key on the door, or any knob or way to get in there."

"There's a tumbler, someone in the language facility, knows of it. Coleman Cartmel knows of it. He's a good fuck and a nice guy, but he does not let me use words which sound too negative, words he keeps hidden from me in some scale or chart."

"You can still use those negative words, since you know them. I mean if you disagree with what he says, you can tell him, because you know the word disagreement."

"Yeah, but I want to get out of this place, so I don't use those words, it's the whole point of the facility, to correct your language and move towards sales friendly language."

Clarity pondered on the words of Ambi. A beeper offered by Ivy alerted her that she had to get back to her room. Tracing her steps back to the kitchen counter, she walked past the kitchen and reached her quarters, realizing the chart of emotion was really a chart of language, and for Herbaline, a chart of manipulating the language of its workers, to mold them into herbal product or service salespeople.

# Chapter Ten

The next day, Coleman Cartmel opened an office door for Clarity and Lanai, letting them inside the emoticon testing room of the language facility, a room filled with hundreds of documents, unsent memos, and letters sent to various employees within Herbaline, describing sales issues, and depicting emoticons and smiley iconographic variations, which Clarity had never seen before, such as the large smiley face with a 'HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR EMOTION TODAY' bandana.

"To get rid of your consistent problem language, which creates a problem at Herbaline, you'll have to perform a test for us, the emoticon chart test," said Cartmel.

Clarity entered the small room mirrored after a genuine eye testing room used by those who wanted to renew the driver's license. At Herbaline, the oral emoticon chart test replaced the vision test, and a series of emoticons of various sizes replaced the vision test letters of a traditional eye test. The emoticon chart was the chart Clarity and Lanai needed to restore their tendency to become emotional and to use ' _disagreement language_ ' back to normal, according to Cartmel's meaning or definition of normality. Clarity was appalled by the simplified view of life at Herbaline. To them, life was a smiley. Cartmel placed Clarity nine feet away from the company's basic emoticon chart.

"What do you see?" Asked Cartmel, "this is all you need to know about your own emotions."

"A chart filled with emoticons, the actual smiley, yellowish, round and smiling, several smileys of various sizes, more than ten or twenty, in several rows."

"It's a lot more than a chart, each smiley drives an emotion," said Cartmel. Clarity went over a few smileys pointed by Cartmel on the chart, such as those indicating suntanning, tongue out, wink, confused, don't say anything related to something other than sales, or the grumpy emoticon, which was there to be interpreted by employees as grumpy about a sales target not quite reached.

"An emoticon is simply a way to let your friends know how you feel, about anything," said Lanai.

Cartmel pressed a button, and one of the emoticons started moving above and around its peers, the smiley turning into a grin.

"That's just an emoticon, it's a bit annoying, because it's moving on the screen. It's superficial, an emoticon does not cover the full range of human emotion, people need to talk to each other," said Clariy.

"But this allows you to choose your emotions, based on our range of emoticons," said Cartmel.

Cartmel pressed another button and a wood panel showing twenty four rows and ten columns of emoticons built out of wood, painted yellow, emerged from the wall, out of an _Oklahoma Mart_ business table top.

"This is ridiculous," said Clarity, "a person does not always chooses her emotion and how they feel, emotion arises out of a particular situation or a relationship, a person is more than a simple, stupid emoticon."

Cartmel sighed and pressed on a tired face emoticon in the middle of the panel. The tired-and-confused emoticon popped out as well from the left hand corner of the emoticon panel, and a caption that said ' _help me_ ' appeared right next to the confused emoticon.

"This is what you're saying when you're talking the way you do about them, you overreact to these emoticons," said Cartmel, "you're not properly tuned emotionally." He added. "At Herbaline, this chart drives our relationships. Between us, that is, our relational group of associates ensures that all relationships have sales hierarchy guidance here, according to this chart of emotional maturity, in fact, everyone goes through this chart until they react properly to it, without acting emotional." Cartmel pressed surreptitiously on a smiley wearing a bandana showing the word _sales instructor_ , rising up from the depths of level two of the business table panel. Cartmel pressed Clarity to associate several emoticons with various emotions or sentences, and then to extrapolate the emotion to a sales context. He handled her the results of the test.

"Some of the answers are all right, but several are outright out of our planned sales model. For instance, if a customer is annoyed, you cannot simply leave the customer like you wrote, you have to persist until the customer opens up to you."

"If the customer has a bad day, I let the customer ramble, but I don't insist on closing a sale," said Clarity. Cartmel shook his head in disagreement and called Ivy through the interphone.

Ivy came inside the emotion testing room. She gave out to Clarity several pamphlets offering _emoticon assistance_ courses to those employees of Herbaline either showing no interest in the course, or showing simply average results on the chart test.

Of particular interest to Ivy was the money-roulette icon smiley, a box-sized yellow box smiley showing signs of worn out gambling tiredness, looking at you in general, with the dumb look of a phoney springlike toy. The purpose of the emoticon was to show how gambling was detrimental to your _wellbeing_ , after engaging in a just a few roulette, buck-roulette throws at the local casino or gambling shop. Clarity kept pondering at the title of the booklet offered by Ivy, matching the emoticon on its cover showing its arm muscles, _Herbaline_ _emoticon sales potential booklet_ , noticing how expensive the course was, how Herbaline associated a sale with perseverence, and how it associated a good Herbaline salesperson with an unsuccessful one at her previous job. Failure at something in a job was nearly a prerequisite to be a good salesperson at Herbaline, and the bigger the setback, the more Herbaline paid attention to the person. She kept the booklet in her pocket.

Clarity and Lanai spent a morning putting order to several piles of paper depicting surveys filled out by people, describing their preference for several kinds of stuff, ranging from furniture products to food cart and lingerie, to credit card, phone card and coin vending machine delivery services. The logic, the underlying sales principles of Cartmel, were not readily available to many of the employees at Herbaline. To know them, to know these principles, required spending thousands of dollars in courses offered by Herbaline, courses spanning hundreds of hours.

Clarity stepped closer to the emoticon wood panel shown by Cartmel. She felt the danger of social disconnect, were she to follow these linguistic suggestions to rid a person of her so-called ' _sales language refusal_ ' traits. As a result of her critical judgement and clarity of discernment between good and a hoax, Clarity had done pretty well. She disregarded the status of Cartmel as a sales guru. Looking at the positive side of things was tiring, always performing, always pulled by the bottom line. Having to think positive as an obligation made no sense, thought Clarity, glancing at Lanai. It was taking away some of their natural emotion range, while considering all of the emotions listed in the genuine chart of emotions made them human. Clarity held one of the surveys in her hand, noticing a smudge in one of the pages. She turned to Ivy, who'd been watching them all morning.

"So what drives the sale for Herbaline?" Asked Clarity. "Why is it such a successful company driving the sale of its products home, all the way to getting cash from a customer for something not really that useful to them, herbal products, compared to basic food items or shelter, that is."

"That's in our sales potential booklet," said Ivy. "Ambi does not understand that a single sale drives all others and that perception drives a sale. That is why she is placed in the antisale room. That's where Ambi is, and that's where you're going to end up if you keep questioning the booklet."

Clarity had an idea to find Ambi. She leafed through the sales booklet of Herbaline, finding a paragraph on the notion of _antisale_ , all of the behaviors which prevented a sale or alienated the customer from the salesperson, which included open disagreement with the customer by the salesperson. After filling out a final survey on her bar hopping habits, Clarity got back to her room with Lanai.

"Let's go find Ambi in the antisale room," said Clarity.

Clarity and Lanai found the area where Ambi was held, the antisale room, kept confidential from the rest of the facility by a door showing the triangle of Herbaline values. These values added up to three, and they were clearly written in the company's annual report. First, there was _other people's work_ , labeled opw, then there was the ever-present _sale persistence_ , which drove sales and company profits, and completing the triangle was the so-called _customer relational affinity_. Clarity opened the sales booklet and read the paragraph on the Herbaline sales triangle. The explanation was that customer relational affinity, networking with prospective customers that is, and establishing a close rapport, in addition to other's people work, delegating your own sale to lower level salespersons, or to peers, these two items or aspects combined with persistence, resulted in a sale, the bottom line of Herbaline. Clarity typed the word antisale on a touchscreen using a keypad which was set on a small pedestal made of steel. The touchscreen acted as door lock to the antisale room. By placing the word antisale outside the sales triangle with her finger, the door opened.

Clarity saw Ambi sitting on a chair beside her bed, covered with a pink and white quilt on top of it. Ambi was reading on a kindle-like device, the book _No sales logo_ , and one titled _No purchase Doctrine_ , books written by sales activist Naomi Clemenvine, arguing that regular people could live very well without purchasing so many items. Noticing that Ambi was barely paying attention to them, Clarity stepped closer and began speaking to the recluse.

"Ambi, come with us, we'll take you to a regular room, don't you want to leave this place?"

"No one can leave Herbaline if they disagree with their official sales policy," said Ambi. "If you two made it to the antisale room, it means Coley knows you disagree with some aspect of company policy. She probably wants you in this room." A television screen lit up in one of the corners of the room, showing Coley Manglove looking grumpy, matching the grumpy emoticon shown by Cartmel earlier that day. Ivy had noticed their disappearance from the survey area and their room.

"Get back to your room, Clarity, immediately, with your friend, you'll find a report on your shelf, I want you to read it."

# Chapter Eleven

Clarity read the unfavorable employee report on her that Manglove had placed on the shelf of her room while she had been talking to Ambi, the cute recluse of Herbaline. Clarity was getting good appraisals in _customer service relationship_ , _sales work diligence_ , and _general understanding of human relations_ , but Manglove had assigned below average assessments in _course taking_ _initiative_ , _sales_ _learning autonomy and knowledge_ , _agreement with human resource policies_ , and _ability to generate agreement with the customer_. Clarity's position on the Ambi Mivel ' _language disagreement_ ' issue was beginning to undermine her position as a quality candidate of Herbaline. Clarity knew that it was the reason for being summoned in Ambi's room after she was finished reading her own report.

Coley Manglove led Clarity to the shelf laid out behind the bed of Ambi, showing several books, among them ' _the Relational Eye_ ', a book written by a lesser known social swindler named Charles Winweigh, describing the advantages of delegating sales work to a team of people needing money or work, and of pairing two single women ' _sold_ ' on living with a couple, what he termed as a relational Fourplay, a four-win situation for 'all members of the purportedly polyexclusive, polygamous, polyamory household' involved.

"A relational Fourplay, that's interesting," said Clarity, "I've never come across this type of relationship. I know of Polyamory, but never shared living with a group espousing those values."

"The Relational Eye is not only a book for us, it is a device we've built, which allows us to film every employee. It allows us to monitor your relational affinity with us, with Mattelson Stive and me, and of us two with you and Ivy, or of us two with you and your friend Lanai."

Clarity looked around. Counting Lanai, and the absent Stive, there were four people mentioned by Manglove, including her. Manglove was dismissing Ambi purportedly, leaving her unpaired.

"And Ambi, I mean us being here, the actual reason for exploring the antisale room is..."

"To show you that if you engage in language refusal consistently, you cannot gain acceptance into this relational group, into any relational group really, you're going to become asocial, alienated from human contact. If you're alienated socially, your work will suffer, your sales will drop, your life will become one big antisale speech."

Ambi nodded and kept reading _No sales logo_ , annotating the interesting parts which talked about not giving in to corporations which intimidated or coaxed people into buying something they did not need to live comfortably. The voice and cute face of Ivy appeared on-screen, speaking to Manglove.

"Ambi hasn't picked up our sales booklet," said Ivy. Manglove turned to Ambi. The emotician disapproved of the book _No Sales Logo_.

"This is a language refusal book, the other books do not engage my free thinking," said Ambi.

Manglove reached for page fifty three of the Relational Eye. "I've been giving some thought to this over the last few days, while Ambi has been refusing to modify her language word cloud. She needs people around her to change the way she thinks. She needs to be in a relationship."

"Go ahead," said Clarity.

"It's a simple idea to put in place a Polyamory relationship. Four people, three women and one man, committed sexually and sentimentally, dividing daily tasks and sharing child rearing obligations, one child per woman, at most, and then, possibly one of the children given away to another household who wants children. With four parents and two children in the household, the work life is doable, there is no sense of overwork for women or the man, there are a lot more quality blocks of living time, a lot more money in the household, thirty thousand dollars on average times four adds up to one hundred twenty thousand dollars for the household every year. The family structure is sustainable, there is vesting in the money and adoption of the household members, so that anyone can leave after the relational cliff period of two or three years, there is more time for relational activity, good sex, and re-placement of the members is possible by finding members who begin to work at Herbaline, so there is some flexibility with the relationship. There is also the advantage of not coming tired from work, and engaging in partnership or collaborative work among all four members of the household, all of them working for Herbaline."

"As long as the women are attracted to each other sexually, it may work. Is the man optional, I mean can I re-place the man with a woman of my own choosing?" Asked Clarity. The face of Ivy appeared on-screen on the in-house television set of the facility, showing the words _optional maid_ , written below. Lanai glanced at the message, intrigued.

"I guess you can replace the man of the household with a maid," said Lanai, "I'm not ashamed of saying I am, attracted to Ivy sexually. I think it can work, polyamorous with three women and a maid instead of a husband." Ivy smiled and said that she enjoyed being with Ambi and that she could be paired with her to live with Coley and Stive, as co-heads of Herbaline as a whole. Ambi was caressing the white quilt, sparsed with pale pink patterns, looking at Ivy several times. Coley unbuttoned her white emotician coat.

"Very few people within the Polyamory community understand this type of committed plural relationship arrangement. Mattelson Stive is not optional, he is part of this relationship arrangement, he is very good at managing this company and he is useful to the women in the plural household. Ivy is simply the maid in the relationship, she likes that role, and her personality shares all of the traits needed to be a happy maid and nothing else. She can be number four, counting you and Ivy, Clarity, if Ambi keeps refusing our official sales policy, or number five, if you and your friend join Stive and me."

They walked into the _General Pleasure Area_ , a room in the facility purportedly built to apply one of the principles of Herbaline, the fact that pleasure was an avenue to super health, a state of perfect health sustained over long periods of time, nine years or so, without feeling colds or the flu. The _emotional blueprint_ workbench showed an emotion scale indicator for Clarity labeled ' _inclined to engage in full Polyamory_ ' which marked openness of Clarity to engage in fully open bisexual relationship with other good looking feminine women. Coley turned to Clarity.

"Have you ever engaged in a bisexual encounter of the variations type?" Clarity gazed indifferently at the shelf behind the quilt and the bed of Ambi. The cover of a Penthouse Variations magazine appeared on-screen, replacing the face of Ivy.

"You mean of Penthouse variations type?"

"Yes," said Coley, without hesitation.

"Yes," said Clarity, "undoubtedly yes. I've gotten into a threesome before, with a guy and with her." She pointed to Lanai.

"With me, in fact," said Lanai, "it happened in Acapulco, and also when we fooled around in a Malibu nudist beach on a sunny day, during midday lunch break, when I was already working at the library. Clarity had the day off her job as teleoperator for Stevenson."

"How old were you at the time?" Asked Manglove, glancing at Lanai.

"Twenty three," said Lanai, "Clarity was twenty four, I remember because it happened before her twentififth birthday."

"One year makes a difference," said Manglove, "the chart says you're twenty five now, you're more mature."

The Malibu teleoperator declined to become a member of Manglove's polyexclusive relationship, which included four people, three women including her and Ivy, and Stive. Manglove got up from the bed and walked to the door, pressing a few characters on the panel opening the door of the _General Pleasure Area_. Some of the characters shown on the door panel came from the Buddhist philosophy, some of them were written in Sanskrit, some of them came from the Greek alphabet.

"You´ll have to work on our values triangle to leave this room, I think you're showing too much attachment to pleasure and to your own pleasure and independence, to be involved in a plural relationship." She used a television remote to turn on the screen, leaving the television set tuned to a channel labelled ' _tantra geometry_ '.

"The exit password to leave the room comes from the sacred scriptures of tantra."

Coley pointed Clarity towards a book placed on the left hand side of Ambi's shelf, titled the _Principles of Tantra_ , a book written by John Woodroffe discussing the practicalities of _Tantra Vipassana_ , a practical avenue for engaging in good sex.

"The key to leave the room is to invert a triangle." Coley left the room on her own, leaving Ambi, Lanai and Clarity inside. The television monitor flashed static, tuned to no particular channel.

Clarity stepped towards the simple, plain table, sensing that they could be stranded for hours inside the General Pleasure area. Laid out before the first page of the book on Tantra, was a piece of paper explaining an ancient formula to invert an upper pointing triangle, describing how the upper point of human potential could be reached by observing both spiritual and material aspects of a person, the other two sides of the triangle. There were no diagrams in the book and most of the text was written in Sanskrit, all illegible to Clarity. Again the triangle surfaced as an intriguing geometric shape.

"What does it mean to invert a triangle?" Asked Lanai.

"Possibly finding a different position of the triangle, mmm, not sure," said Clarity, "or a different kind of triangle."

Lanai walked towards the door entrance, observing the intricate patterns on the door panel, showing an etched mandala. The word mandala echoed as a yantra, and in tantra, was associated with a geometric canvass to express an abstract thought. A Yantra was a circle holding many small triangles inside.

An idea came into the mind of Clarity. She used the local television remote and pressed on a triangle shown in the remote. Static stopped flashing and a triangle appeared on-screen. She pressed on the ok center button of a 'move up and down' cursor and the triangle divided into two triangles. Using the cursor, she matched them both into a square to 'invert' the original shape. This 'inverted' the shape of the triangle, from unstable, into stable, for the square was more stable than the triangle geometrically. She heard the sound of a tumbler lifting locks on the exit door. Her idea was working. They were free from the pleasure area.

"A square is made of two triangles, it inverts the triangle, an unstable geometric shape, into a square, a stable relationship geometric arrangement." Clarity glanced at Ambi, who was reading her book.

"Are you leaving Ambi?"

"No, I want to finish _No Sales Logo_ ," said Ambi.

The door of the pleasure area opened and Clarity left the room with Lanai to get back into their quarters. Clarity pondered on the riddle presented by Coley, before getting back to sleep. In the same way they'd left the pleasure area, she sensed that it was possible to leave attachment to pleasure and to be free from it, while keeping all the benefits of pleasure. It probably was one of the meanings of Tantra. Understanding the Polyamory ways of Herbaline was not easy.

# Chapter Twelve

For a few days, Cartmel did not let Clarity or Lanai out of their rooms. Clarity and Lanai filled out surveys related to the sales potential booklet, but no progress was made, the results inevitably came short of the eighty eight percent needed to pass level one of the Herbaline salesperson test. In addition to the surveys, the motivational guru handed Clarity an agreement. Cartmel wanted Clarity to read carefully a relational agreement offered by him on behalf of Herbaline. After a few days reflecting, Clarity accepted the relational affinity pairing offered by Coleman Cartmel and she received a device called the _relational compass_.

To be paired with Cartmel as a sales associate, also accepting to engage in a personal relationship with him, was clearly a safe avenue to leave the Herbaline facility. After accepting the agreement, Clarity and Lanai walked with Cartmel into a large conference center, where forty or fifty Herbaline delegates selected for multilevel five promotion, were gathering for a personal review by Stive. All those company salespeople had sold more than one million dollars worth of Herbaline products during a single year. The face of Stive appeared on a large Lucky Goldstar television screen displaying in a lower panel the conference room filled with delegates, sending out the vibe to Clarity that they were being watched. Cartmel placed his hand on Clarity's thigh.

"I need three ladies with me in my plural relationship, who do you want in addition to you, in our sales and Polyamory group?" Said Cartmel.

"Lanai and Ambi." The motivational expert stared at Clarity a few seconds.

"Fine," he said.

After the review, which lasted a short hour, they left the conference area and followed Cartmel to pick up Ambi. They exited the room using a door in the back of the antisale room, where an ' _exit the no sales language by thinking yes to the sales booklet_ ' sign showed off at the security clearance entrance backdoor. After taking an elevator, they entered a garage area of the facility and kept Cartmel at a distance, noticing he was giving orders to take his official company car, a dark green Mercedes C class sedan with a personalized car plate which said ' _Show Off Assertiveness'_ out of the garage. The car plate indicated that the company favored those employees who were assertive and confident, but not aggressive.

"Have the relational compass with you at all times. It allows me to know where you are. I've told Ivy to get your things ready and bring them here, we're leaving this place today," said Cartmel.

"Where are we going?" Asked Clarity.

Cartmel ignored her and walked past his car, reaching an area that Clarity had not seen before, known as the meditation and thinking area, a place open to very wealthy customers of Herbaline who got in and out through the facility garage. They entered the _wave inducer_ room, the place, where the _wave inducer_ , a device which looked like a sophisticated pair of music earphones, fed sounds of various types, alpha waves to a person laid out horizontally on a couch for hours.

The sound device slowed the person's thinking through sound, and it prompted various words, to engage free association of thought, where thought meant words and sensations, leading to those sales-related words that Herbaline used to move the mind and behavior of salesperson and customer, including communication _drills_ , _duplicating_ the understanding of a product from the sales person to the customer, and _answer hunger_ , which happened to the salesperson when the customer did not answer the sales query and purchase the herbal product. The device had an _audio sales channel_ tuned to the sales audio booklets which involved motivational sales work, guru and evangelist speak, or behavioral change of customer-reactive answers, modifying the habit or habits of a customer or Herbaline salesperson, into herbaspeak language. The inducer was very expensive, several thousand dollars, and the use of it was forbidden to anyone ranked lower than multilevel four inside the company. It was one of the drivers of _other people's work_ official Herbaline policy and guidelines, and it was recommended to people like Cartmel, who spent hours listening to the device.

A lady named Bertha Myers was in the room, guarding the place, ensuring the recruited ladies like Ambi who showed or displayed reticent linguistic conduct, had a proper experience with the inducer, before being sent to the antisale room.

"It'll be a minute Bertha, I'm taking these ladies to the ranch and the portable inducer with me."

Bertha nodded, and pulled Clarity, Lanai and Ambi aside. The housekeeper was in her fifties and had been an employee of Herbaline for nearly two years, recruited for her diligent work carried out for a prominent household of the East Coast. She wasn't very comfortable with working at the company, ever since a group of inspectors from the Federal Trade Commission had stormed the Orange County office a few months earlier. Through skillful befriending by Clarity, Bertha explained that Stive began studying relational affinity after his marriage collapsed and ended in divorce. Stive attributed the collapse to a wrong configuration of the work environment which made him consider polyamorous relational avenues with other women. According to him, there was space for several women in his life, a physical, emotional, and conversation space, nourishing, supportive, sweet, and professional, that no single woman could meet given the savagery of the work environment.

Stive and Manglove considered Ambi part of their potential polyrelational group, but Manglove was not pleased by her lack of progress in the antisale room. On the other hand, Manglove was clearly pleased by having found Clarity, watching her on television camera in her room with Lanai, like someone watching big brother would. She did that two or three days a week from a large screen television set anchored to a metal pole twelve inches in diameter made of polished, stainless steel, which was part of her language facility office in Palm Springs.

On another level of his own unabashed deviant thinking, Stive manipulated the emotion and the thinking of people, to make them react in certain ways, to make them feel apprehensive, or slightly afraid, or nonconforming. This allowed him to have prospecting recruits spend money on Herbaline services or as distributors, in order to sell Herbaline herbal produce to lower level distributors, peers or customers. Profit trickled upwards from the customer to the chain of distributors, leaving the bulk of it to higher ranked sales executives, but enough to low-level salespersons to get the feeling that they were making more money than any sales job paid out.

"What kind of training does Stive follow? At Herbaline, I mean," said Clarity.

"He has gone through the wave inducer, washing out any negative emotion from his thinking, using Neuro Linguistic Programming."

"What does that mean?" Asked Clarity.

"Neuro, as in brain physiological neural networks, linguistic, as in everyday language, and programming, as in word related behavior, thought, setting of the habit of a person."

"What makes him special?"

"He has a dual way of thinking, he can think yes no, good and bad, in very refined ways, and he can also think non dual, not judging whether something is good or bad. He is working with Manglove to reach multilevel six, a way to join high ranking executives and board of director members of the company, people who have sold more than ten million dollars of Herbaline products or services and are accomplished at linguistic configurations. Multilevel six people can apply for the privilege club."

Multilevel six was both a hierarchical level of accomplishment and a sales milestone at the company. It marked a definite point of procedural loyalty for the Herbaline employee and executive, and led to further avenues of networking, within the company and outside of it, including knowing more about the way it was built and being engaged with the lower hemisphere hierarchical group, a group located outside the company. Clarity pulled out the pen drive from Manglove's office, showing the employee database of Herbaline and the unethical practices of assigning an emotion label to an employee in order to value the professional competence of that worker, all of it, in order to decide their promotion or ' _marketing aptitude_ '. The pen drive included the documents showing that Ambi was kept as language refusal recluse at the company, inside the antisale room.

"Would you be willing to send this pen drive to the Federal Trade Commission?"

"Why would I do that?" Asked Bertha.

"I have connections that can get you a good job with the U.S. government at the Bellagio hotel in Vegas, right under the hotel." Bertha negotiated a U.S. government-sponsored one hundred thousand dollar retirement plan with Clarity, and agreed to send the pen drive.

"Where is Stive now?" Asked Clarity.

"In his office here at the language facility, he came in yesterday, he is working on the chart of emotion, it's what drives the promotions engine at Herbaline, in addition to driving sales aptitude and poly-relational couples."

# Chapter Thirteen

Stive was getting ready to meet Ivy and Manglove in a sexual encounter lasting several hours. A room panel showing several indicators, thirty two in total, each of them indicating whether a particular person part of the Herbaline employee list was present in that room, was one of the favorite items for Stive. The head of human resource allocation at Herbaline checked the light panel showing the ' _person present_ ' status of each room at the language facility. One of the lights was off, that of the antisale room. Stive turned on the speaker phone to talk to Manglove, who was working in another office. "The status light is off, Ambi has left the antisale room," said Stive.

Manglove turned the surveillance screen to the antisale channel, and saw that the room was empty.

"I'll ask Bertha, she may be with Cartmel."

Cartmel bypassed all facility measures set up by Coley Manglove and Stive, leaving in his Mercedes with Clarity, Lanai and Ambi, for ' _Honey Ranch_ ', the Nevada Love Lady relational nudist board house, a place used as a testing ground for polyamorous relationships, engaging the collaboration of ladies and consensual arousal in groups of one, two, three or four women with one man. Cartmel was followed by Manglove, who drove a new Lexus after learning from Bertha that Cartmel was taking Ambi and the inducer with him to ' _Honey Ranch_ '. After a few hours of driving north, they reached the Nevada border and the love lady ranch, welcomed by Rhona Binney, the person in charge of the place, a woman who showed similarities with Madame Tussaud, the woman in charge of the wax museum retail chain of museum shops, in that she rarely smiled and her face seemed frozen in a permanent smug expression.

After a short five minute conversation involving verification of credentials, carried out by Cartmel and Binney, Clarity watched the girls in the relational boarding house, all of them in their twenties, hired to please a single customer, hoping the wealthy customer, he or she, would become their lifetime partner. Each day, the ladies in the relational board house looked at the bulletin board showing the agenda of the day, and performed various duties, from gathering and washing their underwear by hand, to playing tennis and swimming naked with guests, to preparing a buffet brunch for the guests and also for themselves. Daily chores also included designing or studying some Herbaline course work, and managing the herbal product inventory in the warehouse area, which distributed all Herbaline products in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas. Malibu was kept out of the reach of Herbaline distributors by a local law, which prevented multi level companies from carrying out their marketing activity anywhere in the municipality.

Arousal was very present at ' _Honey Ranch_ ', and the ladies were kept in near permanent arousal, to please the guests. After a good breakfast, Rhona Binney called Clarity and Lanai for morning duties. Lanai was dressed in scanty white underwear, reaffirming her bum and the fabric which aroused her with every touch on her vulva. Her clitoris was noticing the attention of the fabric and the librarian became aware of the light brushing of the underwear on her love bud. Clarity watched her friend wearing white cotton underwear that was clearly damp in the area of her Venus mound. One of the ladies in the room reached for the underwear of Clarity and got her naked. She reached for one of the tokens present in a basket and gave it to the Malibu teleoperator. The token credited all incoming guests as unclothed-holiday adults, who could perform any activities which ranged from poolside bum tanning and cocktail straw sipping naked, bathed in sunshine. One of the ladies hired from the Aureolas clothing optional resort in Palm Springs carried out a full body massage on Clarity, grabbing her bum cheeks skillfully, till they showed no more sign of tension after one and half hours of touching it. Honey Ranch was a nudist resort, or had the front of a nudist resort for adults while it also carried out business duties for Herbaline.

The nudist token was also an admission pass, and confirmed that the guest satisfied a large group of relational qualities agreed by consensus of the ladies working there and by Coley Manglove who had the last word on all decisions. It was given out officially by invitation from the secretive low globe or hemisphere counsel group. Clarity kept saying no firmly to the proposal of Cartmel, refusing to engage in pleasant relational intercourse with him and two other 'Honey Ranch' ladies. Instead, she pressed her breasts on those of Lanai and showed herself naked in front of Rhona Binney, with Ambi and with Lanai, because she thought she was compatible with both, according to more than twenty eight indicators of her personal chart of emotion.

Clarity looked at Ambi, who was frolicking with several ladies naked on a large colorful towel set for midday picnic. Ambi had been in Honey Ranch before and Clarity could see that it was easy to become complacent at the ranch. Ambi was a sought-after relational contact for Manglove and Stive and Cartmel knew that. The sales instructor parlayed his training skill and role at Herbaline into receiving authorization to opt in for personal relationship pairing with Ambi. But the authorization was specific. Cartmel could be with Ambi and with other guests occasionally, but he was not the main male partner of Manglove, Stive was. Stive recorded and studied every aspect of personal relational arrangements between employees of Herbaline. Those relevant aspects were recorded by _the relational eye_ of the company, a fuzzy logic computer program with an actual glass eye built by the lens company _Eyemery Lens Sayban_. The relational eye allocated personal and work-related sales pairings and fed its sentimental and professional output to the relational database that the company used to store the information on all of its employees, including with whom they flirted at the company. According to the relational eye, Clarity was compatible with Lanai and Ambi sexually and sentimentally. But Cartmel was not their ideal man to complete the four people Polyamory group.

# Chapter Fourteen

Cartmel invited Clarity, Ambi and Lanai to an outdoor breakfast the next day by the door of the relational board house. Cartmel was playing around with his _docket_ , playing a form of language sudoku or word sequence game.

"I am going on a retreat today," he said.

"How fun, where is it being held?" Asked Lanai.

"In the barn of Honey Ranch, over there. You can attend with me."

Clarity and Lanai attended the retreat in the last row of the large stable, witnessing how a Rolls Royce, allegedly belonging to Lyle Matchett, the official owner and head of Herbaline, came out of the area normally used for horses, driven by Rhona Binney herself. Cartmel walked past several ladies attending the talk and looked at Clarity as she sat not too far from the door of the barn.

"It´s me," said Cartmel, looking at Clarity, "I am the instructor of the retreat."

Lanai held hands with Clarity and Ambi held hands with Lanai.

"Wow, you are the instructor of this retreat, we're in for a sales talk treat," said Clarity.

"How did you make your way here, you cannot attend this private gathering, as long as Rhona has not approved your admission."

"You said we could attend a few minutes ago," said Clarity.

Cartmel gave them a smirk and began the retreat, noticing Rhona was nodding their admission to the retreat, as she opened the driver's door of the Rolls Royce. One of the girls opened the Rolls Royce passenger back door for Rhona and another girl got in naked through the other door of the British luxury sedan.

The retreat was being held for high level sales experts ranking multilevel five and above. Cartmel explained that the emotion and arousal fingerprint of all employees was held by Herbaline. As a result of a new set of instructions given by Stive, no employees, including sales experts could have access to it anymore. The emotion fingerprint was banned and stored in the company's analytic emotion processor to study individual and group behavior. According to Manglove, arousal-guided love and relationships, and deep-arousal encounters, flourished into very stable relationships, and promotion decisions based on flirting habits had to be considered carefully.

The payroll information of Herbaline employees was being shown in other areas of the company. Their spending and sales ability patterns, were being charted by a Herbaline provider belonging to the lower snow globe, separate from Herbaline, and supervised by Ivy. The provider was a microchart interpretation firm in Singapore, _Visual Emotone_. A new way of viewing life was opening to all ladies at the retreat, the polyamorous lifestyle. Manglove lived a polyamorous life with Stive, non exclusive love with other bisexual women, including Ivy and the maid at Herbaline Civic Center, and also including the roommate of Ivy, a good looking blond woman in her twenties who had au paired in Orange County from Northern Italy, Chiara.

Manglove monitored the women at the ranch for pleasure, arousal and sexual inclinations of love, as a Herbaline health or arousal nurse. She was particularly interested in pairing Ivy with Clarity. According to Manglove, emotion came from meaning, assigning meaning to a stimulus of alert, which elicited the emotion as warning to the body or as reassurance signal that things, including a relationship, were safe for the person. In any case, the stimulus came from outside, and so the person in and of itself was good, no matter how negative the emotion was. Manglove entered the retreat and found Ambi, suggesting that the former recluse stay at the love ranch with Cartmel.

After two hours going over sales figures of Herbaline, the retreat was over. Cartmel had not exchanged much with Coley. Their relationship was not that good after Stive had forbidden any flirting by Cartmel with Manglove, and Cartmel spoke mostly with Stive from then on, mostly about business matters. Manglove approached Cartmel, who was leafing through the Herbaline sales figures showing that his communications course had created greater personal stability, and increased spiritual abilities in twelve percent of those taking the course.

"I want Clarity and her friend out of Herbaline," said Manglove.

"What about Ambi?"

"We're through with Ambi, all the arousal and language data is being processed, you can have her, Stive and I are keeping Ivy and the au pair girl, or the maid, they're going to live with us in Cayman."

"What about my promotion?" Asked Cartmel.

"Check your docket, your results should be in."

The motivational guru checked a screen on his docket smartphone connected to the lower globe chat. Results were not what he expected. He was refused admission into the lower globe, because his thinking did not reach the level of wisdom and maturity needed, six, reaching instead the level five point five seven. The emotion scale did not lie, and emotional maturity, a very particular definition of it, was needed to get promoted at Herbaline and engage in sex with a larger group of good looking women, those three women he had in mind, Clarity, Lanai and Ambi.

According to the members of the low key hemisphere, a discreet group of counterparts, Cartmel's arousal was not quite fine tuned for full consensus admission into the lower globe. Only one out of four women involved with him at 'Honey Ranch', agreed to engage in arousal activity with him. Rhona Binney and Manglove told him that he would have to remain a multilevel five salesman another year, despite the good efforts as motivational and sales guru of the company.

Several guests attending the retreat, multilevel six and seven people coming from all parts of the globe, were planning the return leg of their trip. Only they could move in and out of Herbaline freely, but no one knew what they did professionally, no one knew their job outside of Herbaline. Ivy came inside the closed door barn, she was the hostess organizing the return trip for all guests, including Clarity, Lanai, and Ambi. For Clarity and Lanai, it was the initial leg of a plane trip, but it was a clear signal that Herbaline wanted them out of the company.

"Where are we headed?" Asked Clarity.

"Singapore, we are flying you on a business trip."

# Chapter Fifteen

Preparing a brief document used to issue tickets and boarding passes bound for Singapore, Ivy said to Clarity that she was all right with living at Herbaline, and letting the company buy her home, even deciding which home was good for her to own with Coley and Stive. It was likely that her home would be in Cayman and she loved the idea of living in the Caribbean. Ambi was becoming more lively after learning that she was leaving Herbaline.

"I used to be an air hostess working the route from Los Angeles to Singapore," said Ambi.

"Wow, how fun," said Clarity, glad that Ambi was opening up.

"That's how I met Lyle Matchett when he was an attendant. The naughty guy didn't tell me he was working as level four at Herbaline, he was simply an attendant. Meeting him is the main reason why I began working for Herbaline."

"You met Lyle Matchett," said Clarity. She took Ambi aside, while Ivy called a ' _SoberMaggie_ ' shuttle headed for Los Angeles airport.

Ambi had met Lyle Matchett two years earlier, when he was monitoring sales level four and was a recruitment executive for the company. She was led to the love ranch, where she declined polyamorous relational thinking, and doing, with other women, including Coley Manglove. According to Ambi, she was then sent to Herbaline headquarters in Orange County, where she was dismissed by Manglove for poor sales performance after one year, and then led into the linguistic facility of Herbaline in Palm Springs after refusing multilevel work with several distributors. Clarity returned to the barn main area and approached Ivy.

"Is there any other way out of Herbaline besides this trip to Singapore?" Asked Clarity, glancing at a device which looked like a credit card point of sale reader, made by a brand called _Groovvslot_.

"No, you've got to take the plane to Singapore, if you'd like to erase or get hold of the emotion and behavior fingerprint which is being examined by the company," said Ivy. "At this point, you've done a lot of work here with our emotion scale, it's not very smart to leave the company. We value your presence here."

Their only way out of Herbaline was to board the official Herbaline plane and go to Singapore to find their behavior fingerprint with the company, and to find it meant going where the emotion processor technology was being held and developed. The lower snow globe was a network different from Herbaline, ranking more relevant people in the community, authorities in their field, celebrities brought in from Hollywood, scientists and high ranking executives of the fashion industry. Mingling with some of the guests, Clarity noticed that Ivy was walking towards the back area of the barn, where there was a room hidden from view. She followed the low-ranking Herbaline employee and saw Ivy reaching for a key inside an actual snow globe depicting Las Vegas.

"Do you know what that room is, it's kind of nice for a shack," said Clarity.

"It's the lower globe vault of the company, all of the privilege credit cards issued to level five and above employees selected for lower globe admission are issued through a bank whose key opens that room and is in this snow globe.

"Who is in charge of those privilege cards?"

"The lower hemisphere hierarchy. Nobody really knows who they are, but a bank is in charge of the privilege club who issues the cards, they're one of the owners of the club and the cards. So far, only a few members today are receiving the card, and only Manglove and Stive have received it, to my knowledge. Manglove keeps the card in the room, but she uses it occasionally when she's on holiday in Cayman, with Stive and me. That's what we're doing next week, that's why I'm taking the card out."

Clarity and Lanai took the shuttle to Los Angeles with other women who had decided to leave the Nevada relational board house, in order to try out for another stage in their relational development, after showing good numbers on the general emotion scale, scoring average on common sense, and being labeled rational in general. Their evaluation sheet showed several ' _likes_ ' from guests of the ranch coming from Vegas, and some individual capacity for thinking on their own. That was a prerequisite for applying as escorts of the privilege club.

Manglove alerted Stive that Clarity was leaving with Ambi Mivel and other guests, including Cartmel. Stive had been watching all of the retreat, filming with a camera atop the barn. Manglove told Stive that Ivy had access to the emotion chart data and relational information of Clarity, and that the assistant had recommended Clarity and Lanai for lower globe admission.

Coley and Stive alerted their Singapore contact at the lower globe of Ambi's arrival there. They could not acknowlege that Ambi had been lured and misled for two years to try out as Herbaline employee, for that could jeopardize public perception of the company, and it could also jeopardize the approval FDA process of Elony with authorities and the pending investigation on Herbaline by the Federal Trade Commission. The information on arousal and emotion that Ambi had provided to them was useful, and Clarity leaving with her was providing the perfect excuse to return Ambi to Singapore, on the same airline she'd reached Los Angeles, simply as passenger instead of hostess, with a new friend she'd met at Herbaline, Clarity. Ambi was not compatible to work at Herbaline, and the company ensured all those leaving the company left of their own free will, without any sense of meddling or influence by the herbal company.

After reaching LAX, Clarity got inside the plane to Singapore with Lanai and Ambi. Leafing the in-flight magazine, she discovered that the executive president of Herbaline, Lyle Matchett did exist, a photograph of a man with the label Lyle Matchett, Herbaline president, addressing passengers in a short article spanning the first few pages of the in-flight magazine, showed it. The photograph showed the face of Mattelson Stive, a doctor of semantic studies, and self-appointed emotion obstetrician of Herbaline. In a nearly compulsive way, Stive liked to observe the birth of an emotion, the preceding stage of emotion in particular. According to him, preceding emotion was a semantic cloud of meaning derived from outside stimulation, stimulus, or arousal, sexual arousal in particular, which had implications in the behavior of a customer leading to a sale.

Stive was a member of the lower snow globe, through the privilege club, an exclusive club spanning worldwide affiliates, whose activity involved matching high powered men with women who were spectacular, and very attractive, among them the women belonging to a flamboyant harem known as the _Skyline of Kuala Lumpur_ , a close knit brethren of spiritually enlightened and sexually active women who were not owned by any men.

The skyline of Kuala Lumpur had a branch in Singapore and understood the emotion chart. They were also the users of their own emotion scale, a highly sought emotion chart belonging to ' _Pentatone Learning_ ', made by a group of warrior monks who allegedly provided a genuine awakening or sensing of Chinese body health methods. These methods included understanding, explaining and working with the twelve-organ meridian system, depicted in a chart code-named meridian 57. Their name was highly private and was not known to the everyday person. They belonged to a secret society known in inner circles as _the Society of the Enlightened Jade Dragon_.

# Chapter Sixteen

SUN ON THE ROCKS amusements for adults, in easy to read banana humor order.

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.

Crafted by Somers Isle & Loveshade.

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

tropical, and easy-going, like the fruit.

Sold as is, to keep the amusements fresh and irreverent for the community.

All fictional characters of these amusements

are adults at least twenty one years of age.

Amusements are easy to read stories for adults

which can be read in about three or four hours.

The banana humor series of Sun on the Rocks has 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 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.

Join the sun on the rocks community on noisetrade.

http://books.noisetrade.com/somersisleloveshade

The Malibu Case.

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

The Acapulco Cocktail.

Or how a cocktail drink can turn a holiday into a traction with the Law.

The Cayman Air Banner.

Or going where your money goes to keep an eye on how it disappears.

The Bahamas Lotion.

Or discerning when the notion of a lotion is not beauty but dependence.

The Adult Channel.

Or how renting pleasure is different from owning it.

The OOL Broderie.

Or whether a wedding can be arranged as a matter of levity.

The Bellagio Wikileak.

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

The Cuban Renegade.

Or whether gold can be backed by a renegade,

when 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 a talisman can turn global relocation into local sustainable living.

The Outdoor Shower.

Or how a shower built in the right spot can bring a new perspective to the bottom line.

The Emotion Scale.

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

80+ COMMENTS FROM OPEN SALON AND OUR SALON,

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 a 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 characters where 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 deterIvytion. 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: I 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. you must thank keiko alvarez, another universe-in-herself, for the prompt to come around. 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.

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 80 COMMENTS OR SO 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

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

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

**Careers and Professional Designations to consider** :

Chartered Financial Analyst: http://www.cfainstitute.org

Certified Financial Planner: <http://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 and global news** :

Khan Academy: <http://www.khanacademy.org/>

Visual Thesaurus: <http://www.visualthesaurus.com/>

Visual Global News: <http://www.newsmap.jp/>

**Featured universities** :

Bermuda College: www.college.bm/

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

Free online university classes: <http://www.coursera.org/>

Ohio State University: <http://www.osu.edu/>

University of Arizona: <http://www.arizona.edu/>

University of Hawaii: <http://www.hawaii.edu/>

