GENEROUS SPIRIT 08

GENEROUS SPIRIT 
by ghosthostblue


COPYRIGHT 2004-2005
Feedback to: thisguysaghost@hotmail.com



FIVE EPILOGUES



EPILOGUE ONE: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
He had never had this feeling before, this feeling of the world caving
in on him. If his life could be plotted on a graph, the life-line would
always be zigging upwards, with no more than a few short downward
zags to create interest along the way.

He'd been athletic as a kid, his parents wealthy, and he'd been
pretty good-looking in his day. He'd dated the prettiest girls,
attended the right schools, married a trophy wife, basking in all of
the pleasures that accompanied life at the top. He never quite
became the cream Ñ meaning a U.S. Senator or even the President Ñ
but as a member of the House of Representatives, he still wielded
enough power to be above it all. Above them, out there, the
nobodies. They suffered in countless ways, he knew, and their
suffering was a constant reminder to him, a reminder to always
remain high above their sorry concerns. Their suffering was
pathetic, and he wanted nothing to do with it. But now... He was
suffering, too. He could feel it as a pressure in his heart that also
made his bowels feel strange.

Congressman Warren Jones shifted his fleshy butt on the soft leather
seat of his limousine and skimmed the text that his chief campaign
advisor had just handed him. "In times of challenge and
insecurity...", he read. Blah blah blah. It was standard stuff, aimed to
appeal to the crowd's general sense of fear without being too
obvious about it. "Fear is what pulls the lever in the end", he'd read
in a book linking neurology and politics. "Whatever mental or even
religious justifications people make to themselves, it's the lizard
part of the brain that actually votes".

He believed it, but you had to camouflage the use of fear with
certain expected appeals to man's so-called "better nature". He
passed over whole paragraphs looking for some of his favorite
words and found them. Strength. Fiscal responsibility. Conservative
values. God. Compassion. Good, but where was the language aimed
to paint his opponent as weak and out of touch? He flipped forward
a page and there it was, the smear jargon. Risky schemes,
uncertainty, spend-and-tax liberal, indecisive, immoral.

"There are several good sound-bites we'll feed to the press again in
the spin sessions," his campaign advisor assured him. "Now all you
have to do is shake a hundred hands and kiss a few babies, and we'll
have some good pictures, too. Watch your body language as you
walk through the crowd and deliver the speech ÑÊno slouching or
drooped shoulders, we want the appearance of strength. Some
reporters will ask questions afterwards, but they've all been vetted.
The questions will mostly be softballs that you can hit out of the
park. We'll have your poll numbers up by the late news."

His poll numbers had been slipping lately, otherwise he wouldn't
even be in this nowhere part of the state at a stupid Maple Festival.
He looked through the tinted windows at the crowd of middle-class
nobodies. It wasn't as easy for him as it was for some of his
Congressional colleagues from the South. There, in places like South
Carolina or Alabama, you just shouted loudly about gays and
abortion, and winning an election was a piece of cake. "God's little
robots" ÑÊthat was what some of his Southern colleagues called
their political base in those sorry states. All the campaign troops
needed was a little Jesus-oil to keep their gears running and you
could make them do anything. Beating a Democrat was easy Ñ the
only real challenge in the South came during the Republican
primaries when some zealous nut-case actually believed in Jesus and
wrapped his campaign with biblical references even more than you
did.

Maine was different, though. The populace wasn't quite as brain-
washed. Here, he might actually need every vote to win.

Which was why he'd have to go out there and kiss a bunch of
goddamn babies. Babies. He noticed how many infants and kids were
there in the crowd. He fucking hated babies. One of them had
drooled all over his tie a few days ago, and they couldn't vote, so
what were they good for? But he would smile until his face ached
and look like he loved the little brats. He would beam and laugh and
give off the impression that all was well with his world. It was what
he did for a living, it was required. It was the way you pulled the
wool over the eyes of all those human sheep.

He didn't feel that all was well with his world, though, and the
comment about his drooping shoulders was troubling. No one in the
campaign knew how everything was falling apart, but maybe they
could see it in his posture. He couldn't show any weakness, not now.
He had to win or else he might have to find a real job.

He'd thought he was above money concerns. He'd thought he was
just weeks away from being one of the world's richest men. But that
was before everything started turning to shit. What the hell had
happened? How could the GlobalGro plant become a mass of
burning rubble just as they were all about to hit the biggest jackpot
in human history?

The destruction of the research facility was on his Congressional
turf and immediately became an issue in his re-election race. He had
to face the news cameras and say the standard things about
terrorism and national security, about bringing the criminals to
justice and the rest of that crap. But inside he was dying. His mouth
felt as dry as a desert but he couldn't let the cameras or even his
own staff see that his dreams of incalculable wealth had been wiped
away overnight. But how? How could it have happened?

It might be terrorism, but somehow he didn't believe it. Too many
fishy things. First, Snellings had disappeared, only to turn up half-
paralyzed, blind and completely insane. The sheriff was the first line
of defense and somehow, some way, the man became a drooling
vegetable overnight. Some doctors thought it might be a severe
stroke, but apparently there were signs of torture on his body, even
on his dick.

It was just strange enough that security had been beefed-up at the
GlobalGro plant, but there should have been more. He cursed
himself for not taking care of things himself! He couldn't really give
a shit about what happened to Snellings, but he should have read it
as a sign, a sign of more trouble to come. It would have been risky
calling too much attention to the GlobalGro plant, but maybe if the
National Guard had been on the scene...

But that was the thing: He didn't know whether it would have made
a difference because he didn't know what had happened. No one
seemed to know, although there were teams of Homeland Security
investigators still swarming over the remains of the facility.

There had been some survivors, but something was wrong with
them. Memory loss of the night's events for some of them. Others
seemed fine except that they went temporarily insane under
interrogation, as though the very act of attempting to describe the
chain of events at the plant triggered some kind of very powerful
post-hypnotic response. There was talk about that, about some sort
of "Manchurian Candidate" mechanism at play with the survivors,
although no single theory fit with every case. The symptoms were
too wide-ranging, too individual, too diverse.

But not every researcher had been at the plant that night, and what
if one of them came forward and discussed the details of their
research? They were being interviewed by the F.B.I. and the D.H.S.,
some of them might crack under the pressure. But no computer files
or paper reports were ever allowed to leave the plant, and all of the
evidence had been destroyed in the fire. If any one of the
researchers started to sing the truth, the story would sound too far-
fetched to believe Ñ who would buy into a story like that without
any notes or computer files to back it up?

Still, he was afraid that the investigators might find something... He
shivered. If the shit stuck to him in some way, it could be blackmail,
at best. But it could be much, much worse.

He kept thinking that Daggert or Nash Jenkins were double-crossing
him somehow. Jenkins had been the one to insist on bringing the
fucking Chinese into the equation. They needed Global Transport to
have the antidote ready at most points of the globe, but he had
never trusted the Chinese. And now he knew he'd been right about
that, even though he didn't really know what had happened.

The Homeland Security people had shown him the videotape from
the security cameras at GlobalGro's front gate. A gorgeous Chinese
woman wearing huge sunglasses, smiling up at the camera with
teeth so white that you almost wanted to squint. She was the hottest
work-out babe he'd ever seen, and she seemed to know it. She
outright flirted with the camera, flexing her amazing biceps like she
could predict the stiffening dicks of dozens of federal agents and
one Maine Congressman when they eventually watched the video.
Then she hauled back a clenched fist, and with frightful speed and
efficiency...

End of tape, and just the beginning of a million questions. Had the
Chinese government somehow found out about Project Financial
Nourishment, or was this all off the books? Had he been tricked by
Jenkins, or both Daggert and Jenkins? Daggert sounded just as
devastated as he was by the turn of events, but Daggert was a good
actor, you could think he was showing his cards and be totally
wrong.

He couldn't be sure Ñ yet Ñ which one of them had double-crossed
him. Or whether any of them had double-crossed him. But even if he
knew the perpetrators, how had they done it? Who could have
wrecked everything so quickly, so thoroughly, causing so much to
disappear like that? How could the plant have been turned into a
burning ruin in mere minutes when there was such a large
contingent of security personnel on-site?

The F.B.I. had already figured the time of that last moment of
security tape to be 10:13 p.m. Less than thirty minutes later, the
first fire trucks arrived and there was nothing left to be saved. The
F.B.I. was saying that whole truckloads of explosive charges would
need to be in position ahead of time to account for the level of
destruction they'd found, but there was no forensic evidence that
explosive charges had been detonated at all.

"How can a research facility covering ten acres of land blow up
without anything blowing it up?", he asked the Director of
Homeland Security, face to face.

"Fuck if I know," was the feeble reply.

From what he was hearing, they were looking at all kinds of fanciful
theories to explain what they were finding. A whole new class of
undetectable explosives, lasers from space Ñ no one seemed to
know shit.

"Show time in five minutes, Congressman," he was informed.

He worked at fixing his photo smile onto his face. It made his jaw
hurt, because part of him wanted to cry and the rest of him wanted
to strangle somebody. He was still rich as long as he was in office
ÑÊbeing in Congress was a sure-fire a way to be rich and stay rich,
thank God. So many people wanted to give you things, to contribute
to your campaign, all in the hopes that you'd give them the
legislation they craved. And no one even used the word "bribery"
anymore. It was a total anachronism when trading favors had
become legally built into the campaign system.

But he had been so close to being so much richer. And what else was
there that mattered? Certainly not the Constitution, certainly not his
"constituents", certainly not "conservative values". Those were just
the icons that you trotted out to keep the sheep happily tuned-out.
Funny how all of that pathetic crap began with the prefix "con",
because that's what it all was, a con-job. You kissed their stinking
babies and they gave you power, and you were pretty much on top.
But he could have been at the very top, richer than a fucking Saudi
king, richer than just about anybody.

That had been their model, the Saudis. How could those fat bastards
get away with so much? Because they had oil, and even had a secret
plan to irradiate their oil and make it useless for thousands of years
if anybody tried to take it from them or fuck with them too much. It
was legal blackmail, the laws of international supply and demand
twisted into a perfect pyramid of power.

And that was the beauty of it Ñ the laws of supply and demand
completely fell apart when people needed certain resources too
much. And the laws fell in the favor of those who had the resources
that the whole world needed. Again, take the Saudis. Don't want our
oil? What, your economy will collapse? Too bad you didn't give the
same subsidies to renewable energy or conservation that you were
so willing to throw at the oil companies. On paper, in theory, it was
stalemate. But with governments and the entire world economy
starved for oil... Checkmate. Game to the ones with the oil.

So what else did people need that they couldn't do without? Air,
water. If you could sell people the air they needed to breathe...
Maybe once there were colonies on the moon or Mars, which was
why he supported N.A.S.A. and the Star Wars system the way he did.
So what about water? They hadn't been able to come up with a
viable way of controlling that because of the fucking rain.

Health care. That was already a major pyramid scheme in the U.S.
People absolutely needed health care and it was a seventh of the U.S.
economy and growing. Hell, some of his biggest campaign
contributors made hundreds of millions every year off of the
inequities in America's private health care system. With every boil
or hernia or tumor troubling the sheep at the bottom of the
pyramid, dollars floated upwards to the waiting bank accounts of his
friends and contributors. His job, therefore, was to make sure that
the system didn't change no matter how bad things got.

But even health care, compared to air or water, was small potatoes.
So what else did everyone need that they couldn't do without?

Small potatoes... Food. People needed food.

Bingo. They had argued endlessly about whose idea it had been first.
Probably Jenkins, although Daggert claimed that the idea was his.
But Nash Jenkins had known just enough about the cutting-edge
research to spread their money in the right places, and before long
they all knew they were onto something real. People needed food.
And food, all food, came from plants in the end. If you could come
up with a way to make all plants fail or die without what you had to
sell that could revive them...

It was genius. And the science was nearly there, and could be there
quickly with the right investment of cash and focus. So they invested
in it, made it happen. It was exactly what every idiot in America
worshipped. It was capitalism taken to the edge, profit-motive taken
to the Promised Land. And they had been so close. The antidote had
already been distributed to major ports on every continent. They
were weeks away, just a few weeks away. It was just a matter of
synthesizing the photosynthesis-destroying agent into an effective
aerosol form, tweaking a few genetic components here and there to
allow the pathogen to spread effectively between different species...

"It's time," he was told.

He stretched his famous smile across his face and exited the car on
buoyant legs, nearly dancing through the throng of festival-goers,
shaking their slimy hands and kissing their smelly babies. He saw
two young men in military uniform and saluted them, and was
rewarded by dozens of photo flashes. Suckers. The press was
completely addicted to empty theater.

He gave his speech behind a podium on a raised sound stage. There
were fewer digs at his opponent in the text than he would have
liked, and the applause was generally tepid. No matter. If his media
consultants decided to use any footage from this event for a
campaign commercial, they could patch-in the thunder of applause
with the touch of a button.

He pointed to a middle-aged reporter as his first questioner, and got
a really easy one about tax cuts. It had been his own idea to have
these makeshift press conferences following certain campaign
speeches. It made him look accessible, unafraid, in-command. And
the questions were never dangerous. Most reporters had forgotten
how to ask tough questions, or maybe they didn't even know they
were allowed to any more.

He demagogued the tax question, allowing his voice to rise with
righteous indignation when he spoke about the burden to the
economy, about the hands of government reaching right into the
pockets of Joe Citizen and every small business owner. He was
soaring and glanced over towards his chief campaign advisor for an
affirming nod.

But what he saw was a desperate look and a finger pointing right at
his crotch. Oh, crap, was his fly open? It was every politician's secret
nightmare, to be caught on camera with your fly wide open. He
glanced down as discreetly as he could to check...

Hunh??? His fly was closed but his right hand was playing with his
dick through his trousers! What was he doing???

He told his hand to stop... What was happening? If anything, he was
playing with himself more feverishly! He willed himself to stop. Stop!
Stop, dammit! His arm, his hand... It didn't listen. It was as if his own
hand was someone else's hand!

He tried to keep the panic out of his eyes but he knew he was
failing. His crotch was hidden by the podium from all but a handful
of people far to either side in the audience. He saw those few
pointing or laughing or gaping in his peripheral vision, laughing at
the fact that he was playing with himself at a public news
conference. If he stopped now his team could control the damage...

But his hand kept fondling his dick! Stop! Stop it! Why couldn't he
stop it?

"Congressman Jones," a forty-ish female reporter addressed him,
"Can you explain how your health-care policies address the problem
of rising prescription drug prices? As you know, there are many
families in Maine who have no choice but to make monthly trips to
Canada to buy affordable medications, medications they need to
survive. What do you have to say to these people? How do you
intend to help them?"

A bitchy question from a bitchy female reporter. She was a decent-
looking piece of ass, though. He imagined her giving him a blow-job
in a private "interview" session Ñ which was a mistake, because the
thought, coupled with his renegade hand continuing to stroke his
dick through his trousers, was enough to start getting him hard.

He felt perspiration beading up under his thinning hair and he felt
the eyes of his chief campaign advisor boring a hole into him. "I
know I have to stop!," he wanted to scream. But I can't! It's like...
Dammit! My hand won't listen to me!

"Congressman Jones? We're waiting for an answer. How do you
intend to help those people?"

It was the blow-job bitch reporter again. Trying to hide the lewd
activity of his renegade hand, he leaned towards the podium so
tightly that he might as well be fucking it. He had to get out of here.

"I have no intention of helping those people," he heard himself say.

What the fuck??? A murmur arose in the crowd. Fuck, where had
those words come from? He'd intended to trot out his standard
response about personal choice and making sure the government
didn't get in the way of the doctor/patient relationship. But... Oh no.
No! He could feel it Ñ an urge, an impulse to answer the questions
truthfully. No! NO!

The reporter looked stunned, but then you could see her eyes light
up like she was a shark just discovering that she was a shark,
because she'd just gotten her first whiff of blood. She literally licked
her lips as she asked her follow-up.

"Are you saying... Your opponent accuses you of putting the
interests of the pharmaceutical lobby above the concerns of your
own constituents. How do you wish to respond to that charge?

He wished to respond by calling his opponent a desperate liar, but
instead his mouth said: "The pharmaceutical companies contribute
hundreds of thousands of dollars to my party and my re-election
campaign. Of course I put their interests above those of a bunch of
sheep."

He could feel his face going red at the same time that the crowd
collectively gasped. Fuck! Fuck! What was happening? Why was he
suddenly speaking the truth? And why couldn't he stop playing with
his dick?

And then he heard a male voice shout: "Congressman, what is
Project Financial Nourishment?"

Oh no, no! He swung his head in an effort to locate the new
questioner. It was an ambush, and he could feel the response, the
truthful response, forming in his throat. No! He quickly planted his
left hand over his mouth to keep the words from escaping and tried
to run, but his feet wouldn't move. No! His left hand slid away from
his mouth against his will. Stop! He willed it to stop, to come back...
He could grab it with his right hand and put it back over his lips, or
cram it down his throat, but... But his right hand couldn't grasp his
left hand because it was still beating him off behind the podium! The
words started to come again. Truthful words. No! The urge to tell the
truth was urgent, unstoppable. No!

"No! Nooo... Nope... Noproj... NoProjec... Project Financial
Nourishment is a plan to switch off, at a genetic level, the
photosynthetic components that every species of plant on the face
of the earth needs to convert solar energy into growth and
reproductive capacities through the intentional release of an
artificially developed pathogen into the atmosphere."

OH GOD,WHAT HAVE I DONE? He hadn't told them everything, but
he'd told them too much! A truthful response delivered, his mouth
hung open soundlessly. Everything everywhere was soundless, not
one rustle of fabric or uttered word audible from the stunned
audience. He felt like a child just caught torturing a bunny rabbit.
He felt like a man with no future whatsoever.

And then a murmur grew, and he saw the flashes, the photos being
taken that would record this moment of personal and political
obliteration for all time.

The bitch reporter shouted another question above the growing
noises emanating from the crowd, asking why anyone would want to
do such a thing. And he told her, he couldn't help himself from
telling her, from telling everybody everything.

At first he thought the pressure in his sinuses and behind his eyes
was another example of his body or mind rebelling against his will.
But no... He dimly remembered this sensation from his early
childhood. And so, of his own accord, he started to cry.





EPILOGUE TWO: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
She slowly crossed her legs beneath the table and had another sip of
coffee. It was front page news again, even in this dinky backwater
paper, even in The Daily Iowan. "Federal Probe Into GlobalGro
Widens" read the headline, with a stern photo of the Attorney
General pointing to a sheaf of documents.

"Woulda' ruined all of us!", growled a farmer in overalls at the next
table. "The fucking death penalty Ñ that's what the lot of them
should get!"

She was hearing a lot of that out here in the Midwest and could only
assume that the story was being met with similar passion all over the
world. The details were still sketchy, but the basic message was
getting through: Any farmer anywhere, any environmentalist or
businessman or even people who just loved their flower beds or
lawns ÑÊthe GlobalGro scheme would have hit people everywhere if
she and Glenn hadn't intervened. The capacity of all plant-life to
convert energy through photosynthesis temporarily extinguished, all
with the intention of selling the "cure" for the world-wide "disease"
to every government everywhere Ñ it was a kind of aggression that
didn't even have the excuse of religious fanaticism to hide behind. It
was bigger than 9/11, bigger than the war, bigger than anything.

A brief perusal of the editorial cartoons made her chuckle. In the
first panel of one, Senator Warren Jones looked out snobbishly, with
his nose turned up. An accompanying word-balloon said: "I resent
the name Greengate being attached to my difficulties." The following
panel showed him grinning with dollar signs in his eyes. "Please call
it Greedgate from now on!", he declared. Nice work. Greedgate
wasn't bad, not bad at all. And wasn't it funny how quickly the press
reflexively turned every sort of government scandal into some sort
of 'gate'. But Greedgate kind of said it all. She hoped it caught on.

The facts were still few, but that didn't keep commentators on both
the left and right from going crazy about the GlobalGro thing.
Fingers were pointing in all directions, and there was so much
shouting on cable, on the radio, in print. The voice she had yet to
hear, though, was Glenn's. She kept looking, half expecting to see a
blockbuster story somewhere with his name on it. But so far he was
sitting this one out, which was surprising.

Maybe he was still having too much fun, she thought. The headline
that caught her eye at the bottom of the second page might confirm
this: "Former New York Mayor Confesses Penchant For Cross-
Dressing". She read the first two paragraphs. Apparently, the ex-
mayor blurted the truth about his secret sexual proclivities during a
speech to The National Press Club, and for more than eight minutes,
according to this article, he could talk about nothing else.

She sipped more coffee and grinned. She'd bet anything that Glenn
was responsible. He'd gotten a taste for bringing down a political
giant at that Five Forks Maple Festival and he was stretching his legs,
so to speak.

She flipped back to the front page, her appetite for political
destruction whetted. "Disgraced Congressman Cooperating With
Authorities", she read. Warren Jones was probably trying to cop
some sort of deal. There was talk on the cable channels about a
charge of treason, which carried the death penalty. Maybe if he gave
the government the goods on Daggert and Nash Jenkins and a bunch
of others, they'd commute his sentence to life in prison.

"Ma'am?"

A skinny farm boy, standing near her table. "Yes?"

"Are you a super model? Me and my friends over there ÑÊwe have a
bet. They think you're a super model, even though you're so short. I
bet them that you model for the WWF, that we're going to be seeing
you in the ring sometime soon. Who's right? Either of us?"

She smiled. She was dressed down in jeans and a simple crew-neck
sweater over a tank top, and she had her big sunglasses on even
though the lighting was dim in the cafe. Still, the local boys were
checking out her looks and their little minds must be reeling.

"You win the bet," she answered. "I am a wrestler, and a damned
good one, too. And I am too short for your friends' fantasies. I could
never be a super model."

I am a super being, though, she added silently. Would you and your
friends find that interesting? Maybe if I juggled a few pick-up trucks
out in the parking lot or drop-kicked a tractor a few thousand
miles...

"Ohh!", she gasped. Fuck, the thought had her pussy buzzing and she
could feel that her mass had jumped. The chair would give way
under her if she didn't pull herself together.

Until now, until having the need for discipline and immediately
feeling the consequences when things went wrong... She never would
have guessed that it would be so hard to control her thoughts. Glenn
was helping Ñ he'd given her one of his "outcomes", and said it
should help her to reign in her thoughts. But she was finding that
she had a very active imagination, and imagining anything about the
extent of her power was dangerous.

Sex, too, could be dangerous. Her pussy, far too powerful to be
handled by regular mortals, had become a masturbation-only zone,
at least until she ran across Glenn again one fine day. He had
provided assistance here, too, through what he described as a very
wide-ranging outcome, but she would need to experiment in some
remote place before she tried to masturbate again.

She'd bought a set of stainless steel Ben Wa balls in Columbus, Ohio,
with the thought that they might do the trick. They lasted for about
two minutes before her excited contractions became too much for
them. It all happened so quickly Ñ one moment she was thrashing
towards a brilliant orgasm on her hotel bed, and the next she was
crashing through the flooring into a (luckily) vacant room below.
What would the authorities make of the trail of flattened Ben Wa
balls that must have fallen out of her as she ran from the building
and into the nearby woods? Would the pulverized metal carry her
scent, or even traces of her D.N.A.?

In a way, she was on the run. There were no terrible consequences
for her if they found her Ñ she had nothing to fear from anyone
ever anymore, what could anyone do to her if she didn't want it to
happen? But she didn't want to have to go through that sort of thing.

Cassandra's ideas, conveyed through Glenn, had been right, although
she hated to admit that. It really would be best for her to be alone
for some time. She had received the news only a few days ago, but it
seemed like so much time had already passed.

Back there in the Maine woods, she was more than a little ticked-off
when Glenn told her that she would not be allowed to speak to
Cassandra. When he added that she was not supposed to be around
many people at all for some time, she had to control herself to keep
from venting her fury at the messenger. Who the hell was Cassandra
to tell her what to do or not to do?

Glenn recounted all kinds of metaphysical-sounding goop about
Cassandra, and it was evident that he either half-worshipped the
woman or was in love with her. When he told her that Cassandra was
carrying his child, that sex with her had been so intense that she
couldn't even let him remember it...

Glenn was a sweetie, but he sure could be a bonehead sometimes.
How did he think she would react to news like that? She kept it all
inside for as long as she could, but when she learned that the car
he'd arrived in was one of Cassandra's "outcomes", Crystal turned
that particular outcome into a burning scrap heap in about ten
seconds.

Jealousy? Maybe. Deep down she had felt like lobbing crushed cars
the twenty miles to Cassandra's cafe Ñ how would the bitch like
that, to have cars raining down on her head? She also wanted to
meet Cassandra, to confront her with... She really didn't know what.
She just wanted to confront her. But Cassandra wouldn't let her get
near her cafe, Glenn reported, and Crystal knew what that meant. A
lifetime of fucking fog.

Maybe it wasn't jealousy, though. Maybe it was pure frustration at
the thought of having to spend her life in the woods to keep from
hurting people. She was a city girl with city friends. The hermit life
was not something she would enjoy. And it was not something she
was going to do.

Her attitude changed some after she and Glenn completed their
GlobalGro "mission". She didn't let on to Glenn about it, but it
disturbed her how easy it was to lose control of herself. It was like
sport at first, and she got into it, enjoying the movement, enjoying
the expression of her incredible new strength. And after Glenn had
the samples and was safely away, she pulled a Hulk and did a lot
more smashing than was probably necessary.

Twelve missing. The number showed up in every article about the
GlobalGro destruction. The number sounded official now, and it
haunted her. They were faceless to her, the security personnel and a
couple of the scientists who'd been brave enough to try to stop her.
The frightening thing was how quickly she reacted, her imagination
kicking in much as it had in the horrible dream. The thought that
killed those men came before she even knew it was there, as though
it was more of an instinctive reaction than a real thought. The effect
had also been lightning-quick, or possibly instantaneous. She felt
her power surge off the charts and everything within a fifty yard
radius of her was instantly... She shuddered, remembering. The
security personnel, the scientists... Missing. And she had known
when she pulled herself out of the burning crater that no trace of
them would ever be found.

It made her feel heavy to think about it Ñ not heavy as in her actual
overly-substantial weight, but more like... Well, sorrow, or
something like that.

Maybe she really would hang out in the woods. Commune with
nature, listen to the songbirds. Do some meditating. Do some
praying, even.

But not in Maine. Too cold, and it would drive her crazy to know
that Cassandra Bliss was so near, yet might as well be half a world
away. China. That really was half a world away. She'd always wanted
to go there, visit her mother's roots. Lots of people, though, which
meant lots of chances for something to go wrong. Still... Yes. There
must be remote parts, places so remote or dangerous that few
humans lived there. China. Mongolia. Eastern Russia. That might be a
good place for a while.

For now, though, she was in the middle of nowhere in the U.S., just
as she wanted to be. She was heading west, but that didn't mean she
couldn't stop to smell the roses. She had a plan. And it ought to be
fun.

She paid for her breakfast and walked along the side of the highway,
heading north. Several trucks and cars stopped and asked whether
she wanted a ride. She declined. Coming up behind her as they were,
she knew it was her shapely ass they wanted to give the ride to. She
wondered whether they would have noticed the effect of her weight
on their shock absorbers if she had climbed into one of the cars or
pick-ups. She didn't really know how much she weighed these days,
but she thought it might be over four hundred pounds. Denser, even
at her "default" state, the least strong she could be. When she went
crazy and thought of herself as so much more powerful...

Her pussy buzzed and she let the thought slip away. Control
yourself, Skensgard. Truck scales, she thought abstractly. Maybe
some day she'd stand on some truck scales and watch the numbers
go crazy.

She walked a good fifteen miles before coming to the tiny airport. It
was much as it had appeared on the map Ñ a nothing tarmac in a
flat landscape with nothing much to look at in any direction. A
hand-lettered sign in front of one small building advertised sky-
diving instruction. Perfect.

There was only one guy inside, and he nearly fell out of his desk
chair when she entered. He was in his late-thirties, not too bad
looking, and she let his eyes finish scanning her body before asking
him whether he was qualified to fly the jump plane.

"You came to the right man!," he said a little too hopefully. "I'm the
instructor, the pilot, pretty much the everything. You want to learn
how to jump? There's nothing else like it! Better than sex, that's
what some people say!"

"Do you say that?," she asked, doing a little flirting.

"Me? Well..."

She could see his wheels turning. He didn't want to convey that
anything in the world would be more pleasurable for a hot chick
than to have sex with a stud like him, but at the same time he
wanted the privilege of working with her for several days.

"I already know how to jump," she told him. "I learned out in
California. I was wondering whether you could take me up."

"You mean... Now?"

"Sure. Is the plane gassed up?"

"Yeah, but... Do you have your certificate with you? I'd need to see
that. Even then, we'd have to wait until tomorrow. How would an
early morning jump suit you?"

She pondered for half a second. Not his offer, but how to make her
next move. So much faster than the guy could ever have been
prepared for, she was behind the desk, grasping his left hand in her
right. She squeezed, just a little.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!", he screamed in pain.

He had guts. He gave her a really good jab in the cheek with his free
elbow and then screamed again in pain.

"Get the keys and let's go before you hurt yourself," she said calmly.
"Don't make me go Terminator on you and completely crush your
hand."

"What... What are you?", he whimpered.

"Just a persuasive woman who hasn't jumped from a plane in a long
while," she answered. "Let's go."

"But..."

She squeezed a hair more.

"NN... AAAHHHH! NO! It's just... Please! I don't have any chutes
packed! We can't just..."

"I don't need a chute," she said. "Now, do you want me to start
crushing your fingers one by one?"

They walked hand in hand to his plane. He probably thought she was
insane, or maybe a terrorist. And the way he was looking at her...
Studying her features, perhaps, in case he had to describe her later
to the authorities. Or maybe he really did think she was an android,
and he was looking for the seams linking her parts, or trying to find
screws or bolts holding her together.

Once in his plane, he said a few things into the radio as they taxied
that might have been some kind of distress code, but she didn't
care. She stood behind him as the plane went airborne and she told
him to fly her to the most remote patch of earth that he knew of.

"What do you mean?", he asked.

"I mean no houses, no highways, no farm hands, not even a lost dog
roaming around. Find me a place where there isn't a fucking thing
for miles."

They headed north. She could tell that he was afraid, but his fear
didn't affect his piloting skills. The plane climbed and the ride was
smooth.

Every now and then he'd turn his head to look at her, like he wanted
to know her story. She remained expressionless, and he'd turn back
around, his shoulders stiff. She could almost hear the words turning
around in his head: If she told him, she'd have to kill him. The man
set his jaw and didn't turn around again for nearly half an hour, not
even when he yelled out that they'd arrived above the most deserted
piece of land he could get to on a tank of gas.

"Thanks for the lift, partner," she said.

"W... what are you going to do?"

"You need to concentrate on what you do next. What do you think
the pilots of the Enola Gay were told to do after they dropped their
bomb?", she asked her pilot.

"Get the hell out of there, fast," the man answered.

"Take that advice, okay? Seriously. Now open the doors", she
commanded. "I'm going to jump."

He flew straight and steady and made no move, his shoulders locked
tight. "I can't do that, ma'am."

A fucking hero. Did he believe that he was preventing her from
committing suicide, or did he think he was putting a monkey-
wrench into some complicated terror scheme, throwing off its
timing? She could make him do anything... But what was the point?
The only thing standing between herself and free-fall was a skin of
steel, and how was that going to stop her?

She didn't want to kill her hero, though, which meant a degree of
self-control. She walked back towards the bay doors and leaned into
them. She could just tear them off, but what if some of the shrapnel
flew back and sheared off the tail wing? Better to just melt it all, but
that would mean... It should work. She'd become unimaginably
heavy, but if it all happened fast, the plane might not crash.

And so she leaned hard against the doors and thought the thought,
thought herself powerful enough to obliterate the plane's shell just
by touching it. The air around her super-heated and her clothes
were history in an instant. She saw her pilot turn his head to look at
her the same instant that her weight multiplied to the point that the
plane lurched to the left and began to drop like a stone.

And then, her insanely energetic mass melting through the plane's
skin like it was tissue paper, she tumbled out and felt the glory of
weightlessness, even though she must be off the charts, perhaps
hundreds or even thousands of tons.

She located the plane, which was trailing smoke but leveling off,
looking like the pilot was getting control. Had he been lucky enough
to glimpse her body as her clothes burned off? She hoped so. It
would be his reward for helping her.

For helping her to fly, unencumbered, without a worry. Here, high
above the earth, she could do anything she wished.

Like finger herself without worrying about what she would destroy.

The fall would be relatively brief, so she got right to work, bringing
her body into something like a spread-legged cannonball
configuration. She purposefully allowed herself to spin and tumble
riotously, the horizon coming and going from her vision with crazy
speed.

With both middle fingers she spread open the lips of her labia and
stroked her clitoris with the tips of her index fingers. And she
shouted Glenn's name, picturing his gigantic cock. The spike in her
heat was instantaneous, just as he'd promised it would be.

"Give me more!", she shouted into the heavens, imagining herself to
be so powerful that her eventual impact with the earth would not
hurt her in the slightest. Within seconds, her view of her
surroundings was obscured by bright flame. She was like a meteor,
like a fucking comet, blazing its way towards the earth.

And in the flames, in the fiery heat that did not burn her flesh, she
plunged her fingers in and out while shouting Glenn's name, and she
felt the fire inside roar with new life. With just seconds left before
impact, she screamed his name and her lust peaked, and she
detonated within as everything exploded without. Her whole world
became searing deliverance as the earth parted for her, allowed her
to burrow deep inside, like she was penetrating it, fucking it,
plunging in so hot and so deep...





EPILOGUE THREE: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2
Jessica drew back her bedroom curtain to peek out towards the
street. Three news vans, but a least there weren't any camera crews
hanging out on the front lawn any more. Probably relocated to
David's studio, she thought. Unless they were totally dense, they'd
know that Karen as there, not here. It wasn't like you could mistake
her for someone else.

She pitied the rich and famous. These people Ñ Maine's version of
the paparazzi Ñ surely weren't as bad as most of them, but even so
they could be such a pain. They were like locusts swarming towards
boobs. Towards another Karen sighting.

But wait... One of the vans had the CNN logo. Wow. The story was
spreading beyond Maine. And CNN... How could they even have time
for this with everything else that was going on?

If she went outside... They'd want to interview her, to ask her all
sorts of questions about Karen. They would be pushy but polite, and
only halfway interested in anything she had to say. Karen was their
target, because it was Karen's boobs Ñ or at least a painting of
Karen's boobs Ñ that had caused the riot.

A reporter for the Bangor Herald had described the Maple Festival
events as a "perfect storm", but Jessica wasn't sure. She had been
there, not for the political speech, but for the opening of the art
show, and she got to watch the trouble as it unfolded.

It was true that the crowd was already agitated and excited because
they'd been witness to a rare case of political suicide, of public self-
destruction. By the time that Warren Jones had been whisked off the
stage and into his car by his staff, the guy had become a blubbering
idiot, crying like an infant and confessing all sorts of political sins to
anyone who would listen. There weren't many public events where
things went that wrong, and everybody was all excited, you could
hear it in the stunned silence and you could feel it in the air.

And then the master of ceremonies Ñ perhaps making an effort to
change the mood Ñ announced that the art show was officially
open, but he made the mistake of warning the parents in the crowd
that some of the works of art contained "possibly objectionable"
subjects or themes.

Jessica was certain that the throng would not have moved as they
did without that warning. They had just witnessed the slaying of a
political Goliath, and their noses were turned up for the scent of
further scandal.

She backed away from her window and went over to her bulletin
board, where she had tacked up the cut-out newspaper clippings of
the event.

The very first headlines, the ones in the morning papers delivered to
her parents' door, had been straight-forward: "Crowd Riots Over
Nude Painting", or "Sixty Arrested As Five Forks Maple Festival Erupts
In Public Decency Nightmare". They had become more creative by
the afternoon editions, though: "Congressman Commits Political
Suicide Ñ Crowd Celebrates With Orgy", or "Maple Festival? Maple
Breastival!"

Jessica had been about half a block from the gallery space when
bedlam erupted on the sidewalks and in the street. Men came
staggering out of the gallery building and they were either beating
themselves off or already ripping the clothes off of any woman
within reach. The women on the street screamed and resisted as
thought they were being raped Ñ which they were Ñ but then some
of the women who exited the gallery were tearing their own clothes
off, and sometimes one of these crazed women would pull a man off
of one of the screaming rape victims, not to stop the rape but to
direct the raping onto themselves.

Within minutes, Lake Street in Five Forks became a small sea of
thrusting buttocks and heaving breasts shining sweatily in the light
of the late afternoon sun.

At least a dozen police became part of the tangle of grinding bodies
at the beginning, trying their best to pull copulating men and women
apart, but when a truckload of fresh police men and women arrived
and rushed into the gallery, something happened within seconds
that changed them from the solution to part of the problem.
Discarding their riot outfits as though the heavy gear was poison,
they stripped stark naked and started to fuck each other or fuck
strangers in the crowd and within ten minutes the chaos was really
getting out of hand.

She knew the painting that was causing all of the trouble Ñ she had
gotten a pretty good look at it through the keyhole of David's door.
But she didn't get to see how the riot ended, because she was
pushed away by the rough hand of a decidedly gay state trooper.

She giggled. She hadn't heard anything about it yet, but she figured
there would be stories soon about strange sexual meltdowns at the
police station. Had the gay trooper outed himself by being the one
who could go in and wrap up the offending painting without being
affected by it?

From what she'd read and heard on TV, social scientists and public
health experts weren't sure why the crowd reacted as it did to
David's painting of Karen. She wondered how many of these
"experts" ever saw the painting. The art show was immediately shut
down, and all the art was confiscated by the police. The first nude
painting that David had shown in public was probably sitting in an
evidence locker somewhere, tightly wrapped in black plastic.

There would be more trouble later, because the painting of her
sister had magic in it, Jessica was sure. It was a great painting Ñ she
wasn't taking anything away from Karen's boyfriend, he has a
fabulous painter Ñ but she was pretty sure that somebody had
placed a spell into his paintings.

And who might have done a wicked little thing like that? Her
mysterious Warlock, that's who.

Jessica's nipples hardened just recalling him, recalling his
tremendous cock and all of the things he had done to Karen with it.
She gasped, recalling the scenario she'd witnessed through the
keyhole. Karen trying to seduce David, David trying to seduce Karen,
and then things had really taken off. She never would have guessed
it, but Karen was like a sexual genius! She had an otherworldly
command of her otherworldly boobs, and that seemed to be just one
of many sexual techniques she had mastered somehow.

And then the really amazing stuff: The magical appearance of her
Warlock and the magic wand between his legs, the way that Karen
went at him, like she was under a spell...

What Karen could do with her body had shaken Jessica, enough that
she came close to changing her wish. After what she had witnessed
through David's keyhole, she almost wanted her Warlock to make it
so she could do everything that Karen could do.

Thinking like this was making her nipples tingle in that special way.
She looked down at the full mounds on her chest and wondered:
What would those reporters outside think if they knew that her
breasts were even more magical than Karen's? She could go out
there and show them, perform for them, instantly share her secret
with the whole world...

But that was the fun of a secret, wasn't it? To know about it when
they didn't. To hold it close to her chest, so to speak.

And the best thing about it? It was just the beginning. By the time
that five years was up, by the time that she could lose herself to her
lovely Warlock... Would there be anything she couldn't do?

Well, there would be tons of things that she couldn't do, but those
would be non-sexual things. That seemed to be the trick so far. It
was about sex, all about sex.

Her Warlock had looked like a cornered animal when she met him
out in the hallway. After seeing his magic in action (not to mention
his enormous cock), she was flustered, too, but she tried not to
show it. And in the end, she got exactly what she wanted. She kept
her cool and she stuck with her plan, wishing the wish she'd decided
upon earlier when he agreed to grant it. Nothing felt any different
when he made his gesture and proclaimed that her wish was
granted, but that was to be expected. She needed to read about
something first.

She rushed home and went on-line, and immediately dug up that
story that got her pussy so hot every time she read it, the one where
the girl could grow her breasts to any size just by concentrating on
them and wishing them to grow.

Lying in her bed, naked, willing her breasts to grow... She'd been so
disappointed when she wrinkled her brow and nothing happened.
Had her Warlock hit her with a dud, or was she doing something
wrong? She tried to make her breasts grow any number of ways, and
even re-read the story twice more, looking for some overlooked
detail. Nada, nothing. She had large-ish D-cups now, not bad at all
for a girl not quite fourteen, but, much to her consternation, they
stayed that way.

At school the next day, she was kind of depressed. Damn, she'd been
so hopeful, so sure that a whole world of incredible possibilities had
been ready to open for her.

Bobby Donnelley, the school heartthrob she'd had a crush on in an
on/off fashion for over a year, kept staring at her breasts during
third period. So. With her breasts growing rapidly on their own,
without the aid of any magic, the great Bobby Donnelley had
decreed that she was worthy of his lust. She'd caught him staring at
her a few times when she'd been a C-cup (which was only last week),
but now she had broken through the unspoken barrier. Now, with
her breasts tightly packed inside of a D-cup bra, his eyes were
double-parked on her tits almost the whole class.

And she felt her breasts... tingling. Tingling oddly. Just the way the
author had described in the story.

Bobby asked her after third period whether he could walk her home
after school. Part of her felt like melting and part of her felt like
laughing in his face. He was so obvious!  She now had enough going
on upstairs (her genetics promising so much more to come) that
Mr. Cool would not diminish his reputation (might even enhance it)
by walking her home.

But this wasn't like some suburban place where her house was a few
blocks away. This was walking from Five Forks to Extremity, quite a
hike. Still, she thought of the deep woods and the lovely fields
between school and her home. No one around, lots of privacy. And
her breasts were tingling like crazy, her nipples like two throbbing
rocks. Again, just like in the story. She grinned and stroked Bobby's
arm in an encouraging way and replied "okay".

The situation was clear as a bell, except that she wasn't sure about
one thing: Did he expect her to put out? She was almost certain that
he would want to cop a feel somewhere along the way, but would he
press for more? She was going to save herself for her Warlock, or at
least let his be the first penis to ever enter her Ñ on this point she
had no doubt. But having Bobby Donnelley feel up her big, budding
breasts... And if the magic was finally working... The thought made
her nipples tingle in that wonderful way, but it also made her want
to giggle for some reason.

Bobby was in her last class of the day, her English class, and every
time she glanced at him and caught him staring at her breasts (as
opposed to those of Ms. Owens), her nipples tingled. As in they
really tingled, like she had Altoids stuffed into the front of her bra.
And her bra straps felt too tight on her shoulders and back, like...
She felt so happy! It was happening!

She lingered at the door after class, and Bobby took her arm, and
they left together. He didn't say much and neither did she. She knew
what he was interested in, and it had little or nothing to do with her
mind.

Or then again, maybe it did.

"Take me someplace where we can make out, fast," she whispered
into his ear. "I want to feel your hands on my tits."

She didn't have to ask him twice. The afternoon was warm and
cloudless and they made their way down an overgrown fire road that
led to some big flat boulders at Cortland Rapids. No one was there,
so whatever was going to happen could happen unobserved.

They rock-hopped out into the middle of the river, to a boulder with
a relatively smooth and level surface. Without a word being spoken,
Jessica pulled her top over her head and placed it under her, then
lay back. She saw the twin peaks of The Baby Whales rising behind
her own bra-clad twin peaks, and it almost felt like a sign.

Bobby licked her boobs through the bra, his hands caressing her
thighs. Her nipples tingled like crazy and she wished it, she really
wished it.

"Your tits are great," Bobby murmured between licks, then pulled
her right bra-cup down enough to twirl his tongue around her hard,
tingling nipple.

She reached behind her back to unfasten the bra but then stopped.
The tingling in her nipples was spreading! It was happening, she
knew it!

"Suck on it, Bobby! Suck on it hard! Feel me, feel them! Yes, oh
yesss..."

His cheek was pressed into the flesh of her right breast, and she felt
the pressure against his skin even before she felt the tightening of
her bra straps. From her perspective, with Bobby's head partially
blocking her view, she could only make out one of the Baby Whales,
and her breasts were definitely getting bigger in proportion to the
fixed profile of the curving mountain top.

"More, Bobby! Suck harder, suck on the other one!"

The rate of growth increased and he finally noticed.

"Uh, Jessica?"

She reached out and pulled his head into her tits. "Suck them! Feel
them!"

He did, but she could feel the confusion or alarm in the way his
tongue moved. Her breasts weren't growing as fast as they had in
her dreams, but they were going fast enough, and gaining steam as
they gained in mass. Bobby's cock had been hard the whole time Ñ
she could feel it pressing into her thigh ÑÊbut now his whole body
seemed to be more stiff. He was scared!

He broke away, pushed himself up with his arms. "J...Jessica? Ah,
um..."

Her bra straps were becoming a real problem now and she figured
they wouldn't last much longer.

"Jessica? Oh God, your... your..."

Her bra straps gave way, and her boobs, definitely larger now than
the Baby Whales from her perspective, rose in their new majesty.

"Oh Bobby!", she cried, feigning alarm. "OhmyGod! What's
happening? What did you do to me?" She screamed, better than a lot
of actresses in the movies.

She might have started giggling, but the feeling of her breasts
growing was too hot. Her pussy was so wet that it felt like it was
becoming a new tributary for the river, and waves of pleasure not
unlike the frothing, splashing currents below were cascading
through her bigger breasts.

"OhGod I'm going to explode!", she cried, meaning that she was on
the verge of coming from the indescribable pleasure.

Bobby, however, translated her cry as a warning that her inflating
tits were ready to burst. He stood and made some kind of horrified
gurgling noise, backing away like she had become the bride of
Frankenstein's uglier brother. And then he turned and fled, the
coward, screaming for help at the top of his lungs.

In response, Jessica lowered her pants and finger-fucked herself
with her left hand while her right one played with her new tits. She
screamed much louder than Bobby had when she came. Her orgasm
was complex: She felt heat and excitement from masturbating, and
more heat and excitement from the feeling of the huge, sensitive
breasts that she had suddenly grown, and even more heat and
excitement from knowing that this was just the beginning, that her
wish had come true, that her Warlock had come through and
opened a door to unlimited possibilities.

Except that the possibilities were not unlimited. They were limited to
sex. Had she unconsciously thought that when making her wish, or
had the limitation been his?

After returning her breasts to their normal size (with no signs of
stretching, this was great!), she ran to the town library and read
"Carrie" by Stephen King. But she could not move any objects
around with her thoughts, dammit! She read a Power Girl story on-
line and didn't become stronger, and she started to think that her
Warlock's gift had been a one-time wonder.

But then she figured it out. Sex, that was the key. Sex was the key to
everything.

A commotion outside brought her back to the present, and she
peeked through the curtains to see what was going on. Marcy, trying
to run the gauntlet of reporters, getting cock-like microphones
stuck in her face.

Jessica opened her bedroom door a minute or two later, anticipating
her friend's knock.

"They're really aggressive!", Marcy exclaimed.

Jessica locked the door. "What did they ask you?"

"Whether I know Karen or David, whether I know if he's making
more paintings of her, that sort of thing."

"Sometimes I want to suck on one of those microphones like it's a
big juicy dick," Jessica giggled, "just to watch them go nuts."

"Sometimes I want you to suck on me," Marcy cooed, wrapping her
arms around Jessica and kissing her deeply, exploring with her
tongue.

"Take your clothes off and lie on the bed,", Jessica whispered.

Marcy's body was changing, and the changes all looked good. She
had a pretty face, a well-formed body, an eager pussy. As she lay
back on the bed, the aroma of her excitement rising into the air,
Jessica wondered whether there was a way to speed up the
processes of puberty. Maybe there was a way to make Marcy look
even better, to make her pussy even hotter. Marcy was already
smitten with her, and awed by her new power. Perhaps, now that she
was fully embracing her bisexuality, she would turn Marcy into her
very first love slave.

"Bobby Donnelley is telling everybody about your tits," Marcy
warned.

"Do they believe him?"

"Of course not!," Marcy giggled. "They think he's gone crazy."

Jessica grinned as she stripped out of her own clothes, everything
but her white bra. Kneeling between Marcy's spread legs, her hands
roamed the territory of her friend's thighs. She allowed her thumbs
to brush the girlish tangle of downy pubic hair, to pick up traces of
Marcy's growing moisture.

"I have an assignment for you," Jessica whispered. "A way for us to
do whatever we want to do together."

"Ohhh...", Marcy hissed. "Oh, Jess..."

She spread Marcy open, gently probing at her clitoris with her
fingertips. "Help me, Marcy. Help me to enhance my powers. Help
me become the most amazing lover in the world."

"Oh, God, Jess! W... what do you want me to do?

"Write for me, Marcy."

"W... write?"

"It's your imagination I want to tap, Marcy. I want you to write
stories for me. Stories of women with amazing sexual powers.
Stories that make you so hot you can barely stand it."

"Oh, Jessica! That's... that's brilliant! May I let my imagination go
free? Can I push the limits?"

"Of course! That's exactly what I want, Marcy! Write about sex, about
everything you wish could come true during sex..."

"Can I... Oh, God... Can I write a story about a girl... whose pussy
scent... turns her big-titted English teacher into her fuck slave?"

"Oh yes..."

"Or a story about a girl... Oh, Jessica, yes... who can make all of the
cheerleaders go down on each other on the sidelines... during a
game..."

"Yes! And write about a girl whose pussy juice can speed up the
blossoming of her best friend, giving her the hottest body in the
school..."

"Oh Jessica!"

"And a story about a girl with a clairvoyant pussy, a pussy that
knows exactly what any man or woman needs to make them the
most turned-on..."

"Ohhhh... Jessica!"

"Write anything that comes into your head, no matter how strange
or perverted or physically impossible! Write about women with life-
giving secretions, write about impossible flexibility and stamina,
about milk-spewing boobs and addictive nipples and all-knowing
tongues..."

"And pussies that can be eaten forever, that can come forever, and
nipples that light up when a girl comes, and..."

"Yes! Yes! Write it all!"

"Oh God, Jessica! Let me see them! Please! Let me see them!"

Jessica was on top of her friend, but she felt like she was really on
top of the world. Together they would dream up every possible
enhancement to her sexual arsenal, every conceivable sexual
weapon. What Marcy wrote and she read, she would be able to do.
She would test her abilities on her friend and on others. She would
become a lover with talents that far exceeded even Karen's. She
would become a dream lover, a girl who could do anything with her
body, a girl who could sexually devastate anyone, male or female,
with the pleasures of her body.

But she would save that one delight, full penetration by a man, for
her Warlock to enjoy. She would find him somehow, and reel him
in...

"Jessica, please! Do it! Do it!"

She thought the thought and felt her breasts respond immediately.
Her flesh went hot and tingly and her bra straps dug into her
shoulders and back within seconds. This was her third time ÑÊshe
had grown them on the rock and again with Marcy, revealing her
secret to her best friend. And this time, just her third time, she was
already better at it, and the reverberations of her sudden growth
were spreading so much more intensely to her pussy.

"OH!", she cried, feeling the growth suddenly surge. Her bra ripped
apart, its torn remains falling uselessly onto Marcy's belly. Marcy
screamed her orgasm, and Jessica came, too, just from the feeling of
her rapidly expanding tits. She willed them to surge more, to grow
bigger, taking them into Cassandra's range, then beyond, growing
them like Karen's had grown, growing them still more...

She could feel Marcy's hands on them, so puny, feel her going crazy
over them (or under them). Some day they would be huge all of the
time, she knew. Maybe as huge as Karen's, or maybe not. But
whatever her Warlock wanted, however far he wanted to
experiment, with anything...

She came again, screaming and giggling all at the same time. He had
no idea what her wish had been, or what he was in for someday. He
might be her Warlock, but she would show him what magic really
was.   





EPILOGUE FOUR: MONDAY, OCTOBER 3
"Oh God, Karen! Oh God! Oh Karen!"

She couldn't help but smile. She loved to hear him say that. Maybe it
was one of the reasons that she wanted to make love to him so many
times every day.

She stroked the underside of his cock faster with her left hand, but
kept the middle finger of her left firmly pressed on the nerve
connected to his prostate gland.

"Oh God, I'm going to explode!", he cried. "Oh God, oh please..."

"Not until you're finished," she whispered.

"But I'll explode!"

"Paint faster then, Love."

"Oh God! Oh fuck!"

"Faster, faster..."

She quickened the movements of her left hand as his brush nearly
threw paint onto the canvas behind her. Kneeling on the floor like
this, the painting above and behind her, she couldn't see the image
at all. But she didn't need to see it to know how insanely sexy it was.
The painting was of her, her hungry eyes and her open mouth and
her flushed skin and her gigantic breasts, all staring up at the viewer
just as she was staring up into David's eyes while jerking him off.
The painting would be completely "in your face", because she was
completely in David's face, up close, close enough to be fucking him
with her hands and nearly overwhelming the lower two-thirds of his
body with her delicious super-boobs.

"J...just... a few... more strokes...", he moaned.

And she gave him the same number of strokes.

"Oh God, Oh God, I'm... I'm... done!", he cried. She released her
finger from the pressure point and David's eyes rolled back in his
head as he came, spewing his seed into the immensity of the space
where her breasts came together.

Only then, with David's warmth saturating her flesh, did Karen turn
her head to catch a glimpse of his latest creation, and in an instant
she was coming too, the image of her own sexy body almost literally
reaching into her tunnel and yanking a shattering orgasm out of her.
As her body bucked and every muscle quivered, she thought of the
countless other orgasms that this painting would instigate. If a single
painting of her, a comparatively gentle reclining nude of her body at
rest, could make a whole crowd of Maine fair-attendees go sexually
berserk, then what would happen when David showed these "I'm
fucking the daylights out of the artist while he paints me!" images?

She lathered as much of her boobs as David's cum could cover, then
reached down for the gallon bottle of massage oil she had placed
near her feet. They were really going through the massage oil öÊwith
the size of her tits, they might have to start ordering it in fifty gallon
drums. She poured more than half the contents of the jug onto her
juggs and started to rub it around. Though his body was still jerking
and his vision looked clouded, David's hands joined in rubbing the
oil over every inch of her mega-boobs.

"Ohhh yessss...", she hissed, as he lingered over her super-sized
nipples.

He heard the urgency in her voice and played with her nipples,
stroking them, tweaking them and pulling at them, then making an
"O" shape of his hands as she had taught him and sliding the "O" in
and out around each nipple, like her huge nipples were practically
two female dicks fucking his hands.

She screamed in triumph as she came, and came again, and came
again. She could come so beautifully, so forcefully, and so many
times that she often lost count.

Not ready to stop, she whispered, "In here", and David bent at the
waist, leaning his head down. She pushed her body forward and
gasped as his whole head slipped between her slickened breasts. He
was, for all intents and purposes, lost within twin oceans of tit-meat,
just as she wanted. Activating the muscles that animated her boobs,
she tit-fucked David's head, her slippery flesh sliding all around his
jaw and cheeks and ears and hair. She thought she heard him groan
with pleasure, but it was hard to tell, his voice was so muffled in
there.

She loved to tit-fuck his head. She was huge enough that she could
tit-fuck any limb or even much of his torso, but seeing his head
disappear into her cavernous cleavage was becoming her favorite.
Maybe she would even suggest that he shave his head, just to take
the pleasure as far as it could go.

Pivoting her body, she rolled onto her back, and with his head
grasped between her tits as though by a giant pair of pliers, he was
naturally brought along for the ride. She raised her legs and bent
them, then wrapped the soles of her feet around his hard rod and
foot-fucked him while he moaned (she thought) inside of her boobs.
The position that David had to maintain must look and feel terribly
awkward, almost like he was bent in half with just his toes in touch
with the floor, but somehow he eased into the posture, keeping up
with her.

He could always keep up with her, no matter how many times she
needed to fuck him, no matter how forcefully she fucked him or
how she bent him or smothered him in some new creative way. And
he could stay hard for her for hours and keep on coming, although
she didn't see how. She was the teacher, almost always taking the
lead during sex, helping to show David what she needed, how to
touch her, how to match his movements to hers. He was as focused
and enthusiastic a student as any teacher had ever had, but he was
more than that, too. He was her miracle lover, her perfect match,
stroke for stroke, orgasm for orgasm. And she would never stop
fucking him. Never.

She still thought about Cock-Man, but not in the haunting,
debilitating manner that had driven her half crazy. Maybe it was the
way she had joined with him in the final hallucination. Or maybe
something had snapped into place in her mind when she finally
made love to David. She had joined with David and in her joy her
hallucination had given her even more joy by being there in her
brain and fucking her brains out. Or something like that.

It had all been an hallucination, hadn't it? Sometimes she thought
that Cock-Man had been real, that their impossibly intense fucking
had been real. Sometimes she was even sure of it.

What she knew for certain right now was that her magic toes were
tap-dancing on David's cock. She brought him to a shouting,
groaning climax from foot-fucking him, and then helped him to
quickly set up a new canvas, this time on an easel by the bed. She
blew him as he painted her, taking him down into her throat and
giving him a special massage there with her tonsils. God, she loved
to give head! She drank his cum with gusto as he came, but the
painting wasn't done so she blew him again, sucking him like a
vacuum so intensely that his balls were drawn into her mouth, too,
making him go so cross-eyed that it was a wonder he could even see
his canvas.

When he'd finished this new piece and she finished swallowing every
last drop of him, she drew him out of her mouth and had him ride
her like a horse doing a victory lap, his cock imbedded within her
tunnel and his arms trying (unsuccessfully) to encircle her boobs
enough to play with her dangling nipples. Then she threw him off
and mounted him in turn and fucked him from half a dozen
directions with her vibrating pussy before he passed out.

She stared at him lovingly as he lay there, exhausted. Well, it was
actually comforting to know that even David had his limits. How
many times had she made him come today? Twenty? Thirty? More?
Well, why not? It was nine p.m. and had been dark for almost two
hours. Maybe she could set a new goal and make David come an
even fifty times in a twenty-four hour period. Then they could work
to double that some day.

Her own sex drive seemed to be almost never-ending. She was pretty
sure (but how could you really be sure about something like this?)
that her pussy was way more sensitive than normal, that her whole
body was way more sensitive than most women's. She felt like
making love to David that first time had awakened all of her cells to
the point that her whole body was now one unified walking and
breathing sex organ. Her boobs had been off the charts for years, in
size and "oomph", that is. Now they were off the charts in
sensitivity, too. Hell, everything about her was off the charts now Ñ
her sensitivity, her stamina, her drive, her need to come again and
again and again.

The orgasms themselves were not quite unified, and she loved it that
way. It still felt like they came in a variety of flavors, like her pussy
had a multiple personality disorder. It was a plus, not a problem Ñ
they were all devastatingly wonderful, just different, and sex didn't
quite feel like sex until every flavor had been sampled, until every
bell had rung and every voice had screamed. Maybe she had become
sexually schizophenic somewhere along the way, but if so she didn't
want it to change.

She had dreams sometimes, dreams where she was a different
woman. Sometimes a blonde like herself but not herself. Other times
she was a redhead, or a dark-haired Hispanic woman, or a Cajun
beauty or even a hot Asian babe. Sometimes she was even Ester, her
gigantic breasts spurting enough milk to float an ark. In every dream
she was gorgeous and sexy as hell, and she would re-live sexual
experiences that, in reality, she had never had.

It must be all of those years without sex taking shape in her
unconscious, then coming to her in her dreams. All of those years of
not caring much about sex... Maybe she was just making up for lost
time, and her body was needing to explode with the hundreds of
orgasms that had never been delivered in her teen years. Whatever
the reasons, she was like a bitch in heat for five or six hours every
single day.

After that initial coupling, that amazing first fuck-session with David
when her body suddenly came alive, she told her parents about him
and she moved in with him. Then she and David fucked so hard and
passionately for four consecutive days that they forgot all about the
art show at the Maple Festival, and didn't know that anything
strange had happened until the news vans were parked out on the
street in front of her old house and his studio.

After trying to go out for breakfast one morning and being accosted
by news crews like they were rock stars or something, they hid
inside and curled up on his bed together, the scent of sex
everywhere, and watched the news on his TV, learning that the first
painting of her to ever be shown in public had been confiscated by
the police. And not because it was censored in the usual sense, but
because it created a sex riot!

David was concerned at first, but she was thrilled. "Let's give them
more than they can ever handle," she urged. She felt so sexy, so
impossibly sexy, and the thought of modeling for David again, now
that they were lovers...

But because they wanted to fuck all of the time, David wasn't getting
any new paintings done.

It had been her idea to have him paint her while they made love. He
couldn't paint quite as large, but it was working out great anyway.
And the paintings, more than a dozen already of her and her lust-
filled features and her giant breasts, all depicted truthfully, her
sexiness and her desire all played to the hilt...

Holy shit they were some sexy paintings. And people wanted to buy
them. They hardly knew the paintings existed and they already
wanted to buy them.

It started as a trickle even before the riot in Five Forks. Some
stranger contacted David and proposed a commissioned piece. The
money was great and David was excited by the whole idea. He gave
her the details, told her what the buyer wanted, and she got excited,
too, as in really excited. Dressing up as he proposed turned her on
like crazy.

The very next day, a package arrived with a special costume, and she
and David worked together to create a piece that fulfilled the
buyer's specific fantasy. And she got off on it, got off on donning
the special clothing and breathing in so deeply that her breasts
exploded through the material just as the mysterious buyer
requested. And she got off on the painting that David made of her in
that state, standing there triumphantly with the half-obliterated
clothing hanging from her body, her humongous breasts powering
out proudly, defiantly.

She had to interrupt David's process twice to fuck him because she
felt so sexy posing as she was, and that was what gave her the idea
to have him paint her while they fucked. It made so much sense.
David wanted to make super-sexy paintings of her, right? Why not
push it as far as they could go? Why shouldn't he have his paints all
set up and a canvas nearby every time they went at it?

They finished the commissioned painting and threw themselves right
into the next one. In it, she lay naked in his bed, her face forward,
her massive boobs squashed beneath her on the mattress, creating
cleavage unlike anything ever depicted in a work of art before. One
hand looked as though it disappeared down between her legs, as
though she was fingering herself while posing (she was), while the
other arm was stretched forward out of the picture frame, as though
the artist was being given a hand-job as he painted (he was).

They both came several times while making that painting. David's
semen mixed with the paint, creating wonderful, transparent layers.
They had discovered a new technique together! To celebrate, they
fucked like rabbits for hours while staring at the completed piece.

The next morning, David got a call from a gallery in London, asking
him to send jpeg's of his paintings. And an hour later, a gallery in
Los Angeles called, asking for the same thing. He was screening all of
his calls (if he'd answered his phone with all of the reporters calling,
when would they have had time to fuck?), but the trend was clear.
The art world was taking notice of the news story about an
undiscovered painter whose works could turn a peaceful crowd into
a groping, grabbing mob of sex-crazed perverts.

"Don't send them the jpeg's," she advised.

"You don't want anyone to ever see these paintings?"

"Are you crazy? Of course I want them to see these paintings! Just...
make them come and see them in person. Make them come to you."

"Make them come, you mean."

"Exactly."

And in this spirit, the creative act in the studio was becoming much
like the reaction would be out there in the world. There was no line
any more between Karen and David's lovemaking and their
modeling/painting. The incredible pleasure they were experiencing
was right there in every canvas now. David himself never appeared
except perhaps as a shadow cast upon some part of her body, which
just heightened the sexual impact. It was like anyone who owned or
even looked at one of these paintings would feel like they were the
one being fucked by her. Like they were the lucky stiff (or the stiff
lucky one) who got to be fucked by the gorgeous girl with the most
amazing breasts in the history of civilization.

But for now, David was asleep, recharging his batteries so they could
paint and fuck even more. Karen stood and stretched her arms, her
boobs powering forward. She laughed. She had once been ashamed
of her breasts, but that felt like a million years ago.

Remaining naked, she went to one of the high windows in the studio
room and drew aside a corner of the curtain they'd installed, just
enough to peek outside. It was dark inside and she could see
through the glass quite clearly. There were more than a dozen news
vans still parked there, hoping for an interview or even a glimpse of
the controversial artist and his super-sexy model.

She started to giggle, and then wondered what she was giggling at.
Oh, right. It was a little thought that came up, an ironic thought.
How long would it be before Dr. Marlowe, the man who had wanted
to study/worship her breasts even when she was much, much
smaller, would see one of David's paintings? How would he rate her
progress, how would he feel about her breasts' "ideal projection"
now?

Through David's paintings, these breasts were going to be projecting
all over the place. Projecting off the walls of art galleries, projecting
in fancy lofts and living rooms and especially bedrooms, all over the
world.

The world probably was not ready for someone like her, not yet.
When looking at David's paintings, most people would not think that
she was real; or, if they heard that she was, they wouldn't believe it.

That shyness she had felt about her astounding figure... It was all
gone now. Still, how perfect that David's paintings would be like
two-dimensional sentinels, painted versions of her that would reach
out and prepare the eyes of the world for the real thing. Before long,
these breasts would be part of the popular culture. And that thought
made her hot.

Another giggle escaped her lips as she thought about the news vans
parked outside. Bad girl, bad girl. But she began to move the model
stand anyway, pulling it so that it was positioned right in front of the
windows. She went to the back of the room, repositioned the
direction of the spotlights, and then turned them on.

With the lights placed near the back of the room, she danced her
way towards the windows and then up onto the stand, twirling her
naked body much as she might have on an icy pond several years
ago. The shape of her moving body appeared on the surface of both
curtains, just as she'd hoped. Two dancing Karens, her breasts so
gigantic that the rectangle of the windows couldn't even contain
them at times. Slowly, so subtly that they might not even notice at
first, she began to stroke herself, to finger her clitoris as she
danced.

There was no music, but she used the rhythm of the stroking to
keep a beat for her twists and spins. And then a sound emerged
from outside, a growing murmur, punctuated by an occasional shout
and then the honking of horns. They were down there watching her
shadow as it danced upon the curtains, seeing her athletic torso and
her giant breasts spin around and around.

She couldn't move as quickly or as gracefully as she could on ice;
then again, she'd never played with herself while skating in front of
an audience. She brought both hands up and began to massage her
breasts in an almost exaggerated fashion, peeking at how the
shadows played upon the curtains. Her nipples grew to their full
length, the shapes showing clearly on the fabric. She laughed. Which
performance would get the higher marks from the judges, one of
her old routines or this udderly sexy one?

The voices out on the street grew in volume, and she heard a siren
approaching. The reporters getting out of hand, perhaps even
another riot beginning to erupt?

She felt her juices flowing, felt yet another orgasm forming. This
one, she could already tell, was her native flavor. It was a true-blue
Karen Little orgasm, home-grown, the real deal.

She massaged her boobs more frantically, dropped her left hand and
thrust two fingers inside. Because of the height from the model
stand, the shape of her hand playing with herself was right there on
the curtain for all to see. She shuddered, gasped. The wave inside
grew, and just before it crested, she turned her head to make sure it
would play out just right on the curtains.

She wanted them to see this one and get it on film, she really did.
Footage of this masturbatory dance would certainly show up on the
internet, and because the wonders of her body would just be
shadows, a few seconds might even find their way onto mainstream
news programming. Maybe half the world would come this time.

And if her massively-cocked stranger (whom she had never
discussed with David, and never would) happened to be real and not
just some insanely vivid fabrication of her imagination, then maybe
he would see this dance, too.

And come, crying out her name, remembering her.




EPILOGUE FIVE: SUNDAY, APRIL 6 Ñ THE FINAL EPILOGUE
"'But what I really can't believe is that you had the audacity to end
your novel with five epilogues! Didn't something register in your
brain when you had to add the words, "The Final Epilogue" to the
last one? It's a total devastation of universally accepted novelistic
conventions Ñ then again, you were throwing conventions out the
window from the very beginning! The true protagonist of the novel
doesn't even appear until the fourth chapter, long after the reader
has identified the shy artist and his voluptuous model as the main
characters! You cannot toy with the emotional bond between your
characters and your potential readers like that Ñ what were you
thinking?'"

She looked up from the type-written letter with one of those what-
do-you-think-of-that? looks. Lauren was all worked up from reading
the editor's criticisms out loud, so much so that her adorable face
was turning red. But the color wasn't the color of a bruised ego, and
she definitely didn't look insulted or even slightly disturbed. She
looked... exalted.

"So what do you think of that one?," she asked.

"Passionate, and... Well, at least she said early on that she thought
you had a gift for metaphor," he answered rather lamely.

"You know what? I might write her back, just to ask this question:
What is the title of the fucking novel, bitch?"

The title of Lauren's novel was "Breaking The Rules", the phrase
coming straight out of his first dinner conversation with Isabella.
And in its pages, drawn very closely from the total weirdness that
his life had become ever since that first trip to Extremity, she had
succeeded. Big tits everywhere, mind-control, tons of teasing and
even more tonnage of graphically described sex... Added to that was
a certain amount of artistic license in the use of the form; or, as the
last editor had said, the "total devastation of universally accepted
novelistic conventions". Her book was brave. Her book was
complex. But he couldn't imagine that any main-stream publishing
house was going to bite on this one in a million years.

"Here's another one, from a male editor:
'Dear Ms. McCormick,
While the novel you submitted certainly succeeds as a fetish delivery
system, I cannot imagine that any reputable publishing house would
touch it with a ten foot... pole. You do show some talent for creating
and sustaining the intricacies of a complex mystery plot (as well as
an ear for dialogue that can at times be convincing), but there is
simply too much deviant sex in this manuscript to ever appeal to a
mass audience. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there is a real
story in here somewhere, if only one could sift through the sexual
rubble to find it. And please note: There is a significant difference
between the terms "fun" and "fun-bags". You take a story that could
be a rollicking good ride and pollute it with your penchant for
oversized breasts, completely losing any sense of reality. Look
around yourself if you are confused, and you will see that women do
not have breasts like the ones you describe in nearly every chapter
of your novel! Perhaps you should consider submitting your text to a
fantasy Web-site Ñ there are plenty of readers who peruse the
internet for just this sort of cheap thrill.'"

"Ouch!", he exclaimed.

"Ouch, indeed! And what's the matter with this guy? I look around Ñ
hell, I even look in the mirror Ñ and I do see huge and beautiful tits!
And do you think of our sex life as 'deviant?' I don't."

It probably was, by nearly every commonly-held measure. But he
didn't care what others would think of his sex life. What he wanted
to know was why Lauren was so happy, despite receiving such
discouraging responses to her first novel.

"Soooo... I'm confused," he said. "I thought we were here to
celebrate something. But these responses from the publishing
world... They're brutal!"

"I know. But drink up! No long faces allowed ÑÊwe're celebrating!"

She sipped from her glass of champagne and he did the same, not
having a clue.

"A challenge," Lauren said.

"The editor's remarks make you feel challenged?"

"No, silly. I'm challenging you. Right here, right now. You've read the
novel. What kind of letter would you write in response if you were a
book editor and you had this manuscript land on your desk?"

"Not fair! You know I'm too close to this material to be objective."

And that was the truth. "Breaking the Rules" was practically a word-
for-word account of his wild ride through Cassandraville back in the
fall.

He thought back to his long and revealing conversation with
Cassandra, as he often did. She had predicted that Lauren would
develop a special creative gift from making love with him, and this
novel was proof that she'd been right. Lauren had whipped out page
after page at a speed that astounded him. Sure, she had so many
elements of the plot laid out from a simple re-telling of his recent
history, but she brought the characters and situations to life in a
way that he could never approach if he worked on the story for a
hundred years, and it all seemed so effortless for her.

"Are you disturbed by the liberties I took?", she asked. "I get this
feeling that some aspects of the story make you uncomfortable."

It was true. He could understand how certain things absolutely
needed to be changed Ñ his name for one. In Lauren's novel, he was
Pierce Williams, a reporter for a scandal rag called "The Galaxy".
Cassandra had become a white witch named Natasha, Crystal was a
clandestine government agent named Diamond, and Lauren herself
was transformed into an investigator of the paranormal named
Hope. To avoid confusion and long-windedness, she rolled several of
his lovers Ñ Isabella, Angela, Charlotte and Kiko Ñ into one long-
legged and busty sexpot named Kristen.

She wrote the story as a quickly-paced thrill ride with action and sex
at every turn. If things had actually transpired as she described
them, he would have been out of breath most of the time and just
hanging on for dear life. Some elements, such as his willingness to
use his newly acquired mental powers for sexual fun and games,
were played up. She had toned down other aspects Ñ his cock never
grew in her version of events, although his sexual talents did. And
most of the female characters, including Lauren herself, got modest
breast reductions.

"No one would believe that their bodies could look the way they
actually do," she replied when he asked her about that.

"What about when you go on a book tour?", he responded. "Your
fans will see that you were holding something back!"

She had held nothing back in the violence department, though.
Towards the end of her novel, his consummation with Crystal was
transformed into an elaborate cat-and-mouse game where they tried
to kill each other before being too overcome with lust. Their
subsequent infiltration into the GlobalGro facility (called Genomicon
in her version of events) was a blood-filled melee of thought-attacks
and Crystal/Diamond martial-arts ass-kicking.

In reality, he'd used the persuasive powers of his mind very little,
partly because of the continuing effectiveness of Cassandra's
"invisibility" cap, and partly because Crystal's version of
persuasiveness had been so effective. He wiped the memories of
several scientists and security guards, and when this method was not
allowed in a few case, he made it impossible for these personnel to
ever communicate what they had seen.

As for himself, he never even saw most of what Crystal did there,
which was probably best. From the little bit that he did witness, he
felt so sorry for the facility's security teams, probably just a bunch
of hired hands who didn't even know what they were being paid to
protect. He really only knew what others knew from the small
unclassified tidbits that had been released to the general public. She
had become a one-woman GlobalGo-wiping machine. He had an idea
of how much she had actually held herself back; still, the level of
devastation Crystal had wrought at the GlobalGro site had the
Department of Homeland Security worried that an unknown group
might have developed and deployed some sort of secret super-
weapon.

But back to the present. He knew how to answer Lauren's question
about the "disturbing liberties" she took with his life's story.

"It's my ex-wife that bothers me," he finally answered.

"I know a lot of men who would utter those very words," Lauren
teased.

"You know what I mean," he said. "You treat Ruth pretty badly
throughout your novel. She deserves better, I think."

In Lauren's fictional world, Ruth was a genetic scientist named
Heather, and she had been secretly tied into GlobalGro/Genimicon's
nefarious genetic research even during the time that she and
Glenn/Pierce had been married. She was a sinister character
throughout the book, who came to a rather grizzly end in the final
chapter.

"It's so unfair to Ruth," Glenn continued. "She was the one..."

"I know, I know," Lauren protested. "But what kind of satisfaction
would a reader get from having the main character trust his ex-wife
in the end? I know the book's title is 'Breaking the Rules', but I'm
not crazy! It would be the kiss of death to have the protagonist treat
his ex-wife well. People want to read about revenge or comeuppance
in a situation like that, not an amicable reconciliation. And certainly
not having the main character gift his ex-wife with a more sensitive
pussy!"

She was probably right, but still... When Cassandra spoke the words,
that he had to deliver a sealed sample of GlobalGro's secret project
to someone he could absolutely trust, he had thought of Ruth right
away, even though he didn't want to admit it to himself. Part of him
wanted to do things more as Lauren had written them Ñ torturing
Ruth with his mental powers, making it so that her capacity to
lubricate during sex shriveled up to almost nothing...

Maybe it was what Cassandra had referred to as his "better nature"
that led him to trust Ruth. She was more gracious than he ever
would have expected when he showed up at her door. Somewhere
deep inside of himself, he had known that she would do the right
thing with the vial of genetic material, and she had. It was almost
like a set-up to test him ÑÊhis ex-wife just happened to have the
skills to analyze the unknown genetic sample he'd stolen from the
facility, and he had, in the end, overcome any lingering resentments
and gone to her in his hour of need. He didn't fall in love with her
all over again or anything like that, but it was Ruth's research and
subsequent documentation that provided the iron-clad evidence the
government needed to place a noose around the neck of Warren
Jones and Nash Jenkins and a whole host of lesser cronies.

The Congressional hearings about what had come to be known as
"Greedgate" were still droning on, and Glenn laughed sometimes
when watching some attractive talking head (who probably couldn't
even spell "photosynthesis") try to speak coherently on the subject,
tentatively dipping into the vast sea of scientific terminology that
one needed to digest in order to follow the story properly. On CNN
and the other news networks, biologists and genetic research
"experts" drew crude charts or did voice-over analyses of computer-
generated animations, trying to explain the function of RNAi within
cells, and how the artficially created GlobalGro pathogen would have
used RNAi's functionig within the cell to disrupt the signals that all
plant life needed to convert sunlight into food and energy.

For himself, Glenn was much less interested in the pure science than
the fact that human beings could be driven to misuse the science in
such a horrible way. No one knew (or they weren't saying) just how
awful it would have been if the GlobalGro plan had succeeded. But it
would have been bad. Really bad. And there was some debate as to
whether their "cure", an antidote to the pathogen, would have
succeeded in putting things back to normal in time. The GlobalGro
scheme might not have destroyed the earth as we know it, but it
would have changed it, significantly.

Some level of public debate was beginning to brew about the merits
and dangers of genetic research in general, and he had even heard a
few discussions as to whether profit-motive was the beneficial
instrument of economic change that economists had proclaimed it
to be for so many decades. Still, he imagined that office workers
arguing around their water coolers mostly concerned themselves
with the trivial aspects of the subject Ñ whether there was any
difference between heliotropism or phototropism, say, and if so,
then where did phototaxis fit in? In the end, any subject, no matter
how important, could be reduced to an answer in a trivia board
game.

The science, complicated as it was, was beginning to be understood.
But there were many practical and prosecutorial questions still
unanswered. Like what was the extent of Daggert's role in the affair?
Had he just been included because he was so rich, or because he was
Nash Jenkins' friend? Glenn had his own theory: Daggert would have
used his media empire to swing public opinion in either direction as
needed: If governments were slow to respond to the manufactured
crisis, or refused to pay GlobalGro the exorbitant price for their
"cure" to the released pathogen, then Daggert could fuel the public's
sense of fear and desperation with story after story of starving
wildlife and vanishing fish stocks and collapsing economies. And if
the feds had ever begun to shine their investigative lights towards
GlobalGro as the perpetrator of the entire event, Daggert could have
made the allegations look ridiculous simply by "pursuing" them in a
sensationalist manner. If stories about a GlobalGro/extinct plant life
conspiracy were reported in The Sourcerer in the right tone of
voice, no one would believe that any of it could be true.

"You've gone quiet over there, Glenn. We're here to celebrate,
remember?"

"Celebrate what? Why won't you tell me?"

"Maybe I want you to make me beg to be able to tell you."

"You mean..." She loved sex, Lauren did. "Deviant" sex.

"Don't check your hands," she told him. "I'm just kidding this time.
Now, drum roll, please!"

He made an appropriate sound with his mouth, and she produced
yet another letter.

"From a different editor?", he asked.

"Listen and learn, Impatient One. Now...," she breathed.

"'Dear Lauren,

Before commenting on your submission, "Breaking The Rules", I feel
the need to make a few comments about myself and my philosophy
as a book editor.

I read a ton of books every year. Many are solicited submissions, but
some arrive without recommendation (like yours). But I read far
more material outside of the office than I do within these walls. I
keep up with the fiction being published by my competitors. I read
for pleasure, I read to keep up with particular interests, I read to
relax, I read to learn, I read almost as a sport. You get the idea.
Reading is a passion for me. And looking for new talent is an
obsession with me. I have good instincts ÑÊabout what will sell or
not sell, about what will create a buzz or a yawn, about what the
public or the critics will love or hate.

Understand that when submissions arrive in this office, there are no
bored gatekeepers or bitter literary wannabe's sitting around, all
going through the motions just for the thrill of sending out cold-
hearted rejection letters. There is me, caring, hoping, yet sending
out the rejection notices anyway, because so many of the
submissions that reach my desk are crap.

Rarely do I come across a manuscript that places me into a state of
self-doubt or self-contradiction, but "Breaking The Rules" has done
just that. The book is aptly titled. There is every reason for me to
react to your novel with professional stand-offishness or outright
hostility Ñ to begin with, I strongly prefer fiction to outright
fantasy, and my own editorial choices tend in the direction of
female "empowerment". I have never published (or even read) a
novel with so many gratuitously-endowed female characters, nor
with some form of sexual fetish or over-the-top sexual encounter so
graphically described in nearly every chapter. Moreover, I do not in
any way believe in the predetermined mechanics of the "spiritual
universe" that sit like a backbone beneath the situations described
in your novel. In short, there are many reasons for me to pull a
standard rejection form out of my drawer and send it to you with a
hand-scrawled apology that encourages you to "Keep trying ÑÊnever
stop writing!".

Instead, what I have to say is this: I began reading "Breaking The
Rules" in the late afternoon yesterday, and I ended up taking it with
me when I left work. I read it in the elevator. I read it in the cab. I
read it in my bath, in my kitchen, everywhere! For twelve straight
hours I read, barely concerned about food or drink or sleep. And I
realized that I couldn't put your manuscript down precisely because
I have never read a text with the particular balance that you have
achieved. I found myself wondering: What other mystery novels have
I read that balance the higher ideals of mankind Ñ trust, personal
growth, faith in destiny, etc., Ñ with well-described, heat-inducing
situations concerning of the delights of the flesh? Or, conversely,
what stroke/fetish novel successfully juxtaposes its prurient
interests with thoughtful musings about the meaningfulness of life,
or the place of human beings in the greater scheme of things?

The spiritual backbone that I mistrusted earlier became a hook for
me, drawing me in, but it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't cared for
your characters. But I did. I cared deeply, they came to life for me. I
cared about their flaws, their hopes, their destinies. And I cared
about the one character who never appears in the story, but whose
presence is felt in a way that is very rare. I cared about you.

And now, having said all of that, I want to ask this one question:
How soon can we publish your novel?

Please call me at 212-650-2233 the second you read this letter. I
could say so much more here, but I'd rather speak with you directly
and meet you face-to-face, a.s.a.p.

Waiting anxiously,

Jess Badpenny'"

"Jess Badpenny of Ransom House? Holy crap!", Glenn exploded.
"Have you called her?"

"Of course I called her!"

"And?"

"And she loves my novel!"

"What did she say?"

"She said she couldn't see where things were going at first, and she
almost put the manuscript down after the first two pages. But then
she got hooked, and could even go with the Fate and Destiny stuff
once she came to appreciate the way that humor and mysticism are
so interwoven in the story, like even serious things can be funny and
vice-versa. She fell in love with the Dalene character, of all people Ñ
that made me really happy. She told me she flipped back to the
beginning and re-read the prologue, and realized that it acted like
an overture before an opera Ñ the whole story-line was hinted at in
there, but it hadn't meant anything to her when she first read it. In
the end she was even cool with the book having five epilogues Ñ she
said she despaired at seeing the word 'epilogue' because it meant
that the novel was ending, and she didn't want it to end Ñ but then
she saw that there were other epilogues, and it reassured her. She
even said we're going to create the next big literary movement
together. You've heard of 'Chick-Lit'?"

"Sure, literature for chicks, Bridget Jones and all of that female
relationship stuff."

"Jess says that I've created the first stroke novel to have real
crossover potential into the mainstream. And she's already coined
the name of my genre."

"Which is?"

"Tit-Lit."

Glenn had to laugh.

"And she's already written a beautiful little editor's note to appear
before the text. Do you want to know what it says?"

"Read it to me."

"Don't have to. It's short and sweet, so I can remember it word for
word."

"So, what does it say?"

"It says: 'If you write it, they will come.'"

He cracked up at that one and had to drink some of the champagne
to stop coughing.

"And then when she met me..."

"You've already met?"

"We had brunch this morning. That's what we're celebrating!"

"Great! How did it go, what was it like?"

"Well she just about had a coronary when she caught sight of me. I
mean, I sent a closely-cropped head-shot along with the manuscript,
so she already knew that I'm young and pretty..."

"More like underage and heart-stoppingly gorgeous."

"Stop that! But, of course, she had no idea about my tits. Until I
walked into the restaurant, that is. Her mouth flew open so fast and
so wide that a huge hunk of grapefruit fell out and landed in her
Mimosa. Shock, pure shock, and then in a few heartbeats you could
see the marketing wheels beginning to turn.."

"And suddenly there were bright green dollar signs lighting up her
pupils."

"Exactly!"

"She was thinking book tour."

"The official Tit-Lit book tour! All TV and in-store appearances, no
radio, just so the reading public can see with their very own eyes
that the writer who writes about big tits knows whereof she speaks."

"This is just too amazing, Lauren!"

"Jess was sweet, but I think she might have been turned-on, too. She
looks at me and says, 'You know, I might have to amend my editor's
note to "When they see you, they will come!"'"

"Great pick-up line!"

"Well, she's literary. But I'm hard to impress, and sex with anyone
other than you... Well, she thinks the book is 'fantasy'. She doesn't
know how often I get the best deviant sex that a girl could wish for."

"So... what's next? Something deviant, I hope."

"That will have to wait until Tuesday night. Next up is a rewrite after
going through the manuscript and staring at all of the red marks on
every page. She's anal-retentive to a fault, but I guess an editor is
supposed to be that for the writer. She loves my writing style, but
even so she suggested changes all over the place, and I'm finding
that I agree with almost all of them. I thought I had everything right
ÑÊthe sentence structure, the spelling, everything Ñ but stuff got by
me. I have to fax her a re-worked copy by Tuesday."

"Tuesday? Why so fast?"

"She wants the pedal to the metal on this one for an early summer
release."

"Summer? Isn't that unusual?"

"Yeah... She said something about the book being a page-turner at
the beach, but I think she had hidden motives. I think she was seeing
me in summer clothes, sitting cross-legged on a chair wearing a
tank-top and a short skirt on 'Regis' and other shows."

"This is her promotional vision, or she just wants to see you close to
naked for her own interests?"

"We'll find out, won't we? And you'll find this interesting Ñ she said
my boobs would have been too big for television just six months
ago. But now, with all of the media attention being focused on Karen
Little... David's show is opening, you know."

"I know. In Chelsea."

"The opening is tonight."

"Tonight? That can't be right! It's Sunday!"

"Special crowd-control measure Ñ didn't you hear? They've been
talking about it all day on the radio."

"They're afraid of a riot, aren't they?"

"Well why not? One painting displayed in a dinky Maine town and
the citizens turn the streets into Orgyland! Two paintings displayed
in London, and more than two thousand are arrested for 'lewd
conduct' or 'public sexual indecency'! The guy's paintings are sexual
plutonium ÑÊI hear he'll be displaying nearly forty canvases in this
show, and there's every reason to believe that West Side Manhattan
will be a hopping place tonight."

"Fuck, we'll be nearby. We're bowling at Chelsea Piers."

"You're bowling at Chelsea Piers. I'm sorry, Glenn, I have to sit this
one out. I have to make all of the changes to my book by first thing
Tuesday morning."

"That's... Even you aren't that fast!"

"I think I am, thanks to you. But it means I can't go bowling with you
tonight. Sorry."

Glenn hadn't been bowling in at least ten years, but it had become a
pastime for his friend Joe and his new sweetheart. And there were
profound reasons that it could be a bad idea to show up without a
date.

"Lauren... If you aren't there with me..."

"I can't defend you from the intentions of the universe, Glenn. My
being there might help you to buy a tiny bit of time at best. What did
Cassandra tell you ? 'No force in the universe' can keep you apart? It
has to happen."

"I've kept it from happening so far."

"At what cost?"

"I'm holding together okay."

"I meant at what cost to her? Your band-aid outcomes have kept her
from going insane, but she still feels it, Glenn. I should know."

"But... Dammit, it isn't right and you know it!"

"You're swimming against the current. It's going to wear you down
and you're going to lose. And you know that."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glenn dropped by his apartment to walk King, his golden retriever.
King was named King because he was the king of the household,
even if he was an abandoned rescue dog found on the internet. It
was Kiko, of all people, who had put the idea of a dog into his head.

"It would be healthy for you to have somebody around who doesn't
respond to the power of your thoughts," she had advised.

"But dogs are... messy."

"Maybe having to pick up poop every day will keep your head from
getting too big. A dog could help to keep things real. Your life, for
the most part, is pretty unreal."

It sure was, and King knew how to remind him that some beings
couldn't care less about his thought powers. He was a friendly and
reasonably obedient dog, but that was as far as it went.

They walked north in Riverside Park, King running ahead to get his
head rubbed by strangers as usual. Glenn kept an eye on his pet, but
for the most part he was lost in thought. He couldn't stop thinking
about both Cassandra and Crystal for some reason.

It was Lauren's comment, about knowing that he was going to lose. It
was one of those weird things, where even if he lost, he won. Which
was sort of like the way that Cassandra and Crystal were/weren't a
part of his life right now. He'd wanted them both and won, but he
hadn't seen either of them in months. And that hurt, because his
feelings for both of them... they were pretty strong.

With Cassandra, he more or less knew what was coming. With
Crystal... Well, who knew what the future would hold? The answer:
Cassandra, at least somewhat.

It was so weird, knowing that he would have a daughter soon, a
daughter he would not see until she was already five years old. If
Cassandra had a normal pregnancy Ñ what "normal" meant in her
case really was a question Ñ then she would be close to seven
months pregnant at this point. He wondered whether Cassandra
would call or send a special fortune cookie his way when Diana was
born. Then again, maybe he would just know.

As for Crystal... There had been news stories about a new "overnight
Stonehenge" phenomenon somewhere in South Dakota just a few
days ago. He didn't know for certain that Crystal was responsible...
Wait, that was a lie. He knew without a doubt that Crystal had been
making the structures, even if he had no evidence. She was getting
more artful about it, too, the photos of her newest creation showing
a more complex sense of design. Dozens of sculpted and arranged
twenty-ton boulders somehow appearing in a field overnight, with
no evidence of moving equipment having been involved...

He figured that lifting and arranging giant boulders was a better way
to spend her time than creating half mile-wide craters, as she had
probably done in Iowa and Nevada, and maybe even Siberia.

There were three types of unexplained phenomena vying for top
honors on the tabloid covers these days, and he was fairly certain
that Crystal was responsible for all three. The Stonehenges and the
meteor-devoid meteor craters were big and sexy and were
competing to become the official 21st Century successor to crop
circles, but there were also the spheres, thousands of perfectly
round orbs of solid granite that had mysteriously appeared in
Glacier National Park back in the fall. Because they were only the
size of bowling balls, they didn't get the coverage of the
Stonehenges and the craters, but no scientist had been able to
explain the process of their formation, which would apparently
require unimaginable heat and pressure. For a time, nearly every
newspaper or magazine had regular features on the spheres, but
now all of the attention was on the bigger, sexier phenomena. And
no paper provided more attention than his old stomping ground,
The Sourcerer.

It was all so strange, the way everything had turned out. He and
crystal, of course, never returned to the paper after the GlobalGro
event, and Daggert became a fugitive for a time, too, until eventually
being apprehended in Venezuela. It tickled Glenn when he learned
that one of Daggert's huge-breasted playthings turned him in for the
two million dollar reward that had been placed on his head. The
asshole could easily have given his girlfriend twice that much to
remain silent, but his cheapness finally caught up to him. Now he
was in an "undisclosed" prison location, probably Guantanamo,
awaiting trial on terrorism charges and a host of other felonies.

The Sourcerer survived, though, and Lawrence, the clean-cut intern,
was now one of its best writers. Had anyone known that the kid had
talent? Glenn hadn't, that was for sure. Ironically, it was Lawrence
who was writing The Sourcerer's stories on the overnight
Stonehenges and the other phenomena, and his instincts were scary
good. He'd even begun to theorize on the existence of a previously
unknown super-being as the perpetrator of all three unexplained
events, and cited the GlobalGro destruction as the first display of
this being's abilities. Which was ridiculous. But somehow true, just
the way the paper liked things.

South Dakota. Not close, but a lot closer than Mongolia and
Australia, where the other Stonehenges had appeared. Was she
coming back? Did she need to come back? His cock began to
harden. His most frequent mental picture of Crystal these days
included a loincloth and berry stains around her mouth. And
muscles vibrating so powerfully that her body audibly hummed as
she balanced upside-down mountain tops on the tip of one finger.
Unlike his one night of sex with Cassandra, he remembered
everything about making love to Crystal, and he kept praying that
she would take a break from her exile in the wilderness and knock
down his door one night.

She might find him in bed with another woman, though. His love life
was good these days, as in really good. There were complications,
though.

There were almost always lovers around, but not so many at once
that it ever became uncomfortable. Some of them were away, with
orgasm-inducing outcomes to keep their sexual needs satisfied for a
period of time. Isabella was currently in Brazil studying some form
of exotic dancing Ñ it was her lust and aptitude for dance that he
seemed to have re-awakened, although she had first interpreted the
change as lust for travel. Angela was in New Zealand Ñ she got such
good reviews playing Tina Tremendi in her off-Broadway play that
she had been cast for the lead role in a new Xena-like TV show on
the Sci-Fi channel, despite (or perhaps because of) her huge, pointy
tits. He was counting the days until the pilot episode aired. She e-
mailed him an advance publicity photo of herself in heeled fur boots
and a microscopic leather skirt, with a bare midriff and breast-
plates so long and horizontal that people were going to be buying
wide-screen TV's just to make sure they weren't missing anything.

Charlotte was still in the city, although she was away for a week
attending some sort of yoga conference. They had gotten very close,
almost as close as he was with Lauren. Like Lauren, she knew just
about everything that had happened to him. It was funny, because
he probably would not have thought of her as the most likely choice
to open up to. On the surface she was somewhat spoiled and bossy,
but underneath... Well, she was something very special.

She, too, was the recipient of an unfolding talent, which seemed to
concern the sensitivity of her hands and her ability to sense the
channels of energy within the human body, particularly in the spine.
Her standing in the massage world was going through the roof, and
she was teaching her techniques to a handful of young and gifted
students.

Some things, however she did not teach. The things she was learning
to do with her hands and her fingers during sex... She called it Cajun
Sutra, and it sure was hot and spicy, and she kept coming up with
new "recipes" every time he saw her.

And speaking of spice: Kiko. She knew all about his powers now, and
because she had been so broken before, she had benefited from
them in a way that the others hadn't needed. Kiko, as it turned out,
got all better with his help. Her unconscious desires to be used and
abused by a man while secretly hating all men dropped away with
surprising speed. And then she floored him by insisting that she
wanted some parts of her psyche un-fixed.

"I don't know why it is, but sex is so much better for me when I have
to struggle with my emotions and my dark fantasies. You can make
me struggle with my emotions artificially, but it isn't the same. I
want you to change me back. And I want to try out some really
kinky things."

And so he switched her back, essentially unhealing her. Once again,
Kiko could be bad, very bad, a guilt-ridden bitch on wheels at times,
but a bitch who loved to showcase her extreme assets in leather and
chains and find all sorts of ways to turn sex into a race towards the
bottom.

Her Website was back, of course, but now it had a special members-
only "Inner Chamber" that included more jolting photos and even
some hard-core videos, most of which featured Kiko being "abused"
by his immense tool or the power of his thoughts. They almost
always filmed themselves while fucking now, and they even filmed
themselves fucking while watching films of themselves fucking. The
subscribers to her Web-site couldn't see any of the wild shit
happening to her aura, but it was still video sex like no other he had
seen, because all of the impossible things going on were really going
on. His penis really was that immense, her huge boobs really were
being licked and kneaded even when his mouth and hands were not
on them, and Kiko was not faking her continual orgasms. They
didn't hold anything back except his identity, his face always hidden
by some bizarre antique mask that she brought over from Japan.

And there was an even deeper members-only section of her site
featuring special filmed scenarios, what she advertised as "The Dark
Matter". In these, Kiko reacted to him with intense terror mixed with
her lust, and the terror was real. Kiko, it turned out, had an
extremely twisted and vivid imagination, and she wasn't shy about
using his thought-powers to turn her most secret fantasies into
reality.

The basis for many of these fantasies was memory loss, meaning he
would cause her to forget about his powers or even forget him
entirely. And he would make her do things to herself or to others
that she would never consciously allow herself to do. She
masturbated in crowded elevators "against her will", she seduced
pizza delivery boys and gave blow-jobs to the policemen who came
to arrest her, even though she didn't want to and couldn't
understand why she couldn't stop herself, that sort of thing.

The secret to their fun was her total loss of control, the very real
feeling that she was being hopelessly manipulated against her
wishes. By temporarily wiping himself and their earlier exploits from
her memory, he could make her completely lose control for the first
time any number of times, keeping her terror fresh.

But her favorite use of this memory loss game involved rape. As in
being raped, by him. She confessed this secret fantasy to him one
night after sex, confessed how hot she had gotten back in September
when he had begun to abuse her in her office that night. It was the
fear of his power that intensified her lust, and the way to make the
fear real was to make her believe that she really was being raped
and controlled by a total stranger.

They did this a lot. He would wipe himself from her memory when
leaving her apartment after hot sex, and hide in her bedroom or
bathroom a few nights later, or "attack" her in the parking garage or
the elevator. And he would do anything he wanted to do to her.
Sometimes it was physical, sometimes it was mental, sometimes it
was both, and she came like nobody's business as he forced himself
on her. It was pretty sick, he supposed, consensual non-consensual
sex, which was a good description of how complicated his sex life
could be these days.

Ironically, it was these twisted encounters with Kiko's damaged
psyche that gave him the idea of becoming a therapist. Curing
people Ñ or some people, anyway Ñ was not a big problem for him.
He could diagnose a client's problem and look at his hands and
know in short order whether he could "fix" them or not. The larger
question was what they really wanted, and it was surprising how
often a mature human being could not answer this question.

He was listed in the Yellow Pages (the ad, never submitted, magically
appeared in the book when he made his decision on the career
change) as an "addiction specialist". Most of his clients were women
(he wasn't sure why, as he advertised no preference), and he was
really good at what he did. With nothing more than a thought, he
could often wipe away a smoking addiction, cure an eating disorder,
delete a phobia or (his favorite) redirect a sexual dysfunction.

If only he could cure his own sexual complications so easily. Coming
to a stop on the park pathway, he looked at his watch. He kept
buying the things, and they kept going dead during hot sex just as
Cassandra had predicted. He'd bought this one this morning, and so
far so good. Almost six, he read. He should get back, feed King and
shower, then head down to Chelsea Piers to go bowling with Joe. And
Ellen.

Ellen was one of those complications to his sex life.

He didn't make the connection at first, didn't see the danger. After
the GlobalGro thing, after coming back to New York and switching
careers, he met Joe Lentz for pool again. It had been nearly a month
since their last meeting, and Joe was restrained and quiet in a way
that had to mean something. Glenn pressed, and he couldn't have
been more surprised to hear Joe's news.

"I'm in fucking love, Glenn."

"I've heard that from you before."

"I know. But it's totally different this time. I don't even care if you
believe me... But I wish you would. Cindy is gone, everybody is gone.
No more fooling around, no more searching and feeling that nothing
is quite right. I found it. I found her!"

"You mean..."

"My Golden Pussy."

Glenn was going to say something cute, but he went down the street
and got them a bottle of champagne instead.

"To...", he said with raised glass.

"To Ellen."

"To Ellen. So tell me about her, and how it happened."

Joe was serious in his storytelling, which was a rare thing. Ellen was
a young aspiring bodybuilder who showed up at Joe's studio for a
portfolio shoot. Right away, her looks floored him.

"Everything I could have ever wanted, Glenn. A sweet face and a
body like you wouldn't believe, especially her legs and shoulders.
Super legs! And tall... Christ, she had me swooning!"

"And then..."

Joe went quiet for a time. "Look," he finally said. "If something
really weird happened to you... Something totally unbelievable. How
would you say it so that somebody else would believe it?"

"Not a rhetorical question," Glenn commented.

"No, it isn't. Something... happened. You won't believe me, I know...
I couldn't believe it myself, and neither could Ellen. But it was
happening, we could both see it and..."

"Try me, Joe. I've had some really strange things happen to me
recently, too."

"Not like this!", Joe protested. "It was... It was a fucking miracle!"

"Tell me."

"Okay, but don't blow champagne in my face when you hear it,
okay? So, you know I just said that Ellen was everything I could have
hoped for?'

"Yes. Tall and muscle-bound with a sweet face and super legs..."

"But only smallish B-cup tits."

"Which... Hmmm. You're a guy who needs more than that."

"I'm a guy who needs much more than that. It isn't fair, I know..."

"I thought that she was Ñ is Ñ your Golden Pussy."

"Oh, she is! I was completely ready to overlook the tits, not a
problem! I couldn't even believe that I was okay with them, but I
was!"

"And that's the miracle?"

"Uh, no. Under normal circumstance that might qualify, but the real
miracle was... so much more. We're working, see? Ellen had the
body, of course, and a pretty good sense of posing, even though she
was raw in front of a camera. I gave her a lot of help, though, lots of
going up to her and touching her, adjusting an arm or a leg or the
tilt of her head..."

"Not just because of professional courtesy, I take it."

"Fuck no! I was hot, she was such a babe! It was kind of like when
Crystal modeled for me, I got all excited..."

"Hard, you mean."

"Damn straight! And Ellen... I could see that she liked it, liked the
way I was touching her and feeling all hot for her. And it seemed
that maybe she liked me, too."

"And so?"

"And so after a while she keeps glancing down at her tits, making
these strange faces. I kept having to tell her to concentrate on her
expression. She did for a minute or two, but then she starts wiggling
her torso like she's got ants crawling on her skin."

"I'll bet you liked what you saw when she wiggled her torso."

"As a horny male, sure, she had girl-muscles erupting all over the
place! But as a photographer, it was like having your model show up
covered in itching powder! I kept telling her to stay still and she
keeps apologizing, and finally I yell at her and she yells back that
she can't stay still because her tits are growing!"

"Growing?"

"That's exactly what I said! Your tits are growing? And then I look
really close... I almost came in my pants on the spot, Glenn! The
woman had maybe a B-cup chest at the beginning of the photo
session, and that's being generous. And now I'm staring at two very
firm C-cups, at least! They're partially covered by her top but come
on, I'm an expert! I take a quick glance at a Polaroid I shot at the
beginning to make sure that I'm not going out of my mind..."

"What is your girlfriend's name again?"

"Ellen. Ellen with the miracle growing tits! I asked her if she wanted
me to call a doctor and she says 'no, but they're still growing!', and
damned if they aren't and so are her fucking nipples! I'm staring in
amazement, not even remembering the cameras or anything, and
she's staring at her chest all wide-eyed, watching her tits grow Ñ
you could actually see them growing, I'm not shitting you! She looks
like she's gonna faint but there's also this look on her face like she's
about ready to come, too, and then the strap of her swim-suit top
snaps! Her boobs rocket forward and it was all happening faster, her
tits were growing faster, and she looks at me like I'm supposed to do
something but all I can do is try not to shoot a load in my pants, I'm
so hard! And then her eyes go glassy and she groans and I can smell
her pussy and even see two trails of pussy juice sneaking down her
thighs..."

"Ah... Joe? What color is Ellen's hair? She isn't..."

"A true blonde? You better believe she is! It all happened so fast, she
pulls her bikini bottom off and I'm out of my pants like they're on
fire, and right on the model stand under the lights I'm groping a set
of double-D's with nipples bigger and harder than bullets and I'm
not shitting you! She comes, screaming at the top of her lungs like a
banshee, and I come all over her tits and we stagger into the
bedroom in the back and the woman's tits were fucking growing all
night long!"

"How big?"

"You believe me?"

"Yes. How big?"

"A fucking GG-cup, Glenn! You'll see when you meet her! And they
aren't implants and they weren't there at the beginning of the photo
session! I even have the shots to prove it!"

But of course Glenn didn't need to see the photos to believe. The
blonde athlete. His blonde athlete, according to Cassandra. Oh fuck!

He didn't let on that he knew anything about Ellen or why her boobs
had grown. He even went back on what he'd said, pretending to
doubt Joe's version of events, pointing out the impossibility that a
woman's breasts could ever grow that fast and that dramatically.

"I don't care what you believe," Joe concluded. "Her parents don't
believe it either, they think she went out and got a mega-boob job.
They could feel her up and see for themselves... But who cares what
others believe? There's something magical about Ellen and I'll never
forget it. It was only a one-time thing, I guess Ñ her boobs have
stayed the same ever since that night ÑÊbut they're huge and
unbelievably shaped and she can come just from having me tickle
her nipples!"

Glenn got so hard listening to that last part, and he felt horrible
about it.

In the weeks that followed, he did everything in his power to avoid
officially meeting Ellen, and it worked for a while. In time, though,
Joe showed up at Glenn's door with his huge-breasted lover in tow.

She looked spectacular, and he had this weird mix of lust and
artistic satisfaction at the way her breasts filled out her sweater. He
hadn't exactly sculpted them Ñ the universe or the One Will or
whatever hadn't allowed him to supply the details Ñ but he had
played a direct part in their bra-busting existence, and they were
magnificent.

It didn't surprise him that the fuzziness in Ellen's aura was gone (her
"rift" healed, as Cassandra would have put it). It also didn't surprise
him that she had hordes of sparkles flitting around in her golden
field, sparkles that talked to him, winked at him, practically laughed
at him from inside an aura whose color heated up every time she got
near him.

And so began their dance of mutual attraction, the simmering pull
towards each other that at all times threatened to turn into a
roaring blaze. She flirted with him behind Joe's back and would
sometimes catch herself, obviously trying to contain her wayward
behavior, and she would be able to get hold of herself for a brief
time. But then the pressure would build, and she'd begin to slip, and
in slipping she would turn on her sexiness jets and the woman was
very sexy indeed.

Glenn was getting better at containing his wayward lust Ñ practice
made perfect Ñ but sometimes Ellen would hit a pose or even
"bump" into him with one of her huge breasts and what could he
do? He would start to get hard for her and her field would sense his
heat and pretty soon you could cut the desire hanging between them
with a knife, it was so palpable. He was sure that she didn't wish to
cheat on Joe, not really. But she would.

Glenn understood what was going on and Ellen didn't, which made
him the responsible one. He kept having to give Ellen little outcomes
to settle her down or allow her to vent her passions onto Joe's cock
at a later time, but it was getting harder and harder to do. He was
never allowed to repeat one of these outcomes and he was running
out of ideas. His options were narrowing, and pretty soon there
might be none at all.

It was another cosmic set-up. And where could the universe's
"generous spirit" be found in setting him up to betray his best
friend? According to Cassandra, there was no force in the universe
that could keep his cock outside of Ellen's pussy forever, but he sure
as hell was trying. But Lauren was right Ñ he knew he was going to
lose. Every time that he saw Ellen, it felt like the invisible strings
attaching them to one another were both shorter and stronger. He
was being pulled in, pulled towards fucking the love of his best
friend's life.

And he would watch her fling a bowling ball (reminiscent of the
breasts he'd given her) down a lane tonight, with no date of his own
to keep his thoughts in check. Life Ñ it sucked sometimes, what else
could you say?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Having showered and fed the dog, he walked over to Broadway to
catch a 9 train downtown. For some reason he decided to don his
"invisibility cap", which meant that he had to be extra vigilant in
avoiding other pedestrians and especially taxi cabs. Cassandra's
outcome had faded somewhat over the months Ñ where at first he'd
been almost totally unnoticeable to others, he just seemed
uninteresting now. He didn't have to worry so much about other
pedestrians colliding with him any more, but it was still too easy to
get mowed down in traffic. For that very reason, he hardly ever wore
the thing, but tonight... Somehow it felt nice to have people looking
right past him.

Except that they weren't. People on the sidewalk, especially the men,
were staring straight at him like he was the hottest dish they'd ever
seen. And then he was inside of a flashing golden field bigger and
more energetic than any he'd seen in months. What the...

"Howdy, stranger."

The voice was unmistakable. He wheeled around and saw what the
men had been gawking at.

"Holy shit!"

Crystal embraced him in a warm, nearly bone-crunching bear hug
and effortlessly lifted him up off the ground.

"'Holy shit'? Is that any way to greet an old flame?"

She set him down gently, and laughed. Damn, she looked great, truly
great. Her luxurious black hair was longer now, and there was
something in her body that screamed strength even as she just stood
there. And her aura... More layers, and more energetic storms than
before. She didn't look like a woman who'd been leading a hermit
life off in the woods for the past six months. She looked like a
woman who'd been injecting nothing but industrial strength multi-
vitamins and maybe a few nuclear fuel rods into her bloodstream
several times a day since he'd last seen her.

"You might want to reel your tongue back inside your mouth," she
teased.

"Sorry. I just... I can't believe you're here! When did you... How long
have you been following me?," he asked.

"Just long enough to figure out that you were wearing this silly cap
again," she answered. "Here, let me see if it works on me yet..."

She snatched the cap from his head and placed it on her own, then
lifted her lemon yellow stretch-top high enough that she was
flashing her big and braless double-D's at the oncoming traffic.
Pedestrians gasped and several dozen horns blared all at once. A taxi
smashed into the back of a double-parked stretch limousine, the
impact setting off three disharmonious car alarms nearby.

"Nope," she smiled, pulling her clothing back into place. "The magic
still doesn't want to work for me."

Crystal had so much magic working for her already. Along with the
yellow stretch top that did little to mask the magnificence of her
breasts, she had on a pair of black jeans so tight that he could easily
picture them being torn to shreds if she flexed the muscles of her
thighs or calves too tight.

"You're barefoot!," he exclaimed.

"It's become a habit. Most shoes keep falling apart so easily Ñ all I
have to do is wiggle my toes too exuberantly and a decent pair of
shoes are history. So where were you heading just now?"

"Chelsea Piers. To go bowling, believe it or not."

"Bowling? Who with?"

"Joe Lentz and his girlfriend."

"No date for you?"

"No, I..."

"Well now you have a date, big boy! Bowling. And Joe. That could be
fun! Do you think they have any five hundred-pound bowling balls?
You know, something like the huge stone ball that chased Indiana
Jones in that old movie?"

"Crys..."

"Don't worry, I'll behave. Now, do we have time for a drink on the
way? I'm dying for a quality glass of wine."

They had to pick up a pair of shoes for her to enter a bar. As they
walked down Broadway, Glenn kept staring at the way Crystal
carried herself. Tons of other people stared at her, too Ñ did they
notice what he noticed, or were they only focused on her amazing
looks?

Once they were seated in a secluded booth at the back of The
Watering Whole, a trendy bar in his neighborhood, he had to ask.

"I hope you don't mind my pointing this out, but there's something
about the way you move now, something kind of... strange. Like
you're as light as air. Like you have wings on your feet."

"Those ankle wings are another reason I don't like to wear shoes
anymore," she joked. "But seriously, it's funny that you see it as
being light. I'm not sure of an exact number, but I think I weigh
close to five hundred pounds now.

"What?"

Their waitress appeared at that moment. Glenn ordered a Guinness
on tap, while Crystal asked for their best Merlot served in some sort
of stainless steel cup or mug. It was New York, which meant that
waiters and waitresses got all kinds of strange requests, and their
waitress took it in stride.

"I'm always breaking things," Crystal explained when they were
alone again. "But back to my weight Ñ it's tied to density or
something, even at what I've come to think of as my 'default' state. I
think what you saw out on the street is the way I try to compensate
for my strength. Even when just walking... I guess a lot happens with
every little flex, you know? I work hard to look normal when I'm out
in public, which isn't all that often."

"You've been hanging out in the woods mostly? You don't exactly
look like you've been living on nuts and berries."

"I think I'll take that as a compliment. And yes, I'm getting to be
quite the little explorer, roaming the wild pathways that are left on
the earth. It's funny, because I'm such a city girl. I have to rejoin
civilization fairly frequently to keep from going batty. That's why
I've had to learn to walk in a way that doesn't draw too much
attention. When I'm out in the middle of nowhere... Well, then, I just
move as I please and it feels incredible. You wouldn't even believe
how fast I can run now, how quick my strides are and how much
distance gets covered with every stride."

"And when you're out in the woods... You're a busy girl, sometimes,
aren't you?"

"You mean my spheres and my 'Stonehenges'?"

"Yeah."

"They're fun. The spheres were too easy, although it takes some
attention to get a perfectly round shape."

"You compressed stones with your hands?

"Don't shortchange the challenge, now. Each one began as a boulder
about the size of a Volkswagen. They're compressed that much."

"Damn! And the Stonehenges..."

"It bothers me a little bit that they're called 'Stonehenges' in the
press Ñ I really wasn't thinking about that when I began, and most
of the arrangements aren't even circular."

"I noticed that they're getting more complex. Why do you make
them?"

"Well, what would you do if you had super-strength? In comics or
movies, a super-villain always emerges to occupy the hero."

"You could put on a mask and tights and fight crime even without a
super-adversary. And you'd look really great in the tights, by the
way."

"I would, wouldn't I? I considered that idea. For about ten seconds,
that is.

"Why not..."

"For one, my clothes burn away whenever I juice myself up too
much. Even my sunglasses melt Ñ so long secret identity! I'd be the
first nude super-hero, which would be way too weird."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Have you thought of what I do for money?"

"Well, I kind of assumed that no bank vault could keep you out."

"True. I could even use the vault doors for Frisbees, play around for
a while. But really, Glenn, how mean of you to think I'd steal like
that!"

"So what do you do?"

"I open my wallet and pay for things like everybody. It always has
four hundred dollars in it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that my wallet always has four hundred dollars in it, no
matter how quickly I spend the money. A gift from Cassandra, I
assume."

"Wow. Quite a gift."

"Yes, it is. But think about it Ñ I have to put my wallet somewhere
every time I plan to go intense enough that my clothes might burn
off. I mean, maybe Cassandra would replace the wallet somehow,
but maybe not. So I have to be careful. Can you see me fighting
crime while having to keep track of my fucking wallet like that?"

He laughed. "Who would ever guess that the strongest being on the
planet would have so many challenges?"

"I never see these sorts of issues come up in comic books or movies,
that's for sure. But who wants realism?"

"So you, ah, just wander around and sometimes arrange twenty-ton
boulders."

"That's about it."

"Do you see them as art? The Stonehenges?"

"Damn straight! They're earth-works, which is a widely accepted art
form."

"I'd love to see them in person some day," he said. "I have a new
respect for art, you know. It's the only thing that glows other than
living plants or animals."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that every now and then, some particular piece of art has a
golden glow around it. I saw it first in Extremity and thought it was a
total anomaly. But then I went into the Metropolitan Museum when I
came back to the city."

"And the art glows? The paintings, the sculptures..."

"Not everything. In fact, not most things. A handful of paintings, a
handful of sculptures and wall hangings... All I can think is that
every once in a while, an artist can capture something or create
something that has something in it like life-force. It's sort of like
they can create a living thing by making a work of art."

"Which paintings glow? Portraits?"

"Not necessarily. Subject doesn't matter, culture or tradition doesn't
matter. It's something... else. I doubt that even the artists knew
which of their works had this special thing, and which ones didn't."

"Which paintings? I want to know."

"I won't tell you. Sorry. It's just that I don't know if it's universal. If
you could see fields, too, maybe a different set of works would glow
for you."

"I wonder if my earthworks could ever glow for you."

"That's what I was wondering. If they're creative for you, then I
guess they could. In fact, maybe they'll end up in the art magazines
someday," Glenn mused. "Right now the interest is in how they're
being made, and by whom. The aesthetics aren't discussed much,
sad to say."

"Funny, isn't it? I'm tabloid material now. All of that training to write
news stories, and now I am one. Speaking of which... You've been a
busy boy, too."

"Don't know what you're talking about."

She laughed, showing her gleaming teeth. Damn!, the woman was
gorgeous.

"Seriously, Crys. I'm leading a perfectly respectable life these days."

"The phrase 'An Epidemic of Truth-Telling' means nothing to you?"

"I might have seen words to that effect in the papers a while back.
Why?"

She grinned. "What I want to know is why you stopped. And why
didn't you go after some of the administration's top-dogs. You took
down a couple of Senators and that disgusting little Congressman
from Texas who kept coloring his hair..."

"I really hated to see how my home state was being represented."

"Mis-represented, you mean. But why not go to the top? Make the
President tell the truth at one of his press conferences..."

"Might start a war," he sighed.

"They start wars, anyway! Maybe you'd stop a few!"

"Still pretty risky."

"You know how much they all lie, Glenn. They talk about freedom
and opportunity but they trade favors with their rich buddies every
day, and most of it might be legal but it's unethical. They're crooks!
I say expose the whole lot of them! It would be easy for you."

"Lots of times it wouldn't be allowed. Besides... I'd have to be there
in the audience to do something like that, and I've never liked
Washington as a place, to be honest. I was going there for a little
while... Anyway, I keep trying to affect politicians through the TV,
but I can't get the hang of it. Yet."

"Sounds like an admission of guilt to me," Crystal grinned.

"Funny how I don't feel guilty."

"No? You don't even feel guilty about your harem?"

"What harem?"

"Uh-huh. With your powers, you can't tell me that you don't have a
group of devoted concubines by now. I wouldn't believe that for a
minute."

"No harem," Glenn replied. "I have some... devoted fans, you might
say..."

"I'll bet. How's the wife?"

"I don't have a..."

"I meant Cassandra."

"We aren't married, Crys."

"Might as well be. Has she had your kid yet? With all of your
concubines, it sounds to me like you're married and cheating on
your wife."

"Crys, we haven't... I don't..."

Wait. She was goading him, just like she used to do. And he had to
admit that he had missed that, and was enjoying it now.

"I find myself thinking about all kinds of odd things while I'm out in
the woods," Crystal said. "One of the questions that keeps coming to
me is this: Does Cassandra's shit stink?"

He laughed.

"Well, does it? It's a serious question!"

"I don't know. I forgot to ask," he replied.

"I'll bet it doesn't stink," she went on. "She's too pure, too evolved
and all of that."

"Sounds like a bit of barely repressed hostility to me," Glenn said.

"Or maybe a little barely concealed envy, knowing that you'll
eventually go up to live the good life with your perfect little family
while I'm left to juggle mountain tops to entertain myself."

"Ouch."

"Sorry. It's just that... Forget it. I can deal with it."

They were both silent for more than a minute. Crystal drank her
wine faster and he could feel the vibrations of angst, or conflict,
emanating from her.

"How are the outcomes holding up, Crys?"

"I can contain my power for the most part. Tie it to my thoughts. I
make some mistakes, but the world is still here, isn't it?"

"That wasn't what I meant."

"You mean your handy-dandy masturbation outcomes? Fine. I just
call out your name and... The sex must be good, since I don't have it
with anyone but myself."

"I've been wondering... Those unexplained craters..."

"Yes, I confess."

"Your... ah... orgasms?"

"No. Not sex," she answered. "Or not sex entirely. It's sex mixed with
something nearly as good."

"Which is?"

"Skydiving without a parachute."

"Christ."

"I just imagine myself to be strong enough to withstand the impact
without a scrape, and God knows how heavy and dense I am by the
time I hit. It's a real thrill, smashing into the earth like a comet. You
should try it sometime."

They were silent again, and there was a weight in the air at least as
dense as Crystal's body. He kept watching the muscles of her arms
tense or loosen under her skin every time she took a sip of her wine.
They looked pretty normal, if normal meant strong and gorgeous.
But lying there inside of that flesh... He had to remind himself that
he was sitting across the table from a woman with unlimited
physical capacities, a woman who could smash into the earth and it
was the earth, not the body, that had to give way. He felt his cock
hardening under the table.

She looked up at him, her eyes intense. "We did the right thing,
didn't we Glenn?"

"Making love, you mean? I've thought so."

"Silly. I meant did we do the right thing destroying the GlobalGro
plant."

"Oh. Well... sure. You know what could have happened if we hadn't."

She halfheartedly nodded her head in agreement. "Sometimes I think
it wasn't enough."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that GlobalGro was more of a symptom than the disease."

"And most politicians are still slimeballs, and the little guy gets
screwed and global warming and all sorts of other shit still gets
ignored. That kind of thing, right?"

"Right. The current crop of politicians are more rapists than leaders.
And this mixing of fundamentalist Christianity with politics... It gives
me the creeps."

"You could go beat them all up," he joked.

"I've thought of that. I even bought a bus ticket to Washington one
time before changing my mind."

He began to laugh but then stopped. She was dead serious.

"I guess the T.T.B.O. movement reassures me just a bit," she
continued. "In fact, I think your truth-telling tactics are the reason
the movement has been gathering so much steam."

T.T.B.O. (which stood for Throw The Bums Out) was a rapidly
growing grassroots movement that cut across all party lines. The
aim was a clean sweep of Congress and the White House, all
incumbents of both parties defeated because they were all beholden
to some kind of special interest or another.

"I've been doing what I can, I guess," Glenn confessed. "It's become
pretty clear that every politician at the federal level is in the pocket
of somebody Ñ the oil industry, the chemical industry, the gun
manufacturers, the pharmaceutical industry..."

"Or the arms industry or the insurance industry or the trial lawyers
or the bankers... I really hope this movement does the trick, Glenn. I
want all of those fuckers out of there."

"There is no Utopia, Crys. If it works, the new batch could be just as
corrupt as the current crop of old farts."

"I know, but at least the newbies would know they could be voted
out quickly if they don't perform."

"True."

Crystal peered intently into her metal cup of wine. Maybe she really
was becoming more passionate about the state of the union, but he
detected an odd cynicism that hadn't been there back in the fall.
And he had a sense that she had something else on her mind,
something she was talking around. He wished that he could enter
through the layers of her turbulent auras to get a better idea of what
was going on inside, but he knew that her fields would just swat him
away like a bug for trying. Which left the option of asking. He
wondered whether to press, and decided to take the chance.

"Crys... I get this feeling of... something, I'm not sure what. From
you, I mean."

"Want to try to be more vague? Define it."

"It's something like resentment, or regret, or... Why don't you help
me and define it yourself?"

"Why don't you go jump in a lake?'

Silence again.

"I'm sorry, Glenn, you didn't deserve that."

"Is it just the changes? Your having to adapt, to..."

"'Just'? You try carrying the fate of the world on your shoulders for
a few months and see if you say 'just'."

"You know I can't do that."

"I know, I'm sorry. Shit, how many times will I have to say I'm sorry
here?"

"Apologies accepted. Maybe you don't know what it is that I feel like
I'm feeling from you, or don't want to tell me if you do. Maybe
that's why you keep saying other things, things that aren't what you
want to say."

"You sound like a therapist."

"I am a therapist now."

"What? You're shitting me!"

"It's true. It's my new career."

"Well I'll be damned! What kind of therapist?"

"I try to keep the definition open, but my certification says that I'm
an addiction specialist."

"Your certification? What, did you go through school in... Oh. Right.
You decided to hang out a shingle and the certification and the
secretary, they just appeared."

"True with the certificate. I put an ad in the paper for the secretary."

"I'll bet she looks like a swim-suit model with triple-D boobs."

Glenn laughed. "Not even close, Crys. She's the closest thing to
Dalene that I could find."

"Dalene. I miss her. And a few others there, believe it or not."

"Lawrence is on to you," he warned.

"I saw his most recent story. He's starting to put it all together, the
GlobalGro footage and the other unexplained events."

"Sunglasses may not be enough of a disguise for you at some point,
Crys. You're too beautiful to miss."

"I should probably worry about that... about being found out. But I
don't."

"Why not?"

"What do you think would happen if the authorities put out an APB
on me? What do you think the scene would be like if they tried to
apprehend me?"

"I... I wouldn't even want to imagine that."

"Nor would they, nor would their families. I'm not bothering anyone,
Glenn. I make my art and hijack a little plane every now and then for
a jump, but I'm basically trying like crazy to be an anti-problem. It's
worked so far. If things change... well, they'd just better hope they
don't figure it out."

More silence. A longer silence.

"I guess I found a good way to divert the conversation away from
what's really on my mind," Crystal admitted.

"I noticed. A lot of my patients do the same kind of thing."

"I'm not your patient."

"No."

"Oh, hell, Glenn! Let me just come out and say it."

"Go for it."

"Well, like I said, I've had a lot of time to think about things while
I'm roaming around. All kinds of things. What happened to me and
to you, my parents, my old job, my present and my future."

"And?"

"And I'm really confused about most things. I don't know what the
future holds for me. I just know that I'll be freakishly strong when it
happens."

"You speak like it's all a burden. Couldn't some of it be a gift?"

"It hasn't been so far. I get a few thrills but I'm mostly cut off from
others. So I walk around on mountain trails listening to the birds
singing. I'm getting to recognize certain tunes, which is kind of cool,
but are you hearing me? I walk around in nature listening to birds.
That stinks. "

"Maybe. Maybe if things had happened differently, there would be
no forests for you to walk in, and no birds to sing."

"I've thought of that. The GlobalGro thing... What I can do was useful
for that, but there might have been some other way. Anyhow, I guess
I sometimes find myself focused on the glass-half-empty parts, not
the others."

"There's one in particular that troubles you," he said.

"Wow, you really are a therapist, aren't you? You're right. There is
one thing. It eats at me a lot."

"What is it, Crys? Say it, give it a name. It's the only way to wrest
power from these things."

"I'm in love with you, dammit!"

Silence.

She sighed a long sigh. "In a way, I don't want to be," she continued.
"You're partly responsible for turning me into what I am now, and
sometimes I hate you for that. But not really. I... I can't help it,
Glenn. You might be the only man that I can ever make love to again,
and I... feel for you, too. A ton. And not because I sometimes weigh
a ton. I fucking love you, Glenn. There."

"Crys... I think you know that I fell for you even before all of this
weird stuff began. These feelings are completely mutual."

"I know, I can tell. But dammit, you're going to go live with your
perfectly perfect shit-stinkless pseudo-bride, your ideal woman and
the mother of your fucking all-knowing child! How do you think that
makes me feel? I want you, meaning I want some kind of life with
you Ñ and you're promised to somebody else! Your whole fucking
life is somewhere else!"

There it was, finally. The truth. And what a truth.

"I'm sorry, Glenn. There, I had to say it again. But I am sorry. It
doesn't do any good to shift the burden onto you. You're trapped by
circumstances just as I am."

"Not necessarily," he answered.

"What do you mean?"

"I guess I mean that I don't see things the way I used to. You know,
one of my 'concubines', as you see them, is writing a novel about
everything that happened last fall. She calls it 'Breaking The Rules',
and it's only recently that I've begun to suspect how profound those
words can be. Yes, I'm going up to Extremity in four and a half years
to be with my daughter and her mother. And I do love Cassandra, I
can't help it like you can't help loving me. And I love Lauren, the
woman writing the novel, and a handful of others. Some more than
others? Maybe, in some cases. But... I need them all, and I've come
to realize that it isn't too much to ask for."

"What are you saying? That I should join your harem and be the
concubine who also happens to be good at lifting heavy objects?"

He laughed.

"I can hear it now," she went on, smiling for the first time in a while.
"'Crystal, could you rearrange the furniture while we're gone?', or
'Crys, the septic tank needs replacing, could you burrow into the
earth and dig out the old one and throw it into orbit?' Is that the
kind of life you envision for me, Glenn?"

"No, or I think not. But look... What I'm trying to get at is that
maybe some traps aren't real. Maybe we close off possibilities and
turn things into traps all by ourselves. I guess I'm saying that you
might look at what says 'no' inside of you and decide whether you
really need to listen to that. "

"Glenn, from what Cassandra told you and the dreams I've had... If I
don't say 'no' to something every minute of every single day, the
whole world might vanish!"

"I know. You must have more self-control than you ever thought,
Crys. Maybe you're growing in ways that go beyond your density."

"I hear you. You're talking about me being okay with you loving
others, and being with others."

"And maybe being with you, too. Maybe life situations aren't as all-
or-nothing as we make them out to be. Maybe we have some
freedom to be okay with things, including complications. Maybe we
can both grow in some ways or find an attitude above them where
these issues don't hold us in their power."

"A higher perspective? Is that what you're talking about?"

"I guess so."

"You were talking like this when you came back to the cabin in the
woods, right after hanging out with Cassandra. Sounds to me like
she has you brainwashed."

"Maybe."

"Cassandra would have said 'maybe', exactly like that, wouldn't
she?"

He laughed. "I give up!"

"Good. But listen... I'll think about what you said. Later. For now,
this is all too heavy. Abrupt subject change: I'm ready to go
bowling!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joe's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when he saw Crystal.
He made a move to give her a bear-hug, but she side-stepped him
and kept it more casual. Joe probably thought she was making a
"look but do not touch" statement, and she was. But Glenn thought
it was more to keep him from realizing that he couldn't lift her.

Ellen looked great, which could be a problem for everyone. She was
wearing tight jeans that did little to hide the amazing muscularity of
her legs, and a tight white sleeveless blouse that criss-crossed in V-
fashion in front. Her choice in tops showcased her fabulous
shoulders and upper arms and was even more effective in
highlighting the long, deep canyon of soft cleavage that she had
grown in Joe's studio one fine day. Glenn could understand why the
universe had retained the privilege of designing Ellen's boobs Ñ he
never could have shaped them this well in a million years.

Ellen and Crystal smiled at each other and exchanged pleasantries,
but their chemistry was definitely complex. Ellen looked like she was
in shock ÑÊeven though she was a full foot taller than Crystal, she
probably wasn't used to being in the company of a woman whose
physique was every bit as dynamic or even more so than her own.
Crystal had insisted on stopping to buy a short, flowing skirt ÑÊshe
wasn't addicted to clothes shopping, she insisted, she just didn't
want her jeans to burst apart while she was bowling. Anyway, her
tits looked incredible in her tight stretch top and she was showing a
lot of leg, and when Crystal Skensgard was showing a lot of leg,
people noticed. And bowling shoes? They had never looked better
on anyone, ever. A shame that they probably wouldn't survive the
night.

The women both looked so fabulous that it would be easy to lose
himself to his salivating lust and have both of them writhing down
the waxed lanes as they fingered themselves. But Ellen's aura had
begun to heat up the instant she saw him, and Crystal's auras,
especially around her pussy, were beginning to look like they might
leap away from her and catch the whole building on fire. She had
been rather cool as they drank at the bar, but he could see now that
she was on slow simmer, with the heat increasing bit by bit. It was
all enough to make him both horny and extremely nervous, which
was keeping his cock in a very confused state.

They all chatted while waiting for their lane to come free. Bowling in
New York was different than elsewhere. The people were trimmer,
and there was no cigarette smoke creating a haze between the
bowlers and their targets. The food included Thai dishes and the bar
was stocked with much more than lite beers. But a bowling alley,
any bowling alley, had those familiar sounds. Glenn enjoyed the
rolling thunder of the balls and the subsequent crashes. You could
tell how people were doing just by listening, which he'd always liked.

They all drank a bit (Crystal took her wine in a plastic cup this time,
he observed), and then it was time to roll. Ellen bowled first. She
had her own fourteen pound ball, all emerald green and shiny as
polished glass, and she could hurl that thing down the lane with
devastating speed and accuracy. She knew what she was doing,
putting a spin on the ball where it hung on the edge of the right
gutter for most of its journey, breaking in towards the center at the
last second. Her first ball was a resounding strike. She jumped up
and down for joy and he could hear the gasps coming from all over
the joint. He had to look away, it was way too sexy to be safe. But
you just knew that a few dozen of the other bowlers in the building
were hoping that Ellen would get a strike every time.

Crystal went next. She was working with an ugly black sixteen
pounder and Glenn could tell from the lack of tension in her wrist
that she wished it weighed a dozen times that much. She was a
pretty good actress, though. Her delivery was strange-looking Ñ
little careful steps and then a big backward swing and an arm
motion that he could recognize as holding a lot back while trying to
make it look otherwise. Her ball flew straight down the lane even
faster than Ellen's, but she only knocked down five pins for her
trouble.

"Damn, she's strong!", Joe bellowed.

Crystal caught Glenn's eye and there was a slight shrugging of the
shoulders, like she was saying "What else can I do? This is the most
normal I can make it look!"

He gave her an encouraging nod and a smile, but inside he was
developing a bad feeling. He should have canceled when she showed
up. There were way too many things that could go wrong here.

Crystal picked up four more pins on her second roll, and then Joe
was up. He wasn't as artful as Ellen, and muscled the ball like he
needed to prove something. Was it having an Amazon girlfriend with
all of that skill, or seeing how rapidly tiny little Crystal's ball had
zipped down the lane?

Joe bowled a spare in the first frame, and Glenn did the same. And
things seemed to settle down a little, although a crowd of onlookers
began to form behind them. It was the women, their incredible looks
and the contrast between them.

Ellen, big and tall and blond and ripped, looked like she spent about
ten hours every day in a gym. And then with those fabulous breasts,
the huge breasts he'd given to her... Well he had done a superb job
in every way. They bulged just right, they bounced just right, they
had a presence that was completely in-tune with the rest of her
spectacular beauty.

Crystal was so different, so tiny, and her muscularity was of another
nature. Her boobs looked nearly as big on her even though they
weren't, all because her body was so tightly packaged. And that
physique... Christ! She looked like she'd been working out in her
mother's womb so that she could be born ripped. You knew in an
instant that exercise was a major part of her life, and everything fell
together almost too well, like all of the component parts of her body
went around self-perfecting their form when she slept at night.

And people were noticing, noticing Crys, noticing Ellen, noticing the
two together. Every time either of them went into their wind-ups,
the whole building fell silent. And when they rolled a strike or a
spare, cheers and applause were beginning to erupt from all over,
with more voices and clapping added to the mix with every frame.

The first game over, the girls made a trek to the ladies' room, and
Glenn joined Joe for a beer at a table.

"After meeting Ellen and with everything that happened... Her tits, I
mean," Joe began. "I forgot, Glenn."

"Forgot what?"

"Just how special Crystal is."

"Yep."

"The two of you... You have, haven't you? You did... You'd better
have..."

"Stop fretting, Joe. I finally got in Crystal's pants, yes."

"You lucky son-of-a-bitch!"

"You're pretty lucky, too, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Don't forget it."

"I won't. I don't. But... Just tell me this. She's it, isn't she?"

"She's what? My Golden Pussy?"

Joe shook his head 'no'.

"Beyond that, Glenn. I wouldn't have thought this before, but that
was before I lived through a real miracle. Crystal is beyond your
Golden Pussy, I know it."

"What is it that you know?"

"That she's the whole world's Golden Pussy. She's the Universal
Golden Pussy."

Maybe he should have laughed the comment away, but he didn't.
He'd held so much back from Joe and it wasn't always easy. Even
now, just by saying nothing about his mind powers and the sparkles
in Ellen's aura, he was lying to his friend. And the lie was gathering
its own steam, growing much as Ellen's boobs had grown. So now,
here, he took a chance towards some little bit of honesty.

"You underestimate Crystal, Joe. She's the Platinum Pussy. The
Universal Platinum Pussy. And then some. I'm not exaggerating.
There's nothing she can't do."

"In bed you mean. I... I believe you."

"Some people even perform miracles outside of the bedroom, Joe."

"Yeah, but... Don't ever let her go, Glenn."

"I won't. Our relationship is complicated, though..."

"Fuck the complications. Live with them and just hang onto her with
all your might."

"I hear you... But it may not be enough. It goes way beyond what I
want, Joe. Crystal is exceptional in ways that you can't see, in ways
that make you realize that you aren't in control. There are
complications that you wouldn't even believe. That no one would
believe."

"Try me some time. I'm a guy who witnessed a real-life miracle,
remember? But it's more than that. I'm maturing, Glenn."

"I know. But... there are a ton of things I haven't told you, Joe. Wild
things. Really important things. Life and death things."

Glenn's big best friend took a long gulp of his beer and smacked his
lips. "Here's where we are, Glenn. A week from tonight, The Hot
Triangle, just the two of us. I'll be there, and if you want to show up,
it's to let your hair down. It's to be real, no hiding, no holding back.
And I'll understand if you decide not to show, no hard feelings. Your
call."

"You're a good friend, Joe."

"A good friend who can't stop salivating over the female company
you keep. I thought Lauren and Charlotte were tops, but... Shit,
Crystal is put together! Speaking of which, here they come."

They all had a couple of drinks and then went into the second game.
Ellen had done best earlier, with a score of 239. Joe bowled a 211,
Glenn had a 160, and Crystal brought up the rear with a 112.

"This totally sucks!", she whispered to Glenn. "I used to score over
two-hundred consistently! It's all of this holding back, it's messing
up my rhythm."

"Don't you dare cut loose," he whispered back.

She didn't promise anything, which was worrying. Worrying, too,
was the look on her face when Ellen opened up the second game
with another strike and celebrated a little too much, shaking her
huge tits to beat the band.

"She's starting to piss me off," Crystal muttered to Glenn before
going up to grab her ball.

Maybe it was the drinks, maybe it was her steam getting the best of
her judgment. She picked up her ball and inserted her fingers and
thumb with too much force, and the ball cracked in half, two jagged
half-spheres falling loudly to the floor.

"Oops!", she exclaimed, trying to look shocked. "Defective ball," she
mumbled to Ellen as she left to grab another one from a rack.

Joe caught Glenn's eye and there was a question there. Glenn
shrugged his shoulders and looked away. This was going to end
badly, he was sure of it.

Crystal didn't let the ball fly, exactly, but she was clearly not holding
back as much as before, Her new ball flew down the lane fast,
maybe too fast, and she bowled the loudest strike any of them had
ever heard. Glenn was afraid that Crystal would jump up and down
mimicking Ellen, and that the floor might give way when she landed.
But she knew better. She did glare at Ellen, though, when returning
to her seat at the back.

Joe looked at Glenn again and his eyes said "Cat fight?"

"Don't let Ellen do it!," Glenn tried to reply with his own eyes.

But there was a quiet little war beginning to brew. Ellen heaved her
ball down the lane with everything she had on her next turn, and got
another strike. She didn't celebrate as before. She looked serious.

Then she came to the drink table and she pulled her chair too close
to Glenn's, and she didn't even watch Crystal fight her way through a
spare.

"Where did you find her?", she asked him, speaking low. "Crystal is
exquisite!"

"We've, ah... known each other a while now."

"She really is like a crystal, like a tiny little itty-bitty gem."

"I wouldn't let her hear you say that," he warned her.

"Self-conscious about her height, huh? Or lack of height. You're
seeing each other now?"

"She's just in town for a day or two."

"What does she do for a living?"

"She used to be a journalist. Now... Between careers, I guess you
could say. Experimenting with sculpture, traveling, that sort of
thing."

"She should compete."

"At bowling?"

"No, silly. She's as strong as an ox, but... No, definitely not bowling. I
meant compete as in fitness competitions. She wouldn't even have
to train, just put on the bikini and oil her body right. She could
completely redefine her weight class no problem, just as she is."

There was no weight class for Crystal, but he couldn't say that.

"You want another beer, Glenn?" It was Joe, being the king of the
party.

"Sure."

"No more for me, Joe," Ellen smiled. "Why don't you and Crystal get
drinks for the three of you? You can drool over her muscles up-
close for a few minutes while I flirt with your good-looking friend."

Joe laughed and corralled Crystal, as suggested. Ellen watched as Joe
and Crys walked over to the bar.

"I never even knew that a woman could have legs that sexy," Ellen
mused. Then she swung her head and her bright eyes fixed on his. "I
always knew you liked women with some real muscle on their
frames. And some real curves up top. I know how much you go for
that."

"I guess I'm an open book," he said.

"I could see my fingers turning your pages some day, Glenn."

Just in saying it, her aura jumped in intensity. "Ah..."

"Maybe you'd like to slip in-between my covers, too."

"Don't go there, Ellen."

"It's there," she replied. "It's been there for months and you know it.
I slow-drip every time I see you and you're no different. You think
about me, about us, you think about it a lot. Don't lie to me, I know
you do."

"Ellen... Come on. Thinking about it and doing it..."

"Are two different things, I know that. But not this time."

Glenn looked over at Joe and Crystal, hoping they would return. It
was slow going at the bar.

"I love Joe," Ellen continued. "In fact I'm going to marry him,
although he might not know that yet. So it isn't that."

She went silent and looked away, and he couldn't think of anything
to say.

"I'm young, Glenn. There's a lot I don't know, and I admit that. But
your cock is going to end up inside of me, and that will just be the
beginning. I know that and I know that you know that, too. Pretend
any way you want, we both know that we end up in bed together. It's
like a chapter of a book that's already been written."

"Ellen..."

She looked down at her breasts. "These are for you," she said, her
voice soft, her lips looking more full. "I'll marry Joe and I'd throw
myself on a sword for Joe, but these are for you, dammit! I knew it
the first time I met you."

"Christ, Ellen! You have to stop!" But there he was, his eyes following
hers in admiring the breasts he'd helped her to grow, and they really
were for him, they were calling to him and might as well have his
signature on them.

"I don't know how much Joe has told you," she continued. "I... I
wasn't always like this, so... big and so... sensitive. Joe loves them,
he loves the whole idea of them. But they're for you, dammit, and
I'll never feel like I can settle down until you've sucked on these
nipples and I feel you inside my mouth and my cunt!"

"Ellen!"

"I'm not talking dirty to amuse myself, Glenn. You won't escape me!
You're going to see what it's like with a big strong girl and you're
going to love it! We both know that."

Yes, they did both know that, but he tried like crazy to shut it out of
his mind.

"I'm not a two-timer, I'm not a whore. But I have to be your whore,
Glenn, your big, blond muscle-whore. I have to be that, at least for a
while."

And then he felt her knee touching his and his cock began to act like
it wanted in on this conversation, growing in his pants. Ellen's aura
was heating up for real and he felt like a total perv and back-stabber
in so many ways.

"They're coming," she whispered, glancing in the direction of the
bar. And just then, just for an instant, one of her hands shifted
under the table and brushed against his hard-on, and her eyes
fluttered.

"Oh God, ohmyGod..."

Her aura was teetering and he thought she would completely lose it.
But she sat up straight, her face filled with iron determination.

"Now you listen to me," she whispered. "I'm paying you a visit at
your apartment on Wednesday evening, seven-thirty sharp. You'd
better be there alone, and I won't leave until I've gotten what I need.
Now, put on a smile, okay?"

Joe and Crystal sat down with them and Glenn pulled at his beer
long and hard. Just like his cock, down below the table. Ellen's face
was red, the substantial flesh at her cleavage flushed. Crystal
regarded Ellen with interest and Ellen returned the stare, a further
hint of challenge in her eyes.

"You're up, Glenn," signaled Joe.

He could just see himself now, waddling with his ball on the polished
wood with his super-woodie. "I, ah... I need to drink this first."

He glanced at Crystal, who was still staring at Ellen in a way that
made him edgy as hell.

"How much can you bench press?, she asked Ellen, out of nowhere.

Ellen recognized the tone of Crystal's voice, and her eyes took in
Crystal's much smaller frame. The corner of her lovely mouth
turned into a half-smile.

"State secret," Ellen responded, diplomatically. But it also sounded
like she was putting Crystal beneath her, in ability, anyway.

"How is the photo business going these days?," Glenn asked,
addressing Joe.

"Why, how much can you bench press?", Ellen cut in, her eyes fixed
on Crystal's.

"Pretty good, can't complain," Joe responded to Glenn's question,
his eyes darting from his girlfriend over to Crystal and back.

"Now that really is a state secret," Crystal responded to Ellen.

"What's going on here?", Joe asked with a grin. "I thought that
women were the peacemakers! Are you two going to have to arm
wrestle to settle something?"

Ellen's eyes bore into Crystal's. Perhaps unconsciously, both of her
biceps twitched.

"You really wouldn't want to go there, believe me," Crystal
responded dryly.

This was becoming a nightmare. Glenn tried to intervene, silently,
asking the universe whether he could make Ellen feel ill, or need to
pee, or become suddenly more amiable or anything. Anything he
could think of was denied, and he wasn't even going to try to
restrain Crystal, or she'd be having outcome-conquering orgasms
that would blow the whole building apart.

The only positive aspect of this situation concerned Glenn's cock,
which had rapidly shrunk from his nervousness. He stood and
declared that it was time to finish their game, that they should
resolve any friction by applying their emotions to the competition
on the lane.

"Therapists," Joe joked. "Never allowing us to let our demons run
free."

Glenn knew that his voice had sounded firm and resolute, but his
knees were shaky as he confronted the pins. He rolled badly on his
first throw, only knocking down three pins, and only picked up
three more the next ball.

Joe chided him, but it was the yellow-orange flecks still active in
Ellen's field and the way that she was staring at his groin that were
the real problem. He studiously avoided looking at her tits, trying to
keep from getting turned-on in any way.

But Ellen was a skilled strategist and she could sense his weaknesses.
She yawned and stretched as she rose for her turn, her breasts
heaving forward, and he was certain that he heard more than one
groan coming from elsewhere, from some other lane or series of
lanes. The women had been attracting enough attention all night,
but all things seemed to be escalating.

And Glenn felt like his cock, not immune to Ellen's displays no
matter what his conscience thought, was on the verge of becoming
yet another escalating element. And so he plotted his counter-move,
pleading a sore wrist. He went back to the table to drink more beer
while the others continued to bowl.

It worked okay for a few frames. For five minutes he was just one of
the guys staring at the two incredibly hot work-out babes. But then
Ellen came up and began massaging his wrist, holding it way too
close to the massive breasts that had grown with his help. Her aura
was heating up into orange and her nipples couldn't be any more
full.

When she left for her turn, Crystal slipped into the chair beside him.

"That blonde bag of booby booty wants to join your harem, Glenn."

"You're slipping into Sourcerer-speak, Crys."

"And trying to deliver you some real news. If Ellen doesn't stop
playing for you right in front of me and Joe... I won't be responsible
for what happens."

"Don't even think that, Crys! You have to be responsible!"

"I can only take so much..."

"Maybe we should leave. Let's leave."

"No. I'm finishing this game."

"You'll never catch her, Crys. It's mathematically impossible. You
can't beat her even if she gutters the rest of her balls."

"Doesn't matter. I don't quit."

Crystal left to play the ninth frame, then came back.

"What do you think is behind that wall?", she asked, pointing to the
long wall where all of the pins were being knocked down.

"I don't know. Machinery to return the balls, that kind of thing.
Why?"

"But I mean... We're facing the Hudson River, right? The river is
behind that wall. Not other buildings."

"Right. But why?..."

"And it's more than a mile to New Jersey."

"Crys... You're beginning to worry me."

"Nothing back there but empty space for more than a mile."

"Crys, no. There could be a boat. Ships use the river all the time, big
ships and tour boats and..."

"Ellen is up," she answered, and they both looked.

It was the final frame, and Ellen bowled a strike with her first ball.
She hopped up and down as she had at the beginning, and the crowd
whistled appreciatively. She scored a strike with her second ball,
too, and repeated her boob-bouncing muscle-dance. And to cheers
and applause from all over the place, her third ball hit the pocket
perfectly, giving her a third consecutive strike and a final score of
269.

"It's my highest score ever!" she screamed. She jumped up and down
and Joe went out onto the hardwood and hugged her.

"To sixty-nine!," Joe bellowed.

They hugged again. It was a Kodak moment filled with joy and love
and youthful vitality and sexy muscles and huge breasts. Everything
was wonderful. Except for the look on Crystal's face.

She rose from the chair and Glenn reached out a hand to restrain
her, but then he withdrew it. Like he could keep her from doing
anything. Even without making herself any stronger she would be
unstoppable.

She congratulated Ellen and gave her a little slap on the back that
almost sent the much bigger woman sprawling. And then Crystal
slowly and deliberately picked up her black ball.

Glenn grew tense when he observed that she didn't insert her fingers
in the openings, she just cupped the big ball in her small hand. After
Ellen's three strikes, she had the attention of every set of eyes in the
building, and she seemed to know it. She drew the moment out,
pausing, perhaps collecting herself. And then her strange little steps,
and her strange wind-up, and then the ball flew down the lane.

Not only could you see it, the sound was all wrong. The ball literally
flew down the lane, never touching the polished flooring. And then
the crash, too loud, and the pins were flying everywhere. And then
silence.

Miraculously, one pin was left standing. Two others seemed to be
embedded in whatever the dark material was that lay behind the
bay. One pin had cracked in half and other pins had flown several
lanes in either direction and lay spinning hypnotically. And Crystal's
black ball... It was hard to see at first, but it, too, looked like it was
embedded in the wall back in the darkness.

The equipment that should have raised the one remaining pin to
sweep others away failed to deploy. Everything remained silent and
Crystal finally turned and shrugged.

"I'm going to need another ball," she said to everyone.

And then her hand reached out for Ellen's beautiful green one. She
didn't look or wait for permission and she didn't draw this final
moment out as she had before. Everything became quick fluid
motion. She made her quick steps and flung the ball down the lane
with an entirely different degree of force, and the wall at the back of
the building exploded, dust pouring out from the bay in what looked
like a confused cloud, moved by an influx of air from outside.

Other than the cloud of dust, the interior of the building looked like
a still photograph. No one was moving, not even Crystal. Ellen was
seated and Joe stood near her, his hand on her shoulder. They were
both as white as sheets.

Finally, Crystal spun around and strode off the hardwood, and only
then did Glenn see that her shoes had split apart. Her aura was
buzzing and her nipples were straining at her blouse. She had really
enjoyed that.

"I need to use the little girl's room," she said to Joe and Ellen. "Do
you need to join me, Ellen?"

Glenn thought Ellen looked like she needed a hit of pure oxygen, or
maybe a really stiff drink. The whole place was like that.

The way her aura was pumped, Glenn feared that Crystal would go to
the little girl's room to finger herself into an orgasm. He warned her
not to destroy the building as she passed, and she told him she'd
meet him outside in ten minutes. Then he rushed to the main desk
and pulled twenty one-hundred dollar bills out of his wallet and
asked whether that was enough for the damage.

"What did I just see?", asked the stunned man. "How could
anyone..."

"You saw a defective bowling ball that exploded, creating the
damage to your building," Glenn replied, checking his outstretched
hand to see whether he could plant the false memory. Given the
okay, he left his money and aimed the same version of events at
three other people in the crowd. Maybe having just a few
contradictory testimonies would provide enough confusion that the
whole thing would blow over before too long.

"We need to talk, Glenn."

It was Joe, there at his side.

"A week from tonight, Hot Triangle," Glenn assured him. "I'll bring
some money so Ellen can get a new ball."

"Fuck the ball! What did I just see? How could Crystal do that?"

"She's a strong girl, Joe. You said that yourself."

"Nobody is that strong! That was like... The fucking Hulk couldn't
heave a ball that hard!"

"The Hot Triangle, Joe. I'll be there and we'll talk. And I'll let my
hair down, like you said."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well I thought it was funny," Crystal asserted as they walked up
Tenth Avenue.

"Funny? There must have been two hundred witnesses to what you
did in there! And if we see a story in the paper tomorrow about a
ship being sunk by an incoming bowling ball..."

"I'm sure the ball disintegrated or at least turned into little
fragments when it went through the wall. The Circle Line boats are
safe, if that's what's bothering you."

"I can't believe you did that!"

She had also kicked down a chained-up fire door near the women's
bathroom to exit the building.

"Shouldn't be chained like that," she asserted, like she was the Fire
Commissioner. "Definite code violation."

"Crys... New York is a city with an overactive police presence! If you
aren't more careful, you'll be battling police and the fucking
National Guard before you know it!"

"I'd win. Easily."

"That isn't the point!"

Crystal looked like she was about to say something in her own
defense, but they heard shouts and screams coming from the next
cross street and they stopped to listen. Screams. Lots of screams.
But not screams of alarm or fear.

They heard sirens, and saw flashing blue and red lights coming up
from behind them.

"What is it?", Crystal shouted. "Not me."

"I don't know! Maybe we should... Oh no."

"What?"

"I think I know what it is!"

"What? What is it?"

"Come on! This way!"

He grabbed her hand and started to run, intending to pull her with
him. His arm was nearly jerked out of its socket as his momentum
suddenly came to a halt, his legs flying up into the air. He'd
forgotten Ñ Crystal could not be moved until she wanted to be
moved.

"Tell me what it is," she said calmly.

"It's the paintings! Of Karen Little!"

"Who?"

"You haven't heard?"

"No. This must be a news story that I missed on my travels."

Glenn filled her in as quickly as he could.

"Sex riots? Paintings that make people come? I need to see this!"

"Let's don't, please! There could be thousands of people out of
control! With you there..."

"Long live anarchy!"

"Crys... Don't!"

"I want to see one of those paintings, Glenn! And I'm going to!"

"Come with me to my place."

"You aren't listening to me, Glenn. Haven't you learned yet that
you'd better listen to me?"

"I have one, Crys."

"You have one what? One of the paintings?"

"Yes."

She went silent. And then she grinned.

"You horny dog, you. Is it a good painting?"

"An excellent one."

"Does it... work?"

"I had to install an opaque curtain in front of it. Does that answer
your question?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"A doggy!," she exclaimed when he opened his door. She kneeled
down and King licked her face like a long lost lover. "You didn't tell
me you had a doggy!"

"I needed the wisdom in my life that can only come through the
four-legged."

"He's adorable!"

"Except that he needs a walk."

"Can I take him out? He and I can run together!"

"Ah..."

"I haven't lost my mind, Glenn. I know it would attract the wrong
attention if I run faster than your dog. I'll go easy, I promise."

Glenn fastened a leash to King's collar and handed it over to Crystal.
"Here you go. Give him a good romp in Riverside Park. I'll, ah,
uncover the painting."

King pulled hard at the leash as Crystal opened the door, but of
course there was no way he would intimidate her. "No peeking!," she
yelled to Glenn over her shoulder. "And maybe you should put all
your breakables in storage while King and I are out!", she added.

The woman had a point there. Crystal was holding together well (his
outcome from months before, still helping out?), but her auras had
been growing in heat the whole cab ride home, filling the interior of
the car with molten light. She reached out and touched his cock
once, and of course he was hard for her. A little gasp left her lips
and he could actually feel her flesh grow warmer and her side of the
car appreciably sank down on the car's shocks. The woman's
excitement was affecting her weight. She really, really needed to be
fucked.

Glenn went to his bedroom and stared at the heavy white curtain
above his headboard. The painting, David Hande's painting, hung
there behind. Like a living being, it glowed with golden light, just as
he'd suspected it would when he first commissioned the piece. For
his eyes alone, the painting had a glowing presence even when
covered in this way, but its real power could only be felt with the
curtain drawn away to the sides.

How would Crystal react to it? He had come uncontrollably the first
time he saw it, unpacking the large canvas from the cardboard crate
in his living room. It was like the image ripped an orgasm right out
of you whenever you looked at the thing. He covered it with a bed
sheet to begin with, and Lauren was the first apartment-guest to tear
the sheet off and have a look. She fell to the floor, writhing. And
Charlotte... She had come so many times that he had to remove the
thing from the room so she could catch her breath. Now, she always
wanted it uncovered when they made love at his place. It was part of
their sexual world, almost like a unique sex toy.

He had gotten the vibe in David's studio that day. The paintings,
once they were known, would be hard to get, because they were so
effective at making people hard. The demand was going to be
intense. And so he used his in-the-know position by hurrying to pick
up his phone. He claimed to have glimpsed one of the paintings
through David's windows, and commissioned a piece before the
artist became too famous.

He took a chance, setting certain parameters, making certain
requests, essentially telling the artist what to paint for him. He
wasn't surprised, though, when David agreed to the job. The money,
twenty thousand dollars, helped. But he could imagine David Hande
getting off on the idea himself. He was the one, after all, who would
get to see Karen's breasts explode through the huge letter "S" on the
Supergirl costume that Glenn FedEx-ed to Extremity.

Karen had everything required for the role. The blond hair, the
gorgeous/adorable face, the tight and toned fitness body complete
with sculpted legs that would look oh-so hot in the red boots. And
boobs from another planet, otherworldly gravity-defying super-
boobs, boobs that could easily obliterate the stretch fabric of the
costume. And wouldn't they look so devastating, so indescribably
sexy, with the tattered remains of the costume just hanging there,
the top portion totally destroyed, totally overwhelmed. Yes, they
would, and they did.

He reached out to pull the cord that would expose the painting for
Crystal, but then stopped. What if she came, uncontrollably? Crystal
Skensgard should not do anything uncontrollably, not in the big city.
Not in his apartment.

He retreated from his bedroom, confused. How was this going to
play out? He should probably lower the lights, pull a bottle of red
wine out for her and have a glass waiting on the table by the couch.

A glass? Or a steel mug? He didn't have one. A plastic measuring
cup, then?

He didn't have any Merlot, her favorite, so he opened a bottle of
Cote d'Or and poured a glass for himself and drank it down in a
hurry. He was getting both unusually horny and unusually worried.
He had fantasized, vividly, about this scenario for the past several
months. Most of what he'd envisioned was impossible Ñ Crystal
providing him with all sorts of displays of her incredible strength
while they made love, but somehow not tearing him apart or the
building apart.

But when she walked in that door again, the rules would not work
that way. If her thoughts took her power too far, her mass would
have them crashing into the apartment below or maybe all the way
down to the building's basement. And if her thoughts took her
power even farther than that, he'd be burned to a crisp along with
anything else within a certain radius.

He sat down on his leather couch and poured himself more wine.
Maybe he'd be able to hit her with another sexual cooperation
outcome, the same thing that had worked back in Maine. He'd been
learning, though, that the universe favored inventiveness over
repetition. It didn't often allow the same outcome twice, not without
some new twist.

"Honey, we're home!", Crystal shouted as she opened the door. King
leaped onto the couch and licked Glenn's face like they'd been
separated for months, then ran to his water bowl and gulped it dry.

"I might have worn him out a bit," Crystal confessed. "I have a lot of
nervous energy."

Which he could see in her auras. Crystal's pussy was on the war
path. He poured exactly eight ounces of wine into his plastic
measuring cup and handed it to her.

"That was smart," she said, taking the wine and not waiting for a
toast. She sat on the other end of the leather couch and he could
feel his end shift beneath him, as though the furniture would behave
like a see-saw, flinging him up to the ceiling if she got any more
turned on.

"Crys..."

"I've been thinking about this moment for the last six months,
Glenn. The only question is how to proceed without putting the city
on a state of alert."

"Right. Have you ever, ah... Were you ever able to..."

"Get off without destroying a good bit of whatever was around me?
No. I always seem to get too hot and heavy during sex."

He smiled wanly at her little joke. Her auras were going molten, fast,
underlying her concerns.

"You'll have to help me again, Glenn. I can feel... Shit, your outcome
from months ago is evaporating, evaporating fast. You'd better
hurry and ask your gods or whatever if you can do what you did
before, help me to stay normal-ish while we do it."

He thought the vague cooperation outcome and looked at his hands.

"We, ah... We have a problem. We'll have to think of something
else."

She finished her wine in one long gulp and he refilled her cup.

"I need this, badly," she said.

"Sorry it isn't a Merlot."

"I wasn't talking about the wine," she replied, standing and moving
over to him, then reaching down and lifting him into the air by his
belt. "You'd better have your new idea worked out by the time we
reach your bedroom," she said, carrying him effortlessly.

King looked up at his dangling master as they passed him in the
hallway, and he shrank back, then ran to the living room to hide
under the coffee table. Smart doggy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It always pays to prepare. Glenn had fantasized so many times about
making love to Crystal again that he had several outcome options to
explore, and the third one hit the jackpot. He hurriedly explained it
to her as she tore his clothing away, emphasizing that the
cooperation part would have to come from her.

She stared at his erect cock, half mesmerized by the sight of it. He
had topped out in the fall at an obscenely thick sixteen and one-half
inches, exactly ten more inches of length than he'd started with.

"That's crazy," was her initial response to either his dick or his plan.

He argued otherwise.

"But if most of me stays normal," she protested, "and it's my right
arm, let's say, that is given extra strength... I'd snap several bones in
the rest of my body! My right arm would become too dense, the
collarbone or sternum or some other part that isn't given sufficient
strength would snap from the strain!"

"You still aren't with me, Crys. I'm not suggesting that most of you
stays normal with only a small part allowed to get stronger. I'm
talking about all of you getting stronger Ñ up to a point, that's
where your control comes into play Ñ while only one part remains
relatively normal."

"And that one part would be..."

They both stared at the region of her molten pussy.

"You'd better hope this works," she said.

Crystal undressed quickly and he barely had time to send the
outcome before she was on him and he was inside of her. Slipping
into Crystal Skensgard's pussy was like the world's most delightful
welcome home party, and that was even before she turned on her
muscle-jets inside. Once they came into play, he was coming and she
was coming and they probably shared half a dozen orgasms before
the real fun began.

"Find some rope, some duck tape, anything!," she gasped.

She was going to tie him up?

"Trust me!", she barked. And really, what choice did he have?

She bound his feet together and his wrists, too, behind his back. He
stood before her, naked and in one straight vertical line with the
exception of his enormous horizontal dick.

"I've been wanting to try this for months," she said, her voice low. "I
hope you don't get sick on carnival rides."

He had no idea what she intended to do before she started doing it.
She lifted him by his hip-bones and stood on top of his dresser
(thank God it was solid hardwood, not some particle board thing
that couldn't take her weight!). His bound legs and wrists kept his
limbs from flailing about, and thank God for high ceilings, he
realized, as she shoved his cock inside of her and then twirled his
body around and around like he was indeed on some sort of pussy
carnival ride. He wasn't just screwing Crystal's vibrating pussy, he
was centrifuging it, going around and around and in and out and
holy fuck, Crystal's hands were getting hot and his cock inside of
her was getting hot and...

He came as in a vortex and she screamed, too, and he felt his cum
crashing into her, crashing and crashing...

He came to on the floor. Crystal was standing over him, her juices
and his cum easing down her thighs. Behind her lay the remains of
his dresser, his clothing mixed with splinters of wood.

"H... how long have I been out?", he asked.

"Just a minute."

"We didn't fall through the floor."

"No, but the night is young. It's time for you to show me your
painting."

"Look, Crys," he said, regaining his feet. "The painting is pretty
volatile. Maybe we should..."

"Now!"

He got the message. The woman needed more sex, and he'd better
deliver it to her as she wanted it. He went over to the cord that hung
beside his bed.

"Why don't you turn around?," he asked. "I'll unveil the painting and
then go over there by the door." To escape if I need to, were the
unspoken words that followed.

"Fine."

"Please, Crys, don't peek," he pleaded, averting his own eyes and
drawing back the curtain.

He back-pedaled to the doorway, regretting that he hadn't bought a
fire-extinguisher in the months since he'd last seen her.

"Okay," he sighed, and she turned.

"Oh God!", she cried, and fell to her knees. The whole room shook
but she didn't fall through. Writhing on her back with two fingers
stuffed inside of her, Crystal's pussy-auras were starting to go nuts,
exploding with molten colors in a fashion that couldn't be good.

"Oh God, oh God!," she kept crying, and he had a feeling that she
wasn't going to be able to keep her promise about not getting too
hot and heavy.

Glenn ran through half a dozen possibilities, searching for one
allowable variation that would keep his bedroom intact. Vague
things didn't work, the obvious things didn't work... He finally got a
green light when he thought of all of the energy connected to her
heat and density transforming this one time into a single
heatless/weightless mega-orgasm. He sent it, fast.

A light so bright that it was more like a shock-wave exploded out
from her pussy and her aura alike. Crystal flew into the air so high
and fast that she smashed into the ceiling. Plaster fell with her and
everything suddenly became too dark for him to see her land, but he
heard it. She screamed and moaned in the total darkness and he
began to smile. Thank you!, he silently aimed at the outcome gods.
The fact that he could hear her screaming on the floor meant that
he still had a floor.

"C...come here," she moaned, and he cautiously stepped towards her
voice. She grasped his hand and pulled him down on top of her, and
then he was inside of her, and she rocked him, slowly and carefully.

The feeling of his flesh against her flesh was definitely different. Her
skin was skin but it was hot as in good-shower hot, and when his
hands roamed and he squeezed in the places he wanted to squeeze,
he could feel her strange solidity. And throughout her body,
discernible everywhere, that generator humm, pulsing like a super-
efficient engine. She was strength, she was power, and she moved
beneath him like a woman who wanted to make sex last for a long,
long time.

"I've never had this before, Glenn. I've never felt satisfied enough to
go slow, to go gentle. Make love to me slowly, tenderly. Touch me
like we have forever to do this. Make it last."

And that's what they did. Again and again they joined like that,
rushing nothing, her body impossibly strong but not destructively
so.

"I fucking love you, Glenn," she cooed in the darkness after her
eighth or ninth orgasm.

"I love you, too, Crystal."

And then they fucked some more.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cuddling with him in the dark, Crystal said, "I feel just like that
woman in the painting sometimes. It's almost like the painting is of
me."

"I've, ah, thought of that before."

"It must sound like I never do anything but complain about my
strength... There's more to it than that, Glenn. You can't... you can't
know how exciting it can be, to feel myself with all of that power
inside of me. To know how far I could take it..."

"No, I guess not."

"That artist understands. It's there in the paint. And he must have
such an incredible imagination! It looks exactly like that girl was
actually standing there in front of him."

"I think she was."

"That girl is real?"

"She's real."

"But... Those boobs are real?"

"They're real."

Crystal chuckled. "Let me guess. She's the queen of your harem."

"Nope. That one is off the radar."

"I wouldn't mind putting a woman like that on my radar."

"I'll bet the artist would like to paint that."

She laughed. "No wonder the art crowd got out of control in Chelsea
last night."

"Yeah. We'll probably hear all about it on the news tomorrow."

"Glenn? Speaking of huge boobs, there's another question I have
about Cassandra."

"Yes?"

"She says she fucked you so hard that she had to toss your memory
away, right?"

"That's what she said."

"So she fucked you one night in September."

"Right."

"And now she's pregnant, and you won't get another crack at her for
five years."

"What is the question, Crys?"

"Well... It drove me crazy not having real sex all of these months.
Cassandra is going to go five years without having her goddess-twat
twiddled by you? What is she, a Vulcan or something?"

"I guess she's... hell, I don't know. Maybe she's different enough that
sex every five years is just right."

"Too evolved for frequent romps under the sheets, that's what
you're saying."

"I don't know what I'm saying."

"Well, I never want to evolve like that."

"Me neither."

"You know, it's really dark in your part of the city. I can't even see
your face."

"It isn't usually this dark," he told her. "Maybe the power is out."

Crystal rose from the floor and went over to a window.

"I think you'd better see this," she said.

He joined her. Looking out his window, he couldn't see anything. It
was dark. As in really dark.

"Oh fuck," he whispered, understanding.

"Power failure," Crystal commented. "But... something is wrong."

She had noticed that there weren't any cars moving, either. No
headlights, no nothing.

"I want to go to bed with you," he said, taking her hand and knowing
not to try to pull this time. "Somehow we've never done that."

The bed springs complained from her weight as they made love
again. But at least the sheets didn't catch fire.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

King's whimpers didn't quite wake him up, but the tongue on the
face that followed did the trick.

He didn't even have to call out to know that Crystal was gone. Her
presence was extreme, meaning that her absence hit him the same
way. He looked around the half-destroyed bedroom hoping to see
what time it was, but the clock on his dresser was smashed, because
his dresser was smashed. Everything was dead in his apartment, and
he had the distinct feeling that he would have to replace most of his
appliances, everything from the toaster to the refrigerator. Shaking
his head, he rummaged through the broken hulk of his dresser and
pulled out a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and left the apartment
with King, desperate for a cup of coffee.

It was gray outside, which did little to orient him as to the time of
day. And the effects of their fucking last night? You could see how
bad things were even in Riverside Park. Stalled abandoned cars on
Riverside Avenue, utter gridlock on the nearby Henry Hudson
Parkway, the sounds of honking horns coming from cars that had
not been in the city at the time of the event.

He walked King a dozen blocks north and thought the presence of
stalled cars would have to end sometime, but it didn't. They walked
east to Broadway (God, what a mess) and all the way to Central Park,
and everywhere it was the same. Hundreds or thousands of
inoperative cars and buses clogging the streets, subway down...
Fuck! The whole of the Upper West Side? More? How much territory
had Crystal's electrosexual pulse affected?

He tried twice to pick up coffee from a deli but no one had any
power. Everyone was talking about it, too. A traditional blackout?
Then why didn't their transistor radios work? Why didn't the cars
work? A terrorist attack? For what purpose? Entire upper half of the
city without power, someone said. Parts of New Jersey, too. The
Mayor had declared a state of emergency. The Governor activated
the National Guard and was asking Washington for federal aid. Glenn
listened in, feeling guilty, and walked on. God, this was going to be a
rough morning. If it was morning.

He had a sorry scrap of hope that she would be there at his
apartment when he returned, but of course she wasn't. Crystal was
gone. Back to the woods again? Just globetrotting or off to hijack a
plane and freefall into the globe? Who knew? He didn't.

He took a cold (electric water heater) shower, then shaved and got
dressed for real, as though he had something to do. He did have
things to do Ñ it was Monday and he had two appointments at his
office in the afternoon, but what were the chances that anyone
would actually show up?

He had to walk all the way down to 65th Street before he found a
street vendor with hot coffee. He gave the man five bucks and
bought a Times on the way to Central Park. On a crowded bench, he
read of the twin disasters, the uptown blackout that was more than
a blackout, and the downtown sex riots caused by the paintings of
Karen Little.

Forty-two hundred arrested in Chelsea, including eighty-nine cops.
Fuck. No mention of what anybody thought about the art as art. He
wondered whether there were any gay male art reviewers at the
Times to review David's work, then remembered that this was New
York, stupid.

After putting his paper down, he sat there for perhaps twenty
minutes, just watching all of the glowing people as they went about
their business, trying to cope with their power-disrupted lives. After
asking half a dozen times without luck, a man (obviously from
another part of the city) with a working wristwatch informed him
that it was nearly one in the afternoon. He should get to the office.
He might have to walk the forty-plus blocks, but that was okay. The
walk would do him good.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pulse of the city shifted towards something closer to normal at
Twenty-ninth Street. He walked the seven additional blocks to his
building and found that he had power in his office, but no secretary.
Josie's husky voice was on his answering machine, informing him
that she would not be coming into Manhattan today when the whole
borough seemed to be falling apart at the seams. His secretary was a
smart girl. He didn't even want to imagine how awful the traffic and
trains would be with the streets clogged with unmoving cars and half
of the subway system off-line.

His two o'clock, Miss Wells, left a message to say that she, too,
would be unable to make her appointment. Margo Wells was a
twenty-eight year old actress with an eating disorder and she was
already completely cured, she just didn't know it yet. Sometimes he
made the outcomes unfold slowly, as it might draw unwanted
attention if nearly all of his patients received their cures too
quickly. He had just one other client at three today, a Miss
Hightower. It was her first session, pretty much an exploratory
consultation. Not much chance that she would show, under the
circumstances.

Which would give him some time to catch up on paperwork. Glenn
wondered about this aspect of his new profession. There were
patient records to keep, bills and taxes to pay. Did Cassandra have
to pay taxes? She ran a small business, too, but he couldn't imagine
her wasting her time keeping payroll, sending quarterly payments to
the feds, that kind of thing. There must be a way for him to outcome
all of this crap out of his life, but he hadn't figured it out yet.

He got out his books, turned on his computer, and went through the
motions. But his mind, his interest, was not there. He felt
profoundly empty. But no, that wasn't quite it. He felt... He felt the
absence of Crystal, dammit. She seemed to have a presence inside of
him just as solid as her body, just as weighty as... well, as her weight.

He might as well admit it Ñ he was hopelessly in love with the
woman and he already missed the hell out of her.

Maybe he shouldn't be here today, he thought. His heart felt sort of
emptied out and he could really use some company. Lauren would
be perfect, but she was busy re-writing her novel. Isabella, Angela,
Charlotte ÑÊthey were all away. Kiko was around... Oh. Right. As
requested, he'd wiped himself from Kiko's memory. She wouldn't
even remember who he was until after he raped her.

He turned the possibility over, but he didn't really feel like raping
anyone today. He was more in the mood for a good conversation
and a few loving strokes on the hand, not clawing and screaming
and Kiko's fear-filled, ear-splitting orgasms.

He got up, walked to his window and looked out. All of those
glowing people out there Ñ how often did they feel alone? And how
could he go from ecstasy to feelings of loneliness in such a short
span of time, a matter of hours?

Cassandra had spoken about feeling alone, for a good number of
years. He should have asked her how she coped with it, how she
turned out with such a positive outlook on life. As for himself: He
had more than he'd ever dreamed that he could have, and yet some
piece (peace?) of something still felt like it was missing. Cassandra
and Crystal weren't around, that might be part of it, but he was
pretty certain that his situation was more existential.

Maybe it was knowing that everything would be different in a few
years. Which made him feel weird about now, as though he was just
marking time, sometimes. Like his "real' life would begin in four and
a half years, when he rejoined Cassandra and met Diana. His current
life was enviable on so many levels Ñ he had great times, great sex
with "his" women, and he got to help people through his new
profession. Money was there. Freedom was there. And he...

Wait. Was freedom really there? What did the word truly mean,
anyway, when you threw in concepts like Destiny? He was able to do
so much Ñ there were relatively few restrictions from the outcome
gods, really. Still... There was some other kind of freedom that he
didn't have, he could feel it, almost smell it.

But he couldn't quite name it. It eluded him.

He went back to his desk. He could probe these abstract questions
for the rest of his life, or maybe this was the kind of thing that
Diana would know all about when she should be playing with dolls.

He worked for another half hour before a little light bulb went off in
his head, a bulb that brought immediate pleasure. He had power in
his office! Which meant that he could turn on his office TV and see
the news reports about all of the chaos in the city!

Sitting behind his desk, surfing with the remote on his flat-screen,
he saw that all of the local networks were on it, and of course it was
national news, too. Con Ed and the MTA and Homeland Security had
formed a temporary partnership, combining their separate
investigations into the cause or causes of what they were dubbing
"The Suspicious Blackout Events". He switched to New York One and
found more intelligent reporting. But they, too, were hyping the
event in the way that all big events got hyped these days, linking the
Chelsea sex riots and the blackout together into one event which
they were calling "4-7". Hello! Weren't the riots last night before
midnight, which made them 4-6? He got disgusted and was about to
switch the tube off when he heard the words "unexplained
arrangement of destroyed buses".

Huh? He leaned forward. Footage shot from a helicopter followed,
and his cock sprang to life at the same time that he started laughing.

"You crazy, crazy wild woman!", he bellowed at the TV screen.

Crystal had been one wild and busy woman last night or this
morning or whenever. In a Washington Heights depot housing scores
of off-duty city buses, she had re-arranged about twenty of them.
Glenn listened intently to the babbling commentary. No evidence
and no eyewitness accounts of a crane ever being set up at the site,
but how else could the buses have been flipped over or even folded
in half as some of them were? Many of the buses showed signs of
metal fatigue or outright melting, as though...

Yada yada yada. They wondered whether the blackout and the freaky
bus thing were somehow related. But didn't they see the message? If
they would just change the overhead camera angle and make the
numbers rightside-up, it was right there, spelled out plain as day.
And, he was one-hundred percent certain, the message was intended
for him.

"7-7", the upside-down, mangled and twisted buses said.

Exactly three months from now. She had, in her way, made a date
with him! He tuned out the TV and his thoughts wandered forward
to the day in July that Crystal would show up again and he would
fuck her again and...

But the citizens of New York Ñ especially the old people Ñ needed
their air-conditioning in July. A widespread power failure would be a
bad thing. Well, maybe he would rent a car, head out into the middle
of nowhere with her this time. They could climb to the top of some
mountain, and if the climb was too hard for him, she could leap
ahead and tear the top of the mountain off to make the hike
shorter. Then they could fuck each other under the stars with
nothing but coyotes and birds to disturb.

He heard the words "seven-seven" and tuned back in. So they did
see it, they did get it. He flipped through the channels, looking for
more on the boob-inspired riots. The Secretary of Defense was
giving some kind of live news conference on C-Span, and Glenn kept
the channel there when the blackout was mentioned. The old fart
was spinning the New York events as further justification for the
administration's Iraq policy!

Glenn looked at his hands, then back at the screen. He could send
the outcome, but it never worked in this way. Still, maybe some
day...

Tell the truth, he outcomed at the talking head. But nothing
happened.

Jump up and down.

Nothing.

Scratch your forehead.

Nothing.

Pick your nose.

His senses went on alert. Right there, as though there were no
cameras filming his every move, The Secretary of Defense eased a
finger into his right nostril and began to pick away.

Whoa! Finally!

Pick with both fingers!, he outcomed, and the man did. The scene on
the TV screen was almost too painful to watch, but Glenn was
laughing out loud. Cameras flashed and the Defense Secretary was
looking cross-eyed through his square glasses at the disgusting
activity on his own face that he could not stop.

Eat the buggers!, Glenn directed, and started to crack up as a
bugger-tipped finger made its way towards the old man's open
mouth.

"Knock-knock?"

Glenn wiped the grin off of his face and swiveled his chair in the
direction of the voice at his office door.

Wow. Maybe twenty-four, adorable face, medium length chestnut
hair with some girlish curl to it. His eyes quickly scanned the svelte
body set off smartly in a deep blue Madison Avenue dress that
showcased her legs... He lingered for an additional moment on the
strong, graceful leg muscles and the turned-out hips. Right. He had
it figured out.

"Dance studio is on the third floor," he said. "This is the fifth floor."

She gave him an amused smile. "Actually, my dance class is
tomorrow. You're Dr. Cantell, aren't you?"

"Ah... Yes."

"I'm Cynthia Hightower. We have a three o'clock session?"

"Oh. Oh! I'm sorry, I..."

"It's okay. There was no secretary in the waiting room and your
door was open, so..."

"Yes, that's fine! Have a seat!'

She slipped into the cushioned client chair with cat-like grace. "I
hope you don't mind me saying this but... I've never seen anyone
laugh while watching C-span. They're doing comedy now?"

"Ah, yeah... I mean no. Ah, hmmm. Sorry, I'm a bit off today."

"Everyone is a bit off today. The whole city is running around in
circles. The subway is down, I couldn't find a cab..."

"And yet you're here."

"I walked. It wasn't a problem."

No, he would guess not. He watched her cross her legs in a way
intended to prevent her from noticing that he was watching her
cross her legs. Fuck, they were marvelous, simply marvelous.

She tilted her head and looked amused. "I get this feeling," she
laughed, "that you didn't expect anybody to show up today. You
weren't prepared for me."

He nodded like she had it right, but it was more than that. It was
more that he wasn't prepared to ever have a woman this great-
looking enter his office. Even with the brand of fake outcome-
oriented therapy that he practiced, the process could be extremely
intimate. You got inside of people, even without probing into their
auras by non-traditional means. Having a client with a face this cute
and a perfectly fuckable dance body...

She absently fingered a little gold cross hanging between her
collarbones. With her looks, all this woman needed was a bigger set
of tits to fit right in there with Lauren and Isabella and...

Don't think that way!, he silently scolded himself. There were more
important factors than the fact that her C-cup breasts were smaller
than those of his other lovers Ñ oops, strike the "other" word
Cantell, this woman is not your lover! And she couldn't be. She had
no sparkles, even though his stiffening cock hadn't figured that out
yet.

"Maybe I should come back another time?", Cynthia Hightower
probed.

"No, no. Now is fine. And we'll... Let's just forget all about the clock,
okay? It's a weird day, a day to ease the rules. This is your first
consultation anyway."

"Sooo... I guess you want to know why I'm here. What my problem
is."

"What you think your problem is, yes."

"Well... I'm about to be married."

"Congratulations."

Her lower lip fell, trembling just a little.

"I withdraw that," Glenn said. "Perhaps congratulations aren't in
order."

"Not to me they aren't."

"To others?"

"Everyone else is thrilled. My family, Michael's family..."

"This almost sounds like an arranged marriage. Do you love this
guy?"

"Maybe... I don't know. But I've never felt so depressed in my life."

"And you came here because of this sense of depression."

"I think so. Or because... To tell you the truth, I don't know why I'm
here other than this feeling that I really need some help. I noticed
your name on the board down by the elevator when I came for my
dance class last week. I started asking around. They say you're really
good."

"I have more successes than failures, knock on wood. But it isn't
really me, Cynthia. It's more like a healing partnership if things go
well. We do it together, and... You'd be the one doing most of the
work."

"How do we start?"

"Maybe you should tell me about yourself," Glenn suggested. "Your
background, how you met Michael... Just relax and tell me anything
you wish, and maybe we can both get a sense of where we are and
where we should go."

She gave him the outline. She was from a wealthy Connecticut
family, her mother was French and her father was a gazillionaire
stockbroker. She majored in dance at Vassar with a minor in
European history, had been out of college for two years. A trust fund
protected her from ever having to work if she didn't want to. She'd
been dancing since the third grade, starting with ballet but jumping
over to modern in college, and she appeared in one or two local
performances of the Alley Kat dancers every year. She knew she was
beautiful, she always had been.

She'd met Michael a year ago at a cocktail party and they'd been
dating ever since. He was from the right kind of family and worked
on Wall Street like her dad. He was a handsome go-getter and
everyone in her upper-class social circles thought of her as ideal
trophy-wife material, so it was a perfect match. Michael popped the
question six months ago. Their wedding would take place in early
June.

She said more, but it was really just more of the same. Wealth and
privilege Ñ there were bunches of New Yorkers with similar stories,
just walk around Soho or Tribecca and stick out a microphone. In
Cynthia's case there might be some father issues Ñ the groom
working on Wall Street like her dad was a small red flag, and they
could explore that with time. But he couldn't really see any huge
fault-lines that might be troubling her, and he told her so.

"I know, it's all sweetness and light, isn't it? I have everything Ñ
looks, money, a smart, caring fiancee... I'm almost like a modern
princess or something. It's all so perfect that I could puke."

She looked shocked by her own words. Something was there all
right, and he had a feeling that it was bigger than she knew. But he
still couldn't see what it was. Did she know?

"Is there something else that you want to tell me, Cynthia?"

She fidgeted. squirmed in her chair. "It's the sex."

"I see. What about the sex?"

"It's, um... pretty good. With Michael, I mean."

"'Pretty good' as in good, or as in not good enough?"

"Um... Um..."

She was getting really nervous.

"You chose to come here, Cynthia. Go ahead and tell me what the
problem is with sex."

"That's just it!," she exploded, leaping out of the chair and pacing as
she could in the small space. "There's nothing wrong, nothing!
Michael is a considerate lover, he loves my body, I have orgasms
most of the time... Nothing is wrong!"

"But..."

"But it feels all wrong! I want something else!"

"Some 'thing' else or some 'one' else?"

"Some... thing! But I don't know what! I swear! And it's driving me
nuts! The wedding is approaching and every time I even think about
it, I feel like somebody is holding my head under water! I can't
breathe! I can't breathe, dammit!"

He asked the gods whether he could calm her down just a bit and
they smiled on him. He was going to have to go in.

"Cynthia... I'd like to do something with you. It's a gentle form of
hypnosis, a way to relax your mind so some of your deeper feelings
can come to the surface in a calm, safe way. Would that be okay
with you?"

He was already doing it, already putting her "under". It probably was
true hypnosis, or something close, anyway. Since he'd never been
trained in hypnotic techniques, how was he to know?

"Yes. Go ahead. I'll just... sit here..."

"That's right," he said, his voice low. He worked to relax, too, so
that he could enter her field. Breathe in, breathe out...

He was inside in about two seconds. He got a wave of her life Ñ
childhood, older sister, parents... He was just beginning to absorb it
when he got smacked silly by a giant wave of sexual heat!

"Whoa!", he cried, his awareness back in himself. What was that?
He'd never felt that sort of sexual energy in anyone!

Cynthia was peaceful in her chair, her body extremely relaxed...

Not her nipples. And her legs... They were bent in front of her, and
they were widening. Black silk panties and perfect thighs coming out
of them. God, she was gorgeous.

And he was hard, and that wasn't right under the circumstances. But
what were the circumstances? What had he encountered in there? It
felt like he'd been pounced upon by some sort of sexual gremlin! It
was time to go to work.

"Tell me about the sex, Cynthia. Tell me about sex with Michael."

"He loves my legs," she replied, her voice calm. "He thinks I'm
beautiful. He likes to look at me. He gets hard every time he sees me
naked."

"Does this turn you on, being so attractive to him?"

"A little. My body makes men hard. I make Michael hard and we
have sex."

"You both come?"

"Usually. I fake it when I don't, but I usually do."

"Michael is happy with your sexual relationship?"

"Yes."

"Are you?"

Her lower lip trembled as it had before. "I like being beautiful for
him. But I've always been beautiful. It's easy being beautiful."

"Is that a problem, Cynthia?"

"No, but... I want more."

"What is it that you want?"

"A secret life."

He hadn't expected that one. What was she talking about?

"A secret life? What do you mean by that?"

"Did you ever see the film 'Belle Du Jour'?"

Glenn was stunned. No one had ever asked him a question before
when they were under like this!

"Ah, yes. I've seen it. Why?"

"I came five times watching that movie. I want a life like that."

Christ, were they getting somewhere! In "Belle du Jour", Catherine
Deneuve played a beautiful high class woman married to a doctor.
She loved her husband, but couldn't feel comfortable being intimate
with him. By the end of the film, she was living a double life as a
whore, engaged in all kinds of kinky sex outside of her marriage.

"You want to get married and become a prostitute, like in that
movie?"

"No. It was more... I got so excited because she couldn't help herself,
she couldn't stop herself."

"Why does that turn you on, Cynthia?"

"My tiger liked it."

"Your what?"

"My tiger. She wants to be let out like that. She's been locked up in a
cage. No one likes her. They think she's bad."

Wow, this was getting very, very strange. "You have a tiger? Where?"

"Inside of me. She's really powerful."

Glenn had a growing feeling (to go with his growing cock) that he
had felt a bit of this tiger's power.

"Does, ah... Does this tiger have a name, Cynthia?"

"Pussy. No one likes pussy."

"Ah... Why is that?"

"Pussy can't be tamed. She wants to do bad things."

"Such as?"

"Pussy goes against the rules. She gets hot going against the rules.
She wants to do the things they wouldn't want her to do. She wants
to have somebody who makes her do the things she shouldn't do."

"Why, Cynthia?"

"Pussy likes to have wicked fun. It makes her go wild. That's why."

Glenn could not be more hard. She could be straddling his dick and
he might not be as hard as her words were making him. Because he
had felt "Pussy's" energy in there.

Cynthia Hightower was drop-dead gorgeous and there was a part of
her Ñ a secret "twin" in her psyche, if you wanted to look at it that
way Ñ that wanted to be someone's fuck-puppet. She kept it in
check, repressed the feelings... But the impending wedding was
stirring "Pussy" up.

He thought he had a good view of her inner landscape now. Cynthia
Hightower had been brought up in an upper class world replete with
prescribed rules of etiquette (including sexual etiquette, even if it
was unspoken), and part of her ÑÊa major, energetic part Ñ wanted
to break free. She didn't want a respectable married life with a
respectable man. Deep down, she wanted wicked fun.

He stood, went to his window. His cock was distorting his trousers
like crazy but in her state she wouldn't really notice.

He had never run across something like this. He didn't think it was a
true dual personality. It was something more like super-repressed
sexual preferences, and this woman had a ton of sexual energy to
repress. But he wasn't a real psychologist, so what the fuck did he
know? Maybe he should...

"Holy crap!", he exclaimed.

She was fingering herself through her panties, but that wasn't why
he cried out. Her aura! He drew closer to her, leaned in and peered
at it. All clear. But he could have sworn that he'd seen...

There! A sparkle! It came and went, but it had been there!

Glenn plopped down in his chair, stunned. Were there women out
there in the world with maybe one, two sparkles and no more,
women whose auras sent out mixed signals? Or could a woman grow
an aura? He'd thought of them as fixed, as stable...

"Ohhhh...", she sighed over there. Her right hand had pulled her
panties aside and she was slowly going at herself.

And the woman had one adorable pussy. But could he fuck a woman
who had only an occasional sparkle zipping through her aura? Or
did there have to be a certain number, a critical mass? Shit, this was
like it had been back in the fall Ñ something new had appeared and
he didn't know how to respond!

But some part of him knew exactly how it wanted to respond. The
course of action was there, almost a complete plan, but he tried to
ignore it. But it was there. He wanted to push it down, but he
realized that if he did, he'd be just like her, repressing a significant
amount of sexual energy. Cynthia had a wicked little "Pussy" inside,
and he might as well admit that a part of himself liked wicked fun,
too. He could call his part "Tricky Dick" if it needed a name.

It would be totally unprofessional. A therapeutic travesty, perhaps,
or maybe even therapeutic rape. He should have his license revoked
for even thinking it... But then, he wasn't even a real therapist! His
fucking license appeared as an outcome, so who was he kidding? If
having sex with a client was a no-no, wasn't practicing without a real
license or any training whatsoever just as bad or even worse? Get
real, Cantell ÑÊyou jumped off the moral cliff months ago!

Her comment earlier about wanting a secret life came back to him.
He led a secret life. Crystal did, too, and so did Kiko. He and Ellen
were both keeping their situation secret from Joe... Hell, every
woman he was bonking was either involved in keeping her own
secrets or helping him to keep his!

What he was going to do to her right now would have to remain a
very strict secret. A part of him felt guilty about it, too, and maybe
that was the point. It wouldn't be just fun, doing this to her. It would
be wicked fun. The knowledge that he shouldn't be doing it
heightened the sexual pleasure. "Pussy" knew this and Kiko knew
this and even Crystal, in her strength-oriented way, knew this. And
now he knew it, too.

He brought Cynthia Hightower out of her hypnotic state. She came
to her senses with amazing speed, and noticed her opened legs and
her hand in her underwear. She clamped her legs shut and blushed,
profusely.

"It's ah... Don't feel upset about that," he soothed. "You were
unlocking some very deep inner material and it kind of stirred you
up." Underneath, he aimed: Seeing the way you got excited under
hypnosis makes you feel even hotter.

"Ohhh... It's... Its okay," she panted. "What... did I tell you? Under
the hypnosis?"

"It was a great start," Glenn said. "We uncovered a side of you that
hasn't had much opportunity to express itself. The feelings of
depression you described Ñ there is a part of you that wants a
different life than your impending marriage represents."

"A part of me? Am I... crazy?"

"No, not in the least." Underneath: The thought of losing control
makes you feel even hotter. "We all have repressed components of
our psyches. These components sometimes need a chance to
breathe. You described that yourself, the feeling of being unable to
breathe."

"What about, um, Michael? Did I say anything about him? What
should I do about the wedding?"

"Don't panic about the wedding. We just scratched the surface
today, and we can delve into your feelings about Michael next
week." Underneath: Give Michael the raunchiest blow-job you can
imagine the next time you see him. Your own debauchery will turn
you on like crazy, but you'll think of me when you come, not
Michael. Let him down as gently as you can, but dump him. Call off
the wedding. The more everyone gets upset, the hotter you'll feel.

She licked her lips. "Next week? So you'll work with me?"

"Definitely. I think that you could benefit greatly from allowing this
under-expressed side of yourself to come to light in further
sessions." Underneath: The thought of coming back here next week
makes your clitoris buzz.

"Great! Let's, ohhh... Let's set up an appointme... Oh!"

"Not so fast, Cynthia. There's something we really need to discuss
first."

"Oh right, your fee. I'll..."

"Not the fee. It's something else, something that we have to have
absolutely straight between us." Underneath: In your mind you see
my cock, hard and immense. It's poised, ready to plunge into you.

"S...straight between?"

"Yes. Have you ever heard the term 'transference' before?"

"Ohh... Uh, maybe..."

"It's a common phenomenon when two people work together with
extreme intimacy in therapy. The patient sometimes feels... well, too
much. They begin to mistake the intimacy of the healing process for
something else." Underneath: The sound of my voice makes your
nipples tingle.

"T...tit... I mean t...too much? Too much what?"

"Often it's attraction, or even feelings of love." Underneath, you see
my lips licking at your left breast, nibbling at your hard nipple.

"I wouldn't..."

"You're an extremely attractive woman, Cynthia, and we'll be
discussing some of your most private thoughts. You told me
yourself, under hypnosis, that you like to excite men with your
body." Underneath: You see yourself drawing your dress over your
head, cupping your breasts and starting to dance for me, slowly and
seductively.

"I, um, yeah. Sometimes I'm a flirt. But..."

"We can't have any of that here, Cynthia, on my part or yours. It
would be too easy for me to feel too much attraction towards you..."
Underneath: The beginnings of an orgasm, rolling through you, right
now.

"Ohhh..."

"But of course I won't." Underneath: Your promised orgasm comes
to a halt.

"Ah! I mean... Okay."

"As a therapist employing hypnosis in your sessions, I'm the one in
the power position, which means that I must be absolutely clear
about my own motivations. But you must try to be clear, too."
Underneath, you see me kneeling in front of you when I put you
under the next time, licking your thighs and slipping your panties
down your legs. The promise of an orgasm draws closer.

"Ohhhh... Clear, clear thoughts... I'll be clear..."

"Under no circumstances can we ever cross the line, Cynthia."
Underneath: You see yourself pulling my head up between your legs.
My breath is on your pussy and you feel so incredibly hot.

"D...don't cross..."

"We must not cross that line, ever. It would be unethical. It would
be... wicked." Underneath: You feel my tongue dabbing at your
clitoris and you will come, in almost complete silence, in three, two,
one...

"Oh...", she barely whispered. All of her exposed skin flushed red.

"Now, I think that's enough for our first session, don't you?"
Underneath: You'll dream of sucking my cock every night until the
next session. And you'll feel terribly wicked for having the dreams.
The feelings of wickedness will make you so horny that you'll go out
and buy a dozen naughty outfits, and you'll masturbate, thinking of
fucking me the way that Pussy wants, when you try on each one.

She was unsteady on her feet as he helped her to the door. The scent
of female orgasm clung to her and he knew he would breathe in this
scent in every one of their sessions. The scent would someday add
to the ambiance of his apartment, too.

He stared at her graceful legs in an obvious way as she walked to the
elevator. She caught him looking and smiled.

"Maybe I could just drop in and say 'hello' after my dance class
tomorrow," she said, trying to make it sound casual.

"That might be nice," he replied. Underneath: Your pussy will drip
all through your class, just from thinking about seeing me.

The 'ding' sound signaled the elevator's arrival. She gave him a little
wave as the doors opened, and she stepped in.

"Wait!", he cried, but the doors had already closed.

Fuck! Had he seen what he thought he saw? A swelling of the shape
of her aura, and a softening of its edges, right in the area of her tits?

He might be able to grow Cynthia's tits as part of her "therapy"?
Curiouser and curiouser. And more and more immoral. Any
therapist Ñ the kind with real training and real certification Ñ
would undoubtedly tell him that he had some issues to resolve. But
if he had issues and was filled with evil intentions, why did he feel so
light, so energized? Hormones and testosterone, nothing more?

He didn't think so. There was something here. Something that was
an answer ÑÊor at least a partial answer Ñ to those earlier feelings
that he was just marking time.

He was too wound up after all of that to sit in his office, so he
locked up and wandered aimlessly on the streets, thinking about all
of the terrible/wonderful things he could do to Cynthia Hightower
and her powerful "Pussy".

"You are a bad, bad man," he muttered to himself.

Unless he was missing something. He recalled what Cassandra had
said in their long conversation, that he should never stop struggling
with his conscience. He had taken that to mean, "Examine your
morality even when the One Will allows you to do certain things".
Could there have been another message hiding underneath? Perhaps
Cassandra had also been saying, "Struggling with your conscience
will make the sex even hotter!"

He made his way over to Union Square Park. The blackout uptown
hadn't prevented the vendors from setting up at the green market,
and he wandered around in the crowd. It was spring, bright flowers
of every hue were displayed on tables, on the pavement,
everywhere. And he couldn't help noticing that young, lovely women
had been attracted by the colorful plants, as though the spring
scents and colors were powerful chick-magnets. He could swing his
head and see at least thirty or forty women that might be fun to play
with in a dastardly way.

"Glenn? Glenn!"

He stopped and turned in the direction of the voice. Great-looking
woman, but who was she? He knew her, but from where... He
remembered just before she had to awkwardly remind him of who
she was.

"Amber Youngblood!", he exclaimed, recalling their brief meeting
the evening that he first met Lauren.

"How are you doing?", she asked, giving him a too-intimate hug,
considering that they barely knew each other. He said he was okay
and asked her how things were going at The Lion Tamer.

"Business is great!," she said. "Even with the blackout. And did you
hear about the riots last night?"

"Yeah, what was that all about?"

"Sex, that's what! And it's good for business Ñ you should have seen
how packed the store was earlier today!"

They chit-chatted a little before she crossed her arms (which
compressed her double-D breasts compellingly) and said: "You
never called me back about your personal fashion show, you
meanie!"

"I know...", he fidgeted, looking at his shoes.

"You're still seeing Lauren?"

"Yes. We're... tight."

"I miss her at the store. She was incredible at displaying and selling
the merchandise. Are you two... Are you exclusive, you and Lauren?"

"Ah... Well, no. We, ah, allow each other a good bit of freedom."

"Then feel free enough to have a drink with me."

"Ah... I don't know if I can."

"Glenn? What is it? I know I'm not built like Lauren, but still... You
don't find me attractive?"

She was beautiful and sexy as hell and she knew it, she knew that it
couldn't be that and it wasn't. Just thinking about seeing Amber
decked out in a series of naughty little outfits started to get him
hard. He'd go to bed with her in an instant of only... How could he
explain himself?

"So you aren't crazy!," she laughed, glancing down at his growing
bulge. "You do find me attractive. It's something else. It's..." She
peered into his eyes. "You don't believe that we'd have chemistry.
That's what it is."

The woman was scary intuitive. But she couldn't know how deep the
lack of chemistry could reach. She had no sparkles, so he couldn't...

"Take a chance, Glenn. No pressure, no hard-sell. But chemistry... It
can be an art just as much as a science. And artists and scientists
both know how much can come from experimentation. Sometimes
you can't know until you know, right?"

"Maybe, but..."

"Then just a drink. I know a good place... Ouch!", she cried.

A hand went to her head, and she looked down. A wrapped fortune
cookie lay at her feet.

"Fuck, I thought I knew all of the hazards that came with life in
Manhattan!," she laughed, looking up at the treetops above. "Flying
fortune cookies... That's a new one!"

Glenn's flesh was tingling. Cassandra, it had to be. He bent down,
picked up the cookie and unwrapped it. The slip of paper inside was
more than a slip. He read the words.

"Shit," Amber commented. "It's more like a novel!"

No, not a novel. But he would be opening strange new chapters in
his life if he followed her advice:

GLENN, MY LOVE,
IN ANSWER TO CRYSTAL'S QUESTION FROM LAST NIGHT ÑÊI TOLD
YOU THAT WE ARE PROFOUNDLY CONNECTED. I FEEL EVERYTHING
THAT YOU FEEL. EVERYTHING. EVERY PLEASURE THAT YOU EXPERIENCE,
I FEEL THAT, TOO, DEEP INSIDE. VERY DEEP INSIDE. THANK YOU FOR
LAST NIGHT, ESPECIALLY.
BUT YOU ARE STILL HOLDING BACK, BENDING THE RULES BUT NOT
BREAKING THEM.
BREAK THE RULES, GLENN. BREAK THEM FOR ME, BREAK THEM FOR
YOURSELF. JUST BREAK THEM.
WAITING TO COME WITH YOU AGAIN,
CASSANDRA

"You look like a man with an interesting future," Amber observed,
nodding at the little sheet of paper in his hands. "What does it say?"

He crumpled the sheet of paper and threw it onto the pavement.
Break the rules. Amber Youngblood had no sparkles in her aura, so
he probably couldn't stuff her cunt with his cock without doing
some sort of damage. But there were countless other ways to have
sex, and he'd just bet that she knew a few.

"Where do you live, Amber?"

"Tenth at First Avenue, why?"

Walking distance, as he'd hoped. Your nipples feel excruciatingly
excited, he aimed at her, and your clitoris will feel more sensitive
with every breath you take. He looked at his hands and did the deed.

"Ohhhh... OHHH!"

"Let's have that drink, Amber. Right now, at your place."

"Oh... OHH... Okay!"

He took her shaking hand, could feel that he might be carrying her
before they even made it to the end of the block. Well, that was
okay. He felt strong. Energized. About to be on top of things.

He stopped and held her steady in his arms about half a block from
the green market. Looking back, he focused on the crowd as a
whole, wondering whether he could make all of those good-looking
women he'd seen go off and go down on each other. As he sent the
outcome, he could imagine the writhing colors of human flesh
mixing with the more brilliant hues of the flowers.

Moans and screams drifted in the air behind him as he helped
Amber forward. Sex-bombs and sex-blackouts, sex with women who
lacked sparkles, "deviant" sex with a flexible dancer-client with one
or two occasional sparkles for him Ñ and the area of her aura-tits
going all warm and fuzzy, showing a great deal of promise. Psychic
sex this Wednesday night with his best-friend's huge-breasted
girlfriend, and maybe even a growing ability to direct politicians'
actions through the airwaves.

He didn't know what was right and what was wrong in any of these
cases. He could fuck up some lives, mostly his own. He would either
have a new kind of relationship with his best friend or have no best
friend at all. And if he wreaked sexual havoc upon his city and
wider-ranging political and social havoc on the entire country, what
sorts of changes would occur, what eventual "outcomes" would
ensue? Everything, all of the possibilities that lay before him ready
to be plucked like apples from a tree (and didn't that sound
hauntingly familiar), were loaded with risk.

Even so, he felt free to move forward, to let the outcomes fly and
see what happened. Because he could feel himself being pushed as
though by an invisible hand, and he was ready to stop resisting, to
go along with the push, to float downstream with the current. Was it
Destiny's hand that he could sense? The One Will? And was this
sense of going with the flow a kind of real freedom? Was this
growth?

He heard no answers inside of himself, but somehow that silence
didn't feel like an absence. It felt more welcoming, more like... like
the beauty of the unknown.

And besides, wouldn't Lauren need some new material, some
noteworthy events that inspired her to write a second book?

Three months to play and experiment before Crystal came back and
performed her next set of miracles on him. And right or wrong,
Cassandra would feel everything he did. Maybe, through her, his
little girl would even feel it in some way.

That sense of marking time was gone. Glenn had this crazy feeling
that he was going to have some real fun this spring and summer.
And some of it, for better or worse, was even going to be wicked
fun.


THE END



...Except for a brief Author's Note:

I feel like I should congratulate any reader who has made it all the
way to the end. It has been a long, long ride.

The first twenty-five chapters of "Generous Spirit" were nailed down
before I began posting installments of the story on the Web. I didn't
yet know how long the novel would be or how things would end, but
enough was there to provide hints of future resolution. I often felt
like Glenn, dealing with some new complication without knowing its
significance or where it had come from in the first place. For a good
bit of the ride, it was all a mystery for me, too.

I'd like to thank the readers who have responded over the many
weeks with their e-mails. Because I'd never written to an author
expressing my thanks for their efforts, I didn't even know that
people would respond in this way, many times adding their gratitude
or encouragement into the mix. As the writing went on and on, these
e-mails were often a great help.

There were times when this encouragement began to take on a
strange sense of collaboration Ñ perhaps because I was still writing,
the responses to the story felt as though they were a part of the
story somehow. I was able to give form to this feeling of reader
participation through the device of the editors' comments to
Lauren's novel, "Breaking The Rules", in the final epilogue. While
none of the fictional editorial responses directly mirror e-mails that
I received, nearly all of the comments concerning Lauren's book
(the positive and the negative) came out of readers' comments on
"Generous Spirit". It was great fun to blend the writing/reading
universes into the story in this way.


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