Sunday, May 23, 2010

Chapter 8 - The Heart of Busch

I love the smell of Hello Kitty in the morning.” The B bus drops me off in front of the Busch student center…a seedier dive has never scarred the face of Mother Earth. Pharmacy and Chem majors strapped for cash play at being drug dealers, peddling badly made crystal meth and crack in the darker corners of the food court. Cheap Korean whores decked out in the latest designer jeans and little plastic Japanese crap sell their bodies to stressed out virginal engineers. Pathetic Bio majors, dirty and ragged from spending endless nights studying scurry about, hoping to score their next fix of amphetamine-laced Monster to keep them going till their next exam. President Lawrence’s words floated back into mind “You can buy anything there…Love, Loyalty…Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.” I was there as myself, Johnny Taurus, so as not to attract as much attention as I would As Het…course, Johnny Taurus is a celebrity too, but for different reasons. I was to meet my guide there, a Chinese guy named Ping, who would lead me to the building where Prof. Zellwigger was holed up. I was supposed to meet him in the graduate study room, but I didn’t know where it was. So I went up to the information desk and asked the calm looking Vietnamese guy at the desk where the room was.

WHO YOU! WHAT YOU WANT!”

Um…excuse me?”

LOOK YOU STUPID BLACK MAN! YOU NO STAND HERE WITH YOUR WIDE NOSE AND BIG LIPS HANGING OPEN! YOU WASTE MY TIME! NOW TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!”

Oh…” Johnny struggled to not kill this man. “Well, in that case I just wanted to know where the Graduate Study Room is.”

IT DOWN THERE.” He stabbed a finger down the hallway behind him on the left. “YOU GO NOW! YOU HERE 5 MINUTES, YOU GO NOW!”

Thank you.” I looked at his nameplate…Chi Lin Chou…I made a point to remember to kick his ass when the mission was over

***

Melissa is busy taking a time out from living, breathing life to take a field-trip through one of her past lives. Right now she is inhabiting the body of one Lord Valoran.

“Lord Valoran, your troops have the pagans on the run!”

The tall ,blonde, handsome, muscular etc. Lord Herbert Valoran of Normandy looked out triumphantly over the blood-stained wasteland that had hours before been a beautiful countryside in the center of Romania. Lord Valoran’s armor was liberally decorated in the viscera of his foes, he himself only suffering small cuts and scrapes from various slings and arrows.

Truly, the Lord’s work has been done today. Only He could have given me the strength I needed to brutally slay and violently take the lives of so many heathens. He and my wondrous weapon Lunar Sword that I created with mine own hands.” As he said this he raised his pale-blue sword to the sky to let sun glint off of it’s strange metal and drying blood. It was obviously not the creation of the average blacksmith. “Is that not the Lord’s truth Aedria?”

A devastatingly beautiful Greek woman strode up next to him,. wiping fresh blood from her sword. “Yes my love, you were wonderful today. But we must prepare, we have much to do tomorrow…and tonight.” She kissed him lightly so as not to give the men suspicion; the same men who knew damn good and well that Lord Valoran was nailing the former slave on a nightly basis. A common joke amongst Lord Valoran’s army was that Aedria’s official position was Squire, but her most often assumed position was face down, arse up. “We decimated the forces sent against us today, but we still need to kill more people if we are to truly help the Byzantine army. I mean, your…hehehe, ‘sword’ tastes my sweet love every night, but if my blade and shield do not taste more blood tomorrow, then you will experience a drought you will not much like at all.”

Point taken my love, I’ll be sure to maneuver their men towards our waiting swords. But now, it is time for you to fulfill your position.”

***

I looked to my right and saw an arcade…more than the usual games were being played. I watched as two men passed a revolver back and forth across a table, after putting it to their heads and pulling the trigger. I moved on. I found the Study room on the left. I stepped into a moodily lit, smoke filled room straight out of an interior decorator's worst dreams. Fat, greasy Grad students were getting blow jobs from undergrad sorority whores imported from College Ave. Ping was serving drinks, when he could tear his eyes off of the various white girls paying lip service to the Grad students. They played poker for money and weed. One of the bodyguards, a slimy looking Korean in an Italian suit, stopped me at the door. “You want something here, man?”

Yeah, I came for Ping over there.”

Hm…OK, take him. He’s your problem now. He’s about to get himself killed anyway. Horny bastard can’t keep his hands off the Grad student’s ho’s.”

The bodyguard wasn’t kidding. Ping was one horny bastard. “Hey, you good rooking guy, You think you get me some pussy yeah? I make it worth your while yeah? OK?”

I took him back to the Undergrad Reading room. I’m a full two feet taller than him, so of course, I got all of the attention. I went up to one of the prettier ones, but before I could begin negotiations she said “UH-UH. Me no take soul brotha…too boku, it hurt, me small girl. No way Jose.”

True as this is, your protestation is misguided sweet thing.” Johnny was full into pimp mode now. “I just wanted to know if you could provide my friend here with a date. He’s awful lonely.” I brought Ping forward, and the ho looked him over.

Hm…OK, I take him for thirty dorra.

Thirty?!? Honey I could get him a ho on College Ave for $5. Now seeing as how you’re such a pretty young thing, I’d say you were worth three times that much.” What woman can resist the full charm of Captain Hetero? “Fifteen huh? OK”, she finally said, “I take him for $15, but only cuz you such a nice guy.”

Much obliged baby, much obliged. Go ahead Ping my man, have at her…I even think she takes Knight Express.” Ping was ecstatic.

Thank you, thank you Johnny. I neva forget this I mean it! You my numba one OK guy!” Nothing made Johnny happier than getting another man some pussy. He was about to go pound some manners into that uppity info desk guy when a sweet voice from behind him changed his mind. “Ummm…excuse me…but you no too boku for me.” Johnny turned around and saw a phat-assed, big-tittied, slim-waisted, Filipino girl shyly giving him a “fuck me now” look (which isn’t as hard to do as it sounds). Johnny was instantly hard. “Well baby, you see, I don’t usually have to pay for it.”

Oh, thas OK…this week I have a special…free samples for big cock.” Johnny was extra hard now. He picked her up and the four of them went into their “office” the woman's bathroom. Johnny knew full and well that he was delaying the completion of the mission, but he was adhering to his personal rule of “Pleasure before business, Always.”

Chapter 7 - Break On Through

Melissa opened her eyes. She saw blurs…then white, then pink, then feet in sandals, then…oh hell why don’t I just describe the scene. Clouds, as far as the eye can see. Actually, there isn’t much to describe. White going off in every direction, gradually fading into blue. In what would be termed the sky, a warm white sun floats dreamily back and forth pendulum-like across the sky.
“Come now Melissa, time to awaken.”
Melissa shook her head. She could feel her body, but she couldn’t physically feel it being there. She couldn’t feel the burning and bleeding and breaking sensations that she felt before she had…died? She definitely didn’t feel dead. But she couldn’t describe what she was feeling as alive either. Her eyes slowly began to focus. She looked up and saw a man…a familiar looking man. He was fair-skinned, blonde hair just like hers, brown eyes just like hers…all in all, he looked a hell of a lot just like her. He was dressed plainly, kind of like a Greek peasant. “Who…wha…”
“Let me guess…” He smiled at her, a smile that made everything that had ever happened OK, and helped her up. “you have questions. Who are you, where am I, and what am I doing here? That’s understandable. All right, I’ll answer in order. First of all, my name is Vectorus. I have been called many things…you can think of me as your guardian angel, your spiritual self, your soul or your avatar. Where are we…also has been called many things by your incarnations…Heaven, Asgard, the astral plane, the Umbra…it’s a place of pure abstraction where everything appears in it’s true form. Now…what are you doing here? Now that is the question isn’t it? I’m afraid the answer depends mostly on how strong you think you are.”
Melissa gave him a sarcastic look. “So, I’m supposed to believe I’m having an out of body experience?”
“No my dear”, the man said, “your having THE out-of-body experience. I have had to have little talks like this one with all of my earthly incarnations, but none have needed it so much, or so early in life, as you have. That’s why I arranged your little accident.”
“So that was your voice I heard? You got me killed you bastard!”
“Oh my dear Melissa, you are not dead… not completely anyway. Now calm down. I have much to show you.” He helped her gently to her feet. “You have become very important in the grand scheme of things. In the very near future there will be a lot of different forces seeking to destroy you or use you for their own ends. And your friend, John, will do and say a lot of things that you are not going to like. But you must be patient with him and accept him for his faults, as you must convince him to be patient with you. Your two destinies are intertwined, as are his avatar and I linked. Remember your love for him, it has saved the two of you many times before.”
“How do you know I love him?” Melissa shot back defiantly, “and what do you mean before? I’ve only known him for a year.”
“Come my dear, and I will show you what I mean.” He took her hand, and Melissa’s journey into her past began.
***
Meanwhile, Johnny was on Busch.
“Busch. Shit, I can’t believe I’m still only on Busch. Last week President Lawrence called me into his office. [insert Emperor’s theme here] “Ahh, Mr. Hetero (wheeze) I have summoned you here for a purpose. What do you know (wheeze) about professor Zellwigger?
Cap answered rather nonchalantly. “Not much. Professor Julia Zellwigger, graduated top of her class in Microbiology from Harvard in 1962, the same year her twin brother Herman graduated from Yale in Psychology. The two siblings have been rivals since birth, with neither ever gaining the upper hand in their lifelong contest. Even their I.Q.’s are even, both topping out at 189. In 1972 she won a Nobel Prize for her breakthroughs in Organic Cybernetic Grafting, the same year her brother started his research in Circular Reasoning. In 1975 she took her current position of Dean of Biology at Rutgers. Ever since she has brought the school millions of dollars in patents on her pharmaceutical research. Yet since 1987 her funding has dwindled, especially funding for her gene therapy and breast cancer research. In the past 5 years her productivity has dropped off noticeably. She’s had a few boyfriends but is generally afraid to commit to a serious relationship. Other than that, I don’t know anything about her.
“Very good Mr. Hetero (wheeze) you keep up on events. I like that. I have discovered through my all-knowing omniscience that this Ms. Zellwigger has been continuing her research projects with funding from an unknown source. She has not left the campus in 8 months (wheeze) and few people have heard from or seen her since. Some of her Honors students have disappeared with her, among them her favorite TA (wheeze) a pharmacy major named Elizabeth Chen. Here’s a copy of her student I.D. picture.
Something is going on on Busch that I do not know about (wheeze) Mr. Hetero, and I do not like not knowing things. Your mission is to go deep into the Heart of Busch and find this woman and her followers. Bring them down, Mr. Hetero, with extreme prejudice. But be warned…Busch is a land of magic and science (wheeze) fact and mystery. The lines between reality and illusion can blur. You can buy anything there…Love, Loyalty…Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.”
“Don’t worry Lawrence, I can handle myself in Far East Busch. I’ll find out what’s going on.”
“Make sure you do Captain Hetero (wheeze). Now go…destroy that woman.”
***
“Now, assuming that this is actually a ‘spiritual journey through the netherworld’ and not just a coma-induced dream, how is all WHOA!” Melissa’s pretentious droning was interrupted by the decidedly disorienting experience of being shot through the spirit world at fantastic speeds. When she came around again, she saw a decimated battlefield and bloody bodies everywhere.
“Hm…I’d say this scene took place during the Crusades, English ground forces battling what appear to be Ottoman Turks I believe. What does this have to do with me?”
“This is one of my favorite incarnations Melissa. Look, over there.”
Vectorus pointed to a part of the battlefield off in the distance. A group of at least 20 Turks were attacking a small group of 5 English knights. The Turks were losing badly. A tall muscular knight was vivisecting the Turks. His sword and armor were soaked in the blood of his enemies, his blade little more than a blur as he carved them into pieces. By his side, a smaller, dark haired woman fought with a sword and shield, kicking just as much ass.
Melissa beamed with pride, “See, even then I was fighting for woman's rights. I know it must have taken a lot of guts for a woman to fight in a society as disgustingly patriarchal as Medieval Europe was.”
“Actually Melissa, that scrappy young woman is Greek. And, she is not our incarnation. That young woman was your friend John. The valiant, dashing young man at the head of the charge; that was us.”
Melissa looked again…the hair, the eyes, the nose…he definitely looked a lot like both of them. “I was…a man? I was a man fighting for God? Oh, this can only get worse…”