Storiesonline.net ------- Do You Believe? by cmsix Copyright© 2007 by cmsix ------- Description: I didn't, but when my diabetes went away on its own I started getting a hint. Codes: MF ------- ------- Chapter 1 At the old time camp meeting, the fire and brimstone Baptist evangelist had done a bang up job. They were going whole hog for the good old ways, and there were more than fifty in line to be baptized in the small muddy river's cold water. The preacher held a young boy in his arms, lowered him beneath the surface and then brought him back up sputtering. "Do you believe?" the preacher asked. "I'm not sure," the boy replied, and the preacher repeated the process. "Do you believe now?" the preacher asked when the boy was above the water again. "I'm still not sure," the boy replied, and so the preacher tried again, holding the boy under much longer this time. "Now, do you believe?" the preacher asked, as the boy coughed and wheezed. "Yes, preacher. I believe. I believe," the boys said. "And what do you believe?" the preacher asked. "I believe you're trying to drown me, you crazy old bastard." ------- I know it's and old joke, but dammit, it was about the way I felt right now, because I hadn't believed, not for a second. Oh, not about God or anything. I hadn't ever bothered with a real opinion about God. I hadn't believed in spacemen, or aliens, or UFOs - I hadn't believed any of that crap. I didn't know Area 51 from Studio 54 and didn't really give a shit about either until recently. You see, lately things had been happening, to me. Now not a damned one of the things that happened had been bad, but they'd been things that just couldn't happen. Oh, maybe it wasn't completely unheard of for a pretty much pumped out oil well to start flowing oil again, but it was damned nearly impossible. Johnson Manufacturing Company Number One was as close to dry as a well got if it was still called a well. Even after the last work-over rig got done it only produced about two to three barrels a day, barely enough to bother with. Then all of a sudden one fine November Second - my birthday at that - something happened down below, and crude oil started coming up by itself, as if it was under pressure down there. Clearly it couldn't be because there'd been no noticeable seismic activity anywhere within a thousand miles. Oil wells just didn't change like that without something noticeable going on. Still the well was now making five hundred barrels of oil per eight-hour shift. I'd gone from scraping by to filthy rich in a few weeks. See, I owned the mineral rights on that well, I owned them all for that one well. The production company got their share but mostly the oil, and more importantly the money from it, was mine. Of course some government men from one agency or the next came around to see what we'd done that might be illegal, but they didn't find shit because we hadn't done shit. Hell, there's nothing you can do to turn a well around like that. If there was everybody would do it and the Arabs would be broke. We knew it was impossible just like they did, but there it was. They shook their heads and went home after a month or so. The well wasn't the only impossible thing happening to me though. I was getting younger, and it started on the same day the well did. Oh I didn't go to bed fifty-nine and wake up twelve or anything stupid like that, but I knew that morning something was happening, because half an hour after I took my glyburide, I checked my blood sugar, and it was in the low seventies. I damned near ran to the refrigerator for a Coke. And the miracles just kept coming. The next morning when I woke I was clear headed as soon as my eyes opened, instead of the half an hour of moving around it normally took. And that was another thing; I'd slept through the night without having to get up once to pee. By the time a week had gone by I knew I had no use for the glyburide at all. Not only that, my diabetic retinopathy had cleared up on its own too, and I could see perfectly again. Not to mention I felt great. I was also gaining weight, and it wasn't fat. Never in my life had I done any serious exercising, and I hadn't started lately either. It didn't seem to matter though. I was gaining weight and it wasn't going to fat. I was getting stronger and I didn't know why. It was even visible, to me at least. I mean, after you've been looking at yourself for fifty-nine years you're damned sure going to notice when something starts looking better, instead of the other way around. By December 2, 2007, I was convinced that somehow I was getting younger. I looked better and I felt better, inside and out. What the hell, I wasn't complaining, especially since I seemed to be getting rich without doing one damned thing about it. The only things that weren't changing were my externally visible features. My beard was still almost completely gray and my face still matched my chronological age. Oh, a few things had changed about my appearance. My eyebrows had stopped growing the few extra long ones that were a hassle and the hair in my ears and nose had stopped gaining ground. But anything that would have been immediately noticeable stayed the same. Things that were always covered by clothes didn't though; they seemed to look younger and younger every day. Miracles were happening to me goddammit! Miracles. I couldn't think of one damned reason they should be, and I sure as hell didn't have any idea why they seemed to be only happening to the parts of me that wouldn't show up. Oh, I'm sure if I went to a doctor for a physical they would be obvious. Then again, why would I? My health seemed better than it had been since I was twenty-one. Still the facts of the matter were obvious to me, if not to anyone else. I was getting younger, in stealth mode. It didn't make sense, but I wasn't bitching about it. The next major shock in my life came on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2007, and it wasn't a shock for me alone. Apparently, while on his appointed rounds that night, Santa Claus dropped his biggest gift ever onto the United States of America while he was buzzing around Washington, DC. Without making one peep, George W Bush died in his sleep. He died silently from acute myocardial infarction. No one even noticed until a White House staffer came in to wake he and his wife. Laura was confused at first because W always woke and woke her at least a half-hour before the staffer arrived. Imagine the scene when they realized W was as cold as a turd in a milk bucket. Dick Cheney was elevated to President before breakfast, but the sorry bastard, who was not in the best of health himself, died of the same malady before noon Christmas Day. The Presidents are dead - all hail the President, Nancy Pelosi. Talk about a fucking shock for the good old U S of A, and the whole world too. This one took top billing. News coverage from around the world claimed that opinions of whether it was good news or bad news seemed about equally divided worldwide, but we didn't have to wait long for more highly placed heads of state to roll along with George and Dick. North Korea was the next country to suffer the same type of leadership vacuum, if you could call such a gift suffering, and they didn't even have the benefit of serial tragedies. Nearly two hundred of their most highly placed officials were blessed with the same treatment in one big orgy of heart failure on New Years Eve that year. And the shocks just kept coming. Every political leader on Earth must have been beside their selves with worry, since by now barely a night passed without some widely recognized asshole biting the proverbial bullet. Good old Nancy hung tough in the White House, but her former peers in Congress and the Senate dropped like flies all through January, along with almost every one who ruled anything in the Middle East. A seeming side benefit popped up too. Suicide bombings, car bombs, and truck bombs and the like quit exploding. Almost every day for a while there someone would discover a body with a bomb taped around its chest and it's head removed. The missing part was usually lying somewhere nearby, unless they had happened to be on a steep hill at the time. My personal favorites were the truck bombs that weren't intended to be suicide style. Some policeman or other would find a truck bomb parked somewhere with the driver's body slumped in the seat and his head lying on the ground beside the driver's door. Apparently their heads just fell off once they tried to exit the vehicle. Man, what a neat trick. I wished I could do it. It didn't take long for the potential suicide bombers to lose interest in that scheme. After all, they were fanatics, not idiots. Though there was literal panic in the streets in dozens upon dozens of countries, things in the United States stayed fairly calm. Bureaucrats kept the country rocking along on a mostly even keel, and for some reason that I couldn't understand, none of them bit the dirt, but lawmakers were getting hard to come by. Nancy was in perfect health, but it seemed that almost half of the replacements for places in the Congress or Senate died before they had time to fondle a page's ass. A few of them did fine, but the biggest part of those pressed into service by their states were actually pressed into burials shortly afterward, and it was getting so there were damned few who would allow themselves to be considered for the duty now-a-days. By the time Easter rolled around things were settling down. It was as if men who knew that they were sorry sacks of shit also knew they wouldn't last in office until the water got hot. Not only were candidates refusing to serve, many of the jerks that were already in office resigned, just in case. Easter showed them how wise they'd been. Edward - Teddy - Kennedy shuffled off this mortal coil early Easter morning, but he wasn't alone. Almost everyone that was still alive from those that had helped him cover up drowning Mary Jo Kopechne were in turd in the milk bucket shape too. It had taken a hell of a long time for the chickens of July 18, 1969 to come home to roost, but after the Easter massacre you couldn't find one person who hadn't been sure Teddy had pulled a no no, oh so long ago. The State of the Union that Nancy Pelosi had explained to us just a few months before was changed completely again. It seemed that every day more and more political assholes had heart attacks. I wasn't too worried about it, since no one I'd ever miss or lament had died, so far. Sure, things were near low-level panic all around, but what the hell. People were still buying gasoline and I was still coining money and getting healthier by the day. That didn't mean no one I knew had died, they had, but I knew I wouldn't miss a fucking one of them. A recent District Attorney who'd given me some grief was pushing up daisies, and while I figured his wife and kids would miss him, I sure didn't. Hell, as far as I could tell, somebody or something was doing the world a world of good. Terrorism, which had been a growing problem worldwide, was practically unheard of now, barely three months later. There'd been rumors that whole training camps for them died on the same night. Whether that was correct or not I couldn't say. I had noticed that Iraq had settled amazingly, and Iran too for that matter, and I couldn't even remember the last time I'd heard about some atrocity happening anywhere. No matter what was causing all this heart trouble, they had my thanks, so far. It turned out that heart attacks weren't the only new development. Abortions, which I didn't think were any of my business at all, since I didn't happen to own a womb, had come to an end too. Not from any new laws but from a very strange development. Women who didn't want to get pregnant stopped getting pregnant, and they weren't the only ones. With all the obvious confusion it had gone unnoticed for a while, but three months or so down the road it was obvious that most women were not able to get pregnant, and the numbers were a little alarming for many of them. Poor people were hardest hit. If a family couldn't be expected to properly support a new member, they didn't get one, and financial considerations weren't the only ones in effect. Somehow someone or something was deciding which families could be good parents and the females in that family were the only ones getting pregnant. In fact, only women who were in stable relationships with a sane and caring partner seemed able to be blessed with motherhood, as if you didn't get a baby unless you could be reasonably expected to raise it in a sensible manner. What a concept, you had to be a good parental prospect before you got a child. One of the most distressing things about it for some was that it seemed one hell of a lot of Baptist women were now barren, but they weren't alone. Zero population growth had come and gone in a heartbeat. Understandably, figures were hard to come up with, but the most educated guesses were that the Earth would be down under two billion in population within forty years. I didn't know about what was happening in other countries, but here in the United States no one had done much to change their ways since Christmas. People were still dying by the thousands in automobile and other types of accidents. Criminal behavior of all types had slacked off a little, but accidental death and injury were still going strong. Maybe the new facts of life hadn't hit home to them yet. These new facts of life hit home for me on June 19, 2007. No, I didn't die in my sleep. I was pretty sure my heart had to be in great shape, just like the rest of me. It was a good thing too, because after I woke, showered, and dressed I went into my kitchen, and there was a guest sitting at my table. He must have made himself at home already, because he had a pot of coffee made and was even drinking a cup. Hell, I got a cup for myself. I needed it. "Good morning, Jake," he said; as I sat down to join him at my table. "I believe it is safe to say you have the advantage of me." "I apologize for that. My name is Shikictaawa, or that is as close as your language can come. We couldn't decide on a better way to meet you, and I hope the improvements we've made to you will go some way toward redressing our poor manners," he said. "If you're responsible for the miracles that have happened in my life since my last birthday you can consider yourself forgiven," I said, and with a straight face too. "Thank you." "Is it safe to assume you have something more in mind for me?" "Oh, yes, but it isn't mandatory. You may decline with no penalty. In truth, there will be no advantage to you for accepting. Well, maybe that isn't exactly the truth. There will be no material advantage to you if you accept," Shikictaawa said. "That may be a good thing, I've already come across more material advantage than I can shake a stick at," I said. "We noticed that your response to the wealth had been rather subdued but that is of no import in this matter." "What exactly is this matter? What do you have in mind for my immediate future?" I asked. "Excuse me, but don't you have any questions about the things we've done on your planet? Surely you must at least assume that we have caused much death here, among other things," he said. "I might be more worried if you'd done anything I disapproved of. I don't know of a person you killed that didn't need it badly. The lack of new children might be causing a lot of suffering for some, but I don't think it is necessarily unfair, especially to the children that aren't being born. It is assuredly going to be a boon to the children that are being born," I said. "You don't wonder about what other plans we might have for your planet?" "Of course I wonder, but do we really have time for a detailed discussion. More to the point, would any input I shared with you change the plans?" I asked. "Some of your input might change the plans slightly, but as you say there's no need to get into it now. We do have a proposition for you, as you surmised," he said. "Then all you've got to do now is squat down and trot it out." "Why do I need to squat down to do it?" he asked. "That's just an expression." "Ah, and I think that my ignorance of the expression has given you a clue about our current understanding of your language," he said. "Slightly, but you catching onto what the knowledge let me know is even more informative." "In what way?" he asked. "It lets me know that you spacemen are pretty damned smart and observant yourselves," I said. "What makes you so sure we are from outer space, as you earthlings call it?" "The first clue was when you called us earthlings, but even if you hadn't I'd have known that you weren't from Dallas, or (shudder) Washington DC. Even with that knowledge you don't seem nearly as different from us as I might have expected." "Bilateral symmetry is not unique among inhabitants of other worlds, neither is bipedal locomotion. In my case I came from a world that is similar in size and distance from its primary to your planet. "There are some intelligent species with more than four major limbs, but they are exceptions. You have not seen the most marked difference between us though," he said, and promptly turned his head to show me that he had two eyes in the rear also. Now I was impressed, and I had a feeling that he was hiding his advantage in intelligence. The brainpower it must take to accommodate four distinct eyes must be enormous. I didn't mention it though. "They must have come in very handy down through the years," I said. "They have, I'm sure, though of course I'm not old enough to have really needed them for survival. It isn't apparent from visual examination, but we do have an offsetting liability, at least as far as you are concerned," he said. "Oh?" "We have practically no sense of smell, or taste," he said. "I think I can imagine that would be a disadvantage, especially as your species was raising itself from primitive beginnings," I said. "Actually the lack puts us on a more nearly equal basis with you than you might think. It takes quite a bit of brainpower to administer the sense of smell, and it can be very useful. I'll admit we think the additional eyes are more useful than an acute sense of smell, but they do bring their own problems," he said. "Such as?" "Head protection during battle is the primary drawback, as far as we are concerned. It is of little import now, but before we developed super-strong transparent materials it was a real pisser. I think that's your word for it," he said, and I laughed. "I'm sure we could spend several pleasant hours discussing our differences, but for now I think it is time for me to spill it. I think that's the proper expression." "Good enough, and it lets me know that you must have studied telephone sales procedures," I said. "Yes, we have, but what we want of you is to leave with us for training," he said. "May I ask what sort of training?" "Combat training," he said. "Don't you think I'm a little old for that sort of thing?" "You aren't any longer. Your body is now back to the equivalent of twenty-one years, and in fact it is in much better shape than you had it at the age of twenty-one," he said. "Why do I need this combat training?" "It will sound complicated to you, but I'll start the explanation. We have examined every male on this planet and you are one of seventeen thousand that fall within our ideal specifications. I'm sure I needn't elaborate to you on the reason for not considering females of your species for this training. We do not have any of what some would call discriminatory prejudices. Males of your species are simply better equipped by nature to become warriors. We've taken the precaution of selecting for females that could do adequate service, but we won't train one unless it becomes obvious that the men can't do the job without their help. Besides, many females will be needed to help you repopulate after the conflict. If you need to that is. "We intend to further enhance your physical characteristics, and then subject you to vigorous training for a combined space and ground war." "But why? Do you need more warriors for an upcoming battle?" I asked. "No, we do not. Your planet will need them in approximately five of your years." Now there was a reason for pause. Things had been moving along swimmingly until he cut his foot on that particular cow patty, and I was now very interested in the program he was suggesting. "How many of us will you need to train so that we'll be able to take care of that little problem, and can't you just do it for us. I know that sounds horribly like asking for the moon, but if you know the attack is coming and you don't want us to lose, why don't you just take care of it?" I asked. "We are capable of taking care of it as you say, but political imperative don't allow us to. The species that is coming has no interest in your population; they only want your planet. They are about fifty of your years ahead of you technically, and that's because they got started about fifty years ahead of the time your species did. They are fairly equal to you otherwise; they just had a head start. "As for your other question, we will only be training you." "Just me? Will I have to fight them by myself?" I asked. "No, whether you even fight them at all will be up to you. We simply need you, or one other member of the seventeen thousand subjects, to go through the training. "We can then install your training into the required soldiers. We are not able to develop the package to install without at least one individual to work with. "Our technology will allow us to selectively copy parts of your brain to use for other warriors. Don't worry about your personal self - we won't be copying that. We will be using parts of your personality but none of the actual data from your life up until now." "That is a pretty hard concept for me to swallow. Your species must be very far advanced, or at least I hope it is. Can the upcoming attackers perform such miracles?" I asked. "To an extent they can. They aren't as adept at it as we are, but they are capable of mass training, including imparting muscle memory. They are very capable of conquering planets for their use." "You mean we aren't the first?" I asked. "No, your Earth will be the sixth attempt and they have not failed yet. They are being a little more adventurous this time though. Your species is the closest to theirs they have attempted to remove so far," he said. "You mean the others you helped weren't able to rise to the challenge?" "Your species is the first we have tried to help. We only found this little drama in progress lately and the last two of their attempts were against species that had no hope of prevailing even with our help. Be that as it may, we wouldn't have helped them anyway. Some details of your species made us rethink our way of doing things," he said. "Such as?" "Before Earth, we had a strictly hands off approach to the things other species got up to, preferring to be watchers only. Your species is different from most though. Especially the notion in your own country of not taking extreme advantage of weaker groups. "In fact, if not for your repulsive democracy we think that you might have been able to make up quite a lot of your disadvantage to the Ralla, who are coming." "So you don't think democracy is a very good way of conducting business?" I asked. "No. We actually know it isn't, at least not in the form you were using. Having the rulers elected by the populace is not completely without merit, but allowing every member of that populace to have an equal vote is a recipe for disaster. It lets the totally uninformed members of society have an equal say in that society. Why should non-informed members have a vote? They have no possibility of making an intelligent choice. Need I point out how many of your rulers and pseudo rulers we had to dispense with?" "You don't have to explain yourself to me. I don't know of one person that died from what I assume were heart attacks that you inflicted that I'll miss. I'm wondering why you drew the line where you did," I said. "We were able to educate Nancy Pelosi sufficiently so that we think she can understand what she needs to do for now. I'll admit there was quite a lot of discussion over her. We believe that with our help she will be able to mobilize Earth's population to prepare for what is coming. We will also make sure that no more idiots will last long enough to cause much trouble." "So you aren't through eliminating trouble spots?" I asked. "We hope we are. After a little more preparation we will reveal ourselves to the remainder of your world and explain what we know is coming. We think things will go more smoothly after we're able to reach that point. Nothing focuses one's mind like the need to work toward preserving your existence." "Maybe, but there are people on Earth who kill themselves. Suicide is not that uncommon," I said. "Many times people who think they want to kill themselves find that they've changed their minds when they learn someone else wants to kill them also." "I think I can understand that. But what about the fifty-year lead in technology the bad guys have. Won't they be able to do considerable damage before they even land on Earth?" I asked. "We are going to help with your fighting ability. While you are in training we will be helping by providing information for those on your planet, and by helping to mobilize efforts to construct war fighting equipment, arms, and other technology. We won't teach your people anything that the Ralla haven't learned yet, but if they discover something on their own, by manipulating the knowledge we give them, we won't forbid it. "Another helpful detail comes about from the Ralla's own doctrine. They have targeted your planet primarily because of your technological proximity to them. They don't want to destroy your infrastructure. "As an aside they are very fond of certain things you've developed that they never did and a certain portion of their resources are now devoted to copying your work," he said. "What are they copying?" I asked, hoping against hope it wasn't nuclear weapons. "They were astonished with the novelty of the iPod and other similar personal devices. They've had sufficient technology, and even better technology for years. Somehow it never occurred to any of them to use it for personal entertainment. Blackberries, or their version of them, are also wildly popular now. "It isn't important in this case but we think they'd never really moved on from the old Batch Run computer mentality. Their hardware surpassed it long ago, and they even have personal computers for almost every individual. The old "Bigger is Better" thinking just never went away. Their techniques for marketing are also antiquated, though in certain ways that might be an improvement." "Well why in the hell don't they just copy them and leave us alone?" I asked. "Unfortunately, that is something else that has never occurred to them, and trading instead of killing isn't part of their thought patterns either." "So, you're going to reorganize our civilization, sprinkle in some knowledge and let us fend for ourselves?" I asked. "That is one way to look at our intentions. We prefer to think of it as pruning ill advised policy on your planet. We are not providing anything that you would not have discovered in the next fifty or so years. If we'd had the time we wouldn't have even gone this far. Our projections were that removing the impediments and showing what was coming would have let you be ready within the next twenty-five to thirty years. "Unfortunately, you didn't have the time." "What's in it for you?" I asked. "Nothing actually, and we aren't making any great expenditures. We are going to share some hard won knowledge, and do a few other things, but nothing that will inconvenience us. "Frankly the Ralla are starting to get on our nerves. They're doing as they are because they're too lazy to find vacant planets and colonize them. In fact they've hampered their own progress by doing so. We're tired of that method and we feel that merely a very strong resistance will cause them to modify their behavior. Even if you don't survive we think the experience will lead the Ralla to seek other means of expansion." "And if we win?" "I don't understand what you're asking," he said. "What if we win and decide to take everything from the Ralla, and then keep at it as they were?" "After we have set you to basically even technology you are own your own. We'd prefer if you didn't exterminate the Ralla, but if you do... They've done it to others after all. If you take up their habits you will probably run afoul of some other civilization we've helped later," he said, and it chilled me to the bone. "Well I won't be a part of that, at least I don't think I will," I said. "We don't think you will either, and that is one of the reason you are first on our list for the training program." "When do we start?" I asked. "Have you made up your mind to do it?" "Yes." "Then we can start right away." ------- Chapter 2 I'd expected to be led to some type of landing craft or some such but it was nothing like that at all. In fact it was decidedly a non-event, sensation wise at least. It happened in the blink of an eye you might say, especially since so many others have said it before. Actually, my eyes were the only things that let me know anything had happened. Suddenly I was somewhere else. It was a place I recognized at once but never in my wildest had I envisioned being here. We were in the Oval Office and there behind the desk was Madam President, Nancy Pelosi. She didn't look all that presidential though - not impressive or awe inspiring at all. In fact my first read on her mood was trepidation. It reminded me of an old saying. She looked like a kid who'd been spanked for pootin'. Shikictaawa must have called ahead, because Nancy had obviously been expecting this visit. Not only that but there were no Secret Service personnel with us in the closed office. Apparently the space men had put the fear of God into Nancy and company. "Mrs Pelosi, this is Jake Gordon. Jake is our selection for off planet training," Shikictaawa said. "I'm pleased to me you Mr Gordon. What branch of the service are you in?" the first female POTUS asked. "I'm not in any branch of any service," I said, and her look of distress advanced alarmingly. "I don't know how this will be received by our military leaders," she said, even though I could tell she didn't want to say a thing. "Do not trouble yourself with those details. If it's necessary we will explain things to them for you. I have no doubt they will enjoy interacting with Jack much more than they would the alternative," Shikictaawa said, and it didn't take a genius to see that his manner with Nancy was not nearly as nice as it had been with me. "For now, what kind of progress are you making with adapting the technology we shared into your worldwide weapons systems?" he asked. "As I expected, resistance is widespread, but after your earlier demonstrations the governments are not causing it. Most of the friction is coming from large corporations. They are complaining about how they'll justify it to their shareholders. Of course that's just for appearances, they're really just jockeying for positions to make more profit," she said. "Can you name what I think you call a ring leader? Someone who would make the biggest impression on the others if he or she were to lose their head, literally?" Shikictaawa asked. "Oh yes. Mr Ichiro, the real power behind the throne at Sony. He is the main fly in our ointment. He takes pride in coming up with schemes like the Sony Rootkit and them blaming them on his current CEO if they backfire. No matter how much shit he causes to be thrown around, none of it ever sticks to him," Madam President said. "Maybe he would be more malleable if he were a head shorter," Shikictaawa said. "May I make a suggestion?" I asked. "Certainly," Shikictaawa said. "Since you can do such wonders with medical science, I recommend you remove his penis, testicles, pubic hair and trousers. He sounds like a man who would be very sensitive to something like that, as if there were a man anywhere on earth that wouldn't be. Making that type of example of him and promising more of the same for others who don't toe the line might just help things along. Doing it in a place with good news coverage would probably help," I said. "I like it," the President said, smiling for the first time since we'd come. "Very well, we will make it so. Please let me know if you need more examples Nancy." Another dose of whatever Shikictaawa had done to get us into the Oval Office put us somewhere else in a flash. It was another almost non-event but our new location was not in Washington or Kansas. I couldn't help myself. I had to ask. "Where are we?" "You are now aboard one of our ships. It is currently orbiting around the gas giant you call Jupiter," he said. "I hope like hell you're going to teach us that trick." "Yes, it could cure all your upcoming ills, today in fact, but if you were within fifty years of learning its secrets you wouldn't need our help at all. I'm afraid things will be a little more difficult. Still there is a possibility that some of your scientist can make the leap from a few things we'll be sharing with them. None of ours were able to though, in the time we learned the things we'll be sharing. This technology is roughly one hundred and fifty years beyond what will be revealed." "Well if we don't get it, what's next for me?" "Our medical people get the first hands on crack at you." "I thought I'd already been spruced up along those lines," I said. "You have been to some extent, but these last modifications might have made you alarming to some of your species," he said. "Please tell me you're not going to turn me into some sort of cyborg." "We're not, but some of the improvements will be similar. You will not appear any different than now, except we will complete the regression in apparent age. "The most obvious difference you may notice will be the changes to your nervous system and your muscular efficiency. Your standard issue was fine for life on earth, but the changes we'll make will be very beneficial in combat. "First we will speed up the travel time of your nerve impulses and we will also increase the speed of your muscles. You will actually be able to think and move faster. Putting it into perspective, after the treatments are done you should be able to run a one hundred meter dash in six seconds, and you should be easily able to bench press more than eleven hundred pounds." "So I'll be able to operate in two thirds of the time the fastest human on earth can now, and I'll be fifty percent stronger?" I asked. "That is approximately correct. Your speed of thought will also increase by a similar percentage." "And these Ralla can think and move this fast?" I asked. "Actually, they can't. They have discovered these techniques and use them, but they were not as fast as your people in the first place. Unfortunately they started out with a strength advantage. Since they have what amounts to the same techniques, the outcome is skewed both ways because of the relative starting positions. Your people will now have a slightly better advantage in speed while they have gained a greater advantage in strength. It is the same technique, almost exactly; some parts of it work better for your species and some work better for the Ralla." he said. "If I'm the first one you are doing this to, how do you know?" "You aren't the first one to receive this, or any of the treatments you'll get. You're merely the first that will live over it. After things started happening fast on your world, we took the opportunity to recruit some people to experiment on. We didn't need them for anything but the fine-tuning, and we placed them with others who died after we were done with them. "Don't worry, they were individuals who weren't going to be allowed to live anyway. All of them would have been put to death on your planet if the extent of their crimes were fully known. In fact, many were what you would have called terrorist. A large number of them came from Afghanistan but we did take a few from almost every distinct group." "That's better. I was feeling a little pensive about being the first to try this." The next few days were some of the most boring I'd ever spent. I seemed to go from one machine to another for some sort of test or imaging or God only knew what. Every now and then they'd give me an injection with one of those air-gun type hypos. The only thing I really noticed was that my hair seemed to be coming in thicker and my face was starting to look younger. I assumed my beard would lose its gray too as it grew out. Three weeks it took, exactly. On the final day they took me to a running track and timed me in a few hundred-meter dashes. As advertised my time was now around six seconds, usually just under it, into the very high fives. Though they hadn't mentioned it specifically my endurance was improved also. A sub three-minute mile was a piece of cake. Otherwise I didn't really notice the changes. Oh, I felt a little more alert, and it did seem that it was easier to calculate in my head, but nothing that knocked my socks off. Near the end of the day I learned about the implant I'd been given during my sleep, and hadn't noticed. "Think of it as a wireless connection," Shikictaawa said. "Maybe, but a connection to what?" "To almost anything. It will help you control a vessel and even help you to aim a rifle, or pistol," he said. "Mind elaborating a little?" "Your weapons will all have computers built in. They are aimed with a laser that puts a dot on the target. The implant will inform the computer of the angle between the aim points of your eyes and it will calculate the distance to target from that, then it can adjust the angle between the laser and the rifle's barrel if necessary." "You mean the rifle can be resighted for range?" "Yes, and for windage too, but it will only happen if there is significant need. It wouldn't change for the difference between thirty and forty feet for instance." "I see, but it makes me wonder about the weapons. I'd expected to have some type of laser pistol or something," I said. "The phasers from Star Trek would be nice, wouldn't they?" he asked. "Well yeh, they would. Are they too far advanced for us?" I asked. "They are too far advanced for us. We don't know how to make them either," Shikictaawa said, and I got the impression that he'd have been laughing if they ever did such a thing. I was surprised with the first advanced weapon I came into contact with. Hell, it looked a lot like an M1 Garand, and I said so. "It is a lot like an M1, because that's what we used for a pattern. It is an excellent firearm, even in its unimproved state. Its action is one of the most trouble free we've ever encountered, especially for a species equivalent to yours. "I'll admit that the magazine and reloading technique left a lot to be desired, but with a slight modification of the action to allow a little more width to work with, we were able to come up with an excellent removable magazine system. "You might notice that it is more compact in other dimensions, especially length, and I'm sure you can tell it isn't made of the same type steel you're accustomed to." "Is it stainless steel? It looks like it might be, but somehow it doesn't weight what it should if it were," I said. "No, the metal has most of the best properties of stainless steel but is lighter than titanium. It is also much more durable. Even if it had an endless magazine, you couldn't fire it fast enough to make heat degrade the barrel." "You mean it doesn't get hot? How can that be?" "Oh it gets hot, but it is able to withstand the heat. I doubt that anything on earth now can cut it. Not even a plasma arc cutter," he said, and it made me wonder just how they made it in the first place, but I didn't bother to ask. "I'll say one thing for it, the damned thing was accurate. I could sit down at a bench and do nearly as well as any earth made bench rest rifle I'd ever heard of. It would do half minute of angle and keep it up as long as I could. The barrel's heating seemed not to have any effect. I was surprised again by the pistol they provided, or pistols I should say. Since phasers or lasers were a no go I'd been expecting something along the lines of a Glock 34. Wrong, it resembled a Browning Hi-Power and was made from the same material. Hell, it even had grips that looked like Pachmayr. It was a little longer though and when I asked, Shikictaawa said it was ten inches overall. "We believe the increased length will make it easier to use while pointing and shooting, and it will not detract from your ability to handle it with your new nerve and muscle configuration. If you are aiming with the laser sight your implant will perform the same functions it does for the rifle. "You might also take a look at the cartridges. The bullet portion is not the non-expanding type that your militaries use. The Ralla wouldn't even consider using such a humane round. It would be pointless for you to do them the favor unrequited. The biggest difference is the propellant. With our metal technology it is possible to use much more pressure in the chambers. Bullet speed has been significantly increased." It didn't take more than a couple of seconds to see that the rounds weren't the normal military full-metal-jacket. All in all I was impressed, but it seemed we were taking things fairly slowly if time was so short. Five years didn't sound like much time when you had at least fifty years to catch up on. The next morning changed all that. Shikictaawa didn't show up this time, a specialist did, and he was a specialist in hand-to-hand combat. Thankfully the lesson only lasted until lunch. Unfortunately a different specialist showed up after lunch. He was an expert at moving while trying to remain unnoticed. We got done with that just as suppertime rolled around, and I knew that I would be learning a lot more about these two fields than I'd ever wanted to know. I was expecting more of the same the next day, but I didn't get it. I spent the morning getting acquainted with a flight simulator, but not exactly. There was some atmospheric flight ok, except we didn't stop there. We spent about an hour getting familiar with flying through the air, and then he had me point its ass toward the ground and push the throttle to the stop. Its short wings drew inside as we climbed past one hundred thousand feet and kept going, fast. "You will note that we have accelerated past escape velocity. You can consider yourself in what you call outer space now," he said, and sounded oh so smug about it. The thing that struck me right away was how real the simulator felt. In my head I knew we hadn't really gone anywhere, but it sure felt like we had. There was another remarkable change in sensation. While simulating atmospheric flight I actually felt like I was moving at tremendous speed, but as we transitioned into space flight things seemed to slow down even though we were going much faster. Once again I just had to ask. "Part of that sensation, which you will also have in actual flight, is caused by the inertial compensation. The rest of it is from your subconscious realization of the difference in distances traveled on earth and those traveled in space. In outer space there is a lot more nothing between points of interest. For instance, once you leave earth, the next thing worth noticing is the moon - and it is approximately two hundred and fifty thousand miles away." What the hell, I figured it would be at least a couple of years on down the road before they could get earth up to speed building ships like this. In the mean time I could go for all the time in this simulator that I could get. That didn't turn out to be much time at all. The next morning Shikictaawa was guiding my efforts again, and my training took off in a new direction. I wasn't surprised though, since it was more along the lines of what I'd expected from the get go. I was put into a sort of cabinet, with wires and cables running everywhere and they flicked the switch. I'm not exactly sure how the knowledge moved from the machine to me, but it did. There was no sensation of learning anything, and in fact I mostly felt nothing. It wasn't exactly like I was drugged, or anything like that, but I had no urge to move around, look around, or really to do anything except sit still. Apparently time meant nothing to me during the session, since in what seemed like almost no time at all they stopped things so I could grab lunch. I'd been receiving training for six hours. An hour's worth of lunch break found me right back in my cabinet and away we went again. Six hours later we stopped for an evening meal and then I went to my compartment for some sleep. I wondered if I'd be receiving training during my sleep but Shikictaawa told me I wouldn't. "It would be nice, wouldn't it? If we could just tank you up with knowledge during your normal sleep time things could go much faster. We can't though. It's something we've never been able to accomplish and neither have any of the other races we're aware of," he said. "What happens when you try it?" I asked. "The subject wakes up right away, and stays awake." "I guess that would do it." "It almost sounds too basic to be real, doesn't it?" he asked. "It does. I guess I've been spoiled by all the Science Fiction I've read." "I wouldn't call it spoiled exactly, and some of the things you've probably read are closer to actual fact than you might assume. I know we've let you down on Phasers, but at least we do have Warp Drive, of a sort," he said, and damned if he didn't laugh at me. "Will I be learning how it works?" "Yes. It isn't so advanced as you might think. Tomorrow will be physical training, while your knowledge assimilates itself, and the next day you'll get the lowdown on Warp Drives. Of course it will take a day of physical activity before that knowledge becomes available to you," he said, as we reached my cubbyhole. I went inside and to sleep. And so it went. I'd have a day of injected knowledge and then a day of physical training. The things I learned during the knowledge transfer were somewhat deceptive since I had to actually think of something to realize I knew about it. The physical training wasn't like that since I'd done it more or less the old fashioned way. I guess you really never know exactly what you don't know until you learn what you didn't. I spent eight weeks getting pumped up with knowledge one day and then learning things physically the next. About every six days I'd do a full day of reading questions. A little like taking a test at school but without having to write down the answers. This questioning let my mind realize it now knew everything it had been taught via the injection method the spacemen had. There were assorted other things I trained for too. It seemed odd to me that I'd learned to fly a space ship first, but I had - via the simulator. Real flight training came next though, and damned if we didn't start in a Cessna 150. Of course the pace was a little faster than you'd try if going for a private pilots license. I got twelve hours of training per day, and twelve hours of injected knowledge on alternating days. I progressed from the Cessna through an F-22 and even an F-35. We didn't miss many military aircraft in between, even the oldies and goodies. The most enjoyable by far was the P-47 and my next favorite was the P-51. Don't ask me how they got their hands on these, or the obviously military helicopters. I got rotary training starting in a Cayuse and proceeding through a Comanche. All I know about the availability is that when I went out for training, the machine I was destined to use was warmed up and waiting. Maybe the most difficult thing I learned might sound like something simple. Believe me, it wasn't. I spent nearly two weeks, shooting every day, to learn how to multi-task with the Brownings, and I don't mean shooting one in my right hand and then shooting the one in my left. They taught me to use both of them at practically the same time. Of course, since I didn't have four eyes like they did it wasn't exactly at the same time. However, it was damned nearly so. Hour after hour I practiced acquiring a target for one hand and then switching and acquiring one for the other while the first was in the process of firing. I got to the point my neck seemed to almost have ball bearings so I could swivel it smoothly. Finally I balked and asked about it. "Why am I spending so much time developing this skill? I'm sure it will be helpful but I'm only one guy and I can't see where it will be that helpful," I asked. "You aren't doing it so much for your own use, you are learning to do it so we can download into the rest of the troops. This skill has been shown to give you nearly a twenty-five percent better chance of survival in hostile conditions. When you consider that every soldier will get this skill you should be able to see why it is important," Shikictaawa said, and I quit bitching. The strangest part about all the bodily modifications and the intense training was what happened when it was done. As in, nothing. I'd spent months learning to use almost every weapon known to man, from clubs to the new spacecraft we'd be getting, and then it was over. They spent three days downloading most of my brain and that was that. They sent me home. "You mean that's it? We have an invasion coming and that's all the training I'll need?" I asked. "Not exactly. That's all we need from you to train others. You might say we've just acquired a download for basic training. With two weeks of physical training one day and data transfer the next the troops will be the best trained and most deadly ever released from basic training. "That won't be all the training they need, but it is an enormous head start over your planet's old way of doing things. They'll get the training, a week off, and then be sent for specialized training, like all servicemen. You can join up and do that too if you want to be in the fight, but you aren't required to. You have already done enough to satisfy our requirements," Shikictaawa said. "So if I want to be, I'm done. No shipping off to war?" I asked. "Yes. The only thing that will force you into war now is if your side is losing badly. Remember, the Ralla want your planet, they do not want you. They have no use for slave labor and if they take the planet they will kill everyone. If it comes to that you will probably take up arms near the end at least." Now there was a sobering thought. This whole training thing had pretty much kept me from thinking about the actual need for the training. Hell, mostly I concerned myself with doing what was required and being glad that I was young and in good health again. I hadn't really come to grips with the fact that there was and invasion coming. To hell with it for now, I was going home. I had a better than brand new twenty-one year old body and I was going to take a break and see if I could get laid. ------- Chapter 3 Shikictaawa and company set me right back down at my kitchen table. It was a Friday morning in June of 2008. I was pretty much out of luck getting into my clothes now and I couldn't very well go downtown with my young self to go shopping. I hopped into my truck and drove to Dallas. No one would know or care about me there. That wasn't exactly true. When I went shopping and clerks caught onto the fact that my credit card had no problems they cared about me; no matter how raggedy or ill fitting my current clothes were. I didn't bother even trying to go to Wal-Mart because I knew I'd need help determining my new sizes. When it came down to it, finding a place with real clerks and that sold Wranglers wasn't as easy as you'd think. I had to park my pickup and hire a Limo. I even had to call six Limo companies before I found one that had a driver who thought she could help me out. Maybe I was being too careful by not showing my face in my hometown, but there it was. I just knew someone could recognize me in my new condition and after that the questions would never stop. Besides, it wouldn't sit well for me to be roaming around town trying to pick up a young girl, especially since I'd probably gone to high school with her Mama or Daddy. It took the rest of the day to get decked out with a dozen pair of wranglers, a couple of dozen shirts and all things in between. I had to settle for a store bought hat and boots, but I could get down to Austin later for a hat or two and then to San Antone for some hand made boots. Even though I looked young and was physically better than young, my head was still old inside. There was a lot of new knowledge all right, but I couldn't see it helping in my current project. After all, what sweet young East Texas girl was going to be impressed with an explanation of a Warp Drive or a visit with Nancy Pelosi? Not a damned one was my thinking. Hell, I didn't even know what kind of music kids listened to today. I might recognize a few of the new country stars but I didn't know a rapper from a pimp, even if there was some difference. I did think of one place I might fit in though. In my misspent youth I had once wanted to be a bull rider. I found out quickly that it wasn't even nearly as easy as it looked. If you think about it, you'll see that you don't know where in the hell you even go to learn to ride a bull. I didn't either. It isn't like you can just go out in a pasture and saddle one up. The places I learned to ride bulls were called buck-outs. It isn't even a rodeo, just a ratty assed arena in one small town or another where a stock provider sends a few bulls and lets young idiots give it a whirl for money. My first trip to a buck-out wasn't productive either. Oh there were enough bulls all right, but I didn't have any bull spurs and I didn't even have a bull rope. I'd figured there would be a guy with a tack trailer there that could sell me anything I would need. Wrong again, Jake. They barely even had lights on the arena, and the crowd was extremely small. I did get a break when I spotted Billy Scoggins. Billy went to the same high school I did, when he went. He had an alarming case of little man syndrome. He was barely five feet tall but he would end up in a fistfight with anyone that said a cross word to him, and damned if he didn't win a lot of them. Billy was even too small to ride bulls, or for most any kind of rodeo event. He made up for it by being a rodeo clown, possibly the most dangerous occupation on earth. Anyway, since Billy and I had never been in a fight, and since he knew just about everything about bull riding, I talked him into riding to the state line for beer and got him to tell me everything he thought was pertinent to riding bulls. He even went with me the next day, helping me find where to buy, what to buy, and how to get it ready for the next buck-out. The next Friday Billy went with me to Ardmore Oklahoma to a big buck-out. This one was so big that there was even a showing of audience, though not really that many. They even had three tack trailers there, but Billy told me the stuff they had would be nearly worthless. "Hell Jake, nothin' is more embarrassing than having your bull rope break on you at the first jump out of the gate." Well, I signed up for bull riding practice. It was ten bucks for all the bulls you had the strength to climb aboard. Most of them weren't even too rough. Billy had spent a little time showing me how to rosin up my bull rope and how to tie the thing to my hand to make sure it stayed tight as long as I wanted it to but would come off the instant I released my grip. He told me it wasn't so embarrassing to still be attached to the bull after it had thrown you off, but that it could sure be painful. Soon enough they called my name and it was my turn to straddle that chute and lower myself onto the back of a bull that did not want me up there. Plenty of cowboys were hanging around to help you in this chore. They threaded my bull rope around the bull and held it tight while I wrapped it around my hand and pounded the knot soundly to make the rosin stick. My first jump out of the gate wasn't much with this bull. It was my first buck-out but it wasn't the bulls, and he was tired of the routine I guess. There I was, hanging on for dear life, squeezing hell out of my grip around the bull rope and with my bull spurs dug in tight under the bull. All the damned bull did was lope away from the gate and I'd ridden horses with a rougher gait. Now I wasn't completely stupid. I knew that this happened sometimes and that I was supposed to get off the bull, since it wasn't bucking, and try again. Unfortunately, neither Billy nor I had discussed how to get off a bull that wasn't trying to throw you off. I'm sure he thought, like I did, that it was something that would just never come up. Finally I realized I could swing a leg over and let go. Of course the announcer made a production of explaining what happened and that everyone should dismount promptly without trying to teach the bull to neck rein. Hell, I never even lost my hat. It wasn't long until my turn came round again, and whoever was assigning which bull to what rider made sure I got my money's worth this time. When I got to the proper chute three guys were beating the bull around the head and shoulders with short clubs, trying to get it to be still long enough for me to get aboard. As I came up they were just getting its front legs back inside the gate. It had been trying to climb out. They only had to hit it between the horns four or five more times for me and the helpers to get the rope around it and my hand wrapped up in my bull rope. This was a jersey bull, and it probably weighed at least seven hundred pounds more than my first ride. The bull was not in a good mood either. One of the last things I noticed was that one of the bull's horns seemed to be turned around a hundred and eighty degrees. It was bent back and seemed awfully close to my left leg. I nodded my head and they turned it out. I got more than my money's worth this time. First jump out of the gate the bull slammed that bent back horn into my thigh and I thought it had broken my leg. I didn't have any trouble getting off this time, though the three second ride seemed longer than the previous thirty-second gallop. It was damned luck for me that Billy and plenty more rodeo clowns were also taking this opportunity to practice their skills. As soon as I hit the ground and had the time to realize that I couldn't stand up on my injured leg, right after I realized that I'd had the wind knocked out of me, the darling bull turned around and started directly toward me. Billy wasn't the first one to get its attention, but that one was sent flying right away. Billy was actually the third one to be butted over twenty feet. By that time I had hobbled over to the fence and climbed it for all I was worth. The bull was tenacious though and its head hit the wooden fence right as I got my injured ass out of the way. He broke two of the two by ten fence stringers. I was hurt but happy because even though the crowd was small, I did get a standing ovation for my trouble. I didn't give them much of a ride but it was sure as hell exciting, for everyone. Maybe they were applauding the bull. As they say, that was then and this was now. I was going to try a buck out again with my new and improved body. I wouldn't have Billy Scoggins to help me out this time but what the hell; I'd already ridden a bull once, even if it wasn't for very long. A little checking and calling around let me know that yes sir ree; they still had the occasional buck-out at Ardmore. I was there with bells on, or thirty-degree angle bulls spurs anyway. I wasn't planning on finding a horny young cowgirl at a buck-out, though there'd be some here for sure. Hell though, they'd be Oakies. No, I was practicing up for a real hometown rodeo. At least this time I didn't look stupid. I still had my same old bull-rope, it had been the best money could buy at the time and after all these years it didn't look brand new any more. Course I looked brand new to everyone there but that didn't really matter. My first bull wasn't a loper this time but it wasn't a wild assed Indian either. With my new equipment, and I ain't talkin' 'bout the spurs or rope, I didn't have much trouble staying aboard for eight. I even got a smattering of applause. My next turn was on a more excitable bull. It was still nothing compared to the disaster of the Jersey with the bent back horn, but he was energetic. I stayed on for the full eight seconds again, but the ride wouldn't have counted because he did surprise me once and I tagged him (touched the bull with my free hand) and that is always a no no. I had two more rides that night and I paid a lot closer attention to them. I managed to ride them both and it seemed that each one was more of a handful than the last. I found out though that with my super quick reactions and inhuman strength I could stay ahead of their gyrations. By now I figured I could make a decent showing at a real rodeo, and by the way the cowboys warmed up to me after I showed them I could ride, I knew that the cowgirls would probably be receptive soon enough. Two weeks from now would be the rodeo in Mt Pleasant Texas. Yes indeed, the home of Don Meredith, one of the toughest Cowboys of all, for a quarterback. He might not be the best quarterback that ever played the game, but to my mind he was by far the toughest. Toughest I'd ever seen in person or on TV either. He played before they had all the rules to keep the precious quarterback from getting hurt. He's sure the only quarterback I ever saw to get his nose broken twice in one game and never miss a play. Making my appearance on a Saturday night in August I was amazed at just how many people still showed up at rodeos. The place was packed and not just with spectators. There were over fifty cowboys signed up just for the bull riding, not to mention all the other events. At a real rodeo you didn't just take the bull that came up next. In an effort to be somewhat fair about it, names were drawn to see which cowboy rode which bulls. Of course I didn't give a shit about any of that, just as long as I could make enough of a showing to find a willing cowgirl. Since I was a new face I figured I'd be a head of the game, and since I was bigger than the rest of the contestants it should be all the better. Bull riders are not big men, usually. The bigger you are the more there is for the bull to get off balance. I wasn't a giant by any means, but at six-two and two-fifty I was a giant among the bull riders. I'm sure most of them thought I wouldn't be able to hang on long. I had news for them, and for the bulls. Even if they probably aren't the smartest people in the world, bull riders are not short on confidence or nerve. A few of them gave me the business, since I was new and obviously too big for the sport I'd chosen. Most of it was good-natured but a few were a little snotty about it. I tried to keep my cool but I wasn't going to try too hard if they kept it up all night. One of them could definately get his ass stomped if he didn't watch it and not necessarily by a bull. My first bull was pretty salty. He jumped hard out of the gate and landed on stiff legs to make it as rough as possible. He started spinning to the left right away and I had the good sense to hang on with my inside leg and spur hell out of him with the outer one. That was about it for the ride. He did catch on and change directions, nearly unseating me, but it was after the whistle and so I just jumped off since the ride was over. Only thing was the bull didn't pay any attention to the whistle. The clowns weren't that good and when he came at me they weren't there to distract him. He knew in his heart that he had the size and strength on me, but he didn't know how close it was on the strength part. He lowered his head and I'm sure it was in his mind to butt me into next week. With my alien quickness I was able to step to the side, behind his horns, and grab one in each hand. It was a little like bulldogging except with a larger bull than they use. It was also with a hell of a lot stronger man than any bulldogger could hope to be. The crowd went silent as the bull hit the ground; knocked off his feet by the incredible twist I gave his neck. When I let go and walked away the applause was thunderous. The bull was stunned and it took him a few seconds to get up. The announcer made a big deal out of it too, claiming that even if I didn't place I should be paid the same as the clowns for the night. The attitude of the bull riders had taken a turn too. They knew better than anyone that what I'd done was at least superhuman, even if they didn't have a clue about how I'd been able to do it. They weren't ready to be buddy buddy or anything but the banter and teasing came to an abrupt halt. At first I was a little embarrassed about what I'd done, but it only took a couple of minutes to discover that it was the best thing that could have happened in pursuit of my real goal. A rodeo isn't exactly like other sporting events. You won't see normal people allowed along the sidelines at a football game, but at an outdoor rodeo it isn't even remarkable for people to be roaming around where the cowboys are getting ready for their events. The normal people I was interested in, the ones with super tight jeans and jiggling titties were present in plenty back here and I was currently the main attraction. There was no mobbing me like a rock star or anything, but there was a steady stream of sweet young things coming up to say hello, and every one of them asked me if I was going to the "Orange Blossom Special" - the local watering hole - after the rodeo. Of course I said I'd see them there. The rest of the rodeo was more of the same. A few seconds of a wild ride twice more breaking up the young cuties that wanted to meet me up close and personal. I came in third in the event, and it was all the more impressive to me since most of the cowboys did this full time, for a living. They weren't the countries best by far, but they were all professional cowboys, and they knew their business. I don't think I was very popular with them when all was said and done. I didn't give a shit about them though. I seemed popular enough with the cowgirls and I knew there'd be lots of full contact slow dances in my future tonight. It didn't take long for things to get started either. I hadn't even finished my first Lone Star Longneck at the Special when one of the cowgirls from the rodeo came over and asked me to dance. To an old man like I really was this was a switch. On my first trip through twenty-one years old a girl would rather slit her wrist than ask a boy to dance. Some things about these modern days weren't so bad after all. It was a slow dance, and Kitty - I'll swear she said her name was Kitty - wasn't one bit boner shy. My dick was harder than Chester's stiff leg in ten seconds and Kitty made sure it stayed that way. Kitty was a luscious little big tittied, tight assed blonde but there was no way she was old enough to be in here legally and I was pretty sure she wasn't old enough to fuck without her parents' permission. That didn't mean she wasn't fine with having my right leg between hers and rubbing her pretty pussy against my thigh for all it was worth. She didn't mind a bit when my hands took over the protection and fondling of her high and proud ass cheeks either. Thankfully Kitty didn't seem to be seriously trolling for my dick. After three belly rubbers I told her I had to sit down for a few minutes so she tickled my tonsils with her tongue tip and moved on. Most of the rodeo crowd hadn't hit here yet, so after grabbing another Lone Star at the giant bar I was able to find and empty table and sit down. It was just in time too. A girl with shining long black wavy hair and even bigger titties than Kitty strolled her long legs over to my table and sat right in my lap. She kissed me even better than Kitty and wiggled her luscious ass around on the hard dick that Kitty had relinquished. "My name is Tammy Faye and I'm sure glad I found your lap empty. I can tell that you liked Kitty though. I'm afraid she's just a little too young for you," Tammy Faye said, confirming my suspicions. "I guess you're hinting that you're not?" I asked. "Not hardly. My parents got sucked into the whole Jim and Tammy Faye shtick and didn't have any better sense than to name me after her. I flew their coop last year when I turned eighteen and when I call on Jesus it ain't cause I want to be saved," she said, and wiggled around on Peter some more. "What do you do in real life?" I asked. "I have a job at Foxworth-Galbraith to keep me going until I finish nursing school. I hope I can keep it up until I'm qualified as an anestesis. I won't have any trouble getting an RN but anestesis make a lot more money. "What about you. Do you just rodeo for a living?" she asked. "No. If I told you the whole story you wouldn't believe it. Currently I concentrate on being rich for a living," I said. "What? What does that mean? "I own the mineral rights on about a thousand acres of land. It has one well that was as good as pumped out. Last November something changed and the oil started coming up on its own. Nobody knows how or why, but it's making a little over five hundred barrels per eight-hour shift now. I can't even spend all that money. It would be too much like work," I said. "Well what the hell were you doing riding bulls at a rodeo? And that's another thing, how in the hell did you get that first one down?" "I was riding bulls to attract the attentions of some pretty cowgirls. As you can see it worked. As for throwing the bull, I'm just that strong, and it helped me with getting attention didn't it?" I asked. "It sure as hell got my attention, and lots more too I'll bet," she said. "Well I don't need several. Are you ready to get married?" "I'm not quite ready to make that kind of commitment, even if you are as rich as you say. Why don't we go somewhere and have a short honeymoon first?" she asked. "Sounds great. Where would you like to go; London, Paris, someplace like that?" I asked. "Hell no. Get me to Vegas and the biggest hotel room you can afford before I come to my senses." "Well come on then, times a waistin'." Tammy Faye didn't say a word about the disreputable looking 76 Chevy pickup we left the Orange Blossom lot in but she did ask where we were going when I headed west on I-30. "To Dallas first. I'll buy a plane and we can fly to Vegas," I said. "Buy a plane? Hey, you know they have planes going that way all the time anyway and you can actually get tickets and ride on them," she said, and was only slightly sarcastic about it. "Maybe, but I'm trying to really impress you. Besides, I don't trust any pilots but me." "What the hell, you're the man and if you say so I'm gonna believe you until you step in something. What's that whining noise from the tires that just started?" she asked. "Oh, it's just the big tread on those Monster Mudders. It whines when you get up over a hundred." "Won't you get a ticket going that fast?" she asked. "Maybe, but I doubt it. I have an extra good radar detector." I did too. That little wireless connection Shikictaawa had been so nonchalant about was more than just a wireless connection, or at least it could do more than I expected. I don't know what it was connecting to, but I could pull up a complete map of any roads and if I asked, it would tell me were any police car of any type was located along my route. If they were using radar, or even a laser timer the map would show me and warn me before I came into range. I'm sure that it wasn't intended for this sort of thing, but it sure worked good. Tammy Faye settled down to asking questions about where I lived and the normal shit like that. I told her I didn't have a real home place right now, explaining that I'd been too busy traveling and fucking off since I got rich all of a sudden. Naturally I didn't mention that a space ship orbiting Jupiter was where I'd spent most of my time lately. One of the other great things I'd discovered about my little implant was that it would work perfectly well as a cell phone, and without and audible tell tale. I could call any normal phone and carry on a conversation by thought only on my end. Something had to translate that to voice on the other end but I didn't think I needed to worry about those details. I used the phone feature to call around shopping for an aircraft while we were on the way. I bought a Learjet 60 from a Dallas dealer. It wasn't new but it had just been completely refurbished and it could be ready to go as soon as we got to it. I made arrangements to come to their place of business for the paperwork and then gave them an ETA. Tammy Faye never noticed a thing. ------- Chapter 4 Tammy Faye looked like she was nearly in a daze as we entered the aircraft sales office. There was a suede shoe operator to greet us at the door and he couldn't be more pleased to meet us. He told me himself. He also assured me he'd be happy to help us with anything else we could think of. I asked him to get my pickup into safe storage and get us a Limo to my new plane. By the time I finished signing the papers and arranging for payment my pickup was gone and the Limo was waiting. It took nearly half an hour to get to Love field where the plane was parked. It was already warmed up and ready. I escorted Tammy Faye to the co-pilot's seat and then went back outside to do a preflight and then into the building to file a flight plan. I'd already checked the weather via my implant. With that done I sat down and contacted ground control. I could have done that via my implant but used the plane's radio, hoping to seem more normal for Tammy Faye. They put me in line for takeoff and away we went. The only thing now was a call to air traffic control. They gave me a heading and altitude and we were on our way. We'd been in the air about five minutes before Tammy Faye made a sound. "Man Jake, when you try to impress a girl you go all out," she said. "Not for just any girl. I was serious about marriage, I need a wife to keep me from doing stupid things." "I can tell. If we'd been married I'd have made you take a normal flight." "Where would the fun be in that? Even first class is crowded and there's always a bunch of assholes on a commercial flight. Not to mention you have a better pilot now," I said. "Maybe, but it's so outrageous. Buying a plane for a trip to Vegas. Hell, you can get a ticket easy for a hundred bucks." "You're going to have to get out of the habit. Saving money is un-American. I do have some bad news though." "What could be bad?" "I can't get the biggest room I can afford. Britney Spears already had the Palms Casino Villa for twenty-five thousand a night. Do you have any place special you'd like to stay?" I asked, deadpan. "I don't want to be anywhere like that. I was shooting my mouth off about the biggest place you could afford. At the time I was hoping it would be better than Motel Six. Anyplace that's nice will do, and try to hold the price down for my sake. I just wouldn't be comfortable staying somewhere that cost twice as much a night as I make in a year." "I'm glad you said that. I'll get us a suite at Binion's. I'm a regular there and they treat me well." "Come out to see the showgirls a lot, huh?" "Not really, I play poker a lot though. It's usually even better in Binion's now since they sold the rights to The World Series of Poker. They don't have nearly as many weirdoes coming around trying to get airtime on TV anymore. They still get plenty of people to lose money though," I said. Things went smoothly at Binion's and they put us in a nice suite. Tammy Faye didn't think of it that way. To her it was the most luxurious place she'd ever stayed. She froze in place as soon as the bellman opened the door. I had him drop the bags where he was and tipped him away. Tammy Faye still hadn't moved but she did as soon as he shut the door on his way out. She headed directly for the bed, dropping clothes as she went. When she was buck naked she flopped into the middle of the bed and spread those wonderful legs. "If you're going to just stand there and gawk, make yourself useful by calling room service and ordering me some dick. Rich men make me horny and if you aren't going to come over here and fuck me right now you need to call someone to take care of it," she said, purring. That was enough of a hint even for me. I didn't get out of my clothes as easily as she had, even with her help. It didn't mean I wasn't ready for action when I did get naked. "Oh, a nice long fat one, and it's so hard too," Tammy Faye said, and then pulled me between her legs. "We can try some foreplay before next time, for now, just push it in and pump." I didn't mind if I did, and I'll admit when I got it up her I was damned happy about the way things were going. Tammy Faye was hot, tight, slick, and equipped with the new Ronco Fast Action Ass. I'm sure it had ball bearings in there somewhere. The most important part was a cooter that fit like a glove and squeezed like a fist. We went a little crazy for a while there and I know both of us were trying to show off. This was my first chance to give my alien enhanced tool a good test drive. Tammy Faye went off like a rocket in only a few minutes, but I kept going through her come and had her on the way to another one before she realized it. I went off too the second time and then slumped onto her for a little breather. No matter what Tammy Faye thought, I wasn't done yet. I nibbled around on those big titties for a while as my hands fondled her ass and everything else they could reach. She was a little passive for a few minutes but soon enough we were playing the old in-out in-out game again and damned if we weren't both winning. I hope I didn't play too rough, but Tammy Faye did faint when she went off this time. She came back in a few seconds and it was just unfortunate my still hard dick was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. "Ok, that's it. I can take a joke as well as the next girl, but we're going right back to Mount Pleasant," she said. "I'm sorry, have I done something wrong?" "No, you've done something exactly right. The trouble is you can do too much of it. I need to go home and get my sister and maybe a couple of friends to help me out with that monster. I like you fine, better every minute in fact, but it doesn't mean I'm gonna let you fuck me to death if I can draft some relief. "You go take a shower while I call Mitsy," she said, and I considered myself dismissed for the moment. After a quick shower I was back in the bedroom to get dressed. Tammy Faye was still on the phone, but she had a question for me while I was still drying off. "Can you land that plane in Mount Pleasant?" she asked. "I can during the day. They don't have the proper lights for a night landing." "Hell, it'll be daytime before Mitsy is ready anyhow. She'll have to get someone to give her a ride but somebody will, surely." "Just call a Limo." "We don't have a Limo service there. Hell, we don't even have cabs." "Call one from Dallas, they have plenty." "But that's gonna cost an arm and a leg," she said. "I can afford several arms and legs. Call a Limo. Never mind, I'll do it," I said, and after she hung up I did. She gave me the address and then hit the shower while I made the arrangements. ------- Chapter 5 An hour and a half later we were in the air again and Tanny Faye was slobbering over my dick. She'd been determined to give me a mile high blowjob and I didn't mind if she did. Unfortunately I didn't get off in time for the landing and she had to give up and let me land the damned plane. The Limo was waiting for us and as soon as we were inside Tammy Faye gave him directions and away we went. I was a little surprised when we got to the house Glenda lived in. It was a three bedroom brick with a double carport. Tanny Faye said the black Volkswagen was her's and the brown one was Glenda's. They both looked like shit and as soon as Glenda was in the Limo I had the driver take us to the biggest car lot in town and we went shopping. They both squawked at me but I tried to tell them to quit it and we went into the office and soon enough I was talking to the sales manager. He was on the phone quickly looking for a pair of Corverres. Hell, they didn't even have one on the lot. He found two in Dallas and I got the address and told him we'd take a look at them and see if they'd do. Glenda was the one stupified when we went back to my plane and she was a little quiet until we landed in Love field. Hell, I could deal with a little shyness to get hold of a blue-eyed Redhead built almost exactly like Tammy Faye. Another Limo picked us up and took us to the car place I told him about and we bypassed the regular salesmen and went directly to the salesmanager's office. He was ever so happy to meet us and things were looking good until he showed us the cars. One of them was last year's model and the other one had a couple of hundred miles on the odometer. I whipped out my cell phone for looks and dialed the guy in Mt Pleasant and chewed his ass out good and proper. "Find me two new Corvettes or kiss the sale goodbye," I told him, and hung up. "The sales manager with us perked up then and told us he had two new ones on the other side of the lot. "Fine, you can keep them. I wouldn't buy a fucking thing from your slimy ass if you offered it to me for half price," I said, and I ushered the girls back to the Limo and we left. I didn't know what kind of shitty deal the asshole had been trying to pull on me, but I didn't care. I told the Limo driver to just take us around to a few car lots and let us look over what was available. About five stops later he drove by an imported car lot and they had two brand new V12 XKEs all washed and shined up. I told him to pull in and we made a deal right away. Of course the Jags weren't new, but hey, they were classics and they'd been redone right. The dealer was impressed when my debit card handled the price for both of them without choking. He tried to interest me in newer models right away and I told him he'd have better luch selling one of those ugly new jags to a wino. "I have trouble trying to figure out how they could come up with something as beautiful as the XKE and then putting out cars as ugly as the ones they make now. What happened, did the best designer die or something?" I asked him, but he didn't know. Glenda and Tammy Faye were happy enough with the rides though. I told the Limo driver to follow us and we headed back to their home in Mt Pleasant. Of course we had to get in the Limo and head back to Love Field to pick up my plane. When we were airborne again Glenda wanted to know where we were going now. "Right back to Vegas. I didn't even check out of Binion's and they should have the room at least made up again by now." I said. I was right and the suite did look all made up again. We went right down to catch some of the buffet food and stuffed ourselves. I'd intended to get a major fucking started to welcome Glenda to our home away from home, but the girls wanted to go shopping and so I gave them one of the alien supplied credit cards and let them have at it. I decided to play a little poker and when I was dealt in I noticed right away there was some little thing in my head nagging at me. I gave it some attention and it turned out to be some of mathmatical training giving me the odds of winning with every hand. It wasn't like a sure thing or anything, but it did let me know exactly where I stood from my point of view. I didn't have any information every other player didn't have, except for wht my cards were, but I knew exactly where I stood as far as odds went. It was helpful in other ways too. Since I didn't need to calculate anything I could pay more attention to the other players and after a little observation I was able to pick up a few tells. Nothing amazing, but I got to where I could get a feeling from the other players and it turned out I was right more often than I wasn't. Of course I wasn't playing with any high-rollers or anything, just the normal people in off the street to gamble a little. Most of them were at a tremendous disadvantage though since I had loads of cash and I could pretty well bully them all over the place. Later an arab gentleman sat at the table and he had a shitload of money on his own. We avoided a couple of chances to bump heads and I even let him bully me out of a couple of pots. Of course I hadn't had much chance of winning those anyway. I got Shikictaawa's attention then via the link in my head and asked him to take a look at my table and tell me if he could let me in on any useful information. "Jake, are you asking me to help you cheat" he asked. "Of course I am. Remember, any money I win will be money you don't have to spend on me," I said. "Oh, the money is no problem, but I don't see where a little help from us could hurt anything." he said, and he promptly put some kind of mental display of the table in my head. It seemed almost like the view out of an eye I knew I didn't have and it was as if it was showing up between the normal view out of my eyes. It was more than I could have hopped for because it let me know what every card on the table was. Hell, this was great and I started winning more money right away and my losses practically went away. Suddenly the Arab gentleman started bluffing on a hand and I knew from his poor cards he was doing it. The only trouble was my hand this time was even worse. From the way I folded though I could tell he thought his bluff had done the trick. He tried it again when he only had a small pair and I had three kings. I made all the tentative moves I could and managed to suck him in to making a big try at bluffine me off. He raised on the river and I doubled his raise and then he doubled it again. I called and took over a hundred thousand off him. I could tell it pissed him right off. It came up again a few hands later and he had better cards this time, but I could see plainly I had him beat. I made my tentative little moves again and suckered him in and took eighty-five thousand off him this tiem. He was obviously loosing his cool. Just then a rather large man of obvious Italian descent came up to stand behind me and rather closely at that. I made sure he couldn't see my cards by never picking them up. The betting got spirited again since I could tell the Arab didn't have shit. Mine hand wasn't much better but it was better and we bumped heads agin in a big way. Damned if the fool didn't try another bluff and go all in. His chipse were easily over two hundred grand and I called at once. He was ever so pissed when he found out he lost and he nodded at the man behind me. The Italian gentleman made a very stupid move then when he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed in what he must have thought was a threatening manner. I knew where this was going to end up and I put my hand on his and did a little squeezing of my own. I crushed his hand in mine shortly and he fell to the floor trying his best to stifle a scream. He didn't do a very good job of it. The dealer, a skinny man, didn't know what to do and I gave him a little shit about letting the non-player try to physically intimidate me. There was quite a commotion and soon enough a gentleman came over asking me to come with him to the back of the casino. Hell, I went, but I didn't like it when two brusiers fell in step with me on either side. We went to a backroom where we viewed a video tape of the whole scene. The one who had invited me back there looked it over three or four times and once in slow motion. He admitted I'd done nothing wrong and that the other one had caused the trouble. "Unfortunately the Arab gentleman is a very good customer here at Binions and I'm still going to have to ask you to leave," he said. "Oh, I see now. I said and then I let one of the bruisers have it in the solar plexus and slapped the other one so hard he fell unconcious. I didn't stop there though. I grabbed up the one who'd ask me to come into the back room by the shoulders and clamped my hands over his collarbones on both sides. They were almost trivial to break. "Let me tell you something dumbass. You don't have any idea who you're fucking with so I'd suggest you stop it right away," I told him, and returned to the table. The Arab was visibly astonished to see me return and I got in touch with Shikictaawa right away and asked him to cut off the assholes ability to breathe until he passed out. Ninety seconds later he was in obvious distress and then hit the floor. The dealer was about to shit by now and he pressed some type of call button that had a gurney and two medics over to tend to the jackass at once. Unfortunately two other large gentlemen came over to try dealing with me again. Another call to Shikictaawa had them passing from lack of breath before they even reached the table. What the hell, the game was shot to hell now and so I walked over to the nearest roulette wheel and put my now hefty stack of chips on 00 as soon as I could. Of course with a little help from my friends it came up promptly. To cover the excitement I had him make every slot machine come up to top dollar for the nest six plays. God almighty, the noise from the paying off slots and the people winning was nearly a roar almost at once. Of course they halted play on everything at once. They nearly had to just to get the slots paid off. I just sat at the table waiting for the game to start back up, but I figured it wouldn't. Sure enough a guy in a suit came over to talk to me and told me I couldn't play any longer. "I told the asshole in the back room to back off but you shitheads can't seem to learn. If I can't play nobody will." I said. Shikictaawa caught on by himself this time and the tables in the casino started turning over. I mean they lifted up, turned upside down and then fell straight down to the floor. It happened so fast the guy didn't have a chance to even leave my side. "Now, do I have your attention?" I asked the guy. "Yes, I'd say you do? How could I be of service?" he asked. "You can get this table turned right side up and get this game going again or every slot machine in this place is going to start spitting out money whether anyone is playing them or not." I said. Just then two more bruisers came up and I guess they were to help the guy, but they didn't help at all. They both pulled out pistols and shot him in a leg each and then they shot each other in a leg. That was about it for the excitement, but I just kept sitting there and waiting for the game to start up again. There were medics and gurneys all over the place now. Besides the damage I'd done some of the overturned tables had come down on some of the gamblers. Somehow word had alredy worked its way from the guy the two bruisers had shot to the head man. Benny Binion came down to talk with me and asked me to accompany him to his office. "Are you gonna try to have more of your muscle try to encourage me to leave again. Believe me, some of them are going to die this time if you do. I told the first asshole who bothered me he didn't know who he was fuckig with and I believe you can tell I was right. Hold your breath a minute or so," I said, and all of a sudden he sucked in a big one and then stopped. I let it go on for about thirty seconds and then told Shikictaawa to turn him loose. He sucked in a bigger breath this time and then sat down. "Do you believe me now or do you need some more damage in here to catchon. Maybe you'd like a heart attack like some of our elected officials had a few months ago," I said. His eyes went wide and then he started begging. I told him to knock it off. "All I asked the first idiot who started this whole mess was to leave me alone. I wasn't even winning the casino's money, but he just had to fuck with me. This place can be leveled to the ground by morning if you'd like, and none of your muscle can touch me. By the way, the next one you build can go right in the shitter too," I said. He promised me faithfully there'd be no more trouble for me in his place. "Good, I'm glad we could come to this understanding. When you get ready to reopen let me know and I'll make sure you get plenty of customers. Yours isn't the only place I can have a startling effect on. He promised he'd be in touch with me and then damned if he didn't spoil it by sending two more goos after me as I left. Funny, they both took out their guns and committed suicide on the way out of the place. I just flagged a cab and headed for the Golden Nugget. I started inside but my heart wasn't in it. I called up Shikictaawa and asked him to removed the girls from Binions and get them a nice suite somewhere else. He said he'd take care of it and then asked me if I'd like for him to put the real fear of God into the last man I'd talked to. I gave him my ascent and as far as I know the gentleman spent a few hours in the spaceship getting the lowdown. Of course some of the facts made it into the paper the next morning and it was the talk of the town for several days. Binion's was closed for a week and even though they didn't get in touch with me, when they reopened Shikictaawa caused a loss of electricity at five major casinos hoping to steer a little business Binion's way. ------- Incomplete and Inactive ------- Posted: 2007-09-04 Last Modified: 2010-06-13 / 04:11:34 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------