Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
Volume Three: Current Era (mostly)
Prologue
HI! I’M BOB. I’ll be your uncle tonight.
No, just kidding. I’m your friendly neighborhood 4,000-year-old demon. This is the third volume of my memoirs and it will be filled with miscellaneous stuff from the past 4,000 years of my life, as I remember things while trying to sort out what is happening today. It’s all very confusing when you have that much trivia floating around in your head.
For example, I was just reminded of the time I saw Roman numerals invented. It was… A story for later. I really need to learn to stick to the one I’m telling now.
I called the first two volumes of my memoirs “Before Caesar” (BC) and “After Caesar” (AC) because I thought because I thought Caesar represented the pivotal point that divided my ancient past from my modern past. It was the time that I moved away from the Mediterranean as my base of operation and started East. So, what should I call this third volume? If I have my way, it will be called “Escape from Planet of the Humans.” I doubt my editors will let me get away with that one. And if they let it pass, the censors at the Brazilian Forest book selling giant would ban it. Ah well. I’ll call this the ‘Current Era,’ which means roughly 2020+.
You don’t need to read the first two volumes of my memoirs if you understand a few fundamental things that I’ll go about describing now. However, as an author who considers each of his words sacred, I’ll be highly offended if you don’t read my magnificent adventures in the other two volumes. Now or later.
First, some 4,000 years ago, give or take a couple of centuries, when I was being chased from Knossos on Crete, I worked a spell on an old leather satchel to create room inside it for whatever I wanted to put there. At the time, I was thinking of things like Pinaruti’s scrolls of magic, ingredients that he kept in his magic room, and wine. But in the rush to leave, I stuffed everything I could grab into the bag, including the furniture, the food, my wives, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down.
Over the ages, we discovered the infinity room, as I called it then—now called Areola—expanded to accommodate whatever I put in there. And the things I put in it brought the memory of their surroundings, so that when I put sheep in the room, lush pastures grew. When I planted crops, rain fell. And when I brought in people they seemed to live forever—young and healthy. Areola in the Current Era (CE) has a population of some three and a half million. It has its own eco-structure and physics, seemingly unrelated to that of earth. And it exists conveniently in an old leather satchel that I have worked countless spells on to enhance its durability and invisibility. More about that later.
Among the people in Areola are my five wives and five possessions. The wives are not the only wives I have had over the past 4,000 years. I have married many times, but these are the only ones who have taken up residence in the infinity room. The rest have lived out normal lives and I stayed with them and cradled them in my arms as they passed from the natural world. I have often wept because I loved each and every one of them.
My wives in Areola start with Nimia—with me since Knossos, not long after I was first summoned. Then there’s Penelope—formerly Odysseus’ wife, but I had been masquerading as the fabled hero for years (a story you can read about in volume one). I met and married Lakshmi, the third of my infinity wives, in India about two or three centuries AC. Esmeralda became my wife just before I sailed with Columbus. She is the great granddaughter of my one-time wife Esmira, who succeeded in locking me in the infinity room for seventy years before Esmeralda set me free. And finally, there is Peninnah, my wife of the Current Era, who sort of came with my inheritance of 500 billion dollars.
Occasionally—not as often as you might suspect—a lover asks or commands me to possess her. Those words are like a compulsion within me. I think I could resist, but I have no desire to. Once she says “Possess me!” I merge myself completely into her mind, body, and soul. I have acquired five possessions in the past 4,000 years. The first was Josephet, or Josie. She was the unwanted daughter of a desert sheikh—a girl I rescued from a well. Back when I was serving in Nebuchadnezzar’s court in Babylon, he made a gift of the lovely Persian, Pari. I asked her if she was a willing partner because I will have no slaves. She responded with those wonderful words. “Yes. Possess me.”
Let me see. After my voyage with Columbus, I spent a good bit of time wandering the southern Americas, collecting Kukulkàn’s people with his priestess, Maya. She happily became my possession at the urging of her god and goddess. And Liz is my twentieth century possession. She was a bra-burning feminist from San Francisco in the 1960s. She has a better grasp of the modern world than all except Peninnah, so is often at my side when I’m dealing with movie scripts and television producers.
I said five possessions and that is only four. Princess Agora is the only person I have ever possessed who didn’t specifically ask for it. I found her on an island in the South Pacific and we fell in love. She came with me when I sailed from the island, but was soon overwhelmed by the sense of vastness of the world. She had thought her island was the entire universe. I possessed her to save her from a near vegetative state brought on by acute agoraphobia. I offered to free her again later, but she would have none of it and now seldom leaves my palace in Areola.
There are others who are extremely important and will recur as I tell my story. The first is Fa Zhi. We met in China, sometime around a thousand years AC. She became so devoted to me that it nears worship. She is often my bodyguard and protector and has taken it upon herself to make sure everyone in Areola is trained in the martial arts.
Devotion that approaches worship is the province of Zhi. Complete worship is the exclusive province of the fifty-two priestesses of Bob. These are all young women I rescued in my days hunting pirates in the Pacific between the Americas and Asia. They had all been captured, enslaved, and abused by various pirates, whom I gleefully destroyed. The girls were in truly bad shape when I brought them to Areola, so I made up a ritual to purify them in the pool. From that moment, they have worshiped The Bob in his temple. They allow no man to come near them, including me when I am in human guise. They worship me only as the horned and goat-legged demon. They also happen to be the most highly skilled of all the martial artists Zhi has trained. They have become a kind of ninja corps and have been called upon over the years to rescue one of our number or to free women and children (mostly) from traffickers around the world. I foresee great things for them before we leave earth.
Which brings me to the final category of people I will mention by name. I bought a space exploration company and my intent is to get in a rocket ship and just keep going into outer space so I can safely crawl into the satchel and spend eternity in Areola. In order to get things off the ground, so to speak, my advisor Doug developed the concept of a reality television show to select a crew of beautiful women for my ship. He said no one would believe we were really blasting off and the TV show would keep suspicions off us in the name of entertainment.
We selected a crew during the mini-series as a competition. There were complications and I didn’t want to lose any of the eliminated contestants. I started taking the ‘losers’ to Areola if they wanted to continue on the journey with me. All but two elected to do so. When we were down to just seven contestants, I faced a rebellion and they refused to eliminate anyone else from their number and threatened to all walk out if I sent any of them away. Quite the climax to the mini-series. I brought them all to Areola.
The eleven women of my ‘crew’ are Deedee—a 23-year-old sociologist, selected for me by the goddess Aphrodite; Artemisia—an 18-year-old artist whose devotion approaches that of Zhi; Wendy—a 28-year-old journalist and master mimic of voices; Eun-ha—a 23-year-old Korean mathematician; Suhani—a 29-year-old Indian software engineer; Julie—a 22-year-old Formula one racecar driver; Valerie—a 30-year-old former chef to the Queen of England; Karla—a 31-year-old commercial pilot; Lalonda—a 31-year-old black former policewoman and martial arts expert; Marie—a 33-year-old Mexican doctor with an incredible sense of humor; and Linda—a 27-year-old school teacher. I give you all their ages because once they entered Areola, that is the age they stayed at, no matter how long this story goes on.
I brought a couple of others along from the crew of the show as well. A young physicist named Paul became quite attached to Julie and went to Areola with her. Doug is my friend and producer. I could scarcely leave him behind, though he has to function in the natural world as well as Areola, while we start production of the second season of To Boldy Go. We had to launch a second season to compensate for the delays in getting my spaceship ready to blast off. I’ll explain that more as we come to it. And Doug’s girlfriend, camerawoman Avril. She’s coming, too.
There are many others—concubines and friends and people who were taken to Areola or were born there—and I’ll undoubtedly mention them, but you just won’t know their backgrounds unless you decided to go back and read the first two volumes. I don’t plan to retell stories I’ve told before. Though I’m sometimes told I repeat myself.
Why are we going to all this work? For 4,000 years, I’ve been searching for a place where I could hide the satchel and never have it found. But everywhere on earth that I’ve hidden, I’ve been found by explorers, conquerors, and predators, and have had to move again. It is becoming harder and harder to keep the satchel from discovery. My look-away spell is fine when it comes to human eyes, but cameras can see the satchel. Airport security x-rays see it. I suspect that if they knew exactly what they were looking for, Uncle Sam could get a close satellite picture of it.
So, I invested in a space exploration company and ‘volunteered’ to lead the first colonization mission to Mars. My intent was to bypass the red planet and just keep going into space forever. That’s why we organized the television reality show to pick my crew of beautiful friendly women for the voyage. Unfortunately, when I had the crew, Doug informed me the ship was not ready and wouldn’t be for at least a year. We needed to come up with a second season. That’s what’s keeping me confused and active now.
With those little bits of information, I think you can enjoy this volume of my memoirs, even if you miss out on all the adventures of the past 4,000 years I’ve related in the previous books.
Five, four, three, two, one. Ignition!
Comments
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