Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
78
Sometimes an Ally
YOU KNOW, it’s not always Bob against the world. Or even Bob against some upstart king or emperor. Sometimes, I’m actually asked to intervene and become an ally. That happened back after Caesar was killed and Augustus became the ruler of Rome. That was also before I encountered the demon in the desert. I was deep in the Nubian Desert somewhere between what is now called the Nile River and the Red Sea, searching for a temple.
Cleopatra had told me where there were several ancient temples. She was extremely well-educated and spoke several languages. She was the first of the Ptolemys to learn the Egyptian language and was fluent in hieroglyphics, which she taught me during our time together. While her ancestor, Ptolemy I, founded the great Library of Alexandria, Cleopatra was a patron and great promoter of the library. I think it was for that reason that her brother/husband attacked and burned the building, even as I was rushing to evacuate as many scrolls and librarians as I could. I am still upset about the number of scrolls that were lost in that fire—some of which I had personally transported to Alexandria. Those, at least, had already been duplicated and stored in Areola.
Regardless, Cleo told me of a temple far to the south. She’d never traveled there because things were not always at peace between the Egyptians and the Kushites. However, she believed the temple of the god Amun was located there and may have been ancient when people first settled in lower Egypt. It took me a while to find the place. There was no trace of civilization there and I thought it must be buried under mountains of sand. It was quite by accident that I stumbled upon a fissure in the rocks and having passed through it, I found myself in a cool dry temple that was also quite empty. No books.
But it was certainly interesting. I had some of my people come out and begin copying the writing on the pillars and walls. It was a job that would take them a few weeks and they returned to the infinity room each night to sleep.
As I worked myself deeper into the temple, which I verified that like Cleo had suggested, was dedicated to Amun, I was impressed. This had been built near the same time I was building the temple to Namri and Ninra, but was much more substantial as it used stone, much as I had on Crete for the king’s palace. But farther into the depths of the temple, construction methods changed. I could see that much of the temple was made of the same kind of sand bricks I’d made in Bathra. I had to wonder if this was a common technique that all the gods knew and graciously passed down to me. These bricks were older than I was!
It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered a structure that was older than I was. The great pyramids were already half amillennium old when I was summoned into the world. But as I descended—yes, the path definitely sloped downward, even though spacious rooms had level floors—according to the descriptions I found, the temple dated to at least a millennium before my birth!
Originally, the god had been called Atum and was the creator of the world. My librarians informed me that according to this creation story, the world was covered with water until a mound—the very mountain we were inside—was thrust up out of the waves and on top of it was Atum, who created a man and his own wife and then the rest of the world.
Wow! I was impressed and bowed in reverence before the god, who might have had some remnant of presence in the ancient temple.
While my head was bowed, a light moved ahead of me, guiding my path until I came to a wall that moved when I pressed my hands on it. Behind that wall were coves stacked with ancient scrolls. The librarians carefully removed them and put them through the duplication spell. Then they reverently replaced the originals on the stone shelves where they had resided for thousands of years. They did not immediately dissolve into dust, so I had to assume the god was protecting them and would continue to do so.
We backed out of the room and the wall silently sealed itself before us.
I don’t know how long we spent in the temple. Not much had changed when I emerged, except the presence of a beautiful woman as black as the night, sitting on a horse with a dozen spearmen behind her.
She immediately jumped from her horse and knelt before me. The spearsmen dropped to one knee.
“Rise! Rise!” I called. “Whatever you may think, I am not your god and will not take his worship!”
That was a dangerous thing to say, but I’d been in the presence of an ancient being, I was sure, and I would not upset him. There were places I’d been where such a declaration would have meant my instant death. If I wasn’t a god, then I must be an enemy. Not so with this woman. She rose at once and faced me.
“I am Amanirenas,” she said. “Queen of the Kushites.”
“Bob. Free man and wanderer. How may I help your majesty?”
“I had a dream,” she said.
Oh, shit! Whenever someone starts a conversation with the words “I had a dream,” you can bet some god or other has a task for you. It had happened to me too frequently. Who wanted me for what now?
“Please, come in where it is cool and we will have refreshment and stories,” I said.
She followed me back into the temple. She motioned her guards to stay outside, but I waved them in. Whatever journey had brought her here on a horse, her spearmen had made on foot. That was just the reality of royalty.
Once inside, I subtly opened a gateway and my women appeared with cool goats’ milk and honeycakes. The spearmen were in awe. The queen did not acknowledge them.
“Now, your majesty,” I said as we sat on chairs my women brought us. “Tell me about your dream.”
“You must know our circumstances first,” she said. “We Kushites are a proud people. We have withstood the advances of the Ptolemys, the Nubians, and many others. But now, the Romans have decided they should collect a tax from us. They occupied our Northernmost city and demanded payment. We owe them nothing.”
“But you paid?”
“Ha! We took back our city and put the Romans to the sword. We took the head from their statue of Caesar and buried it in our temple where the people walk on it every day.”
“What Caesar is that?” I’d heard Julius was killed by his own senate and Marc Antony was now bedding Cleopatra.
“One called Augustus. He defeated the Egyptians and marched south on us.”
I’d once met Augustus, or Octavian as he was called then. Caesar introduced us at my wedding to his cousin Cordelia. I thought he was a nice boy, but like most of his family, he was rather greedy. He was only a teen, but the only person he considered his better was Caesar. Caesar recognized him and openly declared that he adopted Octavian as his son.
So, that was who had come to attempt to tax the Kushites. They’d responded by chopping off the head of his statue and burying it where everyone would walk on it. That probably pissed off the emperor.
“In my dream, Amun Re told me to come here and make an alliance with the one I found here. Caesar’s Egyptian Governor Petronius is on the march and has sworn to enslave us. O, Bob! Every man, woman, and child in Kush will die before we are enslaved!”
That got my goat. I would die before I saw them enslaved as well.
“I have traveled with Alexander, Xerxes, Julius Caesar, and even greater generals,” I said. “I will help you lay out a strategy and will be your comrade in arms.”
We set about creating a strategy and went out to meet the Romans.
One should always consider the character of one’s allies. I learned that. Amanirenas was devoted to her people and their independence. She was a ferocious fighter and, from what I could see, a just ruler. But she was not a nice person. She was vicious.
Our strategy was to feint an attack on a city occupied by the Roman army and then flee, leading a chase deep into Kush. Here, the queen’s army knew the terrain and instead of standing to fight, like other armies did, we set ambushes. The fighting was intense. The Kushites had inferior arms and inferior numbers, but they were, perhaps, the most devoted army the Romans had ever faced.
In a strategy I borrowed from the Britons, who outmaneuvered Caesar without him even knowing it, we whittled away at the numbers, killing most of the enemy. A few of the enemy were sent back to report what they had seen, but only after being forced to watch others of their living comrades fed to Amanirenas’s pet lions.
She wasn’t nice. But she didn’t enslave anyone.
She paid for her courage. In one battle, an arrow found her right eye. She was blinded in that eye and bleeding, but when she threw the arrow back at the one who shot it, I gave it a little boost in speed and accuracy. It killed the archer who shot her. Then, she turned and led her army into the battle again, driving back the Romans.
The battles went on for three years and both sides lost hundreds of warriors. Seeing that both the Romans and the Kushites were equally damaging to the other, Amanirenas sent to the general and proposed a peace. The Romans agreed and ultimately withdrew into Egypt and repealed all taxes on the Kushite cities.
The one-eyed Queen Amanirenas led the only country and army that stood victorious against the Roman legions. She became a legend in both countries.
You’re probably saying, “Well, Bob, what kind of lover was she? Was she as vicious in bed as she was on the battlefield?”
I have no idea.
After the peace treaty had been signed, I bid the queen farewell. When you have seen a woman feed a living man to her lions, it significantly reduces the libido. I was glad she had saved her country from slavery to the Romans—we had saved it—but I felt no desire for her. She thanked me with some valuable jewels from her country and I left to continue looking for libraries and ancient books.
Okay. That was on my mind when Lacy made her proposal. There was a significant difference, though. When I fought at the side of Amanirenas, no one from Areola was risked. I had very few people in my world who were warriors. Those who were laid down their arms when they entered the infinity room.
Lacy was asking me to bring my precious priestesses into the natural world, along with the contestants and crew of our show, and send them with our little bit of magic and our ninja skills against a heavily armed and vicious predator. There was a reason it took only a few hundred guards to watch over ten thousand slaves.
Getting the priestesses and fifty more skilled warriors ready to launch an earth invasion was less problem than I imagined. I appeared before the priestesses in my full demon form and explained what we’d been asked to do. One of the priestesses stood as the others hummed. I recognized it as the priestesses uniting their minds. I had no idea how they did it, but in this state, when one made love to me, all of them participated and orgasmed when she did. When they spoke in this way, it was the voice of all of them in one mouth.
“I was unclean. I was a captive, raped, beaten, and starved. I was unfit to live in this or any world. My one desire was to die,” said the spokeswoman. The others nodded and rocked as they continued to hum. “Then The Bob came and took me from the dungeons of filth and purified me in the pool of life. He made my light glow with his love. I placed my life in his hands. Now he tells me there are others suffering at the hands of pirates and asks if I would go where he could command me. I will go and free the captives. I will bring them to the blessed land of The Bob. Let this be so!”
Well, fuck! that was short and definitive. They knew the risks and they rose to meet them. Fifty-two fierce warriors who would leave no slaver standing.
There were others. Zhi and Ali brought warriors with them who were more versed in modern warfare through their frequent visits to the natural world as guards for me, my family, and the satchel. They even knew how to use firearms. I didn’t think any of them had actually killed a man with a gun, but they were willing. I soon had another contingent of fifty who would go with the contestants to disable the communications and security devices at each location.
And the camerawomen. Doug had used a couple of dozen camerawomen from Areola in filming the show and contestants. Many were trained in the use of drones as well. A crew of camerawomen would accompany each attack to show the world what happened on this fateful night. All I needed next was to arm my priestesses with more than their swords, knives, shuriken, and bows. We definitely didn’t have enough firearms, and I wasn’t sure they could use them if we did have.
In Areola, when there is a need, it somehow always gets fulfilled.
An inventor in our community who had come from the construction industry when I was building in the Midwest, came up with a tool to help the priestesses with their task. He created a nail gun that didn’t require an air compressor. Previously, they had used a kind of nail gun powered by a cartridge of compressed air. But the cartridges didn’t last long. The new nail gun was something like a staple gun, but had a hair trigger and shot six inch spikes. The priestesses were so pleased with the new tool that they almost touched the poor guy when they blessed him. They holstered their nail guns and glowed with the fierce light of The Bob.
I went to see Nimia and Josie. Of course, my other wives and possessions were with them. I’d brought Peninnah and Liz back with me from the mansion. There were still things I needed to resolve. I wouldn’t do this without their agreement.
“We are not as eloquent as the priestesses of The Bob,” Nimia smiled. “Still, we are as committed as they are. We cannot know of this atrocity without acting to end it. Yes, Bob. We should do this, and we should make Lacy one of our own.”
“What do we do with the slaves?” I asked. “If we leave them after killing all their guards, others will just show up and enslave them. I’m not sure we can even trust the police. Certainly, ICE would be a poor choice. I suspect many of them of being complicit in this.”
I really couldn’t see transporting ten thousand women into Areola. I wasn’t sure how that would improve their lot. They must all—or at least some—have homes they wanted to return to. And some might be badly damaged and beyond our reach to heal.
“Bring them in and quarantine them in a welcoming environment. Make sure they are fed and bathed and tended to medically. Then sort them out after the operation. You could return any of them to any place in the world since you know how to open a portal now,” Nimia said.
“I will organize a welcoming committee,” Maya said. “There are many people in our world who remember what it was like to be snatched out of the world they knew and brought to this one. This would be one of the times that the flower children of the sixties would be good to use. Some of them still think they are tripping out in the best trip ever.”
“Bob, excuse me, but there is a priestess of Aphrodite at the palace asking for an audience with you,” Oza said. He was one of my most faithful retainers and had been attached to the household since before I reached India.
“By all means bring her in,” I said.
The priestesses of Aphrodite. That was another resource we hadn’t thought of using. I hadn’t even mentioned them to the contestants. While they were known for providing sexual comfort, it was not all they did. Few people on Areola actually needed sexual comfort very often. These priestesses had expanded their mission to include counseling and guidance. It was simply another kind of comfort.
A beautiful naked woman who had served in Aphrodite’s temple in Troy approached and knelt before me.
“O, Bob. I have received a message from my goddess Aphrodite and beg leave to deliver it.”
“Yes, yes. How is My Lady Goddess?” I hadn’t heard from Aphrodite in a year. She’d managed to send me one of my favorite contestants, Deedee, during the first season of our show. She’d last appeared to me as I made love to Deedee.
That should have given me a clue regarding what happened next. The priestess crawled into my lap, kissing her way up my chest to my lips and then sliding down to impale herself on my cock. I think all messages from Aphrodite are delivered in that way.
“Bob, I can only maintain this link briefly,” the priestess said. I looked into her eyes and saw before me the most beautiful woman in the universe. Aphrodite had taken over. “Zeus has blessed your operation. He has granted me permission to bring any of the women who would serve me to Olympus. Like in Areola, they will always be cared for and treasured. There are many who were captured because they still pray to me and I would not have them suffer further for my sake.”
“That is wonderful, My Lady Goddess. I thank you and I thank Zeus.”
“There is more. I have a gift from Apollo.” She gave me a quiver of arrows that materialized in my hand. “These are arrows enchanted by the bright god of the sun and poetry. It is the same enchantment used by the Trojans and anyone struck by one of these arrows will die. Yes, that includes any strike of the arrow, whether or not it would be deemed fatal otherwise. Like when Achilles was struck in the heel by the arrow of Paris.”
This was an incredible gift. I would be armed and able to help my warriors in the battle. As I moved in the priestess and we approached our climax, the quiver of arrows transformed itself into a modern handgun and holster.
“The gift of Ares is to make the bow of Apollo into something more manageable in the natural world today,” she gasped. “Oh, Bob! I have missed you! Fill me!”
I had no difficulty granting her request and as my orgasm faded, so did My Lady Goddess. I kissed the priestess tenderly and she smiled, making no move to dislodge herself. I guess I didn’t mind. I was making no move to get rid of her.
In Areola, we had all the pieces in place. We still needed to get the plan together with our contestants. I headed to the mansion, half expecting our contestants would have fled. I was gratified to find them all gathered around the table with a plan for how the rescue would work. The rescue would become the final episode of our season two reality show.
I wondered if they understood that this was real, but Lacy had been with them through all this and they were definitely ready.
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