Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
79
To Boldly Go
I’LL TRY NOT TO BE too graphic about the raids that released ten thousand women and children (plus a few men) and ended the lives of some three hundred traffickers, including an Air Force General and a dozen airmen, a US District Judge, a high-profile evangelist, a dozen men in ski masks, a South American general, an Arab prince, a high-ranking airline executive, and two other billionaires. I was thankful my business partner in Space Pioneers was not among them, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if he was.
We dropped our logistics teams at each of the eleven locations and they confirmed readiness. We intentionally did not tell them what order we would attack the installations. In fact, Lacy and I decided the order as we carried out the purges. The actual attacks took the least amount of time. Communications and video were shut down at all locations at once. As soon as they went dark, we struck the military installation where a dozen freight containers were being loaded for transport on a C-5 cargo plane. Each container had fifty people in it. There were another two hundred containers still in the warehouse. We made it just in time, but it was a bloody battle and we had to evacuate the slaves at the same time we were taking down the guards. Any guard or airman who seemed not to know what was being transported, Sally cast a sleep spell on. In one instance, that put all fifty of the people in the container he was moving with a lift to sleep as well. The guards inside the warehouse who knew they were guarding human traffic were dispatched, along with the General who was directing the operation. The airplane pilot and crew were put to sleep.
Compartmentalization in the ranks meant that the vast majority of those involved had no idea they were moving human traffic. But the ones in the inner circle were not only aware, they were profiting. I was glad that the same compartmentalization let us reduce the number of casualties.
Those bodies, however, were nailed to the side of the aircraft. We moved on with the entire operation taking about half an hour.
We struck the opposite coast ten minutes later. This operation was larger, as the shipment was going by sea to South America. Some forty casualties were nailed to the walls and 1,100 women and children were transported temporarily to Areola for processing. As expected, we were finding it took longer to transport the victims than it did to clear the traffickers. The priestesses of Aphrodite, most of whom had not been in the natural world in nearly three thousand years, cast a blind eye to the environment and focused on moving the freed slaves to Areola to get them food and medicine, clothing in many instances, and safety.
The college in New England went very fast. It had the fewest slaves for transport at about 150. Only ten bodies were nailed to the walls of the old mansion. Then we were on to Texas. As the night wore on, we found the guards more watchful. Being out of communication with the outside world made them suspicious and wary. Resistance was stiffer and our great advantage was the look-away spell and the silence of the priestesses’ weapons.
And so it went, down to the last target hidden near where our raid on the Border Patrol had taken place years before. And we had to deal with Texans on this one. The guards were better armed than at any of the other installations and were on alert. Their communications had been down for ten hours. They didn’t wait to see a target, but when they heard a noise or sensed a presence, they shot. A priestess next to me was hit and I returned the shot with my own Apollo-blessed weapon. I knew I hit the scum and didn’t wait to see where. Any wound with one of Apollo’s arrows was fatal. I opened a gateway and carried my priestess through, where Josie, Pari, and Penelope took charge of her and pushed me back through the gateway.
I went a little wild. My gun blazed at every guard I saw, cutting down a swath of them. And when I broke into an office and found a man using a collar to shock a naked woman into obedience, I knew I’d found the fabled trainer. I kept him alive just long enough to transfer the slave collar to him and then detonate the charge that effectively removed his head. Lacy nailed his body onto a suitcase full of money lying on the floor where he fell.
As soon as we had the 700 slaves from this location transported to Areola, I shepherded my team through and closed the gateway. Then I rushed to my wounded priestess, shedding my clothes, and transforming to my full demon form.
She was lying next to the pool where Marie, our doctor crew member from the first season, had rushed to her. She worked feverishly, removing the bullet and attempting to stanch the bleeding, but it was to no avail. When my priestess saw me, she weakly raised a hand toward me and smiled. I grasped her hand and the light within her brightened. I thought all the healing magic I had ever read to her but nothing seemed to work. The light faded and died as she did.
I took her up in my arms and waded into the pool with her, bathing her body in the warm water that was stained with her blood. I cried and wailed, cursing myself for having let her come to harm. The other priestesses stripped off their black robes and joined me in the pool, surrounding us, their light nearly blinding those who stood around the edge of the pool.
I wailed my grief.
“This is a precious priestess of The Bob!” I called out.
My voice echoed throughout Areola. Even the Bobbobbob people from Australia in the farthest corner of Areola heard me and told the story. My voice may have been heard in the natural world as well.
“She has known kidnapping, rape, abuse of all kinds, and yet she came to me and was cleansed. She was baptized in the pool and her inner light glowed with love. And when she knew of others who suffered as she had, she donned the garb of a warrior priestess, took up her sword, and bravely went to rescue them, whether at sea, in the air, or in any other place the criminals were to be found. And one of those criminals shot her before I killed him. She gave her life for the salvation of 10,000 others. For that and for all her devotion to The Bob and the cause of freedom for the enslaved, for having loved me and had faith in me, I love her! I will love her to the end of time. Beloved priestess and lover of The Bob, I release you to the primordial mass from which all life arose until that time when I, too, may join you there.”
As I spoke, her body dissolved into dust and smoke and was carried away on a breeze.
The operation took longer than one night. From the mansion, we sent photographs and documentation from Lacy to FBI headquarters. She signed them all “Special Agent Under Cover Lacy White.” She included photos of her badge and her face so it could be matched with records. So far, no one was questioning whether Bob had anything to do with the mop up overnight. It looked like Lacy had raised a small army and coordinated attacks all over the country.
In Areola, we did our best to comfort and heal those we rescued and then return those who wanted to go to the natural world. When the women and children started showing up at various law enforcement offices and social services centers, they each carried a photograph and evidence of where they had been held. And that’s when the story of their remarkable escape began to get bigger. They talked about a glowing light that entered their prisons, destroying the evil men who held them. They spoke of being transported to a holding area where they received medical attention and food and were given a choice of what they wanted to do next.
Some bore letters from others that stated they had chosen to stay in hiding and not return to the lives they had before. Some wrote accusations against other people who betrayed them or even sold them to the slavers. An ever-widening dragnet developed as people were brought in for questioning and many charged, awaiting trial.
Of the women who chose to ‘stay in hiding,’ close to two hundred chose to accept Aphrodite’s offer, including half a dozen of her priestesses from Troy. The other priestesses of Aphrodite promised to keep her love alive in Areola. And there were some who simply wanted refuge and chose to stay in Areola. If they were able to adapt to life in our world, we accepted them. Some we turned away because their underlying attitude and personality simply would not mesh with our society. And some were so damaged from their treatment and trauma that we had no choice but to release them into institutional care in various places around the country.
Of course, the government wanted to know where the vast number of undocumented women and children came from. The INS and ICE both came under investigation. There were, of course, some who used their positions to feed the traffic themselves. Mass deportations did not always wind up in countries they were supposed to. Just as the immigration raids had done, several dozen officers were pulled from their jobs and offices. Others quickly stood up to accuse those they knew.
And with the mention of being transported to a holding area, someone made the connection to The Bob. Hadn’t he shown a portal in use to his secret palace? Hadn’t they wasted thousands of man-hours on trying to capture and investigate that portal?
I avoided contact as much as possible by simply staying in Areola. Doug and a few of his assistants made regular trips to the mansion, from which he handled the mail, email, text, and phone messages. Our non-Areola staff in LA and Houston kept things running and we began releasing the episodes of season two when we got news that the first materials transport ship was finally ready to launch into orbit.
Under May’s direction, we began transporting materials for the space station colony ship to orbit. And then we all gathered together to watch the first episode of season two.
We watched the first episode, that included the original crew sitting around like goddesses to decide who should be included in the second season competition. It included several different candidates, some of whom would be surprised to find they’d been considered. Those who were eliminated received a nice check for their screen time and I knew for a fact some of them could really use that extra income. So, the first episode left everything open as to who would be selected. There would be more people introduced as the season went on. Our actual acceptance rate had been about one out of thirty. It just wasn’t easy to find compatible harem members.
“This all seems so tame compared to what we just went through,” Ranisha said. She was a jeweler from Chenai, India and one of the ten people selected during the competition.
“It is tame, but did you notice the fire in Annie’s eyes?” asked Gwen. Gwen was a pharmacist, or chemist, from Wales.
“I loved the way the camera caught that glint when they were talking about trafficking,” Mia said. “I hope something like that came across during my time on camera.”
“We had a lot of opportunity to catch it when we were talking about the possible use of slave labor to build cathedrals and temples,” I said. “Your fervor was something you all were judged on. It came out in each of your interviews.”
“I was so worried,” May said. “I wanted to like The Bob, but I’d fallen in love with Cleveland Bob and just didn’t know what to do. And then I couldn’t believe they were the same person. Do people still believe you do those persona changes with just makeup?”
“We may never know,” I said. “The capacity for people to not believe is beyond my ability to comprehend.”
“Out of all the people who you interviewed—I think Liz said there were 300 candidates who were contacted—were we really the only ten who had that kind of hatred for trafficking and enslavement?” Abby asked. I’d interviewed her first on the golf course where she was a professional and she’d told me about her own near brush with trafficking.
“No. There were many others, which made the selection process that much harder,” I said.
“Like Roxie in Kansas,” Annie said. “I was ready to bring her to Areola on the spot.”
“Why not?” Tommy asked. He was a bass player in LA who flitted from gig to gig but hadn’t landed in a band full time.
“Roxie had her own mission to fulfill,” I said. “She was already engaged in a fight to free dancers who were coerced or forced into stripping and prostitution. We fund her efforts, but she didn’t want to leave her mission to join ours.”
“It was a common theme, wasn’t it?” Sonia asked. She was the PhD candidate studying in Turkey. “You asked me about how I viewed the gods’ interaction at Troy.”
“And?” I prompted.
“Bob is different. The Olympian gods didn’t care about the people they sent to battle. Oh, they had favorites like Odysseus and Paris, but mostly they didn’t care about a hundred thousand soldiers they whipped into a frenzy to do battle on the plains and die for them. The gods, all the way through the history of the world, used their devotees as if they were disposable slaves. The soldiers died for their god and some vague promise of a post-death reward. Religion is slavery,” Sonia said.
“The priestesses worship The Bob,” Maya said. “But they don’t blindly obey him. They created their own mission to rid the world of slavery and sex trafficking. If Bob had used some other means to handle the slavers in the last raid, the priestesses would have been broken-hearted. Even the one who died in his arms. Their mission was to free others as they had been freed.”
Everyone took a minute to acknowledge the sacrifice of my precious priestess. I still had tears whenever she was mentioned.
That night, I had nine women in my bed, and Tommy. No, I didn’t screw Tommy—not this time. But the musician was surprised to find how completely he was accepted into the cast, including being accepted into several of their pussies.
It was a long night of celebrating and I indulged in a deep and sated sleep afterward.
Mostly, the new members stayed in the mansion during the run of the show. Lacy stayed in Areola except when we were viewing and discussing each episode. An FBI agent came to the door of the mansion and politely asked if Lacy was in the mansion. We simply shook our heads and he turned around and left. No show of strength. He looked at the candidates who had marched on FBI headquarters in Los Angeles lined up behind me and just backed away from the mansion.
Five weeks into the airing of the show, when I’d made a big deal about how we used the portal to take candidates to the palace in Areola, I received an ambassadorial invitation from Washington, DC. They decided to take a different approach than previously and invited me as a representative of ‘your country’ to have a private conversation with the President of the United States.
I debated long and hard about this and eventually decided to take her up on her offer.
I did not arrive in a limo.
I only partly trusted the offer to parlay with the President. There were still too many people who were as interested in seeing me captured as they were in seeing me sign a trade agreement. Lacy White had been put on the FBI’s most wanted list. As soon as they figured out that I assisted her, I was sure I would join her in that august recognition.
At the appointed time, I stepped through a gateway onto the presidential seal in the oval office and waved at the doors to seal them. No one but the president was in the office and to say she was startled would be an understatement.
“Madam President,” I said. “Greetings from Areola. I’m not here to do any harm, but hope we can have a civil discussion of things that affect both our worlds. I am Bob.”
She took a deep breath and took her hand off the button that would have called secret service in from all over the building. They couldn’t have gotten in, but it would have made an awful racket and I’d have left before they started tearing down the walls. She stood.
“On behalf of the United States of America, I welcome you to the Oval Office, Bob. Do you mind if we record this meeting so I can review it with my advisors?”
“A wise decision. Please allow me to assist.” I removed the look-away spell from Avril and she appeared nearby with her camera running.
“Color me impressed,” Madam President said. “Why don’t we have comfortable seats to discuss our countries and the ways we might open diplomatic relations?”
She waved me toward one of the oval sofas and seated herself opposite me, carefully avoiding stepping on the presidential seal where I’d appeared.
“You obviously have technology at your disposal that would benefit the United States. What does the United States have that will benefit… Areola?” she asked.
“Areola has very few needs. We are slightly more than another country. Areola is here. All around us. It is a different dimension of the reality you know. There are things we hope to gain from our association and there are things I believe we can provide to you, even if our technology is beyond the reach of your scientists at this time.”
“A different dimension. Do you mean we are sitting together in Areola at the same time as we are sitting in the oval office?” she asked.
“Sort of. The idea that no two things can occupy the same space at the same time is erroneous. All things occupy the same space at the same time. If we were in Areola, however, we would be sitting beside my pool, surrounded by the beauty of the palace, temple, and libraries…”
“I hope I can visit one day,” she said before I’d finished.
“Naked,” I finished.
“You think I would be naked, too?”
“It is possible. Nudity in Areola is the equivalent of a business suit in the Oval Office.”
I’d carefully dressed for the occasion—or rather, Peninnah had dressed me—in a respectable business suit. The president took a moment to collect herself while considering the proposal to visit Areola naked.
“What does it take to set up a trade negotiation between your people and mine?” she asked.
“We have little that is needed. You know of our work in the space industry. We still intend to launch on a colonization mission currently slated for Mars. However, without access to Areola, such a small mission would stand no hope of survival. Therefore, we have also begun construction of a satellite that could be turned into a colony ship. It is far larger than any space ship that has yet been built on earth.”
“Where is this being constructed?”
“In orbit. We have launched materials that will be used in construction and expect the shell construction to move along quite rapidly once we have enough materials. We are using exclusively labor from Areola for the construction as many of the materials are only found there. The colony ship will be slightly more than a kilometer in diameter and capable of transporting some ten thousand people. Once it is lit, it will be clearly visible from earth.”
“A kilometer in diameter? Surely that would require tons of material and many journeys to supply such a ship.”
“And hence my first offer. We have developed an element in our dimension that is far lighter and stronger than any metal found on earth. Yet it can be fabricated into nearly any usable object.” I reached into my bag and retrieved a bar of metal to hand to her. She took it, hefting it and even attempting to bend it. “We call this Areolium and would be willing to offer it as a trade good and to train workers in its use.”
“This is an amazing thing. May I give this to our scientists to analyze?”
“Please do. As I said, the element is unknown on earth. I’m not even sure it will fit on the table of elements.”
“You have indicated that there is little we have that is needed in Areola. What would you like us to trade for this commodity?”
“I would like Lacy White to be removed from the list of America’s most wanted and all supposed charges against her dropped.”
“That is… unexpected. Perhaps you are unaware of the carnage she left behind in liberating some sex trafficked women.”
“Some three hundred sex traffickers were eliminated in a single night while liberating over ten thousand slaves. Brutal, yes. Some might even say barbaric. Once they have analyzed it thoroughly enough, your investigators will realize Lacy could not have effected this endeavor at all, let alone in a single night. I have extended asylum to Lacy White and she has accepted permanent residence in Areola. But her reputation does not deserve to be dragged through a court battle when she has merely stopped a shameful trade in kidnapped women, some men, and many children. These people were destined for short lives of degradation and disgust. Such enslavement is anathema to Areola and to me personally. When discovered, I will not hesitate to eradicate it. Anyplace in the world.”
I spoke a little more strongly than I’d intended, but with each word, I remembered my precious priestess dissolving in my arms as she rejoined the primordial mass. The president fingered the bar of Areolium and considered what I said before nodding.
“I will discover what I can do to eliminate all investigation into the matter of Lacy White and to expedite the trials of the accused traffickers arrested in the aftermath of that dark night. I don’t know what it will be, yet.”
We continued to talk and I alluded to my library and its contents. I also mentioned that there was no reason our space ship needed to be owned and controlled by Space Pioneers, but that I was not comfortable giving it into only the hands of the United States.
“What about the portal technology,” she asked. “You must realize by now that it has been sought after by dozens of nations.”
“That is one reason I am loath to release it. However, the other reason is equally important. Your science and my science are fundamentally incompatible. A researcher would need to unlearn four thousand years of scientific development in order to learn to work a portal. I’m not saying that such people don’t exist, but in most instances, they are not the people you would want to share that technology with.”
“So, you’re saying it is magic,” she laughed.
“I was recently informed by my crew that any form of sufficiently advanced science and technology would be the same as magic in another less advanced society. We can call it magic if you like. That’s what I call it.”
Our conversation ended after less than half an hour. She returned to her desk and I stood on the presidential seal in the middle of the carpet. I waved a hand and the doors of the oval office burst open with secret service and drawn weapons as I stepped through a gateway and disappeared.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
