Double Team
Chapter 213
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
—Joseph Heller, Catch-22
6 OCTOBER 2022
I’m still conflicted about the SSR. We left as ‘friends,’ for lack of a better word. Dana was pretty convincing when she kissed me last night and my wives all ganged up on me about her when we got to the motorhome. We’ll have to see how that all pans out in the future. And I’m still not sure about Paul. I think he’s holding back some secrets and may have been more involved than he lets on. But they do good work.
We’re headed to Detroit now. I guess there’s an RV park near The Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village. With luck we can do some sightseeing there tomorrow. My memories of Detroit, though, aren’t all that good. In 1967, V1 worked on traffic signals and was sent to Detroit for training. People don’t realize that Detroit is home to hundreds of businesses related to the automotive industry, not just manufacturing cars. I was in Detroit working with a team to revamp traffic signal timing mechanisms on July 23, 1967 when the worst riots in a hundred years started. My V1 memories tell me Detroit is a dangerous place, burning, poverty-stricken, depressed, and to be avoided at all costs.
I know it’s different now, but it’s hard to shake off the feeling of dread that accompanies any mention of Detroit.
Ron considers the arrest of General Gerhardt and the normalization of the SSR to be the end of any direct threats to our tour. Lamar and Leah will continue to accompany us, but we won’t have half a dozen security people standing around the motorhome in the RV park or accompanying us wherever we go. That’s a relief. It was beginning to feel like we were prisoners under guard. Still, when I think of Detroit, I can’t help wishing there was an extra body or two between us and the world.
“Amanda, what is the current economic status of Detroit, Michigan? Please be brief,” I said as I sat with the little shit on the floor of the bus.
“Sure, Jacob,” came the mellow woman’s voice. Over the past several days, her tone had become for conversational. “Detroit has had a volatile economy for many years, dependent largely on the auto industry and a large base of blue collar labor. The twenty-teens saw an exodus of the predominantly African-American labor force from the city and left the metropolitan area depressed economically. Property values fell and an accompanying shift in the auto industry saw a decrease in jobs available.”
“Sounds depressing,” I said.
“The late twenty-teens and early twenty-twenties have seen a shift in the socio-economic environment begin. While unemployment has risen, so has population—a far more diverse population than previously inhabited the city.”
“What caused that?”
“Detroit has become a kind of magnet for young people leaving the service. With property values depressed, and the industry in flux, they see the city as a land of opportunity. Entire neighborhoods have shifted in composition to enclaves of displaced service veterans who no longer feel strong ties to the communities they grew up in and are searching for common ground with others who have experienced what they have in National Service. Sociologist Dr. Herman Mann has posited that this trend may be seen in other depressed areas of the country, including both small towns and inner city neighborhoods, as the number of service veterans without jobs increases.”
“Thank you, Amanda. That was very informative.”
“Most of this information was retrieved from Wikipedia and could have been accessed on your tablet,” she said. Damn it! I never intended to start considering her ‘she’ instead of ‘it.’ She was a search engine. My wives, gathered around to listen as the bus trundled through northern Ohio, laughed at Amanda’s subtle dig. I’d been attempting to customize my messages a little more toward the market where we performed. Pittsburgh and Columbus had been highly successful but I wasn’t sure how to address the audience in Detroit.
“Rachel, are we going to have another cavernous room with thousands of noisy attendees in Detroit like we had in Columbus?” I asked.
“Oh, do I have information that Amanda doesn’t have?” she primped a little and I gave her puppy-dog eyes. Beca gave me a shove toward her.
“Am I spending too much time with my toy?” I asked as I scooted close to my love.
“It is a little like having added another wife to the family,” Rachel said. “You always want to stick your dick in the new one.”
“Oh, come on. She’s a search engine.”
“I’m rattling your cage,” Rachel said. “I just wish we could all use her. Any progress on that, Joan?”
“Daddy says this is a training stage for the interface. They intentionally limited input to one source—Jacob—so they could monitor the development. He’ll meet with us in Chicago to go over some of the finer aspects of tuning the interface.”
“You can all access her functions through the tablet interface,” I said. “It’s only the voice interface that is locked down.”
“She. Her. You see, she is another wife,” Brittany sighed. “And we all remember how hard it was to get one-on-one time with you once Cindy opened her legs. You were always between them.”
“Hey! I didn’t try to monopolize him,” Cindy squeaked. Even her mock-offended voice was soft. She could speak up on stage when her turn to talk came, but she’d never developed a louder voice among the family.
“It’s just natural development of a relationship,” Beca said. “Once we found we were all welcome to make you scream, everything returned to normal.”
“You can make me scream anytime,” Cindy sighed.
“Um… Is there an answer to my question about the venue, Rachel? Or should I pass the question on to Amanda?”
“Oh, hush. The answer comes with a cost. Take your pants off.” I looked at her in surprise as she started stripping. Sophie reached over to unbuckle my belt and start tugging at my trousers. Making love on the bus wasn’t unheard of, but even though our driver couldn’t see us, she could certainly hear it when someone had an orgasm.
“Anything for you, love,” I said. Just for good measure, I pulled off my T-shirt as well. Sophie had sucked my cock up to full attention while I watched Rachel strip. It didn’t take that much encouragement. Rachel straddled me and sank her treasure chest onto my cock with a sigh. I caught a nipple on her way down and tongued it enthusiastically until she pushed me back and kissed me. Rachel had a way of just keeping me hard and in her while we talked. Having our eleven other wives with us as she rode me just enhanced the effect.
“The Detroit Music House is a smaller venue and more attuned to your style of music,” Rachel breathed while she rose and fell on my cock with her eyes locked on mine. “It only seats 1,750, but the farthest anyone is from the stage is seventy feet. By comparison to the Newport Music Hall, you’ll feel like you are doing one of the intimate concerts in Mr. LeBlanc’s music room.”
“Mmm. Good memories. I thought Jo was building this up to bigger and bigger audiences,” I panted. I started kissing her neck as she rose and fell on my cock again. She moaned.
“Yeah. She is. The live audience is only a piece of the action. Saturday’s performance will go out live on the National Service Cable Network and will be carried on the local Detroit TV station. But don’t be concerned about it, lover. You’ve performed in front of twenty million before.”
Twenty million? Oh, shit! I bounced up into my soulmate with enough force that she echoed the move up and down on my cock.
“Rachel,” I moaned. “Rachel, my love. Can we stop talking business and just be husband and wife for a few minutes?”
“Oh, lover, I am all yours,” she whispered as she closed in on me to kiss. Yes. All mine and the other eleven women’s who were surrounding us with their love. Naked love, as it soon became obvious there wasn’t a stitch of clothing on any of my lovers. I filled my hands with Rachel’s round butt, just to feel her rise and fall on my cock. We found our rhythm and each other’s eyes as we petted and fucked. Looking into her eyes as we made love always tripled the excitement for us. Mostly we managed to keep up the smooth steady rhythm, occasionally enhanced by a bump in the road that surprised us.
I could hear her breath coming in shorter gulps, feel her pussy clasping and releasing my cock, see her eyes as they filled with tears. We came, crashing together and sought each other’s lips, tongues, and souls.
“That is definitely some class A ass you have following you! Would I love to dip my dick in that one!”
“Excuse me?” I said. “You’re talking about my wives. Button it up, buster.”
“Oh, yeah. I heard you had a bunch of ’em. Little overkill, I’d say, with so many of us incel. But if you’ve got the swinging donkey dick to handle them, why shouldn’t you have it? And I’ve got a solution for the rest of us, by God!”
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded. I knew, of course. I’d gotten thirty seconds’ warning as we entered Greenfield Village that a candidate was waiting to talk to me. He was about six inches shorter than me and fifty pounds heavier. He must have been really excited to meet me since from the smell he apparently didn’t take time to shower first.
“I’m your man!” he said. “I am the candidate for the thirteenth congressional district who believes in National Service Reform. Yessir. I’m not just a yes man, either. I’m an idea man. I will help rewrite the entire reform bill.”
“Um… what kind of ideas?” I asked.
“Here’s the thing. There are too many kids competing for the jobs of hardworking Americans. And half of them are girls. Like my opponent. Stupid cunt. Now it’s okay for guys like you. You join the service and all of a sudden, you’ve got a harem tagging along behind you. But most guys are just average. Like me. Now I’ve done research. Got this idea from a story I read online. The National Service can do about anything. There is precedent for good old Uncle Sam to own brothels. They’ve done it before. I say, switch all that prime teenage pussy from taking men’s jobs to learning how to please a man on her back. Hell, teenage girls are all hos anyway. You can tell by the way they dress; they’re just asking for it.” If he didn’t get his eyes out of Desi’s cleavage, he was going to get it. “Let them earn a premium for their good service. It’ll be good training for them as wives. Everybody wins. And take a percentage to funnel into other programs like that black ops search and rescue team. Bad ass. And only one little girl among them. We know why she’s there.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“That’s just one of the ideas. I’ve got lots more where that came from.” Yeah. The gutter.
“Well, thank you for taking the time to introduce yourself. I’ll be sure to mention you on tomorrow night’s show.”
“I know. I know. Busy man. Lots of pussy to fill. And there’s some prime ass serving tables over at the Eagle Tavern. Trussed up like colonial barmaids. You should have no problem landing a little extra for the afternoon. Not that you need it! Not saying that. Well, I’ll let you get to it. You wouldn’t consider loaning that little one out for the afternoon, would you? I’d pay cash.”
“No.”
“Incorruptible. I knew it. Not like that money-grubbing bitch I’m running against. Stupid cunt. Well, I’ll see you at the show.”
He finally left and I turned to my wives who were all wide-eyed with their mouths hanging open.
“Was that for real?” Nanette said. “One more word from that asshole and I would have planted a shoe far up where the sun don’t shine.”
“The problem would be figuring out which end of him had the biggest asshole,” Remas said. “Yuck!”
“Do we have to support him, Jacob?” Cindy asked.
“There has to be another alternative. Maybe we can change his opponent over to supporting reform. God! Can we move on. I still smell him here.”
“Thank you all for joining me this afternoon. It’s a pleasure to welcome the Octave family,” the woman said at the restaurant where we met for a late lunch. It was unusual for the candidates to try to meet us before the performance—especially the opposition. This was a woman in her late forties, immaculately dressed, attended by two of her staff people, and as cool and professional as they come. Exactly what you can imagine wanting in congress.
“Congresswoman, it is our pleasure to meet you,” I said. “We’re truly hoping we can find some common ground.”
“Ah. I take it you have met my opponent. I’m not terribly worried about him. He polls lower than the belly of a snake. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before you made your presentation tomorrow night. I’m so glad the unpleasantness with the General Director is over. The system works—sometimes slowly, but it does grind on.”
“The evidence of my past two months says the system is seriously broken.”
“There is no system in the world that is flawless—even if it was rewritten a dozen times. It would simply be flawed in different ways,” she said. “And look what the President has accomplished already. She didn’t need an act of congress to establish the OCS. The manual of rules and regulations has already been changed. But what people don’t realize is a rewrite of the current law will upset the checks and balances of our constitutional government in irreparable ways. The President has sweeping authority over some parts of the program but other parts are specifically allocated to congress.”
“Like what?”
“The allocation of American resources is reserved to congress. We create the budget and have the experts who can assess needs and write the contracts for goods and services,” she said.
“How does that affect the National Service?” I asked.
“Let’s look at it from the perspective of Detroit. You know we are nicknamed Motor City. We are the heart and soul of the automotive industry.” Hmm. V1’s father worked at Studebaker in South Bend. My dad worked for the GM assembly plant in Roanoke. The auto industry was spread out, but she wasn’t finished. “Over the years, the economy has rocked the automotive industry and we’ve gone through cycles of boom and bust. In times past, the government has stepped in to help through financial bailouts that got us back to productivity. We’re facing a downslope once again and labor is threatening a strike if their silly demands aren’t met, regardless of the cost and long-term effect on the industry. For the first time in history, we are positioned to bail out the industry, not through money but through offering internships to service personnel who could learn valuable skills and keep the industry running at peak performance. And at a fraction of the cost of a monetary bailout.”
“Do I understand that you’d be interested in the National Service providing assembly line labor for the building of cars and trucks? And that you’d expect to pay them the minimal salary promised by the government. Wouldn’t the union be opposed to that?”
“Jacob, the union has had a stranglehold on the industry for a hundred years. It’s time they learned the true value of being employed and not try to strongarm the industry into untenable positions. They would figure out soon enough which side of their bread is buttered.”
I shuddered. She looked and sounded like a rational human being. But what she was proposing was replacing union labor with slave labor.
“I don’t suppose I can convince you that we need to hear the reform bill in congress and have it openly debated,” I said.
“Bringing that bill off the table would tie congress up for the next two years in hearings and debates. And when we finished, we would still be deadlocked. It would prevent us from accomplishing anything for the next two years.”
“What, exactly, have you accomplished in the past two years?”
She stared at me with her eyes narrowed to slits and a frown on her face as deep as the Grand Canyon.
“You and your reform movement will suffer a resounding defeat in Detroit,” she said. “You’ve met the so-called reform candidate. I’ll make sure his ideas are portrayed as representing the entire reform movement. Move your allegiance to the winning side, Jacob.”
“Amanda, how do you get on the ballot as a candidate for congress in the thirteenth district of Michigan?” I demanded as I walked into the motorhome. We’d cut our visit to Greenfield Village short and came back to the RV to prepare for Saturday’s performance. This was critical.
“Amanda is a computer and not eligible to run for political office,” the mellow voice said.
“That was intended to be a universal ‘you’ meaning how does one become a candidate for office?” I clarified.
“Jacob? What are you planning?” Rachel asked.
“It might not be something my boss should know about,” I said.
“Try me.”
“We need another alternative for office. There is no way I’m going to say anything that supports either one of these idiots.”
“Okay. I agree so far. But how?”
“We need to get another candidate on the ballot and throw our weight behind him or her in the program tomorrow. Amanda?”
“Yes, Jacob. A candidate must be at least twenty-five years of age, a citizen of the United States for at least seven years, and a resident of the district for which he or she is filing. The top two vote-getters in the August second primary are placed on the ballot. A candidate wishing to run without entering the primary may do so by submitting the required petition and signatures by July fifteenth. In the State of Michigan, ballots have already been printed.”
“There has to be another way.”
“A person can declare himself a write-in candidate by filing a declaration of intent before October twenty-third.”
“Please locate the necessary paperwork and send it to the printer. We need a write-in candidate at the performance tomorrow night.”
“Is this even possible?” Donna asked. “How much time during the show is this going to take?”
“As much as necessary,” I said. “We cannot leave Detroit with no better choice than is on the ballot. It’s going to take all our pod to get signatures and collect campaign funds. If we can get some other service volunteers to help, let’s do it.”
My wives thought I was a little crazy, but we all went to work. The printer started to hum. Amanda was doing her part.
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