The following story contains material of an adult nature. If you are offended by such things or are restricted by laws in your area from viewing such things, please turn away now.

LEGAL BS: Feel free to read this story at your leisure. The characters, the plot, and the machine which makes all this happen belong to me and may not be borrowed or stolen without written permission. If you are an archiver, please contact me if you are interested in putting this story up on your site. I will allow all free sites to post my work so long as I know where it is going and you allow me to prepare a copy of the story which is specifically "branded" with your site's information. (i.e. I put a Meta Tag in it with your site info so that we can identify that you do, in fact, have permission to post it) I will also write up a custom "Author's Notes" for the beginning of the tale which addresses your readers directly. You may NOT archive the TEXT versions of this story which have gone out onto the newsgroups. I have posted a few copies, but they lose considerable punch because of the format structure of a ascii text file. You MAY feel free to pass versions along to your friends, so long as you aren't making any cash from it. Again, I would prefer that the text versions just be used for the newsgroups, while the HTML versions are used for all other purposes. If you have questions about whether or not I'll approve of something you wish to do with the stuff, just ask. :)

Note from the Author: This story is a little different from most of the things I've seen posted around the net. In addition to being along a SciFi vein, it also has a plot which (I hope) people will find both entertaining and thought provoking. I have to admit, there are some pretty weird things in here, so I'm assuming that this probably won't be to everyone's liking. This is my first stab at writing erotic fiction for public consumption, so I'd be interested in hearing from people. You can reach me at grumpus@mail.gv2.net.

  FOUR – Hollywood Revisited

I had come out to the bar for a beer between sets and I felt her presence more than I actually saw her enter. I turned my head and there she was – Ms. Hollywood. She was looking right at me and coming toward my seat at the bar as if there were no one else in the room. Her long mane of red hair cascaded down over her bare shoulders. She wore a black wrap dress which also seemed to almost flow behind her ethereally. My first impression was that she was an angel, but the more I looked, the more my mind screamed, Devil!

Ms. Hollywood sat down in the vacant stool beside me, ordered a rusty nail from Al, and then turned her attention to me. She looked me up and down, seemingly pleased with my new healthier appearance.

"I see you’ve hooked in," she said offhandedly. "You look good."

I was seething inside. I really wanted to reach out and grab the bitch by the throat until she told me exactly what was going on, but I really didn’t want to cause a scene. In the back of my mind I knew that there were people looking for Robbie and me – and others for that matter. In all likelihood, Ms. Hollywood was one of us.

Or one of them. Welcome to the Game .

"I’ve sort of been expecting you to drop back in," I said, trying to keep Al’s attention at the other end of the bar. It wasn’t working. So few women came in as patrons – especially walking sex pots like this one. And Al was such a pig, he just couldn’t help coming over to drool over her a little bit.

"Ahhh, that’s it," said Al. "You two are old buddies or some shit, huh? I’m Al, I own the joint."

He extended a chubby hand to Hollywood and I was really impressed at how she just shrugged it off and turned her attention back to me. "How much for a private dance?"

I glanced at Al. He knew that one of my rules was that I didn’t do private dances for women or couples. At this point in my life, I didn’t really understand just why I had made that rule, but nonetheless, if I came back with a number, he would surely know that something was out of the ordinary. And "out of the ordinary" was something that Robbie and I had decided long ago was something we couldn’t afford to do.

Hollywood tilted her head back and laughed, "Still not playing both sides, huh? Not even for an old friend from your hometown?"

"It’ll cost ya even less if you let me watch," said Al with a pig’s grin.

"Fuck you Al," I said and took Hollywood’s hand. It wasn’t much, but the fact that she had established that we were old friends would make it seem quite normal for me to take her back there. He’d assume that we just wanted to talk but knew that I was working and this was how it was done. Or, he might even make up a story in his mind as elaborate as that we were ex lovers and she was the very reason that I wouldn’t do privates with women in the first place.

Regardless, Hollywood and I were headed toward the bank of private booths along the side wall and I was going to get some answers!

The "private rooms" at the club were little more than a booth with a comfortable reclining chair in the middle. They were private though: virtually soundproof and with a lock on the door. There was a "panic button" on the wall for us to press if there was any trouble, but otherwise, no one would key themselves in.

"Okay, you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?" I asked as I closed the latch behind us.

Hollywood sat down on the arm of the recliner and looked up at me almost sadly. "I don’t know a hell of a lot more than you do. I skipped here, though, so I might be able to flesh out a few more details, but I only remember one lifetime back."

"So it’s true!" I exclaimed, leaning back against the door. "We are actually moving from lifetime to lifetime, from one reality to the next!"

"I don’t think that’s exactly right," said Hollywood with a frown, "but, it’s close. Our souls, or whatever seem to pass from body to body all within the same time frame and within the same existence. Although…."

I couldn’t tell if the pause was because she was about to reveal something she didn’t really want me to know, or if it was something she wasn’t sure how to articulate.

"Although what?" I prodded gently.

"Things are unfolding differently this time."

I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I said as much.

Hollywood just sighed and thought for a moment. "Last time, by this date, we were much further along than this. Only problem is that the Stormtroopers managed to wipe out almost all of us before we could skip. I think I’m the only one who made it. I lost my wife and my two children, and all of the others. So far, you’re the only other one of us I’ve been able to find."

The beautiful woman was close to tears now and I could almost feel her loss. "My roommate is one of us too, I think. But, how did you know you I was one of us?"

She brightened a little at the notion of there being a third. "I was guessing really. Our names always seem to be pretty close to the same. I found you in the book and then just did a little asking around."

I was becoming more and more confused about how this all worked. It boggled my mind to even consider possible theories – probably because I’d been "unhooked" from the plant for nearly two hours and that’s when the "fade" usually started.

"Tell me about the plant," I said just as my thoughts struck on it. "Do you have one at home, too? How long can you stay off?"

Hollywood smiled again, "It seems that when you skip, the addictive properties of the plant no longer affect you. I did take a few "rides" on it before I turned it over to you as you told me to, but I’ve got no physical dependency on it."

"As I told you to?" I didn’t follow and had long since lost any shame in admitting that I was lost as hell in all this.

"The last you," explained the redhead. "Apparently, you discovered the plant and understood some potential in it. I think a few of the others did, as well – ones who had also been around a few lifetimes. Robert seemed to be of the mind that each of us had a certain task that our psyche was designed to perform. He seemed to think that he was the Gatherer, the one who was in charge of making sure as many of us managed to get together each shift as possible. He seemed to think that you were the Scientist, the one who could take all of the confusing shit around us and create tools to help us make it to the next phase. And so, just before it all ended, you – or Jack, really - told us to make sure that if any of us made it through and he didn’t, to make sure that you got the plant because only you would be able to figure out what the hell it was for."

This was stunning in several ways. Not only did it confirm that I had been a man in the past, but it also meant that Robbie had been too. I wondered if we had been close in that life like Robbie and I were now – or if we’d even gone as far as to get married. It also seemed to mean that, now, something was expected of me if we were, in fact, going to be playing this "game" to win.

"So," said Hollywood with a hopeful look. "What’s it for?"

I shook my head. "I have no fucking clue."

Holly – yes, it turns out that that was actually Ms Hollywood’s her name! – watched from the bar for the rest of the night. She talked to Robbie some, and they seemed to hit it off pretty well. I talked to her some more when I wasn’t on stage, but since we were in the open, we had to just talk about general things in our lives.

One thing that was decided is that we all needed to stick together through this. Holly was adamant about not wanting to become a stripper. We also knew that Al didn’t rent to anyone but the girls who worked here. Therein lay our problem. There’s no way he’d agree to let her stay with us for any period of time, and there was also no way we could sneak her in and out of the place without being caught sooner or later.

This was predominantly what was on our minds as we climbed the stairs toward the apartment. We could probably go two or three days with Holly as our guest before Al started getting cranky about it. It wasn’t much, but it gave us some time to come up with a plan.

Holly’s face and spirits seemed to drop as I opened the door to the apartment, though.

"What’s wrong?" asked Robbie, eyeing our new friend with concern.

"It’s just that I expected the growth to be further along," she muttered as she walked into the room and began examining our plant with some concern.

It seemed Holly was right about her addiction, though. True, both Robbie and I couldn’t be satiated by the mere smell of the plant as we once had, but it did immediately bring a slight sense of arousal to us. It seemed to affect Holly in much the same way.

"I – I" stammered the stunning redhead as she tried to formulate what she was thinking. "I think it needs more power."

"What does that mean?" I asked, the yearning to plug back in, growing stronger within me.

"Jack once told me," she explained, "that the plant feeds off sexual energy. By this time last shift, there were already four of us and maybe a dozen or so people like her," she pointed to Karen.

"Excuse me," said Robbie as she stripped naked, "but I really need a fix here. Can we talk about this in a little bit."

Holly agreed as she too started taking off her clothing.

"I thought you didn’t need fixes," I stated.

The redhead winked. "I don’t, but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the ride!"

There was definitely something to be said for Holly’s "more power" theory. The minute we were all "hooked in", I could feel the difference. My pussy was on fire with arousal and as the vines scooped me up and cradled me in close to the others at the heart of the plant, they almost felt electric on my skin. Our bodies writhed and twisted together in pre-orgasmic ecstasy, each of us a virtual satellite twisting and turning around the more sedate and tranquil Karen.

And then, I was coming harder than I had ever come in my life!

Rob pounded in and out of my hot cunt while Harry rammed my mouth with his thick rod. The sensations were intense as both of my holes were filled completely. When I closed my eyes, I could almost see my serum coursing through our bodies. My orgasm was building quickly now, and I could tell that Rob and Harry were about to blow too!

And, it happened. Both cocks exploded in me at the same time, which was enough to send me over the edge. I gulped Harry’s seed, swallowing as much as I could before we skipped. It was pure ecstasy.

But, then it was over and nothing had changed.

"Shit, Jax," exclaimed Rob as he rolled off of me and checked the locks on the hotel room door just as the banging started on the other side. "The shit didn’t work!"

Harry, whom I now recognized as Holly, just stared, horror stricken, at the door.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" I screamed as I, too rolled off the bed. "Every shift, it takes more and more for us to skip!"

"Well, one of us has to make it or we’ll never know about this little problem on the next plane!" said Rob pressing his shoulder to the door. "Jax, grab Harry and get out of here – I’ll take the hit, you’ve gotta find a way to skip or we’re all fucked next time!"

"I’m not leaving you! Not again!" I cried as a curved blade cracked through the heavy door, just missing Rob’s head.

It was then that Harry went into action. He seemed to suddenly get all his shit together in a single instant and he raced to the door and pushed Rob aside. "You two both go, I’ll hold them off!"

"You’ve got seven lives behind you," complained Rob, "your information’s invaluable."

Another spike came through the door, grazing Harry’s shoulder. "You said it yourself. Everyone’s got a job here. So far, there are six of us that we know of. Everyone’s got a job. You’re the gatherer and organizer, Jackie is the brains. You’ve got everyone in their little slot, but me. Well, maybe, just maybe, I’m the fucker who’s stuck making sure that you shitheads manage to get the hell through this shit – and right now, the best way to do that is for me to take the fucking hit! Now scram!"

Rob and I started for the window, but Harry stopped us one more time.

"Don’t forget the plant," he called as blood flowed freely from his side. "For three lifetimes now, you’ve been convinced that it’s the key. And it’s always there at Miller’s Creek after every reset. Get to the plant early next time for shit’s sake!"

The blood curdling screams of Harry’s death still rang in my mind as the last waves of my orgasm subsided. All four of us were soaked with the plant’s gooey emissions and the three of us who had just "passed through" were breathing quite heavily.

I was still having residual tremors when Karen’s eyes opened and she spoke for the first time since we’d gotten back home. "Wow, even I got something from that one!" she exclaimed. "You gotta bring friends over more often!"

Holly didn’t seem to take to well to learning that she was the designated soul to take the "hit" if one of the other key players were in trouble. I don’t know if it was because it, all in all, was a pretty grim existence, or if it was because, if it were true, then by her being the only one to skip during the last reset, she had failed utterly in her mission.

"Don’t worry about it," said Robbie, holding her close, the goo squishing out from between their bodies. "You gave yourself the title, not me. And besides, even if it is true – you did make sure that at least someone managed to skip with something useful in their heads."

"I’m going to need to you tell me everything you can remember about your past life," I said, feeling at ease with my role as the thinker. It did feel right. "Before that, though – we’re going to need more power, as you say. There should be at least three others of us out there, so that will be a really good jump, but you were saying that normal people were being used too?"

Holly nodded as Robbie brushed the tears from the redhead’s eyes. "Yeah, not only do the visions get clearer and stronger the more people who are in there, but you – Jack – said something about needing at least two dozen to have enough power for us all to skip. And then, even so, he’d like to have twice that just to be safe."

Some of it seemed to be making some sense. Not a lot of it – but, some.

Okay, at some time back however many shifts ago, someone figured out that some of us were somehow different – that we, our souls, could pass on to the next shift, or reset, of the "world" or whatever it was we were living in. Rob, at least once and now he – or she depending upon the set – was generally credited with finding the plant first, even though it was Holly who technically found it this time around. Somehow, I had figured out that the plant was the key to being able to shift and I even made some sort of serum (using the gooey stuff from the plant?) which, when combined with an orgasm (or maybe it just helped to bring on a more powerful orgasm?) allowed us to skip. Several lifetimes later, the serum stopped working (were we becoming immune?) so we had to find other means of generating more and more powerful orgasms.

"The plant’s not the key, the orgasms are," I muttered aloud as more questions than answers started to appear in my theory.

"Huh?" asked Robbie, still running her fingers through Holly’s stringy sticky hair.

"The plant’s just a tool to make it so the orgasm is strong enough to skip us over the next reset," I explained – or, rather, hypothesized. "Probably, the first several skips occurred the first time we ever came on that plane. Then, we’d have to come harder and harder. Soon, we needed help. And now, however many resets into this thing we are, we need a shitload of help.

Welcome to the Game!

"My god," breathed Karen and we were all rather startled to hear her pipe in. "It really is like some twisted video game. The first levels are real easy to get through, but each one after is a little harder. Until…"

She didn’t have to finish her thought, we all knew what it was.

Until, eventually, the computer wins.

It was rather strange. I’d come to think of Robbie as my spouse, but that first night she spent almost all of her time cuddling, and even making out a little bit, with Holly. That part wasn’t so strange. After all, Holly not only had someone familiar - to her at least - to share her grief with for the first time in who knows how long, but she was also confronted with the new knowledge that she was sort of the unofficial "Fall Guy" for the team. What was strange, though, was that I didn’t even have a twinge of jealousy. I loved Robbie, more than I could even describe, but for some reason, it didn’t bother me to see her in someone else’s arms.

I think Karen worried that I was bothered by it, though. She came out of the "heart" of the plant several times, her cuke still inserted as mine was, to lie on the bed beside me to make certain that I was okay and to "see if I needed any help" in formulating my plan.

"Don’t you worry about me," I assured my friend. "If anything, I’m worried about you."

Karen kissed my forehead and smiled, a low almost erotic sigh coming from deep in her throat. "I’m fine baby. Trust me on that."

"But, not only have I gotten you addicted to some strange drug that we don’t understand, but we’ve also all but come out and told you that you have nothing to look forward to after this life."

"Oh believe me," she smiled, "I’d recommend this addiction to all of my friends. You guys still have to eat because you get off the thing sometimes, I suppose. But me? I’m self sustaining and in a constant state of bliss. And, if I get bored, I unhook for a minute and plug back in and it all starts back in like the first time. This is the life!"

"But what about the fact that everything you’ve been told all your life – heaven, hell, the afterlife – all of it is just a lie?"

Again, Karen smiled. "For you it’s a lie, or at least the evidence seems to point that way now, but don’t you even presume to guess what’s going to happen to me. It’s your belief system that just got fucked to all hell. Mine’s intact, Jackie. I’ll live this life in bliss and probably die one day. Or, maybe I’ll stay hooked up to this thing forever, never growing old. For all you know, this is heaven and you guys are just too stubborn to realize it."

She did have a point. We were the ones who were different – and there were only a half dozen or so of us. Who was I to think that we were the gifted ones. Looking at it from Karen’s perspective, she was in heaven and we were going through hell because we didn’t want to – or possibly were unable to – just kick back and enjoy it.

"I wish I could take your rational and positive outlook with us to the next shift, Karen."

She leaned in close said, almost in a tone of conspiracy, said, "I saw your vision the last time."

I could hear Robbie and Holly sleeping, their breaths coming in unison from the bunk overhead. Otherwise, the entire world was silent, as if pausing to see my reaction to this piece of information.

"You were there?" In all of the other visions, only those of us who had actually been hooked in where actually in the scene. We added Holly and we got a vision of a past scene that she was involved in. I rather expected that if, and when we found more of us, that we’d get visions from times when we were all together and discussing things or having things happen to us – most likely key things that would give us more answers. The more people involved, the more likely someone will have valuable input.

But, this was different. There were three of us in the room during the last vision, yet Karen was saying that there were four.

"I wasn’t in the scene," she said. "I was sort of above it – watching it all. I could move around in it, touch things. Jackie, I could interact with the scene."

I had no idea what to make of it. Was it just that she’d been plugged in to our visions so many times that she could now experience them with us? Or was it something else. Was this something that we could use to our advantage?

"We’ll have to keep an eye on it during the next few sessions before we can know what’s up," I decided. "Keep me posted, will you?"

Karen nodded and kissed me – right on the lips. The cukes started moving a bit faster in our pussies as we lay there on my bed, just kissing and hugging. I felt at peace and for a moment, everything was good as we drifted off to sleep in each others arms.

Robbie came out of the bathroom in a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt with the words, Just Do Me and a sort of bastardized version of the Nike symbol which looked rather like a little sperm emblazoned across the front. She waved the list of names that Holly had drawn up with everyone she had known from her past shift and names she heard the others use from lives beyond that. Robbie tended, it seemed, to always be a Robert, or Roberta or something like that. I always tended to be Jack, Jackie, and she even thought she’d seen someone spell it with a "Q" at some point. Holly had been Harry at one time. The last names were sketchier, so we thought that if Robbie was very lucky and even better at execution, she might be able to find one, maybe two more of us, tops.

Strangely – or maybe that’s just the way it worked in this stupid game – in this life, Holly had grown up only five miles from our current location. While I started out living upstate, I had moved down her for some reason, though I don’t consciously have a good reason for it. She also said that the last time out we had all lived within a 20 mile radius of each other, though not here on the East Coast. It seemed to be the consensus that it just kind of happened that we all ended up together, or at least very close.

"I’ll be back soon," she beamed as she strode out the door. "Hopefully, I’ll have some friends with me!"

"Be careful," I called. "Remember, there are bad guys looking for us all the time!"

That left Holly, Karen, and I to come up with a plan to get "more power."

"I’m not at all comfortable with just grabbing people and making them sex junkies," I said. "We may be different, but I really don’t think it gives us the right to decide the fate of others."

"I disagree," commented Holly. "We need everyone we can lure up here. We’re already almost a year behind schedule because it took me so fucking long to find the stupid plant."

"It’s understandable, you didn’t find it last time, and all you knew was that Rob had found it somewhere by a pond," I said. "But, that still doesn’t give us free reign to take the fate of others into our own hands."

"Miller’s Pond. Southeast corner. Remember that!"

I nodded, and I also noticed that Karen nodded too, almost as if that information might be useful to her later on in life – or lives. I felt so badly for her, despite her undying faith in her own god.

"And besides," Holly continued, her green eyes blazing, "it most certainly does give us the right to decide the fate of these people. They’re nothing, as far as we’re concerned, they don’t come through during the reset, their souls don’t carry on when they die – they are just here as tools for us to use to achieve our goals. Just like the plant and the extra locks I’m going to put on this door while you are at work tonight."

The extra locks seemed like a good idea, though I had seen the "Stormtroopers" – I think that’s what Holly had called them – come through at least two rather stout doors to get to us.Yet, come to think of it, in none of my visions had I actually seen one of them. In one, I watched Robbie get killed by some kind of laser blast and in the other, we were too busy scrambling through the window to safety for us to turn around and get a look.

"That’s bullshit," I said, getting right back to the point. "You have no idea what happens to everyone else once we get reset. For all we know, the world goes on before and after we’re all gone. We are just stuck in some kind of loop."

"We need to just hook in everyone in this building," insisted Holly. "Then we go building by building, block by fucking block until we have the power to skip and we’re gone."

"Gone to where? To do this all over again? I’d hate to think that’s all there is to your lives." It was Karen who spoke up, which startled me. "There has to be something more. For me, and for you. The problem here is that every time you’ve tried it, you’ve gotten something wrong. There’s an element missing. When you go, rather than skipping right on out of this nightmare, you are going right back to the beginning and somebody makes you do it again. And again. Until, finally, someone gets it right."

If there was any time I wished Karen was one of us, it was right then and there. Then again, maybe her ability to see things for what they are – or at least what they might potentially be – was drawn from the fact that she could actually separate herself from it all. Much in the way that I would detach myself while dancing naked in front of grubby strangers night in and night out, she could separate herself from this. To her, this was our problem, not hers.

That’s why her next statements amazed me even more.

"Do you want to know what I think?" she asked, not really caring for an answer. "I think Holly’s right – at least in so far as her techniques go. Her motives are a bit wrong, but here’s my theory. This plane here – the one which I live in and the one you seem to be continually trapped in – is heaven. At some time, something invaded heaven and turned it into the world you see today – possibly even your Stormtroopers. So now, you’ve got heaven but there’s no longer anything heavenly about it. So, someone from another plane or whatever realizes that heaven is fucked up, so they form a team to go fix it. You’ve got your souls and your tools and that’s about it – except for a fucked up set of rules that no one can remember – or possibly just can’t understand no matter how good your memory is. If that’s the case, the closest thing to heaven that I’ve seen is being hooked into this plant of yours. Everything’s fine, no matter what. Sure, I care about what happens to you guys and others like you, but frankly, if those Troopers came in and shot all three of you dead right now, I’d be just as happy staying plugged in and riding this thing to eternity. And, if you think that everyone else in this God forsaken existence wouldn’t agree with me, then you are the ones who are wrong."

I don’t know if I agreed with Karen’s theory, but it was, I suppose, as plausible as anything else I’d heard lately. What if she was right? What if it was our job to see to it that everyone in the world got hooked in before we could finally get out of this mess? Everything I’d heard and seen so far led me to believe that the natural progression of things was heading toward that anyway. I still wasn’t about to take over the world, yet – not until I had a few more opinions, at least.

"What if we were to bring in just one or two more and ask them?" I pondered aloud. "Let them hang for a few days, and then see if they feel the same way you do."

"Time!" cried Holly. "There isn’t time for that. We’ve got less than six months before it comes around to when they found us last time. They could find us sooner this time and we’re already almost a year behind schedule – and remember what happened last time?"

Why the hell did I have to be the thinker? Welcome to the Game.

I turned to Holly. "You said yourself that I told you last shift that I was the only one who would be able to figure out what to do with this, right?"

"Yes," she said, "And we figured it out!"

"You may have it all figured out," I said. "But, I, for one, have no fucking idea what the right thing to do is."

The morning went on pretty much like that. Robbie came home around noon for her "fix" and went right back out before one. She hadn’t found anyone, but was "hopeful." Holly needed to go back to her place to pick up some things – including some notes she’d made over the years regarding things she thought were important in respects to this whole mess. It was left up to me to go out and get the extra food we were going to need for Holly’s addition to the clan.

When I came back from grocery shopping, the first thing I noticed was that the plant seemed bigger and thicker. I remember thinking that it was so thick that I couldn’t even see Karen in the "heart" anymore.

Then, I noticed the vine going into the bathroom – and the sound of the shower running – and the low moans coming from the other side of the door.

Shit. Holly came back and now she’s bringing Julie or Marta in! Fuck!

We weren’t ready to do this test yet. Especially not with more people who were expected to show up for work downstairs! Al would figure out that something was wrong and we’d have a whole bunch of explaining to do.

I practically threw the groceries onto the floor and raced to the bathroom door. Locked. I pounded frantically, my heart beating a mile a minute. "Damn it! Open up! Open this fucking door!"

It finally gave way and I stormed into the small room. The vine ran right into the shower. I whipped the curtain open, perfectly ready to rip Holly’s head off, but I got a start that stopped me dead in my tracks.

It wasn’t Holly – it was Karen! And it also wasn’t Julie or Marta – it was Al!

And, to make things worse, yet – she wasn’t bringing Al across. She was standing over him with a large kitchen knife in her hand and a pool of blood at her feet. She turned at the sound of the curtain opening and she looked utterly scared for her life until it registered that it was me standing there.

"Shit, Jackie," she breathed, her eyes still wide as saucers. "We’ve got problems."

"No shit," I said, trying to maintain my cool.

"No," she said as she stepped out of the pool of blood. "He was one of them."

"One of who? One of us?"

She wrapped her arms around me and even with the calming effects of the plant as the cuke slowly filled her body with pleasure and peace, she started to cry.

"No," she sobbed almost imperceptibly in my ear. "He was a StormTrooper."