5 Must-Know Tips Before Visiting An Asian Massage Parlor ...

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“Another air group attacking from the west!” came the call over the radio from the crow’s nest.
“Copy! Shift AA batteries one and two to counter, I’m getting more fighters in the air!” Hornet promised, closing her eyes and making sure she remembered each component of a Hellcat’s engine as her ship and crew threw flak and machine gun fire skyward.
“Maru, we can’t launch in these conditions!”
“You can’t, but I can; so give me some cover will you?!” she demanded of her deck crews.
“Ma’am, guns five, seven and twelve are almost out of ammunition!”
“Understood, quartermaster. I’ve already got more produced in the depots; get it where it needs to go. And don’t call me ma’am again, I’m not old!” she insisted with a laugh.
“Incoming bombers twelve high!” The radios crackled again as more than fifteen hundred men and one kansen got their first real test as a fighting unit.
“I have them, keep the fire up! Gunners, I have a visual on Ark Royal through her smokescreen. Load up. I’m adjusting the firing solution now!”
“We can do that ourselves, Hornet. Just give us the coordinates and focus on your Hellcats!”
“Aww, you guys are so sweet. Here you go! Let’s show Lexington and Saratoga that they aren’t the only carriers who can use 203mm batteries! I made them just for you!”
“Hard copy, boss. We’ve got her dialed in. Oh shit, strafing run! Incoming sharks!”
“Hold position and open fire! I have you!” Hornet promised, taking a knee and placing a fist against the floor of her bridge. A massive shield encompassed her hull that was more than up to the task of deflecting machine gun fire from Ark Royal’s P-40s. A salvo of heavy rounds thundered from her deck batteries, newly arranged in the same manner as those of the Lexington class carriers.
“Maru, direct hit! Now’s the time!” one of her gunnery sergeants reported, noting the strikes against Ark’s shield that threw up smoke and debris that would temporarily distract attention from their bombers.
“Hold tight boys! I’m going to send it!” Hornet shouted happily as two squads of B-25s initiated a bombing run from on high, screened by lower flying Hellcats. Her deck batteries continued to fire as well, and several seconds later the call of surrender came over the radio. After five grueling days and nights learning how to operate their new ship, they’d defeated Ark Royal in single ship combat. Commander Thorson, Fleet Admiral Nimitz, Enterprise, and the other most important actors in the Union Pacific fleet were waiting for her back on the docks.
“Took you long enough,” Enterprise said quietly as the sisters embraced briefly. The ribbing was all in good fun.
“Yeah I know, had to whip a lot of those lads into shape but we did it,” Hornet replied proudly. Enterprise had, perhaps unsurprisingly, dismantled Ark Royal with absolute precision the second day after she’d been granted her rigging. She had done so with help from a handful of her most experienced pilots and mechanics, but was otherwise unassisted. Hornet had insisted on bringing at least half of her entire crew along for the ride, but eventually arrived at the same point. “So what happens now, Commander?”
“Captain Stevens’ convoy just radioed; they’re about an hour away. We resupply and then we get ready to leave. Akashi finished the retrofit of your kitchens?”
“Yes sir! And I made sure they know not to go tinkering with anything if they don’t want to get bonked by one of my planes. Thanks again for accommodating us.”
“Consider it a little experiment,” Thorson replied with a smile. “Fleet Admiral?”
Nimitz nodded curtly and began informing them all of the next steps that would be taken by each fleet and the Union as a whole in the Pacific. “The vast majority of Enterprise’s crew will be transferred to the old Hornet which will continue to be commanded by Captain Mitscher. Hornet, we are still short crew. How many can you spare?”
“I can have a list ready in a couple of hours, sir. I hate to lose any of them but I understand,” she replied, a hit of sadness in her voice.
“Very good. Enterprise, the few individuals you wish to accompany you will also be assigned to the new Hornet. I am in agreement with Commander Thorson that a true comparison between you and your sister, crewed and uncrewed, is needed.”
“Yes sir. I’m confident in my ability to operate my vessel alone. My pilots and mechanics have been of great help in getting me to the point where I can launch aircraft on my own, but I suppose I don’t need them if push comes to shove,” the silver-haired carrier explained.
“I understand. This should prove a decent compromise. Commander Thorson, I understand that your fleet composition is unorthodox and I wish I had more escorts to spare, but I do not. Northampton is the best we can do.”
“She already approached me about acquiring rigging and learning to fight like Houston, sir. We would be happy to have her,” Thorson replied thankfully.
“And we will be happy to have more experienced hands for other ships,” Nimitz replied. “I don’t think we need to stand on ceremony any longer. Commander, your orders are simple. Track Akagi and Kaga down and neutralize them. If the other carriers interfere, take them out as well. The quicker we finish them, the quicker we can transfer much needed firepower to the Atlantic. The news out of London seems to worsen by the day.”
“I understand, sir. We’ll get it done,” Thorson promised, fashioning a sharp salute that Hornet and Enterprise quickly copied. They were his ships, after all.
“Very good. And one last thing, Commander.”
“Sir?”
Nimitz looked around the bustling base with a slight smile, thinking that victory was perhaps on the horizon. “Following this evening’s meal please instruct your staff to arrange the space for a formal event. Assuming the manifest was not lost in transit, the women of your fleet have earned themselves a bit of hardware.”
-----
“Hammu-chan, Hammu-chan, over here!” Shigure called, summoning the Union destroyer to the Sakura table that night at dinner. She’d received her own ship and rigging in the week following Midway thanks to ample supplies of wisdom cubes and a dire need for escort ships in Thorson’s unbalanced fleet, but remained withdrawn and dour following the loss of Sims and then Yorktown. A seat for her was quickly cleared between Yamashiro and Yukikaze, the former enveloping her in a fluffy, warm hug when she sat down.
“S-stop with this! I don’t need you treating me like a child!” she protested. Yamashiro only giggled, her tail snaking happily behind her as she rubbed Hammann’s ears and pushed the little destroyer deeper into her cleavage.
“Shhh, it’s ok little cat. Yama-mama will take care of you as long as you need.”
Thorson couldn’t recall ever seeing a kansen blush redder or pout harder than Hammann, but she ate with the Sakura at every meal and never lashed out at them beyond her words, even after she acquired her rigging. He allowed it to play out without intervening, as the Union kansen seemed willing to as well. He could not replace a lost sister or mentor.
That evening was a mixture of fond reunions and farewells. Brooklyn had gotten to spend some time with Captain Stevens that afternoon, and Thorson had decided to leave her in charge of the base in his absence during the operation. Yuugure, Hatsuharu, and Michishio would be staying behind to man the kitchens, along with Naka, Cassin, and Ooshio who would be in charge of maintaining the facilities of the base and caring for the kiddies, along with Shiranui. Almost everyone else had been assigned to the attacking fleet, meaning that along with many sailors saying their goodbyes that night, Downes was also in that position. The Union destroyer was making the most of it, dining with her friends around her and Ooshio in her lap. California, Cleveland, Portland, and the other bubbly Union kansen found the arrangement utterly adorable, and the black-furred neko shrine maiden found herself veritably showered with attention and petting throughout the night. Only Downes was allowed to leave the occasional kiss on her cheek, however.
As the meal concluded, Akashi and her bulins promptly arranged for Admiral Nimitz’s request, occasionally removing a sailor from his seat bodily as they cleared tables and redid the hall for a large briefing. Other than the Sakura, all rose and saluted the Fleet Admiral and the rest of Union brass as they filed in, accompanied by several aides. Nimitz got down to brass tacks immediately. “As many of you are already aware, a follow-on operation to the defensive action at Midway will be commencing imminently, with Commander Thorson’s fleet as the spearhead. The Enterprise, Hornet designation CV-12, and the Northampton are officially transferred to his command. All crew assigned to the Enterprise and Northampton are to remain after this meeting to receive your new assignments. Those hulls are to be crewed solo going forward. The crew of the Hornet will also remain, as a minority of you will be needed elsewhere. And since I’m sure you’re all wondering why the Fleet Admiral is dealing with such mundane affairs, we’ll get to the meat and potatoes of this evening. Though I must say I’ve rarely had meat or potatoes as well prepared as I have recently. I’ll miss your cooking,” Nimitz stated, tipping his cap at Shiratsuyu and the other kitchen staff who were caught positively flat footed as dozens of sailors whistled and hooted their own approval. The Fleet Admiral held up his hands for quiet and continued.
“Upon consultation, I’ve been informed that there are no military honors that can be given for exemplary conduct in the kitchen, so maybe that’s something we can address when we find ourselves at peace again,” he chuckled quietly before adopting the tone for which he was known throughout the Union navy. “But we are at war, and were it not for the actions of a handful of individuals we would not be enjoying this relative luxury in the middle of the Pacific today. The shipgirl initiative, which I am designating the kansen initiative effective immediately, has been considered something between a curiosity and side project for more than a decade. We are here to correct that perception.”
Hushed conversation rippled through the many hundreds of sailors in attendance as Thorson’s kansen glanced at one another, suspicion and curiosity mixed together in their expressions. One of the Fleet Admiral’s aides stepped forward bearing a nondescript case which, when opened, revealed a couple dozen of identical yellow citation ribbons with a thin blue bar at the top and a red bar at the bottom. Thorson wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that particular award before, but knew that Brooklyn likely had something to do with it. He stood and saluted as Nimitz addressed him personally. “Yes sir.”
“Commander Thorson, after reviewing your after action reports and similar testimonies from Task Forces 16 and 17, I put in a call to Washington. I doubt many people have managed to surprise a man like the Commander in Chief, but I’d wager the tale I spun for him managed. You and your fleet have been awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, and I’ll be damned if I send you off to strike at the enemy’s heart without the distinction you’ve richly earned.”
“Thank you, sir,” Thorson said stiffly, whipped into shape by the sudden gravity of the moment. Setting an example for his kansen, most of whom had no idea what to do in such a situation, the Commander approached Nimitz to receive the ribbon. When he returned, he tapped Penny on the shoulder and nodded towards the Admiral. “You earned it. Go take what’s yours.”
The battleship held his gaze for a few seconds as she furiously debated with herself. No number of tokens would change the past, but she had served and bled for Thorson, for her sister, and for herself. That alone seemed enough to swallow her pride and be recognized. With confident steps she walked up to Nimitz and saluted, remaining silently at attention as the decoration was pinned to her uniform. Yuudachi, by contrast, refused to be silent and cheered loudly for her Penny-san, eliciting the faintest of confident smiles from the kansen as she turned to face the room and walk back to her seat. That expression turned to pride as her younger sister went next, and approval as Nimitz motioned politely for Arizona to remain standing after receiving her unit citation. Thorson and the rest of his fleet watched closely as a second aide to the Fleet Admiral presented a second case, this one much smaller, which when opened revealed three purple heart medals. The Admiral took one up and pinned it respectfully to Arizona’s uniform himself before extending his hand to her, speaking over Yukikaze’s rapid, questioning ‘nanodas’. “You look right as rain now, but I read the reports of your injury at Pearl Harbor. Let’s hope the next medal is a different color, shall we?”
“Thank you, sir,” Arizona whispered before hustling back to rejoin her sister as quickly as she could without running, flush with both happiness and embarrassment. Thorson met her eyes and nodded approvingly as the rest of his fleet was recognized. Cassin was also awarded a purple heart given the damage she’d suffered at Midway. Tennessee earned a Navy Cross for ‘gallantry in combat’ in addition to her unit citation. The tanned, almost perpetually grumpy battleship scoffed at the notion, but allowed the gleaming cross to be placed on her uniform where Thorson was absolutely sure it would remain for many years. Arizona was called back to receive a second Navy Cross, which Thorson considered richly deserved given that her abilities saw them through to the end of the Midway engagement. The award caused a bit of a skirmish between Yuudachi and Yukikaze over whose adopted onee-san was better, but it was quickly squashed by Choukai, who reminded them of the gravity of the situation with the hilt of her blade.
As the ceremony continued, Thorson clapped politely for each of his ships, especially when Brooklyn was recognized with a new citation dubbed the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, which Nimitz explained was meant to recognize her exemplary contributions to the kansen initiative both on and off the battlefield. South Dakota also received additional merits, though the Union staff in question didn’t have any idea where to pin her Navy Distinguished Service Medal without committing a misdemeanor. There wasn’t much material to work with. In the end, she accepted it in her hands, bowed silently, and then affixed the medal to one of her thick braids of hair. The humor of that situation was followed by true celebration as Ark Royal, despite not being an official member of Thorson’s fleet or even the Union navy, was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, a motion that had several of his kansen whistling and clapping. Unlike South Dakota, Ark Royal’s uniform was practically made to display honors and awards, and the little ones all gathered around to examine her new hardware the moment she sat down. The ceremony concluded with the latest addition to Thorson’s fleet, Hornet, being awarded the final Purple Heart that Nimitz had requested. And while she did not receive a unit citation, she was recognized for something more.
“I call upon Captain Marc Mitscher to present this final honor in the absence of Commander in Chief of the Union armed forces, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Nimitz said, projecting so that even those in the far back could hear him over the ceiling fans. The aging but still spry veteran stepped forward, doing his best to keep from breaking out into a broad smile as the Fleet Admiral continued. Even Thorson’s fleet remained utterly silent as the gravity of Nimitz’s introduction settled over them while Hornet herself stood there with a nervous look on her face and silently wishing she could borrow her sister’s uniform. “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at great risk to her life far above and beyond the call of duty, for sacrificing her own life to save those of her ship and her crew, and for having the gall to return from the dead in spite of God himself; in the name of the United States Congress I officially bestow upon Hornet the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
Decorum, though called for given the situation, was immediately dispensed with as Hornet’s crew, who formed the vast majority of the humans in attendance and who’d just been told they were about to participate in the largest Union offensive of the war up to that point, went absolutely bananas. Their kansen ate it up of course, accepting the honor graciously from her captain before pinning it to her left breast on the hem of her bikini top. Whistles, cat calls, and hoots galore greeted her and she blew them all a kiss with a wink before whipping out her rigging and threatening them with miniaturized aircraft if they didn’t let Nimitz finish. Message received, they returned to their seats and the Fleet Admiral spoke again. “Thank you, Hornet. Commander Thorson, the floor is yours if you have any announcements for your fleet?”
“Nothing major, sir. Just a reminder for anyone involved in the ongoing security around the Sakura prisoners; ensure that everyone has a chance to visit the Sakura dormitory this evening. You all deserve it. We will hold our strategy briefing there as well. Any kansen on sortie should consider their attendance mandatory. I’ll see you all then. For now, enjoy your hardware. It was well earned.”
“What do you think?” Downes demanded of Indianapolis. “That sounded to me like the Commander just said party in the onsen.”
“Kansen only,” Tennessee agreed. “Let’s go, short stuff. Bring your girlfriend.”
“Hey, keep your mitts off her,” Downes shot back playfully as Tennessee stood and adjusted her cap, taking a moment to appreciate the Navy Cross that hung from her uniform. Ares was enjoying it as well, chirping happily from her shoulder. Tennessee resolved to earn more kill tattoos and another medal by the time the Pacific campaign was ended.
“No need to get your panties in a bunch, Downes. Just saying I approve is all.”
-----
“Coolant?” Akashi offered, having found herself a bright red kimono with fluffy white trim to use while serving drinks at the onsen. Thorson’s fleet was all gathered on the wooden patio that overlooked the main pool where Yukikaze’s sisters were splashing about under Shiranui’s watchful eye. A few of the girls were still in their uniforms, having only arrived for the meeting, but many wore swimwear or towels alone, lounging or sitting comfortably as Thorson entered the fenced off area himself. West Virginia laughed and Maryland put her fingers between her lips to whistle at him, as he was wearing only a towel around his waist and his Commander’s cap. That laughter quickly spread through the entire fleet, including Hornet and Choukai, who still didn’t have a bead on the base’s various antics. Enterprise frowned at the display but held her tongue. Her new fleet might as well have been foreign territory. He stood before them importantly before bending over himself and chortling, unable to keep a straight face.
“Everyone good?” he asked casually, earning nods and assents from the assembled kansen. Akashi had already provided a map of the Pacific for him on the back wall of the pavilion, so the Commander began immediately. “Choukai, I know you don’t know many of us well yet, but I’d encourage you to do so over the coming days. The rest of you should know that Choukai has given us the exact location of the enemy’s stronghold, the Sanctuary, where the main Sakura fleets have almost certainly retreated to. This intel confirms older reports from Fusou and Shiranui, which seems to indicate that despite the involvement of the Sirens the base is still that, a fixed position.” Thorson paused to allow the implications to sink in. His veterans were looking at one another knowingly, recalling the triumphant early days of their Java campaign. “Fixed positions can be bombarded. With the Colorado sisters, Hornet, and Enterprise recently added to our ranks, our ability to do so is unprecedented. So as I said, please get to know Choukai. There’s a good chance she’ll be escorting at least one of you into position when the times comes. I’d also like to unofficially welcome Northampton to the fleet. Northampton, it’s a pleasure to have you. I assume there will be no issues if I assign you and your sister to Hornet’s battlegroup?”
“No sir!” the dark-skinned cruiser replied happily, learning she’d be at her sister’s side going forward while Hornet seemed both taken aback and excited.
“I get a battle group?” she wondered.
“Indeed. The fleet will be rearranged to an extent for this operation. For starters, we have three carriers this time around instead of just the one. Additionally, one of those carriers will need to be defended with consideration given to her human crew. Indianapolis, I want you with Hornet as well.”
“Sure thing,” the pint sized cruiser agreed.
“And before you get upset with me, Portland, the battlegroups won’t be operating separately, at least not outside of visual range if I can help it. I want you and Cleveland with Enterprise. That leaves Choukai and Minneapolis. Both of you will be with Ark Royal. Minnie, you have my full confidence. Choukai, you will be escorting a Royal carrier, not a Union one,” Thorson emphasized. The Sakura placed her coolant on the nearest kotatsu and bowed her head low to the floor.
“I understand. She will have my sword. All I ask is for mercy for my sisters,” the cruiser replied. Thorson crossed his hands over his chest, frowning as he did so.
“I was hoping to keep this discussion light but yes, Choukai, the same mercy shown to you will be shown to any who surrender or are captured after being eliminated as a threat. That’s all I can promise.”
“I understand. I apologize for clouding what is clearly meant to be a more upbeat occasion,” she replied. Thorson wanted to explain to her that not only was her disposition understandable, but that seeing her body in naught but a white towel was plenty upbeat. He held his tongue both on account of his other ships and the fact that he was getting far too comfortable in his own ‘domain’. Instead he tilted his head her way to acknowledge her before moving on.
“Pennsylvania, Arizona, Tennessee, and California will make up the rest of Hornet’s group along with Downes, Yukikaze, Yuudachi, and Hammann. I assume there are no complaints there?” Thorson said, earning smirks and smiles from the battleships and happy cheers from the destroyer duo who were pleased to be assigned side by side again, though Shigure looked a tad put out.
“I’d say your assumption is correct, sir. The small ones seem quite chipper. Looking forward to it,” Hornet said hopefully. Her capital escorts were tough and seasoned, but they seemed willing to give her a chance.
“Who are you calling small?” Yuudachi demanded, puffing out her chest momentarily before Pennsylvania reached over and began rubbing her quite forcefully between the ears.
“She was talking about your height, not your chest you one track dog.”
“But Penny-san!” Yuudachi protested meekly as Shigure and Yukikaze enjoyed a laugh at their friend’s expense.
“No buts. The Commander isn’t finished. Sorry about my dog, Andrew.”
Thorson threw his head back and laughed, hardly one to stand on ceremony given the setting and his own state of dress. “Alright I get it. Let’s wrap up then so everyone can enjoy their final night here before we sortie. Ark, you’re with the Colorado sisters. That means Laffey, Javelin, and Zed are coming along too. That leaves Fusou, Yamashiro, and South Dakota for Enterprise. Shigure will be with you as well, along with Asashio, Arashio, and Kasumi. I look forward to seeing what you three sisters can do when working closely together.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence Shikikan,” Asashio replied for her sisters. “We will work hard to end this conflict with minimal bloodshed so we can return to our shrine.”
“Yes, I think that’s a worthy goal for all of us, and something to think on in the baths. Anyone have questions?” Thorson asked, opening the floor. When no one spoke up he nodded and gestured to the steaming pools of water behind them. “Then you’re all dismissed. We depart at sunrise. Be ready.”
At his word the crowd dispersed quickly, with many of his kansen disrobing and heading for the baths. Some like Yamashiro did it obviously for his enjoyment, whereas others like Colorado did so because they were proud of their bodies and didn’t particularly care what Thorson thought of them. Out back, on the far side of the pools beyond the dividing waterfall was where those who wished for a bit more privacy retreated, including Ooshio and Downes. The Union destroyer carried her girlfriend most of the way, using the water to aid her before submerging herself up to her shoulders and settling the Sakura maiden in her lap. “Sorry if I’ve been too possessive. It feels like we only just got back and now I have to leave you again.”
Instead of saying anything, Ooshio undid her towel and laid it over the lip of the stone wall that separated them from the forests below. They were not truly alone, but nudity wasn’t uncommon in the onsen, not to mention that other than flushes of the cheek which could be attributed to the warm water, neither of them had to worry about outward displays of arousal as Downes sunk her fingers gently into the pliant flesh of Ooshio’s hips and behind. “Easy luv, but I’m happy ye’ve been the way ye have. I’m too shy, but I missed ye somethin’ fierce when you were gone. All yer friends are so strong too.”
“It’s ok Ooshio, if Belle likes you then it’s safe to say they all do or will,” Downes assured her before leaving a wet kiss on her collarbone and shrugging off her own towel. “Here, this seems unfair.”
“Oh dear,” Ooshio whispered as Downes’ milky skin and scars were exposed to her, lit faintly by the moon. “Now I really don’t want ye to be goin’.”
“I know, but I have to. You know that,” Downes explained affectionately. Ooshio rested against her more fully, squishing her ample chest against Downes’ flatter one as they kissed.
“And that’s why I’m afraid,” Ooshio whispered.
“We beat them at Midway and we’ll beat them again,” Downes insisted as Ooshio ran an exploratory finger over her piercings. Given their location, they could only have been done for her benefit, or perhaps the Commander’s himself. Downes looked up at her hesitantly. “You like them?”
“Are all the Union gals this naughty?” Ooshio squeaked, shifting Downes’ demeanor to predatory in an instant.
“Yours is.”
“Aah Downes not- not now. I wanna say goodbye proper,” she insisted. Downes relented from kissing along the tops of her breasts and looked her in the eye.
“I’m coming back,” she insisted.
Ooshio closed her eyes and rested her forehead against her woman’s. “I’ll pray every day for ye and the rest, but it’s dangerous Downes, real dangerous.”
“So am I.”
“Downes!”
“Sweetie, if you know something we don’t you need to tell Commander Thorson,” the Union destroyer insisted. Ooshio shook her head.
“Fusou-san, Choukai-san, and Yamashiro-san will all know far more than a gal like me. I’m sure he knows what yer sailin’ towards. That doesn’t mean I like it.”
Downes listened to the pleasant droning of the waterfalls and the distant conversation of the majority of the fleet back in the main pools. “We’ve got more reason to come back than any navy I can think of, me most of all. That’ll have to be good enough. All your sisters are here, right?”
“Yeah, we’re all here,” Ooshio confirmed.
“Good, then I won’t hold anything back out there.”
“Ye could be fightin’ Sirens!” the plush shrine maiden gasped, tears forming in her eyes. Downes reached up and kissed them away, laughing as Ooshio’s eyelashes fluttered against her lips.
“Then I’ll come home with a Siren trophy for you. I’m just sorry you’ll be sitting here worried the whole time. But I’m glad you won’t be there,” Downes insisted, resting a hand on her upper thigh. Ooshio placed hers atop it and laced their fingers together. “We’ll be sailing a long time, and for the first couple days we’ll be in Union seas. I can afford a late night tonight, so let’s make the most of it.” Downes reached up with her other hand and undid Ooshio’s braids, nodding approvingly as the long, silken, black hair fanned out past her shoulders like a veil.
“Sometimes I wish the cubes could make us inta men,” Ooshio remarked wistfully. “Yer so sweet an’ so strong an’ so beautiful.”
“Geez, Ooshio. You’re going to go and make me blush for real!” Downes chuckled quietly. Ooshio took her head in her hands.
“I mean it, Downes. I wish… I wish we could have what some o’ the others have with Shikikan. I sometimes wish we could be havin’ babies, like the little things Ark is always carin’ for. They’re so sweet, ain’t they?”
“I… yeah, they are,” Downes replied quietly, struck dumb at the suggestion but recovering quickly as she remembered it was just that, a dream. For two lovers about to be separated by war again, it wasn’t such a bad dream either. “I guess that would be kinda nice, knowing even if the worst happens I’d leave you something of mine, ours? Damn, here I am thinking I’m the one talking smooth and you’re the one getting me all hot and bothered.”
“I’m plenty hot an’ plenty bothered, Downes.”
Several yards away, Houston tapped Fredrick and Northampton on the shoulder, pointed, and led them back around towards the rest of the fleet. “They were here first. I think they deserve a bit of privacy. So cute!”
“That’s… certainly one way of putting it,” Northampton replied, casting one last glance behind her and catching an eyeful of Ooshio’s ample backside. “I can give you two some space if-”
“That won’t be necessary, Miss Northampton,” Fredrick insisted quickly. Houston nodded in agreement, her green eyes sparkling.
“Indeed! When we’re ready to spend some time together we’ll just head back to my room!”
“Houston!”
“What? Did you think I called him my boyfriend just for show?”
-----
“Commander, if you wanted to have sex with me we didn’t have to wait. I could have just come to your room!” Arizona whispered as he sat next to her in the finally empty onsen. When he stared back at her like a virgin, she blushed furiously and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, that was meant to be a joke! I guess I’m not really that kind of woman, am I?”
“No, and I’m truly thankful for that. Can you imagine if Yukikaze or Yuudachi decided they wanted to add sex to their list of troublemaking activities?” He asked, taking her hand as they smiled at one another, comfortable despite a lack of clothing or any other coverings over their bodies.
“Commander, you know I don’t demand much of anything but I’m going to have to put my foot down just this once. Don’t have sex with my cat!” Arizona insisted. Thorson’s smile grew and he massaged his forehead and temple with his free hand.
“Tell you what, I’ll turn Yukikaze down if she ever gets that notion into her head if you agree to be the flagship for this operation,” he proposed. The sweeter, shyer of the Pennsylvania class sisters lowered her head and looked bashfully at him.
“You… you really want me to-”
“I really want you,” Thorson corrected with a bit of a smirk, far too charmed by her innocence and far too aware that he might not come home to forgo as much lovemaking as he could squeeze in without compromising his fleet’s operations. Unbidden, Arizona reached across him and pulled her body over his, resting against his chest, bracing herself against his shoulders, and lowering her hips until they were intertwined. Thorson reached up and caressed her cheek, doing his best not to take her like an animal. “You feel incredible, but I did actually have my reasons!” he murmured.
“I’ll hear them now,” she whispered back, laying her head against his shoulder so that he could speak directly against the shell of her ear. His hands guided her hips in a slow roll as he did his best to keep his thoughts ordered. “So other than my body?” she breathed.
“And you,” he corrected, nipping at her ear. “You’re in Hornet’s escort group and I want to be close to her. A human crew is a novelty and we’re going up against the enemy on home turf. At a minimum I would be failing in my direct orders if I didn’t oversee and report on that experiment.”
“Ah, that’s the spot,” Arizona gasped lightly, pressing into his shoulders with her fingertips. “Sorry, keep going?”
“Mmm, love you. Second, Penny, Fusou, and Yamashiro have all been flagship. I trust the four of you implicitly, and I don’t think it would be right to leave you out, especially on this kind of mission” Thorson said. He found her next question unsurprising.
“And Tennessee?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Oh? Complicated or complicated?” she wondered. When Thorson didn’t reply for several seconds she hummed in understanding. “I see, so even she’s got a heart in there somewhere? That’s nice to know, really. Anything else?”
“Yeah… revenge,” he admitted. Arizona stilled for a moment before resuming the gentle rocking of her hips, sending ripples shimmering across the water as her long hair pooled around the small of her back.
“Andrew, it’s alright. You and Penny found me, brought me back. Many others never even got that chance.”
“But I didn’t watch them die, not in my arms!” he hissed, holding her tightly around the waist. “This is different. I watched the life leave your eyes, Ari.”
“I…” she tried, unable to adequately reply. Her voice fled as he leaned back so he could capture her lips with his.
“Underneath the fleet and the Commander’s insignia I’m just a man. You and your sister know that better than most, I’d wager. I want the ones responsible for Pearl Harbor destroyed. And I want you at my side when we do it,” Thorson declared firmly. “So yeah, I have a few reasons.”
“Then I’d be happy to serve you as your flagship, Andrew. For now though, can we leave the war aside?” she pleaded, earning his hands on her hips and derriere in agreement. For a few hours they were able to do just that.
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I tried to time my vacation for a relatively quiet week, after the first wave of the offseason was over and before the Super Bowl took center stage. While there wasn’t any major Giants news last week, one of the biggest trades in NFL history was agreed to on Saturday, so that seems like a good place to dive back in:
1. The blockbuster deal that will send quarterback Matthew Stafford from Detroit to the Rams in exchange for quarterback Jared Goff, two first-round picks and a third-round pick has no direct impact on the Giants. But some indirect effects of the deal will be felt in East Rutherford.
Washington made a “significant offer” for Stafford, according to The Athletic’s Ben Standig. That package was WFT’s first-round pick (No. 19) and a third-round pick, according to SI.com. But WFT wasn’t willing to match the pair of first rounders the Rams included to seal the deal.
Opinions vary on Stafford, but he’s certainly better than Washington’s current options at quarterback, so the Giants are surely pleased to see the talented 32-year-old land outside the division. But there can be no celebrating about the QB situation in Washington since the team’s interest in Stafford shows an aggressive approach to upgrading the position. Stafford isn’t the only established starting quarterback on the market, so WFT will likely turn its interest to another option.
Washington is in an interesting position, since it has the 19th pick after winning the NFC East. That puts WFT out of the range of the top quarterbacks in this draft class. With a roster mostly ready to contend, Washington is more likely to pursue a veteran. Stay tuned.
It’s unclear what the Lions are planning. Presumably, they’ll roll with Goff in the short-term since he’ll count more than $25 million against the cap in each of the next two seasons.
The Lions have the seventh pick in this year’s draft, so it’s possible they’ll take a quarterback. That would be a positive development for the Giants. New York has the 11th pick, so every quarterback taken in the top 10 pushes a quality non-QB down the board. But with Goff in the fold, the Lions could target a player at a position of need for the Giants.
One last note: With the Lions seemingly embracing a full rebuild, they’re less likely to use the franchise tag on wide receiver Kenny Golladay. The Giants are on the hunt for a No. 1 receiver, so the more players like Golladay who reach the market, the better.
2. It would be a mistake to interpret the trade as the Rams dealing Goff and two first-round picks for Stafford. In reality, they sent one of the first-rounders to Detroit so the Lions would agree to absorb Goff’s cumbersome contract.
That’s the price the Rams had to pay to erase the error of handing Goff a four-year, $134 million extension after his third season. It was an understandable extension at the time — the Rams were coming off a Super Bowl appearance and Goff had two strong seasons running coach Sean McVay’s offense. But Goff’s play plateaued over the past two seasons and McVay clearly coveted an upgrade.
The Rams aren’t the only team to experience buyer’s remorse recently after giving a highly-picked quarterback a monster extension after his third season. The player who went one pick after Goff in 2016, Carson Wentz, is in a similar mess in Philadelphia. The Eagles gave Wentz a four-year, $128 million extension after his third season that now has them in a bind because his play has deteriorated and the cap ramifications of a trade are ugly.
The flip side of an early extension is Patrick Mahomes, who signed a 10-year, $450 million deal after his third season that will look like a bargain if his career continues on its current trajectory.
The other option is waiting. That approach is beneficial when a top pick is a bust. The Bucs let 2015 No. 1 pick Jameis Winston walk after five seasons. The Titans did the same with 2015 No. 2 pick Marcus Mariota. Both of those teams only paid over $20 million to those quarterbacks during their fifth-year option season before making a clean break. The lack of a long-term commitment allowed those teams to transition to significant upgrades in Tom Brady and Ryan Tannehill, respectively.
Waiting gets expensive when the quarterback performs at a high level, however. Look at Dallas, with Dak Prescott earning $31.4 million on the franchise tag this season and due $37.7 million if the Cowboys tag him again in 2021. Washington did the franchise tag dance with Kirk Cousins in 2016-17, paying him $44 million over those two seasons and then watching him leave in free agency.
Though the franchise tag route limits risk, the problem is that all of the money counts on the cap that season. With a long-term deal like Mahomes’, the cap hits can be massaged. For instance, his cap hit will be $24.8 million in 2021 and $31.5 million in 2022. Also, a tagging team can find itself in a situation like Washington’s with Cousins, where the quarterback leaves after earning top dollar for a year or two.
All of this is mentioned to illustrate that decision time for Daniel Jones is coming sooner than one might think. The Giants will need to decide after the 2021 season if they’ll exercise the fifth-year option in Jones’ contract for 2023.
A change in the new CBA makes that fifth-year option fully guaranteed when executed (teams used to have an out after the fourth season unless the player suffered a major injury). So the Giants will need to decide next offseason if they’re willing to commit more than $20 million to Jones for 2023. And, of course, an extension could be on the table if Jones produces a breakout third season.
As has been mentioned numerous times, Jones’ third season will be highly revealing.
3. It’s become trendy to claim that the salary cap “doesn’t exist” after the Goff-Stafford trade. If anything, this trade proves the opposite is true. The Rams had to throw in the additional first-round pick to unload Goff’s contract because trading him was the only way to acquire Stafford without destroying their cap.
Now, the cap can be manipulated, and some teams are far more aggressive with that approach than others. It makes sense for teams in win-now mode with aging quarterbacks to go all-in and use every cap trick in the book. But at some point, the bill comes due.
The Saints and Eagles are prime examples of that. New Orleans is projected to be a mind-boggling $112 million over the cap in 2021, while Philadelphia is in line to be $53 million in the red.
Those teams surely will get creative, but the bottom line is they’ll be forced to cut or trade contributors while being significantly limited in their ability to sign free agents at a time when each’s Super Bowl window appears closed.
4. Expect the Giants to hire a new offensive line coach within the next week or so. A source said interviews for the position will start later this week.
A full list of candidates isn’t known, but a source said Texans offensive line coach Mike Devlin is among those who will interview. Devlin was hired in 2015 by former Texans coach Bill O’Brien, another coach from the Bill Belichick tree. Devlin was an assistant with the Jets from 2006-14, coaching the tight ends and offensive line. Ben Wilkerson, who has been the Giants’ assistant offensive line coach for the past three seasons, is not believed to be a candidate for the role.
The Giants are in the market for an offensive line coach after the departure of Dave DeGuglielmo, who took over in Week 12 after Marc Colombo was fired. The contract of DeGuglielmo, who was initially going to be added to the staff as a consultant, expired after the season. Giants coach Joe Judge wanted to retain DeGuglielmo, but the sides couldn’t reach an agreement on a contract, according to a source.
DeGuglielmo left the Dolphins a year ago under similar circumstances. The 52-year-old has had five different jobs in the past five seasons. Meanwhile, the Giants will be introducing a third offensive line coach in a year. This is an important hire, as the development of the young offensive line is critical.
5. The Giants made an addition to their coaching staff last week with the hiring of Jeremy Pruitt, who was fired after three seasons as the head coach at the University of Tennessee. Pruitt’s exact role is yet to be determined, but he’ll work on the defensive side of the ball, according to a source.
Pruitt worked alongside Judge at Alabama from 2009-11. Pruitt left Alabama to become the defensive coordinator at Florida State in 2013, then spent two seasons as Georgia’s defensive coordinator, then returned to Tuscaloosa to serve as Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator for two seasons before getting the head job at Tennessee. Pruitt won national championships as a DC at Florida State in 2013 and at Alabama in 2017.
Pruitt was fired two weeks ago after an internal investigation found evidence of recruiting violations. That’s a stain on Pruitt’s resume, but it doesn’t affect his viability as an NFL coach. He’s clearly a sharp defensive mind, and his shared background with Judge makes him a natural fit.
The only position coach opening on defense is outside linebackers, which was vacated when Bret Bielema left in Week 15 to become the head coach at Illinois. But it’s not a lock that Pruitt, whose specialty is the secondary, will slide into that role.
There are still moving pieces as the coaching carousel ends — assistant defensive backs coach Anthony Blevins reportedly interviewed for the special teams coordinator jobs with the Lions and Vikings, for instance — so Judge will likely wait until the dust settles before assigning Pruitt a position. Pruitt’s background suggests he could be a successor for defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, who should become a more popular head coaching candidate in the future.
6. The latest indication of Graham’s stature within the organization: He was the only Giants assistant to join Judge and the front office/scouts at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala. last week.
Judge mentioned in a recent WFAN interview that Graham was the only assistant with him in the facility the week after the season ended, as they got an early jump on free agency and the draft. The Giants surely demonstrated how much they value Graham when they gave him an extension last month that led him to decline an interview request for the Jets’ head coaching job.
At some point, Graham will likely leave for a head coaching job if he builds off a strong first season with the Giants. But retaining him for at least another year was a big win for Judge.
7. With the addition of Pruitt, the Giants have seven assistants who worked in college within the past five years (running backs coach Burton Burns, senior offensive assistant Derek Dooley, defensive line coach Sean Spencer, inside linebackers coach Kevin Sherrer, defensive assistant Jody Wright and defensive quality control coach Mike Treier).
Those coaches not only have insight into players from their former schools, they also recruited many of the top prospects who went elsewhere since they were at powerhouses like Alabama (Burns), Penn State (Spencer) and Georgia (Sherrer). A glimpse at Dane Brugler’s top 100 board shows that nine of the top 32 prospects went to one of those three schools.
The inside information doesn’t guarantee the Giants will take a player from those schools. Last year, the Giants took Thomas, a Georgia product, with the No. 4 pick over tackle Jedrick Wills from Alabama. Then the Giants took Alabama safety Xavier McKinney in the second round instead of Penn State defensive Yetur Gross-Matos.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Giants got negative reviews of Wills or Gross-Matos from staff members. The point is just that familiarity doesn’t automatically mean the Giants will take a player from those schools. The Giants did use Day 3 picks on Penn State linebacker Cam Brown and Georgia linebacker Tae Crowder.
8. The Giants signed veteran offensive lineman Jonotthan Harrison to a futures contract on Sunday. The signing raised some eyebrows because NFL Network reported that the one-year deal is worth $2 million. Those terms are slightly misleading, however, as the New York Post reported that the deal is worth a maximum of $2 million with incentives. The Post reported that the deal is worth at least $990,000 “with a face value of $1.2 million.”
I haven’t obtained the contract details yet and it’s not clear what “face value” means, but the $990,000 comes from the minimum salary for a player with Harrison’s experience. Perhaps the $210,000 difference between the salary and the reported $1.2 million “face value” is a signing bonus.
If so, that would be significantly bigger than the typical signing bonuses for futures contracts. The Giants have signed 22 players to futures contracts this offseason. Five of those players received no signing bonus, while the others ranged from $500 (quarterback Joe Webb) to $8,500 (long snapper Carson Tinker).
Regardless, even if Harrison got a $210,000 signing bonus, that’s an insignificant amount in the grand scheme. Harrison has started 42 career games, mostly at center, over six seasons for the Jets and Colts, so he adds veteran depth behind Nick Gates. Harrison’s signing is indication that the Giants won’t re-sign veteran backup center Spencer Pulley, who is a free agent after three seasons in New York.
Pulley earned $2.05 million last season and didn’t play a single snap. So even if Harrison reaches his incentives, he’ll earn less than Pulley did.
9. This year’s playoffs have provided a boost to Eli Manning’s legacy. With Tom Brady in position to win his seventh ring, Manning’s two Super Bowl triumphs over the former Patriot look even more impressive. That’s especially true after Brady dispatched Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees en route to the Super Bowl.
No one would argue that Manning was a better quarterback than Brees or Rodgers. But Manning is sitting at home with two Super Bowl rings, while Brees is headed to retirement with one ring and Rodgers is stuck on the lone title he won before Manning captured his second. Meanwhile, 2004 draft classmate Philip Rivers’ career ended with a loss in the wild-card round.
Here’s the list of quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl appearances this century: Brady (10), Peyton Manning (four), Ben Roethlisberger (three), Patrick Mahomes (two), Russell Wilson (two), Kurt Warner (two) and Eli (two). That’s exclusive company, especially considering Brady (six), Peyton Manning (two) and Roethlisberger (two) are the only other quarterbacks on that list with multiple Super Bowl rings.
Winning two Super Bowls doesn’t make Eli better than his peers. But there should be a greater appreciation for his career as so many of his contemporaries finish with fewer rings.
10. There’s a lot of uncertainty across the NFL right now. The salary cap still hasn’t been set and it’s not yet known if there will be another virtual offseason. Expect the NFL and NFLPA to get to the negotiating table after the Super Bowl to hammer out those major issues, as the new league year is only six weeks away.

Me and Fink stood in the hallway, looking at Don crouched over the twitching body of Jones. An infinity of silence stretched between us. Don wore a wicked smile and for the first time I understood the possibilities that polar madness could offer.
“What’ve you done?” That was Fink. My words were still caught somewhere in the back of my throat. I was hyper focused on the dead face of my friend.
“What are you talking about?” asked Don, “I got one of those little assholes. Look at it. He stood and offered the head of Jones out for us to see more closely.
“I don’t think that’s one of them.” I spoke.
“Look at it!” said Don. There was a long pause before he let the severed head thump to his feet. “I know what’s going on here.” His words were soft, lingering, insane, “I’m the only real one left, aren’t I?” He cocked his head to the side as though he was waiting for a response.
“You need to calm the hell down!” said Fink, “You’ve already killed one of us!” He motioned to the dead body. “Look! Snap out of it goddammit!”
Don took a step towards us, forcing a flinch out of me. I did not want to be anywhere near him. “Don’t come any closer.” I said.
“Why?” said Don, “If you’re the real you, you shouldn’t have any issues being near me.” I could see in his eyes that he’d already made up his mind. He didn’t think we were real.
“Just back up, Don.” I said, “Please don’t come any closer.”
“Just let me get a good look at you,” he responded. “I want to make sure you’re all human.” He took another step forward.
“I’m fucking serious! Stay away from us.” I said. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to fight him off with Fink leaning on me, so I shifted around to hand my lantern off to the older man. I’d be able to whack him with the hammer if it seriously came down to it. I did not want it to come to that.
Don moved quickly, charging at us. Without any other options, I shoved Fink off my shoulder so that he bounced off the wall and fell to the floor. Don came straight for me, wielding his hack saw in his right hand. His left hand came out for my throat. I swung the hammer, and it met his groping left hand. He let out a howl and swung the hack saw at me. If he were able to grapple me, I was sure his superior strength would win out. I ducked, feeling the hack saw catch on my hood. Without thinking and only the driving force of adrenaline pumping through my muscles, I swung the hammer at his knee as hard as I could. It made a god-awful crunch and he spun like a wild ballerina, falling, and sliding down the stairs to the basement. I shimmied away from the landing of the stairs and found Fink still holding onto the lantern.
We ran from the scene like we were in a three-legged race, all the while Don screamed at us; his words echoed off the metal walls. “You can’t leave me down here! They’ll kill me!”
We stepped around the body of Jones. Her blood pooled thickly around the spot where her head should have been.
As Don’s screams fell away into the distance, we slammed into the door of the canteen, huffing and out of breath. I shoved at the door. I could hear something inside of the canteen. Shuffling feet could be heard as something or someone approached the other side of the door.
The door swung open, leaving me and Fink to go flailing into the room, landing on our knees. The door slammed shut behind us. Looking around, I saw in the dim candlelight that the dogs were still here. Good. I twisted to see who it was that had shut the door. It was Jones. She was grinning. Next to her was Darling and as I whipped my head around to the kitchen area, I saw Donovan munching on a snack cake.
I moved to settle Fink onto a mess of blankets and stood. “Thanks,” He said, but as I caught his eyes, I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. How was any of this possible? I stood by Fink, pushing my back to the wall.
“Are you alright?” asked Darling, hunkering down to check Fink’s ankle.
“I think so,” said Fink, “Probably need to ice it.” He seemed to think this was funny because it was followed by a sick laugh.
“What about you?” asked Jones. She was looking at me. “Are you okay?” she looked genuinely worried. What a master of infiltration those things must be. I almost believed it myself.
Either way, I knew what she meant, I was shaking. As I looked down to my hands, they were quivering. The hammer I held was spattered in Don’s blood. At least I thought it was his blood. My eyes darted back to Don standing on the opposite side of the room. “I’m good.” I watched them all, bug-eyed. It felt that any moment, the creatures would spring into action. The wait was the worst part.
Darling pushed Fink’s pant leg up, exposing a red ankle that would inevitably purple over.
“Why don’t you put that thing down?” said Don, stepping over to inspect me. He was talking about my hammer.
“I really don’t want to.” I said.
“You’re among friends here. There’s no reason for that.” He responded.
“You know what? I’m good actually.” I looked him over, hoping that there was some small thing that I could latch onto and notice that would giveaway the fact that he was in fact a doppelganger.
“Come on,” Don stepped over to reach for the hammer, I jerked away. His face bunched up. “Quit acting like a crazy person.”
“Leave Andrew alone,” said Darling.
Don winced at this and stepped away. “Fine. Guess I’m always the bad guy.”
I choked out the words, “Last time I saw you, you were all burnt up.”
“Me?” said Donovan. “Really? Is that so?”
“Yes. I threw you down the basement steps. So, excuse me if I think you might not be who you say you are.” I shifted to look at Jones. “And the last time I saw you, you had no head.”
Jones looked at me with a stunned expression, “Really? You don’t trust me?”
Darling was watching me. I could feel her eyes penetrating me. “There’s got to be some sort of test, right?” She said. “There’s always a test in the movies.”
“This isn’t a movie,” said Fink.
The room went still except for the dogs. Steve, the curly haired mutt, came over to stand near me. It felt good to have him nearby. If I could trust anyone, it felt like it was man’s best friend, right? I pet him as Fink massaged his ankle. The other three people in the room took up on one of the bench tables near the kitchen, talking amongst themselves.
Fink took one last swig from his flask and tossed it across the room, forcing the dogs to perk up their ears at the strange hollow metallic noise. “Empty.” He grumbled. “This is bad, Andy.” He whispered to me.
“How are we supposed to know who’s who?”
“No idea.” He said.
“Well, if they’re really ningen,” I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. “There should be some sort of test like Darling said, right?”
“Hell, if I know.” He shrugged. “I’m not a cryptid zoologist.”
The tension in the room was swelling and as the other three came over to sit near us, I could feel the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.
An idea sprang to mind. “Hey Jones,” I said.
“Yeah’?” she asked.
“What’s this dog’s name?” I asked while pointing to Steve.
“That’s Steve.”
A million thoughts ran through my head. Think of something, goddammit. “What’s the capital of the United States?”
“Washington D.C.”
“What’s my favorite color?” I asked.
“How am I supposed to know that? You never told me that.”
“I guess not.”
Darling sprang into action, “Andrew, calm your tits, alright? Jen’ is who she says she is.”
“How can you tell that?” I said. “The only person I can vouch for without a doubt is Fink over here. He’s been with me the entire time.”
I could see the spark in Darling’s eyes; she was getting pissed off. “How do we know you two aren’t the fakes?”
“Hey!” said Don, “Yeah’! How do we know that you are who you say you are?”
“Fantastic question!” said Fink. “No idea!” He chuckled. “Better kill us now!”
I wanted to reach over and throttle the senior researcher. “We’re real!” I pleaded. A moment of silence. “Since when did you two get so buddy-buddy?” I asked while wiggling my finger between Darling and Don.
Jones interjected, “Now is not the time to start pointing fingers at each other. I think we’re safe in here.”
“You shouldn’t have a fucking head!” I was shaking. “I saw Don saw your fucking head off!”
Jones glanced at Don. “Is that right?”
Don laughed hysterically, “What? Why the hell would I do something like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Darling, “You do strike me as the type that would fly off the handle given the chance.”
“Fuck off,” Don crossed his arms. “I don’t know what vendetta you’ve got against veterans, but that shit needs to stop.”
“You were in the military?” asked Jones.
“Well, yeah’,” said Don. The next words came out of his mouth very slowly. “You know that.”
Everyone backed away from Jones, creating a semicircle round her. Darling was looking at her lover with wild skepticism.
“What?” said Jones, attempting to give a wry smile. All eyes were on her.
“I’ll be damned,” said Fink. “Good try.”
Darling spoke with an edge to her words, “Where did I grow up?”
“Um.” Jones seemed to mull the question over.
Darling lifted her spray canister and flicked her lighter on. “What town did I grow up in, Jen’?” The cracking sadness in her voice was immeasurable.
“Please,” said Jones. “You know me! I love you!”
Blinding fire shot in a line from Darling to Jones. I shielded my eyes with a forearm and could barely make out Donovan in the commotion as he stumbled away. Jones’s vocal cords ripped through the room and the dogs began barking. The smell of crackling flesh filled the room, then came the smoke.
“I love you! I love you! I love you!” screeched Jones. She threw open the door to the canteen and the bellowing smoke went with her. She was a human torch. We stepped into the hallway, watching her run towards the entrance of the facility. She disappeared out of sight and her screams became echoes as we shut the door to the canteen once more.
Darling was crying silently. Don sat on one of the tabletops, watching his hands. I moved to Darling. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Shut up.” Her voice was sharp. “Just leave me alone, Andrew.”
“We have to make a run for the chopper now.” Said Don.
I regretfully agreed, “He’s right,” I leaned against the wall near Fink.
“I don’t think I can fly in this storm,” said Darling from a million miles away.
“We’ve got to try!” said Don.
“Why don’t you try shutting your fucking mouth?” said Darling.
“Hey, I’m sorry, okay?” said Don, “But there are still people here we can save. You’re the pilot. We need you.”
A long sigh fell out of Darling as her shoulders slumped. “Alright. Okay.”
Fink tried sliding up the wall so that he could stand appropriately. He still favored his injured ankle. “If we’re going, I need to grab something from my room.”
“Are you kidding me?” said Don. “There are more important things to worry about than some trinket from your better days, old man.”
Fink glared, stone-cold-sober, “It’s my wife’s wedding ring.”
“I didn’t know you were married.” I said.
Fink closed his eyes. “She’s been dead for some time.”
“Well I’m not going with you. And I don’t assume you’ll be able to make it on your own with that ankle of yours,” said Don. I studied Don’s face. He seemed like the real deal, but after what had happened to Jones, I can’t say I knew anything for sure anymore.
The next words that came out of my mouth surprised even me. “I’ll go with you, Fink.”
“Thank you,” he wobbled over near me. “I think I can manage to walk on my own. Just barely. Gotta’ be careful is all.”
“So that means we’re splitting up again?” said Don. He clapped. “Fantastic fucking idea. Great. Thanks a lot for that one.”
“It might be faster if we do,” said Fink.
“Yeah’,” said Don, “It might also get a whole hell of a lot more confusing too.”
“Me and Don will make sure the line leading out to the chopper is still intact.” Darling shot me a look, “Just be quick. I don’t want to lose anyone else if we can help it.”
“And what if you’re one of those things?” asked Don.
Darling shrugged, “What if you are?”
We set out, me and Fink heading deeper into the facility. Before leaving the canteen door, I watched Don and Darling go until I couldn’t see them anymore. “Let’s go.”
“Thank you, Andrew,” said Fink. “It means a lot.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
It was slow going with Fink keeping the weight off his ankle by keeping a gloved hand on the wall.
We passed by the spot we’d initially found Don sitting in. The place he’d been burned. My mind flashed to those two out in the blizzard and I hoped like mad that neither one of them were doppelgangers. My foot met something in the dark and I leaned down to see what it was. Fink stopped, holding the lantern up high so as to illuminate the immediate area. It was the pistol the possibly doppel-Don had dropped. I lifted it to my face and inspected it. It was still fully loaded. So that Don had lied about the gun. It made me feel a little bit better about crippling his knee.
I slipped the hammer into my pocket and aimed the gun ahead. I didn’t care anymore. If anything came out of the dark, I would fire immediately.
We met the part of the hallway where the bunk rooms were and as we came upon Fink’s, I told him to keep a look out while I opened the door. A sick feeling in the pit of my stomach swelled and I couldn’t figure out why. Something wasn’t right.
I swung the door in, and the lantern light spilled into the bunk room. My scream caught. I couldn’t say anything. There was someone sitting at Fink’s desk adjacent his bed.
“Hey!” I screamed at the figure sitting there. “Don’t move! I’ve got a gun on you!” It did not move. I approached carefully and rounded its shoulder so that I could see its face. It was Anthony Finkle, lead researcher. He was cold to the touch and a small line of frozen blood had pooled around his temples.
I whipped my head around to see Fink standing in the doorway. His figure was blotted out by the light he held in his outstretched hand, but I could see that his shadowy form didn’t need the assistance of a wall anymore. His ankle was fine.
“Not you!” I cried out.
He threw the battery powered lantern directly into my face and it met my forehead just as I squeezed the trigger of the pistol in my hand. Fink let out a groan, but before I knew it, he was straddling me, and I was on the floor. The dead Fink toppled out of the chair in our struggle. The living Fink brought his knee to meet me directly in the groin and I tried slipping the gun beneath his chin, he grabbed the barrel, pointing it directly at the ceiling. I squeezed the trigger two more times, and the room was coated in a mesmerizing disco flash as his free hand began finding my throat. Tears pooled in my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. I was going lightheaded and my vision began to pinhole. In one last desperate hope, I reached into my pocket. The hammer met his head and he rolled off me. I scrambled to where the door was, pointing the gun at the threshold. I could barely make out his outline in the low light of the strewn lantern. As he approached the doorway, I fired the gun until I couldn’t anymore. The shots rang in my ears and I could hear nothing. I watched as he tumbled to the floor.
I ran towards the entrance, throwing the gun as I went. I held the hammer, readying it so that if anything came from the shadows, I would immediately smash its head in. I tipped over a solid object and I heard the thing let out a whimper. I reared the hammer back as I waited for the thing to find me in the pitch black. A warm tongue met my face. I relaxed and scratched Steve around his ear. The dogs! We’d totally forgotten the dogs! “C’mon boy. Stay close.” I took my steps more deliberately, feeling along the wall until I saw the open door of the canteen ahead. Some small candle glow came from there and I ran towards it in a mad gamble.
Upon meeting the threshold, I saw the canteen was empty. “Shit!” I said. Steve stayed close behind. Maybe we could come back for the other dogs.
I dashed towards the entrance and it felt good to hear the paws of Steve behind. Upon climbing the stairs to the entrance, I passed by a blackened figure. That must have been the fake Jones’s body. I ignored it and as the light coming from the windows of the entrance illuminated my surroundings, I felt a bit better.
With only the thought of survival in my mind, I threw the door open and barreled into the blizzard once more, keeping my hold on Steve’s collar. I could hardly see a thing, but I found the line leading out to the chopper. I moved, keeping one hand on the dog and the other on the line.
The snow blindness was overwhelming, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t keep a hard grip on that line. Just over the sound of the whipping snow, I heard Steve barking wildly. I looked to him and saw that he’d buried his snout in the snow. I leaned down close, searching for the thing he’d found in the snow and saw the frozen face of Donovan staring up at me. He’d been sheered clean in two across his waist. There was no time to mourn. I could feel the heat of the cold attempting to trick me and I pulled Steve along with me. I’m sure I was choking him, but I did not want to leave him. I did not want to be alone.
Through the wind of the storm, I saw the outline of the chopper. I picked up my speed, lifting my legs to fight against the gathered snow. Everything burned.
I slapped against the door of the helicopter and felt around to find the handle. I tore it open, dropping my hammer somewhere. Steve dove into its cabin as I fought with the wind to keep the door open. I followed the dog and the storm slammed shut behind me.
Darling was sitting in the pilot’s chair. “You made it!” There was a small bit of elation in her voice. She looked at me puzzled, “Where’s Fink?”
“He’s one of them!” I said exasperated, trying to catch my breath. The cold forced a cough out of me, and I could barely stop hacking.
“Did you see Don on your way? I lost him somewhere out there.” She nodded to the white hellish landscape.
I nodded manically. “He was half-buried in the snow. I think they got him.”
She began flipping knobs. “I hate to be the barer of bad news, but I think they cut the gas line.” She fell back in her chair before slapping the steering console in font of her. “Goddammit! Can’t one thing just go right!”
I shook my head and focused on the dog attempting to bury its snout in between my legs.
Darling looked at me. “You are you, aren’t you?”
“I think so,” I scratched Steve’s head, trying to distract myself from exactly how fucked we were. “Are you, you?”
“Probably.” She chortled. “Goddamn this!” She pounded the steering console again but piqued up as she looked out the windshield of the helicopter.
I followed her eyeline.
“You see that out there?” She squinted and leaned forward without breaking her gaze from what she was looking at.
I did, but to be certain, I wiped the frost gathered around the windows and pressed my face close to the glass, cupping my hands. There was a semicircle of humanoid figures standing in the blizzard, unmoving.
1/ 2/ 3/ 4

(Note: I'll probably be killed or, at the very least, arrested, for writing this. I don't care anymore. I just want to get the truth out. Quinny, I'm sorry.)
It was just after eight in the morning when we pulled up to the dive bar on the corner. The bar opened early, catering to the third shift South Philly stevedores over at the docks. Quinn sat in the passenger seat, his black leather coat straining to conceal his considerable bulk. He trained his predatory gaze on the bar’s front door from under the brim of his gray jeff cap.
“What’s the kid’s name again?” he asked.
“Sal Narducci,” I said. Quinn should have known Sal’s name already, but the finer details of our operations at the docks always bored him.
Among our port guys, Sal was younger than most, but I was glad we made him the overnight shop steward. He proved to be a solid kid, which was why we immediately came out here when he told us he had some concerns.
Sal walked out of the bar, breath frosting in the cruel February wind. I waved him over. He got into the car.
I reached back and shook his hand. “What’s up, buddy?”
He nodded to me. “Hey Frank,” he said. “Hey Quinn.”
Quinn grumbled a hello as he lit a Marlboro.
Sal rubbed his frigid hands together and spoke through chattering teeth. “How’s your uncle? It’s been a while since I last seen him.”
“He’s doing good,” I said, although that was a lie. Uncle Mick’s health had gone to shit in the past year. He rarely left the house, which meant I handled the day-to-day operations at the docks.
“So we heard you had some issues during your shift last night,” I said. I watched him in the rearview mirror, fingers trembling as he struggled to light a cigarette.
“You guys know I never make a peep,” Sal said. “Your uncle knows that I keep my head down and do my job.”
“That’s why we’re here, bud,” I said. “When a guy like you has a concern, we listen. Our uncle listens.”
“Yeah, so spit it the fuck out already,” Quinn said.
“We had a ship come in around three in the morning,” Sal said. “There was a shipment on there, for the Russians, I think.”
He slipped me a piece of paper with the box’s serial number written on it.
“What was the problem?” I asked as I pocketed the number.
“The box had an air vent, Frank.”
“They all do,” Quinn barked back.
“Small vents, yeah,” Sal said.
“This vent was bigger?” I asked.
Sal nodded, his eyes darting this way and that, like he was afraid we were being watched. “Someone rigged it up that way. The manufacturers don’t make them that big.” He paused and took a long drag from his cigarette. “This vent was big enough so someone inside the box could breathe.”
I lit a smoke of my own. “It’s not what you think.”
But even as I said that, I shot a sideways glance at Quinn and saw my big cousin’s face turn pale.
“Our uncle doesn’t deal in that kind of business,” I assured Sal and, to a degree, Quinn.
Sal wasn’t convinced. “Couldn’t the Russians just lie to you guys and say it was something else?”
“It’s probably an animal,” I said, giving Sal a reassuring smile.
“An animal?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Russians like exotic pets. Check it out on YouTube.”
I looked back at Sal. Poor kid wasn’t even thirty-five yet, but right now he looked like he was pushing fifty.
“Listen guys, I know it’s against the rules, but if we could just go crack that box open, I’d feel a whole lot better,” Sal said.
We never opened shipments. The contents weren’t our business. We were middlemen, that was all. Various factions around Philly paid us a fee to ferry their wares through the docks with little fanfare. If we started poking our noses where they didn’t belong, it could cost us money.
Sal Narducci, the stevedore with a conscience. I wondered, if I told him no, we weren’t going to crack open that sea box, would he go ahead and do it anyway, on his own?
I sighed then glanced over to Quinn, the way that I did whenever we were in these situations.
Quinn cocked an eyebrow, as if to say, Are you sure? I nodded back to him, quick and subtle.
“Alright,” I said. “We’ll head over there with you right now and get to the bottom of this.”
Sal smiled at that, tears of relief welling up in his eyes. “Thanks guys, thank you so fuckin much.”
The shocks groaned as Quinn rolled out of the passenger’s seat. “Here, switch places with me,” Quinn said to Sal. “Easier for you to give directions once we’re at the docks.”
Sal nodded, got out, and took the passenger seat. Quinn slumped in behind Sal, making the car rock uneasily, like a ship listing from side to side.
“You’re a solid guy,” I told Sal as I pulled onto Washington Ave.
In the backseat, Quinn discreetly doused a rag with chloroform then clamped it tight around Sal’s mouth. Sal bucked and kicked like an animal caught in a snare, but Quinn held him firm.
Within seconds, Sal slumped in his seat, unconscious.
Quinn donned two white latex gloves and pulled out a small pill bottle from his coat. Inside were a half-dozen counterfeit Percocets. Each one contained a lethal dose of fentanyl. As I turned onto I-95 North, Quinn pulled open Sal’s slackened jaw then pushed the pill down his throat.
#
We were looping through the claustrophobic West Kensington side streets as we waited for Sal to stop breathing. The kid’s eyelids fluttered, flashing his milky, bloodshot eyes like scoops of vanilla ice cream, topped with raspberry syrup.
Quinn reached up from the backseat and pressed his fingers against Sal’s carotid artery. He checked Sal’s pulse against his wristwatch, as the seconds ticked away.
“Shouldn’t be too much longer,” Quinn said. He leaned back into his seat, making the springs shriek beneath him. “So whaddya think?”
“About what?” I said.
“About the sea box with the big air vent.”
“Probably an animal,” I said. “Or something organic that needs a certain amount of oxygen.”
“Like what?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Fuckin plants or some shit.”
“Yeah, I guess, maybe.”
Sal’s chest heaved. I noticed a ring of vomit around his mouth. His breaths, already labored, were now accompanied by a gurgling, liquid sound.
I rolled to a stop by an alley between two derelict houses. Up the alley, I spotted the rats, dark shapes scrabbling in the shadows.
Next to me, Sal let out one final gurgling respiration before his body went still.
We dumped Sal Narducci’s body in the alley, one more overdose in a neighborhood full of them.
As we got back into the car, my beeper went off, a signal from Uncle Mick. I looked at the message. A single digit. The number nine.
Quinn must have known from my expression. “Claremont again?”
I nodded as we pulled away. “Claremont again.”
#
Uncle Mick lived in a two-story rowhome in Fishtown. He’d always lived alone, except for when he took in me and Quinn. Our parents checked out together in a car wreck back in ‘98.
On the couch, he looked like a grizzly sitting upright, beer in hand, a Marlboro tucked into the corner of his mouth. He exhaled cigarette smoke through nostrils the color of a ripe plumb.
Uncle Mick hacked phlegm into a fist the size of a misshapen softball. “How’d it go with the kid?”
Quinn lowered his head and made for the kitchen.
“Not well,” I told my uncle. “He found a sea box with an air vent.”
Uncle Mick fired back a slug from his Budweiser, golden restorative sloshing in the bottle. “They all have air vents.”
“He said it was a big air vent.”
“And?”
“We’ll need a new overnight shop steward.”
Out in the kitchen, we heard ice clinking into glasses, then the whine of the liquor cabinet hinges as Quinn searched for the Bushmills.
Uncle Mick leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Was the kid right to be worried?”
“He was worried over nothing,” I answered.
He narrowed his bloodshot gaze, as if he were studying me. “Them young Chinese girls in the wishy-washies don’t grow on trees, Franky,” he said quietly. “I don’t want no part of that.”
I made sure to look him squarely in the eye. “We don’t have any part of that, Uncle Mick.”
Quinn returned with three tumblers, whiskey on the rocks. He passed one to me and another to Uncle Mick. Quinn slumped his shoulders as he stared into his glass, clinking ice cubes bubbling in the amber contents.
Uncle Mick squeezed Quinn’s hand. “You’re a soldier, Quinny. Just like me.”
Quinn forced a grin. “Thanks, Uncle Mick.”
Uncle Mick raised his glass. “Sláinte,” he said.
“Sláinte,” we repeated.
We all took a drink. Uncle Mick downed his tumbler in one gulp then rested the glass on his rounded belly. “Reggie wants to meet tomorrow. King of Prussia Mall, two o’clock sharp.”
“He give any details?” Quinn asked, though Reggie Claremont rarely did.
“Nah,” Uncle Mick said. He looked away from us then, his eyes dripping melancholy. “And hey, tomorrow, you two go on your own.”
Quinn looked at me, concerned. I shrugged.
“Just us?” I asked.
Uncle Mick hacked mucus into his fist then glanced over to the set of portable oxygen tanks he was supposed to use, but hardly ever did. “It’s been a while since the last time we saw him and I don’t want him to see me like…you know.”
I threw back the rest of my whiskey and patted the old bear on his shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, Uncle Mick. Me and Quinny got you covered.”
#
Claremont and Uncle Mick had been SEALs during the Cold War. They met in Nicaragua, Uncle Mick told us, where they trained Contras and ran black-ops against the Sandinistas.
“We became real good buddies, me and Reggie,” Uncle Mick had said once. “But we went our separate ways after our deployment was over.”
Saying they went on deviating paths would be a bit of an understatement. While Uncle Mick was busy taking over the riverwards, Claremont became a dedicated federale. They didn’t speak for a long time, not until about ten years ago, when Claremont reached out to Uncle Mick for a favor.
Claremont headed a subdivision of the FBI that few people knew about. It didn’t even have a name. This subdivision investigated “odd cases,” as Claremont put it. Cases that, I assumed, the intelligence brass would prefer keeping tucked away in an iron vault in the bowels of 935 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Claremont had been in the market for subcontractors to carry out off-the-books operations. “I need guys who are dependable, who can work independently, and most importantly, will keep a very level head in strange situations,” he’d told Uncle Mick.
In return, Claremont offered to pull some strings that would ensure Uncle Mick got control of the Philly longshoremen’s union, which would effectively crown him king of the docks.
Claremont’s jobs, although heavy on legwork, were usually straight-up hits with a strange caveat thrown in. He once sent us to track down some voodoo shaman who lived in a Louisiana swamp. All we had to do was slit his throat with a crucifix shaved down to a dagger. Fucker didn’t even fight back, just sat there whispering a prayer in Creole while the blood fanned out, as his face dried and cracked, mottled skin vacuum-sealed to his skull as his eyes leaked out of his sockets, yolk spilling from a cracked egg.
Last year, he dispatched us to this frozen armpit of a town two hours outside Denver to take care of an elderly antique dealer. The job was straightforward enough, until Quinn popped the guy twice in the noggin. Instead of a familiar pink mist, boiling black pus leaked from the cavern in the guy’s head and sizzled right through the floorboards.
Easy peasy, sure, but sometimes Quinn got weird afterward. That wasn’t to say my big cousin didn’t perform as admirably as always but, now and again, he’d get real quiet after a Claremont job.
“Frank, you ever think about what comes next, after we die?” he’d asked me after we finished a job down in Florida.
I didn’t and, up until then, neither had Quinn. He’d been a stalwart nonbeliever despite our Catholic upbringing. As for me, I gave up the pretense of belief during high school, shortly after a priest cornered me in a bathroom and tried to give me a blowjob.
“Some of this shit we do for Claremont makes me think about it,” Quinn said. “About what comes after.”
“I only think about the job, Quinny,” I answered.
#
We parked in the King of Prussia Mall parking garage, third floor, just out of view from the security cameras, per Claremont’s instructions.
Reginald Claremont was six-and-half-feet of muscle carved from volcanic rock. Hulking as he was, his cold baritone voice, detached demeanor, and thick glasses gave him the air of a warrior-intellectual. In the decade that I’d known him, he hadn’t aged a day. However, as he slipped into the backseat I saw that he had dark bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been sleeping. He sank into the seat like he had weights on his ankles.
This concerned me. Claremont had been peeling the back layers of reality to peer at the dark things wiggling beneath for years with nothing less than cold objectivity. Perhaps the job was starting to get to him.
Or maybe it was just this current assignment that had him rattled.
“Where’s your uncle?” he asked, his voice tinged with disappointment.
“He hasn’t been feeling well,” I said.
Claremont smiled sadly. “Cigarettes?”
I nodded.
“I told him those Marlboros would do him in,” Claremont said. “Myself, I kicked the habit after our last deployment.”
“I heard somewhere that only a third of smokers die of a smoking-related illness,” Quinn said as he lit one up. “Still ain’t good odds, though.”
“No, I guess not,” Claremont said. He paused contemplatively, watching the smoke from Quinn’s cigarette curl and dance. “Actually, let me bum one of those.”
Quinn gave him one. Claremont lit up, relishing the smoke, a nicotine catharsis.
“So what do you got for us?” I asked.
“This assignment might be a tad bit hairier than usual,” Claremont said. “The good news is that it’s close.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Only two hours up the PA Turnpike,” Claremont answered. “Up in coal country, in the woods. It’s isolated, too, so you won’t have to deal with any prying eyes.”
“Who’s the target?” I asked.
“There’ll be three soft targets,” Claremont began, “but we’re mainly concerned with an extraction. His name is Colton Shelby, a Catholic priest with a background in engineering.”
I hadn’t anticipated that we’d be taking anyone alive. Claremont’s jobs were always of the pop-em-and-drop-em variety. He never asked us to nab anyone before. By Quinn’s expression, I could tell he had the same reservations.
“Is he dangerous?” I asked.
“On a normal day, no,” Claremont explained. “But within the next forty-eight hours, Shelby is going to run an experiment on himself inside a cabin he’s constructed out in the woods. When you get to him, he may be in a strange state.”
“I can wrangle a motherfucker no problem,” Quinn said. “But can we get a bit more to go on than that?”
“Unfortunately not, because I genuinely don’t know,” Claremont said. “Shelby studied sacred geometry at the Vatican. He found a text that some long-ago Pontiff deemed off-limits. Long story short, Shelby thinks he figured out God’s name.”
“What, fuckin Yahweh or whatever?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Claremont said. “Some have speculated that God’s true name can only be conveyed through certain geometric patterns. Shelby believes that if he ‘spells’ God’s name backwards, he’ll gain access to Heaven.”
Claremont never gave background info on a target unless it was concrete. I pictured Claremont watching through reinforced tempered glass as men in white coats constructed those very same geometric patterns in the labyrinthine depths of some government black site.
Ice filled my bowels. Pray tell, my good Agent Claremont, what happened to those unlucky schmucks when they fucked around with the Almighty’s birth name?
But I couldn’t let my imagination get to me. I lit a smoke, inhaled long and deep, and reminded myself that this was what we had to deal with to keep the docks.
Claremont passed us a surveillance photo of Shelby. He certainly looked the part. Pensive eyes beaming with intensity, sunken cheeks, and a long, graying Rasputin beard that completed the mad acolyte aesthetic.
“You won’t be going in blind,” Claremont said. “Shelby’s three male followers are all true believers, but there’ll be a fourth, a female. She’s one of my sources.”
“An agent?” I asked.
Claremont shook his head. “No.”
So, another subcontractor, just like us.
“Her name’s Kendra,” Claremont said. “She’s Shelby’s newest recruit.”
He gave us the girl’s picture. She was pretty, but young, with dark hair and a mouse-like face. Something about her seemed familiar. It was her eyes, I realized. They had the same haunted quality that Quinn got after one of Claremont’s jobs.
Quinn snatched the girl’s picture, looked her over, then glared back at Claremont. This gave me a jump. I looked down to Quinn’s waist, to make sure he wasn’t reaching for his thirty-eight.
“How old is the girl?” Quinn asked.
Claremont cleared his throat. He stared right back into Quinn’s fiery gaze, eye-to-eye, with neither yielding an inch.
“Twenty years old,” Claremont finally said.
Quinn narrowed his eyes. “How’d your outfit rope a girl that young into a job like this?”
“That’s not pertinent information,” Claremont said.
“Yeah, it doesn’t matter, Quinny,” I said.
Quinn didn’t break eye contact with Claremont. “I can understand you using guys like us,” Quinn said. “But a girl that barely looks a day outta high school?”
Claremont sat up a little straighter. I noted that he was slowly curling his hands into fists. “So how’s the port business, boys?” Claremont said, though his steely gaze betrayed his casual tone. “I was reading in the news that one of the shop stewards overdosed. A young guy with no history of drug abuse, if I’m not mistaken.”
I squeezed Quinn’s shoulder. “It’s been rough,” I told Claremont. “We’re getting through it, though.”
Finally, Quinn turned away from Claremont. I exhaled, lungs burning. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.
Claremont opened a folder and passed it to me. “Here’s a map of the area. Get there early and take this exact position overlooking the cabin.” He tapped his finger on a large red X on the map. It looked to be around one-hundred yards from the cabin.
“When should we make our grand entrance?” I asked.
“You’ll see a bright light inside the cabin,” he said. “I mean bright. That’s why it’s important you keep your distance.”
I thought about those unlucky guys in the white coats again.
“When the light fades, wait a full minute before approaching the cabin,” Claremont said. “When you’re inside, things will be strange.”
I laughed, though I didn’t think anything was funny. “This won’t be the first haunted house you sent us to.”
“This will be different,” he said. “You may be disoriented initially, but just stay calm. Shelby will be in the middle of the room. There, things will appear closer to normal.”
Quinn looked back over his shoulder, locking eyes with Claremont once again. “And how do you know that?”
Claremont took a long drag from his cigarette then shook his head without saying a word.
“I guess that ain’t pertinent, either,” Quinn said.
Claremont passed me a burner phone. “There’s one number programmed onto this phone,” Claremont said. “When you have Shelby, dial that number and the cavalry will arrive.”
I took the phone and nodded to him. “Sounds simple enough.”
Claremont opened the door and got out. “Tell your uncle I said hello,” he said. In the side mirror, I watched him walk off, cigarette smoke trailing behind him.
#
Guided by Claremont’s map, we ditched our car along the eastern slopes and began our long, miserable walk into the grim coal country hills. The temperature crept above the freezing mark and a light rain thawed the soil, turning it into a brown soup.
Quinn was quieter than usual, hardly saying a word since we departed from Philly. Though he didn’t say it, I could tell he was still hung up on Claremont’s girl, Kendra.
It was almost dark by the time we found the cabin in a small clearing nestled in among the barren trees. Me and Quinn took position on the western hillside, roughly a football field away, hidden by skeletal tree branches and gnarled bramble.
Looking through my binoculars, I saw that the cabin was definitely a rush-job--just plywood and drywall from the look of it--although it did look sturdy. There was a mud-splattered pickup truck with a trailer hooked on the toe hitch. I figured that was how Shelby’s merry little band got their building materials out here.
Though we spotted no movement outside, Shelby and his gang were still hard at work inside the cabin. We could hear the persistently banging hammers and the occasional snarl from a circular saw.
“I’m dying for a cigarette,” Quinn grumbled.
“Yeah, me too,” I said.
We couldn’t light up out here since it would risk giving away our position. We’d have to make do with nicotine gum. I passed a piece to Quinn.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
He chewed the gum thoughtfully. “I think I might need some time off, Franky,” he said.
Good, very good. I preferred that Quinn recognize that the work was getting to him, rather than being in denial about it. “Yeah buddy,” I said. “When we get back, take off all the time that you need.”
He nodded. “A few weeks would do me good.”
Down in the cabin, the hammers fell silent. I pulled out my stopwatch, thumb on the switch, staring at the cabin, waiting. A moment later, we heard the girl’s scream, piercing and terrible, cleaving through the silence like a machete through a limb.
Quinn shot up, clenching his thirty-eight. “The girl!”
I grabbed for him, tried to pull him back, but he took off down the darkened hill, running toward the cabin.
“Quinn, wait!” I hissed at him, but it did no good.
That was when the flash came, painfully brilliant, a blinding golden glare that shone through the cracks within the cabin’s structure before it illuminated the entire hillside, searing my eyes. My field of vision burned with white fire, a thermonuclear snapshot.
It only lasted a moment before it flickered down to a dull glow within the cabin. My vision began to clear. Quinn had made it halfway toward the cabin before the flash knocked him on his ass. He struggled to his feet and began staggering the rest of the way.
“God damn it,” I said to myself, then hit the stopwatch and waited, one eternal second at a time, as Quinn threw open the cabin door and barreled inside.
The stopwatch hit the sixty-second mark and I took off, racing through the thawed muck, toward the dying golden light shining through the cabin’s cracks. I reached for the door, raised my thirty-eight revolver, and stepped inside.
I stumbled forward, into a disjointed panorama of the universe. The world became a shattered rainbow mirror, with each broken shard reflecting a different aspect of space-time. I floated in the amniotic waters within my mother’s womb then squinted and saw my cells divide then multiply then wither and die. I marveled at the untold histories etched onto my being then followed my lineage back to a trilobite drifting in the primordial stew.
Behind me, the very nature of reality shook and sundered as the singularity gave birth to the cosmos. Ahead of me, I watched as the last stars winked out, casting eternal darkness upon a cold, barren universe. In one ear, I listened to a Cherokee warrior’s final death-rattle, his body riddled with musket balls. In the other, I heard an entire civilization’s collective scream moments before the firmament split and the sky blazed with celestial hellfire.
I huddled with a dozen young women crammed behind a false wall inside a sea box, sweltering, breathing in the toxic stench from the tin buckets overflowing with urine and shit. I felt the malignant lumps growing in my uncle’s chest, unthinking yet ravenously hungry, spreading their greedy tendrils throughout his lungs.
I glimpsed Heaven on the day of creation as God first revealed Himself. Angels dropped to their knees in terror as His dreadful shadow fell upon the kingdom. As I tried to comprehend His unknowable shape, my primitive brain shrank into itself, a turtle retreating into its shell.
Yet as my mind retreated, a single thought trickled out, like the last drop of water dripping from a rusted sewer pipe. Quinny, I need to get to Quinny.
Yes, then I remembered. I shut my eyes and felt the wooden floorboards beneath my boots. I took one step forward, then another. The cosmic violence screaming around me faded slowly with each step, until at last I heard the sound of creaking lumber and caught the aroma of burned meat.
It was like stepping into the eye of a hurricane. The prismatic chaos shimmered around us, undulating around a cylindrical shaft of blood-red light.
On the floor lay four charred cadavers, all but unrecognizable, although only their flesh had been burned. Oddly, their clothes hadn’t been affected. Quinn stood over the corpses, but his attention was trained on the awful, writhing mass of pale flesh chained upon a crude stone altar in the center of the floor.
“Quinny?” I said.
My cousin turned to me. His face was blackened and cracked. His left eyelid was mostly missing and the flesh had been burned off his right hand, all the way down to the bone. “It’s her, Frank,” Quinn said. He nodded to the altar.
Looking down at those burnt cadavers, I noticed that one of them wore a black cassock with a white collar. Apparently, when the moment of truth came, Colton Shelby had gotten cold feet about touching divinity.
I stepped up next to Quinn and beheld the monstrosity, chains clinking as the girl tugged at her bonds.
She moaned, softly and anguished. She opened her ruined maw to speak but only distant rasps came out. Kendra’s eyes lolled about listlessly and, when she looked at me, her ragged maw curved into a frown as tears trickled down her cheeks.
Quinn cocked the hammer of his thirty-eight. “We can’t leave her like this,” he said.
“We’re not,” I told him. “Claremont will help her.”
“Claremont?” Quinn said. His voice wheezed as he spoke, as if his airway had been charred along with the rest of him. “Claremont won’t help her. He’ll put her in a box so they can cut her open and see what makes her tick.”
“Quinny, listen to me,” I said. “You need to remember why we’re here. Remember Uncle Mick. Remember the docks.”
Quinn smiled, his charred lips cracking and oozing puss. “I do remember,” he said. “That’s why I’m not letting anyone put another girl in a box.”
Quinn raised his revolver and aimed at the girl. “I’ll take care of you, honey,” he said.
And he would have, if I hadn’t pulled the trigger first. My big cousin fell to the floor, still twitching, and I put two more in him just to make sure he didn’t suffer.
Then the prism faded and the shaft of red light along with it. I made the call to Claremont’s people then sat there in the dark, listening to Kendra’s hopeless whimpers. Within fifteen minutes, soldiers in black masks arrived. They shackled the girl to a stretcher then spirited her out into the night.
#
By the time I got to the docks, a light snow was peppering the city and the icy wind bit right down into my bones. Even at three in the morning the docks were alive with forklifts belching propane fumes, roaring diesel big rigs, and the cranes’ chugging hydraulics out beyond the stacks.
I was more than a little drunk and the overnight foreman was more than a little nervous when I demanded he take me up into the warehouse’s shipping and receiving office. I didn’t blame him. The rank and file were all still whispering about Sal Narducci, no doubt.
The office was perched high above the stacks. The nervous foreman was at the computer looking up the location of the sea box Sal had told me about. As the foreman worked, I leaned against the window, gazing out over the docks.
I threw back another slug of whiskey. Once I had the box loaded onto a truck, I’d drop it off beneath the I-95 overpass down in Fishtown. Then I’d free the cargo and be fucking done with it.
Behind me, the foreman looked up from over the monitor, sweat beading across his hairline. “Uh, there’s a problem,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
He swallowed hard, his voice shook. “That box got sent out this afternoon,” he said. “If you want, I can pull up the destination.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. By now, the cargo was likely dispersed among the countless massage parlors and speakeasy brothels around the city. I took another long drink and shut my eyes, but I couldn’t shake the image of the disfigured girl shackled to that stretcher. I wondered where Claremont had her now, if they’d descended upon her with scalpels and pincers yet.
I drove my fist into the window glass, shattering it along with my knuckles. The broken shards clinked against the concrete a hundred feet below like distant wind chimes. I looked out over the docks as my broken fist wept blood, at the gantry cranes unloading a newly arrived ship, like predators picking at a carcass.

After 24 hours as a pudding cannon and pill dispenser, Eric is in awe of himself and his untapped nurturing abilities. Larissa is a total vegetable, and Eric says it’s like having a kid, if parenthood has a 24 hour expiration date, and your child is made of plastic. He’s flirting with making airplane noises as he coaxes Larissa to “open” and consume another 25 calories of goo.
Eric is behind in the quotable quotes department, and realizes he’s running out of episodes to make that happen. So he tosses this salad: “Time without sex gives me more time to get prepared. For what? Well, it doesn’t involve plastic sheeting. It’s been 24 hours. She’s not recovering as quickly as I thought. But I’m not gonna stop when I’m in the middle of the danger zone. I’m gonna take it right into the danger zone.” Thank you Goose, that was outstanding.
He’s crying because Larissa truly is a mess, and he takes her back to the doctor’s office. Dr. Tit-Punch is exactly that, and he comes in like a jolly ginger cowboy checking in on that steer he just branded. He asks about pain, because the more she hurts the more his powers grow, and Larissa confirms it’s happening. Then he reminds Larissa that they hurt a lot because she went for a large size, and they’re under the muscle; he, of course, recommended a small size, but did she listen? Noooooo. Go home, Dr. Feelbad. Larissa can’t move her face at all while she pretends to laugh at her own expense. The doc then adds that he shrunk her areoles from their former silver dollar size to the size of a quarter, and I demand a better descriptor, since this Sacajawea dollar is very nearly a quarter, THANKS.
Fast forward a few weeks, and Larissa and Eric meet up with some of Larissa’s friends for a face and tit and weave reveal, as one does. Eric thinks all of this plastic surgery and bottomless pain killer prescriptions is strengthening their bond, so long as he doesn’t have to be her “sea-na” again (certified nurse’s assistant) again. This duo happily reports Eric’s recovery woes, that they’re still not having enough sex, and that they’ve moved a second bed into Eric’s bedroom, so they sleep like the camp scene in Parent Trap. Larissa’s friends think this is weird, but so is perpetually disappearing to play volleyball, and Paul’s entire existence, so yeah, on this show and in reality, this two beds thing ain’t shit. Larissa’s nose looks okay, even if one nostril seems bigger than the other, and her tits are standing at attention, threatening to escape the strips of fabric she used to bandaid her nipples. If she’s getting titties, she’s doing em justice goddammit, and is raising a flag with those cannons. I think she’s ready to be American.
Angela is beside herself with the news that her mother is in the ICU, and she’s quickly packing up before heading to the airport to be at her mother’s bedside. She’s afraid her mom will never meet him, and that she’ll arrive too late to say goodbye.
“Maybe it’s my fault,” Angela says, blaming herself for something she can’t control, like people with too much responsibility everywhere. Her grief and sense of panic is a reminder of Angela’s special place on this show, and the real person lurking underneath her brash and ridiculous façade. Human Angela is a thousand times more interesting than white trash caricature Angela. More of this, please.
Michael is in tears over her upcoming departure, but knows he has to be strong for her, because she needs to help her mom. He sees her off at the airport, and they call each other husband and wife. Angela wants Michael in the US of A, where he can support her in person, and it seems like she’s speaking for a lot of couples here.
After her plane lands, Angela fumbles with her luggage and heads directly to the hospital, knowing that she’ll have to crack some jokes as a greeting, because that’s how her mother knows her. As she heads through the hospital doors, she hopes to at least get to hold her mother’s hand and tell her she loves her before she fades.
90DF catches up with her two weeks later, and we learn that Grandma hung on for 10 more days, and Angela got to say goodbye. Angela and Skyla sit down to talk about it, and Skyla starts bobbing her foot the way Angela does when she’s trying not to cry, and reports that when she was at Grandma’s bedside, Grandma soothed her by saying, “Well, I’ve got to go to heaven sometime.” This is a perfect epitaph.
Angela seems softer, and she says Michael has been great over the phone, but she just wants her husband at her side. Then the grandkids ask if they can watch youtube, and Angela says fine, so long as they don’t land on that dude with Doritos dust still in his beard talking about green beams from California. She calls Michael, and starts smoking so he’ll recognize her. During this call Michael says that it could be up to 18 months before he’ll arrive in the USA on a spousal visa, and Angela wonders if all of this is too hard. Michael knows his role by now, and he says it’s not too hard, and they can do it — they just need to be more stubborn than the immigration office.
I’ve said it before, and it seems worth repeating: Angela’s tantrums are all an act, because these two are way too relaxed around each other for a pair in a consistently abusive relationship, and Michael is never surprised by her outbursts; they seem to know how they’ve been branded by producers, and work to color within the lines. In situations where people normally go to pieces, they are both instantly adults, navigating complex decisions and supporting each other practically and emotionally. They’ll be back.
Kalani and Asuelu are loading the family up to wave off the pirate ship that brought Asuelu’s family to shore. Kalani is calling Kennedy Freddy, and now I’m confused. They hope to get through a few sentences without a money grab, and things look promising when Rosa signs that it was good to see all of them, and Oliver and Kennedy make more effort to sign to her than anyone else thus far. Why didn’t we get more Rosa? Her signing with the kids would have been totally charming. Why does 90DF always drop us in the most predictable dark waters, and edit anything relatable out?
Just as they’re starting to relax, Mom asks for money again, and announces that she’s joking seconds before Kalani detonates. Asuelu says it’s too soon for that joke, and as they leave Mom reminds both of them to take care of the kids repeatedly, because Asuelu sometimes forgets.
“Bye my room, thank you for everything,” Mom shouts as they leave.
“Stop talking to me,” the room retorts.
Theory: I think Asuelu gave her more money when he went to visit her alone, and that’s the real reason she shut up about it. Just putting that out there.
Back in Utah, Kalani and Asuelu go to dinner, and cheers three times, and the bartenders need to stop being dicks and bring this woman an adult’s drink. Maybe I’ve been in Portland too long, but if I surrender $7.00 and get a Diixie cup of liquor and not a mason jar spilling over the sides, there had better be bottomless refills.
Anyway, since these two have nothing to talk about and Kalani is increasingly unsuccessful in veiling her contempt, Kalani asks the waiter for paper and pens so they can play Tic-Tac-Toe and a new game Kalani invented called Dreaming Myself Elsewhere. She suggests they do their homework assignment from the therapist, who they apparently went to see exactly once, because they’re doing that who-does-what list mentioned a few episodes ago. Afterwards Asuelu collects the papers and declares he’s going to grade himself. Dude, you need to swap papers with your neighbor. Do you even junior high, bro?
Anyway, Asuelu awards himself Perfect Attendance, and Kalani says hers looks like Honor Roll, but he can copy off her paper. Asuelu isolates his apple-raking meditation as one of his weekly responsibilities, lest the lawn be reduced to sauce. If he sugars the whole thing, he’ll be inching towards compote. I mean, think of the ants.
“Apples being raked does nothing for me,” Lady Kalani declares, as she nibbles just a corner of a truffle, and demands just a touch more wine.
“You are the pineapple of my life,” Asuelu JarJars, chawing on the ankle of a surfboard.
For the record, unfair allotment of domestic duties is one of the leading causes of divorce, and the #2 cause of a screaming match I may or may not have participated in seven years ago that included the phrase, “Go die.” #1 would be money, which also isn’t looking so good for Team Kasuelu, even if citizenship grants them double the 90DF dimes.
Later on, COVID-19 is becoming a Korean horror movie subplot, and Kalani is going to pass on the role of Woman Who Dies First. Asuelu’s been playing volleyball, which has to be code for drugs or porn or a massage with a happy ending, because I can’t. We know from his response to measles that he doesn’t think disease actually exists, so these unmasked, socially-intimate sweat exchanges could bring The Rona into their home. Kalani’s retort is to buy him a one-way ticket to Washington, aka the first state to suffer a major outbreak. This is the most Shakespearean thing to ever happen to this show. This is the most Game of Thrones thing to happen on this show.
“I know,” Kalani says, running her finger along the lip of a wine glass until it sings. “Quarantine is oddly freeing, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d enjoy another scene of me putting on makeup? I can also comb my mermaid hair from this clamshell.”
Kalani’s savage death sentence comes riding in on the back of the fucks she has left to give about his hidden “volleyball” agenda. AND THIS IS THE MOST SHAKESPEARE MOMENT OF ALL: She sentences him to several months with his mom, a senior citizen he’ll warmly embrace, germ flowing, right off an airplane.
“She sent him right into the danger zone,” Eric is in awe.
I see you, Kalani. I know you’re Cobra Kai. Strike fast, strike hard, no mercy. Sweep the leg. (Insert appropriate hand signal acknowledging mutual membership.)
Mother Kalani aka Lisa sits down to talk to Kalani, showing off her own waterfall of dark curls, used to thwart advancing man-babies and summon larger drinks. They sit underneath a sign that reads, “we decided on forever” without a hint of irony, and this is the greatest thing ever, and a warning not to put words on your wall unless you’re okay with their curse. After they talk for awhile Lisa starts crying, because her daughter is unhappy and Asuelu let her down.
“Can we just focus on how cute the children are and how sexy my husband is instead of Asuelu?” Lisa makes a solid argument. “Kalani was supposed to get a Brandon, and somehow she got a Steve. A Steve. You know who wants a Steve? Nobody.”
Speaking of needing help, Syngin is running out of reasons to return stateside with Tania, but thinks he can still feign confusion for a few more scenes. “How’s this face? That’s my confused face. Wait, I have another one. This is startled. I know, right? Range,” Syngin is prepared.
He sits down with his family, and they want to know if he has any actual desire to return to CT. His moms tells him he’s “wasting your journey,” unless he wants to travel with excess baggage. After several minutes of resigned conversation, he loses hope that one among them will demand a kidney or ask him to stick around the carry the groceries, so he remains stuck toting Tania across the tarmac.
“I could tote her,” Angela is ready. “I just need ya egg.”
It’s their last day in South Africa, and Syngin is getting ice cream with the person he’s about to be trapped on a plane with. Tania thinks that Syngin lied about his plans for the future, and time-out, Tania lied, too. She said they could live anywhere in the US, and the minute his plane landed she was waxing poetic about her own childhood and how she wants to raise her children in CT, thus rendering them both prisoners of a snowy state for upwards of 18 years. Tania says their relationship is all that maters, because she’s never gonna get a baby if something else does. For his part, Syngin decides he wants to be a coder, a fireman, a detective police officer but not a regular one, a boy band guitarist, and a meadow, because he doesn’t like to limit himself.
Colt has to break the news to his mom that he’s technically an adult, but not before he demonstrates that he doesn’t know how to cut a cat’s nails. His dieting strategy is surrounding himself with food he doesn’t want to eat, so he celebrates the delivery of vegan mac and cheese. Colt tries to get Debbie to arrange her mouth around this foreign sounding word, “vegan” and she recognizes it as the flirting he clearly intended it to be.
Debbie presses for the deets on why he seems down, and he says that after a lifetime of blaming the women in his life for his failed relationships, he’s ready to blame Debbie, too. Never mind that the common denominator in all of these relationships is the guy who doesn’t cook his own food or make his own bed, but lets not burden ourselves with details. Debbie still insists that Jess was using Colt for a green card, and that she has to meddle because the minute she steps away, he’s ordering dairy-rich foods without the dairy. Still, Colt feels like he doesn’t have the kind of privacy normally afforded a reality star. Colt mimes more son feelings, and asks his mom to hold his hand like a Lifetime movie. Debbie is not having it, because she’s seen that movie, and knows this is the scene where the mother’s role in the plot expires.
“I’d like to see him make his own bed, wash his own clothes, give himself a sponge bath,” Debbie scoffs. “No one lights a pumpkin spice Yankee candle the way I do. No one alphabetized the Cornish cookware like me. He might think he can handle a Pyrex dish, but think again.”
“I don’t know what any of those things are, but I want to be treated like a man,” Colt asserts. “Not because I act like one, but because I say it. ”
Speaking of not-a-man, Charlie is trying to form talking words with his chicken nugget brain, but he’s already double-dipped in Ranch. Andrei drags him outside, and since we’ve endured endless teasing of coming fisticuffs, nothing happens. Charlie drunkenly issues macho challenges, and Andrei says they’re not going to figure it out tonight. He tells Charlie to remember his sister, and her happiness, and they can go inside and worry about it later.
“Yes, the wedding was $30K, okay,” Andrei reports. “That was Charlie’s college fund, which will clearly not be needed.”
Somebody call 9-1-1, because Libby and Andrei’s Moldovan wedding is on fire! No one has puzzled out how to muzzle and duct tape the drunk guy yet, which means the groomsmen and bridesmaids are fired. Charlie sways around and says that Andrei is “soft” because he didn’t punch his wife’s brother at their wedding do-over, which is the sort of thing you think when a moment of not being the center of attention is enough to cause you to crumble. Chuck still wades around in Charlie’s bullshit, unwilling or unable to tell him to go the fuck home, insisting that he “did it for my daughter, not for Andrei.” Marcel tries to earn his place back on the groom team by telling Charlie to STFU, and DUI Jen works to make it worse by emphasizing that Andrei is still a bad guy, they should just should pause the theatrics for Libby. Nothing is going to stop this drunken tantrum, and he tells Chuck, “They’re already married, and you’re still paying for their shit. You have seven kids. I’m not taking a pay cut for this dude.”
“You can’t talk to Jesus when you’re drunk,” Thank you, Akinyi.
Libby doesn’t want to be left out of rerouting this public display of douchebag into Andrei’s fault. “Why is he so mad?” She demands. “What did you say to him?” Libby, drunk people aren’t logical. There isn’t a cause and effect happening.
Andrei takes Chuck aside, and asks him to handle his son, for America. This approach makes Chuck defensive, so Andrei reels it back, and apologizes for his part in their tense relationship. He says that he genuinely wants things to be better, especially now that children are involved, and says, “For the sake of my daughter, and your daughter, make peace.” Whoa, what’s adulthood doing here? Chuck seems moved by the sudden appearance of sincerity, especially when Andrei doubles down on acknowledging his contribution to this mess, and they agree to meet each other half way…until Chuck steps to the left for his interview, which allows another opportunity to say he doesn’t know about Andrei. Did he get a $5 bonus every time he trotted out this line?
Libby is still worried that Andrei and her family will never get along, and finds a way to hector Andrei about the importance of getting along with her fam all over again, and I can’t help but wish she’d take that tone with the other toxic people in her life.
“I made peace with you father,” Andrei says in his own defense. “Me and your dad buried the hatchet. Your sister and brother, they are assholes. Yes, I am the one who has said it. Look on Reddit, there is much agreement with me.”
Libby is drained, and just wants to enjoy the rest of her wedding, and Andrei is sweet to her, and these two are tolerable for a hot minute. Exactly one hot minute.
“There’s a broke bum over there named Charlie,” says a broke bum over there named Andrei. “What? You think peacefulness would last?”
Next week, it’s tell-all time! Angela wears her face mask so the internets don’t give her the ‘rona, Tania and Syngin show off that pre or post divorce glow, Kalani is pleased to report Asuelu isn’t there, DUI Jen and Charlie chuck grenades in glass houses, Colt is feeling himself, Angela threatens to beat Tammy’s ass because she can out Jerry Springer anyone, and Shaun eagerly demonstrates that she enjoys the smell of social distancing, and is also Cobra Kai. Make em bleed, Shaun. Make em bleed.
Thank you, Patreon supporters!

After 24 hours as a pudding cannon and pill dispenser, Eric is in awe of himself and his untapped nurturing abilities. Larissa is a total vegetable, and Eric says it’s like having a kid, if parenthood has a 24 hour expiration date, and your child is made of plastic. He’s flirting with making airplane noises as he coaxes Larissa to “open” and consume another 25 calories of goo.
Eric is behind in the quotable quotes department, and realizes he’s running out of episodes to make that happen. So he tosses this salad: “Time without sex gives me more time to get prepared. For what? Well, it doesn’t involve plastic sheeting. It’s been 24 hours. She’s not recovering as quickly as I thought. But I’m not gonna stop when I’m in the middle of the danger zone. I’m gonna take it right into the danger zone.” Thank you Goose, that was outstanding.
He’s crying because Larissa truly is a mess, and he takes her back to the doctor’s office. Dr. Tit-Punch is exactly that, and he comes in like a jolly ginger cowboy checking in on that steer he just branded. He asks about pain, because the more she hurts the more his powers grow, and Larissa confirms it’s happening. Then he reminds Larissa that they hurt a lot because she went for a large size, and they’re under the muscle; he, of course, recommended a small size, but did she listen? Noooooo. Go home, Dr. Feelbad. Larissa can’t move her face at all while she pretends to laugh at her own expense. The doc then adds that he shrunk her areoles from their former silver dollar size to the size of a quarter, and I demand a better descriptor, since this Sacajawea dollar is very nearly a quarter, THANKS.
Fast forward a few weeks, and Larissa and Eric meet up with some of Larissa’s friends for a face and tit and weave reveal, as one does. Eric thinks all of this plastic surgery and bottomless pain killer prescriptions is strengthening their bond, so long as he doesn’t have to be her “sea-na” again (certified nurse’s assistant) again. This duo happily reports Eric’s recovery woes, that they’re still not having enough sex, and that they’ve moved a second bed into Eric’s bedroom, so they sleep like the camp scene in Parent Trap. Larissa’s friends think this is weird, but so is perpetually disappearing to play volleyball, and Paul’s entire existence, so yeah, on this show and in reality, this two beds thing ain’t shit. Larissa’s nose looks okay, even if one nostril seems bigger than the other, and her tits are standing at attention, threatening to escape the strips of fabric she used to bandaid her nipples. If she’s getting titties, she’s doing em justice goddammit, and is raising a flag with those cannons. I think she’s ready to be American.
Angela is beside herself with the news that her mother is in the ICU, and she’s quickly packing up before heading to the airport to be at her mother’s bedside. She’s afraid her mom will never meet him, and that she’ll arrive too late to say goodbye.
“Maybe it’s my fault,” Angela says, blaming herself for something she can’t control, like people with too much responsibility everywhere. Her grief and sense of panic is a reminder of Angela’s special place on this show, and the real person lurking underneath her brash and ridiculous façade. Human Angela is a thousand times more interesting than white trash caricature Angela. More of this, please.
Michael is in tears over her upcoming departure, but knows he has to be strong for her, because she needs to help her mom. He sees her off at the airport, and they call each other husband and wife. Angela wants Michael in the US of A, where he can support her in person, and it seems like she’s speaking for a lot of couples here.
After her plane lands, Angela fumbles with her luggage and heads directly to the hospital, knowing that she’ll have to crack some jokes as a greeting, because that’s how her mother knows her. As she heads through the hospital doors, she hopes to at least get to hold her mother’s hand and tell her she loves her before she fades.
90DF catches up with her two weeks later, and we learn that Grandma hung on for 10 more days, and Angela got to say goodbye. Angela and Skyla sit down to talk about it, and Skyla starts bobbing her foot the way Angela does when she’s trying not to cry, and reports that when she was at Grandma’s bedside, Grandma soothed her by saying, “Well, I’ve got to go to heaven sometime.” This is a perfect epitaph.
Angela seems softer, and she says Michael has been great over the phone, but she just wants her husband at her side. Then the grandkids ask if they can watch youtube, and Angela says fine, so long as they don’t land on that dude with Doritos dust still in his beard talking about green beams from California. She calls Michael, and starts smoking so he’ll recognize her. During this call Michael says that it could be up to 18 months before he’ll arrive in the USA on a spousal visa, and Angela wonders if all of this is too hard. Michael knows his role by now, and he says it’s not too hard, and they can do it — they just need to be more stubborn than the immigration office.
I’ve said it before, and it seems worth repeating: Angela’s tantrums are all an act, because these two are way too relaxed around each other for a pair in a consistently abusive relationship, and Michael is never surprised by her outbursts; they seem to know how they’ve been branded by producers, and work to color within the lines. In situations where people normally go to pieces, they are both instantly adults, navigating complex decisions and supporting each other practically and emotionally. They’ll be back.
Kalani and Asuelu are loading the family up to wave off the pirate ship that brought Asuelu’s family to shore. Kalani is calling Kennedy Freddy, and now I’m confused. They hope to get through a few sentences without a money grab, and things look promising when Rosa signs that it was good to see all of them, and Oliver and Kennedy make more effort to sign to her than anyone else thus far. Why didn’t we get more Rosa? Her signing with the kids would have been totally charming. Why does 90DF always drop us in the most predictable dark waters, and edit anything relatable out?
Just as they’re starting to relax, Mom asks for money again, and announces that she’s joking seconds before Kalani detonates. Asuelu says it’s too soon for that joke, and as they leave Mom reminds both of them to take care of the kids repeatedly, because Asuelu sometimes forgets.
“Bye my room, thank you for everything,” Mom shouts as they leave.
“Stop talking to me,” the room retorts.
Theory: I think Asuelu gave her more money when he went to visit her alone, and that’s the real reason she shut up about it. Just putting that out there.
Back in Utah, Kalani and Asuelu go to dinner, and cheers three times, and the bartenders need to stop being dicks and bring this woman an adult’s drink. Maybe I’ve been in Portland too long, but if I surrender $7.00 and get a Diixie cup of liquor and not a mason jar spilling over the sides, there had better be bottomless refills.
Anyway, since these two have nothing to talk about and Kalani is increasingly unsuccessful in veiling her contempt, Kalani asks the waiter for paper and pens so they can play Tic-Tac-Toe and a new game Kalani invented called Dreaming Myself Elsewhere. She suggests they do their homework assignment from the therapist, who they apparently went to see exactly once, because they’re doing that who-does-what list mentioned a few episodes ago. Afterwards Asuelu collects the papers and declares he’s going to grade himself. Dude, you need to swap papers with your neighbor. Do you even junior high, bro?
Anyway, Asuelu awards himself Perfect Attendance, and Kalani says hers looks like Honor Roll, but he can copy off her paper. Asuelu isolates his apple-raking meditation as one of his weekly responsibilities, lest the lawn be reduced to sauce. If he sugars the whole thing, he’ll be inching towards compote. I mean, think of the ants.
“Apples being raked does nothing for me,” Lady Kalani declares, as she nibbles just a corner of a truffle, and demands just a touch more wine.
“You are the pineapple of my life,” Asuelu JarJars, chawing on the ankle of a surfboard.
For the record, unfair allotment of domestic duties is one of the leading causes of divorce, and the #2 cause of a screaming match I may or may not have participated in seven years ago that included the phrase, “Go die.” #1 would be money, which also isn’t looking so good for Team Kasuelu, even if citizenship grants them double the 90DF dimes.
Later on, COVID-19 is becoming a Korean horror movie subplot, and Kalani is going to pass on the role of Woman Who Dies First. Asuelu’s been playing volleyball, which has to be code for drugs or porn or a massage with a happy ending, because I can’t. We know from his response to measles that he doesn’t think disease actually exists, so these unmasked, socially-intimate sweat exchanges could bring The Rona into their home. Kalani’s retort is to buy him a one-way ticket to Washington, aka the first state to suffer a major outbreak. This is the most Shakespearean thing to ever happen to this show. This is the most Game of Thrones thing to happen on this show.
“I know,” Kalani says, running her finger along the lip of a wine glass until it sings. “Quarantine is oddly freeing, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d enjoy another scene of me putting on makeup? I can also comb my mermaid hair from this clamshell.”
Kalani’s savage death sentence comes riding in on the back of the fucks she has left to give about his hidden “volleyball” agenda. AND THIS IS THE MOST SHAKESPEARE MOMENT OF ALL: She sentences him to several months with his mom, a senior citizen he’ll warmly embrace, germ flowing, right off an airplane.
“She sent him right into the danger zone,” Eric is in awe.
I see you, Kalani. I know you’re Cobra Kai. Strike fast, strike hard, no mercy. Sweep the leg. (Insert appropriate hand signal acknowledging mutual membership.)
Mother Kalani aka Lisa sits down to talk to Kalani, showing off her own waterfall of dark curls, used to thwart advancing man-babies and summon larger drinks. They sit underneath a sign that reads, “we decided on forever” without a hint of irony, and this is the greatest thing ever, and a warning not to put words on your wall unless you’re okay with their curse. After they talk for awhile Lisa starts crying, because her daughter is unhappy and Asuelu let her down.
“Can we just focus on how cute the children are and how sexy my husband is instead of Asuelu?” Lisa makes a solid argument. “Kalani was supposed to get a Brandon, and somehow she got a Steve. A Steve. You know who wants a Steve? Nobody.”
Speaking of needing help, Syngin is running out of reasons to return stateside with Tania, but thinks he can still feign confusion for a few more scenes. “How’s this face? That’s my confused face. Wait, I have another one. This is startled. I know, right? Range,” Syngin is prepared.
He sits down with his family, and they want to know if he has any actual desire to return to CT. His moms tells him he’s “wasting your journey,” unless he wants to travel with excess baggage. After several minutes of resigned conversation, he loses hope that one among them will demand a kidney or ask him to stick around the carry the groceries, so he remains stuck toting Tania across the tarmac.
“I could tote her,” Angela is ready. “I just need ya egg.”
It’s their last day in South Africa, and Syngin is getting ice cream with the person he’s about to be trapped on a plane with. Tania thinks that Syngin lied about his plans for the future, and time-out, Tania lied, too. She said they could live anywhere in the US, and the minute his plane landed she was waxing poetic about her own childhood and how she wants to raise her children in CT, thus rendering them both prisoners of a snowy state for upwards of 18 years. Tania says their relationship is all that maters, because she’s never gonna get a baby if something else does. For his part, Syngin decides he wants to be a coder, a fireman, a detective police officer but not a regular one, a boy band guitarist, and a meadow, because he doesn’t like to limit himself.
Colt has to break the news to his mom that he’s technically an adult, but not before he demonstrates that he doesn’t know how to cut a cat’s nails. His dieting strategy is surrounding himself with food he doesn’t want to eat, so he celebrates the delivery of vegan mac and cheese. Colt tries to get Debbie to arrange her mouth around this foreign sounding word, “vegan” and she recognizes it as the flirting he clearly intended it to be.
Debbie presses for the deets on why he seems down, and he says that after a lifetime of blaming the women in his life for his failed relationships, he’s ready to blame Debbie, too. Never mind that the common denominator in all of these relationships is the guy who doesn’t cook his own food or make his own bed, but lets not burden ourselves with details. Debbie still insists that Jess was using Colt for a green card, and that she has to meddle because the minute she steps away, he’s ordering dairy-rich foods without the dairy. Still, Colt feels like he doesn’t have the kind of privacy normally afforded a reality star. Colt mimes more son feelings, and asks his mom to hold his hand like a Lifetime movie. Debbie is not having it, because she’s seen that movie, and knows this is the scene where the mother’s role in the plot expires.
“I’d like to see him make his own bed, wash his own clothes, give himself a sponge bath,” Debbie scoffs. “No one lights a pumpkin spice Yankee candle the way I do. No one alphabetized the Cornish cookware like me. He might think he can handle a Pyrex dish, but think again.”
“I don’t know what any of those things are, but I want to be treated like a man,” Colt asserts. “Not because I act like one, but because I say it. ”
Speaking of not-a-man, Charlie is trying to form talking words with his chicken nugget brain, but he’s already double-dipped in Ranch. Andrei drags him outside, and since we’ve endured endless teasing of coming fisticuffs, nothing happens. Charlie drunkenly issues macho challenges, and Andrei says they’re not going to figure it out tonight. He tells Charlie to remember his sister, and her happiness, and they can go inside and worry about it later.
“Yes, the wedding was $30K, okay,” Andrei reports. “That was Charlie’s college fund, which will clearly not be needed.”
Somebody call 9-1-1, because Libby and Andrei’s Moldovan wedding is on fire! No one has puzzled out how to muzzle and duct tape the drunk guy yet, which means the groomsmen and bridesmaids are fired. Charlie sways around and says that Andrei is “soft” because he didn’t punch his wife’s brother at their wedding do-over, which is the sort of thing you think when a moment of not being the center of attention is enough to cause you to crumble. Chuck still wades around in Charlie’s bullshit, unwilling or unable to tell him to go the fuck home, insisting that he “did it for my daughter, not for Andrei.” Marcel tries to earn his place back on the groom team by telling Charlie to STFU, and DUI Jen works to make it worse by emphasizing that Andrei is still a bad guy, they should just should pause the theatrics for Libby. Nothing is going to stop this drunken tantrum, and he tells Chuck, “They’re already married, and you’re still paying for their shit. You have seven kids. I’m not taking a pay cut for this dude.”
“You can’t talk to Jesus when you’re drunk,” Thank you, Akinyi.
Libby doesn’t want to be left out of rerouting this public display of douchebag into Andrei’s fault. “Why is he so mad?” She demands. “What did you say to him?” Libby, drunk people aren’t logical. There isn’t a cause and effect happening.
Andrei takes Chuck aside, and asks him to handle his son, for America. This approach makes Chuck defensive, so Andrei reels it back, and apologizes for his part in their tense relationship. He says that he genuinely wants things to be better, especially now that children are involved, and says, “For the sake of my daughter, and your daughter, make peace.” Whoa, what’s adulthood doing here? Chuck seems moved by the sudden appearance of sincerity, especially when Andrei doubles down on acknowledging his contribution to this mess, and they agree to meet each other half way…until Chuck steps to the left for his interview, which allows another opportunity to say he doesn’t know about Andrei. Did he get a $5 bonus every time he trotted out this line?
Libby is still worried that Andrei and her family will never get along, and finds a way to hector Andrei about the importance of getting along with her fam all over again, and I can’t help but wish she’d take that tone with the other toxic people in her life.
“I made peace with you father,” Andrei says in his own defense. “Me and your dad buried the hatchet. Your sister and brother, they are assholes. Yes, I am the one who has said it. Look on Reddit, there is much agreement with me.”
Libby is drained, and just wants to enjoy the rest of her wedding, and Andrei is sweet to her, and these two are tolerable for a hot minute. Exactly one hot minute.
“There’s a broke bum over there named Charlie,” says a broke bum over there named Andrei. “What? You think peacefulness would last?”
Next week, it’s tell-all time! Angela wears her face mask so the internets don’t give her the ‘rona, Tania and Syngin show off that pre or post divorce glow, Kalani is pleased to report Asuelu isn’t there, DUI Jen and Charlie chuck grenades in glass houses, Colt is feeling himself, Angela threatens to beat Tammy’s ass because she can out Jerry Springer anyone, and Shaun eagerly demonstrates that she enjoys the smell of social distancing, and is also Cobra Kai. Make em bleed, Shaun. Make em bleed.

The Commander stood straight with his hands clasped behind his back, carefully upright despite his age even with no one present to bear witness to it. His eyes had fixed on the sterile white drifts beyond the reinforced window of his office, now appearing black beneath the night above. Some might have called the view uninspiring, but not far beyond the window lay a grave. It was not a much-decorated grave considering the expense it had taken to bury its sole occupant there, beneath a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container and pinned in place with a knife.
The Commander wished that it was the grave's occupant standing here now instead of him. He didn't know what the hell he was supposed to do now, but whatever it was, the grave's occupant would have done it better.
Failing that, being able to phone home for orders would have been nice. The first flash of bad weather that knocked out their radio hadn't perturbed the Commander. The second surge, that knocked out the repaired radio, had perturbed him more. After receiving their unexpected visitor they'd took a chance on activating their last set of spares, and a storm had knocked that out too. Now they were out of contact for days, at least, until the base technicians could improvise another solution.
It didn't seem likely the visitor could have caused all that. But he was also having a hard time believing that it had been sheer coincidence. Perhaps their visitor had known that they would be out of contact, at this particular time, and had chosen just then to arrive...
The communicator on his desk warbled out its mock-melody, and the Commander took a step over to press the button with only a glance at the ID. He'd been waiting on this call.
A young woman's voice said, "Sir."
There had been a time earlier in his career when he would have been nervous about handing over duties this important to a member of the fairer sex. He felt no such anxiety this day. Nobody got assigned to this Base unless they were damned good at their jobs.
The vidscreen flickered into action, displaying the upper half of - the Commander privately admitted and would certainly never say out loud - the prettiest sight on the Base, or at least, she'd been the prettiest sight as of one day earlier. If Major Jane Getherde was feeling any feminine jealousy about her suddenly materialized competition, she wasn't showing it.
"All right," the Commander said. "Tell me about our... guest."
"Do you want the most important parts first or should I take things in order?"
"Take it in order, if there's nothing of imminent urgency." He should have been woken again from his sleep if that had occurred. He wouldn't have been sleeping at all, in this situation, except he'd already stayed awake the previous 36 hours trying to fix the radio problem. He was no longer as young as he'd been.
Major Getherde's comportment betrayed no sign of fatigue from her own sleepless night. "All the noninvasive examination I could do with medical instrumentation I had on hand showed our guest as an ordinary human female in every respect. Zero scars, zero birthmarks, no evidence of significant surgeries. White, perfectly aligned teeth with no evidence of fillings or other dental work. Her feet do not have calluses."
The Commander raised a hand and massaged his temples. "Can you tell me whether we're looking at advanced medical care, genetic engineering, or something wearing a newly grown body?"
"I can't think of an easy way to tell. You could order me to inflict a small cut on her and observe how fast it heals."
The Commander grimaced. "Let's continue holding off on that for now. The items she had with her?"
"The earrings glow faintly in the dark. No alpha or beta, very low gamma, consistent with a properly shielded isotopic power source. The high heels seemed ordinary on a surface examination. I didn't want to try more destructive tests, such as X-Rays that could potentially destroy concealed microfilm, without waiting for orders."
Considering that the visitor had been wearing nothing except earrings and high heels on arrival, under circumstances where a visitor should have been wearing rather more, he would have bet a great deal of money that the heels were not ordinary either. "Agreed. Keep holding off on that."
"A full medical examination revealed that the subject had a small case hidden in her vagina. I, ah, took it out. It wasn't locked, and inside were two ampules that looked like they were intended for a hypodermic injector. The case is self-refrigerating."
The Commander grimaced, not liking to think of the required invasion. "Any notion of what it was doing up there?"
"No sir. Obvious thoughts are that she was hiding it, or that something about her transportation method made it easier to carry things inside her body. The XO decided that the equipment should be kept away from the subject for now."
The Commander nodded. "I concur. Continue."
"The two ampules inside the case appeared to be filled with a homogenous transparent liquid. Since there were two seemingly identical ampules, the XO agreed that it was reasonable to draw a small amount of the liquid for further examination. After optical microscopy failed, I had the electron microscope moved into the medical section. Electron microscopy showed virus particles in suspension."
The Commander didn't straighten, because he was already standing completely straight, but his expression sharpened. "A virus? Are you sure?"
"It was hard to be sure from electron microscopy alone. After some discussion with the XO I decided it was worth the risk to inoculate a live mouse with a tiny amount of the fluid - under highest biohazard conditions - in order to observe the results."
The Commander shook his head, frowning. "Not what I would have done," he understated.
"I wasn't sure how long the sample of liquid would survive. The XO thought it made more sense to use it before losing it, rather than needing to draw another sample later. It did seem like something we'd want to try at some point."
The Commander sighed. "So do we now have a shape-changing psionic supermouse destroying our base?"
"No sir?" Major Getherde sounded uncertain.
The trouble with youngsters nowadays was not just that they lacked history but that, lacking history, they lacked imagination. If you were a Native American and people in unfamiliar ships suddenly showed up on your shore, you would be mistaken to assume that your experience with arrows let you understand the destructive potential of the invaders' ammunition stores. Playing with the stranger's toys while she was asleep had not been the correct move.
"What did happen?" said the Commander.
"After a period of four hours consistent with rapid incubation of a disease, the mouse developed a fever. At four and a half hours it began to bleed from all orifices, then it... melted... and then what was left caught on fire."
The Commander scrutinized Major Getherde to see if she was joking, although that seemed unlikely under the circumstances. "A bioweapon?" he said, feeling chilled.
"I would be shocked if it were intended as a weapon, sir," Major Getherde replied, sounding more confident than her previous statements. "A bioweapon should have a long period of contagious incubation, and should only produce symptoms that contribute to its propagation or lethality. Nobody engineering a bioweapon would sit there thinking about how to make the corpse catch on fire after it finished melting."
The Commander nodded, feeling ashamed of himself for not seeing that earlier, and mentally upgrading his estimate of the girl's competence by another notch. "Do you have any idea what the virus is, if not a weapon?"
"Speculation only. I think we may be looking at a biological Swiss army knife, a multitool. A portable lab. I can't see much detail with our equipment, but the virus particles were huge, as large as a herpes virus, and those can carry hundreds of kilobases of DNA. In the hands of an expert, there might be specific settings that produce supermice. We didn't know how to use the portable laboratory, so it deployed random effects that melted the mouse and set it on fire."
That made a surprising amount of sense. The Commander turned the idea over in his mind, considering it. If he had been traveling far from his home civilization, unable to carry even the clothes on his back but still able to carry one kilo of material, his first thought would have been to bring with the Library of Congress on a hyperchip, plus a microfilm on how to construct a reader to retrieve the hyperchip's data. Taking an entire laboratory wouldn't have occurred to him... but that was because his civilization still thought in terms of machines and engines, rather than kilobases of DNA. His race had unlocked the secrets of the Atom; the mysteries held in Life were of a higher order. "Do you have any idea how to operate her... laboratory?"
"It could be a matter of exposing the ampule to a sequence of colored lights. Or feeding a subject the right mix of eye of toad and tongue of newt before infection, if the tool is meant to operate in more primitive settings. The key could be in the earrings, or the high heels, or something we haven't spotted. It seems likely to take considerable experimentation, if we can work it out at all."
The Commander grimaced. "Had the feeling it was a stupid question, but I was hoping you'd tell me otherwise."
"Sorry sir." Major Getherde looked genuinely apologetic.
"Not your fault, son," the Commander said before he could stop himself, then helplessly considered if he should correct himself to "daughter" which did not sound right to him, or apologize to her, or... it was probably better to just drop it. "Next steps?"
Major Jane Getherde spread her hands. "Wait for our guest to wake up."
As if timed to her words, beeping began to sound from off the vidscreen.
-------------------------
A couple of hours later, the Commander was sitting beside Lt. Commander Akio Nagasaki, his base second-in-command, one of Japan's contributions to NATO. Major Getherde had been the only person to have physical contact with the visitor, sealed away from the rest of the base in the medical quarantine unit - the most obvious and basic of precautions. The Commander had on further consideration taken the less obvious step of ordering that only Major Getherde was permitted to communicate directly with the visitor. The existence of psionics and mental superpowers still seemed unlikely, even under the circumstances. But the Commander couldn't be sure, that was the problem, he couldn't be sure of anything. The visitor could have a hyper-advanced organic computer buried in her brain, indetectable to X-Rays, augmenting her ability to read body language and manipulate lesser minds. God damn it, shouldn't his base have had detailed protocols on file for a Little Green Man scenario?
"Report," the Commander said to Major Getherde's image on the vidscreen.
Major Getherde had a distant look about her, as though she was operating on momentum while not really believing in what was happening. "Our visitor identified herself as 'Starry' and presents herself as being... well, sir, I know it sounds unbelievable, and I'm not asserting any such thing myself, but 'Starry' claims to be from an alternate branch of Earth's history."
Beside him, Nagasaki's eyebrows flew up, the Japanese man showing more open emotion than he usually did. The Commander's own mind was recalling dim memories of sci-fi stories he'd read when he was a good deal younger, in particular the Paratime stories by H. Beam Piper. In his mind's eye he stretched out a long timeline of Earth's history, ready to extrapolate possible changes. "Point of divergence?" the Commander said at once. He'd been prepared to stay calm in the face of stranger stories than that one.
The Major looked taken aback herself at her Commander's lack of shock. "Ah... I'm not sure. Taking everything she said at face value, 'Starry' said she was from the United States of her world, a town called Norville in central California. We don't seem to have a national street map on base, so I couldn't check her knowledge of local roads, but she had Interstate 5 right. Her belief about the current date and year matches ours, minus the day she spent unconscious. She confirmed George Washington as the first President and that Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War. She recognized Eisenhower's name, though she wasn't sure whether he'd been President. Mentioning Harry Truman's name made her say 'Dewey defeats Truman', so that part happened the same way. World War II ended with atom bombs being dropped on, ah..." The Major's eyes darted in the direction that would correspond to Akio Nagasaki on her own vidscreen - an unnecessary concern, but the Major evidently didn't know that. "The same two cities. No recognition of Adlai Stevenson's name, or any later Presidents from our world except Jimmy Carter. She named John F. Kennedy as a President in her own world, one she remembered because he'd been assassinated."
That put the divergence at 1960 or earlier. Part of the Commander's mind was trying out possible stories for what would have changed without Stevenson in power. More of his attention was focused on the further implications of her not knowing whether Eisenhower had been President in her America. "She didn't know her own world's history?" he said.
Major Getherde wore a look of faint disapproval. "She had to think hard to remember the current Speaker of the House - Nancy Pelosi, no idea who that is - and she had no idea at all who her Representative was."
"Amnesia?" Akio said.
"I don't think so, and she didn't seem otherwise stupid or scatterbrained. More like she'd played hooky on all her high school civics classes and her family didn't subscribe to any newspapers."
Akio snorted, mirroring the Major's disapproving look.
The Commander lifted a quelling hand. "Don't judge her when we don't know her circumstances," he stated. God knew there were still some kids, even in America, who legitimately had more urgent concerns than their future civic duties. "The larger implication is that our visitor is not an experienced... parallel-timeline traveler, let's call it, or 'paratimer' for short. I would expect a veteran paratimer to have a wide grasp of history."
"Our visitor seems reluctant to speak of how she got here," Major Getherde said. "But it did seem like her journey might have been... unintended."
Beside him, Akio was frowning. "She brought arong a biorogicar raboratory in her vagina," he said in his accented English. "I doubt she arways carries one in her vagina."
It was a good point. The Commander pondered it. "Her apparent age doesn't square with travel on diplomatic or military business," he said aloud. "A stowaway? A refugee of disaster?"
"Our visitor did seem somewhat in shock when she first woke up." The Major seemed slightly embarrassed. "My first priority was putting a blanket around her and telling her she was safe, which seemed to help."
Akio and the Commander traded glances.
"Continue with the report," the Commander said.
Major Getherde looked down and off-screen, probably at her notes. "Again taking all she says at face value, her timeline is advanced beyond our own in the biological and computational sciences, behind us in atomic energy and space travel. Specifically, her timeline doesn't seem to have developed liquid-phase fission reactors, with drastic consequences for all civilization. She had vague memories of learning about an 'oil crisis' that happened in the 1970s. Global warming is becoming a planet-threatening catastrophe. She didn't recognize the names or models of the first Nerva-series spaceships, and seemed genuinely shocked at the concept of using atomic energy for propulsion. Her first question was about radioactive waste contaminating the atmosphere, and she looked surprised and interested when I said a spaceship's atomic reactor only heated the propellant rather than spraying out fissionable materials." Major Getherde spread her hands to display her own puzzlement at the visitor's puzzlement. "Her world has one space station and that's it. She didn't know its tonnage, or whether it was in low orbit or higher. Her people visited the Moon in the 1960s a few times and then they never went back."
The Commander pursed his lips, loading this scenario in his mental timeline. "I hadn't thought liquid-phase atomics would represent a serious technological bottleneck," he said. "I certainly wouldn't expect the idea of using a reactor to heat inert propellant to be a difficult concept." He glanced at Akio, who might know more.
Akio seemed absorbed in thought. "Both riquid-phase reactors and inert-properrant rockets have great engineering difficuruties," he said eventually. "But I wourud not have expected it to be impossiburu in the face of effort. There is no brirriant invention at the core, only much work."
"It could be a cultural issue," said Major Getherde. "Our visitor seemed to show traces of a superstitious or religious dread about atomic energy."
"Hm," said the Commander. He was by far the oldest person on the Base, the token Experienced Officer appointed to ride herd over much healthier youngsters. Even he wasn't old enough to remember the initial introduction of A-bombs in 1945. Still, he knew that dread of atomic energy had been widespread immediately after. If that attitude had persisted and grown, producing a general retreat from material technology into the realm of the mental and biological... he could see it, the Commander supposed. Especially if their timeline had acquired stronger justifications for fear. "Any large-scale atomic exchanges in their history? Any use of atomic weapons above the deca-kiloton level?"
"I... I'm sorry, sir, I didn't think to ask explicitly. It hadn't occurred to me that she wouldn't have mentioned something like that, if it had happened."
The increased fear would have needed to begin early enough to avert research into liquid-phase atomics, which had begun in the 1960s according to his memory. Truman had still been elected in 1948, with events proceeding similarly enough to duplicate the famous headline... "Maybe ask her about the Korean Invasion in particular," said the Commander. "Truman played a damn tight game there. Using Mark-4s may have gotten the NKs to back off, but a lot of historians worry it could have gone the other way - normalized the general use of nukes in warfare, instead of showing that we were willing to use tac-nukes defensively."
Major Getherde nodded. "I'll ask. However things played out, their Cold War ended in the late 1980s with victory to the West -"
"How?" the Commander demanded, leaning forward at the vidscreen as if to press answers out of it. That could be the single most important item of knowledge their visitor had.
"She had only vague ideas. Her rough picture was that the Soviet Union ran out of resources to contend with us and gave up, dissolving into its constituent countries." Major Getherde spread her hands. "The Eastern economies have always been less efficient. As it stands, they're wringing their civilian populations dry to maintain a war footing. Take away everyone's atomic generators, and..."
"Christ," the Commander muttered. "Talk about the mother of all mixed blessings." What he wouldn't have given for a good look at the history shelves of a dozen timelines! If there was a real Paratimer civilization out there, their grasp of history would be chemistry to his Earth's alchemy. A true science that laid out cause and effect with surgical precision, relegating his own historical monographs to poetical essays for the fiction stacks of the library... with an effort, he focused again on the vidscreen. "Maybe I'm being sidetracked from more important issues, but curiosity is eating me alive. What happens after the end of the Cold War?"
Major Getherde hesitated. "Not... not what we'd hoped. My impression is that her United States is also on the verge of dissolution."
A shock of horror went through him. The Commander reminded himself that it wasn't his world... but if there were mistakes that could destroy the West, it was the type of lesson best learned in a single world, once. "What's happening to them? Running out of coal?"
"I..." Major Getherde looked at her notes, and shook her head. "I don't know how to - I don't understand - her attitude towards capitalism versus communism was one of utter despair in both systems. I don't know whether to write it off as teenage nihilism or if her world has been through experiences I can't imagine. I asked if they were having an economic depression. She said that official statistics said no, but it seemed to her like the economy in her city was feeling very sad. And though she didn't say it in so many words, it sounded to me like her America was heading for civil war. As if the only thing holding the USA together had been the Cold War, and once the common enemy was gone, internal divisions began tearing America apart. Political lines more than racial ones, 'reds' versus 'blues'. And it also sounded as if - as if the United States lost interest in its ideals once we didn't have the Soviet Union to contrast ourselves to. People being arrested and held without trial and, and worse. She didn't seem to think other Western countries were better off, and she didn't think the decay was being driven by environmental meltdown or resource exhaustion but by some type of - inward despair, madness, a mass psychological catastrophe of unknown origin. I halfway expected her to describe Martian telepaths launching a psychic assault on all of Terra's sanity like in War of the Worlds IV. Some of what she said sounded like a joke, or insane, the most extreme case being that Donald Trump was elected US President in 2016."
"I have not heard of him?" Akio said, glancing in the Commander's direction.
The Commander was trying desperately to keep a straight face. President Donald Trump. Christ, that wasn't funny, it wasn't funny at all, what was wrong with him, that had actually happened in some poor lost timeline out there. There were real people living in that para-Earth, American citizens, his officers would be rightly critical of him if he started laughing. He just hadn't been prepared to encounter those three words in that order.
"Imagine the most vulgar man in the world," the Commander said, once he felt confident in his ability to keep it together. "Donald Trump is twice as vulgar as that. The only reason the Dems would field him for the White House would be if they wanted to horrify Republicans as much as possible." He was tempted to crack a remark about having not thought even the Democratic Party could sink that low, but he restrained himself. It wasn't his world's Democratic Party, and political dialogue was vitriolic enough without mudraking for scandals from multiple timelines.
"Ah... sir, she said Donald Trump was elected on the Republican ticket."
For a second the Commander thought he'd misheard. "Say again."
"Donald Trump is a Republican President in their world."
"Is he a conservative in their timeline?" the Commander said blankly. "Family man, distinguished service record?"
"She had only vague ideas about his policies but said that the main one she remembered was building a giant wall between the United States and Mexico."
Akio and the Commander looked at each other, and both started to speak at the same time. Military protocol being what it was, that meant the Commander went first. "Can you imagine selective developments or non-developments in military technology that would make a new Maginot Line useful to the USA in the event of war on a Mexican front?" the Commander said.
Akio shook his head. "Extreme deemphasis of air power? I have nothing."
The Commander looked at Major Getherde.
"I - I don't think - I don't think we can understand - there's something very wrong with her world. I said that to her outright and she just nodded. The things she said - I can't summarize, it was a gestalt feeling - that was the largest single thing but there were little things too. She's from a timeline where that is what their lives are like."
"Something went wrong with their advanced biotechnorogy," Akio proposed.
The Commander felt the chill all the way to his ankles. His base's reactor needed a more powerful self-destruct.
Major Getherde glanced back down at her notes. "I had a similar thought," she said. "There could be some drug or supplement that everyone was taking, with undiscovered effects on the brain, like the lead-poisoning theory of the fall of Rome. They'd have no way of knowing that what was happening in their timeline wasn't normal."
The Commander thought that the woman might have an unexplored talent for writing psychological horror stories. Christ, what a terrifying thought.
Major Getherde was still talking. "Another possibility is that it has something to do with their more advanced hyperchip technology. 'Starry' said they'd recently developed the false-reality device that's always five years out according to Popular Science - completely surrounding a person with a binocular 3D vidscreen built into a helmet. That could be having an effect on their psychology, I suppose? People losing contact with reality? Or some broader psychiatric syndrome caused by too much contact with the inhuman logic of computers. An emotional reaction, people clinging to instinct and illogic as a form of protest..." Getherde let out a breath. "I keep wondering whether there's some way for our dimension to launch a rescue mission to their dimension, but I have no idea what we'd do once we got there."
"Let's not get that far ahead of ourselves," the Commander said. "Anything else to report?"
"Our guest seemed oddly interested in hearing about," the woman looked uncomfortable, "well, our sexual standards. I think she was surprised when I told her we were, ah, normal. As if she was expecting to arrive in a culture more... licentious." Major Getherde hesitated. "She seemed surprised that I, personally, was making no attempt to force myself on her. Despite the extreme inappropriateness given the age difference and the serious overall situation and my position as a medical doctor, on a military base where both of us were being recorded at all times, not to mention that she is effectively our prisoner and protected by international conventions!"
"She's a resbian?" Akio said.
The Commander gave the younger man a sideways glance, just to make sure he wasn't leering, but his comport looked as decorous as usual.
"More that she expected me to be homosexual, and - and she thought that's what homosexuals were like!" Major Getherde sounded even more uncomfortable than before.
An intuition tickled at the Commander, born of years of command and experience with subordinates being evasive. He thought again about sci-fi depictions of psionic powers, or implanted hyperchips for reading body language. He needed to ask Major Getherde, in strict confidence and with some urgency, whether the visitor had in fact been right about her - whether the Major had felt a desire to take advantage of their visitor, and properly repressed it. But not with Akio listening. The Japanese were less liberal than modern America about such matters.
"The two packages of virus?" said the Commander, giving the Major a chance to change the subject.
"She seemed surprised that I'd found them at all. Then she said she'd only discuss that with the base commander."
The Commander pursed his lips thoughtfully. It could be a trick to get into his presence. It could also be a legitimate request for any number of excellent reasons. Put Akio in temporary command? The man was as steady as any XO he'd known.
"That reminds me," Major Getherde said. "I'm not sure, but... I think the visitor might have recognized your name when I said it, Commander? She did ask for you by name, after I explained the radio outage and said you were at the top of the current chain of command."
"Ran for President in her timerine, on the Democratic ticket," said Akio, and the Commander shot him a glare.
The Major hesitated. "Actually... I'd have to review the recordings... but in retrospect, I think that mentioning your name was when she stopped acting like I was about to sexually assault her. It was shortly afterward that she first asked for clothing. It's - it's sad that the flag on my uniform wasn't enough. I would have hoped that the Stars and Stripes would mean more than that, even across timelines. Are individual people greater constants than countries? Do genes count for that much? Or fate?" She shook her head. "Sorry, sir, it's hard not to think about - to get distracted by - doctors usually don't have to deal with issues this deep during medical examinations."
"Hmmm..." the Commander hmmmed. Akio's crack there, born of long acquaintance between them and trust enough to jaw about politics, had triggered a thought.
Then the Commander chuckled, unable to help himself despite the severity of the situation.
He'd spotted the joke.
"All right," the Commander said, "I guess I'd better talk with the young lady. Akio, I'm relinquishing command to you pending our recontact with home."
"Sir," Akio said. He hesitated. "Are you certain this is wise?"
"If we trust appearances, this young lady knows one of my alternate selves quite well. Well enough to wind me up some while letting me know that she and I are acquainted. I doubt she made up the story of her dying world from whole cloth, but she did change one detail."
Akio raised his eyebrows again.
The commandant of Heinlein Base leaned back in his chair, an easy motion in the low gravity. Beyond him in the window behind, the searing darkness of the Lunar night stretched out above Mare Imbrium, the white dust blackened beneath it, save where a single spotlight imperishable shone upon the grave of the base's namesake. "Republican President, my ass," said Commander Marcus Adan.