CHAPTER XI THE GALACTIC BENDER # THE VINYL FRONTIER Otis stood w/in the tunnel leading to a galaxy-spanning spacecraft from inside Space Station Sigma. "I've always wanted to serve aboard a real spaceship," he said. The thing was immense, phallic, potent, but what we could see only hinted at the thing's raw power: Here the Shaft would radiate evolutionary energy & take us to the center of the Galaxy. Where we would leave a tremendous Shaft as a weapon of peace: W/ locks dual SIMPLIFIED, beams of invisible force would radiate outward & destroy the tendency toward war on all humanity's part, accelerate evolution thruout the galaxy. In theory, at least.... "To boldly go where no man has gone before!" Otis exclaimed, stepping across the threshold. "Come on, Lead, let's get this road on the show!" I followed him into a clean, well-lighted place, the interior of the immense spaceship. Together Otis & I had flown the Shuttle up from earth to this orbiting ship, the Bender Shaft--named after the invention that was to save reality. Whatever that is. We had spent the last several days living the spacer's life. The final frontier had finally been conquered, for years now since the invention of the Shaft conquest of the galaxy had proceeded--Saklas taking his galactic warfare to planets unknown. We could only guess at the extent of the Galactic Empire. Here in the mile-long ship 1,000 crew members would live, work, possibly die as Otis & I braved the depths of space. We were a stepping, walking razor; dangerous: armed to the gills w/ thermonuclear weapons, piercing lasers, violence, force. Otis & I walked thru a tremendous curving corridor, the rotating assembly which generated artificial gravity thru momentum. Science had advanced considerably since the 20th Century, but not yet to the point where artificial gravity was possible. Soon Otis & I were at the controls. Captain Becca Anderson greeted us, a thin tomboy w/ the hottest legs in the galaxy. & a flat chest. It was more than compensated for, though, in the beauty of her ass. She was wearing green vinyl like an upholstered lizard. I guess that meant she was off duty now; I thought the lounge lizard look was sort of tacky but it went well w/ her vinyl makeup. The vinyl frontier. Or was it synthe-plast? Becca said, "Otis...I've always dreamed of meeting you. The man who invented the Bender Shaft, making space travel possible: We'll be using your Shaft as an FTL-Drive, mutating the relativistic space w/in the ship back to a Newtonian para..." Otis said, "I'm familiar w/ the Drive. After all, it is my own invention...." "We're carrying a slightly different version of the Shaft aboard ship," I said. "A potent monad to be left at the center of the galaxy to radiate powerful SIMPLE/SIMPLE evolutionary rays at the entire star structure." "Thereby bringing about peace," Becca said. "It sounds incredible: It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel." "But it's real," Otis replied. "The Bender Shaft is the ultimate reality...the Shaft is God; the only true God in a world He never made...." "You mean She," I said. "Each of us has his/her own Divinity living inside them, whether it be man, woman, or machine." "True," Otis said. "A simple philosophical concept, really: Man is God. Or rather, the Superman. Whatever happened to Luther, Wendy?" I was still Wendy Corrina Leadbeater; it was the only way I could remain sane. A phallic androgyne to match Toni's phallicy. We were 2 men trapped in women's bodies; Toni was Tony now & serving aboard this very ship as a Nova Nurse for the various flip-outs that occurred when the crew were mind-mutated by assorted bio-psych weapons. I had personally seen to it that she had gotten the job. I replied to professor Bender, "Luther remains at large. I wasn't writing that strip; but Luther always disappears in a time pod just before Superego catches him. It's always like that. That's the way comics are." The mighty ship drifted away from Space Station Sigma. Then abruptly the Bender Shaft was cut in & stars streaked as we traveled faster than the speed of light. The world was an immense machine running forever down & we were headed straight for the center of it, to leave a weapon of peace to mutate the galaxy. Becca brushed back her hair & I wanted to get to know her flesh. She stood there w/ her mixed expression asking about some love I had before. I could guess what her intention was & suddenly knew once more the phallic potency of the Id. The savage journey to the heart of the Id wasn't over yet.... # HOT LEGS & THE ID (A SAVAGE VORKLING FURY) The Captain was in my cabin. We were flying thru the stellar density, luminosity, of the core, straight toward the heart of everything. If the galaxy had an Id, this was it: The vast consuming darkness which hungered at the center of All & devoured matter & spirit like the Spirit of Gravity. I would never forget Death...I lived life now as the misfit I'd been all my life--lived life alone. Even the love of the vorkling he-man stud Tony couldn't save me from the Loneliness of the All. Before dawn I came to you, loneliest of all....Nietzsche. The same man who had asked of an old saint in a forest if he had heard anything of this, That God is dead...? "This is your computer?" Captain Anderson asked. Like the heroine from some other novel. "You've got a monad in there? Could I try it? Could you give me big tits like I've always wanted? Make me a ravishing beauty?" "You already are a ravishing beauty," I replied. I was still a woman, but I'd been both woman & man in the strange days that had followed the 1st public revelation of the monad; I was getting used to a world in which sex was meaningless. I mean, sex roles, I was just as much a horny vorkler as ever. "Yeah, but I'd be prettier if I had big tits." The ring, the finger: Green sparks caressed her frame as I modulated the genes for breast size. Entification proceeded at a lower level & suddenly her entire body changed: It is impossible to affect 1 system w/o affecting the whole. She was seductively beautiful. I was tired, so tired; in spite of her beauty I thought for an instant that sleep would come down, so I lay on the bed: All at once she threw off her uniform shirt. The bare breasts of the tall woman dangled just inches away. It was a gay experience; but in my dreams I was a man. Then I realized that a woman was trying to seduce me--me, a woman. "I'm bi," she said, by way of firm reply. "If you're more comfortable as a man--use your monad." I transmuted myself. Strange man; changed man.... Just then Toni stepped thru the door. Toni would've picked just then to step thru the door. "Lead! I thought you loved me!" she exclaimed, flying out the door before I could say anything. She didn't even stop to comment on this strangeness: that Lead was man again. Like Zarathustra before me, Lead had become man again. Now all that remained was to carry my ashes into the valley...had this dream stopped? The snake was pale gold, glazed & shrunken.... "Now lookit what you did," I said to Becca. "She's my girlfriend; I'm in love w/ her...you ruined all that w/ your damn horniness." "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just that...I've never felt beautiful...I've always had a flat chest; the 1st thing men always look at is how big a woman's boobs are. Now you've made me beautiful...I wanted to pay you back." She kissed me & I burned at her touch. I was a Slime-thing again, Slime in mind if not in body...what I had done to Toni.... "Get out!" I said. "You can have your beautiful bodanon. I just want my woman back!" She leaned forward so that her breasts dangled again, & I must say they were tempting mothers. "So if I help get your girlfriend back, will you make love to me?" I considered. This had probably been her ploy all along...give a woman big tits & they immediately turn into a vixen-foxen. But what could I do? She had me trapped. It was either go along w/ her scheme or be trapped forever, loveless on a ship headed straight for the heart of the galaxy. Suddenly as she sat in my lap playing w/ my ding-dong the ship resounded w/ the sound of red alert. "The Empire!" Captain Becca Anderson exclaimed. "We're under attack by the Empire!" I shouted, "Get your clothes back on & get out of here...what we need now is Starship Troopers, not sex...." Suddenly she was all business. She put her green uniform shirt back on, home & the military girl equally distant in a mindwarp mindstorm as the psionic beams of the enemy impinged upon us. The Bender Shaft had made psionics possible, an anticausal mechanism rotating the wheel of the mind backwards...causing it to regress into the reptilian. The Id. She was suddenly a hypersexual Wonder Woman as she caressed my aching shaft. What we needed in this instant was a Starship Captain, not another green shirt. But the mindstorms were giving us strange sex on a starship destroyer headed straight for the heart of the galaxy. For the black hole at the center of every- thing which devours like the aching hunger that lived w/in my loins. & then some. "Becca!" I shouted. "Get your ass in gear! Get up to the bridge & save the day!" She just did more of her striptease. I sighed. It was up to the Savage Id to save the Universe. Again. Would the work of a comic hero never cease? I zoomed. Like Zipman, I zoomed. Racing at incredible speed upon my warty pseudopods, moving on iron cat's talons I made my way to the bridge. The place was Chaos, Anarchy. The Void before the world began. Bender was desperately shouting orders but no 1 was listening. Then someone shouted, "Look! It is Slimy, come to save the day!" "Hooray!" everyone shouted. "It is the Savage Id, here in heroic identity." I approached the helmsman. "Savage Id here, here to save the day. What's our condition, officer?" "They've got us outgunned, outmanned!" Otis ejaculated. "Our only hope now is...the reptilian Id!" "Look out--I'm going to project my slime-powers thru the ray-guns!" I laid my warty tentacles on a transceiver like some evangelist sending healing power thru the airwaves; then all at once the Empire forces crashed & burned. Who said the Empire never ended? Just then I awoke from a dream. I awoke from a dream to another dream: I was in bed & having fun. "Toni?" I said. "Yes?" came the reply. But it was not Toni's voice. It was Becca. She had large breasts. The transmutation had been real, after all. But what I was doing here was not right. I was cheating on my woman. "Becca..." I pushed her away. "It just...isn't right. You...I...we shouldn't be doing this...." She started to cry. "I'm ugly....I've always been ugly...I can't help it....I had to do it; I just had to....You were so tempting; w/ my new figure I'm so chic....You understand...." & there were tears in her eyes. I gently swung her around, entered from the rear, began making violent love to her. Mad, shattered, abandoned & random love. Then all at once the alarms sounded & it was real this time. Reality. "The Empire never ended!" she shouted, reaching for her clothes. It was our battlecry; it was good Dick. All at once we were both racing for the bridge; & I didn't move on cat's claws. I moved beside a woman who had been transmuted. A changed woman; strange days had found us. We emerged on the battle bridge. Out in the distance were Empire ships; outnumbering us 10 to 1. "It is time to test my weapon!" Bender exclaimed, not taking a 2nd glance at Becca. He probably guessed what had happened. She ran her hands across her chest like it wasn't there. Until a few minutes ago, it hadn't been. It takes awhile to get used to big tits when you've never had them before. Trust me, I know. Bender activated the monad. All around us evolution proceeded at tremendous pace. Suddenly the barrage stopped. The enemy Captain came on screen. He was part of a Higher Mind now; the Omega point had been reached in his craft; a unifying entification into a higher mind, a group mind. "We will cease our attack," he said. "We see now how wrong violence is." Captain Anderson stood w/ her fingers on the laser controls: "Like that they're stopping? It could be some enemy trick...!" Bender smiled. "It is no trick. They have been entified." "We must still protect the monad until such time as the Empire falls," she said, smiling at me. A seductive smile. Crimson lipstick. The probe was launched. We were left alone in this unexplored sector of the galaxy, w/ only a few more dark light years to go before we reached the center of everything. The stars themselves went thru some minor entification, changes in stellar category, a few novas, new stars emerged...but that was only due to the near-decomposability of the astrophysical & the psycho-social levels of organization. As a weapon of war, the monad could've proved formidable indeed...we could've simply novaed every Empire star-sun. But as a weapon of peace...the lock rotated the psycho-social level & a new Galactic Govt was created...Total Human Solidarity. Instead of the regression into Empire that would've occurred in a natural lock the Galactic Empire was aborted by the noise-gate Shaft; the last strong stage of human civilization was recreated: Democracy. Even the Democracy of the Soviets, the reforms of Solidarity, of Perstroika...here capitalist & socialist met in the depths of outer space.... All this occurred quite rapidly, in just a few days. By the time we were back from our military mission the entire Galactic Govt had been totally reformed. Teilhard's Omega point was realized; we were now part of a higher mind: God. God is a weak force, a social force, tending toward greater unity than would be there from the natural systems alone...in other words, God is Love. Love was the drug & I needed to score. Toni & I were about to get married. Becca performed the ceremony w/ Otis as best man. & she still had large breasts. Becca, I mean, not Toni: She winked at me as she said, "Till death do you part." I had had my 1st affair before I was even married...but I wasn't going to tell Toni that. All that remained was a brief stop over on the planet Lucifer...our honeymoon. That wink haunted me though. I suppose illicit love haunts everyone. But it was a secret unspoken; & I had been God for a brief while; I had given a woman love. # THE CHYMICAL MARRIAGE OF WENDY CORRINA LEADBEATER The sands of Lucifer stretched, a demon-desert... Distance... Burning, acid light... Lucifer...I had a whole novel about the flight to Lucifer on m-crystal somewhere. I wasn't going to have much time to work on it on our honeymoon, though. & it wasn't like I needed to sit at a word-processor hallucinating I was a slime-monster for a lousy paycheck from a comics company anymore. Sure, if I wanted to continue writing I'd always have the time, but I had 10 basic patents on the monad. Now, if I wanted to go on writing, I was free to experiment. Tony was carrying a couple of light suitcases containing his/her clothes as we entered our room at the Lucifer Hilton. Only 1 hotel on the damn planet. He/she was carrying some of her favorite negligees. Some of his favorite lumberjack shirts. Although when he was a she she looked pretty sexy in them, too. Tony set the bags down. "Come on, Wendy...it's time for the nuptial rites of the Slime-thing." "Ah, I haven't been working on that comic for years." "I know a phallic symbol when I see 1," she said. She unzipped & I beheld my lover as man. I was wearing plush jeans & the inevitable green shirt. Emerald green & knotted at the waist. No bra. I'd selected a pair of immense knockers out of the genetic map of some holo-vid star; they tumbled in free fall for an instant before meeting caressing hands. Her other hand was undoing my pants, & I thought how much this was like Toni. The woman, not the man: An aggressive, liberated woman, now an aggressive man. My clothes were undone now. Playing the female role, I let Tony carry me to bed. There was a great inwardness. Circles of concentric pleasure w/in... Everything merges w/ the night... When it was over I rose up from the bed to complete a short story I had been working on: # THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: GOD VS REALITY By W.C.Leadbeater Reality strode into the ring like a hurricane, his great black bodanon pouring forth heat/night. God was in the opposite corner, riding his little trundle-mobile, his Unicycle; the Wheel was the All & Reality could see himself reflected there. The referee strode into the center of the ring: "I want a clean fight & no hitting below the belt." The bell rang. God wheeled himself out to the center of the ring. He bopped Reality on the head a few times, little cartoon clown tooting his party whistle. Reality lashed out w/ savage blows. A left, a right, 1, 2, 3...Reality was pouring on the heat now. This was beyond Love & Death, beyond Mind & Cosmos, even beyond God & Reality: This was the fight of the Century! Whoever won could lay claim to the entire Universe. All at once God was down! God popped back up like a Bozo King & bopped Reality some more. His fists lashed like rain that beat senselessly against some invisible windowpane. Again Reality lashed out; again God fell. This time he did not get back up. The referee hurried to the side of the fallen God. Straightening up again, he announced to a hushed arena, "God is dead!" END End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.