Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe (8 page)

Dick’s astonishment was evident in his voice which raised a whole octave. ‘So you’re putting all your trust in this complete fruit loop who’s made a similar prediction in the past, and who got it absolutely, completely wrong? Nought out of one. Or to put it another way, a 100% failure rate. It’s hardly a good track record, is it?’, Dick asked, exasperated.

‘No, but this time I’m
really
confident’ said the Oracle looking Dick straight in the eyes, although Dick felt her answer lacked the degree of conviction he would have liked.

The Oracle had left the lounge to try and stop her nosebleed which had shown no sign of abating. As Dick picked at his breakfast, which was quite good even though the bacon wasn’t anywhere as crispy as he liked,
Taylor
explained that the other resistance members were at their various places of work; their colleagues and employers blissfully ignorant of their extraordinary double lives. By day, trusted and loyal supporters of The Party. By night and in their spare time, revolutionaries, plotters, and advocates of, and participants in, free sex.

 
‘So?’ Dick asked, indicating the china cup in front of him, ‘Is your sex life as steamy as this coffee? I mean I know married citizens are only meant to make love once a week but all of you here must do it more frequently?’

‘We do’,
Taylor
replied. There are a few bedrooms here like the one you have and members are free to use them with colleagues whenever they want. It’s not without problems though’.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Dick. ‘Apart from possible lubrication issues how can having frequent sex cause problems?’.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
‘You have to remember our two purposes’, Taylor explained, ‘Yes, we want to learn how to enjoy sex so we can teach other like-minded citizens that they are sexually-repressed - to open their eyes to what life could, and should, be like.

‘But our main aim is to bring about the downfall of the Party. Only by achieving this will everyone truly be free. At the moment though’,
Taylor
continued, ‘We’re doing too much of the former and not enough of the latter’.

‘And the problem is...’, Dick enquired.

‘The problem is’, said
Taylor
, ‘that the sex is getting in the way of the plotting and the planning. We hold formal meetings and training sessions but everyone has become so sexually frustrated that these gatherings tend to degenerate into group sex sessions. This has even spilled over into actual field missions. Many of these have become compromised or even failed because a team has ended up having intercourse when they should have been carrying out covert operations’.

‘So they’ve been infiltrating each other rather than infiltrating the Party’, Dick quipped, quite pleased with this comment.

‘You could say that’, said
Taylor
dryly. ‘We once had two members smuggled into the Party’s communications centre, concealed in a bank of dummy electrical equipment. They were there to observe and gather information, then escape; we had an audio-link so we could eavesdrop on conversations. Unfortunately the close confinement became too much and overcome with passion they tried to have sex, causing the equipment to start shuffling around before it eventually fell over.’

‘Did they get out?’, asked Dick.

‘Alas, no’, said
Taylor
sadly. ‘The shuffling equipment and the panting sounds from within it alerted security. Our operatives were captured and never seen again’.

‘Do you think they were interrogated or tortured?’ enquired Dick.

‘Without a doubt’.

‘But then wouldn’t they have revealed everything about you, the Resistance and this headquarters?’, asked Dick.

‘No. The location of this building is an extremely closely guarded secret. Virtually everyone who comes and goes is blindfolded. Only members of the Resistance High Command know its location. That’s me, Alice, Susan and Edward.

‘But what happens if any of
you
are captured?’ asked Dick.

‘That would obviously cause problems, which is the main reason why the High Command never go on field missions. We train, we encourage and we lead’.

‘OK’, asked Dick, by now getting quite animated. ‘If anyone else in the Resistance was caught and tortured, wouldn’t they reveal their colleagues’ identities?’
 
 
 
 

‘They couldn’t. Everyone uses false names and we keep our addresses, our places of work, in fact all aspects of our private lives completely confidential. If anyone was captured, all they could do is describe the general appearance of other resistance members but the Party knows it would take forever interrogating every ‘tall man with brown eyes and dark hair’ or every ‘thirty-five year old woman with blue eyes and short blonde hair’.

Taylor
continued, ‘Most of us have partners who are not in the Resistance and who don’t know anything about our secret lives. When we come here we tell them we’re working late, visiting friends, out with colleagues - anything that makes a believable cover story’.

‘So you have to avoid arousing suspicion in order to get aroused?’. Dick was even more pleased with this latest quip but
Taylor
ignored him and there was an uncomfortable silence for a moment or two, broken by Dick asking, ‘How do you identify potential Resistance members?’

‘We all keep our eyes open for signs, however small, of anti-Party sentiment. It could be a throwaway remark, a small symbolic act of rebellion or even a minor public order offence. We then observe the citizen for at least six months to make sure they are who they appear to be, that they are genuine and not Party members masquerading as people sympathetic to our cause in order to infiltrate the Resistance. We could recruit a lot more members but we can't afford to be lax in our vetting procedures’.

‘OK, but then how do you make an approach?’ enquired Dick.

‘Very carefully at first. Usually by dropping a subtle comment here and there to establish how we feel about the Party. Of course, you have to understand that for all they know, the potential recruits we approach might consider
us
Party members, secretly testing their loyalty. That means there has to be a high degree of trust from both sides’.
Taylor
continued,
 
‘Anyone who comes here is not only taken and brought back blindfolded, they keep the blindfold on throughout all our discussions with them. It only comes off when we’re satisfied they are genuine. The outer entrance door incorporates sensors to detect concealed bugging devices, homing beacons, recording equipment or indeed weapons. That way we make doubly sure we’re not inviting back any disguised Party operatives’.

‘But surely people can work out where they are once the blindfold comes off?’, enquired Dick.
 

‘Why should they?’, replied
Taylor
. ‘Look around you. This facility could be anywhere. In an office building, the basement of a museum, a private house, an underground storage depot, a factory outbuilding, a disused hospital - even in one of the Party’s own facilities, operating under their very noses!’
 
 
 
 
 

‘So where are we then?’ asked Dick, looking around his surroundings with renewed interest.

‘Even though you have been brought here to act as our main weapon against the Party I still cannot divulge that information. You remember that other man who was trained by my predecessor in much the same way as we will train you...’
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

‘Ah yes. That would be the person the Oracle saw in a previous very accurate dream’, Dick said with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

‘Yes. That was him’,
Taylor
said uncomfortably. ‘Although we don’t know exactly what happened, supposing he was captured…’

‘Which he most definitely was’, added Dick.

‘Just supposing…’ continued
Taylor
, ignoring Dick’s barbed comment, ‘that happened and he knew our exact location, he would have lead the Party right back here. That’s why we have to take these precautions. It’s not that we don’t trust you, it’s that just we can’t take the risk’.
 
 
 
 
 
 

‘That’s OK. I understand’, said Dick.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

‘Good’, said
Taylor
rising from the table. ‘You need to learn a lot more about our time.
Alice
’s brief film showed you something about our world but there is much more to find out. Only by understanding our enemy can you learn how to defeat it. Before we start a formal induction course we thought it would be good for you to discover as much about our society as you can on your own’.

Dick followed him out of the room to another that contained a number of computer terminals. He sat himself in front of one.

‘Er, how is
Alice
?’, he asked.

‘She’s fine thank you. She was a bit disturbed after seeing you in distress after your nightmare last night but apart from that she is fine. She’s at work at the moment’.
Taylor
pulled another chair up to the terminal.

‘How long has she been in the Resistance?’

‘About three years. She’s one of our greatest assets. She’s dedicated and almost fearless. She’s a very special girl Mr. Longg. Very special indeed’.

Dick nodded in agreement but then couldn’t help himself adding, ‘With a great rack’.

Taylor
looked confused. ‘Rack?’ he asked.

‘You know’, Dick explained, ‘Boobs… Bazookas... Funbags... Hooters… Tits… Jugs…’

Seeing
Taylor
’s confused expression Dick resorted to using his hands and gave the universal gesture for a ‘great rack’, which, he was pleased to see, was still readily understood in 2150.

Taylor
nodded his comprehension. ‘Ah yes. She is unusual in that respect. The mandatory monthly injections don’t just reduce the population’s sex drive, they also contain hormones that will reduce the size of a woman’s bust although it doesn’t work on every single woman. The Party know that breasts can be stimulating and even provocative so they promote a flat-chested look as desirable and fashionable. In this society, Mr. Longg, women with large breasts are considered unattractive. Those cursed with this physical condition try and disguise it by wearing loose, unflattering clothing or restrictive foundation garments’.

Dick shuddered. This world was becoming more and more crazy and more and more scary.

‘Come on. Let’s get you started’, said
Taylor
, reaching over and activating the terminal. He explained how it worked and within a few moments Dick was familiar with its operation. He was connected to the 2150 version of the Internet - an Internet without pornography, he remembered despondently. From here he could access information, news stories, magazine articles, images - in fact everything he needed to give him a thorough understanding of his new world, or more accurately, the things that the Party deemed suitable for him to see. With Taylor’s last comments still ringing in his ears Dick decided that he would first try and find out if what he had been saying about bust size was true (well, that seemed as good a place as any to start his research).