by Mark Leigh
Although his mind was numbed by these sudden events Dick was certain that these two strange men who’d just killed his director were somehow connected with Alice. The two visitors fired their weapons several times again. There was that same sound and the same blue rays that shot across the set. The smell of seared flesh filled the air and the cries of people with the seared flesh rang out. The loudest screams belonged to Alpine Peaks as one of the beams scored a direct hit on her right breast. That was the moment that Dick realised that a) silicon implants are highly flammable, and that b) his life was in mortal danger unless he took immediate cover. He jumped back through the door of his trailer and cowered down in a corner next to a crouching Alice. In one fluid move she grabbed his arm, locked the strange bracelet around his wrist and simultaneously pushed a button on hers. At the same time, in one fluid move of his own, Dick grabbed the chilled bottle of Cristal. A split second later a blast rocked the trailer and it disintegrated.
But in that split second Alice and Dick had vanished.
They appeared again, much to Dick’s astonishment and panic (Dick later learned that time travelling technology was never 100% reliable) but then disappeared a microsecond later.
This time for good.
CHAPTER 4
Dick was never a good traveller. He was sick when he filmed ‘Tit-anic’ on board that cruise liner. He was sick when he had sex on that locomotive in ‘Screw Momma On The Train’. He was even sick when he got that blowjob driving a limo during the making of ‘Riding Miss Daisy’ (and if something’s going to upset the ambience of a sex scene, then vomiting will). When Dick did eventually re-materialise six thousand miles and 140 years away it was with the accompaniment of severe nausea and acute stomach cramps. He hadn’t thrown-up but felt like he really, really wanted to. Instead, Dick crawled around on all fours, farted twice, dry-retched six times, and did a more than passable impersonation of a cat with a fur ball. This was definitely not the sort of impression that anyone would want to give their hosts from the future.
Eventually Dick stopped making noises that sounded like the Devil with laryngitis talking backwards. He regained his composure to see he was in a room that resembled some sort of comfortable lounge with traditional wood panelling, leather wing-backed chairs and a roaring fire. Had he travelled through time? His new surroundings definitely didn’t give that impression but those men on the set with guns and his sudden disappearance and reappearance here… Something really odd had definitely taken place.
As Dick continued to look around he realised he had absolutely no idea where he was or how he got there. For the moment anyway, until he could figure it out, Dick decided to play it safe and go along with Alice’s bizarre charade. He stood up, a bit unsteady at first, to see a few people looking at him, including Alice. It soon dawned on Dick that these spectators weren’t, in fact, looking at him — they were staring. Dick was still trying to work out why, when Alice stepped towards him and whispered something in his ear. He looked down to see his robe was undone. Whatever ill-effect this apparent time travel had on him, the ability to have and maintain an erection was not one of them. Coughing awkwardly, Dick put down the bottle of champagne that he was still holding and secured his robe. He was spared further embarrassment by a tall, distinguished-looking silver-haired man in his early fifties who stepped forward and broke the awkward silence.
‘Good day Mr. Longg, My name is Taylor. Welcome to the year 2150’. He shook Dick’s hand warmly. ‘I am the leader of the Resistance and these are our senior members’. He gestured to Dick’s audience. In addition to Alice there were two more men and another woman. Their initial shock had been replaced by friendly smiles all round.
Taylor continued, ‘You’ll meet everyone properly later, meanwhile they all have jobs to do’. Taking this hint everyone murmured their goodbyes and left the room.
Taylor sat down in one of the leather armchairs and indicated that Dick should join him. ‘Now I know what you’re thinking…’, he said, gesturing around him. ‘That this doesn’t look very much like the headquarters of a resistance movement’.
That was actually the second thing Dick was thinking. The first was whether he could get Alice into bed but he decided to keep that particular thought to himself.
‘Er, yeah, that’s right’, Dick agreed, going along with this whole time travel / resistance movement thing until he figured out exactly where he was and could plan his escape.
Dick did have pre-conceived ideas as to what a resistance HQ should look like and on the evidence of his current surroundings this certainly didn’t resemble one. Dick expected to see a whole room full of elaborate monitoring equipment. Another where members underwent hand-to-hand combat training. A firing range. Some sort of laboratory or workshop where all types of weapons were invented and tested. A place where missions were intricately planned and then briefed. And a room with a huge glass screen in the middle where enemy movements were plotted and tracked with intricate precision while everyone looks stern. He knew a lot of his ideas were based on what he’d seen in movies but despite this, he was sure a resistance movement HQ should not resemble a room in a private gentleman’s club.
A cynical Dick voiced his doubts. ‘How do I know I’m really in the future and actually in your headquarters? For all I know I could have been drugged or knocked unconscious and just taken from the set to a house somewhere in Beverly Hills’.
Taylor grinned. ‘And why would we have done that Mr. Longg?’, he asked.
Dick collected his thoughts for a few seconds before answering. ‘Maybe you know my worth as a top porn star and you’re going to hold me hostage in a locked, darkened room or a deep pit until someone pays a multi-million dollar ransom’.
Taylor frowned but let Dick continue without interruption. ‘Or I’m here because you’re going to kill me and use my skin to make a cape that you can swan around in and say, “Hey everyone, look at me. I’m wearing the skin of Dick S. Longg, aren’t I mad and glamorous”. Or maybe you lost your penis in a gardening accident and I’m here so you can transplant mine on to your stump so you can be a real man again’. By the looks he was getting Dick knew he was both clutching at straws and fumbling for answers.
Taylor shook his head. ‘Mr. Longg, I give you my word as a gentleman that none of those reasons are even remotely true’.
Dick tried to think of more explanations. Thoughts buzzed around his cortex about his abductors wanting to truss him up and milk him like a cow, using his semen to create some sort of bio-fuel, or using fractional distillation to turn it into gold, but he thought that these were scientifically impossible as well as being plain silly. After a while Dick gave up thinking of other reasons why he was here and just frowned, chewing his bottom lip.
Taking advantage of the silence, Taylor continued. ‘Mr. Longg. Although it is, admittedly, a very difficult concept to grasp, maybe you should just accept where you are, that we are all telling the truth and we really do need your help. So much so in fact, that Alice was willing to risk her life and we were all willing to risk detection in order to bring you here’.
Dick thought back to something Alice had told him and smiled. The smile wasn’t because of what she had said, but because despite his short attention span, he was pleased he’d actually managed to remember anything she’d said at all.
‘Alice mentioned that the Party tracked her when she went back to my time’.
‘That’s right’, confirmed Taylor. ‘That’s how the two agents they sent eventually materialised in the same place as she did and tried to kill you both’.
‘But doesn’t that mean that they can now track us back here?’ Dick scared himself with this thought. His eyes darted around the room and he took on the appearance of a frightened rabbit, assuming a ridiculous-looking kung fu pose, en-guard for anyone or anything about to materialise out of thin air and kill him.
‘No’, Taylor smiled. ‘They can’t detect us now. Our headquarters is your home and your hideout until it’s safe
for you to leave’.
‘And when do you think that will be?’, Dick enquired, looking around again at his strange new surroundings.
‘When you’re acclimatised to our world and trained in your mission’.
‘That would be my mission to overthrow the Party?’, Dick asked.
‘That is correct’, agreed Taylor, very matter-of-factly.
‘And why do you think I’ll be able to help you? I’m sure there are loads of people in the Resistance better and more skilled than me who know this world and what they’re up against’.
‘You flatter us Mr. Longg’, commented Taylor. ‘The Resistance is too small, too inexperienced and too under-equipped to topple the Party however we are constantly trying to frustrate or embarrass it. We break into museums and remove the fig leaves that the Party has added to nude statues. We graffiti public spaces with anti-Party slogans, or just giant penises. We once found a cache of old inflatable sex dolls, filled them with helium, and set these adrift over London’.
Dick smiled at this very juvenile form of terrorism.
‘With your help, however’, Taylor continued, ‘We hope to deal it a serious blow’.
‘But what can I do that you can’t do already? I’ve got no special skills. I’ve already told Alice that I’m a lover, not a fighter’, Dick explained. ‘Sure, I can give you the benefit of all my experience as an award-winning top porn star but I’m sure you didn’t bring me all this way just to give you hints and tips for what makes a good video to jerk off to’.
‘No’, Mr. Longg, ‘The reason you are here is because recent intelligence leads us to believe the Party is planning something big. Very big. We think they are developing some sort of secret weapon to use against us. You’re the one man who can find out what this is and ensure they never get to use it’.
‘And you really believe I can do all of that?’, asked Dick dubiously.
‘Mr. Longg’, Taylor replied, looking him straight in the eye, ‘It really doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is that someone very important in the Resistance believes it’.
‘And that is…’ asked Dick.
‘She’s called The Oracle’, said Taylor with due deference. ‘You’ll meet her shortly. In the meantime let me show you what we do here. I think you’ll be impressed’.
‘Whatever’, Dick muttered under his breath.
As they rose, Taylor turned to Dick and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, ‘Only a few key personnel in the Resistance know who you are and why you’re here. We’re keeping it from the rank and file members’. Dick listened intently. ‘There are sound reasons for this. Firstly, the fewer people who know, the greater the chance of you, and us, remaining undetected. Secrecy, caution and a little luck have meant that the Party hasn’t been able to find this location or identify any of our current members, all of whom lead respectable jobs in society, some even working under the very nose of the Party itself’. Taylor continued, ‘Secondly, if I told the whole membership about you, it might raise their hopes and lull them into a false sense of optimism for the future. Even among those who knew about the plan to bring you here, there is a great expectation. One or two of them are even calling you ‘The Messiah’’.
Dick rather liked that comparison, until he remembered what eventually happened to the original Messiah. Then he became glum again.
CHAPTER 5
Dick followed Taylor out of the room, down an anonymous corridor, through a door and down another featureless corridor that made the first one look positively exciting by comparison. They entered a small room where three resistance members were working. Dick recognised two of them from the lounge when he first appeared; now they were seated at a bank of electronic machines staring at a small screen and inserting and removing small silver discs.
Taylor introduced them, ‘Dick, meet Susan and Edward, two of our senior members’.
‘We’re so glad you’re here’, said Susan, an attractive woman in her early thirties with deep blue eyes and full red lips. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you’.
Edward, a dapper, serious-looking man of similar age echoed her sentiments. ‘We’ve heard so much about you and I can’t tell you how relieved we are that you’re here to help us’.
Most of the compliments he received in his career were as phoney as his co-stars’ breasts but this time Dick felt the fawning was genuine and refreshing to hear.
Taylor continued, ‘We have quite rudimentary equipment to copy, edit and distribute pornographic films and magazines. We do this to undermine the government but they’re not what you would probably consider particularly erotic. The Party were very thorough at destroying any surviving films or literature from your time that they considered “unsuitable” for society today’.
Edward interjected. ‘We’re having to work with a sixteenth generation copy of Emmanuelle II with no sound, and a version of Debbie Does Dallas with fifty minutes missing’.
‘You don’t have any of my films?’, asked Dick with an obvious air of disappointment. ‘I’ve made hundreds. Surely some must have survived?’
‘There was one’, admitted Edward. ‘An old copy of Titty Slickers’.
‘It was damaged, though’, added Susan, ‘and we could only salvage part of it’.
‘Well even that must be better than what you’re currently using’, said Dick. ‘Let me see what you’ve got’.
Susan looked past Dick to Taylor who nodded his approval. She located this particular disc and inserted it. After a few moments its contents flickered on to the small viewing screen.
‘That’s it?’, asked Dick after less than thirty seconds.
‘That’s it’, confirmed Susan apologetically.
‘You sure?’
Susan nodded.
‘Sure, sure?’
Another nod from Susan, followed by a shrug.
Dick was depressed. His legacy, and the sum total of his whole back catalogue, was just some opening titles and a ten second close-up of his naked butt. Sensing his extreme disappointment, Taylor steered Dick away and introduced him to a woman in her forties on the other side of the room who radiated what could only be described as naïve childish enthusiasm. ‘Mr. Longg, this is Grace who’s been working on a pornographic magazine’.
Grace blushed and said hello.
‘I’m sure our guest would love to see it’, prompted Taylor.
Grace hesitantly took what looked like a home-produced fanzine from a stack. ‘We put this together from some photos we found’, she added with a hint of pride in her voice that Dick would soon discover was totally misplaced.
Dick thumbed through it and as pornography went, found it one of the most unarousing things he had ever seen. He thought photos of sawmill accidents or toxic waste would have been sexier. The magazine consisted of some old black and white shots of Bettie Page throwing a beach ball, a photo of Jenna Jameson in a bikini, the Venus di Milo, plus some shots from an old Victoria’s Secrets catalogue and a reproduction of the poster of Raquel Welch from ‘One Million Years BC’.
Grace added, ‘I’d heard that people find the idea of two women together quite sexually arousing so I manipulated the images’.
Dick could see that Grace had understood the principle of the idea but not the detail. For a start, Bettie and Jenna were facing opposite directions and it looked as though Bettie was just four feet tall. And as for the photo of Raquel Welch and the Venus di Milo, well maybe someone who’d been raised in, and hadn’t left a monastery for their entire adult life, might have felt a slight stirring in their groin, but that was about all.
‘Not bad’, said Dick, trying not to let his horror show but failing dismally.
Grace detected this disappointment and blushed. Taylor stepped in to save her from any more embarrassment.
‘It’s a start’, he explained. ‘But like the films, it’s all we can do with the tools at our disposal. We can really do with your expertise’.
‘But why don’t you just photograph nake
d people and make new magazines and films, rather than rely on these relics?’, asked Dick reasonably, adding, ‘Some of those images are about 200 years old, and they weren’t that erotic at the time. You must have your own cameras’.
Edward answered, ‘The Party controls technology and everything they do has been designed to thwart us. We have cameras but photographs can only be printed at outlets overseen by the Party’.
‘But what about digital cameras?’, asked Dick.
Edward looked at him blankly.
Dick elaborated. ‘You know, where you can see the images you’ve taken immediately, and you can save them electronically or print them yourself’.
Edward looked at Dick even more blankly than before.
‘They might have been common-place in your era but the Party made sure they were all withdrawn from use and has not allowed the technology to re-surface’, explained Taylor adding, ‘Except for their own use’.
‘What about video cameras? I know you’ve got these’, continued Dick. ‘Alice showed me a short film of this time’.
‘Those images were taken on such a device stolen from a Party office‘, Taylor explained. ‘The Resistance member who made the recording did so at an immense personal risk. He had to replace the camera immediately afterwards’. With a serious expression Taylor continued, ‘If the Party discovered it was missing there would have been a huge security clampdown, mass interrogations and the eventual discovery of the “mole” within their organisation and their probable execution. The Party will go to extreme lengths to stop equipment like this falling into the wrong hands’.
