Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe

by Mark Leigh

  The Oracle spoke. ‘Hello Mr. Longg. I saw you in a dream’.

  She didn’t expect Dick to punch her in the face. Neither did Dick. It was just a reflex act; a combination of the Welsh lilt in her voice and the fact that Dick needed to take his anger and frustration out on someone. Taylor helped the Oracle up from the floor and into an armchair, producing a handkerchief to stem the blood from her nose.

  ‘I can understand your resentment, Mr. Longg’, said the Oracle, holding her head back and pinching her nose.

  ‘You saw me in a dream? In a fucking dream!’ Dick was incredulous. He couldn’t spell that particular word or pronounce it properly, but he was in that state all the same. ‘And you had me brought over six hundred years into the future on the basis of just a dream?’

  Dick was never good with maths. He was actually only a hundred and forty years in the future but Taylor decided that it really wasn’t the best time to correct him.

  ‘It was an omen’, said the Oracle. ‘A crystal clear image of you formed in my mind!’

  ‘What was responsible for this image?’, Dick asked, expecting to hear something about hallucinogenic drugs or a self-induced spiritual altered state.

  ‘Cheese’, said the Oracle.

  Dick really hoped he hadn’t heard the Oracle say the word ‘cheese’. He actually wished she’d said something like ‘fleas’ or even ‘bees’, as if insects were somehow involved in forming her visions; even those would have been preferable to a milk-based foodstuff. Sadly for Dick, his hearing was fine.

  ‘Cheese on toast, in fact’, the Oracle continued in her annoying Welsh accent destroying, Dick thought, any impression of mysticism or the paranormal that Oracles traditionally convey. ‘It was Stilton. Or it might have been mature cheddar… Or was it a nice piece of Brie? Anyway, I had a late night snack and dreamt about someone who would be our salvation. That person was YOU!’

  ‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Dick. Turning to Taylor he asked, ‘Doesn’t this sound a little, shall we say, flaky?’.

  ‘Flaky? I don’t understand’, said Taylor, frowning.

  ‘Flaky. You know, a bit weird. Putting your faith in someone like me, someone you’ve never met before, on the basis of what this fucking crackpot saw in a cheese-inspired dream’. By now Dick was wide-eyed in astonishment. ‘How good is she? I mean, has she ever had this sort of vision before?’

  Taylor hesitated, carefully looking for the right words, but it was the Oracle who answered, dramatically waving one of her hands around while dabbing the other one at the blood still dripping from her nose. ‘I had a similar dream about four years ago. It was very clear. Very clear indeed. I saw a man. He came from an earlier time.’

  ‘The Resistance brought him here in a similar way to you’, explained Taylor.

  ‘So I guess the reason I’m here now is because he didn’t defeat the Party’, said Dick.

  Taylor nodded.

  ‘Then what happened? Why didn’t he succeed?’, Dick enquired, asking for good measure, ‘And where is he now?’.

  Taylor sighed and shook his head. ‘I wasn’t in the Resistance then, but from what I know, they trained him well and sent him out into the real world to begin his mission’. He paused and looked away. ‘Sadly, after a few months it was apparent that he didn’t succeed’.

  ‘What happened? Was his identity compromised? Did a piece of equipment fail?’ Dick was becoming irritated. He wanted answers. ‘Did he have to abandon the operation? Was he captured?’

  Taylor’s reply came in a whisper. ‘We’re not sure’.

  Dick’s reply also came in a whisper, though he wasn’t sure why, as he was quite annoyed over this lack of answers. ‘I know you weren’t there but you must know what happened!’.

  Taylor looked at his feet. ‘I don’t’. He studied his shoes more intently and spoke even more quietly. ‘The Resistance never saw him or heard from him ever again’.

  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.

  CHAPTER 7

  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 getti
ng 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).

  He typed in the word ‘breasts’ and was taken to a list of 364,793 sites about chicken recipes. He typed in ‘tits’ and found 642,652 sites on bird watching. And when he entered ‘bosom’ he received the message, ‘No matches found. Are you sure you don't mean the words “Party Ideology?”’. Thinking laterally he soon located the Victoria’s Secrets Internet site. He was pleased and amazed to discover the company was still in business but dismayed to learn that the bosomless look was most definitely in. Their best-selling lingerie line was a range of uncomfortable-looking corsets designed to reduce the appearance of the bust. Furthermore, bras larger than a 34A had to be specially ordered and as a disincentive to having a large bust, these were brutally over-priced and had a delivery time of six to nine months. Further research showed him that glamour magazines, or what passed for them in this society, featured cover girls and models so flat-chested that it would be quite understandable if you mistakenly addressed them as ‘sir’.

  Dick also learned that most of the wealthy and the vain indulged themselves with breast reduction operations, while the very wealthy and the very vain opted for what he could only describe as complete bosom liposuction. It didn’t take long for Dick to follow the links from cosmetic surgery to medical procedures to medical conditions and several clicks later Dick came across a whole series of sites about masturbation, an act the Party viewed as an acute and dangerous medical condition. He knew the practice was
frowned upon but didn’t realise that there was such a lucrative industry in this era manufacturing and marketing anti-masturbatory devices. These were examples of Victorian engineering and ingenuity at its very best. Dick discovered that these devices were compulsory for all men between the ages of thirteen and nineteen; being fitted for your first anti-masturbatory device was viewed, ironically, as your coming of age. After that you could wear them voluntarily (and many did) while chronic masturbators would have them prescribed irrespective of whether they were single or married.

  Dick also became aware that there was a huge choice of appliances on the market designed to discourage self-love. Although he didn't have intimate knowledge of torture implements or practices he was sure that the Spanish Inquisition or the SS would have fallen over themselves to get their hand on such equipment (this pre-supposed, of course, that the Spanish Inquisition or the SS would ever have suffered the indignity of falling over in the first place). Most of the devices involved penile rings or tubes lined with miniature spikes or blades that came into contact with the penis whenever it became aroused. To Dick, these simple devices seemed a pretty foolproof way of making sure you didn't get excited, voluntarily or otherwise, so he was surprised to see there was a need, let alone a market, for even more sophisticated and painful versions. But he guessed that even when it came down to anti-masturbation devices, some people just had to have the very best.

  Some of these more extreme versions included batteries and capacitors to give the wearer an electric shock if he started ‘pleasuring himself’ — as the description explained. The most sophisticated device he saw looked like the Lexus of anti-masturbatory aids. Not only did this particular model involve electricity and tiny blades, but it also included some sort of small wire noose that went round the testicles, and a very mild acid spray. The way these devices alerted others was also as ingenious. Most just set off an alarm but the more sophisticated also gave a visual clue that masturbation might be in progress including bright flashing lights that were visible under even the heaviest clothing — or versions that emitted coloured smoke or which drenched the wearer in an indelible purple dye.