It's My Party

"Nevertheless, my study group recommends we begin a test program with the other trapdoor, the one to White Mall. Given the behavior of the elevator at the bottom of the great stairwell, we should test whether the trapdoor works with just cargo or needs a person inside to activate it. We should also do a stress test of at least forty jumps and see if there's any variation in the trapdoor behavior."

Mark paused for a moment to take a sip of water. "Route number two is the Mall system. What could we do to get their attention? Fire a flare at them? Roll a bowling ball down the corridor? Amber is worried that if we ignore the possible threat of someone hiding in ambush near the edge of the locked stores, Ricardo will realize we know there's no threat and deduce we can indeed monitor the corridor around his location. And all the scenarios our group considered ran the risk of us being shot at, with almost no possibility of trapping Ricardo in the Mall unless he did something really stupid."

"Route number three for contact is to use the library network system. Do we have a chance of catching someone at the console who wants to surrender to us? What's the risk of a double cross, Ricardo turning the tables and baiting us into another trap?"

"And finally, route four is using the flares near the Black Mall surface perimeter as a means of communications. We only fired a few outside so far, three kilometers south of the Blue Mall home complex. Ricardo's home was thirty kilometers away and it was daylight at the time. I'm not too worried the flares were seen. But potentially we could use the system at night to send signals to his complex."

Mark finished with a shrug. "And that's as far as we got. If somebody has a better idea, let us know."

Fatima agreed to the suggested testing of the trapdoor to White Mall, and Holly and Ann volunteered to do the work. Fatima then got to the last item on the agenda. "As you know, Mark checked the job log very early this morning and linked the new deaths of two women to Party #1. We've discussed this scenario before. We will assume all the recent deaths occurred in Red Mall unless the census counter and Mark tell us otherwise. For today, both search parties will target the Red Mall area."

Fatima glanced at the time, 7:22 AM. "The sun should be rising at this very moment. Team leaders, assemble your groups and depart as you see fit. Good hunting to us all."

A few minutes later Fatima and Mark were the only ones left in the room except for Kiyoko and Cassidy who were still on monitor duty until 8 AM. The two women sat at the other end of the room watching their displays, purposely giving Mark and Fatima a bit of privacy.

"So," said Fatima, "do you have your day mapped out?"

Mark nodded and stretched. "The interface offered me another two-hour course on orbital positioning. Of course I accepted. After that I'll probably work out in the gym for a while."

"Don't tell me, are you still practicing with that sword?"

Mark grinned, "Well, maybe a little. It's too beautiful a weapon to resist. Hey, do you want to meet later for lunch?"

"Sure, sounds nice. Just be careful with the sword." Fatima hesitated a moment. "Mark?"

"Hmmm?"

"Are you disappointed with not being allowed to go out on search-and-rescue?"

"Oh, I don't know. A little maybe. I see your point about pulling me off the exploration teams. And I'm on call if they need any advice. Still…"

"Still?"

"Well, it does feel a bit like fighting a war from behind a desk."

"Yeah. Tell me about it."

"You too?"

Fatima nodded. "I think I'm doing a competent job organizing everything, but the experience of being a team leader and leading the expeditions at Yellow Brick…"

"It's fun!"

"Yeah, it sure is."

The two lovers took a moment to link and smile at each other and then it was time to go. They shared an affectionate kiss before going their separate ways.

Time: Sunday, March 3, 2019 8 AM

Three hours into their march, Carla called her first major break, a full fifteen minutes of downtime. The troops took off their backpacks and stretched out. Sandra took the opportunity to lie down and stretch out so completely, Carla thought it looked like she wanted to take a nap. Carla walked over and sat down beside her.

"Are we half way their yet?" Sandra asked in a quiet voice.

Carla replied, "Almost. We're halfway through with the foothills I think, then about another three kilometers to our pickup spot by the riverbank. Sandra, how are you feeling?"

"What's our pace?" asked Sandra, ignoring Carla's question.

"As the crow flies, we've hiked a little more than eleven kilometers I think, four kilometers an hour for the first two maybe, and a little over three kilometers this last hour. It's good performance, considering the terrain and the mini-breaks we're taking."

Sandra gave a deep sigh and closed her eyes. "Hell Carla. I'm the only one without a backpack and I'm slowing everybody down."

"Sandra, how are you feeling?"

She kept her eyes closed as she gave an honest assessment. "Tired but I still have some energy. My problem is my legs. My muscles are so weak. I just haven't done enough walking this past month."

"Sandra, I remember how your foot looked after the boar sliced it open. I have nothing but admiration for what you're doing now."

"Carla, If I start to slow down too much, I want you to"

"Sandra, if you ever find walking too difficult, just tell us. We'll carry you. We'll use the stretcher if we have to. It would be an honor, and I really mean that."

"Well… thank you," Sandra whispered. She took a moment to reflect on all their new abilities from the supplies that had come back with Tom. The new gear included a folding stretcher that had come with the first-aid kit. Sandra opened her eyes and the sight knocked her out of her pleasant thoughts. "Oh hell Carla. That sky is something out of a horror movie."

The entire eastern half of the sky, from their position and then back northward was filled with a enormous rotating spiral of gray and dirty yellow bands of clouds. The phenomenon had been growing and becoming more organized over the last two hours, and its counterclockwise rotation was now unmistakable.

And the air! Wobanakik almost always had a fresh and breezy smell to it, both on the stormy days and in the sun. But now the air felt flat and very still. Sandra was beginning to feel a sense of dread. "Do you think we should turn back?" she asked quietly.

Carla thought for a moment and finally shrugged. "I don't know what this is. I've been assuming if a storm breaks, we can bundle together in a gully with our ponchos until the storm blows over, but I don't know what this is. If it is a storm, it seems the worst part of it might break back north. Assuming three-plus hours to get back, I don't know if we'd make it."

"Let's move on then. My leg feels better. Let's go now."

Carla nodded and called out an order, and after a moment for final stretching and putting on backpacks, the group continued its journey to the south.

Time: Sunday, March 3, 2019 9 AM

About eighty minutes after setting off from the Red Mall lounge, the Society's two combined search parties reached a spot that Emily on a previous expedition had nicknamed Water Hole #1. They were now approximately three kilometers south of the home complex in a triangular wedge of a half-sized hexagon, an isosceles triangle fifty meters for each side. The waterhole was one large open area and offered food, bathroom facilities and sleeping accommodations.

The two search teams had remained together until now. There were two one-way passages they had passed through to get here, and they would be relying on Emily's command authority to return home at the end of the day.

It was Emily's conjecture that at least one and perhaps both groups of people that left It's My Party came through here on or slightly after December 21st. Her key piece of evidence was that some of the time-sealing food cabinets at the waterhole were not completely full. This fit their experience at their home complex and Mall explorations. All the cabinets they had found started out packed to the brim but the servos would not restock depleted goods.

As she stood and surveyed Water Hole #1, Emily took a moment to review her analysis. The path to this place provided many alternatives to coming here, but at each junction, Emily thought the route that led to here seemed the more likely choice, either better lit or wider or looking more like the main thoroughfare. Assuming a group of puzzled people trying to head south to a parking lot, Emily had a strong suspicion one or both groups came through here. And since it was a reasonable place to stop, perhaps the people that had left shortly after 6 PM had met up with the original group earlier in the day, the eighteen nurses who had left around 3 PM. What would they have said when they found each other?

Emily tried to imagine the scenario. The second group might have arrived here about eight o'clock, after going through four different one-way control gates. Perhaps they even would have tried to prop some of the doors open. It wouldn't have worked. Outside of a home complex, propped-open doors automatically triggered a low-level security alert, and the servos would remove the prop as soon as they could do so unobserved.

Emily thought the people winding up here must have been confused and wondering what the hell was going on. And by the time they got here, they would have been heavily involved with the effects of what the Society was now calling the booster drugs. Emily looked about the triangular space. Was this the scene of a sex orgy? Her mind was guessing yes.

There were three doors to Water Hole #1, one in the center of each of the three faces. There was the northwest door from which they had entered and two exits, one to the southwest and one due east. Their plan was for Emily's team to explore to the southwest, an area she had named The Wilderness for its extremely high density of one-way passages.

Aggie group would head east to an area Emily called The Labyrinth. There were very few one-way passages in this section but it was a 3-D maze of convoluted passages, a true nightmare that would severely test Aggie's team and their ability to chart their position accurately and not get lost. After a few hugs and many brief links of goodbyes, the two teams headed out through the separate doors.

Time: Sunday, March 3, 2019 10 AM

Lynn turned to Charles as they reached the bottom of yet another long series of 311 steps. "Time for a little break?"

He grinned back. "My knees are saying that sounds like a really good idea. And it's time to report in anyway." They took off their small backpacks and rested on the floor a few meters from the stairs. Charles got out the new Leophone and after dialing for a moment said, "This is bathtub to rubber ducky, bathtub to rubber ducky, come in rubber ducky."

A laughing voice answered him. "This is rubber ducky I guess. Before I decide to come in, what's the water like?" Charles recognized the cheerful voice as Hannah's. He was reporting in to the Hilton monitoring station where Hannah and Paige had been on duty since 8 AM.

"Well, the water is just fine so far. Lynn and I are at the bottom of flight sixteen, nine more to go. So far the trip has been uneventful. Another hour and a bit and we'll be at the bottom of the well."

"Sounds good. I'm entering your progress into the mission log right now."

"Is Paige there with you?" asked Lynn.

"No, not at the moment. She's next door in the cartographer's room helping Fatima with some of the spatial data from Aggie's team. They had a bit of a scare a few minutes ago."

Lynn's eyebrows went up. "Oh yeah? What happened?"

"Aggie thought her team had somehow walked into a closed loop with no way out."

"Holy shit!" Lynn exclaimed. "Are they okay now?"

"Yeah. It was a false alarm. The problem was caused by a large spiral passageway, really huge, maybe about half as large as a standard hexagon. At first they thought it was a double spiral. They spiraled into the center and then spiraled out. But then the path turned around and spiraled back in. Aggie said some people on her team were really nervous. They thought they somehow got trapped on an infinite loop of a double spiral."

"So what happened?"

"They got the center of the structure for a second time and found a stairwell descending to a basement level. That's when Aggie realized it was really a triple spiral. Why such a maze would ever be built is a real puzzle. But anyway, they walked down the stairwell and are beginning to explore the lower level now. Getting their data for the chart shouldn't take long. I'm expecting Paige to be back here in a few minutes."

Hannah paused for a moment as she looked at a monitor. "All's quiet at Black Mall. Alfonso and Jessica went on duty as usual at 8 AM. And oh yeah, I should tell you, after Mark finished another one of his courses, he found a new tidbit of information in the job log. A folder containing the job title of Medical Technician has just moved into a parent folder labeled pending activation. Mark thinks we're about to be offered more employment opportunities."

"Wow, that's interesting. Do Emily and Aggie know?"

"Yep. They're very happy. They'd much rather have the autodocs operated by people who have gone through better training. Their janitor course barely touched on how to run the units."

"Yeah, I remember Emily complaining about that," replied Charles. "Well, thanks rubber ducky. Keep up the good work. This is bathtub pulling the plug on you and signing off."

"Yeah, take care guys. Hope to hear from you in an hour." And with that Hannah hung up.

Afterwards Charles and Lynn were unusually quiet with each other. They were sitting close to each other, shoulders lightly touching, their legs splayed out directly in front of them. For a moment, they both sat in silence staring at their boots.

And simultaneously they turned to each other and linked and both thought the question, "Mind if I ask you a really personal question?" And then they were both so startled by the identical question that they laughed and broke the connection.

"Ladies first," said Charles.

"No, if it really is my choice, I'd like to hear your question first." Lynn was surprised to see Charles blushing.

"Well, okay." Charles offered his eyes again to Lynn and a strong link formed immediately. Lynn was surprised to see Charles' mind in a state of deep turbulence. There appeared to be two questions he was trying to ask, and the questions kept folding in on themselves, making it impossible to understand either. One question seemed to be of major practical importance, and the other…

"Charles!" Lynn thought. "Are you asking if I'll forgive you for something?"

He thought back the pictorial construct of a nod.

"If this is something from the days of Chico, there's no need. You already have my forgiveness for everything that happened then."

"I'm still so embarrassed by it. I can't accept your forgiveness if you don't even know what you're forgiving me for."

"Oh, very well. Go ahead."

Sharp images came flooding into Lynn's mind. Chico had checked her out for several procurement expeditions, forcing her to become hoof-pussy and drag the supply sled clad only in bra and panties and wearing ankle and wrist cuffs. And here now were raw images from her companion's mind when he named himself Chico. So many images! Memories of Lynn's panties clinging to her shapely butt as she muscled the sled back from Mex Grocer's, the rise and fall of her breasts as she labored, and most embarrassing to Charles now, memories of him massaging her feet during some of their breaks.

Lynn suddenly understood her friend's shame and projected back the construct for laughter. "Oh wow Charles! You have a foot fetish! Does Brandi know about this?!"

"Uh, yeah I guess," he thought back.

Lynn's hand slowly came up to caress his cheek as she thought, "Want to know something? Dragging that sled without arch support used to hurt my feet. I actually kind of liked what you did. It certainly made my days less painful."

"Still…"

"Charles, link deep into my emotions and understand the following: I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you. I had very little fear when I was hoof-pussy when you were leading. It was nothing compared to pulling duty with Gilberto…" A sad and painful memory floated into Lynn's consciousness, and she shared it with Charles.

"I think this happened about two days before Toshi was rescued," Lynn thought. She could feel Charles becoming captivated by the mental images she was sharing. "Toshi and Ann and I had just finished lugging a very heavy load of beer to the home complex, and Gilberto and Santos and Fidel were checking us into the pussy barn. Jessica was there and insisted we undergo a rectal exam. Ann went first, and then it was my turn. I was scared to death. Jessica had me bent over and her damned fingers up my butt and I had three men leering at me. Gilberto thought I looked so hot he unzipped his pants and started masturbating right there out in the open."

Charles mind was filled with shame. "And I led this. Gilberto reported to me."

"Jessica finished with me and moved on to Toshi before Gilberto got fully erect. About halfway through the exam, Gilberto pushed Jessica aside and shoved himself up Toshi's butt. He anal raped her right there in front of all of us. I felt so helpless. And Jessica was just laughing. I think she was hoping this would happen. She kept egging Gilberto on and asking him to be sure to check deep and report if his cock hit anything suspicious. The bitch! Toshi knew she was pregnant with Gilberto's child by that time. I can't imagine what a horror this must have been for her."

Charles mind was in turmoil.

"Dear Charles, don't you see? I'm telling you this to compare your behavior to what I actually had to fear. Your foot massage actually helped me, and to the extent you thought it was sexy, I forgive you. And you think I have a cute butt? So what? I used to go jogging along the beach with some friends during the summer. We were always catching the boys' eyes with our bikinis."

A faint whisper of a thought in reply. "Thank you."

Lynn smiled within her mind, her hand by this objective time caressing his cheek. "I'm glad I could help." And then the internal smile turned playful. "And if this matter ever bothers you again, just tell me. I'll keep telling you I forgive you for as long as you want me to."

Charles grinned back in mental gratitude. "Okay."

"Now what was your other question?"

"Do you want to be in charge? I mean until we find Jada."

"Oh!" Lynn thought for a moment. "Did you think I might be uncomfortable being under you again?"

"Walking down the stairs, the thought finally occurred to me. With all the excitement of the planning, I never considered this might be… awkward for you."

"It's not. And if we get attacked by a Dinofelis or something, I'd much rather jump to your orders than the other way around. Charles, relax! I trust you. Our current setup is the correct one. Now, my turn! Ready for a personal question?"

"Yep!"

"I was wondering… And I don't mean for you to break any confidences… So if I'm prying, just tell me."

"Huh? Lynn, what's up?"

"I can see it in your eyes, how much you're anticipating seeing Mandy again. You can probably see something similar in me, how I'm looking forward to being with Tom."

"Yes, I see it."

"I was wondering… If I may… Brandi, is she really a girlfriend to both of you? How does that work?"