What Went Wrong With Arlow?

Taylor mentally rehearsed how he'd do this while holding the latch ready for a minute, and then executed. He was fast as a cat. He kicked the door open and jumped off the gangplank facing the correct way, cleared wide and only then switched the flashlight on, pointed under the cab.

"GET YOUR HANDS UP," he yelled at someone, "HANDS UP!" and Carly heard a startled scream.

"Don't shoot boss, please don't shoot," someone called out, wailing pitifully.

Carly followed out through the same side and saw what'd happened. She thought someone was either siphoning diesel or trying their luck at sawing off a catalytic converter on this beast. But instead, it was just a homeless person sleeping under the exhaust for the warmth.

"It was just cold, boss, I swear I wasn't gonna take nothing," he pleaded.

Carly exploded at the man, more upset than Taylor would've expected, "YOU DUMB SHIT! Get the fuck out of here. I could've driven over you in the morning and squeezed your guts out with the rear tires and never fucking noticed. Get the fuck out of here! Get the fuck out of here right now! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" she kept screaming at him as he walked, then ran off.

Taylor noticed she was shaking long after the man left.

"Lets go find a motel," he told her gently, "we need to recharge."

...

Arlow sent his wife to her relatives and holed up at Darlene's for a few weeks, ignoring her constant whining about money. No one knew about her so he felt safe there, but as time passed and his contacts reported nothing out of the ordinary, more he realized no one was coming after him. That was so bizarre, he thought. There should've been a reckoning, but it's as if they just did not care. He decided to go back home and tighten all his spider webs.

Soon, one of the frame threads vibrated and woke him up. And that particular fly was a giant government truck carrying a weird looking science experiment throughout the county. Over some weeks they kept leaving and coming back but overall getting closer and Arlow knew then it wasn't a coincidence. He put on his best charming mask and went in search of contact.

...

Their dinner was good enough and then Carly went dancing with a guy who wore a ten gallon hat. Taylor yawned and after finishing his pitcher of water went to his room and was about to fall asleep when his phone rang. It was Carly.

"I need you to come over right now," she said.

"What's wrong?" he asked, again annoyed with her. She just would not stop coming onto him. He was about to hang up and power down the phone when she woke him up with a coded reference.

"Bring me an ice cream cone, the kind that I like," she said and hung up.

Taylor checked his service pistol and came out to check on her. He wasn't sure if he should storm the room or knock, but then he figured a knock and a face to face would explain the rest. He knocked cautiously; she opened the door and urged him to come inside.

Taylor saw the guy with the ten gallon hat sitting in a far corner, clearly concealing a large weapon hidden in his coat. He wasn't sure what the situation was entirely like just yet, but this was a red sign that told him maybe he should shoot first after Carly got out of the way.

"Tell your regulation haircut friend that he won't have any trouble from me," Arlow said and threw his gun down on the ground, out of reach. He put both his hands on the chair handrests, and that reassured Taylor.

"They came eight months ago," said Arlow, "First a bunch of organized Slavs of some kind started poking around, then flashed money and set things in motion, and then at some point they all... changed. For some reason, they're amassing... well, mass, best I can tell,... and dumping it in a big hole in the new clearcut ground on Highway 13. Municipal, construction, demolition, industrial, hazardous, electronic, medical, simply everything. It's about a large city's worth every month, and yet none of it is showing up anywhere. And then I went and blew one of them sons of bitches' heads off, and instead of blood, this is what I saw." He emptied a sack in front of him and the colors in the motel room suddenly became more vibrant.

...

After Arlow left, Taylor felt something he hadn't in awhile, an excitement. He felt it in his entire body, so close to finding the answers he'd been looking for. Sticking his neck out was finally paying off after all this toil, and that was an incomparable, an intoxicating feeling of discovery. And then he noticed Carly looking at him funny.

"What?" he asked.

Without saying a word, Carly read his body language correctly. She grinned and unbuttoned her jeans and let them slide down a few inches, her oversized shirt protecting her modesty. But it was his modesty that was sensitive. She let him choose.

"Do you want to help me take these tight jeans off?" she asked him.

Taylor flushed red. The unbuttoning upset him because it was the old Carly coming back, but where she deliberately stopped, that was the new Carly. Jeans were a question on their own and she needed help, she said, and he didn't know how to answer her. It was a false question, but it allowed him to pretend she meant something else. But then he felt that excitement of the hunt spill over into his crotch, deep inside, the kind or rise that threatened to come out and do serious damage.

"Yes," he said, confused with himself.

He walked toward her slowly and she closed her eyes when his fingers slipped in the side of her jeans. They both just stood there, his fingers unsure of themselves. She walked him back toward the bed and stopped at the edge. They stood there some more, his hesitancy palpable. Then, her breathing compelled him to pull them down. Down, down they went slowly, fighting Carly's legs, he had to get down on his knees to reach and take her feet out one at a time. He looked up at her from the floor, and knew this moment meant something special to her. She wore a look he'd never seen before on her, of lust, of want. Her eyes told it all, they weren't the scrutinizing kind, they were the drinking his image in kind, not cheap, not cheap at all.

"Do you want me?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"Say it," she told him.

"I want you," he whispered and watched her raise a leg and set her foot down on the bed, showing him her thigh. She'd had no underwear on.

"Kiss it," she told him and stroked her thigh to show him what and where. Then something weird happened to Taylor, he felt fear. The kind that he suppressed his entire career. Fear greater than combat jumps. He couldn't stop himself from doing this, even if he wanted to. This was true vulnerability, he realized in dismay. Nothing in life prepared him for this. He kissed her thigh gently and her hand running through his hair felt like approval he never felt before. Her hand swept his lips out of the way and she flexed her thigh muscle, making it bulge, then swept her fingers along it toward her pussy.

"Kiss it," she told him again and he obeyed. He wanted to obey. His lips followed where her fingers went, a trail of loving kisses along her muscle, and then he reached his destination and started trembling in excitement. His cock was so hard, and he was confused that he wanted to kiss her more down there than have his horniness taken care of.

Her hand stroked his hair and he felt that streak of her approval again, something she'd denied him for months being prickly and distant as she was, and Taylor knew then he was completely and truly fucked. His lips found their way to her pussy and she spread her lips wide with her fingers, wanting his tongue. That, he gave her, along with his lips. He was on his knees, giving her head and wanted to do nothing more in the world than give her proper pleasure. She moaned and it got him more excited, it meant he was doing it right.

After a few minutes, she stopped him and bent down to kiss him on the lips. Still making out, she bade him rise and get on the bed, straddling him. He felt her warmth through his pants and it drove him crazy. He confessed to himself he'd been jealous this entire time. He felt conflicted; he felt he should've said yes that night but then this moment wouldn't have come and been this freakishly rewarding.

Carly started crawling over him, heading toward his chest, he didn't know why and it got him even more excited. Then she kept going forward even after she reached it, and he felt a level of anticipation that made his cock grow even harder somehow. Was she going to? No, no way. But then she did, she straddled his face, and made him wait.

She put both of her hands on top of his head to steady herself, and then started fucking his tongue. He tried to intervene by licking her pussy, but she stopped him.

"Attend!" she barked at him with a serious face.

"Was she French?" Taylor wondered and stilled himself. This was so hot. She was barking orders at him, something he hadn't felt for a cool decade, and she was about to fuck his face. Something he'd never had done to him before, and it was insanely hot. Fuck, if she'd said it in French with that raspy "r", he would've cum instantly, he thought.

She started to do exactly what he thought she would, fucking his face. Slowly, but with an organic rhythm, one that conveyed that she was maximizing her pleasure selfishly and her command meant for him to pay close attention to how she was using him. Fuck, Taylor thought again, he was so hard. Carly was making him so horny, she was putting him to use.

She tasted sweet, he could taste that unnamed slippery component of pussy juice on her clit that promised she'd be an incredible fuck. His vision was mostly obscured and she kept bumping his nose with her clit so he took long breaths out the side of his mouth. Somehow, he later remembered seeing their first time as an out of body experience, somehow watching himself get facefucked by Carly and it never failed to turn him on.

Carly wanted him to purse his lips, to keep his tongue steady, she kept fucking it, fucking his mouth. She sped up, she grabbed his hair, what little of it she could, and then screamed out as she came.

They lay next to each other, collecting their breaths. After a time, Carly helped him out of his clothes, got him completely naked, and then sat behind him nibbling on his neck and ear lobes. The spooning was so frustrating, he wanted to be behind her, not the other way around. But he was still afraid of doing the wrong thing, of reaching for something he wasn't allowed to, so he let her drive this.

Her hand finally reached forward, reached down, and grabbed his cock. She held it in her fist and pumped it, slowly, it made him gasp. They kissed and she kept jerking him off slowly and when he tried to turn around, she told him "nuh uh," and squeezed his cock hard in punishment. He got the message, and this too was a new experience for him. She still had her shirt on but her breasts poking into his back drove him wild. She relaxed her grip and continued pumping his cock. She started whispering in his ear.

Taylor realized he'd never been jerked off by anyone, and that blew his mind. To surrender such a private experience to her was intense. Her whisperings changed language and Jesus, fuck, that was the trigger. He couldn't recall the exact phrase, but she rasped what he interpreted as a "cum for me" and he screamed out and shot his load, spraying his abs. She kept pumping it steadily and moaned encouragement for him, making it even more intense.

As he came to his senses, Taylor realized this was the hottest sexual experience of his life, and yet they hadn't had sex yet. Watching Carly smile and wipe her hand dry with a motel towel, he felt unprepared.

"Why do you call me by my last name?" he asked her. He was used to everyone at work doing the same, but it was unusual for a civilian to do it.

Carly giggled, "this is going to sound insane, but I can't remember very many names. It's just a quirk of mine. If one name enters my head, another leaves it. And yours entered because of your...nameplate... thing on your uniform. I'd heard you introduced plenty of times, but it just can't stick. The last name's etched in your place in my head but I have no idea what your first name is."

"Oh," he dismissed his own question. He'd seen weirder things than that.

...

They'd agreed to meet Arlow the next day at the clearcutting so they could see for themselves before calling in the cavalry. Carly didn't understand why Taylor insisted they take a look first, but that was his world and not hers so he knew better. Still, the unnecessary risk didn't make any sense to her- what if something happened to them? What Arlow showed them already was definitive enough in her mind to call in all sorts of authorities.

Arlow promised them a diversion so they could take a closer look, and provided them with a shiny orange car to use around town. It belonged to someone who would never drive again. He suggested they stow their beast in one of his lots so they don't arouse suspicion.

They spent the day resting and as night came, Arlow silently took them through the woods toward that one hill. Around 9 PM, they saw flashing red and blue lights through the woods and the garbage trucks stopped filing through.

Arlow grinned, "The sheriff is earning his pay tonight," he explained the lights, "about now they're padlocking the entrance gate and turning drivers away." Carly wondered again who the fuck this guy was, but he was helping them, so maybe she didn't care too particularly. Within another hour, the last truck cleared the dumping ground so three of them felt safe enough to creep in and take a closer look.

Closer they got to the edge of the hole, the colors had started acting funny just like how Arlow described. Beyond that point, what they saw boggled the mind.

"Huh," Carly said and chucked a nearby rusted pipe into the hole. It looked as if the pipe somehow slowed falling down as it got close to the middle, and then it startled the two of them.

"What the fuck just happened?" Carly asked.

It looked as if the pipe had simply separated into different colors and then disappeared in different directions at the bottom of the hole. They tossed a few more objects, and then realized that whatever this was, it wasn't separating things into colors so much as sorting matter into different streams.

Arlow figured they'd know more than him, so he asked, "so what is that thing?"

Carly exchanged a look with Taylor and said it out loud. If they hadn't seen someone's bagged skull cracked open like a melon last night with blue crystals growing inside it that fucked with emitted photons in the room, she wouldn't have said it, she would've felt too ridiculous to say it. But say it she did.

"That's an atomic separator. Like a recycling separation, but at beyond-the-molecular level."

"Why?" Arlow asked.

The unspoken - about the nature of what they were seeing - remained unspoken. Carly understood that Arlow wanted an operational reason, not an academic one.

She answered, "We're rich. Not all stars produced planets with a rich distribution of elements like we got. Big bang started everything with three elements, then others got added by individual stars. But some are shittier than others, and more commonly shitty apparently, because they literally came here to take our shit. This is easier for them than mining for it, we already did all that work for them. And note that they're using mostly our equipment to get to it."

Arlow understood, and nodded his acceptance of her analysis, especially that last point. They tried recording the drops, but for some reason none of their cameras managed to snap a single picture or a frame, all they captured was noise. High energy noise, too, Carly felt a little exposed by it and she thought perhaps they shouldn't stand here for very long. They headed back, and said goodbye to Arlow.

"You do what you gotta do,..." he said grimly, "...and I'll do what I have to do," and shook their hands. He almost sounded apologetic.

That was the weirdest sendoff, Carly thought. She again wondered who the fuck that cowboy guy was, and was kind of surprised that Taylor didn't pry all that hard into him. She didn't understand anything about the military-law enforcement intersection and felt they were in a gray area, but shouldn't Taylor have asserted himself more?

"So whom do we call now?" she asked Taylor and saw him melt before her eyes.

"No fucking idea," he admitted. He was frozen, like a fucking deer in headlights, Carly thought.

She tried jogging his memory, "Your commanding officer? Someone up the chain of command?"

"I'm on unpaid leave," he said quietly.

Carly just stared at him.

Taylor confessed, "They put me on leave for 'crashing' those spacecraft. They couldn't conclusively prove I did it deliberately. At the time I was on detached duty so it got fuzzy about how they'd even handle it, but I avoided facing a court-martial. They wouldn't acknowledge the wobble had ever even happened, it was so crazy and irresponsible - it could've been a first strike by an adversary and they were going to ignore it. They said I was crazy, delusional -- and I just had to fucking know."

"Even after they confirmed it was real, they still pushed me through the door; I'd embarrassed some powerful people. That dumbfuck senator from the appropriations committee gave me a clout of authority after I ambushed his advisor with some faked leak, and then no one questioned me afterward. I'd been maxing out my credit cards for this trip," he explained.

Carly could actually believe it. This explained quite a few things, and she laughed at how easily someone like him abused the hospitality of academics. She sat down on the hood of that fucking ugly orange car and patted a spot next to her. She wasn't in trouble. She still had a job and a career. She still liked him. Unconventional, but he got the job done. He was a patriot. Problem was, no one told him to do it, and she hoped he could claw his way out of the hole he dug for himself.

They watched the distant police lights disappear in numb acceptance.

Carly just looked sad for awhile. Finally she opened up, "we're created by immense complexity. Trillions of molecules vibrating just the right way, combining and interacting in a process that took billions of years to get us where we are today, and the most depressing thing is a humbling realization that we could never fully understand this whole system."

"Now we know there's someone else who does, and they just don't care. We're simplicity, produced by incredible complexity. Even just having names was a huge step forward for us, you know? And some of us happen to want to know more about it, about how all this comes to be. And now we find there are others who obviously understand it better because they're so much ahead of us, but they have no interest in sharing any of that knowledge."

"Do you understand? They just don't care" - she looked at Taylor in disbelief, and kissed him. They watched quietly and she emptied her head of all thoughts. Two of them were now adrift, aimless.

Suddenly, Carly heard a very familiar sound. She looked at the road and saw her beloved twinsteer drive up to the clearcutting entrance.

"No, no no no nononononono NO NOOOOOOOO," she whined in desperation, "not my little curb popper," she nearly cried. Arlow was behind the steering wheel and crashing through the gate at full speed. Back of the truck had changed - a huge number of what looked like mulch bags were strapped to the nitrogen tanks, some many dozens of pallets worth. Arlow had driven it through the gate in high gear, she could tell from the high pitched whine of the transmission that he had no intention of stopping. He was headed toward the ginormous warehouse.

"Welcome to planet Earth, motherfuckers," Arlow said angrily.