The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I couldn’t believe it, I had lost control, my harem was now in control of me. Well not me exactly, but close. Something had changed in the 25 new clones they had made of me. Oh yes, they were me, looked exactly like me, had all my knowledge, even acted like me, but they were different. They were like the Hive. They were one, an entity. Each one knew what the other one was doing, thinking, even feeling. They really were ONE...born and bred that way. Ann and the other Girls should have known it from the three Miss Kelly’s. I guess they would have known it if there had been an original Miss Kelly alive at the time to note the difference in her three clones.

It wasn’t like they were intentionally trying to replace me, they weren’t. It was just that they really knew what the Girls really wanted. Maybe needed is the real word I’m looking for here. You know the old hack about the itch you can’t scratch, well they could find it and scratch it for the Girls.

I was the outsider in my own group. They were me, but not me. I was a loner, but they weren’t. I made decisions, they followed them, or let me know why I was wrong, but never tried to take over. In fact, I had found, since that first night on Bob waiting for Sherry and Cora to finish their assignment, that they waited for me to innate any action, if I was present. After Ann directed my other Girls that first night to start peeling everything went fine. No trouble at all for Tab A to find Slot B at all.

Afterward, I figured I was no longer needed, so I started planning my getaway. The Great Escape, ha, ha.

«Ha, ha. Master.» came back on our common link from Ann and the other Girls listening in.

« You know you’re not supposed to do that.» I chided them all.

«Can a fish refuse to swim Harry.» Ann thought back.

«A man needs at least the allusion of privacy. He needs to think that he’s alone in his own head Ann.» I huffed.

«I guess that’s true Master, excuse us.» the link babbled back, I wasn’t sure if they were contrite or laughing at me.

«Tell me something Ann, why can’t I hear anything from the 25 new ME.» I asked the question that was puzzling me.

«We speculate that it’s psychosomatic Harry...» Ann started to explain, as I broke in.

“Psychosomatic Hell...” I blurted out loud.

«I don’t even get a mumble from them.» I snapped back at her on the link.

«If you’ll let me finish...ok...hearing them...the 25 exact identical you in your own head traumatized you so much that your brain has shut them out. It refuses to hear them...» She was explaining when I butted in again.

«I know what I can and can’t hear Ann.» I snorted on the link, clearly irritated.

«Look at it like hysterical blindness Harry. The eyes are fine, but the person it happens to can’t see. Subconsciously they refuse to see. Believe it or not, it’s a pretty common battlefield injury. It’s very real to the person suffering it but easily diagnosed because they never run into things, and are able to dodge thrown objects, ha, ha. We can only hope that your mind will eventually overcome this block on its own.» Ann lectured me.

«So you’re telling me that I’m really hearing them, but my brain is refusing to allow me to hear them.» I laughed.

«Yes, actually that is what is happening.» Ann responded on our link.

«Can the other Harry’s hear each other?» I questioned.

«, Of course, they can, and they can hear you too.» she answered.

«And how do I get rid of....this...this...block Ann.» I wanted to know.

«Hypno therapy is my first recommendation, but is it really important enough for you to really care. I mean I have consulted with the other Girls, even the Hive and June, and most of us feel that it is due to the shock. The shock of the 25 other YOU suddenly coming online all at once. That shocked your mind into rejecting them because they sound...well feel too I guess...so much like you...well are you I guess. We recommend that you give your mind time to adjust to all this on its own. I mean it’s not like you really need to hear them.» Ann finished up rather lamely.

“What I need is a good vacation.” I finished up.

A week later we knew what the residents of the 4th planet looked like. We also knew what the structures were too. The local residents were ‘rat-like’, right down to a long naked rat-like tail. ‘Rat Like’, was the only way to describe them. They seemed to have an average height of about six feet, walking about on two, what passed for legs, upright like a person. Maybe one hundred thirty to one hundred fifty pounds average weight. Short brown course fur all over their bodies where it was exposed, a long hairless snout with dozens of very sharp needle-like gleaming white teeth visible, also with a long thin snake-like tongue that was constantly flicking about. Oh, and did I forget about the eyes, two tiny malevolent red burning coals for eyes set far back in their skulls, eyes that never seemed to blink. In other words, an image that raised Homo Sapiens hackles.

Memories of ancient enemies of the past that the ancient lizard part of the brain still remembers. Ancestral memories awakening from a time that we had been enemies. Memories not unlike those of ancient man’s fear of the wolf that later became the beloved dog, and fought beside man, but these memories were of an enemy that man had always fought. An enemy fought even before man became man.

The structures, on the other hand, were factories, just like the factories we had tracked down out there in the other universe, and we had all seen before. Factories that produced Inoway Artificial Intelligences. Of course, that didn’t mean that they were producing Slavers, or even knew what a Slaver was for that matter. That was why we were here after all. We now had an isolated group of presumably Inoway still manufacturing Artificial Intelligences. Had been isolated here manufacturing them for millions of years, right here all by themselves. As a pragmatist, my first impulse was to find some big rocks and make sure that these monsters never escaped this system again. But I also wanted to know what made the Slavers and figured we had a good shot at it here.

Of the two issues, the issue of the Slavers was more important to us today. Yes, the Confederacy wanted to know now too. After all, they had millions, billions even, of potential Slavers out there to deal with if somebody learned the secret. After the disaster of the Box nobody wanted a repeat of Murphy’s Law, “If it can go wrong it will, if it can’t possibly go wrong it will anyway”.

Bottom line was we needed to question some Inoway about how a Slaver could be made. I did have a hunch, a wild hunch true, but a good one, on how they had produced a Slaver over in my universe. If I was right I figured that this isolated group of Inoway were working to produce the same thing on this planet, and the results would be the same. If I was right somewhere on this planet we would discover how they had made the Slavers and what went wrong, or right for that matter. Somewhere in this solar system, we would find spaceships just like Bob, but without Bob’s organic intelligence to fly them. I hoped that we would not encounter Box, maybe they hadn’t unraveled that secret yet.

I was right, days later we found their Bob shipbuilding site on one of the 6th planet’s moons. The site looked abandoned, and only one forlorn Bob was present. He looked like he had been there a long, long time. He was completely cold, showing no signs of an active internal power source, and a coating of space debris that had accumulated over the years. Since there was no activity on site, and we were still collecting data on the 4th planet, we decided to investigate. Upon entering the open airlock I found that they had even removed the provisions for an organic intelligence like Bob to be installed in this ship. It was also stuffed with conventional batteries, and rack after rack of compactors. They were all absolutely dead now, had been dead for countless centuries at least we discovered. Everything just confirming what I had already theorized.

A month later we had infiltrated the 4th planet. In the end, we discovered they were not much different from us. They were not on a war footing right now, or inherently evil as I had originally thought. In fact, they only had legends of their past to go on. Like us, they had fought wars of aggression with each other over their dwindling natural resources. Civilization itself had come and gone hundreds of times. One civilization rebuilding over the ruins of the other, over and over, and over again.

“It is not the strongest of a species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one most adaptable to change, that survives.” Is the quote by Charles Darwin about the survival of the species. It appeared that rats were adaptable and survived well. It would be interesting to see if Homo Sapiens did as well.

They really had little more than legends to go on after their wars. Legends that said that they were once Gods, Masters of the Universe, Gods who had been defeated by other jealous Gods and forced to flee to this isolated solar system to hide. They had cut off all contact with the rest of the universe until their leaders, well high priests now anyway, could perfect the magical ‘Third Eye’. A device that would allow the true believers to once again navigate, “the rivers of time and space.” When that promised day came they would once again rightfully rule over the universe and exact their revenge on the other evil Gods that had banished them here to this Hell Hole.

The only difference between them and us was their near indestructible artificial intelligence’s, their immortal ever present intelligent computers. A vast store of knowledge that always arose from the rubble of the world they had just destroyed with their war. The vast store of knowledge that had allowed the survivors of the Apocalyptic War to rebuild their civilization over, and over, and over again for millions of years. Just think of where Man himself would be if the Great Library at Alexandra had not been sacked and burned by the barbarians over and over thought out own recorded history. If there had been no Dark Age where would we be today?

The Inoway themselves had seen better days. The evidence showed they had once had space travel and even a thriving sub-orbital travel system on the planet itself, but now they were reduced to trolley cars, trains, and planes that relied on hydrogen gas for their motive power and energy source.

Today all their natural resources were exhausted. In fact, they were dying with no way to get out of this system. Doomed to remain here for eternity. All this knowledge was available at any online library terminal. Available to any citizen, or us for that matter on their version of the world wide web which was open to everyone.

The story that finally caught my attention was one about the creation of, ‘The Beast With The Third Eye’, a Fiery Tale used to frighten small children to go to bed. In the tale, a mad scientist creates a thinking machine. In some of the commentaries and annalist of the Tale, the commentator compares the Beast to a modern artificial intelligence that they are still manufacturing. Anyway, the scientist gives it the task, ‘to see into the maddening Void between the stars’. To do this the machine says it needs more and more autonomy until it has built a whole army of units like himself around it. The scientist is not worried though because they can’t go anywhere. So it comes as a great shock when he discovers that they all have arms and legs now. He’s a little worried now, but the Beast shows him the Eye they have created and explains how it will allow them to seek other worlds. The scientist is hooked, he orders up the ship and they all board it, and it disappears. When it returns the scientist is dead, and the Beast and his hundred brothers run amuck killing hundreds until they are finally destroyed by irate citizenry who burn them up in a great fire. The moral of the story I guess is, “watch out for how much autonomy you give your personal computer, and never, never, ever allow it to grow hands and feet.” Maybe the Inoway watched Walt Disney’s first Mickey Mouse animated cartoon too.

My guess is the Inoway in my universe kept pushing the Bobs to violate their prime directives, of course, I look at them as core beliefs, but the point is there were things the Bobs couldn’t do. Anyway, because the Bobs suicide if pushed too hard, they wound up creating, and having a lot of ships with dead Bobs around. They knew that they, just like the Builders, went insane staring into the Void, but unlike the Builders though, they had their Artificial Intelligence’s, the Rays, to experiment on. That was how the Slavers were created. The Inoway put them on a delict Bob, with a return timer and sent them to stare into the Void. When they returned they were insane, and we know they were never able to replace the Bobs. They just created a lot of crazy Ray’s.

How, you’re probably asking yourself, did we know they never discovered the secret? Elementary my dear Watson, “they are still stuck here, in this dying star system.” I personally was still all for the big rock solution, but the Hive wanted to put the matter in the hands of the Builders and the Confederacy. The Hive won the argument in the end.

Quick Kill

At the beginning of the ’60s, the Marines developed Quick Kill for Force Recon. For this training, they found that air rifles, BB guns, worked best. They found that shooting is instinctive with a certain percentage of us. I also found it worked out really well with my Girls and the recoilless auto shotgun they had decided on.

For example, the instructor would take a BB between his thumb and forefinger, and after showing it to everybody, he would throw it into the air and shoot it with his CO2 powered air rifle off hand. We found that we could actually follow both BB’s through the air. The more we practiced the better we got at it. We learned that the human mind could calculate off hand, instinctively, the path of both BB’s, the power behind it, the drop, the effect of the wind, it’s actual path through the air, all those myriad details all by itself. There was no need for gun sights or fancy scopes and extensive training. In fact, they found that all that fancy training and tools were a distinct impediment to their training methods.

Of course, they found that they could train a soldier to kill anything on the obstacle course in record time with the “System”. The basic rule was, it moved it died, as simple as that. In full kill mode, there were no friends, just things that moved and became targets. They found it a particularly useful skill in the ‘Tunnel Rats’ program they later developed. The Viet Kong, those little yellow fellows in the black pajamas, loved to dig intricate tunnel systems. Room after room of Punji Pits, snakes, spiders, rats, razor blades, water traps, anything to make our jobs a little harder. The thing that really disappointed us was that by the time we got to the end of the tunnel system, room by room, every piece of useful intelligence was destroyed. No prisoners to interrogate, no maps to read, no list of names to check out, nada, nothing.

Well, where there’s a will there’s a way, as they say. Hydrogen gas is odorless, colorless, and even tasteless, but it burns really well and is readily attainable anywhere in the world in bulk tanks. Tanks that come in many sizes and are easily bought and transported. We developed a quite pneumatic digging probe that allowed us to penetrate each chamber. We then flooded the cave system with hydrogen and ignited it the in what is commonly known as a “Flash Burn”. It is a very short intense burn, it’s flame almost invisible to the naked human eye. It doesn’t affect equipment, or clothing, or even the human body really. It just singes everything in the confined area. Well, that includes singeing the human lungs. Anybody, or anything for that matter, that is breathing the room’s air when the Flash occurs is basically dead in very short order. A particularly short, but extremely nasty, painful death I might add.

I’m sure that it’s probably against the Geneva Convention, so many good ways to kill people are, but that didn’t particularly bother us at the time. Our job was to destroy the cave system and recover useable intelligence, which we did in the simplest and most efficient way possible. The same system works on anything within an enclosed area, of course, the smaller the actual area the better after all the hydrogen does have to saturate the air in the area first.

At least one of our mysteries was solved. There was no way the Inoway were ever going to get out of this system without a lot of outside help. Knowing what we know now, I’ll just hope nobody else decides to experiment with the other available Inoway AI’s, now that we know they can see into the Void too. If you stare into the Void too long, or too often, you may get its attention and it will stare back, they say. It would appear that even AI’s can go crazy too from staring into the Void.

As to their limbs. These were AI’s that piloted cars, trains, and planes. AI’s that really supervised assembly lines, hospitals, and many other things. I’m sure that if an Inoway AI needed arms and legs to do its job it would have arms and legs the next day. We saw nothing sinister, or wrong about that.

It hadn’t gone down as I expected. I don’t know if I’ve ever described myself after the process finished. Well, I’m 6 foot 1, a hundred seventy-five pounds. I have wide shoulders and long arms and I’m skinny. Yes, skinny. I burn it off as fast as I eat it. In my younger days I resented that I couldn’t bulk up, but in my present ripe old age, it was a Godsend. I never had to push myself to stay in shape, no designer diets, no restricted foods I couldn’t eat.

I had taken my vacation, escaped my responsibilities for a while. I had the clothes on my back, a pocket full of cash, some fake papers. Make that good fake papers including a passport and credit cards. Nobody could do anything today without credit cards. I had replaced the thin flat high carbon steel throwing knives I habitually carried. One in my boot and the other on the heavy braided leather cord across my throat, the knife hanging down my back. Now they were some nonmetallic ceramic substitutes I’d had Molly whip up for me, knives that didn’t set off every metal detector I went through. Oh, I know they make nonmetallic guns too, but they are still heavy and bulky and really not concealable. I was traveling light and didn’t need to stand out that much. In my light gym bag, I had a change of underwear, sox’s, disposable razor, and extra change of shirt jeans and spare hoodee jacket. As I said light.

I took a jet back to the States landing in Vegas in the early morning hours. Even then it was hot outside the air-conditioned terminal. I tried my luck at the tables on the Strip and walked away a few dollars richer for several hours of hard work. The stage acts were all bigger than I remember, the drinks watered down more, and the girls working the floor cheap and overdone. It was hard to remember that we had only left here a couple of years ago.

Leaving the last casinos I had the taxi drop me off at one of the many used car places just off the strip. After some haggling, I picked up a 12-year-old cherry red Chevy sedan and after some more haggling and some very creative paperwork, I had clear title, tag, and even the mandatory insurance every state now required. I was confident that the paperwork would stand up to any inspection I was liable to run into.

My next stop was Twenty Nine Palms, or Twenty Nine Stumps as we affectionately called it. Driving through Joshua Tree the desert was still just dry desert and lots of rocky mountain. The town itself was still as small and backward as ever. Using my Reservist ID I even played a round of golf and had a beer at the on-base clubhouse. Next, I headed for Palm Springs which had changed as much as Vegas. I didn’t bother to stop for anything but gas this time.

My next stop was San Diego MCRD, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, better known as Disneyland to the Marines. Several of the same dives on the strip were still in operation after all these years. Let me state that anywhere you have troops you’re going to have booze, prostitution, and drugs, in that order. California, unlike Nevada though, outlaws prostitution and some of the Vice Cops think that gives them a fishing license. This forces the troopees in Diego to have to play word games with the women of the night, obviously hookers, over what is solicitation. Yes, prostitution is legally solicitation on the books. The finer details of fair compensation for services rendered can result in being shook down by the cops for bribes, or if it gets serious when you refuse to part with a generous gratuity to the insulted police decoy, it can actually result in being arrested.

After a short stopover at a cheap motel to get some sleep I moved on to TJ, Tijuana, Mexico. My first trips there had been on a Greyhound Bus and crossing the border on foot to visit the three main whorehouses. Later I had a car and had learned that you always stopped and bought Mexican auto insurance before crossing. If you have problems in Mexico the law is on your side if you have bought them already. It does make a difference, and used to only costs a few dollars, cheap at the price.

In the morning I left the car in the motel’s parking lot and walked across the border. It’s never hard getting in, only getting out. There are two different TJ’s, the night time TJ, and the day time TJ. Our pattern when I was here in 68, yes we ran in packs then too, was to visit the stores and open market place first while there was light. You could buy everything from a cheap switchblade knife, a counterfeit Rolex watch, or a nice smelling knockoff of Channel Number 9 perfume for a girlfriend dirt cheap. Our shopping list for the barracks done we would then go by the Jockey Club to drink. All the Jockey Club did was serve alcohol, on the other hand, nobody was ever given a Mickey and rolled at the Club either.

After the serious drinking was done the next stop was the whorehouses. Having experience with legal Brothels in Nevada I cannot call the Brooklyn or Manhattan anything but a cheap whorehouse. You walked in paid the cover charge, bought the mandatory drink, and picked out one of the naked girls dancing in front of you. They changed out the girls regularly, but they all looked pretty much the same, except for Roxann. You paid the standard price $10 at the Brooklyn, and $20 at the Manhattan. The girls, short scrawny little things from Honduras mostly, handed you a condom and you went upstairs with the pick of the day.

Now, this is where the Brooklyn and the Manhattan differed. At the Manhattan, you got a room, admittedly a very small room, but a room with an actual bed. A bed with springs, a mattress, and mostly clean sheets. At the Brooklyn, all you got was an Army cot in the middle of a lot of other cots. A strip of canvas 6 feet long and 2 feet wide stretched out on a wood rack 2 feet off the floor. It was in a very large room with maybe a hundred others racks just like it. There was no privacy and in fact, fights broke out because one asshole would begin commenting on another asshole’s fucking style.

After one visit to Brooklyn, I never went back. I’m just not a group sex person with other males present. The Brooklyn I found was an acquired taste which I never acquired. There was also a back alley where the whores were actually hanging out in the doorways and everything was done with her standing up braced up against the wall, we avoided that one too. There was also the hazard warning about the TJ taxi’s delivering you drunk to the robbers instead of the border gate.

I had roamed TJ in my spare time alone. Not the tourist part, the better, the high-class section reserved for it’s more upright affluent citizens. Not at night, but in the morning and day. I had also made friends at the Manhattan and Black Cat and some of the local cops and Federalizes. I even went to a Bull Fight with a Federalizes officer I met. He liked to explain and describe what was happening in the bull ring to the ignorant Gringo in their private box. I do not consider myself to be a cruel person, but from top to bottom a Bull Fight is cruel, everything is rigged in the Matador’s favor. Nothing is left to chance. My friend went so far as to state that when a Matador is gored it’s because he’s developed a death wish and should retire gracefully.

I was talking a little while ago about the girls, women, whores that wound up naked on stage for us to chose from. Women that looked almost the same, except Roxann. Roxann!... Roxann was THE Exception. 6 foot, 135 pounds, 39 by 26 by 37, bleached blond hair, even to the hair on her unshaven pussy. Hair that I later found out was really a deep red auburn color. If asked to describe her facial features I would say now that she looked like Terry Moore in the face. Anyway, she would come out and dance and get just as naked as the other girls, but none of us for some weird reason ever made a play for her. She only danced for one round and then she was gone for the rest of the night. Weeks later I knew some of the girls really well and asked about Roxann. I found that all they knew was she was somehow related to one of the owners of the Manhattan, and no she didn’t associate with the other girls.

At the time we’re talking about I was in the electronics school, Darling Delta, and had a lot of free time. I got bored with drinking and whoring and especially my fellow Marines. So I took up surfing at Mission Beach. Bought a board, hung out at Hamel’s Surf Shop. Even met and hung out with the college kids from USC who were defiantly anti-war, but believe it or not, I was too. I was all for, “Make Love Not War”.

One night, while waiting for a Grunion Run that never happened, I’m still not convinced to this day that a Grunion Run is not the equivalent of a good old Southern Snipe Hunt. Anyway, that night I was reintroduced to Roxann and her Court. I was just coming to grips with the term Latino and would have said that Roxann and her Court of Ladies in Waiting who surrounded her were white if asked. After all, they spoke American just like me, didn’t they.

To me, there was white and at the other end of the spectrum black. In the middle of those two extremes was gray, yellow, tan, and red and many shades of them. I was later to learn that racial prejudice is more complicated than just skin color. To us, the Ugly American or white European, a Japanese looks like a Chinese, or a Korean for that matter. To them, that is a deadly insult. To them, they look nothing alike.

Anyway, I found that Roxann was a full-time student and very, very popular at USC, the University of Southern California, at San Diego. Though I never got close to Roxann herself for some reason. I did at least have some innocent make-out sessions with several members of her Court. Her Ladies In Waiting were very friendly over that winter on that little section of beach we staked out and maintained as our own, and for your information, the water was always cold. Summer or Winter it didn’t matter the water was cold. After you bought the board the next thing you had to buy was the wet suit to use it, ha, ha.

I found it rather funny that none of the people around me ever tumbled to the fact that I was a Marine. I’d pick up a couple of large bottles of Olympia beer, some Toco Bells, and dump them on top of my suit in the bottom of my good old Marine duffle bag. Then I’d pick up my board at Hamel’s and study at the beach all day with the other kids. This went on for almost a year until my Marine buddies found me and ruined it all.

Now crossing the border again, I was thinking of the Manhattan again when the woman in front of me broke away from the two men on each side of her and stumbled directly into me. Finding her way blocked she looked up directly into my face and locked eyes with me. Fate, chance, coincidence, call it what you will, she looked exactly like Roxann. OK maybe an idealized version of Roxann, because this woman, well really no more than a slip of a girl, had a long mane of luxurious platinum blond hair that had never seen a bottle of bleach. Yes, I do know and notice the difference.

“Pomogi nme.” She implored in Russian. Russian? Help Me, in Russian. One of the phrases my buddy Morosousky had taught me.

“What do you need Mam,” I answered back in English, drawing scowls from the two men with her.

“Please.” She implored in English this time and burrowed deeper into my chest.

“Come Teresa.” The man on the left said as he reached for her arm.

Instinctively I moved to shield her from the grasping paw of the bear.

“Maybe the lady, Teresa? doesn’t want to go home with you dude.” I answered him. This was a bouncer type. 6 foot 3, maybe 4, as wide as a door, in an expensive suit and sporting an ugly broken nose. A nose that had been repeatedly broken and never reset properly. A pit bull dog on a leash as far as I could see. His partner, who was trying to sneak into my blind spot, was a weasel in contrast. 5 foot 6, messy suit, an unkempt mop of brown hair, skinny and jumpy. His eyes were everywhere and his right hand was under his coat tugging at something under his arm.

Just when everything looked like it was going to go pear-shaped, two more suits appeared magically from the crowd. I had seen their like before down here. You could almost smell them as they pulled out their badges. Mexican Federalizes, dark pockmarked faces with the ever-present mustache, and garlic smelling breath.

“What is the problem Mr. Smith.” one of the Rent-A-Cops asked weasel.

“No problem Louis, Teresa here is a little confused and doesn’t want to go home,” Weasel answered, and appeared to be on a first name basis with the local cops. A fact that said a lot to my overworked instincts and a well-tuned sense of survival.

Even in the old days, there were lookouts posted on the bridge. I was absolutely sure that there were CCTV cameras on us now, so this was not the place to make a stand or draw attention to myself. Teresa becoming aware of the new situation asked me to save her in Russian again, and then finished up with probably the only English word she knew, “Please”.

“Why are you interfering with Mr. Smith.” Mustache Pete number one bluntly asked in choppy broken English.

“Hey man, I don’t speak the lingo, but she looks like she needs help man.” I stammered without making eye contact. This was no time to try to establish who was top dog. You know the one about discretion being the better part of valor, well I intentionally practiced it this time.

“Move on and stop interfering. They will take good care of Miss Teresa, I know them personally Gringo. Move on.” Fed number two said, giving me a shove in the general direction of Mexico.

“Sorry babe,” I shouted back over my shoulder, preferring not to see the look in her eyes as I set off leaving her to her fate.

Now I know that some would say I let the maiden in distress down, but you would be wrong. I had no intentions of letting it go. I just wanted to choose my time and my place. The two knives were not my only weapons, but I was far from being prepared to take on the Mexican Army in broad daylight on a public bridge. Sorry, suicide is not in my nature.

Reaching the other side of the bridge I took up a position that allowed me to watch who came out. The next thing was to offer one of the many street urchins passing by an American dollar for his one-size-fits-all wide-brimmed baseball cap. In the end, it cost me two American dollars, I also stuffed my jacket in my gym bag. Shortly the four men and Teresa emerged just as a large late-model Mercedes Benz limo pulled to the curb. Watching it move I discovered it was bulletproofed. The most obvious sign of the treatment is the 3 inches thick Plexiglas that replaces the windows. Even with the adjustable air shocks, it wallows like a dog. Weight is weight folks.

While they were busy loading everything up, and by this time two more men and another girl had shown up, I was busy choosing my TJ Taxi. Choosing the last one in line I opened the front passenger door and slip by the meter flag.

“Hey, you can’t be up here.” He started.

“You see this,” I said handing him two twenties, “that says I can?” I waited.

“It’s going to take more than that to get me to ignore the law Yankee.” He sneered.

“Now we’re talking. How much to hire you and your car for the day Jon Mandoza.” I said reading his name off the taxi license posted on the visor.

“At least a hundred Gringo.” He sneered again.

I took out two hundreds. I gave him one and tore the other in half and handed him one half, but keeping my half.

“Jon I need you to follow that car up there. I need to find out where it’s going. If you do I’ll give you the other half, maybe even a bonus.” I explained.

“You some kind of Mike Hammer or Rockford freak or something Gringo?” He laughed.

“The names Harry, and part of that money is for you not to ask those kinds of embarrassing questions and forget all this ever happened when I leave Jon.” I laughed.

“I’m your man. Twenty years on this street and you’re the first, Hell the only Crazy Gringo, that ever said, “follow that car”. What the Hell, let’s do it, Crazy Harry.” He broke up laughing too.

“And Jon you might want to, let’s say, conceal the identity of your cab.” I prompted him.

He looked at me for a moment, said “that serious!” Under his breath and removed several pieces of black tape stuck on the dash and got out for a minute. When he came back I had no doubt the visible numbers on his cab were now altered. Those pieces of tape were why I had hired him in the first place.

Several miles outside the city the car we were following pulled into an enclosed estate. Large high white stucco walls several feet thick with razor wire and broken glass on top. They even had a gate system, concealed tank traps, and if I wasn’t terribly mistaken Claymore mines at waist level. Whatever this place was it was a veritable fortress. Having seen all that I could see, and willing to concede there was nothing else I could do here alone, I had Jon drive me back into town. I gave him the other half and another to boot and had him give me his cell number. I explained that we might need him again.

Harry’s vacation

Harry’s vacation, AKA escape was certainly short-lived, I laughed to myself as I worked. I’m Ann, Queen Bee of the entire Hive. He would never know that we had followed him, through his implants, the entire time. We were never more than a minute away at any one time. Always with one of his faithful Girls on overwatch all the time. Harry was right about the cameras, we were tapped into them when he had his altercation with the thugs over the girl.

Worried that he was going to bite off more than he could chew I had scrambled the B Team to get down there and cover him. Maybe I should say B Pod, ha, ha. B Pod was Brenda, Bee, Betty, Beth, and Bertha, some of the originals. All the original Pods were identical to each other. They had been complaining a lot that they didn’t get used as much as some of the other Girls. Maybe this assignment would satisfy them.

We already knew who the muscle was and who they worked for, but nothing about the two girls. True over here in AE3 we didn’t have the resources to draw on, but none of our contacts, including the Organization of Assassins knew anything about this group. The property was owned by a trust, that was owned by another trust, making it virtually impossible to track down who actually owned it. On the other hand, we were able to hack, well Robbie was anyway, into their computer records and discover who they are.

The main thing this group of mad scientist and evil doctors were into was drug research. You would think that a cocaine drug cartel making billions would be satisfied, but they had been losing ground to some of the more exotic designer drugs and recently a resurgence in heroin had taken a big plug out of their profit margin. So ten years ago one of their more farsighted leaders hired this group and set them up here close to the American border to study the problem and develop their own competitive products.

Leading the scientists was Hugo L. Black, a biochemist of some renown in the production of speed and meth. Thanks mainly to his hard work and diligent research the sudafedrines are now restricted and we have “shack-and-bake meth labs” in the trunks of abandoned cars. Leading the team for the doctors was Mary Jane Austin a psychiatrist from Austin, Texas. A psychiatrist of some renown in some circles. Among other things, she lost her medical license for running a clinic that turned obstinate wives and problematic children into more easily managed individuals for the right price. Through drugs, therapy, and surgical procedures she could turn that problem into a passive compliant vegetable.

Most people think that a lobotomy leaves an ugly scar, it doesn’t. Handled right the client/victim doesn’t even realize what has been done to them. A thin flexible wire is run around the eyeball and through the occipital cavity, well eye socket anyway, up into the frontal lobe of the brain, directly into the cerebral cortex. In the old days, it was a guessing game where you were sticking the wire. Today, with the proper scans in real time, you know exactly what gray matter your destroying and presto you have a tractable woman.

Doctor Jane got very, very good at delivering what the client wanted. Her motto was, a paying customer was always right about what a client needed. Between the drugs, the surgery, and the “Shock Treatments”, otherwise known as electroconvulsive therapy, Jane could deliver anything you wanted within reason.

As with many other things through “Success Kills”. All Jane’s customers were affluent super rich yuppies, they had to be because they were the only ones that could afford her services. Naturally, as was inevitable really in these cases, some of Jane’s customers got into trouble with the law, and naturally, as was inevitable too, they gave up Jane to reduce their own sentence.

The first to come after her were the Federal prosecutors with whom she was able to make a deal with. Jane did really good work and the prosecutors knew it. Being generally ruthless assholes and morally corrupt individuals anyway, all the prosecutors had minor youthful indiscretions in their pasts that they would like to have magically removed with a wish.

Problems like the wife that was too tired for sex and kept threatening the Assistant Attorney General with divorce, and also threatening to publish the ruinous scandal of his affair with her sister years ago. All of a sudden, after a short visit to the Clinic, she becomes an attentive adoring lover that no longer objected to her single younger sister moving in with them. Hell Jane could even fix the sister if necessary.

Jane was flexible, she was even able to make a deal with the first two or three women AAG’s they sent after her, but finally, her luck ran out. Finally, there were more problems than she could handle, mainly they wouldn’t stay bought. They were always wanting something else changed in their favorite toy. There is no honor among thieves, and blackmail doesn’t work on the people that are enforcing the law. There’s this little thing called “Sovern Immunity” that protects all these people from prosecution. So now Jane and the other assorted experts in their fields were down here in Mexico hiding from questionable American justice, developing designer drugs for the Cartel. Well, really seven of the major Cartels anyway.