DC - Chapter 24

   "I still can't believe this."

   "Well, you're running the battery dead watching the video. You kinda have to believe it, at this point, don't you?"

   "Honestly, I was budgeting way more time to devote to this whole… testing phase."

   "What was your original plan?"

   "Well, it was going to be in phases."

   "Ooh. Sounds very… technical. Do tell…"

   "Well, phase one, was going to be locating and purchasing, said chemical."    

   "Yes. I remember phase one. Your brilliant plan, was for us to go tromping around all the gay dance clubs, until we scored. What amount of time were you budgeting for phase one?"

   "Oh. All day at least, I was honestly going to be happy to find it within a week, at the outside."

   "Thank you for flying Merry airlines. If you need to make a purchase before we land, please feel free to try out the Merry phone shopping network."

   "Phase two, was going to be experimenting with dosage and time intervals, to get used to the effects and some rough predictions going."

   "Time budget, dear?"

   "Oh, Merry… I had that figured for a couple days at the very least, again, a week at the outside."

   "Yeah. That didn't take long either."

   "Now… phase three? Was going to have been using the dosage level, and time interval information… to begin to try to get to the… let's call it the information extraction."

   "Ooh. I love it when you get so technical. Extraction. Let me guess, another week?"

   "Yeah. You steamrolled right over that one, too."

   "So… what was phase four going to be? There's always four phases, right? I should have that one off in, oh, another five fucking minutes…"

   "Yeah. Based on the trend I'm noticing…"

   "Phase four, naturally another week, right?"

   "Oh Merry, science takes time and effort… definitely another week, at least."

   "Phase four is…"

   "Phase four was going to collate all the phases into one. You see, this stuff is passed by the human body fairly quickly. Unfortunately, everyone's weight, body fat, metabolism rate… all different. I wanted to come up with some… rough estimations of weight and perceived fitness of the subject, that one dose of X drops administered at once, would produce the information extraction."

   "You said this stuff isn't really dangerous, right? A few extra drops, worst was you just take a short nap?"

   "Yeah, working by drops, a potentially lethal dose is measured in tens of milliliters… I mean it's not coffee creamer safe, by any stretch of the imagination, but… instead of thinking how many creamers, think how many drops…"

   "Oh, fuck this. Sit!"

   Panic sat in his now seemingly designated lab rat chair.

   Merry counted four drink cups. Pointed out that each had one drop. Making four drops. Safe dose. Panic agreed with her estimation.

   "Now, one drop? Won't do jack shit. We need at least two…"

   Merry poured the contents of one drink cup into another. Put it aside, and pointed and said "two".

   "Now, two drops only got you to say you had a slight pleasant feeling. Nice warm thing, you said. We need at least three, at the very least…"

   Merry poured another one drink cup into a remaining one drink cup. Put it next the the "two" cup, and pointed and said…

   "Two, plus two… is four."

   "Yeah, four was where I finally babbled and you got me sleepwalking and sleep-talking."

   There was one drink cup left, with one more drop in it. She put it with the others.

   "Two, plus two, plus one… is five."

   "Five, is a higher dose than was required to perform the extraction procedure, dear. Also? the time between drops, was lowering a portion of the previous drop, and every other previous drop."

   "Yeah. Whatever. Five is perfectly safe, right?"

   "Sure."

   "Well… I'm in charge. We're trying five, at once. See what happens. Here… pick a new secret code for me to… perform the extraction."

   Panic turned and hid his entry. Handed it back, screen locked.

   "Head back… open…"

   She pinched his nose firmly, and poured and counted as she went.

   "Two… four… five. Swallow… I'm not going through all the bullshit this time. Let me know when you feel the warmth the first time."

   "Okay…"

   Merry just stood around, paced back and forth. Now and again she stopped and peered into his eyes. Smiled and went back to standing and pacing. She was putting her hands on his shoulders, standing behind him, when he announced he was getting warm. Maybe two minutes later, he said it was the point like before, where he had the loose-goose feeling.

   When he giggled, Merry started standing and pacing again, pausing to pick his face up and peer at it, studying his eyes, wagging his head back and forth by the chin.

   "Not… yet."

   Panic chuckled as he looked with a furrowed brow around him at the room. Up into Merry's peering face, studying his. Merry pronounced…

   "Not… quite yet… getting there…"

   Merry waited impatiently another minute, then chin grabbed his face, and examined his eyes some more…

   "Ah… yeah, we're close…"

   "Where… is close to?"

   "We're close, sweetie… hey? I need to make a phone call… make your phone work for me…"

   Panic just held his hand out for the phone.

   "Oh… just tell me the number, dear. I need to unlock your phone to make the call…"

   "Don't… unlock…"

   "It's fine, honey… just tell me the code, so I don't unlock it… okay?"

   "Oh. Right. One… four… eight… eight… but you have to press unlock… so you can't unlock it…"

   Merry had the phone unlocked in seconds, and naturally started recording another video. She spoke right into the phone.

   "Science is so hard… four weeks? For four phases? My ass! Two hours to score the shit, not even two more hours to finish phase four… now, moving right along to the fun portion of this test…"

   She now stood the phone up on a nightstand, pointed right at them…

   "Okay. Hey… let's stand up… come on… stand up? Good boy… give mommy the chair… that's a good boy. Now, I want you to lick my bum, okay? Can you lick mommy's bum? Yeah… that's good… you, just keep licking mommy's bum, okay? Yeah…"

   Merry had leaned over the back of the chair he had given up, which leaned her face into the other cell phone propped up on a nearby handy dresser top.

   It would have a close up of her triumphant and smirking face, announcing proudly…

   "Four weeks, my ass! now… you keep licking mommy's bum… till the drops wears off… that's a good boy… ha ha ha! Oh… yeah…"

   After a little while, Merry was laughing, first into one phone recording as she shut that one off, then the same into the next one.

   She finished, by taking Panic by the hand and walking him over to the bed, and telling him to lay down. He did. She laid down next to him, and waited for him to start looking around, wondering how he got onto the bed. It took a little while, but it wasn't forever.

   "Eh, not too shabby, if I do say so my damn self. Since this is all scientific and all, I decided we needed two recordings. My phone is one of them, and your unlocked phone is the other recording, like before. Here… you can watch them both, dear. You tell me, if I cut some time off of your project or not…"

   Panic started watching the first phone video, with his trademark clinical detachment he reserved for when he was studying anything.

   "Hmm… you know, you're right, hun… you being sober, administering the test… you really got a thing down quick, where you're… just kinda watching the look on the eyes and face, and you already know when its coming…"

   "Yeah. You don't have to worry, I was really scientific about this last test. Keep watching. I make a brilliant summation at the end…"

   Merry had already lit up a joint, and was giggling and chuckling at her boyfriend's all but panic stricken face, as he just shook his head at her "end" performance.

   "Oh. Honey… that's so professional…"

   "Isn't it? Here… suck…"

   She held the joint out for him to hit it, then told him to take another one, then took it back. Allowing him to keep watching the first video.

   "And to think, I've been wasting all my considerable scientific talents, in that steakhouse these last several years. Now, what would my title be? I gotta get… I don't know… business cards made up, or something. What do you think? Does 'science girl' sound like professional enough of a title?"

   He grabbed the joint by himself as he was done watching her scientific video she had made.

   "Either science girl, or… I'm starting to think 'porn star', judging by your little performance…"

   "Ooh. You starting to get a little bit turned on watching, huh?"

   "Well… yeah. I guess so."

   "Good. There's another one. I used my phone, and your phone after I unlocked it. Scientifically? That proves the, um, extraction was successful."

   "I can't wait…"

   He watched the second video, as they smoked the joint down and she tossed it in the ashtray.

   Merry laughed heartily, grabbing her midsection, then bicycled her legs and pumped her fists in peals of laughter. Panic was just shaking his head in amazement.

   Merry couldn't stop laughing as she repeated her catch phrase, which was of course, "four weeks, my ass!"

   Panic had to admit it was funny.

   "See honey, it's funny, because I said four weeks… my ass… get it?"

   "Yes, science girl… I got it."

   "Good. Um, is there a phase five planned? I have another five minutes handy, I could just… bang that video out next, huh?"

   "Funny you mention that, hun…"

   "Why?"

   "Well… you know how we… well, you… are making jokes about four weeks of 'research' I had planned, you turned it into 4 hours of fun, flat out?"

   "Yeah… oh, don't feel bad Panic… your plan was workable. We might have scored in one day, another couple days for the others… heck, you could have been making a 'four days' joke in your video. We got lucky… well, judging by me getting my bum licked? I'm the one who got lucky, but…"

   "Well, in private here only… I was talking about my… concerns, about how the red tape at the Hoover building is going to fuck everything up?"

   "Yeah…"

   "Well, yet another area of the feeb fucking up program, is… they initiated a lab study overview of… you know, this chemical… as it relates to the project, which we both know by now is a case…"

   "A lab study? Seriously? I don't even wanna think how long that's gonna take…"

   "Yeah. Tell me about it. The more 'resources' get 'poured' into this case me and Speedy whipped up in no time flat, all things considered? The longer and longer the time projections are growing. It's getting ridiculous."

   "Well, it's probably shit they need for court…"

   "Yeah, I know… I was thinking we could either arrest or kill the devil? Then? You can make all the lab reports you feel like, at your leisure, while he's either rotting in the ground, or, rotting in a jail cell."

   "You make it sound like… a boardroom meeting."

   "There's like… budget meetings and shit… it gets fucking ridiculous. There's a room full of people, making little memos and reports and presentations… discussing it periodically, what the PR ramifications are, and how that should be handled."

   "Not one person down at the Hoover building, thinks job number one should be… um… finding and laying hands on this motherfucker first? The rest comes later?"

   "One? That would be me, I guess. Speedy is on my side, but, he 'understands' how it all… works… which kind of renders him impotent on the subject."

   "What can you even do, Panic? It's the federal government, what did you expect."

   "Aw, the hell of it is… that if I had known this was going to happen? We had an up front informal meeting. Man, the fucking guy that I think is the best choice for matching the witness sketches to a real life face of the devil? Fuck me in the ass, I was sitting right there with him! All day, then all night at dinner! Watched him drive back home, down south, states away."

   "Call him?"

   "I can't. He's basically 'Speedy', but, he's Speedy from a southern state."

   "Another state policeman?"

   "Yeah…"

   "One state policeman, calling the other state policeman… get him the sketch and tell him to start nosing around…"

   "Naturally, it's not that simple. No one has his phone number. Well, except for the senior agent looking to be in charge of all this fiasco. He's the number one… red tape maker… although it's not really his fault, it's the structure of the whole organization that creates it, really… but, he's the only one has the guy's number, and a relationship with him."

   "Oh, don't beat yourself up over this. I see where you're getting to… you were there with him day one, if you had known, you could have…"

   "Exactly, science girl. Exactly. I mean, If I had only known? I had my chance right there. Couple more missed chances are gone by, this is another whole year."

   "Ha. I'm science girl… I just turned 4 weeks of research, into 4 hours of fun. With, I might add, the added bonus of a butt licking porn clip. That's got to count for something, you know."

   "Okay. What's with you, and the butt licking."

   "Truth? Overheard one of the new girls, bragging to another of the new girls… her boyfriend was drunk and came over for a booty call, and she got him to lick her butt."

   "Oh great. So, now… you're gonna go to the girls locker room at work, and make sure everyone knows I ate candy out of your butt."

   Merry laughed a bit…

   "Okay, for the record? I only get stuff from the girls locker room as you put it, I don't go back and share details. When I talk about 'act X', its always in the generic sense, meaning no one knows who or when I did what I might have bragged about. I'm very discrete that way. Why are you so ashamed of it? You should have seen your face turning red when I showed you your porn clip of you doing it, without candy! Oh, it was priceless."

   "God, I wish I could get science girl half as interested in speeding this case up, as she is in… getting her butt licked tonight."

   "We go through a version of this at work, you know. Granted, its not as big and bad a problem as at your precious Hoover building. Maybe the idea is the same though. See, we go through all this shit, with computer inventory. The computer says this many, why aren't there this many. I walk over and just count the fucking things."

   "God, you're beautiful… makes me wish this were helping…"

   "Well, the point is, I know you don't have an inventory problem. The point is… when you have a big, complicated system? Yeah, it's a hairy beast, I'll grant you that… but? When its big and complicated enough? No one notices when you just walk over… pick up a piece of paper… and walk over and drop it there. Boom! Its like when I count stuff? I'm… cheating, but, the system is so big and complicated, no one notices."

   "What would you do?"

   "Fuck me, science girl can not help you here, trust me. There is no love lost between me, and anyone in that Hoover building. I walk in there? Someone will recognize me, and set me on fire…"

   "Ha, what would you do if you got in, science girl?"

   "Huh… probably put… five or six drops in some assholes coffee… grab his phone… have a little… fun with it… you know, all of a sudden the 'senior agent' just threatened the president's life, and emailed the white house a butt-licking video… all came right out of his phone."

   Panic was enjoying the warm and relaxed feeling simply washing over him from the joint he and Merry had just shared. Panic was also enjoying the warm and relaxed feeling simply washing over him from laying next to Merry. She was smiling at him, and running her foot up and down his leg, eyeing him up, smirking. Merry could easily guess either of these pleasures he was enjoying at the moment.

   Panic was also for some odd reason, suddenly lost in space. It wasn't the joint's effects making him into a temporary space cadet, and it wasn't Merry that had him daydreaming… though any onlooker would have likely been fooled into one, the other, or more likely both.

   No, Panic was calculating. A sudden idea had washed over him. He had internally giggled at the idea, as a joke. But, like any seed of an idea, it germinated. It took root. It grew.

   "Hey… are you okay?"

   Panic suddenly snapped back into the real world.

   "Sorry. I was… thinking."

   "Do you… want time to think?"

   Merry continued rubbing her foot idly up and down his leg slowly.

   Panic smiled…

   "Nope. I'm all done thinking…"

   "What are you smiling like that about?

   "Uh, I'm just thinking how you just now gave me a great idea. Ideas can just come out of nowhere, like that one just did."

   "What, my inventory idea?"

   "It… was nothing you actually said. You said A… I thought of B… then C… then D… next thing you know? I'm off in outer space thinking, and I come up with Z. Now… my plan Z? Is not recognizable from your plan A you mentioned. But… all the same… I feel compelled to thank you for giving me such a great idea…"

   "Ooh. I like the sound of that… what do I get as a reward? Hm?"

   "What does science girl want, as a reward, for her… contributions to science?"

   Merry rolled over to end up laying right up against him, and whispered in his ear, ostensibly with what she wanted as a reward.

   "Seriously?"

   She smiled at him. Shaking her head yes, running her tan index finger down his chest, still rubbing her foot up and down his lower leg.

   "Okay. You earned it."

   "Really? You'll do it?"

   "Yeah. Quick shower. If science girl is clean, I'll do it."

   Panic smiled, and they both went and got into the shower. After turning the TV up loud.