A Change Could Do You Good, Part XII: Wall Cloud
by Flashpoint
"Return! Jake, return!"
Andy had the wind knocked out of him as Jake toppled forward with a groan. He'd been at the wares again in the past three days, and his ball-gut now drove his weight up to a hefty 332 pounds. Of course, a good deal was also muscle, due to not only formulae that specifically increased his muscle and bone density but also Jake's intense powerlifting over the past two years. "Please," Jake said, nearly driving Andy's own 480-pound body to its knees. Jake was a dead weight. Staring over Andy's shoulder, practically drooling in the midst of a body seizure, the words burst out. "Holy crap, the fucking wing just exploded. Annoura please don't be dead. The blue and grey girl. Dad, please don't hate me! My hands." Oh, no, oh, no, please Jake, Andy was pleading silently, please don't remember. Please. Not yet. Not like this. He made a mental effort to ignore the feel of Jake's skin and his close proximity, driving the electricity in his huge body into overdrive. The solid mass, despite being rather bulky, had an incredible solid feel to it that... He grimaced, trying to guide Jake toward the couch and not fully succeeding; they were too far away. Jake was very nearly being pushed toward insanity through his own psychosis and here he was thinking about the man's physical attributes. There *were* priorities.
Jake, once situated, was shaking and sputtering, but seemed calmer. He babbled but it slowed with time, his breathing slowing to a regular pace and his eyes fluttering closed. Andy, his own breathing like a bellows, watched very carefully for Jake to sleep. Or at least lay calmly. Using the back of the chair, he brought himself upright, not sure he wouldn't go right back down again. No, no, no! He commanded Jake silently. You will not remember! He nearly spat in frustration. He'd given that command twelve times, among others, and Jake had very nearly gone conscious with his resistance. He cursed the Boss, wherever he was. The man had disappeared days ago, abandoning everything in the middle of where it was, no matter how small or large. He had just... vanished. And Vincent was no help. Oh, yes, that reminded him. "Vincent!" he called out to the air.
"This is Vital Inf…" the voice began, but Andy had no patience. "Can that crap!" he yelled. "How is Jake? Tell me *everything*! I know you know, damn you! Tell me!" So much for the rather complacent young kid that had walked in a few months ago. An adult man now stood in the place where the kid Andy had been.
"Andy, relax. I was watching the whole time." No shit, Sherlock, Andy thought maliciously. He hoped that the expression on his face conveyed everything. "If there'd been any real emergency I would have had paramedics here already. His vitals, excepting brain activity, never reached a critical stage, no matter how it looked. He was in no danger."
Andy couldn't believe he was hearing this. "No danger. No danger! It's his brain activity that I was worried about! Don't be dense. We both know you're not." Andy, unlike the rest of the household, did not view Vincent as the scientific marvel of the future. He'd been - and was - naturally leery of a non-human that could think. It wasn't natural. "And what about me? What if he'd broken my arm just then? I suppose you don't consider that *dangerous*!"
"If that had happened," Vincent said in the patient voice he usually adopted for Andy, "it would have been so fast that even if a paramedic had stood at your side he wouldn't have been able to stop it. Stop being anal. You damn well know I'm right."
The worst part was that Vincent didn't have the mind of a piece of equipment. He had a human mind, artificially duplicated from an already existing adult. If you asked it, it would say that it was a person and it would be right. This made it the worst thing for Andy because ultimately he had to accept that it *was* a person and therefore had to give credence to what it said. It galled him to no end.
"All right," he conceded, his tone only less irritated than before, "I admit it. But can you understand why I'm concerned? Can you understand why I'm trying to protect him? Can you feel?" Too late, Andy bit his tongue. That was the first time he had voiced to anyone his feelings for Jake, and it was to entirely the wrong... person.
"So that's it," Vincent said in a satisfied tone. "I knew it. You think you've been so clever hiding it when everyone who's here sees you following him like a puppy. Do you think *I* haven't seen? I see everything that happens in this building. I knew that you care about him. I didn't realize that you were in *love* with him!"
Andy very nearly went into panic mode. He very quickly waddled toward a sturdier chair. Oh no. Oh no. No. It was bad enough that Jake didn't love him back, but for everybody to *know*...! He really had hoped and even had half believed that it didn't show, but obviously it did. Now some of the comments from the bar patrons, aside from Fatima of course, took on different meaning. Jake had had his blind spot, but so had Andy.
"I'm sorry," Vincent said, after a moment. His voice wasn't patient or confrontational. It was very contrite. Contrite and... tired. "I didn't mean to laugh at that or to make you feel like it's wrong. I know what it's like." It had a very sad laugh sound to it. Andy felt his resentment dissolving in shock. Could this... thing... really know what it was like? "You see, my human 'father' - the one that loaned his mind to create me - was in love with someone at the time. He'd sort of lied when he allowed them to copy a matrix for me. He would never have been allowed to do it if Troy had known, and if that had happened, the prize went out the window. Vince is a good man, but he was desperate. Very desperate. I don't hold it against him. I exist."
Andy made a quick check of Jake again. He'd gotten so engrossed in the ongoing story that he'd gotten distracted. There was no change. "Um, Vincent..." he said, trying to interject, but got no chance.
"Well, his name is Marion King. Not what he prefers to go by, obviously. He'd never liked it and I certainly don't blame him. Well, my dad talked his way through and around all the mental examinations and carefully made his replies neutral. What a performance. And then the day came and my rather plain existence suddenly became a lot more... real. You don't know what it's like to go from that to this, and I remember all of it." Andy couldn't get a word in edgewise, no matter what he did. "So he was in love, but... well, let's not talk about that. Suffice to say, bittersweet romance, bring in the Greeks in half-masks. So when he got the opportunity to have enough money to live on the rest of his life, he went for it. I just wish he hadn't been in love. That's all I wish."
After an interminable time - ten seconds - Andy finally spat out, "Are you through?" Oh, to have a body to strangle. "While you've been waxing poetic, Jake has been laying there suffering!"
"What? Oh, of course he hasn't, you twit. If he'd been in any real danger you both would be out of there by now. I wasn't going to let my soliloquy take precedence."
"I wonder who my patron saint is," Andy said to no one in particular. "What *can* I do for him? There has to be something."
"Not really. He just has to sleep it off now. He's already entering REM." Vincent would have frowned if he could. Jake's REM shouldn't have come up this quickly or been so violently active. It was unusual but not serious... yet. Vincent knew, however, better than to voice any of these thoughts. "In fact, I think you have a bar to open. It's Wednesday. You won't have more than four or five all night."
Andy very nearly came unglued. "A bar?! You expect me to run a bar, by myself, while Jake lays back here unattended?! I don't believe you!" He would have jumped out of the chair if moving his bulk hadn't been so hindering.
"Andy, there is nothing you can do. I can do more by watching him than you can. I have a human mind, Andy, but I am not one. I'm much faster and more effective. And I am not trying to sound superior. I despise that attitude. It's a simple fact. Can you accept *that*?" The voice wasn't hard or even exceptionally confrontational in tone, just definite.
It was that definite tone that convinced Andy. Vincent was right. Andy had to go on and do what he had to do and maintain a semblance of normalcy. If normalcy were interrupted, people would ask questions that had no easy answers, and The Boss had forbidden that. All to protect Jake. Andy was unsure that it wasn't backwards.
Maybe normalcy was what Andy needed too. He wished he knew exactly what that was.
"All right," he muttered, wishing he didn't feel like he was running away, "I'll go and make house with the customers. I don't like it, but I'll do it." He had no reason to be here. Being here just to be here wasn't enough. After a last check of Jake and seeing no change, he turned toward the door back to the bar. As he opened it, however, he hesitated a second and said, "By the way, whatever happened with your, uh, dad and Marion King? Where's Marion King now?"
There was a long, long pause. "He's... somewhere else now." Andy elected to leave it at that. From the tone, there was an unhappy story there.
It was three hours later when Andy was starting to wonder if he'd made a mistake, despite the fact that he'd gone back in every fifteen minutes to check, with no change. Vincent had increasingly caustic things to say every time he did, so eventually he stayed away. There truly was nothing he could do as long as Jake was semiconscious.
A bar. Andy's mouth twisted in distaste as he surveyed the beer-stained counters, the askew stools, pool tables. This was no bar. This was a cover. It always had been. What better place to hide someone in plain sight than in the most conspicuous and therefore least obvious place possible? And Jake needed to be hidden, if and until he remembered Mark. And the Light of Heaven shine on us all when he did.
Yes, it was Wednesday, and therefore guaranteed to be a slow night. In the context of being on hand for Jake this was a good thing, and in the context of leaving Andy alone with his thoughts a bad thing. Very bad.
Jake didn't realize the power he had over the Boss. The roles of Master and slave for them were interchangeable. The Master orders the slave, but the slave orders the Master in the sense that the Master must attend the slave in order to control. Even the Boss had made this observation on a few occasions.
Andy was operating on... autopilot was hardly the most tactful way to put it, all things considered, but the most accurate. He cleaned, served drinks, and greeted the same guys sitting in the same stools and drinking the same drinks... and this was the same thing he thought all the time over and over, he realized with chagrin. He made an idle wish that things would change before he realized that his wish was already being granted with a vengeance. Slinging a small bar towel over his shoulder, making a damp spot on his 5XL t-shirt ("Feed Me!" in 5-inch high letters), he tried very hard not to think anything.
Fortunately, there were enough customers impatiently lined up waiting for his service - four - that he was at least distracted for a bit. He served ordinary drinks to those in need of a touch of inebriation, weight gain formula to one in need of a certain size, and a couple of specialty drinks that were kept in stock for those few customers into those particular changes, indefinite or temporary. There were a number of the latter tonight. The last one in line was particularly striking.
The man was simply colossal in weight, all of it. The man's belly fat was so ponderous and thick and hung down so far, that it was tucked into the waistband of his 76-inch (? More?) sweat pants and reached nearly to his knees. He was distinctly gourd-shaped. However, due to some kind of genetic anomaly, once he was gone into superchub weight, it had all settled downward, leaving relatively negligible fat deposits from the neck up. Andy had to check closely, but the man hadn't had the fat liposuctioned out and redeposited where it would make him look all the more humongous. Andy knew enough stories of the groups of pretentious queens who were typical status-hungry gays that had taken to having weight-gain the ultimate status symbol, the heavier the better. It was a trend that had erupted in the gay community a few decades ago right after AIDS had become a full pandemic, no doubt a community-wide fear reaction to signs of wasting, swinging the pendulum of body style in a manner not seen since the paintings of Paul Rubens. Suddenly 'fun fat' went from a few extra pounds to look 'healthy' to, in the opinion of one rather caustic reviewer, 'a grossly obese pile of lard.' Clothing manufacturers, always inclined to bend to the gay community's influence on their designing habits, had not been pleased.
"Wow!" Andy said involuntarily, taking in the sheer size of the man, then looked abashed. "Sorry. I don't mean to stare. I'm sure you get enough of that as it is." Andy very nearly bit his tongue. The guys who came here didn't need reminders that in most of the world they *were* freaks. Here, they were the norm.
The man gave a surprised look and turned (ponderously) to exchange looks with the man behind him, a very handsome older man, possibly in his 60s but very well preserved and nicely built. He seemed vaguely familiar for some reason. He then looked back at Andy and said, "I like looking like a freak, Andy. You know that." Andy looked startled, glancing between the two of them. Did he know them? "You don't recognize me, do you?" Andy's blinking silence said no. The man gave a little sigh. "Well, I guess I have put on a little weight since then. Jason?"
Andy's jaw dropped in utter shock. The boy who had gone from gym bunny to buffet patron? Impossible! He then chided himself... what an incredibly stupid thing to think in a place like this. Of course it was possible. But...? "You've, ah, grown a bit since then."
He certainly had. The last time Andy had seen the man now in front of him, he'd been considerably smaller, and that was *after* the weight gain last time. Not six or seven months, like it might take to put on such an incredible amount of weight - if then - but seven *days*. Andy was sure that Jake hadn't contributed to this... but given Jake's mental state, or lack thereof, anything was possible. "What...?" He wasn't even sure what he wanted to ask. The rotund man turned and exchanged amused glances with the man behind him, an older, rather refined daddy type that Andy suddenly recognized. Of course. The two had been in leather the last time he'd seen them. "Daddy Alan?"
"Nice to see you recognize two good customers, Andy," the man said dryly. "Just Alan tonight. Role play is nice, but living 24/7 like that is too high maintenance. Much like Jason." Jason gave him a look but said nothing. "What does a man have to do to get a drink around here?"
Andy jumped, his mass quivering in response. "Oh! Yes! Of course! I'm sorry, I've... had a lot on my mind." Jake. "What do you want, Dillon, Morovec Gold, Kevell's Draft?" All the usual, mass-marketed prepackaged swill from 'the great breweries of the Midwest.'
Alan had sidled his way around his enormous boy and approached the bar. There was a strange, almost hesitant look on his face. "Actually... I was wondering if you had any Kilos lying around." Jason was looking at the floor, his face carefully neutral.
Andy blinked. "Uh... the Kilos are for weight gain."
Alan's face was a blend of slight red tinge and a look that Andy was telling him the desert was dry. "That's why I want to try one," he said in an overly patient tone.
Andy suddenly noticed a strange tension between them. It wasn't confrontational, or at least Andy didn't think it was, but... Perhaps it wasn't his business, which they would tell him immediately, but... "Why?" No need to ask which night.
Alan stiffened and opened his mouth almost angrily, but before he said anything he hesitated and relaxed. Jason half-raised a hand to put on Alan's arm. "I... suppose you have a right to know, since it's coming from you. Since..." He trailed off and almost looked in Jason's direction. "Things haven't been the same since last week. Maybe... maybe it all happened too fast, or..." Jason looked uncomfortable and Alan not less so.
"I think we all need a sit-down," Andy said, gesturing toward a long line of empty bar stools. Presently he was sitting next to a rather reserved-looking Alan and Jason, neither of whom could quite look at the other.
Noting this, Andy sat down but didn't say anything, just gave a slightly questioning look. Despite being the daddy in their relationship, Alan seemed strangely reticent to say anything, and Jason didn't look too forthcoming either.
Finally Alan said, "The fact of the matter is, I don't know how to deal with all of this. I've been hot for Jase to gain weight since the minute we met but I was fine with the way things were. Now..." He trailed off. Jason dropped his head, looking very hurt, but didn't argue. "I started feeding him the minute we got home that night, and the weight piled on right in front of my eyes, faster than I imagined it would. I didn't know that the, whatever it was, would keep working." It shouldn't have, Andy said to himself. He decided to keep it that way too. Alan continued, "At times this is my wet dream come true, and other times the reality hits home. He's close to 500 pounds now. He can't walk too well and he does nothing but eat and sleep. But I like that." He scrubbed a hand through his hair, an uncharacteristic gesture of frustration. He was actually a rather reserved man. "I... I don't know. It's like... like he's been turning into a different person over the past week and I don't know what." The Daddy façade, just for a moment, crumbled.
Andy gave an unpleasant start, hearing almost word for word the echo of his own thoughts about Jake. For a wild moment he thought they knew about Jake, but discarded the thought. No one *could* know; the Boss and Vincent had both seen to that. Vincent's custom-tailored viruses, such as the one that had eradicated Ted's identity, were delightfully pernicious. On a lesser note, he remembered similar remarks from encouragers who had had their 'creations' run out of control.
It was obvious why they were really there; there was a silent plea for help, and there was nowhere else they could turn. No one else would understand. This was where it had all happened in the first place.
Andy made a quick decision, one that the Boss and Jake both would eviscerate him for if they knew. It wouldn't help him resolve his own issues, but there was something about helping someone else right at the moment… Hesitantly, he said, "I have a suggestion."
He'd expected raised eyebrows, and he was not disappointed, but when he explained his raison d'etre, they agreed readily enough. After a half-hour to themselves debating it, of course. Andy noted with some humor that they did that a lot.
He had no idea why he was doing this, just that it felt right at the time. Fortunately, Jake prepared his formulae well in advance and left it clearly organized and labeled. It was also good that so many men wanted so many different types of transformation.
It was a good thing that it was a Sunday; any other day of the week and what Andy had in mind would have been impractical at best. As it was, the ordinary fluctuation of guests had reduced to Lady Fatima and one other guy, who was currently being regaled by the latest of her fabulous adventures. If worst came to worst, she'd serve any new guys coming in. She'd gained tremendous leeway with both Jake and the Boss with just her charm.
The Trough, as it had unofficially come to be called, was as usual fully stocked, but Andy hadn't expected it to be used this evening, so Andy had to scramble to fill the tables, but presently there was ample food ready, and just as a precaution he left the large refrigerators lining the room unlocked so that they could have ready access. Those two would be in a feeding frenzy until closing.
After running back to the front to check on any new customers - there were none - and another quick check on Jake (with Vincent adding the unsolicited comment "Andrew, I am not going to have a revolving door installed"), he led the bemused Alan and Jason into the room and withdrew back to the front.
Alan sat looking at the two bottles in front of him sweating with condensation. He felt like sweating himself. He'd always been, on some level, an encourager, even before he knew what that was, but never before had he had to face the other end of that deal so personally.
Jason looked at him very seriously before saying anything. "Alan, are you sure you want to do this? You don't have to just for me." His voice was pained. "I still love you, Daddy. We can work everything out." Actually, he wasn't sure about that now. The first days had been heavenly, eating nonstop, watching himself balloon up to inhuman proportions in an inhuman time, but then things went sour after Alan returned. They had fought and fought and fought - something they had *never* done before, ever - over the last few days, the last one being two hours before coming to Dimensions. In fact, it was the reason they decided to come to Dimensions in the first place. They were both still simmering with anger on some level, anger at nothing at all.
Alan jerked his head toward Jason and opened his mouth to say something sharp... and then took hold of himself. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was about to... Yes, Jason, I do have to do this. I love you more than life itself," and he gave a deliberate pause for effect; they were the same words Jason himself had used a week earlier, "and it's time that I understand what you've become." He picked up the first bottle. "It was so easy before. It couldn't happen and that was that. Fantasy was so much fun. Then harsh reality set in and I didn't know what to do with what I suddenly had." And with no further comment, he picked up the large bottle - he handled it awkwardly; it was rather outsized - and downed it in one go.
There was no immediate effect, but the anticipation alone was enough for Jason to start feeling a horny swelling happening somewhere beneath (well, within) his flabby poundage. Much to his chagrin, even though he could feel approximately where on his body it was happening, it was now next to impossible for him to locate it in a search of himself. Well, at least structurally impractical. That was the one downside to his new size: he missed seeing his dick, and it was a rather sizable one too. And forget about stroking it at all either: it was so buried in sheer blubber (there really was no other word for it; he was that dense) that when he was not fully erect, it actually retracted slightly into the pelvic layers and disappeared into a fold. It had been mildly frightening the first time that had happened, almost a day after they had left the bar, when he had spent nearly 20 hours awake in a row, exhausted but unable to stop himself stuffing his face with every food item that they could either pick up on the way home or have delivered. And this had been after spending the rest of the night in the private food room engulfing every single thing left. He hadn't been able to stop or seem to find a point at which he became full, as impossible as it was after a while, when he had literally eaten enough in sheer volume that he could have had a teenager curled up in his expanded stomach. It had stretched with the constant influx, and his metabolism, no longer as fast as it had been, somehow paradoxically worked in overdrive toward converting his intake to an already upward spiraling bulk.
He hadn't been able to believe his body, even seeing it happen. Standing up, what had once been carved and mahogany-hard abs was now an immense round pillow permanently attached to his front. A very heavy pillow. The belly had grown below waist level very quickly, pushing his navel forward and down. Now the bottom of his belly was halfway to his knees and at least a foot beyond his reach without laying back or with outside help. He had first objected to tucking the belly into his pants (once Alan bought him some), until it grew pendulous and heavy enough that he couldn't pick it up to attach pants under it any more. He was getting a crease in an equator right at his middle. He hated that. When he was seated, his belly hung halfway below his knees, approaching the floor and spreading his knees in a wide angle. He hadn't measured his waist recently, another thing that Alan hadn't wanted to do after a while and Jason couldn't physically manage on his own, but he estimated that seated he was nearing 75 inches in circumference.
Alan had been a whirlwind, at first feeding Jason constantly, but soon it became apparent that it was too much work and not as pleasant as he'd thought. It wasn't long before the bickering started. But Jason had already been shoveling in dozens of burgers, pizza after pizza, chocolate cake, every single frozen item in the freezer (including the snow Jason had saved in a container from the last snowfall), and an ocean of doughnuts. When he wasn't eating, he was laying on his back, his bare chest and belly coated with the remains of what he'd eaten, breathing and moaning at the mountain he saw swelling from himself, and practically growing visibly. And then he felt his belly empty at a rapid pace and was back at the table or fridge or just the kitchen floor stuffing his piggy face, far beyond rationality or control. Not that that he had any real problem with that. Except that he outgrew his clothes by 100-plus pounds after only 18 hours and no end as yet in sight.
Alan hadn't been quite prepared for his fantasy of a private superchub around the house having some real, and sometimes uncomfortably harsh, problems attached to it. Such as Jason expanding from 195 lean muscular pounds to nearly 500. And such as Jason having trouble getting around because his strength hadn't had time to increase with the added bulk and he was subject to sheer exhaustion at a very quick pace, which meant that he didn't get up much (except for the bathroom or to refill his plate), which meant that Alan no longer had a boy to do the chores around the house. The eroticism was getting counterbalanced with irritation. Their lives had changed too fast for them to adapt, which they both realized ex post facto. Experience provides the best education, but it's a private school with a high price.
After three days of this, Alan took a day and a half to himself to think, leaving Jason to his own devices for a time. It was during this time that Alan had made this decision, independent of Jason's input, which was not the norm for them. Yes, he was the daddy, but they were first and foremost a couple that made decisions together. Not this time. Alan was at the end of a very short tether. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say.
But when he came back, Jason was suddenly as irritated as Alan with no apparent cause. That was when the arguments began, no quarter asked or given.
There was no immediate effect. In fact, for a very long time - almost a minute - Alan was sure that nothing was going to happen, despite the fact that he had seen it happen less than a week earlier, during which time they tried very hard to look at each other with only limited success. Jason was just as uncomfortable in his own way, albeit turned on; he wasn't sure he wanted to see what he was about to see.
Alan had just about given up when he suddenly gasped, his eyes going wide, and gave an involuntary "oh" sound. He looked down at his lean, heaving middle, a look of shock, dismay, utter incomprehension, relief... neither of them were sure what, on his face, as suddenly he wasn't as lean as he had been. Only slightly, but it was there. And then it was no longer slight.
Jason gave a small double-take when he saw it start, even though he knew it was coming and what it was like. Of course he would. He'd seen this man clothed, naked, in leather, in work clothes, and the man suddenly evolving in front of him was a stranger. Despite being in his early sixties, Alan had avoided the physical fate of a lot of his contemporaries. He was still lean, still fit, and had more energy than most men half his age. That man was disappearing beneath the bulk of a larger man.
His already erect posture was forced back even further by the sudden swelling at his middle. His pants, impeccably pressed and the proper height for dress slacks started riding slowly downward. He'd always prided himself for his 31-inch waist, but it was no longer 31 inches around as a round, tight sphere - small at first but growing rapidly - started inflating beneath his shirt.
Alan was breathing heavily, unable to focus well on Jason or anything else. Was this really what it was like for Jason, this incredible infusion of energy and mass? He looked down in time to see the first button on his shirt pop off as he rounded faster and bigger. He was astounded to realize that the smooth round ball forming itself was starting to hide his entire lap from view. Impossible? How could he have ever assumed anything to be impossible after Jason's change?
Jason was watching his daddy transform before his very eyes, torn between lust and horror, with horror running a close second. Jason had always been the jock, the "ladies' man" when he thought himself straight, the beautiful man that everyone of both sexes desired greatly. And then he met someone completely unlike the boring and trying airheads his own age, not pretty and not young, with a bearing that made Jason fall in line... and within a few months fall in love. And who'd had a secret, a secret fetish that Jason couldn't fulfill but enjoyed role-playing about. Thinking about it, he realized that his source of horror was fear of things never again being the same.
But then, hadn't that already happened?
A low moan arrested his attention again, and he blinked with the changes that he had missed. Sometime during Jason's reverie Alan had downed the second container. "Jason..." he said, breathing heavily and looking wildly into Jason's eyes, but whatever he was trying to say he didn't finish. His hard-learned, stone-hard self-control was disappearing along with his narrow body. He wasn't paying attention to it, but the weight was entirely centered into his middle. Not a single pound was going onto any other part of him. Jason, who in truth was still adjusting to his own immense poundage, found it very strange. He seemed to have a huge bubble swelling in his middle, outsized and completely out of proportion to anything else. His pants were riding farther and farther down, the navel almost perfectly centered in the expanding hemisphere, and his shirt had finally given up entirely and hung open like a framing stage curtain. It certainly was a good enough show for one.
Alan had no way of knowing, not ever having tried it before and having little experience with this place, but what Andy gave him was not like a regular Kilo, if a chemical pseudo-alcohol mimic designed to alter the human body could be called "regular." It was a "crash and burn" variant that Jake had come up with for a couple of insulting twinks who'd come into the bar one time. It was a transitory effect, lasting no more than a few hours, but during that time they learned a valuable lesson about respecting other peoples' bodies and self-images. And, interestingly enough, one of them came back a few weeks later, red-faced, apologetic, and eager to try it again. Life has its funny little twists and turns. But the reason Andy gave it to Alan was for that very reason. The last thing that Alan and Jason needed at this point was another permanent or semi-permanent drastic weight-related change in their lives. Andy had always been sharp on the uptake, and just from what he'd gotten from them, the situation truly was more serious than it appeared on the surface, and it was hardly with the pleasant scent of jasmine. It was more like something rotting, and it was their relationship.
Not a single pound had gone anywhere else on his body. Perhaps this wasn't the best way to experience weight gain for himself, but then again it was just as sudden and just as drastic. He couldn't see it, but his navel had stayed dead center on the immense spheroid of his front, much to Jason's surprise. He'd been half-expecting it to droop downward in the manner of the chests of bodybuilders who'd sampled just a bit too much of the juice. Alan's crotch was entirely hidden by the mass, and Jason suspected that his pants had given up the fight awhile ago as well. The shirt was a lost cause entirely; there was no way that it would be able to surround that mass.
Without preamble, Alan said, "I don't know about you, but I'm hard as a rock right now." He laughed and patted the round expanse he now had. "Not that you can tell." Then, feeling a bit more extensively, he said, "It really is hard. I didn't expect…" He trailed off at Jason's stony silence. "Say something."
Jason blinked. "I'm not sure what. This... this isn't what I was expecting." He rolled his eyes. "Who the hell knows what I was expecting. You didn't get what you expected out of me either, I guess, right?" He rubbed his own flab, not erotically. Not this time. "Daddy, we need to talk about this. We really do."
Alan looked at him very soberly, while unconsciously stroking his middle. What he could now reach of it, at least. "No, we don't, Jason. Not this time." Jason gave a mild start at the reflection of his own thoughts but Alan went right on without noticing. "We've been trying to do that all week long, if you recall." He paused and then added, "When you weren't stuffing your face, that is." Jason colored at that remark, but didn't respond. It was true. "Every time we managed to get a word in to each other, we just started arguing. So, no, we're not going to talk about this." He then stood, a bit unsteadily, like an unsteady sailor on his first trip. When he'd finally at least gotten the semblance of balance, he continued. "We're going to do what we do best, boy. We're going to play."
Andy, who had been surreptitiously watching on the security monitor under the cash register, was already waiting when Alan ponderously made his way back toward the front of the bar. He was having a hell of time figuring out his center of gravity and kept either under- or over-compensating.
There were now only three others in the bar when he reached the front, two of whom, Fatima and her gentleman caller, were in the process of packing up to go. Alan turned bright red as he saw what few patrons there were in the bar, all of them giving him a rather frank appraisal of his new poundage. It was embarrassing, demeaning, and humiliating being checked out that thoroughly... and undeniably arousing.
Andy didn't expect Alan's request but he wasn't surprised by it either. So, while Alan was retrieving what he needed from the trunk of their car Andy helped Jason disrobe; slowly, and with a bit of difficulty, such as helping Jason take off his shoes. It wasn't the first time he and Alan had played in a new venue, but it was certainly the first time with these... strange... circumstances. As he stood impassively watching Andy move his more-than-chubby body as fast as it would go, unconsciously feeling around and in more folds of fat than he had ever given credit for having, he thought about - really thought about - what had been going on. Oh, yes, they'd been arguing... but more of it was Jason's fault than he cared to admit even to himself. There was something he'd been keeping from his Daddy, something very sad and hurtful that had made him rather brittle. And make him want to drown his sorrows in food. The unexpected ballooning effect had been - he grimaced at the cliché that came to mind - just gravy for the potatoes.
Due to a quick decision made in a bar a week ago that changed both of their lives forever, Jason was now feeling more alone than he had ever been in his life. And he'd watched himself driving Alan away with every hurtful remark - and every added pound - and felt like a passenger in his own body, unable to control it. He was no longer sure what Alan thought or felt.
"Boy, are you listening to me?"
Jason jumped - as much as he was able to, of course - opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, "I am humbly sorry, Sir," bowing his head. It was measure of his distraction, and the events of the week, that not only did he very nearly forgot their roles, but also that he hadn't even noticed Alan walking into the room.
Alan had no expression other than a raised eyebrow. "We'll discuss your paying attention later. For right now..." he gestured to the center of the room. Jason obediently went there, noticing for the first time that Andy had quietly vanished.
Jason had half expected Alan to walk in decked out in leather, even knowing that they had shown up in civvies. He had, however, shucked his comically small shirt and while Jason lumbered to the middle of the room he disposed of his pants and shoes as well. He was still having balance problems but was managing well enough. What did surprise Jason, however, was that Alan seemed to have no equipment with him whatsoever. They hadn't loaded the trunk of the car when they left the house, not really expecting to play, but Jason had been sure that there had still been at least two bags in the back from their last play session, which was a very bad thing. He'd shirked off his job to see that toys and equipment weren't left in the trunk, as they were easily damaged by heat and sun and not cheap to replace. Some of them were not.
Jason stood at parade rest, or as near it as he could arrange, waiting silently as Alan silently and slowly walked around him once, twice, thrice, examining him so closely and directly that Jason felt that he'd not only gotten his exact weight guessed correctly but also had his horoscope tabulated and had a car inspection. Finally, however, Alan came to a halt in Jason's field of vision, and said, "What are you thinking?"
Jason blinked and said, truthfully, "I wasn't thinking anything."
Alan nodded. "Good. I want you to think nothing, to feel nothing, to expect nothing. We are here, now, doing what we are doing, and there is nothing else in the world. Do you understand?" Jason was mildly taken aback by all this, but nodded. This was far removed from their usual roles and playtime. Very far. Alan brought his hands up toward Jason's head. He had a soft blindfold in them. "Remember that I love you, Jason." Jason's vision went black.
Alan's hands immediately found Jason's bloated expanse. Gently. There was nothing rough or sharp about the touch. It was soft, firm... and loving. And there was a hint of... Jason would never use this word to Alan's face, but it was uncertainty, and it was plain why. They had been in close quarters for a week, slept in the same bed, been in some very intense feeding sessions, but this was the first time in a week that Alan had actually *touched* him. He hadn't realized until this very moment how much he'd missed it.
Then the touch was replaced with a very sharp, localized pain in the middle of his right love handle. He knew that feeling all too well. A clothespin, and a strong one. The soft, exploring touch, momentarily interrupted, continued. "I love you," came a whisper in Jason's ear. Followed by another clothespin, in the polar opposite position on Jason's left. "I love you," he repeated. Another on his heavily sagging front, near where his deeply indented navel came up for air. "I love you." Another. "I love you."
Jason had done clothespins before, on several occasions, and despite sounding benign it was one of the more intense things that could be done. Especially on someone with little to no body fat to attach the clothespins. On someone with more body fat, well, the intensity level increased exponentially due to the simple fact that the number of clothespins could be greater, and the intensity was multiplicative, not additive. Jason had onlyt been able to do twenty or so.
But now, there was a strange intense energy flowing between them, beyond the already intense flow they normally felt in play. Bliss hit him, uplifted him, enervated him. The points of pain he'd been carefully counting melted into an electric battlefield of sensation. His awareness seemed to detach and become attenuated at the same time.
He felt a tap at his mouth. "Open." Jason obeyed and was startled to feel a sweet, creamy confection slide into his mouth. "Eat." He obeyed, slightly bewildered but not complaining. This was a different turn from their usual play. Once he had finished, Alan repeated the commands, this time with what must have been a piece of apple pie. Then a small sponge cake. All lovingly, slowly, inexorably delivered into the endless maw that he had become, grown to please the man he loved. Their feedings this past week had been fast-paced tests of endurance. In retrospect Jason realized that there hadn't been any intimacy. He had a sudden harsh realization: eating wasn't a scene to him, it was part of who and what he was now. He needed acceptance. If Alan rejected him too...
While Jason was chewing and swallowing, Alan was alternately massaging Jason's huge jiggling mass and adding more clothespins to it. It was a measure of the eroticism of the scene that Jason found himself taking more and more clothespins without any count or concept of limit.
It continued on like this for an endless, timeless period, Alan slowly feeding Jason's sightless maw, adding the stinging, pinching pleasure to his huge body. The energy he felt within built to a fever pitch. "Do you like that?" Alan cooed into Jason's ear, nibbling it softly. So very different from most of their scenes. "Do you like the way I make you feel, boy?"
"Yes, Daddy," Jason said between mouthfuls. It was true, and to someone watching closely enough, self-evident; he'd been fully erect since the moment they started. He was so hard it hurt and every additional clothespin, every bite of food, every touch Alan gave him brought him that much closer to climax.
Then Alan abruptly came to a halt. "Walk with me," he gently commanded, leading Jason forward. Jason obeyed slowly, achingly, his sudden movement after standing immobile for so long bringing nerves that had been made numb by inactivity and compression back to life. He had no idea how many clothespins he had on him, just that he had more than his usual number. Maybe half again as much. He'd lost track some time back.
When Jason was in place, whatever place that was, Alan's hands went to the blindfold. "Close your eyes and keep them closed. The light isn't bright, but your eyes need time to adjust." Jason knew this, of course; it was hardly the first time he'd been blindfolded. But there were certain safety precautions and concerns to be followed in any scene.
Jason had been in the leather scene for several years before he met Alan and had more experience in heavy SM than most men twice his age did. He'd traveled the world over for exotic and intense experiences with many incredibly talented and handsome men, but he'd never met a man who could make him cry. Not until Alan. Alan had, the very first time, given Jason a very simple scene that had brought him to tears. But it wasn't for this that Jason experienced true love for the first time with him. It didn't hurt, of course.
When Jason opened his eyes, his mouth dropped open in stunned amazement. Around his wide, round torso Alan had placed no less than one hundred clothespins over the doughy flesh in a rather intricate design of interlocking arcs. He'd never been able to handle that many before. The sheer intensity of even one clothespin on soft flesh can be quite painful in the right place, and he had a number in tender areas.
He looked in disbelief at Alan, who simply said, "I'm impressed. You've never gone this far before, and we both know what a pain pig you are." His tone was utterly serious; so serious, in fact, that Jason knew he was being made fun of. Alan brought another dessert, a hand-sized strawberry tart, up to Jason's mouth. "Open." Jason obediently did and Alan slid the pastry in. Before he could chew and swallow, however, Alan suddenly mashed his mouth onto Jason's in a deep, passionate, and rather messy open-mouthed kiss. "Give me some too," he said, the two of them sharing the pie between them. Alan abruptly became aware that his own inflated belly was growling. "I think it's time for both of us to eat."
Jason was having a hard time concentrating due to the endorphins and the influx of food at the same time, and it wasn't mixing favorably. "Daddy..." he began, suddenly not feeling well.
With no further ado, Alan abruptly began removing the clothespins in rapid-fire succession, causing Jason to cry out with each group removed. After the period of induced localized pain, the sudden cessation was enough to make him sway, since it was happening over and over. The recoil was almost too much for him, especially after the last was gone and Alan rubbed the offended areas, causing Jason to nearly topple with the intensity. Fortunately, Jason went past nausea. Considering the amount of food he'd eaten, it would have gotten messy. Not the best way to end a scene.
Alan, with effort, brought them both over near to the tables and they sat heavily on the floor. He grunted when he hit the floor with much more force than he would have ordinarily. He was rapidly assimilating the pleasure-pain but it was a precarious balance to pass through to safety. But finally he fully came back to reality, lying on the floor, his blubbery mass quivering in all directions, being held by his own bloated Daddy. "I'm right here, it's all right," Alan was repeating in Jason's ear, stroking him gently and lovingly. "You can come down, you're safe..."
For a long time they lay together, simply being together, when with no preamble Jason started crying. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he kept repeating.
"It's all right, Jason, I've been wrong about a lot of things this week too."
Jason coughed, trying to choke back the tears, and said, "You don't understand. There's something I haven't told you." He looked miserable. "When you were gone the other day, I drove to Richland to see my sister and mother. I needed to see them and explain what had happened to me... I figured that since I haven't seen them in a year that I could plausibly explain the weight. Oh, my explanation was sound all right. I told them it was a thyroid dysfunction and I probably would have to live with it." The tears started flowing again. "They went through the roof. They went over the top with trying to get me to see a specialist to lose weight, what an embarrassment I was to the family now, what would my dad think if he was alive... all the best stuff." He closed his eyes. "I didn't want to tell you. I was so ashamed. They won't even talk to me unless I lose weight!" He buried his face in his hands.
Alan stared at him, appalled. It was bad enough that they didn't like Jason having a lover thirty years older, but to hit him with this too...! Silently he said a prayer that they got what they deserved. Taking Jason's hands away from his face, Alan said, "Jason, the problem is with them, not you. They call it body dysmorphia, I believe, an irrational attachment to a particular body type whether it's practical or not. You like being what you are now." It wasn't a demand, it was a simple statement.
Jason gave a small snort of irony. "That's just it. Yes, I do. I really do. And I know you do. That's... that's the reason I've been... the way I've been. I'm sorry."
Alan settled Jason back into his arms for a moment and said, "I'm sorry too. I've been overreacting too. I've had a hard time reconciling what you were with what you are now. I got a unique perspective by putting on my own weight." He patted his own solid ball-gut. "I've had body dysmorphia too, in my own way. I'm sorry too."
Jason was silent for a long time. "So what do we do now?"
Alan thought about it for a moment, and then said, "I think the first thing we need to do is eat." His middle had just begun rumbling, despite the fact that they'd eaten not long before going to the bar. Disturbing Jason as little as possible, he reached up and grabbed the nearest bowl, full of small peeled potatoes seasoned with a small, aromatic herb he thought was rosemary. "Do you want some more, fatboy?" He slipped a potato into Jason's mouth and one into his own. "I know I do." Smiling, he reached up to the next nearest thing on the table, which was a beautifully decorated pink and white raspberry cake. There seemed to be an inordinate number of desserts, but he had no idea that that was normal for this venue. A much louder growl escaped from his belly, one he decided to eliminate. Maybe Jason wouldn't be the only one who needed to be wheeled out of the room at the end of the night.
It was several hours and many customers later when Alan and Jason finally waddled toward the front, both of them much larger than when Andy had seen them last. He had every reason to believe they'd made a considerable dent in the Trough. Nursing their burgeoning middles, especially Alan but even Jason were spilling out of their overworked clothes. They only took a few moments to thank Andy on their way out the door, with promises to return. They had much more important issues to deal with at home, with which Andy had no argument. He wished he could do more, but he had more than enough... on his plate. He grimaced. All of his analogies seemed to do with food.
It wasn't long after Alan and Jason left that Andy got the warning, and it was a warning he'd never heard before. The heavy driving dance music provided courtesy of Corpus Music (yet another subsidiary of TKI) was momentarily interrupted by the intercom. The problem with that was that there *was* no intercom. At least none that Andy knew of...
"Howdy pardners!" came a deep, sonorous and completely incongruous Western twang. "Welcome to the Round-Up! Drink specials tonight include..." The voice trailed off. Every single man there, in the midst of drinks and conversation, came to a halt and looked up toward where they thought the source of the voice was, all with puzzled expressions. "Um... I mean...," the voice continued haltingly, sans Western accent. "Welcome to Dimensions! Uh, welcome all big men, big admirers, and big, um, drinkers," the voice ended weakly.
Andy closed his eyes, groaning. He knew that voice only too well. As though he didn't have anything else to deal with at the moment. He tried to come up with a word meaning 'murdering an artificial intelligence' and failed. AI-icide? That didn't sound right.
After a few exchanged glances of irony toward each other, the patrons (all seven of them) returned to their previous business. Andy was about to stalk back to Jake's apartment and have a few choice words about interference when the voice continued. "Sorry about that, folks. It's been a long day for all of us here. But Andy is here to help you and Jake will be right out."
There was a subtle stress on the last five words that made Andy's ears perk up. The whole exchange had to have been intended for Andy's ears. Vincent, Andy grudgingly admitted, didn't make mistakes. Certainly not "reading the wrong script." Clever.
Sure enough, within fifteen minutes of the soft yet subtly driving beat of the music (Kylie Minogue at the moment) Jake rematerialized. Andy had been afraid for Jake before, but the level spiked the moment Jake came within arm's reach. He looked, for lack of better phrase, like he'd had a fight with a hay thresher. His eyes had dark circles, he was unshaven, and appeared rumpled. "J...," he began, then chided himself unnecessarily, "Sir, is your headache any better?" It had been the only thing he could think of at the time. Necessary as it was, dodging around Jake's... dementia praecox... was an extremely arduous and energy-consuming process.
"I'm fine, Annoura," Jake said while heading toward his usual station, not really paying attention. His voice was hoarse and he was blinking excessively, like his eyes were unusually dry. He looked more than ever like he was sleepwalking. Like Kevin, he hadn't been sleeping well. Unlike Kevin, however, he had dreamed almost incessantly from the moment he went to sleep to the moment he woke up, nightmarish riots of color depicting fire, disaster and death. The Boss had taken care of making sure that any unpleasant dreams would be forgotten when the morning came and thus far it had been effective, but the stone over the cistern was cracking. Andy was afraid of what was waiting when it finally broke open.
"I'm... glad to hear it, Sir," he said haltingly, but bit his tongue saying anything else. Better just to move on, he judged. "You, ah, seem tired this afternoon." It was well into evening, but Jake didn't need to know just how much time had passed. It was getting harder and harder to make him accept the unexplained passage of time during his fugue episodes. He'd started getting confused and asking questions, which was the worst sign of all. Or the best, perhaps. Either way, the firestorm was coming.
"I said I'm fine," Jake replied irritably, which made Andy's eyebrows rise. He never got irritable or lost his temper. Well, to qualify that statement, Jake never lost his temper with anything except Ted. Ted's situation was, after all, somewhat unique. "How are things going tonight?" He looked in the register with no real interest, half-raising a hand in greeting to one or two guys sitting around who'd just noticed him. "Seems quiet."
"It is quiet, Sir. The Daddy and boy from earlier this week came in tonight, but other than that, it's been smooth sailing all day." He nearly bit his tongue. He'd been trying very hard to avoid any references to time and here it was the first thing out of his mouth. Freud would love this.
Predictably, however, just as Andy said this, Kevin walked in.
Andy saw him a moment before Jake did. This would have made no difference at all, except that Andy got a good look at Kevin off his guard, a moment before he and Jake saw each other. His mouth dropped open in shock. Kevin was... different. It was subtle but very pronounced, especially to someone who'd had quite a bit of experience examining Kevin extremely closely, as Andy had done in the previous months. His posture, his demeanor, even his eyes, were all... he shook his head. He couldn't qualify it. He just knew it was there. There was... almost an aura around him that hadn't been there a week ago. Then Andy gave an unpleasant start; for a moment there seemed to actually be a glow around Kevin, one that Andy could almost see out of the corner of his eye.
If he hadn't been already put off by Jake's mental instability, Vincent's incessant sarcasm and Kevin's presence, Andy would have realized that the glow hadn't been his imagination.
Andy had known instinctively all week long been that Kevin would return, and praying - strange how that habit came back in times of crisis - that it wouldn't happen. There could only be one reason why Kevin was there. He needed the answer to the final question.
Andy realized with a dread sense of doom that the end had finally come for all of them. A cold hand of despair closed around his heart. Goodbye, Jake, he said silently, glancing in his direction. It was over. Andy wondered, idly, where he'd go from here. Maybe get a job in a diner somewhere. They were always hiring, and usually they either gave free food to employees or at least substantial discounts. He snorted. His appetite truly was ingrained into him now. He could barely remember what it felt like to weigh under 300 pounds.
When Jake and Kevin met each others' gaze, however, at nearly the same time, it seemed to draw the heat out of the room. In an instant, the tension was palpable. Jake, despite being utterly exhausted, stiffened, his own posture changing. Andy got the uncanny feeling he was watching two bulls trying to claim the same pasture. Of course, he actually was watching that. Vincent had verified that he'd been right about the Boss' connection with Kevin
For a long, long time, they stood there, neither of them giving ground, neither moving, until even the usually oblivious patrons, few that there were, began staring at the two of them. Andy held his breath.
But instead of the explosion that Andy expected, something very different happened. Suddenly Jake, poor, sweet, sad, destroyed Jake dropped his eyes. He was no less strong in body or mind, no less dominant, no less beautiful and wonderful in Andy's eyes, but in that slivered second of time, a contest neither of them had expected or even consciously known they were engaged in had ended.
And Jake had lost. He'd lost something that he'd desperately wanted, desperately hoped for, and had known deeply and instinctively in the labyrinth of his broken and taped-together mind that he had never truly had.
And Kevin had won. He'd won something that he'd desperately wanted, desperately hoped for, and known deeply and instinctively in the labyrinth of his broken and taped-together mind that he'd never been able to have.
And neither of them knew exactly what "it" was yet. They just both knew that Kevin now had it and Jake didn't.
But Vincent knew. Vincent knew everything, including a few things that no one else knew about. He, like Troy, like Kevin, like Jake, like Andy, and even like Ted, had a secret he hadn't told anyone about. Well, only his father, but he wasn't likely to blab, considering the nature of the secret.
Jake couldn't even look at Kevin as a look of hopeless despair descended. He only jerked a look toward the fire door of the Boss' stairwell in a gesture of final acquiescence.
Kevin simply nodded, his expression becoming less intent but overall not changing, and walked to the door, neither fast nor slow, just self-assured. With more force than strictly necessary, he jerked it open, but before he took the first step upward, he hesitated and looked back toward Jake with a look of... sympathy? Sadness? Trying to comprehend? Andy couldn't tell.
After Kevin had vanished up the stairs, Jake stayed where he was, staring at the floor. "It's over," he whispered, not really caring whether anyone heard or not. The bar was crowded with people and he was alone. Now and forever. He was alone. The bubbling, roiling mass in his mind abruptly became deathly still.
"Jake," Andy said from alongside him. It was time for a change for all of them.
Jake was so wrapped up in his own despair he hadn't even noticed Andy approaching. "Oh, Andy," he said, unable to keep the unhappiness out of his voice, "I... didn't see you standing there." He blinked a couple of times vaguely, not really focusing on Andy at all.
"Jake, I...," Andy hesitated, his huge insides fluttering faster than they ever had around Jake, and that was saying quite a bit. But it was either now or never, so he leaped off the cliff. "Jake, I can't... I... I can't give you what... what you have with the Boss. I know... I know you... love... him." There; he'd said it. He couldn't look Jake in the eyes. He was about to hear the worst thing he could hear. Go away, Andy. "I know I'll never be able to... to give you forever." With great effort, he looked into Jake's beautiful, beautiful eyes (when had he first realized how beautiful Jake's eyes were? That first moment), his own eyes moist with unshed tears. "But I can give you one night." Go away, Andy. He waited for it.
But Jake only stood staring at Andy for a long time, as clouds occluding the sunlight in his mind for so long suddenly dispelled. And then he smiled, as though seeing Andy for the first time. He'd never before seen Andy the way he did right then. He was... different.
Not seeing the change in Jake's eyes, and not hearing what he had expected, Andy continued, not sure what he would say next. "Jake..." he began.
"No." Jake frowned and tilted his head, as though listening to something just on the edge of his hearing. Jordan. Marie. Annoura. Paul. Stephen. The names flew in and out of his mind, names he'd never heard before, names engraved on his soul. And one more name he'd lost a long time ago, hearing it in a soft Asian woman's musical voice. "My name is Mark."
Andy very nearly had heart failure. This crisis was the worst of them all. But this crisis, if crisis it was, was unlike any Jake had had previously. He had no confusion, no raving, no dislocation of time and place. In his own shock, the trigger words slipped right out of Andy's head and he said the very worst thing he could possibly say to an amnesia victim. "What do you remember?"
Jake... Mark... just stood blinking for a few moments, his brow furrowed. "I don't know," he finally said. The prototype. We're now flying over beautiful Harrisburg. "I'm... not sure." We got a survivor! "But I know my name is Mark." He looked at Andy again, his eyes clear, and for the first time that Andy could remember, loving. "Help me. Help me remember who I am."
And they stood there for a long time just looking at each other, ignoring bar patrons with empty glasses and ubiquitous dance music deafening them. As far as they were concerned, the bar was empty, quiet, and private. They were both alone in the bar, but now they were alone together.
****
The stairway yawned vacantly.
Kevin was visited by an almost eerie sense of calm. Strangely, he felt no fear. Or perhaps not so strange; he'd made it up the stairs this time without being put off balance by a domineering show of terror. Not to sound cynical about it, of course.
The trip to the top took much less time than his previous visit. But then, he wasn't sporting the excess poundage he had been that visit, either. How strange, to remember that... It was almost like watching an outdoor scene through stained glass; his view was distorted and colored by the ensuing events. Hello, Kevin. Take off your shirt, Kevin. You've earned something for that. The whole thing seemed as surreal as if someone else's memories had been planted into his head.
It was also odd to think that if the same happened to him now, he probably wouldn't mind at all.
He'd felt an impulse to charge right up the stairs the moment the fire door closed behind him, but realized that this wasn't the time for bullheaded demands for justice. For one thing, he was very afraid that if he allowed his self-restraint to bend even the little bit it would take to allow him to run, he would be ready to commit murder without conscience. Also, the abrupt focus of awareness he'd acquired over the past two hours had started to slide along with the depletion of his over-wired, exhausted energy stores. He was very close to being exclusively primitive brain.
He'd also been slowed by the observation of his surroundings; the lights were brighter, for example, but also the camera that had followed his every movement that first night showed no electronic life whatever. He noted without expression that the framed posters he'd knocked askew on his previous ascent were still as he'd left them. It all contributed to an air of neglect. He half-expected everything to be coated in dust and wild foliage, a reaction borne, no doubt, from too many science fiction reruns from the last century. He had to remind himself that only a week had passed.
A week. It felt more like three years had passed, and in that time the entire story of his life had been told, retold, and rewritten numerous times. Why was he here? What was he looking for that he didn't already know? Everything that he'd been missing was back, if not settled in place, so...?
Not yet. Kevin shrugged off the voice as usual, but it was starting to sound oddly insistent.
"Hello, Kevin." The voice was not a natural voice, as it was neither male nor female; it was all encompassing, omnidirectional, and emotionless. Either computer generated or being electronically altered. Not even original.
And certainly not the first time Kevin had heard it. Nice to see you're consistent, he thought. "Hello, Troy," he said to the mahogany barrier.
"Actually, no," the voice said, abruptly different. Without the distortion, Kevin realized it wasn't Troy. "I just wanted to see your reaction."
Unpleasantly taken aback, Kevin asked, "May I help you?"
"No, but I think I can help you, Kevin. About time you showed up. I was starting to think you'd never get back here."
Kevin really had no patience for this. "Who are you, and how is any of this your business?"
"Troy *is* my business, Kevin," the voice said loftily. "Stone cold stubborn. I swear, you two... Look, with Jake and you, he's had his hands full this past week. And he's... not been well himself."
Kevin couldn't care less about Jake. Troy, on the other hand... "What do you mean 'not well'?" He was just curious. It wasn't like he actually *cared*.
"How is that any of your business, Kevin?" the voice retorted. "I assumed that you had no interest in Troy's well-being. Forgive my misapprehension." The sarcasm was so thick that Kevin thought he could break it like glass. "I thought you were free of this place, Kevin, and of him. Don't worry, no one will break you like a stick." Kevin started at the reflection of his earlier words. He had a wary feeling that Troy had not stopped his surveillance of Kevin's activities. "Oh, relax, Kevin," the voice continued. "Troy hasn't been spying on you the past few days. He's shown just as much interest in you as you've shown in him. *I'm* the one who's been spying on you. No need to get angry. It's a done deal."
"I'm not angry," Kevin said through slightly gritted teeth.
"Oh, puh-leeze! You're just as bad a liar as Troy. My scans aren't as precise as they would be with a chip implant, but I saw a sharp spike in your body's heat index just then consistent with strong emotion and it's not hard to guess which emotion it was. You're certainly not in love with me, I know that."
Kevin's eyes narrowed at the inflection that the voice gave one of the words but decided to let it go. "How, exactly, do you know my body's heat index?"
There was a distinct pause. "I keep forgetting that you've been out of the loop." A sigh. "Long story. Tell you later. Look, seriously, Troy hasn't been doing well this past week. He disappeared for several days and when he came back... well, you'll see. I know you're angry, and it's no use my saying don't be, but... don't be. You've both got issues to hack through." When Kevin didn't respond, the voice continued. "Stone cold stubborn. Perfectly matched." Whoever this person was, he was shaking his head. He had to be. "I will give you what you have wanted all week long, Kevin." The large mahogany rectangle ahead of him abruptly sank forward away from him and slid out of sight. "I give you your freedom." Kevin remembered similar words spoken not too long ago.
The darkness beckoned him in. Walking forward, he asked rhetorically, and rather darkly, "How is my walking into a cage freedom?"
"Are you really so sure that you're walking into a cage?"
Startled, Kevin hesitated before he could frame a response, providing just enough time for the door to slide shut behind him.
Once the door was shut, Vincent said to the empty hallway, "I've said it before, Kevin, and I'll say it again... omni vincit amor." Had he been able he would have smiled, and not just for Troy and Kevin. It would have been for himself and his own surprise too.
Kevin started to force his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he realized that there was none. Once the door closed behind him - he automatically checked and, as before, the interior had seamlessly integrated with the surrounding wall - he realized that the entire space was bright as a cloudless summer noon. He raised an eyebrow at the normalcy of it all, not at all the dramatically lit and shadowed chamber of mysteries he'd entered a few days ago. He could see Troy's desk and the television monitors, the sling and the few other areas he'd vaguely seen in the dark, along with several living areas (immaculately well-appointed of course), a well-stocked kitchen, and toward the rear of the space what appeared to be several small freestanding rooms or chambers, probably bedroom and bath somewhere in them. He couldn't see a bed anywhere near him, but he wasn't really looking too carefully either. Far, far away from him he saw a blank brick wall, the only one in this immense space that wasn't decorated with art of some sort.
He noted all of this almost subconsciously, as a perfect stranger standing facing the desk and the wall of flashing monitors took most of his attention. He was casually watching the monitors flash between one vacuous television image and another while smoking a large pipe and, incongruously, trimming a small bonsai tree. Kevin knew a little about pipes and pipe smokers and thought that the phrase for the pipe was "fully bent" or "completely bent" or something like that, which didn't make much sense to him; the pipe went from the stem in the man's mouth to the bowl directly in front of his chin, but it curved elegantly and didn't look bent. For that matter, if it was wood, how could you bend it without breaking it? Was it carved that way? There must be some trick to it he couldn't figure out.
The man was simply obese; there was no other word for it. Corpulent simply didn't cut it. He wasn't as fat as some he'd seen in this bar - hell, as fat as he himself had been at one rather vivid point - but he was much more than simply heavyset. Kevin estimated he weighed around 400 pounds, perhaps a bit less, more or less evenly distributed around him, but under the 4XL t-shirt he had a considerable apron dragging down below the waistband of the sweat pants he was wearing. From what Kevin could see, he had several chins on his thick neck.
Placidly pruning the tiny branches and greenery of the bonsai, the man took the pipe out of his mouth and said to the air, "Transfer one-third of the stock in Zubzero Fusion to the Australian Desert Reclamation Project. With the German Conflict subsiding, stock in steel - transparent and regular - and platinum should be partially reallocated into infant and young child clothing, pending an examination of projected earnings for next year... women's products seem to be holding steady, but invest in home pregnancy tests... remind me to fund the Breast Cancer Foundation's campaign about the dangers of underwire bras. Luxury cars should be experiencing an upswing but pull out of all investment in the Daguerro; it's going to be a disaster." He paused for a moment in his pruning, then continued. "Vincent, please do a diagnostic on the security systems. I seem to have a problem with uninvited guests visiting the loft." He clipped one branch. "Hello, Kevin. Welcome back."
The door and Kevin's approach had been utterly silent, but for some reason Kevin just couldn't muster any surprise that Troy knew he was there. For that matter, Kevin seemed to be taking most things in stride now. "Hello, Troy. I assume your secretary or whoever that guy is told you I was here."
The man turned and faced Kevin impassively. The face was very different with the added poundage, but the eyes were the same. There was also the small detail of the tattooing up his arms, disappearing into the t-shirt he was wearing. There was hardly a question of who it could be. "No, he didn't. I saw your reflection in the glass of the monitors. Nice try. If you're talking about whom I think you're talking about, he's not my secretary. In fact," he added, looking up at nothing in particular, "if he continues his impertinent behavior, he's going to find himself rewritten." Kevin gave a slightly puzzled look to which Troy took no notice. Troy turned back to his project and trimmed the edge of one branch.
Kevin's eyes drew down in mild reproach at being shut out, so he took the expedient of walking around the man and the desk and sitting in the man's chair, which was well back and facing the monitors.
Troy's eyes rose in surprise. "Have a seat, Kevin," he said with no irony. His eyes were burning, but with anger or some other emotion it was impossible to tell. His face was otherwise frozen in impassivity. He started to go back to trimming, but as he lifted the clippers, he found that his hands were shaking. "Why are you here?" He set the clippers aside and again took up his pipe. It, too, would soothe him.
Kevin didn't say anything for a very long time, just watched the screens flash on and on. "Why do you watch them all like that? I mean, what do you get out of it?" Ads for microcellphones. Digcams. Collectible dolls.
Still watching intently, Troy said, "It's a technique my father developed for investments. By watching them this fast, you get a subliminal understanding of current and emerging trends."
"Your father," Kevin said, almost to himself, but didn't continue.
Troy paused, but instead of replying to that remark, said, "Kevin, you could not possibly have come back here to ask me for stock tips. Your cousin Dominic has done quite a good job for you so far."
Kevin watched the monitors for a moment more and then abruptly swung around. His face was as composed as Troy's. So much so that Troy nearly lost his composure. He hadn't realized he'd have such a problem looking in Kevin's eyes. "Vincent told me you haven't been keeping tabs on me this past week. Is that true?"
"Yes," Troy said simply. "I... haven't been here." His tone was composed, but his eyes were slightly unfocused, and Kevin, for some reason, even in the blinding brightness of the room, couldn't be sure whether Troy's facing was coloring slightly. At first glance, he was as in control as ever, but on closer examination there was a hairsbreadth less self-control. Most people wouldn't notice, but Kevin unexpectedly found himself now attuned to Troy. There was something about his eyes...
"I suppose I should ask," Kevin said, "but I really don't care where you've been or what you've been doing." He felt a vague sensation, like an invisible person behind him was shaking his head in disapproval, the way that people did when you told a lie. I am not lying! "You seem different," Kevin said, looking him and up down. "New haircut?"
"I missed you too," Troy replied dryly. "You still haven't answered my question. Why are you here?"
Kevin let out a long breath and sagged back into the chair. "I don't know. Two hours ago, it was so clear in my head, it made such good sense, and I just couldn't stop myself. I had to face you, to ask you..." He paused and looked Troy directly in the eye. "I saw the plaque. And the phoenix."
"Ah. Well, I was wondering when you'd notice that. Took you long enough."
Kevin did not like how everyone seemed to think he was supposed to know what was going on. "I suppose I should have noticed before," Kevin said frankly, "I just... never did. Short attention span. But even with that, I would never have come back if Marion King hadn't called."
Troy stiffened, his eyes burning. "Marion King?" His voice was smooth and dangerously slick, almost like the sound of drawing a sword. He made a curious gesture with his hands and the monitors abruptly went black. "Vincent!"
The voice Kevin had heard in the hallway said, "This is Vital... oh, to hell with it. You rang, massuh?"
"Don't pull that offensive shit on me! What have you been up to?"
"What are you talking about? I've been performing my base operation." Even not knowing what was going on, Kevin could tell from the innocent tone that this Vincent was as guilty as the Abyss itself.
"Vincent, Kevin tells me that he spoke with Marion King earlier. Would you care to explain?"
Instead of answering the question, there was a wholly ingenuous gasp. "Kevin? Kevin Cantore? Is it really you, Kevin?"
Kevin, who comprehended not a bit of this byplay, started to answer yes until he remembered hearing a slightly different voice say those exact words two hours earlier. "What's going on?" he asked Troy suspiciously. "Who is that guy? And where is he?"
Troy looked back at Kevin. "Vincent is..."
"His savior," Vincent interjected.
"...the bane of my existence," Troy finished without pause, as though he'd intended to say that all along. "One who is in constant danger of being deleted."
"Ha! Try it!"
Troy shook his head with an irritated growl, before his gaze rested on Kevin, whose expression had not changed, but before he could say anything, Kevin asked him in a curious voice, "How did you..." he imitated the movement Troy made with his hands, "...do that and shut the screens off?"
Troy snorted slightly. "Six days later, and you still aren't asking the right questions." He held up his hands, palms forward. "I have subdermal processors embedded in my hands. They allow me to control various machines and operations, and they also provide Vincent continual input on the status of my health, among other things." He became very serious. "And you still haven't answered mine. What do you want from me?"
Kevin opened his mouth... and his finely wrought control crumbled. The long, dreamless week, the panic, the fear, the uncertainty, and, yes, the unasked and unanswered question all came down on his head at once. "Why?" The question came out almost as a wail. He'd been waiting a long time to ask this question, not believing he'd ever be able to or that he'd get an answer even if he did. "Why did you put me through all of this? Why were you watching me all this time? Why?!"
Troy stared at him. "Kevin, do you mean to tell me that after all this time you haven't figured it out? You really don't know." It was hardly the answer that Kevin was hoping for. Troy's face was serious, but his tone of voice was another matter. Kevin wasn't sure, but he sounded halfway between laughter and tears. Not disbelieving. "And here I thought I was being far too blatant. That's my anal-retentive upbringing for you." He sighed and said, almost offhand, "You don't remember the first time we met, do you Kevin?"
"What do you mean the first...?"
"Frogs in winter."
To be continued?