The Epilogues. In which the players take their final bows

Epilogue the first: In Memoriam

G-day II + one week

I’ve spoken at some length about Greg Wolfe. Let me take some time to give a brief eulogy of that selfless, courageous woman, Annette Wolfe.

Annette Jolie Dubois was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the USA. Later in life she was fond of telling people of her hometown, “It’s pronounced just like it’s spelled: bah-tawn roozh, loo-zana.” At age 8 she met her best friend for life, Julia Charlotte Crosby of Falkirk, Western Australia. They met in their first Jovan Farmer Trust “Summer Program for Girls” event, a very effective cover for getting young Ten Thousanders from all around the world together. They resolved to stay loyal pen pals, and, wonder of wonders, they actually did. Much of what drew them together was the thrill they shared in the real life adventures of the Legion of Heroes, most particularly the adventures of their favorite hero, Majestic Woman.

At age 18 she and Julia both accepted Jovan Farmer Trust fine arts scholarships to Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford. They had often said that neither of them would have made it through austere, stuffy Oxford without the other. While there Annette met (with my help) and fell in love with (all by herself, but I would have insisted had she not) Rhodes Scholar and “boy genius” Greg Wolfe. Greg had somehow (with my help) turned his high school investment club in Adelaide into a multimillion dollar concern, well on the way to its first billion. After four years, Annette and Greg graduated and married on the same day. There was not a dry eye in the house. Shortly thereafter, much to Julia’s delight, I moved them to their current home in Falkirk.

The astute reader may recall that outside the door of Greg and Annette’s penthouse there was one other door in the short hallway. That was the door to Julia and Annette’s shared studio, which was actually somewhat larger than the apartment itself. Julia was a lithographer, focusing on photorealistic, yet surreal, landscapes and cityscapes. Annette was more the sculptor. Her favorite medium was clay; she loved the feel of it in her hands, molding it, shaping it. Her sculptures exploded with the joy and warmth that she felt in her heart.

Although the circumstances were horrifying and sad, Annette died much as she had lived, with great passion and love. May she rest in peace.

A week after “G-Day II”, two dozen of us — the Wolfes, the Duboises, and the eight of us who lived nearby — all gathered around an unmarked memorial in my park in downtown Falkirk. It was strange in that the memorial couldn’t mention Greg and Annette by name, since they were still ostensibly “alive”, but the ones who mattered knew the truth. The monument was three meters tall, and in the shape of two buildings: the once-tallest building in the world in Dubai, complete with exploded wreckage at the top, and the “new” tallest building in the world complete with the tiny robotic slaughterhouse jutting from its side. At its base there was this small inscription: “To the true heroes of Dubai and Themiscyra. You will live in our hearts forever.”

Cindi and I intend to live up to the very letter of that promise.

Epilogue the second: A Queen, Her King, and Their Kingdom

G-Day II + four months (or so)

We mourned the loss of Greg and Annette much longer than I would have thought. Both of us had lost more friends over the millennia than any mortal could possibly comprehend. We were both adept at saying our fond farewells to the dead, fixing them in our memories, and moving on. But this time ... this was different. Greg and Annette had sacrificed their lives for us, and yet we could see them every time we looked in the mirror. Greg had known going in that he would be a target, even though the end took him unawares. Annette ... Annette had sacrificed herself with her eyes wide open, begging me to let Cindi live on in her place.

It was hard for both of us. But over the weeks and months that followed, we began to turn our eyes to the future. As is often the case with us human animals, we overcame the grief of death and sad memories with the help of new life and joyous hopes.

Cindi was carrying my son, genetically Greg and Annette’s first-born. I was uncharacteristically impatient. Well, I may be understating it a bit. Cindi said that she thought I was going crazy. I told myself that it was just my hope that this child would carry forward the next stage of my breeding program. But Cindi saw right through me.

She finally called me on it one day, shortly after her morning sickness had passed. Apparently I had been ... hovering ... a bit. She had asked me what the hell had gotten into me, and I had just told her, again, I was nervous about the breeding program.

“Bullshit,” she said.

“Bullshit?” I responded, somewhat amused, somewhat ... displeased. In her heart of hearts she still considered herself my slave, but she was becoming much more able to confront me. Particularly when she thought it was for my own good. Like now. But she had to learn to do so, more ... respectfully. I demanded it, and when it got right down to it she demanded it too.

Seeing the expression on my face, she crumpled to her knees.

“P-please, My Lord. Please have mercy!”

I shook my head “No” and swapped us to the training room. This was actually something of a break for her, escaping the aches and pains and discomfort of her pregnancy for just a while. Not to worry, soon she would have plenty of pain in this body to make up for it. She was not restrained. I almost never had to restrain her for punishment anymore. I had her fetch the crop. She returned with fear in her eyes and arousal dripping down her leg. I had her bend over the waterboarding table. She began to moan even before I touched her.

WHAP! “Aaagh!”

“What did you do?”

I was dis-disrespectful, My Lord!”

WHAP! “Aiiya!”

“So is that what you want? Do you want us to be ‘buddies’ now? Do you want to be my ‘equal’?”

“No, My Lord, no! I will always be your slave! I live to serve you!”

WHAP! “Ahaieee!”

She was crying openly now, but I’m really not sure whether her face or her thighs are wetter.

“So you noticed an anomaly in my behavior. So far, so good. You are my slave, but you are also my queen, my most trusted advisor, and the love of my life. How should you have addressed this anomaly?”

“Re-respectfully, My Lord.

WHAP! “Maaahauw!”

I paused to massage the red marks criss-crossing her ass.

Then I continued, but more softly. “Be specific, cunt. Give me an example.”

“I, I... ‘My Lord, please forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I don’t think you are being honest with yourself about your feelings.’”

WHAP! “Waaah-aaah!”

“That’s a good start. You haven’t overstepped your bounds yet. It’s true that I am more nervous than I normally am at the start of a breeding experiment. Continue.”

“This is our child,” she said, “and you are emotionally torn. You are bursting with pride, and beside yourself with worry, bouncing back and forth between the two states like a rubber ball. I’m experiencing all the same things too, but ... from the inside. This child is a part of me. But you ... you feel like you’re just an observer. You’re used to being in complete control — which I love, by the way — but now you feel like you’re on the outside looking in.”

WHAP! “Please, My Lord! Mercy!”

“Is there more?”

“Yes, My Lord! Your nervousness, your anxiety, it’s ... it’s only natural, My Lord. It’s only sob ... human.”

She cringed at the last bit, imagining that I would be displeased to be demoted to “human”. She was wrong about that, but clearly right about everything else. I was actually relieved and, well, happy about it. Who would have thought that I would ever be happy to be thought of as human? Who would have thought that I would ever have accepted this ... analysis ... from one of my Ten Thousand, however respectfully delivered?

But more important right now, her punishment was over, and she was horny. Moaning with her need. Almost involuntarily rubbing her hip against my groin. I pulled her up by her hair and pushed her into the nearby stone wall. This position against the uneven stonework would be really uncomfortable for her, especially as I would be holding her up by her bruised ass. But somehow I doubted she would even notice the pain.

Later, back in the penthouse, Cindi did more than just analyse me. She had ideas. She begged me to take charge of her nutrition and exercise program. Not as some kind of make-work; she really needed help moderating some of her wilder cravings. She signed us up for childbirth classes together. She allowed herself to become more obviously needy. She wanted me to spend even more time holding her, cherishing her, willing myself to be a part of her pregnancy. She wanted me to spend more time disciplining her too, but that was not really a recent change.

And then she did something I never would have thought of. Behind my back, she commissioned a genetic analysis to find the markers for the “Nice Guy” trait I was trying to propagate. It took less than a month for the results to come back. Then she had her doctor perform an amniocentesis and genetic analysis on her little passenger.

I was astounded. “How did you do this without me finding out?”

“Well,” she said, “it certainly helps that you are giving me more ‘privacy’ inside my own head. I know that must be hard for you to give up that level of control, My Lord. But I hope that it actually helps me to serve you better.”

“I love you, Cindi. And you know I trust you implicitly. It is hard for me to give up that control, but you were right. I can tell that you do serve me better if I give you a ‘longer leash’. I’ve even started using your ‘ringing the doorbell first’ idea with the rest of the Ten Thousand. It really does work. But ... but this report. It’s amazing. You’re sure —”

“My Lord, My Love,” she smiled, “He’s going to be everything you’ve hoped for and more. It appears the ‘Nice Guy’ gene is extremely dominant.”

“Not unlike its owner,” she added with a whisper and a smile.

I smiled too. My son was going to be a good man. Well, with our help...

Then I saw that calculating look in her eyes. I almost peeked but stopped myself just in time. I had learned that I liked it better when I let her surprise me. She was clearly deciding whether or not now was the time to bring it up, whatever it was.

“My Lord?” she began, a somewhat hesitant start to what was would clearly be long, maybe even contentious, conversation.

I nodded; she continued, “I just wanted to know if you’ve given some thought to my other, um, idea.”

“Giving up the nomadic life? ‘Settling down’ in Greg’s body?” I actually made air-quotes as I said that. “Cindi, I don’t know. I’ve wandered from body to body for so long that I don’t know if I really can have any other existence. These few months in Greg’s body are the longest I have stayed in one body since I started my breeding program, nine thousand years ago! I do know that I refuse to grow old and that I will not die. I won’t let you die either. I’ll drag you with me kicking and screaming into your next body if I have to. I want to live, Cindi! That’s why I fought the Morlocks! I want to live! I want us to live! Now more than ever!”

She grabbed me around the waist. She held me tightly. Her head was buried in my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, but clearly she was trying to comfort me.

“I know, I know,” she said, quietly, tenderly. “You won’t have to die, My Lord. We won’t have to die. But I want to find a way to live as something other than the shadow of a person. We deserve more. We deserve to live full lives like normal people, like normal families. I,” she hesitated, “I have a plan ... if you would like to ... if it would please you to see it ... My Lord.”

With my assent she laid it out to me. We would still live forever, but we would live like normal people, well, normal-ish people who were actually the secret immortal rulers over a hidden subspecies of humanity. It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, right? How could our lives ever be “normal”? Sure, she had a plan, but I was still skeptical.

What was she proposing? Well, first, we would travel down the path we were already on. We would let ourselves live as ‘the Wolfe family’ for another ten years or so, until Greg’s and Annette’s bodies reached their mid-thirties. Then we would begin our endless cycle. We would choose a young couple from the Ten Thousand, a married couple in their mid-twenties, and begin to live a dual life with them, sharing time in each other’s bodies. Their family would be our family; our family would be theirs. They would come to know their Lord and His Lady, closely, intimately. They would live their lives intertwined with ours, swapping bodies back and forth with ours daily, if not even more often, for ten years, until the older couple (“Greg” and “Annette”) reached their mid-forties. Then the younger couple, now in their mid-thirties, would swap permanently into the older bodies, while we (“Cindi” and “Lord”) would now live in the younger bodies. At this point, Cindi and I, now in our mid-thirties again, would pick another couple in their mid-twenties, and the cycle would begin again.

“Why would they agree to it, Cindi?” I challenged, “They’d end up losing ten years of their lives!”

Cindi regarded me seriously. “That’s a very good question. I’ve ... I’ve thought about that too, My Lord.” She paused, making sure that she could tread that fine line, that her words would carry confident authority about her well-vetted plan, while at the same time she would show me all the deference that I was proper for a slave addressing her Master. “I think, My Lord, that it might be possible that you are underestimating the loyalty of the Ten Thousand. All of them have offered their lives for you already, just like I have. Now think of how lucky the chosen couple would feel. For ten years they would become the closest companions, the most intimate confidantes, of their Ruler, their Master, the superpowered Immortal who literally made them who they are, the mighty Hero who exposed and defeated the Morlocks.” She was on quite a roll, but now she paused, and blushed a bit. “And, well, they seem to like me too. Please, My Lord, just try to see it from their perspective. They would literally live the same lives as people who are like Gods to them. And then, at the end of that ten-year adventure they would be, what, twenty years older? Well, so what? They’d be retired, in their mid-forties, and wealthy beyond the dreams of kings! Sounds like a deal to me.”

Could it be that easy? I had my doubts, but she had me hooked.

“My Lord, just let me lay the groundwork,” she continued. “We have ten years before we would have to start the cycle. Ten years to refine the plan, to work out the bugs, to introduce the idea to them. I bet that by the time we’re ready to pull the trigger on this, our biggest problem will be how to prevent the other Ten Thousanders from being insanely jealous of the chosen couple.”

I still had my doubts, but they were waning. Her enthusiasm was ... infectious. “Okay,” I said, “Let’s do it.”

Epilogue the third: Despair

G-Day II + one year

Seated in the lotus, he tried to center himself. One last time he looked out over the cliff of his Hokkaido estate, out into the vast Pacific Ocean, then he picked up his cell phone and called down to the mansion. He had already been living here even before the madness had lifted, just one of his many luxurious hideaways scattered around the globe. He had been biding his time. He had been plotting his next move. He had been pretending to be “retired”, as he had promised that crazy Aussie psychic who had dared to dictate terms to him. His servants here knew their gaijin Master only as “The General”, and they had feared him greatly, just as he had desired.