Chapter 10

Max might not ever learn to dance, but there wasn’t anything wrong with his love making technique, and his stamina had become phenomenal. His new body could and did last for hours he discovered. True he wasn’t a giant like the Valkyries anymore, but he wasn’t the little people either. He, well all of them actually, had learned a valuable lesson, that after years of being one size the mind doesn’t cope well to sudden change. Especially drastic massive changes in size and shape.

He had also learned it quite literally ran off of the alcohol he consumed, converting it to energy to be stored as fast as he drank it. Of course it was hard to take that he couldn’t get drunk anymore even if he tried to. A pleasant buzz was as close as he could get now to being drunk. The sacrifices we make for God and country, ha, ha.

At first he was afraid that everything he was eating and drinking would leave him looking like a fat slob, but Sigrun, and Kara both assured him that the energy was being stored in special cells in his new body and the rest was just being excreted as waist. He would continue to look like this for the rest of his life they assured him.

“Woman has always been limited by fact that when she is gravid with child she is the most exposed, vulnerable, and dependent on men for her protection. Today she have alternatives. One, she can choose surrogate mother’s womb to carry child to term. Two, can use artificial womb. Or three, accept motherhood and flaunt it to world.” Jia-Li, Madame Chang laughed.

“Of course she can choose not to get pregnant at all by taking birth control.” Morgan put in.

“Or have your tubes tied like we chose.” Sigrun added for the Valkyries.

“Why are we talking about having children.” Eve asked.

“We establish Rules for Dynasty today. Will Empress impose her rule, or bow to Cree Law. Cree law say Empress only rule until male heir become of age, also imposed rule when first child will be born and that first child will always be male...” Eve broke in on Madam Chang.

“You can’t do that ... that is ... is ... unnatural!” Eve sputtered.

“Sex of offspring was always manipulated poor deluded Eve. Never any choice for Empress till now. Reason for royal prostitute was to establish if Emperor could sire male child at all. Too many pinheads and slow swimmers sometimes, ha, ha...” Morgan interrupted Jia-Li again.

“And if he couldn’t?” Morgan asked.

“Then proxy brought in.” Madam Chang stated flatly.

“How did that work?” Morgan asked.

“Empress have ... what is American phrase ... Empress have “one night stand” with member of royal guard that met needed qualifications. More than likely he meet with fatal accident after Empress pregnant.” Madam Chang laughed.

“Did that happen often?” Morgan asked.

“More often than advertised Morgan, sometimes still have problems with pinheads and slow swimmers, sometimes had to substitute male orphan child for girl child. Whatever was necessary to produce male heir! Just better at it today. Today we establish our Rules ladies. Today is first day of rest of our lives, te, hee.” Madam Chang laughed.

“You mean that I’m going to be allowed to have a daughter Jia-Li.” The Empress Chizuko Tocaona asked.

“Chizuko what we are establishing is what will be the Rules in this Great Game forever here. Will you and Consort donate sperm and egg to stasis capsule for safe keeping? When will child be born? Will it be male or female? Will it be enhanced? Will it...” Eve broke in on Madam Chang again.

“You would mess with it’s ... their DNA? That’s wrong...” Eve was interrupted by Nina this time.

“You would deny your child ... no, you would condemn your own child to suffer what you did growing up Eve?” Nina demanded of a shocked Eve.

“Well no Nina. I don’t think I’ll ever get over being born a fat child, but there has to be ... be ... be limits, rules.” Eve huffed.

“Is why we are all here Sweet Eve. To establish Rules of Great Game.” Madam Chang laughed.

In the end it was decided that the Empress would have three daughters born eighteen months apart, starting in two years. Yes, her and Max would establish a stasis egg as a fail safe backup right now. Yes the embryos would be enhanced, almost exact copies of the Empress herself, but smarter, stronger, and given any other improvement we could think of.

Today you can go down a virtual check list of things you want your children to be born with. Now that we had the Asgard Techno Wizard’s nano bots and a road map of the DNA and RNA and their virtual interface nothing was really beyond our grasp in the area of gene splicing.

The Empress’s niece Mira was trying to convince everyone to voluntarily become colonized by “the virus”, which was still just “the virus” to everyone. We had nothing but positive glowing reports from the people that were it’s former victims, people that had really needed it. For some reason though nobody else was rushing out to get colonized. Of course that would probably change in the future as the positive benefits it could bestow on it’s recipient became better known.

Hundreds of years ago there were the Assassins or Hashashin, the Old Man of the Mountain, the Castle Alamut, and even the Great Library of Alamut. They were the first documented group or organization to use an effective form of mind control on it’s own members. I’m sure there were others before these, but these are the first that were documented to succeed in their quest for absolute mind control. These members became dedicated fanatics. There are hundreds of stories of how their programing was supposedly done, but the simple undeniable fact is that they were programed. This is the documented fact we’re talking about here.

The leader, the Old Man of the Mountain lived in this almost unassailable castle on a well defended mountain peak called Alamut. He, the Old Man, Hassan-i Sabbah, learned and made use of the fact that the threat of being assassinated by one of his fanatics was a more powerful motivational threat to the world’s rulers than an actual army parked outside their palace gate. The threat of an Assassin showing up every day at his front door to try and kill him was enough for most of the world’s leaders to buy off the Old Man of the Mountain, rather than try to fight him. It’s first Grandmaster, Hassan-i Sabbah established the order in 1050. Most sources of real information about the cult, including the Great Library of Alamut itself which dealt with the Order’s inner secrets and workings was destroyed in 1256.

After the cult tried unsuccessfully to assassinate the great Mongke Khan in 1253. The Khan ordered the cult destroyed at that time. The Great Khan lay siege to Alamut for three years, and finally destroyed it with the capture of the Assassins headquarters, Alamut itself, by the Mongols in 1256.

It was the Lasiqs order of the cult, the lowest rank of monks in the Order, who were trained to become some of the most feared assassins in history. They were called, “Fida’in”, or “the self-sacrificing ones”, a name which pretty well describes them and what they were.

Hashashin, as they came to be called in stories latter, were also said to be adept in furusiyya, the Islamic Warrior Code of Honor. I personally doubt this because assassins by definition have no honor only a job to be done. It is documented that they lied, cheated, and stole to get near their target to kill by any means possible. They all knew there was little or no chance of escape most of the time after the job was done.

Today most of the legends and myths, like the “secret garden of paradise”, and the severed head that talked of “paradise” trick, are mostly disproved. But still the fact remains that the “Fida’in” were willing to do anything that was necessary to reach and kill their target, even willing to give up their own lives. We also know that certain books from the Great Library of Alamut were supposedly ordered burned by personal order of the Great Mongke Khan of the Mongols himself in 1256.

But some of those books were concealed and taken away by one of Madame Jia-Li Chang’s illustrious Mandarin ancestors. He was working as an advisor and combat engineer to the Great Kahn’s army at the time. He helped design the engines of war that finally breached the walls of Alamut. He saw the potential of the techniques Grandmaster Sabbah had developed for something other than killing.

There in the books that Sabbah had in fact stolen from a secretive order of Tibetan Monks, who he had put to death for blasphemy, was the blueprint for how to create a better human being. A person stronger, faster, smarter, and just a better human being than a regular man, or in his case woman. A person far better adjusted to the world around him, than just a plain human being the Tibetan Monks who discovered it had found. But if the same knowledge was used wrongfully it could enslave that same person as Grandmaster Sabbah had done.

Half of the process explained in the books was a rare drug derived from a certain flower that grew on a north facing wall of a volcanic mountainside near Alamut. The other half was based on a technique they called “fascination”, more in line with Messmer’s theories than modern day hypnosis. With both the drug and technique the subject believed everything he or she was told. The effects of the treatment were permanent the monks attested in the books.

A person told that they would find studying easier, found study easy. Stronger, they were stronger. Told that they couldn’t kill, they couldn’t. Told that they loved somebody, they loved. With a small bottle of the drug and the books the House of Chang was founded.

The small bottle of the drug was long since gone, the flower it was derived from was now extinct. The volcano the flower grew on erupted a hundred years later. But the technique they called “fascination” and the study of hypnosis lived on in the process Jia-Li called, “Building a Harmonious Household”.

A girl adopted into the Harmonious Household of Chang was trained in certain marital skills and became an accomplished acrobat among other skills. She became swift of mind, eye, body, hand, and foot. This was all before she reached womanhood. Upon reaching womanhood she was trained in the arts of love.

Madame Chang’s Harmonious Household had started life on mainland China in the 13th Century. There was even a branch of the family still in Communist controlled mainland China today, though the family had lost touch with it years ago. Madame Chang’s branch of the family had moved their House to Taiwan along with Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940’s. At that time the island was called Formosa with an infamous history that went all the way back to the 17th Century and the Dutch East India Company and the heroin trade. Now it is Taiwan, the Republic of China (ROC) or Free Democratic China to some.

Several years ago an unknown force, for a as yet unknown reason, had literally blown up the House of Chang on Taiwan. They had done a thorough job, killing everyone but her. That she lived was a fluke she was told latter, that she survived without serious injury was a miracle. That she would continue to live if it was learned she still breathed would be more of a miracle certain other people told her.

After being interviewed by certain ROC officials, other than the police, Jia-Li decided that, “discretion was the better part of valor“. Gathering her liquid assets she took an unplanned vacation to the US, specifically Las Vegas, and eventually met us. Now she is Prime Minister of Empress Chizuko Tocaona’s Earth Empire. One of the real powers behind the thrown, and second only to the Empress herself in the now female dominated Empire.

“What am I looking at Jia-Li?” Max asked the question for the gathered group of females.

“This is the last sample of the drug and preserved flower that Grandmaster Hassan-i Sabbah used to create the original Assassins. The Old Man of the Mountain tale was all true. My Illustrious Ancestor, the founder of our original House was with the great Mongol Mongke Khan when he sacked Alamut in 1256.” Madame Chang informed the gathered group. The drug was an amber drop of liquid in a small teardrop shaped sealed hollow glass bead hung on a heavy gold necklace. The flower was pressed and contained between two pieces of heavily waxed parchment paper.

“He was able to preserve, maybe steal is better fit, about a pint of the drug itself and this sample of flower itself. He hoped to eventually find more of flower in China. Even after the expedition the family funded many years latter discovered that the volcano had erupted and destroyed the north wall of the volcano where the flowers grew. We all still hopped to find more latter.” Madame Chang went on.

“So what do you want to do?” Nina asked.

“I want to duplicate the drug or find the flower or a substitute for it.” Madame Chang stated.

“We should be able to do that easily enough Jia-Li.” Morgan laughed.

“I think the better question is why do you think we will need it?” Empress Chizuko Tocaona wanted to know.

“I think that the things you call the “Cubes” are somehow back. Maybe they never left. Maybe we missed a few, who knows.” Madame Chang shrugged her shoulders.

“What do you really know.” Max asked.

“Part of Chang Harmonious Household has been creation of spies and agents. The creation of perfect recall allows them to remember everything they hear. Whores, hookers, high priced callgirls form loose network of intelligence gathers for household. They have been in place for many, many years reporting everything to our information gathering site for hundreds of years. Site which is nothing but big computer now Empress. Girls, well really in some cases, daughters, of daughters, of daughters, report on any strange things they come into contact with...” Madame Chang was interrupted by Morgan.

“What you ran a spy agency?” Morgan laughed.

“No, no, House of Chang very, very old. Take in many, many girls over years. Girls taken in are sold to us. They are ... are ... indentured, trained ... have ... have contract ... become part of family. Serve years of contract then have choice, free or keep working for family. Most choose to work for family, but some do leave, others retire eventually. They all act as spies and pass on information to drop box. Recently the House on Taiwan was blown up. I was almost killed. I was the only one to escape and come here, but network and drop box still exist.” Madame Chang explained.

“So what did you find out.” Max asked.

“Many young girls on mainland China are going missing. Young prepubescent girls taken in by legitimate Christian Orphanages, setup by legitimate Western charitable foundations, are being attacked and destroyed. All girl children supposedly killed in resulting fires, but my sources say children stolen, even kidnapped. My sources also say “Serum” made from “totipotent“ stem cells is available on black market if price is right.” Jia-Li explained.

“So what your saying Jia-Li is that China has gone into the “Serum” business on it’s own?” Empress Chizuko asked her trusted Prime Minster. A trusted loyal friend of the Empire now.

“They can’t do that!” Sweet Eve put in.

“Eve is right Chizuko, it will send wrong message to other members of Empire if we fail this challenge to your authority.” Jia-Li followed up.

“Why can’t we just ask for a hearing at the UN and let them handle China?” Max wanted to know.

“To ask for help would show others weakness Max. Empress all seeing, all knowing. If other member nations discover that China is doing this they get ideal they can get away with it too. Instead of getting rid of China’s program we get more. We must take down entire Chinese program in one stroke. Then go to UN and present them with an accomplished fact. We must prove we are all seeing, all knowing, to world. That way we prove who is biggest dog in fight, ha, ha.” Madam Chang laughed.

It turned out that China did have a “Cube”, and a processing plant setup by the CAI to process the girl children they were collecting now. They were milking the poor children out of all their eggs like they were hens laying eggs or something. The processing would leave them barren for the rest of their young lives, but it was apparent the Chinese authorities didn’t care.

According to the Cree scientist and doctors, the Chinese doctors too for that matter, a woman is born with about 200,000 eggs, but by the time she reaches puberty, age 10 to 14, that number has dwindled to just 400 or so. The 400 or so that are left are dispense at about one a month for the rest of her life.

Loosing those 199,600 viable eggs was unacceptable to both the CAI and the Chinese, and now the Japanese who were secretly supporting them too we found out. They finally got together and proposed to harvest the entire 200,000 eggs at one time, then fertilize them all with sperm, turning them all into embryo. The embryo that is known as a blastocyst and consists of approximately 150 cells. Those stem cells that are the key to growing everything in the human body. The “totipotent“ stem cells that are essential to make “Serum”.

It turned out that Madam Chang had quite an intelligence gathering organization still operating in Taiwan and mainland China that she had never made use of until now. In no time we knew where the Cube’s base of operations was, who all were in it, where everything was being kept, and most of all who was concealing them from us.

When you have a operational teleporter like Fred at your disposal there is nothing, well no security system anyway, that you can’t get through or at least get into. China was being blatant about the whole thing. We had expected their base of operations to be on a top secret base, or on a remote island, maybe even a underground bunker or lab complex somewhere. Instead it was in the middle of one of their biggest Air Force bases, just outside one of their major cities.

When we got into their computers we discovered that they had a rather bold and nasty contingency plan in place for if they were ever discovered or caught. They would threaten to blow up the base and all the innocent people in and around it, and blame it all on us, well the Empress anyway, if we didn’t back off and leave them alone.

Learning of their crude contingency plan and their total lack of compassion and respect for human life, Sigrun and Kara, our Heads of Security and tactical planners came up with a plan to absolutely terrify the Chinese and anybody else that was in bed with them. After tagging all the players in the game we waited for shift change.

Every 72 hours, or 3 days, the bases were opened and the different crews were rotated in and out. It was 3 days on duty, 3 days off duty, 3 days on standby, with the 3 separate crews, and another crew of supernumeraries to take care of emergencies. Supposedly it was impossible to get in or out while the base was locked down, and everything was recorded with backups on and off site. One hour after everything was locked down Fred teleported all the bad guys directly into the sun. “Do not pass goal, do not collect $200.00 dollars out of Community Chest, go directly to jail”, well extinction in this case. This included the Cube that we had missed the first time around too. We all figured it was a waste of time to try to interrogate it anyway.

Next we removed all the explosives, which even included a small tactical nuke device with a remote trigger, and waited for the next shift change. Three days latter the higher ups noticed that everybody was gone. When they went to investigate they discovered the personnel were all gone from their posts. When they went to play the security tapes and find out what happened they discovered all the hard drives with their backups were missing. Also the explosive blackmail they had depended on was gone too.

With Fred’s, and the Empress’s engineering staff’s help, we followed the bad news up the ladder one step at a time. Finally we got to the top of the food chain. Each one disappearing into the sun as soon as his calls were completed. Finally we reached the top echelon.

In order to make a lasting impression, somebody must be left to spread the message of terror. Terror is like that old exercise in logic, “If a tree falls in the deep forest and there in nobody around to observe or hear it did it make a noise?” We made sure there was somebody around to hear it, and report on it’s fall.

In this case the four Joint Chiefs of the Chinese Air Force were left to spread the message. Not only did they not know where their people went, they didn’t know where the bombs went either, and they certainly didn’t know how the Empress got the UN’s Health and Human Rights Commission into the sealed bases either. According to the Commission members themselves, one minute they were at home the next minute they were here. In the end it didn’t matter how they got inside, they were, and they were very aware of what China had done now. They were also in direct contact with the Empress and the UN so that ruled out doing anything to them.

Realizing they were totally screwed China officially arrested the four Joint Chiefs of the Air Force and promised a full investigation of their repugnant acts. They also promised that something like this would never happen again. Most of those Chinese officials that were left, could only pray to whatever God, or gods for that matter, they believed in that they would not just disappear too when they went home tonight and turned off the lights.

“Is best to leave witnesses when message is to be sent publicly. They don’t sleep well wondering about what happened to that duty crew and Cube, or what may happen to them, te, hee, hee.” Prime Minster Jia-Li laughed.

We now had several thousand girl children, all under 10 years of age, that needed our help. The Christian Orphanages they originally came from were all destroyed and we frankly didn’t know what to do with them. Just sending them all back to China was out of the question, even for Morgan it seemed. Nina proposed that we buy a campus somewhere civilized and start our own orphanage/academy. Being the product of the private school/academy system herself, she thought it was a good system for girls.

Sweet Eve on the other hand wanted to find them all families and homes to adopt them. Prime Minister Chang just pointed out that we were going to need loyal staff and the Empress agreed with her. So our own orphanage/academy was decided on in the end. It was funny to hear Jia-Li use the Catholic nun’s favorite quote about church school that Max had heard so often growing up coming from her.

“How the twig is bent is how the tree will grow. Give me a child for the first three years and she’ll always be a good member of family.” Jia-Li told the gathered group of women and girls. Of course Max’s nuns had used Catholic instead of family.

In the meantime Morgan had contacted some of the better colleges and other institutions that specialized in botany and horticulture around the world. They as a personal favor to the Empress agreed to track the dried flower down. They finally narrowed the search down to floriculture, and finally anthology which dealt with the flower itself. After much study they were finally able to trace the dried flower we had to a early 19th Century German botanist’s study of the flora of the Kaspisches Meer, or in English, the Caspian Sea near Teheran, Isfahan, and the ruins of Castle Alamut itself. In no time we found the small valley the German botanist had discovered. Hours latter we had fresh samples of the plant itself and flowers. Now with fresh flowers, we had a working copy of the original drug.

Sweet Eve wanted to destroy all of the plants fearing what somebody else would do with it, if it ever got out of our control. Max himself voiced much the same complaint. Morgan just pointed out that once something is discovered it’s always much easier to reproduce than suppress the knowledge of it.

We were the safest people to have the drug the Empress finally told us all. Jia-Li just pointed out that with the drug and the Asgard Techno Wizard’s nano bots we would have the power to fully process anybody. She also used the quote; “with great power comes great responsibility, power not to be abused”, she finished up.

“And where are we going to establish our Camelot My Queen.” Max asked Chizuko in front of the gathered crowd weeks latter on the main deck of the Ogomma.

“Why not Shangri-la?” Jia-Li put in. As Prime Minister to the Great Empress she had the right to stick her own name in the hat for what the new island and school should be named.

“I don’t care what the Valkyries say about New Valhalla, I don’t do well in cold. I want somewhere I can swim year around.” Max voiced his objection to the Valkyries proposed site.

“You can swim year round in our cool Swedish fjord Lord Max, and be safe and protected from the outside world in our remote Swedish fjord Lord Max.” Göndul, one of the more outspoken Valkyries, put in innocently and laughed.

“Yeah, if your a damn walrus or inhuman like you Valkyries.” Max grossed.

“We’re just naturally warm blooded min vän (my friend, in Swedish). Your still welcome to join the other Heroes we’ve recruited for New Valhalla in Sweden Max.” Sigrun, and Kara joined Göndul and the other Valkyries in laughing at Max’s, and the other girls, discomfort.

“I’m with Max on that one Sigrun. I object to swimming in a river where real ice burgs flow by you as you swim. There’s something just so wrong about that image!” Nina joined Max in complaining about New Valhalla. As an ideal vacation destination it left a lot to be desired Nina and the other girls figured. The only thing that it had going for it was the A#1 man meat the Valkyries had stocked it with.

Oh, truth to be told, there were the many hot springs there too. True it was cold all the time outside, but indoors it could be warm and comfortable.

“We’ve looked around and decided on making our own island in the Bahaman’s, on the edge of the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean. Near the Florida Key’s, Cuba and Haiti in the Caribbean.” The Empress announced to her waiting audience.

<We’ve decided that we’re going to use certain techniques developed in the Cree Empire to build our island. Of course I’m going to add my own special touch to this one in the end. One low yield nuclear fission/fusion explosion is going to expand a bubble that we’re going to create almost a mile below the Atlantic Ocean’s floor, at the spot we want our new island. When the ocean floor itself has expanded and reached it’s maximum limit above the ocean, and is about to collapse back in upon itself. While it’s still a molten fireball of red hot super heated magma, I’m literally going to suck all that energy and matter out of the resulting chamber and dump it into the sun. I might add here that the sun will hardly notice it at all, ha, ha. That huge loss of matter and energy though will super cool the surrounding walls of the chamber that is left and turn them into a smooth glass like surface.> Fred explained patiently to everyone gathered.

“And that gets us what.” Morgan asked.

<That gets us a circular island at least a hundred miles in diameter with a perfectly spherical chamber with fused glass walls at the center of the island.> Fred told Morgan.

“We then take off the top of the chamber smoothly with one of the Ogomma’s main battle lasers and it becomes the perfect bowl to park the Empress Chizuko Tocaona’s ship in. We can even have drawbridges and a moat like a real castle.” Prime Minster Chang, Jia-Li to most of us, explained their plans to the gathered group.

“You can come visit us Sigrun if it gets too cold at the North Pole.” Max laughed.

“You wish puny man.” Kara shouted back over her shoulder as her and the other the Valkyries all left.

Our worst fears were realized about the under age girls we had inherited. They were virtually barren. The Chinese doctors had figured out a way to extract all their eggs. None of them our doctors figured would ever have a child naturally now. Eve thought that we should tell them all right now what had been done to them. The Valkyries, as you would expect, asked what the big deal was. Morgan had a lecture prepared, but waited for Chizuko’s approval before giving it. Max said that it would be years before the “birds and the bees“ lecture had to be explained to them anyway.

Nina, on the other hand, took the practical approach. She said to explain to all the girls now, rather than when they got old enough. Explain that when, not if, they ever wanted to have children they could, but they would need to consult with the Empress and their personal advisors. Parenthood she wanted to emphasize to all the girls was not a thing to get into lightly. It was a thing that effected the entire family organization and was not to be entered into without proper preparation. She even wanted to post banners around the school like, “it takes a village to raise a child.”

After all she argued, with the Asgard Techno Wizard’s nano bots, and no shortage of eggs or sperm from other sources, any of the girls could be impregnated, well implanted actually, and naturally carry to term as many perfect designer babies as they wanted. When they were old enough to know what they really wanted anyway. There should not be any great rush to get pregnant right away she argued.