Chapter 7

Month 72—Christmas on Anouilh

“WE’RE NOT GOING to give you real weapons for filming. There aren’t going to be any targets in front of you but the camera crew and we don’t want anything to happen to them. But you need to know these things exist and they work. Or they will work once we get a few bugs cleared up,” Silver Bullet said. He was talking to the eighteen girls who would rise from the water to attack the Swarm in the video, but his eyes were on his hands.

“Is it really like a Star Wars light saber?” KC Cutie asked. “Pew! Pew!” she made gestures as if she were in a light saber battle.

“You dummy,” said Rainbow. “That’s the storm troopers’ guns. A light saber goes zwarhm, zwarhm.”

“Um ... It’s not like that anyway. This is a laser sword capable of reaching out to touch something a mile away. But if you want pinpoint accuracy, we’re talking a couple hundred yards. If two of these crossed each other, they wouldn’t make contact like swords do. They’d just continue on past. I just thought it would look cool if you swung it instead of pointing it like a rifle. So, like, down there on the beach about 200 yards away, we’ve set up some targets. The big thing is to not swing too far with it because it will cut into anything in its path. So, think of it more like a flashlight. Point it at what you want to hit and flick the switch.” He turned toward the targets and pointed the laser. The light came on and he swept the beam across the targets. Then he turned it off. Even from this distance you could see the burn mark across the targets.

“They didn’t fall over,” KC complained.

“Um ... no. We reduced the power in this unit so it wouldn’t be so dangerous to demonstrate. Here, try it.” KC came up to Silver Bullet and he put the weapon in her hand, making sure she understood not to leave it on and not to point it at anything but the targets.

“Maybe you should ... um ... point it for me,” KC said. Silver almost passed out as she encouraged him to stand close behind her and hold her hand as she guided the beam across the targets. “Cool,” she said, bumping back into Silver’s prominent erection. “You’re not a little kid, are you?” she whispered.

“Um ... I ... I think you got the idea. Anybody else want to try?”

The chorus of “Me!” let him know everyone wanted a chance. And they all wanted him to help point it as they nuzzled their buns against his cock. It was inevitable that the fourth girl to rub up against him felt his weapon pulsing wetly against her butt.

“I win!” she screamed. Silver grabbed his toys and ran back to the hotel.

“Okay, listen up. Anybody not able to swim?” Three girls held up their hands. “Here’s some snorkel gear for all of you. We’ll stay near the shore for a while so you can get used to just floating and breathing. Then we’ll practice the moves for the attack. Make sure the mask is sealed around your eyes and nose, then put the snorkel in your mouth.”

“Are we really going to come out of the water wearing these? That’s so not sexy. Dakota?” whined Babycakes. The starlet was one of the smallest girls in the cast and her most popular roles had been as barely pubescent schoolgirls. She wasn’t nearly as young as she appeared.

“It’s Captain, Babycakes. And yes, you’ll wear the gear unless you figure you can hold your breath for twenty minutes. With your boobs hanging out, no one will notice the mask. Now listen up to Tatts. Silver Bullet was so terrorized we couldn’t get Master Chief to even work with you in the water.”

“Aw. We were just trying to be nice to him,” Miss Molly said. The busty, six-foot-tall camgirl had a perfect figure. It was her butt that triggered Silver’s climax.

“As hard as your ass is, I don’t know how you got him off,” Tatts said. “Now let’s get floating. It’s pretty crystal clear water.” Tatts didn’t wear a bikini. Or a bathing suit of any kind. She was still dressed in her typical baggy shirt and drawstring pants. The legs were rolled up high enough the snakes tattooed around her calves were on display. But she got the girls into the water and promised they’d have plenty of time to wash their hair before cocktails and dinner.

“Why can’t we just shoot the monsters as they come up out of the water, instead of having to duck under and come out fighting? Won’t our weapons all be waterlogged?” Pixie asked at dinner.

“Your weapons are waterproof,” Dakota explained. “And according to the Boss, the Sa’arm don’t like water, so they wouldn’t launch an attack from the water. They might even be discouraged from defending from that direction. So, they’re on the beach and you’re coming at them from the water.”

“Why don’t they like water?” Pixie insisted. “And if they don’t like water, why don’t we just throw water balloons at them?”

“Water cannon!” Silver whispered at the head table where he sat with Master Chief as they ate. “If they won’t come into the water, we should make the water come to them!”

“Pretty weak weapon,” Master Chief replied. “I don’t think it would kill them.”

“It might disorient them long enough to get them with another weapon,” Silver insisted. “Maybe not for this release, but we should think about it for the next. At least ask Ubie what he knows.”

Shooting enough scenes to do the work that would normally be done by CGI in a game was brutal. The previous versions had only had single player scenes that could be played against a single competitor. This was the first version that would allow multiple players and that meant every girl had to be shot in all the action, both with and without clothes.

And then there were the after-action scenes. Those were the scenes in which the prize girl did a ‘one-on-one’ masturbation scene with the guys who won. It all had to be orchestrated in advance and each of the developers had come at least once while watching the scenes on closed circuit TV as they were shot. Even Tatts had confessed to rubbing one out while watching Rainbow’s creative masturbation at poolside.

I had other work to do and fortunately, Tatts could join me when I met with the governing council of Papillon. The population of the entire island was only about 5,000 people, so their governing council was two guys and three old women who listened to grievances and saw that the minimal taxes were paid so they had enough to pay the salaries of their ten policemen. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” I said.

“We’re still upset about the big pickup over there,” an ancient woman with nearly as many tattoos as Tatts had. “We were looking forward to a boom in our economy with a thousand new residents at the hotel. Nearly fifty people had been hired to work at the resort. That’s one percent of our population! They were all sent away before the Confederacy came in and emptied the resort of every last person there. We know you have smart people and beautiful women over there again. How long before the Confederacy swoops in and collects you all and leaves us with nothing?”

“I understand you’re upset,” I said. “I have an agreement with the Confederacy not to have any more pickups on Anouilh. They are only allowed to contact me on my birthday and they will always get the same answer. We aren’t going. I won’t, however, prevent a pickup on Papillon if you want them here. I suppose we might have people on Anouilh who decide to leave the island in favor of a pickup possibility on Papillon. Will that be suitable?” The old woman nodded.

“What about employment?” a grizzled man asked. I got the feeling the council was the equivalent of the village elders. “Will you be importing workers or hiring locals?”

“I have no intention of importing any workers for normal resort operations,” I said. “You know we have specialty workers in our company based there and bring in actors for the movies we shoot. But for normal resort operations, we’d like to strictly use local workers.”

“We do have a restriction on that, at the moment,” Tatts picked up. “As you saw with our first busload of guests this month, our resort is especially tailored to women. As a result, we will probably only hire women as workers. There may be exceptions. We do have eleven men in the company, so we won’t automatically exclude qualified men, but we must honor and respect the women who are our guests and contract employees.”

“You’re pornographers!” another woman said around the two teeth she still had in her mouth. “You sell sex. I saw the women arrive and I came to visit. I saw through the doors that they were all naked and I left.”

“I’m sorry you saw that,” I said. “We produce a video game that has video of naked women in it. That is what our company does. The game is called Pussy Pirates and it not only entertains, it teaches people how to fight the Sa’arm when they invade our world. Naked women are a powerful incentive to playing a game.”

“Who would play such a game?” the woman demanded.

“I do,” one of the old men said. The old woman was shocked. “It is a good game and it is fun to kill the dickheads—besides having a beautiful young woman who is naked. It helps me concentrate.” I doubted that, but it was nice to have an endorsement.

“We have nearly five hundred children on the island. Our school is behind in repairs and technology because we are a poor people,” said the third woman, glossing over the whole issue of pornography. “We have only one old firetruck to service both islands, including your lovely resort. Our infrastructure is deteriorating—even our docks where most visitors arrive and our little airport. How might having your business and ownership of one island help the rest of our people?” At last we were getting to what the real stakes were. This old woman understood that money could make anything possible. I smiled.