Chapter 52

Things got a little tense a day later, when what Pavel had told me to watch for finally happened. T-72 tanks on the streets of Moscow, and a BTR Armored Personnel Carrier pulling right up to the barricade. There were reports that our DEFCON status was the highest it had been since August of 1983, and some were wondering if the KGB would want to go down in a blaze of glory.

Then an amazing thing happened. Reports were confusing. And as reports of fighting came in and people in the crowds being killed, Boris Yeltsin got onto an Army armored car and instructed his people to not use violence. To resist, but not fight. Protect the Government, but not to harm soldiers who were only following orders. I even saw some of the Army cheering that. And according to reports, many units were refusing orders to go to Moscow and put down the revolt.

And even more of their empire was crumbling. Estonia was declaring independence from the USSR, and Latvia was in meetings at that time and would probably do the same thing. This was bigger than East Germany! That was a puppet state, this is actually parts of the Soviet Union itself!

The next morning, I watched the news as I ate breakfast, relieved the world had not blown itself up overnight. Things were still tense, and the news was showing high ranking Soviet officials and Army leadership walking around the crowds, not sure what for. I had already canceled the game, and thankfully everybody understood.

This was either how WWIII started, or the end of the Cold War. And none of us knew how it would end.

Finally, on Thursday night, it was over. Boris Yeltsin had stood down the KGB and Army, Gorbachev had been released from house arrest, and the leaders of the coup were under arrest or in hiding. And the leader of the KGB had eaten a Makarov sandwich.

I know I let out a huge sigh of relief, and got stinking drunk. Knowing that the world was not going up in a nuclear fire, just because some KGB lunatic was willing to kill everybody else because his Communist Empire was crumbling into dust around him.

At work the next day things were still a little chaotic, but it was obvious that they were getting back to normal. Latvia had indeed broken away with Estonia, and a great many reports were coming in of what parts of the military supported the coup, and which opposed it. A great many higher ranking officers had supported it, but many more had refused to take part. Especially at the Regimental level and lower. One Colonel even told reporters he had given his units orders to not fight the people unless it was to protect their own lives. That only orders directly from him alone to fire were to be obeyed, and that would only come if he was dead. And if that happened, they were free to make up their minds for themselves, and to live with it as they saw fit.

The next week I picked Amber up at her house on Friday morning, and we drove to Anaheim. I picked up our badges, and I was showing her around the convention. And I could tell it fascinated her. So many people, and all there to play games.

In the dealer room I signed everything I was asked to sign, and this time kept my eye out for fakes. But I did not see any, which was a good thing. There should be no reason, as I signed about 100 copies of various things while I was in there.

At noon we went to get the luggage and brought it up to the room. Amber was surprised at how big it was, and I said this was normal for me. Sue and Rob found us on the floor an hour later, and I handed them their keys and overall it was relaxing. We had dinner in the restaurant, then after kissing for a bit we curled up to sleep together.

Brad was there the next day, and found us at breakfast. Amber realized we were going to be “talking shop” for a while, so she kissed my cheek and said she was going to use the pool. Brad looked at me as we headed to one of the unused rooms, and I simply said she was a friend.

“Pete, I’ll say it again. How you do it, I have no idea. But I almost never see you without pretty women around.”

“Brad, she’s just a friend, and not interested in me. I asked if she wanted to come, she accepted. Now, Rob is going to be playing the stooge this time, any ideas for the boss?”

“Yes, I have my intern here with me. He is out and about, I already gave him the information you wanted him to read, and he knows what is expected.”

We got it set up, and then we went back out onto the floor. And a few minutes later I heard my name called to the front. I got up there, and the lady that helped run the convention gave a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you for coming Mr. Culver. We have a bit of a problem, and I knew you were here. Can you be a dear and help us out?”

Well, turns out that the guy that was supposed to give a presentation called less than an hour ago and said he would not be there. And now they had a hole in the schedule. I told her that was not a problem, and I volunteered to fill in. She asked me how much I would want, and I just laughed.

“First of all, just call me Pete, please. Secondly, are you still paying him, and is it the standard rate?”

“We already did, but he said he will send the money back. And yes, the standard rate.” I told her to just send me a check for that and I would be happy. She thanked me, and I decided to have a little fun. We were just finishing up when Amber came up, wearing a really hot bikini. I told her what had happened, and she actually looked excited. I told her the time for the presentation, and she promised to be there.

I walked away with Brad, and I told him my idea. He gave me a smile and said it was not one of the things he sold, but I said it should not matter. But he agreed to help me do it and we went back into the room and talked about how to do it.

Amber and I had an early dinner, and at 6:45 we were in the green room as I told her what it would be like. She sounded interested, and thankfully she had played D&D so knew what games like this were like. And when it was time, Jackie and I went out and she took a seat in the front as I saw Brad and his intern passing out slips of paper for people to fill out. And Sue and Rob were set up with my cameras to record everything on video.

I took the stage, and after thanking everybody for being there, I said this had not been well prepared. “This was kind of sprung on me at the last minute, but we are going to do the best we can. So that is why The Geek Crusaders are not here. Brad there is passing out slips of paper, and if you are interested in playing up here on stage with me, please fill out your name. But first, this is not going to be Dungeons and Dragons. The rule system tonight will be GURPS, and it is using a supplement I wrote called ‘Yellow Journalists, Investigative Reporters, and War Correspondents’. Basically contemporary 20th Century newspaper reporting. So if you have played any of my adventure books, please do not volunteer. If you have played it and not played any of my mini-adventures, feel free to volunteer. If you have not played it before, feel free to do so.”

Brad was collecting up the slips, and I saw he was setting some of them aside. And after 15 minutes of describing more about the system, he brought me six names. I smiled and started to call them out. The last name was Amber. She walked behind me as she moved to her seat, and whispered “Asshole!” as she did, causing me to smile at her.

Thankfully three of the six had played GURPS before, and one of them was familiar with Yellow Journalists. So I was giving the basics as the intern was passing out the character sheets. Once they all had characters they liked, I started their first mission. These were all fairly simple ones, designed to be played in 30 minutes or less. The first I ran them through was a simple missing child one. The lead reporter decided that they would interview individuals as they went out and searched for the missing girl. This worked out to be the best choice. When I rolled the girl was found alive, and by the three person search team that had Amber along. She also happened to be one of two photographers on the reporting team. I gave them the results, and said that the story was the winner of many local awards, and the photo won national awards as Amber stated she was taking pictures of the girl being discovered, and being carried back in the arms of one of the rescuers.

The second was about a town caught in a snowstorm, and their editor had given them a list of several possible topics to cover in their morning meeting. This time the lead reporter selected to file the “Human Interest” piece. And the article was a light fluff piece, covering the snowball fight between teens and adults in a downtown park like it was a battle, and the sledding race like it was a serious sports event.

And the perfect touch was when somebody threw a snowball at Amber, and she in in response turned and threw one back. And all of them turned it into a giant snowball fight in front of the newspaper, with the exception of the other photographer that captured it all on film.

Everybody including the audience was laughing at the end, as they were pelting each other with snowballs, and rolling as if it was an actual battle. And in the end I said that they had gotten the entire first page of the local section of the paper.

I thanked them all when it was over, and everybody seemed to love it. Since there were ten minutes left, I took some questions from the audience. And yes, I told them. This is part of a published adventure, and I held up the book I had used.

“This has been out for almost two years now. The very idea is that these are thirty short missions, mostly things that you might see in a local newspaper or TV news broadcast. I simply selected newspaper ones for these two because it allows the team to work together more.” And when another asked if they were all like this, I shook my head. “Oh no, I have published four on this series. Two are like this, the other two are much more involved and long. Playing once a week, it took them six weeks to solve one of the missions. In a longer and more serious game, quite often it almost becomes a crime or spy story, it all depends on what the game master thinks up for them to do.”

At the end I thanked everybody, and told them I would be in the main hall if anybody had a question, or wanted anything signed. Amber came up and hugged me, then called me an asshole again. “You did that on purpose! I did not even fill out one of those!”

“Of course I did. You can’t go to a game convention and not play a game, Amber. But I knew this was going to be fun and easy, and hoped you would not mind.”

“Not at all, it actually was fun. But why did you have me have them find the kid?”

“I did not. I honestly rolled a dice, it just happened to be your team that found her. Pure chance, but you handled it perfectly. You helped, and also did your job.”

She then looked at me and asked what many did during playtesting. I told her that in every game I ran of this scenario, the teams always went out with the searchers. “Pete, what if we had not gone along, and had instead remained at the command post, interviewing the people running it?”

I sighed softly. “That is written also. Then you would have been there to capture the reaction and emotions as one of the teams out in the woods found her body. The rewards might have been the same, the one who took a picture of the mother crying would also have won a prize. But to be honest, I have run that maybe 5 times. And every single time, the girl was saved. But as I had learned long ago, players will do unpredictable things, so I have to account for that.”

“Wow, she would have died?”

“Yep, she would have fallen and broken her leg, and cut an artery and bled to death before she was found. That was why no matter what, the second story I had selected with Brad was the snow one. In every single one of those, it is scripted to end with somebody hitting one of you with a snowball, in the hopes a fight breaks out. But the lead reporter made the perfect choice in going after the human interest story. And I loved how she decided to write them. Fun stories, as if they were serious. A perfect silly touch on a fun day in the snow.”

Amber nodded, and I sat down at a table and a line of people started to hand me things to sign, and asking me questions. Amber sat to the side, amazed at how many people were lining up to talk with me. Even Rob and Sue were filming this, and it was interesting to watch later. This time I know for a fact some of the girls were flirting with me. More than a few younger than Amber was, but also a few more my age, and one of them was even tempting.

She was one of the last ones, and stood at the end of the table talking with me as the last few came up. She had red hair, a dazzling smile, and a lush body that actually had me making will checks to keep my attention on her eyes, and what I wanted to look at. But when she asked me if I wanted to join her for a drink when they had finished, I said I already had a date for dinner, and rested my hand for a moment on Amber’s shoulder.

She smiled, and I said that she should look for me at a future convention though. And even Amber gave a soft whistle as she walked away. “Damn Pete, I may just come back again next time. Cause if you don’t want that, I might like to make a play for it.” I winked at her, and as we walked to the dining room we both commented on the fine ass that the girl had. And the way it moved back and forth as she walked away, and her rather large but high riding breasts.

As we walked in, I whispered back that it might be a good idea, as I was pretty sure that each of us had only been with a single redhead, and experiencing one more might be a good idea. “Yeah, but I got a feeling you would have a much better chance at her than I ever would. She barely looked at me, but she seemed to be really into you, dude.”

I saw Sue and Rob come in, and I waved for them to join us. I moved to sit next to Amber, and Sue smiled and sat next to me, and Rob across. Both said that the game had been great. Sue even said it was almost exactly as when she had played, but the last one was better. When Amber asked, Sue admitted they had done the snow story more serious.

“Amber, Sue here is one of my regular game testers. I have a few groups I run through them before I submit them. She has been part of that team since she started working for me. I have to test them with real players, to help find things I did not expect.”

Sue giggled, and agreed. “Oh, you got that right! You heard him talk about his more serious ones.” I cut her off, and said none of them had played it, so to keep out things that might ruin it in case they did. “OK, sorry. Let’s just say that in one of the long adventures, one of the guys we were investigating was kind of a sleaze. Julie, she was the private eye in the group. The guy liked going to strip clubs, so she got a job as a stripper to try and get information from him. Pete admitted he did not expect that, but we went with it. And in the end, she had sex with him just so she could ransack his apartment after he fell asleep. And she did it two different times!”

Rob and Amber both laughed, and I agreed that I did indeed change that. “I had never intended that they actually go that route to try and get information. The fact he went to a strip club gave them a chance to break into his apartment when he was not around. But Julie was single, and I had known her since she was in Junior High. I would not call her a slut, but let’s just say she had been single for a while then, and felt like playing a bit more.”

Amber asked how I had played that, and I admitted I had a rule book that involves how to include sex in a game. “I simply used that, and had them make rolls to determine how things ended up.”

Rob laughed and admitted that he had a copy of those rules. Sue and I winked at each other, and Amber asked what they were like. The food arrived, and as we ate Rob spent several minutes explaining how the book worked, and all the tables involved.

“So, it’s for a guy and a girl?”

“Oh no Amber, we also made tables for couples of two girls, and even two guys. There is even an appendix in the back for group events.” I smiled, and saw Amber open her eyes wide.

“What do you mean ‘We’?” And even Rob raised his eyebrows and asked the same thing.

Oops. Well, I called for the bill, and I told everybody to grab a dessert and we would talk more upstairs. I selected a chocolate cake, and soon we were in the living room of the suite, drinking champagne and eating our desserts.

“OK, yes. I am one of the authors of that book, Rob.”

“Wait, you are Mike Hawk?” Sue laughed, and I joined in. Amber snorted some champagne out of her nose, and I got her some napkins so she could clean herself up as the rest of us laughed. Of course Amber then demanded to know why I had selected a name that sounded like “My cock” to publish a game under.

“Oh no, I am not Mike Hawk.” As I said that I went into the room and opened up the briefcase I had other game materials in, and walked back and handed a copy of the book to Amber. Along with several other adventures.

“No, Mike Hawk is one of my partners. Me, I am Jenny Talia.” Amber burst out laughing, and then Rob asked me why. I handed around my first two adventures, then explained how and why I had written them, and how we made a company to publish them.

“You see, the entire idea was to be silly and fun, as well as sexy. Think more French sex comedy than hard porn movie. Yes, there was sex, but it was supposed to be fun, tongue in cheek. We formed a company to publish them, but I knew I had to pick a new name to do it. I was already rising in the industry, and that might have ruined that. So to show it was intended to be fun, I adopted the name ‘Jenny Talia’.”

Amber was then interested, and when she tried to open the adventure, I took it back. “Only open this if you intend on never ever playing it Amber. You do not want to go into a game if you can avoid it knowing how it goes.” She nodded, and asked how it normally ended.

“Oh, I can tell you that!” Sue said. “I have done several now, they almost all end in an orgy!” Rob laughed, and I shook my head.

“Not how you think, Amber. Normally when it is all said and done, they retire to an inn, and let’s just say they decide to spend some time exploring the tables I had made.” And when she asked if I had really made tables for homosexual couples, Rob opened the book and turned it to the right page.

“OK, let’s just say that among the group I played with back then, at least three of the girls were bisexual. Two in a committed relationship at the time. So yes, I made lesbian and gay tables. My partner expanded on them, and that became the book there.”

“I had heard of it but never seen it before. I thought it was just a rumor, but not something real.”

“Oh, it’s real, Amber. It’s just not the kind of thing most game stores display for customers. But if you go into more than a few and ask for it, they either have it or can get a copy. I still get royalties from this, I think it is in the eighth printing now.”

Rob was surprised to find out I was Jenny from XX-XY, and asked if it was common knowledge. “Well, I’m sure many others know, but it is still kind of a secret. And thankfully, those in the industry know it does not come into my regular adventures. Jenny and Pete are two different people as far as they are concerned. And she is mostly retired. It has been years since I have done a Jenny adventure.”

We were finishing the champagne, and Amber excused herself to go take a shower. Sue admitted she had known I was Jenny for years, and Rob raised his eyebrow. “Oh yes, Sue here has played all of them. As I said, she is in my test group.” She even admitted to having played one I tested that was never published.

“It really was not all that good. We were a warband of orcs, and a spell went crazy and turned us into dryads and satyrs. In the end, half of the group did not want to turn back into orcs.”

Rob looked at me, and I nodded. “But I did not actually make that one. That was a submission I was testing, and I expected it would not work.”

Amber came out wearing a robe and said it was my turn, and we all said goodnight. I took my shower, and came back into the bedroom in my underwear and saw Amber laying on the bed reading. She was reading the sex manual, and I laughed as I slipped into bed.

“I admit, it’s rather well done. More tasteful than I would have expected.”

“Well, we were trying to be sexy, not smutty. I had made the original tables for the adventure, but then we expanded on them and made an entire book.”

“I see. Pregnancy, disease, even how likely it is different species might be able to have children together.”

“Yeah, that I got from growing up on a farm. It’s basic, but also includes other possible hybrids, and which ones would just not work.”

She put the book down, and when I saw her reach for the light I saw she did not have her shirt on. Amber then rolled into my arms, and we started kissing. I enjoyed caressing her naked back, her skin so soft and smooth under my hands. And Amber was caressing my chest, causing lovely feelings as she slid her tongue around inside of my mouth.

I reached up and took her breast in my hand and cupped it, and she pressed herself into my hand. I took that as acceptance and started to gently caress and feel her breast, as Amber was my chest. Her nipples were hard, and I think we were both enjoying my light pinching and pulling, and my circles over her areola.

After a bit her hand started to work down my belly, and I decided to do the same. Amber pulled back and grinned at me. Her teeth showing clearly in the soft light in the room, a contrast to her darker skin. I bent to kiss her neck, and she purred in response as I made my way up and down her neck, gently biting and nibbling between kisses. And when her hand reached my groin, she jumped a moment later when mine reached her groin. I was surprised to find she was completely nude, and let my fingers lightly explore the top of her pubic mound, feeling her crinkly hairs.