Chapter 1

“Well, at least now the very worst bit is over,” Melinda thought, as the HR manager finished off reading the list of twenty interns named who had not been selected for the very final round of the interviewing process. Her own name had not been called, leaving her with the much smaller group of nine other interns that she would now be competing against for the few treasured hiring slots.

“Again, if your name was one of the twenty called,” the HR matron sternly reminded the large dejected group of slowly shuffling former interns, “you will proceed to the main office across the hall to collect your Internship Completion certificate and a letter of recommendation. Best of luck to each of you with your future job searches. Now, the rest of you ... you last ten interns that are here remaining, please wait for a few more minutes while we sort out the rest of those other folks. While you are waiting, each of you take one of the 5x7 yellow index cards on the table and write your full name across it in plain block letters with a Sharpie, and then tack it up at the top of one of the ten columns on the large corkboard here on this wall, right by the doorway next to me. Then, in a few more minutes, the process for the final selection will begin.”

She’d made it to the final selection, but Melinda wasn’t over-confident or relaxing at all in the slightest. The entire hiring process for Garratt Publishing had been a battle against overwhelming odds right from the start. They only hired Junior Associate Editors once a year, late in the summer after accepting a limited number of prospective interns earlier in the spring after college graduation. There were always thousands of applicants nationwide for those fixed fifty internships, but this was just the start of the real whittling down process as twenty of those folks selected wouldn’t make it past the first month. Garratt’s standards were extremely high and it didn’t take more than a simple minor copy proofing mistake to get a black mark against your name. Every Friday the interns with the most blackies against them that week were gone, and without a letter of recommendation either.

Melinda had been close to elimination once, a few weeks earlier, but she’d always possessed an exceptional ability in her school years to pay extremely close attention to details. Her parents had sometimes thought her ability to concentrate was somewhat excessive, perhaps even borderline obsessive-compulsive. Perhaps, one doctor had suggested, but not significantly enough to require medications or close medical monitoring. Close attention to detail was what made for an excellent copy reader (the main job of interns at this company) and an Associate Editor, which is what she hoped to soon become!

Once the remaining interns had written their names on their card and posted them on the corkboard with a pin, the door to their conference room opened again and the HR manager returned, along with the Senior Director of Acquisitions, a rather formidable woman of middle years that from her reedy angular appearance dined solely upon a diet of broken glass and unfortunate interns. Melinda had never met her, but remembered her name was on one of the doors on the executive floor.

“Ah ... ten brand new young happy faces,” the executive said with a smile that displayed her fangs, out and ready for fresh kills, “most of which, from your faces, don’t quite realize that your hardest test is now upon you. Louise (the HR matron) will now be presenting you with a stack of one hundred index cards on the table. Please now feel free to mix, shuffle and scatter the cards around randomly across the table so that they’re all evenly distributed – but in no circumstances are you to turn any of the cards over! The cards must be left flat at all times. Now ... shuffle them up!” That didn’t take very long and when the pile of one hundred cards looked evenly shuffled, they were told to stop.

“Now, as you can observe, there are one hundred cards available for the ten of you. Yes, most Senior Editors, Managers and even some of the publishers can count! Each of these cards displays on the top the last name of an author, a brief description of their writing genre, and at the bottom the state they reside in. When I tell you to begin, you will have five minutes for each of you to select ten of the cards and slide them – not pick them up - into your own individual pile. Again, you may not at this time pick up and lift or ever look at the underside of any card, but you can slide cards back and forth across the table as you wish! Now begin!”

Melinda already had figured out the goal for this elimination game and now, hastily, had concocted something of a plan that she thought might give her an advantage. These names would be, she was sure, authors that were inactive – but still under contract, owing the publisher works for which they’d already received advances. Almost certainly, it would now become her task to contact these writers – and obtain those overdue manuscripts. Easy!

She decided upon a geographic approach, rather than selecting by favorite genres. She preferred reading science fiction, but she decided to select out her ten cards by their state location. Being here in New York City, her best choice for a regional pick was to select only New England area writers, and pretty quickly she found six of these to start with. New Jersey was good too, and so was Pennsylvania and New York State and with bare seconds left to spare, she compiled her last choices and was fairly happy with each of them.

“Good,” the vampire smiled, “now each of you can have five minutes to privately examine the details on the backs of each of your cards. When you have done so, select at least five cards to keep, and pin those cards up here on the board under your name. Front showing only, please. Now begin!”

The details on the back of each card were fairly enlightening, and consisted of the primary contact information of the author, a listing of their prior novels (condensed by series), and an overview of the recent phone contact attempts made with a very brief explanation for their non-delivery of contracted works. Even this terse overview alone suggested that several of the authors in her pile would be next to impossible to collect from, largely due to reasons of long-term ill-health or attitude. One card had a note saying that the author would shoot at anyone from the publisher’s company who appeared at their door! Not a good prospect for harvesting a manuscript there.

With a little thought, she decided that at least six of her cards were all pretty acceptable. All of these were north of the city and could be combined easily into a circular and concise road trip, if she could visit each of the authors in person. The remaining four cards she now held onto as she awaited further instructions.

“Good, I see everyone as selected at least five author cards on the board, good. Now, for the remaining cards in your hand, we’re now about to play a fun, quick little card game, where for the next five minutes everyone is going to now pass one of your unwanted cards to someone else, one at a time ... when and where and how I tell you. When you are happy with all of the cards in your hand, you’re done – you can get up from the table and pin them on the board. Now get ready – pass to your left!”

Every fifteen seconds the order to pass, either to the left of the right was given and Melinda traded off one of her rejected cards to someone else, and usually received something that was perhaps even worse. By the law of mathematics, this gave her a choice of about twenty incoming cards to select something tolerable from, but the ‘worst’ sort of cards seemed to be the stock in the highest trade rotation. Four of the interns decided that they were fairly happy with their revised stack of prospects and removed themselves from the table, leaving just six of the interns still swapping cards when time was called.

“The four of you that quit early can start looking foolish now. Our little game at the table wasn’t quite done just yet. That’s a lesson to you to never call it quits before you know all of the rules of the game! Now, you six still seated at the table. You all have five more minutes to make any last second trades you wish until you have the final cards you want. NO RULES – start trading!”

No rules? Fine!

“I’m looking for West Coast authors, California especially,” one girl called out immediately, standing up waving her trade cards.

“I’ve got two of those,” one of the guys confirmed, I’m looking for Sci-Fi or Fantasy authors only.”

“Mystery authors for me preferred, but I’ll settle for a modern thriller writer,” another gal called out and the horse trading started to get pretty serious all around the table.

“I’ve got a mystery here ... but I’m looking only for biography or sports authors,” the other guy replied back.

“I’ve got a sport related something here to trade, but I’m wanting either cooking or crafts, or how-to stuff,” another gal offer.

Melinda piped in too, “Looking for New England, anything or anyone in the region.”

Melinda was able to trade off her Pennsy and Jersey residing author cards for two authors living in upstate New York, which fit acceptably with her planned travel circuit and would save her travel time and gas. Then the card which would change her life appeared.

“Last card swap for me,” one girl called out with a scowl upon her face, “it’s for a porn writer. Someone who wrote about a dozen pervy sci-fi novels ... something called ‘The Fleet Girls’ series, or Lesbos in Space, more accurately. Lives in upstate New Hampshire, that close enough for you, Melinda?

“Mine! I want it!” Melinda cried out, “I’ll swap you any card in my hand for it, your choice!” That sealed the deal fast. The other girl was smart enough to think locally too for ease of contact, and she without hesitation took Melinda’s card with a local NYC address, her best prospect ... but she didn’t care. Before the rules could change suddenly again, she pinned her four cards to the corkboard and proclaimed herself done.

Once the five minutes of trading time were done, the game was declared to be over with. A couple of the last interns still seated were a bit disappointed, having hoped that there would be yet one more final choice to get rid of the last ‘turkey’s in their hands, but now the swapping was done.

“Interns,” the pale executive revenant now pontificated, “you now have your cards of ten authors each. You will have until next Friday at 4 pm here in this room to contact those authors by any method of your choice and obtain and deliver these overdue manuscripts, already contracted for and paid for. Note the word manuscripts ... not promises to deliver one, or any excuses either. Manuscripts ... here and in-hand. Should you fail to obtain even a single chapter, don’t even bother returning back here. We’ll can mail you your internship completion and letter of recommendation. The top interns who demonstrate that they can deliver manuscripts will receive an offer of permanent employment as a Junior Associate Editor. That’s the task before you and the final reward.”

“Also, one final reminder, interns,” the HR Matron scowled, “you are free to contact each of your selected authors by any means you like, and sleep on their doorsteps until they cough up the goods for all that we care ... but DO NOT ever represent yourself as a Garratt Publishing employee. You are still interns ... associated with us, sure – but you are not authorized to bargain or conduct any negotiations with anyone, for any reason. If negotiations become necessary, to finalize the delivery of a completed manuscript, you may contact your supervising Associate Editor who can handle those arrangements, but don’t waste their time otherwise. It is just after 4 pm on Friday now ... you all will have exactly one week to accomplish your tasks. Now go!”

Melinda was out the door and out of the building like a rocket.

The ‘Fleet Girl’ series was very much a product of its times in the ‘anything goes’ writing period of the 1970s, where every paperback publish house tried with hundreds of book series emulated the other more famous men’s adventure or fantasy series and tried to out-do them all with more hardcore action or more sex, or both. Mostly, especially the notorious ‘Gor’ series, were targeted at teenaged boys who’d mostly likely never even seen or touched a naked female breast, and already wanted to fantasize owning their own slave girls.

One of these sorts of manuscripts crossed the desk of a Junior Editor at Garratt in the mid-1970’s and she had the sense to see that this was a fairly different sort of ‘one-handed’ reading material ... that this story was oriented towards teenaged girls, instead of boys. Instead picturing the usual Boris Vallejo lurid book cover where the muscle-bound lump would be holding a sword with one hand and the chain to his captive nude slave girl in the other, this cover would feature strong, self-confident women in skimpy space skirts with phallic-shaped blasters! These strong self-dependent women of this novel needed or wanted to please only one man in their life ... their Admiral, for whom they endure any hardship and danger to incur his gratitude, along with their love and yearning to please their stern mistress, their Commander.

It was a different sort of teen series, directed at a demographical market that was commercial underserved and unsatisfied until the ‘Fifty Shades... ‘ appeared much later on, and for about the next ten years Garrett had a bestselling series on their hands. If the girls cared that the romantic sex in the tales now often outweighed the story plot, and had become much more graphic ... no one much cared.

By the early nineties, a new wave of feminists had gone on the warpath looking for misogyny and sexism, and once most of the worst offending male series had been quietly (and not so) suppressed, the Fleet Girls at last came to their attention ... and the feminist gatekeepers of what was to be ‘approved’ in science fiction and fantasy were horrified.

They were mostly fine with the subtle but pervasive themes of Sapphic love and devotion between women and even graphic lesbianism (there were very few men left in that universe) but the recurrent themes of total obedience and submission to authority horrified them, even with women holding the whip hand. Quickly the books were tagged as being associated with far right-wing extreme-ism and pornography. Garratt had quietly ceased reprinting the earlier novels in the series and decreased print run numbers of the final books, to reduce their shelf visibility. When the last novel was published in the early 1990’s it was released to no advance publicity and in fairly limited numbers, soon become a scarce collector’s item. By then, the alleged Author, Skip Noble, had been virtually forgotten by everyone, except by sci-fi book collectors.

Melinda, being a geeky sort of teenaged girl who loved books ... and not being outgoing or attractive enough to attract a steady boyfriend, fell in love with the series from the first book, when it was recommended to her by a used bookseller in the dealer room at her local gaming convention. Soon she acquired the complete set and became increasingly obsessed with them throughout the entirety of her high school years. Of the author, Skip Noble, almost nothing was known about him, other than the name was likely a pseudonym and he lived quietly somewhere in rural New England. Even his Wikipedia page was blank, other than a simple bibliography of the twelve Fleet Girl books. Famously, the author never gave interviews or made any personal appearances at bookstore signings. Someone in the mid-1980’s had once tried to organize a national Fleet-Con convention, but the author refuse to contact them or have anything to do with it, so the idea died.

This only fueled Melinda’s curiosity and imagination, then and then later on in her college years, and even now she still masturbated constantly to these novels. She was certain, from her long reading of the books, that the author was undoubtedly a woman ... probably the so-called Commander, the major heroine of the series. Also, by the time she had completed her English degree, she was increasing certain that the entire fictional series was somehow based upon some actual fact or truth.

This was the obsessive-compulsive side of her, she tried to convince herself, and for years she had yearned to find out the truth of it all. Now, she was finally getting the chance to fulfill her single greatest dream! All that mattered to her now was just the chance to meet her ... or him and to tell them how important the novels had been to her, eventually finding some measure of confidence as a troubled teenaged girl.