Chapter 71: Season Finale

I HAD TO DO a lot of testing. I grabbed a satchel and slung it over my shoulder, then opened a gateway back to my mansion and stepped through. I had the satchel still over my shoulder, but when I stepped through the gateway, there was still one on the floor in my study. So were a couple of dozen women there and Doug was trying to keep them calm about where I’d disappeared to. They were surprised to see me back.

Naked.

In full goat form.

So many things to remember.

I said a little spell and transformed to my Bob persona.

“Aren’t special effects just incredible?” I said as if I had just entered for my own comedy special. “I once saw a guy just evaporate into thin air. And he wasn’t even on TV!” My original crew were all laughing. They’d seen me in full goat form already and figured I was just some kind of morphing alien. The new contestants were a little shaken. I reached into the bag and Josie handed me a pair of pants and a shirt.

“Well, that was exciting,” I said. “You all know from watching last season that I possess some super technology, including a portal that I use to get to and from my secret palace. I carry it around in my satchel. Only I just discovered that I haven’t had that satchel for months! And don’t worry about me exposing that right now, because we haven’t even started airing this season and we’re recording the final episode now. By the time it airs, we’ll all be safe and sound at my palace. Assuming you all want to go. One of the things you all need to think about tonight is whether you really want to make this commitment to leave earth, because once we enter the portal to my palace, you will rarely if ever see earth again.”

There was some murmuring as the new contestants started asking the first crew what it was really like. Of the new contestants, only Annie had actually seen the palace and understood that it was actually in an alternate dimension.

“Bob, are we going to be safe there?” Mia asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “That’s what this whole adventure is about. Making sure my palace is safe from intrusion and destruction. It’s also about keeping it a perfect world. Well, maybe not perfect. But it’s pretty damn nice.”

“That’s for sure,” Artemisia said. “Bob, you know I’m with you. I’ll follow you into outer space. I’ll follow you to Timbuktu. I’ll follow you to bed. Give me any task and I’ll do it. Just let me be with you.”

That girl. Zhi had always had a special place as my devotee, but Artemisia had joined her fully. With those two women, I didn’t need worship, I didn’t need marriage, I didn’t need possession. They lived for me and I wanted to keep them happy for many years to come.

“Okay,” I said. “In the next few hours, I want you all to put together a strategy for rescuing a whole bunch of enslaved women. I’m going to give you a list of resources that we can use, but we’ll need to execute it in eleven different cities in one night. Yes, it’s going to be a bit hairy, but we have ‘technology’ that no one else in the world has.”

“Bob, why don’t you just share that technology with the police or that FBI chick who was here? Why do you think you have to be the one to do this rescue?” Sonia asked.

“Well, there are a couple of reasons. My tech doesn’t work with any other tech on this planet. In fact, to use it, a person would have to unlearn four thousand years of human science, and then study for a thousand to learn how to use it. The only person I know who has made the leap is Sally, who jumped back home with me and will be back later. Ask Mia what Sally can do.”

“I saw her weld a bunch of bricks together with a few words,” Mia said. “I examined them before and after. It was incredible.”

“But my tech is also fairly incompatible with the most advanced human technology. For example, I can make my satchel invisible to the human eye.” I set the bag on my desk and cast the look-away spell. “In this room, you all just saw the bag disappear. On television, people are going, ‘What’s the big deal? I can still see the bag.’ Well, the problem is that my stealth technology only works on the human eye. Electronic devices, including the video cameras, can see it just fine. I demonstrated this once to Annie. Honey, lead them through the exercise.”

“Sure, Bob. Everybody get out your cellphone and turn on your camera. Then start scanning the area on Bob’s desk.”

The whole cast and crew got out cellphones and started looking. They were looking over the tops of their devices and then at the screen. Amy got up and came to the desk. It was fun to watch her looking at her phone while she reached out her hand to feel for the satchel. When she touched it, she gasped.

“Now I see it. It’s ... wait ... it’s gone again.” She touched it again. “I can only see it when I’m in contact with it.”

All the girls and Tommy had to get up and follow their cellphones to the desk and touch the bag.

“You see the problem. I have stealth technology, but it can be detected by human tech. That is one of the things you need to consider in your planning of our rescue operation. Another tech I have is the portal, but it may be that I have to have a satchel at each location I want to port to. I’m not going to indicate why, but at the moment, it only seems to work when one of these satchels is present. Yet the FBI, and probably other organizations around the world, have torn the satchel completely apart, down to the threads that hold it together, and can’t find any sign of the portal. We need to consider this.”

“And finally, we need to deal with the very real possibility that the bad guys who are holding these sex slaves might be—no, are willing to kill us to keep their slaves. And, of course, we have to figure out what to do with ten thousand women and children we intend to rescue and what to do with their captors. I’m going to leave you to work on planning this effort as I take off for a while to scout the locations. I’m not sure how long this will take, but I know that once people enter the cycle of slavery, they don’t have much time to be rescued before they are sold off and transported out of our reach. With the idea of a rescue mission in the air, we can anticipate that the bad guys will start to anticipate it and may start moving their merchandise to other locations sooner rather than later. Your mission, if you accept it, is to beat them to the punch and rescue these people who are being trafficked.”

I looked around at all the cast and crew and saw them beginning to nod as the ideas started coming. I picked up the satchel and slung it over my shoulder as I had done thousands of times in the past and opened a gateway. I stepped through, taking the satchel with me, and closed the gate behind me.

I was back in Areola and Lacy was waiting for me.

“Excuse the old goat in me, but I really liked you naked,” I said.

“We finish this raid and I promise I will live the rest of my life naked for you, Bob.”

“It’s that important?” I tested her.

“It’s that important.”

“You’ve visited each of the locations from a safe distance, right? I’m going to need to borrow your memories of those places.”

“Take them, Bob. I give you permission.”

I looked at and memorized each of the eleven locations, then opened a gateway and popped into the first East Coast location in Massachusetts. At first glance from the rooftop where we arrived, it looked like any other shipping port. Lacy led me to the edge of the roof where we peered over at a dock.

“In there,” she said.

I wanted confirmation and checked all around for surveillance devices. There were the typical security cameras overlooking the dock and a traffic camera at the gate. I fixed a point on the roof in my mind and opened a gateway. We popped back to Areola and then I opened the gate to the rooftop. We stepped out near the door from inside to the roof. I did another check for surveillance, hoping the look-away spell I’d cast on the two of us would be all that was necessary. I took hold of the doorknob and whispered an unbinding spell.

The whole door came loose, which was not my intent. I only wanted to unlock it. We listened carefully and I moved the door aside so we could enter.

We could see what we needed to see from the top of the stairs. The warehouse was filled with cages. In the cages were women and adolescents. They quietly sobbed. It was all I could do not to summon the priestesses immediately, but Lacy gripped my arm and I backed out, replacing the door, and putting a temporary binding spell on it. Lacy and I flashed back to Areola and I swore.

“Whoever has imprisoned them will die!” I declared. “Let’s go to the next one.”

I opened a gateway and we were in the restroom of a small coffee house. We listened and as soon as we were sure the way was clear, I released the look-away spell and the two of us walked to the front of the shop and ordered coffee like any couple out for a morning stroll.

In fact, we were in a popular tourist area of a historic seaport on the north side of Long Island Sound.

“This looks like a typical New England tourist spot,” I said. “Even a college here.”

“Makes it much harder to locate the prison,” Lacy said. “It’s actually on campus.”

We walked across the lawns of the old college.

“The mansion of the founder on the edge of the campus is deserted. Supposedly. It was closed five years ago because it was deemed unsafe and in need of structural abatement. No one has come forward with the money to do the restoration and renovation. But right here, on the college campus, over two hundred sex slaves are housed and transferred on a constantly rotating basis. This quiet little community is a hub of international sex trafficking, right under the nose of the proper and respectable people who live here. The good thing is that there is very little external security and it is all routed through the college security office. Inside, the guards are well armed and brutal. Rumors of late have indicated the house is haunted. In reality, it has an entire warren of underground rooms that date back from the American Revolution,” Lacy explained.

I snapped some pictures of the beautiful campus and the mansion as we strolled by. We entered a classroom building and saw signs that pointed to campus police. After scouting by and seeing the unattended video monitors of the campus, we slipped into a bathroom. I opened a gateway to Areola and we left.