Chapter 41: Bachelor Party

I made only one request of my good friend, Dr. Mitchell Harris, when he let it be known I was going to have a bachelor party whether I wanted one or not.

“No Vegas,” I said sternly. “Too many special things happened there to cheapen it with a weekend of meaningless sex.”

Mitch jokingly said that left only Reno, but it turned out he had more imagination than I thought.

The fucker rented an island, a whole, green, largely uninhabited island.

“You’re fucking kidding,” I said, incredulous. “An island?”

“Actually, it’s called a cay. Think about it, Larry,” he said with total confidence. “No laws, no rules, no one watching.”

“No clothes,” Chuck Arnovsky chimed in.

“For you, maybe,” I shot back. “I at least want something to slip into as well as slip out of.”

I knew from the beginning that this decadent little weekend – yes, weekend – would be a Master PC Special, with my best man, the good Doctor, violating untold number of people to make this his idea of my perfect weekend. Fortunately for me, he did not consult me on any of these notions. The better to surprise me, of course.

Yeah, right.

The first clue I had that this would be that kind of weekend was his flatly stating that no one bring their golf clubs. Second, all cell phones, surfaces, iBooks, Kindles, etc., were banned or would be confiscated. More than that, I didn’t want to know. Once that was clear, however, I made sure he knew that I did not want anyone along who was not privy to Master PC and our little pact.

But I made it clear that the details did not matter at the moment, since I was doing my best General Patton act to rescue the fair maiden Casey Michaux and deprogram her.

Even with Doc’s good intentions, I chose my team like Phelps used to on Mission: Impossible.

I needed someone with some military expertise: that was Darren.

I needed a computer expert I could trust: that was Todd, by the slightest margin over Joanie.

I needed someone who was familiar with the setup as I: that was Althea.

Someone else who could handle a gun beside myself and Darren: that would have been Mickey, but he wanted nothing more to do with our operation after stealing all the armaments. So he recommended his suspended partner, Melissa Turnbull. The dark-haired woman had a disarming smile – not a bad thing for a cop – and once I had erased all of her stupid tattoos, she was fit right in with our merry band.

Darren spent two days scouting and surveying the property on which Casey’s townhouse sat, and aside from being grateful that it was warmer, it was also in a busy suburban area – albeit behind a formidable wall. He called us to Windsor after only those two days. We met in the suite of a nearby Hilton.

“Security is nothing like at Michaux’s estate,” Darren began. “There are no redundant systems and there is no obvious Master PC program running. However, Larry confirmed that both she and the guards are programmed to behave and react to specific situations, so she would be a hostile takeaway.”

“I will try to reset them beforehand,” I said. “But they could easily be resistant the way Althea was when Michaux tried to co-op her.”

Darren had managed to grab one photo of Casey at the campus when she stepped out of her car – revealing a shapely young woman whose body was much more a reflection of Sara’s DNA than Belle’s was.

As we passed it around, it struck me that our newest recruit, Melissa, had a thing for our newest woman, Todd. And it was mutual.

“You’re pretty hot for a cop,” Todd said.

“You’re pretty hot for a clone of a world-famous reality show host and Playboy cover girl,” Melissa replied in kind. Like many female cops, she was quite a bit more feminine than you’d expect, but the most apt description of her would be “put together.” And she was well-programmed; one minute she could instruct you on how to field dress a handgun and, the next, she would be blowing you with equal ability.

“Todd, what is the best way of keeping Michaux from finding Casey after we take her back?” I asked. “Do we need to template her another body like we do Audrey, or can we just make her invisible to the computer scan somehow?”

“I like your thinking outside the box,” he said. “We can easily follow the setup Audrey’s master established for her changes, but Amber was the last form he held in reserve as far as dad could tell.”

“How hard is it to download a form?” I asked; I could not use the word “body” in this context.

“Larry, I can’t be sure we can do it without deleting the original subject,” Todd admitted.

“Holy moral dilemma, Batman,” I said. “And if we leave her at risk...

“ ... since Michaux programmed her first, he could likely override anything we can program her to do,” Todd finished my thought.

“Grab her first, get the fuck out of Canada, worry about it later?” Darren offered.

“Might be our best bet,” Melissa offered.

“One other thought,” Todd chimed in. “Might we want Sara to be here when we, uh, liberate her?”

“Sara will meet us, but it ain’t gonna be here,” I said. “When we leave this room, I want it to look as if we were never here.”

“That’s not right away, is it bro?” Darren asked as he nudged against Althea, who was only speaking when spoken to – a little gift from Michaux that would be fixed by the end of this trip.

“I need to scout this campus for an idea – maybe a body to snatch. Everybody else can knock his or herself out.”

Clothes were already being shed as I stepped out the door.

Windsor was a remarkably beautiful college, especially compared to some of the state-fed dumps back in California. I drove by the brownstone that Michaux owned and followed what Darren told me was her normal route to class. It took only one pass by the athletic fields for me to realize the way to do this.

So, naturally, I arrived back at the room far earlier than anyone expected.

Darren had found out how well his new length fit inside Althea, who in turn learned how good Melissa tasted. Todd, remarkably, was working at his computer. Naked, but wprking.

“I was saving myself for you,” he grinned his Hollywood grin at me and spreading his legs as her turned; it was remarkable how quickly he adapted to not have a dick. I wasted no time meeting him in the extra bed and found out that he had made strides in the fine art of kissing. I kept my eyes open, because the illusion of making love to a Hollywood icon is something you don’t do every day – even in Hollywood.

“I’m selling her pretty well, aren’t I?” he grinned at me with a million-dollar smile. “Hey, Larry – don’t be gentile.”

I understood. Todd the teenage jock had experienced little more than wet dreams. Todd the Brooke Burke lookalike had almost nonstop sex with both men and women and came dangerously close with having sex with himself, as it were. But you could look in his eyes and see that lust and expectation, not uncertainty or fear, was inside him.

Having played flag football with him and gone with him to a Dodgers game made this joining seem so surreal to the point of me questioning my sanity. But I managed to concentrate on what senses were talling me – including his chanting, “Yes Larry! Yes Larry!” in that distinctive voice. Later, when we lay together catching our breath, the bro bonding would kick in as he and I exchanged a high five.