EVERY Stronghold master had one. It was part of the game in the land of the “replaced” people, where the parts were mostly new-metal, with the flesh-strips few and played-down. In the days when I was a neophyte Stronghold master, one of the elite-elite brand new, just out of the nine-month series in that hospital where they rebuilt people mostly to new-steel, it came my time. So I moved out to get it.
An idealist still, as always, I thought it could be the mending time of the Dream. For us all. But to see them there, the snot-punky kids, pulling on their Moderan big-bite longer stronger goofy-fags, and leering lasciviously, I thought of little pimply punks slipping smokes in dark back alleys and drawing sex on smeared board fences and scarred stone walls. In the Old Days. And telling dirt-color jokes.
Even change them to steel, can you change them!? I retreated my thoughts and hopes and hopeful dreams across old disappointments grounds and into Sadness Field. (Were these the ONES CHOSEN—they to become the battle-great and power-tall renowned feared masters of Stronghold Moderan!?) I went back home to total woe. Almost. For but one small small while. Then I rallied back up out of the Despair Darkness, pulled by a Light like that from our wonderful star, the sun—propelled by a thought, holding to the point, filled with a wholesome gladness like spring coming to the long-night fields of snow. I had my Dream MY DREAM! Let others cling to their baseness and be kings on the field of shame. I’d move into the Light with MY DREAM.
MY DREAM was the pedestal woman, part imagined, part actual and always walking away. But now was my chance! To have THE DREAM! From old memories, long-carried tight-held, I had sent in the specifications to the new-metal mistress shop, along with the photos I had with great effort and tedious pains kept safe through all danger and despair—heart-shatter, mind-havoc, even unto world destruction, the conflagrations of war. And now, for my Stronghold haven, to have the Dream in a package that I could take home with me! Has ever man had more?
Through the punks lounging by the wall (these were Stronghold masters!?), eagerly awaiting tryouts and a field day of selection in the new-metal mistress store, I moved up to the warehouse window. I handed in my card and the clerk-type new-metal warehouseman looked a little out at sea, sort of misted in, a wee bit PUZZLED. “You mean you just want to take a chance!? You don’t want tryouts and selection, the same as the others!? You actually mean you want me to just go back there to the pile and pick a random package!? Why you might get a-a-a-uh, a redhead. Ha ha. Or a bleach-bottle platinum blonde. Even a wig! Ugh!”
“Read the instructions; look at the card,” I said, as coldly as I could. He looked. His face trembled open and horrored through confused miles and areas of surprise. When he had recovered a little he said, “Oh, yes, sir! I should have looked, sir. These forms all look so much the same, sir. I just assumed—”
“Assume nothing, guess nothing, check everything,” I recited to add salt and acid to his little open boil of confusion.
So we took her home in the truck, which was really the Moderan new-metal mistress delivery van driven by a noncommittal new-metal fellow who was rumored to be absolutely without settings that would tempt him to stop for awhile and turn on the goods, should he happen to be delivering on a lonely stretch. I guess you could call him a new-metal eunuch. Yes, I guess you could.
When at last we were alone, I fell to unwrapping her. In my hurry I snarled the cords; I drew loose knots tighter; I made knots where no knots had been before. YES! When a man has the key to heaven for the very first time, he is not apt to be calm. My heart, despite the settings staying solid, catch-locked on CRUISE, was pounding away like a big mallet hitting a one-pound sack of marshmallows in the Old Days. For one terribly giddy moment of sickness I thought I might lose consciousness altogether. But calling on all the forces of determination in the flesh-strips I still owned I hung in there doggedly and fought with the knots in the twine. . . .
Now, with my new-metal mistress at last unwrapped, and for the very first time all mine . . . I think it only necessary, and fitting, to tell you that we had a very nice time . . . the first time . . . and each and every time subsequently and thereafter we had a very nice time. The rest is personal, private and not necessarily for publication at all.
And yet, and yet—something loose in the flesh-strips I still own somehow nags at me, pushes at me, asks me to set down this greatness, tell how it was . . . share . . . even brag a little of the truth . . . be fair with those less fortunate . . . keep nothing back . . . enrich the world with the telling of a great GREAT moment in love. OH! YES! YES, I WILL!!
The cords all in scattered snarls and little tangle-ball heaps now. . . the shredded paper torn hastily, frantically from and in its own wild piles now. . .The room a shambles, but THE DREAM there cool . . . the blonde doll all turned on, the real and true-copied image of an old Dream in the mind . . . there waiting in the body that science had made, the little bow of a mouth all moist and rosy red, the blue eyes blue-bulb blue and like small glass globes sliced carefully out of that heaven when June was all clear-and-bright . . . and now here to look at me like two sweet queens from paradise, light and language and love-bespeaking-love for this empress come visiting from heaven . . . no more than a body’s length away. . . SO I MOVED INTO THAT MOMENT. . . snatching away what was necessary to snatch away of her clothes . . . my heart on MAX entirely now, hers on LOVE ME COOL . . . factory set. . . .
Oh, God! was I sailing a kite in a pinhole, was I riding a vernal moon in a summer storm, all snow; was I scratching the lobes of my ears with the second joints of my toes? WOW! and WOW!! Were all things impossible, possible now? . . . jug-jug-jug, phu-phu-phu, bam-bam-bam, jug-jug-jug, gaaru-gaaru-gaaru, phu-phu-phu, gaaru-gaaru-gaaru—possible now . . . ? All the people who had written and overwritten about this thing—in the Old Days old Mailer and Hemingway, say—had they been right all along? I believed now that they had (for the tiniest moment in all the world, I believed) garu-garu-garu, wham-wham-wham-bam-a-bam-wham-WHAAMMM-A-BAMM-WHAAMMM—OOOh-OOOhhh-OOOOOhhhhh-OOOOOOOHHHHH-uh . . .
Then switch-off—all through when over, another moment of truth gone into the irretrievable blanks of time. But a great one, a truly GREAT moment of truth this time one surely gone down now to petition admittance somewhere at a Gate where a Book is kept in a Castle of Pure Light, and that Castle all of a Purpose to keep safe the record of those moments that tell the Great Story and never die.
YES! That’s how it was! The day I got my new-metal mistress from the new-metal mistress store in the Land of the New Time.