March
Prince Glorb-O’s Saucer in High Orbit
The shuttle docked with a slight crunch. The hatch opened, and Gretchen walked through with Helen, Sara, and Anna flying beside her. Their Lesbian nanny, Jarb-E, trailed closely behind, keeping an ever-watchful eye on the mischievous, curious three. On the flight to Lesb, several weeks earlier, she had been careless, and the three had snuck away from her. After searching for over an hour, Jarb-E found them in the engine room of the ship gleefully exploring while lights flashed around them. Embarrassed, she certainly wasn’t going to let that happen again.
While Gretchen visited on Lesb, she had taken the opportunity to go shopping. It proved difficult because wherever they went, despite her Order of the Golden Labrador Guard, sentient beings would gather in large crowds to watch Gretchen and especially her three wayward curious little birdies.
Despite the distractions, Gretchen managed to outfit her three aviators in the latest Lesb children’s fashions. Wearing matching red and blue jump suits with gold stripes down the sides and small pink capes with an M emblazoned on them, the three looked like miniature superheroes flying next to her.
Gretchen had chosen to wear a frilly dress that she had bought on Lesb at the new L’otarie store with lots of cleavage that she knew would immediately entice Wyatt if she wiggled just right. It had been a month since she had last seen him in this world. This had been the first time they had been apart since they had died together and though in each other’s dreams at night the loneliness she felt absent from his human touch during the day felt overwhelming at times.
It would’ve been hard for Julie, Claire, and Heidi to understand the spiritual and supernatural bond that existed between Wyatt and her, so she never tried to explain it, or even let them know how deep it ran. Gretchen wanted Julie, Claire, and Heidi to have their own world with Wyatt, and she didn’t want jealousy. It helped that she had taken the kids with her. It took away some of the sting of missing Wyatt while Gretchen looked forward to having Wyatt hold her again in this plane of existence.
Commander Pinky met them at the entrance and saluted. “Did you have a good trip, Ambassador?” she growled.
“Very good, Commander,” replied Gretchen. “The Emperor sends his compliments to you and the Order.”
Commander Pinky smiled. “Thank you.”
“Where’s Wyatt?” asked Gretchen, glancing around the corridor. “I thought he would be here to meet us.”
“I told him the ship wasn’t arriving for another hour,” growled Commander Pinky. “I have a report to give you. I thought it might be best if I gave you the briefing early since you’re the family point person regarding the Teddy Bear investigation.”
Gretchen turned to Jarb-E. “Take the children to the Order’s breakroom. They always like to play ball with the tigers. I’ll catch up with you after I’ve talked with Commander Pinky.”
Jarb-E waved at the three floating birdies to get their attention. “We’re all going to go to the Tiger…”
As soon as they heard the word Tiger, three sets of eyes grew real big and they zoomed towards the breakroom with Jarb-E chasing after them.
In the Order’s monitoring station, Gretchen studied the 3-D images moving in front of her.
“Which one is Teddy’s brother?” she asked.
Commander Pinky pointed a claw. “He’s the one in the back directing the work crew, hanging the giant picture of Teddy on a cross. He has a beard now. That’s probably why you don’t recognize him from Paris.”
“I do recognize the two beside him,” commented Gretchen. “They were with him in Paris. Seems like the Chinese didn’t treat them too badly after they appeared in Tiananmen Square.”
“I don’t know about that,” growled Commander Pinky, “six months in a Chinese jail can seem like a lifetime. I wouldn’t want to do time there.”
“Show me where this is happening,” said Gretchen.
Corporal Springer touched the image, and a map appeared. “It’s a block to the southeast of Powell’s Bookstore,” she growled.
Reaching in she inserted a picture. “Here’s what it looks like from the outside. It used to be an old Presbyterian Church. Notice the two steeples. Now it’s the Church of the Holy Teddy Bear. Its ideology is a combination of Christianity combined with Teddy being the second coming of the son of God. His brother is the chief priest.”
“Also, despite the court rulings that Wyatt was the biological father,” growled Commander Pinky, “they still worship Beau and Niki as Teddy’s children.”
“Where the fuck, are they getting the money for all this?” asked an exasperated Gretchen, shaking her head.
“At their service on Friday there were almost three hundred mostly women,” growled Commander Pinky as she glanced at an electronic pad in front of her. “But when the collection plates were brought in, there was almost a million dollars according to the deposit the next day in the bank. The IRS considers them a church so they go almost completely unscrutinized.”
Commander Pinky shook her head. “I don’t think all the cash appearing in the collection plates is being contributed by the members of the congregation.”
Gretchen turned to Commander Pinky. “What?”
“I think the collection plates are opening a small portal for financing this operation,” said Commander Pinky. “It’s clever but also very disturbing.”
“How so?” asked Gretchen.
“It means they are using the same technology as that we are,” growled Commander Pinky, “except that it doesn’t have the blue light spectrum shift. It’s forbidden experimental grade.”
“Experimental grade?” puzzled Gretchen. “Why haven’t I ever heard anything about this before now?”
“Because it is, in its current state, impractical, and unhealthy to use,” growled Commander Pinky.
Gretchen, confused, wrinkled up her face.
“The microscopic implant that you have behind your ear sacrificed five percent efficiently for portability, thus the tell-tale blue light,” growled Commander Pinky. “To get the extra five percent, you have to have a Lesbian processor the size of a refrigerator. It’s not portable and uses a lot of energy to provide site to site transport without the spectrum shift. When we realized what was going on, we ran a search of all military processors in the empire that could be reconfigured. One was missing from a warehouse on Tralax. From there the trail went cold.”
Commander Pinky rubbed the fur underneath her chin. “However, the real reason we don’t use the technology is because it is extremely dangerous.”
“In what way?” asked Gretchen, still studying the images.
“Because of the way energy is processed, it gives off a type of radiation that will change the molecules in your brain resulting in psychosis and paranoia. It’s gradual. But the more you use it, the more deranged you become,” growled Commander Pinky. “That is information we didn’t disseminate when we abandoned the program.”
“Can you track the energy signature?” asked Gretchen, looking at the projection.
“The ship using this is screened and located somewhere in low orbit below us and is constantly moving,” growled Commander Pinky. “We can detect small energy spikes. But the energy spikes match the same readings we get from the earth’s atmosphere when solar radiation reflects off of it so it’s extremely hard to tell where they are coming from. We theorize it is disguised as a large piece of space junk from one of your earlier stations.”
She paused. “But other than that, they are invisible to us. At least, for the moment. Eventually, we’ll find a way of tracking it. When we do, we’ll find out who’s behind all this.”
An hour later Wyatt stood at the airlock, waiting. In his hand he held a big bouquet of crocuses. He had to go to all the way to the slopes of Colorado to find them and when he turned around and saw the gleam in Gretchen’s eyes he knew they were worth it.