Bride of the Atom - Part One 
By The Captain
A Old-Style Science Fiction Story


<><><> Chapter One - Bride Of The Atom! <><><>

OCT 30, 1949 - 10:30 PM

Dr. Benson looked down at his young wife. It had been quite a strain for him
to move her into the proper position, she weighed much more than he had ever
realized. His Nancy was a very healthy woman indeed, one who must have learned
a few special exercise routines. Sadly, he had recently discovered what her
true intentions actually were. He had been blinded by the beauty and passion
of this woman, who was nearly thirty years younger than he. It was only by
accident that he had learned of her plan to cause his death through "natural
causes". Nancy would then inherit his wealth, and after a short but
respectable period of time, she would marry her true love. That was her plan.

He noticed a flutter of one eyelid. "Nancy, my dear, no need to keep up the
act, I am fully aware of your secret plot to kill me. Please, open your lovely
eyes and see what a wonderful surprise I have arranged for you!"

Nancy open her eyes, saw that the doctor was only inches away from her and
lunged at him, "Come here you old coot, I'll break your bones and be done with
you!" Her movement was cut short by a series of extra thick leather straps
holding her arms and legs tight against a cold metal table. "What's this! More
of your stupid science! I'll break these toys like I'll break your neck!"

"Nancy, my lovely Nancy, if you had paid attention to my attempts to educate
you about my project then you would easily recognize that this table was built
for the final phase of my experiment. Alas, the Army cut my funding, so I will
not have access to the male gorilla that I needed to test my anti-radiation
drug. In fact, this table is the only item remaining in my test bunker. The
good news is that tomorrow morning the Army will be conducting a test of their
brand-new twenty-five kilo-ton warhead. Sadly, the radiation will make this
bunker unusable for nearly sixty years."

"When they open the doors they will be quite surprised to discover your
mummified corpse. I'm afraid that I won't be around to answer their questions,
I very much doubt I will live to see one-hundred. However, I will outlive you
by many years, even with your unorthodox exercise program. Really, your absurd
notion of lifting and pulling metal objects to make yourself strong. Ha! You
forget that you're a woman, and no amount of grunting and sweating can change
that fact."

Dr. Benson poked her arms, Nancy flexed her biceps by reflex. Dr. Benson
gasped in surprise, noting that his wife's arms had ballooned to over ten
inches. This was over an inch larger than his own, "How I do wish I had my
recorders. Despite your sex, you have a nearly the minimal muscle mass for the
drug. I think I will give you a maximum dosage, if the anti-radiation drug
works, you will starve instead of dying from the radiation. The drug was
designed to work on a soldier, with a man's muscle mass. Normally a woman
would be unsuitable, but I see now that you have the muscles of a small boy."

Nancy strained to free herself from the straps, her muscles became much more
visible under the harsh light of the high-wattage incandescent lights. The
frail doctor stepped back, watching her as he would any wild animal. For a
moment he was reminded of some female circus performers he had seen as a young
child, with their muscles unnaturally expanded through years of strange
exercise. He turned to a small table and withdrew a small glass bottle from
his leather briefcase. Carefully measuring the dosage, he turned back to her
young wife and injected her with the drug.

"The Army said it wasn't interested in my discovery. The fools, it will take
them years to understand what I have given them. My drug does not just protect
a human from radiation, it uses the energy contained within the radiation to
actually repair any damage done. In a strange way, your survival may depend of
the same deadly radiation that is killing you. An irony that you are too
feeble-brained to enjoy!"

Dr. Benson stepped back from the table, "Please notice, my dear Nancy, that I
have taken the liberty to dress you in the very same wedding dress you wore
less than a year ago when we became man and wife. Simply consider this a
divorce, because soon you will be wed to a much different husband. A husband
who will keep you warm whenever you feel the slightest chill. You see, Nancy,
in a few short hours you will become the BRIDE OF THE ATOM!"

OCT 31, 1959 - 6:15 AM

Nancy continued to strain, refusing to let the old man beat her. This was not
how things were planned. The Russian woman, Olga, who she had met in London
said that this would very easy. The old professor was frail and ripe for an
accident, and with the proper planning Nancy had been "discovered" by the good
doctor. Olga had told her what to wear and what to say, the Russians had been
watching the professor for years. The straps continued to creak and groan as
Nancy pulled and strained. Even with the secret training program she had
learned from Olga there was no way that she could break free of bonds that
were built to withstand a frenzied gorilla.

OCT 31,1959 - 7:00 AM

She looked up at the ceiling as she felt a shock wave rumble past her. Was
this the bomb? Streams of dust and small debris rain down on Nancy from above.
When would she feel the deadly radiation? He "husband" was right, even if his
magic formula somehow protected her from the radiation, unless she could
escape from this bunker she would starve to death. Nancy felt a wave of heat
descend into the bunker, her expensive wedding gown quickly became soaked in
sweat. She continued to strain, but then found herself slowly drifting off to
sleep.

NOV 1, 1959 - 3:30 PM

Nancy woke up and thought it odd that the lights were still on. She felt light
headed and weak. "I've got to get out of here!" she mumbled. For several
minutes she strained against the straps. They sounded as if they were being
stressed more, like they were getting closer to breaking. "Must of gotten
damaged by that heat!" Again sleep found her.

NOV 9, 1959 - 10:00 AM

She woke up to darkness, "I guess the Army forgot to pay their light bills!"
Felling much better than before, Nancy summoned all of her strength and
strained to free her arms. Unseen by her, the biceps on her arms had grown to
nearly a foot in circumference. With a sudden and unexpected "snap" her right
arm became free. "Muscles of a small boy! I'm coming for you, you old fool!"
But before Nancy could take any other action she found herself falling asleep.

NOV 22, 1959 - 5:20 PM

Nancy found herself still on the table, but now her right arm was free. She
felt around her bonds and found them to be pad-locked. "Well doctor, you
weren't taking any chances! Since I just broke a strap that was built to hold
a gorilla, maybe you weren't so smart!" She screamed with rage as she felt her
strength surge and was rewarded with a second snap as her left arm came free.
As she started to reach for the straps which held her legs she felt the now
familiar wave of sleep descend upon her.

FEB 7, 1960 - 8:45 AM

"This is getting old real fast, I think the drugs my soon-to-be ex-husband
cooked up are doing nothing but put me to sleep. But this is weird, every time
I am awake I feel better. You'd think by now I'd be thirsty at least. At least
it's not as hot as it was." Nancy reached down and ripped the straps from her
legs with only a moderate amount of effort, not knowing that her arms had
grown to fourteen inches. "The Army sure got ripped off, these straps couldn't
hold a horny teenage girl, let alone a gorilla! Now it's time for me to have a
nice talk with my loving husband." As Nancy got off of the table and started
to feel for the door she felt a sudden stab of weakness and fell to the bare
concrete floor.

AUG 16, 1960 - 2:16 PM

Nancy rose from the floor and stumbled into the steel-bar gate. With an almost
animal-like snarl she pulled at the bars, slowly bending them apart. In the
pure darkness Nancy could not see the ripples of muscle which exploded along
the length of her body. And in her rage she could not hear the many tearing
sounds which came from the remains of her once all-white wedding dress.
Moments later sleep consumed her.

MAY 9, 1961 - 4:20 AM

It was some kind of solid-metal security-door, that was what she guessed. Her
angry fists seemed to be making headway, though she thought she could feel her
warm blood splattering on the floor. "I will not be stopped!" she screamed
over and over as the meaty slams of her fits continued. Her mind drifted in
and out of focus, something was wrong, something about what she was doing or
had done. But her anger fueled her strength. As the door seemed to be giving
way Nancy felt the familiar pressure to sleep return.

DEC 11, 1964 - 11:15 AM

Beyond the first security door was a long hallway. At the far end of the
hallway were two doors, one seemed to be the exit, and was another thick
security door, while the other was a simple wooden door that led to a small
bathroom. Nancy felt around until she discovered the familiar round ceramic
shape of a light switch. When she flipped the stiff switch two incandescent
lamps came on, but one instantly popped in a sudden blue-white flash. Looking
around the bathroom she spotted a janitor's closet. Her fevered search
revealed only soap, toilet-paper, rolls of cloth towels and a partial case of
military issue light bulbs. With a small smile she carefully replaced the
burned-out bulb. "Well now, things are looking up! I got light and plenty of
cold water! I wonder why I'm not dying of thirst? I bet my hands are a mess,
with all of that pounding." She was surprised to find no bruises or scars on
either hand. She didn't feel her head slam into the sink as she collapsed on
the floor.

MAR 26, 1971 - 10:55 PM

As Nancy rose from the floor she noticed that one of the bulbs had burned out
and that one of the sinks had a chunk smashed out of it. "How long have I been
sleeping? And what the hell happened to that sink?" Walking to the open closet
she was surprised at the layer of duct covering everything. "This is
ridiculous! I thought the Army was a lot neater than this!" After she had
replaced the burned-out bulb she stripped off her totally shredded wedding
gown. "Damm! This looks like I was wrestling a team of mechanics! How did all
of this get torn!" Nancy took a good look at her body, "Everything looks OK,
though these lights really pick out my muscles. Must be an Army thing, make
the guys feel tuff!" She flexed her now sixteen-inch arms, "This is a neat
trick, I've never seen arms like this, not even on those girls in the Police
Gazette." With but a moment of warning, Nancy sat down on the floor.

JUL 1, 1978 - 2:30 AM

Once again Nancy pounded on a security door, though this one seemed not quite
as solid as the first one was. "The blast must have already weakened this one,
that must mean I'm getting closer to the real exit!" She stepped back and
kicked the door down, "Hey! This isn't funny ..." she mumbled as she fell face
first onto the broken door.

APR 19, 1986 - 6:15 PM

Before she started up the stairs, Nancy went back to the janitor's closet to
wrap herself in the cloth towel roll. "I sure hope this towel is better
quality than those light bulbs! They keep burning out over night. Hey, I bet
the radiation damaged them. But shouldn't I have felt something by now? Or did
that old fool actually make a drug that protects you from radiation? Hey! Wait
just a second!", Nancy looked at herself in the mirror, "Olga knew an awful
lot about my husband. I bet she knew that he was working on this drug. Hell's
bells Nancy girl, you got yourself conned by that Russian bitch! I bet she's
got a bunch of plans all ready if the gullible farm-girl act failed. Oh
Jeremy! What have I done! I've got to get out of here and warn you, it's the
least I can do!" She didn't make it to the bathroom door before she collapsed.

JAN 27, 1993 - 10:30 AM

Nancy had fished several packs of matches from the ashtrays in the rest room.
The roll of toilet-paper stuck on a broom-handle made a poor and to
short-lived torch, but it was all she had. Besides, she seemed to have more
than enough toilet-paper. In the sputtering light she saw the final door.
"Well, now I know where all my tax dollars went. It's a god-dammed bank-vault!
That has to be at least three feet thick or I'm a wooden dummy. Wait! It's got
some kind of electric motor! Sure, there was no way my little Jeremy could
open and close this door by himself." In the dim light of her improvised torch
Nancy spotted a small control panel. "Let me guess, I bet I want to push the
one that is marked OPEN!" One soft click and then a sudden burst of flame as
the motor exploded and melted. Only then did Nancy spot the tell-tail trail of
rust. "Water got in! But how could that motor have gotten rusted solid in just
a couple of days?" Sleep returned.

SEP 10, 1999 - 4:05 PM

She pulled against the gears, feeling them slowly work free and start to turn.
Her torch had gone out while she was sleeping, but Nancy remembered the room
clearly enough. "I don't have to open the door all of the way, just enough for
me to slip through!" For several minutes the metal gears groaned and
complained as Nancy forced them into movement, her muscular arms swelling up
over eighteen inches. In the darkness she could see a thin slit of faint light
slowly grow wider. When she felt that the opening had grown big enough, Nancy
stood up, and promptly fell down.

MAY 21, 2005 - 10:19 PM

The cool wind felt fantastic, Nancy looked around trying to spot a familiar
landmark. "Can't recognize anything in the dark, but there's lights way over
there, that must be where the Army base is!" Nancy started toward the lights,
picking her way around blocks of concrete and metal. "I don't remember all of
this junk being out here! I bet the atom-blast threw tons of stuff around."
Several hours later Nancy came to a tall chain-link fence. In the dark Nancy
didn't notice the razor-wire at the top of the fence or the "DANGER RADIATION"
sign. Another hour brought her to a slightly shorter chain-link fence that she
climbed over with ease.

May 22, 2005 - 8:26 PM

By now Nancy could make out individual buildings, "Too small for offices or
barracks, that must be on-base housing. Great! I can barge in on some
general!" After another two hours she came to a cinder-block wall. On the
other side she could hear music, but it was unlike any she had heard before.
Another quick climb and Nancy was in the back yard. Walking up to the first
window she saw, Nancy peered in, trying to figure out who lived here. "What
the hell! That guy has hooked up his type-writer to a weird looking TV! And
why does he keep rubbing soap on that hot pad?"

For several minutes Nancy watched, puzzled and somehow excited by what she
saw, "Those women, they've got muscles, but not like a man, these are sexy!
This must be some kind of secret Army thing, but how could you keep an army of
women who look like the sister's of Hercules a secret?" Nancy moved away from
the window and over to the back door, but before she could knock she was
claimed by sleep.

Brad was working through another long Google search, pictures off Kay Baxter
were so hard to find, when he heard something slam into his back door. "What
the hell are those cats up to now!" Jumping up, he ran over to the glass and
screen door to discover a woman, wrapped up like a mummy, sleeping on top of
the cat dish. "This isn't a good sign", Brad slowly opened the door and
examined the body. "This lady is into some big-time weight-lifting, she's
massive but not in a juiced-up way!" he noticed the dirt on her bare feet and
the clear trail back to his window.

"OK, a pro-level body-builder that I've never seen before, was standing by my
window, watching me download pictures of muscle babes, wrapped up in the very
long towel, and decided that my cat dish would make a great pillow. Sure.
Happens all the time." Brad reached down and started to drag her into the
house. "Well, they do say that muscle is pretty heavy! But this is getting a
little ridiculous!" After several minutes of grunting, Brad managed to get
Nancy onto his couch.

MAY 22, 2005 - 10:15 PM

Nancy slowly woke up, but this time she felt different, almost as if a tension
she had been fighting was finally gone. As she opened her eyes she noticed the
guy from the window watching her. "Hi there, I hope you're feeling better. I
made you some hot chocolate milk, want some?" asked Brad. For the first time
in weeks Nancy actually felt hungry and thirsty, "Yes please, that sounds
fantastic."

Unable to control herself, Nancy drank the entire glass in one shot. "More
please!" she begged. As Brad walked out to the kitchen Nancy looked around the
room. She leaned over after spotting a stack of magazines. "No! This is some
kind of joke! No, this can't be right!" Brad heard her talking to herself, she
seemed very upset about something. "Yeah, sounds more and more like some
prima- donna got lost. Too bad, she's quite a babe, face like an angel with a
hard-core body. Just like I like 'em."

When Brad returned to the living room he found Nancy staring at magazines. "Is
there something wrong with my reading selection?" he asked. Nancy looked up to
him and he saw the fear, the terror in her eyes. "What is the date?" she
whispered. "Well, it's May twenty-something. Do you have an appointment you
need to get to?" Those eyes, he thought, the eyes of the lost. "What year?"
she whispered so softly he could barely hear her. "It's 2005."

She slumped back so hard Brad thought she was going to pass out again. "OK,
what year do you think it should be?" he asked. Nancy looked up at him and
sobbed "1949!" She took the second glass from him and downed it, "That's
really good, I'm amazed you can cook this up so quick!" He looked down at the
empty glass, "Well, that's what it is, it's powdered. You never had this
before?" She nodded slowly. "My name is Nancy Benson, the wife of Professor
Jeremy Benson. He's a big scientist over on the Army base doing stuff for the
Atom Bomb program."

"Ms Benson, the Army base was closed down decades ago, right after we got out
of 'Nam. All that's left is the sealed off area where they tested a couple of
small nuclear bombs. Look, we can Google him if you want, OK?" Brad smiled and
pointed towards his bedroom. For some reason he just wasn't reaching her, she
clearly spoke English, but nothing was connecting. After a few moments she
seemed to have made up her mind. Nancy suddenly stood up, Brad couldn't help
but notice the quick flash of muscle as she moved, "I'll have to trust you, I
don't know what's going on, but I want to gaggle my husband! Though a phone
call might work better."

"Oh, why don't you use the phone right there!" Brad said as he pointed to his
NFL football-phone. Nancy looked at the phone as if were some kind alien
device. She picked it up, looking in vain for a recognizable dial. Finally
Brad reached over and lifted the receiver, handing it to her. For a moment she
stared at it. "Oh! You push these tiny buttons! How clever, you replaced the
dial with buttons! It's interesting, but I don't think people will like to
change from what they're used to."

Brad could only stand there in stunned silence as she slowly called her
husband's number. This lady was crazed, that's for sure. And that was sad,
'cause she was really hot. "What do you mean that you've had this number for
twenty years? That can't be true! It was our number, my number just a week or
two ago. Yes, I understand. I should try 411? What's a 411? Oh! Operator
assistance. Yes. Sorry to bother you." After several minutes Nancy put the
phone down. "Please, can we try your gaggle?"

As he sat down at his desk Brad muttered, "It's Google, not gaggle. You make
it sound like a bunch of birds." Back on line he ran the obvious search for
"Jeremy Benson". After ignoring the porno links he finally found a useful
reference, "Here we go! Doctor Jeremy Benson, won a bunch of prizes, invented
stuff, lost his first wife, they don't say how, looks like he remarried, had a
couple of kids, but him and his second wife got killed in a traffic accident
in Paris. That was in 1967. This can't be your husband, though it does say he
worked for the Department of War on something called BRR, also known as
bio-radiation-regeneration."

"Are there any pictures in your magic TV?" she whispered. Brad looked back at
her, "Sure, here's one of him and his second wife." Brad turned to her after
hearing her gasp. "It's Olga! That bitch, she was her own back-up plan. Poor
Jeremy, you never had a chance. When did he marry her?" Brad jumped back to
the prior page, "It says here they got married in 1962. She looks more like a
Russian farm-girl than the math expert this says she was. I wonder what his
first wife looked like. That's tragic, it says that his first wife vanished
less than a year after they were married. No trace of her body was ever found.
Here's a picture of her." Brad could only stare at the screen for several
minutes, then slowly he turned to face Nancy.

"This is your mother, or your grand-mother? The face is the same, but she
would need five to ten years of super heavy-duty workouts to make her body
match yours. A different guy wouldn't know that, but I'm one of those who are
into women with muscle. You had me going for a moment, but whatever weird scam
you're doing just fell apart. Which is really sad, because you are one really
great looking lady. If you don't have a cell you can use my phone again to
make a real phone call. "

Nancy looked down, and after a moment she began to tremble, "His drug did this
to me, all that time I was sleeping, it somehow kept me alive. At first all I
wanted to do was escape that bunker, find him, and kill him with my bare
hands. I had met Olga and she filled my head with the glory of the working
class. She was a Soviet agent and she was pretty good at her job. I even
learned some special exercise programs that made me more dangerous. Who knows
what the Soviet Union is doing now with the information she stole from dear
Jeremy." She looked up at Brad.

"I don't know how to tell you this, but the Soviet Union collapsed years ago.
Everyone says it was Ronald Reagon and his Star Wars plan. Are you still
trying to tell me that you're this lady in the picture? You had some secret
drug used on you that make you sleep away the years and turned you into an
amazon?" Brad sat back, unable to stop himself from trying to memorize every
ripple of muscle on her arms.

"Hollywood had a war? I'm getting very confused. It looks like I'm a long way
from home with no way to get back." Nancy smiled at Brad and pulled back her
hair, "So, you like women with a little muscle? This kind of thing was pretty
rare, but I guess things change. All of my family, all of my friends are gone.
I don't know how to ask this, but I really need some help." She looked down at
the towel wrapped around her body. "First thing, I'd like to get some real
clothes. I can't pay you, all I have is this," Nancy took off her wedding ring
and handed it to Brad.

Brad took the ring, glanced at it, and was about to tell her that her scam
wasn't going to work, when he noticed something odd about the ring. He
recognized the design and style of the ring, it was exactly the same as his
grandmother's wedding ring, right down to the weird leaf-like bands that held
the diamond in place. Slowly, Brad turned the ring over in his hand to read
the inscription "JWB-NEB 12/14/1948" Even the lettering was as he remembered
from his grandmother's ring. If this was a scam, it was beyond anything he
could imagine. He turned to his computer, "I'd like to ask you a few
questions."

An hour later Brad was convinced. She had known every thing, the name of the
local mayor, the base commander, the governor, recent movies, what the weather
had been, the price of bread, even the secret name for the atom bomb test. She
answered all of his questions as if she really had been living in 1949.
Hundred of random questions, all answered correctly. As time passed Brad began
to believe, and Nancy began to relax. When the hour was over they looked at
each other in silence.

"I've got some cloths in a box, they're leftover from an ex-girlfriend.
Mary-Ann was a big, strong red-head who was more into country music and bikers
than guys like me. I think some of it will fit." Brad got up, rooted around
the bottom of his closet and dragged out a large cardboard box. Nancy walked
over, playfully showing off her strength by picking the box up with one hand
and walking into Brad's bathroom. Brad suddenly remembered that he needed to
clean up the kitchen.

Nancy closed the bathroom door and looked at herself in the mirror, "Not bad
for an old lady, but what am I going to do now? Hmmm, some of these clothes
are brand-new. I know what these are, I bet Brad bought these for his
ex-girlfriend and she refused to wear them. Hey, some of them still have the
price-tags on them. I like this underwear, it's nice to see some things have
improved. Now these are like what some of those women Brad was looking at
wore. Oh why not, I want this guy to like me, and you know, I'm starting to
like him. Figure I'd have to sleep fifty years to find someone I can get
interested in." Nancy picked up a pair of leather pants and a plain black top
that felt very interesting.

"Wow," Brad thought to himself, "This is by far the most interesting Friday
night of my life. Things like this do not happen, not to guys like me. Hell,
they don't happen to anyone!" He continued to clean up and had just finished
when he heard footsteps behind him. Turning around he saw Nancy walk into the
kitchen, dressed all in black. For a few moments she just stood there, slowly
rocking from one foot to another, the waves of muscular ripples making the
leather pants creak like stressed rope. Every breath drew attention to her
perfect breasts that were highlighted by the stretch-material of the
gloss-black muscle-shirt. The four-inch heels Nancy wore brought her eyes two
inches above his. The dark-red lipstick was a color that he thought never
really looked good on Mary-Ann, but on Nancy it was perfect.

Nancy smiled, "I know where I want to go, but we can talk about that
tomorrow," she stepped towards Brad until she was a fraction of an inch away
from him, "But tonight I just need to be with someone who accepts me for what
I am, OK?" Brad smelled the soap from her freshly-washed skin and something
else, something faintly electric. "The lady get what she wants," whispered
Brad as he spotted the hunger in her eyes.

MAY 23, 2005 - 9:43 AM

Her request was not unexpected. It took Brad nearly ten minutes to Google the
location of her husbands grave. He was surprised that both her husband and his
second wife had been buried locally. It really didn't make sense, they were
living in New York at the time of their death. Why would Nancy's husband have
made arrangements to have himself buried in Nevada? The only thing Brad could
guess is that the arrangements had been made while the good doctor was working
on the now-closed Army base and never bothered to update things. Brad smiled,
sounds just like an absent-minded professor. So now he found himself standing
on a grassy hill, surrounded by tomb-stones. Thankfully the woman at the gate
had a map she could give Nancy. In front of Brad stood an ornately carved
block of stone with Jeremy and Olga Benson's names on it.

"Why is his tomb-stone so thick? It's almost like a cube than a slab all of
the other one's are like" Brad pointed to one of the sides, "And what's up
with that? It looks like a hand-print carved into the stone."

Nancy looked at the carving, "It doesn't look human, more like an animal. Why
would Jeremy have that?"

"Animal, a gorilla perhaps. Hey, there's one on both sides! Well, it would
have taken a bunch of gorillas to move this thing." Brad looked closer at the
stone, "Oh, here's how it was done, this thing is made up of more than one
piece. See this seam? Nice workmanship, the carving hides it."

"A gorilla? I don't think even a frenzied gorilla could pick that up." Nancy
smiled, "It's a message that only I'd understand. But there's only one way to
find out." She stepped up to the tomb-stone, put one hand over each of the
carvings and started to lift.

Brad spun around, making sure that nobody was looking. Turning back to Nancy
he watch her body explode with muscle as she slowly lifted to top half of the
stone. "Hey! There's something inside the block, it looks like some kind of
metal box!" He carefully reached in and pulled the small metal box from its'
resting place. "OK, I've got the box, put the stone down."

"Go ahead, I know you want to feel them! They're pretty pumped right now,"
whispered Nancy, "This isn't as hard as it looks. But don't take too long, we
are in the middle of a cemetery!" Brad stood close to her and ran his hand
along her arm, every one of her muscles felt as hard as the stone she was
lifting. It was as if some master-artist had carved a perfect arm. While Nancy
was not as massive as some of the monsters Brad had downloaded, her muscles
looked more developed, more refined. After a few minutes he gave her a nod and
she slipped the stone back into place.

As Nancy turned towards Brad she saw that he had managed to work open the
small metal box. He lifted a letter, the paper crisp with age, out of the box
and handed it to her, "You have mail!"

MAY 23, 2005 - 4:10 PM

"My dear Nancy, if you are reading this then my final calculations were
correct. You have indeed outlived me and were transformed by the radiation
into a highly enhanced form of human. Lovely Olga introduced herself to me
several months after you last saw me and explained to me all of the reasons
you were acting the way you had. If only she had communicated to me earlier
all of this would have been cleared up. It seems that her father had been a
leading scientist in the Soviet's nuclear program and had actually developed a
formula similar to mine using information stolen from one of my earlier
experiments. He had managed to create enough of the formula for a single dose.
When a lab experiment exposed them both to a lethal dose of radiation he did
what any father would do. He died without knowing if he had saved his only
daughter."

"Olga fell asleep for three days while her body fought the radiation, the
dosage used was much less than I injected into you. When she woke up she had
only one steel door to break through to find her freedom. Once she left the
area of high radiation her body stopped adapting. The authorities accepted her
tale of damaged material, the idea of a young woman ripping down a six-inch
thick metal door never entered their minds. With her father dead Olga entered
into the Soviet sports training program, with the help of several party
officials who were happy to see her move on. She kept her enhanced strength a
secret and used her new contacts and freedom to travel to search for the
source of the information that her father had used. Olga was looking for me."

"Eventually she found me and made up an overly-complex plan to gather more
information about my work. That was when you were recruited. Olga never really
wanted you to kill me, just find a way to steal my lab results. When I finally
confessed what I had done to you she agreed to marry me in order to help me
continue my work. My formula that I used on you was a more advanced version
than that used on Olga. Based of my most recent calculations, you are alive
even as I write this. While I can not predict exactly how long it will take
for your body to become strong enough to escape, it is only a matter of time.
Sadly, my young ex-bride, time is not on my side, and I am not talking about
my advancing age. No, Olga and I seem to have become marked for
assassination."

"On the back of this letter are the instructions to recover the first of
several gifts I have left you. Olga suggests that you find someone to assist
you if possible, but be very careful. We don't really know the identities of
those who wish to kill us, or why, but they seem to be targeting everyone who
came in contact with my anti-radiation formula. Thankfully they will have no
idea that you exist. Please forgive me if you can for making you the Bride of
the Atom."

Nancy cried for nearly an hour while Brad searched the web for references to
the strange words that were written on the back of the letter. Nothing seems
to connect. He sat in front of his computer, turning the box over in his
hands, trying to think like a man who grew up fifty years ago. Suddenly Brad
noticed that the bottom of the metal box was slightly thicker than the sides.
Not enough for a true false bottom, but thicker than it had a reason to be.
Looking inside of the box he saw nothing unusual, but when he brought the box
close to his face he smelled something both familiar and totally out-of-place.
"Wax? This smells like candles!"

Brad got up and went into the kitchen, setting the oven to one hundred
degrees. Not to hot to burn anything, but hotter than the box would have
gotten inside of the thick stone cube. He put the metal box in upside-down and
waited. A few minutes later he was rewarded by a metallic clang as a metal
plate fell free from the box. Nancy came into the kitchen to see what his
victory yells were about. Hidden by the metal plate, covered in white wax,
there was a second letter.

Nancy took the letter from him, "This looks like directions to a church,
something about a statue in the garden. Jeremy must have hidden the real clue.
I am amazed you figured this out! How did you do it?" Brad waved the back of
the original letter towards her, "I couldn't find a reference to any of these
words, so I figured they were fake, then I noticed the smell of wax." Nancy
took the first letter from him and then started to laugh.

"OK, what's so funny?" asked Brad.

"These words aren't fake, they're brand names for some of the candles they
sell ... or used to sell on the base exchange. I guess your magic box doesn't
know everything. Jeremy was so focused on my muscle development that he forgot
my lack of brain development. I never would have figured out that a list of
candles meant that I was to heat up the box. I'm lucky to have you helping
me."

Brad smiled and was about to say something when he noticed a dark blur in the
backyard rushing towards the back door. With a crash the glass and metal door
was shattered as a slim oriental woman smashed her way into the house. "You
must not search for Dr. Benson's formula, we can not allow that!" Before Brad
could react he felt himself lifted and thrown into the front room. Picking
himself up he looked around for a weapon. For a moment he touched the
fireplace poker, "Yeah right, like that ever worked in the movies! Wait! The
wand of doom!" Brad bent over and pulled his special baseball bat from under
the couch. Years ago he had taken a standard metal bat, drilled a hole in the
handle, and filled it with concrete. At the time it seemed to be a good idea.
From the kitchen he could hear the sounds of continued fighting.

Running back into the kitchen with the WOD in his hands, Brad found the small
oriental woman locked in combat with Nancy. For just a second he paused to
admire the way Nancy's muscles were bulging with effort. However, this woman
was a threat that had to be dealt with. It took Brad three blows with the Wand
of Doom before he could see any change, the first two bounced off the oriental
woman as if he was swinging a kid's foam bat. The third blow seemed to knock
something loose in the back of her head, but instead of blood, Brad found
himself looking at some kind of access panel. "What the hell, she's got a USB
port!" With a sigh of disbelief he reached over and pushed the clearly labeled
reset button. The woman continued to struggle with Nancy for a few seconds,
then she went "beep" two times and stood up.

"I saw you," muttered Nancy, "You hesitated before you bashed this bitch. But
at least you eventually came to my rescue, thanks. Now, what the heck is this?
Is she a machine?" She poked the oriental woman hard in the stomach, "I think
you'd like her, she's hard as steel and almost as strong as me."

Brad shook his head and commanded the robot woman to follow him. He wasn't too
surprised when she actually came with him into his bedroom. Nancy took the WOD
from him and stood guard as he found a USB cable to connect his computer to
the robot. "Why am I not surprised," he muttered to himself, "Windows XP comes
with a built-in driver, she's plug-n-play! I can talk to this thing.
Wonderful!"

"Would you please speak English! If you can't get anything useful from this
steel bitch I'm starting batting practice!", warned Nancy.

"She's just a computer controlled machine ... a machine that just happens to
look like a Japanese school-girl. My computer can see her as if she were an
external storage device. These folders represent different parts of her
system. The military is working on combat robot, though those use guns and
don't look like they walked out of a porno movie. OK, here's something I need
to do!" Brad quickly changed several values in a control file, which was
stored in a format that Notepad could open. From the back of the robot another
panel fell open. Brad carefully removed a small, red plastic box. "Better put
something in the circuit, just in case." He unhooked two wires from the
plastic box and connected them to a small door-bell buzzer he had in his junk
box. "That was a good call, something was getting bothered that her
self-destruct bomb had been removed. We just got real lucky, she was set to
blow up if she came up against someone like you that was stronger than her.
Better still, this thing is more like a missile than a assassin. Nobody
expects her to report in, so nobody will miss her."

"What if they launch more missiles? Are we safe here?" Nancy asked. Ben shock
his head, "That would be the bad news. My searches must have triggered
something. For better or worse, we're now on the run. I think we'll be safe
until dark. That'll give us time to load up the Mystery Van and setup some
parting gifts."

MAY 23,2005 - 11:30 PM

With the supple grace of a world-class gymnast, a second female robot stepped
through the broken back door. Her infra-red vision showed a single
human-shaped hot-spot in the bedroom. As she silently made her way down the
hallway her sensors failed to detect the thin stands of nylon thread which
criss-crossed the hall. The robot froze at the small mechanical sound next to
her, but then five pounds of plastic explosive created hell inches from her
belly, which generated it's own fireball of destruction. A faint ringing sound
could be heard coming from the first robot as it lay on Brad's bed, covered
with an electric-blanket. Less than an hour later Brad's house was smoldering
wreckage.

<><><> Chapter Two - Trial Of The Atom <><><>

MAY 28, 2005 - 5:52 AM

Brad moved the van slowly along the dirt and gravel road, in the distance he
could see the lights from the traffic jam. "I'm glad we got off the fifteen,
that was driving me crazy." he muttered to himself. He glanced to the
passenger seat where Nancy, the mystery woman with the atomic-powered muscles,
slept a deep but normal sleep. Brad felt the tension pressing down on him,
panic was a small animal tearing into his gut as he tried to follow driving
directions that had been given to him over ten years ago. With the proper
fuses pulled no lights cam from the van, but in the moon-light he could make
out the rough trail, road was too grand a term for it, as it snaked towards
empty land.

Somewhere, out there, Brad hoped to find his best friend from high-school. Lee
Miller was the one nobody talked about at reunions any more. An early victim
of the dot-com bubble, he had vanished in the nineties, becoming a hermit or
perhaps even a "survivalist". But before he left town he had given Brad
instructions on how to reach him, just in case "something" went wrong. Up
ahead Brad spotted a weather-worn road-sign, identical to all of the others he
had seen except for one small detail. On one of the painted arrows was a small
industrial-looking logo. Brad smiled, it had been a long time since he had
seen the logo from his high-school band, "Johnny Electric and the Solenoids".

Brad stopped the van and got out, he noticed that the flat-brown paint on his
van made it nearly invisible. Walking out to where the "special" arrow pointed
he found a slab of concrete nearly flush with the surrounding dirt. It looked
like it had not been moved in years. Finding a ring to lift it, Brad strained
until he saw red stars. He stepped back only to bump into something
unmoveable. "Did you find something Brad? Maybe a marker or a message from you
mysterious friend?" Nancy asked as she reached past him and casually lifted
the concrete slab. Brad noted that while the block looked slightly larger than
the grave-stone she had lifted before, she was making less effort. Had Nancy
gotten stronger since her battle with the school-girl robot?

Nancy tossed the slab a short distance away, Brad felt the vibration from the
impact through his shoes. "Look Brad! You get a metal box too!" exclaimed
Nancy as she reached in to grab the box. "Wait Nancy!" yelled Brad, "Lee was
more than a little paranoid right before he left, let's take a closer look."
As Brad bent close he noticed several thin wires running from the box to
several packages that seemed to be covered in thick wax paper. Running his
fingers along one wire, he rubbed off some of the material that made the wires
flat black. Brad smiled, "Lee was always a James Bond fan, but more for the
spy tricks than the girls. See here? If we had just pulled the box up those
wires would have pulled out the stoppers of those bottles and poured water
into the tears covering that block there."

Bending down with Brad, Nancy shined her flashlight on the large block of
material at the bottom of the concrete box. "So what, something gets wet. It
isn't like it's a bomb or anything, right?" Brad stated carefully snipping
wires, "We were a little wild in high- school. Lee was a little more into
chemistry and physics while I was going to be Bill Gates. One stunt that would
have gotten him kicked out, if they has ever figured out who it was, was the
exploding toilet trick he pulled just as a faculty meeting was having a break.
It's actually a very easy trick, all you need is a small amount of pure
potassium. Say, about a hundred times smaller than that block there!" Nancy
stepped back. "If you don't mind, could you put the lid back on? We need to
hide the fact that we're here as much as we can."

MAY 28, 2005 - 1:25 PM

A slight wind had picked up, making the visibility almost as poor as it had
been early in the morning. The heat had drained Brad of all energy hours ago,
while Nancy actually looked better, as if the heat were giving her strength.
Brad smiled at that idea, with the van nearly out of gas, Nancy might have to
carry him out of the desert. Directly ahead of them were two cinder-block and
metal buildings. One looked like a small cabin while the other seemed to be a
storage shed just big enough for him the park the van inside. With a nod
towards Brad, Nancy grabbed the concrete-filled metal bat Brad had named the
"Wand of Doom" and started moving towards the cabin. Brad carefully drove the
van out of the blistering sun and into the shed. Because the shed was so
narrow, he had to exit the van from the back doors. Forcing the shed's doors
shut, he turned and walked to the cabin where Nancy stood waiting.

"Looks like someone was here not too long ago, the floor is swept clean and
there are some boxes of survival rations sitting on a table next to a cooler."
Brad walked into the cabin, looking at the clean but Spartan furnishings.
"What's in the cooler?" Brad asked. Nancy opened the cooler and brought out
two bottles, small crystals of ice fell off and instantly turned to water as
they hit the hot floor. "There's no bottle opener, and these aren't twist off,
but I don't think that'll be a problem," Nancy smiled as she effortlessly
popped the lids off of the bottles and held one to Brad, who smiled. "Delaware
Punch, now I know Lee is around and watching us. I used to love this stuff
when I was a kid, but you can't find it anymore."

"Hey Brad, ever try that thing called the Internet?"

Brad and Nancy spun around to find a slim blond-hared man watching them from
the doorway which should have led to a bathroom. It took Brad a few seconds to
recognize his old friend Lee Miller, for some reason he was reminded of the
Russian agent on Man From Uncle. Nancy was still staring at the large and very
ugly gun he had been pointing at them. "Good job stashing the van, I'd left
the shed open so you could do that. When I watched your lady-friend toss that
two-hundred-pound reinforced concrete lid around like it was a Frisbee I
figured you had jacked a fembot, but IR and EMP scans tell me she is all
woman."

Brad smiled, "Lee, may I introduce to you Nancy Benson, wife to the late Dr.
Jeremy Benson. Mrs. Benson, this is my good, if somewhat overly mysterious,
friend from high-school Lee Miller. Lee, what's with all the cloak-and-dagger
stuff, you made it sound like you have a secret base, not just a one-room
shack that's missing a bathroom." Lee smiled and waved the two into the empty
bathroom, Nancy picked up the cooler. Once inside, Lee closed the door and
waved his hands in the air. From a distance there came the sound of mechanical
pumps, but the moving floor itself was silent. "It took a couple of years to
make all of the modifications, even longer to make all records of this base go
away. But nobody really guards records of bases closed back in the sixties
with a lot of effort. What we're in right now was one of two missile silos. In
this one I keep mostly supplies and stuff. The other silo contains my living
quarters and workshops."

As the lift reached the middle of the silo it slowed to a halt. On the metal
platform stood a tall, pale woman with long black hair and large eyes with
pitch-black pupils. What Brad at first thought were a complex series of
tattoos turned out to be a large collection a scars running along her arms and
legs. While she seemed unarmed, she wore a pair of unusually thick metal
gloves. "This is Lana, I've never discovered if she has a last name. I found
her in Vegas in one of those dark alleys which you can see near certain
casinos. She must have looked like a run-a-way just ripe for a gang-rape.
Well, the six guys who followed her into that alley make a good effort, she
had scars that took weeks to heal. But when I walked up she was the only one
standing. I don't know why she came with me, she never speaks and I can't get
her to write. The silver necklace she wore is only reason I'm sure her name is
Lana."

As they started to walk off of the platform Lee said, "Lana, this is Brad, he
is the old friend I told you about. His friend Nancy is our guest and may have
some things in common with you. Make both of them comfortable while they are
here." For a moment Lana's hand flew into a series of gestures. Lee replied
with similar gestures. Brad stared for a moment and then muttered "Sign
language, you taught her sign language?" Lee turned his head towards Brad,
"Actually, she already knew it. I'm the one having to learn. She knows a lot
of interesting things. Some of them are kinda scary. We travel to Vegas a
couple times a month for supplies or for me to sell my products. My last trip
was a couple days ago. We were attacked by some kind of advanced combat mech.
Lana kept it busy until I could drop it with an EMP grenade."

"Where the hell did you get a working EMP grenade? " asked Brad.

Lee smiled as he opened the door to his workshop, "They're one of the products
I make. I build weapons, very expensive weapons." From the back of the
workshop came a small woman dressed in a lab coat. Both Brad and Nancy stopped
as she came into view. Lee took the cold Coke from the fembot's hands, "She's
completely rewired and reprogrammed. Her original command core, after I
stripped it of information, now lies under hundreds of feet of salt-water in
the Gulf of Mexico. I now own the best looking automatic room cleaning robot
in North America."

Nancy waved at the fembot and Lana, "With company like this I don't blame you
living away from the city." Lee starting laughing, "Well, the fembot lacks
certain ... parts. And Lana is ... well ... complicated I guess. But the real
reason I'm out here is because of what I do. Having no neighbors for nearly a
hundred miles makes it very easy for me to test my products before I sell
them. Wait a second! How is it that both of you knew what the fembot was
before I told you?"

Nancy whacked the WOD into her palm, "Because we met one and turned it into
scrap, that's why!"

"One of these things came to my house and would have killed my if Nancy hadn't
been there. Between the two of us we disabled it and I downloaded all of it's
files. We set a booby-trap which went off, according to the news, so I guess
we might have taken a second one out." Brad smiled as he removed a string of
thumb-drives from around his neck, "I'm glad I got the water-proof ones 'cause
I've been sweating like a race-horse." He tossed the chain of drives to Lee,
for an instant they looked like nothing more than a primitive necklace made of
the teeth of a monster.

Lee looked at the high-tech necklace, "Lana, please take our good friends to
the guest quarters and make them comfortable, they have brought me a gift a
great value! I don't know what's going on Brad, but you'll need friends to
ride out this storm!"

MAY 28, 2005 - 3:00 PM

Brad didn't know where Nancy had gone to, but the cool spray from the shower
had been worth waiting for. Out of respect for his host, Brad was trying to
use only a minimal amount of water. As he reached out to turn off the water he
felt a slim female hand stop him. He turned to find Lana next to him, silent
as before. She had stripped bare, revealing an astonishing array of scars.
Gently, she pushed him aside to let the flow of the water cover her head and
body. As she lathered up her long black hair Brad enjoyed the play of muscle
and tendon under her thin pale skin. Lana's muscles were not massively
powerful like Nancy, she looked more like a prima-ballerina who could
leg-press a ton and look graceful doing it. As Brad picked up the wet bar of
soap, his nervousness made it shoot up out of his hand and bounce off of the
shower head. Lana grabbed the bar with a snake-quick motion which somehow left
her facing Brad.

Lana looked directly into Brad's eyes, her face totally free of any emotion.
As she put the bar of soap down he glanced at her arm to watch the subtle play
of muscle. Her eyes followed his. Brad saw her arm slowly raise up, her hand
slowly forming into a tight fist. She stepped closer to him, pressing him back
onto the wet tile wall of the shower. He could feel the heat of her body. Brad
took his still- soapy hands and started to rub her flexed arm. It felt as if
she were straining even harder. Lana pushed harder, he felt pinned against the
wall by her slim, strong body. His vision began to blur as the pressure
increased. Somehow, they had joined, and now both of her arms were wrapped
around him.

Brad felt himself slowly blacking out, the pressure created by the tall, slim
woman was far beyond anything he pictured her being able to produce. For a
moment he did black out. He found himself, cleaned and dried, on top the guest
bed, and covered by a warm towel. Lana entered from the bathroom, her long
black hair freshly shampooed and combed out. He started to say something when
she placed finger on lips, leaned over, and said, "Thank you." So, she could
talk after all. Brad vowed to himself to keep her secret. It was only later
that he wondered why she had a faint Russian accent.

JUNE 9, 2005 - 9:36 PM

Brad had parked his van two blocks away from the address. The area was far
enough away from the strip it to look almost like a normal light-industrial
area in any city. However, Los Vegas wasn't just any city. There was more
traffic that he would have liked, on the other hand, if there had been no
traffic then his van would have stood out more than it already did. Lee had
come up with a couple of magnetic signs which made Brad's van more
"industrial". Though Brad was sure he remembered the name "Yoyodyne" from
someplace. Thankfully he was in a city were it was more common to have an
out-of-state license plate than not. The run-down warehouse matched the
address Lee had given him. Time to play spy.

Lee had managed to extract some very interesting information from the fembot
files. For one thing, it seemed that the one they had disabled had been used
in some kind of kinky party before being programmed to be a killer. Lee had
mumbled the name "Donna Matrix", but that had meant nothing to Brad.
Evidently, the robots had a "fetbot" mode where they became quite aggressive
and controlling. The school-girl outfits could do double-duty it seemed.
Another file turned out to be a master target list. The warehouse in front of
Brad had been on the list. Taking his time, he climbed up on the roof of the
building next door. Lee had said he should hide by the air-conditioning
equipment where the vented heat would mask his signature.

Brad opened the sling-case that contained the hunting-rifle he had been
practicing with for a week. He would never give a real sniper any competition,
but he felt he could easily hit a target from across the street. It had taken
him hours to get used to the night-vision equipment. Lee said that what he was
using would be issued to the military within a year or so. Brad knew enough of
the subject to enjoy how complex the integration of IR and adaptive-NV could
be. Because of the multiple sensor technology, not only could Brad see every
person walking down the street, he could also see a heat signature from each
one in real-time. Well, from every person except the slim school-girl who was
slowly trying to sneak through the sparse desert landscaping.

He followed her with the scope, waiting until she had moved to a spot where
she would be hidden from the street. That's interesting, she has some kind of
weapon. Brad didn't think any normal human could take on one of these robots
and have any chance of surviving. So why would the invisible enemy see the
need for firepower? This was it! Slowly she began to stand up, the front door
her obvious entry point. Brad was slowly squeezing the trigger just as the
fembot smashed the heavy door down with one hand, the sudden movement started
Brad, causing him to pull the last fraction of an inch needed to fire. There
was a sudden crack of the rifle and a momentary flash as the hand-made sabot
round punched a hole completely through the fembot's armored skull. The way
she smoothly slid down to the walk felt like an anti-climax to Brad.

JUNE 9, 2005 - 11:15 PM

Taking out the killer robot was just the first part of his job. Leaving the
hunting rifle and night-vision equipment in his van, he returned to the
warehouse. Now Brad had to enter the building and discover the fembot's
target. Debris from the broken door had sprayed over the cheaply furnished
office. With his highly-modified 45 in front of him, Brad slowly moved
forward. On the wall were posters from old computer games, on one a flight of
helicopters were attacking a big tank that had two barrels. "Looks like these
guys have seen better days." The hallway that led from the front office led to
a strangely painted restroom, a break area filled with small plastic balls,
and a near-empty store-room. As he walked into the store-room he thought he
smelled faint perfume, but saw nothing of interest. "Nobody's home I guess,"
he said as he turned to leave.

He heard the soft voice behind him, "Afraid be not, hurt you I won't!" Turning
around Brad saw a four-foot tall figure emerge from the shadows. In the dim
light he could barely make out who it was. Was this a child? No, her face was
strange, not quite human, she appeared to have gigantic ears. A flash of light
from a passing car revealed her true identity, "You've got to be kidding me!
You're the female gremlin from that old movie! Wait a minute, that was a
puppet, so what are you really?"

With animal quickness she launched herself towards Brad, her slim green arms
reaching out to him. Her surprising weight nearly knocked him down, his back
slammed against the wall. "Well, you're no puppet that's for sure! This must
be some kind of costume!" He managed to twist away, pushing the strange girl
over the top of a chair. While she struggled to get to her feet Brad sprinted
for the hallway and slammed the thick metal door shut. "OK Miss Gremlin, if
you want me you'll have to break down this door!"

Brad began to hear something rubbing against the door, "Play games you like!
Make me want you more!" he heard her hiss. The door began to shake as the
pressure from her tiny form slowly increased. Brad looked around and saw a
heavy metal cabinet, "I think she's mixing up her movies, the short green girl
with muscles was Miss Piggy." He strained to move the cabinet in front of the
store room door. "This thing must weigh hundreds of pounds, no wonder the
store room was empty, everything is in here!" The door continued to shake as
the pressure continued to increase.

Brad stepped back in surprise as one thin green arm forced it's way through
the gap in the door way, "Coming lover I am! Make me work hard, want you more
I do!" For a moment the gremlin stopped and held up her arm, her tiny fist was
dwarfed by the perfectly spherical bicep which exploded into view. "How strong
my love is you feel! All woman you need I am!" Brad slowly shook his head in
disbelief and reached towards her small but muscular arm. He noticed that her
skin felt cool and slick like a lizard. All thought of this being a child
inside of a costume vanished when Brad felt the moving hardness of her bicep.
"Wow, you are real! Ahh ... do you have a name?"

Brad felt the door being forced open by the female gremlin, the thick metal
locks splintered, the heavy cabinet slid as if it were made of paper, and his
own efforts to push the door closed were overcome as if he was a small child.
He was astonished that she was doing this feat of strength one handed, as her
other arm remained in view, bicep flexed for his enjoyment. As the door was
almost fully open Brad spied a hand sledge hanging from a hook. He snatched it
and aimed a blow at the female gremlins head. One hand shot out almost too
fast to see and caught the hammer before it hit. "Name is Patricia, lover.
Want hit use hand. I stand for you, show you I good woman for you, yes."

With that the female gremlin leaped onto a crate and faced Brad, "Now lover!
Prove to you I what you want!" In the bright light of the hallway Brad could
her clearly. Unlike the stiff puppet from the movie, the creature in front of
him now seemed ultra-alive. It was as if each muscle on her body was made up
of hundreds of layers of muscle, like an onion, but hard muscle. The slightest
movement sent waves of tiny ripples as the many layers flexed and relaxed.
With just a little hesitation he reached out and started to examine her. This
seemed to be very pleasant for her, as she actively moved and flexed in order
to give him the maximum exposure to her muscles. Brad started to use more
force, squeezing as hard as he could. This only seemed to arouse the
over-sexed creature even more.

"OK Patricia, I am now totally confused. Either you are real of I am having a
really weird dream. I know! There's something that just doesn't happen in any
of my dreams. How would you like to ... say ... go all the way?" The female
gremlins eyes grew wide and she pulled back her shoulders, pushing her small
but perky breasts towards Brad. "Oh yes, lover! What I do, tell me!" Brad
smiled and handed her a crowbar, "All you have to do is tie this in a knot!
Then we'll wander back into that store room where it's a little more
comfortable." Brad thought to himself, "Right about now is when I should be
waking. Any time now. Say ... is that crowbar starting to bend?"

The female gremlin took the crowbar in her hands and started to strain.
Hundreds of layers of muscle all flexed at once, creating enormous pressure,
and causing her body to grow as if air was being pumped into her. The bar
started to make odd popping noises as it slowly deformed. Brad reached out and
ran his hands along her now massively muscled arms and back. Patricia raised
her arms, now bringing her pectoral muscles into play. Without thinking Brad
followed the flexing of her muscles and suddenly found himself rubbing his
hands on her breasts. "That's incredible muscle control you got there
Patricia! I've never seen anything like this outside of a fantasy."

"I go slow, first time don't rush! Strong woman good to find, yes?" The female
gremlin stopped moving, Brad looked down at her hands, the crowbar was now in
a knot. She smiled at him, "Foreplay done, yes? Gentile I promise be!"
Patricia dropped the crowbar and reached for his hand. He found himself
gently, but firmly led back into the storeroom. Somehow she could read him,
she knew what to say and what to do. Plus, she was a creature who should not
exist. "OK, I just stopped a killer robot from hurting a creature last seen
twenty years ago in a really bad movie. And now I'm getting laid."

Patricia looked up and him and cooed, "Reward of hero, yes?"

JUNE 10, 2005 - 1:30 AM

He staggered out of the warehouse, "Didn't see that one coming!", Brad glanced
behind him where Patricia followed. The female gremlin carried the heavy
fire-proof filing cabinet as if it were made of thin paper. In the darkness
she had become any one of his wildest fantasies, even ones best left in the
darkness. He wondered if she could cook, "What the hell am I thinking? Come on
Patricia, lets load 'em up and head back to the ranch. Outside of some strange
posters of evil-looking bald men armed with chromed-plated hand-guns, this
cabinet was the only thing, besides yourself, interesting in that building. I
wonder what the others found?"

JUNE 10, 2005 - 5:05 AM

Brad was tired for many reasons, several of them were wandering around,
looking at Lee's collection of books. Lana, who was wearing pale-green robes
which made her look more like a vampire than a servant, moved about the group
serving drinks and small sandwiches. Nancy was having fun arm-wrestling
Patricia the female gremlin. Lee was having an intense conversation with
Karla, the large woman Nancy had rescued. Karla looked more like a barbarian
queen, wild red hair hanging down to her waist, than the librarian she said
she was. And on the table directly in front of Brad was a strange metal globe
the size of a bowling-ball. It's surface seemed covered in strange symbols and
he was sure that he was seeing faint blue flashes from time to time.

Shaking his head Brad said, "OK folks, I've had more than enough of this
weirdness for one day. I'm grabbing some sleep. But I'll take this thing for
company, maybe it'll make a good night light." Grabbing the orb he climbed
down to the main level and over to the room Lee had given him. "Maybe this is
some kind of alien artifact left over from the crash of a space ship. Who
knows how long it's been stuck here. Either that or it's the float from a
demonic toilet." Brad walked into his room, placed the orb on the table by his
bed and took off his shirt. "OK orb, I'm not a member of your crew, but I can
hear them talking, and they say that you're to activate Emergency Survival
Protocols. Begin auto-repair and build back-ups and sensor-grid." With a smile
Brad turned towards the bathroom, "Well, that didn't work, so much for the
Andre-Norton plan." Closing the door to the bathroom he started to clean
himself up. As he was finishing he noticed a bright blue glow coming through
the gap in the bottom of the door. After a moment, it faded away.

As Brad slowly opened the door he noticed that the orb looked a little
different. Instead of being pitted and tarnished, the surface now gleamed as
if it were brand new. The random flickers of blue were now a constant flow of
blue glows, as if he were watching some large computer, or a round lava-lamp.
But the biggest change was that the orb was floating one foot above the
surface of the table. "OK, this is different. If I wasn't so dead tired I'd do
something. I sure wish I know what the heck you were."

"I AM A PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT DEVICE, STANDARD CRUSE SHIP MODEL THREE"

"That's interesting, so what do you do, play games?" Brad muttered to himself,
"Great! I've got an intergalactic GameBoy!"

"I PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE SHIP'S ENTERTAINMENT LIBRARY."

"Well, you don't have a ship or a library, do you?"

"NO."

"OK, what else can you do?"

"I CAN PROJECT PERSISTANT INTERACTIVE SIMULATIONS."

Brad thought for a moment. "OK, let's see Anna-Nicole Smith before she put on
all that weight." In front of Brad a figure appeared and took shape. "Wow! You
captured that look. It's a fantastic picture, almost as if you could touch
her." He reached out and felt the warm firmness of her flesh. "That must be
what you mean by interactive. Let me guess, when you say persistent you mean
she'll stick around without you doing a lot of work, right?"

"THAT IS CORRECT, YOU CAN DISMISS, EDIT, SAVE OR CONTINUE THIS SIMULATION AS
YOU DESIRE."

"Right, let's turn this one off for now, why don't you go into sleep mode or
something until I call on you."

"SLEEP MODE ACTIVE"

Brad watched the orb slowly drift down and land on the table. Just as it
finally stopped moving there was a soft knock at the door. Brad watched as the
four-foot-tall female gremlin walked into his bedroom. All of her muscles
looked fully pumped and she moved slowly as if she were sore. "Strong are your
friends. Stronger am I tonight. Lonely you not be, I here." She climbed up
onto the bed, snuggled up to him and cooed, "Protect you, I will. Hear of evil
enemy I do. Lover save Patricia, grateful I am. Take turns others will. Lover
choose not one, have all friends. You see!"

JUNE 10, 2005 - 3:05 PM

Brad woke up to the sounds of intense combat. He sat up to find Lana sparring
with a muscular version of Laura Croft. Lana noticed that he was awake and
make a sign with her hand. The torose tomb-raider stopped fighting and stood
at attention. Lana sat next to Brad and smiled, "Thanks for not telling Lee I
can speak, I think I'm madly in love with him, but I need to keep him separate
from my old life for a while. I love your new toy, you guys get all of the
cool stuff."

"You figured out how to turn it on? Maybe I should put a password on it before
Lee fills the place with whatever fantasy he's into. Which leads me to this
athletic adventurer ... what the hell?" whispered Brad, pointing to Lady
Croft.

Lana bent close and whispered into Brad's ear, "I always wanted to beat the
shit out of that woman, all miss perfect and boobs. That was fun for a while,
but then I told the orb to start making her stronger and tougher. She's now
the perfect exercise machine, I can go all out without holding back. Go ahead,
try her out. If you hit her hard enough to do damage, like break a bone or
something, to a real person she'll blink. Watch!" Lana stood up and launched a
staggering blow to Laura's head. For an instant there was a snapping sound as
Laura's head was slammed back. Lady Croft returned her head to the full
upright position and blinked three times.

"Right, like I can match any of you girls," muttered Brad as he got out of
bed, "Well, I can work up a sweat before I take a shower." Standing next to
the well-endowed computer-game character, he noticed that he was several
inches shorter than she was. His first few punches were tentative, but soon
Brad picked up the pace. However, no matter how hard he hit her, she would not
blink. After a while he noticed that she was moving in a very seductive
manner, winking at him and trying to move her ample breasts under fists.
Turning around he spotted Lana giving commands to the simulated woman with
sign language. Lana smiled, and with a wave of her hands ended the simulation.
The pale woman walked out of Brad's room.

JUNE 10, 2005 - 4:30 PM

"With the information Mr. Miller has provided me, it was easy to trace the
shipments of parts." Karla stood before them, the bright lights of the
workshop turning her long-red hair into a seductive blaze. "This factory used
to make toys during the early 90's but was shut down after a few kids got
injured by the dancing purple bears. We don't have a lot of data on the new
owners, but there seems to be a lot of Russian money flowing into it. I think
this places needs a closer look. I've also looked at the target list from
those androids. The only common factor I could see is that most, not all, of
the individuals had some connection to extremely strong women or research into
atomic energy." She paused to brush her hair back, her sixteen-inch bicep
flickered into view, "I have no idea why I was on the list, I'm just a county
librarian with a hobby of collecting weird research papers."

Lee looked at Brad and smiled, "Did you know that Karla had in her files the
original reports from Nancy's husband lab? Seems that she actually inherited
them. Nancy, I'd like to introduce you to one of Olga's daughters! Karla,
Nancy is your father's first wife."

Nancy stood up, "She's ... my ... daughter-in-law? Yes I can see it now in her
face! But you said there were two daughters, where is the other one? My God! I
have living family!" Karla looked at Nancy and back to Lee, "What are you
talking about? This can't be Professor Benson's first wife! She looks younger
than I am! And I don't have a sister, do I? Damm it, you found out I was
adopted and are trying to mess with my mind!"

Just then Patricia, the four-foot gremlin, walked in carrying the crumpled
form of Laura Croft. "Sorry I am! Toy broke! Too hard hit I have! Need help
fix lover please!" She walked up to Brad and held the trembling woman up for
him to see, Laura's eyes would not stop blinking. Brad looked at the shocked
Lee and the amused Nancy. Karla sat down muttering to herself. From the back
of the room Lana smiled and slowly clapped.

JUNE 10, 2005 - 9:45 PM

With a strange metallic ripping sound, the heavy lock was torn from the
fire-proof filing cabinet. Nancy held the lock out to Brad and asked "Is this
all that you wanted me for? Or do I detect an interest in shorter women?" Brad
choked on his Coke and answered "I can't even explain what's going on to
myself. If I remember correctly, I no longer have a house and what few friends
I have all must think I'm dead!" He took the lock and tossed it into the
trash, Nancy smiled, "We'll have to see about fixing that, but you've got a
few new friends now, even if some look like they escaped from a B-movie".

As Nancy walked out of the silo store room Brad started going through the file
cabinet, "Wow! A bunch of files! Who would have thought of that. So, that's
how that game should have ended?" Both the first and second drawers contained
computer game related papers and CDs. The third drawer contained a small slab
of stone wrapped in a black cloth and a familiar looking metal orb. "It's
another alien entertainment unit, but this one looks like it burned out,
almost damaged. And this slab, I've seen this in some game, something about
Kane killing Abel. Only, I don't remember Kane being a woman, and that rock
she's holding up in the air looks like some kind of machine."

Turning the red slab over, Brad noticed a series of strange symbols unlike
anything he had ever seen, "This doesn't match the symbols on the orbs, a
different alien race? But wait, this thing here looks like some kind of
chemical formula. I've got to show this to Lee! The orb, I'll ask the magic
bowling ball, later."

JUNE 10, 2005 - 11:00 PM

Brad got back in bed and tried to keep his head from exploding. Nancy and
Karla the librarian were still in the work shop trying to piece together their
totally unconnected lives, as well as decode the strange red slab. Lee and
Lana had gone to Los Vegas to pick up some "supplies". Which left Brad alone
with Patricia the over-sexed gremlin. Currently she was having fun with a new
simulation from the alien orb. From the bed Brad could see two identical
female gremlins locked in a wrestling match. Muscles of absurd size bulged
from normally thin arms and legs. Brad shook his head, "This looks as bad as
those picture-mods where they give Madonna sixty-inch biceps! Oh Patricia, if
you could spare a moment, I'd love to take you up on your offer to give me a
back rub!"

One of the gremlins smiled at him, her muscles swelling up even larger. The
other gremlin was ripped free from Patricia's back and tossed to the ground.
Brad assumed that this was the signal she had given to the orb as the
simulation faded away. "This isn't fair! I figured out how to work the thing
and I never get to use it!" He felt small strong hands pick him up and flip
him face down on the bed. Patricia cooed, "Simulation no need, lover real
thing have! Patricia all woman lover need! Patricia love Brad!"

JUNE 11, 2005 - 1:25 AM

Brad woke as the orb gave out a loud beeping, "What the hell? Don't tell me
you're also an alarm clock?" The orb glowed bright blue and seemed to project
an image of the Earth in the space above the bed.

"INITIAL PHASE OF SENSOR NETWORK COMPLETED. SCANS INDICATE NON-HUMAN ACTIVITY
ON SURFACE OF THIS PLANET AND IN NEAR ORBIT. ENERGY SIGNATURES DO NOT MATCH
KNOWN TECHNOLOGY. NEAREST NODE OF NON-HUMAN ACTIVITY HOUSED IN THIS BUILDING."

"The Luxor, why am I not surprised. Hey, that's a pretty detailed report
coming from an entertainment device. What gives?"

"EMERGENCY SURVIVAL PROTOCOL UNLOCKS MILITARY DATABASE. THIS IS DESIGNED TO
ASSIST MERCHANT SHIPS ATTACKED BY PIRATE FORCES. CONVERSATIONS IN THIS BASE
REPORT MULTIPLE ATTACKS FROM UNKNOWN FORCE. TACTICAL SOFTWARE GENERATED ALERT
CONDITION. NON-HUMAN ACTIVITY POSSIBLE CONNECTION TO ATTACKS. REQUEST
AUTHORIZATION TO DEPLOY POINT-DEFENSE SYSTEMS."

Brad covered his head with his pillow, "I'm sleeping next to a fantasy
creature with biceps the size of weather balloons and now my magic talking
bowling ball wants to put up laser cannon to stop the space pirates." Brad put
the pillow under his head, "Right! Sure thing! Better make the stealth
version, don't want to upset the illegal aliens. Say, do you have a name? I
can't keep calling you ORB."

"IS SELF-DESIGNATION PERMITTED?"

"I don't see why not! Just make it something I can remember and pronounce."

"ACKNOWLEDGED. I WILL SCAN FOR ACCEPTABLE INPUT AND REPORT."

Brad sighed, "You do that, just let me get some sleep. Oh, you can wake me if
space pirates attack!"

<><><> TO BE CONTINUES <><><>