Meta Zero One (9 page)

"No, my real name is long, complicated and ancient, you would not be able to pronounce it, Christ even I struggle sometimes, so Gwen will do for now. It's what my friends call me anyway."

  "O.k. Gwen," Margaret smiled, "what can I do for you?"

"Well," Gwen started to relax, she leaned back on the chair, which made her breasts heave appealingly, "I have no intention of killing myself if that's what you are worried about."

"I don't know what you mean," Margaret lied, was this a test, it had to be, she would not have put it past the FBi to set a trap, just to see how good she was at keeping her mouth shut.

"Yes you do," and she had laughed, the sound was like golden chocolate washing over Margaret, how had the Guardian not wanted to sleep with this woman, she wondered, I'd like to. "You know what I am talking about, John of course, there is no need to pretend. He killed himself in this very room last week, we both  know  it, all the League of Heroes know it. Well almost all, we haven't told Giganto, he is just too mentally unstable to handle the news right now. After that split personality thing last year, we are just not sure what he would do to himself or to the rest of us. So other than Giganto, we all know about it, how do you think I got your name?"

"Right, not as well kept a secret as I thought, but never mind, so do you want to talk about it?" Margaret picked up her pen and started to write.

"No, not really, and I would rather you didn't take an notes please," Gwen had said, "I know you can keep a secret, after all you currently have the biggest secret in the world inside your head and you seem to be handling it well enough. No, I know you can keep a secret, but I don't want any record of my visits, or what we talk about, so no notes please."

  Margaret had put her note book down, folded her hands on her lap and said, "Did you love him?"

  Again Gwen laughed, "Love John, no, he was a arrogant, ignorant, superior prick. Did I want to fuck him, yes, did I want to have dinner with him, or have his children, no, never. To be honest with you I hated him. In my opinion the world is a far better place without him, it's less safe, yes, but still better."

  "So what's bothering you, why are you here?"

  "I want to talk about me, not him, I need some help."

"Ok."

The Warrior Queen had gone on to explain that she had been born on a small island in the Pacific ocean, the location of which was a fiercely guarded secret.

  She was the only daughter of the General of the army and Mars, the god of war.

  "The god of war?" Margaret had asked incredulous.

  "Yes, the actual god of war, you know out of the Greek or Roman myths and so on, I'm never sure which and dad wasn't the most hands on father. Well they were not really myths you see, more like explanations of events that happened but weren't fully understood. The gods are all real, they are just a lot less interested in us than they used to be. Take my dad for example, after shagging my mother while he was in the form of a rampant swan, never looked in on me, not once."

"A swan?" Margaret had asked.

"Yep, a swan, and a rampant one at that, which is really rather odd since my mother is as gay as they come."

 The island, as it turned out, was in fact populated by lesbians, exclusively by lesbians. Lesbians who used men only to procreate and nothing more. To the extent that all male children were kept on a separate island and  were killed at the age of 18, that was if they didn't die from total and utter exhaustion first.

Warrior women are apparently remarkably fierce in their sexual appetites, and the women were as far stronger than the men, who had, over the years had all of their self worth and physical strength bred out of them.

  Gwen had been cast out from the island at the age of 18 for the crime of being strictly  heterosexual. She had, she'd  said to the papers when she had arrived in America, simply, "Loved cock".

  It was this that was causing her a problem now.

  "I'm a sex addict," she had said, "I can't get enough of it, I could shag twenty times a day, with any man I could, given the opportunity. It's like an itch that I just can't scratch. I sometimes wonder if that's why I am so strong, such a good fighter, why I'm so aggressive. It's as if all my sexual appetite is coming out in other ways."

"Ok," Margaret had dealt with male sex addicts in the past, including one high profile film and TV star, female addicts were far rarer, but the treatments were still well understood. For human addicts that is, not for super powered ones.

"Tell me," she had asked, "why is this a problem? Why do you think it's an addiction? What makes it a problem for you? Surely you can get whatever you want, whoever you want. I've seen you on the covers of magazines all over the world. You look fantastic, you're a celebrity, there must be millions of young men who would be more than willing to service your needs, as it were. As far as I know you are not in any relationship, so why not just enjoy yourself?"

  "Yes there are, I've never been short of offers, they are practically queueing up, but the problem is I'm just too strong for them."

  "You mean?"

  "When I orgasm I loose control of certain muscles, my thighs well they spasm, other muscles well they pull really hard or clench uncontrollably. The effect on a normal human male is catastrophic, and usually fatal. If that does not get them then I have been known to pound them to death with my fists, I really do get quite out of control."

  Margaret wondered how many young men had suffered that fate, before Gwen had controlled herself, if indeed she ever had. The Warrior Queen was a major hero after all. Margaret wondered just how many young men had been delivered into her clutches by a grateful government. Many states still had the death penalty, and given the choice she wondered how many men would chose death by orgasm over a lethal injection.

"There are only so many death row inmates you can do before it becomes obvious." Well that answers that one thought Margaret. "And let's be honest a multiple rapist is not going to be the most considerate of lovers. So although the government is willing to let me work through the entire prison population, it's not the best solution for me. And as for powered heroes, well not all of them are willing, or even able to perform. I've tried to with most of them, believe you me, Speedfreak, is, as you can imagine just far too fast, he has come and gone before you can get your knickers off. Dark Man, well he's no fun at all and kind of hard to find with the lights off. Captain Los Alamo, well he's as gay as they come, and so on. If you work you way down the list of possibilities you soon run out of suitable choices."

  "I've had my sights on The Guardian for years, but he is well, as you know dead, which doesn't take him off the list, it just makes it logistically more difficult."

  "I've pretty much run out of options," she had stared at Margaret, who struggled to know what to say in response.

After a pause she asked "So, what are you doing instead, what are your coping strategies at the moment?"

"Wanking, I wank 4 times a day usually before meals, which is let me tell you a very poor substitute, I haven't had sex, real sex for just over 6 months, but I am getting very very good at bringing myself off."

It had been a difficult afternoon, sitting listening to the Warrior Queen, and trying to think of a route forwards had taken a lot out of Margaret. Now, half drunk, ordering another bottle of beer, she could see her life stretching ahead of her.

She would become the physiatrist of choice for powered heroes, whose hang ups, whose problems, would if anything be greater, and harder to deal with than those of normal people.

Red Lightning would no doubt have sexual feelings for his sister who would no doubt be sleeping with their father

Grand Master would be a pedophile using his mental powers to ensure his secret was forever safe.

Flame Wasp a pyromaniac, just a very small one.

Norseman a rapist and a drunk, well he was a 600 year old Viking after all.

The Indian Rubber Man would no doubt have at least 16 different personalities, all clamouring to come out at the wrong time. Each one would be slightly worse than the last.

Captain Northway would be suffering from Tourette's syndrome, causing him to shout "Fuck a Cunt," every time he rescued a baby from a burning building.

The list was endless, it was daunting, and the fact that for now at least it existed solely in her head didn't make it any easier to swallow.

At least they paid well, Warrior Queen had paid three times the going rate for her session. Margaret could see herself growing quietly rich off the back of her new clients, and oh the papers she would write.

  Not to mention the book deals. There had to be a lucrative book deal in all of this somewhere. She would have to be careful sure, these were clearly not people she wanted to cross, but still, a world of opportunities opened up in front of her.

  "Penny for your thoughts."

Margaret looked around, a tall rather handsome man had sat down next to her. He showed none of the hesitance Stanley had demonstrated earlier, he looked confidently at her, his plan for the evening clear in his eyes.

  And Margaret was just drunk enough to go along with it.

  "It'll cost you more than a penny," she smiled, turning slightly towards him, enjoying the way his eyes darted down her body, before he covered the movement by reaching for his drink.

  This might be a bit of fun, she thought.

  Later, nicely tired, nicely bruised and a little sore she sat on the edge of the hotel bed, pulling on her discarded clothes. David, she thought that was his name anyway, lay naked and replete across the bed, the scratches on his back and bottom giving proof of the last three hours frenzied activity.

  Good sex, she thought pulling her skirt on and standing, is good for the soul, at least it was good for her soul anyway.

  David remained asleep as she tiptoed out of the room, putting her shoes on in the hotel hallway.

  He had not wanted to go back to his place, saying that it was complicated, which Margaret took to mean he was married. She had looked but there was no white mark on his ring finger, this was the usual clue when married men went astray. Margaret didn't like bringing strange men back to her apartment, so they had booked into a nearby hotel, and the rest was a slightly drunken, hazy blur.

  She could remember that they had started to pull each others clothes off before the door was fully closed. She could remember that he had a hard, well muscled body, and a penis which would have best been described as magnificent, if she was the heroine in a Mills and Boon romance that was, enormous would describe it if she was a normal person.

  Impressive was another word that came to mind, making her smile at the memory of it springing free from his trousers.

  But the rest of the evening was a blur, a satisfied blur but still a blur.

  Making her way down the corridor she pressed the lift button while she did up the last few clasps on her shirt, realising too late that she had left her stockings in the room. Oh well, she thought, she could get some more, she could probably afford more expensive ones at that, now she had these new clients.

  The lift arrived and she stepped in, the doors closed halfway, then jammed on something, before reopening and closing again a few seconds later. Odd Margaret thought, then dismissed it from her mind

Margaret put her bag on the floor while she looked in the mirror, she didn't want to have too much of the just shagged look when she stepped out and walked through reception. That was just a bit too cheap.

  Rubbing her head, trying to ease the start of a hangover headache, she did not hear the slow, steady breathing which betrayed someone else's presence in the lift.

  Nor did she notice, until she got home, that her wallet was missing from her bag.

  By Monday morning she retained some of the residual feeling of contentment. She had spent Saturday cancelling credit cards, and applying for a new drivers licence, but she had enough cash to see her through for a few days, and her bank had been very helpful. So she had simply slumped out in front of the television for the whole weekend, watching tv and eating ice cream.

It was great.

The news that The Guardian had left on a mission to another Galaxy was greeted with general apathy and boredom. The League of Heroes, with Dark Man at the front, had reassured people that they were in place to handle any emergency until The Guardian returned, Margaret noticed that Warrior Queen was not with them.

The article was followed by a short report of the death of Sirus "the Virus" Black, he was a multiple rapist who had spent the last twelve years on death row. His sentence had been carried out in private the report said, despite last minute appeals from well meaning but misguided people who had never themselves been raped.

There was an interview with his distraught wife, who he had written to and married while on death row.

That the sentence had been carried out in private was unusual, Margaret remembered the advice, perhaps misguided she had given to the Warrior Queen at the end of the session. She had suggested that perhaps in the short term she should think about a different coping strategy than repetitive masturbation, something she could do to relive the pressure slightly, while they came up with a more permanent solution.