Rod, Rex and Rhodaby Bob Brill |
Table of Contents |
After Rod gets partially blended with his dog, Rex, as the result of a transporter malfunction, he learns that transporters can be misused to commit murder, produce hybrid beings and create human clones. When the beautiful Rhoda Vane entices Rod to help her expose the giant Rumex Pharmaceutical Corporation, Rod, Rex and Rhoda get mixed up in a transporter-load of trouble. In the process they become bonded in more ways than one.
Once More Unto the Breach
“That’s great,” says Rhoda, “wonderful news. Here’s what you do. Cross your fingers behind your back and accept the bribe. Gives you carte blanche to test the other subjects. If you don’t find anything, nothing gained, nothing lost. But if there’s even one more case of Fallow’s Syndrome, we can blow the whole scene wide open. And don’t you suppose that if the previous results were really negative that there’d be no need to bribe you? Those other two experts must have been bribed too.”
“Yes, I agree with you about that. Something fishy is certainly going on at Rumex. Another thing. They claim that metafallazine appeared in the victim of Fallow’s Syndrome before the start of the trials. But if that were really the case, they would never have accepted him as a subject. And finally, if everything were on the up-and-up, they wouldn’t have scrambled my brains in the transporter.
“But having said that, I still won’t go back to Rumex to test the other subjects on the pretext of accepting a bribe. It’s unethical, but that’s irrelevant next to the fact that it’s dangerous. I’m going to take my pug pal and go as fast and as far as transporter will take me from the Rumex tentacles.”
“What? Are you going to abandon me just as we’re getting to know each other?” Rising, she steps closer to me, arching her back so that her breasts strain against her dress. A move so manipulative, so blatantly obvious, and so effective. I still love her. I still want her. But all of a sudden I don’t like her. Is it possible to love someone you don’t like? An interesting philosophical question I don’t want to think about.
“I’ll send you a postcard from Timbuktu.”
“Rod,” she says, “can we make a deal?”
My second moral crisis of the day. I don’t want a mansion, I don’t need a Lamborghini. A simple Porsche will do. But can I be bought with sex? The concept is repugnant, but not so easy to shrug off. I pause for a beat, maybe two, while I contemplate my decision, then I say, “Take off your dress.”
And she does.
Copyright © 2010 by Bob Brill
