Workin' Progress: The Time Traveler's Mother In Law

Running into an extremely jumpy Olivia Park was not the worst thing Hannah was worried about.  Maybe it should have been.  Dillon wandered off, the Cornelius Kevin party collapsed for a while, restless gestating twins, and a calm dark night, but it was running into Rebecca that worried Hannah.  It shouldn't, but it did.  Dealing with her mother would only ruin her mood, she knew, so encountering an unsettled Dr. Park was a sort of relief.  She seemed happy for the company, and really, the whole thing was so much less awkward than it should have been.  I guess it's all so far away now, she mused.  Olivia is here.  She's alive.  So am I.  We have more than a bit in common besides my father.  Besides Dillon.  Jesus.  It was all so fucked up, but it feels normal here.  Why is that?  She didn't know, so when Olivia went back to try and sleep while it was night, Hannah went to look out over the bluff for a while before she felt tired.  Eva Laria.  Eva Laria.  Tomorrow, probably.  Another lucky winner.  Was that why Dillon was off somewhere?  Probably not.  Dillon was remarkably disinterested in the whole thing considering this was all his doing.  Eva Laria, Hannah remembered her.  Remembered who she was anyway.  How disoriented was she going to be?  Would she be happy to be here?  Would she fit in with this early, disorganized collection?  Maybe Kevin would fuck her straight away and that would be that.  Or did she have a family?  Would she be waiting for the rest of them to get through?  Hannah couldn't recall.  Or maybe she had never known?  Whatever.  Hannah wasn't the fucking welcome wagon.  What Hannah needed was more pregnant women around.  Some commiseration.  Fuck, Kathleen Berotti was probably already pregnant.  Who else?  Anyone would be fine.  Except her mother.

Workin' Progress: Freighter Cruises

Freighter cruises.  Abner Kinsella wasting months, years, on freighter cruises.  Dillon was livid he hadn't come up with that shit earlier.  He was giddy.  This was genius.  Kinsella would be, was, should be, what, 22 now?  Something.  He'd set him up as a college freshman, so 22 would work.  How long?  10 years?  Why not?  In ten fucking years he could bail on whatever horrible thing he was doing, send Dillon off on vaguely undetermined next new somethings, say goodbye, and pop up as horrible douchebag Abner Kinsella, travel writer or whatever bullshit made a modicum of sense.  Or not.  What would it matter?  He probably wouldn't be ready to kill off Dillon.  He still needed a way to live with Dillon for a long fucking time.  That was going to be a problem.  Kinsella was a necessity, and he had been more than perfect distraction.  Special Agent Tomko was probably still trying to figure that shit out.  But that stupid bastard would swear he met the guy, swear he was sure the guy was involved with something that he couldn't quite articulate.  Kinsella wasn't permanent solution.  Dillon knew that the next long-term answer was probably five years old.  It was ok if he was going to be a well-preserved 40, but there was no way to pull off being 60 or 70 years old and looking like you were 20 or 25.  Dillon wasn't going to live forever, but he had no idea how the fuck he would get around living a long goddamned time.  Too long to be Dillon the whole time.  Somebody would notice.  Kinsella was a distraction, but the freighter cruise scheme was fucking genius.  Abner Kinsella on the high seas, far away from just about everyone and everything.  Brilliant.  He wished he could leave today.  He wished he wasn't wasting time.  Get out, get another decade with that Boulder bullshit for Dillon, leave, and then put Dillon to bed for a while and take off as Abner Kinsella.  Then Dillon could come back and open a practice somewhere new with people who hadn't known him since Illinois or the LAPD and wouldn't ask too too many questions.  How long would that last?  A bit of gray in the hair, glasses he didn't need, work for a time in that new place and then "retire" somewhere.  What would be best for that?  A condo in the city in Perth or Dublin?  He didn't want to stand out as the American and possibly be identified more or less by accident.  A house in some middle-class neighborhood like somewhere in Longmeadow, Mass or some such place?  A small house and a big enough yard that the neighbors weren't on top of you all the time.  He could chill out there for a while, anonymously, before he had to completely abandon Dillon, the people assuming his family from somewhere put him in a home or he died or dried up and blew away.  That would be that, and it would be someone else who carried on.  Shane Fitzpatrick.  Seamus Murphy.  Paddy McGoatfucker.  Didn't fucking matter.  Wouldn't fucking matter.  Everybody would dead finally.  Not just some of them.  They'd all be dead.  Except him.  Even Dillon.  Sort of.  How long would he have to fucking deal with it?  Dillon wasn't sure it would help to know exactly how long.  Really, he knew it would be so much worse to know.  What was he going to do, ask?  That would be a nightmare.  He sincerely wished he could fool himself into believing he had a duty or an obligation or something.  He wished he didn't know for sure that nothing he did was going to matter at all.  There was nothing to know that was going to matter.  No one was going to make any difference at all.  There was nothing he could do to change anything.  He could live for a billion years and he wouldn't be able to redeem any of it.  He had done what he needed to for himself selfishly, for them after a fashion, and that was as much he could do.  All of it.  His life was not a reward, it was a side-effect.  His years were no reason.  They simply were.  No matter what he did or didn't do, nothing would change for anyone, nothing would matter.  But he could fuck around as Abner Kinsella for a while and not have to do anything or see anyone pretty much.  Drink whiskey.  Read books.  Be lost on the water.  That was gonna be great.  The best thing. 

Workin' Progress: It's Quiet Here

Mick emerged from the crossing under black night and stars and immediately turned away from the light and the noise.  He was looking for a point, a bluff he'd never really noticed even in daylight.  It wasn't too far, he knew.  Close, but apart, Hannah had told him.  What the fuck did that mean?  Close, but apart.  Jesus.  He'd left her napping in his midday and come here to another night. This whole unsynchronized day thing was a fucking nightmare.  Real ghetto shit.  A million years of post-technological evolution and they couldn't make the days and nights line up right.  Fuckers.  Crossing wasn't good, either.  Bridge.  Bridge would be better.  Nobody cared.  The sky was so clear, though.  Look at those stars.  There was so much beauty.  It was all quiet and dead, but it was beautiful.

Working' Progress: Long Distance Voyagers

Not sleeping too much was not too much of a problem for the most part, but it sure as shit meant that Dillon was clear headed--or at least what passed for lucid for him at any given time--and awake too often to talk to manic-depressive diva's like Jay Kramer when he should have been sleeping.  Or something.  Evie was good for that.  Having her in his bed helped him sleep nicely; fucking her was even more effective.  He was constantly, mostly constantly, sometimes, wondering how much he should be doing with her, but everything so far had been pretty successful, considering, and Evie was certainly not shy with sharing details and taking about her sexuality.  He understood, sorta, how she was feeling, and how she was a little bit, maybe way more than a little bit, confused, confounded, whatever, and also feeling a little bit betrayed.  And alone, probably, far from home.  Dillon knew that Evie was a bit let down by her friend Lily--or was feeling that way, anyway--because Lily had apparently been acting out with men, boys, and having lots and lots of normal, straight, sex.  This was the Lily who had brought Evie out here more than anyone else, the Lily who had been a fuck bunny in high school and then a purported queer warrior fucking other chicks, blah, blah, blah, who was now getting the dick regularly.  After Evie's last two years, it was probably really weird; Dillon would cop to that.  Evie wasn't a fuck bunny in high school; Tom was still not sure how much she'd ever been with a guy, and she was fucking 24 now.  She was celibate gay in high school, more or less.  She was involved with another student back at home in California, but Dillon wasn't sure how much sex they really had.  Then there was the big two years off, working with the band her sister's girlfriend was in, with a serious relationship.  Still, it was odd for Dillon because Evie was still talking about how many people she had kissed in her life.  That was fucked up for a 24 year old woman in college.  And was that serious relationship with a woman who had a boyfriend who was not out on the road with them?  Some shit like that.  As usual, he should have been paying more attention.  But whatever.  She was just a shy person, with shit like that, he guessed, because she was fucking hot and got wet as fuck from his slightest touch.  He'd found her soaking, dripping, no matter how quickly he got between her legs.  She loved to kiss, and even if she seemed unfamiliar with dicks, she was more than accommodating, more than...he didn't know what.  She seemed pretty fucking horny.  She just hadn't fooled around much, he guessed. 

And sometimes, in flashes of lucid decency, Dillon was disgusted with himself.  It didn't matter if he looked 20 and felt 200; he was 37 fucking years old.  He needed to get the fuck out of this town.  He needed to decide whether to hide in plain sight or run to some shitty backwater hideout and play out the string.  Yes, he had been lucky to make it through the last four years and had done well wasting this much time.  Sure he had been lusting after that curvy blonde for a couple of years, but Dillon was much more comfortable with Eva when she appeared to be treating him as an object.  He wasn't sure he was able to commit even the effort needed to get to know her, and he was pretty sure he didn't want to.  Not Providence.  Not Santa Fe.  Boulder.  Boulder was the key.  It was not good to stay here, get a job with the state or one of the clowns practicing small law in town.  Really, Dillon suspected he should in fact take Joe Fallon up on his offer and plan to waste some time in New York or Washington.  No fucking way he was going to take a position in California--working in the same office where Justine had been a partner?--fucking Los Angeles again?--but if he played that out, he could easily spend a half dozen years arousing no suspicion of anything and then just bolt to Boulder or Perth or wherever.

Working' Progress: A Separated Piece

Boulder.  Dillon had pretty much decided it was Boulder.  He knew he had to leave.  Six years plus was long enough.  He wished he had a narrative that would allow him to go for a PhD in something stupid, history or anthropology or something.  That would be fucking golden.  He'd stay for that, but they knew him too well.  He didn't want to answer too too many questions.  Fuck.  Boulder.  Not fucking Providence.  Not fucking Santa Fe.  None of those other fucking places.  When?  Soon enough.  After the first of the year.  That would work.  The bar.  Fuck.  Joe Fallon didn't give up though, that bastard.  And because he was willing to push so hard, Dillon was getting some annoying interest from a few other firms.  They were like fucking blind men, rushing after Fallon's lead, hoping to get something special even if they had no fucking idea what that thing was yet.  Assholes.  He needed to make a list though, figure out where he should be looking.  Do some chasing of his own.  Too bad he didn't fucking care.

Evie reading Calvert was pretty funny; now they all were, apparently, all those silly, silly probably untalented girls.  Not like the old days.  Where was Larry Schwartz when you needed him?  Los Angeles, probably.  Sucking dick.  Good for him.  He was a good person, though.  There was an inherent decency to Larry under all that fucking hilarious walking, screaming, flaming Hollywood via Suffern commonplace.  Because Dillon was a Philadelphia cop's son, he missed a bunch of the riffing nuance to Calvert at first.  With the spread of the internet, the reality of Calvert's background was, much like Pynchon's oddly enough, more exposed, more transparent to anyone who actually cared.  Now it wasn't so much later and not everybody was reading Calvert, even here.  Some people.  But some of the kids, lots of them, really, were still reading Vonnegut.  Even here.  What were they doing in Boulder?

Workin' Progress: Dos Passos, That Bastard

Dillon almost made it to bed.  While he was watching the steam storm out into the kitchen darkness and waiting to brush his hair, he heard the door.  Evie came in with Venus; both were suddenly quiet when they realized he was up.  Apparently they didn't see the light on in the bathroom, or didn't notice it.  What had they been talking about?  He toed the door closed and reached for the mouthwash just as Evie was pushing the door back open.  She smiled and lightly brushed his cheek before plopping herself down and releasing a loud, sizzling stream of piss while Dillon swished the astringent around in his mouth.  Evie was quick, done and out before he spit.  He had been looking forward to some sleep; he had nothing till late in the afternoon, but what now?  Was she here to sleep?  Fuck?  Cry?  Talk?  Where had she been?

He made sure his towel was secure and in place before he walked in.  Evie was still dressed but she got up off the bed and pulled him close.

     -Hi, stranger, she said.  I've missed you.  I didn't feel well, but I'm better now.  You smell nice.

He could smell that she was freshly showered; she must've showered before she left.  Her hair under his nose smelled like flowers.  She reached up with licking kisses, the tip of her tongue darting and hot.

     -Missed you, she whispered.

Dillon didn't react when his towel dropped to the ground; it needed to be washed anyway.  He went for her pants first; she continued kissing him.  He managed to pull her clothes off between the kisses and get her onto the bed.  She kept kissing him and wouldn't let go down on her.  She dipped her fingers between her legs before grabbing him so he would know how wet she was.  Maybe Dillon had not known how horny he was, but he didn't think it took very long before he popped.  After he finished, she fell asleep quickly, between kisses.  Dillon worked her into a more comfortable position and went to sleep with his hand on her ass and the smell of her shampoo in his face.

She woke him with kisses.  He could tell it was early.  This time she turned him over.  Dillon wondered if she'd go all day without showering, reeking of his dick and her own alluring scent.  She was riding him with a clumsily increasing rhythm.  Dillon liked the mornings, and he realized that she was going for herself so he made sure he was following her, randomly bumping up into her sharply when he felt her cresting a peak.  The sweat was collecting in her bush, and she was getting louder, loosing guttural yelps with increasing frequency.  As her riding slackened, he grabbed her hips and pounded up into her until he came too.  She was up quickly, kissing and giggling, with his jizz sliding down as she dressed.  Dillon knew he had a few hours and was asleep again in minutes.  He could smell her at his slumber.

When Dillon got back just after midnight, he found Evie asleep in his bed, naked under the covers, with his old copy of A Year on Mars near her head.  She had told him that she hadn't read it; he believed her but it was fucking insane to think that 10, 15 years ago, so many of the students would have read it, as least as many as Vonnegut, way fucking more than Pynchon.  Fuck, even Julienne Moriarty had read it in high school back in Eugene.  George Calvert had had some success with his first novel, but it took more than ten years.  By that time he had written much more, expanding the characters of Greg and Chris Calvert who also may or may not have somehow been his real-life brothers even though Calvert had only a sister, Juliette, as a sibling.  His first post-Year work pretty clearly and seemingly pointlessly called out John Dos Passos, positing a world where Dos Passos had been so much more talented and courageous and intelligent, a political and cultural force, as opposed to his pathetic post U.S.A. career and dim-witted politics.  Because Calvert's biography was importantly fictional bordering on farce, the Dos Passos significance was not widely-understood; in Year, Calvert stomped on Vonnegut and seemingly dangerously derogated a classically-reclusive (pre-TV, pre-MacArthur) but forbiddingly talented Pynchon while viciously and easily disassembling remaining phalanx of useless literary pretenders.  But the Dos Passos connection was not as obvious to those who didn't know too much of anything of George Calvert before they had heard of his first book.

Working' Progress: Darkness and Doubt

Dillon probably should have been paying more attention.  He was sure that he's missed what she wanted or what she didn't want.  Yeah, he had been looking forward to a winter with her in his bed, and he felt really middle school about the whole thing because the fucking had not been his objective.  He thought he'd done a decent job of fucking her, though.  No, he hadn't been as all-encompassing as he'd been with...other girls.  He had Evie pegged as a lesbian, and Evie certainly had not come across a raving cock monster, but she'd started on the pill.  What had she said about her sister?  Her sister had done something, but her friend was sleeping with a guy now.  Was that right?  Something.  Didn't matter.  It wasn't going to last.  He hadn't even realized till after they were back that she had gone to New York to have sex with that girl.  Jenna, right?  Jenna was the one Evie had been with, and the other one was the apartment mate or whatever.  Vicky?  What an unpleasant person she had been; Dillon could see that from the 20 seconds when he dropped her off and the possibly 40 on the street when he picked Evie up.  They'd fucked the night they got back, though.  He was as tired as she, but she had wanted it.  Virginia showing up like that probably freaked her out.  Too much Dillon in LA talk.  Evie might be an art history major, but she could add and subtract.  Mars hadn't done it with his girly babble, but the former LAPD in the form of a black woman turned lawyer showing up to shoot the shit and tell heartwarming stories of the bank probably had done it.

Dillon felt like shit when he got home.  He went in the back door after parking his car and was happy for the peace of flat black silence.  Besides the refrigerator, there wasn't a sound in the dark apartment.  Tomorrow was Tuesday, so Mars was most likely asleep.  Evie hadn't been there at all in a week, so Dillon wasn't going to be bothered.  It had been a 12 hour day with JK and it was after midnight.  It was Tuesday already.  Fuck.  Long day, and his head hurt.  He didn't get sick these days.  If he felt badly, his body usually sprung back to equilibrium.  The cold, greasy pizza he'd eaten a few hours ago that was currently burrowing in his guts like an ill-tempered worm and the gallon of coffee he'd had at Clinton street around 11 would not be doing any permanent damage.  JK couldn't have been any more thrilled, but once they had found his mini storage unit, all Dillon did was spend a week making crank calls to the cops to make this guy Kiffsky jumpy as shit.  They kept a watch each night after dark on the storage yard.  It had only been three days and there he was.  Dillon called the police and then distracted that asshole for 15 minutes, keeping him talking and blocking his way out, while JK stayed out of sight.  Dillon didn't feel he was in that much danger.  Kiffsky wasn't known as much of a shot; Dillon didn't get that close while he was standing out there between the two rows of doors.  Kiffsky was a fucking waste of space, armed but not that dangerous, and idiot.  Until the cops showed up, and that was when Dillon got the fuck out of there.  He could have drawn and held him there, but he was just as happy to let him run right into the fine and helpful police officers.  They drove to the station, and it took less than an hour for them to finish up.  Kramer was fucking thrilled.  It was another coup.

He peeled off his vest,feeling islands of sweat under there that were always under there and unhappily walked it back out to his car, shaking his head, wondering why a superball of pain was rolling around in there.  He could do it tomorrow, but he just didn't feel right not keeping it in the car with rest of his gear.  Up went the hatch, back went the special carpet in the boot, and under went the vest.  Always be ready.  If you're going to keep a bag, make sure you're always ready to go.  There's not a fucking chance in hell anyone in this fucking town would ever find everything he had in here, ready to go.  His bug-out bag wasn't any good to anyone but him; someday he thought he'd have a proper kit, but since he'd had this fucking car so long and didn't even by it, properly paranoid survival shit was probably not in the cards.  Always a few surprised, though.  He walked back in the dark along the path to his kitchen door after locking and alarming the car.  The best thing about Evie not coming at night was that he didn't feel the obligation to shower before bed, but he knew he would regardless.  He felt slimy and wanted nothing more than to take a shit, shower off his sweat and sleep dreamlessly on his clean sheets.

No, he didn't really get sick.  Spring-loaded centering.  Nothing really took.  He had not asked outright, but he didn't think anything would.  Anything.  He wasn't going to survive major trauma on his own like this, but he was strong, healthy, immune, powerful.  When he felt out of sorts, he bounced right back.  He needed to take a nasty shit.  That fucking coffee.  The pop.  Pizza.  Not good.  He'd like to leave, but where to go.  Nowhere better and for fucking ever.  Not so long ago he was looking forward to fulfilling the family pattern, now it would be so fucking much longer.  Kiffsky?  Jesus what a clown.  Dillon took an ugly little dump before he started the shower and felt immediately buoyant.  With the window open and the minty mint of the mint mouthwash sloshing in his mouth, it was almost pleasant for Dillon to be on this feet.  The hot hot heat and the steamy steam of the shower water was a welcome weight, a warm wet embrace.  Mars had not had many deadlines recently, he could tell, because the bathroom was pretty grungy.  When Mars had a deadline he became a happy fucking homemaker of procrastination.  Relaxed and happy Mars didn't give a fuck.  Besides, without Evie coming down, who would notice?  Mrs. Mars was easy to please.

Providence?  No, that wasn't going to happen.  Not fucking Boston, either.  Santa Fe seemed like a possibility, but there wasn't shit going on out there and the idea of New Mexico bothered.  With the entire west coast out, Pennsylvania not happening, the entire fucking Midwest full of slow children off limits, what was left?  The Republic of Boulder actually seemed like a plan.  He wished he didn't have so much fucking time; 6, 7 years ago, Dillon was fucking set, and part of the plan worked out just fucking fine.  6 years he'd been here; he should be looking at ten more at the most.  He woulda' been able to sleepwalk that.  Motherfuckers.

Workin' Progress: Dylan Sez Sometimes You Just Want A Fresca

Most days Tom Dillon felt maybe 50% engaged and was sluggish and disinterested from his own point of view.  In the past four years, the hyper-focused Dillon had been a dangerously violent and driven but rarely seen creature since that first summer, and he wasn't needed too much these days; it had all been done that summer almost.  He'd done a little clean up, like New York, but really they were nothing once they were cut off.  Dillon got most of them right away and then waited them out.  Not too hard to figure out.  And maybe he was done now.  He wasn't sure.  He'd made it through his classes easily enough and was now splitting his time between the campus PD and the DA's office doing some investigation work and through Josh Kramer's agency.  At least half of his reputation in town came from Mark Rubinstein, but Dillon had done enough to show what he could do during his years hanging around, and his work in a real department had given him some actual experience on the job that nobody in town or on campus had, so right now he was able to pretend like he gave a fuck and actually had plans or something.  He wasn't sure what he was going to do going forward, but he'd had a good run.  He was not interested in police work or being a lawyer or anything else, but he'd figure something out.  A good run.  Something would happen.  The car was good.  Nobody asked too many questions.  Nobody asked the right questions.

He was still being pretty heavily recruited.  The FBI and CIA had been less than subtle, even before he started law school.  His ten years on the job and Ivy League degree had made him a target.  He'd spent the last four years wondering if their continuing interest was going to get anyone else killed.  It could be a real problem if any of those idiots suddenly developed an unusual and imaginative ability to reason and put together what Dillon had been up to.  Probably nothing would come of it.  Dillon never felt the need to come right out and tell them that he would sooner go back to a major department or even LA before he'd work for those assholes.  He also didn't explain that they were much, much safer if he was not at all involved with them.  Joining a big firm was not his idea of fun, either.  He considered pretending to want to work with an DA or public defender's office somewhere in preparation for a defense career that he'd never get around to.  Whatever.  He'd figure it out.

It was late in June when Dillon had run into Erin or Aaron Brown or whatever the fuck she called herself that summer walking across the Engineering quad at 3 in the morning.  He knew something was up right away and spent an hour talking to her, him, before he decided whether he'd bring her to the hospital or not.  Later that morning right before sunup he took her back to her house where her housemates called her mother in New Rochelle.  He didn't trust those girls to be able to handle whatever the fuck was really going on, but a few of them seemed like this was at least something they had seen before.  Though he had been walking home and was not on duty when he had seen her, he filled out a report anyway about the intoxicated and incoherent student.  This was exactly the sort of shit he didn't want to deal with, but he dealt with it anyway.  Nights like that made him want to get the fuck away from everyone and every thing, grinding away his shallow veneer of purpose.

Erin Brown's group of friends turned out to be a pretty observant bunch.  Not long after that stupid early morning, he ran into one of them getting into his car on campus.  Her name was Lily and she was grateful that he had been able to do so well with her friend.  Dillon may have even seen her around at some point in the last couple of years; she was going to be a junior next fall and was in town for the summer with a bunch of her friends taking classes and working.  Since things were slow in the summer, the girls may have thought he was a full-time campus cop; there were six or seven of them besides Erin, and he finally did notice that he saw them fairly often over the next month or so.  He did his best to not share much personal information with them, but a couple of them were decent looking, so he didn't run screaming.  Per his luck, the cuteish ones were the most annoying, but his drowsy, mostly-disengaged lifestyle helped him not too worked up about it.  He had no interest in a bunch of pointlessly self-deluded women's studies majors with gender identity issues, but he had apparently saved their friend's life.

He found out later that Erin Brown, now going by Aaron Brown, was born Evelyn Kastner and was easily the most emotionally and mentally fragile of the bunch.  He also found out later that they were not all really women's studies majors.  There weren't any engineers or physics majors in the bunch as far as he knew, but they were a combination of school friends and friends from home who had transferred and were all hanging out more or less.  When the semester started up in the fall, there would be more of them.  As far as Dillon could tell, it was completely by accident that he started talking to Evie one day outside the library.

Evie was Lily's friend from back home and had transferred after two years of school back home in California followed by two years working with her sister.  She was going to be moving into a dorm with another transfer roommate in the fall.  They walked for quite a while, and Dillon was struck at how little was actually said.  He did find out that she had come out because she knew Lily and wanted to try another college environment.  He also found out she was an Art History major.  He also was getting a very dykey vibe from her.  She was growing out her hair from where she had shaved it and something was just off about her.  She also mentioned her sister's girlfriend or ex-girlfriend in passing.  In the four or five times Dillon ran into her, she hardly looked at him, which was perfect because he rarely looked at her.  Her face was covered in acne but her facial features were truly classically beautiful, much as if a genius artist had woken to a vision of miraculous beauty and created Evie right then.  At times she was perfectly made up and imaginatively dressed, and other times she was minimally adorned and somehow stunningly beautiful. 

Even on his best days, Dillon wanted nothing to do with those girls.  A couple of them were cute enough, but he didn't think he had the patience to put up with their bullshit.  Plus they were so fucking young that he had neither the desire or the patience to deal with them.  In his youth, he might have been able to deal long enough to get laid, but no more.  Truth be told, he was awaiting the return in the fall of a certain bubble-headed sorority girl with blond hair and big tits.  Madison something.  Returning for her senior year.  Nice heavy rack.  Skinny waist.  Thick legs.  Blond.  Pouty lips.  Probably dumb as a post.  She would be worth putting up with for a week or two.  Some dickhead from the hockey team had taken a swing at him on the street last winter, and while Dillon was deciding how many more times to pummel him, the police had shown up.  This girl Madison was right there in front as Dillon picked that asshole up off the sidewalk where he was bleeding and deftly convinced the friendly police men that nothing untoward had transpired.  He really hadn't had the opportunity since, but he got the lowdown from Mars and some of the younger guys and knew she was coming back to campus, and he was hoping for a shot at her.  She was just about his speed.

In total it was about a month after the Erin Aaron incident, maybe five weeks, that part time Officer Dillon ran into Evie walking past some of the new dorms on a Friday night.  There were a few summer parties that weekend, including his, but she was very much alone.  Even in the dark, Dillon could see she had been crying.  She was still dressed from work; if anything, she looked to him like she should have smoking a cigarette, but she didn't smoke.  She seemed surprised to see him, but she asked him to come and pick her up after he was done with work.  At 12:30 he was outside her apartment in his car; he drove while she talked about how much she was regretting leaving home.  How much she was regretting taking time off to work with her sister and her sister's girlfriend's band for two goddammed years.  Two years.  How nervous she was about school in the fall.  Even though she was taking classes over the summer, she wasn't sure she'd be up to it for real.  She didn't know what she wanted.  She didn't want to be there.  She didn't want to leave.  Eventually they were at the diner downtown having a coffee and then after he drove her back up the hill.  Dillon was pretty sure he didn't say 20 words the whole time and hadn't heard half of what she said.

She showed up two nights later at the back door to his apartment when he was just getting home after a shift with a couple of bags of groceries.  Dillon didn't say anything because she looked absolutely ashen, and he was suddenly incredibly concerned and thus briefly observant and engaged.  His head began to hurt right about then, and as soon as he realized there was no real danger, he slid back into his de facto semi-oblivious state.  It was pretty warm, but she was wearing a long coat and carrying a large handbag.  He let her in when she asked, and he looked around for Mars.  Mars was either asleep, likely, or out, unlikely, but the apartment was quiet and Mars's room was beyond the kitchen, so Dillon had no reason to check closer.  She was talking, but not saying anything important.  She was continuing a conversation he didn't remember, he guessed.  He opened the door to his room and she went in without turning on the light.  Dillon watched long enough to see her take the coat off and get into his bed, noting the way the ass and legs looked in the little shorts she was wearing.  She was shaking despite the relative warmth and talking very quietly.  Dillon's headache went away while he watched her.  She asked him to join her, but he couldn't because he had to put the groceries away and shower.  He did both quickly, changing into his own shorts an tank top and got into bed with her.  She was shivering for real when she pressed her back against him, but he was too tired and apprehensive to put up a fight and was asleep right after her.

She had come prepared.  She smelled mostly like soap and shampoo and toothpaste.  In the morning, she thanked him as she hugged him tightly.  Dillon was exhausted and went back to sleep till noon.  He had an appointment later that day at the courthouse with JK but was his usual foggy-headed self, even where last night's bed partner was concerned, while he hung around.  There was a message on his machine when he got back; she wanted to thank him for his understanding.  He didn't return her call, but he picked up when she called later asking to come down.  Same as the night before, she was there until the morning and then left again.  Two days later she was sitting on his bed explaining herself.  She was sure she could trust him, even if she didn't understand why.  He realized that she was repeating herself, had said all of this before and that he had not put it together.  He was something different, something unusual, something unexpected for her.  She was so groundless; she had lost the ability to talk to her friends about it, and she was so anxious about it.  She wanted to know if she was interfering with his social life.  She felt uncomfortable and ashamed but didn't know what else to do.  She explained that she wasn't looking for sex or a boyfriend, but she was so lonely and anxious she was losing her mind.  Could he put up with that?  That night she showered there--she still hadn't met Mars who was uncharacteristically absent; that fucking guy had no life at all and was usually underfoot--and put out the light before she slipped into bed naked.  Dillon showered immediately after and put on some shorts and a t-shirt, but she reached behind her in the dark and pulled the shirt off before pressing herself into him.  He wrapped her up, carefully placing his hands and gently placing his head in back of hers where he could smell her hair.  In the morning, she slipped out of bed and dressed quickly in the low light; Dillon pretended not to see her naked and notice how astonishingly hairy her armpits and crotch were.  After she left, he got up for work down town.  For a moment he was bothered, bothered because he had been remiss in this whole affair and should have been prepared for this weird shit.  How had he become so disengaged?  Was he losing it?  Till he decided he didn't care after about five minutes, Dillon was genuinely concerned that his astounding lack of attention could get him killed.

They went on like that till school started for the fall.  For the first time in six years, Dillon was not going to school.  He got to see much more naked Evie, and she was really amazingly sexy, even as he pretended to not be that into her body.  She had a great body.  He learned she wasn't that experienced at all, and he began to think of her as asexual, so he was speechless when she casually mentioned masturbating in her bed one day before a nap.  He liked the way she smelled every day and wondered if she smelled even better on days she masturbated.  Or maybe on days she didn't?  He loved the feeling of her furry legs wrapped up in his, and he got quite good at making sure his prick wasn't poking into her through his shorts at all times.  They got in the habit of talking in the dark before they fell asleep, their only real verbal communication.  Dillon didn't share too much of anything important, but he knew it made her feel better, and actually enjoyed having her there.  If he thought about in the daytime, which he really didn't do much, it seemed odd, but in the dark it was brilliant.  She was there usually four or five nights a week.  One thing even he noticed was that he slept better, way better since she had been there.  That made no fucking sense to him since he should have completely sexually frustrated by this fragrant, naked girl in his bed, but the effect was exactly the opposite.

It was early September the first time she kissed him.  They had developed the habit of kissing each other goodnight after a fashion.  She would bring his hand to her lips and kiss it as she was falling asleep, and he would kiss her on the shoulder.  That seemed cute and silly and pretty chaste considering she was sleeping naked in a man's bed, so Dillon was honestly confused when she kissed him right on the lips before returning to her regular sleeping position.  The following night she told him she was thinking about sex with him; she was facing away from him in the dark and asked him if that was something he thought about.  His immediate thought was fuck yeah, but his very next thought was that this was trouble he didn't need.  Hyper focused Dillon made a brief appearance and wasn't happy.  He wasn't sure why this was coming up after all this time; he had done his damnedest to not make trouble for himself, but clearly he had not been paying attention.  He had to wait until the following evening when she wound up her courage and explained herself.  She talked about her best friend from highschool.  About coming out.  About her sister.  About Lily.  About the boy Lily was sleeping with.  Something about the first girl she had kissed being engaged to a man.  Dillon didn't follow much of it.  She showed him her birth control pills, the first ones of her life that she had started six weeks ago.  She showed him her blood test.  For fun, Dillon showed her the workup he got in June when he started his working.  She asked him if he thought she was attractive at all.

It was all oddly unfamiliar and tedious to Dillon; he had just not been paying enough attention, but that was the way he was getting by.  And she was oddly unfocused yet clinical herself.  Dillon didn't have the energy to put so much awkward effort into anything.  He could have figured it out, but it was just stupid.  He had been enjoying the low stress bed company from an attractive young naked woman and secretly hoping it would last through the winter.  When the fucking question came up, Dillon knew that fucking or not, she would be fucking out of his life and his bed much fucking sooner.  Not that he had been pursuing any other bed partners, but this had been pleasant and easy.  No longer.  And if it had been that blond, he would have hopped on that shit right away; best 10 seconds of his week and the worst 10 seconds of hers.  This, though, was not that.  If he was going to fuck Evie, he almost, no really, would have preferred doing it right away without getting used to having her around in the night.

The only helpful thing he could say was that since the icky details and paperwork was properly handled, they should maybe just let it work itself out and see what happened.  Since they were safe and stuff, there shouldn't be any pressure or worry.  This seemed to make her happy.  Very suddenly Dillon became extremely worried that she might be a technically a virgin.  She had fooled around with girls, right?  She had had her heart broken or some kind of semi-serious relationship with a girl--girls?--before, he thought.  She definitely mentioned getting herself off, but had she ever mentioned being with a guy?  Dildos?  Did some dyke pound her with a strap-on?  Dillon felt like an asshole, but he wondered.  That was a big problem, he thought.  He wasn't used to putting in that much effort these days.  His cherry popping days were more than a lifetime ago.

Dillon didn't fuck her that night.  They kissed, real kisses, pretty amazing kisses, actually, and neither of them went below the neck.  It was nice, way more fun than Dillon would have ever imagined, considering.  He kissed her, she kissed him as they ground together.  Dillon purposely didn't even attempt to put it in her.  She kept her hands almost to herself while he roamed all over her body, making her shiver, making her giggle, making her squirm while they kissed and gave each other so many hickeys.  By morning, Evie smelled like the world's finest perfume.

Dillon had liked it a bunch.  He had sublimated his giant blue balls into kisses and hickeys, and that felt so right.  The next night when she came down, she seemed shy, but was very smiley and very kissy.  He left the light on while they kissed.  He went south eventually, but he took the long way round.  She tasted even better.  He was pretty happy with himself from the sounds she was making, astonished gasps, self-conscious yelps, and unrestrained moans, and from the liquid gushing out of her.  On his way back up, he took his time marking the path of her glorious hair with his tongue all way to her nipples and finally up her neck to her mouth.  They fell asleep with Evie grinding her pussy into his thigh while she tried to figure out what she wanted to do with that hand on his cock as they kissed.  The next morning, they woke in the early light and started kissing softly and playfully.  Dillon whispered that he wanted her.  She asked for it with a whisper returned into his ear, so he did it.  He fucked her for the first time, gently, in the mellow morning light.

Workin' Progress: Hannah Had Read Calvert

Hannah had read Calvert pretty young.  She was probably eight when she first started A Year On Mars, though she'd put it down after not too long to finish her consumption of the Wrinkle In Time books and the Narnias and the Tolkien and the Dahl.  All that had left her somewhat peeved; back then she couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something was pissing her off in the aftermath, so it was a couple of years later that she picked up Calvert again, and it was the book that she carried around with her to read when her assigned reading was done.  Once she finished, Mick got her the book Andrew Glasner had written about Calvert and A Year.  Glasner was probably a little too close to the subject, but he did an excellent job, Hannah thought, becoming Calvert's Ellmann more than anything else.  Now more than 20 years later, Calvert seemed to be the most widely read author in human existence.  Of course her father had read him, but so had Tom and Eric and most of the others.  It was a prep school thing, a New York State and New England college thing.  20 plus years on, she almost thought she was living it.  Nothing had been lost, of course, and anything she wanted to read or see was available, but she was amazed that the maudlin and insufferable book she had been strangely unable to resist, partly because it spoke to her about her father, was now some sort of horrible, annoying prescience. 

Hannah was blessed that she had completely ignored Harry Potter.  Mick had advised her to read more before she wasted her time with that shit, and by the time she picked up Calvert again, she'd read enough to skip it entirely for many years.  Weary curiosity made her pick it up three or four years after the whole thing started, but she was so horrified that she was 15 before she blew through a few of them because some of her friends at Hotchkiss were reading them, but it wasn't her bag.  Her father encouraged her to read anything, even that shit if she wanted, but to keep reading.  She read his books and Con's few books when she was bored growing up, so she was able to tell what was worthwhile early on--and her father had warned her when she was around eight that the years before she started high school would go quicker than she could know and that she should be taking all the opportunities to read widely while she could.  She was served well by the two or three or four books going at once habit as she got older, but she fortunately acquired her father's music and literature snobbery so that she had no stomach for wasting her time with or committing her precious attention to hackneyed garbage.

Though the MD/PhD idea had been hers, mostly to get a shitload of school for free, Hannah would have wanted to get a literature degree if she had been completely honest at 17 and would have had she known how things were going to play out.  Her father had started before she was five, encouraging her to focus, make her own decisions, and live with the consequences.  His only option for her had been medical school unless she came up with a better option.  Hannah always suspected that he was 50% fucking with her, but as the years went by she saw that he was not going to let her off easy.  The singing career wasn't gonna happen.  6'4" 210 lb. ballerinas weren't a thing.  Engineering seemed more than a little limited.  She had options for athletic scholarships.  She was good at math and had a talent for science.  Mick recognized years before Hannah did that she would be extremely interested in intimidating her peers in ways that weren't height-related.  At every step of the way Mick was there to encourage her, push her, help her and support her.  He was very clear: he'd do anything he could he do to help her, and he expected nothing less then 100% success.  He did not tell her what to do.  He asked her what she was going to do.  How was she going to get it done?  With that, he kept her on track.

She'd started her plans in high school.  After a couple of years her grades were good and she started talking about them.  She was actually not that interested in medical school or being a doctor--until she got there, and then she found it far easier than she thought, and was honestly curious about how she would like dealing with patients--but she kept science and the med school and doctorate plan as her focus.  Mick recognized immediately that she was making an MD/PhD program her fallback position, which made him so proud.  Her grades stayed good.  Her plan worked exceedingly well.  And now she was here.  What could be less useful than a PhD in biochemistry or a medical degree?  Between the two of them, she and Dillon had an MD, a PhD, a JD, and an MBA.  An existential joke?  No doubt, but if she was ever going to be a painter or a poet or something equally as ephemeral, she now had the time to find out.

For the next few years, Hannah was going to be working on taking care of the twins.  She had a feeling there would be more fully human children soon enough.  The Berottis, Olivia Park and her husband, Julienne and Genevieve and their husbands, Melissa--both Melissas--Rachel, Cynthia, but mostly the older women, they were going to be shocked.  Maybe her mother, too.  There was a lot of fucking going on, and more all the time, so there were going to be babies.  That's what they would be doing for quite awhile.  They'd be having babies and reading and eventually creating.  That was what Mick had said he was so curious about.  He had told Hannah that he was curious to see what would be created by the last people.  What sort of legacy would the last cohort leave behind?  Mick was sure that the children born would not be solely human, but Hannah wasn't sure about that.

Both moons were up now, energizing the purple glow of the sky with a vibrant reflected light, and the water was glowing brightly at the horizon line.  Hannah was watching the fires below from her balcony and listening to the patterns of the voices.  She had finally had the shower she been skipping, and dressed in a nearly threadbare genuine Hotchkiss swimming t-shirt and amazingly stretchy shorts, she watched Tom carrying out a huge tub of ice to Kevin and Con and turned away from the scene below to join them.

Workin' Progress: Tokyo Towers

Hannah came back on the far side of the Village.  Coming out into the sunlight she saw the towers on the other side of the cove.  Tokyo Towers, Dillon had said on the first day.  More than a few of them would get that, she knew.  She hadn't looked at the layout of the golf course, but she did recognize some elements of the layout in front of her.  There was a lot of her father here, which made sense.  Some of Lakeville, too, that she could see.  That told her much about how this originated.  The towers, they were probably a view Dillon had seen a time or two years ago when he drove that old black Saab across town after a few too many looking for pussy.  Hannah was mildly shocked there wasn't a mashup of a couple of fraternity houses, but there was so much time.  The golf course was well-placed, though.  When they wanted to branch out, there was the perfect spot right there.

Hannah felt pretty good.  It was odd to not be carrying anything.  After years and years and years with backpacks and messenger bags and tons of paraphernalia and shit, she'd just taken an impossible journey in a shiny little dress and sandals.  Fucked up.  The sun was going down now.  The different times and different days were still new, but the nap she'd had was a huge bonus too.  What had Tom been up to?  Hannah was silently thrilled how graceful she felt.  The comfortable temperature, the lowering light, and the walk turned her on more than a little.  She was not nearly as apprehensive as her father was, as Tom was.  Yes, it was unprecedented, but these people would be very resilient.  What choice did they have?  Life or death?  Long life.  Infinite possibilities.

Before she passed the big pool, she could hear them gathering.  Was this a night for the big moon early?  The far horizon was beginning to glow, so she thought it was.  Bright white to flow into the purple darkness.  Another perfect night, and soon there would be more people.  More connections.  More support.  More focus.  And time.  So much time. 

Workin' Progress: City With No Children

Hannah knew a few things.  She knew was loving the barefoot style she was grooving lately.  She knew Kevin Douglas was a fucking animal.  He and Conny had been drinking and barbequing pretty much non-stop; whoever had the idea to get that going was onto something.  Hannah had never seen Kevin, or her uncle, like this when she was young, but those two were really were raging now.  Pretty much everyone was drifting in and out day and night between swimming or golf or sleeping or fucking or whatever else they got themselves up to; the endless party was a hit.  Hannah was not partaking herself, though she could have completely safely.  What she wanted, really, was to get her father there for a little human interaction.  Hell, Dylan, too.

Rachel and Melissa Berotti were there now, drinking pretty heavily it appeared.  Their parents were there.  Olivia Park.  Another thing Hannah knew was that if her mother caught her talking with Olivia Park about pregnancy again, her mother was liable to lose it.  Cynthia Kvale was out on the plaza.  Melissa Carpenter, too.  It was distinctly possible that Kevin was fucking her; they must have known each other in college.  Was it a renewal?  And was Conn fucking someone here?  It didn't matter.

Dillon was still sleeping when Hannah got up.  She put on what was essentially a shimmering slip dress.  Though it looked genuinely metallic, it was smooth and light and comfortable.  Because she was traveling, she slipped on some sandals.  And panties.  Very important when visiting your father.  After putting her hair up and taking a pee--shower?  bath?  who needs that?--she grabbed an extremely large mug of very cold orange juice and walked down into the courtyard where Kevin was sitting with his feet up, bottle in hand.

It was only after reaching ground level that Hannah realized how early it was.  The angle of the sun, the extremely low level of activity, the look on Kevin's face all told her that it was barely past sun up and not nearly as long into the morning as she had thought.

     -Oh, fuck me running, Hannah said, unloading herself onto the chair next to Kevin and slipping her sandals off.  What fucking time is it, dude?

The thing she loved about the material of the courtyard was that thought it looked like masonry or flagstones or something, it was actually ever so slightly yielding, though not enough so that anything she had seen thus far left a depression, and it was amazingly comfortable on her feet, warm when it was cool in the night and cool to the touch under the sun.  Fucking magic.  She kneaded her toes under the table.  Lovely.

     -No fucking clue, Kevin said, slightly slurring and propping himself up a bit higher in the chair.  Bout an hour, hour plus after dawn.  He put his bottle next to his chair.  Fuck, this thing is piss warm.  Where's fucking Con?

Hannah remembered Kevin Douglas when she was a kid.  He was so much shaggier now and seemed taller, probably because he was not nearly so beefy as he had been.  His beard had ungrayed and his hair was longer ever day.  His bulk was reduced to a visible gut and still-pretty-fucking-big arms.  He was a fucking fish.  Had it been his idea to rustle up the stuff to cook outside like that?  Fucking genius; it was the focal point for everyone now.  Hannah had even seen the Berotti kids there, though they weren't children by any means.  Still, fucking genius.  Even the people who didn't want to rage like Kevin and Connie could drift in and out and always have a place where they wouldn't have to be too alone in their heads. 

     -Fuckin' golf course now.  When'd that happen?  I was here pretty much every night and didn't notice that shit.  Fucked up.  Those things.  What'd Mick call 'em?

     -Rover.  Rovers.

     -Yeah.  Fucking comedian.  Fuckin' sneaky those things.

Cornelius rumbled onto the courtyard carrying a couple of pitchers in each hand.

     -Hannah!

     -Drinks?

     -Two screwdriver, two bloody mary, one peppery, one classic.  But wait one sec.

He looked over his shoulder and right on time Melissa Carpenter brought a giant coffee pot into the sunlight, followed closely by Cynthia Kvale carrying the plain juice in six glass carafes arranged on a tray.

     -That.  Apple, orange, grape, grapefruit, cranberry, and...orange again it looks like.  How the fuck did that happen?  Where's the plain tomato?  Shit.  Anyway.

     -Brilliant! Hannah said as she leaned toward the table and put her giant plastic mug on the translucent surface facing her.

George Donaldson, Sara Kenny, and Jean Quinn brought out three huge serving bowls and arranged them on one of the other tables.  This was a Cornelius special and must have been what Kevin was waiting for.  It was a huge fruit salad in one of the bowls.  Hannah could recognize his style.  Under the domed top of the second was oatmeal, and the third flatter bowl had toasted bread slices. 

Before Hannah could move, Kevin leaned over and asked her if she wanted anything.  He brought her back oatmeal in a bowl and fruit salad on a plate.  Con poured her some black coffee and refilled her juice.  Jean came over and complimented her on her shiny, soft dress.

     -I'm a shiny space beetle.  Don't fuck with me, Hannah told her.

It was getting a little louder as they came out.  Hannah figured some of them were early risers, like the Berottis and Olivia Park, but most of them were probably out here till nearly dawn and were attracted by the noise and the promise of food and coffee and possibly some of Con's screwdrivers and bloody marys.  Melissa and Rachel Berotti ran over and hugged Hannah when they spotted her, rubbing Hannah's shiny   beetle belly.  Kevin was double fisting bloody marys and wolfing down oatmeal and toast.  He had to be a fucking animal to keep that down, she thought.  Con came over and kissed her forehead and checking if she needed anything.  She remembered Con and Kevin as old men most recently; she'd been too young to understand what a waste product Con had been, but he and Kevin were turning this little assemblage into quite the party.  Considering what they were going through, they probably couldn't help fucking and drinking and whatever else as much as they could.  Hannah wasn't facing that because of her pregnancy.  This would be not the worst thing for Mick, though.  And Dylan.  Hannah would probably handle the fucking Tom part, but she wouldn't mind see him getting shitfaced with these idiots once in a while.

Hannah figured that maybe Kevin was getting it on with Melissa Carpenter; he had to have known her back at Illinois, and maybe he had hooked up with her back then, but Hannah was proven wrong when Cynthia Kvale plopped herself onto his lap with a not-so-sober giggle and licking kiss.  Melissa Carpenter was not visible to Hannah when she looked around.  Very sober, somewhat pregnant Hannah almost peed herself when Melissa Berotti walked up behind where Con was sitting across the table from Kevin and licked his face.  Well, well, well.  So much for the Berotti girls being sober and restrained.  Hannah spent nearly an hour there, enjoying the gathering, regretting being up at this hour, and chatting before she took her leave and left to cross over to her find her father.

Workin' Progress: Lactating Purple

Hannah felt weightless on her back next to a sleeping Dillon.  And sleepless for some reason.  There was a low purple light in the dark room making it just possible for her to see her feet moving down there.  Maybe not much longer for that.  She wasn't sure.  But she was sure she was showing now.  Twins.  Her boobs were doing some pretty fantastic things now, though.  She could clearly make out their burgeoning curves and ever more prominent straight-up nip action. 

She wished she could sleep.  Dillon was usually the difficult sleeper these days.  Now he was peacefully sleeping and she was not.  Any time now she would begin to worry that she'd wake him up.  He had been great tonight in bed.  Since she got pregnant, Dillon had changed his approach, which was almost fine with her, and at least understandable, but now that she was super-horny, he had changed it again.  Tonight he had continued with his pregnant partner gentleness, which was not her favorite, but somehow managed to lead her around by her impending orgasm for what felt like a year at least.  In fact, she had not realized how consciously he was teasing her at first.  By the time he finally put his dick in her, she was essentially delirious, and that was what felt like the half-way mark.  He had spent the second half using gentle kisses in places she had forgotten she had until finally it felt like he was licking and sucking her from the inside.  At the end, he had fallen soundly asleep with a well-deserved self-satisfied smile on his face, and she doused the light leaving her to realize just what a ginormous sticky mess he had put up in there as a good portion of it basted her thighs.  If she had never loved him, she could have made her self believe she loved him then.  If he had never loved her, she could have made herself believe that he did then as well. 

That should have been enough to make her sleep for fuck's sake.  It had been a good day.  Laying on her back wasn't the greatest, she knew, but she was wary of touching him.  When she reached out her hand, she could feel the static build up, and when she touched him, he immediately soothed her.  It was freaky.  From the beginning of their interminable on-and-off sexual relationship, Dillon had always known how to touch her in a way that really made her gush.  Not fuck her, no, touch her.  He fucked her, he boned her, he licked her and fingered her and sometimes even smacked her around the way she really loved, but the way he touched her in bed as she slept next to him was always a treat.  That way her held her hand or cupped a breast or the curve of her hip or her belly and the way his hand held her between her legs with a handful of her pubic hair and his finger in her and the way he put his hand on her ass and slipped that finger in when she slept on his chest drove her wild and almost shamefully made her feel loved.  Since she's been pregnant, he wasn't doing that finger thing, and she kinda missed it, but after tonight maybe he had some new spells to work on a chick he knocked up.

With her hand on his leg, he was in her head now and she felt sleepy.  He was so peaceful there for once and now she was sharing it.  In a reverse of the usual sleeping arrangement, she turned onto her side and pressed herself up against his warm back, making sure he could feel her pregnant belly and hard nipples and bush against his skin.  In his sleep, he took her hand after she had put some covers over them and pulled it to his heart.  She feel asleep making angel kisses on his shoulder.

Workin' Progress: Doctor Hannah

Hannah had not grown up wanting to be a doctor.  That was Mick; he constantly told her from her earliest years that she had to accomplish something with her life and being a doctor was a pretty good bet.  Mick had also had hopes that Hannah would have been exceptional.  Exceptional at something.  Even music.  Or sports.  Even that.  It would have made Mick's life so much easier.  He would not have had to worry and wonder.  But she wasn't.  She was average, smart but not out of the ordinary, and certainly not as good in school as Mick had been.  She did the sports that Mick put her in.  She took Spanish lessons and piano lessons as a child because Mick wanted her to.  She never showed any spectacular talent, but she worked at things because Mick made sure she did.  The summer when she was three, Mick put Hannah into a daycare preschool.  This disturbed his parents because they didn't understand his reasons; this also set a pattern for the next decade.  Mick made sure that Hannah was exposed to all the things he wasn't.  It was true that he did volunteer her grandparents to do things they would not have come up with on their own, but because they were in some ways so happy with the daughter they never had, they put up with it.  They lived in fear that Mick would take Hannah from them.  Every time they balked at something Mick was doing for Hannah, like preschool or piano or soccer or swim team, Mick wanted to throttle them.  It was disgusting to him that they could have their own sons right in front of them and not understand what Mick was doing without needing to have every fucking thing explained again and again. 

So Hannah grew up with books and music and sports and activities.  She and her father may not have been unusually close, but Mick continued to show her and teach her what he knew and guide her to a future better than he had been.  That was his mission.  He really didn't care so much about her being a doctor, but he constantly reminded her that she would have to make her own way as best she could, and if she lost focus on that goal, she could end up a very unhappy person.  Mick would never have admitted it, but he used his obligation to Hannah as his personal justification for his own life; whatever happened he wanted her to be different.

As she grew older, school was not as easy for Hannah as it had been for her father, but she learned to work hard and grew into the challenge and was trying to prove herself as a student by the time she was 10.  Mick had always told her that she had no excuse for not being the top of the class, and Hannah had learned how to succeed.  Mick was gladdened by her maturity when she started to actually work at shit. 

She was getting taller, too, though she never showed superior talent, you can't teach height, and Hannah dedicated herself to athletics.  As she grew able to push herself and work hard on her own, she depended less on Mick and spent even less time with him, which was fine with both of them.  They seemed to understand each other at least.

The scholarship to Hotchkiss was a surprise to Mick.  He had not prevented her from applying to all those prep schools, partly because that was what you did if you were serious about to a prep school as opposed to going to a certain prep school, and partly because he didn't think she would necessarily get in anywhere.  He had thought that maybe, just maybe she would follow him, but he had been convinced she would not get accepted.  Her grandparents were appalled and confused, but Hannah never wavered.  She wanted to go, and Mick was supportive.  She packed up when she was 13.  Mick took the money he'd stashed away and bought a house.

Workin' Progress: Hey! There's A Golf Course There Now

The last thing Hannah said before she left was that they had a golf course now.  It took Mick a minute to figure where they put it, but inland and above the village to the, what was it, south?, west?  Mick wasn't sure, but it made sense.  Plenty of space there and would fit if there was some other inland additions or whatever in the future.  Seeing the fucking golf course was not important to Mick, but he did feel like he should cross soon so that he could talk to Dillon once more, and this was as good an excuse as any.

He was wearing the BDU shorts and the faded old purple t-shirt he'd put on earlier.  That giant fucking cheeseburger was pretty amazing too.  Hannah was full of surprises even here.  Normally, he would have taken the unexpected visit after Hannah left as a wonderful excuse to not go, but he was not really sure how many chances he would have.  Would it be only hours or days?  Or somehow years?  More?  He couldn't contemplate that, but what if?  How the fuck would he stand it?

Mick knew how hard all this had been and continued to be on Dillon.  Maybe Hannah didn't even understand; Mick wasn't sure.  Mick was pretty sure he had at least some idea, though.  Taya had given him insight into the whole thing as well.  Dillon had been living with this for decades.  He had to be completely fucking crazy by now.  Mick understood obligation.  And revenge.  Dillon had been living and reliving everything that had happened so that he could finish his mission.  And then he was also collecting these people.  As much as Mick wondered what Hannah and Connie and Kevin and the others would do, Dillon was the reason they were there.  Dillon had continued.  How had he survived it?

Workin' Progress: Hanna With An H

When Hanna was little, she used to go down to her father's room on mornings that he was home and tell him that she was awake and going potty and going to have breakfast.  Generally, if Mick was in bed those mornings, it was because he had worked overtime or was catching extra shifts for someone  or some shit and being awakened like that was fucking torture.  She did this without fail--and he suspected she did that even on mornings when he was not there--for a couple of years despite any and all attempts to dissuade her.  Just about every day, someone was up already, but Mick got up, got her the fucking cereal or whatever, and went back to bed.

After a couple of years, when her schedule included full-time school and she was limited to ruining his day on the weekends, Mick was able to change her behavior by explaining the Prime Directive.  After explaining the importance of not interfering with alien civilizations, her father told Hanna that unless it was an emergency, she should not wake up her father.  Somebody else was up and could be with her, or she could read in bed, or go to the bathroom without informing anyone, or whatever.  Thus, the Prime Directive for Hanna was not to wake up her father on the very rare days where he got to sleep.  It helped that she was getting older and establishing her own personality.  At 5 she was already beginning to disassociate herself from Mick, and she could turn on the TV herself.  Mick suspected she enjoyed the time alone without anyone in that house fucking with her.

When Mick woke in that dark room to sounds a giant pregnant woman bumping around, he was not for a second confused into thinking that he was home 20 or 30 years ago and that Hanna was a small child.  Mick pulled on some clothes.  The room was dark, and he let the neon yellow light in to finish waking him up.  His head didn't hurt anymore, so that was good.  On his way out of the bedroom, he passed the ancient orange Super V.  It was his.  That one from 1999.  Hanna was fucking crazy; not only had she kept it, but she'd brought it all the way here for him.  The clothes were authentic too.  She'd packed him a fucking bag.  Jesus.

Hanna was sitting at the table, resplendent in her shiny space beetle maternity dress lit by bright sunlight from every direction, eating something from a wok-sized bowl.  Was it curry?  She'd polarized the room though, Mick noticed, because there were no harsh reflections anywhere in here.

     -Hi, Daddy.

Mick leaned across and pulled a handful of whatever it was out of the bowl.

     -Hey!

     -Hi, Nana.  How are you?  What the fuck is this?

     -Mine.  I got something for you.  I slaved over it myself.  You don't even like that.

She pushed a covered dish over toward him across the table.  Under it was a giant cheeseburger, or whatever, on a hard roll.  It would have salsa, and lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions and green pepper slices.  No shit.

     -No, shit.  Thanks.

     -That's me.  Domestic fucking goddess.  The first thing I had to do was genetically engineer the cow!  You're welcome.

     -How are you?  OK?

     -Yeah, I'm fine.  She absentmindedly rubbed the disc on her the inside of left wrist.  Wanted to see how you were doing.

     -Dillon OK?

     -He threw me out.  I've come here to live with you so that you won't be alone.  Aren't you proud? 

     -Fuck yeah.  Dream come true.  My unmarried pregnant daughter coming to live with me.  My daughter the surgeon with the MD/PhD from Harvard.  Yeah, that's happening.

     -Not that that gets us shit here, now.  But I'm cool.  Tom is okay, I guess.  He's having a hard time, not that he admits it.

Mick nodded.  He knew how hard all this was on Dillon.  Harder than anyone knew.  Probably harder than even Hanna understood.  Anyway.

     -Anyway, I saw you sleeping earlier.

     -I know.

     -Huh?

     -Blanket.

     -Yeah.

     -This fucking sucks.  I never know what time it is anywhere when you go across.  Fucking annoying.

     -Yeah!

     -Yeah! 

     -Those assholes shoulda thought of that shit.  You're probably tired all the time, right?

     -No, not really.  It's kinda weird cuz nobody has a schedule, but I'm very comfortable.  It's been all good so far.  I was actually talking to Olivia Park and Katie Berotti about their pregnancies.

     -Oh, Jesus.

     -Yeah, I thought you'd love that, but Mom never had an normal, ideal, pregnancy I guess.  Not with me.  Not Johnny.  Or the Anderson kids, so I wanted to ask them.  And Olivia is a physician, so...

     -Those two better watch out.  They'll wind up knocked up again.  Berotti's here.  There.  Olivia's husband'll be there soon.

     -Yeah.  She glanced quickly at her wrist.  You know, she continued, this really helps me with the sensitivities, but I don't have to be a mind reader to know that you shouldn't be here by yourself. 

     -I'm fine.  And the last place I want to be is there.  With those assholes.  But if you want to come here--

     -Oh, shit--

     -Well, fuck you, then, but I'm serious.  Bring Dillon.  Crank out the twins here.

     She laughed.  I don't think it'll come to that, but it's not good for you to be here by yourself.  You look like hell.  I'll send Connie over to live with you.

     -Yeah, that'd be fucking great.  What do I have to do to get away from that time?

     -Are you gonna eat that?

     -Yeah.  Hey!  This is pretty fucking good!

Nobody who knew Mick and was paying attention would have needed to ask why Hannah was spelled like that.  She had taken the explanation to heart when she was a toddler.  Now she was having twins.  How pregnant was she?  Mick still wasn't sure.  Would it be different with the thing.

     -What is that? he asked between bites.  Is that dress made out of the same--

     -Yeah!  It's surprisingly comfortable.  It is nice and light but feels substantial.  I like it.  I like to put it on after coming out of the ocean water.  It smells so nice.  And it's soft.  You wouldn't think so looking at it, but it is.

In the sunlight streaming into the room, the shiny dress was rainbow iridescent.  It was an interesting effect.

     -You look like a shiny space beetle in that thing, Mick said.

     -Yeah, don't fuck with me.

Workin' Progress: I'm A Shiny Beetle, Don't Fuck With Me

Mick had not darkened the room, so the radiant yellow sunshine was reflecting everwhere when he opened his eyes.  There wasn't any excess heat though, and he felt pleasantly warm until he realized he needed to piss.  As soon as he stood up, he realized that Hannah was there somewhere in the house.  He didn't speak and went to piss before he put on some shorts and looked for her.

She was sleeping on one of the sofas.  Wearing some sort of light, metallic green dress, Hannah looked like a giant, pregnant shiny beetle lounging in the sun.  Mick had no idea why she was there, but she looked okay, and he could actually her left wrist the way she had it under her head, so he knew everything was fine physically.  Mick also knew that he hadn't really been sleeping long and still felt like shit, so he darkened the room around Hannah.  Naturally he couldn't find a fucking pen or anything because there probably wasn't anything like that there, and instead of replicating one, he took on of the clear sheets that Taya had used sketching and snapped it against his palm to make it rigid.  Propping it up on the table against Hannah's bag, he touched his fingertip to the smooth surface and wrote "Feel free to violate the Prime Directive" on it, the words trailing his finger in glittering dark script as moved.  Hannah was breathing softly, her long legs pulled up slightly towards her belly when Mick covered her with a light blanket.  Back in his room, he darkened it all the way and put out the yellow sunlight.

Workin' Progress: The Suns, The Moons, And The Stars

It was really dark; this could very be the darkest place in the galaxy, Mick thought.  There were no lights on anywhere--there were no other lights--and the sky was perfectly clear; before the moons, the night was so black.  The water and the breeze were very calm, silent.  He had been alone for far too long, and now he was farther than anyone had ever been.  He could physically feel the desolate emptiness opening before him, dead, dark, and cold.  It was a worthy dream to bring light and life to that emptiness, but he had no role in that.  He could no longer believe in any state other than alone, even with Taya, and could not even imagine who might have once been a companion.  Standing with the empty house behind him and the vast ocean ahead, Mick believed this could be the end, for even though he had such an improbable physical vigor, he was lacking whatever vital spark of spirit that was necessary to do more than simply exist.  He was creating the darkness now; it was rushing out from him to fill the space; he was more alone than the had ever been, and he was grateful for the solitude.  He was breathing but there was no air; he was standing but there was no ground beneath him and no sky above.  He was falling into the void.  At long last there was nothing to bind him.  With an unfamiliar panic, he realized that he could not see any way back.  With no familiar and no routine, he choked on the crush of oblivion.  He calmed and ordered and stretched himself into nothingness he was becoming but came crashing down under the weight of the first bolts of the dawn.

Mick slid to his knees and coughed up some slippery yellow bile.  He wasn't thinking clearly but he knew his head hurt and his feet were burning.  The breeze picked up ever so slightly with the sunrise with very little sound.  His head felt like it was cracking into large, irregular sections; the taste in his mouth was rancid and metallic, but he could not even consider moving from his collapse.  With his long period in healing, he had gotten quite good at ordering his consciousness.  Being by himself helped, but he had put the time in and was usually in control of his memories and his perception.  Nothing was helping this time.  He was pummeled by his fears and his failures; stretched into nothingness, they snapped back in wave after crushing wave.  This was worse than anything.  He needed to stop.

He caught himself looking at the disgusting oily slime dripping from his lips and realized it had only been a second or two since his knees endorsed the concept of physical reality.  This imposition gave him a lever and he pulled himself up.  He wiped at his mouth with his hand and immediately regretted it.

     -Motherfucker, he said aloud and tried to spit but nothing was there except that rotten taste.

He could not contemplate two hundred years of this, or four hundred, or whatever the fuck it was going to be.  One lifetime of desolation and fear was enough; he had no energy to go on, but he would for at least another day, apparently. 

If Taya had stayed with him, he could have gutted it out.  She was his angel; she understood him, knew him, but there was no way he could join her family.  Hannah didn't need him anymore; she had Rebecca, a better Rebecca than would have been possible anywhere else, and Mick didn't want any part of that, either.  That was his dilemma.  He'd been alone for his whole adult life practically; he couldn't do anything else now, and there was no one he wanted to be with.  He was glad Olivia was alive and shit, but he would be perfectly content to never see her face; the living woman whom he had loved in his teens was not the girl he had thought of every day, the ghost who had schooled him in the possibility of lifelong love.  He was damn lonely--he had been lonely every day, even if he hardly ever admitted it to himself--and would only get more lonely every day, and there was no longer even the tiniest hope that someone worthy would finally decide to love him.  They were all dead, and he might live for a thousand fucking years.  Taya didn't stay.  Taya didn't want to stay.  And he missed her.  And he really wanted to be fuck her again.  He really wanted to shower first and brush his teeth and then fuck someone.  Jerking off wasn't gonna quite cut it. 

Thankfully, he was exhausted.  He hadn't slept for the past couple of days, and whatever he did last night, it wasn't restful, so he would be able to sleep for a while.  While his head was clearing, he regained his clarity.  He could hear them in his head, just beyond his comprehension.  The Saga and the Morning Song were there, too.  It was quite remarkable; if he focused they were barely there.  He had no idea if most of them even knew he was there.  Regardless, he knew that most of them wouldn't care anyway.  In the most practical sense, Mick didn't give a fuck; what he most wanted in the short term was a period of deep, dreamless sleep.

Even in his wrung-out, maudlin state, Mick felt jittery and spastic.  Not sleeping until he was worn down was his plan to try and find a balance, a routine in tune with his existence.  That hadn't worked so well last night.  He was wary but fucking tired.

Workin' Progress: Wahl Ball

Johnny Wahl was a charming toddler.  Eric first met him when he around 1 and still screamed bloody murder if he couldn't at least see his mother Rebecca, but very soon after that he calmed way down and did much to be good company.  Years later during one of the worst of her innumerable meltdowns, Rebecca accused Eric of loving Johnny and his own children more than he loved her.  Only someone with a severe cognitive disability could have believed that, but undoubtedly it was just Rebecca being stupid, and mean, ,and hateful, and a fucking cunt with ears.  Johnny grew up though and dulled remarkably with each new year.  Before he started school, he appeared to be very bright, with a large vocabulary and an ability to learn.  Each school year he grew more and more stultifyingly average.  Or worse.  He kept his bubbly and outgoing personality, but a whip-smart and outgoing kid was something completely different from a tubby, boisterous dullard.  Eric always figured that Johnny was a pretty representative mix of Rebecca Harris and Eddy Wahl; he'd never met Eddy, and that poor fucker had the good sense to both never actually marry Rebecca as well as drop dead when he was 50. 

Not that his own children were any better.  Elizabeth had never had a charming phase.  She was every bit her mother without any redeeming qualities which Rebecca may have ever possessed.  She worshiped her big brother Johnny, but she wasn't very bright.  And oh could she complain.  She hated Eric, but she was deadly afraid of him.  As soon as Rebecca finally left, Eric used his opportunity to bully her and Johnny into a semblance of obeisance.  Stephen, being the youngest and by far the smartest of the trio, was actually the least affected by the upheaval.  Unfortunately for Eric, he was a quiet and unsure child who was happy to be the follower, so he followed Johnny and followed Elizabeth in her worship of Johnny.  Stephen Anderson was by Eric's favorite, but he despised his father, not for the reason the other two idiots did, namely depriving them of their mother, but for the reason that Eric was an asshole and cold to all of them, but mostly to Johnny and Elizabeth. 

The best thing about becoming a father for the first time when you were 45 was that you had a reasonable chance of not spending so many years with your children.  Eric had honestly figured that he would drop dead long before Stephen finished high school.  He spent real time really wondering what would happen to those poor assholes.  Would Rebecca somehow be able to actually support them?  Not fucking likely, given her history.  Would they wind up in some sort of state care?  That would suck for them, but there was no family.  Would Johnny somehow be able to become a provider?  Eric couldn't figure out how; the kid was an idiot and probably didn't have much of a future at all.  Stephen was the loser in all this.  He was smart; he took after Eric but would have even less of a chance at finding some version of a useful, comfortable existence. 

Workin' Progress: Heat and Eat

Eric was sandy and damp and warm.  The warm part was the key.  He hadn't gone out too far, and he didn't feel like going for a windsurfer or a kayak or one of the those gay Sunfish things; that was far too much trouble.  But he did go into the amazing crystal water, buoyed by the swell, and came back onto the glittering beach.  If it was sand--and why wouldn't it be?  Sand was simple, and why shouldn't it be naturally occurring and local?--it was firm but powdery soft and sparkled like a unicorn, or a stripper, and stuck to him until he dried.  The weather was really fucking perfect; the temperature just right.  Years and years ago, Eric was unstoppable in winter, out on his mountain bike early in the morning or out on the road in the cold, dry wind, but living in a cold house half the year as he got older really took its toll.  He lived for 30 years with a thermostat never above 60 in the winter except for when the children were young and Rebecca was living with him, but then the bill was $400 a month.  After Rebecca left, Eric was able to control the madness, and the house was empty for half the day and the bill was still almost three bills.  The kids complained from October to April, but Eric stopped hearing it after a few years, and of course, in the summer it was hot, and they complained about that, too.  But Eric didn't like it cold.  Cold made his pain worse, made every moment more miserable, every morning, every day more unbearable as he fell apart, so pleasant, embracing warmth under a bright chartreuse yellow sun was brilliant.  Apparently he didn't have to worry about sunburn, either, because he had perhaps the planet's only hammock, and it was unbelievably comfortable for sleeping in the afternoon light.

Workin' Progress: Eric's Trip

There were side effects.  Eric's pain was gone.  All of it.  His back, his hips, his knees, his feet, his shoulders, his hands.  His teeth didn't hurt, and he was pretty sure that if he focused on it, he could grow back the handful that had rotted and fallen out.  That headache he'd been sporting since 2004 was long gone, and he didn't think it was coming back.  His breathing was free.  There was no sensation of constriction in his chest.  He wasn't sporting a boner at random points during the day--and was happy about that; he was relieved when his libido withered and would not want to go back to those feelings of unfulfilled longings--but his piss was strong and clear and his bladder felt like it had grown eight sizes.  He still wore the stupid titanium-framed glasses everywhere that he'd worn forever with the 15 year old prescription, but he could actually see pretty well now.  He was still soft but not really stooped, and he was able to hike that 10 kilometers or so to this spot in less than two and a half hours.  Eric didn't have to carry all the stuff he had on his little beach, but such a walk with a pack would have been a death march for him before.  And he could sleep.  He did remember in his biking days that he would get into a little shape and not need as much sleep; in later days he was exhausted all the time, but bed made everything hurt after a few hours, so his sleep was quite nearly as miserable as the rest of his life.  It wasn't the gravity that was making Eric feel stronger; he was better off now, even if his memory was clearer now, and it was.  He understood that was an inevitable side-effect, and he had not experienced the full-on technicolor, 3D recall that was a side effect of the full treatment.  Eric was also mildly sensitive to the others--again, there was no way around that--but it was not well-defined.  Dylan was probably nearly complete, and possibly Mick as well; the rest would grow their sensitivity slowly, but Eric knew he was not nearly as susceptible and would never be around long enough anyway.

Eric was more than happy to spend most of his time here, away from the others.  It wasn't really that far, and he did see small sails out on the water and hear the sounds of riders up on the ridges in back of him every once in a while--it might have even been Mick once; Eric wasn't sure, but he felt like it was someone different.  He timed his walks back so that he would get to the Village right before the big moon came up so he would be perfectly on time to eat, take a hot shower, and go to sleep in the very dark, very quiet room with the very comfortable bed.

When he was back there, Eric was sure that Tom Dillon wanted to talk to him; he didn't need to be a fucking mind reader to know that but talking with Dylan was last thing Eric wanted to do.  The kids' sister, Hanna, too; that was fucked up.  He had no idea what she wanted.  Probably something to do with Rebecca, so that was reason enough to stay way the fuck away from that fucking sasquatch spawn of Mick and Rebecca.

Eric recognized the Village.  Everyone thought that Dillon had dreamed it up, but Eric thought that Dillon was too fried.  Maybe he had done it, but Eric didn't think so.  Not Mick, either.  He wasn't even fucking there, so that wasn't right.  The first time he'd seen it, Eric had seen it for what it was.  He didn't recognize the specifics of course, but it was pretty obvious where campus idea got started.