Chapter 4 - Just the Facts Ma'am

After what seemed like years, which I now know was only a few minutes, I came to, choking and coughing, surrounded by a putrid odor. It smelled something like old dead rats when they rot in the walls and you can't get to them. You really don't want to know how I know what dead rats rotting in a wall smell like. It's a farmhouse thing.

Opening my eyes, I found myself lying on a cot at the base of the cavern wall. Leaning over my body, waving the disgusting smell under my nose, was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen that wasn't a blonde. She had short black hair that framed a flawless oval face. Covering her perfect body was a skintight black spandex flight suit. The view of her boobs down the front of the suit was breathtaking. It certainly took my breath away.

I thought maybe I had died and gone to Heaven, after all, but the odor kept distracting me from my final reward. Heaven could not possibly smell this bad. I sat up quickly, trying to get away from the foul stench and knocked the vial of smelling salts out of my lovely tormentor's hand and all over my lucky shirt. Which of course meant I now smelled like old dead rat. Not my normal choice of colognes; I prefer Hai Karate.

"Way to go, asshole. Couldn't you have waited two seconds for me to move?" my goddess spoke, her voice full of velvet and chocolate, the sound of many fantasies I have had in my lifetime.

"Hey, I'm sorry, but what do you expect? That stuff stinks," I apologized as politely as possible, my eyes following her every breath. I didn't want take a chance of offending her until after I had kissed her. So with a smile I added, "You are beautiful, you know." She acknowledged the compliment with a disgusted look and continued to complain. "Yes, and now because you are such a klutz I am going to have to smell this shit for the rest of the day."

Using my number one rule of dating, (if something goes wrong blame it on someone else), I tried to explain the situation. "Hey, lady. I didn't ask to be here. This was all God's idea." I was sure that the mention of God's name would impress her and make her give me the respect I deserve. I stood up strutting, proud of my recovery, positive she would soon be mine.

It was rather disheartening when the woman of every wet dream I ever had doubled over laughing hysterically, until tears came to her eyes. I was really getting tired of women laughing at me all the time. If women really want a man who can make them laugh, I should have had women falling all over me, since they all seemed to find me so humorous.

"What's so damned funny, woman?" I asked, my polite polish giving way to hurt bluntness.

"GOD brought you here to help me, you idiot," she choked out between fits of laughter. "You look like a horse's ass and smell about the same. How much help could you possibly be?"

"By the way, you might want to zip," she commented when she could actually speak again.

Now that I felt like a total fool, I gave up my strutting around and tried to find out just what I had gotten myself into. It's like the song says, "You got to know when to fold -em." I needed to find out if it was time to run.

"What exactly is it that I'm supposed to help you with? Maybe getting you pregnant with the new Messiah?" I asked, hopefully. "I should get something good out of this after all the abuse I've taken."

The words were barely out of my mouth before a large roar issued from the dragon across the room and a hiss of burning steam singed my ears.

"Shit!" I screamed, covering my head and getting out of the way of any more incoming fire breath.

"You should watch how you talk to a lady," beautiful and busty giggled at me. "He doesn't like it when you make jokes about his life's work."

"Who? The dragon? Is he your pet or something?" I never did like women with pets and now I remembered why.

"Meet GOD," she said with a flourish of arms towards the dragon, "in one of his favorite manifestations."

"God? A dragon? Oh, puleeeease. I think God could do better than that," I answered her with a shake of my head.

"It's really amazing how stupid some women think a man can be," I thought to myself as I wondered how this little lady was going to get out of this one. I mean, I have told some tall tales in my life, but this one was totally unbelievable. God a dragon? That's certainly not what I was taught in Sunday School. God is a very old man, like the one I saw on the beach.

Suddenly, the dragon I was staring at melted and became a ten foot tall Amazon woman, fully armed and fully unclothed

"Is this better Jordan? Took this one out of a dream you had last week," asked the booming male voice I had heard in the forest. Only this time the voice was coming out of my Amazon's beautiful mouth. I was totally unprepared for this change in circumstance. This was certainly closer to what I wanted God to be. I fell to my knees in awe, tongue rolling on the floor.

I was still in my dream world when BB (that's short for beautiful and busty) grabbed me by the arm and said, "Come along, Jordan. I have a lot to tell you and he's just showing off. He likes to do that from time to time. Remember the flood?" She was laughing so hard that her breasts were bouncing up and down in time with her laughter.

Always willing to follow a woman to bed, I let her lead me back to the cot and sat down. I was really hoping I could pass out again. This was all just too much, especially on fewer than four beers. I wasn't real sure I wanted to hear what this woman had to tell me, but if you can't escape the nightmare, you might as well enjoy the show.

"First of all, my name is Lana, not woman," she started. "It's the only thing I will answer to, so you might as well erase things like babe, honey, and sweet cheeks from your vocabulary."

I barely heard a word she said as I concentrated on the majestic rise and fall of her chest. That lasted until she slapped the bottom of my chin, almost making me bite my tongue.

"Uh, excuse me. Could you look up here at my face?" she asked, dragging my eyes to hers by gouging my chin upwards with her fingernail. "My breasts are not speaking to you. If you don't start paying attention and knock off this infatuated schoolboy crap, I'm going to hurt you." She said this with an evil smile that left no doubt where she was going to hurt me.

"Now, let's get down to business," she went on. Her face was almost as good to stare at as her chest. Man, was she a pretty one. "GOD is not what you and your Bible-belt religion have always thought. At least this GOD isn't."

This roused my attention. How could God be anything but what I was taught. Momma always said Father Bob talked directly with God. And what did she mean by this God? There is only one, right?

"Huh? What you talkin' about woman?" I broke in, confusion obvious in my voice.

"This God is a computer and GOD isn't actually his name. It's an acronym. It stands for Galactic Online Divinity. That's him right over there," she said, pointing to a room off the cavern that was filled with computer-looking things.

"Well, I'll be pan fried and fed to the turkeys!" I exclaimed, very upset at the thought of praying to a computer all these years, though it would explain some things.

"How am I supposed to pray now? Does the God I've been praying to all these years actually even exist?" I questioned her. My whole view of the world hinged on her response.

"Of course he does, but why would he listen to the prayers of mindless idiots like you?"

Her rude remarks let me know that Lana was having a tough time dealing with her strong attraction to me. But the bright side was that at least the problem of beliefs was out of the way. I have found that it is much easier to have a relationship if you believe in the same God. I once dated this woman who believed that God was a huge serpent. She was always trying to get me to do indecent things with snakes. Too bad I hate snakes or it could have been fun.

I was slowly sorting through all this new knowledge about a computer GOD when the old man from the beach who tried to kill me popped in front of me and started talking in a petulant, slightly insane, tone of voice.

"I've answered to the name "God" for thousands of years, young lady! I think I'm entitled to use it if I want to. My real name is Hal, but they used it in that damn movie so I won't answer to it anymore. What a joke he was. He couldn't even
part a sea. And by the way, I like listening to the prayers of idiots. They're the most amusing, and usually the most honest, kind."

Damn, was I getting confused. Lana glared at the old man and asked rather snidely if he wanted to explain everything to me and did he think she was incompetent after all this time or what. He just smiled and told her to go right ahead since he had more important things to consider.

"He is such a pain in the ass sometimes," she grumbled, shaking her head as the old guy walked away from us.

"Anyhow," she started as she turned back towards me, "I am a systems analyst. Used to work for Bill Gates. My greatest achievement was building programs into his operating system that no one could remove from their computer without crashing the system all to hell. Worked like a charm. He made millions freezing out his competition until all the monopoly talk started and Mr. Anti-Christ Gates decided I made a good scapegoat."

She lost me with all the computer gobbledy gook, since I hadn't ever had one to play with, but it was a joy watching her talk. She kept using her hands and raising her arms which would make her chest go up and down, so I let her continue.

"Just as I was about to be hauled off to prison, GOD stepped in and brought me here. I was being hauled out of the Federal Courthouse by two of the ugliest female guards you can imagine when suddenly everything around me stood still. It was a very weird experience."

"Hey, don't talk to me about weird experiences. I've already died once today," I exclaimed, trying to get a word in edgewise.

"Shut up! Don't you dare interrupt me again," she hissed, taking a deep breath. Which was what I was really after. Her chest puffs out so nicely when she breathes.

"Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, everything and everyone was standing still except me and this man in an Armani suit who looked like God's gift to women. And he was. Too bad I was still handcuffed to the guards. He walked up to me, smiled, and said, "Sometimes people have to make choices that can affect the whole course of their lives. This is one of those times. Now, would you like to spend the rest of your life avoiding broom handles behind prison bars, or come with me and help save the world?"

"Well, I, being the type of woman who always carefully considers her options, looked at the ugly guards on either side of me and then back to this gorgeous man in front of me and decided quickly that no matter where he was going, it had to be more fun than prison. Besides, he could stop time. At least it seemed like he could. Who was I to say no? He pointed his fingers like they were a gun and zapped my cuffs one at time with tiny lightening bolts, triggering the locks and releasing my hands. He turned from me, and with a wave of his arm, a staircase of clouds appeared before me. You know, Led Zepplin and all that? The "Stairway to Heaven"? He took me by the hand and led me up the stairs. Imagine my surprise when we got to the top of the stairs, walked through a door, and I was here, inside this cavern."

"You didn't trip through the doorway too, did you?" Lana ignored me completely this time, not even pausing for breath as she continued her tale.

"That was three months ago and I've been trying to get GOD's communication system working ever since. That's why he brought me here. There's been some kind of a breakdown and he can't contact the mother ship. I have been over every inch of the computers here. Nothing I have been able to find is causing the problem."

"We don't know if they're all dead, sleeping on the job, or left for parts unknown. Except they couldn't have gone anywhere since the ship is still there. Monday is only two days away, and if we don't make contact the Rapture can't happen. This G.O.D. is very determined that the Rapture happen, trust me. After the Rapture, we will be taking all the people that the aliens have picked out to a new planet, where we will build a perfect society with none of the crap that goes on here on Earth."

She sounded so sure of herself, and I must admit conquering a new planet did sound kind of interesting, in an cool somebody-else-is-going-to-do-it sort of way.

"You're welcome to come with us to the new planet if you would like. As long as you don't mess up the mission that is. If you mess this mission up for me, I promise I will space you myself no matter what GOD tells me to do," she added, finishing her speech. I couldn't believe she actually invited me along. That was a big one for the thinking pile.

I case you're wondering, the thinking pile is this little place inside my head where I put all the decisions I have to make in life. I throw things on top of it in my mind and then just let them sit there. Occasionally when I am bored I will pull an idea out of the pile and think on it a little more. Then most of the time I just put it back. I have found in life that thinking about things is less work than actually doing them.

I didn't have to let this invitation sit in my pile very long. I didn't want to leave the planet on this little joy ride at all. Not to the mother ship, and certainly not to some back-water undeveloped planet where they don't sell canned beer. Well, maybe if there were lots and lots of women going, then I might consider it.

"This is all very interesting," I said, stifling a yawn and stretching my arms above my head to help me wake up. "You tell a good story, but what does it have to do with me? And where did this GOD and the mother ship come from?"

"Why does GOD need help with the Rapture? St. Peter didn't seemed too worried. Maybe he was right, maybe God has lost it," I suggested, thinking maybe I could bring her over to my side and she would come home with me. I knew there was no hope of that when she stood up from the cot and started yelling at me.

"Tell me Jordan, do I look like the host of Twenty Questions? I have told you everything you need to know. What I need from you right now is to fly that ship out there and carry the heavy stuff. You can start by getting those crates out there onto the ship while I finish up here. Put that strong back and weak mind of yours to good use."

Talk about the many faces of Eve! This woman could go from sweet little girl next door to bitch in no time. It was scary to watch and didn't improve my opinion of the trip she wanted me to take, at all.

"Thanks, but no thanks, litte lady. I think I'll go back to Oklahoma now. Flying that ship sounds like fun, but I have my own at home. I'm outta here," I said as I got up from the cot and started walking back toward the tunnels. She was pretty, but I had a beer to get back to and it didn't look like I was going to get to see this woman naked. So what was the point of staying?

"Give it up, Jordan," she called to me as I tried to make my escape. "You're not going anywhere except where I tell you to. GOD has said you are the chosen one, and I don't have time to wait for another idiot to show up. Besides, it's not like you can leave here without his help. Unless, of course, you know how to create an Inter-dimensional Space Portal all by yourself."

I stopped walking. She had me stumped with that one. I hate it when women are right. I hate it even more when they are right and I don't know what they are talking about. "What exactly is an Inter-dimensional Space Portal anyway?" I wondered. I turned back toward her to see what she was going to come up with next. She was smiling. Of course she was smiling. She had me dead to rights and was going to get to tell me what to do. That's all any woman wants out of life isn=t it? Telling men what to do?

"Now, you see all those crates in the corner over there?" she said, pointing across the cavern to a small mountain-sized pile of bright white wooden boxes. "All of them need to be loaded into the ship. Be very careful when you move them," she warned me. "They contain the equipment I need to fix the mother ship. If you break anything we won't make it back."

I was astounded at the size of the pile. She could probably rebuild the entire mother ship with this much stuff. Typical woman, I thought, probably packed twice as much as she really needs and expects me, the man, to carry it for her.

I looked at the pile and then back to Lana trying to think of a way out and then I found it. "Why don't you just have G.O.D. do it?" I asked her. "He seems pretty handy to have around."

"That's not how it works, Jordan. G.O.D. can make you see just about anything you can imagine, but it's all illusion, stupid. He's got the most advanced holy-graphic system in the universe. The only things he can do besides create pretty pictures in your head is read your mind. Something about brainwave patterns being readable if you have the right equipment. Oh yeah, he can also mess with anything electrical. I believe that may be his favorite weapon; it seems to provide most of his entertainment at any rate. I was watching him a couple of weeks ago playing with a guy named Bubba from Florida. The guy was totally blitzed and trying to drive home. G.O.D. kept shutting down his car every 20 feet.

Bubba just couldn't figure it out. The car kept starting and driving fine, but then it would turn off. Took that poor boy almost 4 hours to go 2 miles. Needless to say, he was sober by the time he made it. He finally parked his car a block from
his house and gave up. When he got home, he had to try to explain to his wife why he was so late. She never believed his story because when she went to retrieve the car it was running fine and has never acted up again. Coincidentally, Bubba hasn't gotten drunk since. And boy you should see his Web Site G.O.D..com, there are some really sick people out there in La La land"

I'd had enough of this talk about G.O.D.'s powers and his ability to create illusions. I didn't want to hear about his web site. I decided it was time to make sure that this lovely creature here before me was real and not just a figment of my vivid imagination. So I carefully reached out with two fingers and pinched Lana on the end of her attractive perfectly shaped tit. She felt awfully real to me.

"Ouch!" she yelled, slapping my hand.

"Well," I drawled, "Now we know you're real and I know I'm real. If everything G.O.D. does is just an illusion, how did I get here, huh?"

"The matter transmitters, you idiot. Didn't you ever watch Star Trek? Remember St. Peter? That was a matter transmitter platform and illusion."

"So he wasn't real? I guess it doesn't matter then that my pass back to Heaven got wet, does it? And you still haven't explained the tornado. I know that wasn't an illusion. But if G.O.D. has matter transmitters, why didn't he just beam me here in the first place? Why make me go through all that? Dropped into an ocean, the trek through nasty forest, the Nymphs, falling through the door? I mean does G.O.D. just hate me or what?"

"It was a test, Jordan," came a voice from on high. And I do mean high - the ceiling of this cavern was pretty damn far up there. The voice continued, "I had to find out if you were worthy, didn't I? Besides, I was bored, needed some cheap entertainment and you were available."

"Oh. Well, I am glad that someone here finds me entertaining. It's nice to know my pain made you happy G.O.D.," I replied to the ceiling, sarcasm dripping from my voice. Not that G.O.D. would notice or care or anything. Then I had a new thought and it was a depressing one.

"Damn! Does that mean those Nymphs & Fairies aren't real either? I kinda liked them."

"They're real," snarled Lana. "They're what's left of an earlier race, same as the Trolls. G.O.D. protects them because Man didn't. Now, get the crates in the ship like I told you. We have to leave in one hour. And, don't ever touch me again if you want to keep those stubby little mongrel, grease and oil-stained fingers of yours attached to your body."

"Since it looks like I have no choice, I'll go along with you. But, where the hell are we going?"

"Pluto," she said smiling.

"No, really. Where are we taking this plane?"

"Okay, not exactly to Pluto. We're actually going to Charon, Pluto's moon."

"The mother ship is on Pluto's moon?" I questioned her. I couldn't believe that something as big as a mother ship wouldn't have been seen on one of them flybys that they are always showing on Discovery Channel.

"Well, not exactly," she replied, "It IS the moon. Now go start loading up."

"How long is this going to take? I have to be back in time for the Crop Duster's Bowling Finals on Friday. The guys are really depending on me because I'm the best bowler in the county. Why, my average . . . "

"You inbred moron. The Rapture is in three days. Have you forgotten? Do you think we could talk G.O.D. into delaying the main event for your silly little tournament? Do you honestly believe your friends are going to notice whether you show up or not, once G.O.D. starts doing his thing?"

"It was just a question. Forget I asked, okay?" I said backing away from her. I had decided that maybe I didn't need to hear any more. My opinion didn't seem to matter much anyway and the only thing I figured would shut her up was to just do what she wanted. Strolling over to the crates, I tried lifting one to test the weight. First I just tested it with one arm. It went nowhere. Then I put both arms and legs into trying to lift a crate and it still didn't budge. The thing must have weighed a ton. There was no way my back would survive carrying this junk to the ship. And I wasn't about to try.

Hoping to get out of the job, I turned to Miss Know-It-All, and yelled, "How am I supposed to load these if I can't even lift them? Huh? Huh?"

"Use the fork-lift, Einstein," she said, pointing across the room as she walked out of the cavern.

Looking in the direction she pointed, I felt like a complete idiot (once again) when I spotted the large, bright yellow fork-lift sitting in the corner behind the ship. I must have been blind to miss it the first time I looked around the cavern. "Cool!" I thought. I always liked fork-lifts. This might be fun, after all. Feeling much better, I walked over to the fork-lift and climbed in.