Critical Mass

"Fuck yeah, honey, give it to me, you know what I fucking want..." She gasped as Greg obliged her, driving his prick into her further, the pressure on my cock enormous as she clamped down even harder...

"MORE!! ALL OF IT!! GOD YESSSSS!!" She screamed like a banshee as her husband drove the length of his prick into her, then slowly started to fuck her, driving his cock in as far as possible as I arched my back, stuffing myself into her as far as I could. Time seemed to swirl to a stop as her body tightened, Greg increasing the strength and intensity of each stroke...there was no point in even considering the impossibility of holding back any longer; Greg and I fell into a rhythm, pounding Heidi relentlessly, her body flailing madly as she went into a frenzy, screaming obscenities, her hair flying like a murder of ravens, her cunt squeezing our pricks with incredible strength...

It hit like a freight train; immense, it's momentum unstoppable. Simultaneously, our bodies were hurled into a state of ferocious orgasmic overload, each of us erupting at the same microsecond, our beings focused as a singularity within that distorted fragment of time by some sort of incredible, throbbing warmth emanating in waves from deep within Heidi's body...

My mind was spinning, somehow it felt as if I was watching from a distance. It was like my subconscious mind was bubbling to the surface as every problem I had ever tried to solve suddenly fell into place effortlessly, every regret vanishing into irrelevance...I could swear that I could hear a high pitched whine, as if my ears were ringing, but the sound wasn't coming from inside of my head...arching my neck backwards, I could see a small kitchen radio on the shelves behind me, it's plastic housing long ago vaporized, but it's little glass vacuum tubes somehow alive and glowing brilliantly...the frequency of the pitch dropped, and the sound of Sinatra's voice, singing Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" crackled from it's battered frame...

Once time seemed to be passing at a relatively normal rate, we slowly got back onto our feet, noticing as I looked around that light bulbs and electric motors in grotesquely distorted toys and gadgets on the shelves behind Greg were glowing and whirring...that the magnetos in the immense Pratt and Whitney Wasp Major above us were humming and sputtering...Heidi began to giggle as she saw me standing there, wearing nothing but the look of astonishment on my face, turning and making her way down the aisle to retrieve her scattered clothing. Greg glanced around us as the momentarily rejuvenated electronic devices drifted back into dormancy, the scent of ozone and sex hanging thick in the air.

"The 'Goddess' reference, Mike...starting to see how close to the mark you were with that compliment?"

I grinned, nodding. There certainly wasn't anything to be said that I found necessary. We gathered our clothing and made our way back to the entrance, signing off on the required visitor passes as we waited for a cab to show. Heidi was visibly exhausted, her legs so unsteady that Greg and I had to help her out to the cab when it arrived.

We got into the back seat of the cab, Heidi reclining into Greg's body, her legs stretched out across my lap. Our driver, a lovely young woman, turned back at us and smiled before pulling away, obviously not concerned with the fact we were not properly belted in.

"Where to, folks?", she asked as the first few notes of Miles Davis' "So What?" came sneaking out of the speakers.

"Four Queens. And a healthy tip if it takes the entire length of this album to get there", Greg answered, as the driver cruised past the turnoff to get back onto the main drag and headed down a long, deserted boulevard...

Heidi was asleep within minutes, cooing and making little sex noises within her dream state as Greg told me about their lives, how they had met, how everything about them was perfectly, boringly normal...except for the incredible effect she had on him, and very, very few others.

"I don't know how to describe it...it just started happening. I'd been working on an idea, and I was getting obsessed, losing sleep, then losing focus. Heidi knows this hippie chick that has a cabin in some old mining town way up in the mountains, so we just fucked off to de-pressurize. Now, about the first thing that happens any time we go up there is Heidi becoming naked, but this time, there was something else too...I don't know how else to even describe it, but it was like she had this...glow. I know it sounds fucked, but now I know you GET it, right?...if not on Saturday, then sure as fuck back at that warehouse..."

I felt pretty damn confident that I "got" it, and nodded.

"Anyway, I couldn't keep away from her...it literally felt like I was being drawn to her like a moth to a flame...it was after midnight, there were like, a billion stars in the sky, and I was watching her dance outside in the starlight...but it was like it was blinding. I watched her, moving like she wasn't touching the ground, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen...she noticed me watching her, and all of a sudden it was as if she was reflecting more than just starlight. She stretched out on the grass...it was fucking incredible...as soon as I was inside of her I could feel it...and everything changed. It was like every answer to everything I'd ever wondered about had been there the whole time...and the lights came on."

"So, what about your shop, what is it you DO there...what do the guys you work with think of the Cadillac?", I had to ask, wondering how the hell anyone could keep a lid on something like that.

"Decent shop, decent guys, we do fucking good work. I do whatever they need me to do...but I'm pretty sure they'll show up one morning and find me gone...I can only listen to customers rattling off the same bullshit stories about some redneck's rustbucket 396 half ton running five second quarter miles so many times, or how some fly by night mail order outfit will sell them something cheaper than we can...fuck it, I'm pretty much done with it, time to move on to something else before it gets boring. Anything I've done to the Cadillac, they're all blissfully unaware of. They think it still has the original engine in it, and could care less. As far as using a Cadillac as the platform vehicle, well, that was a personal statement, a commentary...when that thing was built, Cadillac claimed to be, and actually had the pride and balls to BE 'The Standard of the World'. The real fucking deal, something that truly set the bar...quality you could touch and feel and smell, not 'virtual' fucking quality, fucking on board Wi-Fi and bullshit. Think about it, who the fuck is going to want a 2015 Escalade fifty years from now? Christ, there's NO fucking standard anymore...for anything. Just relentless expectation of entitlement and convenience, relentless consumption..."

He looked me in the eye, his own physical exhaustion starting to show, and just laid it out.

"Look, man, I don't fully understand how or what is happening, but I have no inclination of 'sharing it' with the rest of the world. I could be stinking filthy rich because of the motor in the Cadillac, or a dozen other contraptions I've come up with, but what the fuck does that even mean? That I could afford the dream girl I already have? That I could own rare and exotic...stuff? That I could do anything I want, disappear with my girl tomorrow and never have to worry about money? Well, I have that now...even better because I don't need a wall around my house or bodyguards or any other paranoid shit..."

He gazed out the window as the backside of what could have been any city rolled by, the gray pre-dawn pallor somehow proving that it really existed beyond the neon and artifice. I could see clearly why trying to cash in on something that had the potential to destabilize the global economic status quo could bring serious fucking complications to your life...and forget any altruistic notion of that miracle motor bringing free motive power, electricity and hope to anyone. No, I know too well how situations like this play out, and devices like spy drones and weapons delivery platforms that never have to land and never need refueling would be where that miracle would find ready employment...not to mention what could happen to Heidi if just one evil fuck on a planet with a healthy supply of evil fucks wanted to find out what made her tick...

"So, Greg. How do I fit into all of this? I know about that motor now...and that equation. Why let me in on it...any of it?"

"Well, I've always been impressed with the stuff you build, you just have a different take on shit that makes sense to me...anyway, remember that data acquisition system that you came up with back in the early eighties...the one hardly anyone could figure out, even if they could afford it? The one that was banned by every race sanctioning body in the country? That's what I'm using to make the motor in the Cadillac function...the mechanism is easy, 'sorting' electron flow, or, I guess 'herding' it would be a better description...that's where your gizmo comes in. It isn't doing anything that you probably designed it to do, BUT, the fact that it functions exceptionally well in powerful electromagnetic fields is no doubt by design...and, yeah, you'll figure what it IS doing pretty quick. So, yeah, Mike...I guess I owe YOU..." He smiled and poked me in the arm, adding, "Ha, ha, now you have a secret too!"

I remember it well...I thought it was a great device, I was so fucking proud of it...but it was a financial flop. Greg was right, they were expensive, so only a handful of racers could afford them, and it gave them a clear advantage...that outlawed the device. I'd invested every dime I had into the things, and fortunately, the design evolved into one the devices built for the government, otherwise I'd have lost my shirt. I still have a warehouse full of the damn things. How the hell could I ever have known someone would find a use for them...

We pulled up to the hotel just as the album ended, our lovely driver rewarded well as promised. Heidi awoke like a sleepy child, Greg and I each taking one of her arms as we headed up to their suite. I was parched, and gladly took Greg up on his offer of a drink once we'd laid Heidi out in the bed. I felt my own exhaustion coming down on me hard, sitting down in the same chair I'd been entertained in by this man's wife on Saturday morning. I stared out the window towards the Plaza, my mind still razor sharp, but pestering me like a bored cat regarding the necessity of sleep...

I awoke to the sound of the bells, my first thoughts shimmering into the realization that everything that happened the night before had been real, and that whatever clarity I had experienced hadn't been temporary. I remember having dreamt; vividly, at once comedic and terrifying as the combined inventory of my thoughts and memory was laid out, open and exposed...then suddenly swirling like leaves in the wind into the image of a woman, illuminated from within, whispering...

Heidi and Greg had left a note; they'd gone down for breakfast and invited me to join them, as well as their phone number so I could contact them later if I had other things to do. As it turned out, I did have things to do; my crew, with our exhibit and inventory for the SEMA trade show, would be down at the convention center setting up about now...but, y'know, they have done this before and will manage just fine without me...

I was heading over to my room to shower and shave, noticing as I crossed the casino floor that the nice old couple I had shared a cab with from the airport had hit it big on a slot machine. Good things do happen to good people, sometimes by random chance. Sometimes...there might be something more to it...

When I was in school it was my incredibly good fortune to have studied engineering with a professor who understood the world on a very different level. He saw the mathematics and theory of science as a necessary evil; like sheet music, the most convenient means of notating something much more complex and grand. And because of that, innocently incapable of explaining the nuances that define reality...

Among many others, he had a theory that civilization and humanity was far more than what history (written by vain conquerors and those who feel no guilt taking credit for the work of others) would indicate. In fact, he believed that some of the greatest innovations and inventions ever conceived will probably never be discovered, not because some evil bastard has them hoarded away, but because whoever came up with the idea was bright enough to quietly enrich their own life or those closest to them without bringing attention to themselves. Whether it was a trade secret or recipe in the family business, a trick to having a better crop than your neighbors, or some cagey method of keeping "them damn revenoors" off of your property, there may be a very good reason for keeping your secrets close to your chest. The fact that humans have been at least this clever for fifty thousand years or so...well the odds are, there are plenty of amazing things that are out there bobbing in the current of time. Intertwined with this theory was a deep spirituality, and a nearly fanatical regard of the role of the female incarnate of God, Shekinah, revered in the most shrouded and secretive echelons of Freemasonry and Judaism, a true and omnipresent force of nature, a critical element in the engine of creation...not only the literal and figurative dwelling in which everything in existence has emerged from, but by counterpoint, the very force which initiates existence...

...suddenly, in the middle of the casino floor, which sits in the middle of this ancient desert, repository for countless secrets, all of the things that had only made sense about this place out of the corner of my eye or in whispers made themselves real, panoramic...

I'm behind the wheel of one of the most beautiful automobiles ever designed, a 1965 Buick Riviera, heading out of the foothills after a very pleasant visit with my friends Heidi and Greg up at their cabin in some old mining town high in the mountains. I've turned over control of my companies to my chief engineer, a bright, intensely focused kid who has proven his dedication and earned my respect, and has the right attitude to keep the businesses humming and our excellent employees happy. Coming out of a long curve, I open up the Buick, feeling none of the mechanical brutality of the old Nailhead engine, just Sinatra's voice flowing from the speakers, and the seductive sound of the machine slicing through the air...