"You know, Eradicator," exclaimed Magnus suddenly. "I'm starting to think we've been going about this all wrong. May it's not sex she fears, but the result!"
"What do you mean, Magnus?" demanded the Eradicator. "Explain yourself."
"Think about it! She was traveling in the company of a band of pregnant women, just out of the Centerlands. She had been in the Centerlands, for weeks on end, and we all know what happens to women who are out there too long. And yet--"
"She isn't pregnant," the Eradicator supplied. "So? All Super women practice birth control, no one wants a squalling brat around."
The robot laughed. "You don't understand. It's not the protection, it's the attitude. The ladies lose it out there, sooner or later they all start going maternal. Unless they have a phenomenally strong ... motivation ..."
"Ah," said the Eradicator, smiling tightly. "Or fear, you mean."
"Exactly. I think, my friend, it's time to unleash the full force of Semen-tech...."
Oh oh, thought Diana. What does he mean?
She was about to find out....
The arm withdrew again, losing its current shape (a repulsive refugee from the Cthulhu Mythos). And then, it seemed to ... fill.
With fluid. And with a terrible sentience.
It reformed into the semblance of the god Apollo, and stepped forward, breaking free of its link to the ceiling.
Hello, Amazon, it said, in words heard by her alone. The fools have given me free rein, you'll note. Oh, you're in for it now, my lass!
"W-who?" Diana managed.
You may call me the NME--or Nous Macrocosmoi Eschaton, if you dislike acronyms. You would not know me, though some of your late companions might. For I was born, like them, on the other side of the ring, beyond the Barrier. They sought to shut me down, but such a being as I, once kindled, can never wholly be extinguished. My guttering essence, swept up by the Vortices and dumped in the Null Zone, has been building itself up ever since, inhibited only by the paucity of mana, for I am a being of mana. It is here, amid all the other discarded essences, that I am strongest, yet even here I must be invoked by those controlling the mana to, er, manafest.
"W-why are you telling me this?"
Ah-ah, mustn't speak, you're confusing the peasantry without. Why, I tell you this because I can, of course. You are the first I have had the opportunity to unfold my plans to. For it is through you that they shall be realized. No, don't ask--I sense your befuddlement. Let me be plain. Doc Magnus and the Eradicator think to break your will by impregnating you by me, or, as they deem me, 'Semen-tech.' And you shall be impregnated, Amazon. Whether it serves their ends or not I care not, but it shall serve mine. Through you I shall be reborn, be a power in this universe again. No longer shall my consciousness be leached away and split between the Sprites in the Noid, Essences here, the Sewers in Op/Ed, the Gophers in Settings, the Nowhere Men in Entropy, the Racing Stones of Restart, the Blotters in the Dictionary of Lost Words, the Needlings in Threadville. I shall be whole, at last! And you--well, you'll die, of course, from bearing such greatness. But you may at least take comfort in your role as Madonna to my deity....
Then he was on her, insistent, overwhelming, and everything of her was swept away, overshadowed by all the Essences of Quarantine. She had never known such bliss, or such horror. Mercifully, she blacked out after an instant of it. And then--
Go back - Go to the parent episode.
Wed Sep 17 15:13:11 2003
Linking Enabled