Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

by Catherine Linda Michel

 

Part 9

FRIDAY NIGHT:

I felt the prick of a needle in my arm and, after a few seconds more, I felt nothing at all. Just blackness and some very strange dreams, all centered around the bodysuit and Joe. In the dreams, I was walking down an aisle and all my new friends were there. Jeri, Terri, Carla, Dana, Ms. Smith and Carol, even Cary, and a lot of people I didn’t recognize. They all had smiles on their faces and a few of them were crying! I could see Joe at the end of the aisle and as I turned my head to the left, I saw my Dad! My arm was slipped through his and we were walking towards Joe who had the biggest smile of all on his face.

I looked down and I could see that I was wearing a beautiful white dress and I could feel that my hair was all done up on top of my head. I was carrying a large bouquet of flowers and it hit me, I WAS WEARING A WEDDING GOWN! Joe was dressed in a very sharp looking black suit and was smiling at me with love in his eyes. My four friends from AGD were all dressed in matching turquoise gowns and all were just lovely. Dad and I walked slowly up the aisle where Joe and a minister were waiting. I WAS GETTING MARRIED? To Joe? I heard the minister begin to say, "Dearly beloved", when I began to lose the dream. All of a sudden, Joe and the minister vanished! My Dad was gone and then the whole church and all the people were gone as well! All that remained was a single figure and I could hear a loud sigh come from that person. I started walking towards the figure and as I got closer, I could tell it was a man. I heard him sigh again and then he began to speak. "Ah, Ginny", he began in a sorrowful tone of voice.

"You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? You had to go and get suspicious and, as if THAT weren’t bad enough, you had to drag Dana into it with you!"

Right then I began to wake up and I realized that the last part of that dream had not been a dream after all! A man WAS talking to me! I was lying on a kind of a bed, I later found out it was a hospital gurney, and I was unable to move. My arms and legs were secured, somehow, and my head was being held still by a strap across my forehead. There was a light shining in my eyes and I couldn’t see very clearly through it’s glare. The voice either got louder or moved closer to me because I could hear it much more clearly now and it said, "Oh, are we awake, finally? I told those muscle brains not to use the whole syringe of sedative on you! A little thing like you shouldn’t have required more than half of it but do they listen to me? Nooooooo!! They have to " follow their orders"! The voice began to mumble something but I couldn’t make it out. Then it got loud again.

So here you are my dear. All trussed up and awaiting final treatment along with your friend, Dana, to your right. I’m really sorry this is necessary, Ginny. The programming on those tapes should have left you pretty much unable to discern fantasy from reality where it applied to AGD. Apparently, in yours and Dana’s cases, it wasn’t quite strong enough to overcome certain psychological resistance to it. Well, that will be remedied here tomorrow. When you wake up Sunday morning, you will be just one more happy girl, looking forward to going to work at your fascinating and well paid job at AGD and you won’t be bothered by thoughts of once having been a male. You see, Ginny, AGD is quite real. It is, in fact a delivery service and, from the looks of the first week of operations, it will be a very profitable little sideline to the more important end of the business. And, what, you may ask IS that business? Why, the testing of the very technology that you wear so fetchingly upon your male body right now! Yes, Ginny, this whole thing was to have been a test of the bodysuits and programming by, well, I am not permitted to tell you who, right now, but, before you undergo the final process, I think I will persuade my superiors to let me tell you the complete story so you will know, even though it will do you no good to have the information.

The voice sounded very familiar but in my still half drugged condition, I was unable to identify who it was for sure. I heard my own voice asking about Cary and the man answered, saying, Oh, don’t worry about him, my dear. Your friend is just fine. As a matter of fact, he had been getting just a little too nosy for HIS own good as well, so I talked the higher ups into letting me include him in our little "test program" By the time you leave here Sunday, you will just be two girlfriends sharing an apartment far away from the one you have been living in. Yes, Ginny, you and little Carrie will be the cutest, sweetest little delivery girls in the L.A. area, sharing makeup tips and clothing and even boyfriends! And you will be quite eager and willing and even ABLE to please your boyfriends, Ginny because before we are done here, you and Cary and Dana will be fully functioning females, perfectly capable of getting pregnant and carrying a baby to full term and birth! Your DNA will be remapped so that you will appear to any test you care to name to always have been female. Your records will be altered right down to your birth certificates and fingerprints. The reprogramming in yours and Dana’s cases and the initial programming in Cary’s case will wipe out any memories you have of life as a man and replace them with an entire lifetimes worth of memories of growing up as a girl. Then, you three will be sent back to AGD to finish out the test program before being assigned to a Top Secret, virtually unknown branch of the Government for further testing of the bodysuits and possible assignments all over the world! Oh, Ginny, I almost envy you the life you will lead! Why, you and Dana could become two of the top secret agents in the world! You will have more adventures and excitement than you could EVER have had as poor unsuspecting Jim and Dan! Just think of it, Ginny, you and Dana could have world leaders groveling at your feet begging to be allowed to worship you as the beautiful women you truly will become! You will be gathering information and secrets to bring back to our government to use against enemies of the American way and having more fun and adventure than any woman ever has had! You’ll be wined and dined by the most handsome, powerful, wealthiest men on the planet and...............!"

Just then, another voice cut in saying, "Frank! You talk too much! See that they are comfortable and that all the IV drips are in place and working properly! We have a LOT of work to do before tomorrow night and it HAS to be perfectly done or it will all be a waste of time and we shall have to start all over! Now hop to it! Unless you want to find yourself in one of those bodysuits, yourself, only THIS time, permanently!"

I could hear someone moaning softly to my right and I recognized Dana’s voice saying something but I didn’t quite catch all of it. Then, Frank began to speak again saying, "Yes sir, right away, sir!" Then he began to fuss with the IV leads which were attached to my arms. He whispered to me, then, "Oh, don’t look so surprised. Yes hon, I was your little waitress at the restaurant across the street from AGD, and every word that you and Dana said, while in there was recorded and stored. Even that wouldn’t have been enough to cause us to resort to this, but that combined with your refusal to go out and party, on the company’s nickel and the tapes of your conversations at home, made us suspicious that the programming on your tapes wasn’t sufficiently effective to keep you in line. By the way, Ginny, what did you do with those tapes? Our men couldn’t find them when they searched your place. Of course, those bumblers couldn’t find their asses with both hands! Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Those tapes will turn up and then we will re-record them with stronger suggestions so that we will, hopefully not be forced to do this again. And, Ginny? Don’t worry your pretty little head about the other three girls. They are fine and the programming seems to have worked perfectly on them. They won’t be harmed and will continue at AGD as our little inside information gatherers. They will form the first level of the finest espionage training school ever!" Then that other voice came back again telling Frank to make it quick and Frank left me there with my thoughts. To say the very least, I was scared, and of all people to be part of this thing, FRANK? I hadn’t seen or heard anything from him since the last day of orientation at AGD. Yet, here he was and involved up to his eyebrows, from the looks of it, and to think! He had been posing as that little waitress all this time just to keep an eye on me and Dana! Then I started to get mad! As the medication started to wear off, I got madder and madder to think that my own government could be involved in something like this! Kidnaping and shanghaiing citizens for some espionage scheme, against their will and without their prior knowledge! I knew if I ever got out of this, I was going to sue everyone and everything in sight! Well, then again, maybe it would be just as well if I just left thing alone, if I ever got out of this. After all, if it WAS the government behind this, what chance would I have against that kind of power?

Then, another thought hit me and I began to panic! Joe! What about Joe? He was going to conduct his investigation tomorrow at AGD’s main building! What if he got caught? Or worse, what if he were caught and put into the same situation in which I now found myself?!! My thoughts continued along those lines for another few minutes until Frank reappeared at my side.

He said,

"Sweet dreams, Ginny. The next time you wake up, you will be ALL Ginny. No more Jim to worry about. Just an exciting life ahead of you as a secret agent!" He kissed me on the cheek and turned a valve on the IV tube and I began to get sleepy very shortly after that. In what seemed like no time, I was out cold again only when I awoke the next time I would be somebody totally different from what I ever had been if these people carried through on their threats!

 

FRIDAY MIDNIGHT:

From a fragment of audio tape found at the underground headquarters used for transformational research:

"..thing set?" (This voice has been conclusively identified as the head of this operation)

"Yes sir. The DNA altering formula, along with the primary mind altering drugs are in the IVs now being administered to the subjects. In the space of 24 hours, their DNA structure will be indistinguishable from a genetic female’s and their minds will be fully open to whatever suggestions we decide to place in them." (This voice has been identified as the voice of Frank Schmidter)

"Very well, then. All that remains is to clean out their apartments and erase everything we can find out about their former lives. This means, of course, notifying their next of kin, if any, and if necessary, altering their memories as well and, If all else fails, well, you know what to do?"

"Yes sir. We are to either reprogram or eliminate anyone who might be a threat to this operation, by whatever means necessary. All public information on any computer network anywhere in the U.S. will be either wiped clean or replaced with the appropriate information matching the new appearances of the subjects. The reprogramming shouldn’t be too difficult with the new tapes and the wiping of the information should be accomplished in 36 hours or less. It ought to be a very simple job to do." "It had BETTER be easy and it had better be done correctly, Frank! You know what is riding on this experiment. Not only the future of our country as we know it should be, but also our own personal safety and lives depend on this being done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. If the President or Congress should get wind of this before we are ready to present our complete and successful findings to them, we might as well kiss our collective asses goodbye! We’ll spend the rest of our lives either in prison or in hiding from every spy agency the government can put on our trails! At least I will. You will be dead, Frank. I cannot afford to leave loose ends like you laying around, but let’s not think of that right now. Let’s think of the rewards that will await us when our theories are proven successful! We’ll have the world at our feet at that point, Frank and we won’t know how to spend the interest on the money we will make from this, let alone the principle!"

"Dr. Kelwicki is due in tomorrow afternoon from Vienna?"

"Yes, Frank. He will arrive at approximately noon tomorrow at LAX. You and two men will meet him there and bring him straight here using the limo with the blacked out windows. He will rest for about 8 hours and then perform the final surgery on the subjects, removing their external male organs and inserting the normal female reproductive organs and constructing their external genitalia. He is not only a master of this kind of surgery, he is the inventor and developer of the organs themselves. I do not know the exact means by which he does this but it will be detailed in the courier packet he will be bringing with him." "Sir, I am a bit concerned about leaving you here with only two men from the security force. With all the other teams out in the field, you will be vulnerable here."

"I know, Frank, but it is unavoidable. Besides, we know our cover is still tight. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, this is just a simple delivery service. No one but those of us involved knows that the basement contains these labs and rooms." "Okay, sir. You’re the boss here but I don’t intend to leave you here alone any longer than I absolutely have to. Too much depends on the success of this operation. You can bet that I will be back here with the doctor before you even know I’m gone!" Very well, Frank. We all know what we have to do and we know that it has to go right or we are all lost. We are the only ones who believe in the stories of the alien threat. The President and Congress don’t believe it, but I have seen the proof. No means are too extreme to assure the survival of our race. If we fail, history will note this date as the beginning of the end for the human race. Even now, the new Arkanian ambassador is scheduling the Peace accords with our government and if he succeeds it’ll only be a matter of a few years until the alien infiltrators are everywhere throughout the world in positions of power. We MUST buy time for our scientists to master the technology of that UFO that we captured last year! As far as we have been able to determine, that ship belonged to the only race to ever successfully resist the Arkanians enslavement of their worlds, the Alfans!" You also know that the world is unaware of the presence, or even the existence of these aliens, so far. The only ones who know of their existence are those in power and THEY are hiding it from the general public until everything is settled and they feel that the rest of the world can be told of them." "You can depend on me, sir. I’ll get the doctor here or die trying. Has there been any more news of the Arkanian hit team that we detected near here last week? They have eliminated four of five of our members in the last month, you know."

No, Frank, they haven’t been heard from in the last five or six days. We have to hope that they are still in Nevada sifting through the false leads we left there. If we are lucky and we have done our work properly, they won’t get wind of this part if our operation until after we are ready for them to know about it by then it’ll be too late for them to do anything openly about it and we will have more security measures in place. According to the latest data, the Alfan force field will be available to us and the Arkanians have nothing portable that can penetrate that. They would need a full scale assault by one of their large cruisers to penetrate even this small version of the field and they won’t risk that even if they do find us here. We’re also fortunate that we were able to salvage that Alfan scout ship that crashed in the Nevada desert last month. If that hit team had beaten us to it, we would have been in serious trouble. As it is, they know it crashed and they know that the MIB got to it first. What they DON’T know is that the MIB are working for US! It’s too bad that we have to do any of what we have planned for Jim and Cary and Dan but if they had gotten any more suspicious, they could have jeopardized our mission and we can’t allow that to happen."

"Yes sir, I understand that. Actually, their resistance to the hypnotic programming has proved to be an advantage to the mission though. Now we will have three agents who should be able to infiltrate the Arkanian legation without the slightest suspicion, seeing as how the Arkanians consider females unimportant and useful only for breeding and child rearing, AND they seem to have developed a real fascination with earth females."

"Yes, Frank, that’s very true. I don’t, yet, know why they consider earth females so exotic but it WILL work to our advantage. Through Jim and Dan and Cary we will have eyes and ears inside the Arkanian hierarchy here on Earth and will be able to take them down from within. The information gathered by our agents will enable us to convince world leaders that the Arkanians are only interested in subjugating the human race as they have done to so many others across the stars. Once we can convince the leaders, then we can introduce the Alfans and THEIR technology and, with that, we can drive those Arkanian bastards back into space and away from our planet forever." Sir, I have to ask you, for my own peace of mind, can’t we let Jim and Cary, and Dan in on this and offer them the chance to volunteer? I hated lying to them and especially Jim. He seemed to be a decent guy and he has showed remarkable will power through all of what has been done to him. For that matter, so has Dan. Cary is just a money hungry investor and will make an excellent servant to the Arkanians, once we have wiped his memory, but I think we need people like Jim and Dan on our side, not as just brain wiped and programmed puppets but as active and aware members of the mission team."

"Frank, you may be right about that and I will discuss it with our people before the final mind wipe is done. I tend to agree with you but, the mission is what counts here, not our feelings about Jim and Dan. NO sacrifice is too great to make in order to drive these aliens from our planet and if that includes making sacrificial lambs of a few good people, including ourselves, well, that’s the way it will have to be. We can’t afford to fail here, Frank. If we do, well, you know what the result will be. Virtual slavery to the Arkanians and our planet stripped of every resource that matters. The end of the human race as a viable entity is the Universe and one more world under the thumb of the Arkanian empire. They MUST be stopped and we are the ones chosen by fate or whatever, to try to do it. With the help of the Alfans and their technology, we have a chance. Now go and try to get some rest. I will talk to Jim and Dan tomorrow after I speak with our people about your suggestion and get their approval. I also want to speak with the Alfan leader and get his take on it as well."

"Okay sir. I’ll try to get some sleep and be ready to pick up the doctor tomorrow. Thanks for considering my ideas about Jim and Dan. I think they could be of much more use to the team as active and knowing members of it instead of just programmed information gatherers like Cary will end up being. You should get some rest as well, sir. You will need to be in possession of all your faculties when you speak with our people and especially with the Alfans. You know that they demand absolute clarity of thought and purpose. The only reason they decided to help us in the first place is because their envoy saw something in OUR boss that convinced them that he and his organization COULD help defeat the Arkanians." You’re right again, Frank. I will try to get some rest as well. I’ll......WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!!" The fragment of tape ends here. We are not sure of what the disturbance was that caused the outburst from the individual who was speaking last but our investigation will continue.

 

SATURDAY 12:35 AM

I awoke with someone slapping my face.

Not hard, but it was annoying me. I wanted to sleep. Why was it, I wondered, that lately it seemed like everyone who wanted to wake me up, did so by slapping my face? Couldn’t they just yell or throw cold water on me? Noooo! I tried to get my hand up to stop whoever it was from slapping me but I couldn’t move my arms. I didn’t want to open my eyes because I knew that once I did, I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep and I wanted to sleep. I was sooooo tired. I tried to say "Stop slapping me, and let me sleep" but it came out like, "Gooo way lemmie ‘lone!" In a kind of whiny voice. Whoever it was that was slapping me just wouldn’t quit it, though so I finally opened my eyes and it was Joe! He stopped slapping me when he saw my eyes were opening and said, Ginny, c’mon, you gotta wake up! Come on honey you HAVE to wake up and we gotta get moving outta here! " I couldn’t figure out why Joe seemed so upset, but my mind was very fuzzy and I couldn’t think straight. I began to remember a little bit of what Frank had been saying to me but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me so, in my sleepy state I dismissed it like one dismisses a bad dream. Joe started doing something by my side and before too long I could move my arms again. I took advantage of that fact and tried to grab hold of Joe and pull him down to me but, instead he pulled me up to a sitting position and hugged me. In a ragged sounding voice he started telling me that he was glad to find me before anything had happened to me. He was murmuring things in my ear and holding me tight and It felt sooo good. I think I finally knew, at that exact moment, that I had fallen for Joe. Yes, damnit, I was in love! With another man!

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. You are saying to yourself, "well, he must have always been gay and this business with the bodysuit, combined with the drugs in his system just finally brought it out." Well, you are wrong! I never in my life had ever had a thought about another man but, somehow, I felt like it was all right to fall in love with this man and that he would protect and love me back. Maybe the bodysuit and the programming and the drugs made it easier to admit to myself that I loved Joe, but it wasn’t just those things. I had been pretty lonely most of my young life with few girlfriends and none of them ever really serious and none of them were anything special to me. They were just flirtations, Just the normal experimentations of an inexperienced youth with no real idea of what he wanted or needed.

All I really knew right then, sitting there being held tightly by Joe was that, for the first time in my life, someone NEEDED and WANTED me! It didn’t seem to matter to me whether that person was male of female, or whether I was, for that matter, male or female. All that seemed to matter to me, right then, was that I was being held and the one holding was telling me that he loved me. Everything began to come back to me then and I started to tremble as I remembered the kidnaping and waking up here, wherever here was, and all that Frank had told me!

Joe just held me tighter and was whispering things in my ear and I never wanted him to let me go but then he said, "Ginny, we’ve got to get out of here! I broke in and knocked out a couple of guys but there have to be more of them around! I don’t know how many of them there might be but I didn’t come prepared to handle more than two or three! I took a chance last night and I followed you home. I saw that van pull up out front and I saw those men take you and someone else out of your apartment. I followed the van and It led me here to AGD, where I watched them take you and the other person from the van and take you into the building. After a few minutes, I snuck up on one guy outside and knocked him out and tied him up and tried to figure out where they had taken you. It took me a few minutes but I finally found a hidden set of stairs and when I went down them, I found a locked door and another guard. I had to shoot him because he drew a gun on me and tried to shoot me! He had some keys on him and one of them opened the outer door to this area. I waited until I had a chance and opened the second door but when I did, I set off some kind of alarm and all hell is gonna break loose very soon, I think."

I slipped off the table and tried to stand but I was very wobbly on my legs and I suddenly realized that I was still naked! Joe handed me his jacket and I used it to cover myself up as much as I could and we started out of there with Joe supporting me. I stopped suddenly, remembering Cary and Dana and mentioned them to Joe saying, "Joe, we can’t leave Cary and Dana here! They are only here because of me and my suspicions! If something happens to them, it’ll be MY fault and I won’t be able to live with that!"

And Joe said,

Ginny, we don’t have TIME to get them out too! If I can, after I get you to someplace safe, I’ll come back for them with some help and maybe the cops but, right now, I have to get you out of here!"

I tried to argue with him, but I was too weak and still too confused from the drugs still in my system and he practically dragged me towards the door at the other end of the room. We were almost there when I heard a voice yell, "HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! YOU CAN’T GET OUT OF HERE! ALL THE EXITS ARE RELOCKED AND THERE ARE FOUR GUNS TRAINED ON YOU RIGHT NOW! WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO KILL YOU, BUT WE WILL IF WE HAVE TO! NOW LET THE GIRL GO AND STEP AWAY FROM HER!" I looked at Joe and he looked at me. We knew we were caught and there was no way out. He whispered to me, "What do you want to do, Ginny? I can try to fight our way out of here but I’m afraid of what might happen to you if I do."

I looked into his eyes and saw the indecision there. I knew he wanted to get me out of here but I couldn’t take the chance that he might get hurt of killed trying. I thought about it for all of about 3 seconds before I finally said, "You’ve got to do what you think best, Joe. If you think we can make it out of here without getting killed then let’s try for it. If not, well, you tried and I love you for it. It’s not your fault. You weren’t expecting to have to try something like this and you weren’t prepared for it. There’s no sense in our getting killed trying to do the impossible. Maybe they won’t hurt you if we just surrender and don’t try to fight them. Besides, Joe they aren’t going to hurt me, they just want to examine me to see what the problem with this bodysuit is," I lied to him. My mind was clearing fast with all the adrenaline that was pumping through me. I knew that these people, whoever they were, wouldn’t hesitate to kill Joe and maybe even me if we resisted and things looked too hopeless right then to try anything brave or stupidly heroic. It looked hopeless to me and I called out to whoever it was that had been yelling to us to surrender.

"OKAY! WE GIVE UP!" And I pushed myself in front of Joe. I hoped that they wouldn’t shoot me to get to Joe. From four different places in the room came men with guns drawn. Then I heard that other voice again, The amplified one that I knew but couldn’t quite place.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE MEN!" it said. "THEY ARE CAUGHT AND THEY KNOW IT!" Then in quieter tones it continued. "You, sir, whoever you are, I congratulate you on even finding this place much less on your apparent skills in actually gaining access to this lower level. Please, sir, drop your gun and turn to face the wall while my men check you for any other weapons you might have on your person. Frank, please escort Ginny back to the gurney and re-secure her if you would. I think we can forego the IV for now but make sure she is securely strapped down. We don’t want her to get any wild ideas at the last minute, do we?

While Frank re-strapped me to the gurney, the other men were searching Joe and tying him to a chair. After Frank had me well secured, he turned to Joe and made sure he was just as well secured and then he said, "Okay, sir. They are all tied down and can’t cause any more problems for the moment. It’s safe to come down."

A few seconds later, I heard a door slam and footsteps coming closer and closer. Then a figure stepped in to the lighted area and my eyes must have gotten bigger than saucers because as he stepped into the lighted area he began to peel back a mask and as his real face was revealed, I gasped in shock! This guy wasn’t human! He looked like some kind of cross between a man and a lizard! He stood there for a few minutes, a long reptilian tongue wrapping itself grotesquely around his, gulp, snout! Then he spoke, saying, My real name, you would not be able to pronounce so just think of me as Link because that is what I am. I am the link between your race and mine, the Alfans. We are a star faring race from a galaxy, as one of your movies so quaintly put it, "far, far away. So far that the distance really means little in your terms. We are here to try to help you in resisting a hostile takeover by another race, the Arkanians who are only interested in enslaving your race and stripping your planet of every resource. They care little for individual planets or people, but rather, only for the advancement of their own race and their selfish goals. They are murderous, bloodthirsty and totally ruthless in their goals and will stop at nothing to gain what they want. My race is the only one who has ever resisted them and we drove then from our world but at such a great cost to us in lives and resources that our own planet became all but uninhabitable. The bodysuits that Ginny and her friends are wearing, and the technology that created them are ours. We hoped, by using them and infiltrating the Arkanian delegation to your leaders and gather enough information about their plans so we could assist your race in throwing off their attempt at enslaving yet another race and planet and, at the same time, gain an ally in our fight against them throughout the universe."

I snuck a look at Joe to see how he was taking all of this and his mouth was as far open as mine was. He was sort of gasping for air like a fish out of water the same way I was, but I had an advantage on Joe. I was still full of the drugs that had been in that IV and now that I was strapped back down the adrenaline was wearing off and I was sort of getting a little loopy again. So, although I was quite taken aback by what this "Link" was telling us, the drugs were kind of insulating me from the main impact of his words. "Link" talked quite a bit more but it was all dry technical stuff and I don’t remember a lot of it. The gist of it was, though, the Arkanians had developed a fascination for earth females and Dana, and I and the rest of the girls from AGD were going to be "drafted" into the fight against their takeover of earth, whether we wanted to be or not. "Link" explained a bit about the bodysuits and the programming on those tapes and told us how some people were, seemingly, somewhat immune to the programming. That was the reason why Dana and I had been able to resist some of the stuff that had been on those tapes, and, it turned out, we weren’t the only ones. There had been others but not many and they, like us, were going to be drafted into the fight against the Arkanians. Terri, Carla, Jeri and Carrie? were going to be used to train others and monitor their progress. Yes, I said Carrie. "Link" had decided that Cary knew too much and was bound to ask too many questions so, he too, was to be put into one of the bodysuits and subjected to the programming.

Make no mistake about it, these Alfans were, in their own way, as ruthless as the Arkanians. They would allow no impediments to their eventual goal of defeating the Arkanians and freeing as many worlds as they could in the process. Anything that stood in the way of their goals was either drafted into the cause or well, eliminated as a possible threat in any one of a number of ways. "Link" decided to wake Dana and explain things to her while I recovered from the drugged IV. He still didn’t know what to do for sure with Joe and I tried my best to talk him out of putting Joe into one of those bodysuits. I explained what was going on between Joe and me and basically ‘volunteered’ to join the fight if he would spare Joe. I had a feeling that Joe might just prove more useful as he was anyway. With his contacts as a private investigator and the backing of the rich and powerful family that was in his debt, he could definitely be an asset in the battle against the Arkanians.

After a couple of hours of talking with Joe joining in, "Link" decided that we were right about Joe and, in addition, Dana decided that she would join the fight of her own free will as well. "Link" told us that this would involve our going through the ‘conversion’ process, meaning that we would actually become real, fully functioning females, but it was either that or the same result with our minds being erased and reprogrammed. "Link" was in favor of our volunteering because he felt we could be more effective as willing agents than we could ever be as preprogrammed human ‘robots,’ so to speak. So, when Frank returned from the airport with the doctor, Dana and I underwent the process and the combination of doctor Kelwicki’s revolutionary process and the Alfans fast healing technology Dana and I became fully functioning females in only about two days including the time for the actual surgery. During the recovery period, a couple of things happened. First of all, Joe proposed to me! Second, Frank proposed to Dana! It seems that Frank had been attracted to Dana at first look and was only being held back by the fact that he and Dana were men. As soon as he knew that Dana was going to willingly join the fight and become a real woman, he professed his feelings for her and, when she had healed, she accepted!

We had a double ceremony about a month after the surgery. The girls from AGD served as bridesmaids and Carrie was our maiden of honor. Mr. Franklin/Ms. Smith gave both Dana and I away and "Link" served double duty as best man to both Frank and Joe. Following a brief honeymoon, Dana and I entered phase two of the training involving self defense and espionage techniques which was made a lot easier by the programming available to us through "Link". I was blissfully happy as Joe’s wife and, confidentially, the sex was GREAT!!!!! Joe was a good a lover as he was a P.I. which means that he was DAMNED good! There were more adventures ahead for all of us but I have to end this one here. My instructor is calling us to class. Today we begin learning weapons use and the Alfans have some really advanced weaponry!

All in all, I don’t regret any of what happened even if some of it WAS forced on me. In the long run I got a great job, a lot of adventures and a wonderful husband out of the deal. Not too bad for a college dropout, farm kid, huh?

The End

 

I had a LOT of trouble writing this final(?) Episode of SS&D. I was stuck for an ending and I was having some personal problems that took my attention away from writing. I truthfully had NO idea where to take the story from pt 8 and I basically just let it go where it wanted to go. I hope it isn’t a disappointment to all of you who enjoyed it so far. I want to acknowledge a few people at the end here, though. First, Prue and neri. Without you two I would never have even attempted this task. Your friendship and help enabled me to start and finish something for one of the few times in my life.

Second, some friends from a certain chatroom. Rose2, KimEM, Samantha, Demi, Jan and AJ. And Rocket. You showed me that if one has friends, one is never truly alone. Last but not least, Sandra, nuada, Steve Z., Heather, and all the other people who helped me post this story and who wrote to tell me how much they liked it, and Crystal who provides us with this wonderful site to post stories to and a chatroom to talk about them in. I love each and every one of the people mentioned above and I owe them more than I can ever repay. God Bless each and every one of you and Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have my love and my respect. Cathy_t_

 

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