Part 1 Index Part 3

Subject:      CODY: THE GO BETWEEN
From:         mithryl@walrus.com (Mithryl)
Date:         1997/05/28
Message-Id:   <5mfbhh$rlp@alice.walrus.com>
Newsgroups:   alt.personals.bondage,alt.sex.stories,rec.arts.prose


Note: This chapter begins with a few paragraphs originally in Chapter 1.

                         THE GO BETWEEN

                      by Cody Ann Michaels
                     c. All rights reserved

                            Chapter 2

	It is customary when writing books to begin with an erotic scene
to catch the reader's attention.  To write good multiple choice questions,
a person must have a high degree of imagination for alternative logic
systems in order to make the incorrect choic es seem plausible. 

	Another possibility is to call upon the muse.  Once, almost every
poem had at least three or four stanzas dedicated to the diety and asking
heavenly guidance.  But nothing like that happens anymore.  Oh, heavenly
divine spirit, smile upon my labor and gu ide my word processor.  Tell me,
bitch, what happened on that pitious day they burned the maid in the
kitchen with cigarette lighters and lighter fluid.  Kerosene fire starter. 
Squiriting it on her.  Setting her snatch on fire.  Roast her again before
my eyes as I describe her miserable cries.  We can all write a story about
what we did to e.  It's going to be a long summer, cookie.  Get used to
it. 

	I'd rather be in the Hamptons.

	The atmosphere is more ambiant than here.

	Here, the ambiance is pretty pitiful.

	Maybe we'll drive out next Saturday.  No.  I'm serious.  Rent a
motel room for the weekend.  You can meet Rick.  What are you getting us
into?  Don't worry.  You'll love her.  He's in railroads.  It's very
thirtyish.  Tonight, we're going to the Pines.  The summer wore on.  In
that stinking cell.  I had to shit in a bucket.  Men peeked through the
door.  To see what I was doing.  They found their big blousy maid parading
around in her underwear. 

	"The natural logarithm of numbers uses the quantity e as the
base."  I found my father's book.  About e.  He didn't write it.  Someone
named Neilsen did.  "This format is becoming very popular since it adapts
itself to direct printing from electronic cal culators."  When was this
written?  1943, 61, 71.  Electronic calculators?  Now you can do it on a
computer.  But it still doesn't say what e is.  I mean, the exact number. 
Just what it is when raised to a power.  Like -4.35.  e to the -4.35 is
0.0129068 .  Don't ask me how they do it.  That's just an example they
gave.  There are tons of tables in the back if you want to know more.  But
the question is, why would you want to know e to minus 4.35?  Or any other
number?  Like, I mean, so what?  Why e?  Why not pi?  Or 42?  Or your area
code?  The natural logarithm of numbers uses the quantity e as the base. 
What does it mean?  There's a lot of other stuff in this book.  Most of it
is gibberish.  I mean, people really spend time with this stuff like this? 
Like, get a life.  This reads like Joyce.  Let me give you an example:
"The logarithm of a number N to the base a is the exponent x of the power
to which the base must be raised to equal the number N."  Wow!  Is that
profound or what?  Someone must have had a wet dream to think that up. 
Basically what they are saying is if three squared equals nine, then log
nine base 3 is two.  So? 

	But there's more: The square root of 25 is five, so log five base
25 is one half.  Get it?  Furthermore, the logarithm of a number is equal
to the sum of the logarithm of its factors.  This is where the
shortcutting comes in.  If you know the logarithms of two numbers, all you
have to do is add them together to get the logarithm of the number you
would get if you multiplied them together.  It's sort of like a warp. 
Thus, it is no longer necessary to learn multiplication.  All you have to
do is add up th e loggies, and then look up the number in a table that
goes with the log you get.  Simple, huh?  You can do division the same
way, except you subtract.  Which is much simpler.  Personally, I have
never been very good with long division.  Or multiplication either, for
that matter.  So it is a real labor saving device, being able to do
logarithms.  Anyone who wants to know more, I refer you to the book, which
is called Logarithmic and Trigonometric Tables to Five Places by Kaj L. 
Nielsen, Barnes and Noble C ollege Outline Series.  I don't know if they
still print it.  It's sort of outdated.  I don't know what my father used
it for.  He was in some kind of engineering that had to do with
agriculture.  Cows fucking and stuff like that.  Sometimes I just like t o
look at the tables.  It sort of calms me down, just reading the numbers,
wondering what they mean.  It's pretty scary.  Someone, (Nielsen?), had to
work this stuff all out.  Maybe he did it for a hobby.  Maybe he had the
hots for someone, and this was a way of keeping himself under control. 
Just staying focused on the numbers.  Pretty weird. 

	That someone would go to so much trouble.

	e, incidentally, is a vice president at Genetic Fibers, A.G., the
international conglomerate that funded the clone research.  Lately,
however, she has been having difficulty focusing on her work.  Something
to do with memory lapses.  I'll get back to tha t later.  What I've been
thinking about is how Joan was treated.  She was a field commander.  She
should have been treated as such.  I mean, can you imagine the Germans
telling Eisenhower he didn't hear voices?  Or Patton?  They wouldn't dream
of it.  But because Joan was a girl, they were totally condescending.  It
really makes you mad.  Look, George, you're hearing things.  But it's all
in your head.  Ya wohl.  Maybe you should try Prosac.  Or Zoloft.  Zoloft
is really good for voices.  Fuck you.  Even Shaw got it wrong. 

	One of the kids in the park the other night was taking Zoloft when
he went berserk and hacked up some guy who came onto his chick.  Slashed
his throat.  Cut off his hand.  Disemboweled him.  Threw him in the lake. 
Makes you think.  Kids have it rough.  The guy was forty three.  The girl
was fifteen.  Everyone has problems.  Not nice.  You can see why Joan
might have voices.  She was just a kid, too.  But she was also a General. 
The real crime was she was denied the courtesies owed a military
commander.  They tried to break her.  Negate her.  But she had already
defeated them.  They knew that.  Not just the English, but the church as
well.  Later, they tried to make nice.  Make her a saint.  Put a good face
on it.  But it was too late.  They were right the first time.  She was a
witch. 

	I am groping here.  I know that e's memory is coming back, and
that she is not sure why she is hiding out in a house on Fire Island doing
maid work for a gang of frat boys.  It's more than bad karma Something to
do with secrets.  Company secrets.  She has actual moments of lucidity
when she can actually remember the compound at Hammer (not it's true
name).  What happened there.  After the trial.  But then it gets confused. 
And her mind shades off into other realities.  She is in a car.  Being
taken so mewhere.  She is tied.  She is sitting on a sofa.  She is being
interviewed.  Some guys are looking at her.  She feels embarassed. 
Intimidated.  Awkward.  Out of place.  Joan denies she is a witch.  That
she can fly.  That she is the devil's plaything.  She is very religious. 
She kneels in front of a painting of the Christ.  It is just for effect. 
She kisses the feet of the Savior painted on the wall.  Sugg waits for her
to get up.  Come into my office, Joan.  I want to talk to you.  Close the
door.  S it down.  There's been talk.  Please don't take what I am about
to say as criticism, but the word is you are a... well, what can I call
it, spawn of satan.  So? 

	She looked at him.  Coldly.  Without emotion.  Sullenly. 
Defiantly.  With an attitude.  How could you save France without an
attitude?  Much depended on what happened next.  I am trying to save you,
he said.  Why won't you cooperate?  What happened to h er didn't matter,
she said.  Only God mattered.  And her voices.  She was totally stoned. 
She should have played for time.  Took the sentence.  Waited.  In a year
or two, she could appeal.  It wouldn't be so bad.  But instead, she defied
them.  Put me in the fire.  Go ahead.  I dare you.  It was a gamble.  And
she lost.  The old men burned her.  Well, technically it was the English. 
Just like the Romans did the Jews dirty work and killed Christ.  Soldiers
are such jerks.  They dragged her down the stair s and out into the
street.  The crowd cheered.  The girl had her clothes ripped off.  Her
long hair was matted to her face.  She knew they were going to kill her. 
She didn't care. 

	Stop!

	English, why are you doing this?

	The two faced each other across the desk.  I don't know, she said. 
I think I am trying to turn a flashlight on my own soul.  To see into it. 
To make it yield its deepest secrets. 

	And have you?

	No.  Not yet.  At least, not enough.  I'm still dark.  As that
street, where they took me. 

	Memory is squalid.  It tells me nothing.  But lies.  Memory is not
about what happened.  It is nothing.  We never know what happened.  We
know nothing.  It's a hopeless dream. 

	You think you're Joan of Arc?  In a past life, perhaps.  Shut up,
Bookgold.  I never said that.  They probed at her psyche.  Pushing and
pinching.  Scratching.  Seeing what she said.  Now she will think she is
Marie Antoinette.  Everyone giggled.  She ha d to get out.  Get free.  The
road down from Hammer Mountain was a winding one.  The edge of the road
was straight down.  She took the hairpins at breakneck speed.  The agency
placed her in a home for boys as an aupair girl.  That seemed another
lifetime.  Where was she now?  e took the papers with her when she left. 
Later, she turned them over to the Germans. 

	There has to be some kind of limits.  Of what you can do and what
is not acceptable.  Dressing in men's clothes was not acceptable.  Neither
was killing.  Torture was acceptable if carried out under the right
circumstances.  Would you like us to torture you?  Yes.  Oh yes.  Please. 

	The men were eager to see.


                            Chapter 3

                            Base Camp

	I have many thoughts tonight.  One is e has a personal psychic,
who she calls whenever she has to make a decision.  She spends tons of
money talking to this person, who is sitting in a kitchen in Pensacola,
drinking cold coffee in her house coat.  They t alk about e's private
life.  At ten dollars a minute.  That's cheap, compared to some trainers. 
Fifty dollars a minute is not unheard of.  The company's HMO plan pays for
it. 

	e is a mass of complexes.  Or a very simple girl.  Or a field
marshall of France.  Suppose the e in logarithms and the one in mc2 were
the same?  What would it mean?  I mean, in terms of the universe.  What
was that formula?  "In N = x and e to the x = N ."  Oh, I found this: The
Natural Logarithms.  The base of a logarithm is not necessarily 10.  Who
said it was?  If the base of a logarithm is e, the logarithm is called a
natural logarithm.  But it still doesn't say what e is.  Or how it is
found.  This is very annoying.  Possibly it is 2.3025850930, which, oddly
enough, is my phone number.  That's the number in the book by which you
multiply a natural log to get a common one.  Strange, the way the universe
works.  The only difference is you have to dial a one instead of the 2. 
What does that mean?  I don't know.  Also, I don't see the point of using
a base like that.  Maybe it has something to do with calculators.  You
could work it out on an adding machine.  Huh? 

	I really ought to try to figure this out.  English stood up and
walked over to the blackboard.  She remembered herself giving a
demonstration.  She knew this wasn't going to be pretty.  The lights lit
up the girl like a frightened doe standing in the roa dway..  The car hit
her her hard.  She flipped over.  Crawling down Hammer Mountain can be a
treat.  Try it some time.  Giles, you fucking imbecile.  I told you left. 
We're going off.  The tumble down the mountain was a flaming success.  We
won't be nee ding you tomorrow, Joan.  Come back next week.  Her
emprisonment wore on.  It was a hot spot in the old cathedral where you
heard voices on the wind.  Everyday they talk to me.  Hear them?  Don't
you listen?  It became apparent that the Angel Michael had been there, and
they were all radioactive.  Of course, they didn't know it then.  They
called it the plague.  They blamed Joan.  Today, we call it Heroin Chic. 
You can hear anything when you're stoned on this.  Come in English.  We
need you here.  She pu t out her hand and drew her into the room.  Shyly. 
She was very shy.  Like a wounded deer that has been struck by a car.  Run
over by a half track.  Crushed beneath the bones of the ancient church. 
You know it was built on a pagan ruin, don't you?  Down under the church
were the old stones.  She felt them under her.  Come on, give us a smile. 
She tried.  Give her credit.  She tried.  Her boy friend had gone totally
nuts and hacked up a civilian.  But it wasn't her fault.  She was just
there.  It happen ed.  Already.  Give me a break.  How was I supposed to
know he was going to do that?  They couldn't figure it out.  She talked
just like a woman.  First save. 

	Now go on.  Then what happened?  I made him King of France. 
Bullshit.  It was going to happen anyway.  Okay.  I'll get rid of the
cross dressers.  So what?  Who needs them?  Alright.  Hire one.  But keep
her in the back room.  Give her to the cooks.  Wh ere are my orders?  You
got to just keep delivering.  Putting out.  Making people happy.  The
French were happy when she won.  The English were happy when she was in
jail.  e knew she was lost.  But she had no clear memory of how she got
here from Hammer Mountain.

	There was a big gap in her story.  One minute she's a high powered
company exec, and the next I'm cleaning out toilets in a dormatory.  How'd
I get here?  I remember the road.  The headlights.  The deer in the
laboratory.  It had two heads and was mutate d.  Is that what happens?  In
the night.  She still had dreams.  When it got in the papers...  Had it? 
She couldn't remember.  She seemed to remember some papers...  But that
was just a domestic flourish.  Something to keep the troops in line.  The
Engli sh shit their pants.  When they saw me on my charger.  They were
dying for it.  garter belt.  nylon stockings.  A helmet of hair flying in
the wind.  Very neo-Rossetti.  Very facshist.  Very French.  I keep trying
to get out of this studio.  Alec paints m e in. 

	You really want me to die, don't you?  e was finding her voice. 
Trying to see things as they were.  I'm not e but a label you put on
things.  To try to validate them.  Make them something else.  Give them
identity.  e isn't a name but a proposition.  A proposal.  A theory.  What
makes a logarithm natural with a base e? 

	I don't like this.  It's puzzling.  If e equals mc squared then mc
square equals my phone number.  Odd, isn't it?  Plus two.  No.  My phone
number is the mantissa.  Did I get that right?  And two is the
characteristic.  Right.  Two plus point my phone nu mber is e.  Which
equals light squared multiplied by m.  What is m?  Mass.  Ah, now we are
getting somewhere.  I presume we are speaking of the Latin Mass and not
some newfangled illusion of what the mass actually is.  Beat it out of her
if you must, but get the formula.  If you kill her, it's lost forever. 
She was only a simple maid.  She had no idea what we were talking about. 
Shaw's interpretation.  What an asshole.  She knew exactly what she was
doing.  Exactly.  Now we are getting somewhere.  You a re saying that mass
is equal to e divided by c square.  Which gives us?  You have the
computer.  You work it out.  I didn't come here to do simple arithmetic. 
I came to save France.  Yes.  We know.  Now sit down.  We have to ask you
some questions.  They 're all like this.  Prozac helps.  What was your boy
friend doing?  He wasn't my boy friend.  He was just someone who helps. 
Was he Bluebeard, the celebrated chavalier de Ruis, who has had so much
bad luck with his wives.  Poor fellow.  I hear he kills t hem.  Very
pithy.  Come my child, give us some answers.  You don't really hear
voices.  Do you?  I mean, what kind of goofballs take things like that
seriously?  There had to be another reason.  Something else.  What was she
hiding that they wanted so muc h to find out?  It had to be something big,
something worth fighting for.  Or hiding.  What was down there in that
hole with her?  Was it really an angel?  Or was it something else?  Maybe
some kind of secret weapon.  Did she know how to turn shit into go ld? 
Was that the secret?  Tell us.  Please.  Don't make me hurt you.  There's
always someone who doesn't want to play.  He slammed e's head against the
wall.  Tell me, you stinking pig.  Tell me.  He kicked her.  She couldn't
stand pain.  She babbled inc essantly, trying to tell them what they asked
for.  But all she knew about were voices.  Finally they asked the ultimate
question:  if God is so powerful, why hasn't he saved you?  It undermined
everything they stood for.  The church.  The state.  The pri son.  In
which she was held.  If she was supposed to be there, then she wasn't in
prison.  It was where God put her.  Tell me again.  Inanities.  Cries. 
Shrieks.  All that garbage about seeing the sky and having the wind in her
hair.  Bullshit.  Shaw was just playing with words.  He didn't know what
to say.  Blah blah blah blah burn me.  Bullshit.  No one gets torched
because they can't see the sky.  It's thank god.  Now what?  Can I talk to
my lawyer?  No.  Something else turned the trick.  What was it?  I can't
think.  Let me get this straight.  If I forsake Saint Catherine and what's
her name, the other one, and promise never to fuck with Michael ever
again, you'll let me live.  But if I don't, you'll have me killed.  Is
that it?> That's it.  Michael was the stud she was dating.  It was an
order.  Back off, or face ... He was a civilian.  Married.  The director
looked at her.  Jean and the director face to face.  Now it begins to make
sense.  Jean is Joan with an e.  The only difference between them is e. 
And o.  But we have already heard the story of o.  Many times.  Have the
files on Seberg been declassified?  I'll look.  She went off to do
research.  Ah yes.  Research.  Research is okay in my books.  If I ask you
to look something up, do it.  Und erstand?  Versteh?  She was a double
agent.  Working for the Germans.  Makes sense.  Hoover gave her a direct
order.  She disobeyed.  We know the consequences.  Make it look like an
accident.  In like Flynn.  Mike Flynnn.  They had a name for him.  Around
the department.  She was dating Mikhail Flyun.  His color had nothing to
do with it.  Drop that.  We're describing her defences.  The kingdom of
France hangs on the balance.  What parameters does Joan have?  What are
her defenses.  She stood powerless be fore them.  Even Shaw couldn't
comprehend that.  He saw her as a weak, defenceless girl.  An English
girl.  Doing cheerful English things.  Like calling Prince Charles
Charlie.  You could tell he was afraid of the material.  That it would all
blow up in h is face.  That he'd have a religious experience.  Joan was
too powerful for him.  She had to be put down.  Reduced.  Made nothing. 
Jean defied him.  When she did that, she went up against the whole system. 
It crucified her.  She won.  Oh, Kelly, I wish you had gone down to the
loophole.  There's always a loophole.  You've got to stay and fight.  Even
if it means being wiped out.  Flynn.  It means something.  Eroll Flynn
always arrives in the nick of time to save you.  Robin Hood.  What are you
doing her e?  Sherwood Forest is the next set over.  Various actors
wandered through on the way to their own bonanza.  They just shot it from
different angles.  Here's a scene where he rescues her from Little Joan. 
John. 

	In the movie, there were two Johns.

	An English John and a French Joan.  What does it mean?  Was John
the characteristic of Joan?  Then Joan was the Mantissa.  Of the story. 
Then what was the log if Joan was the base?  Sprechen Sie Yeti?  She was
far off track.  Wandering around in the woo ds.  Trust me.  It will all
work out.  Give me strength.  These children are all over me.  Tearing my
flesh.  Eating me, like a dinosaur with its prey.  I give you back
everything.  I'm like a retrograding black hole.  It's all coming out.  I
am millions.  That's what he was afraid of.  Like his cardinals.  His
churchmen.  That she really might be from God.  They were terrified. 
Shitting their pants.  Suppose she really was operating under God's
orders?  What then?  It was too much to contemplate.  Even Hoover was
scared.  I don't want any bullshit, was what he said.  Not will someone
rid me of that insolent priest.  The English are so hasty.  Why should we
cover up for them> Monks robes folding into themselves.  Maybe she was
god.  That's just the sort of thing the church was designed to protect. 
To block off the passages by which God comes into the world.  To save men
from it.  She stared at them.  They had to kill her.  Cauterize the wound. 
Block it off.  They knew what was down in that hole.  And it had to be
stopped.  Before it devoured the world.  It didn't matter what it was. 
They had no curiousity.  It just had to be sealed off.  They knew it
wasn't forever.  It never was.  But it was here and now.  And it was their
duty to act.  Killing her wasn't enough.  She had to burn.  I guess you
could say the English saved France for itself.  Even at the cost of losing
it forever.  What a noble deed.  But the men who handled her were doomed. 
She radiated bad vibes.  They all died horrible deaths.  Lo athsome. 
Today we believe it was ebola.  A strain of it.  Got loose.  The earl of
Noddingham escaped because he had not touched her or even been in the same
room.  But the others were not so fortunate.  The whole village had to be
burned.  Today there's a marker.  A testimonial to men's ignorance.  A
warning to generations to come what might be at stake if such a pestilence
was ever let loose on an unsuspecting population again.  Sort of like the
Holocaust.  Forget it at your peril.  Always be on guard.  Never let doubt
seep in.  You are doing the right thing.  Keep it up.  On to the
generators.  Remember.  E equals mc square. 

	But that is E and this is e.  What is the difference?  One of
level, I should say.  Are they equal and are they the same?  E is nicht e. 
Is this something I really wish to contemplate?  e is a black hole of
possibilities.  I wonder where we go from here /

	The secret of typing is not to anticipate.  Do not write.  Type. 
They are two different processes.  What did you want?  For them to forgive
you?  You had completely wrecked the deal.  You can't blame them for being
pissed. 

Part 1 Index Part 3