Take All of It September 2019

by Scarlett Skyes

  I stood and walked to her. As I got closer, I was able to see that there were fresh tears on her cheeks. This fuelled the conflict of person vs object, but did at least make my current course of action an easier decision. I knelt down in front of her and picked up her shirt. I swirled it around behind her and draped it over her shoulders.

  “I was wrong to say that. Whatever you are, you’re unlike anything I’ve ever heard of. Can we start again, pretend I wasn’t an asshole, pretend you didn’t just wake up in a box with me looking down at you?”

  “How do we do that?” she asked.

  “For a start, put your shirt back on.”

  She slid her arms back into the sleeves and I was given one last tantalising glimpse of her perky breasts and pink nipples as the shirt parted at the front briefly. My subconscious mentally kicked me for passing up the opportunity for sex, but I knew it was the right thing to do. The wonderful view was gone as quickly as it had appeared as she buttoned her shirt.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  I stuck out my hand.

  “Xavier Merton-Cane, I’ll be accompanying you to Mars for the next few months.”

  Her small hand reached out and grabbed mine softly. She looked relieved and a timid smile even touched the corners of her mouth, lighting her whole face up. My heart beat like when I was a nerdy schoolboy trying to talk to the head cheerleader.

  “I’m…” the smile faded from her face “I don’t know my name.”

  Our hands remained clasped together as I thought.

  “Hmmm… well, there’s an old tradition that the first female is called Eve. As far as I know, you’re the first of… whatever you are. Would you like to be called Eve?”

  “Eve.” She said the word, as if testing how it sounded. “Yes… that feels appropriate, somehow. I’m Eve.”

  Our hands raised and lowered in a formal greeting, then parted.

  “Do you remember anything before waking up here, Eve?” I asked.

  “Not really. Flashes of light, some beeps and rapid clicks. Nothing that makes sense.”

  “When you first stormed out here, you were making demands about going home, you seemed pretty sure of yourself.”

  “I know, I remember, but when I thought about where home was, I drew a blank.” She looked towards the ground. “I just felt sure that I had a home, that my whole life wasn’t confusion and terror… that somebody loved me and would miss me if I wasn’t there. It… hurts to be wrong about all that.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I didn’t help with the confusion and terror. We’re going to be alone together for a while, so I’ll try to make that up to you if I can. Now that you’ve had a chance to think about things for a while, do you know what it is you want to do?”

  “I have no idea. I guess for now I’d settle for not feeling confused and scared. Could you… this is going to sound stupid… could you just hold me?”

  “Yes, I can do that.”

  I held my arms out and she walked into them, resting her head on my chest and wrapping her own arms around me. I held her close, pulling her in with one arm. With my other hand I stoked her soft blonde hair, trying to be as unthreatening as possible, trying to undo the damage I did a few days previous. Her firm breasts pressed into my body and my heart beat at a quicker pace again, like when she had smiled at me. If I was going to help with her confusion, who was going to help me with mine?

  Time flew as I held her, but after a while I felt Eve pull away.

  “Thank you, believe it or not I feel a lot better already. You really aren’t going to hurt me, are you?”

  “I promise you I won’t.”

  Eve took in a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “Well, I suppose I’d like to feel somewhat useful while I get my bearings. I’m supposed to keep you sane, so what can I do for you? You know, besides… that.”

  “Uh… well, if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d love another cup of coffee. The one you made me before was perfect, I couldn’t even make it that well myself.” I paused, then added “Please.”

  She smiled and then walked gracefully and silently on her bare feet to the kitchen, returning shortly afterwards with another cup of the best coffee I’d ever had.

  “So, we’re going to Mars, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why? Wait, you’re Xavier Merton-Crane, you own most of Mars and you’re getting fucked in the ass by Kozlov Corporation… how did I know that?”

  I stared for a moment at the succinct and brutal summary.

  “I guess technically you’re right, but Kozlov Corporation hasn’t actually penetrated my ass just yet, that’s what I’m going to Mars for, to fix that situation. Robots are loaded with a news feed and certain basic information before they’re shipped out so they are up to speed on current affairs. It’s how you know English, for example. It’s how you know what Mars is.”

  “Oh. How are you going to stop Kozlov?”

  “It’s actually not going to be that hard. I just have to get there and stop my Chief Strategic Officer, Warwick Polzin, from making two more specific fuck-ups. I’d have told him to step down already, but if I’m not there to replace him and supervise his leaving, there’s no telling what damage he’ll do on his way out, what information he’ll take. As long as he doesn’t see it coming and he gets thrown out of the building by security within minutes of finding out, then that’s disaster averted as far as I can see.”

  “I thought it was somewhat more serious than that.”

  “That’s the media being sensationalistic for you. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t misspeak when I said ‘disaster averted’, but as long as I can sort out just a couple issues, the land that Kozlov owns won’t hurt me, and it won’t do them much good either. In the long run they’ll sell up, and make a huge profit because of how much more useful I will have made Mars, but that won’t matter to me.”

  “You sound like you’ve got everything under control.”

  “I do.” I hoped I didn’t sound too smug.

  *****

  Eve proved to be a great listener, and superb company. All day, every day, for weeks she sat with me and pored through screens of reports, analysing all the transactions that had resulted in that blue dagger, or blue cock if you prefer, on the map of Mars. She was keeping me sane, as was her job, but she was driving me crazy too. Locked in a confined space with my perfect woman, the fear long gone from her eyes and replaced by a spark of mischievous humour, and I felt self-conscious about how I acted for the first time in my life, I wanted to earn her trust.

  One morning I woke up and entered the cockpit where we’d been working and saw Eve sitting in her chair, feet kicked up on the table, hands behind her head, looking pleased with herself.

  “Morning, Xavier, sleep well?” she asked.

  “Sure did. You look like you’re taking a well-earned break. Find anything useful overnight?”

  “You could say that.” She said, mysteriously.

  I waited. Eve continued smiling without giving anything away.

  “Ask me!” she finally blurted out excitedly.

  “What did you find?” I humoured her.

  “Polzin. He’s not a fuck up.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting opinion to have about somebody who is single-handedly sabotaging his job security.”

  “Not his real job.”

  “What do you mean by that?” This sounded interesting.

  “He works for Kozlov. He’s actually even a distant cousin of Kozlov.”

  “No shit.”

  “I shit you not. I thought it was really strange that a man with the education Polzin has, with the work record he has, would suddenly start making such simple mistakes. So I started looking into tax records, seeing who worked at the places he used to work at, who he went to college with, who he went to school with, what his ancestry was, right down to who his wet nurse was.”

  “He had a wet nurse?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Had my female companion, model unkno
wn, made a joke?

  “No. Stay focussed.” She smiled despite the reprimand and continued. “It’s complicated, but I’ve put it all into a single file for you to check. As far as the records can tell, he met Kozlov when he was fifteen at a family reunion. After that, he went to the same college, though their years of study only overlapped during one year. The real damning stuff is the fact that they own a lot of the same companies and have shared investments. It’s all like majority share here, off-shore account there, tax haven here, silent investor there but it ties them together completely if you dig through it, and he’s been doing it the entire time he’s been employed by you.”

  “You’re amazing.” I could think of no other way to describe her.

  “Just wait until you hear the good news!”

  “That wasn’t the good news?” What could be better than that? If all this was true, it would be trivial for me to pull some strings and trace some of Polzin’s communications and have him sent to jail. Not to mention the fact that Kozlov wouldn’t go entirely unscathed. All those property deals crookedly rigged would be overturned and open for tender again, and I was the only one in any kind of position to take advantage.

  “Nope. You know those useless pieces of land you think they’re going to put a toll road on?”

  “Of course.”

  “They aren’t useless.” Eve’s smile grew wider.

  “What’s so useful about them?”

  “There’s a huge deposit of palladium there. Huge.”

  “That’s not what the geological surveys said, I read them personally.” I had, I read everything that came out of Mars research.

  “Yes they did. It’s what the raw data said, anyway. The reports that were derived from the geological surveys don’t match up in the slightest with what was actually found there. Care to guess why?”

  I had a pretty good idea where this was leading now.

  “Let me guess, Kozlov and Polzin own the company that processed the data.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, not only were they going to be cutting off my other mining sites, they were also going to control a large site containing the exact metal I’m running short of for my contract to produce Merton’s Magnets.”

  “But now those sites are almost certainly going to be yours. Your existing mining operations are safe, your government contract just got way more profitable and we are going to cut that ridiculous blue cock off of Mars. Can I get a ‘hell yeah’?”

  Eve stood and held her hand up as if expecting a high-five. I ignored her raised arm and rushed in, picking her up off the floor and spinning her around, yelling various versions of ‘woohoo’. She laughed and held on to my head for balance, inadvertently pulling my face into her cleavage. I could feel the twin swells of her breasts on my head through the thin material of her shirt and as I stopped spinning she held my head less tightly, but didn’t let go. I looked up at her and her clear blue eyes looked down at me and we stared at each other in tense silence for agonising seconds.

  I loosened my grip and her body slid against mine on her way back to the floor. I was lost in the beautiful blue that remained fixed on me as her face passed mine, bare millimetres from touching. Her feet hit the floor again and it seemed to shake her to her senses. She cleared her throat and stepped backwards.

  “Ahem. So, what does a quadrillionaire do to celebrate?”

  “I… don’t know.” I had to admit.

  “What do you mean you don’t know? I’m supposed to be the one who’s never lived!”

  “I guess I’ve just always… worked more.”

  Eve put her hands on her hips. “Are you fucking kidding me? No. Wait here.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen and left me standing there thinking about the feel of her body, the depth of her eyes and of course feeling like a boring workaholic. She returned with a bottle of Champaign and a glass, but I only had eyes for the person carrying them. She popped one and filled the other, handing me the glass.

  “I bet that tastes good.” She said wistfully before pressing some buttons on a control panel on the wall. Over the ship’s speakers the sound of a crowd cheering faded in, followed by a slow guitar riff, repeating several times. The crowd began clapping in unison, foreshadowing the drums that soon began to define the beat of the song. Out of nowhere a singer with a voice as powerful as an air raid siren yelled a wordless wail, following the tune of the guitar.

  Eve’s eyes were closed and she was swaying in time with the drums as the singer broke into the first verse, the crowd sang along.

  “Doesn’t it make you want to move?” She asked without opening her eyes. I took a huge gulp of Champaign and watched as her swaying became more pronounced. My heart was thudding in my chest again, I wanted her desperately, but had promised to respect her boundaries. Eve’s hands ran up each side of her body, lifting the bottom of her shirt and briefly displaying her taught navel and belly button before the garment fell back into place. Her hands continued up her body, to the side of her breasts, up her neck and she ran her fingers through her hair, lifting it up from her head and letting it fall back down in a golden cascade.

  Through the speakers the lead guitar was joined by at least two others, drowning out any sound of the crowd as they played loud and hard. The singer progressed into the chorus and the song picked up pace noticeably. I gulped down the rest of my Champaign and Eve opened her eyes.

  “Dance with me.” She said.

  “I don’t really know how…” I responded.

  “That wasn’t a question, Xavier.” She grabbed my glass, put it down and then dragged me away from the wall.

  “Let’s go slow.” She said and wrapped my arms around her before holding me close, like our first embrace. She writhed against me, seeming to move at half the pace of the song, which had slowed again as the second verse began. It was all I could do to slowly steer us around the small room. The music surrounded us, drowning us in its power and emotion.

  I looked down at Eve and saw that tears were streaming from her closed eyes, even as she continued to move with the music, a wet patch was forming on my shirt. The song picked up pace once more and the crowd was drowned out again as the band ripped through the chorus for a second time. I couldn’t make out the words, the balance of instruments to vocals was probably not what would have been set in a studio recording. All that was left was the raw feeling of the music and Eve continued moving against me.

  The extra guitars dropped out and the singer launched into the third verse, I could make out some words, he was singing about confusion of some kind.

  “Do you like it?” Eve asked.

  “I love it.” I replied honestly. “What is it about?”

  “It’s about losing everything, not knowing why, and trying to get it all back.”

  The now familiar change of pace and volume that signalled the chorus returned, with the addition of some guitarist soloing all around the melody. The singer’s voice conveyed pain and anger as he growled through more words that I couldn’t make out like a wounded angel singing a dirge in a higher language. This time the chorus didn’t die out, it retained the volume and pace, incorporating the original guitar riff that had opened the song. One by one all the guitarists, or maybe back-up singers, began singing along wordlessly, plucking notes from their mouths in perfect harmony with the notes coming from the guitars. It was impossible, the power and the harmony coexisting at the same time. The lead singer seemed to be ad-libbing for the live crowd, sometimes belting out a few lines of song, sometimes pleading with some unknown antagonist, yelling out his loss, eventually being drowned out by his own band as they jammed around the basic tune. All at once, by some queue, the band stopped and the cockpit echoed with a crowd going wild, which then faded out.

  “Did he get everything back?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Eve said and looked up at me without letting go, even though the music was gone. I wiped the tears from her face.

  “It’s exact
ly how I feel. Those people who have been dead for hundreds of years, it’s like they know me. I miss what I never had, I miss the ones that I never lost. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel anything?”

  “I can’t answer that, Eve, I’m sorry.”

  She held my eyes and I was lost again.

  “I want you to kiss me, Xavier.”

  I brushed a hair back and tucked it behind her ear, leaving my hand gently touching the side of her head as I bent down and softly pressed my lips to hers. Our tongues met in the middle, neither in my mouth nor hers, and stayed almost still in the midst of our kiss. I pulled back but Eve held my head and prolonged the kiss, as if she never wanted it to stop.

  “That was wonderful.” She whispered when we finally pulled apart. “I feel like I can almost remember doing that before.”

  Eve looked up at me nervously.

  “You still promise not to hurt me, right?”

  “Of course,” I responded “why would I want to hurt you?”

  She didn’t answer my question, instead asking “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Yes, Eve, you’re perfect.”

  I saw her throat work as she swallowed, then she spoke again. “Here’s the thing… I’d like to give you that blowjob you asked for… you know, if you still want it.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes. Because you’re right, Xavier, you’re not an asshole usually. You’re actually kind of nice. You’re my best, and only, friend, so if I can make you feel as good as you’ve made me feel since you stopped treating me like an all-in-one coffee machine/bean grinder, I’d like that very much.”

  I realised then that I’d treated all women like an all-in-one coffee machine/bean grinder. How strange to be taught something so fundamental about my character from something that wasn’t even supposed to be alive. Not for the first time since meeting her I felt ashamed of myself. Eve stood close, awaiting my response.