Mark Leigh - Dick Longg - Sexual Saviour of the Universe

Dick smiled back. ‘Please. I’m not that sort of guy’.

‘I think you’ll be impressed’, Maxx continued.

‘Really?’, asked Dick, now smiling. ‘Remember who you’re talking to!’

Dick and Maxx then both fell about in convulsions of laughter, proof if anyone needed it that men of all ages and positions in life could find amusement in jokes about penis size. Trying to compose themselves the two men marched off to look at the Party’s secret weapon.

It was late and very dark when the Party car pulled up outside a familiar building, the Scientific Research Centre. Carter exited first and opened the rear door. Dick and Maxx exited and all three walked to the main entrance in silence. The lobby was empty apart from a bored cleaner polishing the floor and two even more bored security staff polishing their buttons. Startled by the sight of the Leader they jumped to attention and saluted him. Returning the salute the Leader presented his ID chip to the scanner which blinked green. Dick and Carter followed suit.

‘But you’re the Leader. You don’t need to scan, do you?’, asked Dick walking alongside Maxx.

‘There are no exceptions. Not even for me’, Maxx explained. ‘Although it’s highly unlikely, someone could gain access by assuming my appearance and my identity’. He gave a wry smile as he continued at a brisk pace. ‘It has been known for people to use fake biometric chips, you know’.

Exiting the elevator on level five they walked along never-ending corridors, passing through three other security posts, the only sounds coming from the echo of their footsteps. Eventually they turned a corner to face two armed guards standing to attention outside a plain door. More salutes were exchanged. Dick noticed that this door resembled all the other plain doors they had walked past apart from one thing; there was no lock. Instead, adjacent to it at head height was a small glass screen. Maxx approached and placed his eye in front of it. Moments later there was a bleep of acceptance followed by a buzz and a whirr; the sound of an intricate lock being activated.

‘Retina scan’, explained Maxx. ‘And it’s only programmed to recognise two people in this facility; myself and my chief scientist, Dr. Hargreaves. Identity chips might be copied but no one can do the same with our retinas. Ispo facto, no one but myself and the good doctor can access this room’.

Dick remembered Dr. Hargreaves from the first time he was at the Scientific Research Centre, a snob of man in a swanky starched white lab coat, he recalled. He was still thinking about him as Carter pulled open the heavy metal door and flicked a switch. Light flooded a large room that was full of identical battered leather suitcases and, in the middle, a trestle table.

‘Here it is’, announced Maxx proudly. ‘The culmination of three years of research and development’.

Dick was about to say something stupid like, ‘The secret weapon is luggage?’ but before he could make a fool of himself Carter picked up one of the cases, hoisted it on to the table, took out a small key and unlocked it. Snapping open the two latches he opened the case. There, resting on a purple crushed-velvet lining was what could only be described as a ‘contraption’. It consisted of a large brass cylinder, several brass spheres, lots of copper tubing, some dials, a few small metal boxes and a whole load of complicated wiring. Dick thought it looked like the result of an unholy alliance between a tuba and a deep sea diver’s breathing apparatus.

‘The device is kept in the case for ease of transportation and for disguise’, Maxx explained. ‘After all, no one would ever expect that an old suitcase contains something of such importance, something of such overwhelming consequence that it will change the world!’.

‘So you keep saying’, said Dick.

‘And do you remember something else I said to you recently — that very soon, all resistance will be futile?’ Dick nodded. ‘Well this is why’.

Dick walked around the table, looking closely at the device within the case.

‘Go on, examine it. Tell me what you think it is’, said Maxx smiling.

Dick ran his hands over the copper tubes and the dials. He put his ear next to the large cylinder. He rapped one of the brass spheres to hear a dull, hollow ring. For some reason only known to him, he even smelled the wiring. He had absolutely no idea what this thing was. Weapons that were designed to have such a fundamental impact should be large, he thought. Large and matt black, the colour of choice for deadly weapons. This looked too small and too shiny to have anywhere near the sort of effect that Maxx was threatening.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it before’, admitted Dick. ‘Can you give me some sort of clue to what the weapon is?’

‘It rhymes with “prom”’, suggested Maxx.

Frown lines took over Dick’s forehead as he thought for a few seconds. ‘Mom?’, he offered.

Maxx shook his head.

‘Vom?’

‘”Vom?’’ That’s not a word!’ exclaimed Maxx.

‘It’s short for vomit’, offered Dick.

‘Why the fuck would my secret weapon be vomit?’, Maxx said with more than a hint of exasperation in his voice.

Dick’s confused expression indicated that he obviously hasn’t thought this one through. Maxx didn’t have the patience to wait and hear how Dick expected vomit to defeat the resistance movement, so he revealed the answer.

‘Rhymes with “prom”… try “bomb”’.

Dick flinched, accidentally knocking the table in the process and jolting the suitcase. In a reflex move he ducked down, covering his head with his hands.

‘Don’t worry. It’s not primed!’, Maxx explained, smiling.

Dick pulled himself to his feet and tried to regain at least some of dignity he’d just lost. He looked at the device again, this time with more respect. ‘And you’re going to blow up the resistance headquarters with this bomb?’, he asked.

‘No’, Maxx said. ‘ You don’t even know where it is, so how the hell would we?! In any event, even if we did blow it up, it wouldn’t stop any rebel factions from re-grouping and carrying on their work like they’ve done in the past. Up until now the Resistance has just been an annoyance — a boil on the backside of the Party. But there’s no knowing what trickery they might get up to in the future. Take you for example…’

Dick went slightly red.

‘Who knows what damage you might have done if I hadn’t recognised you?’

Dick went redder.

‘Tell me, how is it that some members of the population question the Party and take petty actions against it?’, enquired Maxx. ‘The sort of people that the Resistance try and identify and recruit. Why don’t these dissidents think and act like 99.9% of the population?’

‘The Resistance gives them an antidote to the monthly bromide injections. You must know that’, answered Dick. ‘This gives people a greater degree of free will. It makes them more questioning about this society’.

‘Precisely!’ shouted Maxx. ‘And as much as it pains me to say it, we’ve never managed to track down supplies of the antidote and whoever manufactures and distributes it. And we’re unable to even identify it within people’s bloodstreams. Which is where the bomb comes in.

‘Think back to our time Dick. Do you remember something called the neutron bomb? It was an atomic bomb specifically designed to kill people but leave buildings and the infrastructure intact’.

‘Sure’, Dick agreed. ‘It released deadly radiation but without a deadly blast’.

‘You’ve got it!’, Maxx smiled. ‘And that’s what gave me the idea for my weapon’. He patted the device proudly. ‘The Impotence Bomb’.