Mark Leigh: Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe

‘Good day Mr. Longg, My name is Taylor. Welcome to the year 2150’. He shook Dick’s hand warmly. ‘I am the leader of the Resistance and these are our senior members’. He gestured to Dick’s audience. In addition to Alice there were two more men and another woman. Their initial shock had been replaced by friendly smiles all round.

Taylor continued, ‘You’ll meet everyone properly later, meanwhile they all have jobs to do’. Taking this hint everyone murmured their goodbyes and left the room.

Taylor sat down in one of the leather armchairs and indicated that Dick should join him. ‘Now I know what you’re thinking…’, he said, gesturing around him. ‘That this doesn’t look very much like the headquarters of a resistance movement’.

That was actually the second thing Dick was thinking. The first was whether he could get Alice into bed but he decided to keep that particular thought to himself.

‘Er, yeah, that’s right’, Dick agreed, going along with this whole time travel / resistance movement thing until he figured out exactly where he was and could plan his escape.

Dick did have pre-conceived ideas as to what a resistance HQ should look like and on the evidence of his current surroundings this certainly didn’t resemble one. Dick expected to see a whole room full of elaborate monitoring equipment. Another where members underwent hand-to-hand combat training. A firing range. Some sort of laboratory or workshop where all types of weapons were invented and tested. A place where missions were intricately planned and then briefed. And a room with a huge glass screen in the middle where enemy movements were plotted and tracked with intricate precision while everyone looks stern. He knew a lot of his ideas were based on what he’d seen in movies but despite this, he was sure a resistance movement HQ should not resemble a room in a private gentleman’s club.

A cynical Dick voiced his doubts. ‘How do I know I’m really in the future and actually in your headquarters? For all I know I could have been drugged or knocked unconscious and just taken from the set to a house somewhere in Beverly Hills’.

Taylor grinned. ‘And why would we have done that Mr. Longg?’, he asked.

Dick collected his thoughts for a few seconds before answering. ‘Maybe you know my worth as a top porn star and you’re going to hold me hostage in a locked, darkened room or a deep pit until someone pays a multi-million dollar ransom’.

Taylor frowned but let Dick continue without interruption. ‘Or I’m here because you’re going to kill me and use my skin to make a cape that you can swan around in and say, “Hey everyone, look at me. I’m wearing the skin of Dick S. Longg, aren’t I mad and glamorous”. Or maybe you lost your penis in a gardening accident and I’m here so you can transplant mine on to your stump so you can be a real man again’. By the looks he was getting Dick knew he was both clutching at straws and fumbling for answers.

Taylor shook his head. ‘Mr. Longg, I give you my word as a gentleman that none of those reasons are even remotely true’.

Dick tried to think of more explanations. Thoughts buzzed around his cortex about his abductors wanting to truss him up and milk him like a cow, using his semen to create some sort of bio-fuel, or using fractional distillation to turn it into gold, but he thought that these were scientifically impossible as well as being plain silly. After a while Dick gave up thinking of other reasons why he was here and just frowned, chewing his bottom lip.

Taking advantage of the silence, Taylor continued. ‘Mr. Longg. Although it is, admittedly, a very difficult concept to grasp, maybe you should just accept where you are, that we are all telling the truth and we really do need your help. So much so in fact, that Alice was willing to risk her life and we were all willing to risk detection in order to bring you here’.

Dick thought back to something Alice had told him and smiled. The smile wasn’t because of what she had said, but because despite his short attention span, he was pleased he’d actually managed to remember anything she’d said at all.

‘Alice mentioned that the Party tracked her when she went back to my time’.

‘That’s right’, confirmed Taylor. ‘That’s how the two agents they sent eventually materialised in the same place as she did and tried to kill you both’.

‘But doesn’t that mean that they can now track us back here?’ Dick scared himself with this thought. His eyes darted around the room and he took on the appearance of a frightened rabbit, assuming a ridiculous-looking kung fu pose, en-guard for anyone or anything about to materialise out of thin air and kill him.

‘No’, Taylor smiled. ‘They can’t detect us now. Our headquarters is your home and your hideout until it’s safe for you to leave’.

‘And when do you think that will be?’, Dick enquired, looking around again at his strange new surroundings.

‘When you’re acclimatised to our world and trained in your mission’.

‘That would be my mission to overthrow the Party?’, Dick asked.

‘That is correct’, agreed Taylor, very matter-of-factly.

‘And why do you think I’ll be able to help you? I’m sure there are loads of people in the Resistance better and more skilled than me who know this world and what they’re up against’.

‘You flatter us Mr. Longg’, commented Taylor. ‘The Resistance is too small, too inexperienced and too under-equipped to topple the Party however we are constantly trying to frustrate or embarrass it. We break into museums and remove the fig leaves that the Party has added to nude statues. We graffiti public spaces with anti-Party slogans, or just giant penises. We once found a cache of old inflatable sex dolls, filled them with helium, and set these adrift over London’.

Dick smiled at this very juvenile form of terrorism.

‘With your help, however’, Taylor continued, ‘We hope to deal it a serious blow’.

‘But what can I do that you can’t do already? I’ve got no special skills. I’ve already told Alice that I’m a lover, not a fighter’, Dick explained. ‘Sure, I can give you the benefit of all my experience as an award-winning top porn star but I’m sure you didn’t bring me all this way just to give you hints and tips for what makes a good video to jerk off to’.

‘No’, Mr. Longg, ‘The reason you are here is because recent intelligence leads us to believe the Party is planning something big. Very big. We think they are developing some sort of secret weapon to use against us. You’re the one man who can find out what this is and ensure they never get to use it’.

‘And you really believe I can do all of that?’, asked Dick dubiously.

‘Mr. Longg’, Taylor replied, looking him straight in the eye, ‘It really doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is that someone very important in the Resistance believes it’.

‘And that is…’ asked Dick.

‘She’s called The Oracle’, said Taylor with due deference. ‘You’ll meet her shortly. In the meantime let me show you what we do here. I think you’ll be impressed’.

‘Whatever’, Dick muttered under his breath.

As they rose, Taylor turned to Dick and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, ‘Only a few key personnel in the Resistance know who you are and why you’re here. We’re keeping it from the rank and file members’. Dick listened intently. ‘There are sound reasons for this. Firstly, the fewer people who know, the greater the chance of you, and us, remaining undetected. Secrecy, caution and a little luck have meant that the Party hasn’t been able to find this location or identify any of our current members, all of whom lead respectable jobs in society, some even working under the very nose of the Party itself’. Taylor continued, ‘Secondly, if I told the whole membership about you, it might raise their hopes and lull them into a false sense of optimism for the future. Even among those who knew about the plan to bring you here, there is a great expectation. One or two of them are even calling you ‘The Messiah’’.