Tales From the Terran Republic

Chapter Jon Pulls a Fast One and Shelia Strikes it Rich

“Jon-Jon! Oh I was sooo worried about you!” A stocky Polynesian woman with a streak of gray in her hair cried as she threw herself on him kissing him repeatedly on the head. The nurse who escorted her smiled and left, closing the door.

“Jon-Jon?” Jon asked with a laugh.

“I’m one of your lovers darling! I rushed here all the way from Nakamura when I heard you got a little boo-boo!” she exclaimed as she laid another big kiss on his face. “Damn, it’s good to see you again Jon,” she said with a toothy smile.

“Same here, Oliana. How have you been?”

“Doing great! I signed on with Greyweather Consulting and business has been good!”

“Still can’t believe you went and became a merc,” Jon said shaking his head. “What about all that talk of settling down and becoming a real nurse?”

“Yeah… I tried that. Fuck that noise! I lasted all of four months before I had to walk. So much bullshit! Couldn’t do anything without asking some asshole for permission. With Greyweather I can actually do shit, actually save lives instead of standing in front of a computer screen with my thumb up my ass.”

“Well I for one am very happy the nasty rumors I heard about you were true,” Jon smiled. “So, you got it?”

“Of course sweetie,” Oliana said as she opened the huge box of chocolates tucked under her arm and lifted off the top tray revealing a med-scanner, vials of an evil looking green liquid, some syringes, and other devices. “And I got you the good stuff. It even isn’t expired yet!”

“Is that greenweaver?” Jon asked in surprise. “That’s restricted...”

“Well you said you were in a hurry, darling, and this is hurry in a bottle. Roll over and let me peek at that cute backside of yours.”

With a pained grunt Jon rolled over on his side. Oliana pulled out the scanner and carefully surveyed the damage.

“Tsk… Civilians...” She said.

“What? Did they screw something up?” Jon asked in alarm.

“Nah, it’s fine, perfectly textbook for a civilian surgeon. They let the goddamn bots do the work. Perfectly safe, lazy, and exactly why your ass was going to be laying here for quite awhile. Don’t get me started… Yup. We can work with this,” she said as she pulled a thin plastic pad from the chocolate box and carefully slid it underneath his vitals monitor.

“There, now they will be none the wiser,” she said with a smile. “Your real vitals are about to do some freaky shit.”

“Oh I’m down with the freaky shit.”

“Not like this you aren’t,” she laughed as she pulled up his gown and drew a measure of the green liquid into the first syringe. “Ever had this stuff in your spine before?”

“Nope.”

“It might sting a little. Seriously. This is going to hurt.”

“Do I need something to bite on?”

“Won’t help,” Oliana said as she pulled out some combat auto-injectors

“Shit. Are you going to heal me or shoot me?”

“They will prevent you from going into shock. Yeah, it’s going to be that bad, Jon. You sure you want to do this?”

Jon just smiled at her as he reached for the first auto-injector...

***

“You’re tough. I’ll give you that,” Oliana said about an hour later. “That’s all we can do for now. We wait for two hours and then we start the second course.”

“Can’t wait,” Jon said grimly looking quite pale and haggard.

There was a beeping noise.

“What’s that?” Jon asked with a little concern.

“My lookout just picked up a nurse saying that she was going to check on you,” Oliana said as she covered up the box. “She thinks you’re cute by the way.”

The door opened and the nurse walked in.

“It’s time for your morning meds,” she said with a big smile and then paused. “Are you feeling ok?”

“Oh yeah, just fine,” Jon said with a pleasant even smile. “Just got a rather unpleasant e-mail, that’s all. Sorry, can’t talk about it. Classified. I don’t mean to be short but I really need to get back to it,” he said weakly raising up his tablet.

Everything doesn’t look fine, she thought as she pulled up his vitals on her work tablet. Everything was well within normal ranges though. That must have been one hell of an e-mail. “Ok, here,” the nurse said handing him a little polymer cup and a glass of water. It took all the willpower he had to move his arms but he took them with a smile.

“Appreciate it,” Jon said forcing another smile. When Oliana said it was going to hurt she wasn’t fucking kidding.

As soon as the nurse left Jon just sagged into the bed. “How long is this hell going to last?”

“No more than a couple of days… tops.”

“Are you fucking with me right now?”

“I really wish I was.”

***

Timing her work around visits from an entirely overly inquisitive nurse, damn her good instincts, Oliana finally finished up the third and final series.

“There. You still with me Jon?”

“Define ‘with you’?” he laughed weakly. “Now what?”

“Now you suffer for awhile,” she said as she pulled out a tablet and carefully examined his real, actual vital signs.

“Lovely.”

“I’m going to hang out for a bit to see how these first few hours go but then I have to bail. I would rather not go to prison. I would for you in a heartbeat, honey, but not if I can avoid it.”

“No. Don’t risk yourself over this. Go now.”

“Not until I see how this is going to turn out. These civilian twerps don’t know about this shit and if anything goes wrong they are going to need me. Don’t worry your pretty little butt,” she said giving it a little pat. “Everything goes well and I will be able to get away long before they figure out what I did.”

“I feel like a shit not asking this until now,” Jon said as he clenched his teeth, “but how are you going to get away?”

“Sweetie, I’m with fucking Greyweather. Just give us a good half hour before you peel off that sensor and I’ll be halfway to a waiting ship and when they pull up their security feeds it will be like I was never even here.” she said with a smile.

“Nice,” Jon said as he convulsed. Oliana jumped up with her scanner.

“Shit. Don’t scare me like that!” She exclaimed.

“Don’t scare you?!? What the fuck was that?!?”

“Just some nerves coming back online. No biggie.”

“If that’s no biggie, what’s a biggie like.”

“Let’s just hope you don’t find out.”

***

“Jon, that’s the last injector I can give you,” Oliana said gravely about two hours later. “It’s about to really get rough.”

“Oh... that doesn’t sound good.” Jon mumbled.

“On the bright side,” she said stroking his face, “It looks like everything took. They should be able to take it from here or at least have time to call someone.”

“You’re... gonna split?”

“Yeah, all they have to do now is monitor you and give you real neural stabilizers and maybe a pain blocker or two. They might try to tell you that you need to go into a medical coma but that’s bullshit.”

“I’ll… bear that… in mind...”

“Try to give me at least a few minutes before you separate that sensor from that little pad,” she said as she kissed his forehead. “But if you feel like you are going to pass out, be sure yank the fucker off before you do. I might not look like it but I can still haul ass… or take down a security guard if I have to.”

“All this affection is… completely inappropriate…”

“Not anymore it isn’t,” she said as she planted a big kiss on his lips. “Whatever it is you are about to do, kick some ass.”

“… intend to...” he said with a smile. “Now go. You will… get that half… hour...”

“If you need me, you know where to find me,” she said as she got to her feet. “And remember, Greyweather Consulting is the Republic’s premier provider of private strategic, tactical, security, and intelligence services. ‘If you want to cry havoc, call Greyweather.’… And we are all loyal to the Republic for what it’s worth. Don’t know what you are neck deep in but keep us in mind.”

With that she blew him a kiss and walked out the door.

***

About half an hour later the nurse on duty walked in.

“It seems like your sensor fell off. Oh, there it is,” she said as she picked the sensor out of the sheet and pressed it to his skin.

Her tablet started beeping immediately. She looked down at it in shock.

“That can’t be right...” She said.

She trotted out of the room and quickly returned with a full medical scanner in her hands.

“What? This can’t be…” She looked down at her scanner and then back up at Jon. He should be screaming in agony. Why is he just smiling at me? she thought and then she recalled the conversations between him and the doctor and put two and two together.

Accelerators!

“What did you do? What did she give you?” she demanded.

“What... do you think?” Jon mumbled with a grin.

She turned red in the face and screamed “IDIOT!!!” at him and sprinted out of the room.

About fifteen minutes later the door opened and an old Kalesh with a white robe draped around him walked in.

“Ok, you crazy bastard,” he said wiggling his eyestalks, “What are you on? What did she give you?”

“Greenweaver.”

“Holy shit. That stuff actually exists?” the old Kalesh said as he pulled out a scanner and gently rolled Jon over on his side.”

“Ow.”

“I can imagine,” the old doctor said as he looked at he scans. “Fuck, right into the spine too. How the are you even conscious? Hell, why didn’t you go into shock?”

Jon just smiled and reached under his pillow retrieving a handful of combat auto-injectors.

“You crazy stupid fucker! Well, I guess it isn’t crazy if it worked, huh?”

He rolled Jon back over.

“Oh, I’m Doctor Balken, formerly Major Balken by the way, Republic Army, and I’m going to be taking over your case. So, you have a gallon of greenweaver in your back and more injectors in your blood stream than I’ve ever seen before,” he wiggled his eyestalks, “This is going to be fun!”

He looked at his scanner again.

“Now I have a couple of questions for ya,” the doctor said, “This sort of black-magic voodoo was nothing but a wet dream back when I was in the service. Hell, it’s still nothing but a wet dream for most of us. Considering your… creative method in obtaining it I take it you want to keep this quiet or can I just call in the experts and be done with it?”

“...quiet...”

“Figured. Ok, next question. Is there a very and I mean very good reason for what you are doing?”

“yes… critical…Republic...”

“Good enough for me,” He said with an eye wiggle. “Ok, ambassador, let’s do this. I’ll do some quick research and make a few discreet phone calls but it looks like what you really need is a top-shelf neural stabilizer and probably something for what I can only assume are truly biblical levels of pain. You also have a brain-curdlingly high temperature but I don’t want to screw with anything metabolism related until I actually know more about whatever the hell I’m dealing with here. We will just have to go old school, very old school. We will get started with that and the we’ll do… something… about all that combat gunk in your bloodstream.”

He wiggled his eyestalks.

“Now I will leave you to your well deserved suffering,” He laughed as he left.

Moments later he heard the head nurse exclaim “Ice?!?” from down the hall.

***

Back on the White Star Helena had finally gotten around to talking to the passengers. She was quite relieved to see how well they were being treated.

“So are you one of them, too?” Rupert Glent asked Helena eyeing Roberts nervously.

“Me, nah,” Helena replied. “I’m just a reporter that sweet talked herself into one hell of an exclusive. I had absolutely no idea the cute guy I picked up at the bar was a fucking pirate,” she said as she poked Roberts playfully. “My ability to pick ‘em remains as fucked as ever.”

Rupert’s wife gave her a dirty look. “Please watch your language,” she said icily. “There are children here.”

“Oh shit,” Helena replied. “Sorry.”

She couldn’t see Roberts snickering behind her.

“So, how have you been treated?” Helena asked them as she switched on her camera.

“Just awful!” Rupert’s wife exclaimed. “We have to sleep on these rags and they just feed us cheap cereal and junk food!”

Rupert just winced.

“Ms. Helena," he said, "I think it would be far more interesting for your readers if-”

“Oh that sounds awful!” Helena gushed zooming in on his wife. “Imagine! Making you have to sleep on just a simple mattress with nothing but blankets and pillows… those animals!”

“And that isn’t the worst part!” she moaned. “All we get to drink is water, cheap sodas, and that awful synth-milk! My poor children!”

“Jesus...” Helena said in a shocked voice managing to keep a straight face.

“And the bread… It wasn’t fresh! It was at least a day or two old and I don’t know what ‘baloney’ is or what it’s made from is but it is simply-”

“It’s made of lips and assholes.” Helena said artfully angling the camera to accentuate the woman’s expressions. “Actually it’s all the parts of left over… whatever animal they got their hands on that week ground up into a pink paste and squeezed into a plastic tube.”

“Oh God!”

“Um, darling...” Rupert said giving Helena an evil glance.

“And that so called ‘cheese’… It is horrific! Each slice is wrapped in… wrapped in plastic!” she wailed. “I had to feed my children that!”

“And did you like it?” Helena asked panning over to the kids.

“Oh yes!” Rupert’s daughter exclaimed. “Baloney and cheese is awesome!”

Helena grinned at the kid. If she was anymore photogenic the camera would burst into flames.

“It is clear that you have truly suffered,” Helena said with big sympathetic eyes as she turned the camera back to Rupert’s wife. “It’s important that I document everything so the Federation, no, the entire galaxy knows what sort of savages these people are. What… what else have you had to endure?”

As his wife started to reply Rupert lunged forward putting himself between the camera and his lovely wife.

“So, Helena was it?” Rupert asked, “Do you have any idea what they are going to do to us?”

“I’m not sure to be perfectly honest,” Helena replied glancing uncertainly over at Roberts. “But I’ve kinda gotten to know their boss and she said you would survive this if you behaved. She seems to be the kind of woman who keeps her word… Right?” she asked looking over at Roberts.

“Right,” he replied. “If we were going to kill you we would have done it right off and not bothered with having to guard you and feed you cheap cold cuts and cereal,” he smiled. “Current plan is that we get you off this ship and back to civilization ass intact.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Rupert replied although he knew that if they were going to massacre them this guy certainly wouldn’t tell him about it.

“So, Rupert,” Helena said with a wicked smile as she made sure to frame his face perfectly, “what sort of money-grubbing porkie slime bullshit do you do when you aren’t cruising around space on a ship full of pedophiles and rapists?” Helena asked focusing the camera on him.

“Hey! I had no idea about that! I just knew the White Star was the best and I just wanted to take my family on a wonderful vacation, that’s all! All I knew was that this thing was supposed to be fantastic and that we were going to get to see a neutron star up close! I had no idea something like… like that was going on!”

“Lucky for you neither did we,” Roberts said with a cruel smile. “Because if we had our tactics might have been a little different, like you not having to endure bologna, fake cheese and Comet Soda different.”

Rupert flinched. Looking into Roberts’ eyes he had no doubt that he was telling the God’s honest truth.

“I only found out about it once our plan was already set and it was too late to make any 'adjustments',” Paul continued, “If we did know about it before hand, there would have definitely been 'adjustments'. Count on it. Be sure to let Axion Lines know how much you appreciate them almost making your family’s vacation especially ‘memorable’.”

“I intend to,” Rupert said with a snarl. “Trust me. I fucking intend to.”

“Darling! Language!” his wife exclaimed holding her hands over her daughters ears.

“He said ‘fuck’ mommy!” she giggled. “What does ‘fuck’ mean?” she asked just giggling her ass off.

“Stop it! It’s a bad word! Don’t ever say it!”

“But daddy just did!” the child exclaimed looking at everybody with triumphant wicked eyes.

“Your mommy, daddy and everybody else in this fucking room are very fucking lucky you are so fucking adorable,” Roberts said as he knelt down to face the girl. “And the word ‘fuck’ is a great word! All us pirates use it!” he said with a big friendly smile.

“Fuck!” the girl exclaimed.

“There you go! Now you sound just like a pirate!” Roberts laughed. “You have a lovely child,” he said to Rupert. “Try not to oink at her too much. It would be a real shame if she grew up to be like her... Wait… hang on...” Roberts said as he cupped his earpiece.

“Got it. We’re on our way!” He replied to the air. “Helena we gotta cut this short. The guys just found something unbelievable!”

“Wait!” Rupert’s wife called out. “Could you please talk to that leader of yours about what they are feeding us?”

“Heh… sure.” Roberts grinned.

“Paul, no.” Helena said playfully punching his arm.

“Killjoy,” Roberts replied with a laugh. “So kid,” Roberts said to the little girl. “What’s your favorite cereal?”

“Bunny Crunch!”

“Got it. I’ll put the word out that you get the Bunny Crunch,” he said to her as her mother looked on in horror.

“Bunny Crunch is awesome!” Helena replied. “You just gotta try it on ice cream!”

The girl looked up at Helena with wide eyes. Her mind had just officially been blown.

***

As they were heading to the bank Jessie came scampering up at a full sprint with a huge scientific scanner in her grip.

“(gasp) I just got relieved by T (gasp)! Can you fucking (gasp) believe it?”

“No. It’s-… and she’s gone,” Roberts replied to the back of Jessie as she tore off again.

Roberts just smiled and shook his head.

“What did they find?” Helena asked excitedly.

“We aren’t entirely sure yet,” Roberts replied calmly. “But if we’re right… Well it’s probably best if you just see it. It’s amazing!”

***

Everyone was just silently gathered inside a cluttered storage chamber looking down at something.

They were all packed so tightly Helena couldn’t see.

“Well?” Sheila asked excitedly.

“Give me a minute, geez!” Jessie said as she wrestled with an almost comically oversized scanner.

Helena finally managed to wiggle around them camera in hand only to find them all huddled around some boxes filled with rows of little vials filled with a white liquid.

“It’s confirmed! Semen!” Jessie almost screamed. “Perfectly chemically stabilized! I bet you could do in vitro straight out of the tube!”

“It’s… cum...” Helena said in a less than enthusiastic manner.

“Yeah, just look at it!” Sheila said excitedly. “Rows and rows of the money shot!”

“Cum… You drug me all the way over here for cum...”

“Do we have an id?” Gloria asked sounding like an actual human being and an excited one at that.

“Cum. You guys are excited about cum...”

“Working on it,” Jessie chirped. “So, Bunny, what is it?”

“While you have saved an amazing amount of data concerning ejaculate,” Bunny replied. “None of the images or movies capture it in sufficient detail for me to make any scientific comparison.”

“(sigh) The archive, Bunny! What do we have in the archive?”

“Surprisingly enough,” Bunny snarked, “we don’t have a whole lot in the way of semen related information. We dived deep but not that deep. (Thank God.)”

“Well you have to have genetic profiles of shit on file,” Sheila said.

“Cum… You made me sprint across the ship for some cum...” Helena muttered. “I had the queen of the porkies in my fucking sights and I let her go over cum...”

Nobody was paying her any attention, not even Roberts.

“Son of a bitch!” Eno shouted from further inside as he pulled out a glass covered frame. “Look!” he held as he held aloft a collection of butterflies. “And there’s more! Oh Mother of God!… Are these… bees?”

“Cum and dead bugs… of course…" Helena grumbled. "We have works from Leonardo da motherfukcing Vinci in the hold and nobody blinks an eye. A vault full of jizz and dead bugs and they lose their fucking minds...”

“Well can you scan the DNA or not, goddammit?” Sheila shouted at Jessie’s tablet.

“Yes and no,” Bunny replied. “With that stupid scanner that Jessie insisted on dragging along we can definitely image the DNA and I’m going through everything we have but so far I haven’t found much on genetic sequences of various species. It’s not what we usually go for, you know.”

“In all of those petabytes you don’t have a goddamn thing? Bullshit.” Sheila said impatiently.

“We have a lot of petabytes and I mean a lot of them,” Bunny replied. “It’s going to take awhile.”

“Cum… Seriously?” Helena muttered to nobody in particular.

“You’re in a fucking quantum supercomputer now. How long can it possibly take?” Sheila responded.

“Oh just the read times of the same old drives we always had. Jessie didn’t think it was important to migrate all that ‘old archival shit’.”

“Hey! Don’t blame this on me!” Jessie laughed.

“Who else is there to blame?” Bunny responded. “I’m just a fucking machine. I don’t do anything unless I’m told to.”

“You don’t do anything unless you are told to!?! Oh that is a steaming pants-load and you know it!” Jessie exclaimed as she gripped her tablet in both hands and stared straight into the camera.

“Hey!” Sheila barked snapping her fingers. “Focus you two! Can we do it and how long will it take?”

“Yes we can and I have absolutely no idea how long it will take,” Bunny replied.

“Ditto,” Jessie chirped. “No fucking clue. We may have to wait until we are back in the Republic and hit the networks. I’m not sure if we have a lot of genetic stuff.”

“You have absolutely everything else! How can you not have… Whatever. Bunny, start digging. Jessie start scanning. I want to get these back in the cases and out of the light ASAP.”

“Cum… Honestly?”

“My God!” Jessie bubbled happily as she opened another box. “Look at all these vials! There’s so much!”

“Ok! What is the deal with the fucking cum?” Helena demanded raising her voice.

Everybody stopped and just looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

“Don’t you realize what this is?” Roberts said excitedly.

“Splooge?”

“I almost forgot you were a porkie there for a moment,” Sheila replied. “Makes sense that you might not immediately get it.”

“So… Terrans love cum.” she turned the camera to face herself. “You heard it here first, gentle viewers."

“This is one of the things we prize more than anything.” Roberts said almost in awe.

“Note to self. Never kiss you again.”

“This is biodiversity! Terra took a beating and what the ash and frost didn’t kill we finished off ourselves,” Roberts replied. “A lot of species went entirely extinct either from starvation or from simply being hunted to extinction. That hamburger you like? Cows didn’t make it. They went completely extinct. They were re-created from genes that we managed to salvage somewhere and a lot of them are damn near clones, or actual clones, of each other. We have managed to find more than one sample, of course, but nothing compared to the diversity before they went extinct. The number of different varieties of even the humble cow was staggering! The same goes for damn near any other animal you can name. This could be completely new genetic source material either for an animal we already recreated or maybe even a lost species! Helena,” Roberts said looking deep into her eyes, “This is huge!” he exclaimed as he hugged her.

“So while the fire and ash was falling someone ran around jerking off their cows?”

“The right term is bull and no, they likely didn’t.” Greg laughed. “It was a common practice if there was an exceptional animal, a ‘prize’ cow, or horse, or whatever to collect its semen to sell to other breeders so they could impregnate their females with it. This is likely what this stuff is!”

“Weird.”

“The only thing that’s ‘weird’ is that it is just sitting here gathering dust!” Sheila exclaimed.

“Look at all the beetles!” Eno yelled from across the room while holding up another box of specimens.

“We have beans and grain over here!” Jacob yelled. “Holy shit! Look!” He hollered as he held up a handful of garden seed packets.

“We find fucking lost masterpieces in here and this is what you are surprised to find?”

“Well, yeah!” Sheila said with a laugh. “Those worthless paintings are damn near impossible to move, but this stuff… Jesus… You can quickly sell it for a fucking fortune which is exactly what we are going to do,” she said with glee. "The big bio firms will get into a bidding war over damn near anything. There are people who make a very good living ‘prospecting’ for just scraps of genes out in the wasteland. If this stuff is what I think it is, intact premium livestock goo, we can get an auction set up in just days and the take will be unbelievable. There is absolutely no reason for it to just be sitting here! Even a porkie would have no problem moving this. The bio giants would come to them! If any of those seeds are a new variety or lost species they are worth a fortune even by our standards,” Sheila said spinning around happily. “If nothing else it’s just neat as hell! This is better than anything we could have hoped for! Those paintings are just pretty. This stuff? This stuff is useful!”

“Yeah, it is weird that it’s just sitting here,” Jessie chirped as she was kneeling down among the cases of semen. “Bunny, can we find out who was the generous soul who just gave us this wonderful gift?”

“The encryption is pretty standard. Give me a minute...” Bunny replied as Jessie was gleefully scanning vial after vial.

“A hundred bottles of jizz on the wall… A hundred bottles of jizz!” Jessie started singing as she scanned away.

“Jessie I am fully prepared to hurt you,” Sheila laughed.

Jessie clutched a vial to her chest.

“Not in front of the children!” she giggled.

“Scan it! Don’t play with it! Jesus!” Sheila exclaimed as she shook her head.

“Oh you are going to fucking love this,” Bunny said as documents started to pop up on Jessie’s tablet.

“Well, now there’s a reason,” Jessie laughed. “Anyone here recognize the name Jayce Mortisen?”

“Who?” Roberts asked.

“He’s a brilliant scientist! An actual real fucking genius!” Helena gushed. “He has built a fucking empire on what he has created, not what he raided, or swindled, or stole, created! He just whipped up some of the most important crops we grow over here, no research team, no budget, nothing. He just sat down at his computer and just with just the power of his mind he… he… fuck.”

Sheila and the crew started laughing.

“Goddammit!” Helena yelled. “I admired that asshole! I even have one of his bullshit quotes hanging over my fucking desk! I can’t believe this!”

“Which quote was it,” Jessie giggled. “Was it the one with the angels, or the one with the doves?” she snickered as she held up an image of an inspirational poster as everyone howled with laughter.

“If you must fucking know it’s a cross-stitch I made when I was fifteen!” Helena said gritting her teeth.

The guys started roaring, Sheila was literally crying with laughter and Jessie was giggling so hard she was gasping for breath.

“Yeah, laugh it up!” Helena yelled. “Fucking laugh it up! I bought it! I bought the whole line, him fleeing from Earth with only the clothes on his back and the desire to build a better future for the whole human race, the whole ‘pull yourself and your people up by your bootstraps’ bullshit, the power of inspiration and creativity, all of it! Gah!!!” she ranted. “Did you know we awarded him the Humanity Award? That’s like one of our greatest honors! He was even given the fucking Federation Spiral!… Oh I’m going to fucking bury him!” she yelled. “Jessie! Can you get me proof, like something even a greased porkie can’t wiggle out of kind of proof?”

“Hey, you’re the reporter. You figure it out,” Jessie laughed. “No but seriously we’ll get you what we can. Pulling down a beloved porkie icon sounds fun!”

“Um… guys?” Jacob yelled as he opened another footlocker and pulled out a nearly empty bottle of seeds. “These samples have Cyrillic labeling...”

“Oh, do they now?” Sheila said, her eyes flashing. “Helena, my dear,” she said as she gave Helena a look that made her blood run cold, “We are going to be finding out all about this guy. I personally guarantee it.”