A million thoughts went through Dick’s head. Well OK, not a million of them. More like five. How? Why? Where? When? What?
‘I thought you looked familiar the first time I met you’. The Leader gently shut the office door behind him and closed the blinds fully. Dick stood totally still, thinking back to their first meeting. He recalled the slightly surprised look on the Leader’s face when they stared at each other and shook hands.
‘Of course, I knew it couldn’t be you. I mean, how could it?’ The Leader was a few feet from Dick, the gun aimed squarely at his chest.
Dick listened in silence.
‘But there was something not quite right about you. Something that didn’t add up. I felt, well… a disturbance in the Fabric’.
Dick frowned.
The Leader continued. ‘You wouldn’t understand’.
‘Is the fabric like ‘The Force’?’, Dick asked.
‘Shhhhhhhh’, hissed the Leader, looking furtively all around him before continuing. ‘But the annoying thing was, although I had doubts about you I couldn’t find anything to substantiate them. Whoever gave you your new identity is very clever. Very clever indeed. You stood up to the most robust security checks. We studied your background and the backgrounds of friends and colleagues. Again, there was nothing at all to arouse our suspicions. From time to time you seemed to disappear when we tried to track you, but again, that in itself didn’t alert me to who you really are. I decided my instinct must be wrong which is why I invited you on to the Ruling Council’.
Dick decided he had to act fast. He looked at the Leader facing him, still holding the gun. He judged the distance between the two of them and looked down at the heavy hole-punch on his desk. Then he looked up once more at The Leader, staring him straight in the face. The Leader went to say something but just as he opened his mouth, Dick let fly.
‘I think you’re mistaken’, he spluttered. ‘My name is Jeremy Brunel!’.
Dick, along with most Party members, had never heard the Leader really laugh. It wasn’t really in keeping with his personality as a ruthless politician or brutal leader. This time though, he let out a loud chuckle.
‘Is that the best you can do, Dick?’, the Leader smiled. ‘I was expecting you to have least thrown that hole-punch at me’.
Doing that, Dick thought, would have just been admitting his identity and therefore his guilt. No, he was sure he could bluff his way out of this mess. After all, many of his co-stars had complimented him on his smooth tongue.
‘I think you’re mistaking me for someone else’, Dick said with as much conviction as he could muster. ‘I’m Jeremy Brunel. I’ve never heard of this Dick S. Longg. Maybe I look like him, whoever he is, but I am most definitely not him’.
The Leader stroked his chin. ‘Hmmmmmm’, he said aloud. Stepping forward he lifted his gun and slowly ran the end of the barrel up Dick’s left cheek then along his forehead, wiping away a large bead of sweat that had formed there. The Leader then used the weapon to trace the profile of Dick’s nose and chin, studying his features intently. A second large bead of sweat formed. The gun moved slowly down Dick’s chest. ‘Well, you do definitely look like Dick Longg. And you sort of sound like him’. Dick didn’t like where this conversation was going. And he definitely didn’t like where the gun was going. It was now heading south of the equator, towards the inevitable destination of the Tropic of Penis.
‘There’s one way to settle the confusion once and for all’, said the Leader as the gun reached Dick’s fly.
Dick gulped. He then realised what was happening in the trouser department and gulped again. The Leader looked down and saw it too. Dick tried to prevent his erection from going any further but no matter how hard he tried, both the thought of sodomisation by Hulk Hogan and the truly frightening real-life threat of a shot to his penis failed to cool his ardour. The rubbing motion of the gun against the cloth of Dick’s trousers turned a mere swelling into a prominent lump into an enormous bulge. The Leader took the gun away and smiled.
‘Sit down Dick’. Dick did as he was told, relieved that the desk between him and the Leader would hide any further embarrassment. The Leader sat facing him and smiled.
‘Aren’t you remotely interested in how I finally realised your true identity?’
‘But I’m Jeremy…’
‘It was your penis’.
Dick stopped. The Leader didn’t.
‘My doubts about you were all but confirmed by David Parnell. One thing he learned from your colleagues was that they had managed, fairly recently, to get someone deep within the Party however they would not reveal who this person was, how it happened or where they were. Then I remembered that a short time ago, using stolen Party technology, one person travelled back to 2010 but two people came back. Two agents were dispatched to follow them but they failed to make a clear identification. You don’t need to be a genius to work out that the person brought back was most probably recruited by the Resistance to do their dirty work’.
Dick could only listen in shock as the Leader continued his explanation. ‘This person seemed to go under cover at about the same time as you appeared on the scene at the Ministry of Information. I’m far too suspicious to believe in coincidences to I decided to probe deeper to try and uncover evidence of your duplicity’.
As Dick’s anxiety levels reached ‘Code Red’ the Leader continued his explanation. ‘We reviewed every single inch of video security footage you might have appeared in. There were eight teams on the project and they went back weeks and weeks looking for any clues, however small. Well, three days ago they eventually found that clue. And you know what? It wasn’t small. It was in a video taken in your department at the Ministry of Information.’
‘Fuck!’, Dick thought. Then he thought some more, ‘Fuck!’ He knew there were cameras outside the entrance and in the lobby but he had no idea the actual offices and meeting rooms were all under video surveillance, and he doubted whether anyone else was aware of it.
The leader continued. ‘Of course, when I said the footage featured ‘you’, I meant you and Vera. You remember that night don’t you?’, the Leader asked, smiling. ‘Well, everything that took place was captured by the hidden security cameras. And I mean everything. You made quite a couple, or should that be quite a coupling?’
Dick choked; a combination of fear and the memory of that night in Meeting Room A. Being reminded of what happened was like someone opening-up an old wound. And squeezing lemon juice in it. Then vinegar. Then a bit of lime for good measure, then rubbing it with sandpaper before hitting it hard with a stick.
The Leader continued. ‘That’s when I thought, there’s only one man I’m aware of with a twelve inch penis’.
‘Thirteen…’ Dick added, realising that setting the record straight was also tantamount to admitting his guilt.
‘And that was Dick S. Longg, world famous porn star. Well, famous of course in his own world’.
‘But if you realised my identity three days ago’, asked Dick. ‘Why the hell didn’t you confront me then?’
‘Well, since we had you under close observation I knew you wouldn’t pose much of a threat, and I thought I could use the situation to my advantage’, explained the Leader. ‘I wanted to see whether you still had contact with the Resistance or whether you were in the field on your own. And of course, I wanted to see how you reacted to the news about David Parnell in the meeting. Your response was priceless!’. He smiled. ‘And I hope you also enjoyed me toying with you in my little introduction. I like to have my little jokes’.
Dick was stunned.
‘Mr. Parnell failed to report in to us this morning’, continued the Leader. ‘I don’t doubt you have some knowledge about what happened to him’.
Dick shrugged his shoulders but in a way so unconvincing that he might just as well have said, ‘Of course I do’.
‘Come on, Dick’, said the Leader with a strange half-smile. ‘Just tell us. You’ve got nothing left to lose’.
‘What about my life?’, asked Dick.
‘Okay, apart from that’, agreed the Leader, adding, ‘Anyway, it’s probably a fair assumption to say that Parnell was killed by one of your colleagues, acting on your tip-off’.
‘And if he is dead’, asked Dick. ‘Then you happily consigned him to his fate just to prove I was still in contact with the Resistance?’
‘Well, yes’, the Leader answered. ‘What is the sacrifice of one man for the greater good of the Party?’
Dick shot the Leader a glare that said you’re a cruel, callous, cold-hearted, contemptible fucker (he would have used the other ‘C’ word to complete the alliteration but the publishers said they didn’t really want that word in this book).
Noticing Dick’s look of abhorrence, the Leader shook his head.
‘Dick. I’ve changed’, he said, adding earnestly, ‘I’m not the man you once knew’.
Dick frowned.
‘Look at me Dick. Look at me’. The Leader had placed the gun down on the desk near him and leaned towards Dick. ‘We know each other… Imagine me with short hair and without a beard and moustache’.
Dick looked. Nothing, but yet…
‘And thirty pounds lighter’.
Dick thought there was something slightly familiar about him. Then the Leader rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo of tape measure; one that neatly wound its way around his strong bicep.
‘Fuck’. Dick thought. It had been over a century since he’d seen that tattoo, but here it was, instantly recognisable.
‘It… It… It can’t be!’ Dick stammered. You’re… you’re…’
‘That’s right Dick…’ smiled the Leader.
‘Maxx Boner!’, Dick gasped.
‘The one and only!’, The Leader / Maxx replied.
Dick slumped back in his seat, the colour having drained from his face almost instantaneously. Being threatened by a loaded gun and then having your identity revealed was enough of a shock. Having it busted by your porn star rival from the past was enough to give anyone cardiac arrest. He thought back top his own time, to the day Maxx Boner suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the industry. At the time rumours about his disappearance were rife. Some said Maxx had been murdered by drug dealers or by the jealous boyfriend of an actress he was screwing on and off screen. Other stories were far more salacious. These included him being kidnapped and slain by a poorly-endowed serial killer, known by the FBI as ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ or suffering hideous shaft blisters when a cheap penile sheath he’d been wearing to increase his length had caused a chronic allergic reaction. And to think, all along he’d been living in the future.
‘Fuck me!’ Dick was still stunned at meeting up with his rival once again. ‘Maxx Boner by name. Maxx Boner by nature’.
‘Sadly no more’. The Leader said dolefully. ‘Probably like you, my disappearance and my appearance here were so sudden I had no time to take the things most dear to me’.
‘Like photographs of loved ones or childhood mementoes?’, enquired Dick.
‘No. My penile implant inflator and valve set’, Maxx said with a dismayed expression.
So the rumours were true after all, Dick thought. Maxx had relied on artificial aids to sustain his erection and without his inflator he was like someone with… someone with… well, the best analogy he could think of was someone with a very long but very floppy penis.
‘But couldn’t you use the technology here to compensate?’
‘That’s what I thought’, Maxx said. ‘That notion… that promise… it’s what kept me going. The then leader of the Resistance and his colleagues tried all sorts of methods but nothing worked. My erections either took too long to achieve or they were extremely painful. Usually both. And having to inflate your penis with a bicycle pump for forty minutes beforehand is guaranteed to kill any amorous moment stone dead.
‘So, even under pressure you couldn’t rise to the occasion?’, Dick asked.
‘I just wish the technology had been as clever as your witty word play’, Maxx sighed. ‘I had my doubts about using a compressed air line from the start, but I was assured it was safe’.
‘My god. What happened?’, asked Dick.
‘The relief valve stuck…’, Maxx grimaced at the memory that was obviously still fresh in his mind. ‘Pressure build-up’. The rest of the words came slowly. ‘Muscle torn…’
Dick winced.
‘Testicle rupture…’
Dick crossed his legs.
‘Shrapnel embedded in scrotum…’
Dick stuck his hands over his ears and went ‘La, la, la, la, la, la’.
Maxx continued. ‘There was nothing they could so. Going to a public hospital was impractical. My injuries would have raised too many questions and my identity would have been compromised. The Resistance did the best they could to stem the blood loss and patch me up’.
Dick thought this was exactly the right moment to say words of encouragement. The problem was, he couldn’t think of any. Dick looked at Maxx and thought it was like talking to a world-class envelope licker who’s just lost his tongue. Any words of encouragement were instead replaced by a banal platitude.
‘But at least you’re alive…’
‘Yes, alive but now permanently incapable of sex’, Maxx said despondently. ‘Gone is my eleven inch erection…’ (‘Yeah, right’, thought Dick knowing it had only been ten inches at best). ‘Now my only satisfaction derives from getting girls to dress up and play with themselves in front of me’.
‘Milk maid?’ Dick asked.
Maxx nodded.
‘Slutty nurse?’.
Another nod. ‘I know I’m predictable’, Maxx admitted. ‘But it’s just a hobby. Not being able to screw meant I had to find a fundamental new purpose in life. That came easy’.
‘Unlike you’, Dick added, very unhelpfully. Maxx ignored him and continued.
‘I actually had two new aims. The first was to get my revenge on the people who dragged me against my will to this godforsaken time and who made me impotent. The second was to find a substitute for sex’.
‘The dressing up thing?’ asked Dick.
‘No you fool!’, shouted Maxx, pounding the desk. ‘That’s just a small but pleasurable diversion! I’m talking about power! The power I could wield by defecting to the Party and rising within its ranks’.
‘Oh’, said Dick.
‘Now come with me. I think we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, Dick’. Maxx gave a wry smile. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Dick, do you, Dick?’
Dick shook his head.
‘Good. And you may call me Maxx. ‘Leader’ is so very officious, don’t you think?’
Dick was thinking of lots of things, but that definitely wasn’t one of them. He was thinking that the game was up, that he was about to die and that he must find a way to escape. Before he had an opportunity to think of any more things Maxx had stood up and was beckoning Dick with his gun. ‘Let’s continue our conversation in more comfortable surroundings’.
It was as Maxx turned to open the office door that Dick suddenly saw an opportunity to cuff him with the hole punch, steal his gun and make a run for it. He decided, however, to reconsider his plans when he saw Carter standing sternly just outside the doorway. Maxx pocketed his gun and walked ahead of Dick while Carter followed dutifully behind. He didn’t hold a weapon but didn’t really need to. His expression and body language said more than a loaded gun could ever do.