The Loinfire Club reads... An Original Sin

An Original Sin, by Nina Bangs

Fortune MacDonald listened to women's fantasies on a daily basis as she took their orders for customized men.

In a time when the male species was extinct, she was a valued man-maker. She had created some of the best prototypes around - from Stud-Muffin-Stuart to the ever popular Hunka-Hunka-Burning-Love-Leroy model.

So when she found herself sharing a bed with the most lifelike, virile man she had ever laid eyes or hands on, she let her gaze inventory his assets. From his long dark hair, to his knife-edged cheekbones, to his broad shoulders, to his jutting - well, all in the name of research, right? - it didn't take an expert any time at all to realize that he was the genuine article, a bona fide man. And when Leith Campbell took her in his arms, she knew real passion for the first time...but had she found true love?

The Loinfire Club gather again in the living room cluttered with second-hand romance novels, alcohol of various varieties, dirty dishes and the remains of buttercream birthday cake (our dear Pillywiggin happens to be getting older). The night of rampant romance-novel-reading begins...

It is noticed that there is some Bug Juice left in the bottle.

Big L (sniffing the bottle): "It smells like yogurt."

The Balance: "It probably means it's fermented..."

Big L sips it: "Tastes better than it smells"
The dead Bug Juice is passed around. It is used by some unscrupulous individuals to menace Sordan, who probably enjoyed it too much.

There is some confusion about what Bug Juice is.

The Anthropologist: "It's Bug Juice in the sense that it was made out of something that was under a log for a most of its lifetime."

The Balance also points out that "We also have 'Glen's Exciting Vodka.' "

The book today, due to a distinct lack of Classicists, is "An Original Sin" by Nina Bangs. There is some pre-reading discussion about what new categories we should be drinking for.

Big L (noticing the book is SciFi): "I believe we might need Stupid Science in a category. And a μ-category, for catgirl type things."

Pillywiggin: "Why are there Catgirl references?"

Sordan: "The heroine's really..."

The Balance (refering to the Stupid Science as a category): "Maybe we could just call it Physcis."

Big L: "Physics doesn't sound quite right...Just spell it: FIZZICKS!!!"

The Anthropologist: "This is the one book we don't need I'm not a slut as a category."

The Chronicler: "You're wrong."

The Anthropologist: "She works designing sexbots!"

Sordan: "Yes, but she doesn't go for them. I've read ahead. I know."

Pillywiggin: "We'll also need the Lesbianism sucks category."
Sordan reviews the new and expanded list of things to drink for and we begin.

Big L reads, or rather, doesn't: "We start with a monologue by Satan. I'm not going to read this because there's no sex. It's all about how he's a trickster. He berates boringness of plagues and then finally decides he's going to bring two incompatible people together and ruin their lives. MWAahahahaha."

But at the insistence of the rest of the Club, Big L reads Satan's monologue.
Big L reads: "War. Been there.
Famine. Done that.
Pestilence. Ho hum.
Drought. Boring, boring..."

Sordan: "Why does Satan sound like a Jersey girl?"

There is some confusion in the Club over Jersey and New Jersey.

Sordan: "Read it with the accent."
Big L: "I can read it in Wasp voice or normal voice. I'm not reading it in a Valley girl accent."

The Club urges him to read it in Wasp voice

One more sin...
The Anthropologist: "I never noticed how Austrian Waspor is."

Sordan: "I am the Govenator."

The Anthropologist: "I am here to kill you all."

Got it! Am I inspired or what? I'll whip up a disaster of the heart. All emotional catastrophe, no upset tummy. Something small, intimate, with room for growth.

Sordan: "That is not original. Not even a bit."

The Chronicler notes the title.

Pillywiggin: "Not anything with blood or anything. Just kinky shit."

First, I'll choose two of the least compatible people on earth, guaranteed to hate each other's guts. Now it really gets good. I'll cleverly encourage them to fall in love; then when they're panting for each other, I'll rip them apart forever. Brilliant.

Sordan: "Satan is so unoriginal."

Big L: "Because he is fail Satan."

Pillywiggin wants to cry: "If Satan actually talked like that, I can really see why everyone hates him."

Sordan: "When we die and go to Our Special Hell we should petition God to make us collectively Satan.

The Loinfire Club, serendipitously numbering seven today, decides this is a brilliant idea and concludes that the Seven Deadly Sins should be divvied up between us.
Sordan: "Dibs on Sloth."

Big L: "But..."

Sordan: "I am slacking off right now, therefore I should be Sloth!"

The Balance: "But Big L has a lifestyle based around slacking off."

Sordan: "In that case, I'll take Wrath"

Pillywiggin: "Damn, I wanted Wrath."

The Balance: "Clearly that makes you Jealousy."

The discussion branches off into what exactly are the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Anthropologist: "We could be just be Jewish Sins. If we're based around a different sort of Abrahamic religion then we don't need to remember it."

Pillywiggin: "To the WikiMobile!"

There is a tap at the window. It appears Lady Miriam has arrived.
The Anthropologist: "Are we going to fuck up the numbers by opening the door?"
The door is eventually opened.
It is decided that the Anthropologist should be Gluttony.
Sloth (Big L): "As Gluttony you should have the Icing bowl."Gluttony (The Anthropologist): "I could be Emo."Wrath (Sordan): "Emo is now a deadly sin."
Sloth (Big L, who is ignored): "Let us make a bold entry into Chapter One."
Envy (Pillywiggin), to Lady Miriam: "You can be Gluttony."Gluttony (Lady Miriam): "Yeah, alright. Is there any food left?"
She is pointed to the SpagBol. She then asks why she is offered the position of Gluttony.
Wrath (Sordan): "Well, we've carved up Satan by taking a sin each because the one in the book is just too fail."

Envy (Pillywiggin): "Right, that's my afterlife planned. Except that you two have taken up the good sins."

Wrath (Sordan): "Together we're the eight facets of Satan."

An Original Sin, continues, part two...

Big L: "I've read this page and I want to share the horror."

Man-maker conventions were hell...
Four-Two-N wakes up in a strange room, in a unrecognised place.
First, Four-Two-N woke to find that her sleeping pad had drifted to the floor during the night. Scientists could build a floating city on Mars, but they couldn't make a sleeping pad that would stay suspended three feet in the air. Of course, scientists had screwed things up for centuries, so she shouldn't be surprised...
Luca: "My poor subject."

Strange. Had she gone to sleep in a museum? An antiquated picture of the galaxy hung above a bureau. A wooden bureau. With the scarcity of trees, no one had used wood for at least a hundred years. A fake? Maybe.
The Anthropologist: "Stupid backward logic!"

Finally, there was the small matter of something sharing her sleeping pad. Something large. She could feel it move against her back, hear it breathe. Which was why she'd stayed frozen for five minutes, staring at the stupid wall.
The last sentence Nina Bangs wrote for us. There is no need to snark.

spotted the silver chain, with her Celtic cross still safely attached, lying on the floor...

Pillywiggin: "Silly SciFi jargon. Will you go to the sleeping pad with me? is really quite unromantic."

She had a vivid imagination. She needed imagination in her line of work, but not for facing unidentified sleeping partners.
The Chronicler: "Why does she need imagination? Sex toys really aren't that complicated."
Big L: "She's never seen an actual man. So maybe..."

Pillywiggin: "I could have a small kitten's head... here..."
The Balance: "With a tiny lapping tongue..."
Pillywiggin: "And it spews milk!"

Maybe a large carnitak had followed her in and curled up beside her.
What?!
With her luck, a Saralian poison pig had escaped and chosen her out of all humankind to cozy up to.
What?!

Her thoughts scuttled in every direction.
Pillywiggin: "Scuttling thoughts! That's got to be a medical complication."
Lady Miriam: "There're spiders in my brain!"

A human male. A man. Just like her Dark and Dangerous Dick model, only better....
Pillywiggin: "Now I'm drinking to stop the pain..."
The Anthropologist: "Isn't that what Birthdays are for?"

Of course, he had to be a fake. Men had gone the way of the Dexovil rock burrower, extinct for fifty years or more. Another scientific screwup.
Luca (whispering): "The pain..."

Studying the man, she couldn't squelch a small stab of professional jealousy.
The Anthropologist: "The squeliching is back!"
Pillywiggin: "I thought we saw the last of the squelching after Night Play ended."

One of her friends, probably Three-Six-H...
Anthropologist: "Do they have any nicknames? Like Haychie or something?"
The Chronicler: "She eventually gets called Fortune."
Sordan: "F2N."
The Balance: "It's just super133tspeak, really."

The discussion turns to 13yr old boys and their love of 133tspeak. Hypothesis abound as to why the future has taken such a turn in naming traditions. Maybe it's because they miss their 13yr old boys...

Pillywiggin: "Or they had a culture of men bestowing names. And they were too lazy to think of anything so their national security numbers had to do."

Hmm, the hair looked like the real thing. Reaching out, she stroked it. Raw silk. She allowed herself a sensual shiver.
Pillywiggin: "How raw? Does it still have little caterpillars inside?"
The Chronicler also wonders why it isn't possible for manbots to have decent hair. After all, we have high quality wigs.

His face was molded perfection— knife-edge cheekbones, straight nose, full lips, long lashes.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complications! If your cheekbones are that sharp that there has to be something wrong!"
Pillywiggin: "Not only is he a sexdoll he's also a kitchen multi-purpose appliance!"

She almost hated the woman responsible for him...
The Chronicler could but wonder why these heroines are always so full of hate for their own gender (cf. Night Play's heroine who was going to run other women over for being pretty.)
Sordan: "Because the women who read these things hate other women?"

But was he anatomically correct? A lot of cheap models weren't very detailed. She'd check.
Pillywiggin: "Why would you slack off on the cock? Since that's what you buy it for."
The Balance: "Surely it'd be the toes or elbows where cheap models fail."
Pillywiggin: "Cheap models have wheels?"

Warmth and essence of male surrounded her. She frowned.
Pillywiggin: "How would she know what essence of male smelt like?"
The Anthropologist: "Well, one week after the great die-off of all the men, the survivors started extracting it from all the corpses."

How did his maker get that scent of desire and dark erotic nights?
Sordan: "How the hell would she know? She's never met one before?!"

She finally reached her destination.
Sordan: "Destination Cock"

This was what separated true artistry from assembly-line cheapies.
Luca: "They could build a floating city, but not make a good manbot."
Pillywiggin: "We're still coming back to the point that the assembly-line cheapies are probably skimping on the toes."

Utter brilliance. She couldn't suppress a small coo of admiration. Large, round, firm. Long, thick, hard...
The Anthropologist: "She's checking if she could see the injection mould lines."
The Chronicler: "I'm sure they make RealDolls that good now. So several centuries into the future..."
Pillywiggin: "All the sex doll making technology died with the men."
The Anthropologist: "If only they've taught women the art of making them, but no! Now it is all lost!"
The Balance: "So they must find all those secret lost manuals!"

Hard? She didn't remember anything hard down here when she'd first ducked under the cover. Hmm. Must be a clever use of sensors.
The Anthropologist: "I didn't press that button."

Liquid heat flooded her, then settled heavily into a bubbling pool of want in an area that had never experienced any kind of bubbling.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complications!"
Sordan: "Also, she's Not a Slut!"
The Balance: "Bubbling where there was no bubbling before..."
Pillywiggin: "What? Her left knee?!"
Sordan: "She has the bends!"
Pillywiggin: "She has a little swamp between her legs."
The Anthropologist: "No, it's a tapeworm! Tapeworm of love."

She'd created customized men for years and never once had a sexual reaction to any of them.
Sordan: "Not a Slut!"

They were fakes— a mass of Toglor fibers and electrical impulses. She prided herself on never forgetting that.
Sordan: "Trogdor! Burninating women's loins!"
The Anthropologist: "Stop ruining everything good about the world!"
The Balance: "It's making you angry. Wrath's job is done."

She teased her friends when they panted after her great-looking Hot and Horny Hal or Stud Muffin Stuart models...
The Anthropologist: "How would you have a conversation about that? I'm thinking of modifications on the Hot and Horny Hal model... Oh yes, I was testing it last night and I though..."
The Chronicler launches into an unnecessary rant about how current sex toys have stupid names because of the prudishness of our current times. The names and the colours are there to make them seem less threatening and less inherently sensual, therefore making them more harmless, more of a bawdy joke. In a future without men and where the reclaiming of feminine sexual identity and owning one's own desires is progressing, surely such mechanisms are no longer necessary...

The Anthropologist: "Maybe the rest of society is well adjusted. It's just the two percent who make and use these things are considered freaks."
Big L: "But there's enough of them that there are production lines to make these things."

Had she seen any sign of a scanglow? No.
The Anthropologist: "Both hidden camera technology and realdoll technology vanished? Is there a connection, perhaps?"
The Balance: "The men died."

She had to admit it. Her sex drive was on automatic pilot and begging for permission to land.
There is much pain over the metaphor.

Sex. She'd seen the disks, knew the basics of the ancient ritual. All she'd have to do was...
The Loinfire Club bursts into giggles about Unlicenced Geomancy!

Lady Miriam: "How can she make the best one if she doesn't know what it's supposed to do?"
Big L: "Well, she does the faces. Someone else does the animatronics."

Appropriate muscles spasmed at the thought of him filling her, touching every dark, wet, yearning space.
The Anthropologist: "Every one of them?"
Sordan: "Do women in the future have multiple vaginas?"
The Balance: "There are other spaces."
The Anthropologist: "But are they yearning spaces? That's very important in the sexual harrassment trial afterwards."

Reflexively, she kneaded him like a cat with eyes half-closed in feline bliss,
Big L: "μ!"
Sordan: "I really don't want to think about cats in that way!"

...while she imagined a joining she'd never know.
The Anthropologist: "Never known and never shall know because she's not a slut."
The Chronicler: "Or a lesbian."

Warm flesh sheathed in satin-smooth skin that slid slickly into—
Lady Miriam: "Poor, abused ampersand."
Pillywiggin: "You mean ellipsis."
The Balance: "Or in this case, the hyphen."
Sordan giggles about Harry Potter's hyphen.
Lady Miriam: "Maybe there should be a book for ellipses who aren't sluts."

With a discipline forged from her society's expectations, she ruthlessly clamped down on her useless fantasy...
The Loinfire Club are variously outraged, amused, frustrated and confused about these expectations of her society which the author never makes clear.

Men were gone, so she'd never experience that particular pleasure. And she'd never get so desperate that she'd lose herself in a fake. A make-believe man.
Sordan: "That makes no sense."

There is much bafflement about the lack of lesiabans. And Butch women. With multiple strap-ons.
The Balance: "And sex change."
The Anthropologist: "Ah, yes, we see a niche in our rich and diverse culuture which is unfulfilled. We must start lounging around in wifebeaters, watching foodball, eat steak and demand those who identify as female bring us beer..."
The Balance: "Maybe they have male reenactors the way we have historical reenactors."

Suddenly the body jerked. Oops. Had she broken him?
Pillywiggin: "What? They don't move? All they do is lie there and take it... no wonder they're shit."

"God's teeth, woman, I dinna know how much more I can stand. Cease cooing like a mating dove and show yerself."
She froze. Dinna? Cease? What a strange dialect...
Pillywiggin: "Don't tell me the Scotish have died out! What kind of a world is that?"

This didn't sound like any programmed response tone she'd ever heard...
The Anthropologit: "They're not only crappy but they have a small set of phrases they say. Like those action figures."
Big L: "That's so creepy."

Possibility sprouted and grew with the speed of a Pelmar choke-weed. It curled inside her stomach, making her feel the way she did each time she started a new creation. Putting out feelers, it touched her heart.
Pillywiggin: "Possibility is a small parasite."
Sordan: "Medical compication!"
Lady Miriam: "It's Lupus!"

Real? Could this be a real man?
He had eyes the color of jade, spectacular with their frame of thick, sooty lashes.

Big L: "That's a woman's eyes!"

There is much discussion about whether or not it is possible to have eyes the colour of jade. Sordan defends the author on this one, but others differ in opinion.
The Anthropologist: "So he has cloudy-white eyes... sort of seeping..."
The Balance: "Cataract!"
The Chronicler: "Other jade has blotchy red areas colouring the green."
The Anthropologist: "Denatured blood cells."

His slashing white smile disappeared, but she'd already noticed one slightly crooked tooth. Customers never asked for flawed men. OK, they did want men with oversize—
Sordan: "Hyphens."
Pillywiggin: "There's nothing like a giant hyphen."

"Not when I wake to find ye rooting beneath the cover like a wee pig."
The Anthropologist: "Really stupid animal metaphors should be a new category we drink for."
The Chronicler: "Maybe she's doing this on purpose."
The Anthropologist: "But if we go down that road it'll drive us insane."
Big L: "I'm not sure knowing she did it on purpose makes it better. It still exists to torment us."

She never programmed anything but polite chitchat and a few orgasmic groans into her creations.
The Anthropologist: "You look like a rooting pig."
Pillywiggin: "Nice weather we're having. Do you want a shag?"
The Anthropologist: "I'm here to fix the plumbing."

Fakes were never aggressive.
The Anthropologist: "You see, that's the sort of thing you expect to be programmed into these things."
Pillywiggin: "She's a rubbish designer and has no imagination."

Pulling the cover and her anger around her, she tried to ignore her body's embarrassing demands.
Sordan: "Have we had any description of her body? Is she a confirmed woman?"
Pillywiggin: "Maybe they didn't lose the men. They just forgot what they were."

OK, she'd admit they were a tad too big— big enough to double as rocket nose cones. But that was what her customers paid for.
The Chronicler: "How does she know?"
The Anthropologist: "She's read the reports from the product testing department. And they only gave four stars in that department."
Jokes are made about her being unwittingly part of a secret nuclear missile design program, disguising rocket parts as sex toys.

She frowned, trying to ignore the sexual implication in his words. Forget it. Everything about him shouted sex.
Sordan: "Clearly it's some sort of new pheromone."

"Customized models. Very expensive."
Sordan: "Everyone has a price."

As he nodded, a strand of hair fell forward, and he raised his hand to push it aside. Fascinated, she followed the motion. Male bodies were her business, but this one interested her more than usual.
Big L: "He's taken the Animal Magnetism ability."
The Anthropologist: "You smell like chocolate. And now I want to gnaw your elbow?"

There is a brief, inconclusive discussion about where in time they are.

Strong hands used to hard work, yet hands that would be gentle on a woman's body.
Pillywiggin: "How can you tell?"
The Anthropologist: "There's a little trademark on the side."
Lady Miriam: "And they've got velvet tips."

(The Chronicler at this point is irritated about the idea that sex toys are supposed to replace and mimic actual sex as opposed to provide different sensations. Why be limited by what a real man is like?)

Mentally, she shook herself. He couldn't be real. Men were extinct, victims of a gene-directed virus gone amok.
The Balance: "FIZIYCKS!!"

"What manner of demon's lair is this?"
The Anthropologist: "A demon's lair with wooden bureau. What kind of crappy demons are you used to?!"

Tis gone! I canna find my dirk...
Sordan: "Dirk! Dodgy comment!"

He sounded upset. She never programmed her models for extreme emotional responses. Well, maybe once. Six-Nine-R...
The Balance: "69-er!"
The Anthropologist: "There's still a lack of H's. We're still good."

...wanted her man to sing the commercial for Healthy Hot and Spicy Sausages— no fat or caloric content— while she climaxed.
Loinfire Club: "WHAT?!"

Big L read it again.
The Anthropologist: "How does that even work? Fat contains calories."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe future fat doesn't."
(The Chronicler suppresses a minor rant about the choice of random fetish to be showcased. And how can a woman who works for the sex toy industry be so... uptight?)

His gaze returned to her— accusing, threatening. "Ye shouldna have done this deed. D'ye think to keep me here, witch?"
Sordan: "We're back to interaction via gazes."

"Virgin witch?" She slid her gaze across his muscled arms and shoulders. So wonderful. So flawed. Maybe if she bashed him over the head with her broomstick it would correct his obviously faulty circuits.
The Chronicler: "What broomstick? She's not a witch, doesn't she remember?"The Anthropologist: "Maybe the author got confused whose point of view it was halfway through the sentence."

Shifting her gaze, she met the fixed amber stare of a large black cat, a cat that hadn't been there a few minutes ago.
Sordan: "The cat was watching!"
Pillywiggin: "The cat is Satan!"

He made some strange signs as he slid to the edge of the pad. His eyes blazed with fierce anger and behind the anger... fear.
Pillywiggin: "It's an add-on."

She'd kill Three-Six-H if her friend had put this maniac beside her. Kill? She never had violent thoughts. Breathe deeply. Stay calm.
Sordan: "She never had violent thoughts! But now she's a romance novel heroine."

Fascinated, she watched him swallow hard, lingered on the strong column of his neck. She blinked. Weapons? Plural?
Sordan is temporarily broken, with laughter the Chronicler presumes.

There are then here said things that really shouldn't be recorded. There is much pain.

Big L: "The book is officially not as bad as our conversation. Now, onwards..."

An Original Sin, continues, part three...

The cat was seated right beneath one of Jupiter's moons. "Ganymede. That cat is—"
The Chronicler: "Like that Really Hot Boy ?
The Anthropologist: "The 'Cup bearer' of Zeus."
The Chronicler: "Also the very symbol of homosexual love for almost a bloody millenium."
(c.f. Shakespeare's As You Like It.)
Pillywiggin: "Would explain why he's so ghey."

" 'Tis a strange name for a cat." The man's brows drew together in a puzzled frown. "And what be yer name, witch?"
The Anthropologist: "Surely he should be chanting the lord's prayer now."

A fake would never be puzzled. The men she created existed for only one purpose: sexual release.
Pillywiggin: "They don't have a jar opening function? Rubbish!"
The Anthropologist: "Or a bulb changing function."
Big L: "It's because real men can't change light bulbs."

"Four-Two-N." His brows almost met. "Fortune?"
She sighed. "No, Four-Two-N."
" 'Tis settled. I'll call ye Fortune."
Why would anyone want a stubborn fake?
Big L: "Why would anyone want a retarded heroine?"

A jagged scar ran from the top of his thigh to within several inches of humanity's salvation.
The Loinfire Club bursts into giggles.
The Balance: "Retarded metaphor..."
The Anthropologist: "The Messiah Cock. That so deserves a new category."
Pillywiggin: "The Jesus Penis!"

For the moment, it didn't matter who he was or where he'd come from. His untainted sperm could bring males back to a dying human race. She blinked away sudden tears.
Me first. Me first. She shoved aside the selfish thought.
The Chronicler feels that this snarks itself.

Where did he think he was going? He couldn't just..."Come back! Millions of women need—"
The Anthropologist: "Damned ellipsis."
Big L: "Still a hyphen."

"Shush, witch." He appeared in the doorway again. "Yer blather will lead our enemies to us."
Pillywiggin: "Since when they have collective enemies?"
Big L: "It's because he's read the blurb and she hasn't."

Frantic, she leaped from the sleeping pad, then rushed to the bureau. She couldn't let him get away. The future of the human race depended on her.
Big L: "There is not enough lesbianism or implied lesbianism in this book."

She didn't need to turn to verify his identity because she could feel him; his gaze was as potent as a trail of fingertips down her spine.
Pillywiggin: "Now she's covered with his gays, pink shirt and..."

How could his mere entrance into the room do this to her, make her feel as though her body belonged to someone else, someone filled with fierce, primitive hunger?
The Chronicler: "Because it makes her think of his entrance into her..."
The Anthropologist: "Or maybe it's because of Satan."

His voice was sandpaper rough...
Pillywiggin: "Medical complication."
Pillywiggin: "Why is she looking for something to wear when she already has a blanket?"Big L: "Spacktard."
The new term is explained.

There is much discussion about people we dislike virulently. The room descends into bitching.
Sordan: "Again our conversation proves worse than the romance novel."
The Anthropologist: "Is this worthy of a new category?"
Lady Miriam: "It all comes under dulling the pain."

For a moment, his stare burned with the green flame of a Norian cantu pit...
The Chronicler: "Does she think this random name-dropping is world building in some way?"

" 'Twas all I could find. The woman cleaning the room across the hall foolishly left the door open while she went elsewhere."
Pillywiggin: "Why is he used to the concept of cleaners?"
Sordan: "I suppose he has servants."
The Balance: "He's bound to be a highland prince."
The Anthropologist: "I've yet to read a romance novel about a lowlander."

Complicated actions and manoeuvering happen. Leith (said real man) and 42N fumble about.
The Balance: "Have they gone to the 20th Century?"
The Anthropologist: "I think they have."

But the part of her that pulsed with need, that cried tears of deprivation, wouldn't let her concentrate...
Pillywiggin: "Tears of deprivation...That's a new way of putting it."
The Anthropologist: "It might not be that literal... We can hope."

Not with an unobstructed view of Leith Campbell's strong buttocks— smooth, hard, silently begging for her to run her hands over them.
The Balance: "He has a silently begging ass. That is so a medical complication."
Sordan: "How long is it taking for him to do this?"
Lady Miriam: "Two paragraphs."

"Yer gaze could draw blood, witch." He straightened and turned to face her.
Pillywiggin: "It's made of knives"
The Balance: "Eveyrthing is made of knives! Cheeks! Looking at people!"
Pillywiggin: "Your looking at people is made of knives."
The Balance: "His gaze is sharp as well."
Pillywiggin: "He has a gaze attack."

"Ye could drain aman dry wi' only yer stare. Verra strong, verra tempting." He scowled. "But 'tis dangerous to lie wi' a witch...
The Anthropologist: "This man has a mental age of nine!"
Sordan: "Yes."

"If I dinna please ye, I might leave yer bed wi'mymanhood a wee shriveled berry. Release me from this enchantment so I may go."
...Wherever he'd been, she'd bet he hadn't been without sex for twenty-eight years...
The Chronicler: "She could always masturbate. Or lesbian sex. I was in a girls school. I know."

"A wee shriveled berry's too good for you. How about an organ transplant? We could take your berry and put it... Oh, never mind."
The Balance explains to the Anthropologist, who is trying to figure out if the heroine has had female genital mutilation performed on her: "He's going to get castrated. She'll be moving the shrivelled berries somewhere else."
The Anthropologist: "If this ends with her castrating him and selling his testicles, is this book a win?"
Sordan: "It's a win for the readers."
The Balance: "But Satan is too ghey to win."

With a horrified squeak, she yanked the cover up to expose the black cat. He peered at her, then yawned. Pulling the cover more tightly around her, she stepped away from the animal.
Pillywiggin: "Why hasn't the world become one giant changing room at this point?"

Leith marvels at what men wear. Because all Highlanders wear kilts and nothing else. All the time. Constantly. And know of nothing else.

Wow! Talk about a meteor-shower smile.
There is pain. And drinking. And cringing.

"Extinct. Men no longer exist. They haven't existed for more than fifty years. Scientists thought they were so successful with their cloning until..."
There is some general pain in the direction of the scientists. It appears that they are suffering from some kind of seizure induced by the scientific ignorance in the book.

"Ohmigod! Get back. You're naked. Everyone will see you." She prayed the window was high enough to cover the obvious.
The Chronicler wonders why her world contains nothing that can be mistaken for men, say butch women with strap-ons and man-bots from a distance.
The Anthropologist: "Clearly the wipe-out disease doesn't work based on genes, well, the book says it does, but never mind that, it actually works like this... It infects you based on your gender identity as opposed to your real physical gender. See, there's a transvestite gene..."

Dozens of emotions whirled in her head as she watched his sun-bathed silhouette. He reminded her of a warrior from some distant past. Some distant past...
Luca: "Funny that..."

This felt like her first visit to Hanus when she was seven years old. She'd hidden her face the entire trip, then screamed like a warren cat when she'd seen the planet's natives.
Pillywiggin: "Why does the future still have cats?"
The Anthropologist: "When you're in a future with only women, you sit around making sex toys and cloning cats."
Sordan: "How many crazy cat ladys do you think there are?"
Big L: "Maybe the sanity gene was wiped out as well. That would explain everything."

"Fear is a shadow lie. Drag it into the light, and it isna so fearsome," he murmured, then turned to face her.
Sordan: "It's phearsome..."
Giggles ensue.

His expression didn't encourage her. In the dim light of the room, his face appeared harsh, dangerous. She could imagine him a warrior, viewing the carnage of battle, with the same expression— amixture of horror, fear, and fierce determination
The Anthropologist: "I've heard quite a few bad compliments... but this is really quite bad. You remind me of a battlefield, I think of the bit where his liver flew out of his torso, which had maggots nibbling in it and there was this other guy who was having his eye pecked out by a raven..."
Lady Miriam: "You look like you're looking at men who've had their stomach slit open and its contents spill all over their armour..."

She sensed, in the dark, hidden places of her mind where frightening truths huddled, that each step took her toward... What? The unknown. Please, please let me look out the window and see something familiar!

She reached the window and stared at the view below. She spoke no words; none were needed. The street was alien, a scene from centuries ago, one she'd seen only on history disks. But one detail riveted her attention. Men. Dozens of men walking on both sides of the street. Men driving four-wheeled vehicles that had disappeared from earth hundreds of years before.

Pillywiggin: "And yet the English language has stopped evolving. They're some six hundred years apart and..."
The Chronicler: "Blame Satan."
The Balance: "He gave them communicators."
The Anthropologist: "She should find someone less maladjusted in the millions of men."

The heart of fear was a cold place...
WHAT?!

no one around to soothe her with promises that this was all a misunderstanding, that everything would be fine in a little while. She grasped the windowsill in an attempt to still her shaking hands.
The sudden warmth of Leith Campbell's body against her back was such a relief she wanted to cry. Not alone.
Pillywiggin: "Now I can more easily break the witches' neck!"
The Balance: "And burn her body."

"Release me, witch," he murmured, then gently raised her head to meet his kiss. She never considered rejecting him...
...Amazing how weird thoughts hit you at the strangest times. She was the first woman in fifty years to kiss a real man.
The Chronicler: "Surely she's kissed girls before."
Big L: "Maybe she repressed them all the memories."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe she's really straight."
Sordan: "Maybe she's really ugly."
Big L: "But Satan says she's hot."
The Balance: "You trust Satan's standards?"
Big L: "We still haven't a description of her."
The Balance: "Not even a hair comment."
Big L: "She could have five arms and a penis for all we know."

A world of sensation blossomed, the rhythmic caress of his hand on her back, the male scent she'd never known— had always known— and the exciting hardness pressed against her thigh.
The Chronicler wonders if the knowledge of male scent is genetic.
Big L: "She has always known... which means she is in fact, a man."
The Anthropologist: "What he should do is write on back of his hand, "She=Witch=Evil" to remind himself so he doesn't randomly snog her constantly.
Sordan: "He could write it on her forehead, then he'll be able to read it."
Pillywiggin: "or breasts."
Big L: "But once you're see the breasts, you won't be able to see anything else."

"I dinna need to do this." He stared at the ceiling and raked his fingers through his hair. "Ye are no witch, so I dinna need to pleasure ye to gain my freedom."
Pillywiggin: "How does he know?
The Balance: "Biological imperative."
The Chronicler is intrigued by this concept of witches as sluts summoning man-whores.

"Just to satisfy my curiosity about how the savage mind works, would you tell me why you decided I wasn't a witch?"
The Anthropologist: "When I realised you were way too sucky to be a witch?"

She'd better watch her insults. A true savage could crack her head like a Coro egg.
The Chronicler: "Do they not have chickens in the future? We've called them chickens for so many bloody years..."
The Anthropologist: "They died out too. Along with the men and the sex doll makers and..."
Lady Miriam: "Why are you making notes for this blasphemy?"
The Anthropologist: "No, I'm making notes for a completely different blasphemy. I'm might be running a Valentine's Cthulhu Game."

This leads into talk of the Irish mafia. From a previous game run by Big L under another assumed name. It's all really quite offensive, so the Chronicler will refrain from quoting.

The Anthropologist: "He's really tall for a highlander, which should make him about four feet. And she should be about seven from all the vitamin supplements they take in the future..."
Luca: "And living in a low gravity environment."
Big L: "We're only on page 27. Onwards!"
The Anthropologist: "It feels so much more!"
Big L: "Well, nothing's really happened. All they've done is stand in a room."
Pillywiggin: "This makes me feel good about how long I drag out scenes for."

Even furious with him, she couldn't control the hopeful pebbling of her nipples.
The Anthropologist: "That's a sentence that requires a sound effect."
Big L: "And that sound effect is..."
Lady Miriam: "Just like levelling up!"

"Wicked Witch of the West?"
Pillywiggin: "I don't look forward to a future that knows nothing of early medieval Scotland and yet mysteriously retains knowledge of the Wizard of Oz."
The Balance: "It's interesting to see what sorts of cultural artefacts remain by 2300 according to this author."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe they remember the Wizard of Oz because of the friends of Dorothy..."
The Anthropologist: "Do you mean the gays?

"Forget it." He'd treated her like a booster rocket— use it; then lose it.
The Anthropologist: "That's a horrible mental image. It's one way of enforcing monogamy, I suppose, but it's a bit drastic solution, really."

"A wee kiss? It felt like all systems were go to me."
Big L: "Keep your man clean or you could contract... imagine all those public health campaigns."

He studied her with narrow-eyed intensity. "Is it that I kissed ye or stopped kissing ye that has ye bleating like a sheep?"
The Anthropologist: "Stupid animal metaphors!"
Sordan: "So far we have him comparing her to pigs and sheep and cooing dove..."
The Chronicler: "So he's into zoophilism!"
Lady Miriam: "Oh God, It's Animal Farm all over again."

Four-Two-N cleared her throat of the rock that seemed lodged there ...
Luca: "It's all that pebbling from earlier."

Fortune (42N) asks "A woman pushing some strange machine hurried past in the hall" the date.

"The date?" Fortune reminded her weakly. The woman laughed.
"He must be damn good if he made you forget the date."
The Anthropologist: "Not really, it's remarkably easy to forget the date."

She glanced back at Fortune. "Today's October tenth, and I've got this whole floor to do, so I better get movin'. Remember, out in fifteen minutes."
Sordan (in pain): "That's my sister's birthday!"
The Chronicler finds that the indominable Mrsgiggles rated a book 3%.
Pillywiggin: "Does that mean monkeys could write a better book?"
The Anthropologist: "It's surprisingly hard to get a monkey to press random keys, you know. They've tried doing that experiment at the London Zoo. They just end up press the key E repeatedly, clog the keys up with their shit and then when they try to press E again it doesn't work..."

"It can't be 2000! When I went to sleep last night it was 2300. There's no such thing as time travel..."
Big L: "It's nice to be reminded."

"...Oh, scientists have played with the idea, but..."
Pillywiggin: "This book really don't like scientists very much, does it?"
The Balance: "This comes from the swathes of America that's suspicious of intellectual learning and Science, no doubt."

His curse was low, graphic, and— she suspected— physically impossible.
The Anthropologist: "How would she know? She knows fuck all about men and fuck all about fucking..."

When he finally opened his eyes and stared at her, she wanted to turn and run from him, from his battle face. She had no doubt this was his battle face— all shadowed planes and hard, gleaming eyes.
The Anthropologist: "He's a mighty morphing robot! Or maybe it's like the vampires in Buffy, where their foreheads grow bumpy, their eyes start glowing and sharp teeth shoot out."

"I saw Clear Lake in the distance. So if this were really the year 2000, which it isn't, then we'd be near the city of Houston in the state of Texas."

There is some talk of Indian princess grandmothers that scatter America, which the heroine is no doubt descended from.
The Anthropologist: "You can't get much more special than being a princess from a tribe which has no royal family."
Big L: "But Sordan is a Micmac princess..."
Big L is given ice cream. And book is passed to Sordan, who reads...

"Texas was part of the United States of America," she clarified in an uncertain whisper. Please let him recognize the name. She didn't want to be trapped in this room with a madman, and she'd have to believe him a madman or else accept a truth that logically could be no truth at all...
Sordan (an American herself): "Only madmen don't know the US?"
The Anthropologist: "They do a lot of geography, but not much history in futureland."

"Jeans. I remember now. One of my history disks. They were called jeans. Men and women wore them in..."
The Anthropologist: "And they're historically associated with gangrape..." (c.f. Lover Eternal, J. R. Ward)

Feeling as though her throat had permanently closed, she could only nod.
The Anthropologist & the Balance: "Medical complications!"

Leith continued to struggle with the jeans. Aside from the fact that they were too tight, he didn't seem to understand how to fasten them.
The Anthropologist: "The highlands had buttons, surely."
The Balance: "He might be from a pre-button era."
Pillywiggin (as a student of Archeology): "No, the middle ages had buttons. It's what they use bone for."

"I need no woman's help." He continued to fumble.
Pillywiggin: "You know, it's quite a delicate operation without underwear on."

Each time her knuckles grazed his stomach, her lower regions clenched in gleeful anticipation.
The Balance: "Medical complications! She's clenching."

"Enough, lass. Between yer shaking hands and these cursed metal teeth, I'm in danger of losing my future bairns."
Big L: "It'd be a great tragedy, castrated by a zip."

She could almost see bits and pieces of his patience breaking away from him like the heat plates during a primitive rocket's reentry into earth's atmosphere.
The Anthropologist: "Eeew!"

"Fine. Leave. I'll stay here." What was she saying? She couldn't let him walk away. He was womankind's salvation, a living sperm bank. She wouldn't lose him.
The Chronicler: "But all the millions out there?!"
Big L: "They're Americans. You can't breed an entire new species out of Americans."

His last bit of patience shot into hyperspace.
The Balance: "Aaaah! Physics, poor, poor Physics!"
The Balance: "Why is he oddly psycic?"
The Anthropologist: "Because he's read the blurb"

Roiling emotion darkened his gaze, pushed her backward with its power. "Ye dinna need to know why. Ye need only know that I willna abandon a helpless woman. I willna leave ye."
She opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with his "helpless woman" label, then closed it.
The Chronicler: "Is there an I am so a feminist category?"
The Anthropologist: "Well, it's very hard to phrase. I am born to be subject by your Patriarchy?"

She blinked at his unexpected question. "I... I was discussing marketing trends with Three-Six-H. Muscular men are out. Potbellies are in. The comfort factor," she explained in response to his blank expression.
What?! exclaims all the females in the room.

Lady Miriam: "Maybe it's so you can fall asleep on them afterwards?"
Big L: "That's what Moobs are for, surely?"

Look at the ostrich, she thought. It stuck its head in the sand to avoid unpleasantness, and it had survived just fine when all those perky birds who poked their inquisitive beaks into everyone's business were extinct...
The Balance: "That's the first non-wacky-space-adjective animal."

The black cat watched with slit-eyed interest, then began to purr...

And so the chapter ends...

Sordan: "I can't read another chapter!"

An Original Sin, continues, part four...

The book is passed to the Balance.

Leith was dead. He'd died last night. If he'd known ahead of time, he would've put more effort into his last good brawl, savored his last drop of ale, killed a few more cursed MacDonalds
The Balance: "There's Historical angst!"

He hadn't felt such terrible fear since he'd watched his parents slaughtered during that longago midnight raid...
...Why was he here? Glencoe? No matter how deeply he tried to bury the memory of Glencoe, of the massacre, it waited, ever ready to condemn him. He need only close his eyes to relive the pain...
And so on and so forth.
Pillywiggin: "Does rape of history count?"

Even though he'd fought many a MacDonald in fair fight and bore them no love, he would not murder unarmed men, women, and children.
Pillywiggin: "But armed children... now that's different. We can kill them."

Mayhap one of his lesser sins had earned him this punishment— doomed to lug behind him a stubborn innocent who claimed to make men.
The Chronicler: "But women do make men... in a incubator sort of way, don't they?"

No matter. He'd do what he'd always done— survive.
Pillywiggin: "But he's dead! He's failed!"

He glanced around. A weapon.... Striding to the small table beside the bed, he studied the object that rested there— it had a solid, squarish base with numbers on it, with a smaller piece cradled on top. The top was connected to the base by a curled cord. It would have to do.
The Balance: "The battle telephone!"
Lady Miriam: "It's no weapon in a place where small children and grandparents have guns."

She ducked even though he came nowhere near her. "I don't believe you. There's never an excuse for violence. Any disagreement can be solved with reasonable discussion."
The Anthropologist: "See what happens when we kill all the men! The women get all fluffy and soft."

She looked a little uncertain about her insult, and well she should. He'd beaten men senseless for less. But how could he deny the truth? In her eyes he must seem both primitive and savage.
The Anthropologist: "That's quite an impressive feat of theory of mind considering how she lives six centuries after him. How is he able to do that?"

More likely it was the willing women he'd taken. He savored the memories. There'd been a lot of women in his life, all willing.
Big L: "More than just willing. Super willing."
The Anthropologist: "A couple were fading in and out of consciousness, but if they were awake, they'd be consenting."
The Anthropologist: "The point is that they're not of marriageable age anyway, so they count as willing..."

"Come wi' me, lass, so I can protect ye from danger. Ye need a strong man to fight for ye. Trust me."
The Chronicler notes how it's okay for him to be misogynistic because he's from the Past.

He smiled the smile that had convinced Mary McDougal a heated night spent in his arms was worth the loss of her questionable virginity.
Big L: "How questionable?"
The Chronicler notes that deflowering a virgin is a very Special act reserved for the Hero and the Heroine in these books, thus Mary can't possibly have been a Real Virgin, because she was clearly a Slut...

Fortune was helpless, with her fantasies of a world with no wickedness or violence.
Big L: "I hate her already."

"A peeping chick in a forest of hungry wolves," he muttered.
Sordan: "More animal metaphors. He likes those really too much."
The Anthropologist: "Maybe making sex toys a job they give to the people without social skills or much intelligence... An Ah, I see, you are the sex toy making caste."Big L: "Clearly an unclean caste."

A vexing combination of defiance and stubbornness with the body of an angel. He narrowed his gaze. The body of an angel with tousled hair the color of the vixen whose den he'd found last week, and eyes like a cloudless sky.
Sordan: "I'm really sure he likes animals too much now."
The Anthropologist: "She has a hair colour and an eye colour, she's a real person now."
Sordan: "Vixen-red hair and sky-blue eyes, no less."
The Anthropologist: "Surely that must clash."
Lady Miriam: "Satan has no taste."
Sordan: "He's also sucky in a number of other ways..."

And so we explain how much the Satan is sucky:
1) He can't stand gore.
2) His idea of micromanaging is just a combination of voyerism and stalking.
3) He thinks this is an original plot.

Lady Miriam: "Maybe it's because he has a 15 second memory like a goldfish."
The Anthropologist: "I like the mental image of him pacing in hell and when he turns, he forgets all that he was angsting about so angsts about it all over again."

Home. He pushed aside thoughts of Hugh, of Glencoe. He couldn't allow them to sour his memories. Home was the mountains, the glens, the heather. The women. He closed his eyes, remembering— heather like a purple sea flowing across the mountain, and Dora MacKay lying in its midst smiling up at him. After that day, heather had always owned a warm spot in his heart... and other places.
The Anthropologist: "He doesn't just fuck the animals, also the vegetation."
Lady Miriam: "He's Scottish, he'll die when he sees the sun."
Big L: "He'll get his moobs sun burnt."
Lady Miriam: "They'll go all dry red and crinkly, and fall off."

Love of women. He glanced at Fortune. Powers had cast him into this time with this woman for a reason. Virgin. She was a virgin. Could the powers want him to...?
Lady Miriam: "The elipsis is a major recurring character."

Teaching this woman the joys of love would be like drinking too much ale. It made a man feel wondrous that night, but exacted a painful vengeance the next morning. He exhaled sharply.
The Anthropologist: "His penance is to fuck a hot chick? What religion is he in?"
The Chronicler: "Not just that. His penance for fucking lots of hot chicks is to fuck another hot chick."
Big L: "How can I get into his personal hell?"
The Balance: "He's a bit of a Christian."
The Anthropologist: "He's the kind of Christian who fucks virgins for a penance?!"

Of course, if it were easy it would not be adequate atonement for all the times he'd sinned. Still, something about his penance seemed passing strange.
The Anthropologist: "In 2300 all of humankind would be based on this brain-damaged man..."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe to him thinking is a headache with pictures."
The Anthropologist: "If your thoughts were as painful as that, you would stop thinking too."

"Because I can." He smiled. " 'Tis one of the good things about being a primitive person. I do what I want—"
Big L: "Mwahahaha!"
Sordan: "Raypes!"
The Anthropologist: "All he needs to know now is what a train track is sO he can tie her to it."

"Ye canna hide from life, Fortune. Hiding doesna save the bird from the hunter."
The Anthropologist: "You'll find that it does."

"It's a wedding gown, and it's too long." She stared at the trailing folds of white material as though she still stood naked...
The Chronicler: "Why is she wearing a wedding gown?"
The Balance: "It was all he could find."
Lady Miriam: "I fear for humanity."

"Aye, 'tis a wee bit long, and I'd prefer ye in red."
The Anthropologist: "Clash! Why do romance novelists never have any decent colour sense?"

"Red is a passionate color, lass." He stared pointedly at her hair. "I admire passion in a woman."
The Anthropologist: "I like the fact that he's talking to her hair."
Big L: "Well, we haven't had any other description of her, so she's just eyes and hair right now."

"I bet you do." She tottered shakily back to the bed on the strange high-heeled shoes...
The Balance: "Surely it's easier for her to be barefoot."

A woman in his own time would be kicking, screaming, and calling him foul names. But Fortune would not resort to such demonstrations. Kicking would be violence, and screaming would not be a calm, reasonable thing to do. Lucky for him, but sad for Fortune. Every lass should spend some time kicking and screaming. It was the womanly thing to do.
The Chronicler: "Whose thoughts are those? He can't be grasping the whole more-peaceful-calm-reasonable business and she doesn't call herself Fortune and... ARGH!"
The Anthropologist: "The author forgot again."

There is now talk of the feelings of the British and Irish, how each national group is only allowed one emotion.
The Scotish allowed drunken anger. The Italians have their Passion, The Americans have Enthusiasm. The British have sarcastic belligerence...
Lady Miriam: "Who gets guilt?"
The Chronicler: "Catholics. The Vatican, maybe."
Sordan: "New Mexico has very special Catholics."
The Anthropologist: "Azraelite Catholics."
There is more talk of voodoo rituals, Books of Hours, the Belfast Times' Saints Tips and the many uses of Catholic saints.

Her hiss reminded him of a tiny outraged snake...
Animal metaphors!
Big L: "We should start skipping."

The Book is passed to the Anthropologist.
Pillywiggin: "Anthropologists are magical!"

An Original Sin, continues, part five...

The Anthropologist: "Right...She refers to him playing caveman..."

Was it in that ancient tale of Pinocchio that someone's nose grew when they told a lie?
The Chronicler: "More random cultural relics."

The Anthropologist: "She's rejecting the identity he's imposing on her with the calling of her Fortune instead of 4-2-N, but no, she's now branded by a new identity... It's all very symbolic."

The Anthropologist: "They're doing things at warp speed, apparantly. Then there is something that makes no sense. Fortune runs down some stairs, cling wrap sensation... WHAT?!"

For one dazzling moment, she forgot everything in the cling wrap sensation of his back and buttocks melded to her breasts and stomach...
The Loinfire Club feels unclean.

The empty spasming of her lower regions reminded her they yearned for some melding too. If only he were a little shorter.
The Chronicler: "Why is he so tall again? I'm sure medieval people were shorter than us and so on..."

He was so darn tall. She wasn't used to looking up to people, literally speaking, of course. It made her feel...
No! It made her feel nothing. Evolving humans had to be physically large and strong to cope with their hostile environments. In an advanced civilization, mental capacity was more important than physical size.
The Balance: "Why does it imply that they've stopped evolving? And more importantly, WHAT?!"

The Anthropologist: "Moving on. The cat's still following them around. It's still Satan. She's accusing him of being a slug... Not just any slug though, it's a pick an animal and a made-up adjective that makes no sense Slug."

The Anthropologist: "And then there's angst over whether or not it's a dream."

"I prefer lighter shades— unobtrusive, restful. In my society, we use our minds to work, and mental stress is tiring. Neutral colors leave me calm and rested."
The Chronicler notes how scary the future is as a place. And how bizarrely imagined.

Even her mother hadn't bothered with hugs, viewing them as unnecessary physical contact.
The Chronicler notes how whilst the future of women are all calm and unviolent, they're not touchy-feely. Which is odd considering how fluffy they all are.

The Anthropologist: "She almost gets run over. She's pressed up against him again."
Lady Miriam: "Swollen pebbles."
The Anthropologist: "He gets lost for a bit. And he helps an old woman carry things. Who may or may not have mistaken him for a gigolo."
Lady Miriam: "That sounds more like a penance."
The Anthropologist: "He has trouble with modern slang. Dough means money... becasue highlanders take everything literally."
Big L: "Like dwarves"
The Balance: "And then Jesus comes to save them. It's actually an inspirational romance."

The singer on the truck's loudspeaker bemoaned his stay at someplace called the Heartbreak Hotel. A sad song about love. No one sang love songs anymore. Without men, what was the use?
The Chronicler is really getting impatient with this vision of a man-less future. Surely they could sing about lesbian love. Or heartbreak from friendships. And the bitchy, bitchy world...

That he'd sacrifice his body for hers was wonderful. Not logical. In her time people accepted the consequences of their own actions.
The Chronicler supposes that in a bitch-future altruism would be out of fashion. (The Chronicler's conjectures about a female future is based on her girls school experiences, of course.)

"Sensitivity's part of my culture, but you make me want to scream and... Must be something in the air. Uncivilized oxygen molecules."
WHAT?!

The Anthropologist: "They meet a taxi driver whose name is Blade. And he's oogling Fortune's chest."
Lady Miriam: "Are we sure she has a chest? We only know of her pebbling nipples so far."

He pictured himself peeling the cloth away from her breasts, exposing the creamy flesh, touching one pink nipple with his tongue, and watching it pucker, become a hard nub.
The Anthropologist: "No, they exist. They're creamy white. She's Caucasian, then."

Yes, he would look forward to paying for his sins. With penance such as this, he would be sorely tempted to raid a score of clergymen.
The Chronicler wonders if he actually understands the concept of penance.

The Anthropologist: "She reasons that everyone in the year two thousand is as ugly as Blade so she should stick with Leith."

Of course, she was probably the most qualified. She knew women's fantasies, listened to them on a daily basis as she took their orders for customized men. She certainly knew men's bodies. No one could do a quality check like she could...
Pillywiggin: "But not a test run."
Big L: "She has an assistant for that."
Lady Miriam: "Postgrads are her bitches."

The Anthropologist: "The slut rival woman has appeared. Very big and strong. Blond..."

Fortune looked up... and up... and up. No human stood on the rickety old porch, but a Valkyrie, come to escort a fallen hero to Valhalla...
The Chronicler could but marvel at the incomprehensible mythology mixup occuring here. Valkyries are from Norse mythology, not Scottish and certainly not 18th Century Scottish.

The Anthropologist: "Oh, it turns out that she's Blade's wife, Lily, World-class knife thrower who always throws knives at his guests for fun."

The Anthropologist: "Right. Satan is back and rants about how plagues are better and easier."
Pillywiggin: "She's like a poor fortune teller who's peering into her crystal ball and trying to describe the horrors of the future to us."

Is Fortune Cookie hot or what? Great babe. I can sure pick 'em.
The Chronicler noticed that sentence when doing the write up. And wants to cry.

"Ye're beautiful, and I willna let anyone take ye from me. Ye make me a man again."
The Anthropologist: "Right. Fortune overhears Leith say something. And thinks that Lily is flirting with Whatsit. She cries and then consoles herself that he's a slut and can repopulate the earth with males better."

Fine. She'd put a positive spin on this. If cosmic forces had decided to repopulate the earth with males, then they'd obviously need a man with a tomcat mentality. They'd probably scoured the time continuum for the most overactive libido they could find.
Sordan: "Everyone's going to be everyone's half sister. That's terrifying."
The Anthropologist: "They've lost genetics along with everything else. After all, they don't trust scientists."
Big L: "If anyone else went back in time, this wouldn't have happened..."

It turns out that Leith was talking to his newly acquired knife.
"Ye dinna understand the relationship between a man and his weapon." He lovingly caressed the smooth wooden handle.
Lady Miriam: "It could happen. Has anyone seen Sweeny Todd? He sings a love song to his razors."
The Anthropologist: "How is to make him a man? Surely he's been circumcised once already."
The Balance: "It could be ritual scarring."

"Researchers had found that tubular-shaped stuffed toys comforted children more than any of our advanced play designs. The discovery sparked a craze for retro-toys. Every child wanted an old-fashioned stuffed toy exactly like her ancestors played with."
The Chronicler questions Nina Bangs' ability to imagine any future.

Fortune angsts about how her mother threw away her toy Skirky. How this fluffy woman-orientated future is also loveless and uncreative in its naming the Chronicler cannot comprehend.

His smile would melt ice on Pluto...
All these stupid, stupid metaphors are getting to the Chronicler...

Leith was confused. They both wore the garments called jeans with shirts and "sneakers."
The Anthropologist: "His tiny highland brain is trying to comprehend. Shirts and shoes."
Pillywiggin: "But they have those things in Scotland, dammit. He should know about them."
The Balance: "But they only wear one at any one time."

...then gave himself permission to continue his journey to the swell of her breasts. Their spectacular peaks reminded him of home....
Lady Miriam: "HOW?"
Big L: "No woman's chest should remind one of the highlands."
Pillywiggin: "It's raining on them? There are deer running up and down them?"

The Anthropologist (still skimming for the rest of us): "Now he's marvelling at money."
Pillywiggin: "For fucks sake! They had a monetary system back then. And complex economics!"

History disks had shown her what men looked like and told her how they'd acted, but not one disk had said a thing about the emotional storms men created.
The Chronicler wonders what the fuck happened to ALL OF LITERATURE that should be telling her that. And she also wonders why women aren't creating emotional storms of their own.

"I'd read about Scotland on history disks, but it was so long ago that—"
" 'Tis gone?" He looked like he'd lost an old friend.
She'd said the wrong thing again. "Sort of. We don't have separate countries, only member states in a world nation, and everyone speaks the same language. No dialects."
The Chronicler: "And that's English?!"

The Anthropologist: "They're having a conversation about how he needs to beat people up and have sex. Because that's what he lives for."

He furrowed his brow. "If ye dinna fight, then ye have only sex for excitement."
Pillywiggin: "What about haggis?"
The Balance: "What about whiskey?"
Big L: "And bagpipes."

"We haven't had men for fifty years, and we've done just fine without sex with real males, thank you very much."
The Chronicler wonders about our sexual history and how most women don't can't orgasm through vagina intercourse alone... Does Nina Bangs know anything about sex?

His excitement reminded her of her own excitement after completing her first man, the thrill when she'd stood back and realized she'd created him with her own hands. The creative experience had remained the only thing in her life to give her that heart-pounding feeling of being able to fly...
The Anthropologist: "Not disparaging the sex toy industry, but I'm really not sure it's like flying."
The Balance: "Depends on whether or not she's testing them..."
The Anthropologist: "But she's not. We've established that."

The Anthropologist: "Anyway, she tries to exert independence. But realises that she doesn't really want to think. And she's confused by curling irons."
The Chronicler: "Why are there no curling irons in the future?"
Pillywiggin: "Because they use drying pods!"
The Anthropologist: "You take a pill and that dries your hair."

The Anthropologist: "And now they're buying clothes.It takes him forever to get his head around sneakers, but he understands lingerie in five."
The Balance: "Lingerie is inherent in human nature."
Lady Miriam: "But red doesn't suit redheads! Because red hair isn't red!"

Now it was her turn to be puzzled. "Penance? What does penance have to with anything?"
His expression cleared, and he smiled. "Ye're right. 'Twill be no penance at all."
The Anthropologist: "Sex with virgins is penance. We've established this already."

"Bras." If he could play games, so could she. "Bras have a force field that's activated by the wearer's body heat. If someone touches me, poof, the toucher disappears." Careful. Violent images were not healthful images.
WHAT?!
The Anthropologist: "That's one way of evading sexual harassment, but I'm not sure it works..."

Stripping off her jeans and shirt, she hung them on a hook, then slid on the red panties. For some reason they made her feel... protected. Protected? Against what?
The Balance: "Against embarassing stains during her period."

"Jupiter's balls! Don't you dare look, Leith Campbell. Get out of here. Close the curtain."
WHAT?!
(Azrael: "Maybe she got confused about what setting she's writing in.")
Pillywiggin: "No modesty rules in Highland Scotland, but lots of them in the all-woman future."

Fortune wondered how well "scat" would work on Leith.
The Chronicler: "I suppose she is acquainted with all sorts of kinks, what with working with fantasies of women..."

The Anthropologist: "Her free will is dissolving..."

"Ye dinna need support. Yer beauty should be free. The red bra will cup ye like a lover's hand. And the sign says the cloth breathes wi' ye."
The Anthropologist: "I actually quite like that line."

The Chronicler marvels that he can read modern English.

Now they're making out in dressing room (like in DarkHunterWolfThing)

Someone has stolen her trousers. She's partially grateful for due to not having sex with him. Leith pulls out the knife and goes after the thief.
There is a fight scene, as the thief tries to punch Leith. He garrots the thief using the red bra. Satan is helping them.
The manager is remarkably unfazed by the fact that Leith has assaulted a guy in their store with their merchandise. He doesn't seem to mind and apologises. Leith is feeling a growing affection for Satan.

"A roach couldn't squeeze through, but he got out somehow. Must be part greased pig."
...He spit on the ground for emphasis. "Give me a dog any day. Dogs are up-front. Cats are sneaky."
Big L: "Is there anyone who isn't into bestiality."

There is a discussion on why neither find it weird the cat is following them around.

Several pages later, she's still giving him grief about punching shoplifter.

Blade suggest eating at McDonalds.

"McDonald's! Ye canna expect me to eat at a place named after my sworn enemies. 'Tis impossible." He glared at both Fortune and Blade in turn.
The joke falls on unlaughing ears. Of course, ears can't laugh.

"In Tibet, this MacDonald family lived next door to the monks. Real slobs— never mowed their lawn, let their dog run loose. You know the kind."
The Anthropologist: "Clearly she has retains little to nothing from these history disks of hers."
The Balance: "Well, if Doctor Who has taught us anything, it's that Scotland is full of Tibetan monks who know kungfu and worship werewolves."

"How do you feel about Burger King, big guy?" Blade sounded weary.
Leith nodded. " 'Tis... OK. I know King William rules England, but what land does the Burger King rule? Burger. 'Tis a land I've ne'er heard of."
Pillywiggin: "Or a merchant. Someone living in a medieval city. The word meaning what he would understand it to mean."

Fortune controlled her irritation. He was taking this "protecting the helpless female" thing too far, but she was too hungry to argue about it now.
The Anthropologist: "She totally has free will and stuff."
Lady Miriam: "Mostly stuff."
The Balance: "She clearly doesn't want to be oppressed by his patriarchy."

Didn't they have anything that didn't involve dead animals? "I can't believe the stuff they serve here. My arteries are clogging just reading the menu. Where's the scientifically formulated imitation beef patty guaranteed to taste like the real thing even though it's made from inorganic material manufactured on Quellum?"
Pillywiggin: "Yum."
The Balance: "An inorganic food product? That's retarded. You can't have... it would have no nutritional value."
(Azrael: "Maybe it's made entirely of salt. That's inorganic.")
Pillywiggin: "This is, in fact, a spoof."
The Balance: "It's supposed to be funny, but the romance is supposed to be real..."

The Anthropologist: "She has angst about eating meat. We shall skip this because it's not very interesting."
"Here's your dead animal, French fries cooked in goo, and cola, which can also take varnish off floors. I've read about the health habits of my ancestors."
The Chronicler can't help but marvel at the stupid things Nina Bangs is letting her know for this jabs against modern life.

The Anthropologist: "Now they're back at Blade's. They're in the sleeping chamber and for some reason they're sharing one."

The Anthropologist: "It's not sexual harassment for him to insist on staring at her whilst she changes... for some known reason."

"I'm not ashamed. I'm..." Embarrassed.
The Anthropologist: "You should feel privileged that I'm sexually harassing you."

Sexual awareness? She'd read about it, and some of her friends had talked about achieving it with the men she sold them, but she'd never...
...She swallowed hard. Think of him as a duty, a man you have an obligation to bring home with you, a humanity-saving sperm machine...

The Anthropologist: "She's trying to decide what to name her sex toy based on him."
...Forget duty. Think of him as a prototype for Creature Comfort's newest, most spectacular line— a man who's fought to survive life's battles and has the scars to prove it. Primitive Paul? Nah. Warrior Wayne? Uh-uh. Doesn't flow. She'd think of a name later. When she could concentrate...
...The scar lent danger to the wicked beauty of his face, a danger that would intrigue women. It made him real...
The Chronicler: "Not with women who find pot-bellies sexy."

Maybe she could implant sound sensors that reacted to a specific voice command...
The Chronicler: "They haven't programmed those in yet?"
Big L: "They're 'tards"

The right one is dimpled, the left one is not.
The Anthropologist: "Perfect imperfections of his cheeks! Angst!"
The Anthropologist: "Sorry, she wasn't looking at his face. She was looking at his ass."
Pillywiggin: "Easy mistake."

The Chronicler: "We have robots that can learn and think..."
Sordan: "Lost all their technology with the death of the men, remember?"

The Anthropologist: "He's thinking about how his head will soon be pillowed between her soft mounds."
Big L: "This woman cannot make breast metaphors."

To be honest, he was curious about how females could live, or would even want to live, in a world without males. If the situation were reversed and there were no females... He grinned. There'd be a great increase in the popularity of sheep.
Lady Miriam: "What just sheep? How about young boys?"
Sordan: "Well, we know all along he likes animals."
Lady Miriam: "Naturephile."
Pillywiggin: "Critterfucker."

She'd said she made men. Now he understood. He pitied the women of her world who had need of such poor substitutes.
The Chronicler: "I'm sure they're better kitchen implements. And vibrate better."

She closed her eyes for a moment. He was right. They'd been dumb, dumb, dumb. She opened her eyes. "There's an old saying: ' Don't mess with Mother Nature.' Long before I was born, even before we'd abandoned our old name system, one of our greatest scientists, Jan Kredski, developed what she believed to be a superior cloning technique. She was wrong. She forgot that for every action there's a reaction. Over the generations, Jan Kredski's mass cloning method reduced our bio diversity, and we became more susceptible to annihilation by a single virus. When it finally happened, it took only the males and any males produced from their sperm. With men extinct, we've been forced to continue the cloning process...
The Loinfire Club explodes in pain.
The Chronicler: "WHAT?! We know today right now that reduced bio diversity is a bad thing? How could they possibly possibly forget?"
The Balance: "Your scientist were fucktards... oh, and this means there need be about five hundred to a thousand genomes left. That's the sort of levels we're talking about. The proportions of cloned people must have been obscene. Retardedly obscene. Maths says no."
The Balance: "Also, you don't need to clone. We have the technology now to breed women. They'd only ever produce female offspring, but we can make new women."
The Chronicler: "Surely if everyone fucked the one person from the past it's going to be reducing biodiverstiy?!"

He didn't pretend to understand everything she'd said, but he'd understood enough to be horrified. "Ye have no father?"
The Anthropologist: "We're back to the Patriarchy winning again. She cries about how she has no father and how her mother didn't really love her."

"I'm an exact duplicate of my mother, only younger. I think that bothers her." She shrugged. "Everyone's expected to have at least one child. I was Mom's token child. Once she'd done her duty, that was that. I was on my own."
Big L: "There's a distressing lack of hot lesbians. And there was so much potential..."

The Anthropologist: "And now they're thinking of eating at McDonalds. Because this is the only two restaurants."
Big L: "It is Texas."
The Balance: "But surely there must be a steak house somewhere!"

Once again, he glared at her with savage anger. "I willna eat there. They are my enemies."
"They are my ancestors," she said softly.
The Anthropologist: "Oh, she is descended from the McDonalds."
Pillywiggin: "Why have they abandoned real names?"
Lady Miriam: "Stop driving double decker buses through the narrative!"
The Chronicler: "How is does she know she's descended from the McDonalds when she doesn't know anything about Scotland?"

The Anthropologist: "She tells him..."
Big L: "Why does she reveal it?"
The Anthropologist: "He's so angry he's about to walk out. Satan blocks his way."
The Anthropologist: "He suspects the cat is Satan."
Big L: "He guessed the plot!"

"We'll get this. It has all the essential vitamins and minerals without a lot of sugar. At home we have morning foods that are manufactured grains made from scientifically formulated—"
The Anthropologist: "She tries to explain to him the concept of vitamins."
"Like a warm woman after a cold day of killing and plundering?"
Pillywiggin: "Murder as foreplay. Sexy."

Sordan complains that we're not going fast enough, so the book passed to Sordan to skim.

Sordan: "They smell of things, pictures, castles, look at me, and now he has part of Glencoe massacre... Satan is stirring up trouble, they're talking baout Elvis, the joys of love, um, Blade..."
The Anthropologist: "Seriously why is he called Blade?"

Sordan: "Sexual tension. More more sexual tension. And more."
Lady Miriam: "Enough to rip a wet tissue yet?"

Sordan: "They're almost getting it on... he's telling her that a machine can't touch her heart."
The Anthropologist: "Ah, but the malfunctioning Laughing Leroy model..."

Sordan: "She's deliberating wounding him in an emotional way, she only wanted him to make a more realisitic sex toy. He's hurt."
The Anthropologist: "And because his motivations were entirely pure."
Pillywiggin: "Penance is pure."

Sordan: "She's having a mother complex as well. She's a textbook case of missing father... Now she's wanting more people to go back to the future."
The Anthropologist: "How?"
Big L: "Maybe Blade has a timemachine."
The Balance: "He's actually Jesus."

Sordan: "She's writing poetry in her mind... They're getting food again..."
Kslajg;lkf;kfdsh
(The Chronicler is really, really sick of this.)

Sordan: "They're catching on the fact that Satan's a cat."
The Anthropologist: "They're being watched by Jesus as well?"
Sordan: "Not incarnate..."

Sordan: "And now Person's husband is sterile. There is comforting. It's all really stupid. All these people are watching her. This is turning out to be a really bad insecurity nightmare."

Sordan: "They're finally having sex. Emotional sex. P.269ish..."
Sordan: "She's suggesting that he go through sensitivity training. And get his teeth fixed. Something that hasn't been mentioned throughout all the kissing scenes."
The Anthropologist: "Now they're in love Satan can send them off to opposite directions and this book can end."

Sordan: "She might be pregnant. Morning sickness... He's cooked her breakfast."
Lady Miriam: "Why can he cook?"
Big L: "That's why he's not eating."

The Anthropologist: "They probably don't give you many safe sex lessons in the future without men. Stands to reason that the super sperm of the man from the past gets her and that this book can't have condoms..."

Sordan: "Now they're looking at random people."
The Anthropologist: "Ah, the famous art of Highlander physiognomy."

Sordan: "Now there's something about Satan... Why is there?! Argh! I hate Satan. He is so ghey! He really, really is."

Sordan: "And now they're on about ancient goddesses..."
She felt like some ancient goddess being honored with the supreme sacrifice. But instead of a sacrificial knife, she'd wield something far more potent.
The Chronicler: "I'm sure he's a Christian several chapters ago when he's not on about Valkyries..."
The Anthropologist: "She's like an ancient goddess in that she can't get naked without people trying to look at her."

As he groaned like a man on the rack, she lifted her arms above her head in a leisurely stretch.
The Chronicler: "The rack?!"
The Anthropologist: "Now she's turned from being spineless to being a whiny sadistic dominatrix?"

"I must cross out the marks I've made."
The Anthropologist: "I've been carving them into your skin..."
He nodded solemnly. "A mark for every time ye've climbed into bed beside me and havena made love wi' me." His gaze turned smoky. "A mark for every night of torture ye've put me through, lass."

Sordan: "More daddy and mummy issues. About how they haven't had parents."
The Anthropologist: "You know, water... that reminds me of the time my parents dying..."

Sordan: "Why are they dancing to Elvis songs?!"
Lady Miriam: "Because it's Texas."

Sordan: "Leith has been kidnapped by Satan."
Lady Miriam: "Texas breathes a sign of relief."

Lady Miriam: "How have they managed to get 300+ pages of this?"
Pillywiggin: "Repeated use of the word pebbled."
Lady Miriam: "Pebble-dashed breasts."
Big L: "Serial pebbler..."

Sordan: "She rescued him. Or rather, he freed himself, because he's manly like that and she finds him."

Sordan: "There is confusion. We don't care. Satan is being really, really ghey..."

Sordan: "His angst is gone, mystically. Because he saved a man from Glencoe, and that man was her ancestor."

Sordan: "Special wind and rain and effects of whatsit. They're in Scotland in the past and there is heather shagging. They're getting married. And they name their kid after Satan, Ganymede..."

Leith grinned. "There are some, of course, who would think Ganymede Campbell a fine Scottish name."
THE END

Afterthoughts:
The Chronicler: "You don't name your son after the sexy pin-up of boy-love!"
The Anthropologist: "I want to know how she she feels about dooming the human race in the future."
Sordan: "I've never seen a more ghey incarnation of Satan."
The Chronicler: "Is this Ghey with an “h”? Just checking?"
Sordan: "Yes!"

The Anthropologist: "They converted Satan by their twu wuv. I can't get over that."
The Balance: "A twu wuv that will last all the ages. And the end of the human race."
Pillywiggin: "Never say the word wuv again! And can we have a ritual burning of these books?"
Lady Miriam: "Give them to a charity shop..."

And so it all ends, in disorganised bickering. For now...