The Conference free porn video

Wynwood Island Resort offered the ultimate vacation experience - a week in another person's body. But what happens when someone holds a conference there? THE CONFERENCE by BobH (c) 2018 (Note: This is a sequel to, and contains spoilers for, my story THE RESORT. Any questions you have about the operation of the resort after reading this one are probably answered in that one.) - 1 - "I'm still a little surprised we host conferences on the island," I said. "Why?" asked Miguel. "Vacation resorts often host conferences, and look at this place!" Miguel Sanchez and I were standing on the patio alongside the swimming pool in front of the hotel, soaking in the sun. Unusually for this time of day the pool was empty, but then this wasn't just any day. I gazed at the island spread out before us, at this vision of paradise that man and many millions of dollars had created, and nodded. "Yeah, but this isn't just any resort," I said. That was an understatement. One of the privately owned islands in the British Virgin Island group, Wynwood Island Resort offered not just five star luxury but also the opportunity to spend a week in someone else's body. Well, technically, to *ride* their body. While you lay in a rig in the operations block behind the hotel, your consciousness would be projected into the mind of your 'mount'. This was an employee at the resort into whom a nanite package had been injected that formed a neural web over their brain that functioned as a receiver. This would put their mind into 'sleep mode' while you took control. "True that," said Miguel, "but Calvin Corso is the star speaker, so you can see the attraction." I could indeed. Dr Calvin Temuera Corso was chief scientist and head of research at the Storr Corporation. Most people knew him as the inventor of ReStorr, a drug that was beginning to change global demographics. Product of a renowned Italian scientist father and a Maori mother, he was often referred to as 'the Steven Hawking of New Zealand'. This wasn't just because of his world-level genius but because he too was confined to a wheelchair, just as Hawking had been. A horse riding accident had robbed him of all feeling from the neck down, but though his limbs were useless he was still able to breathe unassisted, to speak and to give lectures. "I wonder if he chose me as his mount," mused Miguel. "If he did could you record him for me when he gives his big speech, Jim? That would be something to show the grandkids." As head of security I had one of the only photo and video-enabled phones allowed on the island. "We'll see," I said. The size of conference that could be held at the resort was limited by our hotel capacity. In any given week it could accommodate a hundred and fifty guests, up to a hundred of whom could be riding while the remaining fifty were not. There were two groups of a hundred mounts each known as 'cohorts'. When one cohort was being ridden the other was serving as 'hosts' and was also housed in the hotel, which meant it could hold two hundred and fifty people in total. Hosts typically worked as bar staff, pool guards, security staff, waiters, etc., during their off weeks. Eight hour shifts meant they also got a lot of downtime to enjoy the resort and to fraternize with the guests during their off weeks, something which was actively encouraged by management. Those agreeing to be mounts signed up for three months in any given year, for which they were very well compensated. Though some mounts were hired from other local islands and from further afield, the majority were usually American thanks to insanely high levels of college debt. A couple of tours as a mount would pay off most college loans, which was enough to overcome whatever qualms someone might have about working as one. It was now Wednesday, so that meant it was also switchover time. This was the day when those currently working as 'hosts' at the resort became mounts for the following week, while those who had been mounts took their place as hosts. The brief moments they encountered each other in passing was the only time the two cohorts ever interacted. They recognised each other's bodies, of course, but beyond that they were largely strangers to each other. Miguel had been acting as a pool guard for the past week, so he knew he'd be spending the coming one as a mount. What he didn't know, what he never knew, was who his rider would be. None of the mounts did. As the island's head of security I was one of the few with the clearance to access that list. I wondered how many of the conference delegates would be riding? Corso for sure, or why bother choosing us as a venue, but who else? It was expensive to stay at the resort, and even more expensive if you were riding a mount, hence my surprise at a conference being held here at all. I suppose delegates either had the money or were having their stay paid for by employers and academic institutions prepared to pick up the hefty tab. "The helicopter will be arriving shortly with the first intake of the day," said a raspy female voice from behind us, "and you two are out here lollygagging." This was Doc Kelly, the resort's chief medical officer and personal physician to its director, Jeremy Wynwood. She was in her mid fifties, short and stout, with greying cropped hair, and had a prominent nose on which thick glasses rested. Behind that visage lay a formidable brain, and a photographic memory. She was one of the few allowed to see the individual access codes for every mount's neural web, for instance, but having been shown the list once she had never needed to see it again. "It's a nice day, Gretchen," I said, turning to face her, "and we're just enjoying it." "Every day is a nice day here," she replied. "It's rarely less than twenty-five degrees and always sunny." "My relief is late or I'd already be getting ready for my rider," said Miguel, "and...ah. Speak of the devil...." From the hotel, another man dressed as a pool guard had come running. I recognised him as Duncan Reese. "Sorry, sorry," he said. "My rider was late dismounting or I'd have been here earlier. You're Miguel, right? I was told to tell you that you need to go to hotel room fifty-two immediately and get ready." "Wait, they texted room forty-three on my phone alert." "Yeah? Well, it's been changed." "OK, on my way," said Miguel. "See you in a week, Jim." "I'd better be getting a move on, too," said Gretchen. "I need to get to a rig and mount up before the first of the new arrivals get here." In order to lure her to the island, Jeremy Wynwood's job offer to Gretchen had included free riding. Which meant she would alternate between a week as her self, and a week as an attractive young twenty something, during which she could indulge her voracious appetite for sex. No sooner had Miguel and Gretchen left than Duncan dropped to the ground and started doing press-ups. "Riders never exercise when they're using me as their mount," he complained as he bobbed up and down, "and neither do Simon's. We have to put in serious gym-time in our off-weeks just getting our bodies back to how we left them." Duncan Reese and Simon Kurtz were body-building buddies I'd first encountered on the resort's nude beach three weeks ago when they were being ridden by a couple of sixty-one year old women who were using the names Kyle Hudson and Marcus Cohen. At the time I was also an opposite-gender rider and calling myself Candy James, a reversal of my real name - James Candy. Then I was a guest, but after I solved a murder here Jeremy Wynwood offered me the then vacant job of head of security, and I took it. That was two weeks ago today, which meant this was the third switchover I'd experienced, and the second time I'd seen this host cohort become mounts. "The Howard twins are leaving us today," said Duncan. "They're scheduled to be on the second flight out. I'll be sorry to see them go." "Me too, but their three months are up." Dani & Denise Howard were nineteen year old identical twin sisters, though they looked much younger. I first met them as the Lumley twins when they were being ridden, but got to know them as themselves during my first week on the job. This past week they had been ridden by a pair of elderly spinsters, but then Dani & Denise had always been popular with people trying to get as close to the innocence of youth as they could. Given that, for obvious reasons, no-one under the age of eighteen was allowed to be a mount there was a limit to how close to that goal anyone could get. Scanning the skies I spotted a large helicopter in the distance approaching the island. It was maybe half a mile down-range and preparing to land so, leaving Duncan to his exercise, I entered the hotel, crossed the lobby, and took an elevator to the top floor. Here I made my way to a door always locked to guests, tapped in my security code, then crossed the connecting walkway for this floor that bridged the twenty yards or so between the hotel and the operations block. Every floor had one of these umbilicals but the top floor walkway had the advantage of opening up directly into the reception area, which was located on the top floor of the operations block rather than the ground floor of the hotel. This was because everyone arrived here by helicopter, ferried in from the international airport on Beef Island that served the British Virgin Islands as a whole to the rooftop helipad atop this building. I got to the lobby just as the elevator from the roof opened and began disgorging its passengers. Since this was a full-sized goods elevator it was easily able to accommodate the thirty or so people from the helicopter. Leading them out was the tall, slender figure of Michael Danson, who was dressed in the staff uniform of red trousers and slacks over a white shirt and who had been their host on the short flight. Behind him came the great man himself, Dr Calvin Corso, his wife Dr Camille Corso beside the electric wheelchair he controlled with movements of his head. They were followed by a motley bunch of mostly middle-aged scientists, though I did notice one very pretty girl accompanying a formidable-looking middle aged woman. The Corsos had met in college, before Calvin's accident, and both were now in their mid-forties. She was pale, portly, hook-nosed, and her hair was a mass of messy brown curls, while he was actually quite handsome if sunken-cheeked. His clothes were of good quality, but hung loosely on his shrivelled frame. The one feature the couple had in common were eyes in which a fierce intelligence burned. "This is the operations block," said Michael, turning to face the guests. "From here, those of you riding will be taken to the rooms containing your individual consciousness projection rigs while the rest check in at the hotel proper. Your luggage is being taken to your hotel rooms as we speak, and...ah. Here's Doctor Kelly. She'll take over from here." Gretchen Kelly entered via the main doors off from the lobby, followed by a bunch of technicians. She was wearing her doctor's white coat with her name badge pinned to the lapel but otherwise did not resemble the woman I'd seen twenty minutes earlier. A dark- haired, twenty-something beauty with the figure of a supermodel, beneath her white coat she was clad in a tube-top, 'spray-on' jeans, and four inch heels. So she was riding Kirsty Farren this week. Interesting. "Good morning, everyone," she said. "Yours is the first new intake of the five arrivals flights we typically get here on switchover days. You've already been briefed on everything you need to know, so these technicians and myself will shortly be taking riders to their rigs. We will strap you into these, connect you up, and you will awaken in your hotel rooms, in the bodies you've hired for the coming week." While Gretchen was giving her spiel, I took Michael Danson aside. "Any problems?" I asked. "There were some protestors on Beef Island holding up the usual signs," he replied, "but it was nothing we hadn't expected and they well small enough in number that the local police were easily able to control them." "Good. Let's hope it stays that way." Calvin Corso was a controversial figure. You don't invent a drug that has the effect on society that ReStorr is having without pushback from those who object to such change. The most vocal were those who believed ReStorr was the work of Satan, that it was deeply unnatural and an affront to God's design. There were others who saw it as an assault on manhood, particularly the groups in the US who believed it was accelerating what they called the 'pussification' of the American male. As long as they and any others that had a beef with Corso confined themselves to peaceful protest that was fine with me, but in the past there had also been the inevitable death threats. I wasn't aware of any threats specific to the conference but I'd be subjecting this week's guests to extra scrutiny just in case. There was always the possibility that among them was someone who intended to make an attempt on Corso's life. Gretchen was winding up. "Doctors Corso," she said, "if you'll please follow me, and everyone else the technician who has been assigned to you...." Gretchen had been just as brisk and no-nonsense as always, but she still gave me a cheeky wink as she led everyone away. "Are you a technician?" asked a demanding female voice. It was the woman I'd noticed earlier. Tall, fifty-something, and with an athletic build, she was dressed in a trouser suit, her face make- up free. "No, I'm the head of security for the resort." "I see. Well then come along, Madeleine." She grabbed the younger woman's hand and led her after the rest of the group. While the reception area could have been plucked from any number of generic hotels, the corridors that led off it looked more like those you'd find in a hospital. Each individual consciousness projection rig was housed in its own small, windowless room. In fact the only windows in the entire operations block were to be found at the lower levels where the dormitories for non-host staff such as maintenance workers and hotel maids were located. Since hosts were chosen for their youth and their physical attractiveness, these other workers had taken to calling them 'eloi' and referring to themselves as 'morlocks'. Morlocks or not, their jobs paid twice as much as equivalent jobs elsewhere in the Virgin Islands so Wynwood had no trouble attracting locals from other islands to fill them. When the new arrivals had gone only Michael and I remained, but not for long. We were soon joined by Tom Stanic, a man I'd first encountered when his rider was calling himself Karl Chandler, but who was now wearing a staff uniform. "You need to get yourself to whatever hotel room number they texted you, Mike," he said. "Your rider will be coming in with the next intake." "Got you," said Danson, taking his leave of us. Tom had been a mount last week, but his rider was checking out this morning. It seemed the first task he'd been assigned this week was to accompany the batch of guests leaving us on the next flight back to Beef Island. His rider would not be among them but on another flight. Riders and their mounts never got to meet in person, either before or after their pairing. This was a matter of deliberate policy. Such a meeting could be very awkward, as I knew all too well. There was a half-hour turnaround for helicopter refuelling and the like, during which those departing would begin to be brought through to the reception area. I decided to leave before that happened. I'd only really come here to catch a glimpse of Calvin Corso, anyway. After all, it's not every day you get a chance to be that close to someone globally famous. - 2 - I was busy most of the rest of the morning writing up reports for the last two weeks. I hate paperwork. I used to put it off as long as I could when I was with the LAPD, and I was doing the same thing now. Some old habits are hard to break. At lunchtime I went along to the staff commissary in the operations block. The 'eloi' ate their meals here with everyone else when they were in their uniforms and working, and in one of the hotel restaurants when they were out of uniform and off-duty. This latter helped the sort of fraternization between guests and eloi that was actively encouraged. I usually wore a dark but lightweight three-piece suit and tie, with a badge identifying me as head of security, but though I had the same privileges I was not an eloi as such. For one thing I was over forty. So anyway, here I was, standing in line at the counter, tray in hand, and feeling uncomfortable because Jamie Bennett was three places ahead of me. Jamie Bennett was small, cute, and curvy, with full, round breasts, a large round butt, and a small waist. Her face was also round, with plump, pouty lips, a tiny button of a nose, and large, startlingly blue eyes. I thought she was very pretty when I was introduced to her as the new security chief, just as I had three weeks ago when I was her rider. The thing about riding someone is that it's a far more intimate experience than just having sex with them. You've been in their skin. You know what it feels like to exist in that body, have explored every crack and crevice, done things with it that they may never have done themselves. That's why mounts aren't told who their riders were and why the two don't meet afterwards. You have to keep it impersonal. It's potentially too awkward and embarrassing for both parties otherwise. The problem for me is that while *they* are unlikely ever to encounter each other again, I now work with these people. Thankfully, Jamie didn't know I'd ridden her so the awkwardness was all on my side. Perhaps not surprisingly Gretchen Kelly, with her no-nonsense approach to things, doesn't seem to have the same hang-up about this. I was ruminating on how this was just as well in the circumstances when, of course, she sidled up behind me. "Hello, handsome," said Gretchen, sliding her arms through mine. "How about you and I put off lunch for an hour or so and indulge other...appetites." Following my appointment, Gretchen and I had quickly become non- exclusive 'friends with benefits'. "Good idea," I said, putting down my tray. "Food can wait." Since most arriving guests were typically too busy exploring their new bodies to emerge from their hotel rooms until late afternoon/early evening on switchover day, it was actually a relatively light day for me during which I could get things like my paperwork done. Not so Gretchen who had lots of rig hook-ups to oversee. If things were going well enough on that front that she had found a free slot in her schedule between helicopter arrivals I was more than happy to fill it. We both knew the score, that sex was a purely physical thing we engaged in when Gretchen was riding, which suited me. I had just come out of a long relationship and wasn't ready for anything more complicated yet. Since it was closer than mine, we went to Gretchen's permanent hotel room. We both had jobs that could be quite demanding so the hour's workout that followed provided some wonderful stress relief. When we were done, Gretchen rolled off me and sighed wistfully. "A shame Kirsty isn't a smoker," she said of her mount. "A cigarette after sex is the best cigarette of all." Beyond sex, mounts were able to specify what you could and couldn't do while using their bodies. "You ever been tempted to try a male mount?" I asked as I stroked her naked body, "Why do you ask?" "Just curious." "I did once, as an experiment," she said, "and I hated it. I endured it for a couple of hours, then I wanted out. I have a theory that while some people are gender fluid, rather more are gender flexible in varying degrees such as those who are happy to spend a week here riding a mount of the opposite gender. And that then there are people like me who for whatever reason are totally gender inflexible." After I'd eaten lunch, I returned to my paperwork. I'd been at it for maybe twenty minutes when my computer chirrupped and I was instantly alert. When each intake of guests takes their seats for the orientation video they're shown in the Wynwood FutureTech terminal on Beef Island, carefully positioned minicams take a headshot of photo of every one of them. These are then automatically forwarded to my computer and run through a facial recognition programme that utilizes the Interpol criminal database. This runs in the background on switchover days and that chirrup meant it had just found a match. "Jack Rankin," I muttered, reading the screen, "a mob boss operating out of New Jersey." Rankin had done time when he was younger, but now in his late forties he presented himself as a respectable business man in the import/export business. No one had been able to pin anything on him in years, but he was known to have taken over as head of the old Gorsano crime family and to have forged new links with organised criminal groups in Europe. According to his bio, his wife Lisa and he had two daughters, both of whom were currently in college. Interesting then that he had signed up for his week here using the alias 'Bob Jones' and that while he was with us he'd be going by the name 'Marla Jones'. Huh. A cross-gender rider. I do not judge, but this surprised me. It wasn't what I'd have expected of such a man. I vaguely recalled the Gorsanos being in the news about fifteen years ago, so I googled them to find those old reports. The word 'alleged' appeared in these a lot, of course, but what seemed to have happened was that family head Tommy Gorsano had been betrayed to their rivals and then gunned down. The finger of suspicion fell on his brother and right-hand man Vincent, who subsequently vanished. The Gorsanos had a lot of trouble with the feds after this and the family businesses took a big hit. With Tommy and Vincent gone, leadership passed to Rankin who was married to Tommy's daughter, Lisa. All very interesting, but what concerned me was whether or not he was a threat to Calvin Corso. Rankin wasn't a delegate at the conference - there were about twenty guests who weren't - so perhaps not, but I certainly needed to keep an eye on him. I called up the photos of the contents of his luggage taken by the checkers at the Beef Island terminal. These showed the expected female finery, male clothing, a rolled-up belt - nothing out of the ordinary. It didn't appear as if he had tried to smuggle in any drugs or weapons, not that he'd have succeeded if he had tried. The resort has the most stringent baggage checks I've ever seen, and I've visited Israel. According to his booking, Rankin would be sharing a room with someone named Grace Simmons, who was arriving on a later flight. It was the work of minutes to discover there was no record of her anywhere, so she was almost certainly using an alias, too. This could all be nothing more than Rankin wanting to spend time with a lover without his wife finding out, or it could be something more sinister. For now I'd keep an open mind on the matter, but I was still careful to note which mounts the pair had hired. In the evening I made a point of going along to the meet'n'greet in the main bar as I always did so I could get a 'read' on the week's guests. As usual, everyone was very elegantly dressed and tiny quadcopter drones were flitting about taking photos and videos. Looking around when I arrived, the first person I noticed was 'Madeleine', the pretty girl who'd been with that imperious older woman. She was now on the Miguel Sanchez's arm, so he was clearly the older woman's mount for the week. So much for his hope that Calvin Corso would be his rider. I pulled out my phone. According to my master list they were Professor Nicola Wolfe (56) and Madeleine Granger (22). Both were attending the convention on the dime of Auberon College, Maine. Having never heard of the place I did a quick search on it, which revealed it has lots of money and that Professor Wolfe was apparently something of an academic superstar in the field of Women's Studies. Hmmm. It was easy to pick out the Corsos, who inevitably had a group of admirers about them. He was riding Brian Brandt, a well-built, teutonic-looking type I didn't know very well while she was riding Yasmin Carter, who I knew rather better. A tall, striking, African- American woman with a magnificent afro, she was Gretchen Kelly's mount during my first week as security chief. I got to know her very well physically that week, and as a person the next. "Ladies and gentleman, may I have your attention please!" This was Jeremy Danson. As usual he was briefly borrowing the body of a male host - on this occasion Simon Kurtz's - to welcome everyone to the resort, though he didn't sound as ebullient as usual. I'd heard his speech before, so while all eyes were on him I continued to scan the room. I spotted 'Marla Jones', who was wearing a short, frilly dress and painfully high heels. As Marla, Jack Rankin was riding Karen Brandt, sister of Brian. Karen was just as teutonically blonde, but several inches shorter. She was sitting on the lap of a tall, stern-looking woman with long, centre-parted black hair dressed in a black, high-collared evening gown who was idly stroking her breasts. This was 'Grace Simmons' and her mount was a woman named Dinah Silverberg. Poor Dinah. She had a bubbly personality and was very much a girl's girl, but because of her height and her looks she was always being hired by riders who were into dominatrix chic. When Jeremy was done with his welcome speech, he climbed down off the bar and made his way to the door in order to find somewhere relatively private where he could sit down and dismount from Simon. I collared him as he passed by me. "Are you OK, boss?" I asked. "Only you didn't sound your usual self up there today." "Stuff on my mind," he said. "Gretchen keeps me healthy physically but lately she's been getting concerned about my psychological well- being. She's suggested a way of improving it and I've been mulling her idea over. Now, if you'll excuse me...." With that he left, while all around us our new guests were getting down to the serious business of partying. Among those hovering around the Corsos was an overweight fifty-ish man with a tall, thin, flat-chested young blonde on his arm. She was wearing a slinky evening gown, matching four inch heels, and immaculate if slightly too heavy make-up. As if somehow sensing my attention she turned and smiled, fluttering her long false lashes at me. I frowned. While I didn't recognise her she seemed familiar. Not too surprising perhaps given how many young people here were working as mounts and how recent my own arrival was. I hadn't had time to get to know everyone yet, but still. There was just something about her.... "Put away that frown and loosen up," said Gretchen Kelly, gently elbowing me in the ribs. "It's time to have some fun and for me to pick the lucky man who's going to put the hot young body they're riding through its paces with me tonight." - 3 - I've always been an early riser so the following morning, before most of the guests were up and before I'd donned my suit, I took the opportunity to relax beside the main swimming pool in front of the hotel and to review the photos from last night on my phone. The drones that flit about everywhere on the island save for the nude beach are constantly taking videos and photos to compensate for the fact that guests are not allowed to take any of their own. These are vetted by a small team overnight, many discarded for various reasons, and the remainder sent as an early morning photodump to guests' phones. Looking through them I saw nothing that raised any obvious alarms so far as the conference was concerned, but there was one surprise. Midway through the evening, Professor Wolfe and Madeleine Granger had been joined by another young woman, one who bore a passing resemblance to Madeleine. The pair greeted her warmly but she seemed unsure of herself. She stayed with them the rest of the evening, yet when they were canoodling all I could see when I zoomed in on her face was jealousy. According to the master list this was Paul Soren (22), who was going by the name 'Jenny' while on the island. His stay here was also being covered by Auberon College. There was clearly something going on between the trio, but since whatever it was seemed unlikely to pose a threat it wasn't of any immediate concern to me. "Mind if I take this lounger?" asked a throaty voice. I looked up. It was the naggingly familiar flat-chested woman who had smiled at me last night. She was wearing heels, a bikini, and a wide- brimmed sun hat. "Be my guest," I said. She sat down daintily on the lounger next to mine then swung her legs on to it. Regarding me from from under her heavily mascaraed false lashes, she languidly held out a hand that terminated in long, scarlet nails. "Eva Nelstrom," she said in her perfect, German-accented English as I shook it. That's when the penny dropped. Beneath the long blonde hair that reached half way down her back and the immaculately applied make-up lay the face of Michael Danson. My eyes must've betrayed my surprise because he/she chuckled. "When I looked through the brochure, this gorgeous boy was the only one for me. Tall, slender, with fabulous legs and an oh so pretty face that I knew make-up could do wonders for. There really was no other choice. In this body I could once again be the pretty young thing my husband Franz first fell in love with all those years ago." "You weren't tempted to try a female mount?" "Oh, honey, no. Franz wouldn't want that and neither would I. This is my authentic self. As soon as I opened my eyes in this body I went straight to the hotel's main beauty salon, had my hair dyed, and got hair and nail extensions. They won't let you do anything that can't be reversed at the end of your stay here, like cutting hair or plucking eyebrows, but I'm OK with that. And you can do wonders with eyebrows as light as these when you have a dark eyebrow pencil." "You look very nice." "Why thank you!" he said - no, she, I'm definitely going to have to go with 'she' in this case. "It's so sweet of you to say so! Every girl likes to be told how pretty she looks." "So, you're here with for the conference?" "Franz is. I'm just along as his plus-one. He knew he was going to be in meetings most days, so we'd only be spending the evenings together. This would leave me on my own a lot, so while he's not riding a mount himself he paid for one for me and told me to have fun. He's good to me that way, and there are so many delicious men here to flirt with...." She looked at me pointedly and I felt myself blush. Anything I might have said in reply was cut short by what happened next. One of my phone alarms sounded, one of the bad ones. I leapt to my feet. "Damn it!" I said, reading the autotext. "What is it?" asked Eva, wide-eyed. "I have to get to rig room thirty three," I said. "The link between that rider and their mount broke a few seconds ago. That's never good news. The last time it happened was when a mount had just been murdered." "Oh, my!" The island had been between security heads then so in that case there hadn't been the message that had been sent to my phone, the message that would be automatically texted to the head of security's phone whenever this happened. I glanced at it again as I headed for the operations block: LINK BREACH Rig: 33 Mount: Peter Herne Rider: John Verona Location: buoy 5 I rang lifeguard station two. It was on the same side of the island as buoy five and according to this morning's duty roster should currently be manned by Reese and Kurtz. "Link breach, buoy five," I barked, "get out there now!" "Already on our way," said Reese. "The alarm sounded here, too." A buoy. That was bad. It meant the link had been cut out in the water at least a mile from land. If Herne couldn't swim and suddenly woke to find himself that far out at sea he could panic and drown. I prayed that Reese and Kurtz would get to him in time. The buoys ringed the island at a distance of two miles from the broadcast mast on top of the operations block, the maximum distance over which consciousness could be projected before the transmission lag grew too great and the link between rider and mount spontaneously broke. That fact suggested Verona had swum too far rather than that his mount had been harmed, at least I hoped so. When I got to rig room thirty three, a slightly groggy John Verona was being helped from his consciousness projection rig by a technician. He was young for a rider, maybe thirty or so. "Jim Candy, head of security," I said. "What happened out there?" "I was swimming out to a buoy," said Verona. "I like taking long early morning swims, and since the buoys mark the link boundary I figured it would be OK, that the actual limit for the link was a bit beyond that." "Fifty yards beyond." "Right. Factor of safety. Just as I thought. Only I hadn't even reached the buoy when the link broke and I woke up back here. I was a good twenty or thirty yards from it." I frowned at this. If Verona was telling the truth the buoy's anchor had to have come loose a while ago with it then slowly drifting out of position, dragging its chain behind it. Or it could have been deliberately moved, of course. "This your first time at the resort, John?" "Yes. My father died recently and left me a large sum of money. I'd always been curious about Wynwood Island so I decided to check it out." That was when my phone rang. "Excuse me a minute," I said, getting up from my desk. "I need to take this out in the corridor." It was the call I'd been waiting for. "Kurtz here. When we got to the mount he was already half way back to the beach and wanted to swim the rest of the way. He said he'd report to you when he does." "So he's a strong swimmer," I said, feeling the tension leave me, "that's a huge relief." "What do you want us to do next?" "Go out to the buoy and record its position with your phone's GPS. Send this to me then record the location of every other buoy. When you're done return to your lifeguard station." "Acknowledged. Kurtz out." The buoys were fairly crude floating devices. Apart from the solar panels that powered their night lights they contained no tech at all. Ten minutes later, still towelling himself off, Peter Herne entered my office. At thirty years of age he was one of the older mounts, but then was was the fourth year he'd done a three month stint here and, anyway, he was at the peak of fitness and physical health. "Hello, Peter," I said, rising from my chair to shake his hand. "Please take a seat and tell me what happened. Coffee?" "Yes, thank you." I poured him a cup from the large flask of same I always kept at hand. "I woke up in the water when the link broke," he said, sipping his coffee, "and I do mean 'woke up'. From my perspective it was as if someone had thrown me from my bed into the ocean. I didn't know what was happening at first so inevitably I swallowed some water, but that got coughed up and I'm a strong swimmer so no harm done. If I hadn't been it could have been a whole different story." "There's a reason why mounting and dismounting is usually done when both rider and mount are safely lying down," I said. "Yeah, really. So, anyway, as soon as I was treading water I looked around to get my bearings. I was about a mile or more from the island in one direction, and about thirty yards from a buoy in the other. What puzzled me was that I was between them. If the link had broken because my rider swam out too far then the buoy should've been between me and the island." "So you think it was out of position?" "It sure looks that way, yeah." "Does the name John Verona mean anything to you?" "No, should it?" "That's the name of your rider. I just thought I'd check. Well, since this appears to be an accidental link breach I guess you'd better make your way back to his hotel room. As soon as I've given the OK, he'll be wanting to remount you." A few minutes after Herne had gone, I received a text from Kurtz with buoy five's GPS coordinates. A quick check of these against those for the broadcast mast confirmed it was indeed seventy five yards further out than it should have been. I'd have to arrange for a team go out tomorrow to put it back in the correct position. So it appeared it was an accident after all, but I was still suspicious. I knew from experience that appearances could be deceiving. However, for the moment I had no grounds for keeping John Verona away from his mount. I rang his rig room. "OK," I said to the technician who answered, "you're cleared to let the guest remount." What a day! It wasn't even ten am yet, and it was still only Thursday. Half an hour later Jamie Bennett and Tom Stanic came to my office ready to get their assignments for the day. Given her small stature I personally wouldn't have chosen Jamie to work security but my team at any given time wasn't something I had any control over. Admin or HR - I wasn't sure which - were responsible for job assignments and they liked to rotate the hosts through various positions so they got to do most of the jobs for eloi that the resort had to offer. As usual I couldn't look Jamie in the eye. "I'd like you both to cover the lectures in the ballroom today," I said, "keeping an eye on the audience in particular." "Are we expecting trouble, chief?" asked Jamie. "No, but there's always the possibility the conference has been infiltrated by a protestor, or worse. And don't assume that just because someone's riding a mount that they're immune to physical assault since it wouldn't actually be them who'd be hurt. It doesn't always work that way. This morning's talk, which is about to begin, is titled 'Fracking and the Poisoning of Our Drinking Water', while in the afternoon there's 'The Necessity of Population Collapse'." "Sounds like it'll be a laugh a minute," said Tom, drily. Having read the conference brochure, I knew that other talks at the event over the next few days included among others 'A World Aflame: Wildfires and The New Normal', 'Managing the Coming Pandemics', and from Corso himself 'Avoiding Our Malthusian Future: A New Initiative'. Pretty much doom and gloom all the way, in other words. Although there was one - 'Escaping Earth: An Overview of the Generation Habitat Project' - that actually sounded interesting. "Oh and remember," I said, "that while there are only a hundred and thirty people at the conference, the presentations are being live- streamed across the globe. That means thousands are actually watching, including reporters, so make sure you don't do anything to embarrass the resort." "Yes, chief," they said in unison. Later, while doing my rounds, I paused at the outside bar that was one paved area over from the pool to grab an iced tea. Sitting at one of the tables was Grace Simmons. She was clad in a very tight black dress, thigh-high black boots, and was smoking a cigarette. Standing uncomfortably in five inch white heels beside the table, a mass of red ribbons in her long blonde hair and wearing a white dress incorporating more lace and frills than seemed either necessary or sensible, was Marla Jones. "Remember," said Grace quietly, letting her free hand drift ever higher as she languidly stroked the inside of one of Marla's lace- stockinged thighs, "only good girls get spanked. Have you been a good girl, my sweet little pretty?" "Yes, mistress," came the reply. "I've been a very good girl." Taking my tea, I headed back, shaking my head, only to bump into Eva once more. "Well, hello again, handsome!" she purred. "Heading for the beach, Eva?" "What, and get sand in places where sand has no business being? No thank you, honey. You can't even wear heels on a beach. The day I turned eighteen was the day I left my parents' home forever. It was also the last day I ever wore flats. I'm not going to change that just to visit a *beach*." "So I'm guessing you've just come from your poolside lounger to get a drink." "Got it in one," she said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek. "See you later, sweetie." - 4 - On Friday morning, there were three people in my office beside me: Jamie Bennett, Tom Stanic, and Gretchen Kelly, who I'd just come from breakfast with and was now slouched in a chair. "I need you to cover the lectures in the ballroom again today," I told Bennett and Stanic. "The afternoon talk is titled 'The Environmental Impact of Gender Inequality' and will be given by Professor Nicola Wolfe, who's going by 'Nick' while she's with us. The one in the morning is titled 'Crypto-Currencies: An Ecological Disaster' and will be given by Dr Franz Hoffman. Professor Wolfe is riding a mount, and Dr Hoffman isn't." "How can crypto-currencies be an ecological disaster?" asked Jamie Bennett, frowning. "Beats me, but after the lecture I'm sure you'll be able to explain it to me. I know these sound a bit more interesting than yesterday's talks but what neither of you must do is get so caught up in them that you let yourself get distracted. Your job is to keep an eye out for any security problem, got it?" "Got it, chief," they said in unison. After they had gone Gretchen chuckled. "They seem eager." "They are," I said. "So how did last night go for you?" "It went wonderfully. I was serviced by a hot stud who was also very eager." "Male rider, or female?" "I didn't ask, and I don't care. As long as they knew how to use his penis to pleasure me why would I?" "Fair point," I conceded. "So what will you be doing this morning?" "I'm following up on yesterday's link breach." "You're still looking into that? I thought you were confident the breaking of the link was accidental, or have you changed your mind?" "No, I'm still happy to accept the breach wasn't deliberate, but I think there's something funny going on with this particular rider." "Why?" "Because when people come here to experience a week as someone else they choose a body that is older or younger, taller or shorter, better looking, a different ethnicity, the opposite gender, healthier, or some combination thereof." I laid the two photos side by side on my desk. "Rider and mount," I said, "both young white males in perfect health. They're of almost the same height and build, are in the same ballpark when it comes to their looks, and were born within a couple of months of each other. They even have the same hair colour. If you're going to spend all that money hiring another body, why would you choose one so similar to your own? What would be the *point*?" "To get close to someone who knows the real you without them knowing it's you?" suggested Gretchen. "The problem with that theory is that John Verona's using his own name at the resort, not a pseudonym." "Are we sure it's his real name?" "I checked his online and social media history. It goes back fifteen years to when he'd have been in his mid-teens. The guy is obsessed with 'Romeo and Juliet'. He's always posting about finding his own Juliet, his one true love, and how they were ripped apart when they were teenagers. I have no idea if this 'Juliet' is a real person or a figment of his imagination, but it's heavy stuff. And before you ask, yes his social media accounts are genuine. The contemporary links to and links from loads of other people stretching across those years prove that." "His choice of mount is certainly odd, I grant you," said Gretchen, "but there's nothing stopping someone from booking a mount of their own age and gender, nor do they have to tell you why they chose the one they did. Their preferences are a personal matter." "True, but there's something else about Verona that's worrying me. Before coming here he spent a week elsewhere in the Virgin Islands. That would not be suspicious in and of itself except that he didn't choose to stay on Tortola or any of the other major islands. No, he spent that time on the tiny island next to ours, one which is sparsely populated and has few modern facilities. Interesting, no?" "Yes, it is. So what's your next move?" "While you head off on your rounds and do your doctor thing I'm going to make my way over to lifeguard station two and join them when they go out to move buoy five back into position." Which is what I did. I switched to my swimming shorts and rode the cycle path over there - bicycles being the only mode of transport on the island - to join Duncan Reese and Simon Kurtz, who were manning the station again today. The full GPS survey of all the buoys I'd asked them to do hadn't shown another one out of position so it was only buoy five we needed to relocate. The pair were already in the boat waiting for me when I got there. "Take a seat," said Kurtz, as I stepped down into it. "Uh-uh, no thanks!" I knew enough to stand in the speedboat as we made our way out to the buoy. Sit on that hard rear seat and you get bounced up and down which, though it's your butt getting slapped, inevitably gives you a headache thanks to the impact being transmitted along your spine. When we coasted in next to buoy five, Duncan Reese using a boathook to grab it and ensure we didn't drift past, I gave them my instructions. "You stay on the boat, Reese," I said, "Kurtz will dive down and check the anchor while I examine the buoy." Donning a mask and snorkel, Kurtz slipped into the water from the far side of the speedboat while I slipped in from the buoy side. A quick examination above the waterline revealed nothing out of the ordinary about the buoy, so I dipped my head under the water and ran my hand along its underside. That's when I found it. A plastic bag attached with twist-ties to the very top of the anchor chain. I undid the ties and climbed back into the boat with my prize. A minute or so later Kurtz bobbed up from the depths. "No sign of anything to suggest the anchor was deliberately moved," he reported. "Coming loose like that looks to have been just one of those things." "I figured as much," I said. I regarded the contents of the bag I'd retrieved for a moment or two before placing it on the seat. "OK, hook the buoy again, tow it back to where it should be, and resecure the anchor," I said. "After that you can take me back to shore. Mr Wynwood is going to be very interested in what I found." After all this had been done I walked back from the speedboat jetty to the hotel, which meant passing the pool out front. When I got there I found Eva Nelstrom sitting on the edge of a longer and doing the make-up for a woman whose back was to me. As I drew closer I could see it was Jenny Soren. "Hello James," said Eva, looking me up and down approvingly. "You should perform all of your silly security stuff in swim shorts." "You two having fun?" "I'm just teaching young Jenny here how to do her face. Never having been a girl before, or explored her feminine side by experimenting with a little healthy cross-dressing like every boy should, she's woefully unskilled with make-up." I stared down at Jenny. "Professor Wolfe requires me to be in full make-up at all times while we're here," she said, obviously thinking this needed an explanation. "She says women perform femininity and that I need to do so as well because it's as important a part of breaking me free from my patriarchal programming as our penis switch is." "Your *what*?" "Our penis switch. She and I are now on the opposite end of the penis to the one we were before, so that she gives and I receive. She's promised the experience will make me a better, more considerate person." I glanced at Eva, who just shrugged. She obviously found whatever was going on with the Auberon College trio as strange as I did. Still, to each their own. Eva stood up. "My husband's talk will be finishing shortly so I need to be there when he comes off the stage, while Professor Wolfe wants Jenny in the audience from the start when she gives hers," she said, hooking her arm in mine. "So you can be the gentleman I'm sure you are and take us to the conference hall on your arm." "Why not?" I said, shrugging. Jenny took my other arm somewhat hesitantly, and I led them to the hall. As soon as we arrived Eva rushed over to her husband, while Jenny took her place in the audience front row, next to Madeleine Granger. Professor Wolfe was already on the stage, standing at the podium and shuffling her notes. She cleared her throat, which quieted the audience, then began to speak. "I'm sure some of you are wondering why a woman giving a talk from a feminist perspective would choose to do so while wearing a male body," she said in Miguel's resonant tones. "Well, the truth of the matter is that a feminist who's even more famous than me once made the observation that to get ahead in this world you need a penis. Given where the conference is being held, I'm taking this opportunity to test that theory." This comment was met with appreciative laughter. "All joking aside..." she continued, at which point, since I still had a report to deliver to my boss, I decided to duck out. While Jeremy Wynwood resided in the penthouse that was off-limits to most of us, there was also a suite in the hotel kept for his permanent use when he was riding. Which he did every day, always in a different female body. What with one thing and another, it was early evening before I got to see him. After knocking on the door I was led through to where a stunning looking woman was reclining on a sofa. Tall, with silver-blonde hair and a classic 'hourglass' figure, her magnificent breasts and ass emphasised by her tiny waist. She was dressed in a familiar body-hugging pink mini-dress with matching four-inch heels, and had large hoop earrings swinging from her ears. "Hello, Jim, what do you have for me?" she purred. This was Jeremy Wynwood and the body belonged to Jill White, though when I first encountered it it was being ridden by someone going by the name 'Tammy Lindsay'. The two of us spent a very memorable night together. "I found this attached to a buoy," I said, handing over my find. Visible inside the ziplock bag were a syringe and a small blister pack holding a needle. The syringe was full of a liquid whose colour meant it could only be one thing. "ReStorr," said Wynwood, grim faced, "and it's been primed." When ReStorr is primed with DNA it turns from yellow to a very distinctive shade of green. "A guest by the name of John Verona swam out from the island next to this one and hid it on the buoy intending to retrieve when he got here," I explained. "He knew there was no other way to get it to the resort. Our baggage checks are too thorough for that, and ReStorr is at the top of the list of things not allowed on the island." "If this was intended for Calvin Corso it can only be to do to him what was done to me." "That was my first thought, yes," I said. Though very few people knew this, Jeremy Wynwood used to be Jonah Bowman, the ill-fated CEO of Crimax Pharmaceuticals. Bowman used to be a handsome, middle-aged man. After being injected with ReStorr primed with the DNA of a young girl grossly deformed by one of his company's products he became a twenty-year old version of her. Confined to a wheelchair because of vestigial limbs that leave him unable to do much, his malformed skull reportedly gave him a more than passing resemblance to the Elephant Man. Now his permanent residence, one equipped with its own consciousness projection rig, is the penthouse on top of the hotel. Only Doc Kelly and a small team of dedicated nurses sworn to secrecy are ever allowed in to see him. "Although," I added, "given he's already in a wheelchair anyway, the impact on him while bad would be less than it was for you. So perhaps this wasn't intended for him." "Perhaps," said Wynwood, "but we have to proceed as if it was. It would be a disaster for the resort if we allowed anything to happen to Dr Corso while he's staying with us. I thought you were being overly cautious when you requested the extra security measures you did, but now I'm glad I authorised them. Is Doc Kelly still the only one beside yourself allowed into his rig room?" "She is." "Good. Let's keep it that way. What do you think we should do about John Verona? Eject him from the island?" "Not yet, no. He doesn't know we've found his smuggled ReStorr, but with all the attention buoy five has gotten I doubt he'd want to raise suspicion by swimming out to it again. Which makes me wonder if he has a back-up plan and possibly an accomplice we don't know about. With your permission I'd like to arrange it so he's under constant surveillance from mini-drones until we know for sure." "You have it." "Good, and in the meantime I'll carry on looking into his past to see what I can uncover there." I'd done about all I could with publicly available sources so when I got back to my office I put in a request via Interpol for any records on John Verona. -5 - ReStorr From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Finding a method of reversing the aging process had long been a holy grail(1) for scientists around the world. Nine years ago the Storr Corporation(2) announced that a team led by Nobel prize(3) winner Dr Calvin Corso(4) had found a method that achieved this, though only for men. And it turned them into women. This is because it works by switching the DNA(5) of the subject with that of someone else. The subject has to have a Y-chromosome and the donor not, or the drug will not work. Old men get their youth back, but at the cost of their manhood. Since the process does not work on women, it follows this is a one-time only deal. No-one gets to do it again. Seven years ago, after its approval had been fast-tracked by the Federal Drug Administration(6), ReStorr was launched in the USA(7) and beyond. It returns the subject to their physical prime somewhere in the 18-22 range. Age regression occurs at the rate of a week per decade, with no upper limit on how old an age you can start from. Typically, subjects shed a lot of weight during that time as they get smaller, and burning it off appears to help fuel the process. Accelerated hair growth is a side effect during the transformation, increases in length of up to a foot having been reported. Once begun, with a single injection, the process can neither be halted nor reversed. The process is relatively inexpensive, typically around five thousand US dollars(8). Many older men resisted the idea of becoming women when ReStorr was first introduced, but the trade off - restored youth and decades more of life - proved enough to sway most of them. It also helps that no-one who has undergone the process has suffered gender dysphoria(9) as a result. Indeed, most became heterosexual(10) women over time. Why this should be so is a mystery, but it has been enough to put some men off the process. As the subject grows younger, so the diseases and ailments that come with age also get rolled back. This does not include physical damage such as loss of limbs. Because a single five thousand dollar shot is a lot cheaper than most ongoing care for the aged, the health insurance industry in the USA has been lobbying Congress(11) to be allowed to cut off those elderly male patients who refuse ReStorr. The older a subject is when undergoing the process the more years can be clawed back and the longer their life, so many try to leave it as late as they dare. While there is no upper age limit for taking ReStorr, there is a lower one. It does not work on a subject who is still growing, so there is little point in taking it prior to the age it returns you to - around twenty or so. It also takes time for the gender transformation to occur. The subject gets younger at the rate of a week per decade, and the gender transformation takes at least a week. Therefore, thirty is the minimum age to take ReStorr for a full gender transformation to occur. If taken at, say, twenty five, this would only give enough time for the process to go half way and would leave the subject half-male and half-female. There are those who consider this is a desirable outcome(12). ReStorr created a market for the DNA of those who were beautiful, or who had been when younger. Those women are able to command high prices for their DNA. The very wealthy can afford to pay for exclusive rights, but where rights are not exclusive a donor can sell samples of her DNA many times over resulting in a lot of doppelgangers. Several women have grown rich doing so(13). Not everyone wishes to see younger versions of themselves walking around, so not all DNA is for sale. Some object to the whole idea on ethical or religious grounds(see separate article 'Opposition to ReStorr'). DNA can also be stolen or otherwise forcibly taken, and this has happened(14). * I closed my laptop and rubbed my eyes tiredly. I don't know what I'd expected to find online about ReStorr that I didn't already know, but I'd reached the point where I needed something - anything - to jolt me out of my current mental rut. My instincts, instincts honed by my many years as a detective with the LAPD, told me I was missing something but for the life of me I just couldn't seem to see it. In the afternoon I decided to check out the conference hall/ ballroom myself. This was partly selfish on my part. It was Saturday and Calvin Corso was giving the keynote presentation of the whole conference today. I hadn't seen the Corsos around much since they got here. Not surprisingly they were spending most of the time together in their room when they didn't have convention obligations to attend to. So I didn't want to miss out on the chance of seeing Calvin speak in the flesh, even if it wasn't his own flesh on this occasion. Since his talk was titled 'Avoiding Our Malthusian Future: A New Initiative' I inevitably found myself wondering what that new initiative might be. Whatever it was, I'd find out when everyone else did. When I got there the hall was packed and all the seats taken. It looked like everyone at the conference had shown up for the big event. I spotted Professor Wolfe flanked by Madeleine and Jenny, a beefy arm around the shoulders of each, and even Eva Nelstrom, her head resting on her husband's shoulder. Camille Corso walked out onto the stage, Yasmin Carter's glorious body sheathed in a magnificent gown. "Ladies and Gentlemen," she said, "it is my pleasure to introduce my husband, Dr Calvin Corso." Corso strode out to tumultuous applause, paused to hug his wife, then took his place at the podium. He wasted no time on a preamble, launching straight into his talk: "In Europe during the eighteenth century the majority of the eminent thinkers of the day believed that progress towards a perfect society of abundance for all was possible. Thomas Robert Malthus believed the opposite. In his 1798 treatise 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' he wrote that: 'If the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it ... yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.' In other words, unless it is stopped population growth will always ultimately outstrip any increase in resources. For a long time people refused to believe this - it was not in their financial interest, and certainly not in that of the rich and powerful, to do otherwise - but we've now reached the point where the insights Malthus gave us can no longer be dismissed. In the United Kingdom in 1978 the average price of a house was around three times the average annual salary. Thirty years later it was thirteen times. Some of this was caused by foreigners investing in that housing market, but most was because their housing supply had failed to keep up with their population increase. This was predictable. The so-called 'iron law' of supply and demand states that when supply exceeds demands prices drop, and conversely that when demand exceeds supply prices rise. It follows therefore that the Brits could deal with this problem by embarking on an aggressive programme of house-building. But how does the iron law apply when supply has reached its limit yet demand is ever-growing? Are there some prices that just should not be paid?" Corso paused to look out over his audience before continuing. He had their rapt attention. "In 1954 the population of our planet was 2.7 billion. In 2014 it was 7.2 billion. That's a threefold increase in just sixty years. Even if the rate of expansion doesn't increase, if population growth continues at that same pace, then another sixty years after that in 2074 we'd have a global population of 21.6 billion. Does anyone in this room believe our world is remotely capable of supporting that many people? The last time our consumption of the Earth's resources matched her ability to replenish her annual bounty was in 1969. We've been living beyond our means ever since. The water from aquifers that took thousands of years to fill have been drawn down in less than a century, and where the aquifers were below cities those cities are sinking. We know the problems rising sea levels are bringing to island nations such as Tuvalu, but we ignore the problem of sinking land at our peril. Much of Jakarta is now below sea level, its inundation only a matter of time. That's the capital of the world's largest Muslim nation, and it is doomed." Much as I'd have liked to have heard all of Corso's speech, my phone (which I'd set on 'silent') began vibrating. I stepped out of the hall to take the call. Two guys had got into a fight in the outside pool area and they needed me to sort it out. I sighed, and made my way there. Though riders rode their mounts it wasn't the mount's blood circulating through their brains, so their behaviour shouldn't be affected by increased testosterone levels. Yet for some reason there were always those who became more aggressive when riding young male mounts. The fight turned out to be over the attentions of a very shapely young woman. I talked the two guys down by warning them that any repeat of this behaviour would see them dismounted for the remainder of their stay. This had the desired effect, as I knew it would. They fell over each other assuring me it wouldn't happen again. On my way back to the conference hall I used my phone to check their cosplay identities against their real ones on my master list. Surprisingly, the trio had all known each other since childhood. Each of the young guys was being ridden by a 72 year old man. So was the girl. I shook my head. This place, man, this place. By the time I got back to the hall, Corso was winding up: "...and that is why I'm announcing the formation of Ecowar, a group whose aim will be to 'think outside the box' when it comes to the problems facing our planet. Every idea, however radical, will be considered. None will be dismissed out of hand as too impractical or extreme, none beyond the limit or out of bounds, because when we're talking about planetary survival no idea can be. The only completely unacceptable plan is the one where we do nothing at all and continue as we have been doing. Thank you." Calvin Corso was a hell of a speaker. As one the audience rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. Grinning, he hugged his wife and kissed her. They left the stage, waving to the crowd, as hosts were starting to hand out copies of the prospectus for Ecowar. Even with its aggressive name I wasn't sure if a think-tank was going to be enough to sway politicians and corporations, however impressive a membership it succeeded in attracting. Still, no one except for some of my stupider countrymen could deny we were in trouble so more power to Corso, I guess. On my way out I took a copy of the prospectus to read later. - 6 - Just before noon the following day, Tom Stanic came into my office. "There's someone who wants to speak to you, chief," he said. "Who?" "Grace Simmons." "Marla Jones's girlfriend?" I said, frowning. "What could she want with me?" "I didn't ask. Shall I bring her through to the office?" "No, I'll meet her in the hotel lounge." When I got there, I discovered her dressed in her usual dominatrix chic, this time in a dress whose overabundance of straps and buckles was matched only by its amazing sheen. She was holding a wine flute in one gloved hand and barely raised her eyes when I stopped at her table. "Why are you looking into us?" she demanded. "We're here on vacation, nothing more, and we haven't done anything to warrant such an intrusion." This accusation had come completely out of the blue and it momentarily wrong-footed me. "I wasn't aware I had been making enquiries about you," I said. "Who's told you otherwise?" "We have friends who keep us informed about that sort of thing," she said, her eyes narrowing. "And I don't suppose you'll tell me who these 'friends' are." "No, I won't," she said. She studied me for a moment, searching my face, then let out a long sigh. "Can I speak frankly?" she said. "You can." "Since you're head of security for this joint I'm guessing you have access to the list of riders and their mounts." "I do." "So you know who Marla is." "Jack Rankin, current head of the Gorsano crime family." "Alleged crime family," she corrected. "The Gorsanos run a legitimate import/export business." "Of course they do. Allegedly." A flash of annoyance at my tone crossed her face, but she quickly composed herself. "I assume you know I'm here under a false name...?" "I'd assumed as much, yes. You and Rankin both." "Then who do you think I am?" "Rankin's mistress." "His...?" She started laughing. "Oh, that's good!" she said. "I'm happy to see you're not the detective I was afraid you might be." "If you're not his mistress then who are you?" "I'm his *wife* Lisa Rankin, formerly Lisa Gorsano. All it took was a blonde wig and some make-up, and you never flagged me as Lisa." "Why the masquerade in the first place?" I asked. "Because 'preferences' like Jack's mark you as weak and are not tolerated in our business." "The 'import/export business'?" "Exactly. That's why we flew out to Italy together where we were supposedly spending our vacation. It's surprisingly cold this time of year. We spent a day taking a large number of tourist snaps involving lots of changes of clothing to give the illusion they were shot over several days, then flew here separately the following day. No one can know how we really spend our vacations." "Did you know about Jack's, ah, 'preferences' before you married him?" "Of course. They're *why* I married him. His 'preferences' fitted perfectly with my own. I love my husband Mr Candy and there's nothing, nothing at all, I wouldn't do to keep him safe. Together we were a good team, too. I knew we had what it took to run the family business. When my father's brother Vincent got the blame for betraying him, he was no longer heir apparent and we were able to take over. Since then business has been great. When this resort opened we knew it was perfect for us. We've been coming here three times a year ever since, and we'd like to carry on doing so." I held my hands up. "Fine by me as long as you keep your noses clean," I said. "Good, I'm glad we understand each other. It's Sunday and I haven't attended mass yet, so you can leave me now." I'd been dismissed. As I rose from my seat I checked my watch, and sure enough it was that time of the day when Catholic services were held at the multifaith worship chamber in the hotel basement. Tom Stanic had been hovering just outside the bar. He collared me as I walked past. "What was that all about?" he asked . "Honestly? I have no idea." That was when another of my phone alarms sounded, one worse than the last. I knew instantly what it meant. "Shit!" I said. "What is it, what's up?" "There's been an attempt on Calvin Corso's life!" I made it to the operations block and into an elevator in record time. Getting out on the relevant floor, I rushed along the corridor to the rig room everyone had been told was Calvin Corso's. It wasn't. This was the extra precaution I'd talked Jeremy Wynwood into providing, a room that would act as a decoy while Corso was actually hidden away in an unmarked rig room elsewhere in the block. I reached the room just as Doc Kelly emerged from it, hair dishevelled and white coat ineffectively concealing her seriously sexy lingerie. Since she was also wearing the sort of vertiginously tall heels seldom worn beyond the bedroom it was obvious what she had been in the middle of when the alarm went up. But that wasn't something either of us had time to think about right now. "Who was it?" I demanded. "Who got into the room?" "Jamie Bennett." "Jamie Bennett?" "I could hardly believe it either, but the surveillance equipment you set up to record anyone entering the room doesn't lie. I watched the recording before you got here. She was armed with a knife. As soon as she spotted the camera and that the rig in the room was empty she knew she'd been had and she lit out." My phone rang. It was one of those manning lifeguard station two. I put the call on speaker. "This is lifeguard station two," he said. "A female host just took our speedboat. She threatened us with a knife, so we didn't try to stop her." "You did the right thing," said Gretchen. "There was no point in you risking your life by trying to stop her." "Yeah," I said, "but as soon as she gets past the buoys she's home free. She's going to get away." I was gazing at the consciousness projection rig when it suddenly hit me. "There's still a chance!" I said, snapping my fingers. "Hook me up, Gretchen." "What are you doing?" "She's a mount and you've memorised the individual access codes for all their neural webs. If we're quick enough we can still stop her!" She nodded, I climbed into the rig, and she lowered the mesh cage over my head, the soft pads gently clamping my temples. There was no time and no need to strap me down. Gretchen dialled me in, I blinked.... ....and when I opened my eyes I was out on the water at the wheel of a speedboat, rapidly approaching the buoys that ringed the island. I threw the steering wheel hard to port and the boat veered sharply from it's original course, throwing up a great arc of spray that lashed the nearest buoy. Killing the speed, I let the speedboat idle for a minute or two while I pulled myself together. High levels of adrenalin in both host and rider made for a 'bumpy' transition. When I was calmer I set a course back to the jetty at lifeguard station two, proceeding at a leisurely pace, trying all the while not to think about the fact I was once again in this small, curvy, female body, that I was once again Candy James. When I got to the jetty those manning lifeguard station two were understandably wary. "It's alright, boys," I said, putting my hands up. "It's me, Jim Candy. I used a rig to jump this body and now I'm going to march it right into a jail cell." Which is what I did. Those who were present when she woke reported that Jamie was very confused, as well she might be. From her perspective one moment she had been at the wheel of a speedboat and the next she was locked in a cell with no idea how she got there. As for me, when Gretchen pulled the plug on me I woke up back in the decoy rig room. "I'll let you write the report," she said, heading for the door. "I left a hot, ripped, and seriously well-hung man in my room to deal with this stuff. If I'm lucky he's still there, warming my bed, and we can pick up where we left off." - 7 - Monday afternoon, and having explored every other avenue in my quest to understand John Verona I decided I might as well look into his mount, Peter Herne, not that I actually expected to find anything. I called up his blog and social media accounts and started reading. I was immediately intrigued to see that he had attended the Armitage Academy, an exclusive school for boys in upstate New York modelled after English boarding schools. Which meant his family had money, so why do four stints as a mount unless...ah. Reading further, it turns out Dad lost the family fortune on bad investments while Peter was away at college and being a lot less frugal than a student should be in the expectation of his expenses being covered. That explained the four stints. Digging into his years at Armitage, it appears he was in the amateur dramatics club, joined the swim team when he was sixteen, and that his best friend there was someone named Leo. On a whim, I called up Armitage Academy's website and started scrolling through the photos it contained. That's when I found it, the photo that made sense of so much. I checked the names underneath and sure enough this was it: paydirt! It was at that exact moment that Tom Stanic rapped on my office door. With Jamie Bennett in custody he was currently working as my sole deputy. "Call for you, chief," he said, "from the US Marshalls Service. They don't sound happy." That was it, the moment when everything clicked into place. "Holy fuck!" I cried. "Chief?" "Don't mind me," I said. "It's just that in the past few minutes two pieces that finally make sense of the jigsaw have dropped into my lap." Twenty minutes later I was in Jeremy Wynwood's hotel suite, facing him. He was currently riding the same mount my ex-girlfriend had when we were here as guests. I couldn't look at him without seeing all the things she and I had done together sexually, which was more than a little disconcerting. "Well?" he said, losing patience with my silence. "Sorry," I said, shaking myself out of it. "It took me a while, but I think I've pieced it all together now. Some of it is pure deduction on my part but it all fits and makes sense of some things that previously didn't. Lisa Rankin told me two things that explain what set off this particular chain of events. Firstly, that her husband Jack's 'proclivities' were not tolerated in mob circles, and secondly that there was - and I quote - 'nothing, nothing at all' she wouldn't do to keep him safe. I think that Tommy somehow found out about them and confronted his daughter. He didn't act immediately out of his love for her, but clearly this wasn't good news for Jack. Lisa also said that when Tommy was gunned down by their rivals her uncle Vincent 'got the blame for betraying him'. Note that she didn't say he did but that he 'got the blame'. Which means either she *thinks* he didn't do it or that she *knows* he didn't. If she was the one who betrayed her father in order to save her husband then it was the latter. I think she went for the twofer here and framed her uncle in the process, which makes sense. If Vincent had taken the reins Jack would still be at risk of exposure, but if Jack took over with Lisa as the power behind the throne she would then be in a position where she could always protect him." Jeremy Wynwood had been nodding along to this as I laid it all out. "OK, that all makes sense," he said, "but I don't see how it connects to John Verona." "I'm getting to that," I said. "The final thing that made sense of all of this was when I was told the US Marshall's office wanted to speak with me. I knew then that my enquiries about Verona had raised a red flag with them. I also immediately knew just what that red flag had to be." "I don't understand." "What a lot of people don't know is that among their many other jobs, the US Marshalls Service is responsible for overseeing the Witness Protection Program in the US for the DOJ. After being framed for his brother's death, Vincent escaped retribution by turning himself into the feds. It was his testimony that led to them coming down hard on the Gorsanos and seriously curtailing their activities. As a reward for turning state's evidence, he and his son were placed in Witness Protection and given new identities." "So John Verona is Vincent's son?" "Exactly." "Why were he and the Rankins here at the same time, or was that just a coincidence?" "No, it wasn't - I'll explain why later. Them being here at the same time as Verona is why my inquiries through Interpol to the feds in the US caused the alarm it did. Not only in the US Marshalls Service but also in whichever agency tipped off Lisa Rankin." "Why would any government agency tip her off?" "That puzzled me at first, too. The only reason for doing so would be to protect her, and you only do that for someone who's an asset. Which got me thinking about a couple of things. Like why, when Vincent clearly gave them the goods, they didn't shut the Gorsano family down entirely. Why let them continue and allow them to rebuild?" "You think Lisa cut a deal with the feds, too?" "I do. I think she went to them when she realised she was on the verge of losing everything her father had built. I think the Gorsanos are now their bitch, that they've been allowed to continue and to grow as long as the feds have access to everything. What better 'in' could you have to organised crime internationally than if you were controlling a major player, one whose importance is growing year on year? The intelligence-gathering potential alone is staggering, and I can only imagine how operationally useful those overseas connections would be to, say, the CIA." "A crime family being secretly controlled by the US government," said Jeremy, shaking his head. "It's unbelievable!" "Maybe, but it's not like they haven't worked with the mob before. If you don't already know the story you really should read up on their collusion with Lucky Luciano during world war two. I can't prove any of this of course, but it would explain why Lisa was so open about being the power behind the Gorsano throne when she came to see me. She obviously believed she wasn't telling me anything that I didn't already know." "I feel like I should ban the Rankins now I know who they are." "Why? They're repeat, high-spending customers who cause no trouble and, if I'm right, they're working with the feds. No, the one you should be worried about in all this is John Verona. I was wrong about him. I know switchover is only two days away but he's dangerous and we should pull the plug on him immediately." - 9 - Peter Herne sat across the desk from me. "I was surprised to wake up a day early," he said. We'd have woken you yesterday, but for various reasons it was decided to leave it 'til today." "Why wake me early at all?" "Your rider tried to smuggle a substance onto the island that's forbidden here," I explained, "so we severed the link between you without reconnecting him to his own body. We'll do that tomorrow before shipping him out with the departing guests, but in the meantime he's 'floating' harmlessly in disembodied 'sleep mode'." "Huh, first time I've ever had a rider pulled." "I've been reading some of the old entries on your personal blog," I said. "Tell me about the best friend you had at the Armitage Academy." "Leo Gordon? I miss that guy. You wouldn't think it to look at me now, but up to the age of sixteen, when I shot up in height and started to fill out, I was a small kid. Not Leo. He looked out for me and dealt with anyone who tried to pick on me." "What happened to him?" "His dad pulled him out of school when we were fifteen. I never saw him again after that. I often wonder whatever happened to him." "He and his father were taken into the federal witness protection program." "Really? But why?" "Leo's real name was Leonardo Gorsano and his father, Vincent, was part of the Gorsano crime family. I assume Leo went by the surname 'Gordon' because they didn't want anyone in your fancy school to know that." "I...don't know what to say. I'm stunned, frankly." "I gather that you were in your school's amateur dramatic society." "Yeah, so was Leo." "I know. When I went to the Armitage Academy website and scrolled through the pictures there I found a cast photo for a play you both performed in shortly before Leo was taken from the school. Do you remember which one?" "Of course I do. It was 'Romeo and Juliet'. Being a single-sex school meant both the male and female parts were played by boys. That would've been how it was first performed in Shakespeare's time, so I suppose that made it more authentic. Leo played Romeo and I was his Juliet." "In more ways than one." "What's that supposed to mean?" "When he saw you in your wig and dressed as a girl it was love at first sight. In that moment he decided you were the girl of his dreams, his soulmate." "B..but I'm straight!" "So is Leo. I checked the dates so I know that Leo's father pulled him from school right after your performance, but Leo never forgot 'his Juliet'. In fact he became obsessed with 'her'. The years rolled by and ReStorr came along. Now he had the means to recreate his Juliet, so he began cyber-stalking you. Finding a woman close enough to what he imagined twenty year old Juliet would look like and securing a sample of her DNA to prime a dose of ReStorr would've been easy enough, but delivering it was a problem. You would become a heterosexual woman, but you were hardly likely to then fall for the man who had done this to you were you?" "N..no, I guess not. Jeez, I can't believe this!" "Believe it. Leo's legal name is now John Verona. He's the guy who was just riding you. His plan had been to wait until you were thirty before administering ReStorr to ensure a full gender transformation, and during those years he'd have followed your accounts of your times as a host with interest. Somehow - I have no idea how - he discovered his cousin Lisa would be visiting the resort during your current stint here. She was the perfect patsy he needed. His plan was to inject you with the ReStorr while you were his mount, then to make it look like Lisa had framed him for it." "Are you sure about this?" "I am, yes. I revisited the photos taken at the meet'n'greet that first time and though it wasn't something anyone had spotted before, I was able to just make out him lifting Lisa's hotel room key card from her purse and replacing it later. Based on the time stamps, I'm certain he used the time he had the key card to remove something of hers from her room. After retrieving the ReStorr from buoy five, he was going to administer the injection, hide the empty syringe where it would easily be found, and plant whatever he had stolen from Lisa's room nearby. When the changes in your body over the next few days made it obvious that ReStorr had been smuggled on to the island, a search of your room would then turn up both the syringe and the item that would implicate her. Given the family enmities involved, her doing this was just plausible enough for people to buy that she had. It's easy to figure out the story he'd have spun. In Verona's version of events, he would be a person intrigued by the resort but cautious, someone who decided to dip his toe in the water by first choosing a mount similar to himself. In a twist of fate this would be his childhood friend, but he would not realise it. They hadn't seen each other in years after all and, for obvious reasons, the names of mounts aren't included in the resort's brochure. In this version, rather than Verona somehow discovering Lisa was at the resort, it would now be *her* discovering *him*, and also realising the connection between the two of you. Afterwards, of course, you would commiserate with each other over Lisa's evil plan and what she had done to you. He would offer you a shoulder to cry on and be very sympathetic while also pointing out how remarkable it was that fate had brought the two of you back together after so many years. I imagine he expected love and marriage to eventually follow, and it might well have." Herne sat there in stunned silence, overwhelmed by these revelations. I slid a photo across the desk to him. "This is what John Verona looks like now," I said. "He's been permanently banned from the resort, of course, but given his obsession I think he could remain a danger to you after you leave here." When my interview with Peter was done, I took a break. Jamie Bennett was in one of the cells located behind a door two down from my office. Hers was the other interview I had to conduct today, but it could wait until I'd grabbed an iced tea and a pastry at the outside bar. When I got there and bought these I sat at an empty table that coincidentally was behind one where Professor Wolfe and Jenny Soren were engaged in a deep, hushed conversation. Not so hushed that I couldn't hear what was being said, however. "Surely you must have given it some thought?" Wolfe was saying. "No, I really haven't," said Jenny, sounding uncomfortable. "You've taken to this like a duck to water, Jenny, and you can't tell me you don't enjoy sex as a woman because I'm the one fucking you and I can tell that you do." "Yeah, well, maybe." "I think it's possible you've learned things about yourself in your time here that you're too frightened to confront, and I understand that, I do. It must be hard to face the possibility that maybe your true nature is not male but female." Wow. I couldn't tell if Wolfe was being manipulative or genuinely solicitous. Either way, it was none of my business. I'd deliberately ignored Jamie Bennett for the past twenty four hours. She saw no one in that time except those bringing her meals, and they were under strict orders not to say a word or engage with her in any other way, not even eye-contact. This was a well known, effective, and legal method of softening someone up before you interviewed them. As it turned out it may not have been necessary on this occasion since she was actually *eager* to talk to me. I positioned a chair in front of the bars of her cell, while she sat back on the cot and watched with interest. "Over the past twenty four hours I've done a deep dive into your background," I said, "and I found nothing there that would have raised any red flags for me, yet here we are. You want to explain how that is, why you wanted to kill Dr Corso?" "I've never liked the idea of ReStorr," she said, "but it wasn't until I started following the arguments about it in online forums that I came to realise just what an evil drug it is." "Evil? How so?" "It perverts the ordained order of things. It might have seemed relatively benign at first, but then more and more men started taking it and we've now reached the point where it's beginning to upset the natural balance, to pervert God's plan." "So your objection is religious? Huh." "You say that is if being religious means I'm out of touch with reality, which is ironic given where we are. Look around you. This place isn't the real world it's Fantasy Island. All that's missing is an irritating dwarf sidekick." "Going from objecting to something to attempted murder is a big step. What radicalised you?" "Corso's lies. You heard him repeating them in that hall, talking about saving the planet and needing to reduce our population, yet he came up with a drug that does just the opposite. All those old men becoming heterosexual young women leads inevitably to even more babies being born. How does that fit in with his environmentally responsible agenda, with this 'Ecowar' of his?" It was a good point, and something I'd wondered about myself, but where I was puzzled by the contradiction Jamie Bennett had become enraged by it. "You're not a member of any group and I'm pretty sure you acted alone," I said, "which means you're what we call a 'self-starter', someone radicalised by arguments they encounter online. Getting a job here months in advance of the conference shows an unusual level of commitment and forward-planning for a lone wolf. When did you come up with your plan?" "When I read about the conference. Those things are planned and announced at least a year in advance so I had plenty of time to embed myself. When I applied to be a mount I specified a date at which I could start work here that was two months out from the conference. I hate the whole idea of being a mount. It's super creepy to me, but I was prepared to endure it for a while if it meant getting a shot at Corso. I've had four riders - well, five including you." "No, it's still four," I said. "Your third rider was me." She looked both shocked and appalled. "You're lying!" "'Fraid not. I know every nook and cranny of your body from when they were my nooks an crannies, including that mole in a place where only you or a lover would ever see it." "What..what happens to me now?" she asked. "All you've got me for is waving a knife around in an empty room. Since Corso was never in any danger you'll never make an attempted murder charge stick." "True," I agreed, "which is why you're going to write a confession admitting to the charge and laying out your plan." "No I'm not. Why would I ever do that?" "Because if you don't I'm going to mount you again and swim out past the buoys circling the island. At which point the link will break and you'll be back in the driving seat." "But I can't swim! I'll drown!" "I know. Your death will be ruled either suicide or a tragic accident." "I don't believe you. You wouldn't do such a thing." "We already did. You don't think that guest dying in his rig a few weeks ago right after an allegedly unsolved murder was really a result of natural causes, do you?" I would never do what I'd threatened, but Jamie didn't know that. She studied my face for a moment then let out a long sigh, her shoulders slumping. "OK" she said. I passed a paper pad and a pen to her through the bars. It took ten minutes or so for her to write her confession, after which she signed it and passed them back though to me. I read the confession then nodded. "This is good, exactly what I needed." "I suppose you'll be sending me to Beef Island on one of tomorrow's helicopter flights next and handing me over to the Royal Virgin Islands Police." "No, because the resort doesn't want the bad publicity we'd get from having an attempted murder only a few weeks after an actual murder. And, as you rightly pointed out, all you could be charged with was waving a knife around in an empty room." "Then why have me write out a confession?" "That wasn't for me, that was for Calvin Corso's people. Not only do they now know you're a threat, but they have proof of a previous attempt on his life they can produce should you ever try anything again." "If you're not going to charge me, does that mean you're going to release me?" "Yes, two weeks from now." "Two weeks? You can't keep me in this cell for two weeks!" "Don't worry, we won't be. In fact I'll be unlocking your cell door in a minute or two." I took the phone from my pocket and raised it to my ear. "Did you get all that? Great, then you're good to go." Jamie gave a puzzled frown, then her face momentarily went blank before a large smile spread across it. I unlocked the cell door and she stepped out. "The silly girl didn't think we'd let her go with two weeks as a mount still left on her contract, did she?" said Jeremy Wynwood, flexing Jamie's arms. "I'm going to enjoy the next fourteen days. Spending all that time in a single body will be quite a change after a year of flitting from one to another." "And Doc Kelly is sure the team in your penthouse can take proper care of your real body while you're riding this one?" "She is, plus it was Gretchen who convinced me that while expressing my femininity by swanning around looking gorgeous was all well and good I was a sexual being and it was psychologically unhealthy for me to deny myself carnal pleasure. She understood that after the assault, the awful transformation forced on me against my will, I was traumatised and had issues, but she pressed home the fact that whatever else it might have done the ReStorr had made me a heterosexual woman. I now had the same wants and desires as any other woman and I needed to express them." "That...makes a lot of sense, actually." "I know. There's no shortage of hot young men on the island and it's time I started taking advantage of that fact, particularly as I'll now be able to spend the night with them. Gretchen will be riding again in my second week and she wants us to pick up guys together and double date. And I've got to admit, I'm finding that idea very exciting." - 10 - When I emerged from the walkway connecting the operations block to the hotel at ground floor level I almost collided with Eva Nelstrom. Her hair was pulled back into a long ponytail and she was wearing a brightly coloured poodle dress, fishnets and, of course, heels. "Jim!" she squealed. "I'm so glad I bumped into you now. This is perfect timing." "It is? Why?" "I'm on my way to the beauty salon to have my hair and nail extensions removed, and a deep cleanse facial after my make-up comes off. The boy this body belongs to will want it back in the same condition he last saw it in, and after being granted the privilege of borrowing it for a week I owe him that much." "So you enjoyed your time here?" "More than I can say. For seven days I was young and pretty again, I got to flirt with lots of handsome men, and the sex with my husband has been great." "Sex? I hope you didn't...." "Try anal? No, of course not. That was on the list of things my mount did not want done with his body, and we respected that." "Also, the link between you and your mount would've been cut if you had." "Yes, there's that, too," she admitted, with a smile. "As for why us bumping into each other now was good timing, that's because you're seeing me still at my prettiest, and that's important." "It is?" "Yes, because if I wasn't looking so beautiful and so irresistibly feminine," she said, placing her hands on my shoulders, "I wouldn't feel confident enough to kiss you. And I *am* going to kiss you." She leaned in, lips parted, I looked down into that pretty painted face, and we kissed. It was brief, but it was a real kiss. "Oooh!" she said, fluttering her lashes. "I felt that all the way down to my toes." "That was nice," I said, and it was because she was right. In that moment she *had* been beautiful and irresistibly feminine. "Goodbye, James Candy. You're a good man and I'm glad to have met you." My last sight of Eva was as she walked away, high heels tapping on the marble floor, and the skirt of her poodle dress swishing around her calves. When she had gone I turned and went into the lounge. Nick Wolfe was sitting at the bar counter in the main hotel lounge, which she had presumably decamped to following breakfast, a muscular arm around each of her bikini-clad students. She whispered something in their ears then patted their behinds as they set off together, watching them go with a very satisfied smile on her stubbled face. She had been clean-shaven at the start of the week when she first mounted Miguel but had obviously decided to let facial hair grow, presumably for the novelty of it. Miguel Sanchez was one of the mounts I'd come to know best over the past few weeks so it always felt particularly odd when he was being ridden and there was someone else behind those eyes. When the girls had left the bar Wolfe sighed, turned around on her seat and ordered up one of the Cuban cigars kept in a humidor behind the bar. Miguel had written "the occasional Cuban cigar" under 'smoking allowed yes/no' on his mount profile, so I had no problem with this. Perhaps I should've left well enough alone, but the Auberon College trio were leaving the resort on afternoon helicopter flights. Before they departed I had to know what their deal was, if only to satisfy my own curiosity. As Wolfe was puffing her cigar into life, I took the stool next to hers. "Professor Wolfe," I said, "Jim Candy, island security chief." I held out my hand and she shook it using the sort of aggressively firm grip she obviously thought was typical for guys, eyeing me warily. "Yes, I remember mistaking you for a technician when we first arrived here," she said. "I hope I'm not in any sort of trouble." "No, nothing like that," I assured her, "it's just that I'm a great admirer of your work. I found your essay 'Gender Dynamics and Toxic Masculinity in Higher Education' particularly insightful." This was a lie. When I googled Wolfe an hour ago I came across that one online and quickly read it so I could fake at least some familiarity with her stuff. "Ah, a fan!" she said, visibly relaxing. "I'm afraid that because of my duties I was only able to catch the start of your talk, but I was impressed by how you made a joke of the fact you were delivering it while riding a male mount." "If there's an elephant in the room, and you know it and your audience knows it, you have to address it right from the off," she said. "It reassures them and gets them on your side." "Sounds like good advice," I said, "I'll have to remember that. I'm curious about something. At first I thought it was odd that such a renowned feminist scholar would choose to attend the conference with a male mount, but having observed you with your two female companions over the course of several days I've realised why." "Oh?" "Apart from your talk, this has all been research for your next book, hasn't it?" "Very astute," Wolfe replied, taking a long pull on her cigar and regarding me thoughtfully. "I'm impressed. I don't think any of my esteemed fellow delegates has figured that out." "To be fair to them, I *am* a trained detective," I said. "Making deductions based on careful observation is what I was taught to do, and I'm very good at it." "Yes, you are," she agreed. "Obviously I'll be buying your book when it's published," I said, "hopefully at a book-signing the next time I'm stateside so I can get you to sign it for me. Can you tell me, as a fan of your work, what it will be about?" She took another long pull on her cigar and smiled indulgently. "Why not?" she said, and I knew that I had her. Another skill a trained detective learns is how to flatter someone's ego enough so they'll tell you what you want to know, and Professor Wolfe had a very large ego. "One of the problems of critiquing men's behaviour as a woman has always been that you were limited to doing so from the outside. Their perspective was only available to you at second hand which meant there were inevitably insights you could never gain. Until now. When I was invited to speak at the conference I seized the opportunity of using Wynwood FutureTech's amazing consciousness projection technology to get around that limitation. I came up with an a grant proposal that involved me adopting the male identity I have and talked my brightest student, Madeleine Granger, into coming along with me in the role she has. Her boyfriend Paul was unhappy about this at first until I agreed to include him. This mollified him at first until I explained that due to the nature of the sociological exploration I was undertaking this would only work if he was riding a female mount so that both he and Maddy were my male persona's lovers. At first he balked at the idea, but between us Maddy and I were eventually able to persuade him to go along with it. So the final proposal I presented to our college's funding committee was amended accordingly. Happily, they were as excited by it as I was and came up with the cash. They know that when the book based on my experience here comes out it's likely to be a best-seller and reflect well on the college. After all, how many women have had the opportunity of moving through the world as an alpha male, with a pretty girl on each arm and taking full advantage of their male privilege?" "I overheard you telling Jenny Soren - Paul - that he'd make a fine young woman. Did you mean that?" "I did. As a man Paul is a wimp and I've never understood what Maddy sees in him, but as Jenny I think he has a lot of potential. Indeed, I've come to believe he may be in denial about his true, feminine nature. I pointed this out to him, gave him a little nudge in that direction, and got him at least thinking about it as a possibility. Unfortunately, the call of white male privilege is strong so he'll probably choose to remain Paul. I'd be delighted if he does opt for gender reassignment, of course, and happy for him, too. He'd be the perfect girlfriend for a butch lesbian, the sort of strong, dominant older woman who could take him in hand and lovingly mould him into the pretty femme of her dreams." "It sounds like you already have someone in mind for him." "I do, my friend Heather. They'd be a good fit and make a lovely couple. We could even double date. I'd enjoy that a lot." "'We'?" "Maddy and I, of course. She came here as Paul's girlfriend, but she's leaving as mine." "Are you sure about that?" "Oh yes. Maddy has always hero-worshipped me but I it was only an intellectual crush, not a sexual one, too. Unfortunately, Maddy had some distressingly hetero hang-ups about physical intimacy with another woman. However, having agreed to be the lover of my male self as part of the roles we're playing while here, she accepted 'Nick' was the sort of man who would expect his two girlfriends to make out with each other while he watched. Knowing that in this case the other woman was actually her boyfriend helped her to get past her hang-ups. Paul was all for it too and encouraged her, of course. I'm sure this was because his mind was full of disgustingly sexist 'lesbo' fantasies fuelled by all the misogynistic pornography young men like him consume. By coaxing her into this he was unwittingly helping me win her hand. In removing the last barrier preventing her from falling into my arms when the conference is over and I'm myself once again he's done me a great service." "So it couldn't have gone better for you if you'd planned it that way. In fact it sounds as if you did." She frowned at this while pausing to suck on her cigar. "Yes, it does, doesn't it? Given the way your tone has changed, I'm guessing you're not the fan of my work you pretended to be, are you?" "Guilty as charged. I'm a detective, and those instincts mean that mysteries nag at me. Having watched your interactions over the past few days I wanted to know what was going on between the three of you." "Now that you've solved that little 'mystery' what do you imagine you're going to do about it?" "You've haven't done anything illegal so there's nothing I can do," I said, "but I don't think your behaviour has been very ethical. You should be ashamed of yourself." "Why? Because they're students and I'm their teacher? Auberon College is one of those institutions that doesn't have rules against teachers and students dating. Or is it because while I may be riding a male mount at the moment I'm actually a woman? I saw someone I wanted, and did what I had to to make it happen between us. When a man does something like that it's all "attaboys" and pats on the back, yet when it's a woman doing it then it suddenly becomes unseemly. Well screw that patriarchal b.s.!" She took a final pull on her cigar before carefully extinguishing it in an ash tray and standing up. "Now if you'll excuse me, there are a couple of what the character I'm cosplaying would refer to as 'hot babes' getting themselves ready for me in my room. Jenny has an earlier flight that Maddy and me, so I can't delay here any longer if I want to climb between her legs and thrust my penis into her sweet little pussy one last time before she has to vacate that body and become Paul again. And believe me I do want to, and not just because my character would. I want to do it for me and, especially, for her. I'm going to make the experience so memorable that she'll have dreams about it. When Jenny is no more, Maddy and I will still have a couple of hours before we have to check out, and I intend on making the most of them, too." I left the bar a few minutes after the Professor, only to be waylaid by Doc Kelly. "I have to give this body up in the next hour," she said, grabbing my arm, "but I've managed to carve out some free time before then - so my room, now!" I didn't need to be asked twice. And it was *good*, it was very good! After we'd had sex, Gretchen sat on the edge of the bed, staring wistfully at her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite. She ran her fingers gently over her face and breasts, then let out a long sigh. "I hate it when it's time to give up my mount and return to my own body," she said. "But on the plus side, all the repressed sexual longing that builds up over the following week makes the week after that so much sweeter." "As someone who's usually the first recipient of that sexual release I have to agree," I said, stroking her back, "but you're procrastinating. If you leave it much longer they're going to come looking for you." "You're right," she said, standing up. "As soon as we're dressed I'll grab Kirsty's phone and you can take me to a free room." When Gretchen rode a mount she always made sure they woke up in a random room in the hotel rather than her own on the principle that while it wouldn't be hard for them to find out she had been their rider if they really wanted to, it wasn't polite to make that fact explicit. Using my pass key I got us into one of the rooms that had already been vacated by departing guests and Gretchen lay down on the bed. "Will you do the honours?" she asked. "Of course." "Then this is it. Time to give Kirsty back her body and say goodbye to the hot, sexy version of me for a week." Stepping outside the room, I called the operations block. "Jim Candy here. Doctor Kelly is ready to be dismounted." After that I waited in the corridor for a few minutes until the door opened and Kirsty Farren stepped out, still ever so slightly unsteady on her feet. "Chief?" said Kirsty, her soft Southern accent so different to Gretchen's own. "What are you doing here?" "Just passing by. Have they texted you a task yet?" "Yes, I'll be tending bar, but not for a few hours yet. Which is good. If I can, I like to have some time to myself to 'decompress' after I've been ridden. So I'll see you later, chief." "OK. See you, Kirsty." She went on her way, completely oblivious of the fact that I'd been having sex with her body barely fifteen minutes earlier. Someone strode down the corridor past her and, spotting me, waved. It was the familiar figure of Miguel Sanchez - or was it still Professor Wolfe? He was unshaven so I wasn't sure, but that question was soon answered when he grinned. "Hey Jim, what did I miss?" he asked. "Was Calvin Corso my rider?" "'Fraid not," I said. "Then who was it?" "C'mon, you know I'm not allowed to say. What I can tell you is your rider was getting it on with two hot women all week, only one of whom was a mount." "Alright! So he was a stud. Cool. But then with a body like this it's easy to see why a dude like that would choose me as his mount. I mean, could there be a better way to maximize his appeal to the ladies?" "Only if he also had access to your natural modesty. Shouldn't you be wearing your reds, by the way?" "Naw, my first shift doesn't begin 'til this evening. I think I'll just hang out and chill 'til then, maybe grab a bite to eat and a drink, too." We were joined at this point by Michael Danson, who *was* wearing his red host's uniform. I'd got so used to seeing that slender, sandy- haired figure in women's clothing and full make-up over the past week, that it was actually jarring seeing him as his true self. On the other hand, he and Eva looked, sounded, and moved so differently that it wasn't too difficult to disassociate him from her in my mind entirely. "Hi Mike," said Miguel. "Jim was just telling me that my last rider was a stud, and a real hit with the ladies." "Is that so? How about mine?" asked Danson. "A happily married man who didn't have sex with anyone else while he was here but who loved to flirt," I replied. "Did he treat my body with respect?" "Yes," I said, "I can truthfully say that I think he treated it with great respect." Late afternoon found me in the operations block reception area, watching as the last new intake of the day were processed. Gretchen Kelly, now back in her shout, stout, late middle-aged body was rasping out her usual introduction. "Good afternoon, everyone. Yours is the final new intake of the five flights we typically get here on switchover days. You've already been briefed on everything you need to know, so these technicians and myself will shortly be taking riders to their rigs. We will strap you into these, connect you up, and you will awaken in your hotel rooms, in the bodies you've hired for the coming week." She led them away and then the last of the departing guests assembled, the final arrival flight of the day always being followed by the final departure one. Among the group of the thirty or so leaving us was mob boss Jack Rankin, the face of the Gorsano crime family. Looking at him now it was hard to see any trace of Marla, the feminine, submissive girl he'd been for the past seven days. Yet she was as much a part of him as the brutal mobster controlled by the feds. Lisa Rankin, the brains of the family, had departed on an earlier flight, part of the precautions the couple took to guard their secret. Some might think those precautions excessive. I didn't. I believed Lisa when she said that if word of Jack's propensities ever got out he was finished. Also in the group was a tall, short-haired, athletically built fifty- something woman I recognised as Professor Nicola Wolfe, returned to her own body. Madeleine Granger was with her and they could barely keep their hands off each other. When they came up for air after one particularly passionate kiss, Wolfe noticed I was watching them. Grinning, she winked at me then led Madeleine over. "Look, Maddy," she said, "it's the man we mistook for a technician when we first got here." "Oh, that was so embarrassing," Maddy said to me, "I hope you can forgive us?" "Of course, miss," I said. "Think nothing of it." "We had a great time here," said Wolfe, smirking at me, "and everything went the way I wanted it to. *Exactly* the way I wanted. So thank you, Mr Candy. You and the resort did a fine job." They crossed over to the elevator together then, her new girlfriend giggling as Wolfe fondled her ass. The final person to appear in the reception area was Calvin Corso, accompanied as always by his devoted wife Camille. "It was an honour to have you with us, Dr Corso," I said, seizing the opportunity to say a few words to the great man before he left us. "The honour was mine," he replied, peering up at me from his wheelchair. "To be whole once again for my wife, and to have so many eminent minds from across the globe under one roof, was everything I'd dreamed it would be." "Well, good luck with EcoWar. I hope it succeeds in changing people's minds about the problems facing us." "Their minds?" he said, looking amused. "It will change more than their minds. EcoWar is going to change the world!" He sounded so sure of himself, that I really think it might. ******************** The End. ******************** Notes: 1. This is my second story set at the Wynwood Island Resort. Thanks to some sort of brain fart I called the real life Beef Island 'Bear Island' in that tale. Not worth reposting it just to correct that error, but apologies anyway. 2. My most recent science fiction tales all fit on a common timeline. The societies they depict may appear incompatible now but, I assure you I *have* worked out how they fit together. Here's my suggested reading order for the stories in the sequence published to date: 0: Biofem 1: ReStorr: ...and then there were none. 2: ReStorr: A Day in the Life 3: The Resort 4: The Conference 'Biofem' is set furthest ahead in time, but by reading that one as a prologue you then know the future everything else is ultimately building towards and will be able to see it gradually unfold in subsequent stories. These will be set at various different points along the timeline, written as and when they come to me. *****************