Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
70
Back to Italy
“I THINK YOU’VE BEEN holding something back from me, Bob,” Mia said on my next visit to Italy.
There were lots of things I was holding back. And Mia was certainly holding a little something in reserve as well. She hinted at intimacy, but never quite got there. For my part, there were so many possible answers to that suggestion that I thought it best to just keep silent and let her proceed.
“I’ve looked into a couple of the references you gave me on temples built with magic. I must say it isn’t at all what I expected.”
“I’ve tried to give you some appropriate examples that I felt illustrated the concept. Of course, I’m not making an outright statement that magic was involved, only that it had the appearance of something magical,” I defended myself.
“But I think you know,” she said. “You’ve carefully avoided claiming the exact knowledge, but your statements about how such buildings were created have led me to believe that you know more than you’ve let on. I believe you know—or think you know—the actual magic that was used. Say to enchant the bricks of the duomo in Firenze or of the excavated temple in Mesopotamia. You want to avoid a witch-hunt, as do I, but I want to see the magic used. I want to know for sure there is a power that moves through the earth that is greater than our feeble minds have comprehended. Show me, Bob. Show me how the spell was cast on bricks to make them more durable and to weld them together.”
“Ah. Well, Mia, it’s like this. I don’t know for sure that the magic still works. It hasn’t been used in centuries,” I said. “It seems that as technology is developed that supersedes what could have been done by magic in a different age, the magic falls into disuse and then finally disappears altogether.”
“For example?”
“It was said that certain sorcerers and witches could fly and get to a place far away faster than any pursuit. Well, now all we need to do is get on an airplane. Who needs to fly? Though, I admit that I’ve sometimes wished I could fly, even though I have a pilot’s license for small planes.”
“But from that, I detect that you do know the spell, but haven’t tried it,” she persisted.
“I have access to certain ancient manuscripts which purport to have that knowledge.”
“And you can read them.”
I nodded. I was thinking it might be time to tell her I was The Bob, but really, the only thing that I’d revealed about The Bob that could be considered magic was my portal. And that was shrouded in mystery and widely supposed to be a television special effect.
“How about if you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” I think she meant ‘spell’ but I was certainly willing to exchange glimpses of other things.
“I think it calls for something special,” I said. “What would you say to a weekend away with me to someplace very private?”
“I would say yes under one condition,” she said.
I assumed she was going to put a stipulation on how intimate it was.
“And that is?”
“We could go away for a nice weekend someplace very private if we were already in an intimate relationship, don’t you think? Why don’t we go to your hotel, Bob?”
“F.! Gotcha!” I called. “H! Has anyone seen G?” I got hit in the back of the head and a message came up: ‘Game Over.’ I took off my goggles and turned to Sally. “What was that for?”
“New realism I’ve built into it. Now if you get hit in the game, you get hit in real life,” she giggled.
I had a feeling she was just using that as an excuse to hit me! She could be very physical at times. Sometimes that was a very good thing. I pulled her into my lap and before long one of those times was taking us to a peak as I thrust into her.
“Oh, Bob. I need to figure out how to build that into a game,” she panted.
“People would never stop playing,” I said. “When are you going to name those characters instead of just having them labeled with letters?”
“I’ll get around to it. This is only a pastime I use to unwind after I’ve been studying,” Sally said.
“And how are the studies going?”
“I think I’m making progress,” she said. “Nimia has been a great help, but every time I think I understand something, we end up having sex.”
“That can be a problem.”
“Naw. I like that as much as studying. Nimia knows more about all the magical stuff in the library than I ever will,” Sally said.
“She told me to ask you about this. She said that while you were working on the portal research, you came upon various binding spells like the one we used for bricks back in Bathra.”
“Oh, yeah. It was cool. And the librarians brought me five other scrolls that had similar spells and a manuscript from the Middle Ages. I did some comparisons and it looks like the fundamental elements are all the same, but there are different invocations used. It was a bit of a rabbit hole that I dove down, but I’ve got my head back in multi-dimensional portals now.”
“Right. How would you like to have a discussion with another researcher who has been looking at how the structures of the fourteenth century were created without the aid of modern tools and technology? She could use a little demonstration of how the spell works.”
“I’d love to meet and talk to her,” Sally said. “But just because I can read the spell, doesn’t mean I can work it. I um… tried,” she said as she tucked her chin down on her chest.
It wasn’t against any laws to practice magic in Areola, but no one had unveiled any real talent for it. Areola provided all the magic they could want. Actually, they worked magic, but didn’t recognize it as such. Developing a screen and network to project entertainment onto was considered science and engineering. The thing was that they used little understood foundations of Areola that were decidedly outside the science of the natural world. Their science and engineering were built on Areola’s magic.
“Hey,” I said, lifting her chin so I could kiss her. “Why don’t we try it again in the natural world. It might just be the environment.”
“Hmm. Dimensional interference,” she said. “This could help in my study of dimensional portals. If the sorcery of one world doesn’t work in another world, it might mean the portal sorcery would be different in Areola than it is in the natural world. Let’s do it!”
I laughed and left Sally to her plans in Areola while I caught a flight to New York.
I was ready to rename the whole mini-series My Double Life. Only I’d need to have it be triple life or quadruple life. I was leading so many lives as I met and dated these women that I was sure I’d mess up and be the wrong Bob at the wrong time.
Fortunately, there were some who were an instant ‘no.’ Like the racist Lorelei. She wasn’t the belle in Georgia, but the boutique owner in New York. I walked into her shop with Lakshmi on my arm, out for a day of sightseeing and shopping. I thought we might find some nice gifts for the girls in this shop and get to know the owner informally as well.
After a few minutes of being ignored, I started toward Lorelei to ask a question.
“We really don’t carry any ghetto clothing here,” she snapped, looking at Lakshmi. “Just look at the posters around the shop and you’ll see what our girls should look like.” I glanced around. There were full-size posters of women in the lingerie offered for sale in the shop. Every one of them was white and blonde. I hadn’t seen a display like that in years. Something grated against my sensibilities. I turned to her.
“I see. So, you only cater to women with huge oversized tits. Well, that definitely brings our business to a close.”
Lorelei huffed.
“You’re a decent looking guy who obviously has money. You could have any one of those white girls on your arm. You don’t need to eat dark meat.”
That was it as far as I was concerned. I reached in my pocket for a business card. It was simple and I’d not had a reason to use one before now. On the front, it had our show logo and a smiling picture of me in my other guise. It said, “To Boldly Go, starring The Bob.” On the back, it simply said, “You have been eliminated.” I took Lakshmi’s arm and led her out of the store as Lorelei spluttered behind me.
The thing is, if she watched the show and applied to be on it, she had to know that I had all races on with me. Whatever her intent, I didn’t plan to even show her shop or mention her name on the show. She didn’t need any advertising from me.
I took Lakshmi to dinner on the rooftop of our hotel where we could watch the lights of the city come on. It was lovely.
I’d promised Mia a long weekend away to show her the spell for binding and adjusting the sizes of the bricks used in precision building, like the duomo in Firenze. I wanted to be well away from the city for our weekend, so I picked Mia up in Rome and we headed out to one of the islands where I’d rented a villa. It was beautiful.
“Are you sure you didn’t invite me out here just to take advantage of me and plunder my womanly charms with your big plunder stick?” she giggled as I wrapped my arms around her on the balcony overlooking the Mediterranean.
“Mmm,” I said as I kissed up her neck and around her ear. “Plundering your womanly charms has a certain attractiveness to the sound. Perhaps I should change plans and just focus on that.”
“No, no. Binding spells first, then plundering.”
I turned her so I could capture her lips with mine and kissed her passionately.
“Maybe a little plundering before spells would be a good thing,” she whispered. I carried her to bed.
Who would ever have thought that a 4,000-year-old demon would ever get so much pleasure enjoying the love of a twenty-seven-year-old nun? Mia’s order did not hold to the celibacy of nuns or priests and thought it ridiculous to pretend to it when few abided by it. I whole-heartedly agreed and Mia welcomed me into her body as happily as any lover I had ever had.
After we had made love all afternoon, we then walked to town for dinner and drinks at an osteria, owned and run by a local family for some centuries. Then we walked back to our villa. I’d gone into the cellar at the villa when we first got there and opened a gateway so Sally and a few others could enter. They stayed out of the way until we’d left for dinner, then it seemed they’d decided to party and were all playing in the pool.
“Bob? Who are all these women? I thought it was going to be just me and you for an intimate weekend.”
“Well, I invited Sally to join us because she has the scroll I wanted to show you and has studied it most recently. She decided to bring a few friends. Don’t worry. I’m sure they won’t bother us.”
“Not as long as we can keep our eyes off their naked bodies out there. Should I be concerned?”
“No. If your eyes stray to them, they will probably display themselves more prominently for your viewing.”
“Oh, my.”
“Sally!” I called. “Please join Mia and me in the salon.”
Sally’s light brown hair had become even lighter since she joined us in Areola. Not quite blonde, but light brown. Her slight, five-foot-two frame was an ideal foundation for the prominent breasts she sported. I rather thought those had grown a bit since she’d come to Areola, so perhaps she’d been remaking her self-image over the years. She grabbed the scroll and walked into the salon as if she were a six-foot model on a catwalk. She stepped between Mia and me and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she placed the scroll on the table.
“You just carry around an ancient scroll with you as you stroll nakedly through the world?” Mia asked, a bit perplexed.
“It has a kind of preservation spell on it,” Sally answered. “When we put it away at night, it sort of rejuvenates itself, I think. I’m studying what occurs when one crosses from alternate dimensions into and out of the natural world. You smell good. Did you and Bob already make love? You did, didn’t you? Mmm. Just smelling you makes me horny.”
“Sally,” I reprimanded her gently. “We’re here to talk about the manuscript and the binding spell that was used on the temple… or cathedral, I mean.”
“Yessir. You’re Mia, right? I’m Sally. Let me show you what I found. I chose this manuscript because it’s in Latin, so you can probably read it. It takes me forever to get through a Sanskrit manuscript without help.”
“So, you think this actually works?” Mia asked after Sally had unraveled the spell for her and told her how it was supposed to work. In the meantime, she’d also managed to wiggle onto Mia’s lap and get her clothes partially off. Studying these manuscripts just affects certain girls physically. I hadn’t seen this side of Mia before as she talked about the spell and softly caressed Sally’s breasts.
“I haven’t been able to make it work, but Bob thinks it might work here in the… uh… Italy. My special area of study is really interdimensional portals and multidimensional crossovers.”
“Oh, that sounds fascinating. I wish I had time to study everything I want to.”
“I do! That’s one thing about being with Bob. You have all the time in the world,” Sally said. She kissed Mia and both girls moaned. I poured another glass of wine for each of us.
“Let’s try it. Do we need to cast a magic circle or something in order to put it together?” Mia asked. Her head was filled with magical rubbish.
“Bob?” Sally asked.
“I don’t think so. You cast a circle to protect you from outside forces, or to confine magic inside so it doesn’t leak out. In some instances, a circle might give a sorcerer some extra focus for his power. If Brunelleschi worked this while he was laying bricks in the cathedral, he couldn’t have used a circle.”
“What will we use to bind together?”
“I found a couple of loose bricks in the garden,” Sally said. “Uh… earlier when I was exploring.”
“You’ve been here ever since we got here, haven’t you?” Mia accused.
“Um… sort of. We tried to stay out of the way.” Just then, seven naked nymphs came in out of the moonlight by the pool. I think Mia had forgotten they were there. They filed by and kissed me and Sally before going up the stairs. What a lovely sight that was.
“Guest room,” I said to Mia. She nodded slowly. She looked strangely at one of the nymphs and I realized Julie was among them. The darkness and the excitement about their experiment kept Mia from recognizing one of my crew from the first season.
Sally led us out to the patio where two bricks were lying on a table. Mia immediately picked them up to examine them, pushing them against each other to see if they would stick. When she was satisfied they were not rigged, she faced us. The only thing she was still wearing were her panties. She seemed to have just noticed and shrugged.
“Okay. I’ll hold them together and you work the spell,” she said to Sally.
“No!” I said. “Set them down over there on the patio. We’ll stay behind the magic worker. You don’t want to accidentally be in the path of her spell.”
“Ew! I can imagine. Okay.” She set the bricks down touching each other on the patio and stepped back behind Sally. I stepped up and put an arm around my little scientist mage.
“I think you can do this. Remember what the manuscript said about putting your will behind it as you chant the spell. Do you remember all the words?”
“Yes,” she said weakly.
“Just focus on the bricks and when you can feel them with your mind and everything else fades away, point at them and chant the spell.”
“Okay, Bob. I can do this.”
I stepped back beside Mia, who had decided wearing panties wasn’t necessary. She put her arms around me and we watched my little apprentice. We weren’t sure anything was happening, but Sally was gathering her focus. We saw her hand gradually come up to point at the bricks and heard the low chant of the spell. It wasn’t long and she repeated it to make sure she had it correct, then dropped her hand.
“Is that it?” Mia asked. “No bolt of electricity or flash of light?”
“That would make it a worthless spell if you planned to work in secrecy as you were laying bricks,” Sally said as she sagged against me. “Did it work?”
Mia went to the bricks and gingerly touched them as if they might be hot. Sensing no surprises, she grabbed the edge of one and pulled at it. It didn’t move. She pried at the other and it didn’t move. She pulled at both of them and they refused to budge.
“They’re stuck!”
“That was the intent,” Sally said. “It worked!”
“Yes, but they aren’t just stuck to each other, they’re stuck to the patio. I think if you moved them, the whole batch of bricks under them would move. This is amazing. They could have built the whole dome like this if they had a little more control.”
“Thanks,” Sally said. “I’m so tired.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Mia said, running to embrace her. “You did it. You worked a magic spell.” She started raining kisses all over Sally’s face and lips. “You’re wonderful. Wonderful.”
“I’ll take her to bed. I think she needs some sleep,” I said. I scooped Sally up in my arms and she snuggled against my chest.
“Our bed, Bob,” Mia said.
End Part XIII
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