Maddie and Trevor finish it up

I'm awoken by Trevor climbing out of bed and padding to the bathroom. I pull the phone off the nightstand, look at the time, and frown. He'll need to hurry if he wants to make it to his classes... Oh, no, wait. Never mind. I remember that it's Saturday.

After a couple of minutes, the toilet flushes and Trevor returns to stand in the doorway, regarding my tousled form still entangled in the bedsheets, a single bare tit winking back at him.

"I didn't have any plans for today," he says. "What about you?"

"What do you think?" I ask archly.

"I think...that this is the perfect time to finish up Pipe-weed Dreams."

"Fine," I groan, "but first...coffee."

A quarter of an hour later the two of us are ensconced on the love seat in the living room, tablet in front of us. "Where did we leave off?" I ask.

READING IN PROGRESS (BGM)

"Well, that's that," says Trevor. "We've got a lot to cover."

"Azzie reveals to Rowana that she has special jacking powers. Which explains why she was able to learn Westron fluently through their link and also why they didn't fry their brains or whatever."

"She also reveals her origin--Drake Industries, a megacorporation run by a...well, drake, Legere." Trevor frowns. "Apparently, we should have already learned this from what we read last time, but unfortunately we accidentally skipped a couple of chapters because of a bad link."

"Yeah, on a technical level the story isn't perfect, but what story is? I've noticed a few typos. Most intriguingly, several instances where the point of view changes to third person for a couple of sentences--'she' instead of 'I'. I believe it only happens in the side chapters. Makes me wonder if Zeebop originally wrote it that way." I pause for a moment. "But since we're on the subject of megacorporations, will you allow me a bit of a tangent?"

"Would you stop if I said 'no'?"

"So...about this Reunited Megacorp. Last time, I wondered--who was the big cheese around these parts? The ruling authority? The monopolizer of violence? And this appears to be it. They're the ones who employed Rowana as a Ranger in their military. Who sold her the plot of land in Mordor. Who have the power to investigate corporations like Drake and bust them for their lawbreaking. I guess what I'm saying is...the name seems like a misnomer. As far as I can tell, this entity is a proper Westphalian state. What exactly makes it a 'megacorporation', especially when it has jurisdiction over other megacorporations?"

"I dunno." Trevor shrugs his shoulders. "It provides commercial goods and services?"

"So did the Soviet Union, but no one's calling that a corporation."

"Oh! You know what I bet it is? It's some type of technocracy. Not a corporation per se, but a government effectively run by a group of corporations. Through an oversight board or something. I think that would make sense and fit pretty well with the whole cyberpunk aesthetic."

"Sure...that seems plausible," I concede, "though Zeebop never lays it out directly. Er, not that they need to. The story doesn't require that."

"Are you done then? Can we get back to the plot?"

"Yeah, I'm done."

"Okay, back to Rowana and Azzie. Orcs keep somehow killing themselves all over their property. And in the midst of this, they acquire a male orc slave they call Bebe. He's engaged in the orc equivalent of...uh..."

"Bacha bazi." I grimace. "Wish I didn't know that term."

"Right. Anyway, they free him, but he elects to stay with them. And now, finally! We get some tension in the relationship. Not so much about whether Rowana and Azzie should fuck him, but more about whether they should use him to get pregnant and have some kids."

"The conflict is still resolved pretty fast. Surprising after Azzie deliberately turns off Rowana's implant that keeps her sterile, and she starts getting her period. I'm not sure I would have forgiven something like that so quickly."

"Yeah, especially when it's so easy to just talk about it." We smile at each other knowingly. Then Trevor coughs delicately and continues. "Bebe is disturbed by all the righteous murdering Rowana and Azzie are laying down. As well as his near rape experience. So the girls decide to cure his sexual trauma with sex."

"Somehow, I doubt you'll find that in the DSM... You know, something else just occurred to me. Why are these orcs green? And not just kinda green, but, like, vivid near-neon green? They weren't like that in the Peter Jackson films. And I don't think Tolkien ever described them that way either. Did Zeebop mix up Warhammer orcs with Tolkien orcs?"

Trevor sighs. "Really, now--"

"Hold on. I gotta look this up."

INTERNET RABBIT HOLE IN PROGRESS

"Okay, so it seems there was a Lord of the Rings illustrator in the seventies who drew his orcs green. That would have been after Tolkien's death, but before Warhammer and Warcraft and their ilk. I guess I'll allow it. Marginally."

"I'm glad to hear that. Can we move on?"

"Sure, sure."

"All the main character's motivations are now converging. Rowana wants to stop these raids trying to reacquire Azzie. Lilja, the dwarf hacker, wants to rescue her eldritch horror lover, Bob, from Drake Industries. Daleman is itching to get out from under the thumb of the evil Crown Players and protect her new girlfriend. And Amelia...well, Amelia is along for the ride. Thought experiment... How difficult would it be to push all her actions and interactions with Rowana onto Lilja? Just cut her and Aubert out completely?"

"Probably not that hard. And the Occam's Razor of storytelling suggests you probably should. But in this case, I say 'Fuck Occam's Razor!' Reality is messy, and sometimes I think stories can be allowed to reflect that. And having someone whose motivations are purely altruistic elevates this one."

"No argument from me. Anyway, our good guys eventually figure out all the bad guys are connected. And the best way to fuck them up and accomplish their objectives is a raid on a Drake Industries blacksite. Conveniently called 'Black Labs'. Rowana infiltrates through a sewer--encountering some massive spiders--while wearing the invisibility ring. Daleman goes through the front as a double agent. Lilja and Amelia provide hacker support remotely. Inside they find Bob, but also Legere the dragon and a mystical orc with the stolen Morgul blade, who is able to see through Rowana's invisibility. All hell breaks loose."

"I know I shouldn't, but I felt kind of bad for Legere. There he is, just doing his dragon thing, enjoying his hoard, and our heroes roll in and just ruin his day in spectacular fashion. I couldn't help but think of this, but less gold, more porn."

"I don't. He had it all coming. As does Morgain, the mystical orc, who Rowana kills--but not before he stabs her with the Morgul blade. She has to carry Bob back out through the sewers while she's dying."

"I appreciate the echoes of scenes from Tolkien's work that Zeebop fits in. There's several here in quick succession--Rowana passing through the spiders like Frodo through Cirith Ungol, wearing a ring of invisibility while encountering a dragon like Bilbo and Smaug. Her line to Morgain is like Eowyn's to the Witch King. The desperation of her trek through the sewers somewhat mirrors Frodo going to Rivendell after he, too, is stabbed by a Morgul blade, but also the final ascent of Mount Doom. Bob carries her the final stretch like Sam does for Frodo."

"And then once she's back with Azzie and Bebe, they perform life-saving surgery by using electromagnetism to extract the Morgul shards, like that famous Tolkien character, Iron Man."

"Yeah, that was a little silly, but come on. Zeebop should be allowed some fun."

"There's not much left. The Iron Man solution is a temporary one, but fortunately a black wizard shows up to fix Rowana more permanently. Let's see...Daleman saves her girlfriend and inflicts some incredibly satisfying ultraviolence on the Black Numenorean puppetmaster. Note to self: Don't ever get cybernetic combat implants. It will only prolong how long you get to suffer the agony of dying while your body is being torn apart."

"The gang all gathers together at Rowana's farm, all their problems seemingly resolved and filthy rich from all the money they stole from Drake. They enjoy a little orgy to close things out."

"Any final notes?" asks Trevor.

"It occurs to me Aubert might be a descendant of Aragorn and Arwen. Maybe Zeebop made that more explicit at some point, but I think it's merely hinted at. Besides that, well, there's the revelation about the ring...It turns out it is Sauron's, but a trial ring he made before the real one, and it's imbued mostly with his non-metaphorical lust."

"Fitting for a porn story, I suppose."

"It could be a lot worse. I was worried Zeebop might be about to retcon Lord of the Rings entirely. That would have made me throw the tablet across the room."

"Hey! No, bad girl! You can destroy your own property. Once you have some, that is."

"But overall, here's my profound thesis. I think at the end of the day, this story is more Tolkien than cyberpunk. Sure, the...sexual proclivities of the main characters would make the good professor choke on his pipe, but they really are heroes in a pure sense of the word. Even Daleman, I think. Zeebop is careful to make sure both Arnorson's and Rimmer's deaths conveniently come about in self defense. More importantly, the ending... It's unambiguously satisfying in a way cyberpunk generally isn't. Our heroes went there and back again and beat the Man and got away with it and--within the context of the story, at least--are primed for a 'happily ever after'."

"And how Tolkienesque would you say is Tû, the black wizard, and her weird Dualism?"

"Ah...yes. Maybe we can just ignore that. I'm not sure what Zeebop is up to, trying to retcon Melkor in that way."

"Did you want to talk about the erotic aspects of the story?"

"Honestly, who cares? Sure, it's got all the appropriate scenes--maybe not as, uh, sexy as they could be--but I don't think any of that is what a reader is going to take away from this. I think they're going to take away something else, something more." I laugh at Trevor. "Sorry, I know that kind of defeats the whole point you were originally going for."

"That's okay," he says. "I'll pick next time. And maybe I'll find something that actually gets you wet and me hard."

"I look forward to it."