Sally Ramirez sat on the lunar shuttle wondering what she would do if the anti-nausea drugs didn’t work this time. Travel had been bad before, but this took the cake. She was tired of being assigned to every backwater hellhole her supervisor could think of sending her to. Moving around like this was very wearing on her nerves. Why couldn’t they give her a nice permanent assignment?
She loathed being given long-distance assignments. A homebody at heart, New York was her home, and by the Goddess, she should be there right this moment. She had barely seen her apartment in the last three years. Her boss knew how she felt about traveling, hell; everyone knew how she felt about it.
But, a request for assistance had come in and she was off again. Luna Station’s Minister in Residence had asked for the assistance of a Senior Troubleshooting Priestess.
Her immediate superior had asked her to handle it. He had not bothered to specify just what she was supposed to handle either. This was starting to become standard practice for the UCR, and she was tired of it, and like all bureaucracies, the United Coalition of Religions had some real problems. Most of those problems centered on the people running things however.
Sally brooded over what the problem on Luna Station might be. She considered a number of possibilities before deciding that it wasn’t worth her time to continue to brood.
"Well, fretting my guts into a knot isn't going to help." She grumbled a little too loudly.
"Pardon me?" her seatmate asked politely. He had the air of a tecner, a techno nerd who was addicted to tinkering with technology.
"I’m sorry," she explained, "I have this bad habit of discussing my problems out loud."
"Then I’m sorry to have intruded. Are you one of the team?"
One of the team, she thought. "No, I don't think so. Sorry, I don't have a scientific or technical bone in my body. I'm a minister." It was a nice generic cover for Witch on duty.
"A minister?" he asked his nasal voice spiraling up an octave. "Gee, if the padre I grew up with looked like you, I would have paid a lot more attention to my Religions class. What denomination are you trained in?"
All licensed, ordained UCR ministers be conversant with the tenants and practices of all others religions, although they could specialize in one sect.
Sally was on assignment from the moment she received her briefing, and she couldn’t say much, but she was honor bound to answer that question honestly. "I'm an ordained High Priestess and Witch of the Celtic Wiccan community. "
The man looked at her and there was a number of changes in his face. Sally could almost hear the thoughts going through his head. Probably remembering some of the rumors from the Middle Ages. She changed the subject instead. "You mentioned a 'team' a while ago. What team?"
From his expression he changed mental gears into a more technical mode. "An entire cadre of technicians has been assembled covering a number of disciplines. It does appear to the casual observers from Earth’s perspective, that there are a great number of anomalies presently originating from Luna Base. For example, the base has sent no data from the satellite relay stations orbiting Earth to the deep space facilities. Data from those outposts appears to be completely offline. The observatory telescopes, both visual and radio, are pointed at the galaxy G-48 and all orders to focus on the next targets are not being obeyed. Since the astronomers know just about everything there is to know about G-48, it has them upset, somewhat. Time on the dark-side telescopes is too precious to waste on a system that we already know about.
"The Laboratory isn't responding to any requests for information on the research projects they are currently processing, and there have been no updates to older data we have with ongoing projects, nor are final result available for those experiments that have been concluded. Those in more lofty positions than I, are extremely upset, and my colleagues and I have been dispatched to look into the problem and to take whatever steps are necessary to resolve them post haste," he said importantly.
Having waded through the techno-babble of her seatmate to the gist of his statements, she thought that this was too much of a coincidence. Two problems occurring at the same time, requiring the resources of two different highly specialized groups to try to correct? One thing that every apprentice witch was taught was that there was no such thing as coincidence.
The tecner was looking at her as eagerly as her cat looked at the sound of her food dispenser working. Sally knew that he was expecting her to enlighten him as to her reasons for traveling to the Moon. However, by the bylaws of the UCR, she could say nothing. Everything she did on assignment was sealed under the sanctity of the confessional. Legally, the only people she could discuss her assignment with was her supervisor or, under certain conditions, the courts in the case of truly criminal actions.
Instead, Sally said brightly, "Oh, that's good. I’m coming to visit a friend, and I couldn't get in touch with her, so I was worried. I'm glad to hear that it's only a technical glitch."
That statement started him off on a list of stories about the greatest glitches and biggest bugs he had seen in his fifteen-year career as a tecner. Although he was erudite and well traveled, Sally was only paying attention with half of her mind. Under other circumstances, she would be perfectly happy to listen to his stories, however right now she was wondering what all these problems were heralding.
Any number of catastrophic problems could come out of this situation. The entire base could be lost. If the environmental systems were allowed to degrade, for instance, everyone on Luna Station could die. It had cost several trillion credits to build Luna Station in the first place, and if something had happened that caused the station to have to be abandoned, the entire Space Program was shot. No more mining the Asteroids, no gas mining of Saturn, the deep space probes would be cut off, and mankind would be isolated to his own little planet again.
A couple of hours after takeoff, they touched down at the shuttle port attached to Luna Station. Sally felt the impact of the airlock seals against the frame of the shuttle, so, unlike others, she wasn't surprised when the airlock opened. She waited for the other passengers to depart before she did, since she hated crowds. The tecner she had been speaking to put his pocket computer away, picked up his bag, and deshuttled as quickly as possible, already focusing on his job. Sally surmised that he would not be getting much sleep this night.
Her first time on a base away from Earth was something of a shock. She breathed in the recycled air and almost gagged. There was very little fresh oxygen here. While filters removed the dangerous carbon dioxide before it reached toxic levels, filters could never duplicate the fresh-air smell of a planet. Sally would have thought that the hydroponics lab, which provided most of the food for Luna Station would have provided more than enough air for the whole base. The plants in there alone should be producing enough Oxygen out of the Carbon Dioxide to supply the base. It always had before, if the reports she had read as part of her briefing were correct.
The moment she had stepped off the shuttle, she could tell there was something seriously wrong with the emotional "feel" of the station. The air held an atmosphere of neglect and insanity. Where there should have been a "family" feeling that her empathic senses could pick up, the "family" had been replaced by a sexual tension that was almost palpable. Since her ability to feel emotional states was her strongest ability, she was almost nauseated by the sickening "feel" of the station.
So far, not good. Sally went through the normal reception procedures of presenting her credentials to the main base computer, and standard decontamination. The shuttle had forwarded any priority dispatches, and among them were Sally’s primary identification and her security clearance, it was only a matter of matching up her retinal, voice and palm prints with those credentials, while she was cleansed by microwave to keep from contaminating the base. It was with some trepidation that she walked into the base proper.
There was a short man coming toward her who had a curious look on his face. He was approximately 5 foot 2 inches tall, and slightly overweight. Sally thought that he might look nice if he paid more attention to his personal grooming. He was still making a beeline toward her, and she prepared herself to receive him. She expected that this was her welcoming committee.
As the man finished crossing the intervening space, and abruptly he turned and went off into the shadows. There he continued to look at Sally and devour her with his eyes. She felt waves of desire wash over her from him. She knew that he was extremely close to sexually assaulting her right there on the "tarmac".
Sally's eyebrows were trying to mesh with her hairline. To say this encounter was strange was an understatement. Those feelings radiating out of him told her that he had been walking the ragged edge of self-control. She didn’t understand the sexual tension in the air, nor this overwhelming almost mindless lust.
Slowly and cautiously as she walked, she extended her empathy toward the people around her. Without exception among those who were assigned to the base, everyone was in a similar state of sexual tension. She thought it was simply a matter of one or two people who were under some extremes, but the more people she checked, the more she was forced to the conclusion that there was some sort of "love infection" going on. Sally put up her shields to keep the press of emotions from getting to her and shuddered with relief.
Given that, it was understandable why there was such an air of neglect here. Orders coming up from the surface of Earth would be ignored and critical systems would also be unchecked, simply because everyone was too busy making love and pursuing the opposite sex to do anything else.
After coming to the conclusion that this was a very dangerous situation, she finally found herself in the area she had been told to go to when she arrived. She had hoped that someone would be present to guide her, but directions were given, just in case. In the Altar room of the base chapel, she found her contact.
Mary Stewart’s biography had been part of her briefing. According to the dossier picture that was part of that package, Mary was a petite young lady, about 22 with long brown hair. With her large, sloe eyes, and a dancer's figure, Mary looked as if she would be more at home in a pampered sheik's harem than as a Priestess on a moon-base. Sally had to take that on faith, as Mary’s back was currently to her while she bent over the Altar.
From the emotional distress that she was emanating, Sally thought that Mary had been loosing too much sleep. She was emanating feelings of deep, unrequited love, which tallied with the other signs and symptoms that Sally was getting. If this went on too much longer, Mary would have bleeding ulcers from stress.
Sally watched Mary for a little while. When she wanted to, Sally could blend into the background of the featureless desert her first teacher used to joke. No small trick considering that it took a lot of control to send out "don't notice me" vibes to everyone who might glance her way. But then again, she was on the Moon and because most of her magick was tied up with the Moon, she had a huge store of power to draw upon.
After watching her counterpart for a while, and seeing the stress and sleepless nights etched on her frame and spirit, Sally decided that she should make Mary aware that she was there. She shifted slightly against the doorframe, making a small sound of cloth moving over plascrete, and Mary jumped a half-meter into the air.
Mary whirled, ready to face her potential adversary. She launched into an attack immediately, not giving Sally enough time to introduce herself. Without hesitation Sally hit her with a levinbolt, a torpedo of magical power, designed to stun Mary.
Good thing too, because Mary had her athame in her hands. She had that hunted, haunted look that said she was right on the ragged edge and very close to snapping.
Sally was stunned herself, since being attacked by a priestess was the last thing she expected.
Mary stopped, got a good look at Sally's uniform, and almost broke down weeping. Sally moved quickly across the room and helped Mary sit on a pew in front of the altar, only peripherally taking in the trappings laid out on the altar itself. Mary was sobbing uncontrollably.
What the hell happened? Sally thought, I come here and am all but sexually assaulted in the main hanger, and now Mary tries to eviscerate me with her ritual knife? What in the name of Gaia's Sacred Gonads is going on here?
It took time, but Sally was able to calm Mary down eventually. It took all of Sally’s control to drain off the dangerous homicidal/suicidal/sexual tensions in Mary’s mind and body. The atmosphere was starting to get to Sally too. She felt hot and flushed, possibly because of the poor atmosphere on the base.
Let's find out what happened and see what needs to be done to fix it, she thought.
Sally started working on Mary’s emotional state, draining those destructive emotions before they could do more harm to her body and psyche. Apparently draining her released the hysteria, and she started in on a litany of troubles that has been plaguing the station for over two weeks now, from the hydroponics department refusing to operate, to communications not being answered, to rape in the halls to the slow degradation of her own will and mind.
"The hell of it is," Mary managed to choke out between sobs, "is that it seems to be almost at random. People you would never think of as being rapists have been attacking people all over the station. Those with healthy sexual appetites have gone all cold and distant, not wanting anything to do with anyone else. Look, I’m not a lesbian, but I HAD to send away my altar-girl or else I would have attacked her. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself; I would have eventually raped her. Problem is I kept brooding over the fact that SHE actually IS in love with ME, and asking myself if it really would be rape, and we never did anything and I didn’t know anything about her attraction before now, and then there are the guidelines regarding fraternization within the ranks and..."
Sally went for something to drink, letting Mary continue to vent. When she came back, Mary said, "It's not like I haven't tried to do something about all this, but nothing's worked! I have done spells to capture these idiots that go around and attack others, I have tried draining the environment, I even went on a Vision Quest to try to find out the source of this strange love-bug, but none of it is any good! I'm so far past frustrated that I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do now! I was all set up to try to do another useless spell or ritual to fix this, then you show up..." she waved vaguely at the altar.
Sally noticed that Mary’s voice has been rising in shrillness for this entire speech. She was close to hysteria again, and Sally decided to do something that wasn't precisely ethical. She put Mary to sleep. Gently, Sally went into Mary's mind and started slowing Mary’s brainwaves, allowing the fatigue, held off by sheer will alone, to do its long delayed work, slowing her heartbeat so that the exhaustion that was only seconds away could catch up with her.
It worked. In moments Mary was asleep and snoring gently.
"Oh my Gods... What the hell do I do now?" Sally wondered aloud. Probably the first order of business is to find out how long this has been happening. Where could I find out information like that? Security would probably be my best bet. But this is not precisely my area of expertise. Finding out why mystery love bugs are loose on a moon station is NOT in the training manuals anyplace.
Sally could have left it there, but something deep inside her was driving her on and telling her that SHE and no one else, had a good chance to stop whatever this was.
A quick query of the station's computers got her the map she needed and, after putting Mary safely on the couch with a blanket over her, she locked the door to the chapel coding entry to her voice alone, and headed to Security.
Walking along the halls felt strange, they were either deserted or they pulsed with sexual energy. She knew that if she looked in some of the more shadowed corners, she would see people copulating, not always with the opposite sex.
Not that I mind, but it should be because that's how you are, not because something is forcing you, this still left the question of what caused all of this, and why she was here.
Security had the same abandoned air to it. The jail cells were filled to overflowing with those who had been captured before the guards succumbed to whatever this was. All of them were locked, and Sally knew that the facilities in those cells were complete enough that an extended stay in there would not harm anyone incarcerated. The prisoners would be all right so long as the food processors continued to work.
She went past the receptionist's station, and glanced at the entry book laying open on the desk. Idly, she started paging through it to see when the last entry was. It was dated three days before.
Five members of Security are not responding to hails to report for duty. Two more took personal days and there are only two of us left. Lt. Springer and I will hold the fort down as long as possible, but we may be overwhelmed by whatever this is.
Lt Springer is being the same cold person she always is, showing no interest in me or anything else. I wish she would look at me with something other than JUST duty in her eyes. I could use a little of that, and I certainly wouldn't turn it away. I would SO like to get inside those pants.
I wish I could keep my mind on my duty, since there are more reports coming in every hour, reports of assaults, rape, theft and looting, public indecency, men grabbing women and dragging them off into corners to do what they will with them,
just like I hope Springer does to me... We need help and soon.
And that was the last entry. She paged back a few days and saw a steadily increasing series of arrests and break-ins, with fewer and fewer personnel available to handle these crises.
The crossed out portions of this log were almost as interesting as the rest of the official parts. It showed the guard here also succumbing to whatever this was that affected everyone on this station. Obviously, this journal was used for notes, to be transcribed into the official log later.
On impulse, she reached over and turned on the terminal that was nearby. Sure enough, the system booted up and came online, waiting for the User ID and Password to be entered to start the security programs.
She checked the bits of paper laying around looking for something that could be an ID or password, finding nothing. She then turned to the front of the logbook hoping to find something there. Still nothing.
Giving up on computer access for now, she walked around the administrative areas, looking for documents or reports that she could use to find more information with. She got a few pieces that added a few clues to the whole, but nothing of substance.
When she reached the Watch Commander’s office, she hit pay dirt. There, the terminal was still on, and logged into the network, probably so that the missing Lt. Springer could monitor all the problems going on.
She started typing commands into the terminal, afraid to use the voice access since that would naturally be monitored for voiceprint matches. She just hoped that there were not fingerprint scanners in the keyboard to foil her as well.
Soon she puzzled out the file system, and found the official logs of the base security forces. She accessed them and had the entries for the past month print out. Next, she started a search for the base personnel, and as expected, she found a way to track the inhabitants of the base. She turned that on, and set the search parameters for only those who worked in the critical services.
Soon, a map projected on the wall with moving dots denoting those who were responsible for Security, Life Support, Food, and Medical services. The display was even broken out so that Medical personnel were shown in blue, Security in red, Life Support in green, and Food Services in white. There was no pattern in where they were in the station that Sally could detect. They certainly didn’t seem to be in their primary areas of responsibility.
It seemed that almost a quarter of those who should have been taking care of critical services were currently in the brig and the rest were nowhere near their assigned areas. She started highlighting those in the brig and discovered the Captain of Security, locked in his own cell.
My Gods, she thought, if the commander of Security is in the brig for something, things must REALLY have gone wrong here.
It took Sally a good portion of the day, but she managed to piece together the story of what happened from Security’s perspective anyway. It was not a pretty picture.
Apparently, everything had been routine until about two and a half weeks ago. It started with minor disturbances, nothing that anyone could really call a problem. Normal things like a guy getting too frisky at the bar and making some unwanted passes at fellow patrons, unprovoked incidents of sexual harassment and so on. Then it moved into realms that should have had anyone who was thinking concerned. Break ins at the only store to carry any erotic material, merchandise missing from the hardware store, assaults, assault with intent to rape, assault with intent to cause bodily harm and so on.
Then, a week ago, it got really scary. Rapes and assaults increasing exponentially, with a good percentage of the base participating, bar fights on an almost hourly basis, more and more people being out of their designated areas and more break ins at secured locations, reports of people copulating in the hallways and others running around naked in the dome. The Commander of Security was in the brig for assaulting another officer who was attempting to arrest a woman dancing in the public quad, nude, to music that she alone could hear.
Meanwhile, more and more reports coming in of people missing from duty stations, missing period, and possessions misplaced or stolen. The shop with the adult material was practically emptied; according to the theft reports she saw it appeared to be a thriving business until three weeks ago. The items missing from the hardware stores, drug stores, and clothiers were just as confusing and varied.
She put down the stylus she had been using to take notes with and considered the pattern that was emerging. Hmmmm, if I were seeing this for the first time, I would suspect some kind of drug in the atmosphere or the food. I wonder if anyone looked at those options?
She looked into the files again, and there was a report from one officer saying that some kind of contamination was a possibility, and they would be looking into it later that day. There was no follow up to that report, much to Sally’s disappointment.
She did stop long enough to give herself access to the computers, with voice recognition and security access so that she would not have to come back to Security to look at this information. The Commander had the authority to override just about any system there was, and Sally took shameless advantage of that fact. She also made sure to log the Commander out of the computer and shut it down before she took off.
The next step she decided was to go down to Life Support and see for herself if there was some kind of contamination going on.
The trek down the corridors to was arduous. She was constantly on her guard, avoid people if possible, she had no intention of becoming another victim of whatever it was that was going around.
Finally Sally arrived in Life Support about two hours later. While she could have been there in a half hour all that backtracking and avoidance had a price. When she walked in, it was almost as deserted as the rest of the critical services. There was one man there, tending the gardens that kept the oxygen in this place breathable.
It was obvious at first glance that he was way out of his depth. Fully half the plants that should have been generating oxygen for the inhabitants of the base were dead or dying. Those that were left were in desperate trouble. Lighting was out in parts of the rooms. The hydroponics bay that was supposed to grow food for the base looked deserted, almost as though it was falling into ruin.
Sally knew that the hydroponics were simply plants on tied to support walls while their roots were held inside special tanks of water and nutrients instead of soil and water. This was space saving and efficient, since the plant material could filter the air of Carbon Dioxide and produce Oxygen, and still provide food in the form of raw materials which could be processed into almost any syntho-substance needed. Sally had heard that there was a TV show back in the mid 20th century called Star Journey or something like that, which used a similar process. Assemble enough raw materials, carbon, amino acids, and vitamins and trace minerals, and assemble the chains of atoms differently, and you could get any food from prime steak to yeast with no difference in taste or texture, with no tedious preparation either.
The process required to take these fruits and vegetables was mostly automated, but it still required someone to do the actual harvesting, so as to not damage the plants. On average, a hydroponics lab like this one should have 40 people working in it to monitor the plants, harvest those plants that ripened and were ready, and to oversee all the aspects of the operation. Things like monitoring the nutrient bath the plant’s roots were immersed in would be a full time occupation for one tech, and it was critical to keep the plants alive.
Unless something was done quickly, this lab would fail and the base would have to be abandoned. Without the plants to keep the oxygen up, and to keep food on the table, the station would either have to be evacuated or more supplies would have to be transshipped from the surface of Earth, a truly expensive process. That could lead to many people dying due to the simple fact that there was not enough space on the shuttles. They would have to be left behind.
The one man on duty finally noticed her, and came flying over to her. "What do you want? Huh? Are you here to drag me off into some corner like an animal? What do you think will happen if I give into my base instincts? Do you have any idea????" He was babbling frantically and seemed to be on the edge of hysteria.
"Yes, sir, I do know what would happen, and no, I’m not here to do anything to you," Sally answered reasonably. "I only need to find out some information on what is happening."
"I have no use for you... GO on... take off, get out of my sight; I have no time to talk to you. I don’t know what is going on nor do I care, I only want my workers back to take care of the plants so that we all can breathe and eat and be able to live in this hostile environment...." He wandered off still babbling about all the problems he was having.
Sally realized that whatever was happening to the rest of the base, it had affected this man with run-on speech. He didn’t stop talking long enough to allow Sally to question him. He kept talking and talking, and apparently forgot that she was there. He went back to his plants, still babbling like a brook. He was not radiating any kind of sexual feelings, which was a relief to Sally
Sally followed behind him. She looked over his shoulder and helped him out in a limited sense, handing him tools or pointing out something while she tried to get information out of him. She discovered if she mentioned a word or two in his ear while he was dealing with his plants, he would go on and on and on about that subject. But what came out seemed to be stream of consciousness.
Gods, Sally thought, no sex drive and diarrhea mouth. Not a combination I would want under any circumstances. Glad he’s not up to noticing me while I listen to him.
Having gotten the information from the head technician that she had been seeking, seemingly no unknown substances had gotten into either the air circulations system or into the food supply, and she left him. This was getting a little harder than she thought.
One thing that had her desperately worried was the possibility that this bay would fail and condemn everyone to either evacuation of the base, or death by several means. So, Sally thought for a bit and decided to help out the situation a little bit. She stood in the center of the hydroponics bay, stilled herself, and started casting a spell.
The spell itself was a simple one for her. She had cast this one so many times she had it down pat. It was a simple revitalization spell. She was taking her personal energy, her life force, and transmitting it to the plants. She couldn’t give much, since too much of a drain and she would either pass out or die, but she could give some of it to them. This effectively tied her to the plants, allowing her to feel what the plants felt, and allowing her to keep the suffering ones alive until trained technicians could pay more attention to them.
She felt the energy leaving her and going into the plants. She knew, in a distant sort of way, what each of these plants needed to work and produce the food they had been asked to make. Most were suffering from a lack of attention. Like animals and small children, plants thrived on people interacting with them. They were dying now, even though they had all the technical requirements to live and thrive, because of that lack.
Sally explained to them each in the language of emotions that they would have to be patient for a while, there was something really wrong with the place they were living at, and it would be corrected soon. She did not know how long it would take, but sometime soon it would be fixed and their people would be back.
Feeling drained, Sally decided to reenergize herself and replace the energy she had used in her spellcasting. She stopped just outside the door to the hydroponics lab, stilled herself again, and reached for the Elements.
Wiccan spellcasting uses a combination of things to grant energy to the spells of its practitioners. The most common energy sources are the Hermetic Elements of classical Alchemy, better known as Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Sally reached for each of those elements now, to draw their energies into her, fuel herself, and write another IOU to her body.
She got a rude surprise.
Air was reduced to the gentle breathable envelope surrounding her in the station itself, not the wild winds of what she was used to, Fire was missing completely since any fire on a Moon station would be a catastrophe, Water was likewise missing completely since the oceans and lakes she was used to pulling on were millions of miles away and there were no Undine in the cistern, and Earth was the same distance from her.
The only energy she had to draw upon was the faint trickle of the Plants, the energy of the air in the Lunar Dome, and that was all. She had been expecting a river of energy and she only got the trickle of the melting icicle. This was something she had not considered.
But there was an alternate source of energy, one that was used in many cases as a timing mechanism, or worshiped as a deity, the Moon itself. She reached out with her mind and tapped into that source of energy and started drawing it into herself.
She got a rush of power so strong she almost felt like she would incandesce. Pure energy flowed into her being, refilling all her channels and reservoirs of power, filling even her store of physical energy to such a point that she felt as though she were glowing. She thought that if she opened her mouth, moonbeams would shoot out of it.
If she had been expecting a river before, this was like being engulfed in the largest river in the world, while it was flooding. The deluge of pure power was incredible and it left her breathless. Instead of immediately severing her connection she persisted and hoped that she would become used to the rush of power. After all, when handling a lot of power in the Sabbats, she would get overwhelmed initially and finally get used to it.
She was so dizzy, light headed, and in such a fog of euphoria from the energy she was holding she felt like she could float back to the chapel. She vaguely felt others impinging on her awareness trying to seduce her, take her, use her, she blocked their attempts, pushing them away gently with her mind, with the power at her command. She continued "floating" and when one person dared to grab her and attempted to drag her off into a storage room, she casually waved her hand and sent him flying into a wall.
She was in perfect harmony and accord with the Moon. She felt the all that the Moon was, right down to the core. She felt how old Luna was in its relationship to earth, how new Luna was in stellar terms. She felt the golf ball laying on her surface that Alan Sheppard hit once upon a time. She could feel the Lunar Base, every section hollowed out of her crust and each footstep on her surface.
She knew where every living being was on the Moon, and knew that she would never think of the Moon as simply being a rock again. Luna was a being, with as much personality and character as any other being on two or more legs. She also understood why the ancients worshiped Her as a Goddess.
Dreamily she drifted into the chapel, and sat down on one of the pews. She kept feeding energy to the plants, trying to shunt some of this incredible energy away before she completely lost her hold on who she was. She could feel herself merging with Luna, and it distantly frightened her.
She poured energy off to the plants, restoring them and feeling them coming back to life. She was afraid to dump too much energy into those plants because she could do as much harm to them with too much energy too quickly as she could by taking too much. It was not enough of a drop in those internal energy levels. She dumped reckless amounts of energy into her bracelets, charging them with Lunar power and adding to their usefulness to her as batteries of arcane energy. She could feel her power batteries humming with power, and she had to stop because she really didn't want to shatter them by overfilling them.
She kept putting energy into different objects, charging and powering them, and still there was more energy. Instead of becoming used to this amount of energy, she was becoming lost in it. Finally, reluctantly, she severed the connection to Luna, and brought herself back to some type of normalcy.
She hated severing that connection because while she had that connection, everything was perfect. There were no problems in her life, everyone and everything she knew was reduced to trivia and the Universe was opened to her. The only other times she felt like this was when she was communing with the Goddess.
She was still so full of energy that she knew she would not be able to sleep that night, but she was no longer in danger of loosing her grip on reality. HERE’S a good safety rule, she thought. Don’t do that again. Gotta write that one down.
In ten years of experience as a High Priestess, doing rituals from a Latin High Mass for the Roman Catholics to the Saturnalia celebration of some of the renewed Roman Pagan sects, she had handled energy to bless the proceedings, to bless the fields and Earth to allow for a good harvest, to bless the practitioners. She didn’t remember ever being so totally overwhelmed by POWER. The only experience that came anywhere close to this one was the first time she acted as the High Priestess for a Beltane fertility rite, and then she had her mentor right there with her to help out. She had channeled incredible amounts of energy that night. It had been excellent practice for this time or else she MIGHT have lost herself in Luna’s presence.
She decided that since she was up anyhow, she would take care of some of Mary’s "chores". Putting her files in order, annotating entries in the files, and other housekeeping paperwork would give her something constructive to wear her energy out on.
Sally walked to the small room that Mary used as an office. The desk in the corner with the terminal on it was enough for now. There were papers all over the desk, spilling out of their In/Out boxes and onto the floor. Many of the papers were just shoved into books, marking their places and sticking out at odd angles. Chairs were covered with more information and records, and the bookcase where most of Mary’s reference works were had the look of someone who had gone tearing through her research collection looking for something. Books were shelved in incorrect places, upside down, spines turned toward the wall or toward the shelf, and all this chaos left the impression that Mary really HAD gone blazing through her collection for information on this love bug.
The first thing Sally did was begin bringing some order to this chaos. She removed papers from the books, and carefully marked the places that the papers had held open. She then put those books in one section of the bookcase, and only then did she attempt to straighten out the riot of paper and disks.
A couple hours later, Mary came into her office and found Sally hard at work inputting the notes Mary had taken into case files and other archives. The storm of paper was gone, reduced to digital signals stored locally on data disks that could be taken anywhere, and redundantly on the main computer’s huge bubble drives.
Mary sat down on the chair usually reserved for parishioners and Sally finished what she was doing, saved it off, and turned and faced Mary.
She folded her hands on the desk as Mary grabbed a cup of coffee and Sally asked, "So, what can I do? You summoned me here, and while I find problems, I’m not a criminal investigator, nor an advocate, nor am I qualified to find a virus or something similar. So, what prompted you to call the UCR and ask for a troubleshooter?"
Mary took a sip of her coffee and reluctantly looked at her. Her posture and emotions were telling Sally that she was REALLY reluctant to discuss this with her, but finally she "fessed up".
"When it became obvious that there was something wrong, I did some meditation and Buddha told me to do the Vision Quest to ask the Spirits what was going on, but that flushed out and I came away from that without much more than I went in with, only the certainty that I should call the UCR and get a spell slinger up here."
"While I was on the vision quest I mentioned," Mary said, "my totem, Deer, told me what she could. There was not anything that was really specific, not like ‘You need to do thus and so to fix this problem’, but more like ‘You have no one but yourself to blame for this. The situation is getting out of hand and you need help. Call Earth and ask your magickal sisters to help you out.’ And since my primary training is as a Buddhist, I don’t tend to argue with things like that. I really don’t like messing around in areas that I’m not trained in."
Mary looked emotionally drained, despite the sleep she got. "I have been fighting this for about two weeks now. I don’t know what is going on. As far as I have been able to determine, this is not some sort of virus or actual disease that has gotten loose from the lab. No one is safe from the ‘infection’ and there seems to be no way to predict who will be affected by this or how they will behave when they get this."
Sally wilted a bit. She had been really hoping that once Mary regained consciousness, that she could explain why she was up here. "Well, I have no idea what to do either, but let’s see if we can’t make a start. If it’s not a disease, then we have to look at things that can fit what we are looking at. Let’s start where we have facts."
It was going to be a long day.
Several hours later, Sally called a halt. She was beyond frustrated and tired. She was not ready to sleep, but she needed a break before her nerves shattered.
"You can’t think of anything that would account for all this?" she asked for the twentieth time of Mary.
"As I told you a while ago, no I’m sure. I have been dealing with this for a while, and I can’t think of anything. I was hoping you would be able to, that’s why you're here."
Sally’s shoulders slumped and she would have put her head on the desk, but she didn’t want to upset her coffee. Sighing she said, "I can’t think of anything either. Gods, this is damned frustrating. I know that I can help here, but I don’t know how. Okay, what have you tried to correct this?"
Mary started ticking off attempts on her fingers. "I tried to do a spell to catch the rapist in the halls. At first these were random incidents and no one knew how widespread it was yet. I tried willing strength to the support people who were going to be taking care of this mess. I tried the Vision Quest, and I’ve given you as accurate a transcript of THAT as I can, I don’t have anything else to add to it. That’s also when I had to send Carol, my assistant and altar girl away. Even Deer was looking lovely to me at that point." She slipped into nostalgia for a bit before Sally could stop her.
Sally reached across Mary’s line of vision and startled her back into her here/now. "Sorry, let’s see.... I tried the standard ‘make Karma kick them in the teeth’ spell, I tried some scrying to see who was responsible, I tried dowsing to see where it was safe to be at certain times, and then I finally tried the Vision Quest. I figured that the I Ching was out, as were the Saxon Wands (since they both operate on the same principal). I wanted to try some other spells, but since I don’t do that generally, and Buddha was not being too helpful, I let fate take care of it."
Sally looked Mary deep in the eyes. "You tried all that magickal work and spiritual work, did you ever try anything mundane? Like working with Security to catch these people, by playing bait for some reason, or offering to counsel those in the lockup who were parishioners of yours? Or did you see a problem that MUST be solved with metaphysics?"
Mary looked somewhat ashamed. "I’ll admit that I tried the magickal solutions first, but I didn’t know how my skills could help Security."
Sally sighed and sat back in her chair. "Well, okay. I assume you have records of these attempts...?"
"Oh yes," Mary said cheering up somewhat. "The station logs recorded everything, so you can see for yourself what happened."
Sally moved out of the chair and Mary sat down to access the information required. In a few moments, the autologs and sensor information from the main databank was called up on the screen. Mary spun the chair to look at Sally.
"Okay, it’s called up and queued. Just hit the button to play it."
Sally sat back down in the chair and hit the interface to the autolog. It was a good thing that this existed as a permanent black box medium of monitoring station activities. That way if there was a catastrophe it could be determined if human error was involved. Anyone could make logs, heads of departments could access those logs, and the Station Commander and Executive Officer were the only ones who could alter the logs.
Sally watched each ritual that had been done in the chapel in sequence.
The first scrying attempt was a bust. Standard black mirror scrying showed only areas reflected to Sally and the monitor buds in the ceiling, and it was a really bad angle for Sally to see the actual images that formed in the mirror. Most often it was also only a way to unfocus the consciousness and allow intuitive impressions to come through.
Mary’s next attempt with the dowsing pendulum was more visually exciting. Sally watched as Mary laid out a map of the station, and moved the pendulum over it. The recorded image of Mary made marks occasionally on the printout, probably marking where it was not safe to go. Sally glanced at the time index on the playback. It was marked as exactly two weeks ago.
She stopped the log. "How long after the you first heard of these problems did you do this ceremony Mary?"
She glanced over Sally’s shoulder and thought a bit. "About four days. Why?"
"Generally things like this take time to develop, so I’m wondering what was going on three weeks ago."
Mary said "Shouldn’t be too hard to find out. Call up the date/time range for three weeks ago."
Sally typed in her query and soon the records across the station were scrolling across her screen. She didn’t understand the technical jargon, and the logs of the scientific sections didn’t interest her so she focused on the living populace and support areas as avenues of exploration. She started going through each record and looking at the attached visual capsules to see if she could find an incident that would stand out as the instigator of this whole mess.
Mary was rubbing her shoulders as she read. Empathically Sally was getting more and more desire from her. "Mary, please stop. I’m not here to take care of your sexual needs."
Mary’s hands flew off Sally quickly and her expression left no doubt that she was horrified at the thought that she was sexually harassing Sally. "I’M SORRY! Oh, I didn’t mean it.... I was trying to help.... I thought you would like that and my hands just naturally...."
Sally sighed mentally and said "Mary. Stop. I’m not mad. I’m not upset. It’s just that I’m not attracted to you and I’m not here to do anything like that. I’m here to help with this crisis, not anything else."
Mary flopped into her chair and was holding off tears by sheer willpower. "How is it that I can’t keep my hands off anyone, but you sit there and can tell me you don’t feel ANYTHING?"
Sally was wondering that herself. "Frankly, I don’t know. I can guess it is willpower, my shields, something. Perhaps it’s that random factor we don’t know about yet. I haven’t done anything different, just what I always do. Perhaps some of the decom from when I got here is still lingering a bit. I don’t know."
Mary was shaking when Sally turned her attention back on her. "Why don’t you get some downtime? I’m sure you have been doing this for a long time by yourself till now, and I can take it from here. I’ll put up the ‘Out to Lunch’ sign on the chapel and if I have any questions I can call you."
"I don’t want to be accused of dereliction of duty..." Mary started.
Sally was already shaking her head. "No, you won’t be. While I’m here, I rank you and I can put it down to orders. Go, take some time and don’t come back until you feel better."
Mary’s grateful face left the office a while later. She had taken long enough to hug Sally in thanks.
Now that I have that distraction out of the way, maybe I can get something accomplished. Sally kept looking over the logs of the station from three weeks ago, and kept coming up with completely mundane stuff. Here this person used the card access to get into the bathroom, there someone else entered the hydroponics bay. Over there another person entered the command deck and someone else came into the chapel to pray for a while. Everything she was seeing was mundane and normal.
She sat back and started leafing through one of Mary’s books still sitting on the desk, not thinking of anything but trying to intuit the solution. I wonder what would happen if I cast a spell or completed the rituals Mary started. I’m so much more practiced in magick than she is it’s scary. Would that be considered too risky I wonder? I already cast one spell and it went nuts, but I wonder if there is some way I could cast one that is smaller that I can control completely and watch the effects of that?
Sally noticed she was leafing through Mary’s spell book. It had become the standard for UCR ministers. Originally designed to aid non-Wiccan minister in performing the liturgical requirements for the Wiccan practitioner, this book included not only spells ranging from aid for any and every problem, but also services for the entire Wiccan religious year. It explained the Wiccan practice clearly and succinctly, showing a minister how to effectively help those people who identified as Wiccan with a minimum of fuss. Sally herself was listed as a major contributor. One of her spells was the spell of vitality that she cast earlier.
Since Sally had been a practicing Wiccan Priestess for so long, she no longer needed this particular primer. Her tradition of Wicca encouraged the use of free form spells and rituals based on some standard rules of thumb, a kind of ritual framework that she could improvise around.
Sadly, many of the non-Wiccan clergy were convinced that the Wiccan faith was more complex than they could ever hope to learn in one overview class. To try to counteract that it was decided in cabal that there needed to be some alterations to the basic ritual. Overlaying it with unnecessary "blue smoke and mirrors" to pump up the belief of the clergy performing the rites seemed to work best. It allowed those watching and performing the rites to have a better faith in the spell and ritual's effectiveness. Since faith in the spell and belief in the outcome was the most critical component to any spell, this was all to the good.
Since she needed a distraction, she decided to look it up to see what touches had been added to it by the editors. She flipped to the vitality charm she wrote.
What greeted her eyes almost made her vomit. Her creation was a simple little charm to help someone recharge when they were drained and unable to rest for one reason or another. It could be used anytime anywhere by anyone. It could pull from any of a number of different sources to energize the person using it, depending on the results desired.
The nightmare that stared up at her from the pages of this book was beyond belief. There was no way that this could be justified. Five pages of descriptions, chanting, motions and enough stage directions to pass for a Broadway Play, all to gain a little temporary energy? It was highly unlikely that anyone use this ritual since the energy used to cast it would never compensate for the amount of energy gained.
The nightmare spell that she looked at on these pages almost made her scream. Five pages of descriptions, chanting and more useless bodily motions than the background dancers in a ballet, all just to gain a little temporary energy? Instead of calling upon one energy source then moving on to another, this disaster would tap ALL sources of energy at one time. This was apparently on the theory that the ones the caster was able to call upon would make up for those that they couldn’t contact or draw from. It would indeed give a caster the energy they needed, but almost guaranteed that they would wind up with far more energy than the average minister could handle. If Sally could have found the editors and shot them, she would have.
Almost snarling in frustration and anger, she turned to the credit page to find out who compiled this. Thomas Lancaster, I should have known. This is just his style. More apprentices have come out of his Ritual Workshops thinking that all they need to be a good minister and magickal practitioner is more candles and more "sacred" artifacts. No other teacher has as bad a track record in creating idiots. Figures that he would be the one to compile this.
She glanced through the Table of Contents to see who else’s writings he had messed up, and spotted an entire section on love. Advice, theory, how to attract, advice to give to someone who needs love and so on, I just wish there was a spell in here on how to get rid of love. We have a little too much now. On impulse she glanced at the Love Spells, and suddenly, blindly, she knew what was happening.
It took her some time to confirm her thoughts and intuition, but in the end she had her evidence. She knocked on the door to Carol Parker’s suite, Mary’s assistant.
The door rolled back and Sally had to assume that under normal circumstances Carol didn’t greet guests in the nude. But Carol was obviously waiting for someone. It appeared that since that person was not present, any warm body would do.
Having a girl of 17 latch onto her and drag her into the room was a new experience for Sally. She decided to cooperate for a bit and possibly find a way to break the spell this girl was responsible for creating.
It was very hard to begin questioning Carol about what happened when she was so thoroughly being attacked. Carol’s lips kept trying to lock with Sally’s and Carol’s hands were all over Sally’s body. It was all Sally could do to keep Carol’s legs from wrapping around her waist while Sally took her into the main room of the suite.
Sally was finally able to pry Carol off her and she pushed Carol gently to the couch. Carol seemed to think this was a signal of some sort and she laid back, spread her legs wide was anxiously anticipating being done to.
This is getting out of hand really fast, Sally thought. She extended her shields to cover Carol also, and waited for the next crisis to happen.
The change in Carol was dramatic and almost instantaneous. She went from a red-hot sexual bombshell waiting to explode to a demure young lady who immediately grabbed the wrapper nearby and covered up. As she covered herself, Sally could see a blush from her toes to her hairline occurring.
"What do YOU want?" she asked when she had recovered enough to speak.
"Carol, I want to ask you about what you were doing three weeks ago."
She blushed even harder. "What do you mean?"
Sally knew she had hit pay dirt. "Let me lay this out for you. Three weeks ago, someone cast a love spell and tied all the Moon’s energy into that spell, just as the "standard" spellbooks require. Normally that wouldn’t be a disaster, but since we are actually ON the Moon, not Earth where all the spellbooks assume that the caster is at, this sent the spell out of control. It’s so out of control at this point that the entire station is in danger as well as many people could loose their life. What do you know about this?"
While Sally was enumerating all the problems, Carol kept sinking lower and lower. She had managed to work her way into the corner of the couch and now it looked like the couch was going to eat the young assistant. Her hair hid much of her face as she hung her head and Sally wasn’t sure she had her eyes open. "Yes," came the barely whispered reply.
In her most solicitous voice, Sally asked, "What did you do?"
Something in her tone broke into Carol’s guilty miasma. She started babbling, "I wanted Mary to like me, so I borrowed her books and did the spell just like in the book and I got all the implements and cast the spell and something happened and I don’t know what and I tried to tell her about it, but it was too late and I don’t know what I did and PLEASE don’t punish me and throw me out of the UCR because this is all I have and I don’t know where else I would go to since both my parents died on the asteroid mines and they took me in and I don’t want to have to go back to the mines...."
Sally sat there, letting her run on and get it all out of her system. Apparently this was something she needed to do for a while now.