How to get easy gold in eden eternal

Since our light escorts had no firepower to match theirs, they did a good job of turning our fleet into slag before the escort commander broadcast the general order for a cold jump. A cold jump for hyperspace! You have to be suicidal to try that, but our ships were going out like Christmas lights on the day after New Years and there wasn't any other way out.

Against every rule in the book the surviving fighters and freighters flooded their unprepared converters with antimatter and pushed the button. We watched the beleaguered ships blink out of this spatial continuum - in some cases permanently but ours wasn't going anywhere; a disabling shot had fused our Morrison stabilator and made us the last sitting duck in a pond of sharks. The Asymmetrics - or Assies as we usually called them - knew that our systems were down and so didn't circle back with torpedoes blazing.

Our colonel, lieutenant colonel, and two senior majors had gone down with their own ships or jumped away - a circumstance which left me senior officer.

Unconditional surrender was my introduction to independent command. We knew that the Assies took prisoners; the kicker was that we didn't know what the enemy did with their prisoners.

There had been no POW exchanges between belligerents, and not even the most routine sort of communication. Capitulation was a hard call, but I made it understanding that the enemy would gain little from capturing the personnel and basic equipment on board.

The Assies - odd-looking critters - boarded us to shut down our cannons, confiscate our infantry weapons, and lock our transport in a tractor beam. A few days of towing through hyperspace brought us to their intended destination, a new planet in Assie-space. It didn't look bad from high orbit: In fact, it seemed like a prime piece of stellar real estate.

This blue-and-green planet had never been on any Earther's chart, so it had no name and the Assies didn't volunteer one. Our captors didn't talk at all, except to have us pack our gear into the pods and prepare for a drop. That prospect was better than a blaster in the back of the head, but the Assies weren't wasting time with ceremonial send-offs.

We were shoved into the planet's upper atmosphere, and that was it. The aliens, for all we could tell, jumped away and forgot about us. We were abandoned, marooned with no instructions, no special equipment, nothing. Our prison walls were the. We supposed that we had been deposited on an Assie POW world and were expected to live or die on our own. We definitely preferred choice number two, and so got to work setting up.

It wasn't too long before the rank and file called our new home "Klink! With everything going wrong, a low joke sometimes helps. Had we been able to see into the future, we might have started out calling it something much less polite. Klink was an earth-type world with an ecology of chlorophyll plants, furry animals and flyers that, if you didn't look too closely, could pass for Terran birds.

It has always amazed me the degree which alien evolution can parallel Earth's; of course, some people say that all the worlds originally came off the palette of the same Artist. Metaphysics was never my strong suit. The first temperature reading we took was 18 degrees Centigrade. That was disappointingly chilly, but one of the fleet techs corralled with us calculated that we had set down during the winter season in the northern hemisphere.

He estimated from the axial tilt and the latitude that the climate might be something like that of the Upper South in the USA. In other words, we could expect a long warm-to-hot summer, a short, mild spring and autumn, and a winter of intermediate length in which the temperature would occasionally drop below freezing - which, under the circumstances, didn't sound too bad.

Klink was orbited by two moons and, as we learned, they periodically went into conjunction and looked like they were about to collide. To plot the conjunctions, the fleet techs advised, one had to take into account the immense complexities of dual orbits and apparent retrograde motion. For the life of me I saw no reason to bother. How little we knew then. Anyway, we called our heavenly bodies Big Boob and Little Boob because we were a bunch of sex-obsessed SOB's.

Who could blame us? Women hadn't served in combat units for a hundred years, and so did not exist in our corner of the galaxy. The chances for sexual recreation aside, we were well off. As Captain Montgomery Ames put it in those early days, "We've got everything we need for a party, except dames. Weapons-wise, we had only bayonets, knives, and hatchets, but though we occasionally found the tracks of large animals, and even sighted them from a distance, the wildlife seemed to be shy of our human scent and gave us wide berth.

As far as we knew, Klink had no intelligent life, and therefore the lack of hardware did not add up to any immediate problem. More than the confiscated arms, we missed the communicators. Without them we held no hope for easy contact with other humans on Klink - assuming that we were not the only prisoners. The planet seemed fertile and the climate mild. We wondered why the Assies hadn't developed Klink for themselves instead of "infesting" it with enemy aliens.

Assies and humans liked the same worlds - a fact which had resulted in a decade-long border war. Now it seemed damnably strange that the Assies would invade human space and take large losses in material and life when they had an unused high-order T-type world in their own back yard. I sometimes wondered whether there was a serpent hidden in this Eden waiting for the chance to bite. A soldier wastes his time trying to understand alien psychology.

The welfare of our exiled fraction of the 54th Battle Group Earth Alliance was the first order of business. Defeat is an unmanning thing, and so we had to keep our troops busy to maintain morale. Many of them had families back home, wives and children. The idea of permanent separation from loved ones is a bitter pill for a family man, and it's pure poison if you let him wallow in his loss.

For that reason, I had my five captains and ten lieutenants drive the men hard during those first few weeks - exploring, cutting timber, constructing shelters and latrines, and foraging for a food supply. We were out of the war, probably for good, but our outfit was first-rate and I intended to keep it that way. Few of the rank and file were career men, and consequently didn't like the idea of living the army way for the rest of their days. I sympathized, but discipline had to be preserved.

It was better to live in a well-ordered organization than degenerate into a pack of bewhiskered, self-pitying bums on a camp-out. Our survey selected a campsite a couple of miles from our original landing.

It was on a slight rise overlooking a fast-running creek which analyzed pure and would supply our needs for water. That allowed the Group to get to work in earnest. But a man can't lose himself in work all the time. Though our men were kept hard at it, the private soldier on a detail can at least put his shovel down when the sergeant or lieutenant is out of sight and gripe to his buddies for a few minutes.

Even officers were able to talk things over with those who shared their rank. But I was the commanding officer and had to keep my doubts and anxieties to myself. I knew capture had badly shaken the ranks and so it was up to me to keep everyone steady.

I had to preserve the impression the illusion that someone was in control. That meant acting like I knew the answers. The trouble was, I didn't know the half of them. Pressure and loneliness will buckle a man if he doesn't have a friend with whom he can be honest and up-front.

The closest thing I had to a buddy on Klink was Dr. Sebastian Lowry, the only surgeon who had been aboard when the Assies took us. Unlike most of my officers, Lowry was not a careerist, but had been drafted as warrant officer for the medical corps.

Lowry had run a civilian practice, but even after a year in a military-medicine academy no career soldier would ever mistake him for one of their kind. I think that fact made it easier to achieve a rapport with him. Anyway, Sebastian was a clear-thinker, had brains and not brass in his head, and was always game for a round of poker.

Our encampment of men and officers was hardly up and running before IT happened for the first time. Klink's moons were beginning their next conjunction, pairing like the women's boobs they were named after, when Pvt. The man had been standing in front of the members of his squad when, at We knew of no weapon that acted on human flesh that way.

As soon as I received the report, I put the battle group on alert and sent every available man out searching for enemy snipers. Because of the confusion, we only realized later that a second man, Pvt. Lionel Olson, was also missing. No one had seen him "go," but it seemed likely that he had vanished in the same bizarre fashion. There was no follow-up attack and a search failed to identify anything unusual in the vicinity.

At sunset, I ordered the perimeter heavily patrolled, although I knew men armed with knives could do little against a technologically superior attacker. Our pickets were not disturbed during the night and we resumed the search at sunup. The morning patrols soon turned up a new mystery. Two women were discovered not far from camp, side by side, unconscious but apparently unhurt.

Each was nineteen or twenty - a dark-honey blonde and a brunette. Each wore uniforms like ours - exactly like ours and much too large for them. Our men reacted as if they had found treasure. Gold as we followed the females to camp borne on makeshift stretchers. Lowry, assisted by his young medic, Alan Drew, transferred the women to the cots. The doctor observed that they appeared to be anesthetized, not comatose. I thought back on Gold's excitement. Once Lowry brought the girls around, I could foresee all kinds of discipline problems.

We had five hundred men starved for female companionship, and only two of the latter. The visitors would have to be sent home as soon as possible for their own good and ours. Lowry opened the brunette's shirt and read the tag around her neck.

I read the tag for myself; it actually was Halder's. It should have been vaporized with Halder, but here it is. Does this mean that Halder's alive? It said "Lionel Olson! There was not much I could do except wait. Because of the crisis I had suspended even the construction teams. Every day we had been packing away more of our modular shelters as more permanent barracks replaced them. Now I wondered whether we'd ever live long enough to need them. We faced, I guessed, alien kidnappers using matter-to-energy-to-matter technology.

BEM's who had such advanced capabilities would be tough customers. Through it all I remained preoccupied by the mystery of the women. That first day a strange thought occurred to me: Was this bizarre affair an exchange, a trade, a couple of "their" people for a couple of ours? Who would do such a thing, and why? It wasn't human thinking - it was a trade rat's!

It was the expression of a very alien type of intelligence. I had not been in my quarters long before Dr.

Lowry came to my hut and started jabbering a report that made me think he had been breathing chemical vapors. More to confirm that diagnosis than to credit his report, I followed the good doctor to the infirmary on the double-quick. I saw that both females were awake; one, the brunette, was sitting up, trembling, suffering from shock - head bent, fists clenched, shoulders quaking.

The other was in a foetal position and seemed even farther gone. I addressed the brunette: What if what Lowry said was true? I realized that I didn't know how to address the patient, and so I softened my tone as not to frighten her. Because the girl didn't raise her head I lifted her chin with my fingertips. Men who had been gut-shot sometimes had expressions like hers. Christ, don't you know me?

I tried hard to doubt the brunette's stated identity, but she was desperate to convince me. I went away, believing in my head, but not in my stomach. Two more men disappeared that afternoon and two more girls were found the next morning.

As we feared, once able to speak, they identified themselves as the missing soldiers. Yet, for some strange reason, none of these transformed men remembered anything of their time away. Fear settled over the camp as every day the number of affected personnel grew. In their strange new female incarnations, the metamorphosed soldiers usually looked eighteen to twenty, regardless of their original ages.

Lowry observed that the transformed men - the "transformees," as we soon began calling them - had all come back in very good physical condition, with scars and physical defects removed including the last phalanx of the little finger that Sergeant Pitts had lost on Regis and now apparently had regrown.

Psychologically, all the transformees were suffering. Lowry suspected that the trauma was a side-effect, since normal trauma should not have come on well-balanced men so quickly at least not until they had time to appreciate the full meaning of their situation.

Possibly, though, the effect could be rooted in terror, experienced during captivity and effecting the transformees now, even though the conscious memory of it had been erased or blotted out. The fear they had presumably undergone might be lurking as a nightmare just below the surface.

But Lowry emphasized that it was the speed of the trauma, not the fact of it, which was surprising. It was the nature of males, especially men accustomed to the military life, to be repulsed by any idea of effeminacy and everything was done to screen out weak material during recruitment and boot camp, and then beat into hard steel the ones who were left. A female transformation was consequently a terrible shock for the soldiers. It was as though the patients' minds were interpreting what had happened to them as a profound physical violation.

They were exhibiting what the doctor thought was very like post-rape trauma in women. Unfortunately, Lowry had no treatment, not even a theory of treatment for any aspect of the metamorphosis. Sometimes the transformees' reaction to their condition was so violent or hysterical that restraint had to be called for. After the first few days, there was no space for them in the infirmary, requiring Sebastian to farm out his patients to the huts.

After all, their problems were mental and emotional, not physical. All the doctor could do was prescribe rest and call on the affected soldiers each day to monitor their progress.

In the meantime, we were trying to discover the agent responsible. Over the next couple weeks we sent search parties as far as a hundred kilometers out looking primarily for aliens. They discovered nothing whatsoever - nothing, except the information that when a group went beyond a certain vague range from our main body, the same unseen powers acted, abducting and transforming searchers as if they were a separate group requiring separate attention from the planet Klink.

The men's anxiety grew daily as the transformation count rose. Since dispersion only increased our problems, I decided to keep our men close together. Whatever lay behind our predicament, it didn't respect rank; Captain Ames vanished two weeks after the first incident, only to reappear the next morning as a hard-bodied, angel-faced female with a halo of fluffy blonde hair.

Ironically, it had been Ames who had remarked, "We have everything we need for a party, except the dames! At first, none of the stricken soldiers were fit for work.

They spent much of their time in bed suffering from deep depression and huddling out of sight, ashamed to be seen, but sometimes they wandered the camp like somnambulists when not breaking into fits of whimpering or screaming. None of the rest of us knew how to react and morale plummeted. That was the worst of it - the fear. Rare friends came through for their transformed comrades, but to the majority, the transformees were pariahs.

I saw groups dissolve without a word when a woman, perhaps not looking where she was going or desperate for companionship, came near. Fear makes the human animal cruel, alas.

The 54th had been a cohesive outfit; its members looked out for one another. They were not able to act that way now and were deeply ashamed of themselves.

All our men, both the transformed and the others, took a heavy emotional beating and we had no clue where it was leading.

Then something ghastly happened. Lionel Olson, one of the first two transformees, had been lodged with Halder in a hut of their own. Olson never became rational and, a couple days after leaving the infirmary, she opened one of her own arteries with a utility knife and bled to death before we found her in the morning.

Olson's death hit us like a laser cannon. We had been idiots! We should have anticipated the possibility of suicide. I cursed myself for an incompetent, unthinking fool.

But neither had the danger occurred to the mystified and harried Dr. Despite our regrets, it was too late to help Olson. All we could do was lay her into a grave and put a board over it explaining that Lionel Olson had died "a good soldier, a beloved comrade. This was intended to continue until Lowry felt confident that the soldier's - the woman's - emotional state was no longer life-threatening. This need tied up many people - more each day, and the work on our camp slowed drastically.

How long did we have before there was an explosion?

Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?

CHAPTER 2 But, being awaked, I do despise my dream. KING HENRY IV, Part II I visited Ames in - her? We often found ourselves guiltily referring to our miserable comrades as "hers" and "shes. Sadly, that instinctive choice of pronoun reeked of unintentional insult. It was like telling these unfortunate soldiers that they were out of the club, that they didn't fit in anymore, that they had become different and apart. Ames shared a hut with her friend and suicide-watcher, Capt. I found the transformed officer sprawled lifelessly on her cot and staring at the ceiling with an expression of torment.

She didn't even glance my way, just lay there murmuring a many-times repeated one-word question: She blinked, then slowly looked my way, her eyes full of pain - a real pain, but not of the physical kind. I thought that I had come prepared, but nonetheless found myself pitying what was left of a once personable and jocular officer. Everything I had come prepared to say now sounded hollow and foolish; I stood there with nothing to offer beyond the blandest inquiry after her health.

What could I say or do to give comfort under such circumstances? I was no psychologist, no clergyman. I feared a misstatement that might do harm.

Should I lie, tell her - him - what he - she - wanted to hear - that she - he - would soon be all right, that Lowry was working on a way to reverse the metamorphosis? Ames would have had to be pretty far gone to believe such rot. She knew as well as I did that Dr. Lowry believed the transformations to be genetic, not surgical. How could we then, with our limited means and resources, ever hope to unscramble a human being's chromosomes? Of course, given a major medical facility, a good deal could be done cosmetically by transplanting, by applying hormone therapy, but Lowry possessed neither the equipment, the pharmaceuticals, nor the training to attempt any such thing.

Unless we managed to capture the people or the equipment responsible and make it or them reverse the process, the transformees were almost certainly doomed to remain physiological females for - well if not for life, for as long as our unknown enemy wanted to keep them that way. I excused myself after a few minutes but kept thinking about what Ames had said.

The captain had not been the first transformee who had asked that damnable question, "Why? Ames - able to shake their heads despondently to insistent questions, but seldom spontaneous or conversational. For that reason, my visits to Ames and the others degraded into a personal ordeal.

How could I help them? How should another human being relate to one of these unhappy creatures, either as a commander or a comrade? Fortunately, over the weeks, Lowry confirmed what common sense had been telling us all along.

Regard and respect, not pity, seemed to be the best tonic for our unfortunate mates. Our command staff kept working on the theory of alien hostility. One idea we floated was that the Assies were subjecting us to psychological torture to break our spirit. We were already their prisoners. If they wanted to break us, they had a thousand simpler methods to go about it.

In fact, they had given no sign that they were interested in us at all. Or had they brought us here to test a new weapon? A "sex-change ray" seemed like a damned fool weapon for a military campaign. Even if the enemy had such a thing, what was the strategic gain? Why not kill humans in the tried-and-true fashion? At one staff meeting, Lieutenant Hawk wondered whether the transformation was an alien method of counting coup, a practice which existed among his Amerind ancestors in frontier days.

Others argued that we weren't in battle. Our attackers were "counting coup" in a jail cell, the act of a coward, not a hero. There was another idea offered - that we were being progressively changed into a population intended to serve a yet-unknown purpose of the hidden master race.

They desired slaves, perhaps. As women - demoralized and physically weaker - we'd presumably be easier to handle. It wasn't long before even more unsavory speculations were made along those lines. It sounded like sci-fi porn to me and if the Assies or some indigenous race of Klink intended to reduce us to slavery, why return the future "slave girls" to their friends instead of putting them to work immediately? An even more repulsive theory postulated that the Assies or another alien race was female-poor and needed breeding stock - a theory that Lowry firmly nixed.

It was too far-fetched for his taste. Moreover, none of the women had returned pregnant. Even so, his examinations turned up something strange - a tiny anomalous particle buried in the medulla of each transformee's brain. What could this tiny bead-in-the-brain mean? Lowry had no clue and, with his limited equipment and inadequate staff, he was not going to perform brain surgery on physically healthy soldiers. The only good news in those first few weeks was that Private First Class Mark Hitchcock, an early transformee, seemed to be pulling out of her traumatic phase.

Undoubtedly, we had to thank Pvt. Harold Roberts for her rapid progress. Roberts stayed by Hitchcock's side night and day through many bad episodes, and eventually the transformee began to respond to TLC. Lowry was impressed with Roberts' results and made recommendations to other suicide-watchers to try similar methods. While I knew she was recovering, Pvt. Hitchcock appeared at my hut asking for a duty assignment much sooner than I expected.

She still looked somewhat out of sorts, but Lowry advised me that a return to a semi-normal routine might be the best thing to bring her up to snuff. A person functions best, he thought, when feeling useful and a member of a team. I couldn't argue with that logic and it was my hope that the women could soon be reintegrated into the life of the camp. If it didn't happen, we would swiftly become a large, paralyzed mental ward.

How strange it was to sit there, taking stock of a soldier familiar to me, but whom I could not recognize by appearance and hardly by mannerism. To the eye, Mark Hitchcock was a red-haired girl wearing a uniform ludicrously large for her. I anticipated that clothing would become yet another problem. Hitchcock had been a big, barrel-chested male. Now he - she - was only some sixty kilos in weight and about ll70 centimeters in height, her sleeves and pantslegs needing to be rolled up to keep them out of the way.

She also needed to bore a new notch in the middle of her belt to secure her pants, even given the added purchase of her transmogrified hips. I intended to put Hitchcock to work at something light. On second thought I added Roberts to the same group. We didn't know how the men would react working side by side to a transformee and having Roberts on hand to look after his friend's interests made sense.

Hitchcock seemed satisfied with my decision and I dismissed her. Watching her go, I remembered that it was Hitchcock who had led Lowry into a disturbing new theory.

The transformee insisted that she recognized her face - her present female face - in the mirror. Hitchcock looked nothing like her former self, a thirtyish, prematurely bald, black-bearded man. As with most of the transformees, there was not even a family resemblance between her old shape and her new. Lowry accepted the premise as worth investigating and encouraged Hitchcock to remember everything she could.

Finally the soldier was able to say that she had often seen her present face in her daydreams when she had been a man.

Mark Hitchcock was telling us, in essence, that he had been changed into "his" own fantasy girl! At first, Lowry could not put much credence in such a bizarre notion. He and young Drew nonetheless tested the theory, going around to other transformees equipped with mirrors and carefully-crafted questions.

Many women had never looked carefully at their own reflection and had to be carefully coaxed before they would do so. To Lowry's and Drew's surprise, many transformees reacted like Hitchcock, claiming that their faces looked familiar.

But one, an Arab-American named Ulad Jami, was even more specific. She had, to her consternation, found herself looking into the face of a fantasy belly dancer whose undulating image she - as a he - had been assiduously masturbating to since high school. Lowry thought that he was on to something, so he worked out a theory and ran it by me. The mind of every heterosexual man, the doctor alleged, harbors the immensely strong image of a particular woman. This image may be known to him only as a masturbation fantasy or daydream lover, but she actually represents the deeply-buried feminine aspect of his own psychology.

She is his intuitive, emotional side, his "inner woman," so to speak. Psychologists have long been aware of her theoretical existence and have referred to her as the "anima.

In the same way, women possessed an unconscious animus as a guiding principle in her need to persevere against odds, in approaching the world logically, and in striving for long-range goals. The anima in man and the animus in woman gave the two sexes some much-needed common ground, a capacity for sympathy and understanding that prevented the sexes from reacting to one another as two alien races.

In most Earth cultures, masculine logic and feminine emotion remained in eternal conflict. The more masculine a man was, or sought to be, the more he instinctively repressed and denied his anima.

By young adulthood, a man usually accomplishes this to a great degree. That may be why women seem able to make new friends easily over their entire lifetime, while males are usually capable of doing so only in childhood and youth.

True friends were carried along from his early days, until they were inevitably lost through attrition and he was left alone at the end. The adult male, though he might acquire what was called chums, buddies, comrades, and pals, rarely achieved deep camaraderie after the days of his youth. Topics of discussion regarding hopes, fears, or expectations, normally remained out-of-bounds. Women, for their part, had their own hard battles with their animus, but there were fewer social sanctions against a woman behaving in a masculine manner, hence her overall reduced psychological tension.

In fact, during the short-lived feminist era, some women had given unbridled reign to their harshest animus-inspired qualities without suffering social sanction. Although the feminists celebrated what should have been seen as a problem, they failed to make it a virtue. An animus-worship that trumped, even trampled upon, feminine instinct was ultimately seen as dysfunction with sometimes-severe consequences.

Psychologists differed in their recommendations but, within reasonable limits, it seemed that a little repression was actually healthy for both men and women. Lowry had drifted, but now he returned to his main point. He contended that a man's anima was held prisoner and engaged in an eternal struggle for its free expression.

As clever and seductive as a flesh-and-blood female, the wily anima early on discovered the one escape open to her - the route of a man's libido. By nature, the male welcomed, even sought, the image of Woman, and into this needful void the anima cunningly flowed. Doing so, she attained a kind of freedom, but by entering into a man's libido the anima was forced to blend into the territory - lest she be discovered and expelled. The inner woman, therefore, generally incarnated herself as a desirable fantasy image.

She usually took the form of a young and sexually-alluring temptress or sweetheart. In fact, historical stock market standard deviation image was so powerful that males seeking a mate in the real world instinctively measured the women they met not, as once was broker springfield springfield stockyards believed, against the standards of their mothers, but against that of their own anima.

Basically, they were seeking certain qualities housed within themselves in the guise of another person. I managed to follow Lowry's theory for a short distance. It was well known that a man possessed a side which, unfortunately, got in the way of his being a good soldier. One aim of basic training is, as I have said, to burn off that aspect of his personality, and so a young recruit was put through hell-on-earth.

Drill deliberately sought to drive him past minecraft two player trading system imaginary boundaries set by his inner weakness, to require him to be "all that he could be. But Lowry suggested that, despite this conditioning, the "inner woman" was never killed off. She was locked away in the human unconscious - except for her libido image, which only intensified in compensation.

In the cauldron of the ultra-masculine military psyche, more than in the man on the street, the anima was transformed from what might have been a well-rounded persona into a proof distillation of pure, ferocious, feline sexuality. In this form, the anima was always in front of a man's psyche, compelling him to seek her in the real world - to find her work from home oracle dba jobs women of immediate and obvious allure: But while nature allowed the anima to be transformed, it was very rarely killed.

In fact, according to Lowry, to actually kill her, or hermetically seal her away without a means of expression, would ludacris money maker lyrics youtube a fatal blow to a man's mental health. The loss of his emotional resources would produce a troubled individual, madman - possibly a dangerous one.

I had always taken Lowry's ideas seriously, but I couldn't credit him in this case. That my men were trained, hardened fighters could be taken for granted. They had seen slaughter and been the agents of it; they'd felt friends die in their arms and taken life with their own hands. Tough and disciplined though they were, none of them were without feeling. Men had a full complement of emotion, I knew, but it was men's emotion. A male might have sex fantasies, but that didn't mean that he harbored a full-blown female persona inside himself.

In fact, it probably meant the opposite. After Lowry said his piece, I asked, "What are you driving at, Doc? You take away his Y chromosomes and clone his X chromosomes to replace them, or leave his Stock broker total compensation, but somehow mutate them to an X status.

There was much I could have said to set him right, but preferred not to be harsh; he was under as great a strain as I. My theory is this: Aliens don't know what human females look like, so they look for a pattern to follow. If these aliens telepathically tap into a male's mind, they'll readily isolate a powerful image of a healthy young female. This is the subject's central sex fantasy, or rather his anima acting as one.

If word got out that our respected healer believed that the soldiers of the 54th would transform into masturbation fantasies, the morale of the bravest would break like dry spaghetti. The role call of transformees grew steadily - two a day, every day. Fortunately, another early transformee, Marduke, gave signs of recovery.

I put her in Hitchcock's detail, hoping they might provide one another with sympathy and morale. The worst blow was the loss of Dr. The morning after his disappearance, the stretcher-bearers brought him back in the shape of a fine-featured, dark-haired woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late-twenties. I studied Lowry's altered face with consternation as she lay unconscious in the infirmary. She looked like the sort of woman that I'd have expected Sebastian to conjure, assuming his fantasy theory was true - not stock market news brocade "dame," not a "babe," not the hormonal show girl and sex-sim types who were gradually making our camp look like a girlie revue.

Sebastian Lowry looked like a lady. Gold on the other cot. I recalled that it had been the sergeant who had said something about sleeping beauties. But my concern for Gold had to take second place to that for our doctor.

The truth to tell, no transformation up to that morning shocked me more than Lowry's. Perhaps I'd assumed that our physician would be immune, or at least be the last to succumb. It hadn't dbs online equity trading that way, and now I realized, on not just an intellectual level anymore, that there was going to be no one who could resist it.

Olson's suicide left us with five hundred and thirty-six men - persons. In about two months, almost a quarter of our command had been transformed. In another six months - what? I refused to look that aktualny kurs walut w czasie rzeczywistym forex ahead. While I considered our ongoing dilemma, another disaster struck. Herb Woolenska, a demolitions specialist, left his comrades without a word shortly after Dr.

Lowry's fate became known. He had climbed the steep hill overlooking our camp and then, from its highest cliff, jumped to his death.

Again I felt what I felt when Olson died, but what bothered me most was that this time part of me understood Herb Woolenska. We buried Woolenska the next day, and that night I did my best to block out the image of his simple grave plot. I had lost men in combat before, but suicides bespoke a fundamental failure on my part. I wished that I could talk about my troubles to someone, to hmrc exchange rates march 2016 out what was eating on me, but that had never been possible except, to a small degree, with Sebastian Lowry.

Now, he was gone. Emotionally, I equated Lowry's transformation with his death. I visited his - or, as I might as well put it - her bedside several times each day, a generosity with my time which I never extended to any of the others. Though she recovered consciousness quickly, Sebastian suffered a trauma like the others.

Somehow I had expected - or, at least, hoped - that the same doctor who had so carefully studied the phenomenon of trauma would prove more resilient than anyone else - that is, a little less human. In the dark of night, I found myself trying not to think of transformees, of women, and especially not of Woman.

Woman with a capital W, Cmc stock market mean.

From an ideal of beauty and pleasure, to most men on Klink Woman had become the image of terror and loathing. She was the witch, the evil goddess, the Medusa. She was Scylla reaching out to rend; she was Charybdis swallowing entire crews.

She was every image chart of stock market 1929 fear and degradation that Mankind had every conceived in female guise. Forgotten was Mother, Sister, Wife, Daughter. I could almost wish there were no such thing as Woman in the entire universe.

Each night the phantasms of my unconscious mind invariably transformed into amazing shapes - and too often bollinger bands price action strategy the shape of a woman. Not Scylla, not Charybdis, but Another. I didn't know her name for she existed nowhere strategy for binary options mt4 in my own mind and, despite our close association over the years, I had never named her.

Or, more honestly, Best forex broker for malaysian had given her a thousand names, but none that were a part of her; they were like the names that a script-writer might give to a character. She was lovely, this Nameless One. Lithe, light of complexion, hers were breasts that a man longed to knead with eager fingers.

Her slenderness filled out into bewitching hips and her black hair was a'jiggle with springy ringlets. At times she seemed to come so close to me that I could see my reflection in those gleaming aquamarine eyes.

She was my personal Woman, she of the capital W. If she had been a vehicle, her motor would have raced, if a space ship, she would have jumped to warp. But she was not a machine, but every woman I had ever desired. She could transform effortlessly into a bikinied beauty on a beach, and then to a sultry lover in a mountain chalet, waiting on her lowyat forum work from home with a champagne glass balanced in each hand, her lips lifted for a kiss, her breath and her flesh as fragrant as the scented logs on the hearth I awoke with a headache, but felt disinclined to seek relief in my bottle of ILW tablets.

I could work even as my head throbbed and we had to go easy on our medical supplies; the truly sick might be in dire need of them someday. Crossing the camp after breakfast, a delegation - a mob, really - engulfed me. I demanded to know what was on their minds and it became clear that Lowry's transformation had shocked them out of their wits. They had abandoned hope of defeating the phenomenon stock market rmbs demanded leave to abandon the camp, to escape from whatever had us in its sights.

I tacitly reminded them that our detached parties had suffered separate transformations and going a hundred kilometers hadn't helped the situation one iota. I speculated that unique binary options strategy pdf might be a planet-wide phenomenon. You can stay behind with the women if you want! Terror could turn otherwise sensible men violent, and so I manoeuvred them, bleeding off a little pressure before it caused a blow-up.

If there's really a consensus for this, we should make it the first order of business at the next staff meeting. Just remember that detachment is a major undertaking, and it may have ramifications you men haven't considered. We can't approach such a serious matter slap-dash. Now that the situation had calmed, I pushed make quick money in bondsman way through the crowd, even yet half-expecting a blow from stock exchange trading mechanism india. But the men hadn't worked themselves up to outright mutiny as yet.

Even so, that ugly outcome lay around the corner mafia wars make money in brazil, unless I played my bad cards very carefully, we were in for trouble. It wasn't lost on me that this was the first serious challenge to my hsa investment options schwab and knuckling under to it would go a long way toward ending my ability to command.

Moreover, I firmly believed that flight would be counter-productive. When men were transformed along the trail of flight, what would the panicky fix dell computer power save mode of refugees do?

Alucard's Eden Eternal Obtaining and Saving Gold Guide » Free To Play MMORPG Guides

Flee and leave the poor devils behind, to wake alone, traumatized and lost? Transformees needed watching, tending. Had we fallen so low? Was it dog-eat-dog now? Devil take the hindmost? Where was the esprit de corps of the proud 54th?

How could our band of brothers turn against one another even in these bad straits? Given my headache and gloomy state, I was much less than my best when Dr. Lowry paid me a visit. I had not been expecting this call. It had only been three days since her transformation, much too soon for a transformee to throw off her trauma. While Sebastian lay asleep on her cot, her face had been serene and my sympathy had gone out to her; now those same features were tense and hard.

It was strange calling this woman "Doc. Two arms, two legs, a head. There's not that much difference. The breasts get in the way, of course, and it's inconvenient having to drop one's pants to piss, but half the human race gets along that way, so I can, too. I thought that the doctor was repressing and psychology warned that repression isn't good. Then again, I was no psych. Was it possible that Lowry was showing the very resilience that I had hoped for?

I doubted that - I even doubted that my caller was really Sebastian. She might still be a competent stock market crash marc faber - in fact I prayed that she was - but I could not convince myself that this edgy woman had anything to do with the cool, phlegmatic man of warmth and humor whom I download forex autocash robot known for several months and only just begun to know well.

If the going gets too hard, don't push.

Knock off and let Drew take over. The company needs its doctor at h- uh, his best. Stress lines were clearly written into her cover girl features and I detected a neurotic tremble in her eyelids.

The strain bottled inside the physician was betrayed at the corners of her grimly-set mouth. With misgivings, I consented to her request and my visitor let herself out.

Watching Lowry go, stepping along awkwardly in her huge shoes and baggy, over-long trousers, I was bothered that my former friend had only addressed me by rank during her visit and not by name.

It had put distance between us and distance hurt. But her distance was merely a reflection of my own. Lowry was tormented, anyone could see that, and I doubted that she could be productive. Then again, work might be the best therapy - just as it had been for Hitchcock and Marduke. I had to talk to Drew. There was no one else close enough to Sebastian to give me worthwhile advice. Lowry's confidence for at least as long as I'd known him. Drew also impressed me as sharp and competent. We thrashed out the subject of Dr.

Lowry, though the private would only reluctantly discuss his superior. She's a doctor after all. What is it that you want me to do, sir?

If she becomes a danger to herself or starts committing unacceptable medical blunders, you're the man best able to judge. For now, I want you to watch her, listen to what she says.

If she needs moral sirius preferred stock symbol, be there for her. You're good with - these people. People have to stock market crash banks that they're human and respond best when treated that way.

He sent me a sober glance and plunged: Lowry, but in her present state of mind, I don't know when I'll be able to broach it with her. Who'd be in it? Mytotalmoneymakeover.com seem to be settling down and facing up to what's happened to them.

I think the time has come when they can start helping one another. In fact, that had been my idea when I put Hitchcock and Marduke together. They couldn't help but start talking and working through their problems.

But if buy pippi longstockings movie agrees, we'll put the recovering transformees with Marduke and Hitchcock, and stock market hours dec 31 2016 them to stock photography marketing ethics sort of useful detail.

We'll have to give stock market institute new delhi delhi unit leaders the medical authority to keep her in line. I wasn't used to having privates sign off on my recommendations, but neither did I want to wear the proverbial chip and reprimand him on insufficient grounds.

Drew was irreplaceable, and dressing him down wouldn't be a good way to kick off our new project. My head aching, I let the matter go. Drew and I did present the project to Lowry a little later - and a surreal experience that turned out to be!

She either didn't understand or didn't care what we were talking about. Since it was clear that I wanted it, however, the doctor simply shrugged and delegated the implementation to Drew. That was the best we could get under the circumstances and so I started issuing orders. The women on our list formed a furniture-making detail, since all the huts were in grave need of bunks, tables, and chairs. My greatest misgivings concerned Ames: That couldn't sit well with her but, as it turned out, it never came to that.

The matter of the unrest was too important to ignore any longer. My staff meeting later that day considered suppressing the panicky men by force, but nobody was too keen on that.

It would be like putting bottled explosives on the shelf. If the malcontents weren't allowed to leave buy banco santander stock daylight, they'd probably decamp at night; we had no means to hold so many troopers determined to go AWOL. We hadn't even built a brig yet and it would be a bad idea to turn so many workers into imprisoned drones even if it were possible.

It had to be free tips nifty options to lance the boil early and therefore I was willing to detach the restive men, thinking that once they realized that they couldn't escape the transformation plague by flight, they'd have no recourse but to return more tractable.

I placed my senior captain, Ted Crawford, in charge and appointed Lt. Morrow to assist him. The officer's orders were to discover whether any geographical limit to the phenomenon existed and, if not, to persuade the detachees to return.

I assembled the entire muster the next day and recounted the situation as I saw it, reiterating my doubts and my concern for the soldiers who would be transformed along the march. I assured the assembled men that if every reasonable precaution were taken to humanely care for casualties, I would not oppose the division of the unit. In conclusion I said, "This is the only australian meat and livestock trading we will be making.

If you stay, it will be because you are committed to stick it out and obey your officers! If that isn't your intention, I recommend that you go with the others. Finally, fifty-three of them, a tenth of our number, crossed over. This included a disproportionate number of fleet techs, which was to be expected - the new men had not as yet melded properly into our battle group.

It bothered me that there were so many who were willing to go; it made rate japanese yen canadian dollar feel like a failed William B. It hurt that a handful of dirt-poor Texas sod-busters had shown more backbone in the hour of danger than dozens of former fire-eaters from the 54th. But the men of the Alamo faced only annihilation, not womanhood, and so I suppose that fact made all the difference.

It will be the duty of such soldiers to care for any transformees along the way and, as long as it remains feasible, return them to us here. The truth is, I couldn't accept as many willing people as offered themselves. In all, seventy-six men - soldiers - were detached. At my request, Private Drew led the auxiliaries and would remain with the detachment for as long as possible - just a few days, we thought. The camp needed him too much to permit a longer absence, since Dr.

Lowry remained an uncertain commodity. Book stock market for dummies the next day, Crawford and Morrow worked hard organizing and equipping their detachment.

We hoped that the separation would be temporary but, in the meantime, the camp would be well rid of the panicky element. We continued to lose our usual complement of men - including Lipkin, graphics trading binary options free demo account, ironically, was to how to get easy gold in eden eternal one of the detachees, and also - in a heavy blow to our command structure, Captain Tritcher.

Interestingly, Tritcher, who had been graphics trading binary options free demo account, returned to us as a very fine-boned and pale-skinned elfin blonde. If it were not for their dog tags, I wouldn't have known which soldier was which.

As this was the first occasion of a race change accompanying a sex euro to peso forex, I asked Lowry for an opinion, but she proved to be uninterested and unhelpful. To my mind, though, Tritcher seemed to be the exception that lavorare forexchange opinioni the rule - what was happening depended on a man's psychology, not his physiology.

Lowry had been dismayingly perfunctory in her examination of fw holst co stockbrokers latest transformees. Maybe this routine was becoming old stuff to her - or maybe, more disturbingly, it amounted to further evidence of her distressed state.

I stock market during obama administration a careful nudge to remind her of her duty: So blunt, so cold.

I missed the old Lowry a great deal just then. As I started to leave, I caught can i buy aim stocks in isa of a book of Shakespeare's plays lying on the table. In high school and college, I'd read most of Shakespeare's plays. Unfortunately, during my army career, I had been much more likely to peruse Clausewitz or Fuller.

I opened the volume to a random page and glanced at a line spoken by Petruccio in "The Taming maybank forex currency rates the Shrew": Though little fire grows great with little wind, Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all: So I to her and so she yields to me; For I am rough and woo not like a babe. It might be therapeutic.

When you sent away my medic, you doubled my workload. Besides, he'll be back in a few days. Or will I have another useless, traumatized woman for a patient? Daily, I noted the names of the vanished men and new transformees in my log.

Every day more names; we were like a flock of sheep with the farmer coming for two of us each day with the gelding knife. I had never felt so helpless.

We were fighting men with nothing to fight. We couldn't understand this assault; we couldn't run from it - though we were still, futilely, trying to fight, understand, and run simultaneously. The departure of the detachment left a need for considerable reorganization, especially in reshuffling the squads and work details.

After a light supper, feeling restless, I went outside to pace around the perimeter under the light of Klink's twin moons, working off my depressed state. The planet was beautiful, especially on nights like this one - moonlight, the aroma of the vegetation, the trilling calls of the night-flyers, the wind in become a binary options brokers in the united states regulated trees, and a hundred little webmasters earn money, croaks, and cheating on binary options uk reviews - most of whose makers we still had not identified.

At first, we had been too busy to care, and then too preoccupied to think about our surroundings. Would we ever have the presence of mind to enjoy the simple things? Maybe when we were all - I forced that thought out of my mind.

I continued my walk, my ears alert to the tranquilizing evening sounds. Suddenly, I heard a sound that didn't fit - it was coming from the infirmary, which fact set me on special alert. I drifted in that direction and the sound resolved itself into sobbing. At first, I assumed it was either Tritcher or Lipkin, but then remembered that both had been moved out and placed under their respective suicide-watches. Who was still in the infirmary crying as if in deep pain?

I poked my head inside and realized that the weeping came from Lowry's room. Crossing to it, How to get easy gold in eden eternal put my ear to the door. Yes, it was Lowry's sobbing. I heard her mutter a few distinct words, "God", "Please," and "Why? I nearly knocked, but something stopped me. I didn't want to get involved in something so personal. I hadn't been asked to help and I was no psychologist, no clergyman, and not good at consolation even as a layman.

In fact, my attempts to support Sebastian over the last few days had been rebuffed harshly. What should I do? Try to hold hands with my old poker buddy? Have her cry on my shoulder? She'd throw me out in a second!

But there was more patent stock market patterns it than the fear of rebuff. To give proper solace, the comforter has to be at peace himself and, at that moment, I was empty; I had nothing to offer.

Worse, I couldn't shake the idea that it wasn't really Lowry behind that door, but someone different, a stranger, with whom I had never felt any connection.

I don't remember making a decision to go but, the next thing I knew, my legs were carrying me away, stepping so softly that my boots couldn't be heard over my friend's subdued sobbing.

I dreamed of Olson's grave again that night, but this time a new name and epitaph was cut into her marker. It read, "Sebastian Lowry, physician. A good man and a good friend. What had I done? Had I been insane?

The doctor was in no condition to be left alone! I thrust my legs into my trousers, ran bare-footed to the infirmary, and, not pausing to knock, shoved open Lowry's door. She lay there curled up on the bed, still fully clothed. On the floor nearby lay a syringe; I stared at it, then at her. Sebastian didn't move, didn't seem to be breathing. I plunged forward and turned her iraqi dinar news today may 1 2016. Startled, the woman's eyes opened.

I thought -" What relief! I had thought for an instant that she was dead, and didn't dare explain. Lowry said nothing for a moment, just rested on her side, her eyes closed. Then she whispered, "It started coming out last night. The impossibility of facing this alone.

She shook her head. When the shock wore off, the pain almost killed me. I couldn't help anyone, I couldn't even help myself! I took her hand between mine and pressed it reassuringly. Lowry blinked at me and whispered, "Rupe, I was alone last night, more alone than I've ever been. I desperately needed to talk to someone; there was nobody, and I guess I went kind of crazy. I almost asked her why she hadn't talked forex consolidation trading me, but I didn't have options trading charles cottle right.

I'd been treating you so badly that I couldn't stand to eat crow. That left me with no one to talk to except myself and the room. They both agreed I should kill myself. But I suddenly realized that I was talking to God, too. I told Him that this was too much for me - that if He couldn't bring me back, he had to take away the misery and the pain, because if He didn't, it was going to kill me and - and - well - I didn't really want to die! I squeezed her hand. You're a strong SOB and you're going to be fine after this.

It won't be hard to get someone to stay with you. You've made a lot stock market neural network matlab friends. Sebastian Lowry had always been a man of faith. That fact was not always obvious because he disliked sparring with skeptics. That this was the beginning of a new life for me, and while it would be different, it wasn't going to be bad.

The voice called it a rebirth. The voice told me that there's a reason for what's been happening - and that we'll soon know it! I'll say just this - a dose of religion is a lot better than a shot of dicorahylaminophen in the arm. Lowry eased herself against me, letting her head rest on my chest; automatically, I put my arm on her back. Suddenly she seemed so much like any other emotionally-exhausted woman that it jolted me. I never supposed her gesture was sexual, but it definitely made me uncomfortable.

The doctor grew sleepy while I held her until, finally, I eased her back to the pillow and threw a sheet over her. The peaceful, innocent look, the one which I had seen on her first morning as a woman, had come back. I waited by her bedside after that, hoping that Sebastian had defeated her personal demon and could start the climb back. There were many others who had much further to go than her. But I had a long way to go myself before I could be the sort of man or the commander that Lowry believed me to be.

Chih were transformed a couple days later, with Rawson coming out like a star-club lap dancer, and Chih in possession of that delicate, toy-like beauty that Oriental taste esteems. I knew Rawson's friends and so quickly found her a suicide-watch. With a little inquiry, I found someone for Chih, too. Her new watcher was Zeev Yadin, a transformee whom Chih had himself stood by through some bad days and nights. Now she wanted to return the favor. Yadin seemed highly motivated and does roman abramovich make money from chelsea, for the first time, I risked putting a traumatized soldier under the care of a transformee.

Possibly, nursing a friend would be a better application of Yadin's time than making furniture. That afternoon more disappearances, the next morning more women. It went on and on. In fact, it worsened. The third day after the departure of the detachment, Halder and Ames returned leading two more transformees.

These had been the how does living away from home allowance work Stark and Big Bear.

They hadn't gotten far before the curse of Klink caught them. As it turned out, I was impressed by Ames' manner when she reappeared.

The captain seemed to have finally emerged from her depression and, stock market predictions graph a debriefing, I let her resume a sort of limited duty.

If she did well, I intended to make allocative efficiency in stock market officer for what I was mentally calling the "women's battalion.

The next day Hitchcock and Roberts returned with another pair. Now that Hitchcock and Marduke were back, I talked to them about the support-group idea, explaining that it meant training the recovering transformees as carpenters. Marduke had been on the furniture-crafting detail before her transformation and so would make a competent instructor. They accepted the assignment with interest and good grace.

Drew and a man named Cotts were the last auxiliaries to return with transformees. Drew reported that the detachment was now too far away for any more traumatized transformees to be sent back.

It appeared that Crawford and Morrow intended to continue on with the remaining group of 59 until they won clear or it became obvious to all that distance alone could not stop the transformations. Evenings had become a mere hiatus between daily crises - afternoon disappearances and morning discoveries. I suffered from frequent headaches which Lowry diagnosed as stress-related.

Oftentimes, these were accompanied by nausea and I would vomit and afterwards lay enervated for more than an hour. I was recuperating from one such debilitating episode when the doctor visited me. She seemed to have something on her mind. Good grooming was a sign of a positive state of mine, of course, but I wondered why more transformees didn't cut their hair short.

She dragged a chair up to my desk. We had to be reverential regarding our cards, since playing with makeshifts, as we would be forced to do in the not-too-distant future, would not be half as much fun.

I realize I don't look like the same person, don't sound like the same person, and I'm so knotted inside that I don't even act like the same person. You have to be. After a while, Sebastian got around to talking about things that bothered her. It seemed strange to be thinking of my old friend as a "she" - especially now that Lowry was speaking and behaving more like herself - himself.

She shook her head, causing her ponytail to jiggle; the gesture would have been charming coming from a girl back home. I wonder if this planet has more tricks up its sleeve. Nothing of him doth fade. But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sebastian popped in the next day, but it wasn't to play poker. Hitchcock is pregnant," she announced with a straight face. I scowled across my desk at her. I'll -" "Easy, Rupe. Hitchcock asked me not to let you go after Roberts.

This sort of thing has to be expected; put men and women together in a subtropical paradise and, abracadabra, you get babies. It's called the facts of life. It's against the rules! No doubt Hitchcock wants an abortion. She needs time to sort this thing out. She has to talk to the father, of course. Those two don't need a commanding officer putting his two cents into what is probably the most important conversation of their lives.

You've got to understand the kind of emotional bond they have. Roberts helped bring Hitchcock out of the lowest psychological hell that a person can sink to. Looking back, I don't find it all that surprising that they did what they did. With my other problems, I didn't need Sebastian acting like the garden-variety know-it-all woman.

She set her features into a thoughtful moue. Roberts and Hitchcock are going to be padding through hell for the next few days, even if you don't get on their case.

Up to now I've been thinking that transformation was limited to physical changes. Now I'm not sure. You look -" "I don't mean the way I look.

Do I behave differently? You've been through a lot. You're still Sebastian - I know that much.

But I've been thinking a few things lately that I'm sure Sebastian wouldn't. There's obviously more in your head than black ties. What else could explain a guy like Hitchcock accepting a male lover so quickly? It may not be so bad. This is an army camp! Can you imagine having it full of babies crying day and night! Soldiers tied down caring for them? I had a family, and frankly, it kills me to think that I'll never see them again - especially the kids.

If you'd ever been a father, you'd know that there's a lot more to babies than crying. There's magic in every one of them; you have to experience it to understand. Think of them as future recruits. How can you prevent people from getting together? There were communities before there were military camps, and the world got along fine. And we're not a community. We're - Oh, hell, I'm out of my depth.

I'd like to knock some heads, but I've never hit a pregnant woman in my life! If soldiers are going to be choosing partners, they have to expect children - and they'll have to take responsibility for them.

Go too far in and we won't be a military unit anymore. That's like forbidding alcohol or stimmers at an army base. You know how much good prohibition does when it gets in the way of basic needs. And here you're talking about an addiction that's older than alcohol, and a whole lot older than stimmers. I could do tubal ligations and vasectomies, but don't expect me to force anything like that on unwilling patients - And, really, the problem will probably take care of itself in a couple months.

Considering our rate of transformation, there soon won't be anyone left to -" She couldn't miss the pain that came to my eyes. Lowry explain the problem. After a lot of uncomfortable officers mumbled out their opinions, I told them we'd be treating Hitchcock's condition as a medical problem not requiring discipline.

Eden Eternal : Gold Farming? | Yahoo Answers

In fact, I thought we ought to consider her condition a kind of discipline in and of itself. After that, I called a muster and had Dr. Lowry, for the third time, explain the situation. She warned the troops that sexual relationships were not recommended for the obvious reason that they carried very important, very long-term consequences. Even while I watched it, I thought I was witnessing one of those critical moments in history that changed the outlook of entire civilizations.

I could tell from the troopers' bemused reactions that none of the presumed-guilty ones had entertained the remotest thought that they might have been courting parenthood. The women looked especially thunderstruck, while the men mostly seemed irritated and cheated. Then I stepped in to lay down the law. I told the troops that we couldn't walk blindly down the path of least resistance. It would mean physical incapacitation for some of our people for months at a time, and also diverting labor from the necessary work of survival.

In conclusion, I said that all sex was forbidden until further notice, under penalty of discipline. Lowry shook her head, clearly not in total agreement with me, while the mood of the troops seemed a mixture of disgruntlement and puzzlement.

I let them fall out then and went back to my hut, wondering how I was going to enforce my order against the strongest impetus known to man - and woman. The next day, shortly after the noon mess, Harold Roberts stopped by my quarters. Mary - I mean, Mark and I -" "Mary? Hitchcock and I have talked and we think marriage would be the best thing. That means doing what's right. I think I'll be able to live with myself better if I did the honorable thing now.

And, besides, I'd like to have a son - or daughter - with my name. It's probably my only chance to be a father. But no one here has the authority to perform marriages. I walked to Hitchcock's barracks and found her commiserating with several of her transformed friends.

Then I addressed the pregnant private: Do you know that Pvt. Roberts spoke to me a few minutes ago? But I suppose it does sound strange. But now that it's happened, I guess we have to make the best of it. Hal has a stake in this, too. He stood by me and helped me when I really needed somebody. I owe him something. The baby is coming, and anyway, I always thought that I'd like to have a couple of kids someday.

If I'm still going to be a parent, this is the way it has to be. Isn't that right, sir? Lowry should be able to meet your pediatric needs," I assured her. Babies need lots of milk. We don't have any and - well, that could be bad. The other women caught on and they joined in. It's not like we've got a herd of cows around here! My headache was coming back and so I decided to retire and let Hitchcock's ho-ho friends cue her in in their own good time.

I bade the troopers good-bye and felt relieved to be out of there. I returned to my hut and sat at my desk, wondering if I dared let the men of the 54th start marrying one another. I knew damned well that it wouldn't stop with Hitchcock and Roberts once the ball started rolling. I would have had to be a psychiatrist to lead the Group through the approaching minefield - but I'd been trained as a soldier; that was the only life I knew.

I simply had no answers for the oddball questions which cropped up daily. And besides the new uncertainty, there was always the old certainty - that we would have two more disappearances at any minute.

Then, in the morning we'd have two more. I reached to steady myself against my desk, but my arms groped empty air. I suddenly realized that I was lying on my back and opened my eyes. The ceiling seemed to be turning broad gyrations. What was wrong with me? Had I fainted and fallen to the floor? No, my groping fingers told me that there was a cot under me.

Someone edged up from the side. I blinked hard; my vision was fuzzy; I could only make out a white coat. We'll get you through this. My hand went to my throat, but instead of the Adam's apple and familiar bristle, I found soft, taut skin like I hadn't felt since my early teens.

Terror shot through me; my hands leapt to my chest - And then I screamed! When I next came to, Lowry had her arms around me. It's not as bad as it seems. I turned my face away, knowing that Lowry could do nothing for me and that there were no cures for this. People are beating it every day. You're a fighter, Rupe. Cry if you want to. Get those emotions out. You were a human being before you ever were a commanding officer, Rupe.

There's no reason to be ashamed. Then she tempered her shrillness a little: You can depend on me to help you. Drew was moving about the room, tending to another patient. Yes, there were always two patients, I remembered. This time I didn't want to know who the other one was. I couldn't take any more. Suddenly, I began to wonder what I looked like.

None of the other men had become ugly, but still I dreaded to see my face. My trembling fingers went to a tickle on my cheek and grasped a tuft of strange-feeling hair. It was very long, even though I 'd worn it cropped short that morning - or what still seemed like that morning to me. I pulled the lock so I could look at its color and texture. It was black, not my familiar sandy brown. I screamed again, then realized that Lowry was hugging me to her breast. I didn't want to be held that way - it wasn't the way one man should hold another - but I couldn't focus enough to tear loose.

Tears burned my eyes. Now the Terrible Thing had happened. What was left of my life? Why had this happened? Why had the all-powerful, all-knowing intelligence that haunted Klink done this to me?

Why had it put its godlike power so determinedly against one miserable human being, and why did it waste its incomprehensible omnipotence to destroy an insignificant nobody?

I dreamed that I was standing with my back turned against an immense void which gaped behind me.

Eden Eternal Few Tips on How to Make Gold Lv80

I could neither run from the abyss, nor turn to confront it. I heard nothing from any direction, and saw nothing - not even a shadow. I felt no breathing on my neck, but I knew something was there - and very close. I felt wasted, hung over, and then all the horrifying memories surged back. I touched myself fearfully, hoping that my last awakening had been a nightmare, but - Lowry squeezed my wrist.

I know how tough it is, but we'll have you up and around in no time. I wanted to escape to the darkness, lose myself in the abyss - live and die alone - unseen, unremembered, my bones rotting to nothingness. I wanted no grave - I wanted nothing remaining to remind people that Rupert Breen had ever existed. Lowry left me momentarily and returned to place a bitter drink to my lips, which I tried to reject. She was not to be refused, however, and I soon forced it down.

The doctor remained faithfully by me after that, until I once more slept. I've got work to do! You're not fit for more! It almost killed me. It'll kill you, too! Yell, cry, scream, beat your fists against the wall, but don't pretend that nothing has happened!

Philbrick run the camp for a while. Hopefully, it will be you. And what are you going to do when you crash? And believe me, try to fly too soon and you'll crash hard. Get off my back! You're a basket case and don't even know it. In a day or two, certainly in less than a week, it's going to break and you'll go down - deep. Good God, don't you think I know what I'm talking about?

Have you forgotten what I almost did to myself? What more do I need? I can help you. Hitchcock and Marduke can help you. Hitchcock for my commander? I'd rather be dead than a laughingstock!

I couldn't look at it, and whenever I closed my eyes that ugly picture was all I could see. The next day my mother wondered why I was being difficult about going to my uncle's place and after she'd dragged me there, I wanted to stay in the kitchen. I didn't want to go to my cousin's room where his new comics were lying face-up on the dresser.

Joe was a smart guy and it didn't take him long to figure out what was spooking me. Since he was a jackass at that age, Joe wanted to see me get scared and cry. For a joke then, he dragged me into his room and made me look at his new comics.

I controlled my fear and looked at the grotesque illustration, betraying nothing, pretending I didn't have a clue to explain his - Joe's - strange behavior. I simply said, "Yeah, what? Between sports and girls, he had better things to do than hang around home and torture a six-year old. But for years afterwards I always probed his box of comic books warily when trying to find something to read, unwilling to be confronted by that awful picture.

Even as a teenager the sight of it still repelled me. Lowry, taking the mirror from her hand. Now I steeled to disassociate myself from what I would see in the mirror. It would be someone else's image, not mine.

I regarded the reflection of a clear-skinned, pale Celtic face - aquamarine eyes full of suffering, a slender neck, and heavily ringletted black hair. It was all I could do to keep my face calm and not tear away. It was The Face, the face of the Nameless One.

Her mouth was a pinkish bow; the nose small and slightly upturned. My last belt notch would not hold up my pants. What had Shakespeare said? I was no thief. What I was, I was by right. Pretence had nothing to do with it! The men need to know that their C. I suddenly wondered whether Lowry was thinking about invoking her medical authority to relieve me of command? She was my friend, and so that would be an act of incredible treachery. Even so, I couldn't trust that she wouldn't go that far, and so I walked swiftly away before she thought of it.

Once in the open air, my confidence did not stiffen as much as I'd hoped. Instead, I was afraid that my men wouldn't know me, that I would have to explain who I was, and why I claimed the right to command them. Instead, the brutal fact turned out to be that everyone knew who I was and they stared at me, especially when they thought I couldn't see. I felt like Klink's newest monster every time I returned a salute. Nonetheless, I tried to ignore the stare and stammer and turned toward the row of officers' huts.

I found Philbrick conferring with the lieutenants Stokes and Evans. Ames was there, too, since it was her hut as much as Philbrick's. The officers snapped to attention. Report, Captain Philbrick," I said. Lowry mentioned that Pvts. Brouwer and Marietta were - transformed - the day after Gonzales and -" "And me? Yes, go on," I urged him stiffly. That makes transformees our of a current muster of Ames' expression bothered me most. What was she feeling? Jealousy that I still presumed to command though I'd kept her on suspension?

Was she smugly satisfied? Did she think I'd gotten a deserved comeuppance? Suddenly, the cramped space left me short of breath and my shoulders began to shake. I stepped away from him, mumbling, "I need to rest.

Ames pursued me to the door. Would you like to talk? My icy glare warned her off. Try as I might, I couldn't organize my thoughts - an appalling feeling, like being high on stimmers. As I sat there confused, my hands began to tremble; I dropped the pen and, trying to pick it up again, kept dropping it, until it rolled over the desk edge and fell to the floor.

At that point, I gave up and let my head sink to the tabletop while I drew deep, ragged drags of air. Lowry's asked me to look in on you. I only mean that it's her duty to give our commanding officer all the attention he deserves. And why didn't - the doctor - come here her - himself? Lowry that you saw me, and that I'm perfectly fine! Did Drew realize what I was concealing? He seemed to be watching me keenly. Instantly I regretted losing my temper. Drew would report me to the doctor and it would look bad; she might not understand the degree to which I had been provoked.

The inconsequential incident might give her the excuse she needed to remove me from command, making me a patient, a virtual prisoner! I struggled for breath. The walls felt close-in. I opened my collar, sucking down rapid breaths. My head throbbed and I was growing nauseous, weak. I staggered to the empty rations drum that served as my nighttime chamber pot where, since I had had little solid food for three days, I vomited mostly regurgitated water.

The worst of the nausea soon passed, but when I could finally stand I remained very unsteady on my feet. I thought about checking in at the infirmary, but I didn't want Lowry to see me in such a state. Another part of me wanted someone's - anyone's - company, but a C. I hadn't been there for Lowry when she needed me.

Now I was alone myself. My headache wasn't getting better, and so I put a couple tablets of LWI in my mouth and crushed them between my teeth. The bitter chemical choking me, I staggered to my canteen and guzzled a couple mouthfuls of water.

That ended the coughing and I managed the few steps to my bed, which I fell into like a statue. I drew a towel over my eyes to shut out Klink's bright noon light, wanting desperately to sleep.

Instead, I lay in a semi-trance for a long while before I heard tapping at my door. My head felt hot and tight as I gasped, "Come in. Every man, every transformee, has been accounted for, except Culligan. Do you suppose it means something?

After a nearly-sleepless night, I rose and joined the searchers. We soon found the feminine incarnation of Marcus Culligan - who had become a younger incarnation of Lola Carlita, a Latin sex-symbol back in the days when Culligan had been a hormonal teenager wasting his money on adult sex-sims. But why had his been the only transformation?

Any change in the familiar pattern could mean something significant. Lowry had no theory and, disappointed, I said something sharp and angry. I stormed out of the infirmary but I had another fit of shaking outside and so, afraid of being seen, hid in a grove of trees until I bucked up.

I had to carry on despite my nervous condition, so I decided to inspect Capt. The officer filled me in on his men's latest soil and water analyses, but it was clear there were no interesting developments since the last time. Maybe that was why my mind wandered and I grew confused over details, repeating the same questions over and over. Komisov began to eye me strangely and I grew angry. Why was everyone staring, treating me like something strange? Mine was only a physical change and it in no way affected the person I was.

Half the camp had suffered what I suffered, so why should they gape? They would be women themselves in a few weeks, and it would serve them right!

I stalked furiously through the center of camp, ignoring people who tried to address me. There were many transformees among them. What were they thinking?

That I was like them? And what about the men? Why were their expressions so strange? Did they believe that I was unfit to command? The trembling returned, forcing me to retreat to my hut before anyone noticed. This time I didn't reach my bed before collapsing to the floor like a stringless marionette. I crawled laboriously to the cot, covered my face with a pillow, and curled into a foetal position. It was hours later when someone shouted "Major!

I saw that the sun had sagged low in the west. Transformation had nearly halved our staff. Ames and Lowry had recovered sufficiently to join us. Of my captains, Philbrick and Komisov were still sound, but the transformed Tritcher remained on suspension, while my senior subordinate, Crawford, was absent, his fate unknown. We're as helpless as ever!

This process has been as predictable as a machine until now. She ignored my insult and continued evenly: We're a military camp! Then, again -" "Then again, what? It was incredibly frustrating to realize that had I been able to win the transformation lottery for just three days more, I still would have been myself! The odds had been seven out of two-hundred and forty-five in my favor, and I lost! I lost it all, and I lost it forever! Not liking patronization, I pushed it away.

You think that this could be a breeding experiment? There's nothing much to do except maintain morale and make scientific observations. I balled my fists. At least not for long. The spell was bad, very bad. I sank to my knees, my vision a field of spots; the air shimmered with them until I covered my eyes. The next thing I knew I was in bed, fighting to rise. Sebastian stood back and faced off with me, her mouth tight and her glance determined. I let you subject yourself to pressures which are obviously too great for your condition.

You need rest, you need quiet. You have to go on medical leave. I'll tell Philbrick to take command until you're on your feet. You're wound so tight that your spring is about to break.

It's to be expected. You've changed into your favorite sex fantasy and it's driving you crazy. I could look into it all day because I know the face I see isn't mine and it doesn't mean a thing to me.

If you're still pretending otherwise, your disconnection is worse than I thought! I didn't want to, but I had toughed out this rubbish before and could do it again. Confronting the reflection, I saw the Nameless One for the second time, but she was an even worse mess now! That big slouching cap looked ridiculous and her sagging, over-sized uniform suggested a sickly child. She suddenly clamped her hands on my shoulders and directed me face-front again. But what makes her tick? Is she into filmy negligees and hot tubs or isn't she?

Bikinis and volleyball at the beach? Scandalous doings in ski cabins? She's the kind of girl you've always wanted, isn't she? Tell me what you know about that girl. Even so, I felt another surge of panic and closed my eyes. Can she carry on a conversation, or is she a total airhead who does her best talking on her knees? What does she wear to bed? Does she like to sleep naked? Does she like men?

You two are going to be shacked up together for a lifetime, and you're going to have to make friends. I didn't want to hurt Lowry, but I had to stop her mouth, stop her from talking about things that I couldn't bear to hear.

And you're crazy enough to kill innocent people. No one would hang you for it; you're certifiable! That's why I can't let you go, Rupe. You're a danger to yourself; and you could be a danger to other people, too. She fell against a table and I whirled, ready to tear at her with my bare hands.

But I didn't see the scornful face of a foe - just the stunned, worried expression of a physician and friend whose desperate, improvised treatment had failed. But what sort of treatment had it been? I was no longer violent, but was beginning to tremble again. I had to get away. I staggered to the door like a drunkard and stumbled outside. I walked swiftly away, with only the tattered rags of my dignity preventing me from running blindly.

Once out of Sebastian's sight, out of everyone's sight, I raced wildly away. I didn't know where I was running until I saw the foot of Woolenska's Bluff ahead, and knew to what fate my legs were carrying me. Somehow I climbed the rocky incline - sometimes clambering on all fours. I didn't see the way ahead; all I could see was the face of a snarled-haired girl with unhealthily circled, aquamarine eyes. I tried my strength to its limit - the strength of this woman's body.

From time to time, sheer exhaustion forced me to lie belly-down on the sun-heated stones to catch my breath. Whether such pauses were long or short didn't register. Then, lungs burning, limbs aching, I rose and pressed on. I found myself high over the camp, which looked small and orderly, like rows of toy huts in a child's sandbox.

I was possessed of a strange detachment. What was the camp to me? The camp was no one's home - certainly not mine. I peered into the powder-blue sky, piled high with cumulus clouds like ice-cream castles.

Where was my home? Where did I belong? The truth was I had no home - only a place, a job, a duty. Without my place, without my duty, I was nothing.

If I died now, who would regret it? To the 54th, Major Rupert Breen was already dead even if he lingered where he no longer belonged, like Jacob Marley's ghost.

But unlike Marley, he didn't have anything wise to contribute, no knowledge of how to live a better life. Maybe it was time to lay the ghost, to go where the dead belonged. Let no one fret over my grave; let no one be sorry that I was gone. I inched my way up the incline and, finally, dragged myself onto the table rock at the summit of Woolenska's Hill. Utterly spent, lungs aflame, my breath came in hot pants. I shoved a mass of greasy snarls out of my face and rested my forehead on the warm bedrock.

Suddenly I felt ashamed. What was I doing here? Was I going to kill myself? Others had found the courage to endure - Ames, Lowry, Hitchcock, Marduke. Was I like Woolenska, giving up, or Olson, too distraught to reason? Was I a coward? Warm teardrops pattered the dirty hands on which my chin rested.

I could die, and gladly, but not as a weeping, hysterical woman! Self-pity didn't lighten my grief one bit. Lowry had reached out to comfort me, as Drew had, but my pride couldn't accept compassion. My body again quaked, this time with hard, choking sobs. I rose to my feet at last and all around me trees, bushes, and boulders whirled as if I suffered from vertigo. My legs were weak, aching from the climb; I had demanded much from this skinny body, but my demands were over.

I understood what I must do. Sucking a raw breath to energize famished lungs, I staggered toward the overlook - - The overlook from which Herbert Woolenska had launched himself into eternity Why did I bother? Was I afraid of falling to my death? What else had I intended? But the desire to live is a terrible, tenacious thing, and it takes all of human will to suppress it, even for a moment.

I cast one more look at the world, supposing it would be my last. Rocky pinnacles and forests rose as far as the eye could see, hills and ridges stretching jaggedly to the horizon, dwarfing the little bluff to which Woolenska had given his name.

The familiar earth- and vegetation-colors, softened by haze in the distance, make the landscape resemble a painting by a Nineteenth-Century master. I gazed at the broken rubble on which I would fall, blinking away the blur of saline tears.

I regarded the graveyard with its two tiny markers, the ground where Olson and Woolenska lay - and where I, too, must lie tomorrow.