Natty fretted over the contents of a suitcase packed to the brim. "I know I'm forgetting something." 

Laney gave him a peck on the cheek. "You have a photographic memory. You never forget anything." 

"I'm a little stressed right now, okay!" 

Laney gave him another supportive hug from the side and smooch. "The whole idea of a big adventure, darling, is not to anticipate every possible contingency." 

"I do not do the unexpected. You know that!" 

"What do you call meeting me?" 

"A well calculated ruse, albeit with a distinctly low probability of success. I mean look at you. You're a goddess." 

She stifled another smile. "And since I rule, we're done here." She zipped up the suitcase to his abject horror. "It'll take an army of sherpas to carry what you have already." 

"Make sure that army comes with at least a couple battalions. I don't want anyone hurting their backs on my account." 

She struggled with the suitcase and dragged it out of the room as he eyed her delicious derriere from behind. 

"Are you planning on being a man and helping me?" 

"I am being a man - I'm objectifying you - and imagining all sorts of sordid sex behind your back." 

She grinned with her back to him. As he followed her into the hallway he could see that there were suitcases everywhere. Not just in the hall, but in the adjoining rooms as well. She wasn't kidding about needing the Sherpas. But considering where they were headed, there was no such thing as being too prepared. 

Natty turned and faced the living room window. "What happened to 1999!" he said in a panicked voice. "The end of the world isn't supposed to come until 2012!" 

"Very funny." She slipped on his glasses.  

"Well, I guess that explains the unscheduled total eclipse of the sun." 

She made a hole so he could see out the front window of the house by moving a suitcase. 

He immediately checked his watch when he didn't see what he expected to see out the window. "They're thirty seconds late." 

"They're military, darling," Laney explained, tidying him up. The tee shirt over the cotton short-sleeve had managed to sandwich the collar on one side. "I know you expect greater precision, but that won't come until we've been replaced entirely by robots." 

"Ha-ha, very funny. I thought you said these guys were Special Ops. What's so special about being thirty seconds late?" 

"Well, for one, they're under strict orders from me to resist all temptation to kill you. Apparently, regular military doesn't have the necessary discipline." 

He hit her with the "You're just a load of laughs" face. 

"Seriously, honey, you need to relax." 

"Do you have any idea what can happen to you in the tropics! There are a thousand and one ways to die-before you step off the plane." 

She chuckled a little harder than usual, then caught herself. "Stop it, I mean it." 

"How can you not tell when I'm not joking after three years!" 

"Because if I took you seriously, I'd kill you." 

The soldiers pulled up outside. Several Hum-Vs worth. Natty eyed the spectacle. "Holy shit! You said they're sworn not to hurt me, right?" 

She looked at them, tensing up herself at the showing out the door. "Just don't get too close. They don't take too kindly to baby-sitting neurotic rich people, not when they could be off killing people who need killing." 

"Why'd they come at all then?" 

"I'm guessing they're thinking you can finance their next war for them," she said, steeling herself with a deep breath. "You might want to remind them of that an hour from now when all resistance evaporates and they aim some of those automatic rifles at your head." 

"Very funny." 

"You'd think after three years of living with me, you'd know when I'm not joking." Natty wasn't particularly assuaged when the look of concern with what she was seeing out the window didn't evaporate. 

"You know what?" she said. "I think maybe I will come along." 

Natty sighed relief. "Thank God!" He kissed her on the cheek.  

She padded to the front door, preparing to greet the soldiers at the curb. 

Natty said, "What would I do without you?" 

"Hire a dozen nurses, even more shrinks, and never know a soul who wasn't on the payroll." 

As she opened the door, Natty said, "I'm really quite lovable once you get to know me. You'll attest to that, right?" 

She bit her lip and exited to greet the soldiers. 

Outside, a man who looked like he tested his mettle daily, oozed confidence as he scrutinized the pretty woman walking towards him. He and his men, all sporting camou fatigues and automatic weapons, and poised like cobras ready to strike at the slightest wrong move, contrasted mightily with the scene of suburban placidness.  

Laney shook his hand. "I gather you're Quatrell." He just smiled. "You understand this mission, right?" 

"Yes, ma'am. Baby sit some rich bastard, make sure he doesn't stub his toe on his adventure of a lifetime." 

"More or less. Only this rich bastard has a direct line to the President. You'd do well to remember that." 

She walked back to the house, stopped herself, and turned. "Oh, and one more thing." She tossed him a bottle of prescription meds. "His anti-paranoia medication. I'll have some with me, but that you treat like the Dead Sea Scrolls, in case I lose mine." 

He smirked, and stuffed the bottle in his shirt. As she was walking away, knowing full well he was ogling her, she added, "And stop objectifying me and imagining sordid sex with me." 

Quatrell's grin showed teeth that time. "Let's hope she has some meds for that too," he said under his breath. 

"I heard that!" 

From their living room, Natty and Laney watched as Quatrell signaled his men. The soldiers jumped out of their Hum-Vs and swarmed the house like cockroaches.  

"Fuck me!" Natty exclaimed. "They're invading Normandy all over again." He hid himself amongst the boxes and suitcases.  

"You know, I think those boys may be every bit as high strung as you." 

They watched hang-jawed as DeWitt entered rifle up, his name emblazoned on his uniform. He used hand signals to direct the soldiers to the various rooms. "Go!...Go!...Go!" 

The men fanned out, weapons pointed. All Natty and Laney heard from the men that had evaporated out of sight was: "Clear!" "Clear!" "Clear!" 

Laney stepped up to Dewitt and yanked at his shirt. "You know this is the burbs, right?" 

"The LA burbs, ma'am. Surprised you didn't call us in sooner." 

She realized they were being had, and stifled a smile. 

Dewitt sighed. "Yeah, we like to fuck with civilians. It's shameless, but we're mostly retired now. What else we got to do?" 

As Natty looked like he was about to pass out from the stress, he said, "You can change my shorts."

*** 

THREE DAYS EARLIER...

Truman's penthouse office in a downtown Los Angeles high rise was always a bit of an adjustment coming from the burbs. Natty supposed the shock value helped to get him into character. 

He walked around the very impressive Hologram of a hotel in space hovering above the conference table. Several suits, financiers and other power people seated about the polished lake of mahogany, gave him a wide birth.  

"A hotel in space?" He chuckled; he couldn't help himself. "You know you're out of your fucking minds, right?" The suits squirmed in their seats but held their mouths. "I mean, where do I begin? The space debris alone'll pelt it from every conceivable angle day and night. All it takes is one particle of space dust penetrating that hull and your guests will be decorating the walls like Jackson Pollocks." 

"You solved that problem yourself with an energy field." That was Bransen. "The engineers say they can have it ready in a month." 

"My energy field?" Manny gestured wildly. "I don't even believe it'll work!" 

"If that's all, sir..." Klepsky said impatiently. 

"If that's all! Are you simple?" 

A Special Ops type, wearing black and armed, gently assisted Natty back a couple paces from Mr. Klepsky. 

"That's a closed environment, you moron!" 

Truman, in his 60s now, tall as an Oak tree, and somehow, even more imposing, took a certain delight as always in watching Natty dress down his corporate execs. His aura alone made it clear who the CEO and real power person was in this room.  

Natty continued his rant as if he'd never been interrupted. "Microbes, bacteria, viruses, mutating in space into God know's what... Oh, and let's just shuttle them back to Earth where they can wipe out a couple billion people!" 

Truman took a deep breath, held it. Finally, he said, "We have any number of chemical agents to rely on." 

"Chemical agents?" Natty hit him with the thunderstruck face. "Let me guess, you're the head moron, no mere second rater, you." Truman restrained himself, managed a smirk. "Would those be the chemicals that will likely be the first to erode the seals-exposing your tourists to the vacuum of space?" He took another step in Truman's direction. "Would those be the chemicals compromising their immune systems, making them even more susceptible to the microbes you say you're defending them from?" 

Truman took another deep breath, sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "What do you suggest?" 

"I suggest you review the last dozen patents or so I filed on the subject!" Natty took a second to remind himself that while he was twenty-five, he looked eighteen. Maybe that's why they didn't take him seriously. 

Travelli, the "my defense against a cruel harsh world is numbers" accountant, stepped forward with some papers, which he showed Truman. "Honestly, we were eying his inventions, sir, but it'll mean another fifty million or so." 

"Trust me," Natty said, "that's chump change for keeping a lid on this debacle." 

Truman handed the paperwork back dismissively. "You heard the man, Travelli. Chump change. Spend the fucking money." He made a big show of checking his watch. "Are we done here?" 

"I'm sorry. Am I keeping you from your golf game? Because really, I can go. Of course, there's that small matter of what you're going to do to make oxygen when your solar panel fails, secondary to taking a hit from that debris I was talking about? Oh and fifty million other things I can already see going wrong! Trust me, bozo, you're going to have a lot more gray hairs before you get out of here." 

Truman stifled a grin. He looked up at Travelli, "We taping this session?" 

"Of course, sir." 

"I'll play back the tape from home, I promise," Truman said at Natty as he got up from his chair. Putting on his jacket, as he finished preparing to leave the room, he said, "Unless you're afraid the tape device might fail. Do we have a back up, Travelli?" 

"Three, sir. They're running in parallel." 

"Satisfied, Natty?" 

"I'm satisfied a man with your sense of priorities golfs well under par." 

Truman resisted the urge to tell him off. Glancing at his subordinates, he said, "He better not be the only one with answers to his own questions when I get back." 

The sphincters tightened in the room as Natty watched them squirm some more.

*** 

Truman paused at the secretary's station immediately outside his office.  

"How's he holding up?" Secretary Moffit asked. 

"I want him to take a couple weeks, Ms. Moffit." 

"A couple weeks!" 

"I was in there a good five minutes. He barely had time run down a hundred things wrong with my designs." 

"Oh I see, sir. He really is off his game. You don't think it might be because you designed this one a little bit better?" 

Truman eyed her as if he was wrong about her sanity. "Keep it up, Ms. Moffit, and you'll be going on vacation - permanent vacation." 

She smiled. "You realize I can't answer for the President and the countless other people he advises?" 

Truman hoped the mask he was currently wearing was sufficient to hide the fact that she had hit a nerve. "They'll have to make do with the other geniuses on the planet, Ms. Moffit. Last I checked, there wasn't a one of them not on my payroll." 

"We'll call in the B-team, sir. I'm sure the planet will be fine without him for two weeks." 

"Well, I'm not. But right now, seems like a minor point. I'll be damned if my space hotel isn't the envy of the world. Besides, he needs more than a refresher." 

He headed down the hall towards the elevator, leaving Ms. Moffit to wonder about his last remark. 

***

Truman climbed into the front seat of the luge, as Quatrell planted himself behind them. He took a quick look at the cute used in prior Olympic competitions. Then he got the signal from the flag man, and off he went.  

Truman's face was the image of focused concentration and determination as the luge bulleted down the tube of carved ice.  

He proved himself quite able with the steering, even as Quatrell handled the finer points of keeping them from crashing and spinning off course. 

They endured several close calls. Wobbling and zigzagging dangerously coming out of the latest turn... No sooner did they regain control, than their speed picked up to dangerous levels. 

The flag man on the hill eyed Truman's progress through his binoculars. "Fucking lunatic! Slow your ass down or I'll be mopping up the pieces." 

Truman's face lit up with sheer delight the more on the edge things get on the course. 

Flag Man watched a pair of Truman's execs wipe out ahead of him on the latest turn.  

He watched his own people clear the track to avoid a pile up in the nick of time. 

The medevac helicopters were already firing up to fly away the broken, mangled bodies of the wipe-out duo. 

Flag Man returned his eyes to Truman's team. "He's not going to make it. I told him this course doesn't suffer amateurs lightly. The fucking pros die out here in record numbers each year!" 

Flag Man watched as the duo trailing Truman wiped out behind him. They sailed off the course and crashed against the trees. 

Flag Man just took a deep breath and shook his head. 

His assistant standing beside him said, "How could you allow this? They can turn around and sue our asses!" 

"Truman put up forty of the eighty-three million it took to build the course." Prying his eyes away from the binoculars to regard his assistant, he added, "And he pays all of the 538,000.00 a year to maintain it." Returning his attention to the track, he said, "He's not going to sue us." He hoisted the binoculars to his eyes once more. "He's going to fire us for not making it more challenging. Thank God the stupid son of a bitch'll likely die half way down." 

He watched Truman getting closer and closer to the finish line to his dismay. 

Finally, he survived the latest near wipe out and, much to Flag Man's chagrin, crossed the finish line. "Sharpen our resumes, Butch. It was getting too damn cold up here for me anyway." He handed him the binoculars rather unceremoniously. 

At the bottom of the hill, just past the chute's finish line, Truman and Quatrell were assisted out of the luge. 

Truman rubbed his back on standing. "That's another half a mill on back surgery." 

"Maybe it's time you admitted you're getting older." 

Truman snorted. "People like me don't face reality, Quatrell. We bend it to our will." Ambling on in pain, he said, "Walk with me." 

Quatrell walked with him, keeping him from sliding on his ass whenever Truman looked like he was going to fall. 

"You're going to take my boy on a little scouting trip," Truman said. "Nothing too vigorous. He's a bit of a lightweight. The Amazon, maybe." 

"Amazon? That's not exactly what I'd call lightweight." 

"I didn't say baby him! He's got to grow up sometime." 

Stopping and putting his hand on Quatrell, Truman towered over him, a point which he used to buffet his rhetoric. "I want you to make him feel like one of the boys, hear me? He's never had a damn friend in his life, and I want him convinced you wouldn't think of going anywhere without him." 

Quatrell smirked. "We're not an acting troupe, Truman. We keep people alive. That's all we do. We're not Renaissance men like yourself." 

Truman excalined, "Damn it, Quatrell! Do you know how many of your fancy tech toys got birthed up in his head? You wouldn't have any fun if it weren't for him. Time you returned the favor." 

"Look..." 

"Debate over, Quatrell. If he comes back feeling left out and like some fucking alien leper from Mars like he's felt all his life, trust me, you and the rest of your retired special ops people won't be able to find bodyguard work for rich old ladies on 5th Avenue." 

Truman relaxed a stitch, embraced Quatrell by the shoulder, and walked with him. "Hell, he's no people person. A half-way convincing acting job is plenty good enough." 

"Why all the sudden interest in his coming of age?" 

Truman took a deep breath and held it, deliberating whether to come clean. "You know why I tested myself today on this track?" He turned to Quatrell and disabled him with stabbing motions of his fingers to Quatrell's pressure points. Quatrell buckled to his knees, wincing in pain. "You don't get to play global domination games by letting yourself get soft, Quatrell." 

Truman eyed the last of his execs being loaded up in a chopper and flown off to mend. "And boys with toys sooner or later lose sight of the real objective, which isn't to have fun." 

He assisted Quatrell up. Quatrell peered into Truman's soul with those hawk eyes of his. "He's not willing to make your more lethal planet killers for you any more, is he?" 

"But he will when we're through with him. He'll gain a genuine appreciation for what the real stakes are out in the field." He dusted Quatrell off. 

"How? By playing soldier with the boys?" 

"For starters." He straightened Quatrell's collar. "Let's just say I devised a few things to help keep your boys sharp as well." 

Truman walked on, leaving Quatrell hang-jawed. "Don't thank me. It's on the house."