The House of Seven Moons

By T.E. Mark

The delicate balance of the Multi-Verse is again in peril. This time from a League of fanatics determined to extend their self-righteous morality throughout space and time to all inhabited worlds and a few rather quaint uninhabited ones too.
But they’ve overlooked a potential snag while devising their oh-so-abominable plan. They’ve garnered the attention of the omnipotent, the almighty, the incalculably clever and preposterously well-dressed Olgarb.
But even Olgarb will need help on this one. He’ll coax his old assistant Ralphgorn out of retirement. He’ll enlist Tracy, a randy dental Hygienist from Ganymede with breast issues. And he’ll buzz back in time to call upon his favourite Earth journalist, Perry Brambles, who is once again embroiled in marital problems.
With an all-star cast, mind-pulverising action, heart palpitating suspense, disturbingly ordinary drama, nerve-numbing romance and hot steamy sex, The House of Seven Moons will have you laughing and panting and chirping like a sex-starved sparrow on holiday in Spain, Bermuda or on good old Rigel VII.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.E. Mark
• Release date: Aug 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463419328

T.E. Mark

T. E. Mark is an Anglo-American Science Writer, Screenwriter and Editor. He has studied Architecture, Music and Literature in the UK and in the US and has been penning stories since childhood. His first novel, Fractured Horizons, set in the wonderful of Bath England, was written at the age of 12.Mark has written novels for young and adult readers and a selection of science articles for national and international magazines. He also writes and edits academic papers on a variety of subjects for universities, governmental and non-governmental organisations.Follow T. E. Mark at:temarkauthor.wordpress.commthomasmark.wordpress.comtemarkurbanscratch.wordpress.comContact T. E. Mark at: [e-mail].

Book preview

(1)

Tracy had firm breasts. Basically, everyone who knew her agreed. They weren’t just your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill firm either. They were beach ball, volleyball and even over-inflated basketball firm.

But on 21 March 2672, at 4:28PM she sat in the locker room, naked, probing them, lifting them and wondering deeply, philosophically about even having them.

‘Hi Robert,’ she said with an absorbing, well-sustained smile.

Robert was one of the instructors.

He had uncommonly bright teeth.

And Tracy, an incomparably efficient dental hygienist, knew as much as anyone on Ganymede about things related to teeth.

‘Oh,’ he said casually while pulling off his shorts. ‘Hey, Tracy. Was that you on court three just now?’

‘Yes,’ she said brightly, wondering if her exterior display was merely a façade masking a growing darkness within. ‘Veronica and I played for almost an hour at 33% Earth gravity.’

Robert held his chin and stood.

‘Well,’ he said yawning with intrigue. ‘That’s sure something. I guess it’s the showers for me. Good seeing you.’

‘Okay,’ said Tracy still probing and plodding certain something was wrong but gaining little headway in the direction of uncovering what it was.

I mean, what’s the point in having these, she thought? Sure, they’re firm. Everyone knows that. But here, and here and…

‘Oh, hey Tracy,’ said Dennis, a tennis instructor and feasibly nice guy she knew from the gym. ‘Uhm… Busy?’

He searched her with sceptical eyes, felt satisfied this was nothing he should be bothering with, shrugged and turned to his locker.

‘No,’ said Tracy now confused and heading in the direction of progressively forlorn. ‘Not really. It’s just that…’

Dennis turned to the sweet girl with lemon hair and sad blue eyes. ‘What’s up? Having a problem with your breasts or something?’

‘No,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘Not really.’

‘Hmmm,’ he said, scratching at his… ‘Could have fooled me.’

He began humming a 26th century oldie and started to undress.

‘It’s just that…’ continued Tracy.

She now had a portion of the young man’s attention he wasn’t using at the moment and was determined to hang on until she got the confirmation she was looking for. Succumbing to a momentary wave of compassion, the young instructor sat beside her and began doing something with his toes.

‘These,’ she said, still massaging and exploring away. ‘It’s like… It seems there may once have been a point to having these besides serving to fill out one of those,’ she added nodding at her micro-mesh, Paladium fortified bra draped pleasantly, though formidably over her locker.

‘Hmm,’ said Dennis, quite convinced he had no idea what the sparkly young hygienist was going on about. Or why she was still sitting there massaging her breasts in the locker room. ‘I think I’m beginning to see your point,’ he said, feeling fictionally uncomfortable about lying.

‘Can I ask you something, Dennis?’

‘Well, uhm…’

‘Of course, I can,’ she said trying to avert the possibility he might say no and head back to his locker leaving her there alone with her breasts and quandary. ‘Have you ever noticed these?’

‘Well,’ he said gazing at her curiously. ‘I’d say… well… hmm…’

‘Okay,’ said Tracy grasping the unenthusiastic glint in his eyes. ‘Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. But don’t you see? That’s the whole issue.’

‘Ah-ha,’ said Dennis for no real reason other than to make Tracy feel that he was catching on and somewhat cognizant of her incipient breast dilemma.

‘It just seems,’ she continued, ‘that there was once a time, or maybe there wasn’t. Oh, who the heck knows, really? I was never good at or even interested in history.’

‘Ah-ha,’ he said again, checking his watch hoping she’d finish so he could get dressed and out on the high-G squash court.

‘Anyway, I’ll bet there was a time when men would see breasts, even the less firm variety, coz, you know, not all women have the same, uhm…’

‘Ah-ha,’ he said in a way that made him sound even more confused than he was earlier when everything about his face, eyes and posture reeked of fully committed confusion.

The rest of the conversation with Dennis was pretty much an additional waste of time as he was never quite able to grasp the gravity of Tracy’s breast issue.

In those last moments before parting, feeling daring and severely frustrated, she had Dennis do his own examination of her… uhm… breasts during which things, for Tracy, seemed to pick up a bit. Dennis, however, felt quite hot and anxious and appeared uncharacteristically nervous as he probed and squeezed and made wildly improbable facial expressions and stressful mouth noises. These, though, were mainly due his concern that he might be late for his weekly squash match with his colleague Ross Martin from guest services. A great friend and old work companion he’d met three weeks earlier.

The trip home, for Tracy, still mired in her near toxic level dismay along the M15 PCS (Personnel Conveyance System) through the main sports facility, the mall, the full-immersion neural enrichment theatre and the IO-drome was your basic Friday commute.

Nothing extraordinary.

You know.

Just, an average Friday afternoon rush hour on good old Ganymede.

The traffic was a little heavier than usual due to the opening of a new dimension—gawkers and all, and an earlier eruption of a subsurface cryo-volcano which closed sections of the M23 did add extra commuters to the M15, but for the most part, it was just another humdrum, lacking in excitement trip home through the pristine domes which, at the present date, covered roughly 83.2571% of Ganymede.

Roughly.

The high, glass and stainless domes were, as usual, high, glass, stainless, nicely illuminated and strung with the wonderfully elaborate and colourful banners of every country or province of every planet in the solar system.

Many commuters on the glowing, glimmering, metallic moving walkways, were finely dressed in the latest from Europa—quite the fashion centre since the often talked about, in my books, anyway, Peace of 30,242 AC, many heading for an east-end play or a west-end film or possibly heading off into one of the provincial domes looking for something wild, dangerous and forbidden in the main dome.

Tracy, immersed in her dilemma when she boarded, was still embroiled as she focused on every man passing, wondering why not one, even casually, surreptitiously, furtively or even subtly covertly had taken the time to at the very least scan her very firm, quite perky breasts especially after intentionally leaving her micro-mesh, Paladium reinforced bra in her gym bag.

She even spent time standing in front of the cold air ventilators before leaving the gym in order to…

Well…

Has it always been this way, she thought wondering if this could actually be an indication of a much bigger issue? Was it possible this had little or nothing to do with her breasts? An identity crisis perhaps? Possibly a deeper, psychological issue I may be trying to suppress, but can’t? Like wanting to be noticed for what I truly am or wish I could be?

Are you simply a metaphor, she thought gazing quietly downward.

She glanced confusedly at the men who passed. All absorbed in their gadgets and virtual news reports.

Is it the same everywhere in the solar system?

These questions puzzled her as she descended the hydra-lift to the floor of the pleasure dome. Here, she thought. This is where I’ll get some attention. This is where they come to relieve stress, or to learn about managing stress, or maybe to watch others relieving or managing stress.

Or…

What the hell is a pleasure dome, anyway?

Oh, who cares? What’s important is that there must be someone who’ll notice. Someone who will want to…

This part came on a bit sudden as Tracy was yet unclear about the whole issue of why she even wanted men to notice her… uhm… rather amazingly, uncommonly, noticeably, presumably by someone, firm breasts.

Thoroughly unaware, of course, that the Ganymede Morality League, a quasi-Governmental agency in joint partnership with the Ganymede League of Healthy Citizen Behaviour, under the auspices of the Greater Good Society of The Inner and Outer Planets, with both direct and indirect ties to the Ganymede chapter of the Seven Moon Church, had most intentionally, during the 25th century, following the successful introduction of artificial birthing centres, done away with sex, sexuality, interest in sex or sexuality, human impulses towards sex, sexuality, sexual attraction and a bevy of other man—woman, boy—girl, related… uhm… things, through a variety of very questionable, but seldom questioned, ordinances and restrictions regarding eyeing, gazing, ogling, scanning, touching, fondling, flirting, and noticing of the opposite sex. Additionally, clothing restrictions were strictly enforced with often brutally repellent punishments for rebellious scofflaws.

And by the early to mid-twenty-six hundreds, the governmental controls had reached complete success in that, even the impulses and desires, once so inbred in human beings on any world or moon, had been extinguished. Some highly trained professionals in the field of Astro-palaeontology, considered a pseudo-science before the Peace of 30,242, AC (The Arctrillian Calendar—never really used by anyone—anywhere—ever) claimed the behavioural instincts were now entirely mutated out of the human genome.

But, with, call it a lost, latent, randy hormone, a rare and almost inconceivable genetic mutation, or just good old dumb luck, Tracy was feeling something. Something frustrating, even. But stimulating. Something disturbing yet titillating. Something that was biting and gnawing at her like a Gamedon, an early Crustatious Period predator from Ganymede’s Heptatian Epoch, biting savagely into her consciousness, which, due to the lack of sex and sexuality on Ganymede, wasn’t necessarily all that conscious.

This will be discussed later in a non-fiction work I’m planning titled ‘Sexual Intelligence,’ A treatise on the value of sex with regard to the innate human lust for knowledge, lust for information, lust for the heck of it, and lust in the hybrid, pseudo existential context of lust.

There will also be adequate mention in Appendix A of this book’s sequel: ‘Breasts in a Nutshell.’

‘It’s just, Brent,’ said Tracy shortly after arriving home and stepping into their suburban micro-flat, to her husband, Brent, who was already plugged into the NN&EN (Neural News and Entertainment Network) getting the stock reports from the JOVE, the IOzen, the Calisto Industrials and the NASDAQ. ‘I’m having these odd feelings. Urges, even. Desires, if I think about it.’

‘Hmm,’ he lolled with his head probes on gazing gravely, yet spiritedly into the aquatic display wall. ‘Hmm-mm,’ he reiterated, smiling briskly after catching that Europan sheet metal was up 3/5ths of a Juno at the close.

‘I can’t say that it’s new really, or, well… Maybe it is, I guess. I don’t know, or really can’t say for sure, but…’

She sighed noting his look of utter complacency and walked dispiritedly into the kitchen where she opened a small bottle of molecularly de-sublimated Cabernet Sauvignon, swallowed several pleasantly flavoured and coloured caplets, then programmed the meal initiator for their usual Friday dinner of Eutectic Blue Snapper and Ionic Potatoes with imported Enceladus mint sauce.

While pressing virtual buttons, a truly, absorbingly, yet not in any way disturbing, to Tracy for some reason, dark, gurgling, bubbling, undulating, churning mass took form above her virtually eliminating the sparkly blue glass ceiling where she would typically see their upstairs neighbours, Marguerite and Floyd, with their cute twin toddlers, Argon and Krypton, diligently studying for their final exams in Organic Chemistry or Combinatorial Mathematics.

‘Oh, my,’ she said, stepping back, grabbing the wine bottle and quick scanning the warning label. ‘How, odd… How unusually, amazingly odd. I wonder if I may have taken a few too…’

‘Tracy Pennyfarthing.’

How, terribly, terribly odd, she thought placing the bottle on the particle beam generated counter. It even knows my name.

I guess I better answer it.

‘Yes?’ she said timidly, peering in the general vicinity of up. ‘Was there something you wanted? Needed perhaps?’

The ceiling was now completely gone. There was nothing visible but the rolling, undulating, modestly alarming swirling vortex in space-time.

‘Tracy Pennyfarthing,’ said the deep, distinctly sophisticated, and highly authoritative voice. ‘You’ve been under observation for several of your months.’

‘Oh, dear,’ she said with a hand over her… uhm… heart. ‘Really? My months?’

She felt a funny flush of adrenaline at this, wondering, even hoping, in a funny way, that perhaps they, it, whoever, whatever, may have taken notice of her…

‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘Really.’

‘My goodness,’ she said following on. ‘And, is there something you’re hoping I can do for you? Like helping to avert a planetary disaster, or war, or highly toxic plague, or something similar that I may have missed, but most likely wouldn’t have if I had a stronger interest in things like history or school subjects?’

‘No,’ came the voice, loud and secure but with a barely noticeable, unless you were looking for it, patronizing lilt. ‘I am Olgarb, member of the Inter-dimensional, Inter-universal and Intergalactic Affairs Committee recently reassigned to this sector as Supervisor of Primate Evolution, Minister and General Overseer of the Peaceful Coexistence of Planets…’ he paused here, searching through his suit for his notes. ‘…right, uhm… Give me just a quick… uhm… Wait! Here we go,’ he said, shuffling through a handful of post-its, ‘…and the Supreme Conciliator of Undesirable and Unseemly Governmental Abuses of Power.’

Tracy deliberated for a moment, trying desperately to associate what she’d just heard with anything she’d ever heard before hearing it this time, came up empty, then gave in to reasonably articulate questioning.

Of what she’d just heard.

‘Governmental abuses?’ Her left eye squinted. ‘Huh?’

Still standing on the glass floor in her white leggings and strawberry pink trainers, braless in her pulled tight white shirt, she glanced into the parlour at her husband who was still gazing idiotically with his eyes closed into the fully luminous aquatic Trident wall now live streaming the sports and commodities reports simultaneously from the Neural News and Entertainment Network direct from Titan via Aether-wave channel 1.2 x 10⁸¹ drillion.

Boy, is this marriage on the skids, she thought. Maybe this is why I’m having issues with my…

‘Yes,’ came the voice, sounding deep and deeply authoritative. ‘Through my new assistant… I… uhm… used to have a different one, you see, but, due to something rather unexpected that happened semi-recently on the planet Pantrabilis VII with this journalist guy from North London…’

‘London?’ she said displaying the brightness of a solar mass ejection, cutting in. ‘Well,’ she said clasping her hands together, holding them at her cheek. ‘I’d just love to visit London someday. The Eiffel Tower. The Parthenon. Hollywood. Hmmm.’

‘Uhm…’ said Olgarb. ‘Right, well… Hmmm, perhaps we can talk about that… You know…. Another time.’

Need to make a note about the education system here, he thought, reaching into his pocket of post-its. I’m thinking mandatory education at least through pre-school.

‘Okay.’

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘my new assistant, Mornoc, has alerted me to your, erm… breasts…’

‘Really?’ she said glancing down at her shirt with her eyes wide with unconcealed delight. ’I mean… he really, truly, honestly noticed them?’

‘Uhm…’ said the mighty Olgarb, distantly. ‘I meant, of course, your breast issue.’

‘Oh,’ said Tracy with sad eyes now a bit deflated. Emotionally. ‘That.’

‘Yes, Tracy Pennyfarthing. That.’

She gazed around at her fully digitized kitchen as the particle beam, granite counters, stainless modulators, and super-cool and super-conductive replicators began dissolving around her.

As her feet left the glass tiles, she was suddenly aware she was no longer part of this spatial reference frame.

‘Oh, dear,’ she squeaked more or less unintentionally. ‘I take it we’re going somewhere?’

‘Yes, Tracy,’ said the ever-swanky committee member. ‘To show you how this came about on your moon… and how you, Tracy Pennyfarthing, can help to reverse this tragically misguided development.’

Gosh, she thought. Ganymede, a moon? Well, and all this time I thought it was a pla…

And like a Lumigorph rising gently and picturesquely from the methane and Eutectic swamps of Titan or Europa. Or a Trablinuff piercing a transient rift to saturate itself in the pure unadulterated essence of the luminous microwaves left over from various big-bangs, into the great vortex in space-time she drifted feeling singed by varying wavelengths of ultra-high frequency