This work of fiction bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead; if you say otherwise you are a DAMN EVIL LIAR.

As I finished the preparations for my mission, I took another look at the files I had compiled on the targets. This should be a simple operation; easy money. I'd done my research to learn who I was dealing with. My recon had uncovered that my client, as well as my primary and ancillary targets, were all members of a cult, the same cult, a strange religion that had sprung up several years earlier based around some messiah-girl in Oxford. I try to stay out of cult business, but the money I'd get for this job was good, and I felt a certain sympathy towards the client. Cult or no cult, the story was a familiar one: a love triangle, anger, revenge. I wondered for a moment what their "Skyqueen" would think about this infighting among her followers, but I put it out of my mind. I had a job to do.

My primary target was a teenage girl, a minor, living in the New Jersey area; I should be charging my client extra for having to visit the "Garden State" again, but I've been worse places. I could have performed the extraction earlier, but my client had asked me to wait for a better opportunity: the girl would soon be meeting up with my ancillary target. Supposedly the current romantic interest of the girl, my ancillary target was a young man, a known pedophile flying in from Winnipeg hoping for an illicit liaison. It wasn't hard to obtain his travel plans -- as soon as he booked his flight, red flags went up in several government databases to which I have extreme levels of access. My client was the third leg of this love triangle, the aggrieved party. He was another young man on the fringes of society, living with his parents in an obscure English hamlet called Solihull. I don't know how he got the money to pay me, and I don't care. There are certain questions I've learned not to ask.

I have an interesting job -- I possess certain technologies (and the specialized knowledge required to use them properly) not native to this time and place. This lets me do things only a handful of others on the planet can, and that puts my services in high demand. You could call me a "troubleshooter"... of sorts. You could also call me a bounty hunter, a bodyguard, an assassin... my skillset is rather broad and I'll take any job that seems interesting and doesn't conflict with my code of ethics.

I packed my gear and walked out of my domilice. On the way, I stopped to admire the nude statues of young women that I use to decorate my entry foyer. I brushed my hand against a few of the marble breasts, and I playfully slapped one of my favorite statues on her cold stone buttocks. These statues were payments for jobs done in the past -- sometimes a person would require my services but not have the money to pay; in some cases I would accept (or simply take) a client's daughter as payment. For the most part, these teenage girls were horrid creatures, filled with empty vanity, ignorance, and angst, nattering endlessly about banal minutia with their equally air-headed friends. I had the technology to convert these girls to a more pleasant form, and I've always found that their naked and petrified bodies give my home a warm, lived-in feel.

The travel was uneventful, as it always is. Eventually you realize all airports are the same fundamental place, just chopped into little pieces and scattered over the world. Even the cities are one sprawling metropolis separated only by space, or at least it seems that way from the main roads of strip malls & fast food joints. Planes, trains, automobiles: I moved by habit; my thoughts were on the mission ahead.

I walk into the hotel and headed directly for the service stairwell as if I own the place. When you know how to act like you belong, nobody asks questions. I climb to the fifth floor -- I've never trusted elevators, and dark musty stairwells have an undeniable charisma. Down the hallway, up to the door of the correct room -- I slip a featureless card into the maglock; it will take it less than a minute to crack the door code. In the meantime, I stick a tiny machine to the frame of the door, and I'm able to hear as if I were standing inside the room. Two voices, one male, one female. An argument.

"No, I won't do it! Put my camera away!" the female voice shouted angrily.
"You don't really have a choice here. I told the whole Internet we're fucking, and now I have to get proof."
"This has gone too damn far; I'm not going to play along with your sick games anymore."
"I said you don't really have a choice here. Let me show you what else I brought."

I hear what sounds like a gun being drawn, and I hear the girl scream. I can't wait for my key to open the door; I hold my hand up towards the door, crooking a finger so that a ring on my left index finger is pointed at the door handle. The radiation is quite invisible, but the flash and snap as a significant chunk of the door suddenly ceases to exist is about as subtle as a car wreck. I pull something from my trenchcoat as I burst through the door & survey the scene.

The girl is just as her pictures indicated: an attractive 15-year-old brunette of Russian heritage; if I were a decade younger, or if I were a sick fuck like the members of this cult, I'd be quite taken with her. She wears blue jeans and a lacy white bra; a T-shirt lies discarded nearby. She has a look of fear on her face, initially directed at the man in the room with her, then at the sudden blast of noise & light from the doorway. The man is my immediate concern, though: although I'd ordinarily not consider this goofy-looking young Slav a threat, now is not the time to be careless. In one hand he holds a Canon PowerShot, in the other, a pistol -- I've never really learned too much about these primitive gunpowder weapons, so I couldn't identify the model, but I know any of them could kill me if I get careless. He had just drawn the pistol and was aiming it at the frightened girl, but now he is pivoting towards the doorway, towards me.

My reaction time is limited in this case; I see only one easy way to guarantee my safety and that of the primary target. I was given broad latitude in dealing with the secondary target, so this should fit the bill nicely. In my hand I have a gun of my own, though the baggage screeners at the airport certainly didn't recognize it as one; it looks like no more than a thin rectangular plastic wand. As I line up with the deranged man's center of mass, I squeeze the device slightly. The man lets out a soundless scream of pain as his feet lift off the ground and he writhes in agony in mid-air. The walls and ceiling of the hotel room seem to warp and melt as localized geometry goes briefly non-Euclidean; the man becomes a barely-recognizable blur of swirling particles and geometric shapes. Electricity for the entire hotel flickers on and off, and with a barely-audible pop, the man is gone. The floor where he was standing is now covered by a light dusting of a strangely dense pinkish-white diamagnetic metallic powder that would surely be mistaken for bismuth.

The girl looks terrified now; I step back, trying to appear non-threatening. "It's okay, you're safe now."

She seems skeptical, but she puts on a brave face. "What happened to him?"
"That would take too long to explain."
"Is he alive?"
"That would also take too long to explain."
"Did you come here to rescue me?"
"Not exactly, but you should be glad I did come."
"Yeah, thanks. You aren't going to rape me, are you?"
"Not exactly. Hold on a minute. Sit down, relax, calm down a little. I have to take care of the door."

-continued-

The girl still looks nervous but she sits down on the edge of the bed. She briefly looks at her T-shirt discarded on the floor, then looks away from it. She looks at the carpet where the man had just recently vanished, and just for a moment I think I see a smirk of smug satisfaction on her pretty face. But I need to focus on the mission -- the door is hanging ajar & slightly destroyed, and I'm sure someone will be curious about the noise. I press some buttons on my wristwatch and a hologram of the door fades into existence in the doorframe -- it'll suffice for now.

The girl is looking at me now. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

Honesty is always the best policy. "You could all me a 'troubleshooter'... of sorts." (That one never gets old.) "I was hired to transform you into a stone statue and deliver you to my client, and to deal with your self-proclaimed lover in any manner I saw fit."

The girl's eyes are wide; she surely wouldn't believe me about the petrification normally, but after what she just saw happen to lover-boy, I can tell she's conflicted.

"Someone... someone is paying you to turn me into a statue? Who?"
"I can't reveal the identity of my client, though you'll find out soon enough when you get there."
"Is it... is it someone in England?" There's a note of hope in her voice. I smile.
"Yes, it's someone in England?"
"Oxford?" she asks excitedly.
I shake my head. "No, I'm afraid not."
"Oh." She sounds disappointed. Then her face lights up again. "Solihull, then?"
I give her a wry smile. "Maaaaaybe."
She's grinning now. "Then I guess I'm okay with it. Am I going to be a statue forever?"
"That's up to him; I'll be giving him a device by which he can petrify & unpetrify you at will."
Though she still looks nervous, excitement is now dominant.
"What about my clothing? Does it turn to stone too?"
"Don't be ridiculous! Typically, I cut away the clothing after the target has been petrified."
She thinks for a moment, then smiles shyly as she speaks. "I don't want to be any trouble for you. Let me take care of it."

Standing up from the bed, she turns to face away from me as the unhooks her bra and lets it fall to the floor. Her feet are already bare. She unbuttons and unzips her jeans, then pulls her jeans and panties off at once, exposing her nude backside. Looking a bit nervous again, and perhaps a bit in denial about what's actually going on, she turns towards me and I see her in all her adolescent glory. "I guess let's go ahead and get this over with," she says.

I smile at her again and thank her for her cooperation. She strikes a sensual and statuesque pose and flashes a cute grin. I subvocalize a command code, and a bit of hardware in one of my pockets whirs into action. A scientifically-proven magic petrification ray bursts forth and envelops the girl; she's glowing with white light and she shudders briefly as a wave of pleasure passes through her. This particular version of the transformation process is fast and simple; I don't have time for theatrics today. Her whole body transforms at once, taking on the appearance of smooth gray marble. In seconds she's a perfectly-preserved statue of her former vibrant self, all her personality and energy reflected in the perfectly-rendered contours of her stone face and body. Her "soul", for lack of a better term, is still alive and conscious inside the statue, and she's above to perceive the world at least as well as she could before, but what's going on inside her head is knowable only to her.

I have a bit of cleanup work to do before I box her up for delivery, but first it's time for my break. I slip a blindfold over the statue's eyes...

TWENTY MINUTES LATER

To avoid leaving behind any DNA evidence, I toss the ruined washcloth, along with her shirt and jeans, into the trashcan and disintegrate them into a small pile of ash. Her bra and panties have already been otherwise secured. I remove the blindfold from her and tell her to be brave for the trip to England.

-continued-

TWO DAYS LATER

I always make sure my customers are satisfied, and part of that total satisfaction guarantee is a microscopic camera attached to the large wooden crate that arrives at my client's house and is awkwardly hauled upstairs to his room by him and his frustrated parents. I'm elsewhere, doing other things, but later I watch the recorded footage that was transmitted from the camera. My client is a 19-year-old nerd with curly hair. I see him lock the bedroom door and open up the crate with a crowbar (his Half Life skills must be formidable), and I see his face fill with awe & wonder as he observes the nude marble body of the girl inside.

He circles around her, looking at her reverently from all angles. Eventually, he goes and sits down on the bed. He says to the statue, "Please don't be angry. Just don't panic, and we'll talk about it." He's obviously nervous... he seems to be more afraid of the girl than she should rightly be of him. After a few minutes of reflection, he takes a deep breath and pushes a button his new wristwatch. The girl suddenly finds herself alive again, completely naked in the locked bedroom of the man who paid to have her stripped, transformed into a statue, and transported across the Atlantic.

She smiles at him. "Hi, you. So, what's this all about?"

Surprisingly, he's the only flustered one here. "I... I just wanted you to be safe; please don't hate me. Ummm.... there's something you can wear," he says, gesturing to a freshly-purchased nightgown sitting on the desk next to where she stands, surrounded by several empty jars of Marmite.

She looks at the nightgown briefly then shakes her head. "I've been petrified in a box for two days; I'm enjoying this feeling of freedom." She blushes a bit.

The boy seems to have trouble looking directly at her; he too is blushing and keeps looking away. "So you're not even angry?"

She's being so sincere right now. "Well, I'm a little confused; this is all rather out of the ordinary. So, what, am I like your slave now? How does this work?"

He holds up his wristwatch, which is on his right wrist for some reason despite him being right-handed. "Basically, I can turn you to stone or return you to life any time I want. Obviously I'm going to want you to be soft & warm as much as possible, but as a security feature, you'll automatically turn back to stone we're ever more than about a hundred feet apart. So when I leave the house, you'll either have to come with me, or turn back into a statue for a while, depending on the situation."

"That's pretty cool. If you do have to go away temporarily, I want to be petrified outside in the lawn so I can enjoy the fresh air and be admired by all the neighbors. But... what are your parents going to think about all this?"

"Well, in a few days, you're going to move with me to my own place -- I recently came into some money, and there's no reason to be living here anymore. Until then, we're just going to have to stay quiet and you may have to stay petrified most of the time so they won't find you. I told them that the large wooden crate was a new computer for school so that they wouldn't get suspicious."

She smiles at him again. "Well, if this had to happen to me, I'm at least glad it was you."

He starts to stammer a reply, but she walks over and wraps her arms around him, embracing him, leaning her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes, and sighing in comfort and contentment.

I stop watching the footage -- I know I've completed my mission successfully, and the rest of this story is up to the young man and the girl.

Also in England in that very moment: me. I'm some distance away, at my own hotel room preparing for another task. Sometimes one mission leads directly into another. These youngsters I've been dealing with are in a cult, as I've mentioned, and apparently word travels quickly through the grapevine (or the so-called "circlejerk" in this case). Whispers of the kidnapping/petrification incident have apparently gotten around, and I've received a number of inquiries, though only one person had both the money to pay and an interesting mission to offer me. How could I say no?

I whistled a happy tune as I boarded the train for Oxford.

The end, for now.

I was with you and enjoying the silly story up until you called Solihull a hamlet, which is like calling e.g. Brooklyn a backwoods trailer park (I happen to have been born in its general hospital). Research, it's what's for breakfast.

and yes i know brooklyn still isnt exactly salubrious - my point is more about them being now districts of large metropolitan cities