---------------------------------------------------------------
        PROBLEMS?  Please try viewing this with Netscape Navigator.
---------------------------------------------------------------

                         _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

                                  Andrew Roller Presents
 
                                   THE FADING UNIVERSE

                         _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

                                     Chapter Eight

         Marvin wondered idly what city they were in.  Well, he'd find 
out once the squad cars pulled up outside the factory.
         For weeks he and the others had been raiding municipalities 
throughout the universe, skipping through the Doors to get away.  
Some urban areas employed patrols who monitored traffic as it 
passed through the Doors, but Marvin and his compatriots had, so far 
at least, managed to elude them.  His greatest concern was with 
other roving gangs of thieves.
         Marvin rubbed his scalp.  Perry had told him recently that if he 
massaged his head, moving the skin between his fingers, it would be 
stimulated to grow hair.  He glanced at Perry.  He couldn't remember 
having ever seen Perry comb his hair, let alone wash it.  Perry's hair 
was greasy and it stuck out in every direction.  "Perry would be 
better off bald," Marvin thought to himself.
         Perry scampered about, waving a pistol.
         "Get into position!  The cops will be here any minute," Perry 
cried, but his commands were superfluous, for everyone had already 
taken up his proper place.  The hostages were bunched up in the plant 
manager's office, guarded by Harrigan and Elsa.  Frankie lay atop a 
pile of wooden boxes, his rifle leveled at the street.  Flaherty 
crouched behind the broken cinder block wall of a vacant building 
across the road, waiting for a signal to detonate half a ton of 
dynamite.
         Marvin spotted Flaherty's face peeping out from behind the 
jagged facade of bricks.
         "Dammit!  You're supposed to keep yourself hidden, fatso," 
Marvin breathed.  He motioned to Flaherty to get down.

###

         Marvin heard Perry arguing with one of the prisoners.  He 
stepped inside the office.
         "Is there a problem?"  Marvin asked Elsa.
         "No, Perry's just treating a hostage to one of his babbling 
harangues," Elsa said.
         "Shut up, you tin-plated inflatable doll," Perry snapped at Elsa.
         Marvin's face flushed.  "Listen you, I resent that," he shouted at 
Perry.
         "Insubordination!"  Perry screamed.  "Start your own group, 
then.  Why don't you just go rob places by yourself with a whole 
flock of those automated cunts?"
         "Now, now," a portly, bearded hostage piped up.  "I think you're 
just angry with your friend because you don't want to admit that I'm 
correct," he said to Perry.
         "That's not so," Perry retorted.
         "Well, then, refute me," the man said smugly.
         "Listen, professor fussbudget,"
         "Fuddleston," the man corrected.  "Doctor Fuddleston, professor 
of ancient astronomy at Cornell University, chief consultant to 
Dresser Industries here," he said with a wave of his arm.
         "The stars are fixed in place," Perry said hotly.  "Each one of 
them is surrounded with a mesh of solar cells."
         "I'm not talking about the way things are today," the professor 
said.  "I was declaiming on the distant past."
         "And you're saying that at one time the stars were all flying 
away from each other?"  Perry asked.
         "Like spots on an expanding balloon, or raisins in the dough of a 
cake that's rising in an oven," Professor Fuddleston explained.
         "What a stupid thing to argue about," Marvin exclaimed.  "You 
wanna save this for another time?"  He asked Perry.  "After we're 
done here you and your friend can troop off to the library together."
         "So you don't believe me either," the professor said to Marvin.
         "Listen mister, I know what you're trying to do," Marvin said.
         "Then perhaps I can enlist your aid in convincing this youth 
that it was man, employing his reason and the strength of his 
cooperative efforts, that created the universe as we know it today."
         "And it's a rotten place, too," Elsa said.
         Suddenly the shrill whine of approaching sirens cut through the 
air.  Marvin spun about and peered outside.  Police cars pushed 
through a crowd of spectators that had assembled, and rolled into 
the parking lot that fronted the factory.  Officers jumped out of 
their vehicles and crouched behind them.  Others scurried among the 
squad cars, clearing the parking lot of onlookers; driving the 
spectators back and erecting wooden horses to cordon off the 
asphalt.  Marvin glimpsed a sharpshooter crawling through the upper 
story of a dilapidated building adjacent to the lot.  He knew there 
were a dozen more moving stealthily into position, concealed 
somewhere in the crumbling edifices that lined the street.  A police 
bullhorn cut through the murmur of the crowd.
         "We're not here to argue," the officer warned.  "Throw down 
your weapons!  Surrender your hostages!  We have you surrounded!"
         Perry cooly raised his left hand and signaled to Flaherty, 
across the street, to detonate the explosives.  Marvin turned away, 
clapped a hand over his ear, and waited.  Nothing happened.
         Marvin looked up worriedly.  Had a sharpshooter found 
Flaherty?
         "What's the matter?"  Perry asked shrilly.  "Marvin!  The TNT is 
the key to my entire plan!"
         Perry raised his left hand again and frantically repeated the 
signal.
         Marvin glimpsed a stream of urine falling onto the roof of a 
warehouse and traced it upward to a rotund figure standing on an I-
beam that protruded out the far side of what remained of a building's 
seventh floor.
         "Flaherty's busy taking a piss!"  Marvin hissed.
         Frankie spotted Flaherty and shot over his head.  The boy 
jumped back in alarm.
         At once the police opened fire on Marvin, Perry, and Frankie.  
As the youths dove for cover a startled Flaherty yanked up his 
trousers and dashed back to the detonation box.  He leapt atop it, his 
buttocks landing squarely upon the T-shaped handle.
         A crack of summer lightning reverberated through the street.  
With an ominous rumble a building slowly toppled into the parking 
lot, crushing the police.  
         A handful of sharpshooters were all that remained to continue 
the enfilade against Marvin, Perry, and Frankie.  Several had been 
inside the building which collapsed, further reducing their number.  
The survivors were so shaken that their shots went astray.  With 
deadly accuracy Frankie quickly picked them off.
         A minute later a haze of smoke hung over the silent street.  
Perry grinned at Marvin.
         "I think whoever the city sends out next will be willing to 
negotiate," Perry said.

30

----------------------- Dreamgirls! -----------------------
-Back issues (and stories):  type
http://www.dejanews.com/
into your browserÕs ÒLocationÓ window.  Press your ÒreturnÓ key.
Click on ÒQuick SearchÓ, then type in:  roller39@idt.net
Press your ÒreturnÓ key.
Scroll to the very bottom of the page that appears.
Change ÒStandardÓ to ÒCompleteÓ
roller39@idt.net  is already typed into the window.  
Click in the window behind the ÒtÓ in Ò.netÓ
Press your ÒreturnÓ key.

-Other providers:  
Usenet Newsgroup:  alt.sex.stories.moderated
or by e-mail:  file.request@backdrop.com
or via the Web:  http://www.netusa.net/~eli/erotica/assm/

-Free minicomics:  send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to:  Jim
  Corrigan, P.O. Box 3663, Phenix City, AL 36868
- JOIN the worldÕs greatest organization!  Send $35.00 to The North
  American Man/Boy Love Association for a one-year membership. 
  NAMBLA, P.O. Box 174, Midtown Station, New York, NY 10018.  
-Naughty Naked Dreamgirls (Library of Congress ISSN: 1070-1427) is
  copyright 1997 and a trademark of Andrew Roller.  Work by others
  copyright 1997 by the respective copyright holder. 
-END OF story EMISSION