Sun on the Rocks - The OOL Broderie Read online

  "I'm in the air, but I don't see a ring or a Capewell."

  "Capewell is the brand, the release button, the pin!"

  After five one thousand, four one thousand, three one thousand, and so forth, until zero one thousand passed by, both parachutes opened above the night lights of Manama. Clarity noticed two straps with the rest of her vest ensemble, and she pulled on each to guide the parachute towards the rooftop of a ten story building that she had seen on a postcard in Penelope Avalon's decryptor. She folded her legs on landing rolling on the floor, and instructed Montana to do the same.

  "Where are we landing?" asked Montana.

  "If the broderie's program is correct, this is where Scafarel carries out her banking activity in Bahrain, it's an istisna'a bank, which is arranging the sale of the convertible debt for Owens & Owell jet and the highway lamp post lights." A man dressed as a butler, known as Charles inside the bank, opened the door leading to the roof.

  "Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens?" he asked. Montana smiled and glowed with pride in her underwear.

  "Yes, I'm Shalia, she's Jenny, that's us, do you have any special wedding gear for us?"

  "Lady Scafarel takes care of the wedding apparel, did something happen to the symbolic computer, I was warned by the Air Fashion jet autopilot jet setting slight emergency signal, did the maiden flight time change?"

  "Everything's going well, the Air Fashion Jet simply flew before the wedding instead of flying during the honeymoon, sort of a pre-honeymoon flight," said Clarity.

  "I see," said Charles, speaking with a distinct, British accent, "I will get some clothing for you."

  "The parachute gear needs some canopy revision," said Montana.

  Charles gave them some clothes and led them to an air conditioned room filled with people trading on computer screens, dealing in commodity futures such as gold, timber, silver, wheat, crude oil and weather derivatives. They reached a desk where an attorney was working on a document spanning over two hundred pages of intricate financial information.

  "People work late here," said Montana.

  "The attorney is making the last revisions to the ten year bond indenture for the mudaraba, the one hundred million dollars came in a few hours ago. We need to know wether there will be a call provision, given the ten year interest rate will be set at five percent." Clarity looked at Montana, because she had no idea what a call provision was.

  "Shalia, the call provision?"

  "Call provision, call provision for the issuer, Owens & Owell you mean?" asked Montana.

  "Yes."

  "Yes, include a three year call option provision, interest rates may drop three years from now, and we may want to refinance at lower rates, calling the bond and repaying investors. In fact, we'll need the list of investors and also deduct the value of the call provision option to our personal account, since the call option makes the bond less valuable to investors." The attorney hit the space key several times and included a call provision in the document, labeled Air Fashion Lighting Project, Owens & Owell joint venture with the kingdom of Bahrain, one of the investors in the venture. The attorney lifted his eyes towards Montana.

  "What about the Spiritual provision and Owens & Owell Board of Directors clause? I'm having trouble with the covenant covering the thirty seven facets," said the attorney.

  "Let's take a closer look at that, please," said Clarity.

  Chapter Ten

  The attorney hired by Cassandra Scafarel to represent the Church of the Holy Flower in Bahrain, retrieved another file labeled 'OOL General Hierarchy'. The Church of Spiritual Flower Studies owned the other parts of the religious outfit, an intricate web of thirty two entities, among them copyright, patent and trademark divisions owning and amending the official Scriptures of the Church, including the book Decadence, computer-led management centers, foundations, orientation groups and video making units like the Telval Adult Production Studios, publicity agents for expensive beauty products such as Elony, a lab of artificial ingredients, international lobbying advocates and think tanks, fund raisers, a real estate division, underground facilities, various business units, high finance investment units, funds and global trading areas, one network of opinion leaders, and various authorization and verification groups. The authorization counsel of the Church and the Celebrity focal Strata group approved the legal documents officially admitting high profile members like Jenny Owens and Shalia Owell into the Church of the Holy Flower.

  "Here's a list of the thirty seven facets of spiritual awakening, including the four spheres of mindfulness, cognitive body observation, sensory perception, thoughts, and aspects of spiritual reality. One aside first, would you like to include a clause that makes it possible to adopt a flower?" said the attorney. He showed them a large print of two very expensive flowers, the beautiful green, white and purple Shenzhen Nongke Orchid, fetching two hundred forty thousand dollars and the pink Juliet Rose, an exclusive luxury item at four and a half million dollars.

  "Yes, let's do that, we may want to adopt two or three, but no more," said Montana, "just enough to be a larger than nuclear four-member family household, including us."

  Clarity inquired about the mudaraba and all the intellectual property surrounding the lighting units for the highway lamp posts, the broderie itself, and the lights of the Air Fashion Jet. After ensuring suitability with the Scriptures, a symbolic computer kept all the information as a network of concepts, and engaged in the calculation of algorithms to establish logistic and commercial links with all types of light bulb producers to bring the light bulbs to to the right place and light them at the right time, before engaging in surveillance activity of oil fields, tourist beaches, and other sites of interest.

  "Does this include barcode light, you know red laser light for supermarket bar codes?" asked Montana.

  "Yes, Lady Scafarel is reaching this agreement with Owens & Owell through your joint wedding to crush the barcode readers of the S Group new FoodNear supermarket, the one that just opened in Manama and Abu Dhabi." Montana's eyes widened, and Clarity couldn't stop her from reacting.

  "What a coincidence," said Montana, "I have a friend who knows FoodNear, let me check one thing, hold on, do you have a phone?" The attorney pointed towards his own trading phone and Montana dialed a number.

  "Yes, hi Charlie, it's Montana, the readers, yes, the new barcode readers, are they working? Not at all? Thank you. Take it easy, bye." She lifted her eyes towards Charles and Clarity and the attorney.

  "Nothing's working, I mean everything's working properly, the laser light beams are not properly going through to the barcodes, they're reading out twice the number of bars in the code. This is the work of a symbolic computer?"

  "Yes, a flaw in its symbolic interpretation actually, but we're not sure why exactly. Let's get back to the spiritual question in your official membership and wedding document giving Lady Scafarel power of attorney over all your belongings, future and present, intact or broken, small or large. Our Scriptures say that it is impossible to know spiritual reality with the thinking mind, because the spiritual is infinite, we're not infinite, we have a body, and so there's an apparent contradiction." The attorney lifted the index finger vehemently.

  "But, and I say but with one t only, the ten spiritual realms are a pretty good approximation at knowing the infinite. In your budding and finite wisdom, you mentioned wanting to write as a wedding clause that spiritual reality is finite, would you like to know the ten spiritual realms and possibly change the clause, in agreement with our Scriptures? It means you can get a free copy of the original Arabian Nights translation."

  "Yes, what are those realms?" asked Clarity.

  "You're entitled to know two, spiritual discipleship, which is who and where you are, and the human realm or personality, again very fitting for you two young ladies willing to give up your positions of power at the Board of Directors of Owens & Owell."

  "Let's go with the official Scriptures and move on to the symbolic computer, I want to know
how it works," said Montana.

  "No one is entitled to know how the symbolic computer knows, we're still understanding what it can do and how to use its flaw to our advantage."

  Charles led them to a refrigerated computer room near the trading room. Inside, the humming noise of computer ventilators from about fifty servers linked to the symbolic computer, sounded like they were inside a plane. In short, the symbolic computer was linking the broderie wearable lights with the autopilot of the Air Fashion Jet, with the lighting gear of the lamp posts of King Fahd Highway. All the lights of these systems could be operated from the broderie, which could be used to turn off the highway lights if the kingdom of Bahrain refused to pay its monthly electricity bill, supplied by the Church's Light division.

  But there was a more troublesome fact. The Air Fashion Jet, which was in danger of falling to Scafarel's dangerous interests of the Holy Flower, included high technology surveillance material, linked to an underground facility below the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, that turned it, the joint venture plane, into an Awacs, Airborne Warning and Control System plane, with minimum radar gear exposed on its rooftop fuselage. This information had not been openly revealed to the kingdom of Bahrain, in fact it had not been revealed at all by Owens & Owell. That is why, thought Clarity, with Scafarel part of the O&O boardroom, Donway wanted to stop the plane from being built and the mudaraba from being carried out, and the wedding sealing the mudaraba from taking place as well. All of these involved Owens & Owell, and the interests it commanded were strategic and military, not only industrial or commercial, none of that could be left exposed to a woman like Scafarel. A call to Charles' smartphone interrupted their visit. He frowned in typical British style.

  "We've received an air message from Lady Scafarel in the Air Fashion jet cabin, the plane just landed on automatic pilot in Manama airport, there seems to be a problem, Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens are in the plane with Lady Scafarel."

  Montana adopted a look of outrage.

  "Well, those fake women we met at the Cocoon Lounge, it's just not the place it used to be. You know that can't be, Charles, we're here, it's us, the Owens and Owell Board of Directors daughters, Shalia and Jenny. How much are we going to make as Holy flower Church members by the way?" Charles stood in front of Clarity, blocking her view of Montana, and the attorney blocked Montana from the nearby door leading to the elevators of the building.

  "Lady Scafarel takes care of security issues very carefully, she gave a barcode watch, a very distinct wristwatch built by highly skilled technicians, to both of the women getting married. Could you please show the watches to us?"

  Chapter Eleven

  Clarity knew that they were in trouble, and she hoped that Charles or the attorney wouldn't take her Aquaracer off her wrist. She rolled up her sleeves and showed the watch to Charles. Montana didn't roll up her sleeves and Charles simply asked her several times to show him the watch.

  "This is not a Tokyo Flash barcode special light emitting watch, Lady Scafarel is right, they are impostors." The trading room door combination lock tumbler slid open and Scafarel made her way into the finance area, surrounded by the two Owens & Owell daughters and Habib. Clarity observed the watch of Scafarel. It was a digital watch, unlike any she'd ever seen, with four columns, each displaying a few red square LED lights.

  "They don't have the watches, this one asked about the FoodNear barcodes." Charles glanced at Montana, with a despising look saying that she thought of the Colorado heiress as porridge.

  Scafarel also focused on Montana, stepping in front of Clarity, who looked at the trading room clock across from them. The time indicated three thirty five AM. She looked at Scafarel's watch and thought she guessed how to read the barcodes. The first column wasn't lit, the second had three lights, each corresponding to one hour. The third column had three lights lit up, each corresponding to ten minutes, for a total of thirty. And the final column had five lights lit up, one minute each, a total of five minutes, three thirty five AM indeed. Scafarel covered her watch with a blouse and snapped at Montana.

  "I can't believe they made their way to here, the plane was supposed to drop them on the ocean. Who are you, why are you so interested in barcodes?"

  "My name is Montana Sterley, daughter of Carrelson Sterley, the owner of the S Group." Scafarel's features relaxed, her eyes beaming with the look of a lynx.

  "Oh, you're Montana, yes, I've heard of you through Avene Maxini, you're the one who isn't on the Board of Directors of the S Group that we hoped to bring onboard to Hexas Style in Abu Dhabi."

  "Well, I'm not on the Board, but I deserve to be on the Board, my father will eventually understand that. I mean, if Jenny Owens and Shalia Owell are on the Board of O&O, I don't see why I shouldn't be part of the S board, with a capital B, that is."

  "I could arrange a similar outcome for you, but you'd need to give me power of attorney like Shalia and Jenny did and become a member of the Church of the Holy Flower. Well, now that you're here, we'll take your biological coordinates as well and relay them to the symbolic computer database, we might have to provide biometric passports for both of you to leave the country with the harem."

  Clarity watched Scafarel take Montana, backed up by Charles and Habib, to the first aid room. Montana said that she was healthy, and Charles confirmed that she certainly looked healthy, but that she still needed to attach the suction pad to her arms, hips, legs, and top of the head, so that her measurements and coordinates were recorded. Clarity learned that by wearing the broderie, she had sent all of her biological coordinates to the symbolic computer underground facility, somewhere deep below the ground of the Bellagio hotel fountain, a grandiose living monument of water, music and light in Vegas.

  "Where are my friends?" asked Clarity.

  "Your friends are cumming," said Scafarel.

  "I don't see them," said Montana.

  "No, they're in the plane, experiencing higher pleasures, a long lasting spiritual renewal of their materialistic outlooks expressed as specific orgasms that will prepare them to be part of the Nightline of Kuala Lumpur harem and to carry out her further duties with Jenny and Shalia, who are more advanced."

  Materialistic. Clarity thought she was probably referring to Cynthia, Taimi and Jenna, because Flower and Lanai were pretty spiritual and idealistic and gullible and credulous, as it were.

  "Where is Avene Maxini?" She turned to Clarity. "I want my Faberg? egg, Miss Nice, the miniatures have some important aspects revealing the realm of Heaven which are not written down in our Scriptures."

  "You'll have to ask my boss, Al Donway, Central Intelligence, Sensual Brigade, or his chief, superchief Hodson," said Clarity, "he's probably looking for you and interrogating Avene Maxini, my chief I mean, not the superchief, because the superchief only delegates and thinks."

  Scafarel ignored Clarity and gave an order to the attorney to place an ad in the Gulf Daily News and in the Daily Tribune, announcing the successful mudaraba joint venture deal between Owens & Owell and the kingdom of Bahrain. The ad mentioned the initial sum of one hundred million dollars, brought by O&O, funding the highway lamp posts on King Fahd Causeway. The Shenzen Kadupul Fund, one of the financial investment units of the Church of the Holy Flower, acted as arranger of the deal. Cassandra Scafarel was the head of the Shenzen Fund, she was a high level power broker using her connections to pull through extremely costly and major projects for countries which didn't have clout with G-20 countries. Who invested in these projects and funded the monies was not a well known fact. Shalia Owell spoke, reading the time on her own barcode watch.

  "Our parents are going to look for us, you know they didn't approve our meeting or the mudaraba with the kingdom, and they think we have disappeared because we're not studying at University of Arizona, and we have not paid tuition for the year, including our new residence at Yuma Hall."

  "Is Yuma Hall nice?" asked Montana.

  "Not a bad res-life area, it's a small, close-knit, co-ed hall, with single-gend
er wings, moveable furniture and bunkable beds," said Jenny Owens.

  "Thank you." Scafarel stopped Montana's student inquiry.

  "I want O&O to know this is not a bluff, and that you're serious about your new role in this venture. With the one hundred million brought in place, the project has been officially funded by O&O. We can keep a hefty sum for the Church and move on to place a jumbo common stock issue of one billion dollars in the market, to fund the Research and Development costs of the Air Fashion Jet that the kingdom of Bahrain has advanced."

  Charles brought a set of serious setbacks to Scafarel. The new lights and lamp posts on King Fahd's highway were not performing correctly and had turned off, leaving the bridge uniting Bahrain with Saudi Arabia in the dark. One of the lamp posts was acting as a traffic light and was creating the beginning of a traffic jam and a complaint from Bahrain's Ministry of Transportation. In addition, the Air Fashion Jet was not at rest, because the autopilot flight planner was carrying out a one foot forward, one foot back, short distance rocking travel route, in its Manama airport slot, bringing its continuous motion to the attention of airport security officials and the Civil Aviation Affairs Committee of Bahrain.

  "It's the change in time of the wedding that this woman did on the broderie, and the missing light," said Scafarel, pointing to Clarity, "it affected the joint light emitting schedule. We need to fix the broderie light urgently, the one Miss Clarity Nice squashed, to fix the wireless signal triangle made by the plane lights, the highway lights and the broderie's wearable lights."

  Chapter Twelve

  Clarity and Montana were led to two coaches in an office of the twenty seventh floor of the Almoayyed building, holding the Church of the Holy Flower trading and finance outfits. They slept until nine thirty the next day, and Habib woke them up, bringing in breakfast, some ham with scrambled eggs.

  "Lady Scafarel wants to see you," said Habib.

  After breakfast, he led them to an office where Scafarel carried out her agenda on financial matters, and they saw a handyman from 'zero eight hundred handyman' dressed in overalls, carrying the broderie undergarnment in his hand.