The Ragnarö Protocol

Zeb is a world class engineer living a life normally reserved for the super wealthy: traveling to exotic locations and bedding beautiful women. All on someone else's dime.

Then comes The Plague. Fifty million dead worldwide and no end in sight. After more than a year stuck alone in his house, he gets a cryptic offer: solve an impossible problem first and get a million bucks. But the strange missive is just the beginning. His mysterious new employer has loftier plans which will take Zeb around the world, and beyond, in a sexy science fiction adventure.

The Ragnarök Protocol is a tale of erotic science fiction about an engineer who, with the help of his beautiful companions, attempts the impossible in an effort to avert the end of the world. If you're a fan of the science fiction and spy movies of the sixties and seventies, but always wished they didn't fade to black when things got sexy, then this novel is for you.

Author's Note: This is a full novel (~98k words) which I'll attempt to break up into easily consumable sections. All characters are over eighteen. Enjoy!

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Chapter 1

"I fucking hate this place," I muttered to no one in particular. I collapsed wearily into an uncomfortable seating position and looked out on the lifeless void. As I sat on a bench waiting for my ride, it occurred to me how it was

almost

pleasant here at this time of day. The heat of the day was still at least an hour away and there was an almost imperceptible chill in the crisp, dry air of the desert dawn. 'If only this shitty city could be like this all the time,' I thought ruefully. But almost before I finish the thought, I remembered this city could still anger me even when it was at its 'finest', especially after that kilometer-long walk from the suite to the ride-share stand. I was not sure if it was the walking dead shuffling between the slot machines, or the hopeless gamblers convinced they can win everything back playing two-dollar blackjack, or the hookers looking for one last trick for the night. It all typified Vegas and I hated every bit of it.

My reverie was interrupted by a chirp from my phone notifying me that my ride was arriving. The lights of Vegas were still on, even at this early hour. I knew I should take advantage of the twenty-minute ride to sleep, since I had been averaging less than five hours a night since this project started. Today was the end of the project's second week and I was dreading the status meeting scheduled for 10am. Telling the people paying me five hundred dollars an hour that the project was already weeks behind schedule was unlikely to be a pleasant conversation.

On its face, the project was very straightforward: fix all the mistakes made during the bungled implementation of a state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar, environmental system. A system which was currently performing worse, and costing more, than the three-decade-old system it had replaced. I knew I was one of a handful of engineers in the world who could handle the job. After I graduated from the best engineering school in the country with a double-major in mechanical engineering and computer science, I decided that I liked Atlanta so much that I had stayed in school and earned a master's in each discipline. Upon getting out, I accepted a position with one of the big three consulting firms and became a road warrior. I had spent the last ten years working on projects around the world, never staying in one place more than three months. I had a house in Fort Collins, Colorado but in the last year I had spent less than a month at home, and never for more than three nights in a row.

This project, for the amusingly named Wise Guys International commercial real estate firm, was the toughest I had ever accepted. By the end of the first day on the project I had determined that the environmental system was, in the words of my favorite engineering professor, fucked. I did not have the time, or the budget, to rip everything out and start over, so I was left with completely rewriting the system's software. I knew I could do it given enough time and materials, but I also knew I did not have enough of either.

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"Mr. Anson," drawled the CIO, drawing out my last name like he was a malevolent, sunglasses and suit wearing, artificial intelligence. It would not have been so bad had I not been sleeping at my desk in addition to being late to the status meeting. The proof of my attempts to stay awake, five cups of coffee and the remains of two donuts, littered my desk. I had been working since before 6 am trying to update the project tracking software in preparation for this meeting and now I had flushed all that work down the toilet by falling asleep. The CIO was looking at his watch and regarding me with a bemused expression as I stammered out an apology. I grabbed my laptop and followed him to the conference room.

I grabbed a bottle of water to try to wake up and began going over all the tasks I had completed so far in the project. The CIO cut me off saying, "Mr. Anson," once again drawing my name out, clearly very impressed with his wit. He continued, "I don't think it's a good use of anyone's time to go over all the minutiae. My question is, can you fix it before the deadline?"

I slumped back in my chair before saying, "I hope so. I think so."

The CIO steepled his fingers as he regarded me. After a moment he said, "What would make you more probable for success?"

I said, "Honestly?"

He smiled and said, "I hope it isn't more money. We're paying quite handsomely as it is."

I said, "It's not that. It's just all that minutiae you mentioned. I'm working sixteen-hour days and twenty five percent of that is spent doing things that are only indirectly related to achieving our objective."

"What do you mean?" he said.

"Well, all this crap I was about to go through...I spent an hour this morning putting it together. And it's not just the time I spend doing this, it's the fact that I lose momentum on the software rewrite whenever I get pulled away to do something else."

He said, "So, what if I assigned one our interns to do all the admin work for you? Would that help?"

"Sure. And maybe that'll help me get caught up enough that I can take a breath, or sleep for more than a few hours at a time. I can feel my effectiveness slipping the more sleep deprived I get. I feel terrible about falling asleep in my office before, but I'm honestly not surprised it happened. I just need to be able to get caught up enough that I can relax a bit. It sounds counter intuitive but in this kind of work, sometimes you have to go slower to go faster."

He said, "I think I know just what you mean...and I have the perfect person in mind to help you. Why don't we wrap this up now and you go back to your suite and get a couple hours sleep? I'll send your new assistant over this afternoon."

I was too tired to argue, I just collected my laptop and pulled out my phone to arrange for a ride.

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I had fallen into bed fully clothed upon returning to my suite. I woke to my phone ringing, unaware of how long I had been out. I had been having a nightmare where I was buried alive with my laptop, so I was grateful for the interruption. I ignored the call, since I did not recognize the number, but when the ringing stopped, I heard a knocking on the suite's outer door. I peered through the peep hole and saw an attractive young woman in professional attire. Through the door I said, "Yes?"

A muffled voice answered, "I was asked to meet you here. He said I would be helping you with some big project. Can I come in?" I opened the door and waved her inside. She waited for me to close the door behind her before extending her hand. "My name is Eva Mariko. I'm here to do anything possible to help you complete this project on time."

Now that I was looking at her in the flesh, rather than through a peephole, I realized she was more than attractive; she was stunning. Her Asian ancestry was undeniable, with porcelain white skin and almond shaped eyes framed by straight, midnight black hair which reached halfway down her back, even in a ponytail. She was about 170 cm tall, although the heels she was wearing accounted for at least 10 cm of that. She was wearing an expensive looking black business suit with a skirt that ended just above the knee and a jacket over a white blouse. The professional attire did nothing to hide her impossibly full bust, or her hourglass figure.

I realized I had been rather rudely ogling her for several seconds while she stood patiently in the entry to the suite. I looked sheepishly back up to her face.

"Finished? Good, let's get to work," she said curtly.

Perhaps it was the nightmare I had been having moments before, or just a natural amount of skepticism fueled by her intense attitude, but I was hesitant to give a stranger full access to the suite, and all my stuff, without some kind of bona fides. For all I knew Eva was a prostitute who was just walking down the hotel hallway, knocking on every door trying to roll someone.

I said, "How do I know the company sent you here?"

She held up her phone and said, "Well, I have your number. That was me who called you before I started knocking. Besides, you should have an email giving you all the details."

I looked at my phone and she was right; the CIO had sent an email including her name and picture. He also had said Eva would do anything necessary to ensure the timely completion of the project, and the sentence ended with a winking emoji. That struck me as odd, the executive had never seemed the type to use emojis. But Eva's identify was undeniable, so I nodded my head and said, "Ok, so now what?"

Eva said, "Like I said, Mr. Anson, let's get to work. Do you prefer to work in your office or here in the suite?"

I peeked at the window and noticed that the sun was setting, at least I hoped it was setting rather than rising, which would mean I had been asleep for the last eighteen hours. I said, "Wait a minute. Before we get into that, what time is it? And what is your normal work schedule? Would it make more sense for us to start this tomorrow?"

Eva responded, "My schedule is your schedule, Mr. Anson. We'll be joined at the hip until this project is completed."

"If we're going to be working together around the clock, you can't call me that all the time."

"What should I call you, then? Zebadiah?"

I said, "That sounds so old testament. I'll never forgive me parents for hanging that moniker on me. Please call me Zeb."

"Very well, Zeb. Now, back to the question at hand. Where would you prefer to work, here or at the office?"

"Well, here, if I can. It'll save an hour a day just in commuting. But how far away do you live. Maybe it will make more sense for me to work in the office if you live closer to there."

Eva smiled and said, "I live right over there," pointing to the suite's second bedroom, "until this project is completed."

"But all you have is a laptop bag. What about all your stuff?"

She said, "I believe you have an unlimited expense account. Perhaps you can buy me whatever I need. Now, why don't we get you set up at the desk here while you explain to me how I can make your life easier."

As I set my laptop up on the desk in the suite, Eva took off her jacket and began setting her laptop up at the breakfast table a few feet away. She was genuinely alluring and exotic. Her blouse was so sheer that it was, as near as makes no difference, see-through and the swell of her full breasts was obvious beneath her lacy bra. I chastised myself for leering and angrily reminded myself to not be a fucking creep by constantly checking her out. I realized I was not off to a good start as I once again looked up to find her coolly regarding my wandering gaze.

She said, "I thought we were all done with that. You really do need to get to work. Now, this suite is very nice, but I'm not sure it is going to be the most productive workspace. Why don't I order some things to make this space a little more conducive to project success? Then you can tell me what else I can do to help."

I just nodded and got to work on the next sub-routine that had to be re-written.

Twenty minutes later, I got a Slack message from Eva saying, Let me know when you get to a stopping place. I appreciated this immensely. Rather than interrupting me with a conversation, which I would have been obliged to participate in since I wasn't a sociopath, she had politely pinged me to let me know she was ready to resume our conversation once I was done with the current task. So few normal people understood how the mind of an engineer worked. They could not imagine the concept of how a ten second interruption could cause ten minutes of lost productivity while the engineer figured out what they were doing pre-interruption and got back in the right headspace to problem solve.

Thirty minutes later I sighed mightily and looked up from my laptop. I said, "Thanks for waiting. Good job by you on the Slack message."

Eva said, "My brother is an engineer. I know how you people are with being interrupted. We'll have some new equipment delivered in about an hour. While we wait, what else can I do to help you?"

We spent the next hour going over all of the administrative nonsense I was hoping to avoid. I also showed her how the project planning software worked and explained how its critical path algorithm was a piece of monkey shit that kept changing its mind about which task needed to be done next. Finally, I showed her my email inbox and Slack, demonstrating how often I was being interrupted.

She said, "I think I understand how I can help. Give me a little while to set things up. While we wait, can I ask you a quick question?" Zeb nodded. She said, "When's the last time you ate?"

I thought about it for a moment before saying, "I guess it was those donuts I ate around 6 am."

She said, "I thought as much. Why don't we go downstairs and have dinner while we wait for everything I ordered to be delivered?"

I said, "Sure, that sounds great. Why don't I go change real quick?" before walking into the master bedroom and closing the door. I quickly stripped off the clothes I had been wearing since 5 am and walked into the bathroom before giving myself a thirty second shower with a washcloth at the sink. I brushed his teeth and applied some deodorant before combing my hair and beard. I looked in the mirror and said what I always did when getting ready, "Well, its shit, but it's the best we're going to do today." I walked back into the bedroom and got dressed in a fresh engineer's costume: khaki slacks, polo shirt and black oxford shoes. I emerged from the master bedroom after less than five minutes to find Eva working on her own laptop. She said, "Ok, I've ordered a few more things to help smooth things out for you. Where should we go for dinner?"

Zeb said, "Ladies choice."

Eva smiled and said, "Sushi it is."

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After dinner, we returned to the suite to find a row of boxes lined up in the hallway outside the door with two bored looking employees of a national electronics chain leaning against the wall. I opened the door to the suite and Eva began orchestrating the unpacking and, when necessary, assembly of the items she had purchased. I hoped the CIO meant what he said when he told me I had an unlimited expense account. The equipment Eva had purchased easily cost more than ten thousand dollars. When the work was done the suite had an additional desk and two extremely comfortable desk chairs. My new desk, for Eva was now using the desk which came with the suite, was a motorized adjustable height desk with a massive one-hundred-twenty-five cm curved monitor perched atop it.

I grinned widely as I hooked my laptop up the monitor which filled my entire field of vision. Eva interrupted my elation by handing me a new phone.

She said, "Here's your phone until the project is over. I'll keep your other phone and field all your calls. Do you have any family or friends that will likely call, perhaps a wife or girlfriend?"

"My folks or my sister might call. But they're fairly used to me screening their calls and calling them back when I'm not busy. So, I guess just let me know what calls I get, and I'll return them if necessary. No wife or girlfriend. The life of a road warrior doesn't really work for relationships."

"That's too bad. How much are you on the road?"

"Well, it's May and I've spent 23 nights in my own bed this year."

She said, "Wow. Well, I'll try to make things as easy as I can on you. Can you log into your email and Slack on my laptop? That way I can basically screen anything trying to interrupt you. I've set up a new Slack channel just for the two of us. That is all you should have open on your laptop except for whatever you're working on. Just Slack me when you start a task, and again when you finish it, and I'll make all the necessary updates to the software and to the CIO. When you finish a task, I'll let you know what you should tackle next. Hopefully, the lack of interruptions and mid-course corrections will significantly increase your velocity."

I got her laptop all set up and then said, "Ok, what's next?"

Eva gave me my next task and I focused on it completely until I finished around 9:30 pm. She smiled at me when I reported task completion in my typical fashion, "What's next?"

She said, "Next is a small break. I don't have anything to wear except this," indicating her skirt and bouse. "Why don't we go downstairs and pick up some things. You need to stretch your legs anyway."

One of the few good things about Vegas casinos is that many of them, including this one, were basically a combination of every conceivable type of commerce under one gigantic roof. In addition to a standard casino and sports book, this place also had: a mall; over twenty restaurants; a performing arts center; a convention center; and a strip club. I was content to let Eva take the lead as we walked through the mall area. She started off in what appeared to be an extremely expensive woman's boutique. She picked up several additional business suits. Next up was a more traditional clothing store, where she acquired pajama pants, tank tops and a pair of flip flops. She led me to a bodega, where she acquired the various toiletries required to be a functioning adult woman in modern society, before she moved on to a lingerie store.

I said, "Why don't I give you some privacy for this one?"

She said, "Don't be ridiculous. Come on," and took my arm to lead me into the store. At the previous stops she had quickly grabbed the items she wanted without seeking any input from me but that changed all changed in the jungle of lace and pink that was the lingerie store. She started off in the bra section. She spent a few moments looking through various racks before exasperatedly saying, "Can you help me?" I nodded before she continued, "I want one that looks like this," holding up a lacy black bra with what appeared to be a demi-cup cut, "but I can't find my size."

I stared for a moment, mesmerized by the image of the stunning woman in front of me wearing nothing but the alluring lingerie she was presenting, before gathering my wits and saying, "What's your size?"

"Thirty-four D."

I quickly found the one she sought, and then helped her find another in white and a third in emerald green. She then selected two sports bras before dragging me to the panties section where she selected boy shorts that matched the green and white bras as well as two black thongs.

As we headed back to the suite I was once again perplexed by both Eva, and the company I was contracting for. What was the sense of spending over one thousand dollars on things for Eva when she presumably could have just brought all these items from home? I set that question aside as I returned to my desk and Eva gave me my next task.