The sun was setting over the mountains in northern California, casting long shadows across the dry landscape. The lighting bled from gold to deep orange in a large meeting room several floors off the ground, in a not-inexpensive hotel. In this room, three writers were hunched in a horseshoe-shape around a coffee table, upon which rested pads of paper and cartons of leftovers.

One of these, a very tall, well put-together man in a purple dress shirt and glasses, got up to close the blinds and turn on some lights. He resumed his seat and stared at the stacks of story ideas, sighing. Some were great, most were forgettable, and a few were entirely up for debate.

“So, his arm’s broken, his leg’s broken,” said the woman across from him, “but he’s climbing her fishnet stocking to make it up to her crotch.” She spoke to the man on her right, without looking at him, and pausing occasionally to collect her thoughts with a deep breath. “His limbs are broken and he’s still climbing?”

The man on her right grinned awkwardly and pushed his sandy hair back. “Obviously I forgot about those injuries,” he said. “I can rewrite that. No problem.”

The woman reclined, tented her fingers, and focused her cool, feline eyes upon him. “Also, I would just like to point out in the next part, when he crawls inside her panties, and he…” She paused and closed her eyes, picking out the words. “That’s not how women are built.”

The man on her right gathered his notes and assured her he could rewrite that.

She raised her chin at the tall man across from her. “What do you think? You’ve been awfully quiet. Can we pull this together in five days?”

He rubbed his goatee. “We’ve got three solid stories, right there,” he said carefully. “Another four have some promise. They just need a little tightening in places, but they’re not far from ready. If they went as-is, it wouldn’t be awful.”

“A ringing endorsement.” The sandy-haired man plucked at his linen shirt, clingy with sweat. There was AC here but not enough. “That’s still six more stories—let’s give ourselves a break and say five—to fill out the collection. Okay?”

The man in the nice purple shirt nodded a little, shrugged a little. The woman stared at the sunset through the drapes, her bobbed hair glowing auburn in the dimming light. “What if−”

Hard shoes kicked the door in, and four men in black suits and Ray-Bans burst into the room. They fanned out, positioning themselves to place the sunset behind them, so the writers had to squint to look at them. They moved silently, letting their drawn 9mm Glocks make all necessary introductions on their behalf. The writers were effectively hemmed in by their chairs, as they’d been facing the view afforded by the wall of windows.

The tall man in purple kept an eye on their firearms, pointed at the floor for now. A muscle in his temple tightened but he refrained from outburst. It was the woman who spoke first: “What do you want?” Her voice was bright and her eyes were carefully curious, giving nothing away.

They didn’t answer her. Three of the suits stood in a tableau while the shortest one in the group spoke quietly into his lapel. “Affirmative… we have secured the room and engaged the samizdat, do you copy.” He tilted his head thoughtfully, then grinned at the seated writers as an afterthought.

The woman looked at her peers, then back at the suits. “I’m sorry, is something wrong?” She leaned slightly forward, putting on a look of concern. At all times she kept her hands in plain sight, unwilling to give them an excuse. “I don’t know what you’re looking for. We’re just writers.”

The suit on the far left snorted at that but said nothing. The short suit signed off and straightened out his jacket. “Lady, gentlemen… you’re under arrest by federal jurisdiction.”

“On what possible charge?” said the big man, almost laughing.

“How’s sedition sound?” The short suit raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses. “More to follow, of course, but that’s the big one.”

The sandy-haired man looked at his writing partners, at the table full of short stories, then at the short suit. “Sedition? That’s a bit dramatic. I think you’re looking for a different word.”

The suit on the left looked over at the short suit. “The samizdat is resisting,” he said hopefully.

“Samizdat? What are you even talking about?” The woman’s palms turned up in supplication. “Do you even know where you are right now? You busted into a room with three writers. Fantasy writers. Do you hear me? We don’t know anything about government overthrow.”

“You know what the word means,” said the short suit, as if this proved something.

“We write porn,” drawled the sandy-haired man. “We write adult fiction. Niche wank material for fun and profit. If anything, we keep people in their homes, out of the streets.” He nodded at the piled notes. “Take a look.”

The suit on the far left glanced at the short suit, who nodded. The suit on the far left squeezed three rounds into the notes, shattering the glass table. The shots were overly loud, causing all three writers to jump; the sandy-haired man swore and called to a deity. The two suits in the middle were the very picture of dispassionate professionalism.

“We know exactly what you write,” said the short suit. “We’ve been tracking your samizdat for several months.” He pointed at each writer with his free hand, rattling off their online handles. “And we know that you’ve been promoting unhealthy messaging among American Millennials, with the intent to compromise their faith in the federal infrastructure and,” he bowed his head slightly, “the American way of life.”

“Quit saying samizdat,” said the woman, raising her voice. “You’re a goddamned apparatchik.”

The short suit looked surprised. “I’m not an apparatchik! I see myself as more of a… myrmidon.” He grinned and straightened his lapel.

“Who the hell are you?”

The suit on the left took a step toward her, but the short suit stalled him with the shake of his head. “Look, we know you think you’re not bad people,” he said, gesturing. The writers kept a close eye on the Glock he waved around. “But the fact is, you’re sending out some very dangerous messaging to the youth of America.”

“And you’re waving around some very dangerous guns,” the man in purple snapped. “And very big words. Now, I may just be an unarmed monkey in a suit, but I have a few big words of my own and I’ll use them if you don’t explain to me the precise nature of this deleterious messaging.”

The sandy-haired man sat up straight and stared at him, then at the suits with guns. The woman across from him nodded slowly, though her fingers had begun tapping the arm of her chair.

The short suit elbowed the agent closest to him, who cleared his throat and spoke, as though grudgingly reciting a poem from memory: “Entertainment communications and sentiment to such effect that: 1) suggest male Americans are vulnerable to the point of defenselessness against prurient appeal; 2) encourage and impel otherwise complacent and loyal American females to violate their widely social and privately domestic strictures, motivated by false ideology of dominance, cunning, manipulation, and wanton displays of physical prowess.”

A slow grin crept across the face of the woman, though her nails rapped a steady tattoo.

“And 3) suggest the federal government and its armed forces are ineffectual in the face of overwhelming threat from the…” He faltered, frowning. “From such threats as you depict in lurid and salacious detail.”

“The giantesses.” A grin tugged at the sandy-haired man’s mouth. “You’re afraid of giant women. All of you.” His canine glinted in his sneer.

The reciting suit merely resumed his place in line.

The short suit smiled back at the writer. “No one’s afraid of your seditious fiction, Herr Schriftsteller. We are only dismayed at your unrelenting moral turpitude.” The toe of his black wing-tip sifted through papers and triangles of safety glass. “But if you haven’t noticed from the militarization of municipal police forces over the last three years, the Pentagon takes the threat of civic upheaval very seriously.”

The sandy-haired man sat up. “But that was just for the food and water riots.” He glanced at his fellow writers with sudden embarrassment. “I mean, that was in anticipation of Hillary’s installation.” One of the suits chuckled. The writer sighed and sank back in his chair.

The tall writer regarded his company of writers for a moment, then turned to the short suit. “You know that we’re right, don’t you.”

The short suit frowned slightly. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The suit on the far left worked his fist unpleasantly on the handle of his 9mm. The sky had faded to a deep and bloody red, muted further by the drapes.

“You know this is real,” elucidated the woman with an edge to her voice. Her bob swung as she addressed each of the suits. The sunset glowing on her pale cheek. “The giantesses are real, and they’re coming here. Can’t you see we’re trying to help?” She swept her hand over the ruined manuscripts and shattered table. “We’re showing people how to behave, when they get here! You want to talk about a compromised infrastructure? There’s going to be riots and chaos if they just pop in and no one knows what to expect or how to respond.”

One of the suits scoffed, and she swung toward him. “We’re doing crucial work here! We’re showing people how to survive, because they don’t have to die! This doesn’t have to be a massacre! We can live in harmony!” She glanced at one of the stories she herself had written and lightly blushed. “More or less…”

The suit on the far left looked at the short suit, who nodded and spoke into his lapel. “The target is noncompliant. I repeat: samizdat is resisting.” The suit on the far left smiled thinly, teeth glinting. The short suit nodded to himself, then signed out. “This has all been very entertaining, lady, sirs,” he said, raising his pistol from the floor to chest-level, “but now it’s far too late for an arrest. We have been authorized to end this bullshit, here and now.”

The suit on the left said, “High fucking time. I can’t believe my kids read this shit.”

“This isn’t legal,” said the tall man in purple. “This isn’t right.”

The short suit shrugged and the suit on the far left laughed. The sun disappeared behind them.

All the glass in the windows exploded, every square foot, all at once. The men in black suits and Ray-Bans spun around, alarmed. Four long and shapely fingers, and one huge and shapely thumb, scooped the federal agents up in a single swipe. The Glocks all went off, rounds digging into the stucco ceiling and bouncing harmlessly off the tremendous hand that clutched them and hauled them outside, up and out of the view of the gaping windows.

Four grown men—highly trained and disciplined government agents—shrieked in tiny little voices. A woman’s voice, booming and hearty, only laughed at their distress. Massive bare breasts swung outside, glowing in the light of the meeting room. A man in a black suit sailed past the open windows, screaming all the way down. Two halves of another agent tumbled after him, saying nothing. Then there were smacking, chomping noises and no more men in suits appeared.

Instead, a huge and broad woman’s face lowered to the gaping opening in the meeting room. The giantess grinned heartily at the remaining three occupants. In the room’s electric light fixtures her shiny teeth were streaked with red. Her eyes danced with arousal.

“Mmm! Salut tout le monde!” the giantess stage-whispered, her voice like gusting winds. “J’espère que vous avez apprécié le spectacle… rien de cassé?”

The writers rose from their chairs. The AC-chilled air was pouring out of the room through the torn wall, but this was the last thing on their minds. The pale, bobbed woman smiled. “You turned up in the nick of time.”

“What does this mean, ‘nick of time’?”

The writers cleaned up the hotel room, collecting their papers and sweeping up the glass as much as they cared to. Their location had clearly been compromised: the woman in the bob supposed the high school senior watching the front desk had been effortlessly intimidated by the feds, spilling everything he knew. “We’ll need a new location, if you know of anything reasonable.”

The giantess snapped her fingers, momentarily deafening everyone in the room. “I believe I know of just such a place, yes.” She carefully inserted her mammoth palm into the hotel room, fingernails shoveling the carpet right off the floor. The three writers stepped aboard, seating themselves comfortably in the broad plane of warm flesh. Curling her long fingers around them, the giantess cupped her passengers between her breasts and broke into long, thunderous strides toward the north.

In just over an hour they reached Canada, disappearing into the mountains of a provincial park to continue their noble, urgent work. For the giantesses were coming—they were already here—and nothing less than the survival of the human species relied upon the literature of these writers and the brave men and women like them.