Separatrix Pt. 01 Ch. 04

Chapter Four

Jake didn't so much build his new concentrator as the pieces fell into his lap and it was just too easy to put it all together and see what it did. Allison helped by letting him know when interesting items were made surplus. The team was starting to accelerate production, and to do that they needed to move out old prototypes and test platforms. The most important piece of the puzzle appeared in the form of a large coil of superconductor cable in a corner of the workshop's assembly bay.

"What's going on there?" he asked Allison.

"It failed incoming inspection. A crack in the insulation a couple of hundred meters in. We're wondering what to do with it. They're sending us a new one." She meant one of the cable vendors. "May have to just junk this whole reel. A shame."

"I totally agree. Hmm. Let me take care of it." It was way longer length than he needed, but he could cut it up and splice it.

He was able to lease some space in an aged pier building in the old docklands area of the city, a mostly empty structure over the water, used now for boat storage and not many of those. But it suited his needs perfectly, a wooden structure far away from metal. He rented a truck and hauled the cable reel over there. He set up a small business checking account to buy the cable and several other obsoleted pieces from LASSO early proof-of-concept prototypes. It was remarkably simple to get a business license. If this effort actually paid off, he wanted everything he was working on clearly separate from the detector work.

# # #

"I think maybe I met someone from your country."

"Mm-mm," she mumbled. They were in his bed after a session, the first of a series he expected to take up the rest of their day together and on into the night, likely extending into tomorrow. His work, both for LASSO and on his concentrator, added up to more than full time, but for the next few days he knew he would be scheduling his work and meetings around sex. He'd been away for a few days at a plasma physics conference, and had just returned. She'd been away for several days as well, on another mysterious mission, which is why they were now in his bed and she was lying next to him, after having him fuck her again to shivering exhaustion.

He'd thought she was awake, but tried again. "He was at the conference I just went to. Had similar looks to yours, which is why I noticed him, a bit darker. He seemed to be doing a lot of networking, talking to everyone, so I heard him a few times and his accent was similar. Very skinny also, like you, a bit taller. Bald. Quite handsome, by the way."

She was suddenly alert. She raised her head from her pillow. "Did you talk to him?"

"Didn't get a chance. And I wasn't sure, you know, if you'd want me to."

"Good."

"Anyway, I think he was spending his time mostly over in the energy talks. The big European tokamak that shut down? Still generating papers if not alpha particles. I spent the day in the astronomy section, particle detectors. Only saw him at lunch."

"But he was talking to a lot of people?"

"Yeah. Quite the networker." She looked unhappy. "You don't seem pleased to hear about your countryman."

"It's complicated."

"Listen, if you're-- I don't know-- an asylum seeker or something..."

But she'd grabbed a small cylinder from her pouch, which now had a place on the bedside table next to her, and was studying it, not paying any attention to him at all. To his immense surprise-- he knew she wasn't done with him-- she got out of bed and began to dress.

"I need to do something," she said. "I'll be back." She left the bedroom. A minute later he heard his door open and close and she was gone.

# # #

The most difficult part of building the concentrator, at least physically, was winding the coil. At the LASSO workshop the engineers had built a special winding machine on a circular track to do the heavy lifting, but he didn't have that luxury. He rented a forklift, taught himself how to drive it, and worked the half-ton spool around and around the big frame in small steps, attaching it by hand. It was heavy, stiff, and thick with the insulation and cooling lines. Winding its hundreds meter length around and around the structure required extended physical effort. Then the thermal insulation, then securely cinching everything down to the big frame, left over from one of their proof-of-concept experiments. The magnetic forces involved were gigantic.

He didn't mind. His arms and legs ached at the end of each day, but the effort felt good, though it was a thin substitute for her. Whatever it meant to discover another person from wherever she was from, it was taking up all her time. His sexual frustration was nearly as great as what he imagined she must be feeling. She was addictive.

He'd inspected the crack in the electrical insulation. Allison had been right, it made the whole cable, almost a kilometer long, a total loss-- but only if you were going to put it under a few meters of lake water. In air, as he was going to use the cable, it would pose no problem. And cooling it was straightforward. The new high temperature alloys had a critical temperature high enough that common lab cryocoolers worked fine.

The frustrating part, to his surprise, was getting enough electrical power down the length of the pier to feed the coil energizer. The building nominally had the power and voltage, but it was decades since the last use and it had been sitting out in salt air the whole time. A cursory inspection showed that he was as likely to burn down the building as charge the superconducting loop. He finally just rented a construction site generator and ran it for a few hours, at a safe distance so the cast iron in its diesel engine wouldn't be affected, long enough to run the energizer. One of the beautiful things about superconductors, in his view, was that once you got the current flowing you could turn off the generator and it just kept flowing around and around on its own, forever or until you quenched it.

After energizing it to full current, he walked around it with a teslameter. Everything looked good, the B-field values at about what his simulations had predicted. Then he taped a portable dosimeter to a long wooden pole he'd found in a sailboat stored up front and poked it under the concentrator. Yes, the activity jumped more than an order of magnitude, and he'd only installed the first of the two bottom coils. When the second bottom coil and the top coil were added, the power flowing through the concentrator would be immense.

He already had the heavy water, which was easy to get online in small quantities. Now he had to wait for the moderator, which had to be shipped from a chemical supply house.

It looked like the thing was going to work. He could hardly believe it. Energy from the stars. Not really-- the energy would come from the deuterium in seawater, the particle influx was just the catalyst-- but he wouldn't let that picky bit of nerdiness squelch his pleasure. He wished he could show it to her. Allison too. Someday. A lot of work to do first to complete it and get it really going full out.

# # #

She showed up again a few days later at the University cafe he liked to use when doing design work on the concentrator, which he was spending more and more time on. He'd encountered an issue he'd never had to worry about before. The cost of materials, some of which were rare and ridiculously expensive, was eating into his savings. He was forced to redesign components using ones he could afford. Even so, he wasn't sure he would have enough in his account to cover everything. He'd put out some feelers to former colleagues in the industry, asking about surplus, but the meager response only confirmed how much the whole fusion industry had collapsed.

She was dressed in her coed costume, as he thought of it. She looked hot, her small breasts jiggling under her mascot T-shirt, ripped jeans showing golden thighs, wearing bracelets and earrings and a necklace, all gold. Every male head in the room rotated toward her. Female eyes also.

When she sat down across from him, he said, by way of greeting, "Do you even own a bra?"

"Bras are weird, aren't they? We need to talk. I've been looking for you. I asked around and nobody knows where you've been." Her expression was all business.

He closed his laptop and shrugged. "Special project."

Her attention shifted briefly to his laptop, but quickly returned to him. "But first we need to fuck. I wasn't finished last week."

"Are you ever finished?"

"You get the closest, I'll give you that. Except maybe for... just fuck me to the Mars colony and back, okay? Then we need to talk. Seriously. It's important."

He packed up and they headed for his place. "You know," he said, "there is no Mars colony."

"Oh?" She shrugged. "It's just an expression."

"On your planet."

She just smiled. She took out one of her small devices, the one with the tiny green light, checked it, and put it away again.

"The little thingy telling you something?"

"Not yet. But the little thingy between my legs is telling me a lot. For example, that it desperately needs your talented cock up inside it ASAP and that you should be concentrating all your considerable mental and physical abilities on getting yourself ready to satisfy it."

"I'm getting your thingy-grams loud and clear," he answered. "But my considerable mental and physical abilities can't help but notice other little thingies you have."

"You mean my nipples? Yes, you could spend some time on them. And that little thingy in my mouth that you like so much? Your cock needs to satisfy me that way also. I've got some ideas regarding that one."

He gave up after that reply. He'd been with women that liked dirty talk, but their words had always been a tease, a half-promise. Not her. The way she spoke about it was so refreshingly matter-of-fact, as if she were anticipating a favorite restaurant or a new movie. The banter carried an implicit subtext, that their intimacy was certain. It was a new kind of turn on, orthogonal to the kind of desire he'd felt for other women.

He knew better than to ask her what she'd been doing the past week, after abruptly leaving, right from his bed. Also, now he didn't want her asking in return about what he was doing. The moderator was due any day. And anyway, he was nearly as horny as she was, if that was possible. He wanted his cock inside her exquisite body as much as she did. "So what name should I use today, thingy-girl?"

"Pick something slutty. You can see I'm in the mood."

His first reaction was to wonder when she wasn't in the mood. He thought for a few seconds. "Candy? Kitty?"

"Not bad. You're on the right track."

"Um. Lolita?" She didn't react to that. Probably didn't know about the infamous novel. "Bambi?"

"Is that African?" She had to think for a second. "Oh. You think baby deer are sexy?"

"I know," he announced. "I've got it."

She looked at him, waiting.

"Chastity!"

She thought again, looking away, then laughed out loud. "Hi," she said to him, "I'm Chastity. What's your name? Huh." She was thinking again. "Wait. Bambi is also a girl's name? But that baby deer is male. I had no idea."

"I get that you have a photographic memory. But did you, at some point, just read all of Wikipedia?"

"Maybe I should do that some time. But let's go with Chastity. And you can be Dick. No, wait. Rod." She laughed. "Hi Rod. Definitely an accurate name for you, don't you think? Just like mine. Hi, Rod." She looked down at his crotch. "Hi, Rod."

She was on her knees again immediately in his hallway, and he was hard again nearly as quickly, but she didn't spend time there. She pulled him by his erection to his bedroom, where she pulled off her pants and T-shirt, then her jewelry, at least three necklaces that needed to be carefully separated, multiple rings on both hands, bracelets. Not everything. One necklace and a couple of rings stayed. "I know," she said, "You think I wear too much jewelry."

"It's your body. You can wear whatever you want."

"I just got into the habit in..."

"Akkadia?" She tried to make a weak, innocent smile to pretend she didn't know what he meant. She failed. "The women in Akkadia wear a lot of jewelry?" he continued.

"It's not... Akkadia. But yes, they do... some of them. Men too. It had, has, social significance. Status, position."

"And you learned all about this at school, where you studied their language?" The question seemed on-target, but he felt thoroughly confused and could only parrot Nathan's speculations.

"We don't have schools." To his eye roll she added, "I got some... tokens of affection, let's call them. Like here. Those big carbon crystals on women's fingers?"

That remark was maybe a way to distract him from the conversation. It didn't work, but what did work was when she got on the bed on her hands and knees, not even bothering to tell him what she wanted. He pushed himself inside her and fucked her, even as he was getting his clothes all the way off.

"Oh yeah, just fuck me for a while. I don't even want to come yet. Just fuck me." She crawled forward on the bed and he followed, until her head pressed against the headboard. This seemed to be a favorite position for her, with his cock pushing into her and her unable to resist.

He wanted to start calling her Tahsin-- that always made her hotter-- but thought he should wait. "Chastity," he said as he pounded away and she grunted with each thrust, "You're not very chaste."

"Uh, rod, more, rod," was all he got in response. It didn't matter whether she was calling his name or asking for more cock. He knew what to do and how to do it to her. She mewed and moaned and tried to swim away with her legs. "Fuck me, please. Stop, stop, just fuck me and make me come. Way up, way up. You fucker, please, do it!" And on and on.

He did not comply. Her plaintive begging was just a compliment. He continued torturing her and she continued struggling to get away, sliding to end up lying across his bed, and begging him to go deeper, until her babbling made a ragged dissolve into a different language. Then he really started fucking her full out. He lifted her leg and moved into her crotch, full scissor depth, and plowed her rhythmically. He didn't need a translator to get her meaning when the begging turned into orders. Wherever she'd been, that Akkadia place, she'd been serviced by some skillful stud, maybe as good as he was. He concentrated on the tone of her voice, trying this and that until he heard pleasing tones, followed by what could only be passionate expressions of love or something similar. Which inspired some creative fucking of his own. He stretched her leg out further, wetted a finger of the hand that wasn't spreading her apart, and wiggled it into her crack and then her anus.

She cried out, something that sounded like "So dead!" or maybe "Robot!", and her big orgasm began. He'd enjoyed other women's back doors, but hers seemed almost as sensitive as her vagina. He moved his cock and finger and body in sync with the peaks that shot through her, and soon those peaks synced with him, and he was able to guide her through it, as if they were surfing together on her wave of unbearable ecstasy. He stroked his fingers lightly over her face and head, then again, the orgasm went on so long. He almost wanted to comfort her, the stress of the irresistible pleasure had to be difficult for her body, even one as magnificent as hers.

She sobbed and bucked and jerked and he knew that finally she was coming back from whatever universe he'd sent her to. It wasn't a blackout anymore, it was something beyond blackout that enabled her to stay conscious.

He stayed inside her while she recovered, slowly moving in and out of her tight but liquid pussy. She'd been so horny he hadn't even got to the cunnilingus phase. Next time, maybe, which he was sure would happen soon.

She opened her eyes. After some hesitant stretching, as if she'd just had a hard fall and wasn't sure she hadn't broken something, she gradually rose and crawled to the headboard, where she propped herself up on some pillows. "I'm even more fucked up than I told you," she said. Her eyes closed for a minute. He thought maybe she was falling back into a stupor, but her arm reached out for him. When he moved close she took his still stiff and wet erection in her hand and pulled him even closer. "I got the full treatment, everywhere. You noticed my butt, didn't you? I was a little crazy after... well... I wasn't totally in control and I didn't fit in anymore and..." She pulled him to her, making him climb up her slim, golden body. His soaking cock dripped on her breasts, inches from her face.

Her other hand was stroking her neck, chin to collarbone, as she spoke. "Now Rod," she said, looking up at him, "you're going to satisfy Chastity in a new way. Come here."

He was already straddling her delightful chest, so he wasn't sure what 'here' meant. She resolved the ambiguity by pulling him by his butt to her and opening her mouth. She gobbled him into her, then pushed him out after squeegeeing her juice off him. "Ah. So good to have a man in me again. Now, Rod-- I'm liking your name a lot-- service your fucked up lover." She felt over her throat again as if examining it. "I need you to fuck me one more time, up here where I need it, Rod. And keep going till you come." She tilted her head back a little and opened her mouth wide with her tongue out in invitation.

This was new. Of course he'd taken control of other women in their mouths, gentlemanly face-fucks in which he was always careful not to go too hard. But this woman, now hilariously named Chastity, clearly wanted more. He took her head in his hands and slid his cock into her until he bottomed at the entrance to her throat. Her lips and tongue relished his rod so obviously that he could have come right away. But her hands on his butt told him she wanted to be serviced. He held his tip right at her throat's entrance and let her mouth him. He thought that would be a relief from his urge to come, but her lips and tongue slid so eagerly all over his length and the sight of her truly elegant beauty-- especially with her eyes closed in concentration, a world-class beauty whose single-minded attention proved he had the most delicious cock to ever grace a man's body-- only made the urge stronger. He had to pull away.

Without opening her eyes she said, "Fuck me. All the way. Don't hold out. Fuck me till you come. I'll give you ten blow jobs later."

He couldn't stop himself then. He pushed himself back into her, over her tongue while her lips caressed him all around, trying to slow himself down to make this truly peak moment last, knowing he was going to lose control all too soon. She hummed on him, not to stimulate him, just a contented expression she might voice as she ate a special dessert. She kept her hands on him, but not to control him. She stroked his thighs as he worked his hips back and forth, stroked his butt and felt all over him. He felt more delicious than he'd ever felt before, with any woman, especially when he pushed deeper and she seemed to nod on his cock to encourage him.

When she found his balls and pulled them to her, that was it. He pushed himself down into her, feeling her jerk and constrict and choke on him, but her insistent grip pulled him further in until he bottomed out with his pelvic bone against her jaw and her nose against his stomach, and yet still she tugged, trying to ram him deeper.

He tried to keep pumping but he was trembling so hard now that he could do no more than keep himself vibrating in little strokes while she tried to swallow his full length. She seemed to be able to hold her breath for minutes. He desperately needed to come but her throat squeezed his glans and her lips squeezed his base too hard. He was stuck on the edge of orgasm in the middle of her head.

She mercifully released her hold on him. He pulled back. But that let her catch him with her lips and scratch with her teeth, dragging back and forth over the edge of his cockhead, while her tongue wiggled into his pee hole as if trying to snake in. His body-- even though in his mind he was still trying his best to hold out-- exploded.

That was how it felt, as if he were some kind of high-pressure tank of male energy, forced to shoot everything inside him into her. With a loud cry he pounded her mouth as hard as he'd pounded her pussy and ejaculated spurt after spurt into her while she sucked him harder than he'd ever been sucked-- she was so strong-- until he had nothing left and he rolled off her, panting.

"That-- that--" He needed a minute. His hips were still jerking. Somewhere down there he was still coming. He was holding his cock, feeling he needed to protect it, he wasn't sure from what, probably her. After some deep breaths he was able to tell her, "That was maybe the best blow job ever, best orgasm." He had to catch his breath. "Even considering the ones you've given me before, which I thought were the best."

She didn't answer. He turned to look at her. Her cheeks and lips were working. His semen, he could tell. She swallowed, licked her lips, swallowed again. "I'm really starting to like the taste of your come." He put his forehead against her shoulder and closed his eyes. Her words were unbearably hot, sending the same shivering energy through his mind that her stroking of his balls had sent through his body. Almost making him come again in his mind, if that was possible. "You're sort of a combination of--"

But then she was up, pushing him back as she crawled down the bed. He saw her get her pouch. She sat at the edge with her bare back to him. He couldn't see but he knew what she was looking at. A smart remark or two occurred to him, but he wasn't in the mood. He just wanted to enjoy the afterglow a bit more, of the best sex ever. Again.

# # #

She crawled back up the bed and lay next to him, cuddling. "Thanks. I needed that."

"You needed--" He didn't know how to react.

"And I need a favor."

He laughed. He didn't know why, it was just his body's reaction to the overwhelming emotions that still reverberated inside him. "Anything."

"I need you to drive me out to a few places that aren't easy to get to. I noticed you have keys to an automobile."

That was an odd way to phrase her request, but her odd bits of knowledge and ignorance hardly merited his notice anymore. "I own a car, if that's what you mean. I guess then that you don't?" She did walk everywhere, as far as he could tell. Her non-driving was one more odd piece to the puzzle that was her and didn't fit with any of the other pieces. She didn't even use ride-shares or buses as far as he'd seen. What kind of place did she come from-- he no longer tried to classify it as a country or city or geographical area-- where people didn't use automobiles? "Where did you want to go?"

"First, a hotel."

He pulled her to him. "Why don't we just stay here?"

She pushed away and sat up. "Cute. I need to meet someone."

"Okay."

"That person you observed."

"Ah. The other historian? From your country that doesn't have cars or schools? Oh yeah, or prostitutes? But does have a Mars colony?"

"It's not a--" She shook her head. "He's not a historian. He's... a representative of the organization I work for. An agent."

"Ooh, a secret agent."

"I told you, I'm not a spy."

"You did. But you know, we have a saying in science: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and fucks like a duck..."

"How do ducks--" she playfully slapped him. "You're making fun of me. But I need to talk to him. Get some, um, equipment. Then you need to drive me to some places."

"Such as..."

"Let's start with the highest peak around here."

"That would be Mount Washington. I think it's in a state park."

"Good. Just so it's away from everything."

He retrieved his phone and checked the map. "We can go up to this parking lot." He pointed.

"No, the top."

"Bit of a hike." She gave him a look. "Okay, fine."

# # #

They drove to the hotel, a fancy boutique type downtown. He noticed as soon as she got in his car that she was nervous. She tried to pull the seat belt and shoulder harness tighter over the plain blouse she'd put on, which of course didn't happen. "This can't be the first time you're in an automobile."

She didn't look at him. "Just drive."

"Don't worry. The belt is designed to engage instantly in a crash." She gave him a skeptical look. "And there's an airbag." He pointed.

She looked away for a second. "Ugh. And then I'll get hit in the face with a balloon?"

"Way softer than the windshield."

"Drive safe, okay? Really safe."

They drove to the hotel in silence through city streets. She kept grabbing the armrest when he accelerated and putting her hands out as if to catch herself whenever he braked. He felt obliged to drive as gently and smoothly as possible.

When they entered the lobby, she said, "I want you to sit off to one side, so he can see you. But don't say anything."

"Is that your secret agent?" He motioned with his head to one end of the lobby, where the skinny, dark-skinned man from the conference sat at a grouping of seats around a low table, well away from the entrance. But she'd already noticed him somehow and was walking toward him.

She sat at the other end of the couch he'd settled in. Jake took a seat in an easy chair opposite. Secret Agent didn't seem pleased to see her. Or Jake, whom she didn't introduce. He glanced Jake's way briefly, looked him up and down as if he were an object, a suit maybe hanging on a rack, found him unacceptably gauche, and ignored him.

She made small talk, which Jake caught most of, expressing her hope that Secret Agent had acclimated and was enjoying his trip so far. SA didn't respond. They stared at each other, silent together long enough that Jake wanted to ask if there was a problem, especially since SA so far hadn't been pleased at anything, not Jake or her, nor even the hotel lobby before they'd met him. Only her admonition earlier kept him from speaking.

But they were not expressionless as they stared at each other. She kept smiling, though it seemed to take effort. SA showed shock at one point, and she nodded in reply. He glanced at Jake. She spoke then, said something like, "Yes, I know," and then they leaned toward each other and the stares became intense, their faces sagging as if all the muscles had been turned off, with only their eyes alive. They spoke occasional words to each other, single words or short phrases that he couldn't parse, maybe in that language she spoke like Middle English.

SA sat back finally. He stared at Jake, acknowledging him as a person for the first time. From a pocket he took out a small cloth bag and gave it to her. They stood. Jake did the same, following their action. SA studied Jake with an unexpected intensity and, to Jake's complete surprise, reached across the table to shake Jake's hand. "Very pleased to meet you," he said and left.

"That was the weirdest fucking non-conversation I have ever failed to comprehend," Jake told her. He was expecting another condescending riposte, but she wasn't paying attention. She spent a long time, for her, studying the carpet. "Sorry," he tried. "That seemed a serious communication, whatever it was. And why do I suddenly feel like I'm a movie star?"

"Because you are. And it's not a movie." She studied him too, even smiled a little without condescension. "I think I made progress." She put the cloth bag in her pouch, took out a gray cylinder and checked it, smiled a bit more. "We should get going."

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My thanks to my beta readers, @AlexFourways, @MormonJack, and @shelleycat1.