Separatrix Pt. 01 Ch. 06

Chapter Six

Jake walked into the LASSO PI's office in the morning, per the appointment that had appeared in his calendar the day before. Herk was there, but standing to one side by his small conference table. Sitting at the PI's desk wasn't Herk, it was someone new. Also in the room was a woman he recognized as the University's HR director for the collab whose name he couldn't remember, and another man, in a cheap suit, standing with his hands behind his back like a soldier at parade rest. Herk introduced the man in his chair only as "from DOE". He didn't introduce the other suit.

Jake immediately became wary and faced Herk. "What's going on?"

"Jake, this is out of my hands. I'm sorry."

"Mr. Calvino, sit down, please," the man behind the desk said, gesturing to a chair.

Jake didn't feel like sitting down. "Who are you again?" He'd never been a paranoid person, just the opposite, but it seemed his time with her had stimulated some kind of new awareness in him. He hefted his backpack, heavy with the computers that he now always kept with him.

The DOE man sat up. "I represent FPF, the Federal Protective Forces. You may be familiar with us."

"You're the guys that protect nuclear reactors, right?" He remembered the acronym from the fusion startup, though he'd never had to interact with them

"Among other duties."

"What's this about?" he said, again to Herk, not the jerk sitting at the PI's desk. Although he had a hunch that he already knew.

Herk remained silent.

"We've uncovered some irregularities in your work here, Mr. Calvino." From the DOE guy.

"That's Doctor Calvino."

The DOE guy allowed the thinnest of smiles. He pushed a thick folder across the desk to Jake. "Doctor." The way he said it, imitating the emphasis, was almost an insult. "You need to sign this."

He again asked Herk, "What is this?" He was not going to have a conversation with the asshole behind the desk.

"Just sign it, Jake."

He didn't even want to look at the folder, instead turning toward the door, thinking he'd simply leave. There was an awkward silence. "I have work to do."

The cheap suit moved to the door.

DOE sighed. "Doctor, you have a solid reputation in your field." DOE seemed to wait for some kind of response. Not getting one, he continued, "Long list of well-received papers. Excellent references from your previous endeavors in industry. Admiration from your colleagues in the collaboration." He waited again for a reaction, in vain. "It would be a shame to see it all come crashing down."

Jake resisted paying attention to the DOE man. To Herk he tried again, "What's going on here?" The PI looked intensely uncomfortable. He just shrugged and turned away, refusing to look Jake in the eye.

"Then let me be frank," DOE went on, "you've been stealing from the collaboration. You've been caught. Personally, I would just throw your ass in jail, but the collaboration board, in light of your contributions to the effort, is generously offering a deal."

Finally he had to face DOE. "My contributions?" He looked yet again to the PI for help. Finding none, he went on. "Ask Herk. Or anyone. I invented the fucking thing! And I haven't stolen anything."

DOE tapped the folder. "It's all in here, if you would just read it. Every detail. You falsely marked some very expensive equipment as junk, then purchased it at an outrageous discount, to use for-- well, we don't know what exactly, but we strongly suspect you're also stealing University IP. Embezzlement, fraud, theft. Probably more when we've completed the investigation. It's all in here." He tapped the folder again.

To Herk, not the asshole, Jake said, "This is bullshit. Why are you letting this happen? You approved those disposal authorizations yourself."

Herk stared at the floor.

"He was just following your recommendations, Doctor," DOE answered. "He's not an expert in your field. You fooled him."

"I didn't fool anyone. Several experts in my field signed off on those disposals. Some of that junk was sitting in storage for years. You're the one being fooled." To Herk he added, "Why are you letting them do this?"

Without looking up Herk said, "Jake, you can't fight this. Just sign."

"No fucking way. You know I'm right. Everyone does. Except this asshole who's stolen your chair. Speaking of theft."

"Ah, yes," DOE went on, "the other experts. You should know we're also going to talk with-- what's her name?" He looked to the HR woman-- "Yes, Dr. Abbott, your very good friend and colleague. We'll have some pointed questions for her, too."

"You fucker." He went to the door, but Cheap Suit had already moved there and blocked it. The man was big, nearly as big as Herk. "You going to arrest me now? You're not even a cop."

Cheap Suit put his hands up, reaching for him. He stepped back, guarding his backpack. He knew next to nothing about self-defense except for a brief karate class years ago. But he thought of what she would say if he backed down.

"Wait, wait." It was the HR woman. "Ryan, you can't do this." So now he knew DOE's name, at least the fucker's first name. She inserted herself between Jake and Cheap Suit. "Here." She thrust the folder into Jake's hands. "Read this, okay? You won't like it, but you need to know what they're saying. Find a lawyer. This is serious, Jake." To DOE and Herk: "You need to follow procedure."

DOE nodded to Cheap Suit. "Fine. Doctor Calvino. Don't go anywhere. We'll be keeping tabs on you. Don't take too long."

# # #

Jake strode out quickly while every eye in the office followed him. He almost tossed the folder in the trash along the way. Outside the building he made himself walk without hurrying, trying to settle himself down. The folder was sweaty in his hand. It was like holding a bag of dog poo, or rotten garbage. He moved it to his other hand and kept going, automatically, toward his apartment. At a street corner he stopped and looked around. Everything looked the same. But everything was different.

Glancing back, he noticed a figure behind him, a large male figure in a suit. His anger, which had subsided a bit, rose again. The light at the intersection turned green, but he didn't cross. He turned the corner and walked down the sidewalk. Halfway down he looked back. The same figure was behind him. It was like being in some spy movie. Which gave him an idea.

He took out his phone. Trouble. I'm being followed, he sent to the number she'd given him. It was the first time he'd tried it. He wasn't sure it would even work.

But she immediately called him. "What's wrong?" He explained the situation as quickly as he could. He wanted to run, but forced himself to keep a steady pace. "Where are you?" she asked. "Where are you heading?"

"Home."

"Don't go home. Go to a mall. Get lost in the crowd. You know the place we met the agent?"

"Yes. You mean--"

"Don't say it. Just go there after you're sure you're not being followed. I'll meet you. Stay out of sight. Turn your phone off."

He wasn't sure how well he could tell he wasn't being followed. He wasn't a spy or detective. There wasn't a shopping mall close to the campus, just a few streets with shops and cafes. And then he'd have to get to the hotel, not by his car, because it was parked at his place. Which gave him a plan. He turned back into the campus and found a shuttle stop. The University maintained its own shuttle service to satellite campuses around the city. He watched for Cheap Suit, didn't see him, but didn't trust his ability to tell for sure. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

At least when the shuttle came, he could verify that Cheap Suit didn't get on it with him. He watched out the window, scrunched down in his seat, as the van pulled out, didn't see anything, but didn't know if that meant success. At the first stop in the satellite campus he was lost, but luckily it happened to be downtown and not far from Secret Agent's hotel. He took side streets and zigzagged, although he couldn't imagine how he could have been followed on foot. But they would know the shuttle schedule. He went into the lobby and found a seat in a corner.

He skimmed over the documents in the folder. It was about what he'd expected, a list of the obsolete equipment he bought, some BS about their value, an admission of guilt that he refused to read, more pages too repulsive even to look at. He felt disgusted and depressed. Again he wanted to toss the whole thing in the garbage.

She showed up eventually. He wasn't sure what to do. She saw him and motioned for him to stay put. She was dressed in a modest business suit and carried a large bag. It looked like she was checking in, and when she was done a motion of her head told him to join her. They rode the elevator up together. At the end of the corridor she opened the door and let them into a suite. She put the bag down, came to him, and gave him a quick hug.

"What happened? You're sure you weren't followed?"

He gave her a quick summary and showed her the folder, which he was glad he hadn't trashed. She scanned the papers quickly. "They're getting close," she said.

"What do you mean? Who's 'they'?"

"We don't know."

"And let me guess. You can't tell me." She didn't answer. "The DOE asshole, Ryan whatever, just wanted to throw me in jail." He pointed to the folder, which she'd tossed on a side table. "If I don't sign everything away."

She ignored his remarks. "You promised to show me." He knew what she meant. It was his turn not to reply. "I can help you. I think I can. I think I know what's going on. But I need to see it. What you built. I need to verify."

After a moment he answered, quietly, "Okay."

"Good." She pointed to his backpack. "You have the computer? Good. Don't connect to anything."

"Um..."

"Seriously, your so-called Internet is a mess."

"This place--" he waved a hand to indicate the suite-- "is very nice. But I can't stay here forever. Especially out of contact."

"I'm still thinking. This is just to give us some time."

"I should warn Allison."

"I'll take care of that." She stood. He followed her up. She hugged him tightly. "You know what I want right now. But I need to talk to my contact. The agent. He has to report. I'll be back, maybe in a few hours, maybe tomorrow. You can go out. I grabbed what I could from my apartment, but you'll need a few things. Keep as low a profile as you can. Get some different clothes. Here." From the bag she pulled out a wad of bills. "Use cash." Another tight hug and she was gone.

After she left, he inspected the money. At least twenty bills, all hundreds. He collapsed back on the couch and stared off for a while.

She returned an hour later, but didn't stay long. "Here," she said, handing him a new phone. "Keep it on, but don't use it unless there's an emergency, and don't call anyone but me. I really want to see what you built, but first I have to go away for a while to meet with the agent." He stared at the phone. "I'll be back as soon as I can." She went to the door.

"Wait."

She stopped, reaching for the doorknob, and looked back.

"Allison. Don't forget."

She nodded and pointed at her head. Then she was gone again.

# # #

He worked on the concentrator design on his computer, taking breaks to go out and buy clothes and toiletries. But mostly he worked. Some new ideas had occurred to him to improve the efficiency a bit more, and some ways to use cheaper materials. He'd bought some time on a cloud server, but he didn't dare connect to it, so he roughed out a few variations by hand. It was tedious, but it kept his mind occupied. He was worried about Allison.

The phone beeped the evening of the next day. Time to show me. Leave now. Bring our things. He put on a jacket he'd just bought, put his computer into his pack, picked up the bag, and headed out.

# # #

She met him at the pier, walking up to him on the sidewalk just as he was reaching for his key. He immediately noticed how she was dressed, in a dark gray one-piece coverall with a closed collar almost like a turtleneck. It was easily the least sexy thing he'd ever seen her in, although it was beautifully tailored to fit her elegant body, so quite pleasing to the eye.

He led her to the corner door in the large and long building and down its length, past the old sailboats and a small decrepit cabin cruiser, to the wide, high, dark area he'd rented at the far end. At a small stand he turned on a desk lamp. "You need to remove all metal objects," he told her. He put her bag, his backpack, and assorted items into a metal locker he'd purchased. But to his surprise she wasn't wearing any jewelry. When he pointed to her pouch she said, "Don't worry. No metal."

"Okay. They're your toys. By the way, do you want a new name for this?"

"Just Historian will be fine."

"Hi, Historian. And my name?"

"Nobody knows." Yet another answer that made no sense, stated with ultimate confidence as if confirming that, yes, the sun would come up in the east tomorrow. "But," she continued, "'Pavel' is often used."

His name from their first night? He felt his scalp prickle.

"Show me. Please."

He went over to a switch box and pulled up the lever. The ceiling lights came on. And there it was.

"Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes," she breathed. She walked the distance to it, eyes fixed on it as if its powerful magnet were attracting her.

He caught up with her. "It's just a really basic prototype. I hate to even call it that. Proof of concept. And there's way more to do. The coils, the cap, the steam--"

"The generator," she declared, her voice echoing in the large, dim space, as if she were the one presenting it, "the first fucking generator," and not so much interrupting him as not even listening to what he was saying.

"I guess you could think of it that way. I call it the concentrator."

"The first generator." She came up to it and reached her hand out as if to touch it, but halted before he could tell her to stop.

"Be careful. Even with just the bottom coil there's a lot of energy running through it. They're still building the cap." The only way to turn it off was to put a massive lid over the top to stop the intensified cosmic rays. He'd had to come up with a cheap alternative to the expensive, servo-actuated tungsten alloy ones they used at LASSO, and it was taking a long time at the cabinet shop he'd found. "And it leaks muons like a sieve." He flinched, realizing he'd said the M-word.

But it seemed to have lost any effect on her. "Oh, yes." She took one of her devices out of her pouch and studied it. The tiny green light pulsed. She smiled, put it away, and hugged him. "You fucking did it. You're the one. How cool is that?"

"I'm, ah, glad you like it," he tried as an answer. He was pleased, but confused, not just by yet another of her marginally cryptic remarks. Her fascination had transferred from the machine to him. Instead of her politely contained condescension or her hungry desire, her eyes glistened and her smile held a mixture of admiration and satisfaction he'd never seen before in her, as if she were a fan finally meeting her favorite rock star. A smile like the one the agent had shown. Only belatedly did he realize he hadn't told her what it did, its purpose. But she seemed to already know. "Would you like to see how it operates?" he tried.

Her smile changed back to its typical humoring condescension of his quaint but amusing mannerisms. "Yes, please, show me." She almost giggled.

He got a small vial from a nearby table. "You can get this online." He held up the vial, holding a clear liquid.

She nodded. "Of course. Heavy water."

"Uh. Yes." He didn't understand how she could possibly know what was in the vial. But he was tired of asking why she knew things she shouldn't and didn't know things she should. He got out an IR thermometer and aimed it at the vial. "Okay, 14.2°. It's a little chilly in here. Got it?" She didn't reply. She had the smuggest possible smile. He would have been insulted except that he couldn't imagine what she could be so smug about. "Are you following what I'm doing here?"

"Perfectly." The smile did not recede.

He had a plastic tray that he put on the rough plank floor, then the vial in the center of the tray. He held up a dark gray cup. "Moderator. Lithium, in a binder." He placed the cup upside down to cover the vial. Then he picked up a brown disk.

"The accelerator," she said.

"No, this is what I call the generator. It accelerates the neutron flux to generate the tritium."

She rolled her eyes and gave him a "whatever" shrug that any valley girl would be proud of. "Fine. You're the inventor. Call it whatever you want."

It was his turn to roll eyes. He gave up trying to explain the steps. She clearly thought she already knew everything. He placed the disk on top, covering the vial and the cup. Then he got a wooden pole, liberated from one of the parked boats up front, and pushed the tray under the device. They waited.

"So I concentrate the muon flux--" he paused to make sure one last time that the word had lost its emotional charge for her, and motioned with a hand to indicate the flow down through the coil-- "and it catalyzes the deuterium to fuse into helium."

But she wasn't listening, she was just staring at the device, gazing up as if at a natural wonder, the world's oldest tree, or the tallest skyscraper.

"If you're worried about radiation..." She made no reaction. "Um... there are plenty of neutrons, but they're all headed straight down. They retain most of the momentum after the decay. We're okay here."

"I know."

He tried again to figure out how she knew so much. "So, how did you know it was heavy water?"

"Just a lucky guess."

He sighed.

"But I'm really happy you let me see this."

"You seemed to already know what this is." She shrugged. "In fact, you are smugly secure in the knowledge that you know what this is and I, the guy that designed and built it, do not."

"You know what it is. I just know a lot more."

"Really? How did that happen?"

"I guess I'm just smarter. Let's leave it at that."

"You think you're smarter than me?"

She gave him that condescending smile again. "Let's say that we each excel in certain areas of intelligence."

"And leave the debate on the comparative sizes of those areas for another time?"

"We have better things to do right now. I'm having trouble figuring out how long this is going to take. Do we have time for a quickie?"

He wanted to ask how she could think about figuring that out when she couldn't possibly know what he was doing. But answering her question was far more likely to produce dividends. "Five or six minutes." He grinned. "Maybe not enough for a good fuck, but I could suggest other ways you could make me happy that I showed you this."

"Suggest away."

"Well, we couldn't go wrong with..." He took her hand and put it on his crotch. "Would you mind getting your knees a little dusty? Wait. I have to ask. The way you're dressed, like, I don't know, almost a uniform. No gold. Like you're some kind of official. Official historian?"

"You wouldn't be far off to think of me that way."

"You dressed up. I was wondering why. You look great, by the way. That semi-military look. You knew, you really did know. How could you? What did I do wrong? How did the information leak? I was so careful. At least tell me that."

"You did nothing wrong." She gave his crotch a squeeze, but then put her arms around him and hugged him. "You did great." They held each other for a while.

He checked his watch and reluctantly separated from her. He pulled the tray back out, put on gloves, took out the vial and set it on the desk. He pointed the IR thermometer at it. 91.2°. He showed her the reading.

That should have been an astounding moment. He'd just demonstrated that he could produce energy for free. Like solar or wind but better, because the rain of cosmic rays was constant all over the earth, 24/7. And the oceans contained more heavy water than the world could use in a million years. Just build a concentrator, what she insisted on calling a generator-- and he had to admit she had a point in calling it that-- which used no power once you started it up, and harvest the heat. Unlimited free energy forever.

But she already knew. She was holding his hand like a teenaged girlfriend. "I'm so glad you showed me." She hugged him again, not an erotic contact, almost friendly and then romantic as she kissed his neck.

"There's still a lot to do," he tried to explain. "If I left the vial underneath in there it would boil soon, even with just one coil. When I get the other two installed--" he pointed up where they would go-- "with three coils, it would only take seconds."

"Four coils," she said, as if he'd made a mistake.

"What?"

But she'd moved on from that conversation and drew back from him. She smiled broadly. "I've just made a field decision. I'm going to do you a very big favor."

He stood straight and smiled back. He ran his hands over her form, liking her sort-of uniform more and more.

"No, not that. Yes, that, but later."

"And now?"

"I've decided to give you a treatment."

"A treatment? You don't mean--" he made a gesture up and down, indicating her body-- "do you?"

"Not the sex treatment. That's different. Well, sort of. But I'm way beyond you. There are... let's call them stages... and I got a large set of optional extras. I'll start you with the basic treatment, the first stage, and see how that goes. You weigh, what, about seventy kilos?" She looked away, thinking. "We'll need some time in a safe place. It's going to knock you out for a while."

"You make it sound like a done deal. You won't tell me anything about this so-called treatment, which has to mean big changes for me. I have a say in the decision, don't I?"

"You'll come around."

"What will it do to me?" He wanted it, whatever it was. There was a long list of superior qualities she had. But he wasn't ready to say yes. Not yet. He definitely didn't want to say no, but he wasn't ready for yes.

"More energy, more stamina, immune to most diseases and cancers. Upgrade important organs. You're going to need it if you're going to complete this." She waved a hand toward the device.

He sighed. The concentrator. It seemed an immense project right now, a massive mountain he still had to climb. "Can you just fucking tell me what's going on?" He didn't mean to sound angry. It just came out that way. He was tired. Frustrated.

"We don't know either."

"You and your secret agent?"

"No. Well, yes, us too. I mean the entire Org. Our organization. Someone or something is trying to prevent you all--" she waved her arms out wide, as if speaking to the assembled masses-- "from doing this." She nodded at the concentrator.

"Why would anyone want to stop me? I mean, they might think I'm a crackpot or weirdo, but... and why the government? Why are they after me?"

"We don't know. But we know it's happening. Our archives say it shouldn't. But here we are." She paused, staring again at the concentrator.

Archives? But she seemed to have more to say. He waited.

She put her hands on her hips. Her eyes narrowed as she continued to stare at what she insisted was a generator. "And to employ your elegant terminology, I'm going to stop the fuckers who are doing it. I'm going to fucking make sure whatever they're trying doesn't happen and you build your fucking generator!" She undid the top clasps of her uniform-- an action that seemed symbolic-- and turned to him. Her eyes softened. "And the first step is getting you, Pavel, ready."

"I'm starting to like that name when you say it."

"You'll like the treatment even more."

"Sounds like it's, I don't know, a kind of youth serum? You people, whoever you are, can do that?"

"You won't get younger, not with stage one. But you'll probably feel younger. And your aging will slow down."

"I'll need to think about it."

"I'll start getting it ready. It takes some time to prepare the constituents."

He laughed, though the joke was on him. "You're always planning for success."

"What else should I plan for, failure?"

# # #

"That's it?"

She'd manipulated a cylinder, a bit taller than the usual thick disks she took out of that pouch, then touched one end to his arm at the inside of his elbow for several seconds. That was all that happened.

He looked around. She'd brought him to her apartment for the first time. It was a tiny studio, maybe the smallest apartment he'd ever seen in the city, six or seven hundred square feet max. It reminded her of home, she'd told him. Only room for a double bed, which they were sitting on now, a small table, and a kitchenette with a microwave.

She was studying the cylinder. "You expected something more dramatic? Is that what you were thinking? A ray of some kind that makes you glow blue? Something out of a superpower drama? Your popular dramas are shit, by the way. Some of them are fun."

"Spy drama wouldn't be out of place, given how little I know about you and how much, nonetheless, you somehow got me to trust you. And someone is after me." He'd almost forgotten that he was a fugitive. "But that thing you just did didn't hurt or tingle. I didn't feel anything at all. Are you sure it worked?"

"We'll see."

She was very pleased with herself. It seemed she'd again set up some kind of interpersonal contest between them, without telling him the rules or even that it was a contest. And of course he'd lost.

"How long does it take?"

"The long-term metabolic effects will take months. But there are some effects that... well... you'll start feeling soon." She gave him that fake-innocent smile he'd learned to suspect.

"Come out with it."

"Come out with what? Oh, I almost forgot..."

"You forgot something? Wait." He pretended to get up from the bed. "I need to mark today's date."

She pulled him back. "I said 'almost'. It's good news. I was able to add points to the treatment."

"Points?"

"That seems to be the best word for them in English. Don't worry. They're organic."

"Organic points? Sounds like something they sell at Whole Foods."

"They should. They would help way more than the silly crap people think is healthy."

He waited. She put her hand on his thigh. "So," he tried, "you said it wouldn't be like the sex treatment you got, right? But it won't, you know-- I hope it won't-- make the sex less... I mean..."

She hugged him. He thought she was going to kiss him but instead she touched her forehead to his. "Won't be worse," she said softly. "We'll... communicate. Better. So could be even better. I don't know. You might be the first..."

"Caveman? Outsider?" If one effect was to make their already extremely intense and mind-blowing sex even more intense and mind-blowing, then he was on board for that.

She only smirked in answer and pulled back. "Actually," she said, "you're not going to like it."

"No?" He looked down at his arm, at the spot where she'd applied the device. Where she was now lightly rubbing, as if to spread around whatever she'd injected into him. If injection was the right term. He wondered if he should be alarmed.

"The English word 'like' does not compare in the tiniest way to how you're going to feel about what I'm doing for you."

"Just tell me what those damned things are, the points."

She climbed onto him, straddling him the way she'd done sometimes during sex, although they were both still fully clothed. She took his head in her hands and stroked her fingers through his hair. "You would probably call them nanobots or something like that."

"What? Wait a minute! You injected me with--" He struggled under her weight.

She stopped him with a finger to his lips. "They're not robots. They're sort of radio transmitters, microscopic. For the brain. They're not intelligent." She kissed him. The kiss grew passionate. Their tongues explored each other. His cock twitched in his pants, only a few layers of cloth from her sex.

"Is that what--" now it was his turn to caress her head-- "you use to communicate with..." he gestured toward her pouch, lying on a small coffee table. The place was generic, obviously some kind of furnished rental. "Am I going to become one of your little devices?"

"Not so little." She wiggled her crotch on his tumescent meat. She kissed him again. "You'll start to become aware in..." she looked away, maybe calculating... "about 40 minutes. It will take a few hours to fully install."

She was still smug, he could tell, but also satisfied and pleased with him. "So," he tried, "what should we do while we're waiting for me to become one of your peripherals?" He wiggled back as a hint.

"Let's get you ready."

That statement gave him an instant of trepidation, but she immediately hopped off him and pulled him to standing. She undressed him, not romantically, just matter-of-factly, as if she were a nurse and he was her patient. But nurses don't then remove their own clothes. As always, he was struck by how perfect she looked and, still partly erect, he moved to pull her to him, but she slipped away and led him by the hand the short distance to her tiny apartment's very tiny bathroom.

She turned the shower on and had them both squeeze into a shower compartment that was tight even for one person. The water was very hot, nearly painful, but she seemed to enjoy it, and most of it was raining on her while she spread it over him. Their bodies touched in multiple places top to bottom, the enclosure was so cramped. She found the soap and ran it all over him, which meant that washing him was part of getting him ready for whatever was going to happen. That couldn't be a bad sign. He did his best to wash her at the same time. He liked putting a bit of shampoo on her and scrubbing her short hair, almost past her ears now, and scalp. She reached up and did the same for him.

"The nanobots need to be washed?"

"Oh yes, they're dirty little nanobots." She kissed him. Hugging and kissing were about all the sex that was possible between the narrow walls. "I really love you for trusting me. I know this must all seem totally crazy to you."

She didn't wait for an answer, which he couldn't come up with anyway. Soapy hands went all over his cock and balls, quickly eliminating any last trace of sweat or non-erect penis. Even when soapy fingers slipped into his ass crack and one found his anus he stayed hard. In and out it went, cleaning him, for whatever he didn't know.

They were nearly as close in the bathroom proper as they dried off, then she led him back to her narrow bed and had him lie down. "No, on your stomach," she ordered in spite of the stiff, flapping erection he displayed. "You're going to get sleepy soon."

"I don't feel sleepy."

Then there followed a very nice massage. She'd never done that for him before. He could tell she liked his body, but she'd seemed to always be concentrating on his cock. Or sometimes his mouth. But she was good at it, pressing on his muscles with a strength that never stopped amazing him.

He may have fallen asleep. He drifted off for a while, but then became aware of her hands' movements; or rather, he seemed to be able to anticipate where her hands were going and found that his body was responding to her, his limbs stretching out and his muscles relaxing even before she touched him. It was almost-- he turned over onto his back. "You're-- I mean, I can almost see what you're thinking. Is that--?"

Her eyes flicked down. He pictured his cock stiffening. No, he realized, that wasn't quite right. He was picturing her picturing his cock stiffening. And then it did! She moved her hand to almost touch it, as if she were making some kind of magical gesture. He got harder than he'd ever been, faster than he'd stiffened with any woman, including her. She laughed. "Whoa! That was a strong reaction, even for you. It's starting."

"What...?"

She growled, "The nanobots are taking over your mind!" as she held up her hands limply like a zombie. "Don't worry." She put a hand on his cock and pointed it straight up.

He knew she was going to put his cock in her mouth. Not just because she'd done that many times and she was holding his cock in position. He knew, as if she were showing him somehow. She just stared at him as she lightly stroked up and down his length. It was exciting beyond belief, and only grew more exciting when, after several seconds of staring that made his whole body vibrate, she bent down and took him in. His excitement grew not just because the feel of her lips on him fulfilled every vision he'd had of this moment, but also because he now knew she was going to slide him way into her. And as she did so he knew she was going to press the tip of her tongue on the underside of his cock and drag it slowly all the way up because the sensation always drove him crazy. And then he knew, and also just plain knew on his own from experience, that her tongue on the ultra-sensitive spot just below his slit was going to stay there and he was going to get tortured for longer than he could imagine in exactly the perfect way to drive him insane with sexual energy. Because she knew exactly what would do that to him and they knew together that they both wanted that.

The torture/pleasure was unbearable and he never wanted it to end and he knew it never would and hoped he survived it to tell her he knew where she was from: she was from some magical heaven where goddesses magically appear.

"See?" she said when she released him.

He could only babble. He was trembling and shaking. He didn't know if he'd had an orgasm but it didn't matter. He was still stiff as ever and the experience had been as indescribably intense as any orgasm. And anyway, that word didn't begin to describe what she'd just done to him. His cock pulsed with each heartbeat, it seemed, giving off some kind of energy.

"Even with just a fraction of the points in place I can sense what you want and give it to you." He jerked involuntarily as the thought appeared that she was about to start again. "And you can see what I intend to do to you." He pictured himself spurting onto her tongue and almost erupted right there in the air with her hand still holding him vertical.

Then came another impossible experience. She bent down and put her lips on his tip, just barely touching. He tensed, seeing himself being passionately sucked to orgasm. But it didn't happen. The vision or sense or feeling or whatever it was just continued while she held him to her lips. He was experiencing her pleasure in tasting him and her vision of making him come. It was orgasmic and the orgasm never ended.

"That was beyond words," she said, "wasn't it?" She bent down again and took him into her, moving between his legs, and slid him deep to put as much of her tongue as possible against him. He didn't understand how he didn't just ejaculate right at that second into her, because that's exactly what the vision-- or feeling or sensation, whatever it was that filled his brain to overflowing-- filled his mind with. But somehow he maintained and he seemed to shoot a continuous stream into her, not semen but some kind of energy. She took him deeper and it seemed he was shooting himself right into her mind.

"It's getting better, isn't it?" she said. "Getting clearer."

"How-- how many?" He weakly gestured at his head.

"How many evil nanobots are taking over your brain? A few thousand. They came with the device I used to locate the barycenter. I installed enough to use the locator, but there were plenty more."

"Oh, what you did in the car?"

She agreed. She knew how he'd watched her do it. "Do you want more?"

His mind crowded with a score of fantasies. He couldn't tell if they were his or hers. "Come here," he told her with as much authority as he could muster, which turned out to be stronger than he'd expected. The connection was more than just communication, and it seemed to work in both directions. He slid over so she could lie down in the middle of the mattress. He climbed on her and got between her legs. He thought about eating her bald sex and the anticipation of torture he read in her tempted him, but a single image of him entering her appeared, again his or her image he couldn't tell, and he had to right then put his painfully hard cock up into her as far as he could make it go.

It was a sixth sense. He couldn't really describe it as seeing or feeling or any other such words. It was different, its own thing, and everything lit up with it in a kind of synesthesia. There was a clear, sharp pattern in her, in her head but reaching dendritically through her nervous system into her body. And into him. And out to the small room. Everything. Somehow he was in a reality in which everything around him, her environment as well as her body, was intimate with him. He had the amusing vision that he'd been teleported up to Fuck Heaven, where not just the angel underneath him was fucking him, but Heaven itself and everything in it was passionately fucking him and he was fucking her and all of it.

She laughed. "'Fuck Heaven.' I like that." She looked up at him. "Yes, I can see some things in your mind. You saw mine."

"You mean the endless orgasm?"

She looked into him. That's how it seemed. Although he could look right at her and he could feel the tight and slick heat of her insides enveloping his cock as she pumped up and down under him, he could still sense that on some level, through some sideband, she was fellating him. There was that connection between them. And that sense grew until it was difficult to actually see anything with his eyes.

And then, like a movie dissolve, he was lying back and she was between his legs and she really was fellating him. Her eyes seemed especially large and round as she looked up at him.

His vision clouded again as another scene flew in from her and descended on him. She was crawling away from him and he was following and in the middle of the room's narrow floor they were meeting in a doggy style fuck session in which their joined perception filled both their bodies and whole room.

But then she was back between his legs. "See," she said between sucks. "I told you that you would like it." More sucks. "But I have to admit, even I didn't think it would be this amazing."

His consciousness collapsed to their two bodies and he could feel something growing between them, as if she were reaching up into him. It was extremely intimate, as if she were inside him, feeling through his organs. She'd found something, some neural ligament, and touched him there. His whole body lit up, the way he did at the peak of orgasm when she hit exactly the right spot. She did that now to the internal something, an organ he couldn't name. His body rang like a bell and the bright, intense orgasmic peak just kept going on and on.

At last she relented and pulled off him. He couldn't stop shaking. He didn't know when he'd started. She didn't give him a chance to recover. She climbed on him and sank herself down on his cock and that something inside him reached up inside her and touched hers.

It was hallucinogenic. Maybe they both blacked out this time.

# # #

He woke on her bed half on her, half on the floor. He had no idea how long they'd been out, nor how long they'd been at it. The small room was dark, so several hours at least. The only light came through the window from a nearby streetlight. He covered her, then slipped down to the floor, lay back on her one rug and fell back to sleep, trying to arrange an avalanche of memories into something his brain could hang onto.

He woke again on the rug with her kneeling next to him. He was hard again, or maybe he still was, he didn't know anymore. Just her hand on his hip was enough. She bent down and swept her lips along his length and then he was deep in her mouth. It seemed like the time between now and the last time she'd been sucking him had only been a short pause. He saw her cute ass up in the air next to him and even as he was imagining the erotic pleasure he wanted, she was moving over him and lowering her smooth pussy lips on his mouth and the tip of his tongue was in the exact best spot in the whole world, on her clit. Their mutual ascent to orgasmic level was instant and constant and was pure oral heaven. It would have gone on forever except that she began to have orgasms on top of her orgasms. He did something, or his body did, he just felt his body making some kind of subtle movement with both his tongue and his cock-- he could see more clearly into her now-- and those super-orgasms clustered in her, expanded, and filled her. She plunged his cock as deep as he'd ever been in her or any woman and screamed down his length, went rigid for a second, then seemed to explode off him and landed next to him on the floor.

"That-- that--"

She rolled over and pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her eyelids closed and opened slowly in some kind of rhythmic trance. The pattern in her had grown softer, more complex. She mouthed his cock, right next to her, but then rose up and put his cock into her pussy. Or really, it felt like he was going back into her pussy, returning to where his cock belonged.

She closed her eyes and slowly fucked him. Only small sounds came from her. She shuddered off and on. He began to see things in her mind, some things that maybe she saw. He saw flashes of stone buildings. He saw an exotic-looking woman, sharp-featured and not conventionally beautiful, but regal, with gold in her hair and on her ears and around her neck. He saw low buildings in what could have been a forest or orchard. He saw an ovoid, polished warm metal, just big enough to hold a small individual. Not in the place with the stone buildings, instead in a large metal cavern, it seemed.

And he saw what she was planning to do in that ovoid. He couldn't believe it, but there it was in front of him. And there she was sitting on him, coming over and over and not able to stop herself. He grabbed her hips and took control. The way out was through. He sent the images he'd seen in her back to her. They pushed her on and on, spike after spike of raw ecstasy, until the elegant, subtle, smooth patterns inside her broke down, turned to crystal, and shattered and she collapsed on him. At last he could feel her satisfaction.

From the outside she seemed to have blacked out, but he could see she'd been right, that inside her mind was active, flying over and descending on experiences, some real, some imagined, some abstract, some impossible to comprehend. He found that he could calm her, nudge her toward more stable rhythms, and soon she was sighing on him and fell into true sleep.

He wanted to watch her dreams and did for a while, confusing though they were, mixing strange environments with strange people and stranger words in unknown languages he nonetheless could almost understand. But he wasn't immune to her strong mind and soon he was also drifting off to his own dreams, which were at least as strange.

# # #

"Oh, fuck me, what have we done to ourselves?"

He woke to a trim female body sliding off him, not carefully. He hurt in places, his butt felt numb, and he wondered where he was. But only for a second before it all crashed back into his mind. "You--" The overwhelming knowledge stuck inside his intellect, impossible to believe but impossible to deny.

"Yeah, me. You're right, this time you're right." She crawled half back on him. Her hand went right to his cock but he didn't tense and didn't get hard. She just wanted to hold him that way. He knew that. He rolled onto his side and pulled her into a hug, a little awkward because she wouldn't let go of his cock. They spent an indefinite time like that, just holding each other, as if they'd just survived a tornado or earthquake and were happy to be alive and still together.

"You feel satisfied," he said into her ear. She stretched like a cat in his arms. "Finally."

"You fucked me into oblivion."

"It was impossible not to."

She nuzzled him. She scrunched down a bit to find his balls. She kissed them and his cock all over. The pleasure was beautiful but calming. He had no urge to get hard, nor did she want him to. "Part of me feels like I'll never need another orgasm again, ever," she said when she put her head on his chest, still holding his testicles. "Part of me wants to start fucking again right away. But the satisfaction is so nice. Fucking can wait." She lifted her head up to look in his eyes. "But not for long."

He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask her about what he'd seen. And one impossible question he couldn't wrap his head around. But not in his current state. And his stomach was growling. "I'm starving," he said.

"Right." She sat up.

He propped himself up on his elbows and realized that light, daylight, was coming through the window. "Did we spend the night on the floor?"

"You did. I spent the night on the warm body of a magnificent stud." She yawned and stretched. "Yes, breakfast."

# # #

There was nothing in her apartment so they walked to a cafe that was open early. They said little on the way, a long walk, but distance didn't seem to matter. He tried to see into her the way he'd been able to last night during their passionate sex, but got nothing.

His hunger, though, was insistent. They were almost the first customers. It helped that the coffee came quickly. They hardly touched, which surprised him. After such an extraordinary, unprecedentedly intimate and profound experience they'd shared, he thought they should have been all over each other. But her satisfaction continued and radiated to him. They didn't even hold hands across the cafe table, as he'd done other times with other women the morning after. They didn't need to.

The only flaw in their mutual satisfaction was that question in his mind that wouldn't fade, a small but insistent note, that wanted to rise to the surface. It unsettled him. "Last night--"

"I know," she said, and touched his hand briefly, sending a flash of pleasure through him. But she didn't know. "Get some food in yourself. The other entities are beginning to have an effect. You'll need more fuel."

He devoured the breakfast when it arrived, his generous portion of diner special and half of hers. And more coffee. He sat back, his body content for the moment. He seemed to have a detailed perception of the nutrients spreading into him. He couldn't tell whether it was the nanobots or the incredible night or the food or just imagination. Things, his situation-- their situation-- looked clearer also. She'd put on some of her jewelry. Looking at her across the table now he remembered how she'd looked up into the eyes of the exotic royal woman and then lowered her head between the woman's brown legs to the dark bush and--

"What?" she asked. "Why are you--?"

"You're from the future."

The patterns in her re-emerged, distorting into rippling, irregular shapes until settling down. The patterns disappeared for a moment, then gradually became perceptible again, just barely.

"You can turn that off and on, can't you? Those points."

"It's how we maintain privacy."

"But I can't?"

The question seemed to distress her. "That's where I think I fucked up. We learn how to control them from an early age. There are special points for children. What I did to you..."

"You just threw me into the deep end of the pool."

She shrugged. "You didn't drown."

"I did. I just didn't die."

She took his hand. "You did great. But..." Her gaze lowered and her shoulders shrunk together. "But what we did was perverted. A perversion. For me. No way you could know. I'm sorry."

"I don't understand." He thought back. The sex in his office; the anal sex; the road head.

"No, none of that," she answered, seeing what he was thinking. "We don't care about any of those things. Those are your perversions. Ours--" she tapped a finger to her head. "It's all about letting people inside. Privacy."

"And you never let anyone inside before?" A dirty comment came to him. He held back from saying it.

She laughed. She saw it in him anyway. "Yeah, you deflowered my virgin brain. Nearly virgin. You went way deep into me. Deeper..."

"Ah," he said. An image had escaped from her. "I saw a woman last night. A tall blonde..."

"That-- fuck, I wish I hadn't... yes, her, but that was different. I didn't have sex with her, not the way you think. Fuck. We need to get more points into your higher faculties."

"Meanwhile, I'm totally open to you all the time?"

"Mainly just your basic emotions and physical state. Most of the points went to your medulla. But I could pretty much already figure that out without any nanobots telling me. But there's more leaking between us. I don't know how to stop that. And..."

"And you're from the future." He had to say it again or he would start doubting himself.

Again the ripples. "And you're ready again," she responded. "Let's go back to my place."

Images like waves broke over his sight, every kind of sexual intimacy. He grew hard in seconds, an amazingly fast recovery given what his body had been through last night. When they walked out he had to turn a little sideways so the staff wouldn't notice the bulge in his pants and he was glad the few customers were all staring at their phones.

Outside on the sidewalk, she opened up to him and he couldn't keep her out of his mind. She saw what was happening and said, "Maybe we shouldn't wait."

In a parklet along the way, just a green space between low industrial buildings, she took his hand and led him to a narrow patch of grass behind a tree, where she knelt, took his cock out of his pants, not easy given he was still completely erect, and took him in.

He should have been nervous doing sex in public, even with no one around at this early hour, but the intense experience, beyond pleasure, erased any hesitation. Once again the synesthesia of his senses told him crazy things, that his cock was extending through her mouth and into her brain, that her mind was sucking his maleness like honey or ambrosia.

And then another, even more astounding vision enveloped him: he was a prince. He knew he was of royal blood, his father was king, and he was being serviced, as was his right, by a slave. He looked down and she was naked except for a mountain of gold on her: necklaces, bracelets, earrings, ankle bracelets, rings on her fingers and toes. He was both of them, the prince being serviced and the slave servicing. He could feel her pleasure at being so beautiful and so desired and so willing to give herself to the prince and how she wanted nothing more than to drink down the royal elixir.

He erupted, right there in the parklet, right on her tongue, trying not to make a sound but moaning through lips pressed together, jerking his hips while she kept his cock rubbing over just the right spots because she could read his body and he was her prince and he deserved every last bit of pleasure she could give him.

And then he was her, on her knees still, sucking on a large cock as black as ebony, not his or the prince's, extending from legs like black marble, a large, muscled black man, ejaculating into her his semen that tasted like nothing she had ever eaten before and was uniquely delicious.

"Wait! Wait!" He had to step back, banging against the tree trunk. "What was that? What?"

She sucked and licked the last drops of his come and stood. "I know," she said. "I'll explain."

# # #

"Who-- who was that?" He was struggling to speak. They were on her bed, he was naked, and she was fellating him again, passionately, as if it was the last time she'd ever get a chance to suck cock and she'd finally found the best, most suckable cock in world and she wasn't going to waste a second of her life not sucking it, until it and the man connected to it were totally used up. It was all overwhelming and amazing, including the fact that he was hard, endlessly hard. Those points. Or maybe just her.

She looked up, pausing a moment. She knew what he was asking. "My prince." She resumed her sucking. He tried to resist but the heavenly pleasure of being between her lips, just living there on her tongue, was not something he would ever want to stop, so he just let her do it to him again, as she'd been doing, it seemed all morning, another endless series, by far the longest blow job he ever received, hours beyond even her recent marathon oral acts.

As soon as they'd arrived at her place and the door was closed behind, she'd again dropped to her knees and his cock was lengthening between her lips. He'd thought for sure, after such an intense orgasm so recently, she would be disappointed, but whatever she'd injected him with, nanobots or DNA or enzymes, had accelerated his recovery and he was hard again in seconds. She'd led him to his bed, undressed him, and went down on him there. A long time ago, it seemed to him now. He had no sense of time.

When at last she released him again, he managed to say, "No, the black man."

"Hmm. Oh dear. You saw that?"

"I was that. And I was you."

She sat up, lounging over his body, holding his cock as if it were hers and he was only carrying it around for her. He saw that he was going to get a bit of recovery time before her next onslaught. That was a relief, but he could still feel the longing for more, both his longing and hers, and knew that before long it would begin to surge and eventually reach a point where neither of them, because they both felt it, would be able to resist.

"It was a strong image. Must have been important, or at least memorable."

"Yes, well..."

"You're a time traveler. I can't believe I'm saying it but there's no other explanation. I feel dumb for not having seen it long ago."

She made no response. Her mind, the patterns in it, was closed off from him.

"You're closing yourself from me again, but I saw him, your prince. You were blowing him. Me. I was him. And oh my God, I was also you. You were really enjoying yourself. And him."

She remained silent, but he glimpsed a twinkle in her eye.

"And a woman. Brown skin. Lots of jewelry and dark hair done up. Very elaborately." She was still silent. "Very nice bush between her legs, maybe trimmed."

She spoke at last, softly. "My princess." She let go of his cock and lay down on him. Hugged him and nuzzled his shoulder.

"You can tell me. I already know. I know who you are. Fuck all your names. I know you."

She spoke softly in his ear. Or maybe her words were flowing directly into his mind, and he was only imagining he was hearing them. It didn't matter. "It was a long time ago," she whispered, "a long time in my own time stream and a very long time in your calendar time. A very long time ago."

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