Separatrix Pt. 02 Ch. 05

Chapter Five

Jake didn't want to leave her. He didn't even want her out of his sight. If possible he wanted to be in physical contact with her all the time. He left her tiny apartment once to go out for groceries and turned back after a block. The emptiness without her was more than he could take. They had to go to the market together.

"You see what I mean?" she said. "This is the danger. In my time our savants would be sounding alarms all over, both in our heads and to other savants in charge of public health."

"But we're not in your time. And this-- your-- savant, I don't feel it."

"It's not possible to superposition a savant. It's a--" She thought for a few seconds. "Let me try to put it in your terms. It's a virtual entity. Software, in a way. Needs the hardware substrate. That's not the right word but it's the closest equivalent."

"Is that a problem? You seem to be fine without it."

"It's not a problem here. It would be like you not having your phone in medieval England. Useless anyway. And--" She fell silent. He could see and feel the troubled emotions inside her.

"What happened? I can feel something inside you. It's like a bruise or maybe a... I don't know... an internal tear."

"It-- it had itself quenched."

"Sorry, I keep thinking of it as a program or a computer. I don't know what that means-- it's nothing to do with superconductors, right? But I can see something in you, not good, something-- a sibling?"

"It's not like a family member. It's different. No," she added, seeing his thought, "it's not a domestic animal. A savant-- a personal savant, not like the big ones-- is more like an advisor that you've always had. Maybe an uncle? A family therapist? I don't think there's an equivalent in your age."

"It can turn itself off? It did that?"

"It's not a machine. It-- in your terms, it committed suicide."

He hugged her. Yes, he could feel what was going on inside her and he was learning to let his calmer awareness flow over her, which helped, but there was nothing like physical contact. She melted into him. He felt along her spine and found spots where his fingers could press that sent some kind of pleasant energy up into her. She cried silently onto his shoulder.

She opened up a little, letting him know the savant as a personality. When she'd been growing up there were several adults important to her. She had parents, but there were others just as important, part of a group parenting system, and her savant was one of them.

They spent several minutes like that. When they separated he took her by the hand. He knew what to do. He undressed her and laid her on the bed, opened her legs, and put his mouth on her sex. That was all it took. Just the touch of the tip of his tongue on her clitoris did it.

# # #

I was a mess when I returned from Mesopotamia. Physically, of course. I'd stayed as long as I could, close to my limit, so my body was riddled with genetic defects and enzymes turned toxic and all sorts of bad things. It took months for the medical savants to get me healthy again.

But that wasn't the worst part. My physical problems were almost a relief because getting well gave me a goal, a reason to keep going. Emotionally I felt lost. Lost and adrift in my own time. I didn't seem to belong in it anymore. Its cities were dull, its entertainments boring, its people pathetically conventional.

My savant was a problem too. It hadn't wanted me to superposition again after medieval England, and certainly not into the deep past of the Bronze Age. My trip there wasn't the deepest the Org had ever sent someone, but it wasn't far off, and was the longest anyone has stayed that deep in the past. When I returned, my savant could tell immediately that I'd changed. I didn't listen to its advice, in fact I hardly listened to it at all. I didn't need it anymore. I would regularly shut it out, silence it, because we were having violent disagreements that never resolved. I'd been living as a goddess, a real goddess, doing things for people that a goddess would do, treated by them as a goddess. It was a heady experience, I got that, an ego seduction I needed to stay aware of and not let get out of hand. But at the same time it was an exhilarating way of being that I never wanted to give up. Still is.

And goddesses don't need guardian angels. I'd been away from my savant, in my personal time, for a few years total between the Bronze Age and Medieval England, totally disconnected from it. It's... it's still hard to talk about it, but I finally had to sever our relationship. It was partly like you might feel if you had to disown a sibling, or get a divorce from your childhood sweetheart. I'd grown up with it. It had helped to educate me. But it insisted that I had to give up time travel, would not stop trying to convince me to leave the Org, tried to block everything I did, including not transmitting my reports, even sometimes refusing to book me on transports when I needed to meet someone in person. I, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to get back into a capsule and super to a new era, or even back to my role in Mesopotamia.

It didn't take the breakup well. The Org people suggested counseling but I knew that wouldn't work. I'd grown beyond my savant and it wouldn't accept that. Nothing could be done. I severed the connection and acquired a new savant, one just for business, sort of an executive assistant. You can't do much in my era without a savant of some kind to act as an intermediary; it's even more difficult than trying to live in the Modern Age without a cellphone.

The Org wanted me to take some time off before superpositioning again. I'd required significant metabolic repairs, some of them new, that the medical savants wanted to observe for a while, and my savant issues didn't fill them with confidence regarding my emotional state.

And I had to admit that my emotional state wasn't superb. So I decided to go to Mars.

# # #

You might find that shocking, but let me explain. In my era the Moon and Mars are viable, self-sustaining colonies and have been for centuries. There's an established transportation system that can take you to either, and tourism is an important part of the economy and culture of both. I'd been to the Moon a couple of times already. It's not bad, they've got their own variation on Earth culture, and Moon gravity is fun, but it wasn't far enough away for me. Plus my savant had been urging me to try emigration to one of them as an alternative to time travel. I guess I felt a little guilty, so I told myself I would visit the Red Planet and investigate settling in the colony while I was there.

The next habitat coming by was Khufu, a converted asteroid that originally had the same name. I knew I was channeling my inner Bronze Age goddess but that seemed like a good omen. And the Egyptian reference kept me thinking of Sobek, which I liked. So I got a seat on the shuttle heading up there and took up residence.

Something you'll want to understand: a habitat is a transporter that cycles between the orbits of Earth and Mars regularly, in an orbit that gets you to your destination in minimum time using minimum energy. But even so, you're going to spend nearly five months on it. So it has to be big, big enough that a traveller can walk around, explore, get to meet other people, interact-- it has to be at least as interesting as, say, a small town.

Khufu's not that big. In fact, as these things go, compared to a lot of asteroids, it was considered tiny. It was one of the earlier cyclers, hollowed out from the original rubble pile-- that's what small asteroids are mostly, sometimes with an iron core-- and then a few smaller asteroids were added to it. It was about two kilometers long and a kilometer in diameter inside, barely enough to build a small town, plus some forest and farmland to help with the internal biosphere.

Something else to understand is that each of these habitats-- there are several-- has its own community, its own culture. There's always a core group of members who live permanently in it, maintaining it, so when you enter the "hab" you're expected to join the community and live according to its ways while you're there. Choosing a hab with the right community is as important as choosing one with the right schedule. I could have taken the Blau Kami, a luxury cycler that's a lot like one of the big cruise ships you have here, though an order of magnitude bigger. But I would have had to wait ten months for it to come around on its next cycle and I was hot to trot.

I was a little surprised when they Org agreed. They wanted me to recuperate, but not take too long. They were sending me some new confidential data that had recently been gathered. New currents discovered in the time stream. The experts couched the data in terms to make it sound like new territory to be explored, but I picked up on an anxiety in what they didn't say. Something was going on that they didn't understand and didn't like and they wanted their top historian's help. You might think that with time travel it wouldn't matter when I decided to superposition back, right? But keep in mind that we're all flowing down that same stream and it gets harder and harder to go back. Imagine you live in, say, a houseboat on a river and you get word of a rockslide upstream that maybe changed the course of the river. You'd want to find out right away what happened back there. There might be a flood coming, or maybe a major diversion and the water could dry up. You get the idea.

And the community on Khufu sounded intriguing.

The Blau Kami was built and run by a Lunar organization, so the culture was a derivative of the Moon's culture, which was close to mainstream Earth. Khufu, on the other hand, was independent and proudly so. There were two ways you could travel in Khufu: you could just be a passenger, in which case you wandered around the small cylindrical territory, maybe helped out in the orchards or the hydroponics.

But there was another way: for the full experience you could join the community, which required linking your points to it. It was like the first stage that the Director had me link into, but not as directly connected. It all went through a savant. That changed everything: to be lightly connected to about three hundred other minds. Most people don't like that and just go as passengers, but I elected for it, thinking maybe I needed to just inundate myself in a community, hopefully getting in return some of the sense of belonging that I'd felt in the prince and princess's households.

Of the two hundred or so travelers on the shuttle to the hab there were only a few of us who'd been granted full membership. If you just wanted transportation to Mars, that was fine, but you couldn't just reserve a cabin in the biosphere and be admitted to the community. There was an interview process, first with a proxy of the savant they kept on Earth to get around the light speed time delay, then with a subset of the group as the habitat got closer, and lastly with the whole community. I'd gone through it myself but it was perfunctory. I was a minor celebrity from the debrief of my time in Mesopotamia. It was definitely good marketing for them to have Tahsin of Mesopotamia flying with them.

The Khufu colony-- they called themselves a "colony in space"-- had a reputation as a sex cult, and they did have the occasional orgy, but the culture was way more than that. I saw it as an experiment in enhanced connection.

A welcoming committee met me as I floated out of the shuttle hatch and I was immediately offered a connection to their savant, which I accepted. I'd been instructed in some explanatory material on greetings after a long separation and followed through on that, a series of hugs and kisses, with each of the three welcomers, two handsome men and a very attractive woman. It was a very touchy-feely culture. They led me, often by the hand, with at least one of them always touching me in some way, on the walk to my cottage, which was built on the side of a hill overlooking the tiny downtown and with a strange but really pleasant view of farmland, forest, a couple of small lakes, that curved up and around on either side, to an even tinier community, just a few structures, almost overhead. Like everyone, I'd seen these views in various media, but there's nothing like being there. It felt cozy. A whole world before me in a single panorama.

I'd made the unusual choice to live alone while I was in Khufu. That had been a concern during the interview, but they really wanted me so they allowed that. Still, they couldn't quite believe I actually wanted to be alone. No one joins a culture like this because they need alone time. They gave me privacy to change into their standard garb, a simple two-piece that both men and women wore. Khufu was a clothing-optional culture. People went naked or topless all the time.

By the way, all the clothing in my era is self-cleaning. I don't understand why you don't have self-cleaning clothing here. It's just chemistry and I'm pretty sure one of your research Orgs of this era could figure it out.

They all waited just outside for me. I could have invited them in and had sex with any or all of them. It wasn't a sex cult, but it was a sex-forward culture. I was a star and they'd just returned to Earth from the long return part of the orbit.

As I said, the habs are established in a transfer orbit between planets that makes the trip from one planet to the other as short as possible. But you pay for that on the return trajectory, which takes much longer. In the case of an Earth-Mars transport, that means about eighteen months in which the hab zooms past Mars after dropping off passengers and freight, heads out-system almost to the asteroid belt, and then swings around to come back to meet Earth in its orbit. Besides the Earth-to-Mars transporters, there's another fleet of Mars-to-Earth transporters to provide a short return trip.

The Khufuans all had a bit of island fever and were anxious to enjoy some new blood. I'd been celibate since returning from Mesopotamia; my memories were still fresh of my Bronze Age lovers, so no one in this age appealed to me, at least not yet. My Khufu greeters gave me the VIP tour and we walked all around the small territory. We literally walked all around because we did the whole circumference of the cylinder. All quite normal and mainstream for a small community in a temperate climate.

But just underneath was a constant ebb and flow of emotions that I was now a party to. Dozens of people, sensing my presence, came out of their cabins or shops to greet me, giving me hugs and kisses each time. I sensed a wave of hunger grow as their late afternoon meal time approached and I was invited to join them at a local eatery, where we ate some kind of vegetarian dish and drank local beer. It was pleasant. Someone was always touching me. I was starting to like that.

As evening approached-- they kept the day/night cycle like Earth's when they were near Earth and controlled the sunlight that got piped in to enforce that rhythm, then gradually changed to the Martian day/night as they approached that destination-- I could feel a different kind of hunger rising, dim thoughts and unresolved images that hinted of what these people wanted and what some of them were already doing about it. They fed me more beer, which was pretty good, then had me try some of their local wine, which was pretty bad, and then a local spirit that I couldn't tell from grain alcohol. I didn't get drunk but they did. The local eatery had transformed into a local bar, or maybe disco because people brought in synthesizers and started dancing. Maybe it was in my honor-- I couldn't tell-- but they considered it a big deal. We early time travelers were a bit like your astronauts. I could have gone back to my place with any one of them, male or female, probably more than one, and more and more arrived to welcome me, and each one of them was so nice.

They were all nice. That was the problem. They were all much the same. Choosing one of them would be much like choosing any other. Their long term group connection, it seemed, enforced a uniformity among them. They peppered me with questions of my time in Mesopotamia. I answered as best I could, even though most of it was in my extensive debrief, which had been published. It was all over the network. I was polite, but their repeated questions, all much the same, much of it agrarian-focused, started to get boring. I realized that while they were more connected to each other, they were less connected to the rest of the world. I pleaded circadian issues-- what you call jet lag-- and went back to my cottage alone. They were all disappointed. And I do mean literally all. I could see that they were counting on at least one of them being invited into my bed and then all of them, let's say vicariously, or virtually, enjoying the new experience of sexual intimacy with the famous time traveler.

I did finally take a lover after being there a week, and he was okay, very solicitous, very willing to do whatever I wanted, but the real connection wasn't there, not the natural connections I'd felt with my Assyrian lovers, nor the enhanced, purely sexual one with the Director, definitely not in the same universe as what I feel with you. And there was the constant presence of hundreds of other minds as if they were peeking through the windows or listening at the door. I'm not against sex in public, as you well know, but this was like sex on stage. And I didn't find the script engaging.

The reason, I found out later, was their savant. It wasn't the savant's fault, let's get that straight right away. It was that you can't really have a strong connection comprising a few hundred people. The Director more of less maxed out an effective connection being the hub for me and his woman companion and giving the attendants a view of the events. The Khufu community was running a pale imitation, putting everything through the savant. It was overworked. I felt sorry for the poor thing.

There was one way I did take advantage of the Khufu community. I mentioned that they were a very attractive bunch. That wasn't luck. One way in which they were up to date was in cosmetic and physiological biotech. They all looked very similar because they'd made themselves all very similar. They were a bit oversexed because they'd all made themselves oversexed. Khufu was where I had the treatments done that you discovered in me our first night.

In fact, Khufu was a popular transport in part because passengers could have work done on themselves during the trip. They did a good business in what you call plastic surgery, of course, but also longevity treatments, genetic repair, metabolic enhancements-- not all of them sanctioned by planetary Orgs. The central territory of the habitat was bucolic, a small town and the land around it; but the hubs at either end of the asteroid were medical centers as good as any in the solar system. They had an entire facility dedicated to procedures that could only be performed in zero-g.

I didn't need most of what Khufu offered. The Org had already applied enhancements and corrections in me that were even more advanced. I decided on a set of sexual metabolism enhancements.

I knew the Org wouldn't approve of such a treatment, but I needed something to feel alive again after my time with my Bronze Age lovers. The first step was simply to add more sensory receptors. The traditional idea that there are five senses is ridiculous. Touch, for example, includes pressure, temperature, pain, and so on. There's proprioception, and the perceptions of internal organ processes. Sex is its own sense. I was given more nerve cells devoted to sex, all over. They extended my cones a bit into UV and IR, so I can read faces better than most people. You've witnessed my increased capacity for orgasms and my faster recovery time. They even interviewed me about my favorite sex activities to enhance my body for them. It was really quite awesome.

The process took a couple of months. This kind of treatment was almost impossible to find on Earth-- it's considered borderline unethical, doing something like that to yourself-- but Khufu was independent. They were enthusiastic about doing it for me.

But then they weren't as enthusiastic when I didn't immediately take the opportunity to have an orgy with them. I did feel an enhanced sexual energy; their procedures worked. I just wasn't sure of myself. Yeah, me, unsure of myself? How could that be? But I'd recently had to break off intense relationships with three people, I'd lost my savant, and I needed to find my balance.

In the end they did seduce me. First, they were still touching me, and as the treatment took effect those touches became more and more pleasant, even compelling. They could tell, and although I stayed mostly unconnected from them, I couldn't help letting some of that pleasant feeling escape, which only encouraged them more. Walking down the street strangers would come up and rub my back; I couldn't sit for long at a play-- they liked to do little theatrical presentations and musical events, which were often fun-- without two or three of them sitting next to me, even behind me, and stroking me all over. The treatment was still new to me, so I was having some trouble managing the sensations, and it all made me very horny.

Then one of the guys, not the most handsome but he had a slight resemblance to Dagan-- or at least that's what I told myself at the time-- sent me images of the zero cage.

That's what they called it. Zero as in zero gravity. Most space tourists try zero-g sex on their first trip. Of course, who wouldn't? I done it a long time ago when I was a teenager on my first field trip to the Moon. But it's awkward, not easy at all. Humans evolved to live in gravity. We need it to stay healthy. And to reproduce. The sexual desire for someone is, mechanistically, the desire to push and pull one body part in and out of another. That's really difficult if a push will send your lover flying across the room and a pull will fling you both tumbling ass over elbow.

The Khufu folks had come up with a solution. There was a big room in the habitat, right at the axis, that was usually just a view spot. It didn't rotate and it had this big circular window from which you could watch all of Khufu slowly spin. Really a great view. They'd rigged up a cylindrical cage in the middle. I didn't understand how that would help-- the cage was still pretty big-- but their hints and their obvious enthusiasm were very tempting. And in spite of my questions they wouldn't tell me anything more or send any images of how it was used. They were teasing me. I succumbed.

My first surprise when I floated out of the elevator and into the hub was how many of them were waiting for me. When I'd finally agreed to it I'd picked a couple of men and women to do it with, but there must have been ten of them, and as they prepared me more arrived. Two of them took me into a zero-g bathroom, scrubbed me down-- more to sensitize me than to get me clean-- and made sure all my orifices were clean and well-lubricated. It was clear that I was in for a special experience, whatever it was going to be.

They handed me naked into the middle of the cage as if I were a piece of luggage. I couldn't, and didn't need to, do anything myself. My chosen sex partners were waiting there, plus others, and began with a full body massage. I've given you what you think is a full body massage, but you don't know. I was floating in air and there were hands all over me, and I do mean all over. Every muscle in my body had someone working on it, head to toe, front and back, simultaneously, only possible in zero-g. That's a full body massage!

They were careful not to touch sexual areas, but they didn't have to. I caught fire. That's what it felt like. My Dagan lookalike happened to be the one massaging my scalp and his cock, nice and stiff, was right in front of me. I pulled him by his butt to me, even with several people massaging my arms as I did it, and sucked him down.

That, it turned out, was the starting signal, and what they were waiting for. It was open season on the famous Historian who'd chosen to become a Khufuan. A mouth pressed onto my cunt, male or female I couldn't tell, and I came immediately, hard. I heard squealing and realized it was me, on that cock I was trying to swallow. I also realized that I'd unconsciously opened my points to them finally and they were sensing my orgasm. That only urged them further. Teeth bit on my nipples, which you know I can't take, drives me crazy, did even before my treatments, and a tongue did its best to stick itself up my anus.

You can't imagine, and I can't describe, what a total fuck experience it was. I didn't feel weightless, I felt enveloped. In glimpses I saw what they were doing. The ones around me were floating and holding me in place while they licked and sucked and penetrated me, but they were in turn held in place by a surrounding group who were gripping themselves in the cage's footholds and poles and who knows what else, and using their leverage to keep my lovers-of-the-moment in place all around me. I took cock and mouth and pussy and every other body part in every way and the combinations were endless. The connection with them was elementary, as I explained, but they could tell I was coming and what was making me come, and they all wanted to make me come. Wouldn't you want to go down on one of your movie stars if you got the chance?

And they came too. That was an equal part of the ecstasy. I truly have no idea how many men ejaculated in me. I was eating load after load while cocks jerked more come into my ass and cunt. I licked pussy after pussy with endless female legs suffocating me. I gave hand jobs and rubbed G-spots raw. My feet got covered in fluids. Liquids of all kinds, even sweat, are a problem in zero-g, everything gets really messy, really fast, but they had these little zero-g vacuums that the outer people used to keep everything tidy. Me too. Even as I was being reamed in one hole they were cleaning me out in another. Which after re-lubing then got sucked or filled or whatever by my next eager sex partner.

And then the lights went out. That gorgeous view ended when they opaqued the window, not that I was in any state to appreciate the view, and if I'd thought my world had shrunk to sex and bodies and orgasms before, now I understood that that had just been the warm up. Oh my, what they did to me in the darkness! I got manipulated into positions and couplings I didn't think possible, and you know how limber I am. Endless cock. They sensed how much I love it. It seemed like half the men in Khufu came inside me. Maybe more of the women did it on me. There were a few moments when I felt like I was surrounded by pussy. They could also sense how much I like that. They must have been rotating more people in, everyone taking advantage of the opportunity.

I didn't black out, not the way you do me, but at some point I noticed the light gradually returning and the sex had faded into a gentle massage, with plenty of warm wash implements cleaning me up so that, when they floated me back out of the chamber it was as if nothing had happened. Except of course everything had happened.

I was dressed and then, as gravity returned in the elevator, they held me up until I could find my legs again. They drove me in a little cart to my place and put me to bed. I don't know how long I slept. I mean, I didn't know how long I'd been getting fucked either. Between the two I think I lost, if that's the word, an Earth day and a half. Felt like eons. Like time travel.

The next time I walked into town, it was a whole different experience. I'd closed my connection to them back down at first-- I needed private time to process what had happened-- but I didn't need any points, or a savant, to understand that my relationship with Khufu had changed irrevocably. For one thing, the looks on their faces: yes, a few men gave me those knowing looks, you know-- well, actually you probably don't-- of ego gratification, that they'd possessed me, done whatever they'd done with me. Some men never grow up. Some women too, my sex is not immune to that illusion. But most of the Khufuans were simply in awe. It reminded me of my time being Ishtar and Isis, and was nearly as great as the sex itself.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to stay on board for the return to Earth. It would have meant 18 months more in Khufu, the way the cycler orbit works, swinging out past Mars' orbit toward the asteroid belt, then back again. And basically no non-community passengers. They promised more zero-g sex, in fact sex of every kind with everyone, and a lot more than sex. But I'd promised myself and my late savant that I'd give Mars its chance.

Plus the Org was continuing to send me updates. Something was happening in the past and they didn't know what it was. They didn't say it, but they didn't have to: they had another mission waiting for me, one both urgent and important. They wanted me to get back to full health, yes, but they didn't want me to waste time doing it. So down to Mars I went, at least until the next transport back to Earth.

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