Ghost Rider Pt. 01

"Whatever happened to David?"

It's a question David Shyam knew had never been asked since he left his life behind in favor of the open road. Sure, he was the kind of alone that would have been a war-crime had his solitude been imposed upon him. And maybe he didn't live exactly the life his new coworkers had been led to believe. But, as far as he was concerned, he'd cracked the code. He was the master of his existence; beholden to no one and free from the humiliating, incomprehensible, and inevitable results of human interaction. It came at the expense of the certain knowledge that he would be alone forever, but he had made peace with his fate.

Weirdo. Lunatic. Freak.

Petra Jansen had always been... different. But she wasn't the type of person who would let the opinions of others prevent her from pursuing her dreams with relentless focus. Possessed with a mind that processed even the most incomprehensible subjects with ease, it soon became clear to her that she could do what others couldn't; change her destiny. The only catch was: no one could know. If she aimed to pull off a miracle, she would have to hide from the world and operate in complete isolation for year after impossibly-lonely year.

David's well-ordered life, and serene acceptance of his lonely destiny, left him wholly unprepared for the mysterious appearance of a beautiful genius who had done the impossible, only to find herself shouting for help outside his carefully constructed refuge in the middle of a deafening thunderstorm.

He pledged himself to her safety without a second thought. She saw the man, rather than the lonely drifter. They captured each other's hearts, despite neither having ever known love. But the world was not a place predisposed to tolerate innocent love, or the inexplicable appearance of a gorgeous woman who wasn't supposed to exist. Overnight, they found themselves on the run, and hoping fate would give them enough time to discover the meaning of true happiness.

Author's note:

This is a very slow-burn romance with some science fiction elements. I'm splitting it into five parts to make it easier to consume on this platform, but be advised that this story is more lit than erotica (especially in parts 1 and 2). If that's not your cup of tea, I'd suggest some of my earlier works which lean in the opposite direction. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy this story which has been rattling around in my head for quite some time. All on-page sensuality takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

One

"Good morning, everyone!" the too-chipper voice enthused in David Shyam's earbuds. "Happy Monday!"

David made no reply other than removing his electric kettle from its base and pouring the steaming water into a French press. He noted the time as he rinsed his mug in the sink. His morning stand-up proceeded much as the prior forty-seven had since David had joined the company ten weeks prior. He was the seventh of twelve software developers, meaning chances were better than even that he had several minutes before he would be required to speak.

True to his prediction, he was able to pour his coffee, dispose of the grounds, and rinse out the carafe before ultimately settling into his desk chair in advance of the project manager calling his name.

He glanced at the sticky note above the monitor on his left (which read 'Morpheus. io') before he responded. "All tasks proceeding as expected and on track to be completed prior to the end of the sprint. No blockers."

"See?" the project manager interjected. "Why can't the rest of you be that concise?"

A few thumbs-up reactions danced across his screen, followed by a series of supportive messages posted to the meeting chat. David was about to redirect his attention when he received a private message from a teammate reading, 'kiss ass,' which he ignored without comment.

As the meeting entered its closing phase, David heard an unexpected burst of chatter which demanded his attention.

"Many of you have been asking for an opportunity to do some real, in-person collaboration... and we've been listening. The V. P. of I. T. has fought long and hard, and he's finally gotten approval to requisition space in the newly reopened office in Dallas for the entire team. Now, we know many of you don't live in the D. F. W. area, and we're prepared to discuss your individual situations to determine what makes the most sense for both you and the company.

"The best news is that the office refit will be complete in just two weeks, so we'll get to do this meeting in person every day starting right after Election Day."

"Is this... um... mandatory?" the teammate who had just accused David of being an advocate of lip on buttocks stimulation asked hesitantly.

"As I said, we'll talk to each of you individually about your unique situation, and determine what makes the most sense. Expect to see an invite on your calendar for later this week. All right, if there's nothing else... have a great day, everyone!"

David reached for his mouse to leave the meeting with nary a change in expression. Before the meeting window finished closing, he noted a notification for a meeting with the project manager and V. P. for later that day. He opened the invite and selected the option for 'decline with note,' writing simply: 'I resign my position with immediate effect.'

He then powered down the computer on his left and turned to the one on his right, which had a sticky note affixed to its monitor which read, 'Lamneth Labs.' He opened his collaboration software and joined his next meeting.

While David waited for his turn to speak, he activated the tablet which sat between his monitors and, after checking to be certain he was using his 'David Shayem' profile (as opposed to three others with tiny variations on the spelling of his name), marked himself as 'Open to Work.'

"David?" the project manager in his ear queried, "Where are you calling in from today?"

Chastising himself for committing the original sin of mentioning his itinerant lifestyle during the interview process, David reached for a page on the corner of his desk entitled 'Driving Tour of U. S. National Parks.' He compared the drive times listed with the sticky note which indicated the last time he had been asked for his location and the calendar on his screen before replying, "Voyageurs."

"That's the one in Wisconsin, right?"

"Minnesota."

"It's up by the border," another voice chimed in. "I went there with my family when I was in high school. Great canoeing."

"Well," the project manager continued, "keep us up to date on your progress. You must know, quite a few of us are pretty jealous of the fact that you're able to go on this grand tour across our great country without taking time off."

"Uh huh," David replied when the lingering silence seemed to demand a response.

"Where you headed to next?"

"Theodore Roosevelt."

"That's in South Dakota?"

"North."

Another silence bloomed amongst the dozen bored engineers on the call, prompting the project manager to huff, "Don't forget to send pictures. Now... where were we? Oh, yes! Your update, David."

"All tasks proceeding as expected and on track to be completed prior to the end of the sprint. No blockers."

The meeting wrapped up moments later, allowing David to dive into keeping the aforementioned tasks on track. Despite having fallen almost by accident into the habit of overemployment, he was loath to use his eighty-hour-a-week schedule as an excuse for not meeting his commitments. The schedule of working from dawn to dusk every day with no breaks for weekends or holidays was not for the faint of heart, but the inescapable truth was that he had little else to fill his schedule.

The conclusion of his highest-priority work item (updating the color template on the payment confirmation screen of his client's B2B app) allowed him a moment to take a breath. He activated the automated suite of testing tools and smiled in satisfaction when no bugs were detected. He opened the company's collaboration tool and messaged his P. M. that he was ready for his next task.

As David waited for a reply, he felt the harbingers of what many of his coworkers likely would have called crippling hunger, so he stood from his desk and made his way into the galley. The journey was not a lengthy one in the tiny cubic which defined his world. He refilled the voluminous insulated water bottle which was his constant companion, taking a moment as he did so to check the gauge on the wall which indicated his fresh-water tanks were sixty-three-percent full.

Turning to the task of nourishing himself, he pulled the carafe for his blender from the drying rack and opened his pantry to extract oats, peanut butter, whey protein, and powdered greens. Each container held its own scoop, which he used to add those ingredients to the carafe. He slid open the drawer of his fridge and pulled out a carton of almond milk before sliding open the drawer beneath to extract a sack of frozen bananas. He added a precise amount of each to the blender before lidding it up and hitting PUREE, While the blender spun, he re-stowed his ingredients and plucked his cup from the sink. He slapped the switch to suspend the blending before pouring the gray sludge into his cup.

He placed the concoction in the fridge to firm up while he belatedly saw to his daily cleaning ritual (since his willingness to tolerate the admittedly unappealing sludge was entirely dependent on it having the consistency of a milkshake). The pajama pants and T-shirt he wore were consigned to the hamper before he stepped into a head so small that one had to step outside to change one's mind. He attended to his daily ablutions prior to showering, since he detested sitting on a wet toilet seat and even the most stringent use of the switch to shut off the flow of water when not actively in use left the entire chamber soaked up to the ceiling. Emerging from the steaming bathroom, he could not suppress a full-body shiver in response to the relatively cooler air of his living quarters. He dressed hurriedly in pajama pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt (which were twins to those he had removed in all but color) before plucking his gruel from the fridge and returning to his desk.

Several inquiries related to his 'Open to Work' announcement awaited David on his tablet, so he spent a few minutes perusing the messages which ranged from farcical to intriguing, ultimately responding to three with permission for the recruiter in question to submit him for consideration. An objective observer might have suggested that the way David approached his contract jobs was indistinguishable from an addiction; constantly striving for more work with little regard for how busy he was or how much money he was making.

David had just started his next work item for what was, for the moment, his only job when his phone rang. He was inclined to ignore it, but he knew all too well that one of the costs of job-searching was that it was impossible to avoid speaking to strangers on occasion.

He clicked ANSWER in his VoIP software and announced, "Speak."

"David!" a voice which he recognized as belonging to the V. P. of I. T. at Morpheus. io yelped. "What's this I hear about you quitting?"

"I don't understand your question."

"Frank said you emailed him your resignation."

"That's correct."

"But... why?! You're one of our top performers. We're in the middle of the sprint, for fuck's sake. You can't just bail on us."

"My contract states that either of us can terminate our affiliation at any time. I need only to provide written notice, which I've done. The truth is... I would never have even considered this job if it wasn't one hundred percent remote."

"But we're only requiring two days a week to start with, David. And I can promise we could be flexible."

"I think we're done here," David replied with a bored tone.

"Wait! Isn't there anything I can say to change your mind?"

"No."

"Come on, David," his still-former V. P. pleaded. "I knew this move would create turnover, but H. R. assured me we'd be able to entice those I wanted to keep to stay. They showed me studies and everything."

David could think of nothing to say, so he tried to return his attention to his work, but the call again interrupted him. "What about a permanent position?"

"Still no."

"A leadership position, then. And I'll put it in writing that you'll be able to stay remote permanently."

A notification popped up on David's tablet informing him of a message from one of the recruiters he used frequently (and the one who was tied for second place with respect to overall effectiveness). He returned his attention to his call and said, "Unfortunately I've already accepted another position."

"God damn it!" the V. P. exclaimed. "Seriously!"

"Indeed."

"Well, that's just fucking perfect," came the frustrated growl before a beep informed him that the call had been disconnected.

David took a moment to reply in the affirmative to the aforementioned message from the recruiter (which asked as to his availability to start immediately on a six-week project) before rising from his desk. His eyes were drawn to the National Parks cheat sheet on the corner of his desk. He shook his head ruefully at the ruse before peering across his desk to check the all-important gauges on his dashboard. Noting that his propane gauge read a bit low, considering the weather outside, he turned to step through the door to exit the cramped confines of his living space.

Far from the endless lakes of far northern Minnesota, the desolate almost-desert of the Oklahoma Panhandle surrounding his van was something no one in their right mind would seek to preserve, much less enshrine as a National Park. In place of omnipresent water, boreal forests, and boggy lowlands, he found the endless flat of sparse, brittle grass only broken up by the occasional skeleton of an abandoned grain silo or ancient barn. But all David cared about was the fact that the only living things in sight (aside from the aforementioned grass) were a few head of cattle on the horizon and one very loud steer who had taken to grazing close enough to his van that he could hear occasional moo-ing during his calls.

He waved to the massive herbivore, whom he had dubbed 'Beefis,' and called, "How's it hanging, big guy?"

His only companion's loud response continued as David switched from his primary to his secondary propane tank (and made a mental note that he would need to make the day-long trip to a population center to replenish his supplies in the coming days).

The steer's presence reminded David of his location, and prompted him to mutter, "National Park... I really need to figure out something to tell these brainwashed suburbanites which won't invite constant questions."

David did a quick walk around the exterior of his quite expensive and highly customized camper van. While he was outside, he took a moment to disconnect his solar panels and stow them in a compartment beneath his bedroom. He would have normally been content to leave them in place overnight, but the skies to the south looked a bit too foreboding for him to assume the night would pass without incident. With this in mind, he also retracted the awning which extended from above the door and did a final check to assure himself that he was as prepared as possible for the region's occasionally energetic weather.

Job done, he climbed back inside his tiny abode and triggered the control on his desk to raise it to a standing height, whereupon he dove back into what promised to be at least another eight hours of work.

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Two

Long after the sun had dipped beneath the western horizon, David remained hard at work. A lengthy interview for a contract he suspected would carry him through the end of the year had pulled him away from his committed work for several hours, canceling out any potential time savings which might have resulted from quitting one of his jobs earlier that day.

Over his right shoulder, a mindless action movie played on the wall-mounted flat panel. Until moments earlier, he had been seated in his recliner zoning out, but a preposterous declaration by the 'hacker' amongst the antagonists had served as an inspiration for the problem David had spent the afternoon trying to solve with limited success.

Outside, the sounds of a vigorous thunderstorm could be heard. He could also feel a steady swaying caused by the wind buffeting the broad sides of his van. The thought had occurred to David in the past that he had, as near as makes no difference, no defenses against a tornado should one bear down on him. He attempted to minimize his risk by keeping a close eye on the weather (since, unlike ninety-nine percent of humanity, he could just move his home out of the storm's path should the need arise). With that in mind, he glanced at the weather app on his screen to confirm that none of the harbingers for twisters existed in his vicinity before returning his attention to the meddlesome API call to fetch the proper client logo from an antiquated relational database which had dominated his afternoon and evening.

"Take that, you ornery bastard," David growled as he noted with satisfaction the hard-won green checkmark on his debugger which signified a clean compile of his code.

Before he could commit his change to his feature branch, however, his world exploded with light so bright that his first thought was that his battery packs had spontaneously combusted. Furthering this suspicion was the fact that all his electronics had stopped working. Yet there had been no cataclysmic BOOM, nor was he experiencing the unnatural quiet associated with the temporary deafness which could accompany a near miss by lightning.

He rose cautiously from his desk and reached warily for the handle to the van's door. The expected jolt of static electricity did not greet his hand as he reached for the knob, deepening in his mind the mystery of what could have caused the flash of light other than a lightning strike. Before David could open the door, however, he heard a noise which heightened his confusion by an order of magnitude.

"Help!" a decidedly feminine voice shouted through the storm.

Without hesitation, David threw open the door to his van and leapt into the downpour. Lightning streaked across the sky so frequently that his surroundings looked not unlike how he imagined the dance floor for a trendy midtown club would appear on a Saturday night. The visibility granted by the heavenly illumination was hardly sufficient, however, to penetrate the sheeting rainfall gusting across the plain. He reached inside to snatch his keys and a flashlight from where they were hung next to the entrance before slamming the door to his van closed and trudging out into the storm.

"Hello!" he called out as he struggled to make headway through the deluge.

Yet even through the pounding rain and howling wind, he could perceive that all was not well with his little slice of desolation. There was, for example, a decided lack of obstruction to his west where a sturdy fence had stretched before sundown. Notably, his weatherproof storage box where he stored his garbage (which he had lashed to one of the aforementioned fence's posts) was also absent.

He moved cautiously in that direction, memories of online videos from tornado survivors who spoke of storms 'coming out of nowhere' playing on a loop in his head. His caution turned to panic, however, when he caught sight of a vision that had no earthly business in the middle of a driving thunderstorm in western Oklahoma (or indeed anywhere on the terrestrial plane based on David's admittedly limited understanding of the nature of the universe).

Lying in the middle of a perfectly flat, unnaturally featureless circle of what his inspection suggested was volcanic glass was (and, despite considerable effort, he could think of no other way to frame it) a woman.

A naked woman.

He skidded to a halt (only missing by the scantest of margins tumbling headlong into the newcomer like an overeager third-string strong safety arriving late to the conclusion of a play). The impulse to back away, to do whatever it took to distance himself from the embarrassment and humiliation which always accompanied other members of his species, was overpowering. He even stumbled backward a few steps before another sound finally achieved the inevitable and sent him sprawling to the ground.

"Please..." she wheezed as she gazed up at him with desperate eyes.

In an instant, all thoughts of self vanished for David. He crawled over to the woman and shouted, "Can you walk?"

"I... I don't know," she stammered as she tried, without success, to rise to her knees.

He rose to stand over to her and said, "I'll help you stand. My van's right over here."

She gratefully leaned on him as she stood with his help. A distant part of his awareness suggested that he should have offered her the use of his shoes (not to mention his shirt) before setting off, but by the time that thought was fully formed in his consciousness they were already under way. This left him to pick out a path which would (he hoped) steer clear of sharp rocks or thorns while he tried with limited success to ignore the weight of her breast against his ribs, or the swell of its twin teasing the fingertips of the hand he was using to support her. Her notably shorter stature forced him to stoop to support her weight as they shuffled toward the dark silhouette of the van.

They reached his living quarters without incident and, after he struggled to extract his keys without inadvertently groping the woman he was meant to be rescuing, he opened the door and gestured inside.

"I don't think I can make it," she panted.

"Right," he huffed. He only needed to consider the quite narrow doorway for a moment before concluding that merely helping would not suffice to get her inside. Keeping his eyes on the stairs, rather than allowing his wits to be scrambled by another glimpse of her nudity, he grunted, "You'll have to get on my back."

"But you'll drop me!"

His head snapped in her direction by pure instinct and, before he could stop himself, he glanced down at her admittedly curvy, but by no means overweight, body. He bit back several wordy replies before muttering, "I won't," through gritted teeth. "Now... if you please..."

He used the door frame to brace himself and squatted low enough that she did not have to do anything beyond wrapping her arms around his chest.

"Wait!" she yelped as he rose to his undeniably average full height with the aid of the door frame. Her legs snaked around him as he climbed without effort into the van. "I wasn't ready!"

"Too late now," he grunted as he continued into the darkened van. He awkwardly squatted down next to the bed to allow her to take a seat on the bed. Once her arms released him, he took a long step to his closet and opened it wide before announcing, "Please help yourself. If you... um... need the head, it's the door on the right."

"Thank you," she whispered hoarsely.

"I'm going to... um... wait outside," David managed to grit out before he took a long step toward the door.

"Wait! Why?"

"There isn't a door to the bedroom, and there isn't room in the head to... um... do anything."

"But..." she began slowly. Her voice then increased in both volume and intensity as she yelped, "But it's storming... and it's pitch black in here!"

"You still won't have any privacy," he replied as he tried to ignore just how poor a job the blanket she had pulled from the bed to wrap around herself did of hiding her nudity. "Surely you'd be more comfortable if I..."

"I think," she began haltingly. "I think this is unquestionably a very unique situation, and it certainly wasn't my intention to arrive here with nothing. I can only surmise that something must have disrupted the Faraday-Lado containment field and caused the tesseract to collapse."

"The what?" he gaped, instinctively turning back to face her in response to her baffling comment.

It was only by the constant lightning outside the van that he was able to see her as she fixed him with a piercing gaze before seeming to sigh wearily. Her eyes danced around the darkened confines of his cubic before finally casting downward toward her lap. She tugged the blanket higher (although that only served to expose more of her thighs in the service of covering her cleavage) before glancing toward his open closet.

"I think perhaps you're right," she murmured without meeting his eyes.

"Then I'll step outside."

"You don't need to..." she said softly, but her words were cut off by the door closing behind him after he stepped into the storm.

The driving rain and constant thunder aided his efforts to ignore the nude woman on his bed, at least enough that the thought occurred to him to check to see if the explosion which had preceded her arrival did any further damage. A quick look around his van revealed that the western side was coated in splattered mud and clumps of grass. He checked his exterior storage and nothing seemed to be damaged. There was a similar lack of observable damage to the connection to the propane tanks.

It was only after he made his way to where the external readout for his battery packs was located that he started to understand the blackout. After flipping the cover panel up, he encountered a touchscreen display that was not only not illuminated, but appeared matte black when he shined his light on it. He tapped it a few times to no effect as he thought back to the company which had performed the refit of the van who claimed that the electrical system was 'more reliable than the sunrise.' Frantic checks of the other readouts around the van showed a similar lack of results. He had (while he was still getting accustomed to the van's systems) once run his batteries completely flat, so he knew that an absence of power in the batteries would not disable the displays (which ran off the engine's battery).

Feeling a growing sense of bewilderment, he circled to the portion of the van he referred to as 'the bridge' and climbed behind the wheel. After sliding the key into the ignition and giving it a tentative twist, he started at the sound of the mighty turbodiesel rumbling to life. He quickly noted, however, that most of his display was still dark.

"Where are you taking me?" his mysterious guest called out over his shoulder.

He quelled the impulse to look behind him (a likely unnecessary sacrifice considering the inside of the vehicle was lit only by the frequent flashes of lightning). "I'm just trying to figure out what still works. All the electrical systems are fuh... broken."

"But the engine started," she replied almost distractedly. "A diesel... flat-six... uneven firing... cold start... when was the engine manufactured?"

"Originally in 1992, but it was rebuilt from the pistons up last year."

"So no electronics," she continued as her voice grew louder in advance of the WHOOSH of air which heralded her taking a seat in his desk chair.

"Indeed," he agreed. "But the batteries were at sixty-eight percent before the lightning strike, so we're not out of juice."

"But nothing works," she said slowly. "Wait... what lightning?"

"The one that took out all the electronics. It happened just a few seconds before I heard you shouting for help."

"There must have been an E. M. P. when the containment field collapsed. There's no other reasonable explanation."

"I'm sorry," David groaned, "but... what are you talking about?"

"Where are we?" she snapped with unexpected urgency.

"Western Oklahoma, on the panhandle."

"And what's the date?"

"Excuse me?"

"The date! I need to know today's date!"

"The seventh of October."

"What year!?"

"2026?" he replied slowly.

"In Tesla's name!" she breathed reverently. "All the science was so rock-solid, and all my calculations were so unimpeachable, and all my testing was so conclusive, but there was always that infinitesimal possibility that I'd made a mistake. Obviously quite a few things went very wrong... because, as I said, I certainly did not intend to arrive bereft of even my clothing. But... I really did it."

"Did what... exactly?"

"Successfully transmitted a Morris-Musashi time nexus to translate eighty-six years into the past, of course."

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Three

David, without discernible reaction to his companion's startling revelation, mused, "If the lights are still out after the engine's been running for a few minutes, then I'm guessing the alternator's shot. That means we've likely only got maybe an hour of running the headlights, which isn't enough to get you to a population center. We might be stuck here until sunup."

"Did you not hear what I said?" she yelped from where she continued to sit in his desk chair just behind his right shoulder. "I traveled back in time."

"Yes," he replied evenly. "I heard what you said."

"And!"

"And, what? The fact that I understood each of the words you spoke does not mean I am capable of formulating an intelligent response."

"I recognize that time travel doesn't exist yet," she retorted, not unkindly. "If I'm being honest, I'm ninety-nine-point-eight-four-three percent certain that it doesn't exist in any time... at least for carbon-based lifeforms. But you're still familiar with the concept of time travel, right?"

"Affirmative."

Her voice grew softer as she asked, "Are you okay? I read that a lot of people in the twenty-twenties were a little..." She waited for several long beats, until it became clear he was either unwilling or unable to contribute to her thought, whereupon she added, "insane."

"Indeed. It will soon be quite uncomfortable in here without the A. C. running, thanks to all this humidity, but you're welcome to try to get some sleep on the bed."

"And?"

"That was the extent of my suggestion. Once dawn breaks, I'll drive us to a town that's a few hours from here. There I can arrange for more comfortable accommodations for you."

"I appreciate the offer... you know? I don't think I ever got your name."

"I don't recall offering it."

He heard a lengthy exhale prior to her announcing, "My name is Petra Jansen. I was born February 18th of 2081 in Cincinnati. I came from a fairly typical family (at least for that time and place); I'm one of sixteen. Although, as of November 12th of 2111 when I traveled back in time, I only had nine siblings and my father remained in my family. Plus my husband of sixteen years, of course."

"You were married at fourteen?" he replied without judgment.

"I come from a different time..." she groaned in frustration before ultimately prompting, "Is there a reason you're refusing to tell me your name?"

"You never asked me to give you my name."

"Are you insay," she yelped before stopping abruptly. She lowered her voice and continued, "You know what... I guess I didn't. Kind sir, what is your name, age, and... any other details which might be of interest to a woman whom you so kindly saved, and whom you have also seen naked."

"I didn't try to see you naked," he replied reflexively.

"Yet the fact remains that you know my name and pertinent personal information about me... and you've seen me naked. Are you seriously telling me you don't intend to give me anything?"

"My name is David Shyam. I am the same number of years old as you. I have no hometown, no family, no acquaintances, everything I own is in this van, and you have my assurance that you will never see me naked."

"Ohh... kay..."

For lack of a better strategy, David belatedly shut off the ignition to the van's engine which plunged them into an unnatural silence for several long moments before yet another crash of thunder rumbled around the plain.

"Let me ask you this," Petra spoke up after several more BOOMs from the storm surrounding them. "Do you have any idea what time it is, or how long it will be until dawn?"

"It was roughly half past one when the power went out. The sun came up yesterday at around oh-six-thirty."

"Can I ask you something... are you... you know... stupid?"

"No," he replied flatly before triggering the hood latch, opening the driver's side door, and stepping from the vehicle.

He activated his flashlight and opened the engine bay as he tried to recall what an alternator looked like from his prior attempts to do repairs. A visual inspection under the hood revealed nothing obviously out of order, but he had yet to achieve the level of digital nomad-itry which corresponded with becoming intimately familiar with every component of his van.

David had just started to investigate the wires coming out of the fuse box when he heard a soft voice next to him say, "I'm sorry." When he neither spoke nor redirected his attention, she added, "I don't know what the word I was searching for is, but I'd read enough about your time to know the word people use in my time is very insensitive."

"Use whatever word you want. It makes little difference to me."

"Spectrum!" she declared triumphantly. "That's the word I was looking for! I really am sorry about that other word, David." When he made no reply, she belatedly asked, "What are you looking for?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know... or you don't want to tell me because I was mean to you?"

"The former. I had thought to check to see if there was any visible damage to the alternator, but I don't know where it is... or what it looks like."

"It's right there," she announced without hesitation, pointing to a round, finned housing on the top of the engine block, just to the passenger side of the center of the engine bay.

"Um... are you sure?"

"Of course. Where else would it be?"

"Does it look... wait... how do you know?"

"Are you suggesting that a female is incapable of knowing anything about diesels?"

He shrugged without meeting her eyes and muttered, "You said you're from the future."

"Of course, I'm from the future! You think I would have just been randomly wandering around... where are we?"

"The Oklahoma panhandle."

"Walking around the Oklahoma panhandle in the middle of a thunderstorm, completely naked? Oh, and don't forget the fact that all your electrics just so happened to go out the moment of my arrival!"

"I didn't say I doubted your claim that you're from the future."

"Then what was your contention?"

"Do they still have diesels in the future?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't they?"

He muttered, "I guess I figured... you know... electric." Petra let out a loud chuckle before reaching out to slap David on the back. He retreated a step and grunted, "Why'd you hit me?"

"I wasn't trying to hurt you. That was meant to be a gesture of affection. It's just... electric motors for conveyances were outlawed in 2031. It's actually a topic of no small amount of conversation amongst several of the message boards I frequent. Frequented. Will one day frequent. No, that's not right. I am the subject with respect to the temporal referent, so it would be: frequented. The point is, diesels like this are actually quite common in eighty-five years, because they can be easily modified to run on all manner of hydrocarbons." She leaned in to peer at the alternator, shifting around to look at it from all sides before she straightened and reported, "It doesn't appear to be damaged, but I'd have to take it off the engine and take it apart to be sure. Do you have any tools?"

"Um... why?"

"So I can try to figure out why you're not getting a charge off the engine," she replied while she pulled the cover off the fuse box. She looked over her shoulder at him and asked, "I don't suppose you've got another flashlight?"

"Sure," David replied uncertainly. "It's in the aft driver's side storage locker. Inside the toolbox."

"Great!" Petra enthused. "Could you grab it for me?"

"Yeah," he muttered dejectedly.

He held out his flashlight to her, but she failed to notice his gesture. This forced him to reach out and tap her shoulder with it to get her attention. After she gave him a questioning look, she belatedly took the light from him, whereupon he turned on his heel and walked around the front of the van and into the darkness. He managed to find the locker in question (a task made easier by the fact that the rain had nearly subsided, leaving only frequent flashes of lightning in the distance to remind them of the storm) and extract his tools with minimal fuss.

When he returned to the front of the vehicle, he found his baffling companion standing on the winch attached to the bumper and bent at the waist as she peered down at the misbehaving engine.

She noticed his approach and yelped, "Perfect!"

Unsure of what else to do, he lifted the toolbox up and held it where she could reach it.

She snatched a wrench and went to work on the alternator as she offered, "I'm intensely jealous of your toolbox, David."

"Why?"

"I'll put it this way... if I'm not the most disorganized person you've ever met, then I am intensely sorry about the life whoever beat me out must live."

"Then how... did you build a time machine?"

"It wasn't easy," she sighed as she reached into the engine bay. Moments later, she declared, "Got it!" She straightened up, holding what David could only assume was the alternator. After inspecting it thoroughly, she added, "I don't see anything obviously wrong here, so I suspect it's just fragged."

Petra dropped both the alternator and her wrench on the ground before hopping off the bumper. David scooped up the latter and placed it in its appointed spot in the toolbox. He picked up the alternator and stowed it along with his tools in his storage box while she wandered around his van, inspecting various components with her light.

"So do you... live here?"

"Are you referring to this location?"

"No," she replied quickly. She then appeared to ponder the question for a moment before continuing, "Well, I guess that too, but I was actually asking about this vehicle."

"I have been boondocking here for nine days, to answer your first question. As to the second, I already told you that this is everything I own."

"So, what you're telling me is, I royally fragged up your entire life because I failed to do sufficient testing before launch?"

"My van still starts. We should likely wait until morning... but, as I said, we can drive to the closest population center then and I should be able to arrange for repairs to be made."

"But won't that cost a shaz-load of money?"

"That is a distinct possibility," he concurred. "I expect I'll find out tomorrow."

"Then you have to let me help you, David."

"How?" he asked nonjudgmentally. "You said it yourself. You arrived here with nothing."

"I arrived here without clothing, or supplies, or money, or my entire fragging space ship!"

"Why would you need a spaceship to travel through time?" David inquired reflexively.

"Because the Faraday-Lado containment field has not been proven to... you know what; I just did. The point I'm making is that I arrived here without any of my things. But I still have my mind, David."

"Well... good."

"I know the future. I can help you recoup the money I cost you."

"You don't need to do that. I've got some savings. I'll manage. You use what you know to help yourself."

"How, exactly, is knowing which stocks will do what over the next ten years going to help if I don't have any money to start with. I have researched the time period exhaustively, David. I have some idea how difficult things are in this time and place for people with no money and no ability to prove their residency."

"I guess I could give you some money," he offered. "I'm not sure what to do about the citizenship question, however. You're welcome to take my passport if you think it would help."

"That makes zero sense. We look nothing alike, to say nothing of the gender mismatch. But if you're truly that anxious to get rid of me, then I guess I could just jot down a few stock tips for you which will produce a tenfold return on your investment in six months. I just figured, maybe I could assist you in other ways as well. Perhaps in return for you helping me?"

"I didn't mean to imply I intended to abandon you..."

"Petra," she provided softly.

"Apologies," he grunted. "I'm terrible with names. As I was saying, I don't intend to leave you to fend for yourself. I was merely trying to save you the indignity of feeling pressured to come up with an excuse to take your leave of me."

"Why would I do that? You seem like a nice person, albeit quite shy and taciturn."

"Forget it," he grumbled.

"David?" she asked gently.

"You should make use of the bed. I'll wait until dawn and then drive us into town. With any luck, by the time you wake up, we'll be back in civilization and you'll have better options than the likes of me."

"What about you? Aren't you going to sleep?"

He seemed not to hear her as he worked his way across the rear of the van, ensuring that none of the compartments had been disturbed by the explosion which had coincided with Petra's arrival.

"David?" she asked as she tentatively touched his forearm.

"I thought you were going to sleep."

"I'm really very sorry about what I did to your van, and I couldn't possibly sleep while you're stuck fixing the problem that I caused."

"This isn't your fault."

"I did not set out to ruin your home," she retorted, "but there can be little doubt I am the cause. Please... give me a chance to make this right."

"Fine," he conceded. "But just remember..."

"Hello!" a nasally voice called out from the darkness. "Is there anyone there?"

David turned to Petra and said, "You didn't tell me you had anyone with you."

"I didn't," she whispered fiercely. "I have no idea who that is."

He shook his head in defeat and grumbled, "This night just keeps getting better."

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Four

"God dammit," a voice grumbled from the darkness, this time much closer to the pair of humans who had just met under most unusual circumstances. "I know I saw a light somewhere around here."

"Just keep quiet," Petra hissed in David's ear, "and maybe he won't hear us."

His attempt to offer a condescending look in response was swallowed by the darkness, so he returned his attention to discovering all he could about his latest visitor. His life as a digital nomad was not without its exciting moments, and more of those than not resulted from being caught boondocking by excitable homesteaders. He thus had a fair amount of experience in making himself scarce with little to no notice. But, unless he was willing to drive a significant percentage of the trip to the closest small city in the dark, and in a storm, simply leaving was not an option. He was also not entirely convinced that the person wandering in the darkness was a landowner (they tended to use things like vehicles... and guns).

"Holy shit! Is that an R. V.? Hey! Is there anybody out there?"

"You should go inside," David whispered. "I won't alert him to your presence."

"What are you going to do?"

"Get rid of him."

"What do you think he wants? Do you think he knows..."

"There you are!" the unwelcome voice called from the front bumper of David's van. He shined an aggressively powerful flashlight in David's direction before adding, "Didn't you hear me calling out?"

David turned to regard the newcomer with a judgmental glare. The man who approached them was roughly even with his own admittedly average height and weight (albeit with a far more natural-appearing distribution of body mass). He was at least a decade older, although David would have been unsurprised to hear their difference in ages was double that number. The man was festooned with equipment; utilizing a combination of a backpack, a vest, and a utility belt to hold all manner of devices of unknown origin or intent. On his head, he wore what appeared to be a tactical helmet which would have been more at home in the hands of a member of the special forces (complete with fold-down night-vision goggles and the requisite pack of off-brand cigarettes tucked into the strap).

The newcomer raced up to where David was trying with limited success to shield Petra with his body and muttered, "You must have been deafened by the quantum wake!"

He plucked a device (which looked unsettlingly like a Geiger counter) from his belt and held it up in front of David's face, whereupon it started clicking ominously.

"It's just as I thought," he muttered. He then raised his voice to just shy of painful levels and shouted, "Can you understand me!" just a handsbreadth from David's face.

"I'd thank you to not do that again," David grumbled.

"Shit!" the strangely equipped man yelped as he hopped backward. "I thought you'd gone deaf."

"Negative."

"We should keep our voices down, then," he murmured conspiratorially. "There's no telling how many of them are nearby."

"I was not the one who was shouting."

"Well, how was I supposed to know you didn't lose your hearing in the blast? You were just standing there like some kind of halfwit."

David glared at him for a long moment before asking, "Was there something you wanted?"

Rather than answering him, the stranger produced yet another device (this time one which looked like it would be more at home in the hands of a retail checkout clerk) and shoved it under David's nose. A high-pitched squeal erupted from the contraption, prompting the strange interloper to declare, "You've found them! You must take me to them!"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"That's not true! This proves it! You've come into contact with them. I'm certain of it!"

"I think you should leave."

"I'm not going anywhere. You've seen the visitors. You must lead me to them."

"What are you talking about?" David asked in frustration. "What visitors?"

"The aliens, of course!"

David felt a twinge of anxiety, reinforced by the fact that he could not state with confidence exactly what had become of Petra. All he knew was that his admittedly limited senses of his surroundings suggested she was no longer standing directly behind him. He could not, however, ignore the sinking feeling that his bizarre visitors were related in ways he had yet to comprehend.

He tried to infuse his typical level of calm into his next words. "There are no aliens here, sir."

"Bullshit!" the stranger spat. He stowed the retail checkout scanner in his vest before unslinging his backpack and snatching what he could only conclude was a camcorder from within. He activated the device and started scanning their surroundings. "Look! You see! There are clear footprints all around your R. V."

"What are you talking about?"

"I can see it right here on my T. I. S. Mark II!" he exclaimed as he turned the device toward David.

"What is it I'm meant to be seeing?" David asked upon noting that the tiny L. C. D. display showed nothing but a bright orange blob.

"Shit," his unwelcome guest grunted. "You're right." He moved to stand next to David and pointed his device away from the van before exclaiming, "There!"

David, who only saw a sea of dark blue on the display, replied, "I still don't see anything."

"There are footprints! Alien footprints. They're everywhere!"

"Wouldn't there also be a residual heat signature from my husband wandering around out here looking for an, um, thing... I dropped earlier?" Petra asked from the darkness.

"Who said that?" the stranger yelped as he ducked behind David.

"Hi," Petra enthused as she strode into the small circle of light cast by the stranger's flashlight. "I'm... Marge. And this is my husband... Mitch."

"Huh?" the newcomer grunted while not even making a token effort to redirect his stare from the notable evidence that Petra was not wearing anything beneath the still-damp T-shirt she had borrowed from David.

"I said we're Marge and Mitch, from Louisville. We're on vacation, headed for the Grand Canyon. So, who might you be?"

"My name is Dr. Kurtis Trassar, and I have reason to believe there are aliens in this area."

"Really!" Petra exclaimed as she pulled David close and looked around in panic. "Are we in danger?"

Kurtis reached over his shoulder and pulled what looked like a blunderbuss on steroids from his bag. "Don't you worry, ma'am. I'm ready for those little bastards."

"But... how do you know there are aliens here?"

"It's patently obvious!" Kurtis declared. "Surely you heard the sonic boom caused by their entry into our atmosphere." He held forth another of his instruments as he added, "And I registered the quantum wake. See!"

Petra snatched the device from his hand and interrogated it for a moment before offering, "You've got this calibrated improperly. Completely. You're attempting to collect readings in the E. L. F. range, but this dial," she turned a knob one click in a clockwise direction, "was set to V. L. F. You've also done nothing to adjust for the magnetic interference from the storm." She glared at him and demanded, "It spikes with every lightning strike, doesn't it?"

"Well, sure," Kurtis admitted. "But..."

"Typical," Petra grunted. "Look. This device is too crude, and frankly too imprecise, to truly filter out the local geo-magneto-metric fluctuations, so your readings are likely to be complete shaz regardless. But," she turned the device over in her hands a few times, "I need a screwdriver."

"What?" Kurtis grunted helplessly.

"The knobs and switches on this fragging thing are useless. I need to access the boards inside it to properly calibrate it. Surely you've got a simple Phillips head in all that ridiculous equipment you're carrying."

"Oh... um... sure," he replied as he pulled a multitool from a holster on his belt and held it forth.

"Crude," Petra observed, "but it'll do."

She turned her attention to David and asked, "Darling? Do you mind holding the light for me? I'll be your best friend!"

David tried to keep his features schooled as he shined his light on the device, whereupon she attacked the panel in question with a confidence and determination which mystified him. Within moments, she had not only partially disassembled the contraption, but she had also committed acts he was certain were far beyond the intentions of the manufacturer.

Petra looked up at David with an expression he could not interpret and inquired, "Do you remember if I packed my soldering gun for this trip, darling?"

"I... um... don't believe so."

"Rats!" Her gaze rose skyward in thought as she muttered, "I could jury-rig a heating element. But, without solder, it's for shaz. Wait! I know! I could just bypass the... wait... that won't work... I'd still need something to..." She glared up at Kurtis and demanded, "I need some silver-plated, oxygen-free, 7×19 Litz wire."

"I don't have any of that," Kurtis replied with a frown. "I'm not even sure what that is."

"Well, I guess that's why the gorram thing doesn't work. It's the very crudest type of wire which should be used in even the simplest, cheapest E. M. F. detector array."

"Wait!" Kurtis yelped as Petra dropped the disassembled detector into the mud. "What about the quantum surge I detected?"

"With that?" Petra asked dismissively.

"No. With this!" Kurtis replied as he took another device from his pack.

She gave him a withering scowl and retorted, "A Geiger counter? Seriously?"

"Yes!" he insisted excitedly. He started to shove it under Petra's nose, but thought better of it when she made a grab for it. Left with little alternative, he held it up to the van whereupon it started to click lazily. "See!"

"Are you daft?!" she groaned.

"What do you mean? This clearly shows that..."

"That you've found our batteries," Petra concluded. "Again. Congratulations."

"But batteries wouldn't..."

"Emit trace amounts of radon following a dramatic shift in atmospheric pressure? And that's to say nothing of the fact that the fragging lightning will totally shaz up any Geiger counter readings anyway. You might as well use that thing as a backscratcher until this storm subsides." Her eyes narrowed as she regarded him. "What exactly is your doctorate in, Doctor?"

"That's not important! The aliens are out there and we're wasting valuable time..."

"I couldn't agree more," David interjected, more from a desire to be done with the obvious imbecile than out of an infantile attempt to regain control of the conversation.

"In any case," Petra continued. "I promised my darling we would do sex if he stepped out into the storm to look for the, um, thing... I misplaced. And, I assure you, he has a very big... you know... thingee. And I'm very fond of it. And him. Especially him. But also it. So, Mr. Trassar..."

"Doctor Trassar," Kurtis insisted gravely.

"Whatever," Petra grunted. "It's time for us to do sex. So, if you don't mind..." When Kurtis seemed content to continue investigating the area immediately adjacent to the van, she added, "Can you get the frag out of here. Don't think I haven't noticed your clumsy attempts to leer at my teats. Only my husband gets to look at my teats. I mean... honestly. Have you no manners? Have you no shame? Why... my husband would be within his rights to make use of his highly developed and devastatingly effective knowledge of martial arts to..."

"I think that's enough," David interrupted. "And I agree with... her. You've overstayed your welcome, doctor."

"Mister!" Petra growled.

"Well, I never!" Kurtis yelped. "I don't have to stand here and listen to this slander!"

David said, "Then we're in agreement. Goodbye."

"Imbeciles," Kurtis muttered as he wandered into the darkness. Then, somewhat louder (albeit without turning or in any way slowing his retreat), he added, "Don't think I'll forget this when I'm the toast of the scientific community after I'm vindicated!"

Petra took advantage of Kurtis's departure to pull David into the van. She then leaned close, which prompted him to instinctively pull back, but she interrupted his response by gripping his shirt and pulling him close enough to whisper in his ear. "Do you think he bought it?"

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Five

"What the shaz!" Petra gasped after David failed to avoid an unexpectedly deep pothole immediately following their departure the following morning just after dawn.

"Dammit," David grunted as he slammed his hand into the steering wheel in frustration. "I'm sorry about that."

There was no reply for a long moment. Then Petra asked quietly, "Did you say you have a bathroom?"

"Yeah... yes... it's amidships, starboard side."

"Am I meant to know what that means?"

"Sorry. It's... um... the biggest door back there."

"Pretty sure the biggest door back here leads outside," she retorted following what might have been a soft giggle. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"No... I..."

"I'm just fragging with you, David," she interrupted. Her voice then dropped in pitch and took on an almost childlike vulnerability. "Wait... you're not really trying to get rid of me, are you? Because, if you are..."

"The only thing I'm trying to do is get us to town."

"If you're sure... do you mind if I make use of your bathroom?"

"Please make yourself at home," he continued as he brought the van to a stop. "There is some food in the pantry, after a fashion. And you're welcome to whatever you'd prefer of my clothing. You know... now that you can see..."

David sat motionless in the driver's seat, trying to keep the low rumble of the engine from lulling him to sleep. In most circumstances, his companion when driving was an audiobook, but the stereo was yet another thing that had been ruined by Petra's arrival. As he considered the likely very hefty bill he had coming his way to replace (as near as makes no difference) all of the electrical components of his home, he was filled with the anxiety which normally accompanied any hint of financial insecurity. More perplexingly, however, he found that he harbored no ill will toward his baffling companion. And he knew it was more than the fact that he could not bring himself to believe that she had acted with malice. There was something about her which broke through the normal impulse he had around other humans to get them as far away from him as quickly as possible. A cynic would have argued that his reaction was a byproduct of her gender, or more specifically her inarguable alluringness. The truth, however, was that David had hardly gotten a good look at his companion's nudity, or indeed even her face. He, in fact, suspected he would have had some difficulty picking her out of a lineup. Whatever it was about her that quelled his instinct to escape and evade, it was not her (he was quite certain, despite a marked lack of evidence) beauty.

His introspection was interrupted by a gentle jostling of his shoulder as Petra crawled beneath his desk to plop down in the seat beside him. He released the handbrake and carefully got them back underway. It was only when his eyes strayed in the direction of the passenger-side window (to ensure he would not scratch the side of his van against a tree) that he realized she was watching him intently.

He was immediately filled with an incomprehensible mixture of foreboding and excitement as he allowed himself the briefest of glances in his companion's direction. The intensity of her blue, almost sapphire, eyes was made even more pronounced by her extremely pale skin and hair that was on the white side of blonde. The aforementioned mane was worn in a single braid which pooled in her lap. She had soft, friendly features framed by a Roman nose, sharp cheekbones, full lips, and eyes which seemed slightly further apart than was typical for humans of northern European descent. The combined effect was nothing short of mesmerizing, a recognition which caused him to realize that he had been staring.

"What?" he inquired as he averted his gaze.

"You never said whether or not you're trying to get rid of me."

"When we part ways, it will be your choice."

"When?" she repeated. "You speak as if it's a foregone conclusion."

"The town we're headed to isn't very large, but it has a motel and an S-Mart."

"How much are the repairs to the damage my arrival did to your home going to cost?"

He shrugged and said, "No way to be sure until I get it to a shop, but I'm guessing high four figures. Wait... that likely means nothing to you. Hell... for all I know you don't even use money in the future."

"We still use dollars, in point of fact. Although we call them NewDollars, both because there will be four redenominations over the next eighty-five years, and because physical money was outlawed in 2031. It is widely believed that having an all-digital currency was also intended to allow the government to artificially control inflation by just changing the amount of money in circulation on a whim, but that failed spectacularly. It also made things like estimating the actual amount of inflation which will occur over the next eighty-five years impossible, because the dollar effectively became a fiat currency once the rest of the world gave up hoping this country would come to its senses and started doing business with China instead." She took a deep breath before lowering her voice and offering, "That was way more detail than you wanted. Wasn't it?"

"No," he answered slowly. "I actually find it all quite fascinating."

"You really don't think I'm full of slag?"

"Strictly speaking... I'm not sure what that means. But, if you're asking if I believe you, then my answer is yes."

"But... why?"

"Because I saw your landing site, for lack of a better term. And I can state with complete confidence both that it was not there this time yesterday, and that it was not caused by any man or beast within a day's drive of here."

"Why? What did it look like?"

"It was... um... imagine a circle which was, I don't know, four or five paces across."

She offered, "The Faraday-Lado containment field was just over four meters in diameter."

"It was also perfectly flat... unnaturally flat. Like ceramic."

"This is incredible! The amount of heat required to volcanize the soil into glass is like nothing I ever observed in my testing. The ramifications of this are unfathomable!"

For want of a more educated response, David shrugged and grunted, "Okay."

"I've got to ask, and I apologize if I'm being insensitive again, but what's going on with you?"

"I'm driving us to town?" he replied slowly.

"I know that," she groaned in frustration. "It's just... all the videos I watched from this time period gave me the impression that everyone was very... um... loquacious. But you seem like you can't wait to get out of every conversation."

"Then I apologize. That was not the impression I was intending to convey."

"But..." she prompted.

"I am not used to... being in the company of..."

"A woman whom you've seen naked when that wasn't her intention?"

"That wasn't my fault," he protested. "And I did my very best to avert my eyes once I realized your... predicament. I regret that I was unsuccessful."

"You weren't. Unsuccessful, that is. So stop being such a ninny. I'm just trying to figure out how to talk to you. Okay?"

"Are we not talking now?"

"I don't think so," she replied with a hint of frustration hidden beneath what he could only assume was genuine curiosity. "Although, in the interest of being completely open and honest with the person whose life I ruined, I'm not entirely certain."

"You didn't ruin my life."

"You just told me you were going to have to spend, and I quote, high four figures to repair the destruction my arrival caused to your home. That's more than a middle-class family makes in a month, am I right?"

"Perhaps."

"You're living in your car, David! Even if it is a very nice car. People that do that can't afford this kind of financial disruption."

"I have money set aside," he replied gently. "One of the things you come to realize when you're, as you say, living out of your car is that things are always going wrong which require fixing. It's why the first thing I do whenever I seek out a new spot to camp is find the closest repair shop. Just last month, the water pump (which was only five months old) just stopped working. That was a thousand bucks. Then there was the time right around New Year's when the controller for the rooftop solar panels failed. That was another grand. This stuff happens, Petra. I just look at fixing them as my rent."

"So you really don't hate me?"

"For the last time... no, I don't hate you. I was looking to upgrade some of my electrics anyway; this will be a great excuse to do so."

"You're lying."

"I make it a point to be honest whenever possible. Even when speaking to strange women from the future who are capable of building time machines but uncertain what does (or does not) qualify as a conversation."

"Why am I strange?" Petra challenged with a hint of what David suspected some may have called teasing.

"You're talking to me, aren't you?"

"Why is that so strange?"

"I already told you. I don't... fit in... with other people. That's why I live..." He sighed in frustration, an emotion which was further heightened as they finally reached the pavement and the crunching and groaning of traversing the gravel road were replaced by the smooth rumble of the engine as they accelerated to highway speeds. Without taking his eyes from the road, he muttered, "You wouldn't understand."

She was silent for several long moments before finally replying, "But... what if I do?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're the first person I've spoken to in person in more than two years," she said softly.

"But... why?"

She shrugged and said, "I was busy. And it's not like I could tell anyone what I was doing. They would have definitely notified the Defenders of Morality, and that would have ruined everything."

"I'm very sorry. That must have been very lonely."

"I guess," she conceded. "Although, as I said, I was quite busy. You cannot imagine how much work it is to build a time machine. By yourself. But... I had no choice."

"What do you mean?" he asked gently, in deference to the palpable tremor in her voice.

Petra sighed in resignation and said, "The future is totally fragged, David. I came back in time because Western civilization is going to collapse in 2112, and this was the only way I could come up with to save myself."

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Six

"Is that it?" Petra asked, gesturing to a ramshackle building with multiple open garage doors.

"Beggars can't be choosers," David admitted with a shrug. "The next closest place is another ninety minutes."

"It's up to you," she conceded. "I just don't want you to get ripped off." She turned to face him and added, "Speaking of which... do you finally have internet access?"

He shrugged and said, "After a fashion."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she huffed.

"I seem to remember this town having a decent mobile signal, but I am not currently in possession of any devices..."

"Frag! I ruined your gorram phone too!"

"I was thinking of replacing it anyway," he replied lamely.

"Exactly how many things are you planning to claim to have been on the brink of replacing, David?"

"Depends on how many are broken," he replied flatly.

Her eyes narrowed and (after a noticeable pause) she asked, "Was that a joke?"

He thought for a moment before replying, "I'm honestly not sure." He pointed back to the repair shop and added, "You should wait here while I go get things started. Then we can walk across the street to get the things you'll need... unless you'd rather I take you to the motel first."

"I'd rather tag along, since you asked."

"The guys in this place are a bit..."

"Stupid?" she offered with a tentative smile.

"That's as good a word as any other," he replied wearily. His eyes dropped, for the briefest of moments, to her chest (where, as even the most distracted observer would notice immediately, there was nothing between Petra's abundant curves and leering eyes save for his soft T-shirt). "They're almost certain to say something stupid. Honestly, Petra, you should just stay here. They've got pictures of... um... naked women... you know... from magazines... they just put them up on the wall."

"Really?" she asked in amazement. "And they're, you know, all the way naked? You can see their teats and their quims?"

"Yeah. Like I said... not nice. You should just..."

"Are you joking?" she enthused. "And pass up the opportunity to see this? Not fragging likely."

"Ok," he groaned. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

He was brought up short, however, by a soft, "David?" from his companion. Turning from the door which he had already opened, he found her looking at him with wide, tear-filled eyes. He pulled his door closed and said softly, "I'm sorry, Petra... I didn't mean to..."

"No," she insisted. "It's fine. I just really don't want to make things more difficult for you, David. If you really want me to stay in the van, then I will. But..."

"I was just trying to look out for you," he interrupted. "You're obviously welcome to do whatever you like."

"I appreciate that. Very much. Just please look at this from my perspective. I'm terribly curious about... well... everything about this time period. Does that make sense?"

"Sure. I guess I'd be pretty curious if I went back to 1941. Although, knowing my luck, I'd get drafted immediately and sent to Guadalcanal to be turned into a fine mist by Japanese artillery fire."

"That's pretty grim. Maybe you would have instead positioned yourself as a soon-to-be famous prognosticator when you tell the world about Pearl Harbor a year in advance." She hooked her thumb toward the repair shop and added, "Shall we?"

David hopped out of the vehicle and rounded the bow to open Petra's door and hand her down. She smiled her thanks and strutted with exuberance toward the repair shop. True to his prediction, the eyes of the man behind the counter immediately locked in on Petra's borrowed shirt and the impossible-to-miss curviness it (barely) concealed. David was surprised that what he felt in response was not resignation, or even the satisfaction of being proven right, it was righteous indignation. Absent conscious thought, he stepped in front of his companion and stalked up to the counter.

"Help you folks?" the clerk grunted as he tried without success to crane his neck to get another look at Petra's chest.

"I had an electrical failure with my van as a result of the storm last night. I'll almost certainly need another alternator, but other electrical components might also require replacement."

"We're extremely backed up today," the clerk replied judgmentally. "Perhaps if you'd gotten here earlier, I wouldn't have to charge you a surcharge for expedited service."

David looked around in dismay, noting both the wall clock which indicated that it was seventeen minutes to eight in the morning, and the decidedly empty parking lot. Yet long experience had taught him that, while revealing his emotions was a doomed exercise in the best of circumstances, the demonstration of his anger was amongst the least productive of the many possible mistakes he could make.

"Just tell me what it's going to take to get it going again."

"An expedited diagnostic is going to run you five hundred. That means we'll have a detailed estimate for you by the end of the day. If it's just the alternator, that'll run you seven-ninety-nine for the part plus two-fifty an hour for labor. Figure at least four hours for installation and testing. But I doubt..."

"Now wait just a gorram minute," Petra seethed as she approached the counter to shove her finger in the clerk's face. "Are you telling me you're going to charge my husband almost twenty-five hundred dollars to replace a fragging alternator!"

"That's assuming nothing goes wrong. An alternator install could easily take a few days if we find other problems during the diagnostic."

"Have your mechanics never done an alternator replacement before? Are they brain damaged? Or drunk?"

"Listen, lady..."

"No, you listen! We've had a very difficult night, but I won't stand here and allow you to steal my husband's hard-earned money."

"How dare you! Why, I oughta..."

"What you ought to do is charge him for the price of the alternator and one hour of labor, and save the rest of that slag for some other sucker."

"There is no way we can do an alternator replacement in less than four hours. None."

A sly smile spread across her face and she challenged, "All right... then if I can install the new one in less than an hour... then you'll give it to us for nothing."

"You?" he grunted dismissively.

"Yes," she replied mockingly. "Me. If I install it in less than an hour, then we owe you nothing." She stuck out her hand and added, "Deal?"

"What do I get if you're wrong?" he asked while gawking at her breasts, using the thinly veiled excuse of focusing on her outstretched hand.

"Then I'll show you my teats," she responded with bold confidence.

"Now wait a minute," David interjected.

"And your trim," the clerk demanded. "And you let me take a pic."

"No!" David snapped. "This is madness. I won't allow it."

"It's a bet," Petra declared defiantly. She then turned to David and offered him a not-at-all subtle wink, to which he responded by dropping his head in defeat.

"Gimme a minute to get the part from storage. Your hour starts when I get back."

"Then I'd best get to work," Petra replied. As she headed for the door, she called over her shoulder, "Darling, would you be a peach and wait for the rude man to bring our new alternator?"

When David emerged from the shop carrying the much-discussed part on his shoulder, Petra was once again perched on the winch housing with the van's hood open.

"Can you open the box for me, darling?" she called out upon spotting him.

"They can't hear us," he muttered as he set the box down and went to work on the heavy-duty staples perforating the top. "You can drop the charade."

"Can you lift it into place for me, David?" she teased. He answered by yanking the replacement part from the box and (not without effort) holding it in place above the engine. As she went to work on the myriad connections, she asked, "What'd that cretin mean by 'trim'?"

"Your... um... nether region?"

"He wants to see my quim?" she yelped.

"I get the impression he's planning on getting to see all of you."

"But why? It's just hair. Has he never seen hair before?"

"That term is meant to imply... I think... less... you know... hair. Down there. As in, um, trimming. Or shaving."

"You're joking!" she enthused. "People actually do that?"

He shrugged and said, "I guess?"

"Do you?" she asked teasingly as she shifted to get more leverage to muscle a belt into place.

He shrugged, unable to meet her eyes. "I trim occasionally."

"Can I see?"

"Absolutely not!"

"You saw my quim," she retorted.

"I did no such thing. It was dark, and you were curled up in a fetal position when I first came upon you. After that, I did my very best to respect your... wardrobe situation."

"Fine," she groaned in frustration. She shifted over to where the battery was housed before asking, "So, do most women in this time trim as well?"

"I have no firsthand knowledge, but that certainly seems to be what is implied by most..."

"Most... what?" she prompted.

"It wouldn't be proper."

She turned to regard him intently for a long moment before returning her attention to the alternator. "I'm aware of the prevalence of pornography in this time, David. If that's what you were referring to."

"Ok," he said slowly.

"So, do most women in pornography trim their quims?"

Despite his discomfort, he snickered at her rhyme. He then schooled his features and replied, "Something like that."

"I still think that sounds insane. I mean... I can't even imagine."

"Then why did you tell that imbecile that you'd show him yours?" David yelped instinctively.

"First off, I didn't know that's what that meant."

"I tried to put a stop to this."

"I know, and I appreciate your efforts."

"So, what are you going to do if you can't..."

"That guy was being a complete slag-head, David. He was trying to rob you. I had to do something! As for that silly bet, two-thirds of the work to replace this gorram thing was already done because I took the ruined one off last night. It's been, what, fifteen minutes? And I'm already basically done. I assure you that I was never in any danger of having to show him my teats, or my quim." She paused to wink at him before adding, "But that doesn't mean I'm not going to pretend to work on this for another forty minutes, because that guy deserves to really get his hopes up before I bring him crashing back to earth."

"I just hope they're still willing to work with me to fix everything else. The alternator's the first step, but that just gets the rudimentary stuff working. I'm still going to need to replace a ton..."

"I am going to replace whatever requires replacing," she insisted firmly. "Because I'll be fragged if I'm letting you pay those thieves a single dollar in heavily inflated labor charges. Not to mention the fact that I can probably help you really upgrade all the slag you lied about already wanting to upgrade."

"But why would you..."

"Because this is all my fault, you ninny."

"I already told you I don't blame you for anything, Petra."

"I can't do this alone, David," she pleaded in a soft voice. "As far as anyone in this time is concerned, I don't exist. I can help you recoup all the costs you're going to incur because of my arrival, and a good deal more. But I can't make a single cent on my own. Same with your van. I can help you make it better than it was before, but I can't buy a gorram motorcycle for myself. I really didn't intend to have to depend on anyone like this, but then I lost everything."

"I already know all this," he sighed. "I appreciate everything you're offering, Petra. I really do. It's extremely generous of you to offer to assist me. But my offer to help you in any way you need isn't contingent on you doing all this work."

"What's wrong with working out a mutually beneficial exchange?"

"Nothing! It's just..."

"What?" she asked gently after turning to place her hand on his shoulder.

"I'm not ignorant to the fact that we've got a massive imbalance here, Petra. I am grateful for your offer of help, but you feel like you need my help. That's unfair... massively unfair. I would be devastated to learn that you'd done something which made you uncomfortable because you worried that I'd leave you stranded and penniless if you did otherwise. I want to help you, but not as much as I want to put you in a position where you don't need my assistance. Not because I'm trying to get rid of you, but because nothing is more important to me than you being in a position to tell me to hit the bricks when you inevitably come to the same conclusion as the rest of humanity."

"I heard what you said before, David. About how you don't fit with other people. I once tried to make the point to my older sister that I wasn't actually a human. I came to the conversation fully prepared to make my case. I pointed out that no one ever seemed to understand what I was talking about, to the point where (far more often than not) people would pretend I simply wasn't there. She listened to every impassioned argument attentively, never once interrupting."

"And?" David prompted after Petra jumped off the bumper and reached up to slam the hood closed.

Petra smirked at him and replied, "She told me to shut the frag up and get in the gorram truck." She gestured with her forehead toward the S-Mart across the street and added, "Shall we go shopping?"

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Seven

"A thousand dollars!" Petra yelped, causing the clerk's head to pop up in concern from the opposite side of the counter.

"Keep it down," David pleaded.

"But that's so much. How much did your computer cost?"

"Computers," he corrected before he could think better of it. "I mean... about the same as the phone."

She fixed him with a pointed glare and said, "How. Much."

"I am in possession of three laptops at present. Two of them are owned by companies I'm doing work for. Well... I quit one of the companies yesterday. In any case, I'll just send them back to their respective owners, and request a replacement from the one I'm still actively working for. So I only need to replace my personal laptop. And my phone. And my tablet. Tablets."

"David!" she groaned.

"We already talked about this," he hissed as he cast a worried gaze in the direction of the clerk who was not making even a token effort to avoid eavesdropping. "As far as I'm concerned, that money is already spent."

Petra turned and pointedly implored, "Excuse me?" in the clerk's direction. "How quickly can my husband get his new device online? He really needs to let his employer know what's befallen us."

The clerk replied by slapping two boxes, each containing a new phone, on the counter and grunting, "Why don't you ask him."

"It was just a gorram question," Petra muttered. "You don't have to be such a shaz-head." As David led her to an unoccupied table in the nearly deserted wireless retailer, she asked, "Is everyone in the past rude?" After a barely perceptible pause, her eyes widened and she hastened to add, "Except for you, of course."

"You'd hardly be the first person to accuse me of being rude," he replied as he used a tool on his key ring to open the boxes. "So, I'm not sure if I'm qualified to answer your larger question. I'm sure if I wasn't dragging you down, she'd have been perfectly nice to you."

"I wish you wouldn't say things like that."

"Sorry. It won't happen again."

"Meaning you'll censor yourself, rather than stop thinking like that. Am I right?"

His only response was a helpless shrug, followed by gesturing toward the entrance. A frown creased her features as she preceded him toward the door.

As soon as they were outside, she turned to him and said, "You know what... forget I said anything. Say whatever comes into your head. I'd certainly prefer that to... um..." Her eyes, which were focused over his shoulder, widened to such a profound degree that he reflexively turned in that direction as she fiercely whispered, "In Tesla's name! That woman's naked!"

"Where?" he asked, spotting only an unremarkably attired couple walking toward an adjoining restaurant.

"There!" Petra hissed, pointing over his shoulder at the woman clad in a pink tank top and jean shorts which reached mid-thigh.

"Behind that couple?" he asked in confusion.

"She's right there, David! In the pink top and blue bottoms. We can see her arms! And her legs! And her gorram teats!"

"No, we can't," he chuckled. "Those are just shorts and a tank top. Hardly surprising, considering the humidity and how hot it's supposed to be later."

"But isn't that considered indecent?"

"Hardly. I'll wager you'll see a lot more skin within two minutes of us entering the S-Mart. As far as the laws are concerned, anything goes as long as the naughty bits are covered."

"You're telling me bare teats are commonplace?"

"Depends on the weather, I guess. I'm sure there's plenty of folks around here who'd call it indecent. But, in the eyes of the law, all that matters is... you know... nipples."

"That's amazing! Does the same apply to men?"

"Not really. Legally, men can get by with just a pair of shorts. But most businesses expect everyone to wear a shirt."

"But there's a chance I might see an actual shirtless man just wandering around town?"

"A good chance, actually," he replied, hoping very much to table the topic. He gestured to the big-box store across the street and prompted, "Shall we?"

"First, I want you to buy your first stock."

"Why?"

"So, you can start recouping your financial losses, of course. I'll give you a stock symbol and a sell threshold tied to the share price. The first one will hit that mark in about a week."

"And how much are you suggesting this will earn us?"

"That depends on when you buy, of course. The stock in question is currently steadily rising in price, but it will top out (as I said) in about a week. The sooner you buy, the more you'll make."

"And you just happen to remember this one from your research?"

Her eyes dropped and she murmured, "I memorized them all."

"How many?"

"Seven hundred and forty-three combinations of stock symbols, start dates, and sell thresholds."

"That's incredible," he breathed as they reached the van and he unlocked the door.

"I wasn't trying to memorize them," she groaned. "It's just... I'm... you know... a freak."

"I'm inclined to disagree."

"How many people do you know that remember everything they've ever read? With perfect clarity and context?"

"You're the first."

"Well, let me tell you, it's exhausting!" she sighed. "But it also means that I can make sure you can recover all the money I'm costing you. So, if you'd be so kind, please go ahead and make the buy, so I can stop freaking out about the thousands of dollars you're spending because of me."

He noted with approval that his new phone had completed the process of restoring from the cloud backup, so he opened the app for his preferred brokerage and looked up the stock in question. "What's the sell threshold?"

"Eighty-seven. It'll actually top out at two-percent higher than that, but I figured it could attract attention if someone had multiple stocks that they just happened to pre-arrange to sell at their exact high-water mark."

"It's at sixty-two-fifty now..." David observed.

"So, you'll increase that by thirty-nine-point-two percent, minus fees. How much can you afford to invest?"

"I don't know... we've still got more to replace on the van, and more shopping to do. Maybe... um... five grand?"

"So that'll cover the phones, but you can keep investing. All the trades I memorized are like this: quick turnarounds with twenty-five to fifty percent increases. Even if you just keep investing the same five grand repeatedly, you'll make a shaz-load of money."

"That's not necessary," he replied flatly. "I'll just set up a new account on your phone and transfer the money to it. You can manage the trades and decide what gets done with the money."

"Is this about the power imbalance you're obsessed with?"

"It's about doing what's right."

She studied him for a long moment before sighing and saying, "Very well. But I expect zero objections when I use the money I make for you, using your seed capital, on you. Ok?"

"I already told you that you've heard the last of my complaining," he agreed as he again indicated their next destination. "Shall we?"

"You are a profoundly irritating man, David Shyam," Petra growled as she fell in step beside him to cross the street to the S-Mart.

David was a methodical man, one who had been drilled in the value of organization from an early age as a way to offset what his father had called (when he was feeling charitable) intellectual laziness. He was a list-maker, an alarm setter, a note-taker. By the time they reached their next destination, he had already planned out how he should best make use of his time while Petra shopped.

His plans were cratered before they started, however, when Petra interrupted his effort to make for the attached coffee shop. "Oh, no, you don't."

He looked again with longing at the table he had spotted and said, "What? I thought you were going to do some shopping."

"Exactly. And just how in the frag do I do that when I have zero understanding of fashion." Her eyes followed a woman in her early twenties who had just strutted through the front door wearing what he could only conclude was workout attire (and which consisted of barely enough lycra to cover a basketball). Petra lowered her voice and continued, "I'm completely at a loss here, David. I need your help."

"I regret to inform you, in that case, that you managed to find the least qualified man in America to assist you. I have less than zero understanding of fashion. Especially where women are concerned."

"Please, David," she pleaded. "You've lived your whole life in this time. I'm certain you know more than me. Can't you please try? I swear I'll make it up to you."

"Fine," he groaned.

"Thanks!" she enthused.

He collected a cart and followed after her, feeling uncomfortably like not a few other males in his vicinity who universally looked like they would rather be field testing parachutes made from bubble gum than shopping with their partners.

He caught up with his companion as she wandered through the women's section, just as she paused in her perusal of floor-length skirts to instead stare at a passing woman wearing a white skirt (which was closer to a belt than a garment as it barely spanned the distance between her bikini line and the bottom of her ass) along with pink tights so sheer that several tattoos were easily visible beneath. Above the waist, she wore a royal-blue jersey for a sports team he had never heard of which was a dozen sizes too large for her and a pink lacy bra that was more exposed than not.

As the woman wandered out of earshot, Petra turned to David and demanded, "That... is allowed?"

"Apparently," he conceded. "Although I haven't done a thorough examination of the local statutes."

She pressed, "But you weren't shocked by it?"

"I guess not. It's a bit provocative, but to each their own."

"Then I want to buy an outfit like that."

"Are you sure? I thought you said women from your time wore floor-length dresses or skirts, and always long-sleeves."

"I did indeed say that," she agreed. "But do you have any idea how intensely uncomfortable it is to dress like that when it's hot out? And do you have any idea how often it's absolutely sweltering outside in Kansas in eighty-five years? So," she continued as her head swiveled around, "where do they sell the trollop-wear in this store?"

"I... um... have no idea."

"Then we should follow that one," Petra suggested, again indicating the curiously dressed woman.

Without waiting for a reply, she hurried down the aisle in pursuit of her quarry. She stopped short, however, when they reached the next section of the store. She whirled to face David and jabbed her finger in the direction of posters advertising the store's wares. Without speaking a word, she wandered into the section with an awed look on her face.

She snatched a hanger holding a thong from the display and whispered, "This is a joke, right? No one actually wears these things, right? It's a novelty. Right?!"

"I told you I wouldn't be able to help you."

"You're a handsome guy, so I assume you've seen women in their underwear before."

"Then you assume incorrectly."

She offered him an apologetic frown and muttered, "That was a gorram stupid thing to say. I'm so sorry, David. If it makes you feel any better, I'm in the same boat."

"You've also never seen a woman in her underwear," he retorted snidely. "Do they not have mirrors in the future?"

"No, as a matter of fact, I haven't. Why on earth would I look at myself in my underwear! Do you look at yourself in the mirror when you're getting dressed?"

Without meeting her gaze, he mumbled, "I guess not."

"What I was actually talking about was that I've never seen a human adult in their underwear."

"Yeah, right. You already told me you were married for, what was it, sixteen years?"

"It was an arranged marriage with a... well... frag! I have no idea what word I should use, but I know all the ones I know are complete slag. He was... will be... a... um... poofta?"

"Just say homosexual," David murmured. "Or gay."

"I'm really sorry," she sighed. "I did so much research before I made my trip, but there's so much to learn."

"It's fine," he reassured her.

"So that's why I've never seen a man in his underwear. I was married at fourteen to a man who wasn't remotely attracted to me."

"Wondering what my excuse is?"

"I promise to be a good listener if you're willing to talk about it, but I have no intention of pulling the truth from you like a bad tooth."

"Thanks," he replied sincerely. His eyes then fell to the underwear she was holding, prompting him to add, "So, now what?"

"Well... I figure I saved you a couple grand with the alternator, right? I mean, apart from the fact that it's my fault it was broken in the first place."

"I told you I don't blame you for that."

"So, from a certain point of view, you're significantly ahead right now. And that will only increase once you set that app up for me."

"Where are you going with this?"

She held up the thong and whispered, "I'm impossibly curious about this. If women really wear them, there must be a reason. Maybe they feel incredible, or perhaps they solve some mysterious problem I never even knew existed. But there's only one way to find out."

He shrugged and said, "Then we borrow a tape measure to figure out your size and you buy the right one."

She smiled and said, "I had a similar thought." She looked around the lingerie section and the adjoining women's wear section which had not a few outfits that were on the salacious side. "But it's not just this... um..." she flipped the hangar around before continuing, "thong. I guess that word makes as much sense as any other." She turned and plucked some Brazilian-cut panties from a nearby rack before continuing. "I want to try it all, David. I want to find out what I've been missing all these years."

"Ok," he replied without emotion.

"You're sure you don't mind?"

"Why would I mind?"

"And you'll let me know if they look stupid?"

"How can an article of clothing be..."

"I have to try them on first, you ninny."

"Oh... um... I'm not sure that's a good idea, Petra. Perhaps we could..." David's eyes widened as his efforts to look anywhere except into his companion's eyes, or at her body, caused him to spot an obviously furious man stalking through the front door of the store. He ducked down behind the display and hissed, "Oh, shit!"

"What's wrong?" Petra asked in obvious concern.

"That's the guy whose property I was boondocking on," David whispered.

"He looks pretty angry."

"Exactly. He told me the last time I saw him that he'd part my hair with a shotgun if he caught me on his property again." David cast another gaze in the direction of his pursuer before adding, "And he certainly has the look of a man intent on making good on his threat."

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Eight

"David?" Petra's voice echoed from the rear of the van. "What kind of vehicle did you say that pig-fragger drove?"

"A rusted red heavy-duty pickup," David replied tentatively. "But..."

"Then I think he's right behind us," she interrupted excitedly.

He hastened to add, "What I was going to say was that that kind of vehicle is, by far, the most common type people prefer in this part of the country. Can you see through the windshield to figure out if it's him?"

"It looks like he drove through a shaz-storm. I frankly have no idea how he, she, or it is keeping it between the lines."

"Well, let's test him."

David glanced down at the dash out of habit, but that was little help. What had felt like a modern necessity when he had commissioned the rebuild of his new home (namely a touchscreen display which stretched from the driver's side door to where radio and H. V. A. C. controls would normally be found, and served as both his only means of adjusting any settings and a completely customizable dashboard) was now nothing more than a large, unhelpful expanse of black glass. His newly acquired phone (which rested in an also recently purchased cradle) informed him that he was traveling a few ticks under the speed limit, so he tentatively throttled up. Since his side mirrors were also (or, put more accurately, had been) modern displays mounted just inside the door frame, he had no idea if the potential pursuer was still on their tail.

"What's happening?" he called over his shoulder when his phone indicated that they had increased speed by over twenty percent.

"He's still right behind us."

"Dammit! Ok, hang on. I'm going to try something else."

"Hang onto what, exactly... what the frag!"

"Sorry," David muttered as he completed his overtake of a slow-moving minivan and, to a cacophony of angrily honking horns, swerved across the slow lane to take an off-ramp. He downshifted anxiously to dump speed as quickly as possible, as the off-ramp's designers seemed to take it as an article of faith that drivers would heed the warning signs advising they slow to residential speeds before the ramp started.

"Shaz that hurt," Petra yelped following an ominous thud which corresponded to the van finally screeching to a halt.

"Are you ok?" he shouted as he turned to look behind him to find his companion slowly picking herself up off the floor of the galley.

She looked up to shoot an angry glare in his direction before offering, "Purely out of morbid curiosity... what, exactly, was it I was meant to hang onto? Is there some hidden anti-grav harness under your bed or something? Or perhaps a gorram cargo net?"

"It was more of a warning than a command," he admitted glumly. "I'm really sorry you got hurt. I've got a first aid kit above the sink if we..."

"I'm not injured, you ninny. I was just surprised. Perhaps next time you could tell me to prepare for sudden and unexpected acceleration along multiple vectors." A smile bloomed from the frown on her face as she added, "I guess the silver lining is that that stupid truck was being driven by a kid who looked no more than fifteen, and had a very surprised look on his face when you swerved out of the lane."

David was silent for a long moment before murmuring, "I really am sorry, Petra."

"I said I was fine," she insisted with a warmth which surprised him. She gestured toward the bow of the vehicle with her chin and added, "I guess we should get back on the road if we're going to make it to that R. V. dealer before they close."

"Indeed," he grunted as he slotted the gear shift into first and slowly released the clutch. After laboriously making his way through the gears and getting them back up to highway speeds, he called out over the soothing rumble of the massive inline-six diesel, "Are you sure you'll be ok moving around back there while we're under way?"

"I assure you that I'm not avoiding you, David," Petra replied in a soothing tone, and from far closer to his right ear than he had been expecting. "I'm just really anxious to go through all the stuff you so thoughtfully purchased for me."

"In that case, knock yourself out."

"And you really don't mind if I use this computer?"

"I bought it for you. You're welcome to hook it to the docking station on my desk."

"Oh, I don't want to intrude on your space any more than I already have."

"You're not intruding..." he began, but she cut him off so quickly he had little doubt she had anticipated his retort.

"I am most certainly intruding, sir," she replied as his ears told him she took a seat at his desk. "You got zero sleep last night because you've got some kind of noble instinct that demanded you offer your bed to me and, ironically, not take no for an answer."

"I was going to add that you'd be doing me a favor if you helped me figure out what's working and what needs to be replaced. And why ironically?"

"Surely you see the disconnect between, purely because I happen to be a female and you happen to be a male, demanding that I take what's yours out of a sense of chivalry; and refusing to take my feelings on the matter into account. It's like you're putting me on a pedestal with one hand while..." she paused for a moment before continuing, "you know what? I suspect that both aspects are completely consistent with chivalry. Women aren't people; they're chattel. They're belongings to be valued, not human beings to be considered as equals."

"Now hold on..."

"I'm not necessarily suggesting that I think that you believe those things explicitly," she interrupted. "But surely you can see the inherent juxtaposition."

"I was just trying to be a gentleman," he protested. "Not take away your rights!"

"You know what?" she grunted as she squeezed between the seats to join him on the bridge. "I believe you. You were absolutely being a perfect gentleman. Just try to remember in the future that respecting women also means listening to them."

"I will," he vowed gravely.

"No need to be so serious, David," she replied breezily. "I wasn't trying to chastise you. I'm honestly just trying to figure out how to ensure that you get some sleep tonight."

"We'll figure something out," he replied gruffly. He then, as an instinctual part of carrying out the routine of driving (and certainly not in an attempt to sneak a peek), noticed that his companion was no longer dressed in borrowed sweatpants and long-sleeved T-shirt. "Um..."

"Oh," she gasped. "I almost forgot! I tried it both ways, and I'm pretty sure this is right but it still feels a little... I don't know... weird. What do you think?"

"I... um... what?"

"Just give me your honest opinion, David. I swear I won't be offended."

"But... you're... that's a... um... thong..."

"Of course it's a thong! And you promised to help me! I don't even know if I'm thonging correctly. On one hand, I can kind of get the appeal. It certainly feels better on my quim than the scratching synthetic knickers I had to wear in my time. But on the other hand, it's going really far up my bum. Is that normal?"

He dared another glance in her direction, as much to confirm that the last tenuous strands of his sanity had not been severed as to comply with her request. His inspection informed him that his initial impression had indeed been correct. His companion had donned decidedly non-opaque white tights and a simple white thong. Above her waist, she wore a heather T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, 'There are 2 types of people in this world: 1) Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.' (and, based on the way bits of Petra jostled beneath the snug-fitting fabric, nothing else). Most notably for the question Petra had posed (not to mention David's rapidly degrading mental capacity), she wore the thong outside the tights.

"I, um, think they're supposed to go on the inside."

"I know that," she groused. "But then you wouldn't have been able to answer my question."

She hopped up to kneel in her seat and pulled the thong away from her belly as she tried (with limited success) to look past her generous breasts to inspect the garment while David's eyes were glued on the expansive thatch of pale curls which the tights did little to obscure. She turned suddenly to look over her shoulder, prompting him to recall that he was (in fact) piloting a craft in motion. He noted in his peripheral vision that she dropped back into the seat, followed quickly by placing her feet on the dash. A glance back in her direction revealed that she had removed the thong and was examining it closely.

She thrust the tiny garment under his chin and asked, "What do you think?"

Left with little alternative, he accepted her offering. He held the alluring wisp of fabric in the palm of his hand like a cherished artifact, but he nearly dropped it (to say nothing of losing control of the van) when his peripheral vision informed him that Petra was divesting herself of her tights.

"Petra?"

"Here," she huffed as she draped the tights over his arm and collected the thong. "Just hold that for a second."

David made a valiant effort to keep his eyes on the road... and failed miserably. The simple fact was that he was cognitively incapable of ignoring the flash of pale flesh out of the corner of his eye as Petra thrust her hips skyward to help her tug the thong into place. His head helplessly turned to the right in time to gaze upon her lush expanse of pale blonde pubic hair as the thong slowly slid over it (or more accurately, he corrected in his head, through it).

"My God," he breathed reverently.

"Huh?" she grunted as she dropped back into her seat.

"Nuh... nothing..." He desperately tried to catch his breath, but he had the distinct impression he had been fired into space by the world's largest trebuchet. "Why did you... um... hair..."

She rotated in her seat to face him and demonstrably spread her legs before asking, "What do you think?"

His gaze snapped to her eyes with an anxious urgency and he gasped, "I didn't... I mean... I wasn't..."

"Wasn't what?" Petra asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"I didn't look at your..."

"David," she whined. "In Tesla's name... I'm asking you to look at my quim. Why are you being so weird about this?"

"Because I've never seen..."

"You've never seen... what?" Petra demanded, although each syllable was gentler than the last. "Seen a quim?"

David did not trust himself to answer beyond an angry shake of his head.

"Well that's ok," she continued warmly. "You know what? I've never seen a prick before. Maybe we could just... you know... show each other?"

"I can't... Petra... I..."

"It's ok, David," she whispered. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

"I... I'm sorry."

"No, I should be the one apologizing. This is all my fault."

She covered herself with the tights she had been holding, but that did little to cover her near-nudity. He continued staring at her with an intensity which felt more like a compulsion until she started to squeeze between the seats to escape to the rear of the van.

"Wait," he whispered. "I wasn't trying to..." He took a labored breath before his body tensed visibly and he turned to face her. In a strong voice, he declared, "I'm the one who is in the wrong, Petra. You've lost everything, and everyone. I should be doing anything I can to make you feel welcome. It is true that this is an unprecedented situation for me, but that's no excuse for making your life harder."

"It's unprecedented for me too," she huffed as she dropped back into her seat. "I know it must seem like I'm crazier than a Democrat, but I feel like I've spent my entire life working toward a singular goal. In Tesla's name... that's exactly what I've done. I'm thirty years old and I've spent every waking moment trying to escape the wretched reality of my existence since I learned to read. Now I've done it, and I'm in a world where there are no rules."

"There are most certainly some rules," David interjected gently.

"Not compared to eighty-five years from now. Do you know the penalty for a woman to dress the way I am right now in public, in sight of a man to whom she doesn't belong?"

"Public stoning?" he guessed teasingly.

"Not in Kansas, thank goodness. I think stoning is only legal in Mississippi. Kansas prefers to make use of the stocks. After delivering fifty lashes."

"Jesus! Are you serious?"

"I wish I wasn't, but I've seen it David. It's awful. So, believe me when I tell you that this world is so much better than what I used to know. So much." She sighed and sank back into her seat before adding, "I feel this compulsion... this urgency... to taste this freedom that I've never known, to finally find out what it feels like to not be afraid. But I can't, I won't, allow that... um... I can't think of a better word than desire, honestly... I won't allow that desire to put me in a position where I make you uncomfortable."

"You're not, and you weren't, making me uncomfortable."

"You certainly seemed uncomfortable a few minutes ago."

"I was just surprised, Petra. Honest."

"Ok," she said slowly. "In that case... what do you think of the thong?"

"I think it's lovely," he gushed. His eyes then widened and he turned his attention from the road to his companion to say, "I mean..."

"I'll take lovely, David. And I appreciate your feedback, truly. The more honest, the better."

"In that case..."

"Yes?"

"Does it feel... um... strange... because your... um... hair covers more... um... area than the... um... thong?"

"Not really. Does it look strange?"

"It's... um... distinctive."

"Well," she enthused as she sat up straight and looked toward the rear of the van. "Then I should try on the other kinds, shouldn't I?"

"That sounds... um..."

"Lovely?" she chirped as she squeezed past him.

"Yeah," he replied slowly, not entirely certain if the dazed sensation he was experiencing was due more to the unforgettable sight of her lush thatch of pubic hair (which was made that much more alluring by the tiny strip of white fabric which did very little to obscure it), or the heaviness of her breast dragging across his bicep as she climbed past him.

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Nine

"Can you hand me some of that liquid metal?" Petra mumbled around a penlight she held between her lips.

David replied by handing over the requested item before returning to the dresser he had been leaning against for the past hour. He waited until she finished the latest in a long string of meticulous operations before asking, "Are you sure you're building a computer?"

"Of course," she answered brightly. "What else would I be doing?"

"I mean... if I were shown a picture of that," he waved in the direction of the table which had been repurposed as a workbench, "and asked what it was, I'm not sure computer would be one of my first ten guesses."

"What would be your first hypothesis?"

He shrugged and offered, "A bomb?"

She opened her mouth as if to retort angrily, but her expression then turned thoughtful and she grunted, "Ok. I can see that. Although this isn't how I would build a bomb."

"Does that mean this is something you've done before... or just that you've given it enough thought to have a rough idea of how you'd go about it?"

"I mean... technically my time machine was a bomb. Since it, you know, blew up. But I've never intentionally built something whose sole purpose was to explode."

He nodded toward the small-form-factor desktop computer which she had insisted on disassembling to 'find out how they put it together' and asked, "So what's your aim with that thing anyway?"

"Computers are inherently wasteful contraptions. Or, put more accurately, engineers are naturally disinclined to consider problems holistically. Part of it is the nature of how corporations parcel out work. If some middle manager tells a guy to figure out how to get a five-percent improvement in heat sink performance, they'll typically figure out a way to do it. But it never occurs to that middle manager, or his boss, or his boss, that maybe there's something better to do with that heat than just figure out how to get rid of it. Because none of them have the intelligence, or the vision, to truly consider the system in totality. And thus no one ever asks the question: why can't all that heat be turned into power instead of just getting rid of it?"

"Is that even possible?"

"Of course. Heat is one of the most common manifestations of energy."

"So, the whole computer just runs off the power generated by the heat it produces?"

"There's no free lunch, David," she replied not-unkindly. "Also, commercially available thermoelectric generators are nowhere near that efficient. But it will significantly reduce the amount of power it requires. Also, once I get some more parts, I'll be able to use that heat to power a freon-based cooling system that'll allow this little guy to run at five hundred and twelve percent of its rated capacity."

"But all my tools are browser-based. I really don't need that kind of performance."

"You're not the only one who..." she began, but she abruptly fell silent and her hands ceased their delicate work.

"What?" he asked after a pregnant pause. "What'd I say?"

"You mean what did I say."

"I'm confused."

"I was making assumptions. Obviously you bought this computer for you; to do your job."

"Jobs," he corrected reflexively. Then, after his brain caught up with his mouth, he added, "But I already told you that you're welcome to anything of mine. That includes all the stuff we bought today."

"David," she groaned. "I can't keep being such a burden to you."

"Are you nuts? You saved me a shee... boatload of money today. It would have cost me several thousand dollars to have those jackals down at the so-called R. V. Emporium install the new solar charge controller. Not to mention the fact that they insisted the batteries were all bricked and that I needed to replace them along with all the solar panels."

"Fragging slag-offs just wanted to bleed you dry," she grumbled. "But that doesn't change the fact that the only reason you need to do any of this shaz in the first place..."

"I thought we'd moved past this," he interrupted in frustration.

She groaned, "I still feel guilty... ok?"

"So long as you remember that I harbor you no ill will."

"David," she sighed. "I'm not sure I believe you're capable of harboring anyone, or anything, ill will. You in fact seem to be one of the most genuinely accommodating people I've ever met."

He shrugged and mumbled, "I guess you're right."

She again stopped what she was doing in response to his change in tone. She regarded him intently before demanding, "What just happened?"

"We reached the logical end point of that line of conversation?" he offered lamely.

"No. I mean the fact that we were well on our way to having an actual conversation, but then you pulled back. Again. Q. E. D., I said something wrong and offended you. Again."

"You didn't offend me, Petra."

"Come on," she groaned. "Obviously I did something. Just tell me what it is."

"I honestly don't even remember what we were talking about."

"Is this like the thing earlier, in the van, where I was shoving my quim in your face?"

"That... uh..." he stammered, "wasn't what... um... happened."

"Ok," she conceded. "I obviously didn't actually shove my quim in your face. I mean, on top of the moral implications, you were fragging driving at the time. But I was exposing myself rather brazenly. And, despite your repeated reassurances that you weren't offended, I couldn't help but notice that you basically didn't speak to me again for several hours. You'll notice that I dressed much more acceptably after showering."

Absent any instructions from his consciousness, his eyes dropped for the briefest of moments to take in the voluminous floor-length pajama pants she had donned, along with a roomy T-shirt. It was an objectively demure, even androgynous, outfit. At least so long as she remained perfectly still (since any movement on her part laid bare her absence of any supporting undergarments). Her hair was making its own contribution to obscuring her natural (or perhaps supernatural) level of alluringness, as she had laboriously brushed it out so that it laid in long sheets down both the front and back of her body (with the former contingent pooling in her lap like a puddle of silver).

Again realizing that he had fallen victim to a moment of weakness, he snapped his eyes up to meet her gaze and blurted out, "It's fine. I mean great. What I meant to say was..." He paused to take a deep breath, both to give himself a chance to collect his thoughts and to stave off hyperventilating. "Your wardrobe choices are your own, Petra. You need not do anything for my benefit. I was not offended by how you were dressed in the van, nor am I in any way relieved with respect to how you are dressed now."

"Then why'd you go quiet on me before?"

"I'd... um... say that the more apt question would be why was I speaking with you before that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that my... um... default state is not speaking."

"Does it hurt you to speak?"

"Not physically. No."

"But... um... mentally? Psychologically?"

He shrugged and offered, "Sometimes."

"Am I making you uncomfortable right now?"

He thought for a moment before replying, "I don't think so?"

"Well then... would it be too forward of me to ask you to tell me something about yourself?"

"I already told you everything there is to know."

With an intentionality that even his admittedly limited social intelligence had no trouble picking up, she returned to the work on the computer. Keeping her eyes on her work, she said, "You told me your name and your age. Then you said, and I quote, I have no hometown, no family, no acquaintances, everything I own is in this van."

"Those things are all true."

"I'd love to know the story behind those truths," she replied softly. "If, that is, you're willing to tell me."

"There's not much to tell, really. I was born in Alabama. Only child. My mom died when I was eight. My father passed away shortly after I got out of college. My inheritance allowed me to purchase my van."

"Do you mind me asking what happened to them?"

"My mom was in the army; a helicopter pilot. Her squadron was one of the first to be sent overseas for the so-called War on Terror. In Iraq. That's in the Middle East."

She smiled warmly and said, "It may surprise you to learn this, considering all the upheaval in that region, but Iraq is still Iraq in 2111. What I can't wrap my mind around is the fact that a woman was not only in the military, but also sent to an actual war. In my time, I mean the future, that would be unthinkable. At least in this country."

"In any case... she was shot down in 2004."

"I'm so sorry."

He shrugged and said, "It was a long time ago. My dad was very traditional. He was a first-generation American, but both his parents were born in India, so he had very firm opinions about gender roles, and very much considered it a woman's work to raise children. So, you can imagine that my mother's death was pretty inconvenient for him. He started looking for her replacement almost immediately. Unfortunately for him, it took him thirteen years to find one. I suspect the fact that I was old enough that he was no longer searching for a stepmom for me made his search a lot easier. That plus the fact that I had gained access to the trust fund my mother set up meant he was free to start a new life for himself. I probably only saw him a few times after I graduated from high school. He and his new wife moved to Surrey, in England, about a year before he passed and, for all practical purposes, forgot I existed."

"What is it about men that makes them immune to empathy," Petra muttered darkly. She then locked gazes with David before adding, "At least... some men."

"Pardon?"

"We're quite alike. My mother also died young, and my father also put more effort into finding a new wife than he did raising his children. Although, in my case, we lost my mom to childbirth, and I had a bunch of siblings. I'm really sorry for all you went through, David."

He attempted to reply several times before finally settling on, "Thanks."

"Of course," she replied warmly. She finished reattaching the P. C.'s case before speaking again. "Was it... was he also killed in war? My research indicated that those were... are extremely prevalent around the world."

"They were taking the trip my father always dreamed of, to the old country, as he called it. They were killed in what the embassy called a street crime. Likely just a mugging which went wrong, although I can't imagine my father ever just handing over his wallet. He'd been more likely to try to fight the guy. Or guys. In any case, they were both killed."

"That's very sad. I'm sorry for your loss."

"It is what it is."

She opened her mouth as if to ask another question, but she was interrupted by her stomach loudly growling. Her eyes widened alarmingly and she gasped, "Oh my goodness! I am so sorry!"

"Why?"

"Because," she snickered, "that was really loud!"

Before he could fashion a reasoned response, she devolved into unrestrained cackling. He quickly found that he was powerless to resist the lure of joining in on her jubilant chuckles, and was soon forced to seek out the box of facial tissues so that he could offer them to his companion who now had tears streaming down her face.

It took mere moments, however, for his merriment to be replaced by self-recrimination at the realization that she was obviously starving. A condition which was entirely his fault, as he had yet to do anything to provide for her nourishment.

She noted his change in demeanor and managed to quickly quell her laughter to ask, "What's wrong?"

"I owe you an apology."

"Whatever for?"

"I don't eat for much, or very often. It was wrong of me to take this long to realize how hungry you must be."

She gave him a queer look and inquired, "Why?"

"I inherited a genetic infirmity from my mother. Absent very strict control of my calorie intake, my health will degrade rapidly."

"That sounds suspiciously like someone else's words," she observed darkly.

"It is the demonstrable truth. Before I changed my diet a year and a half ago, I was over fifty percent heavier than I am now."

"That's a lot of mass to lose in so short a time. How much did you change your diet?"

"I limit my caloric intake to seven hundred and fifty calories per meal..." he began.

"Ok..."

He continued, "But I also tend to only eat every sixteen or twenty hours."

"That's way too little! How are you not starving all the time?"

He offered another weak shrug and mumbled, "I guess I just got used to it. I drink a lot of fluids. You know... water? Coffee?"

"So, I assume that since you haven't eaten anything since I arrived," she paused to glance at the clock, "eighteen-and-a-half hours ago?"

"I haven't eaten anything since mid-morning yesterday."

"You know what?" she said after her face scrunched up in confusion momentarily, "me neither. In the run-up to my launch window, I was too busy." She stood up and crossed the hotel room to lean against the same dresser which had been his perch since she began her computer improvement initiative. "So, what do people who are hungry do for food in the twenty-first century?"

"They... um... eat?"

She reached over and playfully smacked his arm before huffing, "I know that, you ninny. I meant where should we eat?"

"A... restaurant?"

"Great. Now we're making some progress. Any idea where we might find one of those?"

"You want to... um... go to dinner... at a restaurant... with me?"

"Why David Shyam!" she declared. "I'm a married woman!"

"I'm sorry," he grumped as his eyes dropped to the floor.

"David?" she said gently. "Obviously I was fragging with you. I'd love to go to dinner with you. In fact... it would be my honor."

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Ten

"David!" Petra yelped in a tone which prompted him to spring from the bed upon which he had been lounging.

"What's wrong?" David barked as he hurried toward the bathroom into which she had stepped to get changed (despite his offer to swap places with her).

"I am extremely sorry to do this to you, but I need some help."

"Are you..." he began as his hand reached for the doorknob.

Before his fingers found the metal, he heard a click and the door opened by the scantest of margins to reveal the blacked out interior of the bathroom.

He cocked his head in confusion and asked, "Did the lights go out?"

"No," she sighed dejectedly. "I turned them off."

"Why?"

She growled, "Because I can't figure out this fragging teat-hammock! Ok? I built a gorram time machine, but I can't figure out how anyone puts this piece of shaz on."

"Oh! Do they... um... not have bras in the future?"

"Of course they do, you ninny. But unless you're a brazen trollop, they're not built like this. To be honest, I never bothered with them unless I was going to town, since the ones I was made to wear were cataclysmically uncomfortable. But that's all in the past. I mean the future... my past. Whatever. The point is... I need your help. The mechanism for how this fragging thing works is perfectly obvious. I just can't figure out how anyone who hasn't suffered a catastrophic shoulder injury (likely more than one) could ever attach these gorram hooks!"

"So, why is the light off?"

"Because I'm standing here with my teats out, and I know how uncomfortable that makes you. I was hoping I could sort of put this fragging thing on as best I can, and then just scooch back toward you until you can see enough to help me. I know it's a ton to ask, but..."

He interrupted, "Wait a minute! What makes you think I know how bras work? I already told you that I've never..."

"It's just three hooks you have to connect."

"Then why can't you..."

"Because the complete shaz-head who designed this gorram thing was obviously a man and never tried to manage the task of simultaneously holding their teats up, and the bra in place, and hooking three fragging hooks behind them and so high up their back that they were certain to pull a muscle!"

"I see. Um... I could fetch you your phone and help you find a how-to video."

"Can you just try to help me?" she pleaded. "I'm standing here in the dark feeling like a fool, because obviously even garden variety simpletons in this age can manage that which has completely flummoxed me, and..."

Frantic to forestall any potential hysterics, he yelped, "I'll help!"

"Thank you," she sighed.

Without another word, she emerged from the darkness. At first, he could only see the smooth, uninterrupted skin of her back above a snugly fitting pair of jeans, but then she rolled her shoulders and a pair of white straps slid into place followed quickly by the ends of her garment flopping against her ribs.

David reached for the straps, only to feel unexpected resistance followed by Petra grunting, "Just a minute."

He felt the curious adjustments in tension as she got everything sorted, and it was impossible to ignore the vision in his mind's eye of her manipulating her generous breasts into position.

"Ok," she breathed, "all set."

After tugging the straps snug, he set about affixing the hooks. It was a task easier said than done, however.

"I'm not sure this one fits," he grunted upon discovering that only by pulling the garment uncomfortably tight could he bring the hooks into the vicinity of their intended target.

"They have to be tight," Petra wheezed, "otherwise my teats will just be flopping all over the place every time I move."

"Right," he muttered whilst utterly failing to resist imagining the aforementioned flopping.

After making another attempt, David managed to get everything attached. Petra reached for the light switch to return illumination to the bathroom before turning to face him. She gave a few tentative twists of her upper body before graduating to bouncing on the balls of her feet while she kept a careful eye on her scarcely concealed endowments.

With an almost clinical detachment, she observed, "Well, I'll say this for it, it's an order of magnitude more comfortable than what I'm used to. Although, seeing the results, I'm not sure what the point is." She effected a quick hop, producing an eye-popping reaction from her companion in response to her breasts nearly spilling free from the (as near as makes no difference) transparent white lace. "I mean, honestly, I don't see the point. This isn't really supporting anything, is it? And it's not like it's hiding that much either, am I right?"

Helpless to tear his gaze from the vast expanse of cleavage on offer, he stammered, "I... um... what?"

"Oh, shaz! I'm sorry, David. Here, let me get my top."

She reached for a hanger suspended from the shower-curtain rod and retrieved a jersey for the professional football team which hailed from the state to their south. After sliding it over her head (a move which still left the entirety of one shoulder, and a hint of the lace at the top of one of the bra's cups, visible), she gave him a shy smile.

"Is that better?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose. After holding it for a long beat, he sighed, "You shouldn't be the one apologizing."

"What are you talking about! I basically shoved my teats in your..."

"I meant... I feel like you've spent half your time since we met asking for my forgiveness. This despite the fact that you've yet to commit a single malicious act." He watched her eyes widen in surprise, followed quickly by taking a breath which he strongly suspected was in support of an impassioned retort, so he hastened to add, "Now, wasn't the whole point of this," he gestured back toward the bathroom, "so you could get something to eat?"

After a pregnant pause, her features morphed from frustrated to placid. She shrugged and offered, "Ok."

Caught off guard by her abrupt shift, he backpedaled awkwardly toward where his wallet, watch, and keys had been deposited when they entered the room. He finished filling his pockets with his effects and turned to find her standing behind him with an expectant look on her face.

She asked, "You never told me where we're going?"

"We're not exactly spoiled for choice," he replied with a grimace. "Our options are basically fast food, dive bars, and a barbecue joint."

"I'll be honest, I'm not sure what any of those mean beyond the first one. And I don't care if fast food is a million times better now than it will be in eight decades; that's going to be a hard no for me."

"Strong agree," David concurred. "So, unless you want to drink watered down beer until we're so drunk we forget our names and likely get in a fight, I guess we don't really have a choice after all. On the bright side, this town is so small that it's right across the street, so we don't have to drive anywhere."

"Great!" she enthused. When he turned for the door, however, she yelped, "Wait!"

"What's wrong?"

She tugged at her shirt, emphasizing the portion of her bra that it failed to conceal. "Are you sure I won't get arrested for wearing this in public?"

He replied, "Sure suggests a level of clairvoyance that I don't possess. That being said, I would be stunned if you attracted any official interest above and beyond the fact that you will unquestionably be the most beautiful woman there."

"You think I'm..." she gasped instinctively, but she quickly fell silent.

"Pardon?"

After taking a breath, she grinned at him in a way which prompted a palpable flutter in his stomach, and said, "That was a very nice thing for you to say, David. Thank you very much."

He shrugged uncomfortably and mumbled, "That wasn't so much nice as... true."

"Beauty, and handsomeness, are always in the eye of the beholder," she declared solemnly. She then took a moment to give him a thorough inspection before offering him a tentative smile. "For example, I just realized I've yet to tell you that I find you to be very attractive in general, and especially handsome in those trousers and that button-up shirt. So much so that I find myself wondering why you always wear long-sleeves and full-length pants in spite of the intense heat outside."

He shuffled his feet in obvious awkwardness and did not make even a token effort to meet her eyes. "It's just how I dress."

"Well, for whatever the opinion of a lowly woman is worth in your mind, I very much like what I see."

"I value your opinion very much," he replied severely, "even if I find your assertion preposterous."

"Well, human who has also shown a tendency to make outlandish claims, shall we take our leave of this place and seek out the closest available offering of sustenance?"

He opened the door and gestured toward the parking lot before announcing, "After you."

"Unh-unh," she chided. "I specifically remember you asking me out, sir. It wouldn't be proper for me to be seen in public not on your arm."

"But... we were in public earlier today," he replied in confusion.

"Then we'd best not push our luck by risking any further violations of the morality statutes."

A brief snicker escaped before he schooled his features and asked, "You know those don't exist yet, right?"

"You know I'm just trying to get you to give me your arm so I can squish my teat against you, right?"

His mouth opened and closed several times before he managed to grunt, "I see."

She looked at him expectantly for a long moment before realization dawned and he offered her his crooked elbow. After smiling her thanks, she took his arm and sent him a teasing wink after his eyes widened in response to noticing the heavy swell of her breast against his bicep. He pulled the door closed behind them and led her toward the restaurant. With every step, his awareness of her lush curves expanded. Yet, when he tried to spare her any embarrassment by putting distance between them, she made it clear that she knew exactly what she was doing by tugging him even closer.

"Oh, wow!" she gushed as they rounded the end of the building and their destination hove into view. "Not exactly being circumspect about the primary protein on offer. Are they?"

"Cripes," he hissed.

"Do you not like cow?"

"I sort of stopped... I mean... that preposterous statue they stuck on top of their restaurant is a dead ringer for a steer who would come visit me at the place where I was camping when you arrived here."

Her eyes widened in horror and she whispered, "I hope my arrival didn't hurt him!"

"I suspect he fled to a gully, or even a barn, long before you arrived."

"Thank Tesla," she sighed in relief. After another glance skyward, she added, "Was your friend that big?"

"I don't think so. I also hope, for his sake, that he still exists in the present tense."

"Hear, hear!" she enthused. After gesturing in the direction of the restaurant, she added, "Shall we?"

Petra reached for the door as they arrived at the restaurant, but David beat her to the handle and pulled it open in a fashion which popular media suggested might be seen as gentlemanly. She proved his suspicions correct by smiling her thanks and pulling his arm tighter against her curves.

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Eleven

"So," David stammered, "have you ever... um... had... you know... meat?"

Petra gave him a queer look and asked, "I already told you that my husband was a... gay?"

"I'd suggest that you either say that someone is gay, or that he is a homosexual."

"So, calling someone a gay is improper English, or offensive?"

"Um... both. I guess."

"Point taken," she conceded. "Back to your original question... I told you that the only man who was ever permitted to relieve me of the legal fiction of my maidenhead had no interest in doing so."

His eyes widened and he grunted, "There's a lot to unpack there."

"The fact that any sexual activity other than with your husband is illegal for females doesn't mean that I've never... you know... "

David was helpless to make a reply, instead suddenly finding himself completely enraptured by the implications of her outlandish statement (and doing everything he could to give off the impression that the menu he held required all of his attention, despite already knowing that the restaurant served nothing he would consider safe for personal consumption).

She reached for him almost as if by instinct before letting out a small squeak and retracting her hand. After sitting motionless for a moment, she murmured, "I'm sorry, David. That was too far."

"You didn't even say anything," he grumped. "Why in hell... I mean heck... should it be too far?"

"But my implication was unambiguous. Just as you have been very clear on how uncomfortable that sort of talk makes you."

He dropped his eyes and muttered, "I never meant to imply that I expected you to change on my account. How on earth did we end up talking about this, anyway?"

"You asked me if I'd ever committed adultery by fragging myself."

"I did not."

"You asked if I'd ever had... oh you meant animal flesh for sustenance! Not... you know..."

"Are you seriously suggesting that in just eighty years the term meat comes to mean exclusively intercourse?"

She snickered and asked, "Haven't you ever heard of a euphemism? Surely you're not suggesting that I actually think that the clinical term for a vagina is quim."

"How on earth would I have any basis for forming an opinion one way or the other?" he muttered, almost to himself. "It's not like a million crazier things than that haven't happened in the last couple days."

"Seriously, David. You have got to lighten up."

He cocked his head in surrender and mumbled, "If you say so."

Having already exhausted the distraction offered by the menu, and possessed of zero interest in locking gazes with any of the restaurant's other patrons, David pulled his phone from his pocket and opened the app for his preferred job board.

"Welcome to Bob's Country Bunker," a chipper voice announced from the edge of his awareness. "What'll y'all have to drink?"

Petra replied, "Um... what are you having, David?"

Without looking up, he grunted, "Water."

Petra's response caught him off guard. "Can you excuse us for just a moment?"

"Of course," the waitress answered. "Why don't I just bring you both some water while you're thinking it over."

David's attempt to return his focus to his phone was interrupted by Petra's soft plea. "I really am sorry that I..."

"Please," he whispered with an intensity that bordered on desperation, "stop apologizing to me. You haven't done anything wrong."

"Then can I ask you something?"

He shrugged and said, "Sure."

"Is it legal for women to consume alcohol?"

"Yeah..."

"In public?"

He gestured to a neighboring table where a pair of women were making little effort to hide their enjoyment of beverages that came in glasses which were nearly the size of their heads.

"Then I desperately want one."

"Knock yourself out."

"Please keep in mind that, not only have I never had a drop of alcohol in my life, but also the fact that the sect of Christism both my birth family and my husband followed maintained that consumption was a sin. So I have literally zero idea what anything on this drink menu means."

"And?"

She huffed in frustration and said, "What should I get?"

"Um... I guess that depends on your ultimate objective. If your goal is to get obliterated, then I believe (based on the images on the menu) that those two are drinking the likely accurately-named Mind Erasers."

"What if I just want to know what it tastes like?"

"Honestly? I have no idea. I never really learned how to enjoy the stuff. Maybe try asking the waitress."

"Will you try something with me?"

"I wouldn't mind giving something a taste, but alcohol has a ton of carbs, so..."

"And?"

"Carbs are a measurement of the amount of sugar..."

"I know what carbohydrates are, David," she snapped with a withering glare. "What I don't understand is why you're so obsessed with them."

"I already told you I inherited a genetic...."

She cut him off, groaning, "Infirmity. Yeah. I remember. You changed your eating habits eighteen months ago and you've lost an unhealthy amount of weight. But you're literally one of the fittest males in this establishment. Wouldn't it be reasonable to ease up a bit on your diet at this point?"

"I'm not sure a western Oklahoma barbeque joint at nine P. M. on a week-night is a reasonable basis of comparison. People in these parts basically take it as an article of faith that potatoes are vegetables, anything green is bad for you, and every meal should include (at a minimum) beef, bread and dessert."

Her gaze grew more intense and she demanded, "What are you planning to order?"

He shrugged and said, "Just water."

"You told me you haven't eaten since before my arrival. When, exactly, did you last eat?"

He quelled the impulse to ignore her question (or, worse, to reply untruthfully). "Forty minutes after nine, yesterday morning."

"So it's been, as near as makes no difference, thirty-five-and-a-half hours since you last had anything but water or black coffee. Would that be an accurate statement?"

"Affirmative," he replied evenly.

"David," she groaned, "I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable. I'm just trying to get to know you. And, hopefully, to figure out a way to convince you to share a meal with me. I mean... you must be fragging ravenous."

"I'm honestly not. It wasn't easy, but the only way I could turn my health around was to train my body to stop feeling hunger."

"By starving yourself?"

He shrugged self-consciously and replied, "I had a significant reserve. And the meals I do eat are specifically formulated to ensure that, when combined with a cocktail of vitamins, I don't suffer from malnutrition."

"You had a significant reserve, David. Not anymore."

"Regardless. I assure you I'm in no danger."

"I see," she replied slowly. After taking a moment to scan their surroundings, she asked, "How do restaurants in your time work as far as payment? Can we just leave money on the table for the water, and then we're free to go?"

He looked around in confusion before saying, "But you haven't eaten yet..."

"I've decided I'm not hungry."

Something niggled at the edge of David's awareness, but he lacked sufficient frame of reference to understand its import. Left with no alternative, he voiced the question which was front of mind. "I thought you were starving. And this is the only restaurant around here. It's also getting late. If you don't eat here, you might be stuck waiting until morning."

"Then I wait."

"But... I don't understand. Why'd you change your mind?"

"I will eat when you do, and as much as you do."

"Please don't do that Petra," he pleaded. "Even if I were in the mood to eat, there's almost no chance I could stomach anything they have here."

"Why not?" she asked pointedly.

"I haven't had what most people would consider a meal in over a year. And what I did consume was almost always one of the smoothies I told you about. If I were to eat something like barbeque, or a steak, it would almost certainly give me..."

"Yes?"

"I think it likely that it wouldn't agree with me. But please don't let that keep you from getting something to eat, Petra."

With firm conviction, she stated, "I will eat what you eat, when you eat, as much as you eat. And not before."

"You're not being fair."

"Then help me understand why you're so reluctant to eat like a normal human. And don't tell me about inherited conditions. What you've described to me is the kind of regimen a doctor would put you on if you needed to lose eighty percent of your body weight, not when you're on the skinny side of average."

"Not a lot to it, really. Early on in my journey, I figured out that losing weight is, in many ways, harder than trying to stop smoking or drinking. Because you don't have to do those to survive. Once you overcome your addiction, you just have to deal with the lingering temptation. But you don't have doctors telling you that cigarettes are terrible for you, and will absolutely kill you if you don't make a change; so you have to have exactly three a day and no more (even though when you have those you're overcome with the desire for more). So I just fundamentally changed how I consumed calories until it didn't remotely resemble the activity of eating, and made it so unappealing that I'd never want to do it more than absolutely necessary. That allowed me to, for all practical purposes, kick the habit (if you'll pardon the phrase)."

"That's a very well articulated and logical sounding argument," she replied gently. "It's also complete fragging shaz."

"Excuse me?" he snapped with more emotion than he intended.

"Who was the doctor who told you to do this? What was his name and specialty?"

"Not very progressive of you to assume it was a man."

She snapped, "All doctors are men in my time. Answer the gorram question."

"The internet provided all the answers I required. The fact that I feel far healthier now than I did when I was fat is all the evidence I require to support the wisdom of my strategy."

"So, a doctor didn't tell you that you would die in a fortnight if you didn't start losing weight at a frightening pace; you just decided all on your own that this had to be done. Is that right?"

He dropped his gaze to his lap and groaned, "You wouldn't understand."

"I'm trying to understand, but you're not telling me why you felt this was so urgently necessary."

"Because the veil was lifted from my eyes, all right!" he snarled.

Her eyes grew wide in fear and she whispered, "I'm sorry, David."

"No," he grimaced; his harsh tone from a moment before replaced by a muted murmur, "I'm the one who should be apologizing. That was uncalled for."

"Please, David, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just wish I knew how to convince you that whatever it was that drove you to this... penance; you can tell me. I swear that I won't betray your trust."

"I just reached a fork in the road, one where I realized that there was a huge gap between who I thought I was, and reality. So, rather than allow myself to sink into depression, I, um, made some changes."

"Was it your father's abandonment?"

"Huh?"

"Was your fork in the road when he chose his new wife over you, or perhaps when he was killed?"

"He never really encouraged the kind of bond that leads to people being devastated when they lose someone."

They were interrupted by the waitress's chipper voice asking, "Did y'all decide on what you want to order?"

"I'm sorry," Petra replied without taking her eyes from David. "Could we have just a few more moments?"

"Maybe some cocktails while you're deciding? Pitchers of margaritas are half-off tonight."

"That'll be fine," David grumbled in hope of forestalling Petra's line of questioning. "Thanks."

His eyes flitted to the waitress's departure, based on nothing more complicated than whatever vestige of his D. N. A. obligated him to take heed of movement. The impulse to stare just a moment too long at the undeniably impressive job her jeans did of framing her backside was equally instinctive, and something to which he similarly responded by silently chastising himself before averting his gaze. Unfortunately for the tiny sliver of capacity for effective interpersonal communication which remained in his consciousness (a paltry amount indeed, considering his inherent limitations), his attention fled from inconsiderately lingering on the waitress's departing derrière to helplessly staring at the alluring white lace of Petra's bra strap, and the expanse of creamy skin it bifurcated.

When David, after significantly more delay than was socially acceptable, screwed his eyes shut as a pained expression dominated his features, Petra gasped in realization. "It was a woman, wasn't it?"

"Wuh... what are you talking about?"

"Some contemptible slitch somehow managed to overlook your nobility, and your good heart, and your intelligence, and your handsome face, and responded to a moment of vulnerability on your part by savagely crushing your spirit. Didn't she?"

"How did you know?" he asked in reverential tones.

"I meant what I said, David," she continued, undeterred. "As far as I'm concerned, you asked me out on a date, and I happily accepted. Not because you rescued me, or because I'm dependent on you, but rather because you are a noble, good-hearted, intelligent, handsome man who I am thrilled is taking me to dinner."

"It was... is... my pleasure."

"And it is my pleasure whenever you look at me. Especially those looks which you can't seem to help chastising yourself for."

Try as he might, he could not prevent an inelegant, "Huh?" from escaping his lips.

"We'll get to that," she replied with a wink. "First, I know you've memorized the menu as many times as you've pretended to stare at it. Would you please do your date the distinct honor of telling her the item which is least likely to ruin our evening when I use my feminine wiles to bully you into eating it?"

"I'm not deceiving you when I say there's very little here I can order, Petra. I actually did talk to a doctor about my plan, and she told me I was as likely as not to end up in the hospital. As you've no doubt guessed, I ignored most of her advice. She did, however, convince me that I had to continue eating real food on a regular basis so my G. I. tract didn't atrophy. So I've been eating a green salad with a bit of boiled chicken once a week, and I'd have a poached egg, or a spot of oatmeal, every few days. It wasn't about eating so much as retaining the ability to eat. But anything fatty, or spicy, is likely to be quite problematic."

She fixed him with a gaze which startled him, based on the affection he saw behind her enrapturing sapphire eyes. "If I order for both of us, based on all you've told me about what you've done to yourself, will you at least do whatever you can so that I'm not made to feel self-conscious about the fact that I'm a good deal squishier than our waitress (who, by the way, finds you handsome enough that she's flirting with you despite the fact that I'm right here)?"

"Of course," he replied sincerely. "Although, if our waitress has given me even a passing thought, it's because she's got working eyeballs and knows that you're way too gorgeous to be seen with the likes of me."

"Comments like that are guaranteed to earn you, at the very least, a good-night kiss, David."

He stammered, "I didn't mean you had to..."

"Can I just order for us," Petra interrupted with a twinkle in her eye, "and we'll just see how things go after that?"

~ ≈ ≡ ≈ ~

Copyright © 2026 Jake Lazarus

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This is a work of fiction.

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Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.