Time-Loop
By Torrent
"Am I dead?" SG asked.
The corpulent figure on the alabaster throne frowned. "What is death?"
he asked.
Answering a question with a question wasn't very polite, SG thought. But
she needed his help, so she decided to answer him.
"Death is the absence of life," she said.
"Nonsense," said the fat man. "Is this dead?" He took a ring from his
finger and tossed it to her. It was made of silver, with an emerald the size of
a robin's egg.
"No," she said.
"So, it's alive?"
"No."
"Ergo," said the fat man in a bored and superior tone of voice, "death
cannot be merely an absence of life."
SG fell silent for a while.
"Let's start over," she said at last. "I confess I don't have a precise
definition of death. But can you tell me whether I am dead?"
"If you were a native-born earthling, we could dispense with all this,"
he said. "Even the most irreligious earthlings have some sense that finis
is not quite finis. But you . . . ." He waved his hand as if trying to
brush aside an insect, or an unpleasant thought.
"Am I dead?" she asked again, more loudly and assertively than before.
"No," he shouted, half-rising from his throne. "No, you are not dead, as
much as I might wish you were. You are in a different dimension, and you have
different attributes than you once had, but you are not DEAD."
SG folded her arms across her chest and felt her bare shoulders. She
seemed to be solid, not a mere ghost.
"I know what you're thinking," the fat man said with an exasperated
sigh. "You're thinking that you are still a physical, sentient being. Even a
sexual one. But I must warn you that things are very different now." He paused,
shifted his massive body and farted loudly.
"That crude contraption, Koko, didn't kill you. I'm not sure anything
can. But you have taken a new form. What once was matter is now mostly energy.
You will discover that you can race far into the future, or into the past. Once
you get the hang of it, you will be able to move through space and time at
will."
"Are you my guide?" SG asked.
"Good heavens, no," cried the fat man. Then he giggled. "'Good heavens'
- now there's an interesting exclamation. Haven't used it in years."
"Well, if you're not my guide, who are you?"
"Oleander, the gatekeeper," he said.
She wondered where the gate was, then noticed for the first time that
there were two arched doorways in the curved wall behind the fat man's throne.
"Which is the gate?" she asked.
"Both are gates," he answered. "One will take you back to that stuffy
body bag, in that dreary motel room, where you will await the ministrations of
your boring cousin."
"And the other?" she asked.
"The other will take you someplace else."
"Yes, but where?"
"Someplace different from that motel," he snapped. "I can't be more
specific. The choice is yours."
It wasn't a very hard choice, she thought. Almost anything would be
better than having to return to the helpless state she was in, dependent on
Kal-El to figure out how to restore her to something resembling a normal life.
"I'll take the gate into the unknown," she said. "Which one is it?
"In such situations, I usually don't offer advice," said the fat man
with a sly smile. "But for some reason you provoke in me a feeling of pity. The
gate you want is the one on the right."
"Thank you," she said, as she headed for the doorway.
"But wait," he cried. "A gratuity is expected under such circumstances."
"I'm sorry," said SG. "I haven't any money."
"Oh, I have no use for money," he said. "It's your tender flesh I want."
His jaws opened obscenely, until his mouth was as wide as SG was tall.
At that moment, a sudden wind pulled her off her feet and carried her
past him and through the arched doorway she had chosen.
Her "goodbye" was lost in the rush of air.
# # #
SG found herself sitting in a classroom with a dozen other young women
and three young men. Pacing up and down in front of the class was a thin,
bespectacled man not much older than his students. He wore a white short-sleeved
shirt, a sleeveless sweater and khaki pants, and SG thought she had never seen
anyone quite so dorky.
"It really is quite beautiful," he was saying. "I wish you could see it.
I don't understand why artists - well, some artists - think that beauty is their
exclusive domain. The world as revealed through physics, from subatomic
particles to the cosmos, is more beautiful by far than anything ever created by
painter or sculptor."
"Or poet?" asked a dark-haired girl sitting next to SG. She smiled
impishly.
"Yes, more beautiful even than poetry," said the young professor. His
face softened for a moment, and he added, "But it really isn't fair for you to
bring up poetry, Kathy."
Then a bell went off in a hallway, and the students started gathering
their books and papers.
"Read Chapter 3," said the professor, "and try your hand at the problems
on the website. I know none of you are math majors, but they really aren't that
difficult."
He stuffed papers into a battered leather briefcase as the students
filed out. When he looked up, he saw SG.
"You're new, aren't you?" he asked.
"I guess so," she said.
He reached back into the briefcase and pulled out a sheet.
"What's your name?"
She wasn't sure how to answer. Finally, she decided that what had been
good enough for Marston was good enough for whatever college she now found
herself in.
"Sallie. Sallie Gale."
"Sallie Gale, huh?" he said. He looked down the class roll. "Uh, let's
see - Fischbok, Flannigan, Grabowski. Well, it seems you're not on the list. Do
you have your class schedule?"
"Not with me," she said, which was technically truthful.
"Okay," he said with a shrug. "Well, welcome aboard. You've missed two
classes, but I think you can catch up. Just bring your schedule with you to
class on Friday."
Suddenly, he seemed to see her for the first time. He gave her the kind
of look she was very familiar with, then he blushed and fiddled with his
briefcase.
"See you Friday," he said, then he hurried away.
SG smiled at his awkwardness. There was something rather charming about
him.
In the hall, students were heading to their next classes. They weren't
dressed the way they had been in 1956 or '73. Some of the boys wore T-shirts,
baggy pants and baseball caps turned backwards, but others were dressed in jeans
and shirts with collars. The girls mostly wore jeans, too, but there was less
conformity than she remembered from her last two exposures to college life.
She looked down at her own clothes. Short khaki skirt, white tennis
shoes, a loose silk blouse with a big floral pattern. She wondered who chose
them. The ring Oleander had given her hung on a silver chain between her
breasts.
"Hi." It was Kathy, the girl who had sat beside her in class. "What do
you think of him?"
"Who?" SG asked.
"Dr. Kase, of course. I think there's something so-o-o-o sexy about him.
And we're lucky. I mean how many students get to take a physics course from
someone on the ten-most-promising-scientists-in-America list? And we aren't even
science majors."
She paused and looked at SG with sudden alarm. "You aren't majoring in
math or physics, are you?"
"No," said SG.
"Oh, thank goodness. They said this was a physics-for-dummies course,
just for humanities majors. You know, to promote cross-cultural understanding
and all that."
"Right," said SG, who had no idea what Kathy was talking about.
The two young women walked slowly toward the big door that led out into
the quadrangle.
"What's your next class?" Kathy asked.
"I don't have one," said SG.
"Good. Let's go get a Coke."
SG decided to stick with Sallie Gale as her name. It was innocuous and
all-American. She added that she was a transfer student from Marston College,
which was true, in a way. Kathy had never heard of Marston.
"What dorm are you in?" she asked.
SG thought quickly. "Well, I don't have a room yet. Admissions and
housing didn't communicate. I mean, they cashed my check, but things are sort of
screwed up."
Kathy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, it's amazing. All these geniuses on the
faculty, and they can't get a simple housing application straight. Well, you can
spend at least tonight with me. My roommate barely checked in before she had to
go back home. Her father had a heart attack. I guess it was when he opened the
tuition bill."
"You're very generous," SG said. And very pretty, she thought.
# # #
After dinner, they watched television in Kathy's dorm room. SG had seen
color TV before, but never a picture so clear. And she was astounded by the kind
of shows on the air: comedies about gay men living with young women, jokes about
the size of breasts and penises, crime dramas with the kind of language she had
been taught to shun.
"They can say things like that?" she asked, when a street punk told a
cop to "fuck off."
Kathy looked at her in surprise. "Of course they can. You haven't been
watching much television, have you?"
"No. Or reading the newspaper much, either," said SG, hoping to
preemptively explain any inappropriate references or questions that might pop up
in conversation.
But Kathy wasn't interested in conversation, or television. She had been
sitting in a second-hand armchair, while SG was stretched out on the floor. Now
Kathy joined her. They lay on their sides, face to face, their heads propped up
on their hands. Kathy leaned forward and brushed her lips against SG's.
"Do you like that?" she asked.
SG answered by rolling Kathy onto her back and kissing her passionately.
In seconds, they were tearing off their clothes.
Kathy was an expert lover, with a gift for sensual teasing that SG found
irresistible. When she licked SG's pussy, it was like a concert pianist playing
a charming, childish ditty.
After three orgasms, SG decided to return the favor. She slid her tongue
down Kathy's belly and into her crotch. And suddenly, she saw - knew,
experienced - the last time Kathy had made love. She felt the sensations Kathy
had felt, heard the voice of the man who was on top of her, smelled his body.
She sat up.
"What happened?" Kathy asked. "What's the matter?"
"I don't know," said SG, her face registering her confusion. "It was as
though . . . . I can't explain it. I saw you with a boy. I felt it. I felt him
on top of you . . . of me. His name was Eric and he had a tattoo of a horned
toad on his left shoulder."
"How the hell do you know about Eric?" Kathy demanded. "What kind of
game is this?"
"It's not a game. When I began licking your clitoris, I suddenly tapped
into something. Your memory. Your experiences."
Kathy was on her feet, furious.
"Get out of here," she shouted. "Get out."
SG dressed quickly. She felt devastated. But she hadn't meant any harm.
"Is Eric fucking you, too?" Kathy asked coldly as SG prepared to leave.
"I've never met Eric," SG said. "Please, do one thing for me. Think of a
number while I'm kissing you. A big number, too big to guess."
Kathy looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.
"You pull this stunt and you want to kiss me?"
"Please," said SG.
They stood far enough that they had to lean forward to kiss. They didn't
touch each other, except for their lips.
Then SG pulled away and said softly, "Fifty-three thousand, two hundred
and eleven."
"Holy shit!" Kathy said.
This must be one of the "different attributes" the gatekeeper had
mentioned, SG thought. She now had a talent for reading other people's minds
through sexual contact. So far, it had worked with oral-genital contact and
mouth-to-mouth. She wondered if there were other possibilities.
She and Kathy spent the night exploring. SG learned much about her
attractive host. And Kathy learned that this strange and lovely blonde was a
sexual superstar.
# # #
SG had decided, even before she and Kathy finally fell asleep, that what
worked with Kathy was worth trying on Professor Kase. She didn't know why Fate
had brought her to this college campus, but she was certain it involved learning
about space and time. And the dorky professor was the one to teach her - not
slowly and tediously in the classroom, but in an orgasmic flash.
She didn't waste time. The next morning, she went to the administration
building and found Dr. Kase's schedule. He would be free that afternoon from 2
o'clock on.
At 2:15, she went to his office. She had bought a special T-shirt from
the shop in the student union building, and she wore it under her silk blouse.
She knocked at his door.
"Come in," he called. He sounded irritated.
She opened the door and faced an office with a very bad case of clutter.
Books and notebooks were scattered everywhere. One wall consisted of a shiny
white board covered with equations written with a black marker.
Kase himself was sitting cross-legged in an old-fashioned swivel chair
with a book and a calculator in his lap.
He looked over his glasses at SG. He gave no sign that he recognized
her.
"Can I help you?" he asked, in a tone of voice that said, "Can you
disappear quickly?"
"I want to learn everything you know about the relationship between time
and space," SG said. "I want to know about time travel."
Kase sighed. "Time travel is impossible," he said. "Teaching you
everything I know about time and space may be possible, but I really haven't the
time." He smiled in spite of himself. No time to teach about time.
"Okay," said SG, pulling off her blouse to reveal a T-shirt, several
sizes too small, with a picture of Einstein and his iconic equation: E=mc2 .
"Let's skip the teaching and get to what I'm really here for. I want to have sex
with you. Here. Now."
Kase put the book and calculator on his desk.
"You must really be desperate for a good grade, because I'm not exactly
the studly type," he said. "What's worse, I have ethics. I don't fuck students.
I don't trade A's for sex."
"I'm not asking for an A," said SG. "I'm not even enrolled in your
class, as you discovered yesterday. In fact, I'm not a student at this college."
"So what exactly do you want?"
"I want to have sex with you, here in your office, right now."
He looked at her a long time without speaking. She really was quite
lovely. And she filled that T-shirt in a way that gave new meaning to Einstein's
theory about the curvature of space.
"I really can't . . . ."
Before he could finish his sentence, SG had wriggled out of her skirt.
She wore the skimpiest of bikini bottoms.
He gulped.
"You don't have to take the initiative," she said softly. She moved
toward him, and he almost fell over backward in his chair.
"Just relax," she said.
He looked anything but relaxed.
She knelt before him, looked into his eyes and began unbuttoning his
shirt.
"Really," he said, "this is highly . . . ."
She kissed his chest, then ran her tongue down his belly to his belt
line. It was an amazing experience for both of them. Kase had had sex only once
before, with a prostitute, and it had been a quick, slam-bam-thank-you-ma'm
affair, with no preliminaries. This was deliciously different.
Meanwhile, the instant her lips touched his flesh, SG was overpowered by
his memories and speculations. An entire undergraduate semester of hydrology
flashed through her in a nanosecond. His recent paper on black holes and
singularities was stored in her brain before her tongue reached his navel.
"Let's get those pants off, big boy," she whispered huskily.
He raised himself in the chair, fumbled with his belt and finally slid
his pants halfway down his thighs.
She finished the job, pulling down his underpants to reveal a penis of
modest dimensions but filled with enthusiasm.
She sucked slowly, sensually, guided by her extensive experience. He
moaned and, unsure what to do with his hands, finally placed them on her head.
Then he was thrusting upward, into her mouth, and making little sobbing sounds.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," he cried. "Oh, God, yes."
He came, in an eruption of equations.
SG was dizzy. Cum dripped from her lips, and numbers whirled through her
mind. It was the most exciting sex she had ever had.
Kase lay sprawled in his chair, his head hanging over the back. He
looked like a dead man - a dead man with a goofy smile on his face.
# # #
Kase wasn't dead, but the experience was so overpowering that he spent
the next three days in bed at his apartment, trying to make sense of it - to
master it with reason.
SG also needed time to sort out all that she had learned. Kase's sensual
and emotional experiences, many going back to early childhood, had been
transmitted to her, along with his scientific theorizing. She discovered that he
had been an only child, that he had an imaginary playmate named Eustace, and
that his puppy, Lex, had been killed by a delivery truck.
She also learned that he had a secret crush on Kathy, that he had
written poetry when he was an undergraduate, and that Kathy had discovered some
of his poems in an obscure college literary magazine.
What most interested SG, though, was Kase's complex relationship with
Dr. Pilger Altezeiten, professor of ancient history and polymath extraordinaire.
Dr. Altezeiten was perhaps the university's leading academic figure - certainly
the only one with an international reputation as impressive as Kase's.
The two men were very different. Kase was only 32. Altezeiten was over
70. Kase was a rigorous rationalist. Altezeiten had an equally keen mind but was
at heart a romantic.
They admired and liked each other but disagreed on a wide range of
subjects, not the least of which was the possibility of time travel.
As best SG could understand from what she had learned through her
intellectual cock-sucking, Altezeiten was convinced not only that time travel
was possible, but that it had already occurred. Beings from the distant past and
equally distant future walked among us.
Kase thought this was New Age rubbish.
SG decided it was time to get it straight from Professor Altezeiten.
# # #
He was easy.
Altezeiten was, in fact, a dirty old man. He was delighted when a very
attractive young woman rang the doorbell of his condo and asked for a private
meeting with him. He was even more delighted, and not the least bit embarrassed
or resistant, when she began stripping in front of him - all the while
chattering about how much she admired his work and how eager she was to learn
from the master.
In seconds, she was completely naked, except for her tennis shoes and
her emerald pendant. With European courtliness, he suggested they retire from
the entrance hall, where someone outside might see her through the beveled glass
on either side of the front door. He led her to his "recreation room."
This room was filled with exercise equipment and chrome and leather
devices SG had never seen before.
"You want to learn," he said. "I want to teach. But I am old-fashioned.
I am not a democrat when it comes to learning. I must be the master. And that
leaves, for you, the role of . . . ."
"Slave?" SG suggested brightly.
"Exactly," said Dr. Altezeiten. "You are a very intelligent student."
In no time at all, SG was bent over a leather bench with her butt raised
and exposed, her wrists tied to rings at the far end of the bench and her head
firmly held by two padded arms of a vise.
"As they say nowadays, no pain, no gain," said the professor. With that,
he whacked her behind with a slender bamboo cane. It made a surprisingly loud
noise, but SG found that the sting was not very painful. In fact, the tingle
that followed was quite pleasurable.
"Shall we continue?" he asked.
"By all means," she said. But it was difficult to speak with her head in
the vise, and while whipping might be a great turn-on for the good doctor, it
didn't put her in direct physical contact with him. How would she learn what she
needed to know?
Her speculation was interrupted by a much more vigorous blow, this time
from a 12-tail leather flogger. It hurt. The second and third blows hurt even
more. She yelped and assumed that once he heard her protest, he would release
her. But he seemed to have become too involved to stop.
The blows continued, and so did her cries of pain. These he finally
stopped by stuffing a ball-gag into her mouth and tightening the vise on her
head.
Her muffled protests excited him even more.
"Yes," he said. "I'm sure it does hurt. But we haven't broken the skin,
so I don't think any permanent harm has been done. Let's keep it up, shall we?"
With that, he resumed flogging her. He grew stronger with each blow, as
if the aging process was in reverse.
At last, as tears streamed down SG's face, he dropped his pants, put on
a condom and shoved his prick into her already well lubricated pussy.
"I see you've been enjoying all this," he said cheerfully. "The vagina
speaks truths that the mouth will not utter."
He fucked her with the savagery of a man half his age. SG waited for the
great revelation, but it didn't come - even though he did.
He collapsed on top of her, gasping for breath. His dick slowly shrunk,
but he was in no hurry to withdraw it.
"Is that all?" SG wondered. She could have broken her bonds at any time
but had refrained for fear of sabotaging her experiment. Now it seemed she had
put up with pain and indignity for nothing.
He released her slowly and methodically. The ball gag was the last
restraint to be removed.
She knelt on the floor - her behind was too sore for sitting - and
rubbed her wrists. Altezeiten looked down at her with an expression of concern.
"You seem sad, my dear," he said. "Did I disappoint you?"
"No," she said. "Well, yes, in a way. But not sexually."
"What other way could I have disappointed you but sexually?" he asked,
mystified.
SG looked down, embarrassed. Then she screwed up her courage and said,
"I was hoping to learn your thinking about time travel."
Altezeiten stroked his chin. "Time travel? I thought from your behavior,
you were interested only in fucking. I mean, you came here and stripped and . .
. ."
"I know, but it's complicated," SG protested. "The only way I could
learn your thoughts is through sex."
"But that is absurd."
"No. It isn't. I've already found in two other cases that I could learn
about a person, about his or her experiences and thoughts, by having sex with
them. I can't tell you their names, but I found out about the secret love affair
of a young woman by having sex with her, and I found out a huge amount about
space and time and physics from a teacher."
"My young friend, Dr. Kase?"
"No, I won't tell you their names," SG insisted.
"Well, you don't have to. If the subject that interests you is time
travel, then it must be young Justin Kase. No one else on campus is as well
qualified, as a scientist, to discuss such matters. But I find all this
incredible. Why should I believe you learned anything at all through your sexual
encounters, assuming you actually had such encounters?"
"Here's why," said SG, and she launched into a detailed description of a
conversation Kase and Altezeiten had had two weeks earlier on whether there were
"worm holes" in the cosmos and, if so, could they be used to travel
instantaneously from one end of the universe to the other.
"You were so excited about this that you spilled your glass of kir,"
said SG. "A waitress named Karen cleaned it up. You flirted with her."
"Ah, you must have been sitting near us in the cafe," said the
professor.
"Okay. How about this? Last October, you and Dr. Kase took a sailboat
out on the lake. No one else was there. And you got very excited about going
back in time, to the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, and learning all their secrets of
embalming and mummification. And Dr. Kase laughed and said you had a morbid
streak. And you said . . . ."
"Justin told you all this," Altezeiten said sharply.
"No, he told me none of this. He gave me this knowledge unintentionally,
when we had sex. I was hoping to learn from you, too. But nothing happened.
That's why I look disappointed. I am disappointed."
He began to believe her, in spite of himself. There was something about
her. It was almost as though he had known her long ago.
"For the sake of argument, let's assume all you've told me is true -
that you somehow absorb knowledge through sex. Why, then, did this process fail
with me?"
"I don't know," said SG. "While you were flogging me, I figured there
would be no transfer because we weren't in direct contact. But I was sure that,
once you penetrated me - well, that there would be a flash of words and images
and ideas. The way there was with . . . with the others."
"Aha! I think I see the problem," cried the professor.
"What is it?"
"I was wearing a condom," he said triumphantly. Then he quickly added,
"Not that I mistrusted you, but in this day and age - well, you understand."
"I do," said SG.
She was quiet for a moment, then she said, "All I ask is the chance to
give you a blow-job, an unprotected blow-job."
He had never before had a young woman ask permission to suck his dick.
He had never even imagined such a situation, and he prided himself on having a
very active imagination when it came to things sexual.
"How can I refuse?" he said. "This time, let's go to the bedroom."
She followed him upstairs through rooms filled with dark, antique
furniture. The bed, however, was simple and modern: a futon covered with pale
blue silk sheets. At the four corners were short, stout wooden posts bolted to
the floor. Manacles were attached to each post.
"I will lie on my back," he said. "I want you to attach these
restraints, then do whatever you want. Within reason, of course. I am not a
young man."
"I will be careful," said SG.
He removed his clothes, folded them and placed them neatly on top of a
bureau, next to a small bronze statue. It was an Egyptian figure, of a man with
a dog's head. He held a scepter in one hand and a book in his other, clutched to
his chest.
"I am naked unto mine enemies - and my friends," Altezeiten said with a
smile. For a man his age, he was in good shape, thought SG.
He lay on the futon, and SG secured him.
Then she knelt between his legs. His penis was flaccid, so this would
require some work. She leaned forward and rubbed his belly and thighs. Then she
began to sing, in a voice she didn't recognize as her own and in a language she
had never heard. It was a throaty, sensuous voice, and though she recognized not
a single word, she knew it was a song about sexual passion.
This incantation had a powerful effect on Altezeiten's prick, which
began to rise, like a cobra rises to the notes of its master's flute.
Altezeiten began to squirm on the futon. It was as though he was in
agony - or in the throes of ecstasy.
SG ceased singing and took his prick in her mouth. Words and phrases in
strange languages flooded her brain. Images appeared, too, murals and sculpture
and great temples and palaces.
"Time travel," she thought. "I want to learn about time travel. Back, I
want to go back, to the Middle . . . ." She stopped in mid-thought. Ages? Was it
the Middle Ages that Kase and Altezeiten had talked about?
And suddenly she felt herself whirling through darkness, drawn by a
force more powerful than gravity, flying to a destination far, far away.
Altezeiten gave a cry of surprise and disappointment. "You're gone!
You're gone! You've abandoned me."
He tried to sit up, but was held back by his restraints.
"The lady vanishes," he said to himself. "And I must stay behind,
waiting until Betsy comes to clean on Monday morning. Won't she be surprised?"
He laughed a deep, hearty laugh, and his eyes glistened with tears.
[To be continued.]
