When You've Lost Uranus

 

A great many self appointed experts are now having to admit they were totally wrong about the world coming to an end in 2012. Or were they simply focusing their attention on the wrong world?

 - Travis Clemmons -

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The babies might be delivered by the storks.

But its an earthquake that makes the phone call and places the order.

That was the comment my grandfather would occasionally make when I was a little girl and the family was living in California. His words hadn't made a lot of sense to me when I was the tender age of eleven. Sixteen years later, the connection is coming through loud and clear. As twisted as it might sound, you start to feel this mad sexual rush when you're standing on the edge of an earth shaking natural disaster.

6:14  am

Twenty-two days ago, I could barely stand being in the same room as Colonel James Pike. It was the principle of the thing. I saw the Colonel as an ultra-conservative hard-ass who was allowing his religious views to overshadow his commitment to scientific research. In the opinion of most of us involved in the project, Jim Pike was merely pretending to be a scientist and should never have been allowed to make use of a title like Ph.D. or Professor.

As of three minutes ago, I can't get the man undressed quickly enough. Doesn't matter that I'm twenty-seven and he's forty-nine, I just want to hold Jim and kiss him and feel those rock hard abs of his pressed against my flesh before all the things I've ever known come crashing down around the two of us. As soon as his shirt is off, I'm nibbling on Jim's chest and shoulders and savoring this delicious hunk of masculine flesh that I'm sharing this hotel suite with.

It's Tuesday morning, we're in the Saint Claire Suites in Omaha and I've been awake for less than sixty minutes. When I made my way into the living room to find out what was smelling so damn good, I saw that Jim had called room service and ordered steak and eggs for himself. To the left of his plate was a steaming hot cup of coffee. To the right of it was a small tumbler filled with ice and a double shot of bourbon.

Sitting there in his jeans and that sleeveless T shirt, the man looked more like a farmer than a physics professor. Though I don't know of many farmers who'd be using their netbooks to calculate advanced wormhole energy compensation factors. With three days growth of beard and his hair slightly tousled from the way his head had laid on the pillow, Jim was a bit disheveled and totally adorable. While it wasn't the first time I'd looked at the man and thought of him as potentially attractive, something about the past forty-eight hours had gradually pushed me over the dividing line and I was actually finding myself wanting to know James Pike. In the Biblical sense.

Prior to falling asleep in our separate bedrooms, we'd spent four days rushing around like a couple of coyotes running from a forest fire. During the past two days, Jim had sweated just enough that he's now got that noticeable scent and flavor of a man. I'd probably smack the shit out of somebody if they tried to wash away this deliciously salty coating from his skin before I've had the chance to finish tasting every single inch of him.

Jim and I had driven forty-one straight hours to make it to Omaha, Nebraska. Both of us were probably looking like a couple of zombies early Monday evening as we staggered up to the hotel's front desk and Jim asked if they had a room available. We were escorted to our suite, each of us plodded off to our respective rooms, I crawled into my bed a couple of minutes after eight and the next thing I knew I was opening my eyes and saw that the clock was telling me it was 05:54 AM.

After I'd awakened from almost ten hours of sleep, the two of were hoping we could sneak into the number two wing of the Utica Springs research facility at just after ten this morning. Unfortunately, the security guard that owes Jim a favor works a rotating schedule. Monday was the end of George's forty-five days on the eight to four routine and now he's off for eighty hours.

He'll walk back into the place about eleven forty-five Thursday evening. Once he's managed to get us into the main complex, maybe we can undo what was done three weeks ago. Just in case we can't, I want to spend the next forty-eight hours drinking, dancing, laughing and having the most shameless sex I've ever known in my twenty-seven years and five months of being alive.

As Jim and I kiss, there's that faint hint of bourbon on his lips. I like it, he tastes a bit like a rogue and a gambler. Jim holds me confidently, the way that a grown man should handle a woman's body. I'm realizing that I've been avoiding intimacy with the male gender for the past three or four years because I'd gotten tired of overgrown boys who simply assumed that being eighteen or twenty-one somehow magically elevated them to the status of being worthy of a young woman's time.

Now Jim's gently biting on my tongue, teasingly holding it between his teeth and preventing me from being able to easily pull away. A couple of years ago, a guy being this type of smart ass would have turned me off because the stupid joke would have come after I'd already put up with two hours of sophomoric humor he was trying to pass off as sophisticated conversation. Jim has already demonstrated that he isn't the type who would take a woman for granted. Which is causing everything little he's doing right now to make me want his cock inside of me.

My mouth and my pussy are currently having an incredible argument that's running the poor little brain in circles. The lips and the tongue are demanding that they be allowed to say a proper hello to that massive cock of his. They want to take it slow, invite the fellow in for a warm and cozy conversation. Hold him and love him and allow him to provide them with whipped cream for dessert. Miss Pussy isn't being quite so ladylike. The little girl keeps shouting that they need to get the hell out of the way and allow her to ride the pony.

I'm no sooner stepping out of my jeans than his thumbs are into the sides of my panties. The little red mass of sheer nylon quickly gets pushed past my thighs and it suddenly dawns on me that I haven't trimmed myself there in more than a month. Pussy's mane is a bit longer than I'd like it to be but we're way to involved for me to politely excuse myself and run off to see if either of us remembered to pack a set of clippers. That isn't exactly one of the top five things on your list when you're afraid the world might be coming to an end very soon.

As Jim allows his hand to get to know the V between my legs, I can quickly tell he's had a bit of experience in touching a woman there. Just after his ring finger started caressing the bud, his thumb and forefinger began to gently tug at the pubic hair. His fingers are pulling the little girls just hard enough that the slight degree of skin tension is an unexpected turn on.

Damn, he's making this body send way to many signals to my brain. I can feel his bulging cock touching the side of my right hip and I really want it inside of me but I think I'd turn and smack the man if his fingers were to quit what they were doing. It should be illegal for someone to punch this many buttons at one time.

The last thing I want right now is a gentleman making love to me. Just show me that you're not afraid of being a total brute. I don't want tenderness and I have absolutely no use for sweet nothings being whispered in my ear. Just be a cave man and have your way with me and then come back in an hour and do it all over again. Grab a handful of my hair, make me kneel on the floor and challenge my throat with the head of your shaft. Prove to me that your essence can taste just as good as your salty skin. Then come back in another hour, throw me on the bed and continue doing whatever it takes to distract me from this fear that the planet we're on might not even be hear less than a week from now. Just twist me, turn me, use me and ravage me till this king-sized bed we keep coming back to is just a mass of sweat and cum and tangled sheets.

Almost as though he can read my thoughts, Jim thrusts his cock inside of me and then pulls my body very tight against his. There's that incredibly thin line between pain and pleasure and he's got me dancing all over it right now. Jim's cock is almost too big for me and having it move in and out of me feels very good for what seems to be all the wrong reasons. Kind of like proving to other kids on the beach that you actually can take your shoes off and walk across the hot sand. The discomfort somehow merges with the satisfaction of knowing that you can actually do it and that makes it all feel so much better than if the task had actually been easy.

Jim's rhythm is wonderfully deliberate. Not too fast. Not too slow. He's in this for our pleasure. Not just to get his rocks off and not just to make me cum. I'm just starting to settle into the pattern and think I can enjoy this nice easy ride for several minutes. And that's when the son of a bitch decides its time to start jackhammering me.

~~~~~~~~~~

Three weeks ago, I stepped out of Cabinet B and Project Hocus Pocus was declared a success. Consolidated Research Applications had shown the U.S. Military that hard core science could actually bring to life the carnival trick known as "The Magician's Box". A person steps into a cabinet on the east side of the room and steps out of its counterpart on the west side. No smoke. No mirrors. No identical twins. Just applied physics harnessing the power of a Quantum 5 reactor to create a method of teleporting living matter from one location to another.

There was a round of applause, a lot of handshaking and I had the indescribable joy of going through almost two days of medical testing. And in between it all, I kept hearing the occasional whisper about what a great stride this was and how it could prove incredibly useful in dealing with "them". Never a mention of Russia or China or any other group that might normally be a threat to the United States. Just this mysterious bunch known as "them" and that this world needed to be as prepared as possible.

Nine days ago, stars began to rapidly disappear from the night sky and my mind immediately flashed back to the last thing James Pike had said to me. "If you go through with this experiment, your world will most likely come to an end."

Jim had been the project's official naysayer, the man hired to tell the Emperor when and how he might be naked. His initial concerns about Hocus Pocus had all seemed quite legitimate. Safety matters, potential cost overruns, not stepping on already existing patents and trademarks and things like that. But in the eighteen months that had lead up to the actual testing of the system with a human being, Colonel Pike had been increasingly warning of something that sounded way too much like a Book of Revelation end of the world scenario. And since the man's math didn't exactly agree with the findings of all the other brains on the project, it was easy for the rest of us to believe that he'd allowed his religious beliefs to overcome his scientific objectivity.

Just after Jim had finished his steak and eggs, he made his phone call to George. I could see the massively frustrated look on my Colonel's face as he was conducting the conversation. When you're trying to do something about the fact that the universe is rapidly collapsing, the last thing you want to hear is "The earliest I can get you into the lab is just after one on Friday morning." There was that moment, just after closing his cell phone, when Jim looked like he was going to either cry to put his fist through a wall. Then the man took a few deep breaths, did the math on the amount of time we'd need to spend doing something close to nothing and finally asked if he could take me out for dinner and dancing this evening.

"I don't really have anything to wear," I replied.

"You will after I take you shopping," He smirked.

"Are you certain you want to spend your money on buying me a dress?"

"Did you ever get a good look at my contract?"

"No."

"Trust me. Buying you a dress is not going to make any sort of dent in my bank account."

I smiled. Jim smiled. Then he took five steps in my direction and unexpectedly kissed me. To my surprise, I kissed him back. Then I took a silly nibble on the left side of Jim's neck and the man tasted deliciously salty. What followed was a madcap roller coaster ride of sex, breakfast, more sex, showering and then even more sex.

Almost four hours after that first kiss, we finally stepped out the door to go shopping.

Tuesday     4:45  pm

We finish a late afternoon round of humping each other and then I climb on top of Colonel James Pike and fall asleep for slightly more than an hour. Right now I feel so safe. So completely made use of, taken care of and protected. The world could possibly fade out of existence in slightly more than three days but right now I'm safe and secure beside this hunk of a man who's old enough to be my father. Some little part of me fell in love with James Pike while he was watching me try on dresses and high heels. I think it was that touch of doting adoration as he spoke to the sales lady and made it clear that this evening needed to be the most shamelessly elegant night of my life. My left hand was massaging Jim's crotch as soon as we were back in the limo. Things proceeded to get delightfully nastier from there.

We're enjoying a deliciously warm shower and I start nibbling on Jim's neck and chest again. It feels wonderfully decadent to sink down to my knees and help Jim stand at attention while the warm water is drizzling down on my body. The past fourteen hours have seen me having more sex than I'd probably had in the previous six months. I've just never been someone who got into the idea of having sex for the sake of having sex. Not that I had to be in love with the guy but he did have to mean something to me.

At this moment in time, I really don't care that I'm simply using Jim as a distraction and allowing him to treat me the same way. It makes total sense to me now that so many babies are born almost exactly nine months after a blizzard or an earthquake. A crisis causes people to want to be physically intimate with someone else and Jim and I are facing a crisis of biblical proportions. The fact that we keep going at each other like a couple of dogs in heat seems to be the only thing thats preventing us from devolving into a couple of useless little lumps.

After finally stepping out of the shower, we towel off and enjoy a bit of wine and some cheese and fruit. Then we start going through what we bought at the department store and Jim begins to dress me for the evening. I've never worn a corset or gartered stockings in my life but I'm going to be in them tonight for Colonel James Pike, Ph.D. in Theoretical Quantum Physics.

"These are what's known as full fashion stockings," Jim said as he helped me take them out of the package. "Very popular when my mother was your age but incredibly hard to find in modern day society."

Omaha's a city of over half a million people. Plenty of good places for feasting and partying. I'm going to look like a high class call girl for my Colonel and he'll take me out to the most expensive restaurant and night club we can find. We're going to do everything we can to max out Jim's Titanium Card and then he's going to bring me back here so I can screw his brains out all over again. Funny how you tend to not worry about money when you're pretty sure the world is going to come to an end in less than one hundred hours.

Jim's greatest fear had been that there could be a distinct difference between teleporting inanimate matter and sending an actual human being through the process. In his opinion, adding a living spirit into the mix would totally screw with the equation. We'd figured out how to convert matter to energy, transfer it to another location and turn it back into matter again. Jim was warning that what we hadn't found a way to do was calculate the energy of a human spirit and add that into our spread sheets.

"Will you shut up with all this crap about the human soul?" the project director had finally said to Jim.

"The fact that we can't currently measure it doesn't mean that it isn't there," he'd replied.

Five days before our little play premiered, the military suddenly demoted Jim to consultant and lowered his security clearance by three grades. The test occurred on schedule and I became the first living person to ever be molecularly disassembled, radio transmitted a distance of one hundred and fifty feet and then reassembled. We patted ourselves on the backs, we received a personal statement of congratulations from the President, we drank a reservoir full of champagne and then we suddenly found ourselves facing a lot of questions from the head of the Senate Oversight Committee when stars began to disappear from the night sky.

Both the company and the military were adamant that Hocus Pocus had nothing to do with what was happening. We'd gone through more than a year of tests using inanimate objects and cadavers. There was no way this sudden disappearance of a few distant stars could have any connection to the fact that we'd teleported an actual living person for the first time.

In the grand scheme of things, I was nobody special. Just a sci tech with above-average typing skills who happened to be five foot two and weighed only one hundred and seven pounds. Small enough and light enough to make it easy for them to create a stable transfer vortex. Smart enough to understand the potential danger from what they were paying me one million dollars for and average enough that they wouldn't be losing anybody important if some sort of glitch caused me to fry.

On the other hand, I was just curious enough to wonder if Colonel James Pike might have actually known what he was talking about when he started raising a stink about the human soul part of the equation. Maybe it wasn't a case of him being caught up in the dogma of his religion. Maybe the man had an insight that had allowed him to clue in on something that the rest of the geniuses on this project might have been overlooking.

By the time I'd been able to catch up with Colonel Pike in Western Nevada, there were no longer any stars appearing in the night sky. The moon was coming through crystal clear and several telescopes could pick up the other planets in our solar system but that was all we could find. The universe now seemed to consist only of our sun and its satellites. Everything else that had once been there was currently missing.

The United Nations and most major governments were holding firm on a story that our solar system was passing through the densest part of a massive galactic cloud. Billions of minute dust and ice particles were supposedly blocking the light from the outer stars and allowing us to see only the strong light that was coming from our sun and being reflected by the nearby planets. As usual, the major news outlets were generally going with the flow while the conspiracy theorists were evenly divided between angels and aliens.

"My conundrum is that I'm probably not the real James Pike," Jim had said to me that Saturday evening, as we sat by his fire pit and he sipped a glass of wine.

"I'm afraid I don't follow you," I replied.

"It's the living energy thing I was trying to warn everybody about," he continued. "Even if I factored out the presence of a Supreme Being, my calculations were still running into inconsistencies that everyone else appeared to be glossing over. There seem to be certain safeguards in this universe that are there to prevent a human spirit from being separated from a living body unless it can be done safely. Since they weren't yet smart enough to do it without mangling your life force, your physical form didn't get converted into energy and you didn't get teleported half a football field away."

"Fine!" I stated. "What happened with me?"

"If I'm correct, you actually came out less than one ten millionth of an inch from where you started." Jim said. "You're in some sort of pocket universe that's only a fraction of the size of the real one and is vibrating just slightly out of sync with the Earth that you've always known. This alternate reality was hastily created to keep your spirit from being ripped to shreds by the teleporter and it was originally about one hundred times as large as our solar system. Unfortunately, the energy that went into creating this little universe just for you ... It's rapidly dissipating and the thing is on the verge of shrinking back down to nothing."

"If the thing was only one hundred times as large as our solar system, why were we still seeing stars that were a billion miles away?" I asked.

"We were only seeing the light from the stars," he replied. "With the exception of you, everything in this pocket world began as an exact duplicate of one small section of the real universe. It even duplicated the light that was coming from Alpha Centauri and the other stars. But in this little makeshift universe, there are no actual stars sitting behind each of those light points. Nothing was there to generate more light and once the last of a star's beam had reached our planet, that star seemed to wink out."

I'd found myself torn between not believing the man and saying a few choice curse words about the arrogance and stupidity of the human creature. If Colonel James Pike was right, Saturday and counting provided me with somewhat less than six days to somehow make it back to my own reality. Which meant that he and I were going to have to quickly get past a lot arrogant people who thought they knew more than we did.

Thursday     11:01  am

It takes me about thirty seconds to start waking up and realize that I'm not in danger of being backed over by a garbage truck. What my dream was turning into a warning signal is actually the sound of the alarm clock buzzing. I'm slightly hung over and I'm way hornier than I'd been the day before. It feels delightfully sinful to open my eyes and still be in my corset and stockings. I want to pretend that Jim is some kind of Sugar Daddy and I'm totally bought and paid for. I won't have to worry about math calculations or military protocols. I can just spread my legs and invite the man to have his way with me and James Pike seems more than happy to fulfill my fantasy.

While Jim's ordering room service, I'm having a nice little chuckle contemplating the oil slick of makeup I've smeared on the sheets and pillowcases. My Science Wizard had somehow managed to place more foundation, blush, eye shadow, eye liner and lip gloss on my face than the sum total of what had been there in the previous ten years. I've always been the type who could enjoy wearing a dress and heels if a friend was getting married but could never get into the idea of being dolled up. In my mind, that behavior was reserved for the girls who went to college for the purpose of earning their M.R.S. degree. Since I hadn't been looking for Mr. Wonderful with the perfect wallet, I'd always been content to just be the cute tomboy. On the other hand, being Jim's personal call girl is turning out to be an intriguing change of pace and it hasn't taken more than a couple of seconds to realize that I should step into the bathroom and redo the makeup.

If Jim's calculations are correct, we've got just over twenty-one hours to get me home before this little house of cards comes crashing down around all of us. Which wouldn't be a problem if he and I could do the 200 mile drive and then have George walk us right into the lab this afternoon. With our man not able to get us into the heart of the place until at least an hour after Midnight, Jim will probably have only one chance to align the system. I'll just have to close my eyes, grit my teeth and hope he actually knows what he's doing.

On the other hand, having eight hours to kill means that Jim and I will have to force ourselves to engage in even more hard-core sex before showering and starting our drive to Utica Springs. We've both decided to be noble and totally commit ourselves to the cause. Room service has brought us the most delicious strawberries. They taste perfectly sweet and I can feel the juice dribbling from my lips as I bit into the first one. Things might not be quite as messy if Jim hadn't blindfolded me and made me intertwine my fingers behind my back. But there's a certain silly excitement in forcing myself to allow my man to feed me and affectionately tease me. I can feel a slight twinge in my back as a bit of strawberry juice falls onto my right nipple. As Jim's tongue lovingly licks it from my skin, I feel like an ocean of cum is about to gush from between my inner thighs.

"I need you now!" I plead. "Throw me down on this couch and let me have you right now!"

"Please, Darling." Jim softly whispers in my ear. "Don't spoil the journey to the candy store."

Even after he's carried me back to the bed, Jim doesn't stop teasing me. A soft and gentle form of teasing that I find myself both hating and loving him for. I'd been wanting the shortest possible route to having my bells rung but Jim is determined to keep this blissful torment going all afternoon. Gentle kisses and caresses and softly whispering beautiful descriptions of how I look when I'm blindfolded and the afternoon sunlight is causing the bedroom of this suite to look almost exactly like a brothel he'd visited in New Orleans when he was five years younger than I am now.

When my Colonel finally does place his flesh against mine, he simply holds me tightly in his arms and softly whispers to me how beautiful I am and how someone so innocent shouldn't have to suffer for the foolish pride of humanity. He holds me tightly for a very long time. No motion. No rhythm. Almost no noise being made by either of us. Just Colonel James Pike sharing exactly the same space and time as me. Softly whispering to me and loving me while everything around us has become completely unimportant and I can hear the sound of my blood rushing through my body.

Time seems to have totally stopped. I could stay here forever and be absolutely safe because nothing would ever happen and this universe would stay exactly as it is right now. As long as Jim holds me, as long as neither of us moves, this world will never even think about coming to an end. This is the fantasy I'm desperately holding onto and believing. Doing a pretty damn good job of it till the son of a bitch suddenly pulls back about two inches and begins to rapidly do me. It quickly feels like my soul has jumped right out of my body and run to the other side of the room for safety because it didn't want to deal with the earth quake of an orgasm it could tell was about to hit.

Damn, I'm totally blitzed by that one. Jim had to pick me up and carry me to the shower and now he's also having to wash me off. I honestly think I've forgotten how to hold a bar of soap. All I seem to know how to do is kiss this beautiful man and fall to pieces crying. I've fallen in love with someone I used to despise and I'm really not sure what's going on inside of me anymore. Do these feelings have any reality behind them or are they just a manifestation of the fear that we might not be able to make it off this hunk of rock before the whole damn thing crumbles to dust.

Friday     12:27  am

As we pull into Utica Springs; Pluto, Neptune and Uranus are no longer traceable and the United States government is having an increasingly difficult time getting anyone to buy into the cosmic cloud story. Jim still has a high enough security clearance that his key card gets us into the outer complex. George arrives five minutes later to escort us past all the other bells and whistles.

"You need to go to cabinet B," Jim says, as we enter the testing chamber.

"Not cabinet A?" I ask.

"We need to do everything exactly backwards," He says. "If I'm correct, my Earth is the center of this pocket universe and everything in this room is skewed exactly one hundred and fifty feet off center from where the originals are placed. This is what made it appear like you were actually teleporting. As this mini universe was being created, some sort of trap door opened in the fabric of reality and you slid directly from that A to this B. Which means that we need to send you from B back to A."

"You're not coming with me?" I say, with a touch of disbelief.

"I'm just a very small fragment of something that shouldn't really exist," He replies. "Trying to send me back with you might cause more problems than it would solve. And besides, there should still be a James Pike in the real world."

"But he won't have any of these delicious memories about us!" I protest.

"Then you'll just have to educate him, Darling." Jim says, as he hands me a couple of envelopes. "He'll be someone who thought you were kind of cute the first time he met you. And it will help if you give him these."

We share a passionate kiss and then Jim gives me a fast explanation of what's in each envelope. After a second kiss and a good grab of my Colonel's ass, I step into cabinet B and James Pike makes a few adjustments to the system. We invite George into the room, Jim counts to three and each man presses the red activation button on the console in front of him.

There's a split second of haze and then I find myself back in Cabinet A. Stepping out of the box, I see at least a dozen other people standing in the control room with Jim. Every single one of them seems totally surprised at what I've just done. Maybe it's that they're happy to see me after I've been missing for twenty four days. Maybe it's that I'm wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a sweat shirt and a leather jacket instead of the olive drab jumpsuit I'd had on when we tested the system three and a half weeks ago. I'm not at all sure and I don't really care at this particular moment. Ignoring all the usual protocols ... I quickly sprint past everyone else, wrap my arms around James Pike and try to remove his tonsils with my tongue. The man resists for just a moment but quickly gives into the fact that he's been sexually attracted to this strange little tom boy for more than a year.

"I think you understand the basics of what I've been through these past few weeks," I say to Jim as I pull back and look directly into his eyes.

"Yes," he replies, with a wry little smirk. "And I don't think I'd mind learning more about certain situations. But first it's going to take some effort to bring everyone else up to speed on what they need to know. The government is already putting pressure on this facility to make another attempt at human teleportation. I keep hearing whispers about the needing an effective weapon against something called the outer menace, whatever the hell that is."

"I know," I tell him. "I have two envelopes in my jacket pocket. One is for you and the other is for the project leader. And just so they don't make another attempt before actually listening to us, I've got something else to take care of."

Reaching into the pocket of my jacket, I remove the 45 automatic George had given me. Then I quickly shoot four holes into each of the control consoles. Both of the machines can easily be replaced within two or three months but this will hopefully give Jim and me enough time to convince the higher ups that they're attempting to mess with situations that go far beyond human understanding.

"You!" I say to the project director, as I point my gun directly at him.

"Yes ma'am," The Three Star General quickly responds.

"I'm going to put this envelope on that table and then I'm going to back away," I say to him. "You're going to walk over to the table, open the letter and then read every single word of it. And that should take you about fifteen minutes. Am I clear on that?"

"Certainly!" He says.

"Once you've finished actually reading that message, you're going to ask the Colonel a question that lets him know you understand what's been going on in my life the past several days. Do you understand?"

"Yes ma'am!" He again answers. "I read the letter and then I ask the Colonel an informed question."

"And once you've asked your question and Jim Pike has given his reply, I'm going to put my gun down and I'll allow the security guards to come into the room and escort the Colonel and me to a holding cell." I say. "Are we totally clear on this?"

"Absolutely ma'am!" He responds the third time. "I make you happy and then you put the gun down."

I take ten steps forward, drop my envelope on a table and then back away. The General takes eighteen steps forward, opens the envelope and begins to read what's inside. To say that everyone in the room is tense while he's doing this would be a massive understatement. The fifteen of us could probably fill a fifty-five gallon barrel with all the pissing we need to do at this moment. At just after the twelve minute mark, the General finally raises his eyes from the pages he's been reading and focuses his attention on James Pike.

"Colonel, are you absolutely certain that our young friend with the gun was thrown into a physically unstable duplicate reality?" He says.

"Does that letter appear to be in my handwriting, General Stevenson?" Jim asks.

"I recognize your handwriting and your signature, Colonel." The General replies.

"Then considering that I've not had the opportunity to write such a letter, I would have to say that an alternate version of myself created what you are now holding." Jim says to the man.

"Attention everyone!" The General loudly states to the rest of the room. "I am officially declaring this project to be shut down for the foreseeable future."

I set my gun on the floor, raise my hands above my head and back away from the consoles. Twenty seconds later, the Security Guards march into the room and the General orders them to escort Jim and me to Guest Suite D. It's a rather comfortable set of five rooms that allows the facility to play nice with visiting dignitaries while still providing the potential of keeping them under guard if necessary.

"By the way," I softly say to Jim, as the guards are closing the door of the suite behind us. "I think the other you got me pregnant."

"What?" He exclaims, taking a step back and trying to mentally process what he's just heard.

"Just kidding," I smirk. "But the look on your face was priceless."

~ END ~