The whole time I was trying to work the gag loose to tell her I didn’t like this kind of thing, that whatever she had done with the Lyle she used to know, I wasn’t him. At least I wanted her to know that she was hurting my buttocks and that I didn’t like it and wanted her to stop. I was twitching and screaming through the gag, unable to breathe, terrified about how far she might go or what she might do to me.
She turned me on my side and I frantically shook my head, trying to tell her that no, I didn’t want or like this, but she gave me a smile that froze my blood, took off one of her shoes, and— very gently, to my surprise—inserted the spike heel in my anus and moved it back and forth. I thought I would throw up; my breath, stopped by her gag, was hot and foul in my lungs, my stomach and chest were heaving, my nose clogged with snot from crying.
She wrapped my penis in one of those satin gloves and stroked me, slowly, a few times. I was more erect than I had ever been in my life.
She flipped me onto my back; that might be a good position for someone who does a great deal of yoga, I suppose, but the pressure on my shoulders, ankles, elbows, wrists, and knees was terrible, and I screamed again, choking now on the tears and mucus dribbling down my throat. My penis, as if it had a mind of its own, kept right on responding to the strokes of the satin gloves, and then she hopped up on the bed and sat on it.
Helen rode me for what seemed forever, and though every joint shrieked with pain, and huge sobs heaved in my chest, at the same time I had never felt a pleasure more intense. She jerked and spasmed three times in big, sloppy orgasms while I struggled and wept; finally, everything gave way—my gut muscles cramped as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus after running ten miles—and I came hard enough to give myself a stomach cramp.
She got off me and got a warm washcloth, then slowly bathed my sore genitals. I wanted her to untie me, but clearly that would only happen on her schedule. Then she rolled me to the side and undid my bonds; I flopped out of the hog-tie like a rag doll, unable to move my arms or legs. She turned me back to her and undid the stocking, then pulled it and the panties out of my mouth. I started to speak but she bent low and kissed me intensely, for a long time.
When she had finished and I lay there, spent and barely able to breathe, with most of my muscles screaming, she said, “You were really a good boy. That’s the best it’s ever been.”
“I’ve never done that...” I said. “Never. I had no idea you were going to ... I don’t play games like that. That wasn’t me.”
“Then whose erection was that?”
I turned on my side, away from her. “I didn’t say I don’t respond to it. It’s nothing I haven’t dreamed about. I said I don’t do it. I don’t want to do things like that.” I crept sideways across the bed, face still turned down toward the covers, hoping to get away from her.
“You’ll be suggesting it to me in a few days, if we’re both alive.”
I hated that snotty confidence in her voice. “I don’t care what you did with any other Lyle. You don’t do that with me. And if you even think it might be me, you ask first.”
She laughed, and it was like Helen in one way, but frightening in another—I didn’t even begin to know this person. “Let me tell you something else, little Lyle. You’re now going to have the sweetest little nap you’ve had in years. I know that your body reacts that way. And as for me—this always seems to sharpen my eye and shorten my reaction time. I’ll be fast, precise, and relaxed for the next few days. Whatever you may think at the moment, my little crybaby tramp, we’re both better off. And you enjoyed it whether you admit or not, you little whore.”
She squeezed my testicles, hard, and I nearly vomited as I yelped in pain. Laughing as if it were Christmas, she stretched out beside me.
Strangely enough—how could I sleep next to someone who so terrified me?—it wasn’t long before I fell sound asleep. When she shook me awake, we had just fifteen minutes to get down to the meeting. I didn’t look at her and I asked her to leave the room while I dressed. She laughed at me again, and I really didn’t like the sound of it this time. It was even more frightening, and even less Helen.
Iphwin began his talk obliquely; he said, “I have spent a very long time thinking about how I was going to present this to all of you, and I’m not altogether sure, even now, that I have picked the right way to do it. I know you must be curious about who I am, how I came to know the things I am going to explain to you, and how and why I have undertaken the project that I am asking you all to join—but I am going to deliberately not gratify your curiosity for the moment, because my explanation will make a great deal more sense if I first give you some basis for understanding it. I hope that I am making myself completely obscure?”
“You are,” I said, since no one else spoke.
“Well, good, then my sense of how the human mind responds is not completely wrong. I hope I can make matters clearer, later, but for right now it is probably appropriate that they be obscure. To begin with, then—your surmises, Lyle, Helen, and some of you others, about the Many Worlds Interpretation and some of the other questions, have been largely correct. People, information, and objects did indeed begin, a few decades ago, to cross over between different worlds, as you call them—or timelines, or histories, or event sequences, depending on whose terms you prefer to use—and this does account for discrepancies in your memories, for the occasional outright violations of causality you have noticed, and even for the new cultural norm of people avoiding any sort of discussion of the past, even of their own personal past.
“Has any of you figured out when these things happen, or what triggers them?”
There was a long silence, and Iphwin said, “You couldn’t be expected to, of course—for one thing, the experience itself is sometimes mildly disorienting, particularly if you’re crossing between event sequences which are extremely different, as has happened to several of you in the course of your lives. Well, I can now fill you in—or I suppose if I can’t, I’m about to find out.
“People cross over when they talk on the phone, when they get on-line, and when they ride in a robot-piloted vehicle.”
I felt like I had just gotten an electric shock right up my spine; suddenly everything was clear. “That’s why!” I said. “They’re all driven by quantum computing devices!”
Everyone turned and stared and I remembered that I was the only person with any physics background in the room. “Er—” I said.
“You’re exactly right, Lyle,” Iphwin said, “that’s what’s going on. And the odd part is, that isn’t really a problem. It’s merely the reason why the real problem has gone undetected till now. But I’m getting ahead of myself—perhaps I should just launch in, and if we can get the occasional assist from Professors Peripart and Perdita, we can put the whole story together quickly.”
Iphwin’s lecture and the questions after it ran till midnight; he provided us with plates of sandwiches, pastries, fruit, coffee, tea, and juice, and gave us a bathroom break punctually on every hour, so we endured it well enough physically, but some of us had hoarse voices from arguing by the end, and almost all of us had brains that hurt. But he kept producing evidence, and what he told us fit the facts. Eventually we bought it, perhaps because it was such a relief to feel like we understood what was going on.