Sci-Fi & Fantasy Erotica: Volume 3 (Sci-Fi & Fantasy Erotica Series)

by Charlie Buxton

  "Ok, what are my choices?"

  "Come with me." She stood. His eyes went to her crotch and she smiled. "I don't need the opening you're looking for."

  "I'm naked."

  "Come with me. You don't need clothes."

  He got up and followed her through a door that wasn't there a minute before. As he entered the room he saw a wheel that looked a lot like the wheel from Wheel of Fortune. Each panel on the wheel identified a religion, a belief system, a philosophy and there were three panels painted flat black.

  Twenty-six stood by the wheel and asked him if it looked familiar. He said it did.

  "Good. You can choose any panel on the wheel or you can spin. If you spin you will get what you land on."

  "Can I ask questions?"

  "Yes, and I will tell you what will happen to you if you choose that panel. However, you can only ask about four panels."

  Derek looked them over. He read: Catholic, Baptist, LDS, Shinto, Zen, Tao, Hindu, Orthodox Jew, reform Jew, Reconstructionist Jew, on around the wheel. He counted and there were eighty seven panels, counting the three black ones.

  "Four questions only?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I have only one question. What happens if I land on a black panel?"

  "You cease."

  "I cease?"

  "You will no longer exist. Nancy will remember you as will Mark and the people you knew until they no longer remember you and then you will no longer exist, even as a memory."

  "Does that happen if I land on any other panel?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you tell me which ones?"

  "You can ask three more specific questions and I will answer."

  His eyes looked at the wheel and landed on Catholic. Nancy was Catholic. He knew that because she got married in a Catholic church.

  "Catholic."

  "You were not baptized Catholic and you never did any of the rituals of the church. You fucked Nancy in the church on her wedding day. You will go to hell and suffer for eternity. The church still has some disagreements about exactly what happens in hell, but they agree that it is continual suffering."

  He grabbed the wheel and spun it hard. When it stopped he read "Per-T Em Hru." He had never heard of whatever it was and looked at Twenty-six for help. She smiled and pressed a button on a pedestal beside the wheel.

  He looked around and she and the wheel were gone. He was standing beside a river of gray water. The land he stood on was also gray and devoid of life. The light was dim and seemed to just be, but not from any single source. He looked around and saw no structures or people.

  The instant he moved a man stood before him. The man was darkly tanned and nearly naked. He had no hair on his head or body and wore only a loin cloth that reminded Derek of something he had seen in a museum exhibit about Egypt.

  He spoke and Derek understood him, although he was sure the man did not speak English.

  "We you taught the songs, the rituals?"

  "No."

  "Then to pass you must answer both questions."

  "Two questions?"

  "Yes. Answer the first to get the second. Answer both satisfactorily and you may move on."

  "Ok."

  "Have you known joy in your life?"

  "Define joy."

  "Have you known joy in your life?"

  He thought. If the question had been, have you known success his answer would have been immediate. Yes! If the man had asked about achievement, sacrifice, goals, even satisfaction he could easily have answered yes. Joy. Derek thought back through his life. He replayed each relationship with a woman, each business relationship, each working relationship and none gave him the answer he wanted.

  He thought about his childhood. His father was a harsh man. He never felt his father approved of anything he did. His mother. He recalled being sick when he was five or six. He caught pneumonia and stayed home and out of school for weeks. His mother and his aunt took turns caring for him. The fed him, bathed him, and held him for hours each day. If he laid flat he couldn't breathe so they took turns holding him in their laps.

  He remembered a day when his aunt bathed him and got very wet. She wrapped him in a warm towel and she undressed and used a towel to dry herself. He had never seen a woman naked before. She sat him in her lap and held him close to her skin. Before he fell asleep he found her nipple at his lips and he suckled.

  Every day for the next two weeks she repeated the bath and suckling.

  Derek looked at the man and answered, "Yes, I have felt joy in my life."

  The man smiled and the area around them got lighter. The gray river became bluer and the gray ground was covered in green grass.

  "Have you brought joy into other people's lives?"

  Even without the examination of every relationship he knew the answer was no. He looked at the man and said, "No."

  The man turned and walked into the river. The light went out and he felt pain. He felt squeezed and it got tighter. He wiggled and tried to move but he had lots of trouble. Suddenly he was in the light and it was too bright. He couldn't turn away.

  He felt another pain and tried to yell in protest. He heard a baby scream. He saw a blurred face close to his and heard voices he didn't understand. He felt water and rubbing and hands touching and carrying him. He yelled again and heard the same baby's cry.

  "Shit!" He thought, "It's me!"

  He was carried and wrapped in a blanket. Then he was put next to a warm, breast and the nipple was shoved into his mouth. He knew what to do with that! She sucked as hard and long as he could. Then he fell asleep.

  He got another chance.

  The End

  That Touch

  It was soon to be her turn. Although she'd disguised the fact from Makoto and the other visitors, she was still dependent on the PowerKey Staff. Without winding, she would eventually cease to function. She could have returned to the stasis chamber, to have preserved her existence... but, no. Standing before Yuba's neatly tended grave, she decided this was for the best. She no longer needed to guard the Trigger of Destruction, since it too had been destroyed, and with Yuba's passing she no further need, or desire, to continue existing.

  She had wandered the empty halls of their lab, and their old living quarters, counting down the days until she no longer had to keep this lonely vigil. Now, nearly two months after Yuba's death and the end of Kalia, her time was at hand. Kneeling down on the soft earth, she looked up at the sun, still high in the sky. By the time it touched the horizon, she would no longer be able to move. Within days, she would have run out of energy altogether, beyond hope of reactivation -she would be dead. At last she would be able to join Yuba in the afterlife (of this she had no doubt -it was he who showed her that, artificial as she was, she did have a soul).

  Lying the PowerKey Staff down across her knees, she reflected on how they first met, and how he'd freed her, the DemonGod Ifurita, from the bonds of her programming, and how they fell in love.

  * * *

  Yuba Yurias was a native of the Empire of Creteria, in a world and dimension quite apart from El-Hazard. A bright and ambitious youth, he'd advanced his way through the ranks of the Engineers Guild, becoming one of the many staff members who tended the Spring of Life, the source of Creteria's power. It was only much later that he understood that this Spring, an artifact from ancient times, was a dimensional furnace, the power source for a weapon known as the Eye of God.

  Being young meant being delegated the rather crappy, even dangerous jobs that the others didn't want. The details of the accident are hazy at best, if accident it was (who was that strange, bug-eyed old man he imagined seeing?), but somehow he'd come into direct contact with that dimensional energy. All anyone saw was a body disintegrating in a flood of white light, no doubt assuming he was dead. In fact, he was only transported.

  The world Yuba now found himself, El-Hazard, was very different from the cold tundra and ubiquitous factories of Creteria. Stranded in the middle of the desert, he wand
ered until he collapsed, saved from death only by the intervention of a passing caravan of nomads. They took him in, fed him, replaced his engineers overalls with proper tribal robes, and even taught him some of El-Hazard's lore. Yuba was obviously an outsider, but these people only assumed he was a foreigner from another land, not another world. It would have been nearly impossible to explain. But, once he'd come to realize there was no immediate hope of returning home, he began to look more and more like the tribesmen he travelled with. His skin naturally darkened, his sandy blonde hair grew long, and he cultivated the goatee beard that seemed extremely common in this land. Travelling the old spice roads, he took the opportunity to delve further into his studies of the ancients that once ruled El-Hazard .There were so many similarities between the technology of those old civilizations and that of ancient Creteria. Perhaps this world existed in parallel -from which it would follow that here too must be a Spring of Life, and thus a way home.

  There were few clues. The Eye of God, this strange artificial satellite that hung low in the sky, was completely beyond reach. But there were some archaeological sites that offered hope, and there were rumours of ancient weapons left over from the war that wiped out this old civilization. He had now spent three years in El-Hazard, and had become weary and on the verge of defeat. He would certainly admit that the longer he lived here, the more agreeable it became, but he knew also that he didn't belong; it simply wasn't home. Or, perhaps the quest had become his only purpose in this new life. Regardless, he had reached the point of desperation. He'd begun to wander the most lonely and desolate of places, gradually cut off from the flow of society. Following the trail of some half-remembered clue, he walked into the barren steppes of the western mountains. His supply of water and rations dwindling, he became increasingly lost.

  Then, he found the garden. Well, not so much 'found' as stumbled into. In any event, where there was once a stone wall was now an oasis of lush green trees and plants. Looking back, he could see the stretch of desert and rough mesas he'd travelled, tinted a subtle shade of blue, as though a translucent screen were in the way. It was easy to believe at that moment that he was hallucinating, a creation of his too fevered mind.

  Picking his way through the brush, he soon came upon a pool of clear spring water. Only after kneeling down and plunging his face into the cool water did he realize this was indeed very real.

  Unslinging his pack, Yuba sat on the grassy shore of the spring, examining his new surroundings with fresh clarity. However it was managed, this oasis existed in some sort of shielded isolation, unseen from the outside. Even the temperature felt cooler. And these plants, they weren't quite like anything he'd seen before in all of El-Hazard. There were the tell tale signs of wildlife too, of bird calls and insect chatter. But what really caught his attention was the short stone obelisk that sat not too far away. The more he looked, the more he realized that it wasn't stone at all, but some sort of smooth dull metal, lined with angular grooves. It was artificial, a relic.

  Quickly rushing over to examine it, he gingerly touched the unblemished surface of the eight foot tall structure. Although he never understood why, he had an affinity for the technology of the ancients, a kind of biological sympathy. He could often divine something of their nature, if not re-activate them for a time. Having never had this ability before coming to this world, he could only assume it was a bizarre side effect of his dimensional journey. Closing his eyes in concentration, he endeavored to get some sense of this object, but ultimately there was no response. He only got the sensation of great weight, a heavy leaden feeling in his stomach. This must only be an incomplete fragment of something buried underground, something much larger.

  Cutting a path through the tall grasses, Yuba could spy more of these obelisks, scattered about the landscape in a seemingly random order. He couldn't decide if they reminded him of tombstones, or great fangs sprouting from the earth. But it was when he discovered the shrine that his excitement truly crested. Cut into the side of a cliff, it's spired architecture was clearly a trademark of the ancients. And it was completely intact!

  At first, the empty stone carved rooms he found within didn't offer much room for hope, nothing that could be connected to those dead relics outside. Then, his explorations finally bore fruit; a blue paneled door that was plainly marked with the eye symbol of the ancients. It was shut tight with no visible means of opening it, but just the touch of his hand was enough to re-activate the long dormant circuitry, causing it to glide smoothly up into the ceiling. A long electrically lit corridor led to what appeared to be a small control room, rather like that of the Spring of Life. Nothing was operating, not a single display lit, but it was clear to see that they could. However, it was what he found in the next room that nearly stopped him in his tracks -a body.

  She was encased in what was best described as a glass casket, set on a raised dais. Her dress was something akin to tight fitting pajamas, with a short sleeved open front tunic and long gloves, all set in light violet and black colours. Her skin was so pale and white that at first he thought she must be a corpse, but on closer inspection he realized otherwise. Her hair was long was long and wild, off-white as if perhaps she might have albinism, but that too didn't seem to be the case. Her skin had the smooth flat shine of something inorganic, liked glazed clay or porcelain. And surely no corpse could have remained intact for so long a time. So, she was a statue then? A religious icon, or some life sized doll created in the image of a once important figurehead. She was certainly beautiful enough, her face quite placid in it's state of perpetual slumber. Gently touching the glass with his fingertips, he was surprised to feel the thrum of power, followed by a high pitched audible whine. White lines of light came to life on the dais, and some unseen mechanism could be heard clicking into place.

  Yuba stepped back, unsure of what he'd set into motion. The dais slowly lowered until the top was level with the floor. A circular panel in the ceiling snapped open, and a long ornate rod thrust down, hanging like a spike. It was at least as tall as he was, it's shaft primarily steel grey, with twin crystal blue orbs set near the lower end. The bottom was shaped vaguely like a handle, though it's appearance also reminded him of an axe blade.

  When nothing further happened, Yuba felt safe to approach once again. He glanced from the hanging rod to the casket, feeling there must be some connection between the two.

  "Only one way to find out," he murmured to himself.

  Taking hold of the rod by it's stylized handle, he again felt the surge of power as it responded. The blue orbs crackled with electric light, and then the whole assemblage came loose from it's mooring in the ceiling. It was heavy enough that it nearly bowled him over. But, this was only the first stage in this new set of reactions. With a very quiet hum, the glass panels of the casket slid away into the body of the altar. Then, just as silently, the woman was lifted by unseen means until she was standing on her feet before him. She was still locked in that state of unreal sleep, only now she was erect, hands dangling at her sides rather than folded over her chest. She was so life-like, he half expected her to awake at any moment.

  Just what did it all mean? Clutching the heavy metallic staff he'd liberated, Yuba walked slowly around the figure. It was nearly a foot taller than he was, with a shape that would be considered voluptuous if she were a real woman. There were a few other details he hadn't noticed before. Even though she was wearing long black gloves, her feet were incongruously bare. What he originally thought was an ornate headband, with a backward facing gauze veil, he saw now was integral to her head. Mounted with two half-spheres, the red metal was grooved in a way that suggested the head of a screw. A very strange artistic choice, he wondered why she'd been given such an obviously artificial feature when the rest of her appeared so human? Unless there was more to her purpose than pure ornamentation. The implication took hold of him; could she too be part of the machinery?

  Gingerly touching the cool surface of her cheek, he mentally braced himself for a r
eaction. Nothing overt happened, but there was no question he could detect some latent power within her. The potential behind that power was so deep, it was looking down into a bottomless pit.

  "Do I dare switch you on," Yuba wondered aloud, walking around her again, "and how do I do it anyway?"

  That's when he noticed the hole. It was placed just above her buttocks in the area of her lower back, outlined with the familiar single-eye symbol. It was about a quarter inch deep, with three small holes inside, all of it coloured a dull gold. In fact, it was the same colour as the tip of his staff he'd retrieved from the ceiling -a tip which was mounted with three small needle-like prongs.

  "Mystery solved." He frowned, fingering the shaft of the staff. Now the other question; was it wise to follow through? Just what exactly was he messing with here? The wise choice would be to hold back, to gather more information first before doing something potentially dangerous. On the other hand, what did he have to lose? This was the closest he'd come to finding a link that would enable him to get home since he'd arrived three years ago. The choice was virtually inevitable.