NOTE: I don't know any Stephanie Ayers, and no reference to any actual person is intended by the use of that name in this chapter or any future ones that I may write.
The Sage & a Kind of Good-Bye
"The Sage is ready to see you now," said Wei, the tall Asian man who they had learned was the Abbot of the brown-robed monks – or the Order of Record Keepers, as they called themselves.
Don gently urged Nicole to release his cock from her mouth and promised they would get back to playing soon. As he tied his grey robe about himself, Don saw that Tascha, who had been riding up and down on Alan's lap only a moment before was also hurrying to make herself "presentable". After waking up hours ago, and the following, almost routine, morning sex (
Well, that's definitely the right way to start the day, particularly when you wake up sandwiched between two naked, sexy women!
Don thought to himself with a happy smile), they had had a bite of breakfast and been asked to wait until they were called for. While they learned a little bit more about the Order, most of the morning was spent in lazy sexual play. It was now shortly after midday, and at least two of them were quite eager to meet this person whom they had been awaiting, and had gone to such lengths to find.
They followed Wei to the foot of a winding staircase and proceeded up. At the top, behind a modest door, they were admitted to a good sized study, complete with shelves filled with row upon row of books. Windows all around the room let bright sunlight in. There were a few comfortable chairs, and a nice desk, behind which, in a brown robe, sat a middle aged woman with thick, dark brown hair falling down around her shoulders. She was apparently reading the last page of a stack of typed material.
Wei gestured to a set of chairs that had been drawn into a circle of four, and said, "Please, make yourself comfortable, she will be right with you."
Sure enough, right after he had closed the door behind himself but before they could get comfortable in their chairs, the woman looked up at them and smiled. "Hello," she said as she stood up and came around the desk. "You're obviously Don, and I'm guessing you're Tascha and you're Nicole."
"That's right, and you're 'the Sage'?" Tascha asked.
"That's what they call me," she smiled as she sat down in a high-backed chair.
"I admit, I was expecting someone a bit ... more wizened," Don smiled.
"Well, it's really just a title, like 'the Crone', though I suspect the similarities end about there. You can call me Charlotte if you prefer."
"Pleased to meet you, Charlotte," Tascha said.
"Likewise," Charlotte smiled again. "I know you must have many questions, but let me just say, I've just finished reading your various reports, and I've enjoyed them very much. Our scribes are chosen for their skill at asking the right sorts of questions and their ability to flesh out the stories they're given, but in this case they've had very good material to work with. The three of you have had some very interesting adventures. I particularly enjoyed reading about your encounter with the Bull, Tascha."
"So, everyone who comes here looking for you tells their story and you read it?" Nicole asked.
"Yes, that's right. I confess, my personal 'kink' is to get off reading about, and sometimes watching, the exploits of others. I would have finished reading your reports earlier, but I had to keep stopping to masturbate."
"Wouldn't it have been more efficient for us to just tell you directly?" Nicole asked with a twinkle in her eye that the Sage seemed to miss.
"Well, yes, but there are two problems with that," Charlotte answered. "One, we keep all the stories, as a record and a source of study..."
"You could just have someone type it up as we told you," Tascha pointed out.
Charlotte nodded, "That's quite true, but then the narrator would be bristling with questions for me, which would slow things down and cause all kinds of complications."
"Is that the second problem?" Don asked.
"No, the second one is that there seems to be some benefit to having each person tell his or her own story, and then comparing them."
"How have our stories diverged?" Don wanted to know.
"Well, I've only just read the three of them, and haven't had hardly any time to think about them, but Don's way of looking at your time here in Eros involves a lot of digressions and interconnections, while Tascha's is more straight-forward. Nicole's is actually rather journalistic."
Don could see that Nicole had half a mind to object to this, but he cut in with, "OK, but what's the point of all this anyway?"
Charlotte the Sage frowned slightly and said, "I assume you mean the record-keeping?"
"Well, for now, yes."
"At some point, long ago, the first Sage decided that one way of trying to make sense of the whys and wherefores of Eros was to start recording the experiences of people who, like him, remembered their lives before waking up here."
"And, has it helped?" Tascha asked.
"Well, it certainly makes for some stimulating reading," Charlotte laughed. Then she added, "It definitely has served to build up some generalizations that seem to be helpful."
"Such as?" Don prodded.
"Every single person who has come here, to this Abbey, and this goes back for 450 Erosian years, has spoken English rather fluently. Now, the only people who we interview are those who remember their lives prior to waking up here, but none of them has ever reported meeting anyone who doesn't speak English. This suggests that either the people who don't remember spoke English before they arrived here, were somehow rewired to speak English upon being brought over, or are native Erosians. This all seems to strongly suggest that whomever or whatever is responsible for selecting people for Eros speaks English, and that seems quite surprising and noteworthy to me."
"So, which is it, were they brought here or are they natives?" Nicole asked.
"They were brought," Don said quietly, remembering his and Tascha's visit to the Library in the Manor.
"Well, the evidence does suggest that," Charlotte nodded. "They seem to have various personality traits and interests that wouldn't make sense for native Erosians, for one thing."
"That's what I was thinking," Don added.
"Also, some people have actually met people they recognized or even knew quite well from Earth, but who seemed to have no memory of that other life."
"That must have been bizarre," Tascha said.
"It has sometimes been ... awkward, to say the least," nodded Charlotte.
"All of this is very interesting, but you mentioned whomever, or whatever, is selecting people from Earth – English speaking people from Earth," Don said as he leaned forward. "Who or what is doing this, and why? What's the point of it all?"
Charlotte smiled again, "I honestly can't say. I admit that the question puts me in a philosophical frame of mind. Imagine if I asked you what the point of it all was on Earth. Anyway, there are theories, of course. Some Sages have thought that we were being held prisoner here as lab rats, running countless experiments on human sexuality, others that there is some power, or powers, who feed off human eroticism, or who have lost the ability to generate it for themselves – the ultimate voyeurs. There seems no question that there's some intelligence behind it, though."
"Why do you think so?" Tascha asked.
"Well, it only selects people who are quite dissatisfied with their Earthly sex lives." Charlotte held up her hand to forestall Tascha's objection. "The fact that it is very hard to sort out exactly what counts as such dissatisfaction seems to lend weight to this consideration. No doubt, Tascha would hesitate to say that she was dissatisfied in any way with Sarah, but it seems clear from reading her story that she would hardly think of the sex life she was having before as being satisfying now. Almost every single person who has found his or her way here has thought that being brought to Eros was a wonderful gift, which has led some to speculate that this was some kind of heaven."
Don couldn't resist scowling at this notion, and Charlotte noticed. "I don't buy that either," she said with a smile. "On the other hand, it's the best afterlife I've ever heard of. Going back to the question of intelligence, one of the most telling bits of evidence is the two of you, Don and Tascha."
After taking a moment to scowl thoughtfully at this suggestion, Tascha asked, "What do you mean?"
"As far as our records indicate, the two of you are unique. No pair of friends has ever woken up together like you have. Before you ask, I have absolutely no idea what that might mean. Perhaps it's for the purposes of one of those psycho-sexual experiments."
There was a moment of silence before Don decided to ask, "What's up with the black robed figures?"
"The Watchers," Charlotte nodded. "Another indication that there is some kind of intelligent process going on. After 450 years of accumulating data, there has never been anyone – anyone recorded, anyway – who has managed to talk to, or even catch hold of, one of those bastards. They watch for a bit; then, when you think you're going to get your hands on one, they're gone."
"Is it science or magic?" Tascha asked.
"I'm inclined to follow Arthur C. Clarke on this one and say I don't really know that there's a difference in this context."
"There are so many questions," Don muttered, shaking his head. "How many people remember their lives? What's the distribution of their wheres and whens? Is there anything they all have in common besides being sexually frustrated?"
"Is there a way to get home again?" Tascha asked resolutely.
