. 01

Part 2

Chapter One

"I was found nearly naked in a courtyard. All I was wearing was an ultra-thin bikini the Org gives us. For the people of that age it was the same as naked. Women were expected to dress very modestly in that era. Also, my head was shaved-- it's one of the steps you do for a smoother superposition-- but to them it meant I'd been severely punished wherever I came from. They did that back then to humiliate women.

"My Akkadian when I first appeared was not very good-- I'd learned it just from studying with savant tutors, who were extrapolating from cuneiform artifacts ranging over centuries."

"Wait. Savants?"

"I think that's the best translation for your age. You would call them AIs, but they're true intelligences, not the primitive collection of algorithms you have now. They're designed to specialize, super-smart in a certain area we want them to master. I wasn't the first historian--"

"Wait. Sorry. 'Superposition'?"

"That's the physical effect that's used. You're a physicist. I thought you understood. Superposition and entanglement."

"I understand the basics. But you can't use it to travel back in time."

"

You

can't. Anyway, I wasn't the first historian to go back so far; some pioneers had gone back even further. But I was the first to go back so far prepared for a full investigation and research program.

"My language was almost unusable, a mash-up of vocabulary from centuries before and after, and they didn't speak Akkadian anymore. But I managed to explain that I was a refugee."

Jake had to laugh at that.

"I know, I know. That was my cover story. I didn't know the term for that, but they understood the concept. And Assyria, where I'd appeared, was well known for displacing conquered populations-- they more or less invented the practice. By the way, those people back then were just as smart as you think you are right now. They knew I didn't add up. But they were just as arrogant about their position in the world. They were building an empire. It was actually part of their religion. They had bronze and writing and they had sailing ships and international trade. And they were world-class in water management-- you people could learn from them.

"The princess, her name was Sherua, took me in. Oh, the courtyard was part of a palace complex. We'd done extensive digs of the ruins in my era, so the physicists knew where to superposition me. The palace people always knew that there was something magical about me. I mean, I'd appeared out of nowhere, I had a weird accent, my body was different. And there was an awful lot I didn't know. Okay, yeah, sounds familiar, doesn't it? But hey, I have my winning ways. They worked back then too."

"Princess? You talked about a prince."

"Yes, I'm getting to him. I think it's important, now that you're involved, to tell you my whole story. The prince came later."

"I'm sure he did." She just smiled at that tiny sarcastic pun. He recalled the vision he'd had in the parklet, knowing she would see it in him. She resumed what he thought of now as her "light fellatio", in which she used her extraordinary sense of touch to send zingers of pleasure into him through his cock.

He let her do it to him, electrify his body and light up his brain. Now layered on that was the sight of the jeweled woman, her princess, and he was between her legs, about to go down on her. The erotic energy she generated in him was as strong as anything a drug could produce.

She was giving him an innocent smile as she watched him recover, almost a joke because he knew very well how non-innocent she was. The contrast reminded him of a previous session in which, while she was on top of him while fucking, she'd bent down and bit his nipple. He'd oofed in pain and she switched to licking. He had no sexual feeling in his male nipples, but she did seem to enjoy doing it to him.

"You're bisexual." He'd intended the words as a question, asking for confirmation, but they came out as a statement of fact. Her innocent smile remained. She responded with the slightest shrug, as if he'd discovered something trivial and slightly embarrassing about her, that she ate chocolate for breakfast, or liked plaid underwear. "You seduced the princess, didn't you?"

She looked away and closed her eyes, holding that pose, and his cock, and a new smile he couldn't read, for more than a few heartbeats. He began to wonder if he'd said something wrong but she didn't seem at all offended. She bent down again and gave him some truly affectionate fellatio, all on his tip, that went on for a long time without pause, lick after electrifying lick. He felt paralyzed, but his body needed to touch her. His hands went over her naked form, from the smooth ass he'd enjoyed recently to the dark, lustrous hair of the head in his crotch.

She released him and he fell back to the mattress. She climbed on him and sank him into her sex. "She was beautiful," she said as she slowly pumped herself up and down on him. She lowered her head down to place her forehead on his sternum, moving her hips around in slow circles. He saw, even though she was fucking him, the princess, who had exotic looks, full lips with a long nose, but was strikingly beautiful because of that. He saw her, in spite of her real cowgirl position, between his legs and about to put her mouth on the bald mound of Venus between his thighs. He shuddered with the mental dissonance.

She rose up a little. "Back then... back then life was really hard. So many people just weren't well. Parasites, malnutrition, diseases of all kinds, and they had to work so hard. But if a person was strong enough to survive all that, and had the advantage of being in an elite class-- well, she was like a jewel sprung from an ancient volcano."

"You loved her."

"Everybody did. The people-- she was fair and generous-- and the other noble houses, even her father. The kings back then used to marry off their daughters to other kings, but he kept her around. She was magnificent."

"Wow, can you get me her phone number?" She laughed above him. "And yet you were able to get in her panties?"

"Oh yes." Whatever sad memories she'd been reliving evaporated and the enigma he knew grinned down at him. She rubbed and fucked and soon she was on her way to an orgasm on him. It wasn't a blackout orgasm, just one of her normal, extremely intense ones. She lay on him for several minutes afterward, then lifted off and moved down between his legs. "Loincloth. They didn't wear panties back then."

"I guess that made it easier?"

"What made it easier... royalty back then were celebrities. She had her entourage. We were with her all the time, I mean

all

the time, 24/7 as you like to say here." She licked some pussy juice off his cock. "We all slept together anyway. In her bedroom. I was able to ascend to her bed."

"And that was okay? I mean, you said they dressed very modestly. So the king... her reputation or whatever they called it back then?"

"You mean that she liked girls? You so-called modern people are so hung up about that. They didn't even have a word for homosexuality back then. It didn't matter."

"So it was... I don't know... a free for all?"

"Not a bit. The culture was hierarchical, very structured. I was a servant, a slave. My princess took me in, and clothed me and gave me work, which was fortunate for me as a woman totally on my own. And as a field operative for the Org, a royal household was the perfect spot. But that just meant she owned me. They knew I was far away from my native country. No one had any idea how incomprehensibly far way, but still, no one was going to argue. I was her personal possession. If the princess told me to eat her pussy then I ate her pussy."

He got some very intense sucking after that answer. She didn't send him to heaven for this one. She kept him focused on the physical pleasure she knew how to give him, long enough that he felt his balls begin to rise up. She felt it too. She paused.

"You.. I guess..." the thought and desire filled his mind. "You made her come?"

"In my mouth? Like

you

want?" She put his cock back between her lips and did that next-level thing she did that made him bounce spasmodically on the bed. He was able to get back control of his body through deliberate slow breaths. "And I hope she made

you

come."

She pulled off. "She was incredible." She dipped down to continue on him but stopped. "That was the problem."

He sat up. He felt satisfied for the moment. "Tell me."

"The hierarchy has consequences. It was, in its way, as limiting as yours is with gender. And mine is with privacy. It was totally okay for her to use me to do her. People did that with their slaves all the time. And I became one of her apprentices. She ran the king's textile workshop-- weaving was women's work-- also the farms that produced the wool and flax. It was a major source of royal income. And there was a tradition of apprentices sexually servicing their mentor. Totally okay, expected and ethical. But when

she

ate

me

, that was a perversion. A higher social class shouldn't service a lower social class-- not just sexually, but sexual was important. And she was about as high as a woman could go, and I was about the lowest."

He brushed a hand over her shoulder. "I completely sympathize with a person who finds you irresistible and wants to make you come over and over."

That earned a tiny smile. "This was before I had the treatment, but even then I could come hard, really hard. She loved that." She looked down at his cock and stroked him, balls to tip, back and forth, lightly, just on the pleasant side of tickling. "But her brother found out."

"Oh, is this the prince you mentioned way back? I thought you liked him."

"I did, actually. He was great. That's just how things were done back then. I was a bit shocked at first-- I was still learning the culture and my place in it-- but I was property. I understood that. He already had a few concubines of his own, though nothing like the big harem his father had. I think one of the princess's servants said something to one of the concubine's servants, and that led him to notice me. Once that happened it was only a matter of time before he had me."

"I don't know what to think now. I remember you said I reminded you of him."

"Well, look at you. You're propped up like a prince on your royal bed, fully expecting this pretty girl to do anything and everything you want. In what way are you not like a prince?"

He lounged back and put his hands behind his head against the pile of pillows. He smiled a smile in which he tried to pack as much self-satisfaction as could fit between his cheeks. "You're not a slave, not here. You're doing this because you enjoy it. In

your

bed."

"And because you give me orgasms beyond anything I ever thought possible."

"That too. And he didn't?"

"No way he could, but I enjoyed seducing him. I mean, how many real princes is a girl going to meet in her life? And he really wanted me. I was like an exotic fruit. He was betrothed to some Babylonian princess still years from puberty and he was tired of his concubines. All they wanted was for him to get them pregnant. I was much more fun."

"Did he resist better than me?"

She laughed. "We're talking about a prince here. They were the rock stars of their age. Although you did resist me for longer than I expected. So you didn't do too bad."

"I wasn't fishing for a compliment. I just wanted to learn more about your experiences back then."

"Of course. Please forgive me, your highness. But my prince--" She fell silent for a minute. He could see something in her mind, but she was holding it back, events she didn't want to share. "Life is different back then. I mean, it's the same. We're human back then, as much as you are now, and as much as we'll develop into in my time. But life was a lot shorter and riskier and really just more fragile. Diseases, accidents, famines, wars, earthquakes, they really don't know if they're going to be around tomorrow. And yet they feel things as strongly as we do. So they have an ever-present consciousness of how precious every day is. It changes them."

"I certainly don't disagree that life is precious."

"Yes, I believe you. But you have more days than they do, so each day is not as precious."

He wanted to deny that, but he couldn't think of anything that could contradict her argument. Then he thought of what he was planning to do in the future with the concentrator. "On the other hand," he tried, "given more days, it's possible to plan a fuller life, which would give each day a new form of value and each day could become a new source of experience. In fact--" He was stunned by the realization, but it made so much sense he knew instantly it was true, even outrageous as it seemed-- "you're older than you look. Much older. Aren't you?"

She didn't answer.

"How could you have such a depth of experience, even assuming you've got this tricked out body and brain, and AIs have been force-feeding you since childhood? I mean, you have to live it, there's no other way. How old are you? How do you even calculate that? Does age have any meaning for you?"

"I do live my life just like everyone else, a day at a time."

"But how many days?"

She stared off for a moment, then answered literally. "Maybe 38,000. So far."

It didn't make any sense to him. It was just a number, as detached from who she was as, say, the number of cells in her body. She was who she was. That's what he tried to convince himself of. And it shouldn't have mattered that she was older than his grandmother. Both he and his grandmother would be many centuries in the grave before the young-looking woman before him would be born. He understood the basics of relativity. He knew that stars were so remote in distance that they were also remote in time; now he saw that the converse was also true, that far away in time was as good as being far away in space. She was from another world, and it didn't matter how the distance was measured, whether in light years or kilo-years.

"But-- but--" he had to ask. "What year is it in your... where you come from?"

"We don't base our calendar on religious figures, if that's what you're asking. But we're about 1200 years ahead of you."

So it was as if, to someone from his time, he were living in the 800s. He told himself that, but it was all just facts, not fitting together into anything comprehensible. And here she was before him, a walking paradox.

Make that a fellating paradox. He'd gone slightly soft during the conversation. She sucked him back into his body. That's how it felt now. She could pull his consciousness, who he was, out of his head and into his body. "I'm just a woman and you're just a man," she said at one point, when she paused to let him take a few breaths. "And we just happened to find each other, through our mutual good fortune. A lot of life is like that. And like too many men around here, you spend way too much time in your head. I can fix that." She put her lips to his tip.

"If I want it fixed," he managed to get out before her tongue slid down to his most sensitive spot and held itself there. The tension in his body, which in muscle memory knew what her tongue tip could do and what it was about to do, made him vibrate head to toe.

"You want it. You like to talk big. But you want it."

"You must know, even though you're from a very different place, that it's a major source of ego pleasure for a male, I guess of any time period, whether a prince or just a guy, to be able to deny that he wants you and all the indescribable things you can do to a man, while at the same time enjoying how you give yourself to him and do all those wonderful things he pretends he doesn't need."

"For a primitive man, you are sometimes quite self-aware."

"I'm aware it's time for you to be fucked. Are you ready?"

She moved next to him on her hands and knees. "I'm never ready. It's scary to think how intensely my body is going to respond to you. Now more than ever. I'm out of control and it's doubly scary that so are you."

He got up and positioned himself behind her. "I'm always in control." He put his cock to her slit and wet his tip with her juices.

"You

think

you're in control. Fuck me." He began working his cock into her from behind. She scrunched down to give him a better angle. He steadily pumped deeper and deeper. "Fuck, that feels good. Keep doing that. Don't stop. Yes, yes." She was reduced to gasps when he bottomed out. She tried to twist and lift her leg to allow him deeper penetration, but he held firmly onto her hips and she relented. "Tell me if you want me to stop."

But that was just a joke. She was incapable of any kind of speech, whether she wanted to plead for him to stop or beg him for more. He held her in a purgatory of pleasure, keeping her from the deeper penetration she needed to reach orgasm, not able to escape her overwhelming need for one. He was in control nominally, but he was only doing what he

knew

she desired, to be driven into and through and past the most unbearable ecstasy any woman could experience.

At last, when her hips vibrated on their own so hard he was starting to have trouble staying inside her, he allowed her to roll over and open her legs and let him go into her deepest depth. But even then he just held his cock against her cervix, an intimate touch that she couldn't resist and couldn't take. It was almost cruel. She scrabbled uselessly with her arms to push herself back on him harder. Her fine, strong legs weakly tried to scissor him into her further. But he could feel exactly the right spot to drive a spike of rapture straight up into her mind, as if his cock were an electrode planted in the middle of her pleasure center. It kept shooting the erotic voltage into her, on its own.

But even she could not take the torture forever. The erotic energy resonated and built inside her, with his help, until her mind vibrated like a bell. With a high keening, the most sound she was able to squeeze out of her overstressed lungs, she trembled and shook like a cartoon bomb about to explode. He switched at that moment to the pounding she craved. She'd been correct earlier to say she was scared of what he could do to her body. She came-- that's what she would have begged him for if she'd been able to speak-- but the orgasm was indistinguishable from an electrocution, maybe as painful. Inside her, way up deep, he could feel her insides turn to liquid, then convulse into what looked like a plasma in her, as each stiletto of orgasmic energy shot through her.

After an indefinite time the orgasmic spikes began to wane, and he could feel her starting to slip into the fugue state he'd originally thought was a blackout. He bent down to take her in his arms, still fucking her. She was shaking violently, as if she'd been caught outside in an arctic snowstorm. Her arms had withdrawn to her chest, her fists limply clenched. "Stay with me," he whispered. "Look at me." He ran his fingers all over her head, massaging her scalp and brushing his fingertips over her face.

At last she looked in his eyes. Her mouth tried to move. He relented and stopped fucking, but kept his cock deep in her. "I just-- I just-- My prince. I want you to know."

# # #

I didn't actually meet, or even see, Prince Dagan until I'd been in Princess Sherua's household for a few months. Back then, if you were one of a princess's personal servants you were around her pretty much all the time. We even slept in her room with her. But she would send me away sometimes and I quickly figured out it was when he was coming around. The princess's rooms were part of the palace compound; he was officially in charge of it, so he could show up any time he wanted.