"I know you think we are very unusual, Jeremiah, and in the context of what you know as normal, you are correct about us. That works both ways, though, because things here are not only strange and different to us, but they are dangerous and frightening as well. If anyone else had found us besides you, I don't think we'd have made it two days here. It was an unbelievable stroke of providence that you came up the road when you did. I cannot believe how naïve we were, thinking that our advanced knowledge and equipment would keep us out of harms way in an environment as hostile as this."
I had not thought of things quite that way, but I could see her point immediately. I could see everything being scary to them, given the peaceful portrait she painted of her home. Sonja took the pipe from me and sucked in a big lungful of smoke before passing it to Helena. She held the smoke inside for a long count, then exhaled with a sigh.
"So anyway, Jeremiah, it is obvious that we owe our lives to you, but also, we feel more alive because of you. In only a few days, you have stood everything we have ever been taught about men on its ear."
The other women nodded their agreement, but I did not say anything.
"How we feel about you makes what I have to say next difficult, because it could send you running back home."
Sonja sighed, took a deep breath and continued.
"Jeremiah, it's not where we are from that makes us unusual, it is when we are from. Oh, we are from California alright, but when we left Paradise Valley, it was the year 2523. Our trip is the end result of almost fifty years of concerted effort by the scientist at Paradise University. Hawkingium is the material that makes the time-travel possible, so this first trip was to recover enough to fuel more important trips planned for the future. The four of us who made the trip were the winners of a lottery among five hundred volunteers. I was appointed the nominal leader of the group."
Sonja stopped her narrative and all three women looked at me with bated breath. I sat silently for a few moments, as I tried to grasp what Sonja said. The concept of them being from the distant future actually did not bother me. I prided myself for being a progressive man, even if my choice of professions did not show it. I knew that scientific and inventive men were moving the world forward at an amazing pace. Who knows what wonders they would come up with, given over five hundred years to do it? Besides, it was the most reasonable explanation for all the strangeness associated with Sonja and her party. I made my decision to believe what Sonja was saying. In addition, heading off into the unknown (at least for me) future appealed to my itchy feet.
"When do we leave?" I asked.
My answer must have been what the women wanted to hear, because all three of them whooped and swarmed on top of me hard enough to tip my camp chair over backwards. I landed flat on my back on the soft sand of the small cavern's floor, as three happy women piled on top of me. I received some seriously applied kisses before they let me up and helped me back into my chair. When we were all seated again, I had a question. "I cannot imagine what sort of problem you could be having that you think a muleskinner could fix, Sonja, so why don't you tell me about it?"
Sonja turned serious again and nodded her head. "I need to give you a short history lesson before I tell you that, so you'll understand why we need you. The world has changed drastically between your time and ours, Jeremiah. Yet, we live in my time not that differently than you live here now. That is especially true out in our rural areas. That wasn't true of our ancestors from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Our historians call that time the "Golden Age". During the time between right now and 2025, most of the science that is in existence in our time was discovered. Transportation reached the point that anywhere on the earth was accessible in a matter of hours, while medical advances cured most of the chronic diseases and mitigated the effects of others. Devices were invented that made Communications instantaneous. In general, most of the people on earth lived in prosperity that is hard to imagine.
"Unfortunately, that prosperity required massive amounts of natural resources to maintain, and control over those resources became a contentious issue that led to numerous small wars. At the same time, religious zealots of all sorts were busy turning their followers against anyone not of their religion. While all this was happening, the Earth's climate started to change and geological activity increased to record levels. One natural disaster followed another. Volcanoes erupted and powerful cyclones beyond anything ever witnessed battered coastal areas. Massive earthquakes destroyed major cities and decimated the landscape of rural areas, while gigantic winter storms brought entire continents to a stand still. Droughts that lasted for years struck some regions, while endless rainfall flooded others.
"Religious fanatics on every side blamed the natural disasters on each other, while governments did the same. The cycle continued unabated for ten years. By then, every country in the world was at war. In 2152, the end of the Golden Age civilization came when some fanatical religious group exploded a high yield nuclear bomb in Washington, DC."
Sonja saw my confused look and explained further.
"A nuclear bomb is a weapon of of imaginable power. The one exploded in Washington destroyed the entire city and made an area twenty miles around it uninhabitable. The remnants of the US government retaliated by using nuclear weapons on the three largest cities of the country that was the home of the group claiming responsibility for bombing Washington. Once nuclear weapons were unleashed, every country that possessed the weapon used them on their enemies. Within a week, every major city in the world was destroyed. One of the aftereffects of the Nuclear World War was a twenty-five year mini-ice age that with the continuing natural disasters, eradicated most of the human population that survived the war. By the dawning of the twenty-second Century, the population of the world was about one percent of what it had been at the start of the twenty-first.
"The twenty-second and part of the twenty-third centuries were the darkest times imaginable, as the human race barely avoided becoming as extinct as the dinosaur. Pockets of survivors hung on though, and by 2350, civilization started to recover. Human civilization survived, but it was scattered across the earth in isolated pockets, with vast tracts of poisoned and uninhabitable lands between them. Slowly, gradually, the pockets of humanity began to communicate with each other, using cobbled-together equipment salvaged from the golden scientific era. Many of the communities that survived were small college towns away from major population centers. The earth had been stripped of its natural resources, but the ability to do research still existed, and there were literally mountains of machines and equipment that could be salvaged. As a matter of fact, salvage is still the biggest industry of our time.
"For the first decade or so, the far flung communities traded survival strategies, and by the year 2360, the population was stable, and for the first time in two centuries actually started to grow. When it appeared that mankind would survive, the philosophical debates began about how to prevent what the earth had barely survived from happening again. It took a much shorter time for our ancestors to determine that the belligerent, malecentric society that had ruled the earth for thousands of years was the root cause of the apocalypse. It took twenty more years to perfect the solution. Around 2380, an altered gene was introduced into the first male. By the turn of the twenty-fifth Century, every male born had the modified gene."
Coleen cut into the conversation just then, due to my confused expression, and clarified my unasked question.
"Genes are the part of your body's structure that determines physical traits. Your genes are inherited from your parents. For instance, genes are responsible for your hair being the color it is and for the resemblance you have to your mother or father. Genetic research is one area where we have surpassed the science of the Golden Age. Genetic alteration is common place now, as a matter of fact, Helena, Sonja and I are all genetically altered, mostly to make us healthier and stronger, but also to reflect our parents' heritage."
I nodded my understanding of the general concept of what she was saying, even though I did not have a clue as to how something like that was possible. Helena saw my look and said, "Don't worry about things you don't understand yet, Jeremiah. A writer named Clarke from the Golden Age once said 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' Once you've spent some time with us, you will see that what appears to be incomprehensible is really just the result of years of hard work." Of all the things the women had told me, that one sentence gave me the most hope as far as understanding anything about their world. I gave her a smile and looked back at Sonja so she could continue my history lesson. Sonja resumed her narrative.
"The population of Earth in our time is mostly divided into city-states not unlike Ancient Greece. Natural barriers like mountains and oceans combined with the vast man made dead lands still separate us. There is much interaction between the city-states around the world, but most of it is electronic communications, using machines like the one you saw us using up on the mountain. The open sharing of discoveries, science and ideas has vastly improved the lives of us all. One common goal unites the vast majority of our new civilization, and that is the desire to live in peace and never repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. Unfortunately, there are now groups of humans outside that vast majority. These people live on the fringes of the dead lands and are mostly social outcasts or petty criminals that have been banished from the city of their birth. Those people have banded together in nomadic clans that live off the land.
"One of those groups of outcasts lives in the mountains outside Paradise Valley. That group has moved from being a nuisance to actually being a threat to us because of their leader, a woman who has proclaimed herself Queen Elizabeth the Seventh. Her real name is Elizabeth Celt Smith, and she was once a history professor at Paradise University. For some reason, she walked out of the valley one day and started organizing the outcasts. Elizabeth is a brilliant, charismatic, and cruel megalomaniac, whose stated intention is to conquer the world and restore the English Monarchy. Elizabeth says her claim to the throne of Great Brittan was legitimate, because she was a descendent of Queen Elizabeth the Second, and the sole surviving member of the House of Windsor.
"Elizabeth has managed to bring together three of the outcast clans. She only has about four thousand followers now, but she gains more converts daily. Her 'nation' is small, but it is made up of ruthless and amoral people who have no compulsion about committing atrocities in the name of their Queen. For the first time in over two hundred years, Paradise Valley has had to organize a defensive force. I think we are in serious trouble, because we do not have the skill or mindset needed to deal with Elizabeth and her rabble. You do, though; watching you deal with those savage Indians proved that."
Sonja's story of what happened to the world was so much like my mother's interpretation of the Biblical Book of Revelation, that it shook me to my core. I did not have any doubts about the veracity of Sonja's account. At the same time, the story of how mankind persevered despite everything, made me eager to help them. I was excited as a young boy about the adventure before me.
Sleep was hard to come by that night; we were all too excited and keyed up for that. Instead, the women told me more about their lives and their home. I listened avidly, but did not ask too many questions. I was content that in a few hours I would be there anyway to experience everything for myself. The women had one more surprise for me. It came in the form of more discussion about our relationship. This time it did not apply to me and them, but rather them to each other. I sat there in jaw-dropped wonder as they coolly discussed how the sexual relationship with each other would work. I had never thought of that, it was something beyond my experience. I could only nod dumbly when Coleen explained that women with other women was a very commonplace thing in Paradise Valley.
"We are limited in how often we can be with a man," she said, "so many women compensate by turning to each other. With you, we can have the best of both worlds."
I finally fell asleep sometime in the middle of the night, and inside the dark cavern slept until after nine the next morning. I slept late enough that the women arose before I did. I ducked out of the cavern, greeted them good morning and then walked out of their sight to relieve myself. When I rejoined them, they were sitting around an intensely hot fire burning in a small metal can. A grate of shiny metal was propped over the mostly blue flame and my coffee pot was sitting on the grate. My coffee was ready in a jiffy, so I sat back and had a cup as the women made their final preparation for departing.
I sat in the sun, soaking up its warming rays as the women scurried around, making sure they were leaving nothing behind. It was comical watching them as they expended their nervous energy on make-work. I checked my watch when Helena came out of the cave to fetch me. It was ten-ten in the morning on the third of August, 1868. I stood up, stretched and looked out over South Pass. I had to wonder if this would be the last time I saw this ruggedly beautiful land. It struck me as I stood there that returning me to my own time had never been mentioned. I honestly did not know how I felt about that. One thing I did know, I was much less fearful of the unknown than I was excited about it.
Inside the cave, the shiny silver trunks were all stacked against the wall opposite the entry. On top of the boxes, the little case with the hinged lid was open and green numbers glowed eerily on the black top section. The numbers were in three pairs separated by colons. The last pair of numbers was decreasing rapidly. Helena gave me an explanation without waiting for me to ask a question.
"That is a count down timer. It shows how much time remains before our transfer, fifteen minutes and about twenty seconds."
It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. With one minute remaining, Sonja nudged me closer to the trunks until we were all standing in a tight group.
"You might feel disoriented for a few seconds, but it will pass quickly," Coleen said as she squeezed my hand reassuringly.
Just as I was about to tell Coleen thank you, the small box chirped and the screen read all zeros. Below the numbers, the words, 'synchronization in progress' appeared briefly then disappeared, and the word 'lock' took their place. Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet seemed to shift, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. I closed my eyes until the dizzy spell ended. When I was steady on my feet again, I opened my eyes and looked around. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the impossibly bright light that lit the room we were now in.
I looked at the women first to make sure they were okay, then warily scanned around me. We were in a room about fifteen feet on a side. Two of the room's walls had doors in them, one was bare whitewashed stucco and the fourth was floor to ceiling glass. The ceiling was about eight feet high, white washed like the walls and inset with white tubes that were emitting the bright light. On the other side of the glass wall, a number of men and women in white dusters were gawking at us — or, most probably just me. Finally, one of the men, a high-muck-a-muck, judging from his posture and expression, bent his head and said something into a black tube mounted on a curved stick that came out of the counter in front of him. I saw his lips move, but still jumped when his voice seemed to boom out of the ceiling above my head.
"Miss Ferrens, where is Mister Chin and who is this?" the disembodied voice asked. I was glad that the man had spoken such a short sentence, because his manner of speech was so fast and clipped that I could barely follow what he said. I turned from examining the room and looked at Sonja. She turned towards the wall of glass and calmly replied, "I'll explain as soon as we decontaminate and you can gather the Pleiad, Doctor Mendez."
The room was sparsely furnished with a couple of fancy barber's chairs and some sliver metal boxes on wheels. Before I could examine the room any further, Sonja and Helena grabbed my hands and started dragging me toward one of the doors where Coleen was standing.
"Come on, Jeremiah, I've been waiting a week for this," Sonja said impatiently.
My heartbeat sped up when she said that, as I thought she was dragging me towards a bed. As usual, what I was thinking and actual reality were trains on different tracks. The room she led me toward turned out to be an eight by eight box with a couple of nicely crafted wooden Deacon's benches along one wall but nary a bed in sight. In between the benches was a canvass bag set inside a frame on wheels. The wall opposite the door had pipes coming out of the shiny slick wall about seven feet above the floor and a grate was set in the center of the floor. The women started shedding their clothes as soon as the door closed, but this time they did not stop at their underwear.
I stood there rooted to the spot as they shucked down. Even though each of them had been naked with me at one time or another, this was the first time in enough light for me to see anything in detail. They were even more beautiful in the light, if that were possible. As I stood rooted to the spot drinking in their beauty, I could not help notice that they were completely without body hair. Instead, their skin was smooth and flawless. Helena was olive complexioned, Sonja pale and creamy skinned, while Coleen was alabaster with a dusting of freckles. A smiling Coleen broke me out of my dazed admiration of their beauty.
"Are you going to stand there and gawk all day, or would you like to join us?" she asked.
I blushed at being caught staring and sat down on one of the benches to remove my boots.
Coleen and Helena lifted the lid of the other bench and took out a blue bottle and a couple of bars of what appeared to be some of that fancy French milled soap. Then they walked over to the other side of the room and started twisting knobs sticking out of the walls until water sprayed out, rain-like, from the pipes set above their heads. Sonja stayed next to me as I squirmed out of my clothes. Sonja threw my clothes in the canvas bag on the wheeled cart.
"Your clothes need to be irradiated and laundered before you can wear them again," she said in the way of explanation.
I was slightly embarrassed at my tumescence as Sonja took my hand and led me to the pulsating water. Soon, all three women were making happy noises as the water pelted down on them.
"I never thought a shower could feel this good. For a while there I thought I'd never be clean again," Helena moaned.
"Amen," chorused the other women.
The 'shower' as they called it was very nice; I was surprised with how warm the water was. Showering suddenly became one of my favorite activities when Sonja handed me the perfumed soap and asked me to wash her back. The next fifteen minutes were filled with soapy fun as I washed and shampooed each of my lovelies and they teamed up to wash me squeaky clean.
We dried off with thick Turkish towels that were inside of one of the benches. The women donned baggy green pants and shirts that were also inside the benches, but they handed me this flimsy cotton night shirt that wrapped around me and tied in the back. I protested that I could feel cold air on my butt, so I knew the shirt gaped open in the back. Coleen reached behind me and gave my cheek a pinch as the other women giggled.
"Yep," she said with a grin, "too bad we don't have anything large enough to fit someone as big as you." Then she turned serious as she said, "You'll only be in it a short while, Jeremiah, as soon as your physical exam and lab work are done, we'll have something more appropriate for you to wear."
I had my doubts, but I grumbled my acquiescence as we walked out of the shower room.
I met my first other people from the future when we walked back into the room with the glass wall. They were a man and woman wearing the same green suits as the women with me but with square white masks over their mouth and nose. Coleen introduced them as her colleagues, Doctors Pierce and Hunnicut. Helena and Sonja left us then to go meet with the Pleiad. The Pleiad, I later learned, was the seven member council that governed Paradise Valley. Sonja and Helena both gave me a kiss before they left, which seemed to shock the tarnation out of the masked doctors.
Coleen and the other two doctors put me through a lengthy process that included them bleeding me of numerous glass vials of my life's blood. Then they poked, prodded and hit me with a funny shaped hammer before attaching me to some weirdly beeping machine. They even made me provide a sample of my urine, an exercise that was my introduction to the future's answer to the outhouse. Pierce, the male doctor, showed me how everything worked. Of all I had seen of the future so far, the bathroom impressed me the most. Doctor Pierce departed with the blood and urine samples, while Coleen and Doctor Hunnicut continued my exam. It was just as well that Pierce left, because I would have never allowed a man to do some of what the exam required. It was embarrassing enough to have a woman I did not know participate in it. It seemed to me that Coleen took great pleasure in showing my genitals to Doctor Hunnicut.
"Look at this, Sarah," Coleen said as she grabbed me by my manhood. "I'll bet you've never seen one like this. Go ahead and touch it." Then as natural as you please, she turned to me and continued talking, "By the way, Jeremiah, this is my friend Sarah, we went to medical school together. Sarah, take that silly mask off and let Jeremiah see how pretty you are."
Coleen replaced her hand with Sarah's on the little Reb, then reached around Sarah's head and untied her mask. I was looking into Sarah's big brown eyes as the mask came off. As soon as she took a breath, her nostrils flared and her eyelids fluttered as she gently held my maleness in her hand.
"He smells good," Sarah squeaked.
Coleen's eyebrows knitted together at that remark.
"I thought the same thing the first time I met him," She said, frowning in thought.
Sarah was a very pretty woman; she was not quite as tall as Coleen and a tad more voluptuous, if her face was any indication of what lay under the shapeless clothing she wore. She was also much shier than Coleen as she blushed rosily at Coleen's comment about being pretty. I felt my member firming up as she gently examined it and worked back my foreskin. I tried my best to stop it, but the little devil had a mind of his own. The harder I became, the bigger grew Sarah's eyes. When I was nearly totally erect, she snatched her hand away with a breathy, "Oh my!"
Coleen laughed at Sarah's reaction and put her friends hand back on me.
"He does that spontaneously all the time. Having it happen now is perfect, as we can collect a sample and test his sperm's virility and motility," Coleen said.
Between the two of them, they managed to extract the sample they wanted in no time flat. The rest of me was as relaxed and limp as my member by the time they extracted what they needed.
Thankfully, I had returned to normal when Pierce returned after about fifteen minutes. This time he had Doctor Mendez, the obvious head honcho of this outfit with him. Mendez had a sheaf of papers in his hand and two women armed with stunners stood at his side. Even with one of those masks on his face, his scowl was evident. He gestured for Coleen to join him near the door and the two of them held an animated conference out of my hearing. Coleen was frowning and emphatically shaking her head. I had a feeling that whatever Mendez had found did not bode well for me. My instincts were on full alert when Mendez motioned the two armed women toward me, then followed them over to where I was standing.
"You need to come with us," Mendez said, his voice dripping with disdain.