"Wake up!" Devon was gently shaking the pale figure lying on the ground next to me as I was roused from sleep at the sound of his raised voice. He was tugging Partita's arm from beneath her curled-up body and working to release from her wrist the metallic clasp which had become entangled in her long black hair. He quickly turned to me as I got up and kneeled beside him over my friend's nearly lifeless body, and when he passed me the item he had removed from her arm, I paled too.
It was my turn to wear the accursed bracelet. Partita was nearly drained, and shouldn't have slept through the night with it on, but we hadn't yet worked out all the variables to determine precisely how the device charged itself from our bodies' energy. We only knew that one of us must keep it on at all times, or risk losing our link to the transport. How the device actually worked only Dr. Fielding had an inkling, and he had been separated from our party by an unfortunate turn of fate two transports ago.
Devon had now become our de facto leader after we lost the doctor, not because he wanted the role, but mostly in an effort to curb the decline of our morale. His inextinguishable optimism often was the only thing which kept us from despairing our bizarre predicament. We were beginning to lose track of how many transits we had experienced since the first night we had been whisked out of our own reality, and into this nightmarish plunge between worlds unknown, by way of Dr. Bergeron's gravitational tubes.
It was summer, 1905 in Downey, Wiltonshire when word of the first success of the professor's arcane experiments brought us together to witness the culmination of his life's work. Nearly twenty of us had been gathered by invitation from the most prestigious universities in the south—mathematicians, physicists, and their colleagues in related fields of academia, culled from the departments which had most closely studied the professor's theories on trans-dimensional displacement.
The demonstration had gone catastrophically wrong. What we were intended to witness was carefully described to us before the dynamos were spun up. At first, the phenomenon began as predicted. The zone of variability was marked in chalk-lines upon the ancient brick masonry of the laboratory floor. The test objects were securely ensconced within the projected field of the enormous induction coils surrounding the projector, but the professor and his esteemed audience stood safely outside the target area in a crowded arc of British intellectual curiosity.
The unusual bracelet the professor wore upon his left wrist escaped our notice that night, yet its mate was destined to play a pivotal role in what was to come. The first glimmer of light from the gravitational projector formed mid-air, suspended in a large circle in front of us, reaching from half a meter above the floor to just below the adzed beams of the cellar ceiling. It's circumference wavered and crackled with energy just within the curvature of the field coils, which themselves began to shimmer, as if bending the very light which illuminated them. The smell of ozone assailed our senses as spinning magnetos churned out incalculable pulses of energies to balance the feedback from the displacement field.
A growing sense of alarm rose from the root of my spine, that we must certainly be standing too close to this ungodly experiment. The fear must have been shared by some of my colleagues as spikes of incandescent energy began to arc out from the pulsing ring of light in front of us. A tunnel appeared dimly before us, snapped back into nothingness, then reappeared as a growing vortex of shimmering light that suddenly receded through the stone wall of the lab into an apparent infinity rushing quickly away from us.
I felt Partita's hand squeezing mine as our astonishment at what was transpiring stirred in us a mutual need to hold on to something substantial. The test objects immediately in front of us were forming luminous ghosts of themselves which were being sucked inexorably into the screaming vortex of the tunnel, thinner and thinner until they lost all solidity and disappeared as streaks of light into the abyss.
The sudden disappearance of the array of test objects and the lab stands upon which they were supported evoked a gasp from the shocked crowd as the apparent success of the experiment momentarily distracted us from the peril we feared. The professor beamed with pride at the outcome of the test, proving his theories to the assembled luminaries of science. I myself was momentarily relieved that the demonstration was transpiring as predicted, and the danger we felt was only manifested from our instinctive fears of the unknown. I smiled in relief, and squeezed my friend's hand even tighter in the shared elation of the onlookers.
But glancing down at our joined hands, the same effect that preceded the disappearance of the test objects began tugging wisps of light from our clenched white knuckles, stretching outward from our bodies towards the glowing tunnel. My fear rebounded, but before we could press back to escape through the now-panicking group of scientists behind us, the laboratory around us disappeared in a streak of light.
We abruptly found ourselves standing against a fierce wind on a storm-swept beach on the shores of some vast and unknown ocean. The rain pelted us, driving us to scramble up the shore away from the breaking waves before the undertow sucked the sand from beneath our stumbling feet. The stinging gale beat at our backs and we could not at first distinguish how many of us had been swept into this hellish place. The tunnel we had been sucked through disappeared the moment we tumbled onto this twi-lit shore.
Our first night in that unknown place was terrible. The strange maroon sky could not be imagined to be anywhere on the world we knew. The waves rolling in from the sea seemed to move much more slowly than any breakers any of us had ever witnessed. Their size was also unnaturally large, making them appear ominous, so we scrambled up the beach to escape them into a thicket of towering grass.
Whether night or day, we were never sure. The hours passed under the same sickly discolored sky while we huddled under the relative protection of the thicket of grass we had scrambled into to escape the ferocity of the storm-torn sea. Partita had never released my hand, and we landed upon the beach together, but the others could not be accounted for until the storm let up. The fronds of the grasses under which we sheltered were bowed over us so thickly we could not see beyond our outstretched hands.
The winds gradually ceased whipping the bent blades of grass around our hunkered bodies. We had hiked our collars up to shield our faces from the stinging lash, and pulled our hands into our sleeves, or our skin would have been as torn and excoriated as we found our clothing to be when the winds finally subsided. Upon our escape from the smothering thicket, we found the sea had calmed its assault upon the shore, but our whereabouts remained a complete mystery.
How many hours had passed since our traverse through Professor Bergeron's apparatus we could not count, only our numbers could be reckoned as our fellow refugees gradually emerged into the open again. At first count we numbered twelve of our fellow academicians. Some staggered out from the weeds on their own while others were dragged, beaten unconscious by the storm. Our clothes were in tatters and a few of us were bleeding, lacerated by the whipping grasses when clothing offered too little protection.
We began searching our new surroundings, finding nothing familiar, save a few shiny objects half-buried in the sand. We dug them out to discover them to be the test objects from the experiment, whisked away from the laboratory only moments before we ourselves were. We gathered them into one place, hoping something among them could prove useful in our current circumstance, but little offered us any hope of escaping this unearthly place.
It was Dr. Fielding who investigated our findings, while the rest of us tended to those who were only now regaining their senses. Devon's assistant produced a flask of spirits which he proffered to the weakest of the recovering members of our group. A couple of the women coughed and sputtered at the potent distillation, but it succeeded in bringing them to their feet. The world around us offered no comfort, but a few of our number who were better off than the rest, sought to assuage the fears of the most despondent and downcast, and get them up to face the daunting task ahead of us.
It was then that Dr. Fielding managed to pry open a latched steel cage found among the recovered test objects to reveal a small house-cat sequestered inside. Around its neck, he discovered the bracelet. No ordinary collar, the adornment looked a practical thing, more device than jewelry. The cat was barely alive and made no protestation when the doctor gently removed the unusual circlet from its neck. The intricate bracelet he then examined turned out to be the only useful article recovered from the assemblage of otherwise inanimate objects.
Two groups of mathematical symbols were etched into the metallic surface of one of the bracelet's links, and the other sections seemed un-naturally warm to the touch, but yielded no other clues as to the nature of the device. Dr. Fielding guessed that it was placed around the animal's neck as more than mere identification, and postulated that it was put there to function as a locater to bring the feline back to the lab at the completion of the experiment.
That theory was the only hope we had of ever finding our way home, and the bracelet soon focused our collective attention on divining its function. It became apparent that the mechanism had no operable controls, for the cat would not have the capacity to effect any changes which would bring about its retrieval. So we were hesitant to disassemble the device for fear of damaging it, and possibly defeating any avenue of being rescued.
The doctor put the bracelet on as the logical conclusion was that its function depended upon being worn by a living subject since it was, after all, incorporated into a piece of jewelry. After several hours of speculation, it dawned on some of us that our immediate concerns were more properly devoted to our survival—food and shelter. Those of us with more practical skills set out to look for both.
Partita and I became part of the group attending to our immediate needs, since no easy escape from this place was forthcoming. We introduced ourselves to the rest of our castaways and found we already knew some by reputation and others by association with mutual colleagues. Being experimental physicists by and large, our party was ill-equipped to apply our training to the practical issues of survival, but we managed to find a few edible plants and shelter more hospitable than the stinging grasses.
Dr. Fielding became more discouraged as the day wore on, and his mood turned into an unaccounted for lethargy. There was no real darkness here as day and night were not clearly differentiated by the light in the sky. There was no bright sun overhead, just a milky haze that dimmed and brightened mysteriously. Only our own diurnal clocks remained to signal cues for sleep and activity. Even so, The doctor's energy levels continued to wane, and he very nearly lost consciousness until we realized that the bracelet itself was the cause.
It became clear to us that the bracelet was somehow powered by drawing energy directly from its wearer. Whether this was electro-magnetic, or some other method of transfer, we didn't immediately determine, but we began taking turns wearing the bracelet in shorter intervals so that none of us were drained like the doctor nearly was. What we still had to determine was what the energy derived from our bodies actually enabled the device to do. We found out within a few hours.
Our internal clocks were still set to Greenwich Mean Time. The biological need for sleep overcame our anxieties at being marooned on a world unknown to us, and we succumbed to exhaustion. Not knowing what dangers lay beyond the grassy fields, we slept in the relative safety of the beach, with two of us standing watch. One to wear the bracelet, and the other to take over for them when the bracelet became too taxing. But perhaps it wasn't by accident that the two who volunteered for the first watch were married to each other.
Whether it was the muffled groans of Mrs. Pruitt, or the gentle breeze that suddenly gusted off the ocean, I was suddenly awakened from a sound slumber with Partita close beside me. I gave her a nudge and she popped her head up to see the Pruitts humping breathlessly only a few feet down the beach. Neither of us had ever seen two people engaged in sex right in front of us, so we both watched discreetly, while a few others around us were also roused by their activity.
The Pruitts seemed to be completely oblivious to the rapt attention of their audience, or of anything else around them because neither of them seemed to be aware that the bracelet she wore was glowing brighter and brighter as her sexual excitement approached its peak. When she reached her orgasm, two things happened that none of us were prepared for. The bracelet flashed in a brilliant strobe of light, which expanded into a shimmering ring directly above them.
The wavering circle floated in the air above us, just as its predecessor had in Professor Bergeron's lab, but instead of a tunnel expanding away from the glowing ring, the tunnel appeared as a distant point of light far out over the ocean, racing toward us until its circumference locked onto the ring of light floating in the air in front of us. The completed vortex hummed with energy that sizzled mere inches above the sand. Desperate not to miss the opportunity to escape, we all scrambled to our feet and ran towards the tunnel.
One by one we dove into the vortex, hoping the conduit would convey us back to Professor Bergeron's lab, and home. There was no time to consider our options. The aperture might disappear at any moment. It was a leap of faith, and before we could even count the passage of time, we emerged one-by-one from the other end of the tunnel and tumbled to the ground. We didn't end up in the lab, however. We didn't know where we were, but it only took moments before we realized that our complement was missing Dr. Fielding.
We could only surmise that he had failed to wake up at the sound of the tube's arrival, owing to his exhaustion from having worn the bracelet too long. We learned some hard lessons in a short time, and resolved not to make the mistake of not looking out for each other in the future, providing we had a future. But it was a case of closing the barn-door after the horse escaped. We had lost the one scientist whose understanding of Prof. Bergeron's work might have helped us the most.
Our surroundings were no less inhospitable than the world we had just escaped, and even more unfamiliar. We were on some unknown surface whose composition seemed as smooth as glass and whose horizon seemed unnaturally close. The air was thin, as if on Earth we were at thousands of feet of altitude, but the landscape around us was featureless and level as an icy lake.
We made sure Mrs. Pruitt still wore the bracelet. They had barely enough time to pull their clothes back on when they made the jump, and we were afraid that in their mad dash, they may have lost our one instrument of salvation. Sylvia Pruitt slumped to her knees as we relieved her of the accursed device around her wrist. She was mortified that she and her husband had been caught in the midst of coitus, but too exhausted to offer any apologies.
But through their conjugal act, we had at least discovered how to energize the bracelet sufficiently to summon the transport vortex. It sucked emotional energy from our bodies at whatever rate it was generated, and the most energy was transferred into the bracelet during sexual arousal. As uncomfortable as the prospect seemed, our fate depended on our engaging in some act of sexual stimulation to summon the link and initiate transport. But depending on the Pruitts each time we needed to call forth a tunnel didn't seem either convenient or practical.
We had determined how to activate the device, but not how to control the outcome of our transport. We might be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, but it soon became apparent that we couldn't stay in this place for long. There was no hope of finding any food, and the thin atmosphere could not long sustain us. We needed to summon another tunnel soon or perish. The Pruitt's were exhausted, and few others in our party of aging scientists were young enough to exert enough sexual output to activate the bracelet.
Partita and I were the youngest women in the group, while Devon and his assistant Rupert were the youngest of the men. Devon asked if any of us would volunteer to wear the bracelet, hoping that one of us would acquiesce to perform sexually in the presence of the rest of the group. None of us were eager to step forward, but Rupert finally agreed, realizing our imminent need to depart. I saw the apprehension in Partita's eyes, so in desperation, I took the initiative.
I was hoping to get Rupert to completion as quickly as possible, but as a scientist, it occurred to me that the duration of sexual tension might be as critical to the transfer of energy as the degree. None of us knew how long the Pruitts had been occupied in either foreplay or coitus, so this endeavor might not even work if our efforts were half-hearted. Our ingrained Victorian inhibitions were also a hurdle to overcome, but the thin air was beginning to take its toll on our energy levels, so we were running out of time.
Rupert nervously unfastened his trousers and made sure the bracelet was securely in contact with his skin. He took his limp member in hand and began to stroke himself, but the lack of immediate response made him blush as he realized everyone was watching him. I gave the others an imploring look and they averted their gaze, but there was little else in this environment upon which to fix their eyes. I brushed my hair back away from my face and pulled Rupert down to the surface with me.
The prospect of engaging in coitus with a relative stranger was too salacious for my sensibilities to abide, but I realized we were soon to be spent in this rarefied atmosphere, so I instinctively took Rupert's stiffened member to my mouth in hopes the stimulation would quickly result in our salvation. His excitement waxed in great measure as my peripheral vision detected the unmistakable glow of the bracelet he wore upon his wrist, which even now glanced along the side of my head as his grip on my hair pulled me ever deeper onto his erection. I had never in my life imagined engaging in such an intimacy with a stranger, but under the circumstances, I gave the task my full commitment.
His sudden eruption would have gagged me had I not been yanked away by Partita, desperate to drag me into the tunnel before it was too late. Rupert scrambled to compose himself and barely made it through the vortex before it collapsed behind us as abruptly as it had arrived. While Rupert struggled to re-fasten his trousers, we searched the new landscape around us for something familiar. The world we landed upon was no less unfamiliar than the one we had left, but the air at least was plentiful, and we needed a respite from imminent threats to recover our strength.
Partita took the burden of the bracelet upon herself while we all slumped to the ground, grateful of our escape from hypoxia, but nonetheless unmindful of any possible dangers we might face in our new environment. We didn't have the strength to care, and we soon fell into sleep, failing even to post a watch. Whatever perils our current surroundings might present were mercifully kept at bay while we slept. For the next few hours at least, the only member of our party at risk was Partita, slowly being drained of life as she slept.
And now, dear reader, we've come full circle to the beginning of the tale. Devon mustered an encouraging smile as I took the burden to my hand, mindful that our next attempt at transit would involve me in some sexual liaison for which I was in no way prepared. But in a desperate need to return us safely to our own world, I was determined to make whatever effort it required, even at the cost of my own abasement. Seeing my friend and colleague lying pale as a sheet, having given up her strength to this accursed device, I resolved to end this foray into the unknown one way or another.
The characters etched into the inner surface of the bracelet had seemed mathematical in nature, but as I turned the circlet inside out to examine them more closely, they seemed foreign to the functions of algebra and calculus with which I was familiar. If the symbols were some variables in an equation, the terms were expressed in no manner I had any academic training. The symbols were vaguely reminiscent of something I had once seen in a Sanskrit poem of ancient origin. Having no familiarity with the archaic language, I had only been able to read the modern translation. The one character often repeated however was the one I assumed corresponded to the word most often repeated in the translation: chakra.
What superficial understanding I possessed of the term related to spinning circles of light and energy contained within the spiritual body of each person. How these conduits of energy had been externalized and made physical by Dr. Bergeron's apparatus could not be imagined, and yet, the gravitational tunnels which transported us between dimensions were undoubtedly summoned into our reality by the spinning circles of light and energy called forth by the bracelets. My guess was that this device somehow channeled energy from inside us into the real world, manifesting the rings of light and energy that summoned the vortices.
Why sexual energy was the catalyst necessary to transmute inner chakras into external manifestations of kinetic energy was a mystery, but our experiences had shown beyond a doubt that the correlation was real, however the professor had managed to make it work. In my younger days I had briefly flirted with the practice of tantric sex. The university had been employing a program of importing the brightest minds from the far reaches of the empire. One of the students with whom I had become acquainted was a young adept from India.
Even at university, my Victorian upbringing had stifled my natural experimentation in sexual relationships, but my young friend from India had attempted to ennoble the sublime nature of eroticism by introducing me to the art of tantra, the fusing of mind and body during intimacy to weave the expansion of inner energy. I was beginning to understand that an untapped potential of unlimited magnitude could be derived from such a discipline, given a catalyst—given… the bracelet!
It suddenly dawned on me that the energy that powered the bracelet came from our inner chakras. If we could couple that energy with direction, fusing it with the attenuation of the mind, we might be able to direct the vortices to the destination we willed. Unless this were true, we had no hope of reaching England again. Tantric sex was the key. Focusing our sexual energy with mindfulness could lead us back. I had doubts that I could readily convince my colleagues, entrenched in the belief in scientific principles, that Hindu mysticism was the key to our survival.
Partita was regaining consciousness, and I knew she would be most receptive to my theory. She had been my friend and lab assistant since college, and she had garnered an implicit trust in my instincts through our work together. She was also young. Her sexual nature had not been dulled by age, and all I needed to overcome was her ingrained Victorian inclination to chastity and modesty. My guess was that in order to get all of us home, we all needed to participate, combining our minds and bodies in a tantric expression of our inner energies released through a group sexual experience.
Rupert was also willing to make the attempt, and with some convincing, Devon agreed that the idea had merit. The Pruitts saw no alternative since their initial coupling seemed only to lack the element of control to guide our destination through the tunnels. The others were still reticent, only offering tacit support without participating in direct physical engagement, but willing to lend their mental concentration towards the effort. Rupert, Devon, Partita and I disrobed. It was only then that we noticed we were being watched from a distance by sinister eyes behind dark masks.
What the creatures were we were afraid to guess. Having a manlike stature, they were like some demonic beings out of a medieval nightmare. They had apparently been watching us from a distance. They could have attacked us as we slept, but either through fortune or some strange quirk of their nature, we had been spared their predations till now. They surrounded us, staring dispassionately, soullessly, and our vulnerability could not have been more ill-timed. Our only escape was through the transport, and our ability to summon the portal now seemed more tenuous than ever.
Our senior colleagues drew ranks around the four of us, as if to fend off their ominous determination, suddenly anxious for our plan to go forward despite the new threat. This picket enclosing our foursome somehow gave us enough reassurances of our immediate safety that we turned to our task while we were still able. I told Devon the bracelet was beginning to take its toll on me, and he took me into his embrace, pressing my soft breasts into his bare chest. His sudden kiss emboldened me and I willed time to stop.
Rupert took Partita's hand. She looked at me and I encouraged her with a nod. We both surrendered ourselves then, not merely out of necessity, but with a determination to focus our minds to the intimacy into which we now plunged headlong. We cleared our minds of the dangers outside our circle and engaged our partners physically, emotionally, and spiritually, knowing that through profound intimacy lay our salvation. We stretched a moment into an eternity, feeling the heat of each other's bodies radiate through to our cores.
Devon pressed into me and I felt his heart pounding through his chest like a hammer as his hardness cleaved effortlessly into my wet sex. I felt the bracelet taking in the energy we generated in our passion. The intensity of the moment was turning me inside out and I reached out, grabbing Partita's hand as she too was being ravaged with sensations entirely new to her. We focused our minds into the physical pleasure of our bodies being joined to our partners, feeling their hardness filling our bodies, stretching us body and mind.
I heard Partita gasp as her hand nearly crushed my fingers between hers. Her back arched as Rupert plunged into her, driving her back down to the ground. My own orgasm engulfed me just as suddenly as I felt Devon's manhood pulsing deep within me, inseminating me with copious streams of his viscous seed. I thought of England, my home, and its comforting safety, then cried out as the bracelet sent a shock through me as intensely as had my own climax. The sky opened above us with a gale of wind.
The world around me returned in a rush as my colleagues fled from the peril of the cloaked figures closing in around us. We four in our rapturous detachment had become oblivious to their approach. Devon pulled me from the ground, not even bothering to recover our clothes. Partita and Rupert were the last to escape through the portal before it collapsed behind us. We plunged out of the tunnel into a run-down English laboratory in the cellar of Dr. Bergeron's Tudor house.
Stumbling upon the rough brick floor, we turned to see the tunnel detach from its shimmering anchor ring and recede into nothingness. The glowing ring itself then wavered out of existence as the magnetos that projected it spun down into silence. An astonished crowd of British scientists stared incredulously at our return, shocked at our sudden reappearance, naked or in tatters. Partita and I quickly retreated behind Rupert and Devon, our Victorian modesty returning as we realized our strange adventure was finally over.
The loss of Dr. Fielding fell heavily upon our reunited assembly as the reality of his exile from our world appeared irreversible. Dr. Bergeron was dumbstruck at the tale of our incredible journey through other worlds, and resolved to dismantle his equipment lest it somehow become weaponized by the Ministry of War. His notes were burned and his research buried.
