I was strolling through Gastown on a Saturday afternoon, seeking shops that might have treasures to add to my rather bizarre antique collection. I love anything old, the more unusual and odder the better. I have a particular passion for anything of a sexual nature i.e. well endowed fertility god sculptures, vagina figurines, pre 1960 vibrators, Victorian porn photos, copulating couples etc. My prize possession, one that I am sure has brought me much good luck over the years - a miniature bronze Thai triple phallus amulet!
I did a double take as I looked up and saw an ancient almost illegible sign above a well worn door 'Filby's Antiques and Curiosities.' I had been through this neighborhood quite often over the years but somehow had never come across this store.
The door creaked loudly as I entered and had a quick perusal of its contents. There was a massive desk directly ahead of me, loaded with all manner of things - stacks of books, mini statues and carvings, vases, tea pots and cups, piles of clothes and quite a few old clocks.
It was eerily quiet as I edged forward to inspect the items. Suddenly, up popped a head in a narrow space between the piles. He was a small man, red-haired with a rather sickly yellow complexion.
"Jacob Venus, at your service. What can I interest you in? Have to excuse the mess on the desk, recently came in and I haven't had a chance to sort it yet. Have a look around; go up and down the aisles and let me know if anything strikes you. Anything in particular?"
I checked out the shelves along each aisle - the familiar glass and chinaware, old coins and stamps encased in plastic, Saturday Evening Posts and Life magazines etc. There were antique chairs, tables and wardrobes. Photos of long forgotten families and landscapes that no one wanted anymore lined the walls.
Jacob was following me around like an imprinted duckling, a steady banter, explaining in great detail each piece that I showed any interest in purchasing.
"I do have something else that I can show you sir," he said as I was displaying an inclination to head towards the exit. "These items are of a sensitive nature. They used to be in the main area of the store but I had some complaints so I moved them into a separate room."
"By sensitive, what exactly do you mean?" I enquired, my interest piquing.
"I have a large collection of sexual objects going back through time - art work, photos, books, carvings, lady's massagers. I would not like to offend the gentleman if he has no interest in this?"
I tried to control my enthusiasm. "Well I guess I could have a quick look at them."
I expected it to be a meagre collection, crammed into a storeroom of stuff I already had but I was in for a big surprise. The room was huge, more like a warehouse, even bigger than the public area.
'Kid in a candy store' is the only way to describe how I felt as I surveyed rows and rows of overflowing shelves. The items that immediately stood out, so to speak, were sculptures, carvings and figurines of very well endowed men (mostly fertility gods) as well as big breasted women complete with their pussies prominently displayed, some a rosy red. There were couples and groups enjoying every imaginable sexual perversion.
The objects were divided into centuries and countries/cultures, 20th all the way back to the 15th, even one that had a couple of big question marks. There were also stacks of dirty photos and artwork with some leaning upright, some hanging on the walls.
There were dozens of dildos in various sizes and shapes, mostly resembling fully erect penises. They were made from a variety of materials - stone, wood, bronze, bone and even what looked like ivory! I am somewhat of an expert but a few of them were new to me and could be very old indeed, perhaps back to the middle ages or older.
Jacob was very informative about anything I picked out but knew very little if anything about the oldest objects.
"They were brought in by an older gentleman who was vague about where he acquired them. It is in fact the same man who just passed away and the items you see on the desk are his as well, brought into the store this very morning by his daughter. She was in a hurry to get rid of his personal effects. She told me to call her when I figured out what they were worth."
I selected five items including a couple of the mysterious ones. We haggled a bit on the price, I paid for them, placed them in a small box and then prepared to leave.
On an impulse, I returned to the desk and had a look at the old clocks. Nothing too interesting but there was a small wooden box with intricate and unique engravings that stood out.
"Would be it be okay to have a look inside?" I said pointing to it.
He opened it up. "As you can see, it is a chronometer, kind of like you would see on an ancient sailing ship but quite small compared to others I have had in the store. There is what looks to be a manual for it but in a foreign language, not sure which one."
"Looks like Italian," I said holding up the folded, yellowed and well worn paper to the light to see if I could decipher anything. "I can make out a few words but it's written in pen and ink and not all of it is legible."
The face of the chronometer had three dials on it arranged in a triangle. There were letters beside each one - O, G and A.
"I think Anno is Italian for year. Perhaps O and G are hours and days. Hard to say as there aren't any numbers visible. I would like to purchase it. Any idea what it is worth?"
"Similar pieces I have sold for two hundred dollars or more. I will let you have it for one fifty."
I placed the clock with the rest of my stuff, left the store and drove home. As I carried the box through the side door, my wife Annette called out to me.
"Richard, where the fuck have you been all this time? Wasting more money on junk," she said eyeing the box. "I never would have married you if I knew you were going to become a pervert."
I headed to the basement door without responding to her familiar rant. Our relationship had reached a point where I didn't argue with her. We'd had some loud and violent fights over the years but now I just didn't care anymore. Many times I had thought about leaving her, not sure why I didn't.
Maybe for the sex. The quality wasn't great but the frequency was pretty decent. Like clockwork, every day or two, just before going to sleep, she would nuzzle up to me, grab my cock to get me hard. She knew I liked to be sucked and would get between my legs, move her mouth up and down on it in a passionless way.
"Don't cum in my mouth!" she would often say. It had only happened once many years ago but she had to remind me often just to make sure. In less than a minute, she would say, "That's enough of that. Time to get down to business."
She liked it doggy-style the best and would cum loudly after I 'got down to business' and fucked her hard and deep. In a few minutes just when I was really enjoying it, she would yell out, after her second or third orgasm. "Okay time for you to cum, I'm getting sore."
When she was really horny she'd let me go down on her. Once I did it after I came inside her. "Why do you want to taste cum; Are you gay or something?" Okay not the best sex life, but I figured better than none at all!
I went downstairs and walked over to my den, my sanctuary where I could surround myself with my sex collection, watch movies on the big screen (sometimes porn) and get away from her for a while.
I put down the box and turned on my laptop. I was very curious to get some info on the mysterious sex toys. I searched for ancient dildos and found out something interesting. The oldest ones go back 28,000 years, phalluses made of stone! I compared the images to the two I'd bought and found some were very similar to specimens made of bone carved around 1200 AD!
Should I tell my wife that I might have something of real value just to shut her up? No, I thought, I'll keep it to myself until I figure out what to do with them.
I spent the rest of the weekend doing more research confirming my findings. I wrote detailed notes in my journal that I have regularly kept up to date since my teens.
Another furious five minutes in the sack with my wife Sunday evening then we slept until seven when the alarm woke us up. Only a few words exchanged during breakfast, then she drove off to work.
I didn't have to work until noon at the bookstore so I had a few hours of freedom! As I was heading down to the den, I remembered that I hadn't looked at the chronometer. It was about five inches in diameter and two inches thick. I took it out of the box, set it down and opened up the manual. I used a magnifying glass to enlarge the minute and ancient looking script and typed a few paragraphs at a time into an Italian to English website and then copied and pasted them into a Word file.
Although the translated English was a bit hard to comprehend, I was astonished the more I read. This was much more than just a clock. There were several diagrams that displayed the dials but there were also additional illustrations that seemed to show another spherical surface.
There was a section about some sort of object that could be inserted into the perimeter. I took another look in the box and ran my hand over the velvet base. I felt something hard, lifted up the cover and pulled out a small bronze skeleton key. I had a look at the clock and found a tiny hole on the outside ring.
As I inserted the key and gave it a ninety degree turn, the clock face detached and moved to the side revealing a lower layer. It started to hum and then the three dials on the clock face brightened and instantly showed the present month, year, day and hour in minutes and seconds.
The lower section had what appeared to be two small buttons, one red and the other green, recessed into the bronze surface. There were also three short metal rods embedded in a triangular pattern identical to the top.
I was getting more and more excited but also very agitated as my index finger hovered over the green button. The manual stated that this was the starting point but to what? What the hell I am getting myself into? But being a curious man by nature, I slowly pressed down on it.
Instantly a cloud of vapor emitted from the clock that grew into a translucent oval shape, hovering just above eye level. As I watched, a white-haired heavily bearded older man gradually emerged.
"Who the hell are you? Where's the old geezer? Ahhh I get it. He must have croaked. He never did want to pass it on to his son or daughter like all the rest of them."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," I stammered, in complete disbelief that I was carrying on a conversation with some sort of genie.
"I'm not a genie...why do the newbies always think that. I'm a spirit or essence but not a bloody genie?" he said with a heavy sigh.
"How do you know what I'm thinking? Can you read minds?"
"Yes I can. I'll give you a demonstration. Think about a character in your favourite movie."
I gave it some thought finally settling on Weena from 'The Time Machine'.
I watched the vapor swirl around, finally showing Weena sitting beside a campfire. She was naked!
"What the hell, that movie came out in 1960! There weren't any nude scenes in it."
"Yeah but you've always had a thing for Yvette Mimieux right? You've always imagined her nude in that scene haven't you?
"Yes I have," I confessed. "That's amazing!"
"Your adventure is just beginning my friend! I suppose you might have a few questions on what the hell is going on. Thank goodness I don't have to explain this very often, every forty years or so. Some of it will likely shock you but hear me out before asking any questions.
"A little history for you first. The clock was invented in 1516 AD by an Italian born man living in France at the time. Any guesses? Nope, okay. This should give it away - have a look at the back of the clock near the bottom. Do you see anything? You will probably have to use your magnifying glass."
"Looks like L.D.V. Oh my god, are you saying this machine was created by Leonardo da Vinci?!"
"Yeah. Here's another fact for you to ponder. He was an alien."
"Now you're pulling my leg. Leonardo da Vinci, the most famous painter ever, renowned scientist and inventor, a man way ahead of his time was a fucking alien?"
"You just answered your question! How could a man of such humble beginnings achieve all that? His ancestors, from a reasonably close planet, geographically speaking, on the far side of the Milky Way, visited here just before Leonardo's birth in 1451 AD. They were seeking a host to give Earth a boost in the arts and sciences to move it out of the Middle Ages. They chose a girl named Caterina that Leonardo's father Ser Pirio was dallying with at the time."
This was a lot to take in and hundreds of questions popped into my brain but the spirit now looking like the alien in the movie 'Paul' made a gesture with its bony outstretched arm for me to be silent.
"While Leonardo was growing up, he gradually became aware of his ancestry and his life's mission from preloaded thoughts implanted in his brain. To make a long story short, later in his physical life, he devised a way to become immortal. He created this timepiece and when he died his essence was stored into the 'brain'. By brain, I mean a small atomic core that runs and also powers it.
