Welcome. Welcome to Time Island, home of the world’s only quantum-stable zone. What that means is that an inactive time vortex—a sort of hole in the space-time continuum—is known to inhabit these waters.
Now, don’t worry. We’ve very aware of when this hole is open and shut, so to speak. And when it’s open, we get visitors. Species from ten years ago all the way back to the dawn of time. A cross-section of prehistory. Dinosaurs. And woolly mammoths and sabretooth tigers and a whole host of other things I’m sure all the paleontologists in the audience would hate for me to lump together.
This is the only place in the world where these creatures are not extinct. Within a fifty miles radius, they sort of… co-exist. Both here and all those millions of years ago. But don’t worry about changing the course of history: by being here, they’ve already disappeared from the annals of time.
I’m Dr. Samuel Bright and when my company became aware of this ‘lost world,’ we knew it was a miracle that had to be carefully preserved and cared for. As I see it, these beasties have been rescued from a short, brutish existence and given new purpose in history’s most rarefied nature preserve. They’re well-cared for, studied endlessly, and on display for the benefit of your curiosity.
There’s so little to be curious about in today’s world. But Time Island is living proof that there are endless mysteries waiting to be solved. And we at Bright Industries are happy to have brought some to you; the thrillseeker who won’t compromise on comfort.
One last thing before you disembark and see Time Island for yourselves. We workshopped the name endlessly before we opened this place. There were those who wanted to call it Prehistoria, Dinosaur Island, The Land Where Time Stood Still.
I settled on Time Island because I don’t consider this place to be solely about the past. It’s also about the future. The latest in Bright Industries’ state-of-the-art innovation, which not only allows these attractions to be displayed and cared for, but also gives you all the comforts of home… and a little bit more.
Enjoy your stay on Time Island. And when you go home, remember that it won’t be long until your house, apartment, or dorm is every bit as luxurious. With Bright Industries, it’s only a matter of time!
***
When the ferry docked, the pier led straight to a sort of parking lot—a clockface cul-de-sac where every number the hour hand could point to had a parked automobile. Patrick didn’t know if he would call them cars. They were like a cross between a golf cart and smartcars. Four-seaters that were modular, dragging behind cargo trailers and seating sleds for families with lots of children.
As the guides explained, the things were ‘carts’. They were powered by the glowing rails that ran alongside the trails and roads, and could take the drivers virtually anywhere on the Beachfront—the half of the island where all the hotels, beaches, shopping, and other ‘tourist traps’ were.
If you did a lot of shopping, you could simply hook a cargo trailer on and put all your souvenirs inside. If you wanted to link up with some friends you met, you could hook on a seating sled the same way. The cargo pods and carts were both keyed to each guest’s individual lanyard. If someone messed with a cargo pod without the appropriate lanyard, not only was it nearly impossible to open, but security would be alerted.
Nancy said she had to drive one. Syd sat in the back, saying she didn’t want to find out what a head-on collision in the car of the future would be like. Patrick, in a show of faith in his wife, sat shotgun.
The thing drove like a go-cart.
“This is incredible,” Nancy said, putting it through its paces as she loosely followed the GPS showing the way to their cabin. “It’s like it’s halfway steering for me!”
“AI assisted driving,” Syd said, putting her elbows on the divider between her backseat and their front seats. “It predicts what you’re going to do and corrects it just slightly so you don’t hit anything.”
“It can’t predict what I’m going to do,” Nancy said confidently. “What if I want to mow down some Hari Krishna?”
“It won’t let you do that.”
“Don’t test that,” Patrick told her.
“I won’t!” Nancy said defensively. “But what if I need to drive through a wall to get the drop on a suspect?”
“Don’t you ever stop thinking about work?”
“Well, yeah,” Nancy told him. “When someone’s fucking me hard enough.”
“So no,” Syd put in.
“Geez, Patrick, tell me that when you fucked my partner, you didn’t go easy on her!”
“I fucked her very hard,” Patrick said evenly. “And can we stay off the subject? Considering we’re within about four miles of living, breathing dinosaurs?”
“Well, what’s that have to do with anything?” Syd asked. “It’s not like any of us can fuck the dinos.”
She was close to Patrick. Not too close. But close. He could smell her perfume, but not his wife’s.
It was all too easy, with the hypnotic effect of the cart’s gentle motion and the quiet hum of the electric motor in action and the jagged buzz of air travel finally dispersing, to let himself slip back in time along the scent of Syd’s perfume.
Back a few months to his cancer diagnosis. Nancy was deep undercover, unable to get free. They were a pair, alright. Two workaholics, all about the job, the calling. Patrick with his Protestant work ethic and Nancy with her Catholicism, as determined to outdo him as the IRA were during the Troubles.
Nancy just had time for a phone call. She wanted to come in. But Patrick knew she didn’t really want that. She was in too deep, too close to the truth. He urged her to stay in. He could handle the crisis on his own. He knew she was there for him in spirit.
The only way Nancy would go along with it was to get him to promise to let Syd stay with him. She’d look after him on Nancy’s behalf. Take care of him.
“And don’t you dare jerk off,” Nancy told him, half-joking. “Let Syd do that. She loves giving blowjobs anyway. Jesus Christ, you’re being so brave—you deserve both of us sucking you off.”
Patrick had politely demurred.
But then there Patrick was, with chemo scheduled and Syd moved into the guest room, ready to cook and clean and do whatever else it took to take some of the pressure off Patrick. He felt a little embarrassed to be treating Syd like some kind of maid and so he ended up waiting on her, bringing her a nightcap—all he could bring her, since she was as embarrassed to be waited on as he was.
They were both waiting for when the chemo would hit and what it would take out of Patrick. He might need moral support. He might need a lot more than that. He might need a private nurse, as if they had the money for that with Isabel headed off to college and their healthcare only begrudgingly shelling out some of the funds for Patrick’s treatment.
So it was a relief to go into Syd’s room and see her in her boxers, her tiny tanktop, and have a moment of thinking not of his anxieties, but only how nice it would be to kiss those sensual lips and caress those soft breasts until they swelled.
As if in a rush to prove he wasn’t yet the cripple he would be, his prick jerked into instant hardness, as independent of Patrick’s gloomy thoughts as it had been during his adolescence. He tried to will himself limp, to exile his lascivious thoughts from his mind, but something in him seemed to have seized onto this sign of life in an otherwise death-obsessed existence. He stayed resoundingly stiff. Patrick almost wished he had already started the chemo.
Syd chuckled as she took the drink he’d brought her. “Now if I’d known that was on tap, you could’ve kept the bourbon.” She smiled at his bulging groin. “Nancy’s a stronger woman than I thought. Imagine being able to go undercover when you have all that at home.”
“Sydney, cut it out,” Patrick told her, not able to summon up the strength to put any force behind his words. He felt like a bad actor playing the role of a faithful husband. “I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but—”
“If I was trying to cheer you up, I’d be on my knees… and you’d be a lot happier.” She took a sip from the glass. “How’s that for undercover work?”
She came towards him teasingly, until her breath was like a red-hot branding iron marking his cheek as hers. Her free hand touched his thigh, her fingers seeming so hot that it was like they burned right through his slacks, and then she reached higher. Up to his erection, reminding him of how thick and long it had become, throbbing with desire for her.
“I’m a married man,” Patrick breathed out, now aware of how bloated his balls were as Sydney massaged them, rubbing into them the ache he felt deep in his groin.
Try as he might, he couldn’t wrench himself away from Syd’s touch. Her lips trailed over his stubble, seeking out his mouth, and her finding it almost became a kiss, except her mouth was open to speak.
“It’s just physical. Something to lift your spirits.” Syd’s voice was mesmerizing, hypnotic. “Nancy would do it if she were here. She can’t be. Let me do it for her.”
“I love my wife,” Patrick said, and it felt like his guilt-ridden conscience was speaking right through the rest of his personality.
“Then let me do what she wanted me to do. I’ll enjoy it. You’ll enjoy it. Even Nancy will be happy, knowing you’re taken care of. All your wants… all your needs… all your desires…”
But Patrick couldn’t believe it. His mind was screaming with wrongness. Nancy was too naïve, too trusting. She hadn’t seen what he’d seen, didn’t know how this open marriage bullshit could ruin lives, crack up relationships. However sweet it tasted at first, it was poison. He could not square his self-image of himself with doing this. It was on him to protect Nancy from this disastrous choice she’d tried to make, the same way he would push her out of the way of a speeding car.
Patrick pulled himself away from Sydney, his heart blasting its reverberations all the way to the tips of his fingers. His member rock-hard, seeping precum. This was too much, way too much. He shouldn’t have let it go even this far. He’d tell Syd to go back to her own place, look into hiring a nurse in the morning no matter how much it cost. It was worth holding his marriage together.
“Nanc is my girl. I wouldn’t ever let her down.”
Sydney’s words so echoed Patrick’s thoughts that he had to look back at her, tell her that it was because of their shared love for Nancy that they couldn’t do that. Then his words caught in his throat. His jaw fell and stayed down.
Sydney stood there completely naked. Panties and tank down at her feet like two little puddles, one for each foot. Staring at her delectable body, in all its beauty, Patrick could see she hardly needed a bra. Her breasts were buoyant, sweetly rolling with one little breath after another. And when she smiled, the tip of her pink tongue showed, like it was one second away from starting a passionate kiss whether his mouth was there for it or not.
He also saw the rich black hair of her pussy, the room’s dim light gleaming past her hip and catching the soft down to make it glow like amber. It sparkled on the wetness of her vulva, letting him see every little twitch, every soft undulation of her cunt as it waited for him. Aroused and impatient for him to complete the connection between them, to put an end to her anticipation and a beginning to her pleasure.