“Listen!” Ray bellowed.

  Despite all three of them talking, no one had really listened to anyone else in over half an hour.

  “It doesn't matter,” Ray continued, ”we originally started in an aberrant timeline so we had the freedom to make mistakes. Maybe this is a good thing, we don't know.”

  Lee raised his hand, then said, “Yeah, I like that. Fuck around and find out.”

  Hayley wasn’t impressed. “My entire existence is to be fucked around then, by men who can barely chart their own course? At least I know how being the pigman’s wife ends.”

  Lee had a confused look. “But like, isn't that better?”

  “To live without safety or certainty or recourse?” Hayley shouted.

  Ray stepped in and gently placed his hand on her shoulder. “You have autonomy. You are a partner in this, just like you said. And we need to go back to Kemet to get the bag synthesized as well. Why don't you take this mission Hayley?”

  She looked at him angrily, but couldn't place why this made her angry.

  “I am to… I am to get your groceries?” Hayley huffed out.

  Ray took two steps back, holding up his palms, “No, that is definitely not what I meant, I, uh—”

  “Hands up, don't shoot Sarge!” Lee laughed, until her gaze snapped to him, “Nothing against you of course, it was funny?”

  “You are amused by my plight, as he seeks to make me my father’s daughter again? Shall you both be paid coin to watch me at the dressmaker?”

  Despite her shout, the pair got the impression quickly that those tasks were unsavory.

  Lee leaned forward, concerned, “Please, we didn't mean—”

  “What you mean is nothing. I am sent alone to the market, to the dress shop, to the butcher’s, for I am to be sold. If that is what I am to do here, then I am still home.”

  “Fuck, Lee…” Ray said, as if he had more to say.

  “We aren't like that. You are an equal here.” Lee looked up at Ray, “Well, sort of. You're equal to me at least. The prof is our boss, but he's a good guy.”

  Ray chimed in, “Both our societies are beyond whatever you have endured. We try to treat everyone as equal. No place or people get it completely right, Lee could have called me a ‘dirt’ for being from Earth, but we are further along than widespread exploitation and rape culture.”

  Hayley heard the unfamiliar phrases, but understood far more of their meanings than before she had inhaled the plant.

  She understood that they both believe what her father had done was morally wrong, they stood opposed. More than any husband she hoped to find, and they sought no comfort from her in return.

  And they were both flawed people too, not saints or gentlemen, just people trying to get home.

  “Fuck,” she said with a giggle.

  “Fuck, indeed,” Ray said under a raised eyebrow.

  “Hayley, I can fuck wit chu,” Lee said with a kind of swagger. Her heart jumped at the words, but the meaning came through, that he perceived her struggles as his own and he stood with her against them.

  “I am fuck whiched then,” Hayley said, trying to match his tone. They both cringed.

  ***

  Hayley stood at the base of the doorway in a costume she was swimming in, with more embarrassment than if she had disrobed entirely.

  “It looks good…” Lee lied.

  “It's period fitting, and you'll fit in, probably,” Ray added, also lying.

  Hayley gazed at her reflection and was not pleased. The garment they called a toga would have revealed all her flesh, as it was sized to a much taller, lankier Lee. She had opted to keep the barest of undergarments on simply to prevent being fully exposed.

  “Look, Lee made the trip once and made it back fine. You'll do the same exact circuit, and bounce back a year later for the product.”

  “Groceries,” Hayley huffed.

  “Yes, but then we can use the data and go where it takes us. You can stay, or go, as you see fit.”

  “One hour?”

  “One hour. You'll be at the edge of a town, you'll take the bag and the stone to the sorcerer who knows Atlantean magic, and then come right back. Lee made it in forty-three minutes, walking.”

  Lee took a little bow.

  The outer door crashed open. Lee shot up, and Ray reached for a nearby weapon.

  Hayley's mother called out, “My dearest Hayley? Are you here, inside?”

  Lee and Ray looked at her, her eyes wide with panic.

  Ray lifted the weapon and called out, “This is a private warehouse, and I demand you exit, There is no—”

  The door slammed open, and Hayley's mother stood staring at her, dressed in a toga. Her mother's eyes caught the two men in the room as well.

  “What have you done to my daughter! She is to be married, you filthy lowmen! What have you done?” she screeched.

  Her mother advanced, arm outstretched to grab her. The only other times her mother had moved that fast was to evade her father’s wrath and to push Hayley towards it.

  “We must leave before anyone hears about this!” she announced, grabbing Hayley's arm like a vice, yanking her away from the glowing doorway.

  “No,” Hayley said quietly, pulling backwards.

  “What? We must leave this awful place…” her mother trailed off, now noticing the doorway resolving its imaging. “What awful thing—”

  Hayley pulled backwards, hard.

  “I'm not leaving. I'm not marrying the pigman's son. I’m not—”

  Her mother jerked her forward, so hard her shoulder popped and sent a bolt of pain through her body.

  “We are leaving, now!”

  Hayey pulled backwards, trying to shake her mother off. Her mother wouldn’t follow her into the portal, and Lee and Ray could survive one old woman shouting of a missing daughter.

  Her mother didn't let go and planted her weight instead.

  “You will—”

  Hayley cut her mother off by throwing herself backwards again, but she slipped from the unfamiliar footwear. She fell backwards into the portal and her mother tumbled in after her.

  ***

  Ten million years of cosmic thrashing and infinite pain flashed through Hayley in less than a moment, and she was deposited hard upon a stone road. Her wrist was burning, and looked as if the flesh her mother was touching had been carefully and painfully removed. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of small drops of blood formed and beaded together as Hayley lay upon the stone.

  She heard exclamations, surprise and worry around her, but froze as she did any other time her parents put their hands on her. She felt supremely sorry for ever trying to stand up to her, wishing she had simply gone along, to fates unknown.

  Or well known. Her death in a thousand acts.

  A woman put her hand on Hayley's shoulder and Hayley screamed.

  It wasn't her mother. And she wasn't in Kemet either.

  She expected everyone to look like Ray, but they were more like those of Canaan.

  She heard their words and realized she might even share a few common words or sounds, but nothing caught her.

  She saw the woman, wearing a linen robe, her undergarment missing and her breasts very visible to Hayley.

  “Oh my, I’m sorry,” she started, then realized she couldn't be understood.

  But they seemed to get the right impression. The crowd stepped back and mostly dispersed. The woman crouched beside her a pace farther away.

  She said something in a soothing voice.

  Hayley sat up. Her ribs ached.

  The toga had a pocket she had fallen on. She retrieved its contents.

  The silver bead Ray said would be payment to the Atlantean sorcerers. He called it a new-clear battery.

  She had the bag, of course, and hoped it being crushed against her wouldn't taint the product.

  And finally the small device Lee called an inhaler. She had seen him use it, but they did not have the time to show her how.

  She pressed in against her lips and sucked air through it.

  Nothing.

  The woman seemed concerned by Hayley's bizarre dress and the object she had, but that was simply an inference based on the woman’s furrowed brows, not the drug's power of language.

  Lee held it differently, so she tried mimicking his bizarre hand position.

  Sure enough, the small canister had some give.

  She inhaled while pressing down, and a squirt of very awful tasting mist seared her tongue and the back of her throat.

  The woman placed her hand on Hayley's shoulder.

  “Strange girl, do you come from the mountain?” she asked.

  “No, I came from—” Hayley didn't have any clue where it would be appropriate to come from. “I come from afar,” she finished.

  “You are Jjinn’s daughter?” she asked, more worried.

  “No, no, I’m a regular person.”

  She was suddenly conscious of her dirty blonde hair and blue-green eyes.

  “Then a Jjinn concubine from the mountain turned to snow?” she asked.

  Hayley was vaguely aware of the Jjinn in myth, but didn't know enough to weigh in.

  “Groceries” she said, caught in a folly. “I am to get the groceries from an Atlantean sorcerer.”

  The woman signed in relief.

  “We have no sorcerers here. They were all slain by the Jjinn generations ago. You seek Saint Sophily, who protects us from the Jjinn of the mountain.”

  Hayley allowed the woman to lead her as she pondered. If the Jjinn killed her target, but this other person had power over it, then perhaps she would be close enough to finish the mission.

  Her mind kept pulling her back, she saw an old man here and there. Nothing was concerning about this, they didn't even seem to leer. A few more paces, she would see a boy, playing or tending to a garden. Nothing bizarre, but her mind drew to these details as if her vision was its own folly.

  Hayley saw the temple from a distance, a pyramid more shaped like an obelisk, coated in copper plating. Multiple other spires existed in the town, another detail that left her feeling uneasy.

  An older woman wearing copper armor raised a staff seeing them approach.

  Hayley froze, her sandaled feet dragging in the bit of dirt on the stone road.

  The staff was different, copper instead of gold, but the gem placement and general shape were identical.

  The woman dropped Hayley’s arm and threw herself down on the road and hollered, “I found a Jjinn daughter! Please spare the town!”

  The armorer woman walked over to Hayley, and asked, “What is your name, child?”

  “Hayley.”

  “Hmm. I see.” Her affect completely neutral, but Hayley felt something was terribly wrong.

  “Are you from this town, then?”

  “No, I am from afar.”

  “I see,” she said again. Cold, practiced, but very unsettling. “Girl, I ask you this last question.”

  The armored woman inhaled slowly, and Hayley couldn't help but match her. “Do you remember the future?”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Yes,” Hayley said before her mind heard the question, before it could protest the admission.

  Her feet planted, her lungs froze in place.

  “You,” the armored woman said to the one laying in the road, “are blessed with pleasure to the final.”

  The helpful woman laid in the road, moaning and shivering in ecstasy. She roiled in it as every fluid of her body poured out, until the twitching stopped and only left a corpse.

  “Now, you will follow.”

  Hayley’s mind followed the command, and went blank as her body walked.

  ***

  Hayley’s entire body ached, the pins and needles feeling of limbs finally getting blood flow after a long absence, before she was otherwise aware.

  Her mind shook into focus and she clawed at her face and body with floppy, stinging arms, unintentionally hitting and slapping tingling areas.

  The darkness was near total, with a thin bead of light coming in from above her.

  Her hands only found stone, or flesh. Her clothing and possessions were gone. Her wrist still hurt, but she welcomed the pain in the face of her whole body regaining feeling.

  Her foot braced against something else, a rough wood partly covered with soft leather.

  A door.

  She kicked again, the tingling shrieking up her thighs and hips.

  “Help! Someone help! Please!”

  A feeling poured over her like a blanket of lead. She had this feeling before, a panic when she couldn't release a corset that was too tight, the binding causing her to be unable to breathe.

  Now it occurred in this space, feeling as cramped as she did in those corsets but without anything touching her skin.

  She kicked at the door and screamed wordlessly, but the terror and pressure didn't subside.

  Her mind fled, seeking her follies.

  She never joined Lee on his S-boat to the stars, she stayed on the moon, on the floors of the wide open casinos.

  She only visited Lee on Ares after he could afford a room in a larger, spacious dome.

  She took medications, a lot of them, to endure just a few hours of spaceflight.

  She tried to scream but could only gasp as she lost consciousness again, breathing so fast she was unable to breathe.

  ***

  A girl, not much older than she was, held Hayley as she woke up.

  She took a deep, ragged breath in.

  “It’s okay, a Jjinn’s daughter wouldn't behave so. You're okay now.”

  “What of me?” Hayley felt the air on her skin, all of it. The girl who held her was partially clad in a dirty flap of linen, which looked more salvaged than worn proper.

  The walls had thin windows up very high, sun beams echoed and weakly scattered down the three or four manlengths to the floor where they now laid.

  “It's safe here, the saint keeps us safe, you'll see.”

  “Saint? I have to—" Hayley felt for her clothing and items again.

  “You are free here, to wear or not wear.”

  Hayley's eyes focused in the dim light. Low, echoing voices surrounded them.

  She saw a dozen or so other girls, nude or mostly, conducting their own business within. None seemed too concerned with Hayley.

  “I’m Hayley,” she said.

  “Jerah, am I,” the girl replied. She looked around suspiciously.

  “The saint unnamed us. You'll get in trouble if you say that to the wrong person. Anyone taken.”

  “Taken?”

  “We all are taken to the saint, to testify. Some are taken much more than others. I…”

  “Have not been taken often?”

  “No. Only a time and three.”

  Hayley smiled at her.

  “Well, I hope I can be only taken once and then released.”

  Jerah hissed, her eyes wide with fear, “You are safe until you leave.”

  Hayley had a bad feeling she knew. “When the saint is done, you are made to marry?”

  “Yes, and your daughters will be taken.”

  Hayley gasped.

  The pigman’s daughters would be made to do the same, sold and consumed like their mother was.

  Like her mother was?

  Hayley knew her mother was dragged into the doorway, but she hadn't seen her mother since.

  “My mother. I was with her when I came here.”

  Hayley realized something.

  She had never heard her mother’s name spoken aloud. Only a few times, when she was small, did it appear on any paper? Now it was wholly left out of such things, everything was in her father’s name.

  Was it a dowry or a financial incentive to marry?

  Hayley's mind swam with questions that were unthinkable a week ago.

  “Nothing was told of her, but if she looks as you do,” the girl brushed a bit of Hayley’s hair from her swollen eyes, “then she would be brought here.”

  The girl leaned down to kiss Hayley, but Hayley turned her cheek for the Marysson at the last moment.

  The girl held her, allowed the choice.

  Hayley realized, if true, the Marysson wouldn't have been born to the world yet. This land of the old tales, but they never mentioned a saint holding women captive.

  “Unless struck down,” she offered, accidentally aloud.

  “We are safe, as long as we stay here. You will see, it is wonderful.”

  Hayley’s blood ran cold. The federate had a saying: Every joy has a tear.

  If this place was wonderful, then someplace nearby was raining blood.

  ***

  Jerah took Hayley back to her room and helped her pull down the linens closing the window up high.

  They reeked of mold and mildew. Then Jerah led Hayley to the private baths.

  A large stone pool was fed boiling water from a number of side pools. Jerah loosely described the heating from the Earth, and Hayley was able to match it with stories of hot vents of the Earth discussed out west.

  She couldn't place the geography from the stories of the Marysson to any active vulcan-mounts. A number of mountains did hold holy reverence though, so perhaps they had been active a long time prior.

  A few other girls, most younger than Hayley, lounged near a vent, absentmindedly thrusting poles into their garments dancing in the water.

  Jerah bowed to the water and said a prayer that did not translate.

  Hayley copied her as best as possible.

  Jerah smiled at her and said, “You have to pray to the gods of the waters or they will burn you and your cloth.”

  “Thank you for showing me the ways here, I am from afar.”

  One of the other girls made a noise, like she was trying to suck a piece of food through her teeth.

  “You’ll stay alone here forever. The saint may take me away tonight even.”

  “Or me,” the other girl offered.

  “Anyone who is friends with her is doomed to stay. They remain untaken until they learn better.”

  Hayley looked to the girls, then back to Jerah.

  “Maybe I do not seek to be taken?”

  The pair gasped. A few other girls who had been listening in on the exchange gasped as well.

  “This one,” the lead bully sneered, “has told you lies to protect herself. She only seeks to be wifemarried here behind the walls.”

  Hayley had had such ideas before, but it was far too impolite to discuss aloud. To hear it sneered, aloud, was unthinkable.

  Hayley stood and threw the garment in the water hard. The boiling water splashed across the pool.

  “You speak with a foul tongue, like the lowmen from my home afar. You seek petty charges to hurt others, you stand not upon stone or truth, but the cracking frost of lies. May all the gods, saints, and even Marysson, himself, see you for who you are!”

  Hayley didn't mean to shout, she barely meant to stand up to this girl. That's all she was, not just in form and statute. Wholly immature.

  Other than Jerah, most of the girls were young, a few weren't even marryable, even by the more depraved definitions. Hayley wasn't used to the casual nudity of such things, but she knew enough of the workings of lowmen and the girls who behaved as such.

  Hayley knew these walls were not salvation, but a prison, and she would do her best to appear savage and formidable now, lest becoming a victim of the herd later.

  Hayley noticed the lead bully flex silently, preparing to fight. Hayley had no such life, she worked in a cold shop indoors. The bully seemed to have done years of hard labor before arriving, or perhaps even within the walls.

  A woman wearing only copper plates and chains appeared.

  That's all it took, every girl in the room lowered themselves and moved away.

  Everyone except Hayley.

  Hayley looked towards her.

  “I apologize for my comport, for I am from afar.”

  The guard raised her staff and said nothing.

  Hayley felt her body crumple, but that was something far away. The times she found herself alone, found a folly she could really press herself into, she would have a few minor convulsions. Medical texts told her this was normal, but to be avoided. Only women who cavorted with lowmen had this defect often, good married women almost never.

  Now, she was dragged straight into the convulsions, without any of the build up. It felt good, and Hayley was so caught off guard she heard her own voice in time.

  But it didn't end, it simply kept building far beyond anything her body or mind was designed to endure. She tried to stop it, but she didn't have the wherewithal to control her hands, or legs, or hips, or spine.

  She felt her hand flop into the boiling pool, and that only seemed to make the pleasure worse.

  “Fuck!” she shouted, and the event stopped as quickly as it started.

  The guard walked away, seeming bored.

  The other girls all stared at her as she shivered and panted. Hayley cradled her boiling hand, the same hand as the damaged wrist, feeling the cool air on more wetness than just her arm.

  Jerah took one of the sticks and fished out Hayley's linen for her.

  Hayley took the scene in but couldn’t seem to get her mind to engage, she simply laid in the puddle cradling her scalded hand.

  With equal measure, the girls who stared at her all found anything else to look at. Hayley wondered if she had made some kind of positive impression, or if they were all too scared to endure this torment.

  Jerah set the garment near another vent, focused into a small tunnel, blasting heated air, to dry her linen. Most of the girls around her finished their washing, made it to one of the designated areas, bathed in the pool that was occasionally reheated from the boiling vents, or resalted by a block retrieved by one of the older stronger girls.

  Hayley's hand stung, but the feeling moved into a heavy, itchy ache as Jerah got her linen and helped her to her feet.

  They didn't speak again, even as Jerah helped Hayley eat from the large caldron the older girls made supper in. She was grateful for such a friend, even if the motive of wifemarry existed. Hayley had evaded bigger, meaner suitors before.

  Sleep had trouble finding her over the scalded hand, but eventually she was found.

  ***

  A guard hit Hayley with the staff, soft but unconcerned.

  “You are taken,” she said.

  Hayley's hand burned anew, she had moved it in her sleep, tearing the soft flesh that was left, new blood crusted all over it.

  Hayley tried to pull her linen up into a shawl, but the guard gave her a look that she knew meant it was frowned upon, so she left it on the cot.

  Hayley hated walking naked, and had almost no experience as such. The adult parts of her moved with a mind of their own, often in opposition to how she tried to walk. Her feet ached from the effort of stopping such motion, even with her hand held crossed against her body.

  A few other girls peered from their alcoves, rooms built into the walls. She saw in her mind a kind of plan, the rooms reinforced against siege, and to allow invaders to be captured upon entry.

  The tiny windows could be fitted with boiling oil from the vents, killing anyone who dared the breach.

  She imagined a fortress, built to withstand a kingdom and a millennia. She thought such a place had a need for a ruler outside the kingdoms of man, as they simply did not have foresight.

  Hayley was hit behind the knees by a guard. She had missed the command to kneel. She hadn't noticed their arrival.

  The chamber was large, near the center of the citadel. What looked like a marital bed with a large veiled canopy sat in front of her.

  The guard bopped her lightly on the head, as she was supposed to gaze upon the floor.

  “Leave us,” the voice came from inside the bedchamber.

  The guard left.

  “Hayley Perelli. Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” she said without thought.

  “I’m sorry you had troubles with the girls. You know how badly humans can behave, do you not?”

  Hayley agreed, “Yes, I do.”

  “Tell me of your journey to my city.”

  Hayley almost said the truth, but took a deep breath and said instead, “I come from afar. I am to meet with an Atlantean sorcerer for groceries. Then I will return later.”

  “Groceries? In the bag you mean?”

  Hayley got a flash of terror, but realized maybe this would all work out.

  “Yes.”

  “And you would pay them with this bobble?”

  “Yes, your…” Hayley paused, “how must I address you?”

  “We are friends.” The word ran a cold chill across Hayley's spine. “When alone, we can be ourselves. The formality is to keep the lower humans out, understand?”

  “Like a gentleman shows he is not low.”

  “Like that. What name do you know of mine?”

  “Saint Sophily."

  “That will do. Or you can just call me Sera.”

  “Sera,” Hayley echoed, but couldn't quite place it.

  “I will do your groceries, and then release you, as the Atlanteans would.”

  “Thank you,” Hayley said again, but then realized, “Wait, Lee said this would take a year.”

  “Lee? He is afar, waiting for you?”

  “Yes, Saint.”

  “Then we have a bargain. You will stay, live as these girls do, and I will hand the groceries to Lee when he comes for you in a year.”

  “I can’t…” Hayley couldn't find the words, “I am not to make promises.”

  “But, they did call you a partner. An equal. This deal is simple. I will hand Lee the groceries, you, and then leave this place with you via the telecaster.”

  “How can you know these things? Wait, please.”

  “Now, child, please.”

  “I don’t understand, how—”

  “I must give you the same gifts, and you must leave equal to the other girls.”

  “Stop, what's happening?" Hayley felt it again, like the guard did before, but it built more slowly.

  “I have my own autorobata, made of the mind. I simply need to borrow yours for a moment.”

  Hayley felt the ocean of feelings wash back and forth as she came, thrashing and begging to stop on the stone floor in the chamber with the hidden creature behind the veil.

  But, as her body thrust and moaned, she saw.

  ***

  She stood on a military S-boat now. Unafraid. She was treated for the fear of confinement as a child, as many were.

  The planet needed soldiers.

  A woman stood in front of her.

  “Lee?” she asked. The woman looked just like him, although she was easily ten years his senior.

  She held a solid metal coin.

  Hayley saw herself, her body pressed against a uniform made by a machine, fibers made from chemicals by other machines. A world populated by more autorobota than people.

  Her S-boat was nearly a living weapon, a machine threaded through it with a mind made intentionally simple.

  “For distinction during battle, for landing the most kill shots on the Saurothrop vessel, I award Sergeant Hayley Wolff this Captain's coin!”

  She knew what those words meant but couldn't process them. Clapping echoed around her and she saw a multiple of other uniformed people watching. Her boyfriend, Diego, was amongst them. Not Lee.

  She saw him, and the xeno parasite inside him. The same parasite was inside her. This is what made the connection, this wasn't a folly, it was real. Two folds of the ultramundus, the multiverse, coming into contact.

  She screamed, tearing at her abdomen and the parasite inside. Terror stemming from a moment some universes may have called “deja reve.”

  She felt time shear sideways. The ship discovering the parasite. Flashes, like the ending of a dream. Captain Emmaleigh Stone loses her vessel in deep space to a monster, her world and a thousand other worlds are torn asunder.

  She saw a man scowling, like one that would've been cast as an old cowboy in the cinema, his presence so hyperreal it seemed fake.

  Hayley crashed a timeline he installed. The Saurothrop destroyed Earth again, as they have in most other realities. He kept them at bay long enough to forge an S-boat armada, but it still wasn't enough.

  Emma’s story didn't have to end and neither did Hayley’s.

  Sera watched one of Hayley's timelines collapse through Hayley's eyes.

  Long after the last orgasm washed over her, a guard dragged her body back to her room.

  Her cell.