Let the Wrong One In

Hypatia shuddered in the drawing room, overcome by the note. Fear, Anger, Anxiety, Lust; a dozen emotions swept through her. She felt faint, sinking quietly onto the chaise lounge, reading for the tenth time the stinging words it displayed.

Dearest Hypatia - A lie, in the salutation, no less!

It is with great sorrow that I break off our engagement. I have been a bounder and a cad, constantly endangering your reputation with society - As if I minded! I was in love!

My behavior has been quite inexcusable - finally, some truth!

...but I must confess I have compounded my errors with the love of another - what was wrong with mine?

For my own, I must confess to having led a double life - a double-cross, you mean!

While society may have approved of Ms. Bowdler as our constant chaperone, - constant betrayer!

Our relationship has become something more than chaperone and charge, and has blossomed into all the delights society has denied the both of us - You mean she let you have your way with her!

In the course of events, our activities have been blessed with issue, and the lady - Lady!? Whore! Bitch!... she restrained herself before she gave voice to the foulest oaths heard at the dockyards... is with child. The rules of a gentleman -Hypatia snorted in derision require that I bring forth a legitimate product of our issue, and unless we move to the arid wastes of Utah - another snort, Jonathan couldn't find High street if he was tied onto the police box there.

...I am restrained to but a single wife. You are a good woman, Hypatia, and I am sure that one more constant than I shall relieve your suffering. I have always admired your qualities of restraint and good judgment, which will endear you to a far better man than I - I doubt I could find a worse one, after this, she gritted her teeth.

Ever yours - Ever hers, you mean!

Jonathan - rot in hell, you right bastard...

She carefully folded the note, and slipped it into the secret compartment of the secretary, unsure what to do. The hidden door on the polished wood took its secret, and closed with a barely audible 'click'.

She checked her outfit; a perfectly workable dress, finally free of the bustles her mother had suffered with, a smart jacket filled with small instruments, and her fedora, a single concession to the last century. Her 'impossible' bosom heaved with anger, as she straightened it. Lately it had known the attentions of Jonathan, and she quivered as she remembered the heavenly feelings his fingers made as he used them, his mouth and tongue ...stop it!

While her heart and mind swung into fierce opposition, her body remembered those hands, the wonderful feelings they made as they explored her flesh, causing the most excruciating emptiness between her legs. She would miss his hands the most...

No, Hypatia, she cautioned herself, it is not his hands that you miss the most. Her own hands moved as if of their own accord, when they could be alone. She would regard his member with a combination of scientific and erotic fascination, using her hand to slowly stroke him, until his very essence shot in the air like fireworks, and rained down hotly to cover her hand.

Just the last fortnight, she'd allowed him to touch her in her most secret place, and relished the overpowering flare of aroused passion. He'd stumbled over her clitoris, and had applied himself to it vigorously, causing her to gasp in rigid bliss as if her body had been attached to an electrical wire. She lay back, breathing heavily, his body close to hers, and drew her legs together, milking the newly-discovered bliss. Her emptiness tortured her more than usual, and she swore the next time, she would let him have his way, as it was her way, or would be soon.

Jonathan, you stupid idiot! I was prepared to surrender to you this very night! You could have deflowered me; it could be me who carried your child. She fought not to cry, a single tear only creasing her makeup.

Slowly she contained her emotions. A new day was dawning, and she was needed, at the Research Corporation. Repairing her face and appearance, the young scientist went outside, to catch a passing taxi, looking down with distaste as the aetheropter climbed into traffic, and towards the laboratories. I will lose myself in my work; at least that they cannot take from me.

Far below her, the towers and smokestacks of London painted the morning fog with a sulfur-tinged yellow, as hundreds of vehicles floated and darted about. An occasional ray of sunlight would illuminate the crenellated mansions and row houses, horses still plodding the cobblestones of 21st-Century's greatest Empire.

Thanking the driver, and paying her fare, she climbed off the levitating vehicle onto the fourth-floor labs. A guard tipped his hat to her, recognizing her at once. She smiled back in turn, wondering if he was single...and stopped herself. What on Earth was she thinking? Could she ever trust another man, after the ultimate in rude behavior? A real man would have said those things to her face, not sent a note and card. She'd have a chance to change his mind, to seduce him, to run her fingers over his...she stopped in the hallway, almost colliding with another scientist. Really, we can't be distracted, especially with the kind of forces we're dealing with, she admonished herself.

She opened the heavy doors to the high-potential energy lab, seeing Dr. Rabelais hunched over a winding of a man-sized transformer. Looking up, he smirked as he saw his assistant enter the room. Hypatia knew Rabelais well; the kind of a man a woman should have hatpin ready for, and besides, he was a foreigner anyway.

"Ah, Miss Fullerene, there you are. I've had an idea; I really think that it may provide the breakthrough."

"As in scientific experiment?" she asked.

"As in a way to actually travel to these alternate worlds. See that Charles brings us a few more canisters of film, and some spare Deforest valves." The lab 'go-fer' was a minor partner in the research, still trying to get the graduate degree. He worshiped Hypatia, which made her feel both gratified and annoyed.

"Indeed, Doctor. Any particular kind?"

"6L6's, and a few '34's, " he responded, making a final connection on the wire-covered pillar of iron. He pointed over to the vast ring, mounted on gimbals. It was capable of rotating in two dimensions, as each of the seven electrical connections was made. The result was a splash of water like energy that stabilized into an almost mirror-like pool of radiance, which they'd unsuccessfully tried to pierce with telescopes, periscopes, and even a camera dangled on a string. Thing went in, but didn't come out again. Charles was still smarting from a missing fingertip he'd lost touching the effect.

"I've looked at this in a geometric fashion, only taking into account the first three dimensions. What if there were more?"

Hypatia grinned to herself. He would have made a perfect kinetoscope villain, entirely unable to avoid describing in painstaking detail his plans and stratagems. She listened with half an ear as he rambled on about orbits, magnetic offsets, and the idea of mental processes affecting the outcome. The last was hardly scientific, and she called him on it.

"Doctor, perhaps you confuse the physical with the mental. I'd have a hard time believing that wishing would affect the results, else every scientist be counted a genius."

He sighed, recognizing she was trying to get his goat. "Alas, as a nation of shopkeepers, you have to be so hard-headed and logical about science. I consider science my love, and my mistress."

"Really, Doctor! You forget yourself!"

"Really, Miss Fullerene, if there is no love of science, of mystery, of solving the essential questions of the universe, then why bother?"

"Perhaps you could have phrased it a bit more delicately," she lectured, "you are in mixed company. Unless you forget I am a woman." A frustrated woman, she thought to herself.

"As you wish. Young people today..." he shook his head. He walked to the control circuits, Charles finally arriving with the necessary supplies.

"Ready circuit one," he intoned, as Charles threw the first knife-switch. A low hum started, as the ring began to rotate. Hypatia busied herself with the kinetoscope, filming the results of today's experiment.

Ready circuit two," Rabelais said, and the switches were thrown, one after the other, until the last slid home, and the effect began to pulsate, a hot, liquid star wobbling within the containment ring. The humming now shook the room, a throbbing shake to the air, almost physical. Hypatia, watching through the viewfinder, found the sensation...distracting. It was almost like the anti-hysteria devices the doctors used, before the home models could discretely be delivered to relieve the suffering of women everywhere.

Don't think about that snake now! She remonstrated with herself. The throbbing seemed to center on her sex, giving her a feeling of lethargy and excitement she'd felt whenever he...not another thought! She concentrated on the process at hand, making notes on the typewriter as she expounded on the impressions she saw before her. She watched the control settings recorder print out the columns of numbers the settings and effects generated second by second.

She looked over momentarily at Charles, quickly popping in a new valve to replace a blown circuit. In his haste, he saw him grab the wrong tube. It would not have the same control as the necessary one, and in fact, would convert the whole apparatus into an amplifier. Rabelais was watching from a few feet away, not seeing what their assistant was doing. She raised a hand to get his attention, but it was too late.

The pins struck home in the mounting, and the experiment increased in fury, the throbbing increasing. She felt...she felt...she felt good. Her hips were warring against her, the emptiness was back, and she wanted...she knew what she wanted, if only Jonathan...

An explosion of blue light flared through the room, filling the windows with a radiance that flashed through the windows high above, causing heads to turn around the complex of brick buildings. A tremor quaked the earth nearby, as worried guards and scientists rushed towards the lab, fearing what might be found in what was obviously an experiment gone wrong.

Reaching the metal door to the lab, they cursed as they found it welded shut to the frame. A quick line of concerned people wound down through the supply room, to come in the back way. What they found was desolation, magnificent, and terrible. Dr. Rabelais was sprawled a good twenty feet behind the main controls, while Charles was nowhere to be seen. A man-sized hole in the wall was the most likely place to look, but there was only a charred confusion of bricks and clothing.

One of the men, his mutton-chopped whiskers fluttering against the afterglow, looked around. "There was a third scientist here, a Mistress of Science. Fullerton, Fuller..."

"Fullerene, sir," an assistant offered.

"Yes. See if you can find her...or her remains. Get the readings, the film, everything. I want to know what happened here."

If someone found that a female scientist had been killed, there would be hell to pay. He'd have to go to the Feminist Party for funding; they'd be ruined! Where was she?

The concept of where had little meaning in the spaces surrounding Hypatia. She gazed out in terror as she floated through some sort of nothingness...a space between spaces. Flickers of vision swarmed around her; almost as if she was watching dozens of movies at once. Behind her, the gap in her universe winked out, leaving a featureless gray indistinguishable from the rest of the nothing she saw.

Can my existence get any worse? She set her mouth firmly, holding back the scream forming in her throat. You get hold of yourself, Hypatia Fullerene...generations of suffragettes, and feminists didn't sacrifice so you could be the spoiled girl. You're a scientist...observe and record.

An occasional vision would burst into view, each time showing someone thinking...or acting. She strived to discover what was happening each time, searching for something familiar. Some of the views were of Technologist London, and she swam towards them, but each time, something would divert her, and the whole thing would vanish.

Other viewpoints were of cities and countryside alien to her, where animals were replaced by machines, or machines by strange animals. Humans and others walked, flew, or rode a staggering variety of vehicles to whatever destinations they chose.

She tried to find her purse, but it, alas like her hat, were hanging from the hat rack in the laboratory. A small diary in her pocket reminded her to start taking notes. It gave her hands, and her mind something to do. Reflecting on the myriad of alternatives in front of her, she started thinking. If only one of them could get me Jonathan back, she ruefully considered.

But wishing was an aberration, something every scientist avoided. Rabelais, the emotional, sentimental Frenchman, she knew. sometimes indulged, but he was a universe away. If only someone could help...

Jon was just making the finishing touches to the apartment, a mass of boxes, haphazardly-arranged furniture, and lost or hidden kitchen items stacked in cardboard boxes just inside the front door. It was a drag, being let go from the job, even though he'd been hired back as a consultant for half the money he made before. Life sucks, he thought for the hundredth time.

Losing the job was bad enough, losing the house was worse. And losing his girlfriend, who now turned out to be just looking for a man to underwrite her shopping, was the lowest cut of all. Now, trying to get all his possessions in an apartment that was almost as gouging on the pocketbook as his old spread, life couldn't get much worse. At least the weather was good, so he hadn't' had to hump everything in the rain. Well, time to get the rental truck back, before he got dinged by the rentals, or the management at the complex. He picked up the key, and turned towards the door.

A thick fog appeared in front of the door, a bluish light forming in the middle. Great, I've been moved in five minutes, and already it's on fire. Considering the fire was in front of the door, he looked towards the patio balcony, wondering if he could escape. The heat...wait, there was no heat. So no fire. So what was it?

A formless shape hurtled towards him, too close to dodge out of the way. It hit him squarely in the chest, toppling him to the carpet, as the fog drifted away. He fell backwards, painfully hitting the floor, wincing as he felt the impact.

Looking up, he saw a very surprised...steampunk, straddling his body.. Goggles; check, long dress; check, fantastic ray gun...ok, she was less than complete. She stared at him in surprise, and something else.

"Jonathan?" she whispered, her face inches away. A sort of hunger was forming in that gaze, he wasn't sure he liked it.

"Most people call me Jon. And you..." was all he could manage, as two very delectable lips silenced the rest. She's not a bad kisser, he admitted, pulling her closer. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but thank you, thank you, thank you.

She broke the kiss, another expression on her face, leaning back, she walloped him with a slap, complete with English. He felt like his face was rearranged like Mr. Spudhead, as she stared crossly down at him.

"And that's for that shameless traitoress, Miss Bowdler!"

"What the fuck?" he got out, as she pulled back from him. "Who are you, and how did you get in my apartment?"

She froze, looking at him, slapped back emotionally. "You don't recognize me? Jonathan Williams-Arbuthnot, how dare you pretend not to know me?"

"That's Jonathan Williams, I don't know any Arbuth, arb...whoever. Do you always go around attacking strangers?"

She stared, looking around her at the furnishings. "Where are we?"

"In my apartment. You still haven't told me who you are."

"Hypatia..." she prompted him to complete, "Hypatia Fullerene..." again receiving a blank look, "your ex-fiancé?"

Getting to his feet, he brushed himself off. "I've never been engaged; I thought Karen might be the one, but she split."

"Who is Karen?" she answered possessively.

"My ex-girlfriend, not that it's any of your business. Believe me, if I'd known someone who looked like you, I wouldn't have bothered with Karen."

"And where's your mustache? And how did your hair grow so fast? Why haven't you pomaded it, what are those...clothes of yours? You dress like a pirate!"

"What?" he glowered at her. "I just moved in here, and these are just shorts. I've never had a mustache, I'm not sure what pomade even is, and maybe we should just slow down and figure out what's going on."

She thought it over for a second. "You're Jonathan Williams-Arbuthnot, a scrivener-typist for Arbuthnot, Chesterton, and Knox, limited. You were engaged to me, faithfully, I thought," she snapped off, "and all the while you were cannoodling in amorous behavior with our chaperone, which you got with child! I just got your note cancelling our engagement this morning! I still hold it here!" she reached inside a dress pocket at proffered it at him like a process server.

He took the letter, and looked at it. "I can't write this well," he said, scratching his head. "The date's right, but I don't know a Miss...Bowdler? I'm Jon Williams, until recently a senior web designer, now just a contractor for Applied Darwinism limited, and I just lost my house, my girlfriend, and evidently my mind. And I don't do unprotected sex, if you must know. Now are you with the local Steampunks, and I'm getting punked, or do you have some other explanation?"

"Was that in English?" she replied, puzzled again. "What's a Steampunk?"

"You don't know? Lady, you're dressed exactly like one, even down to the goggles. I've never heard of anyone but librarians and porn stars named Hypatia."

"The goggles are not part of my ensemble, they're necessary for the experiments. I'm going for my doctorate, you must know, at the Lysenko Institute of Aetherial Physics."

"Never heard of it. Your accent's English, is that where it is?"

"Of course it's...you have an American accent? Where are we?" She looked through the window, gasping at the view. To Jon, it was nothing special, he'd been more interested in a quick place to live on his vastly-reduced salary, than something like the view.

"There's no horses..." she said, turning back to him. "I don't smell any horse apples, there's no traffic in the sky, no dirigibles, where are we?" her voice squeaked, as she started to panic.

"We're in Utah, in the US, it's 2013, and I'm beginning to wonder about you. Do you have any meds you should be taking?"

Her brow wrinkled beautifully, as she considered him. He started to notice just how good-looking she was; blond hair slightly disheveled, a pretty nice rack under that...corset thing. Couldn't tell about the rest, but whoever this hyphenated guy was, he was an idiot for leaving her. Unless the Bowdler chick was even better.

She giggled slightly, over some private joke. "I guess I made it to Utah after all, though I shan't share any man. This is all so...alien to me," she confessed, "I know in my heart that you're my Jonathan, but you don't seem to know the most basic facts about the Empire."

"Empire? The British Empire?"

"Well, naturally, of course. Relations between the American and British empires has been strained of late..."

"Wait, there's no American Empire. The British...oh, it would take too long to explain. Let's use the web."

He went over to the laptop, the first thing he'd opened once things were settled. She looked at it, as if she'd never seen one before. Starting it up, he smacked his head, realizing the cable guy hadn't come by to set him up. Well, maybe he could leach from someone's wireless, until the guy showed up.