Sorry Forever

That would, of course, be me, not that anybody needed to know. I spent nineteen months and a considerable amount of brainpower in the pursuit of countering every illegal or immoral endeavor EmCube could facilitate. No one's perfect, not even me, but I defy you to crack it. Most of the planet was rendered unavailable. Infringement on prisons and police stations resulted in a trip directly to the nearest empty cell. I would do the same for bank vaults and such, but not for free. I foresaw a race between thieves and management everywhere. I put places like the White House and its equivalent all over the world permanently out of reach. That included every classified installation in the world, all relatively easy to locate when you can go anywhere and read anything.

It's also fortuitous to be conversant with eleven languages, but I digress.

People of the world were delighted with their newfound freedom. Borders would crumble before long as pride of place would one day become a distant memory. Every person in the world could go anywhere they wished, whenever they wished. Everyone except one Daryl H. Shepard.

That's right. Daryl. He was already hurting. Automobiles were being discarded at such a rate that they were becoming worthless, even as scrap. New infrastructure would be required as the use of transit systems collapsed, but I would have no part of that headache except to license the technology and collect my fee. Let the bureaucrats sort that out and pay me for it.

Poor Daryl couldn't cube anywhere. Alone, in a group, using a proxy, there he stood, stranded. Any person that attempted to help him lost cubing privileges for three days, ten the second time. The third...well, we never found out. As his friends and peers cubed away, passing him by, he found life itself passing him by. Things had changed, and I wondered how he would cope. How many times did he try to contact me? No matter. A phalanx of bully boys surrounded me and denied all access, sometimes strenuously, but they were only window dressing. I had developed an EmQuad variant that shielded me from any possible harm. Even Mr. Renault was unaware of it. Anything that came near me, no matter the speed, would be deposited elsewhere. Trust me, you don't want to go there.

Strangely enough, seventeen other men, one of them Taylor's old boyfriend, also found themselves mysteriously unable to cube. Three of them were stranded in some dangerous places, and airfare had skyrocketed to unattainable now that so few planes were flying. So sad. Several of them didn't make the Taylor connection and banded together in a class action, demanding to know the reason for denial of service and claiming the ability to cube was their right as American citizens. The court determined that the French conglomerate RGI (by extension Mr. Renault, by extension me) is not obligated to ferry a dickhead if it doesn't want to. Those schmucks never know how close they came to landing in the lion habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. It's a beautiful city.

In an odd coincidence, seventeen former members of a certain sorority chapter also experienced intermittent problems; they were often left stranded in the most embarrassing places. I enjoyed that for a while, but I realized they were unaware of the reason for their transit problems. How could they learn? On their next trip, each of them was cubed to a remote location until everyone arrived. The group was then shown the error of their ways and the consequences of their moral failings. Each and every one of them knew what Taylor was doing to me, and they either actively encouraged her behavior or turned a blind eye. By the time they were returned, they knew in no uncertain terms that both decisions were unacceptable. They were fortunate to be young, else their hearts might have burst on the trip home.

"It's time," I said to Taylor.

"Finally!" she exclaimed, clapping. She still did that. "I've been waiting forever."

"Yes," I said distractedly. "Forever."

I could kick myself for not foreseeing.the final problem. Molecules are extremely small, with even smaller components inside, and there are seven billion billion billion of them contained in the human body. That's seven followed by twenty-seven zeros. Moving them from place to place requires a fantastic amount of energy which was problematically expensive, so much so that even billionaires could only afford one or two trips per lifetime. Forgot everybody else. That simply would not do, so it was incumbent on me to address both power and battery technologies. My next breakthrough went smoother, building on the previous one, and three years later, another division of RGI, EmPower, was formed. This time Mr. Renault was better informed, and we split this concern fifty-fifty. It's impact on society would be greater even than EmCube's, but it was still on the horizon.

I know Taylor hoped that we would make love the night before her trip, but I had other plans. I would use her as I had almost every other time. You see, I took her at her word. Gone was the gentle soul who catered to her every whim in bed. Outside of it, our relationship was greatly changed. In compensation, she gained all the fame and notoriety she could have ever hoped for as the wife of the most important man in the world, and she relished every single scrap of it. I wondered how her trip would change that, and if she would have regrets.

She stood next to the bed, compliant as always, waiting, as always, for me to savagely attack her, to take her, if you will, just as she said she needed. I would not disappoint her. I spanked her adorably round bottom until it was on the verge of bruising, but it never did. I was careful. I always incorporated some sort of counting game to make it fun for both of us, or me at least, and draw it out. Her pert breasts and nipples shone scarlet from all the slapping and biting. As for the act itself, she was tiny, I had "toned up" per her request, and the sessions themselves were often aggressive, exhausting, punishing affairs. I especially enjoyed slapping her face with my cock buried in her throat. She could have ended my manhood, possibly even me, right then, but she didn't dare. Tears would sometimes shine in her eyes, but she never cried.

She could leave at any time, but she craved the spotlight, and the agreements she signed gave her virtually nothing. She couldn't survive on that, and who would take her in? Who would dare to cross me now? One night of the year, on our anniversary, the old Aaron returned, and we made love even more tenderly than before. Those were the nights she cried.

"Shouldn't I be wearing some kind of space suit or something?" Tayler asked nervously.

"That's in the movies," I said. "Do you have to wear a special suit when you cube? This follows the same principles."

I could understand her anxiety. She was dressed in a navy blue and white-striped sorority-issue tube top, skimpy blue cotton shorts and her wedge sandals. Not a lot of coverage there. I explained that she needed to select a day in her life back then and do her best to blend in. This was her response. She was a little long in the tooth for an outfit like that, but I assured her that anyone she encountered would only see the younger version of herself. It was nearly the last lie I would tell her.

Taylor peered at the portal for a moment in all its shimmery glory.

"I guess this is it," she said, her voice nearly breaking.

"Guess so."

"I really am sorry, you know."

I didn't know that at all. I always hoped she was. I'm sure she was sorry that I never gave her the babies she hoped for.

"I'm sure you think so."

She squinted, a questioning look, but she had bigger fish to fry. "That's why I'm so committed to doing this. This is for us, just like you said."

"I know," I said. "You pull this off, and I won't remember a thing."

"What I just said," she sighed. "It's not true.'

"Hmm?"

"I wasn't going to say anything, but I changed my mind when you talked about not remembering. I have to tell you now that I pray to God you don't remember. I'm not doing this for me or for us. Not anymore. I'm doing this for you." She looked at me so hopefully. "I want my Aaron back."

"What do you mean?"

"What I did...the person I was back then..." Were those real tears? "I think I broke you."

"Don't be absurd," I scoffed, waving my arm to indicate the entirety of the labyrinthian lab complex. We were the only ones there until Monday. "Look how it's all worked out."

"I think all this would have happened anyway, but you...oh, God, Aaron." She was wracked with sobs now. "You're a hard man now, and I think it's on me...my fault. I'm so deeply, profoundly ashamed of what I did to you. There isn't a word for it."

Could this be true remorse? Did she finally realize she loved me, or was this an even longer con? I had observed her for years, but now that it was time to report, I still couldn't say. The data was inconclusive.

"Okay," I choked. She hugged me tightly and I squeezed back as I kissed the top of her head, both of us silent. What was left to say?

"So, remember," I cautioned as we broke our hug and she gracefully mounted the platform. "You want to sort of hop this time, not walk straight through like you're used to. The displacement will be significantly denser during this process, so you'll need just that little bit more momentum that a hop will give you."

"I'll remember," she said, and as I clambered onto my own position on the platform beside hers, I caught her reflection in the glass readout in front of me as she watched me take my place. Her expression was pure evil. It was devoid of any love or contrition and augured nothing pleasant for me. Poor girl, she had let down her guard an instant too soon.

She felt the same thing for me that I felt for her.

"Goodbye, Aaron," she said, back to sweeter than anything I'll ever hear again. "I love you forever."

"And I love you." I grunted, not nearly as sweet.

Time for the last lie.

"Have a safe trip," I said, and I pushed her with all my might just as she was getting up on her toes for her hop, sending her lurching forward into the portal, never to be seen again. There was nothing to observe, nothing left to report.

I pondered many things after that. If I hadn't witnessed her hatred at the last second, would I have reverted to Plan B and let her off the hook? We could have held hands and walked away from everything with me none the wiser. Her final act was that convincing.

Taylor was now falling exactly two thousand, six hundred and forty-eight feet until she met her next portal. Surely her wedges were gone by now. Would they land somewhere or travel with her? I wondered if she was falling head or feet first, or if my push had caused her to cartwheel endlessly, as intended. Nothing lasts forever, and her body would eventually stop turning. Would she still be alive then?

I wondered.

I wondered if she would expire first from a heart attack or dehydration. She certainly couldn't remain alive long enough to starve, but let's just suppose she could. Would she still be sane?

Did she believe her punishment would ever end? Did she fear it never would? The portal would send her falling through a portion of the earth's crust hot enough to singe but not burn. She would fall through an endless Antarctic blizzard cold enough to freeze but not be frozen. She would be sucked into a whirlpool wet enough to choke but not drown. Last, she would fall through a jungle with vegetation sharp enough to cut skin but not break bones. She would then return to the twenty-six-hundred-foot drop to regain any lost momentum and repeat the process. Forever. The portals were powered by the new EmPower technology and could never be closed, not even by me, until the sun burned itself away. As long as gravity existed, her body would fall through the endless cycle, dead or alive.

Could she possibly suppose there was any mercy left in my soul? Her sorority sisters had received a brief, one-time-around taste of her fate and were threatened with a return visit if they breathed a word of it. I guess the bonds of sisterhood are only so strong, because she suspected nothing.

Did she think I would hear her voice as she howled her last desperate sorries until it finally gave out, choked by lack of moisture until her next whirlpool ride? Perhaps the wet of the blizzard would suffice to return it. Would she scream again, or would she meet her end silent as the grave where her body will never be laid to rest? It would continue on an endless journey, sorry forever.