Strange but not a Stranger Pt. 02

Once that hit the streets we couldn't move without being stalked by the press and crowds of curious watchers. Some of the watchers were less than friendly, a right-wing religious TV self-publicist in Tennessee announced we were the devil's work and evidence of the end of days, which meant we ended up getting crosses left outside the front door and instructions to repent and that we were an abomination.

Jess's mother called to find out what was happening, and what was she doing wearing a bikini like that. Promises to visit and explain were made, with a date set for the weekend.

The visit to mum's place went a lot better than you might have imagined. It probably helps that she's (1) a retired science teacher and (2) a massive Star Trek fan, so being faced with two versions of her daughter didn't turn out to be the traumatic moment it could have been. She hugged us both and announced that we were always and would always be her daughter, which brought on a huge flood of tears from me and a sniffle from Jess.

We explained that the plan was to get me home again and that we all hoped my visit would be relatively temporary, mum told me she hoped I would be happy whatever happened and that there was always a home for me with her, which set me off again. All in all, I seemed to spend most of our time together crying, although I felt in a good way.

On the first day of the madness Carlo met us at the University. He walked into the top-secret lab bold as you like and announced we had to go with him.

Local Jess took the lead in blocking him, "Carlo, you can't just barge in here. It's highly classified, you could get arrested and lose me my job." That was when I noticed the three uniformed police behind him.

He held out an ID, "I probably owe you an apology. Maria, you can give the other me in your world a bollocking. I'm DS Ross Jenkins, Special Branch. I was assigned to you when you first appeared on Prof Cole's radar as a potential intern. "

Both Jess and I were livid, "You fucked me, us, under false pretences. What the fuck? Carlo. Or fucking Ross."

He paused, "Really, we're going to do this now? OK. Yes, I went to bed with you, but you thought I was some thick male model that you could use for kicks and not have to worry about any emotional entanglement. We all knew what we were getting from it, now if you want to shout at me, do it later but don't pretend you weren't using me any more than I was you."

Being right didn't make him any less infuriating, but we followed him out to a blacked-out van that drove us off to an undisclosed location. Just outside Didcot, on the Harwell Road.

We were escorted to and from work from then onwards, Professor Cole made a statement to the press that used lots of words like 'Quantum' and 'resonance' which took some of the heat off, but there was still an undercurrent of mistrust in the news.

I was sent in another blacked-out transit back to UCH, or possibly the same one again, they wanted to compare a live MRI scan with the details received from Jess via the initial link. We reversed up to the Emergency Department where I was bundled out and tagged in behind Brian and Gillian, the team working at this end of the link. As we walked through the busy emergency department I heard my name, my actual name. Not Maria, not Jane Metcalfe, the alias I was under, no it was my name.

I turned; it was Phil the registrar. I stopped, Brian and Gillian looked a bit concerned but there weren't any photographers behind the crash cart so relaxed slightly. He beckoned me over to an examination bay and pulled the curtains around us. Brian started going a bit squawky, but I heard Gillian placating him.

Phil asked how I was, which as a doctor was a bit of a cop out.

"I'm fine, is that a professional question or a personal enquiry?" I responded. He looked sheepish,

"As it's unethical of me to socialise with patients I'd better make it a professional enquiry."

I melted a bit inside, he was one of the first people I'd met in this version of England, he and Emma McCready had been the first to help and the last people I had any positive memories of before my world was twisted in a knot. I reached into my pocket and found my cover ID badge and my university badge. I gave him both,

"Says here I'm Jane Metcalfe, or Maria Newell. I think you'll find your patient was Jessica Newell. My 'Sister'."

He gave me a long smile. "OK, Jane. Would you like to go for a coffee? I've been on overnight and finish around eleven. Can you get ten minutes?"

I said I could and agreed to meet him in the Pullman restaurant. All the cafes and restaurants were named after train related things, what with being up the road from Euston Station.

In keeping with the railway theme, I was running late and burst in at ten past, to my delight he was still there looking exhausted in his scrubs with a half-finished cappuccino. I bought two more and two donuts by way of apology. We chatted for half an hour, I ran my coffee break into lunch and stayed another hour, he finally had to go and lie down in the on-call suite and promised to meet me again later.

At four thirty Emma McCready found me and gave a conspiratorial wave. I followed her to the same changing area where I'd put on some scrubs and her coat last time I was there. A tall Asian girl was waiting with a long coat and a hijab. She showed me how to wear it and with a wink said, "No one will recognise you now, but you will get stopped by the police all the time." Emma led me down to the on-call room where Phil was dressed and smelled of a fresh shower.

"I thought I'd buy you dinner, I recruited Emma and Farah to help you get out unnoticed. You can call your colleagues on the internal system to let them know you'll be safe." So, I did. Brian tried to get all forbidding and official, but I pointed out I was not under arrest and the worst case would be I was spotted somewhere not where I worked or lived and if he wanted to do anything about it he was going to have to catch me first. Gillian was doing her placatory noises in the background, so I didn't really care.

Phil took me to a small Indian restaurant in Finchley, I kept the Hijab on so, to keep in character I kept off the booze, just drinking water with the meal. Having an evening where I wasn't seen through the reflecting lens of not being the Jess everyone knew was liberating beyond belief. I ended up unburdening my worries about my mother and friends at home, although my Carlo and I were going to have words if I ever got back. I talked about my worries about not getting home and my worries about getting home, how I'd never see the new friends I'd made, how having a sister was something I'd miss and how I felt I had to make different friends from Jess.

After the meal he offered me a drink back at his place, an offer I'd been hoping for and accepted in a heartbeat. His place was a one bedroomed flat in a huge Victorian town house. He poured me a large gin and tonic in the kitchen and took it through to the living room. I took off the Hijab and hung it up with Farah's long coat.

The gin did its magic and I found myself mellowing, he offered another and when he stood next to me to collect my glass I put my arms around his neck and kissed him, gently, then with more passion.

"I'm not normally a put out on the first date kind of girl," I whispered, "but technically, you saw me in the Emergency Department, then we had a coffee, then today we had coffee and lunch and now dinner so technically this is our third or fourth date. Technically."

"I do love a technicality" he whispered back round my lips and started unbuttoning my blouse. I reached up and returned the favour on his shirt, then when I was sitting in my bra and I was cursing it's dull utilitarian styling, I started on his trousers, he on mine.

We rolled around on the sofa like a pair of teenagers in our underwear, he tried desperately to undo me and proved that all blokes are incompetent when it comes to clips they can't see, making such a shitty job of it that I laughed aloud and sat up. "Stop, let me do it. We'll never get beyond first base if I leave it to you," I saw his eyes light up next when I said, "And I am hoping for a lot more than that."

His lips went straight to my nipples, slightly squashed and probably slightly sweaty after all day cooped up in Micks and Spencer's finest, the massaging he was giving my boobs felt really good after the day's constraining. I held the back of his head and pulled him into my chest, wrapping my legs around his back and growling with desire and joy.

He was sucking and flicking gently with his tongue, sending tiny sparks of delight through me with each stroke. I pushed on my side with my elbows and wrapped my hands around the back of his head to pull him tight to me. His breath was hot and damp in the soft valley his face was trapped in.

Under my lap I could feel the front of his boxers swelling and pushing into my crotch, I gave a gurgle of delight and released his face from boob heaven to kiss him hard on the mouth. Suddenly I didn't want any more messing around, no more foreplay, I just wanted to get him inside me. I had to stand up to get us both naked, dragging his underwear down and away to reveal a very nicely proportioned uncircumcised rigid cock, shiny headed with trimmed hair and tight balls.

I wrapped one hand around the proud little soldier and with the other I pushed on his shoulder to get him sitting back on the sofa, then straddled his thighs and slowly sank down to take him fully in.

I sat still for a moment, staring into his eyes, savouring the closeness and the connection, a connection that was genuine and mine, not a reflection of my home life and not a second-hand connection from local me. This was real and this was mine.

I leaned forward and kissed him gently, then with growing passion and intensity, his hands gripped onto my boobs, I could feel them slightly sweaty and clammy as he squeezed firmly. I set up a rocking motion with my hips, grinding into his groin, his hard cock stirring inside me sending bolts of excitement up to my brain.

I pushed Phil's head back into my chest where he found my nipples with his lips, one hand was on my back pulling me into his eager mouth, the other was hanging onto my bum as if it might fly away if he let go.

I reached behind my back and with a contorted twist took his hand down to feel his cock squelching into my pussy, his rough fingers giving an added rasping sensation to me. I started gasping, sweat broke out across my body, my nipples were like rigid steel bolts, every nerve ending was on fire.

I threw my head back and moaned as I came on his cock, lips and fingers, I thrashed into his groin in an effort to keep it going as long as possible, eventually collapsing into his shoulder with a whimper, squeaking each time he moved inside me.

My knees were starting to complain at the extended abuse, so I rolled off, leaning back onto the sofa with my feet on the floor. I took a moment to recover while my heart rate dropped back to a more normal level, the tingling of my orgasm still echoing round my body, but I wanted him back inside me, craving the closeness and physicality that was driving my desire.

I gave a murmur of delight as he pushed forward with his hips, slowly penetrating with his probing cock, parting my labia and driving slowly and deliberately in.

Again, I held him tight once he was in, not moving, just gazing into his eyes, the intimacy being more important at that moment than anything else. After a minute or so he started a slow movement, in and out, building in speed and intensity, my boobs started shaking in rhythm, I felt myself being slammed down into the cushions with a passion and intensity that took my breath away.

Phil made a strained gurgle as his spine stiffened and he shuddered his load into me, gasping and shaking three or four times then collapsing onto his knees and lying on my chest, our sweat mingling as we came back to a semblance of recovery.

With a groan he sat next to me, leaning in for a gentle kiss, "mmmm. Fancy a shower and relocating to somewhere a bit more comfortable?" he asked, I nodded my agreement, I was all in favour of that as a plan and half an hour later we were tucked up under his duvet, making a start on round two, which led into a deep and refreshing sleep until eight the next morning, which was fine for Phil as he was on a late shift and didn't start until three in the afternoon, I however had to banish all thoughts of round three and get dropped outside the lab with two minutes to spare and hair still wet from my morning shower, hungry from missing breakfast.

Other Jess greeted me with a demand for the inside story, which she got over a coffee and half a power bar from the vending machine, Carlo, or fucking Ross as it turned out, was less impressed.

"Half Thames Valley police have been looking for you, you don't seem to realise what the stakes are here. I've had to do a threat assessment on your kidnapping by hostile power, a risk assessment on potential harm from religious nutters and I got a Superintendent level bollocking for losing you."

I remembered the other transferrable skill from my ex-army boyfriend. The art of not giving a shit about other people's problems.

I poked him in the chest to emphasise my point. "Ross, I had a boyfriend when I was at Uni who was in the OTC, he used a phrase that may be applicable 'if you're looking for sympathy, it's in the dictionary. Between Shit and Syphilis.' I," I paused and pointed at Jess," We, are nearly twenty-seven years old, we are not under arrest or in protective custody. If you continue behaving like a twat I will continue to evade you and your minions. If you wind your neck in I might be inclined to co-operate. Understand, or shall I speak slowly for you?"

With that I stormed out in a flurry of adrenaline and slammed doors.

Fortunately for me I bumped into our lab assistant with a message for me and Jess from Professor Cole asking us to go to his office straight after lunch. I say fortunately because I had only stormed out for effect, and it gave me a legitimate excuse to go back into my lab without looking embarrassed.

At two thirty we walked into the boss's office, he was in an exceptionally good mood, jumping out of his chair and leading us straight to his lab where a Video Conference screen was running. It must have been running on a loop because it just showed the empty desk in front of it. Jess and I sat as indicated by the professor. It took me a moment to realise the screen in front of me was still showing an empty desk.

Behind me I heard the rattle of a keyboard and a moment or two later Professor Cole sat down next to us, shortly after that he appeared on the screen, giving a friendly greeting to me and Jess.

"Good morning Jess, and to you too Jess, and to the distinguished looking gentleman to your left. Professor Cole, have you lost weight?"

The two professors spent a minute or two telling each other how good they looked and what an honour it was to finally be working with such a towering intellect. The worrying thing was I think they meant it.

'My' Professor Cole, the one on the monitor, cut to the chase. "Jess, as you can see we've been able to establish communications between these two versions of our worlds, we are hoping to move to translocation of inanimate objects then on to living things. We will have the first experiment this afternoon and while it's below your clearance level we feel it's appropriate that you attend.

In the short term, here are some messages from friends and family."

The screen flickered and I saw my mother, she was sitting in her kitchen, tearily telling me she missed me and hoped I was well. I recorded something to go back to her telling her I was fine and that I should be with her soon. A wide angle shot of the team saying hello and telling me they were doing everything to bring me home followed, then the screen flicked back to Cole.

"So, Professor, I see from the readout that your reactor and mine are fully in synch and running at eighty percent. Raising now to full capacity."

The reactor was twenty miles away in the Oxfordshire countryside, but I will swear I could hear the steady increase of a background hum. The screen flicked to a split view of two identical MRI scanners, one empty, one with a life-sized model of...cheeky buggers, it was me.

I pointed to the screen. "Why is there a model of me?"

One of the Professor Coles explained, "We wanted to replicate the initial transfer as far as possible, so we took the records of your MRI scan and put them into a 3D printer. It's printed from a synthetic organic compound that matches the weight, density and feel of a human body, down to the internal organs and eye colour."

It was an eerie experience watching a replica of me disappearing into the scanner, more so because it was anatomically fully accurate, and it was wearing paper underwear and nothing else.

"Why is it necessary to send a life size model of me? Why not something like, I don't know, an apple or a mug or something small?"

Professor Cole on the other side explained that they'd been able to use my initial transference to calibrate the system against itself, he started explaining things that only really make sense mathematically but without resorting to a gigabyte of calculus the calibration they'd established using the baseline of my MRI when extrapolated to the Quantum tunnel meant the work we were doing now was what had allowed my safe passage. Apparently time behaves like a particle at that level and whilst we couldn't (yet) predict what was going to happen actions now would have an effect on things in the past.

I've got a Ph.D. in this stuff, and I was starting to struggle, the local Professor Cole tried to dumb it down for me. "Imagine if you like a bucket of paint on top of a hundred-metre-tall pole with the wind blowing. Eventually that bucket will come off the pole and plummet to the ground. Some people will avoid the area entirely, some will wait until it starts to fall, however both are reacting in diverse ways to events that haven't yet happened. We are the bucket of paint."

He wasn't that successful, and I didn't like the analogy of me splattering on the ground, but I nodded and accepted that was why a lifelike almost naked figure of me was being wheeled into an MRI scanner.

The two professors started talking to each other in gigawatts and percentages, when the numbers reached five and one hundred respectively I heard Julia's voice counting down, which Julia it was I couldn't say. Maybe it was both. When she reached zero she announced "Stability at one hundred percent. Professor Cole, initialise the scan."

The two MRI scanners bleeped, gurgled and whirred and started cycling the artificial Jess through the tunnel. Despite the tension of wondering if I'd get to go home this part of the procedure was remarkably dull, it takes up to ninety minutes for a full body scan and to give the machines maximum information they were set to the highest level of resolution so were going for the full ninety.

One of the machines bleeped to say it was complete, one of the professors called out "Transmitting," the screens flared with a bright flash then faded to dark with a warning alarm buzzing in the background. Two figures appeared, one on each screen with torches making solid beams in the smoky rooms.

Happy sounding voices announced the disappearance from one side of the screen and the reappearance on the other.

The two professors engaged in some more mutual intellect and ability admiration and closed the link promising to review the effects and look at a return shot in twenty-four hours. Our professor promised to let us know what transpired and ushered us out.