Tugboat Man and the Lost Continent

She was standing with me while I worked the hand pump. And I said with all of the anguish I had felt, "I thought I had lost you forever." Her mind absorbed every nuance of that dreadful experience.

She said with real guilt, "What the witnesses saw was us disappearing into the time-space continuum. That kind of sighting happens a lot in present time because technology puts eyes and ears everywhere."

She added, "In the old days our disappearance would be interpreted as a religious event."

She giggled and said, "You should have seen the look on Alexander's face when I vanished in a flash of light. He must have thought that he had been fucking one of the gods. Because he built a shrine to me. I think the Greeks call me Theia."

The last thing I wanted to think about was the thought of Maria sweating up the sheets with the Conqueror of the World. But I gave her a pained laugh anyway.

Of course, she was in my head and she said, "Oh that's sweet, you're jealous. Just like I ought to be about that hot little number you fucked just before WE met."

Okay... I got the point... And apparently she could access ALL of my memories which was a cautionary tale about honesty - indeed.

She said, "The Elders were not happy about my choosing to live out my lifespan with you. But my father insisted. He said that he foresaw a new age for Atlantis once we started producing pure Atlantean children. And eventually they granted me their permission to bond with you."

She added, "But they insisted on a test to prove your mettle, which you passed with flying colors I might add. Only another Atlantean would be able to communicate with me the way you did."

It took us all day to travel the 80-mile distance between where we cleared Cuban territorial waters and Mars Bay. But clock-time had no meaning anymore. That was because Maria was with me. We held each other in a mental bond, just recharging our psychic link.

We also pressed our bodies against each other for hours. I could feel her need for me -- both spiritual and physical. It matched mine. I would have spent all day making love to her. But I had to steer the ship. Like I said, reality always trumps romance.

Once we had refueled I asked her what we were supposed to do next. That was not as silly a question as you might suppose. Since everybody on the island of Bimini thought that she was dead.

She looked at me lovingly and said, "Well - we have a wedding planned on San Miguel in the Azores. That island is very close to where the old pyramid of the sun is located. Of course THAT is now under two miles of water. But we can access its aura from Our Lady of Peace Chapel on the south coast. The High Priest of Atlantis himself is going to preside. It will be a true Atlantean wedding."

I had a vision of guys in elaborate golden headdresses and loincloths. With a couple of human sacrifices on the side; just to honor the happy couple. It definitely wasn't anything ecclesiastical.

She socked me on the arm and said, "Don't make fun of my religion. Remember that I'm a Priestess myself. We have beautiful ceremonies full of the most exquisite dress and music. And we only conduct human sacrifices when the groom acts like a sarcastic asshole."

She smiled and added, "Then we need to go back to Bimini where we will live until the children start to come along. After that we might move to New Atlantis to bring them up."

Did she say children??? She said that in a tone of voice that brooked no insubordination. So I was getting my first taste of married life.

In the meantime, we dropped anchor for the night in the protected shallows around High Point Cay. I had just stocked up the refrigerator after my little meltdown over Maria's supposed death. So we had a feast of oysters, lobsters and beer that night. When it came time for us to go to bed we just lay out under the stars on an air mattress.

It had been an emotional month. First there was the black despair of thinking she was dead. Then there was the undistilled joy of discovering that she was still alive. And finally there was our little mutual brush with imminent death. But she was with me now. And in my reckoning that was all that counted.

We were both nude lying there after a particularly passionate reunion. My deliverance from loss and her need to reassure herself about our bond made the sex memorable.

I was looking up at the heavens. She was half on me with one leg thrown over mine and her magnificent boobs pressed against me. Her head was resting on my shoulder. She was idly tracing her finger on my chest. I was lightly stroking down her smooth back and the underlying muscles were rippling like Bastet when I pet her.

I wanted to talk. I said, "Are you going to miss it?" She was in my head so she knew what I was thinking. She said, "I have lived almost three hundred years without a sense of connection with anybody. It was unspeakably lonely and unfulfilling."

That made my years of isolation living in my parent's basement look paltry by comparison. But the mention of her lifespan caused some angst. The difference in scale between her life and mine was mind-boggling. Not to mention the earthshaking events that she had participated in -- some of which were still causing me extreme pangs of jealousy.

Admittedly - in cyberspace I am as powerful as she is. But she had been a Priestess of the Sun long before I was born and all the time I was growing up. And she was a member of a super-race. While I was still just a nerd. And nerds are anything but super

Of course she heard everything. She said, "Stop thinking that. You are my other half. We belong together." I chuckled to myself and said, "I am probably never going to have any privacy again."

She said gently, "You have to forget all that has transpired prior to our meeting. I was born 13,000 years ago and until recently you were a common human. Who would believe that we would find each other over that immense distance of space and time."

She looked lovingly at me and said, "But we did. And we totally fulfill each other. You can call it whatever you want but I like to think that our coming together was inevitable. And so that must have been a part of the cosmic plan somewhere."

I said, "My life is a harsh duality. It is joyous with you. It is the darkest despair without you." Over the past month I experienced both of those. Look in my head and see how extreme those peaks and valleys were."

I glanced lovingly at her and said, "I would sacrifice anything to be with you. But I really don't have much to sacrifice. You are giving up a life of extreme privilege to be with me. Won't you miss that?"

She looked at me like I had lost my mind. She said, "A man and a woman who love each other build their life together going forward. That is what we are going to do. And that is all you should focus on. Our life will have no limits. We can go anywhere and be anybody we wish to be. And we will experience perfect love for a thousand years together."

She added gently, "You and I will always be as we appear, never aging. And we will love and raise generations of children. That is what we have to look forward to."

Then she said with determination, "And whatever life we lived as separate entities in the past will pale by comparison to the happiness we will create moving into our shining future together."

Wow!! her words put everything into perspective. And I was content.

Life isn't a continuum. It's a series of distinctly different rooms that you pass through. And reality is what you experience in the room you are in at the time. So when you move into the next room, your reality will shift to fit the new conditions. And it will be like the old reality was nothing more than an illusion. That was the way it was for me. I would mark my life's beginning at the moment that I met her. And my reality would be the life that I lived with her.

She fastened those gorgeous lips on mine. And as soon as she did, the answer burst into my head. It was laughably obvious. It was a picture of my devoted wife and our many children -- all of us living together in an idyllic place.

We would spend our long lives nurturing the generations to come. But, the critical element would be the love that we would always share. And my life would have meaning because I had Maria by my side.

*****

Author's Note: I'm an organic writer. Meaning I start in a general direction. And I simply follow along to the logical conclusion. Once in a while that creates characters and storylines that beg to be explored further. I have a lot more questions that I would like to see answered with these two. And there are a lot of directions this can lead. So when my day job permits, I plan to pick up the further adventures of the Tugboat Man and his Atlantean wife.