Chapter 1

David Stanley reclined naked and relaxed on a banquette and gazed up at the stars. He'd spent the day on Lake Powell playing with his newest toy, a brand new 34-foot Searay Sports Cruiser.

While still in his teens, David decided it was better to be rich than merely okay money-wise, so he'd used his flights of consciousness to gather insider information about public companies and had parlayed his meager college fund into millions. Two years ago at David's request, his mother sold her business and, under his supervision, now handled the day-to-day chores his investments required. While in his third year in college, he purchased acreage in North Scottsdale, engaged an architect and builder to construct his home, and helped his mother build a new house within the walls surrounding his land. He also reserved an acre lot within the compound for his sister, Darla, if she ever wanted it, which appeared unlikely. She was happily married to a doctor, a surgeon, no less, and in a few months David would become an uncle. He could hardly wait.

Although primarily self-educated, David still considered a college education important if only as a subterfuge to hide his unique abilities or to open some doors that would otherwise remain closed to him while he occupied his body. After graduating from Arizona State University, he enrolled in the University of Phoenix Online, receiving his M.B.A. a year later.

He also learned to fly and owned a Cessna Turbo Stationair, another toy, according to Darla. He supposed she was correct but rationalized the purchase when he acquired a summer home in Sedona overlooking Oak Creek offering astonishing views of craggy red-rock landscapes famous in the area. Driving to Sedona whenever he wanted to get out of the city didn't appeal to him, although some of his automobiles would be considered toys, too, like his 1967 Chevy Corvette Roadster purchased at the Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction.

With a few exceptions, his paranormal abilities hadn't evolved much over the last few years. He could now connect with anyone he'd ever seen, either in person or while on one of his trips, which had helped him gather insider information on public companies. He'd also repaired his problem with psychic arousal and its accompanying, unrelenting and ultimately excruciatingly painful results. Because he'd created the sensations with the psychic energy loops of his chakras, not through the physical manifestations he'd fashioned to ape a physical orgasm, he'd failed to add a method to interrupt the looping. By building the sensations to an intense level, then abruptly disrupting the psychic loop, he could feel orgasmic-like sensations with a release, especially if he synchronized the release to the physical contractions of his out-of-body orgasms. Once the sensations dissipated, he could reenter his body without pain or any other difficulty. For his first test with psychic sex after a one-year hiatus, his mother volunteered as a participant in the experimental psychic fuck. They'd both enjoyed the experience and had repeated it since, although not often. At the time, Darla saw no reason to try fake sex, as she called it, and promptly jumped David's bones. Later, she eagerly accepted David's ghost into her body. Exhilarated by the results, she encouraged him to repeat the event whenever they were separated, that is, up to the day she accepted Steve White's marriage proposal. She'd been true-blue to the good doctor ever since.

David missed her lovely body next to his, sometimes desperately, but he understood and kept his promise not to entice her to have sex with him again.

He'd also perfected his tone of voice, but anticipating a need for various voices while on his journeys, he learned to speak with a captivating, sultry feminine voice, a combination of the melodious, sensuously teasing sounds uttered by his mother and sister. Darla cracked up the first time he visited her using his female voice and insisted they gossip like a couple of giggly, teenaged girls. He deepened the feminine voice slightly when dealing with his mother. Both stated they preferred his real voice, but David believed his mother secretly preferred the deep, masculine voice he perfected that offered a stentorian quality designed to lead and command. David suspected his mother, besides being an exhibitionist, harbored a small streak of submissiveness in her sexual nature.

One afternoon while still in high school, he couldn't resist and spoke to Barbara as if he were a girl ghost. His feminine voice asked if she'd enjoyed the finger fuck in the showers. She'd gasped in shock but, after she recovered, eagerly requested a repeat performance. Giggling ghost-like, he'd clammed up and watched briefly while Barbara shucked her panties and started to play with herself, beseeching him to join her. He ignored her request and didn't touch her. A promise was a promise. Still, Darla had not appreciated his humor - sick humor, she'd called it. His mother considered the event hilarious and told his sister to lighten up.

The stars are so brilliant, he mused still captivated by the night sky. Not like the dim lights barely seen in a city. Time. Time and space. The starlight I'm seeing now gave birth before I was born. Time, space and consciousness. Do the stars exist only because I'm observing them? Do they exist in a state of superposition until they're observed by a conscious being, as some scientists avow? Conundrums - mysteries physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, and religious leaders all try to reconcile with individual, disparate approaches tied to their biased belief systems.

He turned his head toward a sound and watched as Denise stepped up from the cabin below. Her long legs flexed and glistened in the moonlight. Like David, she was nude, and he appreciated her tawny grace. A lesbian, Denise unaccountably thoroughly enjoyed an infrequent visit from her masculine ghost with a feminine voice, but refused to let him enter her while he occupied his flesh-and-blood body. If involved in a threesome with him and his mother, she occasionally tolerated his real mouth on her, once even experiencing a crashing orgasm from his lips and tongue.

"There you are," she said and smiled as she settled gracefully in the captain's chair and spun the rotating seat toward him.

With her legs slightly spread, the matted blonde curls between her legs appeared as if parted by a hairbrush and framed the reddish, swollen labia of her vulva. He noted her clitoris had retracted under its hood.

"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked. "Or, at least, letting your consciousness wander while your body rests?"

While his dark eyes enjoyed her soft, feminine curves, David huffed a small laugh. "I've been contemplating the universe and trying to figure out how I fit."

"Heavy." She stretched, lifting her clasped hands toward the stars and pushing her feet straight out in front of her. Her perky breasts rose alluringly on her chest, and her nipples hardened, an effect of the cool breezes meandering over the currently calm waters of Lake Powell, David assumed. Not for the first time, he considered it a shame she didn't enjoy sex with a man.

"Is Mother asleep?"

"Yes." She expelled a soft snort and added, "We wore her out."

"You more than me."

"Probably," she acknowledged unabashedly. "Well, did you figure out how you fit in the total scheme of things?"

"Hah! Never happen, but lately I've been wondering if my consciousness could take a trip through time, a journey our three-dimensional bodies couldn't survive."

Her gray eyes widened. "Surely, you jest."

Her obvious surprise surprised David. Dr. Denise Montgomery was a psychologist, a professor at New Mexico State in Las Cruces, and when not teaching did research in consciousness. She'd tumbled upon his secret when he helped her out of a jam years ago, and she'd agreed not to make him a lab rat or divulge his unique abilities to anyone. The agreement reflected her gratitude for his help, and she'd honored the agreement since.

Years, he thought. Seven years have passed since I first saw Denise sitting next to my mother in a bar in Albuquerque. Time flies when you're having fun. Yeah, no doubt about it; time is relative.

"Think about it, Denise. Chaos theory along with quantum mechanics stipulate time is a continuum, meaning now flows both into the past and into the future. Now is where the future intersects the past. According to virtual chaos, its ten-dimensional model has a three-dimensional past and a three-dimensional future that crosses over the four dimensions we refer to as the here and now. When my consciousness takes flight, it moves from one here and now to another space in almost the same here and now, and the journeys are timeless, regardless of distance. Why shouldn't my consciousness be able to slide along the continuum during a trip to visit a past or future here and now?"

She raised a stern eyebrow, but her eyes twinkled. "Are you saying you've accomplished such a feat?"

David looked sheepish. "I'm not sure. I think I connected with Mother when she was about... oh, I don't know, ten or twelve years old, and the scene was... old fashioned, old-fashioned fabrics, carpet, hair styles, those sorts of things."

Her eyes glinted, enlarging the gold flecks in the gray. "Amazing!"

"The episode took place last week. I've tried to repeat the process, but without success. I'm almost convinced I experienced a dream or vision, not a trip."

"Have you discussed the event with Carol? Tried to verify its authenticity?"

"No. I wanted to repeat a similar trip first."

"What did you see?"

David blushed. "Ah, I'd need Mother's permission before describing the scene to anyone."

"I'll wake her."

"No, let her sleep."

"In the morning, then."

"Okay. Are you curious due to my reluctance to discuss what I saw, or is your curiosity based on the potential scientific breakthrough?"

She grinned, exposing the endearing, tiny gap in her two front teeth. "Both. I assumed the scene you observed was naughty, which piqued my sexual curiously, but the possibility that your consciousness has actually slipped the bounds of time intrigues and excites my scientific mind."

Once again, David looked up at the stars, and his thoughts drifted back to his mother at the age of ten feverishly rubbing her puffy, hairless pussy, grunting nasty words and using saliva for lubrication instead of her natural juices. He'd watched her until she climaxed before the connection was severed. Purposefully taking the trip to check on her - something he did out of habit every day - he somehow slipped deep into her past, not her here and now. Almost as amazing, he'd lost his connection with her without his volition, an event he'd willfully controlled since age sixteen. Was his unique consciousness evolving again? He hoped so. Time tripping and its potential ramifications appealed to him.

"David," Denise said, her voice so soft he barely heard her.

Responding to the sound of his name, he turned his eyes from the heavens. Denise looked unsure of herself, almost vulnerable, which bemused David. The lovely, intelligent woman was the most self-assured person he knew.

"I came to you tonight hoping you'd be in your body and we could talk like this. I have a request."

Why did her voice quiver? She's nervous as well as vulnerable. Curiouser and Curiouser.

"I'll grant your request if I can."

"Don't be too hasty. It's a large favor. Huge!" She pursed her lips and closed her eyes. "I want a baby. Your baby." Please, please, she beseeched fate. Don't let him turn me down without a discussion.

Flabbergasted, David sat up but didn't speak. Her request shocked him but, at the same time, reminded him of one of life's realities he'd frequently tried to reject but failed with every attempt. Primal issues defied denial.

Sex. Death. Sex and death, he thought, life's overriding primal concerns. Life itself was primal. Eat or be eaten. To survive, man must kill other life for food. So, death grants life. But everyone, everything dies. Dust to dust. Life maintains itself by creating more life before it's eaten, so the ecstasy of sex must happen to maintain life. Sex and death.

Dammit, a concept of reality based solely on sex and death was... well, uncivilized, not unlike Denise's request. He studied her. Was she serious? Her eyes were still closed, but suddenly they snapped open and fixed on his.

"My sexual makeup precludes a loving, long-term relationship with a man, but a male is necessary if I want a child, and I do. Desperately. I want a baby. I want a child of my own, and I can think of no man but you that I'd... dammit! This is difficult."

"How do you see me in this... ah, project of yours? I mean, do you see me involved in the child's life, or... ?"

Thank you! At least, he's willing to talk about it. "I want a child, your child. I don't expect you to marry me, live with me, or even love me. I love you, David, but I'm not in love with you. I love you like the brother I never had. The love of my life will be a woman, not a man." She took a deep breath and continued, "I don't need an answer right now. Please, think about my request. If your answer is no, I'll never bring up the subject again, and I won't be upset with you. Oh, I'll be disappointed, very disappointed, but regardless, we can continue to be the dear, close friends we've become. Also, if you even considered my request, I knew you'd want to place some conditions on your involvement in... ah, my project. If I can live with your conditions, we'll proceed. If not..." She shrugged. "Let me just say I'll understand and hope you'll feel the same way."

"Have you discussed this with Mother?"

"No. I've discussed it with no one."

"When would you like my answer?"

"I could be fertile now. The midpoint in my cycle occurs day after tomorrow."

Sex and death. Maintaining life was a primal force in nearly every man, every woman, and the notion of a child, his child, excited him not only intellectually but also sexually. His flaccid penis unrolled and lengthened along his thigh, and its movement attracted Denise's attention.

With a sly, small smile, she said, "I can see the concept isn't completely distasteful to you."

"No, not at all. You're a beautiful woman, Denise. Still, won't sex with me be distasteful to you?"

Her lids lowered and shoulders drooped, presenting an uncharacteristic shyness. "You know I enjoy sex with you when you're a ghost, David, and you've given me great pleasure even while occupying your body. If you say no, I'll probably remain childless, because thinking about sex with a man other than you makes me shudder." As she gazed out over the dark, still waters of the lake, her shoulders shook, demonstrating her point. "I could adopt, but for me, raising a child I didn't conceive and carry to term wouldn't be the same."

David shuddered, too, because he was about to make her unhappy. "You live and work in New Mexico. I'm settled permanently in Phoenix. The distance between us makes being a father for the child difficult, if not impossible, and I refuse to act only as a sperm donor for this project of yours. I'm sorry, Denise. I must reluctantly and sadly deny your request."

Tears flushed her eyes and poised to overflow. She brushed them away with her fingers and said, "Would you reconsider if I moved to the Phoenix area?"

"Possibly."

"I've been offered a position with A.S.U. If you grant me the favor, I'll move to Phoenix. And I agree with you. A child needs a father." She rose to her feet and stepped to him, finally kneeling at his feet. She took both his hands in hers, placing them each side of her face. "I won't sugarcoat it, David. I want you to be the father of my child not only because sex with you isn't completely repugnant to me but also because I hope our child will demonstrate some of your unusual paranormal abilities."

"Thanks for being honest, Denise." He'd wondered if the latter motive was involved in her request. Now he knew, and knowing didn't surprise him.

She tentatively reached and took his half-hard shaft in her long, dainty fingers. With a shy smile she glanced up at him. "I've never touched your cock on purpose before."

"How does it feel?" Her talented fingers aroused him, creating a full erection.

"Hard and soft and warm and alive, not distasteful at all." She leaned forward and rasped her tongue over the crown. "No, not distasteful at all." Liar!

"Denise, I haven't decided..."