Chapter 3

Kathy woke slowly from a sound sleep, feeling loved and secure. Opening her eyes, she realized why. Matt was lying by her side, gently stroking her pubic fur. "That feels so nice, Matt, what a wonderful way to wake up!"

"You feeling okay? You did bleed a bit last night, when I first entered you."

"I feel fine. It was just a prick. Ha, pun intended! You okay? I'm sorry I scared you last night, when I screamed."

"Dearest Katherine, you are so beautiful. I'll know not to worry next time."

"I had no idea having sex could be this intense. I had no idea. Amanda my senior roommate at Holyoke once told me she could feel her uterus tenting during a really intense orgasm. I had no idea what she meant... In all the positions we tried last night, doggie was one of my favorites. I love being in submissive positions with you! And I'm amazed I love the anal stimulation so much. At the end, when you were doggie thrusting me and then I felt your thumb starting to caress my rectum, I just lost it. I could feel my uterus tent, dropping the cervix to slide along your penis. The orgasm was incredible! I'm so glad we're having our honeymoon in this tesseract, it'd be embarrassing to scream like that if other people could hear me..."

"It is our honeymoon, isn't it? I wonder how long it will last?"

"Matthew, it might last a long time... When I was in the Manufacturing room last night, I wasn't just searching for condoms, I was exploring. Another name for that room might be the Medical bay. There are selections for growing new limbs, repairing spinal and neural damage, even something listed under medical called quantum cleansing, with a recommended minimum annual frequency. I think it purges toxins and repairs and rejuvenates DNA at the atomic level. With this level of technology, our life-spans might be quite open ended..."

"My gosh. This is a lot to think about..."

"Yeah... Here, let me go south to Manufacturing, then up to Kitchen. I can prepare you something really unique for breakfast!"

After breakfast, Matt and Kathy went north to the Poolroom to try out the chess games. Kathy trounced Matt at 2-D. Matt won the 3-D game, but only because of an opening blunder by Kathy. Matt could see Kathy's play improving during the game, taking a hopeless position and almost turning it into a draw. Kathy then won the 4-D game. After the games, Matt hiked over two cubes to the other end of the tesseract to work out in the Gym, while Kathy wandered around. After about an hour's workout, Matt was just thinking of heading south to the Jacuzzi, when Kathy appeared from the top of the spiral staircase.

"Matt, can you come up and join me in the Entrance hall? There's something new here."

Matt climbed up to the Entrance hall. He and Kathy both stared for a moment, then Matt said, "Why don't we fly up and take a closer look?" They donned their wings, and after shutting off the room's gravity, flew up to a sphere that was floating near one of the top corners of the room.

"A very smooth surface, Matt. I can't budge it at all, though it is hard to push against it with just wing power. But it was floating even with the gravity on. There's no visible support for it... This sphere wasn't here after breakfast. I went through here from the Kitchen to the Jacuzzi then, and it wasn't here. It must have showed up within the last hour or two... What do you think, about 4 feet in diameter?"

"Gratitude. Gratitude and appreciation," said the sphere, before Matt could reply.

Kathy and Matt were silent for several moments. "Are you the entity that brought us here?" asked Matt at last.

"Logically but not physically. It would be the death of your spacetime for me to enter directly. The adversary. Watch the movie. Think of this sphere as a phone."

"What movie? Will you someday return us to Earth?" asked Kathy quietly.

"In the Living room player now. Temporal if desired, but not spatial only. Spatial decision already transferred, 34,194 increments completed, the minimum required. Spatial decision already transferred, gravitational entanglement already merged with electromagnetic entanglement. Genetically encoded in you for progeny propagation also. Both needed at first, then either after first. But, you need to practice!"

"What?" asked Matt. "What are you talking about? Are you a machine or alive? Do you think like us? Like humans? Or are your thoughts computations? How old are you, anyway?"

"Freedom of choice already granted, but you need to practice. Neither and both. Somewhat. No. No again, but certainly incomputable for all three. But you need to practice! From before your Earth was formed, and your sun grew hot. I will return shortly. Again, you need to practice, gravity with electromagnetism! Again, gratitude and appreciation!"

The sphere shrank to nothing. Kathy and Matt hovered for a few minutes in silence, trying to absorb what had just happened.

"Come, Matt. Let's head south to the Living room and discuss this."

"What if it comes back? It said it would be back shortly..."

"Yeah... But you asked it how old it was, and I think its answer was from before the sun grew hot. What does shortly mean for a creature who lives on that timescale?"

Kathy and Matt put away their wings and then exited through the south door to the Living room. They sat down on a couch together and just remained quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. After a while, Matt got up and went to the multimedia center. "There's an unlabeled DVD here, Kathy. Let's see what's on it..."

For the first 15 minutes, there were panoramic videos of galaxy formations, gaseous hydrogen collapsing to stars, stars organizing into great galactic arms. While watching a particularly beautiful galaxy rotate in its majestic spin, something suddenly happened. There appeared black splotches in the galaxy, small at first, but growing rapidly, pulling the stars into them. On a timescale much faster than the galactic rotation, the galaxy collapsed to blackness, the view switching to schematic, designations for black masses within the galaxy coming together, symbols for other collapsed galaxies coming together, symbols for collapsed galactic clusters and super-clusters coming together. The series finally ended with a simple symbol in the center of the screen. Then the whole series repeated with the view of another universe's life and death.

"What does in mean, Matt? Is it a description of how the universe evolves?"

"I don't think so. The blackness seems to hit like a cancer. Remember the galactic rotations? I think our galaxy rotates completely every 26 million years. Once those black splotches hit, the galaxy is gone in much less than one rotation time. Maybe less than a million years. Galaxies don't die that fast."

"My gosh, Matt! The sphere talked about the death of our spacetime! Something about an adversary... The black ink in the escalators! Does it need our help to battle something that can destroy our universe? What can we possibly do to stop something like that?"