Chapter 2

The temperature was quite a bit beyond brisk at this altitude at this time of the year. It was downright freezing — quite literally. The teleportation device had informed Scott that the current air temperature was sixteen degrees Fahrenheit (metric measurements were the default for the machine, but Jim had long since instructed it to convert all such things to the archaic American system). Scott's cheeks were numb and rosy and with each breath he took a dense cloud of condensation streamed from his mouth and nose. Though it was mid-April, all around him was a thick blanket of winter snow that likely wouldn't melt until well into August, if even then. He was unconcerned with the snow or the cold however. He had on his heaviest winter coat, the insides lined with goose down. On his hands were a pair of rabbit fur gloves.

He was on the summit of a peak called Mount Fields in central Montana, right in the heart of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, 8600 feet above sea level. Mount Fields, though not a particularly high mountain, sat directly astride the continental divide, the last large peak before the Rockies sloped sharply downward to become the Great Plains. Scott sat on a rocky outcropping over a sheer cliff that dropped nearly 1500 feet, a place that ordinarily would have been inaccessible to even the most experienced and well-equipped climbers, a place that even a man rappelling from a helicopter would have been hard pressed to land safely upon. For Scott, with the assistance of the marvelous teleportation device his father had given him, it had been no more difficult than pushing a button.

He was facing east, towards the rising sun, which was now about five degrees above the horizon. There was not another human being around him for at least twenty square miles. The view was astonishing, one of the most beautiful he'd seen so far in a long night of traveling. The jagged mountains gave way before him to the gently rolling hills of the plains that stretched to a horizon exponentially further away than one could see at ground level. Some twenty to thirty miles in front of him he could just make out a faint, gray line. That was State Route 89, which led to Great Falls to the southeast and Glacier National Park to the northwest. It was the only man-made thing in view. He could see no telephone poles or electrical cables. No radio towers or cellular phone towers poked up into the sky. There was no litter here, no cigarette butts ground into the rocks, no empty beer cans or used condoms on the ground. There was no graffiti or vandalism. It was not unrealistic for Scott to suspect that he may be the first human being in the history of time to visit this particular spot, and, if not the first, the number would certainly be in single digits. This was what the device was all about. This was what his father had meant when he told him to explore.

He had been traveling all night long, teleporting from place to place all over the globe with the fascination of a child playing with a new toy. His father had shown him the basic functions of the device and the menu, had programmed in Scott's own living room as the home setting, and had then sent him on his way to explore whatever he saw fit to explore. And explore he had. Most of his night had been spent in the eastern hemisphere since that was where the daylight was. He had teleported to Egypt and visited several pyramids, had gazed at the Suez Canal, had sat atop the highest skyscraper in Cairo and stared out at the ancient city. He had gone to Israel and visited the Dead Sea, had waded in its salty waters. He had gone to New Zealand, to Bali, to Java and had stood atop their highest peaks. He had visited isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean, standing on real estate no more than a few hundred yards across, hundreds, if not thousands of miles from any inhabited places, from any people.

He had seen the sunrise seven times now, always from isolated, scenic vistas, teleporting steadily westward hour by hour. He had watched it from the Baltic seacoast, from a cliff overlooking the English Channel, from an iceberg in the North Atlantic, from a volcanic crest in Iceland, from an island lookout off the coast of Maine, from the top of the John Hancock building in Chicago, and now, from Mount Fields in Montana. In the next hour he planned to teleport to the most isolated western shoreline of the Great Salt Lake and take it in again. From there, he would go to the top of the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. After all, the world was his.

He was not the least bit tired, despite having been awake for the better part of twenty-six hours now. Nor was he in any way sore, despite having been in cramped and chilly places all night, despite having turned his ankle quite painfully atop one of the pyramids of Egypt. The machine kept him fully rested and fully in good repair, with each trip refreshing him completely and fixing any damage, no matter how slight, that might have been done to his body. Arm scrapes, skinned knees, bruised skin, even sprained ankles ceased to exist the moment he teleported to the next destination. Even damage and staining to his clothing was repaired. A rip in his jeans from catching them on an antenna guide wire on the John Hancock Building, a mud stain on his jacket from the Icelandic volcano, seagull droppings from the Maine island, all had disappeared without a trace, leaving him with clothing that was as good as brand new.

One thing the machine did not take care of, however, was hunger, and Scott was definitely experiencing that now. He had eaten nothing since the meal service on his Atlanta to San Francisco flight the previous day. As he watched the sun rise higher and higher into the sky over the plains, his stomach growled with increasing insistence.

"I hear you," he said good naturedly after a particularly fierce growl. He unclipped the teleporter from his belt and pondered it. Where should he get something to eat? He had an entire world to choose from. A hot dog from a New York street vender? Fish and chips from a London shop? Bratwurst and beer from a Berlin eatery? Authentic Hungarian goulash from Budapest? Though all of these ideas sounded appealing, he elected to simply return home instead. He had no identification or currency in his possession at the moment, let alone Pounds or Euros, and the insistence in his stomach was enough to convince him that meeting other people, exchanging currency, and paying for goods in foreign places was not something he was ready to undertake prior to feeding himself. He took one last long look at the vista before him and then pushed the "home" button on the teleporter.

Instantaneously he found himself sitting on his couch in the darkened living room. He took a few breaths of the stale, processed air that was spit out by his air conditioning system and then reached over and turned on the lamp. The living room was empty and quiet. He stood up and walked upstairs, looking into the guest bedroom. His father was in the bed, curled up under the sheets, his breathing deep and regular. When he had sent Scott on his way Jim had told him he had been up for nearly a week straight and was looking forward to getting some actual sleep. Well, it looked like he was getting it all right.

Scott went back downstairs and opened up the refrigerator, checking to see what was there. After a few moments consideration he pulled out a carton of eggs and some cheese. He then went to the pantry and pulled out a can of chili. He fired up the stove and went about the process of constructing an omelet.

When his omelet was done, he put it on a plate and carried it over to the kitchen table. As he started to eat he pondered the device, which he set down next to him. Accessing the menu he brought the globe up and began to zoom in on the Atlanta, Georgia region of the United States. As his father had said, the device was a voyeur's dream, the ultimate Peeping Tom machine. It was time to play around with that particular function a bit. Not so much to spy on people, he told himself, but just to fine tune his zooming skills. He picked Atlanta because it was daylight there, almost 8:30 AM in fact, and because he had a fairly decent working knowledge of that particular city since he spent the night there ten times a month.

Utilizing his father's advice, he zoomed in first on the Callahan Suites Hotel, which was where the airline always put him up on his overnighters. It was a thirty story building on Camp Creek Parkway, five miles from the airport and just a few blocks from the Georgia International Convention Center. Since his zoom brought him in over the top of the building, he entered the upper floors first. His first room view was of the five-star restaurant that looked out over the city. The room was completely deserted this time of the day, all of the chairs stacked neatly atop the tables, all of the blinds shut, the only illumination from the emergency lights in the corners.

Using the virtual controls on the menu, he dropped down a floor, to the 29^th, and found himself in the middle of a luxurious penthouse suite. It too was empty, the beds neatly made, the hot tub idle, the lights all turned out, the blinds drawn. Undaunted, he moved to left, passing through furniture like a ghost until he came to the far wall. He passed through this obstacle as well and was now in the adjoining suite. This one, it turned out, was indeed occupied but also quite uninteresting. The occupant was an elderly man who had to be at least eighty. He sat in an electric wheelchair listlessly eating oatmeal from a tray before him. The only other person in the room was an overweight Hispanic woman in her fifties, obviously a nurse of some sort assigned to take care of him.

"Boring," Scott mumbled. Nevertheless, he paused for a moment, his hands going to the tabs on the side of the menu. One of them was marked SOUND OPTIONS. He pushed it and activated the sound, intending to calibrate it in this room so it would be at optimum level for further exploration. He adjusted the volume control to about mid range, until he was able to clearly hear the slurping of the oatmeal and the soft humming of the nurse as she removed clothing from the closet and laid it out on the bed.

"Maria!" the old man suddenly barked, his accent thick and southern. "I shit myself again! Come and change my goddamn diaper so I can finish this slop."

"Yes, sir," Maria sighed, her tone that of a woman resigned to her lot in life. She began to head toward him.

"I think that's enough calibration," Scott said to himself, quickly locking in the sound settings and then putting his finger back on the movement controls. Before Maria even reached her target, Scott moved downward, passing through the floor.

He found himself in another penthouse suite, this one occupied by an elderly couple in their seventies who were pondering the room service menu on the television screen and trying to decide what to order. He decided to move downward again. This brought him to the mere luxury suites, which were a few steps below the penthouse stature. Here he found the first hint of what he was looking for. A balding, middle-aged man was laying on the bed, naked, his small penis in his hand and being jacked enthusiastically while he watched a pay porno movie on the television set.

Scott turned quickly away from this scene, a mild feeling of disgust pervading him, and moved next door, where he found something even less appetizing going on. It was another man in his sixties and he too was naked and holding his penis in his hand, only he was not watching the television. This gentleman had a condom on and was smearing lubricating jelly all over it in preparation for what was to come. In the hands and knees position on the bed before him, naked and holding his butt cheeks open, was a young, well-built man no older than twenty, possibly much younger.

"Come on, you old fuck," the young man said over his shoulder, a come-hither look on his face. "You paid for this nice, juicy ass. Now stick that cock in there and get your money's worth."

"Jesus Christ," Scott said. He had nothing against homosexuals — after all, his sister was one — but he had absolutely no desire to see two men go at it, particularly not when one of the men was old enough to be his father. He quickly dropped through the floor, going lower in the hotel.

This floor was filled with ordinary suites, the level above the standard room that he was put up in on his overnighters. Each consisted of a large sitting room surrounding the bed compartment and a sunken Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom. All of these rooms were occupied and he passed from one to one slowly, seeing what there was to see. In the first two, middle-aged couples, one Caucasian, one African-American, were eating breakfast from room service. In the third, there was a woman showering but she was well into her sixties and not the least bit attractive. In the fourth he finally found something worth looking at. An attractive woman in her twenties stood before the bathroom mirror combing out her long, obviously bleach-blond hair. She was dressed in a skimpy bra that did justice to her store-bought breasts and an even skimpier thong.

"Nice," Scott whispered, manipulating the view so he could see her from all angles. It was hard to believe that this scene was actually happening in a hotel room on the other side of the country and that he was actually seeing it happen, not just as a video clip but in three-dimensional reality.

A man emerged from the shower stall, a naked, slightly overweight, balding man in his late forties. He walked over to the woman and kissed the back of her shoulder blades gently. She cooed a little but pulled away when he tried to put his arms around her from behind.

"Not while I'm getting dressed, you horny old fuck," she said affectionately. "I don't want to have to take a shower again."

"Spoilsport," he told her, giving a gentle squeeze of her left butt cheek.

"I'm sure you'll have lots of uh... dictation for me after the convention today, won't you?" she asked slyly, putting a definite emphasis on dictation.

"Yes, I do like to keep my secretary occupied," he replied with a chuckle.

Scott continued to watch for a few minutes as they bantered with each other, tossing thinly veiled innuendo back and forth. When the woman began to put her clothing on, thus covering up what he was most interested in, he left, passing through the wall and into the next suite.

He traveled from room to room, examining each scene he found before, gradually working his way down to the normal rooms that only had a bed and a bathroom. In most there was nothing of consequence going on — usually just a couple eating breakfast or perusing the television before embarking upon their day. In a few, however, he paused long enough to admire a female form taking a shower, or getting dressed. He saw a few breasts and a few vaginal regions uncovered, just enough of a glimpse to maintain his interest between bites of his omelet. It was down on the twentieth floor that he hit pay dirt again.

The slapping sound of intercourse in action was the first thing to greet his ears. He paused a moment in confusion, since the bed was unoccupied, the covers thrown to the side. He manipulated the view, turning in a circle until he discovered the source of the sound. A naked woman in her thirties, slightly overweight but by no means unattractive, was spread eagle against the window, which overlooked downtown Atlanta in the distance. Her legs were spread widely and she was grunting happily as an older man in his forties thrust in and out of her from behind while squeezing her large breasts with his fingers. Both were sweaty and obviously quite turned on.

"Fuck me harder," she panted, her face pushed against the window. "Rape my pussy, you fucking asshole!"

"Yeah, bitch," he said enthusiastically, slamming harder and harder into her.

This one was enough to cause an erection to spring in his pants. He was actually watching people have sex, watching them perform the most intimate of acts in what they thought was the privacy of their hotel room, and they had no idea, not the slightest inkling, that he was watching them. He abandoned his omelet — which had gone quite cold anyway — and manipulated the controls, bring the view in closer and changing the angle. The detail of the tryst increased, allowing his to see the man's erect cock sliding in and out of her swollen vagina, to see juices of arousal dripping down her legs. He looked upward and took in her heaving breasts, at the erect nipples between the roughly squeezing fingertips of her companion.

"Your husband never fucks you like this, does he?" the man grunted, giving an extra-hard thrust that caused the window to rattle in its frame.

"No..." she panted, seemingly aroused when the illicitness of the encounter was brought to her attention. "Never... neverrrrrrrr!"

"Nope," the man agreed. "If he would've taken care of business at home, you wouldn't be whoring yourself out in my fuckin hotel room, would you, slut?"

"No," she moaned out. "I... he... ohhhhh..."

She came, her pussy going into spasm around his cock. He followed shortly after, squeezing her tightly and hammering into her hard enough to force her head against the window.

Scott was now painfully erect and quite aroused. He watched the two lovers as they slowly uncoupled from each other and walked back to the center of the room. When he finally looked away from them he noticed his father standing in the doorway to the kitchen, an amused grin on his face.

"I see you're putting the device to good use," Jim said.

Scott found himself blushing in shame, as if he'd been caught masturbating. His erection wilted as if it had been burned. He quickly got rid of the menu and the hotel room scene, leaving himself with just the device and his cold omelet. "I was just... uh... looking around at things and happened across that," he said, rather lamely he knew.

"You don't have to explain anything to me, Scotty," Jim said, coming over and grabbing a seat. "Like I told you last night, nothing really matters anyway. I trust you've had a good night of traveling?"

Scott put his embarrassment behind him the best he could and told his father tales of the places he'd been and the things he'd seen. Jim listened attentively while helping himself to a glass of orange juice and then eating the remains of Scott's omelet.

"So it sounds like you have the basic concepts of traveling in linear mode down," Jim said when he finally wound down from his stories. "You know how to zoom and isolate, how to save your locations, how to access most of the functions on the linear menu, and, most importantly, how to get home when you need to or want to."

"I think so," Scott agreed. "I didn't run into any problems. And when there was something on the menu I didn't understand, I was usually able to figure it out with a little probing."

"As I figured you would," Jim said, putting the last bite of omelet in his mouth. "Now how about we go over some of the more advanced features of the device? I think you're ready to learn about those now."

"The advanced features?"

"Hyper-light mode," he said. "That's when the true value of the machine will be evident to you. Linear mode is nothing but a plaything, a transportation and snooping device if you will. Hyper-light mode is what true traveling is all about, what the device is really intended for."

"What exactly does hyper-light mode do, Dad? Is it like... does it take you to other planets or something?" He wasn't really sure he wanted to visit an alien world just yet. There was plenty to look at and do on this one.

"Well, not really," Jim said cryptically. "The device, in either mode, is confined to the five light second range around Earth. Perhaps there were more advanced models further in the future or perhaps not. Either way, I think it will be easier to show you what hyper-light mode does instead of explaining it to you straight out. Are you ready to do some serious traveling with me?"

"Well... uh... sure, but where are we going to go?"

"It's time I showed you my new home."

"We're going to Maui?" Scott asked. "But its only 4:30 in the morning there. It'll still be dark."

Jim chuckled. "Don't worry too much about dark and light right now," he said. He reached over and picked up the device. He called up the menu and the globe appeared before him. He accessed the hyper-light menu with the touch of a finger and the tabs on the side disappeared and were replaced by new ones, these smaller and greater in number. The angle was such that Scott couldn't read any of them. Jim pushed a few tabs, changing the menu with each push and then seemed to have set it for whatever he was trying to set it to do. He closed out the menu. "Okay," he said. "I think we're ready to go." He held out his hand.

"Am I dressed okay?" Scott asked him. "Maybe I should get my jacket first."

"I think it will be quite warm enough there," Jim assured him. "Trust me, my boy. Have I led you astray yet?"

"No, I guess not." He held out his hand.

Jim took it and then pushed the transmit button on the side of the machine. The kitchen and the smell of cooking vanished instantly as they were teleported to a new place.

They reappeared inside of a house in what seemed to be a living room. It was smaller than Scott was expecting, not tiny or cramped, but certainly not as large as what you'd expect a multi-millionaire's living room to be. It looked almost simple, in fact. Maybe three hundred square feet and roughly rectangular in shape. An oak entertainment center stood against one wall, supporting a large-screen television and a complete audio system. An expensive looking couch and recliner sat atop wall-to-wall Berber carpeting. A large picture window faced out toward the ocean. The window was open and a gentle sea breeze was blowing in. It was bright daylight outside.

"Here we are," Jim said, letting go of his son's hand. "Home sweet home."

"It's uh... very nice, Dad," Scott said, looking around. He could see two hallways leading off from the living room and an entryway that led to the kitchen. Music could be heard drifting out of the kitchen. Scott recognized the tune as "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots.

"Bielke must be in the kitchen," Jim said. "She's developed a taste for that godawful heavy metal music. This, despite all my attempts to introduce real music to her."

"Nothing wrong with STP," Scott said in Bielke's defense. He had actually seen them live once and thought they rocked.

Jim gave him a sour look and shook his head. "Excuse me for a moment," he said. "I'll just let her know we're here so she can come out and say hello."

"Right," Scott said.

Jim disappeared into the kitchen. While he was gone, Scott took a closer look around, checking out the details of the living room. Unsurprisingly, an elaborate marijuana bong, sculpted out of granite, sat atop the living room table and served as the centerpiece to the room. On end tables on either side of the couch were matching nautical themed lamps. A look in the corners of the room revealed surround sound speakers recessed in the walls. There were no air conditioning or heating vents visible, which Scott thought a bit strange until he considered that in Maui, where the temperature was almost always between sixty-five and eighty-five degrees all year around at any hour, an environmental comfort system probably wasn't really necessary. But still... you would've thought he'd put one in anyway, just for those rare occasions when the temperature did fall outside the normal range.

Still pondering this, Scott walked over to the window to take in the view. They were up on a hill overlooking a small, natural bay. As he looked down he saw the hillside was covered in lush green plant life. There were a few dirt paths meandering back and forth, working their way down to a sandy beach. About a hundred yards offshore, a motor yacht was anchored. It was maybe a fifty footer, complete with radar mast. It looked odd somehow, sitting out there by itself. In fact, as Scott looked from the hillside to the ocean to the beach and then back again, it occurred to him that the entire scene looked disturbingly odd in some way he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Was it because there were no other structures visible on what had to be a prime chunk of Maui real estate? There were no hotels or beach cottages or even condos anywhere in sight. Nor were there any power lines or telephone poles or radio antennas or power transformers. There were no roads in view either, Scott realized. Just those dirt paths. And then there was the beach. It was a pristine stretch of Hawaiian beach on a beautiful Hawaiian day and there wasn't a single person down there sunbathing or swimming or surfing. There were no other boats in the water either — no sailboats or catamarans or personal water craft.

And why is it daylight here? Scott wondered a little uneasily. It should be four-thirty in the goddamn morning, shouldn't it? The way the sun is, it has to be at least noon.

The sound of footsteps from behind him startled him out of his uneasy musings. He turned away from the window just as his father and his young wife emerged from the kitchen. Bielke was in her mid-twenties. She was a fair-haired blonde, her face plain but not unpleasant to look at, with classic Slavic features. Her body was trim and well-formed, curvy in all the right places. She was wearing a cropped cotton shirt and a pair of loose fitting cotton shorts. Her midriff was smooth and unlined, with no piercings in her naval like most girls her age. Her breasts were full and, based on the way they jiggled when she moved, currently unencumbered by a bra. Scott felt a wave of physical attraction sweep over him as he saw her and then felt ashamed of himself for lusting after what was technically his step-mother.

"Scotty," Bielke said in a heavily accented (and sexy) Russian accent. She was smiling broadly. "It's good to see you again. Welcome to our home."

"Thank you, Bielke," Scott replied. He then flushed as she stepped forward and put her arms around him, giving him a hug. Those jiggling breasts pushed into his chest and her soft lips connected with his cheek.

She disengaged from the embrace and looked him up and down for a moment. "You look good," she told him. "You enjoyed side-effects of teleport machine, no?"

"I haven't felt this good in years," Scott agreed. "You look good as well. Hawaii seems to agree with you."

"It is very beautiful here," she said. "Nothing like Russia. Always warm. People very friendly."

"And your English has improved as well," Scott told her. This was true. The first time he'd met Bielke, she had only been able to speak a few phrases of English. The last time, she'd picked up enough to be able to converse but it had been a chore. Now she was able to speak freely and express thoughts.

"Thank you," Bielke said. "Language program for computer that Jim give me help very much."

"It's how I learned to speak Russian," Jim said.

This too was something Scott knew. Jim was reasonably fluent in six different languages that Scott knew of: English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese. All of them he claimed to have learned with expensive language software and, of course, traveling to the countries where the language was spoken.

"I'm getting good at local Hawaiian language now too," Bielke said. "It very difficult for me since there no computer program for it."

"Why do you need to know the local Hawaiian language?" Scott asked. "Don't they all speak English?"

"They're getting there," Jim said. "They're getting there."

"Huh?" Scott asked.

"Never mind that for right now," Jim said dismissively. "Can I show you around the house?"

"Sure," Scott agreed. "I'm dying to see your dream home."

He was given a tour, Jim and Bielke taking turns describing certain features. It was not at all like what Scott was expecting. The house was small, even tiny by certain standards, and very simplistic. There were two bedrooms — one a master suite that contained a bathroom and a shower, the other a simple twelve by twelve with a queen sized bed. There was a kitchen that had only the most basic appliances in it — an oven, a stove, a microwave, and a small refrigerator. In all, the entire house consisted of maybe thirteen hundred square feet.

"It's not quite as big as I imagined," Scott admitted when the tour was over and they asked him what he thought.

"Well, considering that the two of us built it ourselves, I think it's a goddamn mansion," Jim said lightly.

"You two built it yourselves?" Scott asked, surprised. "Why did you do that?"

"Well there are various reasons, some of which I'll explain in minute," Jim told him. "But the most compelling, I think, is that the construction of this house was a labor of love. We put everything together with our own hands. When you do that, I think you appreciate your home a little more than if some contractor or, God forbid, a real estate developer builds it for you."

"I suppose you do have a point there," Scott had to admit.