Chapter 31:You had sex over a telephone line

“’Kay,” she heard, and the line went dead. She returned her own receiver to its cradle and headed toward the bathroom. After stumbling twice she kicked off her heels and went the rest of the way in only her stockings. By the time she made it she was well aware of how wet she had got during her phone call.

She started the shower running and pulled off her left stocking. “Another new pair in the morning,” she griped, and then something about the wetness soaked into the patterned stocking top caught her eye. She looked more closely, frowned, and then reached between her legs. “Th-that’s not possible,” she said after a few seconds of disbelief.

“Michael? Michael, wake up.” The voice was unfamiliar. Michael’s eyes flickered open to see an olive-brown face looking down at him. Whoever she was, she was stunningly attractive. Large, brown eyes with an exotic shape he could not quite put his finger on. Firm cheekbones framing the kind of features a fashion model would kill for. Full, red lips, slightly parted now, with perfect teeth just visible. Her hair was very long and blacker than anything Michael had seen in his life before.

“Who… who are you?” he stammered.

“My name is Cleopatra. Julia Calvin asked me to pay you a little visit.”

“C-Cleopatra?”

“Well, obviously not the Cleopatra. No, she lived several generations after me and had no talent what so ever. Still, you seduce an emperor and everyone thinks you’re fabulous.”

“A-after you? She lived after you?”

“Yes, dear boy, I’ve been dead for thousands of years.” She smiled at him as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Michael sat up, realising that he was no longer in his bed. The room was a perfect example (as far as Michael knew) of an Egyptian queen’s bed chamber. The walls were painted in bright colours. The bed was a four-poster of ancient design, and huge, cushions scattered everywhere. There was a large window, without glass, through which Michael could see a city of some kind.

Cleopatra saw him looking. “That’s Alexandria, or my memory of it. It’s not real of course; I maintain this whole dreamscape just so I don’t feel homesick. You’d think the first thousand years would rid you of that, but Egypt was so much part of my family’s blood.” She shrugged.

“So, when you died, you were able to keep your… spirit going here in the dream world?”

“Well done, yes. It’s not that difficult if you have the will power; most people don’t.” Michael was now painfully aware that this very attractive, very exotic woman was also naked from the waist up. Her white skirt fell down to her ankles, her headdress was incredibly ornate, and she was wearing a beautiful pectoral of gold and lapis lazuli, but her breasts were bare, the areolas and nipples reddened with makeup. “Julia came to me because of something you did tonight.”

“Um, we just talked.” Quite why he was embarrassed to mention the sex in front of this woman, Michael did not know, but embarrassed he was.

“You had sex over a telephone line,” Cleopatra said bluntly. “More than that, you came inside her.”

“I had better control this time,” Michael said, a little smugly. “Last night I made a bit of a mess of myself, but I managed to stop myself this time.”

“No, you didn’t hear me right. You did not stop yourself, you came inside Julia. You managed to… I don’t believe I’m saying this. You managed to translocate your semen into Julia.”

“Trans-what?” Michael was a little confused.

“Translocate; move from one place to another without crossing the intervening space.”

“Sort of like the transporters in Star Trek?”

“Michael, I have never seen a TV set and, while I have heard of Star Trek, I have no idea what the ‘transporters’ do in it. Essentially, in a state of orgasmic bliss, you still had enough will power available to transport matter a considerable distance into an internal cavity of another human without causing damage to either of you. Julia believes that to be impossible, which is why she came to me.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think that you are a young man with a lot of talent. What you did is not impossible, but it does require a level of will and a kind of belief that is becoming increasingly lacking in the modern world.” She grinned. “You appear to be something of a throwback. You would have fitted in well in my time; sorcery was quite common in those days.”

“S-sorcery? Like Merlin or, um, Harry Potter?”

“Harry who?” She shook her head. “Certainly like Merlin, or Solomon. If you are taught well your power could be considerable. I can help there, but you really need to practice in the real world. Magic is very easy here, where reality can be easily manipulated.” She waved a hand at the scenery and the room changed from Egyptian bedroom to Medieval torture chamber, complete with the rack that Michael was now lying on. Her own clothes transformed into a leather dominatrix set as he watched, and he was now wearing a small pair of leather shorts. She looked back towards him and they were back in the bedroom overlooking Alexandria. “See? You can’t change the real world just like that.”