That Dratted Affair with the Dream Engine
Christine Danse
Published by Christine Danse at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Christine Danse
Cover design by Christine Danse, using Artweaver and Picnik.com
Photograph of man by Celso Pinto, http://www.sxc.hu/photo/271583
Photograph of difference engine by Matthijs van Heerikhuize, http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1185634
Photographs used under this image license agreement: http://www.sxc.hu/help/7_2
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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"I've a surprise for you," said Annette, and I should have known I was in for trouble when she spoke those words.
Still, I let her take me by the hand and lead me through London's streets by night. We went on foot until Borough Road, where she hailed a hansom cab. I did not hear her muttered instructions to the driver. Only when we had passed the Thames did I realize that she was leading us toward the East End. "Love," I said, levelly. "I don't believe this is a very good idea." Long had I known that my wife could not be reasoned with. All I could do was attempt to dissuade her, though it was a fool's errand. Her stubbornness put a mule's to shame.
She patted my knee reassuringly. "Relax, dear. I know exactly where we are going, and we'll be fine. Promise." She gave me her winning smile and gently touched her hand to my cheek. My response to her died on my lips, and I settled back into the cab's seat with a resigned sigh.
Tight-lipped, I watched the buildings grow shabby and forlorn. All manner of shady figures populated the streets and bar fronts of the East End: drunks, beggars, and unfortunate women who shuffled on the street corners like molting crows. Annette patted my knee again, and I sullenly broke off my stare.
At last, we rolled to a stop on a quieter street. The glow of the streetlamps here was murky and diffuse, dulled by the haze of nearby industry. "Here we are," she said, disembarking and paying the driver. She began to walk toward a sooty brick wall. Only on second take did I see the cramped doorway recessed in the shadows there, mounted on a narrow flight of steps.
"Come on, then, darling," she said as I hesitated on the sidewalk. "It's really all right."
"Is this necessary?" I asked. "Your last 'surprise' nearly got me fired from the force."
She laughed. It was a sound like bells. "Oh, don't worry," she said. "We will be very much still this time, and I won't be bound inside of a freight car, and no steamdroids with batons will be involved." She seemed to think for a moment, then added, "Actually, no steamdroids will be involved at all." With a smile, she held her hand out to me, delicate fingers spread in an inviting gesture.
Despite myself, the memory sent a flush of blood over my cheeks and straight down to my loins. My pants grew uncomfortably tight. Reflexively, I ducked my head, cleared my throat roughly, and threw a quick glance up and down the sidewalk. We were alone. Annette stood quietly, her smile bright, her hand unwavering. I was compelled to take it and to follow her through the shadowed doorway.
She led me into a cramped foyer, straight up a treacherous flight of stairs, and down a dark hallway papered with peeling wallpaper. I had the uncomfortable feeling of trespassing, although she walked on with all the ease of a woman in her own home. I received the impression that she had been here before, and I was not comfortable with the idea. No, I was not comfortable with it at all. I began to wonder about all the unwholesome places she had been without me ever knowing. This could not be the first.
There was one open doorway along the hall, and it was through this that Annette led me. The room was a poorly lit parlor that smelled of grease and ozone. Sheets had been draped over the furniture, and almost every available surface was covered with a thick coat of dust. The place had the feeling of a forgotten attic.
"Good evening," said a voice.
I started and turned to find a gaunt gentleman regarding us through a pair of slender spectacles. The white shirt and checkered vest that clothed his person hung upon him ungracefully, as if upon a scarecrow. Though his limbs were long like an adolescent's, his balding head and lined mouth lent him the impression of middle-aged solemnity, an almost shocking contrast. His gaze alighted on me for the briefest of appraisals, then—as if finding me immediately unworthy of attention—settled upon my wife. I bristled.
"Mr. Foster," said Annette, with familiarity. "How do you do?"
The man nodded his head. The bespectacled gaze flicked to me again, and he said, "Very well. Is this your husband?"
"Yes," said Annette, drawing me to her side with a beckoning gesture. I stepped forward readily and placed a possessive hand around her waist, my gaze fixed sternly on this gentleman who presumed to be familiar with my wife. "Jeremy, this is Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster, this is my husband, Jeremy." She gave my waist a little squeeze, and I sensed the slight tease in her gesture, as if she sensed my thoughts.
He nodded again and repeated, "Very well." With a wave of his hand, he directed us toward the back wall of the parlor. "If you would please." As we stepped in that direction, he asked, "Sir, have you experienced dream-watching before?"
I was taken aback by the strange and unexpected question. In my pause, Annette replied, "No. This is his first time." She said this with a smile and leaned her head cutely against my chest. I felt a surge of anger and indignation welling up in me as I felt her dragging me unwittingly into an unknown and unsavory experience.
Mr. Foster said, "I see."
We came to stand before a large machine that stood against the wall, perhaps the only static object in the room that was not filmed with dust. With a jolt of surprise and recognition, I realized that it was—
"An analytical engine," I said, then blurted, "But it looks positively occult."
Indeed, "occult" was the only word I could find to describe the thing. It had the tall, narrow, rectangular shape of the engines used at Scotland Yard. However, half of its tarnished, vertical computing mills had been replaced with narrow glass columns of green, glowing gas, which roiled about in a stormy state of flux.
"You could say that," said Mr. Foster, with a sneer. "However, although it borrows heavily from Babbage's design, it relies primarily on alchemical principles and hermetic technology—what some may call occult, for lack of understanding."
I perceived his insult, and I did not appreciate it. However, before I could gather myself to reply, Annette added, "It's a dream engine, Jeremy. It allows you to experience the dreams of another person. It records them. Isn't that grand? Mr. Foster invented it."
I regarded the engine skeptically. "Annette, I really don't think—"
"Oh, Jeremy. Just one try. We're already here, and I have a surprise set up for you."
"This is not surprise enough?" I asked, incredulous.
"Posh! This isn't the surprise, silly! Come, sit down. I promise you'll be all right, darling!" She stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on my lips, then steered me into one of the thread-worn chairs that flanked the engine. I went with a frown. A wrong feeling had settled into the pit of my stomach, but Annette stood just in front of me, her knees pressed against mine, her hands holding mine, leaning over me with a warm and reassuring smile. "It won't hurt you, I promise. Mr. Foster just needs to put a thing on your head. Just a bit of gel and three little pads. It's cold at first, but don't pay it any mind." She kissed me on the fo
rehead, and smiled, and released me.
I watched her back away, then turned my wary gaze to the gaunt Mr. Foster, who sorted out a tangle of wires at a small table in front of the engine. I had just begun to relax into the chair when he dipped two fingers into a jar and scooped out a quivering glob of gel.
As the man approached me with that greenish mound of jelly, I opened my mouth to protest, but at that moment, Annette sweetly said, "I love you." I deflated. I grimaced, and then the repulsive slime was being smeared across my forehead. This was followed by the placement of three small, flat pads. When I opened my eyes, wires trailed from my forehead from those pads, and Annette had seated herself in the chair on the other side of the machine. As I watched, she underwent an identical treatment. Gel, pads, wires. Catching my gaze, she grinned at me and winked.
"Mr. Foster. The one I prepared, if you would please," she said to our skeletal host.
"But of course," he said, and removed a rather ordinary-looking punchcard from a small box. He fed this into the engine, and—with a pull of a lever—the machine steamed to life.
Immediately, my forehead began to tingle under the coat of gel, and my stomach lurched as sudden vertigo caused the room to spin around me. I had time only to cry out in dismay before the parlor disappeared and I was swallowed into another reality.
The world around me was blue, and formless, and weightless. I had the feeling of floating in a cloudless sky. For some moments, I simply hung motionless, blinking myself into full awareness. There was a nagging haze over my mind, like the drowsy veil that blurred my dreams at night.
Yes. That was it, of course. I was—
"What do you think?" asked a voice from behind me. It was male, and it was at once wholly familiar and altogether strange. With a lazy twist of my body, I found myself turning about to face its owner.
A man floated as if in water several feet away, limbs casually buoyant. He was naked, with lean arms and an abdomen that was flat but undefined. His manhood dangled shamelessly in full view.
I was struck with an overwhelming sense of familiarity. After all, the face I gawked at now was the face that looked back at me in the bathroom mirror every morning.
I was looking at...me.
"Hello, Jeremy," said the other me, in my own voice. "I'm so very glad you joined me. I had always wanted to know what it felt like to be a man, and when I learned of Mr. Foster’s machine, the very first dream I watched was a man's. I thought it was a fantastic and intimate experience, and I thought you ought to try it. As a woman." The lips that I knew so well but seemed so alien quirked up at the ends. "Surprise."
At that, I looked down at my body. There: A pair of voluptuous breasts that I would have recognized anywhere, no matter the vantage point. Lily white, with smart brown nipples that always perked at the lightest touch or chill of the air. No, there was no mistaking these breasts, nor the fact that they swelled from my own smooth, perfectly white chest.
The "me" was Annette. And I...was her.
"I promise to make your first experience so very memorable," Annette continued. She—he?—smiled at me with my mustached mouth. "Go on," she said. "Touch them. They're real, and they're yours."
I wanted to call off Annette's nonsense, but curiosity or some other compulsion drove me to raise one of her—my—delicate hands and cup it under the curve of one breast. The flesh felt soft and smooth, just as I remembered it. However, this time, I experienced the dual sensation of touching and being touched. I could feel the warmth of my hand sliding over my own flesh. I squeezed.
Oh...
Annette chuckled softly in a way that had no right coming from my mouth. She floated toward me and closed the hand that should have been mine around the breast that should have been hers. Slowly, tenderly, she began to knead the flesh. She murmured, "Do you like it?"
I had no choice but to agree. I had an idea by now that I did not act under my own compulsion; rather, I was somehow just a spectator in a dream that was Annette's. In this dream, I responded by exhaling pleasurably. Annette's touch did feel remarkably good. I had never realized quite how large and pleasantly warm my hands were, or just how sensitive her soft breast was. I closed my eyes as I experienced both now. And then she flicked my nipple between her fingers, and my breath hitched and places in my body I had never had before began to tense and swell.
My eyes flew open. Annette smiled wolfishly at me, irises bright. "Oh, yes," she said, twisting the nipple gently now, then pulling on it slowly until it slid smoothly and elastically from her grip. "You feel it, don't you?"
I was mesmerized, caught by her gaze as her face dipped slowly toward mine. Her lips brushed my lips, moustache tickling. I could feel the warmth and solidness of her body closing over mine. As she slipped a broad hand over the smooth, cool skin of my back, I yielded like putty, relaxing against her grip.
"Yes," she mumbled against my lips. "You want this so very much."
With that, her lips closed around mine—gentle, firm, tender. Despite myself, I moaned wordlessly. My nostrils flared and I sucked in a deep breath of her. My senses exploded with the heady essence of man: sweat and spice and something inexplicably primal. I could not help myself, but captured his lips with own, my arms seeking his strong shoulders and curling around the curve of his neck. His mouth was so very delicious, and I was hungry for it. For him.
One of his hands slid down to the soft curve of my butt, while his other arm closed strongly about my shoulders. As he began to pet my ass, he sighed against me and brushed my lips with his tongue, inviting them to open. They did, and gladly. Gently, succulently, his tongue slid into my mouth, caressing my lips, my tongue. His breath was hot against mine, and I could sense his reserve, the force with which he held his animal passion back. It trembled in his arms, on his breath.
My stomach tightened. I wanted him. I wanted that—the animal, not the gentleman. I closed my arms around him and pressed my mouth harder against his, bruising. I plunged my tongue deep and moaned with my need.
He responded with a groan. The hand on my ass gripped hard at the plush flesh, the tips of his short nails edging into my skin. He pulled me even closer against him and closed his mouth like a beast's around mine, his tongue stroking deeper, curling and fighting with mine. Oh, yes...
With a gasp, he pulled away. We both drank greedily at the air. Hoarsely, he said, "Jeremy, I've wanted you... I've wanted you so badly like this."
Jeremy. Yes. I was Jeremy, and Annette—
Annette looked so rakish in my body, hair tousled, a sheen of sweat slicking her forehead. I found it difficult to swallow as I looked at her, struggling with myself. My entire body felt swollen and inviting, so craving of touch. I was overcome with the feeling of not wanting to be in Annette, but wanting Annette in me.
"Sshh. It's all right," she said with my voice, stroking my face with my fingers. So softly, so lovely, her touch trailing. "You are a woman now. You are so very beautiful, and I love you. Jeremy, I want you."
"Annette—" I began, but stopped cold at the sound of this voice—her voice—issuing from my throat. So delicate, so feminine. My hand flew to my throat.
She smiled, tenderly. "Sshh," she hushed again, and touched one finger to my lips. "Just let me show you."
Annette slipped her hands under my body so that she was cradling me like a child, or a bride. She kissed me again, this time softly, chastely. When she lifted her head away, I found that the infinite blue space had been replaced by a room, lavishly furnished in golds and burnt reds. Gravity had returned, and I felt as Annette lowered me down and set me upon the silk sheets of a large, luxurious bed. I trembled at the kiss of cool fabric against my skin.
There was a whisper of a troubled thought, as if something was—
As Annette stood straight, I was distracted by the view of her lean body. My lean body. But, I had never seen it like this before, chest solid, waist narrow, arms strong. So tall, towering over me. When my gaze slid downward, it froze on her engorged cock. Wi
th a chuckle, she lowered her hand to lightly caress and encircle its length. She said, "Jeremy, I love your cock. I love it so very, very much—even more so on me. Mm." She smiled, an expression that reminded me of a tiger. She asked, "What do you think?" She brushed her fingers along the shaft as I stared, fixated on its beauty—the smooth, taut skin, the swell of the head, the hard length of it.
A quiver ran through me as I remembered the feel of Annette's fragile feminine fingers on my cock—stroking, just like that. However, the flesh that swelled and burned in response to my lust now was not a cock, but Annette's flower-like vulva. As I stared at the stiff, statuesque member, I found myself licking my lips with a hunger I had never before known.
In a low voice, Annette said, "You can suck it, if you'd like."
Oh, could I? Another quiver of desire caused me to tremble delicately.
No. No, something was wrong, I—
"I'd like to feel your mouth on my cock, Jeremy," she said, breathily.
Oh, and how I wanted her cock in my mouth! How had I never desired it before? How had my mouth never watered at the sight, as it was now?
The man in me growled—an impotent sound, in this contralto voice—and I said, "You wicked vixen."
Annette smiled. "Oh, but I am not the vixen."
"No," I said, carefully. "No, I suppose you're not." I could not take my eyes from her erection, it tempted me so. "But when this is over..." I did not complete the thought. Instead, I crawled on my hands and knees to the edge of the bed. I could help myself no longer: I leaned forward and slid my lips over the smooth head of her member.
Reflexively, a groan issued from me, and I felt her shudder on contact. My nostrils flared and I took a deep breath. She filled me: firm and satiny and pulsing with heat. I moaned again and nudged my head forward, pushing her farther in, lips and jaw stretching for her girth. Above me, Annette growled and tensed. As I drew back, flesh sliding against flesh, she grasped the hair at the base of my head and pulled me forward again. The show of force ignited a flare of passion in my belly, and I found myself grabbing her muscular thighs, pulling her toward me with every thrust.
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