I know who I am. I am a time-travel agent. I work deep inside the moon. But right now I am floating slowly above the lunar surface, not touching the floor of Crater Clavius, which curves upward to the dark sky. Of course, a human cannot survive outside on the moon without a supply of oxygen and pressurized life-support equipment—helmet, suit, gloves, and boots. This is impossible! I’m only wearing some damned blue robe. Why am I able to breathe? I quickly wrap the front of my blue robe around my abdomen and waist so my genitals will not be injured by the cold or the radiation on the lunar surface. As if that blue robe made of artificial cotton will protect anything at all. I wave my arms up and down as I cry out, “Help! Somebody please.” I can hear my own voice through the bones in my scull. But there is no air on the moon through which the sound of my voice can travel. There is nothing more than a forever cold, unrelenting silence out here. I will be dead soon anyway, so there’s no point in worrying about anything. No point in screaming for anyone to help me.
I must be having a nightmare from all the stress building up inside me!
I turn around and sit down inside the blue glass chamber of one of the time machines. The two sides of the glass chamber slide deliberately and very quickly together so that there is no visible seam whatsoever. “Destination: Bullhead, Arizona,” I hear Doctor Oswald’s voice tell me from some overhead audio source. Or, maybe I can hear his words inside my head. “The target date is August 20, 1991. High temperature today should reach over 115 degrees on the old Fahrenheit scale that they used back then. You are to participate in the execution of Vincent Wauneka in the past. You are to watch him hang by the neck until he is dead. Hold your breath, sir, here you go.”
What a lousy thing to say to me! I have no time to think about that because my least favorite part of my journeys at work begins. Milky white, thicker-than-water translucent liquid flows quickly onto me inside this Giant Blue Hockey Puck. The smelly liquid feels like warm cream as it soaks into my skin. Immediately, the chamber is filled to capacity with the soothingly warm liquid as it starts to spin around my body like I am inside one of those ancient clothes washing machines.
“Hold your breath,” I hear Doctor Oswald’s voice repeat to me from outside the time travel chamber. Travel in time begins with a physical sensation that I imagine is how one would feel while being waterboarded and then hit with warm water from a fire hose in the chest at point blank range. I focus on how hungry I feel. That protein and carbohydrate injection just was not enough for me. Maybe I can find a restaurant in old Arizona where I can buy a decent sausage and egg burrito.
I pull off the two-lane state highway on my late model 4×4 onto the unpaved shoulder of the road. Why do I feel the need to stop here? I get out of my truck and walk into the desert as if I know where I’m going.
Sticking out of the landscape in front of me is a mechanical structure apparently made mostly of wood. As I walk closer to the device, it looks to me as though it was created specifically to slow down the process of hanging a man by the neck so that he will experience extended agony before his death.
Hung from a thick brown rope wrapped around a wheel winch is a muscular, shirtless, and barefoot man with his arms unbound struggling desperately to stay conscious as his neck is crushed in the noose. When I see his high cheekbones and long dark brown hair that is tied behind his neck into a queue, I presume he must be an American Indian. I watch his large bare feet kick the sky.
I feel that I should know who he is. Why can’t I remember his name or where we met?
I notice a pair of unattended video cameras on tripods positioned nearby on the desert floor pointing toward the hanging machine. Why would anyone go to the trouble of videotaping this man’s death by ritual hanging?
Off in the distance fifty meters or so to the west of my location, I can see four men wearing cowboy attire running away. I must have scared them away when I approached. But they left that helpless man to die on their hanging machine being videotaped by their cameras. I know my memories are messed up, but I thought my cover identity as a reporter sent to investigate ritual hangings was merely made up.
The hanging man certainly seems capable of having put up very considerable resistance against this merciless fate. His powerful body attracts my full attention. He looks like he is about thirty years old—the same age as me. His legs wildly swing in all possible directions as I reach the hanging machine. He desperately tries to reach his hands up to his neck as if it somehow were possible to free himself from the noose. But that is impossible! He groans when he sees me as if to try and tell me something.
His faded blue jeans are too tight for him. I stare at his bulging crotch as he dances in the air at the end of a rope. I marvel at his incredible masculinity contrasted with utter vulnerability. This man looks strong and tough. He must certainly be capable of protecting himself against anyone with success. But, not now.
He cannot save himself. He is simultaneously very manly and totally defenseless. This precise opposing combination of traits is, I’m sure, why men watch executions of other men. The thrill of watching men suffer and die certainly comes from deep origins in men’s brains where innate violent compulsions always dominate logical and reasonable thinking.
I can see on the ground below him are cowboy boots—dark chocolate brown interrupted by a distinctive creamy white winged pattern on the sides—not a pair of boots that are off the shelf or from any mail order catalogue. Undefended, such a prize pair of expensive boots seems unlikely to have been left behind by his killers on purpose.
I realize that a winch wheel on the machine was used to draw the thick rope upwards into the air. Whoever lynched this man deliberately and very carefully hoisted him in exacting fashion upward by that rope around his neck aided by the winch to intentionally preserve this man’s spine intact.
His muscular arms frantically move through the air as if like wings that might let him fly away and end his suffering. The four men pulled him upwards off the desert floor—at least four feet up into the air. He won’t be flying anywhere now. Or ever.
The killers secured the winch wheel into place with a thick wooden spike. The doomed man’s entire body weight draws downward, ever tightening the noose steadily around his large neck—a slow brutality that no doubt provided his executioners an extended time to derive pleasure from watching his desperate kicking. I have scared the men off because they did not want to be held accountable for what they have done, but their exit does not end this man’s agony.
His deep, dark eyes remain open, defiantly staring outward into the eerie sky. He resumes his kicking, but much more forcefully now. I reach the winch wheel and try to rotate it despite the wooden spike. I cannot remove the spike that has locked the winch wheel, so I am unable to rotate that wheel to let this hung Indian return to the ground. If only I had a knife! I could climb up there and cut the rope! He quickly realizes that I am powerless to rescue him. His groaning reveals his intense agony.
Try as he might, the hanged man cannot make his toes reach down only 3 or 4 inches to the ground and stay alive. No man could. It’s not how gravity works. That’s the awful purpose of a suspension hanging.
His tight blue jeans emphasize his growing bulge. He has attained a full erection. There is intense humiliation on his face. His body jerks wildly. As he experiences an unwanted orgasm, he shoots his last load in his pants. His neck cannot withstand the crushing force of the noose. I am stunned because I did not expect to see his body spasms, kicking, and curling of his toes.
Very suddenly, he just stops struggling. His body no longer can fight back against the effects of gravity and the noose that has applied fatal pressure to his vulnerable neck. I watch him desperately try to open his mouth to breathe, but he has no life remaining in him. I am overwhelmed with intense anger and shock as I slump to the ground next to his chocolate cowboy boots. I cry without any shame because I failed to save the life of this stranger.
Embedded in my memories, I have a reference point that helps me make some sense of this homicide that I have just witnessed. I can recall having seen brutally bloody videos from this primitive era on Earth showing 21st century religious zealots in the Middle East cutting off young men’s heads using sharp blades. There is a very simple reason for taping such violence: Terror is very easy to spread worldwide when you use graphic, violent scenes of men being killed mercilessly.
I presume that credit should go to the ancient Romans for having originated cultural rituals of explicit torture and murder of people specifically intended for public viewing, especially appealing to male innate violent compulsions. Were the leaders in Rome intending on fetishizing violence for political or cultural reasons? Did sexual gratification from causing pain or degradation of human beings already exist in human culture before there was a Roman Empire? I do not know the answers to those questions.
Yet, ever since the ancient era of Rome, it is very easy to find examples in which humanity has chosen to replicate and enhance public death rituals. My mission to Arizona during the late 20th century is to make changes to remove ritual hangings from the timeline.
I feel thicker-than-water translucent white liquid being pumped quickly downward through a grate in the floor of blue glass chamber. The dripping liquid from my nose and chin makes me feel very annoyed. Immediately after the rapid purging of the liquid from the chamber, my lungs are joyful at the availability of sweet oxygen.
A low-pitched whooshing sound accompanies the vertical splitting of this Giant Blue Hockey Puck into two equal sections, enabling me to stand up and walk out. I am completely naked. I can feel right away that I am in lunar gravity.
“Welcome back, Agent Avila,” says Doc Ozzie as he walks up holding a fluffy blue robe for me.
As I take the blue robe from him and put it on, I look Doc Ozzie in the eyes. “I am glad to be back,” I tell him with complete honesty. “Feeling really messed up. What I remember right now makes no sense.”
I remember finding comfort driving my 1991 truck in Arizona. The SUV is nothing special. In fact, it is rather ordinary in grey, black, and white. The truck’s air conditioning is my favorite feature. Makes me feel calm and relaxed.
In those long-ago days before Interstate 11, the back roads trip between Phoenix and Bullhead took about four hours—just enough time for a man to get lost in his own thoughts. I cannot hide from the truth that I did nothing to try to save the hanged man in the desert. I am emotionally wrecked after watching him die. I wish I could remember how it is that I know him. Without a doubt I believe I keep failing in my missions. I keep ending up back in Arizona in 1991 to try again and again to change the timeline. The process keeps repeating. I am becoming crazy from the repetitions. I feel completely drained emotionally from thinking about the hanging that I witnessed. My truck is moving at approximately sixty miles per hour on that lonely stretch of state highway between Phoenix and Bullhead. My eyes fill quickly with tears of despair.
Because of my mental preoccupations, my truck sails out of control off the road where someone decided not to invest in highway guardrails. I am flying through the air inside my vehicle at the exact moment of sunset over the nearby mountains. The front of my truck dips downward towards the bottom of a rocky ravine as this airborne trajectory takes the vehicle across the purple Arizona sky.
I hear my desperate voice screaming as my 4×4 descends nose first into a sharp cluster of rocks below. The very last thing that I remember is a billboard on the side of the highway promoting tourism: “Lose Yourself in Bullhead, Arizona.” I am engulfed inside an intensely hot explosion. I had believed that a person would not feel any pain during death. I was entirely wrong! I felt excruciating heat burn my body as I am crushed to a pulp in the wreckage of my truck. I remember exactly how all that feels. And then suddenly, there is absolute silence in my head and I am aware only of solid white all around me.
I beg Doc Ozzie when I am standing next to him back at Clavius base: “Can you tell me what’s going on, Doc Ozzie? I am confused by what I remember from my missions. I’m going back in time. I’m changing things that happened in the past. But my memories about what I did in the past don’t seem right.”
“You remember from your training? Before you went on your first mission to the past on Earth. You became aware of the existence of time tributaries. Time tribs for short. This sound familiar to you, Mr. Avila?”
“Time tribs,” I repeat.
“Yes, exactly. The flow of timeline is often thought of like the flow of water in a river or a stream. Time is not water, of course. But the metaphor is useful. Time flows like water. As with water, timeline flowing can have tributaries. Time tribs, as we refer to them.”
“Okay, I don’t really remember that from my training, Doc Ozzie, to be completely honest with you.”
“Not a problem, Mr. Avila. Just try to understand that the flow of timeline in various tributaries from the vantage point of an observer can be confusing. An observer cannot process their memories correctly after having worked as you have worked repeatedly returning to the same timeline tributaries over and over.”
I can remember in 1991 that I was on a mission and I stayed in a Laughlin, Nevada casino resort hotel room. Directly across the Colorado River from Bullhead in Arizona.
I awaken as the light of the sun rising over the Arizona mountains to the east pours into my room. I realize that I am not alone in that Laughlin casino hotel room. The Native American Indian whom I saw executed by suspension hanging is now naked and with me in bed. He certainly is not dead and I am not wearing any clothing.
How did I get to be naked in that hotel bed with him? Who removed my clothing? We both are covered by a soft cotton sheet upon the large bed as the first light of day slips in through the outer edges of the blackout curtains. His muscular left arm is draped across my chest as he remains deeply asleep. I try to slip out from under his arm without waking him, but I am not successful. Soft yellow light of the rising sun illuminates our bodies together in that hotel room.
I can tell by the outline of his body beneath the soft cotton sheet that he is fully erect lying so close to me while deep in slumber. I am having difficulty accepting that what I seem to be experiencing is real and not merely some hallucination brought on by time travel too often to the same timeline tributaries. Doc Ozzie instructed me to focus on the present day. I intend to follow his instructions.
The man in bed with me slowly opens his dark eyes. He smiles when he sees me out of his peripheral vision. He rolls over onto his side in the bed and faces me while keeping his left arm on top of me as if to prevent me from getting away from him.
I ask him bluntly, “How did I wake up naked in bed with a ghost?”
He does not answer me. Instead, he throws back the bedding and then he repositions himself in a dominant position on top of me. He straddles me with his knees pressing down on the bed at my thighs. This is no dream. I’m completely sure of that.
My intense physical and emotional responses to him fucking me so memorably in that hotel bed prevents me from estimating how much time we have spent together in that Laughlin hotel room. He is well beyond thrilling in bed. I’m especially stunned because he demonstrates how he seems to care more about my pleasure than his own. My bare feet kick the sky as I climax. He never says one word to me at all during sex, but I will never be able to forget the expression on his face as he shouts when he reaches the moment of his ejaculation.
As I recover from my orgasm, I instinctively think about the Ezuoia. What would their response be to two men from Earth sharing powerful orgasms across the hundreds of billions of miles across various galaxies. That is when I realize what I should have known: The man in bed with me is Vincent Wauneka. He and I are both connected to the Ezuoia so we both share our orgasmic sensations with them. The Ezuoia must find extreme pleasure in vicariously feeling what two connected males feel during sex. My mind suddenly has achieved a superb clarity.