Tempus Venit
Story by cge0361 on SoFurry
Imported from SF2 with no description.
Tempus Venit.
With precisely even strides, a woman wearing high heels announced her entry into the lobby of a research facility, one click after another. Familiar with the protocol and procedure of Scoparin University, as the emblem embroidered on her livery advertised, she expected the receptionist to greet her exactly one and one half strides before she stopped at the counter.
The receptionist played with some putty intended for hanging posters and bulletins on smooth surfaces until the guest forced a cough. Then she pushed a button that pushed a tone through speakers in the facilities' ceilings. “Hey, U. The intern's here."
Rumors of the living conditions and cultural defects suffered by visitors to the southwestern wilderness proved themselves to be understatements, disappointing her so intensely that she almost let her posture slacken.
A smaller speaker on the desk offered a man's voice. “I'm busy, but Wild Bill's good with the donor, so send her along."
Along she went, keeping in mind the directions that she received on a sticky-note after the receptionist plucked it off of a monitor, quite prepared for this eventuality. “Door to right, three corridors straight, turn left, turn right at the chicken, two more to an enclosed field…" Unable to resist, asking a man in a laboratory coat about “the chicken" only informed her that, “she doesn't sign autographs."
A reasonably large room with some exercise equipment and broad glass windows soon caught her eye, and turned her right as the room was the corner of an intersection. Within it, a blaziken gripped and pulled on two ring-shaped handles attached to pulleys. First she lifted great weights to which they were attached, and then herself, up and out of the seat of a wheelchair in which she sat between repetitions. Farther along, she found the doors to the enclosed field. Out there, a number of pokemon grazed, frolicked, and played. Among them stood a man wearing faded jeans and a damaged hat. His hair seemed to be a mess and when he turned her way she noticed that his beard was a few days old, and one side seemed a day older than the other. A man looking like that wouldn't be permitted to walk on the sidewalk across from Scoparin's walls.
“You here for the fast juice?" the man asked while patting a large pokemon just outfitted with some sort of a harness.
“Dodal, Deborah; Scoparin University, under the Department of Subatomic Research. I have come for—"
“Yep. They told me all about you." He patted the pokemon again and directed its attention to another employee, to whom it soon plodded away. “They should've told you about the job. You ain't dressed appropriate."
“They did. Why I am required to serve an internship here when my research is focused on—among my many aptitudes—synthetic isotopes remains a mystery."
“Then they didn' tell you 'bout it. Let's head on in; time's a wastin'." He directed her attention to the facility doors, and led her through the maze of corridors, along a different and paradoxical path, if she counted the steps and reckoned the directions correctly. “See, you college types got the big ideas but you miss the simple ones. Like, you think just because you're used to playing with nucular reactions, you can handle all kinds of dangerous stuff. That's why you're internin' here before we let you have the material we're offering. You're gonna handle how we handle it before we let you handle it. It's a respect matter."
“Respect" was a watchword in Scoparin, and she took his comments as a dis- thereof. “I have a study to complete for my doctorate and limited time in which to complete it. This summer term could be put to much better use than helping a pokemon breeding operation marginally improve the quality of competition in next year's dose of the masses' opiate. Need I remind you that I don't yet know what this 'substance I might be interested in' is? Right now, I identify it as a waste of my time."
“Don't worry, the nine weeks will be over before you know it. Ah, this is the place," he said, stopping along the hallway. A biometric scan confirmed “Wild Bill" Daevea's right to open the door. Inside, the first room was a simple laboratory space, mostly empty but for one table with misshapen blocks of quite large, individual crystals; some machining equipment beside them; and then some shapes apparently formed from similar crystals before. A large trash can had been filled nearly completely with crystal dust. The other side of the room presented a small gallery of materials in display cases. Each bore a label, “Acrylic," “Vinyl," “Glass," and so on, and within most were heaps of powder or fragmented, flaking chunks. “Glass" seemed to be a blob of some sort, shiny, but not æsthetically pleasing. “Leather" contained only dust. Bill directed her to them, and pointed out “Glass" and “Leather." “See this? This is what the product does to glass, and that, that's what it can do to you. So that's why we figured we'd require a little hands-on training before letting any of y'all play with it."
She led with her chin. “We of Scoparin University invented most of the personal protection equipment used throughout Ocimene, and our authors wrote the books on how to handle hazardous materials with them."
“That's good to know, because handling is your new job. That's if the boss approves, of course. He's been waiting so let's have you meet him." Another scan plus a second authentication opened a door opposite the one through which they entered. When Deborah froze as though time had stopped, Wild Bill gave her a shove forward. Even when forced, her heels clicked with perfect tempo.
She kept her chin held high, but not to snub Wild Bill this time; she needed to look up to see the face of what stood before her. With the size and stance of a giraffe, but far greater bulkiness, a beast of two blue shades and metallic armor-like accents lowered its face to meet hers for a moment, before opening its mouth and making some sort of a noise.
“That means he likes you," Wild Bill admitted. “And that's a good thing because he gets fussy and makes me wrestle him to go where I'll lead him when he doesn't like a handler."
“Handler?" Deborah asked after gulping as covertly as she could manage. “That's a, a, that's THE dialga!"
“Could be 'a,' but we're going with 'the' for now since we don't know of any more of 'em."
Her bold speech faded somewhat, “I can't believe I'm standing in its presence."
“His," Wild Bill specified while picking up some equipment, including some formed crystal shapes. “Let's get to work. This guy's patient to a fault, but you've got a deadline to keep."
Miss Dodal followed him as he walked beside Dialga, and asked, “On the topic of time, I was told that my shift would be eight hours, minimum. How long will it actually be, and—" Wild Bill ducked a little to walk beneath Dialga's undercarriage. “—and what will I be doing? As his—" Wild Bill reached up between Dialga's legs and… “—handler."
“You'll see 'how long will it actually be' in a minute. Like I said, he's patient, but it's on its way out. For 'for how long' is your shift: as long as it takes. Patience. It'll be over before you know it. Now, we need to go over the gear. This is the most important thing," Wild Bill hefted up a double bell shape built of the crystalline material, open on one end and closed on the other. “We call it the 'hour glass.' Once he gets all riled up, you slip the open side over his glans and—"
“Stop!" Deborah's cheeks displayed an impolite amount of blushing. “What manner of hazing ritual is this? Do you actually expect me to—"
“Miss Dodal, I reckon you lower your voice and lighten your tone, so our friend here doesn't start thinking you don't want to be his friend. This ain't no hazing, this is what we do, professionally, and in your case, this is how we get what we offered and what you wanted to use to get your Pee-Aitch-Dee with." He reached up with his left arm and gave the same kind of gentle pat he gave earlier to pokemon in the field to the flesh still creeping along in descent from the monster's crotch above. It wiggled a little in response, as though to rub him back. “And we got you on a non-disclosure agreement, so you might as well get over yourself and give Dialga a hand in giving our world a hand at making it a better place. Anyway, you're a college girl. Ain't this giving you an excuse to laugh at the boys thinking they've got something to impress you with at the frat parties?"
Deborah closed her eyes and thought of her student loan debt. “Non-disclosure better go both ways."
“Our lips are sealed."
“Our?" she shouted. Dialga reacted, curving his neck down to peek below himself, worried that the outcry could have been his obliviously harming someone.
“Me, Uyl when he gets here, the Psychic-type that'll be helping us out by putting the right kind of dirty pictures in Dialga's mind to help him stay in the mood; we'd be plenty happy keeping the secret ingredient secret for as long as we can. So, nobody needs to know how you really advanced your research, just that it passes peer review so we can take the next step. Now, about the hour glass."
Fifteen minutes later, regretting intensely that she wore her Scoparin livery and not something as rustic and easily laundered as what Wild Bill wore, Miss Dodal swallowed all of her pride, and asked, “Is its, his, this, fully, fully out?" toward a clear panel in the metal wall to her right, behind which a small room contained Wild Bill.
The speakers in the room crackled but his voice came through clearly. “You can slip the hour glass on now, just make sure that the cork is in tight and that his glans is engorged enough to create some vacuum to hold it on. If it slips, part of you might go into our gallery of things that react badly to the secret ingredient. No spills."
Standing hunched over, she did as instructed; specifically, to put her weight on Dialga's erect penis to direct it toward the ready positioned hour glass. Slapping the shaft with her left hand once she was sure of the alignment, Dialga ever so slowly leaned himself forward. She could feel the mass of his body above her as his hips shifted, smoothly slipping inside the crystal confinement. He groaned deeply and she felt what she leaned upon bulge and throb upward, lifting the hour glass from its polystyrene cradle. Continuing to follow instruction, next she took up a pair of leather straps, tied them around the hour glass into grooves machined into its surface, and looped their other ends first around the base of Dialga's tail and then up and over his body, just in front of his metallic fan crest.
Stooping low again, Deborah ducked under Dialga's hour hand and knelt beside his left rear leg. With its gently textured surface inches from her face, she hesitated. Reaching over it was like reaching over a guard rail; and putting on the hour glass, Dialga did the work. And she did slap the thing to signal him. Yet, to actually, willfully put her hands on to massage it, the intimacy of the next step clouded her mind. “Can't I wear gloves for this?"
“A little late for that, ain't it? There's nothing to worry about. We checked him out and he's so clean you could eat off 'em."
A strange thud got Deborah's attention, worried that perhaps the hour glass had slipped off or broken, but instead she watched in awe as Dialga's penis became a little larger overall, with its circulatory vessels swelling to prominence. “What the hell?" she shouted, trying to slide away but unable as she backed against Dialga's leg.
“That's just his heartbeat. You could probably figure it at about four-tenths of a beat per minute. Take the lubricant you used to slick up the hour glass's insides and get him all good. It's the warming-sensation kinda stuff so it won't be so cold, then with his next heartbeat, get to stroking it. Try to time it so you work from the base to the part of the glans behind the hour glass and back from one heart beat to the next. That pace seems to work best for him. You can do up-down-up if it's too slow for you to keep up the pace with, but go too fast and his heartbeat will slow down again."
Deborah looked at the bottle and wondered if there would be enough. Although the prominence of Dialga's vessels had begun to visibly lessen, the particular shape of the hour glass's open end now suggested to her imagination that the part sized for his glans at this point was smaller than the bulb beyond it for a reason, if it could slide farther up when forced by something with ten to twenty per cent more girth. Refocusing her mind to the task before her, she got to work with the lubricant and although Dialga's next heartbeat passed before she had finished the step, she had her sleeves rolled up—surely ruining the weave—and her hands positioned at the ready when she heard his great chest thump again. She rubbed with her palms great circles around his staff, and likened it to hand washing large pots, except only the outsides. She worked down to the bulb of his glans and felt the whole business lift up and away.
“Patience!" Wild Bill chided. “Firmly, slowly, embrace it with a loving hug; don't give it a friction burn. Your role is to be the welcoming vagina he may never get to know, being the only one."
Returning to the light falling around the sides of his tail, she took position again and tested out a few different grips while waiting for his next heartbeat. When it came, she remembered the largest boyfriend she had ever known, and imagined being her own pussy, only with years more experience plus thumbs to work with. So absurd was the idea that she cracked a faint smile.
A half-dozen strokes later, she felt like she'd found both the perfect grip and, with her new friend, a good rhythm. “I counted forty-seven seconds," she commented with pride, “I've gotten his heart racing!" His hips swayed in time, too, now, but just a little; not enough to endanger her or the collection device.
After a moment, Wild Bill responded, “Patience. That's a little over one beat per minute; you need to get him up to twenty or thirty to draw a sample from 'em. Pace yourself. Skip a beat once in a while so you don't get worn out, or work the part of the tip still out of the hour glass for a couple beats. Mix it up, it gives the Psychic more to work with." She accepted his advice and moved down toward the hour glass, spending one beat on dirty thoughts, and a second putting the dirtiest to work behind the hour glass's crystal rim. She also commented that the speaker sounded funny, like a bad phone connection, but Wild Bill said that it wasn't anything to worry about, even though it would probably worsen a little.
The rhythm intensified gradually and Deborah started breathing heavily. It must've been a good hour—and a half, maybe—but she and Dialga now moved like a well-lubricated machine. In fact, the lubricant made for a wonderful threesome. If it came from a pokemon and how they extracted it tried to cross her mind, but she had neither time nor space for guessing about goodras or gastrodons. With one particular stroke, something new: it felt not like she was sliding her grip down his length but like she were being pushed. Seeing his organ bulge alongside her, and prove her suspicion by its expansion's squeezing Dialga's swelling glans into its proper place in the hour glass's bulb, she skipped a beat and almost a second a second later. But feeling a sense of duty stronger than any her college had given her, she re-synchronized with her partner. And she took control, deciding that the time for patience was over. “Come on, Big D, let's get this done!"
She felt his body rumble, not a heartbeat or a groan or grumble, but a vocalization.
It reminded her of another boyfriend in her past. She knew her pokemon well and her lovers better: Dialga may be a Steel-type, but this mighty dragon she held was putty in her hands.
Counting out time not in seconds but in contrast to rhythms of music that her parents forced her to practice during her youth, she felt a strange sensation come into her mind. Her inner voice soon spoke to her, its words suggested by another: “Dialga asked me to let him send you a feeling. It is powerful. I can't hold a connection for long."
Merely realizing that she was curious about what Dialga wanted her to know served as the Psychic's cue, and in her mind she felt a sensation of pressure. Gripping him more tightly, so intensified what she, what they felt. Loosening a little and sliding forward, she exhaled slowly and steadily, and moaned along with Dialga for what felt like not seconds but minutes. Reaching the hour glass, her body leaned limp, held up by her arms wrapped around his rigid support, which, with a tensing of some muscles in his pelvis, briefly lifted a little to help her to recover her stance. Brought out from reverie, she slid the other way, again feeling each sensation alone and in series, and began to cry out, all of her muscles either throbbing or twitching and making her stride a difficult stagger.
The Psychic-type connection severed and she again leaned against him and his, now clutching it at the base, feeling all that she held bulge and pulse as it gave forth as much as it could offer with a rhythm perfectly one third of the pace of her own ecstatic heart. Many of her muscles felt like they were shivering and she feared to let go of him until he began to relax, bending his legs to squat and to let her down slowly, patiently.
Loud thumps shaking the metal panels of the floor upon which she lay worried her enough to realize that she was now lying flat. Looking around, Dialga had safely stepped aside, making room for some men wearing highly protective laboratory coats who very carefully removed the hour glass from the room—taking it out through an exit that she had not before noticed—and a man with a clipboard.
He walked with a casual, comfortable gait. “Miss Dodal? Congratulations on completing your first assignment. You get to keep your internship!" he added with a teasing emphasis.
Gathering herself up, she realized that she was a mess of personal lubricant, and some sweat, and; she hoped to scramble to her feet and at least strike a dignified pose of attention. In her haste she slipped in a puddle of once-bottled slime. As her feet slid away, they, and everything else, seemed to slow down and her whole body felt so heavy that even gravity struggled to move it, except for her head. Easily she looked to her left side and saw Dialga tucking his head behind her back. Then, all was again normal.
She patted his face and righted herself. “That's good. My housing out here is non-refundable."
Ulysses nodded, familiar with hearing that refrain. “You'll also be happy to know that we think we got a really good sample this time. We'll be studying it and preparing divisions for experimentation which'll take quite a while because it's careful work, so until we need another bucket of it, your tasks here will be more suited to someone of your educational specialization."
Dialga lifted his head up and away, but stopped and returned when Deborah reached up after him.
“Unless you'd rather be on sample collection detail. We have plenty of studs, though, after Dialga, they might not be as exciting."
Miss Dodal rediscovered the haughtiness she arrived with. “No! This was the most humil—" She looked into Dialga's eyes. “This was a special case. I did this with Dialga because together we're going to advance science; somehow, your letter said. Unless your 'studs' have legendary potential like Dialga, I don't want to have anything to do with them."
Clicking a pen, Ulysses took a note. “We believe that every pokemon has potential, it just needs the right placement and the right caretaker to reach it. Keep that in mind, and try to learn why while you're working here. Now, I'll show you to a locker and changing room. You can wash up and wear something from our loaner closet."
Following Ulysses out, she turned to look back at Dialga, who had settled down on the floor of the chamber. Although he did not gesture likewise, and probably could not, when she waved goodbye, the blue crystal in the center of his body's metal breastplate flickered, and although faint and distant, she heard the sound of his heart, and smiled.
Hoping not to be seen in such disarray by anybody, Deborah wished that her escort would walk faster. “I know there's a lot of secrecy around here, and in my contract, but level with me: Why did you hire a nuclear physicist to jer—to extract a bodily fluid sample from a pokemon that a whole region reveres and believes is a living god?"
Ulysses opened a door to a room without windows and took a seat at a table, indicating toward an open doorway behind which Miss Dodal found some shower stalls, a generous supply of towels, and a bar from which hung a number of shirts for men and women in various sizes. All were surely donated, but compared to what she was stepping out of…
When she finished and emerged, Ulysses hadn't moved but to use his trainer's device's communication features. He picked up their conversation as though there were no interruption at all. “As an expert on atoms, what's the biggest problem we have to solve in your field?"
Deborah seated herself opposite of Ulysses and replied with a short list of unproven theories and speculated interactions.
“Waste. Nuclear waste. Even the relatively safe and clean systems we use now in places where it's the practical option leaves a mess, and older systems have left a legacy that can only be swept under the rug. A rug that says, 'If you lift this rug before the year Ten Thousand, you'll die.' And that's not the only thing. We've got heaps of plastic that will last for millennia, too. It might not kill you for being near it, but it's still filth. Now, imagine if you had a way to knock a few zeroes off of those figures."
She adjusted her towel turban, it having slipped to one side while Ulysses' suggestion sunk in. “The stuff in those display cases, you aged those materials using his… legendary power?"
“By accident at first, then we tested our options for making a collection vessel. Organics fell apart in a blink, glass flowed at room temperature like it were white hot; only noble metals, like gold, and crystals could survive being aged an eon in an instant. This could be a damn dangerous weapon, like any legendary pokemon can be. But a legendary pokemon can be a wonderful thing, too; so we sat down at the conference table and I wrote on the board, 'Name something that lasts nearly forever that we wish wouldn't.' Nuke waste, plastics, so forth. And then we looked for somebody young enough to dedicate a lifetime, if needed, to absolve humanity of the sins we committed on the way to learning how not to commit them."
Miss Dodal stood from the table and looked around. The facility wasn't proudly decorated like Scoparin University, but its simplicity wasn't without virtue, and they did design their wash rooms with towels in mind. “A lifetime is a long time."
Ulysses rose, too. “Everybody gets one to make the most of. Your next shift is Monday, so you have till then to think about what you want to do with yours."
“What? I only work here on Mondays? That's a lot of time off."
“You had a long shift. Ten in the morning to; it's about eighteen-thirty, Wednesday, now; so, fifty-six and a half hours. I think you've done your bit for this week." He winked and walked away.
“Wedn—wait!" She dashed behind him, spewing attempts at sentences.
Hearing her bare feet smacking the recently waxed floor behind him, Ulysses turned around and held up one finger to his mouth to shush her. “How can a genius scientist like you be surprised by something that everybody knows? Time flies when you're having fun."