“A gate,” Alexander repeated.

“Yes, I swear it looked just like the thing in that old movie with Kurt Russel in it,” I replied. “A round frame with sort of a shimmery field inside the frame. You can’t see through it.”

“Did anything come out of it?” he asked.

“No,” Paul said. “Not while we were there at least. We walked all the way around it and it looked the same from all sides.”

“So how do you know it’s a gate?” Alexander asked.

“Paul threw a rock through it and it disappeared,” I said.

“It was a distinctive looking rock,” he added. “I looked to see if it passed through to the other side and I didn’t find it, ergo it must be someplace else.”

“Or destroyed,” Alexander said.

“Or destroyed,” Paul agreed, nodding.

“Hmm,” Alexander said, pondering.

We sat on the fantail seating of The Lady Fortuna, our home. We contacted Alexander as soon as we got back.

“We didn’t hang around,” Paul said. “We wanted to report back to you as soon as we could. Our phones didn’t work until we were almost home – not until we were on the Island.”

“I ran a scan on your phone, it’s functioning as it should, which suggests some kind of active blocking,” he said. “You say it came on after you reached the Island?”

The Island is where we moor The Lady. It’s a small village in Paradise that looks like a mish-mash of Mediterranean architecture with a prevailing Greek theme.

“Yes, we got signal back on the bridge from the Badlands,” I replied.

The Badlands are a mostly desert area, popular with adventure tourists. It buts up against The Realm, a European Fantasy themed area and shares some characteristics.

“That’s disturbing,” Alexander understated. “Can you get some of your colleagues and see if you can map out the extend of the outage?”

“Sure,” I said. “Tommy and Ani are wrapping up the current tour, they’ll be back day after tomorrow. Jason and Yoshi are free too.”

“They’ll be happy for a chance to take the gun-bus out, they’ve been dying for an excuse since we bought it,” Paul said.

I do the books for Fiddler’s Green. The ‘gun-bus’ was a compromise. The boys wanted a tank. OK, so not a tank, a LAV, whatever the heck that means. That’s a big armored car. What we bought was a little armored car. An armored HMMWV with a big gun on it, Paul calls it a ‘Ma Deuce’. The HMMWV is the Warthog’s grandfather, so it’s not as capable a vehicle as the Hog, or as comfortable to ride in, but when you’re hunting a Carnosaur who is hunting you back, having some armor and a big gun does make things easier. And the Meats love the opportunity to shoot the Ma Deuce so I will grudgingly admit, here, that it was worth the cost. I won’t admit that to the boys, however. The accountant must remain aloof and forbidding or next thing you know they’re going to buy a helicopter gunship.

“So we’ll do some recon on our own tomorrow and we’ll get the full team out and running the next day,” I summarized. “I really want Ani to get eyes on this thing.”

“I agree,” said Alexander. “I’ll be going. Please let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure thing, buddy,” Paul said as Alexander got up.

Alexander smiled and nodded to us before going into the other room, where, once out of our line of sight, he disappeared. Alexander was everywhere in The Sim, of course, but he gave us the illusion of privacy when we didn’t actually ask for him. Well, more than an illusion. He had subroutines constantly monitoring things, but absent an alarm or a request for his presence, that didn’t make it to his conscious self. He could recall things after the fact, of course, but he didn’t without reason.

“I feel like I’m wearing half the dust in the Badlands in my hair,” I said. “I’m taking a shower.”

“Want company?” Paul asked.

“Duh,” I winked.

We soaped each other up. My tits got very clean. The shower is pretty small so we didn’t spend too much time in there. The sun was going down when we got out so we went out to the small deck outside our stateroom to watch it set. That turned into kissing and very soon the sun was forgotten. I love playing with my husband’s cock. Cock’s are interesting, they’re unique. I’ve never seen two the same, and since my time in the Sim, I’ve seen my share of cocks. I’m happy not to have to work as a glorified prostitute any longer, but I’ll admit here that it wasn’t always horrible, sometimes it was quite fun but Paul’s cock is sin qua non my favorite.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to cum,” he said, breaking off a kiss.

“You can if you want to,” I said, happy to pleasure him.

“I’d rather save it and cum inside you,” he growled.

I took him by the hand and led him into our stateroom.