I got a few hours of sleep, alone despite several offers, in my bed on Earth. It would be rude to smell like another woman when Jill got here. I hadn’t worried about it too much on Amaranth, where bathing was more of a challenge and everyone was used to it, but on Earth, it was reasonable for Jill to expect me to be freshly showered. Or fresh-ish, since I’d showered before taking my nap.

I opened the door to see Jill. She wore her glasses, which surprised me, and her hair was done up in a bun, which was unusual, too. Her eyesight wasn’t too bad, and usually for dates vanity won over clarity of vision.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, yourself.”

I stood back to let her in. Jill was a good-looking woman, and I hadn’t had the pleasure of looking her over for a while. Her doctor would claim she should lose some weight, but she wore those extra pounds well. Her hips and butt made her short skirt tight, and the buttons on her blouse were under some strain as well.

“Well?” she asked, setting her bag down.

I quit looking, wrapped my arms around her, and kissed her. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Abel.” She stepped back, out of the hug, and looked at me. “Something has changed about you.”

“Huh,” I said. She was seeing the part of me that hadn’t changed, as far as I was concerned. “You, too,” I said, to redirect. “You’re wearing your glasses.”

“Yes, but that’s for a reason. So I can do this.” She took them off, and then pulled the clip out of hair, shaking her long raven locks to her shoulders. “Say it.”

I obliged. “Wow. You’re beautiful.”

She grinned. “Show me you mean it.”

I did. First, on the couch. Then again, in the bedroom.

Lying on our backs, naked, in the bed, she asked, “So when do I get to meet her.”

“Her?”

“Sandra said she’s built kind of like me. But with more muscles. Auburn hair. An accent Sandra can’t quite place.”

“Oh, Valeria.”

“Yes.”

“I thought I’d clear the weekend for just us,” I said.

She smiled. “Well, I just wanted to meet her. And maybe have a threesome. I wasn’t expecting her to spend the night, or even the afternoon. Is that a problem?”

I shook my head. “Well, it’s not like I’m just dating Valeria.”

Jill grinned, and rolled over toward me. At first I thought she was going to jump on me, but no, she was just making more eye contact. “Oh? I heard your time is a bit scarce, these days. Spill. How many are there?”

In the glow of our intimacy, I didn’t want to keep secrets. I never had before, and it felt like we’d never been away from each other. I also didn’t want to act like I was bragging. “Um, four.”

“Counting me?”

“You make five. Four local.”

“I’m not surprised. You’re a catch.” She ran her hand over my chest. “All those big strong muscles.”

I thought of telling her that wasn’t exactly what any of the relationships were built on. “Hmm.”

“Oh, don’t pretend to be modest. Names?”

“Xyla, Gren, and Lesseth.”

“Wow… such very unusual names. I assume Gren is short for something.”

“I don’t think so.”

“More details!” Jill said, and reached down and started playing with my cock, idly.

“What sort of details?”

“Measurements? Hair color? Occupations? I won’t keep it all straight, but I can try. Either that, or you have to throw a party – although I guess, they all have other boyfriends too, right? Or girlfriends? Or enbyfriends?”

“No, actually, none of them do. Well, Xyla and Gren are pretty close like that.” I was actually kind of embarrassed about that, right then. Jill and I always thought of poly as a free-wheeling thing, and of course everyone would have multiple partners, because more was better – unless the more was toxic. Love was infinite.

And indeed, Jill looked at me with the kind of expression you might expect to see if I’d just confessed to hating dogs or something. “Abel! You aren’t doing a one penis policy, are you?”

I shook my head. “No. Not at all. It’s just worked out that way, so far. They are all perfectly free to have whatever sort of connections they want.”

She looked at me doubtfully.

“Gren participates in orgies sometimes. Without me.”

Jill’s expression softened. “Oh. That’s alright then. Are you fluid bonded with any of them?”

I flashed to Lesseth’s changing her whole body so that it was made of a fluid based on my semen. “Yes.”

“Which?”

Of course she had a right to know, so she could make her own safe sex decisions. We’d used condoms, so it wasn’t too very bad of me not to tell her first, although it wasn’t ideal. “All of them.”

She looked at me with some amazement. “That was quick.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Not judging! Not judging!” she said. “And not slut-shaming either. I guess it’s easier to get there if they don’t have any attachments. So, show me the rest of your place?”

I’d expected that, although I thought we might get at least a little sleep in first. “Sure,” I said. I got my robe, and handed her one, but she shook her head.

“Kinda more fun to walk around naked.”

“More fun for me if you do, certainly.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

So I showed her the upstairs. I showed her the ground level. If I were her, knowing me as she did, I would have expected it to be a lot more finished than it was. But she didn’t say anything about that. Maybe the four girlfriends explained it, to her mind.

“The basement’s a mess,” I said, gesturing at the locked door. “Let’s skip that.”

Jill shook her head. “No, I want to see everything.”

“Not in bare feet.”

She grinned. “Just a moment.” She walked back to the living room, where her bag was.

Okay, that wasn’t much of a stall.

If I didn’t want to be open with her, I could break up with her. Correction, if I wasn’t willing to open with her, I should have broken up with her before we had sex twice. Breaking up with her now would be a dick move, however you looked at it. But the fate of two worlds, blah, blah, blah.

I didn’t want to be a dick.

There was a click-clack as she came back to me, and a moment later she was standing in front of me, and the basement door, in nothing but a pair of high heels.

She grinned. “Well, I didn’t pack house slippers. And I know what you like.”

I did indeed like both the person, and the presentation. “We need to talk.”

“Oh?” She looked like she was trying to be mature, but felt the words sounded ominous.

“Nothing… oh, there’s no point in characterizing it. But then, I guess I have to. I have a secret. In the basement.”

“A dead body?” she joked.

Lots of dead bodies. And they walked. But that was almost a minor point. “Not exactly. A secret, though, and one I didn’t even show Sandra. So if I’m going to show you, I need to know that you’re going to keep my confidence.”

“Is it a criminal secret?”

I thought about that. “No, I don’t know how it could be.”

“You had to think about it.”

“I had to think about it,” I agreed. “It’s complicated. But –” how to put it – “I commit all my crimes outside of the jurisdiction of the United States.”

She laughed. “And when’s the last time you left the country?”

“That’s complicated, too. But no international flights, not lately.”

“You’re really talking around this.”

“Yes. I’m really talking around it. Anyway, if you want to go to the basement, you have to promise to keep what I’m working on down there a secret. It’s vitally important. In fact, you might even say it’s a matter of global importance.”

“My!”

I shrugged.

“Okay, Abel. I trust you. I promise. Am I going to regret promising?”

“I hope not.”

She nodded. “Good enough. You can’t read minds, and you can’t tell the future. Let’s see. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away at this point. Nor even a zombie apocalypse.”

“Funny you should say that.” I unlocked the basement.

She slipped in the door, and took the steps down carefully. I followed her. “Stop when you get to the end of the stairs,” I said.

She did, and looked around.

“A giant jigsaw puzzle?” she asked. “And why is there a gun lying there?”

I’d forgotten about the gun, because it wasn’t a gun to my mind so much as a way to test if Amaranth could “push” things out of its way as it expanded.

“It’s not loaded,” I said quickly.

“Okay,” she said. “But it should be locked up, not just sitting there. Honestly, I’d rather it wasn’t in the house at all.”

“Fair. It’s not there to be a gun. It’s there to – oh, where do I start with something like this?”

“The beginning?” Jill suggested.

“I think I’m just going to have to show you. Maybe you should get dressed.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Yes. I’m stalling. Jill, this thing we have …”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Abel, are you thinking it’s better to break up with me than to tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh, no. I just got suddenly scared that you were going to break up with me.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jill said.

She and I had a lot in common. A desire not to be dependent on anyone. A realization that you couldn’t know the future, and that sometimes people grew apart.

And a knowledge that all love was risk, but that the payoffs were worth it. The one thing that made me feel confidence right then was that Jill treated her exes very well. She didn’t talk smack about them. She was friends with most of them. So if she decided, after seeing Abby, or after seeking the girls, or the zombies – that she didn’t want to be involved with me, I thought I could still trust her.

“So,” I said. “It’s like this. That puzzle is a gate to another world. I can show you. But there will be people there, and they might be pretty shocked to see you naked.”

“Prudes!” she said, and laughed. “Wait, you’re serious about this gate thing.”

“I’m serious. So put something on, and I’ll show you.”

She frowned. “I’m halfway thinking I should just flee now, while I have a chance.”

“Maybe. I’d do that, if you don’t trust me.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I watched her thick ass as she walked back up the stairs to get some clothing, and waited. I had planned to finesse this all so that I wouldn’t have to tell her a thing, but that wasn’t how it had worked out. Maybe at some level, I’d known it wouldn’t, but I hadn’t made plans for it.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted Gren. “Jill incoming,” I texted, and then put it away. Probably Gren was asleep. It was five in the morning.

Jill returned, wearing the clothes she’d arrived in and wearing her glasses. She kept her hair loose, though. “So,” she said, trying to make it sound light. “Gate to another world. Is it cold? Hot? What should I know?”

“Well, some of the people there are going to look very different. Including Xyla, Gren, and Lesseth. Lesseth looks very different indeed.”

She nodded. “Okay…”

“And my body changes when I go through the gate.”

“Changes how?”

I hesitated. “I become a futanari.”

“Riiiight.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And there are zombies. But they are on our side, so it’s cool.”

Jill looked at the floor. “The gun distracted me. But you have wires going into the puzzle.”

“And through the gate. Into the other world. If you look at the painting, you’ll see stairs. We’re going to use those stairs and walk on in. Ready?”

“No,” she said. “But don’t let that stop you.”