It felt cool in the cavern office, roughly seventy degrees or less. The harness tingled against my bare skin as I wandered down the aisles, examining the desks and furniture for clues about what a call center was doing on an alien planet.

Sola had tricked me into going there, but now, even as the effects of our nonstop lovemaking session slowly wore off, and my stamina recovered, I still couldn't get too angry. Seeing all these artifacts from earth made me hopeful that I had found a way back home.

We marched ahead with crude torches made from alien plants, examining everything.

"This looks very promising, Jasinch," Sola said. "Does it not?"

"Um, maybe," I agreed.

The moisture in the cave had made the gray carpeting into a damp slick surface tinged with pink, colors which, I discovered to my chagrin, derived their pigmentation from water loving fungus. The stuff, resembling pig ears, squished unpleasantly beneath my bare feet.

Rabies flitted from desk to desk, snatching up insects crawling on their surfaces, or the tattered carpeting.

"What does one do in a place like this?" Sola asked me.

I explained the concept in terms a primitive might comprehend, magical devices that allow people to throw their voices across the world and still be heard with such clarity that one could "hear a pin drop."

Sola laughed. I could tell she didn't believe me, so I did a little acting, demonstrating how a telephone and telephone headset worked, and how the computers and everything would operate if they actually had power.

I watched as my wife sat down int he padded swivel chairs, spinning around and around.

She slapped a moth eaten cushion, perhaps to ask me to sit down, then coughed at the dust. "Jasinch, we should wash these and use them for our personal furniture in our new home."

I rolled my eyes. "And how do you propose to wash them?"

She shrugged. "As with anything else, you drop them in water and let them dry in the sun."

I chuckled. "I'm not sure that would work. Parts of them would rust, and the parts you couldn't expose to the heat would mildew.

"We could take them apart."

"Would you know how to put them back together?"

"That would be your job. You obviously know more about them than me."

"Maybe if I find some tools."

She got up, rummaging through the desks.

Even after all that sex, I couldn't help but admire her body, the swell of her bare buttocks as she squatted down and pulled the desks open, examining crumbling policy documents, salt and ketchup packets and insect damaged Styrofoam food containers.

The name of the company had been American Financial Centers, some kind of bill collection service. The documents we found were account numbers, warnings about not speaking to a spouse in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Georgia and some other states, a notice about overtime offerings, and the no cel phone policy. My explanations of the paperwork amused Sola to no end.

Tawroka sidled up to me, draping an upper arm around my shoulder as her lower curled around my waist. "You have a very strange husband, Sola. He tells fanciful stories."

"But they're all true," I said.

Sola continued searching the drawers. An erection slowly stretched my leather thong as I watched. At times, when she caught me ogling, she would wink and bend in an exaggerated way, to give me a fuller view, giggling as she did so.

In fact, she touched her toes in front of me, as if typing nonexistent shoes, wiggling her derriere to get a rise out of me.

The green hand at my waist slid downward, caressing my buttocks. "A shame she wants you all to herself," she breathed in my ear.

"I'm loyal," I muttered back, brushing her hand away.

"Your * does not agree," she said, indicating my throbbing leather strap. "She did join me to your clan as *. It is not unheard of."

"I'm sorry," I stammered. "I'm still tired."

Sola brushed herself off and stood up, marching further into the building.

Strangely enough, as we walked, we all of a sudden found ourself under working fluorescent illumination, the decay appearing to reverse itself, the chairs got considerably less dusty and ragged (though still appearing to be used).

Finding no more insects, I supposed, my pet rejoined me, perching on my shoulder.

The carpet abruptly lost its slickness, revealing a pattern of crisp dry alternating vertical and horizontal squares. I wiped the fungal grimyness from my feet on one of the squares.

I picked up a phone, but I only heard static on the other end. No dial tone. Still, Sola clapped in appreciation at the new magic trick, especially when I explained what it meant.

The computers, of course, I couldn't do anything with at all, for the all required company passwords.

Despite this new development, and shouting hello at the top of my voice, I found no sign of human life, or intelligent life of any kind. Only silence answered me.

We checked the area against our map, but the map only told us the location of the call center, not what lay in the call center itself.

Sola pushed a chair up to me. "See this? It is already clean. We must save this until we find a place to build our home..."

She looked around the room. "Or we could make this our home!"

"Perhaps," I said. "If we can't leave this planet."

We wandered to the end of the building, searching the employee break room, the bathrooms, a call center for another business associated with American Financial.

The whole time, Sola clutched my hand, eyes wide with excitement, like we were strolling through an amusement park or some other fun thing on a date.

Sola laughed when I told her how all the stuff in the bathroom worked until I used a urinal. She used the one next to me by sitting on it and doing her business that way. After I got over the shock of seeing her secreting purple liquid, I instructed her about commodes.

She played with them, nearly scooped a handful of toilet water into her hands for a drink before I explained why you shouldn't do it.

Then she played with the sink and drank from there.

I showed her the refrigerator, which actually contained ice cubes and people's lunches, a pizza, a box of chicken from Popeyes and a cheesecake tray.

They had something called `Company Kitchen', which is like an automated self serve Quicktrip they put in office buildings, monitored by security cameras, with jacked up prices.

Sola took a sandwich out of a cold case and ate it through the packaging.

"You're not supposed to do that," I said. "You're supposed to put money in the machine."

When I explained how it worked, she remarked, "You have to give offerings to the gods in order to partake of the sacred food?"

"Not...exactly," I said. "But they do have magic machines that show law givers that you have stolen things."

"Will you pay for it?" she asked.

I shrugged. "My credit card is in my pants."

"Oh," she sighed. "The food is not very good anyway. I did not enjoy the material they put on the outside. It has no flavor."

"That's plastic," I said. "You're supposed to remove it before you eat the food inside."

"A strange custom."

I frowned. "C'mon. Let's try to find...whoever is running this place."

We continued with our tour.

Our passage to certain areas was thwarted by security turnstiles. One of them led into an actual cavern, but we needed a special card key to move the column of metal bars. It had a secondary security door alongside it, but I read a warning about an alarm, so I decided to pass on it until later.

Another turnstile, through the break room, led into an interior patio with a staircase.

We opened a set of double doors, entering a reception area containing a check in desk and a conference room with a long glass table and glass walls along one side. An alarm went off as we passed through, splitting our eardrums until I found the shutoff switch beside the receptionist's computer.

I could tell a little nearby hallway had once led into the reception area from the outside, but now the only thing there was rock.

Another set of double doors led us up to a back office and another revolving security gate. The alarm went off again.

"What is the purpose of that noise?" Sola asked.

"To scare away thieves," I said.

"There is nothing of value here to steal."

"Actually, there's identity information," I said. When she failed to understand, I rephrased it in more primitive terms. "It's to keep people from coming in and stealing souls."

She believed me. "Why are souls being kept here, Nocomprendo? What purpose would someone have in doing a thing like that?"

I frowned. The last thing I wanted her to do was smash everything up out of primitive superstition. "Uh...they're used in exchange for goods and services. The...machines can measure the...honor in a soul, and let someone borrow...gold...if they borrowed honorably before. The souls are...given back immediately once the honor is measured, and it's...written down."

Sola tapped her tusk thoughtfully. "Can it measure your soul, Nocomprendo?"

"No, because I never borrowed from these people."

She nodded. "I would not borrow from them either. I like to look someone in the eyes when I am borrowing."

Then she smiled. "You are an exception, Nocomprendo, but I can see great trustworthiness in each eye as they meet mine."

She pulled me close. "Of course, you do not need to borrow from me. I am yours."

I blushed.

There was a couch in the little office, which she bounced upon and pulled me into for another makeout session, but I wiggled out of her arms.

"I'm still...fatigued," I said, already feeling the ache. "Let's keep looking around."

"You're the boos," she said, mangling the expression I explained to her earlier.

I found a pair of elevators, but Sola seemed afraid of them when they opened, so we kept going.

A hallway in front of the office branched off to the patio, this one a regular door that you unlocked with a green button. We swung it open, stepping outside.

It appeared we had entered the employee smoking area. The picnic tables had ashtrays on them, and those narrow necked plastic ashcans with the sand filled bases stood near the doors. The center of the patio sloped into a drain for an easy hose job.

Landscaping had put in trees, shrubs and grass, but it looked like fall had happened. Everything was brown. Only the trees appeared to retain life.

We stood at the ground level of a weathered looking terraced office building, wrapped all around with ivy. The sky was an unearthly neon green, suggesting this place wasn't all that it seemed.

"This is a romantic place," Sola said, squeezing my hand.

"It's definitely picturesque," I agreed. "Except for the sky. The sky is weird."

I found glass doors on that level, but they wouldn't open, so we took another staircase up to the top level.

A stretch of pavement gave the suggestion that there used to be a parking lot there, but now it simply broke off into a crater filled desert, a place that looked like the surface of the moon. We took a sidewalk up to a covered porch looking into a lounge and a hallway lined with office suites, but the door was locked. The lounge still had its TV on, displaying some company message board thing with stock clip art.

We walked a complete circuit around the building, staring at the offices. They had a small chiropractic college and a religious school, neither one looking like they were in business. I could see a `for lease' sign in one of the windows.

A pair of doors led to the check-in desk we'd seen earlier, which didn't make sense, because I'd seen a cave wall blocking that very same door. We marched back downstairs the way we came.

"What do you make of all this, Nocomprendo?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never seen anything like it. I mean, an office building out in the middle of nowhere? Maybe we should search the place for card keys and see if we can find more clues."

The door didn't open, deepening the mystery. A few yards down, we also found the security turnstile that previously led into darkness.

"This is strange magic, Jasinch," Sola said.

I nodded. "No kidding."

We tried to go back down the staircase, and through the door we'd previously exited, but it had locked itself behind us. Sola had to grab a rock from the desert and smash it open so we could get back in.

We hopped over the broken glass to avoid cutting our feet, then searched the office for card keys.

Pay dirt. This turned out to be an administration center, so simply breaking open a few desks and drawers yielded us temporary worker badges, sanitation badges and picture badges of people that worked there. Sola again wanted to try out the couch, but I still wasn't ready for that.

The security turnstile near the office led to a hallway with a training room to one side. Not much of anything interesting there. The hallway terminated in one of those glass security doors, overlooking, strangely enough, a cavern.

"It just doesn't make sense," I muttered.

Sola shrugged both sets of shoulders. "It's magic."

"I'm thinking there must be a clue in one of those caves."

"Let us eat first," Tawroka said. "I have not tried the foods in that Cumandy Kidden we visited."

"I don't have any money to pay for it with," I pointed out.

"I do not believe we will be arrested," said Sola. "Or burned in a fire. There is no one here."

She meant `fired' as in terminated from employment.

She had a point. "Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind if someone came down to arrest me. At least them I'd have another human being to communicate with."

I gave Sola an apologetic glance. "No offense."

"It is okay, Nocomprendo. I would like to meet the sorcerers that run this place myself. It must take great magic to create these lights, the cold box and the `toe-lets.'

"All right. Let's eat."

And so we took a bunch of sandwiches and chips and candy bars off the racks without paying for them, making a meal out of the stuff from Company Kitchen and the lunches I found in the fridge, feeding bits to my little winged friend.

I showed them how to use the microwave, which elicited sounds of delight and approval from my companions whenever they had paused between bites. Tawroka even microwaved a candy bar, which didn't work out so well, but delighted her just the same.

I, on the other hand, thought the food wasn't quite as good as some places I'd eaten at, and that a primitive was no judge on quality dining.

Once we'd finished and cleaned up, I decided we should examine that rock wall at the check-in area more closely.

I pushed through the doors, felt my way around its surface, but found no way through, or even how it got to be blocking our passage.

Yet, on the exterior, you couldn't see it at all! How was that possible?

I stepped into the conference room, leaning on the long glass table as I contemplated the matter.

"Problem, Jasinch?"

I told her about what I was thinking.

"Perhaps the answer lies in the other caves."

"I don't know," I said. "I'm thinking it will only make me more confused."

She shoved me backwards onto the table surface. My skin tingled as the cool glass pressed against my back. "I know what will not make you confused."

She undid the fasteners on my thong, then unfastened her own. "You have had much time to...recover, Nocomprendo, have you not?"

I swallowed. "I...uh..."

Sola ran a finger up my steadily growing erection, causing it to stiffen. "Ooh! It is getting very hard. It does not hurt when this happens?"

"No," I stammered. "Those...sharp thingies...inside you...those used to hurt...but..."

"That's good to hear." She used two hands to lift my buttocks onto the table while the other two slipped beneath the upper straps of my harness, caressing my chest.

She eased herself into my lap, crotch tentacles drawing my penis in.

In my excitement, I gave an aimless thrust, then shifted my hips, aiming beneath that lip of that oddly positioned tube in the back of her reproductive organ. I gasped as the fangs sank deeply into the existing holes in my testicles (the tentacles had moved them into position to avoid multiple punctures).

"We were made for each other," Sola said as she pushed my face between her tusks.

I laughed. "Considering all the extra work we need to do just to have an orgasm, I somehow doubt it."

She frowned at me in dismay. "You do not love me, Nocomprendo?"

My erection was throbbing. Her tentacles still danced up and down the length of its skin. "I didn't say that. I just meant, well, we're not made for each other, that's all. Not everything has to be a perfect fit. I still love you."

"You have wise thoughts, Nocomprendo," she said, then used her frog tongue in my mouth.

"I wish to discover what lay in the caves," Tawroka said as our sexual motions slowly gained momentum. "I will return if I make any interesting discoveries."

Sola retracted her tongue, withdrawing my head from her tusks to address her. "Be careful. The wizard may be lurking there. We do not know how to defend against his magic, do we, Nocomprendo?"

I glanced at our assistant, thrusted. "She's right. This...magic is stronger than the types I am familiar with."

"Then I will exercise caution."

Rabies flew to her shoulder, seeming to sense the danger himself. Tawroka smiled. "It seems I will not be going alone."

I opened my mouth to say something, but Sola filled it with her tongue, drawing my penis in deeper, into the tube with her tentacles. I abandoned conscious thought.

Our associate pushed through the glass door, leaving us to our pleasurable activities.

Sola's tusks rubbed against my head as we kissed, my penis gliding in and out of her as we warmed the glass tabletop with our friction, my bare skin leaving smeary traces on its surface. A client looking at the table after this would wonder why there were knee and butt prints all over it.

Sola came down upon me, her motions knocking a teleconferencing device on the floor with my head.

I thrust with wild abandon. Nearby chairs rolled into walls as my feet bumped against them. We moaned and gasped through our noses.

I crossed the threshold of human climax (the penultimate, you might say) approaching the slow buildup of my actual climax, climbing the foot of that secondary hill.

As our movements took on a feverish urgency, I suddenly heard tapping on the glass wall.

Thinking it to be Tawroka at first, I ignored it, but then it kept tapping.

I pulled my head out of Sola's tusks, craning my neck to get a better look.

"Nocomprendo, why have you stopped?" Sola asked.

Instead of Tawroka, I saw only a tiny winged shape beating against the glass, letting out frantic squeaks.

My eyes widened in alarm. What was Rabies doing down here alone? I thought. Is Tawroka in trouble?

"It is a very strange place to stop, Nocomprendo," Sola said, riding up and down to illustrate the point. "What is the matter?"

"It's Rabies," I grunted, my lust warring with my worriment. "He wants something. Ughhh!"

"Your friend probably wants more food," she muttered. "Come. I sense * approaching. Let us finish and see what it wants then."

I was horny, so the idea sounded good to me.

I rolled Sola on her back, thrusting deep. Rabies continued to squeal and pound against the glass, but I decided to ignore him.

"Nocomprendo," Sola moaned.

I didn't reply, thinking it part of her love song, but then she started looking scared, her voice sounding...almost frightened when she cried my name again.

Fearing I had hurt her, I slowed down. "What is it, Sola?" I said in a tender voice.

"Nocomprendo, the glass. It's...foggy."

I laughed. "They have cleaners for that." And I pushed my penis in as far as it could go.

Sola moaned in pleasure, but then pinched by buttocks hard enough to make it hurt. "Ow! You're getting a little rough!"

"I am trying to get your attention!" she growled, pointing two hands at the glass wall behind me.

I craned my neck and saw what she was talking about.

Indeed, a fog had obscured the view through the glass walls, and it had nothing to do with the hot and heavy activity that was going on in the conference room.

It looked like a fog had rolled in to the reception area, a huge six foot wall of white steam filling the room like someone had turned on a fog machine and left it running at full blast for an hour.

What I saw next made my erection shrivel to nothing.

A group of four shadowy figures stepped out of the fog, approaching the glass, their bodies zombie-like in their state of rotting decomposition.

The only thing fresh on these creatures were the heads, half human insect-like things, with chitinous spider legs buried deep in the rotting necks.

"What the hell are those?" I asked.

Sola shuddered. "They are the Kaldanes!"