Excavating Gustem Hall 5 By Bob Archman
This is a story for adult men. It depicts gay sex. If this offends or bothers you, DO NOT READ IT. It is a fantasy and is not a sex manual, or a discussion of safe sex. If you have, comments send them to bldhrymn@yahoo.com or bldhrymn@aol.com
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I guess it was no surprise when Skippy spent more time at the excavation. He was sixty-five and his businesses were on automatic pilot. If they were to survive, he had to turn over the business to younger, talented men and women. Apparently, his salaries for top people were generous, but Skippy, with his outgoing personality hogged limelight. Spending the summer in England was good for them and for him.
Skippy was a genius in an obscure but essential part of cyber development. He was good at understanding the hardware and the software. Most of his work was with the parts of the computer I had never heard of. His children had no interest in his company. One was a brain surgeon, and his daughter was the president of a college. Skippy joked that they were perfectly happy with a hundred million inheritance. He was planning to spend his twilight years giving the rest of his fortune away.
His life was all high tech. He was interested in exploring other things; our expedition was the first of his explorations. He said he got more praise for the expedition than of any other achievement.
One aspect of the expedition captured the public's attention. With all of our inscriptions and tablets, we had the names of individual men and their requests to the gods for help. We had hundreds of human remains from Pompeii, but they are unnamed and impersonal. We can tell some things about their heath and social status by scientific analysis, but little else.
We knew the names and ailments of hundreds of men from our tablets. With the names we could also determine the ethnic diversity of this part of Roman Britain. It humanized the men visiting the spring.
The next week we continued our excavations around the buried cult statue. We found graves. The bodies were buried in marble sarcophaguses, similar to the one that contained the statue. These were lined up a row on each side of the shrine, five on one side, six on the other. There were no markings on the lids. The tombs had been paved in stones the same size as the paving stones. There was no difference between the paving stones and the sarcophagus covers. If you want to hide a particular pin, hide it in a box of pins.
This had all been covered in the accumulated leaves and debris of 1,400 years. We were still removing the six feet of rotted vegetation. All of the sarcophaguses were unopened and still sealed. The was a metal band between the top and the sides. Roddy had a magnet with him, and the metal was not magnetic.
"It's fucking lead," he said. This was a good news-bad news situation. If the lead coffin were intact and still sealed, the burials and bodies would be as they were when buried. Lead is poisonous and can form deadly gasses. That means hazmat suits and breathing apparatus. An environmental official visited and was not helpful.
The BBC wanted to film opening the tombs live. I thought that was unwise, but they made a good case. Money for educational, preservation and archaeological needs were under attack as being wasteful. A block buster special on ancient graves would be exciting and build interest in the endangered programs. Skippy and the team leaders agreed to the program.
They erected an inflatable bubble over the area to protect the site from rain. It was well illuminated and air conditioned. The cameras were remote controlled. Skippy provided the cameras and the operators. Townsend did good interviews with specialists in tombs and ancient bodies.
He was good and made it clear that it could be a great find, or a toxic stew of poisonous lead and decayed body fluids. If they were priests, there might be robes or insignia of the cult. There might be DNA that would identify the ethnicity of the priests. Were they Roman, Celtic, or Saxon? One of the lesser lights of the rather dim English newspaper world suggested Martians, or a Big Foot type creature.
Skippy was interviewed and said that while he hoped to find valuable information, there was a better than even chance that there was only poisonous, organic muck. The potential for either major archaeological finds or Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts was instantly a hit with the public.
Two nights before the opening, Skippy, Roddy, and I were in my bedroom at Gustem Hall. The day had been long, but they were to set up the cameras and sensors for opening the first sarcophagus the next day. Tomorrow would be longer. Much of it was Skippy's equipment and this was the first time it was used. Skippy seemed like a laid-back guy, but he was a perfectionist. Everything had to work perfectly. The bubble-like enclosure was in place and I had cleaned up as much as we could inside the bubble to avoid contamination. There were portable generators providing electricity and a working ventilation system.
Roddy had been at an inn where the BBC people were staying. He needed rest uninterrupted by interviews. I was tired and took a shower before going to bed. I had been under the water for a few minutes when Skippy and Roddy joined me. They had clearly exchanged the secret handshake and were in a good mood.
I wasn't in the mood, but somehow Roddy's mouth licking my cock changed my mind. I went from uninterested to hot to trot in two or three seconds. Looking back, I am still surprised at how little I know myself. Returning to my bedroom, the sex was mellow and easy going. It was friendly sex, not wild and passionate. Friendly sex is not the same as ineffectual sex. Skippy was fucking Roddy who was fucking me. we had a chain reaction orgasm and fell asleep. Skippy woke me up the next day by playing taps on my prostate. I had a second orgasm. The day began on a high point.
If you were looking for a site that was entirely unsuited for a high-tech investigation our excavation was it. Located in the middle of nowhere, it was muddy and dirty. They toyed with moving the sarcophagus to a lab but were afraid jiggling might destroy organic remains. They had been untouched since the burial.
I discovered that massive inflows of money can counteract most problems. Skippy's people were not just technicians, they were problem solvers and inventors. They seemed to consider a problem as a chance to show off.
The generators were powerful and used solar and wind to charge batteries that would power the equipment. It was mostly silent. The cameras were robotically operated. A Robot the called Delicate Daisy was hard at work. She was a prototype for a medical robot who could do operations and work in contaminated areas. There was group called the FU-SQ, the Fuck-up Squad. Their job was the anticipate as many problems as possible and find solutions. While they used a super-computer, Skippy told me for a truly massive fuck-up you need human beings.
The plan was to use a small laser drill to make a hole in the side to allow a mini-probe to enter the grave. The probe had lights, cameras, a drone, and a gas and chemical detector. All the information would be immediately shown on monitors. The computer would provide instantaneous analysis and warnings. The probe had its own temperature control, that would avoid the problem of overheating the sealed chamber.
Skippy had seemed laidback, but when it came to business, that was not the case. His technicians were even more detail oriented. Since much of the equipment could be adapted for medical use, they treated every detail as a life or death situation.
Skippy did require them to take breaks. If they had their way, they would work 24-7. I was one of the breaks. I gave a lecture on the excavation to date and explained the importance of the project. I can get overly detailed when speaking. That was fine for the technicians; they loved details. Two of them were assigned to stay with the equipment overnight. Thad was to be there from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM. The 2:00 AM to 7:00 AM shift was taken by Susanna. They were to protect the equipment if there was an electric storm. No one said it but they were also uneasy about sabotage.
Thad was a six-foot-five Teddy Bear. Susanna was a five-foot-two wildcat. Thad scared people, Susanna might rip them to shreds. She stayed in the women dorm, a trailer. Teddy stayed at the Inn, where they found a couch that fit him. He was going to stay with me for the night, since the Inn was thirty minutes away.
Teddy knew the lay of the sexual landscape. Alternate lifestyles were accepted by most of the crew. Teddy was a slob who wore ill-fitting sweatshirts. He told me than his Mom always bought clothes two sizes to big for him, so he could grow into them. I would have thought that she would have stopped when he was six-five, but that was not the case.
I got home at six, covered in mud due to a trench wall that collapsed. Officially I was a co-director, but I believe an all hands-on-deck situations meant just that. I helped. The tech people had done the preparations and were told to rest up for the next days work. I went to my room and found Thad there. I took a shower and a few minutes later Thad joined me.
"Is there room for two?" he asked. I smiled and said it was no problem. Thad was a huge man covered in red hair. He was solid, but not fat and much more muscular than I had guessed.
"I'm kind of keyed up. I need to relax," he said as he soaped up.
"I know a few ways two guys can relax," I said. "That depends on how open minded you are?"
"I know some ways too, but that depends on how open your ass is," Thad replied.
"I like the refined and subtle approach," I said with a smile.
"Someone told me your ass is tight, but you like a cream filling," he said. We finished the shower and dried off. Thad picked me up, told me to wrap my legs around him and then he skewered me on his cock. His cock was lubricated and slipped in easily. He walked me back to my bed. Each bounce and jiggle were intensely pleasurable. We got on the bed and I sat on his cock. He shot off and promptly fell asleep. I fell asleep too.
When he woke at 1:30 he woke me and asked if he could fuck me again. I said yes. This time I felt him shoot and I shot off too. Thad bent over, ate every drop of my load, and went to work.
At 10:00 the robot drilled a small hole in the marble side and immediately inserted the probe. The screens came alive. The chemical and gas probe reported no problems. The lights and camera activated. There was a skull. The camera scanned the interior. The skeleton was intact as were the remains of priestly robes. A tablet with an inscription rested on the chest. The remains of floral offerings, food for the trip to the next world were also evident. The most impressive artifact was what appeared to be a golden, erect penis.
The probe created a three-dimensional image of the interior, locating every object as it had been left 1,400 years earlier. The inscription was clear, but Skippy had forgotten one thing. The probe didn't speak Latin. I did, so a half hour later I translated it on television. It read, "Hu Publicus Maximus, Priest of Vodan-Selinus, rests here. He was faithful to the spirit of the gods of the earth and heavens." The inscription included efforts to spell Germanic and Celtic names. Our cult was a Mixture of Roman and British elements.
I think it would be difficult to find a more popular archaeological find that a pagan sex cult. I thought the intentions of the cult were medical, but the physical manifestation was of cocks and erections. What is not to like about that?
I thought Buzzy' s perfectionism would drive me crazy, however, everything worked perfectly. The scanners made a three-dimensional image of the interior that was dazzling. It looked good in the television, but it was also downloadable. That was an immediate success.
We opened one sarcophagus on successive days. That let us do immediate preservation work in the find form the previous days work. The openings were done live, but it was rebroadcast at 11:30 each night. All the broadcasts were popular. Townsend Price became a household name as did Buzzy. I was known as a reticent archaeological genius. Other archaeologists asked how in hell did one man get that lucky? I knew it was just luck and said so, but that was simply considered false modesty. I didn't spend as much time correcting that misconception as I should have.
Things calmed down after the sarcophagi were sent to laboratories for detailed analysis. I was still puzzled by the lack of a settlement or town associated with the sacred spring. A normal Roman shrine would be surrounded by stalls selling amulets or offerings. We knew there were people doing inscriptions. Some of the stones were imported, but the inscriptions must have been done locally.
I knew that modern souvenirs are often made in Japan. Was there a Roman equivalent? Was and ancient souvenir shop it nearby? Roddy, Skippy, and I planned to take a scouting expedition of the surrounding area. We were looking for potential inhabited places.
My immediate task involved documenting the excavations. There had been so many discoveries, it was necessary to take a breath and make sure records were accurate. I approached that as if I were writing a dissertation, but a dissertation that someone might actually read. We had been taking photographs throughout the excavation. These were documentary and showed mud and dirt encrusted objects.
Nigel had taken photographs of higher quality. While he worked for the BBC, he came by when he had a chance to document conserved objects. Sometimes documentary photos are informal and spontaneous. They express the thrill of discovery. Nigel's photographed the objects as works of art, or as the work of skilled craftsmen and craftswomen.
I discovered some new things about myself. Bunny and Mark were not my type, but we were sexually compatible. They were both eccentric and odd characters and not particularly attractive. It seems that sex drive is not related to physical appearance.
Bunny was used to being abused. He told me he was a cum dump you fucked if you didn't get lucky with anyone ese. I was the rare man who was nice to him. When I was deep in his ass, I took my time and massaged his ass and prostate. This was a new experience for him. He was usually with Mark and I would often alternate fucking them. Bunny was brave enough to slip into my ass as I fucked Mark. That changed their view of sex. Sex was a one-way street for them. They now sucked cock and topped.
Bunny's cock was no prize winner, but it was long enough to poke my prostate on each thrust. His bulbous knob felt like a boxing glove punching my prostate. When I stretched my legs wider to give him better access, he realized his knob and my prostate enjoyed it. He gave my prostate a sperm bath and loved rubbing and spurting at the same time.
The next time I fucked him, he opened up and relaxed. I went deeper and he felt more. Both Bunny and Mark liked my cock drool. Once you got past the eccentricities, oddities, and hang-ups of the two men, we became friendly.
Roddy was planning the hunt for the missing settlement with an archaeologist surveyor, Ulrich. Ulrich was skilled and competent but came as close to having no sense of humor at all. He was also perceptive as long as he was looking at landscapes and natural features. The three of us with Loring and Kenneth went over aerial photographs in detail.
Kenneth and Loring knew all the stories and traditional tales about the area. Our spring eventually fed into a tributary stream and then went to the River Nene. I assumed that since the sculpture came from Italy, and water was the easiest means of transportation, some sort of a settlement would be near were the spring connected to the river.
Ulrich said the spring went to a stream named Keepers Creek. The Keepers Family had owned the property since 1550, but that was hundreds of years after the cult center vanished. Kenneth told me the family had been an investor in the Virginia Company, and had been involved in the tobacco trade. The word creek is more typical in the United States than England.
Keepers Creek was fairly straight for much if its length. Straight is not a natural occurrence in England. Ulrich suggested that the creek was a canal-like reconstruction of the original waterway. The original creek bed was abandoned.
While you tend to think of rivers as permanent features, but they move due to floods, mill dams and other occurrences. Ulrich also reminded us that the term navigable depends on the size of the boat. While canoes can use shallow waterways, the QE2 only functions in oceans. Our spring source was in a fixed location, but the waterway could have been easily altered to provide water to houses and settlements along the way.
Using multiple aerial maps from the 1930s to the present, Ulrich found three earlier locations of the spring outflow and the earlier beds of what is now called Keepers Creek. Kenneth found records for the digging of the modern path of the creek in 1842. The Keepers paid for half of the cost; the Maryland-Virginia Tobacco Company paid the other half. That company went out of business in 1889.
We decided to form three team to investigate the three potential sites. I was with Ulrich and Loring, Kenneth paired with Roddy, and Buzzy was with Hank and Georgy. Ulrich wanted to look at the easternmost site so we set off. The area was either lightly wooded, or abandoned fields.
We found a circular ditch and mound, next to a more modest rectangular shape. There were some other mounds near by next to the former stream. I was not as interested in mounds as Ulrich was, but he thought is was a Bronze or Iron age settlement next to a Roman fort. The mounds did not impress me, but Ulrich was right. We had found a prehistoric settlement and its Roman replacement.
Kenneth and Roddy found the remains of a medieval hamlet. Buzzy and Hank found an Elizabethan-Jacobean site. The three sites told the history of the entire area from the Iron age to the Victorian period. This was important since the settlements were abandoned every time the Creek shifted. The sites had been little disturbed by later developments. This was an archaeologist's dream.
I made one major discovery. I tripped over a mossy growth. The moss covered the top of a stone that happened to be the same stone as the sarcophaguses. It was only a part of the stone, but I must have been broken and been used as scrap. This was proof that this had been the port for the spring.
"By the way," Loring said to me. "There is a lot more to Ulrich than meets the eye. He is shy, but we connected. He's cock matches his height. He's a top, but he's too big for me. I told him you were open to the possibilities."
"Why doesn't he talk to me about it?"
I asked.
"He is so shy he has no ability to meet guys," Loring said. "We were pissing behind bushes and I saw it. I cam over and sucked it and he rewarded me with a huge load. we got together again, and it was good, but he was too big for an easy fit. You are an important man, he's afraid you would say no. Most guys do. He scares most guys away."
"Well, I'll think about it," I said.
Since we were in England, rain was feature of most days. Buzzy provided a tent to provide shelter since the nearest far how was three miles away. To call it a tent was like calling a Rolls-Royce a jalopy. It was watertight and well ventilated with a wind-solar battery. The next day was hot and humid. At three in the afternoon a terrific storm hit. Ulrich and I went to the tent, soaked to the skin.
The temperature dropped and we were cold and wet. We stripped and dried off.
"Ulrich, Loring told me that there was a lot more to you than meets the eye," I said. "Your cock is a wonder. I'm not looking for love, but some meaningless sex would really hit the spot for me. Are you game?"
Ulrich stoked his cock. I correctly guessed that was a yes.