San Diego - Barely 2

It was for this reason that Harold began to systematically train himself to sense when the lightning was about to rush through his spine and shut down his mind until the moment had passed him by. It was in this manner that Harold managed to control his inability to exist in a consistently paced version of reality and subsequently, to fit into society with a more satisfying level of success. It was in this manner that Harold became a first-rate Searcher and subsequently was placed in Cell 312-A13. It was also in this manner that Harold repressed his true yearnings. Residing in the deepest abyss of his soul, Harold's true self was incubating dangerously.

Cell 312-A13 was a small room with a black recliner chair, a Falconian model 812-II. The 812-II connected Harold to his wife and kids in .01 seconds, a substantial improvement over the now obsolete Falconian 821-I model, which would have connected Harold to his wife and kids in the cumbersome duration of .015 seconds. Further upgrades on the Falconian model 812-II included an improvement of .015% to the Falconian's sensory accuracy rating, increasing its score to an impressive 99.215% which placed it in the top five of virtual life units (VLUs) currently on the market.

The recliner chair was Harold's chariot and upon it he rode towards his home each and every evening. Harold's wife Autumn, and his twin eight-year-old daughters Lacy and Farfarr lived in Dome 142-ACM, located in North America. Autumn, Lacy, and Farfarr were all Class B citizens and therefore spent the majority of their lives in Static Existence Chambers(SEC's), where their bodies were nourished and cared after by robots.

Like pickles, they floated around motionless in large tanks of fluid as a forest of electrodes and tubules emerged from their bodies and plugged into their SEC CPU's. With their pasty white flesh and their mass of electronic inputs gently swaying in the water, they somewhat resembled oversized jellyfish. Another similarity between the floating pickles and jellyfish was that although a distant observer might mistake the two corpuses for inanimate objects, there was actually a near infinite amount of life taking place in them as billions of electronic signals were being spontaneously generated by the brain unit, conveyed through electrodes to the SEC CPU where it was digitized into a tremendously complicated language that was transmitted to the Central Earth Network (CEN), located on the moon. It would be ignorant to say that they were void of life. Besides, the complex beauty of the images that were created in Virtuality would not have been possible if not for the circuitry located in the brain units of the floating humans.

- 2 -

Harold had fond memories of the day when Autumn and himself conceived of Lacy and Farfarr. It took place in Harold and Autumn's luxuriously furnished bedroom as Autumn, mounted upon Harold, steadily gyrated her hips. As Harold's strong hands firmly gripped her tight waist, he began to thrust his member frantically inside and out of her moist being. As she moaned in pleasure and asked for more, he began to feel a numbing sensation begin to pulsate behind his sinuses and his teeth and he increased his pace. As he moaned ecstatically, Harold's Falconian model 812-II sent millions of lines of code skywards, which were subsequently bounced through the CEN and into Autumn's SEC, which conveyed waves of pleasure through her floating lump of flesh.

In virtuality, Autumn thrust her head backwards in pleasure as an orgasm rippled through her firm tanned body. She squeezed her muscular thighs around his hips and dug her nails into his chest. A million messages were volleyed back through the CEN into Harold's Falconian model 812-II and he felt the numb pain filled pleasure begin to pulsate through his mind as his vision began to blur. He threw her onto her back and pinned her arms to the bed beneath them. Staring into her eyes, he began to methodically thrust away at her insides.

In .012 seconds, Harold's Falconian model 812-II's thermostat detected a rise in the temperature of its internal circuitry and it released a foam-like substance that restored the Falconian model's equanimity in only .01 seconds; The Falconian 821-I would have taken .015 seconds to restore equanimity. How is that for improvement?

Fire raged into Harold's eyes as the numb pain blanketed his essence. He felt as though his soul had expanded like a hot air balloon and was pressing the boundaries of his corporeal being. Harold's Falconian 821-I prepared to launch a signal to the CEN, letting it know that Harold had reached orgasm, so it could make the appropriate edits and relay the message to Autumn's SEC. Stubbornly, Harold held back as his sensations began to increase exponentially. The foam coolant was again released as the temperature of Harold's Falconian began to increase.
Harold grinned as if he knew that in the act of resisting his supposedly inevitable orgasm, he was compromising the structural integrity of his Falconian model, as well as threatening the sanctity of the Central Earth Network. For a moment, Harold felt as though he was on the border of breaking the rules that he had established for himself so long ago, and in the process of doing so, would disrupt reality. An inferno blazed in his heart that lamented the terrible state of his world, the absolute shit pile that his reality had become, and the falseness of his virtuality. He knew at that moment that he would destroy the world.

For over a decade, Harold had fought a daily battle to repress his innermost yearnings in order to better fit the mandates of society. During that time, Harold had always thought his course of action had been intended to help make him a contributing member of society. Now he silently wondered whether or not his subconscious had tricked him, and had secretly planted a seed for society's destruction all along.

The time had come upon him and he was ready to take his leave of this world. Looking down to take one last glimpse into the eyes of his beloved, he was shocked to see a look of absolute serenity on her face. Although she was only 24 years old, her eyes glimmered eternal and suddenly, a spark of nostalgia ran like a shard through his head.

Her lips curved upwards ever so slightly, into a grin of such subtlety that he knew beyond a doubt that it was meant for only one person. Her cool fingers hovered through his sweat drenched hair and as the chaos of the universe around them approached critical mass, she whispered one solitary word that saved everything, it was "you."

As he pointed his member in the direction of Autumn's heart and released himself into her, the color white washed through his mind and body. Harold's Falconian 821-I breathed a sign of relief as the rapidly depleted store of coolant foam shut off.

The electronic signal containing the coding for Harold's virtual emission shot forth from Harold's Falconian 821-I, towards the CEN on the moon where it was modified according to Autumn's genetic code, and then reflected back into Autumn's SEC in 142-ACM where a sublime electronic code mandated that creation occur.

In the breadth of a sigh Harold saw the connection between birth, life, and death: Immersion into warmth accompanied by vacuous consciousness was a record spinning round and round and Harold felt the field swaying in his skull. It was strange that at that moment in time, when Harold should have been orgasmically relieved, he should be reminded of things like fields of wheat.

As the last of his fluids were sucked out of him by Autumn's pulsating warmth, Lacy and Farfarr occurred deep within her womb, kept alive and functioning at peak capacity by a barrage of hormones and electrolysis therapy. Several moments after conception, the genetic coding of Lacy and Farfarr was extracted by molecular sized probes floating in Autumn's body that were engineered to mirror sequences and convey the information to the SEC, where the transcription would then be sent back to the CEN. Here, an algorithm would determine the nature of Lacy and Farfarr's future cultivation.

After 2.24 seconds, the algorithm had determined that Lacy and Farfarr would be level class B citizens like their Mother. A message was sent to the authority program in 142-ACM and funneled on towards the CEN manufacturing station, where two SECs began to undergo production. The fetuses would be allowed to grow within Autumn's body for approximately nine months, at which point, they would be removed and placed into their own SECs. It was a relatively bland procedure which had a 99.97% chance of success.

Of course, in virtuality, the miracle of life was an absolute spectacle to behold. As Harold looked on in completely wonder, with his palm sized video camera in hand, Autumn would thrust her head back in agony and emit an animalistic squealing sound as Lacy, the firstborn, would emerge from deep within her body.