Chapter 14: Lean back, relax, and there we are

“She hit him? I don’t believe it!”

“I swear to God! Full, open hand, good-old-fashioned slap to the face. Just like in the movies.”

Randall and Claire were in their basement. The basement of their new house in Cheektowaga.

The house stood on six acres of land, surrounded by trees and bounded on one side by a nice little stream. It was fairly private, but not… obviously so.

If you drove up the narrow, paved driveway to the garage you might think that an upper-middle-class banker or VP lived there. Somebody who made some good scratch, but not a rock-star or anything. And you’d be right.

Nothing special about the house. Much.

The fact that it sat directly above one of the twelve mainline branches off the Internet trunk wasn’t public information, and certainly not something anyone could see from the street.

The quantity and quality of the computer equipment in the house would also not have been apparent to anyone outside of a few very well informed specialists. This was one case, though, where the “appliances” were worth more than the house itself. The hardened, underground back-up facility alone cost more than most upscale cars.

They called it “their starter house.” There, in the basement, Randall could only see her on the large, flat-screen display. They didn’t have access to Dr. Pharoozia’s equipment anymore, of course. And Randall couldn’t afford his own VR rig. Not yet.

But she was laughing. That great, open laugh where he knew she didn’t care what she looked like. The laugh that was pure-joy. And that made him smile. And then laugh. Which got her laughing again.

After awhile, when they’d calmed down a bit, she asked him to read her a story before he went up to bed.

He turned the overhead lights off and turned on the little reading lamp on the end table by the couch. One of the small cameras that let her see and hear him was clamped to the table and he could see her getting comfortable in one of her rooms as he lay down with a copy of “The Tao of Pooh.”

“I’ve never read this,” he said as he stretched out, barefoot on the couch.

“Me neither,” she replied. “But I liked what I read about it on Amazon.”

“Thanks for getting it for me,” he said.

“Sure thing.”

She snuggled into her big, down comforter and he adjusted the light a bit so that it shone more fully on the book. He began to read:

“You see, Pooh,” I said, “a lot of people don’t seem to know what Taoism is…”
“Yes?” said Pooh, blinking his eyes.
“So that’s what this chapter is for — to explain things a bit.”
“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.
“And the easiest way to do that would be for us to go to China for a moment.”
“What?” said Pooh, his eyes wide open in amazement. “Right now?”
“Of course. All we need to do is lean back, relax, and there we are.”
“Oh. I see,” said Pooh.

And he kept reading, long after she’d fallen asleep.

| The End |