VR and 14

copyright 1994 Canoga Park 
 

My parents would plod up the carpetted stairs to
their bedroom, and I would, at least on this night,
roll over the couch, pull 'on' the power knob
located just beneath the tri-color metal decal,
find the right channel, adjust the volume so as to
not bother the retiring duo, make a soda run to
the fridge, and position the throw pillows
perfectly, lying on my back like a cat, waiting for the innocent, half-naked middle class girls to
make their entrance. I planned on a wild night,
a nutty spring night, with forbidden exploration
and mischieviousness. I was going to, all alone,
watch 'Seashore, Sweeties And Surf' on our color
TV. 

The internal vacuum tubes began cooking, the
static electricity whisked across the thick hunter
green glass that brightened in telegenic,
spectral laced borders. Soon the affected
walnut cabinet sent out a hint of consumption.
Her face enlarged from above, out of focus,
then sharpened. A beautiful pageant girl of Irish,
maybe Norwegian-American youth, tucking a
stray curl under the white plastic bathing cap. In
a one-piece swimsuit, she knelt forward on the
beach, her long fingers delicately collecting a
sand dollar, then she stared back at me, toward
the parking lot. 

"Hey, Dunce, they want your balls." 

Up in the parking lot, the lanky guy trying to carry
a football, basketball, a can of tennis balls and a 
volley ball, got swamped by a horde of hunk
greazers exiting the woodie station wagon. One
of them, maybe part latino, and compact cute,
grabbed the volley ball and headed down to
the sand, growling and kicking back a rooster
tail, causing Dunce to lose everything. 

"Wow", I yelped. "Ho ho." And nearly spilt my 

R C Cola. 

"Wooooooooo," the girls by the hot dog stand
harmonized. They were looking past Dunce and 
Morning Glory, who just accidently crumpled her
prize, as they all ogled Rhett showing somewhat 
atheletic prowess spiking the ball over the net.
Their gaze turned to pity as they shifted attention
to the blonde while scarfing down frankfurters at
the counter. All were in one-piece suits and most 
were wearing bathing caps, and I could
imagine they smelled of suntan lotion. The owner
and cook and probably the builder of the dingy
yellow plywood hut on wheels, that had
illustrations of banana splits on the sides, though
they weren't on the menu, was an overweight
man wearing a white tanktop and apron, a
lawful white paper hat and a grey day old
beard. He kept eying everything from an 
apathetic yet discouraged side. 

They commented how she was a junior, yet still
didn't have a boyfriend. She was a knockout, yet

she didn't want any of the boys who pursued
her, cause they weren't him. Rhett walked many
girls home, and he probably kissed several girls
on the mouth. The wrong girls. The ones who
chewed gum in class and smoked in the
bathroom. The ones who got detention. Morning
Glory was "too good" for him, a snob. He didn't
want a Miss Prissy, they surmized. Like most of
them, a Junior at Theodore Roosevelt High, she
could attain what they couldn't, the best looking
boy in school, if she'd at least chew gum in class. 

As the sea gulls picked at scraps in the far corner
of the parking lot and Morning Glory got up to 
collect the sun bleached and sand worn shells, a
ruse to get away from the beach crowd, Dunce 
rested against the station wagon, and realized
he caught the eye of one of the kids at the
stand. She was a sophmore, like himself, and
had the shiniest auburn locks braided in almost
professionally done pigtails, which when she
disdainfully turned away, whipped her freckled
nose. 

From somewhere else, a group of a dozen
adolescents descended around the hot dog
stand and the old, rusted Chevy truck that
jackknife parked the rig. They were playing tag.
The tall skinny kid sought refuge under a palm.
The stud at the volley ball net got distracted by
the new girls and lost his serve. Morning Glory
was grabbing shells like they were left in a line
on the beach, heading towards an
unpopulated area. 

With the midday sun glowing through my eyelids,
and with the warming sand against my shirtless 
back, I didn't know why I was there, yet it was
fabulous, until irrate spats of venom came down
at me from above. Stopping game play I was.
Rhett was trying to take my head off as I got to
my feet, bare as they were. in fact, my only attire
were cutoff jeans, and I could tell, no
underwear. 

I stood silent, trying to determine the situation,
with the guys around me boiling, unsympathetic.
So I was prodded along by the baking sand. The
tops of my toes felt the sting as they scraped the
inner dark gummy part of the asphalt's edge,
liquifying in the heat. I managed my way to the
woodie, killing my arches with every step finding
a bit of gravel, and leaned against its side. I
closed my eyes again, and a spray of water hit
my cheek. Two beautiful senior girls rushed by,
wet, pinching the water from their noses and
wringing their whole healthy bodies. 

I'd follow them to the counter, but first I had to
check the thick, green-tinged glass I was up
against. Something forced me to ponder my
reflection, as things seemed so different. My
palms on the roof, I searched my reflection, and
realized I was now a sun-bleached blond, with
much fuller hair, and, no mistaking, I was at least
five inches taller. I had to bend my knees to
reach as far down as I did before. I touched the
wide whitewall. The tire was rough and its tread
was worn. There was a slight whiff of rubber rot. I
turned to the hot dog vender. 

The old man distracted me from the two girls. 

"Here you go, son." He handed me an an
orange soda in a Dixie cup and a hot dog
wrapped in 
paper. 

The heat lamp warming the buns might as well
of been pointed at my copper zipper, and I felt
the 
old man knew it. My heart was racing, my
trachea bypassed my vocal chords for sure, and
my legs, even with new color and hairy length
were numb. I was a seduced male. They were
head to bobbing head, talking, unaware of me,
until I slipped a hand, a quivering hand, onto the
closest one's thigh. Now, the man looked up
from wiping the counter top. The girl glared
back at first, then instantly put on a smile. She
pulled the swim cap from her head, revealing
rich black hair that went to her tender shoulders,
then she reached down and removed, of all
things, a cat collar from her ankle. 

I was playing with the elastic edge of the bottom
part of her suit. She was sliding her womanly 
fingers across my chest. The cook called for his
wife, who came from the back room, where the 
soda cannisters and electrical outlets were
located. 

"Son," he said, no emotion on his unkempt face.
"You two can use the back room, if you want. My

wife doesn't need to sleep all day." He turned to
his side. "Go get some relish at the store, and..." 
He leaned toward the crag of a woman. "Get
some beer for me." 

"Isn't it strange how people's lives come
together?" I asked, interupting my discourse. 

We were in the university's computer simulation
lab, just Dr. Edwards and myself. I was now a 
middle-aged man, and he was in late
middle-age, though, of course, you're as young
as you want to be. It was eleven-thirty at night,
and the entire floor was long since silent for the
day. The campus below was itself void of
pedestrians, and completely still, with well lit
areas around the buildings and walkways. 

He seemed preoccupied about something,
even after what I just told him. Unbelievable.
Finally, he came around to face me. 

"Of course, that's the wildest coincidence I"ve
heard..." 

"Not really," I interrupted. " My adolescent torrid
imaginings were too numerous to allow for 
improbability." 

"Far-fetched." 

It was odd to him that 'Sweeties', as he called it,
would've influenced my life, when he was the
guy who played Dunce all those years ago. Of
course, since then, he went to college, got
interested in the field of computer graphics,
which led to an increasing knowledge of VR,
and led to a professorship at a university. I've
loved talking to this man ever since as a college
student in the seventies, first as a TA, he turned
me on to computer simulation programming. I
wanted to engage him in discussing his latest
theories, and was tactlessly trying to jump-start
him that night. As his colleague, it sometimes
seemed just as nebulous as ever, in that I was
always playing catch-up. 

"Remember, Tom, when I progammed a
computer to play tic-tac-toe?" 

Edwards nodded thoughtfully. 

It was in the early part of my student days when
it was done by punch cards and the air
conditioned room wasn't just for our comfort. The
machine would overheat doing simple
arithmatic. Now, it was full sensory teledildonics
simulation VR games such as Tea With The
Kupcheks, which lets the participant experience
virtual wife swapping. As part of the faculty, I
made the mistake of bringing home prototype
equipment and software, taking advantage of
the perks. It was, indeed educational, but that
went south when my son discovered the
software under my mattress. 

"I spend so many waking hours teaching or in
research that I could never use it to the extent
my kid does." 

"What about Jenny?" he asked. 

"I think she must come home on her lunch hour.
She's addicted to digital sex. I know she prefers it 
over me. Mr. Frankie Fractal has stolen my wife." 

He said we were too damn good. The lighting
was limited to what was on our terminals, so
there was a clear view of the campus, without
interference. 

"She takes off her clothes and puts on the
cellophane body liner," I began. My sweet
Jenny, with her short bangs, her turned up nose,
her passion. "Then, into the white canvas Lanier
suit and shoes she wiggles." The inner layer
known as the 'smart skin', loaded with
micro-transducers, a web of intimate tactile
stimulators that could make her feel anything
from a rash to goose flesh. She slips on the
gloves, which, again, could let her experience a
'virtual' handshake or make friends with any part 
of somebody's anatomy, or hold a glass of
champagne, and discern it as being glass and
not plastic or wood. The lightweight
head-mounted display comes on, and she is
sitting in the nonexistent living room of the
Kupcheks, the swinging couple offering her tea
and cake. "It's lunch hour, and most people are
rushing through drive-thrus, unwrapping
pastrami sandwiches at their desks, or doing
errands, but my wife is at home daintily holding
a teacup and saucer that aren't there and trying
to get perved before she has to get back to the
job." 

There was just a faint grin from the man as he
stood towering in front of the full length window,
a slight hunch showing through the argyle
patterned sweater he wore. "I indulge in the
Walk Through The Forest program," he said.
"There is something therapeutic about even a
virtual stroll through an old growth forest. To
compile the data when forming the simulation
was also helpful to the soul, like being a Noah
archivist." 

A good place for poor me to go and whack-off
with privacy, behind a sequoia. 

"We've worked several years on most of the
senses. This department has even gone as far as 
co-development with the Japanese. We've all
worked like hell." He came away from the
window, and looked down on me as I sat
backwards in an office chair. "I, alone, got the
'smell'." 

With his peculiar humble sideways march to the
blackboard, the three words 'in the dark' jabbed
at my brain. The flourescents came on. He broke
a piece of chaulk and began drawing, all the
while intermittantly facing me in the harsh light,
his gold wire rims his only facial feature.
Everything this man said was fact, and I knew
what he was saying. He created smellavision.
Tom Edwards invented smellavision, and I was
not told, yet he was still making it seem like I was
his closest confidant. I'd be at his throat like a
wounded pit bull if he wasn't so nervous. He
proceeded to detail his formulae for Olfactory
Stimuli Reproduction with Applications in Virtual
Reality. Some sort of periodic table was put up,
then came the equations dealing with electrical
resistance correlation. He told me about a
breakthrough in micro-robotics that, together
with other new tools, molecules could be altered
like tinker toys, and nanotemplates would boil
them off in our nostrils, mimicing molecular 
clusters of various scents, as with electronic
brands on our membranes, we'd detect
nonexistent odors. 

At the last row of faux granite tables, caught off
guard, scribbling on a yellow notepad, even
while he shut off the lights and wiped the green
board clean and was breathing over my
shoulder, I got down on paper the essentials.
Agitated and too close. Salt and pepper curls on
his neck, pulsing against his jugular. He tore the
top sheet along the perforation. The nearest
tube's screen blasting from his lenses. He wrestled
with what to do before leaving the page alone
and withdrawing to the next chair over. 

"A foreign graduate student of mine, from Brazil,
told me who rules," he said quietly. "They that 
formed a consortium of South American
countries, in secret. A people who have the
resources to hire discreet Anglo mercenaries to
fulfill the agenda when in the United States. My
student, an Arawakan Indian, gave the bastards
my research." 

"What agenda?" 

The rain forests should be preserved. Slash and
burn policies should be hence forth stopped.
They believe this planet will die if the Amazon
Basin is over inhabited and used up in urban
sprawl and fuel, and all that remain fertile are
pastures." 

Some leadership for this was needed. 

"A beautiful dark-skinned, runty by our standards,
Stone Age, poison-tipped arrow, deep forest 
tribe presides over the member states," Dr.
Edwards continued. "Their main point is
reciprocity. It must have been a chuckle to say
there must be something called Wild Prairie while
still living the hunter gatherer life thousands of
miles away." 

I swallowed hard, staring at a mouse pad. "Our
prairie?" 

He said something about the Mexican prairie,
too, and I pushed back, springing from the seat,
and began pacing. "The kid was yanking your
chain." I fuzzed everything from my mind and
quickly asked about what alloys would be used
in the transducers, only to catch a paranoid
glance. He then got up and joined me at the
window. 

"They have my work, though I don't know for
what they need olfactronics. Now they will want
to eliminate the source." 

Going through my mind was either a darkly clad
commando unit or neatly groomed,
business-suited smoothies with concealable
automatics. Dr. Edwards, however, assured me
that it would be a gang of grunge wearing forty
year olds, probably with skateboards that had
dual purposes as laser assisted fire arms that had
silencers and shot Talons. He went on to explain
that various men with that description would
throughout the day and night position
themselves, taking turns, standing alone at a
particular street lamp that was near the library's
entrance, and provided a view of his car in the 
Engineering parking lot. I tried picturing myself
wearing a baseball cap backwards and riding a

skateboard, then I grabbed him by the arm and
headed for the lobby. As expected, he began 
whining like his life was in danger, but I was
going to confront those fears by taking him
directly to that light pole, which at that time of
night would surely be unoccupied. 

How often does a professor twosome come out
the main doors and become silent and as still as
the midnight surroundings of a campus? Daring
not to lose momentum using the elevator, I had
pushed him along through the stairwell, all the
while relating a scene of incredible sensual
seclusion in a limitless field of wheat and
sometimes within endless rows of corn, ready for
the first harvest of my winsome new brides and I.
Our land and crop, for once, and our mattress.
My piece of the dream that nothing would strip
away. My mentor and I moved down the pristine
walkway toward the curb. 
 

A man with the feared profile was unaware of
us, doing foot stunts with his board. He was
about 
thirty yards of hedging away, on the sidewalk,
and all we had to do was back out of sight. On
his waist was a belt purse large enough to hold
guns and ammo. Perhaps Edwards noticed that
as well, because he broke from me and ran for
the parking lot. The chirp of the door unlocking
on his Lexus. The patter of his hard shoes on the
pavement. The skateboarder momentarily stood
as still and stupid as me, then drew a
semi-automatic from the bag, and rolled past
me in a heartbeat, shoving me to the ground.
Another goon popped up from behind the Lexus
and, in a combat stance, fired a 9mm round
from his pistol straight at the oncoming man. He
missed and began shouting. "We have the info,
Dunce! You are so dumb, dude. You are too
smart to let live." 

He fired again. 

Dr. Edwards felt the impact of the slug against his
cranium. He almost felt it tear through his brain, 
except for the sudden cold and silence and
darkness beyond achievability. 

I looked to my side as I lay on the grass, the team
of sidewalk surfers wheeling it into the night. 

"That was so cool!" he shouted in my face. "It was
like sensory deprivation. This is exactly the kind 
of GAME OVER our shareholders want." 
 
 
 
 
 

end