"Whoo hoo! It's working!" thought Kevin as his computer display finally showed an image of the house's great room.
Kevin checked the ceiling mirror, which allowed him to see into the great room through the window high above his desk. Faint light from the stars and new moon entered through the three skylights over the great room. Since it was 2 am in December, the great room was as dark as a yard up a hogs ass.
Turning his attention back to the display, Kevin started to critique the image to himself. Simple objects, like the pool table and the huge TV, had the yellow tinge that said the enhancement was relying on merging daylight images with what it could see now. And the couch in front of the TV was just a blue blob, indicating what was there did not match the daylight images at all.
That was to be expected. Kevin's roommate Chris was sleeping there flat on his back after he herniated a disk playing squash. The doctor said Chris must not do anything that would disturb the hernia, and that he had to ensure proper posture at all times, especially when sleeping. Anything more strenuous than walking to the bathroom was not allowed for six weeks. Chris had moved from his own room with the soft, spine twisting mattress to the rock-hard couch in the great room a week ago. He only got up for food and bathroom breaks.
This was hell for Chris for two reasons. The first was he was a fit guy who loved to be active. Biking, baseball, taekwondo, Chris did them all, and looked it. His energy and enthusiasm was contagious. Literally lying around the house was a new experience, and it sucked donkey dongs.
The second reason Chris was in purgatory was that he was habitually extremely active with his girlfriend Heather, and that hadn't been possible for the past week. If the boredom from five more weeks of lying flat on his back while taking classes online didn't kill him, the deadly sperm buildup would.
Kevin, however, thought that the last week had been wonderful improvement. Heather had moved in to Chris' bedroom, and had been waiting on him hand-and-foot. This was a seismic change for the other three socially inept graduate students living there. Having Heather there felt like they were living in the Playboy mansion.
Heather, also known as Rabbit, was five foot six with long straight chestnut hair down to the small of her back. She generally wore jeans and a geeky t-shirt, and never wore a bra. Those tight jeans covered a firm athletic butt which sat atop long lean legs. The inter-thigh gap thus framed was the subject of many fantasies. Cornflower blue eyes in an elvishly pretty face added exclamation points to whatever expression she decided to assume. That expression was generally a gentle smile when talking with the socially inept graduate students, especially Kevin, as Kevin's body language perpetually betrayed the crush he had on her.
Heather quickly became even more popular than the outgoing, friendly Chris among the three other graduate students. What had really twisted the graduate students tails was that she could act as a sounding board for their research ideas. After just one week, every one of the graduate students knew that Heather possessed a killer mind to go with that killer body.
She was always ready to play some euchre, do Chris' share of the domestic chores, or just have some beers, but what really made the graduate students day was when Heather agreed to play some pool. The graduate students rarely won, as they always played their shots so that Heather had to bend over the table to play hers. Heather played the same game, but made sure that Chris was the one being teased. Despite her best efforts to focus on Chris, every other player had two pieces of wood at the end of most games.
Couch-bound Chris was amused at these antics. Kevin was momentarily lost remembering when Heather once purposely left the cue ball against the side rail. If Heather took the easiest shot, she would have to bend over and stretch out over the table, giving Chris and the others a nice view from the couch. Heather casually strolled over to the shot, bent over half way, then looked back at Chris with the kind of evil little grin associated with a pair of horns and a pitchfork, wiggled a little bit, then with her nose in the air and an air of complete innocence stepped over to the side of the table. Putting the cue behind her back, she hopped her pert butt cheeks up on the table, and with her perfect B-cups pressed against her t-shirt, she smoothly ran the cue ball up the rail to extend her run to three.
Playing pool was the only time Heather allowed herself to act sexy in any way. She was all too aware how easy it was for her to get the wrong kind of attention from most men, and how much shit and disaster could result. When she was not playing pool, she hid behind her bangs and presented herself as a shy, nerdy girl, blending into the background socially.
Coming back to the present moment, Kevin sighed, then got up to go get himself a beer to celebrate success. Grabbing a small flashlight from his desk, he walked around the corner of the balcony open to the great room below. He looked back along the balcony at the other bedroom doors to see if anyone was up, but all the doors and windows were dark. He then descended the stairs into the kitchen. After closing the door at the bottom of the stairs, and checking that the door to the great room was closed, Kevin turned on the kitchen lights. He quietly took a clean glass from a cupboard, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and headed back up the stairs to his room.
"M.I.T. P.H.D. M.O.N.E.Y." Kevin sang softly to himself as he poured his beer and sat down again in front of the screen. Now that the first prototype was working, it should be quick to add in-depth image enhancement, analysis, and effects. "It's just a question of how smart and hard you can work." he said to himself. "Now for a quick wank and some sleep..." Heather's pool table tease, as usual, was the image that sent him over the edge.
The following week, it was again zero dark thirty and Kevin was looking at his computer display, but now the great room appeared professionally lit. The colour of the pool table and pinball machines were correct to the limits of Kevin's ability to measure. The couch where Chris was still sleeping, flat on his back, was also crisp. As Kevin watched, Chris raised his knees under his blanket. The image remained perfectly clear throughout the motion.
"All right! Time for another celebration!" Kevin said to himself. He got up and grabbed the flashlight to head to the kitchen for a beer. Just before he opened the door to his room, he thought he heard a noise, and froze. It sounded like someone was following the balcony railing towards the stairs.
Kevin sat back down at his desk, and turned his camera to see the length of the balcony. Heather was feeling her way along the railing. He was very happy with the resolution of the image. The over size t-shirt Heather wore was rendered perfectly, the TANSTAAFL text clearly visible on the front. The t-shirt ended mid thigh, and the skin tone exactly matched Kevin's memory. He kept watching as Heather walked past his bedroom door to the end of the balcony, then went out of view down the stairs to the kitchen.
"That's weird. Heather usually uses a flashlight if she has to get up at night." Kevin though. He knew this, as his was the only bedroom with an ensuite. The large shared bathroom used by his housemates separated his bedroom from theirs.
Kevin trained the camera back onto the great room, expecting to see some light coming under the kitchen door. He was surprised to see Heather open the door from the still dark kitchen and work her way silently over to where Chris was sleeping. The directional microphone paired with his camera could easily hear what happened next.
