The Proposal

Immersion Playground

Book #1: The Proposal

Chapter 5

Rick is in the driveway washing Giselle's Audi when the ping arrives from Charlie. "Thank you, Rick," she says over the ping. "I know this wasn't easy for you, and it means a lot to me."

He continues to wash the car as he answers. "You're welcome. Those are one-time-use links, so when you give them to whoever it is that's going to experience it, make sure they don't drop out before they're done because they won't be able to experience it again... well, unless they use the other link, that is."

"I understand." She hears the hissing of spraying water over the ping. "What are you doing?" He opens a video link in the ping, so she can see for herself. "Oh! You want to come wash our cars when you're done?"

"No, I think not," he replies. "I still have my car and the Aston to go. Then I need to mow the yard. I'll tell you what. You send Todd over to mow my lawn and I'll wash your car while he's here."

She trills a brief laugh. "I'll see what I can do," she says before dropping the ping.

When he enters the kitchen after washing the cars, he sees Giselle slicing an apple and placing it on a sandwich. "Mmm, that looks good," he says, crossing the kitchen and hugging her from behind, giving her a quick kiss on her neck. "The sandwiches look tasty too," he adds, causing her to giggle.

"Would you stop it," she admonishes gently. "You're getting to be as bad as Todd."

He gives her another squeeze before turning her loose and putting the plates on the table. "What would you like to drink?"

"Water, please. With a lemon."

He retrieves two glasses from the cabinet and, after adding a lemon slice to each glass, fills them with water and sits them by the plates. She places a small bowl of washed grapes in the center of the table and then sits down in her customary place. They have a leisurely lunch, the conversion wandering aimlessly as they enjoy the smoked turkey sandwiches topped with cheddar cheese and apple slices.

"Charlie pinged me this morning to thank me for the links," Giselle says as she nibbles on grapes.

"She pinged me as well. I hope she gets out of this whatever she is looking for."

"Me too. I wonder if she is looking for atonement for her friend—what was her name, Tip?"

"Maybe. I guess I can see how something like that might twist you up inside, though surely she knows it wasn't her fault."

"Knowing something to be true and

feeling

it is not always the same thing."

"I remember when this happened. I didn't know what happened at the time until yesterday, but I remember I thought I had done something to make one or the other of them mad. They were always polite enough, and they kept telling say, 'no, you haven't done anything,' but for two or three months they didn't want to do anything or go anywhere. I haven't thought about it in a long time, but it bothered me because I never could figure out what I'd done wrong. I guess they were telling me the truth, I hadn't done anything." He pauses for a moment. "You'd think that after ten years, or whatever, she'd be over this."

"I understand exactly how she feels. I didn't do anything that would have caused Jonathan to start cheating on me, but after I found out, it took a long time to get past the 'what did I do wrong' and the 'why didn't I do this or that' feeling. I'm not sure I'm completely over it yet. It's kind of what started all of this."

Rick sits quietly for a moment before reaching across the table and taking one of Giselle's hands. "Giselle, believe me, I'd never intentionally do anything to hurt you."

"I know that. I do! Like I said before, knowing something to be true, and feeling it, is not always the same thing. I may never get completely over it, but I'm getting there," she says with a small smile and a squeeze of his hand.

He sits, holding her hand, not knowing what to say. "Okay," he finally says, pulling his hand from hers before standing and taking their plates and loading them into the dish washer.

She laughs to herself at his discomfort and shakes her head slightly.

Men!

After placing their plates in the dishwasher, he gives her a kiss on her forehead before heading into the yard. He pulls the mower from the attached storage closet and wheels it to the starting point. Normally he likes to mow the yard himself so that he can vary the pattern, but today he has something else to do, so he decides to let the mower do the job alone. He pushes the button to start the electric motors, folds the handle down to place the mower in auto mode, and pushes the repeat button. The mower sits for a few seconds until it establishes a GPS lock and then it trundles off, exactly repeating the mowing pattern he used when he trained it. He watches the mower until it reaches the edge of the yard and makes the first turn, making sure it isn't running amuck, and then goes back inside. One of these days he is going to have to retrain the mower, so it starts from, and returns to, the storage closet, something he hadn't thought of when he trained it the first time.

Back inside he finds Giselle lying on the bed, fully clothed. She waves drowsily when he looks into the room. He sits on the bed beside her. "Are you okay?"

She nods her head slowly. "Just sleepy," she says with a slight smile. "You took a lot out of me last night. Wake me in an hour or so?"

He leans down and kisses her quickly on the lips. "Will do," he promises before he rises and leaves the room. With the cars washed, the lawn mowing, and the Giselle napping, he settles into his chair to check the immersion he recorded last night. He decides that if he got anything, he wouldn't experience it without Giselle. It wouldn't do to get himself all worked up knowing she isn't going to be interested in another tumble tonight. And besides, he did mean it when he told Charlie and Todd the immersion experience is better when it's shared.

Forty-five minutes into the immersion he returns, surprised that the only thing on the immersion were the Roses sleeping. He'd convinced himself over the years that Todd and Charlie had sex at least every day, if not more often. He didn't know why, exactly, he had that assumption. Maybe because of the way Todd looks at Charlie, or maybe just the way she looks in general. Whatever the reason, he's been convinced they were screwing their brains in every free moment.

What

did

come through on the immersion is Todd's endless well of love for Charlie, the deep peace and contentment he felt as he held her. He knows the feeling well—it's exactly the same feeling he has when he holds Giselle close. He smiles from the emotion, the same feeling he gets seeing an old couple walking along hand in hand, still in love. This is some powerful stuff. If the background hum of their love comes through the link when Todd is just talking to and comforting Charlie, what will it be like when they are truly expressing their love in the most manifest way possible? He's always believed that nobody could love anyone as much as he loves Giselle. Now he knows that isn't true—Todd loves Charlie just as deeply, and he suddenly finds that he likes Todd even more than he did because of it.

As he sits pondering, his thoughts a whirlwind, he realizes that his entire outlook of what Charlie was trying to tell him has changed. No wonder she was so set on getting Todd to experience the immersion. The question that remains, however, is will an immersion like this affect a total stranger in the same way? After all, he already loves and respects Todd and Charlie, them being his only family until Giselle came into his life. He shakes his head, throwing off the thoughts. They will know soon enough, when Charlie passes the experiences along to whoever she's going to share the links with. He clears the immersion from the recorder and resets it to record tonight, starting an hour earlier, just in case. He's beginning to see that the lead-up to the sex is just as important, or more so, than the act itself. He really hopes that they do the wild thing tonight, as he is suddenly very keen to share this with Giselle.

He checks the time and then quietly walks into the bedroom and stops, looking at Giselle lying on the bed. With one arm over her breasts, the other tucked under her head, her hand lost in the spray of her red hair, his love for her threatens to overwhelm him. He'd intended to wake her as she asked, but he decides he must hold her first. Removing his shoes, he eases himself onto bed and snuggles up to her as she, still asleep, rolls onto her right side, allowing him to tuck in close. He slides one arm under her head and one over the top to hold her until the emotions flooding through him passes.

Getting himself under control once again, he begins to stroke her on the arm, pulling her gently from sleep. "How long have I been asleep?" she asks in a slow, dreamy voice.

"Just over an hour."

"You been here the whole time?"

"No. Just for the last few minutes." He kisses her on the neck, just above her shoulder where she likes it.

She sighs deeply and stretches as an enormous yawn escapes her. "I think I could lie here all day."

"So why don't you?" he asks, pulling her in a bit tighter, still stroking her bare arm.

"Mmmm... don't tempt me," she says, squirming in closer to him. "Because I won't sleep tonight."

They are quiet for a time, enjoying the closeness of the other. "I checked on the immersion while you slept," he whispered, his hand still slowly caressing.

"And?" she queries, sounding more alert.

"It was nothing, just them sleeping. But there was something there. I wish I hadn't deleted it now, so you could experience it."

"Something there? What do you mean?"

"Even though they only slept, I was getting this feeling of such contentment and love. It was... well ... eye-opening, I guess is the right term. Before, if someone asked me, I would have told them that nobody could love someone as much as I love you. But Todd loves Charlie just as much. His feelings for her—I knew exactly how he felt because I feel them for you. Charlie was still upset, about Tip I guess, and he was concerned about that. And though he wanted her, he didn't make any move to seduce her. He just held her until she went to sleep. And the thing was, he didn't care—not really—that they weren't going to, well, make love. He was content to simply hold her." He pauses, thinking about his new perception of his friends. "I'm kind of surprised that they only slept. I've always assumed they were having sex every night. Have you seen the way he looks at her?"

She giggles. "You men. You think everybody is getting more than you are. I bet if you ask Todd, he thinks you are getting laid every night too."

"You think?"

"Count on it. You should ask him sometime."

"I don't know."

She giggles again. "Look, he has made love to me—sort of. Pretty soon, you will have made love to Charlie. If you can't talk to him after that, who

can

you talk to?"

Rick thinks about it. He knows she's right, but his world is changing faster than he can keep up. "Maybe," he finally allows.

She stretches again, slaps him on the leg, then tumbles out of the bed. "Get up. We can't lie in the bed all day," she declares.

"I don't know why not," he says, as he rolls out of the bed as well.

***

Giselle spends the rest of her afternoon engrossed in her book while Rick, after putting the mower away, works on cleaning up the interface for simultaneous immersions. He isn't sure why he suddenly feels it is important to improve the interface, but he does.

He is about half done with his work when he and Giselle stop what they are doing to prepare a dinner of poached fish, drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, served on a bed of rice pilaf.

The rest of the evening is spent much the same way, with Giselle reading and Rick working on the multi-participant interface. About halfway through the evening he decides the entire concept of the original interface is flawed and scraps any further work on it, preferring to attack the problem with a clean-sheet design. He has a feeling that he's going to need an interface that is written to the same high standards that he uses with all the other interface work he does, and he finds himself far more interested in the idea than he thought he would. It's been a long time since he

wanted

to work on something. He's excited to get started, but he also knows there is no way he can code the interface in the time remaining before he and Giselle retire for the evening, so he spends the time blue-skying ideas for how the interface will work. When she announces she is going to bed and he can either join her, or he can sit up and work, he wastes no time in wrapping up what he is doing and following her. Sex or no sex, being in bed with her is better than work any day.

***

When Rick arrives at work Monday morning he has a clear idea of what he wants to do with the immersion interface. After a day of stealing snippets of code from here and there, along with a good amount of heads-down programming, he has a rough working framework in place. Now comes the hard part, the polishing of the product and bug fixes so that it works the way people intuitively expect it work. In other words, another Feedback Alive product.

He leaves the office tired, drained, but well satisfied with the work completed thus far. Another two or three weeks of development, bug fixes, and polishing, and the product will be ready to release. Driving home, he's amazed that he's sat on this multi-person immersion interface for almost two years and never realized that the market will be clamoring for something like this if the immersion technology takes off.

While the Ford drives itself, he accesses the net and has a dozen yellow roses sent to Charlie with a note expressing his gratitude for the idea. He wishes he'd thought to send them this morning, so she'd have gotten them today, but tomorrow will be soon enough.

Arriving home, he sees that Giselle's Audi isn't in the garage. While it isn't unheard of for him to beat her home, it's unusual. He pings her as he pulls into the garage and immediately gets her standard greeting that she is with a client and to leave a message. He ends the ping without leaving a message, knowing she will see he pinged her and ping him back when she has a moment. As he expected, the message arrives within twenty minutes.

"Just wanted to know when you would be home," he says after accepting her ping.

"I just finished with the client. I'll be walking out in ten or fifteen minutes, so maybe thirty minutes, depending on traffic?"

"Perfect! Dinner should be ready about the time you get home."

"You're going to spoil me," she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

"I try," he teases.

"You're doing a good job. Let me go so I can get out of here. Love you."

"Love you too," he says in response just before the link closes.

The chicken is baking while he rubs his chin, trying to figure out what else to have. He doesn't mind the cooking, but he hates trying to plan a meal. He has a salad planned, but after a few minutes of thought, he gives up and digs in the freezer for a zapper meal, selecting rosemary roasted potatoes.

Zapper meals are similar to old fashioned microwave meals but are packaged with encoded instructions, so you just place them in the zapper, set the time you want the meal done, and the machine does the rest. When cooking a complete meal, the packaging controls how much of the cooking energy reaches the various parts of the meal to ensure everything finishes cooking at the same time. The meals are quick, easy, and tasty. They work great on weeknights when time constraints make it difficult to cook... or when you can't figure out what to prepare.

Rick wonders what wine to have with chicken, comparing what's in their cellar—a small refrigerator tucked under a counter—to the list that appears in his head via the net. Nothing exactly matches, so he considers which of the whites in the cooler would be best, selecting the one most recommended. He decides right then and there to plan a trip to Napa with Giselle, and spend a week having her teach him about wine. She'll enjoy the trip and the wine, and he'll enjoy her company. Plus, afterwards, maybe he won't be so hopelessly lost every time he had to make a wine selection.

Good as her word, Giselle arrives home twenty-five minutes after her ping. He hands her a glass of wine, which she takes with a smile as he looks at her expectantly. She takes a sip. "Chicken," is all she says, and Rick breaks into a smile, amazed that she can do that nearly every time.

"One day I am going to pick something wrong, just to throw you off," he teases.

"And waste a good bottle of wine? Don't you dare!" She takes another sip and raises her glass slightly in salute. "You're getting better at the selecting."

"The net knows all. I've just learned what questions to ask. Left on my own, I'm hopeless," he admits.

"Philistine," she mutters as she turns away, glass in hand, heading into the bedroom to change out of her suit.

When she returns, dressed in comfortable slacks and a loose blouse, the salads are on the table. They enjoy the meal of chicken and potatoes, discussing their day. He explains briefly about the new immersion interface he is working on and she talks about how, once again, she is tired of the big law firm rat race and would like to go out on her own. This is a conversion they've had several times in the past, and while he fully supports the idea, the timing is bad. Rick, and the other three partners of Feedback Alive, draw a pittance in salary, preferring to put any of the company's meager income back into the company. While he is wealthy on paper, he has no real income until Feedback Alive begins to show enough profit to allow him, and the other partners, to pay themselves a living wage.

After dinner she helps him clean the kitchen before they settle into their evening routine, Giselle curling up with a book and Rick noodling around on the net. He first thinks that he might work on the immersion interface, but decides that he has had enough of that for the day. Instead he accesses the immersion recorder he left at Charlie and Todd's house to see if it captured something more interesting than them sleeping. He logs into the recorder and begins the immersion.

***

Rick finishes rearranging items in the freezer and places the leftover Alfredo sauce from dinner in the compartment. Shutting the freezer door, an evil smile crosses his face. He walks into the family room where Charlie is sitting in her chair, obviously accessing the net from the blank stare on her face. He walks quietly around to stand against the wall beside the back of her chair and, with a deft motion, plunges his hands down the front of her shirt.

Charlie shrieks, jumping as if shot. "Shit! Your hands are like ice!" she shouts, peeling his hands off her skin. Rick begins to laugh heartily at her reaction as she looks at him with a dramatic pout. "That was mean," she pouts.

"Kind of like dumping the cold water on me in the shower this morning?" Rick asks playfully.

"No. That was funny."

"For who?" he asks in mock outrage. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"Why, me, of course," she states as if the answer is obvious.

"Well, goose, meet gander," he says, beginning to chuckle again.

"I bet Rick doesn't treat Giselle like this."

"I bet he doesn't either, because Giselle would kick his ass."

She giggles. "She might, but then again, he might enjoy it," she says as she reaches behind her, pulling him from behind the chair to stand in front of her.