This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to ANYONE is completely coincidental. Anyone who engages in any "activity" is well over the age of 18.
Author's Note: Authors love hearing from their readers and I'm no exception, it feeds our egos. I love to interact with readers (except the homophobes). Do you have questions? Please, ask away. I'll answer whatever I can. Hope to hear from you! This is a longer chapter and took quite a bit of time to write. There probably won't be anything new from me for a couple of weeks as my main gig is approaching a deadline.
Last time Amy and Dave completed the purchase of Amy's funeral home and Amy began to take charge. Amy received a visit from her friend, Erin, and David's brother Cal became seriously ill. When we last left the twins David and Amy disagreed on when and how to talk to her adoptive parents about their relationship.
Amy -- Working Hard, Playing Hard.
Part I
I hung up with Aunt Ellie and sat, staring at my computer without doing much of anything for some time. I know the way Cal blew up at us scared Amy but if we wanted to progress down the path we set for ourselves then telling her parents was something we simply had to do.
After Amy got home with dinner, the rest of the night went on par with any other Sunday. We ate, we all relaxed together, and finally, we went to bed.
I'd like to be able to tell you that Amy and I spent the night fucking each other's brains into mush but I'd be a lying bastard if I did. We slept. We slept hard and deep. I was a little concerned by how much we slept and I brought it up to Sophie the next morning. I wondered if we may be coming down with something.
"You're almost fifty years old," Sophie said.
"What's that supposed to mean," I asked, more than a little offended.
"It means," she said, using her doctor voice, "you've been at it like rabbits for a month. You've gone back and forth across half the state multiple times and then you helped her move. You had the stress of dealing with family, a wedding, and fighting with your brothers. And to top it off, you hurt yourself and spent the night in the hospital. Dad, the two of you are exhausted!"
I hate to admit it but I was quite dejected by her explanation. Sophie was right, of course. I just didn't like to hear it. I still thought of myself as a young man.
Sophie sat down next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. "Daddy," she said, "I don't like it, either. I don't want either of you growing any older than you are. I don't want any of us to grow old. You're better off than most guys your age but you can't carry on like you're in your twenties, anymore. Hell, other than the fact you could stand to lose a few pounds you are in amazing shape for a 49-year-old. You're in amazing shape for a 40-year-old! If you want your doctor's advice: Take it easy this week. Don't run all over the state, exercise reasonably, and don't try to be a new dad so much. Save your energy for taking Chris all over Gettysburg, you're going to need it."
Sophie's talk about health reminded me that I hadn't heard from Cal.
"Shit," I said, "I forgot. Cal came to the funeral home on Saturday."
"Did he cause a scene?"
"No," I said, "but he looked more like a potential customer than the owner's brother.
Sophie moved right back into doctor mode. "What's going on," she asked.
"His ankles looked like tree trunks, his skin was grey, and he could barely breath. If he wasn't heading toward heart failure than I'm still drunk. He promised me he was going to go right to the hospital but I don't believe him."
"Shit is right," Sophie said, "how did he look last Saturday when he was here?"
"Fine. I mean he looked like Cal, no neck and all, but otherwise fine."
Sophie called a friend at the hospital. "Hi Sybil," she said. "Yeah, I'm enjoying no more twelve-hour shifts. Look, I need to know if my uncle Calvin Drake has been in. No, I don't need to know details, just if he's been in. No? Thanks."
I watched Sophie's reaction as she spoke on the phone. She wasn't surprised and frankly, neither was I.
"So, he didn't go?"
"Not in the last week, no."
"You know what's going on, don't you," I asked.
She looked at me as if she wanted to say something. Finally, she said, "I can't tell you." That was enough of a confirmation for me, though.
Amy and Lys came into the kitchen and they both saw the stressed look on Sophie's face. Poor Lys looked a little green. I knew morning sickness when I saw it.
Despite her obvious discomfort and roiling stomach, Lys asked Sophie what was wrong.
"Dad was telling me about seeing Uncle Cal and that he was sick."
"Oh, did his wife take him to the ER," Amy asked.
"No," Sophie said, "they never went. I'm going to go see him after lunch, I just need to come up with a reason."
"Take Chis to meet his Aunt Alice," Lys said. Sophie thought that that was perfect.
Part II
Amy and Lys left to meet the contractors after breakfast. Lys took her own car so she could do the grocery shopping afterwards and Amy had plans to stay at the funeral home all day to get some cleaning and planning done. For the first time in days, I was able to get started on a full workday, even logging into my private chat server to work directly with Jags and Cooper. After lunch, when Sophie and Chris went to "meet Aunt Alice" I found that I had the house to myself.
"There's rumbling from the office," Cooper said over the video chat.
"What kid of rumbling," Jags asked him.
"Suits meeting with our bosses," he answered.
That got my attention. "Probably investors. They always get investors in when we're in production. They'll be wanting to show us off soon," I conjectured.
"Maybe," Cooper admitted, "but Kelly at the front desk seemed to think that they were something else."
"Borg," Jags asked.
There are two game companies that seem to be snatching up the other, independent companies. Jags, Cooper, and I had taken to referring to them as the Borg. They swoop in, make everything their own, and take every piece of individuality and originality out of their acquisitions and replace them with micro transactions. You know who I mean.
"Yeah, Borg," Cooper agreed.
"Shit," Jags said. A simple word and a simple statement but it summarized so much.
What my team didn't know was that way back in 1993 when the first Blade and Bolt came out, our bosses were very, very new to the industry. They never asked me for an intellectual property sign-off and my lawyer, Mr. Swift, certainly never brought it up to them. Because of this and through several technicalities, I was still the owner of the Blade and Bolt I.P. Additionally, I never signed a non-compete so if our company really was about to be assimilated, I had an escape clause. Yes, this is unheard of in any publishing industry. Yes, I took advantage of my employers in a big way. No, I did not feel bad about it.
I had hired Jags and Cooper personally back when Blade and Bolt went from being a text-based adventure to being multi-media; that was for the third title. I may have neglected to have them sign non-competes as well.
What all this amounted to was that if something like assimilation, especially to a company like the one who has ruined so many others (you know who I mean), were to happen, we could go wherever and do whatever we wanted.
"There's nothing to worry about, guys," I said.
"Easy for you to say," Cooper scoffed, "you're doing this as a lucrative hobby these days. We don't all have a big-ass inheritance to fall back on."
I picked my phone up off of my desk. It was a message from Amy. "I'm all alone here, now."
"Same here," I replied to her.
"Guys," I said aloud, "I'm serious, there's nothing to worry about. Even the Borg lose once in a while."
"Yeah, okay, Captain Picard," Cooper scoffed.
A moment later, my phone dinged again but this time it was an app notification.
"Your partner is online."
Ah. I had forgotten about the "Interbuzz" app. My phone dinged a few more times in rapid succession. Amy sent me a series of snapshots. She was upstairs in the funeral home, in one of the bedrooms where the spare furniture was. In the first picture, she was topless and putting the Interbuzz toy in her mouth. The second phot was a shot of her spreading her pussy lips and displaying her clit. The third photo had a caption. It said, "I'm recording. You'll get a copy of the video after I've cum." The picture was a shot of the Interbuzz toy nestled securely in her cunt.
I launched the Interbuzz app and chose the sound reaction function. I put my phone down on my desk and switched the PC audio to the external speakers.
"Cooper," I said, "can we go through the new sound files you sent Friday?"
Cooper brightened up. "Oh yeah, let's do it. Where do you want to start?"
"Weather effects. Let's go simple sounds to complex," I answered. I was making sure to really enunciate so my phone would pick up every word. I watched the app reacting to our voices, knowing that it was sending pulses to Amy's toy.
Cooper started the sounds files with wind and a simple rainfall. As always, it sounded great. I watched the little sound spikes on the app, sending waves of gentle, if persistent pulses to the toy. The gentle rain lasted a few minutes and then Cooper changed it up to a heavy downpour, then after a few minutes of that he added howling wind. Each time he made a change I watched the app's little audio indicator light up, giving me an idea of how the toy was reacting.
Finally, Cooper added in thunder effects. Each clap would send a spike to the app and I smiled, hoping it was getting the reaction I wanted from Amy.
"That's great, Cooper," I said, "but it is too regular, too rhythmic. Can you randomize the thunderclaps at all? Make it more like nature?"
A few tweaks later, the thunder was coming in at random intervals and the duration of each rumble varied. While Cooper played with the variations, I noticed that the Interbuzz app had a button to activate multiple modes at once. I pressed it and opened up the "touch" mode.
The silly looking digital pussy appeared on my screen and I discretely began to tap my fingers in random spots. Every so often, I would slide my finger up and tickle the digital clit on screen.
For another thirty minutes, Cooper demoed various sounds and tweaked them based on our discussion. The whole time I kept dancing my fingers across my phone screen. When the last sound played, I pushed my finger down on the digital clit and rubbed it like I was trying to shine up a penny. When the sounds finally ended, I stopped the rubbing.
Immediately, I received a notification: "Your partner is not online." There was no further communication from Amy, so I hoped that I did okay.
Part III
Twenty minutes later, while Jags, Cooper, and I were still bouncing ideas off each other I heard the front door open and close rapidly. I muted my mic and called out to see who had come home.
"I need you upstairs," Amy called back.
