This story depicts same sex relationships that may be offensive to some
readers. Please stop right now if it offends you. Please do the same if are
not 18 yet.

The story is total fiction. None of the characters are real. Any
resemblance with people dead or alive is purely coincidental.

The story or any part of it can be stored, archived and reproduced freely
without any limitations, unless it's done for commercial purposes. Neither
the story nor any part of it can be used for commercial purposes.

Comments, suggestions, criticism: oki_toshi@hotmail.com.  Enjoy!

The Game.
An (almost) true story.


I

As Rob watched the computer screen log the progress of a particularly long
and dull operation, the feeling of a warm, mellow boredom slowly descended
on him and little by little, without, him noticing, enveloped all his
thoughts and feelings. There was nothing he could do about it. He had to
sit there and watch the damn screen blink and listen to the hard drive
chirrup cheerfully and tirelessly. It was close to midnight with no escape
in sight. Too many people depended on his work now. But there didn't seem
like much he could do at the moment, aside from staring at the fucking
screen and listen to the fucking hard drive.

The soft sounds of music from his CD player didn't do much to pick up his
spirits. In fact the music seemed in a strange harmony with the
chirruping. Still, Rob didn't dare to turn it off. He could never be bored
long. Either he would find a distraction or get depressed.  There were
plenty of distractions right behind his office door. An entire hallway full
of video games. There were all kinds: races, shoot-em-ups: the regular
arcade stuff that the company had thoughtfully provided for people
entangled in their work, like Rob now was, to shake off the gloom.

But Rob always hated video games. He had never been good at it when he was
a kid. The monsters would invariably eat him up pretty fast (that was if he
didn't fall off a cliff or got blasted by lighting first), he never managed
to finish any race on time, and after a while it became clear, that he was
not up to the challenge. That was fine. He was not at all discouraged. He
didn't really feel inferior to his friends who seemed to reach fantastic
heights in the field either. He knew that one day he would beat the game at
its own game.  He just had to be patient. The day would come when the game
he wrote himself would show all those snotty kids that they were really
nothing, absolute dust, scum, crap. That would be the day for him to
laugh. He would be the one with the last laugh then.

Rob smiled remembering those sensations. They were vague dreams of his
pre-teen, pre- pubescent years. Now it was different. He was an adult
now. Close to a quarter of a century. Pretty disgusting! But that idea of
early childhood stayed in his mind. It kept coming up, over and over
again. Not really bugging him, but persistent. Sometimes he would forget
about it for a year or more, sometimes he would think about it every week.
It wouldn't let go of him.

Rob gave his cheerful computer a look full of hatred. Naturally the piece
of technology in front of him was the best thing on the market today. Rob
yearned for a heavy glass bottle.  He pictured how he would smash it
against the screen. Pieces of glass flying around in the fountain of
sparkles from the broken monitor. Real fireworks! The machine kept at it.

"Not much I can do to you, is there?" Rob addressed the computer.

As if sensing trouble, the machine suddenly stopped. The lines stopped
appearing on the screen and the chirruping, which almost drove him to
insanity, ceased. In a gesture of peace, the computer presented him with a
thought of the day: "Sex is no substitute for a peace of mind".

"You maybe right," Rob agreed, "but it sure does help."

He sat there a moment staring at the screen.  "Now wait, just a minute, you
cunning peace of metal crap! Like how would you know?!  You mean, from all
the porn people download on you?"

He smiled at his dialog with the computer. Pretty pathetic. Nonetheless,
the job for the night was done. He could go home now. He may not get "peace
of mind" there, but he knew that before he went to sleep, he would put the
machine's theories through a practical test. He smiled to himself.

Rob turned off the computer screen and was ready to leave. He looked at the
hallway with the video games neatly lined up against the wall, their
screens gleaming with lights of all colors, and smiled contentedly. At
least there was one accomplishment in his life.

"Yes-s-s!" Rob raised a clenched fist in a gesture of victory.

He could see the day when it all started as clear as if it happened
yesterday. It was during his last year in the graduate school. He walked
into a local Barnes and Noble and went straight to the computer
section. Nothing there caught his attention, it was the same boring
shit. But what could have possibly changed since last week? With all those
books about programming, he thought, it was amazing why no publishing house
had ever approached him to write one. Yet, amazing, but true. The
publishing houses seemed to be approaching people left and right, but
missed him every time. Perhaps it was a doing of some evil force. There
just wasn't any logical explanation. His eyes kept scanning the shelves,
and then suddenly: that was it! How come he missed it before?!

Rob took the book off the shelf, and opened it. The book had a lot of
sample code printed in it, as well as a CD in the back. This was a good
sign.  A computer book without sample code and a CD in the back, simply was
not worth buying, in Rob's opinion. There was nothing much Rob could learn
about the quality of his find, due to its enormous size.  But in the
annotation, the editor promised that the book could teach anyone how to
write computer games and even more. Naturally, the illiterate bastard who
wrote the annotation almost certainly knew as much about computers as he
did about irons, brain surgery and childbirth. Well, maybe a bit more about
childbirth, Rob hoped for the guy's sake.  Nonetheless, there was no one
else on whose opinion he could rely, so he bought the book.

He brought the book home, sat down at the desk next to the computer and
immersed himself into the wonderful glamorous world of computer games. Or
that was what he thought he did at the beginning. In reality, it was a
cruel world of computer guts, where nothing the computer did was fast
enough, efficient enough, simply good enough. The race against the machine
itself to squeeze every microsecond possible out of its electronic brain
damaged mind, resembled the race against time itself.

Rob didn't give up easily. It wasn't in his nature. Once he got himself
into it, it was too late to turn back. Besides, it would kill him if he had
to admit that the game running bugger had defeated him for the second
time. And so Rob engaged the enemy in a mortal combat again, for the first
time. This time, blood would be drawn.

And so started the new life. He started writing the game.

Pretty soon, Rob noticed, that something strange was happening. He was
still the same.  Yet, people who met him in the hallways of his University
were definitely changing. The first sign of the change: they would avoid
contact with him as much as possible. In different ways. For example, they
would often make a step back after the initial handshake. Or, when talking
to him, they would try to bend backwards and face sideways. It was
weird. Sure, writing the game was taking a lot of his time. Mostly at
night. Yes, he had to skip a shower, occasionally, or would forget to brush
his teeth. But it could not have been that bad?

Well, perhaps it could, because soon Rob started noticing that he was
creating some sort of a force field around himself. He would always sit
alone in the class, with everyone else trying to put at least a few tables
between them. At first Rob was mad, but then found a humor in the
situation. He would walk into the class after the bell on purpose, and
choose a seat in the midst of a tight group. Then with a sadistic pleasure
he would watch how the droplets of sweat slowly formed and glistened on his
victims' foreheads, their breathing becoming irregular. He wondered if
anyone would faint if the class were longer.

Soon, however, he stopped his experiments. Not because he was a nice
person. That was irrelevant by that time. Writing the game had numbed all
his emotions or ability to reason. He just stopped coming to
school. Fortunately, the end of the spring term was near, and he managed to
pull it off. It could have been pure luck that he didn't fail the semester,
but it was the result that mattered in the end.

The summer months were spent in front of the computer, for the most
part. He still had to eat. And not that he could not do it in front of the
computer, no, as a matter of fact that's exactly what he did. It was just
that eating affected his organism in a way that disrupted the whole process
of writing. It was the source of a great frustration to Rob, but he
couldn't figure out a way to avoid those few steps to the bathroom that had
to be made every now and then, and of which eating seemed to be the only
cause. It went without saying that now that the school was over, shower
became obsolete. A couple of big spiders wove their web in what had once
been the shower, trying to show their gratitude by catching at least a few
of the innumerable flies that feasted every day on the mounting piles of
dirty pizza boxes. The leftover pizza inside of those boxes was left for
the flies that the spiders couldn't catch, as well as the armies of
roaches, mice and other fauna that feasts on human garbage. As the result,
anyone who dared to cross the threshold of the apartment would immediately
think he had been magically transformed into a foot, and had a particularly
dirty sock pulled over him. But that could only be said about those who did
not faint right away.

Another problem to deal with was Rob's parents. They insisted that he went
hiking with his friends (a week wasted!), or to the beach, or just outside,
to get some fresh, summer air. At first Rob tried to argue, would loose his
temper. But his parents wouldn't give up, and at the end Rob stopped
reacting. He would put the phone in his apartment on the speakerphone and
continue at the keyboard, listening to the familiar voices promising,
pleading, and threatening somewhere in the background. He was pushing
slowly forward in his war for microseconds. After a while they stopped
calling. It was no longer a question for them to come down to Rob's
place. Both his parents were of delicate health and they did not think that
talking through a gas mask would give them an advantage in the battle for
their son's sanity.

Besides, they could no longer be sure whether it was indeed their son they
were talking to if they met him face to face. Or, rather, face to whatever
was left of Rob's face. To begin with, it was covered with some very thick
vegetation. One could never call it a beard, but it was too late to call it
just stubble. A couple of flashing red circles, where he used to have eyes,
were now gazing at the world around them. He let his hair grow. No one
could guess when was the last time these hair had seen a barber, or, indeed
been touched by a hair comb.

But nothing in this world lasts forever. And there came a day when the game
was done. It happened all of a sudden. After so many months of being
nothing more than an appendix of his computer, Rob regained his human
identity. Just like that. He sat in his chair for a second savoring the
feeling of complete emptiness, unable to move a finger. He was on top of
the world.

But after a few hours, his forces started slowly coming back. Slowly but
surely he was regaining awareness of a world outside of the symbiotic
organism that he and his computer had formed in the months that passed.

When he took his first deep breath, he almost fainted. But Rob was a strong
guy. As soon as he was able to overcome the dizziness, he jumped up and
with the same passion that he had used to write the game he proceeded to
clean up his little Universe. It looked like it would take months to undo
all the damage. But Rob worked hard. He was determined to become a
productive member of society again (or as close as he ever got to it). The
project was not yet finished. The world had yet to see his creation.

By Friday, the apartment and its owner looked quite presentable. Everything
was cleaned up, and the stuff that the exterminator brought in seemed to be
doing its work. Even though Rob could not help but feel as a mass murder,
some sacrifices had to be made.  And now that his job was done, he did not
want to share his apartment with roaches, flies, mice, and rats who did not
even pay rent. The only lives he spared were the two spiders that
established their residence in the shower. He threw them out, but did not
have a heart to kill them.

And so, on Friday afternoon everything was back to normal. Standing in the
middle of his now clean and cozy living room, Rob looked around,
satisfied. However, he could not help but feel that something was amiss. Of
course! He picked up his phone and dialed.

"Yes?" said the familiar voice on the other end.

"Claire? Hi, it's me. Listen, would you like to go out to dinner tonight? I
am done with my project, we can celebrate!"

"Well," Claire answered and he could hear acidic notes in her voice. "I am
sure that since you got along so well without me all these months, you
never thought I was worthy of even one phone call, I am sure you will get
along just fine without me now. Besides, I have a date with Gary
tonight. Hope you'll have a good time."

And that was it. She hung up. Rob stared at the receiver for a moment, not
knowing what to do. Of course Claire was right. Who did he think he was to
treat her like that? But she was going out with that asshole Gary. Gary
used to be Rob's roommate when they were undergraduates. He was extremely
good looking: tall, broad chest, narrow waist, a cute face, blonde hair,
blue eyes. The whole package. And he believed in putting it to a good
use. Boy, did he put it to a good use. There were different women in their
room almost every day. There was no end. Where did he find so many?

When Rob met Claire and they started going steady, his biggest fear was
that she would fall for Gary. That was why he split up with him and got his
own apartment. He was afraid that Claire would never come back to him once
Gary charmed her. And Claire was a very beautiful girl. Long, soft dark
hair, white, almost translucent skin, eyes of emerald green ....  Damn! She
was now lost to him forever. Oh well. Life had to go on. He dialed his
parents' number and invited them out for dinner instead. The end of the
project still had to be celebrated somehow.


II

Now that the game was written, Rob had to find his first victim to get it
tested. It was not that hard. His neighbor's fourteen-year-old son Tony
would do just fine. Rob could not help smiling to himself, looking forward
to the day Tony was supposed to come to his house and have the first crack
at testing Rob's beloved creation.

The game itself was not much better than anything downloadable from the
Internet or BBSs. In many respects it was worse. Rob was not very creative
and did not know how to write a proper scenario. Getting graphics was also
rather challenging, since Rob could not do it himself. But he was able to
put together a few resources from the CD that came with the book and
downloaded a lot from the Internet. The result was acceptable. The idea
behind the game was very simple. Just like in hundreds of games similar to
this one, the player went through a multitude of levels of ever increasing
difficulty, fighting monsters, avoiding pitfalls and collecting
treasures. The goal was simply to survive all the levels, kill as many
monsters as possible, and collect as may treasures as possible. For every
successful action, the player was awarded points. Nothing unusual so far.

The gimmick was in a secret algorithm that Rob built into the game that
made it impossible to complete. It was some kind of a virus, that was
dormant in the beginning, and slowly woke up as the game progressed.

Indeed, in the beginning, everything happened the way it was supposed to
happen. The first few levels were easy. As the player gained confidence,
and as his score grew, the virus would awake. It was the score that woke
the virus up. And then, hell would start to break loose. At first, the
player would be surprised that as he was trying to escape a monster, a wall
that had not there before would suddenly come up. Then, his weapon's
behavior would become unpredictable. It would shoot sometimes and sometimes
it would not. Then, all of a sudden, monsters would gain an uncanny ability
to walk through the maze in a straight line, passing through the walls as
if they did not exist. The pitfalls would appear out of nowhere. A solid
floor would turn into burning fire right under the player's feet. Objects
that looked like treasures would turn into monsters the moment they were
picked up. And if the player survived all those horrors, the key
assignments would suddenly change. Pressing the right arrow key would,
against your expectations, take you to the left or make you jump, or squat,
there was no way to know.

All these things would happen gradually in the beginning, so that the
player didn't even notice. But the frequency would increase very fast and
finally the unavoidable death would follow. At this point, to keep things
interesting, resurrection was possible in exchange for the points. With the
score getting a little lower, the built in virus would calm down a little,
and the road to the new torture would be paved.

Rob was proud of his innovations. They were the revenge for never being
able to survive those devious games of his childhood.

Tony came over on Saturday night at eight, and went straight for the
computer. Tony loved computers and most of all he loved games. He was
perfect for the test. Rob did not meet Tony often but he was very friendly
with his parents. On the day they moved into Rob's apartment building, Rob
helped them to move their stuff in. Now that he looked at Tony, he could
not help noticing that the kid was very good looking in his own teenage
way. Slim, cute face, disarming smile, a true all-American look.

Rob loaded the game and went to the kitchen to get a can of soda for his
test subject.  When he came back, he saw that the boy was absorbed
completely by the little world of treasures and monsters. He was scoring
very fast, and soon, Rob knew, the real game would begin.

He watched the kid's reaction intensely. It changed from surprise to
amusement to anger to frustration and despair within five minutes. And then
he died. And then got resurrected and kept playing. And then the
surprise-amusement-anger-despair cycle repeated itself.  And then
again. And again. The kid did not give up easily, and the game was luring
him in. Even though it was almost clear that success was unattainable,
still the devil encoded in the program kept the excitement level up. It was
plain addictive.

At eleven Rob intervened and Tony's protests notwithstanding told him to
wrap it up.  The kid's face was flashing, his eyes red with wild glimmer
shining from them, his movements were awkward and resembled those of
someone who was torn from a deep sleep and had not completely regained
control of his body yet.

Rob was satisfied. His project was a success, or so he thought. Over pizza,
he tried to question Tony about his experiences. But the boy just mumbled
and could not tell him anything definite. When he was already out of the
apartment and Rob was closing the door, the boy turned around and asked if
he could bring his friend Joey next time, to show him the game. Rob was
flattered, and the time was set right away for tomorrow night.

Tony and Joey showed up at Rob's apartment just before eight on Sunday
night. If Tony was cute and good looking Joey was plain handsome. He was a
bit darker complexioned than Tony, had hazel eyes that looked friendly at
the world around him and its inhabitants. Everything was perfect about that
kid. His body and his face looked like an artist had chiseled
them. Michelangelo could not have done a better job.

Rob felt as if something pinched him from the inside. Pangs of conscience?
It was too late for it now. He let the boys in and tried to be as nice to
them as he possibly could.  Both his guests agreed to a drink. More out of
politeness -- to make him feel like a good host, he thought. Nonetheless,
he went to the kitchen to get their sodas. In the living room, he could
hear the boys laughing and soon heard the familiar sounds of digital
gunshots.

When he opened the door of the refrigerator, he regretted insisting on
those drinks. He was totally out of everything. How could he forget?
Nevertheless, a promise was a promise. Rob told the boys to have fun and
said that he would be back quickly. The supermarket was not that far away.

Rob got some pop and went to the register. It was a Sunday night and just a
few of them were open. There were a couple of people in front of him in the
line and they seemed to have bought half the store. It dragged on and
on. Rob was getting impatient. The whole ordeal lasted probably about
twenty minutes instead of the expected five.

Finally, he was back. As he opened the door, the first thing he was
conscious of were the sounds. Not the sounds of two teenage boys having
harmless fun with the computer. It was something else. Muffled, and, yes,
there was no way to deny it, sensual. Slowly Rob closed the front door and
crept to the living room. He expected anything, but not what he saw. Frozen
in his tracks he stood at the entrance to the living room still unable to
believe what was unraveling in front of his eyes.

Both boys were stark naked. Their clothes was spread all over the
carpet. Tony was bent over with his arms grabbing the desk to keep his
balance. Joey was ramming his dick in and out of his friends ass. Both were
moaning with pleasure. Those were the sounds that Rob first heard. The boys
were facing the other way from the entrance and could not see Rob come in.

"Oh! I love you baby," Rob could hear Joey moan to his friend.

"Why haven't we done this before? I wanted it for such a long time."

"You can have me anytime you want, love," was the reply.

"I wish you never had to pull out."

"Oh, Tony, I am real close now," Joey moaned.

He bent down briefly and stretched himself forward to kiss his lover. Tony
turned his head and stuck his tongue out ....  The boys' tongues wrestled
for a second.

"I am really close now. I can't hold it any more. Here it comes!"  Joey
cried out. His body tensed for a moment, and then Rob saw the
thrusts. Yep. That was an orgasm, and a good one too, judging by how the
boy's entire body seemed to go out of itself with every motion. Spent, Joey
collapsed on the back of his friend, still not having pulled out. Rob
looked at the computer screen, that seemed to gaze cheerfully at the scene
from the opposite side. The writing "Game Over" was blinking happily on the
monitor. But in reality, it was not over yet. Joey, who could now devote
more attention to his friend moved his hand to Tony's dick. Rob couldn't
see from behind, but apparently he was doing a pretty good job, because
pretty soon Tony's body embarked on its share of thrusts, and the
unavoidable was going to happen any time soon ....  At this moment, a
sudden realization hit Rob.

"Watch the fucking carpet!!!" he yelled on the top of his lungs.

It was most certainly too late. The white gooey stuff was dropping on the
carpet in abundance. The only thing he did accomplish was to ruin a perfect
orgasm. Both boys leaped ten feet up in the air. Joey jumped away from Tony
with an unmistakable sound of a flop, as the air rushed back into the place
vacated by Joe's manhood. They started running around the living room,
trying to cover themselves with whatever came under their hands. The air in
the room was filled with "oh shit's" and "oh fuck's", as well as the musty
order of boys who just had sex.

Rob was standing in the middle of the living room, trying to grab each of
the naked boys by the shoulders and calm them down. Finally he managed to
grab Tony.

"Please don't tell my mom!"  There were tears in the boy's eyes. "She's
gonna kill me!"

"Will you calm down? No one is going to tell anyone, unless you do it
yourselves. First of all, go get cleaned up, then we'll talk. I want to
know what happened here in the twenty minutes that I was gone."

The boys saw that Rob was not going to kill them on the spot or tell on
them. Smiles of relief appeared on their faces.

"And no sex in the bathroom, PLEASE!" Rob shouted after them. "Kids!" he
said to himself out loud.

When the cleanup was finally done, Joey and Tony joined Rob in the living
room.

"You must be hungry as hell," he told them. "Come on, let's eat. You can
tell me you story while we eat."

As the boys were devouring the chicken, they told they spoke both together,
at once.  They sensed Rob's sympathy and were not in the least bit afraid
to talk. From their incoherent story, the only thing Rob concluded, as he
had expected, that the whole thing just happened. Spontaneously. One detail
was bothering him, however. In some strange way, the game seemed to come
into the story, somehow. How exactly? It was hard to tell, but Rob could
not shake off the feeling, that ....  No. It could not be. How was it
possible?  Yet, the evil thought had firmly implanted itself in his
mind. It had to be put to a test.  Right now. And what had he got to loose?

"Listen, guys." Rob spoke up. "Why don't you do me a favor. If you agree,
this apartment is yours whenever you like it. I am out most of the time
anyway. What do you say?"

The boys looked at each other. The offer was too good to be turned down.
They nodded agreement.

"What do you want us to do?" they asked.

"Let's go play another game."

"This is it?" the boys cried out in unison.

"You bet."

"No catch?"

"Nope."

"Are you sure?"

"Did you notice that I am having trouble getting through? Is it me or is my
audience suddenly getting dense?"

The two teenagers hopped off their chairs and rushed into the living
room. Rob followed with a smirk. Tony took the "driver's seat", Rob took
the chair next to him, and Joey pulled up another one next to Rob. The game
was started and Tony quickly got through level one. He knew it by heart
now. Level two, same story. Somewhere in the middle of level three, Rob
suddenly caught himself trying to shift closer to Joey. To cuddle almost.
He shook it off, but in a few more minutes, when Tony was ready to go to
level four the urge came back. It materialized quite painfully in the form
of an erection that was trying to poke its way through the denim of his
jeans. Rob knew that at this point the game "devil" should be at work. And
indeed it was. Pretty soon a whole avalanche of monsters started gushing
out of nowhere. Walls were built around Tony as he tried walking, and he
was loosing energy in fights with what appeared to be
treasures. Nonetheless, to Rob's amazement, he persevered.

How exactly Rob found himself naked squeezed between two sex hounds, he did
not know. His mind seemed to have momentarily blacked out. He glanced at
the computer screen and saw a monster finishing up the digital Tony. Waves
of desire and pleasure so intense that he would never be able to find words
to describe it were rushing through his body. Somewhere, down there, Tony,
stark naked was going down heavily on his cock.

"Easy with those teeth, pal," Rob mumbled.  "Shut up and kiss me!" he heard
a husky voice somewhere above. It belonged to Joey.

Joey rushed towards his mouth and pressed down hard on Rob's lips. Soon
their tongues were doing their work. Then Joey came up. He disengaged
himself from Rob and moved towards Tony. He was in with one thrust. Tony
didn't even flinch.

"Either he has done it before, or there is something very weird going on
here," Rob thought.

Nonetheless, Tony seemed to enjoy it. He was moaning and begging Joey to go
harder, and harder, and harder. As their expressions of pleasure became
more and more audible, Rob started wondering about the neighbors. Then he
became really worried. Then, the sensations coming from his cock drove all
the worries away, filling him up completely.  >From the moans he heard from
Tony and Joey, he concluded correctly that his carpet was about to sustain
even more damage. He was not wrong. A moment later, it seemed to him that
his brain separated from its comfortable place in his head, and, passing
through the entire body was violently gushing out of his cock, and whatever
came out was being avidly consumed by a gorgeous teenager whose head he was
holding tight in his grip.

Spent they all lay on the living room floor trying to catch their breath.

"That was fucking intense," said Joey.  "As well as intense fucking,"
agreed Rob.

They all laughed. Rob looked at the clock. It was almost midnight.

"Oh my God!" He yelled. "On a school night! Quick. Go clean yourselves up
right now and scram!"

The boys giggled and dashed to the bathroom.


III

Rob had to admit, that the weekend was far from dull, even though Claire
was not part of it. He was now convinced that the game had much more to do
with the excitement than he ever deemed possible. But was there any way he
could put his discovery to work for him? He had an idea.

Next Saturday Rob threw a bash in his apartment. He invited all of his
friends. He even invited Gary. And not just Gary. He also invited Tom. A
real audacious snob, whose guts Rob hated. But he decided that since he was
inviting everyone, Tom should not be left out. At least that was what he
was telling all his friends. Of course, it was rather difficult to get
Claire to come, but Gary did help.

The party was a success. Rob knew what to do when he really wanted
to. Booze was flowing like a river, music blasting, what else did one need
for a perfect party? Even Claire seemed to be warming up and actually
smiled at him a few times.

Towards the end, when most people had left, Rob got into a heated debate
about game programming with Tom. Tom did not consider games to be worthy of
any serious programmer's time. Of course that was absolute nonsense in
Tom's opinion. Games took a lot of knowledge, skill, and ingenuity.

"Especially good ones!" he yelled in the heat of the argument. "I bet you
never did it in your life, because you are just a conceited snob and
nothing more. You probably never even played a good game, let alone wrote
one!"

"All right, mister genius," Tom hissed. "Perhaps you would care to show me
your creation then?"

"I would," Rob answered calming down, "but Gary and Claire are now in my
bedroom, and I moved my machine there for the party."

"Chicken," said Tom and smiled.

Maybe he was a conceited snob, but his smile was dazzling. With two rows of
perfect teeth. Made him look like a movie star.

"Fine," said Rob. "It's between you and Gary, then."

When they entered the bedroom, Gary and Claire were just starting to make
out. Gary looked outraged, but when he learned about the reason for the
intrusion he got excited.  Gary was a big fan of computer games. Rob knew
that since the time when they had been room mates.

"Can I stay and watch?" Gary asked.

Rob smiled. Everything was going as planned, so far. The rest was up to the
game. He turned the computer on and left the room together with Claire.

"Come on, Robby", she said. "I'll help you clean up a bit, while these two
kids knock themselves out." And she gave Gary a meaningful look, which he
preferred to ignore.

They went to the kitchen and started doing dishes. The water was running
and it made it hard to hear any other noise. And Rob was listening very
carefully for any sound coming from the bedroom. It took all of Rob's
concentration to follow the small talk Claire was making. He thought his
head would burst from tension. At the end he probably did not do too good a
job talking with Claire, because he noticed her frown a few times.

"Rob, are you feeling ok?" Claire asked.  "Yeah. I am fine. Just a bit
tired."

Finally he heard it. Or thought he heard it. It was really hard to tell
with the water running. But in any event, it was as close to a real sound
as he could possibly hear in these conditions. He knew that time had come.

"All right, Claire. Let's go check on those two. I wonder, what is taking
them so long."

Before she could reply, he took her by the hand and led her to the
bedroom. He opened the door with a kick and presented Tom and Gary to his
audience. The effect exceeded his wildest expectations. Tom and Gary were
both naked, with Tom on the floor, his legs spread out, and Gary between
them moving rapidly in and out, in and out. They didn't even hear the door
open, absorbed by their passion.

"I had no idea you had such a smooth chest, Tom," Rob observed calmly.

Claire was standing there with her mouth open unable to utter a sound.

Tom made a wild leap back and both he and Gary were now facing their
audience with a mixture of many emotions written on their faces, their
erections dying quickly. Rob thought he had already seen a similar stunt
performed before, not so long ago. There was fear, and embarrassment, and
despair, but most of all, Rob thought, an intense anger for being
interrupted written on the faces of his guests.

"Claire and I hope we didn't interrupt anything." Rob continued. "Sorry if
we did. Well, have fun. Hope you can pick it up where you left off." He
pushed Claire out of the room and closed the door after them.

Claire was standing in the hallway, still unable to speak.

"It's ok, sweetheart," said Rob taking her into his arms. "You never know
when a person turns out -- you know -- like this.

All of a sudden Claire burst into tears.

"Oh, honey," she was managing to utter between sobs. "And I left you for--
for him--"

Rob was trying to comfort Claire as best as he could.

After all said and done, without realizing it, he must have written a
masterpiece. Rob smiled thinking of the millions of copies his game could
have sold. It could have been another Myst. Who knows?

Yes. Those were sweet memories of a not so distant past. But what was he
still doing at the office at midnight?! His job was done, and he was not
going to play a video game this late. Suddenly, he heard the phone ring in
his office. He rushed back and picked it up.

"Yes?"

"Hello honey," his wife's voice sounded lively and awake.  "You aren't
asleep yet, Claire? What a surprise!"

"I am waiting for you, lover boy," she answered playfully.

"I'll be right over. I'm leaving right now."  Then a thought struck
him. "Wait a minute.  You haven't been--"

"No! How could you!  I don't need a computer to turn me on! I am always
horny for you, you know that." It sounded convincing enough.

"All right, sweetheart. Sorry about that. Just hold on for a few more
minutes."

"Ok. Hurry. Oh, by the way, before I forget. Gary called. He invited us to
visit him and Tom in their cabin on the lake this weekend."

"How sweet of them. That means I can leave the apartment to Tony and Joey
for the whole weekend. They will be ecstatic!"

"I'll bet. You seem to care an awful lot for those boys. Sometimes I get
the feeling that there is something between you I don't know."

"Don't be ridiculous, sweety-pie. Anyway, I'll see you real soon, so don't
go anywhere."  Rob hung up the phone.

Again he looked at the video games in the hallway.  "Good night, guys", he
said and waived at them. "Maybe we'll have some fun together one of these
days, although I doubt it. Still who knows. There might be much more to you
then we, people, think." He turned off the lights in his office and headed
down the hallway to the elevator.