My Reward -- Ch01 (MC, setup, no sex)



CHAPTER 1: THE VOICE

You would be thoroughly shocked if I told you (in fact, you would be waiting
to hear the punch-line), that I am a 52-year-old male who lives in the
suburbs of Phoenix in a rather pleasant but by no means ostentatious house in
an unremarkable upper-middle class subdivision.

The reason you would be shocked if I told you this (whereas you are,
obviously, not shocked in reading it) is because if I told you, you would be
looking at a 22-year-old male who lives in a palatial beachfront home near
San Juan Capistrano. Or perhaps you might be looking at me in another form.
You see, I can be whomever or whatever I want.

A couple years ago, when I (my name is Tom Mallory, by the way) was 50,
reasonably happy, enjoying a reasonably successful career in advertising, and
a reasonably successful marriage with two reasonably well-adjusted children,
a totally unreasonable thing happened to me.

It was Memorial Day weekend. School was just out and my wife had taken the
kids over to visit her parents in San Diego. I was supposed to go along, but
a crisis came up at the office and it looked like we were about to lose our
biggest account unless we all worked all weekend to fix it. So Chris,
justifiably grumbling, took off on Friday morning in the minivan with the
kids, while I headed into the office sweating bullets about a halfwitted
client who loved to make mountains out of molehills, but who also paid his
very large bills on time.

By midafternoon, the huge crisis had blown over, everybody was all smiles
(though some of the smiles on our side of the table were a bit forced) and
the client was leaving the office telling us to enjoy our weekend and saying
that he was heading for his cabin in the White Mountains.

Most of us had canceled our weekend plans because of this jerk and there were
the usual suggestions that we take up a collection to hire a hit man.

As we all calmed down, we tried to straighten out our plans. I assuaged
feelings by suggesting we close the office early, and ten minutes later the
place was deserted.

I tried to make plane reservations over to San Diego, but everything was
booked. I didn't feel like driving alone, so I blew it off and decided to
settle in for a long weekend alone. Actually, I wasn't all that upset. I love
my family but, like most men, I enjoy a little private time occasionally.

On Saturday, just after noon, after doing some long-neglected chores around
the house, I decided to combine two of my pleasures -- wandering in the
desert and writing. I had been working, off and on, on a novel for the past
several months, and decided that this was a good opportunity to finish it
off. And I'd finish it on my laptop at my favorite secluded spot in the
desert.

I made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (my culinary specialty and,
luckily, my favorite food), grabbed a few Pepsis out the refrigerator, and in
forty-five minutes was perched on a comfortable shady spot on a small rise in
a neglected but not too remote section of the Reservation.

I opened a Pepsi, turned on my laptop and opened the file for my novel. I had
only typed about three sentences, however, when the screen went blank, then
flickered a couple times. Uh-oh, I thought, dead laptop. I was just beginning
to think about the warranty, when a message came on the screen: "Bring your
device to the cave 50 yards to the west."

Now I've seen many weird error messages from Microsoft, but this was strange
even by their standards. I was just wondering what was meant by "device"
(presumably the computer) when the message came on again and began flashing in
red letters.

I decided to walk west and see what was over there. I was also trying to
figure out if this was a joke, and if so who could have programmed this sort
of weirdness into my laptop.

I walked what I thought was about 50 yards in the direction that I figured
was pretty much due west (I washed out of Boy Scouts) and looked around. My
laptop (I had carried it with me) started beeping, even though I had turned
it off, and then a voice came through it: "Ten yards to your right."

I wasn't really scared -- I couldn't imagine anyone was doing something to
try to hurt me -- but I was getting a little annoyed with the joke, and very
curious to know what the point of it was.

I walked to my right and, sure enough, there was a little cave. Really little
more than an indentation in the rock, probably caused by erosion when this
was a sea millennia ago, it was about ten feet deep and about five feet high
and wide. I stooped down to enter, and suddenly The Voice (for lack of a
better term) spoke to me: "It is good you are here. I have waited more than
ten thousand years to be released. I must use your device."

"Uh-huh," I answered, looking around for the microphone. "Well, who are you,
and what's going on here?"

"I have no time for explanations. I am a prisoner in this rock, but your
device has the power to release me. I must use it."

And then what looked like an arc of electricity ran between the rock and my
laptop, and the damn thing sparked and heated. I dropped it.

The Voice said, "You will receive your reward." And then he/she/it was gone.
I don't know how I knew it was gone, because it had never really been there
-- in any normal sense. But it no longer spoke and somehow I knew it had
left.

I did consider for a few minutes whether I had imagined the whole thing, but
I'm not a particularly fanciful person, and certainly I would never imagine
anything like this. Besides, there was my laptop. I picked it up and tried to
turn it on, but I knew it was fried. Literally. The plastic had melted in a
couple places. Two months old -- three grand down the drain.

I assumed it was some kind of trick, but I couldn't think of anyone I knew who
would engage in that kind of game -- much less be able to pull it off. Whoever
it was, though, owed me $3,000.

Well, I thought to myself as I got back to my car, at least The Voice said I
was going to get a reward. I wondered if the "reward" would be the punchline
to the joke. Of course, I said to myself, if the whole thing wasn't a joke,
maybe I was about to get a bunch of money. Right.

"How much?"

I looked around. No one was there. Maybe I was losing my mind. "What's going
on?" I thought.

"I need to know how much money you want," came back the answer. I sat down.
This was getting a little weird. Correction: A lot weird. "Who are you?" I
asked aloud.

"I am your reward," was the answer. "I don't have a name, unless you wish to
give me one. Perhaps you could call me Reward, until you determine my name.
The Voice, as I believe you think of it, has installed me in your mind to
coordinate the fulfillment of your desires."

"So you want to give me money?" I asked. "How much can I have?"

I tried to avoid licking my lips in anticipation. Had I just hit the lottery?
I looked around, although the voice did seem to be coming from inside my
head. I also felt a bit foolish because I was almost starting to believe in
what seemed to be happening.

"As much as you want. I am instructed to tell you that I am to fulfill any
request you make, and to anticipate your needs and wishes as much as
possible. I have a few limitations -- I can't destroy the earth, nor can I
kill so many people that life on earth would be endangered."

"I think I can live with those restrictions," I replied. "So is this a genie
in the bottle thing -- I get three wishes?"

"No," Reward answered, "there are no restrictions on the number of wishes,
nor a timeframe. I will be with you forever."

"The rest of my life, huh?"

"When do you wish to die?" asked Reward.

I put the key in and drove off. This needed thought.

*   *   *   *   *

I mentioned some "reasonablies" earlier. I should probably add here that I
had been a reasonably faithful husband. In the course of a twenty year
marriage I had twice, while on extended business trips, had sex with a
prostitute. In both cases it was more a matter of curiosity and boredom than
lust. It was also, in both cases, rather unsatisfying.

That is not to say, however, that I was without my fantasies. I had the usual
quota of dreams of beautiful and submissive young women living only to fulfill
my every desire. Sometimes these dreams might be accompanied by masturbation,
other times they might accompany sex with my wife.

My wife, a delightful person with whom I was, am, and presumably always will
be very much in love, is somewhat repressed sexually. I've given up trying to
get her to experiment -- when you have 99% of what you need to be happy,
there's no point in risking it to get the other 1%.

But now ... with money apparently not a problem, assuming still that I wasn't
hallucinating or being hoaxed, my thoughts turned to sex. How could I work
this out so I could have all the sex I ever wanted, without screwing up my
marriage?

Before I went too far down that path, I realized a test might be in order.
"Reward ...." I said. Then there was a small pile of money on the seat next to
me. I had been about to say "... give me $10,000 in twenties."

I pulled over. I started to count, then realized there was no need. There was
a bunch of money there, it was real, and if Reward could put the money there,
he (for lack of a better pronoun) wasn't likely to short me a couple hundred.

I had almost asked for billions, then realized that there wasn't room in the
car for several billion dollars and me. Now I realized that I didn't need
billions as long as I could have more whenever I wanted it. All I needed to
ask for was that there would always be enough money in my pocket to pay for
what I wanted. I started to ask Reward if he could do that, but before I
could he replied. "Yes."

"Out of curiosity…." I began, planning to ask him how he did it, when he
replied "You are capable of manipulating matter and dimensions."

"I am?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered. "I am merely an interface for your powers."

Hmmm.

My thoughts, not surprisingly, returned to sex.

I was thinking about asking for a nice juicy 18-year-old, when suddenly there
was one on the seat next to me. She had on a crop top, displaying a gorgeous
flat belly, and cutoffs that couldn't have been any tighter if they were skin.
Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail. Just the way I had envisioned her. She
squirmed in the seat, and lifted her delicious butt.

"Man," she said, as she reached under herself to clear the debris of my
previous wish, "where'd all this money come from?" Now she looked over at me.
"Where're we going?"

This was too crazy. I wished she wasn't there.

She wasn't.

"Reward," I said quickly, "don't interrupt me. Please, from now on, don't
anticipate -- wait until I've thought things through and made a definite
decision before you do anything, okay?"

"Of course," he replied. He sounded slightly hurt.

"I appreciate the girl," I said, trying to patch his feelings. "I just wasn't
ready for her."

I thought some more. "I want you to anticipate emergencies," I said. "Like if
I were about to be in a car accident, or someone wanted to hurt me, take care
of the situation before it can happen. But if there's no need for a quick
decision, let me think about it."

"Yes, sir," he answered, sounding a bit mollified.

As I drove into town, I began to think about the girl again. She was exactly
my conception of the perfect teen. I asked Reward if she was real.

"It depends on your definition of real," he answered. "She was made of the
same materials as a human being, she had feelings and thoughts, but she had
no existence outside your awareness. She had no past, and she ceased to exist
once you asked me to remove her."

I didn't know if I liked the idea of having sex with women who didn't really
exist -- although some benefits were readily apparent. I decided to suspend
judgment until I had tried it. Meanwhile I asked, "What about real people --
real in the sense of having a past, present, and future?"

"What about them?" was the reasonable reply.

I was a bit embarrassed to spell out my question, but then realized that I
was, in effect, talking to myself. "I mean, if I want to have sex with a real
woman, can I?"

"Of course. Who do you want?'

I didn't know yet, but I had a feeling I would pretty soon.