Chapter 4

Just to be on the safe side, Sue and I stayed away from sex for three days, but that was the limit. On the fourth day after Sue’s return from the hospital, we were back in bed and making the most of our freedom. We had been introduced to the 69 position, and we were practically stuck in that position. We were getting massive orgasms from that position and were not yet ready to make the final shift to full sex with me penetrating Sue’s vagina with my penis.

Oh, there was no question that we were going to full sex before much longer, but we were kind of teasing ourselves by putting that off for a little while. Besides, the world was changing. My dad had lost his job as production manager for a manufacturing concern because people could make the items that dad’s company produced by means of the replicator, so they no longer needed to buy from Orange Orthogonals, Inc.

This sort of thing was going on all over the world, and the number of people out of work was rising almost exponentially. At first, people thought this was great. They could feed and clothe themselves by using the replicator, so they did not need money coming in. The missing item in the equation was housing, but that had not yet reached a crisis state.

A lot of people were lounging around and generally goofing off. This was fine until boredom set in. Humans were just not designed for extended leisure. Women were a little better off than men because they did have their traditional employment in the home. On the other hand, men were used to going somewhere and doing something useful for which they got paid. The men took their money home and gave it to the wives to spend and generally did not worry about that end of things.

However, the number of jobs was declining so fast that men were left at loose ends, and most were not able to cope with the situation. The result was that gangs of unemployed men were forming everywhere, and these gangs, for lack of anything else to do, were preying on their neighbors. Sometimes, there were gang fights in which there were serious injuries and deaths. Nothing could be done about these fights, etc. because the towns and cities no longer had the cash from taxes to hire the policemen that were needed.

This same kind of problem was happening among the fire departments, but firemen were going to work because they could see the good that they were doing, and nobody was giving them a hard time. An interesting question that a lot of people were asking was just how long was this situation with the fire fighters going to last?

Many people in the outlying areas of cities and in the suburbs had been reduced to arming themselves and reconfiguring their homes into fortified dwellings. Getting the guns and ammunition was no problem—just ask your replicator to supply what you wanted.

Some of these people had an inspiration. They moved as a group into abandoned large buildings. Our dads, George Lee and John Thompson, formed one such neighborhood group and moved into the building formerly used by Orange Orthogonals, Inc. This was a large multi-story building surrounded by what had once been an expansive parking lot, thus there was a very favorable field of fire if they ever had to fight a shooting war. Both George and John had been in the Army as Sergeants in combat units, so they knew what to look for in a defensive establishment.

Initially, 21 families moved in, and they made extensive use of their replicators to clear the building of unusable equipment and materials. Those things were dropped down the recovery chutes of the replicators, and soon they had an empty space to work with. This was a four-story building with a large basement. There were six freight elevators and four passenger elevators, so there was no problem in moving between floors.

It was decided to use the top two floors as residential areas, the ground floor as administrative offices, school, and recreation areas. The second floor was left “fallow” to be used whenever the need arose.

The two residential floors were partitioned into apartments with panels supplied by the replicator. These panels provided excellent sound deadening and were good temperature insulators. Each apartment was heated and air conditioned on an individual basis so that the people could have the conditions they wanted without having to worry about the neighbors.

All of these changes in the building gave employment to the men who lived there, so there was none of the unhappiness found over most of the world. The greatest unhappiness in the Double Os building, as we now called our community, was caused by the loss of TV and the internet. The TV went out shortly after the ad revenue fell too low to support the employees and the maintenance of the equipment. The internet went out for a similar reason. I was really pissed off because my Diablo games were all through central servers at Blizzard’s headquarters.

George and John were the de facto leaders of the little community, but decisions were decided in a democratic manner whenever possible. Fortunately, one of our residents was a former school principal and was able to set up a school system based on study through computers. The kids, including Sue and me, actually liked this better than the conventional school with teachers and classrooms.

Mrs. Holmes, our principal, said that our students were actually progressing faster than did the kids she had formerly been responsible for, probably because each kid was able to progress at his or her own pace. I have no idea where the data were coming from, but the replicator produced a new disc for a subject whenever it was requested. I guessed that the aliens were supplying the information, but I didn’t know how or why.

Dad decided that we badly needed a regular military organization in case we were attacked by one or more of the gangs. Like every other person over 10-years-old, I was drafted as a private. At least, we spent no time with marching and that sort of thing. Instead, we spent at least an hour a day in some form of military training. Martial arts were a big item, and one of our people knew enough Krav Maga to teach that. Shit, that was hard work, but it was fun, too.

Dad had been amazed that the replicator could produce a Jedi light-saber, so he asked me to find out what else exotic the replicator could turn out. It looked to me like the Imperial Storm Troopers were a good model for us, so I had the replicator turn out a version of the armor they used, except that our armor was the real thing and not movie grade props.

The other item I wanted was a version of their assault rifle that fired that bolt of light. That way, there was no recoil that the younger and smaller people, especially kids, had to be concerned about. Sue and I played around with the assault rifle in a section of the basement until we got it to perform like what we needed. It fired a continuous beam of energy that we could see as a white line. We verified the assault rifle’s capabilities by using it to shoot rats down in the cellar.

Once we were satisfied with it, we showed it to Dad and John. They were impressed with the assault rifle and the armor, and standardized on it right away. We ran off enough rifles and armor for everybody over the age of 10 to have a complete set, and training was started in earnest. Within six months, we had a little army that I would put up against anything on the planet.

As far as we knew, everybody else was still using bullets propelled by gunpowder. That was fine as long as all they did was to shoot at each other, but our armor could stop such bullets. Our energy beam assault rifle would cut flesh to pieces, and was murder on steel armor up to 3.5 inches thick. We could get heavier weapons, but we had no place to test or practice with them. Hopefully, we would never need them. If we did, we would just have to work that out when it happened.

In a fit of brilliance, somebody suggested that we line the outside surface of the building with 4-inch-thick polycarbonate sheet. That was a major job, but it did convert our conventional building into a modern fortress that no ordinary weapons could penetrate, short of 155 mm armor piercing artillery shells. That was an unlikely ammunition for any of our prospective enemies to have, so we did not worry about it.

I talked to Dad about issuing our version of a Jedi light-saber, but he vetoed that. He was concerned that such a weapon was too easy to have an accident with, so he was afraid to give them to young children. Upon reflection, I had to agree with him, but he did say that I could keep mine, since I had already proven that I was responsible with it.