Chapter 1

Majorca in July is almost heaven - bright golden sun, floral scented breezes, and a cloudless sky. There was a sweating bottle of San Miguel in front of me and I was luxuriating in the shade of a potted palm as I thought back over the past three miserable years.

It was a toss-up as-to which had hurt the most, losing my marriage, or the tragic plane crash that followed. Whatever ... both events were tied in a neat bow by one person, Colonel David Osborne, or as I fondly called him, “Shithead.”

Shithead had flourished up the chain of command by kissing the right rings. Hence, as far as he was concerned, all you needed were the two “Bs” - Belligerence and Bravado. He had plenty of that, along with two other Bs - Bluff, and Bullshit. That ultimately caused his demise. My life and happiness were just collateral damage.

When this story begins, I was a Captain with the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade. That might sound gloriously martial if you didn’t know that the main qualification for my two gold bars was a Master’s Degree in software engineering from Carnegie-Mellon.

The 780th is an offensive unit, no different in concept than the armored corps at Fort Knox. But the guys who stand on the ramparts in the digital age aren’t your classic chiseled jaw Marine. They’re the folks those Marines used to stuff in lockers. And yet ironically ... they’re now the people who protect us from unthinkable things.

Every country faces traditional military threats. They are all more-or-less serious. But armed conflict, invasions, and more recently nuclear war have been around for decades. Cyberwar is a horse of a different color. Cyberattacks can originate from anywhere, they happen in an instant, and the results are no less catastrophic than if somebody dropped a nuke on you.

You doubt me??! Well believe it. Because if, for example, a cyberattack knocked out our electrical grid, and that’s not entirely beyond the realm of possibility, we would ALL have the opportunity to experience life in the Eighteenth Century – permanently!!

Even worse, no expensive military hardware’s required. It just takes the right know-how and sorry to say ... you can find that in every shithole country on the planet. Hence, the only effective way to convince a would-be perpetrator that a mass extinction event would be a very bad idea is to remind them that they’d better dig two graves. That was my job.

My specialty is worms. No, not THAT kind. Earthworms are good for your lawn. I was a master of self-replicating malware, called internet worms, and my little pets could drop a post-industrial society to its knees in minutes. That was why I was seen as something of an eminence-grise around Fort Meade.

I may look normal. I’m taller than most with a long face, deep-set grey eyes, and an unruly shock of dark hair. But underneath the hood I’m devoutly geek, and people like me don’t spend much time in the real world.

My interests center mainly in the cyberverse, and most of that involves gaming. That was where I’d met and even teamed with Tiffin Ellerian in Warcraft MMOs. She was a member of the same Alliance faction, and she was a powerful Human Mage to my Lightforged Paladin.

I’d always wondered what Tiffin looked like. Of course, there was no way I would run into her in physical space - and I probably wouldn’t like it if I did. Because in the real-world my ideal woman could be anybody from a bisexual BBW whose legs had never experienced a razor; to some fat nerd living in his parents basement and getting a thrill out of representing as female.

Back then, I worked at the FANEX’s. Those aren’t the shining citadel on the hill called Fort Meade. The FANEXs are over in Linthicum next to BWI and it’s relatively brass free. So, there’s a totally different vibe over there. It hosts odds and ends like the Crypto School and spooky operations like mine.

But just like every other outfit ... they throw a Christmas party for the peasantry. And since the FANEXs have all the charm of an airport baggage facility that party is normally held at the Marriott on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Like I said, I’m a nerd, with all the social grace of a high-end, living room sofa. But the Bird Colonel I reported to made it clear that my attendance wasn’t optional. So, there I was, in my dress blues lurking around the outer fringes of the merry makers trying to look engaged and wishing that I was in the Shadowlands, or anyplace but there.

That was when I noticed a gorgeous woman sitting all by herself at a big round table at the back of the room. She was radiating irritation and boredom, which no doubt explained the lack of suitors because she was a real knock-out.

The nerd-dar klaxon began to hoot and I thought to myself, “She might be hot but she’s one of us.” You can always spot a nerd. It’s something in the way we sit apart looking down on everybody around us. So, being socially retarded myself, I thought I’d toddle over and say hi.

She was radiating, “Don’t talk to me!!”

Naturally, I said, “You look as bored as I feel.”

She studied me with a half-smile, like she was evaluating an especially interesting species of rodent and said, “You’re wasting your time.”

I pulled out a chair and said, “Can I sit?”

She gestured and said, “It’s a free country. Just don’t expect me to talk.”

I sat down and said to nobody in particular, “Okay, then I’ll do the talking. You’re here because your boss made you come. You wish you were anywhere else but here, because all these happy people are driving you nuts. So, instead of drinking and socializing, you want to be doing what you usually do on a Friday night, which is cruising the internet.”

I stopped and said sardonically, “How am I doing so far?” She cracked an unwilling smile.

I added, “I know how you feel because it’s the only reason I’m here, instead of in the Shadowlands, which is venue of choice for any time that I’m not at work.”

She perked up considerably and said, “Really, seriously??!! You’re a gamer.”

I extended my hand and said, “Lothar Kingslaughter, Lightforged Draenei Paladin.”

She gasped and put a reflexive hand to her delectable chest. Then she said excitedly, “Tiffin Ellerian, Human Mage.”

I said astounded, “My God!!! You’re her?” She nodded eagerly. It was like we were former high school sweethearts unexpectedly bumping into each other at the twentieth reunion.

And that’s the story of how a potentially excruciating experience became one of the best nights of my life. We talked for hours about the truly important things, like the strategies we’d used to defeat the minions of the Burning Legion and our experiences on Azeroth.

That may sound all weird and geeky to you. Because none of what we were talking about really happened - except in our imaginations. But those experiences were as real to Tiffin and me as the mating dance that was going on among the muggles. It was just that this time we weren’t staring into a monitor and wearing headsets like we usually did when we talked.

Finally, I said, “Erik.” She looked puzzled. I added, “That’s my real-world name.” You have to make those distinctions with gamers.

She gave me a pretty little smile, complete with two adorable dimples, and said, “Rebecca, my name is Rebecca.” That marked the beginning of a fourteen-month period of perfect bliss, as we got to know each other, fell in love, and married.

My wife Rebecca, or Becks as I affectionately called her, was nature’s way of saying “suck this!” to any person who believes that a beautiful and sexy woman can’t be a genius. The gift of mathematics is bestowed early, and Becks was one of those child savants.

I have no idea what my wife’s IQ was. But she graduated from Cal Tech with a PhD in math at the tender age of twenty-one and she worked in the Central Security Service, which is where the Fort’s real eggheads are stabled.

NSA put her in the cryptanalytics section, researching methods for cracking elliptic curve encryption. She tried to explain what that was once. But I’m just a humble software guy and the experience was so excruciating that I had to use our safe word to tap out - “Pineapple!!! Pineapple!!!”

Suffice it to say ... my wife operated on a different plane than me. She lived in the ivory tower of theory and mathematical abstraction, even though her efforts indirectly impacted some of the worst people in the world. And in that sense, she was a true Mage. Incantations and spells were her thing.

Me?? ... Like most Paladins, my powers are more along the lines of brute force. Software people are that way. We’re not subtle – kind of the Oompa-Loompas of science. Even so, one of my APT rootkits, or a distributed denial of service could really fuck up your day. Like I said ... brutal!!

You wouldn’t notice how geeky my wife was if you saw her at a party. Instead - what you would see would be an absolutely stunning woman, high cheekbones, long straight nose, and wide, almost lascivious mouth. She liked to laugh, her Irish forebearers demanded it, and she loved jokes.

Looking down on her beautiful face, I could see the sprinkle of freckles across her obscenely healthy cheeks and her dancing blue eyes. Her nearly translucent alabaster skin with silky, shoulder length hair, which was as black as a raven’s wing, and her bright red lipstick and nails made her a riot of color.

Becks loved to bike and her commitment to ninety minutes of road training each day gave her a lithe slender body with incredible muscled hips and legs that carried her along in a flowing graceful stride. Even so, my wife was a nerd girl to her core.

Becks valued rationality and self-discipline far above sexual attractiveness. Hence, her actions and dress were anything but provocative and she went out of her way to minimize her bountiful assets. That wasn’t just in her public image. It was the way she saw herself as a person and how she demanded that others see her.

In many respects, Becks’ denial of her own femininity was her fatal flaw. Because inherently, my wife was a deeply passionate women. And as a result, her personality and values were constantly at war with her fundamental nature. That battle was waged deep down in her psyche, like Vesuvius waiting to erupt.

It had always been my belief that intelligence and sexual performance are linked. Becks was living proof of that. She loved sex in a way that a foodie craves cordon bleu. She was always right there in the moment with me, like I was the only other person in her universe, and her creativity and responsiveness would make you think that you were John Holmes standing on King Kong’s shoulders.

Even so, Becks was uncomfortable with her extreme feelings. I sorta understood her attitude. It wasn’t a matter of morality. It was the negation of her beliefs. People with Becks’ level of intelligence don’t trust instinct and they despise emotion. They value rational observation and analysis. The problem was that my wife’s sexual appetite didn’t always let her do that. So she, in essence, feared her own instincts.

Becks wanted people to appreciate her for her mind, not her body and her abandoned behavior during sex was an unwelcome contradiction. I finally asked as, diplomatically as I could, why she was such a holy terror in bed but never dressed, or even exhibited the slightest hint of her smoldering sexuality.

She looked uncomfortable and said, “Sex is the most illogical act I can think of. So although I’m addicted to the thrill, I simply can’t deal with how crazy I get. It embarrasses me.”

Then she looked at me hesitantly, like I might not believe what she was about to tell me and said “I trust you and I want to give myself to you completely. So, my solution is to tell myself that it’s Tiffin making all that noise. I’m simply not involved.”

Wow!! That actually made sense. Everybody’s reality is nothing more than what your brain interprets from your five senses. It captures those inputs and turns them into a personal view of the world. So in essence, your very existence is nothing more than whatever that squishy organ in our head says it is. And since everybody’s wired differently, we might be walking around in eight billion separate universes.

Becks’ interior world was understandably deep and complex. After all, she was a genius. And given the highly imaginative virtual space that we both preferred, her rationalization of her sexuality was totally valid and acceptable to me - as batshit crazy as that might sound to anybody else.

Gamers often choose avatars that represent another side of themselves. I mean, Lothar Kingslaughter is a brutal, sword wielding thug, not a tall, skinny nerd. But that was the way I portrayed myself in virtual space and it was how I viewed myself in my mind’s eye, even if nobody else saw me that way.

In essence then, the woman I was fucking wasn’t my shy, coldly logical wife. It was Tiffin Ellerian, a hyper-sexual Mage. And in Beck’s mind it was Tiffin who was acting like a wild woman, not her.

You might scoff. But remember that you are just shouting at pixels on a screen when you yell, “Throw the damn flag!!” Or in personal terms, virtual reality is as real to a gamer as that bad call is to you. You’re not really at the game my friend.

So in effect, my wife had consciously DECIDED to be innocent, at least when it came to her relationships with men. And since her two personas were interchangeable in her own inventive little mind, offloading her sexual behavior onto her avatar let her keep her realworld view of herself as the rational, levelheaded, and analytic person she’d chosen to be.

Of course that schizoid compromise also made her incapable of detecting when she was being sexually manipulated in the real world. Nor did it give her any practical defenses if she was. As a result, Becks in her everyday form, was as naive and vulnerable as the girl next door, especially when it came to the wiles of predatory fellows ... More about that later.

We had everything, a nice house, beautiful neighborhood and more importantly a warm and cozy married relationship. We lived in Columbia about a twenty-minute drive from the Fort. We did everything together and Becks was the best friend and companion a man could ever ask for.

She was always lighthearted and happy, a joy to be around. She was obsessively polite, had an almost irrational fear of conflict. and she never thought that other people had ulterior motives. So, she wouldn’t push back, even if she was being pushed. She just went with the flow.

On the surface, Becks was attentive and loving in an artless almost humble way, so much so that you wouldn’t suspect that there was such a formidable IQ powering her interactions. In fact, most of the time she was as eager to please and friendly as our Golden Retriever, warm, caring, and open to everybody. I loved her with all my heart and our life was full of joy.

We owned a 38-foot Island Packet that we sailed out of Kirwan’s on the Chesapeake. The boat was a gross indulgence, but we both loved sailing. It was for the intellectual challenge. Buy a jet ski if you want brainless fun. Getting someplace on nothing but wind takes smarts and seamanship.

My old man tossed me in a Sunfish and shoved me out into Lake Huron at the tender age of seven. So, I was practically born a sailor. I could handle big water and growing up I had crewed the Port Huron to Mackinaw race on everything from a Tartan cruiser to a Great Lakes 52.

They say that you need to stand fully dressed in a cold shower tearing up hundred-dollar bills if you really want to experience the joys of sailing. But that didn’t matter to either Becks or me. The hours we spent on our boat were our special time together.

Most weekends we’d sail down the Bay, sometimes as far as Cape Charles, and anchor each night in little coves, well out of the shipping lanes. We’d luxuriate in the peace and quiet of an Eastern shore summer’s eve, drink a decent cabernet and just take in the sights, sounds and smells of nature.

Then we would retire to our little cuddy where Tiffin Ellerian would come out of the Shadowlands. Becks might be a nerd-girl. But Tiffin had a voracious appetite, and I was always a tasty snack.

My wife was charged with sexual energy in the silvery moonlight coming through the deck prisms, Her bright blue eyes had turned almost cobalt, and she was practically quivering with anticipation. I looked down the naked length of her slim supple body, with its tight, sleek hips, long legs and perfectly proportioned tits and marveled at my luck.

She said in a strangled voice, “No foreplay, you have to fuck me now!!” This was Tiffin talking, Becks had never used the word “fuck” in her life.

She pulled her long perfectly muscled legs back by the knees and I carefully crawled between them. I was holding my head low. You have to be aware of the overhead in a cuddy. Which of course gave me an idea.

Rather than finishing the trek up my wife’s hard body, I buried my face in her delightful wetness. The heat and smells were beyond stimulating. That caused a groan that probably startled the ducks nesting around us into panicked flight.

She said angrily, “No!! You have to fuck me!!” Those were her last words for quite a while as she convulsed, gasped, moaned, and began to buck wildly until an epic orgasm overtook her. She was still shrieking and bucking as I hustled up the rest of her supple frame to insert myself.

I slid almost instantly to the top of her heated and well lubricated passage. She shouted, startled, “Oh Jesus!!” Her eyes opened impossibly wide, then they crossed and rolled up in her head and her mouth reflexively fell open. She was deep inside herself now enjoying the sensations.

What ensued was a scratching, pounding, thrashing, heated space of time that was more like cage fighting than sex. Tiffin Ellerian was a warrior and my wife’s perfect body was her weapon. She would writhe like a snake, our mutual sweat lubricating the experience, cry-out and yell with sheer delight. Then she would spread wide making loud grunting sounds as I hammered into her.

Something that intense couldn’t last long. Tiffin had been experiencing a series of cataclysmic orgasms as we rolled around in the bunk. That terminated in a frantic shriek. She went limp just as the end of the world arrived for me and I came like the Midnight Express, meanwhile my wife was making contented gurgling sounds of unconscious pleasure.

Afterward I rolled to one side and spent a few long minutes catching my breath. When I opened my eyes, Becks was back. She was staring at me with the focused and penetrating look that she has when she is thinking through an especially knotty mathematical problem.

I said worried, “What’s the matter, baby?”

She said with tears in her eyes, “I just love you so much. I never want to lose you.”

I said still concerned, “You just fucked my brains out. After a performance like that, what would make you think you would lose me?” Of course, I’d forgotten that I was now talking to the other inhabitant of my dear wife’s skull.

She said with all sincerity, “I just never feel like I am good enough for you.” Which was a preposterous statement, but personal insecurity was part of my humble, self-effacing, and totally crazy wife’s basic nature. Maybe that was true for all women? How would I know! Nerds aren’t noted for their insight.

As the old Yiddish saying goes, “Man plans, God laughs.” It was my appearance on the promotion list that let the snake into the Garden.

I liked the Army. It gave me a stable and predictable life. I did things that I loved, and I was valued for doing them. I would have made a lot more money in the cut-and-thrust of Big Software. But the service aspect appealed to me and frankly people with my almost total lack of social skills belong in highly structured environments.

There were two parts to my job. One was the simple task of maintaining our inventory of offensive code. Those were tabloid items like STUXNET and a million other malware objects that you’ve never heard of and that I’d have to kill you if you found out about. The other part was anomaly detection which helped us find and dispatch everybody else’s wee-nasties out there in cyberspace.

As a side project, actually more like a hobby, I had been working on a spinoff of my anomaly detection code. It was a heuristic AI engine that could be integrated into other applications to produce human-like cognition. Or in layman’s terms I was trying to mirror how people think and learn in a way that would create a human in a box. The applications of THAT in the real world would be infinite.

I’d been playing at my little hobby off-and-on for well over a dozen years, which was actually two years prior to meeting and marrying Becks. Creating the program architecture took an incredible amount of time, since I had to conceptualize every variable that underlies experiential thinking.

As I approached my golden twenty, I was getting close to finalizing the prototype ... In order to get my way paid to nerd school at Carnegie-Mellon, I’d signed the contract with the Army at age eighteen. The development would be easy from there on. So, I was starting to think that it was time for me to retire and take my little invention public.

Even so, the twenty-thousand a year difference between half-pay for a Captain versus a Major was a strong incentive for me to go up in rank first. Promotion was nothing that I’d sought or wanted. But when the time in grade criteria for Major were met, I got the notice and just went with the program.

The actual promotion was in the hands of a Promotion Board which was composed of field grade officers. This was all by the book. It required the usual COER paperwork that I would then pass on to a Senior Rater, in this case it was David Osborne.

Osborne was the Brigade’s Colonel. Once he read it, he would pass it along with his comments. But I had never met him face-to-face. That changed at the next Christmas party.

It’s odd really; the beginning and end of my happiness was bookended by two Christmas’s, a dozen years apart. Becks was on the civilian side at the Fort, and she’d had her party the prior weekend. She’d bought a dress for that occasion that was daring for her. But she was celebrating with her nerd cohorts and the idea that she might be giving off sexual vibes never occurred to her.

Being my practical wife, she just recycled the dress for my party. It showcased her superb legs and for a change it was off her shoulders. So, there was a bit more cleavage. It was red which was a perfect contrast to her black hair, blue eyes, and alabaster skin. To say the least, Becks was stunning in ways that she probably didn’t intend and would be embarrassed if she’d been aware of.

We walked into the Marriott ballroom and conversation literally stopped. Osborne was holding court with his usual collection of toadies, Lieutenant Colonel Wysocki, Major Sharpe and a cadre of bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed junior officers.

I’m six-three but Osborne was even taller at six-five. I’ve got a runner’s physique at a solid one ninety. Osborne was closer to two-fifty with big shoulders and an even bigger gut. He’d come up through the infantry and he just radiated machismo. The Colonel was an impressive guy.

He also had the steely eyed commander look down to an art, and so when he turned to stare at us, he looked like the American eagle itself. It was an effective gaze, and I could hear Becks gasp. That was new. I’d never heard my wife react to somebody that way before.

The Colonel said something to his gaggle of fawning admirers. Then he strode over radiating martial arrogance, never taking his eyes off my wife. When he got to us, we exchanged salutes and a handshake and he said with considerable fake joviality, “Good that you could make it.”

I’d never met the man in my life, but he had my picture in my OER folder and it was clear that it was Becks who had drawn his attention. I said, “It’s a pleasure to be here Sir.” Which was a lie. But what else could I say?

He said, continuing the jovial act but looking speculatively at Becks, “Why don’t we find some place where we can talk about your promotion.”

Then he turned to Becks and said, “I’m sure a beautiful lady like you can find plenty of people to talk to while I’m holding your husband captive.” A comment on my wife’s attractiveness was close to over the line. But Osborne was daring if he was anything.

Becks alabaster skin went a lovely shade of scarlet and she said uneasily, “I’ll wait here.” But Osborne would have none of it. He called Sharpe over and said gruffly, “Find this gorgeous creature a drink while I grill her husband. He’s on the list this year.”

Sharpe was a skinny little weasel with a bushy mustache that looked like a hedgehog had crawled up on his lip and died. He was obviously overjoyed at spending any time with Becks. He said, “Come this way and I’ll introduce you around. Can I get you a drink?”

Becks said hesitantly, still appearing overwhelmed, “I’ll have a Chardonnay, thank you.”

Osborne turned to Sharpe and said peremptorily, “Get the lady a drink.” Then he grabbed me by the shoulder in a totally inappropriate buddy hug and waltzed me into a side room that seemed to be designed as a meeting nook.

He began the conversation by asking me the usual questions about my background and career intentions. He was regular army infantry, and I was something else entirely. So, explaining what I did, and where I thought that led, was like describing cyberwarfare to the family dog. But that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t paying attention to my answers anyhow.

It was clear that he was interested in my wife. Because he started asking me a bunch of personal questions, how did I meet Becks and what was the current state of our marriage. I thought his questions were way over the line. Still, what were my options? I could report him. But he was too far up the chain of command, and they would protect him.

Moreover, he held my future in his hands. So, I gave him noncommittal answers while kicking myself for not having a recorder running. He kept me in that little room for well over an hour. It almost seemed like he was stalling.

When he finished, he said with what I read as fake sincerity, “Well, this has been a productive discussion, Captain. I’m sure I can move your promotion along from here.”

We saluted and he turned and walked back in the direction of his group while I headed for the bar. After what I’d just endured, I needed a stiff drink and maybe a shower.

That’s when Sharpe reappeared, mustache bristling like the fur on the back of an eager Jack Russel. He said, “I talked to the Colonel, and he wants me to brief you on what to expect in the rest of the process.”

I looked at my watch and said, “Can’t that wait. I’ve left my wife alone far too long.” He gave me an unfathomable look and said, “It will only take a few minutes and everybody else is taking care of her.” If I’d only known what that really meant.

His few minutes were closer to forty-five and so it was well over two hours before I began searching for Becks. The ballroom was huge, and it was filled with enthusiastically celebrating people. I did a circuit around the periphery trying to spot my wife.

I had almost done a lap of the entire room when I saw a flash of red. Becks was standing with the Colonel’s group and she looked drunk. That was amazing for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I had never seen her take more than two glasses of wine. Second and more importantly, there was no way she would behave like that in public.

Osborne was standing possessively next to her, and Becks was sort-of leaning against his shoulder. It didn’t look intimate as much as she was trying to steady herself. The others were fawning around both of them while the “Great Man” dispensed wisdom. His underlings were nodding smiling approval.

I strode through the group and directly up to her. Becks gave me a sloppy grin and slurred, delighted to see me, “FINALLY!!” She was holding a full glass of wine and was clearly shitfaced. I didn’t know how she’d gotten that way. But I knew that she was going to be very embarrassed in the morning.

The last thing I wanted to do was to humiliate her further by abruptly dragging her away - like the drunk that she was. So, instead I smiled at the group and said, “Sorry guys, but we have to be up early tomorrow, so we need to leave.”

Becks piped-up in a whiny voice, “Don’t be such a pooper, Lover!” Now I knew that she was drunk because she’d never called me “lover” in our entire marriage. Maybe it was Tiffin talking? I said letting some of my irritation at the whole shitshow be evident, “You don’t, but I do, and it’s getting late.”

Osborne said in a voice that wasn’t going to tolerate disagreement, “Come on now. We’re just starting to have fun. You can stay for one more round at least.” It was clear that that was an order, not a request.

He said. “Why don’t you get yourself and your wife a refill while I escort the lady onto the dance floor.”

He made a sweeping bow that was right out of a Nineteenth Century bodice ripper and said, “Shall we dance my lady?”