Chapter 3

Flashback, Cleveland, OH, an earlier time

Paul sighed and began, "Karen and I have known each other since kindergarten, but I don't think I really fell in love with her until the 1^st grade. How can 6-year-old kids really fall in love? Well, first, I got beat up by the school bully, Billy, when I tried to save Karen's lunch money after he knocked her down and took it. Then I got thrown in detention for fighting and Karen joined me for calling our teacher, Mrs. While, a fascist pig for putting me in detention and letting Billy go back to class.

"Karen's parents and my parents met each other when they bailed us out of detention and became very good friends. Our families went on vacation together, spent alternate weekends on joint projects such as "Habitat for Humanity" and the Serra Club, and gave Karen and I lectures about the way the world should be. The one thing that was always stressed in both families was the great importance of all life in the universe.

"As can be expected, Karen and I had two choices. We could learn to love each other, or we could learn to hate each other. We tried hate at first, but that was too much work, so we drifted down the other track. We would go to movies, concerts, and school dances as an item. When we were not with our parents we would do things as a protest to our parent's liberal leanings. Not that we were unaware of the importance of their causes, we just had to do something to keep our individuality. For example, our parents hated guns. That is why we first joined the National Rifle Association and took their various gun and safety classes. We still owe our old Phys Ed teacher, Mr. Johnson, for getting the permission slips signed on that one. He told our parents it was one of our extra credit projects.

"As liberal as our parents were, they did have one blind spot, sex education. Talk about your cabbage patch mentality. They were in total fear every time the subject of sex came up in a conversation with us kids. The school curricula was held hostage by the local Evangelical Church, so it could not make up for our parents' blind spot. We were too hard headed to talk about sex with other teenagers. We were, therefore, weak in the 'forbidden' area.

"One night just before Karen's 16^th birthday, I drove to Karen's house to pick her up for dinner at the local A & W and a drive in movie. Our parents were off on one of their wilderness hike weekends, and we were watching the old homesteads.

"Karen's folks had just put in cable and were reviewing all the movie channels for the first month. Karen thought it would be a great idea if we stayed at home, ordered pizza and found something on cable. We got a pizza, filled our glasses with Coke, moved to the living room, and started going through the cable channels. Imagine our surprise when we clicked onto the local porno channel. Karen's parents did not think to put a lock on the adult channels, so they were clear.

"Karen and I had done some exploring of each other in the past, but we were both virgins. We did not really push the limits of sexuality with each other. At our parents' insistence we both dated other people. no one else gave us the same comfort level we got with each other. Not that we had settled into any type of old married syndrome, we just didn't have to put on airs to impress each other as we did other partners on a date.

"We sat on the couch, and the action on the screen became intense. I was beginning to get a little bothered as I marveled at the action. Just as I was turning around to make some sophomoric comment, Karen took my hand and placed it on her breast. She leaned over and started a very long and passionate kiss. Our tongues found each other and started a dance that pulled our bodies together.

"I can remember Karen's words as if they were spoken last night. "Let's get rid of these clothes!" In no time we were as bare as the day we were born. We had seen each other without clothes when our parents tried out a nudist colony. This, however, was the stuff of dreams.

"We explored each other's body while our kisses grew hotter. My right arm reached around Karen's shoulders and down to the side of her magnificent tits. My left hand started a journey down the front of her body to that part which more than any separates man from woman. When I reached the top of her pubic hair, she reached for my hand. I thought she was going to push it away, but she pressed it into the slit that formed the object of man's passion.

"At the top of this slit was a small tip about half the size of one of her nipples. When I touched that nib, she jerked and drew in a deep breath. I thought I had hurt her, and tried to pull my hand away. She quickly grabbed it, and pushed it back in place. "Oh, don't stop. It feels so good!" She then pushed my hand in such a manner that my middle finger entered her while the palm of my hand rested on the button that was giving her so much joy.

"I moved my hand, Karen's breathing started increasing, and her hips started moving in harmony with my hand's motion. My hand was starting to get wet from something, when Karen became stiff and gasp in a sudden expulsion of breath. That's when my hand got very wet.

"I was not unaffected by this turn of events. My penis was so hard I thought it would burst, and when Karen's hand found it, I almost did. She rubbed my manhood with the touch of someone holding fine crystal, and it felt like heaven. As she stroked me a little more, I did burst all over her hand.

"Just then, the couple on the screen merged together as the woman started screams of joy. As the man started moving in and out, the grunting and screaming got louder. Karen again pulled away from our kiss and said, "I want you inside me NOW!!!!"

"I asked, 'Are you sure?'"

"Yes, you dumb ox, fuck me before we both die of frustration"

"Well, with instructions like that it didn't take much to again rise to the occasion. I moved between my woman's legs as the man on the TV had his, and pressed my penis into the hole I found between Karen's legs. The hole looked like it would not fit the shaft that was being pressed against it, but with the abundance of lubrication, to my surprise, entry was no problem.

"I did find resistance a short way into my journey of the unknown. As I pushed at the resistance, I heard a startled cry from Karen. As I started to pull out, she said, "Don't stop. Just hit it hard and quick. I need all of you."

"Okay."

"I pushed hard and fast, hit the resistance again, broke through, and heard a small cry of pain from Karen. Then her hips took over. She started bucking and squirming. For a moment I thought she had gone crazy. I felt a tightening in my balls, and felt my first ejaculation into a woman.

"Karen kept up the movement, and I was still hard. (Remember I was 16 years old then.) Soon I was back into the movement also. Karen was letting out gasps as we worked on each other. These gasps started getting longer, louder, and closer together. All at once I was squirting again. This time, Karen let out a long scream as her body started shaking and jumping on the sofa.

"We both fell together on the sofa, and just held each other close. Still inside her, I rolled us over so that she was not bearing my weight. As I rolled over, I felt wetness on the couch. I shifted so that I could see what I was lying in. I saw blood.

"Oh my god, Karen, what have I done to you! You're bleeding."

"Karen took my face in her hands, gently kissed me and very softly said, "Don't worry. That always happens the first time a girl has sexual intercourse. We do need to get the blood off the sofa, though."

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. I love you."

"I know you love me, Paul, that's why it didn't hurt. I am happy that you finally found out that you do love me, though. Just like I have loved you, you have loved me since we had to stay after school together in first grade. You just didn't know it. You thought we were buddies, but we are a lot more."

"We spent the rest of the weekend watching the sexual training films on the porno channel, and eagerly tried everything they were willing to teach us. When our parents came home Sunday night, we had supper ready for them and a story about how we had spent the weekend on the shooting range getting ready for an upcoming competition.

"About 5 weeks later, Karen got very sick. She was throwing up in the mornings, and her monthly trauma was missing. We then found out the rabbet had died. Karen was pregnant.

"Our parents were in a state of shock. It almost ended their friendship. They started blaming each other for the lack of education they both had failed to provide. The only thing both families agreed to was that abortion as a form of birth control was murder. Finally, Karen and I called all four parents together and made an announcement.

"Listen you guys," Karen started. "Paul and I are in love. We would have been married after college anyway. We will just have to change the order of things."

"We will need your help in working this out," I continued. "So you are going to stop this fighting and blame laying, now. We have a plan, a difficult plan, but still a plan."

"The plan consisted of Karen and I getting married, moving into the apartment over my parents' garage, finishing high school, and going to the local college which had an excellent computer science program. As it turned out, we had to delay the wedding until after the baby was born in order for Karen's dad's insurance to cover the delivery. To this day, I do not understand insurance companies.

"Karen would work in my dad's contracting business office so she could keep the baby with her in the office when not in school. The grandparents would cover the other baby sitting chores. I would work with Karen's father at the local historical society and museum when not in school. We found it was amazing what teamwork did to get us out of high school and into college.

"Luck was with us, however, in that the delivery of the baby was on summer vacation from school, so our grades did not fall. (We were both carrying a 4.1 on a 4.0 grading system. We needed the scholarships to get through college.) A summer delivery also became important because there were complications due to Karen's young age. Because of these complications, Karen could have no more children.

"As a part of her recuperation therapy, it was recommended that Karen take up Judo as a form of non-impact aerobic exercise. Karen and I decided to take classes together to offer each other moral support. We found that Judo was more than a form of exercise. It was a way of thought, a mental discipline, and a brotherhood of like minded souls. As such, Judo became one of the underpinnings of our relationship through high school and beyond.

"While Karen and I finished high school, Mom would keep KT at Dad's general contractor office. Here, she was adopted as the company mascot. You know how some small companies have a pet dog or watch cat in the office; Stephens Construction had a watch toddler. The construction office was like the United Nations. Spanish, French and English was mixed together to form what was called "Stephenise" around Cleveland. In self-defense, Karen became, and KT grew up tri-lingual.

"In college, a surprising thing happened. Karen became very interested in the actual parts of computers (hardware), and I became interested in the languages of computers (software). This is an exception to what the stereo type, but it seemed to work out pretty well. After it was all said and done, Karen had a dual major in computer science-hardware and electrical engineering and I had a dual major in computer science-software and business administration. We also developed an avid interest in the information super highway or the Internet.

"We decided to expand our knowledge by pursuing postgraduate work. I went after an MBA, and Karen went after a Masters in Computer Science. At the end of the class work part of the masters program, Karen and I found that we could work together on our Masters Thesis by making the title of mine "Future of Business Through the Internet," and Karen titled hers "Software and Hardware Needs in Business." We also found some major weaknesses in the industries we were studying.

"When we looked for jobs in our chosen field, we had very little problem finding offers. We both finished in the top 5% of our class, and people with our skill sets were in demand. What we did have a problem with was the contracts we were ask to sign. One, if you leave a company; you could not work in that industry for 5 years. Two, if you came up with any ideas relating to your job, they belonged to the company. Three, out of town travel was over 60 % of the job.

"If Karen and I both had to travel, we would have no time for KT. That wasn't going to happen. Also, we couldn't see giving other people our minds, or having our careers dictated by someone else. We decided to use what we had learned to eliminate the problems we found and do it on our own.

"The first thing that happened was that Mom and Dad lost their garage. It became our research facility, our offices, and our manufacturing plant in addition to our home. Karen's Mom and Dad gave us both top of the line fully loaded computers, printers, and accessories for graduation and kept paying for the upgrade kits as they came out. We were able to use the old parts to build our test equipment.

"One friend from Judo dealt in surplus electronic parts and generic circuit boards. He was able to find everything we needed for 5 cents on the dollar. Another friend from the NRA found a wave-soldering machine that was being scraped because it did not meet EPA requirements. We were able to hide from the government during this time, so everything we did was governed by common sense, not inspectors. The wave-soldering machine worked great, and the exhaust hoods we made for them eliminated any build up of fumes.

"During the day, Karen and I continued our part time jobs to earn money to eat and buy equipment. I would upgrade the museum data systems, and Karen would bring Dad's bidding process into then 21^st century. In retrospect, both organizations got a real bargain.

"Mom and Dad agreed to continue our rent-free status until we saw some fruit from the company. I don't think they ever thought they would see any fruit, but they decided to let us try. During the afternoon and early evening, we would play with KT, and do things as a family. She was 7 by the time we finished our formal education, and we felt we had slighted her during those first years of her childhood.

"Two nights a week we went to Judo. Another night we would go to a shooting range and go through a few boxes of shells. On the weekends, we would go to the lake and work to restore Dad's 50-year-old sailboat. The other nights, we would let KT help us in the lab. She got to be a pretty good board stuffer. After KT went to bed, Karen and I would focus on the company until the wee hours of the morning, fall into bed, get up at 6 in the morning, run for 3 miles, and go to our day jobs.

"The concept of what we were doing was pretty simple really, and we were surprised that someone had not thought of it before. We knew that for the Internet to reach it's full potential, it had to run much faster. Two problems existed. The first problem was at that time 70% of the Internet ran through copper (old phone lines) at some point in its distribution. This older technology was not designed to operate at the speed of the Internet, and tended to slow everything down. Later, new technologies came out to help, but they were initially expensive.

"The second problem was that with the growth in the number of personal computers, the number of users on the Internet was growing at a faster pace than the ability of the Internet to serve them. Currently the points between servers were ok, fiber optics, microwaves, and satellites were able to get information distributed well beyond the capability of the down line feeders to get it to individual users. Individuals, small businesses, and remote offices could not afford to run dedicated fiber optic cables or DSL lines to their points of usage. The system was fast reaching a point that it could be overwhelmed. Already the fragile Internet experienced short-lived shutdowns due to different causes. The system was designed to note those failures, and find a way around them, but due to loading, it was not always able to reroute signals during outages.

"The basis of all early computers was simple. Take a series of numeric positions called bits, and either give them a magnetic field, or take the magnetic field away, and you create a binary code. When the computer is in operation, the magnetic fields are turned into electrical pulses. Take 8 of these bits, tie them together and you create a byte of information that can represent numbers, letters, symbols and special signals. Using these bytes, computer programmers create computer languages that allow all of us to use computers in our lives.

"Users of computers could connect to the Internet's group of what was considered high-speed communication "servers" like America on Line through the local telephone lines, local cable networks, or other developing media. To do this, a special part of the computer called a modem (modulator/demodulator) turns the binary signals into analog sounds that are turned back into electronic digital voltages at the other end.

"A special crystal called the system clock controls speed inside the computer within the constraints of the hardware. The speed of computers kept getting faster by increasing the frequency of the system clock and modifying the internal structure. The copper phone lines had technical limitations on the speeds achieved.

"The servers then talk to each other through a very complicated network controlled by switches make by a company in Vallejo (Silicon Valley), California. The receiving server then sends the signal to the receiving user's computer that in turn converts it back to computer language, and allows the receiving user to communicate with the sending user. SIMPLE.

"Karen and I figured that if we could compress these signals into symbols similar to the concept used by deaf signing, we could increase the rate of data transfer by a factor of 16. To do this, we would compress information on to data bubbles by layering the modem sounds in octaves, sending that signal through the servers, and then separating the information at the receiving modem.

"We also found that encryption sets could be made unbreakable. Encryption is a technology that substitutes something for the actual letter or digit sent in a message. It is used by companies to send confidential information over the Internet, cyber space money transfers, and other applications that later would develop. Current technologies would substitute over 100 billion electronic symbols for the real signal. Our technology would increase this to the 16^th power. That is 100,000,000,000 multiplied by 100,000,000,000 16 times. That's a very simple explanation of what was going on, any more detail, and I would be in breach of contract.

"We needed five things to do this; a simple inexpensive signal builder and translator to fit onto existing modems, a language that would be compatible to operating systems in existence, the ability to build a company and market the products, airtight patents to protect our work, and the money to pay for it all. Other than that, we were home free. Oh, I almost forgot, we had to do all this while raising our daughter and not tearing each other apart when something didn't work right.

"Fortune smiled upon us one more time. Anyone who thinks God does not get involved in the everyday lives of people needs to have a talk with Karen and I.

"On the weekends when we were working on Dad's old sailboat, we became friends with the family that owned the one sailboat at the marina what was in worse shape than ours. Jack and Jill (I will warn you now, do not make any jokes about falling down a hill around them.) had a son, Jerry, of 11 years and a daughter, Janie, of seven years. Janie and KT became fast friends the first time they saw each other. Jerry, with great effort, tolerated the gruesome twosome as he called the girls.

"They had received the "Good Money" as settlement for a case when Jack's client found out he could not get away from paying for Jack's services. Jack would have been better off if he had allowed his client to default. The 'Money was a wreck. She had as much rot as she did good wood and most of the hull had to be rebuilt. They had decided, however, that this was their family project, and money was no object (thus the name of the boat as in throwing good money after bad.)

"They did have to bend on the money thing now and again. Jack, a patent attorney, had the same idea about serving another master as Karen and I, so he was his own company. Jill was Jack's former legal assistant, turned wife, turned mother who moonlighted in her husband's business as a legal assistant. Neither family was really rolling in the dough.

"Jack and I would compare notes about ship design and construction, discuss how to sail on the Great Lakes, and talk about Lake Erie shipwrecks. Karen and Jill would laugh at us for talking as experts about things of which we knew absolutely nothing. To look back I think our wives could have been called reality checks, but we were not about to admit it at the time.

"The subject of our business came up as we were cutting a large section of rot around the keel. Jack was good. He could see the potential of what we were doing. He could also see where we were going to have some real problems when we went to play with the big dogs as he called the large tech companies. The first problem was we had no money to pay for the legal help we would need to protect ourselves form having our life's work stolen from us by a potential customer.