The little boy, half black and half white, stands in front of the seated man and raises his hands in an act designed to illicit a known response, and it comes. The man reaches down and picks the boy up and sits him on his thigh. The boy is about three. Not a word passes between them but they smile at each other. Neither shows it but the attack is about to start.

Then there is the girl, she is almost six, she looks half white and half Asian. She is a China doll, and just as cute as the boy. She cocks her head at the sitting man. He does the same in return and gives a shoulder shrug with the attendant hand turn-flip open, in question. She knows what it means. He is waiting.

She launches herself at the seated man and hits him exactly where she has aimed. The fight begins. The little boy joins in and soon their father is engulfed in giggles and squeals of joy.

Our revelry stops as suddenly as it started. Lord Byron had it right, make that perfect:

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

She is my sun and my moon, our sun and our moon and every star ever created bows down to her beauty. She is our entire universe.

Her incandescent smile lights our existence. She glows like only a woman carrying life can glow. Her black skin radiates love and motherhood. Our children, only moments ago happy to be with me, their lowly father, now need to be with the real source of power and energy, the main source of love and devotion, their mother, my wife, my life.

She walks to me, her body gliding effortlessly despite the two mismatched book ends, as I call them, growing inside her body. A boy and a girl, to match the set we already have. I touch her stomach and lean to kiss it and thus our two unborn babies. The other two munchkins who have been attacking me do the same to their unborn brother and sister, and giggle. We hug, all at the same time, we are a family. There is more than enough love to go around. My wife is a font of pure love.

My name is Franklin Collins. My story starts with my birth.

"I was born."

Ok, stealing from Lord Byron is one thing but lines from David Copperfield too, well that is just too much. Let's move a little further forward in history.

I was a decent student and worked hard. Just your average white bread kind of guy and that is me. I am five foot nine and one hundred and ninety pounds, just a hint more muscle than most. I love to run and I do lift some iron on a regular basis. I am not going to ever be a body beautiful but I know how to pump iron and stay strong. When I get old I will be fat, but not now, not yet.

Now I have my own company and we test security systems. Actually we hack into systems, to see if we can hack into systems. People pay us to attack them and hack into their systems. We plant bombs in them and then they blow up and funny things happen on the computer screens and people are mad as hell. When we get caught people are happy, until they learn we only got caught to test the system and while they are patting themselves on the back we are blowing up their security systems and attacking their database.

I was just starting out and I could not get any clients so I did what I do best, but I did it for free. There was a security conference with a group of consultants and some large financial institutions were there being represented. I got into the place as a waiter. When the time was right I sat down at a table and drank some coffee as I watched all the computer screens in the place go nuts; flashing colors, geometric designs, you know the kinds of things you see for screen savers. Then I watched all the power players starting to get calls and their little lap top computers, iPods, iPads, you name it, well they all went nuts and started blinking and buzzing, vibrating, and ringing.

Funny that in a conference on computer security everyone there was carrying an unprotected link to their home systems and the conference itself was vulnerable.

In a matter of moments billions of dollars disappeared. Well not really, their computers thought it disappeared but it was right where it always was. I was skirting the law; ok I was breaking the law.

Then every computer in the palace lit up and the same message hit every screen. "If you want your money back all you have to do is visit this man [a real time picture of me in the room drinking coffee in my waiters outfit appeared on the screens around the room] and POLITELY ask him to fix the problem and it will be fixed."

They were not polite so I drank more coffee and smiled. It took all of five minutes for them to realize that screaming would do nothing for them. Threats of arrest and all sorts of threatened other evils fell on my intentionally deaf ears. Their security people said they could do nothing about it and their systems could not trace the threat or combat it, at least in the short term. When they all calmed down I did my thing and all was sweetness and light.

I gave them my card and told them I was the security expert they needed and that the money was where it always had been, that this was a security exercise. Actually I don't think people use real money anymore, at least in the banking industry, everything is electronic.

They did call, right after the FBI and Homeland Security called. Evidently it was not a federal crime to break into their systems if I did not take anything but only made it look like I did for the limited purpose of showing them where they had problems with security. It is something called intent. I think what saved me was that I sent them each a report about part of their security problem. I had prepared it in advance of the security attack which I created in the first place. As soon as I hit the button to clean everything up the report went out to their security people. The other thing that saved me is that they did not want anyone to know that one person could do that much damage to the banking system. Anyway, none of the institutions pressed charges, even though some initially wanted too. They were more interested in what I had done and how to prevent it. Actually I did not do much at all, but what I did was simple to do and hard to combat. Taking the money would have been impossible for the breach I caused, but why quibble with success.

My company is not all that big, but it means I have my own money and not big money, but enough. I guess that depends on how you define big and since I deal with hundreds of billions, my idea of big is BIG! It is like being an adult playing a video game except I get paid to do it.

I met Sheila when I was seventeen and we immediately fell in love. We met in high school and dated exclusively from the time we first met. She took me home and I met her father and mother, and every aunt, uncle, and a bunch of cousins, you can imagine. What a Saturday that was. I mean we had only just started dating and I had to meet everyone and remember their names. I remember one little girl about nine or ten actually gave me a red carnation, it was sweet. Other family members gave me food, lots of food. I gained five pounds that Saturday.

Every two weeks there was a family get together and everyone went. It was a bonding event that I would do for the rest of my life. I can honestly say that I loved each and every one of them.

Sheila was a computer geek, just like me. We did everything together. She was Yin to my Yang. We saw her family every two weeks, always a group. We went to movies and dinner, cheap dinner, we were still in High School but everyone knew we would be together until "death us do part."

We saw my family every two weeks too, but on different weeks. Sheila was loved by them as much as I loved her. We were perfect for each other.

She was short, curvy, vivacious, and every word you can think of to describe the love of your life. She was my first and I was hers. We made sure to practice a lot. We were careful not to get caught, and by that I mean get pregnant. We tried sex but settled on making love; but we still tried sex just to make sure it was making love we liked most.

She was mine and only mine until I was twenty, and when we married we became one. It was a wonderful wedding. My bride glowed. My father in law strutted like a peacock, and I don't even remember how many people were there. It must have been three or four hundred, but probably more.

It was a marvelous blending of two different families until we became one family. Talk about a strange blending. The strange part was that Sheila's mother and father were fraternal twins, but not to each other. Fraternal twins do not generally look like each other. The same sperm fertilizes two eggs. Well we hope it is the same sperm. So Sheila's father had a fraternal twin brother and Sheila's mother had a fraternal twin sister. The really strange part was that the twin sisters married the twin brothers. They each had huge families of nine or was it ten children? The brothers and sisters lived in different states so they only came together once in a while as an entire family, and this was one of the few times. But their children visited often. I really felt honored to have them all at one event.

Sheila and I went around and saw every guest and spoke with them. We had been together for three years and we knew each other well. It was a strange mix of family but we both understood the problems we might face but we loved each other to the exclusion of the entire world.

This was unlike the reunions, which could be a mix of different members of the family and not all came the times that Sheila and I were there. This time it was everyone and I was just overwhelmed by the names and numbers of people on Sheila's side of the family.

Don't get me wrong, my family was huge, even though it was only my brother and I at the time. My father and mother had tons of family and I had more aunts, uncles, and cousins than I could even remember.

I danced with all the little cousins and wives and aunts and well, just about everyone. One pretty little girl about thirteen even kissed me on the cheek and blushed and gave me a white carnation.

Then a month later my Sheila was pregnant and the entire family celebrated at a family gathering easily as large as the wedding. Both families were there this time, it was that special. We took over an entire park.

Three months after that celebration of new life, Sheila and the baby were gone.

A fucking drunk driver decided he was too drunk to walk home but sober enough to drive. Hell, he could damn near see his fucking house from the bar and could have walked there if he headed off across the field and walked for thirty minutes. It was only a mile or two away. No, he had to get into his car and drive all the way around and kill my wife and baby.

He killed my universe and hit a tree too. The tree lived, and the driver did not have a mark on him, my life ended.

I walked like the dead through the land of the living, a ghost in earthly pain. The funeral was beyond my comprehension. There was a large coffin and inside of it was a very small coffin no more than six inches long and it was held in Sheila's crossed arms. It represented our baby who would spend eternity with her mother. Yes, they said she was a little girl. I don't know how they knew but they said they did. Inside of the small coffin I placed a folded piece of paper. I closed my eyes and prayed that I would open my eyes and it would be my wife and little girl looking down on me and I was the one in the coffin; but it was not to be. I kissed my wife for the last time after replacing the small coffin in her arms again and they closed the coffin. Through my tears I remember a little girl crying and handing me a black carnation.

Did you know that vehicle computer systems can be affected by other computers? It is true; it is a little known fact. All you need to do it attach a little device that accepts signals from outside the car, or you can program the computer inside of the car and you can make cars go faster, or stop them or shut down everything.

The man who killed my life finally had an accident he did not walk away from. He was drunk and driving and there was this corner on his way home from his favorite bar, the one he was driving home from when he killed my life. He was just going too fast and then the systems all failed and he hit that tree again, at over one hundred and twenty miles an hour and damn if the computer and electrical system did not go into fail mode and shut down completely. Not even the air bags worked because no signal came from the sensors in the front of the car. They used the "jaws of life" to get him out of the car.

He has a pet monkey that moves his joy stick on his electric wheel chair to get him around. The monkey does not wipe up his drool. He can't talk or even piss for himself, except through a tube where his dick used to be, and he has a bag for shit and piss attached to his chair. Since the monkey will not empty them he always stinks and shit and piss is all over the floor where ever he goes. His wife, who tried for years to get him to stop drinking and driving, finally left him and took the kids with her. She did not divorce him; she just headed out the door and never looked back. He can't drink and drive anymore, unless the monkey makes the chair go. Maybe the monkey will get drunk and crash the chair. One can only hope.

The very small device that accepted outside signals to the computer must have fallen off because the investigators never found it, or if they did they had no idea what it was. I have it on good authority it went into a crucible of molten lead.

I spent the next seven years ignoring real life, including women and just working. At first I did not communicate with my wife's family, it was too painful. But then, a month or two after the funeral, well they were family and I had to see them. Before long it was once every month and they would all be there. They understood and still accepted me as a member of the family. Still it hurt to be around them, but the hurt was going away, slowly.

I was the one man all the single girls look at as a potential husband. I was young, good looking – ok not ugly, and in good shape and I had some money. But still Sheila's family did not come on too hard about being single and fixing me up. Some of my parent's friends did try that but it never worked out. I just withdrew into myself. I had an older brother that was a friend too, but we were not all that close and never were. He was ten years older than me so it was like we were in different worlds, but he tried to help.

I had a few tumbles with some women, I am a male after all, but I lost my true love and I was still upset. I learned early on that fucking was no substitute for making love. I stayed away from Sheila's family, no one night stands from them. I just could not do that to them.

Seven years later I was still on the rebound, still in a fog, still in pain, and then I met Ruth.

I went to all of the security shows, not to talk, but to listen. I rarely said anything to anyone but I did pass out a few cards. I had a booth that was just a few brochures and a pretty face who only knew enough to get a name and phone number and address. I made sure to have the hottest women I could get to work the booth too. Usually the people there were interested in the girl in the booth and not the product but she helped me collect numbers and leads.

My booth girl also wore a name tag with a secret video and audio setup that picked up everything. I did get a lot of information, none of which I ever blackmailed anyone with but I did find out that a lot of men fucked around and wanted to do it with my booth girl. I also got a lot of information about new security problems and possible fixes. Hell, if they wanted to tell my booth girl that was fine by me.

Now I was twenty seven and Ruth was thirty three. She understood her mortality and the bio clock and all that crap. She chased me, caught me, and fucked my brains out. I never met a woman like her. She was sex, sex, and more sex. Whatever I wanted to do she was happy to do it with me. I made a little mistake because I thought all that sex meant she had all that love for me.

She was in the banking end of the business and was pretty sharp when it came to crunching numbers. At her age she was a decade ahead of schedule, she was that smart, or at least I thought she was.

She gave me more sex than I had ever had in my life, which when I think back on it was not all that much. The woman was voracious when it came to sex. "Man Eater" would define her. We did it three or more times a day. Morning, night and middle of the night was our normal times. She would even give me a good evening blow job, or a good morning blow job, or a "Hey sailor, want your cock sucked?" blow job, and that was a lot of sex for a computer geek that did not get a lot of sex before Ruth. And she was beautiful. Buxom is a good way to describe her.

She did come with baggage and that was a son, who was going to be my step-son. Ok, here is the big one, he was seventeen. Obviously Ruth had him when she was young.

Well she was great at sex so I went with it. It was not true love I later found out but it was marriage and with a pre-nuptial agreement and lots of sex. If she cheats she gets nothing. It was pretty simply for an agreement that prevented her from getting a few million.

Brad, my step-son was an idiot and I got to pay for part of his schooling. Lucky me! That makes me an idiot too. Was the sex that good? I'm not sure! Yes she made good money but Brad needed the best, so he got a good home and then a car and an apartment and spending money; you know the score. Ruth was feeding him money like he was a little bird with its mouth open demanding more worms.

I was still going to Sheila's family events monthly, neither Ruth nor Brad ever wanted to go. They always had other things to do. When I got married I was still welcomed but now the women my age at the gatherings had some hard looks for me but everything remained acceptable. Make that every woman no matter what age looked hard and angry at me. After all I was not expected to live without a woman for the rest of my life, or so I thought. As I said, Ruth never went with me to these events and hardly went to the ones that my parents had.

Brad was an idiot. Oups, I am repeating myself, but some things bear repeating; his idiocy is one of them. He barely got out of high school. He went to college to "find his art." He was talking some shit like that anyway.

He had dreams of being a great danseur but the big dummy could not walk and chew gum at the same time and I figured that listening to music, dancing and moving with the flow of the music would be way beyond his abilities. And yes that is the way he spelled it, danseur. Dancer was not good enough; he had to be a danseur.

But still, his mother gave great head and was a wild fuck so what the hell. It is not like Brad was actually costing me anything out of my pocket. I worked, got my cock sucked, fucked whenever I wanted and I did not give a shit how Brad spelled it. I realized that I was not in love with his mother, and Brad and I were hardly on speaking terms, unless he wanted money. But his mother and I got along well enough and the sex was great. I keep repeating that part don't I? Trust me, it is important.

Brad met this great girl who was a danseuse but a real one. I saw her practice and she was fantastic. She would glide through the air, over the floor, around any obstacle, she was a danseuse. Looking back on things I am sure Brad would have liked to be a danseuse too.

The girl's name was Helen and she was a few years older than him. He was twenty and going to this arts school and so was she. She was twenty-three at the time and I have no idea what she saw in him. Ok he was handsome and tall and blond and well built, and so full of himself I expected him to explode any minute.

They dated and then they got sort of unofficially engaged, whatever the hell that is. During his time as my step-son he called me Frank, even thought I told him it was Franklin. Helen calls me "Dad" or "Daddy", even though I am not her father. She is sweet as honey and I am still supporting Brad and now Helen. Brad I am pissed about, Helen, not in the slightest.

Whenever Helen was around I was amazed at her grace and poise. She floated from place to place. She always had a radiant smile. It was like the world was a warm and happy place because she was happy too. Her words were soothing and her voice was like a song to anyone hearing it.

She was better educated than Brad and a lot smarter too; and yes there is a difference. I am not exactly sure what she is studying besides dancing.

I do know that she is working on a Masters in something but she does not talk about it very much. For some reason she actually agreed to marry him, although they are not yet "officially" engaged. Brad seems to be more than a little beneath her. For the life of me I don't know what she sees in him, but since I am not going to marry him it does not matter to me. As I said, he is good looking and tall and blond and since he is a danseur he has a good athletic build, but the man is dumb. The blond part gives it away. If he was driving in the Indianapolis 500 he would stop at least a dozen times to ask for directions. [For those of you not familiar with that particular race it is run on an oval, you can only go one direction. Ok you could speed at two hundred miles an hour toward the other cars instead of with them, but not even Brad would do, of forget it, he might actually do it.]

I did talk to Ruth about it but she said that Brad would one day surprise me and to just enjoy life, like she was. I was happy for her, but I did not know exactly how much enjoying she was doing until I found out how much enjoying she was doing. I did not find it all that enjoyable myself.

I kept going to the monthly gatherings even while I was married and there was a definite thaw in the air. Now the girls, who always managed to stand in a circle looking around at other people, looked at me and actually looked away and giggled among themselves. Ever notice how females all do that. I know something is going on but I don't know what. Maybe they think it is ok that I am married again.

The parties with my family never had the same flair as Sheila's parents had, but they are always fun. At times the two families got together for huge affairs and we take over an entire park, like we did when we celebrated our baby. They were always wonderful times. Then I think of Sheila and I get a little morose but I always hide it so no one knows.

Ruth got pregnant just after Brad got "engaged" and that really did change things for us all, in more ways than one. Ruth had a lot of problems with the pregnancy and I was always there helping. I could do a lot of work related tasks from the house and that gave me the ability to watch Ruth and help her and work too.

I did all the husband things and talked to the baby and even sang to her, yes it was "a her," and Ruth decided that she would be named Kim. I was left out of the loop on that one.

I spoke to Kim every day and most of every night. I caressed her at every opportunity. I had fallen in love with Kim even before she was born.

I would oil Ruth up and rubbed her feet and back in addition to all of the things I had to do because she was so sick; Ruth not the baby. There were times when she was really very sick but she made it. She had to quit work so I took over everything. Yes, that means I had to take over all of the support of Brad. Barf. Now I am sick too.

But Kim never suffered from a lack of attention. I rubbed Ruth's stomach and that way caressed Kim too. I never let an opportunity to pass where I did not speak to Kim before she was born.

By this time I had associates who worked with me and they had their own offices all over the world. We used secure satellite communications with an encryption system that would make the DoD green with envy. We attacked financial and business systems all over the world. And when I say attack, I mean all out war, if they needed it. We even had battle plans.

You get thirty of us hitting the same target with each of us using fifty or more independent programs running autonomously from different computers all over the world, some slaves, some not, then we thirty join together to batter down the gates and you have chaos of the first order. That is 1500 separate attacks from outside plus our own systems and that is the death of a financial institution. Lucky for them it is not real life death. Only the biggest can afford that kind of attack, most don't need that much, but some do.

We don't tell them how we did it, only that we did it and where the attack was successful and what area of their program failed. How we do it, that is our bread and butter and they don't get that.

We also worked out a money arrangement between ourselves. At first they all worked for me doing what I wanted. Soon the business had a reputation and when others found out what my group did locally, well the business came flooding in. The members in Europe worked out a profit sharing agreement where they got the lion's share of the money and I got a percentage but we all worked on it. Then the Far and Mid East groups did the same and you get it.

Eventually I was making money for doing nothing but we all gathered for the attack on larger institutions. For fun we traded assignments to attack an institution with different methods. We were getting really good at it and everyone was making money. So Ruth did not really need to work and Kim would always be taken care of.

So Ruth is pregnant and it is hard on her but we all pull together. Brad and Helen move in with us to help Ruth. Actually Brad moves in for free room and board, Helen moves in to help.

I have a pretty large house, and frankly Brad really does need help too. Without his mother he is useless, even more useless than he is with his mother. Brad can't walk down the street with twenty dollars in his pocket without being broke by the time he gets to the next corner. Make that can't cross the street from corner to corner without being broke by the time he gets to the other corner. The man drools money that he does not have.

He does go to class all the time and so does Helen. Ok, I am sure that Helen goes to class because I see her school work and watch her study. She is beautiful as she sits at the table and concentrates on assignments. She still is working on an MBA and something else too, as well as dance. She makes the cutest little squint face when she is working hard on a problem.

As for Brad, he leaves, says he is going to school and does not come back until later. I never see him with a book. At least I don't have to pay for his apartment and all that crap anymore. Helen helps out with Ruth; and Brad, ever the loving son, Brad hardly talks to Ruth and talks to me even less. I don't see much interaction with Helen and Brad either.

During the day we snack, or at least Ruth does. She is so limited in what she can eat and when, so she eats a little every few hours, as if she had hypoglycemia. Helen and I take turns having a small something to eat with her during her day. She did not want to take too much medication because of the baby.

We all have dinner together and talk about the day. Ruth needs stimulation and she has the phone and computer and Helen and I. Brad rarely joins us for dinner, or any meal, even though it is free. What Brad wants is for me to give him money to buy dinner for him and his buddies; not going to happen too often, was my first thought. Then after I thought about it I let it happen more often, the house was just so much -- nicer -- without him.

I was interviewing people for full time care taking and nursing as well as a nanny and cleaning and cooking and all of that but all of the applications got misplaced, the phone calls stopped and I could not get anyone to help. Helen told me that she was going to do it and if I insisted she would allow one person two days a week to help but she did not want too many people in our house. Helen just took over and it became our house. Even with school and dancing she had time for us and became the woman of the house, at least while Ruth was pregnant.