Nobody Ever Dies

Randi's theme is sudden wealth. That's to Silicon Valley what the gold rush was to the Forty-Niners. So, my hero is a nerd -- aka my kind of guy, it's also the reason why I left the narrative in geek-speak. I know that nerd terminology bugs a few of you. But I'm after authenticity in this story, and it's the way my people talk. Don't try to translate it. It might cause you to develop weird social behaviors.

Fact is... you can be whoever you want to be in cyberspace. Its anonymity lets you say and do things that you would never do in the physical world. Even so, freedom from accountability can also cause you to lose your way... which is why this story fits so neatly into the Loving Wives category.

The plot's a classic LW trope - well, sort of... not really.... And please note that the hacking exploits aren't even remotely fictitious. I've either done or been professionally involved in every exploit that I describe, and I think it's important for you to know about that kind of stuff because it's a jungle out there. The usual thanks to Randi, you're a superstar my friend... please enjoy - DT

NOBODY EVER DIES

Majorca 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 together by a single person, Colonel David Osborne, or as I fondly called him, "Shithead."

Shithead had flourished up the chain of command by kissing the right rings. So, 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 my 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 folks who stand on the ramparts in this digital age aren't your classic chiseled jaw Marine. They're the guys 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, there's no expensive military hardware 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, most of which 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 in 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 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.

My 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 advanced persistent threats, 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.

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 guys... 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.