The Old Man

He was a lonely man who had spent his life with but one woman. That woman had been in the hospital for the last ten plus months and her prognosis had been poor. He had recently begun looking for things to occupy his mind when he was not at the hospital. He's an engineer, and always been a good one. He had a hobby making small electrically powered robot vehicles. He'd done most types of these small robots: wheeled vehicles, track driven vehicles, model airplanes, walkers, arthropods, and even a blimp once. The models had been controlled using infrared and visible light beams, radio frequencies, tethered wiring, and semi-autonomous micro-controller units with sensors operating in response to a programmed sequence of instructions. He preferred tracked, micro-controller driven units.

Lately, he had been losing interest in his hobby and been looking for something else. By sheer happenstance he came across a web site that published various art. Specifically, its principle focus was on erotic art with an apparent emphasis on written works.

He'd always been facile with the written word, but it'd usually been with operating, instruction, installation, or maintenance manuals for complex machines. He read several of the published pieces and his mind told him that he too could write such stories. This night he began with such an erotic piece.

When he'd finished, he became a writer and joined the clientel of this erotic web site, in order to publish it. It was then that he found publishng was not an instantaneous thing, the owners of the site chose to review each submittal before actually posting them. The estimated time from submittal to acceptance, or rejection, was estimated on the site to be three to five days. He submitted his piece.

Now came the long wait. To occupy his agile mind, he began once more to read other's stories. The site was vast, but fortunately the owner's had a database that allowed separate review of the latest accepted pieces. It was during his review of these latest that one story caught his eye. He looked up the author and found that there was a short biography. This biography was of a mature, divorced woman with children. A picture was attached that made her look like a seasoned writer. She was Blond haired, with blue eyes, and a large appearing woman with a jaunty hat perched on her head.

He was intrigued and used the anonymous calling feature of the site to send her a short note. He observed that an anonymous message would not provide a response, so he attached his new pen name. She probably wouldn't respond anyway. His message referred to her story and to her bio. The bio indicated that she was into BDSM. He was not and stated this fact.

Amazingly, she responded to his message in a likewise terse manner, but indicated that she'd deleted the reference to BDSM in her bio. He'd not intended for anyone to change a personal preference based on anything he'd said. However, her action intrigued him more. He wrote back that change was not his intent in writing. Again she responded, but this time the address line showed an actual email addrerss and not the anonymous source address. Again he wrote back, and again she responded.

From his point of view, her notes were always terse, he'd have preferred a more lengthy discourse. She and he both had written more by this time and submitted their stories for publication. At last, he too, was published. The story didn't read this time as well as it had in his own mind - - but it was a start. He asked her real first name and again she responded and provided it. They discussed their erotic stories and talked candidly about them for a short time. At one point he asked about her picture and asked if he could have an additional picture. He was also brazen enough to tell her that he'd like an erotic picture to go with her erotic story. He asked if she ever used an Instant Messenger program.

She responded that she used it often and was currently on line. He asked for her buddy name and asked if it would be okay to talk in real time. She gave him the name and in a short time they were talking.

They rehashed much of their early notes and somewhere he again mentioned the lack of a good picture of her. She indicated that she wasn't sure where her camera was, but might look for it later. Their discussions became longer, and they each learned more about the other.

She had three children living with her and had lost a fourth. The loss was tragic for her and her husband. Eventually they separated and divorced. She also enjoyed online role-playing games, and frequently volunteered as a kind of advisor to them.

One day in the middle of their discourse, she had sent him a message requesting an open connection and the messenger program asked him if he'd like to do that. Not knowing what that meant, he responded with an okay. Soon, he was downloading something from her. What could it be? He waited minutes before finally the transmission was complete and a new one started.

He stared astounded. Could it be? Indeed it was. He wrote back asking if it was her and she responded back with an emphatic yes.

It was a picture of her pussy and showed an enlarged and extended clit staring at him. The second picture was from a slightly different perspective of the same subject. next was a photo of one breast being held out to the camera. I asked for a picture of her face and two more appeared. One showed a slight smile and those definitely blue eyes. Now he was in awe of her appearance and her boldness. He was so astounded that he didn't write back immediately. He was drooling noticeably.

When he finally moved from the pictures to the message she'd written it indicated that she didn't know what had come over her and that now she wanted to dig a hole and pull it in after her. He couldn't allow that. He thanked her profusely, told her of the drooling and how he wanted to save them to his computer drive. Disaster, when he started to return to the photos, the messenger program failed and they were lost.

When he had finally rebooted and gotten back online, she was still waiting there for him. When he told her what happened, she'd asked if he really liked them. When he affirmed this, she said that she could resend them and could do it through email so that they wouldn't get lost again. He begged her to do it, and when they arrived he used his Windows program to make them into background wallpaper for his machine -- after all he lived alone these days and no one else would see them. He could enjoy them even when she was offline.

Their message time increased continually to the point where they spent hours on line. An annoying part of each message was what appeared to him an interminable lag between his message and her return. He devised a way to test whether it was the machine and connection that caused the delay. The total round trip delay he measured at about 15 seconds. She said that she was just slow, but admitted that she answered many emails each day and also had other messenger buddies.

He concluded that she was busy with other things, and suffered. A series of things happened after that. Perhaps the newness was wearing thin, or they'd begun taking each other as granted. Regardless, she seemed to grow more impatient with him and occasionally very gruff. He tried to appease her, telling her that everything was okay, and trying to draw her thoughts and feelings into the open. She was always reserved, but eventually opened up a bit to him. Then came the day when she was continually terse with him. When he asked about it she said that it was her grumpy day. He tried to talk and cajole her into a happier mood. Finally, in exaspiration, she told him that she had a right to be grumpy and have a grumpy day. He'd agreed but things rapidly deteriorated until finally he'd thanked her for her time and told her he was signing off and would login again tomorrow. He also indicated that he hoped tomorrow would bring a better day for her.

After he signed off, he continued to watch the screen and immediately a message appeared that she was no longer available and had exited the messenger.

He visited his wife in the hospital every day, sometimes twice a day. A standard day would always find him there after he'd showered at five fifteen each afternoon, and until nine o'clock each night.

They would usually talk on line again after he got home. This night when he got home, he checked his email and found a message from her that seemed to indicate that she was breaking off the relationship. He too, began to rethink what he'd been doing. Subconsciously, he'd been feeling guilty about what he'd been doing, and now those feelings emerged into the open. What was he doing?

The next morning he was awake and online well before she was awake. He penned a message supporting her decision and told her in all honesty of what he'd been feeling. He told her what a great person she was and a friend. He even told her a few things that he'd not confided before. He was planning to change his email address and not bother her further. He was hoping that she'd take the message in the totally grateful and friendly manner that it was intended. He sent it off.

She later returned an extremely terse and sarcastic note about what she'd read into his message. A second message later, indicated a slight remorse. A third seemed to say she wanted to continue. Finally a message came stating that she too, was deleting his previous emails and the photos that he'd sent her and might delete her account on the erotic story site.

Though he'd promised not to answer further messages from her, this was too much. She was a talented writer and he was looking forward to an occasional story from her. His response was an instant email asking her not to drop the the erotic site.

Life goes on -- or does it?