"Did you see that? How he took the lead?" she pointed out. "We need to see how Little Ricky socializes, don't we? I mean we picked a specific set of genes regarding his personality, and I for one want to see what this really means. Expression markers on a piece of paper are one thing, but..." The noise level in the next room exploded in screeches again, cutting her off.

I shrugged with wide eyes.

"Can't we just turn the simulation off for a minute?"

I was getting a headache.

"You can't just turn kids off, can you Rick?"

"No, but we can sure as heck turn these ones off."

Echo materialized in my display s.p.a.ce beside her, sensing something imminent. Cindy turned to him angrily.

"You mind your own business, mister!" she spat at him, wagging a finger in his direction. If a proxxi could be taken aback, he was, and rapidly dematerialized.

She turned back to me and added, "See Rick, this is just what I was talking about. If you find Ricky too rambunctious, maybe we should select for more introverted character traits. A part of this process is understanding how they will affect us and our relationship."

I could see her point, but I already had a head of steam brewing.

"Look, I don't want to have an introvert as a son. I had something important to tell you this evening..."

"And I had something important too, Rick," she gushed out breathlessly before I could continue. "I want another proxxid."

I was stunned. In another week or two Little Ricky would be ten years old, Derek would be heading into the terrible twos and now she wanted another one?

"We're getting rid of these ones, though, right?" I asked incredulously.

"Getting rid of them?"

The whites of her eyes grew and she worked into a panic.

"We haven't even gotten started with them. So you want to stop halfway through and call this whole thing a waste of time? Call my effort a waste of time?"

"Waste of time? I'll tell you what a waste of time is, Cindy. I'm trying to make sure this tin can we're floating in isn't sabotaged or wrecked by some storm, and I'm strung out on SleepOvers from waking up to rock these stupid simulated babies to sleep every night!"

I hadn't noticed that I'd started yelling, and suddenly everything was very quiet. The boys had circled back into the dining room, and the tiny dinosaurs were staring at me, tears welling in their little carnivorous eyes.

Derek started crying.

Cindy looked up at me and said quietly, "I just wanted to try having a little girl proxxid, to see what that was like."

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my index and forefinger, my eyes tightly closed.

"I'm going to go back to work for a while, okay? I really have some stuff I need to get done. We'll talk later. I'm sorry."

Cindy tried to reach for me, but I shrugged her off and walked quickly back out the door.

Even with a full moon, it was almost pitch black under the dense tropical canopy. I'd just about worked myself up into a full sprint, dodging and weaving between the tree trunks.

Pssi was many things, but it was something else at night. The pitch darkness to my unaided eyes was overlaid with infrared and enhanced color images, so I could make my way easily even in the blackness. While I was primarily in charge of the run, Echo was subtly shifting my foot placements and balance here and there, and ducking my head slightly every now and then to adjust my trajectory through the jungle maze as I shot through it.

Echo had also networked in a few wild horses to stampede through the underbrush with us, and some monkeys swung hooting overhead. The net effect was a mad, euphoric rush through the undergrowth. It was the best way I knew to burn off steam.

The argument with Cindy had reminded me of how my parents had fought, and those bad memories jumped back into my mind. At first I'd gone back to the office to burrow into a pile of work, and Echo had said nothing, just working with me on the files. I'd really just wanted to tell her I was ready, but then that had happened. It felt like some kind of sign. I fought off the feeling.

Maybe that was what the proxxids were designed for, to help test you. If so, they were working.

My cheekbone bounced off something as I ricocheted off to one side and then cart wheeled into a thicket of palmettos. Wetness spread across my face. The h.o.a.rd around me stopped, dousing the rampage in a sudden stillness.

"Maybe you should let me do more of the night driving," said Echo. He waited for me to pick myself up.

I must have hit a tree branch. Ouch. The animals quietly dispersed, sensing an end to our fun.

"Naw, I like to keep myself as in touch with my body as I can, you know that."

The more you used a proxxi to guide your body, the more you stood to lose neural cohesion, and that led down a slippery slope. I needed to be in total control of my body. When we used pssi prototypes in simulated combat training, I always made it a point to keep myself and my team in perfect neural coherence between our simulated and real bodies. Pssi was great for adjusting your aim or getting through trauma, but for the day to day stuff I still believed in plain old wetware as much as possible.

"For a guy who likes to keep in touch with his body, you sure can't feel a thing," commented Echo, standing beside me. "That's going to leave a mark in the morning."

I had my incoming neural pain network tuned down so low I had almost no sensation, at least none of the pain coming from my nervous system. My heart ached something terrible, but there wasn't much I could do about that.

The perception of emotional pain was a funny thing. The more you tried to push it out, the more it seemed to dig itself in.

"Hey this is what we do in combat training," I tried to tell him, but he knew me as well as I knew myself.

I tuned my pain receptors back up and felt a flood of pain from my face and ankle. It wasn't smart to try and walk on a sprained ankle without your pain receptors fired up, not unless you had to.

"We're not in combat training, soldier," laughed Echo.

I limped towards the edge of the woods. Echo was walking beside me, and we were just at the edge of the beaches.

"You can't turn off the pain, and you can't beat yourself up either," continued Echo as we reached the sand and walked out onto the empty beach. "You're not your parents, Rick."

"I know."

"I'm not sure that you do, actually."

A silence settled.

"Nice out here tonight, huh?" I said after a bit, changing the topic.

Echo just looked at me and nodded. "Yeah, it sure is."

We laid down in the sand, side by side, and looked up at the bright stars hanging silently above us. I tuned the ultraviolet and xray spectra into my visual system, and watched the night sky begin to glow in neon blues and ghostly whites above us.

"Beautiful to be alive, isn't it?" I said to Echo, wondering to myself if I was just trying to run away again.

I hardly noticed that Echo didn't respond.

I stayed out the rest of that evening, not wanting to explain a b.l.o.o.d.y and bruised face to Cindy in the middle of the night. Dodging responsibility, I had Echo leave her a low priority message that I was sorry, but that everything was fine, and that I'd be staying at the office overnight.

The next day was a blur after not sleeping again, so I gobbled more SleepOver tabs. On top of everything else, my body was trying to recover from my selfinflicted injuries.

The Command staffers were sympathetically amused at my purple, swollen face. Even though I'd tried to secure a reality filter over the top of it, most of them easily overrode it for a laugh. I was mostly just waiting till the end of the day to speak with Cindy.

"You look the worse for wear," said Jimmy as we started going over the daily threat reports after lunch. He was smiling.

"Yeah, yeah," I replied with a grin, "I am supposed to be the fighting part of this unit, remember?"

"Of course, Commander."

He rolled his eyes, and I looked down, shaking my head.

"Hey, do you want me to finish up with this stuff?" Jimmy offered. "I can see you have a lot on your mind."

The reports and diagrams floating in the shared display s.p.a.ce between us seemed to stretch off into infinite s.p.a.ce. Just looking at them made my headache worse.

"Actually, Jimmy, that'd be great."

"No problem."

"Rick, why don't you just take the rest of the day off? I think Jimmy is right, go and take it easy," Echo added. "I just checked with Cindy, and she's got some time too."

I looked up at him suddenly. "You talked to Cindy?"

"Yeah, I sure did," Echo replied. "She was just checking in on you while you were busy with Jimmy, and she said she had the rest of the day free."

"Good, thanks guys," I said, looking at the two of them. "I really appreciate it."

"Oh, Rick, by the way," said Jimmy as I began to get up to go. "Your wife asked me to help her with some stuff with your proxxids, you're okay with all that?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," I said, waving him on, "whatever she needs."

I forwarded him my proxxid credentials and flitted off to wrap up some details.

I opened the door to our apartment after Echo had walked me home, expecting a wave of screaming kids. It was completely quiet, however, and right away that got me worried. Tentatively, I looked around inside and found Cindy sitting on a small couch in the center. Our place was a pristine white, featureless projection, very calm and quiet.

It felt creepy.

"Oh Rick," she exclaimed as she saw me enter, getting up off the couch and coming to me, "what did you do to yourself? Echo told me you went out last night? This was all my fault..."

"No, no, it's not your fault. It was my fault." I held up my hands. "I'm okay, it's just a big scratch. I was out doing some night drills for work."

She looked unconvinced.

"About last night Rick, I know you had something important to say..."

"And I still do," I interrupted, "look, I know it's been a long time getting here...but...I'm ready now, and I know you are."

I smiled. She smiled back and wrapped her arms around me, kissing me.

"That's wonderful news, sweetie."

She looked happy, but I had expected a little more, so I repeated myself. "I want to have a real baby with you now, you understand?"

She nodded and smiled, "Of course I do, and that's wonderful news. Well, let's get it just right, then."

I took a deep breath, feeling relief wash through my body.

"So, where are the boys then?" I asked, looking around.

"Oh, they're gone now," she replied casually, surprising me. As long as she was happy, which she seemed to be, it was fine with me, but I had to admit I felt some sudden pangs of regret.

"But," she continued, "I do have someone I'd like you to meet."

A crack appeared in the flat white wall behind the couch, and she led me by the hand towards it as the wall slid open to reveal a room beyond. I could hear a soft gurgling sound. We walked up to the edge of a cradle, and Cindy bent over to pick up a little baby girl lying inside it.

She held her up to me, and I took the baby in my arms.

"Rick, please meet Brianna," Cindy announced softly.

I looked down into my new baby girl's face, and she was amazingly beautiful. We could try this out for a while.

Maybe I'd always wanted a baby girl.

5.

TODAY CINDY HAD transported our family into a Norman Rockwelllike setting. We were outside, sitting together at an old weather beaten oak table at the edge of an apple orchard, behind a vintage white washed cottage, complete with peeling paint outside and a musty interior full of yellowing family photographs on mantelpieces.

It was warm, hot even, as the sun lazily set under a cloudless blue sky. We were on Martha's Vineyard in a circa 1940s wikiworld. The fading day had a languid, easy going feel to it, which was nice after a hectic day of chasing down cyber threats. Sea air rustled in through tall unkempt gra.s.ses atop sand dunes lining the nearby beaches.

Like getting a new fix, our first baby girl proxxid had injected new life into our relationship, and the days and weeks had pa.s.sed with a sense of rejuvenated expectations. Jimmy and Echo had sensed what was going on, and the pair of them had volunteered to take on a lot of my Command functions, giving me the time to work things out with Cindy.

The highlight of each day had become a ritualized homecoming to explore a new metaworld that Cindy would create for us, and, of course, to play with the latest proxxid. As time went on, we'd progressed, one by one, through Brianna, our first girl proxxid, and then Georgina, Paul, Pauli and eventually to our new favorite, Little Ricky-Two.