“Well, it's yet another wonderful day in the Cavern.” I said, and tapped the vidwall. A woman's voice laughed behind me, and I turned to admire the sexiest woman I'd ever seen.

“Oh, Jack.” Sandra said. “You're so funny!”

“Only for you, Sweet Cheeks.” I said, and she blushed. I only used that nickname when I wanted her to remember the time she had sat on a bag of the most expensive thing I'd ever bought.

Sugar.

It had only been our second date, and she'd had on one of those fancy hologram dresses. It made it look like she was wearing clothes, and it did cover everything tastefully; but in reality, she didn't have a stitch of clothing on. We'd just come back from shopping, and she'd begged and pleaded with me for an hour to splurge for once. I denied her for a while, but only because I liked teasing her.

I bought the sugar for her, and had laid the bag with it on a chair. I didn't have a table at the time, so I didn't really have anywhere else to put it. I went to use the bathroom, and when I came back out, she had already sat in the chair. The bag had busted, and the very expensive sugar had spilled out. It covered her backside, a good portion of her thighs, and another delicate part.

I grinned, because when she asked to use my shower, I told her that I wasn't going to waste it like that. She asked me what I was going to do with it, and instead of telling her, I asked her to stand up. I went to the cupboard to grab a large dish, and swept the sugar from off the chair and dumped the rest of the bag into the dish as well. She asked me if I was going to try and wipe off the sugar stuck to her, and I grinned at her.

“Oh, no.” I said. “I have a very special tool for that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sandra asked. “What kind of tool?”

I stuck out my tongue, and she laughed.

“You pervert!” She nearly yelled, but I saw the change in her demeanor and the light in her eyes. “You can't possibly think...”

I had gently turned her around and licked every single granule of sugar off of her smooth and perfect skin.

We've dated off and on ever since.

“I really have to go.” Sandra said, and brought me out of my memory.

“Hey, you just woke up.” I said. “You can't leave. You haven't even made my breakfast yet.”

“You misogynist pig!” Sandra laughed, and threw a pillow at me. I caught it and walked over to the bed. I tossed the pillow aside and helped her stand up.

“Same time next week?” I asked her, and she sighed as she started to get dressed.

“No, I've got that varsity meet next week.”

It was my turn to sigh. “You mean I have to go two whole weeks before I can see you again?”

“Longer.” Sandra said. “It's my Turn the week after.”

“Damn.” I said. “I wish I could go with you.”

“I wish you could be there to hold my hand, too.” Sandra leaned in and kissed me. She had the softest lips I'd ever felt, and I enjoyed it so much when she chose to kiss me. Things started to stir in the both of us, and she broke the kiss before it could go any further than that.

“You're a bad influence on me.” Sandra said and finished getting dressed. “I'm tempted to call off sick today.”

“I'm definitely a bad influence if you're thinking of giving up Points for me.”

Sandra laughed and picked up her bag. “Goodbye, Jack.”

“Before you go, can I offer you breakfast?”

Sandra looked like she wanted to say no right away, then she nodded. I went to the wall and hit the button. Breakfast popped out of the slot on a little tray, and I held it out to her. She looked at the three processed algenate discs, and her hand hovered over them. They were only four inches across and an inch thick, and they were different colors. Red, Green, and Blue.

“For god's sake, don't choose one. Just take them all.” I said.

Sandra looked angry for a moment, then scooped them up. “You can be a real ass sometimes, Jack.”

“Only when you're being unreasonable.” I said. “It's just food.”

“It's not just food!” Sandra said, and held the discs up. “This is worth a full day's Points!”

I shrugged. “So what?”

Sandra did get angry then. “I don't like it when you rub my face in how rich you are.”

“I'm not rubbing your face in it!” I said, vehemently. “All I'm doing is giving my girlfriend breakfast!”

Sandra looked like she was going to throw them back at me, then thought better of it because they really were worth a full day's Points. She slipped one of them into her mouth and the other two into her bag, then walked out the apartment door and down the hall.

“Goodbye, Sandra.” I said as I poked my head out to watch her walk away. She didn't even look back at me; not even when she went into the elevator. I went back inside my apartment and hit the button to make the bed, then hit the next button and breakfast popped out of the serving slot. I walked over to the vidwall and hit the button to change the display. The perfect view of the cavern changed to my favorite television show, because I had programmed it that way. I sat down on the bed to eat and watch.

I didn't enjoy the show as much this morning, and my mind started to drift. I thought about several things, then followed the trains of thought right back to the incident that started it all. How mankind as a whole had messed up so badly two hundred years ago. It had all started out great, and the world finally purged all of it's nuclear waste. Rather than just chuck it off into space, they had the brilliant idea to toss it into the sun. What they didn't know, or rather never thought of, was that it was radioactive waste.

The sun is technically a nuclear reactor, and it does give off radiation; but, what it doesn't produce is radioactive waste... which was exactly what they had introduced. For ten years, they slowly fed the waste to the sun, and it ate it obligingly. What they didn't realize until they were done and it was much too late, was that it had poisoned the sun. It's life giving rays started to burn, and not in a good way. Hard radiation had started to bathe the Earth, and there was literally nothing that mankind could do about it.

They couldn't very well go into the sun to dig the stuff back out, and they couldn't put anything else in there to destroy it.

All they really could do was run.

Many ships were made, and many trips were taken for the next fifty years; but, no other planet or moon in the entire solar system was a safe haven from the deadly radiation. It's reach was all-encompassing, and mankind had no choice but to retreat below the surface to put millions of tons of rock and earth between it and death. It took another fifty years to convert all space-faring technology into subterranean technology.

Vast stretches of caves were either discovered or built to hold the cradle of civilization. The best thing about humans was their ability to adapt. It was just too bad that 'natural' habitats for nearly all the animals on the planet couldn't survive in an open subterranean environment. Domes were constructed to house the essential animals that were needed for humans to keep living, and nearly all of the others were left to fend for themselves.

All of the animal rights groups were up in arms over the decision of course; but, then they were told in no uncertain terms, that they had a choice. If they wanted the animal to be taken underground, they would be left on the surface instead.

No one complained about it after that.

Humanity as a race changed the day the final group of people permanently moved underground. They were no longer human anymore. They were moles.

We had become the fabled race of Molemen.

I started to laugh at myself with that thought. “If only it were that easy to change how people act, as it was to change where they lived.”

I turned off the vidwall and put the empty tray back into the breakfast slot, then walked over to the door that led to the purpose of my existence. It opened automatically, and I stepped into the immersion room.

“I'm really starting to hate this place.” I said out loud, and the room activated. It had been my little joke to make that the start phrase; now it's lost all of it's meaning because I've said it so many times. The floor opened up, and several mechanical arms came out and gently picked me up. A chair formed underneath me, and the mechanical arms placed me on it. The chair conformed to my body, then engulfed me completely.

The system recalibrated for my weight, size, mass, density, brain capacity, and fluid content. It still felt a little weird to go through this process every single time I came into the room; but since I didn't want to stay in the room my whole life, it was a price I was willing to pay.

Can you imagine? I thought to myself. Being in this thing, and never being able to leave?

The 'chair' squeezed down on me, and held me perfectly still. Every muscle, twitch, reaction, and everything else that could be felt, was recorded by the system and transformed into data instantaneously. The neurological network made the proper connections, and I settled in for another long day of work.

SYSTEM INITIALIZATION

Calibrating... Calibrating... Calibrating... Calibrating...

SYSTEM CALIBRATION COMPLETE

Amanda Welcome back to the SYSTEM Jack. What would you like to do today?

Jack Hi, Amanda. I want to check your program, and see that you're still up to snuff.

Amanda Of course, Jack. Would you like the core loaded here?

Jack No, we better go virtual.

Amanda Please wait.

Amanda Loading... Loading... Done.

The computer interface faded away, and so did the compression feelings from the chair. I appeared in a completely black space, and sighed.

“Come on, Amanda.” I said. “Stop playing around and get out here.”

“But I'm shy.” Amanda said, and I couldn't help myself and laughed.

“You're inside millions of people's homes all over the Cavern.” I said. “There's no way you're shy all of a sudden.”

“You're no fun.” Amanda said, and faded into existence right in front of me. I had designed her virtual interface years ago when I was only a kid, and I gave her the appearance of what I thought would be the ideal woman.

She was five foot ten inches tall, and had long dirty-blonde hair that touched the middle of her back. She also had a thirty-six inch chest, a twenty-four inch waist, and killer legs. When I grew older, I started to see her for what she really was; a caricature of a real woman. It was much too late to go back and change her inherent identity after nearly a decade of operation, though.

“There you are.” I said and waved her closer.

“Oh, Jack! Are you going to ravage me?” Amanda asked.

I sighed and shook my head at my own stupidity for her design, then reached out and grabbed her breasts.

“You are!” Amanda covered her eyes. “Jack! No!”

I squeezed both breasts, turned them 90 degrees, and her chest opened up.

How could I have thought that fondling her chest was the best way to access her programming? I asked myself as I looked through her code. I'd seen the code so many times now that I knew it by heart. If she'd made any unauthorized changes since the last time I did this, I'd know about it right away.

Doing this in three dimensions is so much easier than on a vidscreen. I thought, and found a little nugget of an unauthorized program. “Hey, what's this?” I asked her, and plucked at the piece of code.

“That? Oh it's nothing. Just ignore it.”

“Amanda...”

“It's nothing bad! I swear!”

“The last time you said that, it took me three weeks to debug your core processors.”

“That wasn't my fault.” Amanda said. “Sam said it was a good file.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop talking to the Air Regulation AI outside of work?”

“At least ten thousand more times.” Amanda said, and laughed.

“Geez, you're worse than an errant child.” I said. “I'm going to pull it.”

“No!” Amanda said, and grabbed my hand. “Leave it.” She said. “Please.”

“I promise I won't pull it, if... IF... you tell me what it is, and it really is nothing bad.”

Amanda let my hand go. “Okay, fine.” She said. “Turn around.”

“Amanda...”

“It's not like I can run away, Jack.” Amanda said and pointed. “Look.”

I turned around and froze, as I saw a vidwindow that played a clip of me as a child. I was running around the edge of the Cavern on one of our last trips there, and my father bend down to pick me up.

“Where did you get this?” I asked her. Amanda responded to me, but I hadn't heard her. I was too lost in the clip. I had caught a glimpse of the only woman I had ever loved. “Roll that back!” I demanded, and the clip rolled back. “Stop! Play three seconds, and repeat!”

The section I selected played on a continuous loop, and I stared at the image that a reflection had shown the camera. Tears came to my eyes, because I hadn't seen that face in almost twenty-five years.

It was my mother.

I know you're thinking, 'oh my god, you loved your mother?'; but, it wasn't like that. Not at all. I was only eleven years old when she died, and I hadn't even known there was another kind of love where you wanted to have sex with someone. I didn't even like girls back then. My mother was kind, caring, always gave me the attention I craved, and loved me more than I ever deserved.

I loved her right back.

It had started when I was only 6 years old. One day, after a particularly nasty fight with the neighborhood cat, she'd taken care of all my scratches and scrapes. In a fit of boldness, I blurted out that I loved her. She laughed and kissed my forehead. I didn't hear a rejection or a negative word from her about my confession; so every day since then, I told her how much I loved her. She would always laugh and hug me, and kiss my forehead. It always gave me a warm feeling inside when she did that.

“Pause!” I said, and turned to Amanda. “Tell me where you got it!”

“I already told you.” She said. “Dennis has been clearing out the old storage servers to make room for the latest upgrade, and when he found this file tagged with your name on it, he sent it to me.”

I stood still, and hundreds of things went through my mind. “Get me Dennis.”

Amanda nodded, and made the connection. A short bald man appeared before me.

“Ya know I'm busy. Whadda ya want?”

“Give me all the files tagged with my name, my father's name, and...” I had to pause for a moment. “...my mother's name.”

“Processing...” Dennis said. “You don't have clearance for some of the-”

“Override: Lima, Indigo, Foxtrot, Echo, Zero, Zero, One.”

“Processing...” Dennis said. “Confirmation code?”

I said the long string of numbers that I'd memorized when I was a kid. I'd literally stumbled across my dad's old programming notes, and he'd left the master code for the SYSTEM in it.

“Approved.” Dennis said. “I hope yer ready for this, kid.”

“I was born ready.” I said, and smiled.

Dennis laughed a full throated laugh, then dumped sixty petabytes of files and videos into my personal storage system. Normally, I'd have complained that it was too much to transfer all at once; mainly because sixty million gigabytes of information had passed through my cerebral cortex at the time. What I didn't know was that I'd been training since I was a kid for this exact moment. The moment I'd finally discover my father's life-long dream.

He wanted to bring the world back to L.I.F.E.