I married Cynthia on a perfect spring day. Despite the formal layers of my suit, I didn't feel warm or nervous. Had I marveled at the perfection, I may have noticed more than I cared for, but instead, I closed my eyes and sucked in the salty air of the ocean that slapped the beach at the bottom of the cliff I occupied. I flexed the soles of my perfectly polished shoes into the spongy green moss that carpeted the ground. When the harpist began to pluck out the Wedding March, I opened my eyes and gazed down the silk carpet of the aisle.
Cynthia was always the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and on this day, she was so stunning that I thought my heart would stop and never beat again. She glided towards me; me. She had chosen me. She was the most incredible person, and she was closing the gap to entwine herself with me forever.
My feeble brain couldn't fathom the luck. I had always been aloof and quiet. I preferred code to a conversation and the flicker of a monitor to the flecks of an eye. But that all changed when I met Cynthia. After years in a bunker-like lab, Cynthia had just appeared next to me at the hot dog cart I visited most days. It was my brief reprieve from the constant tapping on my keyboard. Had it been another day, I may have looked the other way, but on this day, I saw her. I had finally gotten my code to work. With a few taps, I could enter a new world, one that made sense. No random acts of violence, no pollution clogging the planet, no egos driving division. I had created my fairy tale.
Smyth had been equally giddy.
"Think of the possibilities," he enthused. "We can change the world."
"More like an escape from it," I teased.
"We can make the world a place worth living in. This technology can sentence people not just to jail, but to their own worst nightmares." Smyth offered.
"It's not meant to be a punishment. It's not meant to be imposed on people; besides, your tests of forced entries all failed," I reminded.
It was the closest I'd come to boasting. It was another moment that deserved pause. I knew I could code walls around Smyth, but he had saved me. Being a seven-year-old in a foster home that couldn't afford a computer was like a prison sentence for me. Angela and David were loving, but I couldn't connect with them or my found family. My brain didn't work in terms of people. Code called me, not human connection. Smyth found me as my chubby little hands hacked into the electric company to zero out my family's bill.
"Where did you learn that?" He curiously asked.
I expected anger or immediate condemnation, but I got wonder.
"Their firewalls are weak," I murmured, dropping my face at the attention. My eyeglasses slipped down my nose, but I was too nervous to lift my hand to fix them.
Smyth visited me in the library for months, offering me more and more complex challenges. It was the first time I felt like someone understood me. Before long, Smyth was my legal guardian, and I no longer needed to go to the library to access a computer. Suddenly I had access to state-of-the-art everything. By the time I was thirteen, my code was being used worldwide.
Still, that day, the day that Cynthia innocently stood next to me waiting for her hot dog, had been the day I had perfected my greatest code and downfall. Just as I found a way to escape the world I detested, I found a reason to stay.
"Mustard and onions," Cynthia's singsong voice requested.
Her order made me smile. Not only was this beautiful creature willing to eat from a street-side hot dog stand, but she boldly ordered mustard and onions. My chest constricted as I tried to think of any way to connect with her. A single utterance that would keep her near for even a moment longer.
