GREEN EGGS AND RAM


	Douglas Greene, propped up on his elblow, and watched his 
lover sleeping soundly next to him.  Lover, he silently mused.  It 
felt odd saying it like that, but he really couldn't find another word 
in his mental thesaurus that worked any better.  Lover wasn't a bad 
way to think of it, really, not as bad as “chick I'm banging” anyway.
	Melissa James, known in the E.L.I.T.E. database as Parity, 
breathed both softly and regularly in her sleep.  Her green hair was 
somewhat parted, a bit falling behind her neck and a bit draped just 
under her chin.  Doug's eyes traces the curves and contours of her 
face.  Just looking at her made his heart both ache and swell with 
contentedness.  She was so lovely, and looked so peaceful sleeping.
	Melissa shifted beneath the covers, rolling a bit more to her 
side, and as she settled her mouth curled into a small, private grin.  
Doug wondered what she was grinning about.  A vain part of him 
thought, or hoped at least, it was about him.  If their roles were 
reversed, and he was asleep grinning, he was certain it would have 
been about her.  Melissa, he reckoned, would make any guy lucky enough 
to be watching her sleep smile.
	She was that great.
	In an instant, Doug knew what he had to do.  He slowly shifted 
off the bed, careful not to tug the sheets or jostle the mattress too 
much.  Melissa was a professional hero, and her senses were honed well 
beyond what his novice awareness was.  More than the slightest shake 
would wake her up.  When he was fully off the bed, Doug looked back, 
and was pleased to see that Melissa was still sleeping.  He smiled to 
himself and padded off toward her bedroom door.
	The night before, while on patrol around Atlas Park, they'd 
decided to head back to her place.  The voiced reason was that her it 
was closer.  To get back to Doug's place in Skyway, they had to either 
take the train or run all the way through Atlas Park and half of 
Skyway.  Doug guessed that the unspoken reason was that Melissa liked 
her bed better.  Being seven feet tall, Doug's bed was too short for 
her.  Her feet either hung off the end, her head bumped the wall, or 
she had to curl up to fit between the head and foot boards.  With 
Clawrizza gone and Kerovia's general state of hyper-aloof, Doug still 
figured that Melissa was comfortable enough to invite Doug back to her 
bed.
	He made another mental note to go mattress shopping at the 
soonest possible time.
	The way Melissa's apartment was arranged, Doug didn't have 
many choices of direction to take when he left.  If he turned to the 
left, he'd be facing the bathroom.  If he went straight ahead, he'd be 
at Kerovia's bedroom door.  A turn to the right would lead him to the 
large room that tripled as a den, Clawrizza's bedroom, and the 
kitchen.  His intended direction being the kitchen, Doug turned to the 
right.
	The plan was to cook breakfast for Melissa.  It had been a 
while – too long of a while, he lamented – since Doug had tried to 
cook breakfast for someone.  It had been someone he'd dated in 'Cisco, 
but her name escaped him.  It was probably for the best, he decided.
	The entire effort had been a fiasco.  The effort had started 
out well enough.  Break eggs, fry bacon, squeeze oranges, and serve.  
The end result was that the eggs burned, the bacon burned, and the 
juice never got made.  Somewhere between cracking the eggs and frying 
them properly, he'd wandered off to follow through an idea he'd had 
about a software bug.  The burnt breakfast hadn't been the end of 
their relationship, but it had been the beginning of the end.
	He didn't want the same thing to happen this time.  Breakfasts 
in bed were romantic.  They showed forward thinking of the partner.  
Compassion and the ability to put aside comforts, like sleeping late, 
for the partner.  They were good things to do.  Unfortunately, they 
were tedious things.
	Standing and stirring.  Frying and flipping.  Peeling and 
squeezing.  Standing and staring.
	Doug mentally shivered.  He didn't trust himself not to wander 
off midway through the cooking.  He was certain he'd think of 
something like else.  Something like the way Melissa lost her 
television remote last week, and how that wouldn't matter if there was 
a voice-activated control that you could attach to the television.  
That kind of thing would really only require some voice recognition 
software, a universal remote, and some batteries.  In fact, he was 
pretty sure Melissa had batteries...  Doug shook his head.
	He really didn't trust himself now.
	He frowned.  This sort of thing should not be hard.  It was a 
simple rule based procedure.  Break eggs, fry or scramble, put on a 
plate.  Drop strips of bacon on skillet, fry, flip, fry and serve.  
You could reproduce the whole process a million times over with no 
great changes in operation.  Well, interspersed within the million 
breakfasts, you probably need to clean the platters.  That would be 
easy to do, really, with something like a water pick.
	In fact, the whole thing wouldn't be too hard to do.  Well, a 
million automated meals would be a bit trickier, you'd need some kind 
of feeding mechanism to hold the eggs, bacon, and oranges.  In fact, 
with a little bit of work, you could fit a breakfast maker on a 
counter top or atop a stove.  Parts wouldn't be a problem, most were 
already present within a normal kitchen.  You'd need a few motors to 
move things around, but those were cheap.  The hardest thing to find 
would be a camera to watch the color of the bacon.  Programing 
everything to respond to colors – and temperature, but if the camera 
doubled as in infrared system...
	Doug looked over his shoulder where he'd dropped his armor the 
night before.  He and Melissa had been in a hurry to get to her 
bedroom, so he'd removed his armor quicker than usual.  Sitting atop 
the pile of green and gray armor, Doug saw his Utilitarian goggles.
	They could see in infrared, and he'd created a pretty nice API 
for them.
	He looked back in the kitchen.  Most of the parts were already 
present within the kitchen.
	Melissa did deserve breakfast.
	Douglas Greene smiled.


	Melissa knew Doug was watching her.  His shifting around had 
roused her slightly.  If she hadn't known who was beside her, the 
movement might have woken her up fully.  Doug, she knew.  Doug's 
presence didn't rouse her, if anything it relaxed her.
	Time passed.
	She rolled a bit and snuggled down.  A slight smile brushed 
against her lips.  Ever so slightly she drifted back to sleep.
	Time passed.
	She felt the bed move gently, and knew that Doug was getting 
up.  He always woke up before her.  Doug hated sleeping, and always 
woke up early.  She'd always find him hunched over his keyboard or 
down in his workshop.
	Melissa shifted a bit and drifted back to sleep.
	More time passed.
	The smell of bacon and eggs were the first thing to bring her 
back from dreamland, the gentle growl of her empty stomach guided her, 
but Doug's whispers were what finally opened her eyes.  Melissa rolled 
onto her back, and cracked her eyes open.  Doug was just about to 
climb on the bed, and he was carrying a tray.  Melissa moved to prop 
her self up, sliding back toward her head board.
	“'morning,” Doug greeted her.  He set the television tray over 
Melissa's legs, right in her lap.  “Surprise.”
	Melissa's face brightened.  “You did this?” she asked, already 
picking up the fork.  They'd bypassed dinner last night.  Between the 
exhaustion of patrol, the lateness of the hour, and – she pushed a 
forkful of eggs in her mouth to hide the grin – other things, food had 
been missed.
	The eggs were good.  They were perfectly cooked, slightly 
salted, with a smooth texture.  If the rest was half as good, she was 
going to enjoy eating.  She took another forkful and looked up at 
Doug.  His face was torn between smiling and concern.
	With her free left hand, Melissa reached over and grabbed 
Doug's right, giving his hand a slight squeeze.  “Thank you,” she 
said.  His face brightened into a smile.  “These are very good eggs,” 
she told him.
	Time passed.
	With the eggs and bacon eaten, the orange juice drained from 
the glass, and a kiss shared between them, Melissa and Doug left her 
bedroom to take the dishes to the sink.  He'd insisted on carrying 
them, insisting that he cooked so he could clean.  Melissa couldn't 
help but grin at his gesture.  It wasn't the first time she'd had 
breakfast in bed, but it was honestly something she'd never expected 
from Doug.
	He was sweet enough to do it, there was never any doubt of 
that.  It wasn't a case of her not thinking what they had would last 
to the breakfast in bed stage.  Melissa felt what they had could 
easily go past that point.  It was simply, and she hated to admit this 
even to herself, that she thought Doug was too absent minded.  A good 
bit of the time, it felt like he was in two places: the real world and 
his own mindscape.
	Taking the initiative was a surprise.
	It was also sweet.
	It was also sitting on her counter, looking like the results 
of a home appliance Frankenstein's monster.
	“Doug,” she asked cautiously.  “What's that?”  She pointed at 
the contraption.
	Doug almost dropped the tray on the counter.  He spun around 
and looked at the machine.  For a second, his face lit up, his eyes 
sparkling with pride.  Whatever it was, it was his.  When his face 
turned from the machine to her, it fell.  Melissa self-consciously 
realized her face must have looked upset, or at least confused.
	“Uh,” he fumbled.  “I wanted to fix breakfast, but I'm not so 
good at standing around and cooking.”  Melissa realized that had to be 
part of his being in two places.  “Don't be mad,” he continued, “I can 
replace everything.  It's just your blender... And the toaster.  And 
waffle iron, skillet, VCR, telephone cord, hot plate, microwave...”
	Melissa interrupted Doug's shopping list by wrapping her arms 
around him.  She was half a head taller than Doug, so she had no 
problem giving him a silencing kiss to the forehead.  He looked up at 
her, an apology written on his face.
	“More than one guy has brought be breakfast in bed,” she said, 
“but do you know how many have invented something to make me 
breakfast?”
	Doug's eyes half-closed, trying to think of a likely guess.  
He fumbled again, “Um.”
	“Just one,” she answered.  She grinned at Doug again, planting 
another kiss, this time on his lips.  “One special guy.”