Generator [volume 3] the tower

Stephen is thirty-three years old. He is the only child of Jack and Irna Williams. Jack Williams is the president of a videogame company called Big World Entertainment which was founded in 2005. The company amassed enormous profits with bodysuit virtual-reality games, which first appeared in arcades, and were now extremely popular in the home-consumer market.

Stephen was the original developer and programmer of the game’s operating system; Maximum Virtual Reality software; widely known as MaxVR. At the age of 28 he was diagnosed with the motor-neurone disease called amyotrophic lateral sclero‐ sis. For many months after the diagnosis he became increasingly depressed and despondent. His family agreed to care for him at their home, hoping that he would continue to work for the company. They supplied all the technology he needed to continue developing new products, and to communicate with the outside world.

A young doctor named Zak Morrow was hired to care for Stephen. Doctor Morrow was provided with his own room in the family home in which he stayed four nights each week. There were a series of personality conflicts between the doctor and the patient; which on two occasions had drawn visits from the Authorities. According to the report, Stephen had grown violent, believing the doctor was having an affair with his mother while his father was at work. The doctor was released from his responsibility, and apparently Stephen from that point had attempted to care for himself.

HAL reported that ALS affects the muscles of arms, legs, posture, face, tongue, speech, swallowing, and eventually breathing. It may also affect emotion; resulting in periods of inappropriate or exaggerated emotional responses. What it does not affect is thinking or intelligence, sensations of touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight, eye movement, involuntary muscles of the heart, bowel, bladder, or sexual function.

Stephen’s image now appears on Cordova’s screen. The young man is slumped forward in his wheelchair, now wearing an oversized, rumpled, dirty-white lab coat.

Stephen looks tragic and distraught. His slim pasty face is mapped with a furtive frown.

His dark eyes sparkle like gems in the sunken holes of sockets behind the dirty glass of his round metal-framed spectacles. His long, dark unwashed hair is pasted to his scalp. He is contoured into a wheelchair which seems to have become integrated with his crippled body. Two joystick grips steer his body-machine. Cables and tubes wire his body to digital machines mounted on the wheelchair’s frame, and to external devices which surround him in his small bedroom. Cordova observes agents continue to carry away pieces of equipment. Something about their methodical determination reminds him of ants raiding an enemy’s nest. Stephen lets out a long sigh: “I knew someday you would catch me... But why today? I was so close...”

It is difficult for Cordova to understand his slow-slurred speech. He listens patiently as Stephen continues: “She is so beautiful... Did you see her?” Cordova shook his head to indicate that he had not. “Her body felt so good... That was the first time I have ever touched a woman... Why couldn’t you have waited... just a little bit longer.” His