Her name was Angie. His name was John, I think. I don't remember for sure, but I think it was John, short for something else, just like my name isn't really John.

(It's George.)

Anyway, some back story on Angie. She was abused before. But that was all in the past. Now she lived in a very small but nice efficiency in Georgetown with John. She was an art director at an ad agency even though she was just now getting around to getting graduate classes in art. She simply had the knack for it, she was one of the global teens that cool hunters lusted after and through her branded contacts she made her way into her current position. But it was just a temporary thing, always was, in her mind. It just keeps her in enough $$ to be able to live and go to school in the city. As soon as she got her PhD in art, she was taking a position teaching and living simply for the rest of her life. She would take what she knew about the Machine and use it to destroy it. Little by little.

Now that's all in the past.

In the past, when she was 13, in semi-rural Maryland, her father led her into their small barn at the edge of their property. He threw her down onto a pile of hay bigger than she was and grabbed her crotch. She lay there at a 45 on the side of that pile of hay in complete shock and horror, frozen in the look of this man that at once was and most definately was not her father. His eyes were glassed over, two blue pearls devoid of life, at least of his life, like someone or something else was looking through the sockets. He had a strange grin on his face. While his left hand rubbed her crotch, rapidly over her clothes, the other rubbed his own. When he went for his pant's fly, she snapped out of her paralysis and pushed his hand away from her. He tried to grab her by the shoulder, but with only one hand free at this point, the other dug deep into his own shorts, he was unable to keep her from running away to the house. What she doesn't know is that he proceeded to jerk off, shooting his load onto the haystack; then he cried, he balled and whispered "I'm sorry" over and over to himself; then he fell asleep. All she knows is she never spoke about it, he never spoke about it, they exchanged strange, worried, unknown looks that night; and their relationship was never the same again. He and her mother are still alive, living the typical retired life; Angie mostly speaks with her mother; her father doesn't speak to much of anyone anymore.

But that was all in the past. Was.