The sonic boom was followed by the constant roar of a ramjet, indicating that the approaching craft had slowed to less than the speed of sound. It was circling high above his cabin in a tight arc, rapidly losing speed and altitude.

‘It might be Frank and Tanya coming to visit,’ he thought, smiling to himself.

Since he had retired and the company awarded him his own desert domicile, they had started coming by for a visit at least once a year (they’d been there twice). On their last visit, they had brought their oldest daughter Alicia and her middle-aged husband. The cabin had been full of excess motion and exuberant life for the two days they had stayed.

Jake wondered if they were bringing someone with them this time. To find out, he could activate the cabin console – the same system he was just looking at in the bathroom. He decided he’d rather be surprised.

It would be a few minutes before ‘whomever’ could bring their craft down from the altitude it was traveling. He leaned his face into the laser shaver, and pressed ‘one’. It flashed for a few seconds, erasing his month old whiskers. He still used a brush to clean his teeth. It was an old model with a built-in water jet and sonics to clean between his teeth as he brushed.

Finishing up, he combed his hair, pulling the comb slowly over his head as the tiny blades twirled, automatically untangling his hair, cutting off the split ends and providing just the right amount of moisturizing cream to keep it healthy.

Lastly, he stepped up to the deodorant dispenser, pressed ‘Upper’ and raised his arms. A spray of unscented crystal deodorant coated his armpits, then a short blast of dry air finished him off. Liquid crystal deodorant was the popular type in use now, rather than the myriad dozens of toxic, asthma-inducing deodorants available at the turn of the last century, whose main ingredient was coal tar, more commonly known at the time as ‘fragrance’.

Finding a clean pair of jeans and a comparatively unwrinkled shirt, he quickly put them on and went downstairs. Now, completely ready, at least physically, to socialize, he stepped outside and looked around.

A flitter was perched two hundred feet from the cabin. In the automatic floodlights that lit up the landing pad, Jake could see the big ‘F’, the ‘eye’ and the ‘T’ that made up the company logo of Frank and Tanya’s private investigations company. Their slogan was, ‘We f-eye-t for your right!’ (‘to live’ is stenciled underneath the ‘eye’).

Yeah, it was tacky, but Jake smiled when he saw the emblem, knowing that Frank and Tanya did more ‘bounty hunting’ than investigating, these days. Hunting was a lot more adventurous than spying, and Tanya loved the thrill of the hunt.

Jake saw only one person climbing out. From the way the fireproof flight suit fit around the hips, he could tell the pilot was female. As she took off her helmet, a big pile of luscious blond hair fell around her shoulders. Jake felt disappointed, somehow. He didn’t really know whom he expected to see. The person he really wanted to see didn’t exist anymore, except in his dreams.

‘Well, It’s either Tanya or Alicia,’ he realized as he approached the curvy blonde.

As mother and daughter, Tanya and Alicia looked almost exactly alike. Although Alicia was eighty-six and her mother was a hundred and twenty-three, if they stood side by side, someone who didn’t know them wouldn’t be able tell them apart. They both looked twenty.

When Alicia had actually been twenty, she’d had a crush on Jake a mile wide. While he had stayed at Frank and Tanya’s for awhile, Alicia would sneak into his room and make love to him.