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vague statements about how late their work might go tonight, and, predictably, a coaxing mention of his joblessness, hot-linked to the employment advertisements section of the morning newscast.
    There was also a reminder that today was one of Sara’s livedays, meaning that she would actually be attending the neighborhood school in the flesh instead of merely logging in to her classes from home. He was to assist Sara with schoolwork if she needed it: further evidence, if any were needed, of his parents’ general cluelessness. She was much more likely to assist him than the other way around.
    Another note reminded him of his promise to do the yard work. He shook his head wearily. If he were the type of person who regularly forgot his promises or who skipped out on his commitments, that would be one thing. But he wasn't.
    The nagging just came with being parents, he supposed. Returning to his room, he threw on his oldest pair of sweats and tossed the rest of his laundry into the wall hamper, where it was whisked away into the laundry system. Let them see his room, clean as he usually kept it, and draw their own conclusions regarding his sense of responsibility.
    The yard work was almost laughable: he programmed the mower and sprinklers for their regular summer routines, and by the time those were done he had finished pruning the short hedge which separated his parents' square compartment of suburbia from its identical neighbors. An acquaintance from college had once described to him the experience of growing up in one of the modular arcologies springing up in the desert: a perfect cube of an apartment that connected to its counterparts like so many children's blocks. Andrew supposed that the tiny, living green hedge was the only thing that distinguished his parents' house from that condition.
    The afternoon passed quickly, and when Sara arrived home she declared that she intended to upload her homework into the house network to work on later, probably with the virtual assistance of her friends. That left Andrew with time on his hands, time which he quickly decided would also be best spent on-line.
    Re-entering his room, he noticed that the house had returned his laundry, clean, folded, smelling of detergent and (ever so faintly) of melted plastic. There must be a short somewhere in the system. No doubt his parents would charge him with tracking down a repairman once they noticed. He stuffed the laundry in his dresser, and then made himself comfortable on the virlo.
    The leather straps creaked against the chrome frame as they took his weight. He depressed the recline switch, and lifted his knees to attach the velcro anklets of his computer. He settled the goggles, still darkened, over his eyes, and wiggled his fingers into his gloves.
    He lay still for a moment in sensory deprivation, relaxing his muscles and breathing deeply. Like most people, he had been receiving instruction in computer interface since grade school. His full weight activated the micro-servos in the virlo straps, and he sensed his body disappearing as they bore him up at almost 500 miniscule pulsations per second, suspending his limp body a breath above its surface.
     
    For years, engineers and programmers had searched for the secret to true virtual reality, a computerized pseudo-environment which would give users the sensations of actually being in another place, with the ability to walk around, manipulate objects, and do all the other things which futurists had been touting in the pages of Popular Science. The problems were many, and seemingly insurmountable. In the first place, it was not enough to wrap a video screen across someone’s eyeballs -- users were all too aware of the real world beyond the scope of the screens. Even the best available graphics and audio technology could only deliver an approximation of a complete environment as it was normally experienced by all of the body’s senses. Worse were the problems with interface. Early experimenters