I lie in bed in the evening, unable to sleep. The evening drifts into the early hours of morning, which bear witness to my fits and starts. These are ...he times for melancholy, when the expense of a day’s energy has worn me down, and left me only able to reflect, and lapse into nostalgia. When sunlight wakes me some hours later, I stretch out, still half-expecting to feel her sleeping form next to mine. Instead, I am greeted with a cold, empty bed. Refreshed as I am, it is in the mornings that. I date from time to time. But I almost never date the same girl twice. They all seem so vacuous. In one way they all reminded me of my German girlfriend. Far too many of the women I’ve dated gave me the impression they were looking for a ring on the second or third date. I’m getting to be of an age that I can imagine myself falling in love and getting married in the not-too-distant future. I’m about to turn thirty-one. It’s time to settle down. I’m already past the age when most people marry. .. sorry, I'll try and make things simpler." It's okay. Sounds fascinating." It's a research field all in its own right. The start of the industrial manufacture of silicon nanotubes nearly twenty years ago paved the way for the second computer revolution: the advent of the Quantum processor."Before this, the fastest multi-core CPUs of the time ran sequential programs in which just a few dozen instructions executed simultaneously, and consumed vast amounts of power. Developing artificial. I pictured my young lover pleasuring me as I lay helplessly prone and tied. Watching as he stood and unbuttoned his jeans, my eyes like saucers as he revealed himself.My middle finger found my sensitive and swollen clitoris and I teased it gently before increasing the pressure, causing my legs to close involuntarily around my hand, trapping it as long forgotten waves of pleasure washed over me.The curtains were wide open, and I was more than aware of the scene that any nosy passer-by would.