The Crave Theory

Prologue

Imagine, if you will. A world without war. A world without conflict. A world ruled by women.

Advances in technology snow balled in the early 22nd century. But the key was a simple evolutionary theory developed or discovered, strangely enough by a man, by Ronald Crave. The Crave theory could be seen as a simple one. All men were bred to seek conflict. But as simple as it could be summarized, it had a gigantic effect.

It may seem like Crave’s movement started out slowly. First, there was a fiscal response. Insurance companies started charging dramatically hiked up rates for men in charge of weapons of any nature. Then politician started using the movement to gain votes. Surprisingly women weren’t the only ones flocking to the voting booths in favor of Crave’s movement. And as wars became more and more rare the movement just gained momentum.

Soon men were no longer used as generals. And as robots had replaced all soldiers decades previous, men were out of military completely. And conflicts dropped. But as they became more and more rare, they became increasingly intolerable. Not that women were not involved but studies continued to show that removing men reduced physical conflicts. So the movement moved to the point where men were secluded from almost all governments. Yet, fights still broke out. Men still enjoyed their barbaric sports and broke into violent fights amongst themselves. But at last a solution was found. And leaders rejoiced in their great creation. A place for men….

Finding a Man

“ Good morning class.”

The girls all quickly respond. “ Good morning Miss Davis”

A murmuring of excitement filled the room. They all knew what they were going to study today. The students leaned forward in there comfortable pods and momentarily turned off there virtual screens. They focused all of their attention on what they knew they were about to hear.

“Today we will study the process of dating.” The teacher said with a gigantic smile and ending with a well timed pause. The room burst out in a fit of giggles and dreamy ahs.

“Now in our last semesters class we studied the male behavior. And I showed you how to follow and study individuals. Males.” The class was full of excitement and a few of them already knew the individual they were going to follow and most likely go on their first date with.

The sixteen year old girl’s virtual screen materialized in her personal pod. Her friend was speaking instantly and with out a pause for breath.

“ This is so exciting. I already know who I’m going to look up. I cant wait to see Kevin again. He was so nice. We use to go on mock dates before he came of age. I wonder what he looks like now. I ‘ve told him he would be the first boy I ever contacted. Oh I just cant wait. It’s been 5 years. What about you Silvia?”

“I don’t know Cindy, it’s alright.” She shyly hesitated and Cindy asked. “No. I mean do you know who your going to look up?”

“ I don’t know, not really.” Silvia lied.

She had known for nearly six months now. In fact she had been already following him and learning everything she could. The class flashed by and she feigned interest as the teacher went over the boring details that she her self already knew and most likely far better than Miss Davis did.

Silvia was a wiz with all things related to computers. She had been a young avid hacker for many years now. Able to by pass almost all of the schools security systems, she knew she was leagues above the rest. She new virtual computer programs better than most women who engineered them. And this just might be what attracted her to her (for lack of a better word) man.

As class ended several of the girls climbed out of their pods and began their ritual face to face conversations. For many these were essential to help obtain ones needed human contact. As Cindy stretched her arms and legs she herd the humming of her virtual monitor materialize. It was Silvia.

“ I am going to go ahead and get going for the day. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

Cindy was not surprised but she was a little disappointed. Silvia had been doing this more and more for the last four months and Cindy was starting to miss her friend even though they still talked several times everyday. She looked over and watched as Silvia’s pod closed and flew out of the class room.

Silvia arrived home in less than three minutes. She had been anticipating this all day. Today she would have full access to the Conflict Zone’s Spying Network. It would make her study dramatically more thorough, faster, and easier. She quickly hopped out of her pod and rushed over to her full virtual reality computer system. She turned off her cloths and they instantly disappeared. She flipped the computer on and stood waiting for it to boot. The purple mist sprayed for a half second and a static latex like suit formed tightly around her body. The system clicked into affect and she was instantly in her virtual home.

She had long since mastered her routine. Flashes of different pages of information flowed around her. She moved them around and flipped in and out of subcategories. It was like she was standing in the rain. She went threw the pages and 3d diagrams like each was just a rain drop. It didn’t hurt that she was one of the less than one in a million who could fully conceive and visualize 360 degree environments within her head.

Her home work was done and she had all of the latest news updates read and updated her several standing sites. Her virtual café took a few extra seconds to finish updating but alas she was done. The café had made her thirsty so she issued an order to her house for her favorite drink and a hole warped into existence. She could see her house and the virtual world at the same time. It gave her a slight headache but it sped the process up by not making her shut the system down. Silvia grabbed a hold of her cup and it instantly materialized within the virtual system and the hole disappeared. She was ready to start her legitimate research.

No back door surfing today. She opened up the Conflict Spying networks home portal. A flash of baby blue filled her virtual vision and a log in screen appeared in front of her. She almost began to bypass it by habit but instead she simply said her name and verification number.

“Silvia Flourish Trilochana Verification Ekta 73 1714-1834 001”

She rewound the day and zoomed in on her subjects front door. His name was Alex Thompson. Diagrams of his personal information layered around her virtual view of his world. One showed his heart beat and other vitals signs. Another showed his expected physical abilities, like the expected distance he could run, top speed, physical weight lifting limit, lung strength, reaction time, and both with and without his physical enhances. Another showed his current and original physical attributes. He was defiantly a rarity for he had no physical enhancements and all of his physical attributes ( Height, hair color, eye color, body shape, skin complexion, etc.) were unaltered.

But the more interesting diagrams showed truly personal information that, most likely, the males didn’t even know about themselves. One was called Conflicts and showed everything from disagreements and arguments for their hole life to their actual physical fights. Everything a male did was recorded from birth. So it would not be surprising that another showed their emotional history. The emotional history showed every single time they were ever angry or sad. It had their frustration brake downs and every time they ever shed a tear. Looking at this information would make one feel like they were instantly violating someone’s privacy. So it was very exciting and addictive.

Silvia had been studying this information for a while now so she knew very well all of the basics of her man’s life. He had been in three fights. All of which had occurred shortly after he arrived in the Conflict Zone and none of which could he claim victory for. Silvia had found it funny, when she was learning Crave’s Theory in full detail, that women were supposable attracted to violent men. She had always thought that that was the stupidest thing a woman could be attracted to but as time went on she knew their was some truth to it. The men who won more fights always seemed to be requested for more dates. And she knew when she returned to school their would be a session of bragging on how many fights their date to be would have been involved in. As of late, even she could feel the thrill in it all. So she was a little embarrassed by her pick but…

She was embarrassed also because she felt such a strong connection with him. A lot of it had to do with his Intellect Diagram and his interests. His IQ had been rated at 243. By far the highest she had ever seen in a male and just slightly below her own at 257. But of course she would have far exceeded his with all of her education and mental enhances, even if he used the inferior enhances available for males.

But she was ready for him to start the day. His door, yes he still used a door to enter in and out of his home, opened and he breathed in the cool morning air. The sunlight had not yet lit the day and the morning dew was in full plethora, covering all the bright green grass that layered the ground. He stepped directly on to the path of grass that filled in between the rows of gray square houses. He breathed in a deep breath and slowly exhaled, preparing for his morning run. She could see the steam of his breath role across his shivering lips.

Silvia felt her pulse quicken as she watched him in what felt like slow motion. But then she realized she was still watching him in real time. Quickly turning the recorded data to 7 times normal speed, she enveloped herself into his day. Multiple images of men flashed around her. Each a person he was on route to make contact with threw the upcoming days progression.

He ran. He ran harder and harder. After two minutes he burst out into a full sprint running his usual random route. Impossible to predict no matter how hard Silvia had tried. He had even managed to dodge the cameras for minutes at a time before but never Silvia. She could always switch over to different cameras and follow his movements with ease. Although she may momentarily lose her 3d mapping of him.

He never had any tech with him on his morning run. He ran wearing real cloths and shoes, no communicator or music player, and of course no self monitor or enhancers. It was a little fascinating to watch some one run the barbaric way he did.

The pain diagrams would slowly spike as his lungs struggled to continue, His muscles would threaten to cramp and yet he would press on until he would come to a collapse. He stumbled down and slid across the grass. Rolling over, he breathed heavily and hard unable to catch his breath for nearly five minutes.

Laying there his panting slowed as he stared up at the sky. He slowly stood up and stretched out. It was early morning and the sun light had finally lit the day. Sunrise, it had cast brilliant oranges and yellows across the sky and was just about over. He limped his way back having finished his morning run.

He looked different then all of the other men he passed. Older. And not nearly as attractive. The others had all chose to hide their age. Rarely did anyone ever look older than 18. Of course there were other benefits to staying young. You healed faster and took on the physical enhances much quicker. But he had gained a little bit of a rugged look. Although she knew once he progressed out of his twenties he would regret his decision, she thought it fit him quite well for now.

The day flashed by. After returning home and cleaning up he gathered his tools and went to the local market place. Every thing one would need was provided for them. So working was more like a hobby then a job but he was there everyday selling his goods. He made high tech defense devices and sold quite a few of them. The devices mostly just used electrical currents to immobilize people. A few had basic force field shielding of the same nature. These could be quite impressive and prevented anyone from making direct contact while it was activated.

When the sun finale set, her man ended his last conversation with friends and customers and went home, she was back to real time. Silvia had spent nearly two and half hours on watching his day and now had cot up to the present.

She watched him enter his house and wondered if she should follow him in.