Free The Viral Epiphany by Richard McSheehy Page B

didn’t really care.   However, he did watch movies on television, and he knew he was missing something he wanted. He had seen the sex in the movies, and that was certainly something he wanted.   But most of the movies were clear about something else: to get sex you had to have a relationship with a woman, and that was something for which he had neither hope nor interest.
    He couldn’t quite grasp the concept of something as ethereal as a relationship.   He couldn’t understand why anyone would want one.   Sam liked concrete things, things he could be sure of.   A relationship with a person was a gulf too wide for him to cross.
    Fortunately, one Saturday morning about six months ago he had seen a television ad by one of the ubiquitous, Japanese sex tour companies.   In a moment of inspiration, he realized that a weekend sex tour to Bangkok would be the perfect gift to give himself for his twenty-first birthday.   Bangkok was where he could sample what the movies were about, this was what life was truly about: concrete things, reality.
                Now Sam sat alone in his room at Bangkok’s First Hotel on Soi Somprasong and stared at the alarm clock.   He watched the second hand as it went around.   There was something about the passage of time and circular motion. It was fascinating how they were interconnected.   He read the word Westclox on the face and noticed that the numbers were written in a heavy italic font. They had a shiny trim.   The background was faded.   It must have been there a long time.   Maybe ten years old, he thought.
    There were switches on the side of the clock labeled time set and alarm set , but he had no interest in using these.   All alarm clocks seemed to have different knobs and switches.   How could anyone ever determine how to use all the different kinds?   he thought.   I won’t touch these.   Look, there are slide switches; and they’re dark, dark slide switches.
                At five minutes after nine there was a knock on the door.   He quickly jumped off the bed, went to the door, and opened it so quickly that the two very young Thai girls jumped back half a step.   There was a man, perhaps forty-five years old, standing beside them.
                “You Sam?” he asked.
                “Yes…yes,” Sam replied with an automatic bow.
                “These girls for you. OK?   Two hours.   OK? Good.”    Sam looked at each of the girls and tried to guess their age.   It was difficult with Thai girls; they always looked younger than Japanese girls.   But these looked very young, and for some reason that pleased him.
                “OK,” he replied as he opened the door wider.
                “You pay now.” The man said. “One thousand baht for two, OK? Like you already told, OK?” the man smiled as he talked and held out his hand.   “I come back two hours.   OK, Sam?”
                Sam reached into his pocket and took out the thousand baht he had already prepared as payment, and then gave it to the man.   Without another word the man left and Sam turned back to the girls.   They were giggling while they glanced at him and then back at each other.   One of them said something to the other in Thai that Sam couldn’t understand, and then they both stepped forward and each of them took one of his hands and led him into the room.
                Nearly three thousand miles away, Dr. Stephen Itagaki was sipping an after dinner cognac at the posh Jade Emperor restaurant in downtown Tokyo.   He had taken his assistant Shaylin out to celebrate the secret birth of the mammoth, an event that was still only known to a handful of people.   His face had turned a rather bright red color over the course of the evening, the result of drinking several glasses of wine, and he was feeling a mixture of emotions that he couldn’t quite explain to Shaylin, but he was