The story begins with my seeming to make love to Chloe Cary, she working to revive her career, me looking to get mine started. The faux sex was good, and afterward we lay in bed, both on our backs, staring at the ceiling, wondering what we could do next to keep it entertaining. I thought it had all gone very well. It was, myBob promised, very editable.

Chloe was a nice young lady; too nice and too young at twenty-three, really, for the likes of me, an athlete worn out at thirty-two. She'd had a starring role two years before in a Comedy Box sitcom that had disappeared after eight episodes and now she was in the running for a recurring role in the very popular The Family Madderz sitcom. She needed it — she needed to get things back on the rails before she got too old at, say, twenty-four. She was on a media tour that included sweep interviews, so we'd met at Habana Café to eat and chat over bistec de pollo while I swept to my audience every tasty bite and every stirring look at those famous wet lips of hers as we sipped on mojitos and took our time with the meal. Sweeping was very new then and the audience was small, but the idea of it seemed good to me and I'd risked pretty much everything on its future. Chloe was a lucky break for me, the kind of audience-builder I needed.

The idea was that we'd have a faux relationship and help both our careers. Some dinner and alcohol, a walk on the beach, more drinks on my back deck with that splendid view of the Gulf of Mexico's setting sun, the green flash if we were lucky; and all the while those initial little touches — her hand brushing mine, my fingertips on the small of her back as she came through the door, her reaching over to put her hand on my arm as we talked about how the sun seemed to flatten at the base so it looked like an old bowler hat, albeit an orange one, or a classically styled UFO right before it disappeared.

And then that look, her eyes into mine, those lips opening as I leaned in toward her — toward them — and we finally kissed and it was as warm and wonderful and wet as it was scripted. Our standing there on the beach suited sweeping perfectly, with my sensory wash adding to the visuals and sound.

The numbers were good. myBob, my helpmate, had whispered them to me as we went through the motions. Eight thousand at dinner, nine thousand for the walk on the beach, over ten thousand for the sunset and those touches, and then up to twelve thousand for the edited lovemaking, give or take. There weren't more than five hundred thousand receivers in the country at that point (489,324, in fact, said the ever-exact myBob), so these were phenomenal numbers, thank you, Chloe.

And so now we lay there, enjoying the damp glow of the aftereffects. Her numbers, no doubt, were ten times higher, but all she offered was old-media sight and sound. I offered touch, and taste, and smell, and, as soon as I could afford the surgery, the full limbic, scalable, turn it up to eleven. We had to remember to talk about that, Chloe and I, so her audience would come back to me when the upgrade went in.

I blinked with my eye to end the feed, knowing myBob would handle the fade-out and the stay-tuned-for-more, and then I yawned, shook my head in pleased amazement while I unclicked the contacts and pulled the bowl amp out of my ear, and looked over at Chloe. She was beautiful, no question: the straight black hair and those famous bangs, those breasts, the lips, smiling now as she listened to the fade-out in her own feed and said, "That was great, Peter, thank you. myBetty tells me your numbers were like super?"

Chloe had a disconcerting way of ending her sentences with a question mark, whether they deserved it or not.

"The numbers were great, Chloe, thanks," I said.

She sat up, holding on to the sheet to cover her breasts, and smiled at me. "I put a lot into that? I was like nervous about it? It's like weird, isn't it?"

"The sensory side, you mean?" Now I was doing it. Good grief. "You get used to it. You learn to make it part of the show."

"You know that's a first for me? Sweeping, I mean?"

I blinked. "And no one told me? Your agent didn't tell mine?"

Her smile was killer. She put her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, silhouetted by the thin light of the moon through the sliding glass door that led out to the deck.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "Kind of a virgin thing going on, right? First time? Probably just like made it better, right?"

"Sure," I said, "better."

It was clear that she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. But the lovemaking had been really good, and the conversation was fine when we were live, so she could act even if she couldn't hold an actual conversation. And, truth was, I liked her. Nice young lady. Heart of gold and all that. I bet she loved puppies.

She reached down to touch my lips and grinned. "I did enjoy that, Peter? It wasn't all acting, you know?"

"Me, too," I said.

She turned to look out toward the Gulf and that sliver of moon. "Why don't you put the bowl amp back in and click it live and we'll go for a romantic like walk on that beach of yours?"

"Great idea," I had to admit, thinking how the audience would love the romance.

"myBob," I said to my helpmate, "send a ping to the subscribers and let them know we'll be live in five minutes for a walk on the beach, all right?"

"Done," said myBob, and I put the bowl amp back into the right ear and clicked it in while Chloe slipped into shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops and then I did the same and we headed out for a walk on the beach.

My house sits behind a protective row of sand dunes that the state of Florida keeps replacing as the beach erodes and the water keeps rising. In twenty years, they say, high tide will wash right over our little barrier island and the last of the million-dollar stilt homes will be torn down as the island — or what's left of it — becomes a state park. I'll miss the place — it's my childhood home.

Beyond the dunes is the open Gulf, usually placid, but increasingly violent as the years go by, and once, when I was very young, horrific in its anger. To get through the dunes you stroll along a long, winding wooden boardwalk designed to keep you from doing harm to the sea oats that anchor the dunes. You can see the green blinks of the spyeyes atop poles anchored in the dune. Step off the boardwalk and you'll get a two-hundred-dollar Dunes Violation notice blinking in your Inbox.

myBob said "Live in five seconds" as we reached the three steps at the start of the boardwalk. The steps are worn and uneven, and Chloe stumbled in the dark. I grabbed her hand to help her and then didn't let go as we walked along the boardwalk toward the water. The moon offered enough light to make it easy to navigate once our eyes adjusted, but Chloe hung on to my hand as she chattered on about the offers she was supposedly considering: a hospital drama where she was a surgeon, a family sitcom set in Paris, a feature film set on a Martian colony. I didn't know if any of those offers were real but, of course, I was amazed and pleased for her officially, which meant squeezing her hand and stopping along the way to give her another kiss.

She kept talking as we reached the end of the boardwalk and stepped down onto the dry sand of the upper beach. Then we walked down toward the water. What plans did I have? Would I go back into sportscasting or stick with...