Excited, he jumps up from the stool, leaps across his room to the cabinet where he keeps his SymEneX module, pulls it out and lays down on his bed. One last glance at the clock: 08:44:46. He smiles, clamps on the sensory nodes, puts the headphones on and places the visor over his eyes. The familiar SymEneX menu is now before him, and he scrolls quickly through it, selecting female parts as he goes along. Finally, he sets the duration for 10 seconds and selects PLAY. And the fun begins.

Lying on his back, his smile quickly becomes a grin. For the next ten seconds, Zachary429 is in a different place. He is in an erotic world of cyberSEX, utilizing his free time, or his free seconds, rather, to fulfill his sexual desires. The technological advancements that bathe him, dress him and feed him in the morning are the same advancements that are now allowing him to have sex before breakfast.

At 08:44:56, Zachary429 will come back from this other place, quickly put his SymEneX module away, sit down at the meal delivery hatch, and press the READY button. He will eat his savory French toast with poached eggs, and wash it down with a multi-vitamin protein supplement. At 08:49:00, he will step through the door of his dwelling and directly onto the magnetrain that will carry him to the office. He will work a 12-hour workday alongside co-workers of the male and female persuasion, never having any impure thoughts or romantic notions. Another day, another monetary unit.

The year is 2574. Sex is inefficient. Romance is dead.

All right, all right, hold on a second here. Slow down, there, cowboy. What on earth kind of futuristic view of life is that? That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it? Okay, the clothing tube thing and the hygiene station I might go for, but the super hi-fi sex simulating device? No way, kiddo. Not a chance. Human beings can’t exist without having sex. That’s for sure. When it all boils down, the notion that we are heading towards a more asexual society is totally absurd.

Or is it?

We live in a very SEX oriented society. Sex is sexy, after all. Sex is used to sell cereal. There is an ad on television, for example (I will save the brand the embarrassment and not mention Kellogg’s name), where a half-naked woman gets dressed in a bathrobe after a few laps in her indoor pool and heads straight for the Special K. Does she need to be half-naked? Probably not. But the marketing people have discovered (after lengthy meetings in conference rooms with huge oak tables and cigar smoke in the air) that the people would rather see a little leg than a CT Scan of a colon before and after Special K. Go figure.