Day 1
"Oh, thank god you're home David, I was so worried about you!" Elizabeth sighed as she threw her arms around her 20-year-old son as he stood in the doorway to her one floor home deep in the suburbs of Cambridge Minnesota.
David let his mother hug him tightly understanding her concern was from a place of love. He had been attending college at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Like most of his friends and his dorm mate, everyone thought it would blow over and they wouldn't have to worry about anything, until more and more people started getting sick. Eventually social distancing was put in place, people were asked to wear masks, and people started Quarantining in place. The school semester was quickly converted to online only, and the administrators asked everyone in the dorms to leave if they had easy access to alternative living arrangements with family.
"Do you have anything you need help with bringing in from your car?"
"Thanks mom, but I can bring it in. It's just some computer stuff and my clothes to be honest, I didn't really have much else to bring."
Already ignoring him, Elizabeth was out at his ancient Hyundai Accent dragging in his overstuffed suitcase of clothing into her house.
"I'll let you handle your computer stuff; I wouldn't want to damage anything my little scientist is working on. I can get these in the laundry so you have fresh clothes for your stay. Do you have any idea how long you'll need to stay here?"
"At least till the completion of this semester and likely through the summer. I want to find a summer job, but that might be...difficult. After that, I don't know."
"Well you're welcome to stay here as long as you want honey." Elizabeth declared as she was already shoveling his clothes into the washing machine inside the garage.
David could only smirk as he moved boxes from his car to his old room, feeling a little depressed about the situation but not put out by his arranges. Sure, leaving school like this and all his friends sucked, but he didn't mind being back home with his mother. Truth be told, he'd been worried about her since he and his sister moved out of the house, leaving their mom all by herself. Their dad left the family when they were still just kids, and their mom had raised both of them on her own. There had been tough times, but also a lot of good times. Elizabeth was a fun, fair, and loving woman, and honestly David didn't really think he had much he could complain about from his childhood.
Dragging his boxes to his room adjacent to his mother's, he was happy to see that she hadn't really changed much of anything. His bed was still against the wall, just under the vent, and his desk was on the opposite side in front of the window for some natural light. It was a little bare as he had packed up a lot of his stuff for college, but it was easy enough to get his computers and books unloaded, giving his room a more lived in feel. Opening his laptop suddenly filled his room with soft moans as a video resumed playing of a well-endowed young man anally impaling an older looking woman with a thick jiggle butt. David scrambled to find the volume button just as he heard a rapping at his open door. Panic surged through him as he snapped his laptop shut, his face turning a bright red.
"Well some things never change." His mother teased from his open door.
"Yeah, sorry about that mom."
"Nothing to apologize for, you're a healthy young man. I'd hopes you would have met a nice girl who would have made your need for such things obsolete."
"Even if I had found a girl, which would have been difficult considering my work load, I'm not sure guys ever stop watching that...stuff."
"Fair enough, just keep it down so I don't have to hear it, and any hand towels you may or may not use as a result, just throw them in the wash after it's already going. Sound fair?"
"Sounds fair, thanks mom."
Elizabeth grinned and gave David a brief smile as she walked out of his room, closing the door behind her to give him some more privacy. David was glad his mother wasn't as stuck up as some other mom's were about stuff like pornography. She had given him his first box of condoms when he turned 15, saying she'd rather he have it too earlier than too late. Now that he thought about it, David was surprised that his mother had basically said she had hoped her son got laid in college. He wasn't sure how much she had seen of his porno for the brief moment it had been on the screen, but the older woman in the video bore a striking resemblance to his mother. It was from his rather extensive collection of Ava Addams videos, and David was self-aware enough to admit that his preference for Ava had a lot to do with his mom. His mother had shorter hair, more shoulder length than Ava's long hair, but equally as dark. His mother was a bit thicker than Ava around the tummy and hips, but overall very similar in shape and chest size.
David had always been a bit ashamed of how much he lusted after his mother, but figured from everything he read online that it was fairly normal, especially for a kid with no solid father figure to speak of. Shrugging off the incident with his mother, he returned to unpacking his school supplies, organizing his bedroom with the work he had been doing at the dorms. David was working on a Bachelors in Cognitive Science with a minor in Computer Science and Communications. All his work was around the brain, and how the brain function, specifically around auditory input. He'd done the normal stuff like mapping how a simple cochlear implant could allow a deaf person to hear again, but the professor he was working with had stumbled on something amazing.
Before he had left campus, Dr. Stephenson had presented to David the beginnings of some groundbreaking work around ultrasonic frequencies to alter brain waves to help alleviate brain disease like Alzheimer or Dementia. Something Dr. Stephenson really stuck out to David though, a comment he made as David was packing up his laptop.
"If I'm right kid, you could stop schizophrenics from seeing things that aren't there, or even make normal people see them instead."
The impact of his professor's statement was ringing in David's brain as he was reading through a 300-page PDF sampling the professor's work and his hypothesis thus far.
If I'm reading this thing correctly, it's going to take some complicated algorithms for these cures Dr. Stephenson is talking about. I wonder if here's something simpler it can be applied to.
Unpacking some simple sonic emitters, David lost track of time and almost didn't hear his mother knocking at his door.
"Don't tell me you're doing what I think you're doing in there already?"
"No, I'm not mom." David chuckled as he pulled himself away from his work and opened his bedroom door.
"Good, we're only one day into quarantine, and I can't have you turning into a complete delinquent already."
"Yeah yeah, I was just working on some stuff for school. I'm still responsible for completing my assignments."
"I know David, but you've been at it for hours already and you just got here. We haven't even really had a chance to talk yet. I just finished dinner, wanna take a break for some food?"
"Of course, mom."
A few minutes later mother and son were sitting around the dinner table near the kitchen as Elizabeth scooped heaping servings of spaghetti Bolognese onto both plates.
"This will give us leftovers for at least lunch and dinner again tomorrow."
"It smells great mom. If we eat like this every day, we'll burn through what supplies you might have."
"Oh, you'd be surprised David. I was reading up on this virus for a while. I recently had a large freezer installed in the garage, as you saw. It's basically full of meat and ice cream to last for a month or more, and my pantry is overflowing with canned goods. The way I see it, we'll be good for a while, with the odd few grocery runs here and there, and I hear they're working on some new pickup methods where you don't even have to get out of your car."
"Are you worried about work?"
"Well with the money I got from your father in the settlement along with alimony and all those years of child support, I'm not really worried. The house is paid off and I have plenty in savings. Work has moved us to work from home for now, but there are rumors that we could be furloughed. If that happens, I can last more than a decade on my current savings, so we'll be fine."
"That's good hear." David replied as he stuffed his face with his favorite meal.
"So about those girls you should be dating..."
David almost choked on his meal as his mother brought back up the subject they were discussing when she caught him with porn on his laptop.
"I swear, I would if I had the time mom."
