Reed Richards

Mister Fantastic was not as clueless about his wife’s dissatisfaction as she thought. True, his mind was usually occupied with other things, but as a scientist, he was constantly open to new information input. And his wife had mentioned on more than one occasion that she wished they could ‘spice things up’ a little more in the bedroom.

Again, as a scientist, he never developed a theory without data, so he had asked Sue exactly what she meant by ‘spice things up’? She had become flustered and vague, not giving him exact details. So he had merely filed this away until more evidence could be obtained.

Being a mega-genius, he never forgot something once it had piqued his curiosity, and this question remained in his mind to be pondered over. Even while he was working on other, higher-profile projects, he occasionally returned to this intriguing problem.

Clearly Sue was uncomfortable with discussing the issue, which he could entirely understand – sex was so messy, so…unscientific. It was a much more tangled subject than something like quantum mechanics. But approached in the same way, he was sure he could unravel it.

If Sue didn’t want to talk about it, he would pursue other avenues. About the most she had managed to express to him was that she had certain fantasies that she was keen to explore. Fantasies generally resided in the subconscious, in dreams, and so he had secretly installed a device near Sue’s side of the marital bed, which would scan and record her neural bio-electrical activity while she slept.

He felt a bit conflicted about this intrusion into his wife’s ****, but it did seem to be the quickest and easiest way to get to the root of the problem. If he knew exactly what his wife really wanted, then it would be considerably easier to provide her with it. And it was quite possible that she was not consciously aware of what she really desired, deep down in her innermost mind.

So, he went ahead, installed the system and kept it running each night. It soon collected a mass of data which he was sure would prove useful.

It was easy enough for him to throw together a system that would decode the readings and convert them into audio-visual data. In other words, he could record and replay her dreams.

It was some time before he found an opportunity to review what he’d been recording, but one evening when the rest of the team were busy with other things and he found himself with a free moment in his lab, it suddenly struck him that this would be the perfect chance to take a glimpse into Sue's dreams and fantasies. He booted up the system, and loaded the first set of recordings at random.

He took a seat and slid on a headset which would give him the feed as an audio-visual VR display. He activated the device, then waited a second while the images and sounds took form, seemingly around him…