Dear Hannah,

Hannah and Charles are a couple. That means that there are two of them, but the two are one.

They live and work and play on an island near the center of the Water Hemisphere. This island is the only land that Hannah has ever known, but Charles is from very far away. He is from the exotic and extremely dangerous Turtle Island. Oh, dear.

The center of the Water Hemisphere is the farthest you can get from everything else on Earth (without actually leaving the planet). It is very, very far from Turtle Island. Nice!

Charles lived and worked all over the globe before finally settling down permanently on the much smaller island he now calls home.

That's where he met Hannah. He found her charming.

Charles wrestles bits for a living. It's not much of a living. More an existing, really. So, in his spare time he also wrestles with the big questions. And sometimes little ones. Like, Where the hell did I put my socks?

Hannah's work is shrouded in mystery. No one really knows what she does. She claims that she's a business analyst, but everyone knows that there is no such thing.

Get the money. Take it to the bank. What's there to analyze?

Every day she sits down in front of her computer and pretends to compute. But is anyone really fooled? No.

Charles and Hannah share their space with two cats.

When Charles and Hannah met, Charles had just ordered a Ragdoll kitten. No, really! You can just order one and they send it right over. Like pizza.

A Ragdoll is a kind of cat, not a doll. Definitely not a doll.

Charles named the formerly-female kitten Pris for a reason that should be immediately obvious — but apparently isn't — to anyone who sees her, and she quickly became Charles's cat.

As in: not all that interested in anyone but Charles. But she really likes Charles.

After a couple years of continual rejection, Hannah decided that Pris was aptly named, and suggested that maybe they should get another cat. One that might care that Hannah actually exists.

You can probably see where this is going.

And so Joi, the psychopathic Burmese kitten entered the household. And promptly seized control, despite being the smallest member of said household. It was only too late that Charles and Hannah discovered that Joi's secret middle name is BANZAI.

Joi gets Japan and Burma confused, but that's OK because she has never been to either place. Charles tried to explain it to her with a map, but she chewed the map into tiny pieces, then swallowed a piece or two just to be certain.

But it gets worse! Apparently, Burma has disappeared. It was there one minute and then suddenly... it was gone!

Someone had scribbled Myanmar where it used to be.

This may account for Joi's occasional psychotic tendencies. Her identity has been scrambled.

Hannah and Charles have been under house arrest for nearly three years now and are slowly going stark raving mad.

Hannah and Charles enjoy working from home. Every. Single. Day. In fact, they rarely leave their lovely fifth-floor, one-bedroom flat. Don't tell anyone, but Hannah has forgotten what color the lobby is.

It was only a few weeks ago that Charles found her staring at the door to the flat. From inside the flat.

What's in there? she asked.

OK, that was a joke. But in another year or two, who knows?

Days follow a predictable pattern for Hannah and Charles. Every morning at the crack of dawn Charles leaps out of bed. And then falls right back into bed because he's not bleeding insane.

But he is also Not. Going. Anywhere.

Some time later alarums begin sounding, suggesting to the couple that it really is time to get out of bed and begin another day of doing precisely the same things that they did yesterday and the day before.

Typically, this involves Hannah taking a shower and applying make up so she can look like someone else for her computer. Who? No one really knows. Maybe she changes it up a bit, just to have something new to do.

While Hannah gets creative, Charles makes the coffee.

Charles has raised coffee brewing to the level of a fine art.

Distilled water is mixed with specific minerals in a precise ratio. This water is heated to between 86 and 89 degrees Celsius, depending on the beans, the grind, the roast, and, of course, whether Mars and Jupiter are in conjunction with Aries.

The coffee beans are ground to a medium coarseness in the world's best manual coffee grinder, the Kinu. Twenty-four grams of ground beans to three hundred and thirty milliliters of water in three distinct pours.

The filter holders are 70 degree cones made by the monks of Saint I-Forget-Who in Burma. No, wait! Japan.

The coffee beans are the best available in this ankle of the world. Frank says so, and Frank knows about these things.

Wait! Was that nerdy? No, no, no! Charles is not nerdy. Never nerdy.

Charles is dedicated. He has great attention to detail. He has high standards. He is a philosopher!

When the coffee is ready, someone vaguely resembling Hannah takes her cup and sits at Hannah's desk. She then spends the next eight to ten hours talking to a curved screen with flat people on it, laughing and giggling and waving her hands in the air.

Harrumph! thinks Charles.

Charles wisely retires to his office where his boss is waiting.

Meow! says his boss. Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow!

Ah, yes! It is time for Pris's morning attention! Get in the chair, Pris! No petting if you're not in the chair!

Should all the various timepieces in their flat stop working — and Charles is a fan of wall clocks — Charles and Hannah will still know what time it is. Pris will make sure of it.

Time to get up! Time for petting! Time to work! You don't mind if I lie on you, do you? Surely, you can type with one finger! Time for more petting! Oh, you're pooping? Me, too! Time for treats! Time to watch TV! Time for bed! Trouble sleeping? Here, let me put my paw on your leg. Should I cling to your foot? You don't mind if I lick it a little, do you?

This feature (cough, cough) of Ragdoll cats was somehow omitted from the user's manual. Charles suspects that it was accidentally replaced by the amusing claim that Ragdolls don't shed because they lack an undercoat. Ha ha.

Boy, is that a sick joke.

Pris, evidently, did not read the manual.

Pris also enjoys backing up to a wall and thumping it with her hind leg. Thump, thump, thump! This has been omitted from the user's manual as well somehow, so Charles and Hannah have no clue what it means. But it feels a bit ominous …

The manual was probably written by programmers.

Charles takes a different approach to his work area. Multiple laptops and a mini-desktop, half a dozen large screens, a professional studio sound system, portable lights, a high quality microphone, and not one but two large desks.

And plenty of cup holders, of course.

After appeasing the boss, Charles gets down to work, stopping only to make another round of coffee. But first, a run through his email and a look at what's happening around the world. Oh, my!

Several hours later Charles — now freaked completely the fuck out and possibly cowering under his desk — gives up and proceeds to work on his various projects. Like this one.

And so it goes.

When Charles and Hannah first met the better part of a decade ago, Hannah was a spritely young thing in her early thirties, and Charles was an older-than-he-looks sage in his mid-fifties. But they were a perfect match and that double-decade difference presented no problems.

But as time has marched on, as it is wont to do, the difference has slowly asserted itself, and it has come to Hannah's attention that Charles may not be around forever. And yet, there are so many things — interesting things — that Charles has shared with Hannah over the years.

What if she can't remember them? What if there was something really important in there that she didn't quite catch? Such as:

Whatever you do, don't press THAT button!

Ack! What if there is a test?

It will be too late.

So one day, Hannah hatched a clever plan. What if Charles, who likes to build web sites, built a web site for Hannah? A Dear Hannah web site in which Charles wrote letters to Hannah — epistles, really — telling her all the things! Why, then she could look back at any time to refresh her memory!

And so Dear-Hannah.com was born.

Meanwhile, Charles and Hannah (and Pris and Joi) continued to work assiduously toward their goal of getting away from it all even further by building a secret hideout on ten hectares of steeply sloped native brush overlooking a secluded bay in the middle of nowhere …

… a village so small it doesn't have a single café, restaurant, or grocery store.

Soon, soon, soon, they will disappear to their hideout to read great books, swim in the warm waters of the bay, and play with their cats.

Won't that be nice!