Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Best Girl: Interesting Times by BJohn Chapters 01-06 bjohn36@verizon.net
   ------
   This is Book 2 of Best Girl.  You should read Sorcerer Books 1 and 2 and
Best Girl Book 1 before you tackle this one.  Unless, of course, you want
to miss all the necessary background.
   This book runs parallel to Sorcerer: Interesting Times.  Each contains
some spoilers into the other.  Sorry.
   "Chinese Curses" in order of severity: - May you live in interesting
times (More likely Scottish than Chinese).  - May you come to the attention
of those in authority.  - May you find what you are looking for.
   Acknowledgements: Thank you to the many readers on SOL who gave me
constructive feedback and caught a lot of my typos.  Thank you to my
several editors and proofreaders for their sharp eyes.  Thank you to L. 
Ron Hubbard, whose philosophy forms the basis for many of the ideas you
find here.
   ---------------------------
   Glossary
   Note: The term Gaelic is usually used to refer to Scottish Gaelic, or
Gaidhlig.  Although Irish Gaelic, or Gaelige is also a Gaelic language,
it's usually referred to as simply Irish or called "The Irish Language". 
In Sorcerer, it's called Irish, Gaelic or Irish Gaelic.
"English" is the U.K.  English.  "American" is the U.S.  "Irish slang"
is the English-language slang used in Ireland; most of the Irish slang in
Sorcerer is from Dublin because that's what I could find easily on the
Internet.
   A-wunnerful (adv/adj): A real old-fart joke.  Back in the 50's and 60's
there was a television show, Laurence Welk.  It was an hour of popular
music with his big band and the Lennon Sisters.  When the band had a number
by itself, there were lots of soap bubbles floating around.  He had a broad
European accent; when he'd start a song, he'd say, "It's a-wunnerful,
a-wunnerful." My brother and I used to tell each other, "It's a-wunderful,
a-wunnerful!  Start up the bubble machine."
   Act the maggot (v): Irish slang.  Mess around.  Play around.  Goof off.
Aintin: Irish.  Aunt.  "Aintin Siobhan."
   At it (v): Irish slang.  Making love.
   aul segotia: Irish Gaelic.  Old friend; connotation of very close
friend.
   Aussie Kissing: French kissing, only Down Under.
   Baby Within (n): Unborn child without a spirit-in-charge.  Derived from
Zena Henderson's "The People" stories.
   Banger (n): Irish/English slang.  Old car.
   Bite the bullet (v): Navy slang.  Years ago when there were no or few
anesthetics, the doctor would give the patient a piece of rope or leather
to bite on while he was cutting.  In the newer Navy (or any armed service),
there isn't much leather or rope around, but there's plenty of bullets. 
So, to bite the bullet is to suck it up and get on with the task at hand.
   Bob (n): Irish/English(?) slang.  If a girl sees a good looking man, she
can say that he is a "bob" or that she would "give him a few bob," meaning
she would like to have intimate relations with him.
   Bold thing, the (n.  phr.): Irish/English slang.  Sexual intercourse.
   Bush Telegraph (n); Australian (and heavily propagated to other
languages as slang) A radio program on the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation's Radio National network, broadcast weekdays (Monday-Friday) at
11-12am, reporting Australian rural news.  The name of the show is derived
from the eponymous Australian country concept of a very quick means of
stories getting to everyone in all parts of a particular region.  The rumor
line, gossip line or the back fence.  If your married sister had a baby,
the community would know all the details within a day.  If she was
unmarried, it would be reported she was recovering well from her illness.
   Ceann: Irish.  Literally, "head," the portion of the body above the
neck. Here, it is the Clann leader, the johnny ray, the boss.
Ceann Mor: Irish.  "Mor" is an intensive meaning "THE," like THE Boss,
THE Man or THE Expert.  The leader of the Clanns Council.
   Cheek (n): Irish/English slang.  Disrespect.
   Clann: Irish.  Family.  While a clan is usually among blood or
marriage-relatives, we've extended the meaning to be among people with
common interests.  The same concept of tightness, support and love apply.
Lower-case is simply a family; upper-case is the large group.
Clan: Spanish.  Clan in the same sense as an Irish Clann.
Cleas: Irish.  Trick.  Here, used as holograms and other
trick-the-senses techniques.  Used as both singular and plural.
   C'mere till I tell ye: Irish slang.  Starts the yarn.
Col: Irish.  Cousin.  "Col Alyssa." Probably first cousin.
Coleen (n): Irish slang.  An Irish girl.  "Colleen" is a Hollywoodized
name.
   Colpo di tuono: Italian.  Sharing or exchanging part of the souls.  See
also Thunderstruck.
Cutre: Spanish slang.  Idiot, jerk.
Diddies: Irish slang.  Female breasts.
Do a Bunk/Flit (v): Irish/English Slang.  Sneak off, usually to avoid
paying a bill, the rent, etc.
   Doing a line (phr): Irish/English slang.  Courting, seeing someone.
   Drawers (n): Irish/English Slang.  Underwear, usually ladies' :-).
   Drop the hand (phr): Irish slang.  Gain access to a female's nether
regions, go below the belt etc.
   Eejit (n.): Irish slang.  Fool.  Someone of reduced intellectual
capacity (also 'Gobshite').
   Em (phr.): This is the word Dublin folk use when pausing to think.  It
takes the place of the "um" and "uh" that Americans prefer.  This
two-letter word alone will radically alter your perceived Dublin-ness if
you can learn to use it pervasively and unconsciously.  This is perhaps the
single most commonly used expression in speech, so with this one change
alone, you can drastically alter your accent.
   Endorphins: Natural opiates that the body produces to reward itself for
positive behavior.  They are what a person feels after a hard day of work,
or skiing.  Or the warm, listless feeling a person feels after sex.  Also
reduces or alters the body's physical response to pain.
Fairly lively (adv.): With great haste.  "Run up to the bar and get me a
pint fairly lively."
Fanny: Irish/English/Aussie slang.  Female genitals.
Fine thing/fine bit of stuff (n): Irish slang.  Admiring comment on
member of opposite sex; sexually attractive.
   Fla/Flah (n): Irish slang.  Very attractive person.  (I assumed fla is
male and flah is female).
   Fla/Flah (v): Irish slang.  To have sexual intercourse with someone
(From Irish 'Fleadh' meaning party).
   Flitters (a): Irish slang.  Tattered and torn.
   Full-shilling, not the (n.  phr.): Irish slang.  Mentally handicapped.
   Hacer la sopa: Spanish slang.  Lick the pussy
   Gammy (adj.): Irish slang.  Weak, unsteady.
   Geeser (n.): Irish slang.  Cat.
   Gingernut (n): Irish slang.  Redheaded person.
   Gobsmacked (a): Irish/English(?) slang.  Very (nicely) surprised.  A
connotation of being so surprised one can't move or think.
   Greyhound skirt (n.): Irish slang.  A very short skirt, only an inch
from the hare.
   Herself (pron.): Irish slang.  Quasi-respectful reference to wife or any
female partner.
   Himself (pron.): Irish slang.  The man of the house; quasi-respectful
reference to any male.
   How's the talent?  (phr): Irish slang.  Is there anyone good looking/
interesting about?  Sorcerer uses this as "check out the talent."
   Irish, to (v): To berate someone soundly in Gaelic.  May not have a
"bad" word in it, but you know you've been raked over the coals.  [Author's
invention.]
   Is it yerself?: Irish slang.  Hello.
   Janey Mack (exclm.): Irish slang.  Expression of surprise.
   Jaysus /Be Jaysus (exclam): Irish slang.  Jesus.
   johnny ray : Irish slang.  Head honcho/boss.
   Knickers (n): Irish/English slang.  Ladies' underwear also Don't get ur
knickers in a twist (phr): don't worry yourself.
   Lad (n.): Irish/English(?) slang.  Any male, though usually one of whom
you're fond; when pluralized, it can be used to describe a group of males
and females.
   Mary Jane: Irish/English(?) slang.  Female privates.
Nana: Irish slang.  Grandmother.
PDA (Noun): Public Display of Affection.  Most schools have rules
against PDAs such as not holding hands, necking, etc.  These rules tend to
be relaxed quite a bit during the fertility rites (dances).
   Pelt, in one's (adj.  phr.): Naked.
   Qweer bit of skirt / talent (n): Irish slang.  A really attractive woman
/ man.  No homosexual slant whatsoever intended.
   Quare fella (n.  phr.): Irish slang.  Individual distinguished by
eccentric or unusual conduct / situation.
   Quinceanera: Spanish.  15 yr-old female coming-out celebration. 
Religious and social.
   Rags and tags (adj.) Irish slang.  Tatters.
   Right: Irish slang.  This is an all-purpose expression of determination
or clarification.  "Right, is that a gin & tonic for you and a pint for
your friend?" or "Right, you'll be coming home with me then?" Used for
emphasise e.g.  'a right mess' - Pronounced "roight."
Sack out (verb); U.S.  Navy term.  Hit the "rack," go to bed, get on the
mattress or get lots of sleep.
Seanathair: Irish.  Grandfather.
   Segotia (n.): Irish.  Close friend (e.g.  me aul segotia).
   Sheep's eyes, make (vb.  phr.): Irish slang.  Look fondly at SO of the
opposite sex.
   Shenanagans (n): Irish/English(?) slang.  Carry-on/horse-play.
   sic semper: Latin (of course).  Literal: It always was.  Connotation:
"Same as it always ever was" or "same-o, same-o."
   Skunk Works (n): Term used in engineering and technical applications for
secret projects.  The unofficial name for Lockheed Martin's Advanced
Development Programs, formerly Lockheed Advanced Development Projects Unit
-- has been responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs starting in
World War II.  So, a Skunk Works is a group of techies on an advanced
technological project.
   Slag (vb): Irish slang.  To tease or make fun, take the rise out of.  In
Dublin, if people don't slag you unmercifully, it's a sign they probably
don't like you.
   Slagging (v): Irish slang.  Having someone on, making fun of them.
   Snapper (n): Irish slang.  child, baby
   SWAG: Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.  One of those ideas you develop or
decisions you make when you don't have enough data to make a really
accurate assessment.  "As a SWAG, I'd say it would take three strong men, a
young mule and a leprechaun to move that rock."
   Thunderstruck (adj.): As if struck dumb with astonishment and surprise.
   Tidy (adj.): Irish slang.  Small, tight, in a complimentary way, e.g. 
she has a tidy little arse on her.
   TLC (noun): Tender Loving Care.  Exactly what it sounds like.
Uncail: Irish.  Uncle.  "Uncail Evin."
VPN (n): Virtual Private Network.  In computers it is a highly-encrypted
data exchange line between two points across a "normal" network (even the
Internet).  In Sorcerer, it is also the same thing but is a mental
construct between two spirits.
   Wanker (n): Irish slang.  An uninteresting person, usually someone you
can't stand.  Derogatory term to dismiss an uninteresting, dull, irrelevant
person (normally male).
   Whist / whisht (phr.): Irish slang.  Request for silence.
   WASP: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  Very common in the U.S., at least
in the MidWest and to us old farts over 50.  Racial heritage: predominately
Caucasian (as opposed to Hispanic, etc.), Anglo-Saxon (European roots vice
Middle Eastern etc.), and Protestant (as compared to Catholic).  Basically,
pretty much a run-of-the-mill genetic line.  This gives you a flavor of the
person's ethnic background.  If they were Irish, Hispanic, Japanese,
Korean, or even Catholic, you'd expect a slightly different culture.  Note
not all Irish are Catholic!
   ------------------------------------
   Best Girl Cast
   Aile Bardon Niece; 9 yrs.
   Caden Bardon Nephew; 9 yrs
   Patrick Bardon Teresa's husband
   Teresa Bardon Sean's +6 sister.  1 girl (8), 1 boy (9).  5' 10"
   Sean Cullen Our hero.  23 yrs.  Entrepreneur.  6' 1" DOB 2/14/83. 
General family nickname: Lover Boy.  Eileen's love name: My King. 
Margaret's love name: My Prince
   Celia and Jack Hanes Actually brother/sister.  Took over days at Shane's
Shop.  Decent amount of Talent.  30s.  Undisclosed relationship for 15
years.  Children eventually?
   Kate Hanlon Weekday housekeeper.  Irish, remote relation.  Clann by
blood and association.  22 yrs.  Good amount of Talent.  Becomes part of
Cullen Enterprises.  5' 8", slender.
   Rosheen Kelly Kate's apartment-mate.  75 yrs.  Clann Cullen genealogy
research and "bush telegraph" source.
   Bridget Margaret McLennan Baby.  18 weeks at start.  The Senior.  DOB:
12/19/05.  Sean's love name: My Princess.  Personae: Bridget as an infant,
Margaret/Margie/Marge/Maggie etc.  as an adult and Nana as the dirty old
woman.
   Eileen McLennan Our heroine (maiden name: Brennan).  23 yrs.  BBA. 
Parents deceased.  5' 10" DOB: 3/12/83.  Sean's love name: My Queen
   Frank McLennan Eileen's husband.  45 yrs.
   Connor Nolan Nephew; 9 yrs
   Deidre Nolan Niece; 9 yrs.
   John Nolan Maura's husband.
   Maura Nolan Sean's +8 sister.  2 girls (10, 8) 1 boy (9).  5' 10"
   Sharon Shane Mrs.  Shane.  Widow; store owner.  Shane's Shop.  50s. 
Decent amount of Talent.  Has a brother somewhere nearby.
   Margaret Sullivan Eileen's Nana.  Deceased @ 93 yrs.  Maiden name:
Gallagher
   Sheila Llanos Hispanic.  20s.  Single with younger siblings. 
Insurance/investments for a lot of the Clann.  Some Talent.
   Deidre Nolan Niece; 8 yrs.  (almost nine with boobs and fur)
   Mona Nolan Niece; 10 yrs -- almost 11 (grin).  Lotsa boobs and fur.
   Mary Murray Evening kitchen staff supervisor.  Irish.  Clann.  40s. 
Some Talent.
   Sarah Weekend housekeeper; early 40s.  'Associate' Clann.  Mundane. 
single/widowed/divorced.  Goes full-time when Kate moves in with Sean.
   Jackie Mgr hair salon.  Some Talent.  Has the hots for Sean.
   Sam Altadena Arms Day Manager
   Phil Altadena Arms Evening Manager
   Chapter 1
   EILEEN (Saturday 7/1)
   The printer had the first 300 sets of detail manuals ready for pickup.
That's 300 boxes the size of a notebook binder and some 18 inches long. 
The Reynolds Construction crew brought a big truck this time.  Not a semi,
but really good-sized.
   The forklift driver must have had a real good time.  At 15 boxes a
pallet, he just kept rolling.  As the truck got half-full, we started
porting them to a storage container.  Yep, worked out great, just like the
last two times.
   The printer told us they'd have another 300 or so ready Tuesday
afternoon and the last 400 on Thursday morning.  Sounded good.
   I updated the inventory database while the rest pulled a set of manuals
and started checking them over.  My part took less than a minute so I got a
couple binders to look over myself.
   Yep, looked really good.  The cover artwork matched The Book and
everything inside was crisp and looked really professional.
   Margie told us, "For each error or typo you find, you get a free
clitoral enhancement session.  Sean, you get the equivalent."
   Sounded like a good inducement to me!  We went to work.  Yeh, each of us
found at least one during the next hour.  Kate brought the source documents
up to date, and we lined the manuals up on the shelf and admired them for a
few minutes.
   BB idly said, "Too bad Melissa wasn't here.  She might have found some
typos, too.  Now, about that clitoral enhancement session Margie
mentioned..."
   It didn't take Margie more than two seconds to figure out the needed
combinations for the five of us to do each of the others and get got
(that's the correct way of expressing it, right?) by each of the others. 
When Sean came, we moved on to the next combination.  Toss in phantom
tongues, fingers and Margie-nibbles on nipples, boobs and arseholes and
you've got something that's em, heavenly.
   Sean gave us the rest of the day and Sunday off to rest up for the
seminar next Saturday.  Nice!
   The Jacuzzi got a good workout, the grill produced goodies and the sun
cooked us nicely.  We worked on hair and nails and checked out my tattoos.
They were wearing off as expected, but the other girls insisted on several
inspections just to make sure.
   Yeh, the Babies Within were doing just fine.  All were attached and
growing.  It's a-wunnerful, a-wunnerful.  Life was extremely good.
   Cynthia Gold appeared on our doorstep in the late afternoon.  Margie
twisted her toe on the floor, cast her eyes down and in her best
little-girl voice, told us, "I em, sorta promised two Sean and harem Soo
Laids to the power plant switch flipper.  Bob volunteered her."
   Cynthia looked a bit downcast.  Sean glared at Margie and asked, "What
do I look like, a boy toy?"
   Three adult female voices whispered, "Yes!"
   Sean winced and told Cynthia, "I'm sorry sweetheart.  I guess you and I
are...  gonna have to chastise these females *severely*!"
   Cynthia glared at us, too.  "And I know *exactly* how to chastise them!
Valerie's been coaching me!"
   Oh, Jaysus and Mary come take us away!  We're not gonna live through the
night!  We all had a long laugh and welcomed our blonde sexpot.  Hmm.  Our
first official cross-Clann cultural exchange.  Guess we'll just have to do
it right.
   We did our best.  Dinner in the Caribbean, a long walk together on the
beach while cuddling our small friends (Cynthia *and* Margie), then a long,
wonderful loving in the furs.  Oops!  Sorry, Cynthia; we slipped in an
extra Soo Laid.
   ------
   (Sunday 7/2)
   We were lazy again on Sunday for a while.  Midmorning, Bob _asked_ us to
come over to the Donovan's for a meeting about the Skunk Works.
   Not a problem.  We popped over in the uniform of the day (birthday
suits) and joined in.  They were discussing forming an R&D company from the
Skunk Works.
   Margie gave her experience on R&D organizations, namely a university. 
Basically it was give them room and let them rip.  She did recommend
forming another company specifically for manufacturing the products
developed; she thought both companies would more than support themselves.
The manufacturing company would probably end up in the multi-billion or
trillion range.  Yeh, I could see that.
   We had a quick CE _meeting_.  Sean said, _"These could be the mid to
large companies we were looking at getting into.  Comments or ideas?"_
   Kate said, _"While CE wouldn't own it entirely, we wouldn't have to do
all the groundwork and development, either.  The Book would fit just fine;
it would be a Real Good Thing to get the experience implementing something
in an existing large company from the very start."_
   Margie pointed out, _"The R&D company would probably be similar in many
respects to JPL.  BB, while you weren't in the technical side, at least you
were in the environment for quite a while."_
   BB's turn.  _"Yes.  I had a fair amount of free time so I looked over
the history pretty good.  Most of the problems they actually ran into could
have been avoided entirely with a proper organization.  Like Topsy, they
just grew."_
   Sean said, _"I'll agree with that.  So, do we put money where our mouths
are?"_
   Kate said, _"To a great degree, it's actually all your money, Sean, even
if it's in CE's name.  CE's net worth as of last Friday was around 10
million."_
   Em, not too bad a savings account.
   Sean said, "So_unds good to me.  How about pledging 2 million?"_
   The rest of us agreed.
   He made the offer to the others.  We discussed it a bit then dragged in
the N&Bs and the rest of the JRD Exec Council.  We decided to have 10,000
shares and issue small amounts to individuals so pretty much all the ones
of us could get in on the action.  Initial capital would probably come as
loans rather than share purchases.
   Sean offered up Mercy as a possible executive.  She'd had lots of
experience in a public school system and was getting ready to retire in a
couple months.  While we'd only met her once, we thought she might do well
for the Skunk Works R&D company.
   Okay.  We left it with Evin to set up the companies.  News at eleven!
   ------
   SEAN
   We were lazy the rest of the day.  We played some memory games like I'd
done at the bachelor party, too.
   Neat.  We found we'd all shared several lifetimes in the same time
period over the past 50 million years.  Not that we were always together,
but we'd lived in the same area (within 50 miles or so) at the same time.
No stories like Pat's, though.
   Yow!  Turns out Eileen, Marge and I (in various combinations) had been
married or similar several times both in and out of Clann Cullen.  Dayum!
No wonder we'd fallen into each other.  So far as we could tell right off,
none of the rest of us had more than possibly met each other.  Then again,
we had plenty of millions of years we could cover later.
   We did let Margie duck off to the Skunk Works with George.  As a
thought, BB suggested we invite the Baxters over for a little party.
   No sooner said than done.  Andy and Patricia were more than happy to
visit.  They popped over, we all moved out to the back yard and soaked in
the Jacuzzi.
   Patricia was very appreciative of the pulsating jets.  It must have
gotten the other girls in the mood, because they kicked Andy and me out so
they could have all the jets to themselves.
   Oh, well.  Andy and I did a lot of guy-stuff around the barbeque, lured
Geeser out (currently florescent red with lime-green spots, droopy ears and
a huge rainbow fluff-ball at the end of her tail.) and were lazy.
   Geeser sure was afraid of the outdoors.  She glanced around a few
minutes, chewed down some grass (digestive aid for hairballs), then ensured
one of the lounge cushions stayed warm.
   Andy was very interested in Geeser.  "Looks like Margie's been at work.
I notice she's pumped up pretty good, too.  Hmm, with even more life than a
normal newborn human, would a spirit assume the body?"
   Good question.  After a moment's thought, I said, "Probably not under
the present circumstances.  With a firewall around the grounds, one
couldn't get in anyway.  Most of the spirits we've seen seem to be after
human bodies, too."
   Andy laughed.  "Send the women shopping.  Betcha they could find one. 
Probably not much point, though.  We're in the freeing-spirits business."
   We looked over at the Jacuzzi.  It wasn't quite the time to broach the
subject; Patricia was currently the center of some serious groping,
nuzzling and various other actions resulting in moans and shrieks.
   Andy _linked_ briefly with her then groaned.  "Argh.  Now they've
unleashed a demon.  She'll probably want to have female visitors every
couple nights now; my life will never be the same."
   I told him, "I feel your pain," and laughed my ass off at him.  He
didn't seem too upset because his interest indicator was at full alert.
   ------
   (Monday 7/3)
   We took the N&Bs word they were handling the Clann party so we kept our
noses out of things.  I didn't even make another trip to check for litter
or glass.
   We drove over in the Volvo at 9:00; gotta maintain some appearances for
the mundanes.  We already had about 30 people there; Connor and one of his
ladies were greeting people and directing them to our spot.  Their
gestalt-and-glad-hands sure didn't hurt public relations.
   The Hat Ladies and I picked a spot and set up.  Several chairs and a
table "appeared" from the Volvo's back, and BB directed me where to put
them.
   We had on our daily kilts and CE hats.  We turned Marge loose to run
around with George; with her cuties up full blast, she got some attention.
We continued our dastardly plot to have her pass as a Little Person; maybe
the Clann was used to strange goings-on, because we only got a few curious
thoughts.
   The rest of the N&Bs pulled up in a good-sized truck which disgorged
several barbeques (one looked very familiar from our back yard), tables,
chairs and what looked like lots of food.
   The rest of the young-uns dashed around setting up the grills, the food
and other picnic paraphernalia.  Me?  I sat on my arse, wobbled the
ceremonial staff around and had pleasant thoughts about all the sweet young
thangs prancing around in tee shirts and shorts -- and sometimes skimpier
outfits.
   All right!  Melissa told us, _"We did another run-through on our QQV. 
I'm part of them now!"_ Good thing she'd learned to hold her breath; we
almost smothered her with our hugs and congratulations.  Excellent!
   Very nice day.  I had several talks with Clann members on various
subjects.  I saw Clara and Sally (of the possible new threesome) and
confirmed a meeting with them on Wednesday.  Nice!  The young-uns had a
good start in enhancing them.
   The rest of the talks were fairly routine.  A couple of possible
marriages (send them the study check-list, Admin Scale, etc.  Hmm.  Maybe
set up a standard marriage package?), some business advice, introductions
to distant relatives, etc.
   The Hat Ladies and I did our rounds with gestalt-and-glad-hands.  There
wasn't any unusual attention we could see on Marge's new look, so that was
going over just fine.  Among us, we talked with every Clann member there
and got in lots of good PR (public relations).
   Dayum!  Marge and George both were jogging and running a little.  George
told me, _"Just had to get the body and controls up to snuff.  We've been
toughening up the joints and bones, and it's working out fine."_
   I wouldn't say they terrorized the place, but they sure got around. 
Lots of smiles and laughs followed them.
   We had cards available promoting the CC web site as the main source of
information.  It had the full Ceann drop-out story, so I didn't have to
repeat it very often.  I seemed to get some very interested thoughts from
most of the women, and they didn't hesitate to check out the Ceann's
Shillelagh against their nether regions!  Well, that's what social
secretaries are for, I guess.  Grin.
   We ate, chatted, played volleyball, pickup soccer, some softball and
other interesting picnic games.  The young-uns were controlling themselves
pretty good; I only saw one mistake when Caden jumped about three feet
straight up to catch a ball.  If anyone noticed, they didn't comment.
   Things had quieted down by 6:00 when people started drifting off home.
Teresa kicked us out.  "Go to the Reynolds meeting over at the Donovans. 
Go anywhere; just let us handle things here."
   Okay.  We loaded up the Volvo and took off back home.
   We popped over to the Donovan's pool in the uniform of the day.  Lots of
good news.
   JRD passed out lots of bonuses for Probe Patrol work.  They managed to
get some sort of bonus out to pretty much everyone including the entire
Skunk Works.
   Leone and Mark had some recordings done, and they were working with
Fillmore as the next step.  Very well done!
   Ben Talbot reported on some of the Skunk Works' activities.  They'd
developed a general-purpose _touch_ filter which could filter pretty much
anything in a gas, liquid or solid.  Hmm.  The Hat Ladies and I tucked it
away for discussion of manufacturing and raw materials production.  I knew
we'd use it right away to produce an inert atmosphere for the storage
containers.
   Don Matthews announced a naming survey for the Moon Base.  I promptly
sent Valerie my ideas.  Some were pretty clever, I thought.  Then again,
maybe not.
   The Moon Base (Bob's Hope?) had power everywhere now -- and lots of it.
They had some textbooks (they hoped) thawed out and were looking them over.
They expected to have a linguist available Real Soon Now.
   The next main step, they thought, would be to warm the place up so they
might be able to start up some of the machinery.  Running something at 100
below is a far cry from a probable design temperature of plus 70 or so. 
Thermal expansion would probably nail us if nothing else.
   ------
   (Tuesday 7/4)
   We got the last set of detail manuals from the printers, as well as the
last of the Admin Scale cards to use as goodies.  No sweat, sic semper. 
Marge trained us on creating filters, and we pumped the storage containers
up with argon to plus five pounds pressure.
   We were mainly in hold mode for the seminar.  The mail had another post
card from Fillmore saying while there was time to get registered, you could
still show up at the door for only $50 more.
   Margie spent the day with the Skunk Works doing skunky things while
Mellissa hit the books.  Dayum, she was well into the last one!
   BB mentioned the inducement for finding typos in the new detail manuals.
Liss promptly grabbed the last one and within an hour had pointed out three
glaring errors.
   Well, give the reward right away has always been my motto.  We were
gentle, though, and settled for a home run from each of us.
   BB was really nasty, though, and reported the award to the N&Bs so the
nine of them would reward her too.  In addition, they might add in the five
new young-uns.  Hopefully she'll be alive tomorrow.
   Since we were just hanging around, I _chatted_ with Teresa.  I asked her
to check out her database of Clann members and ensure they all had birth
dates (put the young-uns on a quick probe run for $5 a needed probe).
   Since one of the businesses we were financing was a florist shop, I
arranged to have flowers sent to each Clann member on their birthday.  The
young-uns would keep the database up so the addresses would be accurate. 
PR never hurts.
   Wednesday morning, we picked up the new Clann ceremonial staff.  Really
nice!  It was made of ironwood pressure-treated to the core with the
finishing oil so it wouldn't deteriorate.  It had a replaceable rubber
bumper on the bottom for resting on the floor (and 100 additional bumpers).
   Stained black, it was inlaid with a different shade of ironwood, oak,
maple, ebony and other hardwoods with simple shamrocks and some friezes of
woodland scenes.  It had an easily-replaceable leather-looking wrap where
the hand naturally rested and a small button at the top where I could
attach a small flag if I wished.  Beautiful!  And only $5,000.
   Teresa promptly retired the old staff to the archives to rest in peace
with the war club, Maura's ring and other memorabilia.
   I got my chance to use it immediately.  Popping back over to Clara and
Sally's house, they were ready to talk now.  Yes, they'd decided to join in
a three-way relationship.
   Good on 'em.  I told both the ladies, "You both could have children if
you wish.  With the three of you now, there's plenty of time and money to
handle the load."
   They were very happy about the entire thing.  They loved the new staff,
too, especially after I used it to give them all a blessing from the Clann
gods.  We were all properly cynical, though.
   They were ready to pop, too.  That sure hadn't hurt their negotiations.
I'd bet their QQV was pretty dayum good, too.
   After I got back to OTL, I checked the web site.  Yeh, there was a
section announcing marriages, births and the like.  I sent an email off to
Rosheen telling her the good news and requesting we add "bondings" to the
marriage section.  Bad news we don't publish unless it's vital information.
   I handled a couple other calls and sent out email packages to several of
the Clann I'd talked with on Monday.  Hmm, if Maura was one of my social
secretaries, maybe I could talk her into doing the emails.  I thought a
moment and decided against it; she'd probably take the opportunity to Irish
me about how lazy I was getting.
   While I was gone, the ladies had finished storing the last of the detail
manuals away.  We were ready to go on that aspect.
   In the late afternoon, Kate told me, "All the escrows hit the bank
today. There's about 2.5 million sitting there.  Leave it sit or move it?"
   Hmm.  I had her move 2 million into the money market fund; we'd
earmarked that much for the new Skunk Works company.  We tossed 300K into
the tax set-asides account and left the rest in the checking account.
   Taxes reminded me.  I had Kate cut Clann Reynolds a check for the study
check-list royalties.  We'd just made 2,000 manuals and had "hand-made" at
least three others.  I figured to pay the royalties as we had the books
printed rather than wait until they were sold.  I'd let the accountant (now
nicely enhanced, according to Aile) handle the deductions.  Private-party
check-lists such as for the marriage interviews didn't have a royalty.
   Melissa finished the last detail manual!  Yeh, we had a nice little
party.  I handed over her 5% of the CE shares, raised her draw and put a
Soo Laid on her account.  We held off on it, though; she'd barely dragged
herself in this morning.
   On the other hand, there was nothing in the agreement saying *we* paid
off the Soo Laids!  Just like the previous one, I'm sure the N&Bs would be
glad to work off that obligation!  I _asked_ Maura.  She told me, _"Not a
problem!  She's still the new girl so we've gotta get her up to speed!"_
   Liss didn't quite faint when I told her; she just looked concerned while
the rest of us laughed and cackled at her.
   ------
   EILEEN
   We did a final run-though on the presentation.  We were confident and
ready.  Bring it on!
   I finally got around to doing all the name changes from McLennan to
Cullen: Drivers License, insurance, etc.  I wasn't a feminist by any
stretch of the imagination; I worked my gender to my best advantage
whenever I could.  Grin.  Besides, it would make the genealogy a lot
easier, right?
Yeh, get Sheila over here to update the life insurance and mutual funds.
If I can control Margie long enough, maybe we'll get it done.  Then again,
BB hadn't had a chance to check out her rack.  Hmm.
   Kathleen ported us a CD with the Probe Patrol results and analysis from
their run on RRK Inc.  We took a couple hours together reviewing most of
it; we weren't too concerned about the will and all that stuff.
   No Sherman Tanks and several people with Talent.  The company itself was
really conservative.  We'd see about the people.
   Thursday morning, Sean and I popped off to Chicago with Bob, Kat, Mario
and Sherry to do the first visit to RRK Inc.  The lawyer we'd been referred
to was one of us!  Nancy was really good, too.
   The day was very well-spent.  Amanda, the CEO and Chairman of the Board,
had tons of Talent as did several others throughout the company.  While the
company itself was conservative, the people sure weren't.  They were
relaxed, cheerful and at the same time concerned what would happen to them
with the new shareholders.
   Bob settled that almost right away.  We called a BoD meeting and
confirmed the current Directors in their positions.  Bob told them,
"There's not going to be any new broom sweeping clean.  You folk have done
a bang-up job over the last 115 years or so; we're not gonna change
something just to change it."
   Lots of relief.  On our part, too.  We weren't quite ready to have to
jump into a major daily operations mode.
   Sean and I passed out seminar cards.  If they could get there tomorrow,
fine.  If not, we had others being scheduled as we were speaking.  We got
some interest, especially after Sean told them about running 30 companies
of his and that JRD was implementing them in all their companies.
   At least at this first look, RRK appeared to be a valuable
"acquisition." We might be able to use its stock leverage in companies for
the safe haven project.  Plus, they owned a *lot* of real estate.
   At dinner, Sean and I sat with Bob, Kat, Trevor and his fiancee, Joan.
Trevor and Joan were Chicago-Irish and both had a good dose of Talent. 
Yeh, they'd gotten the target nodes.
   We had a great time chatting and laughing away in Irish.  Joan eyed us
all with some quite em, interesting thoughts.
   Good.  Great night, great people and another possible stride towards our
goals.
   ------
   SEAN (Friday 7/7)
   We were coming down to the home stretch now on the seminar.  As of
Thursday night, we had 1,523 registrations.  Another day and walk-ins might
take that up to around 1,700.  Yow!
   Duane told us the Convention Center was ready to take our manuals and
other pre-seminar materials.  We'd already arranged a truck and special
crew for the first load.
   They popped up a full truckload of manuals to the delivery dock, scouted
out exactly where things were to be stored and moved in a couple pallets
with a fork-lift just for show.  The rest of the truckload magically
stacked itself in the appropriate location.
   The storage area was a little tight; there was room for all the The Book
boxes, but only some of the detail manuals would fit.  Saturday morning,
most of The Books would move to the seminar reception area so we could fill
in the hole with the rest of the detail manuals.  No sweat; we could always
replenish on the fly.
   The crew left a seed packet in the pile.  We popped in a node and
shield; no one was gonna walk away with anything, for sure.
   The Convention Center would supply the entire sound system (wireless
microphones), projector system and all that.  All we had to do was show up
with the computer to hook into the projection system.
   Let it roll.  We were as ready as we were gonna be.
   ------
   Majella and her husband Rory appeared on our doorstep.  Gonna be a good
evening!
   Rory was a finance executive for a good-sized semiconductor R&D facility
in Arcadia.  Yeh, he was one of us like Majella.  They were in their
mid-40s and full of energy.
   Well, this called for an outside dinner -- the Bahamas would do just
fine.  Grin.  Kate had set up reservations so we popped off around 5:15 to
a nice 4-star on a beach.
   The social secretaries had forewarned Majella and Rory so they were
dressed "properly." My Hat Ladies were dressed properly, too, with acres of
cleavage and enough nipple-flashes to keep Rory's interest (and mine) for a
long time.
   Our garble-shield kept us private while we dined and chattered away. 
Rory was well-versed in Irish (the Sorcerer's trick had helped) so that's
what we used.
   I asked her, "So, Majella, how's the priest business doing nowadays?"
   She laughed and said, "I have this feeling it's gonna get a lot busier.
What with us expanding the Clann, Rosheen matching up people and you waving
your staff around -- both of them -- I'll be busy."
   She had one small concern.  "California's making noises about abolishing
the Justices of the Peace.  If they do, we'll have to figure out something
else to keep the bondings and marriages legal."
   BB's thought was to get with Lena and Evin Donovan; if Majella and those
two slick lawyers couldn't figure out how to make things happen, it
probably couldn't be done.
   Both were content doing what they were doing.  Majella was getting a bit
tired of handling so much petty stuff, though.  "It seems to be the same
stuff day after day.  It gets done a lot faster than through the regular
courts, but there's not much adventure."
   Rory was pretty much the same.  He enjoyed the finance end but not all
the turf wars, indecisions and poor management.
   I didn't even have to mention it.  Kate said, "How about you talk with
Ben Talbert a bit?  We may be having some really interesting stuff coming
down the line Real Soon Now."
   They were definitely intrigued.
   In the honoring room, Majella was a wonderful, passionate lover.  She
told me, "Being in the public eye so much does has its disadvantages.  Rory
and I love being a bit kinky, but we really have to watch it."
   We _peeked_ on Rory with the bond-mates.  Well, I guess kinky is in the
eye of the beholder.  With Marge around, there could be lots of kink.  He
was surviving, so we decided not to worry and turned our attention to being
a bit kinky ourselves.
   A couple billion klicks above the Solar System's plane was a reasonable
place to hold a gab-fest.  It did give some perspective on things,
especially how fragile a planet could be in the right circumstances.
   Rory told us, _"I've got memories of being in battles which tore planets
apart like they were dust balls and of civilizations who'd casually destroy
a solar system like we swat a mosquito.  I suppose it could happen here,
too.  That's one reason I'll really support the idea of the safe havens and
colonies the Core has been tossing around lately."_
   I told them, _"Pretty soon now we'll be doing a lot less tossing and a
lot more acting.  We're setting up separate companies for R&D and
manufacturing, mainly for technologies and such we either remember or can
dig out of the Moon Base -- or is it Bob's Weekend Palace?"_
   Well, they had lots to think about.  Me, I was thinking either or both
could find a place with the new Skunk Works or manufacturing company.  Time
would tell.
   ------
   (Saturday 7/8)
   Let's rock and roll!  With our laptop (and spare), we popped down to the
Convention Center at 7:00.  We had two hours before the scheduled start.
   Mellissa ported down the CDs and Admin Scale cards on top of the pile of
manuals.  We were nice enough to remove the shield over the pile before the
Fillmore folk started to haul stuff away.
   They'd set up tables with a small computer network, printers and lots of
other paraphernalia.  They spread The Book cartons behind all the tables so
they could be passed out as the attendees registered.  Once The Book
cartons were gone from the pile, Melissa ported down the rest of the detail
manual cartons.  Now we had our entire inventory here.
   BB got behind stage, set up our laptop and checked out the projection
system.  It worked as we expected and looked completely fine.  It was a
back-projection screen so anyone in front wouldn't cast a shadow.  It did
seem a bit odd for a while to see our slides projected some 25 feet high.
   We each got a wireless FM mike and stashed spare batteries backstage. 
We were recording -- Rita had suggested it; we would offer recordings in
several formats after the seminar.
   We ensured our Cullen Enterprises name badges were very visible and our
bowlers on firmly.  Time to mingle.
   We watched the first batch of attendees register.  Most of them had the
verification printout from the registration web site; some had forgotten
them and others were walk-ins.  In any case, the registrar either entered
their information (walk-ins) or looked up their names and verified their
company or other information (in case some had the same name).
   They'd print up a name badge and hand out a The Book.  If the attendee
desired, they printed up another sticky-back label with the person's name,
phone, etc., the attendee could stick right on the cover -- they wouldn't
get lost so easily that way.  If the person had a business card and desired
it, they got a sticky-back holder for the cover into which they could slide
their card.
   The attendee got an agenda and an additional information packet which
had some of the other services CE offered.  Included were the Admin Scale
and Org Board workshops, individual consulting and references to other,
related services and our seminar-end survey.  Sheila's company and name
were under both Investing and Insurance.
   We did as much gestalt-and-glad-hand as we could, considering how fast
people were flowing in.  We wanted to be able to call each person by name
from the stage.  Gimmicky?  Yeh, but they'd remember.
   We kept an eye on the totals tally.  By 8:30, there'd been 1,480
pre-registered and 300 walk-ins.  Full house, I'd say.  Rita and Duane both
watched over things and helped out with questions as needed.  They were
smiling and happy.
   At 8:55, I announced over the sound system, "We'll be starting right on
time at 9:00, so please take your seats and get comfortable."
   Show time!  I had the first round.  "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
the Cullen Enterprises Business Policy seminar.  If you don't fall into
either category, you are welcome anyway.  The policies you'll be learning
about don't care if you're male or female or any combination or if you're
10 years old or 100.  They'll work for you."
   I brought out the Hat Ladies in their business suits.  "These are my
associates, the Hat Ladies.  Please treat them as you would me.  You'll
notice the height-challenged one appears to be quite young.  Don't let it
fool you; she knows exactly what she's doing.  Treat her as you would treat
me, and you'll be spared her sharp tongue; I've got scars myself from
crossing her."
   Decent laugh, but it got Marge positioned where we wanted.  I continued,
"You'll probably notice four of us are Irish.  The lovely blonde lady is
not, but you'll not worry about that in the least once you hear her.  Her
sister Melissa will be a presenter at the next seminar."
   The Hat Ladies left the stage, and I was on.  I went right into the
first slide about truth is what works.  I asked for questions right after.
Maybe someone had been primed, but one lady in the back asked about the
hats.
   Great!  I said, "Janice Bowlin from Walnut, you are a *winner*!" I
tossed a bag of M&Ms five hundred feet to her and went into Attracting
Attention.
   Between my laser pointer, being able to manipulate the slides directly
from the keyboard and figuratively having eyes in the back of my head, I
never had to turn my back to the audience or even look at the screen. 
Perfect.
   We had a couple shotgun mikes rigged up, and one of the off-duty
speakers would aim it.  When we'd call for questions, the speaker would
pick a person, cue the mike for aiming and say, "Mike Dawson from Silver
Lake, what's your question?" The questioner could have their moment of
fame.
   From the Hat Ladies' feedback, the mikes were working great so we had
another winner going.
   I'd done my time so I turned it over to BB.  She took off without the
least hesitation or stumble.  Same with Eileen, Kate and Marge.
   They did great!  They didn't forget a thing.  Pick out a person in the
audience, talk directly to them with full attention and intention and let
the others listen.  Next sentence, phrase or thought, go to another in a
different part of the hall.  By the time the seminar was over, we wanted
each person to feel we'd talked directly to them at least once rather than
droning on to some mass of flesh.
   No "speaker" voices, either.  My ladies had normal, "I'm talking to you
like we're alone" voices without any artificialities.  By the time I was
halfway through, we'd all figured out how fast this particular audience
could take the information and tuck it way.
   No reading the slides, either.  While none of us had to look at them,
every person there had the same information right in front of them in their
own manual.  It would have been an insult to their intelligence to hear
what they could read off the page or the screen.  Not even the English as a
Second (Third, etc.) Language got it read to them.
   We walked back and forth along the stage front, right in their faces. 
We were maybe 10 feet from the first row of tables.  Simply by putting our
attention out over the audience with a light _link_, every attendee felt we
were there for them, not just "doing a gig." All of us walked out into the
audience several times and asked questions or talked to people directly.
   Marge went over just like the rest.  She actually had an advantage;
being not even 3 feet tall yet, her head didn't cover any part of the
screen as she went back and forth.  Her voice transmitted well over the
sound system; her 40-plus years of teaching experience came through
extremely well.  After the first couple of minutes, everyone took her
extremely seriously.
   We tossed out a lot of M&Ms and asked questions of our own, "Ralph
Edwards of Lost Hills, who is Richter Enterprises' primary customer for the
Finance Department?"
   We were instructing and teaching, not lecturing.  With our link, we knew
when 80% at least had "gotten it" so we could go on.
   We had an hour's lunch break at noon.  Each of us ducked away for a few
minutes to suck something down while the others stayed available on the
floor for anyone with questions.  We had about fifteen people who were more
interested in learning something or getting some direction than in feeding
their faces.  In return, we autographed the title page of their manual.
   After lunch, we started in again at exactly 1:00.  Eileen led off and
did her part superbly.  By 4:00, we'd rotated through the speakers again,
and Kate started the question period.
   Yeh, there were plenty, and she handled each perfectly.  Some just
needed a quick flash of a slide (as they'd practiced, a couple new ones
showed up), others a reference to the exact The Book section, page,
paragraph and sentence, and the rest to the appropriate detail manual --
with section, page, paragraph and sentence if needed.  All without a
moment's hesitation.
   Kate went for ten minutes then Marge took over and Eileen finished up.
Not one question did they have to refer to me or defer for research.  We
cut off the questions at 4:40, and I got the floor again.
   After I asked them to do the survey (for a promised goody), I punched up
the start-up aspect.  "Probably 80% of you here today have no business
experience beyond holding a job or maybe lots of jobs.  You might want to
strive for something new, escape the humdrum of your current life or job or
to prove to yourself you've got the guts to strike out on your own.
   "Take a hard look at it.  Do the study check-list the first thing then
apply it.  Get the detail manuals and study everything.  Everything you
study, question it and yourself as to how you can *apply* it to making a
viable business out of developing and showing prize-winning rutabagas,
designing and producing the next iPod or creating a nation-wide chain of
bookmark stores.  The data is there.  Make it *your* knowledge and
understanding, then apply it.
   "Yes, you might fail, life isn't that predictable.  Life is fair,
though; it gives you exactly the same opportunity it gave Bill Gates, A.L.
Williams and Donald Trump.  Even if you do fail -- this time -- you'll know
you had the understanding and the guts to give it the best shot you had. 
So do it.
   "Art Williams said it best, 'The primary difference between winners and
losers is the winners, they do it.  They do it and do it and do it and do
it until the job gets done.  *Then* they can talk about how wonderful it is
to be somebody special.' Now, show *yourself* how special you can be."
   The Hat Ladies came out in their kilts and started an Irish jig.  I did
a quick change and joined them in ten seconds to close the show.  Now every
time someone saw a redhead, someone with freckles, a Black Irish (like
Gabriel Byrne) or an Oriental they'd think, "The Book!" and "Be someone
special!"
   ------
   EILEEN
   We were wound up tighter than a Scotsman's purse (We Celtics are allowed
to make these jokes.).  Only Marge and Sean had any experience with
decent-sized audiences and the excitement they could bring.  Now we all
knew.  We knew we'd done a good job, especially after Sean gave us a solid
spirit-hug and told us, _"You were wonderful!  Superb!  Totally
professional and extremely effective!  You're my best girl, bestest lady,
best ladies and I love you all to pieces."_ Warmed up our hearts and a
couple other places, it did!
   We mixed and mingled, glad-handed, signed manuals and told people they
*could* do what they wanted.  We didn't spare Melissa, either.  The only
reason she hadn't been part of the show was she hadn't practiced the
presentation.
   Marge handled the height challenge while she was talking with people by
sitting on a table.  We spotted Ben, Nora, Roy, Mercedes, Carl, Debbie and
several people from JRD companies.  Great!
   By 4:45, the last of the attendees were out of the hall, and there were
a bunch standing at the tables out front buying CDs, detail manuals, more
The Books, trading their surveys for the goody card and signing up for the
audio recording.
   While the seminar was going on, Rita and Duane had their people move up
all the detail manual cartons and CDs to behind the reception tables.  One
The Book isn't really very heavy, but put 12 detail manuals together in a
pretty good-sized box and you've got a fair weight of paper.
   They had a UPS terminal right there; someone could ship any of the
materials back home so they didn't have to carry it.  At the end, over 300
people had shipped something, so that was pretty successful.
   Since a box of detail manuals was so heavy, they'd hired a dozen
high-schoolers (male and female) to tote them to the attendees' cars.  Each
had a hand truck and could make a trip to the parking garage and back in
ten minutes.  Usually, they got a several-dollar tip along with their
wages.
   All the attendees were gone by 5:30.  Final tallies: 1,832 attendees,
all the extra The Books sold (and 150 more ordered), all the CDs sold (125
more ordered), 860 detail manual sets sold, 1,724 surveys turned in and 812
audio recordings ordered.
   The high-schoolers took the extra manuals back to the storage area. 
Melissa collected the surveys and made them quietly vanish back home. 
After the extra manuals were stored, they vanished, too.
   We had a final talk with Rita and Duane.  Duane told us, "We had the
normal glitches in the morning about the tables and power, but it was all
routine.  We cheated and listened in a lot; hope you don't mind."
   We didn't mind.  We'd seen several of the local people they'd hired
listening, too.
   Rita told us they'd probably have most of the accounting wrapped up in a
week.  "With the way you did your presentation, I doubt if we'll have more
than a couple returns.  There were only 75 no-shows from the
pre-registration.  As soon as we've got the next couple times and locations
locked down, we'll send them a letter."
   Sounded good.  We said our goodbyes, thanked all the other people who'd
worked that day and headed back to OTL.
   We had a quick shower and collapsed in the office for a few minutes. 
Dayum, we were still on major adrenaline rushes.  BB asked Sean, "I feel so
wound up I could run Big Ben for a hundred years.  Do you get used to it
after a couple times?"
   Sean grinned and told us, "Yes and no.  You'll get really used to the
presentation and will end up being quite comfortable delivering it.  You'll
have almost no attention on the mechanics and can put the rest on the
audience.  I'd say if you're not pretty dayum well wound up at the end as
we are now, you weren't excited enough.  That means your seminar clients
didn't get your best.
   "The data's in the manuals.  Someone could order a copy from the CE web
site, study it then do their best to apply it.  May or may not work.  The
seminar gives not only more live examples and thought-provoking questions
but also the feeling the attendee is not alone.  He gets the real feeling
others 'believe' it will work plus knowledge others have made it work and
it bolsters his confidence.
   "With confidence in the data and at least some confidence in knowing it
works, he's got a lot better opportunity to make it all work for him.  Our
job is to ramp up the excitement to such a degree it fires up their own
determinism to make themselves special and *do* something with it.  The
seminar fee, travel expenses and optional materials are a trivial drop in
the bucket compared to what he can make."
   We got dressed and went to dinner in Cancun.  Passports?  We didn't need
no stinkin' passports to get back into the U.S.
   It still took us a couple hours to wind down.  Melissa said, "I got
wired just listening.  It'll probably be 'worse' when I'm doing it myself."
We agreed with her.  We'd noticed a lot -- well over 80% -- of the
attendees had been very excited when they'd left.
   After dinner, we let Melissa go so she could harass the N&Bs some more.
I don't know what they did, but we piled into our Custom Cloud Cushion,
shared some sweet kisses and caresses then left our bodies to sleep it off.
Who needs drugs to get high?
   ------
   SEAN (Sunday 7/9)
   This was gonna be a lazy day.  We decided the next week would be as much
vacation as we could get in with the minimum of work.
   So, we packed up our swimming suits (Melissa was at the N&Bs, probably
working off her Soo Laid) and popped over to the Arms to raise some ruckus.
The first action was to harass Eavan for a half hour.
   She was doing great.  She'd almost finished her teleportation
check-list. Yeh, she and Ben had talked, too.  She was spending most of her
available free time digging into the various devices in the Moon Base. 
Then again, when one has 24/7 available, that can be a lot of free time.
   She told us, "There's tons of fascinating stuff.  We can tell already
the computers they use work on completely different principles than our
semi-conductor RAM and CPUs.  We really want to get the air temperature and
pressure back up so we can put the juice to them and see what happens."
   Smoke testing, eh?  What with all the new ones of us getting enhanced
along with the coming Skunk Works companies, we'll probably make progress.
   The weekend manager's duties aren't usually very arduous so we talked
Eavan into sitting with us for breakfast.  The place was half-full; a quick
_check_ told us about 70% were outsiders rather than guests.  Shit.  We
were on vacation; knock off the shop-talk!  It was Melissa's hat anyway.
   We headed for the swimming pool; we wanted to swim rather than soak in
our Jacuzzi.  We changed quickly, selected a group of chairs for our towels
and dove in.
   We stayed away from our underwater air cylinders but used the eye
goggles.  No reason for anyone to wonder; they'd wonder enough just looking
at the Hat Ladies!
   Speaking of such, Marge looked great!  She had very-nicely proportioned
waist and hips along with a great chest, legs and face.  I'd noticed before
but hadn't *noticed*.  Her head was still plenty large in proportion to her
body, but it wasn't really noticeable because you were checking out the
rest.
   I asked her, _"Marge, how much of what we see is your body and how much
is hologram?"_
   _"About 80% hologram.  The lengths of the torso are mine so I don't have
to cover the legs and hips actually hinging at a different place.  Most of
the rest is built up or in as needed.  Do you approve?"_
   _"Yum.  With or without the hologram, you're a gorgeous woman!"_
   _"Prrrr.  Best man!"_
   _"Best girl!"_
   I had my suspicions about her suit, too.  They all confessed they
weren't actually wearing any suits; they were *all* holograms.
   I told them, _"More major yums!  Betcha that won't stop you from
shopping, though."_
   _"You're learning, Sean.  Another ten or fifteen years, and you might
have some faint glimmering."_
   The only shop stuff we did was pass off the seminar surveys to the
young-uns.  I talked with Deidre (who happened to be the only one who
wasn't em, involved at the time).  She told me, _"Go ahead and work with
Ted on all this sort of stuff.  We decided he'd make the best team leader
for us young-uns.  That way, you've got a single contact point for most
everything.  If I recall correctly, The Book talks about that very point."_
   She was right, of course.  Clever niece!  Ted was an excellent choice,
too.  Besides being extremely competent, he wasn't a Cullen.  It meant he
hadn't been brow-beaten all his life by the nieces and nephews or the
Cullen Sisters.  If need be, he could beat some butts to maintain order. 
On the other hand, I wouldn't put it past *any* of the young-uns to enjoy
some butt-beating.  Each to his own!
   I did get to Ted after a couple hours.  He was more than willing to take
on the survey tallies.  Then again, $45 an hour to the ones doing it didn't
hurt, either.
   We cooked in the sun, bleached out our skin with the pool chlorine, ate
a lot in the restaurant and were as lazy as we could be.  The ladies got a
lot of overt and covert eyeballs; if they were pleasant admiration
eyeballs, they got low-beam headlights.  If they were nasty (too nasty,
that is), the owner's got a month's impotence or frigidity.  Don't mess
with the Hat Ladies!
   I observed neither their tops nor bottoms fit exactly; there was a bit
of areola or fluff peeking out from time to time.  None of my innocent
ladies would tease the public, would they?
   ------
   (Monday 7/10)
   Melissa survived Sunday, too.  I told her she was on paid vacation like
the rest of us, _"Go for the orgies; you don't have to get up in the
morning."_
   She pretended to be indignant but grinned anyway.  _"Yeh!  The new
young-uns look pretty tasty, too."_
   Marge gave us her best innocent look when I accused her of corrupting
our newest staff member.
   We did a bit of CE work and got it out of the way.  Even though it was
Melissa's hat, with her permission Kate ordered the 150 needed The Book
manuals from the printer plus an extra 50 for spares.  While she was there,
she ordered another 2,000 Admin Scale cards; they were cheap.  Fillmore
would be handling all the back orders so we'd have them slip in the card as
an extra since we'd had to back-order.
   She ordered 250 CDs (sent off the updated PDFs from the errors we'd
found).  It would require a new master which would take an extra day, but
after that we'd be able to get several thousand on a couple days' notice.
Fillmore would handle sending them, too.
   We held off on ordering any of the other manuals until we had the dates
locked down a bit better.  I suppose it was possible Fillmore couldn't find
places.  Doubtful, but possible.
   Sheila dropped by to update our marital situation.  Lena had handled our
wills, so that part was a done deal.  Eileen and I got a joint life
insurance policy with Bridget as the beneficiary.  It wouldn't hurt, and if
CE and I went dead broke, Bridget still had a fall back position if our
bodies died.
   Speaking of Marge, she and Sheila eyeballed each other.  Sheila drooled
a bit over Marge's "new look" and Marge drooled right back at her.  They
both busted up laughing for a couple minutes.
   Sheila told us, "Well, I might have finally found the right guy.  I'd
recruited him into the business then discovered he was one of us.  So, we
might have to channel Marge's lust off onto some other poor sucker, uh,
deserving lady."
   Good on her!  She told us, "My office manager just told me we've gotten
fifty calls so far this morning about insurance and investments.  You have
something you haven't told me, Sean?"
   I confessed we'd put her name down as a reference for insurance and
investments.  Sheila tied her ears in a knot behind her head and told me,
"For that, I'll make an exception.  I'll make a talk with your social
secretaries."
   Kate was quick to tell her there was no need for an exception, "Besides,
we should honor your new man, too.  Obviously he's either Clann or gonna
be."
   Yeh.  Bet any man Sheila glommed onto would be someone really special.
Anyway, Sheila had other appointments stacked up, so she went off to help
some more families.
   Kathleen _talked_ with Eileen for a couple minutes.  The silver-tongued
Hat Lady sold JRD ten detail manual sets at full pop of $300 each.  She had
a check in hand from Siobhan in four minutes, and JRD had their manuals a
minute later.  Not bad.
   The Hat Ladies took off to Nora's to get Marge fitted for some new
clothes.  Yep, even with holograms available, they were going shopping.
   When they got back (full of chatter about the goodies they'd ordered),
we lay around, practiced transforming Geeser with holograms and were
generally lazy.  Besides, we had to rest up for the Clann Reynolds meeting;
Marge hinted there'd be some interesting stuff come up.
   Chapter 2
   EILEEN (Monday 7/10)
   Very interesting meeting at Clann Reynolds.  Ana told us they'd
successfully implemented the Skunk Works' filters for removing diseases and
the like from the bloodstream plus site-specific viruses and the like. 
Yeh, our bodies were still susceptible to rapidly-acting things like
neurotoxins.  Well, we figured we could live with that; even with all the
rest of our body protection, it was still common sense.
   Childhood illnesses were still there; she recommended we let them run to
build up the natural antibodies.  With a spirit keeping a body in good
health otherwise, their influence should be pretty minor.
   The Waystation project surveys told us it was needed and wanted.  While
we didn't have a formal project yet, most of us were full-time on our own
lives.  Maura recommended we keep alert for someone new suitable to run a
project like this.  True; I don't think we CE folk would be able to take on
an entire project like it, especially if we were to get involved much with
RRK.
   Bob gave the Clanns a quick rundown on RRK.  He was good; he managed to
avoid The Name!  As we'd already discussed with him, he thought RRK would
be an excellent strategic partner in our safe havens/colonies goals.  He
stressed the executives keep those goals in mind so all our efforts would
be aligned.
   Margie got some time to stand on the table.  She showed everyone her new
body hologram and gave us a cool Shirley Temple bit with the blonde hair
and everything.  Not a bad singer; then again, it might not have been her
voice at all; she's a tricky little devil!
   She went over the other stuff she'd talked about with us: transducers,
remote viewing and two-way touches (fun, but doesn't replace the real thing
by a long shot!).
   I think the most interesting thing was her cautioning us against
cookbooking.  "We've got a lot of technical stuff.  The main thing we wanna
caution you about is cookbooking.  Look at a cookbook sometime.  An amateur
cook, which most of us are, would look at a recipe, substitute something
and give it a shot.  Sometimes it'll work and sometimes it won't.  Pure
rote work.
   "With these technologies, we want you to *think*.  The training,
teleportation and other check-lists are designed to enable you to
*understand* the technologies from the ground up without cookbooking the
results."
   Yep.  That's what all our checkouts and the entire seminar drove
towards; understanding and application, not just robotic action.  Good on
her!
   She finished up as a top-heavy torch singer (really slinky dress!) with
an over-the-top Janice Joplin voice and a full orchestral accompaniment. 
Best daughter!
   Ben gave us more on the Moon Base (New Hope?).  Our Kate had come
through again with a dumb question.  They were now slowly warming up the
place and increasing the air pressure by porting in air from Death Valley.
Now, Death Valley in July is a bit, em, temperature-enhanced, so it was
working fine.  Yeh, even I knew you don't warm up stuff really fast if you
want it to stay together; the rapid thermal expansion alone could destroy
it.
   They'd found a couple more power plants hooked up to the manufacturing
area.  Yow, if we could get that area going we might even be able to bypass
a lot of planet-based manufacturing.  A Real Good Thing -- maybe we'd be
looking real hard at reactivating the entire facility.
   Well, they hadn't come up with a physical device to record and play back
body perceptions or the like.  We could _link_ and "borrow" someone else's,
though.  It was good enough for now; they'd have a technical bulletin out
soon.
   They'd decided the Krav Maga was the optimum self-defense method.  Ben
told us, "We're actively looking for an expert with Potential we can
enhance.  Even if we never find or develop a 'mechanical' thought device,
we could still probably bring someone up to a decent level in an extremely
short time.  Work is in progress."
   Evin went over the proposed Skunk Works company and corresponding
manufacturing company.  The Clanns' lawyer coalition had decided to make
offshore companies for security and taxes.  Why not?  It might simplify a
lot of things.
   JRD had gone ahead and gotten the lease on the rest of their floor and
the one above.  They could sublet it to the new SW company down the line if
needed.  Works for me; bet we'd know where Maggie was hanging out a lot
when she wasn't with us!
   Patrick Derman told us he and Valerie had done another scan for
Sensitives.  There were some 20,000 in L.A.  and San Berdu Counties *after*
the ones we'd already tagged!  That's a net gain of around 6 or 7 thousand;
someone had been busy!
   Of course he nailed the guilty parties!  Maura, Teresa and Margie gave
us a good show on being soo innocent then trying to blame each other. 
Right.  And Irishmen are teetotalers.
   After the general meeting, Bob got the Clann heads together to ensure
our efforts were aligned with each other.  As I'd expected, they pretty
much were.  We had maybe a ten-minute discussion and decided: a) Expanding
our size and membership was both in-progress and very desirable.  Let it
run full-tilt.  b) Each Clann needed a safe haven on Earth, even if it was
only for a month or so.  c) Off-planet colonies should be actively
investigated (long-term), planned and implemented.  d) At the same time we
were getting ready to bail out, we wanted to make this world better by
being here.
   Yeh, that aligned the Waystation, our seminars and other activities so
they didn't have conflicting or misaligned goals.  Good on him!
   One of the new leaders from Las Vegas (soon to be another Clann there, I
bet) brought up the question of how we'd present all these anticipated new
technologies to the world.  Little green boys and girls floating down from
the sky sounded okay to me.  Grin.
   Yeh, with the expected massive influx of new people getting trained,
there might well be some security breaches.  What if a government or some
other group wanted to kidnap one of us for "questioning?" Nancy got
volunteered to head up the legal coalition to work out a handling.  Better
her than me!
   Well, since we had so many Clanns with a lot more anticipated, our BB
nominated Bob to be the leader of the Clanns Council.  Ceann Ceann sounded
like a good title to us!  Ceann Squared?  C2?
   He got railroaded.  I sympathized with him though, _"Guess someone has
to be the first violinist.  We can't all play the triangle.  Hehehehe."_
   Our game was getting bigger every day.  At least we had some
understanding of the stakes and the rules; we weren't flying totally blind.
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 7/11)
   Better Bob than me, but I'd bet we'd be working together a lot.  We
couldn't have a better partner.
   We're supposed to be on vacation.  Ah, well.  Maybe we can slip some
relax time in yet.
   Ted told us, _"The genealogy research is moving along.  We're
coordinating with the Donovan and O'Banain young-uns and have agreed on a
common software program.  Maybe we'll end up related to them somewhere up
the line._
   _"So far, from pictures and diaries we found, we've been able to trace
the Cullens back to New York and Ellis Island.  Apparently we're among the
3% of the Protestants in Ireland.  That's probably why we tend to be so
damn independent.  Riona and her crew have traced the Donovans back to
Ellis Island about the same time so maybe we've got some time line
together._
   _"From what we've got so far, the Clann Cullen was in Kildare, which is
just west of Dublin; maybe that's why we're using so many Dublinisms!  Real
Soon Now, we'll probably have to pop over there to research specific books
and such; there isn't much on line from back then._
   _"We're gonna take several hours one of these nights -- if I can break
up the young-uns' lovin' long enough -- and do a scan of the entire island.
We'll look for Cullens, Donovans, etc., and see what we can come up with.
Some of the stuff the Skunk Works has come up on finding ancestors will
probably help a good deal."_
   Yeh, he wouldn't tell us what the Skunk Works had come up with.  He said
they were sworn to secrecy and Marge backed him up.  Betcha it's either
really slick or they hadn't really come up with much!
   Marge ducked out a bit during the day; they were moving the Skunk Works
into the JRD floor, and she wanted to keep her nose in things so they
wouldn't get lost.
   When she popped back around 2:30, she told us, "Lookin' good.  Ben knows
enough about traffic flows and such we can work together easily without
being on top of each other.
   "Oh, yeh!  We did some planetary tracing on the plastic page material --
we're calling it the old Sci-Fi name 'duro-plast' because it's so durable
-- and found about 500 solid hits.  Looks as if there's a lot of the same
alloy used in the structure in the Moon Base right along with it.  Barring
further investigation, they're probably old observation or manufacturing
facilities.  It should keep us out of trouble for a few days."
   Not much more than a few days; betcha they'd work *some* trouble-making
in somehow.  Well, it was something we could check out since we were being
so lazy.
   ------
   Wednesday we "shipped" the 150 back-ordered The Books and 125 CDs up to
Fillmore.  We stuffed the extras in the storage containers along with the
2,000 Admin Scale goody cards the other printer delivered.  The storage
containers had worked out fine; Eileen's inventory database matched
exactly, so no problems there.
   The 2,000 The Book and 1,000 detail manuals had fit okay in the three we
had, but there wasn't much room left.  That was easy to fix; Kate hopped up
on the Internet and checked availability of more containers from the
company we'd used last time.
   She told us, "Still 2 grand apiece including delivery.  Guess inflation
hasn't crept that much."
   What the hell.  After a three-second discussion, I had her order another
six.  The bedrock had plenty of room -- in fact we might pick another place
for safety -- and the epoxy paint was pretty inexpensive.  It cost maybe
$400 in materials to fix one up.
   No problem; they'd deliver them to the Tavern parking lot that night. 
Know what we're gonna be doing for a couple days!
   Okay, let's find some spots for the new stuff.  While we're at it, put
them in a location east of the California fault lines; I'd hate to have
them slide into the ocean along with Sierra Madre.
   With a bit of earthquake-hazard research on the Internet, we decided to
stick them in an upthrust northwest of Abilene, TX.  The map showed
negligible earthquake hazard, and it shouldn't get too wet with 23" average
yearly rainfall.
   We checked out the spot the ladies had used to prep the first
containers; since there was plenty of room and no signs of anyone having
been there since, we decided to use it again.
   Eileen and I popped over and got enough paint (probably) to do the job.
She chose an interesting color; it really reminded me of several "things"
which were part of my bond-mates' bodies.
   Yeh, hurry up and wait after that.  Not to worry, we went shopping for
the newest chick-flick DVDs -- found five.  Well, I knew what Wednesday
evening would entail.
   I was right.  We sat around the den, watched two chick-flicks, teased
and petted Geeser ("Do me!  Anything, just do me!") and got all romantic
and lovey.  We adjourned to the Custom Cloud Cushion and laid long, slow
lovings on each other for a couple hours.  Now *that*'s part of a good
vacation!
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 7/13)
   The containers were at the Tavern by 2:00 in the morning so we popped
them right over to the work spot.  Old hat by now; we had the sand-blasting
done and the first coat of paint on them all in three hours.
   Dayum that was hard work!  To wind down from it, we had to spend a
couple more hours a-cuddlin' and a-kissin' and a-lovin' oh my!  in our
Custom Cloud Cushion.  BB, Kate and Margie insisted our Babies Within get
drenched several times -- something Kat had told them.  Hey, I should
complain?  Sean did spread it around, though, so everyone got several great
home runs.  Our final grand slam left us -- where else?  -- in the Asteroid
Belt again.
   About 6:00 in the morning, we had a quick virtual CC Officer's meeting.
Nothing real new, but things were moving along.  The web site was doing
excellently with lots of visitors and lots of looks at pretty much
everything.
   The most-looked-at page was the marriage and bondings pages.  Since it
included the match-making pages, I guess the whole Clann was in a, em,
joining mood.
   About 7:00 (the bodies were still asleep, thankfully), Ted ported over
the seminar survey results.  They looked *really* good!  All the speakers
had top ratings and over 80% of the attendees who weren't in a business
already were seriously planning on starting one.
   Of course there were some additional comments like, "Please send BB for
some personal tutoring," so we guessed they hadn't minded looking at us Hat
Ladies.  Each of us had several requests, so none of us felt left out --
including Melissa.
   Margie had gotten some very suggestive comments, too; she grinned and
preened.  Jaysus!  There'd be no living with the old broad after that!
   We decided it had been a success from the delivery standpoint.  Now we'd
have to see how the accounting tallied up.
   ------
   In the late afternoon, the first coat of epoxy paint on the new-to-us
storage containers was cured, so we did any needed touch up and sealed up
the joints.  Piece of cake by now.
   During the night, we carved out the niches in the Texas bedrock and ran
the conduits for the atmosphere and possible electric supply.  It took
longer to disguise the outlets at the surface than it did to carve out the
niches and tunnels for the conduits.
   A couple judicious holograms locked into nodes in the local vegetation
(sagebrush?) made the outlets appear to be an unattractive briar patch. 
Since it was in the middle of nowhere (common for Texas, I guess) to start
with, we figured no one would stumble over it too easily.  Besides, we had
a small shield and a loud _alarm_ to warn us.
   Late Thursday night, we finished up the work.  The standoff braces went
in then the containers went in.  Melissa got to hook up the conduits
(spread the practice out), and we filled up the void with insulating foam.
Let the foam cure a bit, pump in the argon with the _touch_ filter and we
were gold!
   (Friday 7/14)
   Early Friday morning, Margie popped over to the Skunk Works for several
hours.  When she came back, she told us, _"We finished up the hologram
technical bulletin, so it's available.  Y'all know most of it already, but
there's some interesting tweaks in it."_
   We checked out a copy and oh, my, yes!  Not only was there the hologram
stuff on sight and touch, it dealt with the feedback to the originating
person.  With the proper setup, the hologram would feel and react almost as
naturally as if it were real.
   They tossed in a few of the other perceptions such as smell, taste and
kinetics (motion).  The package was in a "module" which we could get from a
friend (Maggie), plug in and use.  Dayum good!  We were in for quite a
ride.
   Of course, that meant we had to go shopping sometime for spiffy clothes
to "copy." Tough job, but someone's gotta do it.
   Margie promised us technical bulletins on two-way _touches_, distance
viewing nodes and a couple other things would be out Real Soon Now.
   Duane sent us an email which had the accounting for the seminar
attached. Kate immediately printed up several copies for us, ported a copy
over to Melissa and cast her own suspicious accountant's eye on hers.
   Shit.  If we didn't count the cost for the storage containers (a capital
expense anyway), between the attendees and the extra goodies sold, we'd
made over $620,000!  And that's after our material and "shipping" costs! 
*And* it didn't count the back-ordered material!
   Yowsah!  Hot dayum!  YES!  Sean told us, "It was all you ladies who did
the work.  I just did what I'd done before." Right.  And Mona disliked
cunnilingus.
   Definitely called for a celebration.  BB eyed the Exchange calendar for
everyone; Saturday night was open so she set up a celebration dinner for CE
and all the N&Bs.  Place TBD, but it was gonna be fancy!  Ladies were
forewarned!
   Rita sent us an email in the late afternoon.  All the back-ordered The
Books and CDs had gone out the door.  Their estimated cost on producing and
delivering the seminar recording on a CD was about $10.35.  After a
one-time cost of $1,500 to edit the original recording and make the CD
master, the 812 orders would bring us in another $14,000.  Not chump
change. Even though Melissa was on vacation, Sean had them order a thousand
CDs with the extras "for posterity." Since we now had a master, we could
make more as needed.
   Now, that brought up another issue.  Sean had been selling both The Book
and the detail manuals from the CE web site and having the young-uns
package them up and ship them off.  With professionally-produced books, CDs
and now seminar recording CDs, we figured the traffic would increase.
   Sounded like a good task for the young-uns to continue!  Ted thought a
couple minutes then told us, _"Yep.  Can do.  Since the Skunk Works moved
out, we can rent a place at the Reynolds research lab.  Store packaging
materials there, pack 'em up and ship 'em out.  I'll get a schedule of
costs together and have it to you by Sunday."_
   Another little chore handled.  They probably wouldn't charge us much
more than Fillmore did.
   Tavern night!  This was gonna be a *good* party!  Slinky LBDs (Black,
blue, beige, whatever was desired) with lotsa cleavage and tittie hard-ons.
Sean went leprechaun (that hat still looks a bit silly).
   We had a good Core Clann crowd and several Clann families.  Now we
recognized them on sight and just had to update the gestalt a bit -- the
glad-handing came naturally.
   We ate, drank, flirted, danced, sang, hat-tossed (the new young-uns were
catching on, too), Bridget-spun and had a grand old time.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 7/15)
   The pool at Altadena Arms had turned out so well last time, we went back
and spent a lazy few hours sunning ourselves and giving Eavan a hard time.
The dining room was nicely full for lunch; gotta check with Liss to see how
it was doing.
   We popped back to OTL, harassed Geeser (now lime green with red spots)
and watched a chick flick.  Of course that led to a bit of casual lazy
lovin' which built up our appetites for dinner later.
   Dinner in Cabo San Lucas.  Why not?  Since they were "in the
neighborhood," we invited the Guerreros to help us celebrate.
   The Guerreros were lookin' really good.  We Norte Americanos quietly
agreed both Elisa and Linda looked good enough to eat!  Ramon and Alejandro
were no slouches in the sexual charisma department, either.
   Neat.  They talked Irish as well as the rest of us.  Of course, it
started out with the Clann Reynolds accent, but we survived it.
   We had the entire N&B crowd including the new young-uns, who were
extremely nice.  Though the ladies had the men outnumbered considerably,
they tried not to wear us out with dancing.
   I think we wore out our eyes on their cleavage, though.  There was
enough around to make ten dozen Parker House rolls envious.  It didn't help
that something like 26 stiff pink nubbins seemed to take turns escaping
their confines momentarily throughout the evening.
   Dinner was delicious and the service grand.  We could speak
Spanish-with-Irish-accent as well as the best of them, for sure.
   The Guerreros had finished getting utilities to their homestead a couple
months ago.  We took a real quick virtual tour; they'd renoed the place so
well it could be a model home in almost any decent neighborhood in L.A. 
County.
   Guerrero Construction was rolling really well, too.  Ramon's cousin, the
real-estate broker, had helped JRD start snatching up property in the
blighted areas.  Guerrero Construction would go in with a crew, demolish
and clear the land then start construction on housing or light commercial
or industrial property.
   Hell, they had fifty people working for them now!  Quite a change from
April when they were starving.  In fact, they'd paid back almost half the
loan they'd initially gotten from Kat!
   Alejandro and Linda were spending most of their time in Burbank studying
their tails off and getting edumicated in the Burbank version of U.S. 
culture.  I'm sure the Wild Bunch, PVC and the rest of the gang were taking
real good care of them.  Maggie had a couple shots at corrupting them more,
but they'd already done everything she suggested.  Grin.
   Ramon and Elisa were "commuting" two nights a week to Glendale Community
College where they were taking a business course.  Of course, Melissa, Kate
and BB immediately had a lot to talk about with them.
   They'd been a bit apprehensive about the English language the first
couple classes, but they'd relaxed when they realized the Reynolds'
language trick worked just as well on the instructors and other students as
it did with ones of us.  Good on 'em!  They were sucking up concepts and
principles like an Irishman downs a pint.
   Back at OTL, we let the bodies sleep.  No honorings; even the Ceann gets
a vacation occasionally.
   Marge took us on a virtual tour of the new Skunk Works.  Even at 2:00 in
the morning there were at least 10 spirits working away.
   The linguists were making excellent progress.  Somewhere along the line,
there must have been some alien spirits intermixing with us Earth-bound
spirits, because one linguist had lots of pretty clear memories of the
language and some of the technology.
   Seems there's actually two languages.  The simpler one was for technical
communication; it was highly structured, extremely unambiguous and had no
dependence on inflection, tone or other verbal mannerisms.  Henry told us,
_"It's more like a modern block-structured computer programming language
than a living-being language.  Once you learn the grammar and definitions,
it's very clear.  We 'just' have to get enough critical mass in knowing the
definitions to be able to understand the rest."_
   The other language was conversational or emotional.  It was much more
inflected, context-dependent and emotional than the technical one.  It was
like using French or Italian for making love and German for talking
physics. At least these languages didn't have the verb at the end!
   Margie told us, _"As someone new comes aboard -- a couple every day now
-- we get them a place to sit and a workstation of some sort.  If they
wish, we custom-order pretty much any system they want.  Depending on what
research they're doing, they can work from home either on their own
equipment or remotely here.  Lots of pajama work!_
   _"A couple engineers needed drafting programs, plotters, drawing storage
cabinets and such, so that's all over here.  You should see this inkjet
plotter spit out a 4-foot by 6-foot high-resolution color image of Holly
Barry's butt!"_
   The Moon Base was up to -50 degrees with the air pressure now at 8 psi.
They were taking it slowly and letting things soak.  They were planning on
a 10-degree rise each day.
   This was in the living/admin space.  The power plants had their own
isolated air systems; they'd fired up along with the thermionic converters.
With a power cross-feed from the first power plant, they'd brought up the
manufacturing area's thermionic converter -- no sweat.  They hadn't tried
to start up the fusion reactor yet.  Real Soon Now, maybe -- they were
slowly bringing up the pressure and temperature on it.
   The hangar/maintenance area wasn't sealed from the surface.  Made sense,
if ships had to go in and out, airlocks wouldn't be much fun at all.
   The hanger was only 100 meters below the surface; apparently they used
an electronic air shield of some sort to keep in the atmosphere.  Well, no
problem!  Several dozen seed packets in sealed insulated containers
provided nodes for a _touch_ shield along with temperature maintenance on
the containers.  They were pumping up the temperature and pressure in that
complex, too.  Death Valley was losing a lot of air!
   The manufacturing facility was in two parts.  There was a huge area at
the 1,000-meter depth which appeared to handle small components -- they
guessed at less than 50 meters cross-section because that was the width of
the tunnels leading to the surface and the living/admin complex -- and a
surface complex.
   The surface complex had huge machines!  One of the engineers estimated
some could produce components or whatever some 1,000 meters in one
dimension.  There was a bit of impact damage since it was on the surface,
but it was apparently minor.  Probably the biggest issue would be the
500-degree temperature change between the light and dark times of the lunar
month.  Guess we'll find out; they had some shielding from the sun.
   The Skunk Works would probably put up their own shield for air
retention, sunlight shielding and impact protection and were raising the
temperature and pressure like the other spaces.
   What did they build there?  The linguist's memories were those of an
administrator of some sort, not a techie, but she did remember they
produced ships.  We figured one could move a bit of stuff in a ship a
kilometer across!
   So, we had an operational Skunk Works, a decent handle on the
language(s) and ways of bringing the facility back up to a human's
shirt-sleeve environment.  Not too bad for several week's work.  Grin.
   ------
   (Sunday 7/16)
   Ted got back to us in the morning with a cost schedule to do a
decent-scale CE web site fulfillment center.  They'd rent the same room as
the Skunk Works had been in, store shipping supplies such as padded
envelopes and a computer in it and ship right out of there.  With a UPS
account for the manuals and USPS Priority Mail or FedEx for CDs, we'd all
make out pretty dayum good.
   We gave him the go-ahead.  We now had an operational fulfillment center!
   This was the final day of our self-imposed vacation.  After a lazy
breakfast in Cancun, we decided we'd check out some of the planetary traces
Margie had found.
   After 170,000 years (latest SWAG), one would expect a physical
installation to be in pretty bad shape.  The first 20 locations from the
lightest traces were just some metal fragments.  While we marked the
locations down, we figured they were probably just litter or something
lost; they looked like little containers, a couple nuts, screws and bolts;
shit like that.
   We left them; even though they were buried beneath soil and vegetation,
the metal didn't seem to be deteriorated.  Must be pretty dayum good stuff.
   We skipped right to a much larger trace.  Okay, this was in Colorado
near the base of one of the mountains.
   Oh, yeh.  Definitely an installation or outpost.  Buried beneath 20 feet
of dirt and gravel, it looked about the size of a three-bedroom house;
maybe 2,000 square feet.  It had identifiable doors and windows, two
bedrooms (?), kitchen (?), large office/workroom and a couple smaller
outbuildings.
   One outbuilding had a vehicle of some sort.  Our guess was it was
equivalent to a 4-wheel-drive Land Rover.  The tires or whatever were gone,
and we were left with the remnants of wire reinforcements.
   All the buildings looked as if they were open to the atmosphere with no
special provisions for major pressure or temperature control.  BB guessed,
_"Probably a 'shirt-sleeve' environment for them.  There's gasketing around
the door and window joints but not enough to hold pressure."_
   Good.  At a first guess, we had a target STP (Standard Temperature and
Pressure) to shoot for at the Moon Base (Robert's Revenge?).
   There was obvious wear on the floors, doors and other areas.  Kate
observed, _"Lots of repairs.  Seamlessly done to the eye, but the materials
are of a slightly different composition.  The entire place looks welded
together."_
   Guesstimate was it was fockin' old.  I traced power lines and came to a
neat little "black box" tucked away in a small shed behind the main
building.  Looked like an accumulator to me.  There were leads, circuit
breakers and that kind of stuff.  At a SWAG, there were solar panels of
some sort on the roof to charge them up, plus a big-ass outside connector
with room for a decent-size ship to set down in front.  Probably could
charge it up with the ship or maybe vice versa.
   Margie decided, _"Looks like we have a computer in the office.  Monitors
all over, keyboards of some sort, all that shit.  I'd say we could dust it
off and shoot the juice to it.  Sounds to me like a job for George."_
   Great!  Obviously we made a note.
   We nosed around for another hour.  Eileen told us, _"I'd guess there's
closets for clothing, food storage, supplies and that sort of stuff.  From
the looks of several of the knives in the kitchen, they were probably
carnivores or omnivores.  Those are meat-cutting knives._
   _"Possibly some remnants of clothes several places.  Maybe a few old
'personal' items.  I'd say they just packed up their stuff, shut things
down and walked out the door._
   _"From what's left, I'd guess they were planning on coming back.  Dig
off the overburden, dust things off, fire up the accumulator, put food in
the fridge and unpack your bags.  Back in business._
   _"So, it begs the questions of why did they leave and why didn't they
come back?  Of course, there's the obvious question of what the hell were
they doing here in the first place?  This looks like a working installation
to me, like OTL, not a vacation cottage."_
   Right.  Well, there were quite a few duro-plast books, especially in the
office.  Maybe they'd give a clue.  George and his gang could work on the
computer; maybe it had some clues.
   Okay.  We dropped a couple seed packets and set up a tag node.  Lookin'
good!
   We bounced around to lots of the other traces, looking for the big hits.
We found an additional 100 or so installations pretty much like the first
one and another 50 much larger ones which looked like industrial
manufacturing facilities.  That was just in the North American continent;
there were plenty more traces around the rest of the world.
   A real quick _glance_ at the other traces on other continents showed
much the same pattern.  Lots of small installations and several industrial
ones.
   ------
   EILEEN
   All that hard work!  We popped back to OTL, stirred up the bodies and
soaked them in the Jacuzzi for a while.  After a nice dinner in Rio, we
lazed around the den and speculated.
   Sean said, "I don't really see a pattern which would lead me to believe
they were colonizing the place.  No major residential facilities, farms,
small or large villages or cities.  More of a 'keep an eye on the place'
and some utilization of natural resources.  Not to say they didn't have
good times, but it looks to me like it was all business."
   Kate said, "On the other hand, the Moon Base looks really long-term to
me.  With manufacturing facilities that size and the admin and living
spaces being able to hold so many, it looks to me like an ongoing
operation. Any idea if there's other facilities in the solar system?"
   Margie laughed and told us, "Right.  None of us thought to look.  Let's
take a quick look-see."
   Yes, indeed.  There were ten large facilities scattered around from
Venus, Asteroid Belt, a couple of Jupiter's moons and one around Pluto's
orbit.  They looked like almost pure manufacturing or mining facilities
with fairly small living spaces.
   Didn't find any big hits in the Oort cloud, though.  Slackers!
   ------
   (Monday 7/17)
   Vacation's over.  Too bad.  Hell, we'd worked almost as much as if we
hadn't been on vacation.  Oh, well.  There's still enough slack time to get
in some fun and games.
   Melissa must have survived her vacation, because she popped in right on
time.  She'd spent a lot of time with the N&Bs working on the Tavern
expansion project, the Altadena Arms and hotel expansion.  "There's plenty
around; we just need to decide which to do first.  If we do the hotel,
we're plenty involved.  With the Tavern, Maura will probably try to talk us
into helping out.  Guess that's what a Ceann is for, right?"
   Sean just rolled his eyes.  "Why not?  It'll give us another place to
party.  If we get too many Taverns, though, we'll be too busy partying to
get any work done."
   BB told us, "No way.  Margie and I'll whup you youngsters' asses."
   Hmm.  Maybe we'll have to try that sometime.
   Liss checked out the new storage containers and allowed us to keep them.
"We'll fill them up pretty quickly."
   She spent an hour on the phone with Duane and Rita; they were hot on the
trail for getting the next three seminars set up.
   She'd already talked with Ted about the fulfillment center.  "They've
got the shield permissions for all the storage spaces, so they can get
whatever they need.  Eileen, you and he need to do a quick get-together to
decide how to keep your inventory database up to date."
   No problem with that; thirty seconds and he was up and running.  He knew
databases and that pretty dayum good!
   We'd pretty much ignored the emails last week so got caught up.  What
with selling off completely all but three of the businesses (Yeah!), there
were only six sets of statistics left -- three from the sold ones we'd
financed and the three we still had yet to sell.  Well, that was BB's hat.
   She'd had several nibbles, mainly from the web site.  She put out ads in
the local papers as well as the Los Angeles Times Sunday edition.  Should
get some bites somewhere.
   We had a short meeting on seminar materials.  We made some guesstimates
on the quantity to order compared to the number attendees we'd expect. 
Liss spent some more time on the phone with the printer and ended up with a
list of quantity price breaks.
   Usually with inventory, you've got 20-30% per year carrying costs --
storage space, counting, moving, etc.  Ours actually was only a bit of time
every once in a while.  Cycle count?  We don't need no stinkin' cycle
count! Any of us could get a 100% accurate count, reconcile any differences
and get the data in the database in no more than 5 minutes.  Sure we
weren't gonna worry about someone pilfering!
   ------
   SEAN
   Dayum, another Clann Reynolds meeting night.  Seems we were spending
more time at those than we were putting in on ours.  On the other hand, we
handled most of our business pretty informally while everyone learned a lot
at the Reynolds'.
   Valerie got to be one of the first speakers.  "We got a *lot* of
suggestions for the name of the Moon Base.  Most people submitted several.
We grouped them into two obvious classes."
   The first group were take-offs on Bob, anything from Bob's Hope to
Bobolink Base to Reynolds' Rest.  The other group was a bit more formal; it
had suggestions such as New Haven, Selene City and Old Town.
   Valerie was fair, though, and had collected the five
most-often-submitted names in each group.  "Let's pare them down to one in
each group then vote between the two."
   Fair enough.  With over 200 people or spirits gathered, it was a
majority of the ones of us we knew of.  We did a "voice" vote and came up
with "Bob's Hope" (groan) and "Selene City."
   To Bob's obvious delight, we voted in "Selene City." We'd still come up
with alternate names for quite a while, I'd bet.  Big grin.
   Margie had updated the Skunk Works with the explorations we'd done
yesterday.  We had a *lot* of really happy campers getting happier all the
time.
   Apparently they'd decided to be brave and check out the accumulator at
one of the small places.  Yeh, there'd been a neat little graphic procedure
on how to check it out.  One of the new spirits had gotten elected, and
after they'd ensured the accumulator was entirely disconnected, he'd
"pushed the button."
   Fuck!  It still showed 25% charge after who knows for sure many tens of
thousands of years!  Some *dayum* good equipment there!
   The place was so far away from much of anything, they'd made another
project out of getting it up and operational.  At least they didn't have to
wait to get it warmed up; just peel off the overburden (15 minute's work),
set up their own shield and camouflage hologram and they had full physical
access.
   After polishing off the solar panels (some exotic alloy and embedded
circuitry), they'd gotten them up and merrily charging the accumulator.  It
was apparently pretty dayum efficient; they'd found another couple large
sets of panels scattered around the mountainside and had set them up, too.
The electrical engineer's SWAG was the accumulator would be fully charged
in a week; after all, it was summer with lots of sunshine.
   ------
   Tuesday morning, Duane and Rita told us they'd found three more seminar
venues: Seattle on August 12 for 2,000 attendees, Oakland on September 9
for 2,000 and Los Angeles (Convention Center) on September 23 for 2,500.
All righty, then!  Since we'd made over half a million on the first, the
question was: do we go for the gold?  We'd already sent them an additional
$200K which was more than they needed to lock in the dates.
   It didn't take much discussion.  We all voted for it.  Duane and Rita
were happy, we were happy and Geeser was happy.
   Fillmore had completed the seminar recording CDs and was sending them
out.  Of course, we got the balance for our Fulfillment Center.  More
goodies to sell on the web site!
   Melissa got on the phone with the printer and ordered 3,000 The Books
and 2,000 detail manuals.  CDs got an order for 3,000.  Since CE's printer
gave us a price break on a 6,000 order for the Admin Scale prompter cards,
she ordered them, too.  Those gave us decent price breaks.
   Yeh, we were gonna record the new seminars, too.  We'd have Melissa this
time, so none of us would work very hard.  Right.
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 7/19)
   We spent five hours going through the seminar slides and our speaker
notes.  With all our input as both speakers and observers, we tweaked in
several points, adjusted some timings, created a couple new slides and
edited several others.
   Now we all had a new set to practice.  Melissa was new to the whole
thing, but that didn't make much difference.  We went to work; fortunately
we had plenty of laptops.  With a sound shield around each of us, we could
talk as loudly as we wanted, flub and fuck up, practice phrasing, timing
and voice tones, giving examples and so on without anyone else caring.
   ------
   Our honoree for the evening was one of Margaret's sexy friends, the
frail lady with the walker who'd been at the wake and wedding -- and had
been casting a thoroughly lecherous eye on the Ceann!  We'd checked her out
pretty good a week ago.  She had a tiny bit of Talent, enough for a
possible enhancement, so we'd turned her over to the young-uns as a special
project.
   Carla Turner was in her late 70s and despite her severe arthritis, was
full a piss an' vinegar.  Widowed for several years, her three children
were scattered throughout the U.S.  but visited and called frequently.
   Since Margaret had died, she'd been a lot lonelier.  Since she had a
hard time getting around, she couldn't visit a whole lot, either.  Maybe we
could help with that.
   I'd given her a couple day's warning we were having her for dinner;
she'd arranged for one of her other friends to help her get bathed and
dressed.  Since she knew me best, I went over and pushed her back to OTL in
her wheelchair.
   Nice.  The young-uns had done a good job; she was expanded well beyond
her body, was ready to pop and was full of energy.  On the way to OTL, she
laughed, cackled about Sean's butt and gave several very nice compliments
about Bridget and Kate -- yeh, she wasn't at all averse to checking out
Kate and me a *lot* closer, either.  Margaret had really corrupted her!
   Since she'd been at the wedding, she knew about the Clann.  She wasn't
related, but it was no problemo!  Plenty of room in the Clann for another
nice lady.
   Everyone gave her a good welcome hug; Kate and BB made sure she got a
good feel of their boobs against her.  Marge was in full Little Person mode
and ensured Carla felt hers, too.  Hehehehe.
   It didn't hurt a bit when Sean whispered in her ear, "Well, Carla, are
you ready for us to have your way with you tonight?"
   Carla whispered back, "Beware!  Fifteen years ago I coulda taken you all
on.  Just 'cause the chassis's beat up a little doesn't mean the motor
ain't runnin' just fine.  Right now, it just needs an oil change and it'll
be up to full speed pretty quick!" Yeh, she could cackle just as well as
Margie.  Now, who had corrupted whom between these two?
   We had a nice chat for a while.  Margie kept eyeballing her and licking
her lips.  Hehehehe.
   Geeser checked her out thoroughly and claimed a spot on her lap.  Yeh,
she demanded petting; Carla was able to provide a satisfactory amount, so
she went to sleep.
   We talked about the Clann a bit.  Sean extended the invitation to adopt
her, and she took him up on it without a moment's hesitation.
   BB grinned at her and said, "Now since you're Clann, we won't have to
kill you after we show you a few things."
   Carla laughed right back at her.  "I'm sure there's been many a person
over the years wishing I were in the ground."
   To start, Kate gave her an injury energy bleed for a good forty-five
minutes.  It bled a *lot* of black energy off her joints; she felt it right
away and could actually pick up a book with her hands where she couldn't
even open them before.
   Margie asked her, "Cool, huh?  Wanna try something even neater?"
   Carla was more than willing, so BB told her, _"Hold onto your knickers,
then; the ride gets a lot wilder."_
   Her eyes got as big as the proverbial saucers.  Surprise!  Anyway, we
helped make a free spirit of her and drilled her in the basics.  After
that, she wasn't really surprised to learn one of the young-un teams would
be training her more.  _"I figured they were special."_
   After she got calmed down a little, we glommed onto her and popped over
to the Rio for the buffet dinner.  She hadn't been there for years and she
loved it -- and the "ride" over.
   She picked up the language trick quickly, and we soon were jabbering
away in Irish/English.  We casually introduced her to Nana; we were all
crying at least a little bit by the time they'd finished hugging each
other.
   She'd grown up on a modern farm in Ohio; she and her brothers had shared
the work.  She'd been an expert automotive, truck and tractor mechanic by
necessity, but had managed to break away long enough to work her way
through four years of mechanical and electrical engineering.  Very nice.
   She'd been right in there with the personal computer revolution and had
spent most of her working life as a design engineer for custom
manufacturing machinery.  Yow; gotta get her and Roy together; they'd have
some gab fests!
   She'd had her own PC for years after she'd retired, and it had been only
the last couple years she couldn't use it much because of her arthritis. 
She told us, "I can already tell I'll be using the keyboard again pretty
quickly.  I can feel the flexibility and strength coming back more every
minute."
   Well, she sure could hold and manipulate a knife and fork now.  She
packed away a good-sized steak, potatoes and helped us demolish the rest of
the buffet.  She might have been weak before, but she was sure making up
for lost time now.
   Speaking of making up for lost time, from the sounds we heard later from
the honoring room, she was claiming a lot of accrued interest, too.  Dayum
good thing Sean was in good shape!
   We showed her around Selene City and the pilot Earth facility project.
Good thing she wasn't there physically; she drooled over everything and
went out the top in the manufacturing area.  _"Now that's a fabricator! 
Just from a quick look, it can take raw rock or ore in and shove out
finished parts.  Dayum!"_
   I'd say the Skunk Works just got another happy camper on staff.
   We came back to OTL.  Her body was rested up some so she and Margie
spent several hours making up for 16 months lost time.
   Chapter 3
   SEAN (Thursday 7/20)
   We spent a solid three hours practicing our seminar presentations.  Each
of us kept working on every aspect, from how often to toss our hats out
over the audience (we put in an Irishman's drunken hat from one of us at
least once a seminar) to the speed, phrasing and tonality of going over a
key point.
   When to ask a question, when to ask a rhetorical question and when to
throw out that bag of M&Ms.  All grist for the practice mill.  After all,
it was our main source of income now.
   Looked as if the N&Bs had found another Tavern.  They'd zeroed in on a
location in Santa Clarita (just north of Los Angeles) in a fairly new
community.  Right next door was a small hotel (200 rooms) which was going
under because it had been so mis-managed.  Hmm.
   We spent most of the afternoon tearing the hotel books apart.  No
hanky-panky in them, just piss-poor cash flow.  We Cullen Enterprises folk
popped up and physically inspected the place for a couple more hours.  Of
course, we could find every outpoint in the physical plant, even the
leaking pipe in the wall behind the dining-room bar.  Everything went on
the list for negotiation.
   We took the current owners out to dinner and mainly discussed how they'd
been promoting the place.  What they'd done wasn't too bad, actually, but
way too little.  They'd been relying on the sign and location alone to
bring in guests.  Sorry, not enough for this location.
   Being mainly a young-family community with a small industrial base, it
really didn't attract a lot of travelers.  No conventions, no sports arena,
just a nice place to live.
   Well, one thing the hotel had was a good-sized hall.  It could be used
as a dance, banquet or meeting room since it could hold well over 500
people easily.  Seating for 300 or so for a banquet could make a difference
in income.
   Yeh, since Cullen Enterprises had 60% of Cullen Hotels, it'd mainly be
our decision.  Their asking price was just over reasonable, and they were
tired of bleeding cash.  Something to discuss tonight with the N&Bs.
   Back at OTL, we survived ankle-muggings by the resident guard cat (she'd
smother you with lovin') long enough to get settled in front of the
television for a chick-flick.  Dayum, the ladies dug down deep into my
archives and pulled out "The Shop Around the Corner" -- the 1940 one with
James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan [American actress, not Irish].
   It was really fun and really well done.  Marge announced, "We've also
found 'In the Good Old Summertime,' which is scheduled for tomorrow and of
course, we'll do 'You've Got Mail' again."
   Argh.  Guessed I could survive.
   We had a middle-of-the-night meeting with the N&Bs.  They'd thoroughly
investigated the restaurant and had come to much the same conclusion as we
had -- decent location, decent facilities and bad management.  Actually, it
couldn't even be called "bad," since it wasn't even up to that level.
   The price they wanted was way too high, so we spent an hour planning out
the negotiation strategy.  Of course they weren't gonna tell them their
brother's company was seriously interested in the hotel next door.
   Enough business for now!  Marge gave us a quick tour of the SW office in
the JRD building.  It was pretty much set up now so it was actually
operational.  Marge told us, "We've got about a hundred people who 'come
in' every day as teleport-commuters and another hundred who work from home
or are at one of the alien facilities."
   They'd gotten the outpost in Colorado cleaned up and powered up.  A
couple engineers had fitted some custom rims and wheels on the vehicle in
the garage and were tinkering with it.  Seems it ran on a combination of an
accumulator, solar panels built into the roof and what Marge called a
nuclear battery.
   Marge said, "It works from the heat of radioactive decay; after a couple
hundred thousand years, it was pretty worn down.  One of the engineers did
some calculations then replaced the radioactive material with 'fresh'
stuff. Now it can put out something like 100 kilowatts.  That'll light a
few bulbs."
   George had been hovering around the computer with his team.  They'd
dusted everything off -- several times -- checked and cleaned all the
connectors and everything they could think of before they smoke-tested it.
The test was scheduled for tomorrow.
   Oh, yeh.  The linguist and a couple of others studying the books had
started two two-way dictionaries.  A lot of the stuff they could read right
off from the conversational-language books, but the technical books were
actually a bit harder.
   Marge told us, "The constructs are fairly simple, but once you get out
of the normal every-day stuff like how to water the grass in Central Park,
it gets pretty hairy.  It's mainly vocabulary; we've got an ongoing call
out to the ones of us who remember the language and were in the technical
field.  There's a lot of background we've gotta build up.  Fortunately,
it's just a matter of time; the textbooks are all there, we've just gotta
find the right sequence to study them."
   They weren't planning on translating a whole lot, mainly getting people
to learn the language.  The memories people had of the actual language
sounds were somewhat vague, so they weren't too concerned about speaking it
-- yet.
   We took a virtual tour of Selene City.  It was up to 0 degrees and about
10 psi.  Still a little brisk to check it out in a kilt!  They'd found fans
in most of the air ducts so they'd powered them up and opened all the doors
everywhere so the (relatively) warm air could get in.
   A team of about 10 spirits had spent a shift tracing down any ice in
pipes or containers.  Not much at all; the main water lines had been
drained.  There were several hundred pipes they'd identified which had been
sealed off between valves; the liquid had frozen and expanded and had burst
several of the pipes.  Good thing we had some plumbers on staff!
   There was no open water; it had either evaporated before the temperature
got below freezing or had simply sublimed into the atmosphere over the
years.  They'd identified several swimming pools and the attendant
facilities.  Of course, they were empty.
   Marge told us, "From what we've been finding, we're SWAGing they had
artificial gravity.  Otherwise, the diving boards would have been higher
and the walls higher in the pool.  There's lots of other indicators the
gravity was closer to Earth's, such as the amount and strength of girders,
floors and the like."
   Exciting times.  Once the temperature got up enough and they'd learned
enough of the languages to read the books, they were willing to power up
some more equipment.
   The small matter receivers in the power plants had worked just fine to
port in some Sun matter; they were getting a lot of attention.  The big one
(size of a New York City block) was getting a lot of attention, too.  It
had massive power leads directly from the fusion reactor; everything
indicated it used a *lot* of power.  The SWAG was it both sent and
received.
   Marge said, "Once we crack the language better, we'll find out.  Several
of us are betting it's a factor of distance they're porting to and from. 
If those itty-bitty ones in the power plants can move that much mass 93
million miles, there's probably some target points *really* far away.
   "On the other hand, it could be a logarithmic, exponential or other
factor involved besides being linear.  Could be it has to be that big to
get stuff to and from some of the facilities around Jupiter or Pluto.  We
shall see."
   ------
   EILEEN
   Geeser got us up bright and early at our usual 7:00.  She was pretty
plainly thinking, _"You guys didn't even move all night.  I worked guarding
the place.  I'm hungry, so feed me!"_
   Yeh, yeh, yeh.  BB turned her a hideous blue with crimson blotches
topped with an orange lion's mane.  She looked like one of the stuffed
animals we'd seen in some of the stores.  Hope she doesn't turn out to be
another Barney!
   Sean told us, "We've got an easy three weeks before we head to Seattle.
As far as I'm concerned, you've all got everything down pat.  So, every
couple days, let's do a little drilling and call it good for now.  The week
before the seminar, we'll pick it up a little just to be sure, but in the
meantime, I'm sure we can find other things to do."
   Yeh.  From the look on his face, "other things" seemed to involve nekkid
bodies, furs and the Custom Cloud Cushions.
   Tavern night was going to be business casual so we didn't really have
any preps to do for it.  We still had three businesses we directly owned
and three we were financing, so we split up and did our visits.
   Things were running along just fine.  The managers in the for-sale ones
knew we were going to sell, but they were still doing their duties
thoroughly.  Might have been something to do with the fact Sean was
offering a nice bonus if things were in good shape when we did sell.
   We weren't in any hurry and met for lunch in San Francisco at the
Fisherman's Wharf.  Good stuff!  We managed a seat by the window and
watched the wildlife outside the window while we scarfed down scallops,
shrimp and fresh fish (couldn't pronounce the name, but it was good).
   Of course we dragged Sean into the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop.  Isn't
chocolate supposed to enhance the female sexual drive?  We hadn't been very
demanding of him recently; was something wrong?  Grin.
   We spent a couple hours on lunch and wandering up and down the
Embarcadero just looking at the sights.  By now, we all pretty much ticked
off pluspoints and outpoints while looking at a business.  We found several
interesting sight-attractors which we filed away for future reference in
the Arms dining room and the Tavern(s).  God gave us eyes, so plagiarize,
right?
   We finished up the last two business visits by 4:30, dropped the bodies
at OTL and popped over to the Colorado outpost.  Margie had told us,
"George is gonna smoke test the computer there."
   Heh.  Seems like it was gonna be quite a show, be it good, bad or
indifferent.  George and three of his (new) computer cronies were giving
things a final checkout while there were probably 50 others of us _looking_
over their shoulders.  No elbow-nudging, please!
   George introduced Silvia Connor, the Lead Linguist, "We've found
primers, tutorials and other stuff tucked away here and there.  Silvia
remembers using these things, so we dragged her along."
   Silvia was really cute.  She was a linguist; was she a cunning linguist?
   She told us, "Hopefully this'll be straightforward to start with. 
There's lots of different modes they operate in from beginner to advanced
expert.  There's voice recognition -- we expected that -- but it's not
required to start with.  The manual inputs are similar to keyboards and
mice and it's a graphical user interface.  I won't get into the Windows vs.
Mac vs.  Linux interface wars; suffice it to say it's something we can
understand."
   George said, "The input devices are for the alien's three fingers and a
thumb so we can probably get by for a while.  Silvia thinks the keyboard
has a Dvorak arrangement where the most frequently-used keys are in the
optimum locations.  We shall see."
   Okay!  George plugged in the power cords and waited -- there were still
individual power switches on several components.  So far, so good; no smoke
yet.
   Power to the monitor -- no smoke.  The monitor immediately displayed a
small amount of recognizable text.  George announced, "It says, 'No input
signal.' To be expected."
   He powered on what seemed to be a printer, some speakers and other
peripherals.  He said, "There's a wireless network in there.  Probably
won't get much; not too many systems on line."
   Time for the biggie.  Everyone physically present upped the sensitivity
on their body shields then George pushed the button for the main chassis.
No smoke!
   The monitor immediately sprang to life with a background picture (some
greenish mountains) and maybe a dozen icons.  George and Silvia studied it
for a moment; Silvia said, "I'd guess it's in a middle user mode.  Not
quite a power user but not absolute beginner, either.  Let's see if we can
shift to beginner mode."
   She glanced at some notes she had, moved the cursor around some menus
then clicked.  The monitor had quite a different look now.  Silvia pointed
to a small piece of text in one corner and said, "'Learning Mode Level 1.'
Computer for Dummies -- that's us!"
   The gang looked at every icon and bit of text.  They checked a couple
books and notes, made notes, and decided what everything meant.  At least,
they took a SWAG.
   George announced to us lookie-loos, "Nothing much to see for a while,
I'm afraid.  We're gonna do the tutorials, scope things out and see what
we've got.  Slow and easy; probably be pretty boring.  Hint.  Hint."
   Well, we could take a hint.  Everyone _applauded_ them for several
seconds then blinked off somewhere else.
   We got on our casuals for Tavern Night.  Liam and Maeve were to meet us
there as guests of honor then come back to OTL with us for the rest of the
evening (and probably the night!).
   Lots of fun and games.  We had a real good crowd waiting for the
entertainment.  Liam and Maeve didn't mind being dragged up on stage; they
already knew a lot of the songs we were planning on doing.
   They did good.  The Irishman's drunken hat routine went over great, as
always.  Didn't wanna do it every Friday, though, it would get old.
   We didn't require them keep up with us on the dancing; even with their
bodies in really good shape right now, they were quite out of practice. 
They did get their turn in the Bridget-spinning, though!
   We took off earlier than usual for our evening with them.  Back home, we
got even more casually-dressed and broke out the Irish whiskey and beer
while we lazed around the den.
   Neither of them turned a hair when a fluffy green Geeser jumped up and
demanded attention.  _"You've left me alone all day.  Now you're gonna make
up for it!"_
   Geeser didn't mind at all sticking her head in their crotches.  Then
again, none of us would be minding it either in a little while.
   They were doing great.  They were handling some calls on the Ceann line,
working with the Skunk Works a good deal and keeping tabs on Carmel at JRD.
Maeve said, "She's doing a lot better there.  She's happy *all* the time
now.
   They'd been drafted as an enhancement team, too, and had done thirty
spirits so far.  Liam said, "Old and young from all backgrounds.  They each
do just fine."
   Liam told us of their trip to Security Plus in Oakland with Bob and Kat.
Maeve chimed in, too.  She told us, "The old fart found his original bottle
stash in the office.  The next owners must have forgotten about it, because
there were still half a dozen bottles left.  I'm not quite sure how he got
through lunch."
   We talked about some of their earlier experiences in their lives and how
they'd started up Security Plus some forty years ago.  We were well aware
of startup pains from Sean, so we knew pretty much what they went through.
   Liam said, "We'd do it a bit differently now.  First, we'd do your
seminar and study all the manuals.  We did so many things badly it was a
wonder we survived.  Back then, there wasn't really much information for a
small entrepreneur; we had to wing it a lot."
   We winged it a lot later.  Liam proved himself to be in quite good
condition -- we'd learned by now how to make the guys last a long time
while still getting lots of jollies ourselves.
   We girls mobbed Maeve, too.  Sean hadn't quite worn her out so we
introduced her to the difference between male and female bodies.  Hehehehe.
She didn't mind at all even if this was her first experience.
   In the morning, she told us, "Definitely an experience.  Maybe Liam and
I will start enticing some sweet thangs home with us!" We'd corrupted her!
Hehehehe.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 7/23)
   Geeser prodded us awake right at 7:00; gotta have a _talk_ with that cat
about the concept of weekend sleep-ins!  Maybe she could learn to get her
own breakfast?  Stranger things have happened.
   Maeve gave her a set of pink leopard spots on a fluorescent orange
background before we popped up to Sausalito (north of San Francisco across
the bridge) for our breakfast.
   After Liam and Mauve took off (they had three enhancement training
sessions), we popped back home and got to work.
   We got the adult N&Bs (plus Melissa) together and made up our formal
purchase proposals for the hotel and restaurant in Santa Clarita.  Cullen
Hotels made a cash offer for the hotel for $650,000 which was 75% of what
they were asking.  The N&Bs made an offer for the restaurant for $500,000;
the current owners would carry back the note after a $200,000 cash down
payment.
   Yep, the N&Bs had it.  They actually had enough to pay cash, but wanted
to build up credit.  About six months ago, they'd formed N&B Enterprises as
a company and had moved the Pasadena Tavern ownership into it.  That gave
them a lot more protection; they made the offer in the company's name.
   We hand-delivered them to the hotel and restaurant agents.  We'll see
what happens.  We were willing to do some serious haggling, but not much.
   Melissa went over the Altadena Arms status with us.  "Kate should look
over the balance sheet and income statement too, but I think it's doing
fine."
   The occupancy was steadily rising; it was about 85% (weekly average)
right then.  The dining room had shown the most improvement.
   We descended en masse on Eavan who took us on a tour.  "The other
managers and I got together and made several inspections.  The physical
plant is in good shape; keeping up the maintenance and repairs has really
helped.  We'll need a couple renos in the kitchen with a couple new stoves
and reefers in the next several months, but we think the cash flow will
handle it easily."
   The dining room occupancy was running an average of 60% (weekly), with
around 98% average for Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.  The average
wait in the queue during the evening was fifteen minutes, which wasn't bad
at all.
   The gross income from the dining room had doubled.  Even after the
higher expenses for a couple more waiters and a sous-chef on the evenings
and weekends, the profit from it was still up about 30%.  Not too bad.
   We checked over the managers' proposal for renos, enhancements and the
like.  They'd thought everything out really well, had a complete cost
breakdown and had a good schedule.  Total cost was around $100,000 over a
couple months.
   We Cullen Hotels people had a quick huddle and approved the proposal. 
Kate told her, "Do it.  Of course, we don't have to tell you to keep really
good accounting records.  We'll give you a formal approval in writing with
a temporary authorization of $10,000 per check to the bank for you
managers. Good on you all!"
   Melissa got a vague look while she remotely made up the letters at OTL.
We filled in the time by looking over the old pictures in the dining room
waiting area.  It was really interesting to watch this little portion of
Altadena change from foothill land to small city to the busy little town we
now knew.
   Yeh, most of us recalled lots of places and times like that.  In one
lifetime, there was nothing but open land.  Then, in the next a couple
hundred years later, it was a good-sized city.  On the converse, we
remembered cities decaying off or being torn down and the land going back
to the wild.  It works both ways.
   Melissa got the letters back; I signed them and passed them over to
Eavan.  I asked her, "How much longer you gonna be here?  Betcha you've got
an offer from the Skunk Works you're thinking about."
   She laughed and told me, "Don't have to be a mind reader for that.  I've
got a firm $170,000 a year offer with bonuses and profit-sharing on the
table.  I'll probably go for it.  With Selene City heating up, so to speak,
we'll have plenty of action.
   "There's a lot of us engineer types studying the languages.  As fast as
Silvia Connor, the Lead Linguist, has something in the dictionaries, we
work on it.  Hell, they've got word processors up with the right fonts,
right-to left parsing and the works.  I'm gonna ask Silvia for some private
lessons; I need to get educated as fast as I can."
   From the looks on my ladies faces, they too were thinking of private
lessons with Silvia.  Well, they were the social secretaries.  Nothing in
the customs prohibited an outside-the-Clann honoring, for sure!  She was a
right fine lady in my eyes, too.
   Anyway, Eavan gave us notice.  I told her, "Write up your secrets on how
you handle this place.  Where the bodies are buried and all that.  It's in
our detail manual number 5."
   She was familiar with it in principle.  The manager's office always had
a full set of manuals and each was required to study at least The Book.  If
they did all of the manuals, they got a 15% raise in base salary.
   We tried out the dining room for lunch.  Eileen told John and Maura,
"Eat up.  We'll have dinner yet, but you're gonna need all your strength
tonight."
   After lunch and giving Eavan a good hug, we broke up into our respective
groups and did our own things.
   We headed back to OTL, abused Geeser a bit, then checked in on George
and Silvia's group.  They were hard at it, with about 60 spirits _looking_
on.  Guess George's hint yesterday hadn't stuck too hard.
   Well, they had some interesting music coming from the speakers.  Sounded
halfway between the old atonal Celtic stuff and modern classical (is that
an oxymoron?).  They had a completely different screen up and a sign on a
whiteboard, "Now in Learning Mode Level 2." Hopefully that was up from a
rank beginner.
   We watched for a half hour.  It was as exciting as watching Marge write
equations on the board.  Hehehehe.
   We bopped around to other outposts and sites.  There were three other
teams revamping outposts and a 10-person team working on a large complex in
the middle of the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
   From the air, it looked like plain, flat, dry desert sediment, but
they'd dug off a couple hundred feet of sediment and such and had set up
camouflage and shielding.  Being a couple hundred miles from pretty much
anywhere and at least 20 miles from the nearest real road, the only easy
way to get in would be by air -- or teleport -- for now.
   This complex had a fusion reactor.  Since it was already at "normal"
temperature, they were studying the books and instructions on how to bring
it up.  Seems they needed deuterium and tritium to start out.
   No problem.  One engineer had set up a filter in the mid-Pacific and had
filled the deuterium tanks with "high octane" in an hour.  The tritium took
only a bit longer; they didn't need much to start.
   From what they'd discovered, it required the tritium only to start up.
Then, the reactor shifted to using deuterium-only in another reaction.
   Well, the sucker was big enough at a couple hundred meters a side --
with a proportionally sized containment.  Almost everything was underground
(the original ground), and it was a couple kilometers from the complex
itself.
   There was a "standard" thermionic converter a couple hundred meters from
the fusion reactor.  It was used to bootstrap the fusion reactor and to
supply housekeeping power to the complex.  Once the fusion reactor was up,
it supplied something like a hundred times the power.  Guess they were
gonna use some juice on something.  Lots of interesting stuff for the
engineers to explore.
   Okay.  We were patient.  I just wanted to pour some of the sediment
laying around in abundance in one end and get a 1,000-mile-to-the-gallon
all-weather, all-terrain vehicle out the other end.  Sounded reasonable to
me.
   Aha!  BB got a call from someone interested in one of our businesses. 
We popped back to OTL, settled in and goofed off while she returned the
call.  We didn't eavesdrop -- much.  She went over the basics for a couple
minutes then arranged to meet them Monday at the business with our
bookkeeper (Kate).
   We applauded her when she was off the phone.  She told us, "A couple. 
They went to your seminar in Pasadena, got on the web site and found our
ad. They're interested."
   Yes!  We're gonna do it!
   Maura and John popped in around 4:30 for their night.  Teresa had made
reservations in Halifax (Nova Scotia) for dinner, so off we went.
   We were in plenty of time.  We checked in then strolled up and down
Lower Water Street for a half hour and watched the boats run up and down
Halifax Harbour.  [Proper name with United Kingdom spelling!]
   Dinner was great.  Seafood and steak goes a long ways towards building
energy.  My ladies got John in the middle of them and pushed Maura and me
together around the other side of the table.  They proceeded to torment him
unmercifully.
   Of course the ladies were dressed to stop hearts in mid-beat.  They'd
either done some serious shopping or had taken Marge's hologram bulletin to
heart -- or both -- but their dresses made men run around in circles and
howl at the stars and women either pant with desire or glare in anger.
   With our garble shield up, we yakked away in Irish.  We agreed we didn't
expect to hear from the Santa Clarita realtors much before next Wednesday
but put it on the tickler calendar.  If either fell through, there were
still others on the market.
   The adult N&Bs had trained the Pasadena Tavern managers up so they were
running the show almost completely.  Teresa had found a college student
(one of us) to do the daily and weekly bookkeeping; she and Maura would
review them every two weeks and do the monthlies along with her.
   That left the N&Bs almost completely out of the daily operations so they
had the time to concentrate on starting up the new place whenever they got
it.
   John said, "It also lets us start studying the two new languages. 
Besides the obvious technical stuff, there's probably a lot of literature
buried up there.  We're really interested to see what it's all about."
   Despite nipples and bosoms almost escaping at the most awkward times
(while John or I were taking a drink), we managed to get through dinner. 
More good talk.
   Melissa had slipped into their relationship like a really old friend. 
She was a 10% owner in N&B Enterprises and was working right along with
them.  Maura told us, "She's got it rough.  The young-uns tend to gang up
on her every once in a while.  They claim it's required for their
education. Right."
   The young-uns' SOs had lots of freedom during the summer so they were
spending a lot of time together.  They were handling something like ten
orders a day from the Cullen Enterprises web site, doing enhancement
training, genealogy research with Rosheen and, in general, working their
fannies off.
   Good on 'em!  Must be the uncle's influence, right?
   After dinner, we took a short stroll through the harbor-side streets and
watched the seagulls get their dinner.  The Canadians we met (quite a few
were out and about) seemed enthralled with the ladies and their clothes.
   We chatted amiably with several.  It was a breezy night and a bit cool,
so certain parts of the ladies' upper anatomies were very alert. 
Conversation got a little, em, distracted when the breeze almost blew some
dresses open.  Fortunately, the upstanding parts caught them in time.
   Two of the couples had a nice bit of Talent, so we tagged and listed
them.  Why not branch out into Canada?  Even though they tend to have an
odd accent, that doesn't make them bad people, right?  Grin.
   Marge made a note to see how the enhancement lists were constructed and
made available.  Not that it was the Skunk Works' business, but with the
Clann expansion going at the rate it was, every bit of organization would
help.
   We finally popped back to OTL.  Maura had found another chick flick, so
we had a leisurely cuddle-and-snog while laughing at the poor guy getting
blindsided every few minutes by his love interest.  Not that anything like
that ever happens to John or me.
   Geeser didn't get any snogging but got plenty of lap time with both John
and Maura.  She had a bit of trouble getting to John, who had four women
draped around him, but ended up curled possessively around an ankle for a
half hour.  Maura grinned at him and asked, "Got another conquest, John? 
Caden's and Connor's three young ladies and Melissa aren't enough new young
stuff?"
   John grinned at me and announced, "When you've got it, you've got it.  I
guess Sean's rubbed off on Patrick and me; girls just seem to flock
around."
   He fought bravely but ended up crying uncle from beneath a pile of
female bodies.  Even Geeser swatted his ankles a few times for being so
crude.  As for me, I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking
about.
   I told Maura, "Tonight, you're all mine.  The girls will have to be
satisfied with John."
   She purred against me and said, "Will you abuse me terribly?  Make me
cry and beg for mercy?  Take me on a Journey with no end?  I hope I hope I
hope!"
   Yes to all.  She had her delicious Maura smell in full bloom, and we
savored each other for hours.
   I guess John survived because no one mentioned starting any funeral
arrangements when we met at the facility on Venus to take a tour.  If a
spirit could look a bit pussy-whipped, though, it was him.
   The Venus facility was a huge site.  It had tremendous, heavy
containment domes against the Venusian atmosphere and was about 250 degrees
Fahrenheit inside with a couple hundred pounds pressure.  Lots of carbon
dioxide.  There were a couple engineers flitting around checking things
out.
   They told us, _"It's all insulated extremely well.  After however many
thousands of years, there's still a 500-degree Fahrenheit temperature
difference across the containment.  It's Selene City in reverse."_
   They were slowly cooling the interior atmosphere down with
Kate-_touches_.  They were extremely pleased to meet the person who'd
thought of the idea.
   Kate gave them a cute spirit-blush and told them, _"Ya'll come meet me
in person and I'll thank you personally for your kind thoughts."_ Guess our
innocent wasn't so innocent any more -- that's what happens when you hang
out with Nana.
   The engineers were from the Clann Redding.  One told us, _"Ceann Canavan
is tearing up the place.  We're up to 75 spirits now and are helping start
five other Clanns within a 20-mile radius.  Things are happening!"_
   They had no real idea what the complex there on Venus did.  It appeared
to do manufacturing or mining of some sort but what kind, they had no real
idea.  On the other hand, they'd only been nosing around a couple days and
had been mainly involved in ensuring the containment was tight (it was) and
starting the atmosphere recovery.  They told us it would still be several
weeks before it was a shirt-sleeve environment.  Oh, well.  Another place
to wait on.
   About that time, Maura thumped my ribs back at OTL and demanded more
lovin'.  We made our hasty goodbyes to the engineers and popped back home
to attempt to satisfy the hefty appetites awaiting us.
   ------
   EILEEN{br) (Sunday 7/23)
   We gave John some mercy.  Not much, but some.  He was up to a decent
level with all the practice he'd had over the years, so he sure wasn't a
single-shot guy.
   We had a nice breakfast in Redding; one of the engineers last night had
suggested a quaint little place near Bill and Caitlin's place.  It worked
out well even if we had the waitress bouncing around to avoid our cutlery.
   ------
   It was no surprise to us girls when Patrick and Teresa showed up on our
doorstep in the evening.  Time for another nice dinner, chick flick and
lotsa lovin'!
   We found a steak house in Dallas -- no surprise; there seemed to be one
every other business on Main Street near Deep Ellum.  Even though we
encouraged the guys to order the 72-ounce steak, they settled for mere
16-ounce filet mignon.  Wimps!
   Teresa was so bad!  The poor waiter popped a good one every time he got
near her.  She appeared oblivious to the quality and quantity of cleavage
she was displaying.  Of course, the rest of us wimmin took that as a
challenge!
   Teresa had found YACF (Yet Another Chick Flick) so we had a decent time
watching it and cuddling.  Geeser got her licks in on her -- we'd
"forgotten" to warn Teresa about her sandpaper tongue.  Hehehehe.
   We unanimously decided the movie went into our "seen once; beware"
archive.  It was pretty bad as a movie.  Guess we can't win them all.
   Patrick put up a good show.  He managed to pay us all good attention all
at once.  He was nicely yummy!
   ------
   SEAN (Monday 7/24)
   BB and Kate finished up their breakfasts post-haste and headed off to
the Technical Reference bookshop to meet the couple interested in buying
the place.  The rest of us finished up a bit later and popped back to OTL.
   Patrick, Teresa and the rest of us kicked back and _peeked_ at the
proceedings.  The couple had brought both sets of parents along.  The
parents were looking at financing the sale themselves and being silent
partners.
   Neither BB nor Kate nor the manager blinked an eye.  There was just
enough room for the nine of them to gather in the office and look over
things.
   The parents had some entrepreneurial experience (confirmed with a quick
gestalt) because they asked all the right questions.  The manager showed
them the write up of vendor contacts (with notes on their peculiarities),
maintenance services (fire extinguishers, plumber, landlord) and how the
customer promotional mailing list worked.
   Between the manager and Kate, they pumped out a current income statement
and balance sheet and were able to show where every line came from.  Lots
of questions but lots of immediate, correct answers, too.
   The place was nicely arranged.  The shop specialized in mathematics and
geology.  I'd thought it was an interesting combination, and it had worked
well for several years already.  It handled both new and used books,
calculators, videos (CDs and DVDs) and other neat paraphernalia.  Sorry, no
drilling rigs or wildcatting outfits.
   Between the three of them (the manager had just been enhanced, so that
helped), they gave a good, in-depth presentation.  No spins, no bull-shit,
just the facts, ma'am.
   After an hour and a half, BB started closing the sale.  She suggested
they each spend several hours a day for the next week in the store
observing the operations and how things worked.  "I remember you two from
the seminar.  Have you studied The Book and gotten into any of the detail
manuals?"
   The couple had started in the Sunday after the seminar on July 8 and had
showed it to their parents two days later.  The parents immediately got
interested, and the families had ended up ordering two more The Books and
two sets of detail manuals from the web site.  They were all in the throes
of studying.
   They were planning on the couple going full-time with one or the other
of the parents taking turns every couple days.  The manager showed them the
customer statistics over the week and weekend; they immediately decided
they could have four of them on Saturday, two of the parents on Sunday and
the couple could have Sunday off.  Worked for me.  Grin.
   All of the Cullen Enterprise folk (and the manager) could tell already
they were gonna do it; they just had to convince themselves intellectually
they could do it.
   The manager told them, "I would have bought it myself, but I don't have
the drive to do it.  From day one, I saw Sean drive himself and the
business.  We started the place up from scratch; Sean trained me and two
others and we've been here ever since.  We might move on; I've got a girl
friend in Santa Clarita who's been hinting we take over her uncle's
business.  I'm a decent manager but a poor entrepreneur."
   We at OTL figured it was worth a grand bonus just for that statement. 
It handled their unasked question perfectly.
   Anyway, they agreed on a schedule for visits.  BB pointed out it was
still on the market; they got a bit more determined to get the place before
someone else.  Good on her!
   ------
   Clann Reynolds meeting time rolled right up.  At 7:45, we _peeked_ and
decided to leave our bodies home this time unless they were needed (Marge
might have to do a speech or something).
   When we popped over at 8:00, there were 60 bodies and over a hundred
spirits _looking_ on.  Good thing Bob could handle a meeting!
   Kathleen got her digs in first; rank has its privileges.  "There's been
a Clanns' Council formed and might be set up as a non-profit.  With about
10 Clanns operational now, we elected our Mr.  Bob to be Ceann Mor."
   She explained the meaning of "Mor" and noted, "I'm sure it won't go to
his head.  If it does, we've got at least 50 women more than willing to
show him the error of his ways -- plus a set of very-sharp Margaret
McLennan teeth."
   Marge broadcast a light, _"Who?  Me?"_ and the two of them got a good
chuckle.
   Bob spoke a little on the expansion, "We're growing.  There's around
1,500 ones of us in various stages of training, and that number is gonna
increase dramatically as more Clanns start forming and doing their own
training.
   "That brings the security issue up.  Until we've got *lots* of members
and a united, viable group protection, we've need to be very careful of our
security.  Witch hunts still happen."
   Evin talked with us about what to do if one of us was "picked up" or
kidnapped.  "If they're hostile, you'll probably know it right away. 
Remember the CIA has no domestic power -- supposedly.  We might run into
local police, FBI or Homeland Security thinking we're terrorists or just
wanting to interrogate someone in their spare time.
   "If you've got hostiles, either domestic or foreign, simply don't let
them take you.  We all know how to daze and confuse, so just do it.  We'll
have the Krav Maga up and available Real Soon Now; in the meantime, do
anything necessary to prevent your capture.
   "Government agencies are a slightly different story since they're a bit
more legal.  Don't let them harm you physically, don't eat or drink
anything, keep your mouth shut and demand your lawyer.  Here in Southern
California, that's me.  Part of the new Clann setup is to have a lawyer
licensed in the state be known to everyone.
   "Minors, demand your parents be present for questioning as well as your
lawyers.  Keep your mouth shut.  Admit nothing.
   "Everyone, if they try the holding cell with nasty people, defend
yourselves as needed.  You can and should jimmy any surveillance equipment
so there's the least amount 'on record.'
   "Your ultimate defense is porting your body out of there, of course. 
Attempt to daze and confuse while you do that so there's no real record or
recollection of *how* you got out of there.  It's not our responsibility to
explain how someone got out of jail -- or whatever they want to call it --
especially since it'll probably be unlawful to have you there in the first
place."
   Pat Derman mentioned, "Speaking of Krav Maga, we've got at least a dozen
who know it well being enhanced.  Give us a week or so and we'll see what
they think of teaching us."
   Mercy told us, "We expect to have the Skunk Works company chains set up
by next week.  Not too bad, it's only run us $50K in fees and bribes so
far."
   Ben Talbert gave the official word on the status of the various alien
facilities.  "Selene City is up to plus 40 degrees and 11 psi.  Probably a
bit too soon for any remaining ice to melt, so we'll just continue to inch
it up.  We've got at least half a dozen medical experts doing atmosphere
tests for bugs, microbes, spores and other nasty surprises.  We don't
really expect any, but better safe than having to run an emergency filter
routine on someone.
   "We've got a manufacturing or mining facility in the desert between here
and Las Vegas.  With a dozen engineers fluttering around, they expect to
fire up the fusion reactor there in the next several days.  Apparently
there's a set of graphical instructions for it like there was for the
thermionic converters.
   "And yes, we've found similar instructions at every facility.  Guess
they expected some non-techie types might have to do something about it.
   "Three very happy people have gotten the land vehicle going at the
Colorado outpost.  Fitting wheels and tires wasn't an issue, but they had
to put some padding on the seats.  Apparently that sucker will climb a
60-degree hill at 80 miles per hour with almost no help from a spirit
_touch_.
   "A couple people -- like the Cullens -- have checked out the facility on
Venus.  Needless to say, it's warm inside.  We've got the opposite
situation from Selene City; we've gotta depressurize and cool down.  Should
be fun to see what they were doing there.
   "Stuff further out around Jupiter and Pluto, etc., are plain cold. 
They're around -400 Fahrenheit which is getting down towards no molecular
motion at all.  Gonna be fun out there!"
   A baby body flew through the air, skidded along the table and slid to a
stop.  With his face scrunched against the table, George remarked, "Seems
someone wants me to say something."
   He popped up onto his feet and said, "Let's get Silvia up here!"
   We recognized Silvia even with ten people pushing her forward.  George
told her, "No reason to have stage fright, honey.  There's just a couple
hundred interested people here."
   He continued, "Silvia's responsible for getting an outpost computer up.
We blew out the dust, shot the power to it and there it was.  She was able
to get it into the lowest learning mode and we went from there.
   "Not a whole lot to report yet.  There's tons of logs, references, games
-- yes, games -- tutorials, educational programs and the like.
   "Almost the entire thing is solid-state and no moving parts except for
the keyboard.  We happened into the system status area and got lost for a
while.  Near as we can tell, that particular system is using only 5% of its
available storage.  There seems to be only a minor difference between what
we'd call a 'main' memory and the storage.  The thing is freakin' huge and
fast!
   "Anyway, we could read quite a bit of the stuff, thanks to Silvia.  At
first guess, the place was an observation outpost of some sort.  They were
keeping track of 'the wildlife.' Interesting way of putting it.
   "It immediately opens a whole area of investigation.  They didn't seem
to be raising or tending anything, just observing.  Were they caretakers?
Zookeepers?  Seemed to be only one kind of 'wildlife' they were really
interested in.
   "The fact there seems to be lots of educational and tutorial programs on
it should help us tremendously.  Just in the little bit we've been able to
decipher, there's a complete range of language tutorials and training from
baby talk on up.  There's sound to go along with it -- we think it both
talks and presents text and graphics.  We shall see.
   "In the next couple weeks, we plan on resurrecting as many of these
systems as we can.  Since there's several hundred outposts scattered
around, we should have enough to do some serious learning.  And you adults
thought you were done with school!  Ha!"
   He got some various "threats" on how sorry he'd be when some of the
women got done with him.  Yeh.  Sorry like Sheila Llanos was when the girls
got through with her.
   Things went from there.  Tons of people being enhanced, lots of Clanns
being formed and lots of learning getting done.  Guess we'd have to get in
line to get some lessons on one of those computers.
   After the meeting, we flitted back home and put the bodies to bed. 
After lots of cuddling and snogging, we put them to sleep and popped out
for some more exploring.
   We weren't the only ones checking out the various outposts and
facilities.  At each of them there were at least a dozen other spirits
"nosing" around.
   The outer system ones *were* cold.  Could keep beer cool for a long
time. Grin.
   We went the other way and checked the Venus facility.  The engineers
were cooling things down with _touches_ and had already dropped it about 50
degrees.
   We decided to go inwards a bit more and check out Mercury.  Em, not a
place for general sunbathing, for sure.  Maybe near the poles.
   Enough silliness; we popped back home.  Since they'd done so well at the
business earlier, we woke up BB and Kate and abused them for the rest of
the night.
   Chapter 4
   EILEEN (Tuesday 7/25)
   We're rolling!  We spent two hours drilling the seminar routines and
discussion scenarios and options.  Less than two weeks until the next one.
   Melissa had a chat with Rita and Duane at Fillmore.  They'd secured the
venues in all three places and were already promoting heavily.  Rita told
Melissa, "We've got a client portal set up.  Here's your User ID and
password."
   Liss wrote them down, and we jumped up to the web site portal.  After
entering the User ID and password, we got a page on the current Cullen
Enterprises statistics.
   There was a section for each seminar listing the promo quantity sent,
the number of registrations made and the number paid.  Duane told her,
"It's pretty much real-time.  It just queries our registration database
when you first open the page.  Click the Refresh button any time and you'll
update your page to the latest and greatest."
   Liss refreshed it, and the number of registrations for the Seattle
seminar jumped by two.  Cool, now we didn't have to bug each other for an
update.
   Each seminar had a graph of total reservations by day and a
speedometer-like gauge showing if they were on target for the expected
rate. It was right in the middle at "Normal."
   There was a link to the promotional and sign up page on the Fillmore
site.  The promo talked about the "overflow crowd" at the first seminar. 
Well, we'd overflowed the target but not the hall.  Acceptable truth,
right?
   They didn't need more money from us yet.  Rita said, "Your credit's
good, you've got a big deposit and things are running normally.  It's
lookin' good so far!"
   Yes!  We were right in the groove!
   Rita had spent a half-hour with Mona on the Cullen Enterprises web site,
so its promo was up to date, too.  Of course, the link to the Fillmore sign
up page was proximately displayed several times.
   Carmel McLennan showed up at 5:00.  We greeted her warmly, and Margie
got in several good snogs; most un-granddaughterly of her, I'd think. 
Grin.
   We took right off for dinner in New York City.  With our garble-shield
up and talking Irish, we were in good shape.
   Carmel was having a blast at JRD.  "Hell, I work twice as hard, half
again as long, and it's great!"
   She was getting information together for a possible common network and
financial reporting system (General Ledger?) for all the JRD companies so
they could just run the reports rather than merging each company's monthly
data.  The General Ledger account numbers were all different, the roll up
categories were different and the file formats were different.
   It took JRD almost a week of steady work each month to get all the data
converted and into one system so they could do meaningful reports.  With
the different accounting systems, the Income Statements and Balance Sheets
were different and weren't computed the same.  So, it was extremely
difficult to compare any two companies.
   Though she wasn't an accountant, she worked a lot to support the effort.
"I'm training three people to do the individual systems work at the
companies.  Aaron and Barbara are heading up the project and are training
ten accountant-types.  Plus, we're bringing in a consultant or so to
organize and advise."
   So far, she'd just been gathering information on the individual systems
at each company.  What hardware they were running, operating system
versions, GL system and version and a complete copy of the GL account map.
The consultants and the accountants would do the dirty work of recommending
a system (or a couple compatible ones for different sizes) plus creating
and mapping all the account maps.
   Kate ate it up, of course.  I followed for a while and Margie just
grinned.  Sean -- well, he knew the issues and at least sympathized.
   No, Carmel hadn't found a boyfriend yet.  Hope wasn't completely lost,
though.  Rosheen was busily working at getting her and several others
matched up.
   "I've had a couple fun overnighters and quickies.  Hell, it's more than
I've had the last five years.  No major sparks, just lots of fun and
fucking."
   Margie told her, "Well, we'll try to keep the trend going.  If you play
your cards right tonight, you just might get lucky again."
   Carmel laughed and said, "And you, young/old lady, are gonna be right in
there, right?  Do I take you on one by one or all together?"
   We said together, "Both!"
   And both she got.  Sean managed to survive for a couple hours, then each
of us girls got our shots.  Margie got hers first because she needed to do
more Skunk Works stuff.
   Dayum, Carmel was nice!  Lovey, sweet and hotter than a pistol.  I
wouldn't say she wore us out, but we knew we'd been laid, all right.
   Luckily, she was able to port her way back home in the morning.  She'd
get plenty of sympathy (not!) at work.
   We got our first batch of manuals from the printers.  Sic semper; our
now-expert Reynolds Construction crew and we got them into our storage
containers (lots of room now!), got them inventoried and the crew back home
in a half hour.  Sure beats lugging cartons around!
   With the expanded space, we didn't have to pack stuff in, either.  We
just put the cartons down just as they were on the pallets.  Nice and
simple.
   We did another all-hands quality control run for three hours.  Liss
found two typos (she's gonna get it from us *and* the N&Bs!), and Sean
found a couple awkward sentences.  They didn't count since they weren't
"mistakes."
   ------
   We got counter offers back from both places in Santa Clarita.  Not bad,
about half-way between the original and our offer.  The N&Bs zipped over
and we made up our own counter-offer.
   We upped our bid a couple percent and put in the list of repairs to be
made.  Yeh, there was a page and a half for each property.  If they'd
agreed to our bid, we'd have done the repairs ourselves -- Papa Sonora and
the Reynolds Construction crews were fast.
   Melissa took our offers back to the agents.  When she came back, she
told us, "They'll see if they can get something back to us by the weekend."
   Good enough for now.
   ------
   That night, we did our now-routine flits to various places.  Looked like
the desert facility was gonna get invaded in the next day or so.  They had
everything under control, so we didn't worry about it.
   Selene City was up to 60 degrees and full pressure.  They'd flooded the
entire place with ozone a couple times (kills nasty little critters) and
had the particle filtration on full-bore.
   Maybe in a day or so we could actually pop up there and feel what lunar
gravity was like.
   ------ SEAN (Thursday 7/26)
   The spirit bush telegraph told us about the fun and games scheduled for
the morning out in the desert.  Being both supportive and nosy, we popped
over in plenty of time for the action.
   We "bought" programs from a couple of the young-uns (payment to be
delivered later and in person.  They drove hard bargains.) and several
hundred of us kinda perched ourselves around the entire area.
   The Marines and Army folk did just fine.  They treated it as completely
routine, even if it was really hot by mid-morning.  The civilian geologists
loved it.  They took air samples, ran ground radar and echo soundings and
had a good old time.
   The Department of Home Security guys, on the other hand, seemed to take
it personally that there weren't a horde of terrorists experimenting with
their latest Weapons of Mass Destruction.  They were quite even-tempered,
though.  They were mad all the time they were there.
   The new Skunk Works security team and the resident engineers had ported
everything out, put back about 20 meters of the sediment they'd peeled off
before and had rigged up a high pressure atmosphere underneath.  To a
geologist and others, it was supposed to look like a natural formation.
   There was methane gas leaking up.  Methane's flammable, so we watched
several of the soldiers and two of the DHS guys struggle with their
nicotine addiction.
   Hah!  When the geologists drilled for a core sample, they "somehow"
managed to pick the thinnest, loosest part of the sediment.  When they
pulled the drill out, the atmosphere pressure below blew out like a geyser!
   Really neat.  There was dust everywhere; the geologists and DHS pukes
got covered -- and the military got alert for a little while.
   With the pressure decreasing below, the entire triangle where the two
reactors and the facility had been sank into the ground.  Not really fast,
but within an hour, they had a 75-meter deep sinkhole to explore.  Grin.
   There was lots of running around, gesturing, arguing and cell phone
calls -- among the geologists and DHS.  The military relaxed and made the
best of it.
   Margie said, "They're already arguing whose name gets to be on top.  A
couple think they'll get their PhD out of this and the rest think it'll
guarantee tenure.  Fuck.  Glad I'm out of *that* racket."
   Ah, well.  Fun must end sometime.  The Marines and Army packed up and
took off.  The gang of us had found some Talent here and there, had put in
tags and augmented the list.  The time hadn't been completely wasted, at
least.
   Later in the day, Bob and Kat popped in for a _talk_.  Apparently George
and Silvia Connor had taken advantage of the quiet time while the
spectators were at the desert to up the computer investigation a notch.
   They were now at Level 3 and were looking at a lot of stuff.  Not
understanding a lot, necessarily.  They were pretty sure of some names,
though.
   The engineering or technical language was "Sperk." The cultural or
emotional language was "Phane" with a nice long "a" sound.  The aliens were
the "Cels" just as we called ourselves the "Humans." Why not?  It was
better than, "tech-talk," "love-talk" and "aliens."
   Anyway, Bob and Kat were interested in what was happening, if anything,
with the Los Angeles Waystation.
   I told them about our newest real estate adventures.  Beyond the initial
surveys, we (and the N&Bs) hadn't done anything beyond the surveys.
   I said, "We're anticipating finding a new person with experience in the
area to head up the project.  We're in the throes of expanding ourselves
and don't really want to take on something this size.  We're more than
willing to contribute some time, but we can't run the show."
   They could live with that.
   Marge brought up the fact the Clanns didn't appear to have an all-person
search for specific talents.  Neither Bob nor Kat appeared concerned;
they'd farm that off to Mario or someone.  We speculated a bit about having
Regional Data Centers feeding up to a central repository or query point. 
Well, that's why the experts are around.
   ------
   EILEEN (Friday 7/28)
   Tavern night again already.  It was a "black night," so we got decked
out in our finest LBD cleas (Trick.  A magic spell.  Holograms and other
trick-the-senses) and piled into the dining room.
   We had a good crowd; lots of Clann and lots of well-known customers.  We
put on a good show for them.  Caden's and Connor's three ladies pitched
right in and contributed to the festivities.  Good thing they were there;
we had some plans, and they all knew it!
   The Tavern managers were doing great.  The service and food were up to
the standards the N&Bs had set, and the entertainment -- well that was
mostly us.
   We pulled Caden and Vivian (the first of the three to latch onto them)
back to OTL with us.  We all kicked back and relaxed in the den.
   Vivian was a wonderful sweet young thang to the eye.  Underneath, she
was a powerful spirit with excellent memories and excellent skills.
   She told us, "We enhanced our six parents and five siblings right off
the bat.  We're finding, like most of you guys have, that it seems to run
in families.  While our folks aren't really active in the Clann meetings
and the like, they've all jumped onto the Selene City bandwagon."
   They'd all volunteered for various teams and were spending at least half
their non-JOB time working their spirit-butts off.  Good on 'em.
   The five of them were enhancing and training about five new spirits a
day.  Connor said, "With the new checksheets, it's pretty straightforward.
Fortunately, after the basics, we can turn them loose to twin up on their
own for the teleportation checksheet and the technical bulletins.  We take
from one to five days from start to finish; a lot depends on how much power
we pump in to start, when they're ready to pop and how much fun they wanna
have."
   Someone (or someones) had done taught Connor really well.  I wouldn't
say he wore BB, Kate, Margie and I out, but he sure knew how to make the
best of his physical abilities.
   Yeh, we stole Vivian after Sean had "abused" her for a couple of hours.
Margie got first dibs on her because she had to go off for Skunk Works
stuff, but BB, Kate and I managed to take up the slack.
   Vivian was a real ball of fire; wonderfully alive, wonderfully sweet and
eager as a new bride.  She loved Kate's and my red down pussy-frames and
went into ecstasy over BB's silver pelt.  Then again, we still really like
her pelt, too.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 7/29)
   In the morning, we (Margie was still out skunking around) took a
bleary-eyed Connor and Vivian off to Manhattan for a good all-you-can-eat
breakfast.  They were able to eat almost as much as we could!  I wouldn't
call either of them under-nourished by any stretch of the imagination.
   While their bodies were still a bit shaky, they were fine.  After a
final round of hugs and kisses, they took off for some Cullen Enterprises
web site fulfillment, scheduled enhancements and a bit of genealogy
research.  For sure they weren't telling their folks they were bored!
   Both the offers were back from Santa Clarita.  At least they were
prompt. We zipped over to the N&Bs (now always including Melissa) and went
over them.
   Yeh, they'd accepted our last offer.  They'd do the repairs as soon as
possible and have them done by the end of the thirty-day escrow.  If
everything was complete, we could close escrow any time.  Good!
   So, that launched off a lot of planning.  We'd already considered a lot
of ideas for both places, so this was getting into the actual details.
   The N&Bs offered Cullen Enterprises 10% of N&B Enterprises.  Maura said,
"That way, we can really pick your brains on the Tavern stuff." We accepted
and became a proud part of the Irish tavern business.
   All righty, then!  We spent most of the day on detailed planning,
locating potential new staff and planning the promotional activities.  Hmm,
we spotted at least fifty tagged people within five miles of the places.
   We spent Sunday on the beach somewhere in the Bahamas.  No hurricanes,
so we mingled with the crowds and basked in the sun.  Marge spent some time
with us, too.
   By the way, it was a nude beach, so the only one with a cleas was Marge.
Dayum, she was a right fine tidy package oozing sex and personality.  She
got lots of appreciative eyeballs and not just because of her size.
   The other ladies got their share of appreciation, too, and not just from
me.  They didn't seem to mind in the least; all them were suspiciously damp
in some very interesting places.
   Back home, we checked the Fillmore portal.  Registrations for the
Seattle seminar were up and the expected-performance gauge was above
normal. Fillmore must be doing something right; just under two weeks to go
and we had well over the 50% of the anticipated 2,000 attendees.
   ------
   (Monday 7/31)
   BB and Kate had been _peeking_ at the Technical Reference business
pretty much every day.  The manager had been keeping us informed of what
had been going on, too.
   The couple and parents had been in and observing.  After Wednesday, they
got "itchy" and started going through all the inventory lists and becoming
familiar with the actual arrangement, books and the rest of the goodies. 
By Saturday, all six were there and selling away.
   The manager had set each of them up with a register key (and kept an
_eye_ on them), trained them on using it and had gone through the New
Employee Checksheet.  She knew the sale was closed and was treating them as
if it were a done deal.
   The entire six were in the shop Monday morning, so BB and Kate dropped
in.  They weren't even able get much more than an initial greeting out
before they were into negotiations.
   That's the Hat Ladies!  They drove a decent bargain, and everyone ended
up happy with the offers.  They set up a closing meeting for Wednesday with
the lawyers (Lena Severin for us and their family lawyer for them).
   As an oh-by-the-way, the manager had spotted Talent in all of them. 
They had tag nodes and were already being slowly enhanced.  Very nice.
   I had a couple Ceann meetings with couples (mainly).  In my queue were
five (count 'em!) potential bondings, ten thinking of babies and three
looking at businesses.  None were particularly complex, so I wasn't
anticipating any issues arising.
   In the evening, I hit three of the bondings and four of the
baby-thinkers.  When Liam, Maeve or Rosheen got a call (or email forwarded
to them), they did a quick gestalt, sent out the appropriate references
(usually the study checksheet and QQV article as a start) and scheduled a
meeting.
   All the bonding meetings went excellently.  Hell, two of the couples
already had a child on the way, so were really getting intent.  Besides
that, they were ones of us from the recent tagging spree!
   The four baby-thinkers were a slightly different mix.  Two were fine to
go right then, but I did a thorough run-through on the QQVs with the other
two because they hadn't quite hit it correctly.
   One eventually decided to strengthen their own relationship more before
having children, and the other decided their relationship probably wouldn't
be able to handle a child properly.  I left them both pretty content with
their decisions.
   Of course I always waved the ceremonial staff around and chanted
blessings.  Some were over the top for the ones with warped senses of humor
(like mine) while others were a bit more "serious." No problem, everyone
appreciated it.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Well, assuming the Technical Reference sale went through, that was one
more off our lines.  BB had some leads on the other two and was following
up each one.  No real hurry, but we'd like them off our hands ASAP.
   While Sean was off doing his Ceann duties, the rest of us popped over to
the Clann Reynolds meeting.  There were around 70 bodies and well over 200
spirits in the audience.
   Bob told us, "We're expanding all right.  We don't even have a decent
guess at how many ones of us we have now, much less how many are tagged or
how many are already in the enhancement process.  Gee, I guess we'd better
shut everything down until we get a count, right?"
   He got roundly booed, as expected.  Nana gnashed her teeth and _Irished_
him really good!
   Bob just grinned and shrugged it off.  He said, "It doesn't matter. 
It's not *your* problem at all, and there's no need to follow it real
closely.  As long as you train the new folk in the proper security
processes and procedures and log them in as they're trained, we're safe. 
That's all that really matters for this.
   "Go for it!  I know we've got either ones of us or tagged people in the
United States, Mexico, Canada, almost every country in Europe and lots in
Asia.  Let us in the Clanns Council concern ourselves with the statistics
-- you folks just go full out for expansion.
   "Train 'em properly, get 'em hooked up with a Clann or help them start a
Clann and ensure their particular talents or specialties are in the
appropriate database.  We'll organize behind you."
   Fockin' aye right!  I'd already turned over my Clann Cullen Education
Officer hat to one of our new spirits (a long-time school administrator).
If needed, the Core or Sean could get an approximate count and all that
pretty much any time.  If it wasn't exactly accurate, it really didn't
matter.
   Bob introduced five Krav Maga specialists.  They were from all over the
U.S.  and were mainly from various military special forces.  One was a
martial artist in her own right (Aikido) but knew Krav Maga cold.
   They'd tested out various ways to disseminate the ability and had come
up with a method which had a decent chance of working.  Each had several
hundred special nodes set up which linked directly to their memories of the
craft.  This included all the usual perceptions such as muscle movement,
joint position, kinetics and the like.
   On of us could connect to an open node and run through the katas,
exercises and drills until we were satisfied.  A checksheet was available
and recommended.
   The group leader, Phillip, told us, "This'll give you a great leap up.
Around 80% of the ones we ran through this routine got an acceptable pass
when we brought them in and tested them.
   "We do recommend you do the entire checksheet and, if at all possible,
get tested.  That'll give us more research on the workability, and you'll
be assured if you know enough.
   "Once you know and can do some of the moves, the key is to apply
appropriate force.  You'll most likely have some idea of how intent your
opponents are in really being out to get you.  If they're a typical bully
throwing their weight around, use milder force and techniques.
   "If they're out to do you in, do them in beforehand.  The entire idea is
to apply enough force to change their mind -- if you have time.  Remember,
you can let the body shield defend you, port yourself out of there or cause
your opponents temporary or permanent disabilities.  You'll have a very
wide range of choices you can apply."
   The katas and exercises were excellent physical training for the body,
too.  Despite being able to "think" our bodies to a certain condition or
state, they still needed to be worked to keep strong and flexible.
   Groan.  Betcha I know what Sean will want to start doing.  Would Geeser
would be interested in joining in?  Probably not.  Well, at least we've got
a Jacuzzi to help ease the probable aches and pains -- and take our minds
off them with the water jets.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   (Tuesday 8/1)
   All right, all ready!  7:00 with Geeser prodding sensitive body parts is
bad enough, but Sean wanted to start some exercising.  Argh.
   Actually, it wasn't too bad.  We glommed onto some checksheets and went
to work.  There was a bit of the Krav Maga and general martial arts history
theory then the sequence of the exercises and katas to do.
   The specialists were two men and three women.  Males were supposed to
_link_ to the men and females to the women because of the difference in
bodies.  No problem; we all picked a node and latched on.  Margie
immediately suggested, "How about one of us women do the link to them and
the rest of us link to her?  We're all supposed to be doing exactly the
same thing in unison so it should work."
   It did.  Sean had his node and we had ours.  We lightly linked in Sean
so we were somewhat together (there were some variations since there were
two different people "recording" at two different times and places).
   Most of this was stretching and breathing.  Yeh, yeh, yeh.  Come on,
knee tendons, stretch!
   Being _linked_ to someone who knew what they were doing -- even on the
real simple stuff -- really made a difference.  We simply followed and
matched the perceptions.
   The checksheet recommended a max of a half hour to start so we left it
at that.  We were sweating a bit just from moving so we took a quick shower
under our outdoor spray.
   The checksheet warned against heavy eating after exercising, so we took
it real easy.  That prohibition didn't stop Geeser from being very
interested in the goings-on; after all, she'd worked hard watching us
humans do strange things.
   So, we still had stuff to do.  Sean and Maura arranged with Ana Matthews
for a full probe run on all the staff and suppliers for both properties up
in Santa Clarita.  We should go in blind or let it wait?  Ana told us,
_"Plenty of people wanting to do probes.  This will be a standard dossier
run.  Probably not more than a couple hundred all told.  I'll have one of
the day probes pull the lists and we'll do the run tonight."_
   The community was called Stevenson Ranch.  It was just west of the I-5
at McBean Parkway (going east) and Stevenson Ranch Parkway going west. 
Magic Mountain (*big* entertainment park with some nasty roller coasters)
was only two miles north.  There were two major golf courses within a
couple miles and some night life in Santa Clarita itself.
   We figured we'd promote a lot to the family trade for those going to
Magic Mountain.  During the summer, the park was jammed most of the time.
The only real reason the hotel hadn't been packed all the time was it was
slightly away from the freeway and hadn't been promoted.  Same with the
restaurant.  Such a shame!  Their pain, our gain.
   We started a hard look over the entire property -- the N&Bs were doing
the same with the restaurant.  Each of us took an area, started a
pluspoint/outpoint list and scrutinized it down to the cockroaches in the
walls.  Yeh, there were some, and they were on the escrow list for
handling.
   I got the top floor and roof.  The roof had the air conditioners,
hot-water boilers and a sunning deck.  Heh.  Put a short fence around it
and we could have nude sunbathing!  Better check the local ordinances; that
was a good assignment for Lena and company.
   Well, the air conditioners were in pretty good shape, but could use a
good going over after the hot season was over.  The place was only six
years old so they were still pretty new.
   The deck could use a quick refinishing; it had some splinters here and
there with some debris underneath (old papers, trash, etc.).  Hmm.  Put in
a good water cooler, a towel dispenser and maybe a bathroom.  That should
make some happier campers.  There are nudist families, too.
   I started at one end of the third floor with the rooms.  Cullen Hotels
already had a working checksheet for room maintenance and preparation, so I
broke it out and made a list for each room.
   I did twenty of the 90 rooms (there were 90 rooms on the 3d floor, 85 on
the 2nd and 25 on the ground floor).  Hard work?  Nah.  Geeser kept us
company and reminded us when it was time for lunch.
   So far, we hadn't missed any major repair in the escrow list, so we were
in good shape that way.
   ------
   Bob had asked for a full Clann Council meeting about midnight.  Margie
ducked out for some skunking around about 6:00 and met us in Chicago right
at midnight.
   And I'd thought the Clann Reynolds meeting had been crowed!  Bob ran a
quick census; we had 200 spirits here from 75 Clanns!
   Yeh, they were from all over, just as Bob had said.  Bob everyone, _"I
got railroaded -- I mean elected -- into being Ceann Mor.  I'm willing to
abdicate; anyone want the job?"_
   Quiet voice: _"Fat chance!  You got it, bubba!"_
   Must be from the South.  Anyway, Bob said, _"Thank you for the vote of
confidence.  Some of you have been free for maybe a couple days, others of
us have been around for almost eight months now.  Not a long time for a
group to come together, find out what's happening with the individuals and
make deep plans for the future._
   _"But what we decide now will set our course for quite a while to come.
We've talked before -- at least some of us -- on how we should handle the
technologies from Selene City as we discover them.  Plus, how do we handle
the technologies we've found dealing with the spirit?_
   _"We've pretty much determined we should have some safe havens here on
Earth plus several to many to thousands of Human colonies off-planet.  I
don't think that's changed much.  Let's talk about how to deal with the
business and other interactions with the rest of Earth while we gather the
economic, material and personnel resources to carry this off.  I see
several ways of doing this."_
   He had some ideas.  First, we could deal in smoke and mirrors to
obfuscate our presence, technologies and abilities.  Kinda like we did with
the manuals for the seminars.
   Next, we could mock up a convincing alien presence with "little green
men and women" and attempt to open up trade with Earth.  Sounded like fun.
   Last, we could openly announce ourselves as free spirits, show the
technologies and show Selene City and the Earth facilities.  Then, open up
manufacturing and/or distribution facilities for the Earth.  Hmm.  Sounded
shaky to me.
   There was plenty of discussion, for sure.  The main point brought up was
that individually or in relatively small groups, men were usually pretty
ethical, honest and rational.  Get them in larger groups, and they seem to
go insane.
   Pull a monkey out of a cage with other monkeys.  Dye him pink and put
him back in.  What do you get?  Shreds of pink monkey.  Man the mob will
attempt to suppress, attack or destroy pretty much anything different. 
Governments do it every day without blinking a bribe.  For anything
different, make a new law preventing, abolishing or controlling it.
   Yeh, seen that.  If we had a bunch of little green men drop in, maybe
10% would welcome them, and the other 90% would immediately be convinced
they were out to enslave us, ship us off for meat or something equally
dastardly like giving women the vote.
   That left only one viable alternative, at least for now.  Keep our
clandestine nature and perhaps even make it more secure.  Even with
millions of us in a year or so, there's still billions of people who would
reflexively condemn us and attempt our destruction.  Yeh, no shit,
Sherlock!
   Obfuscation may be a pain in the ass, but it kept us safe for now. 
Perhaps once we have colonies firmly established elsewhere as an immediate
safeguard and escape route, we could try some of the other techniques.  For
now, though, keep it quiet, keep it secret and keep any connection between
new technologies or radical manufacturing techniques and us as remote as
possible.  That's one main reason the Skunk Works had such a long trail of
obfuscation behind it.
   Not a comforting thought, actually.  However, we had to deal with what
we had and could actually control, not the wishful thinking of, "If
everyone just loved each other, Earth would be a paradise." Yeh, a paradise
for the predators.
   Cynical?  Could be.  I had enough memories just from the first
back-tracking I'd done while waiting in the hospital to know how we'd be
accepted.  Witch hunt would be a mild term.
   ------
   SEAN
   Well, it made sense.  Just 'cause we're not paranoid doesn't mean
they're *not* out to get us.  Clann Cullen had dealt with the same
phenomenon for thousands of years: since you're not us, we must destroy
you. That's why we'd had escape routes, emergency caches and the like --
and they'd saved our red-haired arses more than once.
   Bob talked some about organization.  Eileen whispered to me, _"He went
over this at the Clann Meeting last night."_
   Just like The Book said, let things run fast-flow until something
breaks, then fix it and let it run again.  As long as security stayed in,
we'd catch up.  Now, with the Ceanns well-aware of our path, they'd be
really strict on security.
   Bob brought in Mario, who talked with us about a global network for
organizing and sharing statistical information and enabling Clanns (or the
Skunk Works, etc.) to do a rapid search for specific specialties.  _"In the
United States, there's about 724 major metropolitan areas.  I propose each
area have a system -- not necessarily located there -- which the area's
Clanns keep current.  We can easily design and run a query down through
those to find specialties we may need."_
   He'd worked with Carmel on a preliminary design.  Europe, Mexico, Canada
and Asia would have similar areas.  Each area would have its own query
interface they could use.  The Skunk Works and other Clann organizations
could use the local region's interface.  With remote operations, someone
needing to do a query could easily find a system, much like we were doing
for the tag and list database.
   Mario invited anyone interested or able to get together for a design
conference so it would be built correctly from the start.  He said, _"The
Celian networking and storage technology might well make it obsolete before
we even get it set up, but we'll need the organization no matter how it's
implemented."_
   Sounded good to me.  We were in the Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside
metro area with something like 18 million people.  With our last count of
Sensitives who could be enhanced around 20,000, we weren't even a drop in
the bucket.
   At a guess of about 10 to 15% of a population being "enhanceable," it
could give us around 2 million free spirits in our metro area alone.  Glad
it was Bob who was the Big Boss.  Just within Clann Cullen alone we now had
around 200 enhanced, and that increase was mainly because they were in the
geographical area, not that they were Clann to start with.
   So, we had some things to ponder.  We were already keeping our Clann
data on the JRD secure server so Mario could do what he wished on it. 
Marge could put her fifty-cents worth in if she wished; I didn't have much
technical expertise to offer in that area.
   We flitted back to OTL and had our own discussion for a while.  Marge
pointed out, "We *are* expanding rapidly.  Let's say it takes about a week
to enhance and fully train someone -- including the teleportation
checksheet.  If each new person found one more to enhance and started right
away, we'd be doubling in size every two weeks.  As it actually works, the
new ones a) Tend to run into more than one at a time and b) There's no need
to wait until a person's fully enhanced to start on the 'leads' they find;
the 'finder' doesn't have to be the enhancer and trainer.  We're doing
fine. Just let that line keep running and start working on the next set of
issues."
   Right.  We looked over our own obfuscation practices to see if they
needed to be improved.  Kate asked, "If there's a one of us at the
printers, we don't even need to use the Reynolds Construction crew at that
end.  All they'd need to do is steer people clear of the loading dock for a
few minutes, and we could have the stuff out of there.  Would that work?"
   None of the rest of us could find a difficulty with that.  We decided to
check out the printer tomorrow and see if there was anyone available.
   Just for fun, we popped over to the desert sinkhole.  The geologists
must be having fun because there was a good-sized camp set up at the
bottom. They'd put a small crane at the top of the most solid wall
(hopefully) and were using it to bring down equipment, food and the like as
well as giving them an easier way of getting in and out.
   I know I wouldn't have enjoyed climbing up or down 75 meters of ladder
to get in or out.  We thought of "building" them a ramp by collapsing part
of a wall, but BB pointed out, _"To look natural, it couldn't be any better
than a 45 degree slope.  I don't think there are many vehicles that could
make the grade, so to speak."_
   It was only a thought.  Guess if they wanted to get published and
degreed, they'd have to work hard at it.  Grin.
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 8/2)
   Ana ported over the probe results on the hotel (she sent the restaurant
ones to Maura).  The hotel had "furnished" about 125 probes of the staff
and various suppliers.
   We gathered around and checked it out.  Frank and Thelma had pointed out
several current staff who were taking "inappropriate advantage" of the
mis-management.  In short, they were stealing from the place.
   The hotel had a medium-sized kitchen for room service and small meals
for the bar.  The restaurant was literally right next door and the guests
could walk about ten yards from the hotel and be there.
   Several of the hotel staff were smuggling out linens, towels, bathrobes
and the like to sell to their friends.  The kitchen help (in cahoots with
some of the restaurant staff) were selling food like steak and lobster out
the "back door" to a somewhat-organized gang of thieves who'd sell it on
the black market.
   A quick guesstimate based on the quantity and value of the goods was
that the hotel was losing some $5,000 a month and the restaurant about
$3,000 a month from the thefts.
   Thelma had suggested that a ramontheeye tip to the local police might be
very appropriate; none of the police were involved in the racket.  Yeh,
let's let them get nailed now so we wouldn't be bothered.  Melissa _talked_
with the N&Bs briefly then told Frank, _"Go ahead and tip them off.  Give
them the whole deal on both places."_
   Frank said, _"I'll put it on the queue.  Not much happening right now,
so it should go out in fifteen minutes or so."_
   Good.  We looked over the rest of the staff.  The managers appeared to
be both honest and competent within their duties; they were constrained a
lot by not having the budget to keep up on the maintenance and offer some
requested services.  Well, at least they were trying to serve the guests.
For now, we'd leave them be, especial since the day manager was already
getting enhanced.  The Probe Patrol had tagged and listed fifteen people
between the two organizations.
   Once we got rid of the thieves, it would leave them several people
short. Not our problem right now; we'd see how it was a week or so before
escrow closed.
   Kate especially knew most of the staff tricks to avoid or short-change
work.  She told us, "These six are lazy and need a kick in the arse.  Bill
here is, em, intellectually-challenged but has the best intentions in the
world.  He's not much of an issue; the guests like him and the managers
deal with him easily, so he's still a go."
   The rest of the staff ranged from incompetent (didn't know what they
should be doing and didn't care) to a couple ambitious ones who studied a
lot and picked the managers' brains.  They wanted to become a lot more
special.
   Well, we sure could find a place for them!  If not at a Cullen Hotel,
I'll bet they'd fit into one of the upcoming commercial enterprises.  How
about Head of Accommodations on one of Jupiter's moons?  Not a joke.
   That took care of the staff; if the incompetent ones were still there,
we'd easily weed them out when we took over.
   BB suggested, "Since we're in escrow or will be in a couple days, could
we contact the current owners to see if we can start training the managers
on The Book?  It would give us a good head start."
   Fine by us.  Melissa said she'd handle it and let us know.  She'd also
talk with the N&Bs to see if they were interested in doing something
similar.
   ------
   BB had a lookie-loo potential buyer for one of the businesses.  She told
us, "I'll give her the sell, but she's pretty flaky.  I don't know if we'd
want to pass ownership to her; it would still be a Cullen Enterprises shop.
If she ran it into the ground, it would reflect back on us."
   I told her, "Sort it out.  No law says we have to sell to any particular
individual.  Just concentrate on some of the negative aspects if you need
to; that could just blow her off."
   She headed out while the rest of us took a quick _look_ at the printers.
Yes!  There were two ones of us already with more coming on line.  Good. 
It took about ten seconds to strike a deal for an "enhanced product
delivery" solution.  Grin.
   We checked out email, did a bit of business research on stuff which had
come up in some newsletters and ensured our network was in prime shape.  It
was.  How could it be otherwise with Marge in charge?
   We _peeked_ lightly at BB and her looker.  BB and the manager must have
had a conspiracy going, because they were showing her the more esoteric
aspects of the business, like knowing the product.  Heh.
   The prospective buyer had come in half-heartedly; she was more glancing
at doing a business than having any real desire to do something with her
life.  Hadn't been to a seminar, had read a little about The Book on the CE
web site and hadn't the faintest idea of the purpose of a General Ledger. A
real candidate for a sole proprietorship, for sure.
   BB and the manager didn't quite laugh at her; they simply reverse-sold.
"Doing the books should only take you a couple hours a night; they're
actually pretty simple after you've memorized all the account numbers and
know the roll ups."
   Yah.  She lit out of there convinced the shop was gonna be closed the
next time she came by.  After all, it was so difficult to operate it
couldn't be making any money!
   BB and the manager did an enthusiastic high-five and laughed for a
couple minutes.  BB told her, "Hopefully, there won't be many more like
her. Maybe the next one will know the difference between a credit card and
a checking account."
   ------
   SEAN
   Well, I guess people have to start somewhere, but that lady would have
to study for a year just to get to the starting line.  As a plastic-mold
injector operator on the swing shift, she would do just fine.
   Anyway, we gave BB a nice round of applause when she zipped back.  She
rolled her eyes and told us, "She didn't ask one intelligent question. 
Maybe she used up all her smarts finding the place."
   BB and Kate took off to Lena's to do the Technical Reference closing. 
With them doing their own financing, we'd be clear of it fairly lively. 
Now, two more to go
   Right at 4:00 Caden and Sally appeared on our doorstep.  Sally was the
second of the three young ladies ensuring Connor and Caden were toeing the
line and being productive.
   She was a really nice lady.  At a bit over nine, she was showing very
clear signs of puberty.  Yeh, she was Clann blood which explained that. 
Smart, too.  The five of them were well-organized in doing the enhancement
work, the fulfillment center and some of the genealogy research.  Over-all,
they did quite well financially from their activities.
   Sally's family were almost all ones of us; only an older brother was
mundane.  She grinned and said, "All of agree he must have been adopted. 
Even my folks, and they were both there for his birth.  He's actually okay,
even if he tries to play older brother a bit too much at times."
   She and Caden were well-versed in the clothing cleas, so we "dressed up"
and hit the ether for France.  Paris should be interesting.
   Well, the French was a little different from the bit we'd heard in
Canada, but they took our $20 bills with the same eagerness.
   Interesting change of pace.  Sauces and such did change the flavor.  It
was all really good, though.
   Sally was very interested in studying the Cel technology.  "I figure
most everyone will have to learn from the ground up, even the adults.  I
might have just as much an edge as anyone else."
   Marge laughed and told us, "She's probably right.  We've just begun to
get into a bit of their mathematics, and it has a bit of a different slant.
True, none of what we know will be wasted, but I'll be right along side you
learning away.
   "We're after applied math.  Probably in the last 50 years, all the time
spent on the esoteric theorems has resulted in maybe one application
somewhere.  The academic math world is its own little island; ask them to
swim a little and they'd sink.  Hehehehe."
   We decided dinner had been fine, though a bit rich overall for most of
tastes.  Hey, we came to try it out and we did.
   Back home, Caden took her on a full tour.  Next thing we knew, they were
in the Jacuzzi -- recirculation only.  That was a good hint; we were in
with them in a minute.
   At just the right time, I hit the pump for the water jets, and Sally did
the normal levitation trick.  Caden was a gentleman and only chuckled a
little.  Sally did admit it was, em, interesting.
   And in the honoring room, she was *very* interesting.  Lively, squirmy
and determined to make the most of her time.  Dayum, she was nice!
   Caden seemed to be holding his own with the four ladies.  So far, they
hadn't killed anyone, so we figured he'd survive the night.  Sally said,
"He might not be good for much tomorrow night, but we shall see."
   About 2:00, the ladies came swarming in and kidnapped her.  They told
Caden and me, "Come back in a couple hours.  If she's still alive, we'll
share her -- maybe."
   Okay.  Caden grinned and we popped out and about.
   Nothing was happening at the desert sinkhole.  We checked out the hole
in the mountain where the engineers had stored the two reactors and the
facility.  Nobody home.  We weren't at all concerned about someone
discovering it or walking off with it; there was a minimum of 60 meters of
solid rock all around.
   Good.  We'd figure out what to do with it later.  I was sorta betting
we'd be really circumspect in firing up something for a while.  We had no
idea what byproducts like heat or magnetic fields a fusion reactor would
put out.
   Off to Selene City.  In the living/admin space, it was up to 70 degrees
and 15 psi; shirt-sleeve weather.  There were lots of spirits darting
around but no bodies yet.
   There were several signs around, "Please wait until Thursday to bring a
body.  We want to do a final medical and security check." Darn.
   We spent an hour flitting around.  The pressure and temperature in the
hanger and maintenance facilities was up to the same 70 degrees.  Someone
had opened the doors on all the ships and directed fans to blow the warmer
air inside.  We knew there'd be no lack of people interested in climbing
inside.
   The lower manufacturing facility was up to temperature and pressure,
too. There were plenty of signs around warning people about the wrath of
Margaret Sullivan if they messed around with the machinery.  People were
learning.
   The manufacturing area on the surface was at Lunar conditions.  Yeh,
there was a physical shield up, probably for meteor debris and the like, or
perhaps to keep the sunlight off.  Some of that stuff was right big!
   Well, we'd "killed" an hour so headed back to OTL.  Yeh, Sally had
survived.  The girls grabbed us and forced us to service them for another
two hours before Sally passed out for good.
   Chapter 5
   EILEEN (Thursday 8/3)
   Caden and Sally looked a bit worn in the morning.  Well, they were young
and strong -- and it wasn't as if they were total beginners, either!
   Breakfast in Baton Rouge (Louisiana) was a success.  Creole food has a
distinct taste and lit a fire in your mouth.  Hopefully it wouldn't give us
too much fire on the other end.
   Kate and Margie dropped hints throughout breakfast about going back home
for another couple rounds of poke and tickle, but we let Caden and Sally
off the hook -- for now.
   We went back to work on the hotel inspection.  I got through 50 more
rooms; by now it only took a couple minutes each.  That left me 20 to go,
then I could start looking at suppliers.
   Just before lunch, Sean dragged us out back for more Krav Maga
exercising.  It was a bit easier this time to stretch out the leg tendons
(I'd been thinking them "stretchier."), and we added some balancing and
small movement exercises.  We went only ten minutes longer than before, but
we were still sweating when we were done.
   Sean did let us have lunch.  Nice of him, wasn't it.  Slave driver!  He
told us, "Three times a week minimum.  It's not just fun stuff, it's part
of our cover and survival." He was right.
   All right!  The printer said we had another big batch of manuals ready
for pick up, so we contacted our partner in obfuscation.o Most everyone
there was at lunch and there was no one around the shipping dock.  With the
five of us working at once, in less than 10 seconds all the cartons were
stashed in Texas and I was updating the inventory in the database.  No
muss, no fuss.
   We girls started planning our clothes for the wedding this Saturday. 
Rodrigo Fuerte (Clan Fuerte Jefe) and his lady Alona were tying the knot!
Another Clann wedding and party; we were ready to party.
   Yeh, that meant we had to nose about, investigate and consult on the
appropriate attire.  There would be mundanes in the party, so we couldn't
be too outlandish.  Then again, "too" depends on the viewpoint, right?
   We'd probably end up with some actual clothing and the rest cleas. 
While we didn't want to outshine the bride (probably couldn't anyway), we
had a good opportunity to gussy up and let loose.  After the appropriate
meetings, debates and such (Alona wasn't averse to sharing some ideas), we
developed a clothing base for each of us.  The proper color thong was a
good base, right?
   We dragged ourselves back to work.  I finished up the last 20 rooms and
called it good for then.
   We took a well-deserved break and chatted.  Margie told us, "We've gone
about as far as we can go on finding specific spirits of our ancestors and
such.  Since there seems to be nothing requiring a spirit to pick a new
body in the same genetic line, they could be anywhere.  From researching
memories, we've found most spirits at least tend to stay in the same
geographic area for quite a while; most don't venture very far after they
drop a body.
   "As we've found ourselves, we can hang around a long time before we pick
up another body.  We're usually a bit dazed and confused and haven't a clue
about what's going on.
   "Now, we tend to use names and bodies as identities, like an ID card. 
Present the name or the body, and someone else 'knows' who you are.  As
spirits, we do a bit of naming, but sure don't use bodies.  We've got
'Sunshine,' 'Toro' and several others whom we know that way.
   "Previous identities are usually heavily suppressed or occluded.  If we
know a name, we've had some luck in scanning an area.  We've gotten 1 in
about 500 in our experiments.  Even if we bore in with a deep probe, it
takes a bit of digging, so to speak, to find out previous identities.
   "So, don't count on a thing.  I've looked for Frank, Mom's parents,
Sean's parents and grandparents and have come up empty.  What we've got is
the proverbial needle in the haystack, except we've not only got billions
of haystacks but we also have a needle which looks like a piece of hay and
thinks it's hay.  We'll keep pecking away at it, but it's pretty much an
inactive project for now."
   Well, hell.  We'd known it was a long shot to start with.  Maybe later
something would come up to increase the odds in our favor.  We've probably
still got tremendous areas to explore we don't even know about right now.
   Right on schedule, Caden, Connor and Morrigan appeared on our doorstep.
Morrigan was Clann Irish with the signature red hair and with the peaches
and cream complexion like Margie and me.  Nice.  Very nice.  Did I have a
thing for Irish girls?  BB and Liss were Irish by now, of course.  Grin.
   Morrigan's interest was in the Cel technology.  She'd dived into pretty
much every type of equipment there was in any of the Celian facilities and
outposts.
   She told us, "There's tons of what we call 'solid state' except they use
at least ten different substrates, circuitry and the like.  From what we
can tell, the Selene City underground manufacturing facility has machinery
to make every kind.  Once we figure out how to get them operational, we've
no doubt we can make our own."
   The "we" was the her and several other semiconductor engineers.  They
were waiting (quite impatiently) for the teams to bring up enough of the
smaller computer systems so they could hop on and start learning not only
the languages but also the technology behind *everything*.
   Connor told us, "She's the brains of the bunch.  The rest of us are just
users.  We don't care if it's a black box, just that something works."
   Morrigan grinned at him and said, "As I recall, you and Caden don't mind
'using' Sally, Vivian or me."
   He and Caden laughed.  Caden noted, "True.  We're doing our best to be
'power users,' too."
   Sean had definitely rubbed off on them.
   Kathleen had told us about an Irish restaurant in New York City, so we'd
made reservations for "4 faeries and 4 leprechauns." The receptionist
asked, "Ah, yes.  You must be with Kathleen and Bob, right?" Seems they'd
made an impression.
   We donned some heavy-duty cleas.  Connor, Caden and Morrigan were
"adult" faeries and Margie was a "baby" faery.  They looked light, delicate
and sexy as hell.
   Sean got to wear his full leprechaun regalia; BB, Kate and I wore green,
falling-off dresses.  BB's cleas included switching her hair and pelt to a
light red; she scattered a few freckles in interesting places.  Sean asked
us, "You sure you're hungry?  Maybe an appetizer before we leave?"
   Lecherous leprechaun!  Just as we liked.  We turned him down -- this
time -- and ported off to Gilligan's in NYC.
   ------
   SEAN
   Our reservations were fine; we got right in.  The maitre d' announced to
everyone, "A visit from more of our friends!" The entire restaurant
applauded us.  Actually, I think the men were applauding the ladies if for
no other reason than their outfits covered almost everything below the neck
yet appeared to show everything.  Female leprechauns and faeries do wear
some, em, interesting outfits.
   The food was excellent.  As we ate, we chatted away with other patrons
(in Irish of course) and among ourselves.
   Marge played "the baby" to the hilt.  While none of our faeries wore
wings, every once in a while she'd "forget," sprout a nice pair and flutter
up over the table to grab something.  Morrigan would grab an ankle, swat
her bottom and pretend to give her a stern lecture.  We had a remorseful
baby for several minutes until she "forgot" again.
   Morrigan apologized to the rest of the patrons, "Sorry.  She's still
learning manners; she's only 50 years old."
   All in good fun.  The patrons were amused -- fun magic -- and it kept
Marge out of worse mischief for now.
   Our cleas included complete facial alterations.  From the outside, our
eyes were spaced differently, we had different noses, ears, teeth, hair
color and voices (The resonating chambers and vocal cords were altered). 
The Skunk Works security experts had put out a technical bulletin on
disguises and facial characteristics.
   I had the full leprechaun beard with the curl at the tip; Connor and
Caden had shorter neat beards.  I don't think any of the patrons looked
much at the ladies' faces; there were other *extremely* interesting places
to look.
   After a great desert (and paying the bill), we quietly slipped out. 
Right.  We got a full round of applause.  Marge "forgot" again and
fluttered around giving out hugs and kisses while Morrigan chased her.  Ah,
well.  They'd remember us but could never recognize us in the flesh.
   We kept up our cleas and wandered around downtown Manhattan for an hour.
The ladies got some very interested eyeballing, but in the main, no one
really noticed us.  New Yorkers tend to ignore everyone who wasn't directly
in their path.
   There wasn't a Clann in NYC yet that we know of.  There will be soon,
though; we'd tagged and listed a half dozen people at Gilligan's.
   Back home at OTL, we kicked back and let Marge flutter around to her
heart's content.  Morrigan got snuggled under my arm with Geeser on her lap
while BB, Kate and Eileen sandwiched Caden and Connor.  The ladies warned
them, "You might not live through the night."
   They grinned and said, "Good.  We're looking forward to dying in
ecstasy. Just being with you is almost too much to bear."
   Hey, I hadn't been coaching them!  They came up with that on their own.
   Morrigan felt, smelled, looked and tasted divine.  Her firm small
breasts fit my mouth and hands perfectly, and her red-downed fanny exuded
ambrosia.  Long, slow and sweet; we made wonderful love for hours.
   Marge was scheduled to go skunking later, so she bopped in around 2:00
and kidnapped Morrigan for the ladies' turn.  She told me, "You and the
nephews go watch some skin flicks or something.  Don't go too far; Morrigan
deserves a Soo Laid for being such a good faery."
   Morrigan bemoaned her fate and went to her doom with an ear-to-ear
smile. Yes, she got her Soo Laid -- a couple times.
   While we were letting our bodies rest, we popped up to Selene City to
check out the action.  Great!  The signs told us to come on in with our
bodies!
   Well, our bodies were resting right now, but we flitted around anyway.
There were plenty of other bodies around banging into ceilings and walls
(with cushy body shields) and having a great time in the lunar gravity. 
Maybe later for us.
   There was a full team of techies bopping around to various computers and
bringing them up.  Morrigan said, _"I'd be right on their heels, but right
now, Sean, you and I have some serious mink-fuckin' to do."_
   Yeh.  As if I'd turn her down.  We ended up wearing out several minks.
   Breakfast at the Rio buffet was the ticket the next morning.  Caden and
Connor looked a bit drawn, but Morrigan was peppy and alert even if she was
a bit bowlegged and stiff.  She told the nephews, "Great start.  Glad we
don't have much scheduled today, because Sally, Vivian and I have some
*great* ideas."
   They groaned, complained and grinned.  The last, I *had* taught them.
   They did have some fulfillment shipments to get out, so they took off
after breakfast.  I think Caden and Connor will have a very interesting
relationship.
   Lena _talked_ with us a bit.  She told us, _"While there's no ordinance
against nude sunbathing, nude beaches and the like in Stephenson Ranch,
there are the usual 'public nudity' and 'indecent exposure' ordinances.  If
you post the hotel as 'private' for guests only, you can probably get away
with nudity on the roof, especially if you put the fence around it.  I
wouldn't try it at the pool."_
   Made some sort of sense.  We decided at least to go ahead with the fence
along with the rest of the roof improvements when we got the property. 
We'd decide about the risk of promoting the nude sunbathing after that.
   We jumped on the restaurant and hotel supplier probes and reports.  Hmm.
Almost half of the food suppliers were either double-billing, padding the
bill or billing for food never ordered or delivered.  Neither the
restaurant nor the hotel had apparently done any cross-checking between
actual receipts and the bills.  Not a wonder they were bleeding cash.
   To top it off, a couple of them were in cahoots with the thieves
stealing food.  They were getting money both ways.  The same suppliers were
running more or less the same scam with at least a dozen other local
places, too.
   We had a quick talk with Lena.  We agreed ramontheeye had a good reason
to report that stuff, too.  Perhaps the police could do a wide-range
investigation on the suppliers, not just the thieves.
   Yeh, she agreed it was the best way for now.  _"We could do our own
sting, something like JRD did at Vail, but we're talking something which
could and should be handled with the police and the City Attorney.  The
Attorney would probably love to get her hands on something like this."_
   We _talked_ with the N&Bs, too.  They'd just run into the same results
with the reports they had.  So, ramontheeye had a quick cycle to dig out
the probe dossiers and tip the City Attorney and local police.  We'd keep
an eye on the happenings up there so hopefully nothing would drop through
the cracks.
   Ana had no problem with it.  _"We're a bit slow right now, so it'll take
maybe 20 minutes.  Obviously, we keep copies of everything we do, so it's
no big deal to dig those out and ship them off."_
   Good.  We reminded her to send us an invoice for the probes and such. 
She told us, _"That was sent out this morning.  You should get it tomorrow
if not today.  We don't bill for ramontheeye's time, of course."_
   Nice.  Maybe we could get some criminals nailed before they scammed more
money off -- maybe even get some back.
   The hotel real estate agent called.  The escrow was open and things were
moving.  The title search and associated legalities were already in
progress.
   Melissa got the escrow company's information and gave them a call.  The
manager there told us they'd send us a notice when our money was due into
the escrow; should be right around three weeks.
   Since the financing was usually the hold up on most escrows, Melissa
told her, "It can be out to you within two days.  As soon as you're ready,
let us know."
   Should be an interesting balance.  Would the criminals be nailed before
or after we (and the N&Bs) became the owners?
   ------
   EILEEN
   Bob _told_ Sean that he, Kat and Sherry had finished the detail manuals.
Excellent!  We gave them a firm round of congratulations.  Margie added,
_"When one of the Cullen Enterprises people finishes the last manual, they
get a Soo Laid as partial reward.  Now, when do we schedule yours?"_
   Hehehehe.  Good excuse.  We resident social secretaries had a quick
discussion with their social secretaries and came up with next Wednesday.
Yes!  Party!
   BB, Kate, Margie and I decided to meet later with Maura and Teresa to
set up a good event.  We could make it a formal intra-Clann honoring in
addition to the Soo Laids and help promote the relationship.  Yeh.  Promote
the relationship; that's the justification.
   Tavern night!  This one was a casual, so we dug out our Irish Inside tee
shirts, flat hats and shorts.  Of course we wore our pendants!
   There was a pretty full house.  Between a lot of the Core and old
friends, the place was almost overflowing.  The nieces, nephews and SOs
were out in force, of course.
   Caden and Connor were looking even more peaked while Sally, Vivian and
Morrigan were glowing.  We knew that look well!  Guess the girls' plans had
worked out.
   Aile and Deidre were there with their SOs, Ken and Rich.  Mona and Ted
were snuggled up together, too.  We social secretaries made a note: need to
honor the new SOs.  Of course, the fact we'd get more licks in on the
nieces had nothing to do with it, right?
   The food was excellent, of course.  Even dining at the supposedly best
places in the world (more to come!) still left us appreciative of what we
had right here.  Keep up the quality, keep the price reasonable and we'd
continue to have a winner!
   We conned -- oops, persuaded -- several of the Clann and clients up on
stage to sing and dance with us.  About half were mundanes, some weren't
Irish, but all were very willing.  We _linked_ very lightly with those who
didn't know the dances or songs, and somehow they found themselves doing
them correctly.  That got them enthusiastic, and everyone had a blast.
   Yeh, we were replacing ourselves.  Pretty soon now, we'd be spending
time up in Stevenson Ranch rather than here, so we needed to keep up the
entertainment actions Sean had started as soon as the Tavern opened.
   The managers could hire dancers, singers and the like or offer a
discount or free dinner to those who'd care to entertain on a somewhat
routine basis.  Promote for groups (Leone and Mark could sing and dance in
Irish as well as any other language), feed them, perhaps pay them something
and we'd probably keep things going a long time.
   ------
   (Saturday 8/5)
   There's gonna be a wedding!  We (The Clanns Council) had informally
decided to make a pretty big deal out of a Ceann's wedding.  Clan Fuerte in
El Tule (between Cabo San Lucas and the airport) fit the bill perfectly.
   Alona (the bride-to-be) had sent invitations to the people in her
location, but had agreed to a "blanket" invitation to the rest of the
Clanns.  Hell, we didn't have addresses for 98% of them anyway!  She had
one Clan volunteer handling only the RSVPs and it had been taking several
hours a day.
   Somehow, lots of food, booze, and other party goodies had started making
appearances in the middle of the night.  By the time we'd gotten cleased
(how's that for a word?) to our satisfaction and ported down, the "stuff"
for the reception (translation: party!) alone covered a good Burbank city
block.  We were gonna have a *great* time!
   Bridget and George had elected to go as the young girl and boy their
natural bodies displayed.  At about 8 months physical age, they appeared to
be round three years.  Not bad.
   Bridget wore an impossibly-frilly white "virgin" dress down to her knees
and looked absolutely cute as a kitten.  George had a miniature tuxedo he
wore with impeccable dignity.  Nice match; they held hands and joined the
other several hundred youngsters in scampering about nosing into everything
they could.
   We other Hat Ladies had our own brand of ancient Mexican female
ceremonial garb from full skirts to feathers in our hair.  Our cloth dyes
were a little more modern, though; the colors were almost iridescent. 
Every other woman we saw had similar colors -- we grinned and waved at each
other.
   I might have been prejudiced, but I thought ours were the most
natural-looking (except for the colors).  Then again, they should be.  We
lived with and got coaching from the original trickster!
   We spotted Rodrigo doing his gestalt-and-glad-hand routine.  Funny how
that had spread.  When we got our shot at him, Sean commiserated with his
task.  Rodrigo grinned and said, "Wouldn't have it any other way.  Alona
wanted a big wedding, and so far it looks like it'll be ten times bigger
than she ever imagined."
   Rodrigo had the standard tuxedo with a few extra Mexican touches here
and there; nothing too drastic.  Alona, of course, was hidden away
somewhere getting dressed for the ceremony, so we wimmin would have to wait
to approve her outfit until then.
   We physically recognized maybe one in a hundred people.  That was great!
It meant we were really growing!
   Time for the ceremony.  Ceann Mor stood in front of the altar and
announced, "There's going to be a bonding.  Please take your places."
   It sent shivers up and down our spines.  He'd spread himself over the
entire area and had spoken with total confidence.  Sean was impressed and
whispered to us, _"He is the right one to lead us."_
   They had a priest dressed in long ceremonial robes, feathers and with a
long staff.  Definitely not Catholic, probably from hundreds or thousands
of years ago.
   There was Alona!  Dayum she was gorgeous!  She glowed so much we didn't
even get a chance to inspect her outfit.  Alejandro and Linda were
accompanying them along with her two teenage sons.
   They had a 50-person choir singing a cappella; it was magnificent
ancient Spanish which flowed majestically over us.  They sang of ancient
gods, lives of bonding together and of cherished love among willing people.
Nice; very nice.
   The ceremony was short; the priest spoke of a consensual bonding among
two or more people.  He left the relationship open for changes with
approval from the Jefe.  Sounded very familiar.
   The choir sang again of love and admiration through ages of lives.  We
wept while the feelings and emotions among the entire assembly echoed those
which Rodrigo and Alona were feeling.
   It was done!  While Rodrigo and Alona went back down the aisle as
bond-mates, the choir sang a last song of hope and joy -- we recognized it
as Leone and Mark's!
   Ceann Mor rose again and told us, "Thank you for coming.  Now, in the
ancient tradition -- an entire hour old -- let's celebrate!"
   Yes!  We celebrated all right.  We did hold the pranks down; there were
several hundred mundanes throughout the assembly who'd wonder at flying
babies and other manifestations.
   ------
   SEAN
   Magnificent and extremely well-done.  I could tell there weren't going
to be contests for fancy weddings, but there would be a very high standard
of quality.
   The moratorium on spirit-tricks sure didn't stop the ladies from
comparing notes on clothes.  There was anything from "plain" elegant LBDs
all the way up to formal gowns.  I didn't even try to tell which were cleas
and which weren't; I let the ladies concern themselves with that.
   Yeh, lots of ladies did quick changes to try something new or different.
Most seemed to get quite a bit more, em, risque, as the day progressed,
like an all-out Tavern night.
   We didn't quite stuff ourselves, though we did sample a lot.  I figured
the amount of food there would feed us all for a couple days.  The booze
ran the gamut just like the food.  Seems the organizers knew there were a
lot of Irish, because we found a *lot* of excellent Irish whiskey.  Some we
hadn't heard of before, so of course we had to do quality control checks to
ensure it was fit for consumption.
   Ceann Mor did a quick count and _told_ the Ceanns, _"We've got 80 Clanns
here!  Good on ya, folks!"_
   We Clann Cullen folk didn't even try to stay together.  We couldn't get
too lost; besides, we had a light _link_ going as we normally did while we
were out in the world.  All the Ceanns circulated around and ensured we met
the rest in the flesh.
   Japanese was interesting, for sure, with a whole different language
construction.  Might as well get used to it since we all had at least two
more completely-foreign languages to learn.  At least Japanese could come
from a human throat; so far, I had no idea if a human could actually
vocalize Sperk or Phane.
   Clann size ranged from five on up to hundreds.  Like me, a lot of the
Ceanns had only a ball-park estimate of how many they had -- and were as
concerned about it as I was.  I met four other hereditary Clanns from
Ireland alone!  Of course we compared notes; we were from various parts of
the island and had some memories of at least hearing about each other. 
Good.
   I got to dance with Alona for a whole five minutes before someone stole
her.  *Very* nice lady!
   By the time things were winding down (about 7:00 for us California
folk), there were plenty of well-sloshed people.  I noticed among several
of the mundanes, ones of us had installed a blood-alcohol filter so no one
was really hurting.
   The ladies and I finally got back together and ported back to OTL.  We
put the bodies down to rest and recover.  Marge had invited George over for
the rest of the night (plenty of room in the second bedroom); he didn't
snore, but we did hear some interesting noises the rest of the night.
   Around 1:00, our bodies had recovered enough to have our own little
party.  Seems the ladies had talked with Kathleen about Babies Within and
had gotten some "divinely-inspired" advice.
   So, our Babies Within got three doses of special baby-grow juice.  That
inspired BB and Kate so we had to practice doing the same with them.  Oh,
such an onerous duty!
   ------
   (Sunday 8/6)
   Early Sunday morning, the thieves at Stephenson Ranch made a heist --
helped from within.  Unbeknownst to them, however, some extra security
cameras had popped up inside and outside and caught everything.  The local
police had thirty men waiting for them as they started to drive off.
   Only one person tried to get away, and a spike strip nailed her tires
before she'd gone more than a couple feet.  Too bad.
   Just there alone, they picked up fifteen people, including half a dozen
insiders from the restaurant and hotel.  We tracked them for a while;
several started singing right away when offered a "deal."
   The current owners were extremely surprised, of course.  They rapidly
came to the conclusion the gang's activities had *not* contributed much to
a positive cash flow.
   After a couple hours of singing, the police and City Attorney had
warrants for another twenty arrests for people they'd suspected of criminal
activities for many years.  The judge signing the warrants took one look at
the source of the original tip and signed away.  Even as they were going
out to arrest the others, ramontheeye was pouring dossiers into the email
in-boxes.  It was a slow night on Probe Patrol so a good dozen newbies got
some real-world practice.  Yes!
   About 4:00, we let ramontheeye and the police get on with what they were
doing; they sure didn't need our help!
   We had breakfast in.  Guess who got elected to be the cook?  One hint --
the person wasn't female.
   After breakfast, Melissa popped over and we drilled the seminar for a
couple hours.  The Hat Ladies were now in excellent form and were talking,
asking the right questions and manipulating the show with almost no
attention on what they were doing.  99% of their attention was on the
audience (a group of a dozen dolls).  That's exactly how it should be.
   We let Melissa go back to her orgies (at least we told her that's what
probably would be happening), and we spent most of the day looking over the
statistics emails, doing industry research, soaking in the Jacuzzi and
harassing Geeser.
   We checked out the Clann Cullen web site in the evening.  Rosheen's Good
Gossip Column mentioned that Simon (from Collectable Arts) had gone a very
successful first date with a Clann lady -- they'd gotten matched from on
the web site!  Good on 'em!  Maybe sometime soon I'd have a bonding
meeting.
   The Fillmore portal showed we were above normal on the seminar
registrations for next Saturday.  Guess we'll have to put up with another
overflow crowed.  Yes!
   ------
   EILEEN (Monday 8/7)
   Monday morning started off with several bangs.  We got five emails and
three calls inquiring about Admin Scale and Organizing Board Workshops.  We
figured it was about time.  The seminar had been just about a month ago,
and that would give the right amount of time for busy executives to get
through The Book and the detail manuals.
   Of course we were interested!  While BB, Kate and Melissa handled the
phone calls, I replied to the emails quoting terms and prices.  We'd
figured out over a month ago we'd send two people for every 10 Workshop
attendees.
   With the Exchange calendar working perfectly, we had three tentatively
scheduled starting next week.  We figured a flat rate of $2,000 each for
us, plus expenses.  Expenses would mainly be food; we weren't about to
worry much about transportation since the Beemer and Volvo would make the
trip with no strain.  Grin.  Besides, they needed to be run around a
little; we'd moved them around in the drive a little every day but hadn't
actually used them for over a month.
   About 10:30, Kate informed us the money for the Technical Research sale
had hit our bank.  All right!  $395K would buy a few baubles for Bridget!
That left two businesses to go.
   The Stevenson Ranch hotel owners called.  They didn't mention a word
about the excitement yesterday -- probably didn't want to shake up the
escrow.  They told us it was fine for us to meet the staff and to start
training the managers.
   Good.  Kate immediately called the day manager and set up a time for a
"formal" visit.  Yeh, she was being enhanced; Kate figured she'd probably
be popped in the next couple days.
   Anyway, we arranged to go up tomorrow so she could give us her own
personal tour.  10:00 was just fine for us all.  We _talked_ with the N&Bs;
they'd had the same offer to start their managers and were going up
tomorrow, too.
   We spent several hours in the afternoon working up the Admin Scale
Workshop materials.  We'd thought initially of using a PowerPoint
presentation like we did for a seminar, but ditched the idea.
   We ended up with a thirty-page printed set of material; most of it was
definitions and examples -- both good and bad.  BB put it all together with
a front cover similar to The Book and emailed it off to our local printer.
Two hundred fifty copies for now should do; we had Mona add it to the web
site.
   ------
   Clann Reynolds meeting time again.  We sent Margie over physically; she
might have something to say (then again, when *doesn't* she have something
to say?).
   Oh, yeh.  She did have something.  The Skunk Works had finished up
technical bulletins on Two-Way Touches, Distance Viewing, Sound and
Perception Transducers (both directions) and yet another one on Cleas. 
She'd been holding out on us; guess we'd have to Soo Laid her until she
dies!
   We immediately checked out a copy of each for us to devour later. 
Probably would be plenty of goodies inside!
   Kathleen talked.  "You know Sunshine's story by rumor if nothing else.
Probably all of you have observed babies being born and spirits picking
them up.  If you haven't done body switching by now, you probably will
soon.
   "The idea of the spirit controlling a body through a control interface
-- the mind -- is one we teach as a basic almost as soon as someone is
enhanced.  One of the Skunk Works projects kicking around was the
possibility of locating healthy bodies with no spirits, like Kathleen
Donovan.  Granted, I lucked out to some extent by ending up a Donovan --
being Irish is a Real Good Thing!
   "We've set up a confidential database of bodies 'available' for
walk-ins. They range from newborns up to the 80s but are all very healthy.
The original spirits are no longer there for whatever reason.
   "There's a family history to go along with the short description and
location.  Currently, there are around 25,000 available.  Each has a tag
node; if you run across another likely candidate, put in a tag node and add
it to the database with all the information you have.
   "We're working on a global data-sharing network for Clann research and
this will eventually be part of it.  For now, though, it's on the same
network as the confidential material check out logs and is available to
everyone.
   "Obviously, not everyone will need one of these and most will simply
want to start over.  However, it's an option we haven't had before.  I
personally know of several older people who might decide to go that route
rather than doing stem-cell regeneration or picking up a baby body.  The
choice is yours.
   "Any conflicts will be escalated to the Clanns Council as needed, but we
expect the Ceanns to be able to handle most of the issues.  It's not as
though we'll run out of new bodies soon; making babies seems to be a
favorite pastime on this planet."
   Interesting.  We knew she was talking of the Keavys; we'd talked over
that option with them before.  Now there was the possibility of an even
wider choice so they didn't have to scout up something on their own.
   Bob spoke briefly.  "At a rough guesstimate, we've got over 2,500 ones
of us now, and Maggie McLennan figures we'll probably be doubling that
every week or so.
   "Security is the watchword here.  Know your Potentials; just because
someone has Talent or Potential doesn't automatically give them a right to
be one of us.
   "We haven't run across any evil spirits yet, but most of us are betting
it's simply a matter of time.  We really haven't done much investigation of
governments like State and U.S.  Congressmen and Senators."
   That got a good laugh, but underneath we figured he was right.  There
was nothing we knew of which meant having Talent made someone ethical or
good.
   Bob finished up the thought, "We haven't had the slightest security
breach yet.  That's probably because the enhancement teams are training new
spirits properly and the checksheets work.  Keep expanding and keep up the
good work."
   Yes.  Betcha we'll have a couple Clanns in Stephenson Ranch in the near
future.
   Ben Talbert told us about some of the Skunk Works projects.  "I'll bet
most of you've checked out the new sinkhole in the Mojave Desert.  The
geologists are having a grand time messing around with samples and
speculations.  So far, they've not found a single indication the entire
affair wasn't completely natural.  Of course, that's what they expect to
find, so it helps quite a bit.
   "Let's give a hand to Patrick Derman for spotting it and to our security
team and engineers for such a fine deception under pressure."
   Yeh!  We at OTL joined in with the _applause_.
   Ben had more.  "Selene City is open for physical visits.  Most
everyone's found if you set your body shields pretty cushy, you can do a
lot of bouncing -- and you will.  Lunar gravity only takes an hour or so to
get used to.
   "We figure there's artificial gravity; we've found lots of equipment
underneath everything which is probably just that.  For now, we're leaving
it alone.  We don't really need it right now so we're not gonna mess with
it until we understand it a lot better.
   "George Baxter and his elite team of computer geeks have gotten a
thousand of what we call 'personal' computers operational in various parts
of Selene City.  Fortunately, all they've needed so far is a quick check
for dust and loose connections, and they power right up.
   "Two haven't powered up and there were five monitors, two keyboards and
a couple 'mice' which didn't appear to work.  Didn't matter, there were
several thousand each in storage.
   "There are three much larger computer systems in the main living and
admin space plus a mid-sized one in the hanger.  There's one humongous
sucker in the manufacturing area which leads us to believe almost
everything is computer-controlled.
   "One of the living-space ones appears to be for city control.  There's
channels to atmosphere sensors, the gravity equipment, shields and the like
running all over.
   "The other two, we're not sure of yet.  Probably one does the
administration since it's in what we think is the major office complex. 
The third one seems to be for R&D of some sort, we don't know.  It's got
plenty of sensors running everywhere plus what appear to be several
trillion wireless nodes.  It's possible it is the central network hub for
all the 'personal' systems.
   "And yes, there is definitely a wireless network.  It's not our
Earth-type radio, either.  As soon as we fired the second system up, it
appeared as if an entire networking system came alive.
   "We can trace the signals to some extent and found satellites in almost
every the Lagrange point of the solar system -- plus several hundred others
scattered around.  They're little things; less than a meter across.
   "They're solar-powered and have built-in accumulators and debris
avoidance engines.  Between the Earth's Lagrange points, both Earth and the
Moon pretty much have full line-of-sight coverage.
   "This stuff doesn't seem to be line of sight, though.  Preliminary
speculations and SWAGs make it quantum signaling of some sort.  Anyway,
there's the equivalent of zero signal propagation time as near as we can
tell, even from ones around Pluto and the Moon.  You can guess our network
engineers are having a Real Good Time.
   "Practically, it seems to have a transmission speed of well over a
million times what we have in Earth wireless networks.  Another SWAG is we
can parallel several of the small systems together and make a cluster.  It
should be verrry interessting!"
   There were sign up sheets by each Selene City system for those wanting
on.  Ben requested we hold off mobbing them for another couple days at
least until the crews got more going.  The linguists (especially the
cunning one!) were still going all-out studying the languages and were
hoping to have some technical bulletins available Real Soon Now to help
guide our studies.
   Good.  We could use something to do in our spare time.  Grin.
   ------
   SEAN
   More good stuff.  Evin Donovan told us about the companies, "We've got
them set up.  The research company is 'SW Enterprises' and the operational,
manufacturing and distribution company is 'NewTek.'
   "Even we lawyers had a good time with them.  There's probably at least
fifty blind corporations, holding companies, cross-ownerships and what have
you in each chain.  There's no cross-connection, either.  NewTek will
manufacture under a royalty agreement with SW Enterprises and that will
pretty much be the only legal connection.
   "Each top-level parent company has 10,000 private shares.  As we
discussed before, we'll sell one share per spirit for $100 per share.  We
did a lot of cheating and elected the necessary officers and filed all the
right papers -- hopefully -- and paid all the needed, em, extra fees to get
them all nice and legal.
   "As of tomorrow, SW Enterprises will start hiring at the JRD building.
Probably the only thing the current people will notice is that they'll have
business cards with a different company name."
   NewTek was legal and all that but wasn't operational since it really had
nothing to produce -- yet.  The officers were rapidly hiring salespeople to
sell raw materials such as pelletized iron, rare metals and the like. 
Until we had some "real" technology, they'd hire and teach ones of us to do
mass production, usually with _touch_ filters of some sort.
   Yes, they'd figured out how to create pretty much any alloy or other
combination of elements desired.  Even semi-conductor substrate was fairly
straightforward.  Delivering the precut wafers in pretty much any size and
composition for a tenth the cost they were now might get a few nibbles.
   Marge told everyone about the ancestor hunting.  She told them the same
as she'd told us; it was a definite "maybe." Well, after we get a couple
more hundred thousand ones of us, maybe someone will take an interest and
do more research.  It wasn't vital and wasn't really needed so far as we
knew.
   ------
   (Tuesday 8/8)
   I nudged the ladies awake at our usual 7:00 and dragged them outside for
Krav Maga exercises.  Four nude ladies doing stretches does tend to get the
blood circulating -- except it tended to pool in a certain place.
   Last night, Evin had announced the SW Enterprises and NewTek shares
would go on sale.  Right at 9:00, we joined the other 2,000 spirits lined
up in the JRD building.  Long line?  Not a problem; we had maybe a fifteen
minute wait.  We each got a share each; Marge's was "in trust" to Eileen
and me.  We were twice-over YAB owners (Yet Another Business)!
   Dayum, BB got a solid lead for one of the businesses.  She set up a meet
and tour for Thursday morning.  Yes!  We're gonna get it done!
   Right at 10:00 we showed up in the Stephenson Ranch hotel lobby.  Paige
Flinders, the day manager, was ready for us.  We'd get together with the
night and weekend managers later.
   Paige was in her mid-twenties and had an Associates degree in Hotel
Management.  This was her first position, and she'd been there for six
months.  She and the managers for the restaurant got along really well --
in fact, she and the restaurant day manager been dating for a couple
months. Should work out just fine.
   Kate told her right off what the story was on the properties.  "Sean's
sisters and brothers-in-law are purchasing the restaurant.  We're
cross-linked in the businesses, so we'll probably be running both pretty
much as a single entity.  You'll probably become *very* well-acquainted
with Arnold Billings next door."
   Paige pinked right up as we grinned at her.  She could see we had a
pretty good idea what was going on.  Arnold was being enhanced, too, so
they'd probably do pretty well together.
   She took us around on a tour of the ground floor and gave us her own
opinion and slants on things.  BB mentioned, "I understand there was a bit
of excitement around here Sunday morning."
   Paige shook her head.  "Sure was.  We haven't been told anything, but
we've got staff missing from both here and next door.  The police said
they've made several arrests for theft and have been interviewing staff
yesterday and today.  Other than what we can see, we haven't been told a
whole lot."
   Kate told her, "You'll find out everything within a couple days.  Now,
since you might be short-handed, here's a list of people we recommend you
interview."
   We had a list of the potential ones of us on our enhancement list who
were available to work.  She took it as a quite strong suggestion.
   She'd spotted a lot of the same outpoints we had during our inspections.
She had some excellent ideas on increasing the service without much cost
and on promoting the hotel and restaurant.  She said, "If we're going to be
working together, we should probably do some joint promotion, too.  Are you
planning on changing names?"
   Yeh.  We had some real original ones.  Erie's Rest and Erie's Tavern. 
Heh.
   Eileen filled her in on the rest of Cullen Enterprises.  I handed her a
seminar card with a 100% discount code.  "Get registered right away.  That
code gives you a free ride for this Saturday in Seattle."
   Kate handed her an envelope.  "Here's a plane ticket and a bit of fun
money.  The room reservation's in there for Friday and Saturday nights and
you've got a reservation in the SkyCity restaurant on the Space Needle for
8:00 Friday.  Both are fully paid.  We expect you to spend Sunday having a
great time.  And by the way, Arnold's getting the same deal next door as we
speak."
Paige pinked up again.  She was thinking she and Arnold were gonna have
a *good* time.  Neither of their salaries were much and both were paying
off some school loans.  Kate "neglected" to tell her the room was
double-occupancy; we'd decided to let them find that out themselves.
   Paige said, "From the sound of things, you're not going to be replacing
us.  Is that right?"
   I told her, "You and Arnold have been doing the very best you could
under the management you have.  You're both educated in the businesses,
know the place and people and are ethical.  With a record like that, we'd
be pretty stupid to let either of you go, and Cullen Enterprises isn't
known for its stupidity."
   We gave her a brief rundown on The Book and what the seminar was about.
I told her, "As soon as we can schedule it, we'll be sending all the other
managers, too.  In the meantime, we'll get them started on self-study next
week.  It's not as if they've got three other jobs."
   That was true.  The evening and night managers were full-time and the
weekend managers had small part-time work during the week.  All were good
people; two here and three of them at the restaurant were on the
enhancement list in addition to Arnold.
   Good.  We did a switch with the N&Bs next door (Melissa was with them)
and talked with Arnold a while.  He was really looking forward to the
weekend -- somehow I didn't think it was just the seminar, either.
   All right!  We popped back home, checked the email and relaxed for a
while.  Geeser ensured we stayed well-anchored by sleeping on laps.  She
didn't play favorites; she blessed each of us in turn with her presence.
   We did another couple hours of drilling then popped back up to SR to
meet the evening manager.  He was in his fifties and pretty experienced. 
While he was mundane, he was real good people.
   We took him over our plans for the places and gave him The Book.  He
didn't mind at all; he'd been concerned too that we'd be letting him go.  I
think he'll work out just fine.
   The night manager came in a bit early to meet us.  She was a no-nonsense
tough broad.  She had plenty of compassion and understanding, though, and
we figured she was a good fit for the shift.  She was on the enhancement
list so would work out just fine.
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 8/9)
   George popped in around 9:30 with a load of "stuff." He and Margie
scurried around setting up a computer system and half a dozen monitors,
etc. Margie told us, "Since we're such nice people, SW decided we needed
our own Celian system for training.  That way, we wouldn't be bothered by
the common crowd in Selene City."
   Right.  It was a Celian desktop with an accumulator for power.  George
told us, "The operating system is intrinsically multi-user.  We've had a
system with 20 users running the multimedia presentations at full speed
without a lick of effort.  Each Ceann gets one."
   Well, we wouldn't turn it down, for sure.  Kate promptly signed out
checksheets for us so we could get on and start some larnin'.
   It took Margie a whole 10 seconds each to "attach" a user monitor and
the other devices.  All were wireless and apparently worked on a
short-range equivalent of the network.  Short range apparently could be up
to several million kilometers, so we weren't too limited.  Grin.
   George mentioned there were indications we could actually hook up
through the network, too.  So, we could be out beyond the Oort cloud and
still be connected to our personal porno collections.  Hehehehe.  As if we
needed any.
   Of course we left it alone for now.  Right.  We were on it like green on
a leprechaun!
   The checksheet got us onto the first tutorial -- basic basic basic
computer operations.  The checksheet addendum gave us just enough
vocabulary to muddle into it.
   Sean finally pried us away after four hours of doing alphabet and number
drills.  "More later.  If you're *real* good and you do your Krav Maga
exercises *real* good, I'll let you back on."
   He relented after many threats of bodily harm, including becoming bald
all over one hair at a time.
   ------
   Oh, yeh!  Soo Laids tonight for Bob, Kat and Sherry!  Yum!
   If Sean was amused by all our dashings around, he hid it well.  He
brushed Geeser thoroughly -- to her delight -- and cleased her in a nice
leprechaun green.  She'd guard the house while we were, em, engaged in
dispensing hospitality.
   Sean and Margie had the place done up as an ancient Clann meeting room.
We'd mixed and matched half a dozen ages and had come up with our own
notion of comfort.
   We ended up with stone walls, comfortable chairs, warm fireplaces,
"furs" on the floor and chairs and serving wenches running around showing
lots of skin.  Plus the guard cat prowling around ensuring we were safe
from rodent ravages.
   Kate had tipped off Kat and Sherry; the three of them appeared right on
time in their (very clever) versions of semi-formal ancient Irish apparel.
Jaysus, they all looked so good I could barely restrain myself.  I noticed
BB, Kate and Margie were drooling quite a bit, too.
   We did give some leeway and disguised modern cutlery and the like as
ancient utensils.  Joints of beef, a small piglet and lots of Irish mead
fed us pretty well.  I had a suspicion we'd all need our strength tonight,
especially after the way we'd eyed each other all during dinner.
   Geeser did us proud and didn't beg.  Of course, she ensured our guests'
ankles stayed warm.
   After our nice dinner and appropriate belches to complement the cooks,
we kicked back and chatted.
   They still had almost a dozen companies to visit yet.  So far, they
hadn't really come up with many outpoints so things were going well.
   We tried to stay away from too much shop talk.  Bob did ask to look at
Sean's ceremonial staff.  No problem.  Bob looked it over carefully and
twirled it a few times (did we see some ancient katas there?).  He said,
"Extremely nice.  Of course, you wouldn't think of using it as a weapon,
right?"
   Sean laughed and said, "Right."
   Bob noted, "Maybe I'd better get me one of these.  I've got a couple
females who need some beatings."
   Sherry and Kat both belted him a good one.  His shield didn't even
twitch; he calmly said, "Ouch.  I'm in agony." Yeh.
   Kat told him, "We're cutting you off.  You ain't gonna get nothing from
either of us for a whole...  night.  Suffer."
   Bob grinned and started suffering.
   We serving wenches decided it was time for some fun.  We gathered around
Bob and carried him off as he cried for help.  Yeh, we'd do our best to see
he got it.
   We dayum near passed out as we stripped him down.  Velvet over steel
didn't even begin to describe it, and it sure wasn't a cleas!
   He was gentle, tender and loving for a long time, then turned things
around and screwed us all into comas!  Yowsah!  We gotta do this some more!
   Sean seemed to have survived the first round with Sherry and Kat.  We
hadn't heard much from their room; could it have been the fact we were
doing one hell of a lot of screaming ourselves?
   We spent some time bouncing around Selene City.  They were bringing up
the observation posts on both the Earth and the back sides.  Give them a
couple weeks and we'd be touring them, too.
   Back home!  We kicked out Bob and Sean while we investigated Kat and
Sherry.  Total yum!  Such lovely boobs on them, with tasty, delicate nectar
flowing freely.
   Kat's clit was wonderful and fit deeply into our mouths.  Margie found
she could get it really swollen up then slip it right into her!  Yow!  Lots
a moanin' and a groanin' and a screamin' oh my!
   I wasn't sure who ended up Soo Laid; I sure felt I was.  The Babies
Within got three righteous drenchings!
   
  
Best Girl Interesting Times 01-05