Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Best Girl: Interesting Times by BJohn
   Ch 06 - 10
   Chapter 6
   SEAN (Thursday 8/10)
   Now *that* was sparks a-flyin'!  While Kat and Sherry were their own
individual selves, they were both fiery, loving and, em, quite noisy.  They
had the best of both worlds: the endurance and exuberance (Oh, *yeh!*) of
youth and the experience of remembered age and actual experience.  Total,
complete yum.
   All that besides their depth, richness, intelligence and, and, and... 
Our _blendings_ were wonderfully brilliant, and we made exquisite rainbows
in the rings of Saturn.  Dayum, we were really compatible; almost up to the
level of my ladies and me.  There was no doubt in any of our minds we'd
continue to get along well together just fine.
   Sherry had _snuggled_ up real close and noted, _"We'll have to schedule
this for at *least* twice a month."_
   Kat had agreed immediately and my doom was sealed.  At least no one had
thought of putting all six ladies on Bob or me at the same time.  Maybe if
I kept my mouth shut, they wouldn't think of it.  At least Bob and I had
gotten a break while the Cullen ladies were molesting the Reynolds ladies.
   We all managed a rest break and did a quick flit up to Selene City. 
There was plenty of action with George's team activating systems and
people-bodies bobbing around in the light gravity.  Bob mentioned, "Since
you're good at the Custom Cloud Cushions, just reverse it up here.  We've
got our own built-in artificial gravity.  Oscar Gold thought it up."
Sounded great to us, and it worked just as well.
   8:00 in NYC for breakfast at Gilligan's!  Four serving wenches, two
Ladies and two Lairds of the Manor staggered in with mammoth (faked)
hangovers.  We loudly bemoaned our actions at the orgy last night and
sucked down some coffee and tea to calm the pounding.
Yeh, most of the male patrons would have endured a month of hangovers
for a night with these ladies!  Little did they know how evil they were!
   Maggie behaved herself and "remembered" not to fly around the room this
time.  No major wardrobe malfunctions among the ladies, either, though
there were lots of close calls.
   The social secretaries must have done some plottings against our
virtues, because Bob and I saw lots of glances at us, giggles and
nipple-peeks.  The other patrons definitely appreciated the last.  Then
again, there wasn't a lot of difference between a nubbin in the air and one
behind gauzy material which probably wasn't legal in public.
   Apparently they also decided our Clanns needed some more cultural
exchange, because they scheduled a pool party for next Sunday.  What the
hell, Geeser could always use some more attention.
   I passed the ceremonial staff around for a look-see (suitably cleased in
deep red and other tricks), then gave a quick demo of shillelagh swinging.
Not the one between my legs, either.
   We did a smoke-and-mirrors exit with pairs of us spinning very fast then
"fading" out with a spiral of smoke.  It was all in the _touches_ we left
behind to let the air collapse.
   Back to work.  At OTL, we did a final run through the seminar then
decided we were ready.  Seattle, here we come!
   The Admin Scale Workshop workbooks came in via Teleport Express -- our
local printer was one of us by now, too!  They were very well done with the
cover art matching the seminar manuals.  We decided they'd do just fine and
tucked them away in a storage container.
   BB and Kate ducked out to show off the business to the prospective
buyer. Marge took off to do some skunking, so Eileen and I looked over
newsletters, did some Internet research and harassed Geeser.  She didn't
seem to mind at all ("Whatever it is, just do me!").  She was getting to be
as bad as the rest of the females around here.
   We didn't _peek_ at BB and Kate this time; we figured they could handle
it and would tell us all about it.
   They did.  The buyer was extremely interested.  BB had set up the "come
in and see how it operates" schedule for him over the weekend and next
week. Lookin' good!
   Hmm.  Seemed Mario had finished his last detail manual because Kat
immediately tattled on him to Marge.  They scheduled his "reward ceremony"
for next Sunday after the pool party.  I sure hoped he would be in
condition, because surviving a night with the Cullen ladies wasn't easy.
   We got some serious time in on the Sperk tutorial.  By now, we didn't
have any trouble recognizing characters (rattling off the alphabet
backwards and forwards might have something to do with it).  The tutorial
had drills on handwriting, too.  There was a difference between the cursive
style and the printed style, just like our usual language.  Actually
*doing* the cursive got rid of any glibness we might have had; the tutorial
was very well done.
   All right!  We were now well into the language constructs, modifiers and
all that.  I had a nodding acquaintance with Microsoft's Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA), so that helped.  BB, Kate, Melissa and Marge had some
experience, too -- Marge a lot more.  Poor Eileen got the short end of the
stick; she had to start from the ground up.
   We took a cursory glance at Stevenson Ranch.  The DA was having a great
time with rooting out the widespread theft conspiracies and had several
cases already arraigned and scheduled for trial.
   Ramontheeye was going strong on it and were relaying dossiers to her. 
Since this wasn't real-time, a lot of Probe Patrol newbies were able to
take the time needed to learn and do things right.  Ana was apprenticing a
half dozen others on the scheduling and administration; sure looked as if
we'd have some regional Probe Patrols fired up Real Soon Now.
   About 7:00 we zipped back up to visit the evening manager.  He was doing
really well on The Book and was excited about the coming changes.  He'll do
just fine.
   At 10:00, we found the night manager was dayum near ready to pop.  She
was picking up thoughts and emotions from almost everyone and was expanded
outside her body a good foot.  A quick check with her enhancement team told
us they were gonna pop her after she got home from her shift.  That should
give her something to do in her spare time.  Grin.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Breakfast had helped out -- maybe we'd live a while longer.  We made
plots about creating some serious compromises on the virtues of our Ceanns.
The social secretaries from both Clanns decided a) The honoring had been a
complete success and b) We *would* do it on a repeating basis.  After all,
relationships need constant work, don't they?  It didn't take long to
schedule in a couple more orgies -- Oops!  That's cultural exchanges.
   Speaking of cultural exchanges, we figured it was time for another pool
party.  Among us (and tapping in Maura and Teresa), we decided next Sunday
would do just fine.
   Sperk was very interesting.  Since we had a real-world use for it (and
Phane) right away, our studies had meaning.  Just like the study checksheet
went over, the student has to be willing to apply what he's learning.
   Now, translate our really confidential materials into Sperk, cipher it,
and there might be something which would give the gov'mnt people a hard
time!  Having to learn Sperk before getting the Clann customs and
new-spirit checksheets might be a bit steep, though.  That was up to the
Skunk Works security team, of course.
   ------
   At midnight, the Clanns Council met in the JRD conference room to do the
Admin Scale Workshop.  Dayum, we'd gotten an additional 15 Clans since last
Saturday so we had over a hundred bodies in the shop!
   Sean ran the workshop; the rest of us Hat Ladies circulated around and
helped out.  Our new workshop manuals got quite a bit of admiration.
   We immediately agreed we were working on the Admin Scale for the entire
group of the ones of us.  The Clanns Council was the representatives; the
Clann Ceanns would pass things up and down.
   We were no longer just talking about a few thousand or million free
spirits, but all the present and future free spirits in the world -- and
possibly others we might meet outside our current environment.
   We did a quick run up and down the Scale to get some possible basics in
place.  It took two solid hours to get something hammered out, but we ended
up with everyone happy.  Sean told us, "Good.  Now, just from what we've
done tonight, there's tons of stuff, capabilities and the like we still
know little or nothing about.  I'd recommend the Council review this Scale
at least every six months for a while.  Betcha some things will change."
   Yeh.  He also recommended each Clann do its own Admin Scale to ensure
their operations were in alignment.  Kieran Flannigan (the luscious red
bear from Akron!) immediately asked, "Could we get some help if necessary?
I'm sure a weekend would be enough." The way he looked at us Hat Ladies
told us what kind of "help" he was interested in.
   BB told him promptly, "Ask nicely and things might happen.  All depends
on the schedule." We didn't mind looking *him* over, either; betcha his
wife was something else, too.  Hehehehe.
   Bob told us he'd have the Scale printed up and ready for checking out by
tomorrow evening.  Yeh, we do need a global bulletin board.
   We let the bodies rest that night.  We restrained ourselves and had a
wonderful cuddling and mild snogging while we checked around for
interesting things happening.
   Not much action at the sinkhole.  Geological action, that is.  There
were several grad students taking advantage of the isolation to console
each other about their hard lots in life.  There was lots of topological
mapping and test drilling going on, for sure!
   Hell, three had some nice Talent (they happened to be a threesome), so
they got tagged and listed.  Now, how would they write up their papers
since they'd eventually know what really had happened?  Not our problem.
   Lots of the Earth outposts had activity.  From a quick check, they were
activating them pretty much everywhere there were free spirits.  That meant
Europe, Asia, Mexico, Australia and Canada as well as the United States.
   So far as we could tell, everything was properly shielded.  Each
installation had the Skunk Works security team's inspection certificate, so
we didn't concern ourselves about it.
   In Selene City, George's crew had brought up several hundred more
desktop systems.  They'd made them available to the "public," so there were
lots of people working away.
   Word had spread about Oscar Gold's "artificial gravity" so not too many
bodies were bouncing around.  Then again, those which were bouncing were
having loads of fun.  Guess that'll end up in another technical bulletin.
Margie got the hint right away.  _"Maybe we could do a 'Household Hints'
blog in our soon-to-be global network.  Can't call it an Internet since
it's more like an Outernet."_
   Groan.  She got a good spirit-pummeling for that.
   ------
   (Friday 8/11)
   Geeser got us up right at 7:00.  How did she learn to tell time? 
Anyway, we got up and went into the back yard for Krav Maga exercises.
   Now we were getting into some basic motions or moves we'd actually be
using.  Simple ones, but we could see how they'd be very effective.  Drill,
drill, drill until it _felt_ right even without the _link_ to the
instructor.
   A quick shower and breakfast (Sean's treat) got us ready for the day. 
After Melissa popped in, we did a quick round of virtual business visits.
   Technical References seemed to be doing very well.  They'd settled right
in, put their own little touches on things and were happy as Irish night
watchmen at the distillery with keys to the sampling room.
   BB and Kate's prospect was at the business; the manager was showing him
around more and he was excited.  Good.
   We spot-checked the rest of the businesses.  Jackie's Beauty Arts was
running smoothly; we had a little _chat_ with her.  Yeh, she'd gotten one
of the girls enhanced; she'd taken over as manager, so Jackie wasn't in the
day-to-day as much any more.
   She and several other newbies were putting together a business plan for
a mobile Beauty Art.  We all had a glance at it and approved.  Good on her!
   Nice.  Thanks to Rosheen, she was dating a Clann guy -- he was also
involved in the Beauty Art on Wheels planning.  They were doing *very* well
together; he seemed to appreciate her as much as we did.  Maybe Sean will
have another Ceann bonding approval cycle Real Soon Now!  Could we stand
another wedding?  Horrible duty, but we political figureheads had to do it.
Grin.
   Great!  BB got a call on the last business we had up for sale.  She and
Kate immediately scheduled an afternoon visit with her.  Yes!
   The rest of the businesses were running smooth as Baily's Irish Cream.
Let 'em rip!
   Oh, yeh.  The Stevenson Ranch DA had gotten the last of the arraignments
in.  They had around 150 different criminals in custody and were trickling
down to the "minor" participants.  Of course, each had a full ramontheeye
dossier.
   Paige and Arnold were doing interviews for staff replacements.  They
were able to take hints, because they were working of the list of tagged
people we'd given them.
   They had to work hard at paying attention since their thoughts kept
drifting off to the weekend's anticipated adventures.  In Paige's case, the
male applicants she was interviewing didn't mind at all.  A hefty dose of
female pheromones and scent does wonders for relaxation -- at least for
some body parts.  Hehehehe.
   We had a wonderful relaxing Pasadena Tavern night.  If escrow closed
early, this might be our last one here.
   We had a lot of Clann here!  We had a great time chatting, flashing,
gossiping and catching up on the young-uns' love lives -- which were going
extremely well, thank you very much.
   The Irishman's drunken hat made its appearance.  Hmm.  Seems a couple
other ones of us were in attendance, and their hat was drunk, too.  The two
hats tried to get amorously engaged, but kept falling off the tables or
chairs and running into things.  Ah, the trials young love goes through!
   Back home, we had some wonderful slow sweet lovin' ourselves.  We
_peeked_ a bit to see if Melissa was concerned about her first time
tomorrow.  She might have been, but there were six other people there
ensuring she got plenty relaxed.  Hehehehe.
   The Stevenson Ranch night manager had gotten popped right on schedule
(not *that* kind of popped!) and had gotten some of her basic training
during the day.  We had a nice _chat_ with her and ensured she knew she was
welcome among us.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 8/12)
   Rita had already arranged our carton storage location in the Seattle
conference hall, so all our stuff appeared in it overnight.  No muss or
fuss.
   Melissa popped over at 7:30 all ready to go.  No, she didn't look at all
tense; guess she'd found a way to relax last night.  We did a last check of
our stuff, ensured our spare laptop was ready then zipped on up to Seattle.
   Rita and Duane were already there.  Hot dayum!  Someone had tagged them
both!  We'd spotted specks of Talent in them the first time we'd seen them
but hadn't followed up.  Guess that was being remedied now.
   We did the room and stage tour.  Again, we had a rear-projection screen
so we wouldn't have shadows following us.  Melissa set up our laptop, got
the calibration slide up and we zeroed in the focus and keystone.  Lookin'
good.
   We had the wireless microphones again; they and the sound system checked
out fine.  We located the spare batteries, and that part was ready.
   The setup out front was similar to the one in Pasadena.  Tables, check
in terminals and cartons of manuals and CDs.  There were already public
people standing around waiting to check in.
   Duane told us, "2,132 pre-registrations.  We might hit 2,400 with the
walk-ins." Yeh, lookin' really good.
   After a final adjustment to their hats, the Hat Ladies and I spread out
for our pre-seminar gestalt-and-glad-handing.  Not a lot of glad-handing;
there was very little time for it.  But between the six of us, we greeted a
good 80%.
   Hell, the front line was already selling detail manuals and CDs.  Since
we had them created already, maybe we should add the Admin Scale workbooks?
Talk about it with Rita and Duane.
   We started right at 9:00.  While there were still people lined up at the
check in, we had 2,584 already.  Not bad.
   As before, I did the introduction.  When I introduced Melissa, I told
the audience, "Be gentle with her.  It's her first time." They gave her a
good round of applause -- and quite a few thoughts about how they wouldn't
mind being her "first time."
   We were off!  Kate started us off while I stood on the other side of the
stage.  These people were pretty dayum sharp; it only took a half hour
before someone asked about the hats.
   Three Irish cheerleaders promptly ran onstage.  They chanted, "Winner!
Winner!  Winner!" with appropriate kicks, bounces and jumps.  Marge
announced, "Charlette Billings from Mercer Island, you are a *winner*!" She
did a multiple-turn discus spin which flared her kilt up nicely and
launched the M&M packet right out to its target.  Bull's eye!
   Kate went into Attracting Attention, and we were off and running.
   We kept lightly _linked_ so we all knew exactly what was going on.  One
of us would handle the shotgun mike for questions while the others were
available for cheerleader duty.  No, I didn't take a turn.
   The speaker always wore business dress.  We got some puzzled thoughts
about having seen Eileen launch an M&M bag some ten seconds before she was
introduced, but that was part of the fun.  A little magic goes a long ways.
   Rita, Duane and several of the front-line crew were watching from the
back of the room.  2,612 was the count so far with only 10 no-shows.  It
was shaping up to be a good one!
   We _linked_ in Rita and Duane really lightly; might as well give them a
head start.  Hell, they started pumping up immediately; with a _link_ to
over 2,600 people, it was no wonder.
   We'd switched speakers all the way through by lunchtime; everything was
flowing smoothly.  None of the ladies had any real attention on what they
were doing; they simply did the correct thing.  That's what all the
drilling gave them.  Good on 'em!
   At lunch hour, we each snuck off for a couple minutes to get a bite
backstage.  The rest stayed out front on the floor answering questions. 
Again, Marge solved the height challenge by sitting quite demurely on a
table.  It sure isn't the case she didn't *know* how to be demure; she
simply doesn't usually act that way.  Dirty old lady!
   BB had cleased her hair and pelt to a medium red and lightened her skin
to match the other Irish girls.  Melissa kept her black hair but lightened
her skin up, too.  Now we had five comely coleens!  I admired them - and so
did most every one else, both guys and gals.
   We rolled on after lunch, tossing out M&Ms like candy (grin) and
ensuring everyone got at least one "they talked right to me" experience. 
If they already had or were in a company, we gave them lots to think about.
If they were looking at starting their own, we gave them lots to think
about.  Either way, they got a bit uncomfortable with their status quo.
   Kate finished up with the Do It talk.  She was great!  It had me ready
and rarin' to go start up something new!
   After we ended off, we handled questions for another half hour or so. 
Most were quite specific, and we pointed them to the correct reference
either in The Book or the proper (section, page and paragraph) detail
manual.  Of course, the detail manual CD or paper manuals were available to
them right outside the door.
   Rita and Duane were hot!  They were pumped out a good foot beyond their
skins and kept bumping into each other.  Hehehehe.
   They'd hired the high-school carton carriers, and the UPS terminal got
one hell of a work out.  By 6:00, we had all the terminals down, packed and
ready to ship back to Fillmore, the extra unsold manuals (six detail sets
and fifteen The Books) and the rest sitting nicely in the storage area.  Of
course, they got Teleport Expressed back home the moment they were alone.
   We took Rita and Duane to dinner.  They were so enthusiastic about the
results they just kept going on about it.  Of course, it didn't hurt they'd
experienced a lot of the feedback and enthusiasm from the audience the
entire time.
   The final tally was 2,621 paid attendees with 10 no-shows.  We'd
completely sold out of the detail manual CDs and had fifty on order.  The
seminar recording had orders for 1,876 CDs.  Dayum, my ladies are good --
and I ensured I told them so several times.
   Marge told Rita and Duane, "When you get back to your hotel tonight,
kick back and relax for a bit.  Things will calm down a notch, then you'll
get all hyped up again." Their enhancement team had noticed the goings-on
through their tag nodes and had already _told_ us they were gonna get them
going that evening.  Yes!  More for the Clanns.
   So, we decided to increase our order for the detail manual CDs by 50%
and do the same proportion as we'd done on both The Book and detail
manuals. No sweat with storage room; the containers were almost empty by
now.
   Melissa showed them the Admin Scale workbook.  We talked a bit about
carrying it at the seminars and decided, why not?  Since the Admin Scale
was pretty much the first thing a business had to get correctly, it should
sell just fine for $15.
   All the information was in The Book and detail manuals, but the workbook
extracted it all into one place.  Of course, Mona had it advertised on the
Cullen Enterprises web site.
   We let them stagger off to their hotel rooms.  They had a very
interesting evening ahead of them to match the day behind them.
   We didn't have any loose ends there, so we zipped back home to OTL for a
well-deserved rest.
   Of course Geeser was glad to see us.  She greeted us with ankle-maulings
and a vibrating massage.  The fact that it was way past her dinner time
(according to her) had nothing to do with it.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Oh, yeh.  We were hyped all right.  Sean kept telling us how well we'd
done, and it wasn't Irish blarney, either.  We did good!
   It took a good hour before the adrenaline rushes even started settling
down.  A nice innocuous chick flick handled the final cooldown while we
talked about any points or ideas which had come up.  We were happy, the
audience was happy, Fillmore was happy and, above all, Geeser was happy. 
We put a good dent in a fifth of 75-year-old Irish whiskey (direct from the
distillery in Ireland!).
   Marge didn't drink much, just a few sips now and then.  She had enough
sense to know her body wasn't very tolerant to that stuff yet.  On the
other hand, she had it calibrated down to the last half-shot to know when
she *should* quit.
   Seems BB and Melissa were developing quite a taste for the stuff, too.
Let's say none of us were feeling much pain by the time we hit the Custom
Cloud Cushion.  Good thing, because we had a major party tomorrow!
   After we put the bodies down, we popped up to Stevenson Ranch to see how
things were going.  Petra Syllum, the hotel week-night manager, had been
popped right on schedule.  She was enjoying her weekend off by zipping
around Magic Mountain and riding all the rides.  She was having a *great*
time.
   ------
   (Sunday 8/13)
   Pool party!  Or I should say parties.  With probably a thousand spirits
just between Clanns Cullen and Reynolds, it would be quite a feat to fit
them all into our and Evin's pools.  So, we did a virtual party.
   There were some thirty clannspeople who had pools and/or Jacuzzis and
were willing to host.  Sean and Bob anted up for the goodies, someone
bought it all and distributed it (Teleport Express), and the hosts provided
the barbeques, the pools and any special goodies they were proud of.
   Hell, it worked out great.  With the shields up and a simple cleas, even
the nosiest of next-door neighbors had no idea what was going on.  If it
got too crowded at one place, someone could just zip over to another party.
If they weren't up to porting themselves, there were plenty of helpful
friends to do it for them.
   Our specialty was the heavy-duty Jacuzzi jets, Irish whiskey and a
flying faery.  A very nekkid, very beautiful flying faery, no less.  Marge
was in old lady heaven; she got to turn on every male and female who
visited.
   Seems like the word spread around, because we had a steady stream of
people zipping through.  It probably didn't hurt, either, that all the
hosts were nekkid, too.  Then again, Sean's "Please play with the chef"
apron hid some of the goodies.  That must have encouraged pretty much every
female who came through to cop a good feel of his tight arse and rub her
boobs on him!
   Carmel showed up with a man her age.  "This is Phillip.  He's from
Havertown, just outside of Philadelphia." They'd met care of Rosheen's
column and via the Skunk Works.  He was *very* nice and we didn't have to
be mind readers to know they were quite smitten with each other.
   Sean shook his hand and noted, "I went to Philadelphia once, but no one
was home."
   Philip laughed and said, "I know exactly what you mean.  I think there's
quite a few 'nobody homes' there most of the time anyway."
   So, maybe the McLennan clann might get another descendant after all. 
Time will tell.
   Carmel told us, "Seems that skin is the uniform of the day.  Every party
we've been to has been nicely nekkid." Yeh, she and Phillip were that way,
too.  They were both lookin' good.
   Things calmed down around 7:00.  Kat and Sherry zipped in with Mario
held firmly in their grasps.  Sherry said, "Just so he won't cut and run.
When we told him there were four horny Irishwomen waiting for him, he
tried."
   We got our holds on him so he couldn't escape from us.  We were
definitely going to have our way with him!
   He was a wonderful man!  He laid so much Spanish lovin' on us we were
pretty worn out after two hours.  Dayum, this Soo Laid stuff works both
ways!
   While we were letting the bodies rest until the next round (Maybe I'd
get a couple more good drenchings on the Babies Within.), we took him up to
Stevenson Ranch to show him around.
   He was suitably impressed with our plans for both the hotel and
restaurant -- or at least he put on a good show of it if he wasn't.
   We scouted around for Paige and Arnold to see how they'd liked the
seminar.  Hah!  Right then, the seminar was *not* in their thoughts.  Paige
told us, _"Seems some tricksters got us both in the same room.  Since we
didn't want to make waves, we made do."_
   Yeh.  They'd made do four times Friday night, six times Saturday and
were going for their fifth for Sunday.  Guess Kate had inspired them with
her "Do it and do it and do it until the job gets done" speech.  Hehehehe.
   They inspired us to drag Mario back for another hour of lovin'.  We
showed him all about Irish shaggings so he could demonstrate something new
to Sherry.  Yeh, the Babies Within got another good drenching.
   ------
   (Monday 8/14)
   We cleaned out the breakfast buffet at a Birmingham, Alabama restaurant.
We let Sean come along to help hold Mario up.  Sean grinned at him and
said, "Not to worry.  After four or five times with them, you'll start to
bear up a little better."
   Mario groaned.  He must have been taking lessons from some Ceann
somewhere, because it sounded a lot like an "it's a trying job, but
someone's gotta do it" groan.
   We let him, Kate and Marge zip off to the Skunk Works.  Ben had asked
Kate to come along for a facilitation meeting so she could ask some of her
famous questions.  The rest of us zipped back to OTL and started the day's
work.
   Liss had survived the weekend, too, because she was already there when
we got back.  She glared at us and said, "You know you've got things to do.
Too much playtime last night!"
   Yeh.  BB and I went back and forth with her a couple times telling each
other just how dick-whipped we were.  Sean just looked around innocently.
At least he'd been innocent last night -- for once.
   BB, Liss and I made a quick check of the two prospective buyers.  They
were already right in the middle of things with their get-acquainted
visits. The managers were doing just fine, so we didn't butt in -- for
once.
   Sean, BB, Melissa and I got together to go over the seminar numbers. 
Kate had built a spreadsheet for the last one, so we made a copy and
plugged in last Saturday's numbers.
   Be Jaysus!  We'd had an additional 800 attendees and had sold a lot more
books and CDs than the first one.  The attendance, manuals and CDs sold on
Saturday would net Cullen Enterprises some 1.1 million bucks!  Toss in the
back-ordered audio CDs and detail manual CDs for another $36K profit and it
wasn't bad for a day's very hard work.
   Sean pointed out, "Remember, we worked our arses off preparing for it,
too.  It wasn't all just one day." Yeh.  But still, even after setting
aside some 35% for business taxes, it left us about $850K to play with.  BB
pointed out we could buy a *lot* of Irish whiskey with that much.
   We sent off the seminar-end surveys to Ted so the young-uns would have
something to do in their spare time.  Maybe the guys would get a couple
hours' rest; I wouldn't count on it, though.
   ------
   SEAN
   With both Stevenson Ranch properties using several of the same crooked
suppliers, we were gonna need some reasonably honest ones.  We made a quick
_talk_ with the N&Bs then made our own quick probe runs through several
dozen hotels, motels and restaurants checking who they used.  We included
the Magic Mountain restaurants and food outlets in the run, too.
   After an hour, we had a list of several dozen suppliers for our various
needs.  The Altadena Arms and the Pasadena Tavern were using several on the
list already, so that was a plus.  We already had good relations and credit
with them so we were ahead of the game with them already.
   BB, Melissa, Teresa and I got on the phone and called them to ensure
they served the Stevenson Ranch area.  They all did, so we explained what
would be happening in a couple weeks.  None of them had any issues with
servicing us; wonder why?  Grin.
   Fortunately, one of them was for all the hotel and restaurant linens and
such which were a major portion of the services we needed.  There were a
couple food suppliers, but we needed others supplying other types of food.
   So, we did some quick probes on those on the list others were using and
rejected several out of hand because they were not really very reliable --
read that to mean "dishonest." We started talking with the others to
establish a business relationship.  Since both the Altadena Arms and the
Pasadena Tavern were already established, there weren't any real issues
about our credit lines.
   All right!  Things were rolling.  Paige and Arnold were doing more
interviews to fill vacant positions so that part looked to be under
control.
   BB talked with Ted about having the young-uns do some surveys at Magic
Mountain.  We'd buy them season passes so they'd be legal, they'd mix,
mingle, have a lot of fun and do surveys on other people -- where they were
from, family size, where they stayed if they were from out of town and what
they needed and wanted in a hotel/motel and restaurant.  We planned on
using the buttons they found to promote both places.
   For some reason, the young-uns didn't have any back off on running
around Magic Mountain.  I figured they'd invite PVC and the Wild Bunch
along to "help." Right.  I told him to go ahead and invite whomever they
wished; we'd supply the passes.
   Ted told me, "We'll probably start tomorrow or Wednesday; depends on how
many fulfillments we've gotta get out."
   That part was a go.  I figured by the time our promo started taking
hold, we'd have a lot of the renovations and maintenance done so we could
handle the higher occupancy at the hotel.  Fortunately, the Tavern didn't
need a whole lot; mainly a major cleaning with some repairs here and there.
   We had a light dinner at OTL; Kate and Marge told us they were hanging
with the Skunk Works and were going to the Clann Reynolds meeting later. 
BB and I decided we'd kick back here and attend remotely; we didn't have
anything we needed to say.
   There were lots of spirits at the meeting.  Besides the 60 or so
people-bodies (including Kate and Marge), there were a good 500 remotes
like BB and me.  Dayum, we're getting some action.
   Bob told us, "Our quick and dirty census shows we have over 5,000 ones
of us world wide.  That's double what we had last week, so we're really
going to town.  Keep it going, keep it secure and we'll all be winners."
   Ben Talbert had his turn.  "Things are looking good.  There's almost
2,000 systems available in Selene City for your training.  Just sign up and
do it.
   "Now, Bob mentioned security.  We had a good-sized meeting today on just
that subject.  We tossed around everything from having all the checksheets
and so on in Sperk to having them totally verbal.
   "Then, our Kate Hanlon asked one of her famous questions, 'Couldn't we
just post them somewhere completely secure, and we go look at them?  Is
there any reason each person has to have their own individual checksheet?'
Well, that brought some results."
   By mid-morning (Pacific time) tomorrow, they'd have a complete set of
everything printed and arranged in racks in Selene City.  They'd be in a
medium sized room with a lot of plants.  We could put nodes in the plants
for distance viewing, put out a streamer, go completely there or pretty
much anything we wished.  It wasn't as if we would be bumping elbows,
right?
   A newbie would already be able to move there and directly perceive.  By
the time they got through a couple more steps of the checksheet and a
couple of the technical bulletins, they'd have all sorts of options.
   We'd have a stack of checksheet prompting sheets with just the step
numbers and a ciphered title so individuals could easily keep track of
their own progress.  As we picked up our prompting sheets, we would leave
our original checksheets and materials and sign them in.  Hell, worked for
me!  No different than doing a probe and transcription.
   Ben led a round of applause for Kate.  Some things must be spread by
word-of-spirit because at least 400 _voices_ chanted, _"Soo Laid!  *Soo*
Laid!  Soo *Laid*!"_ Kate flushed, everyone else laughed and the social
secretaries went into a scheduling frenzy.  Apparently everyone wanted, em,
a piece of that action.
   She was able to escape her fate worse than death, though, and met us
back at OTL.  We grinned at her.  BB told her seriously, "We signed you up
with fifty people.  You're gonna be a busy lady."
   Kate's eyes got real big and those sweet puffies popped right up.  We
couldn't hold it in any longer and laughed our arses off.  Marge told her,
"We figured maybe you'd be able to make do with just us, the N&Bs and the
Skunk Works facilitation team." That got us going for another minute or so
until Geeser reminded us it was time for her night time snack.
   Eileen said, "All right.  Since we've had all these honorings, we
haven't seemed to get much time with you ourselves, Sean.  That's gonna
change."
   BB's turn, "You will spend a night with each of your bond mates.  None
of us has had that chance before.  Not that we don't love our other mates,
but we feel it's important to have some one-on-one time, too."
   Kate stated, "Bridget is first.  She was the first and has always been
your Best Girl."
   Hey, I should complain?  Bridget was looking at me with her Best Girl
eyes and Bridget persona and was completely irresistible anyway.  I picked
her up gently and asked, "Want some candy, little girl?"
   She snuggled right up and said, "Yes, please.  You can have some of my
cookie if you ask nicely."
   I wrapped us in the honoring room furs and asked her as nicely as I knew
how.  She was gracious enough to give me nibbles of her cookie -- several
times.
   The pleasures of the body are many, but the joys of the spirit are
wider, deeper and even more wonderful.  Far from the busy solar system, we
_merged_ gently and wound ourselves around as we shared our deepest
memories of love and contentment.  Best Girl!
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 8/15)
   BB, Kate and I didn't even _peek_ at Sean and Bridget; we got in a good
night of cuddling and snuggling.  Just like old married folk, right?
   Sean and Bridget survived because they were right there for breakfast.
They both glowed with contentment, and it wasn't just physical.  Yow!
   We finished up our checkout of the rooms and other hotel facilities then
went over the list with estimates.  There was lots of minor stuff we wanted
to upgrade a little, like the rooftop area, but the major stuff was already
on the escrow repair list.  Of course, we needed new signs, stationary,
pencils and that sort of thing.
   The current owners were doing the repairs we'd requested.  We were
keeping a close eye on the progress.
   We priced out the things we wanted to do, and it ended up around $90K by
the time we were done.  Why not?  We decided to do it.
   Melissa told us the N&Bs had finished their survey of the restaurant and
had figured maybe $75K should bring things up to acceptable.  That included
new signs, permit transfers and a general upgrade of the parking lot.
   We worked a bit on coordinating the interaction between the facilities.
We decided to put in a wide covered walkway so no one would get wet (It
*does* rain in Southern California!).  With it wide enough, we could easily
roll carts back and forth for banquets and other stuff.
   Melissa placed the order for the next seminar materials with our revised
estimates.  It was in Oakland for 2,000 attendees.  We had several Admin
Scale Workshops coming up starting next week so we ordered the workbooks
for them.  1,000 should be okay to start; the printer could get them out
with a few days' notice.
   Since Mona had put them on the Cullen Enterprises web site, we'd already
shipped a hundred or so.  At $15 plus shipping and our price of $7.00, we'd
probably do okay with them.
   Speaking of the young-uns, Ted sent us back the seminar survey results
they'd tabulated.  Excellent!  Not a single complaint beyond wanting more
depth.  And, yes, every lady got several subtle or not-so-subtle
propositions -- Sean got a couple invitations himself.
   There was interest in both the Admin Scale and Org Board Workshops. 
Melissa said she'd follow those up.
   Kate asked, "We don't really have a checksheet for all this stuff, do
we? The study checksheet is part of The Book, so someone can learn to study
then go through the material.  Should we have detailed checksheets for each
of these which can lead a student through drills and practicals?  Then
maybe give an on-line exam and give them a certification?"
   The rest of us looked at each other for a couple seconds then got right
into it.  Then N&Bs were available, so we had a quick meeting in the
Jacuzzi.
   Sean said, "How about specific industry checksheets as well as a general
checksheet?  One for a restaurant, fast food, collectibles, all the
businesses we've owned.  With the expertise we've got available in the ones
of us, we can branch into manufacturing of several sorts and other
industries.  Do one for each of the JRD company types."
   John suggested, "Get the general checksheet done and piloted.  Once it's
up to speed, farm out the development of the drills and practicals to
various other experts in their areas and give them a piece of the action on
those checksheets and exams.  It should be real simple to account for each
checksheet sold and exam taken."
   We agreed.  Sean parceled out the various tasks: He'd start the general
checksheet for The Book, Patrick and I would investigate various on-line
training and examination packages and the others would scout up industry
experts who might be willing to give their input.  Depending on what
Patrick and I found, we might be able to do the entire thing on line as
courses.
   Yet Another Business again.  Now all we need to do is add in work on a
Waystation and we'd have plenty to do.  Grin.
   We put in a sold three hours on the Sperk tutorial.  It was even making
sense by now!
   Tonight was Sean and me.  Dayum!  We'd never really gone on a date, had
we?  There'd always been someone else along.  This would be special.
   Marge supervised me dressing.  "Gotta get in the romance, Snapper.  I've
no doubt of all our love for each other, but last night with him was
*really* special.  I'd never experienced anything so deep and intense."
   Got me a bit nervous, it did.  Anyway, we decided on something sexy but
not overboard.  We didn't want to give him eyestrain right off.
   We had a wonderful dinner in Honolulu.  It was private, right on the
beach and totally romantic.  We talked, laughed and thoroughly enjoyed
simply being with each other.
   The honoring room furs were simply luxurious as was the long, gentle
loving.  A long, loving Journey left us well out in the Oort Cloud where we
spent the rest of the night loving on each other with sweet _blendings_ and
wonderful rainbows.  Best Man!
   ------
   SEAN (Wednesday 8/16)
   I fell in love all over again with my Best Girl and Bestest Lady! 
Jaysus, it felt just so right to be with each of them.  Add them together
and...  well, it's one of those things you've gotta experience because you
could take hours describing it.
   We did Krav Maga in the morning.  By now, we were up to a 45-minute
session with lots of drilling on several simple basic moves.  The idea was
to get the body and muscles so attuned to *doing* the motion we didn't have
to put attention on it.  Just like everything else, it was drill, drill and
drill until we could literally do it in our sleep.  Some memories must have
been coming back, because lots of the moves felt really familiar.
   Then to work.  BB told us both business prospects were really hot to
trot after just two days.  "Give them a full week like we did Technical
References, and they'll be completely hooked." Good on her and Kate!
   We got a call from the hotel escrow company; they were ready for money.
Melissa and Kate got the task; they did the bank run to get the certified
check then zipped up to Stevenson Ranch and hand delivered it.  Our part
was done for now.
   Liss told us, "The escrow's running smooth; it might even be done next
week."
   Good.  We did a quick check with Paige and the other managers on their
progress on The Book.  Paige and Arnold were both almost through it; going
to the seminar had been a big boost.  Of course, they were studying
together in the evenings.
   The other managers were doing okay on their progress.  They weren't
necessarily burning up the road but were doing acceptably.
   The previous owners were well along in the required repairs for both
properties.  We were getting close!
   So, I got right into creating a detailed checksheet for The Book.  How
do you make meaningful drills and practicals for a general business?  With
lots of work.
   I expanded our work by adding a course checksheet for the Admin Scale
and Organizing Board workbook.  We had the Admin Scale workbook developed
already, so I gave BB and Kate the task of making up a checksheet.
   We debated adding the checksheet to the workbooks versus selling it
separately.  Okay, we decided to make them part of the workbooks.  Marge
got the task to do the checksheet for the Organizing Board, plus to start
gathering the needed materials to create a workbook similar to the Admin
Scale one.
   Ted sent us 50 surveys they'd done at Magic Mountain.  Since this was
the middle of the summer, it was open early to late and was pretty much
full all the time.  Especially during the week, there were vacationers from
out of town, so we got a wide variety of publics.
   The initial tabulation showed most were families with younger
(elementary and middle school) children.  Almost all were staying at an
area motel or hotel within a thirty-minute drive.  Of course, the shorter
the drive and the more economical the lodgings, the more interested they
were.  Well, Stevenson Ranch was literally minutes away and Eire's Rest and
Eire's Tavern were right in the middle price range.
   Hmm.  Was there room for a small playground behind the hotel or Tavern?
Did we need a baby-sitting service?  Well, we just added it on to the
survey.
   ------
   We got the spirit-rumor that one of the Earth-facing Lunar observation
posts was open for virtual tours.  At 3:00, we all popped up and looked
around.
   Neat.  It had a small (1,000 megawatt) thermionic converter, a small
living and office space and the now-standard networked desktop computer. 
It also had a much larger computer and an antenna array of some sort.
   There was a posted notice of observations and SWAGs from the engineers.
The thermionic converter had major power connections to the larger computer
and the antenna array.  So far as they could determine so far, the antenna
array was a transmitter rather than a receiver.  What it transmitted was
yet unknown.
   There wasn't much wear here compared to Selene City and the Earth-based
outposts and facilities; the initial conclusion was it was infrequently
manned or used.  Though the antenna was pretty much fixed on Earth, the
actual reason behind it (and the other similar Earth-facing facility) was
as yet unknown.
   The other two observation posts on the back side of the Moon were
similar except the antennas were huge radio telescopes for receiving. 
Obviously they had different purposes.  Neat.  Another mystery to add to
the heap.  1,000 megawatts could sure put out a lot of bagpipe music to
Earth!
   ------
   All right!  Kate and I were on tonight!  Dayum, she looked *good*! 
Yummy just starts to describe it.  We went to dinner in Sevran (Paris) and
played the new couple all the way.  The food was fine, we enjoyed watching
the people and we loved being together.
   We talked a lot about our earlier years and about our school adventures.
Our shy Kate had been quite the girl in high school!  She'd been on the
Debate Team, Student Council and the Drama Club stage crew.  Quite a
combination.
   Clann Cullen hadn't been really apparent in her life.  She'd been aware
of it all her life, but there hadn't been much action like meetings or the
like.  The support from the Clann had been evident when she'd lost her
parents and her aunt, but pretty much everything else had been in the
background.
   Someone had primed her to ask about my leprechaun costume.  Arg.  Betcha
one of the Cullen Sisters had shot off her mouth.  I still need to recover
that photograph!  I'd _looked_ several times, but someone had really hidden
it away; probably in a stash somewhere.
   Kate loved the honoring room furs almost as much as I did.  She was
sweet and full of fire at the same time; our gentle Journey left us weeping
with happiness while our _blendings_ and rainbows in the Sun's corona
cemented our love and joy with each other.
   Chapter 7
   EILEEN (Thursday 8/17)
   No exercises this morning; instead, we got right to work.
   We spent a couple hours on Sperk then Margie and I started on the first
Phane tutorial.  Lookin' very good.
   After we were done studying, Sean buried himself in the checksheets for
The Book while the rest of us did our assignments.
   I spent three hours tracking down Computer Based Training (CBT)
development programs, testing programs and course administration programs.
Dayum, there were a good dozen or so.
   I made up a comparison matrix in Excel for each type of software.  Each
feature we desired got an overall weight assigned, then each product got a
relative score on the feature.  Calculate the weight times the score and we
had a weighted score.  After summing the weighted scores, we could compare
each contender to the others.
   Checking out the demos, feature lists and prices for each one took
several hours; sometimes the vendors buried the information so deeply I
couldn't find it.  If the software looked interesting enough with the
information we had, I called and shot the shit with a salesman.  Several
tried to sing and dance their way around, but since the web site gave me
their location and I knew their name, a quick probe got me the information
anyway.
   What the hell, BB, Kate and I ran some quick probes into all of them. 
That gave us decent data on their strengths, weaknesses, projected
longevity and other interesting information.
   I pumped that into the comparison matrix.  A couple were show-stoppers
-- one company was just ready to declare bankruptcy, so we sure wouldn't
get any support from them.  They were outta the matrix as fast as a column
delete would run.
   That took us to mid-afternoon.  Enough for today, since Fillmore sent
their final seminar statistics down.
   Oh, sweet Jaysus!  Their figures were just a touch higher then ours
after they'd reconciled everything.  $1.1 million plus change on the
attendance and on-site sales, and the rest of the back orders were the same
as we'd figured.  Yowsah!
   Well, that called for a bit of celebration.  We broke out the rest of
the whiskey bottle and got on a conference call to Rita and Duane.
   They sounded a bit different.  Hmm.  A quick _inspection_ showed us the
enhancement team had done their magic Saturday night, and they were now
ones of us!  And yeh, the expansion team had "neglected" to tell them we
were part of the gang, too.
   They had a good _laugh_ out of that, you bet!  Since they both lived in
Sherman Oaks, they'd been invited to join the local Clann there.  Good on
'em!  We made date to get together for some socialization.
   We got back to business after a bit.  We hopped up on our Fillmore
portal and checked out the activity for the next two scheduled seminars. 
Both the Oakland and Los Angeles seminars showed slightly above normal for
the projected sign up rates, so we discussed doing more.
   Sean told them, "We can handle two at once at different locations.  You
can probably guess by now that logistics are not a problem, and since
there's now six of us with experience, we can split three and three.
   "Go ahead and schedule out as far as you wish.  If you need more deposit
money, let us know."
   Yeh, they had a pretty good idea now how we handled logistics.  They
were gonna start their teleportation checklists tomorrow.
   Duane told us, "With a longer lead time, we might even get a price break
on the venues.  We won't get a lot of breaks on the promo material since
it's customized for each location, but we'll still get several economies of
scale."
   Our contract had provisions in it for exactly the scenario we were
looking at now.  Cullen Enterprises paid the venue costs, so the better the
break, the more we made.  Not too shabby.
   Rita said, "We'll get on it.  Looks as if we'll have to bring several
more people into the division.  Too bad.  Seems the higher-ups are putting
in The Book Real Soon Now; I figure we'll have some advantage with that
since we've listened to parts of two seminars now."
   ------
   EILEEN
   Tonight was Sean and BB's night.  We sent them off to Bermuda for dinner
with BB in her full coleen cleas.  She was really an Irish girl now.
   Her and Melissa's folks, Carl and Della, along with the two younger
brothers, were part of Clann Cullen now.  Guess they'll have to put up with
two Irish girls in the family.
   Liss zipped back to the N&Bs.  Margie zipped off for some skunking with
Ted and Mora -- they were working on the long-distance porting -- so Kate
and I settled in for an evening of Irish whiskey and girl-talk.
   We did that and got in a bit of our own slow loving.  We left the bodies
to recover and explored the rest of the night.  The entire Solar System out
to beyond the Oort Cloud was fair game.  That's a lot of cubic kilometers
to bop around in.
   The grad students at the sinkhole were still miserable and were
comforting each other.  Yeh, an enhancement team had picked up the
threesome and were pumping in power.  That seemed to make them even more
eager to do their own personal erogenous zone explorations.  Even if the
other grad students weren't being enhanced, they still managed to get it
on. Hehehehe.
   There were lots of bodies and spirits in Selene City.  Most were working
on the computers while others in engineering teams were checking out
different facilities and support systems.  There were 15 spirits checking
out the fusion reactor; they were apparently gonna attempt to fire it up on
Saturday.
   There were a dozen small facilities in the Asteroid Belt which had been
energized and were warming up.  Not a lot more they could do until we (the
engineering teams) understood a lot more of what all the equipment actually
did and how to make it do just that -- instead of blowing up.
   ------
   (Friday 8/18)
   Sean and BB appeared for breakfast at Fado's in Chicago.  (Sherry had
told us about it).  We had our public disguise cleas on, but even through
them we could tell they were both glowing.  Nice.  Very nice.
   Yeh, Sean dragged us out for Krav Maga.  It was even getting to be fun
now that we could actually *do* some of the stuff.  Every new motion or
move built on the ones we'd done before, so it was actually getting easier
in many ways.
   Sean _talked_ with Mona for a few minutes about the new checksheets. 
Sean emailed her a couple surveys for the web site.  The first was to see
if our customers wanted the checklists and at what price.  The
certification exam and cost was a separate survey item.
   The other survey was for online courses.  Again, it was to see if it was
needed and wanted; they'd end up with the same exam and certification (if
they passed the exam).  This was the more critical survey since it would be
a lot more work to create the course.  The software wasn't cheap, either,
since it not only had to track the students but it also had to track where
they were on the checklist, have them do the drills and practicals, report
on them and grade them.  If not enough people were interested, we wouldn't
bother.
   Mona _told_ him she'd have them up in an hour or so.  Once we had enough
surveys, we'd know if it was viable.
   Ted had sent in the Fulfillment Center stats yesterday; there'd been a
significant increase in the Admin Scale workbook orders and a spike in
orders for CDs.  Mona had put a link to the Fillmore web site so people
could place orders for the seminar audio recordings.
   The download statistics for the detail manual PDFs had gone up a bit;
guess those who hadn't gotten either the CDs or manuals at the seminar were
getting their goodies.
   With the RRK and JRD companies drop-shipping The Book and detail manuals
to their new hires and companies, that stat was up, too.  All helped fill
the coffers.
   Sheila Llanos called and pretended to rag on us because of all the calls
her office was getting.  She was still listed in the seminar resources and
Sean had mentioned her name twice.  I thought that was good promotion, so
we sassed her right back.
   Sean dove back into developing the checksheets.  The rest of us had our
work to do.
   Patrick and I split the exam software research; each of us picked a
couple and did as much research as we could from the vendors' web sites --
including beating on the exam simulators.  Geeser contributed to the
research by walking on our keyboards; she managed to make a couple exams
freeze up!  Now, how do we pay her for her work?  We upgraded the
comparison matrix then let it sit until we got enough survey results.
   We dug out Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from various JRD and RRK
companies, got their email addresses and sent out a quick survey to see if
they'd be interested in creating drills and practicals for a piece of the
action.  By the end of the afternoon, we'd sent out 50 surveys.
   ------
   Date night with Clann Reynolds!  They were hosting the orgy, em,
interaction facilities this time, though.  We wanted them to see the
Stevenson Ranch properties, so we were supplying the tour and dinner.
   We zipped over to North Hollywood, picked up the four of them then
zipped up to Stevenson Ranch.  They liked both places even before we put in
our planned upgrades.
   The staff at the restaurant was on their toes.  Service was prompt and
the food was decent.  Margie told them, "We'll be renovating the kitchen a
little.  The chef's actually pretty decent; she's just been working under
so many budgetary constraints it's been very difficult to get things up to
the standards she knows are possible."
   We were planning on a small stage at one end of the dining room.  With
the large multi-purpose room at the hotel, we could have dancing there as
well as banquets and other activities.
   The parking lots were plenty large; Margie had calculated we could
handle one vehicle for every two patrons in the hotel and restaurant plus
the staff vehicles.  The land behind the two properties went back another
150 feet, so there was even room for some more expansion.  Pretty decent.
   From our preliminary surveys, we were going to cater to the Magic
Mountain family public.  Both places would be kid-friendly, yet allow the
parents some "party" time.  With Magic Mountain only two miles north,
several golf courses around and other night life in the surrounding
communities, we thought it was in a decent location.
   ------
   SEAN
   We went back to their place for the rest of the evening.  They'd done it
up as an Irish castle complete with stone walls, fireplaces and the
obligatory "ghosts" making noises.  To me, the noises sounded suspiciously
like they were moans of passion.
   We settled in to the large common room.  The chairs and sofas looked old
but were quite comfortable.  Bob told us, "Sorry, no castle drafts.  We
figured we didn't need to be *that* authentic." No problem on my end.
   Shop talk, of course.  They'd done a tour of the lunar observation
posts, too, so we mused about it a bit.  I offered my idea of transmitting
bad bagpipe music; enough of that would probably rot anyone's mind.  Bob's
thought of Country and Western music would work the same way.  Mix them
together?  Maybe that's why Humans behaved so weirdly!
   We got an update on the JRD oversight visits.  They had maybe a half
dozen to go; the book audits and probes would be running through
mid-October.  They'd not found anything major like they had in Vail.
   I let the Hat Ladies tell them about the ideas we had for The Book,
detail manuals and workbooks.  Bob asked, "You'll have them done tomorrow,
right?"
   Yeh.  The Hat Ladies promised him some severe chastisement for that
remark; maybe he'd been trying for just that.
   They'd just been talking about the most effective way to get the
policies in and were glad to hear of the checksheets.  They thought $10 a
checksheet and $50 for the exam and certification was reasonable.  We
already had a bunch sold at any price.
   They filled us in on the RRK employment company progress.  Their Van
Nuys Temps worked with it; RRK did the upper end while VNT handled the less
skilled areas.  We decided Cullen Enterprises would go with them on their
next RRK run.
   In their fur-padded, fire-lit glade, Sherry, Kat and I made slow sweet
loving for a long time.  We surfed a few waves and enjoyed each others'
company tremendously.
   We ended up with the rest of the gang just inside the Oort Cloud.  We
played hide and seek among comets and rocks then discovered a small mining
facility on one of the comets.  Dayum, those Cels had known how to get
around!
   We guys all yelled about the same time.  *Someone* was playing the drums
on our poke spots.  Sweet ladies wanting more sweet loving?  Well, I'd
never turned one of them down yet.
   ------
   (Saturday 8/19)
   Geeser _prodded_ us awake from OTL promptly at 7:00 and wasn't willing
to take _"No!"_ for an answer.  Arg; shouldn't have put a permanent node
into her.  We weren't so worn out we couldn't give each other some
good-morning snuggles and kisses.
   I wasn't about to do breakfast, so we zipped down to Chilly Billy's in
St.  John, Virgin Islands (No comments, please.) for their sinful stuffed
french toast -- it's made with eggs and Bailey's and satisfied us
completely.  For then.  Definitely worth the one-second travel time.  Kate
_touched_ Geeser's breakfast out for her; maybe she'd last until the
afternoon.
   The Reynolds gang took off after breakfast, but not before the social
secretaries huddled and plotted against us mere males.  Guess I'll find out
what they came up with when it comes up.  I figured I was in good hands. 
Grin.
   Marge ported Rita and Duane down to OTL for some face-to-face social
time -- they hadn't yet completed their teleportation checklists.  We were
gonna be working a lot more with them so it was worth the time for
everyone.
   We chatted in the den.  They'd been with Fillmore for five years and had
been working together for the last two.  Both were quite happily married
with children, and their families were very good friends.
   They'd suspected something was going on after seeing Margie at the first
seminar, since they'd met her as Bridget during our first meeting.  They'd
kept their mouths shut, though they'd done some private speculating.
   Being outside was a blast for them.  They were already enhancing the
rest of their families -- that was a second-training-session activity on
the checksheet.
   Yeh, they knew Kat and Bob along with most of the JRD staff were ones of
us; the enhancement team had pointed that out.  What they didn't know yet
was the extent of the Clanns' activities.  They were quite aware of Selene
City since the checklists were posted there but hadn't yet gotten into the
broader plans for expansion.
   That was easily handled.  The Hat Ladies were more than glad to talk
away so I didn't need to add much.
   Speaking of Selene City, we popped up and looked around a bit.  Jaysus!
There was so much activity going on around the manufacturing area it was
like a Las Vegas convention.
   Of course, that was like shouting, "Open bar!" in an Irish theater. 
There were at least a thousand spirits _observing_ the happenings.  George
announced to us all, _"We're gonna fire up the fusion reactor."_
   That was exciting, so we "sat" in the grandstands with the rest of the
onlookers.  They'd evacuated Selene City of all the physical bodies so it
was just us chickens.
   Henry was one of the engineering team and had the job of keeping us
informed of what was going on.
   This fusion reactor was several times the size of the one we'd seen at
the sinkhole facility.  The engineering team had transferred the deuterium
and tritium from those tanks to the ones here and had topped them off.  The
second thermionic converter was supplying the initial start up power.
   There was a good-sized box of instrumentation floating around in a
gravity and atmosphere-enhanced shield.  Henry told us, _"It's a wide-range
electromagnetic sensor package plus several particle sensors for neutrons
and others.  We'll get a good idea what, if anything, leaks out when this
thing is operating."_
   Things went pretty fast.  The team had warmed everything up per the
start up instructions so they started the next steps while Henry kept the
rest of us informed.
   A thermionic converter relied on temperature differences to create
electricity.  The fusion reactor heated up helium to several hundred
thousand degrees which ran turbines and generators.  Henry said, _"This is
the largest reactor we've found so far.  The next one down is about a third
of the size."_
   They'd done a complete mechanical inspection of the turbines, generators
and associated support systems.  Replacing a couple bearings had been
almost trivial; it had just taken some very precise teleporting.
   Okay.  The first main step was to initialize the plasma containment
field using the output from the thermionic converter.  That went without a
hitch but the sensor package recorded a good spike in several bands.
   The team shut the field down then started it up again much slower.  That
reduced the spike to about 10% of what it had been before.  The team agreed
it was acceptable for now.
   They did some engineering magic and started a plasma flux with tritium
fusion.  Neat, it was warm enough to toast marshmallows.  Grin.
   They started a turbine rolling and let it warm up for the required ten
minutes.  With the alloys having so little thermal expansion, it took very
little.  The turbine spun the attached generators on no load while the team
_inspected_ everything again.
   First moment of truth.  They energized one of the generators; the
control system immediately feed more hot helium to the turbine, and we had
a couple volts output.
   They gradually brought up the generator voltage until it was at the
rated level.  Someone closed the output breakers and it was on line.
   The grandstand immediately let out quiet _cheers_ of congratulations. 
So far, so good!
   They gradually switched the plasma containment field power from the
thermionic converter to the generator until it was fully over.  The system
was now running on its own power.  Nice.  More _cheers_!
   Henry told us, _"It needs about 10% of the output to maintain the
containment fields.  Now that it's running and self-servicing, we should be
able to switch over to the deuterium fusion."_
   That they did.  It didn't change the power any, but the plasma inside
the field looked a little different.  The instrumentation package had shown
some spikes here and there but in general was pretty innocuous.
   To load the generator, a couple spirits would _touch_ the electrical
output at the main distribution panel right into the Sun.  _"We can put on
as much load as we want."_
   They started putting load on the generator.  The helium flow to the
turbine increased and the gas temperature went up.  At 50% rated load, they
stopped.  Henry informed us, _"We're planning on holding it here for a
while then take it on up over 100%.  Sorry, the fun's over for today."_
   Well, shit.  No more fun today?  Anyway, the package was showing
increased levels of both low and high frequencies so the reactor was
leaking a bit.  They'd probably figure out a way to put a better shield on
it.  I'd still recommend extreme caution in firing up either a thermionic
converter or fusion reactor on Earth; who knows what tricks those sneaky
Humans have up their sleeves!
   Henry told me privately, _"You're right, Sean.  We still need to check
out the magnetic and gravity reactions.  Those require some really
specialized equipment we might have to 'borrow' some night.  The neutron
flux seems to be almost completely shielded already, which helps.  The
security team's already recommended we keep the thermionic converters and
fusion reactors shut down on Earth and on the Earth-facing side of the
Moon. That means we're not gonna energize either of the observation posts._
   _"There's only an occasional flyby of the back side here, so we're in
pretty good shape.  Once we get the shields tuned in for everything, it
should be undetectable."_
   ------
   EILEEN
   Bob and Sean took off for some Ceann talking so the rest of us nosed
around the Moon for a while.  Yeh, the two outposts on the back side sure
looked like radio telescopes except the arrays were completely disguised as
the usual lunar rock.  Once you knew where to _look_, they were obvious.
   Each array covered a circle several hundred kilometers in diameter.  In
our ignorance, that would be pretty sensitive.  With the two spread apart
almost 90 degrees, triangulation for distance should be pretty easy.
   Backing off the surface, we couldn't see any indication of civilization
or non-natural features.  Even over the two converters and the fusion
reactor, there weren't any heat blooms, so someone had them shielded pretty
good.  We were satisfied with it; the engineers and security team would
probably be even more stringent in their criteria.
   As to why everything was disguised to start with, we had no idea.  Even
the outside manufacturing area looked like more lunar surface from a
kilometer away.  Someone had put up a cleas to make it look even more like
the rest of the surface, so it was completely disguised now even from less
than 10 meters away.
   Selene City was rockin'!  Spirits and bodies were everywhere. 
Two-thirds were working on the public computers -- probably doing tutorials
-- while the rest were busy tracing circuitry and inspecting components. 
Margie told us, _"We need to have a good idea what *everything* does before
we power it up.  For all we know now, the 'artificial gravity' grid could
also be part of the garbage collection system.  We've got people busting
their arses getting up to speed on Sperk so they can bust their arses on
finding and understanding the technical material."_
   Yeh, more fun for Margie and the Skunk Works.  We Hat Folk just had to
understand enough about a technology to use it properly, not design or
build something from scratch.
   George and several other spirits were busy inspecting the City Hall
computer; that's the one in the middle of the administrative area.  Margie
told us they figured it handled most of the administrative functions. 
_"The facilities system is next.  All we can do right now is blow the dust
out and look for obvious failures, just like we did for the smaller systems
we've brought up."_
   Fine by me and the others.  We popped over to the hanger; not much
happening, just several spirits checking out the ships.  Margie told us
they weren't planning on firing any of those up any time soon, either. 
Same with the manufacturing areas; until they had a good idea of what they
were doing, the engineers weren't going to mess around too much.
   The checksheet/materials room was completely set up in a wide hallway in
City Hall.  Each page of the material was separated in a rack about a
quarter inch for easier _viewing_.  No need to make it too difficult. 
There were only a dozen or so separate publications for now, so they didn't
take up much room.
   There were plants all over and the ceiling fixtures were on full-blast.
Margie told us, _"They're full-spectrum so the plants should get along just
fine.  We've got a team who waters and dusts every couple days."_
   We _watched_ for about 10 minutes.  During that time there were several
hundred _viewings_, either directly or through nodes set up in the plants.
Most were about a second long, probably just to check out the next step on
a checklist.  While we hadn't needed to access anything lately, we knew it
would be easy.
   Sean and Bob were still going at it, so we _told_ Sean we'd meet him at
home and took off for Earth.
   About a dozen of the outposts were up and had people using the computer
systems for training.  None of the other facilities had anyone in them;
just a shield.  Probably when the security team and engineers figured out
the magnetic and gravity shielding, that would go in, too.  While most all
of them were well-buried under (several hundred thousand years worth?)
debris, the metal *was* somewhat magnetic -- and there was lots of it in
each outpost and facility.
   We popped back to OTL and started our set up for the evening's honoring.
Ted and Mona were coming over.  Ted, of course, was new and we wimmin still
had to see if Mona had picked up any of Maura and Teresa's inclinations. 
Hehehehe.
   Sean got back around 3:30; we all got our showers and were dressed up by
the time Ted and Mona appeared at 4:00.  Yeh, they were dressed for the
occasion.
   Barcelona, Spain was our target this time.  We had reservations for 4:30
(our time) at a four-star restaurant right by the water (Mediterranean
Sea). Five-star places were generally too hoity-toity for us.
   Our cleas fit the local population just fine.  In thirty seconds or so
we had the local dialect and accent rolling pretty well.
   Ted and Mona were familiar with the DNA shielding so that wasn't an
issue.  We just chatted away inside the garble shield.
   Ted told us the fulfillment operation was going very well.  There was
usually at least one drop-shipment for The Book every couple days from the
RRK employment agency so was still going pretty strong.
   Everything else was going out pretty regularly, too.  The Admin Scale
workbooks were currently the hottest item, followed by the manual CDs. 
They were shipping several printed The Book and detail manual sets every
week, too.  Lookin' good.
   We filled them in on our plans for the checksheets.  Ted told us, "No
problem there.  We've got the records of everyone who ordered the workbooks
so when the checksheet's ready, we can mail them off.  With The Book and
detail manuals, we can send off promo when those are ready.  Fillmore has
the seminar attendee records and Sean has his squirreled away somewhere so
we can promote to them, too."
   All Real Good Things.  Kate told us, "We've gotten about $80,000 in
revenue from the site so far.  Guess it's a viable operation."
   Mona told us there had been about 3,000 downloads of the PDFs.  She
speculated most of them had come from the previous smaller seminars.  She
suggested, "How about another email campaign to them promoting the web site
and the goodies we have available now.  Perhaps a discount only for them? I
bet some of the older ones have worn out their paper copies by now."
   Sounded good.  Looked like a job for me.  After our last email campaign,
we'd weeded out the bad (no longer available) email addresses.  Sean had
gotten lots of addresses for his attendees so we could do a direct mail
campaign, too.
   Kate told us, "Even at two or three cents a page, running a set of The
Book and the detail manuals costs almost as much as buying them from us
already printed.  Maybe we could put up a cost analysis?"
   Mona told us it takes them about five minutes to put together a manual
from the pages Sean had sent them.  "Then again, we had the dividers and
notebooks already and knew exactly where everything went.  Add in the
printing time, printing cost and assembly time and it might be more
economical for someone to buy it from and have it shipped.
   "Might even bring that out in the current seminars -- put it on signs at
the front.  Probably quite a few people drive to the seminars rather than
flying in, so they could save the shipping costs.  At $10 shipping for The
Book and $35 for the detail manuals, that's about 10% savings if they get
them then.  Not that we're trying to get out of work, mind you."
   Yeh.  They'd get the custom binders, too.  We immediately decided we'd
sell the workbooks only as printed material.  If someone wanted a checklist
for either of them without the workbook (using the pages scattered
throughout the other manuals), we'd charge them $5.  Not a big money-maker,
but we'd put work into them.
   The restaurant had no problem accepting U.S.  currency, so we paid our
tab and zipped back home.
   We had nothing fancy set up at OTL, just the usual dens of debauchery
with furs and firelight.
   Sean and BB sandwiched Mona on one sofa while Kate, Margie and I
molested Ted on the other.  Ted didn't seem to mind at all!
   Mona didn't mind attention from BB, either.  She returned it with vigor;
I think she liked BB's pelt just as the rest of us did!
   We talked a while more, then dragged off our prey for their in-depth
ravishings.  Mmm.  Ted had gotten some excellent teaching; he could
cunny-lap with the best of us!  He gave us all an excellent going over; my
Babies Within got a good drenching.
   All right!  Time to switch.  We wimmin let Ted and Sean do guy-talk
while we checked out Mona.  Yum, yum, *yum*!  She was sweet, tender (very
firm in the right spots) and completely uninhibited.  We decided the Moms
had taught her extremely well.
   ------
   SEAN (Sunday 8/20)
   Mona was...  Mona.  Tons of fire which matched her heart and a sweetness
of spirit which made me ache.  Yeh, seems the all the Cullen women affect
me that way.
   My ladies kidnapped her in the middle of the night and threw Ted and me
out.  We just laughed and ported off to New York while they worked their
wiles on each other.  Ted told me, "It'll probably be a draw about who
outlasts who.  Maybe your ladies have a chance since you've already worn
Mona down a bit."
   We strolled around Liberty Island and ported to the top of the torch to
look out over Manhattan.  While some windows were dark, there were still
plenty of lights on.  We kept looking for the Big Apple but didn't see it;
maybe someone had eaten it?
   We talked about the teleportation research.  Ted said, "It's getting
really tricky.  We always seem to be on the edge of a breakthrough, but
keep running into a dead end.
   "Hell, we've already been to ten different planets over 100 light years
away.  Finding the target in either direction seems totally a matter of
perception; we keep refining the very nature of the perception we have of
the physical universe and how it works.  Porting material or living things
that far is the same; if we can perceive it, we can get there.
   "So far, we've decided it's not an issue of technique since for all
practical purposes when we move as spirits we need a source and destination
point.  Teleporting something physical to the same place needs a source and
destination point, too; the actual porting is trivial.
   "We've not run into any issues on intrinsic velocity; it's an almost
trivial compensation.  It all seems to be related to finding and internally
describing a destination point.  Don related it to the idea of a golfer
always aiming for a specific spot no matter how far away.  If you don't
aim, you'll probably not get close.
   "We think we should be able to move and port from one side of the galaxy
to the other as well as from a specific point in one galaxy on one edge of
our physical universe to a specific point in a galaxy on the other edge. 
We're talking about a mathematical point of zero dimension.  It's all
coming down to locating and finding that destination point, and that's all
about perceiving it."
   Yeh.  I remembered the first time Margie had ported us (over to Bob and
Kat's place).  One of us had made a comment about not being spread out
through 20 universes.  I told Ted about it.
   He laughed.  "That's come up too.  Marge thinks -- and so do we -- that
there might well be other universes, too.  We're getting down into the very
weave of how this universe is put together."
   Marge thought all mathematics could be derived from those basic ways our
universe was put together so the team was spending a lot of time
reverse-engineering simple math in an attempt to discover the basics. 
Matter, energy, space and time appeared to be intimately inter-related. 
Once they knew how they were related, they'd have a chance of understanding
and applying the knowledge.
   Yeh, there might be some fundamental barriers to what we desired to
accomplish, but what fun's a game without rules?  Even as kids, the games
we played developed often-tacit rules as we went along.
   We laughed at the thought we were "all-powerful." Ted clunked his heels
against the bronze and said, "But in the meantime, we're playing this game.
This matter, energy, space and time is fairly well defined, and we know
what we want to do within it.
   "Now, it seems the ladies have worn each other out for a while so maybe
they'll let us back in."
   They had worn each other out.  Three solid hours wasn't bad, though.  We
ported back and let our bodies rest while we bopped around the space beyond
the Oort Cloud and the next nearest solar system.  As we'd expected, there
really wasn't a clear-cut boundary.  The matter density kept decreasing
then started increasing again.  Hell, it was just like urban sprawl!
   That didn't effect at all the joy and love we shared as we _merged_ time
and again and wound ourselves through each other with brilliant rainbows of
happiness.  With Ted and Mona joined with us, the ecstasy was bearable for
a while longer.
   ------
   The ladies did decide they wanted a bit more and told us so by thumping
our poke spots soundly.  Ted and I resigned ourselves to our fates, popped
back and soundly chastised them for a couple of hours.
   We had brunch in Nassau in The Bahamas.  We fit in there as if we'd been
natives; no one paid us a bit of unusual attention and of course accepted
our U.S.  twenties.
   My ladies and Mona were sparkling and glowing.  Ted and I at least had
to put on the appearance of being worn out, so we played the part and
bemoaned the work they'd put us through.  Mona laughed at him and said, "No
FedEx or UPS today.  We've got a couple enhancement appointments, but we
have the afternoon and evening free to do whatever I want.  Right, Ted?"
   Ted was very much aware of his place in the Scheme of Things so he
agreed with her.  I'd say he was in for a Real Good Time (again) today;
last night, the Cullen ladies and I had taught her a few interesting things
to try.
   Ted and Mona zipped back off to their places to tend to their duties.
   We ported back to OTL.  The N&Bs ported over, and we spent the rest of
the day looking over the plans for the restaurant and hotel with an
occasional soak in the Jacuzzi.
   Seems the ladies had to gossip a bit.  Why else would they spend three
hours in the various bedrooms making interesting sounds while leaving Jack,
Patrick and me to entertain Geeser?  Hehehehe.
   ------
   EILEEN (Monday 8/21)
   After we did our exercises in the morning, we checked out the status of
various projects.  The repairs on the Stevenson Ranch properties looked
completed and appeared quite acceptable.  We were really itching to get in
and start our name changes and upgrades, not to mention our promotion.
   Based on what previous stats the owners had kept, the average hotel
occupancy had been running around 60% last summer and even lower during the
other times.  Even before I'd met Sean, that would have seemed pretty low
to me, especially at a place that close to Magic Mountain in the summer.
   We wanted to get it up into the 90 to 95% range.  We computed the
Altadena Arms occupancy on a weekly basis and would do so for Eire's Rest,
too.
   Well, that meant we had to advertise and promote.  The local stuff we'd
done for the Altadena Arms had worked quite well in our estimation, but the
Eire's Rest public was much different and much more wide-spread.
   Okay.  The N&Bs zipped over (looking quite well-rested), and we had a
discussion.  Jack told us the repairs on the restaurant were done, too. 
They were chomping at the bit to get going, just like us.
   Not that we averse to work, but we'd been so successful with Fillmore,
we thought they might be able to at least steer us in the right direction
for wide promotion.  A quick call to Duane gave us a referral to Anita
Wilson in the Business Promotion department.  Melissa called her and set up
an appointment with the entire bunch of us for that afternoon.  Let's see
what she thinks.
   We scurried around a while and gathered a sample of all the promo we'd
done for the Arms and the Pasadena Tavern.  Kate and Teresa printed out
various stat graphs and made sure all the rest of the business data for
both places was available.
   BB called the escrow company.  Hot dayum!  They would be ready to close
tomorrow morning!  Yes!  We'd have some significant progress.
   Kathleen popped in.  _"We've got someone here who fits the
qualifications to head up a Waystation.  Interested?"_
   Does an Irishman lust after faeries?  Apparently it was a couple who
lived in Arcadia.  They'd been enhanced over the weekend and were willing
to talk with us.  Kathleen told us Bob and she would treat for dinner, and
we'd meet Tuesday evening at their place in North Hollywood -- bring along
the entire CE and N&B gang along with Vera Leonard from Mesa if we could.
Yes!
   We had a quick lunch then zipped over to Fillmore to meet with Anita. 
We had a good sized conference room; Anita was there with three of her
staff.
   It wasn't much of a surprise to find Anita was one of us; she had a very
strong Talent.  One of her staff with her was being enhanced, and a quick
gestalt told us the other two were bright and ethical.  We all grinned and
shook hands; we introduced Margaret in her Little Person persona.
   Anita got right down to it, "Duane and Rita have given you a glowing
recommendation.  I'm very pleased your seminars are doing so well."
   Well, we were pleased, too!  Anyway, we let Sean and Maura do most of
the talking since they'd been with the businesses since their beginnings.
Sean trotted out all the stat graphs for the Altadena Arms and the Pasadena
Tavern and went over them.
   I told Anita, "We four over here came on the scene a couple months ago
and helped out a bit at the Arms.  Most of the time we were working on
other Cullen Enterprises businesses."
   Teresa pointed out, "But...  Eileen did the entire promotional campaign
for the Arms by herself.  Sean had the signs set up around the entrances,
but Eileen did everything else except find the pictures in the restaurant."
   Yeh.  Guess that was right.  Anita grinned at me and said, "Looks like
we've got a winner here."
   Sean and the rest said together, "Agreed!"
   ------
   SEAN
   Okay.  Fillmore had experience promoting both hotels and restaurants. 
We laid out our idea of catering to the families going to Magic Mountain. I
think they started taking us seriously when Kate gave them the survey
results the young-uns had done.  500 surveys showing a definite leaning
isn't just paper talk or speculation.
   Anyway, they were willing to help us out.  Anita said, "Let's get some
pictures of both places; they always make it personal." She shooed the
three other staff people out with specific tasks.
   Anita got a digital camera and several memory cards; we surrounded her
and zipped us all up to Eire's Rest.  She blinked her eyes, laughed and
said, "That's sure a lot different than hearing about it.  I'm starting my
checksheet tomorrow."
   Anyway, she knew exactly what pictures she wanted.  The swimming pool,
several rooms, shots of the Magic Mountain roller coasters from the roof,
the hotel and tavern bars, and the restaurant.  She said, "When you get the
signs up, we'll get several distance shots with them.  These will probably
do handily for the first couple rounds."
   Kate introduced her to Paige.  BB told Paige, "Fillmore Sales Relations
will be doing a lot of the promotion for both places." When they shook
hands, they almost collapsed!  Dayum, they blended so fast and hard
together it rivaled the sun!
   Colpo di tuono!  I'd say they'd get along together just fine.
   We gathered around and held them up for several minutes while they
danced around the surrounding hills and flared out the joy they'd found. 
Dayum good thing they were trained enough to have their shields up, or the
entire surrounding community and the Magic Mountain crowd would have had a
*very* interesting time.
   They finally got back and stood hugging each other for a couple moments
before they heard our not-so-polite applause.  They both blushed deeply. 
Margie told them, "I think we'd better be there when she meets Arnold. 
I've got a suspicion we'll be needed."
   We were.  This time we lured Arnold into his office before Paige
introduced her.  Yow!  All three of them collapsed as they took off. 
Several of the Reynolds crew had told us stories of this happening, now
we'd seen it ourselves.
   Fortunately, Anita's camera was okay.  BB had grabbed it out of mid-air
with a lightning _touch_.
   We figured we wouldn't get much more work out of them for a while.  When
they finally got back, Kate told the three of them, "Anita doesn't have to
be in the office until 9:00 tomorrow.  I'm sure one of you will be willing
to port her back.  Hopefully, she'll be able to stand up a little tomorrow.
Hehehehe." She was getting to be as bad as Marge!
   Anyway, Paige's and Arnold's shifts were almost over, so we left them to
be Anita's company while we zipped back to OTL.
   ------
   We had a pleasant surprise waiting; Fillmore had sent the seminar money
to our account.  It was nice to have a few nickels to rub together.  Grin.
   Kate promptly distributed it among the tax set asides, money market and
a long-term fund, leaving about $250K in the checking account.  She told
us, "There's a balance of around $800K there now.  When Anita gets
recovered tomorrow, we should probably send her some money to get started."
   Okay.  We had a quick dinner at Sizzlers then shipped Marge off to the
Clann Reynolds meeting while the rest of us celebrated a bit in the den and
tried not to kibitz too much.
   Great!  Bob announced we now had around 10,000 ones of us.  We're still
doubling every week.  Marge's prediction had been pretty good for an old
lady.
   Caitlin Canavan (Clann Redding Ceann in Washington and Bob's brother's
fiancee) told us, "We've found several Potentials in our area who are not
real good people.  In fact, a couple of them are actual criminals.  Our
local ramontheeye had a good time with them, and they all got a 'Do not
enhance' notification in their tags."
   Ouch.  Bob's guess about possibly-evil spirits had a lot of truth.  I
made a note to pass the word along to the rest of Clann Cullen.
   We were already filled in on most everything else they announced. 
Having a cross-Clann cultural exchange does help that way, right?
   After the meeting, we _peeked_ at Page, Anita and Arnold.  They were
celebrating the spiritual joy they'd found with a bit of physical joy. 
Actually, it looked as if it would be bit by bit by bit the entire night.
Maybe none of them would make it into work on time tomorrow, but there sure
were a lot of brilliant glows and rainbows!
   ------
   (Tuesday 8/22)
   Well, they did make it in on time.  Paige and Anita were glowing and
Arnold looked a bit peaked.  Grin.  Kate ported a check over to Anita to
get the promotional campaign rolling.
   At 9:00 we zipped up to Stevenson Ranch and closed escrows on both
properties.  I made BB do all the signing, though we all read everything.
Standard real estate stuff.  Done deal!  Now I could put everyone to work
while I kicked back and sipped whiskey.  That's what an executive does,
right?
   It only took an hour, which wasn't bad.  We zipped back home then BB and
Kate took off to Lena's to close the Cullen Enterprises business sales.  We
were carrying the paper on one but the other put up hard cash.  No more
direct small businesses for now; we've got enough to do.  On the other
hand, we'd keep our eyes open for opportunity.  That would leave us four
financed businesses we needed to track every couple weeks which was a lot
better then fifteen or so.
   We had an Admin Scale Workshop in Casper, Wyoming.  Philips' Gadgets
(that *is* the name) designed and manufactured, em, gadgets for the
electronic and aerospace industries.  Jigs, fixtures, specialty soldering
tools, clamps and that sort of stuff.  There were 13 executives scheduled
to be there from 1:00 to 5:00.
   We'd decided to send Melissa and BB in their Irish cleas and Hat Lady
hats.  Both had studied the materials and had been in the Clanns Council
workshop, so they were more than qualified.
   For appearances, we loaded up the Beemer with workbooks, a set of
manuals, a laptop and a projector.  They'd use the laptop and projector to
keep a running track of the scale as they developed it.
   They'd spent an hour ahead of time doing some informational probes, so
they probably knew what was going on with the company even better than most
of the executives.  It went off smooth as silk.  Liss and BB had some
trouble keeping a couple of the guys' attention on the workshop instead of
their chests, though.  It wasn't their fault the room was cool!
   Eileen, Kate and I _observed_ now and then to see if the approach or
anything else could be made smoother or more effective.  The previous
workshops we'd done had been with ones of us so this was our first "public"
appearance.
   No issues.  The Hat Ladies kept them on track and working the entire
time, though they did let them make a couple pit stops.  We made sure
Philips' Gadgets got their money's worth.
   Two of the executives had done the Pasadena seminar, which helped
considerably.  The survey at the end showed they wanted the checksheets for
both The Book and the detail manuals.  I'd gotten the general one done for
The Book and the Hat Ladies had taken passes at the rest.
   ------
   Waystation time!  We met the N&Bs at Bob and Kat's then we all zipped to
Mesa to meet Vera and the prospects.  Vera had made reservations at the
Dubliner Irish Bar and Restaurant in North Phoenix so we had a place to go.
   Nice.  Alex and Tess Adams were retired administrators who'd worked in
large non-profits for the last 20 years.  They'd helped run (and had run)
anything from religious charities, boys and girls camps and drug/alcohol
rehab centers.  I wouldn't say they'd seen it all, but pretty close. 
Recently enhanced, they were on the last part of their teleportation
checksheet and were full of vim and vigor.
   We let Vera do most of the presentation.  She went over the Waystation 1
Admin Scale, how we'd started it and the current stats.  Patrick pulled out
the surveys they'd done and showed them the results.
   Especially since the initial financing, surveys for location and
preliminary local/federal government cooperation were already set up or
available, they were very interested.  The idea of helping without straight
charity was somewhat novel, but they picked it up right away.
   The Dubliner had excellent food, decent whiskey and beer and fun
entertainment.  Even though the Adams weren't Irish, we didn't hold it
against them.
   Bob paid the bill (tax deduction!) and we ported over to Waystation 1
for a physical tour.  Vera was doing really well with the place.  We had
something like 90% occupancy, happy clients (as happy as they could be in
their circumstances), lots more successful program completions and the
funding was rolling along well.
   The Adams were quite interested.  Since the surveyed location was in the
San Gabriel Valley where they lived, it was a bonus.  On the other hand,
John pointed out once they'd completed the teleportation checksheet, it
didn't really matter where it was.
   The proposed organization was sane, the motives (Admin Scale) were sane
and the salary was right.  They were in.  Excellent!
   Kat gave them a couple JRD checks for salary and expenses.  Evin would
set up a not-for-profit corporation under Clann Cullen and get the ball
rolling on the tax stuff.  We turned over copies of all the information
we'd collected plus a couple The Books.
   They agreed to pilot the general checksheet and develop drills and
practicals for a rehabilitation center.  Lookin' really good!
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 8/23)
   In the morning, we did exercises and hit the Sperk and Phane tutorials.
Phane was a lot more complex than Sperk, but we could see it conveyed
emotions and complex philosophical ideas tremendously better.  From the
quantity of literature available on the system, it was very widely used. 
Did the Cels have bodice-rippers?  SciFi?  Fantasy?  Erotic literature
(possibly buried somewhere)?  It'll be extremely interesting to find out.
   We'd gotten agreement from Subject Matter Experts in every company we'd
contacted to work on drills and practicals for the checksheets.  I sent
them a copy of the general The Book checksheet Sean had worked up
(cautioning them it was a pilot) so they could get to work.
   The rest of us worked on the general checksheets for the detail manuals.
Margie had already pulled together a great workbook for an Organizing Board
workshop and had a good checksheet to go with it.  Sean approved the final
Admin Scale workshop checksheet and sent it off to the printers to get
1,000 copies.
   BB ordered a proof run of 15 copies of the Org Board workbook which
included the new checksheet.  The printer told her we'd have it tomorrow;
he already had the cover art from the Admin Scale workbook.  Good thing; we
had an Admin Scale and Org Board workshop scheduled for Friday.
   We'd arranged with Ted to have the young-uns meet the new Eire's Rest
and Eire's Tavern staff, so we all met in the Tavern for lunch.  We
introduced the young-uns to Paige, Anita and Arnold.  Our preliminary
promotional plan included saying we were family-owned catering to families,
so Anita had her camera to document it.
   The young-uns did us proud.  Ted, Connor, Caden, Rich (Deidre's SO) and
Ken (Aile's SO) were just the right height to get in some good boob-nuzzles
on Page and Anita while they were hugging.  By the time Arnold had the
third sweet young thang push their breasts and hard nipples into him, he
was quite, em, alert.  I saw some more possible cross-Clann cultural
exchanges in the future!
   With the escrow now closed, we started the permit and utilities
transfers and ordered the new signs, stationary and other branding stuff
like pens, paper and pencils for the rooms.  We introduced the young-uns
around to all the available staff so they'd know exactly who they were;
they were gonna be there a lot.
   Lunch was excellent.  The chef had already gotten her budget increase
(We'd set up the checking accounts last week.), had additional staff and
was in chef heaven.  No surprise she was being enhanced as we ate.
   After lunch, we traipsed over to Eire's Rest where Paige introduced the
young-uns around to the staff there.  All Real Good Things.
   ------
   Speaking of Deidre and Rich, they were our honorees this evening!  They
showed up on our doorstep at 4:00.  We'd had a good-sized lunch, so we
decided to delay dinnertime for a while.
   So, we soaked in the Jacuzzi a while, talked away and in general got to
know Rich a lot better.  He was slotted to be in the school's Inner Circle
and Brain Trust and was working with the rest of the young-uns to recruit
more tutors over the summer.
   Deidre (and probably the rest of the girls) had taught him well.  After
he wrung BB, Kate, Margie and me out for two hours, we took a break.  From
the sounds coming from the honoring room, Deidre and Sean had been getting
along just fine.  Grin.
   While we let the bodies rest for a bit, we popped up to Selene City to
see what was happening.  Good stuff.
   The fusion reactor was "steaming" along at 110% power with no detectible
emissions.  The shield appeared to be working perfectly.  Great!  Now, how
were we gonna put it to its intended use?
   In the confidential material posting room, George (?) had put up several
large monitors.  Displayed on them were events like new Clanns and Probe
Patrols, new checksheets and technical bulletins and a list of known
Clanns. All in several languages.  We had our bulletin board!
   The rest of the place was still busy with lots of bodies and spirits
studying and examining things.  Margie told us, _"George and his crew are
madly studying operating systems and applications.  Their target is to get
the facilities computer up within the next month."_
   We girls decided it was time to go back home for more fun.  Yeh, Rich
had a poke spot, too!
   After another hour of tormenting Rich, we let him and Sean rest while we
"let" Deidre torment us.  That she did; she was even feistier than before
since she was now in better physical condition.  Dayum near wore us all
out, she did!
   Chapter 8
   SEAN (Thursday 8/24)
   Margie told us, "Mario and the rest of the computer crew have set up a
cluster of systems in Selene City for a global network.  It looks good to
me."
   We popped up and took a look.  A large room near the
confidential-material room had several hundred terminals connected to a
group of three Cel desktop systems.
   They'd put the "standard" Brain Trust personnel database (Cel style) on
them so the Clanns could store their data.  With a normal Cel search -- in
Sperk of course -- we could do the specialties searches we'd talked about.
   Margie said, "We've set up each Ceann with systems like we have at OTL
and created a connection to this system.  You can search from home, do it
remotely at home or here or pop a body up here."
   The SW security team had set up a special _touch_ shield for the home
systems with a preprogrammed porting destination.  A spirit had to do the
port, but the node already had the destination mapped.  Marge said, "I've
made our target the second storage container in Texas.  Should be okay; in
an emergency, the entire system can vanish in half a second.  It's almost
like pushing a button; don't have to think about it much."
   Sounded great.  We popped back home and amused ourselves for a couple
minutes searching for various specialties.  Cool; we had 15 people who were
expert free solo climbers.
   Eileen said, "Looks like they've already migrated our database.  Hello!
This says we've got about 900 members in Clann Cullen with about two-thirds
of them enhanced.  Looks like the Ceann's gonna be a busy boy."
   Yeh.  I'd been doing several Ceann interviews a week.  As before, most
just need some guidance and could be handled through email.  I had a
standard package with the study checksheet, Admin Scale and QQV articles I
was sending out.  That was almost always a solid beginning.
   I spent maybe 10 or 15 minutes a day on emails and perhaps 3 hours a
week on visits and phone calls.  Nothing major, but the ceremonial staff
had been getting a good workout giving "blessings" on relationships.
   The Keavys and McLennans were handling almost every routine thing as it
came in.  90% of the stuff didn't even have to come to me; that's what
organization does for you.
   ------
   The entire collection of RRK owners zipped up to Chicago for a general
meeting with the RRK execs.  Amanda, Trevor and Richard were lookin' good.
   Bob had also brought up the people from the temporary team working on
Kat and Evin's stuff and from JRD Properties.  Among them and RRK, we now
had a full list of properties they either held or controlled.
   Most were in the U.S.; there were others scattered around Canada and the
rest of the world.  Neat; there were a couple in Ireland.  Maybe Bob and
Kat will make a visit to an ancestral home?  Hmm.  Maybe Clann Cullen
should make a visit to some of the Clanns we'd met and see the old Clann
Cullen stomping grounds.
   Mario recommended we set up a database similar to the Clann databases so
any of the companies could find out who had what properties and what they
might be used for.  That would also let SW Enterprises and NewTek factor in
the availability of "friendly" property owners.  We got a unanimous aye
vote.
   The RRK personnel recruiting was going along fine.  We had about 100
potential middle and upper management people studying The Book (smirk!). 
The main question now was what to do with them.  It was already a firm
security decision we weren't going to use any of the Earth-based Cel
facilities, and the off-Earth ones (including Selene City) weren't ready
for occupancy.
   Van Nuys Temps had about 500 people on their list who'd passed the
initial "willingness to relocate" criteria.  Even though the eventual goal
was to man up the off-Earth facilities, they weren't ready and we sure
didn't want to disclose them and ourselves to the mundanes yet.  Get them
to the facility, then disclose what was going on.  They weren't gonna go
home without us; it was a long way to hold one's breath.
   Bob said.  "I'll see if we can set up a meeting with SW, the SW security
team, NewTek and the personnel agencies.  They can come up with a
recommendation to present to the Clanns Council.  I think it should be the
Clanns Council decision on the time table."
   Ceann Mor had spoken.  None of us had to be in those preliminary
meetings, so it sure wasn't a scheduling issue on our end.
   Kate told them about the checksheets we'd created for The Book and the
other references.  Trevor wanted to know when we'd have one for bringing up
a Cel manufacturing facility.
   Eileen handled that; Marge didn't have to get her teeth into him after
all.  We did decide we'd keep a close eye on the technology advances and at
least help create the appropriate checksheets.
   The owners agreed they'd purchase the current checksheets off the web
sites at the going rates.  Fine by me; never hurts to have several income
streams.
   Bob took us all to lunch at Fado in Austin.  We tried an Irish vs. 
non-Irish drinking contest.  It came out a draw; seems everyone had been
practicing!
   Anyway, Bob popped for lunch.  Another excellent place; looks as if Fado
is a winner for us.  Kate made a note to put them on Sarah and Julio's list
of good places to go.
   ------
   EILEEN
   We'd gotten back some 50 surveys about a certification exam.  Almost all
were in favor and were willing to pay $50 for The Book and $35 each for the
detail manual exams.  Since the certification would include the cost of the
checksheet, most everyone seemed to think it was a good deal.
   Only three people thought they'd use an on-line course and weren't
really excited about it anyway.  That's fine; it eliminated lots of
development work for us.
   Patrick and I had zeroed in on the examination software we wanted.  At
$2,500 for an unlimited number of students, it was no big expense; the
Cullen Enterprises debit card handled it with ease.
   Mona was nice enough to download the software and get it installed on
the CE web site with private access for now.  We immediately dove into the
exam construction package to get familiar with its capabilities.
   We got in 500 Org Board workbooks.  They looked really good, and we
could use some this coming Friday.  They went right to the storage in
Texas.
   We had a quick Waystation 2 meeting with Alex, Tess, the N&Bs, Kat and
Bob.  They'd reviewed everything and were ready to get going for real.
   What they needed now was people and a location.  Sean gave them Ted's
contact information and told them, "He runs the ones who did the initial
surveys.  Just tell him what you want and he'll get it done.  I pay, Bob
pays or Clann Cullen pays.  When we get the corporation, it can pay.  For
now, don't worry about the money."
   Vera had already talked with them several times about how they'd
recruited their staff, so they'd already put out several inquiries for
retired military personnel.  With the Long Beach Naval Station and other
military facilities around Southern California, we figured there could be a
decent response.
   For now, money wasn't an issue; we weren't into the big bucks yet.  Get
people, get a facility, get it promoted and get in money.  Pretty simple to
say but not easy to implement.  We'd put our two bits in as needed.
   ------
   Friday morning, Anita sent us over some draft promo for Stevenson Ranch.
It looked good; somehow she'd managed to catch the young-uns when they were
looking innocent.  That was very rare, if you asked us.
   Based on the surveys we'd done, she was planning on advertising locally
right around Magic Mountain and in several periodicals and newspapers
throughout the U.S.  The surveys had shown most of the people had come from
the west U.S., so that's where she planned to start.
   Sean thought that would do fine.  We had to balance promotional expense
(even small color ads in magazines were *not* cheap) against the expected
return.  Melissa and Anita had a long chat and decided they'd advertise in
two of the regional travel magazines which were available in supermarkets
and other places our public normally went.  Sounded good to the rest of us,
too.
   ------
   SEAN
   We sent Kate and Marge to handle Admin Scale and Org Board workshops for
a mid-sized company in Santa Clarita.  Again, we loaded up the Beemer with
goodies then zipped everything off.
   They did great.  We'd learned a little lesson from Philips' Gadgets;
Kate had her nipples thoroughly cleased until the last 15 minutes of the
workshop.  Marge didn't have to worry about hers at all.  We wanted to
attract attention, not be distracting.
   With the new checksheets in both workbooks, the company could refine
their results even more after the workshops.  We let the company
participants worry about the Friday evening traffic; the Beemer made the
trip back to OTL just fine.  Grin.
   We could tolerate another 8 grand in the coffers, too even if we'd made
over a million at the last seminar.  Doing the math for an eight-hour day,
we'd brought in around $20K per hour per person.  The workshops brought in
maybe $500 per hour per person, but there were a *lot* fewer preps and
other expenses.  Still decent income, right?
   While Kate and Marge did their gig, the rest of us checked out the
business stats for the week.  With only four now, it took a huge fifteen
minutes.  Lots easier than before.
   When the workshops were over, we met at the Stevenson Ranch Eire's
Tavern.  We brought the entire N&B gang and had Rosheen pass along the
previous open invitations to the rest of the Core Clann.  So, we had a good
20 people to liven up the place on a Friday evening.
   After an excellent dinner, I stood up at the front of the room and
welcomed everyone.  "I'm one of the new owners of the restaurant and the
hotel next door.  Those folk over there will be around a lot helping the
management change-over, so you'll be seeing more of them.
   "Real Soon Now, we're going to bring in some entertainment and gradually
change over to Irish themes in both places.  In case you didn't notice, a
whole lot of the new owners and associates are Irish.
   "If you know any Irish jokes, let us know; we'll add them to our stock.
Seems one stereotype is that the Irish drink a lot.  Well, there are worse
things than a drunken Irishman.  One is an Irishman's drunken hat!"
   We had two drunken hats staggering around for several minutes.  One was
my large bowler, and the other was Eileen's smaller one.
   Marge pointed out to the audience one possible result of unrestrained
drinking.  "When you loosen up your inhibitions, you might well end up
doing things that lead to unanticipated results."
   Eileen's hat seemed to swell up.  It shook around and Marge's real small
hat popped out.  Marge commented, "Where do you think babies' hats come
from?"
   The audience did appreciate the fun.  Well over half were locals and
were thinking they'd come back more often if it was going to be this much
fun.  I'd say we were off to a good start.
   ------
   Saturday morning, the social secretaries had arranged an Admin Scale
workshop with Clann Flanagan in Akron.  Yeh, right.  I figured they were
more interested in the Irish bear.
   We did do the workshop, though, and did it correctly with around ten
Clann Flanagan folk -- no charge for this one, especially since the Hat
Ladies had other things in mind, too.  Having been through our own and the
Reynolds Clanns' Admin Scales, it wasn't really surprising they came up
with many similar items.
   Mick and Nora Reynolds were David Reynolds' parents.  It wasn't at all
surprising they looked quite familiar.  Besides, they'd been at the last
several weddings.
   After the workshop, Kieran and Joan Flanagan (Ceann and Mate) along with
Mick and Nora gave us a whirlwind tour of Akron.  Seems Bob had spent some
time here; the Matthews had come from here, too.
   We ended up at Kevin O'Bryan's Irish Pub on Main Street.  Great place;
too bad we'd missed the Thursday night Karaoke.  Grin.
   After dinner, we kicked back at the Flanagan's place, sipped whiskey and
Clann-talked.  They had speculations about the transmitters on the Moon,
too.  Mick figured they'd put out rap, while Kieran and Joan thought it
would be plain rock and roll -- or the Cel equivalents.  Rot the brains,
all right.
   Joan and Nora dragged me off while the Hat Ladies pounced on Kieran and
Mick.  We had a lovely time cross-culturing; Nora sure wasn't an old lady
in bed!
   ------
   (Monday 8/28)
   Sunday, we mainly dorked around doing our exercises, tutorials and
having an occasional soak in the Jacuzzi.  For some reason, Geeser had no
interest in joining us.
   We went back to work on Monday.  I reviewed the general checksheets for
the detail manuals, made a few changes and told the ladies, "Let 'em rip!"
BB sent the PDFs off to the printer for 500 copies each.  Melissa send the
promo blurbs and prices to Mona to add to the web site.
   We figured some industry-customized checksheets might be ready in a
couple weeks.  We had to give the various Subject Matter Experts plenty of
time to do their work.  We'd simply add them to the web site as they became
available.
   We'd gotten enough surveys from the web site to make a stab at pricing
the new stuff.  It came down to $15 for a general checksheet for The Book
or detail manual and $5 for one of the workbook checksheets.  Although we
didn't have any in yet, people seemed willing to pay $200 for an
industry-specific one for The Book and $500 for the ones covering all the
detail manuals.  Sounded good to us.
   A general on-line exam and certificate was worth $50 (The Book) and $35
each for the detail manuals, while an industry-specific one would be worth
$250 (The Book) and $600 for all the detail manuals in a package deal.  Not
too expensive, but they'd pay for themselves.  The SMEs who were making up
the specialized checksheets would be supplying the exam questions so we
wouldn't have to strain at it.
   Since Eileen and Patrick had gotten the examination software, we all got
familiar with what it would do.  We spread out the various general
checksheets and worked on creating decent examinations.  It wasn't the
easiest thing to do, but with our experience in giving each other
checkouts, fielding a lot of questions at the seminars and knowing the
relative importances of the various issues, we came up with questions that
ensured the student understood the material.
   They were open-book exams, of course.  Part of studying is knowing where
to find the answers, not just being able to repeat them back or guessing
correctly.
   We sent Marge and Kate off to the Clann Reynolds meeting while the rest
of us kicked back at OTL.  Best way to do it, if you ask me.
   Dayum nice.  We were still maintaining our expansion rate and were up to
around 23,000 ones of us now.  We had new folk in Africa, several countries
in South America and lots more in Asia -- including the Russian countries
and China.  We're getting there.
   The fusion reactor had been running at 120% rated power for several days
straight.  The engineers had monitored it very closely, of course, and
could find nothing out of specification anywhere.  Looked like we had a
working installation.  Even if we weren't engineers, the Hat Ladies and I
figured 500 gigawatts of power would charge up a few accumulators from time
to time.
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 8/29)
   We talked with Rita and Duane a bit in the morning about email
campaigns. We had well over 12,000 email addresses between Sean's earlier
seminars and the two recent big ones.
   Rita told us, "That gets a bit much for a single normal email system to
keep straight.  Let's get you on a professional contact list manager."
   She gave us several Internet-based ones to check out.  We could have the
clients opt in or out so our stuff wouldn't be spam, send newsletters as
often as we desired, have special interest groups.  We might even set up
discussion forums.
   Sounded like it should work.  Sean talked with Ted a bit; the young-uns
were at the Fulfillment Center pumping out packages, letters (with
checksheets) and Irish hats.  Seemed they'd taken the initiative and were
offering Irish Within tee shirts with the Cullen Enterprises logo as well
as assorted other promotional goodies including a variety of hats.
   Good on 'em.  They had the supply worked out, a reasonable price list
and were doing all the work.  Hell, we decided to establish them as an
authorized franchise so they could do as they wished, make it as big as
they could and reap more of the profits.
   Anyway, they were more than willing to check out the contact list
managers and make a recommendation.  Having an in with the webmistress for
design and implementation didn't hurt either.  Knowing them, they all
probably had "ins" with her pretty often anyway.  Hehehehe.
   Rita and Duane were doing really well.  All their family members were in
the last stages of their enhancements, and Rita and Duane were twinning up
on the teleportation checksheet.  Lookin' good!
   ------
   BB and I handled an Admin Scale workshop in Long Beach.  It was for a
small aerospace third-tier vendor which made control cables and hydraulics.
The Beemer took the load easily and handled the 40-mile, at-least-an-hour
run in ten seconds; we had to wait for the traffic to die down at the other
end.
   They were good.  The President had gone to the Pasadena seminar and the
other executives present had at least read over The Book so they had an
idea what they were getting into.
   Yeh, it was air-conditioned in the room.  BB and I didn't let it
"bother" us until things were pretty well wrapped up.  Then, two of the
three lady executives started eyeballing our chests pretty good, as well as
most of the guys.  Didn't take much _inspection_ to see where their
inclinations ran.
   Good.  They would be able to review the scale and refine it down even
more now.  We left them laughing, slightly horny and wanting more.  That's
the way to do it; there'd be some SOs getting really lucky tonight.
   Speaking of getting lucky, Aile and her SO, Ken, zipped onto our
doorstep at 5:00.  Aile didn't throw down her glove this time but only
because she wasn't wearing any.
   Laguna Heights, Texas is right on the Gulf of Mexico.  It had only about
20 streets, but it had a great Mexican-style seafood restaurant on Michigan
Avenue.  With their cleas, Aile and Ken looked well over 21; maybe a bit
small for their ages, but they were still taller than Little Person Margie.
   Ken was somewhat quiet, though full of fun and intelligence.  Aile's
personality matched his really well.  They were both plenty feisty, though,
and didn't take much crap from us Hat Ladies.  Grin.
   The young-uns had spent a couple hours looking over the various contact
list managers.  Ken told us, "We'll probably have a recommendation by mid
morning tomorrow."
   They were still on a Clann Cullen enhancement team, though not quite so
involved as they'd been before.  Aile said, "There's plenty of others
willing to enhance and train and who have the time.  With this new load of
stuff you've so rudely tossed us into, we've dayum near got full time
positions."
   Margie observed, "Betcha that won't slow down the other activities,
though.  Right?"
   They both flushed a little.  Ken grinned, "Hasn't seemed to slow any of
us down yet.  Guess lots of work raises the hormone levels."
   Yeh.  Well, Ken's hormone levels were dayum good.  He kept the four of
us very happy for a couple hours while Aile raised havoc with Sean.
   We all ended up outside after a big wave, so we made the rounds.
   "Our" grad students at the sinkhole were out and about!  Yeh, their
bodies were still there in what some narrow-minded people might call a
compromising position.  They're gonna have fun.  We met a good dozen other
spirits checking on the area; guess we've adopted them.
   Ken had a good poke spot.  We had another half-hour frolic then kicked
him and Sean out while we molested Aile.
   Shit.  It was the other way around.  Dayum, she's so sweet and fun!
   ------
   SEAN
   As promised, the young-uns had their contact list manager
recommendations in to us by the time we'd finished our exercises and
Sperk/Phane studies Friday morning.
   They'd selected Constant Contact.  Mona told us, _"Relatively
inexpensive, seems to work just fine and I can have the opt-in set up on
the web site in fifteen minutes -- after we make up the welcome pages and
interest groups on Constant Contact."_
   We gave her the go-ahead.  She would set it up for auto-debit on the CE
debit card and start on the design for the welcome pages and a sample
newsletter.  We gave her our ideas for special interest groups (the various
departments from the detail manuals, mainly, plus seminars and general
news).  With several of them working on it, it wouldn't take long.
   We looked over the business stats, then zipped up to Stevenson Ranch
with the N&Bs to see how things were going.
   Going good.  Paige and Arnold were right on top of things, as we'd
expected.  We'd _talked_ with Papa Sonora about doing the construction
stuff we wanted.  He _looked_ it over and told us, _"You don't need any of
our special talents.  You'll get it done just as fast and as well with a
local contractor.  Keep us in mind when you've got wiring or other stuff to
run, though."_
   We had a local contractor putting in the wide walkway between the Rest
and Tavern.  Not a big job; it would be done today and the sun/rain cover
would be up by Wednesday.
   We'd gotten temporary signs up for both places.  The stationary, pencils
and that sort of stuff had come in and was already in place.  Paige and
Arnold had handled their staff shortages, so that wasn't an issue.
   Yeh, it seemed Paige, Arnold and Anita were rapidly developing a deep
relationship.  Puts a new meaning to the phrase, "on the same Paige,"
right? Hehehehe.
   We had another contractor doing what upgrades we wanted on the rooms (a
few at a time) and the roof.  Having a bathroom, ice dispenser, privacy
fence and a repaired deck with a fence on the roof just might attract some
sunbathers.  Paige had put a sign on the entrance to the roof, "Warning. 
Possible nudity." Lena had somewhat approved it; it didn't say it was
either allowed or encouraged, just that it was possible.  Lawyers are good
for something, right?  Especially a Lena-lawyer!
   The same contractor who was working on the walkway was going to do a run
on the parking lots, too.  He'd patch up the little holes, repaint the
lines and arrows and upgrade the landscaping.  We had playground equipment
set up temporarily behind the pool.  No concrete anchors yet, but several
_touches_ held everything down.  Gotta keep the little ones occupied so the
parents can play -- and pay.
   JRD's Tight Fences was gonna come in and reno the fences around the pool
and the outside of the parking lots plus build one around the new
playground area.  We didn't need the fences to keep people out; we wanted
them to keep the little people (kids) in so they couldn't wander off so
easily.
   Both buildings were already the same color and general design, so that
was a goodness.  With similar signs, landscaping and decoration, we'd
operate them together in collaboration.  I was sure we'd have plenty of
collaboration.
   While the pool wouldn't have a lifeguard (lots of signs up about that),
there'd be room service attendants circulating around every so often to
take drink and food orders as well as ensure things stayed somewhat sane.
We figured a couple bosomy gals and endowed guys would give some good eye
candy to the place.  Is that sexist?  Unlawful?  Tough darts.
   We had Labor Day weekend coming up, and it was nothing to sneer at in
the entertainment business.  We borrowed the Beemer, Volvo, one of the
N&B's cars and Arnold's small pickup.  With a cactus plant sitting on the
floor inside, we could do almost anything.
   We parked them at strategic intersections and put up holographic signs
anchored to a node in the cactus.  We were promoting both the Rest and the
Tavern.  I left the design to the ladies; they immediately came up with
impressive, multi-colored lettering and arrows which would glow at night,
appeared 3D, moved and changed color.
   We might get some questions on how we'd done it; we'd just point out the
"apparatus" on each side of the sign and say, "Lasers and magic.  After
all, anything Irish is magic."
   The temporary signs in front of the buildings got the same treatment. 
Attractive but not distractive.
   The Altadena Arms and Pasadena Tavern were in good shape; they'd
weathered weekends like this before.  They wouldn't get the amount of
traffic the Magic Mountain area would get.
   Hmm.  Maybe find a small bus and run a shuttle to MM?  Hire a service?
Probably most families wouldn't mind avoiding a $10 parking fee (each day)
and fighting the in and out traffic.
   Paige and Arnold had stocked up on stuff.  Both bars were well-stocked,
the kitchen pantries were full and we were ready.
   The ladies decided it was a Leprechaun Night so I got to wear one of my
outfits.  Why did they laugh at my beard?  It was long, curly, and very
red. Just like a leprechaun!
   Leprechaun ladies are something else.  Seems the word had spread through
some of the Clann, because even Sheila Llanos was a leprechaun.  A really
good-lookin' one, too.
   The ladies managed to get right up to the line on "family restaurant"
acceptable dress.  Everything was covered, but it sure looked as if stuff
was gonna fall right off (or open) any second.  Yum!
   The entire gang descended on SR just about 4:00.  The young-uns worked
anywhere needed.  Imagine if you were a tired family with three young kids
cranky from the heat and a four-hour ride.  Now, when you get into the
hotel lobby, three leprechauns descend and entertain the youngsters while
another leprechaun handed you a free cold drink (your favorite, of course).
Think that impression might stick?
   The Tavern was pretty full by 5:00, and we expected it to remain so most
of the night.  Families coming in late to the hotel would want dinner and a
place to relax and would probably hit MM the next day.
   We kept the Passion Posse (now consisting of the young-un fivesome) over
at the Rest with Jack, while the rest of us adults (including Marge) helped
out at the Tavern.
   We guys muscled beer kegs, cases of drinks and booze and the other heavy
or awkward stuff.  Not that any of the ladies couldn't do it, but we wanted
to keep up appearances.
   Hell, even Rosheen showed up and stood behind the pub bar slinging
drinks, flirting with the men and keeping everything clean.  The two other
bartenders worked the bar and kept the waitresses supplied.
   The nieces and their SOs bussed tables.  They could take a complete
sloppy mess and have it clean as a whistle with a new tablecloth and a
complete setup in five minutes.  Just stay out of the way of flying
leprechaun elbows!
   Patrick, Maura and Teresa did waiter duty; they had the experience. 
Marge did greeting and table-leading while the rest of the Hat Ladies
helped in the kitchen and took out orders as they were ready.
   Me, I knew my place.  A young man, Paul, and I ran the dishwasher line.
From several months at the Arms, Pasadena Tavern, Waystation 1 and other
assorted restaurants, I had a pretty good handle on how they worked.  We
did not want to run out of clean dishes!  And we didn't.
   After about two hours, Paul was handling everything by himself and doing
very well.  I'd _looked_ at the dishwasher line and had found a couple
fittings and hoses which would need to be replaced in the near future.  A
couple joints need a bit of lubrication; I found grease in the storage room
where we'd located it during our survey.
   Gail Turner, the chef, ran the place like an orchestra conductor.  Not a
thing out of tune and as well-timed as possible given that food needs to
cook.  She was so ready to pop, she was extended a good two feet from her
body.  Yeh, she was picking up thoughts and emotions and was able to direct
people with just plain intention -- whether or not she or they knew what
was happening.
   Funny how the floor stayed clean and dry, the sinks unclogged and the
refrigerators kept stocked.  With the Hat Ladies taking an hour's turn each
in the kitchen, the new ones learned some of the ropes quickly.
   I saw at least a half dozen couples/families who'd been there last
Friday, so we might already be getting results on returnees.  None were
offended in the least by the leprechauns; most were quite impressed and
several of the women were already thinking how they could dress similarly.
   Hmm.  Gotta get up a web site for the new hotel and both Taverns.  I
didn't recall looking at the Altadena Arms site recently, either.  Get your
arse in gear, Cullen!
   Anita, Paige and Arnold showed up even though it was well after their
shifts.  We had no trouble at all seeing they were together.  Oops!  They'd
missed the leprechaun notice!
   The other ladies couldn't stand that, so they rushed Paige and Anita off
to Arnold's office to get them up to standard.  Arnold wasn't up to the
cleas technical bulletin yet, but we Clann guys fixed him up anyway with a
decent outfit locked in a shamrock on his shirt.
   We put them all to work.  By 9:00 the Tavern was full and rocking!  The
hotel was up to 80%; not bad for impromptu advertising.  A good time was
definitely being had by all.  Grin.
   ------
   EILEEN
   We survived the evening.  Good thing we'd been doing the Krav Maga; even
with _touches_ to help, holding a 10-pound tray of food and drinks above
one's head while maneuvering through a crowd could stretch some muscles.
   I'd done some waitressing in high school but was pretty rusty.  The N&Bs
_coached_ me a lot and the other waitresses helped, too, even if they
didn't know it.
   Hey, I got tips, too.  Of course, it doesn't hurt if the guy you're
serving gets an eye full of cleavage and nipple bumps along with a whiff of
pheromones and female scent.  The women didn't seem to mind; we girls were
soo innocent!  Then again quite a few of the women didn't mind looking,
either.  Luck of the Irish can rub off -- probably gonna have some real
lucky people tonight when they got home (or to Eire's Rest).
   Sean and the N&Bs appeared to be everywhere.  They knew this work even
better than my fingers used to know my pussy; they'd lived it for years.
   We finally got out of there at midnight.  We had some nice cuddles and
snogs, then let the bodies rest.
   ------
   (Saturday 9/2)
   Sean and Geeser rousted us at 6:00.  Groan!  We were sore, but willing.
No, we were sore in different spots than that!
   Back to SR.  By 7:00 we had the Rest and Tavern cleaned, stocked and
ready to go.  People and families started showing up for breakfast right
about then; we had a good-sized sign in the Rest lobby pointing to the
walkway.
   Magic Mountain opened at 10:00 so most of the people had breakfast and
were on their way by 9:15.  I worked in the hotel room service kitchen with
two of the staff.  They knew what they were doing, where everything was and
in ten minutes, so did I.
   Lots of people liked breakfast in their rooms.  What the hell, when we
were at the Arms, *I* liked it.  We started right at 7:10 and didn't stop
cooking, cleaning and restocking until 10:30.  We only had to get half a
dozen orders from the Tavern; we didn't do everything over here.
   The Passion Posse ran the lobby traffic, helped us out in the kitchen
and ran pickup service.  The two staff bellboys were running around
everywhere.  Besides more people coming in (Dayum, we were up to 93%) they
usually ran the room service to the rooms.  When the young-uns picked up
the room service empties, they ensured the one who'd taken it up got any
tip.  We were tipping the young-uns plenty good, and it wasn't their
living; they were owners (or their parents/SOs were).
   The two staff with me in the room service kitchen told me, "We don't get
much call for room service now until after 5:00, then it picks up again."
   They kicked me out to do something useful.  Okay.  I went out back to
see what was happening there.  The Passion Posse was circulating around the
pool and playground ensuring things were running well.  Actually there
weren't many people there; probably most were already at Magic Mountain.
   Fine by me; I went back inside the Rest.  The maids (female and male)
had already done the morning rooms run so that was handled.  The lobby was
pretty clean; several pieces of paper vanished and a couple kid toys ended
up at the front desk for recovery.  A quick _look_ around the rest of the
place showed nothing out of place to me.  Yeh, there were a good half-dozen
couples taking advantage of the baby sitting to get some of their things in
the proper places.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   SEAN
   More of the same.  As soon as the breakfast crowd thinned out, we did a
quick floor clean, bar restock and pantry reshuffle.  We had plenty of
reserves of everything so were in good shape.
   The noon crowd was decent.  Since everyone was now experienced, we just
boogied along as if we knew what we were doing.
   Chef Gail turned back up at 3:00, as planned.  Hot dayum!  The
enhancement team had been at work last night!  I grinned at her and asked,
_"Have an interesting time last night?"_
   She laughed for a good minute.  _"Shit, you guys are everywhere!  If
you're one, how about the others?"_
   I rattled off the list and included the ones on staff who were tagged or
being enhanced.  I told her, _"You're gonna have plenty of company.  Give
it a few training sessions, and you'll really be having a good time.  How
was running the kitchen last night?"_
   _"Smoothest place I've ever been.  Some of those guys I've been working
with for a while, and they should know what they're doing.  With you guys
in there, too, I almost didn't have to do a thing but think of what needed
to be done."_
   _"Yeh.  And it'll get better.  Speaking of which, think we'll be busy
tonight?"_
   She thought it might even be worse -- or better, depending on how you
looked at it.  She was very pleased that the kitchen was already back in
shape after lunch.  She _looked_ around (she was good at it already) and
said, "You guys have done this before."
   Maura came in and gave her a quick rundown on the Pasadena Tavern and
Altadena Arms.  Since the women were now at it, I made my escape.
   The weekend day manager was on.  She was tagged for enhancement so I
knew she'd work out well.  The weekend managers do 12-hour shifts both
days, so there were only two.
   We decided she'd mainly stay at the reception desk, greet people and
help the cashier as needed.  The rest of us extras would do the grunt work
for now.
   We ended up with Marge mainly doing greeter duties; say hello as they
came in, schedule a table then show them to the table.  There was another
young lady doing the same thing; after an hour, she realized Marge knew
exactly what she was doing, and when she said a certain table would be
ready in x minutes, it would be.  No trouble at all.
   More kegs and cases to wrestle and a few more dishes to wash.  The
dishwasher line was running just fine; I told Paul to keep an eye on the
couple hoses I'd noticed before.  Just in case, I wrapped a _touch_ around
each one and anchored them to a node in a convenient plant in the chef's
office.  It'll last until next week.
   Things were smoother tonight even though we had more guests.  We'd done
the organizing and piloting last night, so tonight everyone knew what they
were doing.
   There was actually enough staff to do everything if they were organized.
Bit by bit, one of us extras would drop out.  The staff would pick up the
load and carry on.  By 9:00, dinner was almost over and the rest of the
evening would be drinks and such.  They were doing an excellent job!
   What the hell.  A couple Irishmen's drunken hats made their appearances
and produced a baby hat right on schedule.  Even though we didn't have a
stage, we improvised a clear area and did a quick gig.  Music?  We didn't
need no stinkin' music when we had the most talented transducer artist in
the world with us!
   I made our introductions as I'd done the previous night and heaped
lavish praise on the staff for their work.  I told the audience, "We'll be
open Sunday and Monday, so come on back!" We got lots of cheers and
applause.
   -------
   Sunday was much the same, except most of us simply stood by unless we
were badly needed; the staff was handling things very efficiently.  Dinner
hour was longer and we had more people.  From some quick gestalts, quite a
few patrons had heard of us from someone else at Magic Mountain.  Free
word-of-mouth publicity -- the best kind!
   Anita, Paige and Arnold made another appearance.  Anita took a lot of
pictures for promo.  She asked me, "Are the signs outside going to be like
that all the time?"
   Maybe, maybe not.  The signs we'd ordered were fine, but especially with
almost all the managers in both places being ones of us, we could cleas
them up to our hearts' desires.  Even change them every day if they wished.
   There weren't too many people around the pool and playground. 
Apparently the thrill rides and walking around at MM took their toll. 
Guess I'll have to take the ladies there myself Real Soon Now.
   Now that most of the kids were in bed, quite a few of the adults (and
not so adults) were taking advantage of the relative privacy to take their
own thrill rides.  Good on 'em.  Nookie is natural, right?
   ------
   EILEEN
   Monday was our Labor Day Clann party at Eaton Canyon Park in Altadena.
Clann Reynolds was doing another virtual pool party; we begged out on this
one.  Sorry, no nekkid faery this time around.
   We split our time between SR and the park, favoring the park.  The
Tavern and Rest were doing pretty dayum well on their own.
   The social secretaries hadn't been involved in the party planning; we'd
been told just to show up.  Guess the Clann had appointed its own events
manager; whoever she was, she was doing a bang-up job.
   We Hat Ladies had our kilts and hats.  Yeh, blouses, too.  This time, we
knotted the tails below our boobs and let things wobble really good.  I
would have said "heart's content," but most of the other people were
looking at us that way.
   Ha!  Most of the other ladies were soon in the uniform of the day. 
Those with tee shirts pulled them up a bit and knotted them.  Plenty of
bellies and cleavage showing, you betcha!
   At a little over two months along, our Babies Within were showing just a
bit.  With two, you get more.  Mary Murray (from the Altadena Arms) and I
compared bellies.  She was four months along with one and had a *nice*
bulge.  We _looked_ and decided our Babies Within were the cutest ever!
   Yeh, we Hat Folk split up and did quite a bit of gestalt and glad hand.
With upwards of 900 Clann Cullen members now (with the recent additions),
we had a lot to go through.  While I wouldn't say they were all here, there
were a lot.
   Sean carried his ceremonial staff.  He didn't circulate a lot, but
tended to stay near our chairs so people could find him easily.  Seems he
blessed a lot of babies -- young girls didn't mind getting blessed either,
especially when they got a nice tingle in a sensitive spot.  Some even got
back in line for several blessings.  That's my Ceann!
   We scheduled several follow up meetings; nothing major, just bonding and
other relationship meetings.  We Hat Ladies passed out a lot of Cullen
Enterprises and Clann Cullen Ceann cards.
   The food was great.  Even having eaten at a lot of the world's best
places, we still liked this stuff.  Yummy grilled hot dogs, barbequed ribs,
grilled hamburgers and the lot.  Top it off with very cold, very tasty
Irish beer, and you couldn't ask for more.
   Things wound down at the park by 7:30.  The organizers kicked us out;
they'd handle all the clean up.
   Back at OTL, we did the usual.  After a shower and a brief rest, we sent
Kate and Margie to the Clann Reynolds' casual meeting at Bob and Kat's
place while the rest of us looked on.
   Recruiting is up!  We'd more than doubled this week up to 50,000.  Good
thing we had the checksheets and such posted; Henry probably couldn't have
kept up with printing that many.
   We got reports of finding several more somewhat-evil Potentials.  Yeh,
they were there all right.  There seemed to be some concentrations of them
scattered around the world.  Like minds seem to flock together.
   Bob gave us another warning to be on the lookout.  "Being enhanced to
one of us isn't a right, it's a privilege.  Yeh, we're snobs that way. 
Tough shit.  We're depending a lot on being clandestine; keep it that way.
   "There's no shortage of Potentials that we've found yet.  If there's the
slightest doubt in your minds, put a warning on their tag and move on. 
We'll have the SW security team check them out."
   Kathleen announced the Los Angeles Waystation organization and
introduced Alex and Tess.  They took a bow and gave us a quick rundown on
what they were doing.
   Bob told everyone, "There's one successful Waystation in Mesa, Arizona.
When we get this one up and operating, we'll have two good examples.  The
Adams, Leonards and Clann Cullen have agreed to create checksheets on
setting one of these up, so they'll be available probably in a couple of
months.
   "This isn't a patented or copyrighted idea in any way.  You'll be able
to get The Book and a checksheet from the Cullen Enterprises web site and
roll your own anywhere you can.
   "Remember, we're not abandoning this planet and people for our off-world
colonies; we're expanding our options and population and making the Earth a
better civilization while we're doing that.
   "We've still got a lot to learn about history.  The Cels left here
probably a couple hundred thousand years ago; from what little we've been
able to understand of their history, there might well be many other
civilizations 'out there.'
   "We want to present the Earth culture as the best it can be.  Yeh, it's
possible what we have now *is* the best it can be, but we don't know that
as a fact.  Make yourselves more able, and let's help our Earth kin become
more able at the same time."
   Exactly.  We've still got plenty to do.
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 9/5)
   We'd discussed Kate and Melissa going back to school to finish up their
associate degrees.  We'd decided to send Melissa this semester to finish
her final courses then Kate would go the winter semester.  We'd spread the
load out better that way.
   Cullen Enterprises would pay the expenses.  That's an owner's perk.
   Yeh, they were getting lots of practical experience, but you can still
learn a lot in formal schooling if you have the viewpoint there's stuff
there to learn.  All it would take would be one new Bright Idea (pun
intended) percolating up to make it all worthwhile.
   Liss ended up with her two classes three times a week each. 
Fortunately, they were scheduled the same day so she'd have two full
weekdays a week free.  She was on for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday for
two hours a day for the next several months.  Kate went over what she'd
learned about the fast-track commuting at Glendale Community College; they
looked over Pasadena City College with an eye for Liss doing the same.
   Public school was back in session.  We'd managed to work our "free
labor" hard all summer, but that was over now.  We'd find out this evening
how the young-uns made out their first day.
   Kate brought up an interesting idea.  "At the meeting last night while
we were discussing the Waystations, I had a thought.  Lots of the people we
get at Mesa are quite able; they just need some temporary assistance. 
Could we recruit for our off-planet enterprises from them?"
   Well, shit.  Sounded like a good idea to the rest of us.  We immediately
ran it by the people at Van Nuys Temps and RRK.  They thought it was well
worth investigating.  Good.  One more possible public to draw from.
   We checked the Fillmore seminar stats site.  The Oakland seminar (this
weekend!) was well above normal on registrations; we were already at 1,800
of the 2,000 we'd projected.
   Rita assured us the room would hold around 2,400.  "This place also has
an annex we could use with closed-circuit television.  If needed, we can
expand into it.  Not an ideal scene, but workable."
   Okay.  We had no doubt they'd be on top of it.
   Seems Rita's and Duane's families had become even better acquainted over
the holiday weekend.  They probably had an N&B-type relationship in the
works.  Good on 'em!
   We polished up the last of the detail manual general checksheets and
sent them off to the printer for 1,000 copies each.  As soon as they got
back, we'd have the CE Fulfillment Center put them up on the web site as
being available.
   I sent Marge off to skunk around while the rest of us polished up the
exam questions.  Thirteen exams took some work to get published, checked
out and polished up.  We'd have the young-uns and Geeser beat on them a bit
overnight; if they were okay, we'd release them tomorrow.
   We worked on the literature for an email blast and postcard to the
addresses we had.  Mona had already told us she could handle the email
blast through a commercial service so we didn't have to worry about our ISP
going weird on us.  She'd do the postcards the same way: on line black and
white for about 30 cents apiece.
   We agreed on the wording and layouts.  Both pieces were designed to get
the people to the web site to check out the news and goodies and to opt in
to the newsletters.  We shall see how well they work.
   About 3:00, all the young-uns were back from school, so we zipped over
to the N&Bs for a quick conference.
   The elementary school day had gone excellently.  The Inner Circle and
Brain Trust were already in operation, the councilors and teachers knew
they were there and they were in business.
   Ted and Mona's day in middle school had done okay.  They'd done quite a
bit of recruiting over the summer and had a fledgling Inner Circle and
Brain Trust operating.  They'd spent most of the day gestalting and
schmoozing with the "upperclassmen" so they'd know they were there.
   In both schools, the faculty had announced the Brain Trusts and
emphasized they were there to help the students.  They made a pretty big
deal about McCambridge's academic excellence and how the Brain Trust there
had helped accomplish it.  We agreed we couldn't have gotten a better
introduction.
   So, we had a quiet celebration dinner in Mar del Plata (Buenos Aires,
South America).  It was a bit cooler down there; not that it mattered to
us.
   Later, Ted and Mona got together with us and went over the Constant
Contact stuff they'd designed.  We had a special interest group for The
Book, each detail manual department and general news.  Those should cover
the range.
   The welcome page and sign up pages looked really good; we made a few
minor tweaks and gave them the go ahead to let it run.  Mona told us she'd
have the opt-in box on the Cullen Enterprises web site within twenty
minutes.
   Good.  Now, all we CE folk had to do is produce a newsletter at least
once a month for each interest group.  We'd do the general news probably
twice a month; we could fill people in on newly-scheduled seminars, talk a
little about the goodies and other stuff on the web site and, in general,
keep people aware of us.
   Constant Contact would handle all the stuff.  Deidre and Rich would
check out the people opting in and ensure they got the welcome letter. 
Lookin' good!
   ------
   (Wednesday 9/6)
   Melissa zipped off for her first day at school around 8:45.  We gave the
email blast and postcard promo a final polish and shipped it off to Mona so
she'd have something to do when she got back from school.  Didn't want her
idling around getting into mischief, right?
   Yeh, she'd gotten the newsletter opt-in box on the web site pages.  Of
course, I signed up.  The entire process took maybe five minutes even if I
did play the not-so-bright user.
   BB and I did an Admin Scale workshop in Colorado.  It was a ski resort
servicing company which did building maintenance and renovation and
maintained ski lifts.  Plenty of those things around that area!
   It went just fine.  The President had done the Pasadena seminar and was
ready to get things in.  They'd gotten a bit stuck on the Admin Scale,
though, and needed some help.
   Help we did.  They had some excellent ideas; we were able to help flesh
them out quite a lot more and get things aligned.
   Of course we passed out lots of business cards.  We pushed the
newsletter opt in so they'd stay on top of any new developments.
   For some reason, the last fifteen minutes pretty much everyone was
stealing lots of looks at BB's chest.  They would definitely remember us.
   Chapter 9
   SEAN (Thursday 9/7)
   Melissa left for school directly from the N&Bs, so we didn't see her
until 11:15 or so.  She'd found the first day's classes okay; they were
doing introductions and had gotten a little into the meat of things.
   Mona sent out the postcards; we had about 9,000 addresses at 30 cents a
pop.  I had her do address verifications on the batch; for 75 cents, the
post office would give us any new forwarding addresses.
   She sent out the email blast of 12,000, too.  She had the usual glitches
of the commercial server locking up a couple times.  No big deal, she'd
been clever enough to send over batches of 3,000 at a time.  The commercial
service would weed out the bad/void ones as they came back; when the
returns had settled down, Mona would retrieve the updated list.
   We wanted them to get to the web site to check out the opt-in
newsletter, the seminar dates and the product center.  We'd get the
newsletters started in the next week or so.
   The young-uns had "borrowed" Geeser last night to help check out the
exams.  Not too bad; she was able to freeze the exam twice and locked up
the entire local computer system once.  Cat tracks are nasty.
   Ted, the clever guy, had put a keystroke logger on the system Geeser was
molesting, so he was able to reproduce the exam lock up; yeh, probably a
bug.  He was able to reproduce it from several different systems, so he
sent off a bug report to the vendor.
   Everything else worked fine, so we gave Mona the go-ahead to get them
all online and the CE Fulfillment Center the word to start promoting them.
   We rewarded Geeser well with an extra round of meat chunks and a
pass-around of cuddling and petting.  Not quite a Soo Laid, but she really
enjoyed it.  She wasn't fat but was pretty big by now with more to grow.
   We worked with Mona a while on the web sites.  The Clann Cullen site was
fine; Rosheen had her advice and matchmaking column going full tilt plus we
had a couple other pages with "new arrivals" of Clann babies and adopted
members.
   Seemed there were enough volunteer reporters eager to submit gossip
(Rosheen checked out the rumors thoroughly and passed on the good stuff),
requests for matches and so on.  The jobs/positions offered and wanted ran
a couple pages.
   The "front page" news was a report on the Labor Day picnic with several
pictures of cute babies, good-lookin' (single) gals and handsome (single)
guys.  They'd caught me doing a blessing; it was the young lady's third
time through the line, and she looked *really* happy by then.
   They had pictures of all the bondmates with a short bio and a glowing
report on the Babies Within.  Several hints about a possible Ceann heir
appeared here and there.  At least my wanted-poster picture was off the
front page.
   The Cullen Enterprises site was in excellent shape.  The Fulfillment
Center page was excellent with good pictures of the products.  No pictures
of the checksheets; didn't need pictures of them, but the ads for The Book,
detail manuals and workshop manuals had a cover shot.  Made me want to buy
a set!  Mona, Rita and Duane had done an excellent job on the blurbs.
   Mona had even tracked down all the "old" CE businesses which had web
sites and had put in reciprocal links.  Each of our links to them had a
small blurb about the business and the owners' names.  Sure wouldn't hurt
the search engine positioning!
   N&B had a site for the Taverns, too.  Each Tavern had its own page with
pictures, hours of operation, testimonials and directions/map.  Looked
good!
   I think Eileen had something to do with the fact there was now an Eire's
Rest page and that the Altadena Arms page was up to date.  Lookin' good! 
Soo Laids all around as far as I was concerned.
   Chef Gale had her picture on the Tavern page, and we had several success
stories from happy Rest and Tavern patrons.  They'd made a pretty big deal
about the Rest and Tavern being run together so closely.
   Yeh, Paul had replaced the parts in the dishwasher line so it was
running along just fine.
   ------
   EILEEN
   I'll confess: Mona did the pages for the Rest and the Taverns.  By the
time I'd even brought it up, she and the young-uns had already gotten most
of the content put together and the pages developed.  Dayum, we've got good
folk!
   Right around 1:00, we got word on the spirit bush telegraph: Leone and
Mark were on the radio!  We had to scour the place for an AM radio, but had
one on in ten seconds.  Yes!  "I Fall to Pieces" sounded better to us than
the original singers!
   Twenty minutes later, the global bulletin board had a list of links to
the various regional radio stations.  With six cell phones going, we put
out a lot of requests for "L&M." The links had the station genre and a
couple songs L&M had available for them.
   Most of the radio station web sites had request forms.  We had some busy
_touches_ going for a good half hour!
   The N&Bs promptly made L&M offers for gigs on Friday and Saturday night
at the Taverns.  We'll promote and pack the places!  Maybe an occasional
show at the Arms, too?
   Since Sarah and Julio were doing so well as Bob and Kat's social
secretaries' assistants, I sounded out our social secretaries on doing the
same.  The Hat Ladies and Cullen Sisters were all for it.
   We knew who we had in mind.  Kate and Teresa had a talk with Ted about
the entire young-un crew taking on the task.  They were doing a splendid
job on everything they were involved in, and this way we could get them
some more income.
   I remembered (and Nana reminded me) that when I was a kid income was
very desirable; it could fund all sorts of girl things like make up and an
occasional set of really sexy undies.  Of course, Nana never knew about the
undies.  _"Yeh, right, Snapper."_
   Apparently Deidre had snuck over to the JRD temp team and had waved her
boobs around -- or rubbed them on -- Mike, the team leader, because she got
the location of an old mansion in Ireland Kat now owned.  It took the
assistants maybe ten minutes to swarm over and check it out.
   Morrigan told us, _"It's in really bad shape.  Probably hasn't had any
work done in well over a hundred years.  On the other hand, even though
some of the above-ground stuff has collapsed, the cellars below are still
intact.  There's a whole shit-pot full of booze bottles and barrels down
there, so we brought a couple back for your, em, recreational meeting
tonight."_
   Well, the bottles seemed to have whiskey of some sort.  I didn't sample
it; that was for the owner.  Aile _sent_ us a quick gestalt of the mansion
layout, and we scurried around for a half hour setting up OTL to have a
resemblance.
   The NH crew zipped onto our doorstep right on time.  They loved the fake
mansion; Kat was thoroughly impressed we'd managed it.  Kate told her,
"Deidre has secret methods of extracting information from males.  It's all
the young-uns' fault."
   Right.  We talked about Leone and Mark's song on the radio and what we'd
done.  They'd gotten the word about the same time and had joined in on the
radio station call-ins.  They had no objection to us offering L&M gigs and
actually suggested we go through Fillmore so they'd feel useful.  Sounded
good; we had a couple people we knew over there.
   The assistants had found a wonderful dinner place in the Bahamas.  With
the time zone difference, the dinner crowd was gone when we arrived and we
had several waiters to ourselves.
   We talked about the RRK and other joint operations.  Even with our
cleas, garble shield and using Irish occasionally, we didn't talk at all
about Clann clandestine stuff.  No need too, either; we had plenty of time
for it.
   Back at the OTL mansion, Kate said, "With the population boom we're
having, I think the Clanns Council will be pretty unwieldy at having every
Clann there.  Ceann Mor is doing just fine; on the other hand, I think we
should have a monarchy.  The individual Clanns had their undisputed leaders
for thousands of years with an occasional king or queen.  I think a Ri
(King) and Banrion (Queen) would work out great."
   Oh, yeh!  That we could get our teeth into.  We girls got into a good
discussion of the ramifications.  The Ri and Banrion would have honoring
customs throughout the world!  Crowns, crown jewels, gowns, ceremonies,
regalia -- all really fun stuff.
   For some reason, Sean, Mario and Bob just sighed, rolled their eyes and
muttered under their breaths.  I thought "R.  Robert Ri" and "Kathleen
Banrion" sounded just fine, myself.  Grin.
   To celebrate the idea, I pulled out one of the old bottles from Kat's
mansion.  Since he was the mechanical wizard, we made Bob extract the old,
fragile cork and taste test it first.
   He smelled it and said, "Whiskey." After a sip from a shot glass,
"Tolerable."
   Good enough.  Bob did the honors and poured us all a round.  A sip
almost killed me!  Tolerable?  Hell, this was ambrosia from the elder gods!
Maybe the Cels had left this as a legacy.
   Really yummy stuff.  Wrap up all the sweet lady-nectars I'd ever tasted,
add a dash of the ecstasy we found in our _blendings_ and it just
approached the taste.
   The rest had the same reaction.  We glared at Bob for saying it was
tolerable and promised swift vengeance upon his delicate body.  Kat and
Sherry said they'd make a bar at home, put this on the top shelf and label
it, "The Best."
   Kate told them there apparently was a whole cellar full at Kat's
mansion. We could go a long time on a shot of this.
   Margie had appropriated a half shot.  She remarked, "This isn't for
drinking; it's the original Irish usquebaugh, the water of life.  This is
for enjoying and celebrating; only one shot a night.  Otherwise, we'd lose
the flavor."
   Yeh.  We nursed them for a good thirty minutes.  Kate found us some baby
whiskey -- only 50 years old -- and we settled for it the rest of the
night.
   We filled them in on the events in Stevenson Ranch.  We were happy the
staffs had come up to speed; with almost 50% of them being new, it had been
interesting.
   Sean claimed he'd hidden out in the kitchen most of the time.  Right. 
Nana commented, "I think he and Chef Gale were in the pantry doing the
deed. Hehehehe."
   But we defended his honor after that and loudly declaimed his leadership
knowledge and prowess.  Kat and Sherry grinned at him and promised him an,
em, interesting reward.
   BB remarked, "Maybe if he'd work as hard on us, we wouldn't be left so
wanting all the time."
   Sean told Bob and Mario, "I think they're wanton, not wanting.  Bob,
perhaps you need to apply the Rod of Chastisement to them.  After all,
they've been getting pretty sassy lately."
   Margie tried to encourage the Sorcerer to work us over -- with her as
his magical lair assistant.  No way!  BB told them Margie was the worst one
of us; she'd make catty remarks about her and Kate in the old Gaelic which
they didn't understand.  "While she may not be able actually to take the
Rod of Chastisement, I think she still needs to be chastised vigorously. 
Her mouth's outgrown her body by a long ways."
   Yeh.  Margie tried to look pissed, but from the size of the wet spot on
her panties, she wouldn't mind a bit.
   Kat suggested, "Maybe 20 Soo Laids in a row?  Would that quiet her down
for an hour or so?"
   Maggie looked extremely interested while the rest of us ladies discussed
her capacities.  We came to the conclusion that the only way to quiet her
down for long would be to lock her away somewhere so she couldn't work her
mouth -- physically or spiritually.
   Margie grinned and preened.
   BB said, "Hmm.  How would you lock a spirit away?  We're running into
baddies now; could we lock them up somehow until we could learn to handle
them?" Bob and Mario promised her a thorough caressing of *every* hair on
her body for that question.
   We decided an inverted firewall might do the deed.  We wanted to keep
them in place so they wouldn't wander off and cause more hate and
discontent.
   Those of us with long memory streams had noted we'd had pretty much the
same personality traits for many lifetimes, even though we'd not actually
remembered the ones before.  Once a baddy, always a baddy -- unless we
figured out how to snap them out of it.
   If the body died, the baddie would simply pick up another one and start
its nastiness again.  That told us killing the body -- even if we would do
it without extreme necessity -- wouldn't protect the rest of society or us
in the least; it would just delay some of the activities.
   But, if we had a firewall to keep them inside and perhaps limit their
abilities to influence others, it might just do the job.  Keep them in jail
until we could rehabilitate them.
   Well, that took fifteen minutes to write up and send to the SW security
team.  Maybe they already had something similar, but it didn't hurt to
suggest it again.  We were careful to say it was coming from Bob, Kat and
friends, not Ceann Mor.
   Margie didn't slow down even after ten Soo Laids.  No, we didn't try to
apply the Rod of Chastisement directly; she was way too small -- yet.  She
cackled, "I'm working on it; Sean gets the first adult crack at the crack.
Hehehehe."
   That's okay.  If she was shrieking and screaming, she wasn't running her
mouth.
   The Rod of Chastisement struck the rest of us deeply.  Twice each.  We
ran out of time before Mario and Bob could do BB's hair-by-hair caressing,
but they got some done.  Mario hit lots of home runs and they ended with a
grand slam for us all.
   By the time the nine of us _blended_ together in the starlight, it was
almost intolerable.  It was just short of the ecstasy we bondmates had in
our _blends_, so we could hold it a lot longer.  Wonderful!
   After we broke one _blend_, Mario suggested various teams and committees
might work as a team like the Probe Patrol did.  He noted, _"Most of the
meetings I've been in have been just like every other mundane meeting.  We
offer up opinions, Bright Ideas and such, but it's always been a discussion
and resolution -- most of the time -- rather than a team like we have in
the Probe Patrol."_
   Well, Janey Mack!  It only took a couple minutes to fire off an email to
Ben with the suggestion.  That little bit of work done, we bopped back to
OTL and used the spirit team idea to run Margie through another set of Soo
Laids for an hour.  Fifteen home runs in a row wasn't bad.  Not bad at all.
Hehehehe.
   We let the bodies rest the rest of the night while we bopped around the
solar system.  While we girls weren't completely chastised -- we still had
some sass left -- we'd been quieted down for a couple of hours.
   ------
   SEAN (Friday 9/8)
   Kat and Sherry ran me through the wringer.  A spirit team of one of them
and me against the other lady got some, em, excellent results.
   This required a major breakfast buffet in the morning.  By now, the Los
Vegas Rio buffet staff knew us by name.  Yeh, we had appropriate disguise
cleas and all that, but we also had standard names we used, too, as part of
the cleas.  Little Person Marge didn't get looks beyond a lot of, "there's
one right fine sexy lady."
   We took a run around to our financed businesses.  Their stats yesterday
had been just fine; we just showed the flag and looked impressed with their
work.  They *were* doing very well.
   We did the preps for the seminar tomorrow; they were quite familiar by
this time around: check out the laptop and projector, ensure the spares
were operational, check out the material in storage and we were ready for
the morning.
   We started the newsletters.  We split up the various special interest
groups and started roughing in content.  Mona had sent over the newsletter
template we'd agreed on, so we could work directly on the final format.  I
got "elected" to do The Book; well, why not?
   ------
   Wedding!  Leone and Mark were doing the deed.  Yeh, the ladies got all
dolled up with perky nips, eye-straining cleavage and wonderful smells; I
volunteered to help relieve their anxieties, but we ran out of time because
I was dodging too many pillows.  Well, at least I offered.
   The old Glendale Masonic Temple was already overflowing when we got
there a half hour early.  The wedding planners (at least a dozen Clann
Reynolds' ladies) immediately arranged for a virtual pool party.  No sweat
on setting it up by now.
   Almost all the music was Leone and Mark's.  The choir was a lot of young
ones (high voices) and an assortment of adults (all voice ranges).  Along
with the actual sound, the choir _projected_ a PVC-type _song_ which made
us tear up with joy.
   Ceann Mor called the wedding to order; I thought he needed a ceremonial
staff if for no other reason than to beat off the women who had flocked
around him -- bonded, married and single; didn't make much difference. 
Glad it was him; I had plenty to handle on my own.
   There were quite a few mundanes, too.  Apparently the radio station call
in had been so successful that several of the entertainment newspapers got
wind of it.  When they heard of the wedding, they showed up.
   So long as they were appropriately dressed and behaved, we let them in.
They got plenty of wedding pictures and interviewed everyone they could
button hole!
   Yeh, several of them got to us Hat Folk.  We gave L&M excellent personal
reviews (quite objective, of course.  Grin.) and said we'd heard and loved
most of their music.  The "most" was because of our slightly-different
tastes; L&M had something excellent to match any of them.
   The reception was great.  Lots of food, lots of dancing and lots of good
talk.  Bob and Kat even did a floating waltz for us; not too tricky, even
mundane reporters would have noticed someone spinning a couple feet off the
floor for several seconds.
   We ducked over to the virtual party at Bob and Kat's.  Megan Foster was
their beautiful nekkid faery!  She promptly invited Marge to join her; then
we had two!  Getting double-teamed with two adorable creatures was quite an
experience.
   The wedding planners left the mundanes at the Temple reception while
most of the ones of us went to the virtual sites.  We kept tabs on the
Temple, though; didn't want to miss out on any fun.
   Fun there was, too.  George had rigged a CD of their music; Bob
introduced it and asked the off-stage musician to play a couple samples. 
Nasty!  George had frequency-shifted their voices so they sounded like
squeaky chipmunks!  L&M and everyone else loved it.  Mark said, "We'll add
that to our inventory."
   We didn't party too late (physically); we had the seminar the next day.
The Fillmore site showed we already had 2,104 registrations.
   ------
   (Saturday 9/9)
   Around 5:00, BB ported the needed manuals and supplies up to the Oakland
staging area.  There was plenty of storage room so she gave us extras.
   By the time we were ready to go at 7:00, there were 2,153 registrations.
Lookin' really good!
   Rita and Duane met us; seemed we were good money-makers for Fillmore. 
While they had several other convention clients, we were already classed as
long-term repeaters rather than one-shot deals like a trade show.
   They were really glowing; seemed being free spirits perked them up quite
a bit -- and expanding their relationships probably hadn't hurt, either. 
We chatted for a bit; they had everything ready to go.
   We checked out the room and the annex, just in case.  The annex could
hold several hundred and had a good-sized projection screen which would
show the main stage.  We rigged a dressing-room screen by one of the
backstage doors so one of us could pop out from behind it if needed.
   BB rigged a transducer node in a handy potted plant so we could monitor
the room and use the shotgun mike the same as if it were there.  Dayum
clever, these Irish girls!
   The microphones and projector checked out just fine, so the facilities
were ready.  With plenty of M&Ms (plain and peanut), the Hat Ladies were
armed and dangerous!
   We split up and did the rapid gestalts and glad hands to do some quick
audience surveys and emotional estimations.  By 8:00, Fillmore had set
aside a spot for the UPS terminal, and there were already over 100 people
in line to register.
   I spotted pretty much the entire JRD office staff and several RRK people
in the audience.  They were spread around doing a bit of their own gestalt
and glad hand.  There were at least 300 other people from the various RRK
and JRD companies ready to be entertained -- and inspired.
   By 9:00, we had 2,200 physically registered with another 50 in line. 
The main room would hold them and another 50 or so before we spilled over
into the annex.  Rita told us they'd give the late-comers the option of
trying to fit into the main room or to go to the annex.
   We let it rip.  Marge did the introduction; it took only fifteen minutes
for someone to ask about the Hats.  Yep, the Irish cheerleaders popped out
on stage and did their gig.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Rita and Duane were videoing the seminar.  We thought we'd see if people
were interested in a DVD set; the preliminary survey they'd done at the
registration showed we might sell several hundred.
   Fillmore had a couple main cameras with several handhelds.  We _cued_
the handhelds to the person we were going to question so they could zoom
right in for several seconds of fame.  Of course their name went on the
list to be contacted for a DVD set!
   We caught the tone of the audience pretty quickly.  It was a
medium-response speed but was very attentive and interested.  Decent
combination.
   The presentations were as "routine" as we'd had before.  We were already
on adrenaline highs after the first fifteen minutes.
   We had 30 people in the annex a half hour after we started.  Marge asked
someone in the annex a question (by name and company).  They answered it
right away.  Kate zipped to behind the screen and popped out.  She gave a
really nice spin to throw out the candy, and her kilt flared up.  Oh, my!
That cute leprechaun "tattoo" on her thigh near her shiny green panties got
some good exposure.  Got their attention really good, it did!  One of the
surveys we'd done earlier showed well over 80% wouldn't mind a bit of
"flash."
   Lunchtime was the usual; one of us at a time would duck backstage for a
quick bite while the rest joined the remaining audience for questions.  BB
and I alternated in the annex; we had well over a hundred people there by
then.
   They had good questions, too; no stumpers, thankfully.
   We had some brisk sales during lunch.  Apparently lots of people were
already convinced they needed the printed detail manuals, extra The Books,
workbooks and CDs.  We already had over 50 orders for the video DVDs and a
couple hundred for the audio CDs.  Yeh, Duane and Rita had gotten some
high-schoolers to do the toting out to the cars.
   Right after lunch, Kate was the speaker.  She told the audience,
"Hopefully, not too many of you had too much liquid lunch.  Seems we Irish
have a reputation for that.  Ya know, the only thing worse than a drunken
Irishperson is an Irishperson's drunken hat."
   We were off.  We tossed our hats out (Sean's and mine went to the
annex). Everyone had a fun couple minutes while the hats got down to it
(quite diplomatically, of course) and produced several tiny hats.  The tiny
hats ended up in the audience as additional souvenirs.
   The rest of the afternoon went great.  Seems we girls all had a
leprechaun tattoo on our legs.  They didn't get a lot of exposure, but the
audience was always hoping.  Grin.  The handheld cameras got a few quick
zooms.
   I ended up doing the Do It!  talk at the end.  Jaysus, it made me hot!
Strange reaction?  No, we had to do it and do it and do it until the job
got done -- we had two Babies Within to get out, and they needed frequent
drenchings of baby-grow juice to grow big and strong.  Ceann-Mate Mor had
said it, so it must be true.  Right?
   We had a good after-event talk with several people.  Sorry, the
leprechaun tattoos stayed hidden even though there were quite a few people
looking for them.
   Bob and Kat "drifted" by.  They were off on a week's boat cruise to calm
down a bit.  We shared a quick _hug_ and spirit kiss and sent them on their
way.  Favorite people!
   After the close (the UPS terminal had two people still handling the
load), we dragged Rita and Duane off for dinner.
   Final score: 2,348 paid attendees; only a couple with discounts.  728
extra The Books went out along with 1,029 detail manual sets, 1,316 CDs,
1,472 audio CDs ordered and 954 video DVDs.  Not shabby.  We'd had several
hundred fewer attendees than in Seattle, but we'd been estimating only
2,000 to start.
   Rita and Duane were happy as Irishmen at the wake of a very distant
relative.  Duane told us, "You must have some good word of mouth, too.  All
three seminars have run over the initial projections."
   That could be.  While most of Sean's earlier seminars had been right
around the upper Los Angeles area (and Mesa), there'd been lots of
addresses from other areas.  Hmm.  While we'd sent postcards to our
database, Fillmore didn't have them.
   Rita didn't mind at all having another 9,000 or so verified addresses.
Since we'd already emailed the list to Mona, it only took me a couple
minutes to send an email to her so she could send the list to Rita after
the initial batch of address corrections came in.
   With over 900 DVDs ordered, we thought it would be worth doing again the
next seminar.  The couple extra staff didn't make a lot of difference in
the overall cost.  Since one of the main reasons to do a seminar was to get
people excited, a DVD would help considerably in keeping them excited down
the line.  Duane had already checked the DVD cost; we got a price break at
1,000 so we told them to order 1,200 DVDs and 1,600 audio CDs so we'd have
them for the Fulfillment Center, too.
   They were hot on the trail of setting up more seminars.  Two locations
were getting ready to close, and they had ten more which looked good.  From
their experience (and now ours), Saturday was a good day so they were going
for that.
   The only things we had scheduled "in concrete" were Bill and Caitlin's
wedding next Saturday with Sherry and Mario's wedding the Saturday after
the Los Angeles seminar.  Anything they could schedule around those was
fine.
   Sean cautioned them, "The end of March next year might get a little
iffy; we've got two more Cullen Enterprises personnel scheduled to arrive
around then."
   Yeh!  We proudly showed Rita our Babies Within.  She laughed and agreed
they were wonderful.  Of course, we had to let her in on the secret process
which ensured they grew big and strong.  She loved it; Duane and Sean just
looked at each other and kept their mouths shut.
   ------
   SEAN
   We hadn't padded the attendance too much with our "captive" audiences
from JRD and the other companies.  That would only account for a couple
hundred at the most.  The rest was from Rita and Duane's efforts.
   Rita and Duane zipped back home; they'd probably celebrate the way the
Hat Ladies were looking at doing.  Hehehehe.
   We'd already zipped the equipment and excess material back to their
resting places, so all we had to do was zip ourselves back home.
   The Hat Ladies promptly ganged up on Melissa and dragged her and me off
for some adrenaline and hormone therapy.  Liss was just as yummy as I'd
remembered, but was even stronger and more passionate.  Guess all that
practice paid off!
   We slipped off to a Clanns Council meeting.  Bob had us discuss regional
representatives; everyone was in favor.  We'd follow the same regions as
for the Probe Patrols for now, except group them together some more so we'd
end up with maybe a couple hundred representatives.  No sweat; they'd
handle it.
   We had a 10 minute discussion on opening up the off-planet sites to the
mundanes.  The final agreement was we'd not open the sites until they were
had self-powered facilities (air, water, etc.) and were at least ready to
be stocked with food.
   If someone didn't like the fact they were really off-planet, we'd ship
them back home with a gag order or something.  As soon as we had a colony
planet, we could keep them there.
   We didn't want a prison, but didn't want someone just deciding to go
home, visit the old girlfriend, get drunk and tell the world where he'd
been.
   ------
   Sunday, Kate plugged the seminar numbers into our spreadsheet template.
By the time Fillmore had filled the audio CD and DVD orders, Cullen
Enterprises stood to clear over $900,000.  Not bad.  Grin.
   The certification exams were up and operational on the CE web site.  BB
sent an email off to Ted about the DVDs; we'd sell them at $75.  That would
clear us about $65 per DVD.  We got a price break from JRD Media on both
the CDs and DVDs because of the repeat business.
   Mona and Rita would work up a success page on the seminar and get it up.
A check of the Fillmore dashboard showed the Los Angeles seminar on the 23d
was already over 50% booked.  It was projected for 2,500 attendees so we'd
plan materials for 3,000.
   Any extra inventory wouldn't go to waste; the Fulfillment Center was
showing a steady, increasing sales volume of all the goodies.  The hats,
tee shirts and other promo stuff was bringing in several thousand dollars a
week.  CE's cut was about 10%, so we were making out pretty well for doing
nothing.
   We zipped over to the Altadena Arms to see how it was doing.  Eavan had
found her own weekend-manager replacement and had trained him up pretty
dayum good.
   Everything was calm where it should be calm and exciting where it should
be exciting, like the pool (some nice-lookin' ladies) and the kitchen
(plenty of business in the dining room).  Hmm.  Maybe think about some
staff bonuses?  Gotta confer with Kate and the N&Bs to see how the finances
looked.
   We spent the rest of Sunday being somewhat lazy.  We zipped up to Eire's
Rest and lounged around the pool while doing our own informal _surveys_ of
the guests.  Over 80% were in the area for Magic Mountain, so we were
probably headed in the right direction.
   Monday, Eileen had our lawyer-lady Lena set up a company for the
Fulfillment Center.  Wouldn't be a problem; the Moms and Dads would be the
officers and goof off while the young-uns would do the work.  Heh.  With
most family businesses, it was the other way around.
   Before she left for school, Melissa ordered the manuals for the Los
Angeles seminar plus enough extra to handle the Fulfillment Center
projected orders.  Ted was doing conservative projections on sales, and
they looked good.  The Fulfillment Center did only the order handling on
the manuals and such while they ordered, bought and stored their own
goodies like the tee shirts and hats.  Lookin' good!
   We all stayed at OTL while we observed the Clann Reynolds' meeting.  Bob
and Kat were off on a well-deserved cruise, so David ran the show.  Janey
Mack!  98,000 free spirits and 1,300 Clanns.  Glad *we* didn't have to
organize them!
   Tuesday we had dinner at the Pasadena Tavern.  It was running smooth as
100-year-old whiskey so we had no complaints.
   Wednesday, Maura and I trekked around to the various hotels and motels
in the Stevenson Ranch area.  We introduced ourselves and checked if they
had a shuttle service to Magic Mountain for their guests.  One large hotel
had their own shuttle, but three smaller ones used a local bus service.
   Okay, off to the bus service.  They had two mid-sized shuttles they ran
around MM and four local hotels.  It wasn't a problem at all to add the
Rest and Tavern to their stop.  They'd charge us per head either direction
and would do the count at the Rest.  At $2 per adult and $1.25 per child,
it was dirt cheap.  We signed up and got the schedule.
   It took maybe fifteen minutes at OTL to print up several signs with the
schedules.  Kate zipped up and showed them to Paige and Arnold who posted
them right away.  Yeh, maybe some people would park at the Tavern and take
the shuttle, but most would probably at least stop in for a look and maybe
have a drink or a meal.
   Wednesday evening, Deidre and Rich showed up on our doorstep.  All
right! We had a very nice dinner in Nova Scotia; seafood was always good.
   Deidre and Rich were working their arses off.  While elementary school
wasn't a burden, scholastically, it still took the morning and early
afternoon.  The rest of the time they were doing Fulfillment Center work,
checking out the Constant Contact leads, being social secretaries'
assistants and doing a bit of enhancement work.
   They were interested in the Cel technology.  Their Sperk was probably
better than ours and they were quite pro-Phane.  Grin.  They and the rest
of the young-uns were spending at least two hours a day (of 24 hours) on
the Cel tutorials -- and frequently a lot more.
   We spent an hour or so talking back at OTL; they enjoyed Irish whiskey,
too.
   The Cullen ladies dragged Rich off to do some quality control checks
which left me alone (shudder) with Deidre.  She grinned at me like Geeser
looks at a fresh chunk of meat and told me, "Now you're mine!"
   We survived.  She was lively, passionate and loud.  Not quite loud
enough to drown out the female noises from the other room, but there were
several of them to one of her.
   We did a run through Selene City.  Not a lot happening, though there
were several thousand Cel computers up with spirits/people studying.  With
all the engineering teams working away at the technology, we'd probably
have something happening Real Soon Now.
   Rich and I got kicked out while Deidre molested my bondmates.  Too bad
for them, right?
   Rich and I cruised around the neighborhood.  The sinkhole was its usual
quiet place in the middle of the night.  Our three special ones were out
and about; we should meet them some day.
   The engineering teams had powered up several hundred facilities in the
Asteroid Belt and on Saturn's and Jupiter's moons.  Hope we can figure out
what the hell to do with them!
   In the morning, my ladies were looking a bit frazzled while Deidre was
purring even more than Geeser.  I didn't ask how much was an act; Rich and
I put on the frazzled look, too.  We had a buffet breakfast in Lake Tahoe,
then Deidre dragged Rich away so they could get to school on time.  Maybe
this time she wouldn't fall asleep in class.
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 9/14)
   Rita and Duane informed us we had some work to do.  They'd scheduled
four seminars in October, four in November and five in December.  Rita told
us, "We would have tried for another one in November and December, but
they've each got a long holiday weekend.  We've got feelers out for January
and following for next year."
   Looks as if we weren't gonna just sit around eating bon-bons.  We had
plenty of room in our storage; the materials for a seminar took up one and
a half containers.  The printer would give us even better price breaks for
larger orders delivered over a span of a couple weeks.  Kate said every 10%
would help, so we ordered 20,000 The Books, 10,000 detail manuals and 1,500
workshop manuals.  I'd say we were on a roll.
   Sean "forced" us to do a run to Magic Mountain.  We zipped up to the
Tavern and played tourists.  Even with heavy cleas, the enhanced staff
recognized us.  That was okay.
   We rode the shuttle to MM.  We decided right away it was a lot better
than fighting the traffic and parking at MM -- if we didn't have our own
special transportation.  It only took a half hour from the time we were
picked up until we were at the ticket window.
   Might as well get season passes.  Going twice on a season pass was still
less expensive than getting two one-day tickets.
   Bridget played the little girl.  She made Godfather Sean carry her,
whined for ice cream and cotton candy and demanded to ride the non-existent
ponies.  Sean grinned, sucked it up and catered to his Best Girl.
   It was loads of fun.  I'd done roller coasters before; several had made
me nauseous.  This time, even the worst (or best) ones just pumped in the
adrenaline.  Good thing we could protect our throats, we screamed loud
enough.  Yeh, I remembered hearing dim screaming even from the Rest and
Tavern parking lots.
   Of course, with all the adrenaline, we had to have the Ceann take
curative action later.  He blessed us all thoroughly with his staff (not
the wooden one) and sent us off into blissful sleep.
   Friday, we started in on a Cel facility startup checksheet.  We roughed
out a general outline (first step was to locate one!) then started WAG'n at
the rest.
   Margie, George, Ben and several engineers got in-depth interviews.  They
were SWAG'n instead of WAG'n, at least.  SW still had to get enough of the
technology unraveled to get the facilities (air, water, etc.) operational.
   At eleven weeks now, the Babies Within were making a *nice* bulge.  Ana
and the Golds assured me they were doing great.  Karen told me, "Keep doing
what you've been doing.  They're in great shape, and you haven't gained too
much weight.  You must be getting enough exercise."
   Yeh.  I had four bondmates keeping a close eye on me -- plus ensuring we
all got plenty of exercise.
   We did a Friday night Pasadena Tavern run, leprechaun style.  Quite a
few people got good looks at the "people tattoos" on our legs.
   ------
   (Saturday 9/16)
   Hot dayum!  We had a Ceann wedding today!  Bill and Caitlin were bonding
up in Redding, and I'd heard they had a good bash planned.
   We had the coordinates and zipped up at 8:15 to stake out a spot.  Yow!
The place was right on Shasta Lake in the national recreation area north of
Redding.  There were trees, mountains and the whole wild outdoors.
   Even though there were still 45 minutes before show time, we found
probably a good 1,000 people scattered around several acres of woodland. 
Tons of food and stuff (Yeh, that's an exaggeration.) were already spread
around in various spots so there wouldn't be too much traffic in any one
place.  I deposited our offering of several bottles of 75-year-old whiskey
(Sorry, not The Best; we'd given it all to Kat since it was hers.) in
several strategic locations.
   This was gonna be an Irish wedding, so we had on our best kilts.  BB and
Melissa (the N&Bs popped in right behind us) had on their Irish cleas and
looked great.  Though there would be a few mundanes from Bill's company,
the vast majority would be ones of us.
   We split up and mixed with everyone.  We met lots of people from
different places and did lots of handshakes and hugs -- mostly hugs.  The
ladies were interested in the Babies Within so we definitely had things to
talk about.
   I met at least 50 other ladies with the same "condition" as mine; we
solemnly agreed our Babies Within were the best ever.  Of course, I passed
on Ceann-Mate's Mor tip on helping them grow.  Grin.
   Bob definitely needed a ceremonial staff.  He _called_ us to order right
at 9:00; there was no doubt who he was, but I thought he needed the extra
symbol.  Then again, if we made him Ri, he'd need something *really* fancy,
right?
   Majella Canavan did a great job and had us all crying.  Leone and Mark
sang for them; Leone had overlapped Bill a year in high school so she knew
him a little.  We wimmin cried, the birds sang and the guys made manly
tears.  Wonderful!
   Margie was gorgeous in her kilt.  George appeared in a kilt, too.  He
had a 6-inch shamrock badge on his chest saying, "Irish by Osmosis." They
looked great together.
   BB had on her full red-haired, light complexion cleas and looked more
Irish than the Irish.  She'd put on a big shamrock badge which said, "Irish
by Very Frequent Injection." Of course, she had to explain to everyone who
asked how Sean had corrupted her and how the "other women" had trapped her
into a life of (not-often-enough) degradation.  Grin.
   We knew Bill and Caitlin only from the Ceann weddings, so didn't press
around them too much.  Of course, we did extend our congratulations -- as
well as solid hugs and kisses.  I think Margie slipped them both the
tongue. Nasty old lady!
   We partied until mid-afternoon while mixing around.  Dayum, there were
over 2,000 people (We were getting good at estimating "body count" by
then.), and several thousand more spirits partied right along with us.
   ------
   SEAN
   One hell of a good wedding.  If this keeps up, a Clann might consider
renting a sports stadium or area for these kinds of events.
   With their assistants on the job, the social secretaries had a big
selection of places to see and places to eat.  We didn't need anything
Saturday night, for sure.
   Sunday, I made several Ceann house calls.  A couple were to ones of us,
but most were to Potentials or mundanes.  No problemo, they were still
Clann.
   The social secretaries dragged me into the den Sunday evening.  Maura
told me, "We're running out of people we know intimately so we're gonna be
dipping into the pool of mundane Clann and the more recent ones of us. 
Even though the new ones of us outnumber the established Clann by over two
to one, we think the honoring, in general, should go to the older Clann
members.  Any issues with that?"
   Hmm.  I told her, "It's a different situation now than it's been the
last couple thousand years.  Then, Clann Cullen was always fairly small and
a hundred was a good size.  Times have changed, but the principles still
stay the same.
   "I'd say you pick who you wish.  I'd recommend, though, if they don't
know us very well -- which is what I hear you saying -- we need to spend a
little longer building up.  We could also have people, or several people,
for dinner or something without doing our, em, usual close encounters.
   "Teresa, you know the customs and the gradients.  Within reason, I'll go
along with you.  What I probably won't do is jump some girl's bones just
because you drag her in."
   Margie asked, "What if she tries to jump *your* bones?  You're right in
many respects, but remember, pretty much everyone knows you; after last
Monday's Clann party, there were several hundred females who got their
fingers very wet that night while dreaming of you -- and they all weren't
just the sweet young thangs you'd 'blessed' several times.  I know; I
counted."
   Yeh.  Well, if they were willing, I guess I would be, too.  This was
turning into a very complex duty, but I had to keep up my end, so to speak,
or I'd have the wrath of the entire social secretary brigade on my head. 
They'd probably bring in all the assistants, too, to show me the error of
my ways.
   I protested no more; they knew what I thought and would keep it in mind.
   All that being said, I spent a delightful night with my Best Girl.  At
the ripe old age of nine months, she had the body of a much older girl. 
While she was just over three feet tall, she was a lovely small woman --
even without her cleased chest and hips.
   Our _blendings_, caresses and sweet kisses were wonderful.  On our sweet
Journey, she flooded my mouth time and again with her nectar -- she
squirted it in a couple times.  Hehehehe.
   Monday, we got Cullen Hotels and N&B Enterprises together for a
talk-talk.  I told them, "We've been around to the Arms, both Taverns and
the Rest within the last week.  The Arms and Pasadena Tavern, I think, are
doing splendidly.  The Stevenson Ranch Rest and Tavern staffs have come
together from a routine bunch of mundanes to a smooth group of like-minded
people who just need more experience to be top-notch.
   "I'd like to recommend a round of staff bonuses.  What do you other
owners -- and accountants -- think?"
   I was talking with exactly the right ones.  Maura said, "The Pasadena
Tavern is doing very well.  We made enough profit over the Labor Day
weekend to give every staff person at least a $200 bonus.  I'd make it a
bit more proportional to their position and how long they've been there,
but the actual amount isn't much of an issue; it's the recognition."
   My oldest sister was getting smarter in her old age.  Kate's report was
similar and her recommendation the same.  She said, "While the Rest isn't
really that profitable right now, we've already broken even on cash flow.
We've got the rest of the rooms to renovate and the fences to do, but we've
got enough in the Cullen Hotels coffers to pop out some nice bonuses.  If
we run short of cash any time, I'm sure Cullen Enterprises wouldn't mind
making a loan."
   With all the cross-ownership, all we really had to do was agree.  As
long as I was the majority holder in CE and CH (for the Arms and Rest), we
weren't about to piss around with money issues.  So long as the books
stayed clean, either CE or CH could loan a decent amount of bucks to N&B
Enterprises without breaking a sweat.
   So, we agreed the entire staff of each enterprise would get a nice
bonus, a good-guy letter in their staff file and a good snuggle in private.
Maggie volunteered to do the snuggling!
   Clann Reynolds Meeting!  Bob and Kat were back from their cruise looking
none the worse for wear.  We all went over a bit early to get in our hugs
and kisses then retired to OTL and _observed_ from afar.
   205,000 ones of us now with 2,700 Clanns throughout the world.  It was
just statistics by now, but such *nice* statistics!  Someone had posted a
graph in the Selene City viewing room; it felt really nice to see those
lines going up, up and up again!
   My Bestest Lady spent the night alone with me.  We shared the long, slow
kisses and caresses we'd grown to love so much and made our own slow loving
in the starlight of the outer Oort Cloud.  No one bothered us at all.
   ------
   (Tuesday 9/19)
   The CH and N&B gangs went around to the four businesses and presented
checks, award letters and dispensed righteous hugs to those interested. 
Mary Murray at the Arms was very interested.  She snuggled her
nicely-rounded tummy up against me and said, "Yum.  I'm gonna put my bid in
for another round." I snuggled her right back, smacked her butt and sent
her off to Eileen to compare Babies Within.
   Paige and Arnold weren't Clann Cullen, but Paige had zero back off on
planting a good lip lock on me.  There were three hard spots between us in
a couple seconds.  She told me, _"Anita's plotting to get you and us in a
very compromising position.  Several times."_
   There is an advantage to having social secretaries.  _"Talk to the
social secretaries.  They wouldn't object if I brought home such wonderful
people as you three, but it might throw some wenches in their plans."_
   Paige dashed off and huddled with the social secretaries.  From the
grins and nods, I was sure they were up to no good.
   In the evening, we had Brian and Ellen Keavy, Liam and Maeve McLennan,
Rosheen Kelly and Carla Turner (no longer at all frail) over for an
honoring dinner.  We had a great time.  With all of them retired, they
could shoot the bull and tell war stories with the best of them.  Nana fit
right in, of course; she had her own war stories.
   Carla was working full-time with SW on the manufacturing technologies.
They'd puzzled out what one hell of a lot of the stuff actually did and
were going all out on learning the engineering principles behind it all.
   Knowing something could be done was half the battle in learning about
something.  They'd already developed several thousand pages of
Sperk-English and English-Sperk dictionaries.  She was having a great time.
   The Keavys were doing okay.  Brian had just averted another stroke, and
they knew it was just a matter of time.  They weren't worried at all. 
Ellen said, "We've already got our bids in on two male and female walk-ins.
They're not related so we can just get right back together."
   Brian's turn, "We're getting the last few ends of our affairs together.
Our kids know exactly what to do, and the paperwork's almost done and in
the right place.  We might just end it as soon as that's done instead of
waiting around."
   We made some good notes on where their projected new bodies were and
ensured they knew we'd help them out any way we could.  Hell, we could set
them up anywhere in the world they wished.
   Liam and Maeve were gung-ho.  They were working on the same SW team as
Eavan McGlinchy from the Arms.  As soon as NewTek had enough technology,
they'd probably switch over there.  Maeve cackled, "We think Eavan has an
eye on one of the guys on the team.  She gets this dreamy look and stiffens
up when he's around." Hell, we all cackled over this juicy tidbit.
   We ensured they had plenty of middle-aged whiskey available, though
Brian and Ellen liked the beer.  We had a grand old time.
   Rosheen kept us entertained with good gossip.  Seems there were lots of
relationships blossoming among the Clann folk, both old and new.
   The social secretaries held Carla back after the others left.  Eileen
told her, "We want to show our appreciation for you being such a good
friend to Margaret over the years."
   They did.  When Carla wore them all out, they made me take her for the
rest of the night.  Such a chore!  She'd strengthened up and was more than
able to endure several home runs and a grand slam.
   In the morning, porting to Reno wasn't as much a surprise to her as her
"first time" had been.  We all did justice to the buffet.  Carla glowed and
beamed while the rest of us limped back and forth to the buffet.  Grin.
   ------
   (Wednesday 9/20)
   We stole Kat for a few minutes and went to see our cabinet maker.  We
wanted to create a ceremonial staff for the Clann Reynolds Ceann and Ceann
Mor.
   Kat cackled along with the rest of us while we went over the project. 
The cabinet maker had some wonderful ebony, rosewood and oak which would
last a long time and wear well.
   We spent a half hour sketching out the design.  Kat had no trouble
showing him exactly how big Bob's hands were, "They fit over these
perfectly!"
   I thought it would do just great.  He's gonna have fun beating off the
women!
   Kate pushed her puffies in my mouth a long time that night.  Yeh, as
she'd said, her wonderful breasts had grown a half size at least.  Dayum,
being with her was so wonderful!
   Chapter 10
   EILEEN (Thursday 9/21)
   We were on the tail end of the Krav Maga checksheet.  Doing the training
and exercises had become so routine (Geeser always made sure we were up on
time) I simply haven't been mentioning it.
   BB and Kate handled an Admin Scale workshop in Oakland.  They said it
went extremely well; the Irishperson's drunken hats made an appearance.  No
cheerleaders, though.  Another happy camper company.
   We got back three industry-specific checksheets for The Book.  Sean
blessed them off, ensured the SMEs' names were part of them and turned them
over to me to ensure they had the proper formatting and style.  They didn't
take long; in an hour, I'd checked over all three and had run off 10 sets
each on the printer.
   Off they went to the Fulfillment Center!  At $200 apiece, we'd take our
usual $15 and spread the rest out to the SME authors and the Fulfillment
Center.  Kate suggested we simply email the PDF to the Fulfillment Center
so they could print off more as needed.  That worked for me, so I sent it
off to Ted to store away.
   Maggie took off just after 4:00 for some more skunking.  She had plenty
to do; she was working on the Cel math, long-distance teleportation and
with several high-level applied math and physics wizards working on the Cel
technology.  Even with all that, she was still corrupting most everyone she
met.  Good on her!
   ------
   (Friday 9/22)
   After some exercises, we checked out the seminar preps for tomorrow.  We
were scheduled for 2,500 and were projecting around 3,000 attendees.  This
would be the largest one yet.  Los Angeles Convention Center would hold
them with no problem.
   The materials had just kept flowing in as the printer(s) had gotten them
ready.  When they had a batch ready, they'd let us know, and we'd have them
outta there and into storage usually within a couple minutes.  A quick back
and forth clipboard port let us sign the delivery receipt, punch the stuff
into the inventory database (not a big deal with only a couple products)
and we were done in maybe five minutes.
   We had plenty of laptops at OTL, and the venue supplied the projector,
so there were no issues there.  We usually brought along our equipment for
workshops, though often the client had a built-in projector.  Just in case,
we ordered three more projectors.
   In the evening, we donned our duds (mostly cleas) and zipped over to the
Pasadena Tavern.  L&M were gonna be there!
   Maura, John, Deidre and Rich zipped in, too.  The other half of N&B were
going to the Stevenson Ranch Tavern.
   There was a nice sign out front, "Leone and Mark Live!" Kate asked, "Do
we have any of our steady patrons' email addresses?  Perhaps we could start
a newsletter or something to keep them aware of these special events.  Put
them on Constant Contact or start another account?"
   We immediately voted her a Soo Laid!  Not that she needed any more, but
it was always fun "threatening" her with one and watching her flush up --
and seeing those sweet puffies puff up even more.  Hehehehe.
   Leone was genetically Jewish and didn't look Irish except for her black
hair.  Mark had really dark hair and a "normal" WASP skin complexion.  We
saw right away they wore cleas which made them acceptably Irish; just
enough so they were still quite recognizable as L&M.
   The Tavern manager introduced them; Mark told the audience, "In case you
didn't notice, we're Irish tonight!  That doesn't mean we're forced to do
only Irish music, but with the Clann Cullen leader, his bond mates and the
other Tavern owners looking right at us, we'll try to please them as well
as you."
   Please us they did.  They didn't do a lot of dancing as such; their
forte was singing.  They dragged us up to do the dancing!  I mostly stayed
out of the way and just waved my belly around; no one expected a preggy
lady to do the stuff Sean and the rest were doing.
   They were excellent showmen, taking turns introducing the next song or
dance and keeping things moving right along.  The first time they asked for
requests, Sean immediately announced, "Stump the performers!  If you can
name a song we can't do, your entire party has the night's dinner free. 
The only requirement is that it was published nationwide in the United
States in the last 75 years."
   Nasty boy!  It was fun, though.  If one of us performers knew it, the
others learned it immediately.  If none of us knew it, we "stole" it from
the person asking!  Usually they'd forgotten half the words, so one of us
had to probe him pretty good.
   Music?  Fake it!  Mark was excellent with a transducer and could put out
Big Band as well as the 1812 Overture.  Being able to compose an
accompaniment on the fly from just a hint of the melody didn't hurt,
either.
   We had a grand old time!  The Irishperson's drunken hats made their
appearances and dropped a couple Tavern stuffed teddy bears around.  Hmm;
order some more teddy bears?
   Afterwards, we hugged them both (Leone had *yummy* boobs!) and promised
to see them later.  They were gonna be there Saturday night, but we were
gonna be resting from our seminar.
   BB spent the night with our King.  The rest of us cuddled and snogged a
bit while we basked in the flow of love they were (intentionally) giving
off.  Dayum this bondmate stuff is heavenly!
   We heard lots of purring from the honoring room.  Maybe Sean was petting
her pelt?
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 9/23)
   BB definitely got her pelt petted.  Her full-pelt caressing had been cut
short the last time, so I tried to make up for it.  Didn't make it, though.
I still had two-thirds to go when she grabbed my ears and pulled my head
into her pussy.  "Do it!  Make my hair fall out."
   We tried.  Alas, there were only five hairs left on the Custom Comfort
Cushion when we were done.  Maybe the rest of the fallen ones were still
plastered to us from the sweat and other assorted body fluids?
   My lovely BB.  We soared and _blended_ for hours in the flames of the
Sun.  They were still cooler than our love.
   We did get some rest, though.  We had a gig to do later.
   Margie zipped the materials down to the Convention Center.  We took a
full load of everything.  There was still plenty of everything left in
storage; it wouldn't take long to restock the staging area with anything.
Ain't logistics a bitch?  Grin.
   When we started at 9:00 there were over 2,900 registered attendees and a
good queue still waiting to get signed in.  Rita and Duane had plenty of
staff for the signing in, but even doing thirty at a time took a few
minutes.
   Eileen stalled a little at the beginning until everyone got in the room.
Rita had told the people waiting, "We'll give you the books right now. 
Just get in there and come do the sign in over lunch or when you can."
   No risk on them not signing in.  She had a couple ones of us out front;
they stuck tags in them to follow up.
   People must be getting quicker; it was only ten minutes until someone
asked about the hats.  Eileen was off cheerleader duty; she could have
handled it, but I put on my concerned father hat and made her relax as much
as she could.  After all, she was delicate.  _"Delicate my red arsehole! 
We'll see how delicate I am tonight!"_
   I'd been put in my place, but she still wasn't a cheerleader.  I filled
in; my legs and chest didn't attract anywhere near the attention the
ladies' did.
   We rolled.  The audience was quick, and we kept them alert.  If nothing
else, keeping an eye out for a glimpse of the leprechaun "tattoos" in
interesting places kept them awake.
   Margie did a top-notch job on the Do It!  talk; all my ladies are great!
   Dinner with Rita and Duane was fun and informative.  They didn't have to
tell us how their families' relationship was doing; their touching and
snuggling shouted it out.
   We'd ended up with 3,110 attendees with the proportional amount of stuff
sold.  We'd had to replenish the staging area twice.  Too bad; all that
work.  Grin.
   After we got back to OTL, we discovered Kathleen had deposited several
barrels of her special whiskey in our dining room.  50 gallons of
usquebaugh would last us quite a while.
   We relaxed with a bit of the decent stuff.  Dayum, that adrenaline rush
is fun.  We _peeked_ at L&M's gig at the SR Tavern; they had the audience
going really well and ended up with only one stumper -- that was probably
deliberate.
   Oh, yeh.  Eileen showed me how "delicate" she was that night.  Lots of
lube and a bit of patience introduced us to the back door.  She loved it,
and I didn't mind at all.
   The other ladies promptly signed up, too.  Nana put up a sign on the
refrigerator with the ladies' names and labeled it, "Buggered!" They all
wanted to try it at least a couple of times.
   ------
   We slipped out around 1:00 for a Clanns Council regional meeting to
elect one or more representatives.  Fortunately, I kept a low enough
profile they didn't notice me.  We elected a young lady from Van Nuys to be
our representative from Southern California.  She was smart, experienced
and knew what she was doing.
   We had lots of fun with the idea of a monarchy.  Guess whose names kept
coming up?  Bob would glower a bit and Kathleen would laugh.  We probably
wouldn't actually do it, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely.
   ------
   EILEEN (Sunday 9/24)
   My arsehole was only a touch sore in the morning; no worse than my pussy
had been after that long dry spell.  It went right on my To Do List for
periodic review.
   Kate dumped the Convention Center seminar numbers into our spreadsheet
template.  Holy Jaysus on a walker with training wheels!  There would be
some 1.2 million from the immediate attendees and sales and another $125K
or so after the audio CDs and DVDs were delivered.  Big is definitely good!
   Maybe we should do more of these.  Not that we were greedy, but we had
something to exchange and might as well do it in abundance.
   Rita and Duane had celebrated too.  They got commissions from events, so
they were definitely interested in the numbers.  Dunno if they had the same
fun as we'd had last night, but they sure _sounded_ relaxed.
   They'd firmed up the venues for more seminars and were gonna start the
promotions Monday morning.  BB put the dates on our Exchange calendars.
   There were four Saturdays we were scheduled with seminars in two
different places.  No biggie; we'd draft one or more of the young-uns to
swing the shotgun mike around -- or maybe we'd use them as cheerleaders? 
Make a talk.
   ------
   (Monday 9/25)
   Sean talked with Bob overnight.  The rest of us were glad they were
close; we girls loved the four of them, but guys seem to bond a little
differently.
   Anyway, Sean had found out where Bob had gotten the little teddy bears
the first night he'd performed at the Tavern.  We checked out various
suppliers and decided to use the same one.  Since both Taverns were
"Eire's" we could use the same tee shirts.  The two hotels had different
names, of course, so they had to be different.  We added the web site
addresses in small print in the back so it wouldn't be so blatantly obvious
as advertising.
   N&B would proportionately share the cost by percentage of ownership.  We
owned them and they owned us, so to speak.
   We discussed the idea of having Cullen Enterprises bears or the like
with Irish hats.  We decided against it; the promotional stuff the
Fulfillment Center was handling was fine.  They had a "wish list" survey on
the goodies page of the web site; if enough people wanted something, they'd
do the entire thing.
   The N&Bs and we zipped up to Stevenson Ranch to go over all the books
and files.  Both places had only been open about five years before we'd
bought them, but it had been plenty of time to get the paperwork flummoxed
up.
   The previous owners had stacked receipts, bills, invoices and the like
in bankers boxes (cardboard storage boxes) along with an occasional old
magazine or used paper towel.  At least most of it appeared to be in
inverse chronological order.  Heh.
   We'd opened new checking accounts under the appropriate names, so we
were okay that way.  Since we were separate corporations from the original
ones, we didn't really worry about the taxes, but we needed to ensure the
(honest) suppliers had been paid properly.
   Even working as a team, it took several hours just to sort the paperwork
by vendor.  We didn't bother keeping the old magazines or other trash.
   Sean had already set up the money flow processes; Paige and Arnold were
signers on the appropriate checking accounts for the routine stuff.  Just
like at the Arms, one of the Cullen Hotels or N&B Enterprises officers had
to countersign for large amounts.
   We all got together for lunch; it just so happened there was a very nice
eatery close at hand!  Paige and Arnold were our guests, of course, and we
managed to convince Anita to "drop by" for lunch.  No one objected when we
conjured up a bottle of adult whiskey, either.
   Anita brought along the promo file, so she could work as long as needed
with us.  We girls promptly got together and gossiped a bit.  Paige and
Anita marvelled at the Babies Within and agreed they were the cutest
there'd ever been.  Sean didn't even need to glare at them once.
   Paige looked at BB and Kate and asked, "So, when is it your turns?"
   Four nipples promptly popped up.  BB said, "We're waiting until we know
if they've got an heir or not.  Besides, we've never done it before so
we've had to practice a lot."
   Kate laughed, "But we'll practice tonight!  Sean's got a few new moves
he's promised to spread around.  Seriously, though, we're both interested.
We'll wait probably a couple more months then see if we can find a suitable
father.  Who knows, Sean and Eileen's babies might be born naked!"
   That called for another round of whiskey.  Anita went over the promo
she'd made up for the Rest.  The stuff looked good.  She had copies of the
magazine ads which would be out sometime next week.  She'd made up a couple
fliers and coupons as samples for local businesses.  She said, "Eileen did
really well at the Arms with this sort of promo.  You might look at doing
it around here, too."
   Yeh.  Get everything listed in the Internet Yellow Pages, Chamber of
Commerce, Better Business Bureau and stuff like that.  I could do that.
   We put up a garble shield and gossiped (at least we girls did while the
guys looked tolerant).  Paige, Anita and Arnold's relationship was moving
along splendidly.  They were seriously considering getting a place for the
three of them.
   We Hat Ladies knew exactly how they felt.  Fortunately, as our
relationship had grown and extended, there'd never been a question of room.
So far, we were very happy with OTL.  With babies in the third bedroom,
we'd be full, but who cared?
   We zipped back to OTL and checked out the email and other stuff.  We
didn't have to order more seminar material; we'd already done that.
   I started nosing around the various Yellow Pages directories, the
Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureau.  The CE debit card came
in handy a couple of times.  I routed the BBB and Chamber of Commerce links
to Mona so she could display the logos on the various web site pages.
   The Keavys _called_ and asked to come over for a bit; they had something
to go over with us.  No problem; in fact, it was easier for us to go over
to their place.
   Well, their affairs were all in order and they were ready to leave. 
Brian had been holding back a major stroke for the last week, and Ellen had
several very weak spots.  They were ready to go; their kids would come over
tomorrow and handle the final stuff.
   Ellen said, "Of course we'll have a wake!  I wouldn't miss it for the
world!"
   That took the solemnity out of the occasion.  They weren't leaving us;
they were going on a bit of a vacation!
   We still cried a bit as we gave them their final hugs.  We wouldn't
recognize them in their new duds the next time we saw them.
   Still, we were a little somber when we got back home.  Geeser wandered
around trying to cheer us up.  That and a little adult whiskey helped.
   We looked in on the Clann Reynolds meeting.  Not much going on, if you
could say 385,000 ones of us and 5,350 Clanns wasn't much.  Dayum.
   We did a lot of cuddling and gentle snogging.  Just being together
helped a lot.  Brian and Ellen popped by about 5:00.  Brian said, _"It's
done.  We just let the blood vessels fail and numbed the heart nerves.  No
fuss, no pain.  We'll see you again soon."_
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 9/26)
   We saw the Keavys' children show up at their place around 9:00.  A short
time later, the coroner's wagon came by and picked up the bodies.  Done
deal.
   While we'd never talked with their children, they came over to the house
around 11:00.  The oldest, Samuel, told us, "Mom and Dad said to come see
you about a wake."
   Brian and Ellen had prepared well.  The children knew exactly what was
going on; their folks had enhanced them over three months ago.
   Okay.  A wake is something we could do.  Brian had left us (me) a short
letter about the wake and the like.  They were to be cremated after any
required autopsies and they'd already made reservations at the Pasadena
Tavern for a wake -- plus a $5,000 deposit.
   Eileen and Margie took right over.  Since the children didn't live
around here, they really didn't know anyone.  Eileen firmed up the
reservation while Margie checked out the availability of buses for the
oldies in the neighborhood.  We knew the whole drill.
   I told the children (actually, they were all in their late 30s and early
40s) that we'd set everything up for the wake.  The will specified Lena
Severin as the executor (Yeh, yeh.  There's probably a female version of
the word.) because she knew the area.  Well, she was available for a while,
so she zipped over and sat in on the conference.
   The will was quite straightforward; everything went to the children. 
The Keavys had owned the house (fully paid) for about 15 years.  The
children hadn't lived there, so there weren't any sentimental attachments.
   The plan was the children would clear out the personal stuff like
pictures and other memorabilia, and they'd sell the house.  Lena said she'd
handle that from this end -- the children would approve the final sale.
   We Cullen folk had already done some _plotting_, so I told them, "Cullen
Enterprises is willing to purchase it at market value.  No agent
commissions, a quick sale and it would be a done deal."
   They thought that was an interesting idea and agreed.  They'd already
planned on taking the day to go through the house for the personal items.
Brian and Ellen had set up the standard security shields; we were already
on the "owner" list for them.  They'd planned well.
   Eileen and I would go around the neighborhood to spread the news and
invite people to the wake.  Most everyone knew us from Margie's wake, so it
wouldn't be an issue.  Eileen, BB and Kate would contact others in their
address book and do the same.
   Of course all the excitement brought out the neighbors.  Carla showed up
on their front lawn and helped us out with spreading the news and gathering
information on those interested in the wake.
   Eileen, Marge and I spent several hours doing the rounds.  Telling
someone about a death is never pleasant even after a couple thousand years
of doing it.  Still, it was a subset of the Ceann's duties.
   Everyone had their jobs to do so we got at them along with the rest of
our already-established tasks.
   About noon, Marge and I loaded up the Beemer and headed to Austin, TX,
for an Admin Scale workshop.  The Beemer handled the ten-block drive with
aplomb; there was lots of traffic at the other end so it took us five
minutes.
   We had an excellent workshop.  The executives were very motivated to get
it right so we really worked them over.  Marge and I took turns
facilitating so we shared the load.  Marge turned on her headlights during
the last fifteen minutes; I'm sure they'd remember what she said during
that time.  Right.
   The drive back to OTL only took two minutes; we're getting better at
spotting and estimating traffic around us, plus there's not that much
traffic on our street.  We hadn't appeared suddenly in front of anyone yet,
but there's been a couple surprises when someone's glanced in their mirror.
Grin.
   RRK, JRD and Kat's team had set up the joint property and asset
database. Now pretty much any of us could do some queries and find out what
was close to where and things like that.  I was sure it would help us all
out.
   We finished up the first round of newsletters for all the Constant
Contact Special Interest Groups (SIGs).  We shipped them off to Deidre and
Rich; they knew when they were supposed to go out.
   We'd had two hundred people sign up for the newsletters already.  That
wasn't bad at all for the time the opt-in had been on the web site.
   Deidre asked, "How about a CC setup for the hotels and Taverns?  The
Arms and Pasadena Tavern could cover a lot of local things like the Rose
Bowl while the Rest and SR Tavern could do a lot of stuff on Magic
Mountain. There's always some special events going on there."
   Sounded great to us and the N&Bs.  Since all the businesses were pretty
much under the same umbrella, we decided to use the same style we'd already
developed for the CE newsletters.  I told them to get together with Mona,
get the accounts set up and let 'em rip.  At $15 a month for a 500-contact
list (with modest increases as the size went up), it sure wasn't gonna be a
large expense.
   The N&Bs would do the newsletters for the Taverns while CE would do the
hotels.  Deidre and Rich would handle all five lists.  Gotta keep young
folk out of mischief, right?
   Since we were already talking with the N&Bs, Kate asked for help with
the dually-scheduled seminars.  Yeh, the young-uns were quite interested.
An offer of $500 each didn't hurt, either.  We figured the Passion Posse
would do one while the rest did the other.  We could have lots of
cheerleaders, lots of fun and get some work out of them at the same time.
   We decided to work them all at the next seminar.  The young-uns had
already started developing some, em, interesting ideas.  Might even have to
tone them down a little; bare-bottomed cartwheels would be interesting but
not conducive to keeping the attention on the seminar content.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Well, we were getting busy again.  With newsletters, promotion and
visits to the four main businesses, we certainly didn't lack for things to
occupy our time.
   None of that precluded getting in some loving.  Four bondmates
enthusiastically helped Kate find out what fun that second orifice "down
there" could be.  She really liked it, just as I had.  We other girls still
had lots we could play with while she was, em, otherwise engaged. 
Hehehehe.
   Yeh, she was a bit sore for a couple hours, butt it would pass.  Heh.
   Wednesday, the bush telegraph told us L&M CDs had hit a couple record
stores.  Well, the five of us hit several different ones and bought a
collection.  They sounded great!
   Sean, Ted and Simon's collectables site apparently was doing very well.
We had Lena set it up as a corporation; Sean put his part of it under
Cullen Enterprises.  He asked us, "Why should I have all the fun?  Now I
can work you slackers the way you should be."
   As punishment, we turned Geeser loose on him for fifteen minutes.  She
left a nice assortment of cat slobber and cat hair over him by the time she
collapsed for a much-needed nap.
   The shuttle bus service between Stevenson Ranch and Magic Mountain
appeared to be working out okay.  We'd had over a thousand riders the last
three weeks; a survey at the hotel showed the patrons really appreciated
it. We kept it up and dropped an email to Duane and the young-uns to put in
the promo as part of the service.
   At 10:00, Margie invited us up to Selene City to watch George and others
try to bring up the large facilities computer.  Why not?  By now, all of us
knew enough about a computer we might be able to appreciate it.  Besides,
we could provide moral support.  Not that they needed it, mind you.
   George's team (including the delicious Silvia Connor) stacked us up
around the room (the NH gang was there, too); of course we'd left the
bodies at home.  George warned us, "This will probably be as exciting as
watching the toilet flush."
   Maybe; we'll see.  Charles Tanner was diddling the keyboard while the
rest of them got to put their two cents worth in as a spirit team.  Anyway,
they had a lot of documents laying around.
   Charles told us, "There's actually several systems here.  The front end
I'm working on here is a modified desktop system; it does the human
interface work while the back end does the actual processing.  There's yet
another system which appears to interface to the physical facilities
components either through optical channels or a subset of the standard
wireless network."
   Power time.  Apparently the front end came up all right, because in less
than a minute, we were looking at a somewhat familiar screen.  The team had
a checklist they were going down based on their studies and what
information they'd found.
   George told us, "Diagnostics are first.  They'll check out all three
systems."
   A screen opened up, and Charles selected something and clicked the Go
button.  About 15 seconds later, a message came up.  Charles said, "Memory
error.  Shit.  Says it's in the processing system at a certain location. 
Fat lot that tells me."
   George looked at it, too.  He said, "That's not the way they address
memory in these things.  Maybe it's a physical location; I remember seeing
a lot of numbers and so forth inside the hardware.  Lemme take a look."
   He _looked_ around inside the middle machine's hardware and told us,
_"Yeh.  It's got coordinates labelled as well as parts.  From the error
message, this memory block here is the one it's bitching about.  I'll try a
bit of mechanical agitation on the connections as well as some lube."_
   They shut everything down while he worked.  He loosened the mechanical
hold-downs on the memory block (a cube around six inches square), squirted
a bit of cleaner/lubricant on the connections and worked it back and forth
several times.  _"I could see a touch of dirt or corrosion on a couple
connections; maybe that's the problem."_
   He tightened the hold-downs and came back outside the system.  "Give
that a shot."
   Charles fired them up again and launched the diagnostics.  This time, it
ran on through.  He ran several more -- some ran ten minutes.  He said,
"Done.  The middle system checks out.  Let's see what the back end does."
   The diagnostics on that one showed several errors.  George said, "Sensor
errors.  Let me check a couple of those." He bopped out somewhere and came
back again a couple seconds later.  "That one didn't have power in the
area. It was clear to be powered up, so I did.  Can we check it again?"
   They could and did.  They started tracing down the remaining errors. 
Silvia told us, "It's not vital that all the sensors be on line for it to
run.  Apparently, the entire thing will do a decent job even if half the
sensors are off line."
   After a half hour, they decided to let the remaining sensors and so
forth stay off line; they couldn't see anything specifically wrong with
them.
   Charles said, "Okay.  Firing up the monitoring program." The screen
started showing various messages.  Charles did something and the screen
showed a view of Selene City.  After a few clicks, Charles said, "That
should be the air pressure." The image showed almost everything in green
with some different shades.
   George said, "Those lighter green areas are the ship hanger and
underground manufacturing area.  They're running a couple pounds less than
the rest of the place.  We don't keep much pressure in the thermionic
converters, either; that's probably why they show as light red.  The really
bright red is lunar vacuum."
   Charles clicked his way around and displayed temperatures, oxygen
levels, power feeds, gravity (lunar-normal) and air flows.  George said,
"That's all passive sensing.  We've gotta fire up another program to do any
controlling."
   Charles ran something else.  Several seconds later he was running more
diagnostics with the new program.  "Different set of hardware on the
outside."
   The team _ran_ around to various locations.  Seemed most of the errors
came from controls of some sort either being powered off or not
operational. There were fifteen errors still listed when Charles said, "I'm
satisfied with that for right now.  That's 99.7% of the controls
operational."
   Silvia told us, "The documentation we could find said even 30% of each
control type in an area could do a reasonable job.  I'd say we keep going."
   Charles said, "The documentation said the next step is the AI program.
We've gotten the impression it's a really good search engine, voice
recognition and on-the-fly programming combined.  We shall see."
   He clicked away for a few seconds then waited.  A voice said, "Hello. 
How may I help you today?" In Sperk.  We cheered.
   Silvia asked, "Do you have a name?" Sperk, of course.
   The voice rattled of a set of letters and numbers.  George noted,
_"Program name and version.  Thanks.  Helps a lot."_
   Silvia tried again, "If the operator wants your attention or gives you
direction, how does he refer to you?"
   The reply basically came down to, "Computer." Yeh, just like Star Trek.
   Well, we couldn't have that.  Silvia, George and "Computer" went back
and forth a few times.  Silvia said, "Computer, your control name is 'Fred
Facilities.' You are a male."
   The voice deepened and said, "Fred.  I like Fred.  No one has given me a
name before."
   Margie snorted, _"Obviously never been around Earth guys and their
toys."_
   I think they were getting the hang of it.  George asked, "Fred, who is
authorized to request you to do things?"
   Fred replied, "You are.  When I was last shut down, my user security was
wiped since there was no way to ensure the same people would be starting me
up again."
   Okay.  George said, "Good.  My name is George Baxter.  There are cameras
around this room and throughout the rest of the facility.  Can you see us?"
   "Yes.  You are not Cel."
   "Correct.  We are from the planet below.  Krle." (Cel name for Earth).
   "Where are the Cels?  I see many bodies that look like you in the
facility.  None are Cel."
   They went back and forth for a while and worked out that we didn't
really know where the Cels were.  They brought Fred up to date on the fact
we'd discovered the base/facility and were bringing it back into
operation."
   Silvia asked, "Fred, when were you last shut down?"
   "I do not know.  My internal clock ran out of power and has reset.  It
is recharging now.  From my external sensors on the surface, the stars look
different.  I do not have the data to extrapolate the time.  The library
system could do that, but it and the others are out of contact.  Are they
operational?"
   "We don't know.  You are the first one we brought back up.  We plan to
bring them back into operation."
   "Good.  I would miss them."
   Hey, Fred actually sounded like an all-right "guy."
   When asked what he "thought" of the facility status, he said, "The air
pressure is within limits in most living areas.  The oxygen and other gas
levels are in tolerance but the atmosphere generators are off line.  They
need water, nitrogen and other gases to generate the proper atmosphere."
   It took maybe two minutes to find out "he" needed fairly pure water in
an enormous holding tank buried below the base -- it also was Selene City's
main water supply -- and other tanks filled (pressurized) with various
gases.
   Charles told him, "We will have them filled to at least minimum capacity
very soon." He _sent_ out a request to the rest of the engineers for water
and the other stuff.  Within fifteen seconds, we could _see_ water getting
dumped into the tank.  Someone had a big filter going for that; the other
gas tanks were being filled, too.
   According to Fred, the power distribution system was a bit off.  Silvia
told him, "Fred, we three will have authority to request action from you.
Can you recognize our voices or must we be here in person?"
   "I can recognize your voices.  Do you wish to use passwords?"
   That wasn't necessary for now.  Charles showed him pictures of several
other people.  "These people will also have request authority.  Will you be
able to recognize them?"
   "If they look like the pictures.  Sometimes the Cels' pictures barely
looked like them."
   Ha.  Must have been passport or drivers license photos.
   Anyway, Charles told Fred to take control of the power distribution
system and to do his normal control on it.  No problem.  Within a minute,
Fred told them, "Power distribution is normal.  Living area power is at 5%,
hanger power is at less than 1% and the manufacturing power is at 1%.  The
fusion reactor is on line but is not connected.  It is not needed to run
anything.  None of the outposts are on line."
   Okay.  Silvia asked about the gravity.  Fred turned on the controls
(buried every couple feet throughout the facility) and gradually increased
the "gravity" to what he considered to be normal.  Charles said, "Feels
fine to me.  Maybe a touch lighter than Krle.  Can you increase it by two
percent?"
   He did and everyone grinned.  George said, "Feels great.  Do you have
enough water and other gases now for the atmosphere generators?"
   "Yes.  They were refilled very rapidly.  Thank you."
   Okay.  I'd say they were doing just fine and didn't need us to support
their morals any more.  We gave them _pats_ on the back and went back home.
If everything goes right, we'd have Selene City on line within the next
day.
   Now that was a big step.  Fred could help us get the place livable;
maybe then we could have some real parties.  Perhaps weddings in Central
Park?
   We had another chat with the N&Bs.  They too were really happy with Fred
being "alive" now.  Anyway, we decided we'd try to have a presence at the
two Taverns on Friday and Saturday nights.
   With the Rest in essence being part of the SR Tavern, we didn't concern
ourselves with it in particular.  However, it had that good-sized
banquet/party room to be put to use.
   Sean and Maura zipped over to the Arms to talk with Sam, the day
manager, about doing events in the dining room.  Part of Anita's promo gave
the banquet room as being available for larger parties.
   Okay.  The rest of us tracked down L&M's contact in Fillmore.  That
turned out to be Richard Sanders.  He was more than happy to talk with us
about scheduling gigs for them.
   We offered to sponsor a mini-concert at the Rest; the banquet room could
hold up to 500 people.  Richard was interested, especially since we'd pay!
He put it on the schedule for two weeks from now, Friday the 13th.  Yeh,
yeh, yeh.  None of us was that superstitious.
   ------
   SEAN
   Well, bringing up Fred had been exciting.  The other big systems would
help us a lot, too, I thought.  Just keep Marge away from them; she'll
corrupt them somehow.  Grin.
   Speaking of my Best Girl, she told us what the SW security team had come
up with for the baddies.  Yep, it was BB's idea.  Whether or not she'd been
the only one to come up with it didn't matter; we'd find a way to reward
her.  Hehehehe.
   Put a node in the internalized spirit and surround it with an inverted
firewall.  Lock the spirit into the current body, limit his output to
almost zero and he wasn't gonna do much as a spirit.  Yeh, he could still
move the body around, talk and all that stuff, but the effects he could
create were a lot less without the "charisma" and intention a spirit
normally projects.
   When the body dies, the firewall clamps down even harder.  Now you've
got a djinn in a bottle!  When we figure out how to rehabilitate his evil
purposes (if we can), he could be retrieved.
   The firewall is internally powered and is the "Cullen" type Eileen,
Marge and the Cullen Sisters developed way back when.  Mind control? 
Arbitrary?  You betcha!  Until we can find a way to change their minds and
have them stop harming others, they needed to be isolated.  Anyway, Ceann
Mor had approved it; that was good enough for us.
   ------
   Back onto brighter things; Paige, Anita and Arnold found their way to
our doorstep around 4:00.  The evening managers had come in a tad early so
they could come over.  Wonder why they were here?  Grin.
   Paige's and Anita's hugs on me left me no doubt of their state of mind.
Oh, yeh, I hugged right back; the Ceann's Shillelagh woke up in a second
and was ready for me to wave it around.  Hehehehe.
   Jacuzzi time!  The three of them were in excellent shape; they hadn't
needed a lot of thinking up to start with.  Two more very yummy ladies!
   Of course the bondmates maneuvered Paige and Anita onto the water jets;
they obliged their efforts by shrieking and popping right out of the water.
Arnold and I looked at each other and shrugged.  What's the big deal?  We
got chastised for our rude behavior.
   The ladies forced us guys to do nipple inspections.  Such a task;
Paige's and Anita's were delightfully chewy -- and sensitive.  I was
willing for more, but several stomach growls from various parties (Geeser
yowled from inside the house, too.) informed us we needed energy to last
the night.
   Our three visitor had most of their meals "out," so we ate in.  Guess
who got elected the chef?  Well, that's why I had my apron.  Steaks,
chicken and salmon on the grill went over pretty good.  Paige and Anita
appeared to be literate, because they followed the, "Please play with the
chef" advice on my apron.  Grin.
   We had a nice long talk about pretty much everything.  Not much Tavern
or Rest talk, though there was some of that.  They'd all visited the
Pasadena Tavern and Altadena Arms so were familiar with them.
   There were now several Clanns in the Santa Clarita area and more
forming. For whatever reason, the entire staff of the Rest and Tavern
wanted to be in Clann Cullen.  Anita told me, "Sean, you'll always be 'the
one' for us." Yeh.
   The Cullen ladies started looking through the DVD collection.  I
pretended to growl about watching another chick flick.  Kate smacked me and
said, "Better than those macho, shoot-em-up and screw-the-girls dick flicks
*you* guys watch.  Besides, you're outvoted."
   Yeh.  Arnold's and my two words against potentially thousands of theirs.
We groaned, surrendered and enjoyed the movie.  Besides, chick flicks seem
to get chicks in the mood better than dick flicks do.
   Paige and Anita snuggled on me while the Cullen ladies sandwiched Arnold
in really well.  Marge perched herself (lightly) on the back of his neck
and kept rubbing her boobs on his head.  He probably had stuff trickling
down his back, too.  Geeser checked out the new crotches and approved the
smells.
   In the honoring room, Paige and Anita were wonderfully loving and
totally delightful.  The Ceann's Shillelagh waved a lot, hit several base
hits, lots of home runs and two excellent grand slams.  We ended up out in
the Asteroid Belt checking out some of the facilities.
   Arnold survived the bondmates, because we didn't have to plan any
funeral arrangements when they joined us.  We had some thoroughly-nice
_blends_, played hide and seek (Yes, a spirit can hide inside the stellar
matter of a thermionic converter -- until another one finds him.), and had
a great time.
   The ladies popped back to OTL for their fun and games, leaving Arnold
and me out in the cold.  Ah, well.  Such is the lot of men.
   ------
   (Thursday 9/28)
   We did do a Lake Tahoe buffet; I wasn't cooking in the morning.  Arnold
and I looked appropriately frazzled, the bondmates looked wilted, and Paige
and Anita bounced around and glowed all over.
   Our three very-welcome visitors had to go to work, though.  Well, we had
work to do, also.
   BB and Eileen did an Admin Scale workshop in Scottsdale, AZ, while the
rest of us worked on newsletters (plenty of them to do) and assorted
checksheets.
   We got in a batch of teddy bears.  Since the only difference was the
printing on the tee shirts, we'd ordered the same size in a couple
different colors.  They looked fine to me; the Hat Ladies approved them and
got the Cullen Sisters to agree they were cute, too.
   Marge set one on the floor for Geeser to inspect.  She promptly fluffed
up her fluorescent red fur and started stalking it.  It must have been hard
work, because she collapsed and took a nap every couple of feet.
   Anyway, the teddies would be a fun thing to pop out of drunken hats.  We
distributed what we had (with the appropriate tee shirts) to the Arms, Rest
and Taverns.  Put a couple on the front desk, maybe sell them for several
bucks apiece (they cost us $2.50 each in lots of 1,000) and see how they
went.  They could be stored easily in one of the closets, and we'd just pop
them out as needed.
   ------
   EILEEN
   That seemed to be the day for technical stuff.  Margie, Mona and Ted
talked with us about the progress on the long-distance teleportation.
   Seemed the more they got into the math (the applied math wizards, not
the young-uns) the more interesting things were getting.  Yeh, it was
really coming down to "the map is the territory."
   All four of the young-uns and several of the team had ported physical
objects and their bodies to places up to 400 light years away.  That's a
fair ways to row back home.  They'd had to develop, discover or whatever a
coordinate system which would work decently for the *really* long trips. 
After all, 400 light years is just a little stroll across a small room.
   The Cel coordinate and navigation system looked promising, so they were
paying lots of attention to that research.  Time will tell.
   Yeh, they'd discovered planets but hadn't really looked for any.  Mona
told us, _"There's a couple we've kinda run into which might be good colony
sites, but we're making no recommendations until we get this stuff down
better."_
   ------
   That night, we introduced BB to the back-door delight.  She moaned and
squirmed a lot; we all had a great time!  She told us, "Definitely an
acquired taste.  I'm gonna have to try it several times!"
   Yeh.  Kate and I practiced acquiring the taste, too.  Margie pretended
to pout.  "Guess I've got a choice, right?  Either grow the body up for the
next fifteen years so it can take things 'naturally' or think this body up
so it can handle things as they are.  I've got three orifices just waiting
to jump on that shillelagh you other girls so casually stick in your
bodies."
   Well, it was something we could discuss while we let Sean do his
five-minute recovery cycle.  The Golds had given George and her the green
light to do pretty much whatever they wished to do with their bodies
subject to Clann security.  Their bodies were perfectly healthy at their
sizes no matter what their physical ages.
   We decided she'd grow her body up another foot and a half at least to
four and a half feet tall and ensure the appropriate orifices could
accommodate what she wanted.  One drawback was she'd have to give up
playing little girl so much.  Too bad.  We'd just have to go shopping for
new clothes!  She could then be a small person rather than a Little Person.
   Friday, the N&B gang and we went to the Arms for dinner.  The dining
room food and service was even better than before.  We took a hard look at
the layout and decided we could take out a booth and put in a small 5 x 5
raised stage for live performers.  They would be up high enough so most
everyone could see and hear them.  The stage would hold two adult-sized or
several young-un-sized performers easily.  With wireless mikes, there would
still be plenty of room to move around.
   We talked it over with the dining room in-charge; she was all for it. 
"Pack 'em in; we'll handle them.  We might even have to get more waiters
and kitchen staff.  Too bad, huh?" Yeh.  Too bad.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 9/30)
   Yet Another Wedding!  It was Sherry and Mario's turn this time.  We
promptly overflowed the Glendale Masonic Temple and went to the pre-planned
virtual sites.
   Mario looked great and Sherry looked even greater.  Yeh, we're
prejudiced, all right.  You've heard about enough weddings; suffice it to
say it was wonderful.
   We partied.  Megan Foster was the beautiful nekkid faery at Bob and
Kat's while Marge did the honors at OTL.  Not a visitor escaped unmolested!
Geeser ensured every person who went inside got at least a good
ankle-mauling.
   Bob and Kat had given them a week's cruise as a wedding gift!  Maybe
that's something we could do -- when we got a week available.  It wouldn't
be Real Soon Now, for sure.
   ------
   Monday, we got another large batch of teddy bears.  Geeser's target was
still on the floor; she'd managed to get a couple swats in on it and was
stalking it again.  We'd _nudge_ it every couple hours; she'd come alert
and fluff up again for a while.  Grin.  We distributed about half the batch
and put the rest into storage.
   We _watched_ the Clann Reynolds meeting.  690,000 and 9,000 Clanns was
moving right along.  We listened to (and added to) interesting spirit
rumors about electing a King and Queen.  Glad they weren't thinking of us!
   After the meeting, Papa Sonora told us his special crew would build the
stage at the Arms that night.  _"Not a problem.  Maybe take a half hour to
put up, then a couple hours for the paint to dry."_
   ------
   (Wednesday 10/4)
   Eileen and Kate zipped off for a few minutes and came back with a
beautiful ceremonial staff for Bob.  The ebony, rosewood and oak were
shaped and inlaid in lovely patterns and scenes.  Right through the middle
was a stainless steel rod for extra strength; he shouldn't break it no
matter how many women he had to beat off.
   Eileen told me, "I noticed at Nana's wake your war club was getting, em,
a bit long in the tooth.  So, we made a shot at getting you something
else."
   The other ladies brought in a pillow with the new war club.  Jaysus, it
looked and felt great.  While it was solid oak on the outside, it was
reinforced inside with stainless steel.  It fit my hand perfectly and was
balanced much better than my trusty ratchet.
   A few kata moves showed me it was excellent.  I *liked* it!  I dealt out
many righteous hugs and kisses to the ladies who cared so much for me. 
They're winners!
   Kate and Eileen zipped off to do an Admin Scale workshop in North
Dakota. Don't ask me where the lead came from.  I just work here; do you
expect me to know something, too?
   Marge zipped off to do some skunking while Liss, BB and I made lots of
progress on the checksheets and newsletters.  Part of doing the first set
of newsletters was to establish a topic list so we could build a series. 
Mainly, they were some hints, some possible practical applications and a
short, "How would you apply this in your company?"
   Kate and Eileen came back all flushed from teasing the guys at the
workshop.  We snuggled and snogged a few minutes to calm them down.  Funny
how that didn't work too well.
   Papa Sonora told us, _"Your stage is done and all the paint is dry.  You
just have a great time with it; it'll probably hold up under pretty much
anything."_
   I'm sure he didn't mean that as a challenge even though I saw a strange
gleam in Kate's eye.  She was completely corrupted!
   
  
Best Girl Interesting Times 06-10