Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Best Girl: Interesting Times by BJohn
   bjohn36@verizon.net
   Chapters 16 - end
   Chapter 16
   SEAN (Saturday 1/27)
   They were off for however long.  I, at least, had complete confidence
that Bob would bring them back somehow.  They might be singed from a
dragon's breath, but he'd bring them back.
   We gathered the "expedition widows" for a send-off party at the Ganymede
Rest.  500 or so folks intent on partying can have one hell of a good time!
With plenty of moonshine samples going around, lots of singing and dancing
and tons of talk-talk, we made it through the evening.
   The NH and OTL gangs ended up back in the OTL den subject to Geeser's
attention.  Yeh, she knew something was wrong; she kept looking around for
the missing two.  We consoled her and each other a good dozen times the
rest of the night.  We still had wonderful flares together!
   ------
   (Sunday 1/28)
   The ever-accepting Rio buffet did us well for breakfast.  With a good 50
of us from around the world from the widows' party, we made a decent dent
in the buffet.  They were tough, though, and bounced right back from the
blow!
   The ladies glowed and bounced; we guys put on a convincing (to the
public) display of being completely pussy-whipped.  Heh.
   Actually, there wasn't a whole lot that needed doing right away.  We had
seminars either already set up or being set up for almost every Saturday
and lots of workshops scheduled.  The two remaining financed businesses
were rolling along, and all the hotels, bars and taverns were doing just
fine without us owners sticking our noses in every couple days.
   That meant we could look for more expansion.  The N&Bs and we decided to
turn Petra and the young-uns loose to check out more places for Rests, bars
and Taverns.  It had been a winning action before, and it wasn't as though
we didn't have the capital to do it.
   ------
   EILEEN
   My "baby" was off on her own.  I hoped she'd take good care of George
and Bob.  Heh.  She was a knurly old broad, so she'd make sure they did
things right.  Heh.
   Speaking of babies, my three were getting pretty eager.  Granted, there
were no spirits guiding them yet, but the bodies "knew" it was getting
time. We spent an hour sitting around the den watching baby bumps trail
across my belly.  Geeser ensured there was plenty of blood circulation by
draping herself across it and giving it a hard purr-massage.  Heh.
   I "snared" a spirit!  It had been ducking in and out for a while and my
firewall had finally snugged down on it.  Hah!  It was Cathal and Nora's
son, Conor!  He's the one who'd survived the battle.  Well, I guessed we
couldn't get a better Ceann heir than that, right.
   The young-uns were more than happy to glom onto him.  From first _look_,
he'd been sleeping since his body had died in 1985.  That made him some 120
years old.  Yep, he'd need some Burbank/NH culturizing, all right; twenty
years in this neck of the woods was a *lot* of culture change.  One down,
two females to go!
   Nah, we didn't tell Sean; only the rest of my female bondmates knew.  I
could be a bitch, too!  Heh.
   With Margie gone, Kate was spending a lot more time both with the Skunk
Works and the War Council; she was probably asking a lot of dumb questions.
Anyway, the rest of us still had our own direct news line right into the
action.
   David Reynolds ran the Clann Reynolds' meeting.  He reported, "It
appears the _Columbia_ got off.  Remember, we're keeping 'radio silence' as
a security measure.  If they decide it's no longer needed, we might well be
getting some communication.  Hopefully, it shouldn't be difficult;
communicating across 1,000 parsecs should be a lot easier than doing a
blind jump that far."
   Anyway, we had 900 million and 2.5 million Clanns.  Yeh, we're leveling
out, but David pointed out we were ending up with a highly-trained and
capable organization.  "There's plenty to research and plenty to learn.  SW
found a lot of memory blocks tucked around in folds.  So far, Frank Duane's
told me they've got lots of history -- mainly of the previous races here --
plus more math, physics, chemistry and the like.  Maybe the administrators
didn't trust all that data out among the general Cel populace."
   Mona and Ted spent the night with us.  Even if they hadn't been awarded
Soo Laids, it would have been wonderful.  They'd both matured tremendously
over the last several months.  And yes, Mona was as sweet as ever; Patricia
found out she could give us a good gusher when we caressed her G-spot just
right.  Hehehehe.  Of course, she paid us all back.
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 1/30)
   Petra Syllum had a talk with us.  She'd found five spots in Selene City
and a spot in six other larger facilities she thought would make decent Bed
and Breakfast businesses.  To back it up, she'd done needed and wanted
surveys which we looked over.
   Hmm.  Around 80% of those surveyed (some 50,000 total) responded that
they'd at least try one out.  Well over half said they'd stay at a B&B
rather than a Rest because it was less "formal," a touch less expensive and
should be an easy in and out.
   We talked about it for several minutes and decided, why not?  I told
Petra, "Go for it.  Replace yourself as the operational manager and run the
whole show.  We'll give you $50K a year base and 15% of the profit."
   That she could go for.  Kate had her set up an account at the Selene
Galactic Bank and zipped her up a check for a million.  That should get
things going, and we didn't have to work at it every day.  We'd keep an eye
on things like we did for the rest of the businesses, but we weren't
planning in getting involved in the daily operations.
   The lawyer coalition had set up an entire framework for off-Earth
banking, corporations, stock market and the like so we'd be able to fit
everything right in.  They had to do some tricky stuff to interchange funds
with Earth banking accounts, but it worked.
   ------
   (Wednesday 1/31)
   With Kate working with SW, we still had a line into what was going on.
Plus, Marge had given us a study curriculum which we'd better follow.  Kate
and Rhonda went over a few of the interesting things they'd been finding.
Rhonda told us, "A quick look at the archived memory blocks from the folds
gave us some more data on the dimensional folding and a few hints on some
of the math and physics behind it."
   A full fold resulted in an artifact which had no "presence" in our
normal physical universe; it had neither volume nor mass.  It did have time
differentials which we'd found out on our own how to manipulate to some
degree -- that part hadn't been in any of the old or new "literature"
available.
   Apparently a couple dumb redheads had asked, "If the Cel system is 3,000
light years away and the Cel ships take 25 years to make the trip, doesn't
that mean they're traveling faster than light?  How do they do that?" SW
had nosed around the math etc.  and had developed/discovered a partial or
"leaky" fold.
   Well, built into the drive components was a partial folder.  While the
drive still hung outside the internal anti-gravity and gave (at Cel best
for manned ships) about 10 gravities acceleration, the folding circuitry
started cutting in at about 10% light speed.
   It started folding the area around the ship a couple meters out from the
hull and in essence reduced the mass.  With less mass and the drive
applying the same force, the acceleration increased.  As the mass
approached zero, the acceleration approached infinity.
   So, one could get up a pretty good clip, right?  Well there were plenty
of gotchas, though.  It took power to hold the fold; a full fold was "tied
off" and didn't take power to hold it.
   It caused one hell of a local gravity wake, like the wake turbulence of
a large airplane.  It wasn't easy to change course, the gravity effect
resisted a change in direction something like a gyroscope.  If it ran into
something too solid, both tended to, em, go up in smoke.  If you got too
close to a large gravity gradient (like a planet or a sun), the thing
collapsed on itself.
   The sensors had to be pretty dayum good, too; you could easily outrun
them, like driving too fast at night with your headlights.
   There was still a lot of stuff in space, too.  Hydrogen atoms, dust,
small bits of rock and the like.  The ship had to have either dayum good
armor -- which would tend to abrade -- or a tough presser shield, which
took power.  So, if you had enough power, the actual speed limit appeared
to be directly related to how much friction resistance the shape got from
the medium.
   All that translated around to about a third of a light year a day
average speed in average interstellar space.  That would give the 25 years
or so to the Cel systems.
   SW figured we could tweak things up one hell of a lot more.  With all
the cookbooking, the Cels still hadn't found out much more about the
folding than those two things.  There was lots of progress on the
mechanical presser and tractor fields and beams, too.  We weren't complete
yokels any more.
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 2/1)
   Well, the guys had another toy to play with.  Boys and their hot rods.
   Mary Murray had her baby!  It was a really cute girl, and everyone was
really happy.  Sean told her, "Looks like the gods really smiled on you
both." Right.  Mary and Chris (her husband) set this Saturday for their
Meet the New Friend party.  No, Sean's idea of pink leprechaun booties was
not accepted.  Heh.
   The up-front profits from last Saturday's seminars rolled it.  We
guessed we could afford to send Gary, Lois and Howard to do a workshop in
Arizona, so we did.  Keep it rolling!  We'll find a way to spend it.
   ------
   (Friday 2/2)
   Friday, we pulled a slip out of Sean's bowler to decide where to go in
the evening.  The expedition widows ended up at one of our mid-sized bars
on one of Saturn's moons.  We had plenty of company, lots of nice talking
and lots of Baby Within tickling.  Kat wouldn't even breath a word about
who she'd found; we countered with keeping our mouths shut about who we'd
found.  Heh.
   We snuggled and cuddled a lot back at NH; Sean had to fill in for Bob on
one of Sherry's "scheduled" tri-monthly Ceann shaggings.  Seems any Ceann
would do in a pinch.  Grin.
   ------
   (Saturday 2/3)
   Mary Murray's party was really fun.  We met Treasa Neve Murray who'd
been her father's sister.  It seemed someone had been teaching her on the
sly, because she laid the baby-lovin' on Sean really good.  She told him,
_"I've been hearing things about you, lad.  Mum says you've got an inside
line to the gods, too.  You'd better be prepared in a couple of years
'cause I've already scheduled a major date night."_
   Sean told her, "I'm just a plain, hard-working, ordinary Clann Cullen
Ceann.  Nothing special.  Whatever you've heard about me is, em, probably
only half of what's really going on."
   Of course the rest of us bondmates had to fill in Treasa on all his
faults and weaknesses.  He's only served us breakfast in bed once, after
all!
   Sean pointed out, "She's getting breakfast in bed as we speak.  The
Ceann delivers!"
   ------
   (Monday 2/5)
   The young-uns had apparently found enough time between their orgies to
do some location scouting.  They'd found some promising locations for
Rests, Taverns or combinations of the two near a dozen airports across the
U.S.  Now the question was whether or not we were going to do more business
sites.  We decided to meet with the N&Bs after the Reynolds' Clann Meeting.
Besides, it was a good excuse for another party.
   David announced we had 905 million and 2.56 million Clanns.  We'd gotten
some word back on the _Columbia_ expedition, too.  "They're definitely
alive, in good shape and on schedule.  There's been some mild surprises but
no dragons.  The mission is still the same: Inspect and steal Library
data."
   Sounded good to us.  Maybe we'd get a chance to _talk_ with Margie
later. Kids.  Once they get out of the house, they don't call, they don't
write.  Not even an email!  Heh.
   We met with the entire N&B gang around the Jacuzzi.  The young-uns
eventually managed to take it over and started playing with the water jets.
Aile said, "Too bad we don't have room for one of these at our place.  It
would be fun."
   Ted pointed out, "Yes, it would.  On the other hand, you girls would end
up puckered up all over.  Then where would we guys know where to put our
mouths?" Heh.
   We did get some work done, though.  We decided to investigate
franchising the entire new expansion.  With current checksheets on The
Book, etc.  as well as creating ones for hotels and restaurants, we could
offer pretty much a complete package.  Put that together with a couple
possible sites, and it might be interesting to some entrepreneurs.
   Well, that's what surveys were for.  We'd put up surveys on the web
site, the Selene City global bulletin board and continue looking around for
potential sites.
   In the off-Earth locations, we'd turn Petra loose to let her build an
empire of her own.  Kate said, "How about small businesses at the various
facilities?  Could we do some preliminary surveys of needs and wants and
some locations?  That way, we could offer another franchise package.  Maybe
Petra could get her own staff together and handle everything."
   Yeh.  That sounded just fine for everyone.  Sean would get with Petra
later to see if she was interested.  She probably would be; she'd seemed
hot to trot on the B&Bs.
   We kidnapped the Passion Posse!  It didn't take much convincing, either.
Sally, Vivian and Morrigan were more than interested in doing quality
control checks on the Ceann's Shillelagh.  Heh.
   Caden and Connor had learned a lot over the past couple months.  I
stayed out of it, pretty much.  Even at a tenth of a gravity in our Custom
Cloud Cushion, I felt pretty awkward.  I hated to admit it, but I wasn't
all that interested right then, either.
   That was okay with the rest.  BB, Kate and Patricia managed to take up
the slack.  Heh.
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 2/6)
   We had two workshops on Tuesday.  Our facilitators did quite well;
Patricia told us, "I'd say they're completely ready to handle them all by
their lonesomes."
   Okay.  Let it rip.  While a female at the workshops was fun, they
weren't actually needed.  Males or females could deliver the services as
promised.
   We were doing a lot of studying.  Bob had "suggested" we keep very up to
date on new technologies and advances cropping up and to learn as much as
possible.  That, along with the threat of a Marge snit-fit, convinced us
we'd better do it.
   Besides, every new technology might lead to another business
opportunity. NewTek would probably be doing almost all the actual
production, but we (the Clanns) still needed sales and distribution on the,
em, secular level.  That's exactly what Cullen Enterprises, Cullen Hotels
and Tavern Enterprises was doing.
   SW and NewTek were testing fuel cells and solar panels, mainly for the
home environment.  With being able to "grab" a hunk of almost-metallic
hydrogen from Jupiter into a folded sphere the size of a golf ball, all the
assembly needed was oxygen from the air and a place to drain or store the
resulting pure water.  Preliminary estimates were that NewTek could build,
sell and install a home fuel cell assembly which could deliver the normal
100-amp, 220 VAC service for about $3,000.  Make the assembly a bit larger,
and we could do 200, 300 or more.  At full power 24/7, they figured the
hydrogen sphere would last about 10 years.
   Toss on solar panels for day use with an accumulator, and you'd have an
independent power source for a home or a reasonably-sized business.  With
that in mind, they were distributing "samples" to various industry testing
agencies so they could do their own approvals -- or disapprovals.
   The fuel cells would work just fine for a low-emissions vehicle.  NewTek
had produced prototypes for several sizes and types ranging from a
motorcycle up through a semi-truck tractor.  They were going to go to
various testing agencies, too.
   Everything possible was patented.  Let the Chinese or whomever try to
reverse-engineer some of that stuff.  Heh.  Most of it was in the
technology of producing it which would be a bit, em, difficult.
   ------
   (Wednesday 2/7)
   Alex, Tess and Vera had finished their pass at a Waystation setup
checklist.  We spent most of Wednesday morning going over it with them and
doing a bit of final tweaking.
   They'd finished customizing The Book and detail manual checksheets, too.
As a bonus, they'd designed a set of certification test questions.
   Okay.  We decided they were ready to go.  BB and Patricia produced a
final set of PDFs and sent them off to the Fulfillment Center.  Mona would
have the blurbs and links up by tomorrow; another product for us!  The
young-uns would have a complete certification test ready within a week.
   Eileen was auditioning spirits for our Babies Within.  Dayum, she was as
stubborn as Kat when it came to telling me who she'd been finding. 
Pigheaded Irishwoman!  I could tell the other bondmates were in on it, too,
because they were grinning a lot.
   Yeh, the man is always the last to know.  I guessed I would survive, but
there might be some drastic applications of the War Club in the near
future!
   ------
   (Thursday 2/8)
   By Thursday afternoon, all the new facilitators had completed the last
of their detail manual checksheets and had drilled the appropriate seminar
sections.  Based on that alone, they were ready to handle seminars
completely on their own.
   We had two seminars this weekend, and they'd be handling it all.  The
rest of us would be there, but wouldn't do more than the initial gestalts
and help answer questions during lunch and after.  We were ready to retire.
Grin.
   ------
   (Friday 2/9)
   We already had the new facilitators handling all the scheduling and
delivery of workshops.  The Admin Scale workshop was the most popular by
far; we'd only done a couple Organizing Board ones.
   Surveys from the web site hadn't shown much need and want for workshops
for other areas.  However, there was a reasonable demand for direct
consulting.  Well, the facilitators could handle that, too.  Most of
consulting is ensuring the client had read and understood the references
and usually just needed a little direction in the actual application.
   ------
   EILEEN (Saturday 2/10)
   We split into two seminars: Juneau, Alaska with 3,324 final attendees
and Saint John, New Brunswick with 2,410 finals.  Our facilitators did them
both completely on their own.  Good on 'em!  Yes!
   The young-un cheerleaders "worked" just as happily for them as they'd
done for us.  Of course, it hadn't hurt they all had, em, personal
relationships among them.  Heh.
   We had afters in Saint John.  Yep, the social secretaries had even found
an Irish restaurant!  The facilitators were gleeful, and with good reason.
They'd done extremely well.
   The rest of us had just sat either backstage or in the audience and
snoozed.  At least I had.  Ana, the Golds and the OB had told me, "It's
getting time.  You'd better wrap up the auditions, because they're gonna be
coming out pretty quick whether or not you're ready."
   Heh.  Well, let 'em come.  We'd found three "perfect" fits.  They'd
probably give Sean fits.  Heh.  That was a lot of the fun.  The young-uns
were justly proud, too.  Our new friends were nestled on shoulders (they
kept switching) with personae which matched the other young-uns.  Heh.
   We let the adrenaline die down in the OTL den.  A bit of The Best didn't
hurt, either.  We made Sean suffer through a neat chick flick; why did we
keep picking ones about babies?  Grin.
   After we put the bodies to sleep, we got on with our studies.  Jaysus,
even I'm learning the Calculus and more about physics than I even knew
existed.  Alice, Rhonda and Margie were hard taskmasters.
   Well, the _Columbia_ expedition had pulled a slick one.  They'd
literally stolen the entire Cel home system main Library.  They'd
teleported the entire dayum thing to Mars; the word was that its power
source had been destroyed.  Apologies for the theft.  Right.
   Anyway, SW had plenty of thermionic converters.  For this little trick,
they'd simply pulled the one they'd hidden from the sinkhole out from its
hiding place beneath a Mojave mountain.  With a small part of the matching
facility for office and living space, they were setting up a research
facility in a hidden-from-space canyon.
   Yeh, they stayed out of the way of JPL's Mars rovers.  It would have
been fun, but we weren't ready to go public -- yet.
   SW's tuned network nodes appeared to have worked just fine between
Selene City and about halfway to the Cel system.  500 parsecs wasn't too
shabby for a home-grown wireless network, right?
   Anyway, they were setting up the Library with another set of tuned nodes
to the AIs in Selene City.  The AIs there would tap in and find out what
was going on.  They and SW were not planning on bringing up whatever AI was
there until they could give it a through cleanup.
   The library had come with its own backup accumulator, long since drained
down.  No matter, a quick look-see told us the entire complex had used the
same power voltage, phases and what have you as Selene City.  The
accumulator was already getting its first energy drink in a long time.
   They'd do a complete D&C on everything.  There were over 1,000 desktop
systems and a couple thousand direct terminals.  They were getting a good
going over, too, before the 1,500 or so George clones smoke-tested them.
   SW and the AIs were planning on doing a thorough backup, a complete
cross-indexing of the available data, and then a rebuild of the operating
systems -- unless it was already superior to what they had developed.
   So, it looked as if the expedition was a success so far.  We'd had no
word yet (security) of what it had found, but the existence of the Library
here on Mars told us they'd at least gotten there.
   ------
   (Monday 2/12)
   Maggie _called_ us!  For security, she didn't tell us where they were.
_"We've had lots of surprises.  Fortunately, none were hostile.  Betcha you
folk got a few Care Packages, right?"_
   Right.  She assured us George was keeping her all snuggly at night.  She
and Carmel were ensuring Ceann Mor wasn't slacking off, either.  Just
because he was on a sightseeing trip didn't mean he shouldn't work.  Heh.
   _"We've still got scheduled stops yet.  There's plenty of slack; if
things don't change for the worse, we'll be back before you know it.  Kiss
everyone for me and give the Babies Within a good tickling."_
   ------
   (Tuesday 2/13)
   Of course we were around when Kathleen popped her Babies Within;
someone's gotta ensure she did it right!
   By some miracle, their sexes hadn't changed: Two boys and a girl.  The
NH gang will be having a Real Good Time from then on.
   The bitch wouldn't tell us their names or who they'd been.  She told us,
_"Daddy Bob gets to find out first."_ Yeh, just because the rest of us
preggies were doing the same...
   Jaysus, the expedition was busy picking pockets.  We got another Library
on Mars.  The SW team went right to work on the D&C.  This was a big one;
they had plenty of work to do.
   More workshops for our folk.  They were happy getting clients educated
and earning money for themselves.  We were happy, too; we made money.
   The young-uns assured us our prospective offspring were doing just fine.
Mona told us, _"They'll be able to speak Valley Real Soon Now.  They get
along just fine; think of the way Sean and the Cullen Sisters act.  Heh."_
   ------
   SEAN (Wednesday 2/14)
   Well, it was Valentine's Day.  Even if my Best Girl was out with another
man, we still exchanged virtual hugs.  Heh.
   I'd been able to sneak off to Jewelry Arts and get some goodies.  Seems
if you _touch_ the carbon monoxide out of the air, break it down with a
filter and put on a little pressure, you could get some dayum fine
diamonds. Add a little of this or that as you're compacting them, and you
can get a pretty decent range of colors.
   I supplied the diamonds, and Jewelry Arts designed and did the settings.
Each of my bondmates got a necklace, earrings and bracelet in green and red
diamonds.  Yeh, I probably could have made rubies and emeralds, but it's
the thought that counts, right?  We stored Marge's away for when she got
back; we had plenty of thoughts on how to present them to her.
   I told them, "My loves!  Each day brings me new delight in your presence
and my love for you grows deeper.  Each day I feel new depths within each
of you, and my heart often aches with the happiness I've found with you.
   "Soon we shall have more to love.  Even though you're being stinkers
about who they are, our babies will be wonderful and loving.  You will be
wonderful mothers."
   Hey, can't go wrong praising the kids and mommas, right?  Even Geeser
climbed on the resulting pile and put in her 500 purrs worth.
   I did escape without being molested more than twice -- apiece.  No,
Geeser only got a good pass-around petting.
   For our new arrivals, I had made miniatures for the girls so they
wouldn't feel left out.  Ronan got a headband with a small strip of the
Clann Cullen tartan in the appropriate color diamonds.  He was a Valentine,
too!
   We met with the N&Bs and the NH gang at Liam's pub.  Mario was already
looking a bit worse for wear, so we figured we'd take a bit of the load off
him.
   The Cullen and Reynolds young-uns were off doing whatever young-uns do
on Valentine's Day, so it was mainly the adults.  The McDonnal Passion
Posse were working over their latest victim -- oops, em, whatever -- so we
set aside their goodies for later.
   The new Reynolds' young-uns got passed around for lots of cuddles and
baby-lovin'.  We knew their names, but they kept their previous identities
quiet.  That was fine.  They all had plenty of Irish sass -- both among
themselves and for others.
   I gave Maura, Teresa, Sherry, Kat (and our two new female friends) each
a set of the necklaces, earrings and bracelets.  The designs were
different, but the reactions were pretty much the same.
   John and Patrick laughed.  John said, "We'll find out if that was a
mistake or not.  I hope you remembered jewelry seems to make your sisters
really, em, hot."
   No, I hadn't remembered.  I found out, though.
   Since OTL now had so much more room, we moved the party there after a
while.  Kat begged off on much more than a lot of snuggles and cuddles, but
there were plenty of them for her.  We laid a lot of admiration, cuddles
and kisses on our new Clann Reynolds folk.  They were *soo* cute!  Uh, oh!
It was all right for the girls to say that, but I got thoroughly Irished
for hitting on two newborn girls so soon.  Ah, well.  Maybe later.
   Maura was wonderfully loving (and hot), and Teresa had her jet engines
on full throttle.  Sherry was full of jalapeno pepper.  Mario whispered,
_"Thank God you're here.  They already wrung me out -- four times."_
   Maura and Teresa each asked their Ceann about having more babies
themselves.  I told them both (individually), "That's totally up to you.  I
know with new babies coming left and right, it brings back those urges.
   "You've gotta balance several things.  You know the biological clock's
ticking -- if that's even valid any more.  You've got wonderful children
already; the DNA shows they are the legal husbands.  Do you want a
cross-relationship child?  Does it make any difference?  Whose child do you
want?  You have virile husbands; do you need the Ceann to help out?
   "Money isn't a factor any more, obviously.  You've now got a wide
network of friends, relatives and Clann to help out anywhere.  Since you've
been so clever at your businesses, you're not required to be there.  You
could spend all the time you want with new offspring.
   "On the other hand, no matter how mature you find a spirit to be, kids
take lots of attention; as much as we might like, we can't just do the
barrel routine."
   Of course, both of them bit on that.  "When a kid's born, you stick them
in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole.  When the girl's 10, you
open the barrel and let them out to get married and have more kids.  When
the boy is 10, you drive in the bung.  Heh."
   Needless to say, I got thoroughly chastised.  Yes!
   ------
   (Thursday 2/15)
   Admiral Bob called a virtual War Council meeting.  He told us, _"So far,
we haven't run into anything we could even remotely call spirit abilities.
We've found remnants of ship-based zappers, and that's about it.  So, this
meeting should be a good risk."_
   They'd found what appeared to be a disabled robotic or automatic ship
which appeared to be built to run around and destroy other ships or
installations.  It was a good-sized sucker at around a kilometer long and
was packed with munitions, sensors and the like.
   They'd run into a firewall of a completely different nature than
anything we'd found before, but their Marines had gotten in and disabled
it. It had enough specific alloys in it that they could recheck their
previous system traces; they'd found the traces in each system.
   Basically, what they'd found in each system they'd visited were the
ruins of war.  There was lots of debris and lots of Sleepers.  So far, the
most they'd found were several billion Sleepers; sure nothing near what
Krle had.
   Any civilizations they'd found appeared at most to be around the
equivalent of our 1800s.  The populations were in the millions.  They'd not
investigated whys and wherefores; that would come later.
   The main discussion was what we'd do about the robot destroyer.  The
power plant had failed which is why it hadn't self-destructed.  We decided
it was too dangerous just to leave there; who knows what race might come
along and play around with it.
   Besides, it was chock full of SW-type goodies: a very small power plant
with tremendous output, an apparent very-effective firewall, different
sensor types and that sort of stuff.
   Well, there was plenty of room in one of the Alpha Centauri systems. 
The scouts would open all the breakers in the ship, then port it over.  Our
local SW folk could then get all drooly over it.  Grin.
   ------
   We had the Juneau and Saint John seminar up-front profits roll into our
account.  Kate grinned, BB grinned and the rest of us grinned.  We could
get used to that!
   Cullen Enterprises now had some 30 different industries with detailed
checksheets for startup, The Book and the detail manuals.  Not too shabby;
Patricia routed the newest ones over to Mona to install on the goodies page
of the web site.  Everyone would win on those.
   ------
   EILEEN (Friday 2/16)
   Jaysus, the pickpockets were getting good.  One of the Alpha Centauri
Oort Clouds got a moon-sized Central Library.  It was apparently in
excellent condition, though it had been shut down for quite a while.  It
was completely self-contained with its own thermionic converter.  SW was
gonna have a good old time!
   Ted told me, _"Your potential offspring are pretty well up to speed now.
At least a couple of you should get your really-cute butts over here and do
your QQV checks as a final decision."_
   Great!  BB, Kate, Patricia and I left Geeser to keep Sean and Melissa
out of trouble (fat chance) and zipped over to Teresa's.
   YES!  We had wonderfully-bright blendings together.  They were bright,
cheerful and had great personalities.  Our QQV was excellent; they'd fit
right in with us.
   So, among us we decided they were The Ones, so to speak.  I'd get with
Ana, the Golds and the OB and come to a decision as to when we'd pop the
Babies Within.  Hopefully soon; we all wanted our babies to cuddle.
   I sent the other bondmates back to work and had a short chat with Ana.
She, the OB and the Golds _looked_ everything over; we decided on next
Thursday.  That would give us time to get all the OTL facilities ready and
to polish up the Babies Within bodies.  Yes!
   I zipped back home and told everyone, "Next Thursday.  Don't make a lot
of plans, 'cause you're gonna be doing a lot of new baby cuddling."
   We spent a long time just grinning away.  That will be wonderful.
   Back to a bit of business.  The young-uns had come up with several
locations and surveys for Rests/Taverns near major airports.  The N&Bs were
available, so we gathered in the OTL Jacuzzi to discuss it.
   Patrick said, "Since we've got Petra doing all the work on the off-Earth
new locations, how about we find someone to do the ones here.  We've got
the checksheets for everything pretty much done, and there's no particular
reason for us to do it personally."
   Yeh.  That's one thing money is good for: hire someone to do the work.
Okay.  Since we had them available, we sent the position specifications to
the RRK Chicago agency.  They probably had a lot more contacts available
than we could find easily.  Besides, that was their area of expertise so
why not use them?
   ------
   (Saturday 2/17)
   We put on four simultaneous seminars.  That's four (4), one, two, three,
four.  Nova Scotia (3,748), Maine (2,195), Pennsylvania (2,637) and West
Virginia (3,186).  Each new facilitator got a location and did eight of the
ten sections; we weren't wimping around with them any more.
   The cheerleaders were spread pretty thin at times, but they didn't seem
to mind.  They just zipped around to the locations as they were needed and
had a grand time.
   We old hands thought they'd done just great.  They were pumped full of
adrenaline which took a while to ease off.  The afters in Philadelphia
(Someone was home this time.) gave them a chance to cool off some; betcha
there'd be some more partying later on.  Heh.
   Anyway, several toasts and an excellent dinner didn't hurt the mood a
bit.  Sean told them, "Okay.  Now that you're all seasoned veterans, we've
got a proposition for you."
   They'd gradually take over the seminars, locate and train several more
facilitators and get a piece of the action.  A good piece.  Since the
facilitator checksheets were already in place, and they'd done them all,
that wasn't an issue.
   They had a three minute _conference_, then told us, "Yes." All right! 
That called for another celebration.
   We had another small celebration back at OTL.  I didn't do a lot myself,
but sure made my presence known.  Heh.
   ------
   SEAN (Sunday 2/18)
   The _Columbia_ expedition were busy little beavers.  The big Library in
the moon in Alpha Centauri got a kid brother circling around it.  The new
Library was in perfect condition except for the power; it had run from
solar panels which had been damaged.
   That should keep SW deep into mischief for quite a while.  We made a bet
among ourselves that Marge would end up with more stuff for us to study in
our spare time.  Then again, once the facilitators got going well, we might
end up with some spare time.
   All right!  The expedition was coming home tomorrow!  We immediately
went into welcome-home mode; the ladies took off for feast shopping, and I
got elected to ensure the house, Jacuzzi and Geeser were spotless.  The
Clean Place cleaner would be in tomorrow morning, but apparently that
didn't make any difference to them.  Grin.
   ------
   (Monday 2/19)
   The _Columbia_ was back!  We didn't rate a physical presence (no need
for it, either) so we were in the cheap seats when _Columbia_ settled into
her cradle in Harry's hangar.  Hmm, she didn't look battered or bruised, so
things must have gone okay at least that way.
   SW had scared up a great tacky brass band which blared out wonderfully;
it was so fun!  There were plenty of bodies to greet Admiral RRR when he
was pushed out the port first; we guessed he was the sacrificial offering.
   Obviously he was required to give a speech, so he did.  He praised the
_Columbia_, her crew and the civilian scouts.  Like a politician, he didn't
really say anything.  No one cared, that's what they were expecting anyway.
   The civilian scouts were "let out of school" first since they didn't
have any watch standing or other ship duties.  Maggie and George were
lookin' good!
   Marge told us, _"Gimme about a half hour to get things stashed, then
I'll meet you at home.  Prepare to get nekkid!"_
   We did.  When she zipped in, we did our best to smother her with hugs,
kisses and general cuddles.  Geeser got in her licks and ensured her ankles
were shining bright.  Heh.
   She was lookin' great!  They must have fed her well, because she'd put
on another inch in height.  She told us, "We got spoiled rotten.  There was
excellent food and tons of it.  George and I had to work out a lot to work
it off.  Hehehehe."
   Yeh.  She'd also put at least another half inch on her chest and hips,
too.  Her gorgeous red curly hair was below her shoulders, and she glowed
with happiness.  Needless to say, we were happy, too.
   Since this was President's Day, it was only us chickens.  We took prompt
advantage of it (not that we wouldn't have otherwise), got very nekkid and
ensured Marge knew how much we'd missed her.  For three hours.
   After we got cleaned up, we had a huge lunch then sat around and yakked.
Marge told us, "It was really interesting.  You've probably already _seen_
or _heard_ of the Libraries, so we think that part went really well.  We'll
need a hell of a lot more intelligence to be sure, but for now we think
we're in fairly good shape.  We didn't find any dragons as such, but lots
of dragon shit."
   Dayum, there hadn't been any high-tech civilizations in any of the
systems.  Low populations, lots of Sleepers and literally tons of evidence
of a long-ago war.  The first SWAGs placed the war around 208,000 years
ago. Marge noted, "Of course, that number is biased with a lot of our
assumptions.  The main thing that popped up after the third system was the
number of Sleepers.
   "None of the systems had a set of zappers like ours -- that we could
see. We have our 3 quadrillion or so Sleepers, while these systems had what
one might expect of a system population.  Maybe in the billions.  I'm not
so sure we want the Krle system to be that 'special,' myself."
   She expected most of the Library and other component D&Cs to be
completed within the next couple of days.  They'd bring things up slowly
and let our known-to-be-friendly AIs check things out before SW brought up
any of the resident programs.
   We _watched_ the Clann Reynolds meeting later.  Bob was in his usual
good form and said much of what he'd said at his return speech.  Overall,
we were up to 905 million and 2.57 million Clanns.  Seemed pretty much
everyone was concentrating on getting as many as possible trained and
educated.  Good.
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 2/22)
   Baby day!  Since the location didn't matter to the OB, we decided one of
the large new bedrooms would do just fine.  I broke my water about an hour
before the scheduled start time, and the contractions started up.
   They were a lot more tolerable this time; seemed I had much more
control. There were three extra spirits bouncing off the walls just waiting
to get going.  Grin.
   We'd already decided to bring out the two girls first, then the boy. 
That sequence had worked out fine for Sean and the Cullen Sisters, so why
mess with a good thing?  Heh.  Not that Sean would necessarily see it that
way.  Grin.
   Out zipped Keelin.  Yep, she had 10 cute toes and fingers, two eyes and
all the usual accessories.  Jaysus, she was so cute!
   We just zipped away and got them out a minute apart.  These were the
best babies ever!  Even Margie said, "Dayum, they're cuter than I was!  No
fair!" Even the babies laughed at that.
   The female bondmates knew who we had but no one else.  We'd elected
Patricia to do the introductions to Sean.
   "Sean, meet Keelin Quinn Cullen who was Eileen's great-great grandmother
on her mother's side.  Of course, that means she's Margie's
great-grandmother."
   Keelin told Sean, _"Hi, Da!  You and me are gonna get along just fine.
From what I've heard, Margie has been training you up pretty decently.  By
the way, you need a trim."_
   Sean groaned and told her, "Now what am I gonna do?  Having Marge around
is bad enough." He must have gotten over it because he was more than
willing to give her a good snuggle and cuddle.
   Keelin told Margie, _"You!  You're the one who kept pushing me aside
when Bridget was born.  Ah, well.  You've turned out kinda cute, though."_
   She knew exactly how to get on Margie's good side.  We had a great
laugh.
   Okay.  Joan McDonnal Cullen was Seamus' great grandmother Saraid from
the McDonnal house.  She told Sean, _"Ya did a wonderful thing, there,
Cathal.  But don't you be after gettin' a swelled head about it!"_
   Gotta keep those menfolk in line, right?
   Finally, the heir.  Ronan McLennan Cullen was Nora and Cathal's son
Conor who'd survived the McDonnal house battle.  _"Hello again, Mum and Da!
It's wonderful to be back.  Except it seems now I've got lots more Mums to
give me a hard time.  And you two young ladies had better not give me too
much crap!  I've got the master here to teach me how to handled sassy-arse
sisters!"_
   Joan snapped back, _"Just because you've got red hair doesn't mean
you're the hair apparent.  You might not live that long."_
   That started a round-robin Irishing contest for a while.  While our
wonderful, beautiful babies nursed (two boobs go into three mouths...) we
laughed, _blended_ lightly and enjoyed.
   I _talked_ with Kat a couple minutes; we agreed our babies were the
cutest ever and that we would get everyone together for a Meet the New
Friends party next Sunday.  Life was wonderful.
   Chapter 17
   SEAN (Sunday 2/25)
   We had Kat's Meet the New Friends party at OTL so we could combine it
with letting people explore our new house additions.  Besides, Bob told me
he'd be able to supervise me at the barbeque and learn something.  Grin.
   My "Please play with the chef" apron didn't attract much attention this
time around; it seemed babies were a lot more fun!
   So, who were they?  Well, Brian was Seamus from Clann McDonnal
(sneaky!), Aideen was Ana's great-great grandmother from Donegal and Robert
Kelly Reynolds (RKR or Rocker) was the infamous Reginald Robert Kelly.  I
figured we'd better be careful about asking "Reginald" anything because we
might get two people answering up.  Grin.
   I tentatively decided Aideen would be another tough old bird.  She and
Marge went at it a little bit right away.  I figured I'd just better watch
my step around her.
   Seamus I already knew; we got along just fine.  Rocker?  Having been a
businessman and entrepreneur, he was right up my line,.
   Dayum they were cute!  Even Rocker looked fine though he was more, em,
strong than cute.  That was a good thing, too; who needs a cute robber
baron?
   We got all the new Core Clann Cullen and Clann Reynolds babies together.
Might as well have them getting to know each other; they'd probably be
another young-uns group Real Soon Now.
   We stacked their bodies up on a big outdoor blanket and let them handle
them as they wished.  Most of the time, at least half of them were up
getting fed, cuddled or otherwise being kids.  Grin.
   With nine baby bodies, it was sometimes a bit difficult to tell who was
who.  The kids solved that themselves by providing a small holographic sign
with their names, relationships, prior identities and so on.  It worked for
me at least.
   There were plenty of spirits and bodies coming through to eyeball the
newbies.  Bob told me later he'd stopped at 2,000 spirit visitors.  There
were lots of Clann Cullen mundanes who stopped by; for whatever reason they
seemed to be interesting in poking the heir's belly.  Heh.
   Yep, Clann McDonnal put in a good appearance.  They weren't too
surprised to find Brian/Seamus; it turned out Kat had, em, propositioned
him right in the middle of Liam's pub.
   Cean and Meadbh were really happy to run into their past brother again;
they'd had some really good times together before.  From the sound of
things, they were gonna stay in really close touch.
   Ronan and Aideen got along famously.  When they weren't doing their
baby-shticks for a visitor, they were out _blending_, flaring and making
wonderful rainbows.  What the hell, they were old enough to make their own
decisions about things like that, right?
   Besides, it was similar to what Marge and George had been doing since
the first day they'd met.  Down the line, they'd all form their individual
independent relationships.  Time would tell.
   Anyway, we went through quite a few pounds of various barbeque meats,
lots of salad, lots of cheesecake and ice cream and *lots* of beer and
usquebaugh.  Gotta stock up on usquebaugh again; fortunately it really
didn't cost that much straight from The Selene City Distillery of Fine
Irish Spirits -- Mars Annex.  Grin.
   Everyone got thoroughly worn out (physically) and had a great time. 
After the NH gang and the rest of the visitors left, we introduced Patricia
and our new ones to the concept of the chick flick.
   Ronan caught on real quick; he couldn't roll his eyes too well right
now, but knew enough to keep his thoughts private between him and me. 
Patricia, Keelin and Joan ate it right up, though.  Ronan and I agreed that
while the culture might have changed in the past hundred some years, women
still loved romance and gooey stuff.  Grin.
   ------
   EILEEN (Monday 2/26)
   Showing off the new young-uns was so much fun!  There was absolutely no
friction among any of them.  That didn't stop them from Irishing each
other, though, especially when it was meal time for one of them.  Hell,
with four nursing mothers and nine mouths, the kid went for the nearest
boob anyway.  They were quite careful in _touching_ their bodies around; we
had quite a few mundane Clann Cullen folk stopping by.
   Our new facilitators were still working out of OTL for now; they were
actively searching for an office for themselves.  They did squeeze in a
workshop in Chicago in their spare time.
   Marge wasn't much into the techie part of setting up the acquired Cel
and other memory blocks and Libraries.  She, like most of SW, was more
interested in what they contained.
   For now, it looked as if the George-clone crew had it well under
control. They had almost all of the D&Cs done and had set up a special
network in the Mars facility for the oddball memory blocks.  With a tuned
node to our Selene City AIs, it was the same as if they were right there
anyway.
   ------
   (Wednesday 2/28)
   SW declared the two habitable planets in the Alpha Centauri system and
the one in System Alpha to be provisionally habitable for body occupation.
They pointed out that did *not* mean we could go skinny dipping in the
waters!
   Several teams immediately ported outposts from the earth and set up
camps.  Manpower wasn't an issue, for sure.  With several hundred thousand
volunteers, they telecommuted and worked in shifts.
   The main mission was to set up full weather and geographic sensors and
to conduction biological experiments.  With a Sam Sensor AI on each planet
collecting and sending back data to Ed Explorer, they could explore and
check out the real wildlife.
   From the preliminary results, SW didn't expect to find many problems. 
There'd probably be specific bacteria and viruses for which they'd have to
develop inoculations, but their main concern was for predators which might
like to nosh on tender human bodies.
   We OTL and NH folk stayed at home; we had plenty to do for now.  That
didn't preclude us from yakking with Ed about what they'd been finding. 
For us at least, he'd mocked up an image of an old Aussie explorer with the
bush hat, kakis, kerchief and the whole bit.  He looked a bit like
Crocodile Dundee.  Grin.
   ------
   (Thursday 3/1)
   The facilitator team found an office in an Arcadia building.  By
"coincidence," it was one of Kat's properties.  Grin.
   They got good deals on computer systems, projectors, laptops, copiers
and the like.  NewTek had a special web site for Mick-Made equipment.
   Kate set up a new checking account with multiple signatures and set up
the accounting software for them.  They weren't completely independent of
CE, more like a subdivision.
   Melissa did a "formal" contact turnover to Rita and Duane.  Of course
they could talk with any of us any time, so we weren't disconnecting.
   They weren't on a sink or swim basis, either -- yet.  We'd still be
around, but they'd handle all the ordering, organizing, scheduling and
delivery.  Good on 'em!
   Within a couple hours, Mona had help wanted ads up on the CE and global
sites for facilitators and cheerleaders.  They could expand as much and as
fast as they wished.  The more business they did (We cut them in on a good
piece of the seminar goodies action, too.) the more everyone made. 
Everyone would win.
   ------
   (Friday 3/2)
   Alice "stopped by" to gaze at the kids and to chat for a while.  SW had
gotten all their D&Cs done and had done a preliminary check for the
biggest/bestest/fastest memory blocks, both operational (where the programs
and in-use data resided) and non-volatile (think of a solid-state hard
disk).  They'd found both which were about a hundred times faster and
denser than the Cel stuff; an SW team had reverse-engineered them, tweaked
them and had upped the specs by another factor of ten or so.  Not shabby.
   Being paranoid, they immediately had Mick pop out lots of blocks.  Each
recovered block and all the Libraries got five "image" backups which they
immediately spread around among several systems and folds.
   The automated destroyer got some special treatment.  It got its computer
system backed up, a thorough scan of its innards done, then got its own
home inside a fold in one of the AC Oort Clouds.  They put the densest
full-everything inverted firewall and shield around it they could devise.
   Alice continued to handle the people scheduling for the various teams.
Rhonda and a small clone (Rhondette) did most of the testing and initial
checkouts.  The last memory block of each image went to AC to go into a
main encyclopedia; they'd make another specialized system and AI for all
that.
   Besides all that, several teams ported every Earth-based outpost,
facility and anything else with Cel technology off to the AC and System
Alpha planets for storage.  We were still a bit amazed the Humans hadn't
stumbled across them, and we wanted to ensure they didn't.
   It being Friday night, we made an early run to Stevenson Ranch.  We set
up shop in the Rest for an hour to show off the kids.  We had both guests
and staff flocking around all the time.
   The kids ate it up.  They wore their Valentine's outfits, were cuter
than any bug in any rug and laid on the baby goo.  Fun.
   Of course it wasn't much trouble to scoot along the walkway to the
Tavern and set up a baby-cuddling station there.  Chef Gale looked, cuddled
and cried a little.  I think she wanted at least one of her own.  Grin.
   We had a wonderful dinner and a wonderful time.  Back home, we laid the
baby bodies down with firm instructions of no coitus interruptus and laid
the lovin' on each other for several hours.
   The kids were good; they joined in with a couple phantom tongues,
_touches_ and lots of lovin' in their own rights.  Ronan bopped off for a
while to visit Aideen -- I'd say they had something going.
   I decided I was fully recovered, so "forced" Sean to service me
thoroughly.  Dayum, I was a bit out of condition.  The rest of the
bondmates ganged up on me too; everyone got a Soo Laid!
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 3/3)
   We didn't have any seminars.  None were scheduled, so everyone got a
break.  We were calling the subdivision CE Seminars, and they were working
their arses off getting things going.  For sure, they had the technology,
marketing and financial backing, but they also had the responsibility and
desire to make it all go really right.
   Sunday, Fred told us, "We've come to a conclusion on the 'best' hardware
and operating system software and languages.  They're all better and
faster; I think we'll be doing some dancing later on!"
   Mick pumped out a couple small desktop systems for Mini-Micks, cloned
himself a bit and set his offspring to work.  Rhondette took over the OS,
memory and AI testing job while a couple of Mini-Micks coughed out a new
Fred house -- yeh, he'd been elected to go first again.
   Rhondette and the rest started on a completely new operating system
design with an entirely new (faster, cleaner, "easier") language.  Glad it
was them and not me!  With the AIs working as a team with the human
programmer input, they really didn't expect it to take very long.  More
power to them.
   We zipped off to Liam's pub in the early afternoon.  Lots of them had
already visited the kids, but that didn't slow them down on their
appreciation.
   There were several of the Clann McDonnal in the family way, too.  Seemed
this baby gig was making the rounds!  Heh.
   The McDonnal Passion Posse was snuggled up against their latest target.
At 98, he was still full of piss and vinegar.  He told me, "They're doin'
their best to get me out of this body.  I figure I'll milk it as long as I
can."
   I laughed and told him, "Hell, you've got eight to milk; it's a wonder
you can keep up."
   "Teachin' the lassies is an awesome task, lad, but someone's gotta do
it, right?"
   Right.
   ------
   (Monday 3/5)
   Well, RRK found us a couple good candidates to take over running the
Earth-based Taverns and Hotels.  We and the N&Bs did interviews Monday
morning, then spent the morning and early afternoon deciding to use Selena
Hawkins.  She was one of us, of course, with long experience as a business
owner, CEO and various other high-level positions in successful companies.
Yep, she'd been to a seminar and had completed her general certification in
The Book and all the detail manuals.  That was the deal maker.
   We found her an office in the RRK building in Chicago and talked RRK Inc
into giving her a hand in setting things up.  She too got a good deal on
her office equipment.  Grin.
   The Cullen young-uns had a complete write up on all the locations they'd
researched for various things, including Waystations.  They turned all of
it over to her and went off to do their own celebrating.
   Once she got rolling well, we'd be backed out of that, too.  Not to say
we wouldn't go visiting, mind you.  It was just that we didn't have to be
involved at all with the operations besides looking at the stats
occasionally, offering suggestions and approving any major operations.
   She was to get 30% of the action on most everything.  Again, we supplied
the initial financing so she could hire people she needed and get things
set up.  May we could take an actual vacation sometime!
   ------
   We ducked out with the NH gang, with babies of course.  That gave Ronan
and Aideen a chance to love on each other a bit, so everyone was happy.  Of
course they couldn't get too physical, but they managed to get their tiny
hands interlocked for a long time.
   We had dinner in a nice Puerto Rican restaurant; the babies were models
of what babies should be -- seen and heard only when they laughed, gurgled
and cooed.  Grin.
   Bob told me, "At least with the new folk around, we don't have to do a
lot of PR stuff with the public.  That's relaxing."
   Yeh.  "Now the ladies have other flesh to press.  I figure give a woman
a choice between wild sex and cuddling a kid, and she'll cuddle the kid
first."
   "Gives you time to catch your breath though, right?"
   "Right."
   We let them go back to Clann Reynolds meeting while our gang zipped back
to OTL and _looked_ on.  They zipped over to OTL after the meeting and the
obligatory baby cuddling, and we settled in for the evening.
   All five AIs put in "appearances" and joined the festivities.  Four
boobs and six mouths don't match up exactly, but the kids managed.
   Bob and I had thought our new mothers had recovered last week, but it
had taken them this long to discover it.  Well, I guessed I'd survive. 
Fortunately, I did.
   We had long, tender lovings among us all.  We flared wonderfully! 
Bringing our new friends in the final extremely-rich _blend_ let us go on
for several minutes before it became too much.  A-wunnerful!
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 3/6)
   Of course Margie tracks these sort of things: Fred told SW, "Back me up,
Scottie!" They'd tested and tweaked new hardware, the OS and the AI overlay
(for Fred) and were ready to rock.
   It didn't go smoothly; it took them a good six hours before they were
satisfied he could run okay for a while.  He shut down in his old home and
took a nap while the SW team swapped out the system in Selene City.
   Yeh, he came up fine then.  He led them while the AIs and the
programmers re-inspected and tweaked bits for the next day.  I know how
that goes; with Alice and Rhonda around, they wanted the kitchen curtain
color just right.  Grin.
   We brought the entire N&B gang over for a liberation party.  With our
new folk handling the seminars, Rests and Taverns, we were now liberated.
Sean told us, "We could retire completely if we wished.  Somehow, though, I
bet we'll end up involved in something else Real Soon Now."
   Well, I for one could wait.  "That may be so, Sean.  In the meantime,
we've got kids to raise and a couple remaining financed businesses.  Let's
not let training Ronan slip through the cracks, either."
   We passed the babies around, snuggled Geeser, stuffed our faces and did
severe damage to the usquebaugh supply.  We gave the Jacuzzi a good
workout, too.  It was nice to have the shield over the back yard and have
it at 78 degrees while the rest of Sierra Madre was at 60.  Grin.
   Every once in a while, a girl would drag off one of the guys for some
fun.  Patrick and John didn't seem to mind checking out my breast milk --
and other juices.
   Sean?  Let's say he was more than willing to help out ladies in
distress. The babies were interested observers; mainly they floated in the
air around the Jacuzzi or snuggled up to someone.  Aideen said, "Our time
will come.  The Ceann will treat us fairly.  Hehehehe."
   Most of our bodies fell asleep in chairs in the back yard.  No biggie.
We just zipped them into a convenient Cloud Cushion in one of bedrooms and
let them doze away while the kids took turns ensuring my boobs didn't
burst.
   ------
   (Wednesday 3/7)
   Fred had turned out great!  He had a permanent grin on his face and was
bouncing around.  Of course.  He was a guy with a new toy!
   With all the hardware and software tweaks noted, Mick pumped out new
homes for Alice, Rhonda, Harry and himself.  Rhondette did the initial
hardware testing, OS loading and testing and pronounced them satisfactory.
   The rest of the AIs got their final backups, went to sleep and woke up
in their new homes.  My, did we have a party then!  All of Selene City, the
Krle system, AC and System Alpha had parties.  Hell, being Irish, all we
needed was the least excuse; no one even had to drop a hat.
   ------
   (Friday 3/9)
   Patricia and I whipped out a business visit to one of our two financed
businesses while BB and Kate did the other.  All was well; they were
expanding steadily, and the staff was quite happy.
   Melissa we sent home early.  We left Margie and Geeser to entertain Sean
and to handle the kids.  Not that they really needed handling; they only
needed fed at the appropriate times and cuddled a lot while they studied.
   We got home early enough to get the latest on the AIs.  Alice told us,
"Everyone's done and in their new homes.  Dayum, it feels so free."
   Along with our familiar friends, they'd cloned off two others into their
own systems.  Ellie Encyclopedia and Ed Explorer would "live" in the Alpha
Centauri system and would be doing what their names implied.
   Ellie's hardware and major software routines were optimized for storage,
searching, cross-referencing and presentation.  Ed, of course, would be in
charge of exploration and mapping.
   They'd been cloned mainly from Rhonda and Harry, but were definitely
their own "people" and personalities.  With the aid of a golf-ball-sized
hunk of hardware, all the AIs could project a 3D hologram that looked so
dayum real you could smell them.
   With a judicious array of presser/tractor projectors, each was actually
tangible.  Think Margie's tits before she grew them.  Now they could
actually hold the babies and cuddle them up.
   They appeared fully Human now.  Ellie told us, "You helped create us. 
It's the least we can do to show our appreciation.  Besides, appearances
are half the fun."
   They could each handle trillions of simultaneous conversations.  With
several million processors in a multi-tasking, multi-processing OS, it was
apparently a piece of cake to them.  Anyway, it worked.
   Since the holograms were hardware-assisted, all it really took to
"appear" was the small remote which handled all the load.  The "smarts"
behind the projector was directly to the appropriate AI.
   Ellie really looked like a librarian.  She sported a half-moon lens set
of reading glasses on the end of a really cute nose.  Hmm.  Actually, they
were all really cute.  Yeh, they looked good enough to eat.
   Since they now had "form," the females seemed to slip up every once in a
while and flashed a nice bush or boob at us every once in a while.  We
couldn't wait to see them dressed up in LBDs!  Nasty!
   We had an honoring night at the Altadena arms with several mundane
families.  Sean got seated right next to Cathy, a sweet young thang of 19.
Did that make her a sweet old thing?  Sean didn't seem to mind.
   Sorry, Sean.  No virgin tonight.  While Cathy wasn't the most
experienced young lady we'd run across, she was really up to speed and
eager.  Really eager.  The entire OTL gang grinned at her all night, and
she dayum near wore holes in the front of her blouse.
   The Arms restaurant was going strong.  We even had to wait twenty
minutes even though we had reservations.  Good.
   Back at OTL, we gave Cathy the tour.  When she saw the fur and
firelight, she quivered and had a tiny one right on the spot.  Heh.
   Oh, yeh, she knew about usquebaugh, all right.  We had plenty of ranges
of what could be termed The Best, and we sat around for forty minutes
sampling and chatting away.
   Cathy was a year out of high school and was working with NewTek.  RRK
had picked her up for training, and she was deeply involved in her advanced
studies.  She could Sperk and Phane pretty dayum good!
   Sean started speaking in Phane, so we jumped right in with him.  Kate
told her, "We're on an online program with NewTek, and they wanted us to
know the languages, too."
   That was good for another round or so.  Kate slipped a blood filter into
Cathy so she wouldn't get too plastered to enjoy the rest of her night. 
Heh.
   She loved the new babies.  After a couple of them had rooted around for
milk, she was almost crying.  She wanted a mate (at least one!) and babies
of her own real soon now.
   Finally we took pity on her and escorted her off to Kate's room (which
she never used) and got her dressed for her adventure.  She was long-line
Clann, so she knew some of the rituals and customs.  We dressed her in a
diaphanous lace gown, put a few temporary tattoos where they'd show things
up, mopped her down a little and sent her in to abuse Sean all she could.
   Yep, we _peeked_.  She was a thrasher, moaner, squeaker, back-scratcher
and a gusher.  Even five home runs and a grand slam didn't appease her
fully.
   An earlier inspection showed she was very curious, so we kicked Sean out
and gave her a good introduction to other female anatomy.  She sure learned
in a hurry!  She'd gotten some education from the Internet and made
Patricia squirt nicely for us.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 3/10)
   We fed her well in the morning at one of the local buffets.  We did our
due diligence on trying to eat them clean.
   Cathy glowed and bounced while the rest of us did our knackered-out
impressions.  Everyone who glanced at her smiled and knew exactly (or
thought they did) how she'd spent her night.
   The babies got their share of admiration, too, and laid the baby-love on
anyone interested.
   I got into my regalia and drove us over to her place.  I "made" her
carry Ronan; I was gonna take him around on my visits.
   I did my bragging on her to her family; they ate it up.  After the
"oops" dropping bit, I handed over a custom flask of moonshine.  It had her
name and the date engraved on the front and "Product of The Selene City
Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits" on the back.
   Her dad asked, "Where's this distillery?"
   I told them, "Probably where Cathy might end up.  For now, consider it a
Clann confidential matter."
   Yeh.  They had a pretty good idea it was off-planet somewhere.
   Anyway, Ronan got another pass around and soundly abused Cathy's and her
mother's boobs rooting for milk.  He told me, _"I could get used to this."_
   _"Get used to it, son.  It's part of your duties.  It's a tough job, but
someone's gotta do it.  Maybe in a little while, we could share the load."_
   We both _cackled_ a little.
   CE Seminars had two seminars and didn't need our help at all.  Good on
'em.  We _peeked_ now and then and didn't have any nits to pick anywhere.
   ------
   (Sunday 3/11)
   Ellie Encyclopedia paid us a visit.  Dayum, she had on the sexiest
librarian's outfit I'd ever seen -- or thought of.  While covering
everything, there was a lovely set of breasts and nipple-bumps poking out
and a gorgeous arse sitting atop a pair of legs that descended from heaven.
Aideen told me, _"Dad, wipe your chin.  Let Margie coach her a bit, and
I'll bet she can wear out even you.  Hehehehe."_
   I didn't have much choice but to wait.  Darn.
   Anyway, she got a small glass with the rest of us and caught us up on
the news.  She (and the other AIs) had copied the image blocks into their
own systems and had gotten the first pass at the indexing and
cross-referencing done.  Now, "all they had to do" was to check it over and
see if it made any sort of sense.  Of course, with the tuned nodes to the
Selene City AIs, all their data (including the stuff we'd found in the Krle
folds) was in the mix, too.
   She told us, "This pass was pretty brute force.  While I can do tons of
synonyms, see-alsos and the like, I'll be going over the index especially
with lots of Humans.  There's still lots of nuances we don't know.  Even in
Sperk, Phane and a couple other languages, it's taken a Human to make some
sense of things."
   They were still tweaking the storage and retrieval taxonomies as they
went.  Why did we think that Silvia Connor was in linguist heaven?  She'd
gotten a volunteer team together and had moved lock, stock and barrel to
the Encyclopedia facility in AC.
   Ellie cuddled the kids really well, too.  They squirmed around, rooted
for milk (_"She's got great tits, Dad!"_) and fell asleep.  She beamed,
sighed and relaxed.  "I know I'm just a program, but it still seems like I
have feelings and emotions.  Each time we clone off another AI, it feels
like we're sending our own child out into the world."
   We discussed that a while.  Interesting.  While there was no "life" in
any of them, they were still wonderful friends.  Yeh, SW had a team looking
at the whole idea of an actual Artificial Intelligence.
   Although the babies couldn't speak verbally or hear very well, that
didn't slow them down much when it came to the AIs.  There were about a
hundred transducer nodes scattered around OTL (as well as all the
facilities, NewTek, SW and other places) with a direct network link to
either a local system or directly to an AI somewhere.
   We were all able to link in directly, almost like doing remote probing.
Since the transducer was optimized for it, it was dayum fast.  We OTL folk
could run two at a time (Patricia could do four!).  While verbal
communication was by its nature pretty slow, it was still pretty rich in
connotations and the associated body language.
   We could carry on a verbal communication and run the transducer links at
the same time.  Straight data went across the link while emotions and fun
stuff went verbally.  It seemed to work fine for pretty much everyone.
   The AIs could also produce a holo-clone in the blink of an eye.  They
weren't identical, but sure looked related.  All it took was another
remote; we had plenty scattered around.
   ------
   EILEEN
   We spent the afternoon and early evening at Liam's pub.  The NH gang
popped in and we had a great time.
   Oh, my.  It seemed the McDonnal Passion Posse had gotten their product.
Their last, em, target was now in a newborn body in a Clann right over the
hill.  They apparently hadn't selected another victim yet, because they
were mixing around with the rest of the Clann.
   Kat whispered in their ears and they laughed.  They trooped right over
over to Sean and snuggled up.  He immediately looked very apprehensive and
told them, "Now wait a minute.  I know what happened to the last two guys
you ganged up on."
   I told him firmly, "Ceann Cathal!  Do your duty!" Hehehehe.
   He groaned, the Passion Posse flooded out scent and pheromones and the
rest of the people applauded quietly.
   We left relatively early with Emer McCarthy and Ellen Shannon; it was
already quite late in Ireland, and we bondmates didn't want them too tired
to wear him out.  Heh.
   They got the usual OTL tour.  When the saw the fir and firelight room,
they fixed Sean with a firm look which said, "You are gonna work tonight."
   He did.  They did, and the rest of us did.  They were warm, sweet, tasty
and so much fun!
   ------
   (Monday 3/12)
   We took the day off; we had nothing to do and all day to do it in. 
Grin.
   We gathered the N&Bs (Sorry, the young-uns had school.) and found a
quiet beach in Brazil where we wouldn't be bugged for nude sunbathing.  Of
course we brought along a sufficient supply of food and other goodies.
   We took along a Cel laptop (It could run full out for a week on a single
accumulator charge.) so we'd have communications.  We also brought along a
dozen AI remotes so they could join us if they wished.
   They did.  They were as willing as we were to peel down to the buff. 
Anatomically correct was the least you could say; they were all simply
gorgeous.  Yeh, they even had a small mole here and there or a crease or
wrinkle, but that made them even more lifelike.  They were quite polite,
too; their farts didn't smell.  Grin.
   Ed Explorer, Fred Facilities, Mick Maker and Harry Hangar saluted the
females right away -- to match Sean, John and Patrick.  Ronan got a stiffy
all the time anyway, so he disqualified himself.
   Alice, Rhonda and Ellie made us all drool.  We didn't care if was all
smoke and mirrors, they were lovely.  Yeh, there were lots of perkies and
droolies going around.
   Anyway, one of the main things we talked about was colonization.  Ellie
told us, "We're finding quite a bit of information about ships, drives and
all sorts of stuff.  Seems the Cels in Krle got kinda the leftover ships
and data; there's a lot of designs and improvements in the Cel Libraries
which Mick didn't have.  In fact, the Library from System Harry (the
independent one) is more advanced than any in the Cel home systems and
their allies."
   Rhonda said, "We're SWAG'n that since they were simply miners and
manufacturers with a fairly low cultural level -- you call it lower to
middle class -- the home folk didn't bother with much of anything fancy. 
Why they didn't raise the level, we don't know yet."
   Anyway, right now we already had enough information and technology to
colonize any planet within 1,000 parsecs.  All we really needed was to put
a node on the target, and any of us could port ships, supplies, people
bodies, food or anything else in one shot.
   Our own Human history had enough experience at making colonies that the
SW planetary and colonization teams had a 98% confidence that we could put
a viable colony anywhere we wanted if it had a decent weather pattern. 
That was assuming it didn't run into mysterious plagues or vitamin/mineral
deficiencies or that kind of stuff.  Those were the type of follow up tests
any survey would run.
   Well, after quite a few hours of discussion, noshing, The Best and
leering at each other (Ellie trotted out some new dirty jokes she'd found
in the Libraries.  Heh.), we decided we'd still probably hang in on Earth
and the vicinity for a while.  We could and probably would spearhead
stores, services and those sort of businesses for a colony; they'd still
need them.  We weren't out to pioneer some place just to do it.
   We _listened_ in on the Clann Reynolds meeting.  We were up to 906
million and 2.6 million Clanns.  Not bad.  Given the six billion current
awake population, we had a decent representation.
   The AI holos "walked off into the sunset," and we gathered up their
remotes, our trash and zipped back to OTL.
   ------
   SEAN
   Yeh, planting a branch of Clann Cullen on a different planet would be
interesting, but not enough just to say we did it.  Getting a bolt hole or
hundred was a different story; that was vital.
   Margie dragged me off to fur and firelight.  "Tonight, you're mine."
   I was hers and she was mine.  I ensured I checked out and approved every
millimeter of her recent growth spurt and ensured she wasn't suffering from
orgasm deprivation due to her recent trip.  Hehehehe.
   My Best Girl was wonderful.  How could she have become so much lovelier,
sweeter and richer in so short a time?  Our _blendings_ were ecstatic with
vivid rainbows flickering around.  Best Girl!
   Tuesday, we spent several hours going over all the Cullen Enterprises,
Cullen Hotel and Tavern Enterprises books with the N&Bs.  Shit, especially
with the seminars, the money was rolling in.  RRK had well over 25 million
of our money invested; a quick look at our accounts there via the RRK
portal showed we'd already gained 15% yearly average since we started
sending it to them last year.  We could live with that.
   Every location was at least break even on cash flow.  Even the smallest
bar in the remotest facility was okay.  Hmm.  Maybe Petra would be
interested in setting up stuff around Alpha Centauri?  With the
Encyclopedia there, it could have plenty of visitors in the long run who'd
like a place to stay, eat and get booze.
   Yeh, she'd already been checking it out and had staked a claim for
several bars, B&Bs, large Rests and Taverns.  You go, girl!
   BB dragged me off that night.  "I got the next slip from your hat.  I
didn't even cheat, either!"
   Warm, tender lovings were the order of the night.  Her pelt was even
more luxurious ("It gets lots of tongue brushing.  Heh.") by now, and we
flared together to beat the stars.  My love, my sweet lady!
   ------
   (Wednesday 3/14)
   Kate and Marge were spending a lot of time with SW, mainly helping sort
out the Encyclopedia data.  Even with an index, we still needed categories,
applied keywords and other taxonomies.  Marge concentrated on the
math/physics data while Kate simply stuck her nose in pretty much
everywhere.
   She played a pretty good dumb redhead.  If she couldn't understand the
entry or category, who could?  The Encyclopedia wasn't just for experts; it
was for everyone's research and education.
   There was some more information about folds, mainly from the independent
system Library.  Seemed the Cels weren't too bright compared to their
allies and others, so their depth of information was actually pretty
shallow.
   There were enough equations to give SW one hell of a start on doing
their own work.  Kate stuck her two cents worth in, "If a full fold is not
actually part of our physical universe, how does one stay in one place? 
The big matter transceiver was exactly where expected, and the Distillery
folds stick around.  I'd expect them to be pretty much anywhere since the
Earth, the solar system and the entire galaxy are constantly moving all the
time."
   Well, SW had a task.  After a lot of digging and help from the AIs (They
could handle equation-tweaking really fast.), they found the original
equations the Cels had used "tied" the fold to a gravity well.  That's one
reason a partial-fold ship left a gravity wake.
   The folding equation "permitted" the folder to tie the new fold to a
specific gravity well or several.  The matter transceiver had been tied to
both the Sun and to Jupiter.  If no specific gravity well was specified,
the fold "found" the most intense one in the vicinity and glommed onto it.
   Someone looked at the equations and figured out how to tie the fold to
actual galactic or "universal" coordinates -- if the coordinate system was
specified in the equation.  Heh.
   They ended up with a set of equations which could create a fold (or
partial fold) at any coordinate.  Once the equation was solved for the
proper factors (The AIs cranked them out in much less than an eye-blink.),
it was a simple number-crunch with some special presser/tractor hardware
actually to do the fold; pretty much any laptop or desktop system could
crunch it in less that half a second from a standing start.
   Marge told us, "We're really glad the AIs could help us with this.  If
we printed just the basic equations, we end up with about 60 inches of
bookshelf.  Tack on the equations to handle the coordinate system, and
you've got an entire bookcase."
   Someone else asked some more dumb questions, such as, "If you fold to a
coordinate, do you have to 'unfold' in the exact sequence to get the
contents back?  Can we change the coordinates before or during the
unfolding?"
   That was exactly the right question.  A fold could be done from the
outside or inside.  It could last as long as desired (by the equations at
least) or be set to collapse on an elapsed time (jigger a timer inside if
desired), etc.
   That said we could fold a rock on the Moon, change the "stored"
coordinates to a set in Alpha Centauri then unfold it.  Funny, it not only
said it, it did it.
   A couple quick experiments showed life, spirits and the like went along
just fine with zero ill effects they could find.  We then had a complete
bypass of matter transceivers with all the construction, mass, power
requirements and other limitations.  They were already testing limitations
such as mass, size and distance.
   Our Rhonda Columbia or other shipboard computers could handle the math
with ease, and the actual folding hardware was shit-simple.  Complete folds
and unfolds were simple and required little power, while partial folds were
much more complex and required a great deal of power to maintain.
   Okay.  We had our FTL transport.
   ------
   Eileen got the next slip from my derby.  Yes!  We fed the kids up really
good after dinner then I dragged her off to my passion pit.  Heh.
   We had a wonderful three-hour Journey through the Gates of Heaven.  The
flare of our _blending_ was magnificent.  Our love had expanded more than
we ever could have imagined.  Best Lady and Ceann Mate!
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 3/15)
   Wonderful loving.  When we were all loving together, it was wonderful,
but when we were one on one, it was really special.  Best Man!
   Sean and Ronan were catching up on a lot of Ceann visits.  They'd go off
all dressed up in their kilts (Ronan had a tiny ceremonial staff to match
Sean's.) and usually come back all happy.
   Some of the visits weren't so happy, but that was part of the job. 
Ronan had a great time laying on the baby lovin'!  Yeh, he'd root around
the ladies' boobs real innocent-like.  Right.  If you believe that, Sean's
still got some pedestrian rights available in the Bay Area; contact him at
SQCullin@CullenEnt.com.  Grin.
   We prepped up Kate for her night with the laird.  Heh.  Dayum, she was
gorgeous.  With those puffies popped up, one could dine all night and never
be bored.
   The rest of us _peeked_ a little bit and did some of our own slow
lovin'. Life was a-wunnerful.
   Kate and Margie must have been inspired, because the next thing SW came
up with was the reverse engineering of the robot destroyer.  They
concentrated on the very small (relatively) power plant and figured out its
dirty little secrets.
   It was a combination fission/fusion reactor which could use dayum near
anything for fuel and converted it directly to multi-phase electricity.  A
plant the size of our kitchen refrigerator could produce the same power as
the big fusion reactor at Selene City.  Not a shabby deal at all.  Grin.
   With all the new goodies, Admiral Shelly immediately upgraded the
sensors around Krle and set up Sam Sensor AIs to handle all the input. 
Since any Mini-Mick could pump out sensors fairly lively, we saturated
Krle, Alpha Centauri and all the _Columbia_-explored systems with them. 
While we couldn't exactly walk on sensors from Krle to AC, it was dayum
close.
   We had a family meeting with our Ceann.  Since we now had an heir, who
gets to pop the next set of beautiful babies?
   We grinned and laughed a lot.  We (Sean actually had the final say.)
decided BB was next since she had the oldest body.  Why not?  It was as
good a reason as any.  We figured we'd stick with twins from here on out
unless an extra egg slipped; two mouths matched two faucets pretty well.
   Once we got BB on the way, we'd work on Kate, then Patricia.  The actual
exact sequence would depend on when their eggs ripened and when they were
ready to ovulate.  Yeah!  More fertility rites!  Margie told us, "Don't
even consider me.  Remember, I'm not even a year and a half old yet; I've
got *lots* of wild oats to sow!"
   The copycat Cullen Sisters wanted in, too.  Heh.  No, they didn't need
Sean to help, but multiple applications of the special baby-grow juice
would be accepted.  Heh.
   They, their hubbies and Sean decided to stick with singles this time; it
wasn't as if they didn't actually have enough offspring.  They'd go with
which ever husband got there first; there was no particular reason to stay
with the "legal" one.
   Melissa sure wanted in, too.  The minor debate was who would be the
father.  Kate pulled another one on us when she asked, "How about twins? 
Cats, dogs and other naturally-multiple bodies can have multiple fathers.
Get one egg fertilized from John while blocking the other egg.  Patrick
then gets his shot and then you've got one from each."
   Hehehehe.  Sounded good to *all* of us.  Did John or Patrick have any
say in the matters?  Take a wild guess.  Grin.  Liss would be in the right
time in her cycle without any nudging in a week or so; she promptly started
two eggs ripening.
   Maura and Teresa had about three weeks before their cycles were ready.
We immediately started planning seven rites!
   ------
   SEAN (Friday 3/16)
   I did my part in the baby planning by facilitating the discussions. 
Hopefully, I'd have parts to play later on; I was sure the bondmates would
inform me when my services were needed.  Grin.
   Now that SW had nifty power plants and a major breakthrough in fold
technology, they (and the War Council) decided to create scouts for
surveys. We'd start with the Alpha Centauri planets for a very quick test,
then move directly to Systems Bravo through Harry.  They'd pick up System
Foxtrot on the way; the _Columbia_ had skipped it during the expedition.
   Mick or a Mini-Mick could pump out the scouts and customize them as
desired.  Alice asked for volunteers; she had 50 million within an hour. 
Nice.
   She held a drawing to get about fifty teams together.  We figured
anywhere from four to ten people would work out just fine.  If someone drew
a lucky number and already had a relationship or a team, they could all go.
   Well that gave us 49 teams ranging from four to fifteen people.  No big
deal.  Mick and Rhonda designed a basic ship to hold 25 and started pumping
them out.
   With an updated Rhonda clone each, Ed Explorer could situate several on
a planet.  They'd pump out sensors and link them up through a Sam Sensor
who'd pump the information back to Ed.  The team would do population probes
(for populated planets) and gather information.  We sure were interested in
why the civilization and population levels were so low.
   Since we now had folding and power, the War Council approved Harry and
Ed to start mapping local systems (within a 1,000 parsecs or so of Krle).
Harry had not been "happy" with the jumps the _Columbia_ had done; he
figured even the initial _look_ should have been within a kilometer of his
calculations.  Instead, the margin of error ranged up to 100 kilometers.
   He and Ed figured that was due to outdated or incorrect map information.
Besides, there were *lots* more systems within a 1,000 parsec radius of
Krle.  Granted, we were near the rim of the galaxy where the stars weren't
*really* packed together, but there were still plenty of them.
   Mick could pump out a survey package with a life canister in very short
order.  Ed would select the next system and fold the package out above the
ecliptic.  The package would do a passive and active system scan.  With a
transducer in the package and in Ed, he'd get real-time data.
   The package would do a very accurate positioning survey to correct or
validate the coordinates, survey the system and keep reporting back.  Even
without a system _inspection_, we'd find out in a hurry if there were
habitable planets and populations.  If we found a population, we could then
send in some scouts to check it out.  It worked for all of us.  The War
Council gave the plan a unanimous go.
   Friday night, we honored Carl and Della Bright at the Ganymede Rest; we
brought Melissa along, of course.
   They'd both gone to the seminar, had done their studying and had started
putting in the policies in their store.  Funny enough, they'd tripled their
business since then and had the two boys working full time and overtime.  I
guessed the stuff worked.
   Carl tried to saddle us with the responsibility for the expansion.  No
way.  I told them, "All we did was make the data available and give you a
path.  You are the ones who studied and made it your own knowledge.  You
are the ones who sweated blood all this time.  You did it, not us."
   They had to settle for that.  Anyway, the Rest was in full swing.  The
restaurant was at least 95% full, so that was a good thing.  Petra was
doing good!
   Back at OTL, we settled in and talked for a while before Della dragged
me away.  Dayum, I sure learned what BB meant when she'd talked about
oriental endurance.  Della was wonderfully passionate, sweet as anything
and used both my poke spots unmercifully.
   Neither Carl nor BB nor Melissa had anything on doing each other, so
Carl had to endure the attentions of six sexy women.  Poor fella.  Grin.
   The bondmates eventually kicked him and me out (rescuing me from Della's
clutches) and dragged Della off shrieking and protesting.  Right.  Carl and
I just looked at each other, shrugged and settled down in the den with The
Best, Ronan, Ed, Fred, Mick and Harry.
   From the sounds of things, Della didn't have any back off on any of the
girls.  Hehehehe.  We guys just cuddled Ronan (Keelin and Joan were in with
the others "helping.") and yakked away.
   With the jewelry shop doing so well, they were looking at franchising. I
suggested they get together with Jewelry Arts and look at a joint venture.
Carl and Della mainly did repair and fabrication while Jewelry Arts was
more retail sales.  With a storefront nearby each of the current shops,
they might get the best of both.
   ------
   (Saturday 3/17)
   We zipped off to Ohio for breakfast.  Della was bouncing all over with a
grin a mile wide, while the rest of us were really knackered out.  Grin.
   We did the buffet justice, though.  Carl, Della and Liss zipped off to
do their stuff, and the rest of us went back to OTL so we could rest up
from our labors.
   CE Seminars had three scheduled for today.  After a _peek_ or so, we
knew they were doing just fine, so we soaked our aching bodies in the
Jacuzzi.  Funny, even though the womenfolk claimed to be all worn out, the
water jets still got a major workout!
   ------
   (Sunday 3/18)
   Ed Explorer sent out the first survey packages.  At a hundred or so an
hour (for now; he could actually send them out a lot faster), he covered a
lot of territory quickly.
   Being ambitious, we invited the entire N&B gang, the NH gang and all of
Clann McDonnal for a day at a beach.  The NH gang dropped by for a couple
minutes, but had some other stuff do do.  So, after a solid round of
baby-cuddling, they took off.
   All the AIs made an appearance.  Yeh, the N&Bs and McDonnals were just
as struck with them as we had been.  We're gonna have to try this out some
time.  Betcha my bondmates would surrender to their base desires before I
did.  Hehehehe.
   We swam, snorkled, ate, drank, gossiped, talked and had a great time. 
The young-uns took the younger ones in swimming and body surfing (With two
foot waves, it was just enough to have fun.) We had a wonderful lazy day.
It was great to be retired.  Grin.
   ------
   EILEEN (Monday 3/19)
   Yeh, might as well be really lazy.  We zipped off to Liam's pub for the
day for another party.  They're eight hours ahead of Southern California,
so their normal work day was already over.
   The AIs joined in; the village might have been rural, but with ones of
us everywhere, they had terminals, computers and the like all over.  I
spotted a couple dozen of the AIs' remotes stacked in a basket behind the
bar; they'd either been here before or had just "moved in."
   Apparently they'd just been moved in.  Ed Explorer came in the door in
his Aussie outfit, and the McDonnal Passion Posse descended on him like
alcohol on whiskey.  He was good-lookin' and young, no doubt.
   From the way the girls were rubbing their boobs on him, they thought so,
too.  Their faces got puzzled looks; since there wasn't an actual spirit,
one could think he had up perfect Cullen shield.
   He grinned around at the girls and told them, "I really appreciate your
efforts, ladies.  If I were different I'd take you up on your apparent
offers.  But to save time, I'll introduce myself.  I am Ed Explorer, AI
extraordinaire."
   The girls laughed.  Ellen grinned and said, "Well in that case, I sure
hope you're all charged up.  We've had discussions about meeting one of
you, em, in the flesh.  You've just been appointed the explorer in another
realm.  Hehehehe." Eight young firm boobs immediately rubbed again.
   Ed flushed and gave me a "help me" glance.  I laughed at him and told
him and the rest of the AI holos who'd come in, "You're on your own.  I
just hope getting a remote completely discharged won't affect you at home.
Hehehehe."
   ------
   Ed must have survived, because he later helped fold off the first scouts
to System Bravo, followed in short order by the rest of the _Columbia_
systems.  Each system got a Sam Sensor to relay data back to him, and the
teams settled in and got to work.
   Wednesday, the entire CE gang met with the RRK shareholders in Chicago.
Oh, yeh, Amanda and her crew were ecstatic to have RRK himself back and
looking over the results of his work.
   He'd gotten a decent education in the couple months he'd been around, so
understood quite a bit of what he saw.  Figures, companies, income
statements and balance sheets hadn't changed that much, and he helped us
give everything a good going over.
   We made a private bet where Rocker would be spending most of his spare
time.  No girls yet; he had a different adventure in mind for a while. 
Grin.
   We left Kat and Bob trying to pry him away at least long enough for
dinner.  Grin.  My babies got dinner just fine at Liam's pub.
   The McDonnal Passion Posse had survived Ed somehow.  We got together
with them (Sean had better things to do, of course.) and got the down and
dirty.
   Yeh, he'd known what he was doing, all right.  He'd been a wonderful
lover, strong when needed and gentle when desired.  He'd laid them all out.
Margie noted, "Probably the only reason you survived is because the
accumulator in his remote ran down.  They're not very big actually.  But
you don't get off scot free, either.  Fred, Harry and Mick will simply
build larger remotes and come looking for you.  The gauntlet has been
thrown!  Hehehehe."
   ------
   SEAN (Thursday 3/22)
   Oh, boy!  Melissa got her first fertility rite -- with Jack.  My
bondmates, the Cullen Sisters and the female young-uns dragged her off for
the pre-rite set up.  Grin.
   It was only fitting that BB was the link; gotta help out baby sister,
right?  Anyway, this was a Core Clann Cullen invitation, and we ended up
with a couple hundred spirits tormenting BB for an hour before the rite
started.  Heh.  I was nice and let everyone else go ahead; I could get my
licks in pretty much any time.  Hehehehe.
   Dayum, it was hot!  They'd picked a "deserted beach" setting; the
sponsors had to keep straightening out the beach towel.  Ya wouldn't think
it would take an hour, but they were after a quality product.  Right.
   Liss had a _touch_ shield around one of her two eggs which let Jack
right in on the other.  It worked like a charm, for sure.  Yes!  We had
another preggy lady in the works.
   When my bondmates got back to OTL, for some reason they were interested
in practicing.  No, BB wasn't worn out; seemed it had just whetted her
appetite.  A bondmate's gotta do what a bondmate's gotta do, right?
   We managed to hold it down to half the night.  Marge told me, "We've got
you scheduled for tomorrow night, so you've gotta keep up your strength."
She was serious; they cut me off after three times each!
   Friday I found out who they were talking about.  Mary McCarthy and Keavy
Shannon zipped in from Ireland all hot to trot.  Nice!  We had a nice
leisurely dinner in Rhode Island and chatted away.
   Both sets of sisters were working their butts off on getting solid
technical educations.  Marge purred when they told us they were interested
in the math area.  Wonder why?
   Marge did recommend they also pick up at least one other technical field
to supplement the math, "Math is for application.  Yeh, there's lots of
folk around who just play with it, but as far as I'm concerned it's just
mental masturbation.  It might make you happy for a while, but it neither
pays the bills nor gets anything done."
   Mary and Keavy had really gotten an education somewhere.  They started
in on me at 10:00 and didn't let up until 3:00.  Dayum, what a chore!
   The other bondmates grabbed them at 3:01 and let me rest.  From the
noise coming from their room, the girls were still going strong for the
next several hours, too.  Heh.
   ------
   (Saturday 3/24)
   The first scouting reports from the _Columbia_ systems were in; we
gathered at NH to go over them with Frank Duane and Ed Explorer.  Ed looked
a bit frazzled; he told us, "Sorry, I had a tough night a couple of nights
ago." Right.  I knew his problem exactly.
   Ed reminded us this was a short first week results from quick probes. 
"So far what we've found is the folk on all the planets are a bit, em,
intellectually challenged."
   The highest IQ they'd found was about 95, and she was the leader of a
large town.  Only a few specs of Talent showed up anywhere in any of the
systems.  They hadn't really checked out the Sleepers; that was an entirely
different task with different techniques and took a lot longer than the
awake spirits.  Well, with the IQs that low and so little Talent, it wasn't
really a wonder the civilization levels were so low.  Which came first, the
low IQs or the low civilization?
   Another issue was the Libraries and memory blocks they'd found.  The
most recent date was about 207,000 years ago.
   So, right about the time of the war we'd found, the civilizations had
collapsed and had never really recovered.  Obviously there was a
correlation between the intelligence and civilization; the scouts were
still scanning for previous civilization artifacts.  So far, they hadn't
come up with any more recent than the 208,000 year one.  That's a long time
for a civilization to be stagnant, much less several of them.
   Lots of the Library records were in local languages (207,000 years or
more old), so Ellie and Silvia Connor were working on them.  Ed ended up
with, "There was a widespread civilization decline or collapse in something
like a thousand years, and as far as we can tell, it hasn't come back very
far.  That's another good reason to get our mapping up to a reasonably good
rate; we might find a civilization which didn't decline.
   "The real Why we've yet to find, even as a *really* Wild Assed Guess. 
Maybe there'll be more when we crack some of the languages."
   Chapter 18
   EILEEN (Sunday 3/25)
   Kat had talked Liam into a tour of The Selene City Distillery of Fine
Irish Spirits facilities.  The Selene City part was doing research in small
batches with different grains, stills, casks, aging and the like.
   The Mars facility was much larger and was completely underground.  Yeh,
it might have a slight heat bloom now and then on the surface, but what's
Earth gonna do?  Send their Mars explorers several thousand miles to
investigate?
   We'd picked up a little on the booze-making technology.  The key
ingredients were mash (from grain and water) and a bit of yeast perhaps to
get the alcohol production going.  The type of grain made a difference as
well as the water.
   As a control, they had used _filtered_ water for their experimental
productions; that's *pure* aitch two oh!  The water used actually did make
a difference in the final product, though.  "Natural" waters had varying
degrees of impurities which tended to flavor the end product.  Scotch, for
example, used water from peat bogs.  It gave the booze part of the end
flavor.
   Mick and the crew, however, could do a good enough scan of the "best"
waters and reproduce the molecules which gave it flavor.  Then they could
use their own filtered water, add the appropriate molecules then toss in
some minerals (proportional to the original water).  Make the mash and turn
it loose.
   Seemed the vacuum-distillation actually gave them better control over
the distillation process.  The mash had to be at one optimum temperature to
produce the alcohol, but after that results varied according to the still's
size, shape, style, temperature and the like.  Toss in the aging process
with different types of casks and storage conditions, and you had a lot of
variables.
   Not our problem, really.  As long as they pumped out the usquebaugh at a
decent price and volume, they could make it from oily bilge water as far as
we cared!  Besides, toss in some B-complex vitamins at the end, and it was,
em, healthy.  Grin.
   Our big deal that evening was Melissa's fertility rite with Patrick. 
John's egg had been dividing perfectly and was firmly attached.
   While this was a private ceremony, between the OTL gang with all the
young-uns (six young young-uns now in addition), she had good attendance.
Heh.  BB was our link again.  She was a trouper, putting up with all that
to help her baby sister.  Right.
   They did it perfectly!  We had another two Clann Cullen members on the
way.  Maura and Teresa were hot to trot, but they didn't want to push their
ovulation too much; just let it happen.  They were due Real Soon Now
anyway. Grin.
   Of course, that fired up Patricia, BB and Kate.  They insisted on
practicing a couple times each.  Heh.  Me, I figured I'd wait a while to
decide if we wanted more; I'd shown I could pump out wonderful babies
already -- and the three we had then were all-hands full.  No, I wasn't
gonna give them back, either!
   ------
   (Monday 3/26)
   We lazed around a lot doing newsletter research and eyeballing our
various business interests.  NewTek was rolling along delivering raw
materials at something like 500,000 tons a day.  Hope it doesn't affect the
Earth's gravity!
   Aideen zipped over to NH so she could spend some physical time with
Ronan.  That was fine with us; she could dine there from an available boob
if she could fight the other three off long enough.  Isn't young love
sweet?
   Tuesday, Ed Explorer gave us a quick update on the exploration.  With
his mapping packages going out so fast, he could cover a lot of territory.
Between Dr.  Frank Drake's estimate of some 10,000 intelligent-life planets
in the Milk Way Galaxy and SW's SWAGs, there would be plenty to explore.
   To start with, Ed was doing a pretty thorough search of Krle's vicinity.
He started with a disk some 2,000 parsecs in diameter and about 300 parsecs
thick centered around it.  Doesn't hurt to know the neighbors.
   The Libraries we'd gotten so far referenced lots of systems and planets.
If he could figure out a coordinate, he could fold off a probe.  The
systems with mentioned goodies (civilizations, habitable planets, raw
materials, etc.) got first dibs.
   Not that they were so concerned with how fast things could go.  Between
him and his Minis, they could pump out fifteen new packages a minute,
including the life canister.  Cost to SW, NewTek or others?  Nada, just a
bit of spirit time every now and then to collect the bacteria, moss or
whatever they were using.
   In fact, System Alpha had a bacteria and moss farm.  Totally sealed, of
course, but Mick figured within a week or so, all the canisters would be
getting "fueled" from there.
   ------
   SEAN (Thursday 3/29)
   We had the NH gang over for an evening of good times.  Ronan and Aideen
floated around playing mushy-mushy while the rest of us cheered them on
occasionally.  Grin.
   Aideen and Marge were having a great time old-ladying each other.  They
could go at it for fifteen minutes straight in Irish, Phane and six other
languages.  The rest of us laughed and egged them on.
   Jaysus, the kids were getting really old now.  Kat's were six weeks, and
Eileen's were five weeks.  How time flies.  They were eating almost every
chance they got.  Eileen pretended to bitch and moan about being just a
milk factory, but her contented smiles and radiance as a baby nursed let us
know differently.
   She did complain that her huge boobs made none of her clothes fit any
more.  The rest of the girls consoled her with frequent shopping trips. 
Not that they bought all that much any more; they got lots of ideas and
cleased stuff up.  They were getting so good at that I couldn't tell myself
if a given outfit (or any part of one) was "real" or not.
   Not that it mattered much.  Any of us could get undressed in a second
and dressed again in another second.  For some reason, the girls took a lot
longer getting dressed than I did.  That was fine; the results were always,
em, up to saluting standards.
   The bondmates (plus Kat and Sherry) blindsided me.  Seemed BB's eggs
were in a prime position for, em, enhancement to zygote status.  Hey, I
should complain?
   We had a wonderful fur and firelight dalliance with lots of loving (plus
six home runs).  The rest _cheered_ us on.  The last two home runs nailed
both eggs.  Dayum, BB's fur stood straight up when the sperm went in!  It
took me 15 minutes each time to get her combed back down -- I didn't finish
either grooming before she insisted on some baby-grow exercises.  Grin.
   ------
   (Friday 3/30)
   Dayum, having the both Clanns together like that was great!  We're
spirit cross-related to boot.  Bob and I agreed we actually were an
extended family to a great degree.  Now *that* is cross-Clann cultural
exchange!
   We wore out a breakfast buffet in Atlantic City then took off to our
various little tasks for the day.  We did some newsletter research and a
quick check on the CE Seminars materials storage.  There was plenty for the
ten seminars scheduled the next several weeks.
   CE Seminars was training eight more facilitators.  Betcha Rita and Duane
were having a great time at Fillmore.
   Apparently Bob and Kat were as "retired" as we were.  Mario and Sherry
(with her happily-bulging belly) were busy a lot with SW stuff, so they had
some duties to fulfill almost all the time.
   The OTL gang agreed that even if we were retired, Ceann Mor might find
something for us to do.  We'd better at least look busy.
   Ronan and I did a lot of Ceann visits.  Stuff was going well; most
everyone had followed up on the "homework" we'd given them -- studying,
mainly -- so we were willing to bless quite a few relationships and
dispense a lot of, em, advice.  Most of the advice was asking the right
questions, and Ronan was getting good at feeding them to me.
   Why shouldn't he work?  After all, I had to wave that staff around and
look Ceann-ly correct while he just had to lay on the baby-lovin' and feel
up all the female boobs he could, right?
   He agreed, _"Bring on the boobs!  I love 'em all!"_
   ------
   Ed put several packages out into the nearest part of the Sagittarius
Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy; that's 21,000 parsecs.  He told us, "Harry and
I've got little data on any other galaxy beyond the rough coordinates.  So,
these are really a hunt, poke and cuss.  One package we had to move twice
before we got it outside a sun.
   "That tells me, at least, that for now if we have a coordinate, we can
fold to or from it.  Now, you biological and spirit packages gotta come up
to speed Real Soon Now.  A 1,000 parsec teleport is pathetic."
   Sure and the bondmates didn't let him get away with that smart-AI-arse
remark; even his knowledge of Phane was put to the test for several
minutes.
   Marge did agree with him for some of it, "We're getting there, though.
On the other hand, the only way an AI or sensor package can detect actual
life like Sleepers is through a transducer node.  Maybe sometime you can
actually pull your weight when it comes to surveying a system completely."
   Ed might have been "only a program," but he did know when to retreat
from a battle.  Ronan and I sympathized with him a little.
   He adroitly changed the subject when he popped up a room-sized 3D map
with one of the available projectors.  He shaded different areas so we
could immediately pick out the explored, unexplored but in Harry's maps, in
Harry's maps with suspect coordinates, in Harry's map on hearsay and lots
not in Harry's maps but which the Encyclopedia said were "around that
neighborhood." None of the areas were marked as, "Here there be dragons."
   The "newer" AIs deferred to the Selene City AIs.  Ed said, "We might be
a bit faster, larger and have more data storage, but the original big AIs
have the, em, experience.  We share a tremendous amount and are normally
linked up pretty close.  Still, we give their opinions a lot of weight in
our work."
   Smart "man." By now, Rhonda and Alice could almost talk either Marge or
Aideen to a standstill.  Not both at once, but close.
   He joined us for Tavern night at one of Petra's large bars (almost the
size of the Pasadena Tavern) on one of Saturn's moons.  We had a
spectacular view of the rings all night while several Irishmen's drunken
hats made their appearance.
   The bondmates had decked out the three young-uns with Cullen tartan
blankets and tiny bowler and flat hats.  Some patrons must have snuck the
tiny hats some usquebaugh, because they started staggering around
assaulting innocent (highly-unlikely) maidens.
   Soon the maidens' protectors started taking action with their assorted
drunken articles -- mostly hats.  After about a half hour, the SW Security
hat bouncers broke up the brawl.  Their hats were *big*.  Grin.
   Back home, BB demanded (and the others supported her) several injections
of the baby-grow formula.  The very tiny almost-young-uns were so cute! 
(So said the females.  Far be it from Ronan or me even to hint we thought
differently.)
   ------
   (Saturday 3/31)
   We _peeked_ in on two CE Seminars.  The audience was having a blast and
learning a lot, so we let it be.  After all, it was their baby now, right?
   That evening, we honored two of the Clann Cullen mundane families.  The
Altadena Arms restaurant was in full swing; the stage was just right for
the duet to dance just a bit.
   My social secretaries had instructed me to pay close attention to Mary
Orban and her daughter Celeste.  Not a problem!  They were a cute mother
and daughter; the family was several generations of Clann.  Ronan told me,
_"Probably became Clann in New York.  Orban has a familiar ring to it."_
   Chuck Orban was part of NewTek in the new products division.  He and his
wife worked with Pieter Analytics (one of Kat's companies) in the R&D
department.  Their two sons were Juniors in high school, while Celeste was
in her Freshman year of college.  Marge snuggled up to her a bit because
she was a math major.  Grin.
   We had a blast.  The entertainment duet was excellent even though no
Irishmen's drunken hats appeared.  The young young-uns refrained (with
great effort) from letting *their* hats get drunk.  Thank you.
   The manager took us on a quick tour of the kitchen (We outnumbered the
staff.) and politely kicked us out the door.  With us inside, his cooks
couldn't get much done.  Guessed he showed us where we were on the totem
pole.
   We got the Orbans back to OTL without any effort; they knew what was
going on.  We gave them the two-bit tour; Mary and Celeste were quite
interested in the fur room, while Chuck and the two young men were equally
interested in a large, second-floor bedroom.
   The babies spread their lovin' around equally.  Yeh, Ronan got his hands
all over four quite nice feminine accessories.  Dirty young man!
   After a final feed, the babies went down for a while (Their bodies could
sleep most of the night now.), and the bondmates dragged Chuck and his sons
away on a detailed inspection tour.  Sure and I knew what they wanted
inspected.  Grin.
   Uh, oh!  That left me at the mercy of Mary and Celeste.  They'd
remembered where the fur room was and dragged me off to have their way with
me.
   They did.  About four times each.  With no qualms about riding the
two-saddle pony and laying some loving on each other every once in a while,
they let me know in no uncertain terms how honored they were.
   Several home runs later, the bondmates ejected us guys and took Mary and
Celeste away for "a quiet talk about the Ceann's shortcomings." Chuck, his
sons and I kicked back in the den for a while to try to recuperate from the
frequently-lost attacks on our innocences.  Right.
   The boys' eyes were big, and they were wiped.  Chuck wasn't in much
better shape, so I made like I was whipped too.  Yeh, the boys hadn't been
around too much, so getting savagely molested by four horny women had been
quite an, em, experience.  Fortunately, Chuck and Mary had taught them to
bear up under unusual circumstances.  Grin.
   ------
   EILEEN (Sunday 4/1)
   We had fun with Mary and Celeste.  They were well warmed-up, as were we.
Sweet!
   We exchanged preggy and baby stories with Mary while Celeste listened a
bit wide-eyed.  She and her mother were pretty open about things, but this
was the first time she'd been in a real adult hen party.
   This was also the first time she'd been with another woman openly
(Besides earlier with Sean.  Yeh, we'd _peeked_ a bit.).  After a couple
more stories, BB said, "Enough!  Plenty of time for that.  Right now we've
got these two sweet young thangs at our mercy!"
   No mercy did they show us.  While the wimpy guys snoozed, drank
usquebaugh and gossiped, they showed us what two determined women could do.
Bring in on!
   In the morning, we had a special breakfast at the Arms.  Mary and
Celeste glowed (and walked a bit funny) while the guys looked whipped -- as
they should be.  Grin.
   Mundane or not, they were really good people.  We put a node in each of
them and put them on the enhancement list.  We'd had apparent mundanes pop
out just fine before, so why not them?
   Sunday, we traipsed off to visit Clann McDonnal at Liam's pub.  We took
Carmel McLennan along so she could hang out with her niece a while.  The NH
gang was there in force with David and Elizabeth as guests.
   The McDonnal passion posse took one look at David and Elizabeth then
swarmed all over them.  Grin.  Kat warned them they weren't the old bodies
they'd run over before, but that didn't seem to phase them.
   David and Elizabeth grinned and joined in the fun.  Liam took lots of
bets on who would give up first -- among the older folk, the odds were
heavily in David and Elizabeth's favor.  Of course; experience (plus
David's genetic disposition) made him odds-on favorite for us.  Go, David!
Go, Elizabeth!  Do 'em all *real* good!
   We slipped away after a couple of hours.  No one had come back screaming
about dead bodies, so we figured David and Elizabeth were taking it fairly
easy on the Passion Posse.  Heh.
   We had Maura's fertility rites that night.  Melissa was the link;
Patrick wound her up for an hour before blasting her womb full.  Scoooore!
   Patrick got lured into several extra doses of baby-grow serum while we
celebrated their happiness.  Baby-grow all around, even if it wasn't needed
yet!
   ------
   (Monday 4/2)
   Ed Explorer and his packages found another 20 more habitable planets
just about where Harry's maps had pointed.  The distance varied up to about
10,000 parsecs; no problemo for mighty Ed the Folder.
   Alice scheduled them some scouts for spirit-on surveys.  There was no
reason to pass up a decent possible colony planet; we'd keep them "in
reserve" if nothing else.
   Ellie told us, "I'm not having much luck finding references to Krle in
any unusual aspect.  There's quite a few listing it as both a minor
manufacturing center and a construction site for the network mass
transmitter.  Still, there's plenty more to sift through."
   Ed got back to us a while later.  He'd checked back over the previous
inhabited-planet surveys and _inspection_ reports.  "With all of these
civilizations, there's a tremendous infant mortality.  Even at the
'highest' civilization level, it's about 40% to age six.  The lower the
civilization, the higher the rate.  The lower ones run about 60%; one is
75%.  Those are dying out."
   Jaysus.  He also told us the number of Sleepers ran from several hundred
thousand to several billion per system.  In the case of the non-Krle
systems, we called any unaware spirit not in a body a Sleeper.  Some really
were catatonic and others were just wandering around or were stuck to some
object or following around a body or genetic line, just as we'd found here.
Not a lot of fun in that; we wanted someone who'd come out and play with
us!
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 4/3)
   SW, Ed and Alice decided it was time for more scouts.  Ed had plenty of
hot systems to investigate, and the fifty or so scouts we already had were
really busy.
   SW did a satisfaction survey with the current scouts.  Gathering the
results, they tweaked the designs with Ed and Mick.  Not a problem, most
were pretty minor such as a nice little fold to store ice cream and really
cold booze.  Yeh, if you did it just right, you could do a fold within a
fold if you fed it the correct coordinates.  Seemed the inner fold had to
be contained entirely within the outer.  Made sense to me.
   Anyway, it didn't take Mick and his horde of leprechauns (Mini-Micks) to
pump out another 500 scout ships.  With lots of volunteers already, it took
about three days to get a new scout crew trained (theory), practiced (shoot
up some rocks, fold here and there) and off on a survey.
   By now, Ed was pretty good at estimating the threat level just from his
packages.  So far, he hadn't rated any at more than, "Here there might be
some butterflies" rather than warnings of possible dragons.  Grin.
   It turned out Clann Cullen had three scout teams!  That's a pretty good
proportion; it must have been my bondmates' influences.  Heh.
   We gave the teams a rousing sendoff with a party at the Ganymede Rest.
The Irishmen's drunken hats made several appearances, including the three
tiny ones from our "innocents." Right.
   ------
   (Wednesday 4/4)
   Bob called us together for a briefing from Ed, Ellie and Frank Duane. 
The scouts and packages had found some interesting things.
   Under Ed and SW's direction, the scouts had done a very fine scan for
zapper circuitry.  The ones on a ship used for attack were pretty
good-sized pieces of gear, since they had to operate over a distance and
were so inefficient.
   However, they could be made quite small if distance wasn't really a
factor.  The scouts had found circuitry matches on every inhabited or
previously-inhabited planet.
   Ed told us, "What the scouts did pick up was a pretty solid match to
several small zappers on each planet's surface.  The three Cel home systems
had several on each of the planets, all the same circuitry and
configuration.
   "In each case, the zapper was in a small building on or very near the
planetary surface.  The building and zapper components from each system
were so identical in fabrication and metallurgy, we believe they were built
off-planet and set there.  Some were smashed from meteor strikes or the
war, but in most cases we found enough positive matches to SWAG they were
the same as the others.
   "The building had a small but fairly powerful one-way firewall --
currently non-operational.  It looks to us like they were spirit motels --
a spirit could check in, but he couldn't check out."
   Frank's turn.  "Our SWAG is it was a spirit collection facility.  Put a
body plus spirit in the room, zap it real good to 'numb' the spirit then
use a moveable firewall to pull the Sleeper into the 'safe.' Dispose of the
body as needed.  Think of the ghost collection facility in Ghostbusters."
   They'd folded off one of the buildings and had disassembled it down
almost to the molecules.  From that inspection and the state of the actual
physical building, they SWAG'd it was well over a million years old.  It
had been on the surface of the planet for a *long* time.
   Most planets had several.  There was an excellent correlation between
the SWAG'd size of the original civilization and the number of spirit
motels.  From the distances involved (Thousands and tens of thousands of
parsecs), they were definitely not only a Cel phenomenon.
   Ellie was searching deeply for references to them.  It was slow going
since our main extrasolar languages were Sperk and Phane.  Lots of the
Library references were in a language similar to Sperk -- those they were
making good headway in translating.
   The majority of the files were in what were probably local languages,
either the planet's own main languages or perhaps those of a loose group of
allied systems.  They were hoping for a Rosetta Stone here and there, but
hadn't had much luck so far.
   Silvia Connor and her crew was going almost 24/7.  If anyone could do
it, they, Rhonda and Ellie could.
   Frank ended with, "We're WAG'n now, not SWAG'n.  We think there's a
direct relationship between the presence of those zappers and buildings on
planetary surfaces, the present IQs of the inhabitants, the lack of
Potential and their civilization levels.  Each planet we've seen has a low
civilization level, low IQs -- which would give a low civilization level --
and zapper buildings."
   Dayum.  Just what we needed.  Lots of zap-happy populations.
   Thursday, Ed and his gang of scouts did a snatch of a major Library. 
They didn't fold the library away; they simply folded a couple tuned nodes
into the system hardware and copied the memory blocks.  Why bother with the
entire thing right now?  We were after data, information and intelligence.
The art work (They'd found tons in each Library.) came second.  We had
puzzles to solve right then!
   Every library they'd found referenced other systems yet further from us.
Stepping stones, for sure.  Harry was having a grand old time updating his
maps at least ten times a day.  His 3D projection showed the area of
knowledge, guesses and rumors growing all the time.  We were in a good pie
wedge almost to the center third of the galaxy!
   Maggie spent a lot of her time skunking away.  Once Ellie had done her
cross-reference and indexing of a new Library, she gleefully served up
liberal portions of math references.  Seventh heaven for Maggie!
   That didn't stop her from ensuring she got back in plenty of time to get
in on all the lovin' going on at home, either.  Seems math made her horny.
Then again, pretty much anything made my bondmates horny.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   EILEEN (Friday 4/6)
   Just because there were lots of events going on thousands of parsecs
away didn't mean we weren't interested in them.  Even with our naked eyes,
we could see some of the stars Ed was surveying.  Granted, the light we saw
was thousands of older than what Ed was "seeing," but no matter.  It was
*real*, not just some writer's science fiction dream.
   Besides, some of our scouts were on station.  As an experiment, SW had
several of us attempt a _link_ or _join_ with some of the scouts.  We had
the coordinates, could translate them and knew where the target was.
   Especially if we knew the target, such as one of our Clann Cullen
scouts, it was actually pretty simple.  The most difficult part was to
account for the relative motion; the coordinates themselves didn't tell us
anything about that.
   However, if you started with a wide enough scan of the target
coordinates, you could zero in really fast.  All of the family, including
the young young-uns, could lock into a target and _link_ within about
fifteen seconds.  We got better with practice, too.
   The furthest distance we'd personally linked was around 13,000 parsecs.
Not bad for a bunch of once-zapped spirits!
   We did a quick run around to our financed businesses.  It was worth it
to do so, because we still had a couple million bucks due to come in from
them.
   We had no major complaints.  Of course, we could find fault just about
anywhere, but the nits to pick were getting smaller all the time.  Good on
'em!
   We had a nice Tavern night at the Stevenson Ranch properties.  We
honored a new one-of-us family who'd joined the Clann about a month ago. 
Sure and it was a lot easier to zip up there and meet them without having
to drive the Beemer or Volvo.  Maybe we'd dump the cars for one of the new
NewTek fuel-cell vehicles due out Real Soon Now.
   Anyway, the family was a couple and their two daughters of 16 and 18. 
There was nothing bashful about any of them; the women zoomed in on Sean
like Ronan on boobs.  Grin.
   Of course we wimmin gave the husband, Gary, the real hairy eyeball.  I
thought he started to get a bit nervous when four adult women and one
gorgeous young faery kept licking their lips over him.  Hehehehe.
   They got introduced to the Irishmen's drunken hats -- a good five of
them.  Seemed every time we trotted them out, some of the audience conjured
up some of theirs, too.  Grin.
   We had a wonderful night.  Gary did survive us, though barely.  Sean
didn't survive the two girls and their mother; they were voracious.  We
took pity on the wimpy guys, kicked them out and got our own licks in on
the women.
   Dayum, it was a good thing there were five of us; even after going
through the Sean wringer (a good three home runs and a grand slam each),
they were still willing to attempt to wear us out.  They almost did, but we
prevailed in the end -- or in their ends.  Heh.
   After a wonderful breakfast buffet in Cabo, we let them escape.  Sean
sent two large usquebaugh flasks for the adults and a couple smaller ones
for the girls.  Gotta break them in easy, right?
   Saturday, Bob, Kat and their young young-uns zipped up to Redding to
visit Bill and Caitlin of Clann Redding.  Janey Mack!  She'd been holding
out on us.  Kat was quick to _tell_ us Caitlin had two leprechauns in the
oven, and that Bob had been forced to demonstrate (time and time again) the
Ceann baby-grow regime.  Poor fella!  Grin.
   Sunday we spent most of the day at Liam's pub with the NH gang.  We had
a lot of discussion among us and Clann McDonnal about rehabilitating a
planet with a degenerated population.
   We thought it would be a tough road.  The scouts' inspection reports
showed only a trace of Talent here and there among the awake ones.  Sure
and it wasn't after being the 10% plus we'd found here on Krle.
   With about twenty ex-Sleepers among those present, we at least had some
reality on what it took to get one back among the "living." With the Krle
Sleepers so far (according to Alice, who tracked the Clann logs), it took
at least a solid week to get one up to a point where they wouldn't drool
over themselves.
   That was with someone pretty sharp, too.  With the lower IQ and less
Talent among the out-planets, we figured it would be a lot harder.
   Rhonda (as a sexy nekkid faery) had a little on that from Alice, Ed and
Ellie.  "The IQ on the planets is actually skewed down about 20 points from
100 -- which Earth people consider 'normal.' Even with the flap-jaw about
IQ tests being culturally biased, it is about normal.  At least it's at the
high point of the curve.
   "It's an asymmetric bell curve.  It drops off really fast to the left,
while the right side shows the normal drop-off rate.  It makes sense in
some ways.  People like Kathleen Airhead tend not to survive very long;
often not long enough even to be tested or estimated.
   "With the other civilizations, everything slid to the left.  Probably
that's why the civilization level is so low."
   Margie had almost the last word, "SW is working on wholesale Sleeper
rehabilitation.  Maybe we could find a way to invert the zapper to remove
the confusion and perhaps dig out the implanted commands enough that a
Sleeper could be handled more rapidly.
   "Then, even if we find Sleepers in other systems haven't been subjected
to a zapper, perhaps we could kick them enough to make a difference.  Heh.
We've got plenty of inventory here, maybe we could export a couple trillion
per planet; it sure wouldn't effect Krle very much, and it just might drag
up the average IQ quite a few points."
   ------
   SEAN (Monday 4/9)
   Early Monday morning, Ed rousted us and the NH gang.  He told us, "I've
got a survey package reporting a ship moving in a system.  This is the
first we've noticed; I've sent a scout on scene to lay on some spirit
whammy."
   The scout team was a whole two-weeks experienced and stayed inside a
partial fold while they checked things out.  Once they got out of the fold,
we were able to _link_ with them at about 8,000 parsecs.  We had live
action news!
   There was definitely a ship moving.  It was making a straight approach
to one of the two habitable planets.  The scout reported, "No occupants,
but...  there's a hefty interior-facing firewall, a lot of pretty hefty
zappers and a couple hundred Sleepers inside."
   Yeh.  Our suspicions were immediately confirmed when it went right to a
local collection station on the planet and "dipped" in.  The two planetary
collection centers and the three on the other planet were long out of
commission.
   It was making pickups!  We've got us a space-cruising paddy wagon!  Ed
told us, "Harry tells me it's got a standard IFF beacon.  His programming
says to let a ship with that kind of beacon signal to have full access to
the Krle system.  Looks like we have a real find here."
   Ed and the scouts promptly folded a tuned node into the ship's computer
system.  Ed (The other AIs were already tuned in.) had not the slightest
problem in hacking in and subverting the ship's AI.
   "It's a dummy, really.  Even a Mini-Mick could spit out a better system
on the side while pumping out usquebaugh bottles."
   Yeh.  Even we could sense through our nodes that it was a) Slow as an
Irishman leaving a free bar and b) Pretty shtupid.  I thought even our DVD
program chip had more smarts.
   Anyway, the ship went to each collection station and attempted to dip
into the storage vault.  No luck; all the stations had gone out of service
a long time ago -- a WAG of some 207,000 years ago.
   It had kept a log of sorts.  Ed and the scouts were able to figure out
where it was going next; it was going "home." Well, they told us, "This
will take a while.  The directions and coordinates are pretty weird, so
we'll keep you informed."
   ------
   (Tuesday 4/10)
   We figured they'd let us know when something was happening.  In the
meantime, we had a fertility rite to supervise.
   Teresa had an egg well down her tube; it would be the luck of the Irish
whether John got it or Patrick.
   Melissa was the linker.  Heh.  Well, we knew what to do with her! 
Forty-five minutes was just a good warm up.  Hehehehe.
   John got Teresa going really well with one home run right after another.
When he finally let go, she sucked it right up.
   Anticipation.  That was the hard part.  Well, after an hour of the sperm
swarming all over the egg, nothing had happened.  It was one tough Irish
egg.  Grin.
   She washed things out with some water, then Patrick got his chance. 
With everyone egging them on, Patrick gave her a really heft dose of
baby-making juice.
   Yes!  After maybe five minutes, a sperm worked its way in and went to
town.  The egg started dividing right away, and we had another future faery
for the Clann!
   We left the N&Bs to their post-rite party.  My bondmates promptly
descended on me for more practice.
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 4/11)
   Ed and the scouts had traced the collection ship's route to its next
system.  They SWAG'd it was the home system because there was a large
Library and an operating facility.  The facility was running on automatic
producing what appeared to be more collection ships and repairing the
returning ones.
   The system had a civilization once.  Currently there were several
billion Sleepers and a couple million awake population between the two
habitable planets.
   The inner planet's moon had the ship facility and Library.  The Library
was empty of almost all living creatures (There were the equivalent of a
few rats running around underneath things.) but was powered up and idle.
   Well, Ed knew what to do with that.  After a tuned node, canister and
transducer went in, they went to work.  Yeh, there was a Rhonda-type AI,
but it wasn't very smart.  It was more like a fairly competent search
engine which had been waiting for input (a search question) for a couple
hundred thousand years.  No awareness at all.
   Ed fed Ellie the Library memory.  While it was pretty large, it only
took about 30 hours to copy everything over.  Not bad for a 13,000 parsec
data link.  Grin.
   ------
   By Saturday, Ed and Ellie had come up with enough translations to make a
bit of headway.  The system was called Cablin, and the Library was
nucleus-in-atom with the manufacturing/repair facility.
   The records showed there were several hundred thousand of the collection
ships out and about.  Each had its own route of sorts, and Ed was trying to
track them down.
   The "route" was what a city slicker would get from an Arkansas good ole
boy.  It was on the lines of, "Go thataway 'til you see the orange moss on
the dead pine -- not the orange moss on the oak.  Hang a sorta left towards
the highest peak you see..." Peter Pan and Wendy had better directions.
   Well, what with the relative motion among the stars, the ships didn't
work their routes very fast.  Yeh, they brought back some corrections, but
it was still really slow.
   They had several scouts trying to run the route about 100,000 times as
fast -- a couple scouts were already half-way through the "directions."
   A ship took about 10,000 years to run a route; the facility/Library sent
another ship on the same route every Krle-year or so.  The ship would
"visit" a system, collect the captured spirits and go on its way.  What
exactly they did with them wasn't quite clear yet; the best they'd come up
with was they'd dump them somewhere we had yet to track down.
   ------
   SEAN (Sunday 4/15)
   We spent the day on a warm beach somewhere with the kids and the AIs. 
While the AIs couldn't really swim, they could fake it pretty well --
something like what I did with some of my Ceann duties.  Grin.
   The kids loved the small waves.  The AIs kept a sharp eye on their
bodies as they body-surfed the two-foot waves a couple times.
   We kept an eye on the AIs and the other family members.  There were lots
of good-lookin' bodies around.  The Ceann's Shillelagh kept trying to wave
around; yummy!
   Yeh, the bondmates wanted to practice.  Kate and Patricia figured they'd
be ready fairly lively, so they kept insisting we practice until we got it
right.
   BB needed frequent applications of the magic formula, while Eileen
impartially egged everyone else on.  While Marge wasn't preggy and wasn't
planning to be, she still got her share of the magic potion.
   ------
   (Tuesday 4/17)
   Frank, Ed and a couple other of the AIs called us and NH together.  They
had a briefing for us on information they'd ferreted out of the Cablin
Library.
   Frank told us, "The Cablins at least well aware of the spiritual nature
of beings well over a hundred million years ago.  They didn't *do* anything
with the data, it was more of a 'magic' sort of thing with them.
   "About 65 million Krle years ago, one scientist of sorts discovered how
to make a spirit firewall with electronic circuitry.  Given that, several
thousand years later, the zapper itself was developed.  They both worked,
so no one really did anything more with them."
   Yeh, a couple big-wigs on Cablin had some political enemies and figured
out that if they zapped them and "extracted" the actual person, they
wouldn't be around to give them a hard time.
   It did work.  The spirits were collected in several collection stations
where they were out of the way.  The bodies mysteriously disappeared,
probably into the sewage systems.
   There was a fairly wide-spread set of systems in the 1,000 parsecs or so
around Cablin.  Always out for a buck, the big-wigs spread the word: your
enemies, criminals and thorns in the side can vanish -- and won't be back
to haunt you.
   For a small annual fee, Cablin would deliver and install one or more
innocuous-looking collection stations.  For the times, the engineering was
pretty good because the stations were built to last over a hundred thousand
years.
   Several Cablin politicians got pretty wealthy fairly quickly.  Then
again, some of them "disappeared" too as their opponents found out what was
going on.
   Yeh, pretty much anyone "out of the norm" was fodder.  A controversial
artist, a known criminal, a too-active manager and anyone who protested too
much.  Anyone could vanish.
   After a few thousand years, there was some rumbling among the Cablin
clients.  They were worried that the collection stations might fail and
they'd have all the trouble-makers right back out making trouble.
   Well, the solution to that was a dumping planet -- or several.  Find an
out-of-the-way planet without a civilization or with tool-making bodies
then just dump the collected spirits there.
   After they were dumped, the dumping ship could give the entire planet a
good zapping with heavy-duty, long-distant zappers.  That kept the wildlife
in a stunned condition until the next dumping ship came along.
   The Cablin system's main industry had become building, distributing and
maintaining spirit collection facilities.  The word spread among the
"civilizations" around until the entire galaxy at least knew of the ideas.
   Krle got picked mainly because it had just been struck by a nice wayward
meteor or comet and had been almost completely wiped clean of mobile life.
Besides not having native spirits to cause confusion, there wouldn't be any
bodies around to use for a long time.
   Besides, with a large, close satellite in synchronous orbit (one side
always facing the planet -- not unusual at all), they could mount really
heavy zappers on it to cover the planet.  That way, the collection ships
didn't have to carry the big zappers themselves.
   There's lots of planets with synchronous satellites, but ones with a
large close one were much rarer.  With the large one, they could mount a
couple zappers far apart on the horizon and cover the planet pretty well.
   That was Krle.  From what we could glean from the logs, it got one hell
of a dump about that 65 million years ago.
   Cablin altered its contracts and offerings.  They still supplied the
spirit motels and the pick ups, but now had a place to dump.  Krle became a
gulag, a Siberia and a Botany Bay.
   The main problem was a collection ship from the far side of the galaxy
would take well over 100,000 years to make its collections, do the dump and
get back to Cablin for maintenance.  That was way too long.
   Cablin spearheaded a drive for other gulag planets.  They managed to set
up three other planets roughly spaced by the population density.  There
were three about a third of the way spaced around the outer part of the
galaxy (like Krle) and one much nearer the center.  That gave four separate
dumping grounds; the ships wouldn't have nearly so far to go.
   The galaxy-wide "company" set up a repair/maintenance/production
facility for each of the four sectors.  While this took a thousand years or
so, the executive club kept the word going through the generations.
   Cablin was the facility for the Krle sector was in; they'd been there
the firstest with the mostest.  Yeh.  It was nice to know we were among the
first; thanks heaps.
   Well, that explained a lot of things about Krle.  We were a dumping
ground for exiles.  The three quadrillion or so Sleepers had been dumped
just as apparently we had.
   Most of the surveyed Clann members (almost a billion now) had their
memories running back to about 65 million years ago.  Marge's SWAG was,
"Probably most of the ones with Talent were among the first to get dumped.
As the most Talented -- and most unwilling to put up with government or
corporate bullshit -- we were among the first to get 'collected.'
   "That kinda tells me probably everyone on Krle has enough Talent of some
sort to be a mover or a shaker.  Leaving aside for the moment the probable
criminals we've found, it says we've got the best available pool of sheer
ability for a long ways around.  The other three gulag planets probably are
in the same situation whether or not they know it."
   Eileen had her own SWAG, "Betcha since the ones with ability or Talent
kept getting, em, deported, that lowered the civilizations' IQs.  Keeping
the brain drain going those 65 million years or so and you'll have
civilizations where Kathleen Airhead was a Normal in comparison.
   "Is it any wonder the civilization levels are so low?  Less native
ability means less ability to learn, improvise and originate positive
actions.  By now, most of them are probably robots."
   Yeh.  On the other hand, the fact that the intercepted ship had several
hundred collected spirits told us at least one civilization had operational
collection stations.  While we didn't know the caliber of the collected
Sleepers, we were willing to bet they were still a cut above the average of
their civilizations.
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 4/18)
   We gathered at NH for the evening and night.  We teased all the young
young-uns unmercifully, talked a lot about what we'd just learned about our
exile and downed a bit of usquebaugh.  We were pissed, no doubt about it.
   Sherry said, "We're still having the last laugh.  No matter who they
were, we've still probably outlived our enemies and are in one hell of a
lot better condition than they are now."
   Yeh.  We didn't concern ourselves much with why we'd been deported; the
reasons were way out of date anyway.  Ceann Mor had passed the word for a
full War Council and Clanns Council meeting next Wednesday.  That would let
the emotions settle up a bit and give SW and the AIs more time for more
translations and to sort out the data a bit more.
   Heh.  Since our entire "family" was here, Kate had managed to get her
eggs just right.  We kicked her and Sean off to the fur and firelight room
for a lot of whoopee.
   We were definitely in the mood.  _Watching_ Kate's nipples almost pop
off when the sperm burrowed in was, em, exhilarating.  Grin
   We had some long slow loving among us for the rest of the night.  Of
course, the preggy ones (now including Kate) had to get as many doses of
baby-grow formula as possible.  Gotta grow 'em strong, right?
   Whether or not we were exiles, our _merges_ and _blendings_ were full of
ecstasy and love.  We wouldn't have it any other way.
   ------
   SEAN (Friday 4/20)
   Well, we wouldn't lack for babies for a couple years.  Dayum good thing
we'd built all those spare rooms on the second floor!
   We and the NH gang did the Pasadena Tavern.  We showed off the babies
and the babies showed off.  Their little hats were so cute!  The Reynolds'
babies didn't have hats but had their own tartan blankets.
   Yep, the Irishmen's drunken hats made their appearances.  For some
reason, the three Cullen hats tormented the Reynolds kids.  Grin.
   We spent the night at NH.  Patricia's eggs had dropped, so the whole
family watched as we nailed them really good.  Her hair stood up all over!
Yowsah!
   The rest of us did some loving.  Sherry slipped in several three-run
homers in on us.  Kat told her, "That counts for two of your three monthly
shaggings.  Live with it!"
   Sherry could Irish pretty dayum good for a Hispanic.  The traitor Aideen
even helped her out!  They were both overdue for some serious tickling one
of these days.  Grin.
   We hit a remote warm beach early Sunday morning.  The AIs joined us.  No
they couldn't really swim, but they sure had some other tricks.  Rhonda,
Ellie and Alice could shake their heads and their hair would be dry and in
place.
   Heh.  We Humans could do that too.  After a couple practice runs, we
could all do it in a couple seconds.  Nice.
   Later, we zipped over to Liam's pub to catch up on the local gossip and
pass around the kids for cuddling.  NH was already there, so the Passion
Posse had more to handle.
   Six babies and eight young tidy boobs worked out all right.  Even if the
boobs were dry, it didn't stop the young-uns from trying -- especially
Ronan.  Grin.
   ------
   (Wednesday 4/25)
   At the Clanns and War Council meeting, Ed didn't have a lot more news.
All the translations in the Cablin Library appeared to have confirmed the
existence of the four gulag planets.  The AIs and the scouts were zeroing
in on the locations; it seemed a lot of the route signs had vanished over
the millennia.
   They'd found another hundred habitable planets.  80 of them once had
civilizations and about 50 had sentient beings with useable bodies.
   They'd gotten over a thousand collections stations tagged; all were out
of of commission.  Ed and his scouts were tracing the back track of the
ship which had the captives aboard.
   We ended up with several firm decisions.  Ed and his cronies would
continue their search for the other gulag planets.  As for the Cablin
system, we'd take over the AI and make it part of our network.  As ships
came back in, we'd take them over and shut them down.
   For a longer range plan, we'd attempt to track the ships already on
their routes.  As we found them, we'd take them over and free the captive
spirits.  Them we'd either drop at a convenient near location or bring them
to a larger habitable planet which needed some fresh spirit.  Heh.
   If we found a collection station, it was outta there.  We'd just release
any captives and fold the station itself off for recycling.  Sure and we
weren't after planning on using them any more!
   If and when we found the other gulag planets, we'd do some serious
considering on moving in and taking over any facilities.
   We'd always take appropriate precautions while scouting.  No dragons
yet, but they may pop up in the next system.  We didn't want any surprises
of that nature.
   We'd continue our current mapping and exploration project.  Even at 200
to 400 billion stars in the galaxy, Ed and the rest could handle all the
packages.  That's one reason they'd put the specifications for the new
systems so high.  Keep lots of widely-distributed backups, and we'd
probably do just fine.
   ------
   (Friday 4/27)
   Party night!  We did the rounds of several Taverns.  Yeh, having
apparently-nekkid preggy faeries and a half-dozen mischievous
young-young-uns along did make it interesting.  Irishmen's drunken hats
seemed to appear from everywhere!
   The NH gang and us ended up back at OTL for a bit of resting before
partying the rest of the night.  A bit of The Best seemed to settle
everyone down a little.
   Sherry was happily showing off her preggy belly, and the other preggies
were cleasing up their own cute bellies.  Looking around, I observed, "Sure
and you're not gonna be very good colonists.  None of you are barefoot."
   Dayum, I must be getting old.  A good dozen pillows hit me all at once.
Grin.
   End Best Girl: Interesting Times.
   
  
Best Girl Interesting Times 16-end